of its citizens, and ought to cultivate them for the public good and the more that the average of talent is low, ought those who rise above the average to be cared for. As you would select the strongest to bear the standard, and the bravest to man the breach, so should you cherish him of powerful intellect to deal with the laws and executive of his country. Self-educated and self-raised persons are apt to despise the ladder to learning, from a notion that if mind is worth anything, it will find its level. But what an advantage to remove early difficulties, and suggest pursuits that may be selected according to taste. These selfraised know not how much higher they might have risen, or how much better they might have acquitted themselves, had they been early placed amid the facilities which education furnishes.

New York may bravely lift up her head and say she has not left the "stepchildren of nature and fortune, the outcast, the benighted, the brutalised, and the homeless," to flee to a rock for shelter. She has generously opened her arms, and is opening them wider and wider still. She has instructed thousands, and will instruct thousands more. Besides the very extensive benevolent institutions sustained by voluntary subscription, the report for 1850 shews at least nearly 11,000 dollars contributed by the city, to aid in sustaining orphan houses, blind asylums, and places of reform for juvenile delinquents. How poor and dangerous a plea is it

may

for depriving the few of the refining and expanding influences of good scholarship, that the same boon cannot be conferred on the masses!-and how much need has a republic of leading minds, well imbued with principles of justice, and enriched with the histories of other ages and other nations, and with their experience, under a just and wise Providence, of past failures and successes! It is easy to raise a popular cry which frustrate the wisest purposes. Such a cry, about liberty of conscience, has hooted all catechisms and creeds out of the present scheme of instruction; and, in virtue of the city having at present an inheritance of children, whose parents, as Romanists, dare not, or as infidels, will not, read the Scriptures, the Holy Book, and all teaching founded on it, are sparingly used in the Common Schools. How this comports with the order of a country calling itself Christian, and essentially Christian in most of its institutions, it is not easy to see; while it is very easy to see that a cry raised about encroachment on liberty of conscience was sure to tell on a people so jealous for liberty as are the Americans.

It is melancholy to observe bright children, capable of all manner of impressions, well versed in the brief history of their own country, but utterly ignorant, so far as the school-teaching goes, of the history of the world they live in, its creation, the path by which they may pass safely through it, and, above all, of how they may go well out of it.

It will be said that this statement is not fact, and

that a portion of Scripture is read each morning, and the Lord's prayer said, or sometimes chanted, at the opening of the school. This is optional, and, judging by delicate admonitions in the reports, it would appear is omitted by some teachers. If reading the Scriptures were steadily observed, it could not be said that some classes, after learning to read, pass on to' other things, and never read any more, or at least read a little history so seldom, that the inspectors complain of reading not being cultivated as an art, and say there is no reason why the pupils should not read as well as Miss Fanny Kemble, to listen to whose "readings of Shakspere," the taste and cultivation of the city were thronging.

It is an excellent rule to begin the day by the habitual reading of the Word of God. Let it be without note or comment, if that be necessary to security against the teacher's peculiar dogmas, but still let it be solemnly and soberly. How many whose hours are hereafter to be spent in earning a livelihood, may thus stow up sacred sentiments to fall back upon when the time of reflection or of retrospection comes. And if there is to be no more extended petition than what is found in the Lord's Prayer, at least let that be said, not sung, with deliberation and reverence, each in the attitude of prayer.

Were the vote re-considered, apart from any false excitement about encroachment on liberty of con

science, one cannot but hope that even in New York-where numerous recently-arrived Irish emigrants have, by some evasion of the laws, been permitted to exercise the power of voting-they would lay it down as a rule that the Scripture History be read and questioned upon, at least as diligently as that of the United States. It seems to me grievous to see the real Christian influences which would be shed from many of the teachers, neutralised by this vain cry of liberty of conscience. Children do not learn arithmetic and geography without teaching—but they are supposed to know Christianity by intuition, and to exercise conscience before it is enlightened. Liberty of conscience! Poor dear ignorant offspring of fallen Adam! Let it be called liberty of sin-liberty of forgetting God -liberty of neglecting the Saviour liberty of slaying their own souls; but let not the citizens be deluded by supposing that training which omits instruction in reference to God and his thoughts toward themselves is honest genuine liberty.

Protestants have thus heedlessly, in keeping with the constitution of their government, as they reckon it, slighted the means of conveying early knowledge of the Bible, and are not awake to the proceedings of the enemy, who, with unsleeping eye, discerns where and how he may insinuate his baleful influences. Amid many pleasant moral songs which form the peculiar attraction of a school examination, you may not hear one Protestant hymn. No

strain of adoration or of love is put into those young hearts. But watch, and when you inquire what are the words of that noble and striking air, you will discover that it is the chant of a Popish pilgrimage. What those sweet cadences of thanksgiving they are praise for the pleasant rest to be obtained before the little shrines which stud the deep and meritoriously stony ascent, crowned by the image to whose sacred fane the pilgrims are climbing on their knees. Think we such strains are adopted by accident? They are certainly, by carelessness in some quarter, but it must be of purpose and by Popish influence in some other. In England we are sufficiently accustomed to such wiles, and we have seen music made the plea for the introduction of many an Ora pro nobis to the Virgin, which the unthinking have accepted because of its beauty.

Another mode of insinuating mischief is the prize books which are distributed on a day of examination. Many are good and useful, many are pleasant, but, if one may venture to say so, too juvenile and silly, and some are unwholesome and dangerous. In selecting a set of books, when an eye must be turned to the cost, and to the attractive aspect of the prize, it is not difficult for the designing to introduce mischief under cover of blue and gold. In such a livery have I found, in the hand of a girl of fifteen, the Beauties of Festus, as her reward for attainments in the highest class. Festus!-a work which, in spite of all its talent and fine thinking, I threatened to