of composition is put into the hands of scholars, the more unexceptionable it should be in style and sentiment. These selections go a great way towards determining the future character of those who may read them. We sincerely thank Mr. Sargent for having so beautifully realized a correct and important idea, and regret that our space will not permit us to do his book a higher degree of justice.

E. S.

AMERICAN INSTITUTE OF INSTRUCTION.

We are unable to inform our readers where the next meeting of the American Institute of Instruction will be held. We had delayed going to press until after the meeting of the Directors, which took place the 27th of June, hoping to obtain all needed information. But the subject was referred to a special committee of three, who will report at an early day. We trust we shall be enabled to publish the programme in the August No.

PRIZE ESSAYS.

THE MASSACHUSETTS TEACHERS' ASSOCIATION offers the following prizes for original Essays :

TO MEMBERS OF THE ASSOCIATION, for the best Essay, on either of the following subjects, a prize of TWENTY-FIVE

DOLLARS.

1. The Relation of the Common School to the State. 2. School Supervision.

3. The Relation which the Common School sustains to the College and the University.

To the FEMALE TEACHERS of the State, for the best Essay on either of the following subjects, a prize of TWENTY-FIVE

DOLLARS.

1. Primary School Instruction, and the Methods of Teaching Young Children.

2. The True Mission of the Teacher.

3. The Objects of Common School Instruction.

The Essays must be forwarded to the Secretary, Charles J. Capen, Esq., Latin School, Boston, on or before the 21st of October. Each Essay should be accompanied by a sealed envelope enclosing the name of the writer. The envelopes accompanying unsuccessful Essays will not be opened. The prizes will be awarded by an impartial committee; but no prize will be awarded to an Essay that is not deemed worthy of one. The successful Essays will be regarded as the property of the Association.

Boston, June 18th, 1855.

JOSIAH A. STEARNS, President.

THE

MASSACHUSETTS TEACHER.

Vol. VIII, No. 8.]

A. M. GAY, EDITOR.

[August, 1855.

AT WHAT AGE SHOULD A BOY ENTER COLLEGE?

The following communication addressed to the editor of the present number of the Teacher, is commended to the careful attention of parents who have sons intending to enter college, and to those generally who have the immediate charge of the preparatory instruction in our classical schools. It is the tendency, at present, to urge scholars on beyond their real capacities, to introduce them into studies evidently beyond their depth; and the result uniformly is, that the elementary branches are neglected, and superficial habits of study acquired. This fault is to be attributed partly to parents who, partaking of the spirit of the age, and supposing that mind, like matter, will yield to force, frequently importune teachers to shorten the period of elementary training, with great detriment to the pupil's success, and partly to teachers themselves, who are sometimes exceedingly ambitious to offer a large number of candidates each year for examination. It is to be hoped that the example recently set in some of our best classical schools, of lengthening the course of study to five or six years, will be speedily followed in all, and that "men" not "boys" will be offered for the discipline and instruction of college.

AMHERST, July 2d, 1855.

MY DEAR SIR: You inquire of me, at what age a boy should enter College. The question is one of no small importance, not only to the boy himself, but to the preparatory school and the college, to the cause of learning and the community.

My own observation and experience of college life, which, in one relation or another, has now extended over some twenty-five

years, is decidedly adverse to early admissions. The laws of Amherst College, in common, as I believe, with most of the other colleges of the older States, prescribe fourteen, as the earliest age at which one can be admitted to Freshman standing. This may, perhaps, be well enough for an extreme limit, for there are undoubtedly individuals, who at fourteen are already capable of entering college with safety, and pursuing all the studies, as they come along, with advantage. There are boys, who are as mature at fourteen, as others are at eighteen. And yet these are so manifestly exceptions, that it may well be doubted whether they should constitute the rule, or be set up, even indirectly, as the standard. If fourteen is prescribed as the limit, the danger is, that all will consider that as the proper age. It were better, perhaps, to designate the age at which, as a general rule, it is desirable to enter, and leave exceptional cases to be provided for, as they arise; or if a limit must be prescribed, it should be accompanied with the distinct statement, that it is better for boys, in general, to enter at a more advanced age.

That it is better, as a general rule, for boys not to enter college so early as fourteen, I have no doubt. Not a few instances have come under my observation in which the vanity of parents has plumed itself on entering their sons at the very earliest period at which they are admissible, and some instances, in which they have procured a special vote of the Corporation, dispensing with the law in the case of their sons and authoriz ing their admission at a still earlier age. And the result has

almost always been unhappy. Doubtless the evil was aggravated in these instances, by the foolish vanity of the parents, producing in their sons that pride which precedes a fall. But where there has been no such weakness, those who enter the lists very young, seldom hold out in the race with their older and more mature competitors. They set out bravely; during Freshman year, they are, perhaps, favorite candidates for the valedictory. But early in the Sophomore year, many fall out of the course, not a few others fail to round the goal at the end of the year, others still fall behind in the Junior studies; and most of them come in for a very inferior share of Senior triumphs and the honors of Commencement. In view of such facts, college officers are often tempted to wish that they may never see any more "boys" present themselves for examination. College is no place for mere boys. Its duties and its dangers, its trials and its toils, its course of study and its whole organization and manner of life, demand men; if not men in age and stature, yet men in physical, mental, and moral stamina.

The studies now pursued in American Colleges, extend over the whole wide and ever widening range of literature and

science, and comprehend the most abstruse and difficult, as well as the loftiest and grandest subjects, that have ever exercised the human intellect. Whether prosecuted for their own sake, or for the sake of the discipline which they impart, they require to be pursued with the most intense application of all the mental powers. They must be studied so as not only to master the facts, but to comprehend their mutual relations and the principles which they involve. The study of languages, for example, is not (as boys usually make it, and as "children of a larger growth" sometimes represent it) the study of mere words. It is the study of thoughts and things-of the greatest and best thoughts that men have ever uttered, and so, indirectly, of the greatest and best things that God has created on earth. It is the study of reason and speech,* those characteristic attributes of our race, in their inseparable connection with each other, and the study of them after the Baconian method, by observing how men have developed and employed these divine gifts; and so it is the study of history and philosophy, of human nature and mankind. Classical studies should be commenced in boyhood, when the memory is ready and retentive. The foundation should then be laid in a perfect knowledge of forms and constructions. But the chief end of such studies is lost, if they are finished and laid aside, before the mind has become sufficiently reflective and comprehensive to consider them in these higher and wider relations.

In like manner, the mathematics are not merely a dry collection of theorems and problems-not merely a dead body of rules and formulas; but as the very name imports, they are the basis of all science and all art, the informing principle of music, poetry and the arts of design, not less than of chemistry, astronomy and the physical sciences, and the invisible frame-work of the material, if not also, (as Pythagoras taught) of the spiritual universe. The physical sciences, while they embody some of the most masterly productions of human genius, are also expressions of the attributes and thoughts of God. The several branches of mental science, while they make us acquainted with ourselves, also determine the limits and methods of all knowledge, and furnish the clew to discovery and progress, not more in anthropology, than in cosmology and theology.

Such, in brief, are the principal studies pursued in college, and they are clearly no boy's play. They are sufficient to task the largest powers of the human intellect. They are only marred and mangled and effectually finished, if finished in mere boyhood.

* Hence the term Philology: piños and hoyos which includes both reason and speech.

We come to a similar conclusion when we look at the mental discipline, which, more than the mastery of literature and science, is the primary object of a college education. The college is the last in the series of properly educational institutions. On leaving college, the young man's "education is completed," and he enters upon the study of a profession. Now it requires no argument to prove, that before the discipline of the mental powers is finished, those powers themselves should have attained to some degree of maturity, and also that the judgment, under whose control the work of discipline is to be accomplished, should have become in a measure ripe? The college student is emphatically left to his own judgment,-thrown upon his own resources. When he enters college, if not before, he must leave the parental roof, the command of parents, the counsels of friends, the influences of home, and become, in an important sense, his own master, choose his own associates, regulate his own house, and direct his own manner of life. This involves a weighty responsibility in regard merely to bodily health and habits, and the culture of the intellect. How much more weighty, when the social habits, the moral character, the religious principles, the health of the heart, and the welfare of the soul are taken into consideration! Parents and friends can, now, only advise. Teachers look on, not indeed at so great a distance, but still from without that charmed circle, in which he lives and moves and has his being. College students constitute a community by themselves and of their own kind, with manners, customs, laws, and I had almost said a language of their own, with peculiar advantages, and those very great, but with peculiar temptations, and those also very trying, with facilities for propagating influence and for getting and doing either good or evil, such as belong to scarcely any other community in the wide world. Meanwhile conflicting motives sweep the surface of this little community, and counter currents stir it to its lowest depths. Every influence that can proceed from this world or the next, falls upon them. Every passion, from the merest love of self to the purest love of God, contends for the mastery. Competitions with fellow-students, as severe as those which are waged on the floor of Congress, or in any other arena of human strife, invite them to enter the lists against each other. Or they may strive for the mastery over self, and thus win triumphs more noble than those of the gymnast or the as cetic. Or yet again they may struggle to obey the will of God, and do good to men in a field of usefulness which the missionary might well covet,-in a theatre of glory, such as never dazzled the eye of any poet or orator of antiquity. Or, on the other hand, they may sit in the bower of ease, or enter the halls of forbidden pleasure, or vie with each other in the arts of dis