to state that Beargrass is the name of a creek near Louisville. The School Friend.

"Not long since, at. an evening political levee, at the capital, conversation turned upon geography, and finally, old Tom Benton (being present) began to quote Humboldt pretty extensively. A quiet old codger, an ex. M. C., who hailed from Kentucky, and had once been attached in some way to the Ministry of France, in his younger days, and of which fact he was always mighty proud, joined in the conversation. When old Tom had gotten through with his Humboldt authority, Kentuck said

'Gentlemen, it's my opinion old Humboldt is an overrated man, and he don't begin to know so much about geography as he lets on. The fact is, I met him once at a public dinner in Paris, when I was thar, you know, and put him to the proof. As long as he was talking about the Andes, and Cordilleras, and sich places as nobody but himself had ever heard on, he carried every thing his own way; but the instant I put a straight forward question to him, one that any school boy in Kentucky might have answered, he was floored; yes, sir. Now, Baron, said I, can you tell me whar's Bar Grass? Upon — my honor-gentlemen, he knew no more about it, than I do about Jerusalem!" "

EXTRACTS FROM ROUSSEAU'S EMILIUS.

We receive education from nature, from men, or from circumstances. The constitutional exertion of our organs and faculties is the education of nature; the uses we are taught to make of that exertion, the education given us by men; and in the acquisitions made by our own experience on the objects around us, consists our education from circumstances.

We are not sufficiently acquainted with a state of infancy, and the farther we proceed on our present mistaken ideas, the farther we wander from the point. Even the most sagacious instructors apply themselves to those things which man is required to know, without considering what it is children are capacitated to learn. They are always expecting the man in the child, without reflecting what he is before he can be a man.

Trace the progress of the most ignorant of mortals, from his birth to the present hour, and you will be astonished at the knowledge he has acquired. If we divide all human science into two parts, the one consisting of that which is common to all

men, and the other of what is peculiar to the learned, the latter will appear insignificant and trifling, in comparison with the other. But we think nothing of general acquisitions, because they are made insensibly, and even before we arrive at the age of reason; knowledge becomes conspicuous only in its difference of comparison, just as in working algebraic equations common quantities stand for nothing.

Mr. Locke's maxim was to educate children by reasoning with them; and it is that which is now most in vogue. The success of it, however, does not appear to recommend it; for my own part, I meet with no children so silly and ridiculous as those with whom so much argument has been held. Of all the faculties of man, that of reason, which is in fact only a compound of all the rest, unfolds itself the latest, and with the greatest difficulty; and yet, this is what we would make use of, to develope the first and easiest of them. The great end of a good education, is to form a reasonable man; and yet we pretend to educate a child by means of reason! This is beginning where we should leave off, and making an implement of the work we are about.

[For the Massachusetts Teacher.]

SOLUTION TO PROBLEM PROPOSED IN No. 7.

Connect each Inscribe a circle

Describe about the given circle a regular polygon, of as many sides as the number of circles required. angle thereof with the centre of the circle. in each of the triangles thus formed. Nashua, N. H.

C. A. L.

PROBLEM.

Around a given circle, whose radius is a, suppose any possible number of equal circles to be circumscribed, each touching the interior and two of the exterior circles. It is required to find a general formula for x, the radius of the circumscribed circles, n being their number.

L. R.

DICKINSON PRINTING HOUSE,
DAMRELL & MOORE, Publishers, No. 26 Washington Street,

To whom all letters should be addressed. TERMS-One Dollar per annum in advance, or One Dollar and Fifty Cents at the end of the year. Twenty-five per cent. allowed to agents who procure five subscribers, and all payments by them to be made in advance.

LESSONS FROM ANCIENT SCHOOLMASTERS.

COULD old Pythagoras visit once more this busy world, and witness the changes which have transpired since he taught his school of three hundred in Italy; could he enter one of our modern seminaries of learning, and sit but half a day beside the teacher's desk, and glance at the modern means and mode of doing things-the new school books, the ferule, the blackboard, the bell, the special regulations for sitting, walking, and standing, the positions first, second, and third, and all the rules and appendages of a modern schoolroom, we doubt not, that on taking his leave of us, he could give us a few hints, especially upon the education of the young, which would not be without their meaning or their value. We fancy we see him now, with his "flowing beard and long white robe," walking our bustling streets. There is a sort of contemplative dignity about the old philosopher, which the wisest of men now-a-days do not possess. He looks about him for some still retreat for meditation and repose; but every nook is preoccupied by a crowd intent upon business or pleasure. There is an air of bustle and hurry in every one he meets, which seems to say that something new has happened, or that some extraordinary event is about to come. The din and clatter of the workshop and the loom, the rattling of hurrying hoofs and wheels along the stony streets, have drowned the quiet which, through a long life, had reigned in his own great soul, and hushed to silence that music of the spheres, which he once fancied he could hear. His mind, once so calm, is now bewildered and amazed. He quits the busy street, where the dashing speed of every thing he meets, makes him tremble for his life, and gladly seeks the still retreat of some seat of learning, with the hope that there, at least, there

reigns a spirit congenial to his own-that there, at least, he may be reminded of his own school at Crotona, and of the occupation in which he once took so much delight.

He enters. "How brisk-how young-how forward-how thoughtless!" he exclaims. "These are not the sober young men who once listened to my voice, and so eagerly and confidingly received every word that fell from my lips." He witnesses, with a confused mind, the various mechanical operations of the schoolroom in beginning the labors of the day. He listens eagerly to the recitations. He wonders that the smallest stripling knows, with certainty, a thousand things of which he himself had only dreamed. His own idle theories of decads, and invisible spheres, and central fires, are scattered, by the very school-boy, to the winds. He is glad to hear that what he once groped after in the midnight darkness, is now brought forth into the noon-day light. He sees that the discovery of magnetism, of the printing art, of the power of steam, and of the telescope, have revealed, in bold relief, the facts which were once enveloped in a misty shroud. He sighs to think that his own beloved disciples have died without the sight.

But yet he is not ashamed of his own Pythagoreans. Gladly would he be challenged to a comparison. "Your pupils," he exclaims," are acquainted, I confess, with a thousand facts which my disciples never knew; but my disciples cherished a thousand noble sentiments which yours have never felt. Your pupils are taught what is in the books; to mine I imparted what was in me. You teach them what to know; I taught them what to feel.

But to cease from fancy. The ancient teachers greatly excelled the modern in stamping the impress of their own soul upon their pupils' heart. We teach the books; Pythagoras taught Pythagoras. We impress facts and truths; he enstamped the image of his own mind, and the emotions of his own heart. Ours are Greek and Latin scholars; his disciples were Pythagoreans. To have been a disciple of Socrates or Plato, forms an important part of the history of many a noble Greek; but what historian will dare record the teachers of the great men of America? Who, like the prophet, casts his own mantle upon his disciple's shoulder? What teacher dreams of making his pupils like himself in all that is intellectual and moral?

Far be it from us to suppose that it is possible for the modern teacher to follow, in all respects, the examples of those ancient philosophers-like Socrates, to lead his disciples to the workshop and the bustling mart; like Plato, to sit with his pupils in the "Academic groves;" or like Aristotle, with his peripa tetic school to walk beneath the cooling shade and converse

with nature under the open sky. But to dismiss for the pres ent the reasons why we cannot do this-still we have often dreamed of a school of a more private character, combining the ancient with the modern modes, to which we should love to grant the favor of a fair experiment.

Our novel school should consist of those alone who possess the mind and the means to place themselves unreservedly beneath their teacher's control. Our teacher must be a man of practical, as well as scholastic attainments. During the cold months of the year, the minds of the pupils should be fixed upon the pursuit of those studies which all ages have acknowledged to be indispensable to securing strength and discipline of mind, and upon the acquisition of those rudiments of the sciences, which can be learned from books alone. But the prospect should be constantly presented to the pupil's mind, that these are not the pursuits of the whole year; that when summer clothes the earth with green, and nature puts on her inviting smile, then the dreary walls shall no longer confine them, but that they shall be led forth to meet her as she comes. They should be told, as an incitement to diligence, that he who most faithfully studies her laws during the months which are devoted to books, will be the one who shall best enjoy her charms when their schoolroom becomes the open sky. When spring has arrived, and those sunny days have opened, when, to every pupil, the walls of the schoolroom look prison-like and gloomy, then should commence a new order of things, then should begin the practical study of the operations of nature, the works of art, and the life of man. The practical knowledge, the inventive powers, and every faculty of awaking curiosity, which the teacher possesses, should now be taxed, and all above, beneath, around, should contribute their quota of interest and knowledge. Natural History, Botany, Geology, and the like, should now be practically and familiarly pursued. The schoolroom should be to-day the mountain, tomorrow the vale-now the deep forest, then the flowery field. The steam engine, the cotton mill, the telegraph, the glass factory, the chemical laboratory, the dye-house, the printing office, the court-room, the public archives, the farm house, the workshop, and every place which exhibits a work of science or of art, should be visited; and there, upon the spot, should be practically applied those principles which, within the schoolroom, they had stored in their minds.

But the taste must not be neglected. The works of genius, in architecture, statuary, and painting, should be visited, and the teacher must awake the interest of his pupils by reciting the history of the authors, explaining the rules of the art,