From the Boston Saturday Evening Gazette. The School of the World. Ir is a common complaint with parents of the present day that the young of both sexes of the rising generation prefer the attractions offered elsewhere to those of home, and bestow upon others a large share of that society which should be given entirely to their family. Let us see how far this complaint has common sense to back it up. sentiments, and the more clear the light in which he regards a subject. We do not deny the palpable advantages of love of home and kindred. We believe that at home man is planted with those seeds of instruction which bear glorious fruit--but the budding sprouts must be nourished with water drawn from that great pool-Society. Love is itself nine parts selfishness, and constant communion with one family of loved faces, and with none else, superinduces both selfishness and one-sidedness. Simplicity of Until established for life, a circumscribed character is defined as verdancy in our modcircle of acquaintance and a limited sphere of ern dictionary; it may be very delightful to communion are antagonistic to the natural contemplate at a distance, but it will not desires of man and woman. Of course there settle a butcher's bill nor protect a man are exceptions, but we state the general fact. against watch-stuffing. The rough turmoil of The same sights, the same faces, dear though the street, the converse alike with rough and they be, the same topics of conversation, and suave, the amenities and deceptions, the favors the same stereotyped interchange of thoughts and rebuffs, of the world, alone make a man and ideas, first satiate, then weary. Young a man. Rattling and roaming over streets people are nervous in their temperaments. and cities, the varied scenes of that grotesque, They crave excitement, change, novelty, gigantic panorama, Human Life, are unfolded variety. No matter how cherished are home to him as they are, with their sombre tints of and its associations, they grow tired of the crime, and misery, and despair, and the poor monotonous routine of home amusements. fool sees that he has viewed it from behind his In a word-the world is before them, the untried world. They long to taste its sweets, regardless of its bitters, they pant to bask in the rays of the sun as they fall upon the street, and not as they steal through the curtains and double windows. They would fain break off the home shackles they have worn for so many years and breathe the air of unrestrained freedom. It is wrong to restrain them. The young man who is cooped up in one brick house has no chance of expanding his mind. His ideas and sentiments may be very excellent and very truthful, but at the same time they are of necessity very bigoted and very contracted. He looks at but one side of the question and becomes as rigid in his notions as a granite rock. He has no chance to mix with the world, that greatest of all schools of discipline. It is by contact with one's fellows that that experience and savoir faire are gained which are a man's best assistants through life. This association with humanity in its varied forms is the chief recommendation of a collegiate education. The wider one's circle of acquaintance, the more liberal will be his bricks and mortar simply as a Chinese picture of glaring brilliancy-but with no perspective. CATO.-If Cicero had too little character, Cato had too much. Public virtue is like gold, if it is to be current, it must be alloyed. Cato left the alloy out, and cared little whether his coin circulated or not; all he knew was, that its purity must never be tampered with, and that whoever would not receive it as he tendered it must be corrupt or criminal. He was a good orator, but his oratory was in vain; he was always ready with advice, but it was advice incapable of being put in practice; he was esteemed by all, but with an esteem that bore no fruit. Inflexibly and almost savagely austere, he was one of those men whom posterity place in their Valhallas, but whom nations, unless for example's sake, deny admittance to their councils-the most irreproachable of virtuous men, FORBEARANCE is a great virtue. For the Schoolmaster. effective, because best understood. But this about HE, who has not felt what is so beautifully is better illustrated by what somebody says described in the following lines, either has no poetry in his soul, or has had no experience in teaching a country school, and “ boarding round"—alas! he never has heard the music of the patter of the million little feet of the GOOD WORDS.-"Nobody knows what is slumbering among the people-what political wisdom until it is called forth. The very persons who say the best and noblest things do not come forth without they are called forth, because those great and noble things are their utmost feeling, and seem to themselves too simple and what everybody must think. Speak it out good friends, everywhere, those simple things-fixed truths. Freedom feeds on the universal heart and mind, and not on the genius here and there, one remarkable person or great scholar. The American statesman is the good, honest citizen, who does his daily work, and loves his wife and children, and knows that every other man has the same duties and rights as himself." So much for words. Now read what Carlyle says in one of his condensed paragraphs about DEEDS.-The spoken word, the written poem, is said to be an epitome of the man; how more the done work? Whatsover of morality and of intelligence; what of patience, perseverence, faithfulness, of method, insight, ingenuity, energy; in a word, whatsoever strength the man had in him, will lie written in the work he does. Great honor to him whose epic is a melodious hexameter Iliad. But still greater honor, if his epic be a mighty empire slowly built together, a mighty series of heroic deeds-a mighty conquest over chaos. There is no mistaking this latter epic. Deeds are greater than words. Deeds have such a life, mute, but undeniable and grow as living trees and fruit trees do; they people the vacuity of time, and make it green and worthy. There will be no loss of time in reading the following twice THE CHILD.-Hear the story of the child which went forth into the mountain ravine. While the child wandered there he called aloud to break the loneliness, and heard a voice which called to him in the same tone. He called again, and, as he thought, the voice again mocked him. Flushed with anger, he rushed to find the boy who insulted him, but could find none. He then called out to him in anger, and with all abusive him. Choking with rage, the child ran to his epithets-all of which was faithfully returned to mother and complained that a boy in the woods had abused and insulted him with many vile words. But the mother took her child by the hand and said :—“ Mv child, these names were but the echoes of thine own voice. Whatever thou didst call was returned to thee from the hillside. Hadst thou called out pleasant words, pleasant words had returned to thee. Let this be thy lesson through life. The world will be an echo of thine own spirit. Treat thy fellows with unkindness, and they will answer with unkindness; with love and thou shalt have love. Send forth sunshine from thy spirit, and thou shalt never have a clouded day; carry about a vindictive spirit, and even in the flowers shall lurk curses. Thou shalt have what thou givest, and that alone." Always, said the speaker, is that child in the mountain passes and every man and every woman is that child. For the Schoolmaster. counsel by words without knowledge, till men begin first to doubt the correctness of their reasonings, and end in disbelieving the truths about which they reason. Starting with some self-evident proposition they fly off into the regions of mental abstraction, from whence they hope to return with motives purer and more effective than ever before discovered. They seek to demonstrate the plainest rules of conduct by long drawn analogies and metaphysical niceties, to prove the most obvious duties by learned arguments and logical deductions, and to enforce maxims, which all acknowledge, by the most eloquent appeals and brilliant illustrations. Every unimportant particular must be drawn out finer than the spider's web, and every philosopher must attempt to prove that it is sometimes right to do a moral wrong, or in other words that it is duty to follow expediency instead of rectitude. Thus men, wearied by the incessant teasing of these advocates of gossamer morality, are taught to ridicule the doctrines as well as their deluded defenders. When will teachers of morality lay aside all that is incomprehensible and abstruse, and inculcate and enforce their doctrines with simplicity and directness, and not attempt to clothe frigid abstractions in the worn and moth-eaten tatters of monkish absurdities, and palm them off upon men as the beauties of morality? Ir we consider the vast amount of labor that is spent in making and enforcing laws, in disseminating moral precepts and urging men to embrace them, we may be astonished that mankind display so great a disregard of civil authority, and so profound a contempt of morality. We behold national establishments for the preservation of peace and the prevention of crime. In every capital, the wisest legislators are assembled, to institute laws commanding justice and virtue, and forbidding vice and wickedness. To the acts of civil power, religion joins her sacred precepts, to deter men from rushing into immorality and lewdness. A thousand pulpits echo with the voice of eloquence in defence of truth, and ten thousand ministers of Christ promulgate the salutary principles of the gospel, all seeking to raise man from degradation and guide him to honor and distinction. Multi-enchanting hues; and may we not suppose tudes of societies have been established, and millions of money expended, to advance improvements in morals and religion. Yet, after all these efforts, man is not raised entirely above the influence of his vicious propensities. Perhaps it may not be time misspent to inquire into some of the causes of the tardy advance of morality among men. A few elementary substances are all that are required in forming the infinite variety of materials around us; and cannot we take a lesson from nature, and learn that the moral world is equally simple when philosophically analyzed? A small number of primary colors are sufficient to diversify the whole creation, with an endless profusion of the most that all moral beauty is adorned with equal simplicity? Philosophers are proud to have discovered that the single law of gravitation is enough to regulate the motions of the universe; and can they not adopt the one great commandment of the Savior, and confess that the laws of the moral world are quite as simple and efficient? One of the principal causes which conspire Another cause of the slow progress of moto retard moral improvevement is a cumber-rality is error in mental culture. If we look ous and unwieldly system of moral philoso- at our systems of education, we see but very phy. Philosphical writers seem to darken little effort to inculcate moral instruction. The object seems to be to crowd into the mind stranger, gentle friend, thy looks are either so many sweet, sunny beams that betoken the common fellowship of humanity, or so many icy rays that chill him to the heart-that freeze little by little the fountains of love-that fill him with distrust of the world and hatred of his species. No man knows for how much of other wickedness and wretchedness he may be held accountable. A look of thine may breed sorrow in thy brother, though a stranger. A look of thine may do a good deed, may shine from thy face to his face, and reflected, like a ray of sun, over half the globe. of youth, a vast amount of ideas, some drawn from the store-house of classic lore, some from the grand repository of nature; and more from the treasury of mathematical abstrusities, till reason, rendered giddy by the fermentation of the heterogenous mass, gives up the control of the moral faculties to chance or inclination. Amid this incessant toil to cultivate the intellect, comparatively little is done to improve the sensibilites, which are matured long before the mental powers. The child, instead of being taught first to love and sympathize, is left almost to itself, till sent to the school and surrounded by vicious companions. Here the mental improvement commences, and often too the moral degradation. The little urchin soon learns that it is considered manly to play his pranks; and if detection and punishment follow, they are such, as lead him to consider them honorable marks of distinction, rather than a disgrace, and even if he does think them disgraceful, they only tend to foster the bad passions of his heart. The general system of rewards need only be adverted to as liable to equal objections, with the manner of punishment. Thus from the time of the young tyro's emergency from his hated slips, and his first entrance upon a course of education, to his departure for the active pursits of human life, clad in the coveted panoply of knowledge, and crowned with academic honors; the whole system gives preeminence to the mental, over the moral faculties of man. Home! Sweet Home. T. Live, ye gentle scenes of home! Light up, yet brightest of the domestic hearth! Glow, ye pleasant fancies of the wood fire! Smile ever, ye dimpled portraits on the wall of childhood! Come in, ye sweet little breezes that rustle through the cosy curtains, the blossoms of youth and the airy old cobwebs of memory are simmering in your light! Place may change, friends come and go, hearts grow cold or wear away beneath the drops of care till they crumble and molder beneath the clod of the valley, but a pleasant home, where childhood lives and loved, never dies. The memory thereof is a fortune, an indestructable faculty of self-renewing joy. What is heaven itself but the renewal of the free hearts and delightful pleasures of childhood's home? A happy child looks forward to a happy home, above. The hireling initiated but too early in guilt and misery, or in misery without guilt, he seldom hopes for better accommodation at the journey's end; and the shadows of his childhood descend with him to the grave. ONE of the arts that tend most to the improvement of human intellect is that of language. GALBA was seventy-two years of age when he began to reign. THAT wide, open, friendly fire-place, with its lively, crackling mirth, or its sweet twilight embers, always appear to me the meet emblem of a contented, great heart, answering back to your own joy, and lighting up your shadows. And sometimes, surrounded by strangers, the object of dull remark, or cold criticism, or ignorant condemnation, how have I pictured to myself a world of warmth like unto the great LOVING AND FORGIVING.-Man has an unfire-place at home, where every man should fortunate readiness, in the evil hour after be greeted with "welcome! welcome, broth- receiving an affront, to draw together all the er!" and a comfortable, snug corner of his moon-spots on the other person into an outown; and where all answer to each other with line of shadow, and a night-piece, and to the sympathy and cheer of shining faces over transform a single deed into a whole life; and the glowing hearth. Look kindly on the this only in order that he may thoroughly only, it may be, lay the foundation for a morbid excitability of brain, that may one day end in insanity-but you debilitate its bodily powers, and by so doing, to all intents and purposes, the mind will be a loser in its powers and capabilities." Daguerreotypes. relish the pleasure of being angry. In love, he has fortunately the opposite faculty of crowding together all the light parts and rays of its object into one focus, by means of the burning glass of imagination, and letting its sun burn without its spots; but he too generally does this only when the beloved, and often censured being is already beyond the skies. In order, however, that we should do this sooner and oftener, we ought to act like Wincklemann, but only in another way. As he, namely, set aside a particular half-hour of each day for the purpose of beholding and meditating on his too happy existence in "THE daguerreotype tries to represent as Rome, so we ought daily or weekly to dedi- still, what never yet was still for the thoucate and sanctify a solitary hour for the pur-sandth part of a second-that is a human face; pose of summing up the virtues of our families, and as seen by a spectator who is perfectly our wives, our children, and our friends-and still, which no man ever yet was. My dear viewing them in this beautiful crowded as HERE is what Kingsley, in his new novel "Two Years Ago," says of Daguerreotypes. It is pretty strong language, but has, notwithstanding, a good deal of truth in it: fellow, don't you see that what some painters semblage of their good qualities. And, in-call idealizing a portrait is, if it be wisely done, deed, we should do so for this reason, that we may not forgive and love too late, when the beloved beings are already departed hence, and are beyond our reach.-Richter. OVER-WORKING THE BRAIN OF CHILDREN. hundreds of that name, to express our convictions of the value of his philosophizing: really painting for you the face which you see, and know, and love; her ever shifting features, with expression varying more rapidly than the gleam of the diamond on her finger; features, which you, in your turn, are looking at with ever shifting eyes; while perhaps, if An exchange says that Dr. Robinson is the it is a face which you love and have lingered author of the accompanying remarks, on over-over, a dozen other expressions equally belongtaxing the youthful brain. It is a misfortune ing to it are hanging in your memory,. and not to know what Dr. Robinson, among the blending themselves with the actual picture on your retina,-till every little angle is somewhat rounded, every little wrinkle somewhat softened, every little shade somewhat blended with the surrounding light, so that the sum total of what you see, and are intended by Heaven to see, is somewhat far softer, lovelier-younger, perhaps, thank Heaven-than it would look if your head was screwed down in a vice, to look with one eye at her head screwed down in a vice also,—though even "The minds of children ought to be little, if at all, taxed till the brain's development is nearly completed, or until the age of six or seven years. And will those years be wasted; or will the future man be more likely to be deficient in mental power than one who is differently treated? Those years will not be wasted. The great book of nature is opened to the infant's and the child's prying investigation; and from nature's page may be learned more useful information than is contained in that, thanks to the muscles of the eye, would not produce the required ugliness; and the only possible method of fulfilling the Daguerreotype ideal would be to set a petrified Cyclops to paint his petrified brother." all the children's books that have ever been published. But even supposing those years to have been absolutely lost, which is anyJOHN ADAMS.-The elder Adams was the thing but the case, will the child be eventually a loser thereby? We contend, with our author, son of a worthy cobbler. It was, perhaps, that he will not. Task the mind during the owing to the very fact of his humble parentage earlier years, and you only expose the child that the elder Adams became what he was. to a greater risk of a disordered brain-not I have never seen the story in print, but it |