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in our drilling, many of these portions altogether. We make up minds as we make up goods, not according to their really intrinsic qualities, but according to what they are likely at the moment to bring in the market-the style of thing" actually in demand. But fashion, no more in this, than in any other of its caprices, is to be relied on; the fashion passes, even while preparing for it; and the "single power" man, like the "single speech" man, cannot work in the new machinery, and is necessarily thrown by when most needed, as altogether worthless-of no practical use."-Wyse, p. 74.

A CONTRAST.

FLETCHER, of Saltoun, gives a dreadful picture of the state of Scotland, at the close of the

seventeenth century:

to prevent its too frequent, and oftentimes improper use. But we also most sincerely believe that there are instances in which the highest good of a school, as well as the good of an offender, demands a severe application of the rod. Its use, however, should never be resorted to, hastily or passionately. There are teachers, and there are parents, who for every slight offence of a child, fly to the rod, and with passionate violence use it. This we regard as extremely unwise and wrong. We would not advocate the use of the rod on every occasion-for every offence, but would endeavor to have the infrequency of its use contribute in no small degree, to its efficacy. When resorted to, it should be with calmness and seriousness, and the whole case with all its circumstances, should be so represented and explained that the whole school and the offender himself, shall see and fecl that the teacher is duty-a duty from the discharge of which he about to perform an unpleasant and painful shall never shrink when called upon by circum

stances to act.

After suitably commenting upon the circumstances and the nature of the case, let the rod be applied with such a degree of severity as shall him that "the way of the transgressor is" and subdue the guilty one and strongly impress upon always will be "hard." This, followed by a kindness on the part of the teacher, which shall show that nought has been done in malice," will, almost invariably, produce the desired result.

"There are, at this day" he says, (1698)in Scotland, besides a great many poor families, very meanly provided for by the church-boxes, (with others who by living upon bad food fall into various diseases,) two hundred thousand people begging from door to door. And though the number of these be, perhaps, double to what it was formerly, by reason of this present great distress, yet in all times there have been about one hundred thousand of these vagabonds, who have lived without any regard or subjection, either to the laws of the land or even those of God and Nature. No magistrate could ever discover or be informed, which way one in a hundred of Good order and submission to wholesome reguthese wretches died, nor that ever they were lations must be insisted upon in every good baptized. Many murders have been discovered school and family. These should be obtained by among them, and they are not only a most un- mild and kind means if possible, but should not speakable oppression to poor tenants, (if they in any case be sacrificed to a frequently conceiv give not bread or some kind of provision to pered, though we think erroneous idea, that the use haps forty such villians on one day, are sure to be insulted by them,) but they rob many poor people who live in houses distant from any neigh. borhood. In years of plenty many thousand of them meet together in the mountains, where they feast and riot for many days; and at coun. try weddings, markets, burials, and other the like public occasions, they are to be seen, both men and women perpetually drunk, cursing, blaspheming and fighting together."

A system of parochial education was shortly afterwards established in Scotland, and the result was, that Scotland, then one of the most barbarous countries in Christendom, became and has for a century and a half remained the most orderly. Is not here a lesson for statesmen and political economists, no less than for philanthropists and social reformers ?

of the rod savors too much of cruelty and brutality. If boys so far depart from a proper course, as to allow brutal passions to gain the ascendency, under whose control they "set at nought" all good requirements and salutary regulations of parents or teachers, they should be promptly met and conquered by arguments well adapted to the ground they have presumed to

occupy.

A GREAT ERROR.-READ.

A.

HEAR Some remarks from an address of Horace Greely, Esq. of New-York, on the "Formation of Character." The prevailing evil spoken of needs to be seen and done away.

"There remains one other monstrous error of [For the District School Journal.] our fireside education which I cannot refrain CORPORAL PUNISHMENT. from exposing, though I am aware that it is less elemental than those I have already repreWITHIN a few years, probably, no subject has hended, and in fact is but an off-shoot from them been discussed more frequently, or with more in--a branch of that great Upas of false formaterest, by the friends of popular education, than the practice of inflicting corporal punishment in our schools. These discussions have, unquestionably, done good, and will do still more, if conducted with a proper spirit; but while endeavoring to turn the public attention to the correction of any evil or abused privilege, there is great danger of tending to opposite extremes. We believe the rod has been used too freely in our schools, and think something should be done

tion of character, whereof I have endeavored to expose the gnarled and writhing roots to general scrutiny and abhorrence. I allude to the fatal practice of paying for virtue, or rewarding with adventitious indulgence acts of integrity and of duty. As in its nature and origin this is a compound of most of the errors I have enumerated, so is it in its consequences more pernicious than any one of them. The child which for performing a task nimbly and faithfully, for acquiring a

lesson rapidly and thoroughly, is rewarded with some dainty confectionary or glittering toy, you have doubly corrupted; first, in making that a task, which, being a duty, should also be a pleasure in itself; secondly, in pampering an appetite or a craving, which, being fictitious, cannot fail to be evil. If that task were not properly his--if that lesson were not of itself worth acquiring-you should, not have imposed it. If it were, you have blinded him to its true worth and meaning; you have taught him to look astray for the reward of well doing; you have made that which was a simple and true action, no longer such, but a finesse-a dexterous feat a sinister calculation. The child thus paid to do right will soon have learned not to do right without payment. It will not accept the harvest as the proper recompense of its toil and culture, but will clamor. to be paid beside for sowing and

nurturing it. Worse even than this is the delusion implanted, that daintier food and gaudier toys are of more value than elevating knowledge and habits of healthful industry-in fact, that they are of any value at all. But time would fail me to trace out all the evil consequences of that one woful folly, by which you have pollut ed all the springs of action, clouded the moral vision, and corrupted the very soul of the victim of your fatally mistaken policy. Let us banish forever the idea of reward for well-doing extraneous from and unrelated to itself. There is nothing like it in nature-in the vast universe. God never promised a reward thus detached from and alien to the obedience it would recom pense; the Devil promises. but never pays. It is ignorance to desire, madness to expect any. thing like it."

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eyes fixed on the capitol, which immediately minds with patriotism, whilst the Tarpeian rock faced them, and which was suited to fill their reminded them of the fate reserved for treason or corruption,-the noblest of orators "wielded at will the fierce democracy," or filled the souls of gathered thousands with one object, one wish, one passion--the freedom and glory of the Roman race-a freedom which would have been more enduring had the glory been less.

[These engravings are taken from "The Youth's | ed in the midst of the square, and with their Plutarch," (by the author of Popular Lessons, &c.,) a selection from Plutarch's Lives, of a few of those individuals who were the friends of peace, of law, and civil order in the better days of Greece and Rome. The writer has adapted these histories especially to the youth of our country, giving them a modern form of language, in strict conformity to the facts of the original. The moral value of the writings of the "Cheronean sage," has been acknowledged for eighteen centuries, and they are as instructive in the present day as they were in the first century, when they were presented to the world.]

Here, as long as the Romans were a free people, all the affairs of the state were debated in a most public manner, and from the rostra, elevat

"Yes; in yon field below,

A thousand years of silenced factions sleep-
And still the eloquen: air breathes, burns with Cicero!"
The Forum, where the immortal accents glow,
"The field of freedom, faction, faine, and blood:
Here a proud people's passions were exhaled,
From the first hour of empire in the bud,
To that when further worlds to conquer fail'd;
But long before had Freedom's face been veil'd,
And Anarchy assumed her attributes;
Till every lawless soldier who assail'd
Or raised the venal voice of baser prostitutes."*
Trod on the trembling senate's slavish mutes,

Here the orators of the people brought their accusations against public men, or pronounced the eulogies of such as had died for their country, and here also were exhibited the bleeding heads or lifeless bodies of traitors, (or as it but too often happened,) of men unjustly deemed so by an overbearing faction.

The Forum was the court of justice, and in the homely days of the early Republic, civil and criminal causes were tried and decided by simple laws, in the open air, or in very plain sheds built in this square. The humble schools for the republican children (for these old Romans had places of public instruction for even the poor people) stood round the Forum, and seem to have been intermixed with shops, shambles, stalls, lowly temples, and altars. It was as she used to cross the Forum, day by day, in her way to and from school, that the innocent young Virginia, a maiden of plebeian rank but extraordinary beauty, unhappily attracted the notice of the lustful and tyrannical Decemvir, Appius Claudius, who sat there on the tribunal, surrounded by lictors to administer the laws which he himself outraged. It was here, as she was on her way to school, that Appius had her seized. Livy says, "As Virginia came into the Forum, (for the schools of learning were held there in sheds,) a dependent and minister of the Decemvir's Bust laid his hands on her, and affirming that she was a slave, and born of a woman who was his slave,' ordered her to follow him, threatening, in case of refusal, to drag her away by force."

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This fearful tragedy, with a sort of dramatic unity, was ended where it began. When the honest centurion Virginius, informed of the disgrace hanging over the heat of his daughter, quitted the army with which he was fighting for the Forum to plead for his child; and when he his country, and came to Rome, he appeared in and Icilius, a young man to whom Virginia was betrothed, had both pleaded in vain, it was here

he slew her.

To narrate all the great events of which this spacious area was the scene would be in a manner to write the history of Rome. Virgil, in speaking of this site in the days of Evander, who is supposed to have flourished some centuries before Romulus, says that then the flocks of sheep used to wander and cows low on the Roman Forum.

During the Republic, in the absence of those vast and splendid theatres and amphitheatres where the emperors afterwards amused that people whom they enslaved, the players and gladia. tors exhibited in the Forum. In the later years of the Commonwealth a great number of temples, military columns, and rostra dotted the space; but these, for the most part, gave way to more splendid edifices and objects which were erected during the empire, when the soul of liberty that had animated the place and the virtues which could cast a charm on lowly walls had for ever taken their departure. We do not eulogise the factious spirit, the love of war and conquest, which were the immediate causes of their ruin, but we need scarcely remind any of our readers that the old Roman republicans had many pri vate and public virtues,-that they were sober, honest, chaste and hospitable, and that they loved their country with an unbounded passion. All these disappeared under an execrable des.

potism; and the Romans experienced, what all nations will feel, that in forging chains for others they make rivets for their own necks,-that those who enslave to-day are on the road to be enslaved to-morrow, that the spoils of unjust aggression, and the gains wrung from a vanquished but once free people, are like clothes stolen from the back of a man that has died of the plague, which carry a curse and death to the fool who puts them on. The wooden sheds where Virginia repaired to school, and where her father scized the butcher's knife, were succeeded by marble porticoes and colonnades; and it is even said that, by night, the Forum was illuminated all round with lamps. On one occasion, Julius Caesar nearly covered it all over with tents or awnings, for the purpose of commodiously cele brating certain games; and Octavia, the sister of the Emperor Augustus, furnished it with an immense quantity of velaria, or canvass awnings, to shade the portions of it where causes were tried. In the immediate neighborhood of the Forum-on the Palatine Hill, which stands at one end of it-Augustus himself built a library, wherein he placed a large collection of law books, as well as the works of all the famous Roman authors. Pliny gives an almost incredible notion of the number of statues and busts of gods, heroes and emperors, which a few years later were arranged in the midst or around the Forum Romanum. Here the adjective sounds like an absurdity or a reproach.

SPARTAN FESTIVAL.

IT was a beautiful idea of the ancients to ac

knowledge children as citizens. Both among the Greeks and Romans, at an appointed time in their names were enrolled as belonging to the every year, the boys of about seven years of age were brought into a public assembly, and state, and thenceforward they were allowed to take part in the public festivals. At a later age they assumed the apparel of maturity and took the oath of citizenship.

citizens classed according to their respective ages. In the Spartan festivals one exhibited all the On that occasion they formed a procession consisting of the old men, the middle aged, and the children. The old men, as they marched along sung one portion of a popular song, the younger men continued, and the boys concluded it. The song from Plutarch's Greek, has been paraphrased as follows by Mr. Bryant.

OLD MEN:

We are old and feeble now

Feeble hands to age belongBut, when o'er our youthful brow Fell the dark hair, we were strong. To the strife we once could bring Limbs by toil and hardship steeled; Dreaded rivals in the ring,

Dreaded foes in battle-field.

YOUNG MEN :

Though your youthful strength departa,
With your children it endures;
In our arms and in our hearts
Lives the valor that was yours.
CHILDREN:

We shall yet that strength attain,
Deeds like yours shall make us known,
And the glory we shall gain,
Haply may surpass your own.

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"ALL the triumphs of truth and genius over prejudice and power, in every country and in every age, have been the triumphs of Athens.

"Wherever a few great minds have made a stand against violence and fraud, in the cause of liberty and reason, there has been her spirit in the midst of them; inspiring, encouraging, consoling;-by the lonely lamp of Erasmus; by the restless bed of Pascal; in the tribune of Mirabeau; in the cell of Galileo; on the scaffold of Sidney.

"But who shall estimate her influence on private happiness? Who shall say how many thousands have been made wiser, happier, and better, by those pursuits in which she has taught mankind to engage; to how many the studies which took their rise from her have been wealth in poverty,-liberty in bondage,-health in sickness, society in solitude. Her power is indeed manifested at the bar; in the senate; in the field of battle; in the schools of philosophy. But these are not her glory. Wherever literature consoles sorrow, or assuages pain,-wherever it brings gladness to eyes which fail with wakeful. ness and tears, and ache for the dark house and the long sleep, there is exhibited, in its noblest form, the immortal influence of Athens."

"Such," continues Mr. Macaulay, "is the gift of Athens to man. Her freedom and her power have for more than twenty centuries been anni. hilated; her people have degenerated into timid slaves; her language into a barbarous jargon ; her temples have been given up to the successive depredations of Romans, Turks, and Scotchmen; but her intellectual empire is imperishable. And when those who have rivalled her greatness, shall have shared her fate; when civilization and knowledge shall have fixed their abode in distant continents; when the sceptre shall have passed away from England ;-her influence and her glory will still survive ;-fresh in eternal youth, exempt from mutability and decay, immortal as the intellectual principle from which they derived their origin, and over which they exercise their control.""

SOUTH AFRICANS AND THE LETTER.

He transThe indiwith utter Verily that

Mr. MOFFATT, the African missionary, speaking at a public meeting of the schools which had been establ shed in South Africa, said. "he had been compelled to leave his family, and live a semi-savage life one hundred miles from the missionary station. He could not hear from them, for there were no mail-coaches in that country. On one occasion, however, he received a letter from Mrs. Moffatt; and a chief, sitting beside him, wished to know what it was. lated to him a part of the contents. vidual who brought it looked at him amazement, and at last exclaimed, letter speaks: if I had known it, I would not have brought it. It has told every word that is true, and yet it has no mouth. Some time after he wished to get an individual to convey a letter to Mrs. Moffat, but could not procure one, though he offered the most liberal remuneration. A simpleton was at last obtained, who promised to take it; but when he received it, he thought it was not worth carrying; he expected to receive something in a bag, and that they were playing a trick with him. He was told that it would convey all the news to Mrs. Moffatt; upon which he threw it down, and nothing could prevail on him to take it. He said, it would speak to him on the road, and make him go out of his wits.

On another occasion, when he wished to forward a letter, he asked a native to carry it; but the man hesitated, though he did not like to refuse, for he did not wish to disoblige him (Mr. Moffatt.) At last he inquired whether he could not put his spear through it; to which he replied he might if he thought that the most comvenient way of carrying it. The man answer. ed, No; but if he ran his spear through it it would not say a syllable to him all the way he went. Now, however, schools were estab lished, churches were gathered, books were read from one end of the land to the other, and the cry was, Give us more, more education.''

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these flowers are succeeded by soft green berries
or pods, containing each from one to three white
seeds. The plant will grow in either low or
elevated situations, but always thrives best and
furnishes leaves of the finest quality when pro-
duced in light stony ground.
Jed

The leaves are gathered from one to four times during the year, according to the age of the trees. Most commonly there are three periods of gathering; the first commences about the middle of April; the second at midsummer; and the last is accomplished during August and September. The leaves that are earliest gathered are of the most delicate color and most aromatic flavor, with the least portion of either fibre or bitterness. Leaves of the second gathering are of a dull green color, and have less valuable qualities than the former; while those which are last bo collected, are of a dark green, and possess an inferior value. The quality is farther influenced by the age of the wood on which the leaves are borne, and by the degree of exposure to which they have been accustomed; leaves from young wood, and those most exposed, being always the best.

THE history of commerce does not, perhaps, present a parallel to the circumstances which have attended the introduction of tea into Great Britain. This leaf was first imported into Europe by the Dutch East India Company, in the early part of the seventeenth century; but it was not until the year 1666, that a small quantity was brought over from Holland to this country, by the Lords Arlington and Ossory; and yet, from a period earlier than any to which the memories of any of the existing generation can reach, tea has been one of the principal necessaries of life among all classes of the community. To provide a sufficient supply of this aliment, many thousand tons of the finest mercantile navy in the world, are annually employed in trading with a people by whom all dealings with foreigners are merely tolerated; and from this recently acquired taste, a very large and easily collected revenue is obtained by the state.

The tea plant is a native of China or Japan, and probably of both. It has been used among the natives of the former country from time im memorial. It is only in a particular tract of the Chinese empire that the plant is cultivated; and this tract, which is situated on the eastern side, between the 30th and 33d degrees of north latitude, is distinguished by the natives as the "tea country." The more northern part of China would be too cold; and farther south the heat would be too great. There are, however, a few small plantations to be seen near to Canton.

The Chinese give to the plant the name of tcha or tha. It is propagated by them from seeds, which are deposited in rows four or five feet asunder; and so uncertain is their vegetation, even in their native climate, that it is found necessary to sow as many as seven or eight seeds in every hole. The ground between each row is always kept free from weeds, and the plants are not allowed to attain a higher growth than admits of the leaves being conveniently gathered. The first crop of leaves is not collected until the third year after sowing; and when the trees are six or seven years old, the produce becomes so inferior that they are removed to make room for a fresh succession.

The flowers of the tea tree are white, and somewhat resemble the wild rose of our hedges:

[Tea-gathering-from a Chinese drawing.]

The leaves, as soon as gathered, are put into wide shallow baskets, and placed in the air or wind, or sunshine, during some hours. They are then placed on a flat cast iron pan, over a stove heated with charcoal, from a half to three quarters of a pound of leaves being operated on at one time. These leaves are stirred quicky about with a kind of brush, and are then as quickly swept off the pan into baskets. The next process is that of rolling, which is effected by carefully rubbing them between men's hands; after which they are again put in larger quantities on the pan, and subjected anew to heat, but at this time to a lower degree than at first, and just sufficient to dry them effectually without risk of scorching. This effected, the tea is placed on a table and carefully picked over, every unsightly or imperfectly dried leaf that is detected being removed from the rest, in order that the sample may present a more even and a better appearance when offered for sale.

The names by which some of the principal sorts of tea are known in China, are taken from the places in which they are produced, while others are distinguished according to the periods of their gathering, the manner employed in curing, or other extrinsic circumstances, It is a commonly received opinion, that the distinctive color of green tea is imparted to it by sheets of copper, upon which it is dried. For this belief,

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