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minious compliance; to give a nick-name;-these, and such as these, are the gentle appliances, by which some teachers, who profess to discard corporal punishment, maintain the empire of the. schoolroom;-as though the muscles and bones were less corporeal than the skin; as though a wound of the spirit were of less moment than one of the flesh; and the body's blood more sacred than the soul's purity. But of these solemn topics, it is impossible here to speak. I cannot, however, forbear to express the opinion, that punishment should never be inflicted, except in cases of the extremest necessity; while the experiment of sympathy, confidence, persuasion, encouragement, should be repeated, for ever and ever. fear of bodily pain is a degrading motive; but we have authority for saying, that where there is perfect love, every known law will be fulfilled. Parents and teachers often create that disgust at study, and that incorrigibleness and obstinacy of disposition, which they deplore. It is a sad exchange, if the very blows, which beat arithmetic and grammar into a boy, should beat confidence and manliness out. So it is quite as important to consider what feelings are excited, in the mind, as what are subdued, by the punishment. Which side gains, though the evil spirit of roguery or wantonness be driven out, if seven other evil spirits, worse than the first,-sullenness, irreverence, fraud, lying, hatred, malice, revenge,—are allowed to come in? The motive from which the offence emanated, and the motives with which the culprit leaves the bar of his judge and executioner, are every thing. If these are not regarded, the offender may go away worse than he came, in addition to a gratuitous flagellation. To say a child knows better, is nothing; if he knows better, why does he not do better? The answer to this question reveals the difficulty; and whoever has

not patience and sagacity to solve that inquiry, is as unworthy of the parental trust, as is the physician, of administering to the sick, who prescribes a fatal nostrum, and says, in justification, that he knew nothing of the disease. In fine, if any thing, in the wide range of education, demands patience, forethought, judgment, and the all-subduing spirit of love, it is this; and though it may be too much to say, that corporal punishment can be disused by all teachers, with regard to all scholars, in all schools, yet it may be averred, without exception, that it is never inflicted with the right spirit, nor in the right measure, when it is not more painful to him who imposes, than to him who receives it.

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Of emulation in school, as an incitement to effort, I can here say but a word; but I entreat all intelligent men to give to this subject a most careful consideration. And let those who use it, as a quickener of the intellect, beware, lest it prove a depraver of the social affections. There is no necessary incompatibility between the upward progress of one portion of our nature, and the lower and lower debasement of another. intellect may grow wise, while the passions grow wicked. No cruelty towards a child can be so great as that which barters morals for attainment. If, under the fiery stimulus of emulation, the pupil comes to regard a successful rival with envy or malevolence, or an unsuccessful one with arrogance or disdain; if, in aiming at the goal of precedence, he loses sight of the goal of perfection; if, to gain his prize, he becomes the hypocrite. instead of the reverer of virtue;-then, though his intellect should enter upon the stage of life with all the honors of an early triumph; yet the noblest parts of his nature,-his moral and social affections, will be the victims, led captive in the retinue. Suppose, in some Theological Seminary,

a prize were offered for the best exposition of the commandment, "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself," and two known competitors were to task their intellects, to win it; and, on the day of trial, one of these neighbor-loving rivals, with dilated nostril and expanded frame, should clutch the honor; while the other neighbor-loving rival, with quivering lip and livid countenance, stood by, the vulture of envy, all the while, forking her talons into his heart;-would it not be that very mixture of the ludicrous and the horrible, which demons would choose for the subject of an epigram! Paint, or chisel the whole group of neighbor-loving rivals, and pious doctors sitting around and mingling,—in one chalice, the hellebore of pride, and in another, the wormwood of defeat, to be administered to those who should be brothers, and can aught be found more worthy to fill a niche in the council-hall of Pandemonium! Who has not seen winter, with its deepest congelations, come in between ingenuous-minded and loving fellow-students, whose hearts would otherwise have run together, like kindred drops of water? Who has not witnessed a consumption, not of the lungs, but of the heart; nay, both of lungs and heart,-wasting its victims with the smothered frenzy of emulation? surely is within the equity of the prayer, "lead us not into temptation," not to lead others into it. And ought not the teacher, who, as a general and prevalent, I do not say a universal rule,-cannot sustain order and insure proficiency, in a school, without resorting to fear and emulation, to consider, whether the fault be in human nature or in himself? And will there ever be any more of that secret, silent beneficence amongst us, where the left hand knows not of the blessings scattered by the right?-will there ever be any less of this deadly strife for the ostensible signs of precedence,

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in the social and political arena, while the germs of emulation are so assiduously cultivated in the schoolroom, the academy, and the college? The pale ambition of men, ready to sacrifice country and kind for self, is only the fire of youthful emulation, heated to a white heat. Yet, there is an inborn sentiment of emulation, in all minds, and there are external related objects of that sentiment. The excellent, who may be present with us, but who are advanced in life; the great and good, who are absent, but whose fame is every where; the illustrious dead; these are the objects of emulation. A rivalry with these yields sacred love, not consuming envy. On these, therefore, let the emulous and aspiring gaze, until their eyes overflow with tears, and every tear will be the baptism of honor and of purity.

Such are some of the most obvious topics, belonging to that sacred work,-the education of children. The science, or philosophical principles on which this work is to be conducted; the art, or manner in which those principles are to be applied, must all be rightly settled and generally understood, before any system of Public Instruction can operate with efficiency. Yet all this has been mainly left to chance. Compared with its deserts, how disproportionate, how little, the labor, cost and talent, devoted to it. We have a Congress, convening annually, at almost incredible expense, to decide upon questions of tariff, internal improvement, and currency. We have a State Legislature, continuing in session more than a fourth part of every year, to regulate our internal polity. We have Courts, making continual circuits through the Commonwealth to adjudicate upon doubtful rights of person or property, however trivial. Every great department of literature and of business has its Periodical. Every party, political, religious and social, has its Press.

Yet Education, that vast cause, of which all other causes are only constituent parts; that cause, on which all other causes are dependent, for their vitality and usefulness, if I except the American Institute of Instruction, and a few local, feeble, unpatronized, though worthy associations,-Education has literally nothing, in the way of comprehensive organization and of united effort, acting for a common end and under the focal light of a common intelligence. It is under these circumstances; it is in view of these great public wants, that the Board of Education has been established, -not to legislate, not to enforce,-but to collect facts, to educe principles, to diffuse a knowledge of improvements;-in fine, to submit the views of men who have thought much upon this subject to men who have thought but little.

To specify the labors which education has yet to perform, would be only to pass in review the varied interests of humanity. Its general purposes are to preserve the good and to repudiate the evil which now exist, and to give scope to the sublime law of progression. It is its duty to take the accumulations in knowledge, of almost six thousand years, and to transfer the vast treasure to posterity. Suspend its functions for but one generation, and the experience and the achievements of the past are lost. The race must commence its fortunes anew, and must again spend six thousand years, before it can grope its way upward from barbarism to the present point of civilization. With the wisdom, education must also teach something of the follies, of the past, for admonition and warning; for it has been well said, that mankind have seldom arrived at truth, on any subject, until they had first exhausted its

errors.

-Education is to instruct the whole people in the proper care of the body, in order to augment the