commands the respect of society. Common sense must be cultivated, by an habitual attention to the subjects of common life; and these, and not the learning of the schools, must form the medium of intercourse between the teacher and general society. Opportunities for

travel are to be sought, and that intercourse with the best society, which tends to polish and refine the manners. The pedantry, or conceit, which is apt to be engendered by an exclusive intercourse with tyros, is to be prevented by an habitual intercourse with equals, or superiors. The duties and privileges of the citizen must not be forgotten, nor merged in the character of the scholar. An intelligent interest in public affairs, and an ability to converse well upon these subjects in mixed society, and the actual discharge of such offices of the citizen, as may be compatible with the life of a teacher, will have no small tendency to dissipate the prejudices of the world against the profession, and to elevate it to the rank which clearly belongs to it among the learned professions.

The picture, which we have thus easily been able to place before our imagination, of the "perfect teacher," presents, indeed, a rare assemblage of virtues. It combines in one, scholarship, embracing a knowledge of one's own subject, both accurate and extensive, and a liberal acquaintance with all kindred subjectsintellectual qualities of a high order, implying a mind strong and clear, vigorous imagination, and taste characterized by both the το πρεπον, and the το καλον, of the Greeks, comprising a nice perception of all that is fitting and proper, and a lively sensibility to

whatever is beautiful in the classics, in the fine arts, and in the kingdoms of nature moral qualities, established on the faith and the benevolence of the Gospel, and flowing out in the effusions of a warm heart, and generous affections; with authority to command, united with discretion, and self-controland, finally, those refined manners, and that knowledge of the world, which blend in one the scholar, the gentleman, and the citizen.

Formidable as this model may appear, some few names, at least, are on record which, in no mean degree, illustrate it; and it has been my happiness to know those whose accomplishments approximated to our ideal character. When thus adorned and dignified, how useful is the life in its meridian transit, how illustrious in old age! How well has he served his country who moulded, in childhood, or in youth, her lawyers, her orators, her statesmen, her physicians, her divines, her authors! Still, the love of goodness, rather than of glory, will ever be the passion most appropriate to instructors; and they, in their approaches to the temple of fame, will ever be of that smallest tribe of suppliants who cry:—

Great idol of mankind! we neither claim

The praise of merit, nor aspire to fame!

'Tis all we beg thee to conceal from sight,

Those acts of goodness which themselves requite.

O let us still the secret joys partake,

To follow virtue, even for virtue's sake.

10

LECTURE IV.

ON THE

NECESSITY

OF THE

STUDY OF PHYSIOLOGY.

BY EDWARD JARVIS, M.D.

THE going to school is so universal among children every one goes so much, as a matter of course, as early as he can be taught to read, and as late as the convenience of the family can spare him from the more active employments of life, and this is done so much from habit, that one hardly stops to find reasons for so doing. And it would seem almost a work of supererogation to ask a child to tell, why or wherefore he thus buffeted with the winter's cold, or sweltered in the summer's heat, as he waded through the snows of January, or toiled beneath the burning sun of August, to the school-house.

Yet it is not an idle question to ask, nor a useless

one to answer: What are the objects of a common-school education?

What do we hope to gain for our children, by thus sending them to the public schools?

In what way, or to what degree, may we hope to prepare them any better for the purposes of life, by this process of education?

These are questions so apparently self-answered, that it seems almost a trifling quibbling to propound them.

Yet it is worth our while to examine them not so much because we doubt that they can be answered at all, but because we need to be assured that they can be theoretically, or are practically answered in the best manner. It is well for those, who are engaged, or are interested in the education of children, to call up these questions, and settle clearly in their minds, first: What are the great purposes of life? -and, second, how can the training and the instruction of the schools aid in effecting those purposes? What foundation can be laid in childhood, upon which can afterward be built the happiest and most useful, the fullest and most vigorous manhood?

These are questions not to be settled at once, and to so remain forever undisturbed; but in the progress of knowledge, in the new developments of science, they are to be again and again called up, to see how far new improvements in teaching, or new discoveries in science, may be adopted and made available in the education of the young.

There may be differences in the minutiae of the