that those by every other means will be, ample. With such instructors as you have appointed, seconded by your own zealous and untiring efforts, I have no doubt that this school will be all that you desire to make it, one of the first model schools of New England.

But I perceive that your forethought has gone farther. You have determined that other habits, besides those of the intellect, shall here receive their appropriate share of attention. You have provided for each scholar an exclusive place for his own hat and outer clothing. You have furnished your apartments with convenient wash-rooms, an improvemen which I do not remember to have seen in any other school-house. Thus you have made it necessary for each scholar to cultivate habits of order and cleanliness. In all these respects, I do not see how your arrangements could be better made, or how any thing else could reasonably be desired.

How delightful an object of contemplation is such a school as this, when faithfully and zealously conducted. Here the slumbering germs of intellect will be quickened into life. Here talent, that would otherwise become torpid from inaction, will be placed upon the course of indefinite improvement. Here, the rough and uncultivated, arrested by the charms of knowledge, and allured by the accents of kindness, will lay aside their harshness, and assume the manners of refinement and good breeding. From hence the lessons of knowledge and the habits of order will be carried to many a family, and they will there awaken a whole circle to a higher and purer life. In a word, take the five hundred children, whom this building will accommodate, and suppose them destitute of the knowledge, the discipline and the manners, which this school will confer; trace their course through life in all its vicissitudes, and observe the station which each of them must occupy; and then, suppose these five hundred children imbued with the knowledge which you here are prepared to give, and the habits which you intend to cultivate, and follow them through life, and observe the stations which you have qualified them to occupy; and you have the measure of good which, year after year, you are accomplishing by the establishment of these means of instruction. Look at the money that it costs. You can calculate it to a single cent, both the principal investment and the interest which it would yield. But can you estimate the intellectual service, and moral advantages which will accrue to you and your children, by this expenditure? The one is to you as the small dust of the balance. Were it all lost, you would hardly think of it. You would not think it worth while to smile at a man, who should say, Pawtucket is ruined, for it has lost a sum equal to that which all its means of education have cost. But suppose that, what that sum has purchased were lost; suppose that your schools were shut up, and your whole population consigned to ignorance; that henceforth reading, writing, and all the knowledge which they unfold, should be taught or learned here no more for ever; then would Pawtucket in reality be ruined. Every virtuous and intelligent family would flee from your border, and very soon your name would be an opprobrium to New England. I ask, then, in view of all this, is there any money which you invest, that brings you in so rich a revenue, as that which you devote to the cause of education? But I ought to apologize for occupying so much larger a portion of your time than I intended. I must, however, even now, break off abruptly, and give place to others who are much more deserving than myself to be heard on this occasion. I will therefore add but a single suggestion. Let this effort which you have made, be but the first step in your progress. Cultivate enlarged and liberal views of your duties to the young who are coming after you, and of the means that are given you to discharge them. A place as large as this, can perfectly well provide for all its youth of both sexes, as good an education as any one can desire.

What we are capable of doing in this respect, is so little known, that any public spirited and united population, as wealthy as this, can easily place itself in the vanguard in this march of improvement. It is in your power so to cultivate the mind and manners of your children, that wherever they go, they will take precedence of those of their own age and condition. Your example would excite others to follow in your footsteps. Who can tell how widely you might bless others, while you were laboring to bless yourselves? Are you prepared to enter upon so noble a career of improvement?

REMARKS OF REV MR. OSGOOD.

Mr. Osgood, of Providence, being called upon by the Chairman of the School Committee, spoke in substance as follows:

You will agree with me, friends, in deeming it a happy circumstance, that he, whose position places him at the head of the educational interests of this State, and whose name stands among the highest in the literature of our land, has favored us with his presence upon this occasion, and borne so decided witness to the importance of a far nobler popular education. After what we have heard, we cannot but recognize the common interests of all friends of sound learning, and rank the school and the university as helpers in the same good cause.

We have met to-day to consecrate this pleasant edifice to the service of popular instruction. Solemn prayer has been offered to the throne of mercy, and honest counsel has been addressed to you. This house is now consecrated as a temple of learning. Do we feel duly the significance of these exercises? Do we realize the common responsibility that we assume by participating in them? This afternoon has been spent in mockery, unless the parties here represented entertain and carry out serious convictions of duty.

Let us feel that in consecrating this house to the purposes of education, we consecrate it to the spirit of order. Without good order, education cannot succeed; and surely all will allow that good order cannot exist without the aid alike of master and scholar, parent and guardian. Let the teacher have your hearty co-operation in his endeavors to regulate his school. Let him not be left at the mercy of the unreasonable, who will call every act of discipline, tyranny; or of the quarrelsome, who will resent every restraint as a personality. Encourage in yourselves and your children the idea that good order has its foundation in the very nature of things, in the plan of the creation, and the hearts of man. There is order in God's works,-in the heavens above,-on the earth beneath. We imitate the divine mind when we strive to do our work in accordance with the best rules, and submit passing impulses and little details to a common standard of right. Let the child be taught to accept this idea, and to see in the order of the school not so much the teacher's will as the law of general good. Let this idea prevail, and a new day will come over our schools.. Teachers will be more careful to place their passions under due control, by looking beyond present provocations to permanent principles; and parents and children will acknowledge the justice of proper discipline, even when its penalties fall upon themselves. Consecrating this house to education, we consecrate it then to the spirit of good order.

Akin to order is the spirit of good will.-that love that heightens every task, and cheers every labor. Let us feel that this building is set apart as the abode of good will. In the simple beauty of its walls, and the neatness of its arrangements, we see at once that it is intended to be a pleasant place, where the young shall come rather in love than fear. Let every thing be done to carry out this idea, and remove all gloom from the work that here is to go forward. Let the voice of music be heard in the

intervals of study, and charm away weariness and discontent. Let courteous manners prevail between scholars and teachers. Let the law of love be supreme, and the good of each be regarded as the good of all. Let every thing be done to make knowledge attractive, without impairing its solidity. You have declared your principles upon this subject in the very structure of this edifice; virtually acknowledged the relation of the beautiful to the true, and applied to education that law of attraction that pervades all the plans of Divine Providence. Carry out these principles without fear and without extravagance. Let not your care be given merely to make your dwelling-houses attractive. Let there be no more school-rooms so rude and uncleanly as hardly to be fit to shelter well-bred cattle. Let children learn neatness, taste, and refinement, along with their alphabet and multiplication table. To good will, under every one of its attractive agencies, this house should be devoted.

Thus devoted, it will be a nursery of good works. Utility will go hand in hand with good order and good will. In this community, practical industry is the ruling power; utility is the prevailing standard. See to it that this standard is rightly adjusted, and that we do not confine our idea of usefulness to worldly or material interests. As we hear the sound of the spindle and the anvil, and see the spray of the waterfall, and the smoke of the furnace, let us rejoice at the large measure of enterprise and prosperity that have been granted us. But when we turn away from these things to look upon this house of learning, let us not think as some base souls do, that we have left utility behind, and are dealing only with what is visionary and unsubstantial. Next to the church of God, let us feel that the school-house is the most useful building in the community, and that from it should emanate the knowledge, principles, and habits that are to give life its direction and efficiency. Reckon in your estimate of the best wealth of your city, your schools, and, without them, regard all other wealth as disgraceful covetousness or mental poverty.

Let the idea of utility preside over the direction of this school, and all its studies tend not to fill the memory with loads of words, but to strengthen the mind, and invigorate and regulate the will and all the active powers.

Standing as it does in so sacred a seat of manufacturing industry, this house has a peculiar significance. Overlooking this prosperous town, it serves to express a generous creed-to say as if it were:--"We, the people of North Providence, think much of the importance of industry and wealth, but we think that some other things are of still greater importance, and however remiss in duty we may have been in time past, we mean to practice upon a more generous system, and this fair temple of learning, standing so far above the factory and workshop, is a substantial testimonial of our determination."

It is an interesting fact, that the first movement in this State in behalf of popular education was made, not by professional men, nor by merchants, nor any of the classes that might be thought, from their leisure or literature, to advocate the claims f sound learning, but by an association of mechanics and manufacturers in Providence. I read to-day, with great pleasure, the memorial which this association presented to the Legislature, in the year 1798. I honor those men for that document. But one of the original signers now survives. Who can meet that old man without respect? Who will not honor John Howland even more for taking the lead in that memorial, than for having served under Washington at Trenton, and braved death in the battles of the revolution? Peace to his sturdy heart, and many good days yet to that stout Saxor. frame!

I must cease speaking with these few words as to the good order, good will and good works, to which this house of learning is devoted. May a good providence watch over it. Imagination cannot but conjecture the

various scenes of its future history-picture to herself the groups of children who shall come to enjoy its privileges, and who in due time shall leave its walls for the pursuits of maturer life. Prophesy is not our gist, except the prophesy that calculates events by purposes and principles. Let this edifice be used faithfully for true purposes and for just principles, and its future history will be a blessed volume in the annal of your town It will tell of generations of noble men and women, who have been educated within these walls. And when this house shall have gone to dust, it will have performed a noble mission, by being the nursery of mental life that cannot die.

"Cold in the dust, the perished heart may lie,
But that which warmed it once, can never die."

DEDICATION OF THE PUBLIC HIGH SCHOOL-HOUSE, IN CAMBRIDGE, MASS.

The edifice, which has just been erected (1848,) for the accommodation of the Public High School of the city of Cambridge, is built of brick, two stories high with a basement, and is a substantial, attractive and convenient school-house, of which the citizens of Cambridge may well feel proud. The cost, including land, furniture and apparatus, is $13.500. The plan of the interior is substantially the same as that of the High School in Hartford.

The following account of the Dedication of this house is abridged from the Cambridge Chronicle for June 29, 1848.

The services were commenced by the chanting of the Lord's Prayer by the scholars of the school.

Alderman Whitney, in behalf of the building committee, transferred the building to the care of the School Committee, through the Mayor of the city, with an appropriate address. After a dedicatory prayer by Rev. N. Hoppin, and another chant, of selections from Proverbs, by the children, the Mayor addressed remarks to the audience upon the relation of the High School to the other grades of schools, and to the cause of education generally in the city, and on some of the conditions on which the success of this and the other schools depended. Addresses were also made by gentlemen present, in which many pleasing incidents in the history of the public schools, and of the town and city of Cambridge, were narrated, and many valuable suggestions thrown out, by which children, teachers, parents and school officers can profit. We make the following extract from the address of Rev. Mr. Stearns, Chairman of the High School Committee.

"At the time of my settlement here as a clergyman in this place, in December, 1831, there were in the town 6 school-houses, 8 school-rooms, 8 teachers and about 400 scholars.

At this time, 1848, there are 17 school-houses, 35 rooms, 44 teachers, and 2136 children.

During this time, it is true, the population has more than doubled, but the interest taken in the schools, and their progress, has much more than tripled or quadrupled.

If at that period any school committee had seriously proposed the erection of such a building as this for a High School, they would undoubtedly have been excused from public service the coming year, if not immediately sent to Charlestown as insane. But the spirit of improvement has prevailed, and now we have all needed advantages for making good scholars, who shall be an honor to their parents, and to their generation.

But, Mr. Mayor, it cannot be too deeply impressed on the minds of our youth that the means of education, are not education itself. We may have good school-houses, fine libraries, superior collections of philosophical apparatus, and the best of teachers, with miserable scholars. There are means of improvement in creation all around us-good influences ascend to us from the earth and come down to us from the sky. The sun is a teacher, the evening stars impart knowledge, while every flower is eloquent with wisdom. But what intelligence do all these outward instructors communicate to the ox who grazes without reflection, or to the horse who eats his provender without thanksgiving? Hardly more will books, and maps, and pleasant seats, and air-pumps, and scientific