the diversified employments of civilization may make of them. One has a passion for contention, and danger, and adventure. There are the gigantic game of the sea, the vast fields of the Pacific, the pursuit even "beneath the frozen serpent of the South," for him. Another has a taste for trade; he plays already at bargains and barter. There are Wall-street and Milk-street, and clerkships and agencies at Manilla, and Canton, and Rio Janeiro, for him. A third early and seriously inclines to the quiet life, the fixed habits, the hereditary opinions, and old ways, of his fathers; there is the plough for him.

Another develops, from infancy, extraordinary mechanical and inventive talent; extraordinary in degree, of not yet ascertained direction. You see it in his firs whittling. There may be a Fulton, or an Arkwright there may be wrapped up the germs of an idea, which realized, shall change the industry of nations, and give a new name to a new era. Well, there are the machine shops at Lowell and Providence for him; there are cotton mills and woollen mills for him to superintend; there is stationary and locomotive steam power for him to guide and study; of a hundred departments and forms of useful art, some one will surely reach and feed the ruling intellectual passion. In the flashing eye, beneath the pale and beaming brow of that other one, you detect the solitary first thoughts of genius. There are the seashore of storm or calm, the waning moon, the stripes of summer evening cloud, traditions, and all the food of the soul, for him. And so all the boys are provided for. Every fragment of mind is gathered up. Nothing is lost. Every taste, every faculty, every peculiarity of mental power, finds its task, does it, and is made the better for it.

EXERCISE XLIX.

OUR DUTY AS CITIZENS.

IN that unceasing march of things, which calls forward the successive generations of men to perform their part on the stage of life, we at length are summoned to appear. Our fathers have passed their hour of visita

tion;-how worthily, let the growth and prosperity of our happy land, and the security of our firesides, attest. Or, if this appeal be too weak to move us, let the eloquent silence of yonder venerated heights,*-let the column which is there rising in simple majesty, - recall their venerated forms, as they toiled, in the hasty trenches, through the dreary watches of that night of expectation, heaving up the sods, where they lay, in peace and in honor, ere the following sun had set. The turn has come to us. The trial of adversity was theirs; the trial of prosperity is ours. Let us meet it as men who know their duty, and prize their blessings. Our position is the most enviable, the most responsible, which men can fill. If this generation does its duty, the cause of constitutional freedom is safe. If we fail; if we fail; -not only do we defraud our children of the inheritance which we received from our fathers, but we blast the hopes of the friends of liberty throughout our continent, throughout Europe, throughout the world, to the end of time.

History is not without her examples of hard-fought fields, where the banner of liberty has floated triumphantly on the wildest storm of battle. She is without her examples of a people by whom the dear-bought treasure has been wisely employed and safely handed down. The eyes of the world are turned for that example to us. It is related, by an ancient historian, of that Brutus who slew Cæsar, that he threw himself on his sword, after the disastrous battle of Philippi, with the bitter exclamation, that he had followed virtue as a substance, but found it a name. It is not too much to say, that there are, at this moment, noble spirits in the elder world, who are anxiously watching the march of our institutions, to learn whether liberty, as they have been told, is a mockery, a pretence, and a curse, or a blessing, for which it becomes them to brave the rack, the scaffold, and the scimitar.

Let us, then, as we assemble, on the birthday of the nation, as we gather upon the green turf once wet with precious blood, let us devote ourselves to the sacred

*Bunker's Hill.

cause of constitutional liberty. Let us abjure the interests and passions which divide the great family of American freemen. Let the rage of party spirit sleep to-day. Let us resolve, that our children shall have cause to bless the memory of their fathers, as we have cause to bless the memory of ours.

EXERCISE L.

OUR OBLIGATIONS.

LET the sacred obligations which have devolved on this generation, and on us, sink deep into our hearts. Those are daily dropping from among us, who established our liberty and our government. The great trust now descends to new hands. Let us apply ourselves to that which is presented to us as our appropriate object.

We can win no laurels in a war of independence. Earlier and worthier hands have gathered them all. Nor are there places for us by the side of Solon, and Alfred, and other founders of states. Our fathers have

filled them. But there remains to us a great duty of defence and preservation; and there is open to us, also, a noble pursuit, to which the spirit of the times strongly invites us.

Our proper business is improvement. Let our age b the age of improvement. In a day of peace, let us advance the arts of peace and the works of peace. Let us develop the resources of our land, call forth its powers, build up its institutions, promote all its great interests, and see whether we also, in our day and generation, may not perform something worthy to be remembered. Let us cultivate a true spirit of union and harmony. In pursuing the great objects which our condition points out to us, let us act under a settled conviction, and an habitual feeling, that these twenty-four states are cne cour try.

Let our conceptions be enlarged to the circles of our duties. Let us extend our ideas over the whole of the vast field in which we are called to act. Let our object be, our country, our whole country, and nothing but our

country. And by the blessing of God, may that country itself become a vast and splendid monument, not of oppression and terror, but of wisdom, of peace, and of liberty, upon which the world may gaze with admiration, forever!

EXERCISE LI.

THE EDUCATION OF THE HEART.

WHILE the great powers of the mind-observation, comparison and reflection—are, and of right should be, the objects of school discipline, the great powers of the heart, springing from the sentiment of love, should not be neglected. That they are important, and important in the very first degree, cannot be doubted. They are the great basis of all true thought and action. "Keep thy heart with all diligence," says Solomon, "for out of it are the issues of life." The truly great men of the earth have been those whose mental abilities were strongly backed by great moral qualities; that is, by unselfish, sincere, sympathetic, forbearing hearts. All mental greatness, unless thus based, is like the house which was built upon the sand, which the wind, and rain, and flood of worldly misfortune have uniformly washed unto its fall. I say uniformly, for however a man may apparently succeed by superior cunning and selfish tact, he will, in reality, be miserable, just in proportion as his heart is selfish and depraved. His misery will be none the less real because it is not apparent. It is in this view that the race of life is not always to the swift, nor its battle to the strong. Every opposition in this world goes down, in the long run, before the better feelings of the heart. It is the carefully educated heart which beats the carefully educated head. Both equally combined, however, form the perfect model of man. It is this deep sentiment of the heart, love, which is at the bottom of all great reforms, the originating cause, -and is, in fact, the great basis of popular opinion. It is the true foundation of all good society, all real freedom. Woman, -educated, refined, Christian woman,

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is its guardian, I might say its personification, in society, and by her silent but deep.example is ever giving a great impulse to its holy extension. When speaking of reforms, however, I do not mean by them all changes which may agitate the great surface of society—which come as the tornado of popular passion or prejudice, to avenge and destroy, to stamp conviction on every mind by force and fear. True reforms are as silent as they are deep. The great laws of the moral, as the physical world, move in sublime silence. Beneath the fury of the sea, when lashed by the tempest, the great under-current of the ocean flows on quietly and unheeded. the earthquake is shaking a world to its centre, amid desolation and dismay, the noiseless, beautiful, irresistible principle of gravitation retains the rocking sphere in its orbit, and remains immutable and eternal amid passing violence and change. Thus, in society, there is a principle which is deeper than all outward agitation, a true feeling deeper than all outward passion, and that principle, that feeling, are moral ones, of and belonging to the heart.

While

Of what boundless extent, depth, and value, then, is the human heart, as a subject of cultivation! Who has ever estimated, who can ever estimate, its better capacities, sympathies, generosities? Of what good cultivation is it not capable in its every relation of life, and of what bad, alas? From the heart have originated the most stirring appeals of patriotism, the most enthusiastic efforts for human freedom and happiness, the most selfsacrificing labors in every good cause. The greatest efforts of the mind have been warmed by it into life, spurred on by its better energies, and have finally received from that source, also, their most grateful rewards. If the effort of the mind becomes immortally bright, it is because the glowing heat of the heart is there. It is the heart which finally rebukes ambition, defeats cun ning, disarms selfishness. By it, in the end, all causes are tried, all wrongs condemned, all grievances redressed. The lessons of history, the records of our own experience, teach us that we are to look to our hearts for the rewards or punishments of life. Shakspeare has recorded