head-work, nor could get any to do, if they were.

And so they insist on having their children taught how to do something, perhaps several things, without ever soiling their fingers by actually doing any thing. If they would, in all meekness and simplicity of heart, endeavour to educate their children to be good for something, they would be infinitely more likely to overtake the aim of their sinful and stupid ambition. The man who has been well and rightly educated to earn, and does earn, a fair living by true and solid service, he is a gentleman in the only sense in which it is not both a sin and a shame to be called by that title. Any form of honest service, however plain and humble, has manliness in it, and is therefore a higher style of gentility, and a sounder basis of selfrespect, than any, even the proudest, form of mere social ornamentation. The dull boy, who cannot prate science, but can drive a cart as a cart ought to be driven, or the dull girl who cannot finger a piano, but can rightly broil a beefsteak, is, in the eye of all true taste, a far more sightly and attractive object than the most learned and accomplished good-for-nothing in the world. I have seen men calling themselves doctors, who, week after week, month after month, year after year, were going about making sham calls on bogus patients, that so they might either get themselves a practice or make men believe they had got one; and have thought that the poorest drudge, who honestly ate his bread, or what little he could get, in the sweat of his face, was a prince in comparison with them. An aristocratic idler or trifler or spendthrift or clothes-frame, however strong he may smell of the school and the college, of books and of lingual culture, is no better than a vulgar illiterate loafer; nor can' his smart clothes and his perfumes and his lily hands and his fashionable airs shield him from the just contempt of thoughtful men and sensible women.

Now so long as people proceed upon the notion that their children's main business in this world is to shine, and not to work, and that the school has it in special charge to fit them out at all points for a self-supporting and reputable career in life; just so long they will continue to expect and demand of the school that which the school cannot give; to grumble and find fault because it fails to do what they wish; and to insist on having its methods changed till their preposterous demands are satisfied. On the other hand, the school could do its proper work much better, if people would but come down, or rather come up, to a just conception of what that work is. But it must needs fail, in a greater or less degree, to do that part of education which falls within its legitimate province, while struggling and beating about in a vain endeavour to combine this with that part which fairly lies outside of its province. For, in straining to hit the impossible, we are pretty sure to miss the possible. And all experienced teachers know right well that those parents who faithfully do their own part in the education of their children are most apt to be satisfied with what the school is doing.

It is, then, desirable that children should learn to think, but it is indispensable that they should learn to work; and I believe it is possible for a large, perhaps the larger, portion of them to be so educated as to find pleasure in both. But the great question is, how to render the desirable thing and the indispensable thing mutually helpful and supplementary. For, surely, the two parts of education, the education of the mind and the education of the hand, though quite distinct in idea, and separate in act, are not, or need not be, at all antagonistic. On the contrary, the school can, and should, so do its part as to coöperate with and further that part which lies beyond its province. And it is both the

office and the aim of a wise benevolence in teachers so to deal with the boys under their care as to make them, if possible, intelligent, thoughtful, sober-minded men, with hearts set and tuned to such services and such pleasures as reason and religion approve; also, to make them prudent, upright, patriotic citizens, with heads so stocked and tempered as not to be “cajoled and driven about in herds" by greedy, ambitious, unprincipled demagogues, and the political gamesters of the day. And here it is to be noted, withal, that any man who gains an honest living for himself, whether lettered or unlettered, is a good citizen in the right sense of the term; and that human slugs and do-nothings, however book-learned they may be, are not good citizens.

As for the women, let it suffice that their rights and interests in this matter are coördinate with those of the men; just that, and no more. Their main business, also, is to get an honest living. And the education that unprepares them or leaves them unprepared for this is the height of folly and of wrong. And I hope the most of them are not going to turn students or authors by profession, nor to aim at eating their bread in the sweat of the brain. For things have already come to that pass with us, that any fool can write a book the great difficulty is in finding people who know enough and have strength enough not to attempt it.

And here let me say that the greatest institution in the world is the family; worth all the others put together, and the foundation of them all. So, again, the greatest art known among men is housekeeping, which is the life of the family. For what are we poor mortals good for, in head, heart, hand, or any thing else, without healthy, eupeptic stomachs? and how are we to have such stomachs without good cooking? So that I reckon housekeeping to be just

the last thing that any lady can afford to be ignorant of. The finest accomplishment too that woman was ever beautified with. This part of woman's education, also, is to be gained at home; it cannot be gained anywhere else. As for those young ladies who are above going into the kitchen, and learning this great art by actually working at it, my advice is, that they forthwith migrate to a world where the home and the family have no place, and where babies are not to be born and nursed.

Our girls in school, then, should, first of all, be fashioned for intelligent, thoughtful, sober-minded women; with souls attempered and attuned to the honest and ennobling delectations of the fireside; their heads furnished and disposed to be prudent, skillful, dutiful wives and mothers and housekeepers; home-loving and home-staying; formed for steady loves, serene attachments, quiet virtues, and the whole flock. of household pieties; all suited to the office of

A creature not too bright or good

For human nature's daily food.

The love of home, and the art of making home lovely, must be mainly acquired in the works and enjoyments of home; and the best thing that the school can do is to coöperate with the home to that end.

But the most important item in this account, and that which is the main subject of what I have to say, is yet to

come.

We have reached a stage of civilization and general culture in which both the virtue and the happiness of people depend very much on their intellectual forming and furnishing. And as this holds true alike of both sexes, so both will be included alike in the scope of what I have in mind to

speak further. Books, of one sort or another, are now, on every hand, a common resort for entertainment and pleasure, and are likely to become more and more so. Wealth has greatly accumulated; machinery has come to do a large part of our work; and all sorts of people have more or less of leisure on their hands. This leisure ought not to be spent in idleness, neither will it be. In the vacancy of their hands people's thoughts will needs be busy either for the better or for the worse: if their minds are not dressed for the abode of the Deity, they will be workshops of the Devil. And reading does in fact bear a large part in filling up such vacant time.

Now the world is getting full of devils, very potent ones too, in the shape of foolish and bad books. And I am apt to think the foolish devils in that shape even worse than the wicked for they only begin the work of evil somewhat further off, so as to come at it the more surely; and a slow creeping infection is more dangerous than a frank assault. Nothing so bad here as that which eludes or seduces the moral sentinels of the heart. I am not exactly a believer in the old doctrine of total depravity; but I fear it must be confessed that the greater number of people take much more readily to that which is false and bad than to that which is good and true. Certainly what intoxicates and lowers stands a better chance with them than what sobers and elevates. Virtue and wisdom are an up-hill road, where they do not advance without some effort; folly and vice a down-hill path, where it requires some effort not to advance. And this is quite as true in intellectual matters as in moral. Here, to most people, delight in what is false and bad comes spontaneously; delight in what is true and good is the slow result of discipline and care, and grows by postponement of impulse to law.