ing thirst, I seized a jug, and drank a considerable draught of water. Soon after, all my extremities were very cold; the pulsations ceased entirely; all the symptoms were those of death. [He now stretched himself on his pallet, and exclaimed to the soldiers who were guarding him, "Look how well I have laid myself out."] The physician, who had arrived an hour before, asked me, in those convulsive moments, whether I would take anything, and, giving me four or five spoonsful of wine, restored me to life and strength. I then again drank some water. Ten A.M.-I now feel myself much the same as yesterday morning, only my thirst is more tolerable. Two P.M.-No particular inconvenience; no hunger; the pulsations of the heart have entirely ceased. Six P.M.-No motions in the heart; pulse very low; thirst bearable; no hunger; head clear; faculties all in a good state. Ten at night.-After half an hour's placid sleep, felt a slight shiver over my body. Pulsations scarcely perceptible; still my faculties are as usual. Shivering increasing; my feet warm; but nose and ears cold. "14th.-After the convulsions described, I had three hours' pleasant sleep, accompanied by tranquil dreams. On awaking, my thirst was very great. Pulsations very weak; those of the heart quite ceased. My faculties in a good state; but my physical state decreased since yesterday. At one P.M., my thirst increased beyond everything; my pulse was alternately weak and strong, but always regular, though the motion of the heart has quite subsided. Still my faculties are good, considering the reduced state of my body. All the world has abandoned me; but I still preserve, and shall preserve as long as I live, the best of my possessions-my constancy. On the 10th inst. my thirst was such that, having filled my mouth with water, I could not resist swallowing it. During the convulsions of the 12th, I drank, in the presence of the doctor, above a tumbler of water; and again, during that of the 13th, rather more than half a tumbler. Total absence of appetite. Ten o'clock at night.-Insufferable thirst, as in the course of Monday; feeble pulsations all over my body; no indications of convulsions, like those of the preceding night. Since the 2nd inst. I have been deprived of every kind of consolation-no news of my family. To such of my relations as are in the town all access to the prison has been denied. Seven inexorable soldiers have passed the night and day in the small room in which I am confined, observing, with an inquisitorial rigour, almost my every motion. So barbarous and superfluous a degree of circumspection would be more suitable to the prisons of a seraglio, or a pasha of St. Jean de Acre, than to those of the French government. "15th.-Vigorous pulsations until three A.M.; feverish heat in all my body; very hot thirst, succeeded by calm repose till six; fainting and insensibility of half an hour. At seven the pulsations recommenced, but continued very weak till midday. "16th. From ten till four, burning thirst; otherwise calm. After four o'clock, vigorous pulsations, accompanied by febrile heat: these ceased for an hour; then recommenced very faintly. It is now seven o'clock; and the pulsation is so little perceptible, that I think that the end of my days and my agonies must be near. This journal will be delivered, after my death, to my nephew, G. G. Gunemes, who will take care to send a copy of it to the Presidents Mezard, Pasqualini, and Suzzoni, and the fourth to Signor Rico, whom I request to fulfil my wish, as I before expressed to him personally. "17th. Yesterday passed very tranquilly. I now find myself the same, only my pulse is very weak, I die with a pure and innocent soul, and end my days with that tranquillity with which Seneca, Socrates, and Petronius ended theirs. "18th.-Eleven o'clock.-I am near upon ending my days by the calm death of the just. Both hunger and thirst have ceased to torment me. My mind is collected; my sight is clear; and a universal suavity reigns throughout my heart, and my conscience, and every part of me. The few moments that remain to me flow as smoothly as does a gentle rivulet through a flowery meadow, The lamp is near being extinguished for want of fuel requisite to feed the flame." We give the above as the first of a series illustrative of personal experiences, which we have gathered from different quarters. Our literature contains many short and interesting facts, which we have thus collected into one whole. We may find sentiments expressed, as here, with which we may not entirely sympathise; but we intend, as much as possible, to let the individual speak for himself. We trust to interest our readers, and to illustrate the well-known saying, that "truth is strange-stranger than fiction."-[ED.] ESSAYS ON THE EDUCATION OF THE HUMAN RACE.-I. ADDRESSED TO THE INDUSTRIOUS CLASSES. WHAT IS EDUCATION? WHO IS THE PROPER OBJECT OF IT? "Do you ask what will educate your son? Your example will educate him; your conversation with your friends; the business he sees you transact; the likings and dislikings you express: these will educate him."-MRS. BARBAULD. WHAT, another essay on education! Yes, another, and another! Think you they are not needed? Look around, my friends, at the RESULTS produced by such education as now prevails. Amid the multitude of systems now extant, has one been found that can ensure that the future conduct of the child it guides shall be moral, intelligent, and well-directed? Are the majority of the children who swarm forth from our schools gentle, truthful, and versed in the social laws which govern the well-being of society? if not, (and I fear the question must be answered in the negative,) then must it be granted that more thought yet must be expended, more inquiries yet be raised, and more investigations pursued ere we can flatter ourselves that we have entered upon the right path. But it is not a mere system of teaching the different branches of scholastic learning that I intend to denote under the term "education." In a more extended application of the word, a man may be well versed in classical literature, may be deeply read in the sciences, may have passed through the different schools with honour to himself-nay, have taken his degree in the university with renown, and yet be very ill educated. The learning which makes a man a lawyer, a doctor, or a priest, useful as it may be to the individual's rise in his respective profession, is, when unaccompanied by a good education in other respects, comparatively valueless in the development of the character of the individual as a man, a human being, a member of a large society of human beings. As well might we expect that the knowledge which a bricklayer, a tailor, or a shoemaker acquires in the exercise of his calling would of itself expand the human faculties, and refine the mind, morals, and manners of the individual, as to look for this effect from the knowledge of the mere technicalities of learning, or from the long parade of grandly-sounding words. No! education has a nobler office--a higher aim than can be engrossed by any one class of society, however favoured. It is not alone the rich, the great, the learned who share her care. The toiling multitude, the labouring many are equally, if not more, within the scope of her influences, if these are but rightly understood and beneficially directed. It is not costly apparatus and a goodly array of expensive folios that are needed to commence the important task, but thinking heads, feeling hearts, and unbiassed understandings; for "education" comprehends the whole series of influences, direct and indirect, which form the mind to virtue or to vice; and the study of how best to direct these, that a beneficial result may be the consequence, forms the true object of the educator. Young men and women of the industrious classes of society! it is you whom I invite to the present inquiry-you on whom probably the welfare of a large portion of the succeeding generation depends-you who, though not yet fathers and mothers, are eagerly looking forward to the time when your respective savings shall furnish you, and the equally prudent partner of your choice, with a comfortable hearth, by the side of which your mutual studies are to progress, your mutual plans to be discussed, and your mutual purposes to be carried out. The time is not, I trust, far distant when the majority of the laborious classes may, during their daily toil, safely look forward to this hour of rest and leisure which will enable them to assume a real part in the drama of this world's doings, give them substantial interest in the passing scene, and inspire them with such beneficial energy of mind as will teach them to embody their own good in that of the good of the community at large. Meantime, I would fain request the earnest attention of such of you as are already blessed with so much occasional cessation from labour as to be furnished with a few spare moments for study and reflection to one of the most important subjects that have yet occupied the thoughts of man: not only because, in the probable course of nature, your attention will inevitably be directed thereunto, and that it would not be well, when the task is already appointed, that you should enter upon it utterly unprepared for its proper performance, but also because the study itself is interesting and important to every human being; and it were a hard chance, even for the wisest of us, to find, while studying the influences best calculated to lead our children in the path of rectitude to man's estate, that we had failed of obtaining one hint which might tend to improve our own hearts, to strengthen our own minds, or to quicken our own understandings. Let us then endeavour to answer for ourselves and others this question: What is the real object proposed in the education of the rising generation? Do we wish to form a nation of mere readers, writers, linguists, or a race of mere mathematicians, poets, or classical scholars? or is our object altogether higher than this?—is it to call into life and action the varied powers that lie folded up in man? to teach the rising race to become MEN AND WOMEN-beings of expanded intellect, of moral energy, of clear, unbiassed judgment, active in body, and with minds so governed that the very fulfil ment of their own desires shall cease to please when such fulfilment entrenches on the enjoyment of a neighbour? It is to the formation of such a character as this that I invite your attention; and while we together investigate the influences most calculated to produce the desirable result, who shall say that such investigation is not likely to repay us for our pains, even in the light it may throw upon the means we may most successfully apply in the improvement of our own characters? Thank God that the day is gone by when the supposed duties of "the many" were limited to the providing for the animal wants of the race, when it formed a part of the duty of the shoemaker not to "go beyond his last," and of all trades and handicrafts to leave matters of high moment to "their betters." Thank God for this: that men are at length awakening to the knowledge that they were intended to use the mental faculties bestowed on them by a beneficent Creator; that, necessary as it is to provide for the wants of the body, it is no less so to provide for those of the mind; and that the neglect of the one duty is to the full as sinful, i. e. as fraught with evil consequences, as neglect of the other. Men and women obliged to toil for your daily bread! ye are no longer necessarily shut out from the study of any subject really important to your welfare; and therefore I call on your attention, in the present instance, as, on your examination of this theme, in some form on other, mainly depends the improvement or retrogression of the human race in the succeeding generation. Your numbers alone form too important an item in the management of human affairs to allow neglect on this point to be tolerated. Such is now the state of society that knowledge of one sort or another is sure to be attained; and there is no longer the possibility, even if the wish existed, of shutting it out from among you: therefore, as knowledge is literally "power," and power too of a very destructive kind in the hands of the ill-educated, it is now become doubly and trebly imperative to give that knowledge a right direction, or, in other words, to impart to the possessors of it a good education, in order that the increased diffusion of this "power" may tend to the happiness rather than to the injury of mankind. And now one word respecting the effect which it is feared by many that "education" will produce upon the "labourer;" viz.: to give him a disgust to the necessary "labour" of life. A superficial knowledge of some easy art or science, an idle habit of skimming over the surface of works of the lighter literature, or the cherishing a discontented state of mind under the name of sentimentality, are assuredly evils to be dreaded, and may possibly, in some instances, occur, and produce this prognosticated disgust. But are there no other forms of idleness among mankind? Were reading, and writing, and all concomitant circumstances swept away, would no inducements to loitering and dissipation remain? Before the schoolmaster made his appearance abroad, were there no vicious, no dissolute persons? none who would prefer to play the soldier or the idle man, in preference to fulfilling daily the daily round of labour? Assuredly there were; and many such-and many, too many such, may still remain. The merely being able to read and write will not counteract evil tendencies to idleness and discontent, though a really good education will! A good education will? Yes, most assuredly. And why? Because from it we shall learn that "labour" is a divine institution, framed by the Creator for man's peculiar benefit-the appointed means for the development of his mental faculties, the exercise of his moral virtues, and for exalting him above the condition of the animals whose food grows beneath their feet without care of theirs. Were the necessity for labour abolished, what school would remain to call forth his manifold faculties, to develop his varied ingenuities? None. He should sink immediately and inevitably to the level of the brutes that perish. Labour, then, (I speak not, of course, of overstrained exertion,) is a blessing to man, in being the appointed means of improving him what idea, then, more irrational than to use it as a means of keeping him from improvement? The history of the race has not proved that any one rank or class among men possesses qualities inherently raising them above the rest; on the contrary, our wisest, best, most useful men have sprung indifferently from every rank, from the highest to the lowest, as circumstance or constitutional ability have forced them to manifest their superiority. From the royal Alfred to the poor printer's boy who stood with his last roll, wondering where next he should find a penny to buy a meal-from the lordly Byron to the ploughman Burns-or the yet humbler Bloomfield-mind is of no rank, but universally diffused, and universally and imperatively calling for training and development. For if it is true (as we by no means deny that it is) that man has propensities similar to those of the lower animals, it is also true that he is endowed with faculties of perception and reflection, of imagination, of sentiments prompting to justice, to benevolence, to social sympathies, and to veneration of all that is good and great. Now, modern philosophy has shown us that each and all of these powers not only demand exercise as the price of enjoyment, but inflict positive punishment as the consequence of inaction. If the muscular and nervous energies remain unused, the health becomes impaired, the frame shrunken, and the limbs lose their elasticity and power. If no play is afforded to the moral and intellectual faculties, the mind becomes enfeebled, the senses dulled, and too often the wretched possessor sinks below the dignity of a brute. It follows, then, that we shall vainly seek the right path, by the contentment of one part of this nature to the exclusion of the rest; the neglected faculty will one day surely avenge itself by making us feel the consequences of its decay. There is another principle also at work, and, for all, an extremely important one; namely, that, in the formation both of habits and principles, we are necessarily either assisted or retarded in our advancement by the advancement of those around and about us, since their example and indirect influence necessarily operate upon us for good or for evil for man is not an isolated being, whose faculties are self-centered, but one of a vast community, the actions of each individual of which influence for weal or woe the happiness of the whole mass. In vain the philosopher builds his systems and exhausts his powers in contrivances to benefit mankind, while the ignorance of the multitude ascribes his learning to witchcraft-his mysterious combinations of chemical and mechanical skill to dealings with the evil one. In vain the prudent store their grain, and lay up provision for the future wants of the community, while the ill-taught and ill-disciplined multitude seek refuge for their own improvidence, or satisfaction for their own impatient spirits, by firing the stores that were to feed them, or by breaking up the machinery which should have spun clothing to protect them. Nay, it is in vain that the intelligent are solicitous to preserve the physical health of their own families by well-ordered ventilation and sytematic cleanliness. The ignorance of the inmates of the squalid hut will engender |