wasting her sweetness on algebra and geometry, what do you propose to do with this, when you shall have mastered it? What is its use, its purpose, its end, so far as you are concerned? If you propose to turn it to some practical account, very well; but if you only acquire it with an eye to mental discipline, then I protest against it as a waste of time and energy. Action, action disciplines the mind; the acquisition of what we need to know, better than that we don't need.

Yes; I demand of education, and of every part of it, fruits. I test its value by the standard of practical utility. Let us learn first, at least, what we personally and positively need to know; afterwards, if ever, that which we can profit by, only as exercise or discipline. Let all our education recognize that we are here as doers, not as dreamers. Yet does this Baconism not really affirm, as some say, the subordination of the man to the workman, the mental to the physical? It affirms for the latter a precedence in time only, not in importance. "First the blade, then the ear; afterward the full corn in the ear." The child must creep before it can walk, however decided the superiority of the latter mode of locomotion. We insist, then, that education should first qualify its subject for his work; -—that is, for a career of assured usefulness and independence; because, in default of this, there is scarcely a chance that he can be morally good or intellectually great. Bread is not so noble as thought, but in the absence of food the brain is paralyzed or absorbed in the consciousness of hunger. Let every human being be first trained to an assured ability usefully to earn at least a livelihood, and thus shielded from the all but inevitable moral degradation of the dependent and the beggarly. Every man who has had, with myself, the sad experience and observation afforded by a residence for upwards of a quarter of a century, in a great city, will agree with me, when I say no sight is more pitiable than the educated men, having no means of support by their hands, either through Ignorance, weakness or pride, who are huddled in its crowded populations. We see there a host of such waifs, intellectual wrecks, literally begging for a chance to coin their thinking faculties into food. Moral elevation is of course impossible to such men; and they are the inevitable product of our present school systems.

We want a more practical, physical, industrial education, for many urgent reasons. 1st. To advance physical health, strength and longevity. 2d. For the proper cultivation of the earth, and the development of its mineral and vegetable treasures. We have but begun in this age to know the wealth of nature. What is the present state of agriculture, the first of arts in time, the first in necessity? 3d. For improvement in machinery, in manufactures, and in household economy. 4th. To diffuse leisure and taste for study among the uneducated. It is a very common complaint

that thrifty, untaught farmers grudge the cost of a thorough education for their sons and daughters. Hodge, industrious and independent in his igno. rance, scorns his educated neighbor, who is but a drone and a beggar with it all. "I have succeeded well enough," says he, "without education; why shouldn't my children do the same." Now I realize and regret Hodge's contempt for learning, but I cannot pretend to be surprised at it. On the contrary, it seems to me most natural, and not very blameworthy For do but consider that the educated son or daughter too often returns to the paternal home with an ill-disguised contempt for its homely roof, and a positive aversion to its downright labor. Who would expect a sensible home-bred parent to relish and value such education?

That son is not truly educated who cannot grow more corn on an acre than his unlearned father, and grow it with less labor. That educated daugh ter has received a mistaken and superficial training, if she cannot excel her mother in making soap or cheese or butter. All these are chemical processes, in which her education should render her an adept, far beyond any untaught person. The educated lawyer, doctor or clergyman, whose garden is not better, (I do not say larger,) and his fruit trees more thrifty and productive than his illiterate neighbor's, sadly discredits and damages the cause of education. The prejudice against muscular, physical labor is a product of barbarism and slavery. It ought long since to have vanished in the light of liberty and civilization. Of course, he who can earn ten dollars per day, as a lawyer, should not desert this to toil for a dollar per day as a plowman or canal-digger. This would be folly. But the lawyer or physician who cannot earn the ten dollars per day, nor one of them, and who stands idle, and runs in debt for his board, rather than plow or dig, has been very badly taught, and is a poor creature. Let each do his best; but let no man make his presumed ability to do something better, an excuse for doing nothing. "Six days shalt thou labor," says The Book; and there is hardly a commandment worse understood or worse heeded. Each of us is under a perpetual obligation to usefulness; and this is not discharged by the fact that we cannot find just the work we would prefer to do. Every one lounging around taverns, or idling in office, or waiting for some one to employ him as a lawyer, a doctor, or in some such capacity, and meantime doing the world no good, but living on the earnings of others, is a scandal and a clog to the cause of education.

Perhaps the great mistake is nowhere more general or more pernicious than in the education of woman. It is the destiny of woman, we carelessly say, to preside over a household as wife and mother; and so it is the destiny of most women, but by no means of all. It is right that all should be educated to fulfil nobly the duties of matronage; but it is not well that any should be educated, so as to fit her for no other sphere than this, so as

to render her life as a maiden necessarily a defeat and a failure. Choice with some, disappointment with others, necessity perhaps with more ;these consign thousands to single life. All must fill this sphere at least for a season. Why, then, should not all be fitted to exalt and adorn it? The position and sphere of woman is one of the themes which the thought of our age is pondering; and its meditations will not be fruitless. Greater freedom and wider opportunities for usefulness in maidenhood, a juster and more equal union in married life, these are the essential demands of the clear-sighted, and they cannot always be answered by misrepresentation nor silenced by sneers. Pecuniary independence and self-support in single life are essential to woman, that she may spurn the degrading idea of marrying for a home and a livelihood. For, however proper the marriage state may be, surely an ill-assorted union is worse than none.

To this end, woman must be taught and encouraged to do many things she now shuns;-Laust be called out into God's sunshine, and made a free producer of those fruits which are its noblest embodiments. The fine arts in all their phases, gardening, the vineyards, the manufactories, all must be annexed to her industrial domain, until it shall be impossible, as well as shameful, to exact of her teaching and other service at half the price which man receives for equal ability and equal efficiency. This is among the achievements immediately before us, and it is to be attained through a wiser and more practical Education.

But in thus basing Education upon industry, activity, efficiency, I do not of course mean to confine it to material ends. Its feet are planted firmly on the earth, only that its head may be exalted to the skies. Let our educated youth be first capable, skillful, efficient, independent workers, in order that they may develop and evince a nobler manhood, a truer and sweeter womanhood, than we, their less fortunate predecessors and progenitors have been able to attain. Let them be armed at all points for the great battle of life, that they may carry thence grander testimonies than our feeble and unmailed arms were ever able to achieve. Let them be skilled in all forms of muscular exertion, so that they shall work out for themselves a genuine leisure for conquests in the dominiou of mind. Let them be inventors, thinkers, philosophers, poets not merely that they may coin their brain-sweat into bread, but that, having secured ample bread, they shall now be ready to labor intellectually for the good of their race.

But would you have every one a mere delver? you ask. Yes, let every one delve till a way shall open before him to something better. Let men be called to intellectual work, because needed there, not because needing to be there. Let the relationship of literature to life be placed on a truer, more earnest basis. Now we hear a young man, trained in the prevailing system of Education, cry, "Why may I not be an author, and thus earn

my bread?" And so he makes an earnest effort to enter the realms of Authorship, as Novelist, Essayist, even as Poet. But alas! no Poet ever deliberately sat down to write a poem for either bread or fame. Poetry, to be real, is the overflow of life, not its mean quantity. True Poets only write because they must; as Jenny Lind's bird in her beautiful song, that cries, "I must, I must be singing." Only to think of Homer or Dante going about with "Please sir, buy my poem, that my wife and my children may have bread!" I often think with pleasure of an anecdote of Uhland, the great German Poet. When a friend visited him, at a time when he had published nothing for many months, and asked him, "Have you anything in hand now, any great poetical effort not yet finished, that you continue so long withdrawn from the public eye?" he answered, “No, I have not felt the necessity of writing lately." A true Poet must be silent when he does not feel the necessity of writing. But to write because you have no other means of support, because you cannot live without it, this is to debase your faculty. Yet the world is full of appeals for patronage and em. ployment, which amount to just this. Now the world is not bettered by the book that is written for money; nor by any intellectual labor of which hunger is the inspiration. And all education which makes a man neces sarily a lawyer, a physician, a clergyman or an author, is degrading to literature and intellect. The writer ought to be always the perfected worker. The curse of our time, as I suppose of all times, is inordinate self-seeking. We acquire that we may serve, not mankind, but ourselves. We seek not to keep step in the even march of life, but to steal a ride on the baggage wagon. The spirit of the NEW AGE on which we are entering is different; it speaks only of, and seeks for, the equal rights of all. It says to the Leg islature, Punish, punish crime; but only as the Guardian of Justice and the Protector of the Commonwealth. for the prevention of future crime, and, if it may be, the reformation of the offender. It says to the Thinker, Hate, but be careful to hate only that which is hateful, which opposes and impedes human good. And it cries, as it hails the rising generation, Youth, study! Study with all your energies, but study only that you may be a more effective worker! It says to men everywhere, Work, that you may be more unselfish and effective students. And to all, Live, with all your powers and all your life, that the haughty may be abased, the humble exalted, and God glorified.

I feel that I have reached the limits of my voice and of your patience. I have thrown out these thoughts, thus imperfectly, hoping that they may reach your minds and dwell in them, and become your thoughts; and thus, so far as they are just and right, influence your lives. You know our thoughts are always, if allowed to develop themselves rightly, better than our lives. What then? Shall our thoughts be brought down to the

lower level of our lives, or shall the latter be exalted? Let us strive to make Education the seed of good thoughts; a sure and faithful teacher that soul is more and better than body. Let it train the young so to use every power that man may be ennobled, and life may be higher and holier -Record of the Times.

For the Journal of Education.

ON CHOOSING SUBJECTS FOR COMPOSITION.

TO THE BOYS AND GIRLS IN OUR SCHOOLS.

Many are the things upon which scholars rack their brains. There is the puzzling proposition in Arithmetic, the more puzzling sentence in Grammar, and the hard spelling lesson, which, in common with other pressing affairs, demand attention.

Among these various things that claim the notice of Scholars, the choosing of a subject on which to express their thoughts, stands out preeminent, to some, in the catalogue of their difficulties and vexations. Some say that it is easy enough to chose a subject, but harder to write on it. "Aye! there's the rub," to choose a subject suited to one's capacity When a scholar who is beginning to study composition, is thinking of something on which to write, he generally runs his mind over a plentitude of abtruse subjects, such as Wisdom, Happiness, Truth, Twilight, Sunshine and Shadows," upon which he can no more express his thonghts, than can a "bevy of blackbirds," or any other of the lower animals. A good illustration of the above assertion is found in an anecdote which a celebrated authoress, Mrs. Sherwood, relates of herself. It is as follows: It was the custom of her father, every Saturday morning, to give her a subject on which to write. So one Saturday morning, as usual, she went to her father's study and said, "Papa, please for the subject of my theme, today?"

"Hoc age," he replied, still writing on. "What? Papa," she said. "Hoc age," child, he answered, "Hoc age. Go and do your best with it but don't disturb me." As she went down stairs, she repeated to herself, "Hoc age, Hoc age. It's Latin, I know. 'Hoc' means 'this,' and is neuter, so the word 'thing' is understood, and 'age' means 'do;' so it all means 'do this thing.'" She sat down, with pen, ink and paper, and