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will crown the deeper education of this country with a most appropriate grace and a most softening influence. The exhibition of the fine and mechanical arts, to which the Sabbath school child is admitted during some holyday, not only gratifies the curiosity of all, but there may be an eye which receives the first impression of lovely forms and ingenious contrivances, a mind which carries away its first idea of proportion and design, a hidden zest and genius which emits its earliest spark, the young observer may be the future painter, sculptor, and machinist !

It is not expected that all will concur with our next recommendation. But we are deeply convinced that the industrious classes should receive a political instruction. If government be in any sense an arrangement for their benefit and a trustee for their security, it ought to be shown in what manner it acts on their behalf. A foundation should be laid for their confidence. If apparent wrong be done them in any legislative measures, they have a right to be satisfied that it is not real, or that, if real, it is indispensable. Prove to them that the reclamation of the common, where their poultry strayed, was demanded by the general consumption of the country. Convince them that it is only just that they, in the excise on the necessaries of life, should pay the largest share of the national burdens. Make it plain to them that their own interests are chiefly consulted in the withholding from them of all part in the direction of

national affairs. If you can bring proof, they will be readily satisfied, or at least will submissively yield : if you cannot, it is at your peril that you proceed. A government has no proper arcana; it is a great social regulation, a strict convention. It is the executive for the greatest possible happiness of the greatest possible number of its supporters. It is only a relative thing. Not a thought can it legitimately bestow upon itself. Its strength, firmness, revenue, are of the people, and for the people. It is no truce of party, it is no game of faction. Its force is in the sound, thinking, influential, preponderant, ascertained, majority of its subjects in favour of its measures, —and in the unanimity of its subjects in favour of its institutions. Throw all light over its frame and working; make the people parties to it; let them appreciate the use of every principle and adjunct; invest them with a beneficial interest in all; while they "sit by the fire," let them know "what 's done in the Capitol ;" and your commonwealth is imperishable. The advantage of this kind of education is twofold,-you bind the people to the State, but in their improvement, if the State be wrong and defective, you must raise the State to the people. Such a populace might be trusted in the most critical times. It would bow to the severities of what it saw was inevitable scarcity. It would acquiesce in the lowness of the price of labour, when it perceived the slackness of Shakspeare. Coriolanus.

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demand. It would hold no quarrel with the seasons. It would not suicidally destroy property. It would not listen to the nostrum of the political empiric. It would not sway to and fro under every noisy leader. Among its ranks might be seen an enlightened patriotism to encourage the public spirit of other orders,— at least to expose the timid and to shame the venal.

One feature of popular education ought never to be overlooked. It cannot be denied that the mental circumstances of the labouring poor form a sort of proscription. In vain we say, that every man in our country can rise into a better lot. It is theory. It is possibility. How may it be? It is the duty of those who can impart education so to fashion and direct it as to lift the people universally to this starting point. Give them the capacity thus to rise. When elevated to a few degrees, it is their fault alone if they do not advance. The progress, henceforth, must be their own. But until then, they hardly can emerge from a deep debasement. The hope of extrication has not whispered to their ear. The instruments of melioration are not furnished for their use. Waken the soul from its sleep. Stir up its powers of life. of life. it its place in the competition. Let it have room for the race. And then will it be no idle mockery, nor ribald insult, to the meanest, when we assert that he may improve his social condition if he will: the chances remain not so much to be drawn as that a prize is actually won. It is a goal already gained,

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but it points to others more distant and more glorious still.

The education which is denounced, because wholly secular, requires some little notice. Does such exist in our country? Does that deserve this description, which is found associated with the most anti-evangelical communities? Is there the school in which is found no inspired verse? Is not morality infused into the reading-lesson and copy-book? If the infidel has his educational institution, it is, we know, for irreligion we include it not in the defence: though, even in it, the probability is, that truth, sobriety, and kindness, will be inculcated..

The question has been violently agitated, Whether education can be properly scriptural, which only recognises selections from Scripture. We think it may be right to teach a part of Divine Revelation, when we are not suffered to teach the whole. We practically, where the entire volume is the reading book of the school, do very mainly use it in sections. None would wish it to be read indiscriminately and consecutively by children of all the classes and forms. Happy, at least, are they who are free to act in these choices for themselves! Nor are we disposed to offer one excuse for those who, in order to promote the most flattering schemes of universal education, enter into a compromise, the conditions of which shall be the employment of Scripture with a corrupt text and fraudulent translation!

The necessity of Female education is unjustly overlooked in most of these general enquiries. But it is not, in any view, of inferior importance. The future mothers of a people are the best protectresses of a State from moral deterioration. Let them be trained as thinking beings. The female intellect only wants culture to establish its strict equality. But there are domestic virtues which specially adorn the sex. The house-wife is woman's proudest name. The home is her peculiar sphere. Honourable is her distaff: as honourable her careful management and thrift. It is plain for what sphere she should be instructed. Deeply is it to be deplored when the blooming girl is, by the calls of want, diverted from these duties. They should be early commenced, and as often as possible resumed. Then the regulations and arts of other employment may not be useless. They will supply the means of independence, if woman's common lot be not fulfilled. They will impress habits of self-denial and industry. They will afford an experience, whose fruits may be most wholesome, and which shall set homestead joys in the most enviable view. But they have too frequently a contrary influence. Their principal evil, if it can be shown to be true, is a tendency to disqualify for the obligations of wedded life. To this we know there is ready answer: we doubt whether it be quite satisfactory. We cannot be forced from this conclusion, that there is no subject of education, so fitting, so deserving, so influential,

They bring many snares.

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