est to new pursuits. The "pliant hour" must be taken for all processes of mental budding, grafting, or pruning, as well as in those of the orchard. An early dip into the study of nature, will serve to saturate the whole soul with a love for it so strong as to insure the prosecution of such subjects for life. The season is auspicious; the senses are fresh and susceptible; the mind is awake; the heart is alive; the memory is retentive; nature is yet a scene of novelty and delight; and application is a pleasure. The twig may now be bent in the direction in which the tree is to be inclined. Universal susceptibility to instruction, drawn from Nature.-In a diversified experience of nearly forty years in the field of education, one teacher, at least, can testify that he has not yet found the mind so dull, or the heart so callous, as to resist the attractive intellectual influence of the analysis of even one plant or one mineral. The mysteries of beauty and awe which hang over such objects, as an investing celestial glory, entrancing the imagination and the heart, and all but translating the intellect itself, have a power of attraction which the dullest, coarsest, and most brutalized boy in a ragged school, cannot resist. But of the moral influence of early education, when directed to the aspects of nature, it will be more appropriate to speak in that special connection. Effects produced on mental character, by the study of Nature.— The solidity and the firmness of mental character, which are acquired by the study of things, preceding and accompanying that of words and books, are a natural effect of the early and seasonable cultivation of the habit of observing, analyzing, comparing, and classifying, which even the slight examination of any natural object induces.-A clear, decisive, and discriminating judgment, and a retentive memory, are among the other fruits of that mental training which commences with definite objects, capable of being analyzed and reconstructed by the natural and appropriate action of the young mind, in virtue of its own powers and native tendencies. But these considerations, also belong properly to another and more advanced stage of intellectual discipline, at which the reflective faculties, and maturing reason, are beginning to put forth their claims for culture and development, in addition to the preparatory training which they may have received in the blended exercises of sense and intellect, in the action of the perceptive faculties. (4.) KNOWLEDGE, THE INTELLECTUAL RESULT OF THE ACTION OF THE PERCEPTIVE FACULTIES. Impelled by the instinct of curiosity, and guided by the habit of observation, the young mind,-whether more or less assisted by education,-advances to the goal designated by creative Wisdom,the acquisition of knowledge, the appointed means for erecting the fabric of character on the scale outlined by the Great Architect, but left to man's industry and intelligence, for the filling up and the symmetry of detail. The part of education which lies more immediately before us, as the object of our attention, being the cultivation of the intellect, the acquisition of knowledge becomes, in this view, a consideration of primary importance, as, at once, a source of intellectual wealth and power, and a most effective means of mental development. Knowledge, as a result of culture, is undoubtedly of inferior value to discipline. But the efforts put forth in the acquisition of genuine knowledge, are, in themselves, a disciplinary process, and the indispensable instruments of further cultivation. Yet more,-intellectual acquirements are true and durable riches,-valuable for their own sake, not merely from the resources which the accumulation of them places at the mind's command, but from their own intrinsic value, as imperishable because intellectual things, and as the successive steps of mental elevation in the scale of being. In reference to intellect, knowledge is, in one most important sense, an end, not less than a means and a measure of progress. Profound, extensive, and varied knowledge, is one of the crowning glories of man, as an intellectual and progressive being, capable of ceaseless development and acquisition. Most emphatically is this true of him, the soundness, and exactness, and completeness, of whose knowledge, are the assurance that he shall be a safe and competent guide along the path of education. Actual knowledge.-But what is knowledge? How is it acquired? -not by the repetition of the words or the processes of others, not by the transfer from one mind to another of the verbal statements of fact or of abstract principles, not by the formation of vague and partial notions, formed on superficial data, and floating loosely in the mind, not by a half perception or half consciousness of something indefinite or supposititious, not by an assent to rash assumptions or confident assertions, not by the recollections of extensive reading, or perhaps, of attentive listening, retailed in fluent expression, not by accumulating the amplest furniture of second-hand theories and systems, whether plausible or absurd, or even logically consistent. Knowledge is what we have experienced in our own intellect, by means of our own observation or reflection, the fruit of personal perception, or of conscious reason, acting on the positive data of sensation. So narrowly must the term be limited, when we refer to the action of the perceptive faculties, or to their appropriate training and discipline. Knowledge, in these relations, is the accurate interpretation of the facts of sene, in matters, usually, of color, form, number, weight, or sound, and the relations which these bear to one another in the processes of induction and classification. With the other sense of the term, in which it refers whether to truth or to theory, and implies the deductions of reflective reason, we have not, at present, to do. It belongs to a subsequent stage of the analysis of the modes of mental action, as subjected to the processes of intellectual cultivation, and occurs in connection with the discipline of the "reflective" faculties. Literal accuracy of verbal statement, a false test of knowledge.— The acquisition of knowledge, however, is, notwithstanding all our advances, of late years, in the philosophy of education, too generally confounded with the repetition of the verbal statements of definitions, rules, and systems, as contained in books, even in relations so palpable as those of form and numbers. The test of knowledge, accordingly, with some teachers, to this day, is, even in the exact sciences, the fluency with which a definition or a rule is orally repeated, verbatim, from a text-book, and the mechanical accuracy or despatch with which a correspondent problem is solved, or a proposition demonstrated. True knowledge experimental and personal. True perceptive knowledge, on the other hand, or that which is actual and personal, implies, in all relations of form and number, that the individual who possesses it, has seen the object in question, or its representative, in palpable shape, in surface or in outline, that he has subjected it to actual measurement and comparison, or has an exact image of its form and configuration before h's mind, that he has actually counted or grouped objects in numbers presented to the eye or to the mind, or that he has compared these with one another, and traced their relations, by strict and exact observation; and the proper office of the text-book is but to confirm and embody the result, and classify it in the exact language and systematic arrangement of formal science, as the specimens are labelled and shelved in a collector's cabinet. The use of scientific method, in the statements of text-books, is but to give logical arrangement to mental acquisitions, not to induce mere assent, whether silent or oral, and not to facilitate the mere repetition or verbal enunciation of propositions. The proper business of the teacher, as a superintendent of mind.— The true office of the teacher is to see that the pupil is led by his own conscious experience and observation, through the process of perception prescribed in every exercise which he attempts; that the operation is intelligently performed at every step and the result rendered certain, as far as the limitations of human faculties permit. By frequently repeated performance of the requisite process, the principle in question thus becomes an integral part of personal knowledge with the individual; and his faculties receive, at the same time, a discipline which gives them facility and force in all analogous procedure in which expertness and skill are desirable attainments. In due season, also, he is able to sum up his acquirements in knowledge, in the clear and definite and precise language which science demands, and of which his text-book furnishes a perfect specimen on which he can rely. At first, however, the young operator may need even the palpable aid of actual objects; and the judicious teacher knows well when to give, and when to withhold such help, when to appeal to the blackboard, and when to have his pupil rely on the mind's eye, during the successive stages of intellectual training. He is careful, however, not to slight or hurry over the business of the rudimental course, in which the reference to actual objects is the main reliance for a sure personal knowledge of the facts of form and number. The collateral discipline, also, arising from the attentive observation and careful study of plants, minerals, leaves, insects, and other natural objects, the intelligent teacher values highly, from the power of attention, and the habit of exact observation, which it tends to secure, by the defi'niteness which it gives to the action of the mind, and the certainty which it stamps on knowledge. Contrasted examples of neglect and culture.-True education has no more striking proof of its good effect than may be observed, when the apathy and ignorance of young persons who have been allowed to neglect the observation and study of nature in childhood, and afterwards to go through a class-drill on a given branch, by means of a text-book, are contrasted with the intelligent personal interest and intimate knowledge of those who have been wisely induced to turn an early attention on the productions of nature, and thus to acquire an early love for such studies, and a life-long enjoyment of the pleasures which they afford. Adults of the former class take little interest in the "floral apostles" of the poet, who are ceaselessly preaching the perfection of their Source, or in the pebble at their feet, which, to the intelligent eye, is the medallion struck by the Creator's hand, in commemoration of one of the epochs in His reign. These eloquent monitions of a perpetual Divine presence, are, to such minds, the dead letter of a handwriting which they have not been accustom ed to trace, and on which their listless eye falls, as does that of the sceptic, on the page of written revelation. The mind, on the other hand, which has been early trained to an intelligent personal interest in the productions of Creative wisdom and power, enjoys a personal property, and a personal reference, in every object in nature, finds, in “the meanest flower that blows, thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears;" and ultimately to it, "The delicate forest flower, With fragrant breath, and look so like a smile, A visible token of the upholding Love, Which are the soul of this wide universe." The definiteness and the certainty, however, which give conscious life and power to all such knowledge, depend, to a great extent, on the faithful training which the perceptive power has undergone in the nurturing stage of education. The poet whose words of truth and love convince us that he has attained to the rank of an inspired seer, set out on his career from the common starting place of infancy, in blank ignorance of every object and of every fact around him; and his brother bard whose office it is to announce, in the language of astronomy, the harmony of the spheres, and read to mankind the legislation of the heavens, had no vantage ground at his outset on those excursions which ultimately extend beyond Orion and the Pleiades. Nor was there any special dispensation antecedent to the slow but sure processes of culture, in favor of the electrician who, in the maturity of his acquirements, became competent to transmit and diffuse intelligence with the literal rapidity of lightning; and what shall we say of the barefooted mason's boy, who commences his career of "glory and of joy," plodding over the stone which he has broken with his unpracticed apprentice hammer, and, at length, reads, from that same fragment, to the delight and astonishment of mankind, the facts of an antediluvian world? All the treasures which such minds have brought from their various explorations, as tributes to the treasury of science, and to man's dominion in the sphere of knowledge, are but the varied fruits of unwearied, progressive observation, accumulating fact upon fact by the patient process of attentive examination of objects, and by the skillful exercise of well disciplined perceptive faculties. Such noble efforts of mental power we contemplate with a delight mingled with reverence and gratitude to their authors, as benefactors of the race. The worship which human ignorance, in its wondering admiration, extended, of old, to the mythic demi-god and hero, night, we think, have been pardoned had it been offered to |