away? "Oh lame and impotent conclusion!" Such a conclusion only demonstrates the imperfectness of his education, and his incompetency now to lead public opinion. Our children are sent to school not simply to acquire knowledge, but to learn how to acquire knowledge; not simply to store away and retain facts, but to acquire the power of commanding facts at pleasure, and of perceiving and controlling this power. The boy who learns to-day how to tell the hour and minute by the watch may to-morrow forget precisely what o'clock it was when the watch first actually became a chronometer to him; but never hereafter, should he live to be as old as Methuselah, will he lose the power of telling the time of day! It is principles, processes, powers, not facts simply, that we wish to control.

You might as reasonably ask that a boy should always carry with him all that he puts in his breeches pockets as to ask that he carry with him all that he learns.

A man who has once learned to swim may not enter the water for years; but when he attempts it, though his muscles may be weak for want of exercise, and his first motions awkward, yet soon he will be able again to strike out, and breast the waves as skilfully, if not as strongly, as ever. I once knew of a graduate of the Dublin University, who, reduced by intemperance, was found in this country in hum

predatory and unjust. Like other savages, they will have their chiefs, and their wars, and conquests, and slavery. The lowest passions will first prevail. Physical strength, superiority of age, or skill, will rule with tyranny. In fact, the worst forms of human government, including despotisms, oligarchies, impassable castes, and slavery, will spring up spontaneously in any neighborhood of untrained children. You will conclude from what you see in such a state of things that Hobbes was not far from right when he said that 66 war is the natural condition of man." Savage men and women are only untrained, unschooled children of larger growth. The whole of the philosophy of history may be studied in a neighborhood of boys and girls.

Now, schools remedy all this. They organize the children and youth into a community. They bring them under the dominion of law. They humanize, civilize, and polish them. They lift them up on the platform of the nineteenth century, and give them a fair start; otherwise they would be compelled, like other savages, to start at the bottom of the ascending plane of society.

Thus the defects in every child are largely supplemented. Some children are precociously opinionated. Accustomed to rule their parents (for you are aware that it has long been settled that there is quite as much family government now as ever, only that

often now children govern their parents, whereas formerly parents governed their children) - these children accustomed to rule their parents are sent to school. They soon come into contact with law kind, reasonable, but unyielding law. It is a new sensation altogether, but it is one which they very much need. Better now than some years hence.

The penalties now can be borne; when they come to be penitentiaries and prisons, they are not so easily borne. One of the greatest advantages of schools is the humiliation of silly childhood pride, and in enabling children to understand that the world is not bounded by their own home.

But there is exactly an opposite class-supersensitive, diffident, awkward. Who has not seen them in primary schools, and especially if children are not allowed to enter school till advanced somewhat towards youth? —blushing girls, that, suddenly spoken to, cannot remember their names or ages; awkward boys, that can scarcely answer questions, and are puzzled to know what to do with their feet and hands. Now, this excessive diffidence and awkwardness can never be overcome by theoretical instruction. It must be done by actual experience in society. Modesty, and even diffidence, is an excellent symptom in a child, because it shows that there is in that soul a deep sense of propriety, a native sensitiveness that is capable of being trained into the most refined courtesy and delicate sense of propriety.

Now, one of the very greatest advantages of schools is that it brings the pupils together, accustoms them to society, breaking down all distinctions that are based only on factitious and accidental qualities, and organizing them into communities on a reasonable basis.

I do not hesitate to avow the conviction, that this, including a proper subjection to law, is probably the greatest advantage of our public schools. In this regard, they lie at the very foundation of our society. They are not merely the corner-stone, but a large part of the basis, on which the superstructure of our common society rests.

So far as the obtaining of information is concerned, a well-matured mind will learn more in a week than a child of ten can learn in a year.

Much is said now about object-lessons for primary scholars, and inexperienced observers are often amazed at the fluency and volubility with which little ones from five to eight years old will describe leaves, twigs, plants, flowers, and many animals and other objects. This is all well, and I heartily approve it; but have you never observed how much more familiar the teacher is with all these things than the pupils, though perhaps she never thought of them till she took her class, and has spent on them since, perhaps, less than half an hour of extra study a day? I refer to this, not to undervalue the study of objects, or of facts, or

any other studies by children, but only to call attention to the fact that it is not precisely what, nor how much, they learn, that renders schools valuable to the young. It is that they acquire the habit of learning, the power of learning. It is also that they become organized into a community, and naturally and harmoniously developed in what we call civil life.

Those of you who have had the opportunity of examining the searching and voluminous Report of a Parliamentary Commission appointed in Great Britian, in 1861, to investigate the condition of their great and leading classical schools, will not fail to observe the strong confirmation of the principle which I am advocating in that report. From this faithful report, we learn that the thousands of pupils of these schools, from which the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge are supplied, learn nothing of any branch of natural science, almost nothing of any modern language but their own; are so deficient in English, that a majority of them cannot spell correctly when they enter the university; and confine their mathematical curriculum to the four fundamental rules of arithmetic and decimal fractions; expending their energies in the schoolroom for the most part on Latin and Greek; which, being drudgery, and untempered with other studies, are imperfectly comprehended. But it is not this sad deficiency to which I desire to call special attention. This has been fearlessly exposed, and sooner or later,