unwritten page of being-who produces impressions which only death can obliterate-and mingles with the cradle dream what shall be hereafter revealed in the light of maturer life. Well may statesmen and philosophers debate how she may be best educated who is to educate all mankind.

The ancient republics overlooked the value of that sex whose strength is in the heart. Greece, so susceptible to the principle of beauty, so skilled in wielding all the elements of grace, failed in appreciating their excellence, whom these had most exquisitely adorned. If, in the brief season of youthful charm, she was constrained to admire woman as the acanthus leaf of her own Corinthian capital, she did not discover that, like that very column, she was capable of adding stability to the proud temple of freedom. She would not be convinced that so feeble a hand might have aided to consolidate the fabric which philosophy embellished and luxury overthrew.

Rome, notwithstanding her primeval rudeness, seems more correctly than polished Greece, to have estimated the "weaker vessel." Here and there, upon the storm-driven billows of her history, some solitary form towers upward in majesty, and the mother of the Gracchi still stands forth in strong relief amid imagery over which time has no power. But still wherever the brute force of the warrior is counted godlike, woman is appreciated only as she approximates to sterner natures: as in that mysterious image which troubled the sleep of Assyria's king-the foot of clay derived consistence from the iron, which held it in combination.

In our own republic, man, invested by his Maker with the right to reign, has conceded to her, who was for ages in vassalage, equality of intercourse, participation in knowledge, dominion over his dearest and fondest hopes. He is content to "bear the burden and heat of the day," that she may dwell in ease and affluence. Yet from the very felicity of her lot, dangers are generated. She is tempted to be satisfied with superficial attainments, or to indulge in that indolence which corrodes intellect, and merges the high sense of responsibility in its alluring and fatal slumbers.

These tendencies should be neutralized by a thorough and laborious education. Sloth and luxury must have no place in her vocabulary. Her youth should be surrounded by every motive to application, and her maturity dignified by the hallowed office of rearing the immortal mind. While partner toils for his stormy portion of that power or glory, from which it is her privilege to be sheltered, let her feel that in the recesses of domestic privacy she still renders a noble service to the government that protects her, by sowing seeds of purity and peace in the hearts of those who shall hereafter claim its honors or control its destinies.

Her place is amid the quiet shades, to watch the little fountain ere it has breathed a murmur. But the fountain will break forth

into a rill, and the swollen rivulet rush towards the sea; and who can be so well able to guide them in right channels, as she who heard their first ripple, and saw them emerge like timid strangers from their source, and had kingly power over those infant waters, in the name of Him who caused them to flow.

And now, guardians of education, whether parents, preceptors, or legislators-you who have so generously lavished on woman the means of knowledge-complete your bounty, by urging her to gather its treasures with a tireless hand. Demand of her as a debt, the highest excellence which she is capable of attaining. Summon her to abandon selfish motives and inglorious ease. Incite her to those virtues which promote the permanence and health of nations. Make her accountable for the character of the next generation. Give her her solemn charge, in the presence of men and angels. Gird her with the whole armor of education and of piety and see if she be not faithful to her children, to her country, and to her God.

Nor less, when throned on blackest clouds,
That round ye roll and veer,

The storm-god pours his thunder-trump,
And hurls his lightning spear!

I love the torrents strong and fierce
That to the plain ye fling,

Which gentle flow'rs drink at their goal,
And eagles at their spring.
And, when arrested in their speed
By winter's wand of frost,

The brilliant and fantastic forms

In which their waves are tossed.

I love, upon the breezeless lake,
To see your shadows sleep,
While slowly sails the crested swan
Above each mirrored steep:
I love your shape precipitous,
Bare, desolate, and grand,
That stand far out in ocean,
Like pilgrims from the land!

Elorious ye are, when Noon's fierce beams
Your naked summits smite,

As o'er ye Day's great lamp hangs poised
In cloudless chrysolite :

Glorious when o'er ye sunset clouds,

Like broidered curtains lie

Sublime, when through dim moonlight looms Your spectral majesty.

I love your iron-sinewed race-
Have shared their rugged fare-

The thresholds of whose eyrie homes
Look out on boundless air:

Bold hunters, who from highest clefts

The wild goats trophies bring,

And crest their bonnets with the plumes
Of your aerial king!

I've seen, amid Helvetian alps,

The Switzer's daring leap

Poised on his pole-o'er bridgeless voids,
A thousand toises deep ;-

While in his keen, unquailing glance,
That challenged where it fell,
I saw the same high purpose beam,
That nerved the patriot TELL.

I love the mountain maidens-
Their step's elastic spring
Is light as if some viewless bird
Upbuoyed them with its wing;

WITH A COMPARISON BETWEEN THE LESSONS OF THE COUNTRY AND THE TOWN.

[Concluded.]

THERE is leisure then, in the country. But is it leisure improved? Are those morning hours spent where Milton says they should be, up-stirring in winter often ere the sound of any bell awake men to labor or to devotion; in summer as oft with the bird that first rouses, or not much tardier, to read good authors, or cause them to be read, till the attention be weary, or memory have its full fraught; then with useful and generous labors, preserving the body's health and hardiness, to render lightsome clear and not lumpish obedience to the mind. And those long winter evenings, too; are they embalmed in the memory by well spent hours? Will their history tell of minds enlarged, social bonds strength

ened, the tender charities of our nature cherished, hearts and lives made better? What a noble heritage may be at once entered and enjoyed, by the men and the women who will away with unworthy passions and low pursuits, and awake to the privileges of country life! Hard work; but grand intervals of leisure. Few books; but those they have, studied well, and made their own. The spirit of learning without its foppery. Then Nature, free, bountiful, unbounded Nature, with her multitudinous faces of joy, always before them!

Why then is the acquisition of natural science so rare in the country, where the inducements and opportunities to make it, are so many? Why the prevalent ignorance, or which is the same thing, the mere surface-knowledge of Nature in the country? The scarceness of books, and the mistake that much previous knowledge is necessary in order to begin to study Nature, are among the reasons. But the chief reason lies far deeper; in the habits of mental sloth, formed at the unreflecting period; and in the fact that the mind at school is often turned away from outward things to mere books, by teachers who are mere hook-men. How else can we account in the man for the absence of that habit of observation of of the world without, which is so strong in the child; to which in youth, the age of sensation, everything invites? How else can we account for the absence of taste for those intellectual pursuits, for which men are more generally fitted than for any other; a taste which combines the sweet with the useful; so simple, so pure, that next to religion it seems to be the remedy appointed by God for sorrows, bad passions, and discontent? "Let me see," says Mudie, "is the exclamation ready on our lips, at the proposal of a question or a doubt." Yet from the first ray of morning, which opens the eyes of the sleeper, to the last at night, which his eyelids shut out, how countless, how wonderful the phenomena, which having eyes, men do not see; or seeing which, they do not reflect upon, nor understand!

The morning light; the coloring of the clouds; the rising sun; the ascending mist; the mountain and valley; tree and flower; beasts and birds; the breeze, felt and heard, but not seen; the storm and calm; heat and cold; snow and rain; fire and flood; music and odors; silence and sound; taste and touch; motion and rest; darkness and night; moon and stars. What more mysterious than this train of familiar realities? What more fitted to enlarge the mind, than the contemplation of these innumerable and diverse things? What better to strengthen it, than to study their laws and conditions? What to quicken it, purify it with awe, chasten it with a sense of its weakness, and lift it with hope, than the revelation that we live in the midst of beneficent and fearful powers, the beginnings only of which we see, and which end in His hands, from whom we come and to whom we go!