and books and pictures and symbols should come. There every low desire and every tainted fancy should feel rebuked. There purity, like a guardian angel, should abide.

We wish our sons and daughters to become superior men and women, and hope that school education will contribute to that result. Therefore parents confide in teachers with anxious trust. The teacher stands in the parents' place, and has been called the parent of his pupil's mind.

Yet the teacher's responsibility is much limited; he is, at most, but minister plenipotentiary, not chief ruler. Seven-eighths of the school-boy's hours are disposed of by direct will of parents only oneeighth under the immediate control of the teacher. No amount of vigilance can secure the true ends of education without vigilant home rule at the hearthstone. It is hardly to be expected that any teacher can maintain a stronger influence with his pupil than an equally intelligent and conscientious parent can exercise over his own child. Mother, father, schoolmaster- these are the educational trinity, — these, in complete co-operation, are the agents of Providence to train the child.

The schooling which the young obtain out of school is no less essential than that received on the recitation benches. Bodily exercise and deportment; skill in work and play; walking, riding, rowing, swimming, dancing; public amusements, such as the

theatre, the concert, and the museum afford; familiarity with social usages; conversation; general reading; travel, these are branches of useful education, quite as important as the contents of text-books. Deprived of such schooling out of school, the mere student of books is not prepared to enjoy himself or to perform his duties. The teacher who disparages these extra accomplishments forgets the breadth of life. The parent mistakes the true relations of things when he undervalues the worth and dignity of school-training, and subordinates solid learning to superficial accomplishments. There should be harmony between what is done outside and what is done inside the seminary walls. Each set of tasks and recreations should have its bounds, so as not to trench on another set.

Because its time is limited and its authority curtailed by many outside influences, a school, to be efficient, must be rigorous. The teacher needs economize his opportunity, and use his five or six hours a day with systematic efficiency. He knows that it is not possible for any one to acquire mental strength or accuracy, or to secure thorough knowledge of any sort, without concentration and continuity of effort. No matter how smart a boy may be, he acquires scholarship only by steadfast devotion to study, from day to day, week to week, year to year. No matter how able his parents, the heir does not inherit his ABC's. Stuart Mill says truly, that "the children

of energetic parents frequently grow up unenergetic, because they lean on their parents and the parents are energetic for them." How gladly the father marks in his children every indication that they will some time be able to fight the battle of life unaided, if need be; and yet indulgence often robs the loved boy and the idolized girl of the weapon that alone makes success possible self-reliance. Relaxation is necessary; but there should be no break in general purpose, no cooling of interest, no dissipation of force. To suppose that teachers or schools can impart a good education to a boy who scatters his energy by idleness or other vice is as absurd as to expect a plant to thrive that is pulled up by the roots every night, though carefully reset every morning. The wisest conservation of force is the conservation of brain force. If the boy squanders himself, becoming the slave of his own feebleness, no outside strength can save him. Why do we control our children at all if it is not to invest them with selfcontrol? The restraints of school are like the stake that holds up a young tree that it may grow strong and straight.

I conceive of a school in which the motives, ambitions, and conduct are tuned to the same key and play together the melody of reciprocal service and good will. The teachers are exacting, but kind and just; the pupils docile, eager, persistent; the parents unremitting in their intellectual and moral support. Believing knowledge to be, as the Bible says, "more

precious than rubies," the learners will toil and strive for knowledge; will collect mental treasures and wish to become millionnaires of thought. Imbued with the sincerest sentiment of honor and purity, they will respond with quick enthusiasm to every generous and heroic idea.

2. WOMAN'S RIGHTS.

Rights spring from native powers, brute or human,
And vary as the powers rise or fall;

The flying angels and the worms that crawl
Have meted rights. The liberties of woman,
Of man, of seraph, with their longings, grow.
Our brain and heart are torches to illumine
The path of duty; by their inner glow
We ken the way we should have right to go.
He lives the best whose faculties are free

To do, and think, and feel, as God designed,
Who made the mortal members and the mind.
Each sex best knows its nature's mystery.

Most feminine is she whose free-winged soul
Feels no constraint except Divine control.

3. PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE.

One of the sublimest thoughts of Carlyle is that every day is the confluence of two eternities, the infinite past and the infinite future. That man narrows the scope of his existence who is concerned only with things local and temporary. The far distant and the long past may be more important to him than the present and what he is doing in it. How the wind is blowing a thousand miles away forewarns

the sailor to cast anchor or to set sail. What is going on in Europe or Asia, in politics or in society, may affect my happiness to-morrow. What went on in Egypt, or India, or Palestine ages ago, transmitted through the lives of nations and of men, and through history, may control the thoughts and events of to-day. The stream of influences flowing from the past indicates what the tendency of the future may be. Realizing what has been accomplished towards civilization, and by what means, the individual man may order his life according to knowledge, and move forward with some assurance of making a real advance. He will know that the passing is the fruitage of the past, and will believe that he can plant the future now.

4. PROGRESS OF CIVILIZATION.

Much has been accomplished within the past century for human amelioration. The average length of man's life has been increased by better sanitary conditions. The material comforts of living have multiplied beyond conception. What ancient king could command such powerful and willing slaves as every common citizen now calls to his service steam and electricity. Steam carries me around the world; lightning lights my candle. But what are the triumphs of material discovery and invention compared with the moral conquests and products of the century? Fetters have fallen from millions of slaves; the wheels, keels, and wires of commerce mix up the