and sunny glades, as inviting as the poet's description of the approach to the Castle of Indolence, and where, as in that abode of delight,

sooth to say,

No living wight could work, ne cared even for play.'

But though these experiments have terminated as all experiments must, which have for their object the acquisition of knowledge, without patient and assiduous labor, the science of teaching has by no means been stationary. The objects and means of education have become better understood. It has assumed a more practical and useful character, especially in its higher branches, and the progress which it has made, together with the importance which exists under a government like ours, of every one being properly and practically educated, must gratify while they should stimulate the friends of improvement to fresh and united exertions.

If there were no other circumstance from which to derive encouragement except that discovery of modern days, an infant school, all that we could urge and all that we could anticipate, would derive support from reason and analogy. It remained for modern times to discover how to employ those days of infant existence which have too often been employed in nothing better than developing the corporal functions and powers by, as it were, a mere vegetable growth and expansion in exercising, strengthening, aad developing the intellectual being, and giving life and energy to the immortal mind. Results alike gratifying and surprising have sprung from these humble seminaries, where education lays its tender and plastic hand upon the intellect and character of the future men and women of our country, before they have been suffered to gain strength by neglect, and to assume those perverse forms from long indulgence, which education, too often in vain, labors to correct. Whatever is accomplished in infant schools, might, perhaps, ordinarily be affected by maternal care and solicitude, applied in the family circle at home, if circumstances of property and leisure permitted the application of such attention. The multiplicity of every mother's cares is, however, so great, especially of those who like most of the females in New England, to their praise be it spoken, are employed in the active duties of their families, that few have leisure to devote to early education of their children, that time and unceasing attention which it requires.

It is by supplying this defect, that Infant Schools promise so

much to the cause of knowledge. Education begins earlier in life than many are willing to believe, and experience shows how rapidly the mental powers of the infant may be developed, and how early the twig may receive its direction to become the future tall, and sturdy, and beautiful tree, or distorted till it becomes irrevocably deformed, misshapen, and, at last, the useless cumberer of the ground.

We may in this connexion see how the success of Lyceums, as well as every other means calculated to diffuse knowledge to each sex and to all classes, may indirectly produce lasting and important benefits to society. Not only should husbands and fathers be intelligent and well informed, but it is even more important, if possible, that wives and mothers should be enlightened and well educated. It is upon them, that the character of each succeeding age in a great measure depends.

It is from impressions which the child receives while in his mother's lap, and the direction which is given to his thoughts, his disposition, and his feelings, while a prattler by her side, more than from any one thing else, that the future character of the man derives its qualities and its hues. Here and there a child is seen springing up with surprising precocity of intellect called genius, and that genius, and an inequality of intellectual capacities exist I will not deny ; but in many, I had almost said in most cases, the precocity of the child may be traced to the early care of a mother of superior intellect. Sir William Jones, for instance, might have been, for aught we know, the son of a gay, weak votaress of fashionable life and heartless pleasure. But we cannot conceive how the mother of Sir William Jones could ever have been the mother of a tame, incurious, and grovelling son.

But I need not multiply examples from history. I am willing to appeal to the observation and recollection of every one who hears me, upon this part of my subject. The attempt to cultivate and diffuse a taste for useful knowledge by any system which may be adopted, should begin earlier in life than when habits have been formed, tastes confirmed, and the cares and employments of life have begun to weigh upon the minds and spirits of those upon whom such system is to operate. Mutual instruction should begin by the fireside, in the little family circle that clusters around the mother as she plies her task during the winter's evening, when all is dreary without, and all is cheerful within, and when inquiry should be awakened, and all reasonable curiosity gratified. And if there is a scene upon

which superior intelligences may look down with complacency and pleasure, it is when a father or mother with a purity of purpose and a disinterestedness of affection, which belong only to a parent's heart, are fitting their children to fill an honorable sphere in the world, and to tread the crooked maze of life with usefulness and safety.

Parental instruction should be carried into every situation in life, instead of a child's being left, as is too often the case, to glean a mere pittance of knowledge from schools during the few weeks or days which parents ordinarily afford to their children. It should be carried into the fields, where nature opens her boundless storehouse. It should be communicated in the volumes of history, in the treatises on science, in the books of moral and religious instruction, which should be found in every social library, if not in every family, and which would be found there if a proper spirit and zeal could be diffused through the community.

The establishment and increase of these libraries are by no means the least important of those subjects which associations like these are calculated to encourage and promote. Schools may be at the foundation, but the access to books forms an essential part of the means by which knowledge is to be diffused. We urge this with the more confidence, because the multiplication and cheapness of books at this day, puts it in the power of every neighbourhood to be supplied with one or more libraries. We urge it too because it is a subject in which every one is interested, even if he regards only his personal gratification. To a man who never reads, how many wearisome hours pass over him, even while engaged in the active duties of life, with health, business, and friends to animate and employ him. But when the bustle and excitement of business is over, where old age or sickness have damped the ardor of his hopes, and removed him beyond the influence of the scenes and employments which once occupied his time, or when his early companions have fallen around him, and left him alone in the world, what condition can be less desirable, what state of mind less enviable than his whose taste has never been improved by culture, nor the circle of his knowledge enlarged by reading, who has never learned to hold converse with the mighty dead, nor to draw from the storehouse of nature around him, any of those exhaustless treasures of amusement, which lie open to all who seek for them.

Men toil for wealth as if they were sure candidates for a long life, and yet, in the acquisition of knowledge, of every thing which would make life worth possessing, they act as if today was the only moment in the duration of their existence, and they too often find in the loneliness and hypocondria of age, that they have toiled for a bubble that is not worth the effort.

Let no man say he has no time to read. If he would count up the scraps of hours, the portions of days and weeks, which, in the course of a life, might be thus employed without infringing upon his other employments, we believe he would find no man, not even him who toils the daily round of labor for his immediate support; who could urge the want of time as an excuse for neglecting altogether his own education or that of his family. Every one has observed how when men have once acquired a taste for reading, they discover means of gratifying it, and it is not too much to say that the objects of such associations as this would be well nigh accomplished, if this taste could be once diffused through the community. For this end, libraries should be established, and curiosity awakened by means of lectures, discussions, and direct appeals to the ignorant and unreflecting. They should be told of the pleasures and advantages of knowledge to every class. They should learn that it comes home to the business and affairs of life of every one, that it brightens and cheers what would otherwise be the loneliest hour, and gives to the lowliest and humblest, a companionship with the wisest and greatest of every age.

Nor is it alone for personal gratification and individual pleasure, that a taste for learning and the arts should be cultivated and extended. Considerations of a public nature, connected with the glory and honor of national character might be urged upon every citizen under a republican government. Why do we remember Greece, while the nations which flourished around her are forgotten? Why does the traveller as he pauses on the Aeropolis amidst the ruins of a wasted city, feel that he treads on holy ground, and start amidst crumbling temples and broken columns, at the creations of his own fancy? Why does the light of history gild more brightly the era of Augustus, though the strength and vigor of the Roman character had been tamed and weakened, than upon the days of her stern simplicity of character when victory perched on her standard, and kings were proud of the title of Roman citizen? It was the never dying lustre which learning and the arts threw over the ages when

they flourished, which consecrated them to glory and immortality. They have even consecrated the Saracen character of one era, and once shed a light over the cities of the East which seemed perhaps more splendid and brilliant from the darkness, the thick, impenetrable darkness which brooded over christian Europe, during the five hundred years in which the sacred flame of learning was cherished and kept alive by the bounty of the Mahometan Caliphs.

In other governments royal bounty, and imperial patronage may give an impulse and life to literature and the arts which may immortalize the potentate and the age. But under a government like ours, the people alone possess the power, and every citizen has, therefore, something at stake to give to the age in which he lives and the nation of which he forms a constituent part, a character which other nations shall respect and after ages venerate.

But it is chiefly in regard to its moral tendency and effect that a diffusion of knowledge becomes important. Fear may restrain from the commission of the grosser crimes, and the punishment which awaits the guilty may keep men from indulging in the grosser vices. But it is to the intelligence of men that motives must be offered, and arguments addressed which have for their object to make men habitually honest, sober, and moral. It is one thing to warn the blindfold traveller that danger awaits him, and a far different one to open to his view the dizzy precipice on which he is standing, and to point out the end and consequences of the course he is pursuing.

It may, indeed, seem hopeless to attempt to eradicate sin and vice from the earth, but much has already been done in correcting the vicious habits and propensities of men in the progress and improvements of society. Crimes and vices which were once committed at noon day, are now unheard of or committed only in the darkness of midnight, or in the secret haunts of infamy and guilt. The diseases which pervade the moral, like those of the natural world, have assumed a milder form and character, and are less wasting and destructive in their consequences than in the earlier history of man. We know not to what this may be ascribed, except a more general diffusion of knowledge, and it seems by no means a visionary anticipation arising from this reflection, that as the world becomes wiser, it will lose more and more of that moral corruption and depravity which seems inseparable from a state ignorance, till public sentiment shall no longer tolerate open vice, although individuals