illustrious benefactors of mankind.  If he bring to his task high talent and rich acquirement, he must be content to look into distant years for the proof that his labors have not been wasted, that the good seed which he daily scatters abroad does not fall on stony ground and wither away, or among thorns to be choked by the cares, the delusions, or the vices of the world.  He must solace his toils with the same prophetic faith that enabled the greatest of modern philosophers,[39] amidst the neglect or contempt of his own times, to regard himself as sowing the seeds of truth for posterity and the care of Heaven.  He must arm himself against disappointment and mortification with a portion of that same noble confidence which soothed the greatest of modern poets when weighed down by care and danger, by poverty, old age, and blindness, still

  “—­In prophetic dreams he saw
  The youth unborn with pious awe
  Imbibe each virtue from his sacred page.”

He must know and he must love to teach his pupils not the meager elements of knowledge, but the secret and the use of their own intellectual strength, exciting and enabling them hereafter to raise for themselves the veil which covers the majestic form of Truth.  He must feel deeply the reverence due to the youthful mind fraught with mighty though undeveloped energies and affections, and mysterious and eternal destinies.  Thence he must have learned to reverence himself and his profession, and to look upon its otherwise ill-requited toils as their own exceeding great reward.

If such are the difficulties and the discouragements, such the duties, the motives, and the consolations of teachers who are worthy of that name and trust, how imperious then the obligation upon every enlightened citizen who knows and feels the value of such men to aid them, to cheer them, and to honor them.

But let us not be content with barren honor to buried merit.  Let us prove our gratitude to the dead by faithfully endeavoring to elevate the station, to enlarge the usefulness, and to raise the character of the schoolmaster amongst us.  Thus shall we best testify our gratitude to the teachers and guides of our own youth, thus best serve our country, and thus most effectually diffuse over our land light, and truth, and virtue.

[Footnote 39:  Bacon.]

* * * * *

=_John W. Francis, 1789-1861._= (Manual, pp. 487, 532.)

From his “Reminiscences.”

=_122._= PUBLIC CHANGES DURING A SINGLE LIFETIME.

He who has passed a period of some three score years and upward, some faithful Knickerbocker for instance, native born, and ever a resident among us, whose tenacious memory enables him to meditate upon the thirty thousand inhabitants at the time of his birth, with the almost oppressive population of some seven hundred thousand which the city at present contains; who contrasts the cheap and humble dwellings of that earlier date,