EDUCATION.

“I suppose it never occurs to parents,” says John Foster, in his Journal, “that to throw vilely-educated young people on the world is, independently of the injury to the young people themselves, a positive crime, and of very great magnitude; as great, for instance, as burning their neighbor’s house, or poisoning the water in his well.  In pointing out to them what is wrong, even if they acknowledge the justness of the statement, one cannot make them feel a sense of guilt, as in other proved charges.  That they love their children extenuates to their consciences every parental folly that may at last produce in the children every desperate vice.”  As to this matter of education,

OUR GREAT SCHOOLS

have taken it largely out of the parents’ hands to guide the course of instruction, and where this would be done logically, I cannot but feel it is to the disadvantage of the child; but the system is built for public, not for individual benefit, and will probably do the greatest good to the greatest number.  If we could have a little less Latin and a little better spelling, a little less long Latin and a little more good short Saxon I believe our youth would make their mark easier.  Our young people dislike interest tables and are delighted with long words.  Under the present system and popular taste, our children despise

THE LANGUAGE OF THE BIBLE

until they are thirty years old, whereafter they gradually learn that the very essence of artful language is contained in its pages.  There is not much need of a long word when a short one sounds better.  “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.  He maketh me to lie down in green pastures.  He leadeth me beside the still waters.”  How like the ripple of a brook the syllables drop from the tongue!  The fall of the voice, and the fall of the idea, make the passage a lovely instance of the highest art in poetical expression.  If our youth could be taught respect, attention, multiplication and division, spelling, short words, short sentences, Bible, Shakspeare, and geography, and could spend less time conjugating foreign verbs, there would be a really higher grade of intelligence in the end, perhaps, and there would, above all, be more of that glorious independence of mind which makes a thing worthy of commendation because it is appreciated, not because somebody else has said it is good.

WORSHIP.