possesses such means. It would be difficult to find an instance to the contrary, unless where it should be owing to the negligence of the parent;;--and in truth the means are actually used and enjoyed by nearly every one.

"A youth of fifteen, of either sex, who cannot both read and write is very unfrequently to be found. Who can make this comparison, or contemplate this spectacle, without delight and a feeling of just pride? Does any history show property more beneficently applied? Did any government ever subject the property of those who have estates, to a burden, for a purpose more favourable to the poor or more useful to the whole community?

"A conviction of the importance of public instruction was one of the earliest sentiments of our ancestors. No lawgiver of ancient or modern times has expressed more just opinions, or adopted wiser measures, than the early records of the colony of Plymouth show to have prevailed here. Assembled on this very spot, a hundred and fifty-three years ago, the legislature of this colony declared, 'Forasmuch as the maintenance of good literature doth much tend to the advancement of the weal and flourishing state of societies and republics, this court doth therefore order, that in whatever township in this government, consisting of fifty families or upwards, any meet man shall be obtained to teach a grammar school, such township shall allow at least twelve pounds, to be raised by rate, on all the inhabitants."

We cannot refrain from strengthening the influence of the example here set before us by a few sentences from Mrs. Austin's Preface to her Translation of M. Cousin's Report. The following are parts of her triumphant reply to some of the ordinary objections to education:

"It is not worth while at the present day to discuss whether or not national education be a good. It is possible to imagine a state of society in which the labouring man, submissive and contented under some paternal rule, might dispense with any further light than such as nature, uncorrupted by varied wants and restless competition, might afford him. But if that golden age ever existed, it is manifestly gone, in this country at least, for ever. Here, the press is hotter, the strife keener, the invention more alive, the curiosity more awake, the wants and wishes more stimulated by an atmosphere of luxury, than perhaps in any country since the world began. The men, who, in their several

classes, were content to tread step for step in the paths wherein their fathers trod, are gone. Society is no longer a calm current, but a tossing sea. Reverence for tradition, for authority, is gone. In such a state of things, who can deny the absolute necessity for national education?"

"It has been asserted by some persons, with an ignorance which, if it be sincere, is so shameless that it almost deserves to be confounded with dishonesty, that the tendency of the system recommended by M. Cousin is anti-religious. To this, every page of his book is an answer. Indeed, were I to express a fear on this head, it is, that it is far too religious for this country; that the lofty, unworldly tone of feeling, the spirit of veneration, the blending of the love of God and of the Good and the Beautiful with all the practical business and the amusements of life, is what will hardly be understood here, where religion is so much more disjoined both from the toils and from the gaieties of life. To me it appears that there is not a line of these enactments which is not profoundly religious. Nothing, it is true, is enjoined as to forms or creeds; but, as M. Cousin truly says, ' the whole fabric rests on the sacred basis of Christian love.' As the most affecting, and, I must say, sublime example of this spirit, I refer my readers—especially the humbler and, as I hope, more numerous class of them,-to the description of the little schools for training poor schoolmasters in such habits and with such feelings as shall fit them to be the useful and contented teachers of the humblest cottagers of the most miserable villages. (See pp. 171, 177.)

"Here is poverty, to which that of many among our working classes is affluence; and it is hopeless, for no idea is held out of advancement or change. Yet if ever poverty appeared on earth, serene, contented, lofty, beneficent, graceful—it is here. Here we see men in the very spring-time of life, so far from being made—as we are told men must be made-restless and envious and discontented by instruction, taking indigence and obscurity to their hearts for life; raised above their poor neighbours in education, only that they may become the servants of all, and may train the lowliest children in a sense

of the dignity of man, and the beauty of creation, in the love of God and of virtue.

"I confess myself almost hopeless of the transplantation of such sentiments hither. Religion is made the theme of the fiercest and most implacable contention; mixed up with newspaper squabbles and legal discussions; her bright and holy garments are seized and soiled by every angry and ambitious hand.

"It seems to me, too, that we are guilty of great inconsistency as to the ends and objects of education. How industriously have not its most able and zealous champions been continually instilling into the mind of the people, that education is the way to advancement, that 'knowledge is power,' that a man cannot better himself' without some learning! And then we complain, or we fear, that education will set them above their station, disgust them with labour, make them ambitious, envious, dissatisfied! We must reap as we sow: we set before their eyes objects the most tempting to the desires of uncultivated men, we urge them on to the acquirement of knowledge by holding out the hope that knowledge will enable them to grasp these objects:-if their minds are corrupted by the nature of the aim, and imbittered by the failure which must be the lot of the mass, who is to blame?

"If instead of nurturing expectations which cannot be fulfilled, and turning the mind on a track which must lead to a sense of continual disappointment, and thence of wrong, we were to hold out to our humbler friends the appropriate and attainable, nay, unfailing, ends of a good education;—the gentle and kindly sympathies; the sense of self-respect and of the respect of fellow men; the free exercise of the intellectual faculties; the gratification of a curiosity that grows by what it feeds on' and yet finds food for ever; the power of regulating the habits and the business of life, so as to extract the greatest possible portion of comfort out of small means; the refining and tranquillizing enjoyment of the beautiful in nature and art, and the kindred perception of the beauty and nobility of virtue; the strengthening consciousness of duty fulfilled; and, to crown all, the peace which passeth all understanding;'-if we directed their aspirations this way, it is probable that we should not have to

complain of being disappointed, nor they of being deceived. Who can say that wealth can purchase better things than these? and who can say that they are not within the reach of every man of sound body and mind, who, by labour not destructive of either, can procure for himself and his family food, clothing and habitation?"

No apology, we are quite sure, will be expected of us for the introduction of these beautiful and affecting passages. Simply, adding that the whole preface is marked by the same glow of language, depth of feeling, comprehensiveness of view, and exaltation of purpose, we return to Mr. Webster, who thus struggles to have wiped away the one great blot still resting upon the reputation of America :

"I deem it my duty on this occasion to suggest, that the land is not yet wholly free from the contamination of a traffic, at which every feeling of humanity must for ever revolt-I mean the African slave trade. Neither public sentiment, nor the law, has hitherto been able entirely to put an end to this odious and abominable trade. At the moment when God, in his mercy, has blessed the Christian world with an universal peace, there is reason to fear that, to the disgrace of the Christian name and character, new efforts are making for the extension of this trade, by subjects and citizens of Christian states, in whose hearts no sentiments of humanity or justice inhabits, and over whom neither the fear of God nor the fear of man exercises a control. In the sight of our law, the African slave trader is a pirate and a felon; and in the sight of Heaven, an offender far beyond the ordinary depth of human guilt. There is no brighter part of our history, than that which records the measures which have been adopted by the government, at an early day, and at different times since, for the suppression of this traffic; and I would call on all the true sons of New England, to co-operate with the laws of man, and the justice of Heaven. If there be, within the extent of our knowledge or influence, any participation in this traffic, let us pledge ourselves here, upon the rock of Plymouth, to extirpate and destroy it. It is not fit that the land of the Pilgrims should bear the shame longer. I hear the sound of the hammer, I see the smoke of the furnaces where manacles and fetters are still forged for human limbs. I see the visages of those, who by stealth, and at midnight, labour in this work of hell, foul and dark, as may become the artificers of such instruments of misery and torture. Let that spot be purified, or let it cease to be of New England.

Let it be purified, or let it be set aside from the Christian world; let it be put out of the circle of human sympathies and human regards, and let civilized man henceforth have no communion with

it.

"I would invoke those who fill the seats of justice, and all who minister at her altar, that they execute the wholesome and necessary severity of the law. I invoke the ministers of our religion, that they proclaim its denunciation of these crimes, and add its solemn sanctions to the authority of human laws. If the pulpit be silent, whenever or wherever there may be a sinner bloody with this guilt within the hearing of its voice, the pulpit is false to its trust. I call on the fair merchant, who has reaped his harvest upon the seas, that he assist in scourging from those seas the worst pirates which ever infested them. That ocean, which seems to wave with a gentle magnificence to waft the burden of an honest commerce, and to roll along its treasures with a conscious pride; that ocean, which hardy industry regards, even when the winds have ruffled its surface, as a field of grateful toil; what is it to the victim of this oppression, when he is brought to its shores, and looks forth upon it, for the first time, from beneath chains, and bleeding with stripes? What is it to him, but a wide spread prospect of suffering, anguish, and death? Nor do the skies smile longer, nor is the air longer fragrant to him. The sun is cast down from heaven. An inhuman and accursed traffic has cut him off in his manhood, or in his youth, from every enjoyment belonging to his being, and every blessing which his Creator intended for him.

"The Christian communities send forth their emissaries of religion and letters, who stop, here and there, along the coast of the vast continent of Africa, and with painful and tedious efforts, make some almost imperceptible progress in the communication of knowledge, and in the general improvement of the natives who are immediately about them. Not thus slow and imperceptible is the transmission of the vices and bad passions which the subjects of Christian states carry to the land. The slave trade having touched the coast, its influence and its evils spread, like a pestilence, over the whole continent, making savage wars more savage and more frequent, and adding new and fierce passions to the contests of barbarians.

"I pursue this topic no further; except again to say, that all Christendom being now blessed with peace, is bound by everything which belongs to its character, and to the character of the present age, to put a stop to this inhuman and disgraceful traffic."

It will be remembered that this speech was delivered in