Alas! regardless of their doom,
The little victims play!

No sense have they of ills to come,
Nor care beyond to-day:

Yet see how all around 'em wait

The Ministers of human fate,

And black Misfortune's baleful train!

Ah, show them where in ambush stard To seize their prey the murth'rous band! Ah, tell them they are men!

These shall the fury Passions tear,
The vultures of the mind,

Disdainful Anger, pallid Fear,

And Shame that sculks behind;
Or pining Love shall waste their youth,
Or Jealousy with rankling tooth,
That inly knaws the secret heart,

And Envy wan, and faded Care,
Grim-visaged comfortless Despair,
And Sorrow's piercing dart.

Ambition this shall tempt to rise,

Then whirl the wretch from high, To bitter Scorn a sacrifice,

And grinning Infamy.

The stings of Falsehood, those shall try,

And hard unkindness' alter'd eye,
That mocks the tear it forced to flow;

And keen Remorse with blood defiled,

And moody Madness laughing wild Amid severest woe.

Lo, in the vale of years beneath
A griesly troop are seen,

The painful family of Death,

More hideous than their Queen:

This racks the joints, this fires the veins,

That every laboring sinew strains,

Those in the deeper vitals rage:

Lo, Poverty, to fill the band,

That numbs the soul with icy hand,

And slow-consuming Age.

To each his suff'rings: all are men,
Condemn'd alike to groan;

The tender for another's pain,

Th' unfeeling for his own.

Yet ah! why should they know their fate?

Since sorrow never comes too late,

And happiness too swiftly flies.

Thought would destroy their paradise. No more; where ignorance is bliss, 'Tis folly to be wise.

THE ALLIANCE OF EDUCATION AND GOVERNMENT.

A FRAGMENT.

As sickly plants betray a niggard earth,
Whose barren bosom starves her gen'rous birth,
Nor genial warmth, nor genial juice retains
Their roots to feed, and fill their verdant veins;
And as in climes, where Winter holds his reign,
The soil, though fertile, will not teem in vain,
Forbids her gems to swell, her shades to rise,
Nor trusts her blossoms to the churlish skies:
So draw mankind in vain the vital airs,
Unform'd, unfriended, by those kindly cares,
That health and vigour to the soul impart,

Spread the young thought, and warm the opening heart:
So fond Instruction on the growing powers

Of nature idly lavishes her stores,

If equal Justice with unclouded face
Smile not indulgent on the rising race,
And scatter with a free, though frugal hand
Light golden showers of plenty o'er the land:
But Tyranny has fix'd her empire there,
To check their tender hopes with chilling fear,
And blast the blooming promise of the year.

This spacious animated scene survey,
From where the rolling orb, that gives the day,
His sable sons with nearer course surrounds
To either pole, and life's remotest bounds.
How rude soe'er th' exterior form we find,
Howe'er opinion tinge the varied mind,
Alike, to all the kind, impartial Heav'n
The sparks of truth and happiness has giv'n;
With sense to feel, with memory to retain,
They follow pleasure, and they fly from pain;
Their judgment mends the plan their fancy draws,
Th' event presages, and explores the cause;
The soft returns of gratitude they know,
By fraud elude, by force repel the foe;

While mutual wishes, mutual woes endear

The social smile and sympathetic tear.

Say, then, through ages by what fate confined
To different climes seem different souls assign'd?
Here measured laws and philosophic ease
Fix, and improve the polish'd arts of peace.
There industry and gain their vigils keep,

Command the winds, and tame th' unwilling deep.
Here force and hardy deeds of blood prevail;
There languid pleasure sighs in every gale.
Oft o'er the trembling nations from afar

Has Scythia breathed the living cloud of war;

And, where the deluge burst, with sweepy sway
Their arms, their kings, their gods were roll'd away.
As oft have issued, host impelling host,
The blue-eyed myriads from the Baltic coast.
The prostrate South to the destroyer yields

Her boasted titles and her golden fields ·

With grim delight the brood of winter view
A brighter day, and heavens of azure hue,
Scent the new fragrance of the breathing rose,
And quaff the pendent vintage as it grows.
Proud of the yoke, and pliant to the rod,
Why yet does Asia dread a monarch's nod,
While European freedom still withstands

Th' encroaching tide, that drowns her lessening lands;

And sees far off with an indignant groan

Her native plains, and empires once her own.
Can opener skies and suns of fiercer flame
O'erpower the fire that animates our frame;
As lamps, that shed at eve a cheerful ray,
Fade and expire beneath the eye of day?
Need we the influence of the northern star
To string our nerves and steel our hearts to war?
And, where the face of nature laughs around,
Must sick'ning virtue fly the tainted ground?
Unmanly thought! what seasons can control,
What fancied zone can circumscribe the soul,

Who, conscious of the source from whence she springs,

By reason's light, on resolution's wings,

Spite of her frail companion, dauntless goes

O'er Lybia's deserts and through Zembla's snows?
She bids each slumb'ring energy awake,

Another touch, another temper take,

Suspends th' inferior laws, that rule our clay:
The stubborn elements confess her sway;
Their little wants, their low desires, refine,
And raise the mortal to a height divine.

Not but the human fabric from the birth
Imbibes a flavour of its parent earth.
As various tracts enforce a various toil,
The manners speak the idiom of their soil.
An iron race the mountain-cliffs maintain,
Foes to the gentler genius of the plain :
For where unwearied sinews must be found
With side-long plough to quell the flinty ground,
To turn the torrent's swift-descending flood,

To brave the savage rushing from the wood,

What wonder, if to patient valour train'd

They guard with spirit, what by strength they gain'd? And while their rocky ramparts round they see,

The rough abode of want and liberty,

(As lawless force from confidence will grow)

Insult the plenty of the vales below?

What wonder, in the sultry climes, that spread,
Where Nile redundant o'er his summer-bed
From his broad bosom life and verdure flings,
And broods o'er Egypt with his wat'ry wings,
If with advent'rous oar and ready sail
The dusky people drive before the gale;
Or on frail floats to neighb'ring cities ride,
That rise and glitter o'er the ambient tide.

XV. NATHAN GUILFORD.

BY WILLIAM T. COGGESHALL.

(Ohio State Librarian.)

NATHAN GUILFORD, the leader of the movement by which the first liberal school-law for Ohio was secured, was the son of a physician, and was born in Spencer township, Worcester county, Massachusetts, on the nineteenth day of July, 1786. In his boyhood he worked steadily on his father's farm, during the spring and summer months, and attended a district school in the fall and winter, of each year. A marked disposition for reading and study led his father to determine that he should have a liberal education. Nathan was accordingly sent to a classical school, at Leicester, where he fitted himself for college. He entered Yale College when he was twenty-two years of age, in 1808, and graduated with a respectable position in the class of 1812. He was not distinguished for any special aptitudes or powers, but was regarded as a young man of good habits and fair talent, who would devote healthful energies, of mind and body, to some good work.

For a few months Mr. Guilford conducted a classical school at Worcester, Massachusetts. He then determined to make the practice of law his business, and entered at once upon the study of his profession. When he had been admitted to the bar, looking toward what was then the goal of many an earnest ambition, he emigrated to the West, and settled in Kentucky, with the probable intention of entering actively into political life; but opportunity did not occur, or his intentions changed, and in 1816 he removed to Cincinnati. There Mr. Guilford opened a law-office; but he soon engaged also in other pursuits. Following those inclinations which led the friends of his youth to trust that he would distinguish himself by useful identification with some enterprise for public welfare, he became known as a zealous advocate of a liberal system of common schools. As fast as his acquaintance extended, he impressed his views of what ought to be done for popular education in Ohio upon his friends, and he opened an extensive correspondence with gentlemen of influence in the middle and northern portions of the state.

Having once fairly decided that his plans ought to be accepted, he was not disposed to give up their advocacy because he found but a

few willing listeners. Opposition and indifference alike urged him to closer thought and more active efforts. The laws then existing were incompetent for, and the people generally were opposed to, any thing like an active movement toward the establishment of an efficient system of free schools. Not satisfied with the slow progress his conversation and his correspondence made, Mr. Guilford conceived the idea of securing the attention of the people by means of an almanac. "Solomon Thrifty's Almanac" was immediately issued. It contained the calendar, the "weather," and the astronomical changes, duly set down and certified to; but in addition to these, and to paragraphs of direct service to the husbandman, it had, on every page, something about free education-the value of common schools-the importance of general intelligence. It was a good almanac, and for seven years had an extensive circulation.

Meantime Mr. Guilford had opened a book-store in Cincinnati, and had become a publisher of other works as well as "Solomon Thrifty's Almanac." Wherever an opportunity offered, or could appropriately be taken, those works contained good words for free schools.

In the year 1820, Mr. Guilford was in correspondence with a considerable number of influential men who sympathized with, and were proud to act for, the movement to which he had been calling public attention. The first general school-law for Ohio, authorizing directors, committees, and clerks, with power to assess local taxes, build schoolhouses, and employ teachers, was passed by the legislature of 182021. The next year a committee, of which Caleb Atwater was chairman, recommended the appointment of seven commissions, to devise and report an efficient system of common schools. That committee was authorized; and Governor Allen Trimble appointed Caleb Atwater, Rev. John Collins, Rev. James Hoge, Nathan Guilford, Ephraim Cutler, Josiah Barber, and James Bell. Atwater, Collins, and Hoge agreed upon a report, and presented it to the legislature of 1823-24. It recommended a school system based upon the one then existing in the State of New York, making no provision for a general fund, other than that which might arise from the sale and lease of school-lands.

Nathan Guilford openly refused to co-operate with the committee. He said their plans were inadequate. In order that his position might be understood and widely made known, he addressed a letter to the committee, and a memorial to the General Assembly, in which he advocated with zeal and force the assessment of a general county tax, ad valorem. That was the first public appeal in Ohio for a legislative enactment requiring general taxation for school purposes. Mr. Guilford's memorial was printed, by order of the legislature, with the report of the committee. Its propositions were strenuously opposed