with splendid buildings, and keys to unlock the various apartments. But who will give us the keys to unlock the chambers of these youthful intellects, and furnish them with rich thoughts and noble aspirations? Who will give us entrance into the various apartments of these young hearts, and aid us in their right development? Who will give us the keys to unlock the beautiful temple of these children's souls, and make them fit for His indwelling? No city authorities can give us these. No committees or government officials can give us more than the outward. We must go to the great Teacher for these spiritual keys. We must sit humbly and reverently at the feet of Him who took little children in his arms and blessed them, if we would unlock the inner chambers of their being, and develop their natures through their affections. While believing, therefore, that compulsory obedience is far better than no obedience, let us educators

ever remember that we have not saved our pupils until we have firmly established in them habits of obedience to principle; until we have taught them to love knowledge, truth, virtue, and goodness, for their own sakes; in fine, until we have so governed them that they shall have learned that best of all discipline - self-discipline.

We teachers, especially of Boston and vicinity, are living in trying times. In the present excited state of public sentiment upon the subject of school

discipline, we are frequently misunderstood and misrepresented; but let us do our duty fearlessly and conscientiously, feeling far more our accountability to God than to man, and remembering that but a few short years, at most, will pass away, ere we shall reach that better land where all unjust human judgments will be reversed, and righteous verdicts alone rendered.

LECTURE II.

HINTS TOWARDS A PROFESSION OF

TEACHING.

BY C, O. THOMPSON.

WHEN a man has the privilege of discussing an educational topic, he must choose, with stern resolution, between the allurements of inclination and the dictates of duty. Circumstances, on this occasion, favor the syren. Colleges and schools have closed their doors, and the tired inmates-vestigia nulla retrorsum-hurry to their chosen scenes of relaxation. Teachers and pupils break the bonds of school-law, and enter, with exulting voices, that broader school, where nature teaches and blesses as well. We, who teach, anxiously help every effort of our struggling spirits to be free from the stifling embrace of routine and form, and to regain by a quick rebound the elasticity of thought and feeling which has slowly lost its force. The huge mill casts longer shadows. The great wheel has made its last heavy revolution. The gate is shut, and the glad water begins to fall

in a laughing cascade over the dam, and gushes through the seams in the heavy planks. The sound of the grinding is low. An evening coolness breathes a benediction over us. We bless Virgil and Theocritus for pastorals. We will almost embrace the blockhead and the rogue who have made our day so toilsome. We are children ourselves in the sudden rush of vacation joys,—

“We 're twenty, we 're twenty; who says we are more?
He's tipsy, young jackanapes; show him the door."

This utter freedom peculiarly fits us for a social chat-inter pocula — if you please, about our work. The season is propitious. And now while all summer flowers are smiling at us, and all summer birds are singing to us, and the bright waters of all summer brooks are rejoicing with us, we meet to study the science of education.

Inclination calls us to leave the heated plain of dry discussion, and pasture our hungry scholarship in the green fields of æsthetic culture, where teachers seldom can go, save on holidays. But duty suggests that much useless labor has been during the past year; that some of our best endeavors have been fruitless; that unsymmetrical systems have rendered nugatory many of our best methods of instruction. A college professor says that one half of the senior class could not enter freshmen on examination.

Few graduates from college can read a page of prose Latin at sight, determine a geological epoch by examining its fossils, assign a Crucifer to its true genus, or decide whether or not there is lead in the water he is drinking.

When a faculty is needed for a technological institute, many are taken from the graduates of the college, to the theory and aims of which the plan of the new seminary is diametrically opposed. The college classics, mastered with surpassing skill, and giving in one mind the ripe fruitage of a persuasive style, are reflexively denounced in that very style.

"Who but must laugh if such a man there be,—
Who, but must weep, if Attacus were he ?”

The graduates of schools from which the classics have been carefully weeded succeed in special lines of effort, but so far fail in power of expression that we have few contributions from them to the literature of their own special branches of knowledge.

The demand of the times is for more natural science in the high-school course; but the demand of the colleges is for more Latin, Greek, and French.

Boys who graduate from the high school must be able to enter college: the door is narrow, and "procul profani" blazes over it. Again: Hundreds of boys are conditioned or rejected when they apply for admisson to college, who have fitted in country