of education thus prescribed was forgotten and overlooked, did the evils, against which these laws were enacted, pour in upon this people as a flood!

How soon were these barriers of freedom, and a pure religion, broken down, their own high privileges taken away, and even their "holy and beautiful house where [their] fathers praised [the Lord], burned up with fire, and all their pleasant things laid waste"!

But to drop further down in the tide of the world's life, let us look for a moment at Greece, that mother of all beauty, and hive of those ever busy ideas which still perplex the disputatious students of her philosophy. She first trained her youths to those three great staple studies of our own time embraced under the general name of Grammata, but which we style, "Reading, Writing and Arithmetic."

Next, they afforded them that accomplishment in their simple. music, which, though not of the learned kind of later centuries, still found its way in tender measures to the heart. Then followed a two years' drill in gymnastics, closing with wrestling in the Palastra, while among them all was mingled appropriate attention to the family sacrifices and religious festivals. After this, a service of the State, in some military capacity, was required; then travel abroad, which in that period afforded the best opportunity of learning the wisdom of other nations, as observed in their life, laws and customs; and, finally, the fully developed Greek was introduced into the Senate or Assembly, to command by his opinions, delivered in a manly and elegant style, the attention of senators, and the admiration of the people.

What Greece sought above all else was that glory which springs from the realization of the beautiful, whether in thought or deed. She endeavored, therefore, so harmoniously to educate her sons in every faculty, both of mind and body, that a strong ambition, arousing and directing their cultivated powers, would early send them forth to achieve this glory, whether they won it by the sword of battle, the Teus [graphis] of the painter, the sculptor's chisel, or the philosopher's style.

Youth so educated, and incited to great deeds by all the inspiring influences that filled this lovely land, made haste to enter those fields of imaginative beauty, which then, like an unexplored continent, stretched themselves afar on every side.

Like the hopeful Columbus of a later era, in his pursuit of the Indies, laden as he believed with golden spoil, they went forth confidently, braving all privation and danger, and labored on, until the

Gods blessed their efforts and permitted them to return and cast some proud triumph of art or genius into the free lap of their mother land.

Sparta, also, kept in view this principle of perpetuating the strength of the State by the education of her youth.

This duty was deemed of such great importance as to be committed only to those who were in the enjoyment of the highest dignities of the republic. The system they pursued, for severity of discipline and protracted development, has never been surpassed. Not even after they had acquired the ordinary branches of education (which were more numerous than those of Greece), were they left to be masters of their own actions. Then it was they were subjected to the most vigorous restraints, the object of it being to inure both the spirit and body to the severest privations and perils. Lycurgus, having established his mixed government of monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy, sought to consolidate the Spartan citizens into one warlike brotherhood; and this he endeavored to accomplish by banishing all social distinctions, except such as were the fruits of personal bravery, and training every youth into a soldier, obedient, enduring, adroit, and courageous unto death.

The public tables, at which all ate in common, were converted into schools of wisdom, where the old recited their exploits, and boasted of their powers to the young. Military discipline was daily and hourly enforced on different bodies or companies of youth; severe exercises and privations were seldom or never relaxed; and the city was continually made to resemble the armed camp of war, rather than the peaceful home of contented labor. Capacity for war and military renown constituted the great good aimed at by this rigorous nation, and they diligently, laboriously, and cruelly disciplined and educated their youth toward the attainment of that end.

Rome looked back to Greece, her charming model and mistress, and, copying from her in many respects, originated in the West her own peculiar institutions of government and education, and infused into them all the fire of her fervid genius.

She modelled after both Athens and Sparta, seeking to incorporate into herself all advantages derivable from either. She was fascinated by the wisdom and polish of Athens, but she craved the soldier-like traits of Sparta. By combining the peculiar possessions of each with that native strength, of which she was already conscious, she aspired to a government that should yet dazzle and conquer the world. She early received the Grecian schoolmasters, who wandered forth the first pedagogues of the world; and for some she built her schools, while to others she threw open several temples on her hill-side,

and, unmindful of their ancient deities, dedicated them afresh to the charms of poetry and philosophy. Her children were early taught to look upon that ancient bronzed statue of their foster-mother, still standing in the Roman capitol, as typical of the spirit that lived in Roman blood, and thence to the culture of the Forum, whence their honor was to proceed. Cicero tell us that the very boys learned the laws of the twelve tables by heart, and indulged in the discussions of the Moot Court even to a greater and more minute extent than is practised by the law students of our day. At the age of seventeen, the Roman lad put on the manly gown, and was introduced, with solemn ceremony, into the Forum. At once he commenced the study of pleading, with its round of varied lore, no matter whether he was destined for the law or the camp. Almost every Roman captain was a good speaker, and almost every orator had seen some service in the field. But he who was particularly designed for the practice of eloquence, after having been furnished with a knowledge of all the liberal arts, was then placed under the most celebrated orator and rhetorician of the day, whose high duty it became to impart the last polishing hand in the formation of the Roman citizen. Say what we will of them, there is a moral grandeur almost approaching sublimity in these old Roman institutions, which, like their venerable and massive walls, yet live to show the might and power of the people who created them.

In the "corpus juris civilis" Rome still lives, and is daily realizing that eternal existence which her poets and orators once so proudly claimed for her, notwithstanding silence reigns to-day in her Forum, and a few shattered columns still tremblingly stand as the only surviving monuments of its ancient glory. With her all the delights of scholarship and the graces of oratory were sought after; but it was to adorn the patriot and representative of Roman greatness, whether he contended in the forum, or struggled in the field.

Believing as they did that their institutions were the best that man had yet secured for himself, they made the service of their country the first and great end of life, as we learn from all those thrilling incidents of Roman story which still enchain both the beardless student and the gray-haired antiquarian.

Could the refining and conservating influence of the Christian religion, with all its pure precepts, have only descended upon, and been accepted by, her people, when the foundations of Roman greatness were laid, so that her dross might have been purged away by lifting up the great Roman heart from an earth-born and corrupting mythology to the worship of the true God, who can deny but that the massive institutions of this "Niobe of nations," after regenerating

Europe, would still have stood, like her frowning Pantheon, the glory and wonder of the world?

The early Persians, before the days when luxury had made its destructive inroads upon them, although then of soft and effeminate manners, had some wholesome regulations of their youth. As they regarded valor and truthfulness of the first importance to a nation, they required their children to be educated into the same views.

The principal course of instruction pursued in reference to them, was an acquaintance with their own literature as well as that of other nations, riding on horseback, shooting the bow, and learning to speak the truth. Lying they considered the most disgraceful action in the world; next to that, they abhorred getting into debt; as they held (legitimately enough) that all debtors, sooner or later, must necessarily become liars; precepts which it were well modern civilization enforced with the same severity.

Tyranny, both ancient and modern, long since learned that the sources and springs of her power lay in the rising youth; and she accordingly adopted her own schemes of education with reference to its preservation.

She educates, not in advance toward light and truth, but backwards into darkness and superstition. This is the mental condition she aims at for the masses of her people, knowing that such condition permits, with much less resistance than any other, the riveting of their chains, and the easier obscuring of freedom's lamp. Civilized society now contains more than one instance of this mode of education, cruel and degrading as it is in its crushing effects upon the masses. Modern Europe enlarges her armies and multiplies her batteries, but she expends comparatively none of her treasure in popular education. Her casernes stand on every street, but the free school, as we understand it, has yet to be founded in her cities and villages. Even the rustic of England is to-day the same rough, unlettered, ale-drinking, tap-room hero, that he was in the days of Shakspeare. With them the cannon is still the all-potent argument; and though this principle of action is worthy only the scornful condemnation of every enlightened mind, it still bears along with it a lesson of wisdom for the race. But, looking back from our stand-point at these nations to whom we have referred, we find a world-wide difference betweeen them and ourselves.

Sparta was, after all, an elaborate communism, destructive of individual rights, degrading even the marriage and parental relations, and, excepting the glorious example of "the three hundred " at Thermopylæ, she has bestowed very little of real value upon the race.

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Plato, with all his reach of intellectual might, is in his model republic likewise led into communism; and both in Greece and Rome man could rise no higher than to a citizenship in the State. As a political being he had here reached the acmé of his existence, and here he rested; while in those more modern nations, over which tyranny sways her iron sceptre, the man has no rights except such as he snatches from the throne with a bloody hand, and is willing to maintain at any and every cost. If the throne is perilled by an effort to reconquer these rights from him, he may possibly be permitted to retain them. But if the government is strong-handed, they are very apt to be forced away from his grasp before they have even yielded him their first fruits.

Citizenship in this republic of ours differs widely from that of the republic of old, and principally in this, that so far from its being the END of privilege, it is but the means to attain an end yet higher and nobler. The enthronement of certain blood, or the establishment of a party in power, is not, nor should it ever be, the end of government, no matter how loudly kings and partisans may so declare. We of this age ought no longer to contemplate man in the dim light of those ancient philosophies which limit his career to earth and a high place in her government, but as something above and beyond all place. Though his life's seed may be planted here, it is nevertheless appointed to an endless bloom hereafter, far beyond the utmost verge of this small world which has so long bounded the view of the race and her wisest philosophers.

Instead of those political ethics dreamed out by the speculative mind of Greece, and which were, in fact, but unaided Reason's first tottering steps towards truth, we of this republic have happily adopted those which were handed down to man from the skies, and which are endowed with power to regenerate the world, if it would only consent to put them into peaceful and universal operation.

The germ of this regenerating political influence lies in the simple teachings of the New Testament, and free governments are but slow and successive advances towards that brilliant goal which it steadily holds out to the human race. Our government is one of institutions; that is, of rights wrested from despotism by the strong arm of freedom, and constitutionally consecrated to her children; and its end is not only the secure establishment of self-government in the world, but the ever-progressive development of the individual. The struggle after such an end differs totally from the aims and purposes of those effete governments now left to us only in the pages of history.

We, as a nation, have gleaned from the long centuries past, those