to itself. The way to gain wealth is to seek it; learning is only to be acquired by constant and eager labor; but to gain praise, you must be indifferent to it; for the rule of commendation is, and ought to be, the very reverse of the rule of charity; to give most to those who want it least, and thus by ill success to teach a better motive to action. Vanity is every day detected and disgraced; we know men, who believe themselves to be objects of universal admiration, while, in fact, they are objects of universal contempt; we see how difficult it is to conceal the passion, or prevent the ridicule consequent upon it; yet we are vain, and believe that acute malice will be blind for us alone. A vain man looks more to the pleasure, than the means of triumph, and experiences defeat, because he sings the song of victory, while he should be spreading his ranks for the battle; if he succeed, he loses even the inaccurate measure of himself which he before possessed, attempts greater, and still greater achievements, and is sure at last to fail, because it is the easiest of all. things, to find difficulties superior to human powers.

A very vain person is seldom a very happy person; he lives under no certain law; the rule of his conduct is the caprice of those with whom he lives; he never knows to-day what he is to do to-morrow, and is constantly acting a part, before an audience, who become difficult to please in proportion as he is desirous to please them; he lives in constant perturbation, and is ever flushed with triumph, or pale with despair; he is a slave in essence, who feels that he has not dignity to be free, and erects every man he meets into a master and a lord. This love of praise, so strongly enfixed in our nature, it is rather our duty to direct, than to extinguish: the excellence which requires neither to be encouraged, nor corrected, exists not in the world; the commendation, or censure of enlightened men, is, perhaps, the best test here below, of the purity and wisdom of what we intend, and the propriety and success of what we do; and a wise man will always make this use of the decisions of the world; when he is blamed, he will listen with sacred modesty to the collected wisdom of many men, he will measure back his footsteps on the path of life; and which ever way he decides, he will know, that he has either obtained success or deserved it; he will receive praise as a probable, not as a certain evidence that he is right; nay, he will do more, he will rejoice in the approbation of his fellow-creatures; every feeling of his heart will

expand; it will cheer him in his long struggle, and dissipate that melancholy, which the best sometimes feel at the triumph of folly, and the fortune of vice.

MORAL EDUCATION.

We have abundant reason for gratitude to Heaven, and to those instruments in the hands of Heaven, our worthy ancestors, for the numerous and excellent institutions of learning, and means of education which we in this conntry enjoy.— For the most part, we evince our gratitude for them by the value which we set upon them; though we are not yet grateful enough, for we do not yet value them highly enough.We do not value them highly enough, because we do not correctly appreciate nor universally understand the great purpose and end of instruction. Many among us are not in the habit of regarding this purpose as a moral purpose, and this end as a moral end. We are afraid that, from the poorest to the richest of us, the mind is considered as the principal object of education, and the information of the mind as education's peculiar and ultimate design. Though there exists very remarkably in our country, or at least in this part of our country, a great desire in parents to secure an education to their children, and a general willingness to spend their money for this gift, yet we believe that it is common for the poor to bestow what means of education they can on their children, under the sole idea of preserving them from the disgrace and the inconvenience of ignorance, and for the rich to furnish their children with every accomplishment which wealth can command, with the predominant impression and hope that they are qualifying them to push their way in the world, and make a figure in the eyes of society. They do not seem to extend their views, or if at all, not with a due anxiety, to that far nobler and more important office of education, which is simply and beautifully described in the words of the prophet Ezekiel. They seem not to apprehend that it confers its best and most finished endowment on their offspring, only when it has taught them 'the difference between the holy and profane, and caused them to discern between the unclean and the clean.'

This is education's perfect work. When it has done this, it has done every thing; and till it has done this, it has done

nothing effectually. Who has a finished education, as far as any education may be called finished? Not he who is often complimented by the world on its possession. Not he who has been through all the most expensive schools, and yet without learning his duty to God and his neighbor. No; if he is master of all accomplishments; if his brain is filled to its remotest cell, with all manner of knowledge, and still he does not discern, or does not act as if he discerned, between the unclean and the clean, his education is not finished in the most important respect; it is imperfect; it has stopped short of its destination, for it has stopped short of true wisdom, and the pupil is as yet immature, superficial, unfurnished. Who has a finished education? He has it, who, though he may have only learned to read and write, has learned, beside, the difference, the immense difference, between the holy and profane; has cultivated his moral capacities; has acquired sound opinions, and firm principles, and good habits; has preferred and chosen the paths and the rewards of virHis education is really finished, for its true end is attained; it has given him the wisdom to perceive, the ability to discharge, his personal, his social, his religious obligations; it has placed him as a column in the great fabric of human relations; and though he may not adorn that fabric, to the eye, as much as some other columns which art has more carefully enriched, he supports it quite as well in the simple beauty of strength and durability.

tue.

We mean not to say, that every thing which informs and enlarges and embellishes the mind, has not a natural tendency to educate the heart, and establish the character on enduring foundations. We cannot be such recreants to the noble cause and holy faith of letters. We believe that education, in all its fulness, and all its variety, has a powerful and beneficial influence on morals. It is precisely because we believe this, that we say it is never finished till it has exerted that influence; morals being its end. Mind is its first object, but it is not its only, nor its final object. Through the mind it must reach the moral sentiments and convictions, or it reaches not its mark. This is but a partial education, which does not lead its pupil to the knowledge and the practice of duty. That is a complete education, the education of a man, which makes a man feel himself one; an accountable creature of God; a free and a noble spirit, discerning the difference between the holy and profane, the unclean and the clean, and

renouncing the evil and embracing the good, for his own sake, for society's sake, and for God's sake.

That by such an education, and in no other way, or in no other way so well, some of the greatest blessings of life are to be widely and permanently secured, we have no doubt.— If such an education is impracticable to any greater extent and degree than has already been attained, then, with all our faith in human improvement, we should be obliged to acknowledge that no further improvement was to be hoped for, in this world. A few remarks on some of the advantages which can only result from a general and thorough system of moral education, will best explain our reasons for attributing to it so great an importance.

We must be permitted to say, then, that we know not in what other way the best political blessings are to be secured to our country. We are as prosperous, as powerful, and as free as we are, chiefly because we have been thus far, and comparatively speaking, an intelligent and a moral people; because knowledge has been remarkably diffused among us, and our habits have been simple, and for the most part virtuous and religious. But luxury has increased with our wealth, corruption with our numbers, and ambition with our strength. The virtue which carried us through the time of our tribulation, may relax and be dissolved in the time of our prosperity. Those principles of honesty and justice and freedom which we only wrapped the more closely about us while the storms of persecution and poverty were blowing, may be loosened and perhaps thrown off under the warm sun of plenty and ease. It was a day of peril and of trial, when, to guard their rights and liberties against an arrogant and superior force, our fathers stood on the brink 'few and faint, yet fearless still,' and dared and suffered the worst; but if we are not greatly mistaken, our country may see a day more perilous and trying than that; the day when it will have to contend with the passions and the pride and the lust of its own children. If it escape from such a trial safely and with honor, it will be only owing to the prevailing moral sentiment of the people, diffused through their mass by all the efforts and means of a moral education.

We form a republic. We are all politically equal. The right of government is shared by every individual in the nation; and Heaven forbid that it should be otherwise. But this right of government must be delegated somewhere. We must

have rulers like other nations. We appoint these rulers ourselves, and in their hands we place in trust much of our happiness. What is to secure to us good rulers, rulers who will respect and watch that sacred deposit, but the widest diffusion of correct opinions and feelings through the influences of a moral education? What is to secure us against unprincipled rulers, but a deep respect for principle, and a stern, uncompromising demand for men of principle, and a universal determination to bestow no confidence on talent alone without principle? What is to secure us against the winding, specious, flattering arts of political quacks and demagogues, but an understanding sufficiently informed to detect those arts, and a virtue sufficiently elevated to despise them? What, in fine, is to carry the best men to the highest and most responsible places, but the existence and the predominance in the community of worth, of moral worth, which will appreciate and sympathize with, and seek out worth like its own, for honor, office, and trust? And how shall we secure this moral worth in the community, unless it is instilled, guarded, and confirmed by all the influences and appliances of a moral education universally diffused.

SUBJECT CONCLUDED.

AND what, again we ask, is to preserve us from a national passion for war and the deeds of war, an admiration of military fame, a love of dominion, a thirst for conquest? What is to preserve us from these things, which have been among the deepest stains and curses of the world from the world's childhood, but a general sentiment, which, with purged and undazzled eyes, shall view war rather as a scourge, a judgment, than as a theatre of glory? Why should we not go on, as other nations have gone on, extending our possessions by the sword, and losing them by the sword, attacking and attacked, spoiling and spoiled, and devoting treasure, talent, and life, to the insane purpose of fighting with the rest of the world, and entailing on ourselves that misery, be it splendid or otherwise, which is always entailed by ambitious war, unless we are taught by experience and religion to regard war as that last, terrible resort, which good men in all ages, though not, alas! the multitude, have considered it to be? If we feel and think on this and kindred subjects as other