Enterprize a Result of American Education. 131 into their hands, is that on the trades. The work of the farm and garden they soon understand, and fathers vigilant of opportunities will not omit to elevate their minds "from nature up to nature's God." The inquiry, What he shall be when he grows up? is a boy's first anxiety; and he is not long in understanding that a college education is a preparation for professional studies. Emulation is both natural and necessary. Those who do not feel it, are likely to be envious and to fall into a discouragement, and to lose that energy on which success in business afterwards depends. But the boy who is animated with this moral courage, is not long in perceiving that prosperity is the recompense of service, and that work may be either manual or intellectual. There are few sons who are without the advantages of example in the business of industrious parents, whose labors they see provide for the comfort and happiness of home. If the father is a farmer, the son is very likely, in the early aid he gives him, to become acquainted with the principles as well as operations of agriculture, and probably regrets the necessity which compels him to seek his own home at a distance from the paternal roof. But fortunately no American emigrates to Europe. Far happier than her sons, he is by the constitution, a citizen of every state in the union. Here there are no hereditary principalities, no great entailed estates. Here land may be purchased. Nor is he to win a lodgment for himself on the bleak shelf of an Alpine mountain. But free to earn and purchase more broad acres than he can cultivate, he in a few years finds himself an independent farmer in some community where civilization, and its best fruits faith and practical piety, will have raised in the recent wilderness the temples of devotion. Professional men are wanted every where; and the merchant follows the sound of the axe. This has been the process of improvement ever since the discovery of America. The spirit of enterprize was blended with the zeal of the pilgrim fathers; and nearly the earliest encroachments on the wilderness in defiance of the Indians, were along the shores of our own far flowing Connecticut and since the same dauntless spirit achieved the liberties of our country, the like spirit led the settlers of the West across the Blue Ridge. But how far more daring and difficult was that movement, than the safe and economical transportation which the progress of improvement has now prepared! Were some able pen, dipt only in the hues of truth, to trace the real adventures of the pioneers of western civilization, when the Ohio was first navigated by arks, which could no more re-ascend the current than its owner the tide of time, and ere the sudden warhoop had ceased to echo from bluff to bluff along its far winding course, we should do honor to the heroic courage of many a wife and mother, whose devotion to duty and the little world of home, was above all fear and equal to every emergency. Since thus it has been the education of circumstances, that has made the American people peculiarly enterprizing, why should it be apprehended to have its source in too much ambition to be rich or great? Much is to be accounted for in a long period of peace succeeding one of war. The constitution itself encourages the arts and sciences, and commerce is the handmaid of civilization. This encouragement of inventive genius, has among other results, spread the culture of the beautiful and useful cotton plant through half the States, and mitigated the condition of half their population. This alone has opened vast fields of enterprize to the north, and we may ask what is so likely to form in the south and west a sound national character, (as we deem that of New England to be,) than that a part of our young men should settle in those new States. Is it reasonable to fear that they will forget the principles in which they have been educated, on losing sight of the paternal home? There may be danger in every kind of prosperity! True: let parents then guard early against it. Let a deeper culture of the conscience, associate the mother's influence with that of religion. Is there any fear that our moral and religious improvement will not keep pace with our intellectual? We see that our colleges and schools have become as much improved in theological and moral as in physical science. There never has been a period when the benevolent early bestowed so much time on the instruction of children. Our Sunday Schools are the glory of this day, and seem to have been instituted by Providence to counteract the supposed danger, and to fix in thousands of youthful hearts those principles which must ever influence their lives. Those who sustain personally this benevolence, cannot conceive a limit to the good they are doing. Is there any fear that mothers will take less pains to instruct their children in the scriptures? Are not these instructed children rising into life and is not female education so much more than ever comprehensive, that mothers must exert an influence more and more over the mind, and thus better reach the heart. To them it is committed to mould this little temple, the abode of good or evil. They must endeavor that its most secret recesses, penetrated alone by the eye of God, shall be viewed with approbation, and the plaudit of "Well done, good and faithful servant, enter thou into the joy of thy Lord," be given to the mother on account of the virtues of the son. And what son would not make the sacrifice of self-denial, and were it necessary lay down his life, to gain for his mother that recompense of reward? But the enterprize of the American people is not to be limited to the acquisition of wealth. Higher and nobler objects rise in the horizon, as the whole people advance in their career of prosperity and improvement. The patriot comprehends his whole country, as the christian embraces the whole world. Why should it not be the aim of every enlightened and religious man in it, to improve the nation in its moral as well as intellectual character? Is it alone into the minds of children that the light of truth is to be poured? Before the union of the States, their sovereignty was undeniable but a mutual surrender placing it in the constitution, left and regulated the subject of slavery. The right to hold the African in bondage was guarantied; but there could be no guaranty against the influence of religion, because mind cannot be enchained. The mind of St. Paul was not less free because his limbs were in fetters. Without violating the principle of the constitution, the religious may like St. Paul, in sending back Onesimus, persuade Christian masters to hold their servants in the spirit of Christianity, and view them as human beings under the gospel dispensation, worthy of being at least instructed in the hopes of salvation and recompense beyond this life. Africans properly instructed would make as good tenantry as Europeans; and whoever has visited the southern States, knows how much this would ameliorate the condition of wives and mothers there. The time will come when Virginia and Caro Enterprize the Result of American Education. 133 lina will like Pennsylvania be cultivated by none but the free, and be far more wealthy and happy than at present. We can admire the bold enterprize of a Stockton, in wresting from heathen superstition Cape Mesurado, from the frequency of its thunder storms the supposed abode of the Great Spirit,-European governments having for 400 years in vain sought to acquire it by purchase. Thus laying the foundation of Liberia; but, reason forbids the expectation that so distant a settlement can materially lessen the numbers of the African race within the United States. The prophetic eye of a well wisher to this branch of moral enterprize discovers a nearer shore, a congenial clime, a more practicable settlement, in the adjoining province of Mexico, open to American emigration, where already great purchases have been made by our enterprizing capitalists. Millions of men, of African descent, who are now free or who may become so, and desire to possess landed estates and become agriculturalists in a climate adapted to their physical constitution, might on this side the Atlantic there enjoy the institutions of civil and religious liberty. This settlement might be made at moderate expense. They require considerable capital for the purchase, and for the first year; and on the second or third, the settlers might pay for their land with its produce. This plan of providing them a home is not of so difficult management as the Colony of Liberia. Several good effects would be produced, worthy of national patronage. The southern States would become more and more occupied by the northern and European emigrant. The African would be transferred thence in freedom to a more congenial climate and country, to which he can go by water or by land, in a few days. He would be under the protection of strong, free governments. He would early make himself rich, as he is within reach of commerce. Our statesmen would see a strong southern frontier where now it is a weak one. The philanthropist would see humanity and policy going hand in hand. The religious man would see the rights of the human soul to a knowledge of eternal truth, likely to be largely realized by these millions; and the western continent doing late but ample justice for the wrong done ages ago to the eastern world-but above all, the gospel, the glad tidings of great joy to all people, spreading happiness to the hearts of the bond as well as free, and preparing them for rational liberty as fast as their own industry or the liberality of masters should enlighten and free them. "There is no one quality that more thoroughly runs through the warp of our fallen nature, than the disposition to be restless. There is a something more, or a something different, which we are ever prone to covet; and unless our minds are well disciplined, we shall poison the cup of life by our absurd attempts at sweetening it, or lose the good within our reach while grasping at that which is beyond it." For the Microcosm. THE MOTHER'S CHOICE. ASLEEP the wearied mother lay; A form of light, all love and grace, Thus spake the form :-" Daughter of earth, Thrice happy in an infant's birth, Whose soul with richest gifts shall shine. Now choose, (for perfect none can be, With intellect, as pure and bright As shines the sun on mountain snow, Conceptions like a fount of light, And thoughts that pierce where'er they go, He shall, with ease, through every field And when the hill of years he gains, Where life's wide prospect spreads before him, Then will I bless his youthful pains, And spread my choicest influence o'er him. In senates heard with deep delight Prais'd and beloved, from place to place, Thus honor'd all his length of days, All fortune's frowns and clouds unknown, In ripest age he sinks apace, And leaves a radiance where he shone. A nation's idol when alive ; A nation's voice his death shall weep; Its poets in his praise shall strive, And sculptured stone his form shall keep. |