tend to preserve purity and chasteness of thought and of taste; they repel licentious imaginings; they delight in the unsullied and the untainted, and all their tendencies and aptitudes are on the side of virtue. Excepting prior-formed habits, habit can overcome anything but instinct, and can greatly modify even that.

CAUSES OF NECROMANCY, ASTROLOGY, &c.

N all countries and times, it has been an impulse,

IN

if not an instinct, of the human mind to long for a knowledge of the future to desire to lift the curtain that hides coming events from our eyes. To obtain prescience of future fortunes, whether individual or national, men have vainly watched the flight of birds as they obeyed the great law of their migration; they have laid open and examined the entrails of animals; they have traced the courses and conjunctions of the stars; they have pretended to wake the dead, and to wring from them the secrets which time holds in its bosom, and they have put the gods themselves to the question, to make them foretell the fate they had foredoomed. Hence numerous orders of men have been set apart to the work of divination and prophecy the necromancer, the soothsayer, the augur, the astrologer.

Hence patriots have wrestled with destiny to insure the salvation of their country, and priests have supplicated Heaven to vouchsafe those temporal blessings which they were doing so little to obtain. Yet the solution of this awful mystery lay before them, like an open book, while they were searching afar off — looking among the silent stars, and questioning the unanswering dead-to find it. It lay in the agencies for good or for evil, which were forming the minds and hearts of the rising generation around them.

a principle antecedent to all human institutions, and incapable of being abrogated by any ordinances of man, a principle of divine origin, clearly legible in the ways of Providence as those ways are manifested in the order of nature, and in the history of the race, which proves the absolute right of every human being that comes into the world to an education; and which, of course, proves the correlative duty of every government to see that the means of that education are provided for all.

In regard to the application of this principle of

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natural law,

that is, in regard to the extent of the education to be provided for all at the public expense, some differences of opinion may fairly exist, under different political organizations; but under a republican government, it seems clear that the minimum of this education can never be less than such as is sufficient to qualify each citizen for the civil and social duties he will be called to discharge; such an education as teaches the individual the great laws of bodily health; as qualifies for the fulfilment of parental duties; as is indispensable for the civil functions of a witness or juror; as is necessary for the voter in municipal affairs; and finally, for the faithful and conscientious discharge of all those duties which devolve upon the inheritor of a portion of the sovereignty of this great republic./

ORIGIN OF THE WORDS URBANE, POLITE, CIVIL.

A

PEOPLE cannot pass from a state of barbarism to one of refinement and civilization without casting off the exterior of rude and rugged manners, as well as by becoming skilful in the arts and learned in the sciences. This change from the coarse to the refined is supposed to have first taken place in cities and in the courts of kings.

From cities and from courts are derived almost all the words which we now use to express the manners of a lady or a gentleman; while the words which express inelegance and want of refinement are borrowed from the country. Etymologically, the words urbane and urbanity are derived from a Latin word signifying a city; while their opposites, rustic and rusticity, signify qualities which were supposed to belong to the country. The word polite, also, has a derivation precisely similar, though it comes from another language; while impolite means something unlike the city. Civility, in the same way, is an abstract term, derived from the manners of city residents; incivility, from those who resided elsewhere. So courtesy was borrowed from the court, and indicates the elegance of manners, the complaisance and the kindness which belong to a true gentleman or lady.

But, since the signification and use of these and similar words have become fixed, great changes have taken place. On the one hand, refinement has often run into a hateful fastidiousness, while the spirit of true politeness and civility has evaporated, leaving nothing but heartless conventionalism behind; and, as a natural consequence, an adherence to certain arbitrary forms, in the intercourse

of life, has been deemed of more value than benevolence and sincerity. On the other hand, the condition of the masses has been greatly improved. In many nations they have been elevated from the state of serfs and slaves to the enjoyment of a few natural and civil rights, and occasionally they have been allowed to exercise political franchises. In our own country, the whole people, by a single revolutionary act, have declared themselves to be freemen and sovereigns; as freemen, repudiating all foreign authority, and as sovereigns, assuming the exclusive right to govern themselves. If, then, with us, every man calls himself a citizen, his conduct should be characterized by civility; and if all the people, by virtue of their political franchises, are sovereigns, and have a right of presentation at court, the manners of all should be stamped with courtesy.

To

INFLUENCE OF A GOOD TEACHER.

save a considerable portion of the rising generation from falling back into the condition of half-civilized or savage life, what other instrumentality does society afford than to send into every obscure and hidden district in the state a young man or a young woman, whose education is