tion, and their carefully written and ably illustrated volumes, filled with what they have seen and experienced, and vivified by the humane sentiment which pervades them throughout, stand in strong contrast with the jejune, spiritless sketches of some secular tourists, and the exciting myths and exaggerations of others. Dr. Anderson, in company with Rev. Eli Smith, one of the missionaries of the Board, made the earliest exploration of the Morea and the Greek islands after the establishment of Grecian independence, and the resultant volume was warmly welcomed by the Royal Geographical Society of London, as having made extensive and valuable additions, even to what the English had learned of a region so much frequented by their ships of war, and under safer auspices by their men of letters. The researches of the same Rev. Eli Smith and Rev. H. G. O. Dwight in Asia Minor, Georgia, and Persia, and among the Nestorian and Chaldean Christians in Oroomiah and Salmas, were published in 1833, and shortly after republished in London, with the highest commendation from the most distinguished authorities. On our own continent, an exploring tour beyond the Rocky Mountains, undertaken by direction of the Board by Rev. Samuel Parker, 'first made known a practicable route for a railroad from the Mississippi to the Pacific.'"

"BIBLICAL CRITICISM AND ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY.

"Who can estimate the services rendered in the department of biblical criticism alone by a band of educated men who love the Bible, and whose duties lie among scenes, objects, and people identical with, or closely resembling, those commemorated in the sacred record?

"There are also some portions of ecclesiastical history that lie open to the missionary as to no one else. Of the Eastern churches, much more than has ever been written, remains unwritten and unknown. But the materials for reproducing what has not yet found record, exist in part in tradition, in part in ecclesiastical rites and institutions, and in theological symbols and ideas which have manifestly been transmitted from a remote antiquity. The missionary who seeks to make real the ostensible Christianity of these representatives of the early separatists, must needs enter into their ecclesiastical life, in order to recast it; must become conversant with their ancestral opinions, in order to replace them by better; must learn their traditions, in order to separate from them their admixture of falsity and error. We are to look, then, primarily to this source- and we have already the first-fruits of such an expectation for effective researches in this large, interesting, and instructive department of the history of the Church, for lines of testimony that shall carry us back to the time when primitive Christianity had its pure white light broken into varying hues by refracting media.

--

"Still further, there are various departments of expressly theological science to which the missionaries of our age have brought large accessions. Their labors are wrought, in great part, among those nations of the East whose manners habits and customs have been stereotyped from time immemorial, and among those features of Oriental scenery which are the same now as in the days of Abraham, Isaiah, and Christ.

"PHILOLOGY.

"But we have not yet entered upon the most arduous and recondite literary labors performed by these soldiers of the cross. In philology they have accomplished more than all the learned world beside. The publications of the American Board in and concerning foreign languages, number already nearly two thousand titles, in nearly forty different tongues. Many of these are translations of the entire Bible. Many are vocabularies and grammars of languages previously unknown to civilized man, and in not a few instances, of languages previously unwritten. Who can estimate the amount of patient, intricate, baffling toil involved in these issues of the missionary press! How completely does it distance and throw into the shade the labors of retired scholars, in the shelter of well-stocked libraries, surrounded by reference-books, cheered by the sympathy of men of kindred tastes, and urged on by the anticipated plaudits of the erudite public in all lands! The missionary has no thought of fame; his only impulse — the noblest, indeed, and the mightiest of all is the desire to save his fellow-men from spiritual death, and to enlarge the empire of Him whose are all souls, and to whom is destined' the kingdom and the dominion under the whole heaven.'

"THE MISSIONARY HERALD.*

"We ought not to omit emphatic mention of the Missionary Herald, a periodical containing reports from all the missionary stations, with accurate statistics embracing every department of knowledge on which the researches of its contributors can throw light. If we were to leave out of thought its prime purpose of enkindling and sustaining zeal in the great work of evangelizing the world, and to regard it solely as a journal for the dissemination of knowledge and the advancement of learning, it would easily hold the first place among the periodicals of the age."

A POEM

READ AT THE DEDICATION OF A PUBLIC SCHOOL-HOUSE IN STOCKBRIDGE, MASS.

WHEN through the city's crowded streets

One casts his wonder-smitten eyes,

On follies countless that he meets,

Of Fashion and its butterflies,

* The Missionary Herald is not published for any pecuniary profit from the subscription itself, the price, one dollar, barely covering the cost of the magazine. If, in addition to its influence in behalf of Missions, it can be made to subserve the ends of science and education, the American Board will be glad to furnish it to American educators at the same price as to its patrons. Many are now receiving it. Cyrus W. Field and Professor Guyot, have long been subscribers. Carl Ritter kept it constantly by him.

It may be obtained by addressing (one dollar enclosed) "MISSIONARY HERALD, Missionary House, 33 Pemberton Square, Boston."

So in a place like this, replete

With all that modern skill contrives
To spur the brain and wing the feet,
And train the young to useful lives,
Though not, as in the other case,

Disposed to look with captious eyes,
Call all that's new a mere disgrace;
And only talk to criticise—
Still will our thoughts go musing back
To other days and different times,
When learning entered with a whack,
Not representable in rhymes.
Indulge we then a gentle trot

Back fifty years from this November,
O'er scenes the boy forgetteth not,
And to the last, the old remember.

Imagine, then, on village green,

Or some bleak spot beside the road, Where not a friendly tree is seen,

To dull the keen Northwester's goad, A little building bare and brown,

Whose roof old Time, the utilizer,
Has sown with moss, as though to crown
Efforts beneath to grow the wiser.

A dozen clapboards lacking nail
Discourse of ventilation well,
And thump with every wind a bass

To the soprano of the sash,

22

A POEM.

Whose crippled panes proclaim the scars
Of wounds received in many wars

Waged by the boys with sticks and stones,
And no prudential

Consequential

Committee-man to set their bones.
The battered, ragged chimney top
Has been a target and a stop
For missiles for some seventy years,
And a grim witness, too, of tears,
When some successful urchin's whack,
Sent a brick thundering down the stack,
And called the irate master's frown
In anger with his ferule down.

Pass the low door, and make your bow –
Would that that rite were practised now
And take a seat to watch and see
The daily school economy.

Behold three tiers of desks arranged
Around the room, of form unchanged
And stereotyped, the same as when
The first were built by Mayflower men;
Stiff, stark, and perpendicular,

By offsets rising from the floor;

Straight-backed as any whaleman's paddle,

Or trooper, frozen in his saddle.

The seats in front 'neath teacher's eye

The younger urchins оссиру,

Lifted so high above the floor

That honest sitting is a bore.
In truth, however good the will,
'Tis penance on them to keep still,
Though many is the thump they get,
And ears pulled, for not doing it.
The ceiling, dark with dust and
Sundry outlandish figures bears,
Done with a tallow candle's smoke,
Dotted with wads, like knots in oak.
The walls have furnished myriad pellets,

years,

For ages shot by rogues as bullets,
From the high batteries carrying woe

On unsuspecting heads below.

On the dimmed plaster that remains
You'll see amidst the apple stains,
Mid words of shame, full many a name
Long gone, and rarely known to fame,

Commingled with some love-sick verse,
In meaning poor, in lettering worse.
Each scarred and battered counter gives
Full proof of Jack and Barlow knives;
Where fly-traps, punches, holes combine
To blotch and rough the ancient pine.
The floor, O tell it not in Gath!-
Precisely such a color hath

As wears the cornfield just outside.
Nor must I pass the fireplace, wide

Enough a half a cord to hold,

When wood bro't not its weight in gold.

Whose fires in vain like useless grannies,

Fought Jack Frost's lances through the crannies.

But, leaving this 'tis time, I ween,
To speak of words and deeds within.
Well, then, behind an ancient stand
A little raised, on either hand
Flanked by a ferule and a rod,

Sits the brief despot, on whose nod
Await reward and retribution,
Law-making and its execution,
No admiral on deck at sea,
More potent for the time than he.
Around that awful pivot wheel
Doings from which there's no appeal.
"Silence!" he calls, and silence is;
A glance upon those tools of his
Makes it quite clear that moral suasion
Is not a partner in the question.
The classes by platoons outpour,
And toe the time upon the floor;
Their bows and courtesies perform,
And then proceed the works to storm.
The strong holds of the enemy -
Arithmetic, Geography —

The eldest strive to undermine,

And "fight all winter on that line";
While little tow-heads statedly
Charge a-b, abs and a, b, c.
Some daring few, on progress bent,
Make Grammar an accomplishment.
But cautious here the learner goes,
For 'tis not much the teacher knows.