by the models of personal energy, with which, in the course of life, it is the lot of us all, more or less, to come in contact. Not one escapes altogether the contagion of example, more potent than all precept, more plastic than our acts of education. A master mind, oracular even when not original, in which ordinary thoughts kindle and burn, and by which familiar objects. are electrified, is responsible to society, and to God, for a fearful power.

It should be an object never lost sight of, to secure in seminaries of learning, and indeed every where, examples of the most perfect mental development. Systems which tend to equalize the benefits of education by reducing the standard of practical attainment-lessening, in this way, the difference between the highest and the lowest-have the effect, ultimately, to depress all; for they remove one of the best incitements to excellence, the actual exemplification of it in a living instance before us and of us. If a man of pre-eminent character and attainment should do nothing else but exist in the eyes of his associates and neighbors, he would live for a most enviable usefulness. And a system which raises up one such man, in a class of students or a community, really improves and elevates the whole.

INFLUENCE OF HOME UPON THE SCHOOL.

Much has been said, and said justly, of the influence exerted by the common school teacher upon the manners and morals of the community in which he moves. It is not in danger of being too often impressed upon the attention. It should be frequently dwelt upon by the teacher himself. It would, doubtless, lead him to "magnify his office," and enlarge his hopes.

But another view must arise. The teacher acts against strong obstacles. His motives are often misrepresented, and his measures ridiculed. No one, therefore, has long taught without placing a proper incredulity in the path of baseless hopes. He meets much to discourage him in the character of children. Their love is mingled with selfishness, their sprightliness with trifling, their confidence with importunity. But one great point, whence contracting influences spring, is the home. On this we propose to consume a few moments of our readers' patience.

A teacher of large experience and comprehensive philanthropy, takes a school in a district of average advantages and expectations. Knowing what he has to do in the school, he forms his plans for improving his precious charge in habits of

order, punctuality, honesty, honor, and truth, while the main object of a common school is never lost sight of. Does he meet with the hearty coöperation of parents, even, generally? I mean not indefinite commendation, but definite acts. Take the matter of punctuality at school, for example. Do parents enorce this important duty at home? Or is the trifling errand, or valueless entertainment, or pernicious amusement preferred before it? Are not excuses offered for neglect in this, which a child would be ashamed to offer for failing to meet his companions at the play-ground? How many parents, too, paralyze the arm of the teacher, both by injudicious words and deeds, in the important matter of order. How many children, at home disobedient from custom, are to be compelled into habits of good order, which should have been already formed. Then, how inclined many are to fault the teacher, and justify the wrong doer. How little interest, further, is shown in the progress of their offspring, and the plans for their good. All these things weigh heavily upon the efforts of the faithful and determined man. They are sad obstacles in the way of his usefulness. Added to the natural indolence of children, they almost crush his strongest hopes. Exhausted with continued exertion, and often to little accomplishment, he is sometimes tempted to doubt the improveability of human nature, or the ultimate ascendency of good.

Such are some, but not all the influences of home. Every community has its households of well trained and industrious youth, who in school are exemplars, and whose parents sustain him by their well directed support. There lie his earthly sympathies, and in these abodes he takes the cup of social communion. Does he suggest an improvement in the mode or the subjects of study? They give him hearty aid. Are his motives belied? They shame the slanderer. Do his circumstances call for advice? The best is freely given. Thus is he made to feel that the world is not unmingled evil, and courageously to enter its contests.

If, then, the influence of home can embitter the anxieties or heighten the joys of the common school instructor, let him not fail to improve its advantages, or strive to remedy its deficiencies. By a proper training of his pupils, both in word and example, let his influence reach the fireside of degraded homes. By forbearance, let him disarm active hostility. By an interest. in the meanest child of his charge, let him show his impartial desire to overlook none. By an affable deportment, let him win the approach to all. Thus will the path of teaching be trodden with more pleasure, and improvement will chase away the gloom of discouragement.

K.

'Tis with our judgment as our watches; none
Go just alike, but each believes his own.

Pope.

We have strict statutes and most biting laws,
Which for these fourteen years we have let sleep,
Even like an overgrown lion in his cave,

That goes not out to prey; now, as fond fathers,
Having bound up the threatening twigs of birch,
Only to stick it in their children's sight,
For terror, not to use; in time the rod

Becomes more mocked than feared; so our decrees,
Dead to infliction, to themselves are dead,
And liberty plucks justice by the nose.

Shakspeare.

Whatever may be said of the personal example of the celebrated Sterne, the following mode of treating critics and slanderers, which he has left us, is certainly worthy of imitation.

of

"God bless you, only next month if any one of you should gnash his teeth and storm and rage at me, as some you did last May (in which, I remember, the weather was very hot), don't be exasperated if I pass it by again in good temper, being determined as long as I live or write, (which, in my case, means the same thing), never to give the honest gentlemen [the critics] a worse wish than my uncle Toby gave the fly that buzzed about his nose all dinner time. Go, Go, poor devil," quoth he, "get thee gone; why should I hurt thee? This world is surely wide enough to hold both thee and me."

66

The next Annual Meeting of the American Institute of Instruction will be held at Bangor, to commence on Tuesday, the 15th of August, and continue three days. Tickets through, from Boston, by Portland, and back, may be obtained at half price.

DICKINSON PRINTING HOUSE,

DAMRELL & MOORE, Publishers, No. 26 Washington Street,

To whom all letters should be addressed. TERMS-One Dollar per annum in advance, or One Dollar and Fifty Cents at the end of the year. Twenty-five per cent. allowed to agents who procure five subscribers, and all payments by them to be made in advance.

Delivered before the Essex County Teachers' Association, by William D. Northend, Esq., of Salem.

THE great glory and pride of New England are her common schools. It is her peculiar boast, that all her citizens, the rich and the poor, the high and the low, of all classes and denominations, can enjoy the blessings and privileges of Common Schools; that there is no one in this land of the Pilgrims, who cannot receive a good practical education, one to prepare him to become a useful and honored member of society. This is no vain boast. It is what has made New England, and Massachusetts in particular, what she now is. It is to the common school system that Massachusetts owes every thing. Planted in a wilderness, by men of iron hearts and noble purpose, men of disinterested motives, who looked at matters, not only with reference to their immediate effect, but to their remote result; who were willing to sacrifice their own comfort, and deprive themselves of many privileges, for the good of their posterityplanted by such men, and nurtured by the free spirit which urged America to throw off the yoke of oppression, and which tended to the recognition of the inalienable rights of every member of the social compact, it grew and flourished. spread wide, and enlarged, and perfected, with the increase of population and intelligence; the latter the result of its own beneficial influence, it is now one of the most perfect and noble systems the world ever witnessed, for the good of mankind. The common school system! How much that is noble and patriotic, is embodied in these few words! Blot out free schools from

It

Massachusetts, and proud Massachusetts would dwindle into utter insignificance. They are her glory and pride, and justly so. And by what I say, I mean the common schools, in distinction from the higher universities, academies, and colleges. The latter are useful,-they are indispensable; but they exist in every enlightened country. The man of wealth never found it impossible to educate his sons. He always had access to academies and colleges, or their substitutes. But the poor man has not always enjoyed that privilege. His sons must grow up in ignorance, and always remain subservient to the educated sons of wealth. It was ignorance made dependence, and not poverty. Intelligence will be respected, and will have its appropriate place. Such was the fact, before the establishment of common schools; such would, in a degree, be the fact now, with our academies and colleges alone. But the common school system opened a new fountain. The spirit which prompted it did not rest till it had thrown wide open the vast granaries of education stored up for the favored few, and distributed their immense accumulations among the multitude; and thus given an impetus to the advancement of humanity, which will be lasting, and almost incredible in its results.

It had the effect, which a great writer says should be the aim of an enlightened and benevolent philosophy, "not to rear a small number of individuals, who may be regarded as prodigies in an ignorant and admiring age, but, to diffuse, as widely as possible, that degree of cultivation which may enable the bulk of a people to possess all the intellectual and moral improvement of which their nature is susceptible."

Such has been the aim of the common school system; and its success, thus far, has been truly wonderful. The elements of Massachusetts success, are to be found in the instructions her sons received from masters in the common schools. The teachers of the common schools have directed the policy of Massachusetts for the last half century. If any one asks me why it is that "I am from Massachusetts" is almost as much a password and honor, to our citizens abroad, as the words, "I am a Roman citizen," were in the days of the ancient republic, I would reply, with all duc deference to the clergy, the men of deep learning, and useful members of other professions, it is owing to the schoolmasters of her common schools. They are the great, the humble, it may be, instruments, to this great end. They have sown the seed which has sprung up into such a healthy and luxuriant growth. They have stamped upon Massachusetts her character. The youth from the common school goes out into the world; he becomes the industrious and ingenious mechanic. He, perhaps, in time, has charge of one of the