just equivalent for the liberal wages they paid him for his services?" Among the speakers was a very industrious yeoman, who knew no way of estimating the value of labor but by the length of time occupied therein, and whose ideas neither corresponded with the free and easy notions of Young America, nor with the more enlightened views of the successful educator. With an earnestness akin to that manifested by Patrick Henry in his celebrated Independence speech, and with as deep and vivid a sense of the importance of the interests at stake as that which inspired the soul of the great orator, he electrified the congregated savans with the following brilliant peroration of his lengthy harangue: "When I am employed to mall rails for my neighbor, I work from sun-up till sun-down, and I work, too, Mr. Chairman; and I will never agree to pay our teacher high wages for sitting in this schoolhouse six hours only per day doing nothing, and walking about as a gentleman the rest of the time. No, never." What a sinecure, in this learned (?) man's opinion (he had never learned to read), was the teacher's profession! What a life of ease and indolent pleasure was his! What a fine specimen of the gentleman of leisure! Malling rails was something to do-it was work to separate the materials of a worm-fence from the body of a sturdy oak; but to teach, was doing nothing—at least it was not work, it was play. These were the darker days in the history of American schools, when to keep school was thought by the mass of men, to be the work of that dignified gentleman of leisure called "Master;" and to throw inkstands at his head, and "bar him out" on Christmas, the most heroic and praiseworthy achievement of his precocious pupils. But brighter days have dawned upon our educational history, and a clearer conception of the nature and dignity of the teacher's work is now generally entertained. His true mission as an educator of mind is now recognized, and it is the teacher's duty to acquit himself as one worthy of such a high mission. In the practical thoughts I propose to present, my aim shall be to aid the young teacher, first, to comprehend fully the nature and magnitude of the work he has undertaken to do; and, secondly, to make some suggestions as to the best means of accomplish ing it. And in doing so, I know that I shall say many things that are already familiar to the experienced teacher; but even he may be profited by the opportunity thus afforded him of comparing notes and exercising his talent for criticism-a sort of tilt at short sword gymnastics, of which all teachers are passionately fond. Let me suppose, fellow teacher, that you are already in your school-room-that you have reduced to order the heterogeneous mass of material upon which you are to operate-that you have arranged the varied duties of each day in accordance with the well-known law of order, "A place for every thing and every thing in its place." You are now ready to commence the great duty which gives to your profession its name and character. How appropriate then the question, Why have so many youth assembled at your bidding, and submitted themselves to your direction? Surely not that you may exhibit your skill in conducting them through a systematic routine of school duties, and then to dismiss them in as orderly a manner as a military officer disbands his troops by the command "Break ranks." No, it is not for this that these youths with buoyant spirits and glad hearts, assemble in the school-room. They bring with them undying minds to be developed to be awaked to a sense of their own immortalitysouls to be trained for glory. This is your work. The difficulty attending its accomplishment is incalculable, its importance immeasurable, and the danger of error here is fearful. The teacher is a sculptor. The marble which he must shape into humanity-perfect in all its features-harmonious in all its movements and symmetrical in all its parts-is immaterial. The eye sees it not the hand feels it not-and the implements with which he gives form and intellectuality to the mass are themselves invisible. And often, when he knows it not, the silent look-the moving hand-the hasty step-the heaving breast-are doing their work upon that imperishable marble for eternity. A Powers, with his chisel, brings from the quarried rock a Grecian Slave in chains, and nations celebrate his triumph in songs. But his sculpture-how inferior to that of the teacher in the skill requisite to its execution, in its worth or durability. In the one case, the friction of years will efface the memory of both sculptor and sculpture; in the other, eternity will be the only measurement of the artist's praise, and the soul he has developed will remain forever, the immortal monument of his skill. To gain such praise as this should be the high ambition of every teacher. And I can not resist the conviction, that every devoted teacher as he stands for the first time before his pupils-his eye beaming with intelligence, and his soul impressed with the conscious greatness of his work-will thus soliloquize: Immortal mind is before me, to be developed in all its powers by my instrumentality. Its Author one-its destiny one-it is varied and diverse in its characteristic traits. All mind is not the same mind, else would my labors be much simplified. But, now, how complex the work upon which I enter! Yonder penetrating eye, looking out at the base of a high and philosophic os frontis, indicates a mind within, quick in apprehension, inquisitive, attentive, reflecting. That sprightly youth needs only to be shown the truth, and his mind, eager in its investigations, will appropriate it to its intellectual growth. Not so with that dull physiognomy beside him, sleepy in his looks, with hair dishevelled and encroaching upon the sacred precincts of the visual organ. I fear that if ever he experiences any consciousness of mental action, it is but the feeble quiverings of a mind whose drowsy energies lie concealed amid the tangled interstices of an inactive brain. To reach that mind-to wake it up to intellectual life and action-this is my work; and to accomplish it, what schemes must I devise-what patience cultivate! The roguish glance of that little Miss-what tales does it tell of mischief lurking within, awaiting a favorable opportunity for development, to vex a classmate, or to torment the teacher-all for the enjoyment of the occasion. The current of her thoughts must be changed-higher motives of action must stimulate her mental powers-and I must be the reforming spirit that will move upon the great deep of her soul, and impress upon it a sense of its high destiny. O, for inspiration for my work, else my feeble powers will fail in the accomplishment of the vast ends and purposes of my office. But why should I look around me? Every face reveals the lineaments of mental idiosyncrasy, and calls for some new device-some special application of teaching-tact to train the mind aright,—and I tremble before the colossal magnitude of my work. How fully do I now realize the truth of the stirring thoughts of the poet: Yes, great their mission! as each morning shows And conquer too, in her own cause of Woman's Right! WHAT IS THE SHAPE OF THE EARTH? BY W. D. HENKLE. : The earliest astronomers regarded the earth as a sphere. Aristotle said: "As to the figure of the earth, it must necessarily be spherical." After the rotary motion of the earth was established, the conjecture of a flattening at the poles came as a matter of course. Newton in his "Principia" gave the ratio of the equatorial to the polar diameter 230 229, and hence, "according to Picart's mensuration, *** the earth will be higher at the equator than at the poles by 85,472 feet, or 17 miles." The measurements of the first Cassini in a geometrical survey of France between 1680 and 1716, made a degree to the south of Paris 57,092 toises, but to the north 56,960 toises. This result led to the conclusion that the earth is a prolate spheroid, or is elevated at the poles. In 1751 Lacaille measured an arc at the Cape of Good Hope, where he found the degree at the parallel of 34° to be nearly the same as at 49° in France, fifteen degrees farther from the equator. This led to the conclusion that the southern hemisphere is flatter than the northern, and of a different internal constitution. Later and more accurate measurements in France showed that a degree is longer north of Paris than south of it, thus corroborating the conclusions drawn from a great many other measurements made in different parts of the northern hemisphere. The anomalous result of Lacaille's measurement in southern Africa, was unexplained for nearly a century, although the accuracy of the measurement was strongly suspected. About the middle of this century, British measurements with all the modern improved methods revealed the fact that nearly all Lacaille's anomaly was produced by mountain attraction on the plumb-line. Prof. Airy, the Royal Astronomer of England, gave in the Encyclopaedia Metropolitana, 1831, considering thirteen arcs, two of which were in Sweden, one in Russia, one in Hanover, one in England, two in France, one in Italy, one in the United States (Mason and Dixon's), two in India, one in Peru, and one in southern Africa, for the equatorial diameter of the earth 7,925.648 miles, and for the polar 7,899.170. Bessel by taking six of these same measurements and four others gave 7,925.604 miles for the equatorial diameter and 7,999.110 for the polar. These dimensions are those now generally adopted. It should be remarked that no two measurements yet made, give the same dimensions to the earth. It is by a combination of the equations of condition by the method of least squares, that the problem is solved. The operation is extremely laborious. Taking the dimensions given by Schmidt, based on twenty arcs, in No. 213 of Schumacher's Astronomische Nachrichten (Bessel's were given in Nos. 333, 334, 335, 438 of the same)-namely, 7,924.873, 7,898.634-we have the measurements of no one of the twenty arcs agreeing with what it should be for an ellipsoid with these dimensions, the measured lengths varying from 73 to 282 feet in excess, and from 46 to 411 in deficiency, of the computed lengths. Although Maclaurin demonstrated in Chap. IV, second volume of his Fluxions, first published in 1742, that an oblate spheroid is a figure that satisfies the conditions of equilibrium in case, of a revolving homogeneous body, whose particles attract one another according to the law of the inverse square of the distance, yet it must be remembered that it has not yet been proved that there are not other figures in which the equilibrium might subsist. Indeed, it has not even been proved that the sphere is the only 66 |