Conclusion.

A language of such depth, and force, and beauty, is not to be learned in a few short terms of school and college, or with little care. To acquire a thorough knowledge of it is the serious business of a lifetime. By the study of its structure and its grammatical principles, by the attentive reading of the best authors, by the study of foreign languages, that shall throw light upon it, and teach us its derivation, by careful and protracted meditation, and by care in speaking, we should strive to know it in its perfection. Some of the purest pleasure of my life has been derived from the study of language. And although the beginning of the way was difficult, and dusty, and fatiguing, the elevations are easy and pleasant, and the prospects delightful.

LECTURE VI.

I

THE MEANS AND ENDS OF EDUCATION.

PURPOSE to speak of the means and ends of

a practical education-one that may produce fruit. Education, in its special and restricted sense, is the work of developing the faculties of the mind. It is a process by which the mental energies are furnished with material and put to work. The mind is sometimes compared to a storehouse, where a profusion of articles are indiscriminately stowed away. This is an unfortunate figure. Better liken it to the workshop of the mechanic, or to the hall of the artist, where numerous operatives are engaged in executing forms of beauty and usefulness. The various faculties of the mind, as memory, imagination, taste, are the workmen employed. The material which they are engaged in transforming into beautiful and useful shapes, the marble, the steel, the gold, the silver, are the ideas which we have of the various objects by which we are surrounded. The means by which those workmen have acquired skill in producing specimens of their labor of greater or less excel

Clear conceptions.

Coin and the college degree.

lence, as regards strength, harmony, durability, finish, is, when applied to the energies of mind, what we mean by education.

If this be a true idea, the means employed should be such as to accomplish the end desired. We should not labor so much to accumulate vast stores, as to give the mind clear and vivid conceptions, and to stimulate its energies to long and vigorous exertions. That man is not of necessity best educated, who has read the most books, or spent most time in the schools. Those patents of nobility in the republic of letters, written upon sheepskin, and signed by the president of a college, certifying that the bearer has spent four years of his life within its walls, are, in too many instances, synonymous with those labels we see attached to bottles of patent medicine. Some of them are good for all they call for; but too many are the currency of quacks. This fact does not in the least depreciate the value of a sound collegiate education. The gold coin issued by government always carries with it the value upon its face, although there is abundance of the spurious article in circulation that is not worth the brass of which it is made. But there is this difference between the coin and the college degree. Government puts its stamp only upon the genuine article, and we are left to detect the bogus by the want of it; whereas the faculty of

Knowledge of the present.

a college affix their official seal to the spurious and the good alike, and we are without the means of knowing the value of one A. M. over another, and from frequent deception are inclined to doubt all till we have proven them.

Many men in our midst are possessed of the soundest culture, who have never had the advantage of a liberal education. The newspapers, and contact with the world, have been their tutors. The intercourse of society in the business of real life, where contending passions and counter interests impart a wholesome discipline, is a much better nurse of common sense than the cloistered cell. Careful, keen observation has furnished them with the material of thought from sources in which we are least liable to be deceived. The public journals, which are the only real histories that the world produces, enable them to compare the opinions and reasonings of other men with their own. They thus acquire a discipline of mind at the same time that they obtain an accurate and practical knowledge of the times, and are thereby prepared to act understandingly in any emergency.

If we bear in mind the definition of education which we have already given the furnishing the mind with material and putting it to work-we shall not wonder at their success. The richest classical education, unassisted by any kind of practical knowledge, af

Thermopylæ.

Malakoff.

Self-educated men. Halls of Congress.

fords a very uncertain guide in managing present affairs. The student of Grecian lore may be intimately acquainted with the tactics employed in the siege and defense of Thermopyla; but these would by no means be adapted to the taking of the tower on the Malakoff. He may know all the policy and chicanery which Themistocles employed to deceive the Lacædemonians, and secure the completion of the wall of defense around the city of Athens; and yet he may be a novice in devising a network of plots which shall introduce or exclude slavery in the Territories.

The self-educated man frequently meets with eminent success in the management of affairs, because his school has been the present times; while the adept in classical learning fails, because his school was exclusively among the ancients. If we look into our halls of Congress we shall find that the sword of argument cuts keenest, and is handled right and left most dexterously, when wielded by a man who has learned what he knows from his reading of men, and the present workings of civil society, quite as often as when managed by him who has acquired his knowledge among musty folios, or has with pale and sickly countenance delved deepest in the mysteries of science. We often wonder how it is that the members elected from the Territories and newly set