Mountains have a very evident analogy with the water springs, the common school houses with the smaller ponds, the academies and high schools with the lakes, and Champlain and the Connecticut with the University and College. These springs, after giving much comfort and service and health to the dwellers around them, send off their little, dancing, loitering streams to the ponds. There the water from many springs is collected, commingled and softened, and prepared to furnish a constant little mill stream doing its many services of mechanical labor, while it flows on, with like streams from other ponds, into the larger pond or lake. And then, after supplying other wants, exciting to larger enterprise and meeting the demands of a wealthier and more cultivated society, there is a portion to flow off perpetually into the great lake and river, there to perform a part, and acquire a larger power, and then to roll off into the great common universal ocean.

So from the cabins and private residences, scattered all over our hill-sides and far away up the valleys of the mountains beside these bubbling springs, children are gathered into the school house. Here by mingling with each other, each sheds off some of his rougher personal peculiarities and gains much knowledge and culture to fit him for enterprise and usefulness. Thence some go out to the necessary business of the farm, the shop and factory, and others pass on, with their fellows from other schools, to the high school and academy. Here goes on a similar process of cultivating, enlarging and polishing, and a similar sifting, from which some are drawn out directly into the busy enterprises of the country, while a portion pass on, to meet other like portions from other academies at the University and the College. After honorably passing through the thorough training of these institutions of noblest purpose and highest value, these sifted and selected children of our families, scatter away again, like the water from our mountain springs, over the wide ocean of human life and enterprise and usefulness. There is an intimate relation between all our educational institutions. The college is necessary to the highest culture, and the more powerful and nobler enterprises of the world. The academy is necessary to the college. The com

mon school must furnish pupils for the academy. And the vital source and fountain of all is the Family.

If, by the digging down of the outlet of all our ponds and lakes the water should flow off suddenly in swollen torrents, the landscape would be shorn of its beauty, the meadows become barren, the mills and factories swept away, or else be for a time blocked up with surplus water, and then left as on dry land, and the varied beauty and industry and sources of wealth of our thriving State would be ruined; even so all that is beautiful useful and noble in the intellectual and moral character of Vermont would be dried up and ruinous, if her school houses were torn down, or should be left to decay.

It seems to be a law of Providence, that boys and girls should be raised among our mountains, to stimulate and carry forward the enterprises of the world, as much that springs and streams should rise here and run off to purify and swell the great rivers that flow through other states and other climes. We only imitate nature, if we collect and detain this living tide of intellectual and moral power, within the school house, academy and college, till it is fitted to flow on, with a sober steady current, that shall strengthen and bless the progress of the human race. C. E. F.

COLBURN'S ARITHMETIC.-The President of the Board of Education, at the Sandwich Islands, speaking of school-books, remarks" It is safe to say, that translations of the works of that remarkable genius, Warren Colburn, especially his mental arithmetic, pursuing, as it does, the inductive method, have done more than any other works, to awaken and discipline the native mind." -Jour. of Missions.

THE SEAT OF LIFF.-M. Brown Sequard, in a recent lecture before the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons, London, stated that he had found a spot in the brain, not larger than the head of a pin, which, if merely touched by a foreign body, produces death as instantaneously as if the individual had been struck S. & H. J. by lightning.

TO THE SUMMER TEACHERS.
With the bright, gentle messengers of Spring,
The birds. and flowers, and pleasant breezes,
The life-giving shower, and warm sunshine,
Ye are going forth. Will ye, too, like them,
Bless all who come within your
influence?

Or, shall it be your highest aim to pass,

As best you may, the long, bright Summer hours
Content, if to your ears no murmurs come
From patrons disaffected; reckoning

The days, days of toil unwillingly performed;
That you your compensation may receive?
You have freely chosen your vocation :
Have you weighed it well in all its bearings?
Know you that minds which may forever live,
And ever grow in knowledge and in goodness,
Are to your care consigned? It may depend
On you whether this life be one of beauty
And of joy, of purity and holy love,

Or whether death-eternal, dark, despairing.

Shall be theirs. Oh! bear this in mind, and seek,
Oh! seek, with vigilant, earnest prayer,

Wisdom from Him who giveth liberally ;

And to that prayer He surely will give heed.
Oh! do not dare to teach without His guidance.

This obtained, toil on; and though sometimes in vain
Your labor seems, and little prized by those

For whom 'tis taken, yet do not falter

Success shall one day crown your patient efforts.
Then onward and upward tend your busy feet,

Until, at length, the sought-for goal attained,

A glorious rest awaits you; while, perchance,
Your crown, a Savior's gift, wath stars shall glitter-
Seuls by your efforts saved from death eternal.

EVA

To divert, at any time, a troublesome fancy, run to thy books. They presently fix thee to them, and drive the other out of thy sight. They always receive thee with the same kindness.

Fuller.

UNIVERSAL KINDNESS,

THE HIGHEST RULE OF SCHOOL GOVERNMENT

An Essay delivered before the Chittenden County Teachers Association, at Williston, December 18th, 1858.

BY W. IRVING BYINGTON, OF HINESBURGH.

Burke has said that good order is the foundation of every good thing. Still another trite saying has been handed down to us, that order is heaven's first law. When this universe When this universe sprang into existence, it was decreed that each part should harmonize with the whole; that our own planet should move in symmetrical harmony among the other planets, while all together should revolve around one common center. We should learn from such an example constantly before us, to govern our lesser works by the same principle of harmony. To insure this in the state, civi governments have been established. To insure it in society, the family relation has been instituted. The subject and the child are placed under a discipline, that each may learn the principle of self-government.

Next to the parent in the government of the child, stands the teacher. He must mould the mind He must arouse its latent life and turn this newly aroused activity into its proper channel. Vice must be uprooted in the mind and virtue must be implanted there. The low and groveling purpose must be exchanged for one high and noble. So much the teacher should accomplish. He should rest satisfied, only when he realizes in his pu pil his own highest ideal of right. Happy indeed would that teacher be, who was left to expend all of his energy and skill in moulding a single mind. But each teacher must educate a vaviety of minds.

As it is necessary that the parent should be intrusted with au thority over the child, so must the teacher be clothed with positive authority in the management of his school. Every teacher, and especially one who has just commenced teaching, finds it ex

ceedingly difficult to preserve order in school. Rules which one scholar willingly obeys, another bolts at. Rules which to the teacher seem right and just, the school sometimes band together to annul. For example, it is hard for children to learn that whispering in school is wrong, and the teacher who would prevent it, is teased, from morning till night, to let this, that, or the other, speak about his lesson. If he is observant, he can but perceive that the boys find an endless theme of whispering study, in trading jack-knives and pocket books; while innocent little girls find rouch in their books, which they must communicate, of petty dolls and other trinkets. A thousand petty annoyances meet the teacher every day in his school. Every hour is his patience tried, until he comes to believe that, if he holds out to the end of his school, "patience will have her perfect work."

It has ever been the teacher's study how best to govern in school. One teacher adopts rigid discipline, and alone, in retirement, writes out a system of rules, weighing and balancing each in turn, until he imagines that all will work like the wheels of a watch, but he finds that his mainspring needs a constantly increasing pressure, that his watch often runs down, and, in short, that his stiff rules are inconsistent with human nature. Another makes his own present feeling the rule of action. As a natural result he is inconsistent with himself. The pupil is quick to see this inconsistency, and loses his respect for the teacher. Indeed, the teacher loses his own self-respect, and finds himself, at last, in a dilemma.

We have cited extreme cases. There is a vast difference be tween rigid discipline and extreme looseness. In the first there is an aim, an appeal, at least, to the passion of fear, while in the last there is no aim, no purpose, and this shows the teacher either too weak, or too indolent, to form a plan of discipline.

Let us carefully examine the ground-work of the first, while we pass the second as unworthy of notice.

The advocates of rigid discipline trace its origin back to the ancients. They tell us that it was transmitted to our New EngLand soil by the Puritan Fathers. Nor is it strange that men,