solete, both in idea and practice; and are numbered with the lost arts of the ancients? It has been remarked, that there are thousands of boys in this great country, not one of whom has ever made a bow, unless when he had occasion to dodge a snow-ball, a brick-bat, or a bowlder.'

"Some eight or ten winters since, Ex-Governor Everett, of Massachusetts, with the late Amos Lawrence, was, in a sleigh, riding into Boston. As they approached a school-house, a score of young boys rushed into the street, to enjoy their afternoon recess. Said the Governor to his friend, Let us observe whether these boys make obeisance to us, as we were taught to do fifty years ago." At the same time he expressed the fear, that habits of civility were less practised than formerly. As they passed the school-house, all question and doubt upon the subject received a speedy, if not a satisfactory settlement; for each one of those twenty juvenile New Englanders did his best at snow-balling the way-faring dignitaries."

"That more regard," says Mr. NORTHEND, the late distinguished Principal of the Connecticut State Normal School, "should be manifested by the young to rules of etiquette and courtesy, must be admitted by every observing mind. There is too little reverence for age and authority; too slight a respect to laws of both man and God. The transition from boyhood to imagined manhood is altogether too rapid, as by it the son is, often, placed above the parent, and the pupils taught become much wiser, in their own estimation, than their teachers. Boys in their undue anxiety to become men, are neither men nor boys, but form a new, peculiar race.' To rectify these evil tendencies, the School Library must come to the aid of the teacher and the parent.

8. Good Libraries would not fail to exert a happy influence in eradicating vicious habits. "Habitual novel reading," says Hon. JOHN D. PHILBRICK, recently Superintendent of Common Schools of Connecticut, and now City Superintendent of Boston, "is extremely detrimental to the health and vigor of both body and mind. Works of fiction, and those of the baser sort, constitute almost the entire staple of the reading of the multitudes of our youth. This species of literature has increased, within a few years, to an alarming extent, and its readers have increased in a corresponding ratio. It is spreading over the land like a moral plague, tainting the whole moral atmosphere with its pestilential breath. The reading of such productions inflames the passions, depraves the imagination, and corrupts the heart. A recent author has truly said, "They paint for our imitation, humane murders, licentious saints, holy infi

dels, and honest robbers. Over loathsome women and unutterably vile men, is thrown the checkered light of a hot imagination, until they glow with an infernal luster.'

"Would you," asks Prof. READ, "effectually banish from the generation growing up, stupid knavery, low vices, idleness, loafing, running about upon the Sabbath? These and kindred vices will be most effectually banished by sending out into every neighborhood the means and incentives of intellectual culture.

"What boy," inquires HORACE MANN, "what boy, at least, is there, who is not in daily peril of being corrupted by the evil communications of his elders? We all know, that there are self-styled gentlemen amongst us,-self-styled gentlemen,-who daily, and hourly, lap their tongues in the foulness of profanity; and though, through a morally insane perversion, they may restrain themselves, in the presence of ladies and of clergymen, yet it is only for the passing hour, when they hesitate not to pour out the pent-up flood, to deluge and defile the spotless purity of childhood, and this, too, at an age, when these polluting stains sink, centre-deep, into their young and tender hearts, so that no moral bleachery can ever afterwards wholly cleanse and purify them."

It is always with pain and sorrow, that the good man hears God's name taken in vain; yet, in fervent charity may he hope that, "The accusing spirit flew up to Heaven's chancery with the oath, and as she wrote it down, dropped a tear on the word, and blotted it out forever." By multiplying the purest models of literature, we may confidently hope to do much towards rooting out this vile habit, and implanting in the breasts of our youth an unswerving reverence for the sacred name and character of the Supreme Being.

Another evil habit to which a love of reading, acquired by the School Library, would prove superior, is the low and grovelling desire to witness the vulgar minstrels, and corrupt ballet dancers, who stroll through the land-not of the Venus Celestial sort, but of the Venus Infernal. "One of the most striking things," says HORACE MANN, "in the Letters from Abroad,' by Miss C. M. Sedgwick, is the uniform and energetic condemnation which that true American lady bestows upon opera-dancers, and the whole corps de ballet, for the public and shameless exhibition of their persons upon the stage. Have

e young ladies of our cities a nicer sense of propriety, of modesty, and of all the elements of female loveliness, than this excellent author, who has written so much for their improvement, and who is herself so admirable an example of all feminine purity and delicacy? And have the young men of America

a higher ideal of what belongs to a true gentleman,—to a man of lofty and noble nature, than a writer, who is so justly celebrated, in both hemispheres, for her pure and elevated conceptions of human character ?"

9. By placing in every School Library one or two standard works on School Architecture, we should soon see a decided improvement in the size, style, arrangement, and comfort of our school-houses, and in the selection of the most beautiful and appropriate locations for, them-thus rendering them attractive, rather than repulsive, to the youth who repair there for the highest and holiest of purposes. What Mr. MANN said eighteen years ago of the school-houses of Massachusetts, is equally applicable to those of Wisconsin at the present day."Our school-houses," said he, "are a fair index or exponent of our interest in Public Education. Suppose, at this moment, some potent enchanter, by the waving of his magic wand, should take up all the twenty-eight hundred school-houses of Massachusetts, with all the little triangular and non-descript spots of earth whereon and wherein they have been squeezed,whether sand bank, morass, bleak knoll, or torrid plain,-and whirling them through the affrighted air, should set them all down, visibly, round about us, in this place; and then should take us up into some watch-tower or observatory, where, at one view, we could behold the whole as they were encamped round about, each one true to the point of compass which marked its nativity, each one retaining its own color or no-color, each one standing on its own heath, hillock or fen ;-I ask, my friends, if, in this new spectacle under the sun, with its motley hues of red, gray, and doubtful, with its windows sprinkled with patterns taken from Joseph's many-colored coat, with its broken chimneys, with its shingles and clap-boards flapping and clattering in the wind, as if giving public notice that they were about to depart, I ask, if, in this indescribable and unnameable group of architecture, we should not see the true image, reflection and embodiment of our own love, attachment and regard for Public Schools and Public Education, as, in a mirror, face answereth to face? But, however neglected, forgotten, forlorn, these edifices may be, yet within their walls is con-tained the young and blooming creation of God. In them are our hope, the hopes of the earth. There are gathered together what posterity shall look back upon, as we now look back upon heroes and sages, and martyrs and apostles; or as we look back upon bandits and inquisitors and sybarites. Our dearest treasures do not consist in lands and tenements, in rail-roads and banks, in ware-houses or in ships upon every sea; they

are within those doors, beneath those humble roofs; and is it not our solemn duty to hold every other earthly interest subordinate to their welfare?"

10. School Libraries will create the germs of thought in the minds of our ingenious youth, and will thus be likely to lead to useful inventions. We know not whose humble roof may shelter a Franklin, a Newton, a Watt, an Arkwright, a Fulton, a Whitney, or a Morse.

"Of what use is all your studying and your books?" said an honest farmer to an ingenious artist. "They don't make the corn grow, nor produce vegetables for market. My Sam does more good with his plough in one month, than you can do with your books and papers in one year.'

"What plough does your son use?" said the artist, quietly. "Why, he uses 's plough, to be sure. He can do nothing with any other. By using this plough, we save half the labor, and raise three times as much as we did with the old wooden concern."

The artist turned over one of his sheets, and showed the farmer a drawing of his much-praised plough, saying with a smile, "I am the inventor of your favorite plough, and my name

is."

The astonished farmer, it is said, shook the artist heartily by the hand, and invited him to call at the farm-house, and make it his home as long as he liked.

11. A good School Library in every neighborhood, would serve a most important purpose, in giving the rising generation a better idea of the learned professions, commerce, manufactures, and the mechanic arts, and of the requisite amount of knowledge and preparation necessary to fit them for engaging, with a fair prospect of success, in any of these several pursuits. An appropriate proportion of the best works on Agriculture, Horticulture, stock and fruit raising, the culture of the Chinese sugar cane, and other branches of Farm Husbandry, would tend to dignify the earliest and noblest occupation of man, and would be worth many thousands of dollars annually, to the yeomanry of our State, their rising sons and daughters. "The farmer and mechanic, and even the housewife," the late Judge BUEL well remarked, require professional books,-books that will instruct them in their several employmentsthat will render their labors more enlightened, more pleasant, more profitable, more respectable, as much as the lawyer, the physician, or the clergy require professional books to perfect them in their several vocations."

12. How few, comparatively, have any practical knowledge of physical education, its wants and necessities, its neglects and

penalties. It is the physical condition of the child from its birth onward, and the physical condition of the parents before its birth, that involve its health, growth, and longevity. Air, temperature, dress, diet and exercise, with their proper relations and bearings to each other, have more to do with the successful rearing of children, than the most devoted maternal love, ignorant of these requisites, or any amount of the best medicines ever devised by the skill of man. Nearly a fourth part of the human race die before they attain the age of a single year. It has been well asked, what would the farmer or the shepherd say, if he should lose nearly a fourth part of all his lambs and kids before a seventieth part of their natural life had been reached! Before attaining the age of five years, more than a third part of all our race die-a great majority of them from ignorance on the part of their parents of the great laws of physical education. How much of human life would be saved, bereavement and misery avoided; and how much of joyous health, rosy beauty, and unspeakable happiness, would be promoted, if we had in every School Library throughout the length and breadth of the State, so all could read and profit by them, such works as Dr. Combe's Principles of Physiology as applied to Health and Education, and kindred works on the mental and physical condition of man, and the great laws of nature, relating to the preservation of health, and the longevity and happiness of our race.

13. The School Library would diminish the commission of crime. It has been the experience of the civilized world, that education has invariably had this effect. Scotland presents a remarkable instance of the diminution of crime, the increase of public wealth, and the diffusion of private comforts, as the result of the increased and increasing attention to the education of the people. Little care is paid to educating the masses in Spain, and, as the natural consequence, we find there twelve hundred and thirty-three convictions for murder in a single year, seventeen hundred and seventy-three convictions on charges of maiming with intent to kill, and sixteen hundred and twenty persons convicted of robbery under aggravated circumstances. According to the returns made to the British Parliament, the commitments for crimes, in an average of nine years, in proportion to population, are as follows: In Manchester, the most infidel city in Great Britain, 1 in 140; in London, 1 in 800; in all Ireland, 1 in 1600; and in Scotland, celebrated for learning and religion, 1 in 20,000! Out of nearly 28,000 persons convicted of crime in the State of New York, during a period of ten years, but 128 had enjoyed the benefits of a good common school education, and only about one half could either