by a flood of French and Italian words; then will the history of romantic amours be preferred to the immortal writings of Addison, Hawkesworth, and Johnson; then will our churches be neglected, and the name of the Supreme Being never be called upon but in profane exclamations; then will our Sundays be appropriated only to feasts and concerts; and then will begin all that train of domestic and political calamities. But I forbear. The prospect is so painful that I cannot help silently imploring the great Arbiter of human affairs to interpose his almighty goodness, and to deliver us from these evils, that at least one spot of the earth may be reserved as a monument of the effects of good education, in order to show in some degree what our species was before the fall, and what it shall be after its restoration.

THE USE OF TOBACCO.

Were it possible for a being who had resided upon our globe to visit the inhabitants of a planet where reason governed, and to tell them that a vile weed was in general use among the inhabitants of the globe it had left, which afforded no nourishment; that this weed was cultivated with immense care; that it was an important article of commerce; that the want of it produced real misery; that its taste was extremely nauseous; that it was unfriendly to health and morals; and that its use was attended with a considerable loss of time and property; the account would be thought incredible, and the author of it would probably be excluded from society for relating a story of so improbable a nature. In no one view is it possible to contemplate the creature man in a more absurd and ridiculous light than in his attachment to

TOBACCO.

The progress of habit in the use of Tobacco is exactly the same as in the use of spirituous liquors. The slaves of it begin by using it only after dinner; then, during the whole afternoon and evening; afterwards before dinner, then before breakfast, and finally, during the whole night. I knew a lady who had passed through all these stages, who used to wake regularly two or three times every night to compose her system with fresh doses of snuff. The appetite for Tobacco is wholly artificial. No person was ever born with a relish for it; even in those persons who are much attached to it, nature frequently recovers her disrelish to it. It ceases to be agreeable in every febrile indisposition. This is so invariably true, that a disrelish to it is often a sign of an approaching, and a return of the appetite for it, a sign of a departing fever. I proceed now to mention some of the influences of the habitual use of Tobacco upon morals.

1. One of the usual effects of smoking and chewing, is thirst.

This thirst cannot be allayed by water; for no sedative or even insipid liquor will be relished after the mouth and throat have been exposed to the stimulus of the smoke or juice of Tobacco. A desire, of course, is excited for strong drinks, and these, when taken between meals, soon lead to intemperance and drunkenness.

2. The use of Tobacco, more especially in smoking, disposes to idleness, and idleness has been considered as the root of all evil. "An idle man's brain," says the celebrated and original Mr. Bunyan, "is the devil's workshop."

3. The use of Tobacco is necessarily connected with the neglect of cleanliness.

4. Tobacco, more especially when used in smoking, is generally offensive to those people who do not use it. To smoke in company, under such circumstances, is a breach of good manners; now, manners have an influence upon morals. They may be considered as the outposts of virtue. A habit of offending the senses of friends or strangers by the use of Tobacco cannot therefore be indulged with innocence. It produces a want of respect for our fellow-creatures, and this always disposes to unkind and unjust behavior towards them. Who ever knew a rude man completely or uniformly moral? * * *

I shall conclude these observations by relating an anecdote of the late Dr. Franklin. A few months before his death, he declared to one of his friends that he had never used Tobacco in any way in the course of his long life, and that he was disposed to believe there was not much advantage to be derived from it, for that he had never met with a man who used it who advised him to follow his example.

THE BIBLE AS A SCHOOL-BOOK.

Before I state my arguments in favor of teaching children to read by means of the Bible, I shall assume the five following propositions:

I. That Christianity is the only true and perfect religion, and that in proportion as mankind adopt its principles and obey its precepts, they will be wise and happy.

II. That a better knowledge of this religion is to be acquired by reading the Bible than in any other way.

III. That the Bible contains more knowledge necessary to man

in his present state than any other book in the world.

IV. That knowledge is most durable, and religious instruction most useful, when imparted in early life.

V. That the Bible, when not read in schools, is seldom read in any subsequent period of life.

My arguments in favor of the use of the Bible as a school-book are founded, first, in the constitution of the human mind. The

memory is the first faculty which opens in the minds of children. Of how much consequence, then, must it be, to impress it with the great truths of Christianity before it is preoccupied with less interesting subjects! There is also a peculiar aptitude in the minds of children for religious knowledge. I have constantly found them, in the first six or seven years of their lives, more inquisitive upon religious subjects than upon any others; and an ingenious instructor of youth has informed me that he has found young children more capable of receiving just ideas upon the most difficult tenets of religion than upon the most simple branches of human knowledge.

There is a wonderful property in the memory which enables it, in old age, to recover the knowledge it had acquired in early life, after it had been apparently forgotten for forty or fifty years. Of how much consequence, then, must it be, to fill the mind with that species of knowledge, in childhood and youth, which, when recalled in the decline of life, will support the soul under the infirmities of age, and smooth the avenues of approaching death! The Bible is the only book which is capable of affording this support to old age; and it is for this reason that we find it resorted to with so much diligence and pleasure by such old people as have read it in early life. I can recollect many instances of this kind, in persons who discovered no attachment to the Bible in the meridian of their lives, who have, notwithstanding, spent the evening of them in reading no other book.

My second argument in favor of the use of the Bible in schools, is founded upon an implied command of God, and upon the practice of several of the wisest nations of the world. In the sixth chapter of Deuteronomy, we find the following words, which are directly to my purpose:-"And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might. And these words which I command thee this day, shall be in thine heart. And thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up." "***

I have heard it proposed that a portion of the Bible should be read every day by the master, as a means of instructing children in it. But this is a poor substitute for obliging children to read it as a school-book; for, by this means, we insensibly engrave, as it were, its contents upon their minds; and it has been remarked that children, instructed in this way in the Scriptures, seldom forget any part of them. They have the same advantage over those persons who have only heard the Scriptures read by a master, that a man who has worked with the tools of a mechanical employment for several years, has over the man who has only

stood a few hours in the workshop, and seen the same business carried on by other people.

I think I am not too sanguine in believing that education, conducted in this manner, would, in the course of two generations, eradicate infidelity from among us, and render civil government scarcely necessary in our country.

In contemplating the political institutions of the United States, I lament that we waste so much time and money in punishing crimes, and take so little pains to prevent them. We profess to be republicans, and yet we neglect the only means of establishing and perpetuating our republican forms of government,—that is, the universal education of our youth in the principles of Christianity by means of the Bible; for this divine Book, above all others, favors that equality among mankind, that respect for just laws, and all those sober and frugal virtues which constitute the soul of republicanism.

LINDLEY MURRAY, 1745-1826.

No work which treats of American literature should fail to notice him whose works on English philology have been the standard educational books on both sides of the Atlantic for half a century. Lindley Murray was born at Swatara, near Lancaster, Pennsylvania, in 1745. He was quite young when his father, an enterprising trader and miller, removed to New York, and there established himself as a merchant. Lindley had, very early, a great ardor in the pursuit of knowledge; and, after being a few years in his father's counting-room, he determined to enter the legal profession, for which he had long felt an inclination; and his father gave him permission to prepare himself for it. He entered the office of his father's counsellor, Benjamin Kissam, Esq., and was for some time a fellowstudent of the illustrious John Jay.

After remaining four years in Mr. Kissam's office, Mr. Murray was admitted to the bar, and entered upon the practice of his profession; and the next year he formed a happy matrimonial connection; but soon his father, whose health was feeble, went to England on business, and in a year sent for his son to join him. He did so, and the united families remained some time in that country. In 1771, however, our author returned to New York, and resumed the profession of law, which he practised on the principles of the strictest Christian benevolence, always urging a peaceable settlement of difficulties in every case where it was at all practicable. At the commencement of the Revolutionary struggle, being in poor health, he removed to Long Island; and, after residing there four years, having much improved, he returned to New York, and entered into mercantile pursuits. He was very successful, and had acquired sufficient to make him independent of business, when he was attacked by a disease that completely debilitated his whole muscular system. His physicians believed that the climate of England would be more favorable to his health, and accordingly he and his wife

embarked for that country in 1784. He selected as his residence the village of Holdgate, within a mile of York. His health seemed to improve for a short time, and he was enabled to walk a little in his garden; but finally he had to give that up and take exercise in his carriage. At length he was compelled to relinquish this also, and from 1809 till his decease-sixteen years he was wholly confined to the house. But his bodily sufferings were the means of chastening his spirit and strengthening those feelings of piety and devotion which he had long cherished. An American1 who visited him in 1819 remarks, "Though so weak as scarcely able to bear his own weight, he has been enabled, by the power of a strong and well-balanced mind, and by the exercise of the Christian virtues, to gain a complete ascendency over himself, and to exhibit an instance of meekness, patience, and humility which affords, I may truly say, one of the most edifying examples I have ever beheld." On the 16th of February, 1826, this eminently good man closed his earthly career.

Few authors have so wide-spread a fame as Lindley Murray, and few have had so many readers. His first publication was The Power of Religion on the Mind,— a treatise of great excellence, which was very favorably received, and passed through numerous editions. His next work was his English Grammar, which was soon followed by his English Reader; and it is doubtless the fact that no other school-books have ever enjoyed so wide a circulation. He afterwards published an Introduction and a Sequel to the Reader, an octavo edition of his Grammar, and several other minor works on the English language.

The following prose extracts are from a series of letters of an autobiographical character.

MODERATION IN ONE'S DESIRES.

My views and wishes, with regard to property, were, in every period of life, contained within a very moderate compass. I was early persuaded that, though "a competence is vital to content," I ought not to annex to that term the idea of much property. And I determined that when I should acquire enough to enable me to maintain and provide for my family, in a respectable and moderate manner, and this according to real and rational, not imaginary and fantastic wants, and a little to spare for the necessities of others, I would decline the pursuits of property, and devote a great part of my time, in some way or other, to the benefit of my fellow-creatures, within the sphere of my abilities to serve them. I perceived that the desire of great possessions generally expands with the gradual acquisition and the full attainment of them; and I imagined that charity and a generous application do not sufficiently correspond with the increase of property. I thought, too, that procuring great wealth has a tendency to produce an elated independence of mind, little connected with that humility which is the ground of all our virtues; that a busy and anxious pursuit of it often excludes views and reflections of infinite importance,

Prof. Griscom.