tive notions of things, [accurate ideas] their uses, and the means of self-improvement are communicated. I hope, he continues, that the time will come, when every one will learn to read, write, and cipher, in the same institution, and by the same authority, where morality shall be shown in action, and imposed as a duty, and where mutual civility and refinement of manners will be inculcated. I hope that places of instruction will furnish abundance of ideas, which the learner will learn the art of communicating to others, and that the knowledge thus acquired will extend through every stage of life, and every class of society, and that this knowledge will be practical, from the most common notions of household affairs and agriculture to the deeper conceptions of art and the principles of science. I hope also that the time will come when nothing shall be taught in the school merely for the school, but every thing in reference to the uses of future life. When religious sentiments will be cultivated in every one, not in words merely, but

in deeds; not in superstitious formalities, but in harmony with reason and charity; and that in the school the young will learn every public and private virtue, and become qualified to value, to enjoy, and maintain religious and civil liberty, as well as to raise the standard of true wisdom, and augment the general amount of personal and domestic happiness, in the world. These are rather the suggestions, than the exact words, of Dr. Spurzheim, but they express perfectly the true ends of instruction, and they are happy, who, hearing them, shall imbibe their spirit and accomplish their ends,

NORMAL SCHOOLS

IN

PRUSSIA.

ONE of the most judicious, elegant, and convincing articles, ever written on the subject of public instruction, is Mrs. Austin's preface to the Report of Cousin. Her mind perfectly apprehends the universal features of this beautiful system. She sees that of knowledge, all cannot provide for all, and that the mind that feels the want, cannot procure the supply. She knows that the wise must have pity upon the ignorant, and them that are out of the way, and that they must enlighten the blind, and raise the low. She believes, also that national virtue is obtained and cherished by general intelligence, that neither grow spon

taneously, but are a result of the care and beneficence of the most enlightened and disinterested spirits of a country. To such minds all that she says is properly addressed. She believes that such exist in the stations of middle life, and she writes to just thinkers, and to those who are perfectly sincere, in morals, whoever they are, and wherever they may be, and can exert any influence to those truly desirous to dispel error and enlarge the limits of truth and right reason, to those who would extend and secure the happiness of a people, who can alone become zealous of good works through information of immutable principles of right and wrong.

Mrs. Austin believes that in England a great fault is committed in the offering of selfish motives, of false ambition, to young persons; we wish that we in America were free from this error. The selfish principle in human hearts is strong enough in itself, without being commended and praised as a salutary incentive to intellectual labour. Truth, for its own sake, wisdom, because its ways are pleasantness; benevolence, because