acquires its purest aliment, and gathers strength for the sternest labors of intellect and the loftiest soarings of imagination. We have heard, indeed, of professors, and that in New England colleges, who have pronounced a library a comparatively useless appendage to an institution of learning, and have urged that, if one be possessed, it should be open only for the use of instructers and visiters. It may be true that the libraries of some of our colleges are nearly useless, and might almost as well be closed to the visits of the students; but wherever this is the case, we should be almost ready to recommend that the college itself be closed also, and the labors of instructers totally cease, till a library could be gathered, sufficient to allure the curiosity and answer the inquiries of the eager minds of aspiring youth. Not that comparatively few books may not suffice for the immediate reading of the students of a college. The books that are read through, form but a small part of any public library. Many are only occasionally consulted, and many others lie in their places for a whole generation, without being opened or even taken down. Yet they do not lie there in vain. Even from the silent and dusty alcoves in which they are contained, they put forth an influence which cannot but be salutary. They proclaim the learning of which they are the depositories, and thus enlarge the sphere of that most useful branch of knowledge, which consists in knowing where knowledge is to be found. Even though our eyes rest only upon their names and covers, books kindle in our minds a desire for wider knowledge, and enlarge our conceptions of its unmeasured domain. They speak to us of the long and shadowy past from which they come, so fraught with wisdom, yet so apt to be forgotten in the bustling enterprises of the present. They are monuments of the labors which the great minds of other ages have achieved; and, by the contrasts they suggest, they remind us of our own dwarfish stature and puny exertions. They are also to go down to the depths of the distant future; and to a remote posterity, to whom our age shall be like antiquity, they are to bear the immortal treasures of knowledge. To that far off future they carry forward our thoughts and purposes, and thus open before us new incentives to every high and generous labor. In these, as in innumerable other ways, do books, even by their very presence, contribute to enlarge and elevate the VOL. VIII.NO. XXXII. 65 mind of the scholar. He thrives both by drinking from the perennial fountains they contain, and by breathing the exhilarating atmosphere they create around them. To spend the period of academic study in the midst of a valuable library, and to have been taught how to use it aright, are advantages to the student which he can hardly estimate too highly, and for the want of which his literary character and spirit may suffer during his whole life. To increase, then, the libraries in our colleges, and render them sufficiently large, not only to subserve the purposes of the immediate reading of students, but also to open before them the wide range of the world's literature, we believe to be an object among the most worthy and important that can claim the attention and the exertions of all the friends of really liberal education. ARTICLE III. DEVELOPMENT OF CHARACTER UNDER THE INFLUENCE OF POPULAR EDUCATION. THERE is scarcely any point of wider difference between some of the nations of our world and others, than that of education. In some, provision for the training of the mind, except in the dogmas and superstitions of a false religion, seems regarded as scarcely worth a thought; and the cultivation of the intellectual powers in any individual instances is a matter of comparatively rare occurrence. In other countries, on the contrary, education is a subject in which the State wisely interests itself; provides for it by statute, raises a fund or lays a tax for the express purpose of defraying the expenses of it, and by law provides for its thorough superintendence, and systematizes its prosecution. Many of these United States stand on high ground in this important respect. The late census exhibits some interesting facts. While it appears, that in several of our States there is not yet enjoyed,—or not thoroughly prosecuted,— an extended system of popular education, it shows that in a good number of these States, its advantages are variously, yet extensively, enjoyed. It appears, that, for the purposes of what may be called popular education, we have, of academies and grammar schools, 3,242; of common schools, 47,209; giving, as the whole number of our institutions for popular education, 50,451. According to a table compiled for one of our southern journals, it appears, as the effect of our extensive common school systems, that in Maryland there is the proportion of but one to every 27 who cannot read or write; in Louisiana, one to 38; in Ohio, one to 43; Pennsylvania, one to 50; New York, one to 56; New Jersey, one to 58; Rhode Island, one to 67; Michigan, one to 97; Maine, one to 108; while, better still,in the other New England States, in Massachusetts, appears the gratifying fact, that there is but one to 166; in New Hampshire, but one to 310; in Vermont, but one to 473; and best of all in Connecticut, the leader among the States in the enterprise of popular education, but one to 568. Out of our population, then, of 17,000,000, there is a grand proportion who can read and write their own language,-two fundamental things in popular education. And the man who can do these has qualifications which, important in themselves, generally vouch for the presence of other things, such as arithmetic, geography and grammar. And, with these five elements of education, any man of common capacities is irrevocably beyond the confines of illiteracy. He will have occasion to consider it purely his own fault, if he do not know something, and appear to decent advantage among men of common education. A careful investigation would probably show, that a fair proportion of those, whom the census reports as people who can read and write, can also boast of attainments and culture, gained in the academy, high school or gymnasium, preparing them for various positions in general society, and in the body politic; and approaching, by very respectable advances, towards the positions even of those who have had their education in the college and the professional seminary Possibly the men of collegiate and professional education are included in the census-reports of those who can read and write. But their subtraction would not very greatly diminish the estimate. And, inasmuch as the men of collegiate and professional education began their intellectual ascent upon the ladder of common-school learning, it is proper to say, that they are sharers in what is called popular education. Now, between the conclusion of the course of education in the academy or high school, and that point of intelligence and cultivation which is seen in a good proportion of people in general society in our best provided States, what are the instrumentalities concerned in developing the intellectual character? After the school-master and the academy preceptor, who, or what, gives direction to the minds of the popularly educated? For not alone persons, but circumstances and systems of things combined, are concerned in moulding and bringing out the characteristics of the mind. Here is a vast mass of American intellect, sufficiently trained by means of what is called popular education, to be brought into powerful action, for good or ill to themselves; and sufficiently thrown open to influences of various kinds, to render of deep interest the inquiry, what are the developments of character consequent on general education? It is also to be considered, what is the influence of so many who have had the advantages of popular education themselves; and what influence is a predominating one upon those who have not? That portion of the mass of mind in our country which has been educated, influences that which has not, and stamps its own character upon it. And, if it be true, that "a little leaven leaveneth the whole lump," it may be regarded as certain, that such a fair proportion of popularly educated mind in our country will exert a control such as to render it proper to say, that through the mental culture of so many, and the influence of those many on the remainder, we are, in the popular sense, an educated nation. That a system of popular education, having such an extent, would put a wide difference between the intellectual character and elevation of the people of three such countries as America, Great Britain or Prussia, as examples, and nations like China, Hindoostan, Turkey, or Persia, it is natural to conclude. And any one who should turn his attention to the subject, and pursue his researches with care and industry, would doubtless find himself collecting materials for a stronger argument in favor of popular education, as promoted in our country, than has yet been exhibited. Not that it would become us to compliment ourselves as a nation, and to say "we are the people, and wisdom shall die with us;" but, that it would be well for us to understand what are our obligations to that gracious Providence, who, in addition to the light of the Christian religion, has also given us so richly, the means for intellectual culture in the light of science and of all useful knowledge. Doubtless, more is to be attributed to the Christian religion, than to education in itself considered, as putting the wide difference between the people of the two classes of nations which have been mentioned. For the Christian religion is the grand elevator and educator of the human mind. But there are points in which the instrumentality of popular education,in causing the differences alluded to, will be seen, as powerfully auxiliary to the Christian religion in this effect; while also working important effects peculiarly its own. This remark we make with reference to the good which comes of education, as an auxiliary to the intellectual influence of the Christian religion ; while we are compelled to know, and feel too, that where profligacy and errors in matters of religion stand associated with education, there education itself becomes a tremendous engine of moral mischief and destruction. Finding such an amount of mind, then, prepared by popular education to be operated upon and developed, it is natural to inquire, what are some of the instrumentalities concerned? The men who, as the quaint expression is, have "been to college," in their place are an interesting class; and on their character much is depending. But the men who have never darkened any doors loftier than those of the high school and academy, or even of the common school, as constituting the majority, and as having character to be developed, may possess deeper interest for the man who loves his country, and is anticipating its future good. The first instrumentality in the development of character in the popularly educated, is the press. Millions of people, who can read and write their own language, are at once accessible by this mighty instrumentality; bringing into contact with their minds, and to exert influence on their characters, the whole universe of written thought. Let us consider this instrumentality, first, as it is endlessly various, for both good and ill. The man who can read is offered, from the press, these various descriptions of publications, the newspaper, weekly and daily; and who can tell if steam, or electricity combined with magnetism, or some other combination of principles in natural philosophy, shall not yet make it hourly. Here is the mammoth sheet, weekly or monthly, with its news, novels, and nonsense, more than the man can read in the largest leisure of a week, if he be a decently industrious man; and all for a shilling, too,—a consid |