sipation and seduction with a freshness of appetite and fervor of the passions, known only to clubs of youthful votaries. It is under such circumstances and such influences, that the boy (if he is a boy when he enters college) is to decide for himself, and, as a general rule, to make the final decision, whether he will do well or ill, do right or wrong, do something worthy of himself and the reasonable expectation of his friends, or do nothing, or over-do and break down his constitution, perhaps, past re

covery.

From this simple statement of facts, two or three inferences follow, as obvious and unavoidable conclusions.

1. No one should be exposed to such an ordeal, till he has formed habits of study and adopted principles of action, that may be regarded as somewhat firm and fixed,-that will not be likely to yield to the first breath of temptation which falls upon them. To send a boy to college who has no habits of study, and no love of learning for its own sake, while, at the same time, he has no steadfast purposes of right, no fixed moral or religious principles; to send him, as too many parents do, against his will, though it be to the most Christian college in the land, is to put him on the highway to ruin. It will be no thanks to the parent, if he fails to come to some bad end.

2. He should not be put to such a test, without considerable maturity of intellectual powers. The mind should be taxed, but not overtaxed-exerted, but not strained, in order to the healthy development of its faculties. To require of a boy a man's task, is to dwarf his intellectual, as surely as his bodily growth and strength. The college, as we have already said, is the last stage of the education properly so called; and the last stage of education should be coincident with the last period of youth, when the mind attains its full growth and stature. In earlier boyhood, neither are the faculties capable of bearing the necessary strain, nor is the judgment competent to give the right direction.

3. He should not be subjected to such a pressure, till he has nearly or quite attained his physical growth, nor without a good degree of bodily health and strength. The college course imposes no small tax on the physical constitution. The brain is stimulated and strained to its utmost tension in the direct and almost exclusive service of the mind; and the nervous energies are diverted, drawn off, drained out, if we may be allowed the expression, from all the bodily organs in indirect contributions to this reigning power. To subject the system to such a drain, while, at the same time, its energies are nearly all required to sustain the rapid growth of the body, is little short of suicide. The parent who imposes such a tax on his son, may expect to destroy his health, and shorten his life, if not also to

sacrifice interests dearer than life-to impair his intellect, ruin his character, and wreck all his prospects for this life, with, perhaps, all his hopes for the next. Whereas, if he will wait till his son has arrived very nearly at the growth of all his powers and faculties, and wants only the last touch of the forming, strengthening, and finishing hand of education, he will have every reason to hope, that he will come out a whole man, with a sound mind in a sound body, under the supreme control of an enlightened conscience and a pure heart.*

The age which will meet all these demands better than any other, as a general rule, is perhaps seventeen or eighteen. If there are exceptions to the rule, as there are to all rules, my own judgment and my own observation would lead me to say, that far more should enter after than before this standard age. The average age of those who enter Amherst College is as high as twenty or twenty-one; and more and higher honors, both in college and in public life, have been won by those who have exceeded, than by those who have fallen below the average.

The age which we have fixed upon, from regard to the welfare of the student, is also well adapted to secure the other interests involved. It gives time and scope,-the right time and the proper scope, for the family, the preparatory school, the college and the community, each to impart its benefits and to receive its dues.

It leaves the boy at home under the control of parents, and the influence of brothers, sisters, friends,-the very best place and the very best influences in the world, if the home is at all what it ought to be, while his body, mind and heart are most rapidly growing, and his habits and principles are forming. And it is with a wise reference to this home influence, as well as to the proper education of all her children, that old Massachusetts has provided by law, that every town of any considerable size shall establish a High School, in which the children of the town may be fitted for college, or may acquire a thorough English education, while they yet remain under the parental roof. Parents little know to how much pains and expense they subject themselves in exiling their sons and daughters from home only to injure the completeness of their education.

The age suggested leaves time for the preparatory school to do its work and do it well-to see that the common English branches are thoroughly mastered, and that the youth goes to college well trained in the elements of the Greek and Latin

*Such & complete man will accomplish more for himself and his generation in one year than a half or a third of a man will in two or three; at the same time, he will be likely to live longer in the practice of a profession, which he enters at thirty, than one broken down by ill-advised haste, who commences at twenty-one.

languages. In ordinary cases, it affords none too much time for a perfect preparation. But if perchance a boy is really well prepared at an earlier age, let him spend a year or two in strengthening his physical constitution, or, if that be quite perfect, in acquiring one or more of the modern languages. Then let him go over again with a careful review of all his preparatory studies; and the impulse with which he thus enters college, will bear him on with an increased rapidity and power through the whole collegiate course.

The college has quite as great, if not even a greater interest at stake, in the mature age of those who enter. If the Presidents and Professors might safely calculate on having to do, not with reluctant, half-formed, heedless boys, but with full-grown, strong, and earnest young men, well trained in all the preparatory studies, and eager to enter on the new and untrodden paths of learning, as one after another they shall open before them, this alone were sufficient to revolutionize the course of study, to transform the manner and spirit of their instructions, and to lift the college up to a higher platform of intellectual and moral culture.

Lastly, the cause of letters and the community would reap the benefit of the change. We should see fewer boys in the pulpit, at the bar, and in all the public walks of life. Young America would have an older head put upon his young shoulders. Older and wiser men would wield the power of the pen, of the press, of the government, and of public opinion. As in college, so in all that is done or directed by educated men, there would be more power, and it would be better regulated.

Precocious development is every where-whether in the body or the mind, in the individual or the State-more or less unhealthy development. This is pre-eminently the disease and the danger of our country. Like a raging fever, it is making havoc with the health and life, the minds and hearts of our youthful countrymen. Perhaps the first step towards a cure would be to check it in the educated men, the leading minds of the community. The public men of Israel did not enter upon their official duties till the age of thirty; and even the man who appeared in Judea eighteen centuries ago as a model for our race, conformed to this usage. Were the same limit imposed on all who hold stations of power and influence in our age and country, the whole spirit and soul and body of American society would be in a far more healthy condition.

W. S. TYLER.

THE RELIGIOUS TEACHING OF THE SCHOOL-ROOM.

Ir would be very absurd if sectarian strife should banish from our school-rooms that on which every Christian sect is based, viz., Christianity itself. Such a result would be equally prejudicial to the contending parties and to our educational interests. One denomination had far better submit to see itself outstripped in influence, than that the principles of a common faith should have no place in the instructions of the school-room. If Christianity is not carefully taught to children, religious doctrines of all kinds will very soon lose their influence among men. Christian people, therefore, will desire that the Christian religion be taught to childhood; and if this is to be done by a person of a different denomination from me, who will certainly present the truth in the color given it by his own denominational views, this is of but little consequence so long as I know that he is a Christian who will not falsify the great doctrines of the Christian scheme.

These principles will be admitted by most. The unbeliever in Christianity, alone will prominently object to their application, and yet even his better judgment must yield conviction here upon an enlarged and liberal view. In objecting to Christianity, we object to education itself, for it is not too much to affirm that all the properly educational influence by which we are to-day surrounded, and all the true education of the race in any age, have been owing to Christianity. Before the appearance of the Christian religion there was no such thing as a true education known. True, the world cannot be said to have been at that time in utter ignorance; much had been discovered and was known in art and science and philosophy. Neither can it be affirmed that there was then no means of instruction, for we find the frequent existence of schools in which the young were taught the principles and the results of knowledge. But education in the only proper sense of the term, education as a leading out, as an unfolding of the man, and this for no other reason than because of the man's own excellence and worth, we do not find amid all the knowledge nor amid all the schools of antiquity. The Christian religion first introduced it to the world.

The only ground for objection to this affirmation lies in the facts of Grecian history. It may be contended that in Greece education was cultivated according to its high ideal, long before the birth of Christ. But, while it is fully admitted that the Greeks stood upon a very high point of refined culture, that they had carried out art and science and philosophy to a very wonderful extent, yet must the affirmation be repeated, that

No

education in its true sense, was not found among them. part of the culture of the Greek was for his own sake, but all of it was directed for the sake of the state. The Greek was taught and cultivated that he might be made a better citizen, and not that he might become a nobler man. This is the idea which underlay all that which, in a false sense, is termed Grecian education. Everything in it was directed towards the state, and never stopped short with the individual. True, this general idea had its specific development in different forms among the different Grecian states, varying in each one according to what was fancied to be the predominant want or interest of the state, but never losing its distinctive feature of cultivating the individual for the citizen, and not for the man. Education thus dates its first appearance among men after the coming of Christ and the introduction of His religion.

In subsequent time, education has had a hold upon men, and progressed just as Christianity has strengthened and brightened. We might have expected that even after the religion of Christ had been nominally introduced among the barbarous hordes who overran Europe and broke up the Roman Empire-ages might elapse before they should even feebly understand the application of its principles. They were savages who might challenge comparison, for brutal ferocity and violence of passion, with any races the world has known, and who were almost on a level with the lowest in stupidity of intellect. And yet, not three centuries after the nominal conversion of Clovis, we find the basis for the University of Paris laid by Charlemagne; and from the fact that Professors were invited to his court from England, Ire land, and Germany, we infer that education had followed the in troduction of Christianity in these countries even earlier than in France. Christianity has since kept on its progressive working, and education has followed it, with equal pace, till the present day. So now, the teaching of the school-room must be religious and Christian, in order that the school-room itself may be sustained. This should be advocated both by Christians and unbelievers, upon both religious and educational grounds.

S.

A GRAMMATICAL PLAY ON THE WORD THAT.

Now that is a word which may often be joined, For that that may be doubled is clear to the mind, And that that that is right, is as plain to the view, As that that that that we use, is rightly used too, And that that that that that line has in it, is right In accordance with grammar, is plain in our sight. In the above lines, the word that is used in perfect accordance with the rules of grammar.-Albany Express.