In the family, too, although the higher classes took care that their children should improve the mind, all, from the highest to the lowest, were earnest in efforts to train the rising generation to have healthy, strong, and beautiful bodies. And when these people met at their national festivals, they not only read or recited history and poetry before these great assemblies, but they still more delighted in games and sports, which exhibited the beauty, strength, gracefulness, and skill of the human body.

But the American people have pursued a very different course. It is true that a large portion of them have provided schools for educating the minds of their children; but instead of providing teachers to train the bodies of their offspring, most of them have not only entirely neglected it, but have done almost everything they could do to train their children to become feeble, sickly, and ugly. And those who have not pursued so foolish a course have taken very little pains to secure the proper education of the body for their offspring during the period of their school life..

In consequence of this dreadful neglect and mismanagement, the children of this country are every year becoming less and less healthful and good-looking. Every year I hear more and more complaints of the poor health that is so very common among grown people, especially among women. And physicians say, that this is an evil that is constantly increasing, so that they fear, ere long, there will be no healthy women in the country.

At the same time, among all classes of our land, we are constantly hearing of the superior health and activity of our ancestors. Their physical health and strength, and their power of labor and endurance, were altogether beyond any thing witnessed in the present generation.

Travellers, when they go to other countries, especially when they visit England, from whence our ancestors came, are struck with the contrast between the appearance of American women and those of other countries, in the matter of health. In this nation, it is rare to see a married woman of thirty or forty, especially in the more wealthy classes, who retains the fulness of person and freshness of complexion that mark good health. But in England, almost all the women are in the full perfection of womanhood at that period of life.

Now, it is a fact, that the health of children depends very much on the health of their parents. Feeble and sickly fathers and mothers seldom have strong and healthy children. And when one parent is well and the other sickly, then a part of the children will be sickly and a part healthy. Thus the more parents become unhealthy the more feeble children will be born. And when these feeble children grow up and become parents,

they will have a still more puny and degenerate offspring. So the case will go on, from bad to worse, with every generation. What then, if what I state be true, are the prospects of this nation, unless some great and radical change is effected?

Such a change is possible. The American people have far better advantages than the Greeks had to train their offspring to be strong, healthful, and beautiful, while the means of retrieving the mischief already done are in their hands. Nothing is needed but a full knowledge of the case, and then the application of that practical common sense and efficiency to this object which secures to them such wonderful success in all their business affairs.

EARLY MENTAL CULTURE.

THE universal admission that success in life and personal consideration depend on intellectual development and extensive knowledge, has led many, in their ignorance of physiological principles, to force mental labor on young children. But, in most cases, both the minds and bodies of the little sufferers have been enfeebled by an over-exertion of the brain, when as yet imperfectly formed. There is nothing more painful to witness than the unnatural disproportion which mental precocity introduces between physical and intellectual life. Parents and teachers have much to answer for, who, regardless of the manifest designs of nature, condemn young children to sedentary occupations, and force intellectual acquirements upon their tender minds, at the risk of unduly exciting the nervous system, injuring the brain, and undermining the constitution. So close is the immediate connection between mind and body, that the former cannot be over-exerted without the latter feeling the baneful effects of the undue excitement.

The most eminent physicians of ancient and modern times proclaim the fatal influence which overstraining the mind of youth has on the health and bodily frame. Of the numerous medical authorities which we could bring forward on this point, we will confine ourselves to one, that of the celebrated Tissot, who says, "Long continued application in childhood destroys life. I have seen young children of great mental activity, who manifested a passion for learning far above their age, and I foresaw with grief the fate which awaited them; they commenced their career as progidies, and ended by becoming idiots or persons of very weak minds. No custom is more improper or cruel than that of some parents who require of their children much intellectual labor and great progress in their study. It is the tomb of their talent and their health."

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Of

those who have survived the direful effects of a premature and exclusive excitement of the mind, few indeed have ever risen to eminence.

The histories of the nations among which classical literature and the sciences have been much cultivated, and which have consequently afforded parents opportunities or inducements to force abstract studies upon their children, abound in facts which prove the truth of these observations. Intellectual precocity is but too frequently attended by premature death or debility through life. The instances are very rare of young genuises having arrived at old age; whilst, on the contrary, many of those whose education began comparatively late, have remained engaged to the end of a long life in the most intensely intellectual labor.

"Experience," says Dr. Spurzheim, "demonstrates, that of any number of children of equal intellectual power, those who receive no particular care in childhood, and who do not learn to read and write until the constitution begins to be consolidated, but who enjoy the benefit of a good physical education, very soon surpass, in their studies, those who commence earlier and read numerous books when very young. The mind ought never to be cultivated at the expense of the body; and physical education ought to precede that of the intellect, and then proceed simultaneously with it, without cultivating one faculty to the neglect of others; for health is the base, and instruction the ornament of education."

Let parents then check, rather than excite in their children, this early disposition to mental activity, or, rather, let them counterbalance it by a due proportion of physical and gymnastic exercises; for it is not so much the intensity as the continuity of the mental action, which is injurious to the constitution. Let them not cause the age of cheerfulness to be spent in the midst of tears and in slavery; let them not change the sunny days of childhood into a melancholy gloom, which can, at best, only be a source of misery and bitter recollection in maturer

years.

Physical exercises and the cultivation of the perceptive faculties should, with the reading of moral and instructive books, form the principal occupations of children. Their expanding frame requires the invigorating stimulus of fresh air; their awakening organs seek for external objects of sense; their dawning intellect incessantly calls for the action of their observant powers. This is the great law of Nature. She has given to the child that restless activity, that buoyancy of animal spirits, that prying inquisitiveness, which makes him delight in constant motion and in the observation of new objects. If these wise intentions of Providence be not frustrated; if he be allowed to give himself up to the sportive feelings of his age, he will acquire a healthy

constitution, and a physical and perceptive development, which are the best preparation for mental labor.

Of the men who have conferred benefit on society and have been the admiration of the world, the greater number are those who, from various causes, have in early life been kept from school or from serious study. They have, by energetic and well-directed efforts, at a period when the brain was ready for the task, acquired knowledge, and displayed abilities which have raised them to the highest eminence in the different walks in life, in literature, the arts and sciences, in the army, the senate, the church, and even on the throne. The history of the most distinguished among those who have received an early classical education, sufficiently proves that it is not to their scholastic instruction, but to self-education after the period of school, that they chiefly owed their superiority.

David, the sublime author of the Psalms, followed in his early occupations the dictates of nature; he had, in his youth, muscular power to tear asunder the mouth of a lion, to resist the grasp of a bear, and to impart to a pebble velocity sufficient to slay a giant. Napoleon, when in the school of Brienne, was noted in the quarterly reports of that institution as enjoying good health; no mention was ever made of his possessing any mental superiority; but, in physical exercises, he was always foremost. Sir Isaac Newton, according to his own statement, was inattentive, and ranked very low in the school, which he had not entered until after the age of twelve. The mother of Sheridan long regarded him as the dullest of her children. Adam Clarke was called 66 a grievous dunce" by his first teacher; and young Liebig, a "booby" by his employer. Shakspeare, Molière, Gibbon, Niebuhr, Byron, Humphry Davy, Porson, and many others, were in like manner undistinguished for early application to study, and, for the most part, indulged in those wholesome bodily exercises and that freedom of mind, which contributed so much to their future excellence. -Marcel.

HABIT. I trust every thing, under God, to habit, on which, in all ages, the law-giver, as well as the schoolmaster, has mainly placed his reliance; habit, which makes everything easy, and casts all difficulties upon the deviation from a wonted course. Make sobriety a habit, and reckless proflicacy will be as contrary to the nature of the child, grown or adult, as the most atrocious crimes are to any of your lordships. Give a child the habit of sacredly regarding the truth, of carefully respecting the property of others, of scrupulously abstaining from all acts of improvidence which can involve him in distress, and he will just as likely think of rushing into an element in which he cannot breathe, as of lying, or cheating, or stealing.-Brougham.

Resident Editors' Cable.

GEORGE ALLEN, Jr.,.... Boston.
C. J. CAPEN,

RESIDENT EDITORS.

Dedham.

ELBRIDGE SMITH, Cambridge.
E. S. STEARNS, Framingham.

MASSACHUSETTS TEACHERS' ASSOCIATION. THE Eleventh Annual Meeting of this Association, will be held in Lowell, at Mechanics' Hall, on Monday and Tuesday, the 26th and 27th of November.

The Association will assemble on Monday, P. M., the 26th inst., at 3 o'clock, for the transaction of preliminary business, and to hear, and act upon, the reports of the Secretary, Treasurer, and of Special Committees. After which, the prospects and management of the "Massachusetts Teacher," a journal sustained by the Association, will be discussed.

LECTURES WILL BE DELIVERED AS FOLLOWS:

On Monday evening, at 7 o'clock, by Hon. George S. Boutwell, LL. D., Secretary of the Board of Education. Tuesday, P. M., at 3 o'clock, by B. F. Tweed, A. M., Professor in Tufts College, Somerville.

Tuesday evening, at 7 o'clock, by Rev. Joseph Haven, Jr., Professor of Intellectual Philosophy in Amherst College.

THE FOLLOWING SUBJECTS WILL BE IN ORDER FOR DISCUSSION:

1.-The Propriety of requiring Scholars to Study at other times than during School Hours."

2.-"The importance of Physical Geography as a Branch of Study in our Common and High Schools."

3.—" The best Methods of Teaching Penmanship."

Teachers who may desire accommodations in private families, are requested to send their names to the Publisher of the "Massachusetts Teacher" by Monday the 19th inst.

Should arrangements for railroad facilities to those attending the meeting be made, notice thereof will be given in the Boston evening papers of the 23d and 24th inst.

CHAS. J. CAPEN, Sec'y.

Boston, Nov. 5th, 1855.

JOSIAH A. STEARNS, President.

The late appearance of the "Teacher" for this month is attributable solely to delay on account of the above notice.

FOREIGN CORRESPONDENCE.

C. J. C.

MANSFELD, GERMANY, July, 1855.

In the last number of the "Teacher" I gave its readers a translation from the treatise of Madame de Stael, on Germany;