its economy and its benevolence. And whether we secure good disciplinarians of course matters not; since, under this dispenation, pupils soon become wise enough to govern themselves. Happily, the system of pedagogical puffery, inseparable from this state of things, has now nearly cracked its own cheeks; and the fire, which threatens us, is fast getting smothered with its own smoke. No, it so happens, unfortunately, that nature gives us no abstract ideas to educate, but only individual minds; and it would be well for us to remember, that to educate the abstract idea of a mind, is, after all, but to exercise the abstract idea of education. The truth is, no person can possibly teach another, or be taught by another, until and so far as they are personally and individually acquainted with each other. In vain do we try to secure good instruction by systematic arrangements; the same system which takes from teachers the power to go wrong, also makes it impossible for them to go right. The sooner, therefore, we throw our abstractions into the fire, and make our instruction an individual process, the better. Our schoolroom clock-work not only does nothing towards supplying the place of brains to teachers who have them not, but is sure to obstruct and paralyze the brains of teachers who have them. The teacher and pupil can give and receive instruction, just so far and no farther than they are brought to study and know each other. An immediate intercourse, therefore between them is indespensable; and the teacher is but separated from the pupils by the media through which he tries to operate. A mind cannot possibly be produced in the same way as a watch. Mechanical arrangements cannot assist the process of vegetation. The apparatus by which we try to stretch a tree, will only pull it up by the roots; so that we shall only make it look taller by stunting or killing it. In short, our abstract method is a perfect outrage on nature, and cannot choose but miseducate. We might as well have all our coats cut to a common shape, such as the abstract idea of the human form, and then fill out or pare down our bodies to fit the coats. But in this matter all of course know that the dress is to be fitted to the form, not the form to the dress. And undoubtedly that method of instruction is best, which most adapts itself to the wants and peculiarities of its sub

jects. The true teacher is an artist, not an artisan; he works by inspiration, not by mechanism; and to proceed by system is to degrade teaching from an art into a mere handicraft. It is with the teacher, as with the painter, whose subject, when he succeeds, always seems to paint itself; and his work is never good for anything when he knows how he does it. It may even be questioned whether the dependence we place upon books is not worse than to be entirely without them; just as the circulation of the Bible and of tracts is thought by many to have done injury, by seeming to preclude the necessity of the Church; and our present rage for text-books is, perhaps, the best evidence that the true idea of instruction is well nigh lost. At all events, of this we may be assured, that true instruction always proceeds, and always must proceed, not by a fixed inflexible system, now shrinking or stretching, and now bending or straightening its subjects, to suit its own preadjustments; but by "a slow, tentative process, requiring a patient study of individual aptitudes, and a constant variation of means to suit the endless varieties of mind."

A few words touching the utilitarian spirit, which has given birth to so much reforming and system-making, will close this article. Now, one of the greatest evils of utilitarianism in education is, that it is suicidal. "He who seeketh his life shall lose it," is as good in philosophy as it is in religion; and the seeming paradox, "he is oft the wisest man who is not wise at all," is one of the profoundest truths. Too much anxiety to hit the apple agitates the nerves, and thus defeats the aim; looking too steadfastly at our interest, makes us unable to see it. Viewed objectively, indeed, and in reference to the last results, there is no antipathy between the wisdom of the serpent and the harmlessness of the dove; but, viewed subjectively, they are as antipathic as heaven and hell. The darkest cunning and the whitest innocence doubtless converge to the same ultimate point; but the crime and curse of the cunning is, that they never can see this. Self-interest comes by self-sacrifice; but the spirit of selfinterest and the spirit of self-sacrifice are utterly incompatible. Truth, if honestly sought, will always do more for us than we can do for ourselves; but when pursued as interest, the pur

suit inevitably defeats itself. If we seek first the kingdom of heaven, all things alse shall be added unto us; but not if we seek the former for the sake of the latter. It is thus that we find our interest by forsaking it, and get salvation, here and hereafter, by selfrenunciation; while, by attempting to become our own saviours, we utterly lose ourselves. In short, all salvation that is worth the having, comes by faith; by faith in the Truth, not by foresight; by oblivion, not by calculation,

of interest.

But the genius of utilitarianism of course aspires to a higher wisdom than is implied in working and waiting. Mammonism and modern philanthropy must climb up some shorter way to their ends than the straight and narrow path of truth and nature. Instead of asking for wisdom and get ting riches, they ask for wisdom in order to get riches; and of course miss, as they deserve to miss, them both. Nature, to preclude the pride or vanity of well-doing, has wisely ordained, that the triumphs we gain in the service of truth should seem to us the truth's work, not ours; so that when we are doing the most good, we think we are doing the least in the same way and for a similar reason, that where there is the most wisdom, there is the least conceit of wisdom. Accordingly, the most useful men are always those who, from love and holy passion, pursue what the world esteems useless. And the merit is generally as unknown to us as to themselves; for, to us, as to themselves, what they do seems the work of truth and nature; so that while bringing heaven down to us, they are often lost in the splendor of their gifts; and the blessings we owe to their labors appear to come of their own accord. Probably nothing, on the other hand, has done so much mischief to education, as the exclsive desire to be useful; for it is the misery and meanness of utilitarianism, that while calculating the profits of knowledge, it kills the passion for it. For example, the discovery of the occultations and emersions of Jupiter's Satellites, after being made, was found available for purposes of navigation. But if the discoverer had been in quest only of something to aid navigation, he probably would not have thought of looking in that direction, and therefore would not have

found anything so useful for that purpose. The true reformer, in like manner, always becomes such without knowing it; and those who set up for reformers, are generally the greatest pests and nuisances society is afflicted with. No men are so dark as those who are always trying to make their light shine; for they always make their bellows so strong as to blow the fire out, instead of blowing it up. Their hard tugging for truth's sake is but a more cunning form of conceit and selfwill, and proceeds, not so much from a sense of obligation to truth, as from a desire to lay truth under obligation to them. Those who have deified their own ideas, of course think themselves qualified and commissioned to construct the world anew; and many a strutting sophomore has conceived himself wise enough to convert the Pope, and has mistaken the swellings and crowings of his own pride, for the expansion of the human mind under his instructions. Here, too, the effort and anxiety to do good and be useful, defeats itself. The true benefactor sheds out his influence unconsciously, and always loses it in proportion as he undertakes consciously to exercise it. Thus, nature cunningly hides from us the good we do, and wisdom, to prevent conceit and vanity, always steals into us, and steals out of us, without our knowledge. When we abandon ourselves to truth in love and faith, truth flows freely into us and through us, and heaven is with us in hours of self-oblivion, always finding us children, or making us so.

Nothing, then, is vainer than attempting to substitute convictions of interest and utility for noble passions; such convictions never can insure, and never ought to ensure the successful pursuit of knowledge or of any other good. We have ourselves lived to see study well nigh banished from the closet by the perverse efforts of certain moral and intellectual financiers to make out a balance of economical motives in its favor. By forcing in such motives we only force out, or shut out better ones. Those people who believe in going so much on the belly, and seeking truth for the stomach's sake, have they not yet learnt, that in the mouths of such seekers the fruits of the tree of knowledge always turn into ashes and bitterness? It is truly high-time the money-changers were scourged out of the temple. What

Central America." This essay fills 350 pages of the work. The author first examines the languages, by giving comparative tables of the most common words in the several languages, of which grammars, dictionaries and vocabularies have been published. Such tables are useful for etymological comparisons, and serve to show the very great dissimilarity that exists in words conveying the same meaning in languages spoken by people contiguous to each other. This phenomenon is peculiar to the aborigenes of America, and the researches of philologists have not as yet been able satisfactorily to account for so great a diversity of dialects and languages as are found on the continents of North and South America. Although we thus find great diversities in languages, there are, nevertheless, tribes and nations, living in some instances contiguous, and in others far apart, whose speech presents but a dialectical difference. These, it is evident, originally sprang from the same stock, or were, at a remote period, one great family.

The first table presented by Mr. Gallatin exhibits five languages, viz., the Poconchi, the Quiche, and the Chorti of Guatemala; the Maya, of Yucatan, and the Huasteca, of that part of Mexico contiguous to Guatemala. The etymological analogies in these are so striking as to leave no doubt of their common origin. If this comparison is extended farther, not the least similarity is discernible, even in the most common works.

"The investigation of the languages of the Indians within the United States, east of the Rocky Mountains, and north of the States, as far as the Polar Sea, has satisfactorily shown that, however dissimilar in their words, their structure and grammatical forms were substantially the same. A general examination of the Mexican proper, and of the languages of Peru, of Chili, and of some other tribes of South America, has rendered it probable that, in that respect, all, or nearly all, the languages of America belong to the same family. This, if satisfactorily ascertained, would, connected with the similarity of physical type, prove a general, though not, perhaps, universal, common origin. But

whatever the result might be, a more critical investigation than had heretofore been attempted, appeared necessary, in order to elicit and ascertain the truth."

Another remarkable feature is presented in the grammatical construction of the Indian languages, a feature which no other languages in the world possess to so remarkable an extent. This peculiarity is the power of compounding words, or of expressing in the least number of words the greatest number of ideas. To effect this, not only are two or more words joined together, and the termination or inflection of a radical va ried as in the most of the European languages, but by interweaving together the most significant sounds or syllables of each single word, so as to form a compound that will awaken in the mind at once all the ideas singly expressed by the words from which they are taken.

Another process is, by an analogous combination of the various parts of speech, particularly by means of the verb, so that its various forms and inflections will express not only the principal action, but the greatest possible number of the moral ideas and physical objects connected with it. This system, observed by Mr. Duponceau and others in the Indian languages of the United States, which have been critically examined, also prevails in the languages of the Esquimaux and in those of the aboriginal tribes in the far west. Mr. Gallatin has examined several of the Mexican languages besides those before alluded to spoken in Yucatan and Guatemala. On the subject of these he says:

"One of the most general features, and which has struck all those who have examined those languages, is the multitude of compounded words, many of them of inordinate length, and the facility with which new words of the same character might be formed. There is, however, an apparent difference in the manner in which words are compounded in the several Indian languages. In the various Algonkin dialects, compound words are found, consisting of the union of five or six words so abreviated that only one syllable of each has been preserved, Analogous instances occur in the Eskimo, and occasionally in some other lan

lished.

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Among the nations which are the subject of this inquiry, compound words are very numerous; but it is rare to find, independent of the agglutination of pronouns and insertion of particles, words consisting of the union of more than two primitives; one of which generally loses one of its syllables. It must, however, be observed, that the mode of compounding words is only adverted to incidentally, and not discussed as a distinct subject in the ordinary grammars. Words of that description occur among other illustrations, and some may be extracted from dictionaries. But the principles on which words are compounded in any language, can be ascertained only by those who are thoroughly and practically acquainted with it.

It would occupy too much space to enter at length into the grammatical structure of the Mexican languages, or to offer a conjecture as to the remarkable form they assume, or the powers they possess in common with the aboriginal tongues of America, beyond the cultivated languages of either ancient or modern times. When the learned first began to investigate the American languages, they were struck with their remarkable powers of compounding, and the endless variety in their inflections. The conclusion they arrived at, was, that none but a highly cultivated people could have brought their language to such a state of perfection, and that this continent must have been peopled by a civilized race, the only memento of whose existence and advancement in civilization was to be found in their languages, The investigations of modern philologists since the commencement of the present century, have shown that the phenomena which characterize the Indian languages of America do not arise from their cultivation, but rather from the want of it; that the number of their words is few in comparison with the cultivated languages; and that the power they have obtained in their multiplicity of compounds and inflections, is the result of necessity. The elaborate work of Mr. Gallatin, entitled a "Synopsis of the Indian tribes, etc." is more full on the subject of the Indian

The system of numeration or arithmetic among the Mexicans, is one of interest, and presents some peculiarities which do not belong to more civilized nations. A knowledge of arithmetic or some system of numeration, must, as Mr. Gallatin observes, "have preceded calendars, or any attempt to compute time."

"Men must have known how to count as far as 365, before they ascertained that the solar year consisted of 365 days. It is well known, that almost all nations, in forming their system of numeration, have adopted a decimal arithmetic, and that this was the natural result of men first beginning to count by their ten fingers. This is the case with all the Indian tribes within the United States; though it must be allowed that there is much confusion and but little regularity in the formation of the names expressing the higher numbers, which they hardly ever wanted. The arithmetic of the Peruvians and of the Araucanians is purely decimal.

"Traces are found in several of the Indian languages, of their having first counted by fives. This has already been pointed out in the Eskimo, of Hudson's Bay, where the names of the numerals, 8, 9 and 10, mean respectively the middle, the fourth, and the little fingers.

"This primitive mode of counting by fives, is also apparent in the Mexican, the Otomi, and the Carib languages.