Of what incalculable influence, then, for good or for evil, upon the dearest interests of society, must be the estimate entertained for the character of this great body of teachers, and the consequent respectability of the individuals who compose it!

At the recent general election in this State the votes of above three hundred thousand persons were taken. In thirty years the great majority of these will have passed away; their rights will be exercised and their duties assumed by those very children whose minds are now open to receive their earliest and most durable impressions from the ten thousand schoolmasters of this State.

What else is there, in the whole of our social system, of such extensive and powerful operation on the national character? There is one other influence more powerful, and but one. It is that of the MOTHER. The forms of a free government, the provisions of wise legislation, the schemes of the statesman, the sacrifices of the patriot, are as nothing compared with these. If the future citizens of our republic are to be worthy of their rich inheritance, they must be made so principally through the virtue and intelligence of their mothers. It is in the school of maternal tenderness that the kind affections must be first roused and made habitual, the early sentiment of piety awakened and rightly directed, the sense of duty and moral responsibility unfolded and enlightened. But next in rank and in efficacy to that pure and holy source of moral influence is that of the schoolmaster. It is powerful already. What would it be if in every one of those school districts which we now count by annually increasing thousands, there were to be found one teacher well-informed without pedantry, religious without bigotry or fanaticism, proud and fond of his profession, and honored in the discharge of his duties! How wide would be the intellectual, the moral influence of such a body of men! Many such we have already amongst us-men humbly wise and obscurely useful, whom poverty cannot depress nor neglect degrade. But to raise up a body of such men as numerous as the wants and the dignity of the country demand, their labors must be fitly remunerated and themselves and their calling cherished and honored.

The schoolmaster's occupation is laborious and ungrateful; its rewards are scanty and precarious. He may indeed be, and he ought to be, animated by the consciousness of doing good, that best of all considerations, that noblest of all motives. But that, too, must be often clouded by doubt and uncertainty. Obscure and inglorious as his daily occupation may appear to learned pride or worldly ambition, yet to be truly successful and happy, he must be animated by the spirit of the same great principles which inspired the most illustrious benefactors of mankind. If he bring to his task high talent and rich acquirements, he must be content to look into distant years for the proof that his labors have not been wasted, that the good seed which he daily scatters abroad does not fall on stony ground and wither away; or among thorns, to be choked by the cares, the delusions or the vices of the world. He must solace his toils with the same prophetic faith that enabled the greatest of modern philosophers, amidst the neglect or contempt of his own times, to regard himself as sowing the seeds of truth for posterity and the care of Heaven. He must arm himself against disappointment and mortification with a portion of that same noble confidence which soothed the greatest of modern poets when weighed down by care and danger, by poverty, old age and blindness-still

"In prophetic dream he saw

The youth unborn, with pious awe

Imbibe each virtue from his sacred page."

He must know, and he must love to teach his pupils, not the meager elements of knowledge, but the secret and the use of their own intellectual strength, exciting and enabling them hereafter to raise for themselves the veil which covers the majestic form of Truth. He must feel deeply the reverence due to the youthful mind, fraught with mighty though undeveloped energies and affections, and mysterious and eternal destinies. Thence he must have learnt to reverence himself and his profession and to look upon its otherwise ill-requited toils as their own exceeding great reward. If such are the difficulties and the discouragements, such the

duties, the motives and the consolations of teachers who are worthy of that name and trust, how imperious, then, the obligation upon every enlightened citizen who knows and feels the value of such men to aid them, to cheer them and honor them!

But let us not be content with barren honor to buried merit. Let us prove our gratitude to the dead by faithfully endeavoring to elevate the station, to enlarge the usefulness and to raise the character of the schoolmaster amongst us. Thus shall we best testify our gratitude to the teachers and guides of our own youth, thus best serve our country, and thus most effectually diffuse over our land light, and truth, and virtue.

Admiration of Genius.

There is a certain charm about great superiority of intellect that winds into deep affections, which a much more constant and even amiability of manners in lesser men, often fails to reach. Genius makes many enemies, but it makes sure friends, friends who forgive much, who endure long, who exact little; they partake of the character of disciples as well as friends. There lingers about the human heart a strong inclination to look upward-to revere; in this inclination lies the source of religion, of loyalty, and also of the worship and immortality which are rendered so cheerfully to the great of old. And, in truth, it is a divine pleasure to admire. Admiration seems, in some measure, to appropriate to ourselves the qualities it honors in others. We wed-we root ourselves to the natures we so love to contemplate, and their life grows a part of our own. Thus, when a great man, who has engrossed our thoughts, our conjectures, our homage, dies, a gap seems suddenly left in the world -a wheel in the mechanism of our own being appears abruptly stilled; a portion of ourselves, and not our worst portion-for how many pure,high, generous sentiments it contains-dies with him.

BENJAMINE F. TAYLOR

ENJAMINE FRANKLIN TAYLOR, one of America's most

BEN

gifted and entertaining authors and lecturers, was born in Lowville, N. Y., in 1822. He received his education at Madison University, New York, under the tutorship of his father, who was at that time president of the institution. Mr. Taylor has been an active and popular worker in the literary field. The Attractions of Language appeared in 1845, and January and June, in 1853. From the latter volume of charming essays and poems we have made our selections. No one who admires beautiful word-pictures, fine sentiment, and a clear and entertaining literary style, can afford to be without the volumes of B. F. Taylor.

For many years he was literary editor of the Chicago "Evening Journal." During the late war he was the "Journal's" principal war correspondent. Many of his letters have been gathered together and published under the title of Pictures in Camp and Field.

His pictures are so perfect, and his words so admirably selected, that in reading them we live again our soldier life. We hear the rattle of musketry, and the roar of artillery; and we see the advancing columns and the terrible conflict as the armies contest in a hand-to-hand struggle; and when the winds have lifted the black smoke, we see the terrible work of battle, and we again earnestly pray a kind Father to spread the mantled mourning of night over the scene.

Mr. Taylor published The World on Wheels in 1873, and

Old Time Pictures and Sheaves of Rhyme in 1874. All of his works have passed through several editions. He has been very popular on the lyceum platform.

It will pay us, kind friends, to read the volumes of Taylor. They contain the beautiful wish that "our lives and his may not be composed of random scores,' but be a beautiful anthem, harmony in all its parts, melody in all its tones; not a strain wanting, not a note out of tune; till 'the daughters of music are brought low,' and the lifeanthem is ended."

"But isn't it a pleasant thought that perhaps somebody may take up the tune, when we are dead-not a note lost, nor a jar, nor a discord, but all swan-like harmony? Perhaps perhaps! There is something hollow, like a knell, in that word. The veil that hides the future is woven of 'perhaps;' in it the greatest ills have their solace, the brightest joys their cloud."