teaching, if I did not reflect that a man may kill himself with whisky for two shillings. They used to go about from house to house, like country tailors; and were less regarded. In the hard winters, many of them travelled on foot more miles in a month than they received dollars in a year. The school-houses were wretched dens, with no earthly recommendation but their airiness in the summer; and in these boys and girls, as full of mischief and prank as buxom health could make them, would vex the red-wigged master till his carbuncled nose emulated the red cloaks behind the door. Then came the smothered laugh, the furious reconnoitre of the offending bench, the cuff, the slap, the rejoinder, the surrejoinder; the quip modest, the reply churlish, the reproof valiant, the countercheck quarrelsome; till down fell the birchen shower. A stranger might have taken the engagement for a fight, as the whole commonly issued in a mutual castigation, in which the master was reduced to a good humour, and making a virtue of necessity, passed it all off as a joke. In those days, however, of Cocker and Dilworth, there were some ripe scholars, even in the glens of the mountains; and if learning was hardly come by, it was prized the more. Old men are living, who remember to have heard Latin talked in the upper forms of log school-houses; nay, who have seen and heard the master, in a fine frenzy, spout Cicero, and even Demosthenes, in the ori ginal. There were some who had emigrated from "the old country," and some were bred among ourselves, who taught for the love of it, and who would scarcely have been willing to exchange the ferula for the truncheon of a commander. Many young people are now-a-days receiving a finished education, whose fathers scarcely knew a letter in a book. A few months ago, in a somewhat secluded place, almost five hundred miles from here, I found the state of affairs so changed from what it once was, that the daughters of mechanics were learning French, Latin, and the guitar. Whether this is wise or not may be reserved for future discussion; but one thing is certain, working-men are setting a higher value than formerly on education. If we may judge of the demand for an article by the price, teaching is a better business than it was. People are beginning to find out, that the man who gives good learning to their sons and daughters is doing them a favour. The schoolmaster is lifting his head, and is no longer ashamed of the title. It is right that this feeling should prevail, especially in the case of those who make teaching a business for life. Such men, if faithful and competent, are second to none in the good they do. The permanent teacher, especially when venerable for his years, ought to be honoured in every circle. While he looks benignantly round him on those whose fathers he has in former days led along the ways of knowledge, he should be made to feel that his services are not undervalued. When this shall be more generally the case, there will be fewer instances of retreat from the vocation. The instructer of youth will be regarded as constituting one of the learned professions; and young men will look forward to this calling, just as they do to the pulpit or the bar. "If it were asked," says a late English writer, "what class of men would receive, in the present or next generation, the rewards to which their labours, when rightly understood and assiduously performed, justly entitle them, it might be answered, with every appearance of probability-those who improve the moral and intellectual characters of individuals, and fit them to perform the various duties of life with satisfaction to themselves and advantage to others." A difficulty suggests itself in the case of many mechanics and other men of the industrious classes, which merits special attention. We have among us highly respectable persons of this description, who have never received a thorough education. Still they are improved by their own exertions, and by intercourse with society, and are consequently far above the contemptible prejudice with which ignorant parents regard all science and literature. So far are they from this, that they lament their own deficiencies, and hold nothing more resolutely before their minds than the purpose to have their children instructed. But in seeing this accomplished, there is this hinderance: they can not themselves pretend to decide who is and who is not a fit teacher; and in this age, when recommendations for pills, or dictionaries, or professors, are as easily obtained as bank-accommodation, no parent can rely on mere general testimonials. Habits of calculation naturally lead a man in such a case to make the price a criterion: and here is a common snare. Wo to the boy or girl whose parent has been beguiled by a schoolmaster with no great merit but his cheapness. Cheapen your watch or your chaise, but not your child's instruction. I knew a teacher once-I know him stillwhose like I would gladly see in every town and hamlet of my country. Though aiming to be no more than a common schoolmaster, he might have graced the chair of a university. His manners are formal, and his language precise, and his decisions positive: these things are wont so to be, in one that has ruled for fifty years. Yet he is bland, and ready to communicate. He will put on his huge round spectacles even now, to rule a girl's copy-book. His gray hairs sometimes blow about in the wind, while he is fixing a dial in a pupil's garden. He has been a great aid to surveyors and almanac-makers, and is suspected of helping the clergyman to scraps of Greek and Hebrew. For though he teaches English, he is not strange in the ancient lore; and I am not sure that among all my good old mates, there is a single one who could better give the meaning of a hard quotation, than Robert Appletree. VIII. THE SCHOOLMASTER. Continued. "The village all declared how much he knew; WE are apt to flatter one another that the world is growing wiser and better every day; and if great public improvements are to be taken as a fair sign, we are doubtless a greater people than our forefathers. They, poor souls, had neither steamships nor railways; the division of labour, which with us leads to such perfection in all the arts, had with them gone but a few steps. Books were rare among them; exceedingly rare among the earlier American settlers; so that the libraries of many able and learned men, before the Revolution, were smaller than collections which may now be found among mechanics. Schools are more numerous, and nearer together, and scarcely a day passes but we hear of discoveries in education, which are almost as numerous as patent |