of government? I remember to have examined a young man, whose classical and scientific acquirements would have fitted him for a professorship, and to have heard, a few days afterwards, that his boys had turned him out of his own school-room. The severe disciplinarian of former days has almost passed away; yet there is a simplicity mixed with dignity of character which commands respect, and which is a gift rather than an acquisition. That gift must be the teacher's.

CLEAR THOUGHTS AND CLEAR LANGUAGE.

The next qualification is the facility of communicating clear thoughts in clear language. This is a grand sine qua non of a good teacher. I cannot think any one ever made a good instructor without it; and no one who has it not, at least in a tolerable degree, need expect to be any thing more than a ploughboy in breaking up the fallow-ground of human ignorance. I do not mean merely fluency or elegance of language, for I have heard gentlemen discourse most rapidly and elegantly, for hours together, when it would have defied the wisdom of Solomon to have told what they said; and I know a distinguished clergyman of whom it was said in college, that he could not state a proposition in distinct terms. And yet this capacity to state clear thoughts in clear language, without one word more or less than is necessary, is an element of the highest eloquence,

and the greatest power in the range of human acquisition. It has distinguished some of the most remarkable men of modern times: it was the peculiar talent of Swift and Cobbett, and marked the genius of Chatham and of Webster; and this power should always be, in some degree, the attribute of a teacher. I care not whether he is to officiate in a country school-house or in the halls of science, or address an Athenian audience in the groves of the academy, he must in any event be able to convey thought clearly and forcibly, or be forever shut out from the high rewards of a successful teacher; for when we come to consider, it is only the conveyance of something from the mind of the teacher to that of the pupil, in the way of thought, explanation, or strong illustration, that constitutes the peculiar functions of a teacher. If it be merely to set lessons, or hear them repeated, a monitor, an assistant, or any one who can read, can perform that office, and we need not resort to cultivated intellect and peculiar qualifications for that purpose: but our common sense teaches us that more than that is necessary; and all who are educated or are familiar with public teaching, know that the greatest possible difference exists among teachers in their power to impress and interest their pupils, by the clearness and force of their expression. Life is too short for either young or old to spend much time in hunting up an idea which an instructor thinks he has put away in some corner of his head, but cannot exactly find; nor does it make the matter much better

if he throw out fifty at once, so confused that, like the goods and chattels of an auctioneer's room, it will take half our life to separate and classify them. No; we want him to hand them out distinctly, one by one, and just in the order they should be stored away. He that can do this has a clear head, and clear language, too; he is not a rhetorician, but he is one who is remembered when rhetoricians are forgotten.

THE TEACHER A LOVER OF HIS COUNTRY.

Again, the teacher should be a lover of his country-not from any mean spirit of selfishness, but because there is in it something worthy to love, and worthy to preserve; because it is the result, not merely of a people struggling against the oppressions of government, but of mind against the servitude of its own corrupt tendencies-the last rich fruits of ages upon ages of trial, experience, and long-suffering among nations past; and because to him (the instructor of youth) is intrusted, upon all the principles of our ancestors, in the very nature of our institutions, and in the very words of our fundamental law, the solemn guardianship of its life and its destiny. None of the founders of our government ever contemplated the possibility of its existence without religion and education, and they have written it over and over again in all their constitutions. To what high duty, then, is the teacher called!

Nor should he regard it as a light thing that he is

in America, in these green and fresh lands; not some unhappy Hindoo worshipping crocodiles on the banks of the Ganges-or some serf making a unit in the masses of the Russian autocrat-or in some more doubtful land waiting the fearful issue of revolution ; but that he is here, to partake with the republic in its matchless freedom, in the mighty velocity with which it ascends the most daring heights of human hope, and in those high responsibilities, too, which God has, in every age, attached to his peculiar blessings.

THE TEACHER A LOVER OF HIS PROFESSION.

We come now to a qualification for teachers without which I cannot conceive of success in any thing: it is a zeal and a love for his profession. And who has a better right to that zeal and that love than he? whose labors are to be more durable in time, or wide in extent? who, much more than liberty, gives to fleeting life its color and its perfume? whose influence shall survive the monuments of mental glory?

Would he compare himself with artists-with Phidias or with Angelo? He is not forming a work like theirs, from the cold marble, lifeless and perishable; but is vested with power to mould a heart warm with the beatings of youth, and direct a mind perennial in freshness and immortal in youth. Does he compare himself with musicians-with Handel and Mozart? He is a performer upon a more complex instrument than theirs, strung with a thousand chords, and

each chord susceptible of a thousand tones. Is it the hero with whom he would compare himself? That destroys-this creates; that conquers a kingdom of earth-this the dominion of mind. Is it the fame of the statesman that he would reach? The statesman governs empires-he teaches statesmen how to govern; that gives laws to property-this to soul.

If it be fame he seeks, let him look at the roll of practical teachers only; what a record of renown! it is a sheet of fire! With whom is he enrolled? With Plato, with Euclid, with Cicero, with Descartes, with Boerhaave, and Newton; with Rush, and Adams, and Dwight; with Socrates, teacher of men, and Paul the apostle of God.

THE GLORY OF TEACHING.

Let the teacher then remember the glory of his profession nor let him suppose that men are unwilling to learn; the history of the world is against such a supposition. Wherever there have been found men willing to teach, there have been pupils willing to learn. How else did the ancient philosophers draw multitudes to their audience? How else did Abelard, in the midst of the dark ages, draw listening thousands? Did they draw them to the mere sound of the voice? How did they teach geometry and arithmetic? Let me take one example from the close of the middle ages: the Abbot of Croyland, when he was appointed, sent for four Norman monks to teach;