instruction of those, who were likely to be employed as teachers of village-schools. Her daughters, as they rose around her, caught the same hallowed zeal, and were anxious to instruct in various departments, and the good devised and wrought out by this "mother in Israel," will doubtless be felt by unborn generations.

I venture to propose that some young lady, in the enjoyment of affluence, should perform the noble charity of commencing a Normal school, and instructing, or causing to be instructed, ten of her own sex, until they shall, in their turn, be qualified to instruct others. No costly endowment need be connected with an establishment of this nature. The pupils might probably be gathered

in the immediate vicinity.

If they have received the common rudiments of education, two or three hours of personal attendance daily, with perhaps, the care of a substitute, for two or three more, would, with the adoption of a judicious system, prepare in the course of three years, a class of profitable teachers, for elementary schools, and even for higher departments. Why need any formiable expense be involved in such an arrangement? If some of the recipients were able to pay a small price for tuition, it might aid in the purchase of books for their use. If they were not, the bounty of our land, is never invoked in vain. The author of the "Annals of Education," to whose perseverance and research, both his country and the world are indebted, says: "We

hope ere long, to see associations of females, engaged in supporting and preparing those of their own sex for the office of teacher. Recent calculations in a city of England, have led to the belief, that the efforts of one female in a benevolent object were equivalent to those of thirteen of the other sex."

The preparation of competent teachers for our village-schools, would be a lasting benefit to the country. The evil in our remote districts, has been incalculable, from illiterate teachers coming in contact with the mind in its season of early de velopment and indelible impression. Would it be beneath the notice of a lady to bestow some systematick instruction on such young females as are destined to assist in the domestick care of little children, and in whom moral integrity, correct language and manners, and a sense of religious obligation, have a deeper value and wider influence, than would be readily conceded or imagined?

But I would not prescribe the particular forms in which benevolent young ladies, having the command of time, knowledge or wealth, may subserve the cause of happiness and virtue, by acting as teachers. Their own ingenuity and the circumstances in which they are placed, will best define the channels, where this hallowed charity may flow. Let them, however, adopt teaching as their charity, and give to it regularly and laboriously, some portion of every day. It need not interfere with other employments and pleasures. Even if

it should curtail some amusement in which youth delights, their payment will be the gold of conscience, and those radiant and priceless memories, that visit the death-bed. If it prove a self-denial, it will be a glorious one. And when they stand before that bar, where all shall be summoned, if it appear that one fellow-being has been snatched from vice, or fortified in virtue, or anchored on the "Rock of salvation," through their instructions, what can the world which shall be burned as a scroll, or all the glory thereof, which shall vanish as a vision, offer in exchange for such a testimony?

LETTER XVI.

MOTIVES TO PERSEVERANCE.

WE are impelled, my dear young friends, to higher degrees of intellectual and moral effort, by the continually advancing character of the age in which we live. It does not permit the mind to slumber at its post, with any hope of regaining a respectable rank in the career of knowledge. Its literary gymnasium has no dormitories. It stamps with deficiency, what was considered a good education, twenty, or even ten years since. She who was then held accomplished, if she has remained content with her early attainments, will find herself painfully surpassed by the spirit of the times. The usury of our day, does not permit the "talent to be long wrapped in a napkin." Those studies which formerly marked the closing grade of education, are now familiar to the infant scholar. So much has knowledge divested itself of mystery and of majesty, that "the sucking child plays upon the hole of the asp, and the weaned child puts his hand upon the cockatrice den." Every thing urges us onward, in the pilgrimage of mind. The standard is constantly elevating itself, and she who

would not be left behind, must take pains to mairtain a corresponding elevation.

In the department of benevolence also, as well as in that of intellect, there is an equally perceptible progress. Not many years since, the sphere of missionary labour was first explored. Now "its field is the world." The vast machinery, by which the Scriptures are dispensed to heathen climes, was then undiscovered and unimagined. Many of those charities, which stoop to every variety of human wretchedness, were either unborn or in their infancy. Now the economy of charity is unfolded to the young. The most gifted minds simplify wisdom to the comprehension of children. The bread of eternal life is mingled with the milk of babes. Those who enter upon the stage of action stand upon vantage-ground, and are enriched with the concentrated experience of many generations.

Our individual privileges, as well as the energetick character of the age, demand persevering exertions. We are enriched with gifts to which our ancestors were strangers. Our responsibilities are proportionably great. The useful arithmetical position, impressed in our childhood, that "more requires more, and less requires less," admits of a moral application. The temple of science has been thrown open, and its sanctuary, so long hidden from the eye of woman, unveiled. She is invited to enter. In the olden time, our grandmothers received instruction, in the uses of the needle, the