neficial; that they sharpen the tongues and faculties of young men; that they accustom them to view matters dispassionately, and exainine both sides of a subject; that they keep them, in some degree, from theatres, taverns, billiard-tables, and other immoralities; and that, moreover, they are a sort of preparatory schools, wherein incipient legislators may perfect themselves in declamation, mystification, equivocation, and other indispensable requisites for wordy war in after life. Oh misjudging fathers of families! Is it more pernicious, think you, for your offspring to injure the coats of their stomachs by quaffing tumblers of brandy punch at a tavern, than to sully their immortal minds by nightly draughts of quibbles and sophistry? Is it worse to play a straight hazard at a billard table, than to learn habitually to undervalue truth, treating her like a play-thing-a shuttlecock-to be bandied to and fro as suits their convenience? Is it worse for them to sit in a theatre and hear the divine poetry of Shakspeare appropriately recited, than to be listening to the dull speculations, or inflated bombast of raw juveniles; or worse than that, perchance, being themselves actively engaged in damaging the English language, their vernacular, their respected maternal or mother tongue? Is the quarrel scene between Brutus and Cassius less to the purpose than a fiery altercation between Master Cicero Timkins and Master Demosthenes Simkins? Answer. "But are these things so ?" exclaims some unsuspecting, kind-hearted father, or some amiable mother, aroused, for the first time, to a sense of the danger of her darling child, who has recently joined one of those associations, and in whom she has latterly remarked, with sorrow of heart, unequivocal symptoms of obtrusiveness in company, and a rapid development of the organs of obstinacy and self-will. Trust me, dear madam, they are, and must of necessity be so. I am not trifling with you. I am no giddy boy, writing for a thimble-full of local notoriety, but am myself a parent (of some six weeks standing); and though of the more obtuse (where feeling is concerned) or masculine gender, know how to enter into a fond mother's fears on such an occasion. Trust me, where one boy is benefited by such societies, hundreds are injured in their intellects, their morals, or their tempers. Where one over-bashful youth is inoculated with a little becoming self-possession, hundreds acquire a degree of audacity, repulsive even in those who have arrived at whiskers, but perfectly shocking in persons of tender years; who, by the yet unstiffened down upon their cheeks and chins, are reasonably expected to be patterns of meekness and acquies cence. But this is only a portion of the evils produced by such unwholesome hotbeds for the forcing of the intellect. The other natural consequences are overweening pride, inflated notions of self, together with contradictious, acrimonious, disputative habits, which irresistibly prompt the unhappy possessors to injure their friends, neighbors and acquaintance, by committing, as it were, moral assaults upon them; waylaying and deluding them, unawares, into outof-the-way controversies, knocking them down with arguments or quotations, and then rifling them of their quietude and peace of mind, and otherwise maltreating and abusing them. Is such conduct commendable? Is it decent? My dear madam, if you would not have your son become a piece of unmixed impertinence-an unamiability—a flatulency—an after-dinner annoyance and a tea-table curse, keep him away from debating societies. * After this affecting appeal, I think I see you turn to your first-born, and, with tears in your eyes, exclaim "Oh, Ralph Nicholas, my love, go no more to that place-it will not, and it cannot come to good." Madam, hand this lucubration across the table to him, and conviction will stare him in the face; he will yet be saved; and in the words of some great moralist, "I will not have written altogether in vain.” "But to take," as the newspapers say, 66 a more enlarged and comprehensive view of the subject." These abominations are spreading themselves with awful rapidity over every section of the country. In cities they abound, and are of every degree, from bad to execrable. But worse than this: even in the most (apparently) calm and sequestered villages -sanctuaries for retirement and contemplation and solemn thoughts-the demon of debate has established a president's chair; and the propounding and discussion of questions are carried on by the rustics with a vigor and pertinacity that argue any thing but well for the peace and quiet of the neighborhood. Really, unless some remedial measures be adopted, habitual disputation may become general, and no man be safe. But what chiefly alarms me, who partly believe in the transmission of peculiar qualities of mind, as well as body, from generation to generation, is, that this disease-this moral blotch of wrangling and debating, becomes rooted in the system; that what in our children is only an acquired habit, may, in their children, and their children's children, be a natural propensity! I will be gathered to my fathers long ere that, and therefore, cannot be supposed to be influenced by any personal feeling in speaking thus; but, good heavens! should it become hereditary! Then, in deed, may the peaceable and well-disposed of afteryears-those who have escaped the taint-be emphatically said to have "fallen on evil days," and then will they exclaim, in the agony of their outraged quiet, "Oh, for a lodge in some vast wilderness! But, perhaps, I am mournfully anticipative. Providence grant it may be so. But no means should be left untried to check the evil. I will apostrophize; perchance it may act as a dissuasive. Oh, tender, callow youth, of sixteen and upwards, listen! A voice from the olden time, even that of the wisest among men, calleth unto thee-"my son, get wisdom, and with all thy getting get understanding;" and that thou may'st do so, discountenance those talking, turbulent, truculent associations for the effusion of the froth and scum of oratory; eschew hot and bitter disputation-seek not for truth amid wrangles, and quibbles, and disingenuo us paradoxes-consort not with such as deal in them; but hie thee to thy silent chamber and choose thy companions from the immortals, from the demigods of thy "land's language." Look now, in this small room, what a goodly company hast thou assembled around thee. What a congre |