then the important question occurred to meWhere shall I find a home? I left my baggage at the station, determining, should I be unable to procure comfortable rooms, to return to Providence. I was fortunate, however, in finding, not only apartments, but friends, in the first hotel I went to.

Boston has more of an English aspect and tone than any city I visited in the United States. One cannot but remark the crooked streets of the older parts, and the spacious and substantial buildings in the new; the bustling quays, and the charming parks and gardens; and, above all, the refined manners and intellectual pursuits of the people. Business and money-making are ont the chief end of man in Boston. The superiority of Boston arises in part from the fact that it was one of the earliest settlements of the pilgrim fathers, and in part from the elevating influence of the great University of Harvard.

The educational system of Boston, and indeed of the whole State of Massachusetts, is not surpassed in America. It is wide in its range, and, on the whole, very thorough in its work. The gentlemen who constitute the Board of Education appear to have a full apprehension of the place education should hold in a country, and of the power which, when rightly organized and directed, it is calculated to wield. "Public schools," they say in their Report for last year, "are the great civilizing force of the present age. Freedom without them becomes anarchy, and liberty becomes license......We see them as the truest index of the intelligence of the people, the surest sign of their progress, and the most certain means of their advancement. Like other institutions of society, the public school had its origin in necessity, and has been developed rather than formed. The past should not limit its progress, for it adapts itself to the multiplied wants and necessities of the day. It should be regarded as an institution of the state, and as a necessary condition of the national life. The idea of its necessity should pervade the public mind, and become a controlling living verity. It should be the nucleus around which should gather all that refines society and beautifies life. The affections of the people should twine around it, and their hopes cling to it. Let all classes learn

that education is the stock that will support whatever the good of society may require to be engrafted upon it, and then labour to improve our schools, as the surest means of promoting all legitimate reforms; and the senseless excitements and wild fanaticisms that so often sweep over the land would cease, and there would be seen a newer intellectual life and a fresher moral beauty."

The members of the Board are also conscious that intellectual training alone is not enough to make good citizens, and prepare for the right discharge of the duties of life. They believe that the heart and conscience must also be instructed. The fundamental principles of morality and religion are therefore made to form part of the state system of education. In proof and illustration, I quote from the Report the following weighty words:"Is it not desirable that the whole man, in his physical, intellectual, and moral nature, be cultivated-efficiently trained? Why should the moral training of the young be neglected while such earnest attention is bestowed upon the intellect? Is not goodness of heart to be preferred to brilliancy of mind? Is not reliability of character as desirable as progress in study? Is a well-trained intellect more important than a virtuous character? What is the value of mental power without moral principle, patriotism, truthfulness, honesty, and a life of virtue? Should not our youth be trained to what is noble, manly, and right? Under the influence of a moral education, they should be led to live the beautiful life of virtue. Have not our schools been established for the purpose of educating the young for the duties, privileges, and responsibilities of American citizens? What is necessary to a good citizen of the freest and best government on earth? What is necessary for the faithful discharge of these high and solemn duties? Do not the safety, stability, and prosperity of our republican institutions rest upon the intelligence and morality of the people? Do not the interests and destiny of this free nation rest upon the moral character of the people? What, then, is the vast importance of moral instruction to the young? The perfect freedom of our schools from all sectarianism does not exclude the cultivation of the heart and conscience,

Established upon such a sound basis, superintended by men competent and earnest, and

I.

FIRST MAGNITUDES JOSEPH.

He was a burning and a shining light."-JOHN V. 35. Na cloudless evening, and about an hour after the sun has set, the stars begin to twinkle one by one, till ten or a dozen may be detected. And an hour or two later, when the whole glittering host is marshalled, the first ten or twelve are still pre-eminent. And these brightest stars we call first magnitudes. They are the foremost to arrest the upturned eye, and their fine effulgence will sometimes attract the gaze of incurious rustic, or fill young hearts with wonder. These first magnitudes are the landmarks of the firmament. We say that such a lesser star is near Sirius or Arcturus, or that it has the tint of the Lyre or Orion. And they are the sparks which first kindle scientific ardour; for were the face of the heavens besprinkled with starry dust, with evanescent and inconspicuous points of light, they would draw but little notice. It is the large and brilliant orb which blazes in the forehead of the evening sky, and which makes for a long way round it a lovelihood of light-it is this which catches and detains our earthly vision, and kindles into devotion or intelligence some wondering spirit.

And so, looking upon the firmament of Scripture, there are a few characters which outglory all the restsome ten, twelve, or it may be twenty stars, of the first magnitude, burning and shining lights which will not let the eye away, and which haunt the memory when the eye is closed-brilliant and conspicuous names which serve as landmarks and points of reference, and which are also signals and surprises, arresting notice and awakening wonder-signs and seasons which God has set in the world's historic sky. Enoch, Noah, Job, Abraham, Joseph, Moses, Gideon, Samson, Samuel, David, Solomon, Eli

jah, Isaiah, Daniel, the Baptist, Peter, John, Stephen, Paul-you have nearly named all the first magnitudes in the Bible's older and newer hemispheres. And though there be hundreds more of lesser lights, and though the lustre of these again is annihilated in the daylight which the Sun of Righteousness makes, still these are the overmastering names which our fancy first calls up in looking back on the Bible story, the main foci into which God has condensed the lessons which he would teach us through the persons of our fellow-men.

....

And if another instance be desired, we might name the patriarch JOSEPH. Viewed on the human side, we have in his memoirs the history of a pious youth, full of brotherly kindness and filial affection, and by his good conduct and great sagacity rising to a station where he was enabled to rescue from ruin his own family, and be the princely benefactor of his unnatural brethren; but viewed on the divine side, we almost lose sight of the pious youth, and see nothing but God's momentary and marvellous providence. Parting at the pit's mouth, we see the Arabs riding off with their young captive; and, regardless of his cries, we see the shepherds, his savage and inhuman brethren, returning to their flocks and resuming their sulky road to Padamaram, to all appearance parted for ever. The desert wind soon swept out the camel tracks, and next rains new grass sprang where Jacob's sons had grazed their flocks. But, unseen by man, a thread, hitherto single, had split, and had uncoiled from the edges of that pit, too fine for human eye to see or human sense to follow, but strong as the fiat of Omnipotence. From the mouth of that pit the divided thread travels two different ways. The one from Dothan travels up to the vale of Hebron, and enters the tent of an old man with a snowy beard, weeping blinding tears over a bloody mantle which they spread before him, and it travels on through chequered years of weal and woe, during which the old man draws many a heavy sigh; and amidst all their roughness and rivalry, a guilty secret seems to bind his coarse and selfish sons to one another, till by-and-by

you see a motley caravan taking the southern track, and quitting the empty garners and burnt acres of "Palestine, the lean asses and the lank and haggard shepherds limp down to Egypt; and still, as they move on, the fated filament, the mystic clue, spins out from behind their feet. And from the same pit in Dothan the other branch of the unbroken thread follows the Ishmaelites down to On. It enters a palace door; descends to a dungeon; emerges again; darts up towards Pharaoh's throne; and wherever the second chariot in the kingdom rolls, that clue uncoils behind it, till, after years of grandeur, the sumptuous Vizier and the haggard shepherds stand front to front, and the thread which split at Dothan meets again in Pharaoh's palace, and becomes a united line once more. And in such a starting, guided round to such a meeting, we have, not so much a romantic story, as the mind of God revealed. Joseph's career is just predestination made familiar, and the providence of God made palpable. It burns and shines with present Deity; and whilst it says to the sinner, "Be sure your sins will find you out,” and tells that what man means for evil God manages for good, it also proclaims,

"O but the counsel of the Lord

Doth stand for ever sure; And of his heart the purposes From age to age endure."

II.

THE LAMBS OF THE FLOCK.

And he took them up in his arms, put his hands upon them, and blessed them."-MARK X. 16.

PALMS, and some other trees of tropical countries, are clever at growing upwards. Their trunks are often hollow cylinders, and the effect of a new season is not so inuch to add an inch to their diameter as a cubit to their stature. A date is dropped into the soil, and presently there comes up a tuft of fronds; and as the little phoenix keeps growing, it pushes further and further up into the air this feathery crown, till at last there is a tall slim column with neither branch nor bough, but, at the very summit, a bright flisking canopy, from under which the golden clusters droop downward.

But pines, and oaks, and elms, and nearly all the trees of England, have another way of growing. The acorn is dibbled into the loam, and by-and-by come up two tiny leaflets supported on their little stem. They wither in autumn, but after the winter's rest the little nursling takes a new fit of growing; but instead of merely thrusting forth new leaves at the summit, all round and all the way up a new layer of soft pulpy fibre is deposited under the bark, whilst, from the axils or buds, branches break out; and so, season after season, every summer making the boughs spread wider and the stem wax stronger, the oak holds on expanding, bush and bole together, till a little congregation could worship in its tent, till a house could be built from its timber.

The oak, the apple, the cedar, and most of the trees in our orchards and forests, are exogens or outgrowers,

| enlarged and strengthened by acquisitions on the external surface; so that, if you could only do it deftly enough, you might pull off, one after another, a hundred concentric layers or wooden shells, till you again disclosed the little shrub which left the nursery a hundred years ago.

Now, in the case of the best men—the truest, noblest, greatest-growth is exogenous. Adding fresh fibres to their strength, and new cubits to their stature, they withal are solid, and keep throughout all that they have ever been. And just as in the heart of that veteran of Windsor Forest remains the sapling which saw George the Third a boy, or was looked upon by Gray and Johnson in their prime, so in the case of the more magnificent natures, the true and primal being survives; and whatsoever in the way of knowledge, experience, insight, they may have since acquired, at the core of their goodness, and interior to all things else, in the case of men like Wordsworth, Chalmers, Wilberforce, Mackintosh, you will find the little child,

This is the first essential of success with children: you must have retained, or through grace recovered, this early element-the little child-that freshest, youngest form of yourself, on which have been superinduced all others. If, through worldliness, or pride, or misanthropy, you have destroyed it, so that your heart is now hollow, you will have no sympathy with children, you will dislike or despise the little ones. And they will soon find it out. The tap of the woodpecker does not more truly reveal the empty trunk than the pat of the little hand or the glance of the little eye detects the hollow heart; and if he draws away from you as from a thing dead and dreary, be sorry for yourself. You may be rich, you may be learned, you may be punetilious in practising the rites of religion; but if you have lost all the good things which the little child gathers in its kingdom of heaven-if the sap and substance of these early springs have vanished, and left you dry as summer dust be sorry for yourself. Scholarship, statesmanship, official station, are too dearly purchased by infanticide by the destruction of that little child who is not only the true father of the man, but who through life would have been his best companion.

No doubt, the grace of God sometimes gives in the new man a precious equivalent; but those are the richest, rarest, most delightful spirits, where all that was sweet and simple in life's opening is prolonged into life's progress, and where, amid all his thoughtfulness, all his care and sorrow, the veteran keeps the heart of the little child, and has never been cast forth from their communion. Such a one, in warm and genial affinity, has the main requisite for being a "teacher of babes ;" and whilst teaching, many will be the lessons which in turn he will learn from them.

In what we say we are thinking of that period when infancy first opens into consciousness, and the young immortal begins to wake to the world's delight and wonder. It is the period of simplicity, before conscience has come to life, before such compound passions as re

venge or envy are developed, when kindness gives content, but hardly awakens gratitude, when if in grief there is little hope, there is joined with mirth no trembling, for happiness does not yet cast its shadow fear. It is the time when sensations too are simple, when food and warmth are ample well-being; and perceptions are no less direct and unsophisticated, scarcely aspiring to be ideas; in the rich solution of the sense crystallization not commenced, nor the pulp of feeling compressed and dried into that tough fibre which men call matter of fact.

Can you join them? Can you humble yourself as a little child? Can you look through their eyes? Can you listen through their ears? Can you remember how, amidst the soft grass of June, yon lay upon your back, and gazed up and up for ever so far into the azure, and thought how pleasant it would be to be an angel, and rest on that pure white cloud? Do you remember how you held close to your ear the conch or other winding shell, and wondered why the ghost of the ocean never grew silent? Can you get down to their level?-entering into the mind of their friends, for to them all things are friendly, and they have no mute companions-to them dogs and daisies, kittens and kingcups, all talk distinctly-even books turned upside down have something to say, and empty chairs get lectures, if they do not give them. Can you join them ?-entering into their thoughts, standing on tiptoe to look at the transcendental world, half Olympus, half Alhambra, which, in crystal and silver and mountains of fruitage, spreads upon the table, and which, in kingly, queenly forms, rims its horizon, and then from the awful vision subsiding to every-day life amongst hassocks and toys on the carpet?

For such little children, what is the best thing you can do? By all means protect them; keep them from harm. Though you intend that at last it should be hardy enough, and face a wintry world, at first you take care of your seedling-take it into your greenhouse perchance, and then, when planted finally out, put a fence around it to fend off heedless heels and browsing cattle. So, blessed are those seedlings of eternity which get a good start at first, which open existence where there is no telling of lies, no rough chiding, none of that habitual threatening which begets false and furtive ways. But positively, what is the best lesson for the little ones? Surely something very short; a five minutes' task in an hour of play; a something very easy; a sentence of one thought, a sentence of seven words, will be quite sufficient "Love one another;" "Our Father who art in heaven;" "Suffer the children to come unto me;" "Jesus, tender Shepherd, hear me." But quite as much as the instruction, the influence. If milk be the food convenient, balm is the congenial atmosphere. Here we see the Saviour surrounded by little children; but we are not told any questions that he asked these infant scholars, nor anything that he bade them repeat, important as is truth: others could do that; and it is not so much in lectures or good lessons that our world is

lacking, as in love. Even here, and in Christ's own presence, the air was roughened with the east wind of controversy and remonstrance, when from the rebukes of angry apostles the timid trembling lambs found refuge in the bosom of Jesus; caught up in the arms of the good Shepherd, as he put his hands upon them, and breathed his gentle blessing over them, the calm unspeakable sank into their souls, and with no malice to neutralize it, no unbelief to shut it out, the perfect peace of perfect love had possession of all their minds, and made the moment memorable.

Milk for babes, the food convenient in the plainest porringer, the simplest truth: God is good; God is holy; God is here; God loves you; God hates falsehood, cruelty ;-the most familiar lesson of kindness, reverence, civility, any day may give occasion for it, and the text is never far to seek. But do not forget that in life's soft and susceptible outset, quite as important as great truths is gracious influence. There are teachers who drive dogmas into the heads of little children-yes, and of grown people even-in the same way as Jael drove the nail into the head of Sisera, and with much the same result; but the doctrines of God's holy Word are not so many spikes to be hammered into reluctant or unwary heads, but they are seeds to be planted in an honest soil, hidden in the willing heart, and in order that they may spring, they need-what God's own Spirit alone can give sufficiently-the quickening warmth, the softening rain. But in a degree subordinate, the same gracious influence is exerted by the truly spiritual. You who are a Christian parent, you who are a teacher of babes-nurse, foster-mother, grandmother Lois-who30ever you be who have to do with the little ones-perhaps I should say, most chiefly you so little thanked, but oh, how thankworthy!-the Marthas and Marys, the Annas and Phoebes, who, free from other bonds, are the handmaids of the Lord and the servants of the whole Church, and who, with gifts and affections which might have brightened homes of your own, are now doing all that unselfish goodness and gentle ministry can do to brighten others-imitate Jesus. Get into sympathy with him; seek his presence, seek his help. And walking through the world in his company, you will be a balm in the bleakest weather, a benediction in the wildest scene. Even demons which resist long fasting and prayers, at the name of Jesus "fear and fly;" and that dear Name, as sung by infant voices, will to yourselves grow dearer, as the hope is awakened that your voices and theirs may yet unite in the Song of Moses and the Lamb. As, in the Master's spirit, you take into your arms the little ones, his own everlasting arms will encircle them and you; as on the little heart sobbing for its own offence, or for the unkindness of others, you lay your hand and still its tumult, a resistless voice will say within, "Peace, be still;" and as you tell of that "gentle Jesus, meek and mild," he will pity both their and your simplicity, and as in unseen presence he comes again, his blessing will breathe upon you.