formal addresses from bodies of pupils to the President of the United States, on national affairs. Encourage such sallies, and you will have in time nominations of the Chief Magistrate by the same associations.

Anxious as we were for the success of the Greeks in their sublime struggle with the most ferocious of tyrants and bigots, we did not like the idea of public donations to their cause from Freshmen, Sophomores, Juniors, Seniors, or Tyros. It would be better that the money of the lad should be applied to the purchase of copies of Thucydides and Livy; and that he should be restrained in all cases from public interference in public questions. His sole business in college is the acquisition of knowledge and virtue.—We would not have him kept in ignorance of passing events and the concerns of nations, but our doctrine is that he is to be a mere inquirer and observer at the most. There is time enough for intervention and bustle, after he has passed through his novitiate.

THE BLIND.-American Institutes for the instruction of the Blind have been organized in the most satisfactory manner. This is, truly, an excellent foundation of charity, embracing the creation, as it were, of intellectual and moral being-the completion of the soul in all its faculties and susceptibilities, in a number of our fellow creatures whom Providence seems to have consigned specially to the beneficent and plastic hand of the more favoured portion of the human species.

The instruction of the Blind, and of the Deaf and Dumb, as it is prosecuted by modern ingenuity and philanthropy, may be pronounced scarcely less creditable to the human head and heart than any employment in which man can be engaged, and consequently deserving of universal concurrence. The process is all mind and beneficence; the results are beautiful and noble. A being so

1

mutilate in bodily organs as to be a cripple equally in the rational part, and thus, in the ordinary course of nature, restricted to an apprehension and existence but little above the merely animal, comes forth from the tuition of his fellow creatures, with illumination intellectual and moral; susceptibilities; tastes; accomplishments; equivalents that raise him to a level, in every respect, with the most amply gifted, happily disposed, highly refined and richly cultivated of our race. In this supplemental and glorious creation we have more than the ancients imagined in the achievements of Prometheus and Pygmalion.

The case of the Blind is, in our opinion, still more pitiable than that of the Deaf and Dumb; it is susceptible of equal alleviation for the immediate sufferers, and of indemnification for society which loses by the imbecility of any of its members, and is bound to qualify them, if it can, for private enjoyment and public usefulness. The triumph of human ingenuity and beneficence is more signal and affecting in the instruction of the Blind than in any other exhibition of the effects of those wonder-working springs of human action, which we have ever witnessed. In the Institution of the Blind at Paris, there were, when we visited it in 1808, eighty youths of both sexes, undergoing a comprehensive course of education-literary and mechanical. They were taught, with complete success, the Latin, and several of the modern languages; most of the branches of general literature; the mathematics; music, instrumental and vocal; and a variety of handicrafts, especially printing and book-binding, in which it was impossible to be more skilful than they were. Of the whole number of pupils there were but three or four who had not a good ear and a great fondness for music; their concerts, in which they executed the compositions of the

most difficult masters, were of remarkable excellence; they sang with as much science as melody; no disposition, however stoical, could resist their chant of thanksgiving to God, and their immediate benefactor, Hauy, the founder and principal of the Institution: it was a chorus, of which the fine harmony, and the devout and grateful strain, seeming to issue from the inmost soul of the performers, along with their peculiar, mournful physiognomy, and the impression which the whole scene afforded of reclaimed and comparatively beatified existence, rived the heart and drew abundant tears from the eyes of every casual auditor. For those who understand the French, the elegant and pathetic sentiment and turn of the following verses, of the number of those which they sang, will form our apology for quoting them :—

"O ciel pour combler tes bienfaits,
Ouvre un instant notre paupière,
Et nous n'aurons plus de regrets
D'etre prives de la lumière;
Que notre œil contemple les traits
De ceux dont la main nous soulage,
Et referme-le pour jamais :

Nos cœurs en garderont l'image."

In the mathematics, through the most abstruse and elevated parts of this science, their proficiency was truly astonishing, and superior to that of the pupils of a correspondent age in the regular colleges. One of them soon after bore away the governmental prize publicly contested, from all the latter. The particular aptitude of the mind, under the privation of eye-sight, for abstraction, accounts for this superiority. Several of the Blind educated in this institution, have been, and are, professors of the mathematics in the Lyceum and in the private schools of the capitol others are organists in various churches in Paris and in the Provinces; some serve as interpreters of languages in the public offices, &c.: most of them gain a

comfortable livelihood by means of the learning or trades which they have acquired; they are, too, not only valuable to society as efficient labourers in the different lines of industry, but as examples of piety and order.

CHARITY SCHOOLS.-The processions or groups of charity children, which are sometimes encountered in our streets, must affect even the passing and casual spectator with respect and gratitude, on behalf of human nature, for those who contribute to rescue indigent and helpless childhood from the moral and physical disasters by which it is beset, and to place it under auspices and in a situation through which it may reach an equal lot with the classes originally more favoured in the cast of condition. It is not individuals alone who are benefited, when means for the happy developement of the moral and intellectual faculties, and opportunity for social efficiency and elevation, are thus afforded. The community at large have a considerable share of the advantage; the propagation of the good by example or otherwise, is indefinite: and hence, public spirit will specially direct its exertions and resources to this mode of charity in alliance with the general object of education.

UNTHRIFT.

THE poverty in which Mr. Sheridan died, was not the fault of his friends, but the effect of his own inveterate improvidence and insobriety. He abandoned himself long before they ceased to assist him in every way. To his case we may well apply the excellent observations of the author of the Pursuits of Literature.

"The want of discretion and prudence has ruined more men of letters and genius than the time would allow me to mention. Without prudence and the habit of regularity, without an attention to the decencies of society and of common life, and of the principles by

which all men indiscriminately should be conducted, all our attainments are nothing worth. They will never procure us esteem or respectability among men."

To persons of genius as they are called, Dr. Johnson gave this solemn admonition :

"The relation of the life of Savage, will not be without its use, if those who, in confidence of superior capacity or learning, disregard the common maxims of life, shall be reminded that nothing will supply the want of prudence, and that negligence and irregularity, long continued, will make knowledge useless, wit ridiculous, and genius contemptible."

Sheridan's folly made his end the most striking of contrasts with what it might have been, had his endowments and opportunities been turned to the true account.

An essayist says of Churchill" he was constitutionally licentious; his passions were too violent to admit of restraint-he scorned excuse or palliation for his vices," &c. We apprehend that the poet was no more constitutionally licentious or subject to ungovernable passions, than any other culprit who has preferred the paths of wickedness to those of virtue. He cultivated no moral principles he resigned his power of salutary will, to gratify libertine propensities-he became frontless, and therefore disdained apology for his vices; in short he was "a bold, bad man," and is no more to be excused than the rest of the dissolute and criminal in whatever sphere. The same writer supposes that he relinquished the clerical habit because he found that "his inordinate passions would not allow him to maintain the purity befitting it."-Now, in fact, the real reason was, that he could not bear to maintain any appearance of purity:Hypocrisy, according to the well-known aphorism, is the homage which vice pays to virtue; he was too corrupt and callous to consent to pay any homage at all in his deportment. His biographer explains his procedure thus