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give religious instruction. The edifice, having been built for the purpose, was admirably suited to the wants of the institution. The school-rooms were spacious and numerous, so that there was no necessity for crowding. They were well lighted, and, what is quite as important, well ventilated. No one cause operates so disastrously on the health of teacher and scholars as corrupt air. In schools innumerable the atmosphere is perpetually foul, if it may not rather be called pestilential. This particular had been well cared for by Mr. Mill and Dr. Smith; and in this they had the hearty concurrence of Mr. Barry, who had had experience of the ill consequences of a few hogsheads of air breathed over and over. He told them the story of the Black Hole of Calcutta, and declared that, in many school-rooms, the greatest favour one could do, would be to knock out two or three panes of glass.

I will not deny that Carl felt a glow of some kind, when he first saw the printed “Circular and Prospectus of the Ashdell Academy." It

was concise and modest, but it contained, in very conspicuous capitals, the name of Mr. Carl Adler, Assistant, and Instructor in the French and German Languages. There are moments when trifles like this weigh as much in the scale as legacies, or prizes in lotteries. Carl had the comfort of reflecting that this honourable advancement, which was certainly considerable in the case of a youth, had been unsought by him; and he was earnestly desirous to make it contribute to the good of his fellow-creatures. And what situation is there in life, I desire to ask, in which this hope may be more reasonably entertained, than that of an instructor of youth?

Every one of Carl's scholars at the octagon was present as a pupil at the opening of the academy. This had been matter of special arrangement by Mr. Mill. But these nine had now increased to thirty-five! As they sat at their separate desks, on the cast-iron rotary seats, which had then just come into use, they appeared to Carl like a little army,

of which he was in some sort the commander. And he wrote to his elder sister, Charlotte, a letter, of which the following is an extract:

"You must not think me exalted, dear Lotte; my illness has done something to prevent this; but still more, I trust, am I kept humble by a sense of my daily and hourly shortcomings. Yet there is something not unlike elation, when I find myself admitted to such trusts. More than thirty boys are partly under my control. Some of them are advanced scholars, even in branches which I have not studied; but my task is well defined. The higher Greek and Latin' classics are taught by Barry, and the whole domestic charge falls to his share. Oh! I wish you knew him! He is just such a man as you could not but admire and love: so self-forgetting, so many-sided in his tastes, so noble, so fervid. If I ever think the Americans cold, it is not when I am with Barry. From him it was that I first caught the idea of what it was to be a teacher. I had thought it dull, mechanical, and even irksome. He

made me see it to be a noble art-more noble than our darling music-more noble than painting, sculpture, and architecture. These work with dead materials, but the hand of the teacher moulds the plastic soul. The noblest cultivation of fields and gardens rears only vegetable life; but the teacher watches the development of a life which is spiritual and immortal.

"Often, dearest Lotte, have I unbosomed myself to you about the church. You know I have sometimes thought seriously of being a minister of the gospel-unworthy as I amand, indeed, I sometimes think of it still. But is not this also a kind of ministry? May I not serve our blessed Redeemer, even if I pass my life in feeding his lambs? Thus I regard it. I would not learn to regard it otherwise. Some people, here, think religion ought to be kept out of schools! Do not laugh at the suggestion. They even attempt to put it into practice. Is it not like opening an hospital without medicine? or sowing fields with every thing except grain? You may be sure neither

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Barry nor I would come into any such schools as these. The principal thing which a child needs to learn, and that which he must learn now or never, shall always have a chief place in all instructions of mine. But, hold! I catch myself talking large, and remember that I am only an usher, and not a president, (as Mary Smith prophesies I shall be ;) yet am I ever and ever your loving, loving brother,