illuminated, authentic display of the eternal principles on which God governs the world.

Again: there is an important sense, in which classical literature is in itself eminently religious. It is indeed full of darkness and of error, on the great themes of God, of human nature and the unexplored future; and many of its pages consecrate vice, deify brutal passion, and minister to unholy appetite. But we look in vain through the classics for that religious indifference, for that entire exclusion of all reference to the higher relations and destiny of man, which marks so much of the literature of modern Christendom. We do not believe that, in times and lands characterized by secular civilization and refinement, without the light of revelation, religious indifference is a possible thing. There must needs he, in such a state of society, an earnest craving and yearning for spiritual truth, a longing to penetrate the veil of sense and the darkness of the grave-to answer the questions, which cultivated man cannot help asking, "Whence am I, and whither? Am I the creature of chance, and the plaything of irresponsible fate, or the child of a Supreme Intelligence, and the heir of a higher destiny?" These inquiries have been answered by an express mission from the throne of the Eternal; and vast numbers now fold their hands in easy indifference, content to know the path of immortality without treading it. But of such questionings, the classic writers are full. Even the most licentious of them express a longing for light and truth, for a supreme law of duty, for a voice to break the eternal silence, and to reveal the vast unseen and unknown. Even those of them that are termed sceptical, have only outgrown the rude, gross forms of popular idolatry, and are endeavoring to construct out of the chaos of exploded superstitions and philosophies, some more rational and coherent exposition of the great mysteries of life and nature.

Now it is to these writers, not to modern unbelievers, who have borrowed light from that Sun of righteousness, which they would quench,-it is to the classics, that we must go, to learn what the religion of nature is. We find it written out in detail in their history, their philosophy, their poetry; and every item of it is pointed with an interrogation mark. It is, throughout, a religion of questionings, of yearnings,—a "feeling

after God, if haply they may find him," a "longing after immortality," an earnest desire for light upon the path of duty, nay, in some striking and beautiful instances, a confession of darkness, and a humble prayer that some guide for benighted man may come forth from the Eternal Throne. Now Christianity, which is a religion of answers, every item of it pointed with a full stop, was given man as a counterpart to the interrogative religion of nature, to answer his questionings, to solve his doubts, to satisfy his longings. We can then hardly have a better guide in our study of the records of revelation, than the anatomy of the human heart in its days of darkness and of need. We learn from this anatomy precisely what man's wants were, how various, how complex, how deep. We gain an accurate knowledge of the needs and demands, which revelation was designed and adapted to meet,-of the ground which it was to cover. And, as human nature is the same in all ages, though its inmost structure is no longer laid bare to our view by its moral destitution and neediness, we may learn from this study what Christianity has done and is now doing for the soul of man, yea, even for the unthankful and rebellious, though a hundred fold more for the believing and obedient.

In the study of theology, we attach little value to set and formal theological treatises; none whatever to bodies of divinity-aptly so called from their lack of soul. There are certain works of philology and archæology, which are essential aids in the critical study of the Scriptures; but the next place to these on the clergyman's table, we would assign to Horace, Cicero and Seneca. Not that they will be, in any sense or degree, his authoritative instructors in truth or duty; but they will constantly suggest questions, which he will go to the Bible to have answered. They will reveal states of mind, doubts, difficulties, for which he must seek the solution in the records of inspiration. They will enlarge to his eye the scope of revelation. They will make him feel the folly of any system of baptized rationalism or naturalism. They will impress upon his mind the truth, to sound philosophy, of a simple, childlike faith in prophecy and miracle. They will echo in his ear the voice that came from heaven, "This is my beloved son,-hear ye him." They will draw from his own heart the echo of the apos

tle's words, "Lord, to whom shall we go? Thou hast the words of eternal life."

The lawyer too, for special reasons, needs this same classical training. Of many maxims, principles and rules of law, he can trace the history, only by going back to the laws of Solon, Lycurgus, or the Twelve Tables. The common law of England, the basis of our own legal precedents, though usually deemed of Anglo-Saxon origin, with accretions of Norman growth, bears not a few traces of Roman jurisprudence, and must date back its rude beginnings to the age when Britain was a Roman province. Then too, the civil law, which forms the basis of the jurisprudence of one of our States, and portions of which are fast working their way into the statute law of others, cannot be studied or understood by merely reading the Pandects of Justinian. Law is never written or enacted; it is only compiled. The law of a nation is an epitome of its history. There was not a revolution of the Roman state, not a faction of the early republic, not a Latin epic poem, tragedy or comedy, not a phasis of Roman culture or refinement, which formed not a constituent factor of Justinian's code. No man, then, can understand the civil law, except by entering into intimate communion with the mighty Roman mind in the days of its vigor and its glory.

For the physician also, a similar classical training should be deemed indispensable. His profession has its technical phraseology, which he can understand only by conversance with the ancient languages. It has also its authentic history, which abuts upon--its semi-fabulous yet instructtive history, which spans the classic ages. The physician's business too, is with man, and not with man as a mere animal, but equally with the living spirit, with the unceasing mutual intersection of mind and body with the soul's mysterious maladies; and whatever reveals man to his better knowledge, must therefore form an essential portion of his culture. Then too, the physician's position in society, the intimate and delicate relation in which he stands to individuals and families of the highest purity of taste and refinement of character, the power, which, for good or evil, he may in ways without number exert by his speech and manners; the necessity for his successful practice, that he should be confided in as an intelligent and cultivated man,-these considera

tions, and many others, point out for him a standard of general education not one whit below the highest. Indeed, if there be a class of men, on whom we have a right to look with contempt, those, who have enjoyed the professional services of physicians of large mind, and liberal tastes, and whole, warm hearts, can hardly fail to regard with scorn the too numerous class of mere adroit medical practitioners, who can blister, bleed and purge, but could not minister to a mind diseased,-who make their profession a mere handicraft, and intrude themselves with the speech and manners of an unnurtured boor upon scenes, where every utterance, gesture, thought and feeling should be gentle as the breath of heaven.

From these remarks, it may be inferred, that we would place very far along in the course of a liberal education the point at which candidates for the learned professions shall diverge from each other, to commence special preparation for the business of their coming lives. Let the established and required course of professional studies be also prolonged, exact and thorough. The very nature and rank of these professions demand this. The clerical profession has for its text-book a volume, which claims and rewards the profoundest study of the longest life; and, though its more obvious and essential doctrines and precepts may be promptly apprehended even by the unlettered, the teacher of religion should be able to interpret its dark passages, to defend its truths and its records from cavil and scepticism, and to hold them up for the adoring admiration of the indifferent and the scoffer. There are indeed many ignorant religious teachers, who seem to do great good; but they do harm also. They degrade, in the eyes of some, the religion which they make precious to others. Their rude rhetoric and lame logic put gibes into the mouth of the scoffer. Their feeble defences and unauthentic statements, while they satisfy the credulous and submissive intellect, drive those of keener vision into doubt and unbelief. True it is," writes a quaint old divine, "God stands in no need of any man's parts or abilities; much less does he stand in need of any man's ignorance, incapacity, self-conceit and vanity; nor has he anywhere encouraged the use of these latter qualities in the business of religious instruction, now that miracles have ceased, though he was once pleased by miracle to give elocution

to a stupid quadruped, to rebuke the madness of a wicked prophet." The study of the law also covers a vast extent, and in its practice involves, not only the highest earthly well-being of the individual, but the permanence and sacredness of all social rights and obligations. The sources too, of the physician's education are exhaustless and infinitely varied, while his personal life is full of emergencies, demanding all the available apparatus of scientific knowledge, and of the treasured experience and skill of those who have preceded him.

But we must suspend our remarks on these professions; nor have we space to speak in detail of mercantile education, which, both general and specific, cannot be too extensive or too thorough. Commerce, conducted by merchants worthy of the name, is, in the best sense of the words, a liberal profession, and has adorned itself in our cities by illustrious examples of intelligence, uprightness and princely generosity, while, when its escutcheon has been stained, it has generally been by intrusive members of the profession, who have embarked in it, with no fitness, either mental, educational or moral, to conduct its operations, or to subdue and scorn its temptations.

There are three numerous and unlike professions, in which we, in this country, are sadly in need of suitable preliminary education for the incumbents. Under one of these we would group the various classes of persons employed in steam navigation. It is universally conceded, that, in the application of science to steam navigation, our country is second to none; and yet appalling and fatal accidents from steam occur among us with startling frequency, while on board of French and English steam-vessels they are extremely rare. This difference is not to be ascribed to the different characters of those to whom the management of this fearful agent is entrusted. In England and France, the qualifications of engineers, pilots, and commanders, are submitted to the severest and most searching tests, while, in this country, such tests are nowhere employed; nor are there any means for enforcing their employment; and, though on our Eastern routes of steam navigation, care is generally taken to select competent persons for the more important offices, if report speaks the truth, there is a vast amount of reckless and guilty negligence in this matter on our Western waters. Of the fitness

of engineers or pilots, we can judge only from report; but of western captains we have had opportunities of personal observation. We have stood on the deck of a huge and crowded steamboat, with its freight of hundreds of precious lives pouring over the gangway, the furnace fires glowing and roaring, the steam fuming, snorting, and hissing, shaking its prison walls, storming every valve and orifice, like a maniac giant in a wicker cageand, when we have made diligent inquiry for the chief keeper, whose word, whose every look should control every underkeeper, and check every movement of the prisoner's fiery pulse, we have seen him the most insignificant man on board, of stolid countenance and slouching gait, his whole bearing and manner pointing him out as fit to be but a mere woodheaver, or man of all work, fore and aft. With such a commander, we have felt that the lack of one controlling voice and mind, might, of itself, tell the whole shameful story, should scattered limbs and bleeding corpses follow the first roll of the engine. In a profession involving such tremendous risks, the most peremptory legislation ought to scourge ignorance, incapacity and stupidity, from every place of trust and control, and to put there only those who can count and calculate every throb in the giant's veins, as the skillful physician does the pulses of his patient.

Another very different profession, of which we have almost no properly educated members, is, that of the statesman and legislator. The Athenians chose their generals from the mass of the people by popular election; and a shrewd philosopher once proposed that they should vote their asses horses, so easy did they find it to transform men by their vote. We make statesman and lawgivers out of anything, and everything; and seem to think, that because a man has been successful and eminent in any profession whatever, he is therefore, fit to make or administer our laws, and to adjust the most complex international relations. "He has made glass, or cotton goods," we say," he has sailed ships, he has pleaded causes, he has treated patients, he has slaughtered Indians, with eminent success; therefore, let us send him to Congress, or make him Governor or President, Secretary of State, or a Foreign Envoy." In point of fact, a man's eminence in any one profession, is proof positive that he has so concen

trated his energies on that one, as to be well fitted for that alone. Even the successful lawyer, as such, is no statesman. Because he can interpret, he is not therefore capable of originating laws. Because he can manage the interests of a simple client, he is not therefore fit to guide the state. Because he can convince a jury of plain, sober, honest Yankees, it does not follow that he can play at fast and loose with the practised diplomatists of St. James and St. Cloud. It is because our statesmen are made as the Athenian generals were, that we have such reckless tampering with laws and vested rights, such ceaseless vacillation in the management of our public affairs, --such daubing with untempered mortar of every seam and cranny in the ship of state. We have not the faith of a hackneyed partisan in the total depravity of this or that political party. But we have unlimited faith in the incompetency of public agents, chosen without reference to their attainments in political history and science. On the floor of Congress, there are gravely debated, every session, points in political economy which have been deemed settled beyond dispute, among those versed in the science of government, ever since the days of Adam Smith. The law-maker, the statesman, the diplomatist, ought to be acquainted with the history of governments and of theories of government, with the principles and the postulates of international law, with the whole science of political economy, and with the legislative action of former times and other nations. Were our people once to demand such men for the places in their gift, the demand would create the supply. The same men, who now leave no stone, on which they can climb into power, not upturned, would then seek place and its emoluments, not, as now, by canvassing votes and swelling the breeze of popular clamor, but in the seclusion of libraries,--in tranquilizing, elevating communion with the mighty dead, and with the illustrious liv. ing-by dignified communications through the press, in which the wisdom of the past and the present would be solicited to solve the knotty points at issue between contending parties, to balance precedents, and to establish the right and the true. However solicitous to rise, they would then bide their time, and wait, perforce, to be sought ought, and to have office tendered them as the due meed of patient self-culture and well attested merit.

For my third instance, I would class, as belonging to one profession, the various subordinate public functionaries connected with the collection and disbursement of our revenue. To make their offices a party football, is to put them, with every change of administration, into less and less faithful and competent hands: for all who can live by their skill or talents, will soon find out that the prize is not worth the game. We charge the greatly increased losses of government, of late years, through mismanagement and default, not upon the profligacy of one or the other political party, but upon the introduction into these branches of the public administration, by one of the great political parties, of a system under which no party can be well served. It is fit, indeed, that the leading and responsible places near the executive chair be filled by those who sympathize with the Chief Magistrate in his political theories. It is fit, also, that those connected with the various branches of revenue, and thus brought into contact with all classes of citizens, should not be obtrusive, or brawling politicians. But there is no need that they think alike on mooted points of national administration. These points have no connection with their specific duties-but they ought to be men of approved business education and habits, careful and accurate accountants, prompt and intelligent in the interpretation and application of the rules of their respective departments, and honest, trustworthy men in private relations and duties. These qualities, (the last alone excepted) can be ensured only by the education of public functionaries for their offices. And they might be educated by clerkships, or placed, by way of probation, at less important posts, and promoted as they were found fit for promotion. Were the tenure of such offices for good behavior, they would not lack annual recruits from among the choicest youth of the country; nor can any other system but this redeem our financial administration from the inroads of growing profligacy and corruption.

But we have dwelt so long on our first proposition, as to leave but little space for the discussion of the other two. Nor do they need much; for they are virtually included in the first. We shall not, therefore, trespass far on the patience of our readers, in the separate remarks which they seem to demand.

II. Our second proposition was, that a man ought to continue through life in

the same profession. By this we do not mean to say, that a man should not rise in the world. We would have him aim constantly at the highest places in his profession, and assume them as fast as he is fitted for them; but we would have him rise in his calling, and raise that along with himself.

Why do men leave their professions? Chiefly for four reasons.

1. On account of incompetency, growing almost always out of defective education. They find themselves unfit for what they have undertaken. They cannot command patronage or satisfy employers. Such men generally have recourse to some position in which incompetency can be veiled from sight. They often betake themselves, not to commerce, (for that needs both ability and previous training,) but to buying and selling on a petty scale. A very large proportion of the keepers of little huckster shops, fruit stalls and tippling houses in all our towns and cities, are occupying these paltry places, simply because for lack of training they are fit for nothing else, nor yet could they keep shops worthy of the name. Many, too, seek to hide their incompetency in public offices, where any lack of skill or tact or intelligence is easily atoned for by a double measure of partisan zeal.

2. Many men change their professions for the sake of ease, and generally from the mistaken idea, that where the hands are not employed there is no labor or fatigue. Now, in point of fact, no vital and useful member of society leads an easy life. One may indeed occupy a sinecure, but that is only a living burial, and no man, who respects himself, will commit self-annihilation for the sake of ease. But every man, who occupies an actual place among living men, must pay its price by diligent, arduous labor. There is no profession in which a respectable standing can be attained and kept without toil. Nor is there, as regards bodily ease, any essential difference between headwork and hand-work; or if there be, it is in favor of the latter; for the fatigue of a laboring man, which a sound night's sleep will carry off, bears no proportion to the derangement of nerves and the chronic lassitude that result from an overtasked brain. Those who change professions for the sake of ease are almost always disappointed. They find that an increase of risk, care and accountableness a larger draft upon the functions of the brain, and a less entire relaxation of

mind during hours of repose, are more than an offset for the release from handlabor.

3. Another class change professions from false notions of respectability. True respectability, not only in the eye of heaven, but in the esteem of every man of common sense, consists not in the place one holds, but in his fitness for it, and his fidelity in it. It is not the place that makes the man, but the man that makes the place, great; and no being in the universe holds a higher rank, than he who fills with conscientious industry and usefulness one of the least conspicuous stations in society.

"His sphere, though humble, if that humble sphere Shine with his fair example, and, though

small

His influence, if that influence all be spent In soothing sorrow and in quenching strife, In aiding helpless indigence, in works From which at least a grateful few derive Some taste of comfort in a world of woe,Then let the supercilious great confess, The state, beneath the shadow of whose He serves his country, recmpenses well

vine

He sits secure, and in the scale of life Holds no ignoble, though a slighted place."

On the other hand, a man, by changing his profession, frequently sinks while he thinks he is rising; for there is no object more grotesque and ridiculous than a person occupying a situation out of keeping with his talents, education and habits. If a certain small and narrow-minded portion of society, if here and there a silly girl or a brainless fopling does see fit to stigmatize some honest and useful professions as less respectable than others, even this is in great part chargeable upon the readiness of so many to forsake what are termed the humbler callings. But if men will only remain where Providence has placed them, there is indefinite room for the elevation, mental, moral and social, of every lawful avocation; and each will take rank in the esteem of the community, in proportion to the fidelity and uprightness of its members. If a man be actully a genius, a great man, he may show himself great, without forsaking his calling. He may bring the resources of his genius to bear upon that calling, either in mechanical or economical improvements, or in intellectual impulses transmitted from his mind through a constantly widening circle of commanding influence. Dr. Franklin continued a hard-working mechanic long