all that is required, is to form good habits; in the other, bad habits are to be broken up, before right ones can be formed.

Before closing, I will advert to an objection, which has been sometimes urged against the method of instruction which has now been recommended. It is thought to be too difficult, to require too much effort.

To this objection I answer, that from the nature of this branch of knowledge, some difficulties must attend its pursuit. Who, without effort, can hope to look into the human breast, and to discern those hidden springs of action, those trembling chords of emotion, to which the eloquent writer must address himself? Who can expect to acquire skill in the use of language, and refinement of taste, without labor? Where is the able writer, who has not made himself such by his own unwearied exertions?

-Nil sine magno

Vita labore dedit mortalibus.'

But there is another view. It should be no objection to a course of study, that it requires effort, that it tasks the mind. and calls for the vigorous exertion of its powers. For one, I confess myself in a measure skeptical as to the value of those improvements in education, which remove all difficulties out of the way, which, if they do not open a royal road to knowledge, make a smooth and a level one, and sometimes burden the traveller with help as he goes on his way. I am by no means persuaded, that these facilities are in the end to advance our scholars farther in their course. The higher you ascend the hill, the steeper and the rougher is the way; and it is only the strong muscle, and the sturdy step of him, who knows what it is to toil and to struggle, that can mount these steeps, and move onwards unimpeded by these roughnesses. I might here ask, what made our fathers what they were, and how comes it to pass, that there were giants in those days? But this topic belongs to others, and I dismiss it, with the ob

jection which has led me to remark upon it, believing that the latter requires no further notice.

Gentlemen, if what I have now said has tended to increase the definiteness of your views as to the objects to be obtained by the study of rhetoric; and especially, if any suggestions have been offered, which may aid those who teach in becoming more useful to those who are taught this art, my design is accomplished.

MR GRUND'S LECTURE.

LECTURE VII.

ON

GEOMETRY AND ALGEBRA,

AS

ELEMENTARY BRANCHES OF EDUCATION.

BY F. J. GRUND.

SCIENCE and arts are useful, only in proportion as they contribute to our happiness, either by providing the means of our physical comfort, or by ennobling human nature and increasing the number and intensity of our intellectual enjoyments. Education is the appropriate means of securing these. I shall be justified, therefore, when, in speaking of the two principal branches of mathematical knowledge, algebra and geometry, I first dwell on the general purposes of education, in order to determine the rank which mathematical sciences ought to hold in early instruction, and the bearing which they have on the developement of intellect, and the formation of character.

Education has, at all times, held a distinguished place among the acknowledged interests of civilized nations. It has been successively the subject of thought and research with the most eminent philosophers of antiquity. Statesmen and reformers of empires have bestowed upon it their utmost cares, and