remembering, or calculating by numbers. Now the former are as susceptible of improvement as the latter; but, when improved, the result is never considered as consisting in any amendment of simple spirit, but of compound organized matter. For example, when vision is improved the amendment is uniformly referred to the eye, the optic nerve, and that portion of the brain which is immediately associated with them; they being the organs wherewith the mind sees, and without which it cannot see. The position is so plain that to state it simply is to prove it to a demonstration. With regard to the higher mental operations the same may be affirmed. In performing these, the mind works with the brain as its machinery, as certainly as it does with the eye in seeing, the ear in hearing, or the muscles in performing voluntary motion. By practice, man becomes more powerful and expert in reasoning and judging; but in this case the mind is not changed; no-the improvement is confined to the organ in the brain, with which the mind reasons and judges. For man to claim the power of operating immediately on spirit, and of amending or deteriorating it by any means he can employ, is an assumption perfectly gratuitous, and, in his opinion, the Doctor adds (too modestly) not a little extraordinary and arrogant. It is enough that man is able to change matter, and to control it to his purposes, by material agents. All the means used in teaching are material: when, therefore, we wish to improve mental operations, we have only to amend the organs which the mind employs in performing these operations. There is good reason to believe that spirit cannot be altered or modified by any thing short of the Creative Will, by which it was primarily brought into existence.

Dr. Caldwell divides education into three distinct branches-the physical, moral, and intellectual. Nothing is more certain, he says, than that the intellectual and the moral powers may be educated separately—the former being amended while the latter are not, and the converse. There is as real a difference between moral and intellectual education, as there is between these and physical education: but they are all three so intimately connected, that the improvement of any one of them may be made conducive to that of the rest. Nor can it be otherwise, except through mismanagement: moral action, intellectual action, and physical action, all have their sources and instruments in different parts of the human system: these parts are essentially connected by sympathy, and other ties more mechanical and obvious: wherefore, one or more of them being injured or benefited, the rest must necessarily be affected. Thus, for instance, the human body is a very complicated system. It con

sists of many different organs, which are again made up of other organs, each performing its specific functions: but, instead of acting every one for itself alone, these organs act also for each other individually and collectively, and are united in a system by function and sympathy. The condition of one organ, therefore, whether sound or unsound, influences and modifies that of many others: if it be a principal organ, it influences the whole machine. There are three great sets of organs which, while they are intimately and indispensably connected with each other, they control all the rest and assimilate their condition in no small degree to their own. These are the chyle-making or digestive organs: the blood-making and blood-distributing organs, consisting of the lungs, the heart, and the blood-vessels; and the brain, spinal cord and nerves, which are the organs of intellect and feeling, as well as the sources of voluntary motion. All the other organs are controlled by these three sets, and they produce this effect by mutually controlling themselves, by exercising such a reciprocal influence as to be all, at the same time, somewhat assimilated in condition. They are as necessary to each other as they are to the whole: when one of them is materially deranged in its action, the two others immediately suf fer, and all the rest of the system is disordered in its turn. Hence, it is quite evident, that moral and intellectual education which consists in amending the condition of the brain, and physical education which is the improvement of the other parts of the body, are indispensable to the perfection of each other, and consequently to that of the whole system. Physical education is to the other two, what the root, and trunk, and branches of the tree are to its leaves, blossoms, and fruit it is the essence and source of their existence: injure or improve it, and you produce on them a kindred effect: without a strict and judicious attention to it, man cannot attain to the perfec tion of his nature. If history and tradition be credited, the people of ancient Greece, as a nation, were, physically and intellectual. ly, the most perfect of the human race; and there is reason to be lieve that their unrivalled attention to physical education was highly influential in determining this result. If, then, instead of treating technically of moral, intellectual, and physical education, authors and teachers would speak more correctly of the education of the different portions of the body, each portion being trained according to its organization and character, their discourses would be more philosophical than they are, and also greatly more instructive.

Physical education, in its philosophy and practice, embraces every thing that, by bearing in any way on the human body, can injure

or benefit it in its health, vigour, and fitness for action. This is Dr. C.'s position; and, according to him, the first and most important element of physical education is to procure, for those to be educated, a constitution of body originally sound. For attaining this end, the soundness of parents is necessary; because it is a law of nature that constitutional qualities are hereditary and transmissible from parents to their progeny, in man and animals. That the descendants of a community, sound, and vigorous, and hardy, in mind and body, will be themselves a community of the same description, unless they are changed by adventitious causes, is a general rule to which neither does history contain, nor can observation adduce, a single exception. This principle is extensively and powerfully operative on the standing and welfare of the human race it is the reason why children, born at different periods of the lives of their parents, and under the influence of diffe rent circumstances, especially different degrees of parental health and vigour, are often so unlike each other: and it is also the probable source of the very frequent strong resemblance of twins who receive the impress of the same parental condition. The firstborn children of parents who marry when very young, are rarely equal, either in body or intellect, to those born afterwards, provided the parents continue healthy. Dr. C. explains this occurrence by stating that very young parents are immature and comparatively feeble in constitution; that their constitutional imperfection descends to their early offspring; but that, as years pass on, their being ripens and their strength increases; and that, as a natural effect of this, the constitutions of their children become ameliorated. During early life, the animal faculties and their organs predominate: parents, therefore, who marry at this period, communicate in a higher degree to their children the same unfortunate predominance which renders them less intellectual and moral, and more sensual-less capable, as well as less ambitious, of pre-eminence in knowledge and virtue, and more inclined to animal indulgences.

Dr. C. refers to history and observation for a confirmation of this doctrine, and to philosophy for its exposition. He advises, as a means toward the improvement of our race, the prohibition or abandonment of too early marriages: before the parties form a compact fraught with consequences so infinitely weighty, let the constitution of both be matured. They will then, he says, not only transmit to their progeny a better organization, but be themselves, from the knowledge and experience they have attained, better prepared to improve it by cultivation. Patriotism, philanthrophy, and every

feeling of kindness to human nature, call for the prevention of such marriages. Similar objections may be justly urged against young women marrying men far advanced in years. It is rare for the descendants of old men to be distinguished for high endowments, either of body or of mind: age has impaired their constitutional qualities, which being transmitted to their children, the practice tends to deteriorate our race: wherefore, Dr. C. concludes, old men ought, in no case, to contract marriages likely to become fruitful. As respects persons seriously deformed, or in any way constitutionally enfeebled, particularly those who are predisposed to insanity, scrofula, pulmonary consumption, gout, or epilepsy; all such persons should conscientiously abstain from marriage. The union of such individuals cannot be defended on moral grounds, much less on that of public usefulness: it is selfish to an extent but little short of crime: its abandonment or prevention would tend, in a high degree, to promote the improvement of mankind.

Another source of human deterioration is a long series of family intermarriages. Be the cause what it may, Dr. C. affirms, both history and observation testify to the fact, that the descendants from marriages between parties related by consanguinity always degenerate in time, they become both mentally and corporeally enfeebled. Another grand source of the degeneracy of human beings is the marriage of the indigent, who are destitute of a competent supply of wholesome food for themselves and their children. This is a fearful cause of deterioration. Reason assures us that a sound and powerful machine cannot be constructed out of damaged materials; and to this decision of reason experience unites its testimony. Stinted and unwholesome fare acts on mankind as it does on other forms of living matter; it injures organization, and checks its development. Both the vegetables of a barren soil and the animals nourished by them are feeble, and diminutive, and unsightly; so is man, when pinched and dispirited by poverty and its concomitants. Dr. C. regards the state of the mother's health during pregnancy as a cause which operates decidedly upon the constitution of her unborn infant; and, he observes, it is vain to allege, in opposition to this, that the children of delicate, enervated, and even sickly mothers, are sometimes healthy and robust: they would have been much more so had the health of their mothers been in a better condition. All this being certain, he adds that females, while in this state, cannot too carefully avoid every thing calculated to injure or alarm them. They should take much exercise in the open air, overcoming the feeling which induces them to practice an injurious

seclusion suggested by an excess of delicacy. Their food should be generous, nourishing, easy of digestion, and taken in quantities sufficient to invigorate the system, and to maintain all its functions in full vigour. Their minds ought to be kept in a state of cheerfulness and tranquillity; and, in a particular manner, they should be protected from the effects of frightful appearances, alarming accidents, and agitating and impassioned tales and narratives. The blighting operations of the "Reign of Terror" on the children born in Paris during that period, furnishes fearful evidence of the influence of the distracted and horrified condition of the mother over the system of her unborn infant. An unusual proportion of these children was still-born; a number equally uncommon died at an early age; and of those who attained adult life, very many were subject to epilepsy, madness, or some form of cerebral disease.

According to Dr. C.'s scheme, which is excellent, the sound nursery-education of children consists chiefly in the judicious management of diet, cleanliness, clothing, atmospherical temperature, respiration, muscular exercise, sleep, and the animal passions. He would not exclude every degree of moral instruction from children at a very early period; but since the organs of their moral faculties are then not only small but immature, and cannot be operated upon to much advantage, attempts to excite them powerfully might even do mischief. His precepts on these departments of physical education are beautifully practicable, and delightfully instructive. He contends that parents, especially mothers, whose responsibility to God and society for the conduct of their children is unspeakably weighty, have it in their power to do, for the morality of a country, ten thousand fold more than all the teachers of theology, literature, and science, and all the pastors of churches united. Habits of correct and efficient morality, with a fruitful love and pursuit of virtue, are the issue chiefly of practice and example under the parental roof. It is, therefore, his deliberate judgment that children ought not to be too soon dismissed from an education exclusively domestic. Many parents are over anxious that their young ones should have a knowledge of the alphabet, spelling, reading, geography, and other branches of school-learning, at a very early age: but this is worse than tempting them to walk too soon; because the organ likely to be injured, by such exercises is much more important than the muscles and bones of the lower extremities: these exercises may then do irremediable mischief to the brain, which is as yet too immature and feeble to sustain fatigue. Until the seventh year of life, all the energies of the brain are necessary for its own