t recognize the duty they owe as citizens and as men of
truth, they would, by uniting, soon sweep away the serious discredit to
our country and to Republican Institutions, the festering corruption of
this city and of the State; yet it is to their supine, nay wicked
tolerance of the evil that we owe the specimens of judicial corruption by
which we are robbed and dishonored. Can it be said that any system of
education can be sound, which shall fail to demonstrate, at least to the
older pupils, their duties as citizens, to take an active, intelligent and
upright interest in public affairs; that shall fail to instruct them in
the principles by which their judgments should be guided, and lead them to
discard every action in public affairs, which they would not approve in
private life?

We must cease to live in books, in past mystifications, in useless
theories, in foolish and unprofitable discussions, in ancient ideas and
customs, and grasp the living present with all the richness, fullness and
beauty of its life. The chemistry of nature, the work of her great
laboratory, should be the study of youth as of age, instead of dead
languages and the vain and foolish mythology of Greeks and Romans
wherewith at present we poison the minds of the young.

"Can we take burning coals into our bosom and not be burned?" Can we
suffer the impressionable minds of youth to be impregnated with the filth
of the heathen poets in their imaginings of gods as disgusting as
themselves, without staining the pure tablet of the mind with spots and
grossness, while the children acquire a distaste for that glorious nature
whose volume should be their constant study?

We have to deal with the great present, with life, not with death--to
promote health, physical and moral, not to propagate infectious sickness.
The present, wisely improved, leads to a happy future, and is the only
road to that goal. We can not jump the present and its duties and reach
the future so as to enjoy it, neither can the dead past lighten the labors
of the living present. There is a past which still lives and vivifies the
present, but the quaint and filthy imagery in which the ancient priests
disguised from the profane--from all but the initiated--the mysteries of
their lore, can be of small account to a people whose great duty is the
dissemination of light and truth.

Every thing that has any relation to man's comfort and well-being, or to
his happiness as a social being, tha