rare exceptions, it
is even more decided at the other extreme of the scale. Of all the
gentlemen holding place in our over-numerous college faculties, and
commanding, one would expect, the very passes to the _terra incognita_
of the human soul, how few seem disposed to prove their individual
_faculties_ by any thoroughgoing and successful incursions into unknown
regions of the psychologic and pedagogic realm! The spirit of this
should-be influential and leading class among us is one of serene assent
in the iteration of the old steps, with of course some minor
improvements, but with no attempts at a grand investigation and
synthesis, such as gave to philosophy her new method, and to the world
her growing fruitage of physical sciences.

If proof were needed of the comparative apathy under which we labor in
respect to activities and progress in the more abstract and higher
planes of intellectual effort, we find it in the contrast between the
rewards meted out to the successful in this and in more material fields,
in the general estimation awarded to the two classes of workers, and in
the present expressions of the public bereavement when leading
representatives of the two classes are removed from the scenes of their
labors. Compare the quiet with which the ordinary wave of business
interests and topic closed almost immediately over the announcement of
the death of Horace Mann, with the protracted eulogy and untiring
reminiscence of person, habits, work, and success, that, after the
decease of William H. Prescott, kept the great wave of current topics
parted for weeks--as if another Red Sea were divided, and the spirit of
the historian, lingering to the chanting of solemn requiems, should pass
over it dry-shod! For the great historian this was indeed no excess of
honor, because grand human natures are worthy of all our praises; but
was there not a painful want of respect and requital to the equally
great educator? Prescott wrote admirable volumes, and in our libraries
they will be 'a joy forever.' Horace Mann secured admirable means of
instruction, made admirable schools, awakened to their best achievements
the souls of our children; and his work is one to be measured by
enlarging streams of beauty and joy that flow down through the
generations. Would that, in the midst of so much justice as we willingly
render to self-sacrifice and worth, we could less easily forget those
whose labor it is directly to fit mankind for a hi