ich associate Mr. Mann with Antioch are too great
for conventional phrases of eulogy. Whether judged by the mighty things
he accomplished, or by the harmonious development of the moral,
intellectual, and affectional nature which he displayed, there are few
human records which show an appreciation of duty so exhaustive united to
a performance so heroic.

The life of Horace Mann was full of severe work. Few men have had the
grace to return so uncompromising an answer to the question whether
their service was to be rendered to God or Mammon. He had the gift of
separating religion from its accidental trappings, and of recognizing in
the simplest intuition of accountability for our neighbor's welfare the
best working hypothesis. Like Theodore Parker, he excelled the common
citizen, not in reach of skepticism, but in might of faith. His was
never that gentlemanly sort of virtue which devotes unoccupied corners
of the being, as it were in decorative fashion, to the interests of
humanity. He would toil patiently at the humblest crank-work, content to
move puppets who received whatever public credit was to be had. Mr. Mann
abandoned a political career that was calculated to satisfy a generous
ambition, to take the newly created office of Secretary of the Board of
Education, unassociated with dignity or emolument. "If the position is
not honorable now," he replied to the remonstrances of a friend, "then
it is clearly for me to elevate it; and I would rather be creditor than
debtor to the title." He combined in a rare degree the working powers of
the enthusiast with the balance of the philosopher. He wrought at
high-pressure, yet looked to no immediate or showy success. "If no seed
were ever sown save that which would promise the requital of a full
harvest, how soon would mankind revert to barbarism!" The exclamation
was with him no disregarded truism.

Mr. Mann's views of the true ends to be sought in our systems of
education receive daily confirmation. Burying the mind under a heap of
ready-made generalizations may give a conceit of knowledge, amusing or
dangerous as the case may be, but never gives the "power" promised in
the aphorism. When Montaigne said that he would rather forge his mind
than furnish it, he suggested the true principle of education. The
problem is not to fill the mind from without, but to give the most
efficient aid to its efforts to form itself from within. The energies
that Mr. Mann put forth for the dire