ion given to
female education, so that the mother of this generation is not compelled
to rely exclusively upon the school and the paid teacher, public or
private, but can herself, as the teacher ordained by nature, aid her
children in the preparatory studies of life. This power does not often
manifest itself in a regular system of domestic school studies and
discipline, but its influence is felt in a higher home preparation, and
in the exhibition of better ideas of what a school should be. And we may
assume, with all due respect to our maternal ancestry, that this fact is
a modern feature, comparatively, in American civilization. Female
education has given rise to some excesses of opinion and conduct; but
the world is entirely safe, especially the self-styled lords of
creation, and may wisely advocate a system of general education without
regard to sex, and leave the effect to those laws of nature and
revelation which are to all and in all, and cannot permanently be
avoided or disobeyed.

The number of educators has strangely increased, and they often appear
where they might least be expected. We speak of the revival of
education, and think only of the change that has taken place in the last
twenty years in the appropriations of money, the style of school-houses,
and the fitness of professional teachers for the work in which they are
engaged; but these changes, though great, are scarcely more noteworthy
than those that have occurred in the management of our shops, mills, and
farms. When we write the sign or utter the sound which symbolizes
_Teacher_, what figure, being, or qualities, are brought before us? We
_should_ see a person who, in the pursuit of knowledge, is self-moving,
and, in the exercise of the influence which knowledge gives, is able to
appreciate the qualities of others; and who, moreover, possesses enough
of inventive power to devise means by which he can lead pupils,
students, or hearers, in the way they ought to go. We naturally look for
such persons in the lecture-room, the school, and the pulpit. And we
find them there; but they are also to be found in other places. There
are thousands of such men in America, engaged in the active pursuits of
the day. They are farmers, mechanics, merchants, operatives. They do not
often follow text-books, and therefor are none the worse, but much the
better teachers. Insensibly they have taken on the spirit of the teacher
and the school, and, apparently ignorant of t