school or college, when its list of members is compared with the same list at the beginning of the course. Imperfect organizations, whether intellectual or moral, have not survived, it is found, in the struggle for successful life at school. Herein, however, good teachers are less merciless than nature; and I think nothing in the world is more noble than the selfsacrificing patience with which many teachers bear with the weak and the vexatious, hoping-often not in vain to awaken intelligence and moral sensibility.

There is great power for moral influence in what I may call the machinery of a great school. A boy will fall into line with others in instant obedience to your commands when he might be sullen and dilatory if called on simply by himself. As part of a great organization, his repugnance to good discipline is counteracted and overborne by the general good order. Habits of punctuality and thoroughness-essential parts of true honesty, and necessary to success in any occupation or station in life—are fostered by no agency more efficiently than by the entire discipline of school and college. Then certain respectful habits-as that of rising at the entrance of visitors to the school, are easily enforced when you are dealing with large numbers. The force of the public sentiment of a large school, moreover, is very great; and the skillful teacher will know how to enlist it on the side of good morals. Moral courage, manliness, the detestation of all meanness, and the good American virtues of self-respect and respect for the rights of others, are all re-enforced by sound public opinion, in school, as well as in the larger world.

"But how am I to go to work to give moral instruction," the inexperienced teacher may say. Methods will shape themselves if only the earnest desire is present that the moral influences of the school shall be wholesome and fruitful. There is less need for direct moral lessons, than for a moral influence underlying all the exercises of the school. History is a moral teacher. All science has its moral analogies. Literature above all, is instructive. The reading lessons and the declamations and recitations should be elevated in their tone and inspiriting in their influence. Again if any offence demands notice its moral character should be the consideration chiefly dwelt on. "What! has George told a falsehood?" "Has John been unkind to a boy younger than himself?"

Fellow Teachers, the power to mould the character of the next generation in a country which will soon hold a hundred millions of freemen, is a greater power than is held by any of the rulers of the world -greater than the power of Bismarck and the German Emperor-and this power lies in great measure in your hands. Wield it for the good of your country and of all mankind. Ours is a democracy which wishes not to pull down the high, but to raise the lowly. It levels upwards. Its aim has well been said to be to make the gentility of Sir Philip Sidney universal. The public schools are the chief instrument in this great work. We sometimes hear the slanderous charge, bred of ignorance and prejudice, if not of malice, that our public schools are Godless, and nurseries of vice. If this charge applies in any degree to any of our schools, the fault

lies chiefly in the homes from which the children come, or the want of success of the churches with the lowest class of the population. Such schools need teachers whose souls are on fire with zeal for the moral welfare of our children. Imagine a Dr. Nott or a Dr. Wayland holding the head-mastershipof such a school. Would not his influence for good be felt immediately? Would he not speedily work out an entire revolution? But one need not be a Wayland or a Nott to succeed in such work. Let him love the children and ardently desire their highest welfare, and he will raise them and reform them.

But of our public schools in general it can truly be said that they are nurseries of sound morality and practical religion as well as good learning. Let us pledge ourselves that they shall become so more and more. The friends of virtue and education must not sleep, nor be slothful, if they would maintain and constantly improve that public school system which is the chief glory and the strongest bulwark of the republic. Let us show to the world, more fully than we have yet shown, that good habits, good character, good citizenship, practical religion, can be taught fruitfully and effectively in non-sectarian public schools. I believe this country will be true to herself and to the right on this great question, as she has proven herself on several other great and critical questions, when they have arisen.

I am happy to hear such sound, practical views on moral education as those of Dr. Fitch presented before the American Institute of Instruction, for it is most true, as was said by Pres. Hall," that there have been few if any advances made along the whole

line of educational work which have not been previously presented, argued and urged, before or by this body"; and if the teachers here assembled are filled, as I am sure they are, with the right spirit, the moral welfare of the coming generation is secured. I believe, too, that this Institute is destined to last as long as the country lasts, and to continue to grapple successfully, as Mr. Walton has suggested, with the great educational problems which are with us and before us. Be not disheartened at the magnitude of the work. Our responsibility is always limited by the limits of our opportunity. The very word evolution suggests a gradual process, and should teach us patience.

The motto which hangs above us, "Not for a day only, but for all time," applies to our work in moulding character. It reminds one of words which I once heard uttered by Horace Mann: "The children of to-day are the men of to-morrow, the immortals of eternity." We are fitly overshadowed, too, by the national flag. Let it be the emblem of all our schools. "Its stars have lit the welkin dome, and all its hues were born in heaven." May our schools blend, in the characters they evolve, as that flag blends on its lovely folds, the blue of purity, the white of stainless integrity and honor, and the red of love-reverential love to God, and sympathetic brotherly love to man.

IX.

A TRIP AMONG THE GLACIERS.

BY HON. J. W. PATTERSON, LL.D., CONCORD, N. H.

If we go forth into our fields and pastures we see rocks and bowlders scattered promiscuously and in countless numbers, which have been transported from their original beds by some giant force which dominated the world in a primitive age, but unknown since the historic period. If in our northern latitudes we lay bare the flanks of the mountains, we find the underlying ledges all ground and polished by some powerful enginery of nature which has passed down their naked sides, plowing at intervals parallel furrows in their tough and unyielding surfaces. Everywhere over our northern hemisphere the Titanic workers of the olden time have dumped their mighty burdens of drift, above the stratified deposits of a yet earlier period, and the heterogeneous masses of mingled dirt, gravel and bowlders, found among our mountains and stretching east and west along our temperate zone, all point to a time when glaciers, like those of Greenland, moved over our continent and sent their mighty bergs into the sea. But whence came this power, and whither has it gone? is the question which naturally comes to every