Various

“ Education, in some of the most enlightened European countries, is like the sun rising in majesty, and gilding with surpassing brightness a few mountain tops. Education in the United States is like the sun pouring his cheering radiance over every hill, and into every valley.
The peculiar importance of universal and well-conducted education, in a republican government, must be evident from the slightest consideration. Every American citizen is a juror, before whom each officer of the government is on trial, in regard to his capacity and fidelity. ”

“ Yet it is with others as with ourselves: 'We know what they are, but not what they may be.' Time adds to the novel thoughts of the child, the tricks and joyance of the urchin—the glow of increasing years, the passion of the swelling heart, when experience seems to school its energies. But in the flush of young existence, I can compare a child—the pride and delight of its mother and its kindred—to nothing else on earth, of its own form or image. ”

“ Our young deputy post-master rarely betrayed his involuntary acquaintance with the nature of the missives he dispersed; but, whenever sympathy was permitted, his bright smile and radiating or tearful eye would show how earnest a part he took in all his neighbors suffered or enjoyed. Never was there a kinder heart than Loyd Barnard's—never a truer mirror than his face.
Every family, however insignificant in the stranger's eye, has a world of its own. The drama and the epic have their beginning, their middle, and their end, in the material world. ”

“ The little cherub who now sits at my knee, and tries, with tiny effort, to clutch the quill with which I am playing for you, good reader; whose capricious taste, varying from ink-stand to paper, and from that to books, and every other portable thing—all 'movables that I could tell you of'—he has in his little person those elements which constitute both the freshness of our sublunary mortality, and that glorious immortality which the mortal shall yet put on. Gazing upon his fair young brow, his peach-like cheek, and the depths of those violet eyes, I feel myself rejuvenated. ”

“ But that such a fabric should traverse oceans, struggling on amid the strife of seas and storms, that it should hold on its way like 'a thing of life,' nay, like a thing of intellect, a being endued with courage, and stimulated by a high purpose, a traveller that has seen the end of his voyage from the beginning, that goes forth upon it without fear, and completes it as with the feeling of a triumph, is, as it seems to me, a greater wonder still. ”

“ He had no disease within the reach of art, but a delicacy, a fragility, that rendered him incapable of continuous exertion or application of any sort. A merciful Providence provides compensations, or, at least, alleviations, for all the ills that flesh is heir to; and Loyd Barnard, in abundant leisure for reading, which he passionately loved, in the tranquillity of a perfectly resigned temper, and in a universal sympathy with all that feel, enjoy, and suffer, had little reason to envy the active and prosperous, who are bustling and struggling through the chances and changes of this busy life. ”

“ The custom, growing in some of our cities, of private funerals, of limiting the attendants to the family and nearest friends of the deceased, is there in good taste. The parade of ceremony, the pomp of numbers, the homage of civility, and all the show and tricks of hollow conventional life, are never more out of place, never more revolting, than where death has come with its resistless power and awful truth. But a country funeral has, beside its quality of general sorrow, somewhat of the nature of the Egyptian court that sat upon the merits of the dead. ”

“ This is a great reason why France, with all her aspirations after freedom, and all her toil, and sweat, and blood, to obtain it, has had no more success in securing its substantial blessings. This is one reason why reform in the English government is a work of such immense difficulty, and why it cannot be obtained but by a severe struggle, and, as it were, by inches. Some master-spirits in that country, in which there is much to admire, and to approve, and to imitate, have recently engaged in a noble effort to advance the cause of popular education. ”

“ To them, the flaunting honors of the landscape have a new beauty, and a joyous meaning; the sun hangs above them like a great ball of fire in the sky; the waters wear a glittering sheen; and the wide moving pulse of life beats with a universal thrill of happiness to them. I could not but note the number of urchins in the steamer, whom their 'paternal derivatives' were guiding around, and showing, to their vision at least, 'all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them.' ”

“ No man now fills a greater space in the national councils, than the son of a plain farmer in New-Hampshire, who commenced his brilliant career on the benches of a common school, in his native town. And no man can tell what future farmers' or mechanics' sons may occupy the highest and most responsible posts of the nation. In the free government of the United States, every man is, to a great extent, the artificer of his own fortune and fame. ”

“ The wheels of the coach are shod with the preparation of iron slippers, which are essential to a hold-up; and as you bowl and grate along, with wilderness-chasms and a brawling stream mayhap on one hand, and horrid masses of stone seemingly ready to tumble upon you on the other—the far plain stretching like the sea beneath you, in the mists of the morning—your emotions are fidgetty. ”

“ If one should see that part of the river between Switzerland and Mayence, and no more, he would pronounce its far-famed beauties all a joke. It passes here through this flat uninteresting duchy, the banks affording nothing more attractive than pine bushes, six feet high; and the river itself has lost its primitive attraction at Schaffhausen, for here it is of a brown muddy color, instead of its once transparent green. Occasionally, however, the monotony of the shores is relieved by a pretty town, which, the atmosphere being clear, and the view unobstructed, may be seen from a great distance. ”

“ You can lie on your pillow at Catskill, and see the god of day look upon you from behind the pinnacles of the White Mountains in New-Hampshire, hundreds of miles away. Noble prospect! As the great orb heaves up in ineffable grandeur, he seems rising from beneath you, and you fancy that you have attained an elevation where may be seen the motion of the world. No intervening land to limit the view, you seem suspended in mid-air, without one obstacle to check the eye. ”

“ When the first yellow surges of September sunlight seem to roll through the atmosphere; when the dust of the city street, as you look at some stately carriage, whose wheels are flashing toward the west, seems rising around them like an atmosphere, colored betwixt the hue of gold and crimson; when the mountains put on their beautiful garments, where tints of the rainbow mingle with the aërial blue of the sky ”

“ The king who has to ask his Commons for supplies, and the Crœsuses of our land who still desire more than they have, might envy our contented colonel, or rather might have envied him, till, after a life of perfect exemption from worldly cares, he came, for the first time, to feel a chill from the shadows of the coming day—a distrustful fear that the morrow might not take care of itself. ”

“ The public conveyances on the continent are all driven by a postillion, in a kind of livery, with 'seven league boots,' a trumpet with tawdry tassels, and a leathern hat: he always rides the 'nigh' horse, and never goes more than one post, as each 'team' has its own postillion. Every diligence is superintended by a conducteur, who has the best seat in the coupé, but does nothing himself, except delivering the mails and small parcels on the way. The French and Swiss conducteurs are often surly and uncivil, but those in Prussia are very attentive, good-looking, and even well-educated. ”

“ From the top, the eye takes in too much; and large towns and lakes appear like baby's play-houses and frog-ponds, and much as they would from a balloon. But the grand whole is certainly magnificent; a view of the whole of Switzerland could not be otherwise:
'Lakes, rivers, long drawn vales, towns, hamlets, towers,
From Gothard's glacier-snows to Swabia's bowers.'
Thirteen lovely lakes, of which those of Luzerne, Zug and Zurich [393] are the nearest and most conspicuous; with a hundred villages scattered along their banks. ”

“ Far be it from the writer to speak lightly of those farmers' sons who have more taste for literature than the generality of their fellows, and have better improved the advantages which they have enjoyed, and who aspire to the office of teachers; or of those young men in colleges, who are conflicting with the disadvantages of poverty, and by diligence and perseverance, are raising themselves to usefulness, and perhaps to fame. Many a man, who has been an honor to his country, and sustained with reputation the higher offices of the state, has been, in early life, a teacher of a common school. ”

“ In the wonder which we feel as to children growing old, we are apt to associate ourselves with them. When one who, in the hey-dey of his blood, and before the glow of the purpureum lumen of his 'better-most hours' has begun to diminish, is led to regard (and to hear, beside, for the fact rings often at his auricular portals,) that a vital extract is extant, he wonders if that 'embryon atom' will ever come to denominate the agent of his being as 'the old gentleman!' Of course, it must be impossible. ”

“ Having now 'done Switzerland,' you may ask, 'Have we not scenery at home, equal to any in that land of wonders?' And, at the risk, as Mr. Cooper says, of being called unpatriotic and 'spoiled by travelling,' I must say no—at least so far as my knowledge goes. The 'Notch' at the White Mountains is equal in wildness and grandeur to any scenery in Scotland; of course it exceeds any in England, and probably, the rest of Europe, which is saying a good deal; but Swiss scenery, i.e., among the higher Alps, you must bear in mind is on a vastly larger scale than either. ”

“ That a fabric so gigantic as a first rate ship, of traffic or of war, framed of ponderous timbers, compacted with bolts and bands of still more ponderous iron, holding in its bosom masses of merchandise, under whose weight strong cars have groaned, and paved streets trembled, or bearing on its decks hosts of armed men, with the thundering armament of a nation—that a fabric thus framed and thus freighted, should float in a fluid, into which, if a man fall, he sinks and is lost, is in itself a wonder. ”

“ But a talent for government, however important, will not alone fit a teacher of a school for his station. He needs not only a gifted, but a well-furnished mind. He should not only possess a thorough acquaintance with the text-books which he uses, and be able to explain all their intricacies, and to unravel all their difficulties, but he needs, in addition, a great variety of collateral information, which he may bring to bear on all the subjects of instruction. He should be himself a living, walking, speaking text-book. ”

“ At night he seemed to revel in a world of his own creation; he would sit for hours in one position, chanting low airs, his spirits kept alive by opium and worse stimulus. I never could discover the least mark of intoxication in Mr. Collins, as every body called him. His person was scrupulously neat, his dress always adjusted with the nicest regard to fashion and elegance. His language was at all times proper, and his sentiments refined. ”

“ Sorrow is transient, and Hope ever new. Sabbath of the soul, fresh from its God! To the vision of these, how brightly the leaves move, and the breeze-crisped waters quiver! How their quick pulses bound, in the newness of existence, at that which is ancient and disdained of the common eye! To them, every color is prismatic, and wears the hue of Eden. ”