THE

MASSACHUSETTS TEAC

Vol. VI. No. 1.] GEORGE ALLEN, JR., EDITOR OF THIS NUMBER.

THE DUTY OF SELF-CULTURE IN ITS R

TO TEACHING.

[A PRIZE ESSAY.]

PERSONAL improvement is the duty of every h By virtue of his very humanity, every individual stands under a sacred obligation to make as much and moral powers, as his position in life will pern has a right to bury in a napkin any talent God ha any more than he has to pervert it to an unworth obvious general duty becomes specific and peculia tion to many callings in life; and every one, we cide that in regard to the business of teaching, it i and primary qualification. Its limits and metho in that particular relation may, perhaps, give occas ences of opinion, where, indeed, any definite opini held on the subject.

Self-culture relates mainly to three things, ma morals. Attainments in all these directions are es teacher's success. Failure in either of them is fat culture in one of these directions make up for it any other. The instructor ought in a high sense tlemen, a scholar, and a Christian. Whoever else be other than all these, he cannot. And this, w will be manifest if we consider the peculiar nature

What, then, is the distinctive character of the cation? A somewhat extended answer to this que nish forcible arguments for continued self-culture gage in the work. We must think, that with all

greatness of their work. We cannot say less of it than involves the highest responsibilities, and is, in the best most honorable. The business of educating has to do wi soul rather than the body; it is, therefore, more concerned eternity than with time. We do not,-for how can sufficiently consider what it is to make an impression up immortal mind. We are dull in our apprehensions o peculiar honor there is in fashioning a human spirit into for intellectual symmetry and grace, which it shall carry no through the life that is, but onward into the ever length ages of the life that is to be.

In all civilized countries the votaries of art have beer in honor. He who could make the canvas glow with im life, and he who could cut from the cold, dead marble almost living, breathing forms of animated existence, have alike acquired lasting renown. Some of them lived far in the past. Ages have passed away since the crumbling of their masterpieces has mingled with the ashes of tombs; yet their names are held in deserved honor. But is a coloring that outlasts all time, and eternity will foreve to its brightness. There is a sculpturing too, every lin angle and feature of which, will retain its exact form whe heavens and the earth shall be no more. No less a work this is every teacher called to perform. Consciously or u sciously, he is making impressions every day as lasting a soul. What work, then, more responsible than this? more honorable, provided it be well performed?

But the teacher need not pass the limits of the presen to find evidence of the high character of his calling. It this character when judged by finite standards, and mea by the relations of time. Leaving wholly out of view higher relations which connect it with a future existence regarding it simply as a business connected with the pr life, we know of no nobler employment, none more worth efforts of the highest order of intellect. The teacher's for hand is to be found all along the world's history, in the the philosophers, the statesmen and the heroes of every Through these he has shaped the destinies of nations. U ognized, unknown perhaps, by the subjects of them, h sent forth influences that have been felt far and wide. No this obscurity rendered these influences any the less effed It is a fact, not usually appreciated, that the true orig

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pher." Is it, then, too much to say that had Laelius, there would have been no immortal S great Carthaginian might not have found a co greatest of Roman orators, whose fame yet s light over the abyss of ages, declares that Publ name that, but for this circumstance, we shou known, was the author of his noblest deeds. could make this confession, how many more of could make similar acknowledgments with yet ety? Indeed, however narrow our observation instances must have come to our knowledge proceeding from those who dwelt in obscurity, ev is heaved, and tossed and cleft asunder, by in which we know almost nothing.

Of this hidden power of the teacher for good be remembered, it may be for evil likewise, illustration. We once knew a teacher who, in t those best acquainted with him, possessed the ra powers, which he had cultivated with long an pline. For him it was a pastime to read in the m Plato and Plutarch, the deep philosophy of t lofty morality of the other. There is hardly any edge to which he was a stranger. He seemed on the classic page, among the higher mathemat while engaged in unfolding those subtle dist underlie that sublimest of all sciences, the human soul. And no mind truly awake could lis "wide and large discourse of reason," and not of that awe-inspiring reverence, which the p highest forms of intellectual greatness seldom And yet he was known comparatively to but sonal influence over the world at large was bu masses were alike ignorant of his worth and With a modesty equal to his unusual attainme from display; and having no desire of a passing away from us in the meridian of his of the results of his profound investigations w posterity on the printed page. But will he have Far otherwise; for deep in hundreds of young a made yet nobler by his sublime teachings, wer the living thoughts his "winged words" bore thi will they be cherished in undying remembran Truth and Honor and Duty was inspired in mi

and thus has he set in motion a tide of healthfu cies that will ebb and flow to the end of time. Not the quiet waters of a New England lake, stands a granite shaft erected to his memory by his loving pu bears no flaunting eulogy upon its tablets. It rises in s simple grandeur, an apt symbol of his life, whose nar the day of his birth and of his death only, is cut i upon the solid stone. As we stood, not many mont beside that monument, with sentiments akin to those pilgrim who has reached some long-sought distant sh could but feel how fitly it illustrated the enduring influ him whose ashes are reposing at its base.

Let it not be supposed that the importance or the r bilities of the teacher's calling are confined to the highe of the profession; or that they belong exclusively t chiefly engaged in finishing the work. The instructor, a stage of his business, is concerned with intellectual and development; and we are yet to be informed that the part of this business is fraught with less important quences than that of any later period. Of how little elegance of finish, or beauty of exterior ornament, to that whose foundation was laid at first in the treacherous Or, to use a better analogy, of what avail is any ef remove an unsightly crook in the sturdy tree, which com while yet the tree was a tender shrub? We know n soon the infant soul begins to receive from the world its shapings and tendencies. But we do know, that aft time has arrived, its earliest are its most impressible p It is, then, that little causes, as we call them, produce results. A word, a look, a tone, a tear, or a smile, eve does its work. Sunny and joyous tempers have sprun life under the genial influence of a constantly cheerful nance and voice. At this period too, harsh and ir dispositions are bred amid strife, in an atmosphere of m ness and ill humor. Thus early does the die give the en stamp. A very few years suffice to give full vigor to elements which expand into a Cowper or a Byron; a Wa ton or a Bonaparte. "The boy is father of the man,' poet; and most true it is, that the human character re its form in childhood. Let no one, then, touch the young that wondrous birth of heaven, with a careless or unpra hand. Whoso does this does it at his peril.

Thus in whatever view we regard the teacher's voc