a time as
any other institution in the world; but there is a great offset to the
good which it has thus done to be found in the history of the thousand
wretched imitations of it which have been started only to linger a
little while and die, and in which a vast amount of time, and talent,
and money have been wasted.

[Illustration]

4. Consider the influence you may have upon the other institutions of
our country, by attaching yourself to some one under the existing
organization. If you take an academy or a private school, constituted
and organized like other similar institutions, success in your own will
give you influence over others. A successful teacher of an academy
raises the general standard of academic instruction. A college
professor, if he brings extraordinary talents to bear upon the regular
duties of that office, throws light, universally, upon the whole science
of college discipline and instruction, and thus aids in infusing a
continually renewed life and vigor into those venerable seats of
learning that might otherwise sink into decrepitude and decay. By going,
however, to some new field, establishing some new and fanciful
institution, you take yourself from such a sphere; you exert no
influence over others, except upon feeble imitators, who fail in their
attempts, and bring discredit upon your plans by the awkwardness with
which they attempt to adopt them. How much more service, then, to the
cause of education will a man of genius render, by falling in with the
regularly organized institutions of the country and elevating them, than
if in early life he were to devote his powers to some magnificent
project of an establishment to which his talents would unquestionably
have given temporary success, but which would have taken him away from
the community of teachers, and confined the results of his labors to the
more immediate effects which his daily duties might produce.

5. Perhaps, however, your plan is not the establishment of some new
institution, but the introduction of some new study or pursuit into the
one with which you are connected. Before, however, you interrupt the
regular arrangements of your school to make such a change, consider
carefully what is the real and appropriate object of your institution.
Every thing is not to be done in school. The principles of division of
labor apply with peculiar force to this employment; so that you must not
only consider whether the branch which you are now di