children from maintaining their
parents, when old and feeble, if they had neglected to qualify them for
some useful art or profession. Although this principle has universally
prevailed in every civilized age, yet the success of its practical
operation depends entirely upon what is understood by necessary
knowledge and useful employment. If, as among the Lacedemonians and many
other nations of antiquity, a useful art consisted chiefly in the
exploits of war,--in being able to undergo privations and hardships, and
in wielding successfully the heavy instruments of bloodshed,--such an
education as would conduce to the acquirement of that art must be
estimated on different grounds from that system whose object is to
develop the moral and intellectual faculties.

From the distant past, traditions have come down, evincing in many
instances exemplary care in the culture of youth; but the conspicuous
record made of them by the historian and poet refutes the idea that they
were common. With the lapse of centuries, revolutions in the arts and
sciences have been effected, important in themselves, but more so for
the changes they have produced both in social and political affairs.
Like hunters who discover in their forest-wanderings a valuable mine
which shapes anew their course of life, the people of the old world, in
the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, were allured from their
incessant conflicts by the more profitable arts of peace. Till then the
interests of learning had been crushed by the superstition and bigotry
of the times. In the fourteenth century even, the most celebrated
university in Europe, that of Bologna, bestowed its chief honors upon
the professorship of astrology. But these grand developments in art and
science gave a new impulse to social life. Thenceforward the interests
of education began to thrive. The patronage given to popular
instruction by many of the rulers of European States has imparted a
lustre to their annals, which will almost atone for their heartless
perversion of human rights. For whether we consider the coercive system
of Prussia, which not yet exhibits very happy practical results; or the
Austrian system, which indirectly operates coercively by denying
employment to those unprovided with school-diplomas; or the Bavarian,
which makes a certificate of six years' schooling necessary to the
contracting of a valid marriage or apprenticeship; or, indeed, the
systems of many other Continental count