and place in his stead some ignoramus, or some inexperienced lawyer's clerk, who is burning to enter the arena of politics; and, what is disgraceful to human nature, such things are done by the aid of men who know and confess that they are wrong, but who fancy that they excuse themselves by saying that, for party reasons, such things are unavoidable. There is nothing under heaven that can justify a man in doing what he knows to be a public injury; and that man, whoever he may be, that, for party purposes, will jeopardize the public welfare, is destitute of moral principle, and unworthy of the confidence of his fellows.

In every political party, and in all communities, there are men competent to fill all the offices in the gift of the people; and if good men refuse to occupy places of public trust, it is simply because public offices have been so generally degraded by filling them with persons totally disqualified both by nature and by education. It is the duty of the leaders of all parties to nominate good men for office, but, unfortunately, in some communities, party leaders are so constituted, morally and intellectually, that their ideas of goodness and fitness are about as correct as the Frenchman's definition of the word horse. "Horse!" said the Frenchman, “certainment I comprends ver vell vat you means by horse. Certainment, it is in Français vache, and vache is von animal vit two horns, vat gives ze milk, and ze butter, and ze scheese, and zat is vat you call in Anglais ze horse.”

For the guidance disposed to look aft it may be laid dow that if a man runs a office for which he be selected as a su who know him, he is seeker after position only to promote his fellow who would st under any circumsta reputable.

The wares which offers as a public of and paid for however be, for he is the onl mitted to supply the line; and it is this w position upon society officer such a prodigio Commissioners, Town even District Trustee intelligence. They from the best educat found willing to occu There is just as much a numscull at the he as there is in putti affairs of a county of the care of such an Smith, whose lumino quoted above.

rs and fair arithmeticians among the who have been taught in our public ols, but a very rare thing to find a reader. Why is this? The ability to correctly and with facility, is, I be, as easily attained, to say the least, ood penmanship, or a knowledge of rules and operations of arithmetic. a large portion of those who come our public schools read so badly, that re correctness is the one thing neces, it is one of the severest of inflictions be compelled to put up with so vile a titute for the genuine article. A pernt grumbling of the whole dental lanx is not more annoying.

here must be something wrong in the hod of instruction, when such are the lts; and it is due alike to the credit of schools, and the interests of parents pupils, that a system better adapted to ire the desired result should be at once pted. I fear that reading in large ses, and the irksomeness of the proling to the teacher-inducing the desire get through with the business in the rtest possible time-is one cause of the uccess of the reading exercises. There ot sufficient time taken to insure correct unciation and proper intonation. If it

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were otherwise, we should not hear the most ordinary words in the language so egregiously metamorphosed as hardly to be recognized as belonging to our mother tongue. Nor should we be tortured by the dissonance occasioned by the substitution of the rising for the falling inflection, and vice versa. If the teacher be a good reader (and if he be not, he has mistaken his vocation), an error in pronunciation, or in the use of the inflections, will fall upon his ear with as much harshness as a discord in music upon the ear of a musician. He will detect it instantly; and he should permit the exercise to proceed no further until he has corrected the pupil, and made him, as well as the whole class, repeat the passage with proper pronunciation and the due inflections. He may not be able, in this way, to get through an entire reading-lesson; but he will have accomplished more, as an educator, than if he had listened to the blundering recitation of a whole Reader.

Hoping that these suggestions may not, like seed sown in a barren soil, be altogether unproductive of results, I submit them to your disposal.

New York, May, 1864.

FRANKLIN.

SCHOOL OF APPLIED SCIENCES IN COBIA COLLEGE.-The trustees of ColumCollege are about to add to that instin a School of Applied Sciences, having ts purpose a better and more effective lopment of the material resources of country than has hitherto been attain. The need of thoroughly trained, atific experts, in the promotion of our strial interests, and especially in ascering and bringing out the dormant minresources of our country, is particular lt at the present time.

he course of study at the school, which cover three years, will include AnalytChemistry, Mineralogy, Metallurgy, ology and the Formation of Metallic ns, Geology, Paleontology, Machines, ing, Mining Legislation, etc.

HE Sophomores and Freshmen of Yale lege had a fight last week, caused by Freshmen appearing with new and ny hats.

HE number of children in Maine, beeen the ages of four and twenty-one rs, is 34,775. The number of schoolses, 3,827.

THE prospects of Bates College, Maine, encouraging. Boston promises a gift $50,000, and part of it is already raised. No student can enter the University of ford, except by attaching himself to me college or hall. But a small part of revenues is applied to educational purses. Most of the professorships are sineres, and the real instructors are nearly rved.

POPULAR education is making great ides in Italy. Common and free schools e everywhere extended by the Italian al governments, and the number of holars is largely increasing.

Ar the inauguration of Governor Hahn, New Orleans, on the 4th of March, the ices of 8,000 school-children were acmpanied by the strains of several military nds, and the chorus was swelled by the ating of fifty anvils, the ringing of all the ells in the city, and the thunder of fifty eces of artillery. The cannon were fired

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ends of which were brought to the table of the conductor of the band, and the ringing of the bells was controlled by connecting a wire from the table with the telegraph of the fire-department. The effect was grand beyond description.

AGRICULTURAL SCHOOLS IN EUROPE.The desire expressed in various quarters for the establishment of agricultural schools, has occasioned the publication of a pamphlet, extracted from the report of the Secretary of the Massachusetts Board of Agriculture, in which he gives a somewhat

minute account of the different schools of that class in Europe. These schools are of two kinds-those which are connected with universities, and those which are not. In the former, the students are not expected to labor, though there is sometimes an experimental farm connected with them. In the independent schools, the students may labor or not, as they choose, the farm being carried on by hired labor, or by students of a lower school of practical agriculture connected with it.

Mr. Flint, the Secretary of the Board, visited many schools of both kinds, attended lectures, mingled with the students, joined in excursions, and forming an acquaintance with the professors, qualified himself for giving a full account of their organization and methods, which he has done at some length in this pamphlet.

Germany abounds in schools of this description, some of which have a high reputation. France has also her agricultural schools, nor is England or Ireland without them.

The work before us states the systems of instruction in several schools in each of these countries. It would not be easy to give an abstract of the plan on which these schools are conducted; but it would be well for those who are interested in the

subject, to read this pamphlet carefully before completing their plan of agricultural education.

THE new dormitory at Harvard College, in the rear of the old President's house, and in a line with the Law School, is nearly completed. It is a fine edifice: the centre, four stories and French roof-the

In

AGE OF THE EARTH.-The Rev. Prof. Haughton, in a paper recently read before the Dublin Geological Society, gave the result of some computations, based on the earth's rate of cooling, to determine the limits of the time during which animal life can have existed upon our globe. As the albumen of the blood coagulates at 122° Fah., he regards it as impossible that animal life can exist in an atmosphere above that temperature. He therefore attempts to calculate the time from the period when the polar regions of the earth were at a temperature of 122° down to the period when the mean temperature of the British isles was 77°, the latter being the London clay tertiary epoch of tropical mollusca. His computations give the time between the two periods as 1,018,000,000 years.

HEAT OF THE SUN'S RAYS.-The observations on this subject by the late Dr. Otto Hagan have been communicated to the Prussian Academy of Sciences. The most important conclusions are: 1st, That the height of the atmosphere, presupposing an equal power of absorption in the different superimposed strata of air, is only equivalent to the 173d part of the earth's radius. 2d. The amount of heating power of the sun's rays, on entering this atmosphere, is determined by the fact that a beam of rays, a square inch in cross-section, would, during one minute, elevate the temperature of a cubic inch of water 0.733 of 1° Centigrade. 3d. The loss of heat in its passage through the atmosphere, taken on different days and seasons, and when the air is apparently clear, is variable.

REVELATIONS OF T Brush a little of the of a dead butterfly, a piece of glass. It will as a fine golden dus under the microscope, the dust will reveal itse metrical feather.

Give your arm a sli draw a small drop of bl with a drop of vineg place it upon the glas microscope. You will red matter of the bloo numerable globules or d so small as to be separa naked eye, appear, unde each larger than a letter

Take a drop of wate pool or ditch or sluggish from among the green v