North and South, has taken a decisive position on the conservative side of the issue, and yet they not only refuse to aid the Democratic party in the great and eventful struggle, but array themselves under the flag of the enemy, and do battle with it. This fragment of a party insist, that they can not, for principle's sake, go over to the Democratic party, even in this terrible conflict; but that the Democratic party, for principle's sake, must go over to them! This is a refinement of logic too high for us. We never could understand why Mohammed should not go to the mountain, but we can comprehend why the mountain should not go to Mohammed. Verily this Southern American party has taken upon itself a most weighty and dangerous responsibility. The demand that a great national party shall suffer itself to be absorbed by the miserable fragment of a sectional party, great in nothing but its arrogance and folly, is too monstrous--too ridiculous to be seriously considered. They talk of the ultraism of the Democratic party upon this question. What is this ultraism? It is, that by the Constitution the Federal Government have no power whatever over the subject of slavery, whether it shall or shall not exist, or where it shall or shall not exist—that it is a question purely domestic to the States, whether in, or to come into the Union, with which the Federal Government has no authority to intermeddle. It is in fact, in a few brief words, the right of self-government; and this is what this party, of intense American feeling, calls ultraism. What deep, detestable hypocrisy! They whom God intends to destroy, he first makes mad. This is the party, also, North and South, which has taken charge of the noble and glorious work of proscribing, disfranchising, and persecuting Roman Catholics, native or adopted, and reducing below the level of the free negroes of the North, as to political rights, our adopted citizens. Can the real friend of his country, the Constitution and the Union, confide in such a party, and unite with it in invading the right of conscience, and destroying vested political rights?

Of the Fusionists and new-fangled "Republican" parties, we need say but little we all know that their very formation is hostility to, and aggression upon, the constitutional rights of the slave States, and resistance, even unto blood, of the Fugitive Slave Law. They have undertaken to prescribe who shall and who shall not, emigrate to the territories; what shall and what shall not be the domestic institutions of the States yet to be formed out of these territories; and what the slave States shall or shall not trade in. They have nullified the

Fugitive Slave Law; resisted, slain, and captured the public officers engaged in its execution; resisted, slain, and imprisoned the owners of fugitive slaves, when in pursuit of their lawful property; rescued slaves from the actual possession of their owners, passing through some of the free States; rescued fugitives from the hands of the public officers charged by law with their arrest and restoration, and even prosecuted judges for the honest execution of the laws they were sworn faithfully to execute; and have even armed and equipped lawless ruffians to go to Kansas to prevent the settlement of American citizens from the South, with their slaves. These are the parties with which the "American party," North and South, is coöperating to overthrow the present administration and the Democratic party, while the administration and the Democratic party are risking every thing dear to freemen, in resisting the destructive march of these disorganizers, anarchists, and traitors, and defending the constitutional rights of the South. The patriots of the land we still hope, will crush them, as Napoleon did the alliance of England, Russia, and Austria, upon the famous field of Austerlitz.

DEATH AND SLEEP.

I DREAM my only dreams by day,
And when the night is come

I sleep; I lie upon my bed,
And rest as soundly as the dead:
The dead are not more dumb!

To some the doors of Sleep unclose;

To me, the gate of Death:

I enter not the sunless land,

But all night on the threshold stand,
My life upon my breath.

R. H. S

AGRICULTURE AND EDUCATION.

NUMBER TWO.

We have said that the order of men, whose condition and prospects we have been considering, may be elevated from a subordinate station of mental and moral insignificance, to the first rank of influence and respectability in society. Let us see how this is likely to be brought about.

The relative station of the practical agriculturist, feeble and undignified as it may be regarded in reference to the subject of mental development, is one, nevertheless, which is attended with opportunities of intellectual effort, and of high moral culture, accorded but to few classes of men in the same degree. The position we assume is, that the farmer is destined to become a man of cultivated tastes and habits-of a highly-improved moral sense and discernment. And when this shall be the case, the standard of improvement and excellency with him will greatly exceed that of all other classes of men around him. It only requires that we should consider the facts of his case, in order to see the force and reasonableness of our position.

One of the great defects of our best modes of teaching, as well as of studying, at present is, that they are not sufficiently plain and practical. Our youth are placed at seminaries of instruction, in order that they may have an opportunity of making themselves acquainted with the sciences, but with scarcely more assistance than the naked book affords them, in which their lessons are printed. There is no opportunity of examining into the rudiments of things. There is no provision made for practical illustrations. Often they are in want of the most simple apparatus, as a means of explaining some physical truth. They are left entirely ignorant of the connection between cause and effect, and their whole vocabulary of knowledge consists of an acquaintance with barren facts and incidents, rather than with the causes and consequences with which these facts and incidents are intimately combined. Hence it is that the memory, for the most part, is much more actively engaged in the acquisition of knowledge at the present day, than any other faculty of the mind. There is no application of principles and inferences to the ordinary occurrences of life. There is no inquiring after the uses to which a knowledge of any particular science may lead. The student may indeed be a hard worker-constant, attentive, and laborious—but he is operating with barren materials, and he is cheered in his after-life neither with blossoms nor fruit; or, if these should perchance be found on the tree of knowledge, the one would be sickly and unpromising, and the other

stunted, bitter, or distasteful. His heart and his affections are left in a much worse state than his intellect. He has lost all true conception of the purposes for which learning was designed, and he goes forward on the great highway of life, engaging in the pursuits of business-mingling in the social circle-seeking for pleasure, wealth, or honor, but scarcely ever so much as naming a single truth, or maxim, or virtue-a single practical use —which had its foundation in the early teachings of a college education.

All this is to be regretted as the consequence of an unwise and inefficient system of instruction, but for which we think a remedy will be found before the world shall become many years older. In regard to our agricultural communities, such a consequence could hardly have happened, or at least could not have happened to the same extent. A system of education equally absurd and vicious might have been pursued in both cases, but, we have no doubt, with results essentially different. Believing as we do, and as we have already averred, that our farmers are destined to become hereafter an educated class of men, we will endeavor to explain wherein we believe they may greatly excel the race of scholars who have gone before them. Even if precisely the same system of education were pursued in regard to both these classes, we are at no loss to know where the advantage would be. But we can not doubt that a better system of teaching will prevail as soon as our plain, practical men shall be thought worthy of a place in the temple of learning, and the good effects seen to result from such a system, will be attended with the additional blessing of rendering it permanent and universal.

Let us consider for a moment what most of our sciences are intended to teach, and where and in what manner they could be most effectually explained and studied. We will mention, for this purpose, in the first place, the science of physics, or natural philosophy.

This is the science which treats of the phenomena attending objects, in the development of which we observe no important changes in the objects themselves. Most of the observations connected with this branch of knowledge have reference to the general properties of bodies, comprising magnitude, impenetrability, divisibility, porosity, expansibility, etc., and they treat, moreover, of light, heat, fluids, vision, sound, and subjects of a kindred nature. Now this, perhaps, of all the natural sciences, is the one which affords subjects for study and observation, under every conceivable position in which man may be placed. Wherever there are natural phenomena to arrest the attention-wherever there is the appearance of space, of form, of color, of light, etc.-wherever our senses may converse with outward objects-there we have an opportunity of pursuing this study with advantage, and of becoming experimentally acquainted with the knowledge it inculcates. And yet it may be seriously doubted, whether there are not particular times and places more favorable than any other to the investigation of even this important branch of knowledge. Certain it is that the