I would also banish from our schools Homer, Hesiod, Horace, Ovid, and Virgil, and every volume that makes the least allusion to the mythologies of Greece or Rome, or any-other part of what have been called the Pagan mythologies. If such books are amusing or instructive in ancient history, it will be time enough to read them after having gone through a scholastic education. They should make, no part of the school routine. I do not here mean to dispute the propriety of children been taught the dead languages, although I must confess, that I consider them no farther useful than to teach the etymology of our own language. Paine, Franklin, and Cobbett, are powerful instances that they are by no means essential to an enlarged mind. However, if the dead languages continue to be taught in our schools, I could wish them to be taught through a different medium than at present. Those languages might be taught on other subjects than wars, famines, and massacres, immoral mythologies and the history of base and vicious characters. It has been the common misfortune of historians to take especial notice of base and vicious characters. Hitherto profligacy has been the chief passport to immortality, and the virtuous few have passed through life unheeded before or after death with but very few exceptions. The very books which are called holy and divine are filled with descriptions of human monsters, and scarce any set off or contrast to exhibit the benefits and beauties of moral virtue among mankind.