It is always a solemn & interesting moment for a teacher to close a term of his exertions & instructions. To give the last information to those who are entering the world to perform their parts on the great theatre of action; to feel that all that he can do for their improvement & usefulness, their benefit here, & their welfare hereafter, has been done; to realize that the account of his influence over them, has been sealed up by the recording angel, & entered in heaven’s dread chancery, to be opened no more until the great day of reckoning brings all things to light; to feel that he has bidden adieu to those, whose welcome faces, for years, have surrounded his desk, & constituted his happiness or misery by their conduct; to feel all this clouds his brow with gloom, & fills his heart with sorrow, when the anticipations of home & friends, & the buoyant hope of future usefulness, & the false glare of expected admiration, causes every eye to sparkle, & every heart to throb among the pupils around him—It is then, that looking on the past, the feelings of regret, at neglected opportunities for their welfare, once enjoyed, and now lost forever; at all that he might have done to have made his pupils more useful, better fitted for the stormy trials of this world, & the greater trial hereafter; of all his mistakes & errors in intellect; of his follies in conduct and obliquities in temper; of his example, shining but to betray, & his influence, powerful, but to mislead; of all that he has done to injure, or omitted to do to benefit, rush upon his mind, in a tide of overwhelming sorrow— At such a time, the most faithful in intellectual discipline, the most devoted to the future usefulness of his pupils, & the one most willing “to spend & be spent” in the service of his greater master, feels his past neglect, & grieves over his deficiences. If such be the feelings & the regrets at the close of an ordinary term, how much more shall he feel, the principal of this Academy, who, after eighteen years devoted to its interests, on this night, with this act, closes his connection with it, & enters on a new, & almost untried field of usefulness. The audience generally, & his pupils in particular, will excuse him for occupying their attention, a few moments, in a detail of the plan of his instructions, the motives for the resignation of his present office, & the regrets that crowd upon his mind in standing for the last time at the head of the Litchfield Female Academy— It has always been our belief, that the female intellect was as susceptible of as high & extensive cultivation as that of man; though, from her different destination in Society, & her various employments, a different education must be pursued—