the stern realities of life, the honesty and uprightness with which he should tread its path, and the use he should make of the blessings which God and his own exertions bestowed upon him. We had to learn the great but simple lesson that 'The rank is but the guinea's stamp, The man's the man for a' that;' and in so doing, to accept, for a time, the position of the Pariahs of Christendom, through the imputation of degrading all things high and noble to the rank of the low and vulgar, of casting the pearls of a lofty and ennobled class before the swinish multitude, of throwing open the doors of the treasury, that creatures of low, plebeian blood might grasp the crown jewels which had for ages been kept sacred to the patrician few; in a word, we had to take upon ourselves all the odium of a despised democracy--a moral agrarianism which should make common property of all blessings and privileges, and mingle together all things, pure and impure, in one common hotch-potch of corruption and degradation. Greater heresy than all this was not then known, and the philosopher of to-day has little conception of the sacrifice required of those who would at that time accept such a position. Another and not less important lesson which our ancestors had to learn was, that national prosperity which depends upon the learning and refinement or energy of a certain privileged class, can never be otherwise than ephemeral; that the common people--the low plebeians, whom they had been taught to consider of the least importance in the state, are in reality the strength of the land; and that in the amelioration of their condition, in the education and mental training of the masses, while at the same time placing before them the highest incentives to individual exertion, lies the only sure basis of an enduring prosperity--that the only healthful national growth is that which is made up of the individual strivings of the great mass rather than the self-interested movements of the few; and as a consequence of this truth, that the privileged minority is really the least important of the two classes in any community. In the infancy of government, when a rude and unlettered people are little able to take care of themselves, the establishment of class distinctions is undoubtedly conducive to progress, as it tends to unite the people, thereby counteracting the thousand petty jealousies and strifes and bickerings which invariably beset an infant people, and to organize and systematize all progressive effort. It is, in fact, a putting of the people to school under such wholesome restraints as shall compel them forward while guarding them against those evil influences which militate against their prosperity. But in the course of events the time comes when these restraints are no longer necessary, but rather become hampers upon the wheels of progress; and when that period arrives, all these invidious distinctions should, in a well-regulated state, gradually disappear and