The "tar-water Bishop of Cloyne" would have been exceedingly astonished could he have seen the first line of his prophecy or averment made to do duty as a motto to Mr. Bancroft's History of the United States; but surely if the prophecy be not realised, it will be the fault of the agencies engaged in working it out--never in the history of mankind, as we know it, have such advantages been enjoyed by any nation as have been, and are, the appanage of the Americans of European origin in the New World. They have leaped into the possession of their heritage full armed, like Minerva from the brain of Jove. For them have all the champions of human rights died or conquered, and the protagonists of human struggles for liberty and light fought. For them Science has trimmed her lamp--for them martyrs have died--for them Europe and Asia have been in toil and travail for countless generations, and they have been guided across the sea to a grand continent where it would seem as if Nature had been engaged for myriads of ages to provide for their happiness and grandeur--all climes and all products are theirs--the bounteous plain, the ore-filled mountain, the treasures of the deep, the heaven-made ways by lake and river, and it would be a despair for all mankind if they misuse their glorious inheritance, and if all the nations of the world see that the pillar of fire in the west was but an _ignis fatuus_ dancing before their aching eyes in a Serbonian bog of creeds and 'isms, of factions and faiths, all struggling towards the gate of the Temple of Mammon. "Philosophers," in all the doubts and fears which the condition of the Republic inspires at times, cling with confidence to the palladium which is, they think, to be found in the system of education based on the free schools of the States. If there were not a distinction between knowledge and morality, they would be justified; but the Evil One tempted us to eat of the fruit of the tree which brought sin into the world, and if Americans are to be trusted as authorities, the result of the largest and most liberal system of education ever devised is not as happy in practice as it ought to be according to theory.