Geniuses are rare in our world; sent occasionally to break up the monotony of life, impart new impulses to a generation, like comets blazing along the sky, startle the dosing mind, no longer on the stretch to enlarge the boundaries of human knowledge, and rouse men to gaze on visions of excellence yet unreached. Happily, the mass of mankind are not of this style of mind. Uniting by the process of education the powers which God has conferred upon them, with those of a more brilliant order which are occasionally given to a few, the advancement of the world in all things essential to its refinement, and purity, and exaltation, is probably as rapid and sure as it would be under a different constitution of things. Were all equally elevated, it might still be necessary for some to tower above the rest, and by the sense of inequality move the multitude to nobler aspirations. But while it is not permitted of God that all men should actually rise to thrones in the realm of mind, yet such is the native power of all sane minds, and such their great capacity of improvement, that, made subject to a healthful discipline they may not only qualify us for all the high duties of life on earth, but go on advancing in an ever-perfecting preparation for the life above. The second thing pre-supposed in education is personal application. There is no thorough education that is not self-education. Unlike the statue which can be wrought only from without, the great work of education is to unfold the life within. This life always involves self-action. The scholar is not merely a passive recipient. He grows into power by an active reception of truth. Even when he listens to another's utterances of knowledge, what vigor of attention and memory are necessary to enable him to make that knowledge his own? But when he attempts himself to master a subject of importance, when he would rise into the higher region of mathematics, philosophy, history, poetry, religion, art; or even when he would prepare himself for grappling with the great questions of life, what long processes of thought! what patient gathering together of materials! what judgment, memory, comparison, and protracted meditation are essential to complete success? The man who would triumph over obstacles and ascend the heights of excellence in the realm of mind, must work with the continuous vigor of a steamship on an ocean voyage. Day by day the fire must burn, and the revolve in the calm and in the gale--in the sunshine and the storm. The innate excellency of genius or talents can give no exemption to its possessor from this law of mental growth. An educated mind is neither an aggregation of particles accreted around a center, as the stones grow, nor a substance, which, placed in a turner's lathe, comes forth an exquisitely wrought instrument. The mere passing through an academy or college, is not education. The enjoyment of the largest educational advantages by no means infers the possession of a mind and heart