only on holy-days;" and that the Florentines themselves, whenever they would characterize any thing as extremely beautiful, say it is "as fine as the Campanile." Gentlemen, you have reared a nobler edifice! Nobler, not because more costly, for your pecuniary outlay is as nothing in the comparison. Nobler, not because the material is more precious, and the architecture more perfect; for what is a pile of brick to such a miracle in marble? or where is the American builder that would dream of competing with Giotto? Nobler, not because there is a larger and richer-toned bell in the gilded cupola, to summon the inmates to study and recitation, or to morning and evening worship; for the great bell of the Campanile is one of the grandest pieces of resonant metal ever cast; and its voice, though soft as flute-tones at eventide coming over the water, is rich and majestic as an angel's song. Far nobler, however, in its purpose and utility; for that wonder of Italian architecture is the product of Florentine pride and vanity in the days of a prosperous republic--a less massive but more elegant Tower of Babel, expressing the ambition of its builders; and though standing in the Cathedral Piazza, its chief conceivable objects are mere show and sound; while the end and aim of this edifice is the development of mind, the formation of character, the creation of a loftier intellectual manhood, the reproduction of so much of the lost image of God as may be evolved by the best media and methods of human education. The excellence of your structure, then, consists mainly in this--that it is only a scaffold, with derricks, windlasses, and other apparatus and implements, for building something immeasurably more excellent. Here the thinking power is to be quickened, and the logical faculty is to be awakened and invigorated. This is to be effected, not so much by the knowledge acquired, as by the effort called out for its acquisition. The teacher is to measure his success, not by the number and variety of terms, rules, formulas and principles he has impressed upon the memory, but by the amount of mental power and independence he has imparted to his pupil. True, in educating the mind, knowledge of some sort must be acquired; but the thoroughness of the education depends no more upon the quantity of the acquisition, than the health of the guest upon the abundance of the banquet. The mental food, as well as the material, must be digested and assimilated. It follows that those exercises which require close and consecutive thinking, thorough analysis, clear discrimination and accurate definition, are best adapted to develop the higher faculties of the mind. Mathematics, metaphysics, dialectics and philology must form the granite basis of your building, sustaining the solid tiers of rich and varied marbles.