"Is not your paradise an Inferno? Please never name it. While in Heaven I speak not of it: I hum that song to myself. Will you spoil my paradise too? Come with me, come, and I will show you Elysium; I know all about it; I am not deceived. I feel it to be solid, safe. It makes good its pledges always. I have a home of all delights--am admitted when I please, while you seem vagabonds and woebegones, bereft of friends, the Friend of friends. Am I to quit my present satisfactions for your promised joys. Unkind! this taking me from my paradise, unless you conduct me to a happier." V. CULTURE. "O for the coming of that glorious time, When, prizing knowledge as their noblest wealth And best protection, liberal states shall own An obligation on their part to teach Them, who are born to serve her and obey; Binding themselves by statute to secure For all the children whom their soil maintains The rudiments of letters; and to inform The mind with moral and religious truth Both understood and practised--so that none However destitute, be left to drop By timely culture unsustained, or run Into a wild disorder; or be forced To drudge through life without the aid Of intellectual implements and tools; A savage horde among the civilized, A servile band among the lordly free." WORDSWORTH. [Illustration: Decorative banner of thistle blooms and leaves] CULTURE. I.--MODERN TEACHING. Saxon Alfred decreed that every man who had so much as two hides of land, should bring up his children to learning till they were fifteen years of age at least, that they might be religious and live happily; else, he said, they were but beasts and sots, dangerous to themselves and the state. And the state's true glory lies in its calling forth into fullest exercise and giving scope and right direction to the gifts of its children; seeking out especially and fostering the best born as they rise, and training these for educators of the coming generations. The Parent of parents, the guardian of all gifts born into it, society should neglect none, sequester none from places and honors to which they are entitled by birthright of genius or acquirement. Every child, the gifted by divine right, is sent to cherish and redeem the race; whom to neglect or divert from its aim were base oversight and abuse of the race itself. Far too noble, too precious be any to be used for ends merely secondary, secular, and thus spoiled for their own and God's intents.