Not letters but life chiefly educate if we are educatable. But experience follows oftenest too late for most and too distant from the work to help us directly without an interpreter to assist in making timely use of it. Fortunate will it be, if by instinct and mother wit we take life at first hand, converting it forthwith into thought and habit. Character comes of temperament far more than of acquirement. And the most that culture performs is the drawing forth, fashioning and polishing the natural gifts. But we cannot create what is not inborn. A fine brain is a spiritual endowment, as from the head of Jove sprang Minerva. Centuries of culture pass into pure power; piety and genius are parents of piety and genius. But less discriminating than were the ancient carvers in wood and ivory, who, when they had an order for a head of Hermes, or any ordinary god even, searched carefully for substances adapted to receive the proper form, states attempt to fashion saints and rulers out of any materials that chance brings to hand. Omitting mind, or overriding it in our haste to come at immediate and superficial results, we ignore ideas and principles altogether. Aiming at little we attain little. For while our country opens the freest scope for the exercise of the higher gifts of genius and character, we cherish these but feebly in our public or private training. The highest prizes held forth to youth are not only beneath the aims of a noble ambition, but the stimulus for their attainment is wanting. Even in New England, culture is external, provincial; neglectful of the better parts of body and mind; behind the old countries, that of the ancient states. We cram the memory with the lore of foreign tongues, the understanding with a medley of learning, leaving fancy, imagination, the moral sentiment, mainly to shift for themselves--the forming of the manners, motives, aims and aspirations. Then what substitutes have we, for the falconry, archery, the hunting, fishing, of earlier and what we deem barbarous times? Yet these were sports, heroic and wholesome, giving a national coloring and strength of character: the wrestling too, throwing the quoit, and other manly games, horsemanship, boating, swimming, were a natural gymnastic for body and mind. War also had its advantages. So the plays and games were schools of genius and valor: the people were refined by contact with the refinements of the best citizens, the guardians of public taste and honor providing hereby a polite and manly culture suited to the needs of the state. Education extended into the age of ripe maturity. Nor was the disciple committed to himself till he became the master. And through life he was prompted by incentives of virtue and fame. The state was venerable, ennobled as it was by the genius and services of great men; great men earning honorably their renown by teaching. 'Tis noble minds who noble men create, And they who have great manners form mankind.