Defective education is a frequent cause of suicide. At the present day, the ornamental has taken the place of the substantial; the showy and specious, the situation of the solid and virtuous. The endowments of the mind and cultivation of the heart are forced to yield to the external accomplishments and graces of the body, and polished manners are too generally preferred to sound morals. The importance of fashion is inculcated in opposition to reason; religion is made to bow down before the shrine of honour; and the fear of the world is taught to supersede the fear of God. But what superstructure can be raised on so sandy a foundation? It can support no incumbent weight; and, in consequence, it cannot be deemed surprising that an inundation of folly and vice, like a sweeping torrent, should bear down all before it. The dignity of personal worth and character is a point too little considered. Brilliant parts supersede sound judgment; and disinterested virtue, integrity, and public spirit, are out of character in a nation immersed in voluptuousness. Education of a light and frivolous character leads to a vacuity of serious thoughts and solid principles of conduct. Luxury and profligacy, in all ages, have operated injuriously on the human mind. Cato the elder observes that there could be no friendship in a man whose palate had quicker sensations than his brain and heart. The man who has no internal sources of enjoyment to fly to when others fail,—he whose happiness consists in an indulgence in the pleasures of the senses, when these ephemeral sources of gratification are removed, will, to avoid the vacuum which is made in his existence, readily terminate his own life.