My views touching the modes, in which the best results of education are to be obtained, whether just or erroneous, have at least the advantage of being entirely practical. I am sufficiently convinced, that there must be an adequate and happy organization and mental development, without which no education, however wise and assiduous, will ever effect anything more, than mediocrity of character and acquirement. In the present state of public opinion, as great mistakes are made by expecting too much from the training of schools, as were formerly committed by attempting too little. The opulent, and people in the higher walks especially, are tempted by their condition to believe, that wealth and distinction can purchase, and even command mind, and that cultivation of it, by which more enlarged and distinguished minds differ from the common measure of intellect; a mistake, than which no other is more universally, and palpably taught by every day’s experience. The Author of our being reserves, and will never impart his own high prerogative, to bestow mind; and he as often dispenses the noblest and richest endowment of it in the lower, as in the upper walks of life; though, as we have seen, he has indicated, in the order of nature, a process of unlimited improvement of organization and endowment. But the substratum of a practical and well endowed mind, to begin with, being granted, I beg leave to add my conviction to that of M. Droz, a conviction, which, as I think, will resume its authority and influence, when most of the present tedious and endless systems and projects of education will have passed into their merited oblivion. It is, that strong, latent and distinguished character and acquirement receive in domestic education, that predominant and fashioning direction, which they retain through life. The peculiar impress of a parent, a family-friend, a single tutor, is often as distinctly marked upon the whole after life of the scholar, that becomes truly distinguished, as though he had been wax in the hands of a moulder. The numerous tutors of opulent families, and of public institutions, seldom impart the same advantage. Their different views and modes of discipline countervail, and neutralize each other. The Greeks and the great Romans taught at home, the master being a member and an honored one of the family. The master and the pupil walked, conversed, and pursued their amusements together; and the sweet associations of home and the shade and freedom from restraint were conjoined with the lessons. When the good Plutarch paints to us, with his inimitable _naiveté_, one of his favorite characters, he indicates as his first felicity, that it was his lot to have the training of an Aristotle, or some similar worthy. Consult the English Plutarch for the same fact. Could all the commencing circumstances of most of the great men, who have lived, be exactly traced, we should find the same truth disclosed. That the development of