It can easily be shown that education as well as art is essentially symbolical. Such, indeed, must be the character of the education, whether public or private, of the whole rising generation, unless it is to degenerate into an ordinary mechanical system. And it is even in this quality principally that we are disposed to place the distinction between an unspiritual education, which, even though in the sternness of its morality it may defy censure, yet eventually proves barren and mortal, and one more solid and more conformable to human nature, which, less pretending in the outset, is even the more lasting in its effects. The ready susceptibility of the youthful mind for every thing symbolical that lies within its reach, and its vivid perception of its meaning, might be clearly enough shown by instancing some of the ordinary amusements of boyhood and youth. How commonly, in these years, are the various occupations, pursuits, and circumstances of real and, to them, still future life, childishly, perhaps, but still ingeniously imitated, or, rather, anticipated! And how lasting an influence does this frequently make on their little society! What various but lasting traces does it often leave on their minds, more perhaps than many hours of study, especially if in the latter the usual system of overloading the young mind defeats its own end. Play, indeed, must not become the mere pastime of idleness, for it is only by its alternation with labor and the sternness of discipline that it continues to be a recreation and a pleasure. And, indeed, the earnestness, the labor, and the sterner part in this whole business and matter of education, as mixed and composed of two opposite elements, of the serious and the sportive, is highly capable of receiving so spiritual a reference and vital a significance. And if all education be nothing else than a preparation for the future, and the state of this preparation, then it must be self-evident that too many or enough of such vivid references and spiritual allusions to a future life, either generally or to any particular phase of it that may chiefly be had in view, can not be introduced into education and its serious and sportive elements and pursuits. For it is only by this method that the susceptibilities of youth and the youthful fancy can be vividly excited and thoroughly impressed with the fundamental design and significance of the whole of life--a result which no mere dry definition of the future state, or generally of any “destination of man” on the dusty road of logic, will ever attain to.