_Practical Morals_--I mean that department, which teaches, and _habituates_ us, to behave justly and kindly to our fellow creatures--will ever be poorly taught by dry precepts and formal essays. No vehicle of moral instruction is comparable to the striking narrative. How is it possible for any school-boy to rob an orchard, after having read Miss Edgeworth's "Tarlton?"--or to practise unfairness in any bargain, when he has glowed at the integrity of Francisco, in purposely shewing the _bruised side_ of his melon to a purchaser? or not to loathe party spirit, when he has been early imbued with the rational sentiments contained in the "Barring Out?" In short, to be familiar with the mass of that lady's incomparable writings for youth, and not have the principles and feelings of economy, industry, courage, honor, filial and fraternal love, engrained into his very soul? Or how can he fail to find, in "Sandford and Merton," for the daily occasions of life, the happiest lessons of duty and humanity, and for those great conjunctures which never occur in many a life time, the most resistless incentives to a more than Roman heroism? Other branches of knowledge are desirable for the republican citizen, less from any peculiar appositeness to his character as such, than from their tendency to enlarge his mind; and especially because, by affording exhaustless stores of refined and innocent pleasure, they win him away from the haunts of sensuality. "I should not think the most exalted faculties a gift worthy of heaven," says Junius, "nor any assistance in their improvement a subject of gratitude to man, if I were not satisfied, that _to inform the understanding, corrects and enlarges the heart_." Felix Neff, the Alpine pastor, whose ardent, untiring benevolence, ten years ago, wrought what the indolent would deem miracles, in diffusing knowledge, and a love of knowledge, amongst an untutored peasantry, found their indifference towards _foreign missions_ immovable, until they had learned something of _geography_: but so soon as they had read the {22} description of distant countries, and seen them upon the map, they conceived an interest in the people who dwelt there; and entered warmly into the scheme of beneficence, which before had solicited their attention in vain. "Their new acquirements," observes Neff, "enlarged their spirit, and made new creatures of them; seeming to triple their very existence." Geometry, he remarked, also "produced a happy moral development:" doubtless by the beauty of its unerring march to truth. Arithmetic it is superfluous to recommend: but its adjunct, Algebra, deserves cultivation as an exercise to the analyzing faculties; as an implement, indispensable to the prosecution of several other studies; and as opening a unique and curious field of knowledge to the view.