Again: What is meant by universal mental cultivation? It is not the expansion of any single mental power or susceptibility. There should be no brilliancy of intellect unmellowed by the radiancy of moral feeling--no strength of passion or sentiment uninfluenced by other of the mind's faculties. There must be a mental balance, which is the great secret of all education. From the want of such balance, Ignorance, with her offspring, Superstition and Prejudice, has ever weighed down the intellectual scale and destroyed the noblest results of mental effort. That system should be discarded which developes only the powers of intellect. Variety, the high thought, the virtuous sentiment, the beautiful and sublime emotion, the chaste passion, all, in happy union, raise communities to power and happiness. Surely, it is not illogical to maintain, that an endowment of diversified powers and affections of mind, impliedly requires their cultivation. Why the gift of reason, of memory, of imagination? Why the gift of moral and religious feeling, of love, of sympathy--or of any faculty? It would be absurd to say that they are mere trifles, mere butterfly appendages, to gratify taste or pleasure. Further, this diversity of mind, entering into, necessarily creates the numerous individual fibres which are the sources of the vigor and strength of the social frame. Is it not then evident, that the expansion of any one mental power to the neglect of all, or of some to the neglect of others, would take away more or less of this vigor and strength; would disfigure the social frame and destroy its beauty and harmony of proportion? Here, the mind suggests {385} an analogical argument. Look abroad over the material world. Is there sameness? Is there the exclusive development of any single feature? Is the earth's surface one barren, limitless plain? or its soil of one kind? or its deep mines all gold, or silver, or iron? Or do we behold a world of water, of inconceivable sublimity? No! There is the mountain, bold and rugged, bleak, or crowned with magnificent foliage, to awaken the emotions and give wings to the imagination; the valley of varied soil suited to the production of the comforts of life; the vein of gold, of silver, of iron, each and all, in happy effect, increasing the embellishments and blessings of society; and there are the river, the lake, and still worlds of water. What is there useful or harmonious, or ornamental, or enlivening, or grand, unseen in this, the Deity's material creation? Now, observe the mental world. There is reason, producing the solid and beneficial; memory and imagination, her handmaids, assisting her vigor and research, and robing her in loveliness and brightness; the affections, diffusing through all and throwing over all a glow of love, beauty, and peace; thus, preserving the necessary relations, and showing their glorious influences when