in your manual-labor employments. If you add to the hours thus occupied, those which are demanded by other necessary avocations and by sleep, the time which you can devote to the direct improvement of your minds is very little. This, it must be acknowledged, is a serious obstacle to great literary acquirements. But, while your time for intellectual improvement is limited, you have this advantage, that you know just what time you can devote to it. The perfect system, with which your manual-labor employments are conducted, enables you to calculate, with great accuracy, the time which you can devote to study. This redeeming circumstance is one of no inconsiderable importance, and gives you a decided advantage for mental improvement over those classes of society, whose ordinary business is less systematic.

2. Another obstacle is lassitude of body and mind. A general languor of the physical and mental powers is created by long-continued application to business. After spending twelve or thirteen hours in labor, a person is quite unfitted for close mental application. In order to prosecute study the most successfully, the body and mind must be in an active, vigorous state. Besides, that discipline of mind, which will enable one to accomplish much, even in untoward situations, is very difficult to be acquired under the almost ceaseless pressure of business. These conditions present serious impediments to your progress in study. But do not feel that their influence cannot be counteracted. Simpson, the mathematician, by untiring perseverance in mental application, rose from the weaver's loom to the first rank of scientific men.

3. There is no great demand for high literary attainments. In academical and professional life, there is incessant conflict of mind with mind. There, the premium, which public sentiment awards, is awarded only to mental productions of a high order. In such a market, distinguished efforts of mind are the articles in demand. But, in all pursuits where there is no special demand for great intellectual acquirements, there will, of course, be less prospect that they will be made. The river will rise no higher than the fountain. The supply will not be likely to exceed the demand. No employments of the handicraft character present the highest inducements to intellectual improvement. Those persons who who have no special taste for improvement, will therefore be in danger of resting satisfied with barely that measure of education, which may enable them to ply their mechanical operations with acceptance. Such are the prominent obstacles to intellectual improvement, which exist among a manufacturing population.

III. It now remains to consider the means of overcoming them.

1. Attach a high degree of importance to education. A man's principles will affect his practice. If education be undervalued, it will be likely to be neglected; if its vast importance be appreciated, it will receive corresponding attention. To argue the importance of education, in this enlightened day, would seem to be as superfluous a task, as an attempt to demonstrate an axiom. And yet it is the theme of almost every tongue. It is advocated in every variety of form and manner. It is urged in the tract, the newspaper, the periodical, and the more stately volume. It is the theme of the teacher, the professional man, the poet, the patriot, the philanthropist, the statesman. For a few years past, perhaps no subject has found so many eloquent panegyrists. And, yet, one half of its importance to individuals or to communities has not been told. "An angel's lyre" would not suffice to sound its praises, nor a seraph's eloquence to do justice to its merits. Let its immeasurable importance to man, in his individual and social capacities, be impressed upon

your hearts. Next to the conservative power of the gospel, we must look to education to give perpetuity to our republican institutions, and to preserve our cities and villages from riots, incendiarism and blood. A well-educated individual is a blessing to himself and to the world. A welleducated community will be a prosperous community, and its example will operate salutary changes on the other side of the globe.

2. Rise early. Perhaps you may think this advice gratuitous, when your business often calls you to rise before the sun. But there is little danger of rising too early. The mind is more vigorous, early in the morning, than in any other part of the day. Milton wrote much of the "Paradise Lost" before breakfast. Though to him did not return

"Day, or the sweet approach of ev'n, or morn,
So thick a drop serene had quenched his orbs,
Or dim suffusion veil'd,"

yet some of the most splendid passages of that immortal poem were written under the inspiration of early dawn. Dean Swift says, "I never knew any man come to greatness and eminence who lay in bed of a morning." The celebrated Buffon agreed to give his servant a crown every day, if he would get him out of bed by six in the morning.

His servant persevered, and his master afterwards said, "I am indebted to poor Joseph" (his servant) "for ten or a dozen volumes of my works."

Frederick II. of Prussia, gave strict orders never to be allowed to sleep later than four in the morning. Peter the Great always rose before daylight. Dr. Doddridge declares, that his Commentary on the New Testament, and most of his other writings, were the result of his habit of rising at five o'clock. "One of the most celebrated writers in England was lately asked, how it was that he wrote so much, and yet from ten in the forenoon was at leisure through the day;—‘Веcause I begin to write at three in the morning,' was the reply."* One half hour devoted to reading, before you enter upon business, will furnish you with materials for profitable reflection through the day. Such a practice, perseveringly pursued, will yield you a stock of knowledge, which some graduates of our colleges can hardly be said to possess.

3. Improve fragments of time. "Drops added to drops," says the Arabian proverb, "constitute the ocean." The pyramids of Egypt were reared by degrees. The coral-insect, by beginning at the bottom of the ocean and adding one grain at a time,