LECTURE.


Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen:--

We have met together to consider the best methods of Educating, that is,
drawing out, or developing the Human Nature common to all of us. Truly a
subject not easy to be exhausted. For we all of us feel that the Human
Nature,--out of whose bosom has flowed all history, all science, all
poetry, all art, all life in short,--contains within itself far more
than that which has hitherto been manifested through all the periods of
its history, though that history dates from the creation of the world,
and has already progressed as far as the nineteenth century of the
Christian era. Yes! we all of us feel that the land of promise lies far
away in the future, that the goal of human history is yet a long way
off.

A large portion of this assembly consists of those whose business it is
to study Human Nature in all its various forms, and who have taken upon
themselves the task of developing that nature in the youth of America,
in that rising generation whose duty it will be to carry out the nascent
projects of reform in every department of human interest, and make the
thought of to-day the fact of tomorrow.

Some doubtless there are among this number, who by very nature are born
Teachers, called to this office, as by a voice from heaven! Men, who in
spite of foolish detraction, or yet more foolish patronage, understand