A museum and a library would be necessary adjuncts to such a school as we have described. It would need but a few seasons to get together in the various excursions taken by pupils and teachers, quite a collection of botanical, entomological, and geological specimens. These would serve as objects for illustrating the teacher’s lessons, and for examination by the pupils. The drying, preservation, and arrangement of plants, animals, and minerals, in which the pupils would assist, would serve to impart to them a skill and dexterity, which they would know how to value, and would be eager to acquire, and, together with their frequent visits to the museum, would serve to cultivate a love of nature and devotion to the study of her works.
The library, besides containing treatises on science and for reference, would be filled with books of travels, and the nobler English and foreign classics; the books would be loaned to the pupils as in ordinary circulating libraries, and a pleasant reading-room would be furnished with the better class of periodicals and newspapers.
To be deprived for a time of the right to visit the museum or reading-room, or to borrow books from the library, would be one of the severest punishments known in the school.
It is hardly necessary to say that the selection of the principal of such a school as we have indicated is among the most difficult problems of its establishment. His qualifications should be as near the perfection of manhood as can possibly be found. Invited by a large and generous salary (to be dependent, beyond a stated sum, on the number of the pupils), it is to be hoped such a teacher could be found.
Such a principal, after a fixed period of probation, should not be removable except on a very large vote of the proprietors of the school to that effect, but his office should be vacated on his attaining the age of 60 or 65 years. The selection of teachers to assist him in his duties should be left to himself. The remuneration of the assistant teachers should also be large, and should be such as not only to enable them to live in comfort, but to make ample provision for their future when the age of labor shall have passed.
The chief position in society should be assured to the principal and his assistants by the proprietors of the school.
The visits of the former to the houses of the latter should be regarded as an honor, the greatest respect and deference should be paid to them, and the pupils should be taught to look upon them with love and respect next only to that they pay their parents.
The best investment a parent can make of his wealth is in the proper education of his children. Life is not merely to be born, to grow, to eat, to drink, and breathe. Noise is not music. Life is such as we take it and make it, or rather as it is taken hold of and made for us by those to whom the care of our youthful days is intrusted.
Let us endeavor to picture to ourselves the being likely to be produced by a system of teaching and training, continued for successive generations, such as we have indicated above. Let us imagine the full development of the most complex of nature’s organisms—a part of the one living organism of the Universe, the latest product of her laboratory; considered, as a part of the great Cosmos, the most perfect, yet but an integer in the whole; the ultimate development of nature’s chemistry, yet forming an atom of her living unity; combining and possessing the widest relationships, even embracing therein the entire volume of that nature whose true relationships comprise all knowledge, truly “the noblest study of mankind.” Let us try and draw the picture of the developed man!
Robust and supple of limb, symmetrical of shape, his muscles swelling beneath their healthy development; with head erect, conscious of his strength and skill, which he puts forth for the protection of the weak, and for the purpose of drawing from nature her bounteous stores; free from sickness or disease, in harmony with nature, at peace with his fellow-men, possessing a competent knowledge of nature’s laws, and guiding his conduct to be in accord therewith, “sitting beneath his own vine and fig-tree,” “blessed in all the works of his hands,” and diffusing blessings and happiness around. Such is the picture of the healthy mind in a healthy frame, which it is in man’s power to procreate and rear!