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Will the Chinese

merce, Christianity, and civilization of Asia. Shall they not have the credit of it? Let us now attend to the reflex action of China upon our own country. prove the solution of the labor question? The mineral question concerns us all. With a plentiful supply of gold and silver the financial question becomes an easier problem. Gold and silver being plenty, a stream is started that will vivify and fertilize the most barren parts of every land. The foreign mineral lands are mostly owned. by England, France, Prussia, Austria, Italy. Those classic lands, however, hardly equal the territory of our mineral lands. What a precious heritage providence has bestowed upon us? Are we equal to the responsibility? Time will test the wisdom of our policy. Silver, quicksilver, wedded together, each is necessary, indispensable, for the other. Our quicksilver, ten times richer than any other mine, destroying the great monopoly of Spain, cheapens the price, and stimulates to a wonderful extent the product of the South American mines. Graphite also is ours, the indispensable necessity of the crucible to melt the silver and the gold, indestructible by fire, and not absorbing the precious metal. Did ever Providence give so grand a possession to any nation? The extent of territory--903,000 square miles-population, 780,000—not one person to a square mile. The same extent of country in Europe has a population of 150,000,000 of people. The great want is population. Can our native population supply the demand? By no means. We want a large number immediately, and an inexhaustible source of supply. Whence shall it come? China-China alone can meet the demand. Nature has formed them for these very services. Physically formed, they safely breathe the impure air of mines and subterranean passages, where other races faint and perish. A people distinguished for their patient industry, they have learned to toil. They have made their country a garden spot, and enriched it beyond all other lands. They have a great genius for steady work and unfailing perseverance. We need a docile, quiet, inoffensive race, not afraid or ashamed to work, and here we have them. They ask no political favors, and do not seek to be our legislators and rulers. They have learned

stability at home and they like a strong orderly government. They are an educated people, and venerate learning. The poorest coolie can often read and write. Now for the application. They are anxious, begging for hard work. Our people are restless, and wish to avoid it. They work at the mines all day and are satisfied with eight dollars a week. Our people grumble and pass on to richer diggings at twenty-eight dollars a week. They come and glean and obtain a competency after our populace have decided they must move or starve. Quartz mining is inexhaustible, and yet our people, recklessly extravagant, have already wasted $300,000,000. Certainly the time has come for a new system, for a slow, plodding, but not a reckless people. We need the silver and the gold, our currency and fiscal operations plead strongly for it. Shall we neglect the gift that Providence has provided for us? bitter prejudice against this Mongolian race. lesson. Such prejudices must succumb.

But there is a Let us heed our

The want of good household servants is a great and deplorable evil. For every disease, however, Providence provides the remedy, and often summons human ingenuity to work out the problem. When hand labor was too expensive, God provided machinery; when sewing-girls were exhausted, the machine took their place. The mails are not rapid enough, and we use the telegraph. So in the present case the Chinese, possessing all the qualities of good servants, are at our door, begging, not with brazen look and arrogant manner, as too many are, demanding employment. They are good cooks, the best in the world, the French excepted. They will obey orders to the letter and spirit. They work all day, and are satisfied with moderate wages-who says all this? The Pacific Mail Company from San Francisco to China employ only Chinese-Chinese sailors, cooks, waiters. They speak in the highest terms of their honesty, sobriety, faithfulness. Passengers passing over that route give the same unvarnished testimony. San Francisco, California, tells the same tale. For fifty cents they do more work and better than those who charge one dollar for it. A friend, for years in business in China, has employed Chinese servants. His statement is this: "I have been very sick; no female could have nursed

me more tenderly than this Chinese servant-very fastidious, no woman could have better ironed my shirts or made my linen whiter-fond of good living, no cook could have prepared better or more palatable dishes-always at hand, ready, good-natured, willing; no money, no motive could tempt me to part with him." A friend, used to the best comforts of life in the East, and interested in the silver mines of Nevada, says that he wanted no better cook or attention than he received from his Chinese attendant. Rev. Dr. A. L. Stone says the Chinese make the best kind of help. They adopt at once any new habit desired, are clean and competent; always respectful, and never seem tired out. They never steal, nor do they have company. The testimony of several of the best Spanish families in New York is, that the Chinese excel all other servants. They use and much prefer them for all kinds of work. Their family attachments are strong, and they do not wish to change. Such testimony must be conclusive to all unprejudiced minds.

In conclusion let us learn the lessons of history. The nations that despised the barbarians fell. Greece was the classic land, the mother of the arts and sciences, the promoter of commerce, the instructor of antiquity, and yet proud, and despising the barbarian. She fell before the power of Rome. Rome took her place and strode over a prostrate world. She ruled with an imperious sway. Overbearing, haughty, she despised the barbarian and before that terrible horde her imperial sway perished. All men are our brothers, all are colaborers with us in the emancipation of the world. We pass over the ocean, tell China she belongs to the brotherhood of nations, and her open ports and valuable commerce will be our rich reward. Christianity must triumph. With all her faults America is the grand Protestant nation of the world, and we are rising up to our true position. We no longer wrangle about minor matters, and the hosts of our Christian. ranks are becoming united. A stronger bond of religion and fellowship awaits us. Our money is poured out like water for noble and charitable objects. The missionary is better understood and more highly appreciated. Closely united by commerce, by telegraph with other lands, our missionary friends

and children are not beyond our reach. A strong united gov ernment at home, we speak, and Turkey, India, China, know that we are a power upon the earth. The bright cross appears in the heavens, "in hoc signo vinces." A greater than Constantine is marching to universal conquest, and under our immaculate king, a universal Christian empire will surely prevail.*

ART. VII.-The American Colleges and the American Pub lic. By NOAH PORTER, D. D., Professor in Yale College. New Haven, Conn.: Charles Chatfield & Co.

EDUCATION is a work consisting of several stages, which necessarily differ greatly from one another. It includes all that is due to the culture and direction of all the mental and bodily powers of children, of youth, and of men and women, as well as their equipment for professional life. The style of teaching which is best for a child may be unsuitable for the boy of fifteen or sixteen; and the young man between twenty and twenty-five has reached by natural growth a stage at which he is less capable of profiting by drill, and better prepared to apprehend abstractions and generalizations, and to organize practical knowledge.

Obvious as this fact must seem when mentioned, the overlooking of it has occasioned the principal difficulties in both the theory and practice of education. One plan treats children at school on the principles suited to the college; another carries the methods of the school into the treatment of young men; and a third confounds school, college, and university in one. Objections may be raised to the distinctive use of these names, and many will make no difference

* Our readers will judge how far any part of the foregoing article needs qualifying in the light of the Tientsin massacre, the authentic details of which have been received since it was in type. A masterly description and analysis of that barbarous slaughter, by Dr. Martin, of China, has been published in a late number of the New York Evangelist.

between school and college, and cover the whole course of education by the one word-school. But where there are real distinctions, corresponding names are indispensable to the proper ends of language. Common usage has, in the main, so appropriated these. And a right understanding of the duties of an instructor depends very much upon the correctness with which he discriminates their respective meanings. The slackness so commonly complained of in preparatory schools in this country is chiefly due to their aiming at what does not belong to them to do, and to a great extent neglecting, or going through in a perfunctory manner with their proper work, and hurrying on to carry their pupils into the sophomore or junior classes in college, to the spoiling of half the college course, as well as the whole of their own. Similar is the injury done by young men to themselves in their attempting, as some do, to carry on professional studies, while in college. Order, that first law of heaven, and which ought to be the first of human culture, is in no other serious business of life so much neglected. In nothing else have the recent improvements in normal and model schools been of more value than in the stress which they lay upon order. Every part of instruction has its best use in its proper place: and all together may be rendered worse than useless by being put into improper places. Many of the difficulties encountered by theorists arise from the attempt to regulate all steps of the process by one measure.

Greater progress might have been made toward a proper distribution of the work had successive generations been more careful to study the experience of the past. Amid the efforts for improvement, which so commendably distinguish the present, there is still too little regard paid to that earnest but much neglected witness. Experiments are made, and fail, and are forgotten, and are tried over again, to fail again and be forgotten, and again mislead some future experimenter. What are some of those great heterogeneous enterprises of which, as if they were novelties, extravagant expectations are now entertained, but the reproduction of what, in a more spontaneous way, grew up, flourished, and failed, hundreds of

years ago.

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