have been trained with a hair, and when they bent at your breath? So is it, in general, with these inattentive or regardless children, now, indeed, so loudly complained of. They are proofs of some previous delinquency on the part of their ordained guardians-assuredly not proofs of the powerlessness or inefficiency of parental instruction." ABSTRACT From the Report of the School Committee of the town of Warwick, made to the town, in June, 1852. Your School Committe beg leave to report as follows: The moneys available for the support of Public Schools the past year, were derived from the following sources : Add, balance in the Treasury, due to the several The expenditures for the same time, have been 846 24 $3,463 90 3,075 49 Add, balances now in the Treasury, due to the several Districts, 388 41 $3,463 90 The whole number of scholars who attended school this year, as gathered from the District Returns, was 1,244; the average attendance was 812; the time the schools have been kept, was a fraction over seven months, and the cost per scholar, has been three dollars and seventy-five cents. Compared with the last Annual Report, the number who have attended school, is 69 less, and the average attendance 96 less, than last year. This decline in numbers was confined mainly to two or three large Districts-the smaller Districts show on the whole, a small increase. For the Committee: S. H. GREENE, Clerk. From Dickens's Household Words. THE WASTE OF WAR. Give me the gold that war has cost, I'll clothe each shivering wretch on earth, Which Kings might envy and admire. In every vale, on every plain, A school shall glad the gazer's sight; Where every poor man's child may gain Pure knowledge, free as air and light. I'll build asylums for the poor, By age or ailment made forlorn ; And none shall thurst them from the door, Or sting with looks or words of scorn. I'll link each alien hemisphere! Help honest men to conquer wrong; Art, Science, Labor, nerve and cheer; Reward the Poet for his song. In every crowded town shall rise Halls Academic, amply graced ; Where ignorance may soon be wise, And coarseness learn both art and taste. To every province shall belong Collegiate structures, and not fewFilled with a truth-exploring throng, And teachers of the good and true. In every true and peopled clime A vast Walhalla hall shall stand; A marble edifice sublime, For the illustrious of the land; A Pantheon for the truly great, The wise, beneficent, and just; A place of wide and lofty state To honor or to hold their dust. A temple to attract and teach Where pious men shall feel and preach Round the whole earth shall gladly rise; From the American Journal of Insanity. SUPPOSED INCREASE OF INSANITY. Some of these causes of the increase of insanity are the same in all ages and in all nations, and in all states of barbarism and civilization. Those especially which belong to the malignant and the evil passions, anger, hatred, jeasously, pride, and violent temper, are probably the same at all times, and have an unvarying amount of influence on the sanity of the brain. Those causes connected with the depressing emotions and feelings, anxiety on account of the sufferings of friends and relatives, fear of their loss, sorrow for their death, and probably those causes which are connected with family variances and misconduct, with the ill treatment of parents and husbands, remain as active now as ever, and no more. There are other causes of grief which become more painful with social cultivation, and therefore disturb the nervous system more. In a higher state of refinement, the sensibilities become more keen, and the tender passions more powerful and more relied upon as sources of happiness Then the affections between the sexes are more ardent and abiding, and have a more controlling influence over them, than in a ruder state; and a rupture of the proposed union, a disappointment in love, the failure of tenderness, of respect, or of fidelity in a partner after marriage, would produce a keener anguish, a more effective shock, and wear upon the spirits more in a refined than in a less cultivated state of society, where less was hoped, and less suffering would follow failure or disappointment. Therefore, we may look for more insanity from disappointed love or domestic troubles now, than in former ages. But, on the other hand, the same cultivation of life and spirit would probably engender more permanence of affection in both parties, more respect, and faithfulness, and tenderness, in the domestic circle, so as to diminish the frequeney of the causes of their disappointments and sorrows. Some of the other causes connected with the feelings and passions, quarrels, duels, lawsuits, have probably diminished. The causes connected with religion have doubtless dimin ished within the last thirty years. These have always been active. As far back as even in the days of the oldest heathenism of which we have any record, there were those who became so exalted with their feelings of inspiration, that they imagined themselves especially endued with knowledge and gifts from superior beings. The Pythoness "spoke the oracles of the God, often with loud howlings and cries." There were the enthusiasts and the uncontrollable fanatics in all the days of the Roman Church. Since the Reformation, when sects have multiplied, the various forms of doctrines meet more varieties of temperament, and probably more are brought under their active influence. With this change comes more desire to produce immediate and powerful impressions, and a greater confidence that this impression will establish one in a more satisfactory religious condition. The desire to be so impressed, and the impression itself, after it is received, create in some, a state of doubt between hope and fear, an anxiety and a mental struggle to attain to the position of security and happiness. There is probably less of insanity from this cause in New England now, than there was in the last and the preceding generation, yet all ages are subject to it. The causes connected with mental labor, in its manifold applications, have increased and are increasing continually. In the progress of the age, education has made rapid advances, both in reaching a wider circle of persons and in multiplying the subjects of study. The improvements in the education of children and youth, have increased their mental labors, and imposed more burdens upon their brains, in the present than in the preceding ages. The proportion of children who are taught in schools increases every year in the United States, and in most civilized nations. There are more and more of those whose love of knowledge, whose sense of duty, whose desire of gratifying friends, and whose ambition, impel them to make their utmost exertions to become good scholars. Thus they task their minds unduly, and sometimes exhaust their cerebral energies, and leave their brains a prey to other causes which may derange them afterwards. 'The new sciences which have been lately discovered, or the old sciences that were formerly confined to the learned, but are now simplified and popularized, and offered to the young as a part of their education, multiply the subjects of study and increase the mental labor of almost all in schools. Men and classes of men, such as in the last century would have thought of nothing but how they should obtain their bread, are now induced to study subjects and pursue sciences, and burden their brains with great, and sometimes excessive labor. New fields of investigation have been laid open within the last hundred, and especially within the last fifty years. New inducements are offered, so that a greater variety of tastes is invited to their peculiar feasts of knowledge.Many persons now study phrenology, metaphysics, mathematics, physiology, chemistry, botany, and other branches of natural history, to say nothing of mesmerism, biology, &c., and thus they compel their brains to labor with more energy and exhausting zeal than those of any former generation. In this multiplication of students, there are some who attempt to grapple with subjects that they cannot master, and sink under the burden of perplexity which they cannot unravel. In this general increase of mental activity, some men become interested, and give their minds intensely to the study of public topics, politics, state or national affairs, and the subjects of legislation, the banking system, tariff, anti-rent, antimasonry, the license question, &c., or to public moral questions, anti-slavery, temperance, and general or special reforms, any or all of which impose upon them great anxiety and mental labor. In this country, where no son is necessarily confined to the work or employment of his father, but ali the fields of labor, of profit, or of honor, are open to whomsoever will put on the harness and enter therein, and all are invited to join the strife for that which may be gained in each, many are in a transition state from the lower and less desirable to the higher and more desirable conditions. They are struggling for that which cost them mental labor, anxiety, and pain. The mistake, or the ambition of some leads them to aim at that which they cannot reach, to strive for more than they can grasp, and their mental powers are strained to their utmost tension; they labor in agitation, and they end in frequent disappointment.— Their minds stagger under the disproportionate burden; they are perplexed with the variety of insurmountable obstacles, and they are exhausted with the ineffectual labor. There are many whose education is partially wrong, and some whose education is decidedly bad. These persons have wrong notions of life. They are neither taught to understand the responsibilities that they must meet, nor are they prepared to sustain them. They are filled with false hopes. They are flattered in childhood and youth, but they are not accustomed to mental labor, nor disciplined and strengthened to bear burdens. They are led to expect circumstances that will not belong to them. They look for success, honor, or advantages, which their talents, or education, or habits of business, or station in the world, will not obtain for them. Consequently, |