epistle from you, expressing in the warmest sentiments the acknowledgments you owe me agreeable to your faithful promise to reciprocate with me on the morning I took leave of you. Has the thought ever rushed into your mind of the obligation you are under to me now, when after a promise I have so faithfully fulfilled on my part, could you doubt the insincerity of my motive; how can you? Have I not offered a multitude of compliments in your efforts to promote my pleasure and comfort while at your house last summer? then be frank in this binding contract to be punctual in the discharge of your honorable promise to me in an early hour after the receipt of this letter so that I may know all is right.

Thousands of young people have been sent forth from our numberless select schools, or have been honorably graduated from our higher institutions of learning with no better knowledge of the principles of English composition, than had the individuals from whom these extracts have been given verbatim. Not that instructors have been wholly recreant to their duty, but doubtless because in our private schools the relation between pupil and teacher has usually been transient; and because professors in colleges and academies have taken too much for granted, or have given their pupils credit for an intuitive knowledge which they did not possess. Genius, it is true is of nature's own planting, and requires little cultivation but talent, being merely an off-shoot of genius, may be made to produce in a two fold, five fold or ten fold ratio, according to the careful husbandry expended upon it.

Paul may plant, but how can the increase be given, if Apollos neglect to water? A want of system is fatal to any pursuit in life whatever that pursuit may be. Sympathized instruction in composition has been the failing in the past, and will continue to be in the future, if the graded school comes not to the rescue. There only can a progressive method be established permanently and carried out persistently.

The work should be commenced in the lowest department. As soon as the little one has mastered a word, he should be encouraged to put it into a sentence. When he has learned to print, words placed upon the black board should be embodied in the form of propositions, and when this is well understood, instruction should be imparted in

the art of giving to these propositions an exclamatory, or an interrogative turn. The instructor may vary the exercise by printing short stories upon the board in which blanks are left to be filled by the pupil. He may read poetical couplets, the rhyming word being omitted and required of the scholar. He may also place easy sentences upon the board in an anagrammatic form, and call for the proper arrangement of the words. For instance: light, the, made, God, will be almost instantaneously turned into, "God made the light,” by pupils that are able to read without hesitancy. The reading of simple stories, such as: "A little girl had a black kitten, it went out one day and found a mouse and brought it into the house and played with it on the floor," may be found of practical benefit, if all that can print be desired to reproduce the story, and those who cannot be encouraged to give the substance of the story in their own language.

Simple as such exercises may appear, they can with profit be carried even as far as the threshold of the High School; words given, being more difficult and a greater number embodied in one sentence,-the stories being of greater length and presenting more intricacy of plot, the rhymes being alternate rather than in couplets, and the disarranged sentences being more complicated and consequently more difficult of reconstruction.

In Intermediate and Grammar schools, words may be given to the number of twelve or fourteen to be used by the pupils in the construction of a composition. Lines, like "Homeward the ploughman plods his weary way," may be usefully employed in a syntactical exercise intended to show in how many ways the same thought may be uttered by the use of the same words. If the teacher be conver

sant with any but his mother tongue, an occasional literal translation from German, French or Latin will be found very profitable, it being required that each pupil shall render such translation into the best of English. Take, for example, the following incident from the French: "One little boy demanded at table, of the meat; his father to him said, that it was not proper some of it to demand, and added; it is necessary to await until that they to you of it give. After some time the poor boy, seeing that all the world ate and that they nothing to him gave, said to his father: My dear father, give to me if it you please, a little of salt. What with it wilt thou do, demanded the

father. I wish it to eat with the meat which you to me will give, replied the child. All the world admired the wit of the little boy, and his father himself perceiving that he it had forgotten, to him gave a piece of meat." To some, this may seem trivial, but let them try it and find how difficult it is to obtain, even from many well-advanced pupils, a smooth rendering into English. Smoothness of expression may also be inculcated by a change in the rhythm of a familiar stanza and the requirement to restore the melodious flow. As an instance, allow me to quote the well-known version of the twenty-third Psalm.

"The Lord shall prepare my pasture,
And with a Shepherd's care feed me;
His presents shall supply my wants,
And with a watchful eye guard me:
He shall attend my noon-day walks
And defend all my midnight hours."

To write or not to write was once a debated question, but it is such no longer. In this age of cheap postage, of flashy periodicals and of sensational novels, every one feels called upon to write and considers himself an incipient Shakespeare, or a Byron in embryo. Wealth, honor and pleasure seem to be lying in wait for the literary aspirant, and he plumes his wings for a lofty flight. The country is flooded with limping rhymes and romantic platitudes, and there is no one to say to the waters, "Thus far shalt thou go and hitherto shall thy proud waves be stayed." All that can be done is to endeavor to give the right direction to the popular current. This can only be effected by raising the standard of composition, and by teaching the rising generation that the possession of a rhyming dictionary is not all that is necessary to constitute a poet, nor that the facility to string together a series of long, hard words is the only requisite for perfection in English prose writing.

EDUCATION is a better safeguard of liberty than a standing army. If we retrench the wages of the schoolmaster, we must raise those of the recruting sergeant.—EVERETT.

OUR NATIONAL CAPITAL.

Large conceptions should be followed up with large execution. Our forefathers laid out the National Capital on a large scale, but for many years it laid dormant ; it took the present generation to carry out the original idea, at once in a manner harmonious with their conceptions, and in a manner in spirit with the age.

Improvements seem to be contagious; one step towards it suggests and opens the way for another, and another, till it increases in direct proportion; and the smaller things are reached and taken in with as much taste and judgment as were at first the larger and more important ones.

When the practical and artistic elements in man go hand in hand, the result is rapid and substantial advancement. Such has been the case with our National Capital; and hence, the reason why such great progress has been made in so short a time. The city, like many other cities, has been cursed with local grades-grades made for the immediate advantage of certain parties, and not for the universal public good. Such grades, etc., should never be allowed; yet in many cities they are common, because of the individual importance. As the public at large must in time suffer from them, they should in future so legislate as to prevent any such further nui

sances.

The improvements here are in charge of a board of public-works. Like every other public board, they have had to endure great censure, especially just before an election. There was much excitement and complaint last year over the proposition to raise a four-millionloan for these improvements. When such steps are to be taken for the advancement of the general interest, there is always a host of potent ones with little faith, who really in the end will be the most benefited; yet who oppose with so much stupid and tenacious argument, that one would think that it would be their utter ruin, rather than their material and moral advancement. After the work is all done, the city not only beautiful but elevated to a higher sphere, they are ready to accept the blessings thereby accomplished in spite of them.

The vote on the four-million-loan, was carried by a popular demonstration; and as a result we have such extensive improvements as were probably never before carried out in any city at one time; and which makes the Washington of to-day quite another city to what it was a few years ago; and created not only within its limits, but throughout its surroundings, great activity in the real estate line. This latter clause may strike some as descending to things a little too material in its nature, yet if rightly considered it reveals to the business man at least, a healthy condition of things-it is another side or view of the object brought to the light.

The old and only railroad entrance from the north into Washington for many years, was that furnished by the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad Company. The neighborhood about their depot, is not such as to inspire an outsider, on his first introduction to the city, with a very flattering idea of the beauty or present improved condition of the capital. We do not blame the railroad company for what surrounds their depot, outside of their jurisdiction, as it is something beyond their control; we simply note the fact that this immediate neighborhood, extending up to the very capital itself, is such as to call forth severe comment, were it not for the fact that the march of improvement is in this direction, and up this hill; and in a few years, instead of the present barren and repulsive condition of things in this locality, one will see fine grounds laid out in the most approved manner.

Congress made appropriations for these improvements; and, but for some bull or misunderstanding, they would have been commenced this year. The improvements embrace the taking in of two entire squares, one on the north, and the other on the south side of EastCapitol Park, which is immediately in front of the east front of the capitol. The trouble was in the amount of the appropriation, which was based upon an apprisement made on this property, ten or twelve years ago. The owners of course refused to sell at such rates; and one cannot blame them; their property has surely increased in value in that time. An apprisement should be made on the valuation of property at the time; and not based upon its valuation some years previous. Those who have charge of, and are interested in these improvements, are tenacious enough not to let their schemes be neutralized by this present block in their way.