for the City of Salem, in the County of Essex, State of Massachusetts, on a plan similar to that of the State Reform School. And I direct my said trustee to pay the same sums and residue, together with any interest that may have accrued thereon, to such trustees or their treasurer, as may be chosen by the Mayor and Aldermen of Salem, and incorporated by an act of the legislature with such powers and provisions as shall be judged best adapted to carry my said design of a Farm School of Reform into complete effect. And it is my will, that my said trustee, William I. Bowditch, shall not be required to give bonds as such trustee, I having full confidence that he will faithfully execute the same. Should these united sums be inadequate to the object, they shall be safely placed at interest until they amount to the sum deemed sufficient, unless a subscription be raised to supply any deficiency. In such case, my bequest aforesaid shall be used immediately for said Farm School of Reform."

The above bequest was accepted by the City Council, and in accordance with the terms of the Will, ten Trustees were chosen by the Mayor and Aldermen of the City of Salem, and an Act of Incorporation granted by the Legislature, May 21, 1855. The first meeting of the Board of Trustees was held November 26, 1855, at which time a code of By-laws was adopted and Officers were elected.

The amount of the Fund received from W. I. Bowditch, Esq., Trustee of the Will of Miss Plummer, July 1st, 1856, was $25,462.23.

PLUMMER HALL.

Under the following clause of Miss Plummer's Will, the sum named therein ($30,000) was paid over to the Trustees of the Salem Athenæum:

"I give and bequeath to the Proprietors of the Salem Athenæum the sum of Thirty Thousand Dollars, directing said bequest to be very distinctly recorded as a gift from my beloved brother Ernestus A. Plummer, I making the bequest in conformity to what I think would have been his wish, he having felt a deep interest in the welfare of this literary institution, and the observatory having been furnished with large additional funds. The said sum of thirty thousand dollars shall be appropriated to the purchasing a piece of land in some central and convenient spot in the City of Salem, and for building thereon a safe and elegant building of brick or stone to be employed for the purpose of depositing the books belonging to said Corporation, with liberty also to have the rooms thereof used for meetings of any scientific or literary institutions, or for the deposit of any works of art or natural productions. Should said library ever become a public one, this bequest shall not be forfeited. I expressly prohibit any part of said building or its cellar from being used as a public or private office of business or place for the sale or deposit of merchandise, being unwilling that said building should be used for any purpose which might endanger by fire the valuable library therein contained. The said building to be erected and the books belonging to the said Corporation to be deposited in it within three years from the time of receiving the legacy or of my decease. Said building to be kept constantly insured."

With this sum the Trustees of the Salem Athenæum have purchased a lot on Essex street, and erected a substantial, convenient, and elegant building for the accommodation of the Athenæum and the Essex Institute, of which the following is a description:

The building is in the form of a parallelogram, 97 feet 3 inches long by 53 feet wide. The exterior walls are faced with the best quality of pressed bricks and are 45 feet in height above the underpinning, which is 4 feet 6 inches high, and is of brown sandstone. The steps, doorway, window dressings, balcony, belts, etc., are also of the same material. The style of the building is the Romanesque. The principal entrance is from the end or façade on Essex street. The first story is finished 16 feet 6 inches in height, and contains a vestibule 14 feet square with doors on the right and left side leading to rooms each 34 feet in length by nearly 16 feet in width; that on the left is appropriated to the herbarium of the Institute, and that on the right to the historical collection;—in the rear of the vestibule is the great staircase to the principal story, octagonal in

form and 18 feet in diameter, and is consequently not far from the centre of the edifice; beyond is the principal room, 58 feet long by 48 wide, which is also connected by doors with the two rooms above mentioned, and has been finished expressly for the accommodation of the geological, mineralogical and zoological departments; a light gallery, with a neat iron railing, extends entirely around the room, being constructed in a serpentine form, receding into each space between the cases, access to which is by two flights of spiral iron stairs, each 5 feet in diameter.

The stairs leading to the principal story commence at the bottom in two flights, each of which are 4 feet 6 inches wide, one on each side of the stairroom-they are continued in this manner to a height of ten feet, where they terminate at a landing, and are continued thence in a single flight 6 feet wide to the floor above; a fine dome is finished over the stair room with a colored glass centre at the apex; at the landing of the stairs on the principal floor is a vestibule corresponding to the one below, from which is a long window leading to the stone balcony over the principal entrance, also doors from the two sides to rooms of the same dimensions and form as those of the entrance story; that on the right is appropriated to the use of the Librarian, and for the deposit of some of the books of reference and the new books belonging to the Athenæum -that on the left to the bound volumes of newspapers of the Institute, and the Library of the Essex South District Medical Society, which contains about 700 volumes;-both of these rooms may be used as reading rooms.

The large Library room is in the rear, and is of the same dimensions as the principal room of the first story, viz., 58 by 48. It is entered by doors from the two rooms above named, and is finished in an elegant manner, having a range of Corinthian columns on either side, about 21 feet high, with an entablature above them, each range being 12 feet from the side walls, leaving a space of 24 feet between the ranges in the center of the room. The ceiling over the aisles or spaces, between the columns and walls, is horizontal, 24 feet high from the floor, and is neatly paneled. That over the nave or center compartment is arched its entire length, finishing 31 feet high from the floor, and is richly paneled in stucco. The cases on the sides of the alcoves are of a peculiar arrangement, commencing narrow at the back of the columns, and widening as they extend toward the sides of the rooms. The shelving being on each side and on the rear of the cases, also in the spaces between the windows. The nave is used for tables. A light balcony or gallery, similar to that in the room below, is constructed at the height of eight feet from the floor and is finished between the columns in a serpentine form, with a neat cast-iron railing. There is located at the rear end of the room a neat flight of spiral iron stairs, leading to the above-named balcony. The alcoves on the western side of this room contain the library of the Athenæum, those on the eastern that of the Institute.

NOTE.

The SALEM ATHENEUM was instituted and incorporated in 1810. In the same year the books belonging to the SOCIAL LIBRARY, which was established in 1760, and the books of the PHILOSOPHICAL LIBRARY, which was established in 1781, were purchased by the Athenæum. The present number of volumes in the Library is about 12,000.

The ESSEX INSTITUTE was formed in 1848, by the union of the Essex Historical Society, which was organized in 1821, and the Essex County Natural History Society, which was established in 1833. It has an extensive and well-arranged cabinet of collections in history and natural science, and about 18,000 volumes, of which more than one-half were donated by Hon. D. A. White. In one of the rooms occupied by the Institute, is the Library of the Essex South District Medical Society.

The institutions accommodated by PLUMMER HALL embrace the great objects of Literary, Historical, and Scientific inquiry.

VI. EARLY TRAINING.

APHORISMS AND SUGGESTIONS-ANCIENT AND MODERN.

WE

E are physiologically connected and set forth in our beginnings, and it is a matter of immense consequence to our character, what the connection is. In our birth we not only begin to breathe and circulate blood, but it is a question hugely significant whose the blood may be. For in this we have whole rivers of predispositions, good or bad, set running in us-as much more powerful to shape our future than all tuitional and regulative influences that come after, as they are earlier in their beginning, deeper in their insertion, and more constant in their operation.

Here, then, is the real and true beginning of a godly nurture. The child is not to have the sad entail of any sensuality, or excess, or distempered passion upon him. The heritage of love, peace, order, continence and holy courage is to be his. He is not to be morally weakened beforehand, in the womb of folly, by the frivolous, worldly, ambitious, expectations of parents-to-be, concentrating all their nonsense in him. His affinities are to be raised by the godly expectations, rather, and prayers that go before; by the steady and good aims of their industry, by the great impulse of their faith, by the brightness of their hope, by the sweet continence of their religiously pure love in Christ. Born, thus, of a parentage that is ordered in all righteousness, and maintains the right use of every thing, especially the right use of nature and marriage, the child will have just so much of heaven's life and order in him beforehand, as have become fixed properties in the type of his parentage.

Observe how very quick the child's eye is, in the passive age of infancy, to catch impressions, and receive the meaning of looks, voices, and motions. It peruses all faces, and colors, and sounds. Every sentiment that looks into its eyes, looks back out of its eyes, and plays in miniature on its countenance. The tear that steals down the cheek of a mother's suppressed grief, gathers the little infantile face into a responsive sob. With a kind of wondering silence, which is next thing to adoration, it studies the mother in her prayer, and looks up piously with her, in that exploring watch, that signifies unspoken prayer. If the child is handled fretfully, scolded, jerked, or simply laid aside unaffectionately, in no warmth of motherly gentleness, it feels the sting of just that which is felt towards it; and so it is angered by anger, irritated by irritation, fretted by fretfulness; having thus impressed, just that kind of impatience or ill-nature, which is felt towards it, and growing faithfully into

the bad mold offered, as by a fixed law. There is great importance, in this manner, even in the handling of infancy. If it is unchristian, it will beget unchristian states, or impressions. If it is gentle, ever patient and loving, it prepares a mood and temper like its own. There is scarcely room to doubt, that all most crabbed, hateful, resentful, passionate, illnatured characters; all most even, lovely, firm and true, are prepared, in a great degree, by the handling of the nursery. To these and all such modes of feeling and treatment as make up the element of the infant's life, it is passive as wax to the seal. So that if we consider how small a speck, falling into the nucleus of a crystal, may disturb its form; or, how even a mote of foreign matter present in the quickening egg, will suffice to produce a deformity; considering, also, on the other hand, what nice conditions of repose, in one case, and what accurately modulated supplies of heat in the other, are necessary to a perfect product; then only do we begin to imagine what work is going on, in the soul of a child, in this first chapter of life, the age of impressions.

I have no scales to measure quantities of effect in this matter of early training, but I may be allowed to express my solemn conviction, that more, as a general fact, is done, or lost by neglect of doing, on a child's immortality, in the first three years of his life, than in all his years of discipline afterwards. And I name this particular time, or date, that I may not be supposed to lay the chief stress of duty and care on the latter part of what I have called the age of impressions; which, as it is a matter somewhat indefinite, may be taken to cover the space of three or four times this number of years; the development of language, and of moral ideas being only partially accomplished, in most cases, for so long a time. Let every Christian father and mother understand, when their child is three years old, that they have done more than half of all they will ever do for his character. What can be more strangely wide of all just apprehension, than the immense efficacy, imputed by most parents to the Christian ministry, compared with what they take to be the almost insignificant power conferred on them in their parental charge and duties. Why, if all preachers of Christ could have their hearers, for whole months and years, in their own will, as parents do their children, so as to move them by a look, a motion, a smile, a frown, and act their own sentiments and emotions over in them at pleasure; if, also, a little farther on, they had them in authority to command, direct, tell them whither to go, what to learn, what to do, regulate their hours, their books, their pleasures, their company, and call them to prayer over their own knees every night and morning, who could think it impossible, in the use of such a power, to produce almost any result? Should not such a ministry be expected to fashion all who come under it to newness of life? Let no parent, shifting off his duties to his children, in this manner, think to have his defects made up, and the consequent damages mended afterwards, when they have come to their maturity, by the comparatively slender, always doubtful, efficacy of preaching and pulpit harangue.

DR. BUSHNELL. Christian Nurture.

Some recreations, to be taken from time to time, are not only always necessary, but are also expedient, because after such pauses the children return to their studies with more pleasure and earnestness.

Playing is also in itself a mark of activity of mind; and children who play in a slow and spiritless manner, will not show any remarkable aptitude for any branch of science.

Many plays, such as the answering of riddles, strengthen the reflective faculties; and afford the teacher valuable hints as to the character and capacity of the young people.

But on this subject also a judicious mean must be observed.

QUINTILIAN.

In education, as in the arts and sciences, and as in virtue itself, there are three things to consider; nature, instruction, and custom or practice. Nature without instruction is blind. Instruction without nature is faulty; practice without either of them, is imperfect.

For as in farming, there are necessary good land, a good husbandman, and good seed, so must good natural endowments have the assistance of good teaching and admonition. PLUTARCH.

The younger any one is, the more easily can he be improved in morals; for virtue is in its essence natural to men, while vice is strange to them. SENECA.

It is an evil thing when by reason of severe punishments, children become angry at their parents, or at enmity with their teachers.

For many unskillful school-masters injure excellent minds with their banging, scolding, rapping and beating, treating the children exactly as hangmen and jailers do a thief.

Solomon, who was a judicious school-master, did not prohibit scholars from sports at the proper time, as the monks do their pupils, who thus become mere logs and stocks, as Anselmus says.

A young man shut up in this way and kept apart from men is like a young tree which ought to bear fruit, but is planted in a kettle.

Such treat

The monks shut up the young, as people do birds in a cage; so that they can neither hear nor see anybody, nor talk to any one. ment is dangerous to youth.

Therefore they should be allowed to hear and see, and go about to various places, but should at the same time be made to behave decently and orderly. LUTHER.

The reflecting understanding teaches what is expedient with a view to goodness. But it is habit which gives men the real possession of the wisdom which they have acquired, and gives enduring strength in it.

PYTHAGORAS.

This is the most excellent way of living; to devote only so much care to the body as is sufficient for the health.

It should be kept under somewhat strict subjection, so as not to be disobedient to the mind.

Bodily exercises, if they are moderate, are useful, but those are harmful which are excessive, and make athletes. These latter obstruct the youth of the mind.

Light and easy exercises on the other hand, such as running races, swinging weights in the hand, and dancing, are beneficial.

Almost any bodily exercise, however, may be taken, if the student soon returns to his studies again.

The mind should be exercised both by day and by night. Moderate labor strengthens it.