Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 84.djvu/182

178 narrow limits many a strong soul, many a great man. This community can take the unfortunate, morally and mentally bent boys and girls from the crushing life of the city, and, under the clearer skies of a simpler life, by injecting more of the time element into their education, make them into new and wholesome men and women. It can stimulate its own boys and girls to higher ideals and larger views of the world, and by arousing itself to this mission the community can not fail, in large measure, to recover its own lost grip on the wider world.

A great day for the rural district is clearly at the front. Are the people of these localities awake to the opportunity? It is because I think I can answer the question in the affirmative that I am writing this article. But, given the appreciation that a great opportunity is at their door, the next movement is to grapple with it, and master it. That such may be done, the people will be compelled to make some marked changes in their thinking, and in their method of work. Here strong and wise leadership is called for. After the minister, no man has more nearly in his own hands the uplift of the rural district than the schoolmaster. The school is a power plant for intelligence, vision, training, and manhood. It is for use. And wisely used must render great help in solving the rural problem. But the school board, and the schoolmaster of the country districts, must rise to a higher and more intelligent plane of energy if they are to count in the new life of the community.

Our age may well be termed a renaissance. But in that character it has only just begun to dawn on the small and scattered sections of the country. There came a day in the fifteenth century when Italy renewed her youth. A new and mighty impulse to nobler ideals stirred the nation. Slumbering instincts aroused themselves, and songs of the spirit, unsung since the ancient empire passed away, became once more a joy and a glory. New songs were sung. The imagination reasserted itself, and the mind recognized a deeper and diviner significance in life. It is called the Italian renaissance, the rebirth of literature and learning and art in Italy. This awakening placed the nation on a high level of intellectual and spiritual energy where she soon demonstrated to the world that, in herself, she possessed an age, greater, in some respects, than that of Pericles.

But the rebirth of Italy was no miracle. It did not come in a night. It was largely the product of the schoolmasters. At least it involved the elements of learning and scholarship. The stimulus indeed was from without, being the discovery and possession of Greek literature and art, but in reality, the secret of it was in the stored energies of the people. It was the uprising of long dormant forces in the heart of a great nation. A miracle is not demanded to bring new visions and new energies to the rural community. It is only necessary that they hear