THOUGHTS

ON

EDUCATIONAL TOPICS

AND

INSTITUTIONS.

BY

GEORGE S. BOUTWELL.

BOSTON:
PHILLIPS, SAMPSON AND COMPANY.
MDCCCLIX.

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1859, by
GEORGE S. BOUTWELL,
In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts.

STEREOTYPED BY
HOBART AND ROBBINS, BOSTON.

To

THE TEACHERS OF MASSACHUSETTS,

WHOSE
ENLIGHTENED DEVOTION TO THEIR DUTIES
HAS
CONTRIBUTED EFFECTUALLY TO THE ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING,
This Volume
IS RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED.

G. S. B.

CONTENTS.

• [The Intrinsic Nature and Value of Learning, and its Influence upon Labor]
• [Education and Crime]
• [Reformation of Children]
• [The Care and Reformation of the Neglected and Exposed Classes of Children]
• [Elementary Training in the Public Schools]
• [The Relative Merits of Public High Schools and Endowed Academies]
• [The High School System]
• [Normal School Training]
• [Female Education]
• [The Influence, Duties, and Rewards, of Teachers]
• [Liberty and Learning]
• [Massachusetts School Fund]
• [A System of Agricultural Education]
• [Advertisements]

THE INTRINSIC NATURE AND VALUE OF LEARNING, AND ITS INFLUENCE UPON LABOR.

[Lecture before the American Institute of Instruction.]

Words and terms have, to different minds, various significations; and we often find definitions changing in the progress of events. Bailey says learning is "skill in languages or sciences." To this, Walker adds what he calls "literature," and "skill in anything, good or bad." Dr. Webster enlarges the meaning of the word still more, and says, "Learning is the knowledge of principles or facts received by instruction or study; acquired knowledge or ideas in any branch of science or literature; erudition; literature; science; knowledge acquired by experience, experiment, or observation." Milton gives us a rhetorical definition in a negative form, which is of equal value, at least, with any authority yet cited. "And though a linguist," says Milton, "should pride himself to have all the tongues that Babel cleft the world into, yet if he have not studied the solid things in them, as well as the words and lexicons, he were nothing so much to be esteemed a learned man, as any yeoman or tradesman competently wise in his mother dialect only."—"Language is but the instrument conveying to us things useful to be known."

This is kindred to the saying of Locke, that "men of much reading are greatly learned, but may be little knowing." We must give to the term learning a broad definition, if we accept Milton's statement that its end "is to repair the ruins of our first parents by regaining to know God aright;" for this necessarily implies that we are to study carefully everything relating to the nature of our existence, to the spot and scene of our existence, with its mysterious phenomena, and its comparatively unexplained laws. And we must, moreover, always keep in view the personal relations and duties which the Creator has imposed upon the members of the human race. The knowledge of these relations and duties is one form of learning; the disposition and the ability to observe and practise these relations and duties, is another and a higher form of learning. The first is the learning of the theologian, the schoolman; the latter is the learning of the practical Christian. Both ought to exist; but when they are separated, we place things above signs, facts above forms, life above ideas. Law and justice ought always to be united; but when by error, or fraud, or usurpation, they are separated, we observe the forms of law, but we respect the principles of justice. This is a good illustration of the principles which guide to a true distinction in the forms of learning. Of all the definitions enumerated, we must give to the word learning the broadest signification. It is safe to accept the statement of the great poet, that a man may be acquainted with many languages, and yet not be learned; even as the apostle said he should become as sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal, if he had not charity, though he spoke with the tongues of men and angels. Learning includes, no doubt, a knowledge of the languages, the sciences, and all literature; but it includes also much else; and this much else may be more important than the enumerated branches. The term learned has been limited, usually, by exclusive application to the schoolmen; but it is a matter of doubt, especially in this country, upon the broad definition laid down, whether there is more learning in the schools, or out of them. This remark, if true, is no reflection upon the schools, but much in favor of the world. Those were dark ages when learning was confined to the schools; and, though we can never be too grateful for their existence, and the fidelity with which they preserved the knowledge of other days, that is surely a higher attainment in the life of the race, when the learning of the world exceeds the learning of the cloister, the school, and the college.

In a private conversation, Professor Guyot made a remark which seems to have a public value. "You give to your schools," said he, "credit that is really due to the world. Looking at America with the eye of an European, it appears to me that your world is doing more and your schools are doing less, in the cause of education, than you are inclined to believe." For one, though I ought, as much as any, to stand for the schools, I give a qualified assent to the truth of this observation. There is much learning among us which we cannot trace directly to the schools; but the schools have introduced and fostered a spirit which has given to the world the power to make itself learned. It is much easier to disseminate what is called the spirit of education, than it was to create that spirit, and preserve it when there were few to do it homage. For this we are indebted to the schools. Unobserved in the process of change, but happy in its results, the business of education is not now confined to professional teachers.

The greatest change of all has been wrought by the attention given to female education, so that the mother of this generation is not compelled to rely exclusively upon the school and the paid teacher, public or private, but can herself, as the teacher ordained by nature, aid her children in the preparatory studies of life. This power does not often manifest itself in a regular system of domestic school studies and discipline, but its influence is felt in a higher home preparation, and in the exhibition of better ideas of what a school should be. And we may assume, with all due respect to our maternal ancestry, that this fact is a modern feature, comparatively, in American civilization. Female education has given rise to some excesses of opinion and conduct; but the world is entirely safe, especially the self-styled lords of creation, and may wisely advocate a system of general education without regard to sex, and leave the effect to those laws of nature and revelation which are to all and in all, and cannot permanently be avoided or disobeyed.

The number of educators has strangely increased, and they often appear where they might least be expected. We speak of the revival of education, and think only of the change that has taken place in the last twenty years in the appropriations of money, the style of school-houses, and the fitness of professional teachers for the work in which they are engaged; but these changes, though great, are scarcely more noteworthy than those that have occurred in the management of our shops, mills, and farms. When we write the sign or utter the sound which symbolizes Teacher, what figure, being, or qualities, are brought before us? We should see a person who, in the pursuit of knowledge, is self-moving, and, in the exercise of the influence which knowledge gives, is able to appreciate the qualities of others; and who, moreover, possesses enough of inventive power to devise means by which he can lead pupils, students, or hearers, in the way they ought to go. We naturally look for such persons in the lecture-room, the school, and the pulpit. And we find them there; but they are also to be found in other places. There are thousands of such men in America, engaged in the active pursuits of the day. They are farmers, mechanics, merchants, operatives. They do not often follow text-books, and therefor are none the worse, but much the better teachers. Insensibly they have taken on the spirit of the teacher and the school, and, apparently ignorant of the fact, are, in the quiet pursuits of daily life, leaders of classes following some great thought, or devoted to some practical investigation. And in one respect these teachers are of a higher order than some—not all, nor most—of our professional teachers. They never cease to be students. When a man or woman puts on the garb of the teacher, and throws off the garb of the student, you will soon find that person so dwindled and dwarfed, that neither will hang upon the shoulders. This happens sometimes in the school, but never in the world.

The last twenty-five years have produced two new features in our civilization, that are at once a cause and a product of learning. I speak of the Press, and of Associations for mutual improvement.

The newspaper press of America, having its centre in the city of New York, is more influential than the press of any other country. It may not be conducted with greater ability; though, if compared with the English press, the chief difference unfavorable to America is found in the character of the leading editorial articles. In enterprise, in telegraphic business, maritime, and political news and information, the press of the United States is not behind that of Great Britain.

It must, however, be admitted that a given subject is usually more thoroughly discussed in a single issue from the English press; but it is by no means certain that public questions are, upon the whole, better canvassed in England than in America. Indeed, the opposite is probably true. Our press will follow a subject day after day, with the aid of new thoughts and facts, until it is well understood by the reader. European ideas of journalism cannot be followed blindly by the press of America. The journalist in Europe writes for a select few. His readers are usually persons of leisure, if they have not always culture and taste; and the issue of the morning paper is to them what the appearance of the quarterly, heavy or racy, is to the cultivated American reader.

But the American journalist, whatever his taste may be, cannot afford to address himself to so small an audience. He writes literally for the million; for I take it to be no exaggeration to say that paragraphs and articles are often read by millions of people in America. This fact is an important one, as it furnishes a good test of the standard taste and learning of the people. Our press answers the demand which the people make upon it. The mass of newspaper readers are not, in a scholastic sense, well-educated persons. Newspaper writers do not, therefore, trouble themselves about the colleges with their professors, but they seek rather to gain the attention and secure the support of the great body of the people, who know nothing of colleges except through the newspapers. We have always been permitted to infer the intellectual and moral character of the audiences of Demosthenes, from the orations of Demosthenes; and may we not also infer the character of the American people, from the character of the press that they support? In a single issue may often be found an editorial article upon some question of present interest; a sermon, address, or speech, from a leading mind of the country or the world; letters from various quarters of the globe; extracts from established literary and scientific journals; original essays upon political, literary, scientific, and religious subjects; and items of local or general interest for all classes of readers. This product of the press, in quantity and quality, could not be distributed, week after week, and year after year, among an ignorant class of people. It could be accepted by intelligent, thinking, progressive minds only; and, as a fact necessarily coëxisting, we find the newspaper press equally essential to the best-educated persons among us. The newspaper press in America is a century and a half old; but its power does not antedate this century, and its growth has been chiefly within the last twenty-five years. What that growth has been may be easily seen by any one who will compare the daily sheet of the last generation with the daily sheet of this; and the future of the American press may be easily predicted by those who consider the progressive influences among us, of which the newspaper must always be the truest representative.

Within the same brief period of time it has become the fixed custom of the people to associate together for educational objects.

As a consequence, we have the lyceum for all, libraries for all, professional institutes and clubs for merchants, mechanics, and farmers, and, at last, free libraries and lectures for the operatives in the mills. Where these institutions can exist, there must be a high order of general learning; and where these institutions do exist, and are sustained, the learning of the people, whether high or low at any given moment, must be rapidly improved. Yet some of these agencies—lectures and libraries, for example—are not free from serious faults. It may seem rash and indefensible to criticize lectures upon the platform of the lecturer; but, as the audience can inflict whatever penalty they please upon the speaker, he will so far assume responsibility as to say that amusement is not the highest object of a single lecture, and when sought by managers as the desirable object of a whole course, the lecture-room becomes a theatre of dissipation; surely not so bad as other forms of dissipation, but yet so distinctly marked, and so pernicious in its influence, as to be comparatively unworthy of general support. Let it not, however, be inferred that wit, humor, and drollery even, are to be excluded from the lecture-room; but they should always be employed as means by which information is communicated. Between lecturers equal in other respects, one with the salt of humor, native to the soil, should be preferred; but it is a sad reflection upon public taste, when a person whose entire intellectual capital is wit, humor, or buffoonery, is preferred to men of solid learning. But it is a worse view of human nature, when men of real merit and worth depreciate themselves and lower the public taste, by attempting to do what, at best, they can have but ill success in, and what they would despise themselves for, were they to succeed completely. Shakspeare says of a jester:

"This fellow's wise enough to play the fool;

And to do that well, craves a kind of wit:

This is a practice

As full of labor as a wise man's art:

For folly, that he wisely shows, is fit;

But wise men, folly-fallen, quite taint their wit."

A kindred mental dissipation follows in the steps of progress, and demands aliment from our public libraries. In the selection of books there is a wide range, from the trashy productions of the fifth-rate novelist, to stately history and exact science. It is, however, to be assumed that libraries will not be established until they are wanted, and that the want will not be pressing until there is a taste for reading somewhat general. Where this taste exists, it is fair to assume that it is in some degree elevated. The direction, however, which the taste of any community is to take, after the establishment of a public library, depends, in a great degree, upon the selection of books for its shelves. Two dangers are to be avoided. The first, and greatest, is the selection of books calculated to degrade the morals or intellect of the reader. This danger is apparent, and to be shunned needs but to be seen. Books, of more or less intrinsic value, are so abundant and cheap, that common men must go out of their way to gather a large collection that shall not contain works of real merit. But the object should be to exclude all worthless and pernicious works, and meet and improve the public taste, by offering it mental food better than that to which it has been accustomed. The other danger is negative, rather than positive; but, as books are comparatively worthless when they are not read, it becomes a matter of great moment to select such as will touch the public mind at a few points, at least. It is indeed possible, and, under the guidance of some persons, it would be natural, to encumber the shelves of a library with good books that might ever remain so, saving only the contributions made to mould and mice.

Now, if you will pardon a little more fault-finding,—which is, I confess, a quality without merit, or, as Byron has it,

"A man must serve his time to every trade

Save censure—critics all are ready made,"—

I will hazard the opinion that the practice of establishing libraries in towns for the benefit of a portion of the inhabitants only is likely to prove pernicious in the end. To be sure, reading for some is better than reading for none; but reading for all is better than either. In Massachusetts there is a general law that permits cities and towns to raise money for the support of libraries; yet the legislature, in a few cases, has granted charters to library associations. With due deference, it may very well be suggested, that, where a spirit exists which leads a few individuals to ask for a charter, it would be better to turn this spirit into a public channel, that all might enjoy its benefits. And it will happen, generally, that the establishment of a public library will be less expensive to the friends of the movement, and the advantages will be greater; while there will be an additional satisfaction in the good conferred upon others.

We shall act wisely if we apply to books a maxim of the Greeks: "All things in common amongst friends." Under this maxim Cicero has enumerated, as principles of humanity, not to deny one a little running water, or the lighting his fire by ours, if he has occasion; to give the best counsel we are able to one who is in doubt or distress; which, says he, "are things that do good to the person that receives them, and are no loss or trouble to him that confers them." And he quotes, with approbation, the words of Ennius:

"He that directs the wandering traveller

Doth, as it were, light another's torch by his own;

Which gives him ne'er the less of light, for that

It gave another."

A good book is a guide to the reader, and a well-selected library will be a guide to many. And shall we give a little running water, and turn aside or choke up the streams of knowledge? light the evening torch, and leave the immortal mind unillumined? give free counsel to the ignorant or distressed, when he might easily be qualified to act as his own counsellor? In July 1856, Mr. Everett gave five hundred dollars toward a library for the High School in his native town of Dorchester; and in 1854 Mr. Abbott Lawrence gave an equal sum to his native town for the establishment of a public library. These are not large donations, if we consider only the amount of money given; but it is difficult to suggest any other equal appropriation that would be as beneficial, in a public sense. These donations are noble, because conceived in a spirit of comprehensive liberality. They are examples worthy of imitation; and I venture to affirm, there is not one of our New England towns that has not given to the world a son able to make a similar contribution to the cause of general learning. Is it too much to believe that a public library in a town will double the number of persons having a taste for reading, and consequently double the number of well-educated people? For, though we are not educated by mere reading, it is yet likely to happen that one who has a taste for books will also acquire habits of observation, study, and reflection.

Professional institutes and clubs also serve to increase the sum of general learning. They have thus far avoided the evil which has waited or fastened upon similar associations in Europe,—subserviency to political designs. Every profession or interest of labor has peculiar ideas and special purposes. These ideas and purposes may be wisely promoted by distinct organizations. Who can doubt the utility of associations of merchants, mechanics, and farmers? They furnish opportunities for the exchange of opinions, the exhibition of products, the dissemination of ideas, and the knowledge of improvements, that are thus wisely made the property of all. Knowledge begets knowledge. What is the distinguishing fact between a good school and a poor one? Is it not, that in a good school the prevailing public sentiment is on the side of knowledge and its acquisition? And does not the same fact distinguish a learned community from an ignorant community? If, in a village or city of artisans, each one makes a small annual contribution to the general stock of knowledge, the aggregate progress will be appreciable, and, most likely, considerable. If, on the other hand, each one plods by himself, the sum of professional knowledge cannot be increased, and is likely to be diminished.

The moral of the parable of the ten talents is eminently true in matters of learning. "Unto every one that hath shall be given, and he shall have abundance: but from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath." We cannot conceive of a greater national calamity than an industrial population delving in mental sluggishness at unrelieved and unchanging tasks. The manufacture of pins was commenced in England in 1583, and for two hundred and fifty years she had the exclusive control of the trade; yet all that period passed away without improvement, or change in the process; while in America the business was revolutionized, simplified, and economized one-half, in the period of five years. In 1840 the valuation of Massachusetts was about three hundred millions of dollars; but it is certain that a large portion of this sum should have been set off against the constant impoverishment of the land, commencing with the settlement of the state,—the natural and unavoidable result of an ignorant system of farm labor. The revival of education in America was soon followed by a marked improvement in the leading industries of the people, and especially in the department of agriculture. The principle of association has not yet been as beneficial to the farmers as to the mechanics; but the former are soon to be compensated for the delay. With the exception of the business of discovering small planets, which seem to have been created for the purpose of exciting rivalry among a number of enthusiastic, well-minded, but comparatively secluded gentlemen, agricultural learning has made the most marked progress in the last ten years. But an agricultural population is professionally an inert population; and, therefore, as in the accumulation of John Jacob Astor's fortune, it was more difficult to take the first step than to make all the subsequent movements. Now, however, the principle of association is giving direction and force to the labors of the farmer; and it is easy for any person to draw to himself, in that pursuit, the results of the learning of the world.

Libraries and lectures for the operatives in the manufactories constitute another agency in the cause of general learning. The city of Lawrence, under the lead of well-known public-spirited gentlemen there, has the honor of introducing the system in America. A movement, to which this is kindred, was previously made in England; but that movement had for its object the education of the operatives in the simple elements of learning, and among the females in a knowledge of household duties. An English writer says: "Many employers have already established schools in connection with their manufactories. From many instances before us, we may take that of Mr. Morris, of Manchester, who has risen, himself, from the condition of a factory operative, and who has felt in his own person the disadvantages under which that class of workmen labor. He has introduced many judicious improvements. He has spent about one hundred and fifty pounds in ventilating his mills; and has established a library, coffee-room, class-room, weekly lectures, and a system of industrial training. The latter has been established for females, of whom he employs a great many. This class of girls generally go to the mills without any knowledge of household duties; they are taught in the schools to sew, knit," etc.

But, in the provision made at Lawrence for intellectual culture, it is assumed, very properly, that the operatives are familiar with the branches usually taught in the public schools. This could not be assumed of an English manufacturing population, nor, indeed, of any town population, considered as a whole. Herein America has an advantage over England. Our laborers occupy a higher standpoint intellectually, and in that proportion their labors are more effective and economical. The managers and proprietors at Lawrence were influenced by a desire to improve the condition of the laborers, and had no regard to any pecuniary return to themselves, either immediate or remote. And it would be a sufficient satisfaction to witness the growth of knowledge and morality, thereby elevating society, and rendering its institutions more secure.

These higher results will be accompanied, however, by others of sufficient importance to be considered. When we hire, or, what is, for this inquiry, the same thing, buy that commodity called, labor, what do we expect to get? Is it merely the physical force, the animal life contained in a given quantity of muscle and bone? In ordinary cases we expect these, but in all cases we expect something more. We sometimes buy, and at a very high cost, too, what has, as a product, the least conceivable amount of manual labor in it,—a professional opinion, for example; but we never buy physical strength merely, nor physical strength at all, unless it is directed by some intellectual force. The descending stream has power to drive machinery, and the arm of the idiot has force for some mechanical service, but they equally lack the directing mind. We are not so unwise as to purchase the power of the stream, or the force of the idiot's arm; but we pay for its application in the thing produced, and we often pay more for the skill that has directed the power than for the power itself. The river that now moves the machinery of a factory in which many scores of men and women find their daily labor, and earn their daily bread, was employed a hundred years ago in driving a single set of mill-stones; and thus a man and boy were induced to divide their time lazily between the grist in the hopper and the fish under the dam. The river's power has not changed; but the inventive, creative genius of man has been applied to it, and new and astonishing results are produced. With man himself this change has been even greater. In proportion to the population of the country, we are daily dispensing with manual labor, and yet we are daily increasing the national production. There is more mind directing the machinery propelled by the forces of nature, and more mind directing the machinery of the human body. The result is, that a given product is furnished by less outlay of physical force. Formerly, with the old spinning-wheel and hand-loom, we put a great deal of bone and muscle into a yard of cloth; now we put in very little. We have substituted mind for physical force, and the question is, which is the more economical? Or, in other words, is it of any consequence to the employer whether the laborer is ignorant or intelligent?

Before we discuss this point abstractly, let us notice the conduct of men. Is any one willing to give an ignorant farm laborer as much as he is ready to pay for the services of an intelligent man? And if not, why the distinction? And if an ignorant man is not the best man upon a farm, is he likely to be so in a shop or mill? And if not, we see how the proprietors of factories are interested in elevating the standard of learning, in the mills and outside. But they are not singular in this. All classes of employers are equally concerned in the education of the laborer; for learning not only makes his labor more valuable to himself, but the market price of the product is generally reduced, and the change affects favorably all interests of society. This benefit is one of the first in point of time, and the one, perhaps, most appreciable of all which learning has conferred upon the laborer. As each laborer, with the same expenditure of physical force, produces a greater result, of course the aggregate products of the world are vastly increased, although they represent only the same number of laborers that a less quantity would have represented under an ignorant system.

The division of these products upon any principle conceivable leaves for the laborer a larger quantity than he could have before commanded; for, although the share of the wealthy may be disproportionate, their ability to consume is limited; and, as poverty is the absence or want of things necessary and convenient for the purposes of life, according to the ideas at the time entertained, we see how a laboring population, necessarily poor while ignorance prevails, is elevated to a position of greater social and physical comfort, as mind takes the place of brute force in the industries of the world. Learning, then, is not the result of social comfort, but social comfort is the product of intelligence, and increases or diminishes as intelligence is general or limited. It is not, however, to be taken as granted that each laborer's position corresponds or answers to the sum of his own knowledge. It might happen that an ignorant laborer would enjoy the advantages of a general culture, to which he contributed little or nothing; and it must of necessity also happen that an intelligent laborer, in the midst of an ignorant population, as in Ireland or India, for example, would be compelled to accept, in the main, the condition of those around him. But there is no evidence on the face of society now, or in its history, that an ignorant population, whether a laboring population or not, has ever escaped from a condition of poverty. And the converse of the proposition is undoubtedly true, that an intelligent laboring community will soon become a wealthy community. Learning is sure to produce wealth; wealth is likely to contribute to learning, but it does not necessarily produce it. Hence it follows that learning is the only means by which the poor can escape from their poverty.

In this statement it is assumed that education does not promote vice; and not only is this negative assumption true, but it is safe to assume, further, that education favors virtue, and that any given population will be less vicious when educated than when ignorant. This, I cannot doubt, is a general truth, subject, of course, to some exceptions.

The educational struggle in which the English people are now engaged has made distinct and tangible certain opinions and impressions that are latent in many minds. There has been an attempt to show that vice has increased in proportion to education. This attempt has failed, though there may be found, of course, in all countries, single facts, or classes of facts, that seem to sustain such an opinion.

Now, suppose this case,—and neither this case nor any similar one has ever occurred in real life,—but suppose crime to increase as a people were educated, though there should be no increase of population; would this fact prove that learning made men worse? By no means. Our answer is apparent on the face of the change itself. By education, the business, and pecuniary relations and transactions of a people are almost indefinitely multiplied; and temptations to crime, especially to crimes against property, are multiplied in an equal ratio. Would person or property be better respected in New York or Boston, if the most ignorant population of the world could be substituted for the present inhabitants of those cities? The business nerves of men are frequently shocked by some unexpected defalcation, and short-sighted moralists, who lack faith, exclaim, "All this is because men know so much!" Such certainly forget that for every defaulter in a city there are hundreds of honest men, who receive and render justly unto all, and hold without check the fortunes of others. So Mr. Drummond argued in the British House of Commons against a national system of education, because what he was pleased to call instruction had not saved William Palmer and John Sadlier. But the truth in this matter is not at the bottom of a well; it is upon the surface. Where it is the habit of society generally to be ignorant, you will find it the necessity of that society to be poor; and where ignorance and poverty both abound, the temptations to crime are unquestionably few, but the power to resist temptation is as unquestionably weak. The absence of crime is owing to the absence of temptation, rather than to the presence of virtue. Such a condition of society is as near to real virtue as the mental weakness of the idiot is to true happiness.

Turning again to the discussion in the British Parliament of April, 1856, we are compelled to believe that some English statesmen are, in principle and in their ideas of political economy, where a portion of the English cotton-spinners were a hundred years ago. The cotton-spinners thought the invention of labor-saving machinery would deprive them of bread; and a Mr. Ball gravely argues that schools will so occupy the attention of children, that the farmers' crops will be neglected. I am inclined to give you his own words; and I have no doubt you will be in a measure relieved of the dulness of this essay, when you listen to what was actually cheered, in the British Commons. Speaking of the resolutions in favor of a national system of instruction, Mr. Ball said: "It was important to consider what would be their bearing on the agricultural districts of the country. He had obtained a return from his own farm, and, supposing the principles advocated by the noble lord were adopted, the results would be perfectly fearful. The following was the return he had obtained from his agent: William Chapman, ten years a servant on his (Mr. Ball's) farm; his own wages thirteen shillings, besides a house; he had seven children, who earned nine shillings a week; making together twenty-two shillings a week. Robert Arbor, fifteen years on the farm; wages thirteen shillings a week, and a house; six children, who earned six shillings a week; making together nineteen shillings. John Stevens, thirty-three years a servant on the farm; his own wages fourteen shillings a week; he had brought up ten children, whose average earnings had been twelve shillings weekly, making together twenty-six shillings a week. Robert Carbon, twenty-two years a servant on the farm; wages thirteen shillings a week; having ten children, who earned ten shillings a week; making together twenty-three shillings a week. Thus it appeared that in these four families the fathers earned fifty-three shillings weekly, and the children thirty-seven shillings a week; so that the children earned something more than two-thirds of the amount of the earnings of the fathers. He would ask the house, if the fathers were to be deprived of the earnings of the children, how could they provide bread for them? It was perfectly impossible. They must either increase the parent's wages to the amount of the loss he thus sustained, or they must make it up to him from a rate. Then, again, those who were at all conversant with agriculture knew that if they deprived the farmer of the labor of children, agriculture could not be carried on. There was no machinery by which they could get the weeds out of the land."—London Times.

The light which this statement furnishes is not hid under a bushel. The argument deserves a more logical form, and I proceed gratuitously to give the author the benefit of a scientific arrangement. "If a national system of education is adopted, the children of my tenants will be sent to school; if the children of my tenants are sent to school, my turnips will not be weeded; if my turnips are not weeded, I shall eat fat mutton no more."

After this from a statesman, we need not wonder that a correspondent of Lord John Russell writes, "That a farmer near him has been heard to say, he would not give anything to a day-school; he finds that since Sunday-schools have been established the birds have increased and eat his corn, and because he cannot now procure the services of the boys, whom he used to employ the whole of Sunday, in protecting his fields."—London Times, April 13th, 1856.

Now, I do not go to England for the purpose of making an attack upon her opinions; but, as kindred ideas prevail among us, though to a limited extent only, the folly of them may be seen in persons at a distance, when it would not be realized by ourselves. Moreover, the presentation of these somewhat ridiculous notions brings ridicule upon a whole class of errors; and when errors are so ingrained that men cannot reason in regard to them, ridicule is often the only weapon of successful attack. And it is no compliment to an American audience for the speaker to say that their own minds already suggest the refutation which these errors demand. If the chief end of man, for which boyhood should be a preparation, were to weed turnips or to frighten blackbirds from corn-fields, then surely the objection of Mr. Ball, and the complaint and spirit of resistance offered by Lord John Russell's farmer, would be eminently proper. But Lord John Russell did not himself assent to the view furnished by his correspondent. Mr. Ball's theory evidently is, "Take good care of the turnips, and leave the culture of the boys and girls to chance;" and Lord John Russell's wise farmer unquestionably thinks that cereal peculations of blackbirds are more dangerous than the robberies committed by neglected children, grown to men.

Mr. Clay, chaplain of Preston jail, says: "Thirty-six per cent. come into jail unable to say the Lord's Prayer; and seventy-two per cent. come in such a state of moral debasement that it is in vain to give them instruction, or to teach them their duty, since they cannot understand the meaning of the words used to them." Here we have, as cause and effect, the philosophy of Mr. Ball, and the facts of Mr. Clay. And, further, this philosophy is as bad in principle, when tried by the rules of political economy, as when subjected to moral and Christian tests.

Mr. Ball says there is no machinery by which the farmers can get the weeds out of the land. This may be true; and once there was no machinery by which they could get the seed into the land, or the crops from it. Once there was little or no inventive power among the mechanics, or scientific knowledge, or even spirit of inquiry, among the farmers. How have these changes been wrought? By education, surely, and that moral and religious culture for which secular education is a fit preparation. The contributions of learning to labor, in a pecuniary aspect alone, have far exceeded the contributions of labor to learning.

It is impossible to enumerate the evidences in support of this statement, but single facts will give us some conception of their aggregated value and force.

It was stated by Mr. Flint, Secretary of the Massachusetts Board of Agriculture, in his Annual Report for 1855, "That the saving to the country, from the improvements in ploughs alone, within the last twenty-five years, has been estimated at no less than ten millions of dollars a year in the work of teams, and one million in the price of ploughs, while the aggregate of the crops is supposed to have been increased by many millions of bushels." From this fact, as the representative of a great class of facts, we may safely draw two conclusions. First, these improvements are the products of learning, the contribution which learning makes to labor, far exceeding in amount any tax which the cause of learning, in schools or out, imposes upon labor. Secondly, we see that a given amount of adult labor upon a farm, with the help of the improved implements of industry, will accomplish more in 1856, than the same amount of adult labor, with its attendant juvenile force, could have accomplished in 1826. If we were fully to illustrate and sustain the latter inference, we should be required to review the improvements made in other implements of farming, as well as in ploughs. Their positive pecuniary value, when considered in the aggregate, is too vast for general belief; and in England alone it must exceed the anticipated cost of a system of public instruction, say six millions of pounds, or thirty millions of dollars, per year. But learning, as we have defined it, has contributed less to farming than to other departments of labor.

The very existence of manufactures presupposes the existence of learning. There is no branch of manufactures without its appropriate machine; and every machine is the product of mind, enlarged and disciplined by some sort of culture. The steam engine, the spinning-jenny, the loom, the cotton-gin, are notable instances of the advantages derived by manufacturing industry from the prevalence of learning. It was stated by Chief Justice Marshall, about thirty years ago, that Whitney's cotton-gin had saved five hundred millions of dollars to the country; and the saving, upon the same basis, cannot now be less than one thousand millions of dollars,—a sum too great for the human imagination to conceive. When we contemplate these achievements of mind, by which manual labor has been diminished, and every physical force both magnified and economized, how unstatesmanlike is the view which regards a human being as a bundle of muscles and bones merely, with no destiny but ignorance, servitude, and poverty!

Ancient commerce, if we omit to notice the conjecture that the mariner's compass was in possession of the old Phœnician and Indian navigators, reproduced, rather than invented, in modern times, did not rest upon any enlarged scientific knowledge; but, in this era, many of the sciences contribute to the extension and prosperity of trade. After what has been accomplished by science, and especially by physical geography, for commerce and navigation, we have reason to expect a system, based upon scientific knowledge and principles, which shall render the highway of nations secure against the disasters that have often befallen those who go down to the sea in ships. Science gave to the world the steamship, which promised for a time to engross the entire trade upon the ocean; but science again appears, constructs vessels upon better scientific principles, traces out the path of currents in the water and the air, and thus restores the rival powers of wind and steam to an equality of position in the eye of the merchant. Will any one say that all this inures to capital, and leaves the laborer comparatively unrewarded? We are accustomed to use the word prosperity as synonymous with accumulation; and yet, in a true view, a man may be prosperous and accumulate nothing. Suppose we contrast two periods in the life of a nation with each other. Since the commencement of this century, the wages of a common farm laborer in America have increased seventy-five or one hundred per cent., while the articles necessary and convenient for his use have, upon the whole, diminished in price. Admit that there was nothing for accumulation in the first period, and that there is nothing for accumulation now,—is not his condition nevertheless improved? And, if so, has he not participated in the general prosperity?

Indeed, we may all accept the truth, that there is no exclusiveness in the benefits which learning confers; and this leads me to say, next, that there ought to be no exclusiveness in the enjoyment of educational privileges.

In America we agree to this; and yet, confessedly, as a practical result we have not generally attained the end proposed. There are two practical difficulties in the way. First, our aim in a system of public instruction is not high enough; and, secondly, we do not sufficiently realize the importance of educating each individual. Our aim is not high enough; and the result, like every other result, is measured and limited by the purpose we have in view. Our public schools ought to be so good that private schools for instruction in the ordinary branches would disappear. Mr. Everett said, in reply to inquiries made by Mr. Twistleton, "I send my boy to the public school, because I know of none better." It should be the aim of the public to make their schools so good that no citizen, in the education of his children, will pass them by.

It is as great a privilege for the wealthy as for the poor to have an opportunity to send their children to good public schools. It is a maxim in education that the teacher must first comprehend the pupil mentally and morally; and might not many of the errors of individual and public life be avoided, if the citizen, from the first, were to have an accurate idea of the world in which he is to live? The demand of labor upon education, as they are connected with every material interest of society, is, that no one shall be neglected. The mind of a nation is its capital. We are accustomed to speak of money as capital; and sometimes we enlarge the definition, and include machinery, tools, flocks, herds, and lands. But for this moment let us do what we have a right to do,—go behind the definitions of lexicographers and political economists, and say, "capital is the producing force of society, and that force is mind." Without this force, money is nothing; machinery is nothing; flocks, herds, lands, are nothing. But all these are made valuable and efficient by the power of mind. What we call civilization,—passing from an inferior to a superior condition of existence,—is a mental and moral process. If mind is the capital,—the producing force of society,—what shall we say of the person or community that neglects its improvement? Certainly, all that we should say of the miser, and all that was said of the timid servant who buried his talent in the earth. If one mind is neglected, then we fail as a generation, a state, a nation, as members of the human family, to answer the highest purposes of existence. Some possible good is unaccomplished, some desirable labor is unperformed, some means of progress is neglected, some evil seed, it may be, is sown, for which this generation must answer to all the successions of men. But let us not yield to the prejudice, though sanctioned by custom, that learning unfits men for the labors of life. The schools may sometimes do this, but learning never. We cannot, however, conceal from our view the fact that this prejudice is a great obstacle to progress, even in New England; an obstacle which may not be overcome without delay and conflict, in many states of this Union; and especially in Great Britain is it an obstacle in the way of those who demand a system of universal education.

In the House of Commons, Mr. Drummond opposes a national system of education in this wise: "And, pray, what do you propose to rear your youth for? Are you going to train them for statesmen? No. (A laugh.) The honorable gentleman laughs at the notion, and so would I. But you are going to fit them to be—what? Why, cotton-spinners and pin-makers, or, if you like, blacksmiths, mere day laborers. These are the men whom you are to teach foreign languages, mathematics, and the notation of music. (Hear, hear.) Was there ever anything more absurd? It really seems as if God had withdrawn common sense from this house." Now, what does this language of Mr. Drummond mean? Does he not intend to say that it is unwise to educate that class of society from which cotton-spinners, pin-makers, blacksmiths, mere day laborers, are taken? Is it not his opinion that the business of pin-making is to be perpetuated in some families and classes, and the business of statesmanship is to be perpetuated in others? And, if so, does he not believe that the best condition of society is that which presents divisions based upon the factitious distinctions of birth and fortune? Most certainly these questions indicate his opinions, as they indicate the opinions of those who cheered him, and as they also indicate the opinions of a few in this country, who, through ignorance, false education, prejudice, or sympathy with castes and races, fear to educate the laborer, lest he may forsake his calling. With us these fears are infrequent, but they ought not to exist at all. The question in a public sense is not, "From what family or class shall the pin-maker or the statesman be taken?" There is no question at all to be answered. Educate the whole people. Education will develop every variety of talent, taste, and power. These qualities, under the guidance of the necessities of life and the public judgment, will direct each man to his proper place. If the son of a cotton-spinner become a statesman, it is because statesmanship needs him, and he has some power answering to its wants. And if Mr. Drummond's son become a cotton-spinner, it is because that is his right place, and the world will be the better and the richer that Mr. Drummond's son is a cotton-spinner, and that he is a learned man too; but, if Mr. Drummond's son occupy the place of a statesman because he is Mr. Drummond's son, though he be no statesman at all himself, then the world is all the worse for the mistake, and poor compensation is it that Mr. Drummond's son is a learned man in something that he is never called to put in practice.

When it is said that the statesmen, or those engaged in the business of government, shall come from one-tenth of the population, is not the state, according to the doctrine of chances, deprived of nine-tenths of its governing force? And may not the same suggestion be made of every other branch of business?

But I pass now to the last leading thought, and soon to the conclusion of my address. The great contribution of learning to the laborer is its power, under the lead of Christianity, to break down the unnatural distinctions of society, and to render labor of every sort, among all classes, acceptable and honorable. Ignorance is the degradation of labor, and when laborers, as a class, are ignorant, their vocation is necessarily shunned by some; and, being shunned by some, it is likely to be despised by others. Wherever the laboring population is in a condition of positive, or, by a broad distinction, of comparative ignorance, society will always divide itself into two, and oftentimes into three classes. We shall find the dominant class, the servient class, and then, generally, the despised class; the dominant class, comparatively intelligent, possessing the property, administering the government, giving to social life its laws, and enjoying the fruits of labor which they do not perform; the servient class, unwittingly in a state of slavery, whether nominally bond or free, having little besides physical force to promote their own comfort or to contribute to the general prosperity, and furnishing security in their degradation for a final submission to whatever may be required of them; and last, a despised class, too poor to live without labor, and too proud to live by labor, assuming a position not accorded to them, and finally yielding to a social and political ostracism even more degrading, to a sensitive mind, than the servient condition they with so much effort seek to shun.

All this is the fruit of ignorance; all this may be removed by general learning. If all men are learned, the work of the world will be performed by learned men; and why, under such circumstances, should not every vocation that is honest be equally honorable? But if this, in a broad view, seem utopian, can we not agree that learning is the only means by which a poor man can escape from his poverty? And, if it furnish certain means of escape for one man, will it not furnish equally certain means of escape for many? And if so, is not learning a general remedy for the inequalities among men?

EDUCATION AND CRIME.

[Extract from the Twenty-First Annual Report of the Secretary of the Massachusetts Board of Education.]

The public schools, in their relations to the morals of the pupils and to the morality of the community, are attracting a large share of attention. In some sections of the country the system is boldly denounced on account of its immoral tendencies. In states where free schools exist there are persons who doubt their utility; and occasionally partisan or religious leaders appear who deny the existence of any public duty in regard to education, or who assert and maintain the doctrine that free schools are a common danger. As the people of this commonwealth are not followers of these prophets of evil, nor believers in their predictions, there is but slight reason for discussion among us. It is not probable that a large number of the citizens of Massachusetts entertain doubts of the power and value of our institutions of learning, of every grade, to resist evil and promote virtue, through the influence they exert. But, as there is nothing in our free-school system that shrinks from light, or investigation even, I have selected from the annual reports everything which they contain touching the morality of the institution. In so doing, I have had two objects in view. First, to direct attention to the errors and wrongs that exist; and, secondly, to state the opinion, and enforce it as I may be able, that the admitted evils found in the schools are the evils of domestic, social, municipal, and general life, which are sometimes chastened, mitigated, or removed, but never produced, nor even cherished, by our system of public instruction. In the extracts from the school committees' reports there are passages which imply some doubt of the moral value of the system; but it is our duty to bear in mind that these reports were prepared and presented for the praiseworthy purpose of arousing an interest in the removal of the evils that are pointed out. The writers are contemplating the importance of making the schools a better means of moral and intellectual culture; but there is no reason to suppose that in any case a comparison is instituted, even mentally, between the state of society as it appears at present and the condition that would follow the abandonment of our system of public instruction. There are general complaints that the manners of children and youth have changed within thirty or fifty years; that age and station do not command the respect which was formerly manifested, and that some license in morals has followed this license in manners.

The change in manners cannot be denied; but the alleged change in morals is not sustained by a great amount of positive evidence. The customs of former generations were such that children often manifested in their exterior deportment a deference which they did not feel, while at present there may be more real respect for station, and deference for age and virtue, than are exhibited in juvenile life. In this explanation, if it be true, there is matter for serious thought; but I should not deem it wise to encourage a mere outward show of the social virtues, which have no springs of life in the affections.

And, notwithstanding the tone of the reports to which I have called attention, and notwithstanding my firm conviction that many moral defects are found in the schools, I am yet confident that their moral progress is appreciable and considerable.

In the first place, teachers, as a class, have a higher idea of their professional duties, in respect to moral and intellectual culture. Many of them are permanently established in their schools. They are persons of character in society, with positions to maintain, and they are controlled by a strong sense of professional responsibility to parents and to the public. It has been, to some extent, the purpose and result of Teachers' Associations, Teachers' Institutes, and Normal Schools, to create in the body of teachers a better opinion concerning their moral obligations in the work of education. It must also be admitted that the changes in school government have been favorable to learning and virtue. For, while it is not assumed that all schools are, or can be, controlled by moral means only, it is incontrovertible that a government of mild measures is superior to one of force. This superiority is as apparent in morals as in scholarly acquisitions. It is rare that a teacher now boasts of his success over his pupils in physical contests; but such claims were common a quarter of a century ago. The change that has been wrought is chiefly moral, and in its influence we find demonstrative evidence of the moral superiority of the schools of the present over those of any previous period of this century. Before we can comprehend the moral work which the schools have done and are doing, we must perceive and appreciate with some degree of truthfulness the changes that have occurred in general life within a brief period of time. The activity of business, by which fathers have been diverted from the custody and training of their children; the claims of fashion and society, which have led to some neglect of family government on the part of mothers; the aggregation of large, populations in cities and towns, always unfavorable to the physical and moral welfare of children; the comparative neglect of agriculture, and the consequent loss of moral strength in the people, are all facts to be considered when we estimate the power of the public school to resist evil and to promote good. If, in addition to these unfavorable facts and tendencies, our educational system is prejudicial to good morals, we may well inquire for the human agency powerful enough to resist the downward course of New England and American civilization. To be sure, Christianity remains; but it must, to some extent, use human institutions as means of good; and the assertion that the schools are immoral is equivalent to a declaration that our divine religion is practically excluded from them. This declaration is not in any just sense true. The duty of daily devotional exercises is always inculcated upon teachers, and the leading truths and virtues of Christianity are made, as far as possible, the daily guides of teachers and pupils. The tenets of particular sects are not taught; but the great truths of Christianity, which are received by Christians generally, are accepted and taught by a large majority of committees and teachers. It is not claimed that the public schools are religious institutions; but they recognize and inculcate those fundamental truths which are the basis of individual character, and the best support of social, religious, and political life. The statement that the public schools are demoralizing must be true, if true at all, for one of three reasons. Either because all education is demoralizing; or, secondly, because the particular education given in the public schools is so; or, thirdly, because the public-school system is corrupting, and consequently taints all the streams of knowledge that flow through or emanate from it. For, if the public system is unobjectionable as a system, and education is not in itself demoralizing, then, of course, no ground remains for the charge that I am now considering.

I. Is all education demoralizing? An affirmative answer to this question implies so much that no rational man can accept it. It is equivalent to the assertion that barbarism is a better condition than civilization, and that the progress of modern times has proceeded upon a misconception of the true ideal perfection of the human race. As no one can be found who will admit that his happiness has been marred, his powers limited, or his life degraded, by education, so there is no process of logic that can commend to the human understanding the doctrine that bodies of men are either less happy or virtuous for the culture of the intellect. I am not aware of any human experience that conflicts with this view; for individual cases of criminals who have been well educated prove nothing in themselves, but are to be considered as facts in great classes of facts which indicate the principles and conduct of bodies of men who are subject to similar influences. In fact, the statistics to which I have had access tend to show that crime diminishes as intelligence increases. On this point the experience of Great Britain is probably more definite, and, of course, more valuable, than our own. The Aberdeen Feeding Schools were established in 1841, and during the ten years succeeding the commitments to the jails of children under twelve years of age were as follows:[1]

In the work of Mr. Hill it is also stated that "the number of children under twelve committed for crime to the Aberdeen prisons, during the last six years, was as follows:

"It will be observed that in the last three years there has been a great increase of boy crime, contemporaneously with an almost total absence of girl crime, though formerly the amount of the latter was considerable. Now, since this extraordinary difference coïncides in point of time with the fact of full girls' schools and half empty boys' schools, the inference can hardly be avoided that the two facts bear the relation of cause and effect, and that, so far from the late increase of youthful crime in Aberdeen any-wise impairing the soundness of the principle on which the schools are based, it is its strongest confirmation. In moral as in physical science, when the objections to a theory are, upon further investigation, explained by the theory itself, they become the best evidence of its truth. Indeed, it is proved, by the experience, not only of Aberdeen, but, as far as I have been able to ascertain, of every town in Scotland in which industrial schools have been established, that the number of children in the schools and the number in the jail are like the two ends of a scale-beam; as the one rises the other falls, and vice versa.

"The following list of imprisonments of children attending the schools of the Bristol Ragged School Union shows considerable progress in the right direction:

16.5 : 15.9 :: 100 : 96.36.

"Thus," says Mr. Thornton, "it appears that the diminution of the average annual number of children attending our schools imprisoned in the latter period of five years, as compared with the annual average of the previous four years, is ninety-six per cent.—a striking fact, which is, I think, a manifest proof of the benefit conferred on them by the religious and secular instruction they receive in our schools, or, at the very least, of the advantages of rescuing them from the temptations of idleness, and from evil companionship and example."

I also copy, from the work already referred to, an extract from a paper on the Reformatory Institutions in and near Bristol, by Mary Carpenter: "In numberless instances children may be seen growing up decently, who owe their only training and instruction to the school. Young persons are noticed in regular work, who, before they attended the Ragged Schools, were vagrants, or even thieves. Not unfrequently a visit is paid at the school by a respectable young man, who proves to have been a wild and troublesome scholar of former times."

Mr. Hill, Recorder of Birmingham, in a charge to the grand jury, made in 1839, speaking of the means of repressing crime, says: "It is to education, in the large and true meaning of the word, that we must all look as the means of striking at the root of the evil. Indeed, of the close connection between ignorance and crime the calendar which I hold in my hand furnishes a striking example. Each prisoner has been examined as to the state of his education, and the result is set down opposite his name. It appears, then, that of forty-three prisoners only one can read and write well. The majority can neither read nor write at all; and the remainder, with the solitary exception which I have noted down, are said to read and write imperfectly; which necessarily implies that they have not the power of using those great elements of knowledge for any practical object. Of forty-three prisoners, forty-two, then, are destitute of instruction."

These authorities are not cited because they refer to schools that answer in character to the public schools of Massachusetts, for the latter are far superior in the quality of their pupils, and in the opportunities given for intellectual and moral education; but these cases and opinions are presented for the purpose of showing what has been done for the improvement of children and the repression of crime under the most unfavorable circumstances that exist in a civilized community. If such benign results have followed the establishment of schools of an inferior character, is it unreasonable to claim that education and the processes of education, however imperfect they may be, are calculated to increase the sum of human progress, virtue, and happiness?

II. Is the particular education given in the public schools unfavorable to the morals of the pupils, and, consequently, to the morality of the community? I have already presented a view of the moral and religious education given in the schools, and it only remains to consider the culture that is in its leading features intellectual. It may be said, speaking generally, that education is a training and development of the faculties, so as to make them harmonize in power, and in their relations to each other. Among other things, the ability to read is acquired in the public schools. In the individual, this is a power for good. It opens to the mind and heart the teachings of the sacred Scriptures; it secures the companionship of the great, the wise, and the good, of every age; and it is a possession that, in all cases, must be the foundation of those scientific acquisitions, intellectual, moral, and natural, which show the beneficence and power of the Creator, and indicate the fact and the law of human responsibility. The natural and general effect of the sciences taught in the schools is an illustration of the last statement. Moreover, the mere presence of a child, though he took no part in the studies of the school, is to him a moral lesson. He feels the force of government, he acquires the habit of obedience, and, in time, he comprehends the reason of the rules that are established. This discipline is essentially moral, and furnishes some basis, though partial and unsatisfactory, for the proper discharge of the duties of life. But it is to be remembered that the power of the school is but in its beginning when the presence of a pupil is recognized. The constancy and punctuality of attendance required by all judicious parents and faithful teachers are important moral lessons, whose influence can never be destroyed. The fixedness of purpose that is required, and is essential in school, remains as though it were a part of the nature of the child and the man. School-life strengthens habits of industry when they exist, and creates them when they do not. It is, indeed, the only means, of universal application, that is competent to train children in habits of industry. Private schools can never furnish this training; for large numbers of children, by the force of circumstances, are deprived of the tuition of such schools. Business life cannot furnish this training; for the habits of the child are usually moulded, if not hardened, before he arrives at an age when he can be constantly employed in any industrial vocation. The public school is no doubt justly chargeable with neglects and omissions; but its power for good, measured by the character of the education now furnished, is certainly very great. It inculcates habits of regularity, punctuality, constancy, and industry, in the pursuits of business; through literature and the sciences in their elements, and, under some circumstances, by an advanced course of study, it leads the pupil towards the fountain of life and wisdom; and, by the moral and religious instruction daily given, some preparation is made for the duties of life and the temptations of the world.

III. Is the public school system, as a system, in itself necessarily corrupting? As preliminary to the answer to be given to this question, it is well to consider what the public-school system is.

1. Every inhabitant is required to contribute to its support.

2. It contemplates the education of every child, regardless of any distinction of society or nature.

3. The system is subject in many respects to the popular will; and ultimately its existence and character are dependent upon the public judgment.

4. In the Massachusetts schools, the daily reading of the Scriptures is required.

The consideration of these topics will conclude my remarks upon the general subject of the moral influence of the American system of public instruction. In New England it is very unusual to hear the right of the state to provide for the support of schools by general taxation called in question; but I am satisfied, from private conversations, and from occasional public statements, that there are leading minds in some sections of the country that are yet unconvinced of the moral soundness of the basis on which a system of public instruction necessarily rests. Taxation is simply an exercise of the right of the whole to take the property of an individual; and this right can be exercised justly in those cases only where the application of the property so taken is, morally speaking, to a public use. The judgment of the public determines the legality of the proceeding; but it is possible that in some cases a public judgment might be secured which could not be supported by a process of moral reasoning. On what moral grounds, then, does the right of taxation for educational objects rest? I answer, first, education diminishes crime. The evidence in support of this statement has already been presented. It is a manifest individual duty to make sacrifices for this object; and, as every crime is an injury, not only to him who is the subject of it, but to every member of society, the prevention of crime becomes a public as well as an individual duty.

The conviction of a criminal is a public duty; and, under all governments of law, it is undertaken at the public charge. Offences are not individual merely; they are against society also, inasmuch as it is the right of society that all its members shall behave themselves well. And, if it is the right of society that its members shall behave themselves well, is it not the duty of society to so provide for their education that each individual part may meet the demand which the whole body asserts? And, further, as a majority of persons cannot individually provide for their own protection, it is the duty of society, or the state, or the government, to furnish the needed protection in the most economical and effective manner possible. The state has no moral right to jeopard property, life, and reputation, when, by a different policy, all these might be secure; nor has the state a moral right to make the security furnished, whether perfect or not, unnecessarily expensive. It is the dictate of reason and the experience of governments that the most effectual method of repressing crime is to diminish the number of criminals; and, though punitive measures may accomplish something, our chief reliance must be upon the education and training of children and youth. The facts drawn from the experience of England and Scotland, which have been quoted, lead to the conclusion that schools diminish the number of criminals, and consequently lessen the amount of crime; but I think it proper to add some extracts from a communication made, in August, 1856, by Mr. Dunne, chief constable of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, to the Secretary of the National Reformatory Union.[2]

"I know, from my own personal knowledge and observation, that, since parental responsibility has been enforced in the district, under the direction of the Secretary of State, the number of juvenile criminals in the custody of the police has decreased one-half. I know that many of the parents, who were in the habit of sending their children into the streets for the purposes of stealing, begging, and plunder, have quite discontinued that practice, and several of the children so used, and brought up as thieves and mendicants, are now at some of the free schools of the town; others are at work, and thereby obtain an honest livelihood; and, so far as I can ascertain, they seem to be thoroughly altered, and appear likely to become good and honest members of society. I have, for my own information, conversed with some of the boys so altered, and, during the conversation I had with them, they declared that they derived the greatest happiness and satisfaction from their change in life. I don't at all doubt the truth of these statements, for their evident improvement and individual circumstances fully bear them out; and I believe them to be really serious in all they say, and truly anxious to become honest and respectable. I attribute, in a great measure, this salutary change to the effects arising in many respects from the establishment of reformatory schools; but I have more particularly found that greater advantages have emanated from those institutions since the parents of the children confined in them have been made to pay contributions to their maintenance; for it appears beyond doubt that the effect of the latter has been to induce the parents of other young criminals to withdraw them from the streets, and, instead of using them for the purposes of crime, they seem to take an interest in their welfare. And I know that many of them are now really anxious to get such employment for their children as will enable them to obtain a livelihood; and it is my opinion that the example thus set to older and more desperate criminals, belonging in many instances to the same family as the juvenile thief, has had the effect of reforming them also; for many of them have left off their course of crime, and are now living by honest labor. The result is that serious crime has considerably decreased in this district, so much so that there were only six cases for trial at the assizes, whereas, at the previous assizes, the average number of cases was from twenty-five to thirty, which fact was made the subject of much comment and congratulation by Mr. Justice Willes, the presiding judge."

These remarks relate chiefly to the reformatory schools, but we know that the prevention of crime by education is much easier than its reformation by the same means. Indeed, it is the result of the experience of Massachusetts that the necessity for reform schools has in a large degree arisen from neglect of the public schools. It is stated in the Tenth Annual Report of the Chaplain of the State Reform School that of nineteen hundred and nine boys admitted since the establishment of the institution, thirteen hundred and thirty-four are known to have been truants. It is also quite probable that the number reported as truants is really less than the facts warrant. It may not be out of place to suggest, in this connection, that when a boy sentenced to the Reform School is known to have been guilty of truancy, if the parents were subjected to some additional burdens on that account, the cause of education would be promoted, and the number of criminals in the community would be diminished. From the views and facts presented, as well as from the daily observation and experience of men, I assume that ignorance is the ally of crime, and that education is favorable to virtue. It is also the result of experience and the dictate of reason that general taxation is the only means by which universal education can be secured. All other plans and theories will prove partial in their application. If, then, it is the duty of the state to protect itself against crime, and of course to diminish the number of criminals; if education is the most efficient means for securing these results; if this education must be universal in order to be thoroughly effective; if the state is the only agent or instrumentality of sufficient power to establish schools and furnish education for all; and if general taxation is the only means which the state itself can command, is not every inhabitant justly required and morally bound to contribute to the support of a system of public instruction?

It will not necessarily happen that public schools will furnish to every child and youth the desired amount of education. Professional schools, classical schools, and academies of various grades, will be continued; but there is an amount of intellectual and moral training needed by every child which can be best given in the public school. This training in the public schools ought to be carried much further than it usually is. In the city of Newburyport, as I have been informed, there are no exceptions to the custom of educating all the children of the town in the public schools up to the moment when young men enter college. In large towns and cities there is no excuse for the existence of private schools to do the work now done in such schools as those of Newburyport and other places where equal educational privileges exist.

The chief objection brought against the public school, touching its morality, is derived from the fact that children who are subject to proper moral influences at home are brought in contact with others who are already practised in juvenile vices, if they have not been guilty of petty crimes. I am happy to believe that this statement is not true of many New England communities. The objection was considered in the last Annual Report,—it has been often considered elsewhere; and I do not propose to repeat at length the views which are entertained by the friends of public education.

I have, however, to suggest that while this objection applies with some force to the public school, it applies also to every other school, and that the evil is the least dangerous when the pupil is intrusted to the care of a qualified teacher, who is personally responsible to the public for his conduct, and when the child is also subject to the restraints, and influenced by the daily example and teachings, of the parents.

Moreover, it is to be remembered that the great value of education, in a moral aspect, is the development of the power to resist temptation. This power is not the growth of seclusion; and while neither the teacher nor the parent ought wantonly to expose the child to vicious influences, the school may be even a better preparation for the world from the fact that temptation has there been met, resisted, and overcome. It is also to be remembered that the judgment of parents in a matter so difficult and delicate as a comparison between their own children and other children would not always prove trustworthy nor just; and that a judgment of parties not interested would prove eminently fruitful of dissatisfaction and bitterness.

If all are to be educated, it only remains, then, that they be educated together, subject to the general rule of society, that when a member is dangerous to the safety or peace of his associates, he is to be excluded or restrained. Nor is this necessity of association destitute of moral advantages. If the comparatively good were separated from the relatively vicious, it is not improbable that the latter would soon fall into a state of barbarity. It seems to be the law of the school and of the world that the most rapid progress is made when the weight of public sentiment is on the side of improvement and virtue. It is not necessary for me to remark that such a public sentiment exists in every town and school district of the state; but who would take the responsibility in any of these communities, great or small, of separating the virtuous classes from the dangerous classes? Parents, from the force of their affections, are manifestly incompetent to do this; and those who are not parents are probably equally incompetent. But, if it were honestly accomplished, who would be responsible for the crushing effects of the measure upon those who were thus excluded from the presence and companionship of the comparatively virtuous? These, often the victims of vicious homes, need more than others the influence and example of the good; and it should be among the chief satisfactions of those who are able to train their own children in the ways of virtue, that thereby a healthful influence is exerted upon the less fortunate of their race. There is also in this course a wise selfishness; for, although children may be separated from each other, the circumstances of maturer years will often make the virtuous subject to the influence of the vicious. The safety of society, considered individually or collectively, is not in the virtuous training of any part, however large the proportion, but in the virtuous training of all. I cannot deem it wise policy, whether parental or public, that takes the child from the school on account of the immoral associations that are ordinarily found there, or, on the other hand, that drives the vicious or unfortunate from the presence of those who are comparatively pure. When it is considered that the school is often the only refuge of the unhappy subject of orphanage, or the victim of evil family influences, it seems an unnecessary cruelty to withhold the protection, encouragement, and support, which may be so easily and profitably furnished. It is said that a sparrow pursued by a hawk took refuge in the bosom of a member of the sovereign assembly of Athens, and that the harsh Areopagite threw the trembling bird from him with such violence that it was killed on the spot. The assembly was filled with indignation at the cruelty of the deed; the author of it was arraigned as an alien to that sentiment of mercy so necessary to the administration of justice, and by the unanimous suffrages of his colleagues was degraded from the senatorial dignity which he had so much dishonored.

It does not seem necessary to offer an argument in support of the position that the public school is not unfavorably affected, morally, by the fact that it is subject to the popular judgment. This judgment can be rendered only at stated times, and under the forms and solemnities of law. The history of public schools would probably furnish but few instances of wrong in this respect. The people are usually sensitive in regard to the moral character of teachers; they contribute liberally for the support of the schools, are anxious for their improvement, and there is no safer depositary of a trust that is essential to a nation in which is the hope of freedom and free institutions.

And, last, a school cannot be truly said to be destitute of moral character and influence in which the sacred Scriptures are daily read.

The observance of this requirement is a recognition of the existence of the Supreme Being, of the Bible as containing a record of his will concerning men, and of the common duty of rational creatures to live in obedience to the obligations of morality and religion.

It has been no part of my purpose, in this discussion of the public school as an institution fitted to promote morality, to deny the existence of serious defects, or to screen them from the eyes of men. The public school needs a more thorough discipline, a purer morality, a clearer conception and a more practical recognition of the truths of Christianity. But, viewed as a human institution, it claims the general gratitude for the good it has already accomplished. The public school was established in Massachusetts that "learning might not be buried in the graves of our forefathers, in church and commonwealth;" and, in some measure, at least, the early expectation thus quaintly expressed has been realized. Learning has ever been cherished and honored among us. The means of education have been the possession of all; and the enjoyment of these means, often inadequate and humble, has developed a taste for learning, which has been gratified in higher institutions; and thus continually have the resources of the state been magnified, and its influence in the land has been efficient in all that concerns the welfare of the human race on the American continent.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] The Repression of Crime. By M. D. Hill.

[2] The Repression of Crime, pp. 358, 359.

REFORMATION OF CHILDREN.

[Address at the Inauguration of William E. Starr, Superintendent of the State Reform School at Westborough.]

Neither the invitation of the Trustees nor my own convenience will permit a detailed examination of the topics which the occasion suggests; and it is my purpose to address myself to those who are assembled to participate in the exercises of the day, trusting to familiar and unobserved visits for other and better opportunities for conference with the inmates of the institution.

As the mariner, though cheered by genial winds and canopied by cloudless skies, tests and marks his position and course by repeated observations, so we now desire to note the progress of this humanity-freighted vessel in its voyage over an uncertain sea, yet, as we trust, toward lands of perpetual security and peace. All are voyagers on the sea of life. Some, with the knowledge of ancient days only, grope their way by headlands, or trust themselves occasionally to the guidance of the sun or the stars; while others, with the chart and compass of the Christian era, move confidently on their course, attracted by the Source and Centre of all good. And it is a blessing of this state of existence, though it may sometimes seem to be a curse, that the choice between good and evil yet remains. The wisdom of a right choice is here manifested in the benevolence of this foundation.

The State Reform School for Boys has now enjoyed eight full years of life and progress; and, though we cannot estimate nor measure the good it may have induced, or the evil it may have prevented, yet enough of its history and results is known to justify the course of its patrons, both public and private, and to warrant the ultimate realization of their early cherished hopes. The state is most honored in the honor awarded to its sons; and the name of Lyman, now and evermore associated with a work of benevolence and reform, will always command the admiration of the citizens of the commonwealth, and stimulate the youth of the school to acquire and practise those virtues which their generous patron cherished in his own life and honored in others. Governor Washburn, in the Dedication Address, said, "We commend this school, with its officers and inmates, to a generous and grateful public, with the trust that the future lives of the young, who may be sent hither for correction and reform, may prove the crowning glory of an enterprise so auspiciously begun." Since these words were uttered, and this hope, the hope of many hearts, was expressed, nearly two thousand boys, charged with various offences,—many of them petty, and others serious or even criminal,—have been admitted to the school; and the chaplain, in his report for the year 1854, says that "the institution will be instrumental in saving a majority of those who come under its fostering care." This opinion, based, no doubt, upon the experience which the chaplain and other officers of the institution had had, is to be taken as possessing a substantial basis of truth; and it at once suggests important reflections.

Massachusetts is relieved of the presence of a thousand criminal, or, at best, viciously disposed persons. A thousand active, capable, industrious, productive, full-grown men have been created; or, rather, a thousand consumers of the wealth of others, enemies of the public order and peace, have been transformed into intelligent supporters of social life, into generous, faithful guardians of public virtue and tranquillity. Nor would the influences of this degraded population, if unreformed, have ceased with its own existence; every succeeding generation must have gathered somewhat of a harvest of crime and woe. A thousand boys, hardened by neglect, educated in vice, and shunned by the virtuous, would, as men, have been efficient missionaries of lawlessness, wrong, and crime. And who shall estimate how much their reform adds, in its results, to the wealth, the intellectual, moral, and religious character, of the state? The criminal class is never a producing class; and the labor of a thousand men here reclaimed, if estimated for the period of twenty years only, is equal to the labor of twenty thousand men for one year, which, at a hundred dollars each, yields two millions of dollars. The pecuniary advantages of this school, as of all schools, we may estimate; but there are better and higher considerations, in the elevated intellectual, moral, and religious life of the state, that are too pure, too ethereal, to be weighed in the balance against the grosser possessions and acquisitions of society. We thus get glimpses of the prophetic wisdom which led Mr. Lyman to say, "I do not look on this school as an experiment; on the contrary, it strikes me that it is an institution which will produce decidedly beneficial results, not only for the present day, but for many years to come. I do not, therefore, think that it should, even now, be treated in any respect in the light of an experiment, to be abandoned if not successful; for, if the school is introduced to public notice on no better footing and with no more preparation than usually attend trial-schemes of most kinds, the probability is that it will fail, considering the peculiar difficulties of the case." Here is a high order of faith in its application to human affairs; but Mr. Lyman saw, also, that the work to be performed must encounter obstacles, and that its progress toward a perfect result would be slow.

These obstacles have been encountered; and yet the progress has been more rapid than the words of our founder imply. But are we not at liberty to forget the trials, crosses, and perplexities, of this movement, as we behold the fruits, already maturing, of the wisdom and Christian benevolence of our honored commonwealth?

We are assembled to review the past, and to gather from it strength and courage for the future; and we may with propriety congratulate all, whether present or absent, who have been charged with the administration of this school, and have contributed their share, however humble, to promote these benign results. And we ought, also, to remember those, whether living or dead, whose faith and labors laid the foundation on which the state has built. Of the dead, I mention Lyman, Lamb, Denny, Woodward, Shaw, and Greenleaf,—all of whom, with money, counsel, or personal service, contributed to the plan, progress, and completion, of the work.

The good that they have done is not interred with their bones; and their example will yet find many imitators, as men more generally and more perfectly realize the importance of faith in childhood and youth, as the element of a true faith in our race. If this enterprise, in the judgment of its founder, was not an experiment ten years ago, it cannot be so regarded now; yet the public will look with anxiety, though with hope, upon every change of the officers of the institution. The trustees having appointed a new superintendent, he now assumes the great responsibility. It may not be second to any in the state; yet a man of energy, who is influenced by a desire to do good, and who will not measure his reward by present emoluments or temporary fame, can bear steadily and firmly the weight put upon him. The superintendent elect has been a teacher elsewhere, and he is to be a teacher here also. His work will not, in all particulars, correspond with the work that he has left; yet the principles of government and education are in substance the same. The head of a school always occupies a position of influence; the characters of the children and youth confided to him are in a great degree subject to his control. Here the teacher is neither aided nor impeded by the usual home influences. This institution is at once a home and a school; and its head has the united power and responsibility of the parent and the teacher. Here are to be combined the social and moral influences of home, the religious influences of the Sunday-school, with the intellectual and moral training of the public school. He who to-day enters upon this work should have both faith and courage. He is to deal with the unfortunate rather than with the exceptional cases of humanity; for all these are children whom the Father of the race, in his providence, has confided to earthly parents to be educated for a temporal and an immortal existence. That these parents, through crime, ignorance, indolence, carelessness, or misfortune, have failed in their work, is no certain evidence that we are to fail in ours. May we not hope to see in this school the kindness, consideration, affection, and forethought, of the parent, without the delusion which sometimes causes the father or mother to treat the vices of the child as virtues, to be encouraged? And may we not expect from the superintendent, to whom, practically, the discipline of the school is confided, one characteristic of good government, not always, it is feared, found in punitive and reformatory institutions? I speak of the attributes of equality, uniformity, and certainty, in the administration of the law. To be sure, a school, a prison, or a state, will suffer when its code is lax; and it will also suffer when its system is oppressive or sanguinary; but these peculiarities in themselves do not so often, in any community, produce dissatisfaction, disorder, and violence, as an unequal, partial, and uncertain administration of the laws. If at times the laws are administered strictly according to the letter, and if at other times they are reluctantly enforced or altogether disregarded; if it can never be known beforehand whether a violation is to be followed by the prescribed penalty—especially if this uncertainty becomes systematic, and a portion are favored, while the remainder are required to answer strictly for all their delinquencies; and if, above all, these favored ones are recognized as sentinels, or spies, or informers in the service of the officers,—then not only will the spirit of insubordination manifest itself, but that spirit may ripen into alienations, feuds, and personal enmities, dangerous to the prosperity of the institution. Here the scales of justice should be evenly balanced, and the boy should learn, from his own daily experience, to measure equal and exact justice unto others. I do not speak of systems of government: they are essential, no doubt; but they are not to be regarded as of the first importance in institutions for punishment or reformation. Establish as wise a system as you can; but never trust to that alone. Administer the system that you have with all the equality, uniformity, and certainty, that you can command. As a general truth, it may be said that the law is respected when these qualities are exhibited in its administration; and, when these qualities are wanting, the spirit of obedience is driven from the hearts and minds of the people.

But we are not to rely altogether, nor even chiefly, upon the visible weapons of authority. Especially must the mind and heart of childhood and youth be approached and quickened and strengthened by judicious appeals to the sentiments of veneration and love, and to the principles of the Christian faith. In this institution, one serious obstacle is present; yet it may be overcome by energy, industry, and a spirit of benevolence. I speak of the large number of inmates to be superintended by one person. Men act in masses for the removal of general evils; but the reformation of children must be individual, and to a great extent dependent upon the agency, or at least upon the coöperation, of the subjects of it. It is not easy for the superintendent to make himself acquainted with the persons and familiar with the lives of six hundred boys; yet this knowledge is quite essential to the exercise of a salutary influence over them. He may be aided by the subordinate officers of the institution; and that aid, under any circumstances, he will need: but, after all, his own influence and power for good will be measured by the extent of his personal acquaintance with the inmates as individuals. First, then, government is essential to this school; not a reign of terror, but a government whose majesty, power, equality, certainty, uniformity, and consequent justice, shall be experienced by all alike; and, being experienced by all alike, will be respected, reverenced, and obeyed.

And next the social, intellectual, and moral influences of the school and the home should be combined and mingled, or else the visible forms of government become a skeleton, merely indicating the figure, structure, and outline, of the perfect body, but destitute of the vital principle which alone could render it of any value to itself or to the world.

This institution is not an end, but a means. The home itself is only a preparatory school for life. This is a substitute for the home, but is not, and never can be, its equal. It therefore follows that a boy should be removed whenever a home can be secured, especially if his reformation has been previously so far accomplished as to render the completion of the work probable.

A great trust has been confided to the officers of the Reform School; but the power to do good is usually proportionate to the responsibility imposed upon the laborer. In this view, much will be expected; but the expectations formed ought not to relate so much to results as to the wisdom and humanity with which the operations are conducted. Massachusetts is charged with the support of a great number of charitable and reformatory institutions. Their necessity springs from the defects of social life; therefore their existence is a comparative rather than a positive good; and he is the truest friend of the race who does most to remove the causes of poverty, ignorance, insanity, mental and physical weakness, moral waywardness, and crime.

THE CARE AND REFORMATION OF THE NEGLECTED AND EXPOSED CLASSES OF CHILDREN.

[An Address delivered at the opening of the State Industrial School for Girls, at Lancaster, Massachusetts.]

In man's limited view, the moral world presents a sad contrast to the natural. The natural world is harmonious in all its parts; but the moral world is the theatre of disturbing and conflicting forces, whose laws the finite mind cannot comprehend. The majesty and uniformity of the planetary revolutions, which bring day and night, summer and winter, seed-time and harvest, know no change. Worlds and systems of worlds are guided by a law of the Infinite Mind; and so, through unnumbered years and myriads of years, birth and death, creation and decay, decrees whose fixedness enables finite minds to predict the future, and rules whose elasticity is seen in a never-ending variety of nature, all alike prove that the sin of disobedience is upon man alone.

But, if man only, of all the varied creations of earth, may fall from his high estate, so to him only is given the power to rise again, and feebly, yet with faith, advance towards the Divine Excellence. This, then, is the great thought of the occasion, to be accepted by the hearts and illustrated in the lives of all. The fallen may be raised up, the exposed may be shielded, the wanderers may be called home, or else this house is built upon the sand, and doomed to fall when the rains shall descend, the floods come, and the winds blow. The returning autumn, with its harvest of sustenance and wealth, bids us contemplate again the mystery and harmony of the natural world. The tree and the herb produce seed, and the seed again produces the tree and the herb, each after its kind. There is a continued production and reproduction; but of responsibility there is none. As there is no intelligent violation of law, there is no accountability. Man, however, is an intelligent, dependent, fallible, and, of course, responsible being. He is responsible for himself, responsible in some degree for his fellow-man. There is not a chapter in the history of the human race, nor a day of its experience, which does not show that the individual members are dependent upon, and responsible to, each other. This great fact, of six thousand years' duration, at once presents to us the necessity for government, and defines the limits of its powers and duties. Government, then, is a union of all for the protection and welfare of each. This definition presents, in its principles and statement, the highest form of human government,—a form not yet perfectly realized on earth. It sets forth rather what government ought to be, than what it has been or is. Too often historical governments, and living governments even, may be defined as a union of a few for their benefit, and for the oppression of many. The reason of man has not often been consulted in their formation, and the interests and principles of the masses have usually been disregarded in their administration.

A true government is at once representative, patriarchal, and paternal. In the path of duty for this day and this occasion, we shall consider the last-named quality only,—governments should be paternal. The paternal government is devoted to the elevation and improvement of its members, with no ulterior motive except the necessary results of internal purity and strength. Every government is, in some degree, no doubt, paternal. Nor are those governments to be regarded as eminently so, where the people are most controlled in their private, personal affairs. These are mere despotisms; and despotism is not a just nor necessary element of the paternal relation. That government is most truly paternal which does most to enable its citizens or subjects to regulate their own conduct, and determine their relations to others. In the midst of general darkness, the paternal element of government has been a light to the human race. It modified the patriarchal slavery of the Hebrews, relieved the iron rule of Sparta, made European feudalism the hope of civilization in the Dark Ages, and the basis of its coming glories in the near future; and it now leads men to look with toleration upon the despotism of Russia, and with kindness upon the simplicity and arrogance of the Celestial Empire.

We complain, justly enough, that the world is governed too much; and yet, in a great degree, we neglect the means by which the proper relations of society could be preserved, and the world be governed less. In what works are the so-called Christian governments principally engaged? Are they not seeking, by artifice, diplomacy, and war, to extend national boundaries, preserve national honor, or enforce nice distinctions against the timid and weak? Yet it is plain that a nation is powerful according to the character of the living elements of which it is composed. If it is disorganized morally, uncultivated in intellect, ignorant, indolent, or wasteful in its labor, its claims to greatness are destitute of solid foundation, and it must finally yield to those that have sought and gained power by the elevation of the individual as the element of the nation.

That nation, then, is wise, and destined to become truly great, which cultivates the best elements of individual life and character. It is not enough to read the parable of the lost sheep, and of the ninety and nine that went not astray, and then say, "Even so, it is not the will of your Father which is in heaven that one of these little ones should perish," while the means of salvation, as regards the life of this world merely, are very generally neglected. Such neglect is followed by error and crime; and error and crime are followed by judgment not always tempered with mercy.

While human governments debate questions of war and peace, of trade and revenue, of annexations with ceremony, and appropriations of territory without ceremony, who shall answer to the Governor and Judge of all for the neglect, indifference, and oppression, which beget and foster the delinquencies of childhood, and harden the criminals of adult life?

And who shall answer for those distinctions of caste and systems of labor which so degrade and famish masses of human beings, that the divine miracle of the feeding of the five thousand must be multiplied many times over before the truths of nature or revelation can be received into teachable minds or susceptible hearts? And who shall answer for the hereditary poverty, ignorance and crime, which constitute a marked feature of English life, and are distinctly visible upon the face of American civilization? These questions may point with sufficient distinctness to the sources of the evils enumerated; but we are not to assume that mere human governments can furnish an adequate and complete remedy. Yet this admitted inability to do everything is no excuse for neglecting those things which are plainly within their power. Taking upon themselves the parental character, forgetting that they have wrongs to avenge, and seeking reformation through kindness, criminals and the causes of crime will diminish, if they do not disappear. This is the responsibility of the nations, and the claim now made upon them. Individual civilization and refinement have always been in advance of national; and national character is the mirrored image of the individual characters, not excepting the humblest, of which the nation is composed. Each foot of the ocean's surface has, in its fluidity or density or position, something of the quality or power of every drop of water which rests or moves in the depths of the sea. What is called national character is the face of the great society beneath; and, as that society in its elements is elevated or debased, so will the national character rise or fall in the estimation of all just men, and upon the page of impartial history. Government, which is the organized expression of the will of society, should represent the best elements of which society is composed; and it ought, therefore, to combat error and wrong, and seek to inaugurate labor, justice, and truth, as the elements of stability, growth, and power. It must accept as its principles of action the best rules of conduct in individuals. The man who avenges his personal wrongs by personal attacks or vindictive retaliation, must sacrifice in some measure the sympathy of the wise, the humane, and the good. So the nation which avenges real or fancied wrongs crushes out the elements of humanity and a higher life, which, properly cultivated, might lead an erring mortal to virtue and peace. The proper object of punishment is not vengeance, but the public safety and the reformation of the criminal. Indeed, we may say that the sole object of punishment is the reformation of the criminal; for there can be no safety to the public while the criminal is unreformed. The punishment of the prison must, from its nature, be temporary; perpetual confinement can be meted out to a few great crimes only. If, then, the result of punishment be vengeance, and not reformation, the last state of society is worse than its first. The prison must stand a sad monument of the want of true paternal government in the family and the state; but, when it becomes the receptacle merely of the criminal, and all ideas of reformation are banished from the hearts of convicts and the minds of keepers, its influence is evil, and only evil continually.

Vice, driven from the presence of virtue, with no hope of reformation or of restoration to society, begets vice, and becomes daily more and more loathsome. Misery is so universal that some share falls to the lot of all; but that misery whose depths cannot be sounded, whose heights cannot be scaled, is the fortune of the prison convict only, who has no hope of reformation to virtue or of restoration to the world. His is the only misery that is unrelieved; his is the only burden that is too great to be borne. To him the foliage of the tree, the murmur of the brook, the mirror of the quiet lake, or the thunder of the heaving ocean, would be equally acceptable. His separation from nature is no less burdensome than his separation from man. The heart sinks, the spirit turns with a consuming fire upon itself, the soul is in despair; the mind is first nerved and desperate, then wandering and savage, then idiotic, and finally goes out in death. Governments cannot often afford to protect themselves, or to avenge themselves, at such a cost. There may be great crimes on which such awful penalties should be visited; but, for the honor of the race, let them be few.

We may err in our ideas of the true relations of the prison to the prisoner. We call a prison good or bad when we see its walls, cells, workshops, its means of security, and points of observation. These are very well. They are something; but they are not all. We might so judge a hospital for the sick; and we did once so judge an asylum for the insane.

But what to the sick man are walls of wood, brick, granite, or marble? What are towers and turrets, what are wards, halls, and verandas, if withal he is not cheered and sustained by the sympathizing heart and helping hand? And similar preparations furnish for the insane personal security and physical comfort; but can they

"Minister to a mind diseased;

Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow;

Raze out the written troubles of the brain?"

And it may be that the old almshouse at Philadelphia, which was nearly destitute of material aids, and had only superintendent, matrons, and assistants, was, all in all, the best insane asylum in America.

We cannot neglect the claims of security, discipline, and labor, in the erection of jails and prisons; but to acknowledge these merely will never produce the proper fruit of punishment—reformation. Indeed, walls of stone, gates of iron, bolts, locks, and armed sentinels, though essential to security, without which there could be neither punishment nor reformation, are in themselves barriers rather than helps to moral progress. Standing outside, we cannot say what should be done either in the insane hospital or the prison; but we can deduce from the experience of modern times a safe rule for general conduct. In the insane hospital the patient is to be treated as though he were sane; and in the jail the prisoner is to be treated, nearly as may be, as though he were virtuous. This rule, especially as much of it as applies to the prisoner, may be recklessness to some, to others folly, to others sin.

"The court awards it, and the law doth give it," is no doubt the essence and strength of governmental justice in the sentence decreed; but it would be a sad calamity if there were no escape from its literal fulfilment. And let no one borrow the words of Portia to the Jew, and say to the state,

"Nor cut thou less nor more,

But just a pound of flesh."

As the criminal staggers beneath the accumulated weight of his sin and its penalty, he should feel that the state is not only just in the language of its law, but merciful in its administration; that the government is, in truth, paternal. This feeling inspires confidence and hope; and without these there can be no reformation. And, following this thought, we are led to say, it is a sad and mischievous public delusion that the pardoning power is useless or pernicious. It is a delusion; for it is the only means by which the state mingles mercy with its justice,—the means by which the better sentiments of the prison are marshalled in favor of order, of law, of progress. It is a public delusion; for it has infected not only the masses of society, who know little of what is going on in courts and prisons, but its influence is observed upon the bench and in the bar, especially among those who are accustomed to prosecute and try criminals. This is not strange, nor shall it be a subject of complaint; but we must not always look upon the prisoner as a criminal, and continually disregard his claims as a man. It is not often easy, nor always possible, to make the proper distinction between the character and condition of the prisoner. But the prison, strange as it may seem, follows the general law of life. It has its public sentiment, its classes, its leading minds, as well as the university or the state; it has its men of mark, either good or bad, as well as congress or parliament. As the family, the church, or the school, is the reflection of the best face of society, so the prison is the reflection of the worst face of society. But it nevertheless is society, and follows its laws with as much fidelity as the world at large.

It is said that Abbé Fissiaux, the head of the colony of Marseilles, when visiting Mettray, a kind of reform school, at which boys under sixteen years of age, who have committed offences without discernment, are sent, asked the colonists to point out to him the three best boys. The looks of the whole body immediately designated three young persons whose conduct had been irreproachable to an exceptional degree. He then applied a more delicate test. "Point out to me," said he, "the worst boy." All the children remained motionless, and made no sign; but one little urchin came forward, with a pitiful air, and said, in a very low tone, "It is me." Such were the public sentiment and sense of honor, even in a reform school. This frankness in the lad was followed by reformation; and he became in after years a good soldier,—the life anticipated for many members of the institution.

The pardoning power is not needed in reform and industrial schools, where the managers have discretionary authority; but it is quite essential to the discipline of the prison to let the light of hope into the prisoner's heart. Not that all are to enjoy the benefits of executive clemency,—by no means: only the most worthy and promising are to be thus favored. But, for many years, the Massachusetts prison has been improved and elevated in its tone and sentiment above what it would have been; while, as it is believed, over ninety per cent. of the convicts thus discharged have conducted themselves well. If the prisoner's conduct has not been, upon the whole, reasonably good, and for a long time irreproachable, he has no chance for clemency; and, whatever may be his conduct, and whatever may be the hopes inspired, he should not be allowed to pass without the prison walls until a friend, labor, and a home, are secured for him. And the exercise of the pardoning power, if it anticipate the expiration of the legal sentence but a month, a week, or a day even, may change the whole subsequent life. Men, criminals, convicts, are not insensible to kindness; and when the government shortens the legal sentence, which is usually their measure of justice, they feel an additional obligation to so behave as to bring no discredit upon a power which has been a source of inestimable joy to them. And prisoners thus discharged have often gone forth with a feeling that the hopes of many whom they had left behind were centred in them.

Mr. Charles Forster, of Charlestown, says, in a letter to me: "I have been connected with the Massachusetts State Prison for a period of thirty-eight years, and have always felt a strong interest in the improvement, welfare, and happiness, of the unfortunate men confined within its walls. I am conversant with many touching cases of deep and heartfelt gratitude for kindly acts and sympathy bestowed upon them, both during and subsequent to their imprisonment." And the same gentleman says further, "I think that the proportion of persons discharged from prison by executive clemency, who have subsequently been convicted of penal offences, is very small indeed." To some, whose imaginations have pictured a broad waste or deep gulf between themselves and the prisoner class, these may seem strange words; but there is no mystery in this language to those who have listened to individual cases of crime and punishment. Men are tried and convicted of crimes according to rules and definitions which are necessarily arbitrary and technical; but the moral character of criminals is not very well defined by the rules and definitions which have been applied to their respective cases. Our prisons contain men who are great and professional criminals,—men who advisedly follow a life of crime themselves, and deliberately educate generation after generation to a career of infamy and vice. As a general thing, mercy to such men would be unpardonable folly. Of them I do not now speak. But there is another class, who are involved in guilt and its punishment through the defects of early education, the misfortune of orphanage, accident, sudden temptation, or the influence of evil companionship in youth.

The field from which this class is gathered is an extensive one, and its outer limits are near to every hearthstone. To all these, prison life, unless it is relieved by a hope of restoration to the world at the hand of mercy, is the school of vice, and a certain preparation for a career of crime. As a matter of fact, this class does furnish recruits to supply the places of the hardened villains who annually die, or permanently forsake the abodes of civilized men. What hope can there be for a young man who remains in prison until the last day of his sentence is measured by the sun in his course, and then passes into the world, with the mark of disgrace and the mantle of shame upon him, to the society of the companions by whose influence he first fell? For such a one there can be no hope. And be it always remembered that there are those without the prison walls, as well as many within, who resist every effort to bring the wanderers back to obedience and right. I was present at the prison in Charlestown when the model of a bank-lock was taken from a young man whose term had nearly expired. The model was cut in wood, after a plan drawn upon sand-paper by an experienced criminal, then recently convicted. This old offender was so familiar with the lock, that he was able to reproduce all its parts from memory alone. This fact shows the influence that may be exerted, even in prison, upon the characters of the young and less vicious. Now, can any doubt that these classes, as classes, ought to be separated? Nor let the question be met by the old statement, that all communication between prisoners should be cut off. Humanity cannot defend, as a permanent system, the plan which shuts up the criminal, unless he is a murderer, from the light of the human countenance. Such penalties foster crimes, whose roots take hold of the state itself.

The result of the exercise of the pardoning power is believed to have been, upon the whole, satisfactory. This is the concurrent testimony of officers and others whose opinions are entitled to weight. Permit the statement of a single case, to which many similar ones might be added. In a remote state of the West there is a respectable and successful farmer, who was once sentenced to the penitentiary for life. His crime was committed in a moment of desperation, produced by the contrast between a state of abject poverty in a strange land, at the age of twenty-three, and the recollection of childhood and youth passed beneath the parental roof, surrounded by the comforts and conveniences of the well-educated and well-conditioned classes of English society. This, it is true, was a peculiar case. It was marked in the circumstances and enormity of the crime, and marked in the subsequent good conduct of the prisoner. But can any one object, that, after ten years' imprisonment, this man was allowed to try his fortunes once more among his fellow-men? Are there those who would have had no faith in his uninterrupted good conduct; in the abundant evidence of complete reformation; in the fact that, in prison and poverty and disgrace, he had allied to him friends of name and fortune and Christian virtues, who were ready to aid him in his good resolutions? If any such there be, let them visit the solitary cell of the despairing convict, whose crime is so great that executive clemency fears to approach it. Crime and despair have made the features appalling; all the worst passions of our nature riot together in the temple made for the living God; and the death of the body is almost certainly to be preceded by madness, insanity, and idiocy of the mind. Or, if any think that this person escaped with too light an expiation for so great a crime, let them recall the incident of the youth who was questioned because he looked with fond affection into the babbling face of the running brook, and, apologizing, as it were, in reply said, "O, yes, it is very beautiful, and especially to me, who have seen no water for four years, beside what I have had to drink!"

Nor is it assumed, in all that is said upon this subject, that the laws are severe, or that the judicial administration of them is not characterized by justice and mercy. In the ordinary course of affairs, the pardoning power is not resorted to for the correction of any error or injustice of the courts; but it is the means by which the state tempers its justice with mercy; and, if the penalties for crime were less than they are, the necessity for the exercise of this power would still remain. It assumes that the object of the penal law is reformation; and if this object, in some cases, can be attained by the exercise of the pardoning power, while the rigid execution of the sentence would leave the criminal, as it usually will, still hardened and unrepenting, is it not wise for the state to benefit itself, and save the prisoner, by opening the prison-doors, and inviting the convict to a life of industry and virtue? And let it never be forgotten, though it is the lowest view which can be taken of crime and prisons, that the criminal class is the most expensive class of society. In general, it is a non-producing class, and, whether in prison or out, is a heavy burden upon the public. The mere interest of the money now expended in prisons of approved structure is, for each cell, equal annually to the net income of a laboring man; and professional thieves, when at large, often gather by their art, and expend in profligacy, many thousand dollars a year. And here we see how much wiser it is, in an economical point of view, to save the child, or reform the man, than to allow the adult criminal to go at large, or provide for his safe-keeping at the expense of the state.

Under the influence of the pardoning power, wisely executed, the commonwealth becomes a family, whose law is the law of kindness. It is the paternal element of government applied to a class of people who, by every process of reasoning, would be found least susceptible to its influence. It is the great power of the state, both in the wisdom required for its judicious exercise, and in the beneficial results to which it may lead. Men may desire office for its emoluments in money or fame; they may seek it in a spirit of rivalry, or for personal pride, or for the opportunity it brings to reward friends and punish enemies; but all these are poor and paltry compared with the divine privilege, exercised always in reference to the public welfare, of elevating the prisoner to the companionship of men, and cheering him with words of encouragement on his entrance anew to the duties of life.

Yet think not that the prison is a reformatory institution: far from it. If the prison should be left to the influence of legitimate prison discipline merely, it is doubtful whether the sum of improvement would equal the total of degradation. This may be said of the best prisons of America, of New England. The prison usually contains every class, from the hardened convict, incarcerated for house-breaking, robbery, or murder, to the youth who expiates his first offence, committed under the influence of evil companions, or sudden temptation. The contact of these two persons must be injurious to one of them, without in any degree improving the other. Therefore the prison, considered without reference to the elevating influence of the pardoning power, has but little ability to reform the bad, and yet possesses a sad tendency to debase the comparatively good.

We miss, too, in the prison, another essential element of a reformatory institution. Reformation in individual cases may take place under the most adverse circumstances; but an institution cannot be called reformatory unless its prevailing moral sentiment is actively, vigorously, and always, on the side of progress and virtue. This moral influence must proceed from the officers of the institution; but it should be increased and strengthened by the sympathy and support of the inmates. This can hardly be expected of the prison. The number of adult persons experienced in crime and hardened by its penalties is usually so large, that the moral sentiment of the officers, and the weak resolutions of the small class of prisoners, who, under favorable circumstances, might be saved, are insufficient to give a healthy tone to the whole institution. The prison is a battle-field of vice and virtue, with the advantage of position and numbers on the side of vice. Indeed, there can hardly be a worse place for the young or the inexperienced in crime. This is the testimony of reason and of all experience; yet the public mind is slow to accept the remedy for the evil. It is a privilege to believe that the worst scenes of prison life are not found in the United States. Consider this case, reported in an English journal, The Ragged-School Magazine:

"D. F., aged about fourteen. Mother dead several years; father a drunkard, and deserted him about three years ago. Has since lived as he best could,—sometimes going errands, sometimes begging and thieving. Slept in lodging-houses when he had money; but very often walked the streets at night, or lay under arches or door-steps. Has only one brother; he lives by thieving. Does not know where he is; has no other friend that he knows; never learnt to read; was badly off; picked a handkerchief out of a gentleman's pocket, and was caught by a policeman; sent to Giltspur-street Prison; was fed on bread and water; instructed every day by chaplain and schoolmaster; much impressed with what the chaplain said; felt anxious to do better; behaved well in prison; was well flogged the morning he left; back bruised, but not quite bleeding; was then turned into the street, ragged, barefooted, friendless, homeless, penniless; walked about the streets till afternoon, when he received a penny from a gentleman to buy a loaf; met, next day, some expert thieves in the Minories; went along with them, and continues in a course of vagrancy and crime."

And what else could have been expected? The government, having sown tares, had no right to gather wheat. Yet, had this boy been provided with a home, either in a family or a reform school, with sufficient labor, and proper moral and intellectual culture, he might have been saved. Of the three thousand persons annually in prison at Newgate, four hundred are less than sixteen years of age; and twenty thousand children and youth under seventeen years of age yearly pass through the prisons of England. "Many of the juvenile prisoners," it is said, "have been frequently in prison, and are very hardened. Some, from nine to eleven, have been in prison repeatedly, and have very little fear of it."

The officers of the Liverpool Borough Jail are united in the opinion that, when a boy comes once, he is almost certain to come again and again, until he is transported. And, of every one hundred young persons discharged from the principal prisons of Paris, seventy-five are in the custody of the law within the next three months. A professed thief said to the Rev. Mr. Clay, of England, "I am convinced of this, having too bitterly experienced it, that communication in a prison has brought thousands to ruin. I speak not of boys only, but of men and women also." And Mr. Hill, Recorder of Birmingham, says of the sentences imposed in his court, "We are compelled to carry into operation an ignorant and vengeful system, which augments to a fearful extent the very evils it was framed to correct." A few years ago, there was a lad in a New England prison whose experience is a pertinent illustration of the evil we are now considering. His father, a resident of a city, died while the boy was in infancy. He, however, soon passed beyond the control of his mother, and at an early age was selected by a brace of thieves, who petted, caressed, and humored him, until he was completely subject to their will. He was then made useful to them in their profession; but at last they were all arrested while engaged in robbing a store,—the boy being within the building, and the men stationed as sentinels without. In this case, the discretion of the court, which distinguished in the sentence between the hardened villains and the youth, was inadequate to the emergency. The child, unfit for the prison, and sure to be contaminated by it, ought to have been sent to a house of reformation, a reform school, or, perhaps better than either, to the custody of a well-regulated, industrious family. Now, in such cases, the distinction which the law, judicially administered, does not make, and cannot make, must be made by the executive in the wise exercise of the pardoning power. But this power, in the nature of things, has its limits; and on one side it is limited to those who have been convicted of crime.

At this point, we may see how faulty, and yet how constantly improving, has been the administration of the criminal law. First, we have the prison without the pardoning power, except in cases of mal-administration of the law,—a receptacle of the bad and good, where the former are not improved, and the latter are hurried rapidly on in the path of degradation and crime. Then we have the prison under the influence of the pardoning power, more or less wisely administered, but, in its best form, able only to arrest and counteract partially the tendencies to evil. Next, from the imperfections of this system an advancing civilization has evoked the Reform School, which gathers in the young criminals and viciously inclined youth, and prepares them, by labor, and culture of the mind and heart, to resist the temptations of life. But this institution seems to wait, though it may not always in reality do so, until the candidate is actually a criminal.

Hence the necessity which calls us to-day to consider the means adopted elsewhere, and the means now to be employed here, to save the young and exposed from the dangers which surround them.

Passing, then, in review, ladies and gentlemen, the thoughts which have been presented, I deduce from them for your assent and support, if so it please you, the following propositions as the basis of what I have yet to say:

I. Government, in the prevention and punishment of crime, should be paternal.

II. The object of punishment should be reformation, and not revenge.

III. The law of reformation in the state, as in the family, is the law of kindness.

IV. As criminals vary in age and in experience as criminals, so should their treatment vary.

V. Prisons and jails are not, in their foundation and management, reformatory institutions, and only become so through influences not necessarily nor ordinarily acting upon them.

VI. As prisons and jails deter from crime through fear only, exert very little moral influence upon the youth of either sex, and fail in many respects and in a majority of cases as reformatory institutions, we ought to avail ourselves of any new agency which promises success.

Influenced, as we may reasonably suppose, by these or kindred sentiments, and aided by the noblest exhibitions of private benevolence, the state has here founded a school for the prevention of crime. As we have everywhere among us schools whose leading object is the development of the intellect, so we now dedicate a school whose leading object is the development of the affections as the basis of the cardinal virtues of life.

The design of this institution is so well expressed by the trustees, that it is a favor to us all for me to read the first chapter of the by-laws, which, by the consent of the Governor and Council, have been established:

"The intention of the state government, and of the benevolent individuals who have contributed to the establishment of this institution, is to secure a home and a school for such girls as may be presented to the magistrates of the state, appointed for that purpose, as vagrants, perversely obstinate, deprived of the control and culture of their natural guardians, or guilty of petty offences, and exposed to a life of crime and wretchedness.

"For such young persons it is proposed to provide, not a prison for their restraint and correction, but a family school, where, under the firm but kind discipline of a judicious home, they shall be carefully instructed in all the branches of a good education; their moral affections be developed and cultivated by the example and affectionate care of one who shall hold the relation of a mother to them; be instructed in useful and appropriate forms of female industry; and, in short, be fitted to become virtuous and happy members of society, and to take respectable positions in such relations in life as Providence shall hereafter mark out for them.

"It is to be distinctly understood that the institution is not to be considered a place of punishment, or its subjects as criminals. It is to be an inviting refuge, into which the exposed may be gathered to be saved from a course which would inevitably end in penal confinement, irretrievable ruin, or hopeless degradation.

"The inmates are to be considered hopeful and promising subjects of appropriate culture, and to be instructed and watched over with the care and kindness which their peculiar exposures demand, and with the confidence which youth should ever inspire.

"The restraint and the discipline which will be necessary are to be such as would be appropriate in a Christian family or in a small boarding-school; and the 'law of kindness' should be written upon the heart of every officer of the institution. The chief end to be obtained, in all the culture and discipline, is the proper development of the faculties and moral affections of the inmates, however they may have been heretofore neglected or perverted; and to teach them the art, and aid them in securing the power, of self-government."

Under the influence of these sentiments, we pass, if possible, in the work of reformation, from the rigor of the prison to the innocent excitement and rivalry of the school, the comfort, confidence and joys of home. This institution assumes that crime, to some extent at least, is social, local, or hereditary, in its origin; that the career of hardened criminals often takes its rise in poverty, idleness, ignorance, orphanage, desertion, or intemperance of parents, evil example, or the indifference, scorn and neglect of society. It assumes, also, that there is a period of life—childhood and youth—when these, the first indications of moral death, may be eradicated, or their influence for evil controlled. In this land of education, of liberty, of law, of labor and religion, we may not easily imagine how universal the enumerated evils are in many portions of Europe. The existence of these evils is in some degree owing to institutions which favor a few, and oppress the masses; but it is also in a measure due to the fact that Europe is both old and multitudinous. America, though still young, is even now multitudinous. Hence, both here and there, crime is social and local. The truth of this statement is proportionate to the force of the causes in the respective countries.

We are assembled upon a sloping hillside, over-looking a quiet country village. Happy homes are embowered in living groves, whose summer foliage is emblematical of innocence, progress, and peace. We have here a social life, with natural impulses, cultivated worldly interests, moral and religious sentiments, all on the side of virtue. Crime here is not social. If it appear at all, it is segregated; and, as the burning taper expires when placed at the centre of the spirit lamp's coiling sheet of flame, so vice and crime cannot thrive in the genial embrace of virtue.

Circumstances are here unfavorable to crime; it is never social; but sometimes, though not often, it is hereditary. A family for many generations seems to have a criminal tendency. Perhaps the members are not in any generation guilty of great crimes, but often of lesser ones; and are, moreover, in the daily practice of vices that give rise to suspicion, neglect, and reproach. Here together are associated, and made hereditary, poverty, ignorance, idleness, beggary, and vagrancy. Surely these instances are not common, probably not so common as they were in the last generation. But how is the boy or girl of such a family to rise above these circumstances, and throw off these weights? Occasionally one of great energy of character may do so; but, if the children of more fortunate classes can scarcely escape the influence of temporary evil example, how shall they who are born to a heritage of poverty, ignorance, and ever-present evil counsel and conduct under the guise of parental authority, pass to the position of intelligent, industrious, respectable members of society? Some external influence must be applied; by some means from without, the spell must be broken; the fatal succession of vicious homes must be interrupted. The family has here failed to discharge its duty to itself and to the state; and shall not the state do its duty to itself, by assuming the paternal relation under the guidance of that law of kindness, which we have seen effectual to control the insane, and melt the hardened criminal? But in cities we find vice, not only hereditary in families, but local and social; so that streets and squares are given up, as it were, to the idle and vicious, whose numbers and influence produce and perpetuate a public sentiment in support of their daily practices. This phase of life is not due to the fact that cities are wealthy, or that they are engaged in manufactures or commerce; but to the single fact that they are multitudinous, and their inhabitants are, therefore, in daily contact with each other, while, in the country, individuals and families are comparatively isolated. Yet some may very well doubt whether such an institution as this, with all the benign influences of home which we hope to see centred and diffusive here, will save a child of either sex, whose first years shall have been so unfavorable to a life of virtue.

The answer is plain: as in other reformatory institutions, there will be some successes and some failures. The failures will be reckoned as they were; the successes will be a clear gain.

But investigation and trial will show a natural aptitude or instinct in children that will aid in their improvement and reformation. There has been in one of our public schools a lad, who, at the age of fourteen years, could not recall distinctly the circumstances of his life previous to the time when he was a newsboy in the city of New York. He was ignorant of father, mother, kindred, family name, and nation. At an early age, he travelled through the middle, southern and south-western states, engaged in selling papers and trash literature; and, for a time, he was employed by a showman to stand outside the tent and describe and exaggerate the attractions within. When he was in his fourteenth year, he accepted the offer of a permanent home; his chief object being, as he said, to obtain an education. "I have found," said he, "that a man cannot do much in this country unless he has some learning." This truth, simple, and resting upon a low view of education, may yet be of infinite value if accepted by those who, even among us, are advancing to adult life without the preparation which our common schools are well fitted to furnish. And the case of this lad may be yet further useful by showing how compensation is provided for evils and neglects in mental and moral relations, as well as in the physical and natural world. Though ignorant of books, he was thoroughly and extensively acquainted with things, and consequently made rapid progress in the knowledge of signs; for they were immediately applied, and of course remembered. In a few months, he took a respectable position among lads of his age. The world had done for this boy what good schools do not always accomplish,—made him familiar with things before he was troubled with the signs which stand for them. There is an ignorance in manhood; an ignorance under the show of profound learning; an ignorance for which schools, academies and colleges, are often responsible; an ignorance that neither schools, academies nor colleges, can conceal from the humblest intellects; an ignorance of life and things as they are within the sphere of our own observation. From this most deplorable ignorance this boy had escaped; and the light of learning illumined his mind, as the sun in his daily return reveals anew those forms of life, which, even in an ungenial spring and early summer, his rays had warmed into existence, and nourished and cherished in their progress towards perfection.

And, ladies and gentlemen, let us indulge the hope that the events of this day and the faith of this assembly will declare that it is possible to save the children of orphanage, intemperance, neglect, scorn and ignorance, from many of the evils which surround them. Let it not be assumed and believed that the task of training and saving girls is less hopeful than similar labors in behalf of the other sex. It has been found true in Europe, and it is a prevailing opinion in this country, that, among adults, the reformation of females is more difficult than the reformation of males. But an analysis of this fact, assuming it to be true, will unfold qualities of female character that render it peculiarly easy to shield and save girls who are exposed to a life of crime; for, be it remembered, this institution deals with mere children, who are exposed, but not yet lost. It differs, in this respect, from most institutions, although many include this class with others. And it may be well to remark, that every reformatory school in Europe, even those altogether penal,—as Parkhurst in England, and Mettray in France,—have had some measure of success. Eighty-nine per cent. of the colons, or convicts, at Mettray, have become respectable and useful; while, of the youth sent to the ordinary jails and prisons, seventy-five per cent. are totally lost. It is not fair, therefore, to assume that this attempt will fail. The degree of success will depend upon circumstances and causes, to a great extent, within human control. There are, however, three elements of success, so distinct that they may well stand as the appropriate divisions of what remains for consideration. They are the right action of the government; the faithful conduct of superintendent, matrons, and assistants; the sympathy and aid of the people of the state in matters which do not admit of legislative interference.

The act of the Legislature, though voluminous in its details, contemplates only this: A home for girls between seven and sixteen years of age, who are found "in circumstances of want and suffering, or of neglect, exposure, or abandonment, or of beggary." The first idea of home precludes the possibility of the inmates being sent here as a punishment for crime; therefore they are neither adjudged nor actual criminals, but persons exposed to a vicious life. Secondly, the idea of home involves the necessity of reproducing the family relation, as circumstances may permit. Hence, the members of this institution are to be divided into families; and over each a matron will preside, who is to be a kind, affectionate, discreet mother to the children.

And here, for once, in Massachusetts, a public institution has escaped the tyranny of bricks and mortar; and we are permitted to indulge the hope, that any future additions will tend to make this spot a neighborhood of unostentatious cottages, quiet rural homes, rather than the seat of a vast edifice, which may provoke the wonder of the sight-seer, inflame local or state pride, but can never be an effectual, economical agency in the work of reformation. Every public institution has some great object. Architecture should bend itself to that object, and become its servant; and it must ever be deemed a mistake, when utility is sacrificed that art or fancy may have its way.

Reformation, if wrought by external influences, is the result of personal kindness. Personal kindness can exist only where there is intimate personal acquaintance; this acquaintance is impossible in an institution of two, three, or five hundred inmates. But, in a family of ten, twenty, or thirty, this knowledge will exist, and this kindness abound. Warm personal attachments will grow up in the family, and these attachments are likely to become safeguards of virtue.

Nor let the objection prevail that the expense is to be increased. It is not the purpose to set up an establishment and maintain it for a specific sum of money, but to provide thorough mental and moral training for the inmates. Make the work efficient, though it be limited to a small number, rather than inaugurate a magnificent failure.

The state has wisely provided that the "trustees shall cause the girls under their charge to be instructed in piety and morality, and in such branches of useful knowledge as shall be adapted to their age and capacity; they shall also be instructed in some regular course of labor, either mechanical, manufacturing, or horticultural, or a combination of these, and especially in such domestic and household labor and duties as shall be best suited to their age and strength, disposition and capacity; also in such other arts, trades, and employments, as may seem to the trustees best adapted to secure their reformation, amendment, and future benefit."

It is sometimes the bane of the poor that they do not work, and it is often equally the bane of the rich that they have nothing to do. The idle, both rich and poor, carry a weight of reproach that not all ought to bear. The disposition and the ability to labor are both the result of education; and why should the uneducated be better able to labor than to read Greek and Latin? Surely only that there are more teachers in one department than in the others; but a good teacher of labor may be as uncommon as a good teacher of Latin or Greek. There is a false, vicious, unmanly pride, which leads our youth of both sexes to shun labor; and it is the business of the true teacher to extirpate this growth of a diseased civilization. And we could have no faith in this school, if it were not a school of industry as well as of morality,—a school in which the divine law of labor is to be observed equally with the laws of men. Industry is near to all the virtues. In this era every branch of labor is an art, and sometimes it is necessary for the laborer to be both an artist and a scientific person. How great, then, the misfortune of those, whether rich or poor, who are uninstructed in the business of life! We should hardly know what judgment to pass upon a man of wealth who should entirely neglect the education of his children in schools; but the common indifference to industrial learning is not less reprehensible. Labor should be systematic; not constant, indeed, but always to be reckoned as the great business of life, never to be avoided, never to cease.

Labor gives us a better knowledge of the fulness, magnificence and glory, of the divine blessing of creation. This lesson may be learned by the farmer in the wonderful growth of vegetation; by the artist, in the powers of invention and taste of the human mind and soul; by the man of science, in the beauty of an insect or the order of a universe. The vision of the idle is limited. The ability to see may be improved by education as much as the ability to read, remember, or converse. With many people, not seeing is a habit. Near-sighted persons are generally those who declined to look at distant objects; and so nature, true to the most perfect rules of economy, refused to keep in order faculties that were entirely neglected. The laborer's recompense is not money, nor the accumulation of worldly goods chiefly; but it is in his increased ability to observe, appreciate, and enjoy the world, with its beauties and blessings. Nor is labor, the penalty for sin, a punishment merely, but a divine means of reformation. It is, therefore, a moral discipline that all should submit to; and especially is it a means by which the youth here are to be prepared for the duties of life. But industry is not only near to all the virtues; it is itself a virtue, as idleness is a vice. The word labor is, of course, used in the broadest signification. Labor is any honest employment, or use of the head or hands, which brings good to ourselves, and consequently, though indirectly, brings good to our fellow-men.

The state has now furnished a home, reproduced, as far as practicable, the family relation, and provided for a class of neglected and exposed girls the means of mental, industrial, moral, and religious culture. The plan appears well; but its practical value depends upon the fidelity of its execution by the superintendent, matrons and assistants. I venture to predict in advance, that the degree of success is mainly within their control. This is a school, they are the teachers; and they must bend to the rule which all true teachers willingly accept.

The teacher must be what he would have his pupils become. This was the standard of the great Teacher; this is the aim of all who desire to make education a matter of reality and life, and not merely a knowledge of signs and forms. Here will be needed a spirit and principle of devotion which will be fruitful in humility, patience, earnestness, energy, good words and works for all. Here must be strictness, possibly sternness of discipline; but this is not incompatible with the qualities mentioned. It is a principle at Mettray to combine unbounded personal kindness with a rigid exclusion of personal indulgence.

This principle produces good results that are two-fold in their influence. First, personal kindness in the teacher induces a reciprocal quality in the pupils. The habit of personal kindness, proceeding from right feelings, is a potent element of good in the family, the school, and the prison. Indeed, it is an element of good citizenship; and no one destitute of this quality ought to be intrusted with the education of children, or the punishment and reformation of criminals.

Secondly, the rigid exclusion of personal indulgence trains the inmates in the virtue of self-control. And may it not be forgotten that all apparent reformation must be hedged by this cardinal virtue of practical life! Otherwise the best-formed expectations will fail; the highest hopes will be disappointed; and the life of these teachers, and the promise of the youth who may be gathered here, will be like the sun and the winds upon the desert, which bring neither refreshing showers nor fruitful harvests. Every form of labor requires faith. This labor requires faith in yourselves, and faith in others;—faith in yourselves, as teachers here, based upon your own knowledge of what you are and are to do; and faith in others upon the divine declaration that God breathed into man the breath of life, and he became a living soul,—not merely as the previous creations, possessed of animal life; but as a sentient, intellectual, and moral being, capable of a progressive, immortal existence.

"'Tis nature's law

That none, the meanest of created things,

Should exist

Divorced from good,—a spirit and pulse of good,

A life and soul, to every mode of being

Inseparably linked.

See, then, your only conflict is with men;

And your sole strife is to defend and teach

The unillumined, who, without such care,

Must dwindle."

And always, as in the beginning, the reliance of this school is upon the people of the commonwealth, whose voice has spoken into existence another instrumentality to give eyes to the blind, ears to the deaf, a heart for the work of this life, and a hope for an hereafter, to those who from neglect and vicious example would soon pass the period of reformation. But may the people always bear in mind the indisputable truth, that schools for the criminal and the exposed yield not their perfect fruits in a day or a year! They must, if they will know whether the seed here planted produces a harvest, wait for the birth and growth of one generation, the decay and death of another. Yet these years of delay will not be years of uncertainty. The public faith will be strengthened continually by cases of reformation, usefulness, and virtue. But, whether these cases be few or many, let no one despond. The career of the criminal is, often in money and always in influence, the heaviest burden which an individual can impose upon society.

This is a school for girls; and we may properly appeal to the women of Massachusetts to do their duty to this institution, and to the cause it represents. We can already see the second stage in the existence of many of those who are to be sent here; and there is good reason to fear that the relation of mistress and servant among us is in some degree destitute of those moral qualities that make the house a home for all who dwell beneath its roof. But, whether this fear be the voice of truth or the suggestion of prejudice, that woman shall not be held blameless, who, under the influence of indolence, pride, fashion, or avarice, shall neglect, abuse, or oppress, the humblest of her sex who goes forth from these walls into the broad and dangerous path of life. But this day shall not leave the impression that they who are most interested in the elevation and refinement of female character are indifferent to the means employed, and the results which are to wait on them.

The greatest delineator of human character in this age says, as the images of neglected children pass before his vision:

"There is not one of them—not one—but sows a harvest mankind must reap. From every seed of evil in this boy a field of ruin is grown that shall be gathered in, and garnered up, and sown again in many places in the world, until regions are over-spread with wickedness enough to raise the waters of another deluge. Open and unpunished murder in a city's streets would be less guilty in its daily toleration than one such spectacle as this. There is not a father, by whose side, in his daily or nightly walk, these creatures pass; there is not a mother among all the ranks of loving mothers in this land; there is no one risen from the state of childhood, but shall be responsible, in his or her degree, for this enormity. There is not a country throughout the earth on which it would not bring a curse. There is no religion upon earth that it would not deny; there is no people on earth that it would not put to shame."

This institution, then, in the true relation of things, is not the glory of the state, but its shame. It speaks of families, of schools, of the church, of the state, not yet educated to the discharge of their respective duties in the right way. But it is the glory of the state as a visible effort to correct evils, atone for neglects, and compensate for wrongs. It comes to do, in part at least, what the family, the school, the press, the library, the Sabbath, have nest yet perfectly accomplished. As these agencies partially failed, so will this; but, as the law of progress exists for all, because perfection with us is unattainable, we may reasonably have faith in human improvement, and trust that the life of each succeeding generation shall unite, in ever-increasing proportions, the innocence of childhood with the wisdom of age.

ELEMENTARY TRAINING IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS.

[Extract from the Twenty-Second Annual Report of the Secretary of the Massachusetts Board of Education.]

We are still sadly defective in methods of education. Until recently teaching was almost an unknown art; and we are at present struggling against ignorance without any well-defined plan, and attempting to develop and build up the immortal character of children, without a philosophical and generally accepted theory of the nature of the human mind. There are complaints that the duties and exactions of the schools injure the health and impair the constitutions of pupils; that the progress in intellectual attainments is not always what it should be; that the training given is sometimes determined by the wishes of committees against the better judgment of competent teachers; that the text-books are defective; that the studies in the common schools are too numerous; that the elements are consequently neglected; and that, in fine, too much thought is bestowed upon exhibitions and contests for public prizes, to the injury of good learning, and of individual and general character. For these complaints there is some foundation; but care should be exercised lest incidental and necessary evils become, in the public estimation, great wrongs, and exceptional cases the evidence of general facts.

It is to some extent true that the duties and exactions of the schools seriously test the health of pupils; but it is, as I believe, more generally true that many pupils are physically unable to meet the ordinary and proper duties of the school-room. School life, as usually conducted, is physically injurious, and our best efforts thus far have been limited to the dissemination of elementary knowledge of physiology as a science, and to an acquaintance with a limited number of important physiological facts. Yet even here little has been accomplished in comparison with what may be done. In this department there is much instruction given that has no practical value, and children are often permitted to live in daily and uniform neglect of the most essential truths of science and the facts of human experience. Neither physiology nor hygiene can be of much value in the schools, as a study, unless there is an application of what is taught. Great proficiency cannot be made in these branches in the brief period of school life; but a competent teacher may induce the pupils to put in practice the lessons that are applicable to childhood and youth. If, however, as is sometimes the case, pupils are undermining the physical constitution in their efforts to know how they are made, the loss is, unquestionably, more than the gain. Physical health and growth depend, first, upon opportunity; and hence it happens that, where physical life is most defective, there the greatest difficulties in the way of its improvement are found. Boys born in the country, living upon farms, accustomed continually to outdoor labors and sports, walking a mile or more every day to school, have but little use, in their own persons, for the science or facts of physiology; and it is a very rare thing, where such conditions have existed, that any teacher is able to exact an amount of intellectual service that proves in any perceptible degree injurious.

But these opportunities are not so generally enjoyed by girls, and the mass of children in cities are wholly deprived of them. In the country, and even in villages and towns of considerable size, there is no excuse, better than ignorance or indifference, for the lack of judicious and efficient physical training of children and youth of both sexes. But ignorance and indifference are facts; and, while and where they exist, they are prejudicial to the growth of mind and body. The age at which children should be admitted to school has not been ascertained, nor can a satisfactory rule upon this point ever be laid down. If children are not in schools, they are yet subject to influences that are formative of character. When proper government and methods of education exist at home, the presence of the child in school at an early age is not desirable. Even when education at home is not methodical, it may be continued until the child is seven or even eight years of age, if it is at once moral, intelligent, and controlling. It is not, however, wise to expect a child who is infirm physically to perform the labors imposed by the necessary and proper regulations of school. When children enjoy good health, and are not blessed with suitable training at home, they may be introduced to the school, at the age of five years, with positive advantage to themselves and to society.

When the child is a member of the school, what shall be done with him? He must first be taught to take an interest in the exercises by making the exercises interesting to him. That the transition from home to the school may be easy, he should first occupy himself with those topics and studies that are presented to the eye and to the ear, and may be mastered, so as to produce the sensation that follows achievement with only a moderate use of the reasoning and reflective faculties. Among these are reading, writing, music, and drawing. This is also the time when object lessons may be given with great advantage. The forms and names of geometrical solids may be taught. Exercises may be introduced tending to develop those powers by which we comprehend the qualities of color, size, density, form, and weight. Important moral truths may be presented with the aid of suitable illustrations. In every school the teacher and text-books may be considered a positive quality which should balance the negative power of the school itself. In primary schools text-books have but little value, and the chief reliance is, therefore, upon the teacher. Instruction must be mainly oral; hence the mind of the teacher should be well furnished, and her capacities chastened by considerable experience. As the pupils are unable to study, the teacher must lead in all their exercises, and find profitable employment for the children, or they will give themselves up to play or to stupid listlessness. Of these alternatives, the latter is more objectionable than the former.

It is, of course, not often possible for a teacher to occupy herself six hours a day with a single class in a primary school, especially if she confines her attention to the studies enumerated. In many schools, of various grades, gymnastic exercises have been introduced with marked advantage. There are many such exercises which do not need apparatus, and in which the teacher can properly lead.

These furnish a healthful variety to the studies usually pursued, and they prepare the pupils to receive appropriate instruction in sitting, standing, and in the modulation and use of the voice. Indeed, gymnastic exercises are indispensable aids to proper training in reading, which, as an art of a high order, is immediately dependent upon position, habits of breathing, the consequent power of voice, and expressiveness of tone. I am fully satisfied that much more may be done in the early period of school life than is usually accomplished. In the district mixed schools the primary pupils receive but little attention, and they are not infrequently occupied from one to three years in obtaining an imperfect knowledge of the alphabet. Usually much better results are attained by the combined agency of the home and the school, but there is an average loss of one-fourth of the time employed in teaching and learning the elements of our language.

Mr. Philbrick, Superintendent of Public Schools in Boston, has taught and trained a class of fifty primary-school pupils with a degree of success which fully sustains the statement of the average waste in schools generally. Twenty-two lessons of a half-hour each were given; and in this brief period of time the class, with a few exceptions, were so well advanced that they could write the alphabet in capital and script hand, give the elementary sounds of the letters, produce and name the Arabic characters and the common geometrical figures found upon Holbrook's slates. I saw a girl, five and a half years of age, write the alphabet without delay in script hand, in a manner that would have been creditable to a pupil in a grammar school.

I present Mr. Philbrick's own account of his mode of proceeding, in an extract from his third quarterly report to the school committee of the city of Boston.

"The regulations relating to the primary schools require every scholar to be provided with a slate, and to employ the time not otherwise occupied in drawing or writing words from their spelling lessons, on their slates, in a plain script hand. It is further stated, in the same connection, that the teachers are expected to take special pains to teach the first class to write—not print—all the letters of the alphabet on slates.

"The language of this requirement seems to imply that the classes below the first are to draw and write words, in a plain script hand, without any special pains to teach them, and that by such occupation they were to be kept from idleness. As I saw neither of these objects accomplished in any primary school, I thought it worth while to satisfy myself, by actual experiment, what can and ought to be done, in the use of the slate and blackboard, in teaching writing and drawing in primary schools. To accomplish this object, I have given a course of lessons in a graded or classified school of the third class. The number of pupils instructed in the class was about fifty. The materials of the school are rather below the average; about twenty of the pupils being of that description usually found in schools for special instruction. The school-room is furnished, as every primary school-room should be, with stationary chairs and desks, and Holbrook's primary slates. Twenty-two lessons, of from thirty to forty minutes each, were given, about one-third of the time being devoted to drawing, and two-thirds to writing. As to the method pursued, the main points were, to present but a single element at a time; to illustrate on the blackboard defects and excellences in execution; frequent review of the ground passed over, especially in the first steps of the course; a vigorous exercise of all the mental faculties requisite for the performance of the task; and a desire for improvement, encouraged and stimulated by the best and strongest available motives; the greater part of the time being bestowed upon the dull and backward pupils.

"The result has exceeded my expectations. About three-fourths of the number taught can draw most of the simple mathematical lines and figures, given as copies on the slates used, with tolerable accuracy, and write all the letters of the alphabet in a fair script hand. This experiment satisfies me that, with the proper facilities, the three upper classes in graded primary schools can be taught to write the letters of the alphabet in a plain script hand, and even to join them into words, without any material hindrance to the other required studies; and, moreover, that the great remedy for the complaint of want of time, in these schools, is the increase of skill in the art of teaching."

It is well known that in this country and in Europe methods of teaching the alphabet have been introduced which materially diminish the labor of teachers, and lessen the drudgery to which children are usually subjected. The alphabet is taught as an object lesson. The object is usually an animal, plant, or flower. More frequently the first. The mind of the child is awakened either by the presence of the animal, or by a brief but vivid description of its characteristics. The children are first required to pronounce properly the name of the animal. Here is an opportunity for training in the use of the voice, and in the art of breathing, with which the general health, as well as the vocal power, is intimately connected. The word which is the name of the animal is analyzed into its elementary sounds. It may then be reconstructed without the aid of visible signs, either written or printed. Next the teacher produces the signs which stand for the several sounds, and gives their names. The letters are presented in any way that suits the teacher. There may be no better method than to produce them upon the blackboard, as this course encourages the pupils to draw them upon their slates, and thus they are at once, and without formal preliminaries, engaged in writing.

An outline of the animal may be drawn upon the blackboard, which the pupils will eagerly copy; and though this exercise may not be valuable in a high degree, as preparation for the systematic study of drawing, yet it trains the perceptive and reflective faculties in a manner that is pleasant to the great majority of children. It is also in the power of the teacher, at any point in the exercises, and with reference both to variety and usefulness, to give the most apparent facts, which to children are the most interesting facts, in the natural history of the animal. This plan contemplates instruction in pronunciation in connection with exercises in breathing, in the elementary sounds of words both consonant and vowel, in the names of letters, in writing and drawing, to all of which may be added something of natural history. It is of course to be understood that such exercises would be extended over many lessons, be subject to frequent reviews, and valuable in proportion to the teacher's ability to interest children. The outline given is suggestive, merely, and it is not presented as a plan of a model course; but enough has been done and is doing in this department to warrant increased attention, and to justify the belief that a degree of progress will soon be made in teaching the elements that will mark the epoch as a revolution in educational affairs. It is to be observed that the system indicated requires a high order of teaching talent. Only thorough professional culture, or long and careful experience, will meet the claims of such a course. It is quite plain, however, that no advantage would arise from keeping pupils in school six hours each day; and that, regarding only the intellectual advancement of the child during the elementary course, his presence might be reduced to two hours, or possibly in some cases to one: provided, always, that he could enjoy, with his class associates, the undivided attention of the teacher. In this view of the subject, it would be possible, where the primary schools are graded, as in portions of the city of Boston, for one teacher to take charge of two classes or schools, each for an hour in the forenoon and an hour in the afternoon. This arrangement would apply only to the younger pupils; yet I am aware that parents and the public would be solicitous concerning the manner of employing the time that would remain. In the cities this question is one of magnitude, and there are strong reasons for declining any proposition to reduce the school day full one-half, which does hot provide occupation for the children during the remainder of the time. It is only in connection with such a proposition that projects for gymnastic training are practicable. When children are employed six hours in school, it is not easy to find time for a course of systematic physical education; and physical education, to be productive of appreciable advantages, must be systematic. When left to children and youth, or to the care of parents, very little will be accomplished. Children will participate in the customary sports, and perform the allotted labors; but in cities these sports and labors are inadequate even for boys, and in country, as well as city, girls are often the victims of neglect in this respect. Availing ourselves, then, of the light shed by recent experience upon the subject of primary instruction, it seems possible to diminish the length of the school day with a gain rather than a loss of educational power. This change may be followed by the establishment, in cities and large towns, of public gymnasiums, where teachers answering in moral qualifications to the requisitions of the laws shall be employed, and where each child, for one, two, or three years, shall receive discreet and careful, but vigorous physical training. After a few years thus passed in corresponding and healthful development of the mind and body, the pupil is prepared for admission to the advanced schools, where he can submit, with perfect safety, to greater mental requirements even than are now made. The school, as at present constituted, cannot do much for physical education; and it must, as a necessity and a duty, graduate its demands to the physical as well as the intellectual abilities of its pupils. But I am satisfied that it is occasionally made to bear a weight of reproach that ought to be laid upon the customs and habits of domestic, social and general life.

Assuming that the principal work of the primary schools, after moral and physical culture, should be to give instruction in reading, spelling, writing, music and drawing, it is just to say that special attention should be bestowed upon the two branches first named. So imperfectly is reading sometimes taught, that pupils are found in advanced classes, and in advanced schools, whose progress in other branches is retarded by their inability to read the language fluently and intelligently. When children are well educated in reading, they find profitable employment; and they are, of course, by the knowledge of language acquired, able to comprehend, with greater facility, every study to which they are called.

Pupils often appear dull in grammar, geography and arithmetic, merely because they are poor readers. A child is not qualified to use a text-book of any science until he is able to read with facility, as we are accustomed to speak, in groups of words. This ability he cannot acquire without a great deal of practice. If phonetic spelling is commenced with the alphabet, he will be accurately trained in that art also. It is certain that reading, writing and spelling, have been neglected in our schools generally.

If there is to be a reform, it must be commenced, and in a considerable degree accomplished, in the primary schools. These studies will be taught afterwards; but the grammar and high schools can never compensate for any defect permitted, or any wrong done, in the primary schools. Reading is first mechanical, and then intellectual and emotional. In the primary schools attention is first given to mechanical training, while the intellectual and emotional culture is necessarily in a degree postponed. When the first part of the work is thoroughly done, there is no ground for complaint, and we may look to the teachers of advanced classes and schools for the proper performance of the remaining duty. The ability to spell arbitrarily, either in writing or orally, and the ability to read mechanically,—that is, the ability to seize the words readily, and utter them fluently and accurately,—must be acquired by much spelling and much reading.

This work belongs to the early years of school-life; and, if it can be faithfully performed, the introduction of text-books in grammar, geography and arithmetic, may be wisely postponed. But it is a sad condition of things, which we are often compelled to contemplate, when a pupil, who might have become a respectable reader had the elementary training been careful, accurate and long-continued, is introduced to an advanced class, and there struggles against obstacles which he cannot comprehend, and which the teacher cannot remove, and finally leaves the school without the ability to read in a manner intelligible to himself, or satisfactory to others. It is the appropriate work of primary schools, and of the teachers of primary classes in district schools, to develop and chasten the moral powers of children, to train them in those habits and practices that are favorable to health and life, whether anything is known of physiology as a science or not, and to give the best culture possible to the eye, the ear, the hand and the voice. This plan is comprehensive enough for any teacher, and it will be found sufficient for any pupil less than ten years of age. Nor am I speaking of that culture which is merely preparatory for the life of the artist, but of that practical training which will enable the subject of it so to use his powers as to render his life valuable to himself, and valuable to the world. There will be, in the exercises comprehended by this outline, sufficient mental discipline. It will, of course, be chiefly incidental, and it may well be doubted whether studies that are merely disciplinary should ever be introduced into our schools. There are useful occupations for pupils that, at the same time, tax and test the mind sufficiently. The plan indicated does not exclude grammar, geography and mental arithmetic, but text-books will not at first be needed. Grammar should be taught by conversation, and in connection with the exercises in reading. Grammar is the appreciation of the power of the words of the language in any given relations to each other, and a knowledge of grammar is essential to the ability to speak, read and write properly. Therefore, grammatical rules and definitions are, or should be, deduced from the language. Hence children should be first trained to speak with accuracy, so that habit shall be on the side of taste and science; next the offices which words perform in simple sentences should be illustrated and made clear; And thus far without text-books; when, finally, with their help, the pupils in the higher schools may acquire a knowledge of the science, and, at once, as the result of previous training, discern the reason for each rule and definition. The study of grammar requires some use of mental power; but when it is presented to pupils by the aid of an object which, in itself and in what it does, illustrates the subject and the predicate of a sentence, the work of comprehending the offices which words perform is rendered comparatively easy. Having the skeleton thus furnished, and with the eyes and minds of the pupils fixed upon an object that possesses known and appreciable powers and qualities, it is not difficult for the teacher to construct a sentence that shall contain words of several parts of speech, all understood, because the grammatical office of each was seen even before the word itself was used. This work may be commenced when the child is young, and very satisfactory results ought to be secured as soon as the pupil is in other respects qualified to enter a grammar school. The pupil should be trained in reading as an art; that is, with the purpose of expressing whatever is intellectual and emotional in the text. Satisfactory results cannot at first be secured by much reading; it seems wiser for the teacher to select an extract, paragraph, or single sentence only, and drill a pupil or a class until the meaning of the author is comprehended, and accurately or even artistically expressed. This can be done only when the teacher reads the passage again and again in the best manner possible. The contrary practice of reading volumes of extracts from the writings of the most gifted men of ancient and modern times, without preparation by the pupil, without example, explanation, correction, or questionings, by the teacher, cannot be too strongly condemned. The time will come when these selections may be read with profit; but it is better to read something well than to read a great deal; or there should be at least thorough drill in connection with every exercise, until the pupils have attained some degree of perfection. It may not be best to confine advanced pupils to the exercises in the text-books. If such pupils are invited occasionally to make selections from their entire range of reading, the teacher will have an opportunity to correct whatever is vicious in taste; and the pupil making the selection will be compelled to read in such a manner that those who listen can understand, which is not always the case when the language is addressed to the eye as well as to the ear.

The introduction of Colburn's Intellectual Arithmetic was an epoch in the science. It wrought a radical change in the ability of the people to apply the power of numbers to the practical business of life. Its excellence does not consist in rules and illustrations by which examples and problems are easily solved, but in leading the mind of the pupil into natural and apparent processes of reasoning, by which he is enabled to comprehend a proposition as an independent fact. Herein is a mental discipline of great value, not only in the sciences, but in the daily affairs of men of all classes and conditions. It is to be feared that equally satisfactory results have not been attained in what is called written arithmetic. This partial failure deserves consideration. The first cause may be found in an erroneous opinion concerning the difference between mental and written arithmetic. Written arithmetic is mental arithmetic merely, with a record at given stages of the process of what at that point is accomplished. But, as written arithmetic tends to lessen the power of the pupil for the performance of those operations that are purely mental, he should be subjected, each day, to a searching and rapid drill in mental arithmetic also. This neglect on the part of teachers explains the singular fact that pupils, well trained in mental arithmetic, after attending to written arithmetic for three or six months, appear to have lost rather than gained in their knowledge of the science as a whole.

The second cause of failure may be found in the fact that rules, processes and simple methods of solution, contained in the books, are substituted for the power of comprehension by the pupil. He should be trained to seize an example mentally, whether the slate is to be used or not, and hold it until he can determine by what process the solution is to be wrought. Nor is it a serious objection that he may not at first avail himself of the easiest method. The difference between methods or ways is altogether a subordinate consideration. There may be many ways of reaching a truth, but no one of them is as important as the truth itself. The text-books should contain all the facts needed for the comprehension and the solution of the examples given; the teacher should furnish explanations and other aids, as they are needed; but the practice of adopting a process and following it to an apparently satisfactory conclusion, without comprehending the problem itself, is a serious educational evil, and it exerts a permanent pernicious influence.

The remarks I have now made upon methods of teaching, which may seem to have been offered in a spirit of severe criticism, should be qualified and relieved by the statement that our teachers are as well educated as any in the country, and that they are yearly making progress in their profession. Indeed, I am encouraged to suggest that better things are possible, by the consideration that many instances of distinguished success in teaching the alphabet, reading and grammar, are known to me; and that teachers are themselves aware that the work is, upon the whole, inadequately performed. If, as is generally conceded, the highest order of teaching talent is required in the primary schools, then that talent should be sought out by committees; the persons possessing it should enjoy the best means of preparation; they should receive the highest rewards, both in money and public consideration, and they should be induced to labor, without change or interruption, in the same schools and the same people.

THE RELATIVE MERITS OF PUBLIC HIGH SCHOOLS AND ENDOWED ACADEMIES.

[Remarks before the American Institute of Instruction, at Manchester, N. H.]

Indebted to my friend on the other side, and to you, sir, and this audience, for inviting me to take a position on this floor, I am still without any special preparation to discuss the subject. I have thought upon it, because any one, however humbly connected with free schools in this country, must have done so. And especially just now, when, in the educational journal of Massachusetts, a discussion has been conducted between one of its editors and Mr. Gulliver, the able originator of a school in Norwich, Ct., and the advocate of the system of school government established there. And, therefore, every one who has had his eyes open must have seen that here is a great contest, and that underlying it is a principle which is important to society.

The distinguishing difference between the advocates of endowed schools and of free schools is this: those who advocate the system of endowed academies go back in their arguments to one foundation, which is, that in education of the higher grades the great mass of the people are not to be trusted. And those who advocate a system of free education in high schools put the matter where we have put the rights of property and liberty, where we put the institutions of law and religion—upon the public judgment. And we will stand there. If the public will not maintain institutions of learning, then, I say, let institutions of learning go down. If I belong to a state which cannot be moved from its extremities to its centre, and from its centre to its extremities, for the maintenance of a system of public instruction, then, in that respect, I disown that state; and if there be one state in this Union whose people cannot be aroused to maintain a system of public instruction, then they are false to the great leading idea of American principles, and of civil, political, and religious liberty.

It is easy to enumerate the advantages of a system of public education, and the evils—I say evils—of endowed academies, whether free or charging payment for tuition. Endowed academies are not, in all respects, under all circumstances, and everywhere, to be condemned. In discussing this subject, it may be well for me to state the view that I have of the proper position of endowed academies. They have a place in the educational wants of this age. This is especially true of academies of the highest rank, which furnish an elevated and extended course of instruction. To such I make no objection, but I would honor and encourage them. Yet I regard private schools, which do the work usually done in public schools, as temporary, their necessity as ephemeral, and I think that under a proper public sentiment they will soon pass away. They cannot stand,—such has been the experience in Massachusetts,—they cannot stand by the side of a good system of public education. Yet where the population is sparse, where there is not property sufficient to enable the people to establish a high school, then an endowed school may properly come in to make up the deficiency, to supply the means of education to which the public wealth, at the present moment, is unequal. Endowed institutions very properly, also, give a professional education to the people. At this moment we cannot look to the public to give that education which is purely professional. But what we do look to the public for is this: to furnish the means of education to the children of the whole people, without any reference to social, pecuniary, political, or religious distinctions, so that every person may have a preliminary education sufficient for the ordinary business of life.

It is said that the means of education are better in an endowed academy, or in an endowed free school, than they can be in a public school. What is meant by means of education? I understand that, first and chiefly, as extraneous means of education, we must look to a correct public sentiment, which shall animate and influence the teacher, which shall give direction to the school, which shall furnish the necessary public funds. An endowed free academy can have none of these things permanently. Take, for example, the free school established at Norwich by the liberality of thirty or forty gentlemen, who contributed ninety thousand dollars. What security is there that fifty years hence, when the educational wants of the people shall be changed, when the population of Norwich shall be double or treble what it is now, when science shall make greater demands, when these forty contributors shall have passed away, this institution will answer the wants of that generation? According to what we know of the history of this country, it will be entirely inadequate; and, though none of us may live to see the prediction fulfilled or falsified, I do not hesitate to say that the school will ultimately prove a failure, because it is founded in a mistake.

Then look and see what would have been the state of things if there had been public spirit invoked to establish a public high school, and if the means for its support had been raised by taxation of all the people, so that the system of education would have expanded according to the growth of the city, and year by year would have accommodated itself to the public wants and public zeal in the cause. Though these means seem now to be ample, they will by and by be found too limited. The school at Norwich is encumbered with regulations; and so every endowed institution is likely to be, because the right of a man to appropriate his property to a particular object carries with it, in the principles of common law, and in the administration of the law, in all free governments, the right to declare, to a certain extent, how that property shall be applied. Rules have been established—very proper and judicious rules for to-day. But who knows that a hundred years hence they will be proper or acceptable at all? They have also established a board of trustees, ultimately to be reduced to twenty-five. These trustees have power to perpetuate themselves. Who does not see that you have severed this institution from the public sentiment of the city of Norwich, and that ultimately that city will seek for itself what it needs; and that, a hundred years hence, it will not consent to live, in the civilization of that time, under the regulations which forty men have now established, however wise the regulations may at the present moment be?

One hundred and fifty years ago, Thomas Hollis, of London, made a bequest to the university at Cambridge, with a provision that on every Thursday a professor should sit in his chair to answer questions in polemic theology. All well enough then; but the public sentiment of to-day will not carry it out.

So it may be with the school at Norwich a hundred years hence. The man or state that sacrifices the living public judgment to the opinion of a dead man, or a dead generation, makes a great mistake. We should never substitute, beyond the power of revisal, the opinion of a past generation for the opinion of a living generation. I trust to the living men of to-day as to what is necessary to meet our existing wants, rather than to the wisest men who lived in Greece or Rome. And, if I would not trust the wise men of Greece and Rome, I do not know why the people, a hundred years hence, should trust the wise men of our own time.

And then look further, and see how, under a system of public instruction, you can build up, from year to year, in the growth of the child, a system according to his wants. Private instruction cannot do this. What do we do where we have a correct system? A child goes into a primary school. He is not to go out when he attains a certain age. He might as well go out when he is of a certain height; there would be as much merit in one case as in the other. But he is advanced when he has made adequate attainments. Who does not see that the child is incited and encouraged and stimulated by every sentiment to which you should appeal? And, then, when he has gone up to the grammar school, we say to him, "You are to go into the high school when you have made certain attainments." And who is to judge of these attainments? A committee appointed by the people, over whom the people have some ultimate control. And in that control they have security for two things: first, that the committee shall not be suspected of partiality; and secondly, that they shall not be actually guilty of partiality. In the same manner, there is security for the proper connection between the high school and the schools below. But in the school at Norwich—of which I speak because it is now prominent—you have a board of twenty-five men, irresponsible to the people. They select a committee of nine; that committee determines what candidates shall be transferred from the grammar schools to the high school. May there not be suspicion of partiality? If a boy or girl is rejected, you look for some social, political, or religious influence which has caused the rejection, and the parent and child complain. Here is a great evil; for the real and apparent justice of the examination and decision by which pupils are transferred from one school to another is vital to the success of the system.

There is another advantage in the system of public high schools, which I imagine the people do not always at first appreciate. It is, that the private school, with the same teachers, the same apparatus, and the same means, cannot give the education which may be, and usually is, furnished in the public schools. This statement may seem to require some considerable support. We must look at facts as they are. Some people are poor; I am sorry for them. Some people are rich, and I congratulate them upon their good fortune. But it is not so much of a benefit, after all, as many think. It is worth something in this world, no doubt, to be rich; but what is the result of that condition upon the family first, the school afterwards, and society finally? It is, that some learn the lesson of life a little earlier than others; and that lesson is the lesson of self-reliance, which is worth more than—I will not say a knowledge of the English language—but worth more than Latin or Greek. If the great lesson of self-reliance is to be learned, who is more likely to acquire it early,—the child of the poor, or the child of the rich; the child who has most done for him, or the child who is under the necessity of doing most for himself? Plainly, the latter. Now, while a system of public instruction in itself cannot be magnified in its beneficial influences to the poor and to the children of the poor, it is equally beneficial to the rich in the facility it affords for the instruction of their children. Is it not worth something to the rich man, who cannot, from the circumstances of the case, teach self-reliance around the family hearth, to send his child to school to learn this lesson with other children, that he may be stimulated, that he may be provoked to exertions which he would not otherwise have made? For, be it remembered that in our schools public sentiment is as well marked as in a college, or a town, or a nation; that it moves forward in the same way. And the great object of a teacher should be to create a public sentiment in favor of virtue. There should be some pioneers in favor of forming a correct public sentiment; and when it is formed it moves on irresistibly. It is like the river made up of drops from the mountain side, moving on with more and more power, until everything in its waters is carried to the destined end.

So in a public school. And it is worth much to the man of wealth that there may be, near his own door, an institution to which he may send his children, and under the influence of which they may be carried forward. For, depend upon it, after all we say about schools and institutions of learning, it is nevertheless true of education, as a statesman has said of the government, that the people look to the school for too much. It is not, after all, a great deal that the child gets there; but, if he only gets the ability to acquire more than he has, the schools accomplish something. If you give a child a little knowledge of geography or arithmetic, and have not developed the power to accomplish something for himself, he comes to but little in the world. But put him into the school,—the primary, grammar, and high school, where he must learn for himself,—and he will be fitted for the world of life into which he is to enter.

You will see in this statement that, with the same parties, the same means of education, the same teachers, the public schools will accomplish more than private schools.

I find everywhere, and especially in the able address of Mr. Gulliver, to which I have referred, that the public schools are treated as of questionable morality, and it is implied that something would be gained by removing certain children from the influence of these schools. If I were speaking from another point of view, very likely I should feel bound to hold up the evils and defects which actually exist in public schools; but when I consider them in contrast with endowed and private schools, I do not hesitate to say that the public schools compare favorably; and, as the work of education goes on, the comparison will be more and more to their advantage. Why? I know something of the private institutions in Massachusetts; and there are boys in them who have left the public schools because they have fallen in their classes, and the public interest would not justify their continuance in the schools. It was always true that private schools did not represent the world exactly as it was. It is worth everything to a boy or girl, man or woman, to look the world in the face as it is.

Therefore, the public school, when it represents the world as it is, represents the facts of life. The private school never has done and never will do this; and as time goes on, it will be less and less a true representative of the world. From this point of view, it seems to be a mistake on the part of parents to exclude their children from the world. Is it not better that the child should learn something of society, even of its evils, when under your influence, and when you can control him by your counsel and example, than to permit him finally to go out, as you must when his majority comes, perhaps to be seduced in a moment, as it were, from his allegiance to virtue? Virtue is not exclusion from the presence of vice; but it is resistance to vice in its presence. And it is the duty of parents to provide safeguards for the support of their children against these temptations. When Cicero was called on to defend Muræna against the slander that, as he had lived in Asia, he had been guilty of certain crimes, and when the testimony failed to substantiate the charge, the orator said, "And if Asia does carry with it a suspicion of luxury, surely it is a praiseworthy thing, not never to have seen Asia, but to have lived temperately in Asia." And we have yet higher authority. It is not the glory of Christ, or of Christianity, that its Divine Author was without temptation, but that, being tempted, he was without sin. This is the great lesson of the day.

The duty of the public is to provide means for the education of all. To do that, we need the political, social, and moral power of all, to sustain teachers and institutions of learning; and, endowed or free schools, depending upon the contributions of individuals, can never, in a free country, be raised to the character of a system. If you rob the public schools of the influence of our public-spirited men, if they take away a portion of their pupils from them, our system is impaired. It must stand as a whole, educating the entire people, and looking to all for support, or it cannot be permanently maintained.

THE HIGH SCHOOL SYSTEM.

[An Address delivered at the Dedication of the Powers Institute, Bernardston.]

There cannot be a more gratifying spectacle than the universal homage offered to education and to the young. Childhood is attractive in itself; and it is peculiarly an object of solicitude for its promises concerning the future. Hence the labors of philanthropists, reformers, and Christians, as well as of teachers, are devoted to the culture and improvement of the rising generation, as the chief security possible for the prevalence of better ideas in the state and in the world.

Massachusetts has been peculiarly favored in the means of education; and we ought ever to recognize the divine influence in the wisdom which led our fathers to lay the foundations of a system that contemplated the education of the whole people. The power of this great idea, universal education, has not been limited to Massachusetts; the states of the West, the states of the South, receive it as the basis of a wise public policy; and had our ancestors contributed nothing else to the glory of the republic, they would yet be entitled to the distinguished consideration of every age and people. The vigor of our culture and the hardihood of our institutions are more manifest out of Massachusetts than in it. The immigrant in his new home in the great valley of prairies, on the northern shores of the American lakes, in Oregon, California, or the islands of the Pacific, invokes the spirit of New England in the establishment of a free church and a free school. And in the spirit and discipline of New England, the thoughts of her sons are turned homeward in adversity, seeking consolation at the sources of early, vigorous, and happy life; or, in prosperity, that they may offer, in gratitude to man and to God, some tribute, always noble, however humble, to the principles and institutions that first formed their characters, and then controlled their destiny; or, in old age, the wanderer, like Jacob in Egypt, with his blessing upon the tribes and families of men, says, "I am to be gathered unto my people; bury me with my fathers." This occasion and its honors are due to the memory of him whose name this institution bears; and his last will and testament is an illustration, or rather the cause, of these prefatory remarks. As the reasonably extended and eminently prosperous life of your wise benefactor approached its close, he, in the principles of Old England and of New England, ordered and directed the payment of all his just debts; and then, secondly, expressed the wish, "if practicable, to be buried by the side of his parents in the cemetery at Bernardston." First justice, and then affection for parents, kindred, and home, animated the vital, never-dying soul, as the life of the body ebbed and flowed, and flowed and ebbed, to flow no more. For every good the ancients imagined and named a divinity; and there is in every good something divine.

We do not deify the living nor the dead; yet such foundations and institutions as the Lawrence Scientific School, the Peabody Institute, the Powers Institute, will bear to a grateful posterity a knowledge of the virtues of their respective founders, and of the exactness, rectitude, and wisdom, of the public sentiment which religiously consecrates the means provided to the ends proposed.

But just eulogy of the dead is the appropriate duty of those who were the associates and friends of the founder of this school.—It will be my purpose, in the humble part I take in the services of this honored occasion, to point out, as I may be able, the connection between learning and wisdom, and then, by the aid of some general remarks upon education, to examine the fitness of this foundation, and the rules here established, to promote human progress and virtue.

The actual available power of a state is in its adult population; but its hope is in the classes of children and youth whose plastic minds yield to good influences, and are moulded to higher forms of beauty than have been conceived by Italian or Grecian art. Excellence is always adorable and to be adored. If it appear in beauty of person, it commands our admiration; and how much more ought wisdom, which is the beauty of the mind and the excellency of the soul, to be cultivated and cherished by every human being! "For what is there, O, ye gods!" says Cicero, "more desirable than wisdom? What more excellent and lovely in itself? What more useful and becoming for a man? Or what more worthy of his reasonable nature?"

But wisdom cannot be acquired in a day, nor without devotion and toil. It is the achievement of a life. It is to be pursued carefully through schools, colleges, and the world,—to be mastered by study, intense thought, rigid mental discipline, and an extensive acquaintance with the best authors of ancient and modern times. It is not the child of ease, indolence, or luxury; and it is well that it is not, The best of human possessions are cheapened their attainment is no longer difficult. The wealth of California and Australia has made silver, as an article of luxury, the rival of gold; and the pearl loses its beauty when the mountain streams are as fertile as the depths of the sea. Wisdom comprehends learning, but learning is often found where wisdom is wanting. Wisdom is not accomplishment in study, or perfection in art, or supremacy in poetry or eloquence. Learning is essential to wisdom, for we cannot imagine a wise man who is not also a learned man; and the extent and soundness of his learning may be a measure of his wisdom. Wisdom must always have a basis of learning, but learning is not always a basis of wisdom. Learning is a knowledge of particulars, of details; wisdom is such a combination of these particulars as enables us to harmonize our lives with the laws of nature and of God.

Learning is manifested in what we know; wisdom in what we are, based upon what we know. Philosophy, even, is love for wisdom rather than wisdom itself. The old philosophers defined wisdom to be "the knowledge of things, both divine and human, together with the causes on which they depend;" and in the proverb of Solomon, "The fear of the Lord is the instruction of wisdom." Purity, truth, and justice, are also of its foundation. Wise men of the Jewish and Pagan world built on this foundation, and the Christian can build on none other. Having combined learning with these essential virtues, a liberal, symmetrical, comprehensive character may be built up. In the formation of such a character, industry, powers of observation, strength of will and intellectual humility, are requisite. The virtue and the glory of industry cannot be presented too often to the young. I know of no worldly good or human excellence that can be attained without it; nor is there any inherited possession of name, or wealth, or position, that can be preserved in its extent and quality without active, systematic, judicious labor.

It is not necessary to consider industry as habitual diligence in a pursuit, manual or intellectual; but rather as a judicious arrangement of business and recreation, so as always to have time for the necessary duties of life. Mere diligence is not industry in a good sense; it is labor in a bad sense. Our time should be systematically appropriated to our employments, and each measure of time should be equal to the work or duty appointed for it. Moreover, each work or duty should be accomplished in its appointed time; and this can be secured only by a strong will. The power of will admits of education, culture, improvement, as much as any faculty of the mind or quality of character. A fickle, planless life cannot accomplish much. System in our plans, and firmness of will in their execution, will place us beyond the reach of ordinary disasters; yet how often do young men go through a course of school studies without a plan, even for the moment, and enter upon life the slaves of chance, the victims of what they call fortune, while they might by industry, system and firmness of will, rise superior to circumstances, and extort a measure of success not unworthy of a noble ambition!

Idleness is a wasting disease, a consuming fire, a destroying demon; in youth it is a calamity, in the vigor of manhood it is a disgrace and a sin, and in old age it can be honorably accepted only as the symbol of reflective leisure earned by a life of industry and virtue. Industry is a badge of honor, an introduction everywhere to the true nobility of the world, the security that each may take of the future for his own happiness and prosperity in it.

Cardinal, personal virtues shrink and wither, or are blasted and die, in the company of idleness; and, without firmness of will, the noblest principles and purest sentiments sometimes wear the livery of vice, and often they give encouragement to it. Good principles, good purposes, good ideas, are made fruitful by a strong resolution; while without it they are like bubbles of water, brilliant in the sun-light, but destined to collapse by the changing, silent force of the medium in which they float. And can any life, not positively vicious and criminal, be less desirable than that of the young man who quietly accepts whatever condition circumstances assign to him? I speak now of his moral and intellectual condition rather than of his social position among men. The latter is not in itself important, and only becomes so through the exhibition of high qualities of mind and character. Social and political consideration we cannot demand as a right; but we may acquire knowledge, develop qualities of character, give evidences of wisdom that entitle us to the respect of our fellows.

It may be agreeable, but it is not absolutely essential, for us to enjoy the public confidence, or even the public consideration; though we can be happy ourselves only when we are conscious of not being totally unworthy. But no social or political concession or consideration is acceptable to a noble mind, that is grudgingly yielded or doubtingly bestowed; and the lustre of great intellects is dimmed when they become subservient to claims that they despise.

But can we acquire a knowledge of things, either divine or human, unless we cultivate our powers of observation? Partial or inaccurate observation, especially of natural things, is a great defect of character; and in New England, where the aim of educators and of the public in matters of education is elevated, a remedy for this defect ought at once to be sought and applied. Our ideas are vague concerning many subjects of common sight and common observation. Is adult life, even among the educated classes, equal to a description of the common animals, trees, fruits and flowers? Who will paint with words the elm or the oak so that its species will be known while the name is withheld? The introduction of drawing into the schools will improve the power of observation among the people, especially if the pupils are required to make nature their model. And this should always be done. O, how is education belittled and the mind dwarfed by those teachers who keep their pupils' thoughts upon signs and definitions, when they ought to deal continually with the facts, things and life of the world! It is no fable that a student of the higher mathematics, when his master, a practical engineer upon the Boston water-works, required his services, exclaimed, "I had no idea that you had sines and tangents out of doors." With such,

"Nothing goes for sense or light

That will not with old rules jump right;

As if rules were not in the schools

Derived from truth, but truth from rules."

And Butler, in his satirical description of Sir Hudibras, ascribes to his hero more practical philosophy than he appears to have intended, and more, certainly, than is found in some modern systems of education:

"In mathematics he was greater

Than Tycho Brahe or Erra Pater;

For he, by geometric scale,

Could take the size of pots of ale;

Resolve by sines and tangents straight,

If bread or butter wanted weight;

And wisely tell what hour o' th' day

The clock does strike, by algebra."

Another prerequisite of wisdom is intellectual humility, Solomon, says, "Before honor is humility;" and humility is before wisdom, and even before learning. We ought not to be ashamed of involuntary ignorance. Franklin, when asked how he came to know so much, replied, "By never being ashamed to ask a question."

It is idle for any one to imagine that there is nothing more for him to learn. Indeed, such a theory is good evidence of defective education and limited attainments, if not of a defective mental and moral structure.

Naturalists delight and instruct their pupils and auditors with the wonderful truths folded in the flower, garnered in the plant, or imprisoned in the rock. Yet how much more there must be of God's wisdom in the humblest of the beings created in his image! There are distinctions among men; and out of these distinctions come the truth and the necessity that each may be both a teacher and a pupil of every other. No man, however learned he may be, does know or can know all that is known by his neighbor, though that neighbor be the humblest of shepherds or of fishermen. We are not independent of each other in anything. The earnest and faithful disciple of wisdom goes through life everywhere diffusing knowledge, and everywhere gathering it up. Over the great gateway of life is the inscription, "None but learners enter here;" and along its paths and in its groves are tablets, on which is written, "None but learners sojourn here." He is a poor teacher who is not a learner, and he is but little of a learner who is not something of a teacher also. The best teachers are they who are pupils, and the best pupils are already teachers. Such was the real and avowed character of the great teachers of antiquity; such is the best practice of modern continental Europe, and such is the requirement of nature in all ages. He who does not learn cannot teach. Socrates professed to know only this, that he knew nothing. Plato was a disciple of Socrates and Euclid; a pupil in the school of Pythagoras; and, as a traveller, under the disguise of a merchant and a seller of oil, he visited Egypt, and thus gained a knowledge of astronomy, and added something to his learning in other departments. He numbered among his pupils Isocrates, Lycurgus, Aristotle, and Demosthenes; and for eight years Alexander the Great was the pupil of Aristotle, while Demosthenes

"Wielded at will that fierce Democratie,

Shook the arsenal, and fulmined over Greece

To Macedon, and Artaxerxes' throne."

Thus we trace Demosthenes and Alexander, the master spirits in the struggle of Grecian independence against Macedonian supremacy, through teachers and culture up to Socrates, the wanderer in the streets, and the disturber of the peace of Athens.