gimcrack that was called a planetarium, and showed how the heavenly bodies do not move. As for a school library, with which, my young friends, you are so well provided, there was not in any school I ever attended so much as half a dozen books bearing that name. There was indeed at the academy at Exeter, which it was my good fortune to attend for a few months before I entered college, a library, containing, I believe, some valuable, though probably rather antiquated volumes. It was my privilege, while I was a pupil, never to see the inside of that apartment; privilege, I say, sir, for it was the place where the severer discipline of the institution, in rare cases of need, was administered.

Hinc exaudiri gemitus, et sæva sonare
Verbera.

We, little fellows, sir, got to have the most disagreeable associations with the very name of library. I ought to add, in justice to our honored preceptor, good Dr. Abbott, that the use of the library for any such purpose was a very rare occurrence. He possessed the happy skill, Mr. Smith, which I am gratified to say has not died with him, of governing a school by persuasion and influence, and not by force and terror.

As to the learned languages and classical literature generally, they were very poorly taught in those days. I do not like to speak disparagingly of men and things gone by. The defects were at least vitia ævi non hominum, but defects they were of the grossest kind. The study of the Latin and Greek was confined to cursory reading of the easier authors; a little construing and parsing, as we called it. The idiom and genius of the languages were not unfolded to us; nor the manner of the different writers; nor the various illustrative learning necessary to render the text which was read, intel ligible. We got the lesson to recite, and that was all. Of Prosody, we were taught little; of versification nothing. I was never set to make an hexameter or a pentameter verse at any school, or, I may add, college, in my life; nor did I ever do it, till I was old enough to have children at school, who asked my assistance.

As for text-books and editions, they were all foreign, and, I may add, compared with those of the present day, both native and foreign, all poor. Master Cheever's accidence, Corderius, and Eutropius, with an English translation in parallel columns, were the books with which the study of Latin was commenced half a century ago.

Such were the schools; and the school-houses were in keeping with them; for the most part cheerless and uninviting in the extreme; cold in winter, hot in summer, without ventilation, destitute of every thing required for accommodation, comfort, or health.

But these days of physical hardship and discomfort, of defective teaching and defective learning, are past. You can hardly believe that they ever existed. In the immense strides. taken by the country, in every direction, since the beginning of this century, nothing is more distinctly marked than the improvement of the schools.. It must be so, in a healthy state of society, for the education of the young, the formation of the minds and characters of the next generation, is the flowering out of the community. It is to the social and intellectual world, what the vernal outburst of nature is to the natural world; with the mighty difference that inanimate nature, of necessity, repeats herself from year to year with an august uniformity, while man is endowed with a capacity still more sublime of perhaps indefinite improvement.

We shall feel more forcibly the importance of this improvement in the schools, when we consider how many things must conspire and work together to produce it. As earth, air, water, and sunshine, must coöperate for the growth of vegetable nature, so all the best and most powerful influences and most favorable circumstances must be combined into a harmonious system, to make education, on any thing of a large scale, what it ought to be. And this happy combination of means and influences has in point of fact in this country, especially in this part of it, been called into action.

Not to speak of the legislation, by which the duty of educating the young is enforced by public authority, there must, in the first place, be liberal pecuniary appropriations made

by the community. We, New Englanders, are constantly charged, and in very exaggerated terms, with excessive love of money. Now it happens that a good system of public education is one of the most expensive of luxuries; and where is the country which has so freely indulged in it? You may recollect, sir, that I stated on this platform last year, that the annual appropriations of the city of Cambridge for the support of her schools, a city of fifteen or sixteen thousand inhabitants, among whom are none of great wealth, exceed the entire annual income of all the funds bestowed upon our ancient and venerable University, and applicable to the business of instruction, since its foundation. I speak of the college proper, and not of the professional schools connected with it. The annual expenditure of Boston for schools and schooling is more than half of the entire expenditure of the Commonwealth for the support of all the public establishments and the salaries of all the public officers. These munificent appropriations, as you all know, are not provided for out of the income of ancient endowments; they are met by taxation from year to year. The money-loving people of Massachusetts, as they are called by foreign and domestic fault-finders, happen to be the people who lay upon themselves, in their little municipal democracies, the heaviest tax paid by any people in the world for purposes of education.

These liberal pecuniary appropriations, however, are but the first step; they give you school-houses, school libraries, apparatus, and fuel, and the salaries of teachers; but the teachers themselves are not to be had merely by paying for them. A class of skilful, accomplished, and conscientious teachers can only be gradually formed. They must be men and women, a considerable part of them, who have chosen the work of education as the business of their lives; who give to it their time, their abilities, and their hearts. Such a class of teachers is not to be had by asking for it. It must form itself in the bosom of an intelligent and virtuous community, that knows how to prize them, that holds them in high esteem, as some of its most honored public servants. There are portions of our country, in which, if you were to stud them

thick with our beautiful school-houses, with all their appliances, apparatus, and libraries, you could not work the system for want of teachers, nor get the teachers merely by advertising for them. Sir, I say it for no purpose of compliment in this place; the school-teachers in this community constitute a class inferior in respectability to no other, rendering the most important services, by no means over-compensated, rather the reverse. I consider their character and reputation as a part of the moral treasure of the public, which we cannot prize too highly.

Closely connected with the teacher, and of the utmost importance in a good school system, is the school committee, a most efficient part of the educational machinery. Much of the prosperity of our schools depends upon these committees. They stand between all the interests, parents, pupils, and the public, connect them all, mediate between them all. An intelligent committee is the teacher's great ally. They witness his labors and mark the proficiency of the pupils. They counsel him in cases of doubt; share or assume the responsibility in cases of difficulty. A community may think itself highly favored when gentlemen of respectability in the several professions, and in the active callings of life, can be found, as in the city of Cambridge at the present time, to undertake this laborious and responsible office. Nor will an efficient school system readily be sustained where this cannot be done. I own, sir, I witness with admiration the spectacle of gentlemen, whom I know to be burdened with heavy and incessant duties of their own, and are yet willing, day after day, and week after week, in summer and in winter, to devote themselves to a laborious, thorough, and conscientious examination of the schools; besides looking in upon them frequently, and being always accessible for counsel and direction, in the intervals of the periodical visitations.

But, sir, all this is not enough. In order that the school should prosper, no small part of the work must be done at home. Let the father and the mother, who think that their child has made but little progress at school, bear this in mind. I am almost tempted to say, without intending a paradox,

that half of the government, if not of the instruction of the school, must be done at home. This I will say, that if nothing is done at home to support the teacher, his labor is doubled. The parent must take an interest in his boy's or his girl's pursuits, and let that interest be seen. It is shocking to reflect how often the child is sent to school "to get him out of the way." There will be no good schools in the community where that is the prevalent motive. No, he must be sent there for his good and yours. Your heart must go with him. He is not an alien and a plague, to be got rid of for so many hours. He is a part of yourself; what he learns, you learn; it is your own continued existence, in which you love yourself with a heavenly disinterestedness. And yet you are not to let your parental fondness blind you. Do not listen to every tale of childish grievance against the master. The presumption is, that nine times out of ten, the grievance is imaginary; in truth, the presumption is always so, generally the fact is so. Then, too, the parent's coöperation is of the utmost importance in other ways. For many of the short-comings of scholars, the parents are the party to blame. It is their fault, if he stays at home for a breath of cold air or a drop of rain. It is the fault of a father or mother, if the poor child cannot get his breakfast in season, or if his clothes are not in wearing condition. Let the child see betimes that in the opinion of his parents, going to school is one of the most important things to be attended to in the course of the day, and he will so regard it himself.

And this is a result not less important than all the rest. In order to a good school, there must be a good spirit among the scholars. Where all the other requisites alluded to exist, this is not very likely to be wanting; but it may be, it sometimes, under particular circumstances, is wanting. But if there is a fine spirit of generous docility on the part of the children, the school will almost of necessity be a good one. It will, if I may say so, keep it itself. A good school always does, to a considerable degree, keep itself. When I hear of a good school, I involuntarily think there must be good materials to make it of. Our worthy friend, Mr. Upham, has