and the plan of an agricultural school is given by Professor J. A. Porter, as also that of Hartlib two hundred years earlier.

The peculiar circumstances of our country have demanded that special attention should be given to military and naval schools and education, and the Journal has answered this demand. The military systems of France and Prussia, the most perfectly organized of any in Europe, are described in a series of Articles occupying some four hundred pages, the materials of which are drawn from official sources, and the systems of England, Russia, Austria, Switzerland, and Sardinia are sketched, but more briefly, while a particular account is given of the English naval and navigation schools. Respecting our own national schools, in addition to an Article upon the history of the West Point Academy, the extended reports of that school by the Board of Visitors for 1863, and of the Naval Academy at Newport for 1864, are presented in full, in which, and in some minor Articles, is discussed the subject of competitive examination as governing admission to these institutions—a principle which, if applied as it may be in these cases and in admission to many other civil positions as well, would seem to be the one most effectual way in which the national government can stimulate the schools of the land to the attainment of a higher grade of excellence.

The Articles upon preventive and reformatory education, which alone form a volume of three hundred and fifty pages, embrace detailed descriptions of the principal reform schools of England and the continent, and fully illustrate the application of the principles of family training and agricultural labor to the reform of juvenile criminals and the prevention of crime. Accounts and statistics are also given of similar institutions in the United States. Space fails us, however, to speak even briefly of the many valuable Articles contained in the Journal which relate to the instruction of the deaf and dumb, of the blind and the imbecile, to female education and physical training, to the questions respecting moral and religious instruction, to the schools of the Jesuits and other sectarian institutions, to lyceums, mechanics' institutes, libraries, and other means of supplementary and self-culture, and to all pertaining

to language and to books. Yet to the latter, one notable exception must be made. The three last volumes of the Journal contain a unique catalogue of the books belonging to the single department of schoolroom literature, which have been published or used in America. Its composition must have

been veritably a labor of love-of love for all that is ancient, and especially that savoreth of the pedagogue and his domain; and whoever examines these more than a hundred doublecolumned pages and sees what thousands, not to say tens of thousands, of school books have been written for our schools, will not wonder at the cry of the teachers for deliverance from this flood of authorship; and he who shall attempt to trace the gradual progress of instruction in the schools by a search among the thumb-worn, dust and time-begrimed relics which this catalogue shows to be in the editor's possession, will doubtless make many a curious, many a valuable discovery. A fit supplement to this is the list, tolerably complete, of all the educational, college, and school periodicals, numbering some two hundred and thirty, that have been published in this country.

In contributions to the history of education in the United States the Journal abounds, for which the documentary and other resources at the command of the editor have evidently been drawn upon without stint. We have given us here, in addition to the history of schools and institutions, as already stated, an account of nearly every association and society that has ever been formed for educational purposes in America. Many of these were certainly short-lived and are now forgotten, yet even their records recall the names of those who were at the time most active in the cause of education, and mark the steps by which ideas and principles have reached their present form-some, on the other hand, like the American Lyceum and the Western College of Teachers, have had a wide and marked influence upon the progress of education, and others, as the American Education Society, the American Sunday School Union, and the Western College Society, are still doing a work which is as effective as it is silent and unobtrusive. A peculiarity, however, in the public school systems

of the United States, is found in the "Teachers' Associations," which have at some time existed in nearly every State, and are still in operation throughout the north. In connection with the preliminary history of these associations, occasion is taken to give an account of all the conventions and societies that have been previously formed, so far as existing records at hand have permitted, and in this way is gathered a large amount of information respecting the early educational movements in the several States. Nearly nine hundred pages are thus devoted to the history of associated effort in behalf of education.

Another peculiar and important feature of the Journal, relating to the historical department of education, is found in the memoirs and biographical sketches so thickly scattered through its volumes. The lives of more than two hundred persons, including many of the eminent pedagogists of Germany, Switzerland, and France, and educational worthies of Great Britain, together with a large number of those in this country who have made themselves in any way prominent in connection with schools and education, are here given with more or less detail. More than one hundred portraits, from engravings on steel, in the highest style of the art, accompany the memoirs. In no other work in the English language has any similar effort been made to do justice to this class of laborers.

Still another class of illustrations is found in the numerous plans and elevations of school buildings, which accompany the Articles by the editor upon the subject of school architecture. This subject is most thoroughly treated, as it has been by no other author, and over three hundred pages are devoted to an elucidation of the principles that should govern in the plan and arrangement, the construction and furnishing of schoolhouses and buildings for educational purposes of every grade and character-the whole exemplified by numerous descriptions of the best edifices of the kind that have been erected in this country. By his publications on this subject, according to Dr. Vogel of Leipsic, the editor has added a new department to the literature of education.

There remains but to mention that without which the Jour

nal were a locked enclosure, its contents of little value-the Index. In this respect the work does not fail us. The indexes to the several volumes are minute and accurate, affording ready access to the contents of the work, and together filling over one hundred pages. The fifth volume closes with a general index to the volumes that precede. A classified Index to the whole series would prove of great value to the student. of education.

3d. What it deserves. It would seem as if what had already been said should supersede the necessity of many words as to the desert of the American Journal of Education. It is not without its faults and deficiencies, but these disappear in view of its excellencies, and we have also the hope that in the volumes that shall follow, what is still wanting to its completeness will be supplied. A circular, containing a plan of the Journal, closes with the promise-"The series, when complete, will constitute an Encyclopedia of Education,"-and we see how nearly the pledge has been fulfilled. We are assured of the probability of the issue of a sixteenth volume, but that "the further continuance of the publication will depend upon the substantial favor extended to the editors' labors."

The Journal is manifestly a work of no transient value, but it must become a permanent reference book of constant utility to every one whose office, whose occupation, or whose taste leads him to wish for information upon educational matters. No other work, or score of works, can be substituted that shall place ready at hand the information which it affords. It should therefore be wherever such a work is needed-in every state and legislative library, in the offices of every state, county, and city school-superintendent, in the libraries of colleges, academies, high and normal schools; and with the teacher of every grade, whether of public or private school, of seminary or of college, it should form the basis, as it would almost include the superstructure, also, of an educational library. Indeed, it may justly be considered as a work that should be in every library that would not be deemed deficient in the materials requisite for an important branch of historical investigation and philosophic research.

ARTICLE VI.-THE NATIONAL COUNCIL OF CONGREGATIONAL CHURCHES.

THE National Council of Congregational Churches, assembled recently in Boston, has an important bearing on the welfare of Christ's kingdom in this country, and in all the world; and its transactions, therefore, are a worthy object of interest to all who love that kingdom.

In this brief Article, prepared just as this number of our Quarterly is going through the press, we shall not attempt to record the acts of that Council in detail, but only to speak of some of its more important measures.

The genius of Congregationalism rejects permanent national Councils, annual, or regularly recurring at longer than annual intervals, lest by their great influence, though professedly destitute of authority, they should come to possess a control over the churches inconsistent with their liberty and welfare. But it does allow and require national Councils, "pro re nata," summoned in an exigency, or whenever a general consultation is demanded by the interests of Christ's kingdom, in the nation, or in the earth. And modes of calling such Councils are easily found, whenever the necessity for calling them occurs. In the judgment of the wise and enterprising in the churches, this necessity existed in the condition of the nation. The end of a great civil war was approaching, by the subjugation of the slaveholders' rebellion and the abolition of slavery. The whole South, with its four millions of freedmen, and its many millions more of whites, almost as ignorant as the freedmen, both alike deprived by the laws and influences of slavery of any adequate religious privileges, was thus to be opened to the benign measures of true Christian evangelization. The West, also, by the rapidity with which new territories, cities, and states, were springing up, especially in the rich and fast discovered mining districts, was far outgrowing the means of evangelization hitherto employed; and it was thought,