by intelligent observers among ourselves, such as Denison Olmsted, Thomas H. Gallaudet, Roger Minot Sherman, James L. Kingsley, Thomas Robbins, Hawley Olmsted, Samuel J. May, William A. Alcott, William C. Woodbridge and others, from 1825 to 1830. About that time originated the great "School Revival" of New England, for the causes which operated here had produced similar deterioration in common schools in other States, or at least had arrested that development which was necessary to meet the demands of a wider and better education for all classes of society. Of this revival in Connecticut I have given a brief history elsewhere, including the Hartford School Improvement Society, which held its first meetings in the winter of 1826-27; the Oration of Prof. Olmsted, and the Letters of T. H. Gallaudet, proposing a Teachers' Seminary, and the plan of W. C. Woodbridge and William A. Alcott to establish one in this city in 1828, which if carried out would have been the first on this continent; the movements of Hawley Olmsted in the House of Representatives in 1826 and '27; the great State Convention held in this city in 1830, and other meetings and publications.

The immediate fruits of this revival of educational interest in Hartford, was a renovation, after a poor fashion, of all our school-houses, the addition of an English department to the Grammar School, and a reorganization of the studies, and classification of the pupils in the Center and South District Schools. But the efforts put forth did not reach the seat of the difficulty-they did not destroy the independent existence of the Districts; they did not restore the old system of town taxation or induce the School Society to exercise that right which undoubtedly belonged to it; they did not bring all the schools into a well adjusted system, so that the lower should furnish a regular supply of pupils for the higher, and the highest operate with a healthy stimulus on the teachers and pupils of all the schools below; they did not provide a system of inspection and reports by which the people were kept annually advised of what was doing in this most vital and productive of all their interests, the right education of all the children of the city. Not securing these objects, not only was the work begun not finished, but a reaction took place, or at least further progress was hardly perceptible, and in the Grammar School, after a brief period of prosperity, the scheme of 1828 broke down, so far at least that in 1838, and for many years before, the sons, not only of wealthy families, but of many who could ill afford the expense, were sent out of town, and out of the State, to obtain a good English education.

In 1837 my public connection with school agitation began in the House of Representatives, in the advocacy of a bill introduced by Judge Sharpe of Abington, to provide for the more thorough local visitation of schools, and of a resolution to secure for the first time through the Comptroller official information respecting the common schools of the State. In remarks on the latter measure, I ventured the opinion, "that our district schools had sunk into a deplorable condition of inefficiency, and no longer deserved the name of common in its best sense; that there was not one educated family in a hundred that relied on the district school for the instruction of their children; and if they did go, the instruction received was of the most elementary character. All the higher education of the State was given in denominational academies and irresponsible private schools of every grade of demerit. I may be wrong, although I speak as a victim of a miserable district school in the chief city of

the State. Let us have light, and then our successors here can act with knowledge and thoroughness."

In 1838, as soon as I was returned a member of the House, I addressed myself to the best preparation I could make for the thorough discussion of this subject. I hurried up the preparation of the society school returns, which I found in the Comptroller's office, unarranged and uncollated; a circular was addressed to every member elect for information on certain points specified, and three weeks were devoted to personal visits, public and private, to schools, and conferences with school men, in different parts of the State. Soon after the House was organized, a select committee was raised to consider the subject, of which I was made chairman, and as my circular had arrested the attention of members, there was much talk and looking forward to legislative action. I soon found that with nearly every member, the next election was the day of judgment, and that any measure, calculated to disturb the relations of political parties by giving to the minority the slightest chance for crying increased taxation, or suggested a suspicion of diminishing the dividends of the School Fund, had not the slightest chance of success. It was therefore not deemed advisable to broach any radical change in the system, but simply provide the machinery for a wide-spread agitation of the subject, and inaugurate a system

*The subject in its largest scope was not new to me. Circumstances had made me acquainted with the Latin School and the English Classical School of Boston, the Central High School of Worcester, the Gymnasium of Dwight at New Haven, and of Cogswell and Bancroft at Northhampton, and I had brought several of these to the attention of the Trustees of the Hartford Grammar School, at the time its reorganization was under consideration in 1828, and 1833; and letters describing them will be found in the old file of the New England Review. As a traveler, "not floating about in a miscellaneous way," but having a specific object in view in every city or country visited, the school had always been an object of interest as an index and measure of the civilization and culture of a people. In this way, without the slightest expectation of ever having any thing to do with school organization and administration, I had studied the best school systems of Europe, and had visited several of the most remarkable institutions of the secondary and technical grade before the close of 1836; and in a volume, for which I made memoranda, and collected material, it was my purpose to discuss in the light of European experience, among other topics:-I. Reformatory and Industrial Schools for neglected and semi-criminal children. II. Secondary Schools-designed to prepare candidates for the highest literary and scientific instruction in Universities and Polytechnic Institutes. III. The Polytechnic Institute or University of Science and Modern Languages, with schools and classes of practical application to agriculture, architecture, commerce, mines, manufacture, locomotion, etc. IV. Schools for the Professional Training of Teachers-elementary and higher. V. School Inspection and Central Administration. Much of the material gathered for these chapters was published in Appendix IV, to my Annual Report for 1839-40, and subsequently embodied with later information in the volumes entitled National Education in Europe; Reformatory Schools and Education; and Normal Schools and other Agencies for the Professional Training of Teachers. At a much earlier period, the vital importance of universal education to a government fast approaching to universal suffrage and universal eligibility to office, had been dwelt on in an Oration delivered in the North Congregational Church on the 4th of July, 1834; the importance of Schools and Education, not only to the ultimate success of the Colony of Liberia, but to prevent it from being swallowed up in the barbarism of a Continent, was one of the topics of an Address before the Connecticut Branch of the American Colonization Society, in the Center Church Conference Room, July, 1833; and the weight of universal popular intelligence in the settlement of international differences before War was declared, and in demanding the arbitration of neutral powers before appealing to brute force, was discussed in an Address before the Connecticut Peace Society, in the North Baptist Church, in December, 1834. My first knowledge of the school system of Prussia was gained from Adams' (John Quincy) Letters from Silesia, in which he pays a just tribute to the far-reaching school policy of Frederic II.; and Letters from Germany by Henry E. Dwight, published in 1828.

of annual reports, by which the people in each society, and the Legislature, should be informed of the condition of the schools and suggestions for their improvement. In the speech, introducing and explaining this measure, the legislation of the State was reviewed, and the gradual departure from the fundamental principles of the old system was pointed out, as well as our failure to meet, by better educated teachers, and a more scientific course of instruction, the exigencies of increased population and wealth, and of diversified industries. What changes have we made to meet the demand for more thorough preparation for College? where can any special preparation be made for occupations which demand a knowledge of drawing, engineering, and chemistry? I know not a single school in the State in which drawing is taught; and yet without it, every mechanic labors under daily disadvantage, and the whole field of design and all the highest domains of art are closed. But without even alluding to new studies-where are the public schools of a higher grade which the statutes, down to the beginning of this century, made imperative? Where is the "town of 100 householders," or of 1,000 even, which maintains a public Grammar School, "the teacher thereof being able to instruct youth, so far as they may be fitted for the University?"! Where is the "County Town" which maintains a "free school for all such children as shall come there to be taught (among other branches) the Latin and English languages, the master thereof to be paid one-half by the county, and the other half out of the school revenue given or to be given for this use, so far as it will go, and the rest by the respective towns?" Where are the six hundred acres of land which were appropriated by the General Court in 1672 to each of the four county towns, "forever to be improved in the best manner that may be for the benefit of a Grammar School in said County, and for no other use or end whatever?" Where is the town or State officer, who knows the condition of the beneficent bequest of Edward Hopkins, by which "hopeful youth were to be bred up at Grammar School and College for the service of the country ?" If there is a Free Grammar School, in Hartford or New Haven, which does not require a pretty high fee for admission, I should like to know its location and teacher. And what substitute has the State provided for this abandonment of the whole field of higher education? What security have parents who are not competent themselves to judge, that these chartered academies, and numerous adventure schools, are performning well or at all the work, which our fathers thought to be essential to the commonwealth? I speak from personal knowledge on this subject-there is not a Public Grammar School in the State resting for support on property taxation, and to which a poor but talented lad could enter except as a recipient of charity. We have nothing corresponding to the great Public Schools of England, resting on the endowments of centuries-nothing like the High School of Edinburgh, where in Brougham's day the sons of the noble and the shopkeeper occupied the same bench-nothing like the Real and Burgher Schools of Leipsic, much less the Gymnasiums of Berlin and other German cities, which although not free, are so aided by the state or municipality, or so endowed with scholarships, that the poorest boy, if talented and worthy, can get his preparation for the University, and enter into free competition for government appointment aud professional promotion;-nothing like the Latin School of Boston, where a son of the President of the United States was said to have taken the second prize, when the first was awarded to the boy whose father sawed the masters' wood."

Other topics, connected with the past legislation and the existing condition of the common schools,—the irregular and non-attendance of children at school, in connection with the provision of the statute of 1698 which required the selectmen to see that not a single family should allow so much barbarism in its midst as to have a single child unable to read the holy Word of God, and the good laws of this colony;" the itinerating and non-professional class of teachers; the absence of constant, intelligent, and skilled inspection; the inadequate and defective mode of supporting the system, &c, were discussed, closing

with an appeal to members to at least inaugurate a system of State supervision, by which the people and the Legislature should be advised in an official way of the actual condition and desirable improvements of our school system. On motion of Roger Minot Sherman, the Nestor of the House, the bill was put at once on its final reading, and passed without a dissenting voice. The Act passed the Senate with but one dissenting voice. The originator of the measure, after an effort on his part to secure the acceptance of the position by Thomas H. Gallaudet and Lorin P. Waldo, was made the executive officer of the Board of Commissioners of Common Schools, instituted by this Act.

In the week following the adjournment of the Legislature, as President of the Young Men's Institute, then just established, I was invited to explain its plans of operation, and commend them to the personal coöperation of the young men, and the pecuniary aid of the citizens of Hartford generally. With my mind full of the discussions of the House, and with a plan* to meet the educational and moral wants of cities carefully and thoroughly digested, in which institutions like the Institute, then generally designated Lyceums, had an important place, on the evening of the 4th of July I delivered a lecture in the Center Church, in which, with an enthusiasm which had not yet been chilled by the apathy and opposition of those it desired to benefit, I magnified the work the young men had begun, by making it part of a system of popular education for the city. That lecture, in all its main features, was repeated in the Fourth Congregational Church, and subsequently in New Haven, Norwich, New London, Middletown and Norwalk † -as well as in other cities out of the State. The following outline is from a newspaper report, in which the editor was careful to say: "We would not be understood as advocating every measure proposed by the lecturer, but in general we think our readers will agree with us, that his plans are wise and philanthropic. Nothing in our opinion deserves this praise more than the proposal to put the schools mainly under the supervi sion of the mothers of the children. An association of mothers in each district, or union of districts, having the choice of the teachers, the examining of the pupils, and all the property and arrangements of the schools, in their hands, would be one of the happiest expedients ever adopted in respect to primary education. They would see that the seats were adapted to the comfort of the children and properly arranged, the rooms suitably warmed and ventilated, the grounds properly laid out and adorned with shrubbery, and all the moral as well as intellectual influences of the schools, of the best character. They would visit the schools, at least by their committees, and exercise a vigilance over them, absolutely indispensable to their prosperity, and which committees of the other sex, unpaid or paid, do not observe.”

This plan had been already embodied in a lecture to be read before the American Lyceum, which met in Hartford in May (9-11) previous, and which I had been prevented from attending except on one evening by my engagements in the Legislature in New Haven. It was in the interest awakened by the discussion of the Lyceum, which held its annual session in Hartford, on the application of Mr. Gallaudet and myself, that the Institute had its origin.

†The Otis Library, and meetings to establish a Public High School, which ultimately were directed to the endowment of the Free Academy, in Norwich; the Union of the City Districts and the establishment of the City High School in Middletown; the Young Men's Institute, and numerous meetings to inaugurate a system of graded schools, in New Haven; the establishment of the Young Men's Association Library, and meetings for the establishment of a Public High School, in New London, and similar meetings in Bridgeport, Norwalk, Stamford and Winsted were among the fruits of this lecture in Connecticut.

Outline of Lecture on the Moral and Educational Wants of Cities.

He first presented a vivid picture of the large city, not only as the mart of commerce and business, the point to which the facilities of trade all tend, the center of political influence, the arbiter of fashion, the arena of the highest literary and professional talent, but as exhibiting the most fearful contrast in the social, moral and intellectual condition of its population-high intelligence and wretched ignorance-overgrown wealth, ministering to the luxurious indulgences and the fashionable frivolities of its possessors, and abject poverty withering up all the noble impulses of its victims, and nurturing the elements of anarchy, vice, and crime, in its bosom. To remedy this false civilization, and to elevate and purify the influences which must go forth from the city to the country, the lecturer proposes the following system of moral and educational

means:

First, that provision be made for juvenile offenders who abound in cities, by sending them not to the County or State prisons, or to the town work-house, as at present constituted, but to a House of Reformation, including a School of Industry, where correct moral and industrious habits could be formed. One such would answer for the State, and should be located in the country.

Second, that the physical condition of the poor of our cities be improved, and their physical wants be relieved, by making their houses more convenient and attractive, by furnishing them in every possible case with employment, instead of indiscriminate charity, and through personal intercourse, by awakening in their minds a self-respect and force of thought to bear up and rise above the adverse circumstances of their lot. The home of the poor might be improved wonderfully in a single generation, by disseminating plans of cheap tenements, embracing the conveniences of a home, which the stopping places of the poor do not now have, and by inducing men of property and of philanthropy to erect such to rent for a fair return on the money invested. If in the children of the poor a sense of the beautiful, a taste for flowers and music, could be cultivated, it would soon change the outward and inward aspects of this class of homes in our cities.

Third, that more abundant means of innocent and rational amusements, such as are calculated to develop the physical frame, to inspire cheerful thoughts, to promote the social feelings, and to be shared in by rich and poor, the more and the less favored in intellectual improvement, must be provided, encouraged and sustained.

Fourth, that a broad, liberal, and cheap system of educational influences, such as schools, books, libraries, lectures, cabinets, &c., must be spread before and around every child, youth and grown up person in our cities. Such a system might embrace,

1. Primary Schools for children under eight years. In this class of schools, the health, manners, morals and early mental habits, should be attended to. The teachers in all cases to be females, and the supervision of the schools to be intrusted mainly to the mothers of the children.

2. Secondary or Intermediate Schools, for children between the age of 8 and 12. In these schools the education of the pupils should be carried as far as is now done in the best of our common schools, and thus four years at least in the school period of children be saved. This Mr. Barnard thinks might easily be done, if teachers properly trained were employed, and the foundation was properly laid in the Primary Schools. In these Schools there should be a male and female Principal, as the influences of both are needed at this stage of moral education, and in the formation of the manners of children.

3. A High School, with two departments, one for boys and the other for girls. This school should afford a higher elementary education than can be given in the secondary schools, or the common schools as now constituted, and at the same time furnish an education preparatory to the pursuits of commerce, trade, manufactures, and the mechanical arts. All that is now done in our best private schools for the children of the rich and the educated, should be done for the children of the whole community.

Connected with this system of Public Schools, there should be one or more departments for colored children; and Evening Schools, for such young persons