The income of the State school fund was less than $100,000; one-half appropriated to the towns and cities, according to their school population, and the remainder expended by the board at its discretion. Still, 22 towns received only $2.50 from the State and 52 towns less than $3 per capita for their school population. Dr. John D. Philbrick was this year elected superintendent of the public schools of Boston, a notable event in the development of the system of city schools in New England and the entire country. He reports that "the primary schools had been comparatively little affected by the various improvements, which for the past ten or fifteen years had operated powerfully for the advancement of schools of the higher grades." He reports the primary city schools of New York greatly superior to those of Boston in general organization, gradation, and forcible administration.

Secretary Boutwell offered his resignation in 1858, but was reelected and persuaded to serve the State another year, during which he delivered 62 lectures to the people. Mr. B. G. Northrop made himself almost omnipresent as agent of the board, having given 481 popular addresses during the year and traveled 10,000 miles within the narrow compass of a State containing but 8,000 square miles. An interesting portion of the secretary's report is a number of replies to a circular addressed to leading manufacturers concerning the influence of popular education on the rapidly growing interest in Massachusetts. The legislature, as if stung to a spasin of reform, abolished the local district school system, but only to reinstate it at the following session.

In 1859 Mr. Albert G. Boyden entered on his long and valuable career as principal of the Bridgewater (Mass.) Normal School.

Secretary Boutwell was practically relieved of active public duties, although he completed his series of excellent reports by the preparation of A Manual of the School Legislation of the State, with copious notes for the use of teachers and school officials. He prefaces this work with the statement: "Massachusetts, first of all, established a system of public instruction and supported it by the essential and distinctive characteristics of a State-the right and duty of taxation." The school system of Scotland, established in 1696, "was not public in its foundations nor public in its influence. It was controlled by the clergy; fees were charged to those who had the ability to pay, and hence it was not in any true sense a system of free schools." The secretary meets the claim which came up from the city of New York that the Americau system of common schools was inaugurated on Manhattan Island by the original Dutch settlers in 1633, by showing that "the school system of Holland, established in 1656 was essentially an ecclesiastical institution, and the school referred to was simply a parochial school of the Dutch Reformed Church in New Amsterdam, subsidized by the commercial corporation, which was virtually the government during the entire history of New York previous to its occupation by the British power."

The secretary declares that "in no State or country have the facilities

for public education been so good during the past generation as in Massachusetts." Whatever truth there may have been in this statement, it is certain that the people of the old Commonwealth had profound cause of gratitude to God and satisfaction with themselves for the progress of the common school since the memorable day when Horace Mann was appointed first secretary of the board of education in 1837. In 1861 Hon. Joseph White was chosen as the successor of Mr. Boutwell, and through a long period of about 14 years served the Commonwealth with conspicuous ability.

Here the proper limit of the present essay is reached. It has been the intention of the writer here to record the organization of the State systems of public education during the period extending from 1830 to 1860, distinguished as the great revival of the American common school.

CONNECTICUT.

In the year 1849 the office of superintendent of the common schools. of Connecticut was combined with the presidency of the State Normal School and Henry Barnard recalled to the leadership of the reformed system of popular education inaugurated by him in 1838. During a portion of his administration, Mr. John D. Philbrick, of Connecticut, had been the acting head of the normal school at New Britain, and on the resignation of Dr. Barnard was appointed to the State superintendency of public schools.

In his first report, May 10, 1855, the new superintendent "regrets that the imperfection of the existing system of returns and reports from school officials to this department renders it impossible for me at this time to present full and accurate statistical information as to the progress and present condition of our common schools." He attributes the failure to "the absence of the requisite legal provisions for a proper system of returns and reports." This chronic shiftlessness of the "business side" of the common school affairs of New England at this period, so opposed to the careful and correct methods prevailing in the pecuniary transactions of ordinary life, emphasizes the fact (1) that the old-time isolated district school, even in its home in Massachusetts and Connecticut, had become the refuge of that spirit of personal and local independence characteristic of the New England people, and (2) that the statement of Dr. Sears and Superintendent Boutwell that the reports, documents, and literature of the new educational movement, even in the States where it originated and was led by its two most eminent champions, Mann and Barnard, were not read by the people. Certainly if a Commonwealth could be lifted up to the perfection of educational organization and method by an awakening presentation of startling facts, unanswerable logic, and inspiring eloquence, the State of Connecticut should have responded to the deluge of information in which she had been engulfed during the past eighteen years. But when the great practical schoolman, Dr. Philbrick, came up to the statehouse

in 1855 as superintendent of schools he discovered that great masses of the people remained practically unmoved. Probably many of the school visitors and local committeemen had never read enough of this overabundant literature, which had exalted the name of Henry Barnard to national and even international renown, to clearly understand what their great educator was about.

But from such records as he found in the office of the superintendent, and from other sources of information, Dr. Philbrick was able to gather a considerable amount of information, and could honestly declare that— On the whole, the aspect of our common school system is encouraging and hopeful. The gladsome light which for years has been lingering upon the mountain summits has descended into the valleys. Since the last report from this office was made probably more has been done by way of reducing into practice the plans and suggestions for the improvement of the schools which had been previously urged upon the people than during the same length of time since the system was established. Never was there a time when so many capable and faithful teachers were in the field; so many citizens earnestly engaged in the work of reforming our schools; when the people were so well prepared for liberal action upon the subject.

Indeed, the fact that the double office of superintendent of public education and president of the State normal school was in existence. and Dr. Philbrick in the post of authority, representing the reality of an improving school system and a successful attempt to exalt the teacher's profession, was a decisive testimony that the wheels of progress, so long embedded in the muddy ruts of a stolid conservatism, bad begun to revolve. But there were other signs of motion enumerated by the superintendent that cast a cheerful light on a situation still clouded by uncertainty. Several of the larger towns and cities of the State had made a radical change and a marked improvement in their educational arrangements, and, to a certain extent, the rural districts were looking in the right direction. The legislature of 1853 had required the towns to lay a tax of 1 per cent on their valuation for the schools; the teachers' institutes and associations were better sustained and more worthy of support; acts for the condemnation of land for schoolhouse sites and for the consolidation of districts had been passed by the legislature; still it must be acknowledged that, in the words of the report

A majority of the districts have made little or no progress for many years; the majority of the schoolhouses are utterly unfit for school purposes; a majority of the teachers are incompetent for the discharge of the responsible duties which devolve upon them; the majority of the schools are kept open for too short a period; in a majority of the districts great difficulties are experienced from want of uniformity in the text-books and the most essential apparatus; in a majority of the districts the attendance of pupils is very deficient; the great majority of the children of the State enjoy no means of pursuing any but the elementary branches; and a vast number of children among us are growing up without that intellectual and moral culture necessary to make them industrious, intelligent, respectable, law-abiding citizens.

Of course, this tremendous impeachment of a State, confessedly from the beginning of colonial life among the foremost of American communities, must be understood, like all similar statements of American

affairs, as the estimate of the pedagogic reformer, which leaves out the formative agencies of private and public character beyond the schoolhouse. The great Commonwealth of Connecticut a generation ago was in no such desperate plight as is here posted on the blackboard of the earnest schoolmaster and high-toned citizen called to the head of its educational department. All this is but another way of saying that forty years ago even New England, then the most progressive portion of the Republic, was still educationally lingering in the good old British aristocratic habit of largely depending on a superior educational class to do the thinking and save the people according to some vicarious scheme of public salvation. Never had there been a more abundant supply of eminent scholars, eloquent and devoted ministers, able public men, enterprising and executive leaders in business, even superior teachers and leaders in education, both at home and in other States and round the world, than when the new Superintendent of the Common Schools of Connecticut gave this doleful picture to the world.

A free American Commonwealth, like a man, is never absolutely compelled to depend on any single institution or agency, however valuable and in the long run indispensable, for its existence or progress. In the absence of a suitable provision for the schooling of the masses of the people, the superior class of Connecticut, in a variety of indirect ways, had educated the people, at least sufficiently to avoid the extreme perils that filled the horizon of Barnard and Philbrick with threatening omens of impending ruin. The entire life of an American Commonwealth even in the crude condition inevitable to a new and heterogeneous population getting itself together after the fashion of a republican State, is the most powerful and many-sided university yet set up on this planet, containing within itself vast and varied resources of power to educate and train the people for emergencies that would overwhelm a State otherwise constituted.

And the good doctor confirms all this by the way he applies himself in this, the first of a series of remarkable reports which hold a distinguished place in the educational literature of the country, to a practical and elaborate discussion of the most important needs of the schools; evidently with a lively faith that the people would "read, ponder, and digest," and in the fullness of time act upon his lines of reform.

Through the remaining 175 pages of his report he treats of, (1) Schoolhouses, (2) Attendance, (3) Rate bills, (4) The distribution of public money, (5) Small districts, (6) Length of school terms, (7) Support of schools, (8) The Connecticut Common School Journal, (9) The State Normal School, (10) School visitors' reports, (11) Lectures on Common Schools, (12) Teachers' institutes, (13) Common school apparatus, (14) The school laws, (15) District school libraries. The last item was especially emphasized. An elaborate appendix contained a mass of valuable information under the heads of, (1) Plans and descriptions of schoolhouses with cuts, (2) Reports of visitors and educational addresses in

school societies, (3) Extracts from school visitors' reports, (4) A circular to school visitors, accompanying a copy of the school laws, by the Superintendent, (5) A list of teachers' conventions and institutes held in Connecticut since 1839, (6) Rules and regulations prescribed by school visitors, (7) A long extract from the 16th Annual Report of Secretary Sears of Massachusetts on the district system of schools, (8) Circular to school visitors, (9) The returns, as far as received, from the different portions of the State, (10) A list of 40 districts, each containing less than twelve children between 4 and 16 years of age.

A general estimate shows 153 towns in the Commonwealth, 221 school societies, 1,644 school districts, 100,294 children and youth between the ages of 4 and 16; capital of State school fund, $2,049,953.65, with an income of $144,137.73-a dividend of $1.25 annually to each pupil in the schools. The superintendent regards the rate-bill, the hardship of which is especially felt by the poorer class, as one of the most serious obstacles to good schooling in the State. The method of distributing school moneys is severely criticised. The schools are in session, on an average, but four months in the year. Some $200,000 from all sources of revenue were appropriated to public education in 1852—$2 to each person of school age. While the law permitted an unlimited local taxation, the privilege was rarely exercised. The secretary cites the example of the new western State of Ohio, which levies a tax of 1 mills on the dollar for the schools. Connecticut, he says, is perhaps the wealthiest State of the Union in proportion to population, with probably a valuation of $300,000,000, and a school tax like that of Ohio would produce $450,000-$4.50 to each child.

The State Normal School is one of the bright features of the situa tion. During the five years of its operation 867 students have been connected with it; ouly 20 of the school societies of the State have not been represented, the number during the first year being 294. But the majority of these have only remained through one term, and the school has scarcely reached the height of a proper training seminary for teachers. Two lecturers have been employed among the people and 655 teachers have been instructed at institutes. The State of New Hampshire is praised for raising $5,200 annually by the voluntary taxation of its different counties for institutes. Under an arrangement with the State prison, the convicts have been employed in manufacturing the Holbrook's school apparatus, and the articles have been offered at 25 per cent discount on their cost to all the school districts. But few have been sold, and it was only after a still farther reduction, almost amounting to a free distribution of this valuable material, that the accumulated supply could be disposed of. A pamphlet compiled by legislative direction containing the school laws had been distributed to all the districts in the State-2,500 copies in connection with an edition of the Common School Journal. The importance of common school libraries is urged in the longest item of the report.

This summary of the first report of one of the most prominent edu