great variety of topics. They contain important facts, reasonings and suggestions, in regard to a majority of all the points essential to the welfare of our public schools. To lay open this store-house of information, town committees, prudential committees and teachers, in many instances, have invited the inhabitants of the district to assemble together, during the long winter evenings, for the purpose of having select passages from the Abstracts, specially applicable to some emergency or peculiarity in their condition, read to them. In this way, views have been enlarged, prejudices dispelled, interest in the cause of education quickened. But the Abstracts have seldom been used by the teachers in the schoolroom; and, yet the occasions are almost innumerable where this might be done with signal benefit. They may be used to promote intellectual progress; they may be used as a strong moral incentive to good conduct, and as a dissuasive from ill. There is scarcely one of the volumes which does not describe schools and classes preeminent for their excellence;-schools where the attendance has been remarkable both for its punctuality and regularity; classes which have distinguished themselves in spelling, in neatness and proficiency as exhibited in their writing-books, in reading, in working out difficult arithmetical problems, or in the expert and elegant drawing of maps, upon the black-board; or which, in some other branch, have won for themselves the commendation of the committee and been honorably reported to the town. Let the teacher read passages of this description before his school, such as may be especially appropriate to the condition of his own scholars, and cheer them on to emulate the high example of children in other parts of the State. Suppose, on the other hand, the teacher sees prognostics of a mutinous and insubordinate spirit among the elder scholars,-the falsely called young men, of the school; let him select from the Abstract some passages in which a school insurrection is condignly denounced and reprobated, the infamousness of its character portrayed, the names of the wicked agents in committing it, and there have been several cases of this sort,-called out from the school committee's report, in open town meeting, to be afterwards forwarded to the seat of government, and there deposited among

the records of the State, as an enduring memorial of their disgrace. Bright rewards, retributive consequences, like these, might be employed, among the motive-powers for advancing and governing a school, and would often exercise a decisive influence over its destiny.

I proceed to compare a few of the school statistics of the year 1843, the last received, with those of 1837.

The number of children in the State between the ages of 4 and

The number of scholars of all ages in all the public

The number of scholars of all ages in all the schools,

The average number in attendance, in 1837, in sum

The average number in attendance in 1837, in winter,

No registers were kept in the schools, in 1837; and there are many facts tending to prove that the estimates then made, both of the whole number of scholars, of all ages, belonging to the schools, and of the average number in attendance, were too high.

But supposing them to be accurate, it follows that, with an increase of less than 15,000, in the number of persons between 4 and 16 years of age, there is an increase of 24,516, in the number of those attending school, in summer; and of 27,354, in the number of those attending school, in winter. It appears also that the average attendance of this greatly increased number is higher than was the average attendance of the smaller number. This last fact is especially worthy of remark, because the new recruits freshly brought into the schools would naturally be far less punctual in their attendance than the rest. Another fact also bears directly and strongly upon this point. In 1837, the average length of all the schools in the State was only six months and twenty-five days, while, during the last school year, the average length of the schools was seven months and twenty-two days. Of course, other things being equal, the average of attendance would be greater for a short school than for a long one; for if parents will not spare their children regularly to attend a short school, still less will they be inclined to spare them, when the school is long.

Still, both the whole number in attendance on the Common Schools of the State, and the average of the attendance of this number, are alarmingly low, when compared with the whole. number of our children of a school-going age. This startling fact is shown by the following aggregates.

Whole number of children in the State, between the

ages of 4 and 16, in 1843,

192,027

Number of scholars of all ages, in all the schools, in

Now the average number of scholars, in all the

academics in the State, last year, was

3,760

And the average number in all the unincorporated academies, private schools, and schools kept to prolong Common Schools, last year, was

25,850

The great majority of the latter number consists of those who attend the Common Schools, while they continue; but, during the vacations of these, they attend private schools, schools kept to prolong Common Schools, &c.

A glance at these facts is ocular demonstration that thousands and thousands of our children, between the ages of 4 and 16 years, attend no school whatever, from the beginning to the end of the year. Although there may be no native born child who never enters a school, from the age of four to that of sixteen, yet it is certain that there are many between those ages, who are absent from school, a whole year, if not whole years, at a time. And in regard to those who attend school, more or less, every year, there are not a few, whose irregularity of attendance is aggravated into what may be almost called, a regularity of non-attendance.

In my Fifth Annual Report, I showed that, such was the enormous amount of the average absence of scholars wholly dependant upon the Common Schools for an education, that, were a single portion of the territory of the Commonwealth to be selected, and doomed to bear the entire loss, the "absence even in winter, when it was more than eighteen thousand less than in summer, would have exceeded the number of all the children between four and sixteen years of age, in the five western counties of Berkshire, Hampshire, Hampden, Franklin, and Worcester; that it would have exceeded, by more than ten thousand, all the children, between four and sixteen years of age, in the six south-eastern counties of Norfolk, Bristol, Plymouth, Barnstable, Dukes county, and Nantucket; that it would have been nearly equal to all the children, between the same ages, in the three great counties of Suffolk, Essex, and Middlesex; and that the amount of absence in the summer, would have exceeded the number of children in the three last named counties, by more than sixteen thousand." The questions which I then put, have since lost but little of their significance, namely; "were all the children in either of those three great sections of the Commonwealth wholly deprived of the privi leges of a Common School education, would not the State, foreseeing the inevitable calamities which, in the immutable order

of events, must result from rearing so large a portion of its population in ignorance,-be filled with alarm, and impelled by the instinct of self-preservation, to seek for an antidote? But is the evil which this fact infallibly prophecies, any less dangerous or imminent, because, instead of shrouding one particular section of the Commonwealth in night, it is diffused over the entire surface of the State, darkening the common atmosphere, and blinding the vision of the whole people?"

Another aspect, in which this case may be presented, is as little calculated to minister to our contentment or self-complacency. Deducting the number of children below four and over sixteen years of age, who attend our Common Schools, it then appears that, while the schools themselves are kept less than two-thirds of the year, the average attendance of children between 4 and 16 is less than two-thirds of the whole number between these ages belonging to the State. And this is true even of the winter schools, when the average attendance exceeds by eighteen thousand the average attendance in summer. If one-third of the schooling of the children is lost, each year, then, of course, in three years, it is equal to the loss of their whole schooling for one year. Now suppose that every third year, the State should raise its more than half million of dollars, and should provide and pay its complement of teachers, but that no child should attend its schools for a single day; that the schoolhouses, those places which we have been accustomed to look upon as the nurseries of intelligence and virtue, and the defences of our liberty, should be left desolate from one end of the year to the other. The actual fact is worse than the supposition here made; because a regular and unbroken attendance for two years, during the whole time the schools are kept, with an entire intermission of the third year, would be far more serviccable than the same amount of schooling spread irregularly over three years. Or, to look at the case, for one moment, in another of its aspects; suppose, every third year, the whole body of teachers in the State, should absent themselves from their respective schools, and still draw their compensation from the public treasury; would the injustice on the one side, or the loss on the other be any greater, in that year, than they now