With teachers properly trained in Normal Schools, and with such a popular disposition towards schools as wise legislation might effect, nineteen twentieths of the immoralities which afflict society might, I verily believe, be kept under hatches, or eradicated from the soil of our social institutions.

Every step in such a progress renders the next more easy. This is proved not only on the grand scale of comparing country with country, and state with state, but district with its adjacent district, and neighborhood with neighborhood.

Finally;-In the predicament last stated in the circular, and supposing the teachers to be imbued with the Gospel spirit, I believe there would not be more than one half of one per cent. of the children educated, on whom a wise judge would be "compelled to pronounce the doom of hopelessness and irreclaimability."

In nothing which I have advanced has it been my intention to advocate any sectarian instruction in our schools; or any thing adverse to the statutory limits of the Massachusetts school system. I therefore expressly disavow any intention to recommend truths or doctrines, as part of the moral instruction to be given in Public Schools, which any believer in the Bible would reasonably deem to be sectarian.

I am, with true esteem, thy friend,

JNO. GRISCOM.

Letter from D. P. Page, Esq.

HON. HORACE MANN,

STATE NORMAL SCHOOL, ALBANY, N. Y., Nov. 20, 1847.

DEAR SIR,-I received, some weeks ago, a copy of your Circular, propounding several inquiries respecting the intellectual and moral education of children in our Common Schools, on the supposition that a given series of conditions named in the circular should first supervene in the community.

To these inquiries it was my intention, at first, to furnish a somewhat extended reply; but, as your communication was received in the midst of a pressure of duties attendant upon the close of the summer term of our school, and as the vacation was wholly devoted to incessant labor among our Teachers' Institutes, I have felt obliged to defer giving the subject any considerable attention till after the labor and care of opening a new term of the school had somewhat subsided. Your more recent letter reminds me of my protracted delay, and I hasten to express my views upon the main point, very briefly.

In your circular, I may first remark, you have supposed a state of affairs

which I have never known to exist; my answer must therefore be based upon my knowledge of human nature, and of cause and effect in education, rather than upon what I have seen actually done; for, though my experience has now extended beyond twenty years in the schoolroom, and though I have often sighed for that degree and kind of confidence and coöperation which you have described, I have never yet realized it, or seen it realized by others. Still, could I be connected with a school furnished with all the appliances you name; where all the children should be constant attendants upon my instruction for a succession of years; where all my fellow-teachers should be such as you suppose, and where all the favorable influences described in your circular should surround me and cheer me, even with my moderate abilities as a teacher, I should scarcely expect, after the first generation of children submitted to the experiment, to fail, in a single case, to secure the results you have named.

With my views of human nature, I should not expect to succeed, in every case, in securing for each young heart what I understand to be a truly religious character. This is not, as I think, wholly a work of education,- for "neither is he that planteth any thing, neither he that watereth, but God that giveth the increase;" still, I am firmly of the opinion that the right of expectation of a religious character would be increased very much in proportion to the excellence of the training given, since God never ordains means which He does not intend to bless; and He has said, "Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it." But I should not forgive myself, nor think myself longer fit to be a teacher, if, with all the aids and influences you have supposed, I should fail, in one case in a hundred, to rear up children who, when they should become men, would be "honest dealers, conscientious jurors, true witnesses, incorruptible voters or magistrates, good parents, good neighbors, good members of society;" or, as you express it in another place, who would be "temperate, industrious, frugal, conscientious in all their dealings, prompt to pity and instruct ignorance, instead of ridiculing it and taking advantage of it, public-spirited, philanthropic, and observers of all things sacred;" and, negatively, who would not be "drunkards, profane swearers, detractors, vagabonds, rioters, cheats, thieves, aggressors upon the rights of property, of person, of reputation or of life, or guilty of such omissions of right and commissions of wrong that it would be better for the community had they never been born."

Had I leisure, I would gladly subjoin a few thoughts, to awaken parents to a proper sense of their responsibility in rightly aiding the teacher in the work of educating their children, and in rendering his success more certain in attempting to train them to whatever is excellent in human character. This, however, might be trespassing on ground prescribed to yourself. I therefore cheerfully leave the matter in your hands; and shall rejoice most heartily if you shall be instrumental in arousing the parents of the "rising millions" of our youth, to do rightly for them what the All-wise Creator intended they

should do, when he permitted them to assume the relation of parents. May God direct your efforts to this desirable result!

With sincere regard, your friend,

D. P. PAGE.

Letter from Solomon Adams, Esq.

HON. HORACE Mann,

My Dear Sir,-Most cheerfully do I comply with your request accompanying the Circular, with a copy of which you honored me a few days ago. I comply cheerfully, more in deference to your judgment than my own, having regarded my personal experience of little value, except as it enables me to do my own work, from day to day, better than before. If it can be turned to any good account in advancing the great work to which you have been so long and so honorably devoted, accept it for what it is worth.

1. I have been engaged in this profession twenty-four years. The first five years in the country, the remainder of the time in a city.

2. My whole number of pupils is a little below two thousand. The last nineteen years, my pupils have been females. Previously, both sexes.

3. Your third, and principal question, demands a graver consideration, and is one which I do not find it easy to answer with absolute precision.

Even in physics, certain conditions must be fulfilled, in order that known causes may produce known results. That acids and alkalies may perfectly combine, that heat may dissolve a metal,-the constituents must be brought into proper relations to each other, and counteracting influences prevented. The proper conditions being fulfilled, no one doubts the uniformity of the results. A failure does not raise a doubt as to the law of uniformity in the operations of nature. We question not that like causes produce like effects. We only go to work to make the conditions right, never doubting the law. If the seed sown does not germinate, no one supposes that the laws of vegetation are variable, but he ascribes the failure to some unfavorable circumstance, as some defect in the seed, or the soil. Equally uniform, beyond doubt, is the operation of moral causes. But to fulfil the conditions, or to ascertain what these conditions are, is usually more difficult than in the case of material agents. Matter has no living activity or will of its own, but is passive under the action of forces either from without, or permanently and invariably inherent in itself; but when we come to deal with mind, we deal with that whose inherent and essential nature is activity, affections, will.

If a well-conducted education produces benevolence, justice, truth, patriot

ism, love to God, and love to man, in one case, the same education, in the same circumstances, will produce the same results in all cases. The results for which we look and labor sometimes fail, not because the great law of uniformity is at fault, but by reason of counteracting causes, which may escape our most careful scrutiny. Does the failure impair our confidence in the uniformity of moral causes and effects? The moment this law fails, every cord that binds society together is sundered; society is disintegrated. Every social enactment, by which society attempts to regulate its members, every motive by which one man hopes to influence another, assumes this uniformity. It is the hinge on which all social influences turn. Without it, we could not shape moral means to moral ends. To destroy it,-to doubt it,—would be the moral unhingement of society.

In this great law are the teacher's hopes and encouragements. The great outline of the means he is to employ is well defined. It is his province to bring all those moral appliances to bear upon the soul, which are suited to lead it into harmony with truth and with God,—to train it to the perception and love of truth and goodness. In doing this, the faithful teacher is a co-worker with God, and may confidently look to the Author of all good to give the crowning blessing to his strenuous endeavors. There are those, (and I confess myself of the number,) who believe and feel that all human endeavors, unaided by an influence from on high, will prove fruitless, so far as the highest wants of the immortal spirit are concerned. Yet those who feel so, can tell us of no way in which they are authorized to expect such an influence, and of no way in which it is exerted even by almighty power, except through the instrumentality of truth presented to the mind. There might as well be a conflagration without fire, or a flood without fluid.

I confess I do not see how our different theological views can essentially alter our modes of instruction. We are all to train the young in the way in which they should go, "giving line upon line, precept upon precept, here a little and there a little," waiting for, and expecting, precious fruit. The fruit may ripen slowly. From day to day you may not be able to see any progress. This holds true both in moral and intellectual training. But by comparing distant intervals, progress is perceptible. At length a result comes, which repays all the teacher's labor, and inspires new courage for new efforts. You ask for my own experience. This is my apology for alluding, with freedom, to myself. Permit me to say that, in very many cases, after laboring long with individuals almost against hope, and sometimes in a manner too which I can now see was not always wise, I have never had a case which has not resulted in some good degree according to my wishes. The many kind and voluntary testimonials given, years afterwards, by persons who remembered that they were once my wayward pupils, are among the pleasantest and most cheering incidents of my life. So uniform have been the results, when I have had a fair trial and time enough, that I have unhesitatingly adopted the motto, Never despair. Parents and teachers are apt to look for too speedy results from the

labors of the latter. The moral nature, like the intellectual and physical, is long and slow in reaching the full maturity of its strength. I was told, a few years since, by a gentleman who knew the history of nearly all my pupils for the first five years of my labor, that not one of them had ever brought reproach upon himself, or mortification upon friends, by a bad life. I cannot now look over the whole list of my pupils, and find one, who had been with me long enough to receive a decided impression, whose life is not honorable and useful. I find them in all the learned professions, and in the various mechanical arts. I find my female pupils scattered as teachers through half the States of the Union, and as the wives and assistants of Christian missionaries, in every quarter of the globe.

So far, therefore, as my own experience goes, so far as my knowledge of the experience of others extends, so far as the statistics of crime throw any light on the subject, I should confidently expect that ninety-nine in a hundred, and I think even more, with such means of education as you have supposed, and with such divine favor as we are authorized to expect, would become good members of society, the supporters of order, and law, and truth, and justice, and all righteousness.

That I may not be misunderstood, allow me to add a few explanatory remarks.

I have no confidence in the reformatory power of education into which moral and religious influences do not enter. I assume,-as any one having the slightest acquaintance with your writings and teachings on this subject knows that you do, that the three great classes of powers, the physical, intellectual, and moral,—shall each receive its proper training; and then I feel authorized to look confidently for that providential blessing, which will secure the high results already alluded to. Without such a training, I have no right to expect the blessing of Heaven, or a good result. I do not fulfil the conditions on which such results are promised.

The world has already seen enough of highly cultivated intellect, while the physical and moral man has been dwarfed. Of this, we have too much melancholy proof in the demoralizing character of a large part of our current literature, including poetry, fiction, and the periodical press. The history of ambition, marked at every step of its career with carnage and blood, is sad proof that towering intellect, uncontrolled by a higher principle, is only augmented power for mischief. How much greater and better, when weighed in just balances, had Byron and Napoleon been, had their godlike powers been swayed by high moral considerations, in place of low passions and vaulting ambition!

It is to be feared, yea to be for a lamentation, that comparatively few of teachers, and still fewer of the community, have looked upon a school education as any thing more than a very limited intellectual training, leaving physical and moral culture to take care of themselves. The school laws of Massachusetts have always contemplated other attainments and vastly higher