and more security to the rights of others, than all the criminal enact ments that have ever been made, or prisons that have ever been built.

If we desire the rising generation to be virtuous, lovers of freedom, and to cherish our institutions, which we must soon leave behind; if civilization, intellectual enjoyment, substantial refinement, love of order, and prosperity, are to be leading characteristics with those who are to succeed us, the means must be provided, and an efficient common school system devised. The youth of the State must be educated and instructed in habits of useful and industrial pursuits; for habits formed in early life are likely to follow to its close.

The Constitution has very wisely provided for the inviolability of the principal of the school funds, which now are, or hereafter shall be, under the control of the General Assembly, and for the faithful application of the income to the purposes designed. It has also declared that such sums shall be raised, by taxation or otherwise, as, with the income of the school trust fund, will secure an efficient system of common schools throughout the State; and this Constitution the Representatives of the people have solemnly sworn to support.

For the amount and condition of all moneys and grants for school purposes, the General Assembly is referred to the report of the Secretary of State. It is respectfully recommended that every sehool district should be required to have a school kept in it, from the first of December until the first of April, in each and every year, and that parents or guardians, and all others, entrusted with the custody of children, should be required to send them to some school for at least three months of that time, unless for good cause excused by the directors. It is likewise suggested that some method should be provided, better suited than the one now in force, to prevent the employment of any but competent teachers, and those of unexceptionable character.

I believe it to be true, that children, in the habit of attending school become fond of it. The desire to learn increases. If the foundation be laid in youth, every one of either sex, as a general rule, and in any ordinary condition, may become possessed of a common English education, may be intelligent and intellectual. There is leisure sufficient from the employment of all, if the disposition exist. The General Assembly might do much to improve our common schools, and to promote the cause of education, by providing for suitable libraries in every school district, such as would be adapted to the capacities and tastes of youth. In Massachusetts, every school is furnished by the State, with Webster's Dictionary, as the standard work of orthography and pronunciaThe same is recommended by a committee of the New York Legislature for the Empire State.

tion.

It is admitted to be the most valuable work of the kind extant, by the learned men both here and in Europe: and its general use in our schools would break down all provincialisms, so to speak, and produce uniformity and elegance in the use of our language. Words would then be used by every one in the same sense in which they are defined by that able lexicographer.

Much might also be done by the General Assembly to encourage literary taste, by small aid, from time to time, for the purchase of books, periodicals and newspapers for permanent literary associations, lyceums

and clubs, in our cities and towns. It would certainly have a tendency to prevent dissipation, by the desertion of places tending to immoral ities, and cause young men to store their minds with useful knowledge, and elevate themselves in their own self-dignity and self-respect.

Again I would say, let the masses be educated. Send information and the means of instruction among all classes of our people unable to provide it, and your jails will become tenantless, and your penitentiary greatly diminish in its occupants. The songs of riot and debauchery will be seldom heard in your streets, and your Executive will escape the constant annoyance of parents, wives, and children, for some ignorant and disgraced, but still cherished object, who has forfeited his liberty to satisfy the claims of justice.

My predecessor, in his last annual message, among other things recommended a thorough revision of the school laws. He remarks: "The law which now professes to regulate this system has been in force for many years. It has undergone many alterations; is printed in many different volumes of the Statutes, and is thus made difficult to be found, and still more difficult to be understood by the great majority of persons whose duty it professes to point out.

I fully concur with him in opinion, and the entire subject is earnestly and respectfully recommended to the early and deliberate consideration of the General Assembly, with the full conviction that the people of Ohio will cheerfully submit to any reasonable burthens that may be imposed, in aid of the school fund, and which shall be faithfully applied. to the purposes of common schools, believing as they justly do, that it would relieve them from other burthens, in a measure, which are now levied to secure the faithful and prompt operation of penal laws.

ITEMS.

A fine Union School House has just been erected in Troy, Miami county. It is seventy feet square, three stories high, has cost from $8,000 to $10,000, is so divided as to accommodate all the departments, from the Primary to the High School, and can seat comfortably more than six hundred pupils. The Schools are expected to open on the first of May next. The Board of Education wish to employ a thoroughly qualified man as Principal and Superintendent, at a salary of $500, $600, $700, or more, according to his qualifications; and a male Teacher for the Grammar School, at a salary of $350 or $400,

-The Spring Session of the Richland County Teachers' Institute will be held in Lexington, during the week commencing on the 22d of March.

-Our friends will do us a great favor by communicating items of intelligence in regard to schools, school houses, and teachers.

-Advertisements and communications should be forwarded so as to reach us by the 15th of the month preceding the date of each number.

THE ANNUAL EVENING ADDRESS, delivered by GEORGE WILLEY, Esq., Acting Manager of the Public Schools of Cleveland, before the Ohio State Teachers' Association, Dec. 31, 1851. OWE the privilege and the honor of addressing you upon this occasion to the fact, that it has happened to be my fortune for a few years past, to be measurably connected with the educational interests of a neighboring City. You have desired to show that individual exertions, if well intended, however otherwise of unpretending character, or however local in their range, would not escape your notice and appreciation. It was for this, and not from any expectation that I should come prepared to instruct and enlighten you upon subjects peculiarly your own, that you invited. me to be present and remark to you this evening. Accept my acknowledgments for your thoughtful courtesy.

per

If you will permit me to pursue a little further this line of sonal remark, I would beg to say, that if it were possible for me to discharge this evening, in any measure, the obligations I am under to practical teachers for what little I may have gathered upon subjects of education, it would heighten to me, not inconsiderably, the enjoyment of this hour. If the City which welcomed you at your last meeting in July, has maintained a respectable position with regard to educational concerns, it has been owing to the fact, that in every important movement, experienced and practical teachers, of this and of other States, have been carefully and thoroughly consulted. After all, it is to them, and to such as them, that mere officials must go for light.

It is not my purpose to present to you, nor do I know that you expect from me, a carefully prepared educational essay, or an

VOL. 1, No. 2: FEB. 1852.

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elaborate discussion of any single topic. Indeed it would seem doubtful if there were any proposition broad enough to comprehend the great variety of subjects which naturally require a passing notice, and seem appropriate at a meeting like the present. We assemble for purposes of conference, of consultation, of free and mutual suggestion,-to review the past,-to refresh ourselves and each other with a recurrence to familiar principles-to cast, perhaps, the horoscope of the shadowy future. What I have to offer, therefore, will be in the nature of Educational Remarks,-discursive they may be, but it is hoped, nevertheless, that they will be found to have some connection with the objects we have in view.

What is Education? And here I may as well remark, that these detached and fragmentary observations, will follow something like this general plan:

To consider what Education is, as connected with the Individual, and what it is, or should be, and how it may be furthered as connected with Systems of Education, and to glance, quite superficially, at the educational condition and prospects of the world, our country and our State.

What is Education, then, as connected with the Individual? This question lies, obviously, at the basis of all educational inquiry. Discussions, however general, improvements, however comprehensive or magnificent, begin and end here.

We wish of course to be understood as limiting this inquiry to the instruction of youth as provided for in educational institutions. We are well aware that individual education is something which is never commenced and never finished in the Schools. The first accessions of knowledge through the senses at the dawn of life, and the final glimmerings of intelligence at its close, bound human education and what is acquired intermediately is the result of influences too various even to be enumerated. Unaided selfculture, observation, the exterior impressions of nature and society, have of course a leading agency in personal development.

But in its more limited sense, what is it to educate the Individual? Generally speaking, it is to take him when he is most impressible, to superintend, promote, and regulate his development, to furnish him with a suitable variety of knowledge, and give him a right direction on the journey of life. This comprehends all a teacher can do-all this, however, a teacher must do, to fulfill his trust.

To educate is not, certainly, to create; although in rare instances where a deficiency of the senses, or of mental structure has existed, education in skillful and patient hands has almost seemed creative. But ordinarily, of course, every human being is provided with a full set of faculties, fashioned and adjusted by a

skillful hand, and admirably fitted for symmetrical improvement. All that man can do is to educate these faculties as he finds themto draw them out into such exercises as shall endow them with health and vigor-to chasten such as unreasonably domineer, and encourage such as are naturally feeble, irresolute and inactive. Thus proportion and harmony spring from disproportion and conflict. Thus culture does not create or superadd, but seeks to energize and direct the faculties of man.

That education is the most philosophic, and is apt to be most successful, which first analyzes man's nature to see what it is, and then proceeds to train it with steady reference to the results of such analysis. Proceeding upon this idea, man's nature is not unfrequently divided into a Physical, an Intellectual, a Moral and a Religious nature. All these blend with one another; still it is a convenient subdivision, and sufficiently precise for ordinary purposes. To educate either of these natures at the expense or to the neglect of the other, is to produce a character more or less one sided, angular and disproportioned. To educate each in the due measure of its importance, is to do all that can be done toward producing a perfect specimen of human nature. With your permission I would offer a few remarks upon each of these subdivisions.

First, then, of inevitable importance is Physical Education; yet is it not painful to consider how mysteriously its importance has been disregarded? There have been eras in the world's history which were essentially physical in their ideas and tendencies. The Games, the Amphitheatre, the Tournament, the battle field, before science supplanted all other means of military renown, all tended to exalt the standard of physical symmetry and strength over the intellectual and the moral. Poetry and Romance personified this spirit. This, as an intellectual age, has passed to the other extreme. Modern Literature shows it. Romance, which catches and adapts itself with instinctive promptitude to the complexion of the times, shows it. It will never do for the heroes and heroines of the present day to be vigorous, robust people like those of earlier centuries. They must be highly wrought intellectual impersonations, and their faces must be "sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought." It seems to us that in educational assemblies occasion should never be omitted of beckoning the age back from this unfortunate extreme. The Ancients had a maxim that a sound mind in a sound body was the greatest good. "Sana mens in sano corpore." They would have the one, but they would equally have the other. Nothing has done so much to preserve the physical excellence of the aristocracy of England as manly exercises at their Schools and Universities. There is a fine picture in Alton Locke, of the invigorating sports of the Students of Cambridge. In our own country it is gratifying to per