people. When the pulsations of its heart are warm and vigorous, a life-giving energy will be imparted to every effort to elevate and improve the young.

The responsibilities of teachers were never greater nor their duties more arduous than they are at the present time. The youth under their charge are to be educated, not only in the elements of knowledge as contained in books and taught in schools, but they are to be instructed in the great duties of life-duties belonging to every sphere in which moral and intelligent agents may be called to act. The vital principles that underlie all cur social and civil blessings are being examined and discussed more than ever before. And our youth should be educated for the exigencies of the times in which they live. They should particularly be trained to individual and independent thought. And they should be well fortified and protected by the whole panoply of virtue and truth against the dangers and the evils to which they will be exposed. The ordeal to which their moral principles will be subjected will be searching in the extreme.

The passion for sudden wealth, which has been excited by so many instances of rapid and almost fabulous accumulation, has become so absorbing and engrossing as to endanger every sentiment of honor, fidelity and truth. The ordinary profits of ligitimate trade and the rewards of honorable labor are deemed wholly inadequate to satisfy this grasping ambition; hence every artifice and stratagem that ingenuity can devise are resorted to without scrupie. Speculation in every department of trade, the most daring and reckless, are becoming rife. And the frequency with which frauds of the basest character are committed with impunity, is fast deadening the public conscience and rendering it less and less sensitive to the violations of plighted faith, and to the sacritice of mercantile honor. Integrity is losing its sacred character: and confidence in man, the basis of all honorable intercourse, is being shaken. Duplicity and deception are becoming synonymous with shrewdness and skill, if not reckoned among the virtues.

The

It is to the custody of the youth, who are now about to enter upon the sphere of active life, that the citadel of truth and the sanctity of mercantile faith are soon to be committed. Never were higher and nobler duties ever imposed on man. brightness of the future and the permanency and stability of all that is fundamental in moral obligations, are depending mainly upon the culture that is now being wrought in the hearts and minds of youth. No opportunity should pass unimproved, no means or agency left unemployed. Lessons of practical wisdom, drawn from the past, should be enforced with all the persuasive earnestness of a divine teacher. Admonitions and warnings, coming from the moral wrecks strewn so thickly along the pathway of life, should be sounded in the ears of every youth, till they reach down to the very depths of his being, and arouse his conscience to vigorous action.

There are also evils of a local nature that require special attention. Never were the avenues to ruin so broad and inviting as at present. Every conceivable temptation is thrown directly in the pathway of the young. Ignorance and vice go hand in hand with but comparatively few checks to arrest their mad career. They are gathering to their haunts all the unwary victims whom they, by their fiendish arts, can entrap.

It appears from the recent census that there are now in our city nearly three thousand adult persons who can neither read nor write, and more than one thousand children between the ages of five and sixteen who do not attend any school. We need not the spirit of prophecy to foretell the influence of these classes on the future prospects of our city. Ought not all who honor virtue and detest vice, unite in some vigorous and systematic efforts to check, if they cannot eradicate the evils which threaten us.

We have abundant reason to be proud of the monuments of noble charity with which our city is so conspicuously adorned. But is there not a higher duty still? If it be wise, if it be Christian, to seek to alleviate in every way the woes and miseries of suffering humanity, is not that a Heaven-born charity that aims to remove the causes and the sources of this suffering?

There are other causes operating more or less unfavorably on our schools. Among these, Fashion may be regarded as holding a very prominent place. Her influence is felt in every department, but more particularly in the higher grades. When fashion once utters her behest, we might as well perhaps attempt to resist an established law of nature as to escape her tyranny. To whatever she dictates we voluntarily submit, no matter how preposterous or absurd. Ease, comfort, health

and even life itself, are often offered a willing sacrifice on her cruel shrine. Every principle of taste, beauty and propriety may be violated and ignored, and yet we cheerfully acquiesce in whatever she demands. No Heathen or Pagan Deity ever held such absolute sway over their ignorant and degraded votaries as the Tyrant Fashion has, at the present day, over those who boast most of their intellectual and moral grandeur.

The tendency of a fashionable education is to undervalue what is elementary, practical and useful, and to over-estimate what is ornamental and showy, as though we had no higher aims, and no more sacred duties to perform, than simply to amuse and be amused; overlooking entirely the end of all true culture, which should be to prepare the young to adorn and beautify life by the fruit wreaths of noble deeds and virtuous living.

The usual results have crowned the labors of most of cur teachers the past term. The few errors and faults that have been manifest are to be attributed to inexperience and to a want of skill, rather than to any lack of faithfulness or interest in their work.

I would again earnestly recommend to all teachers to give their instruction a more practical character, to prepare their pupils better for the common duty and the ordinary business of life. They should be taught how to use most effectively all the knowledge they acquire.

I would recommend additional tests in the examination of our schools, that we may ascertain, not only what pupils know, but what they can do. It is not an uncommon occurrence to meet with scholars who have completed their education at school, and have passed a stisfactory examination in many of the higher branches of study, to be ignorant of some of the simplest elements of knowledge. They can solve difficult problems in Algebra and Geometry, and yet they will make frequent mistakes in orthography, violate the plainest rules in Grammar, and fail entirely in the correct use of the fractions. This defect ought, at once, to be remedied. Penmanship, in particular, ought to receive more attention than is now given to it. There are few schools in which great inprovements have been made.

There should be, at least, a daily exercise in all our Intermediate and Grammar schools; and there should be the most careful supervision over this by all the teachers, that no bad habits are formed. And in order to produce a change in this respect I would suggest the propriety of making the Committee on Music, or some other one, a special committee on writing, that they may examine each school and report its progress.

There is another prominent defect which ought not to be passed by. There is but little decidedly good elocution in our schools. Pupils are not trained as much as they ought to be in an easy, natural and graceful utterance. Declamation ought to receive weekly attention in every school. I know teachers will reply that they have not time for these duties. If this is so, then special instruction in these branches should be provided, for they are certainly of as great if not greater practical importance than music.

The number of pupils in attendance the past term is smaller than usual. The demand for labor has been so great and so remunerative and the necessity of families have been so increased by the high cost of living, that a large number of boys have left our Grammar and Intermediate schools for work. In not a few instances, however, I fear that parents have been willing for immediate gain to sacrifice the future welfare of their children by denying them the privileges of an education so liberally provided for them.

The whole number registered is 7,149. In the High School there are 278; in the Grammar School 1,747; in the Intermediate 1,897; and in the Primary 3,327. All which is respectfully submitted.

DANIEL LEACH, Supt. Public Schools.

ITS MERITS GROW UPON YOU. "It is not a careless reading we have given to the new illustrated edition of Webster's Dictionary, and we have found that the more care we spent upon it, and the further perusal, the more profit and pleasure we got from it. We commend it heartily, and we believe with reasons which those who consult it will understand."— Christian Examiner.

RESIDENT EDITORS' DEPARTMENT.

RHODE ISLAND INSTITUTE OF INSTRUCTION.

THE next Annual Meeting of the Rhode Island Institute of Instruction will be held in PROVIDENCE, at the CENTRAL CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH, Benefit street, on Friday and Saturday, the 26th and 27th of January. Addresses are expected from Professors

R. P. DUNN, S. S. GREENE, and J. L. DIMAN, of Brown University; S. H. TAYLOR, LL. D., Principal of Phillips Academy, Andover, Mass.; Prof. JOSIAH P. COOKE, Jr., of Harvard College, and others.

"A MERRY CHRISTMAS AND A HAPPY NEW YEAR" to all the kind patrons and friends of THE SCHOOLMASTER, and the hearty wish of a glad and prosperous year to all who in any wise are laboring for the progress of Education all over our land. Thus speaks THE SCHOOLMASTER, as its pages once more greet you, near the grave of the old and on the threshold of a new and more glorious time. Clouds and darkness were above and around us, when last we sent out our New Year's greetings. The agonies of our national struggle were upon us. With unwavering faith and persistent hope we looked upward.

"The God of battles heard our cry
And sent to us the victory."

Unseen hands rolled away the storm-clouds, and when the summer's sun rose over our land, it shone upon a people beating their swords into ploughshares and their spears into pruning-hooks. The experiences and teachings of this old year 1865 have been worth all, and more than all their cost. Its noble record on the page of history will balance the memory of a thousand years of ordinary times. A moment has been worth centuries of history. Our losses have been fearful, but our gains, how splendid! It is no rhetorical flourish when our pens prefix that old word FREE to many an institution which before was only half-emancipated or closely bound by the fetters of an iron bondage. That old word has been coined anew in the mint of our trial, purification and deliverance. What think you, fellow teachers, when we can write Free Schools on the banner of South Carolina as well as on that of Rhode Island? Look higher, and in fiery letters we see Free Men written on that same blood-stained banner, never to be erased. "What hath God wrought?" With free institutions our work advances. We must go forth to educate and reclaim. Philanthropy, liberty and Christianity demand it. The banners of our educational purposes now float southward. We must not fail to possess the land, ere Ignorance and Despotism erect again their fallen altars, and offer thereon their hecatombs of hopeless victims. The Macedonian call and welcome salute us. God and duty command us to listen and obey.

The old year has taken from us and from earth, some of our best friends and coworkers in Education. Dr. WAYLAND, of our State, was one of the best and

brightest ornaments of our profession.

A merciful Providence has spared most of

those who were foremost in our ranks twelve months ago.

Let us welcome the new year 1866 with an earnest purpose to accomplish more for ourselves, our profession, and our race than in any previous time.

Let us remember that we are living in "a grand and awful time," and that the Future beckons us to a higher level of moral, intellectual and Christian duty.

WE have received the December number of THE RHODE ISLAND SCHOOLMASTER. It is beautifully printed, and a more than usually interesting number. In the article upon corporal punishment in schools, the doctrine advanced-that in the conflict of law upon that subject in the several States, the teacher ought to punish according to his conscience-we cannot subscribe to. In whatever State he may be, let the teacher obey the law. It is quite time that the "higher law" doctrine should be restricted to its legitimate scope and authority. It has been perverted until it has poisoned every department of life, and has become a scandal, a nuisance, and wholly and widely demoralizing in its effects. It ought not in its degenerate use to find advocacy in our educational publications. THE SCHOOLMASTER ought, as it deserves to be, well sustained.-Providence Daily Post.

Read and Choose for Yourselves, if you can make a Choice where all is Good.

LIFE AND LETTERS OF FREDERICK W. ROBERTSON, M. A., incumbent of Trinity Chapel, Brighton, 1847-53. Edited by Stopford A. Brooke, M. A., 2 vols. Ticknor & Fields, Boston.

Mr. Robertson, though belonging to a sect, was no sectarian. His pure and simple piety was a perpetual sermon and invitation to all classes of men to love God with all the heart and all the world as themselves. He more desired that men should become Christians than that the peculiar doctrines of any sect should be extended; yet he was a firm believer in the faith of the Episcopal church. His published sermons have delighted the hearts of Christians of all denominations; and now that we have the record of his private life our love for the man and the Christian is greatly enhanced. No more interesting biography has been published for a long time.

A SUMMER IN SKYE. By Alexander Smith. Author of "Alfred Hagart's House. hold," &c. Boston: Ticknor & Fields.

We have all, at some time, listened to a friend, telling a story of his experience or travel, till we felt that we had been his companion through all his journeyings, and had looked on the scenes of which we had only heard a description. It is just so with one who reads Mr. Smith's Summer in Skye. It is the most charming book in its freshness, and in vividness of its scenery painting, we have ever read.

SEASIDE STUDIES IN NATURAL HISTORY. By Elizabeth C. Agassiz and Alexander Agassiz. Marine Animals of Massachusetts Bay. Radiates. Boston: Ticknor & Fields.

This is a very interesting work on the Marine Animals found on the New England coast. The work is scientific, yet simple enough to be comprehended and understood by every one who has any desire to study the structure and habits of these animals. The book is printed on beautiful paper and is full of illustrations; and is such a work as every dweller by the sea, or who visits it during the summer months, will wish to have with him. It is a valuable aid to the study of Natural History.

GLIMPSES OF HISTORY. By George M. Towle. Boston: William V. Spencer.

We thank the author of this work for bringing together in one volume, so many biographical sketches of distinguished historical characters; some of the most distinguished are of our own time, and are wielding a mighty influence in moulding the public opinion on social and political questions, affecting the rights and the progress of universal free man. The book contains eleven articles, the titles of which are, "John Bright;""Count Cavour ;"" Alexis de Tocqueville;" "Memorable Assassinations;""The Opening Scenes in the Rebellion ;" "The last of the Stuarts;" "Lord Chancellor Campbell;" "The Last Days of Chatham;" Leigh Hunt;" 'The Cardinal-Kings," (Wolsey' and Richelieu ;) and "A Century of English History, 1760 to 1860.

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All the articles are very interesting, and the first three pre-eminently so to American readers at the present time, in view of what we have just experienced as a nation, and what we ought in justice to do to secure a prosperous and happy future to all within our borders. Mr. Spencer has spared no pains to give the work a beautiful dress.

DICTATION EXERCISES. By E. M. Sewell & S. R. Urbino. Published by S, R. Urbino, 13 School Street, Boston.

We have been deeply interested in these exercises. We have not seen anything in the way of general exercises in spelling that meets the demand of the school-room so exactly as they do. The exercises are written in the form of letters, or are descriptive of places or persons, while the particular words to which attention is called are printed in italics. At the beginning of each lesson the rules of spelling are given and these rules are at once applied, which fastens in the mind of the pupil the meaning of the rule. We commend these exercises to the critical examination of teachers.

J. H. COLTON'S AMERICAN SCHOOL QUARTO GEOGRAPHY. Comprising the several departments of Mathematical, Physical and Civil Geography, with an Atlas of more than one hundred Steel Plate Maps, Profiles, and Plans, on forty-two large sheets. New York: Ivison, Phinney, Blakeman & Co., publishers.

We have taken great pleasure in perusiug the pages of this truly magnificent work. From the beginning to the end the book is intensely interesting. It is comprehensive, treating with fullness all the different departments of the science of Geography and in such a manner as to be easily understood by the youngest student.