State to fountains of truth, beauty and goodness, never saw so many bright eyes sparkle at once and thus develop and foster a general taste for with delight, as when, a few days ago, I had the æsthetics. pleasure of announcing to one of our largest dis Will not this be desirable? and can it not be at-trict schools [No. 4, in the fourteenth ward] that tained? Let parents review the subject and ask the trustees had agreed with me to send them a wherein they can contribute to the great work of music teacher. regenerating their schools; how they can best contribute to raise the living spirit, in their drooping formalism! And let teachers and school officers stand ready to answer the call of an awakening public, with hearts and hands consecrated to the noble work, and we shall then have reason to join with them in singing a song of triumph before many years are gone.

[Extract from the Report of IRA PATCHIN, Co. Superin-influence in refining their minds, improving their

Music has received but little attention. The want of teachers who understand the science is the only reason. Of the whole number of pupils in the county, but three hundred and forty-one in the summer, and one hundred and forty-five in the winter schools, were taught to sing enough, however, to show the importance of introducing music as a branch of education, into all our schools. It is an excellent means of government, as I have found; for where there is good singing the whip is very rarely seen. It secures early attendance, and produces cheerfulness and joy, There is no doubt of the happy tendency singing has upon the morals of children, and over their passions. Every tendency to virtue seems to be strengthened, and the chords of every vice weak- [Extract from the Report of H. E. ROCHESTER, CO. ened.

consideration of my subject, to express no opinions which are not sustained by practical results coming under my personal observation.

school being assigned as a reason for employing teachers of a second or third rate grade, and then only continuing the school some six or eight months. The average compensation of female teachers is now less than half that paid to male teachers. Were female teachers of a higher grade of qualifications demanded, they would exly than they are at present; but still they would be content and could well afford to receive less than is paid to male teachers of the same attainments; for the reason that the customs of society and other circumstances forbid their engaging in many other vocations peculiarly appropriate for the other sex, and also for the reason that their employment would be continued throughout the year. This permanency of employment of the same teacher, let me suggest also, would be one of the most important advantages resulting from such a system. Often one-half the term for which a teacher is engaged passes away before the scholars become attached to their teacher, and familiar with his peculiar modes of instruction and system of government, and before too, the teacher is well acquainted with the various capacities and dispositions of his pupils, all essential to secure the best results from the labors of the teacher. And scarcely are these advantages attained when the term closes and a new teacher is employed, a stranger to the scholars, and who most probably introduces new books and methods of teaching.

The idea is very prevalent that female teachers are not competent to govern most of our winter schools. This would readily be granted were it necessary for them to adopt the system of gov. ernment heretofore so much in vogue, that is,pect and in justice ought to be paid more liberalone of indiscriminate flagellation for all offences. I would not subject delicate females to the unpleasant task and trial of physical strength incident to such a system. If better motives to obedience are presented, such as self-respect, and love of approbation, and the incentives which an intelligent pursuit of knowledge will invariably furnish to the observance of quiet and good order, I can conceive of no ground for the apprehension, that females are not as capable as males to govern a school. On the contrary, I have found female teachers succeeding admirably in the government of the same schools that male teachers of good qualifications utterly failed to control. There is a spirit of independence fostered by our free institutions which prompts to high and noble bearing, but which, unguided by intelligence, and unchastened by the moral virtues, degenerates into harshness of manners, and disregard of all law and authority. It is this blind and unchastened spirit which develops itself, in the resistance to the legitimate authority of the school. master, on the part of so many of the young men in our schools. They entertain the false notion, that such conduct evinces a manly independence which will elevate them in the regards of their fellows. But who ever saw a young man, possessing any self-respect, pride himself upon his success in resisting the authority of a kind and respectable female teacher? If any such there be, they should not be allowed to poison the moral atmosphere of a school room by their pre

sence.

devotion to the vocation of teaching as a profesPermanency of employment further secures a sion, calculated alike to call into exercise the utmost abilities of teachers, elevate the character of the profession, and call into its ranks those of the best talents. There are few that engage in the business of teaching under the present system of change and limited employment, who do not One other objection to the employment of fe. regard it as a temporary business, to be relinquished so soon as an opportunity is presented male teachers deserves a passing remark, and for employment in one more permanent, and in that is the difficulty of their conforming in the which they will be better remunerated for their winter season to the almost universal custom of services. And what reputable business, I may teachers boarding in the several families of the ask, is there, requiring a moderate share of litedistrict It is sufficient in answer to this to say, rary and scientific attainments which in this resthat such custom is detrimental to the interests pect, does not hold out greater inducements to of the school, and in no case ought it to be reyoung men qualified to be successful teachers? quired of a teacher. The distance they may A correspondent of the Common School Journal, have to walk is the least objectionable feature of in a recent number, says: "Not long since, in one the system. It were well if young women gene- of the most cultivated towns in the Commonrally practised daily walking more than they do. wealth, I took great pains to ascertain the wages and especially would it be calculated to preserve of journeymen shoemakers, carpenters, blackthe health and strengthen the physical and men-smiths, painters, carriage-makers, cabinet and tal constitution of those confined so many hours piano-forte makers, and some others. The result to the school room. The practice of boarding of this examination showed, that while every from house to house interrupts any systematic class of these received more, some of them recourse of study by the teachers, and often sub-ceived fifty, and a few one hundred per cent jects them to inconveniences and discomforts, rendering their situation very unenviable.

more than was paid to any of the teachers of the district schools in the same town. If then we But I must hasten to the consideration of some pay less for teaching than for painting or shoeof the advantages to be gained by the more gene-making, and give only temporary employment, ral employment of competent female teachers. On this branch of my subject, as in what has preceded, I shall be unable to present any thing new, but can only corroborate by my testimony what has so often been urged by others.

And first in order I will suggest the economy of the plan, a consideration which we may deem of no little consequence when we are aware of the expense ordinarily incurred in sustaining a

we cannot expect that men of the best talent, the greatest sagacity, the highest hopes, will leave those callings to go into schools, or will be will ing to prepare themselves with the expectation of being idle during most of the year. But if we offer women the wages we now pay men, we hold out to them higher inducements than is offer ed by any other calling, and we shall therefore have our choice of all the female talent and ener

gy that is to be hired; and then we may engage the first rate women to do the work which we too often entrust to second and third rate men." Great value is justly attached to the cultiva tion of habits of neatness, and whatever pertains to good manners, in childhood; they are conducive to health, refine the mind, and secure for their possessors the respect and association of those who will exercise over them a virtuous and moral influence; I have found more attention paid to the cultivation of these habits by the fe. male teachers of this county, than by the male; and such I presume is generally the case every where.

I am not so enthusiastic in urging the employment of female teachers as to be unwilling to admit that there are difficulties to be encountered in the system. The objections, however, are overbalanced in my judgment, by the peculiar advantages to be gained; and what may be granted as tenable arguments against the universal employment of females, are inapplicable to a system which only contemplates their more general employment, retaining male teachers at the head of our large city and village schools, where they can be retained throughout the year; and in all cases where the school is sufficiently numerous, and the district able to maintain a school of two or more departments, it may be well to have a male teacher as principal.

are females. This, we think, is as it should be.
A large proportion of the children who attend
the summer schools are quite young, and as it
seems to be universally admitted that females
are peculiarly fitted for moulding the infant mind,
the custom of employing them to teach the sum
mer schools would seem to be dictated by sound
wisdom; and we believe it would be well for so-
ciety, if the instruction of children under ten or
twelve years of age was exclusively assigned to
them. Formerly, a deep rooted prejudice against
the employment of female teachers existed in this
county, but this is now rapidly yielding to more
enlightened views. Many of our winter schools
are now taught by females; and we do not hesi
tate to say, that in some instances they are decid.
edly the best conducted.

[Extract from the Report of E. COMSTOCK and S. MOUL
STON, Co. Superintendent of Oneida.]
The proportion of female teachers is evidently
increasing in this county, and it is perhaps a
matter of congratulation that such is the fact.
From the experience which we have had in the
schools in this county, we have no hesitation in
saying, that full one-half of the winter schools
might be successfully taught by females, while
of the summer schools very few are to be found
in which it is found necessary to employ male"
teachers.

MASSACHUSETTS ANNUAL REPORT.

BY HORACE MANN.

We have drawn freely from this admirable report, but our readers will rather complain that anything has been omitted, than that so much space is given to its important topics; we shall, however, return to it again and again, until all its stores of wealth are exhausted.

While I have aimed to present all the more important facts and arguments on the subject, I am aware that I have omitted many things, which, from their being so universally conceded, or from my want of personal knowledge of their value, I have deemed unnecessary or inexpedient to embody in my report. I ought not, however, to omit altogether in its proper place, one other objection that I have heard to the system frequently raised, which is, that when young ladies have acquired some practical experience in teaching, and are thus qualified to be most useful in our schools, they will get married. This is so, and it is vain to remonstrate against it. We must in such cases console ourselves with the re-cal examination of the schools of Europe, and flection, that what we lose in the practical experience of those who are thus drawn from the work, we make up in the greater zeal and energy of the younger and less experienced who take their places.

In view of the whole subject, aided by the experience and observation which the supervision of the schools in this county for the past two years has afforded me, I am satisfied that if well qualified female teachers were employed by the year in four-fifths or even seven-eighths of our common schools, it would be a wise and beneficial reform, diminishing very much the expense of sustaining our schools, and calculated to improve them in every important and valuable feature.

It may be proper for me, in conclusion, to add that the schools in this county, generally, were as well, if not better conducted, during the past summer than any preceding term, summer or winter, since my first appointment as superintendent. More districts are now employing teachers by the year, and more females are now engaged in teaching than in any previous winter. [Extract from the Report of D. MCFARLAND and R. S.

HUGHSTON, CO. Sup'ts of Delaware.] It will also be perceived that a much larger proportion of the teachers in the summer season

Mr. Mann,has but recently returned from a criti

his report gives to his countrymen, counsels and warnings of surpassing value, drawn from an intelligent and careful investigation of the leading continental school systems.

We need say nothing more in commendation of this document, than that it is worthy of the exalted reputation long since won by this great champion of universal education.

Whatever may be the especial object of the American citizen in going abroad, still, if his mind is imbued with the true spirit of the institutions of his country, he cannot fail, in travelling through the different nations of Europe, to find tion. There is no earthly subject, in its own namaterial for the most profound and solemn reflecture, of higher intrinsic dignity and interest than a contemplation of the different forms into which humanity has been shaped by different institutions. This interest deepens, when we compare

Trac

our own condition with the contemporaneous con-
dition of other great families of mankind.
ing back, by the light of history and philanthro
py, these respective conditions to their causes, in
some period of antiquity more or less remote, we
behold the head-springs of those influences which

leaves wholly untouched the side of positive, boundless suffering and wrong. In the Europe of the nineteenth century, incomputable wealth flows from the bounty of heaven, during the revolving seasons of the year, and is elaborated from the earth by the ceaseless toil of millions of men ;-that wealth which is wrought out by hu man labor and ingenuity, in conjunction with the great agencies of nature-fire, water, wind and steam, and whose aggregates are amply suffiman being, and the joys of home and the sacred influences of the domestic circle to every family,

have given such diversity to the character and fortunes of different portions of the race. We are enabled not only to see the grand results which have been wrought out by certain agencies, acting through long periods of time, but we are brought into immediate contact and we commune as it were, face to face, with these great principles which bear the future destinies of mankind in their bosom. Whatever now is, whether of weal or woe, is the effect of causes that have preexisted; in like manner, whatever is to be, whe-cient to give comfort and competence to every huther of glory or of debasement, will result from causes put in operation by ourselves or others. The past is a unit, fixed, irrevocable, about which there is no longer either option or alternative; but the future presents itself to us as an infinite of possibilities. For the great purposes of duty and happiness, to-morrow is in the control of the weakest of men; but yesterday is beyond the dominion of the mightiest prince or potentate ;-it is no longer changeable by human or divine power. The future, then, is our field of action; the past is only valuable as furnishing lights by which that field can be more successfully entered and cultivated. For this purpose, we study the history of particular parts of the globe, of particular portions of our race,-of Europe, for instance, for the last thousand years; we learn what manner of men have borne sway; we discern the motives by which they have been actuated; we study the laws they have made, and the institutions they have established for shaping and moulding their unformed future. We go to Europe, or by other means, we examine and investigate the present social, intellectual and moral condition of its people; and here we have the product-the grand result, of men, motives, laws, institutions, all gathered and concentrated into one point, which we can now see, just as we see the fabric which comes from a piece of complicated machinery, when the last revolution of the last wheel rolls it into our hands for inspection.

And what is this result? In a world which God has created on such principles of wisdom and be. nevolence, that nothing is wanting, save a knowledge of his commands and an obedience to them, to make every human being supremely happy,what amount of that knowledge is possessed, what degree of that happiness is enjoyed? It is no adequate representation of the fact to say, that not one-half of the adult population of Europe can read or write in any intelligible manner,and hence are shut out from knowledge of all history; sacred and profane, and all contemporary events: that not one-third are comfortably housed, or fed or clothed, according to the very lowest standard of comfort amongst the laboring classes in this country;-that not one individual in five hundred has any voice in the enactment of the laws that bind him, or in the choice of the rulers who dispose of his property, liberty and life;and that, excepting in a few narrow and inconsiderable spots, the inalienable right of freedom in religion, and liberty to worship God according to the dictates of conscience, is not recognized or known-nay, that the claim of any such liberty is denounced and spurned at, and its advocates punished, not only by a denial of the right itself, but by the deprivation of all human rights what ever-all these facts, deeply as they affect human happiness, greatly as they derogate from human dignity, present no living picture of Europe, s it now exists All this is negation only; it

that wealth, by force of unjust laws and institutions, is filched from the producer, and gathered into vast masses, to give power, and luxury, and aggrandizement to a few. Of production, there is no end; of distribution, there is no beginning. Nine hundred and ninety-nine children of the same common father, suffer from destitution, that the thousandth may revel in superfluities. A thousand cottages shrink into meanness and want, to swell the dimensions of a single palace. The tables of a thousand families of the industrious poor waste away into drought and barrenness, that one board may be laden with surfeits. As yet, the great truth has scarcely dawned upon the mind of theorist or speculator,-that the political application of doing as we would be done by, is, to give to every man entire equality before the law, and then to leave his fortunes and his success to depend upon his own exertions.

That there must be governors or rulers where there are communities of men, is so self-evident a truth, that it is denied only by the insane. Yet under this pretext, a few individuals or families have usurped and maintain dominion over almost two hundred millions of men. That a nation must possess the means of defending itself against aggressors, or submit to be vanquished, despoiled and enslaved, has been equally obvious. Yet under pretence of doing this, naval and military armaments are kept up, at incalculable expense, and men are converted into the soulless machinery of war, far more to uphold thrones, and to subju. gate all independence of thought and action_at home, than to repel assaults from abroad. Religion is the first necessity of the soul; but because every human being, though he were heir to all the glories and profusions of the universe, must still be a wanderer and an outcast, until he can find a supreme father and God, in whom to confide-because of this instinctive outreaching of the soul towards some Almighty power,-crafty and cruel men have come in, and have set up idols and false gods for its worship; and then, claiming to be the favorites and ministers of Omnipotence, have dispensed the awful retributions of eternity against all questioners of their authority, and brandished every weapon in the armory of heaven, not merely for the slightest offences against themselves, but for the noblest deeds of duty towards God, and of benevolence towards men. Hence, throughout wide regions of country, man is no longer man. Formed in the image of his Maker, the last vestiges of that image are nearly obliterated. He no longer breathes that breath of independent and conscious life that first animated his frame, and made him a living soul. The heavenly spark of intelligence is trodden out from his bosom. In some countries which I have visited, there are whole classes of men and wo men, whose organization is changing, whose

thus, from parent to child, the race may go on e generating in body and soul, and casting off, one after another, the lineaments and properties of humanity, until the human fades away and is lost in the brutal, or demoniac nature. While the vicious have pecuniary means, they have a choice of vices in which they can indulge; but though stripped of means to the last farthing, their abil

whole form, features, countenance, expression, are so debased and brutified by want and fear and ignorance and superstition, that the naturalist would almost doubt where, among living races of animals, to class them. Under governments where superstition, and ignorance have borne most sway, the altered aspect of humanity is assimilating to that of the brute; but where resistless power has been trampling, for centuries, up-ity to be vicious, and all the fatal consequences on a sterner nature and a stronger will, the likeness of the once human face is approximating to that of a fiend. In certain districts of large cities, -those of London, Manchester, Glasgow, for instance, such are the influences that surround children from the day they are brought into the world, and such the fatal education of circumstances and example to which they are subjected, that we may say they are born, in order to be imprisoned, transported or hung, with as exact and literal truth as we can say, that corn is grown to be eaten.

to society of that viciousness, still remain. Nay, it is then that their vices become most virulent and fatal. However houseless or homeless, however diseased or beggarly, a wretch who is governed only by his instincts may be, marriage is still open to him; or, so far as the condition and character of the next generation are concerned, the same consequences may happen without marriage. This also, the statesman and the moralist should heed, that however adverse to the welfare of human society may be the circumstances under which a fore-doomed class of children are born, yet the Not in a single generation could either the cru- doctrine of the sanctity of human life protects elties of the oppressor, or the sufferings of his vic- their existence. Public hospitals, private charitim, have effected these physical and mental trans- ties, step in and rescue them from the hand of formations. It has taken ages and centuries of death. Hence they swarm into life by myriads, wrongs to bend the body into abjectness, to dwarf and crowd upwards into the ranks of society. But the stature, to extinguish the light of the eye, and in society, there are no vacant places to receive to incorporate into body and soul, the air and them, nor unclaimed bread for their sustenance. movements of a slave. And the weight and full-Though uninstructed in the arts of industry, ness of the curse is this, that it will require other though wholly untaught in the restraints and the ages and centuries to efface these brands of de-obligations of duty, still the great primal law of gradation, to re-edify the frame, to rekindle in self-preservation works in their blood as vigorthe eye the quenched beam of intelligence, to re- ously as in the blood of kings. It urges them on store height and amplitude to the shrunken brow, to procure the means of gratification; but, having and to reduce the over-grown propensities of the no resources in labor or in frugality, they betake animal nature within a manageable compass. themselves to fraud, violence, incendiarism, and Not only is a new spirit to be created, but a new the destruction of human life, as naturally as an physical apparatus through which it can work. honest man engages in an honest employment. This is the worst,-the scorpion sting, in the lash Such, literally, is the present condition of large of despotism. There is a moral and a physical portions of the human race in some countries of entailment, as well as a civil. Posterity is curs- Europe. In wide rural districts,--in moral ed in the debasement inflicted upon its ancestors. jungles, hidden from public view within the reIn many parts of Europe, the laws both of the ma- cesses of great cities, those who are next to be terial and of the moral nature, have been so long born, and to come upon the stage of action, will outraged, that neither the third nor the fourth come, fifty to one, from the lowest orders of the generation will outlive the iniquities done to their people,-lowest in intellect and morals and in the fathers. qualities of prudence, foresight, judgment, temperance; lowest in health and vigor, and in all elements of a good mental and physical organization; strong only in the fierce strength of the animal nature, and in the absence of all reason and conscience to restrain its ferocity. Of such stock and lineage must the next generation be. In the mean time, while these calamities are developing and maturing, a few individuals,--some of whom have a deep stake in society, others, moved by nobler considerations of benevolence and religion, are striving to discover or devise the means for warding off these impending dangers. Some look for relief in a change of administration, and in the change of policy it will insure. With others, compulsory emigration is a remedy, -a remedy by which a portion of the household is to be expelled from the paternal mansion by the terrors of starvation. There are still others who think that the redundant population should be reduced to the existing means of subsistence; and they hint darkly at pestilence and famine, as agents for sweeping away the surplus poor,-as famishing sailors upon a wreck hint darkly at the casting of lots. Smaller in numbers than any of the prece ling, is that class who see and know, that while the prolific causes of these evils are

Again, the population of a country may be so divided into the extremes of high and low, and each of these extremes may have diverged so widely from a medium, or standard of nature, that there are none, or but a very small intermediate body, or middle class of men, left in the nation. The high, from luxury and its enervations, will have but small families, and will be able to rear but few of the children that are born to them. The intermediate class, whom affluence has not corrupted, nor ignorance blinded to the perception of consequences, will be too few in number, and too cautious about contracting those matrimonial alliances which they cannot reputably and comfortably sustain, to contribute largely to the continuation of the species. But the low, the aban doned, the heedless, those whom no foresight or apprehension of consequences, can restrain, these, obedient to appetite and passion, will be the fathers and mothers of the next generation. And no truth can be more certain than this:that after the poor, the ignorant, the vicious, have fallen below a certain point of degradation, they become an increasing fund of pauperism and vice, -a pauper-engendering hive, a vital, self enlarg. ing,reproductive mass of ignorance and crime. And