becomes slower, the tendency of bodies to the equator would diminish, and the water would flow toward the poles, until another surface equilibrium were established. If the rotation become more rapid, the water would rush toward the equator, till the equilibrium was restored. These opposite forces, the centrifugal and centripetal, will always balance each other.

How Mr. Mann could be puzzled about so clear a matter, is singular. One would imagine that the mind which could originate the idea of marrying a man to twenty fine ladies of the modern school without subjecting him to a charge of bigamy, would be able to comprehend a very simple problem in natural philosophy.-Quincy (Ill.) Republican.

REPORT ON IRREGULARITY.

READ BEFORE THE STATE TEACHERS' ASSOCIATION AT WAUKESHA, Aug. 13, 1857.

"Days of Absence, sad and dreary."

IRREGULARITY is the root of school evil. In blackness of consequences, compared with it, desertion in the army is an angel of light.

Irregularity heaps on a school reproach; breeds in a school inefficiency; thins it like a pestilence; like a wasting disease, drags it down to a state of dullness and indifference to study, which may well be called h-ll.

Low views in regard to education, or wrong views as to the manner of getting it, produce most irregularity. The district need to be taught the philosophy of the subject. A school-day, like a dish, has an intrinsic and a relative value. A school-term is just as much of a unit as a set of dishes. A scholar can no more lose a day from the one than a purchaser can spare a dish from the other. In either case, more is lost than the value of a single day or of a single dish.

Wrong views in a district as to the usefulness of regularity must be removed. The majority of every community, where the schools are of an inferior order, will say, "I don't see that a day out of school, now and then, can do any harm." Don't a little whisky, taken now and then, do any harm? The wine of irregularity is as dangerous as the wine of the grape. Teach not your children to look upon it when it is red. Irregular schooling injures a scholar just as much as irregular milking injures a cow. Twice a day, and every day, is the motto in both cases.

The expedients calculated to break up irregularity are of two kinds: those which operate as punishments, and those which operate as rewards. The following penal expedients probably deserve a place in the memory of the Association:

1st. Obliging an irregular scholar to enter a lower class.

2d. Obliging an irregular scholar to go into a lower department.

3d. In all cases and in all schools, without any exception, exacting a written statement from the parent, showing consent and cause of absence. 4th. For occasional cases, a gentle application of birch.

5th. Forfeiture of seat.

6th. Putting the school in charge of a trusty scholar and going after the absent, gives the teacher a chance to speak his mind when he can speak it, and to strike a blow when he can strike it, at a time and in a place where it ought to be struck.

7th. Where you do not go yourself, in all cases note vacancies the instant school is called, and dispatch scholars to know the reason.

8th. In all cases and in all schools, oblige scholars to make up and recite after school all the lessons which were recited in their absence.

forced, inexorably, than this I know of no better penal regulation. Now for the expedients which operate as rewards:

Where en

1st. The first day of the term, notify your school that on the last day of the term you will have something which will draw out the neighborhood, and that then before all you will write on the blackboard the names of those who have been neither tardy nor absent.

2d. If the neighborhood do n't come, have the list published, or nailed up in the post-office, or have the clergy read it in church.

3d. Have taken, in a lovely group, the daguerreotype of those who have been neither tardy nor absent; there is no handsomer school-room picture than it will form.

4th. Let all the parents have their babies named after scholars who have been neither tardy nor absent. Thus generations to come will know that regularity and punctuality excited your admiration and received your rev

erence.

While expedients are merely the bugler's epaulets and standard of the war against irregularity, the munition of rock is the hostility, the settled unceasing hostility of the teacher himself. He must hate irregularity with vengeful, brick-bat animosity. Causticity cannot be extravagant in the premises. Let it have free course and be glorified.

Be not acid to the pupil and oil to the parent. Don't rake down one and rub down the other. Let both feel the rowel of malignant justice. Every case of irregularity or unpunctuality, save for sickness, is such an indignity offered a holy cause, and is calculated to produce such horrible malformation of character in the pupil himself, as to awake the tiger in a teacher, and utterly preclude all pretty-faced, simpering, pussy-cat twaddle.

Let but the teacher set his face like a flint, and stand against the evil like a beaten anvil to the stroke, and the incubus will vanish like the baseless fabric of a vision, nor leave a wreck behind. A teacher can, and a teacher ought to educate a community, to regard irregularity just as they do the itch. D. J. HOLMES, Sheboygan.

WISCONSIN INSTITUTE FOR THE EDUCATION OF THE BLIND.

[WE cheerfully give place to the following article, which has been sent to us for publication in the Journal.—ED. JOURNAL.]

This Institution, now suspended on account of the annual vacation, will be re-opened on the first Monday of October next.

During the present season the building will be so far completed as to afford ample accommodations for more than double the number of pupils heretofore in attendance, and all the necessary appliances for comfort and instruction will be correspondingly increased, so that its capacity for usefulness in the noble work allotted to it will be greatly enhanced as compared with the past.

The design of the Institute is to furnish all the young blind of both sexes, residing in the State, whether native or foreign born, with the means of a thorough education, as well as a comfortable and pleasant home during their term of instruction.

The school course comprises all the branches which are necessary to a good English education, together with vocal and instrumental music. Instruction is also given in a variety of mechanical employments, by means of which many will be enabled to procure a competent support after leaving the Institute. Especial attention is likewise given to the formation of correct personal habits, so that the plan of education pursued has reference to the moral and physical, as well as the intellectual powers.

In the boarding department of the Institute, everything needful for the promotion of the health, comfort and convenience of the inmates is provided, and no pains is spared by the officers to make them as happy and contented as they could be at their new homes. In case of sickness, they receive prompt medical attendance, and are watched over with parental solicitude by the superintendent and matron.

The school session occupies ten months in each year, leaving a vacation of two months, which is spent by the pupils at their homes.

The term of instruction is not limited to any definite number of years, but the stay of each pupil is determined by the advancement made, and consequent fitness for graduating.

The rule pertaining to the ages of pupils embraces only those who are not under eight or above twenty-one years, but exceptions are sometimes made in peculiar cases.

No person of confirmed immoral character is knowingly received into the Institute.

All the benefits of the Institution, including boarding as well as instruction, are furnished to the blind residing in Wisconsin free of any charge, it being supported by legislative appropriations as a department of the Common School system of the State. The only expense attendant upon a course of instruction is for clothing and traveling to and from the Institute.

Persons wishing to make application for the admission of pupils, or to gain further information concerning the Institute, will address their communications to W. H. CHURCHMAN, Superintendent of Wisconsin Institute for the Blind, Janesville, Wisconsin.

N. B.-As the existence and design of this Institution are but little known in some sections, papers throughout the State, whether printed in foreign languages or English, will confer an incalculable benefit upon the blind of their respective neighborhoods, and likewise aid the Institute in its benevolent work, by giving the above several insertions.

An appeal is here made to the Philanthropic of all classes to co-operate with the Institute, by using their efforts in procuring the attendance of all the unfortunate children of the State whose condition it aims to ameliorate. SUPERINTENDent.

GYMNASIA AT SCHOOLS AND COLLEGES.

AMONG other indications that education is beginning to be established on a sensible basis, we are happy to learn that the University of Virginia has devoted fifteen hundred dollars to the establishment of a Gymnasium for the use of the students, while, in the words of an exchange, "California has passed a law to make the scientific development of the human body the order of the school hours upon the Pacific," meaning that all her Common Schools are to have the necessary apparatus for physical exercise, with teachers of gymnastics.

Could the entire public only be once awakened to the fact that the young study better and learn more when the health is vigorous, and the body strengthened by daily exercise, we should unquestionably at once see a gymnasium with a teacher connected with every school of any account in the country. And yet the opinion of the most experienced and judicious physicians and physiologists in the country is decidedly and unhesitatingly to this effect. There is not one child in twenty in the country whose physical education is in due correspondence to its intellectual training, while at more advanced institutes of learning the neglect is truly pitiable. Take almost any college, Princeton, New Haven, or Cambridge, and we are astonished on examination to find that at the most critical period of life, that of youth just preceding manhood, bodily vigor and daily exercise are things never hinted at by any of those who have sole charge of the institutions, all such vulgar matters being entirely subordinate to the superior attractions of coefficients and Greek quantities. "The young men ought to know enough to take care of themselves in so simple a matter,” we have been told. Yes, and the young men, by the same rule, might be left to teach themselves English History, belles lettres and French; it being quite as intelligible to any of them that all will be very useful in after life. The

fact is that the old custom stands in the way, and laziness aids. Health and strength require education as much as Greek; they need professors, classes and apparatus as much as chemistry or botany; and we should have a glorious country if bodily exercise could ever be made generally popular among those classes now leading sedentary lives, and who are rapidly filling the country with neuralgic, pale-faced, weak-breasted descendants. We commend the example of the University of Virginia, and of California, in this particular, to other States which pride themselves much more on the perfection of their educational systems, and of their superior institutes. Until they have caught up in this particular, they certainly cannot boast of doing anything for the important branch of all education whatever.-Philadelphia Evening Bulletin.

For the Journal of Education.

PEOPLE'S

CONVENTION.

"Watch the main-spring."

MAPLE GROVE, September 1st, 1857.

THE appointed hour having arrived, the President called the house to order, and offered the following remarks upon the design and importance of the meeting:

We have met for a laudible purpose, and under a very appropriate motto. There is a little coil of steel attached to the machinery of a watch, which acts as a motive power, sets all its wheels in motion and causes its hands to point out the minutes and hours as they pass. This coil is the spring of all its usefulness, and is called the main-spring.

There is an institution in our midst so necessary to our welfare, and so closely connected with our very existence, that it may well be called the spring of all our success. It is the life of our most cherished possessions and dearest hopes; it is the main-spring to elevate the human race. It holds the reins of society; it bears the standard of religion; it moves the wheel of state and carries in its hand the destiny of nations. This institution looks to us for its preservation; we to it for ours. It looks to us for its elevation; we to it for ours. It rises, we rise; it falls, we fall. It now demands our attention; we now greatly need its influence. We need not say that we refer to the Public School.

A complaint is often heard of late, that our educational system is imperfect; that our schools under it are in many places almost a failure, and that it presents little opportunity for their improvement.

It becomes us as fathers, as members of society, as citizens of the com