CENTENNIAL HYMN. [Sung at the National Celebration at Philadelphia.] BY O. W. HOLMES. RIGHT on the banners of lily and rose, BRIGHT Lo! the last sun of our century sets! All but her friendships the nation forgets! All but her friends and their welcome forgets! Welcome! a shout like the war trumpet swell Wakes the wild echoes that slumber aroused! Welcome! the walls of her temple resound! Welcome! still whisper the echoes around; Thrones of the continents! Isles of the sea! Yours are the garlands of peace we entwine; Shadowed alike by the palm and the pine; THE EDUCATION OF THE PRESIDENTS. THE Syracuse University Herald has made up the following table of Presidents and their places of education, which is of interest: Washington, good English education, but never studied the ancient languages; Adams, Harvard; Jefferson, William and Mary; Madison, Princeton; Monroe, William and Mary; Adams, J. Q., Harvard; Jackson, limited education; Van Buren, academic education; Harrison, Hampden Sidney College; Tyler, William and Mary; Polk, University of North Carolina; Taylor, slightest rudiments; Fillmore, not liberally educated; Pierce, Bowdoin; Buchanan, Dickinson; Lincoln, education very limited; Johnson, self-educated; Grant, West Point. Monroe and Harrison did not graduate. Monroe left college to join the Revolutionary army. Financial reverses deprived Harrison of a full course. Polk was the oldest when graduating, being twenty-three; Tyler the youngest, seventeen. The majority graduated at twenty, this being also the average age. Jefferson probably had the most liberal education and broadest culture. It is said that his range of knowledge would compare favorably with that of Burke. The drill at West Point may be considered equal to a college course, and in many respects superior. In discipline and mathematical training it is not equaled by any American college. Counting General Grant, two-thirds of our Presidents have been college men. To be sure, the two whose names have become household words-Washington, the Father, and Lincoln, the Martyrwere not liberally educated; but theirs were special missions. They live in the affections of the nation rather than in the intellect, as embodied in the Constitution and laws. Theirs was to execute, not to mold. TEACHERS' SALARIES IN ENGLAND. A RETURN for the year 1873, prepared by the Education Department, shows that in England and Wales the average income of certificated masters of elementary schools aided by the Parliamentary grant was £103 11s-the average being taken on the income of 7,629 such masters; 3,920 (more than half) were provided with a house or lived rent free. The income of certificated mistresses averaged £62 10s—the average being taken on 5,035, and 2,022 were provided with a house or were rent free. The average income of certificated infants' mistresses was £60 9s-the average being taken on 2,670, and 743 were provided with a house or rent free. In Scotland, in he same year, the average income of certificated masters was £110 8s (or nearly £7 more than in England), the average being taken on 1,549 and 1,036, or two-thirds, were provided with a house or were rent free; the average income of certificated mistresses, (taken on 636), was £58 14s, and 361 were provided with a house or were rent free ; the average income of certified infants' mistresses was £60 13s, the average being taken on 132, and 42 were provided with a house or rent free. In Ireland the income of 3,610 head male teachers of national schools shows an average of only £56 10s, and nearly four-fifths have to pay rent for their residences. A fewonly 93—in the first class of the first division had an average income of £125 15s, but the average for the third class, constituting a majority of the whole number, was not quite £43 17s. The income of 1,937 head of female teachers averaged £45 17s, three-fourths paying rent for their residences; there were 59 in the first class of the first division, whose income averaged £93 6s; but 823 in the third class averaged £37 12s, four-fifths of them having to pay rent for their residences. -Keep a list of your plans, your difficulties and your methods of meeting them. Look at the list often and see if you are carrying out your plans. M VOCABULARY OF GREAT WRITERS. [ILTON'S vocabulary (excluding his prose writings) consists, it has been computed, of about eight thousand words-counting as distinct words all separate parts of speech, but no inflection of any one part of speech. Shakespeare's vocabulary, estimated on the same plan, contains fifteen thousand words; a number, as compared with Milton's, which is accounted for by the great volume of the writings; partly, also, by the aggregate of things and notions among which the dramatist's imagination moved. The next question that occurs is, In these vocabularies what proportion is of old English stock, and what borrowed from Latin or other non-English sources that have fed composite English? In Shakespeare's vocabulary the non-English element is about two-fifths-that is, about six thousand words out of the total fifteen thousand-are not of the English stock, a proportion nearly the same as that in the English Bible, where, according to Mr. Marsh's reckoning, about sixty per cent. of words are native. In Milton's poetic vocabulary the non-English element is about two-thirds-that is, about five thousand three hundred words out of the total eight thousand. But now a distinction must be drawn. A word belongs to a writer's vocabulary if he has used it once; but in writing or in speech, some words are used oftener than others; and, therefore, to determine the proportion between the English and non-English constituents of a writer's vocabulary is not the same thing as to determine this proportion for his style. In order to apply the test to a writers style, specimens of various lengths must be taken from his text, and every word must be counted, not only once, but as ofteu as it occurs. Mr. Marsh has applied the test to various English writers, and has obtained some curious and rather unexpected results. In the eighteenth century English style generally was highly Latinized. Yet even then the proportion of English to non-English words in a tolerably long and characteristic passage of a good author very seldom falls below seventy per cent. Swift, in one essay, sinks to sixty-eight per cent., but usually ranges higher. Hume's average raises to seventy-three per cent., Johnson's is seventytwo per cent., Gibbon's seventy per cent.-good testing instances, which give results on which few people would have ventured to reckon from guess-work or general impression. In the present century the ratio of English to non-English words has decidedly gone up. Macaulay's rate is seventy-five per cent.—i. e., only one word in four is not of old English stock, and this, according to Mr. Marsh, is about the mark of recent prose writers, though on the whole we should rather have expected it to have risen. As to poetry, the "Lotus Eaters" shows eighty-seven per cent. of pure English words; "In Memoriam," eightynine per cent. Mr. Longfellow's number is eighty-seven per cent.; Mr. Browning's, eighty-four; the general result being that the proportion of English in poetry is hardly less to-day than it was in the sixteenth or seventeenth century, or earlier. Shakespeare's rate is from eighty-eight to ninety per cent., Milton's (computed from "L'Allegro," " Ill Penseroso," and "Paradise Lost," Book IV,) is, on the whole, eighty-five-eighty being the probable average for the whole of "Paradise Lost." Another very interesting point in Milton's vocabulary is the number of words he has used but once. Under the letter A alone Mr. Mason counts np 118 such words. Mr. Marsh gives a few samples of words thus used once only by Shakespeare-namely: Abrupt, ambiguous, artless, congratulate, improbable, improper, improve, imburse, inconvenient, incredible. Lastly, between five and six hundred of Shakespeare's words have become obsolete, or have changed their meaning. For Milton Mr. Marsh puts the like number at one hundred; but Mr. Mason gives chapter and verse for one hundred and fifty, which are, at all events, uncommon now, though many of them have been assumed by recent poets, and some others might still be pressed into service at need.—Saturday Review. THE THE PROFESSION OF TEACHING. `HE work of instruction in our public schools is one that ought to involve an amount of careful training and study and of conscientious labor which would entitle it to rank high among the professions, and by its rewards attact the best talent from the graduates of the higher institutions of learning. Instead of this, it is often used as a makeshift to fill up time and afford the means of respectable subsistence until one can determine what he will adopt as his life-work. Those who take it up with this view have not the incentive to devote themselves to it with zealous fidelity, and are too apt to get through its duties as easily as possible and devote a considerable share of their time to outside studies, in order to prepare themselves for something else which occupies their thoughts more than the work they have in hand. Those who do propose to make it a life-work are too often those of second-class qualifications, who doubt their ability to succeed equally well in anything else, or lack the resolution and energy to strike out in a field where success would depend more upon their merits and the ability to achieve. Teaching ought to be a profession, adopted like any other as a life-labor, because it affords scope for the talents and culture of those who select it, and brings reward and satisfaction cnmmensurate with the labor. That it is not such a profession is due in part to false principles in the management of educational interests. Our teachers are too much at the mercy of those who employ them. It is notorious that personal influence is more potent in obtaining and retaining positions than any degree of merit or any standard of qualification. The examinations are almost always a farce, the selection being virtually made beforehand, and in many cases utterly incompetent persons are appointed when there are applicants for the positions with the best qualifications. The teachers are employed by the year, and are constantly dependent on the committees, knowing full well that they are liable to be displaced at any time to make way for somebody else, or as penalty for some act that is really a merit, but has displeased somebody with power and influence in the Board on which they are dependent. Such a thing as a fair examination into their merits before a dismissal is made, or of judgment based upon justice, is not to be hoped for, because that dismissal can be effected by the easy process of failing to re-elect. Every teacher is a tenant at will, and his term expires each year. He must have the favor of the committee, or he is liable to lose his place merely by not being elected anew every summer. The result is that the teacher regards his position as precarious, and is induced by the instinct of self-preservation to follow a course and make reports which will suit the committee rather than such as are approved by his own judgment. He will not venture, in fact, to have any judgment, and his experience goes for nothing. He is neither at liberty to utilize it, nor has he any encouragement to make suggestions. The consequence is that those who understand best the interests of the several schools have the least power over the policy of directing them. The position is at once humiliating to honest pride and destructive to honorable ambition. The examinations for the selection of teachers should be very carefully and thoroughly made in every case, and the appointments should be conferred strictly by merit. The teacher once appointed should be sure of his position during life or good behavior. He should be removable only for cause and after a fair trial of any charges that may be brought against him. There is a good deal of talk about cutting down salaries, but a matter of far more importance is securing teachers that would be worth even more than is now paid. The pecuniary inducements are hardly sufficient to secure the best qualifications, especially under the discouragements that weigh upon the profession. Our school system is essentially weak and inefficient for the reason that so little attention is paid to encouraging and building up the profession of the teacher, and will never have strength to produce the best results until this radical defect is remedied.--Boston Globe. DIVERSITIES. AVE we an art of education? is a question that, it seems to us, must occur columns. From teaching the a-b ab's up to the study of the classics, every several man has a different theory and method, and we are not sure that some do not have many. And where lies the fault? If there be a science of education, its work should be to lay open to us those deep and sure foundations which would serve for a substantial oneness in our superstructure. If there be an art of teaching, it ought to give us assured methods, capable of being embraced in a harmonious general practice. Alas! practically, we have little of either. Half the time the educational world is at loggerheads, and we are wielding our wisest journal-craft in the sole endeavor to lead the differing to a common landing place. Now we are not going to spend time in proving that there must be a true science of education, and a harmonious art of teaching. If there be a science of mind, there must be a science of education and an art of teaching. At least |