Samuel T. Armstrong, the lieutenant governor, performed the duties of the executive. In the autumn of 1835 the Hon. Edward Everett was nominated as chief magistrate by a whig convention held in Boston, and was elected by a majority of upward of eleven thousand votes.

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CHAPTER XXII.

THE GROWTH OF PUBLIC OPINION.

It was a most felicitous concurrence of events that raised Edward Everett to the executive chair of Massachusetts. He was a ripe and accurate scholar, a man of large attainments, a brilliant orator, and not an inferior statesman. Born in 1794, and graduated from Harvard College in 1811, he was chosen to Congress by the young men in Middlesex in 1825, and from the very first became an earnest supporter of the administration of John Quincy Adams. He remained in Congress until 1835, the year in which he was chosen to the governorship.

Governor Everett's official term was a period of unusual interest in the history of the state. Foremost among the achievements during his administration was the establishing of a school system upon a better and more fruitful foundation than had hitherto been reached. In 1835, the Rev. Charles Brooks, of Medford, delivered a course of lectures on the Prussian system of State Normal Schools, in the town of Hingham. "The whole Prussian system,' he said, "is built on these eight words, — As is the Teacher, so is the School; and therefore we must have seminaries for the preparation of teachers, and I hope the first one will be in Plymouth county. From what I have learned, it is now my opinion that the Prussian system is to make a new era in the public elementary education of the United

States." In the following year the Rev. Mr. Brooks lectured in other parts of the state, and sought to establish the theory that there was need of a normal school, owned, supported, and governed by the state for the state's service.

Meanwhile a writer and a graduate of Harvard College—had published an article in the "Boston Daily Advertiser," at that time the leading newspaper in New England, in which he facetiously ridiculed the idea of normal schools, and represented Mr. Brooks with a fool's cap on his head, marching up State Street, in Boston, at the head of a crowd of ragamuffin young men and women, who bore a banner with this inscription: "To a Normal School in the clouds." But such classic raillery passed for nothing, and the writer of the article survived long enough to discern a proof of his abysmal ignorance. The intelligent men and women in Plymouth county awakened to a sense of the importance of the subject, and in conventions assembled passed resolutions deploring the low state of the public schools, expressing a readiness for reform, and declaring, in favor of the Prussian model, that the surplus revenues should be used to advance the cause of education.

At the beginning of the new year Governor Everett asked, "Whether the creation of a Board of Commissioners of Schools, to serve without salary, with authority to appoint a secretary, on a reasonable compensation, to be paid from the school fund, would not be of great utility?" On the 10th of January the House of Representatives requested to be instructed on the subject of normal schools, and to Mr. Brooks the committee on education extended a patient hearing. A Plymouth county convention, held at Halifax on the 24th of January, voted to petition the legislature for normal schools. In the American Institute, Mr. Ichabod

Morton offered a resolution to petition for the same object. Mr. George B. Emerson prepared the petition, which, for comprehension of thought, force of statement, truth of reasoning, and persuasiveness of spirit, could not be surpassed. It need scarcely be said that by so doing, Mr. Emerson laid all future generations under obligations to his personal labors as a teacher, and to his pen, as a philosopher and Christian. One month later the Rev. Dr. Channing, in a public address, said, "We need an institution for the formation of better teachers; and, until this step is taken, we can make no important progress. An institution for training men to train the young would be a fountain of living waters, sending forth streams to refresh present and future ages. We trust that our legislators will not always prove blind to the highest interests of the state."

What had already been done carried conviction to every reasoning mind. Early in the spring a vote of the legislature established the Board of Education. On the 20th of April it was approved by the governor, and on the 29th of June it was organized. A few days later the Hon. Horace Mann laid down his law books, and became the first secretary of the Board. Not a man in the commonwealth could have planned more wisely or executed his duties more successfully. The record of his labors will be his everlasting monument. After providing for several county conventions, the Board of Education instituted a course of lectures to be delivered by different gentlemen. in the House of Representatives. On the 25th of January, 1838, the Rev. Mr. Brooks spoke on "Normal Schools and school reform." Eight days later Governor Everett, who wrote the first annual report of the Board of Education, recommended that the legislature should establish normal