Twenty-Fifth Annual Report of the Board of Education, together with the Twenty-Fifth Annual Report of the Secretary of the Board. Boston William White, Printer to the State. 1862.

We have here a handsome octavo of 455 pages, embracing the separate Reports of the Board of Education, the Visitors to Newark Schools, the Secretary, and the Agent of the Board, with abstracts of the Reports of School Committees throughout the State, and a mass of valuable statistical information, the preparation of which must have cost vast labor.

It is the glory of our public school system in Massachusetts that her people do not consider it perfect, but have intelligence enough to modify it as circumstances may require. Very important improvements have been made within the last quarter of a century, nor can we doubt that still greater improvements will be accomplished within the next ten years. We have watched with particular interest the labors of the agent of the Board, the Rev. B. G. Northrop, and we desire to record our deep conviction of the great value of these labors. Mr. Northrop possesses rare qualifications for the office he fills-finished scholarship, a sound practical judgment, enthusiastic interest in the cause of education, facility in lecturing, a never-tiring industry, and, not least, a fine Christian spirit with great suavity of manners.

His Report in the present volume is a paper of exceeding value, and deserves to be well studied by every school teacher and parent in the State. The adoption of the suggestions it contains on spelling, reading, text-books, keys, classical studies in our High Schools, physical exercise, &c., could not fail to bring our whole educational systèm up to a much higher standard, and every one of these suggestions is perfectly practicable. We earnestly advise all concerned to read, mark, and inwardly digest Mr. Northrop's able and sensible Report.

ARTICLE X.

THE ROUND TABLE.

THE IMPERSONAL WE.—It is pleasant to find one's judgment on a debated question indorsed by a good authority in the matter; and this we esteem the "Independent" to be in a purely literary affair. It

writes sensibly upon the publicity which the prevailing fashion demands for our periodical authors. Our intensely eager curiosity cannot be satisfied with a good thing unless it knows precisely where it comes from. Possibly not a few readers do not feel competent to say if a thing is good without the indorsement of a distinguished name to back their verdict. Or is it that people now-a-days have not time to try for themselves if an article is worth the trouble of a reading, but must have the assurance of the writer's name to guarantee them against a waste of labor? However this be, it has come to pass that nothing scarcely now can wear even the thinnest veil. Newspaper columns now parade their celebrated contributors, with all their blushing honors thick upon them. Monthlies and quarterlies let you either boldly or slyly into the coveted secret of whose is this and that. This is not enough; but bulletins in advance herald the rising of new or the return of old stars, of all the magnitudes. The thing has become quite nauseous to some tastes, and threatens injury to the public mind, as it hinders individual independence of judgment, and goes to enfeeble the critical abilities of the mass of readers. We count but here and there a contemporary which observes a reticence on this subject. Our own course was adopted deliberately, and has been adhered to against the continued remonstrance of many firm friends. We have had to use much of the grace of resistance to fraternal importunities to keep our own counsels concerning the parentage of at least those of our papers which we decidedly preferred should remain incognito. We fancy that we have acquired some character for just this thing, of not permitting the individual interest of our pages to become the main point of consideration with anybody. A people who, more than any other existent, profess to call no man master, do not show much consistency in this insatiable avidity to ferret out the source of every paragraph which asks their notice. But our New York contemporary shall speak for us. It says:

"All the great journalistic successes of England have been impersonal, where the workman was hidden behind the work, and scarcely known or regarded by the public. Jeffrey's generally understood connection with the Edinburgh Review was scarcely an exception to this, and Gifford of the Quarterly was merely an abstraction for general readers. The thunder of the Times lost all its sonority when years after it leaked out that Captain Sterling was the Jupiter Tonans, and no known name can fill the imagination like the oracular editorial' We.""

Wherever lies the power of this impersonal unity of a periodical publication, it is a perfectly legitimate means of influence. It may, of course, be abused. But they are not the ones to allege this, whose

quarrel with the anonymous is only that they cannot fasten an individual assault upon somebody, whose arguments they are incompetent

to answer.

"As for her virtuous husband, Isaac Johnson, Esq.,

He try'd

To live without her, lik'd it not, and dy'd."

Cotton Mather.

BRIEF chronicle, half sad! made by the quaint
Old annalist; who, in a curious weft

Of learned lore and phrase grotesque, has left
Inwrought, this tender record of a Saint.
She, the rare, beauteous jewel of his heart,
Was caught up out of sight. He stood alone
The warmth and radiance of life quite gone!
Waking from happy dreams with sudden start,
Grief blew 'gainst him such pitiless, cold rain,
As rent him with fierce agues -shaking chills;
And even in the lullings of his pain

His soul pulsed upward with immortal thrills.

He leaped the bound. Then both the Throne drew near,
Singing their life song heavenly, sweet, and clear.

GERMAN PIETY. - It has puzzled us more than most other things to satisfy our own mind concerning the essential qualities of this commodity. Perhaps our meaning will be clearer thus: how full of error and malpractice may a Christian be, and yet be a Christian? hung that problem up, as an unresolvable one, years ago, thankful that judgment is the Lord's; and surely the glimpses which we get of the religion of the land of Luther from a late letter-writer, at Dresden, do not incline us to take it off its hook for a re-study, just now. We glean a few particulars. Few people comparatively attend the churches. These edifices are cloistral and sepulchral. Floors often are of stone. Pew doors are locked, and frequently the seats are turned up and also fastened with a key. No fires invite a winter audience; no pleasant welcome invites a congregation ever in multitudes to these dismal buildings. Sundays are gala-days, crowding all sorts of pleasurehouses and places with noisy, thoughtless throngs. The best men go regularly from church to their counting-rooms. Sabbath evenings are times of merry-making and general visiting. The names of God and Jesus are so familiarly used in conversation that no one thinks anything of it-children, ladies, everybody, indulge this practice. Loose

notions about the Bible are prevalent. Fashion and philosophy alike reject its supernaturalism. The creed of the million is, that one belief is as good as another. Doctrinal preaching is at a great discount. Children are taught the catechism, but grown-up folk are left to forget or remember its truths as they please. The church and the population are very nearly conterminous. Spirituality is at zero. This is dark shading; probably, in many localities, the picture is all too true. Yet a reaction is begun; and the denseness of this gloom may soon break away before a bright day-dawn. We have hope still of the land of Luther and Melancthon.

OUR physicists will unseat the Almighty to make room for their nature-god, with its fate-fixed necessity of invariable causation, hoping, possibly, to climb up on its broad shoulders to the thunderer's throne themselves. Their ambition may remind our classical readers of a few lines of Virgil, in the sixth Eneid, which depict a similar overweaning effort to assume, or at least to counterfeit, divine functions. Will these modern god-makers recognize their close kinship with the son of windy Eolus?

"Vidi et crudeles dantem Salmonea pœnas,

Dum flammas Jovis et sonitus imitatur Olympi.
Quatuor hic invectus equis, et lampada quassans,
Per Graiûm populos mediæque per Elidis urbem,
Ibat ovans, Divûmque sibi poscebat honorem :
Demens qui nimbos et non imitabile fulmen
Ære et cornipedum cursu simulârat equorum.
At pater omnipotens densa inter nubila telum
Contorsit (non ille faces, nec fumea tædis
Lumina) præcipitemque immani turbine adegit."

Vs. 585-594.

BOSTON REVIEW.

VOL. II.-SEPTEMBER, 1862.-No. 11.

ARTICLE I.

RELIGIOUS SELF-COMPLACENCY.

The Higher Christian Life.

By Rev. W. E. BOARDMAN.

Boston: Henry Hoyt. New York: D. Appleton & Co. 1859.

Lord's Dealings Edited and conWith an IntroBoston: Gould & Lin

The Life of Trust: being a Narrative of the
with George Müller. Written by himself.
densed by Rev. H. LINCOLN WAYLAND.
duction by FRANCIS WAYLAND.
coln. 1862.

A SHORT and easy way to heaven is the dream of indolence and pride in every age. So will it ever be to the end of the dispensation. Not so very strait is the gate in the hands of such engineers, nor the way so very narrow, however it may have been once when Christ spake. If any choose to go the roundabout, lengthened, weary way which Bunyan's pilgrim trod, let them; but there is not the smallest need. There is a much shorter, easier road. The slough of despond, the valley of humiliation, the lions, and the shadow of death, are antiquities, of value chiefly to remind us of our own happier lot — our triumphs speedier than even Cæsar's "I saw, I conquered" victory, not only bloodless, but achieved without the toil of a march; golden harvests where no furrow has broken the glebe;.