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over all our farms, in all our workshops, and emphatically in all the labors of our households, we should then know how rapidly their gathered units swell into millions upon millions. The skill that strikes the nail's head instead of the fingers' ends, the care that mends a fence and saves a cornfield, that drives a horseshoe nail and secures both rider and horse, that extinguishes a light and saves a house, the prudence that cuts the coat according to the cloth, that lays by something for a rainy day and that postpones marriage until reasonably sure of a livelihood, the forethought that sees the end from the beginning, and reaches it by the direct route of an hour instead of the circuitous gropings of a day, the exact remembrance impressed upon childhood to do the errand as it was bidden, and, more than all, the economy of virtue over vice, of restrained over pampered desires, these things are not set down in the works on political economy; but they have far more to do with the wealth of nations than any laws which aim to regulate the balance of trade, or any speculations on capital and labor, or any of the great achievements of art. That vast variety of ways in which an intelligent people surpass a stupid one, and an exemplary people an immoral one, has infinitely more to do with the well-being of a nation than soil or climate, or even than government itself, excepting so far as government may prove to be the patron of intelligence and virtue.

From her earliest colonial history the policy of Massachusetts has been to develop the minds of all her people, and to imbue them with the principles of duty. To do this work most effectually, she has begun it with the young. If she would continue to mount higher and higher toward the summit of prosperity, she must continue the means by which her present elevation has been gained. In doing this, she will not only exercise the noblest prerogative of government, but will cooperate with the Almighty in one of his sublimest works.

Horace Mann's greatest services to education must be sought in the field of institutions, organization, administration, legislation, and public opinion. He was a great constructive pedagogist, a wise educational statesman, an eloquent tribune of the common school, He called upon the people of all classes, as with the voice of a herald, to raise their estimate of public instruction, and to provide better facilities by which it could be furnished. He devised or

adopted new educational agencies, and persuaded the people to use them. He organized public opinion, and influenced the action of legislatures. He gave men higher ideas of the work and character of the teacher at the same time that he taught the teacher to magnify his office. He heightened the popular estimate of the instruments that are conducive and necessary to the existence of good schools. He elevated men's ideas of the value of ethical training, and made valuable suggestions looking to its prosecution. But his great theme was the relation of intellectual and moral knowledge to human well-being, individual and social. Here his faith never faltered, his ardor never cooled. In no other name did he trust for the safety of society. A confirmed rationalist, he looked with supreme confidence to the healing power of popular intelligence and virtue. In his successive reports and addresses he set forth his faith, and the grounds of it, with wonderful force of statement and fertility of illustration. To him the old theme was ever new and ever fascinating. He poured into the body politic a large measure of his own lofty faith, his great unselfishness, his burning enthusiHe believed in the democratizing movement of modern times, and preached the perfectibility of man. It was in this way that, as Mr. Parker said, he took up the common schools of Massachusetts in his arms and blessed them. No doubt he committed the mistake that rationalists are always prone to commit,— that of overestimating the power of intelligence as a means to virtue. Still, it is perfectly obvious that a generous measure of such confidence is a prerequisite to the efficiency and even to the existence of public schools, and that it forms the very foundation of democratic government.- - Hinsdale.

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Horace Mann was the great leader in the Common School Revival in New England in the middle of the present century. The Massachusetts State Board of Education was created in 1837, through the efforts of James G. Carter and others; and Mann became its first secretary, holding the position until 1848. His influence upon educational thought and sentiment, not only in Massachusetts, but throughout the country, was unparalleled. To him more, perhaps, than to any other, our common-school system is indebted for its remarkable development during the last half of the century. His twelve annual reports, each devoted to distinct subjects, are classics in our educational literature. The tenth report, that of 1846, is given in the present leaflet, almost in its entirety. A brief outline of the twelve reports may be found in Hinsdale's little volume upon Mann, chap. vii; also in Dr. William T. Harris's address at the Mann Centennial, printed in the Report of the Commissioner of Education, 1895-96, vol. i. All of these reports are printed in full in the Life and Works of Horace Mann, 5 vols.; and here also (vol. ii.) may be found the seven lectures delivered by Mann in successive years before the various county conventions of the State. The third and fifth of these lectures, "The Necessity of Education in a Republican Government" and “An

Historical View of Education, showing its Dignity and its Degradation," are especially commended to the student as re-enforcing the considerations urged in the report reprinted in the present leaflet.

A thorough life of Horace Mann, by Mrs. Mann, occupies the first of the five volumes of the Life and Works; and there is an admirable brief biography by Prof. B. A. Hinsdale in the “Great Educators” series, which contains, in an appendix, an excellent bibliography. The survey of the period, in this little volume, is most discriminating; and Dr. Hinsdale performs a distinct service in directing attention so intelligently and justly to Mann's forerunners, and especially to James G. Carter, "the one man who did more to cast up a highway for Horace Mann than any other." "To him," says Henry Barnard, "more than to any other one person belongs the credit of having first attracted the attention of the leading minds of Massachusetts to the necessity of immediate and thorough improvement in the system of free or public schools." George B. Emerson rightly Bestowed upon him the title of "Father of Normal Schools"; and Dr. Hinsdale pronounces his Letters on the Free Schools of New England "incomparably the best existing mirror of education in New England in the first quarter of this century.' This, and his Essays upon Popular Education, the closing essay of which outlines the modern Normal School, should be read by the student who would understand the situation into which Horace Mann entered, and by the general student of the history of education in America in the nineteenth century.

PUBLISHED BY

THE DIRECTORS OF THE OLD SOUTH WORK,

Old South Meeting-house, Boston, Mass.

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No. 110.

The Romance of New England History.

BY RUFUS CHOATE.

THE IMPORTANCE OF ILLUSTRATING NEW ENGLAND HISTORY BY A
SERIES OF ROMANCES LIKE THE WAVERLEY NOVELS. AN AD-
DRESS DELIVERED AT SALEM, 1833.

The history of the United States, from the planting of the several colonies out of which they have sprung to the end of the War of the Revolution, is now as amply written, as accessible, and as authentic, as any other portion of the history of the world, and incomparably more so than an equal portion of the history of the origin and first ages of any other nation that ever existed. But there is one thing more which every lover of his country and every lover of literature would wish done for our early history. He would wish to see such a genius as Walter Scott (exoriatur aliquis), or, rather, a thousand such as he, undertake in earnest to illustrate that early history by a series of romantic compositions "in prose or rhyme," like the Waverley Novels, the "Lay of the Last Minstrel," and the "Lady of the Lake," the scenes of which should be laid in North America somewhere in the time before the Revolution, and the incidents and characters of which should be selected from the records and traditions of that, our heroic age. He would wish at length to hear such a genius mingling the tones of a ravishing national minstrelsy with the grave narrative, instructive reflections, and chastened feelings of Marshall, Pitkin, Holmes, and Ramsay. He would wish to see him giving to the natural scenery of the New World and to the celebrated personages and grand incidents of its earlier annals the same kind and degree of interest which Scott has given to the High

lands, to the Reformation, the Crusades, to Richard, the Lionhearted, and to Louis XI. He would wish to see him clear away the obscurity which two centuries have been collecting over it, and unroll a vast, comprehensive, and vivid panorama of our old New England lifetimes, from its sublimest moments to its minutest manners. He would wish to see him

begin with the landing of the Pilgrims, and pass down to the War of Independence, from one epoch and one generation to another, like Old Mortality among the graves of the unforgotten faithful, wiping the dust from the urns of our fathers, gathering up whatever of illustrious achievement, of heroic suffering, of unwavering faith, their history commemorates, and weaving it all into an immortal and noble national literature, pouring over the whole time, its incidents, its actors, its customs, its opinions, its moods of feeling, the brilliant illustration, the unfading glories, which the fictions of genius alone can give to the realities of life.

For our lawyers, politicians, and for most purposes of mere utility, business, and intellect, our history now perhaps unfolds a sufficiently "ample page." But I confess I should love to see it assume a form in which it should speak directly to the heart and affections and imagination of the whole people. I should love to see by the side of these formidable records of dates and catalogues of British governors and provincial acts of Assembly, these registers of the settlement of towns and the planting of churches and convocation of synods and drawing up of platforms,- by the side of these austere and simply severe narratives of Indian wars, English usurpations, French intrigues, Colonial risings, and American independence, I should love to see by the side of these great and good books about a thousand neat duodecimos of the size of "Ivanhoe," "Kenilworth," and "Marmion," all full of pictures of our natural beauty and grandeur, the still richer pictures of our society and manners, the lights and shadows of our life, full of touching incidents, generous sentiments, just thoughts, beaming images, such as are scattered over everything which Scott has written, as thick as stars on the brow of night, and give to everything he has written that imperishable, strange charm, which will be on it and embalm it forever. . . .

I venture to maintain, first, that such works as these would possess a very high historical value. They would be valuable for the light they would shed upon the first one hundred and

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