ard of Christian truth is the word of God, as preserved and interpreted by THE CHURCH, the decrees of councils, and the writings of the Fathers and accredited doctors!" and that "all are bound to conform to this standard, on pain of losing their right to the Christian name!" If Mr. Mann's theology do not suit Mr. Brownson, it is because Mr. Brownson is a Catholic, which he certainly has a right to be, if he chooses, and Mr. Mann is a Protestant. Mr. Mann, for all that, may be a very good theologian. We think he inculcates good Christian doctrines, and good Christian morals, and sound principles of philosophy in his seventh annual report, which we are about to examine. We are as much astonished at Mr. Brownson's gratuitous attack upon Mr. Mann, as we are with the startling information he gives us, that New-England, including Boston itself, is a very immoral portion of the American Union; that the people there read very bad books indeed, and that this depravity results from their defective systems of education. Our hopes of the perfectability of the race are thus suddenly disappointed. The citizens of Boston, we had always been accustomed to believe, approached, in the item of morals, very near to the climax of humanity; and the schools throughout New-England, have certainly hitherto enjoyed, and we think deservedly too, the very highest reputation.

Let us turn to the document which lies before us. It deserves attention, for it contains information new to the citizens of this country, particularly the Southern portion of it, which is both useful and important. Whatever may be said of Mr. Mann's philosophy, and we do not think him either a stoic or an epicurean, he certainly is a close observer. During the few months he spent in Europe, visiting the schools and examining the different systems of private and public instruction which prevail there, he made the most of his time, and is to be commended for his zeal and industry. There are parts of his report which are exceedingly eloquent. It breathes throughout a high, generous, humane spirit, and an ardent devotion to the principles of American liberty, and to the cause of sound learning and of human progress every where. We do not concur with all his opinions on education, but we do with many of them. They are generally distinguished by good sense, and evince a thorough practical acquaintance with his subject. His views on some topics are not sufficiently extended, and we

are obliged to content ourselves with hints, the expression of mere opinions, and sometimes with isolated facts, where we should greatly prefer elaborate and well-considered arguments. But it would be unreasonable to expect that every important topic, upon which he makes only a passing comment, should be thoroughly discussed in a pamphlet of a hundred and fifty pages, when the proper investigation of each of those topics would require a volume.

It is obvious, we think, that Mr. Mann was well prepared to go abroad on a mission of inquiry, having first made himself well acquainted with the state of things at home:

"For the six years," he says, "during which I have been honored with an appointment to the office of Secretary of the Board of Education, I have spared neither labor nor expense in fulfilling not only that provision of the law which requires that 'the Secretary shall collect information,' but also that injunction, not less important, that he shall 'diffuse as widely as possible, throughout every part of the Commonwealth, information of the most approved and successful methods of arranging the studies and conducting the education of the young.' For this purpose, I have visited schools in most of the free States and in several of the slave States of the Union; have made myself acquainted with the different laws relative to public instruction, which have been enacted by the different Legislatures of our country; have attended great numbers of educational meetings, and, as far as possible, have read whatever has been written, whether at home or abroad, by persons qualified to instruct mankind on this momentous subject. Still, I have been oppressed with a painful consciousness of my inability to expound the merits of this great theme in all their magnitude and variety, and have turned my eyes again and again to some new quarter of the horizon, in the hope that they would be greeted by a brighter beam of light. Under these circumstances, it was natural that the celebrity of institutions in foreign countries should attract my attention, and that I should feel an intense desire of knowing whether, in any respect, those institutions were superior to our own; and, if anything were found in them worthy of adoption, of transferring it for our improvement." p. 70.

In the course of his rapid tour, he visited various nations, speaking various languages:

"In my travels, I visited England, Ireland and Scotland, crossed the German Ocean to Hamburgh, thence went to Madgeburgh, Berlin, Potsdam, Halle and Weissenfels, in the kingdom of Prussia; to Leipsic and Dresden, the two great cities in the kingdom of Saxony; thence, to Erfurt, Weimar, Eisenach, etc., on the great route from the middle of Germany to Frankfort on the Maine; thence to the Grand Duchy of Nassau, of Hesse Darmstadt and of Baden; and, after visiting all the principal eities in the Rhenish provinces of Prussia, passed through Holland and Belgium to Paris." p. 71.

Of the impressions made upon his mind by what he saw of the scholastic establishments of Europe, we have the following general summary:

"In the course of this tour I have seen many things to deplore, and many to admire. I have visited countries where there is no national system of education at all, and countries where the minutest details of the schools are regulated by law. I have seen schools in which each word and process, in many lessons, was almost overloaded with explanation and commentary; and many schools in which 400 or 500 children were obliged to commit to memory, in the Latin language, the entire book of Psalms and other parts of the Bible,-neither teachers nor children understanding a word of the language which they were prating. I have seen countries, in whose schools all forms of corporal punishment were used without stint or measure; and I have visited one nation, in whose excellent and well-ordered schools scarcely a blow has been struck for more than a quarter of a century. On reflection, it seems to me that it would be most strange if, from all this variety of system and of no-system, of sound instruction and of babbling, of the discipline of violence and of moral means, many beneficial hints for our warning or our imitation, could not be derived; and as the subject comes clearly within the purview of my duty, 'to collect and diffuse information respecting schools,' I venture to submit to the Board some of the results of my observations.

On the one hand, I am certain that the evils to which our own system is exposed, or under which it now labors, exist in some foreign countries, in a far more aggravated degree than among ourselves; and if we are wise enough to learn from the experience of others, rather than await the infliction consequent upon our own errors, we may yet escape the magnitude and formidableness of those calamities under which some other communities are now suffering.

On the other hand, I do not hesitate to say, that there are many things abroad which we, at home, should do well to imitate; things, some of which are here, as yet, mere matters of speculation and theory, but which, there, have long been in operation, and are now producing a harvest of rich and abundant blessings." pp. 71-2.

And again:

"Throughout my whole tour, no one principle has been more frequently exemplified than this-that wherever I have found the best institutions-educational, reformatory, charitable, penal or otherwise— there I have always found the greatest desire to know how similar institutions were administered among ourselves; and where I have found the worst, there I have found most of the spirit of self-complacency, and even an offensive disinclination to hear of better methods.” pp. 73-4.

The subjects of inquiry to which he more particularly directed his attention, during this tour, were the following:

"The examination of schools, school-houses, school systems, apparatus and modes of teaching, has been my first object, at all times

and places. Under the term 'schools,' I here include all elementary schools, whether public or private; all Normal schools; schools for teaching the blind and the deaf and dumb; schools for the reformation of juvenile offenders; all charity foundations for educating the children of the poor, or of criminals, and all orphan establishmentsof which last class there are such great numbers on the continent. When practicable and useful, I have visited gymnasia, colleges and universities; but as it is not customary in these classes of institutions to allow strangers to be present at recitations, I have had less inducement to see them." p. 74.

We have a highly interesting account given of the method adopted in Prussia, Saxony and Holland, of teaching the deaf and dumb to speak by the utterance of articulate sounds. The first step taken is to convince the child that he breathes. The process of doing so is particularly described. The next thing is to convince him of the fact of sounds, and of their effect and value. The third is to instruct him in the nature of the elementary sounds. Of these the letter h, being an aspirate, is first taught, and then the vowel sounds:

"Here it is obvious that the teacher must be a perfect master of the various sounds of the language, and of the positions into which all the vocal organs must be brought in order to enunciate them. All the combined and diversified motions and positions of lips, teeth, tongue, uvula, glottis, windpipe, and so forth, must be as familiar to him, as the position of keys or chords to the performer on the most complicated musical instrument. For this purpose, all the sounds of the language, and of course all the motions and positions of the organs necessary to produce them, are reduced to a regular series or gradation. The variations requisite for the vowel sounds, are formed into a regular sequence, and a large table is prepared in which the consonant sounds are arranged in a scientific order. To indicate the difference between a long and a short sound, a long sound is uttered accompanied by a slow motion of the hand, and then a short sound of the same vowel accompanied by a quick motion.

As the pupil has no ear, he cannot, strictly speaking, be said to learn sounds: he only learns motions and vibrations, the former by the eye, the latter by the touch. The parties being seated as I have before described, so that the light shines full upon the teacher's face, one of the pupil's hands is placed upon the teacher's throat, while he is required at the same time to look steadfastly at the teacher's mouth. The simplest sound of the vowel a is now uttered and repeated, by the teacher. He then applies the pupil's other hand to his (the pupil's) throat, and leads him to enunciate sounds until the vibrations produced in his own throat, resemble those which had been produced by the utterance of the teacher. At this stage of the instruction, the pupil understands perfectly what is desired; and, therefore, he perseveres with effort after effort, until, at last, perhaps after a hundred or five hundred trials, he hits the exact sound, when, conscious of the same vibration in bis own organs, which he had before

felt in those of the teacher, at the same moment that the teacher also recognizes the utterance of the true sound, their countenances glow into each other with the original light of joy, and not only is a point gained in the instruction which will never be lost, but the pupil is animated to renewed exertions." p. 77.

All this is surprising, but the effects produced are still more so. Facts and anecdotes, in this connection, are given:

"In some of the cities which I visited, the pupils who had gone through with a course of instruction at the deaf and dumb school were employed as artisans or mechanics, earning a competent livelihood, mingling with other men, and speaking and conversing like them. In the city of Berlin, there was a deaf and dumb man, named Habermaas, who was so famed for his correct speaking, that strangers used to call to see him. These he would meet at the door, conduct into the house, and enjoy their surprise when he told them that he was Habermaas. A clergyman of high standing and character, whose acquaintance I formed in Holland, told me that when he was one of the religious instructors of the deaf and dumb school at Groningen, he took a foreign friend one day to visit it; and when they had gone through the school, his friend observed, that that school was very well, but that it was the deaf and dumb school which he had wished to see. Were it not for the extraordinary case of Laura Bridgman-which has compelled assent to what would formerly have been regarded as a fiction or a miracle-I should hardly venture to copy an account of the two following cases from the work of Mr. Moritz Hill, the accomplished instructor of the deaf and dumb school at Weissenfels. They refer to the susceptibility of cultivation of the sense of touch, which he asserts to be generally very acute in the deaf and dumb. The importance of this will be readily appreciated, when we consider how essential light is to the power of reading language upon the lips and the muscles of the face. In darkness, the deaf and dumb are again cut off from that intercourse with humanity which has been given to them by this beneficent instruction. Mr. Hill gives an account of a girl, whose facility in reading from the lips was so remarkable, that she could read at a great distance, by an artificial light, and even with very little light. She was found to be in the habit of conversing in the night with a maid-servant, after the light was extinguished. And this was done only by placing her hand upon the naked breast of her companion. The other case was that of a boy, who could read the lips by placing his hand upon them in the dark, in the same way that Laura reads the motions of another's fingers in the hollow of her own hand. Mr. Hill also mentions instances in which the facility acquired is so great, that the motions of the face can be read by the deaf and dumb when only a side view of the countenance can be obtained, and, consequently, only a partial play of the muscles is seen." p. 79.

The reasons assigned by the Germans for preferring the method of teaching the deaf and dumb to speak by the voice rather than by signs, are, that oral communication is more