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We are glad to find in this preface a courteous acknowl edgment of another lexicographer, whose "Dictionary of the English Language" has been so often contrasted with that of Dr. Webster, of which it was no mean competitor. "The best works of the kind," says Prof. Porter, "have been freely consulted, and among them the well-known Dictionary of Dr. Joseph E. Worcester, which is so honorable to the industry of the author and the scholarship of the country." We are not without hope that "the war of the Dictionaries" will henceforth cease, and that all future competition will be in the line of generous emulation to make new improvements in these standard works as decades roll by. For this there will still be need of careful investigation and review, as much as in any department of natural history. For definition, instead of be ing dependent, as some suppose, on the arbitrary will of a lexicographer, is a matter of scientific investigation, and professes to be an exposition of facts and usages embodied in literature. In this there can be no monopoly, and there must be progress and improvement. We accept thankfully each new contribution to this department of learning at its full value, and find in it a pledge that still more will be done in the future.

The Dictionary before us is large and costly; but we have seen no new volume that is more entertaining; we know no book,-unless it be the Bible,-that keeps one so long in turning over page after page for the sake of comparing its parts; and we think the money will be well expended which puts under the evening lamp, or on the teacher's desk, or on the study table, a copy of the new Webster.

ARTICLE V.-THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF EDUCATION.

The American Journal af Education. Edited by HENRY BARNARD, LL. D. Vols. I.-XV. Hartford, Conn., 1856-1865.

THE schoolmaster does not hold a large place in the pages of history or of literature. His mental activity is confined to the sphere of the school room. He deals with boys, and his labor ends where their work as men commences. Their words and deeds in other fields of action make them famous, while his quiet toil and patient skill, whence sprang those words and deeds, are overlooked and forgotten. Recognizing as we do, and must do, the power of education as a controlling influence in a nation's destiny, it is surprising how far it has been ignored by even the most philosophical historians. This cannot always be so. The history of education will itself become an essential part of that groundwork upon which all other general history must be based.

The materials for such an educational history, even of our own times and country, though far more abundant than at any previous period, still cannot be considered as ample. From the records of legislatures and the official reports of superintendents and boards of education, an outline may indeed be drawn, more or less full, of a surface view of the subject. But there yet remains the history of systems and methods, of speculations and opinions, of teachers and text-books, of conventions and associations, and all those movements, transient and yet of importance as at least indicative of currents of feeling and opinion, which are apt to find no permanent and connected record. Herein lies one element, perhaps not the least, which gives value to educational periodical literature, inasmuch as it becomes a store-house of information that would otherwise be lost, forming a channel for the interchange of thoughts and sentiments, communicating, but at the same time preserving,

the record of them, seeking to supply the educational wants of a State or a more limited district, and thus revealing what those needs must have been, and constituting in many respects a reliable standard of the educational intelligence and activity of those for whom it was intended.

In no country has this species of literature been more abundant than in the United States, and it has here assumed peculiar characteristics, and attained to a high grade of excellence. Within the last half century more than one hundred and fifty strictly educational journals have been published in this country. * Of these, however, over eighty failed to survive the first year, twenty others did not pass beyond the second volume, and but fourteen are now in existence. The cause of this prolificness may be found in the sanguine temperament of our people, and our appreciation of the press as a means of influence, while the unfortunate tendency to a speedy decease has been in most cases due to a want of capital on the part of those undertaking the enterprise and the too general apathy of the teachers and others whose patronage had been depended upon to sustain it. All of these journals, with the few exceptions noted hereafter, were established to subserve the interests of education within single States, and hence have had but a local and limited circulation. The most able and influential of those not now published were the New York Common School Assistant, established by J. Orville Taylor in 1836, of which five volumes were issued; the Massachusetts Common School Journal, commenced by Horace Mann in 1839, which was continued by him and William B. Fowle, Jr., fourteen years; and the New York District School Journal, first edited by Francis Dwight, and continued by him and S. S. Randall from 1840 to 1852. Twelve State school journals are now published, viz. the Connecticut Common School Journal, established by Henry Barnard in 1838; the Massachusetts Teacher, in 1848; the Ohio Educational Monthly, commenced as the Ohio Journal of Education, by A. D. Lord, in 1852; the Pennsylvania

* A list of these journals, nearly complete, is given in Barnard's American Journal of Education, vol. xv., p. 383.

School Journal, by T. H. Burrowes, in 1852; the New York Teacher, in 1852; the Illinois Teacher, in 1855; the Rhode Island Schoolmaster, in 1855; the Indiana School Journal, in 1856; the Vermont School Journal, in 1859; the Iowa Instructor and School Journal, in 1859; the California Teacher, in 1863; and the Kansas Educational Journal, in 1864. These are all issued in monthly numbers of twenty to forty pages, and generally are well conducted, and exert an influence greatly beneficial to both teachers and scholars within their several States.

Those journals, which have been more ambitious in their views and have sought a wider reputation and sphere of influence, deserve a more extended notice. The first adventurer which appeared in this new field of literary enterprise was the "Academician," in 1818. At that date the era of educational improvement in which we now live had scarcely opened. Schools and teachers were as they had been in the times of the fathers. Of what kind they were, any of our gray heads, recalling memories of boyhood, can tell us. Of the common schools, Irving's Ichabod Crane and the Seminary of Sleepy Hollow are scarcely a caricature. The "Dame's School," where hapless urchins were duly impregnated with primer and catechism, and the village academy, where the young college graduate first tested the pecuniary value of a liberal education, formed, with the common school, the circle of institutions. wherein was then imparted all "primary and secondary instruction," a phrase at that time unheard of. Yet there were some excellent schools, and teachers devoted to the profession, whose minds were active in their calling and awaking to the need and possibility of improvements in the science of educa tion, who were developing systems of their own, and were ready to receive and put to the test the new views that were now advancing in England and on the Continent. Such men were the brothers Albert and John W. Picket, who had been for several years at the head of the "Manhattan School," a flourishing day school for boys and girls in the city of New York, and who had already in 1810 issued in quarterly numbers, a small volume styled the "Juvenile Mirror or Educa

tional Magazine," probably the earliest educational periodical in this country. On the title-page of the Academician they record themselves with evident self-satisfaction, the one as "President," and the other as "Vice President" of that now forgotten association, "The Incorporated Society of Teachers," "Members of the New York Historical Society, and authors of the American School Class Books."

A curious book and redolent with the staid and dignified literary spirit of the times is their " Academician-containing the elements of scholastic science, and the outlines of philosophic education predicated on the analysis of the human mind, and exhibiting the improved methods of instruction." Essays upon the principles and methods of education, after classic models, with mottoes and frequent quotations from Greek and Latin writers, freely translated for the benefit of the less learned readers, present quite a pedantic appearance, as becomes the writings of the old-time pedagogue, though they must still be judged well and carefully written. The greater part of the matter is original, excepting the "Outlines of Philosophical Education," which are an abstract of the work of Prof. George Jardine, of Glasgow, introduced as expressing the views of the editors as to the true scope and object of education. The systems of Lancaster, Bell, Pestalozzi, and Fellenberg, whose new methods of instruction had but recently attracted attention in this country, are also severally explained and advocated. This journal was issued in semi-monthly numbers, the whole forming a volume of four hundred pages. The publication was discontinued at the close of the year, though "the patronage had surpassed the most sanguine expectations," the amount of labor required being too great when superadded to the duties of the school-room.

The next attempt was the "American Journal of Education" of Boston, the credit of which is due to Thomas B. Wait, who commenced its publication in 1826, under the editorship of William Russell. Mr. Russell, as a pupil of Prof. Jardine, had become deeply interested in his views of education, and, having devoted himself successfully from his

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