live in, by a scholar every way qualified for the important work in From Hon. J. C. Spencer For Common Schools and younger classes in Academies. This attractive little volume is the latest of the series of text-books in Natural Philosophy and Astronomy prepared by Professor Olmsted. Its leading object is to afford an easy explanation of those truths of these sciences, which are most important to be known by mankind in general, being truths of the greatest practical utility. No similar work, it is believed, ever contained, in the same com pass, a greater amount of useful and interesting matter. This is rendered easy and intelligible by familiar illustrations and expres. sive diagrams, and is adapted to the comprehension of young learn ers, to a degree which can be attained by those only who, like the author, have had great experience in teaching. This work is highly recommended by qualified judges, and is extensively used in schools. Albany, October 31st, 1818. JUDGE STRYKER-Dear Sir,-Since my letter to you of June last, I have received and read the second number of your Quarterly Re gister, and its contents are even an improvement upon those of the first number. I repeat what I said in June, "the original matter is able and interesting, and the selected articles are precisely such as should be found in such a work." It has already become a reservoir of various and important contributions to the history, constitutional jurisprudence and commercial and social progress of the country, and my prediction will soon be verified that it will be indispensable to every library." To the libraries of the common school districts, I know of no work that will be equally interesting On account of its simplicity of style and happy way of illustraor useful. Its narrative of current events, its collection of importing profound truths, it has been published in the form of raised tant documents in our history, and its varied miscelaneous contriletters for the use of the blind in the Massachusetts Asylum, at butions upon subjects of immediate interest, give it a zest equal to that of a biography, while its facts and chronicles render it of great Boston, and has been introduced by the American Board among value for purposes of reference. It seems to me that Trustees of Missionary Schools in distant parts of the earth. Each part is also bound by itself, and may be had separately. School Districts could not better apply the moneys in their hands Olmsted's Introduction to Philosophy, 8vo. for the purchase of libraries, than by the purchase every half year Olmsted's School Astronomy, 12mo. of your semi-annual volumes. Olmsted, Introduction to Astronomy, 8vo. JOHN C. SPENCER. Mason's Introduction to Practical Astronomy, designed as a supplement to Olmsted's 8vo. Astronomy. This work may be Respectfully yours, the From Hon. John A. Dix. had bound up with the Astronomy when desired. Albany, October 31st, 1848. Solar and Lunar Eclipses familiarly illustrated and explained, Dear Sir, I have examined the first volume of the American with the method of calculating them according to the theory of AsQuarterly Register, Edited by you, and I take pleasure in expres-tronomy, as taught in New-England Colleges, by James II. Coffin, sing my concurrence with the Hon. John C. Spencer, in the favorProf. of Mathematics in La Fayette Colleges, Pa. 8mo. able opinion he entertains in respect to it. I consider the statistical Published by COLLINS & Brother, information it contains of great value. Indeed I have taken much No. 254 Pearl-street, New-York. pleasure in the examination of the whole volume. I have not only found it interesting but highly instructive: and I think with Mr. Spencer that the Trustees of school districts would render a valuable service to the inhabitants by adding it to the school libraries. Judge Stryker. I am respectfully, yours, JOHN A. DIX. From the N. Y. Tribune, April 21st, 1849, The American Quarterly Register for March, has just been issued by its enterprising proprietor, Judge Stryker. It is the most wide. ly useful periodical published in this country, and in its general arrangement reflects great credit on the industry, and perseverence with which it has been got up. From the Savannah Georgian, May 5, 1849. We have taken great pleasure in examining a copy of this valu. able Journal. The design of the work is indicated by its title; that design being to present in a condensed form, a record of all the great events of the times in every quarter of the world. It furnishes consequently a register of historical incidents of statistical facts connected with the commerce, internal improvements, religion, education, &c. of our own country, biographical notices, miscellaneous matter of interest-in short a condensed record of all that is impor. tant or valuable in the progress, changes and improvements of the world. The number before us bears every indication of being ably conducted. From Professor Henry, of the Smithsonian Institute. Before the publication of the "American Quarterly Register," Judge Stryker explained to me the plan and the object of the work, and I then expressed a very favorable opinion of its importance, as supplying a deficiency constantly felt. I have since seen the first number of the journal, and am confirmed in the opinion previously expressed, of its being a work of great value to the public. Washington, June, 1848. JOSEPH HENRY. It is my opinion that a work of this kind is desirable in this country, and that, if judiciously conducted, it will be of great service to the cause of political science and historical research. Brown University. F. WAYLAND. STATE OF NEW-YORK, Department of Common Schools. Albany, May 31, 1849. Hon. JAMES STRYKER-Sir,-I have read the first three numbers of your American Quarterly Register and Magazine," and am fully satisfied both with the plan and execution of the work. It has taken possession of a field hitherto unoccupied by any periodical. Its miscellaneous department will commend it to the general reader: its documentary and statistical, to politicians and men of science; and its historical, to all classes. Your summary of history I consider extremely valuable. The invention of the magnetic telegraph has annihilated time and space, and made the antipods near neighbors. The result of the rapid transmission of news by this invention is, however, that we get our information piece-meal, and not in a continuous and orderly relation. In your Register the day-book of the worlds history is posted up quarterly, and a few pages contain the sum of each nations share in the general account. In my opinion the trustees of our school districts could not more profumbly expend their library money than in the purchase of your semi-ammel volume. CHRISTOPHER MORGAN. Supt. Com. Schools. Notice to Town Clerks. AN ACT requiring chattel mortgages to be registered. The People of the State of New York, represented in Senate and Section 1. It shall be the duty of the clerks of the several towns and counties in this state, in whose offices chattel mortgages are by law required to be filed, to provide proper books,at the expense of their respective towns, in which the names of all parties to every mortgage, or instrument intended to operate as a mortgage of goods and chattels, hereafter filed by them or either of them, shall be entered in alphabetical order, under the head of mortgagors and mortgagees, in each of such books respectively. such mortgage or copy so filed in said office, by endorsing the 2. It shall be the duty of the said several clerks to number every number on the back thereof, and to enter such number in a separate column in the books in which such mortgages shall be entered, opposite to the name ofevery party thereto; also the date, the amount secrued thereby, when due, and the date of the filing of every such mortgage. §3. The said several clerks for services under this act, shall be entitled to receive therefor the following fees: for filing every such mortgage or copy six cents; for entering the same in books as aforsesaid, six cents. $4 This act shall take effect within thirty days after its pasage. The subscrierb has a large quantity of blank books for sale for entering chattel mortgages according to the above law. Town clerks are desired to send their orders to JAMES HENRY, Bookseller, 67 State-street, Albany. ap-1m Get the Best. "All young persons should have a standard DICTIONARY at their elbows. And while you are about it, get the best; that Dictionary is Noah Webster's, The great work, unabridged. If you are too poor, save the amount "This volume must find its way into all our public and good private libraries, for it provides the English student with a mass of the most valuable information which he would in vain seek for elsewhere."-London Literary Gazette. "The very large and increasing demand for this work. affords the best possible evidence to the publishers that it is highly acceptable to the great body of the American people." Containing three times the amount of matter of any other English Dictionary compiled in this country, or any Abridgment of this work. Published by G. & C. MERRIAM, Springfield, Mass, and for sale The District School Journal, Is published monthly, and is devoted exclusively to the promo- SAMUEL S. RANDALL, EDITOR. vance. School Journal, should be directed to the Editor, Albany, N. Y. street, Albany. Popular Education. The power of Common Schools to Redeem the [No. V. diminished, and even life itself is sometimes made bardensome and odious by the existence amongst us of pests and nuisances in human form, whom the law forbids us to destroy, and whom, with all our efforts, we are unable wholly to reform. Were we permitted to hunt out and exterminate from society a wicked or mischievous man, as we would a prowling wolf from the sheep-fold, or could we apply the sovereign antidote of extinction to a pestilent brood of children, whom profligate parents are about to send forth into the world, we might then secure ourselves, iu a summary manner, from present fears and from future annoyance. So too, if we could arrest the momentum of long habit, or win back to the The following Circular Letter was addressed by the paths of virtue those who, by their frequent tread, Hon. HORACE MANN, late Secretary of the Massachu-have worn the highways of vice both smooth and setts Board of Education, to several of the ablest and broad, we should then have access to a milder though most experienced Teachers in different sections of the a more laborious remedy. But the common sentiments Union. Their answers we shall give in a subsequent of mankind would revolt at any proposal to prevent all violations of the moral code by extinguishing the life of the violators; and all history and experience afford concurrent proof that the inbred habits of grown men and women, their accustomed trains of thought and of action,―are mainly beyond the control of secondary causes. Hence it is, that a great part of the legislation of every state and nation; a vast majority of the deci tion of all the labors and expenditures of philanthropic sions of all legal tribunals; and a still larger proporand Christian men, have been devoted to the punishment of positive wrong, or to the vain attempt to re number. We earnestly ask the attention of every reader to the able exposition here given, of the benefits resulting from the ADOPTION of a system of UNIVERSAL EDUCATION, such as is contemplated in this correspondence: To CIRCULAR. I desire to obtain the opinion of teachers who are both scientific and practical, on a subject of great importance to the cause of Popular Education. Your long experience in school keeping; the great number of children whom you have had under your care, and pair its nameless and numberless mischiefs. Could your well-earned reputation as an instructor and trainer of youth, prompt me to apply to you for answers to the subjoined inquiries. My general object is to obtain such an opinion as your experience will authorize you to give, respecting the efficiency, in the formation of social and moral character, of a good Common School education, conducted on the cardinal principles of the New England systems. In other words, how much of improvement, in the right conduct and good morals of the community, might we reasonably hope and expect, if all our Com mon Schools were what they should be, what some of them now are, and what all of them, by means which the public is perfectly able to command, may soon be made to become? up As we look around us, we see that society is infested by vices, both small and great. The value of life is these wrongs and mischiefs be prevented, our descendants would inherit a new earth. The classes of common offences by which society is vexed and tormented, are numerous; but the individual acts of commission, under the respective classes, are absolutely incomprehensible, save by the Omniscient. There is the detestible practice of profane swearing, which is motiveless and gratuitous wickedness. This is a vice which neither gives any property to the poor It degrades even man, nor any luxury to the rich one. the clown to a lower state of vulgarity; and it would render the presence even of the most polished gentleman offensive and disgusting, if it were ever possible for a gentleman to be guilty of it. Though greatly restricted, at the present day, in its destructive agency, and gradually withdrawing itself from the more respectable and intelligent classes to loss. In some of the commercial countries of Europe, a merhant's insolvency affects his moral character hardly less than his pecuniary credit. If a bankrupt cannot the two extremes of society,-to the luxuriously rich out to be disastrous, their creditors must suffer all the and the self-made poor,-yet the vice of Intemperance still exists amongst us. Wherever it invades, it eats out the substance of families; not only consumes the means of educating children, but eradicates also the very disposition to educate them; involves the inno-show that his deficiency of means was occasioned by cent in the sufferings of the guilty, even torturing them with superadded pangs of shame which the guilty do not feel; and, according to the divinely ordained laws of our physical being, it visits the iniquities of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generations, by sowing in their constitution the seeds of inordinate desires. Below that degree of slander or defamation which the law denounces as punishable, there exists such an amount of censoriousness and detraction, as often estranges acquaintances, dissolves friendships, introduces discord into neighborhoods and communities, and sometimes entails hereditary animosities upon families and circles, which might otherwise be blessed by harmony and peace. Nor can the gross and cowardly offence of lying be omitted from this odious catalogue. This vice includes in its very nature so much of the assassin and the dastard, that it lurks to inflict secret blows, or only ventures abroad, when large numbers, bound together by strong ties of passion or of interest, impart mutual confidence and boldness in the prosecution of a common object. Hence a private individual, who is known as a liar, is detested, scorned, and shunned; while profligate political defamers and sectarian zealots, inspired by a common sentiment of ambition or of intolerance, and keeping themselves in countenance by their numbers and their partisanship, welcome this vice as an ally, and rejoice in the successes obtained by its aid. No patriotism is proof against the rancor of party spirit; no piety or good works against the rage and blindness of religious bigotry. In pecuniary transactions, the temptations to overreaching, to exorbitance, and to actual dishonesty, are yielded to with a most lamentable frequency. The buyer takes advantage of the necessities of the seller, and obtains a transfer of his property for a small part of its value; or sometimes, by adroit management and preliminary scheming, he creates the necessity which places the victim within the jaws of his avarice. The seller knowingly overstates the quantity, the quality, or the value of the commodities he sells; and perhaps takes advantage of the ignorance or credulity of the purchaser to obtain a price which he knows to be exorbitant and inequitable. The employer often avails himself of the necessities of the employed to obtain his services for less than they are worth; he summons in hunger, and cold, and the sufferings of a dependent family, as advisers in helping to make an unrighteous bargain, and as sureties for its performance. Men without any pecuniary resources which they can call their own, embark in hazardous speculations, where if the rash adventure should chance to prove successful, they will pocket all the gain; but should it turn some disaster which he could not control, or by some loss which he could not reasonably be expected to foresee, he forfeits his mercantile standing amongst honorable dealers, and can retrieve his character only by actual proof of returning, or of newly created honesty. A second failure, unexplained and unatoned for, brands with disgrace, and expels not more from the traffic than from the companionship of honorable men. The above classes of wrong-doing, together with many others of a kindred nature, are regarded by the law as minor offences. Some of them it does not undertake to punish; yet, from their wide-spread prevalence and great frequency, they perhaps inflict as large an aggregate of evil upon society as those of a more heinous and formidable character, but of less frequent occurrence. In regard to offences of a graver nature,—such as come under the head of crimes or felonies, the condition of our country compares favorably with that of any other part of Christendom. Especially will this remark appear true, if we consider the slight amount of preventive force, made use of, in any part of our Union, to deter from actual transgression; and, as a general rule, the lightness of the penal sanctions held up as a terror to evil-doers. Yet that there does exist amongst us an appalling amount of criminality of this deeper dye; that flagrant offences against the rights of property, of person, of reputation, and of life are perpetrated, is proved by the records of our crimina courts, and by the mournful procession of convicts and felons, whom we see on their way to our penitentaries and other receptacles prepared for the guilty. Including all classes of offenders, both the less and the more flagitious, it is undeniable, that there exists amongst us a multitude of men, of whom it may be truly said, that it would be better for the community had they never been born; or had they died in childhood, before their propensities for evil had been developed, or before they had gone abroad to disturb the peace of society, and to destroy that sense of security which every honest man is entitled to feel. To thin the ranks of this host of enemies to the wel fare of the race, or to cripple the evil energies of those who could not be wholly reclaimed, has been the object of philanthropists and sages from the beginning of time. Their efforts, however, have been expended a million fold more upon the old than upon the young; and a million fold more, also, in the way of punishment than of prevention. Among the republicans of ancient times, a few wise and sagacious men did clearly perceive the bearing of education upon character; and, of course, upon innocence and guilt, both personal and public; but among the masses of the people there never existed any set tled and operative conviction of this truth; and not a single year can be pointed out in all their long annals, where a majority of those who held the reins of go. vernment, and framed the laws of the state, rose to any practical or even theoretic conception of the grand idea, that the vital intelligence or the stupidity, the integrity or the dishonesty of the people at large, will be measured and bounded by the kind and degree of the education imparted to its children, just as the zones upon the earth's surface are measured and bounded by the amount of sunlight which is shed upon them.* ries have no more existence than nonentity has to his senses, it would be hazardous to affirm that the chances of the former for a virtuous life are much superior to those of the latter. Nor do the best authorities dispel all the clouds of doubt which hang over this question. Some writers maintain that crime actually increases in proportion to the diffusion of the rudiments of knowledge, provided the knowledge which is diffused stops with mere rudiments. I think, however, it must be conceded that the preponderance of names and of statistical results does, on the whole, clearly In modern times, this relation of early education to favor the opinion that crime recedes as knowledge adadult character has been more clearly and generally vances; and that, as the full-risen sun enables a travelrecognized as being, what it truly, to a very great ex-ler to see his path and to avoid the dangers that beset tent, is, a relation between cause and effect. As one it, so the first and faintest gleaming of the morning twimeans of establishing this truth, many earnest well-light helps him to discover his way and to shun its perils. wishers of their race have made extensive collections of what are called the "Statistics of Education and Crime." The inmates of large penal establishments have been subjected to a personal examination, in order to ascertain whether a greater proportion of them, than of the community at large from which they were taken, were wholly ignorant of letters. In this investigation, the comparison has been made between those who were able both to read and write, and those who could perform neither or but one of these operations I will not dwell here upon the amazing absurdity of any definition of the word "Education," whose spirit or whose terms are satisfied by the mere ability to read and write. Reading and writing may be, and, among this class of persons, they usually are, mere mechanical processes; and how such attainments should ever have been dignified by the name of educa" tion, or confounded with that noble culture of the soup which pours the noon-day illumination of knowledge upon the midnight darkness of ignorance, which seeks to enthrone the moral faculties over all animal desires and propensities, and to make the entire course of in-like exhibiting a taper to prove the existence of light, struction subservient to the great duties of love to God and love to man;-how an absurdity so extravagant and now so obvious, could ever have been committed, can be explained only by reference to the low and un. worthy ideas of education which once prevailed. It must also be remembered, that when great numbers are taken as the basis of comparison, all of whom possess the rudiments of knowledge, it will always happen that some of them will possess more than the rudiments. Hence, taking whole communities together, I believe the legitimate and inevitable conclusion to be that every advance in knowledge, amongst a people, is pro tanto an invasion of the domain of crime. For years past, however, although I have carefully scrutinized these so-called "Statistics of Education and Crime," and am convinced that they do establish a distinction between the two classes,—one of which can read and write, while the other can do neither of these things or but one of them,-in regard to their relative exemption from crime, or exposure to it, yet I have never been able to bring myself to present these schedules to our people, as an argument in favor of that elevated and ennobling education to which it is their duty to aspire. I have felt that, by so doing, the argument would be shorn of half its power by the feebleness of the proofs brought to sustain it. It would be while surrounded by the sun's effulgence. Our present state of society, the form of government under which we live, the improvable faculties with which we have been endowed by our Maker, and the solemn destiny that awaits us,—all demand vastly more than a knowledge of the nature and power of letters, and the just method of spelling words," and the mechanical ability to imitate, with a pen, their written or The naked capacity to read and write is no more education than a tool is a workman, or a telescope is a Laplace or a La Verrier. To possess the means of education is not the same as to possess the lofty pow-printed signs. ers and immunities of education, any more than to possess the pen of a poet is to possess a poet's skill and "faculty divine;" or than the possession of the Gospel is the possession of that liberty wherewith Christ maketh his disciples free; and, that reading and wri. ting are only instruments or means to be used in edu. cation, is a truism now so intuitively obvious as to disdain argument. And hence it is, that, of two persons one of whom can barely write his name or spell out a paragraph in a newspaper, while, to the mind of the other, the contents of all manuscripts and of all libra Even Marcus Aurelius declared himself satisfied, if he could only improve a few persons; and he denied the possibility of establishing Plato's republic. Yet this degrading idea of education, which was first conceived in reference to the ignorant classes of Europe, has been, to some extent, adopted and acted upon in our own country. The last census of the United States, taken by authority of a law of Congress, and in compliance with a provision of the Federal constitution, proceeded upon this European fallacy. It virtu ally adopted the old line of distinction between education and ignorance, for it required an enumeration of all persons over twenty years of age, who were unable to read and write. The results have been published and they are now embodied with the permanent statis tics of the country. Towns, counties and states aro in less. classed, their condition is mentioned with honor or it will do better work in the same time, or equal work with opprobrium, according to their relative position above or below this absurd standard of knowledge and culture. It is inevitable that this legislative sanction of such a standard,—this naturalization of it, so to speak,―should have a most baneful effect in debasing public opinion upon the subject. Facts of an interesting nature are presented, it is true, but their tendency is to rob education of all its noblest attributes. It seems to me that the time is now arrived when the friends of this cause should plant themselves on a more conspicuous position; when, surveying the infinite of wretchedness and crime around them, before which the stoutest heart is appalled and humanity stands aghast, they should proclaim the power and the prerogatives of education to rescue mankind from their calamities. Founding themselves upon evidence that cannot be disputed, and fortifying their conclusions by the results of personal experience, they should proclaim how far the miseries of men can be alleviated and how far the dominion of crime can be overthrown, by such a system of education as it is perfectly practicable for every civilized community forthwith to establish; and thus they should awaken the conscience of the public to a sense of its responsibility. The idea will be more distinctly presented under an inquiry, like the following: But though the public mind always tends strongly to conform its modes of thinking to legal definitions, and to subscribe to opinions sanctioned by high authority, yet the common sense of the community, especially in the more educated States of the Union, has outgrown these contracted notions, and has claimed for the word education, a far ampler and loftier significance. All intelligent thinkers upon this subject now utterly discard and repudiate the idea that reading and writing, with a knowledge of accounts, constitute education. The lowest claim which any intelligent man now prefers in its behalf is, that its domain extends Under the soundest and most vigorous system of eduover the threefold nature of man;–over his body, cation which we can now command, what proportion training it by the systematic and intelligent observance or per-centage of all the children who are born, can of those benign laws which secure health, impart be made useful and exemplary men,-honest dealers, strength and prolong life; over his intellect, invigora- conscientious jurors, true witnesses, incorruptible ting the mind, replenishing it with knowledge, and voters or magistrates, good parents, good neighbors, cultivating all those tastes which are allied to virtue; good members of society? In other words, with our and over his moral and religious susceptibilities also, present knowledge of the art and science of education, dethroning selfishness, enthroning conscience, leading and with such new fruit of experience as time may be the affections outward in good-will towards men, and expected to bear,-what proportion or per-centage of apward in gratitude and reverence to God. In thou- all the children must be pronounced irreclaimable and sands of reports, prepared by school committees; in irredeemable, notwithstanding the most vigorous edufrequent addresses and lectures, delivered on public cational efforts which, in the present state of society, occasions; in all educational documents emanating can be put forth in their behalf; what proportion or from high official sources; and in every work pretend-per-centage must become drunkards, profane swearers, ing to scientific accuracy, or to any comprehensive | detractors, vagabonds, rioters, cheats, thieves, aggresoutline of the subject, these sacred and majestic attrisors upon the rights of property, of person, of repubutes have been set forth; and it has been demonstated tation, or of life; or, in a single phrase, must be guilty hundreds of times over, that the effect of a sound edu-of such omissions of 'right and commissions of wrong, cation of the people, must, not accidentally but neces- that it would have been better for the community had sarily, not occasionally but always, be, to repress the they never been born? This is a problem which the commission of crime and to promote the diffusion of course of events has evolved, and which society and human happiness; and that to act in conscious defiance the government must meet. If, with such educational or disregard of these truths, is treachery to the best means and resources as we can now command, eighty, interests of our fellow-men, and impiety towards the ninety, ninety-five, or ninety-nine per cent. of all chilAuthor of the moral universe. dren, can be made temperate, industrious, frugal, conBut notwithstanding all that has been said, and so scientious in all their dealings, prompt to pity and well said, as to the moral power of education in re-instruct ignorance, instead of ridiculing it and taking forming the world, there have still been a vagueness | advantage of it, public-spirited, philanthropic, and and an indefiniteness, in regard to the extent of that power, observers of all things sacred;-if, I say, any given which have shorn argument and eloquence of much of proportion of our children, by human efforts and by their strength. Nowhere have its advocates set forth, such a divine blessing as the common course of God's distinctly and specifically, how much they believe can providence authorizes us to expect, can be made to be accomplished by it. When an alleged improve-possess these qualities and to act from them ;—then, ment is presented to a judicious man, he wishes to just so far as our posterity shall fall below this practiknow whether, and to what extent, its benefit will ex- cable exemption from vices and crimes, and just so far ceed its cost. A capitalist will not aid a new enteras they shall fail to possess these attainable virtues,— prise with his money, until he is satisfied of the profi-just so far will those who frame and execute our laws, tableness of the investment; nor will a manufacturer shape public opinion and lead public action, be crimipurchase new machinery, unless he is convinced that nally responsible for the difference. I can conceive of no |