tion, and the place where the manners and personal habits of children can be better trained than elsewhere. With them, the hours of play and study, of confinement and recreation, must alternate more frequently than with older pupils. To teach these schools properly,to regulate the hours of play and study so as to give variety, vivacity, and interest to all of the exercises, without over-exciting the nervous system, or over-tasking any faculty of mind or body,—to train boys and girls to mild dispositions, graceful and respectful manners, and unquestioning obedience,-to cultivate the senses to habits of quick and accurate observation and discrimination,-to prevent the formation of artificial and sing-song tones,-to teach the use of the voice, and of simple, ready and correct language, and to begin in this way, and by appropriate exercises in drawing, calculation, and lessons on the properties and classification of objects, the cultivation of the intellectual faculties,-to do all these things and more, require in the teacher a rare union of qualities, seldom found in one in a hundred of the male sex, and to be looked for with the greatest chance of success among females, "in whose own hearts, love, hope and patience, have first kept school."

The earlier we can establish, in every populous district, primary schools, under female teachers, whose hearts are made strong by deep religious principle,-who have faith in the power of Christian love steadily exerted to fashion anew the bad manners, and soften the harsh and self-willed perverseness of neglected children,-with patience to begin every morning, with but little if any perceptible advance beyond where they began the previous morning, with prompt and kind sympathies, and ready skill in music, drawing, and oral methods, the better it will be for the cause of education, and for every other good cause.

2. Secondary Schools should receive scholars at the age of eight years, or about that age, and carry them forward in those branches of instruction which lie at the foundation of all useful attainments in knowledge, and are indispensable to the proper exercise and development of all the faculties of the mind, and to the formation of good intellectual tastes and habits of application. If the primary schools have done their work properly, in forming habits of attention, and teaching practically the first uses of language,--in giving clear ideas of the elementary principles of arithmetic, geography, and the simplest lessons in drawing, the scholars of a well conducted secondary school, who will attend regularly for eight or ten months in the year, until they are twelve years of age, can acquire as thorough knowledge of reading, arithmetic, penmanship, drawing, geography, history, and the use of the language in composition and speech, as is ever given in common or public schools, as ordinarily conducted, to children at the age of sixteen. For this class of schools, well qualified female teachers, with good health, self-command, and firmness, are as well fitted as male teachers. But if the school is large, both a male and female teacher should be employed, as the influence of both are needed in the training of the moral character and manners.

Schools of this grade should be furnished with class-rooms for recitations, and if large, with a female assistant for every thirty pupils.

3. High Schools should receive pupils from schools of the grade below, and carry them forward in a more comprehensive course of instruction, embracing a continuation of their former studies, and especially of the English language, and drawing, and a knowledge of algebra, geometry and trigonometry, with their applications, the elements of mechanics and natural philosophy and chemistry, natural history, including natural theology, mental and moral science, political economy, physiology, and the constitution of the United States. These and other studies should form the course of instruction, modified according to the sex, age, and advancement, and to some extent, future destination of the pupils, and the standard fixed by the intelligence and intellectual wants of the district-a course which should give to every young man a thorough English education, preparatory to the pursuits of agriculture, commerce, trade, manufactures, and the mechanical arts, and if desired, for college; and to every young woman, a well disciplined mind, high moral aims, and practical views of her own duties, and those resources of health, thought, manners and conversation, which bless alike the highest and lowest stations in life. All which is now done in private schools of the highest grade, and where the wants of any considerable portion of the community create such private schools, should be provided for in the system of public schools, so that the same advantages, without being abridged or denied to the children of the rich and the educated, should be open at the same time to worthy and talented children of the poorest parent. In some districts a part of the studies of this grade of schools might be embraced in the Secondary Schools, which would thus take the place of the High School; in others, the High School could be open for only portions of the year; and in others, two departments, or two schools, one for either sex, would be required. However constituted, whether as one department, or two, as a distinct school, or as part of a secondary school, or an ordinary district school, and for the whole year, or part of the year, something of the kind is required to meet the wants of the whole community, and relieve the public schools from impotency. Unless it can be engrafted upon the public school system, or rather unless it can grow up and out of the system, as a provision made for the educational wants of the whole community, then the system will never gather about it the warmth and sustaining confidence and patronage of all classes, and especially of those who know best the value of a good education, and are willing to spend time and money to secure it for their own children.

4. Intermediate Schools or departments will be needed in large districts, to receive a class of pupils who are too old to be continued, without wounding their self-esteem, in the school below, or interfering with its methods of discipline and instruction, and are not prepared in attainments, and habits of study, or from irregular attendance, to be arranged in the regular classes of the school above.

Connected with this class of schools there might be opened a

school or department for those who cannot attend school regularly, or for only a short period of the year, or who may wish to attend exclusively to a few studies. There is no place for this class of scholars, in a regularly constituted, permanent school, in a large village.

5. Supplementary Schools, and means of various kinds should be provided in every system of public instruction, for cities and large villages, to supply deficiencies in the education of individuals whose school attendance has been prematurely abridged, or from any cause interfered with, and to carry forward as far and as long as practicable into after life, the training and attainments commenced in childhood. Evening Schools should be opened for apprentices, clerks, and other young persons, who have been hurried into active employment without a suitable elementary education. In these schools, those who have completed the ordinary course of school instruction, could devote themselves to such studies as are directly connected with their several trades or pursuits, while those whose early education was entirely neglected, can supply, to some extent, such deficiencies. It is not beyond the legitimate scope of a system of public instruction, to provide for the education of adults, who, from any cause, in early life were deprived of advantages of school instruction.

Libraries, and courses of familiar lectures, with practical illustrations, collections in natural history, and the natural sciences, a system of scientific exchanges between schools of the same, and of different towns,--these and other means of extending and improving the ordinary instruction of the school-room and of early life, ought to be provided, not only by individual enterprise and liberality, but by the public, and the authorities entrusted with the care and advancement of popular education.

One or more of that class of educational institutions known as "Reform Schools," "Schools of Industry," or "Schools for Juvenile Offenders," should receive such children, as defying the restraining influence of parental authority, and the discipline and regulations of the public schools, or such as are abandoned by orphanage, or worse than orphanage, by parental neglect or example, to idle, vicious and pilfering habits, are found hanging about places of public resort, polluting the atmosphere by their profane and vulgar speech, alluring, to their own bad practices, children of the same, and other conditions of life, and originating or participating in every street brawl and lowbred riot. Such children cannot be safely gathered into the public schools; and if they are, their vagrant habits are chafed by the restraints of school discipline. They soon become irregular, play truant, are punished and expelled, and from that time their course is almost uniformly downward, until on earth there is no lower point to reach.

Accustomed, as many such children have been from infancy, to sights and sounds of open and abandoned profligacy, trained to an utter want of self-respect, and the decencies and proprieties of life, as exhibited in dress, person, manners and language, strangers to those motives of self-improvement which spring from a sense of so

cial, moral and religious obligation, their regeneration involves the harmonious co-operation of earnest philanthropy, missionary enterprise, and sanctified wisdom. The districts of all our large cities where this class of children are found, are the appropriate field of home missions, of unobtrusive personal effort and charity, and of systematized plans of local benevolence, embracing friendly intercourse with parents, an affectionate interest in the young, the gathering of the latter into week-day, infant, and primary schools, and schools where the use of the needle, and other forms of labor appropriate to the sex and age of the pupils can be given, the gathering of both old and young into Sabbath schools and worshipping assemblies, the circulation of books and tracts, of other than a strictly religious character, the encouragement of cheap, innocent and humanizing games, sports and festivities, the obtaining employment for adults who may need it, and procuring situations as apprentices, clerks, &c., for such young persons as may be qualified by age, capacity and character. By individual efforts and the combined efforts of many, working in these and other ways, from year to year, these moral jungles can be broken up,-these infected districts can be purified, these waste places of society can be reclaimed, and many abodes of penury, ignorance and vice can be converted by education, economy and industry, into homes of comfort, peace and joy.

THE above cut exhibits a front view of the Public School-house erected in the village of Warren, at the expense of the town, in 1847-48, after drawings made by Mr. Teft, of Providence, under the directions of a committee of the town, who consulted with the Commissioner of Public Schools, and visited Providence, Boston, Salem, Newburyport and other places, in order to ascertain the latest improvements in school architecture, before deciding on the details of the plan. To this committee, and particularly to two of its members, Mr. E. W. Burr and Mr. G. S. Gardiner, is the town largely indebted for the time and personal supervision which they devoted to this public improvement, from its first inception to its completion, without any other reward than the realization of their wish to secure for their town the best school-house, for the amount of money expended, in the State. The Commissioner of Public Schools remarked, in his address at the dedication of the house, in September, 1848," that, for location, style, construction, means of warming, ventilation, and cleanliness, and for the beauty and convenience of the seats and desks, he had not seen a public school-house superior to this in New England. It is a monument at once of the liberality of the town, and of a wise economy on the part of the committee." The town appropriated $10,000, and the committee expended $8,594.

The opening of the Public School in this edifice was followed by a large increase of attendance from the children of the town.