condition of success. But I am reminded that I may be using the word "success," in a sense different from what it bears to some minds. Shall I err if I say that the popular type of a successful teacher is he who can insert the greatest number of facts in the memories of his pupils in the shortest time? If this is the true test, I should be unable to maintain my position; for in that case there would not be any apparent necessity for the mastery of any subject whatsoever.

If this were so, certainly a capacity for being crammed would be the first requisite. It is indeed the office of the instructor to impart knowledge; but if this were his whole or chief duty, his work would be far less onerous and far less responsible than it is. No, this is not the main purpose. The teacher must above all quicken and energize the mind of his pupil, and he who best succeeds in this is to be accounted the most successful teacher.

But to do this knowledge alone is not enough. It must be warmed and irradiated by enthusiasm. This is the one instrument of unequaled power. This fills up depths and levels heights of difficulty; it makes the hard look easy, and the ugly beautiful. All hearts do homage to its power, but the young especially are led by its irresistible charm. Hence it is that for the teacher no source of influence is so potent for good; it seems almost the only unfailing stimulus. How shall I make learning and culture seem good and lovely to my pupil, except by showing that they are good and lovely to me? How shall I enkindle his mind, except by the enkindling of my own? How shall I inspire him, unless I am myself inspired? If my word, and look, and tone, and gesture animate and beckon him on, he will follow hopefully, and eagerly, and delightedly. He will rejoice in the exercise of powers that he never dreamed he possessed. He will awaken to new life and energy.

We

But this is not all. There is need of increased devotion. must believe in the dignity and value of our vocation, however the public esteems it. We must give ourselves to it without stint, however poor the recompense that men bestow. But of how many of us is this true? How many young men who enter upon the business of teaching will admit that they have any intention of

making it their lifework? How many teachers are there, who have not passed forty, who are not accustomed to speak of teaching as a temporary employment, well enough till a man can find something more lucrative or more honorable? It is true there is much to dishearten. The teacher seems to me to have no recognized place in society. He is not counted or felt as a force outside of the school-room. He is generally praised and pitied.

Often the rich man, whose son he instructs, deems the service he performs for him somewhat inferior to that of the man who grooms his horse. This however ought not to disturb a rational mind. We may amuse ourselves, if we please, by recalling the saying of Carlyle. Speaking of his fellow-countrymen, he says, "We are about twenty-seven millions, mostly fools." We might show the rich that they could learn something from an old pagan who lived nearly two thousand years ago, I mean Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, who, in enumerating the chief blessings of life, thanks the gods that he had good instructors in his youth, and that he had learned that in such things a man should spend liberally. No, the nineteenth century has not learned to spend liberally upon its teachers. Its view seems rather to be that of the shrewd townclerk, of whom Carlyle relates, that when he was assisting in founding a seminary, and the question was raised, "How shall the teachers be maintained?" delivered this brief counsel, them, keep them poor." You remember perhaps the great Wolfe's advice to teachers: "Be always in good health, and know how to fast courageously."

The public perhaps thinks that a low diet is essential to clearness and activity of brain, and that the teacher must be secured by poverty against temptations to self-indulgence by luxurious sur roundings. Or its idea may be akin to that which seems to prevail in my own native State of Connecticut, with reference to clergymen, where the salaries, I think, average about five hundred dollars per annum. The theory seems to be that as the minister is working for the Lord, he must look to the Lord for his pay. I am not speaking at random. To convince you of this, it will be sufficient for me to mention one fact. The president of Harvard College receives $3,000 a year (about half the salary of a sub-master at Eton) and

the chief cook at the Parker House $4,000. I admit that the wretchedly insufficient salaries of teachers are a discouragement; but if any gentleman is disposed to make this an excuse for a superficial performance of his work, and for the absence of all effort for self-culture, let him by all means abandon the profession and qualify himself for a cook.

It rests with teachers to determine whether their vocation shall be paid and respected as it should be, or not. It rests with teachers to exalt and dignify their profession by increased knowledge, enthusiasm, and devotion.

THE NORMAL SUPERVISION OF SCHOOLS.

DR. HART'S "In the School-room" has an article devoted to the practice-teaching of pupils under his charge, subject to his guidance and criticism, as the Head of the Institution. Is it not desirable and necessary that something similar to this Supervision of Normal Schools, which looks toward making experienced teachers of those who have had no independent experience, should be adopted and practised in the cases of those novices in the art who have not had the advantages or opportunities of professional training? It is such oversight, which we have ventured to name by the above title.

Judging of the whole State of Massachusetts by one of its large towns, not more than one in five of the teachers are Normal Graduates. Of these unprofessionally educated, probably fourfifths have had not more than two years' experience. Nearly all of these teachers are young ladies, who have entered upon the work of instruction after pursuing in full or in part a High School course, and who, as a whole, design to continue in the work only during that ad interim period which must needs transpire between getting an education and getting married. Now, if it is deemed needful that a Normalite should spend two years under the eyes of the best educators of the country before he is considered competent to engage in instruction, must we not

regard the two years that many of our young persons teach, as a very imperfect substitute for Normal training; and then record the lamentable fact that, after these months of spoiling or indifferently cultivating the minds of children, just when they are fitted tolerably for the work, they die to the profession. To save them, not from this death, for that is impossible, but from "keeping school" merely, when they ought to be educating the children under their charge, they require an oversight which shall make the period for spoiling their work as brief as possible, and such an oversight is far different from what most of them now receive. For who are the persons that supervise the labor and progress, and general character of their schools? Even admitting that they are the best qualified of the intelligent citizens of the town or city, are there not many things which tend to render, and commonly do render, them incompetent to judge of just what the school should be and should do? Let them, if you please, be the clergyman, the lawyer, and the doctor of the place. These gentleman, in attending to their official duties, will be able to give to them only those remnants of time which they can secure from their professional occupations; they will, therefore, be generally unable to spend any extended length of time even with those teachers who need their guidance and suggestions the most; they will be apt to have the ideas which were prevalent in their own school days, and either think that everything is wrong which differs from them, or which agrees with them, according to the success which school methods. had in their own culture; they will tend to do (I do not say they will do, for some are efficient), - they will tend to do their work in an indifferent, a bigoted, or a slipshod manner, and this not because they mean to be unserviceable, but because their minds are necessarily directed in other channels. That such persons may be and ought to be connected with the educational affairs of a community arises from the fact that every one should be interested, that a few must represent the many, and that the material wants .of the teachers and scholars must be met by action on the part of those who will be apt to present this side of the matter more in accordance with the desire and condition of the people than professional educators might be inclined or competent to do.

Now, the immediate supervisors of schools ought to be devoted entirely to the work of education. They should make it their study, in its greater and lesser matters. Nothing should be too minute to escape their notice, nothing too vast to be carefully investigated. Their primary work should be with the schools under their immediate charge; and subordinate to this, the methods adopted in other schools the world over should be made to contribute to the efficiency of their own. A man might be so great an educator as to be quite unserviceable in the apparently minor things of his office, and succeed better as a compiler of statistics or promulgator of untried theories than in developing a young and inexperienced teacher, or advising about a suitable programme of studies. He should compile such statistics as will conduce to the great end of education; but an extended array of tabulated statements may only show that the writer is "good at figures," and his self-imposed and arduous task may be lost labor.

To be a supervisor requires a completely educated man, with good common sense. Unless he have an education in those branches which are taught, and superior to the portions of them taught, he cannot judge of the best matter or the best manner of teaching. Unless his education be larger than this, he will be unable to see the bearing of any study upon a complete culture. good common sense, he will be apt to think that no ideas at variance with his own can be correct; that no methods unlike his ought to be pursued, and that an exhibition of authority and superiority is essential to the dignity and character of his office.

Unless he have

The field of a superintendent's labor ought to be large enough to demand his energetic action continually, and not so large that any portion of it would be neglected. In a city of large territory or great population, several might be requisite; while in a sparsely populated region, one would suffice for a county, the one-pervaling question being, How and how often can this superior culture in educational matters be brought to bear upon each school most successfully?

It is due the profession, for profession it certainly is, that a member of it, when entering and while continuing in it, should be submitted to only such ordeals as the clergyman passes. While the