mangled by a bad recitation, it was grateful to hear him repeat it all over to himself, in the most soothing and motherly voice, as though he would bind up and heal its wounded and dislocated parts. Sometimes he would croon off (as the Scotch would say) page after page of the author, winding up each paragraph with such an inarticulate chuckle of delight as only a very fat man like him could give. It must have been to him that Mr. Mann referred when, in his controversy with the "Thirty-one Boston School-masters," he speaks of the inspiring effect of a teacher's knowledge upon the progress of his pupils. "I know that this ability of his inspired one of his pupils, at least, with sentiments of respect toward him, with conceptions of excellence, and with an ardor for attainment, such as all the places and prizes ever bestowed, and a life of floggings into the bargain, could never have imparted. I well remember that when I encountered a a difficulty either in translation or syntax, and was ready to despair of success in overcoming it, the mere thought how easy that would be to my teacher, seemed not only to invigorate my effort, but to give me an enlargement of power, so that I could return to the charge and triumph."

As Mr. Mann went to college late in life, and was obliged to earn his own living, his native logical powers naturally led him to the profession of the law. What he did at all he always did with a will, and though he would have preferred the pursuit of physical science, he became eminent in his profession, which he always considered the best training for truthfulness of character. He was thankful when the opportunity came to turn away from the task of weighing evidence which was intensely laborious to so conscientious a mind as his, to the more congenial investigation of the best modes of education. Mere instruction was the smallest part of education in his eyes. The ruling of the spirit was the chief aim, and that the individual must be taught to achieve for himself. He had never heard of Froebel, but he was fully of the opinion that the earliest bent given to the character is the most likely to be the most lasting one, and when he came to have children of his own he realized it in full, and bent all his energies to begin aright. The order in which the human faculties should be developed had been a subject of theoretic study with him in sympathy with a friend who had a large school of young children, but with children of his own he was practically a good kindergartner, and great would have been his enjoyment of the perfecting of Froebel's system for the ends both of character and intellectual training. He gave his own children to the study of nature in the things themselves before the age for books. He made the love of

knowledge a passion with them, and such was their enjoyment of his brilliant sympathy in their pursuits that they were never satisfied with the slightest acquisition they made till they had communicated it to him in full, and talked it all over with him. He took them to manufactories to explain the processes of the artisans, and cultivated every faculty, as it appeared, by conversation and by applying all needful appliances for practical working. They pressed and classified and made herbariums of the plants, gathered and found out the names of the stones, searched the sod and the river-banks for fresh water and land shells (not having access to the sea), stuffed and studied the structure of the birds, collected and identified the eggs, prepared skeletons of the frogs and the fishes, and this without a task in a book. When the eldest son entered the preparatory school of Antioch College, at the age of twelve, he was quite a little chemist, and was possessed of all the knowledge of that science (or more) which was comprised in the first year's study of it by the college classes. He volunteered his services at the table of the professor, and was accepted as a very efficient assistant. He had had his own private laboratory in his father's spacious cellar, where he performed his own experiments, something at the risk of blowing up the house, but he never did it. The only accident he ever had in his chemical pursuits was the flashing in his face of some gunpowder which he had made for a little cannon, and which he was testing with a fuse. It was thought he was disfigured for life, but the timely application to his face of a wet cloth, which he patiently endured for a day, saved his complexion. He and his brother next in age to himself built themselves a chimney of fire-brick in the cellar, and there smelted metals with a good foundry bellows, in imitation of a foundry in the neighborhood where they had learned the art. The father's luminous talks with them upon the never-failing topic of the glories and wonders of the universe made them precocious in language from a very early age, without the help of any formal exercises, preventing that confuson of mind so often seen in children of lively imaginations who are left to their own deductions from what they see unexplained, or crudely think.

When Mr. Mann first looked into the details of education in this country he was amazed at the condition of things,-at the deterioration that had taken place from the first impulse and action of the fathers to educate the people. He saw at once that the common school system was one which could redeem society if its possibilities. were exhausted by vigilant and conscientious devotion to the cause, and he ended by calling it the greatest discovery of modern times, fit sequel to the discovery of the power of self-government in man,

for he saw that it was the only condition on which a government founded on the consent of the governed could be successfully maintained. The universal vote must be not only an intelligent vote, but a conscientious one.

Education was at a low ebb at the West in his time. It has made giant strides since that day, and at present has a vitality and spring that is wanting in the more conservative East. Specially has the "New Education" (as Froebel's system is sometimes called) found a rich and answering soil in its great fields, and if the spirits of the departed have any cognizance of the scenes of their former labors, his own spirit must hover over the places his work made better in his life-time. Massachusetts seemed to have waked at last to his con ception of the necessity of moral education, and when the "New Education" is thoroughly understood and appreciated,-which is not yet the case, alas !-we may expect glorious fruits. He agreed with. Froebel, that Education, especially of early childhood, should be chiefly in the hands of women. When he began his labors in Massachusetts only one-eighth of the teachers were women, and those were wholly in the lower schools; when he left it seven-eighths of the teachers were women, and many of those in the higher schools. This good work went on till one of the normal schools was put in charge of a woman, under the engineering of ex-Governor Washburn, who was in full sympathy with his friend, who had passed on to other spheres, but had left his spirit in the hearts of his friends and coadjutors. And one of the finest teachers in the Boston School of Technology is a woman. He also came to feel, while acting as Secretary of the Massachusetts Board of Education, that there was not an organic connection between the common school and the higher educational institutions of the country; and when he took the direction of Antioch College it was not only its unsectarian promises, and the facility it was to afford for the equal education of women, but the hope to bridge over this gulf, and interest the learned professors of universities in the elementary education of the people, that attracted him. He wished to prepare the candidates for college study in his own way, and most of the applicants to that institution were resolved into a preparatory school. This preparatory school comprised men and women of all ages, from men who had been settled in the ministry down to children of twelve years of age. Mr. Mann felt, as Froebel had felt in his first school, that the defects of home education were at the root of all later evil with children, and that this evil could only be met by the superior education of women, for it is the mothers who give the first education. Children were sent to him who were unmanageable at home, and he sometimes had to resort to heroic

measures to eliminate bad sheep from his flock. He did it tenderly, circumspectly but efficiently, by various measures suited to the cir cumstances, on the principle that the flock must not be contaminated. Sometimes he won them, and his patience was inexhaustible. Sometimes he showed them to themselves, and they came to him as to a father, that he might help them against themselves where they had been too far corrupted to do the work unaided. He saved many from the demoniac influence of the "vile weed," helping them every day to hold their resolution till they could pronounce themselves safe, and he enlisted public opinion in the college in favor of temperance. By his wit, by his tenderness, by his power to elicit self-respect, he restored to manhood and womanhood the frivolous votaries of selfindulgence, and enlisted the aid of his best pupils in the redemption of others. Public opinion gradually took the right side, and the members of his institution became in great measure the superior men of the community, protecting it instead of its being obliged to protect itself against them, as in most college communities. His dying words were to young men with whose souls he was dealing. The work done at Antioch College is fully known only to the subjects. of it. It was his principle that a bad man should not be helped in his iniquity by the prestige of high education, which, if not used aright, only adds power to evil, and he refused to give a diploma except to those who deserved it morally as well as intellectually. The labors and perplexities of his position, which was one persecuted by bigots, shortened his life. He died because others did not do their duty, and in the full possession of the glorious fruition of his powers. On Commencement day of that year his Baccalaureate was finished but an hour before it was delivered. He had not time even to read it over, but his giant will carried him through the fatigues of the day and evening, twelve hours of unremitting strain. It was the last day that he could stand upon his feet, but the next day, instead of being left to sleep and rest, an important committee meeting was pending which lasted two days longer. A burning fever raged in his veins, and sleep was no more for him in this world. At last a flash of lightning pain passed over him which he was sure had disorganized his very substance. It was too true. But his brain continued preternaturally active for two days, and when the last hours were inevitably at hand he called for a student who had given him much anxiety, and uttered inspired words to him and to others who crowded around his death-bed. Could such a man die? Those who looked upon his face after his spirit had passed from it saw that what is called death was only more life.

THE STUDY OF LATIN IN COLLEGIATE EDUCATION.

BY PROF. FRANCIS W. KELSEY.

By common consent the study of Latin forms an essential part of higher education. In the classical courses of most American colleges it takes up from one-eighth to one sixth of the student's whole time, while in many foreign institutions of learning the percentage is still larger. Laying aside, for the present, the question whether or not so much attention ought to be given to a dead language, it may be well to consider in what way the time actually devoted to Latin in college may be employed so as to yield the most benefit to the student.

The average candidate for the freshman class has read somewhat in several of the less difficult of the Latin authors, and is supposed to be well-grounded in the grammar. Thus far, however, his work has been largely memorizing. He has learned, by rote, declensions, paradigms, and rules of syntax much as a parrot learns to say "Poor Poll." He has struggled with a strange vocabulary and idiom. He has toiled over Cicero and Virgil with grammar and dictionary, too often, it is to be feared, losing the thought in searching out the construction. Yet this preparatory training, if properly conducted, has been of inestimable value. It has developed the power of concentration. It has not only strengthened the memory, but also brought into exercise the faculty of judgment. Its main outcome has been mental discipline,-that first requisite to all intellectual progress. But, obviously, any amount of such training will not transform a crude, listless youth into a firm, roundly cultured and useful man. The college training must be broader, higher, nobler in scope and aim. It will be concerned less with memory, more with judgment; not less with accumulating facts, but more with developing the power to make use of facts; it will impart truth in systems rather than in fragments; above all, it will ever keep in view the growth of high, manly character. In any such course of education the Latin language and literature, rightly treated,—become a means of training second to no other in value and efficiency.

The study of Latin is of practical value in the training that it gives in right thinking or scientific method. This is often overlooked; but where such result does not follow, the fault lies not