-OF SCHOOL BOOKS, By PROFESSORS VENABLE and HOLMES, of the University of Virginia; the late COMMODORE MAURY, of the Virginia Military Institute; PROFESSOR GILDERSLEEVE, of the Johns Hopkins University, and other eminent scholars and educators. The following books of this celebrated series have been Authorized by the State Board of Education for use in the Schools of Virginia, for four years, from August 1st, 1878. Full details as to books, terms, or rates of supply, obtained by addressing UNIVERSITY PUBLISHING CO., 19 MURRAY STREET, NEW YORK, WILLIAM F. FOX, Editor. W. H. RUFFNER, Ed. Official Dept. THE Educational Journal of Virginia. Vol. XI. Richmond, Va., January, 1880. Athenian Education. No. 1. An Address before the Educational Association of Virginia, July 9th, 1879, by PROF. H. H. HARRIS, Richmond College. "Weak nerves are a source of rash acts." The late General Dick Taylor, from whose racy Reminiscences I quote, gives an instance as occurring in his own experience. You have before you this evening another example. When requested to prepare an Address for this meeting, I was too weak to refuse, and, since my word was given, I have been too weak, or what is nearly the same, too busy, to think on any topic outside of my usual range. This drives me into the rashness of attempting, in the last quarter of the nineteenth century and before an assemblage of enlightened Christian teachers, to discourse on Schools as they were in a far-off heathen city four hundred years before the dawn of our era. Be not alarmed, however, at the announcement of this antiquarian theme. Teachers just released from the school-room retain indeed their professional interest, but the zest with which they seek the seaside or the mountains, shows their pressing need of relaxation. In full sympathy with this need, I shall by no means undertake an elaborate discussion of school-life in ancient Athens, nor so much as introduce the unsettled questions which it might raise, but invite you to glance with me at some generally admitted facts (such as the Encylopædias supply) and to draw here and there a practical lesson for our times and our occupation. That the subject itself, as announced, is eminently WORTHY OF OUR ATTENTION, will appear from two considerations. First, no other State of its size ever produced in the same length of time such a galaxy of great men; |