ARTICLE VII.

A CRITICAL REVIEW OF AMERICAN COMMON SCHOOL HISTORIES:

As embraced in a Report submitted to the "New Jersey Society of Teachers and Friends of Education," at a quarterly meeting held March 7, 1845.

By M. WILLSON, N. Y.

THE Report, from which the following article is abridged, was prepared for the New Jersey Education Society, by its request; and in accordance with a resolution of the Society, the same is now submitted to the public.

The importance of the subject announced will be manifest, when it is remembered that it is from our common school histories, those unassuming companions of the school-room, and not from those more elaborate writings which grace the libraries of the men of wealth and the professional scholar, that the great mass of our citizens must ever derive their knowledge of the character, toils, and privations of our fathers, and of the origin and nature of our free institutions.

It is the object of the following article, to give our prominent school histories such a review, as will enable all who feel an interest in the subject, to judge more understandingly of their comparative merits, and of their relative claims to the confidence and the patronage of the public. The task that we have undertaken is, of itself, a delicate one; and the more so, from the circumstance, that the reviewer exposes himself to become the reviewed. The spirit of searching criticism, however, has already gone abroad among teachers and friends. of education; and who shall check its progress? It is the ordeal through which every important school book must hereafter pass to public favor. The able and critical discussions upon the merits of school-books, recently called forth in the Educational Society of New Jersey, are indications of the same spirit; and we begin to have some confidence, that the

popularity of a school-book will, at no distant day, depend upon its intrinsic merits; and not, as heretofore, upon the favor of popular names, the wealth and enterprise of publishers, and the chance condition of getting it into certain fortunate channels of trade.

The subject of school histories will be examined under four heads Arrangement, Anachronisms, Accuracy, and Literary Merits.

1. Arrangement. Two different plans of arrangement have been adopted by American historians, in treating of our early colonial history. One plan is that of particular or individual history; the other, that of common, or general history. The former, technically speaking, is history ethnographically arranged, or, according to nations and tribes: the latter is history chronographically arranged, in which events in different nations are brought together and given in the order of time in which they occurred. The first of these methods, as applied to our own country, pursues the history of each colony separately down to the period of the French and Indian War, in 1754, after which, the separate and individual history of each colony is abandoned, and all are united in one common history. This arrangement has been adopted by Hale and Olney; and by Frost, with respect to all the colonies except those of New England.

The other plan of arrangement carries along together the contemporary events which happened in different colonies, and thus, as far as possible, blends the whole in one common history. This latter plan has been adopted by Goodrich, Grimshaw, Mrs. Willard, and in the pictorial history of S. G. Goodrich, the author of Peter Parley's Tales.

It is obvious that the history of a colony may be learned much more readily where the events are narrated in one unbroken series, and in one chapter, than where the series is frequently interrupted and the events are found dispersed through a dozen chapters. Let any one search for the colonial history of Virginia in the volumes of Bancroft, and he will find a little here, and a little there; and unless he

should read the three volumes through, he will be likely to omit some portion of Virginian history. Let it not, however, be supposed that we depreciate the value of Bancroft's History. We regard it as the best, for its purposes, that has yet been written. In our view, it is well adapted to those already familiar with the separate history of each colony, but exceedingly unfit for a school-book. Circumstances in the history of one colony are often narrated by Bancroft in connection with those of another colony, for the purpose of elucidating some important principle. They are links taken from the chain of particular history, and, for especial purposes, formed into new series; and unless the reader can restore them to their proper places, the histories to which they belong must appear incomplete and broken. More fully to show the faultiness of this mode of arrangement for a school-book, we refer to Mrs. Willard's History, and to Goodrich's Pictorial History, in both which this plan is adopted.

Of those histories that have adopted the other plan of arrangement, the well-known and early work of Hale yet stands preeminent in this particular, and greatly in advance of any of its competitors.

In some of our school histories, a highly important feature has recently been introduced, which may properly be noticed under the head of arrangement. We allude to the introduction of maps.

There are those living who recollect the time when geography was studied in our schools without the aid of maps; but how preposterous would now appear the attempt to teach a child a knowledge of localities by description only. We believe the day is not far distant, when the attempt to impart a knowledge of history, without the aid of historical maps, will be deemed almost as great an absurdity. Will it be said that our ordinary school atlases furnish all the necessary aids? Without stating other numerous objections, we remark that the reader may search in vain, on modern maps, for the names of numerous places, familiar in history, but forgotten in modern topography, because important only THIRD SERIES, VOL. I. NO. III.

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in the remembrance of what they have been. But one or two dilapidated dwellings now mark the site of Jamestown, and among the ruins of the fortress of Louisburg, the once called Gibraltar of America, a few sheep roam for pasturage, and a few fishermen's huts now grace the site where once frowned the royal batteries. In the topography of the present, the monuments of the past are fast wasting away, and if we would restore their already half-effaced inscriptions, like Old Mortality, we must chisel them anew. No American school history should be written without its historical maps, on which should be given, with enlarged plans when necessary, the localities of all places distinguished in our history; such as Ticonderoga and Crown Point; Lexington and Bunker's Hill; Forts Stanwix and Schuyler; Forts Washington, and Lee, and Edward; Forts Clinton and Montgomery, Stony Point, Valley Forge and Wyoming, and the names of numerous other places not found on common maps.

In our school histories, historical maps have been introduced only in those of Mrs. Willard, and in the Pictorial History of Goodrich.

2. Anachronisms. The length of a year was fixed by Julius Cæsar at 365 days and six hours, which is about eleven minutes and a fifth more than the true solar year, amounting in 130 years to one entire day, and a small fraction over. At the time of the Council of Nice, in the year 325, it was found that the vernal equinox had changed from the 25th to the 21st of March, and there it was fixed by the Council; but in 1582, it had receded to the 11th. To bring it back therefore, Pope Gregory decreed that ten days should be taken out of the month of October, 1582; and that what would otherwise have been called the 10th should be called the 20th. was, moreover, decreed that to prevent the accumulation of the same error in future, three days should be abated in every 400 years, by restoring leap years to common years at the end of three successive centuries, and making leap year again at the close of every fourth century. In other words, the

It

year 1600 should be leap year as usual, but 1700, 1800, and 1900, the first three successive centuries, although their numbers are divisible by 4, should be common years, allowing February but 28 days; while the year 2000, being at the close of the 4th century, should be leap year; and thus in every subsequent 400 years. This correction leaves but a small error, amounting to less than a day and a half in 5000 years.

As different European nations then commenced the year at different periods, some on the 1st of January, some on the 25th of March, and others on the 25th of December, Pope Gregory, in order to produce uniformity, adopted the Roman method, and decreed that the year should commence on the 1st of January. Catholic nations and Catholic writers immediately adopted these regulations of the Pope, but they were for a long time rejected by Protestants. The Scots, who from time immemorial commenced the year on the 25th of March, adopted the Gregorian style in 1599, but the English, with wonderful pertinacity, held out against these wise regulations during more than 150 years; during which time all their historians retained the old style in their dates. In 1751, the English Parliament enacted that the year should commence on the first of January, and that the 3d of September of that year should be called the 14th, thereby striking out eleven days, which the English calendar then required to reduce it to the Gregorian.

As most of our colonial history is embraced between the time of the Gregorian reformation in 1582, and its adoption. by the English Parliament in 1751, and as our historians have taken their materials partly from Catholic, and partly from Protestant writers, as might be expected, a great confusion of dates has arisen, and we frequently find, on the same page, even in our best histories, part of the dates in old style, and part in new. More particularly is this the case in regard to the dates in the days of the month, for in most cases recent historians have made the change with respect to the date of

the year.