Deduct fifteen minutes for opening exercises in the morning; five for the afternoon; five for the closing exercises of both; fifteen minutes in each half-day for recesses, thirty minutes in all; ten minutes more for time spent in opening and closing exercises of classes; ninety minutes for the recitations, exclusive of reading, writing and spelling; sixty more for the latter; and twenty minutes for gymnastics, — two hundred and thirty-five minutes aggregate deduction: and we have a trifle more than two hours, in which the scholar, who does not, or cannot or is not allowed to study at home, must prepare three or four recitations; or from thirty to forty minutes of time for preparation for each recitation. What shall be done? What can be done in so brief a time, supposing the scholar to, -something more than commit to memory-study his lessons, looking out definitions, pronunciation, references, localities, etc., etc.? For my own part, in this view of the subject, I am surprised that we as teachers witness so good results. Are we not crowding into our school routine too great a multiplicity of studies? Should our so-called courses require more than two studies, in cases where attention is given to reading, penmanship and orthography? Under the present regime, with thirty or forty minutes only to devote to a study, is it a wonder that scholars merely memorize; that they do not think? Are not teachers and committees to blame for the half-learned lessons which our record-books represent?", We believe one grand remedy for this state of things to be in a change in the methods of teaching. Instead of setting lessons, and hearing recitations, let teachers study the lessons with their pupils, and then send them to their seats to recite them to themselves. A little brief questioning afterwards, or the evidence of the pupil's increased skill at the next exercise, will show whether he is faithful in that part of his duty which he performs alone. In this way, the driest study may be made pleasant, the teacher will be brought into true relations with the pupil, and an immense amount of time will be saved that is now wasted. We think our correspondent is right, however, that too many studies are apt to be crowded into a High School course.

Education and [Sham] Democracy. The inimitable Nasby thus discourses on these subjects. We do not know whether to admire his wit or his wisdom most: "The Deekin remarked that it wus painful, but the fact was Elijer must hev a edjucashen. He didn't bleeve in edjucashen, generally spekin'. The common people wuz better off without it, ez edjucashen hed a tendency to unsettle their minds. He hed seen the evil effex uv it in niggers and poor whites. So soon es a nigger masters the spelling-book and gits into noosepapers, he becomes dissatisfied with his condishun, and hankers after a better cabin and more wages. He to wunst begins to insist onto ownin land hisself and givin his children edjucashen, and ez a nigger, for our purposes, aint worth a soo markee. Jes so with the poor whites. He knowed one melloncolly instance. A poor cuss up towards Gareittstown, named Ramsey, learned to read afore the war, and then commenst

deteriroratin. For two years he refoosed to vote the Dimocratic ticket, then he blossomed out into a Ablishnist and tried to make the others uv his class discontented by tellin' uv em that slavery was wat kept them down, and finally after pashence ceased to be a virchoo, and we tarred and feathered him one night for a incendiary, he went to Injiany. That cuss cum back here doorin the late onpleasantnis, kernal of a rigimint, which he campt on my farm and subsisted em off it. Sum edjucashen is, however, necessary. I design Elijer for Congress, and he must hev it. He is a true Pogram, and nothin will strike in wich kin hurt him.

"The discouraged Dimokrat may say that preechers, and noosepapers, and Sundy skools, and sich, are underminin their party. In time they will, but not yet. There is still whiskey in the land, and the nigger is not yet extinct. Uv wat danger is preechers to these men, when yoo coodent git one uv em within gun-shot uv one? and wat harm is noosepapers to em, when they can't read? Besides, we are not at the end uv our resources yet. When the wust comes to the wust, there is the nigger left us. When he is no longer uv use to us ez he is now when the prejoodis is so far removed ez to invest him with the suffrage then WE'LL give him the ballot - WE'LL lead him up out uv Egypt, and we'll make him vote with us. The Dimocrisy never yet failed to control all uv the They hev the lowest grade uv the furriners; they hev they hev Noo York city and Southern Illinoy; and ef the nigger gets the ballot afore he does the spellin book, he's ourn beyond peradvencher."

lower orders uv sosiety. Delaware and Maryland;

·

But alas for Nashy's bright hopes for the future of that base party, respecting which Governor Morton, of Indiana, recently gave this advice to the young men of Chicago: 'You are just starting in life with the world all before you, when and how to choose. Beware how you connect your fortunes with a decayed and dishonored party, indelibly stained with treason, and upon whose tombstone the historian will write: False to liberty, false to its country, and false to the age in which it lived.' The democratic party has committed a crime for which history has no pardon, and the memories of men no forgetfulness; whose colors grow darker from age to age, and for which the execrations of mankind become more bitter from generation to generation." What will Nasby say to the following?

Negroes in Trigonometry and the Classics. If that large class of Americans, imported and native, who have been educated to express their hatred of equal rights, and their prejudice against race, by mouthing with hot rage, or airy contempt, the word "Nigger!" could be compelled to visit in detachments the Philadelphia Institute for Colored Youth, on Shippen Street, they would speedily get cured of the false ideas upon which Slavery in the United States sought a logical and lawful foundation, and which now inspire the opponents of impartial suffrage to resist the extension of the ballot to the black man. We visited this

school last week, and for two days witnessed its annual Commencement exercises. We saw there abundant evidence, says the N. Y. Tribune:

-:

"I. That, under the management and instruction of colored teachers, male and

female, there is in Philadelphia a school for the education of girls and boys in the Latin and Greek Classics, the Mathematics, History, Geography, and Composition, which is fully equal to the best of the endowed academies of Massachusetts and New Hampshire. This is saying a great deal, but we will stand by it.

II. We saw that under the development of this culture, favored by the strong social position which the colored population in Philadelphia have attained in that freest of our great cities, there were one hundred and eighty-one boys and girls of African descent, as intelligent, as self-respectful, as well-mannered, as well dressed and as promising as the same number of schoolchildren in any of the best schools in New England. To be more specific, we saw a large school of colored pupils, who, in no respect, save color and features, differed at all from the best educated and most carefully trained white boys and girls of the same age in the best academies of the Northern States. In all respects, they were fully their equals.

"III. We saw colored children of both sexes, between the ages of twelve and nineteen, rigidly examined in Xenophon's Anabasis and the Greek Testament, in Virgil's Æneid, Cicero's orations and Horace's songs, in plane and spherical trigonometry, Legendre's geometry, algebra, mental arithmetic, English analysis, history and geography, and saw that they understood and knew what they recited; that they were radically and thoroughly instructed; that their answers to questions were not exercises of memory; that they had not been drilled parrotlike for a public show; and that they had successfully received from colored instructors the education which our best schools give white children preparatory to entering college.

เ

"IV. We heard compositions read, and declamations delivered, upon such themes as The Essential Feature of a Republic,' Music as an Element of Worship,' The Education of Women,' The Age of Pericles,' The American Congress,' The Province of Poetry,' 'Individual Effort,'The New Rome,' The Two Cæsars.' These performances, original, marked with thought, of a high grade of excellence in the use of language and structure of sentences, and full of generous feeling and morality, had they been listened to by the most prejudiced upholders of caste, would surely have shamed them out of all further talk about the inferiority of the African race, and brought them to a candid confession that there is nothing in the organization of the colored American which should withhold from him complete political enfranchisement; nothing in his character or capacities which can longer uphold the mean and cowardly lie that the Government of the United States was intended to be a 'White Man's Government.'"

Richard Humphreys, a member of the Society of Friends, in Philadelphia, preparing for his death in the year 1832, devised $10,000 in trust "to instruct descendants of the African race in school learning, in the various branches of the mechanic arts and trade, and in agriculture, in order to prepare and qualify them to act as teachers in those branches of useful business." That little sum of money was the seed from which has grown up the Shippen Street Colored High School.

Massachusetts and South Carolina. These two States may be taken as fair representatives of the two systems of civilization, which are based respectively on the equality of man and the subordination of races; whose symbols have been the school-house and the slave-shamble; whose watch words are "Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity," and "Slavery, Subordination, and Oligarchy." They started on these two different and diverging lines of policy, and have pursued the same with about equal zeal and devotion. How far are they now apart! What are the practical results of the two systems? Since South Carolina has been suddenly checked in her career, and may soon wholly abandon her favorite policy, these inquiries possess very great interest.

For their answer let us turn to the census of 1860:

These significant contrasts may be verified by referring to Appleton's Cyclopædia. How plainly they show how the desolated South may be regenerated, and her waste places changed to fruitful fields! The great agent of reconstruction is the school-house. The “irrepressible conflict" will continue until the negro is handed over to the schoolmaster. He alone can conquer a lasting and blessed peace. Ohio Educational Monthly.

-

We desire again to call the attention of our readers to the French classes of our friend and colleague, Prof. Bôcher. A new course of twenty French readings will begin at the room in Freeman Place, Beacon Street, opposite the Athenæum, on Wednesday, Feb. 6, to continue Wednesdays at 7%, P. M., and Saturdays at 122, P. M. Books will be loaned to the class.. The Saturday afternoon class for advanced scholars will begin a second term, Feb. 16, at 2 P. M.; and an elementary class will be formed at 31⁄2, P. M., of the same day. The fee for all the readings is ten dollars; for the half course, either afternoon or evening, five dollars; for the Saturday classes, eight dollars for fifteen lessons.

We believe we shall do many of our readers a service by giving them this information; for we do not think they can anywhere find better or cheaper instruction in French. Programmes may be obtained by addressing Prof. B., at No. 2 River Street.

From John S. Hart, Esq., Principal of the New Jersey State Normal School, we have received an admirable article in defence of common schools, reprinted from the Biblical Repertory and Princeton Review. It contains a strong argument, supported by valuable facts and statistics derived from the reports of our prisons, to show the elevating moral tendency of intellectual education. One would think it time the opposite doctrine were exploded, - a doctrine first started by the narrow bigots and tories of England, in their vain attempts to protect their antiquated Church, and their aristocratic privileges against the slow but certain progress of popular enlightenment. Mr. Hart's facts and arguments, and his striking contrast between the progress of Massachusetts with, and the stagnation of Virginia without schools, cannot but produce conviction in the mind of any reader who needs to be convinced. We trust his pamphlet will be widely read.

His illustration, drawn from the ignorance and degradation of the lower classes of England, receives fresh corroboration from a pamphlet just come to hand, entitled "National Education: an Address delivered to the National Association, for the promotion of Social Science, at Manchester, Oct. 6, 1866, by the Right Hon. H. A. Bruce, M. P." The right honorable gentleman, an enlightened friend of the cause of popular education, gives some of the disheartening results of an investigation recently made in the great manufacturing city of Manchester, by the Manchester and Salford Education Society; and this is an extract:

"Of the 11,086 children between 3 and 12, there were 762 at work, 4,537 at school, and 5,787 neither at school, nor at work. In other words, out of every 110 children between 3 and 12 years of age, living with their parents or guardians, 7 were at work, 45 at school and 58 neither at work nor at school. I have already stated that it appears, from the investigation of the society, that about two-fifths of this absence from school was due to the neglect, and three-fifths to the poverty, of the parents. Their last returns show that while they have made 24,000 grants to enable these latter children to attend school, only half of that number, or 12,000, have availed themselves of this aid. And this fact is attributed to the apathy of the parents.

"It is clear, and this must never be forgotten during the discussion of this subject, that it is not the employer of labor who is the competitor of the schoolmaster. The figures just given show that of the children between three and twelve years of age, less than one in fourteen is at work, while, out of every twenty-two of such children, only nine are at school. Miserable as this is, it seems to be hardly as bad as that which remains to be revealed. The committee has hitherto shrunk from visiting some of the worst and most populous districts in Manchester and Salford, because so large a proportion were below the reach of their influence. In the lowest districts only a small proportion of the children could be got into schools by any agency the society could use. There are few schools in the localities, and parents and children are alike unimpressible.' The statistics, therefore, which I have just read, melancholy and disheartening as they are, by no means indicate the lowest state of depression in the population of this great town."

We are indebted to George W. Hoss, Esq., Superintendent of Public Instruc