indefinite, and indecisive. Moreover, in literary study, the mind is in a passive or negative condition; but in art, it is active and positive, The concentrated attention, the close observation, the ingenuity, invention, and judgment in use in art are far superior as mental discipline to anything that literature can give, and whatever is learned in this way is learned positively and permanently, while four-fifths of the literary acquisitions of schools fade out into dimness, or are lost. The boy who has just constructed a wagon is in a much better mental condition than the one who has just learned his lesson in grammar. Art work is natural, pleasant and invigorating, while literary study in the young is generally task-work, which is not invigorating, but fatiguing. All labors which are not spontaneous or attractive, but fatiguing, have a degenerative influence; and life is shortened by all extreme, fatiguing demands for physical or mental labor. That alone is beneficial which can be performed with interest and pleasure, and Professor Hagar tells us that even girls take to the use of carpenter's tools with enthusiasm. Moreover, industry is the basis of the moral nature. The first duty of life is self-support,—that failing, life is a failure. Hence, every hour of industrial occupation is a cultivation of the manly, moral nature which assumes at once and performs faithfully the chief duty of life. As we cultivate the muscles, not by reading essays on gymnastics, but by gymnastic performance, so likewise the moral nature is cultivated effectively, not by moral essays, but by moral action, and moral action implies industrial action. Industrial occupation has proved the most powerful, the absolutely indispensable, means of reforming criminals. If it has so great a moralizing power, we have no right to exclude it from the standard system of education, for moral development is worth more than intellectual development; and if the choice were offered whether education should be all literary or all industrial, I should say industrial,-for that would give us both intellectual and moral vigor, which the present system does not. I claim that the industrial system is the true liberal education, and I accept the definition of liberal education given by Rev. H. Stebbins at the Exeter Academy Centennial, -"the discipline, of the man, putting him in the widest relations with humanity as a general preparation for life in whatever sphere he may be called to act." That is precisely what industrial education. does, while the old-fashioned education produces a half-developed man in sympathy with the literati of to-day and with the literature of the past; and we are all victims of the partial education more than we are willing to confess.

Would it be too much to say that an exclusively literary education

does not contribute to the active progress of society, but rather tends to hold the present anchored to the past? We might quote in behalf of such an opinion the assertion of Lord Macaulay, that "the University of Oxford had the unquestioned preeminence, the glory of being farther behind the age than any other portion of the British people, -a preeminence which that learned body acquired early and never lost." We might also refer to the Empire of China, in which literary education is not only widely diffused, but is the basis of honor and of political power, as the best example of mental stagnation united. with literary culture. In proof of these assertions as to the moral influence of industrial training, I would refer to the State Reformatory School of Ohio at Lancaster, in which, for twenty-five years, the combination of industrial and intellectual education has been carried on under Christian influences, and has educated more than two thousand criminal youths, more than nine-tenths of whom have been fully redeemed for lives of usefulness, while their intellectual and literary progress has not been retarded by giving half their time, not merely to industrial training, but to actual farm-work and shop-work. The school of these working-boys compares favorably in intellectual progress with the common schools of Ohio, while their moral deportment is superior to that prevailing in any common school of our country of which I have any knowledge.

It is not strange that the hard-working boy at Lancaster equals the unworked boy of the common schools, when we know that industrial occupation gives a mental discipline of a high order, while the wild, disorderly sports of uncontrolled boys produce a mental dissipation and restlessness which counteract the effect of the school. If the hard-worked boy keeps up with the idle one, we may infer that the boy who is not heavily taxed in that way, but has his industrial training merely as a part of his education, will greatly surpass the boy who is merely a literary scholar, unassisted by industrial art,-by which I mean not merely drawing, modeling, or designing, but working also to produce something of value. This has been proved, in a New England school, one of the most interesting and unique experiments in education of which I have ever heard, and this is the lesson which is urgently needed. Industrial art education has been running too much in the old groove of intellectual culture, drawing and designing, instead of doing. It is a grand step in progress, but we need the next step, which continues action with thought, developing practical power and ethical principles as it was done in a New Hampshire school.

Ezekiel Rich, born in 1784, was a poor bound boy in New Hamp

shire until twenty-one years of age, when he devoted himself to acquiring an education, became a successful minister at Troy, New Hampshire, and impelled by an ardent philanthropy and the memory of his own toils and sufferings, he established a school in a singularly original and practical manner to improve the common school system, and enable the poor to gain a good education by their own labor. I rely upon his own account of the school given forty-five years ago, in 1838, in a lecture before the American Institute of Instruction.

Mr. Rich's experience began in a simple and natural way from his objections to the demoralizing common schools, by teaching his own children at home and a few of the neighbor's. He began by allowing them to work during the recitation of spelling. That succeeding well, he introduced work into English and Latin recitations generally, and next introduced work into their studies, while he taught them orally. "Extending these experiments (says he), I was at length forced upon the broad conclusion that all branches of learning, except the manual part of a few, such as writing, drawing, painting, and instrumental music, can by competent teachers be communicated and received, to say the least, as pleasantly, as rapidly, and as thoroughly, at the same time with proper productive hand labor, as by any other method. Any work is proper that does not require too much noise, motion, or intense thinking,—such as braiding, knitting, sewing, etc. Even the impossibility of obtaining such kinds of selfsupporting business need not break up or greatly embarrass institutions of this sort, provided other productive business, especially that of agriculture, can be procured. For, at worst, our system will, as we have proved by experiment in the late hard times, admit on an average through the year of the pupil's learning, and that to the best advantage, eight or nine hours a day."

Mr. Rich had in his school, altogether, about twenty-four permanent inmates under his family government; about forty manual labor boarding scholars, paying all their expenses, including clothing, by their labor, and sometimes making a little over; and about fifty day scholars, coming in from the neighborhood,—his object being, as he said, to give a good and useful education and entire support to youth between five and sixteen years of age, without any expense to them. but their own beneficial and necessary labor, to fit them for useful lives, and to increase the useful efficiency of women without impairing their delicacy and refinement. I quote from his lecture the statement of his methods and results, the essential features being the combination of oral instruction aud manual labor during eight or nine hours daily:

"1. The institution has well supported itself, paid six per cent. yearly on all the property used, and laid up, besides, rising of two hundred dollars

a year.

"2. The health of our inmates, notwithstanding the hereditary and chronic diseases with which many of them came to me, is far above that of children in general, even in our very healthy region. It is the united testimony of all impartial observers, that our inmates, except when afflicted with innate and cutaneous maladies, appear peculiarly contented and happy. "3. The part of the almost universal reformation of extremely vicious, uncivil, and perverse children of both sexes, within a few weeks or months after admission, is very encouraging.

"4 Our inmates are constantly forming good habits in the grand matters of care, neatness, frugality, order, and various important business, without which the greatest attainments in mere literature, science, and polite learning are of little value.

"5. As far as we can judge from the present state of experiment, this system adds greatly to the physical efficiency of males, and quite doubles that of the more wealthy and educated half of the New England females. [He mentions a female pupil of fifteen who walks thirty-five miles a day freely without injury.]

"6. Our pupils have, to say the least, made as great improvement in literature, the arts and sciences, as those of similar age who have been kept the same time, at great expense, in the best common schools, high schools, boarding schools, or academies.

"Oral instruction, instead of receiving detriment from its union most of the time with proper self-supporting handicraft, does, in fact, itself derive much advantage from it. Some people, prejudging the case, seem to think that our plan imposes a double task on children, and, of course, double fatigue. But the result of thorough trial proves enactly the reverse. I never knew any of our inmates to exhibit signs of distressing uneasiness by attention to both, at once, during eight, or even ten, hours a day."

He speaks of the painful weariness of children in common schools after five or six hours of study, and the discontent and fatigue of children kept seven or eight hours a day at work, and the great contrast in "a school of our sort, where proper and productive business is prosecuted, together with pleasing, exciting, and profitable conversation, or oral instruction, conducted by an agreeable and able associate or teacher," where, "during some eight, ten, or even twelve, hours a day, fretful irksomeness has no place. Observe the cheerfulness, the vivacity, nay, even the innocent, healthful mirth often here enjoyed. Nothing is difficult, tiresome, or disgusting. The labor of the hands, which soon becomes almost automatic, operates as a spring and balance-wheel to give constantly fresh vigor, self-posses

sion, and stability to the mind; and delight of the mind arouses the animal powers, gives energy to the body, and pleasant sensations, causing the time to pass lightly and agreeably."

"Another advantage of uniting oral instruction with proper work is not only the diminution or prevention of fatigue from both, but the great increase of the rapidity of acquiring learning. Pupils will obtain knowledge and general mental improvement much faster with the union, most of the time, of hand and mental labor than withoht such union. This is proved by abundant trial in our infant institution, as fully attested by pupils of sufficient age and experience, by their parents and friends, and by many visitors and examiners. Add proper labor to oral instruction, and the rapidity of acquisition is surprisingly increased, and the fatigue diminished. When work is brisk, learning is brisk; and so of the opposite. The vast gain of time for learning by this union is no small affair. As I regard the health and general good of my dear inmate pupils, I would not allow them a single day to dispense with their hand-labor, even if it were of no pecuniary profit.

"Education, according to this system, is of of vastly superior worth after it is acquired. It appears from reason, and as far as we have yet had opportunity to judge from experiment, also from fact, that this system, faithfully followed from an age as early as five years, will add quite four years in both sexes to the early, stirling, and best part of self-directing, independent life, qualifying our youth for settling in life, and managing their own affairs four years earlier than usual. It will probably add as much as four years to the later part as well as first part of man's life. It annihilates much want and suffering, gives much superior health and comfort, and adds quite one-third to general human efficiency; fitting people in a special and peculiar manner for the various ordinary relations, duties, trials, and enjoyments of real common life, and, finally, for the society and felicities of the heavenly state.

"Another thing which peculiarly enhances the value of this education is its qualifying its subjects in an eminent degree to teach others what they themselves know. This we design all our pupils, who commence in season, to acquire by the age of sixteen, for they are daily learning what to teach and how to teach it.

"This system takes any child of good promise, especially the most needy and unfortunate, including those of either sex, who by bodily infirmity are unfit for business save what is sedentary and light, at about five years of age and carries them forward till sixteen or more wholly by the cultivation of their own powers in a course of general education for common or professional life. It is designed by that age to finish the school and business education of females, or to furnish them well for self-teaching, self-care, and self-support in any proper station or employment, embracing common housekeeping, cookery and dairying, millinery, dressmaking and tailoring; an ornamental education in the fine and polite arts, such as drawing, painting,