and verbs in the Greek tongue, then may he be admitted into the college, nor shall any claim admission before he possesses such qualifications; " and President DUNSTER made a rule that throughout their course the scholars were not to use the vernacular within the college limits, except when called to deliver an oration or some other public exercise in English. From what has been said it may be known, that the Grammar schools of 1647 are not to be confounded with the schools of modern times called by the same name. The ancient Grammar schools received their name not from the fact that they gave instruction in English Grammar merely, but because they resembled the old Cathedral Grammar schools of England, or the Cloister schools of the monasteries, in which schools the teaching of the Latin and Greek was the especial aim.

In the old statute of 1647, we find expressed the original notion of gradation in our town schools. The Grammar schools of that day were at the head of the system, and so were the type of the high school of the present.

In 1683 all towns of five hundred families were required to maintain two grammar schools and two writing schools, and any town failing to support a grammar school was required to pay a fine, first of 10£, afterwards one of 20£ to the nearest school kept in compliance with the law. Mr. GEO. B. EMERSON says, "that this law of 1647, establishing free schools on a broad and comprehensive basis, not only had no precedent in the school legislation of any country, but the ideas expressed by the law seem never before to have entered the minds of men.

Two divine ideas, says Horace Mann, seem to have filled the great hearts of our Massachusetts Fathers, their duty to God, and their duty to their children. The term High School does not occur in any of the Statutes, from the earliest to the present time, but by common consent, it is now applied to those schools kept for the benefit of the whole town. In 1826, fifty-three years ago, an act was passed establishing our present system of High Schools. By this act provision was made for the free education of every child in the Commonwealth in the common branches of learning, and it was also provided that besides the Elementary Schools a town containing five hundred families shall maintain a school kept for the benefit of the whole town, in which school a course of secondary instruction shall be given. I have now spoken of the origin and character of our high schools, and have shown that from the earliest times it has been the policy of the Commonwealth to require these schools to be maintained at the public expense. In modern times it is affirmed by some that the right and duty of the State to provide schools for its children are limited to providing those which give instruction in the elementary hranches of learning only. To test the propriety of this affirmation it is necessary to determine first what is meant by the State, and secondly what are the rights and duties of a free State.

A free civil State, like Massachusetts, is a community of persons living within well-defined limits of territory, acting under a permanent organization and controlled by self-imposed rules, for the purpose of securing to themselves protection in the enjoyment of the objects of their natural rights, and for their development as intellectual and moral beings. The

existence of the state is necessary for two ends, protection and human development. The State is necessary for protection in the enjoyment of the objects of natural rights, as man is governed more or less by the selfish principle of action. It is necessary for human development; for 1st, there can be no proper development of human nature, except in well-organized communities whose institutions are adapted to train the youth in societies rather than in a state of isolation; and, 2nd, the means of development cannot be supplied except by the combined effort of communities of persons.

The amount of protection a State affords, will depend upon the amount of development of the people her educational institutions produce.

The rights of property, and liberty, and life, will be violated unless first, they are known to be rights, and, secondly unless the disastrous consequences of disturbing them are also known and conscientiously regarded. Protection results from human development and that development is Education. I use the term Education or development to mean that state of the mind in which it is able and inclined to exert all the energy of which it is capable in obtaining a knowledge of what ought to be known; in producing such emotions as the knowledge is adapted to excite, and in choosing the best ends. The education of all the people of a State is necessary that the State may have the power and the disposition to secure the two ends for which States exist.

What then are the rights and duties of the State in relation to Education? In discussing this question we are sometimes led to consider the people and the State to be two distinct objects of thought, and we inquire for the obligations of the one and for the rights and the duties of the other. If the definition we have given of the State is the correct one, the people and the State are one and the same thing. This being true, what may the people acting as a State do for themselves as individuals? The people constituting a democratic State and acting as a State, may properly exercise their power in doing anything whatever that is necessary to be done for their own protection and development, and which acting as individuals they cannot so well do, each for himself alone. The State as an end in itself is of no consequence, and it is not to be supported as an end; and individual members composing the State have no interest in it only so far as it enables them to secure for themselves the two ends for which States exist. It has been shown that individuals acting independently can not provide themselves with that instruction and training which will produce the State called Education.

The mind is instructed and trained by all the influences that in any way affect it, but most of the systematic work done to educate, is done in the schools. The State, then, should establish and maintain public schools, and into them should be gathered all the children of the State. From what has been said it would seem that these children should be kept in the schools until they have acquired a knowledge of their own wants as physical and moral beings; of the means of gratifying these wants; of the relations they bear to one another as members of society, and of the relations they bear to the State whose institutions they are to perpetuate. They should also acquire that mental and moral training without which

a knowledge of the truth cannot be obtained, and which if obtained would be of no value to its possessor. There is not now in the mind of any man whose judgment has anything to do in forming public opinion a doubt concerning the propriety and necessity of providing for elementary instruction in public schools, supported by equal taxation or from the income of a permanent fund, established by the State, or supported from both these sources. There are some, however, who affirm that secondary instruction cannot with equal justice to all be provided for in Secondary Schools established by the State and supported by a general tax.

After what has been said of the rights and duties of the State, it only remains to be shown that secondary instruction is necessary to the wellbeing of the individual, and to the existence and highest civilization of a free State, and then elementary and scientific or secondary schools are to be supported by the same means and for the same reasons. This will lead us to compare the two grades of schools, 1st, with reference to the kind of knowledge each has for its object. 2d, with reference to the relation the two kinds of knowledge hold to each other. 3d, with reference to the training the mind receives in obtaining knowledge, and 4th, with reference to the preparation the knowledge and training furnish for the duties of practical life and for citizenship. And first it is the peculiar province of the elementary schools to teach facts, without much reference to the causes of them, or to any general principles philosophy may derive from them. In the secondary schools the learner is required to refer the facts he has discovered to their causes, and to reason for general principles, The relation elementary holds to secondary knowledge is, the one prepares the mind with knowledge and training for the other. A knowledge of plants prepares the mind for a knowledge of Botany; a knowledge of number leads to a knowledge of arithmetic; a knowledge of language is necessary to a knowledge of Grammar, and a knowledge of the facts of any science will prepare the mind for the science itself.

A study for facts trains the mind to observe, and gives it an inclination to use its observing power. A study for scientific knowledge trains the reflective powers to reason for general principles.

A complete system of schools includes both the elementary and the scientific schools. As facts learned in the primary schools, are good for nothing except for the activity they occasion the mind to exert and for the general principles they lead the mind to obtain, the secondary schools give character and aim and value to the elementary schools, which have little meaning except as they are related to the schools above them; for if the secondary schools are taken from our system or are degraded in any way, then our children will be in danger of being turned into active life without a knowledge of those general principles which alone can guide them to the successful prosecution of any business, and without that culture which alone can enable them to perform well any public or private duty. Both private and public interest demand that the schools add to that teaching which results in mere information, that which produces an ability to reason correctly for general principles and an inclination to do what ought to be done. JOHN ADAMS said that the instruction of the

people in every kind of knowledge that can be of use to them in the prac tice of their moral duties as men, citizens, and christians, and of their political and civil duties as members of society and freemen, ought to be the care of the public, and of all who have any share in the conduct of its affairs. High schools in our public-school system hold the relation of a part to a whole. Without them there could be no true scientific teaching in our system of public schools. The pupils of the elementary schools would be sent out into public life without a proper training of their reflective faculties by whose activity general principles are discovered, and rules of conduct are constructed. The elementary schools cannot teach methods of thinking nor those doctrines which direct one in all the affairs of life.

If we remove the High Schools from the system, there will be no longer open to all the means of obtaining that knowledge which directs to a successful individual life and which trains individuals to be intelligent and good citizens in a highly-civilized and free Commonwealth.

Again, the secondary schools in the towns always stimulate the schools below them.

The courses of studies taught in the High Schools and the methods of teaching practiced in them determine the studies and the methods in the lower schools. In this way, the influence of one grade of instruction over another is from above downward in so far as relates to what shall be taught and to the manner of teaching, while it is from below upward in all that which relates to thoroughness of the work done. FRANCIS ADAMS of England says that "if the elementary schools of Germany are the best in the world, it is owing in a great measure to the fact that the higher schools are open to all classes. In England not only have the aims of the elementary schools been educationally low and narrow, but an impassable gulf has separated the people's schools from the higher schools of the country." In the commonweath of Massachusetts over 90 per cent of the population are within the reach of High Schools and the path lies open to them for the children of the poor as well as of the rich. Without them poor boys and girls would be deprived of the means of obtaining that liberal culture which sets the mind free from prejudice and enables one to hold equal rank with the best of his fellows.

Free instruction in the higher branches of learning is necessary to prevent all those class distinctions that are sure to spring up if such instruction can be obtained only by a favored few. A republican State and republican society are both impossible unless the children of the State are educated alike and together in the same schools, to that extent at least, necessary to enable and incline their minds to think alike and judge alike on all questions pertaining to the principles on which rest republican institutions. That the schools may be common schools they must be established and supported by the State, and all the conditions of their existence must be secured by the guardian care and by the authority of the State. It is the great mission of a republican State to support its public schools, for in this way it can best accomplish the two purposes for which States were established. There will be some ignorant men in all countries and in all times, but in a free State the number of these men must be reduced

to the smallest possible number, and their ignorance must not be due to the character or condition of the institutions under which they live. To make education universal, the schools must be free and the attendance upon them compulsory.

"A popular government," says MADISON, "without popular information or the means of acquiring it, is but a prologue to a farce or tragedy, or perhaps to both." Knowledge will forever govern ignorance, and a people who mean to be their own governors must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives. In the Constitution of Massachusetts adopted nearly one hundred years ago may be found this declaration of principles. "Wisdom and knowledge as well as virtue diffused generally among the body of the people being necessary for the preservation of their rights and liberties, and as these depend on spreading the opportunities and advantages of education in the various parts of the country, and among the different orders of the people, it shall be the duty of legislatures and magistrates in all future periods of this commonwealth, to cherish the interests of literature and the sciences, and all seminaries of them, especially the University at Cambridge, public schools and grammar schools in the towns; to encourage private societies and public institutions, rewards and immunities, for the promotion of agriculture, arts, sciences, commerce, trades, manufactures, and a natural history of the country; to countenance and inculcate the principles of humanity and general benevolence, public and private charity, industry and frugality, honesty and punctuality in their dealings; sincerity, good humor, and all social affections, and generous sentiments among the people." It seems to me that the Fathers had a more exalted notion of what the schools should be, and accomplish than have some of their children who live in more modern times.

It is refreshing to open the pages of our early New-England history and learn in what estimation the founders of our free communities held the free public school; to learn what they thought of the rights and duties of the State with reference to popular education, to find what were their opinions concerning the extent of that learning which the free schools should offer to all the children of the State, and to learn also what sacrifices of labor and wealth they were willing to make that all might obtain the most liberal culture the schools could give.

"In the year 1853, the Hon. SAMUEL A. ELIOT, the distinguished father of the present president of Harvard College, made an address before the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, on a complete system of education. It was considered to be an unanswerable argument in favor of higher education by the State. He says there should be not only some education for all, but every needed kind of education from which all may make their choice." 'It was a great thing two centuries ago that New England should have done so much more in the days of her poverty and anxiety and weakness than the rest of the world to promote the general education of the people by public authority." "In Massachusetts provision was made more than two hundred years ago for a more extended course of instruction to be sustained by all the resources of the colony; and if we had retained the noble ambition of our Fathers such a purpose would never have slipped out of view or become unpopular." "Our