NEARLY A HALF CENTURY OF SUCCESS. T no time since the establishment of this House by the senior member of the A present firm in 1838, has it been more alive to the wants of the educational public than it is to-day. During this period it has been devoted to the production and improvement of Elementary and High School Text-Books. Of authors, whose classbooks have become famous in the hands of the firm, may be mentioned— Charles Davies, J. Madison Watson, J. Dorman Steele, James Monteith, Stephen W. Clark, Alphonso Wood, W. G. Peck, Joseph Ficklin, C. S. Jepson, Jerome Allen, Charles N. Cleveland, Charles Northend, Dav. Page, J. M. B. Sill, Edward Searing, and James H. Worman. Such volumes as the following have won for themselves a National Reputation: BARNES' NEW NATIONAL READERS. Five Numbers. "The Educational Gems of the Nineteenth Century.” BARNES' BRIEF UNITED STATES HISTORY. Largest sale on record in 1886. BARNES' NEW GEOGRAPHIES. Two Numbers. Equalled by none in Accuracy and Beauty. MONTEITH'S NEW PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY. Peer and Companion of the above series. Cheapest and Latest. Barnes' New Arithmetic; two numbers; a minimum of theory and maximum of practice. A Primary History of the United States; an exceptionally taking book. Barnes' Short Studies, Maxwell's Primary Lessons, and Sill's Essentials of Grammar; excellent language lessons. Barnes' Penmanship; creating a revolution in style and price. Ward's Business Forms; a great hit. Barnes' Popular Drawing Books; a complete and practical series. Steele's Sciences; a series on the one-term plan in seven volumes. Pathfinder Series of Hygiene; three volumes, meeting recent legislation regarding the effects of Alcohol and other narcotics, General, Ancient, and Modern Histo ries, in short and attractive courses. These books have been prepared at a great cost and represent the result of long experience. With such books any school is admirably equipped, and many more years will pass before a set really better in any essential requisite will appear. Teachers and school officials are invited to call upon us at any of our agencies, or send for full descriptive catalogue. Specimen pages free. Returnable samples on application. 111 & 113 William St., N. Y., 1026 Arch St., Phila., Pa., 365 Wabash Avenue, Chicago, Ill., 22 Bromfield St., Boston. Industrial Education or Manual Training MAY BE BEST BEGUN OR ITS FOUNDATION LAID BY THE USE OF WHITE'S INDUSTRIAL DRAWING. REVISED. This popular series, already widely and favorably known, has just been thoroughly and intelligently revised, and now represents the best thought and practice in this important branch. The books contain only such work as is directly educational in its character, and which leads, without waste of time, to such a knowledge of the subject as is essential to every artisan or person employing such. In a word, WHITE'S INDUSTRIAL DRAWING, REVISED, IS THE SIMPLEST, THE MOST PRACTICAL, THE MOST COMPLETE, THE MOST EASILY TAUGHT of any existing system. Beginning with the lowest work for the first year of school life the books are numbered consecutively from No. 1 upward. There are no cards, exercise books, or manuals, but each book is complete in itself, and to be followed in order in the series. Nos. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, and 8 will be ready June 20th; the remaining numbers to follow shortly. CORRESPONDENCE SOLICITED. Ivison, Blakeman & Co., 149 Wabash Ave., Chicago. 753 & 755 Broadway N. Y. THE Educational Journal of Virginia. Vol. XVIII. Richmond, Va., July, 1887. No. 7. The Study of Literature. An Address by the Right Hon. John Morley, M. P. The Lord Mayor has been good enough to say that I am especially qualified to speak on English literature, but I must remind the Lord Mayor that I have strayed from literature into the region of politics; and I am not sure that that journey conduces to the soundness of one's judgment on literary subjects, or of one's arguments on behalf of literature. Politics, the Chancellor of the Exchequer will agree with me, are a field where action is one long second best, and where the choice constantly lies between two blunders. But I have, however, determined to do the best I can; and I feel the great honor in being invited to partake in a movement which I do not scruple to call one of the most important of those which are now taking place in English society. What is the object of the movement? What do the promoters aim at? I take it that it is to bring the very best teaching that the country can afford, through the hands of the most thoroughly competent men, within the reach of every class of the community. Nothing but good, I am persuaded, can come of these attempts to connect learning with the living forces of society, and to make industrial England a sharer in all the blessings which have been left us by the endowments of that love and thirst for learning which prevailed in medieval England. THE EVILS OF EDUCATION. I am well aware that there is an apprehension that the present extraordinary zeal for education in all its forms-elementary, secondary and higher-may have some evils in its train. It is said that nobody in England is now content to practice a handicraft, but that every one seeks to be a clerk, and that the moment is even already at hand when a great deal of practical distress will result from this tendency. I remember years ago that while in the United States I heard something of the same kind. All I can say is, that this ten dency, if it exists, will right itself. In no case can the spread of so mischievous a notion as that knowledge and learning ought not to flow within the reach of handicraftsmen be attributed to literature. There is a very well know passage in which Pericles, the great Athenian, describing the glory of the community of which he was so great a member, says: "We at Athens are lovers of the beautiful, yet simple in our tastes; we cultivate the mind without loss of manliness." But then remember that after all Athenian society rested on a basis of slavery, and Athenian citizens were able to pursue their love of the beautiful and their simplicity and to cultivate their minds without loss of manliness, because the drudgery and hard work and service of the society were performed by those who had no share in all these good things. With us, happily, it is very different. We are all more or less upon a level. THE OBJECT OF EDUCATION. Our objects is-and it is that which in my opinion raises us infinitely above the Athenian level-to bring the Periclean ideas of beauty and simplicity and of cultivation of the mind within the reach of those who do the drudgery and the service and hard work of the world. And it can be done. Do not let us be afraid. It can be done without in the least degree impairing the skill of our handicraftsmen or the manliness of life, without blunting or numbing the prac tical energies. I know they say that if you meddle with literature you are less qualified to take your part in practical affairs. You run the risk of being labelled a dreamer and theorist. But, after all, if we take the very highest form of our practical energy, the governing of the country, I venture to say that in the present government, from the prime minister downward, there are half a dozen men who are perfectly capable of earning their bread as men of letters. In the late government, besides the prime minister, there were three men of letters, and I have never heard that those three were greater simpletons than their neighbors. There is a commission now at work on a very important and abstruse subject, in which Mr. Goschen, by the way, takes a great interest; and I am told that no one there displays so acute an intelligence of the difficulties that are to be met, and the important arguments that are brought, and the practical ends to be achieved, as the chairman of the committee, who is not what is called a practical man, but a man of study and thought and literature. It is true that we cannot bring to London with this movement that indefinable charm that haunts those gray and venerable quadrangles of |