When this continent was as yet unknown, the Old World had been enacting history for ages, and to-day it is full of objects of historic interest. There are picturesque ruins, tombs that hold honored dust, galleries and libraries where are garnered up the fruits of genius and toil, and fields on which men have gone down in mortal combat. With so many visible memorials to keep it alive, it is not strange that the past exerts a mighty power; and besides, there have been times when the despair of the present and the gloom of the future forced the thoughtful to take refuge among the glories of the past, or die.

In the more cultivated of the States of Europe, already in the last half of the past century, history was recognized as essential to a liberal culture, and at present it is considered an important branch of elementary instruction. In this country our motto seems to be, let the dead past bury its dead, we have a great future before us; and monuments, which should be most sacredly guarded, fall before our zeal for improvement and progress. Thus far we have not considered history essential to an academic, and much less to a commonschool education. With accessible data it is impossible to speak with exactness, but of our young men who have this year, for the first time, exercised the right of suffrage, probably not more than one in ten has studied the history of our country at school.

In elementary education our great hobby has been arithmetic. Its importance has been over-rated, on account of its supposed practical value. It is indeed important, and should not be neglected; but much time has been spent on portions of it which have no practical value in every-day life, to the exclusion of subjects of the highest importance. The Rule of Three, Alliga

tion, and the rest, deserve to be studied if there is time for them, yet it can hardly be claimed that they contribute much toward virtue, and that higher intelligence so requisite to good citizenship.

In our higher education we have deified two dead languages, galvanized them into a semblance of life and set them on the throne, and the ambitious squire who would win knightly honors must serve them, though his heart be elsewhere, the best seven or eight years of his preparatory life. All honor to the languages of Greece and Rome, once the great repositories of knowledge. They should hold a high place, but they should claim attention from the few; for the many there are more vital themes, even for those that seek a broad and generous culture.

Of all our American colleges, probably hardly half a dozen have a chair of History, and probably still less actually examine applicants for admission in the history of the United States. As a result, our college graduates have ordinarily studied American history for a few weeks at the academy or high school, and have had thirty or forty recitations in Greek and as many in Roman history during their college course. This is about all the school and college have done for them in this regard. Such, in brief, is the place history now holds in our school education. In claiming for it an important place in every scheme of education, the question arises, on what this claim can be founded; in other words, What is its real value ? "All the misfortunes of men, all the sad reverses with which history is filled, all the follies of politicians, and the failures of great captains, have come from not knowing how to dance." This is the dictum of Molière's dancing-master. I do not forget that life is short and art is long, and that

there are many important subjects. History is not the one all-important theme in education, the universal panacea; but in a republic a knowledge of it is essential to good citizenship. To train men to servility, to blind obedience, is one thing; to fit them to cast an intelligent ballot, is quite another. For this, reading, writing, and arithmetic even, with all its intricate portions, are not enough. On what is a man to base a sound judgment in regard to proposed measures and the general policy of governments, if he has no knowledge of past measures and policy? He is not prepared to understand the arguments in favor of contemplated changes. He cannot even read the best portions of a good newspaper intelligently. Born into a party and nourished on fancies and half-truths, he can hardly be more than a blind partisan, and may become a dangerous element in a free government. It is no insignificant matter for a people to have an heroic past. In the history of this nation there have been lives and deaths as grand and noble, filled with as tender a pathos, as anything minstrel ever sung in hall or bower; but how meagre and uncertain is our knowledge of them! how lightly do we prize them! How few the outward memorials to perpetuate the memory of even the grandest of all our heroes, the Pilgrims, and the men of the Revolution. There stands an unfinished monument at Plymouth, another at Washington. Some organizations have done what they could, and a few States have reared some fitting tribute to our Revolutionary sires who rest within their borders. Next month, we who are sons of Vermont shall gather at Bennington, with the men of New Hampshire and Massachusetts, to celebrate an event among the most glorious in our annals. This celebration has its origin in the noblest impulses of humanity. The

fields on which brave men fought for the right, and graves that hold the dust of the good and true, are among our chiefest treasures, and should be held sacred. We should visit them to revive our own patriotism, and take our children, to teach them from what ancestry they have sprung, and inspire in them a loyal reverence for our heroic past.

In view now of what has been said, we claim that the history of the United States should be made a prominent study in our common schools, and no young person should leave it without a fair knowledge of our past.

I now proceed to some considerations on the value of history in the education of those who are privileged to go beyond the common school. History is the common ground where the orator and the poet, the statesman and the publicist meet to possess themselves of so much of the wisdom of the ages as may subserve their purpose; and here all must go who would understand on what foundations existing structures rest, and comprehend the higher life of the past in the varied forms in which it has manifested itself. We want to know how men moved from place to place, how they won their bread,— in a word, to understand their daily life, as well as the great outward events, in order to comprehend their modes of thought and expression. Without a clear insight into the past of the English nation many of the masterpieces of our literature can be but poorly understood.

Alexander Dumas, on being asked "Who were the classic writers?" replied, "Those that are no longer read." In this sense many of our greatest authors, whom we all praise, but few read, are classics of the first order. Were we acquainted with the times that gave them

birth, they would become a power and an inspiration. Suppose we take one of the finest long poems in our language, "Childe Harold," and read,

"While Waterloo with Cannae's carnage vies,
Morat and Marathon twin names shall stand;
They were true glories, stainless victories,
Won by the unambitious heart and hand
Of a proud, brotherly, and civic band,

All unbought champions in no princely cause
Of vice-entailed corruption."

If Waterloo and Cannae and Marathon are but names of battles, fought we hardly know by whom or when, or for what, and Morat be but a myth, then this grand stanza shall fall on our ears like the sound of tinkling cymbals. But if the historian has taken us to Cannae,— if we have stood on the height with Napoleon and seen the Old Guard go down and the battle lost, and with the Switzer have beaten back the invading foe, then we ́shall have something more than mere words and rhythmic measure, and vague, uncertain thought. This example is by no means isolated nor deceptive, and is but one of thousands that might easily be cited.

What has been said in regard to the value of a knowledge of history, for a proper understanding of literature, holds substantially true in regard to art in its various departments. The work of the sculptor and painter rests largely on an historic basis, and must be familiar to him for whom canvas and marble shall be instinct with life.

The value of travel, too, depends very largely on the extent of knowledge, on setting out. With the past but as a sealed book, much that should teach the most impressive lessons is insignificant, and the principal charm escapes us. We may go over fields where the