most enlightened friends of popular instruction throughout the country, and, I may add, throughout the world, as the one measure, without which, our system must have remained comparatively inert; but with which, it must, if properly sustained, rise to excellence, and cover itself with honour. May the people be too wise, to brook the idea of its repeal, until its merits have been fairly tested by trial!

Holland. Each province is divided into a number of districts; a district being about equal in population, to one of our counties. An inspector is appointed for each district, whose duty it is to superintend the schools, attend examinations, preside at periodical assemblies of the schoolmasters, &c. To use the language of Cousin, they are "the officers in whose hands the whole system of primary instruction is virtually placed." Hence the care with which they are always selected. "Take care," said Mr. Van den Ende, chief commissioner for the primary schools of Holland, "take care whom you choose for inspectors; they are a class of men who ought to be searched for, with a lantern in one's hand."

There is one provision of the Dutch law, which might be ingrafted with much advantage upon our own. It is the plan of having provincial boards of education, composed of the inspectors of the several districts in each province, who meet three times a year in the chief town of the province. The same end would be attained, in our state, if the deputy superintendents, within each senatorial district, were to meet twice or thrice a year at some central point, and were there to constitute a board for mutual consultation, and were to be clothed with authority over certain matters.

It is the opinion of intelligent travellers, that education is, on the whole, more faithfully carried out in Holland than in most of the German states; and that, notwithstanding the numerous normal schools of Prussia (institutions in which Holland is deficient), the Dutch schoolmasters are decidedly superior to the Prussian, and the schools of primary instruction consequently in a more efficient state.

spection.

This superiority they attribute entirely to a better system of in

THE SCHOOLMASTER.

THE

PROPER CHARACTER, STUDIES, AND DUTIES OF THE TEACHER,

WITH THE

BEST METHODS FOR THE GOVERNMENT AND INSTRUCTION OF COM

MON SCHOOLS,

AND THE

PRINCIPLES ON WHICH SCHOOLHOUSES SHOULD BE BUILT, ARRANGED, WARMED, AND VENTILATED.

BY

GEORGE B. EMERSON, A.M.,

President of the American Institute of Instruction, and of the Boston Society of Natural History, Secretar of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Corresponding Member of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, &c., &c.

NEW-YORK:

PUBLISHED BY HARPER AND BROTHERS,

NO. 82 CLIFF-STREET.