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moning to its uses the monetary resources, the intelligence, and the activity of the whole body, and of giving its decrees the authority of law in every part; possessed at the same time of a quick sympathy with every feeling and want of the people and readily appreciating every demand of its free intellectual life; one whose ruling body fully represented the people, and had no special interests to serve, and no special prejudices to promote-could we find in any nation a church combining all these characteristics, we should readily acknowledge in such a body the proper source and seat of power for the establishment of a true educational system for the whole people. Without referring to the present condition of other nations in this respect, the practical question for us is simply this: does any ecclesiastical body in the United States, or in any one of them, occupy such a position? To ask this question is to answer it. The church in this country, broken into its dozens of independent sects, each embracing in its folds only a small proportion of the whole people; commanding only to a very limited extent either the mental or monetary resources of the nation or of any state, commanding likewise the sympathies and confidence of only a part, and incapable of giving to its decisions the authority of law; the church, I say, existing here under such conditions, is obviously quite incompetent to organize, establish and maintain a system of schools characterized by that unity, that universality, that liberality, that completeness of appointment, that mutual fitness of the parts and that adaptation of the whole to all the popular wants, which the age and the country demand. The church, then, cannot meet this great demand-we must look elsewhere, And where shall we look? It is clear that there is no power adequate to the work, except that power which embraces all the parties in whose behalf the system is designed, commands all their resources, possesses the sympathies of all, and exercises supreme control. In short, there is no power equal to the task, except the State itself. The Civil State therefore, is bound to furnish, as it alone can furnish, the complete system of schools, fitted to meet every want of the people.

I do not forget, gentlemen, that the church is itself a series of schools of a peculiar but most important character-schools in which are taught to old and young, from Sabbath to Sabbath, the sublime sciences of Christian morality and faith, and the ennobling arts of the Christian life. I do not forget, either, that according to our American ideas of the separation of the civil State from religious teaching, I must so far modify my claim for the civil State as the power which possesses in itself all the resources necessary for the establishment of a perfect school system, as to admit that these higher schools of moral and religious training must exist in some sense independently of the State. Nor do I forget that the Christian church has been in every age, one of the chief patrons of learning and the liberal arts; or that the great ideas of the Christian faith in regard to God and man, of our common brotherhood, our essential equality before God, and our responsibility for each other's welfare, not only physical but spiritual, and not only for this life but for the life everlasting, have been the grand inspiring ideas of the modern systems of education in Christian lands, the fruitful germs from which all the greatest efforts for popular education have sprung. I do not forget John Calvin or John Knox; I do not forget Martin Luther or Philip Melancthon; I do not forget Geneva, or Scotland, or Germany. Nor until our right hands forget their cunning, shall any of us forget the devout and earnest piety of the Puritan fathers, who, amid poverty and strife, laid the foundations not only of Harvard and Yale, but also of that common school system which constitutes

the glory of New England and of America. That profound sense of the dignity and worth of every individual soul which Christianity imparts, will ever render its true and intelligent disciples the best friends of popular education. While, therefore, it follows inevitably from the principles and facts which have been stated, that the civil state is the proper power to devise, inaugurate and maintain an approximately perfect school system, it must be cheerfully granted that only in a Christian state is this great idea likely ever to be realized.

I am well aware that some who recognize in the State the only power adequate to this great work by virtue of its financial resources, its supreme authority, its all-comprehending sympathies, and its all-pervading influence, have yet such a distrust of the intelligence and integrity of those who administer the State, as leads them to despair of its ever fulfilling aright those great responsibilities which are laid upon it. In regard to higher education especially, this distrust appears to prevail. It must be admitted, that when we observe how feebly and how blunderingly the interests of higher education are too often managed under State control, there seems to be some justification for this sentiment. It must be further admitted that amid the actual and gross imperfections of the State system, and the selfish imbecility which too often characterizes its administration, they do well for the State itself and are entitled to steem as public benefactors, who seek to supply those obvious defects by individua enterprise or by denominational zeal and devotion. But, gentlemen, he is not a good citizen who allows himself to despair of the commonwealth. If we rightly appreciate the sublime possibilities of a system of public education established by the authority and maintained by the energies of a well administered Christian State; if we justly appreciate the impossibility of any true and large and perfect system arising in any other way, we shall not allow ourselves to abandon the great idea, or stumble at the difficulties that must be encountered in its realization. We shall rather devote ourselves with new courage and new earnestness to the extension and improvement of our public school system, until it shall stand forth a pefect whole, complete in all its parts, and providing adequately for every educational interest of the entire people.

The next question of practical importance relates to the subjects of instruction which a perfect school system should embrace. The faculties of the human mind are various; the arts which adorn and embellish life, and over which the laborious Muses preside are manifold; the fields of effort for the inventive powers of man are ever widening and multiplying with the advancement of civilization. Not only the old scholastic trivium and quadrivium, the liberal arts of an earlier time; not merely grammar, and rhetoric, and logic, with arithmetic and geometry, astronomy and music, are now presented to us as at once the results and the means of human culture. Nor do we add to these merely those branches of science which even in that semi-barbarous age were taught in some rude way, such as theology, law, and medicine, or those fine arts which the Middle Age did not extinguish. These, indeed, have been immeasurably enlarged in their scope and contents. The Grammar, for instance, of that early period, was but the babling of a child compared with that range of facts and principles accumulated by centuries of immeasurable toil, which constitutes the science of Philol ogy in our day. Between the mathematical studies of the quadrivium in the Middle Ages, and the science of mathematics, with its applications to the arts of life in modern times, the difference is no less immense. But when to these we add the entire

range of natural sciences, the accumulated treasures of history, and the manifold arts and processes based upon scientific principles, which have enriched the mind, multiplied the resources, extended the dominion, and elevated the hopes and aims of man in modern society, and all of which furnish new materials and new work for the school, we shall then begin to form some just conception of that variety of studies which must be provided for in any school system in the present age. Here let me iterate and reiterate that for all these studies alike-with the single exception of polemic theologythe State is bound to make provision in her system; a provision adequate to the actual demands of the people. On this point I speak with earnestness, because it has been the lot of some of us, during years past, to encounter, just here, the most opposite and conflicting prejudices. The arts and sciences which belong to the industrial pursuits, and which are capable of being made subjects of school instruction, have equal claim to a place in our school system with those more peculiarly adapted to preparation for what were once called the learned professions. Against the bigoted exclusion, or jealous and niggardly treatment of the former, we do well to protest earnestly and to the end. But, on the other hand, that is an equally narrow view of the educational obligations of the state to her children, which would exclude from her system of schools those studies which specially fit men for the invaluable functions of the jurist, the moral and religious teacher, the man of letters, or the physician; or those, which without any immediate relation either to the processes of industry, or the duties of professional life, tend to improve the taste, to quicken the fancy, to develop the moral sentiments, to strengthen the intellectual faculties, to render the individual man or woman wiser, better and happier, or to impart a sweeter tone, and a more attractive charm to the intercourse of human society. Why, on the one hand, should philosophy or ancient learning appropriate to themselves the resources of the State devoted to the higher education, and either exclude or reduce to ridiculously narrow limits, and treat as mere step-children of the brain, those sciences which have within two centuries so marvellously enlarged the sphere of human vision and the dominion of man, both in knowledge and in act, over the material world? This question is surely apt and legitimate. But why, on the other hand, should the latter exclude the former? And why should the multitude of men and women who seek to gratify and purify their tastes, to develope their intellectual powers, to increase their knowledge of man-in himself and in his relations, in the products of his mind and his means of influencing his fellow men, and who seek these attainments in the way whose efficiency has been demonstrated by long experience, through the study of philology, of history, of literature, of rhetoric and logic, and of the mental, moral, social and political sciences-why, I ask, should these be shut out from our State institutions, whether higher or lower, and deprived of the amplest means of pursuing in connection with our State system of schools, their chosen methods of mental culture? This question seems to me equally apposite and unanswerable with the former. No, let us not for a moment give way to the idea of destroying the symmetry and the perfection of our State system of education, by leaving out of its scope any expanding and fruitful studies, any valuable and liberal arts.

A distinction is frequently made between disciplinary studies and those which lack this character; and upon this is sometimes based an attempt to circumscribe the range of studies appropriate for schools. I have not referred hitherto to this distinction for two reasons; first, because even if it is a sound one, both classes of studies

must belong equally to a complete school system, and 2ndly, because I believe that the distinction itself has little ground in the nature of things. What is mental discipline but the exercise, and the development through exercise, of some one or more of the mental faculties? What is study but the attentive and zealous application of the mind in some of its faculties to the acquisition of some branch of human knowledge? All studies therefore are of necessity disciplinary, just so far as they are studies. He who investigates and masters the principles of science and the processes the agricultural art by which two blades of grass may be made to grow, where only one has grown before, just as truly and as necessarily disciplines his mind in so doing, as he who translates an ode of Anaoreon or an idyl of Theocritus. He who studies the human body in the anatomy of all its complex structures, and the marvelous laws of its life, until he has entered fully into the divine thought therein contained, and has comprehended, so far as science enables us to comprehend, the mystery and the marvel of our being, gains in that process an invaluable mental training, as inevitably as he who studies the anatomy of a sentence, or who seeks to penetrate the laws of mind. Doubtless certain faculties are more employed, and therefore better disciplined, in certain studies than in others. It is, indeed, a part of the science of education to determine the relation of different branches of knowledge to the specific culture of particular mental powers, as it is a branch of the practical educator's art to employ those methods of instruction in any given branch by which it may be made to minister in the highest degree to the unfolding of the various intellectual faculties. But however this may be, the distinction between disciplinary and non-disciplinary studies ought, in my judgment, to be abandoned, and with it all narrow notions concerning the proper functions of the school, and the legitimate range of intellectual pursuits belonging to a perfect school system.

Having thus defined the position of the State as the only possible author of a complete school system; and having endeavored, in general terms, to point out the wide range of arts and sciences which must be embraced in such a system, we are met by a third question of eminent practical importance: Through what series and gradations of schools should these subjects be distributed for the most convenient, full and thorough culture of the whole people? But gentlemen, I have already detained you too long, and must dismiss this part of my theme with a few very brief suggestions. The great want of our State in education seems to be this-that the principles of gradation in schools which have been successfully applied in our populous cities, should be in like manner applied, to the utmost practicable extent, throughout the State; that in all our counties we should have our primary, intermediate and high schools; that the State should devise a system, under which each of these shall be supplied with its appropriate funds, and placed under adequate and active supervision; that larger districts should be furnished with such normal schools and such academies or colleges as they may need, under the patronage, and control, and stringent supervision of the State, and harmonizing throughout with other portions of its system; that special schools should be established for instruction in the fine arts, and in the industrial arts, just as rapidly as a demand for them developes itself, or just as soon as it appears that their establishment would itself develope such a demand; and that at the head of all, the State University should open wide the doors of its various schools for the men and women of the State, there to acquire a more advanced knowledge of all sciences and all liberal arts than can be appropriately furnished in the other schools of the system.

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Ladies and Gentlemen of the Association: If the ideas of a complete Educational System which I have now so imperfectly sketched are true and just, yet they cannot *be realized in a single year. You and I may not live to see them embodied into living facts in this noble State of our adoption. The generation to which we belong may pass away before the fullness of the idea is translated into actual laws and institutions. Meanwhile it is the proper duty of the true man not only to labor in faith for the realization of every noble idea in laws and institutions which may remain to bless a future age, but to stand in his appointed lot, and work while it is called to day, with such imperfect instruments as are furnished by the systems actually existing around him. To you it belongs, by your combined efforts, not only to develope in Wisconsin a system of greater symmetry and completeness, but to put into these dead forms of system a devout, intelligent, and earnest soul, a quick and glowing life. From the discussions of this annual gathering, we must all go forth again to the burdens and the battles of life. May we go with a fuller appreciation of the real wants of our people, with a profounder sense of personal responsibility, with a more extended acquaintance and a wider charity for our fellow laborers in this vineyard of the Lord, and with a more earnest consecration of ourselves to the great cause of human improvement in whatever professional or industrial station, in whatever position, humble or conspicuous, in hu.nan society, may be assigned us severally by the Divine Taskmaster of us all.

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VISIT YOUR SCHOOLS.

I AM of that class of individuals who have the great care and responsibility resting upon them of teaching and governing a school of seventy scholars, in a miserably low, ill-contrived 20 by 24 room, without shadetrees or window blinds to keep back the burning sun, which pours its scorching rays full in the faces of its suffocating victims. Nothing but the same old newspaper curtains which were used when our fathers and mothers were school-boys and girls, are permitted to adorn the place where, day after day, the children of rich and poor are compelled to spend the greater part of their time. Nothing to render it attractive but the broken desks, the rusty stove, the dingy walls, half stripped of the coat given them by the mason, the leaky roof, and the smiles which now and then light up the teacher's visage, although, I assure you, this requires a great exertion on his part, surrounded as he is, by so gloomy an aspect. The cry of "Progress" is rife in our land. "Welcome! thrice welcome!" the glorious day when friends and patrons shall have progressed so far in the scale of civilization as to see the need of visiting their schools. Go and sit thirty minutes upon the back-breaking benches, where your children are required to sit hours; and breathe the air which they MUST in