their name and their praise among the nations; to lay broad and deep the foundations of our higher periodical literature; to show that what is termed the higher culture is perfectly consistent with the most ardent devotion to the popular welfare.

The fulness and exactness of learning which astonished the academic body at Cambridge was soon felt in every town and village in Massachusetts. The graduates of Harvard, who had hung upon the lips of this young Chrysostom, went to the bar, the pulpit, and the school-room with a finement and a power which had not previously been known; and the stories of the Mayflower, of Lexington and Concord, were soon heard from every school-boy in periods of classic beauty which the English language had not known before.*

re

Such powers could not long be confined to the cloister; they were demanded for the legislative hall, for the executive chamber, and for the highest diplomatic service which the nation had to perform. The Massachusetts Board of Education and her normal schools date from his administration; and could his far-seeing counsels have prevailed, his native State would have still greater cause to bless and love him.

It was into this spirit that the young men whom I have mentioned were baptized; and thus to the manly virtues that had grown up upon the farms of

*See Appendix, Note A.

New England were united the culture and refinement which were drawn from distant climes and from the remotest generations.

There were important tributaries, however, to this main current of influence. In Connecticut, there were men at work who did much to expose the defects of the existing schools. William A. Alcott and Amos Bronson Alcott showed all the zeal of crusaders without their fanaticism. William Channing Woodbridge was preparing to do for geography what Warren Colburn had done for arithmetic. Denison Olmsted, in his master's oration at Yale College as early as 1816, had urged the establishment of a schoolmaster's academy, at the expense of the State. Josiah Holbrook had established an agricultural school at Derby, which, however, he soon left, to establish throughout the country the American Lyceum, and kindle popular enthusiasm by his admirable illustrations and instructions in elementary science. Meanwhile there appeared upon the stage a gentleman with the best culture of Scotland, and the pupil of her best teachers. This was William Russell, whose whole life has been given so successfully to the work in which he engaged in his youth. Thomas B. Wait, with no honors from the learned schools, but with the training of the printing-office, comes from Portland and forms the plan of acting upon the public mind

The

in behalf of education by means of the press. enterprising Yankee printer finds his counterpart in the young scholar from Scotland. Mr. Russell edits, and Mr. Wait prints, the American Journal of Education; and in this journal the best views of European and American educators find expression. After several years of efficient editorial labor, Mr. Russell is called to different work, and his place is filled by Mr. Woodbridge, whom I have already mentioned, and who had just returned from the home of Fellenberg with a double portion of his spirit. The City of Boston, in the meantime, enlarged her system of schools to its present dimensions; in 1818, she established, not without difficulty, her primary schools; in 1821, her English High School went into operation, under the mastership of Mr. Emerson; in 1825, the Girls' High School was established (not the present Girls' High and Normal School, which is of much later growth); and these institutions, in connection with her Latin School, which had come down from the earliest history of the city, together with her grammar schools, constitute her present system of public instruction. To this great centre of American liberal culture all the active forces now began to tend. Mr. Woodbridge, as we have already seen, came from Connecticut with his enlarged views and earnest Christian spirit; he brought with him the two

Alcotts; and Mr. Holbrook soon found this city the most convenient field of labor. He here found Timothy Claxton engaged in a work so like his own, that they united their efforts; and we may still find, in our older school-rooms, air-pumps, or electrical machines, bearing the name of Claxton. Claxton had come from England; his early years were passed not at Eton, or Harrow, but at Earsham Hall, in the menial service of the friend of Burke, "the ingenious, the chivalrous, the high-souled Windham." He established a mechanical institution in London, the first of its kind, it is believed, in the world's metropolis; and found his way to Boston through St. Petersburg, where he had built important gas-works, - here to originate the Mechanics' Institute, and perhaps, by its success, to suggest to the mind of John Lowell the endowment of the Lowell Institute, the noblest charity of its kind which the country can boast.

But the whole country was stirred with these movements and discussions of which Boston may be considered as the centre. Every village and hamlet had its lyceum, every school-room felt their influence, every teacher shared in the new inspiration. And then, as always, when men's minds are deeply moved, they claim the aid of sympathy and tend to act in concert. Conventions were called, and temporary measures and expedients devised; districts and

towns, counties and states, began to move in harmony. As early as 1826, a temporary association was formed, in which some of the best minds of Boston were engaged, and among them George Ticknor. All these attempts prepared the way for a more brilliant final success. In March, 1815, a convention was held, in obedience to a call from the state committee of lyceums, to receive reports on the progress of lyceums and the condition of common schools, and to acquire information as to the organization of infant schools, and the use of school and cheap scientific apparatus. As was fitting, this meeting was called to order by Josiah Holbrook, and organized by the choice of the Rev. Jonathan Going, D.D., of Worcester, as chairman, and the Rev. E. K. Newton, of Marlborough, and J. Wilder, of Watertown, as clerks. During the sessions of this convention, which appear to have been eminently earnest and practical, it was voted to be expedient to form a permanent association of persons engaged and interested in the work of instruction; and Ebenezer Bailey, Benjamin D. Emerson, Abraham Andrews, George B. Emerson, and Gideon F. Thayer, of Boston, Henry Kemble Oliver, of Salem, and J. Wilder, of Watertown, were appointed a committee to digest a plan and prepare a constitution for the proposed association, with instructions to call a meeting for organization when they should deem it expedient.* *Sec Appendix, Note B.