great deal of reflection. He is speaking of the "examination" at the district school. "These examinations were a study for the humorist. A day was publicly assigned for each school, and on that day the children were present in their best clothes; the benches were crowded, and a tolerable representation of parents and friends occupied the vacant spaces of the room. The committee sat upon the platform in dignified silence, and the teacher conducted the ex

libraries by citing from the Autobiography of Stephen Burroughs, a gentleman who at times 66 came in somewhat violent contact with the laws of his country." He was a New England figure of the last century, who was justly expelled from Dartmouth College, and was afterward a preacher, a counterfeiter, a jailbreaker, a school-master, and for his misconduct in the last office came to the whippingpost in Worcester in 1790. Having graduated at the whipping-post he appeared as a school-ercises over safe and familiar ground to a trimaster on Long Island, and finding the community destitute of all reading but schoolbooks and Bibles, he proposed to collect a library for the use of the young people.

umphant conclusion in some peculiarly unnatural bit of childish declamation. Then the chairman and other members of the committee were asked to gratify the children with a few remarks, which it is unnecessary to say were of a highly commendatory character. The whole thing was a sham. After it was over the committee knew nothing more about the school than they did before it began; and as for tests, there were none."

Six years ago, however, a change was introduced. The committee themselves examined the scholars. "The result was deplorable. The schools went to pieces." That is to say, the scholars who recited glibly by rote could not apply the rules which they repeated. This discovery led to a thorough reorganization of the system, and the result was not only instruction which was both intelligent and effective, but a method so attractive that the

ple. And this was due to the selection of a superintendent who understood that teaching was a science, and who had carefully trained himself in it by study of the best foreign methods. It is singular that in the land of com

After consultation and effort some money was raised, and a committee named to select books. Burroughs made a reasonable choice, but Deacon Hedges brought forward as his list: Essays on the Divine Authority for Infant Baptism, Terms of Church Communion, The Careful Watchman, Age of Grace-all doubtless excellent, but yet not the kind of literary entertainment for which the young people of the district could be supposed to be hungering and thirsting; Deacon Cook offered another list of similar charm: History of Martyrs, Rights of Conscience, Modern Pharisees, Defense of Separates; the Reverend Mr. Woolworth proposed Edwards against Chauncey, History of Redemption, Jennings's View, and Judge Hurlbut concurred in the list as very suitable for youthful reading; Dr. Rose," whining school-boy" became a willing disciprobably a latitudinarian physician, suggested Gay's Fables, Pleasing Companion, Turkish Spy; while Burroughs recommended Hume's History, Voltaire's Histories, Rollin's Ancient History, Plutarch's Lives, etc. There was a tremendous debate, and at last a compromise list was adopt-mon schools it should have been only recently ed. But when subsequently a book was bought discovered that teaching is a science for which from the collection of Judge Hurlbut, who had training is as useful as for any other. With concurred in the Reverend Mr. Woolworth's ruthless sincerity Mr. Adams says: "Very much selection, Burroughs found a deistical treatise as Bentham defined a judge as an advocate in it, and, as Mr. Adams says, he proceeded, run to seed,' the ordinary superintendent is so to speak, to make it uncomfortably warm apt to be a grammar-school teacher in a simfor the judge and his reverend friend. The ilar condition. Where he is not this, he is committee had a hot discussion about exclud- usually some retired clergyman or local poliing the venomous work; but when a motion tician out of a job, who has no more idea of to have the obnoxious parts read aloud to the the processes of mental development or the committee failed, the committee also voted science of training than the average schoolagainst excluding it, because, as Burroughs master has of the object of teaching English says, those who had read it were more afraid grammar." The University of Michigan has for others than for themselves, and those who recognized the necessity of training by foundhad not read it had an eager curiosity to seeing a chair for teaching the science of teaching. for themselves the naughty thing. "Could Massachusetts is regarded as a model comanything better mark the advance which has monwealth. One-fifth of the entire amount of late years been made in a correct understand-raised by taxation is expended upon the coming of that intellectual food which the popular taste demands ?" says Mr. Adams; and we say "From Edwards against Chauncey and Rollin's Ancient History to Harper's Monthly! What giants they must have been, or what husks they subsisted on, in those days!"

amen.

Mr. Adams's caustic criticism upon some aspects of the common-school system are not less valuable. One of his pictures will be universally recognized, and it will suggest certainly a

mon schools, and they are supposed to be models. In many ways they are admirable; but Mr. Adams holds that from the want of a pervading and intelligent direction of school expenses some two millions of dollars a year are wasted, and the chief defect that he finds is the lack of trained superintendency. A few citizens of his energy and sagacity and public spirit, however, would spur any community to necessary reform. The details and statistics

which he gives about the Quincy schools are fine Barrett gymnasium at Amherst College, worthy of careful study, and explain their rep-where every class has a brief daily practice utation among the schools of the Bay State. under the intelligent direction of an accom

plished professor, who is a trained physician, show that the athletic standard has been notably raised since the days of Tom Cribb and the Tutbury pet. Muscularity harms neither the student nor the saint, and the muscular Christian need not be less a Christian because of his muscle.

THE chief topic of “town-talk" during the last month was the walking match, in which Rowell, the Englishman who won the Astley belt last year, undertook to win it back from Weston, the American who carried it off in the summer, and succeeded. A dozen men entered the lists, to "go as you please," but the Eng- It is doubtless true that a man becomes eslishman, a small wiry man, soon took the lead, pecially interested in that to which he devotes and retained it to the end. There was a gen- himself, and that if he be anxious to develop eral feeling that, despite Weston's success in his biceps muscle, his patience and prudence England, he would not lead in this race. He and the other cardinal virtues are apt to be has been known by name longer than any of left to shift for themselves. But the business his competitors, but known chiefly by great of a man is to regulate himself. It is not neattempts. He has been very persistent, but cessary to walk a thousand miles in a thonhis failure has been so uniform that his Eng- sand hours, nor to make five hundred miles in lish victory was surprising. He had a few a hundred and forty-four hours, going as you weeks of glory, coming home to a reception please, nor to outrow the champion rower of and an interview; but before he could have the world, in order to have a sound body for made his triumph real even to himself, the the sound mind. It is no more necessary to contest began again which was to strip him do this than to tap the claret and to close the of his laurels. There was a great deal of sym- peepers of a neighbor for the same purpose. pathy for him, and, according to the reporters, Feats of bodily strength and endurance always he could not conceal his own grief and chagrin have been and always will be full of interest. as he strained and struggled around the track, | Sir William Wallace, wielding a claymore that with a ghastly affectation of gay carelessness, no other man could lift, seems to be more a coming out sixth in the race. hero for his strength of arm. The walkers for the Astley belt are not likely to win Wallace's fame, nor is his fame due to his sturdy swinging of the claymore. But the interest that attends the walking match, and the "decline and fall off" of the boxing match, are among the pleasantest signs of the times.

The immense and universal interest in athletic contests is remarkable. When Heenan and Sayers were to pummel each other in England there was much more apparent excitement here than when Russia and England were fighting for Constantinople, and since the great events of the civil war, nothing has so aroused the city of New York as these walking matches. Some of the newspapers gave a | quarter of their entire space to the details and gossip of the arena. There were the minutest descriptions of the appearance and movements of the contestants, some of them very graphic and vivid. The amount and kind of food taken by each man, the incidents of his resting in his room, his action, his "spurts," his conversation, the comments of the spectators-everything that can be noted was carefully observed and recorded, and read by millions of readers. There was a vast throng of spectators, some of whom passed the week in the inclosure, and the whole scene was a singular comment upon our civilization.

THERE is a series of political essays by Addison, called the Freeholder, which are much less noted than the Spectator, but which are admirable studies for their tone of good humor. They were written after the accession of George the First, and took the Hanoverian side in the Addisonian way, which was very different from that of Swift. They are familiar and colloquial and shrewd, intended plainly for town reading and for the occasional country house-a cheerful mixture of British good sense and good nature to which the Tory side offered no antidote. The good nature is, above all, their characteristic, and it is the more striking, not only because party discussion in a semi-revolutionary epoch is always fierce, but because at that time it was especially so. The Stuart rising of 1715, at which

country that the government was still far from settled, and there are exceedingly interesting glimpses of current events in the agreeable pages.

The changed form of athletic contests, however, is an agreeable sign of the advance of that civilization. Walking matches and row-time the Freeholder appeared, apprised the ing matches are better than boxing matches; and, happily for decency and humanity, the bruiser has evidently had his day. He has not been banished certainly by greater effeminacy, because the true manly exercises were never so general as now. The pleasant contests of athletic clubs, the cricket and baseball playing, the rowing and walking matches, and above all the exercises of the gymnasium as a part of the college curriculum, as in the

There are very few purely partisan political essays of more than a hundred and fifty years ago that are very entertaining reading now. The newspaper which we seize so eagerly every morning will be a curious relic a hundred years hence; but nobody reads old newspapers.

The collections of editorial articles which are | brought to see that there has been at least a sometimes published as books drop unheeded little sunshine since the Revolution, and that into oblivion. They are as unread as many pulling down meeting-houses is not quite the of the new volumes of verse. They may have same as going to church. a certain historic and antiquarian value, but they are not "books which are books." There As we lay down the good-natured Freeholder, are two volumes of editorial writings by Al- we observe that the manuscript diary of Mr. bany Fonblanque, from the old London Exam- | Henry R. Storrs, a member of Congress from iner. He was a noted editor in his day, and Central New York fifty years ago, has been dehis opinions were weighty and worth know- posited with the Historical Society of Buffalo. ing. But how many of our readers have ever Like the diary of every active public man of inheard of the book, or would care to read it if | telligence, it speaks with great bitterness of the they saw it? The value of newspaper writing corruption and narrowness of politics and the "lies in the application of it." It is alive in wrath of party spirit. During the session of its relation to the time and to current events. Congress of 1827, Mr. Storrs says that all the To-day it is as fresh and sparkling and exhil- | leading men of the opposition refused to atarating as Champagne just opened; to-morrow tend Mrs. Clay's parties or to call at Mr. Clay's, it is stale. who was then Secretary of State. He records The reason is that such writing has an im- at about the same time that Mr. —, of the mediate and special purpose. It is the work Senate, had a fight with Mr. —, in the of a peculiar talent, which is not necessarily a House, and that they were separated by the literary talent. Coleridge was an editor, but by-standers. He groans that strangers would nobody knows what he wrote. It may be think us a nation of blackguards if they could found in the old Morning Post and the Courier, see the performances of Congress. Mr. Storrs and was, of course, able. Dickens was an ed- was a Federalist, and he and his friends thought itor as well as a reporter. But he was more that the coming of Jackson was the end of fitted to be reporter than editor, and he soon all things, as Fisher Ames and the Essex Junto left the Morning News. But the form in which thought of the coming of Jefferson nearly thirAddison's political essays were published, that ty years before. In the same way Lord Eldon of the pamphlet, helped his instinct and gen- | and his associates lamented the Reform Act in ius, which were purely literary, so that his England, and Lord St. Vincent regarded the Freeholder belongs to literature; and while the abolition of slavery in the West Indies as the politics and parties and the England of George overthrow of the bulwarks of English liberty. the First are gone, these essays survive. Some If anybody finds his political faith waverof their delightful touches we remember to ing, let him read a little history. If he thinks have mentioned before as illustrations: the that we are sweeping rapidly along the broad tough old Tory, determined that nothing should road of destruction, let him take heart as he be right until the old king came to his own observes that other people have been in a very again, and who grimly insisted that there had much worse plight, yet have not been overbeen no fine weather since the Revolution; and whelmed. It is not a mere happy-go-lucky the Tory landlord who was always too busy philosophy which assures a man that a great to go to church, but who had still found time self-governing community, mainly of the Engto help pull down a few Dissenting meeting-lish race and traditions, can not easily be houses. These are figures for all time, like Charles Lamb's late Mrs. Battle, "now with God," who at whist asked only "a clear fire, a clean hearth, and the rigor of the game."

The good humor of the Freeholder would light up most happily our own political discussion. The sly sarcasm, the good feeling and sympathy which remind us of what we really know, namely, that acridity and spite do not help but hurt the best cause, are worth cultivating. Political differences are very serious, but the most resolute difference may be conducted as between gentlemen and not blackguards. Messieurs, tirez les premiers, did not mean that the volley was to be of blank cartridges, nor to go over heads. But the perfervid zeal and mighty roar of our political writers in the "thick of the campaign," for instance, have a look like scenic lightning and a sound like sheet-iron thunder. A little study of the Freeholder would happily temper our fury without relaxing our principle: and surely it would be a gain if some of us could be

ruined. It ought not, certainly, to teach him indifference, nor tend to foster the complacent faith that Providence takes especial care of children, drunkards, and the United States. But it should keep his cheerfulness in good repair, and enable him to see how much of party fervor is Pickwickian.

The Easy Chair watches with amused attention the well-known figure in public life which we will call Orlando. His name is legion. He is a very familiar figure in politics. It is to him that we owe much of the fervor of political literature and oratory. He is especially gifted in the preparation of platforms. He writes scathing squibs in the party organs. He prophesies the most direful consequences if his side does not come in, and he shudders to think of the awful doom that impends if the other side secures a majority. Interpreted into the language of truth, all this means only that Orlando thinks that he is more likely to bag the Plenipotentiaryship, or the Commissionership, or the Consul-Generalship, or some other equal

ly desirable ship, if the minority shall become | the majority than if the majority holds its own. The real mischief produced by such characters as Orlando is that they injure the cause which they profess to serve, by making all reformers, however sincere, seem to be charlatans. If a man utters noble sentiments, he is apt to be called Joseph Surface; and such is the force of this tendency that Dr. Johnson, who was at heart a kindly man, and honest and earnest to a proverb, was so disgusted with political charlatans that he defined patriotism—a word which charlatanism had abused— as the last refuge of a scoundrel. There are many honest people who are disgusted in the same way with the word reform because of such reformers as Orlando, and it is upon this feeling that political coxcombs play when they sneer at reform. But hypocrisy is the tribute that vice pays to virtue. It does not follow that reform is folly because the word is deftly mouthed by Orlando and his kind. On the contrary, it is used by them because they know it to be a spell to stir generous souls. There were canting hypocrites who were Puritans, but Puritanism was not canting hypocrisy.

speaking of Sir Charles Grandison, who would seem to the youth of to-day an elaborate and very tedious man, but of whom, nevertheless, those youth might learn many, a valuable lesson of dignity and self-respect. It is, however, rather our conception of the old manners than the actual historical illustration of them that we have in mind when we, speak of the old school. Colonel Newcome is essentially a modern man, a man of our time, but we accept him at once as a gentleman of the old school; and although the men of an older day were very probably no better men than their descendants, it is Colonel Newcome and not Major Pendennis who satisfies our ideal of the older gentleman.

Indeed, in its common use in such phrases, the word old expresses an ideal view. Old times are not merely the times of our youth or of another century; they are times that never were, or rather they are real times touched by the imagination with a celestial glamour. We are all conscious that the days which we recall so fondly as the days of Eden and of Paradise were not so cloudless and painless as our words import. The boy who is But in maintaining that history is the best kept in at school when he hears his comrades tonic for political despondency, we are far shouting as they bound away in freedom, and from insisting that party differences them- the girl who is forbidden the pleasure upon selves are merely Pickwickian. They repre- which her heart is set, hear with angry imsent real and universal tendencies. In this patience the elderly aunt and uncle who lay country, for instance, it was of the utmost im- hands upon their heads, and tell them tenderportance to human liberty whether at one timely to enjoy while they can, for these are the one party or the other was supreme. The loy-happiest years they will ever know. The alist historian of New York in the Revolution, grief of the child over a trifle is not less real Judge Jones, shows us some shades upon the and intense for him than the sorrow and yearnSons of Liberty, but there is no doubt that the ing regret of the man over his wasted years victory of the Sons of Liberty was necessary or the grave of his heart's love. to the true welfare of the country. Falkland was the most pathetic figure of a Cavalier, and in him the cause of the king becomes exalted. | But none the less were the Puritans the party of liberty and progress. The tonic of history is the perception that the party aspects of other times were quite as resolute and angry as those of our own time, and that among the troubles which they knew was the charlatanry of Orlando and his kind. Both the humbug and the brutality of party spirit which we encounter were familiar to our fathers, and it may repair our good nature to know that they were even more positive than with us. The more closely the diaries of the actors of those days are scanned, the more clearly we shall see that the troubles which annoy us are not signs of national dissolution, but fixed phenomena of political life.

MANNER is so much an expression of temperament that it seems to be inaccurate to speak of a school of manners, except as meaning the manner of a class of persons. Yet there is a very definite idea associated with the words, "manners of the old school." And it is not an idea of overstrained courtliness and affected courtesy. A month or two since we were VOL. LX.-No. 855.-10

To describe a person as a gentleman or lady of the old school, therefore, is to speak of him or her not as resembling Sir Charles Grandison or the Duchess of Newcastle, but as showing a gentle soul and refined courtesy, with a certain endearing fascination of address and an essential nobility of nature. There must doubtless be a dignity of bearing fully to satisfy the phrase, and just that slight and charming shade of difference from the current ways of to-day which we call quaintness. There must be, also, for complete satisfaction, superior intelligence and cultivation: indeed, there must be precisely that harmonious blending of many high qualities which will always cause the friends of a venerable lady who recently died to recall her in the loftiest sense as a lady of the old school. Those who approached her perceived at first that sweet, urbane, and unforced dignity which is perfectly simple and unassuming, but full of self-respect. It was the manner of one accustomed to association upon equal terms with the most superior men and women, and no less accustomed to the most thoughtful sympathy and regard for those who are called inferior. Steele said of Lady Elizabeth Hastings that to know her was a liberal education. It may be said that