against evil, and to give it power and energy in the pursuit of what is good. Unfortunately this wisdom is seldom learned, and even then but imperfectly, till after years of toil and experience, when the opportunities to use it to the greatest advantage have passed away. FIRST DISTRICT. Benefit street Grammar School-Noble W. DeMunn, Principal; Martha F. Thurber, Elizabeth B. Eliza Thurber, Eliza J. Yeomans, Assistants. Symonds, Lucy G. Metcalf, Abby A. F. Sprague, Benefit street Intermediate School-Mary E. Anthony, Principal. There is another evil that often disturbs the suc-Principal: Susan Joslin, Assistant. Benefit street Primary School-Elizabeth Davis, cessful working and harmony of our schools. I refer State street Intermediate School-Abby C. Salisbuto the frequent instances of the unreasonableness of ry, Principal; Eleanor S Calder, Assistant. parents, and their want of active coöperation with State street Primary_School-Elizabeth teachers. Some seem disposed to prejudge every case of difficulty, and to form their opinion upon a partial knowledge of the facts; and as a matter of course, to condemn the teacher. By such unwise J. Chace, Principal; Abby A. Evans, Maria T. Hale, Mary D. Armington, Assistants. Scott street Intermediate School-Ann E. Avery, Principal: Elizabeth Passmore, Assistant. Scott street Primary School-Ann Yerrington, Principal; Sarah E. Capron, Assistant. Graham street Intermediate School-Harriet J. SECOND DISTRICT. partiality and interference, the discipline of our best schools is seriously interrupted. If parents did not expect greater perfection in teachers-more self-control, or more wisdom in the management of children than they exhibit themselves, these difficulties would seldom occur. Absolute perfection is not to be expected in any one, certainly not in teachers. Errors in judgment, mistakes in regard to duty, in discretion in language, and the indulgence of excited passion chester, Principal; Cornelia W. Latham, Martha J. Prospect street Grammar School-Albert J. Manare among the many frailties which are inseparable Guild, Emma Brown, Candace G. Wilcox, Assistfrom human nature even under the highest Christian culture. We should judge others by the same standard by which we wished to be judged ourselves, especially those who are placed in the most trying and responsible situation of life. tants. Meeting street Grammar School-A. C. Robbins, Prospect street Intermediate School-Amelia An- THIRD DISTRICT. Arnold street Grammar School-Alvah W. God Our schools have suffered more than usual the past term from the large number of idle, vagrant boys, who are in the habit of lounging about our schoolhouses, annoying the scholars and enticing away all over whom they have any influence. There seems to be at present but little prospect that this increasing ding, Principal; Amanda Miles, Fanny Stebbins, evil will soon be remedied. There are so many plau- Frances Gruber, Charlotte R. Hoswell, Elizabeth S. sible objections that can be urged against interfering Parker, Assistants. with the rights of parents to control their children as they please, or to leave them without any control, ker, Principal. that no feasible plan has yet been matured by which one of the greatest obstacles to the complete success of our schools may be removed. The attendance the past term has been remarkably good, notwithstanding the interruptions of business and the distractions incident to the civil strife that is raging in our unhappy country. The whole number admitted is 7888. Of this number, 360 have been received into the High School, 2142 into the grammar, 1811 into the intermediate, and 3575 into the primary schools. All of which is respectfully submitted. Arnold street Intermediate School-Susan R. Par Arnold street Primary School-Emma Shaw, Principal; Catharine M. Gladding, Assistant. East street Intermediate School-Mary W. Armington, Principal; Delia Armington, Assistant. East street Primary School-Almy E. Spalding, Principal; Hannah Bailey, Mary C. Bradford, Elizabeth Goff, Assistants. Transit street Intermediate School-Sarah Shaw, Principal; Charlotte M. Hodges, Assistant. Transit street Primary School-Lydia M. Carpenter, Principal; Sarah A. Purkis, Assistant. Transit street Primary School, No. 2-Rebecca Armington, Principal; Juliette Allen, Assistant. FOURTH DISTRICT. Fountain street Grammar Scaool-Albert A. Gamwell, Principal; Rebecca E. Chase, Elia Pierce, Helen A. Nichols, Elizabeth C. Capron, M. S. D. Gower, Margaret W. Arnold, Assistants. Fountain street Intermediate School-Anna M. Sessions, Principal; Mary J. Cleveland, Assistant. Fountain street Primary School-Helen C. Elliott, Principal; Martha W. Hall, Assistant. Carpenter street Intermediate School-Rebecca O. Sheldon, Principal; Mary M. Angell, Assistant. Carpenter street Primary School-Eliza B. Barnes, Principal; Susan S. Williams, Assistant. Federal street Intermediate School-Emily E. Potter, Principal; Mary A. H McQueen, Asssistant. Federal street Primary School-Abby T. Tanner, Principal; Susan Gorton, Ellen M. Arnold, Assis tants. FIFTH DISTRICT. Elm street Grammar School-Thomas Davia, Prinoipal; Mary C. Lewis, Isabella F. Doyle. Ann M. Barrows, Celia J. Lewis, Asenath Tetlow, Mary Col, Assistants. Hospital street Intermediate School-Diana S. Parkhurst, Principal; Angeline Haskell, Assistant. Hospital street Primary School-Alice Brogden, Principal; Abby F. Butler, Assistant. Richmond street Intermediate School-Eliza M. Ingraham, Principal; Abby F. Sherburne, Assistant. Richmond street Primary School-Almira Marshall, Principal; Emily T. Winsor, Kate Scott, Sarah E Tanner, Assistants. I Potter's Avenue Intermediate School-M. Austania lege, circumstances prevented me from entering; but Babcock, Principal; Emeline A. Sayles, Assistant. I have endeavored all my life to make up for this Potter's Avenue Primary School-Maria Essex, deficiency by patient, hard and persevering study, Principal; Julia Waterman, Assistant. and I claim that though I have no liberal education, Pond street Primary School-Abby A. Branch, am not an uneducated man. Like many others, Í Principal; Mary E. Young, Assistant. am to a certain degree self-educated. It was my misfortune that I had not the advantages of a liberal tages of a public school education. In defining my education; but I thank God that I had the advanposition, I am a Union man. I always have been. I should be recreant to my race if I were not, for my his musket in defence of the Constitution and Govgrandfather was a good Union man, who shouldered rise up before me if every fibre in my body were not ernment under George Washington. His bones would has been spoken of in this Convention as though this Union. So far for my position. Now, gentlemen, it nomination of State Superintendent were a trifling matter. Gentlemen have said, "nominate your Superintendent and let the schoolmasters go home." have a Union State to the back-bone until you have Gentlemen, you need them there. You never will be brought into the schools, and thoroughly Ameria school system so thorough that every portion shall canized. Gentlemen, you are taking an important measure towards making this a Union State for any Bridgham Grammar School-Francis B. Snow, crisis that may arise in the future. It is not an unPrincipal; Ellen M. Haskell, Mary E. Scarborough, important matter. Cast your eye over the map toJulia A. Osgood, Sarah C. Allen, R. Anne Haskell, day, and show me a section from which people shed Emeline B. Nichols, Maria F Stokes, Sarah Dean, their blood most freely for the defence of the Union, Lizzie Wilcox, Sarah C Padelford, Assistants. and I will show you those that have expended the Summer street Intermediate School-A. F. Fielding, most money for public schools and for the best school Principal; Susan M. Shelly, Harriet R. Greene, system. You show me the States that are stained Susie Gladding, Assistants. blackest with the damning stain of disunion, and I Summer street Primary School-Abby Jackson, will show you those that have no public school system, Principal; Elizabeth Cory, Julia E. Cady, Sarah Austin, Assistants. Plane street Intermediate School-Rosamond R. Leavens, Principal; Martha R. Congdon, Assistant. Plane street Primary School-Ann E. Edmonds, Principal; Rebecca Sessions, Assistant. SIXTH DISTRICT. Hammond street Intermediate School-Mary T. Friendship street Intermediate School-Sarah T. Ring street Primary School-Mary M. Shelley, Teacher of French-Alphonse Renaud. Teacher of Drawing-Lydia M. Underwood. that ignored, did not want, and that will not have it. Why, gentlemen, on the 19th of April, 1775, the men at Lexington, who poured out their life-blood, were graduates of the American public schools; and the men of a later day, who shed the first blood of this war on the 19th of April, 1861, answered to the tap of the drum in the schools, 1rom the school-houses of Massachusetts. Look at the State of New York, the Banner State in patriotism, perhaps in numbers, at least-in this war. She has a public-school system second to none in the Union. Ohio, also, is one of the Banner States in education. And, gentlemen, why is it that these armies are so invincible when gathered in the field, but for the fact that behind the bayonets is the intelligence of the public schools, playing around those loyal points like lightning, making those bayonets as invincible as the sword of the Archangel Michael. [Applause] I say, gentlemen, if you want in future a State so thoroughly Union that no rebellion can arise, that no Convention like MR. JOHN SWETT, a San Francisco teacher, treason, organize thoroughly an effective system of this need ever be called to put down secession and who is still proud to be reckoned as a Yankee public schools. [Cheers,] Now, I believe fully in schoolmaster, has been nominated for Superin- what has been stated in this Convention, and that the tendent of Public Instruction in California by tion will be in travelling through this State-which duties of the next Superintendent of Public Instructhe Union Administration Convention. Pend- has never been done. The public must be awakened, ing the nomination, he addressed the Conven- and the teachers must be encouraged. I claim to represent, in some degree, the teachers of this State. tion as follows: If you give me this nomination, I shall take it as a Mr. President and Gentlemen of the Convention:- compliment, not to me personally, but to the working In making my appearance before you to-day, I rise teachers who perform regular duties in the schoolfor the first time in my life to speak to a political room. [Applause.] If you confer upon me this Convention, and appear for the first time in my life nomination, I do not consider that you will give me as a candidate for any office in the gift of the people. any additional honor. I believe that the place which I am proud that at this time I seek an office so inti- I occupy now is as honorable as that of Superinmately connected with my profession, to which ten tendent of Public Instruction. If you give me the years of the past portion of my life have been de- nomination I shall thank you for it; and if not. I voted-in arduous hard labor in the public school- shall go back without a shadow of regret to my room. Gentlemen, I am indebted for the commence- duties in the school-room-where I may do somement of my education to a little school-house in the thing toward Americanizing the people of this State, old Granite State; and whatever I am, I owe it to who are to take your places, and inspiring them with that school system of New England. I am proud of a love of liberty and à sacred regard for the rights of it. It was my misfortune that, after fitting for col-man. I. The R. J. Schoolmaster. SEPTEMBER, 1862. VOLUME EIGHT. For the Schoolmaster. The Younger Days of Gibbon. NUMBER NINE. painted ogresses on his escucheon. One suffered martyrdom, yet his descendant at the eighth remove was content to work the treadles of a IN the essay on Petrarch, Macaulay declares cloth machine. One lost his head by a change that Homer was the most modest of men. In in the administration, another was in imminent over thirty thousand lines which he wrote, critics danger of being scalped at an Indian dance on have never been able to detect a single "hint as the Susquehanna, and the sole relic of another to his situation and feelings." That posterity is picked out, after the oblivion of a century, should experience no such difficulty in his case, from under a dirt-heap in an obscure corner of Gibbon, with an effrontery not very complimen- the Ducal library of Wolfeubuttel. Such a tary to his great mind, has left on record a pro- feast of genealogy would have satiated an ordifuse volume of memoirs, which is unsurpassed nary autobiographist. But Gibbon was a liteas a monument of literary egotism and vivacious rary as well as a physical gormandizer. He not vanity. This inimitable performance opens with only relates who his ancestors were, but stalks a chapter of the Generations of the House of through every county in England to discover Gibbon as interminable as " the book of the whom his ancestors knew. The result was a generations of Adam." With unspairing dili- meagre reward for his pains. A certain John gence, Mr. Gibbon lays bare the lines of ances- Gibbon sat at an Astrologer's club with Wiltry. He dissects the Heralds' Books with the liam Dugdale and Mr. Ashmole,- forgotten gusto of a surgeon, and wipes the dust of cen- names written only on the disfigured front of turies from antique coach-pannels, and exhumes some rural gravestone, or remembered only by a generation of giants from the Shropshire the solemn sexton of some rural church. Hesvaults. With a quaint conceit he proclaims the ter Gibbon devoted a career of celibacy to a family programme as hoarse-voiced auctioneers platonic and confessional connection with a Mr. proclaim their wares. One Gibbon was blown William Law, -a man whose single claim to into bankruptcy by the South Sea bubble. One the memory of this late posterity is the ludisat in ermine on the customs-bench of Queen crous virulence with which he anathematized Ann, in that age when Bolingbroke split his "all actors and the intemperate satire by sides at the obscene jokes of Prior, and another, which he sought to call sinners to repentance. in a still earlier age, turned away sick and faint The immediate marriage from which the histoat heart as Sir James Fien swung from the in- rian sprang was happy in the extreme. His surgent gibbet of Jack Cade. This family pa- mother was the flower of high London life. norama unrolls in curious alcoves and retreats. But the embroidered veil which fell around her One Gibbon reared "the strong and stately cas- snowy shoulders was not more frail than the tle of Queensborough," at Medway, by the beauty it enveloped, frittered away in the unsea." Ole was a London counter-jumper, and ceasing round of flirtation and fashion. His measured out German linens in Leadenhall father was a model of English courtesy and street. One was a bitter misanthrope, and honor. His convivality rarely ran to excess. His hospitality never merged in extravagance. to the puny invalid. In calmness she endured In politics he enjoyed the honors of that party his feverish petulence, and exhausted every rewhose reverses he accepted without a murmur. source that a woman's tact could invent or a woGibbon insinuates that he was a perfect gentle- man's sympathy suggest to assuage the sharpman,- that is, he kept his temper, worshipped ness of pain. Such devotion Gibbon tenderly his king, never cursed at table, loved his wife, repaid by employing to portray her excellence and knew the points of honor better than the the same pencil with which he drew the splencreed of the church. did pictures of Alexander and Severus. Of such stock was the historian born. Of Thus Gibbon struggled up to his ninth year. seven children he alone survived. And so frail Now creeping about his sick chamber, at the was the tenure by which he held on to life that quiet homestead in Putney Village, alternately his father sat uneasily in his chair at the Alder- tortured and relieved, an experiment for the men's Rooms, expecting each moment to be skill or ignorance of every practitioner, from called to the bedside of his dying heir. At the Sloane and Ward to the Chevalier Taylor. Now sprinkling of each child he had repeated the winning applause at his father's state dinners, patronymic Edward," in order, as Gibbon so by a precocious aptitude at figures. Now learnfelicitously quotes, "uno avulso non defecit al- ing his Latin rudiments from an obscure gramter." In the miracle of the historian's life, hu- mar, and the elements of Algebra from a fanciman as well as divine agency was manifest. To ful novel. At this age he was under the tutorMiss Catharine Porten, at once an aunt and pa- ship of Mr. John Kirby. This man introduces rent, Gibbon acknowledges himself vastly in- us to the English teacher, of whom he was a debted. Heaven seems specially to have con- perfect type. A wretched curate, whom the secrated her, like the Roman Vestal, to fan the world had driven to the wall, whom misfortune flame. There came a time when her protegè, had rendered timid and poverty made servile. inflated with vanity, puffed with applause, apa- In the epic of these men's lives is woven many thetic in the midst of splendid successes, indif- a line of sadness. In the mould of unceasing ferent to religion or love, was roused to unus- labors poorly paid, of cares meanly recompensual emotion at the mention of this old nurse's ed, of vexations and insults borne in meekness name, and tearing off his mask of sullen stoi- and with patience, their lot was cast. Lords cism, shed bitter tears. She seems to have and advocates of slender talents built superfibeen a quiet Christian, one of those beings of cial reputations upon the brains of amanuenses whom society is full,-deprived of children and tutors who were fed on scraps and cursed of their own, designed to be mothers to the as house-dogs. The English scholars of Gibchildren of their frail sisters to whom the ball-bon's day! They were starved at overloaded room presents higher considerations than the tables, and men who could speak five languages nursery-half-developed women, under a fri- were crowded in garrets with lacqueys and volous ban and a contemptible prejudice-wall- footmen who could not even speak one with flowers at dinner parties—yet wearing under correctness or fluency. Scholars worthy to their demureness and serenity a repressed gaiety converse with Bacon toiled a twelve-month for and an infinite fund of affection. Such was less than Bacon squandered on a dinner. The Miss Porten. Her outward attire was the sym- author of the Letter to the October Club quarbol of her mind. She preserved the high waist- reled and flirted in the kitchen of Sir William ed, heavily-frilled dress, the broad, stiff collar Temple, and now their genius flashes in many and huge shell comb, which younger women an old book whose title-page does not bear their had discarded a century before. She drew her name. Such was Gibbon's first tutor, John small, narrow sleeves down to her slender blue- Kirby. Under such a master he made hardly veined hand, in utter abhorrence of the profuse any progress. One Sabbath he unluckily fordisplay and prodigal charms of Sir Peter Lely's got the name of King George in his prayers. beauties. Beside the dashing, spirited mother The indiscreet blunder lost him his head, and of the historian she fades into littleness, but in when and where he ended a most unfortunate a style of quiet womanhood, a cheerful temper and weary life even the astounding diligence of never ruffled, a faith in God never disturbed, Gibbon was never able to discover. From the she rises far above the fashionable Mrs. Gibbon. crude and gloomy tutorship of Mr. John Kirby Very much did she love young Gibbon, in her the historian entered upon public-school life at serene way. Her assiduity supplied every care Kingston upon the Thames. Although with a surplus exactness he describes his experience could never accept: there are few finer pic there, it appears to have been not unusual. It tures in the gallery of literature. was the experience of a sad, shy, nervous Gibbon next attended Westminster school. youngster with a crook in his moral spine, weak Laboriously, fighting disease and diffidence, he muscles and an overgrown head. Laboring reached the third form. As a public school under perpetual debility from his birth he had scholar he never went higher. The next two been pampered and indulged to that degree that years of his life (1750-1752) are confused and the familiar rudeness of play-fellows shocked mixed. There are glimpses of him throwing him inexpressibly, and the austerity of a peda- pebbles into the waves of Bath, as if to resurgogue dissolved him in tears. He had no com- rect the buried secrets of Health; poring over manding trait of character to guarantee respect. Horace in the close foliage of a parsonage. BeHe was ridiculed for his physical infirmity, and yond this nothing, only a quiet, shy, dreamy, reproached with the politics of his family. So peevish boy, revolving the first principles of soutterly lonely was he, that years afterwards he ciety and speculating on questions that have remembered the very spot where he caught the dismayed older minds. farewell benediction of his mother's kiss, and tried, as he passed, to detect in the dust of the highway the prints of the horses' hoofs and the rim of the carriage wheels, At no time of life, in no conditions, will such an awful sense of loneliness and desertion steal upon the soul as when a child stands for the first time alone up on the threshold of a school-room and sees the At length in a triumphal hour nature overcame the obstinacy of disease, and Gibbon passed under the noble gateway and entered the spacious cloisters of Magdalen College. In the inimitable language of the "Memoirs," he came to Oxford "with a stock of erudition that might have puzzled a doctor and a degree of ignorance of which a school-boy might have been ashamgrim majesty of the master and hears the hum ed." At his matriculation he was a model for of lips like the whir of numberless wheels. the oldest readers in his university. Most men And there are men who, without concern, have never begin to read till eighteen. At fifteen fought iniquity and sin in courts and pulpits; Gibbon had mastered books to which most men who, without a tremor, have looked into the are strangers at fifty. He read constantly, unghastly eyes of death in the lazar-houses of interruptedly, when well to stifle the memory great cities; who, undismayed, have faced the of past suffering, when sick to alleviate the pitiless storm of grape and cannister or led the pangs of present agony. He read everywhere, forlorn hope, can look back to the moment when at Buriton, at Putney, at Bath, at Westminster. they stood alone for the first time before the He read everything, the translations of Dryden, master's desk, and remember how the first the originals of Homer, Xenophon, Procopius, glance into the master's eyes inspired them with Hearne, Kapin, Machiavel and Davila. a more utter sense of nothingness, of cowardice dinner bell dragged him reluctantly from Ecand of shame, than unbroken testimony, hydra- hard's History, and he rushed from the table headed vices or sharp lines of bayonets ever abruptly to guess at the French of D'Herbelot. have been able to produce. Such, however, Such was Gibbon when he came to Oxford. It was Gibbon's experience. Beyond this nothing would have been better for his fame and better peculiar occurred to him. He worked through for his soul if he had never seen Oxford. Of the the lower classics, Phadrus and Nepos, as all arguments which Gibbon subsequently made The school-boys, before and since. In 1747 his use to defame the University the American stumother's death recalled him from a school to dent cannot form the remotest opinion. At any which he never returned. There are the touches rate it seems that Oxford was anything but an of a master's hand in the picture of himself amiable mistress, and Gibbon cordially reciprowhich he has painted:- A pale, shy boy, de-cated her indifference. He was frivolous among prived by death of his mother, by political cares scenes where Hooker had pondered the laws of of his father; morbid from a prostrating sick-God and man. He was sullen in places that ness; wandering about a silent, deserted manyet remembered Chillingworth, and contempusion house, near Putney's bridge; holding the ous on the very spot where the great Locke hand of a taciturn nurse listening to the gloomy himself had meditated on the bigotry of learned lapping of the Thames; opening the long-shut mind. It was hardly his fault. The imaginidoors of a dusty library; sitting down, at twi- tive boy had dreamed of a splendid college calight, to discuss the mysteries of a religion he reer, of laurels to be won. A week's experi |