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Master of the Shoe-Shop-Rufus Lewis. daughters. Wilson Whiton and James L. Mistress of the Tailors' Shop Margaret Wheeler, of the corps of teachers, are both Greenlaw. mutes, and have each a salary of one thousand a year, which certainly goes a great way towards relieving them from a harrowing sense

The Gallaudet High Class was originated within the walls of the institution a few years ago, for the instruction of the most promising of their inferiority, in a pecuniary point of pupils in the higher branches of an English view. May He who saith, “The laborer is education, such as Rhetoric, Astronomy, Phi- worthy of his hire," bless the directors of the losophy, Civil Engineering and Physiology.institution for their liberality in placing them Mr. Ayres, the instructor, as before observed, on an equal footing with their hearing assoof this class, is married to a deaf and dumb lady.

ciates. Mary A. Mann and Sarah W. Storrs are both deaf. Nancy Dillingham, one of the assistant matrons mentioned in the catalogue of the officers, is a deaf mute. Her sister, also deaf, was employed as assistant teacher the Deaf and Dumb Institution of Philadelphia when it was in its infancy. She is well connected in Philadelphia.

Laurent Clerc, whose name heads the list of instructors, was born deaf, and is a native of France; having been taught by the cele-in brated Abbe Sicard. He had the degree of A. M. conferred upon him by the trustees of Yale college, while yet a young man. He was biographed in the December number of the New York National Magazine for 1856, and his likeness also appeared therein. His wife was educated in the Hartford institution.

One of his daughters is the wife of the mayor

The list of pupils from the commencement of the institution in 1817, who had left previous to May 16, 1857, (the date of the report,) covers more than 28 pages, giving the residence, cause of deafness, and occupation

of each pupil. I glean from this list the fol-. lowing items:

of that city. One of his sons now ministers in St. Louis. Laurent Clerc's salary is not far from $1200 per year. Samuel Porter edits Levi S. Backus is publisher and editor of the "American Annals of the Deaf and the "Register," and not the "Radie," as statDumb," a quarterly periodical of decided ed in the list. John Brewster, now dead, merit, which contains in part contributions was a portrait painter. George W. Caldwell from deaf mutes. Edward M. Gallaudet, the is a bookseller. James J. Chamberlain is a youngest son of the late Rev. Thomas H. Gal- conveyancer. John W. Compton is a clerk in laudet, LL. D., and scarcely twenty-two the U. S. Treasury, with a salary of $1500 a years of age, has recently been appointed year, and married one of three mute sisters. principal of the Deaf and Dumb Institute in John Everson is a nurseryman and seedman. the District of Columbia. He is assisted by William Genet is master of the cabinet-shop his mother in the general supervision of the in the Deaf and Dumb Institution at New female department. She is a mute. Her oth-York. George Homer is a custom-house boater son, Thomas Gallaudet, besides being a man. Derwin Langdon is a merchant, doing teacher, breaks the bread of life to the mute business at Kennebunkport, Maine. Miss, or portion of the population of New York every Mrs. (I don't know which) Laura A. MerriSunday afternoon. Like his father, he is man is represented as a clock-face painter. married to a deaf lady; whose brother not Philip H. Neilson, besides being a farmer, long ago married one of her (Mrs. Gallaudet's) holds the office of postmaster at Warm

Springs, N. C. Olivia J. Record is a teacher is pleasant to know there are many who are of drawing. H. Scovel is a pedlar.

Thus, it will be seen, that the graduates of Hartford Institution fill different spheres of life, some of them, doubtless, with credit to themselves. I had almost forgotten to say that Mr. Edmund Booth, formerly a pupil and subsequently a teacher in that establishment, is employed as editor of the "Eureka," in Iowa.

For the Schoolmaster. Our Life.

BY N. A. W.

With change on change doth roll
The wave of human life,
Bearing onward to the goal,
Its freight with beauty rife.

It is a common lot;

To all the fate is given, That here our home is not; Oh! look for one in heaven.

And where are we to-day?

Have we the power, if will, The unrelenting flood to stay? The hidden strife to still?

Our life is but a little space

For preparation given,

That when we've run our earthly race, We may find rest in heaven.

For the Schoolmaster.

Cruelty to Animals.

How often may be witnessed, in almost every place, and especially in large towns and cities, public exhibitions of this most detestable vice. It is strange that men who are indebted to the noble animals which they own for both pleasure and profit, are mean and cruel enough to repay them for their valuable services, with kicks and blows. But it

worthy exceptions to this cruel treatment of animals; noble-minded persons who would scorn to degrade humanity by stooping to such low acts. How common, yet how revolting a sight, to one of tender feelings, is that presented by a horse taxed with the labor of bearing burdens to which his strength is wholly unequal. Even the most patient and docile of animals will, at times, resent the harsh and unjust treatment of a cruel master, but the man who is merciful to his beast gains all his love and gratitude; which, in the hour of danger, combined with the sagacity which all animals have in various degrees, may be of great service to him.Many of the brute creation are known to have been the medium through which life was saved.

How constant and unchanging is the attachment of a faithful animal to his master, and that his companionship and love are not to be lightly estimated, many a person who has been deprived of human society might testify. I have read of wild animals being so touched by the helplessness and dependence of their prey that their brute natures were made subservient to their compassion, but I have seen a man, or one who had arrived at the years of manhood, who, having been offended by some person, expended his terrible anger in beating a poor, defenceless beast.

Cruelty to animals is by no means significant of bravery. Far from it,

"The coward wretch whose hand and heart
Can bear to torture aught below,
Is even first to quail and start
From slightest pain or equal foe."

Children should always be taught to treat with tenderness and care the creatures which God has made and placed here. We often hear of desperate characters who commenced their course of wickedness by inflicting pain

But let them have a fixed posiing sands. tion or a permanent soil, and they will have the means of growth; they will flourish in vigor and beauty. Roving tribes of men have

upon the smallest insect, and it is certain that or if they have nothing to cling to but shiftthose who are kind to animals will extend that kindness and love to suffering humanity. The knowledge that we are dependent upon a Supreme Being for all that we have, and all that we are, should teach us to be kind to ev-uniformly been barbarians. No people ever ery creature dependent upon us.

For the Schoolmaster.

N. A. W.

Frequent Changes in Educational Policy
Unfavorable to Mental Improvement.

BY REV. WILLIAM BATES.

MEN, in order to rise to civilization and refinement, must have a fixed abode. Committees that would develop the intellectual powers of their youth must rely on no chance or spasmodic efforts in behalf of education. Government should establish and cherish in

came out of a state of barbarism without choosing a permanent residence-without establishing certain fixed principles of life-certain rules of national policy. Fickleness has been the bane of France.

Let this condition of excellence be regarded in our state and city policy in respect to our system of education. Change is not reform. Experimenting is not progress.

For the Schoolmaster.
William Shakspeare.

J.

stitutions of learning-should pursue a steady His Memory-Irving-Criticisms of Hallam—

Dryden and Jeffrey-General Merits-Conclusion.

THERE are three rivers Avon on the map of England. That which flows by Stratford, the birth-place of Shakspeare, rises in the interior and joins the Severn above Gloucester. William Shakspeare has lain in his grave in the chancel of Stratford Church many long years; his mulberry tree has been metamorphosed in snuff-boxes and walking sticks, his portraits have been smoked, weather-faded, restored and retouched, but Shakspeare lives to-day as truly as ever author lives, in the life pictures which his productions everywhere exhibit. Poets and essayists, no less than the drama, have joined to keep his memory green.

policy-one looking to remote results. The supplies, the means for sustaining our schools, should be as unfailing and as reliable as the government revenue. Change of policy, fickleness in plans and principles in relation to our system of education will be destructive of all true and healthful progress, of all permanent good. A rolling stone gathers no moss, neither does the mountain-top that is swept by ceaseless winds. The ocean's beach, shifting its sands and washed by restless and ever-returning waves, presents no verdure. Lands subject to the influence of the winds and driven before the tempest are a perpetual desert. But give those waste places rest, let the spirit of quiet brood over them, and little by little vegetation springs up, and they are clothed with verdure. A fruitful soil covers The style of Irving was never more pleasthe sands; the once barren rock is adorned ing than when he paid that beautiful tribute with vegetation, and the once dreary desert to the memory of the poet which he records smiles in living beauty. Neither the delicate on his journey to his birth-place. It is a plant nor the sturdy oak can take root if they spontaneous acknowledgment of his own idea must be subjected to continual transplantings, of the poet by which he invests the old house,

the church, and his tomb with an interest and bombast. But he is always great when some a beauty which show that Irving himself occasion is presented to him." sherished the memory of the bard of Avon.*

"The most exquisite poetical conceptions, images and descriptions are given with such brevity and introduced with such skill, as merely to adorn without loading the sense they accompany. Although his sails are pur

Quoted, and following in the order of mention, are passages on the subject placed at the head of this article from the writing of Hallam, Dryden and Lord Jeffrey. Respect to the opinions of such men is a sufficient apolo-ple and perfumed, and his prow of beaten gy for this course, even if it were not vanity and folly to attempt an imitation of what able pens have done before.

"The name of Shakspeare is the greatest in our literature; it is the greatest in all literature. No man ever came near him in the creative powers of the mind: no man had ever such strength at once, and such variety of imagination. Others may have been as sublime; others may have been more pathetic; others may have equalled him in grace and purity of language, and have shunned some of his faults; but the philosophy of Shakspeare, his intimate searching out of the human heart, whether in the gnomic form of sentence, or in the dramatic exhibition of character, is a gift peculiarly his own."

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'He was the man who, of all modern, and perhaps all ancient poets, had the largest and most comprehensive soul. All the images of nature were still present to him, and he drew them not laboriously, but luckily. When he describes anything, you more than see it you feel it, too. Those who accuse him to have wanted learning, give him the greater commendation. He was naturally learned; he needed not the spectacles of books to read nature; he looked inwards and found her. I cannot say he is everywhere alike; were he so, I should do him injury to compare him with the greatest of mankind. He is many times flat, insipid; his comic wit degenerating into clinches, his serious swelling into

Sketch Book.

gold, they waft him on his voyage, not less, but more rapidly and directly than if they had been composed of baser materials. All his excellencies, like those of nature herself, are thrown out together; and instead of interfering with, support and recommend each other. His flowers are not tied up in garlands, nor his fruits crushed into baskets, but spring living from the foliage in which they lurk, and the ample branches, the rough and vigorous stem, and the wide-spreading roots on which they depend, are present along with them, and share, in their places, the equal care of their creator."

Minds which are not sufficiently developed to see these merits in Shakpeare, cannot of course, appreciate them. To the general reader are apparent, first, the genuine wit and the rare conceptions of character which the poet has at command; afterwards, his unusual power of description which makes the most careless thoroughly acquainted with the persons introduced before the first act is finished. The beautiful Miranda, the ugly Caliban, haif man, half beast, are perhaps the characters strongest and clearest delineated in the Tempest. Shylock, in the Merchant of Venice, Beatrice, in Much ado about Nothing, become at the first, well known and interesting personages. But in King Lear, Macbeth, and Hamlet, are those exquisite delineations of feeling which charm and surprise the reader. Other dramatists present to us images, pictures, but Shakspeare acquaints us with persons who seem to be living, breathing, actu

al; they are men and women; not figures or representations.

We cannot praise Shakspeare as a man; he doubtless had excellent qualities, and, being human, possessed faults; but this age knows most and cares most for him as a writer. In this character he efficiently sustains the part which he acts. The greatest critics award him deserved praise.

Shakspeare was born April 23, 1564, and died on his birth-day, 1616. No lineal descendant remains.

He so sepulchred in such pomp dost lie
That kings for such a tomb would wish to die.

For the Schoolmaster. What is Life ?

BY ANNIE ELIZABETH.

Milton, 1630.

OH, what is life,a restless dream
That death will waken soon,-
A fading mist, a passing gleam-
A morn without a noon.

Oh, what is life,-'tis like the breath
Of summer's withering flowers,
In vain we bind the rosy wreath,
It dies e'er evening hours,
And far upon the night winds sad,
Each falling leaf is borne,
So is it with life's visions glad,

So with the hopes we mourn.
Oh, what is life,-'tis like the light
That paints the closing day,
'Tis lost amid the deepening night,
Soon gone its last pale ray.
Above the night-cloud's deepening shades
Another day will dawn,
The light of life forever fades,

Death's night proclaims no morn. Oh, what is life,-'tis like the star That glimmers o'er the wave, And lures the traveller's eye afar, But leads him to his grave.

In vain the sweet illusion binds
To earth's scenes all so fair,
Time soon life's brittle thread unwinds,
And ends his record there.

Great God, within whose mighty hand
Our destinies abide,

Lead us into that better land
Beyond the mortal tide.

For the Schoolmaster. Burning School Houses.

THE notices lately inserted in the papers concerning the fires in school buildings, and the risk incurred from the present mode of constructing the warming apparatus ought to receive immediate attention.

The agent of an insurance office told me that when he was requested to insure a new house, he replied that he would first examine the furnace by which warmth was procured. He afterwards assigned as a reason for refusing to issue a policy, that the furnace was so constructed as to render the building liable to destruction from the brick and stone work being so near to the wood work. The owner, who, like the majority, did not know about furnaces, told the insurance agent that the furnace was built by one who had erected a number in Providence, and, of course, had the reputation of being capable of suitably arranging a warming apparatus. The agent explained the defect, and told him that he had seen twelve furnaces constructed after the same pattern, and, of course, liable to burn the wood-work as soon as it becomes dry, which would require but a short time. The owner had his furnace altered as the agent suggested, and then the building was insured. How many school houses and dwellings are now exposed to be burned, will not be known; but surprise will be frequently expressed that this calamity should be so common, when, apparently, the work was so securely done.

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