THE NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL MEETINGS AT INDIANAPOLIS.

The National Association of School Superintendents was called to order on Monday, Aug. 13th, by the President, B. G. Northrop, Agent of the Mass. Board of Education. After the introductory exercises, papers were read by Señor Sarmiento, Minister of the Argentine Republic, and J. W. Bulkley, Superintendent of Schools in Brooklyn.

J. W. Bulkley, Superintendent of Schools in Brooklyn, read a paper " on Cost per Capita of Education in the different States," which was discussed at length. The same subject was referred for further examination to E. E. White, of Ohio, J. W. Bulkley, and W. D. Henkle as a Committee, to report next year the results of further investigation.

The evening was occupied with interesting reports from the different States represented, and was an occasion of much interest.

A very able paper on a National Bureau of Education was read on Tuesday morning by Hon. E. E. White, of Ohio, which was discussed, and resolutions in its favor adopted.

The Report of the Committee on "Plan of Collecting Uniform Statistics in order to compare the School Statistics of the different States" was also presented by Mr. White, and a spirited discussion followed.

The School Superintendents in all the States were requested by a unanimous vote to collect carefully prepared statistics as to the relation of Education to, 1. Material prosperity and productiveness of Labor - 2, to Crime-3, to Insanity, A Committee of five was appointed to collate and compare these reports of the several States and publish them in a condensed form.

The following resolution was unanimously passed: :- That it is the opinion of the National Association of School Superintendents, that Free High Schools form an essential part of each State School system.

Our limits forbid even a sketch of the remaining proceedings of this important Association. Hon. E. E. White, of Ohio, was chosen President for the next year.

STATE TEACHERS INSTITUTES are appointed to be held as follows:

The NATIONAL TEACHERS' ASSOCIATION met on Wednesday morning, and was cordially welcomed by Governor Morton, to whom the President, J. P. Wickersham, of Pa., happily responded.

A paper was then read by Prof. W. R. White, of West Virginia, upon Educational needs of Border States."

"The

Mr. Stevenson, of Kentucky, followed in a short account of the common school system of that State.

In the Afternoon Session a discussion was held in regard to "What proportion of time should the young spend in school up to the age of sixteen ?”

The Evening Session was occupied by the annual address of President Wickersham on " American Education for American people."

The exercises on Thursday morning were introduced by Prof. O. Hosford, Supt. of Schools of Michigan, on "The Relations of the National Government to Education." The paper strongly opposed the plan of compulsory attendance upon schools. A discussion followed.

The topic of discussion for the afternoon was the question, "What Service can this Association render in the work of establishing Free Schools in the States lately in rebellion? Ought an Agent of the Association be appointed to visit the South, and assist in the organization of Free School Systems?"

After a spirited discussion, the following resolution was adopted:

Resolved, That a committee of five be appointed, with power to add other members, to correspond with Southern educational men, with a view of enlisting their talents and energies in the establishment of Free Schools throughout the South, and to collect and distribute among these men Reports and other public documents pertaining to Education, and calculated to further their object.

The evening was occupied with a lecture by Rev. Jesse H. Jones, the subject being "The Psychology of St. Paul, being a new interpretation of the Flesh and Spirit."

On Friday morning a paper was read by President Edwards, of Illinois, prepared by Professor Atkinson, of Mass, upon "The Amount of Classics which should be taught in our Schools."

The paper led to a lively discussion, and a committee was appointed to report next year upon the subject, consisting of Dr. Andrews, of Ohio; Dr. Benton, of Indiana; and Dr. Johnson, of Carlisle, Pennsylvania.

In the afternoon the question, "What branches should be studied in our ungraded Common Schools?' was discussed.

J. M. Gregory, President of Kalamazoo College, Michigan, was chosen President for the next year. The Vice-Presidents from the Atlantic States are Wickersham, of Pa.; Northrop, of Mass.; and Bulkley, of N. Y. The Counsellors from these States are Hagar, of Mass.; Valentine, of N. Y.; Porter of Pa.; Pierce, of N. J.; and Chaney, of Md.

INTELLIGENCE.

S. H. BRACKETT, having resigned his situation as Principal of Stoneham High School, has been elected Sub-master of the High School in Woburn.

EDWIN B. ADAMS, recently of Plattsburg, N. Y., and ALBERT HALE, of the Newburyport High School, have been appointed ushers in the Boston High School.

J. W. CHADWICK and CHARLES G. G. PAINE have received similar appointments in the Boston Latin School. Messrs. Adams and Paine are graduates of Amberst College, Class of '61.

J. L. EWELL, of Rowley, and a graduate of Yale, has been invited to a Professorship in Washington University, St. Louis.

MOSES T. BROWN, the accomplished elocutionist, has received the appointment of Prof. of Elocution in Tufts College. His services are in request, and we learn that he has been secured to teach Elocution in the schools of several of our suburban cities.

LEANDER WATERMAN, who has had charge of the Freedman Schools of Baltimore, has taken charge of the Grammar School in West Newton, from which Mr. Chase has been called to the Washington School, Roxbury.

Miss C. A. COMSTOCK, of the Bridgewater Normal School, has been called to the Connecticut Normal School, salary, $1,000. Is Massachusetts to allow her best teachers to be tempted away by higher salaries ?

E. H. BARLOW, of the Class of '66, Amherst College, has been called to Bridgewater. G. H. MARTIN returns again to this school.

We are not surprised that our Normal Schools are full to overflowing, when such teachers are selected to assist our accomplished Principals.

N. B. Teachers interested in this department, will please send items to
G. B. PUTNAM, Franklin School, Boston.

BOOK NOTICES.

OUR WORLD; or First Lessons in Geography for Children. By Mary L. Hall. Small 4to, pp. 116. Boston: S. F. Nichols.

School-books, as we find them at present, may be divided into three classes. First there are the abridgments. A scholar or man of science writes a learned treatise for learned men which leaves nothing to be desired in the department of which it treats, so far as mature scholars are concerned, and he is forthwith invited to make "an abridgment of it for schools," and is offered a handsome remuneration by publishers who depend upon his reputation to sell the book. This he accordingly does, and a smaller work is produced nominally for young persons. But as our learned man, engrossed as he is with his science, and quite unskilled in the art of elementary teaching, is profoundly ignorant of the right method of addressing the young, his small book is apt to be dry in proportion to its condensation, a mere conspectus, a table of contents of the larger treatise, and about as well adapted to the youthful comprehension as grandfather's coat taken in and made shorter is adapted to youthful wear. Still such books have the value which is imposed upon them by the accuracy and thorough knowledge of their authors, and in the hands of a judicious teacher who knows how to use them as a text for oral instruction, and to mould them and expand them and give life to their carefully collected knowledge they may serve an excellent purpose.

A second class of school-books are what may be called job-work. A book pub

lisher who has organized a large advertising machinery wishes to invest a sum of money in a book or set of books on which to employ it. He accordingly hires printers to print, binders to bind, engravers to illustrate, and a compiler to make a school-book, and the latter equipped with the needed apparatus of encyclopædias and dictionaries, sets about his part of the task in much the same spirit as the other mechanics engaged in the undertaking. And the result is often what might have been expected, a product of scissors and paste which may impose upon school committees, but which is a rock of offence to a true teacher. We have known a publisher, an honorable man, desirous of turning out good work, very thankfully receive and profit by a copy of such a book, in which a swarm of blunders had been corrected on the margin by a teacher who understood his business. We do not reproach publishers with the production of such poor performances. We believe they almost always desire to offer a good article, but while able writers disdain, and able teachers have no time to produce good school-books they must often be left to the tender mercies of inefficient compilers.

A third, and the rarest class of school-books, are those written for children by teachers of genius who understand the nature of children's minds—and in this rare class we reckon the little book which stands at the head of our notice. It is a charming book, which will increase and not deaden, as most school-books do, the interest of children in a study which ought to be one of inexhaustible fascination. It is adapted to a child's ways of thought, takes up a great subject at the right end, and does not overwhelm the infant mind with thoughts too great or too abstruse for its comprehension. It is valuable for what it contains and still more as furnishing an admirable model which primary teachers of sufficient tact and culture can follow out indefinitely. We cordially endorse the recommendations of these wise educators, Dr. Geo. B. Emerson, Mrs. Horace Mann, and Miss E. P. Peabody, and the commendation bestowed on it by that most competent judge, our contributor, A. B. W., in our May No.

GUYOT'S GEOGRAPHICAL SERIES: Primary. New York: Scribner & Co. Small 4to, pp. 118.

A little lady, to whom, as the most proper judge, we submitted this and the preceding volume, and who had been intently perusing both, gave this as her verdict: "They are both very nice, but I like the little one (Miss Hall's) the best." Valeat quantum. Both must be put to the test of the class-room as well as of private perusal. Let us here notice that in this book the learning of the man of Science has been combined with the rare skill of a practical teacher. The book is written under the superintendence of Prof. GUYOT, by Mrs. MARY H. SMITH, of the Normal and Training School of Oswego, and is the first of a series which have long been in preparation by the eminent geographer first named, to accompany his most admirable series of wall-maps, which latter, we think, have been the greatest boon to the teacher of geography in this country that has been bestowed in this generation.

The book is very handsomely illustrated with maps and wood-cuts, and we recommend it, as well as the other, to the attention of all primary teachers.

THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY FOR SEPTEMBER. University Reform: An Address to the Alumni of Harvard College, at their Triennial Festival, July 19, 1866. We print in another part of this number the remarks of the venerable ex-president of Harvard on the same occasion as the one on which this admirable address was delivered. We wish we had room to transfer it bodily to our columns, or we should wish to if we did not hope that all our readers are also readers of the Atlantic. For the benefit of our Western brethren who think us so rash in our attacks on the present style of classical education, we extract the following passage:

"The question has been newly agitated in these days, whether knowledge of Greek and Latin is a necessary part of polite education, and whether it should constitute one of the requirements of the academic course. It has seemed to me, that those who take the affirmative in this discussion give undue weight to the literary argument, and not enough to the glossological. The literary argument fails to establish the supreme importance of a knowledge of these languages as a part of polite education. The place which the Greek and Latin authors have come to occupy in the estimation of European scholars is due, not entirely to their intrinsic merits, great as those merits unquestionably are, but in part to traditional prepossessions. When after a millennial occultation the classics, and especially with the fall of the Palæologi, the Greek classics burst upon Western Europe, there was no literature with which to compare them. The Jewish Scriptures were not regarded as literature by readers of the Vulgate. Dante, it is true, had given to the world his immortal vision, and Boccaccio, its first expounder, had shown the capabilities of Italian prose. But the light of Florentine culture was even for Italy a partial illumination. On the whole, we may say that modern literature did not exist, and the Oriental had not yet come to light. What wonder that the classics were received with boundless enthusiasm! It was through the influence of that enthusiasm that the study of Greek was introduced into schools and universities with the close of the fifteenth century. It was through that influence that Latin, still a living language in the clerical world, was perpetuated, instead of becoming an obsolete ecclesiasticism. The language of Livy and Ovid derived fresh impulse from the reappearing stars of secular Rome.

It is in vain to deny that those literatures have lost something of the relative value they once possessed, and which made it a literary necessity to study Greek and Latin for their sakes. The literary necessity is, in a measure, superseded by translations, which, though they may fail to communicate the aroma and the verbal felicities of the original, reproduce its form and substance. It is furthermore superseded by the rise of new literatures, and by introduction to those of other and elder lands. The Greeks were masters of literary form, but other nations have surpassed them in some particulars. There is but one Iliad, and one Odyssea; but also there is but one Job, but onę Sakoontalà, but one HafizNameh, but one Gulistan, but one Divina Commedia, but one Don Quixote, but one Faust. If the argument for the study of Greek and Latin is grounded on the value of the literary treasures contained in those tongues, the same argument applies to the Hebrew, to the Sanscrit, to the Persian, to say nothing of the modern languages, to which the College assigns a subordinate place.

But, above all, the literary importance of Greek and Latin for the British and American scholar is greatly qualified by the richness and superiority of the English literature which has come into being since the Græcomania of the time of the Tudors, when court ladies of a morning, by way of amusement, read Plato's Dialogues in the original. If literary edification is the object intended in the study of those languages, that end is more easily and more effectually accomplished by a thorough acquaintance with English literature, than by the very imperfect knowledge which college exercises give of the classics. Tugging at