it in the city of Washington, he would go back to the old system at once.

Mr. ADAMS, of Newark, inquired if Mr. Richards' experience with the mixed school was in a city, and he replied that it was in the vicinity of Troy and Albany, and his school was composed in part of youth from those cities.

Mr. BULKLEY, Superintendent of Schools in Brooklyn, N. Y., said he had had experience in both kinds of schools, in country and in city; and he was decidedly in favor of mixed schools. In Brooklyn, a portion of them are so, but some are not. He thought many of the evils supposed to exist in mixed schools were imaginary. He believed it practicable to carry out the plan of mixed schools throughout Brooklyn, and from year to year this practice was becoming more and more common. In New York the practice is the other way.

The family is the beau ideal of a good school. The habits and manners will be better formed, and more suited to the relations of after life when the sexes are educated together. Mind will be more symmetrically developed. The boy will be refined, and the extreme prudery of the girl will be removed. Under proper influences, he had no doubt that in every way the education of both would be more valuable when educated together than when educated in separate schools.

EVENING SESSION.

The Institute met at eight o'clock.

Adjourned.

The chair was

occupied by Gideon F. Thayer Esq., of Boston.

According to previous arrangement, Hon. Daniel Clark, of Manchester, by request of the President, addressed the Institute.

He spoke with great earnestness and eloquence, urging,

more especially, the importance of Common Schools; but at the same time claiming a very high and important place for High Schools and Academies. What an amount of good had been done by the Academy at Exeter, where were educated the massive and intellectual Webster, the polished and graceful Everett, a Cushing and a Plummer, and hosts of others, the stars of New England.

The Common School has its sphere too. It is there peculiarly that self-reliance is taught. There the son of the rich man learns that though better fed and clothed than the son of the poor man, he is no better scholar. Thus is the Common School fitted to make one humble and to encourage the other. The poor boy feels that he can go to the free school as well as the son of the rich, and he can learn as well, and may hope to rise to distinction as well as he. Said Mr. C., if it were not invidious, I would like to call your attention to what this nation witnessed a few weeks ago. Shall I do it? And will no one think I allude to political matter, though it took place in the councils of the nation? It furnished one of the finest examples that the nation ever saw, how the poor man's son, coming up from a public school, from the mechanic's shop, from his profession, called to the councils of Massachusetts, and from the councils of the State to the councils of the nation; and then when put side by side on the track with a man highly educated, and who had his thousands and thousands of dollars, and had been lulled in the lap of luxury, won his way to the chair of the House of Representatives.

The importance of Public Schools in fitting children to meet the exposures of after life was dwelt upon, and the necessity of proper training and influence at home to guide the child while exposed to the influences of the school was shown. It is far better that the child should

have to meet some of these exposures while under the guidance of the parent than not till afterwards, when he or she will be in danger of falling, and perhaps the more likely to fall from the fact that the new temptation is presented in an unexpected guise, and when there are no influences to counteract it.

The influence of the Common School in making our whole population homogeneous was also illustrated, and regarded as important. In closing, Mr. Clark said: In my opinion no profession holds a rank in community with that of the instructor of youth. You admire the statesman, and you admire the law-maker. You admire the professional man, the lawyer, the clergyman, the physician. You are they who made them. You admire the sculptor and the architect. Michael Angelo will live forever for the various creations he wrought. How much short of him will be he who educated Webster and his compeers? You admire the painters, Raphael and Titian ; but you paint on a material that will never allow the colors to fade, through all the ages of eternity. Perhaps there is some lady here who toils in the Primary School. You go to your task in the morning and you return fatigued, perplexed; you are tired and fainting; you think that it is a paltry business to be teaching these little ones, in your vexation. But remember that every one of these little ones is a harp of a thousand strings, and you are tuning it to join the symphonies above. You pass through the street or are in a brilliant party or in a ball room, and you wear, or see on another lady, a beautiful gem. Far away in Geneva, or in some town in France, sits the lapidary who wrought and polished that beautiful gem from the rough unshapen mass. You are the lapidary, at work on gems which shall be worn in crowns above.

After Mr. Clark's address, in accordance with the plan

of the Committee who had arranged for the evening session, each gentleman called upon by the President was expected to make a short address.

WILLIAM D. SWAN, Esq., of Boston, was then called upon as one of the four original founders of the Institute who were now present. He spoke of the great changes that had taken place in the cause of education since the foundation of the Institute, a great deal of which he believed to be the result of its action. At the time the Institute was organized there was no Free School system known in any of the States west of the Hudson River. Now, we can scarcely keep pace with the newer States. There are now upwards of 700,000 children in the Public Schools of New York; in Ohio there are more than 600,000. Referring to his own experience as a teacher, he said that he first began to teach in Dorchester with a salary of $350 a year, and thought that a great salary. Now the seven teachers in that town have each a thousand 'dollars a year. The people are ready to make any necessary sacrifice for schools, he believed, if the want is properly shown and made to appear.

Mr. BATCHELDER, of Salem, spoke of the manner in which our public schools are to be sustained. He plead for an effort to secure appropriations from the public lands of the United States for that purpose.

D. B. HAGAR, Esq., spoke of the encouragement that teachers have in their work, compared with what once existed. As an illustration of the estimation in which, in one place at least, they were held, he said that a teacher, some years since, on going to a new field of labor, and to the house selected for a boarding place, was met at the door by the good lady, and having introduced himself as "the schoolmaster," was greeted with the response, “Is

it possible you are the schoolmaster? Why, you look like a gentleman!" Now, so far as his observation extended, a gentleman and a schoolmaster are not regarded as entirely incompatible.

NATHAN HEDGES, of Newark, N. J., spoke of the great distance he had come to be present at this meeting, as it was his habit to be present always at the meetings of the Institute, and as he intended it should be, so long as he had strength to come. He looked forward from one year to another to those meetings, as a child does to his holidays. It was his joy, when he had toiled through the ten or eleven months of a year, to think that in August he could come to Manchester, or Providence, or Springfield, to meet those laborers, who, like himself, have been standing in their lot in the school-room, and have been trying to make the rising generation wiser and better. They would not probably obtain their recompense here. But he did not care for that.

Mr. Hedges particularly addressed the female teachers, urging them to perseverance and faithfulness; and in this connection he spoke of the success he had witnessed in some schools taught by females. He had never seen so good an examination in the English Language in any school as in one taught by a female, the pupils being all females. He had received many good hints at this meeting, he said, and should go home to adopt them. They all ought to return to their work prepared to labor in season and out of season for the good of their pupils, and to set them an example which should be an embodiment of the principles derived from the word of God, that book which the Institute had just shown, they would never consent to have treated with contempt.

Mr. WETHERELL spoke of the importance of sustaining