The Magazines.

NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW-FEBRUARY.-Contents: Corporations, their Employés, and the Public, Carl Schurz; Henry Vaughan, Silurist, Principal J. C. Shairp; John Brown's Place in History, Senator J. J. Ingalls; Must the Classics Go? Prof. And. F. West; Race Progress in the United States, J. R. Tucker, M. C.; Defects of the Public School System, Rev. M. J. Savage; Rival Systems of Heating, Dr. A. N. Bell and Prof. W. P. Trowbridge.

THE AMERICAN NATURALIST-FERRUARY.-Contents: An Account of the War Customs of the Osages, illustrated; Notes on Some Apparently Undescribed Infusoria from Putrid Waters; Colonial Organisms, Charles Morris; Review of the Progress of North American Batrachology in the Years 1880-83; Wood Notes and Nest Hunting; Editor's Table; Recent Literature; General Notes; Geography and Travels; Geology and Palæontology, Mineralogy, Botany, Entomology, Zoology, Physiology, Psychology, Anthropology, Microscopy; Scientific News; Proceedings of Scientific Societies.

OUR LITTLE ONES AND THE NURSERY-FEBRUARY.-Fully up to its high standard of child-literature. THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY-FERRUARY.-Contents: In War Time, III., IV., S. Weir Mitchell; A Trio for Twelfth Night, H. Bernard Carpenter; Voices of Power, O. B Frothingham; A Roman Singer, XV., XVI, F. Marion Crawford; The Vagabonds and Criminals of India, Elizabeth Robins; Newport, XVIII, XIX., George Parsons Lathrop; A Memory, A. A. Dayton; En Province, VI.. Henry James; To-Day, Helen Gray Cone; In Madeira Place, C. H. White; A Visit to South Carolina in 1860, Edward G. Mason; Reminiscences of Christ's Hospital, J. M. Hillyar; Foreshadowings, Julia C. R. Dorr; The Confederate Cruisers; Mr. Trollope's Latest Character: Great Britain and the United States; Mr. Crawford's To Leeward; The History of Sculpture; The Contributor's Club; Books of the Month.

LIPPINCOTT'S MAGAZINE-FEBRUARY.-Contents: Old Germantown, with illustrations from drawings by Joseph Pennell; French Chateau Life, Past and Present, by Annie Hampton Brewster; A Mental Masquerade, a story, by Esther Warren; An Indian Cattle-Town, by Alfred M. Williams; The Great Jigtown Failure, a story, by C. F. Johnson; A Pilgrimage to Sesenheim, by Horatio S. White; On a Glass Roof, Winter Fishing, by Rowland E. Robinson; Explained, a story, by Alice Brown; Healthy Homes, II, Surroundings, by Felix L. Oswald. Also a charming serial story entitled Sebia's Tangled Web, by Lizzie W. Champney. Other short stories, poems, and articles of interest upon current topics.

ST. NICHOLAS-FEBRUARY.-Contents: Frontispiece, "A Midwinter Night"; Tabby's Table-Cloth, second spinning-wheel story, Louisa M. Alcott; Drifting, poem, two illustrations; To My Valentine, Aged One, verses; Our Coasting Brigade, picture; Stories of Art and Artists, four illustrations, Clara Erskine Clement; Flowers of Winter, a valentine; Phaeton, poem, illustrated; Griselda's New Year's Reception, four illustrations; Winter Fun, chapters III. and IV.; Pigmy Trees and Miniature Landscapes, two illustrations; T e Brownies on Skates, verses, three illustrations; The Land of Fire, chapters VIII-XI., three illustrations, Mayne Reid; Not Fear, Jingle, illustrated; An Engraver on Wheels, four illustrations; The Cricket's Violin, poem; Historic Boys, Marcus of Rome, the Boy Magistrate, three illustrations; Nine Years Old, poem, illustrated; The St. Nicholas Almanac, two illustrations; For Very Little Folk. My Dolls, illustrated from a photograph; Jack-in-the-Pulpit.

THE MIDWINTER CENTURY.-Many noted names lend weight and importance to the table of contents of the February Century, either as subjects or as contributors to the number. In the frontispiece is given one of Rembrandt's most effective paintings.

Signor Salvini contributes his "Impressions of Shakspeare's Lear'"-a paper which shows how deeply the actor has studied the poet and with what thought and elevation of purpose he approaches the Shaksperean drama.

The two articles on Dante are well calculated to extend the interest in his genius.

Keats is also illustrated in a remarkable way by a full-page engraving of his life-mask-probably the most expressive portrait of the poet that has ever been published. Edmund C. Stedman contributes a brief essay on Keats.

The Bric-a-Brac " department has the benefit of a humorous sonnet by Robert Browning and of five short poems by Austin Dobson, which were inscribed in copies of his books presented to American friends

George W. Cable's polemic against "The Convict Lease System in the Southern States "-read at the Louisville Convention in the interest of prison reform-is here brought to the notice of the whole country, From Mr. Cable we have, besides, the fourth part of his serial story," Dr. Sevier." The other fiction of the number is the third part of Robert Grant's "An Average Man," and a short story, "A First Love Letter."

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY FOR FEBRUARY.-Contents: The New Toryism, by Herbert Spencer College Athletics (I.), by Professor E. L. Richards; The Remedies of Nature-Nervous Maladies, by Felix L. Oswald, M. D.; Dangerous Kerosene, by Professor J. T. Stoddard (illustrated); The Morality of Happiness, by Thomas Foster; The Aurora Borealis; Defences of the Lesser Animals; The Comet of 1812 and 1883, by Professor D. Kirkwood; How we Sneeze, Laugh, Stammer and Sigh; The Chemistry of Cookery; Underground Wires; An Overdose of Hasheesh; The Causes of Earthquakes; Last Wills and Testaments; Fifty Years of Mechanical Engineering; A Prehistoric Water System; Working Capacity of Unshod Horses (illustrated); House-Building in the East; Sketch of Sir Charles William Siemens, with portrait.

OFFICIAL DEPARTMENT.

R. R. FARR, Superintendent Public Instruction, Editor.

[The Journal is sent to every County Superintendent and District Clerk, and must be carefully preserved by them as public property and transmitted to their successors in office.]

CONFERENCE OF SUPERINTENDENTS.-The Legislature is still in session. I am therefore unable to state the date of the meeting.

Due notice of the time, with programme of proceeding, will be given, and I trust that all Superintendents will be present, as many things of interest to public education will be considered.

IN VIEW of the fact that national aid to public education is attracting unusual attention, we surrender the most of our space to the able address on "National Peril and Remedy" delivered by Hon. J. L. M. Curry, the agent of the Peabody Educational Fund, before the InterState Education Convention held at Louisville, Ky., last year, and invite a careful perusal by all who are interested in the subject of the startling facts it contains.

We will publish in the next JOURNAL an address on the same subject delivered by the same able gentleman before the House Committee on Education in Washington:

NATIONAL PERIL AND REMEDY.

It is a fact of some interest that this Inter-State Educational Convention meets not very far from the centre of population of the United States. It must be the earnest desire of all here assembled that influences for good may be set in motion, which shall spread to the extreme limits of the Union.

Another auspicious circumstance is that we meet in Kentucky. In 1811, Stein, the great German statesman, the forerunner of Bismark, said, while meditating a plan of emigration to America: "To enjoy rest and independence it would be best to settle in Kentucky; there one would find a splendid climate and soil, glorious rivers, rest and security for a century, not to mention a multitude of Germans; the capital of Kentucky is called Frankfurt." Seventy-two years ago the great German, with his prescience, did not dream of what our

eyes see to-day. In the light of subsequent events America would have presented other attractions than gifts of nature, and furnished themes for profounder contemplation, in her rapid growth of population, increasing 12,000,000 in ten years, in her enormous productive industries, in her fabulous applications of science, in her startling powers of recuperation, in her complex governments, in her vast and unparalleled agencies for education. For crushed and Bonaparteridden Germany he saw clearly that her only hope was in education, and the general education, secured to the people, reversed, in the wars against Austria and France, the abasement of the Napoleonic period. Frederick William, after the bitter humiliation which Prussia suffered, said: “Though territory, power and prestige be lost, they can be regained by acquiring intellectual and moral power." It is the prime business and duty of each generation to educate the next. No legislation is more important than that which pertains to universal education of American citizens. In the convention which framed the Constitution, Wilson, the most learned civilian of the body, said: "Property is not the sole nor primary end of government and of society; the improvement of the human mind is the most noble object.' President Garfield said: "Next in importance to freedom and justice is popular education, without which neither justice nor freedom can be permanently maintained."

This Convention emphasizes the importance of education by giving especial prominence to the subject of aid from the General Government. Federal aid is reducible to a few very simple propositions, each of which is capable of indefinite illustration and argument.

1. The basis of free institutions is the intelligence and integrity of the citizens. This foundation is not simply indispensable to good government, but to the permanence and success of our Republic. Washington, in his farewell address, said: "In proportion as the structure of a government gives force to public opinion, it is essential that public opinion should be enlightened." Madison said: "It is universally admitted that a well instructed people alone can be permanently a free people." All our wisest patriots confirm the declarations of these two men, who were most influential in bringing about the Union and framing the Constitution. The "Democratic ideal is that the many shall govern themselves." Self-government by the many is impossible, if the many be ignorant. They become dupes and slaves of the crafty few. The best government is that which governs least. The good and enlightened are a law unto themselves. "The maximum of education," says a profound thinker in Georgia,

"is the minimum of government." The minimum of education is the maximum of restraint, interference, coercion. In a popular government an educated people is the best constitution. The more universally the people are educated, the greater the liberty which can be allowed. "The world is governed too much," is an old adage. The best limitation of government is right education. It secures a better selection of rulers, better watchfulness of agents, and is the best check on oppression, on corruption, on unwise and class legislation. Ignorance and despotism are always in partnership.

General intelligence reduces the need of harsh and external government, makes protection of person and property easier, surer, and more economical, gives readier mastery over narrowness and prejudice, the fruitful source of so much legislative wrong, and substitutes the teacher for the sheriff, the work-shop for the poor-house, the school-house for the prison. "For every pound you save in education," said Macaully, "you will spend five in persecution, in prisons, in penal settlements."

2. Universal education, even approximately, is impossible except through governmental direction and public revenues. "The best educated communities on the globe are those where governmental direction, in matters of education, is most constant and careful." There is no instance of an unenligthened people becoming cultured by spontaneous efforts, or of general education through private or denominational agencies. Italy, Spain and Austria show the inadequacy or insufficiency of parochial or sectarian schools. Prior to the war the wealth of the people of the South was greater per capita, slaves being excluded from the enumeration, and pauperism was less, than in any country in the world. Flourishing academies and colleges existed, superior advantages for the elect few, both men and women, abounded; but there was no adequate provision for universal education, and of consequence there was deplorable illiteracy among the white people.

The census of 1860 showed in South Carolina 15,000 adult native whites who could not read; in Georgia, 43,000; in Alabama 37,000; in Mississippi, 15,000; in North Carolina, 68,000; in Virginia, 72,000; in Tennessee, 67,000; in Kentucky, 63,000; in Missouri, 50,000. Every intelligent Southern man knows that these figures largely under-estimate the illiteracy. Governor Campbell, of Virginia, in his message in 1839, stated that "almost one-quarter part of the men applying for marriage licenses were unable to write their names."

Primarily it is the duty of local communities and of States, by local

and general taxation, to furnish education for all youth. The education of the children of a State is properly a burden on property, and is the cheapest defence of the property and the lives of citizens. Industrial success, productive industry, accumulation of capital, remunerative wages, national independence, national well-being, cannot be separated from general education. In the United States there is an annual expenditure of about $80,000,000 for public schools. In the late slave States there is a school enrollment of over 3,000,000 in a school population of about 6,000,000, and for the education of those enrolled these States expended over $13,000,000. These dry figures mark a revolution of which few realize the import and extent. Every Southern State has now a system of public schools. The same educational rights and privileges are granted to both races. School money is distributed without discrimination betwixt African and Caucasian. Right manfully, heroically, did the South undertake the work of rehabilitation and adjustment to new environments. The history of our country, fertile in great deeds, presents few spectacles of civic virtue, of self-sacrificing and patient courage, grander and sublimer. A thoughtful and observing New Englander says: "No similar class of people in the old or the new world has accomplished so much, in a time so short, against obstacles so formidable." Upon "the slough of financial wreck and absolute poverty," amid the untold harassments and horrors of reconstruction, with irritations that no stranger can conceive of, the school systems were erected. Most commendable progress has been made in legalizing and popularizing a new system, establishing schools, building and beautifying schoolhouses, improving methods of teaching, and in training teachers.

Despite these patriotic efforts illiteracy abounds fearfully. Of the school population of the South 3,000,000 are not in school. The whites of educational age, under nineteen, not enrolled, number 1,741,339; the colored, 1,038,026. Nearly one-half of the white children, and more than one-half of the colored, are growing up without educational advantages.

3. The resources of the South are wholly inadequate to meet the heavy burden which is upon her. In her present financial condition, universal education, without Federal aid, is distant-is impossible. In the most advanced and prosperous countries schools and their management are not upon a satisfactory basis. Governor Butler is reported as saying that even in Massachusetts 92 per cent. of the children receive no education after they attain the age of fifteen years. On an average, our people do not get more than thirty