would be most salutary, and tend to repress the increasing restlessness of our population.

It may be justifiable to console ourselves, on behalf of our country and of the world, by the reflection that the art education has been longest delayed, because it has been supposed to touch only that social development of a people last reached; and because, old as is the oldest country in comparative history, all are yet new in the work of understanding the complete needs of man.

SPECIAL EDUCATION.

CHAPTER VI.

INDUSTRIAL SCHOOLS.

SCHOOLS OF THE ARTS AND TRADES-RUSSIAN SCHOOL-FRENCH SCHOOLS, AND THE COURSES OF STUDY-GERMANY-SCHOOLS IN OTHER COUNTRIES OF EUROPE-AssoCIATION PHILOTECHNIQUE OF PARIS-MECHANICS' ASSOCIATIONS IN THE UNITED STATES-SCHOOLS OF APPLIED ART IN EUROPE-RAPID INCREASE IN GREAT BRITAIN-SCIENCE AND ART DEPARTMENT-SOUTH KENSINGTON MUSEUM-WURTEMBERG-NECESSITY FOR TEACHING THE PRACTICAL APPLICATIONS OF ART IN THE UNITED STATES.

It was natural that the important scientific discoveries which rapidly followed the introduction of the Baconian philosophy should have given origin to a class of schools specially designed to furnish instruction in the mathematical, physical, and natural sciences, whose potency for the advancement of the arts of civilization soon became unquestionable. Speculative philosophy, dogmatically asserting itself and promising grand results that never came, began, so soon as the foundations of science were laid, to lose its hold upon the best minds of the age; and not a few of the most culture came to see that scholasticism was not of itself sufficient to meet the practical needs of mankind, and seriously to question whether it was best to require every ambitious lover of knowledge to follow in the old beaten path, regardless of his purposes or his necessities.

One of the early fruits of the new philosophy was the establishment of the real schools as divergents of the gymnasia, some account of which has been given, Chapter IV. But the real schools were rather designed to fit a certain class of youth, presumed to be wanting either in ability or in inclination to pursue the classics, for the ordinary general duties and business of life. The idea that the engineer, the miner, the mechanic, and the farmer required, for the most successful practice of their several occupations, a training and study akin to, but very different from, the preparation which had for centuries been required of those who would practice the learned professions-this idea came later. But it did at last come, and in its train a great number and variety of schools of an entirely new class-schools scientific, schools technical and polytechnical, schools industrial and professional, institutions whose name already is legion, and yet whose number rapidly increases in all lands.

Hundreds of these schools were in some form represented in Classes 89 and 90 of the Exposition, and hence required attention. But if they

had not been represented, their vast importance to the world, and the interest awakened in them in all civilized countries, would demand for them a large share of consideration.

I.-SCHOOLS OF THE ARTS AND TRADES.

To the careful observer no feature of the Exposition was more instructive than the direct relation discoverable between the representative exhibits of a large class of industrial and technical schools, and the prod ucts of manufacture displayed in several departments, designed merely to illustrate the progress of industry. It was not the relation of harmonious development merely, but, as between the schools themselves and those industrial departments referred to, it was manifestly the relation of cause to effect. For nothing could be plainer than that in proportion as such schools had been established and fostered by a country, that country had made progress in those particular branches of manufacture for whose advancement they were originally established.

Thus, as early as the latter part of the last century, schools created for the purpose of furthering development of the arts began to spring up in many portions of France and Belgium, and in some other countriesschools for instruction in the arts of designing, engraving, coloring, dyeing, silk and ribbon weaving, lace-making; of the making of horological instruments of various kinds; stone-cutting and general carving; of manufacturing the most delicate patterns and elegant forms of glassware; of working the metals, both useful and precious, into nearly every variety of form, for the consumption of the most refined and cultivated nations-schools, likewise, of various grades for instruction in the principles and practice of the more complex and comprehensive arts of mining, engineering, agriculture, &c. To-day it is undeniable that, in nearly all the branches of industry named, in every one, I will venture to say, for improvement in which special educational effort has been made, those countries are the acknowledged leaders of all others.

These remarks are eminently true in their application to the influence of schools of design in which France, more than any other country, abounds, and from which, in the whole range of artistic manufactures, all the other nations have so long been borrowers.

And yet France affords scarcely a better illustration of the general remark above made than England, the clumsy attempts of whose workers in glass and fine pottery, as well as in the precious metals and in certain kinds of figured prints, silks, &c., even as late as the first exhibition, were less remarkable as competitive failures than has been her rapid progress in all those branches since that period; when, being fairly aroused to a realizing sense of the causes of the superiority of France in nearly all the finer arts of manufacture, the British government began in earnest to found and encourage the establishment of similar schools in various portions of the United Kingdom.

Of the number, distribution, and character of schools of lower grade

for the improvement of the arts and trades, I must content myself with the general statement that, in France and Belgium, where, as a class, they may be said to have originated; and in Switzerland, Holland, and all the German states, into which they spread, or in which they sprung up almost cotemporaneously, they are numbered in the aggregate by thousands-some of them extensive enough to accommodate pupils by the hundred, and exerting a very marked and important influence upon large districts of country. In the countries first named they occur in some form in nearly every large town; while in some of the larger cities they are even numbered by the dozen.

Many of the schools in question are for the instruction and practical training of youths-boys or girls, or both-in some single branch of manufacture. Many are, likewise, for the practical education of adults in those applications of mathematics, mechanics, and chemistry, a knowledge of which is essential to one or more kinds of industry. Others embrace a wider range of scientific study, and are open alike to both youth and adults above a minimum age.

As to support, some are maintained wholly by the government; others receive only a moderate amount of state aid; a large number-especially of such as are more strictly industrial, and are confined to individual arts—are private institutions, managed on the sole responsibility of their founders; while some of the most important and most flourishing, under the general title of apprentice schools-being designed to induct boys and girls between twelve and fifteen years into the best methods employed in various trades, at the same time that they are taught the principles that underlie those occupations, and thus, at the expiration of two or three years of study and labor combined, they are prepared to enter, with greater advantage, as regular apprentices into the practical study of their chosen pursuits-are established, directed, and supported by philanthropic societies.

Of the multitude of these primary technical schools at present found in all European countries, none are more interesting perhaps than those which have been established within the few past years in Belgium, as at Roulers, Ghent, Ath, Wacken, Courtray, Deerlyk, and many other points. From being foremost in the spinning and weaving of flax, (employing, it is said, no less than 220,000 spinners and 57,000 weavers as late as 1830,) Flanders was reduced, by the introduction into other countries of laborsaving machinery, which has characterized more recent times, to a condition of actual distress. Stimulated by the necessity to do something to rescue this branch of its industry, and at the same time ameliorate the condition of the poor working-people of Flanders devoted to this and other branches of industry, the government of Belgium conceived the idea of establishing, at certain points, industrial establishments in which, at the heads of the several departments, should be placed skilled and educated foremen, while the youths of their respective neighborhoods should be allured from the streets and the haunts of vice by pay

for

labor carefully performed under this wise and kindly supervision, and, at the same time, instructed by competent teachers each day, for one, two, or three hours, first in the rudiments of learning, and then, in connection with their work, in the scientific principles involved in their several trades.

By this means great numbers, who without stringent compulsory regulations would grow up in utter ignorance and enter into the devious paths of wickedness, are now being at once technically, intellectually, and morally trained for careers of usefulness; while, by means of the frequent conferences required of the heads of practical departments in the various schools of the same general district, for the discussion of methods and the diffusion of a knowledge of the latest improvements, much progress has also been made by the industry of the whole country. Schools for the technical education of girls, and even of adult females— of whom the number devoted to the many operations of spinning, weaving, lace-making, embroidering, &c., is so great in Belgium-have likewise been established within the past five years in many parts of this busy little kingdom.

Were I to attempt an account even of the more interesting examples of this class of schools, as found in the different countries, this single chapter would swell to a volume; for such interesting examples are almost as numerous as the manufacturing towns of Europe.

As a means of improving the social condition of individuals and populations, by affording the means of profitable employment to thousands who would otherwise suffer from want, they are hardly less interesting than as potent agencies for the advancement of a multitude of handicrafts, in the perfection of which the whole world is interested.

Schools for technical instruction established, directed, and sustained by voluntary associations on philanthropic grounds, found their most interesting illustrations at the Exposition in the contributions made by various institutions of France and Holland; among which, those located at Strasbourg, Mulhouse, and Amsterdam, possess peculiar interest as showing in a very satisfactory manner their ameliorating influence upon the industrial condition of localities.

Of schools of this class we have but few, if indeed any, in the United States. They have been an incalculable blessing in European countries; and although the character of the people and the condition of the arts are quite different here, it may, nevertheless, be well for the municipal authorities and benevolent persons of large means to consider whether numbers of the children now growing up in their midst in ignorance, pauperism, and crime, could not, through this double agency of training in the rudiments of education, and also in the processes of skilled labor, be both saved from ruin and made useful members of society.

Next in grade above this numerous class of what may be considered the elementary schools of industry, we have another class, still primary in their general character, and yet aiming at higher educational and