the better prepared are we to derive advantage from coming in contact with the knowledge of others. The more virtuous we are, and the better we understand moral and religious laws, the greater the benefit from daily conversations with others as affording us instruction or lessons in the art of virtue. So in like manner, the more healthy we and our families or schools are, the better we understand the laws of life and health and disease, the greater the advantages to be derived from daily conversations of greater or less length, with wise and experienced physicians.

But can we, or our children, or our pupils be more than healthy? I shall doubtless be asked. And why will you not ask, with the same propriety, whether we or they can be more than wise or more than virtuous or pious? The state of our bodies, indicated by the term health, is no more, at any time, at any age, or in any circumstances, a state of perfection, absolutely so, than the state of our minds and souls, as regards knowledge or excellence. All, all, so far as we know at present, is comparative. And paradoxical as the statement may seem, I have often made it, that in the present low state of humanity, most people are too ignorant to derive much benefit from knowledge, too imperfect to be much elevated by our efforts for their moral improvement; and too far from absolute health-if such a thing there beto be much benefited by our attempts to render them more healthy.

I should be glad, both as a parent and as a teacher, to converse an hour, every day, with the wisest and best physicians I could find, in regard to the best means of improving the physical condition of my children and pupils. I believe it would be time profitably spent ; and that the services of the physician would be such as I, for my own family, and the parents of my pupils on their behalf, could well afford to pay for. Whether one, who has studied the subjects of health and disease, nearly twenty years, needs instruction in these matters more than others, the reader will, of course judge for himself.

It is not enough, for example, to secure ourselves from actual pain and suffering, and the actual loss of time and money; nor is it enough that we preserve ourselves and our children from sickness, suffering, &c. from birth to the age of eighty or even one hundred; though this were in

deed to do much. It is not enough that we live, even a century, at the very line of exemption from disease and pain. There is a field beyond this, of whose existence few have ever yet dreamed. We do not know at present, as I have already intimated, to what extent human health, individual or collective, can be carried.

The old objection will, I know, be perpetually recurring to the minds of some; how can people, as parents and teachers, but especially as teachers, afford to pay physicians for the services you contemplate?

This question, though honestly and candidly asked, is not unlike the question, how can prevention be cheaper as well as better than cure? Every one knows, or may know that the taxes we pay for knowledge are more easily paid than those we pay for ignorance; and that the costs of vice and crime to the world are far greater than would be the cost of converting it to the love of God and man. Why then should not the taxes for preventing disease and promoting health and longevity be more easily borne than the taxes we now pay for neglecting the whole subject?

The truth is we have so long lived on, in the world, at this" poor dying rate," that we seem to regard pain and suffering and loss of time to ourselves, our friends and our attendants, with the bills of physicians, and dentists, and surgeons and apothecaries, as necessary evils. Accustomed, the healthiest of us, to be satisfied with a state of mere freedom from pain, we seem to be ignorant or at least to forget that there are beautiful fields, and ascents perhaps interminable, beyond us, which it is not only our interest, but our duty to traverse and climb, as long as life's journey can be made to continue. We have become so earthly, that we seem to have forgotten the heavenly.

To recur once more to the use of physicians in our schools. There is one point of view to which I beg leave, in closing my remarks, to invite the particular attention of the reader.

6. Were there no other motive to urge us on in this work of mercy it should be the consideration that it will greatly add to the immediate happpiness of our children. We wish them to acquire knowledge at school; all this is indeed very well. Knowledge is valuable; but it is chiefly valuable as a means of securing an end. That end is happiness; the

happiness of the pupils, and of the world around them through their instrumentality. Some of us are anxious for their improvement in morals. This is still more desirable. But who is as anxious to have his children improve in physical activity and vigor while at school, as in knowledge and moral excellence? Who is not satisfied if his children do not come home at night, at the end of the week, or at the end of the quarter, actually sick? Who looks as anxiously for physical, as for moral and intellectual progress ?

We are told of some German parents who measure the height and ascertain the weight of their children when they go to school, to see whether they gain or fall off during their attendance; and how much. Are they not in this respect as in many other matters pertaining to education greatly in advance of us! Are not moral and intellectual progress more valuable as a great fact in proportion to our physical attainments?

How great the work a physician might help us to do, in family and in school! I have said that the school physician need not enter into particulars. And yet it is difficult to separate the two provinces-the family and the school-especially the family and the infant, primary and common school. The latter is but a limb of the former; or at most a temporary substitute for it. It would be quite fortunate if the same physician could be attendant both in the family and in the school. The same children that require more heat, more exercise, &c. at home, usually require a continuance of the same treatment at the school room; in short the treatment of a school, not only as to generals but also in particulars, would be much modified, by a knowledge of the habits of the families respectively, from whence the pupils came; and especially by a knowledge of the diseases to which by inheritance they are specially predisposed.

It may be said by some that I require too much, so much as to discourage people; that if on the contrary, I only insisted that a medical man ought to be employed to visit each primary or common school once a month or once a quarter, and make a brief report, my remarks might perhaps be heard with favor. Now I do not hesitate to admit that much might be done by the monthly or even the quarterly visits of an ingenious and skilful and truly scientific physician; and I shall be glad of so much, if the public sentiment is not ready

to grant more. It is a maxim with me, however that what ought to be done can be done; and if I think the school physician ought to make more frequent visits than once a month, why should I not say so? May I not hope at the least, to awaken a few minds to the inquiry whether physicians to schools are or are not necessary? The bare discussion of such a question, especially in this journal would be productive of great, inevitable and permanent good.

For the Annals of Education.

ART. IV. LECTURES BEFORE THE AMERICAN INSTITUTE. The Lectures delivered before the American Institute of Instruction at Lowell, (Mass.) August, 1838. Boston: published by William D. Ticknor, 1839.

THE plan of the American Institute of Instruction was formed with great wisdom. It is an association of literary men, professional teachers, and the friends of education in every quarter of our country, combining the talent and availing itself of the experience of them all. As an association of teachers, it gives a unity to that scattered band, elevates them as far as an association can do it, to the digntyof a profession, and furnishes to each and all of them the encouragement of mutual sympathy and co-operation. The labors of the teacher are solitary. Few, even after all that has been said of the interest now taken in the training of the young, look in upon him in the hours of his daily occupation. The bustle of the exchange does not excite him, nor the solemn questions of the forum, nor the changeful caprices of the popular assembly. He toils in a seclusion which the murmur of applause, and the strife of opposition seldom enter. His work is slow in its processes and late in its results. Many an autumn shall have passed, before the plant he has trimmed and watered, puts forth its golden fruit, if it be not withered or stunted in its early growth. Pleasures indeed there are, which beguile his way of much of his weariness, but they are lonely like his toils. Oppressed by long months thus passed, he may come up to this anniversaof his fellows, and rejoice with the many who are like

ry

minded, in their wide and close companionship. He is no longer isolated. He does not sow the seed alone. He is one of a great company who are striving, each in his own separate domain, to rear our youth to the excellence of pure and perfect manhood. His mind kindles with a new conception of the dignity and worth of the profession he has chosen, and he returns from the greetings of the brotherhood to his once solitary labors, with fresh and strengthened hope. The Institute has now entered upon the tenth year of its existence. The results of its activity in the years now passed, though silent and unobtrusive, have been beneficent and lasting. It was one of the early organizations which assumed for its scope and end, the great interests of educa tion. Meanwhile, hundreds of institutions aiming at the same end, local and limited, or running on some one of the innumerable lines which converge to the same distant point, have started into being, around it; and its impulsive power has been felt in them all, as well as in the thousands of individual hearts that have been gladdened by its meetings or encouraged by its voice. In addition to all other means of influence, and not the least among them, it has published an annual volume of transactions, embodying the richest lessons of experience, and the maturest advice of wisdom. We have before us the ninth volume, consisting of the lectures delivered at the last annual meeting, which abounds with suggestions of great practical value to the teacher, and to the friend of education. It is entitled to the especial consideration of all such, for its suggestions are from men practised in teaching, and who have tested by experiment the value of their methods, or from strong minded philanthropists who have reflected with enthusiasm, and yet calmly, upon the great principles which form the character and the destiny of men, and of nations.

The lectures in this volume are eight in number. 1. ON THE LITERARY RESPONSIBILITY OF TEACHERS, by Charles White. 2. ON THE HEAD AND THE HEART, OR, THE RELATIVE IMPORTANCE OF INTELLECTUAL AND MORAL CULTURE, by Elisha Bartlett. 3. On the Practicability and Expediency of introducing Vocal Music, as a branch of Education into our Common Schools, by Joseph Harrington, Jr. 4. On Model Schools, by Thomas D. James. 5. Observations on the School System of Connecticut, by