Legislature, will see to it that much of our defective legislation is supplied by that which will create and sustain a popular interest in the subject, lead to the appointment of faithful officers, assign to each class of offices appropriate duties, subject all appropriations of school money to severe scrutiny, provide for the training and adequate compensation of good teachers, and the employment of such teachers in schools of different grades. But let us not deceive ourselves. Five thousand dollars will not make adequate provision for the training of teachers As one of those who may be intrusted with its expenditure, I should not advise its appropriation at this time, to the establishment of a Normal School. This sum should be so expended as to reach, if practicable, every teacher in the state. The teachers should be induced to come together for a week, or a month, and attend a course of instruction on the best methods of school teaching and government. They should profit by the lectures and practical hints of experienced teachers. They should have access to, and be induced to purchase and read good books on the theory and practice of teaching. They should be induced to form associations for mutual improvement, the advancement of their common profession, and the general improvement of education, and the schools of the state. They are the natural guardians of this great interest at least they are the cooperators with parents in this work of educating the rising generation, to take the place of that which is passing off the stage. They are the chosen priesthood of education-they must bear the ark on their shoulders The appropriation thus applied, so as to improve the teachers now in the schools, and create in them a thirst for something higher and better than can be given in any temporary course of instruction, will lead to the establishment of an institution for the professional education and training of teachers, the great agency by which the cause of education is to be carried upward and onward in this state. Though the prospect is dark enough, I think I can see the dawning of a better day, on the mountain tops, and the youngest members of this house, if they live to reach the age of the oldest, will see a change pass over the public mind, and over public action, not only in respect to the professional education of teachers, but the whole subject of common schools. Old, dilapidated, inconvenient school-houses will give place to new, attractive, and commodious structures. Young children will be placed universally under the care of accomplished female teachers; female teachers will be employed in every grade of schools as assistants, and in most of our country districts, as sole principals: a school of a higher order' than the district school will receive the older boys and girls, not only of a district, but of a society, and the common school will no longer be regarded as common, because it is cheap, inferior, and attended only by the poor, and those who are indifferent to the education of their children, but common as the light and the air, because its blessings are open to all, and enjoyed by all. The passage of this resolution will hasten on that day; but whether the resolution is passed or not, that day will assuredly come, and it will bring along a train of rich blessings which will be felt in the field and the workshop, and convert many a home into a circle of unfading smiles. For one, I mean to enjoy the satisfaction of the labor, let who will enter into the harvest."

In this brief speech, expressed in the language of a man in earnest and who knows what he is driving at, is the substance of many speeches. The appropriation was carried in the House, where these remarks were made, but was lost in the Senate. What the - legislature refused to do, the Secretary undertook to do at his own expense, in order "to show the practicability of making some provision for the better qualification of common school teachers, by giving them an opportunity to revise and extend their knowledge of the studies usually pursued in district schools, and of the best methods of school arrangements, instruction and government, under the

recitations and lectures of experienced and well-known teachers and educators." Since that Teachers' Class or Institute was held in Hartford in the Autumn of 1839, hundreds of similar gatherings have been held in different states, and thousands and hundreds of thousands of teachers have had their zeal quickened, their professional knowledge increased, their aims elevated, and the schools which they have subsequently taught, made better.

But Mr. Barnard has rendered other important services to the cause of popular education, and his labors have been largely instrumental in promoting and improving institutions, systems and agencies, which are already wrought into the structure and life of society. In every part of our land his name is mentioned with honor and gratitude, whenever plans for the diffusion of useful knowledge and the improvement of school-laws, school-houses, schools, and education generally, are agitated in public or private. Believing then, that the influence of no single individual has been more extended or more beneficial, in the most critical period of our own school history, and in determining the educational policy of the country, and that his fame is the property of the state, we propose to accompany the portrait of our late Superintendent, which the teachers of Connecticut are having engraved for this number of the Journal, with a sketch of his labors in this state and in Rhode Island. We shall dwell at some length on his early connection with the schools, of Connecticut, because many of our teachers now in the schools, are not aware of the thoroughness of his early labors, the nature and extent of the sacrifices he was called on to make in their behalf, and of the generous and indomitable spirit with which he persevered through good report and through evil report, until his long baffled efforts by pen and voice, are now realized in improved school-houses, a gradation of schools, the better compensation, more permanent employment, and united action of teachers, a property tax for all school purposes, a livelier parental interest, the larger attendance of children of the rich and educated, as well as of the poor, in the common school, and above all, in the permanent establishment of this Journal, a Teachers' Association, Teachers' Institutes, and a State Normal School.

Mr. Barnard entered into the service of the common schools of Connecticut with all his early sympathies enlisted in their behalf, at an age when he was capable of performing the most work, both mental and physical, and with the best preparation he could have made, had he been destined or trained for the specific work he was

called on to perform. He was a native of the state and proud of her great names, and had already revived the Connecticut Historical Society, for the purpose of collecting and preserving the memorials of her past history. He was born in Hartford, where his family had lived from the first settlement of the colony, in the mansion where he still resides, and his strong local attachment to his old home, the city and the state, has led him to decline many lucrative and desirable situations abroad. He had just entered the twenty-seventh year of his age, having been born on the 24th of January, 1811. His elementary instruction was in the common district school, to which he was always attached, and for which he has repeatedly expressed his gratitude, not because of the amount or quality of the instruction there received-for we have often heard him declare that it had taken half his life to get rid of or correct the bad mental habits he had acquired at the district school-but because it was the best school of American citizenship, the place where children of the rich and poor, of the capitalist and laborer, were brought into that practical knowledge of each other which our law of society ordains. His acquaintance with the defects of the common school, qualified him to speak authoritatively of their condition, and his subsequent training in Munson Academy (Mass.) and the Hopkins Grammar School in Hartford, led him early to the opinion, that all that was taught in institutions of that grade, could be as well, and even better taught in a Public High School, as part of our system of common education. He has lived long enough to see such a school established in Hartford with a course of instruction more extensive and practical than in any academy in the state, and actually resorted to by the sons and daughters of the rich and poor.

His collegiate training, connected with his special attention while in college, to the exercises of one of the literary societies, not only prepared him for the high duties of public life, but qualified him to assign the proper place to the common school, with its various grades, in a system of public instruction, and saved him from those narrow and one-sided views, which the advocates of the common school, looking xclusively at that great interest, and especially when their minds have not been liberalized by a high literary culture, are too apt to take. Mr. Barnard has never been found on the side of those who would lower the standard of collegiate education, or reduce the number of highly cultivated minds in a state. On the other hand, he has done much to assist deserving young men in indigent circumstances, to obtain a collegiate training, and to bring teachers of

common schools, and professors of academies and colleges to coöperate in some concerted plan of action, so as to make all our educational institutions, parts of one great system of public instruction.

Mr. Barnard entered Yale College in 1826, and graduated with honor in 1830. While he aimed to maintain his general scholarship up to the standard reached by less than one-sixth of his class, and in the early part of his residence there, won the prize for Latin and English composition-during his Junior and Senior years, he devoted himself diligently to a systematic course of reading in English literature, to the practice of English composition, and to written and oral discussion, for which the exercises of the class-room and the literary societies of Yale furnish an inviting arena. He has often expressed to the writer of this sketch, his conviction, that while he did not under-rate that instruction in science and literature, and that development and expansion of the faculties of acquisition and reflection, which he had gained from the regular college course, he owed more of his usefulness in public life to the free commingling of members of different classes, of varied tastes, talents and characters, to the excitement and incentive of the weekly debates, to the generous conflict of mind with mind, and to the preparation for the discussions and decisions of the literary societies with which he was connected. He was an active member, and at one time President of the Linonian Society, for one of whose exhibitions he wrote a drama, which that distinguished poet, James A. Hillhouse, who was present at its performance, pronounced worthy of being brought out on the stage. For the advantage of having access to the library at all hours, he acted as librarian for two years, and in keeping with his subsequent conduct, expended the compensation allowed for his services, in a donation of books to the library. His knowledge of books and of the practical management of a library, thus acquired, has proved of great service to him, in organizing school and other public libraries in his educational labors.

Immediately on leaving college Mr. Barnard projected and entered upon a course of private study and reading, at once preparatory and supplementary to a thorough professional training for the practice of the law. While he gave two hours every day to Blackstone and Kent, and the other legal text-books, until he was enrolled as a student in the office of Hon. Willis Hall, afterward Attorney General of the state of New York, and of William H. Hungerford, Esq., of Hartford, when he reversed the rule, he devoted the rest of the day to the diligent perusal of the works of Bacon, Gibbon,

Warburton, Burke, Barrow, Taylor, and that class of authors, as well as the more commonly received classics of our language. Few professed scholars among us at the age of twenty-seven, were so thoroughly familiar with the ancient and modern English literature. Nor did he lose by want of use, his knowledge of the Greek and Latin languages, but following the advice of President Day to his graduating class, he read a little every day in Homer, or Virgil, or Cicero. At the suggestion of the same venerated instructor, he was induced to take charge of a school in Willsboro', Pa., to teach for a while, as a means of reviving and making permanent his knowledge of the ancient classics. On arriving at Willsboro', he found that the school was more like a "District School" in Connecticut, than like a New England "Academy." Being desirous to make the most of his position, he at once addressed himself to the work of making a good school, and to a thorough study of the theory of teaching. He read and thought upon the subject, and gained that practical knowledge of the management of a school, which proved of eminent service to him in his subsequent career.

This brief experience in teaching he has ever highly valued, not only because it introduced him to the subject of education as a science, and to its practical duties as an art, but as a school of mental and moral discipline to himself, and as the most direct way to test the accuracy of attainments already made. "We are not sure of our knowledge of any subject, until we have succeeded in making ourselves vividly and thoroughly understood by others on that subject," is a familiar remark in his public addresses to teachers. His literary and professional studies were not again interrupted until he was admitted as Attorney and Counselor at Law in Connecticut, in the winter of 1835. Before entering on the practice of his profession, his father furnished him with the means of spending a few years in Europe. In accordance with his plan of doing thoroughly and with preparation, whatever he undertook, he had fitted himself to profit by his opportunities of foreign travel, by a familiar acquaintance, not only with the history and institutions of our own country, but with the local peculiarities, the manners, men and scenery of its different sections. He had spent his college vacations and subsequent intervals of leisure, in visiting all the most interesting localities in New England and the western states, and was present for several months at Washington, in the stormy and eloquent debates of 1832 and 1833; and before embarking for Europe, he extended his personal acquaintance by a tour through the southern and Western states, with such