Mr. Baker, while at Newburyport, had been actively interested in the proceedings of the Essex County Association, and at Quincy saw the need of similar means to excite an interest in public education. The teachers were called together, a County Association formed, of which he was President for two years, and Institutes were held, with good results. In 1861 he was elected President of the State Teachers' Association. In the following year he entered service in the field as chaplain until December, 1864, when he resigned and received the position of Deputy Superintendent of Public Instruction, which he held until October, 1865, when he became principal of the Springfield High School.

NEWTON BATEMAN.

NEWTON BATEMAN was born near Fairton, Cumberland county, New Jersey, July 27th, 1822, and removed to Jacksonville, Illinois, in 1833. His father was in very indigent circumstances, and he grew up accustomed to poverty, and trained to hard manual labor. Up to the age of sixteen he had gained but the rudiments of an English education, obtained in three or four terms at very common schools. In the fall of 1835 he attended the anniversary exercises of Illinois College, and there the desire was awakened and the resolution formed to go out from the same walls a graduate. Yet, for four years, though the hope and the determination grew, the absolute necessity for other labor prevented an attempt at their fulfillment. In July, 1839, his time was unexpectedly given to him and the privilege of struggling single-handed for the attainment of that which he so much desired. Within an hour, arrangements were made for study and recitation under Prof. Truman M. Post, of Illinois College, and the work was begun. Though at the time wholly ignorant of Latin and Greek, yet in less than four months he was able to pass a full examination and entered the Freshman class. Contracting his expenses within the narrowest limits, and earning the necessary means by such labor as offered itself, in the latter years of the course by teaching the lower classes, he graduated in June, 1843, and immediately made preparations to enter Lane Theological Seminary. Accepting an agency, he traveled for some weeks on foot through Southern Indiana and Ohio, and with the means thus acquired entered the Seminary in September, but in the following spring, worn down by protracted study, he left for the East in the pursuit of health and employment by which to enable himself to resume attendance at the Seminary. To his connection with the faculties of these institutions, and especially to Prof. Post and Dr. Lyman Beecher, does Mr. Bateman attribute whatever literary taste and enthusiasm for literary pursuits he may have shown, and his exertion and ambition to devote his powers to high views and worthy ends.

The determination to engage in educational pursuits was chiefly induced by the experiences of the following eighteen months, which were spent in an agency which brought him into communication and constant association with the educational institutions and teachers of nearly every State and principal city in the Union. In 1845 he returned to the West and opened a private school in St. Louis, in which the number of scholars increased from five to over a hundred during the first year. In October, 1847, he entered upon the duties of professor of mathematics in St. Charles College, Missouri, where he remained until 1851, when reasons of a personal and domestic character induced his return to Jacksonville. He was immediately tendered the principalship of the Public Free School, then just established, several years in advance of the first

free school law, and entered upon the work of organization and classification, overcoming objections and obstacles, and making a reputation for the institution both at home and abroad. Taking upon himself the personal charge of the High School Department, he fitted over a hundred students for college during his principalship, and as many more became teachers. In 1858 he resigned his position and was appointed principal of the Jacksonville Female Academy, but after the performance of much preliminary work and while the prospect of a field of great interest and usefulness opened itself before him, he resigned (Dec., 1858) to prepare for the duties of the State Superintendency to which he had been elected in the previous November. While in Jacksonville he was twice elected County Superintendent of Schools, holding the office for four years in succession, examining in that time several hundred teachers for the common schools. In Dec., 1854, he assisted in the organization of the Illinois State Teachers' Association; he was one of the committee that originated the "Illinois Teacher," and was one of the first board of editors of that Journal, and also afterwards principal editor in 1858, laboring at the same time eight hours a-day in the school-room. At the next session he read by appointment a report upon "School Government," and was elected Corresponding Secretary, and member of the Executive Committee. He was also nominated as the Teachers' candidate for the office of State Superintendent, which nomination was indorsed by the State Republican Convention, but was declined. In 1856 he was appointed State Agent in the service of the Association. All this preliminary labor in the school-room, in connection with both private and public schools; in the field, as superintendent and examiner; and in association with the teachers of the State, was admirably fitting him for the new and more important position in which he was now placed, and to which he was reëlected in 1860 and again in 1864. In January, 1863, he was also appointed by the Governor and Senate member of the State Board of Education for six years. In connection with the State Superintendency he has issued two official reports, and a digest of the School Laws of the State, with official and judicial decisions, while his official circulars, to school officers and others, would form a volume of three or four hundred pages, and have contributed more than any other agency to a better understanding of the school laws and system.

Mr. Bateman has attended and participated in most of the sessions of the State Association, of which he was elected President in 1862, and has delivered addresses on educational subjects in about half of the counties of the State, and by invitation before associations in several of the neighboring States. He has contributed more or less to every volume of the Illinois Teacher since its commencement, and for more than twenty years frequent communications from his pen upon educational subjects have appeared in various periodicals, reviews, and newspapers. He has spared himself in no manner and at no time; labor has been his law, and the results commend the workman.

RICHARD EDWARDS, A. M.

RICHARD EDWARDS was born in Cardiganshire, South Wales, on the 23d of December, 1822. His father was a mason in narrow circumstances and removed to this country ten years afterwards and settled in Northern Ohio. Here, until he attained his majority, his time was spent in labor upon the farm and as a house carpenter, except the short time spent in the ordinary common schools of the neighborhood. The few books, however, to which he had access,

us to scourge vice, and which we see not only in Tacitus, but also in Juvenal,-in the latter disgustingly,-is not found in Horace. Juvenal, however, you must not read yet, with the exception of a few pieces: nor is this any loss; for even if you might be allowed to read him, it would not be wholesome at your age, to dwell on the contemplation of vice, instead of enriching your mind with great thoughts.

To these poets, and among prose writers to Herodotus, Thucydides, Demosthenes, Plutarch, Cicero, Livy, Cæsar, Sallust, Tacitus, I earnestly entreat you to turn, and to keep exclusively to them. Do not read them to make esthetical remarks on them, but to read yourself into them, and to fill your soul with their thoughts, that you may gain by their reading, as you wonld gain by listening reverently to the discourses of great men. This is the philology which does one's soul good: learned investigations, when one has attained to the capacity of carrying them on, still are only of secondary value. We must be accurately acquainted with grammar, according to the ancient, wide acceptation of that term: we must acquire all branches of archæology, so far as lies in our power. But even though we were to make the most brilliant emendations, and could explain the most difficult passages off hand, this is nothing but mere trickery, unless we imbibe the wisdom and the magnanimity of the great ancients, feel like them, and think like them.

For the study of language, I recommend you, above all, Demosthenes and Cicero. Take the speech of the former for the Crown, that of the latter pro Cluentio, and read them with all the attention you are master of. Then go through them, giving account to yourself of every word, of every phrase. Draw up an argument: try to get a clear view of all the historical circumstances, and to arrange them in order. This will give you an endless work; and hence you will learn how little you can, and consequently do yet know. Then go to your teacher,—not to surprise him with some unexpectedly difficult questions (for in the speech for Cluentius there are difficulties with regard to the facts, which, even after the longest familiarity with it, can only be solved by conjectures, such as will not occur to the best scholar at the moment) but that he may have the kindness to consider the passages, and to consult the commentators for you, where your powers and means are at fault. Construct a sketch of the procedure in the accusation against Cluentius. Make a list of the expressions, especially epithets and the nouns they are applied to, and mark the key of the metaphors. Translate passages; and a few weeks after, turn your translation back into the original tongue.

Along with this grammatical exercise, read those great writers, one after the other, with more freedom. But after finishing a book, or a section, recall what you have been reading in your memory, and note down the substance as briefly as you can. Note also the phrases and expressions which recur to you the most forcibly; and you should always write down every new word you meet with immediately, and read over the list in the evening.

Leave the commentators and emendators for the present unread. The time will come, when you may study them to advantage. A painter must first learn to draw, before he begins to use colors: and he must know how to handle the ordinary colors, before he decides for or against the use of ultramarines. Of writing I have already spoken to you. Keep clear of miscellaneous reading, even of the ancient authors: among them too there are many bad ones. Eolus only let the one wind blow, which was to bear Ulysses to his goal: the others he tied up: when let loose, and crossing each other, they occasioned him endless wanderings.

Study history in two ways, according to persons, and according to states. Often make synchronistical surveys.

The advice which I give you, I would give to any one in your place. The blame I should have to give to very many. Do not fancy that I don't know this, or that I do not willingly take account of your industry according to its deserts.

The study which I require of you will make no show, will advance slowly and it will perhaps discourage you to find that many years of studentship are still before you. But, my friend, true learning and true gain are the real blessings of speculative life; and our lifetime is not so short. Still, however long it may be, we shall always have more to learn: God be praised that it is so!

And now, may God bless your labors, and give you a right mind, that you may carry them on to your own welfare aud happiness, to the joy of your parents and of us all, who have your virtue and respectability at heart.

"A bad handwriting ought never to be forgiven. Sending a badly written letter to a fellow-creature is as impudent an act as I know of. Can there be any thing more unpleasant, than to open a letter which at once shows that it will require long deciphering? Besides, the effect of the letter is gone, if we must spell it. Many applications for aid, positions, and coöperation are prejudiced and even thrown aside, merely because they are written so badly."

"Writing seems to me just like dressing; we ought to dress well and neat; but as we may dress too well, so may a pedantically fine hand show that the writer has thought more of the letters than the sense."-Conversation-in Lieber's Reminiscences of Niebuhr.

ROBERT SOUTHEY-A FIRESIDE LESSON ON CONDUCT AND WISDOM.

[The readers of that most remarkable production of Robert Southey-"The Doctor, &c."-will recall in the following conversation the principal characters which figure in the volume, so full of rare learning, quaint humor, and practical wisdom, viz., Daniel, the veritable Doctor Daniel Dove, and Dinah, his wife, and Daniel, their only son, born to them after fifteen years of wedlock, a healthy, apt, and docile child, who was growing up under the wholesome teaching of outward nature, of a quiet, pious, industrious, and reading household, and of the more formal but simple teaching of a country schoolmaster by the name of William Guy, and of a loving but half-witted uncle, William Dove :—

"Father," said the boy Daniel one day, after listening to a conversation upon this subject, [of Alchemy,] "I should like to learn to make gold."

"And what wouldst thou do, Daniel, if thou couldst make it?" was the reply. "Why, I would build a great house, and fill it with books, and have as much money as the king, and be as great a man as the squire."

"Mayhap, Daniel, in that case thou wouldst care for books as little as the squire, and have as little time for them as the king. Learning is better than house or land. As for money, enough is enough; no man can enjoy more; and the less he can be contented with, the wiser and better he is likely to be. What, Daniel, does our good poet tell us in the great verse book?

Nature's with little pleased; enough's a feast;

A sober life but a small charge requires;
But man, the author of his own unrest,

The more he hath, the more he still desires.

No, boy, thou canst never be as rich as the king, nor as great as the squire; but thou mayst be a philosopher, and that is being as happy as either."

"A great deal happier," said Guy. "The squire is as far from being the happiest man in the neighborhood as he is from being the wisest or the best. And the king, God bless him! has care enough upon his head to bring on early gray hairs."

Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.

"But what does a philosopher do?" rejoined the boy. "The squire hunts, and shoots, and smokes, and drinks punch, and goes to justice meetings. And the king goes to fight for us against the French, and governs the parliament, and makes laws. But I can not tell what a philosopher's business is. Do they do any thing else besides making almanacs and gold?"

"Yes," said William, "they read the stars."

"And what do they read there?"

"What neither thou nor I can understand, Daniel,” replied the father, "however nearly it may concern us."

That grave reply produced a short pause. It was broken by the boy, who said, returning to the subject, "I have been thinking, father, that it is not a good thing to be a philosopher."

"And what, my son, has led thee to that thought?"

"What I have read at the end of the dictionary, father. There was one philosopher that was pounded in a mortar."