done, the text book was laid by, and there was no other review or preparation for examination in that study at any future time.

There were no academic prizes or honors, unless a testimonial of having fairly completed the course may be called an honor. No individuals distinguished themselves by special literary exercises at the time of graduation. No kind of stimulus was ever applied to ambition. Nothing was done by principal or teachers that could foster a spirit of rivalry. There was no talk whatever about marks and rank. To none but the highest and purest motives did Miss Grant ever appeal. The love of knowledge, the desire of mental power, the duty of doing good, of these she had long felt the force. She knew how to apply these motives with great power. Had she appealed to lower ones, it would have been suicidal of her grand purpose to form pure and elevated characters. More time was given to the Bible than to any other single study. There was always an exercise of this kind on Monday morning to which every pupil was expected to give two hours' previous preparation. This exercise was often continued the successive mornings of the week, until the whole subject was thoroughly discussed and understood. Sacred History, Geography, Antiquities, everything to elucidate and impress was brought into this exercise. Miss Grant was mighty in the Scriptures, not less in the Old than in the New Testament. The crimes and the virtues, the wickedness and the excellence of men and women portrayed in the Bible, these she illustrated for the instruction and training of her own scholars.

Miss Grant exercised a most powerful influence over her pupils by her famil iar lectures. In these lectures she discussed a great variety of subjects; such as health, dress, diet and exercise; the care of one's own room and wardrobe; manners, including courtesy, personal appearance, grace of movement and gesture, tone of voice and address. Methods of study, motives to it, valuable courses of reading, the teaching and training of children were also presented in these lectures. It would be difficult to mention a practical subject that she did not touch. The name of those that she did touch, and to excellent purpose, is legion. Her pupils often said that these lectures were worth more to them than all the studies of the course. Influences from this source did much to make of her pupils useful, practical and cultivated women in the various spheres which they have so honorably filled. As early as 1829 her Senior Class prepared a list of topics on which they had heard her speak in these exercises. It numbers one hundred and fifty subjects.

During the fifteen years of Miss Grant's school at Derry and Ipswich, about sixteen hundred young ladies came under her care. Of these, one hundred and fifty-six received the testimonial of having finished the course.

Character and Services.

Mrs. Zilpah Grant Banister was not a great linguist. Except a little Latin, she never introduced foreign tongues, either ancient or modern, into any of her schools. Nor was she much conversant with the vast range of English literature. Yet she knew with rare perfection her own native speech, and on every needful occasion could use it with excelling fitness and power. When she spoke, you chose to listen; and when she ceased, you reflected. She was neither imaginative nor learned; neither humorous nor witty; never fervid, nor often pathetic; but whatever she said was so well said, and in itself so fit, just

and proper, that addition seemed tame and self-condemned. She never indulged in those current intensities of expression, which by repetition have lost their original intensity. She seldom hesitated, seldom failed of the right word; never retraced and began again, never spoke in a hurry, never said what she had not meant to say. She spoke upon themes which she had long studied, and on which her mind and her heart were alike full. You might doubt whether her wisdom or her kindness were the greater, but you could not doubt the joint reign of both. She was far from an immoderate talker. In conversation she did not lecture, and she never usurped the field. She was willing enough to express her own mind, and on all ordinary subjects she had a mind to express; but she loved, at least as well, to hear yours also.

She was eminently social. Nothing human was indifferent to her; servant or sultan interested her alike. The book of human nature was her chief and constant study. Except Bunyan's Allegory, probably she never read any work of fiction; but no girl ever read a novel with more engrossing interest than she the leaves of human life, turned without fingers, before her eyes every day. No idle curiosity begat this ruling passion, that grew with her growth, strengthened with her strength, and never slackened till she drew her last breath. It was a wise, all-controlling, principled and passionate benevolence, and it opened its own way to those secret chambers where strangers are not allowed to enter or intermeddle. Her pupils confided to her their dearest secrets, as they would to none other, and she was to them the wisest and safest of counsellors. She did not largely know of birds, and beasts and plants, not more than she did of books and tongues; but she knew girls, and grown women, and grown men. She knew religious experience. She was at home in all matters of domestic economy and in all works of benevolence and mercy. In these fields lay her wealth and her power. Here she might truly be said to shine without a rival; yet without the slightest affectation or apparent consciousness of eminence. Here she was authority, and the most experienced could learn from her lips. Eminent professional men enjoyed her society, and appreciated her conversation. She knew how to ask a question, as well as to give an answer. Her mind was of the tentative sort; always watching on the frontiers of its knowledge for any chance to push those frontiers a little farther back. She could make the best use of whatever she knew, and drew to the best use whatever was known by those around her. She was in no sense an exquisite; but always left the impression of pure refinement and cultivation, yet cultivation carried to such a degree that its luster obscured the semblance of art. Girls that wanted to grow into polished women, fondly wished to be like her. If she were listened to as a teacher, she was quite as much watched and imitated as a lady. She was refined without affectation; dignified without stiffness; self-respectful without pride; serious without austerity; economical without meanness; patient without indifference to pain; benevolent without weakness; religious without superstition; and though her mother was subject to grievous turns of religious melancholy, yet the daughter was habitually cheerful without the slightest trace of levity.

Mrs. Banister had an acute observation; an eye and an ear that caught what many in the same situation would have missed; a broad and capacious understanding, with ample room for much intellectual store; a clear and sound judgment which suffered nothing to appear magnified through the mist of pas

sion; a retentive memory, which held dates, persons, traits of character and incident with surprising fidelity; regular habits of association which kept similar things together, and suffered no inextricable confusion; an admirable tact, which enabled her to walk among, and act with many different characters without friction; an attractive power, which made it delightful to be associated with her; these qualities fitted her easily to comprehend and conduct affairs as complicated as any that fall to the lot of educated ladies. Probably it is the judgment of all competent persons who knew her, that her administrative ability was never fully tested by any affairs she ever had in hand; but that she might easily have conducted affairs much more difficult and complicated.

Her benevolence had the force and womanly tenderness of passion, with the solid firmness and unyielding toughness of principle. Her means were comparatively limited, yet her gifts, like those of her kindred, among whom she had her birth and growth, were large, wide-spread and habitual. Her beneficence embraced relatives, friends, the poor, and more than the established charities of her own denomination. It was inspired by Christ-like love, fed by economy, and regulated by wisdom.

In her religious life might be seen the true beginning of that life which is eternal. Of all the fruits of the spirit which St. Paul enumerates, none were wanting, none were sickly, none ever appeared intermittent. These few words may perhaps best express her as a Christian; a beautiful child in the arms of a loved and trusted father.

In the beginning of the present century, young ladies even in moderately easy circumstances seldom went beyond the district school. The daughters of the wealthy, instead of adding a higher course of intellectual training, were indulged extensively in the so-called accomplishments. The second quarter of the century, gave to female education a general and mighty impulse, whose waves, like those of the ether, still propagate themselves, and everywhere carry light. Of the four well-known heroines in this awakening, Miss Grant was neither the last nor the least. The noble structure at South Hadley dates and perpetuates Miss Lyon's part in the movement; but before Miss Lyon, and greater than Miss Lyon, was Miss Grant. Miss Lyon was indeed a noble original. Her Creator made her; but she came from His hands like the unpolished marble from the quarry, the uncut diamond from the mine. It was Miss Grant, more than any other person or thing, who for twelve years molded, trained, informed and inspired her for her not over-appreciated work. But Miss Grant's essential and unquestionable part in it, in truth and justice, ought not to be forgotten. Besides this, every influence that went from Miss Grant's school powerfully helped the general cause. Seventy-five years ago, few thought that more than the common elements were necessary for a daughter; anything more would make her less domestic, less healthy, less useful. When Miss Grant's pupils returned home, more domestic, more willing to be useful, and not less healthy, objections vanished, and the higher substantial education no longer needed defense. Now within the boundaries of New England, and wherever New England has traveled, it is as rare to find any one who doubts about the higher education for young ladies, as seventy-five years ago, it was rare to find any who believed in it, or even gave the subject a thought. Her own eminent share in this result was honorable to Mrs. Banister, and is grateful to her surviving friends and pupils.

WILLIAM TORREY HARRIS AND ST. LOUIS PUBLIC SCHOOLS.

MEMOIR.

WILLIAM TORREY HARRIS, LL.D., for nearly a quarter of a century associated honorably as teacher and superintendent with the Public Schools of St. Louis, was born in West Killingly, Windham County, Conn., September 10, 1835. On the father's side he is descended from Thomas Harris, one of the early settlers of the Providence plantations with Roger Williams, and on the mother's side, from William Torrey, who settled in Weymouth, Mass., in 1640; and from his own immediate progenitors he inherits a constitution capable of any amount of hard work of mind or body. To this "good breeding" he had the best New England training for American life: (1) the district school of his native town; (2) the intermediate and grammar grades of the Public Schools of Providence; (3) the general and preparatory course for five years of the Academy, at Woodstock, Worcester, and Andover; associated (4) with intervals every year of school teaching by which his own attainments were reviewed and made his own by communicating the same to other minds; and (5) three years of hard study at Yale College, from 1854 to 1857.

Thus bred and taught, he substituted for the fourth year of a college course, a year of travel, observation, and private teaching in St. Louis, which on nearer view he concluded was the place for him to reside, study, and work in. To this city in 1858 he brought his wife, Miss Sarah Tully Bugbee of Providence. Here one of his two sons is now located in business. In May, 1858, Mr. Harris became assistant teacher in the Franklin School, and after a year's experience in that position, was promoted to the principalship of the Clay School. After eight years of faithful and successful work in perfecting the classification, instruction, and discipline of this District School, in which the graded system was first thoroughly tried; Mr. Harris was invited by Mr. Duvoll to assist him in the work of general supervision; and in 1868 he was elected by the Board of School Directors Superintendent of the St. Louis Public Schools, a position which he held by re-election every year till May, 1880, when he signified his purpose to withdraw.

It is seldom that a school officer enters on the administration of a system with such practical knowledge of all the details which enter into the studies, the first admission, the successive promotions from grade to grade, and the instruction from the primary class to the High or Normal School. To this practical experience of his own, he was constantly adding a diligent study of the best treatises in the English, French, and German languages on the general principles of education, and the organization and administration of systems of public instruction; and at the same time Mr. Harris was subjecting his own experience and views, and the experience and suggestions of others gathered from books, to the experience and discussions of living teachers and school officers assembled in city, state, and national conventions. No teacher or school officer in the whole country has more promptly responded by formal lecture, or brief discussion to invitations from any quarter, east or west, north or south, to attend and assist at such gatherings.

Before passing to an exposition of the system of Public Schools as found by Mr. Harris in 1867, and left to his successor in 1880 to carry on the work of development, we will add biographically:In 1866 he was one of the founders and always an active member of the Philosophical Society of St. Louis; and in 1867 he started on his own responsibility the Journal of Speculative Philosophy, which he has continued to edit as a medium for communicating to the public the views of the advanced thinkers of our own and other countries in the domain of speculative philosophy and pshycology. The number last issued (No. 56, of Vol. xiv, for October, 1880) is published by D. Appleton & Co., New York. In 1863 he published his "Introduction to Philosophy" as a key to the speculations of Kant, Leibnitz, and Spinoza; in 1875-7 he contributed upwards of forty original articles to Johnson's Universal Cyclopedia, of which he became associated editor in 1875; in 1871 he issued the first volume of Hegel's Logic in paraphrase and translation, and announces the second volume in parts in 1880; and as publisher he announces the completion of the publication of Fichte's great works, the translation of which was begun by A. E. Krueger in the Journal of Speculative Philosophy. In the same Journal have appeared many valuable papers on Pedagogics, by Miss Brackett, Prof. Soldan, and others, in paraphrase and translation . of Rosenkrantz, Benneke, and other German educators, several of which are issued as independent treatises. Miss Brackett's para, phrase of Rosenkrantz makes a valuable volume by itself.