tinctions that must at length prove fatal to republican institutions. Besides this, the wealthy class will be likely to lose much of their interest in the public schools, and the schools will suffer every way on this account. Our safety is to be found, not only in universal education, but in the education, to a certain extent, of all our children together in the same grade of schools.

4. The existence of a high school in a town enables parents, living in that town, to educate their children at home, where they should always be, during their early years, surrounded by the restraints and teachings of home life. If children are educated at home, many of those evils will be averted that come to those who are away from the influences of paternal care and love.

5. The high school will have a tendency to break down those barriers that prevent some from contending for good ends, on equal terms with others, by enabling all alike to obtain that knowledge and culture which are necessary to the highest personal success in life.

For these reasons the committee think the high school should by all means be retained in our system of public schools.

J. W. DICKINSON,

S. M. ETTER,

J. O. WILSON,

Committee.

NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL MUSEUM.

Mr. BICKNELL, from the committee on an Educational Museum, made report in the following resolution:

Resolved, That the superintendents recognize the great importance of the organization of an educational museum at Washington, using as the basis of such a museum the national educational exhibit at Philadelphia; and still further resolved, that the provision of plans and means of operation of such a museum be submitted to a special committee of this body, to report at the annual meeting of the Association in August next.

On motion of Superintendent NORTHEND, Messrs. BICKNELL, WILMER, and NORTHROP, were appointed as the special committee referred to.

THE NATIONAL ASSOCIATION.

On motion of Superintendent WILSON, it was voted that Mr. J. W. DICKINSON be requested by this Department to prepare a paper upon "The Relation of the High School to the Elementary School," to be read before the National Association at its annual meeting to be held in August next, and that the secretary of this meeting be instructed to notify the President of the Association of this action.

The Department then adjourned, to visit the Corcoran Gallery, President GRANT, and President-elect HAYES.

(REGULAR MEETING.)

First Day's Proceedings.

TUESDAY, AUGUST 14, 1877.

The Department met in one of the rooms of Liederkranz Hall, Louisville, Ky., at 3 P. M. The Hon. JAMES H. SMART and HAMILTON S. MCRAE, of Indiana, were chosen temporary President and Secretary.

After an informal discussion as to the probability of securing the attendance of more members, the Department adjourned until 2 P. M., Wednesday.

Second Day's Proceedings.

WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 15, 1877.

The Department met at 2 P. M., the President, the Hon. C. S. SMART, of Ohio, presiding.

M. A. NEWELL, GEO. P. BROWN, and WM. S. WOOD were appointed Committee on Nomination of Officers.

Hon. JAMES H. SMART, of Indiana, opened the discussion on the Educational Museum. He had conversed with General EATON, the National Commissioner, on the subject. The Commissioner had a vast amount of material stored away. He had no space or means for display. An appropriation by Congress was needed for the purpose.

Hon. J. P. WICKERSHAM, from the Committee on Paris Exposition, said that he was able to report progress. It is necessary for the Government to make the exhibit. He had indirectly communicated with the Minister of Instruction of France. Unless Congress made an appropriation there would be no exhibit of American Schools at Paris. Letters were read, on the subject of expense of attending the Exposition, from Messrs. NORTHROP and LOOMIS. The Committee could state that Dr. S. P. MAY, of Ontario, would take a party to the Exposition for two weeks, spending also two weeks in Scotland and England, at two hundred dollars in gold. The expense in Paris for moderate living would not be greater than in Philadelphia.

The Department adjourned to meet at 8 A. M., at the Galt House, in the parlor of the President of the Association.

Third Day's Proceedings.

THURSDAY, AUGUST 16, 1877.

The Department met at 8 A. M.

The Committee on Officers reported:

For President-J. P. WICKERSHAM.

For Vice-President―JAMES H. SMART.

For Secretary-R. W. STEVENSON.

In view of the fact that the programme of the General Association had embraced the topics of the afternoon the Department decided to adjourn. On invitation of Mr. WILSON the Department adjourned to meet at the call of the President after consultation with the National Commissioner. HAMILTON S. MCRAE, Secretary pro tempore.

Omitted Paper.

The following paper was not received in time for publication in its proper place, page 22. When the printing had reached page 86 a card was received that the paper had been sent by express. The press was stopped for two days in hopes of receiving it in time to print with the other delayed papers. The paper did not, however, arrive in time, and hence its insertion in this place.

THE STUDY OF ENGLISH AS INTRODUCTORY TO THE STUDY OF GREEK AND LATIN.

BY THOMAS R. PRICE, M. A., Professor of Greek, University of Virginia. It is good for us at times, amid the infinite complexities that bewilder modern thought, to get our minds filled by that simple and direct perception of elementary truth which flashed itself in upon earlier thinkers.

In the last years of the 9th century, Alfred the Great was using the peaceful close of a stormy life in brave efforts to reform the religion and education of England. For the good of his subjects, he turned the Pastoral of Pope GREGORY from Latin into the English of his time, and he had a copy of it put for his people's reading in every parish church of Wessex. In his preface to that translation, the great, wise king lays down the outline of his thoughts upon education, and he works himself up in his simpleminded and luminous fashion, to the formulation of a very great principle. "I think it better," writes the king, "that all the youths that are now in England, may for a time give themselves up to no other work till first they will know how to understand the English. Let them that wish to know more learn Latin afterwards."

Such was the great king's plan, away back in the 9th century, for the philologized education of English-speaking boys. Such is the plan that, after the blunders of a thousand years, still seems to me the only one capable of achieving for the English-speaking boys of this our 19th century any of the great benefits of philologized culture.

It is because we seem to have forgotten this great principle of education that I wish to plead once more for the natural rights of the mother-tongue. I wish to enforce the old truth, by modern arguments. I wish to show, from my own and from others' experience in the school-room, that the only natural and right introduction to the study of any other language is the study of those facts and laws of language that are contained in the mother-tongue itself; above all, as a teacher of Greek, as one that sees year after year more than half his efforts for the furtherance of the Greek studies foiled and thwarted by the prevalence of false methods in philology. I wish to prove that the only rational preparation for the study of Greek and Latin is the scientific and practical study of the English.

All true and rational education is a matter of well-devised and easy sequences. In leading on a child's mind to any height of acquisition, it is the duty, it is the power, of the skilful teacher, to establish the rational sequence of subjects, to begin with the easiest and to lead on, without a jerk or break of sequence to the subjects that are harder. The great highway of science, the only royal road of learning, is the path from the known to the unknown. If you apply this axiom of science to fix the sequences of philologized studies, it is plain that the first stage of linguistic education should be education in the understanding and use of the mother-tongue. Each child before he comes into our hands has gained some control over some small part at least of the vocabulary and laws of English speech.. Such knowledge of English, small as it is, is the means for him, the only means he has, of increasing his knowledge in any and in all directions. Thus his knowledge of the English and his power over it are the measure, the natural and infallible measure, of his fitness and ability to gain other knowledge. Here then lies the first term of all sound educational sequences. To increase, to expand, to intensify, the child's knowledge of his mothertongue is to ripen and strengthen the intellect itself, and to furnish it for all great achievements. Every new English word that the child learns adds a new idea to his mind. Every new perception that he gets of law and order in the English sentence, of the relations of word to word in the simple sentence, of the relations of clause to clause in the complex sentence, is a new revelation to him of the laws of thought itself, and of the relations that exist between thought and thought in the universe of mind. Thus by concentrating the child's study wisely and firmly upon the facts and laws of his mother-tongue, we are leading him by every day's advance into higher and wider regions of knowledge and thought; we are opening up to him new worlds for his conquest, and giving him the weapons to make his conquests solid and lasting.

Yet in spite of these facts, facts that ought to control the sequence of studies in all good schools, the educational power of the mother-tongue has fallen so strangely into disuse that I must ask your pardon for laying emphasis on truths that ought to be truisms. In almost all the high schools of England and the United States, the study of the English language, so far as I can judge by reading and experience, is either absurdly dwarfed or altogether neglected. The cause of this neglect is to be found in the history of our education. The old schools of England still bear upon their schemes of study, the distorting influence of that mediæval time when the English was called and considered a vulgar tongue, and when all the effective power of the school was applied to forcing in upon the minds of the young the use of Latin as the language of science and literature. Hence in defiance of all common sense, by the instinct of an unwise conservatism, the English schoolmasters of the 19th century, like the English schoolmasters of the 15th, still go on for the most part putting Latin into the place of English, and even excluding the mother-tongue from the range of school discipline. Thus it is one of the strange anomalies, one of the surviving barbarisms, of English life, that the same Eton boy, who when he goes up to the University can write a decent copy of Latin verses, modelled on VERGIL or OVID, is wholly unable to comprehend a