insufficient to fit a pupil for college, and that the Greek language is not even recognized; yet this same report opens with the remark that "the school is in a satisfactory condition, so far as the course of instruction is concerned." Can it be that all concerned are satisfied, when girls are obliged to go to expensive private schools to learn what is freely offered to their brothers? Just here it will be pertinent to consider the boasted superiority of Boston schools to suburban schools. In the matter now under discussion the superiority will at once be seen to be in the suburban institutions. In one High School near Boston, for several years there has been no class in Greek composed exclusively of boys; and the girls of these classes not only study Greek, but take the full course preparatory to college, and graduate with honor. The experiment in this school has demonstrated the ability of the girls to do this work; they are usually found to lead in their respective classes. Nor is the school thus referred to a solitary example. In every direction from Boston the High Schools of the neighboring towns recognize the need of the higher education for girls, of which so much is said at the present time, and offer to all their pupils, without distinction of sex, the opportunity to pursue those studies, the knowledge of which shall yet prove to girls, as it has already proved to boys, the open sesame" to unbar the college doors.

It may be objected that in towns where the sexes are taught in separate schools, as in Boston, it would involve great additional expense to supply, in the girls' schools, teachers competent to fit pupils for college. If money, which is so lavishly expended for exhibitions, school festivals, and the like, cannot be raised for this nobler object, what a powerful argument do we have in favor of coeducation!

Another objection to fitting girls for college may be urged: it may be said that, while Harvard College persistently refuses to admit young women to its privileges, and many other colleges of less note follow the example thus set, it is not worth while to try the experiment. Yet facts are stubborn things; and the facts remain, that girls, unable to go to college where they would, will and do go where they can; that many colleges have already thrown to the winds distinctions of sex, as well as of color; that

in our very midst the new Boston University offers alike to both sexes its privileges, its honors, its diploma; and that to-day many an earnest young woman, impelled by a noble desire for knowledge, rejected from the school where she would show herself her brother's rival, is fitting herself for college in a private school, or under the direction of a private tutor.

Is it not worth while that Bosshould vindicate her claim to be

Ought these things so to be? ton, the queen city of our State, a leader in educational matters? Let her remove this blot upon her fair fame, and, actuated by right and justice, proclaim to all the children and youth within her borders, equal opportunities to develop the intellectual faculties which God has given them.

SIGMA.

WILLIAM RUSSELL.

SAYS Mr. Barnard :

"Mr. Russell commenced his seminary in Lancaster, with liberal aid from the local friends of education there, with the assistance of a numerous and superior corps of instructors, and with a promise of entire success. But the highly liberal course now adopted by the State of Massachusetts in establishing State scholarships in her colleges, for the benefit of young men intending to devote themselves to the business of teaching in the public High Schools of the State, and in the generous encouragement given to students of both sexes in the State Normal Schools to extend their course of professional study, has, to a great extent, superseded the necessity of any private establishment for the higher professional training of teachers."

Mr. Russell proposed to call the institution he was establishing the New England Normal Institute. Few persons have ever begun such a work with higher qualifications, a richer experience, or with nobler views. He had received his education in one of the highest colleges in Great Britain, and obtained a very high rank in every department of study. His long residence in New Haven, Cambridge, and Boston had given him opportunities of knowing the modes of instruction and discipline in some of the highest literary institutions in the country; he had

seen their successes and their failures, and known or conjectured the causes; and his thorough education and extensive and thoughtful reading, with his wide and varied experience, had richly qualified him to teach and superintend teaching in every department. It was no presumption which led him to call the institution he was establishing the NEW ENGLAND NORMAL INSTITUTE. How is it to be regretted that an institution so planned, and to be so conducted, to be established in the most beautiful town in New England, should have been allowed to fail.

His views in regard to important points in the work of teaching, are best learnt from himself, from his Address at the opening of the Institute. Read what he says of a cause for the advancement of which he had done as much certainly as any other individual:

:

"The slightest survey of the steps of New England's advancement' is sufficient to show that the particular direction which the great current of intellectual progress is, at present, taking, in this favored region, is that of a more extensive and a more effectual course of professional preparation, for those who present themselves as candidates for the arduous office of instruction. On this point, the intellectual, the moral, and the political strength of our whole community of New-England States, and, indeed, to a great extent, of our national Union, is at present bearing with a centripetal force at once conservative and impelling.

"We wish to offer, also, to our students who may aim at places as instructors in the higher seats of learning, a wider range of intellectual culture than the State can be justly expected to furnish to those who are candidates for the charge, only, of our common and high schools. We wish, moreover, to meet the wants of individuals who possess, perhaps, the advantages of a superior education, and who are desirous of entering the field of useful labor, as teachers, but whose circumstances are not met by the arrangements proper to our State Normal Schools."

"The adequate training of teachers for private schools, even of an elementary character, will require the addition of instruction in branches not demanded by State legislation.

"The instructors, too, of schools of a more elevated character, as to extent of teaching, and particularly of schools in which

the teacher is at liberty to mould or modify the character of his school, according to the views of his own mind,-these require all the advantages arising from such an extent of preparation in various subjects, as shall best serve to furnish adequate means of giving direction and distinctive tone to the professional labors of the individual."

"It is our earnest desire, while we leave unsatisfied no immediate want of the teacher's vocation, to afford a wide and elevated scope to all minds which take an interest in the ceaseless enlargement of the sphere of education, and the progressive advancement of the art of teaching."

"We propose to render our humble tribute of aid to the grand meliorating movement by which the field of education has been so enlarged, as to embrace not merely the understanding and the memory, but the conscience, the imagination, the taste, the heart, and the will, as the great sources of character. We wish to aid in furnishing activity, also, and skill to the eye and to the hand, as well as to the voice."

"Our endeavors to mould the mental character will be founded on the principle, that all true intellectual progress is a growth and a life. Our prevalent school regimen does not train the mind to the freest, fullest, strongest exercise of its own powers,-generously trusting to its ability, thence derived, to apply itself to details. The teacher insists on details as the prime objects of acquisition, from the very first, and thus dwarfs and distorts, too often, by premature and unscasonable effort, the whole intellectual character."

"In school exercises, there has been a neglect of proper training to habits of orderly exactness, of personal neatness, of systematic action, of thorough-going instruction, of attention to details, of the practical application of principles, - in one word, of true teaching and true learning."

In the following passage, we find him, twenty years ago, insisting upon elementary principles of instruction in the earliest education which are just coming prominently forward.

"Previous to a course of discipline on arbitrary geometrical forms, like those of letters, the infant mind should have been first trained on the natural forms of life, in plant and animal around

it, by being furnished with a due number and variety of these, for observation and classification and description, individually; and in interesting and instructive groups. A long course of silent, but most effectual, as well as pleasing cultivation, should have followed on inanimate objects, on models and pictures of objects, before the unmeaning and highly arbitrary forms of letters were presented at all.

"We have arranged our course of studies for teachers, so as to secure attention to a regular, orderly, and progressive development of the mind. We suggest the deferring of the theoretic study of language, for example, till the learner shall have had opportunity of acquiring a good elementary knowledge of the objects, facts, and phenomena of nature, and their relations. These are the only real basis of thought and language.

Objects thoughts - language; these form the successive steps in the order of nature, in the experience of the mind, and in the history of speech.

"To secure the benefits of a thoroughly practical course of intellectual development, by founding it on things real and actual, we have made provision for that elementary study of natural objects, which, by its simplicity, and its proper limitation, as well as its gradually progressive character, seems best adapted to the wants and circumstances of the young minds of which our students are, in due season, to assume the guidance. Nor does this course require any expensive or formal apparatus for its purposes. Magnitude, form, color, weight, distance, are everywhere around us, soliciting our attention. The wayside flower, the pebble at our feet, the tree of the forest, the mountain in the distance, the tints of cloud, of foliage, and of blossom, the exhaustless variety of form in plant and mineral, are everywhere inviting us to study. In these directions the young mind is athirst for knowledge, and is ever craving it as aliment and gratification. On such data do we all begin our formation of ideas."

Then as to the formation of purity and nobleness of character, so apt to be neglected in the course of education:

"To purify, to elevate, to hallow this forming power of the soul, and thence to sway the will and touch the heart, the true teacher can rely on no influence so effectual as that of enlightened con