seats and desks are not, in a majority of cases, adapted to children of different sizes and ages, but on the other hand are calculated to induce physical deformity, and ill-health, and not in a few instances (I state this on the authority of physicians who were professionally acquainted with the cases,) have actually resulted in this-and that in the mode of warming rooms, sufficient regard is not had either to the comfort and health of the scholar, or to economy.

That I have not stated these deficiencies too strongly, I beg leave to refer you to the accompanying returns, respecting the condition of schoolhouses in more than eight hundred districts in the State, and in more than forty particulars in each. These returns were made from actual inspection and measurement of school-houses by teachers and others. An abstract of them in part will be found annexed, together with extracts from letters received from school officers on the subject. I might accumulate evidence of the necessity of improvement here for every district in the State. Without improvement in many particulars which concern the health, the manners and morals of those who attend school, it is in vain to expect that parents who put a proper estimate, not only on the intellectual, but the physical and 'moral culture of their children, will send to the district school.

The following extracts are taken from official documents, published in 1846 and 1847, and fair specimens of the manner in which school-houses | are spoken of, in the reports of local committees, from different parts of the State.

"In one district the school-house stands on the highway, with eighty pupils enrolled as in attendance, in a room nineteen and a half feet square, without any outbuildings of any kind.

In another in the same town, the school-house is less than seven feet high, and the narrow slab seats are twenty-one inches high, (four inches higher than ordinary chairs.) The walls, desks, &c., are cut and marked with all sorts of images, some of which would make heathens blush.

In another, the room is fourteen feet square, and six feet five inches high. The walls are very black."

"In this town there is one of the most venerable school servants in the State. The room is small, and less than seven feet high. Slab seats extend around three sides of the room, and are too high for men. The skill of several generations must have been expended in illustrating the walls with lamp smoke and coal images. The crevices of the floor will admit any quantity of cold air. The door sill and part of the house sill have rotted away. The day I visited it, the teacher and pupils were huddled around the stove."

"In one district, the house stands near the travelled road, is low and small, being only seventeen feet by seventeen, and seven feet two inches high, for the accommodation of sixty or seventy pupils. The seats on the outside are from seventeen to eighteen inches. The walls, door, and sides of the house are disfigured with obscene images."

"There are only three good school-houses in the society; only three that have any out-houses. The rest of the school-houses are in a miserable condition. One is thirty-five or forty years old. Most of them have only slab seats, with the legs sticking through, upwards, like hatchel-teeth, and high enough to keep the legs of the occupants swinging. They are as uncomfortable to little children as a pillory. Seats and desks are adorned with every embellishment that the ingenuity of professional whittlers can devise."

"Two of our school-houses, those in the two largest districts, are in a bad condition, old, unpainted and inconvenient. They are built and con structed inside on the old Connecticut plan. Only one row of desks, and that fastened to the wall of the school-room, running quite around it; and long forms, without backs to rest on, the scholars sitting with their backs to the centre of the room. The other two are in better condition, though one is constructed on the same plan as above. The out-buildings are in bad condition generally. One school-house has no out-building nor wood-house. One school-house only is painted outside."

"Of the nine school-houses in this society, not one is really what they all ought to be, for the morals, health, and intellectual improvement of the pupils. Four of them are considered tolerably good, having one outbuilding, the other five are hardly passable. The desks in most or all of them are where they never ought to be, against the sides of the room and against one end, and with few exceptions, all of a height, with poor accommodations for loose clothes, hats, &c.; all located on or near some highway; no play-ground attached to any of them, except the highway." "A part of our school-houses are comfortable buildings, but destitute of every thing like taste or ornament in the grounds, structure, or the furniture of the rooms. Being generally built in the public highway or close by its side, they are, one and all, without enclosures, ornamental or shade trees. But the want of ornament is by no means the greatest defect of our school-houses; a majority of them are not convenient. Although there has been some improvement in those recently built, yet they are not so good as would be desirable. The out-buildings in too many cases are in a neglected condition, and in some districts are not provided at all, indicating an unpardonable neglect on the part of parents and guardians."— East Windsor.

"It appears that a great proportion of the school-houses are in a sad condition and of bad architecture. Architectural drawings should, therefore, be scattered over the state, so that in the buildings to be erected those abominations may be avoided which are now so abundant."— Glastenbury.

"The internal construction of most of our school-houses is bad, and occasions great inconvenience and hindrance to the prosperity of our schools. Let as much be done as can be, to remove those miserable prison-houses for our children, and in their stead let there be good, large, and convenient school-houses."-Suffield, 2d.

"None of our school-houses have play-grounds attached; they generally stand in the highway, and some on a corner where several roads meet.”Bethany.

"Another evil is the poor, cold, inconvenient and gloomy school-houses which we find in many districts. There is one in this society not more attractive than a barn, for comfort and accommodation in a cold day: the best I can say about it is, it is thoroughly ventilated."—Lebanon, 4th.

"The houses and the internal arrangement are inconvenient; a slanting board the whole length of the house for a desk, and a slab-board for a seat so high that the scholars cannot reach the floor with their feet, constitute the conveniences of half of the schools in this society."-Easton.

"We see many a school-house which looks more like some gloomy, dilapidated prison, designed for the detention and punishment of sonie desperate culprit, than a place designed for the intellectual training of the children of an enlightened and prosperous nation. Instead of being ren

dered pleasant and attractive to the youthful mind, they are almost as cold and cheerless as an Indian wigwam."-Chaplin.

"Many of our school-houses are in a miserable condition, possessing less attractions outwardly than our prisons, while within they are dark, gloomy and comfortless. They are all destitute of an appearance of any out-house."-Warren.

"The general plan of all the school-houses is the same. Writing desks are placed around the room against the walls; these are generally so high that it would be inconvenient for adults, much more for children to use them. The seats stand in front of these, so that the pupil has his option to sit with his face or his back to the teacher. In the former case, he has the edge of the writing desk to support his back; in the latter, nothing. An arrangement like this is the worst possible. Of the five school-houses in the society, two may be warmed so as to be comfortable at all times; a third needs nothing but a good stove; but the remaining two cannot be made fit for a school to occupy without thorough repairs. There is but one out-building of any kind connected with the schoolhouses of this society, and this is entirely unfit for use.”— Winchester.

"Throughout Middlesex county the school-houses, taken as a whole, are several degrees below respectability-rarely ever painted within or without, and if painted at all, they ever afterward show a worn and weatherbeaten coat, like the half starved, half clothed outcast of society. Yet these houses are owned by the public, worth its tens of thousands, and they groan grievously if a small tax is levied to improve them. Of the four locations of school-houses in this town, not one has sufficient land for a private dwelling, and all the land combined would be less than an acre. One stands wholly on the highway; another stands on a bleak and rocky elevation, and during some portions of the winter, almost inaccessible. This location was chosen probably because it was cheaper than the pleasant field on the opposite side of the way. Why should the public school-house which accommodates from thirty to fifty pupils, ten and eleven months in the year, five and a half days of each week, not require as much land as a church or private dwelling?"—Chester.

"Our school-houses are not what they ought to be either in their location or construction. In their location they are generally found upon some barren knoll, or too near the highway, forming part of the fence between the highway and the adjoining proprietor, alike destitute of ornament or shade calculated to render them pleasing or attractive. The desks are almost always too high and continuous, instead of single, nor is there generally a gradation in reference to the size of the scholar. Few schoolrooms are well ventilated; not more than one or two properly or healthfully warmed; the consequence is unnecessary frequency of colds, headaches and ill health."-Tolland.

The Superintendent (Hon. Seth P. Beers) of Common Schools, thus introduces the subject in his Annual Report for 1848.

"The reports of school visitors from every part of the state speak in strong terms of condemnation of the deplorable condition of many district school-houses. The progress of renovation and improvement in this department has not been as rapid or as thorough, during the past year, as in other sections of New England, or as the true interests of the common schools imperiously demand. Badly located school-houses still "encumber the highway."-" without shrub or shade-tree around,"--"without

play-ground, yard, or out-house, mat or scraper,”—without means of ventilation and uniform temperature,"-" with seats too high and destitute of support for the back,"-" with desks attached to three sides of the room," "with windows destitute of glass," "clapboards hanging loose,""blinds propped up to be kept in their places,"-" the wood without shelter," and "the stove without a door." These are specimens of the language used by school visitors in describing the places where the children of Connecticut are receiving their early training in taste, manners, morals, and health,-language which it is hoped will touch the pride of the districts, and lead to some efficient action on the subject."

"How surprising and disgraceful is the fact, that a very large proportion of the school-houses of our state present vastly fewer attractions, in point of comfortable arrangement and tastefulness, than are seen about our poor-houses, our jails, and our state penitentiary! This remark is too true of the school-houses in this society. They are all located directly on the road or in it, with hardly a shrub or shade-tree around any one of them; and with no play-ground except the highway, which the children, in several districts, have to share in common with geese and swine. Of their external condition nothing very creditable or gratifying can be said. Six, of the nine school-houses in this society, are wooden ones, and they generally bear a time-honored, weather-beaten aspect. Unpainted and blindless, with clapboards agape to catch the winds of winter, and window-panes rattling, or fallen from the decayed sash, they present a most forlorn and gloomy aspect, which, to say the least, is not very well suited to woo the youthful mind, and fill it with pleasant fancies. One, unacquainted with their original design, might mistake them for the abodes of the evil genii, which would naturally be supposed to haunt the dreary solitudes which surround them.

The internal condition of these school-houses is in perfect keeping with the external. In several of them, the plastering is broken and missing, to say nothing of the dark and dingy color of what remains. The stoves are smoky, and the benches and desks are so high as to be better adapted to the children of a race of giants, than to those of the present generation; and these are hacked and gashed by the pupils, as if in retaliation for the torture suffered from them. My compassion has been deeply moved as' I have frequently entered these abodes of suffering, and seen their unhappy inmates the children of protestant parents-doing penance upon their high seats, with no support to their backs but the soft edge of the projecting board which forms the desk, and with their feet dangling in mid-air several inches from the floor. And when I have looked upon these youthful sufferers, thus seated and writhing with pain, the question has often arisen in my mind, what have these ill-starred children done that they should be doomed to so excruciating torture? What rank offenses have they committed that they should thus be suspended between the heavens and earth for six hours each day? And from deep-felt pity for the innocent sufferers, I have sometimes wished (perhaps it was cruel) that their parents had to sit for one hour in a similar position, that they might learn how to pity their children, and be prompted to attend to their health and comfort in the internal arrangement of the school-room.

Add to all this the fact, so outrageous to common decency, that most of these school-houses have no out-buildings whatever attached to them; and does not the case appeal movingly to the friends of humanity, and -demand prompt and decisive measures of reform ? Is it not passing strange, that while many parents incur considerable expense in providing themselves with cushioned and carpeted slips in church, where they ordi

narily spend, perhaps, but three hours each week, they should be so utterly regardless of the comfort and happiness of their offsprings in the school-room?"-Bloomfield.

"Three of the houses are located in the highway; an excellent device for saving land, but a miserable one for the comfort, safety and improvement of children. In selecting sites for the new houses, recently erected, a good degree of space fronting was provided for. Only two houses have blinds or shutters; all the others give full scope for the sun to see what is going on in the school-room, often to the manifest annoyance of the children and teacher; unless, perchance, the latter has genius enough to convert a stray newspaper. or some other available article, into a temporary curtain to shut him out."-Manchester.

"Our school-houses, though not cold and leaky, are very badly constructed within, and are therefore very inconvenient. Two of them stand mostly in the highway, so that one passing in a carriage or on horseback may look in upon the whole school, and as a matter of course the scholars will look at whatever passes. When the school-house is so exposed, it would seem, that modesty in our children would require the convenience of good out-houses; but this is not the case with any two school-houses in the town. We have urged the importance of these things, but with poor success."-Suffield, 2d.

"There are some houses unfit for their purpose; the weather-boards are starting off, "and the wind enjoys quite freely the luxury of coming in and being warmed by the fire; and the dear children suffer much between a cold northwester and a red-hot stove." It is very common to find the school-houses mutilated by the cuttings of obscene figures; this should draw forth the unqualified censure of proprietors and teachers. Further, there are cases where there are no out-houses for the use of children. This is a sore evil, and ought to be remedied immediately."― Groton.

"Among the ten school-houses in this district are several very good buildings; but, taking in view the size and proportions of the edifices, the internal arrangement, the fitness of the seats and desks for the object designed, we feel impelled to say, that in our opinion there are no very good school-houses. In some of the districts it is said the people are obliged to go among strangers to procure teachers, on account of the shabbyness of the school-houses."-Brooklyn.

"Not more than one-half of our school-houses in this society are very good, if, indeed, they can be termed more than comfortable. The remainder are bad, some of them very bad, exhibiting nothing of comfort or convenience. In some of them, there are no desks fit to be used for writing purposes. The seats are so constructed as to afford no place to rest the back, or, in some cases, even the sole of the foot. Many of the schools are destitute of out-houses. Some of them have no conveniences for hanging up the hats or clothes of the children, or even to shelter the wood from the weather. And more than half our school-houses are destitute of black-boards, a fact alike discreditable to the district and to the teachers who have served in them."-Stafford, 1st.

"It appears from the superintendent's report for 1847, that of 1663 school-houses in the state, 873 have out-houses, and 745 have none! This fact is, undoubtedly, a burning shame and a deep disgrace to the state. It is unworthy of a civilized country, and indicates a state of things that ought to exist only among savages. The committee are happy to say that we have little or no share in this shameful fact: but our schoolhouses are by no means what they should be, and call for improvement.