ILLUSTRATED MAGAZINE OF THE EIGHTH EXHIBITION, under the direction of the Massachusetts Charitable Mechanic Association, at Faneuil and Quincy Halls, Boston, September, 1856; published by Damrell & Moore and George Coolidge, in the Halls, and at No. 16 Devonshire street.

What a picture of the industry, enterprise, intelligence, and thrift of our good old Bay State, does this elegant pamphlet exhibit! Here is a list of 1,733 different articles-from the most delicate jewelry, the finest product of the loom, and the most beautiful cabinet-work, to the massive steam-engine and the heaviest machinery. We wish that space allowed us to describe some of the many evidences of the skill and ingenuity of Massachusetts workmen and inventors, which we examined during a visit of several hours which we made to the Exhibition itself — for we prize such occasions greatly, as among the best of educational opportunities. And whence all this, save from the intelligence of Massachusetts? and whence her intelligence, save from her Free Schools? What a commentary on the atrocious sentiments respecting them, which we have copied in another place, from a Virginia newspaper!

The pamphlet, with its numerous illustrations, is beautifully got up, and is a credit to the press of our excellent printers.

A.

That pleasant magazine for the young, the Student and Schoolmate, comes to us this month in a new and very pretty dress, and with the name of the Rev. A. R. Pope, lately one of the Agents of the State Board of Education, as its Assistant Editor. It is filled with a variety of useful and interesting reading, and is adorned with neat wood-cuts. We wish it a continuance of prosperity. It is published at one dollar a year by Robinson & Richardson, 119 Washington street.

We have received the following books, which we shall notice in our next No.: Tate's Philosophy, Hickling, Swan, & Brown; Mitchell's Primary Geography, 4th edition, Thomas Cowperthwait & Co.; Cowdery's Moral Lessons, do.; Berard's United States, do.; Colburn's First Part, do.

INTELLIGENCE.

The Michigan Journal of Education contains the minutes of the annual meeting of the Teachers' Association of that State, at Ypsilanti, Aug. 18. Reports were read, on The Necessity, in our School Training, of a more careful cultivation of the Sensibilities; on The Importance of the Study of Natural History [an excellent paper which we propose to lay before our readers]; on The Supervision of Schools; on The Study of the English Classics; and one on Drawing in Schools, by Miss M.L. Gilpin, of Philadelphia. Committees were appointed to report at the next meeting, on the subject of the Reflex Influence of Teaching on the Health and Character, and on Primary Instruction. A vote guaranteeing to the editor of the Journal a thousand copies of the same, was afterwards changed by inserting the words, "a full and adequate support" instead.

names.

An incomplete list of members contains seventy-five

We learn from a correspondent, whose account we have not room to print, that a pleasant occasion took place on the 23d instant, at Phillips Academy, Andover, when a handsome and valuable telescope was presented by the pupils-between two and three hundred in number to Mr. J. S. Eaton, teacher in the English Department, as a token of their appreciation of his impartial and judicious management of the School, during the absence of the principal, Dr. Taylor, on a tour through Europe and the East.

DEDICATION OF A HIGH SCHOOL-HOUSE IN BROOKLINE. · On Friday, October 31st, the edifice recently erected for the Brookline High School was dedicated with appropriate exercises. Thomas Parsons, Chairman of the Building Committee, surrendered the keys, with apt and felicitous remarks, to the School Committee. Rev. Dr. Stone, in behalf of the latter Committee, received the keys, spoke of their symbolical character, and remarked that with them it would be the purpose of the Committee to lock out of the building all ignorance, vice, and ill manners; free admission would be offered to all else. Rev. Mattson M. Smith read selections from the Scriptures, and led in the prayer of dedication. Vocal and instrumental music followed. Hon. George S. Boutwell was then introduced, and made a very instructive and practical address on the relations which the different grades of schools bear to one another. Rev. Mr. Quint, a member of the Board of Education, being introduced, illustrated in a happy and impressive manner the idea embodied in the text, "The school is more potential than the laws, and the family is more important than the school." Rev. Dr. Hedge, of Brookline, urged upon the scholars the reflection that beautiful school-houses and extensive apparatus cannot supply the place of their own efforts. Though having large hope in the future, he suggested the query, whether the rising generation would furnish more leading minds than the generation past, which did not enjoy so ample means.

The house is constructed of wood, at an expense of about $15,000. It is a beautiful building, containing two large school-rooms forty-two feet square, a recitation-room, library, ante-rooms, and two large, well-lighted, and airy rooms in the basement for gymnastic exercises. The structure does credit to the liberality, and is an ornament to the town of Brookline.

H.

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MATHEMATICAL.

ANSWERS TO QUESTION 15 (OCT. NO.)

I. The greater of two numbers is equal to one-half their sum increased by one-half their difference; and the less is equal to one-half their sum diminished by one-half their difference. The product of any two numbers, then, is equal to one-half their sum increased by one-half their difference, multiplied by one-half their sum diminished by one-half their difference, i. e., the square of one-half their sum diminished by the square of one-half their difference.

=

b

++ and b

2

Algebraically stated. Suppose ab. Then a = ; and a x b = (+ =) ( += " — =) = (2 + ") ' — (b). If now we construct a table, placing opposite every number the square of its half, we can find the product of any two numbers by subtracting the number in the table opposite the difference of the two numbers from the one opposite their sum. In constructing the table, the fraction (4) which

would occur opposite every odd number may be disregarded; for, if the sum of any two numbers be odd, their difference is also odd, and therefore the difference between the two tabular numbers used in any given case is not affected by the fraction.

P.

II. This table is based upon the truth of Prop. 5, 2d Book of Euclid. Opposite each number in the table stands the square of its half, rejecting the which always occurs in the square of half of an odd number; because, the sum of two numbers being odd, their difference is also odd, and the & cancels itself.

The truth above alluded to is, that, if a number be divided into two equal, and also into two unequal, parts, the product of the equal parts will be greater than the product of the unequal parts, by the square of half of the difference of the unequal parts.

[The title of the book is, "Table of Quarter Squares. By S. L. Laundy, Associate of the Institute of Actuaries. London: Layton."]

MISCELLANY.

EDUCATION AND SLAVERY. -"We have got to hating everything with the prefix free, from free negroes down and up through the whole cataloguefree farms, free labor, free society, free will, free thinking, free children, and free schools-all belonging to the same brood of damnable isms. But the worst of all these abominations is the modern system of free schools. The New England system of free schools has been the cause and prolific source of the infidelities and treasons that have turned her cities into Sodoms and Gomorrahs, and her land into the common nestling-places of howling Bedlamites. We abominate the system because the SCHOOLS ARE FREE."-South Side Democrat, Petersburg, Va.

FREE SCHOOLS-MASSACHUSETTS AND VIRGINIA. In 1701, the penalty imposed by the Legislature of Massachusetts upon towns for neglecting to provide Grammar Schools was twenty pounds. It was required that "the schoolmasters should be appointed by the ministers of the town, and the ministers of the two next adjacent towns, or any two of them, by certificates under their hands."

These early resolves, concerning schools and education, indubitably prove two things: first, that our Puritan Fathers believed that the establishment of schools was a duty they owed to justice and humanity, to freedom and religion; and, second, that they had resolved that these schools should be free. Here, then, was a new idea introduced to the world, free schools! And from free schools and congregational churches, what could result but Republicanism? They held our republic as the acorn holds the oak. It is important to state that free schools originated in Massachusetts.

In 1671, Sir William Berkeley, first Governor of Virginia, writes to the king, thus:

"I thank God there are no free schools nor printing-presses here, and I

trust there will not be this hundred years; for learning breeds up heresies and sects, and all abominations. God save us from both!"

Now look at Massachusetts. The Rev. John Robinson, before the Pilgrims left Leyden, charged them to build churches, establish schools, and read the Bible, without sectarian prejudice. He said: "I am convinced that God has more light yet to break forth out of his holy word. Receive such light gladly." Our fathers acted on this wise, Christian, and republican advice, and engaged Philemon Purmount "to teach the children; for which he was to be paid thirty acres of ground by the public authorities." How accordant this with that noble resolve of New England, to establish a college, "to the end that good learning may not be buried in the graves of our fathers!" It is cheering to read in the early records of Medford, when a special town meeting was called for this only purpose, viz., "to see if the town will have a school kept for three months," to find every voter in favor of it, and, at the end of this vote, appending these immortal words, "and this school shall be free!"

Here we have, in short compass, the different beginnings and opposite policies of two settlements; the one anathematizing free schools and printing presses; the other doing all it can for free inquiry, universal culture, and progressive truth. The natural result of one system is to overrun a State with slavery, darken it with ignorance, pinch it with poverty, and curse it with irreligion; the natural result ofthe other is to fill a State with freemen, to enlighten it with knowledge, to expand it with wealth, and to bless it with Christianity.

We should never cease to thank God that our ancestors, though surrounded by savage foes, and doomed to poverty and self-denial, laid deep foundations of that system of common schools, which is now the nursery of intelligence, the basis of virtue, the pledge of freedom, and the hope of the world. Brooks's History of Medford.

SLAVERY AND IGNORANCE. Of white persons in Virginia, between the ages of five and twenty, there are 379,845. Of this number there are at school or college only about 111,327, leaving as attending no school of any kind, 268,518: that is, for every young person in the State, between five and twenty years of age, receiving any instruction, there are two others who receive none! In other words, two-thirds of that portion of the population of Virginia who are to become citizens within the next fifteen years, are in these most precious years of their history, going wholly untaught. We stop not to comment on the almost total worthlessness of much of the instruction imparted to the one-third who receive any. - N. Y. Evangelist, quoted in the Wisconsin Journal of Education.

"There are, within the limits of the State of Maryland, according to the last census, seventeen thousand native white adults and three thousand four hundred and fifty-one foreigners, making in the aggregate 20815 persons, who can neither read nor write. Scattered over eight counties of the State, with an aggregate population of about 80,000, there are but fourteen public schools, averaging about thirty-four pupils to each school. There are of course some private schools in these counties, but the entire number of children attending school, all does not average more than one child to each family of seven persons.

The head of every third family throughout the State can neither read nor write. More than ten thousand men exercise the right of suffrage in Maryland, who are utterly unable to read the names of the candidates for whom they vote." -Baltimore Patriot, quoted in the Wisconsin Journal of Education.

EDUCATION AND FREEDOM. "No State can boast of the same amount of enterprise, intelligence, and public spirit, as Massachusetts, and no city has done half so much as Boston. I find here more learning, more industry, and more of everything that adds to the greatness and glory of America, than I find in half of the Southern States put together. No child is allowed to grow up to manhood without an education; if his parents are poor, he is edu

cated at the expense of the State; if he is an orphan, he is not only educated, but he is also taught a trade; and to prevent truant boys from growing up vagabonds, a committee is appointed whose duty it is to ascertain who and where they are, that they may be properly cared for." "A Kentuckian Down East," in the Louisville Courier.

A discovery of great interest in Geology has just been made by Prof. Wm. B. Rogers in the eastern part of Massachusetts- no less than fossil remains in the old and altered slates immediately bordering on the Quincy granite. The fossils are trilobites of a species belonging to the very oldest fossiliferous strata. "Thus for the first time," says Prof. R. "are we furnished with the dates for establishing conclusively the geological age of any portion of this part of ancient and highly altered sandstones, and, what gives further interest to the discovery, for defining in regard to this region the very base of the Paleozoic column as recognized in other parts of the globe." The fossils, which are thus far all of one genus, (Paradoxides see Hitchcock's Elementary Geology, p. 152, for a drawing of one, and Lyell's Manual, Little & Brown's Ed., p. 454,) were found in a quarry in the belt of siliceous and argillaceous slate on the borders of Quincy and Braintree. For some years the owner of the quarry and his family had been aware of the existence of these so-called images in the rock, which they were in the habit of quarrying as ballasting material for wharves, but until now the locality has remained entirely unknown to science. "As this genus of Trilobites is peculiar to the lowest of the Palæozoic rocks in Bohemia, Sweden, and Great Britain, marking the Primordial Division' of Barrande, and the "Lingular Flags" of the British Survey, we will [shall] probably be called upon to place the fossil belt of Quincy and Braintree on or near the horizon of our lowest fossiliferous group, that is to say, somewhere about the level of the Primal rocks, the Potsdam sandstoneand the Protozoic sandstone of Owen, containing Dikelokephalus (Lyell, p. 457,) in Minnesota and Wisconsin."

"The occurrence of well-preserved fossils among rocks so highly altered and so contiguous to great igneous masses as are the fossiliferous slates of Quincy, may well encourage us to make careful search in other parts of Eastern New England where heretofore such an exploration would have been deemed useless."-Letter of Prof. Rogers in Silliman's Journal for Sept.

We have received from Tuscaloosa, Alabama, a number of the Teacher, with the following endorsement, -"Keep your d-d abolition doctrines at home; please stop this; Mr. has gone to parts unknown." The Southern gentleman who writes it, and whom we suppose to be the post master of the place, is not over civil, and somewhat profane withal. He is, however, wise in his generation. Nothing ought so much to excite his wrath and his fears, as free schools and popular education, for his wicked institution has no enemy so dangerous. The number returned was the one occupied with the proceedings of the American Institute of Instruction. We shall give ourselves the satisfaction of finishing his year by sending him this one number more.

A.