six and twenty-one years who may be voluntarily entrusted to it for any or all of these purposes by the parent or guardians, or committed to its charge by competent authority.

Article VII. The institution designed to be established and aided by this bequest, is to be organized and conducted on the general principles and methods recognized in the Rauhen House near Hamburg in Germany, and the Agricultural Colony at Mettray in France, as described in Barnard's National Education in Europe (Edition of 1854), and in the Boston Asylum and Farm School, incorporated in its present form in 1833, . and the New York Juvenile Asylum, incorporated in 1851, with such modifications as may be by the Trustees deemed to be better adapted to the peculiar condition of the people of this State, or which may be suggested by their own experience or that of similar institutions.”

Of

The amount of the Watkinson Fund is now $207,000. this sum $162,000 is invested in productive funds and $45,000 in land. The last sentence of the will gives the Trustees authority to make such modifications as they may deem needful for the industrial training of the inmates of the School. If industrial education becomes a prominent feature of the Institution, it will, in the words of the will, be "better adapted to the peculiar condition of the people of this State." The principles and methods recognized in the Rauhen House and Mettray School may be inferred from the following statement: The "Colonie Agricole," at Mettray, near Tours, in France, was founded in 1839 as an institution for the reformation and training of children liable to become vicious and criminal. Besides receiving instruction in the necessary school studies, they are taught various useful occupations, such as farming, and the trades of the wheelwright, blacksmith, joiner, carpenter, mason, shoe-maker, wooden-shoe-maker, tailor, rope-maker, sail-maker, etc.

The Reform School of the "Rauhen House," at Horn, near Hamburg, was founded in 1833. Here as at Mettray, the "family system" is maintained. The labor performed includes house-keeping and home-work, field and garden culture, and such occupations as shoe-making, making and mending clothes and bedding, carpentry and wooden-shoe-making, woolen-thread

spinning, baking, masonry and painting, house-keeping and basket-making. There are also workshops for printing, bookbinding, lithographing, stereotyping and wood-engraving. The girls fill the places of servants, cooks, washerwomen, ironers, laundry-women and seamstresses. The younger girls help the older, make and mend coarse linen, knit and mend stockings,

etc.

The German Government has long sought to make industrial pursuits reputable and universal. To this end, members of the royal family have practiced as well as preached the gospel of honest work. In Carlsruhe, I learned of an excellent girls' school in the Schloss, in which the Grand Duchess of Baden, the only daughter of the Emperor of Germany, had recently placed her young daughter, with instructions that she should be excused from none of the household industries required of the other pupils, that she should be trained in sewing and knitting, and made as thorough a seamstress as if she were to earn her livelihood by her needle. During her school life she is not to be distinguished by any of the high titles which she may bear in after life. In all respects she is to be on a par with her young companions, receiving no favoritism in view of her rank, but to WORK and play, run and romp, give and take on perfectly equal terms with her companions, and receive exactly the same punishments if remiss in study or work. The present Crown Prince of Prussia early learned the cabinet makers' trade, and at Babelsberg near Potsdam, the Summer Palace of the Emperor of Germany, are shown articles of furniture of superior workmanship made by him. His cousin, Prince Frederick Charles, learned the trade of glazier, and became quite artistic and enthusiastic in his craft. Fine specimens of his work may be seen in the Potsdam Palace, consisting chiefly of colored glass tastefully joined together by means of lead and tin strips, like the fine colored memorial glass windows so often found in churches. Such examples of honoring industry have exerted a vast and beneficent influence throughout the German Empire

EDUCATION AND LABOR.

The great majority of our pupils must work for a living. By the ordinance of Heaven, the necessity of labor is wellnigh universal. Nature and history alike confirm the old decree, "In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread." Teachers and school officers should carefully inquire whether our schools are accomplishing all they ought to do for the working classes. It is a grand result that all are trained to read and write and cipher, and learn something of the other common rudiments. In no part of the world, except Germany, are there so few native illiterates as in New England.

The general intelligence of the people is one obvious cause of our exemption from the railway strikes of last summer. The sober second thought prevailed here, while madness ruled the hour elsewhere. But beneficent as has been the influence of the public school in New England, it has by no means done its whole duty to the laboring classes. More should be said and done to dignify labor and prepare our youth to become skilled workmen as well as industrious and upright citizens. It is a mistake to suppose that education need create any aversion to labor, or that those who do the roughest work need the least schooling.

Under the system of slavery in the South, and until recently with the serfs of Russia and the equally illiterate farm hands of England, it was held as an axiom that schooling would make laborers discontented, restless and unprofitable servants, and that universal education would render manual labor distasteful and disreputable. Too much of this mischievous legacy of slavery lingers among us still. The silly and wicked notion that labor is menial ought to be refuted in our schools, where our youth should be early taught the necessity and dignity of labor, as the primal source of all human excellence and progress. Girls as well as boys should be early taught both in the family and school that to learn to be useful

is alike their duty, privilege and interest. Education should thus be made the auxiliary of labor. Instead of treating it as a degrading drudgery, education should elevate labor and render it more skillful and productive. If the true bearing of education on industry was taught in our schools, our youth would grow up under the salutary conviction that education is economy, and so far from degrading labor makes it more inviting and profitable, because the skilled workman so forecasts his plans that every blow tells, thus economizing his time and strength and stock, and even in the humblest work, accomplishing more, in better style, and with less damage to tools or machinery, than the boor who can use only brute muscle. Pride in one's work leads to higher excellence both in his craft and character. The skilled artizan who delights to do his best to-day, will aspire to do better still to-morrow. On the other hand, the too common theory that labor is a degrading drudgery will consciously demean any workman and bar improvement in his trade.

Connecticut is a busy hive of manufactories. The industrial interests of no State are more vital to its prosperity. We are a working people, and the cause of the workman is the cause of all. The problem of our State and of our day is to elevate work by educating and thus elevating the workmen. The masses are learning that mere muscle is weak, that brains help the hands in all work, that knowledge multiplies the value and productive power of muscular efforts. If knowledge is power, ignorance is waste and weakness. What a man is, stamps an impress upon what he does, even in the humblest forms of industry. The character of the work depends upon the workman. Whatever elevates the laborer improves his labor. In proportion as you degrade the operative even to the degree of serf or slave, you depreciate his work. You can dignify work therefore in no way so surely as by elevating the workman. The wealth and welfare of individuals and States, always dependent on labor, can be most fully secured only by educated labor. If rightly conducted, our schools, so far from breeding discontent with the humblest pursuits, will prepare for success in the ordinary callings of life.

Instead of this, I find in some cases the chief aim is promo

tion to the next higher grade, and from that up to the highest or High School, and the programme is planned for those who complete the full curriculum, rather than for the majority who withdraw early for work or business. It is worthy of inquiry whether at each successive step the conditions of promotion may not wisely include the same studies and attainments which constitute the best preparation for the business of life, as well as for higher grades in school.

How to secure the best results with the least cost of time as well as money, is a problem not yet fully solved. Our text books, now too voluminous, should comprise less of minute details and more of practical methods and principles. Such topics in arithmetic as the least common multiple of common fractions, casting out of nines in multiplication and division, alligation medial and alternate, and commutation of radix, may well be omitted in a common school course, or briefly noticed in the appendix. Those and kindred topics, of no use in ordinary business, fill a large space in nearly all the arithmetics. They have a traditionary sanction. In continuing them the authors have consulted usage more than utility. Like the titled scions of rank in the old world, they have come down by so long a literary descent that no one disputes their right to their honored place. Worth more than all these complicated processes is the thorough mastery of the ground rules. In all our schools rapid mental combinations should be daily practiced till pupils can add, multiply and divide with the utmost facility and accuracy. This done, the rest of arithmetic will be comparatively easy and pleasant.

Ex-President Thomas Hill justly complains that our "Arithmetics have been expanded until the unfortunate pupil is lost in a wilderness of words, and does not find his way through, in time to learn to cipher. The science of arithmetic receives so much attention that the art is neglected. Life is not long enough to spend so long a proportion of it on arithmetic as is spent in the modern system of teaching it, and arithmetic is too valuable an art to have our children neglect to acquire facility in it, instead of being stupefied and disgusted with premature attempts to understand it as a science." It is certainly a useless repetition to require children to learn, for example, explana