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GOOD old lady once entertained us by a description of a famous female seminary, of probably seventy years ago, in the State of Connecticut, where were gathered the daughters of eminent families from Massachusetts to Louisiana. The proprietor of the establishment cultivated an extensive fruit garden in the rear of the buildings, always in sight of the girls from the back windows. Once a week they were assembled in the great parlor, when the principal and his wife used solemnly to appear bearing dishes of every variety of luscious fruit, with the instruction that the pupils could look at, admire and, as a special favor, smell of it. Somewhat after this manner some of our great educators seem to be gathering "fruits of Hesperides" in ideal systems of school keeping, which at best cannot find a stable habitation under any present condition of affairs, and can only, like the fruits of the economical principal, be realized through the spiritual sight, hearing, taste and smell. One of the most observant and successful of our educators concludes that while the graduates of our normal schools perhaps do better work at teaching for a year or two, the college graduate, after two years, generally comes out ahead. This is both important and true. The reason is that the young people that enter the state normal schools are generally deficient even in the secondary education, while one of the most characteristic results of a good college course is the acquirement both of the power of mental application and the mental dexterity which enables the graduate to learn and do things more rapidly than others. But there seems to be but little help in this for any save the higher schools, which are rarely taught during the first years after normal school graduation. And only the larger towns can afford to pay the salary in the higher school of the expert college graduate after his two years of professional experience. Another very distinguished educational leader declares that during the first eight years the school children should not be taught to read or write; but largely instructed in the mythologies, fairy tales and legends of the races of men, with special attention to the purity of the English which they hear and speak. This leaves for nine tenths of the American children at most four years in which not only to learn to read and write, but to cover the entire curriculum of elementary studies. And just where the ideal teachers can be found, some five hundred thousand in number, to dispense this system and turn out some twelve or thirteen millions of young Americans prepared for American citizenship does not appear. Of course ideals, even if

like Shelley's "topmost star of unascended heaven, pinnacled dim in the intense inane," are the condition of all progress; for "where there is no vision the people perish." But just now there is a most

imperative necessity that, between the ages of six and twelve, the vast majority of American children should be educationally handled in a way that in connection with the family, the church and what the fathers called "the means of education," they will be "wiser than we," so that "many things impossible to us will be easy to them." And while our imagination is entertained and our hope and faith stimulated by the possibilities of child nature, the average schoolteacher, by whom this mighty work of launching a new generation must be chiefly done, still needs "line upon line, and precept upon precept" concerning the dealing with the children of the common people in the common school.

TH

AN ENGLISH SCHOOLMAN.*

HE life of the author of Educational Reformers must surely offer many points of interest to those who deal with education-a man of whom it has been written, "You are the only man I have met with who has not been a mere partisan in education; who has not looked at it through professional spectacles of more or less self-interest and been a modernist because that was his line, or a classicist because that was his line, but has quietly looked and thought about what is best." Mr. Storr tells us that his materials have been selected from forty notebooks, which record in extenso more than a quarter century of Quick's life and thought. From these he has carefully chosen enough to make a book of over five hundred pages of exceeding interest. Robert Hebert Quick was born in London in 1831, son of a merchant of sound financial standing, and so never bound down by the necessity of earning his living by teaching. His health caused him to leave. Harrow after one term, in 1846, and it was not until 1854 that he was graduated at Cambridge. There he had applied himself to mathematics, for, as he writes: "I adopted as a rule Bacon's maxim-that you should attend to studies you don't like, and what you do like will take care of itself. This, at least in my case, was a great mistake." He then took Holy Orders, but soon turned from his curacy to teaching, "the second string, so to speak, that every English cleric has to his bow." Carlyle "stirred him up," as he says, to go for a month's visit, in 1856, to Hamburg, which was the beginning of a series of German trips in which he mastered the language, which he afterwards taught at Harrow.

*Life and Remains of the Rev. R. H. Quick, edited by F. Storr. London and New York. Macmillan.

His activity as a teacher began in 1858, when he became a master in the Lancaster Grammar School. But early in 1859 he started again for Leipzig. Soon returning, he became mathematical master in Guilford Grammar School, and afterwards taught at Hurstpierpoint and Cranleigh. In 1868 he published his Essays on Educational Reformers, a book of sketches of the great masters of educational method. Then followed his unexpected call to a mastership at his old school, Harrow. But here he found what Ste. Beuve complains of in the university teachers of the sixteenth century, "la diversité dans la routine." "Every man taught as he liked. No attempt was made at any uniform system, but men were so overworked that they could not get along without routine." The programme of a sample day's work, extending from 6 A. M. to 10.30 P. M., shows thirteen hours of labor in teaching. This was indeed to shorten one's days, and it is no wonder that he speaks of turning "oneself into a machine without thought or feeling." Five years was the limit of Quick's endurance at Harrow, where he left the impress, not indeed of greatest brilliancy in teaching ability, but of the kindest man, "of unfailing loyalty and affection.”

In 1879 he was called to Cambridge as Lecturer on Education. In 1883 Trinity College gave him a Living, which he resigned in 1887, going to Redhill, where he passed the last four years of his life. Since 1876, however, he had tried his hand at two private schools, one in London the other at Guildford. At Redhill he passed his time in labor in his chosen line, in which he was probably the best known of English writers. He was struck down and died in 1891, at the house of his friend, Prof. J. R. Seeley, who says of him: "I never knew a man of happier disposition and temper. He was all candor and kindness."

The life, in a large measure an autobiography, ends with page 126. Then follow extracts from his forty journals, rich in intimate glimpses of the soul of the man, dealing with all phases of the educational question. The mere titles of the divisions will give an idea of the contents. They include Elementary Education, Public Schools, Boys and Masters, Examination, School Wrinkles, What to Teach, Child Nature, Dora and Oliver (a record of the development of his two children, full of interesting and instructive observations on child life), Training of Teachers, Language, Memory, Adversaria Moralia, Varia, Varia Literaria, Preaching and Lecturing, Religious Beliefs and Criticisms of Books.

Many words of wisdom are in these last four hundred pages. It would be useless to quote from them here. They must all be read,

and that, too, not alone by those who look for light on problems of education, but also by those who are interested in the broader view of human life which here finds expression in the words of a singularly loveable and noble soul. Of his own writing he says, in his modest way, in a note written at Redhill, "It is extremely devoid of what Matthew Arnold calls charm. But one claim to attention my writing has I write because I think." And it is precisely this fact that lends the charm and the value to what Quick has left behind him.

S.

FOREIGN NOTES.

SCHOOL SUPERVISION IN SEVERAL COUNTRIES.

That supervision is essential to any system of public education has become a platitude. The evolution of the supervisor is a phenomenon of interest, though it has scarcely progressed far enough for history. The office exists under various names in our own and in foreign countries; in our ideal we exalt it to the level of a profession, and demand for it special preparation, scholastic and practical. The ideal is approached in a few cities and in many cases in the State superintendency; it is very generally ignored in the widely diffused system of county superintendence. The school laws, however, call for or imply, in more or less explicit terms, "professional" equipment for the duties of the last-named position which are definitely set forth.

The county superintendent may be compared with the French academy inspector (inspecteur d'académie). The comparison is permissible for this reason alone,-both officers belong to a subordinate division of territory embracing under their charge minor divisions. which have a measure of independent control. Any comparison between a system in which local control is the pervading and dominating principle and a centralized system like that of France is apt to be misleading, and is only suggested here to emphasize the matter of professional equipment which is a sine qua non in France for admission to any government position. The academy inspectors in France have charge of districts varying from a population of 550,000 (Chambéry) to six and one-quarter million (Paris). The inspector must have had either ten years' experience in teaching or have attained the bachelor's degree, and have passed some time as a college professor or as an inspector of the inferior order or in some similar service, each and all of which require qualifications defined by law. The academy inspector must be fully competent to conduct the ex

aminations for teachers, which are quite rigid, and to bear his part in the council of university professors and higher officers of education. He has under him a corps of primary inspectors, whose reports he must receive and summarize; he must hold conferences of teachers and of inspectors and stimulate and unify their efforts, give them model lessons, and be, in short, a leader as well as a critic and judge. The efforts which the Republic has made to develop its primary schools are well known, and the inspectorate may be largely credited with the excellent results attained. The weaknesses of the centralized system are many and serious, but under the pressure of a great necessity, namely, that of creating in the sympathies and conscious interests of the masses a solid support for the Republic, the primary school system of France has been made efficient, and the inspectorate in fact what it is in name. Unfortunately the influence from below is powerless to overcome military domination in this ill-fated country.

Germany is constantly giving to the world new ideas and suggestions applicable to all degrees of education, but as regards the actual conduct of primary schools it offers little that we could with profit adopt. The Volksschule, or people's school of Germany, is not the sort of school that is wanted for the people of America. In all German schools, primary, higher schools and gymnasia, the chief stress is placed upon the preparation of the teacher. Supervision is pro'vided, but it is rather for administrative than for scholastic purposes.

The twelve provinces of Prussia are divided into regencies, and these again into districts (kreise) analogous somewhat to our counties. Each parish or commune within the kreise is a unit or district for school administration. In each regency there is a school commission which has great authority in educational affairs. District school inspectors are appointed by this body subject to confirmation by the Minister of Education. Each parish has its own school committee, which appoints a local school inspector, who is usually a clergyman. The latter class of inspectors are not as a rule salaried officers, their work being regarded as an honor or as a legitimate part of ecclesiastical functions. It is easy to understand why the church should constantly seek to increase the importance and authority of the local inspector. Last year a successful effort was made in Bromberg to secure a ministerial decision making the local inspector equal in rank to the district inspector. In a circular of the Bromberg government, since published in the official Centralblatt, and thus, according to the London Journal of Education, made applicable to all parts of Prussia, it is provided that the district inspector cannot inspect or deal in any way with the internal organization of a school without first consulting