of promotion from the
lower schools to the schools above it. This would have placed "Graphics"
alongside of the copy-book and the spelling-book. After struggling for
several years with popular prejudice, the friends of the scheme were
obliged to abandon it as hopeless. The idea was too much in advance of
the times. Could the plan have succeeded, and could the entire youthful
population of that great city, which is preeminently a mechanical and
manufacturing centre, have grown up with a familiar practised skill in
the use of the pencil, in ordinary, off-hand drawing, such as our friend
Michael had, there can be no question that it would have added untold
millions to the general wealth. If every boy and girl in that great
metropolitan city were now obliged to spend as much time in learning to
draw as is spent in learning to spell, and at the same age that they
learn to spell, I do soberly believe that the addition to the wealth of
the city, by the increased mechanical skill that would be developed,
would be worth more than the entire cost of her public schools, although
they do cost well-nigh a million of dollars annually.

What is true of drawing, is true of every branch and accomplishment
necessary to a complete education. A man is educated when all his
capacities bodily and mental are developed, and a community is educated
when all its members are. Now if we could imagine two communities, of
exactly equal numbers, and in physical circumstances exactly equal as to
climate, soil, access to markets, and so forth, and if one of these
communities should tax itself to the extent of even one-fourth of its
income in promoting popular education, while the other spent not a
dollar in this way, there can be little doubt as to which community
would make the most rapid advances in wealth and in every other
desirable social good.

We happen to have on this subject one most striking and significant
record. In 1670, the English Commissioners for Foreign Plantations
addressed to the Governors of the several colonies a series of questions
concerning the condition of the settlements under their charge. One of
these questions related to the means of popular education. The answers
of two of the Governors are preserved. One of them, the Governor of
Connecticut, ruled a territory to which nature had not been specially
propitious. Its climate was bleak, its coast rockbound, its soil blest
with only ordinary fertility. The other territory, Vi