have power to contribute to such institutes from the institute and other funds under their control, and to permit the teachers employed by them to attend the same for one week without forfeiture of wages." The Cleveland experiment has not been repeated; but it is to be hoped that it will be repeated, in the near future, in various sections of the State.

REMARKS.

The most active and enthusiastic workers in teachers' institutes have felt from the first the needs of some legislation. by which the value and efficiency of these educational helps may be increased, and the sphere of their usefulness enlarged. The impossibility of securing the services of experienced instructors and lecturers has, in many instances, prevented the holding of sessions at times convenient for teachers, and occasionally the exercises have not been of such a character as to be of much benefit to teachers in ungraded schools. The State Commissioner has frequently not been able to attend even one-half of the institutes held during his term of office-many of them being held simultaneously, and those succeeding each other being located at points widely separated. Their exercises have not been thoroughly classified and systematized, and all attempts to secure uniformity of method in their conduct have been futile. Quite frequently, valuable time has been consumed in arranging a programme or in the discussion of irrelevant matters.

Various plans have been suggested to remedy these defects. In 1864, the State Commissioner was requested by the State Teachers' Association, at the annual meeting, to select one or more men, thoroughly competent to conduct institutes, who should devote themselves to the work of their organization and management. In his report to the General Assembly, the Commissioner stated that he

could not find any competent person who was willing to undertake the work and depend wholly upon institutes for support. He therefore recommended that an appropriation be made to aid in supporting a corps of institute instructors. It was thought that $3,000, in connection with the sum available from the institute fund, would keep three able and efficient educators constantly in the field. The appropriation was not made. The recommendation was repeated in the report for 1865, and in several subsequent reports; but an institute corps has not yet been appointed, neither has the General Assembly ever made any direct appropriation to encourage this the only agency employed in the State, under the sanction of law, for the professional training of teachers.

CHAPTER VIII.

SCHOOL SUPERVISION.

This subject will be treated under the following heads: 1. State Supervision.

2. County Supervision.

3. City and Town Supervision.*

STATE SUPERVISION.

It may justly be said, that in the year 1837 common school education in the United States took a new departure. In that year, there entered upon the discharge of the important duties of superintendent of education in two states, two remarkable men. On the 31st of March, Samuel Lewis was elected by the legislature, Superintendent of Common Schools for Ohio, an office created four days before; and on the 29th of June following, Horace Mann was elected Secretary of the Massachusetts Board of Education. Though Massachusetts may rightly claim for herself the larger part of the honors of her great son, it has been the happy fortune of Ohio to possess exclusively as her own the fame and good works of Samuel Lewis, and to divide with her sister state the glory of Horace Mann's great fame.

*Although "Township Supervision" has been authorized ever since the passage of the law of 1853, if not longer, it has not been thought necessary to enter upon any history of it in a sketch so brief as this, and with so few facts in possession. It will be sufficient to say, in a note, that township boards have still the same authority to employ a superintendent of schools that the boards of cities and towns possess. This authority has, however, been exercised only to a very limited extent, but, where it has, so far as results have been reported, they have been, in almost every case, highly favorable to the success of the scheme.

Both men, although of diverse characteristics, had extraordinary qualifications for the work upon which they were about to enter. Both possessed an untiring energy, and both were prompted by an intense enthusiasm in the cause of the education of the whole people. Though the qualities of their minds were so different, they were both powerful and persuasive speakers. Mr. Mann had every advantage in the way of education and general culture, and these advantages he improved with the happiest results. His spirit was fiery, and he was filled with an unquailing, aggressive courage. His eloquence possessed the highest attributes of oratorical style, and he put into it all the best qualities of his heart and mind. He did not so much seek to convince by his logic, as to stimulate to noble deeds by constantly bearing aloft a standard of true manhood. No wrong could so securely intrench itself as to withstand the vehement tide of his indignant denunciation, and his scorn for mean thinking and doing was withering. He showed Massachusetts, the earliest home of the American common school, how miserably inadequate were the notions of her people as to the true scope of an education that should equal the exigencies of American citizenship. He showed that education, to be of any great worth, must include more than reading, writing, arithmetic, and geography; that it must transcend all mere text-book lore, and have a moral side to it, incomparably more important than the intellectual.

Samuel Lewis enjoyed none of the educational advantages of his eminent co-laborer, his school training having ended before he was ten years old. Otherwise, he was possessed of an excellent capital with which to begin life-a healthy mind of great original power and a thoroughly sound moral nature. He was essentially a man of the people, self-made and well-made. He was a born orator, naturally possessing those traits of mind which enable a speaker to convince and move the people. If the true standard of eloquence is what

it accomplishes, then he might well have taken his place among orators of the highest rank. Less impassioned than Mann, he was not less earnest; less vehement, he was not less courageous; possessing less beauty and elevation of literary style, he was not less convincing and persuasive— nay, his very simplicity was inwrought with a wondrous power, and was far more effective with the people among whom he labored, than would have been the most finished rhetoric. In addition to these great qualities, his keenness of practical insight has seldom been surpassed.

Before his election to the superintendency, Mr. Lewis had been well known for the valuable work he had done in the cause of education in various directions. He had made several addresses before the Western College of Teachers, which were characterized by their practical features. He was also instrumental, as the trusted friend of William Woodward, of Cincinnati, in obtaining from him, for the benefit of poor youth, that large bequest upon which Woodward College was founded, and which is now a part of the consolidated fund used for the support of the Cincinnati High Schools. In all his educational enterprises, Mr. Lewis had the hearty sympathy and active co-operation of Nathan Guilford, the author of the school law of 1825, and to whose zeal Ohio is so much indebted for the wise and stable foundation of her common school system. But it was Alfred Kelly, a man eminent as a legislator, and of the very highest capacity in business affairs, who first introduced into the General Assembly a resolution instructing the committee on common schools to inquire into the expediency of creating the office of Superintendent of Common Schools.

The duties of the State Superintendent seem not to have been fixed by statute when Mr. Lewis first entered upon the discharge of the duties of the office, but, by the law of 1838, they were defined as follows: