both." Though probably the most widely informed man of his time, he did little more for education than occasionally to express such views.

Of all the national leaders, Thomas Jefferson alone took a vital interest in education, held broad and progressive views upon the subject, laboured incessantly for their realization, and left a literary record of them. The two most elaborate presentations of these views are in proposed laws or codes, one of 1779, the other of 1816. The first, a bill for the general diffusion of knowledge, proposed for Virginia a reproduction with elaborations of the essential features of the New England school system which was never realized; the second eventuated in the University of Virginia, the first of the state institutions, now so characteristic of America, to achieve material form. Much of the voluminous correspondence of Jefferson relates to these projects. He wrote often to his friend and political and legislative representative, George Cabell, advancing arguments, answering objections. His correspondence with Professor Ticknor of Harvard, lately returned from European universities, reveals his interest in and knowledge of foreign institutions. From this source no doubt came the innovations regarding freedom of choice of studies, the divorce of these from degrees, the lack of a permanent administrative head, the democratic government of both students and faculties, and other features which made the University of Virginia unique among American universities.

Jefferson's influence on education was local, not national. Only one other local or state leader of this generation was comparable to Jefferson: Governor De Witt Clinton of New York. Clinton, an organizer and a promoter of all movements for social betterment, left numerous addresses on various phases of the quasi-public educational endeavours of his time. Scientific societies, libraries, mechanics' institutes, hospitals, societies for the relief of the poor, infant school societies, Lancasterian societies, all held his interest and called forth statements of his democratic views. These, together with his messages to the legislature commending educational reforms, constitute the most considerable body of educational materials of the times. It was particularly the mechanical and temporarily successful Lancasterian system which aroused his greatest

enthusiasm. While Mayor of New York City he was instrumental in organizing (1805) the Free School Society of which he was president until his death. For thirty-eight years this society was the sole public or quasi-public educational agency for the children of the metropolis, and for ten years longer it continued a potent factor in competition with the growing public school system. As Governor of the state (1817-22 and 1824-28) Clinton continued an ardent advocate of this system through public address and official paper.

The chief literary as well as practical exponent of the system was John Griscom (1774-1852), a New York Quaker. In 1819 he published his observations on a visit to European countries, as A Year in Europe. In this he records his impressions of all types of European educational, philanthropic, and reformatory efforts, thus giving to his countrymen in this direction a great stimulus to endeavour. Of this work Henry Barnard later declared: "No one volume in the first half of the nineteenth century had so wide an influence on our educational, reformatory, and preventive measures, directly and indirectly, as this.” Griscom's Recollections gives an intimate account of his services as teacher, administrator, educational innovator, and public-spirited citizen, covering a period of more than half a century.

The Lancasterian system had run its course before the death of Griscom. Its mechanical scheme of organization made it possible at least to attempt the education of children in large groups. Lancaster claimed that one teacher, by using the older pupils as monitors, could teach one thousand pupils. This ideal was beyond the reach of his followers, though he himself is said to have demonstrated its feasibility. The early New York schoolrooms were built for five hundred pupils. Economically the scheme claimed to educate the child at an expense of one dollar a year. Thus it put within the realm of possibility the education of all the children of a community on the basis of philanthropic and later of public support. To communities not yet accustomed to taxation for police or fire protection, for means of communication, care of streets, or sanitary provisions, experience with the Lancasterian plan was an essential factor in the evolution of schools. But the superficiality of the method and its meagre intellectual results, its repressive disciplinary measures, its false conception of child nature, its low moral

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plane resulting from dependence on motives of reward and punishment, and the formality of its religious instruction brought about its final rejection.

Meanwhile a European educational influence of quite different character was being exerted through literary channels. This was the Pestalozzian movement in Switzerland and Germany, destined in later decades to have a powerful effect on American education. In 1806 William McClure, a Scotch philanthropist recently settled in Philadelphia, returned from Paris whither he had been sent as a commissioner to settle the French war claims. While there he had gone on an occasion to see the great Emperor, when it had been announced that Napoleon was to visit an experimental school kept by one of his old soldiers, Neef by name. Napoleon rejected the Pestalozzian ideas urged on him by Neef, while McClure accepted them, as did also the Prussian government.

Through various articles McClure was the first to introduce the Pestalozzian conception of education into America; later he induced Neef to remove to America, and in Philadelphia in 1808 Neef issued his Plan and Method of Education, the first distinctly pedagogical work published in the United States. The work of Neef in his first school was briefly described in later years in the memoirs of his most distinguished pupil, Admiral Farragut. Subsequently McClure and Neef both joined in the communistic and educational scheme which Robert Owen established at New Harmony, Indiana, in 1825. Owen had published in 1813 his New Views of Society, which was widely circulated in America as a means of educational and social propaganda. The substance of this dissertation was delivered by invitation before the American Congress, of which Owen's son, Robert Dale Owen, was later a member. The son also issued his Outline of the System of Education at New Lanark, Scotland, as a part of the American propaganda. The New Harmony experiment was a failure (1828), and the literary propaganda aroused intense opposition upon the part of the conservative elements in American society, particularly the religious, which then dominated the traditional education. The general triumph of the Pestalozzian ideas did not come until after the Civil War.

One great factor in the secularization of American education was formulated during this early national period-the school

textbook. A second factor in this process was the change of dominant profession. During the colonial period, in education as in social and political life, this was the ministry. Immediately preceding and following the Revolutionary War leadership was largely assumed by the legal profession. The practical bent given to education by such men as Franklin and by the actual conditions of American life constituted a third factor. The three together resulted during the middle national period in the complete secularization of education at least in the elementary field. This change was accomplished in the United States long before it came about in any European country.

The textbooks of the colonial period were almost exclusively religious in character and content. From the close of the Revolution a distinct type of American textbook began to appear. Political material in the form of orations, patriotic appeals, and more or less exaggerated or distorted descriptions progressively replaced the sombre religious contents of the earlier books. Undoubtedly the bombastic oratory, exaggerated style of speech, and rather flamboyant views and claims of the American citizens of these and succeeding generations were largely due to this change. However, this was one of the means, perhaps a necessary one, by which provincialism vindicated itself, maintained its independence of "effete" European society, and developed in time a strong nationalism.

The earliest and most influential of these textbook writers was Noah Webster (1758–1843), whose fame as a lexicographer has long outlived his fame as textbook writer. In explanation of his work he wrote: "In 1782, while the American army was lying on the banks of the Hudson, I kept a classical school at Goshen, N. Y. The country was impoverished; intercourse with Great Britain was interrupted, and schoolbooks were scarce and hardly attainable." Accordingly, in 1783 he issued the first part of his Grammatical Institute of the English Language, Comprising an Easy, Concise, and Systematic Method of Education Designed for the Use of English Schools in America. This was a combination speller, reader, and grammar, which had patriotic as well as educational aims. Out of it grew various modifications, the most noted of which was The American Speller. This is the premier American textbook, of which more than seventy-five million copies have been sold and which still

has its devotees. In 1806 appeared his Compendious Dictionary of the English Language, which in its school or in its unabridged form has ever since been a familiar and popular work of reference.

The only rival to Webster in popularity and fame was Lindley Murray (1745-1826), a Quaker educator of New York and New Jersey. In 1795 he published his English Grammar, in 1797 his English Reader, and in 1804 his Spelling Book. These, somewhat more scholarly than those of Webster, and, as became an author English-born, somewhat less narrowly nationalistic, were also extremely popular, widely used, and greatly influential. In 1784 Jedidiah Morse issued his Geography Made Easy, the first American text on this subject. This was followed in 1789 by American Geography, or a View of the Present Situation of the United States, which was even more distinctly a means of political and nationalistic propaganda. In 1797 he published his Elements of Geography, and in 1814 his Universal Geography. The New and Complete System of Arithmetic by Nicholas Pike, avowedly a patriotic or nationalistic endeavour, came from the press in 1788. In its original form, too bulky for simple school use, or in numerous simpler offspring it dominated American schools for half a century.

There followed a deluge of school texts, as might be expected of an independent people blessed with initiative and groping for a democratic education. Many of these attempted the synthesis of the old and the new. There were those which began geographical studies with the exploration by Moses of the Red Sea; or the study of ichthyology with Jonah. Many still used the old catechetical form. Most included material of religious character, some of it in violently controversial form. Some adopted Biblical phraseology, hoping that the form would make alive, even if the spirit were gone. All were intensely nationalistic.

In the field of higher education, the outstanding change during this period was the development of the professional schools of medicine and law. The creation of a professional literature followed. The old colonial government was superseded by national and state governments based on written constitutions, "a government of law, not of men." Law reports began to appear in 1789, with Kirby's Connecticut Reports,

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