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TEACHER'S GUIDE AND PARENT'S ASSISTANT, Devoted to the interests of Common Education.

THE first number was published on the last day of April: the work will be continued monthly. It is extracted from the Journal of Education, and consists of matter expressly designed to promote the interests of common education. It is believed to be calculated to do extensive good in this important department; the trifle that is required for a yearly subscription puts it in the power of every teacher and family to possess it. The friends of education are particularly requested to give it their aid. The editors of papers, and especially those who receive the Journal, will confer a favour by making the public acquainted with the work through their columns.

The following are the terms of the work.

TERMS.

ONE dollar a year-payable on the delivery of the June number-if payment is delayed beyond that time, the price will be one dollar fifty cents, payable on demand. No subscription will be taken for less than a year, and remittances by mail .must be post paid.

The work will be published by S. G. GOODRICH, 141 Washington Street, and will be edited by WILLIAM RUSSELL, Editor of the Journal of Education.-Wait, Green, & Co. 13 Court Street, are general Agents for the work, and will furnish it to the subscribers. -Communications which respect the editorial department to be addressed to S G. Goodrich; others to be addressed to Wait, Green, & Co.

[As it is extremely doubtful whether the work of Dr. Johnston, from which we have hitherto extracted so much interesting information, will ever be republished in this country; we shall continue to select from it, at intervals, such parts as are most essential to a full view of the history of public education in France.]

Period of the Revolution.—BEFORE the commencement of the French revolution,—an event that will be ever memorable in the history of the world, as well for the actual circumstances attending it, as from the consequences that have arisen from it,— there had existed great cause of complaint, partly real and partly imaginary, and considerable feeling of dislike and illiberality towards the seminaries of public instruction throughout France. This was not occasioned by a falling off in the state of literature; on the contrary, the eighteenth century will be ever glorious in the history of France as the age of learning; nor did it arise from any indifference on the part of the people about the attainment of knowledge, for at this period knowledge was making rapid progress among all ranks; but there were other causes that tended to degrade the system of public education in the eyes of Frenchmen. The doctrines that had been taught in the schools for centuries were no longer taught unopposed, and those tenets which, from a blind subjection to the church of Rome and its bigoted priesthood, had stood so long uncontradicted, a few illustrious writers had shaken to the foundation. The spirit of the universities was at variance with the spirit of

the times, and the spirit of the body of the universities at variance with that of many of their most able members. The country was becoming enlightened; whilst those who studied with. the intention of becoming public instructers, found themselves, upon leaving the university, where they had been educated, behind the world in many respects, and, it may be said, were forced to unlearn every thing, in order to commence their education This was a state of things that could not last long; and the catastrophe was hastened by the diffusion of a new philosophy, which was rapidly gaining ground, and the doctrines of which, though long in openly manifesting themselves, and though opposed by all the influence of church and state, were not destined to be slow or ineffective in their ultimate progress.

anew.

But it must not be supposed that the low state into which the universities of France had fallen in public estimation was altogether owing to defects in their own constitution. Though, perhaps, proceeding in some measure from this cause, it is to the bias which the minds of men had received from doctrines, of which the tendency was to throw down all existing opinions, and establish in their place a new philosophy, that it must be principally ascribed. Knowledge, it is true, was spreading among the people, but not in a manner calculated to produce good fruits: it was a knowledge unsupported by truth or reason, disseminated by a few powerful but ill regulated minds, and received by a class of men who, unable to discover the fallacious or sophistical nature of the proof, or the insufficiency of the basis, were yet readily disposed to seize upon doctrines that flattered their worldly or personal feelings, and appeared to degrade what was above their attainment. Instruction, though become more general, was become more superficial, and what were termed the positive sciences were alone the object or pretended object of pursuit. The natural consequence of this was, the neglect of whatever had hitherto been accounted most important in literature, and was still the great object of study at the schools.

The spirit of ancient literature was passing away, and a superficial education, calculated to unfit men for the dry details. and intricate reasoning of the deeper branches of science, led to the cultivation of those branches, less complicated, more applicable to the every day current of human affairs, and more agreeable and less fatiguing to the mind. What was disagreeable therefore, was accounted useless; and the stale and abstruse doctrines of the universities gave way before the novel and superficial, though alluring and eloquent philosophy of a Diderot, a Raynal, a Voltaire, or a Rousseau.