Chapter 5

To compel a citizen to support a school or educate his children was regarded as a violation of the rights of conscience. Twenty years ago an old Rhode Islander, well to do in the world, assigned as a reason for refusing to aid in supporting a district school, "It is a Connecticut custom, and I don't like it."

The plan of operations adopted was substantially the same as that pursued in Connecticut. The first great work was to enlighten the popular mind on the subject of common schools, and create a public opinion in favor of right action. The next step was to frame and secure the enactment of an efficient school code, adapted to the wants of the State, which was accomplished in 1845. Then came the difficult task of organizing the new system and of carrying out its provisions; in a word, of bringing into existence in every school district the conditions of a good school. This process was progressing with a rapidity scarcely ever realized elsewhere, in the erection of better school-houses, in the employment of better teachers, in the establishment of school libraries, and in the increase of the means provided by law for the support of schools. But before accomplishing all his plans for the improvement of public education in Rhode Island the state of Mr. Barnard's health rendered it imperatively necessary for him to resign his office. On his retirement the Legislature, by a unanimous vote, adopted a resolution, giving him their thanks for the "able, faithful, and judicious manner" in which he had for five years fulfilled the duties of his office. The teachers of the State, through a committee appointed at the several institutes, presented him a handsome testimonial of their "respect and friendship, and of their appreciation of his services in the cause of education, and the interest which he had ever taken in their professional improvement and individual welfare."[6]

[6] Mr. Mann, in his Report to the Board of Education in Massachusetts, in 1846, refers to this work as follows: "Within the last year the State of Rhode Island has entirely renovated her school system. Under the auspices of that distinguished and able friend of common schools, Henry Barnard, she is preparing to take her place among the foremost of the States." In 1856 he speaks of Mr. Barnard's work in Rhode Island "as the greatest legacy he had left to American Educators; the best working model of school agitation and legal organization for the schools of the whole country which had yet been furnished."

Mr. Barnard returned to his old home in Connecticut. He was soon invited to professorships in two colleges, and to the superintendence of public schools in three different cities. But a more congenial work in his own State awaited his restored health. In 1849 an act was passed to establish a State Normal School, the principal of which should be the superintendent of common schools. Mr. Barnard was elected to this office, and accepted on condition that an assistant should be appointed to take the immediate charge of the Normal School. He soon had the satisfaction of seeing long-cherished hopes fulfilled. After many struggles and efforts he saw his own State taking her appropriate place among the foremost of the educating and educated States.

Our limited space will not allow even a glance at the particulars of his doings while in office from 1850 till he resigned, at the close of the year 1854, to give himself exclusively to labors of a more general and national character. He had already accomplished as much perhaps as any other individual for the promotion of education in every part of the country. By repeated visits to the chief points of influence, by extensive correspondence and numerous personal conferences with the leading persons connected with the management of systems and institutions of education, by addresses before popular assemblies, literary associations, teachers, and legislative bodies throughout the country, he had done more than any other man to shape the educational policy of the nation. His publications had been numerous, important, and widely disseminated. Besides the "Common School Journal" and reports above alluded to, his work on "School Architecture" had been circulated by tens of thousands, not only throughout America but in Europe, creating a general revolution in public opinion on the subject. His work on "Normal Schools" had been published several years, from which the substance of nearly all documents on the subject since published have been drawn. The volume entitled "National Education in Europe," begun in 1840, and containing about nine hundred closely printed pages, had been published in 1854, a work well described as an "Encyclopædia of Educational Systems and Methods," and of which the "Westminster Review" speaks as "containing more valuable information and statistics than can be found in any one volume in the English language." But his contributions to educational literature did not stop here.

Scarcely did he find himself relieved from the routine of official life when he projected and immediately entered upon the publication of a still more valuable and important work, viz., the "American Journal of Education." Four large octavo volumes of this Journal are now before the public, and we may safely affirm of it that it is the most valuable and comprehensive educational publication ever printed in the English language, and it will be a lasting disgrace to the teachers and educators of America if it has to be prematurely suspended for want of sufficient patronage. Besides conducting this Journal, he has found time for other labors of a general nature. As president of the American Association for the Advancement of Education, his influence has been widely and beneficially exerted. That his services to the cause of good letters and education have been appreciated in high places may be inferred from the fact that in 1851 he received the honorary degree of Doctor of Law, from the corporation of Yale College, and in the same year from Union College, and in the year following from Harvard University.

* * * * *

[Mr. Barnard's subsequent labors and successes, including his services in connection with the United States Bureau of Education, will be the subject of another article, which will be accompanied by a portrait from a photograph recently taken.--ED.]

A DAUGHTER OF THE PURITANS.

BY ANNA B. BENSEL.

"Have you known sorrow?" "No." "Then this sketch is not for you."

In one of the loveliest towns in New England there stood, many years ago, a large, old-fashioned, rambling house, known to all the villagers as the old Vincent Manor. It was such an old place, full of strange, dark corners and winding halls; a place that would have been famous for a game of hide-and-seek; but there were no children to roam at will over the house, to laugh out of its dusky corners, or to set the high rafters a-ring with noise. It had stood there--the house--before and after the Revolution. It had been turned into a small garrison more than once. Its walls had heard anxious councils, as men of strong nerve and resolute will made their vows of independence. Stately dames and grand gentlemen, in powder and ball dress, in ruffles and periwigs, had paced its weird corridors, or danced the slow minuet in its great salon.

But now all was changed, and Mistress Marjory--as the neighbors called her--lived alone in the old manor, the last of all her kin. She was a tall, pale woman, bearing in her stately, gracious ways all the trace of her proud ancestry, living alone, yet living for others, helping the poor and the suffering, answering the call of sorrow everywhere it reached her, loving and beloved. And her story--The story I learned one day in the great drawing-room at Vincent Manor! Ah, well, after all, perhaps it will not interest you as much as it did me. All lives have their sorrows; does the telling of _one_ matter, after all?

But perhaps the charm and the pathos lay in the way Mistress Marjory told it, sitting in the shadows before the open wood fire, with her hands, so seldom idle, folded listlessly in her lap, and her beautiful gray eyes looking far into the past. What a pretty picture she was in her black silk dress, with its lace kerchief crossed on her bosom, with her hair, white as snow, drawn back high from her brow! I like to think of her as she looked that night so long ago.

And so it is that I think you may like the story best if I tell it to you in her own words, just as she told it to me. So here it is:--

"My child-life was one full of excitement, yet little pleasure. What with our struggles between hostile Indians and the soldiers of King George, we had small time for play or serenity of living. Yet perhaps we children enjoyed our play hours more than do those of the present time, for they were so few and far between,--those peaceful, happy days,--they were treasured all the more. Of the many strange events that happened in those far-off years I have no time to tell you now. My parents had seven children--there were six boys. I was the only daughter, and next to the youngest, who was my favorite brother, one year my junior, sunny, brave-hearted, and loyal in all things.

"While the men were at work in the fields, and women busy in the house, the children on different homesteads kept watch for Indians. My brothers, of course, took turns on our place; and sometimes in the harvest days, when many hands were needed out doors, and I was not helping my mother in spinning the flax, I was set on the lookout. Those were days when the stoutest heart among us would quail at times, for danger and horror were on every side; and I--well, I was none of the bravest. But on the days when Harold knew I would be most likely put on guard he would contrive so as to have his work near the house, and so watch over me. In order to do so he would rise before the rest, and going alone in his far corner of the field,--his only defence a faithful dog, and a trusty rifle over which the dog kept watch while his master worked,--he would finish his field labor for the day by the time I was ready for my task. It was a mutual understanding between himself and my father that this should be; and I think that while my parents feared for the boy's safety they were proud of his courage that dared so much for love.

"Well, we grew as children grow, through war and peace, through storm and calm. And when the first gun of independence was fired on Bunker Hill my father and brothers armed themselves and joined the numbers there. Two of my brothers were killed outright in their first encounter with Gage's men. In the third battle another was taken prisoner, and with four others tried for 'treason against the king,' and shot. My mother was a type of the bravest women of that period, but I thought she would have died then, for he was her eldest born, upon whom she had always looked with pride.

"I was eighteen then, and my heart and hands were full; but so were those of many another woman. In that time girls were _women_ and boys were _men_; it was needed so, you may be sure. Well, after a while the struggle was over, you know, and they came home,--father, Robert, George, and Hal. We were expecting them, and stood at the door watching,--mother and I. And then--and then--we saw them coming, not in triumph, as we expected, but slowly, a mournful little procession. We saw father, Robert, and George, and a few neighbors, and they were bearing a burden we could not see.

"They came nearer, and then I heard mother's awful shriek, that rings in my dreams even now; but I stood there still; all my heart seemed turned to stone. 'Seven wounds,' I heard them say, 'and the last was mortal.' O Harry, my boy--my boy! He looked up and smiled faintly, as they bore him past me into this very room, and laid him on that couch yonder. My boy! I had never seen him so white and weak,--he who had been so strong always. All my strength seemed gone, and I sank beside him as he held out his hand for me to come to him. He was but a lad in years, but he had a power of earnest courage many men of riper years do not possess. Shot six times, he had insisted upon returning, after the dressing of each wound, to the struggle going on so fiercely, heeding nothing, fearing nothing, until, in that last battle, he had received the seventh wound,--the seventh and the last. He lived two days after they brought him home; and his sufferings! I shudder now when I think of them. He died as he had lived,--strong and brave to the last. He was a handsome lad, and he was beautiful in death. Oh, how I missed him! how I have missed him all these years! Yet as I stood alone, bending over the coffin, before they bore him out of the dear home forever, I knew all his terrible pain was over, and through blinding tears I thanked God as I have never thanked him since. I felt as if I should like to die too; but soon the numb feeling passed away. Mother was failing, and she, father, and the other boys leaned upon me as woman can be leaned on, and I was beginning to be happier. In the train of the French general, Lafayette, was a young soldier, Chevalier de Rosseau, and he had known Harold, and loved him. He would come often to the house, and one day he brought his sister Manon, who had followed him from France. She was the loveliest little creature I ever saw. I call her little,--although she was three years my senior,--she was so small and delicate. We became great friends, and she told me, in her pretty, affectionate way, how she had been afraid to cross the great ocean, but that she could not bear to be separated from her brother, who was all she had, and so she had, after trying in vain to live without seeing him for many months, conquered her fear and crossed to America. But after a time La Fayette prepared to return to France. Then it was that my life-trouble came to me. Chevalier de Rosseau loved me, and I loved him; but when he asked my father's consent to wed me he was sternly refused. My father had always seemed to like the young count, and we had no fear of his opposition; you can imagine, therefore, our dismay and grief. We sought in vain for a reason for his refusal; he gave none. In vain my lover pleaded. I could say nothing. In those times a daughter's obedience was in strict command. Countess Manon wept in vain. They went back to France. I stayed on. My brothers married and went away. My mother died, and then my father, he commanding me on his death-bed not to marry Chevalier de Rosseau. The latter, hearing of my father's death, came once more to America, and sought again to woo me. What was the need of obeying the dead? Why should we not be happy? He urged in vain. Dead, as living, my father's word was law. I was very young still; and I was lonely in the old house, from whence all joy had fled. The chevalier went back to France. I never heard of him again but once, and then of his death. Countess Manon was married, and came with her husband to America; here she stayed four years, and we often saw each other. We might have been sisters, and we loved each other as such. Ah, what narrow ways we have to walk! Is it well in the end? God knows. Manon and her husband returned to their own land in time, and once more I was left alone. I had many suitors, but I cared for none; my love had not died, nor will it ever. Perhaps, somewhere, some time, the life I could not have on earth will be given in another world. I wait in patience. It will not be long. The other day I heard of the death of Countess Manon. My brothers are gone. I alone am left. Why is it so?--I ask myself over and over, I have not cried for years; but the tears will come to-night as I think of the past, and of beautiful Countess Manon lying cold and still in death under the sunny skies of far-off Southern France. She may not have been beautiful these later years. I forgot she was older even than I, and I am very old; but to me she always was, and always will be, beautiful. She was the last link of the old bygone years. What is the use of remembering them? If Harold had only lived I could have been happy; but I have not long to wait now. They will come for me. O Harry, Harry!--across the long space of years the newer love has never dimmed the older. Eternity waits. I shall see and know you again."

* * * * *

Is it much, after all is told? I have repeated it just as Marjory Vincent said it, half to me, yet more to herself, for she scarcely heeded my presence; it was better so. Poor Mistress Marjory! There is nothing left now; even the old manor is gone. And Mistress Marjory is at rest.

JUDICIAL FALSIFICATIONS OF HISTORY.[7]

BY CHARLES COWLEY, LL.D.

Historical societies, magazines, and students are, in a real sense, the guardians of historic truth. If a book is published which falsifies history, it is our right, and, if the falsification is important, it may be our duty, to expose the error. So, if those having the administration of a government falsify history, as the Guizot ministry of France did, when, vainly hoping to stem the tide of opposition to Louis Phillipe, it covered Paris with handbills declaring "He is not a Bourbon, he is a Valois," it is our privilege to "put the foot down firmly," as President Lincoln said, upon any such falsification. So, too, if a court of justice commits the indiscretion of falsifying history, as the Supreme Court of the United States did in the legal-tender case, Guilliard _v._ Greenman, 111 U.S., 421, it well becomes the historic student to step into the arena, as Mr. Bancroft has done, and, logically speaking, put that court to the sword. To permit such falsifications to pass unnoticed and unchallenged is a species of connivance at error; for, to quote a maxim which is recognized alike in morals and in law, _Qui tacet consentire videtur:_ "Silence gives consent."

[7] Substance of an address before the New England Historic-Genealogical Society, April 7 1886.

An able lawyer of the Granite State bar, commenting on the decision of the Supreme Court of New Hampshire in the case of Eastman _v._ Moulton, 3 N.H., 156, remarked that "the Court, without knowing it, repealed nearly two hundred years of history."[8] In like manner, it may be said that the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts, in a decision recently made, has falsified the juridical history of this Colony, Province, and Commonwealth for more than two hundred years. We refer to its opinion in the divorce suit of Robbins _v._ Robbins, printed, with the briefs of counsel, in 1 New England Reporter, 434, and, without the briefs of counsel, in 140 Mass., 528.

[8] The Early Jurisprudence of New Hampshire. An address delivered before the New Hampshire Historical Society, June 3, 1883. By John M. Shirley, Esq.

The only question presented to the court in that case was whether certain conduct on the part of the husband amounted in law to connivance at the infidelity imputed by him to his wife. For one hundred years a statute has been in force in Massachusetts (which, however, is only a reënactment of what had long previously been recognized here as unwritten law) providing that, in all matters of divorce, the Supreme Judicial Court shall follow "the course of proceedings in the Ecclesiastical Courts." Various decisions of the Ecclesiastical Courts were cited to this court by counsel, showing that, according to the law which prevailed in those courts, the conduct of the husband amounted to connivance, and ought to preclude him from obtaining a divorce. In order to obviate the conclusion to which these decisions clearly tended, the Supreme Judicial Court proceeded to minimize the authority of the Ecclesiastical Courts, by suggesting that "the decisions of those Courts upon questions of substantive law are _not_ of the same weight here as are the decisions of the English Courts of Law and Chancery;" because "the Ecclesiastical Courts proceeded according to the Canon Law as allowed and adopted in England; but the Canon Law was never adopted by the Colonists of Massachusetts: it was not suited to their opinions or condition."

Now it is true that the Ecclesiastical Courts of England were Canon-Law Courts, as distinguished from Courts of Common Law and Courts of Chancery; but this court here has erroneously assumed that the rules and principles which governed the Ecclesiastical Courts in determining questions of connivance were different from and inconsistent with the rules and principles which governed the Courts of Common Law and Chancery in determining similar questions. Nothing could be further from the truth. In dealing with questions of this sort, the Canon-Law Courts, the Common-Law Courts, and the Courts of Chancery sought and found rules and principles in every system of morals and in every system of law which had prevailed in any past time in any part of the civilized world, and especially in the Civil Law of Ancient Rome. They all drank at the same fountain. In the Roman Law they found the maxim already quoted, and also the following, viz., _Qui alios cum potest ab errore non revocat, se ipsum errore demonstrat:_ "He who, when he can, does not divert another from wrong-doing, shows himself a wrong-doer." _Qui non prohibit cum prohibere posset jubet:_ "He who does not forbid when he can forbid seems to command." _Qui potest et debet vetare, tacens jubet:_ "He who can and ought to forbid, and does not, assents." _Qui non obstat quod obstare potest facere videtur:_ "He who does not prevent what he can prevent seems, to commit the thing." Many others might be cited. In short, the maxims of the Roman Law covered all questions of connivance so completely that there was no need of devising any new rules in relation thereto; and no new rules were devised.

With respect to the Canon Law we are enabled to speak positively; for the whole of the Canon Law is found in the _Corpus Juris Canonici_; and the _Corpus Juris Canonici_ nowhere attempts to define connivance, and nowhere lays down any rule by which to determine whether any particular act, or series of acts, amounts to connivance. When a Canonist had to grapple with any question of connivance of new impression, he sought, and never sought but found, ample guidance in the Old and New Testaments and in the Roman Civil Law. Perhaps the learned judges who promulgated this disparagement of the Canon Law have given as little attention to it as John Adams gave to it before he disparaged it in his treatise on the Feudal Law. There is a remark in one of Fielding's novels which perhaps applies here, that, "generally speaking, a man will write better for having some knowledge of what he is writing about;" or words to that effect. The notes penned by Mr. Adams, in his private copy of his treatise, warrant the inference that, after that treatise was printed, he acquired a better understanding of the Canon Law than he had when he wrote it. _Verbum sapienti._

In the _Corpus Juris Canonici_ we find at the end of the decretals a collection of ancient maxims, of general application, culled chiefly from the Roman Law, and promulgated by Pope Boniface VIII. One of these maxims touches this case, and is the one first quoted in this article; and, singular to say, it has been twice quoted with approval by the very court which has put forth this disparagement of the Canon Law.--2 Pickering, 72; 119 Mass., 515.