reading, writing, and spelling, and those who spent all their time in these elementary studies. "I was surprised to find that the former excelled the latter even in a knowledge of those very studies; they read better, spelt better, wrote better, and were better versed in grammar and geography. One inference I drew from the observation was that an extended course of studies, proceeding far beyond the simple rudiments of an English education, is not inconsistent with acquiring a good knowledge of the rudiments, but is highly favorable to it, since, on account of the superior capacity developed by the higher branches of study, the rudiments may be better learned in less time; and a second inference was that nothing was wanted in order to raise all our common schools to a far higher level, so as to embrace the elements of English literature, of the natural sciences, and of the mathematics, but competent teachers and the necessary books. I was hence led to the idea of a seminary for schoolmasters." His plan was outlined in accordance with this thought. Another encouraging feature in his scheme, as it appeared to him, was that "no sooner would the superior order of schoolmasters commence their labors, than the schools themselves would begin to furnish teachers of a higher order. The schoolmasters previously employed were for the most part such as had received all their education at the common schools, and could only perpetuate the meager system of beggarly elements which they had learned; but it was obvious that schools trained in a more extended course of studies would produce teachers of a corresponding character—that is, if we could once start the machine, it would go on by its own momentum." He was contemplating a series of newspaper articles in advocacy of his plan, and communications concerning it with eminent men interested in education, when he was called to another enterprise. The idea of normal schools was afterward taken up by other men and brought by them before the public under much more favorable circumstances than he could have commanded had he remained in Connecticut and continued his advocacy at that time.
At a later time, as a member of the Board of Commissioners of Common Schools for Connecticut, in 1840, in drafting the annual report, he observed that "wherever normal schools have been established and are adequately sustained, the experiment has uniformly resulted in supplying teachers of a superior order. As in every other art whose principles are reduced to rule and matured into a system, the learner is not limited to the slow and scanty results of his single unaided experience, but is at once invested with the accumulated treasures of all who have labored in the same before him."
Preparatory to going to the professorship of Chemistry in the
