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404 Education schools" of Ferrer and other more recent radicals. From Alcott's school Louisa M. Alcott is said to have chosen the char- acters for some of her stories for the young. The Journal and the Annals were as worthy educational publications as any that we have in our own time, and appealed to the interests of the entire educated class instead of to the teaching profession, which indeed can hardly be said to have existed then. Similar to these, in content at least, was the first educa- tional periodical of the Middle West, The Western Literary Magazine and Institute of Instruction, published in Cincinnati (1835-39) • The quality of this jotirnal is a surprising comment on the high character of the interests of the frontier region. Its efforts were largely directed toward the development of free public schools and the higher education of women. These were succeeded by a number of other magazines whose interests were localized in particular states, whose appeal was to the teaching profession alone, and whose objects were merely the development of a particular school system and of the technique of teaching. By the close of this period practically every state had one or more such publication. Only one of these, the first and the most influential, need be mentioned. This was The Common School Journal of Massachusetts, founded and for ten years edited by Horace Mann. It became the channel of official report and leadership, the source of profes- sional training and stimulation, and the chief means by which Mann carried on his prolonged struggle for the reform and bet- terment of popular education. Yet this journal, like all of its type, was distinctly below the grade of the group of magazines first mentioned. In magnitude, scope, and quality, however, all were out- classed by one great publication, Henry Barnard's American Journal of Education (1856-82). No other educational period- ical so voluminous and exhaustive has issued from either private or public sources. It will ever constitute a mine of information concerning this and earlier periods in both Europe and America. Through this and his other publications, as well as through his position as first Commissioner of Education at the head of the National Bureau (founded 1867), Barnard exerted widespread influence on the developing educational interests of America. So valuable are the volumes of this magazine that when in