=Barnard as Secretary of the Connecticut State Board.=--Two years after Barnard’s return to Connecticut, he began his part in the educational awakening as Secretary of the new State Board of Commissioners of Common Schools, and undertook to do a work similar to that of Mann in Massachusetts. Throughout the eighteenth century Connecticut schools had been among the most efficient in the country, but since the income from the Western Reserve lands had begun in 1798, and especially since this had been increased by the United States deposit fund in 1836, public education had steadily declined. A state tax was still maintained, but all local effort was paralyzed through lack of exercise. Another factor in producing this decline was connected with the transferal of the management of the common schools from the town to the ‘school society,’ which was a species of district, almost identical with the parish of each Congregational church. The results of this ruinous policy had been revealed in an investigation made by the legislature, which showed that not one-half of the children of school age were attending the common schools, and that the teachers were poorly trained and supervision was neglected. Barnard at once began to urge many reforms, and in his reports and the _Connecticut Common School Journal_ made suggestions for a complete plan of public education. He also began the publication of his rich collection of material bearing upon popular training at home and abroad. But he was more a scholar and literary man than an educational statesman like Mann. He succeeded in getting the legislature to pass several reforms and a general revision and codification of the school laws, and in arousing several towns to amend their educational plans, although the crucial difficulty of the ‘school societies’ could not be touched, and within four years the conservatives succeeded in legislating him out of office and in undoing all his reforms. [Sidenote: Radical reforms accomplished.]