=First United States Commissioner of Education.=--In 1867 Barnard was appointed the first United States Commissioner of Education. This office he had been constantly trying to have established ever since he had found, as Secretary of the Connecticut Board, how absolutely lacking the federal government was in school statistics and documents. He hoped that, through the agency of the government, facilities might be secured to collect and publish trustworthy educational statistics, and to issue a library of independent treatises. The bureau was not created for many years, and then through the immediate initiative of another, but when Barnard was called to the commissionership, he organized the office practically upon the lines he had previously suggested. He suspended his _Journal_ and used the product of his investigations in the annual reports of the office. He started that searching inquiry into the administration, management, and instruction of institutions of every grade, and into all educational societies, school funds, legislation, architecture, documents, and benefactions that has since been maintained by the Bureau of Education. However, within three years a change in politics brought a new incumbent into the commissionership, and Barnard gave his literary efforts once more to his beloved _Journal_. [Sidenote: This life work marked him as leading representative of the awakening.] =Value of Barnard’s Educational Collections.=--Hence, Barnard’s real life work may be considered the collection of a great educational compendium. By temperament, native ability, and habit, he proved himself well fitted to be the leading representative of the literary side of the awakening. Through his work American education was, in its period of greatest development, granted the opportunity of looking beyond the partial and local results of the first half century of national life. It was enabled to modify and adapt to its own uses the educational theories, practices, and organizations of the leading civilized peoples, and to bring together for a comparative view sections and states that were widely separated. _Barnard’s American Journal of Education_ was not intended to be a universal encyclopædia of education, but often includes a condensation of important works or a presentation of highly scientific methods and profound philosophic systems in popular form. It was not possible, either, to classify and work out a connected and complete historical account, when there were no reliable records or collections of materials in existence. It was necessary that some one should first gather the information from newspapers, pamphlets, memorials, monographs, and plans, and publish it as it was found. In this way he accomplished a more valuable work than if he had published a systematic history of education in the United States. [Sidenote: The ‘revival’ was general, but its results were most striking in New England.]