burn on account of its blasphemous tendencies, when a young person proposed to leave it on my table. Festus-which introduces among its dramatis persona the Sacred Three, and daringly inserts in the margin the holy names, mixed up with its other interlocutors! I turned over the Beauties of Festus with eager fear, and found that no delicate omission had been made; as is the book, so are its beauties—and this the reward of a studious girl !— Surely an enemy hath done this!

Another painful effect of this liberty-of-conscience scheme struck me again and again in attending the Inspector's examinations, viz., the abridgment of his liberty, and that of any Christian minister's who might be present, so that their final addresses were limited to stories of obedient boys, good morals and good manners, and not a word hinted of the Divine law, of the gospel, and of the bright prospects which the gospel unfolds. The rewards proposed to them are, that they may be respected, may become magistrates, governors, senators, or even President of the United States. One grieved to see the Christian sentiment kept down in the speakers, and the Christian motive withheld from the listeners; and as one looked over the pleasant, orderly, ductile-looking youth, one felt how much finer things are in store for those who love the Lord, and how delightful it would be, instead of senators and presidents, to tell them of crowns, and palms, and harps, and of the city where there is no night, no pain, no difficult

tasks, and no death. The idea also arises, that there is an over-tenderness in the examinators. If a whole class blunders over a question, as I have repeatedly remarked to happen more in English Grammar than in any other branch, it is glided by, some loophole for excuse is found, so that neither teachers nor pupils feel the deficiency sufficiently to be put on the alert in correcting it. Why not say simply, This needs to be amended? The general tenor of remark is of a complimentary character. Is this lest free pupils should take offence and leave the school? Then surely the pupils are much more free than their examinators. One expects genuine freedom to use great plainness of speech, and that, in cases of this sort, the performance of duty demands it—a painful evidence that in New York city, liberty is sliding gradually under an influence which domineers over conscience wherever it reigns, is found in the blackening of one page in a whole edition of a school lesson-book. And what is this page, bearing so condemning a mark? Nay, it is carefully obliterated, and so past my reading, except that through its gloom the name of Martin Luther is dimly perceptible. Is there liberty of conscience here, or is there not rather incipient Papal domination?

With these exceptions, but they are grave ones, the Common School is an admirable institution, furnishing the fundamentals of all learning, and the books employed in teaching, to every rank of chil

dren. No one need be uneducated if willing to be taught. The school-houses are, in general, erected by the district, which also elects trustees, who manage the school for one year, and appoint teachers, while the teachers are paid from the general school fund. A difficulty about obtaining steady attendance arises from the very liberality of the plan. Caprice leads to leaving one school, and entering another. Or a new and airy school-house in the next ward, may thin the benches of the school in this. It is our experience in Britain that we prize less what we get freely, and therefore, the mother who sends her penny with her infant on Monday morning, will have more scruple about keeping the child at home for a trifling reason, than she would have if she paid nothing. We need not weigh the penny against lost time and opportunity, and the contraction of idle habits-any one who can "calculate" sees that, and the absence of charge is hinted at as a difficulty with the Common School teachers as well as with our own.

There is a very becoming courage in the manner the pupils give out their attainments, and a pleasant music in their recitation, and at times a swelling feeling of the sentiments they utter, or a suppressed consciousness of the drollery of the dialogues which they recite on exhibition days, which always drew forth my heart to the young people. In no country does one feel so clearly that courage exists apart from boldness, and that frankness has no necessary

connexion with forwardness, as in the United States. That movable excitability which "turns at the touch of joy or woe, and turning, trembles too,” is inexpressibly lovely in youth-and I have never more admired young countenances, than some of those that I have seen turned to beloved teachers, and stirred by the zeal, ambition, or animation of a favourite lesson.

The education, if we except the classics, embraces a wider range than that of our parish schools, and is very thorough, if it be not the pupil's own fault. One sees the higher classes of girls quite au fait in astronomy, square and cube root, &c. Another striking difference is the employment of female teachers, not in the industrial department only, nor for girls alone. They seem more numerous than the male teachers, probably because they are obtained at a cheaper rate. Why the rate should be cheaper does not appear. Their labour is not less, neither are their attainments and success inferior. I have never admired calm authority and sensible dignity more than in the person of an American female teacher, while she drew forth the attainments of fifty big boys in mathematics and the Latin rudiHer class was in perfect order, and her pupils evidently observed her with affectionate respect. She was not teaching in one of the Common Schools, as the Latin lesson proved. But such female teachers are nearly as common as the schools.

ments.

As past experience generally passes in the mind

in a sort of panoramic review while we are busily observing the present-or rather, what we witness now forms the foreground, while what we have seen elsewhere forms the background of the picture-so it is inevitable that comparison should be in active exercise. One difference which met me everywhere was the mode of addressing pupils at an examination, shewing what is expected of them. They are not treated as machines upon whom the teachers are to act, as they unfortunately sometimes are in England; but as members of the community, who have a part to act themselves, and who are as much interested in the credit of the school as the teachers. The effect of this is to excite a common interest between teachers and taught, and to give superior manliness and energy.

The fittings-up, or "fixings," as our brethren call them, of some of the more recent schoolrooms are very worthy of imitation. Instead of one long, dreary bench in front of a desk, which forms a barrier to be climbed over, each pupil has a rounded seat, which turns a little on a pivot, and has a low back, so that he glides gently into his place, instead of clambering into it with an unsightly scramble; and when seated, he has a rest for his spinal column, which saves him at once from oppressing and contracting his chest by leaning forward, and from the lateral curvature which so frequently is the result of attitudes chosen to relieve the weariness of a long unsupported seat.

There is much ingenuity and spirit in the songs