sity of more general elementary education not merely provided, but enforced upon the lower classes, very naturally took the ground that education, and not punishment, should characterize all reformatory provisions. They went further; maintaining and convincing by their unparalleled success, in the work of permanent reform, that moral elevation must be in advance of intellectual, at least for the classes they sought to bring in to their sheltering-the most depraved of all that could be found.

Accordingly the inmates of these establishments were divided into families of not more than twelve, each group being under the care of persons whose mission was to combine the discipline of a school and a home, as circumstances would admit. From that day to this, prisons for convicts of youthful age have mainly disappeared from the world, while prisons for adults have universally felt the amelioration of the truth there practically illustrated, that instruction, including labor and affection, not failing of discipline, were to join hands in securing society against crime and in giving back to society the truly reformed criminal. And yet reform schools, and prison schools, what a shadow they still remain upon the school records of almost all countries! In vain the sums of money annually appropriated to their support repeat, in the hearing of legislators, that it is easier to prevent than to reclaim a criminal, and vastly more economical. In vain, or almost, so slowly do fruits of these labors diminish the statistics of vice and ignorance, do the nations assemble in international fraternity to consult how best to convert the necessity of prisons into the, opportunities of instruction. No later than in 1855 at Paris, and since that at Brussels, the statesmen and philanthropists of nearly all countries met in this common interest. There is no mistaking the work of the statesmen and the ed ucators who would stand foremost in the history of immediate generations that of wiping out supplemental and reformatory educational attempts, by devising such means of public instruction as will secure, what has never yet been secured, the education of all who are amenable to law. There is no glory of power and wealth, so considered, that could take from the brow of any people the crown that would accredit such an achievement as this.

For the partially endowed-the blind, the deaf, the dumb, the idioticdoes any one think to place these beyond the pale of a public responsibility, so evident in the cases of destitution and vice? No. The number of those who cherish the delusion that an inscrutable Providence has decreed numbers of innocent persons to a penalty for which there is none but divine accountability, is rapidly diminishing, as science, which has pioneered the way into the hidden treasures of the material world, is piercing with its light of established truths the dark mysteries of social disorder. Sentiment and theology may stand aside. The logic of statistics is showing how closely violation of law is followed by the results of deformity and deficiency; while the same unanswerable

tables, in connection with educational deficiency, tell the story of human wretchedness.

Education for these unfortunates has kept pace with enlightened civilization, and there are no Christian countries which do not supply some means of helping them to a better use of such powers as they have, as a supplement of those they have not. The annual appropriations made for institutions suited to the partial physical endowments of the blind, and of deaf-mutes, are hopeful premonitors of the time when individuals of these classes will be as rarely found as were of old instructions for their special improvement.

SCHOOLS FOR THE IDIOTIC.

The science and beneficence of the times are nowhere more noticeable than in recent efforts for the benefit of the idiotic. The results of educational attempts, for this most unfortunate class of all unfortunates, have already placed the improvement of the idiotic beyond the doubts of controversy; and nowhere else are the related physical and intellectual laws of the human constitution more amply illustrated. This last and most reluctantly entered field of investigation seems to ap proach, if not to reach, the limit of the operations of the educator.

Idiocy-that condition from which the world has turned with a repugnance that did not shrink from endowments however else partial, nor from the degradations of poverty and vice-the imbecility of which was so much more hopeless than the ravings of insanity-idiocy is at length to have the elevation of a limited yet possible education.

CHAPTER IV.

SECONDARY EDUCATION.

SCHOOLS OF LOWER GRADE- -SCHOOLS IN THE GERMAN STATES-SCANDINAVIA — FRANCE, ENGLAND, AND THE UNITED STATES-SCHOOLS FOR A HIGHER GRADE OF SECONDARY INSTRUCTION-GYMNASIA-REAL SCHOOLS-SECONDARY EDUCATION IN

ENGLAND-PRUSSIA, ITALY, FRANCE-UNITED STATES.

I.-LOWER GRADE.

Secondary education of some sort has always existed, and has had its place in or out of the plan denominated popular, just in proportion as the line, no less flexible and varying than its boundary, which defined the national idea of popular rights has been liberal or limited. As the truth that a certain amount of rudimental knowledge is essential to all alike took root in the convictions of thinking people all over the civilized world, and that all classes must, therefore, have it furnished to them, so, as the facts of this furnishing began to multiply and bring fruits, the still more distinctive truth that, beyond this essential education, all people did not need exactly the same advancing culture, and might, therefore, have that which their necessities or inclinations decided as best for them, began to illustrate itself in a class of schools hitherto unknown, and to give to secondary education the honor of verifying its practical value.

Up to this time it had been classical almost to the exclusion from its instruction of those who were not destined for the still higher advantages of superior culture.

The developments of science and ethics brought new ideas of value and duty; and these ideas were soon prolific of action that opened a field of education dotted all over with schools accessible to the mass and varied, almost, as the needs of the race. Anomalous as it may seem, this most remarkable of the educational phenomena of any time—and which has recently received such an impetus that it seems a spontaneity of our own times-had its first and still has its most complete illustration under those governments where the inherent rights of man are less distinctly admitted than in those where both the letter and the practice of the law are a unit in the advocacy of the largest freedom.

As in other great departments of instruction, there are in this gradations that rank as lower and higher, corresponding at once to the general ideas of the countries where they are fostered, and to the necessities of those who seek them.

GERMAN AND SCANDINAVIAN STATES.

Thus, in the German states, where this bifurcation of secondary instruction is most noticeable, the burgh school, which had long existed

as a municipal provision for the highest primary advantage, began at an early day to develop into the higher burgher and the pro-gymnasium; the first in the interest of practical, and the second of classical training, and yet with such a happy combination of each, that the students of neither were excluded from the advantages of the other. This principle seems to have kept pace with the spread of such schools: that while the pupil must have instruction in the direction of his anticipated calling, he should also be encouraged to secure so much of that which is considered culture as his circumstances made possible.

In the Scandinavian states thre high, or grammar schools, the citizen's schools and schools of learning, altogether classical in their foundations, began to incorporate such special teachings relating to the business and arts of life as approximated the new demand, some time before the real schools of Denmark and the apologist schools of Sweden (both practical) began to define in distinct institutions the first grade of their two-fold secondary instruction. I have always regarded this necessity, which came of limited means and partial knowledge of how to give the new idea tangible form, as most happy, having prevented the divergence of these paths of special development to such extent as must have greatly lessened the value of each while tending to perpetuate that feeling of caste in society which it is one province of education to banish.

The ripeness of the time which saw the birth of this era in the education of the world is strikingly illustrated in the promptness with which both Russia and Italy began an appropriation of the light it brought to these so opposite civilizations. In the district school of that empire began the glimmer of the torch of science applied to the resources and capabilities of millions who could not hope, and who did not care, to find the old paths to better conditions; while in Italy, the soul of its departed greatness seemed to inspire the degenerated population with the thought that practical business education was the speediest road to the material power which must precede a recovery of the old prestige. To this end technical schools of number and variety equal to a stimulation of great national activity chronicled a very considerable advance in this grade of secondary education over that of most other countries. Switzerland is not behind in the supply of either classical or scientific secondary education; though the independence of the several cantons would make reference to any detail of differences tedious. In Belgium a very marked advantage to the people is dated from the establishment, in 1850, of intermediate schools of higher and lower grade, in each of which there is a section for instruction in courses leading to collegiate and to business life, which may be pursued together, or singly, at will. In truth, scarcely any of the most inconsiderable powers of Europe have not taken steps to secure to their people, the masses of whom have hitherto been either limited to primary or forced into exclusively classical instruction, the facilities of preparation, in some degree, for the varied occupations of practical life.

FRANCE, ENGLAND, UNITED STATES.

Three great-names-France, England, and America-by their compar ative inaction in this interest stand grouped together; not that they have left secondary education unprovided for, but that they have more slowly come to a recognition or a supply of its needs, as above indicated.

Though the people of the French empire have been for a third of the past century calling for a better and more popular middle class instruction, and though some considerable improvement has in both public and private ways been made, the educational forces of the government have been mainly directed to redeeming its low estate of primary, and ministering to the furtherance of its superior instruction. The communal college is yet the only public institution providing secondary education to the great mass of the people; and between this and the parish school there is a chasm that most of those entering upon ordinary labors and business pursuits do not know how to bridge. A real school of some sort, a citizen's school, a pro-collegiate course, coming down to the wants of those who may not go further, and more directly assisting those who, under difficulties, may, is still the great lack of their system of public instruction. An attempt has been made to meet this demand by incorporating courses of practical scientific value with the more classical curriculum of these colleges, and to give to these courses the desired grades by doing the same for the smaller number of royal colleges. this has been done by England in connection with the burgh Latin and inferior grammar schools, which have yet kept up their classical front in lower, secondary grades.

Less than

How far the American high school, which, as a national institution, stands in the lower grade of secondary education, meets the requirements of our youths, so anxious to get ahead and so convinced that success in business is the measure of this, is a question that would be variously answered by educators. That they do meet this world-noticed popular move in the direction of encouraging and respecting special training, for special ends, in any way befitting the versatility of our genius, the magnitude of our undeveloped material wealth, and this epoch of our national history, I think few would affirm.

The Scandinavian states, the German, with most of the smaller European states, and Italy, have adopted courses of study for a more varied and thorough secondary instruction, giving to its lower grade a dignity and value which can only come of time and care not usually bestowed upon this beginning of the more individual training of the young. In the first intermediate schools of these countries will be found a fair illustration of the old axiom, "that worth doing at all is worth doing well;" and accordingly, whether providing for separate or combining instructions for the varied positions of life, the scholar is often reminded by the course and by the time required that a fitting for life has really commenced. The positive nature of the governments by which these schools are fostered, and of the people whom they educate, finds expression in