300,000; to the encouragement of the instructional corps and to classical works, 60,000; and to the collection and publication of unedited documents relating to the history of France, 120,000.

HOLLAND.

Public instruction in Holland is divided into the usual grades, with primary schools, ordinary and superior, in one of which all private ones of this class must rank.

The scheme of organization is simple. The minister of the home department is the supreme officer in charge of this interest. The eleven provinces of the kingdom are divided into eighty-nine school districts, and these into communes, in each of which there must be a primary school in the care of a local board; and each commune of 3,000 persons has a school commission. For each district there is an overseer, who is chairman of all the commissions within his jurisdiction. At the head of the districts embraced in a given province is a provincial inspector, salaried by the state, whose duty is to superintend all the schools in his province, receive the reports of district overseers, and once a year to sit in the council of provincial inspectors, under the presidency of the minister, upon the general interests of primary schools throughout the kingdom.

Secondary instruction is provided for and looked after with an equally Dutch straightforwardness of action.

Children are admitted to these schools without distinction of creed; and while it is the avowed purpose to have primary instruction "tend to develop the reason of the young and to train them to the exercise of all the Christian and social virtues, the teacher is to abstain from teaching, doing, or permitting anything contrary to the respect due to the convictions of dissenters." In short, the teacher is expected and enjoined to cultivate the Christian virtues, but is prohibited from teaching any form of theological doctrine. Religious instruction, outside of the family, is left to the different communions, the school law favoring no one of them, though it expressly provides that "school-rooms may be used at the convenience of any of them, for the religious instruction of children attending the schools, out of school hours."

Primary schools must be in operation throughout the entire year, except during the time of recognized holidays.

The support of the primary schools, as in most countries, is required of the communes, which must also furnish them in sufficient number, the state deputies and the government being judge of that sufficiency. In the event of a commune proving unable to support the needed schools, the province in which it is found and the state share equally in meeting the expense.

The law further provides for a liberal minimum compensation to teachers, and that the communes furnish them a residence and garden.

It also fixes the maximum number of children to be placed under the care of an unaided teacher.

Attendance upon school is not obligatory; but is made practically somewhat so, by prohibiting parents from receiving relief from charitable institutions whose children have not been duly instructed in the elements of a popular education.

In 1857 Holland numbered about 2,500 primary schools, with nearly 5,000 masters and assistants, and an average attendance of 322,767 pupils. Of private schools there were nearly 1,000, and of infant schools 800, having an aggregate of 133,435 more.

An estimate of the results of these schools may be gathered in various ways outside of the school reports, which are not of very late date. In 1857 a speaker in the national legislature complained, as in evidence of a deplorable state of ignorance in that portion of the kingdom, that of the conscripts of South Holland, the worst educated portion of the kingdom, ten per cent. were unable to read and write. A parallel /comparison of this with the wholly uneducated number found in the service of many a more pretentious country than old Holland would have induced more bitter complaints in the interest of humanity, or greater respect for the institutions of his own.

Commissioner Arnold, sent out by the council of education of Great Britain to investigate the school systems of certain countries, in his report of 1860 says, in speaking of that of Holland: "It is impossible to regard it without admiration. I do not think we can hope, in England, for municipalities which, like the Dutch municipalities, can be trusted to provide and watch over schools; for a population which, like the Dutch population, can be safely trusted to come to school regularly; for a government which has only to give good advice and good suggestions to be promptly obeyed."

In 1867 Holland appropriated to all its schools, of every grade, 1,605,695 florins.

In secondary, and especially in technical or industrial secondary, instruction, there is a great interest. Schools of various specialties connected with the industries of the people, embracing Sunday schools and evening classes, have been instituted in recent years and are doing much toward bettering not only the material but educational character of the laboring classes, who, from their former almost exclusive limitation to the pursuit of agriculture, and that but rudely practiced, have been the least informed and most unskilled general workmen in Europe. At the same time, the quality of their higher burgher schools, seminaries, and athenæums for intermediate education has correspondingly advanced in the interest of letters and philosophy.

These special schools are largely supported by municipal and private means; but the state also not only encourages but aids, when needed, all such enterprises. The amount of public grants to secondary and special secondary schools and associations is about $50,000 annually.

Charitable institutions are unusual in number and well sustained. Superior education has its universities at Leyden, Groningen, and Utrecht, which, besides revenues from endowments, are fostered by both public and private means.

BELGIUM.

The school system of Belgium is very imperfect, yielding but inferior results.

As in France, the kingdom is divided into provinces, corresponding to the French departments, arrondissements, cantons, and communes. The minister of the interior performs the functions of minister of public instruction.

The law recognizes the following classes of schools:

1. Primary, including communal schools, founded, supported, and administered by the communes; private adopted schools, often a substi tute for the communal, and receiving a consideration for instruction given; and private free schools, usually those of denominational orders, and which admit poor children gratuitously.

2. Superior elementary, or high schools.

3. Secondary, or intermediate schools, preparatory to the university, and known as Atheneums.

4. Normal schools, primary and secondary.

5. Superior schools-universities with faculties of philosophy, medicine, law, and theology.

The public communal schools are established and managed by the communal authorities, which are practically quite independent as to their establishment at all; though, if done, the schools are subject to the supervision of the government through cantonal inspectors appointed by the minister. It is the duty of the inspector, whose term is three years and who receives a per diem for service rendered, to visit each school within his canton twice in each year, and report to his next official superior, the provincial inspector. Of provincial inspectors there are nine; one for each province. They are appointed in like manner, with corresponding duties for their province, besides that of presiding at the cantonal conferences of teachers and making a report of the proceedings, as well as of all inferior inspectors, to the minister of education.

Once a year these provincial inspectors meet in council at Brussels, under the presidency of the minister, to consider all educational interests that may arise.

Teachers can only be appointed, upon favorable examination by a clergyman and a layman, from among candidates who have had at least two years' training in an approved normal school; and when appointed, are removable by the inspector, upon consultation with the communal council.

In the superior elementary schools, it is provided that one of the best in each province may incorporate into its scheme a course of normal in

struction for persons fitting themselves to teach in the lower schools. Provision is made in the organization of the Atheneums for instruction in various industrial branches.

In addition to these courses, normal and industrial, separate schools are founded for higher advantages in acquiring proficiency in the art of teaching and in the application of science to the pursuits of life.

Superior education is furnished in two universities of the state, at Ghent and Liege, and two outside of government patronage, that of Louvain being Catholic, and that of Brussels liberal.

In special culture, there are schools of arts, manufactures, mines, and civil engineering, in connection with the state universities, and a superior commercial institute at Antwerp.

The policy of the government is, like some of its European neighbors, to give as little assistance as is possible to elementary instruction, and keep good the right to superintend its character and operations-that of the Belgian authorities limiting it almost within the encouragement given to communal school-house building, by loans of money to that object, returnable within a given number of years. From 1842, when the present school regulations were adopted, to 1851, there was such a decline in the public interest growing out, as it seemed, of the voluntary policy permitted in the communes, that few of them either owned or provided school buildings. At that date the government opened a credit of 1,000,000 francs with the communes in aid of school-houses, so that at this time they own some 2,500, capable of accommodating over 256,000 pupils. Still, looking at the condition of the education of the common people as favorably as possible, Belgium presents the spectacle of a militia of which scarcely over thirty per cent. can read and write, and a school population, two-thirds of which commence the labor of life in self-support without the rudiments of anything that can be called education.

Secondary and all intermediate education fares better, but is yet unsustained, in any just sense, by the public treasury. When superior and special institutions are considered in reference to the ways and means of their existence, the state shows to better advantage in the two universities of its care and those independent, giving instruction to nearly 2,000 students, while meeting more than half of the annual expenses of such schools as prepare for the higher professional positions of life.

It supports schools for the blind and deaf-mutes, for orphans, and for juvenile criminals. It liberally sustains a national observatory, about 20 public libraries, three conservatories of music, with more than 1,000 pupils incited to excellence by liberal rewards, and more than 50 schools and halls for drawing, painting, sculpture, and architecture, which together instruct scarcely less than 10,000 students, all of which institu tions are aided or supported by public funds.

PRUSSIA.

First among the nations to adopt systematic regulations for the instruction of the people, and faithful to this policy through the strifes and upheavals of more than three hundred years, Prussia is fully entitled to its present rank as first in the educational world.

Owing to the war of 1866, and the absorption; as a consequence, into the kingdom of a number of the smaller states of North Germany, the school system of Prussia is undergoing modifications. At the date of this writing, however, none of these have been promulgated, even if determined upon, and this account must be understood, therefore, as referring to the period immediately preceding that great event.

The principal divisions are provinces, of which, in 1866, there were ten, and these are subdivided into regencies, circles, and parishes.

Its system of public instruction wears the features of a strong government. At its head stands the minister of education and of ecclesiastical and medical affairs, and a central council, of which he is president. This council is divided into sections corresponding to the three general interests of the department; the one devoted to the establishment and care of schools being the educational cabinet of the minister, and occupied in devising plans and executing such measures as meet with his approval and have the sanction of the law.

Next below is the provincial council, having general control of secondary education, and primary normal schools. A subdivision of this consistory (Schulcollegium) has charge of the primary schools of its province, being empowered to execute the statutes made and provided, and to decide upon the use of text-books, subject to the approval of the minister, to whom all its transactions are reported.

Immediately below this is the church and school section of the supreme council of the regency, charged with the examination and appointment of teachers in the primary schools, with keeping the schools in good condition, and with collecting and disbursing school funds. It is presided over by the school councilor, (Schulrath,) who is a member of the regency council, and entitled to a seat in the consistory of a provincial council, to which, on behalf of the church and school committee, he makes report.

The educational officials of a circle are the councilor of the circle (Landrath) and the inspector, a clergyman, whose duty to watch over the schools of the several parishes of his circle is an essential part of his ecclesiastical functions. Finally, each parish must have its school, and each school its committee of supervision, (Schulvorstand,) consisting of the curate, two magistrates, from two to four notable persons of the parish, and its inspector, usually the parish clergyman.

In the larger towns and cities the general management of all the schools is intrusted to a board called the school deputation. This board consists of the burgomaster, (mayor,) members of the municipal council,