only to a part, there was still a large residuum, and by no means a caput mortuum, of truth, keen observation, and artistic skill. We were, however, almost unanimous in voting her to be what her name, Trollope, expressed; and in taking her as the type of European detractors of our free country, popular institutions, and intelligent people.

The volume, scarcely yet dry, from the facile and spirited pen of her son, "North America, by Anthony Trollope," strikingly illustrates both how much progress we have made in a third of a century, and yet more what progress the English have made towards a just appreciation of us. Many of our readers, doubtless, either have read, or will read this work, which, published in some common year, would have made quite a sensation among us; but I am sure that they will be among the last to make any objection to the transcript upon our pages of the observations which it contains upon American Education. Nor are these reprinted merely for the sake of the many in our profession whose time for general reading, like my own, is nearly absorbed by the daily reports of the scenes and events that so thrill and haunt us. It seems eminently proper that such a testimony to the value of national education, and to the excellence of that education in our country, should have its record on the pages of an educational journal. And certainly, this present year, there can be no cry that the Teacher is not practical enough, even should we extend and vary a little, for a single month, the range of selection and discussion for its pages. It is well, at times, to look away from the practical details of our daily work, both to see what others are doing, and also to learn their judgment of our own efforts. We are thus strengthened in the right; we may be corrected in the wrong.

It will certainly be without any feelings of jealousy that we shall read the author's hearty commendation of the New York schools.

SCHOOLS IN NEW YORK.

"As to the schools, it is almost impossible to mention them with too high a praise. I am speaking here specially of New York, though I might say the same of Boston, or of all New England. I do not know any contrast that would be more surprising to an

Englishman, up to that moment ignorant of the matter, than that which he would find by visiting first of all a free school in London, and then a free school in New York. If he would also learn the number of children that are educated gratuitously in each of the two cities, and also the number in each which altogether lack education, he would, if susceptible of statistics, be surprised also at that. But seeing and hearing are always more effective than mere figures. The female pupil at a free school in London is, as a rule, either a ragged pauper, or a charity girl, if not degraded at least stigmatized by the badges and dress of the charity. We Englishmen know well the type of each, and have a fairly correct idea of the amount of education which is imparted to them. We see the result afterwards when the same girls become our servants, and the wives of our grooms and porters. The female pupil at a free school in New York is neither a pauper nor a charity girl. She is dressed with the utmost decency. She is perfectly cleanly. In speaking to her, you cannot in any degree guess whether her father has a dollar a day, or three thousand dollars a year. Nor will you be enabled to guess by the manner in which her associates treat her. As regards her own manner to you, it is always the same as though her father were in all respects your equal.

"As to the amount of her knowledge, I fairly confess that it is terrific. When, in the first room which I visited, a slight, slim creature was had up before me to explain to me the properties of the hypothenuse, I fairly confess that, as regards education, I backed down, and that I resolved to confine my criticisms to manner, dress, and general behavior. In the next room I was more at my ease, finding that ancient Roman history was on the tapis. Why did the Romans run away with the Sabine women?' asked the mistress, herself a pretty woman of about three-and-twenty. 'Because they were pretty,' simpered out a little girl with a cherry mouth. The answer did not give complete satisfaction; and then followed a somewhat abstruse explanation on the subject of population. It was all done with good faith and serious intent, and showed what it was intended to show, that the girls there educated had in truth reached the consideration of important subjects, and that they were leagues beyond that terrible repetition of A B C, to which I fear that most of our free metropolitan schools

are still necessarily confined. You and I, reader, were we called on to superintend the education of girls of sixteen, might not select as favorite points either the hypothenuse, or the ancient methods of populating young colonies.

"There may be, and to us on the European side of the Atlantic there will be, a certain amount of absurdity in the transatlantic idea that all knowledge is knowledge, and that it should be imparted if it be not knowledge of evil. But as to the general result, no fairminded man or woman can have a doubt. That the lads and girls in these schools are excellently educated, comes home as a fact to the mind of any one who will look into the subject. That girl could not have got as far as the hypothenuse without a competent and abiding knowledge of much that is very far beyond the outside limits of what such girls know with us. It was at least manifest in the other examination that the girls knew as well as I did who were the Romans, and who were the Sabine women. That all this

is of use, was shown in the very gestures and bearings of the girl. Emollit mores, as Colonel Newcombe used to say. That young woman whom I had watched while she cooked her husband's dinner upon the banks of the Mississippi, had doubtless learned all about the Sabine women, and I feel assured that she cooked her husband's dinner all the better for that knowledge, and faced the hardships of the world with a better front than she would have done had she been ignorant on the subject."

In this speech-making country, Mr. Trollope could not, of course, escape from the school which he has described above, without the release-fee of a speech. And his speech seems to have been of a type quite too common in our schools. His mental reserve upon the occasion, in qualification of his remarks, is very instructive. When, amid so many other lessons, shall we learn the great lesson of health?

"At that school," he adds, "I saw some five or six hundred girls collected in one room, and heard them sing. The singing was very pretty, and it was all very nice; but I own that I was rather startled, and to tell the truth somewhat abashed, when I was invited to say a few words to them? No idea of such a suggestion had dawned upon me, and I felt myself quite at a loss. To be called up before five hundred men is bad enough, but how much

worse before that number of girls! What could I say, but that they were all very pretty? As far as I can remember, I did say that and nothing else. Very pretty they were, and neatly dressed, and attractive; but among them all there was not a pair of rosy cheeks. How should there be, when every room in the building was heated up to the condition of an oven

EXCELLENCE OF AMERICAN EDUCATION.

There is great fairness in the general view which Mr. Trollope takes of the influence and effects of popular education in this country. The traveller is too apt to make his own country the standard by which others are to be tried, and to judge of their institutions and usages by the relations which they sustain to himself, or his class and nation. But, in this case, Mr. T. leaves his personal preferences quite out of the question; and considers the matter in its bearings upon the welfare of the educated, — of the people at large. He accepts fully the Benthamian standard of "the greatest good to the greatest number;" and admitting this, he is compelled by his clear-sightedness and candor to commend what he does not personally like. His testimony is the more valuable, that it is not the ardent tribute of the philanthropic theorist, but the enforced evidence of the calm observer and cool man of the world. He thus commences a chapter which he entitles "Education and Religion."

"The one matter in which, as far as my judgment goes, the people of the United States have excelled us Englishmen, so as to justify them in taking to themselves praise which we cannot take to ourselves or refuse to them, is the matter of education. In saying this, I do not think that I am proclaiming anything disgraceful to England, though I am proclaiming much that is creditable to America. To the Americans of the States was given the good fortune of beginning at the beginning. The French, at the time of their revolution, endeavored to reorganize everything, and to begin the world again with new habits and grand theories; but the French, as a people, were too old for such a change, and the theories fell to the ground. But in the States, after their revolution, an Anglo-Saxon people had an opportunity of making a new State, with all the experience of the world before them; and to

this matter of education they were from the first aware that they must look for their success. They did so ; and unrivalled population, wealth, and intelligence have been the results; and with these, looking at the whole masses of the people,—I think I am justified in saying, — unrivalled comfort and happiness. It is not that you, my reader, to whom in this matter of education, fortune, and your parents have probably been bountiful, would have been more happy in New York than in London. It is not that I, who, at any rate, can read and write, have cause to wish that I had been an American. But it is this: -if you and I can count up in a day all those on whom our eyes may rest, and learn the circumstances of their lives, we shall be driven to conclude that nine tenths of that number would have had a better life as Americans, than they can have in their spheres as Englishmen. The States are at a discount with us now, in the beginning of this year of grace, 1862; and Englishmen were not very willing to admit the above statement even when the States were not at a discount. But I do not think that a man can travel through the States with his eyes open, and not admit the fact. Many things will conspire to induce him to shut his eyes, and admit no conclusion favorable to the Americans. Men and women will sometimes be impudent to him; the better his coat, the greater the impudence. He will be pelted with the braggadocio of equality. The corns of his Old-World conservatism will be trampled on hourly by the purposely vicious herd of uncouth democracy. The fact that he is paymaster will go for nothing, and will fail to insure civility."

We cannot but sympathize with Mr. T. in the illustration which he draws from his own experience. Many of us have had experiences similar in kind, if not in degree. Yet we cannot admit that the example is quite apropos. For the chances are three to one that the careless, insolent porter was a foreigner, and had never had the benefit of an American education. The most discourteous are, in general, either those who have never learned to be courteous, or those who, conscious of having been depressed, feel that they must now assert their equality, and are afraid that civility would be mistaken for servility. We admire the candor with which the author reasons on the case, supposing, as he does, that he had been ill-used by native Americans.