"I shall never forget my agony, as I saw and heard my desk fall from a porter's hand on a railway station, as he tossed it from him seven yards off on to the hard pavement. I heard its poor weak intestines rattle in their death-struggle, and, knowing that it was smashed, I forgot my position on American soil and remonstrated. It's my desk, and you 've utterly destroyed it,' I said. 'Ha! ha! ha!' laughed the porter. You've destroyed my property,' I rejoined, and it 's no laughing matter.' And then all the crowd laughed. Guess you'd better get it glued,' said one. So I gathered up the broken article, and retired mournfully and crestfallen into a coach. This was very sad, and for the moment I deplored the ill-luck which had brought me to so savage a country. Such and such-like are the incidents which make an Englishman in the States unhappy, and rouse his gall against the institutions of the country; these things, and the continued appliance of the irritating ointment of American braggadocio, with which his sores are kept open. But though I was badly off on that railway platform, — worse off than I should have been in England, — all that crowd of porters round me were better off than our English porters. They had a good time' of it. And this, O my English brother who hast travelled through the States and returned disgusted, is the fact throughout. Those men, whose familiarity was so disgusting to you, are having a good time of it. They might be a little more civil,' you say, 'and yet read and write just as well.' True; but they are arguing in their minds that civility to you will be taken by you for subservience, or for an acknowledgment of superiority; and looking at your habits of life,-yours and mine together, — I am not quite sure that they are altogether wrong. Have you ever realized to yourself as a fact that the porter who carries your box has not made himself inferior to you by the very act of carrying that box? If not, that is the very lesson which the man wishes to teach you.

"If a man can forget his own miseries in his journeyings, and think of the people he comes to see rather than of himself, I think he will find himself driven to admit that education has made life for the million in the Northen States better than life for the million is with us. They have begun at the beginning, and have so managed that every one may learn to read and write, have so

managed that almost every one does learn to read and write. With us this cannot now be done. Population had come upon us in masses too thick for management, before we had as yet acknowledged that it would be a good thing that these masses should be educated. Prejudices, too, had sprung up, and habits, and strong sectional feelings, all antagonistic to a great national system of education. We are, I suppose, now doing all that we can do; but comparatively it is little.

"I think I saw some time since that the cost for gratuitous education, or education in part gratuitous, which had fallen upon the nation, had already amounted to the sum of 800,000l.; and I think also that I read, in the document which revealed to me this fact, a very strong opinion that government could not at present go much further. But, if this matter were regarded in England as it is regarded in Massachusetts, or rather had it from some prosperous beginning been put upon a similar footing, 800,000l. would not have been esteemed a great expenditure for free education simply in the city of London. In 1857, the public schools of Boston cost 70,000l., and these schools were devoted to a population of about 180,000 souls. Taking the population of London at two-and-ahalf millions, the whole sum now devoted to England would, if expended in the metropolis, make education there even cheaper than it is in Boston. In Boston, during 1857, there were above 24,000 pupils at these public schools, giving more than one-eighth of the whole population. But I fear it would not be practicable for us to spend 800,000l. on the gratuitous education of London. Rich as we are, we should not know where to raise the money. In Boston, it is raised by a separate tax. It is a thing understood, acknowledged, and made easy by being habitual,—as is our national debt. I do not know that Boston is peculiarly blessed; but I quote the instance, as I have the record of its schools before me."

SCHOOLS IN BOSTON.

The mirthful spirit of the following sketch does not in the least impair its value. Why," says Horace, " may not a man tell the truth, and yet have his laugh?" We cannot hesitate in identifying the school of "young Brahmins ;" and I could myself, from my

own experience in the other school, more than parallel the Miltonian discussion, which our author found so very entertaining.

"At the three high schools in Boston, at which the average of pupils is 526, about 137. per head is paid for free education. The average price per annum of a child's schooling throughout these schools in Boston is about 3l. per annum. To the higher schools any boy or girl may attain without any expense, and the education is probably as good as can be given, and as far advanced. The only question is, whether it is not advanced further than may be necessary. Here, as in New York, I was almost startled by the amount of knowledge around me, and listened, as I might have done to an examination in theology among young Brahmins. When a young lad explained in my hearing all the properties of the different levers as exemplified by the bones of the human body, I bowed my head before him in unaffected humility. We, at our English schools, never got beyond the use of those bones which he described with such accurate scientific knowledge.

"In one of the girls' schools, they were reading Milton; and, when we entered, were discussing the nature of the pool in which the Devil is described as wallowing. The question had been raised by one of the girls: a pool, so called, was supposed to contain but a small amount of water; and how could the Devil, being so large, get into it? Then came the origin of the word pool, from 'palus,' a marsh, as we were told, some dictionary attesting to the fact, and such a marsh might cover a large expanse. The 'Palus Mæotis' was then quoted. And so we went on, till Satan's theory of political liberty,

'Better to reign in hell than serve in heaven,'

was thoroughly discussed and understood. These girls of sixteen and seventeen got up one after another, and gave their opinions on the subject, -how far the Devil was right, and how far he was manifestly wrong. I was attended by one of the directors or guardians of the schools, and the teacher, I thought, was a little embarrassed by her position. But the girls themselves were as easy in their demeanor, as though they were stitching handkerchiefs at home.

"It is impossible to refrain from telling all this, and from mak

ing a little innocent fun out of the superexcellencies of these schools; but the total result on my mind was very greatly in their favor. And, indeed, the testimony came in both ways. Not only was I called on to form an opinion of what the men and women would become from the education which was given to the boys and girls, but also to say what must have been the education of the boys and girls from what I saw of the men and women. Of course it will be understood that I am not here speaking of those I met in society, or of their children, but of the working people, of that class who find that a gratuitous education of their children is needful, if any considerable amount of education is to be given. The result is to be seen daily in the whole intercourse of life. The coachman who drives you, the man who mends your window, the boy who brings home your purchases, the girl who stitches your wife's dress, they all carry with them sure signs of education, and show it in every word they utter."

RESULTS OF THE SCHOOLS.

*

"So much for the schools, and now for the results. I do not know that anything impresses a visitor more strongly with the amount of books sold in the States, than the practice of selling them as it has been adopted in the railway cars. Personally, the traveller will find the system very disagreeable, as is everything connected with these cars. [But we need not copy a description of what is so familiar to us all.] But the numbers of the popular books of the day, printed and sold, afford the most conclusive proof of the extent to which education is carried in the States. The readers of Tennyson, Thackeray, Dickens, Bulwer, Collins, Hughes, and Martin Tupper, are to be counted by tens of thousands in the States, to the thousands by which they may be counted in our own islands. I do not doubt that I had fully fifteen copies of the Silver Cord' thrown at my head in different railway cars on the continent of America. Nor is the taste by any means confined to the literature of England. Longfellow, Curtis, Holmes, Hawthorne, Lowell, Emerson, and Mrs. Stowe, are almost as popular as their English rivals. I do not say whether or no the literature is well chosen, but there it is. It is printed, sold, and read. The disposal of ten thousand copies of a

work is no large sale in America of a book published at a dollar; but in England it is a large sale of a book brought out at five shillings.

"I do not remember that I ever examined the rooms of an American without finding books or magazines in them. I do not speak here of the houses of my friends, as of course the same remark would apply as strongly in England, but of the houses of persons presumed to earn their bread by the labor of their hands.

A porter or a farmer's servant in the States is not proud of reading and writing. It is to him quite a matter of course. The coachmen on their boxes and the boots as they sit in the halls of the hotels have newspapers constantly in their hands. The young women have them also, and the children. The fact comes home to one at every turn, and' at every hour, that the people are an educated people. The whole of this question between North and South is as well understood by the servants as by their masters, is discussed as vehemently by the private soldiers as by the officers. The politics of the country and the nature of its constitution are familiar to every laborer. The very wording of the Declaration of Independence is in the memory of every lad of sixteen. Boys and girls of a younger age than that know why Slidell and Mason were arrested, and will tell you why they should have been given up, or why they should have been held in durance. The question of the war with England is debated by every native pavior and hodman of New York.

"I know what Englishmen will say in answer to this. They will declare that they do not want their paviors and hodmen to talk politics; that they are as well pleased that their coachmen and cooks should not always have a newspaper in their hands; that private soldiers will fight as well, and obey better, if they are not trained to discuss the causes which have brought them into the field. An English gentleman will think that his gardener will be a better gardener without than with any excessive political ardor; and the English lady will prefer that her housemaid shall not have a very pronounced opinion of her own as to the capabilities of the cabinet ministers. But I would submit to all Englishmen and Englishwomen who may look at these pages, whether such an opinion or feeling on their part bears much, or even at all, upon the subject. I am not saying that the man who is driven in the coach is