eorological cause in making popular a taste for
knowledge the instances of Iceland, Scotland, Scandinavia and North
Germany, to say nothing of New England, leave us no room to doubt.
It is, of course, not the only cause. Ability to read and write is as
universal in China and Japan, as in the countries we have named. In
the case of the Orientals it cannot be ascribed, either, wholly to
that conviction of the importance, as a conservative guarantee,
of elevating the popular mind and taste, which belongs to the
enlightenment of the day. Instinctive recognition of this need
manifests itself in a simultaneous move in the direction of universal
education at government expense throughout the two continents. All
the populations snatch up their satchels and hurry to school. Athens
revives the Academe and reinstates the Olympic games under a literary
avatar. Italy follows suit. Hornbooks open and shut with a suggestive
snap under the pope's nose, and Young Rome calculates its future with
slate and pencil. Gaul, fresh from one year's term in the severest of
all schools, adversity, joins the procession, close by John Bull, who,
_more suo_, pauses first to decide whether the youthful mind shall
take its pap with the spoon of orthodoxy or heterodoxy, or neither.
With him the question between Church schools and national schools
is complicated by one which is common to other nations--whether
attendance shall be compulsory or voluntary only. The tendency is
toward the former, which has long been in practice in some of the
States of the Union; and it seems not unlikely that Christendom will,
before many years, revert, in this important matter, to the Spartan
view that children are the property of the state.

Lavish beyond precedent are the provisions made by governments and
individuals everywhere for the promotion of this great object. Private
endowment of schools and colleges was never before so frequent and
liberal, and nothing so quickly disarms the caution of the average
taxpayer as an appeal for common schools. From California eastward to
Japan it is honored along the whole line, the unanimous "Yea" being
the most eloquent and hopeful word the modern world emits. Of the
slumbering power that till recently lay hidden in coal and water, and
which has so incalculably multiplied the material strength of man,
much has been said; but we fail to appreciate the unevoked fund
of intellect upon which he has additionally to draw. The highest