he public schools of New Orleans, February
22d, 1850--a most befitting day for a school celebration. These
statistics strike us more forcibly when we consider that they relate to
the metropolis of the South, and to the capital of a state in which,
according to the last census, only one person in one hundred received
instruction in the primary and common schools of the state. The public
schools of the second municipality of New Orleans were established in
1842, comprising at that time less than three hundred pupils. Now the
constant attendance is upward of three thousand--ten times what it was
eight years ago. But even this increase, large as it may seem, is not
sufficient to constitute the proportion in attendance upon the schools
of the state even one in fifty of the entire population.

[62] My information is derived from the "Southern Journal of Education"
for May, 1850--a monthly for the promotion of popular intelligence,
published from Knoxville, Tenn.--Samuel A. Jewett, Editor and Publisher.
This journal is ably conducted, and has now reached its third volume.
This certainly is a very encouraging omen, especially when we consider
that it has so long survived in a state where, according to the last
census, only one in thirty-three of the entire population attended
school. May it long continue to do good service in this important cause.

Kentucky furnishes the other indication of improvement which I propose
to notice. In this state, according to the last census, only one in
thirty-three of the entire population attended the common schools during
any part of the year. The number of children at the present time in that
commonwealth, as reported by the second auditor, between the ages of
five and sixteen, leaving out the colored children, is one hundred and
ninety-three thousand. The number provided with schools, as reported in
1847, was twenty-one thousand; in 1848, thirty-three thousand; and in
1849, eighty-seven thousand; showing a clear advance in two years of
sixty-six thousand.[63] But, with all this improvement, one hundred and
five thousand children do not derive any personal benefit from the
public school system. In other words, eighteen thousand more children in
this state are still growing up without instruction than as yet attend
the schools. And the utter inadequacy of the common school privileges of
even these will be apparent when it is understood that in the great
majority of the dist