se old or
curious. Thus adjuncts, in some sort, of the newspaper and the common
school, their catalogues prove, as do the bookcases of private houses,
that the newest and deepest results of European thought and inquiry
are eagerly sought and used by our people.

[Illustration: THE SCHOOL-HOUSE OF THE PAST AND THE PRESENT.]

Our system of public schools, long classed among the "peculiar
institutions" of the country, is notably gaining in scope and
efficiency, be the English and Prussians right or not in their claim
of greater thoroughness and a higher curriculum. The different States
have engaged in a series of competitive experiments for the common
good, and cities and counties, in their sphere, labor to the same end.
Schools of higher grade are being multiplied, and the examination of
teachers, still lax enough, becomes more exact and faithful, as befits
the drill of an army of two hundred and forty thousand charged with
the intellectual police of eight millions of children--the number said
by the new "National Bureau of Education" to have been enrolled in
1875, against 7,209,938, 5,477,037 and 3,642,694 by the censuses of
1870, '60 and '50. Little more than half this number is estimated by
the Bureau to represent the average daily attendance, which is
quite compatible with the attendance, for the greater part of the
school-year, of nine-tenths of the whole number on the lists. A
comparison of the number enrolled and the entire supposed number
of children between six and sixteen leaves an excess of nearly two
millions and a half outside the public schools. Of these private
schools will account, and account well, for a large proportion.
These are fulfilling indispensable offices, one being that of normal
schools--a want likely to be inadequately satisfied for a long time to
come.

In one respect our public schools are beyond, though not above,
comparison with those of the most advanced European states. An annual
outlay of a trifle less than seventy-five millions of dollars, with
an investment in buildings, ground, etc. of a hundred and sixty-six
millions, implies a determination that should be rewarded with the
most unexceptionable results. It reaches eighteen dollars yearly,
leaving out the interest on the fixed stock, for each child in
daily attendance. Such an expenditure, trebling, we believe, that
of Prussia, ought to secure better teachers and a higher range
of instruction. It must be said, however, that the d