pass a minimum examination in the work of the previous session or half-year,) that it is to me wholly unintelligible why it should ever have arisen, still less have been allowed to continue. Nothing but the excellence of the raw material of Scottish youth, and the energy and perseverance which distinguish both boys and masters, could have preserved the best system from collapse when afflicted with so fatal a defect.

Such an uncompromising condemnation of this system by two gentlemen who have had so much experience of its operation, and who are so eminently qualified to judge of the effects of it, is unanswerable.

As to schools organized on the third principle, by dividing the whole school into three or more sets of classes, one for each department, and and promoting every boy from class to class, according to his proficiency in that class, without reference to his standing in any other, there are very few such in Scotland. It implies a large staff of teachers in proportion to the number of scholars, but it is essential to giving fair play to all classes of scholars. Where the curriculum is fixed according to the yearly class, a boy who is far on in one branch and backward in another is kept too far back in one or pushed too far forward in the other. A boy may wish to attend an advanced class in classics and a low class in mathematics. The highest class in classics is not improbably held at the same hour as that at which the lower class in mathematics is held, and so the boy must give up one or other of the classes, or the hours must be arranged to suit his individual case. But when there is a separate curriculum arranged for every subject, and promotion by proficiency in all of them, both the difficulties of the other systems are avoided.

The Commissioners close this discussion as follows:

1. There should be a rector or head master in every school, with entire control over the internal economy of the school, including the appointment and dismissal of the teachers. His position should be higher than that of the under masters, and his emoluments should be in proportion. 2. It can not be settled arbitrarily what subjects he should teach. Opinion is rather in favor of his having the classical department under his charge; but so many qualifications besides teaching are necessary for a head master, and such different branches are popular in different places, that this question should be decided locally.

3. The system of individual and independent classes is not satisfactory in its operation. It would be much better both for masters and boys, if this system were changed, and, where practicable a fixed curriculum introduced into every department in all schools.

4. Promotion from one class to another should be regulated, not by routine, but by proficiency tested by class marks and examination each halfyear, and efficiency in one subject should not affect promotion in another. 5. Where it is not practicable to enforce a prescribed curriculum, there might be a fixed course of classes recommended but not absolutely enforced, and optional classes at a higher fee.

6. Fees might be paid into a common fund, and the emoluments of the teachers graduated from the highest to the lowest.

SUBJECTS AND METHODS OF INSTRUCTION.

The subjects of school instruction in Scotland are not distributed into institutions of different grades, but are taught indiscriminately in all grades. There is no line of demarcation between the higher and the lower, as to the age of the pupils, their attainments or their instruction. Infant schools run into Elementary schools, Elementary or Primary into Secondary, and Secondary into the Universities. Parochial schools, and those on this model, are attended by children who ought to be in Infant schools; and what are called infant schools are attended by big boys and girls who ought to be in the more advanced schools. The Burgh and Middle-class schools, in like manner, which might be expected to be Secondary, combine in themselves Infant, Elementary, and Secondary schools. Sometimes, in the same class-room, and taught by the same master, there are boys and girls of fifteen or sixteen years of age, reading, it may be Homer and Virgil and Racine, and alongside of them, infants under six years of age learning their letters and the multiplication table, and young men of eighteen and twenty, who, according to age, ought to be in the universities. In the universities, again, there are students far advanced in Greek and mathematics in the same class with those who hardly know the Greek alphabet, and have not learned the elements of algebra, and men of thirty and even forty years of age alongside of lads of fourteen and fifteen. There is no uniformity or organization throughout the country, but schools have been left just as they have grown up, or old schools have been amalgamated with new, so that the general result is a sort of ill-ordered patchwork, and the great marvel is how much good comes out of this disorder. And as it is with the schools, so it is with the departments in the schools.

Out of 15,146 pupils in 69 schools, there were in Greek, 962; Latin, 4,169; French, 3,183; German, 688; Hindustani, 1; Italian, 7; Arithmetic, 11,323; Book-keeping, 974; Mathematics, 1,975; Physics, 545; Natural History, 165; Chemistry, 184; English, 14,023; Writing, 11,333; Drawing, 2,063; Music, 1,227; Mensuration, 91.

In some cases all the branches are taught by one man; in others, classics and modern languages are taught by one, English by another, and mathematics by a third; in others, classics, modern languages, and English are taught by one, and mathematics by another. Some schools, again, instead of following the division into four departments, are divided into three,-classical, English, and commercial; whiles uch a school as Dundee High School contains no less than eight distinct departments; viz.,-classical, mathematical, commercial, writing and arithmetic, English, French, German, drawing and painting. In point of fact many schools are arranged in no very definite principle, but according to the teaching power which can be made available. When the staff of teachers is sufficiently large, the schools are divided into four departments,classical, English, modern language, and mathematical.

Out of 69 schools, with a total of 15, 146 scholars returned as belonging to the Secondary grade, only six are regarded as strictly secondary; that is, professing to give an education definitely higher than elementary. Out of 969 pupils in Greek, more than one-half (512) are in the six schools; out of 4,169 in Latin, 1,291 were in the same six schools, while of the 14,023 in English studies, only 1,203 are in this class of schools. Latin and Greek.

In the six professedly classical schools the usual Greek and Latin authors are learned and taught, and in them all, with certain modifica tions, in much the same stereotyped way. Latin only is taught for the two first years, or in the High School of Edinburgh for the three first years, and after that Greek and Latin go on simultaneously. The highest authors are read in the Edinburgh Academy and High School, and scholarship is brought to as high pitch in these schools as in any other in Scotland. In the Aberdeen schools the system appears to aim at grammatical precision rather than at elegant scholarship, and looks more to the attainment of rigid verbal accuracy than to the acquisition of classical ideas by varied reading. A considerable part of the scholar's time is devoted to writing versions, and very little can be spared for general classical reading. In the highest Latin and Greek class of the Edinburg High School, small portions only of Virgil, Horace, Plautus, Terence, Cicero, Livy, and Tacitus, and of Homer, Sophocles, Thucydides, Euripides, are mastered, while in the same class of other institutions of this grade, the attainments are far below those of the English Grammar Schools, and of the German Gymnasia.*

Reading.

Reading was in one or two cases very good. The scholars read both poetry and prose with confidence, with expression, and with understanding and appreciation of what they were reading. In most schools, however, there was no expression exhibited in the reading, but the words came out in a monotonous uninterested tone, well enough pronounced and easily followed as words, but with no appreciation of the meaning of the passage, or the intention of the author.

The following authors in Greek and Latin are read in the Gymnasia of Prussia :—
I. GREEK.

1. Homer, the Iliad and Odyssey entire.

II. LATIN.

1. Virgil, Eclogues and Eneid entire.

2. Several Plays of Eschylus, Sophocles, and 2. Horace, entire.

Euripides.

3. Ovid, Metamorphoses entire.

4. Elegiac Poets, various pieces.

5. Cæsar, Gallic and Civil Wars.

6. Livy, five or six Books.

7. Sallust, entire.

8. Tacitus, Annals.

9. Cicero, Orations in part, and the Treatises, "De Amicitia," and "De Senectute," "De Officiis," De Divinatione," "De Natura Deorum," and "Disputationes Tusculanæ."

N. B.-The above is only the classical part of the gymnasial work in addition, there is instruction carried on simultaneously in the departments of German, French, and English, natural science, mathematics, etc., and in the case of students intended for theology a course of Hebrew, in which the grammatical training is over before a student enters the university at all.

Spelling.

In some of the largest schools visited we found the spelling very far from satisfactory. This was not confined to the junior classes alone, but frequently in the exercises done by the highest classes mistakes were made which would have been fatal to the authors of them under the standards of the Revised Code. Where dictation was systematically given, the spelling was generally more accurate, and this very important branch of education is more commonly taught in schools than it used to be. There are not a great many schools in which it is never taught, but in some it is a regular part of the course, in others it is intermittent, sometimes given, sometimes neglected. It was generally pretty easy to find out whether the teaching was systematic or not. If the spelling was not bad, the manner of setting about the exercise, and the rapidity or slowness with which the work was done, sufficiently indicated to us the difference between those schools where the subject was regularly taught, and those where it was not.

English Grammar and Analysis.

The ordinary grammar appeared to be given in all schools in a manner that could not but be perplexing and distasteful to any scholar. At best the subject is too abstract for a child of nine or ten years of age. The ideas conveyed by the simplest terms that are employed in it, such even as noun, verb, adjective, are beyond the comprehension of the cleverest boy or girl of that age. But when they get into the abstract nomenclature of the more elaborate grammars, they find themselves in the midst of what is a new and unintelligible language, belonging neither to their own nation nor to any other. In addition to English grammar, taught on the principles laid down in the text-books mentioned above, the same scholar is taught Latin grammar from a different kind of textbook, based on different principles and illustrated by a different teacher; and he is taught French grammar, differing from both English and Latin, and taught by a third teacher, probably a foreigner, and possibly also German and Greek grammars differing from all the others and taught on different principles from each of them. Four or five grammars, all of them of the most abstract kind, bristling with hard and, to a child, unintelligible terms, each calling the same thing by a different name, and classifying the same things in a different system, taught by four or five different men on four or five different principles, tend to form a kind of mental training that can hardly be beneficial.

What is called analysis did not seem to us to be of more utility in education than the more elementary grammar. Gramınar, as we are well aware, must be taught, and must be taught in an abstract form. No one ever will be at home in a foreign or classical language unless he thoroughly understands its grammatical instruction and inflexions. But is there any reason why the difficulties and complexities of a language should be intensified ten hundred fold by the use of abstruse terms to indicate simple things? The difficulties in the very outset of the acqui

sition of a language were increased in old times by the compulsory use of a foreign language. It was the custom, and still is in some English schools, to make the scholars learn the rules of Latin and Greek grammar in Latin. That relict of medievalism has passed away, but it has given place to the abstract and complex terminology of modern English grammars, and it may be questioned whether the one form of barbarism is better than the other. As we must have grammar, let us be taught one good grammar only-Latin grammar, which is the key to most-and let it be simplified to the utmost. Let us have as few varieties, as few systems, and as few abstract terms as possible; and unless something better be produced by analysis of sentences than is produced at present, it would be almost as well that it should be given up altogether.

History and Geography.

In more than one school we found that history was taught by means of catechisms containing questions, the answers to which were repeated by the scholars parrot-like, and without apparently realizing the events narrated and their causes and consequences upon the periods embraced by their answers. The bearing of circumstances did not appear to be considered of importance by many of the teachers. The facts contained in two pages of the text-book which formed the lesson of the day were generally dwelt on, and no attention was given to any general deductions which might be drawn from them. Neither were history and geography made to play into each other as they should be in any intelligent instruction in either subject. History was learned by two pages per diem, or by historical catechisms, and geography was taught in the same manner by certain maps at a time in connection with a text-book. In only one school did we find the boys and girls using their maps along with their history lessons, and when questions in geography were asked, suggested by the passage that was being read, the answers given were more rarely intelligent than the reverse. In schools which follow the text-book system, geography becomes troublesome and useless to the scholars, and a lifeless exercise to the teachers. The former learn by heart a string of names out of their geography book which are supposed to represent towns, mountains, and rivers in Africa or South America, and they come down to school with those names learned overnight in their heads and say them in the morning with no idea that they represent any thing but words hard to remember and difficult to pronounce. The latter hear them say these names, keeping their finger on the place in the text-book, and often apparently with as little interest in what they are teaching as the scholars in what they are saying. The same thing was apparent in the elementary schools. Geography, which might be made a most attractive subject, is too often the reverse, and the reason is found in the uninteresting nature of the text-books.

Physical geography is taught but in a very elementary and not very attractive way. The scholars are carried away by their text-books to some inland sea in the middle of Asia, or to some unusual formation in