undertaking been equally distributed over all the parishes of the different states. The burden being thus divided amongst all, is not felt by any; but had the government started in the vain hope of being able to bear even a third of the expense, popular education would have been no further advanced in Germany than in England. But wiser, or more interested in the real success of the undertaking than ourselves, the governments of the different states have obliged each province to provide for the expenses necessary for its own primary education.

The systems, so far from having been systems of excessive centralization, leaving no freedom of action to the parishes, have been always and still are essentially parochial systems, merely under the surveillance, and subject to the check of the central authority. It is the parishes and towns, which tax themselves for educational purposes; it is the parishioners and citizens, who elect their own teachers; it is the parishioners and citizens, who pay their own teachers, and provide all the materials for the education of their own poor; it is the parishioners and citizens, who determine whether they will have separate schools for their different religious sects, or common schools for them all; it is the parishioners, who choose the sites of their school-houses, and the outlay they will make on their erection; and although they have not the power of dismissing a teacher after they have once elected him, without first showing to government a sufficient ground for such a step, yet they are afforded every facility of forwarding any complaints they may have to make of any teacher they have elected, to the educational authorities appointed to judge such matters, and to protect the teachers from the effects of mere personal animosities or ignorance.

Germany will one day be lauded by all Europe, as the inventor of a system securing, in the best possible manner, guidance by the greatest intelligence of the country, the cheapest manner of working, the fostering of local activity and of local sympathies, and the cordial assistance of the religious ministers.

Disputes about separate or mixed schools are unheard of in Prussia, because every parish is left to please itself which kind it will adopt. One of the leading Roman Catholic Counsellors of the Educational Bureau in Berlin assured me, that they never experienced any difficulty on this point. "We always," he said, "encourage separate schools when possible, as we think religious instruction can be promoted better in separate than in mixed schools; but, of course, we all think it better to have mixed schools, than to have no schools at all; and when we can not have separate schools we are rejoiced to see the religious sects uniting in the support of a mixed one. When mixed schools are decided on by the parochial committees, the teacher is elected by the most numerous of the two sects; or, if two teachers are required, one is elected by one sect, and the other by the other; and in this case each conducts the religious education of the children of his own sect. But when only one teacher is elected, the children of those parents, who differ from him in religious belief, are permitted to be taken from the school during the religious lessons, on condition that their parents make arrangements for their religious instruction by their own ministers."

I went to Prussia with the firm expectation, that I should hear nothing but complaints from the peasants, and that I should find the school nothing but a worthy offshoot of an absolute government. To test whether this really was the case or not, as well as to see something of the actual working of the system in the country districts, I traveled alone through different parts of the Rhine provinces for four weeks before proceeding to the capital. During the whole of my solitary rambles, I put myself as much as possible into communication with the peasants and with the teachers, for the purpose of testing the actual state of feeling on this question. Judge, then, of my surprise, when I assure my readers that, although I conversed with many of the very poorest of the people, and with both Romanists and Protestants, and although I always endeavored to elicit expressions of discontent, I never once heard, in any part of Prussia, one word spoken by any of the peasants against the educational regulations. But on the contrary, I every where received daily and hourly proofs, of the most unequivocal character, of the satisfaction and real pride with which a Prussian, however poor he may be, looks upon the schools of his locality.

Often and often have I been answered by the poor laborers, when asking them whether they did not dislike being obliged to educate their children, "Why should

I? The schools are excellent; the teachers are very learned and good men; and then think how much good our children are gaining; they behave better at home, they make our families all the happier, and they are much better able in after-life to earn their own livelihood. No, no; we do not dislike the schools. We know too well how much good our children are gaining from them." I have heard this said over and over again in different parts of Prussia, Saxony, Bavaria, Wirtemburg, and Baden; and, indeed, I may add, that throughout Germany, I never heard one single word of discontent uttered against these truly liberal and Christian establishments.

Every one of the richer classes, with whom I conversed, corroborated the truth of all that the peasants had told me. I particularly remember a very intelligent teacher at Elberfeld saying to me, "I am quite convinced that, if we had a politi cal revolution to-morrow, none of the peasants would think of wishing to have any great alteration made in the laws which relate to the schools." Recent facts have proved the truth of the assertion.*、

Several travelers have fallen into the strangest errors in their investigations on this subject, from having confined their attention to the schools of the capitals, or of one or two other large towns. Very few have seen the working of the system in the villages and remote provinces. But it is there only that a fair idea can be formed of the effects it is producing, and of the manner in which it is regarded by the people themselves.

The following extracts from Report of Prof. Mark Patterson to the English Education Commission on the State of Elementary Education in Germany, present other and more recent aspects of the matters taught in the elementary schools of Prussia.

1. Religion.

Of the matters taught in the elementary school, religion forms still, as it always has done, the first and staple. The maintenance of this place among the objects of instruction, in combination with a system of compulsory attend. ance, has carried the school in Protestant Germany through a highly instructive experience. This experience, indeed, is still only progressive; the definitive solution of all difficulties is not yet arrived at; but the steps by which the present point has been reached deserve attentive consideration. I can only very briefly indicate them.

The primary school in its origin was a catechismal instruction; a repetition, conducted by a candidate, the sacristan, or other subordinate church officer, of the more solemn Sunday catechisation of the pastor. It was strictly a Protestant institution, born of the spirit of the 16th century. These two points of antithesis, in which the Reformed movement stood to the Chatholic church, 1. That, not incorporation into the visible church, but the faith of the individual believer, was the appointed means of salvation; 2. That public worship was to be, not a transaction by the priest, but the joint act of the congregation, where the roots from which the Volkschule grew. But Luther and Melancthon knew of no schools but Latin schools. If "German schools" (Deutsche schule) are spoken of in the first age of the Reformation, they are so as a substitute for the Latin schools, either for girls or for boys, destined for trading pursuits, and as such viewed with disfavor by the Reformers. Whether the schools were Latin or German schools, they were frequented only by the children of the higher classes, or those destined for a profession or the public service. The people, "das gesinde und junge Volk," received no other instruction than that in the elements of their Christian faith. Gradually, other matters were added to the religious instruction, as knowledge slowly diffused itself through lower social strata, and the Volkschule, or people's school, came insensibly into existence.

* A remarkable proof of the truth of these remarks is, that since the commencement of the German revolutions of 1848, the only change in the educational regulations, which has been demanded by the people, is, that they should be allowed to send their children to the parochial schools free of all expense, and that the present small weekly pence required from The parents for the education of each child should be paid out of the regular parochial school rates. This has been conceded, and the peasants themselves will now as rigorously enforce the compulsory educational regulations, as the Swiss peasants enforce laws at least as stringent.

In the earlier stages of this progress there was no distinction drawn between secular and religious learning. If the child learnt to read, it was that it might read the Bible. When, in the beginning of the 17th century, the consistories, or the prince as head of the church (Landesbischoff.) admonished parents and guardians to be diligent in seeing that their children attended this public instruction, it was as reviving and maintaining the old Lutheran church discipline that they did so. Even after the philosophical reaction against church tradition had spread widely through the upper ranks of society in Germany, we find the royal edicts for the regulation of the primary schools strictly adhering to the ancient spirit and intention. The first general school regulation for Prussia, the Schulreglement of 1763 (Friedrich II,) drawn up by Hecker, and issued by royal authority, with the approbation of the supreme consistory, keeps strictly to the traditional model of the people's school, avoids all abstract principles, and orders only that "the people shall be Christianly taught in reading, praying, chanting, writing and arithmetic, catechism and Biblical history." It enacts in this respect nothing new, i. e., in the matters to be taught, but simply sanctions and enforces the existing practice. The language of the edict is noticeable. The children are to be "Christianly brought up in reading, prayer, &c." (erzogen in gebet, &c.) The school is still, in the view of the consistory, a part of the children's bringing up; not merely a place for teaching elementary knowledge. It is not till 1794, during the reaction against the French Revolution, that we find the edicts impregnated with political theory, and the government anxiously taking possession of the schools as a political instrument. The Prussian code, which appeared in that year, first speaks of "the State," and announces that the public schools and universities are institutions of the State." (Allgemeines Landrecht, th. ii. tit. 12.) The school ordinance of the same year, drawn up by the Minister Wollner, emphatically prescribes in great detail religious instruction for "the lower schools." We have no longer the old ecclesiastical tone of the Lutheran consistories, but an evident apprehension of the spread of illuminism as a cause of political disturbance, and an attempt to arrest it by increasing the quantity of religious lessons given in the school. Religion takes its place among the other parts of useful knowledge, as that which tends to make a good and obedient citizen. Though the school is slowly being drawn into the place which the code of 1794 assigns it among the other state institutions, it still remains subject to the inspection and management of the ecclesiastical authorities. The universities and the classical schools had gradually escaped from the control of the church; their teachers are declared to be State servants (Beamte,) and obtain the privileges of such; but the masters of the lower schools are not admitted into that category. Thus, at the period of the French invasion, the elementary school occupied this ambiguous position: it had ceased to be the catechising school attached to the parish church, yet it had not become wholly secular; it was declared a State institution, and yet continued under the superintendence of the clergy.

Meanwhile the Prussian monarchy was growing in extent, and aggregating large masses of Catholic subjects, in Silesia, Posen, Glatz, Westphalia, &c. The schools existing in these countries were Roman Catholic, i. e., denominational. The law of obligatory school attendance was either already in force, or was without difficulty applied to them. The two religions, Protestant and Catholic, obtained at once that footing of parity on which they still stand in Prussia. Each had its own schools. The Jews were not yet considered “Schulpflichtig." There were no other dissenting communities; for we can not reckon the Moravians, &c., as such, who were settled by themselves in colonies where they had their own schools. Thus the school system of Prussia was in fact, and by the force of circumstances, denominational in its general character. Exceptions, however, arose to this simplicity in the working of the compulsory system from a few localities chiefly in Silesia, in which a Protestant population, technically called "Diaspora," was thinly scattered amidst the Catholic mass. This exceptional fact had an important influence on Prussian legislation. I have already spoken of the code in 1794 (Allgemeines Landrecht) as impregnated with the language of the philosophical toleration theory of the time. The paragraph in question, however, though couched apparently in these general terms, was drawn up by veteran Prussian officials, men of practical routine, and not

of theory; and it can not be doubted that it was suggested by and intended to meet the concrete case of these Protestant congregations in Silesia. The words of the code are as follows:

Allgemeines Landrecht, th. ii. tit 12. § 10. "Admittance into the public schools shall not be refused to any one on the ground of diversity of religious confession. § 11. Children whom the laws of the state allow to be brought up in any other religion than that which is being taught in the public school can not be compelled to attend the religious instruction given in the same."

This last clause is ambiguous, even in the original; it can only be explained by a reference to the Silesian circumstances. The Protestant diaspora, in those localities, too little numerous to support an Evangelical school, were under the necessity of sending their children to the Roman Catholic schools. The Catholic managers of these schools either flatly refused them admittance, or granted it as a favor, under the condition of the children attending all the religious teaching of the school. In the Catholic schools doctrinal teaching, ceremonial observances, and attendance upon church services, form a considerable part of the whole instruction given. It was to protect the Protestant parents against this religious oppression that the seemingly abstract paragraph of the code was in the first instance directed. It is true that, whether dictated by abstract con ceptions, or founded on an actual case, these paragraphs introduced the prin ciple of simultaneous (mixed) schools into Prussian law, long before the Code Napoleon appeared on the left bank of the Rhine.

The Catholic school regulation for the province of Silesia of May 18, 1801, went further in the same direction. It orders that "in parishes of mixed popu lation the schoolmaster shall instruct all children, without distinction of religion, in reading, writing, and all other branches which do not pertain to reli gion. The books used for reading out of shall be such as contain nothing of the distinctive doctrines of either confession. All the children must attend the common prayer or hymn usual before or after school, but neither must contain any thing one-sided or belonging to religious party. The master gives instrue tion only to children of his own faith. The children of the other party remain away on the days or hours set apart for this purpose, and are to receive their religious teaching from the clergymen of their own persuasion." According to this edict, a number of the Silesian schools would be treated as mixed schools; and any school was liable to become a mixed school when children of the opposite faith were sent for admission. But in practice the intention of the law was wholly defeated. The Catholic clergy, who act with an independence of the civil power which the Evangelical church can not attain to, treated both the Regulation of 1801 and the paragraph above cited from the Code of 1794 as a dead letter.

'Experience has shown that in simultaneous schools the chief matter of education, viz., religion, is not sufficiently cared for, and it lies in the nature of the case that it can not be. The intention of these schools, to wit, the promotion of tolerant feelings between the members of different communions, is sel dom or never attained. Disagreements between teachers of the two confes sions in the same school, or between the master and the parents of the opposite confession, have often involved the whole commune in religious dis sension; to say nothing of the other evils inseparable from mixed schools. Such establishments can therefore no longer be regarded as the rule. Excep tions may still be allowed, either in cases of obvious necessity, or when such a coalition is the free choice of the two congregations, acting under the advice of their respective clergy, and with the approval of the temporal and spiritual authorities."-Cabinet Rescript of April 27, 1822.

In the National Assembly at Berlin only a small party was found to support a system of general religious instruction in Scripture history and the doctrines common to all Christian sects. This view, though supported in the press by Director Diesterweg, met with little public favor. The method of secular schools with separate religious instruction, whether to be given in the school, or, as in Holland, out of it, by the respective ministers of religion, was the plan at first most generally supported both in and out of the National Assembly. Though the dissolution of the assembly, December 5, 1848, broke off the discussion of the subject prematurely, it had yet been carried far enough to bring

about a general conviction that the practical difficulties in the way of organizing the Prussian schools on this system were all but insuperable. It was called to mind that the original foundation of so many of the schools by the church had connected school and church in many material ways. The funds out of which the master was paid were often church revenues; partly endow ments; partly collections in the churches. Many schoolmasters are at the same time officers of the church, and make up a considerable part of their income by holding such offices. The school buildings and master's dwellinghouse are often church property, or the church-chest is liable for their maintenance and repair. It was considered that the secular system, however it might be liked in the towns and by the middle class, would be very unacceptable to the country people; that, were an attempt made to carry it out, a powerful party would be formed against it, who would erect rival schools, which, supported by the religious consciousness of the people, would empty the State schools. The result of the attempt would thus be to call into being a net work of exclusively church schools, and so to make education more sectarian than before. Accordingly the Constitution (Verfassung) of January 31, 1851, contains the following article:

Art. 24. In the ordering of the public people's school regard shall be had as far as possible to denominational relations. The religious instruction in the people's school is under the conduct of the respective religious bodies." This article probably represents pretty fairly the result of the previous discussion to which the subject, both in the assembly and by the public at large, had been submitted. As far as legislation is concerned, no further alteration has taken place since 1851.

Were the question asked, Is the Prussian system at the present moment a system of mixed or denominational education?-the answer must be, that there is no general law for the whole kingdom on the subject. According

to the letter of the law any commune is free to have a mixed school, if it can agree to do so, and can obtain the consent of the authorities; but so strong is now the feeling against mixed schools that it is scarcely likely that this consent would ever be asked, or, were it asked, would be granted. By a mixed school (Simultanschule) is meant one in which the teachers are taken in equal proportions from the two religions. In a village school, where there is only one master, the method was to appoint a Protestant and a Catholic alternately, on the vacancy of the office, an expedient which, at one time not uncommon in Posen and East Prussia, has ceased since 1856. The strictly secular school was introduced into the western provinces with the French law, as a necessary portion of the municipal system of that law in which the commune is a purely civil division; but though the Code Napoleon is still retained, a cherished possession, by the inhabitants of the left bank of the Rhine, the schools have almost all become confessional schools, and this without any legislative enactment, but by the mere current of circumstances. The commune still remains a civil corporation, with the obligation of building and maintaining both church and school for the inhabitants within its boundaries; but the preference of confessional schools is now so decided that Protestants and Catholic have invariably separate schools. In a parish where the Protestants are in a minority, for example, they will build and endow their own school, and then oblige the commune to pay for it, and to contribute to the master's salary. They retain the right, all this while, to send their children into the original, or Catholic school, as it is then called; for the school, though legally common, has become in fact Catholic by the secession of the Protestants. The term of the French law, "écoles communales," which once conveyed the meaning of "civil" or "secular," no longer does so, but is used in Prussia (communalschule) in contradistinction to "private" schools. The Prussian Aly. L. R. knows the lower schools only as Gemeinschule. In common parlance they are spoken of as Volksschule-schools for the people--which is the term used in the Charter of 1851; but the word having acquired offensive associations in 18481849, they are now known officially as elementarschule.

The principles attempted to be carried out in this branch of teaching in the elementary schools over the whole extent of (at least) North Germany are those embodied in the Prussian Regulativen of the 1st, 2d, and 3d of October,