the preparation of a text-book. "The Lancashire County Council has adopted an important scheme of the technical instruction committee. The migratory dairy school having been much appreciated, arrangements have been made to start a second school at Ulverston. A scheme for agricultural instruction is also being arranged, at an estimated cost of £500 per annum. The total sum available for technical instruction is £40,391, and, after the sums already guaranteed by the council and the special amounts now asked for are taken into account, there is a balance of some £29,000 to be dealt with, which the committee recommend should be apportioned between the urban and rural districts of the administrative county on the dual basis of rateable value and population. The committee recommend that a director of technical instruction be appointed at £500 per annum, with travelling expenses; that £3,600 be set apart to provide twenty scholarships not exceeding £60 each for a term not exceeding three years, apportioned as follows: eight for science, tenable at Owens' College, Liverpool University College, or other approved public institution, two for art, four for commercial subjects, and six for the science of agriculture, including horticulture; and that £1,200 be set apart for providing eighty exhibitions of £15, tenable for one year at Owens' College and Liverpool University College evening classes, or any other technical, commercial, or intermediate school. It is proposed that this sum should be apportioned as follows-thirty-two exhibitions for science, eight for art, sixteen for commercial subjects, and twenty-four for agriculture." -The Owens' College, Manchester, has developed into a immense school within the last twenty years. As Victoria University, it now numbers 1,150 students, of whom 692 belong to the main department of Arts, Science, and Law, and Medicine. Both these departments have increased in number since last session, while the evening classes continue to show a tendency to decline, owing to the increased opportunities for instruction of the same kind afforded of late years by other agencies. A liberal donation from the Incorporated Law Society has this session enabled the council to appoint two new readers and a tutor in law. -A paragraph worth reading in the hearing of our young friends of the Quebec Model Schools and Academies is to be found in the following: Every man who is educated at all is self-educated. Schools and colleges are valuable aids to him in the work of self education, but it is he and not they who must do that work. It is perfectly true that a man may educate himself very thoroughly without the aid of school or college; it is also true that with the aid of the best schools and colleges a man may make a very indifferent job of his education. But neither of these truths has any just bearing upon the value of school and college training. To the earnest student that training is of very great value; to the dolt, the dullard, or the idle fellow, nothing is of any effect in the way of making him an able man. Because a man with no musical aptitude may take lessons on the violin from the best masters without making a musician of himself, we do not say that the tuition of such masters is a worthless thing. Because a man of musical genius may learn to play exquisitely upon the violin without any lessons at all, we do not reject tuition as a vain thing. It is time to stop talking nonsense upon this subject. The colleges furnish favourable conditions for study. The earnest student who is wise will avail himself of those advantages if he can afford them. If not, he will do the best he can without them. The student who is not earnest or who lacks ability affords in his person no just measure of the worth of a college training. The only just complaint of the colleges is that under the four-class system graduation is so strongly presumed that they grant diplomas to the dull and the bright, the industrious and the idle-within certain limits-with very little discrimination, and thus give seeming point to criticism which is otherwise senseless." -France has taken away the Latin and Greek from the curriculum of public instruction. The German and English tongues, with their literatures, will take the place of the classics, and are to be taught in an analytical and logical way to secure the same results as by the former studies. Besides these studies, the French language and literature, geography, history, ethics, philosophy, political economy, law and science-physical and mathematical-are declared to be the real classical studies to complete a desired education. -The military drill, which was adopted in the public schools of Paris some years ago, under the belief that in this way the school-boys would be prepared for service in the army, has been abandoned as detrimental to military service. Service in school regiments has the effect of disgusting the boys with army life. -Among the recent occurrences of special interest to education was the dedication of the new building of the German American Normal school. This fine building, a gift to the institution from the late Guido Pfister, his wife and daughter, is situated on Broadway, and was opened with proper ceremonies on March 30. The institution had its origin as far back as 1851 in the organization known as the Milwaukee School Society; it now includes the German and English Academy, the German-American Teachers' Seminary, and the Town Teachers' Seminary. -Elementary education is widely diffused in Denmark, the attendance at school being obligatory from the age of seven to fourteen. Education is afforded gratuitously in the public schools to children whose parents cannot afford to pay for their teaching. The University of Copenhagen has about 1,300 students. Connected with the university is a polytechnic institution, with 20 teachers and 200 students. Between the university and the elementary schools there are 13 public gymnasia or high schools in the principal towns of the kingdom, which afford a "classical" education, and 27 modern high schools. There are five teachers' training colleges. Instruction at the public expense is given in parochial schools, spread all over the country, to the number, according to the latest statistics, of 2,940; namely, 28 in Copenhagen, 132 in the towns of Denmark, and 2,780 in the rural districts; with 231,940 pupils in all, or 123 per thousand population. -The apparatus of public instruction seems to occupy the attention of the government of the Argentine Republic in a becoming manner, and doubtless in the course of time the citizens will be fairly well educated. At present, as far as my experience goes, the young Argentines are as ignorant and badly informed as they are badly behaved, and that, too, not from want of intelligence-they are very precociously intelligent -but from lack of severe and logical training. One is tempted to conclude that there is a want of discipline and of good pedagogic methods in schools and colleges, and one cannot believe that the extreme license allowed to boys ten and twelve years of age, such as liberty to smoke, and to contract permature habits of vice and immorality, is compatible with good intellectual training. A more corrupt, rude, unlicked, and irrepressible creature than the average Argentine boy it would be difficult to find in any other civilized country. The girls, too, have an air of effrontery and a liberty of language to which the older civilization of the world has not accustomed us. The educational statistics, are however, satisfactory, so far as mere registered results are concerned. There are two Universities, one at Buenos Ayres and one at Cordoba, which together counted 993 students in 1889, and delivered 234 diplomas, including 81 doctors of law, 85 doctors of medicine, and 11 civil engineers. In the whole Republic there are 16 National Colleges, with a teaching corps of 464 professors, and an attendance, in 1889, of 2,599 pupils. In the capital and the provinces there are 35 Normal Schools, with 12,024 pupils of both sexes, who become professors and teachers, chiefly for the primary schools. In Buenos Ayres in 1889 there were 285 primary schools, directed by 1671 teachers, and attended by 54,509 children. In the provinces there were 2719 primary schools, with a teaching staff of 4532, and an attendance of 205,186. To resume, the results obtained were 3042 primary schools, 6103 teachers, 259,695 pupils, and 2373 primary school-houses in the whole republic. Of these school-houses 485 are the property of the nation or of the provinces, and 1888 private property. From "The Argentine Capital," by THEODORE CHILD, in Harper's Magazine for March. Literature, Historical Notes, etc. REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE ON EDUCATION. COMPULSORY The committee charged with the duty of investigating the subject of compulsory education, begs leave to present the following report which, for convenience, has been divided into several sections. In the first place your committee has endeavoured to deal with the subject from a historical point of view, and in so doing is enabled to report that Scotland adopted a compulsory education law by act of 1872, section 69 of which makes attendance compulsory between the ages of five and thirteen, and provides penalties for defaulting parents. Where wise and conservative Scotland leads the way, few need fear to follow. England, sometimes thought to cling too tenaciously to the old paths, was not long in following the good example of her sister, Scotland, for by the Elementary Education Act, passed in 1876, attendance was made compulsory for every child between the ages of five and fourteen. In Prussia, Frederick William I. issued the first law concerning compulsory attendance on the 28th September, 1717. In this law are found the following words: We have resolved with grace to issue this our general edict, and to order earnestly that hereafter wherever there are schools in the place the parents shall be obliged, under severe penalty, to send their children to school." This law was modified in 1736, 1739, 1763, and 1794, in which year the following remarkable clause was added:-Art. 46, "The instruction in school must be continued until the child is found to possess the knowledge necessary to every rational being. The clergyman of the district determines this." Amendments were passed also in 1808, 1811, 1812, 1817 and 1825, when the compulsory law was enforced in all newly acquired territory. By act of Frederick William IV., in 1850, the Prussian constitution provided for a continuance of the same laws. Since 1850 every state of Germany has adopted compulsory laws, and in 1890 the Prussian Diet passed a general compulsory act, of which clause 1 reads:" Every child within the kingdom of Prussia must follow the course of instruction laid down for the elementary schools." By this act the term of compulsory attendance was fixed to extend from the sixth to the fifteenth year. It went into force on the first of October, 1890. Germany to-day reports no illiterates. During the year 1888 out of 500,000 children of school age, but 5,145 were absent from school longer than the time allowed by law, or but about one to the thousand. In Berlin but fifteen parents proved law-breakers, and in all Germany but 1,020 were fined for delinquency. Denmark, Switzerland, Belgium, Bavaria, and France, have compulsory laws which are effective and salutary. In a recent address in Washington, Rev. William Morley, of New Zealand, gave it as one of the evidences of progress and prosperity in the colonies of New South Wales, Queensland, Victoria, South Australia, West Australia, New Zealand, Tasmania, and Fiji, that they all have free secular and compulsory education by state provision. In the United States, twenty-seven states and territories have compulsory laws, no less than 16 having enacted such laws since 1886. Massachusetts passed her first compulsory law in 1642, when a fine of 20 shillings was imposed for non-attendance. The truant law was passed in 1850, and the foundation of the present compulsory law in 1852. This law of 1852 required attendance of all children between 8 and 14 years of age for a period of not less than 12 weeks in each year. The truancy laws were consolidated into a general statute in 1859, made more effective in 1862, when school districts were compelled to carry out these laws. A new and more satisfactory act was passed in 1873, when the length of compulsory attendance was changed from 12 to |