practicable for us to spend 800,000l. on the gratuitous education of London.  Rich as we are, we should not know where to raise the money.  In Boston it is raised by a separate tax.  It is a thing understood, acknowledged, and made easy by being habitual—­as is our national debt.  I do not know that Boston is peculiarly blessed, but I quote the instance, as I have a record of its schools before me.  At the three high schools in Boston, at which the average of pupils is 526, about 13l. per head is paid for free education.  The average price per annum of a child’s schooling throughout these schools in Boston is about 3l. for each.  To the higher schools any boy or girl may attain without any expense, and the education is probably as good as can be given, and as far advanced.  The only question is, whether it is not advanced further than may be necessary.  Here, as at New York, I was almost startled by the amount of knowledge around me, and listened, as I might have done to an examination in theology among young Brahmins.  When a young lad explained in my hearing all the properties of the different levers as exemplified by the bones of the human body, I bowed my head before him in unaffected humility.  We, at our English schools, never got beyond the use of those bones which he described with such accurate scientific knowledge.  In one of the girls’ schools they were reading Milton, and when we entered were discussing the nature of the pool in which the devil is described as wallowing.  The question had been raised by one of the girls.  A pool, so called, was supposed to contain but a small amount of water, and how could the devil, being so large, get into it?  Then came the origin of the word pool—­from “palus,” a marsh, as we were told, some dictionary attesting to the fact, and such a marsh might cover a large expanse.  The “Palus Maeotis” was then quoted.  And so we went on till Satan’s theory of political liberty,

     “Better to reign in hell than serve in heaven,”

was thoroughly discussed and understood.  These girls of sixteen and seventeen got up one after another and gave their opinions on the subject—­how far the devil was right, and how far he was manifestly wrong.  I was attended by one of the directors or guardians of the schools; and the teacher, I thought, was a little embarrassed by her position.  But the girls themselves were as easy in their demeanor as though they were stitching handkerchiefs at home.

It is impossible to refrain from telling all this, and from making a little innocent fun out of the superexcellencies of these schools; but the total result on my mind was very greatly in their favor.  And indeed the testimony came in both ways.  Not only was I called on to form an opinion of what the men and women would become from the education which was given to the boys and girls, but also to say what must have been the education of the boys and girls from what I saw of the men and women.  Of course it will