PUBLIC EDUCATION IN EUROPE.

SAXONY, Royal sem. for teachers at Dresden, 261.
Examination for teachers' diplomas, 262.

management 757, 769, 800.

School regulations, 139.

Schul-vorstand, 86. See School Committee.
Scientific institutions, 406, 591, 626.
SCOTLAND, 651.

History of Parochial School, 651.

Normal School of the Church of Scotland, 661.
School of Free Church, 671.

Rosier, Abbe, founder of agricultural schools, 467. Social influence of good public schools, 317, 657.

"Bavaria, 318, 315.

"Wirtemberg, 301.

"Lombardy, 636.

Sardinia, 640. "Rome, 644.

System of primary instruction, 257.

Institution for superannuated teachers, 259.
Statistics of schools, 260.

GERMANY.`

To Germany,* as a whole, as one people, and not to any particular state of Germany, as now recognized on the map of Europe, belongs the credit of first thoroughly organizing a system of public education under the administration of the civil power. Here, too, education first assumed the form and name of a science, and the art of teaching and training children was first taught systematically in seminaries established for this special purpose.

But not to Germany, or to any one people or any civil authority any where, but to the Christian Church, belongs the higher credit of first instituting the public school, or rather the parochial school, for the elementary education of the poor, which was the earliest form which this mighty element of modern society assumed. After the third century of the Christian era, whenever a Christian church was planted, or religious institutions established, there it was the aim of the higher ecclesiastical authorities to found, in some form, a school for the nurture of children and youth for the service of religion and duties of society. Passing by the ecclesiastical and catechetical schools, we find, as early as 529, the council of Vaison strongly recommending the establishment of village schools. In 800 a synod at Mayence ordered that the parochial priests should have

Mr. W. E. Hickson, in his valuable pamphlet, entitled "Dutch and German Schools," published in London in 1840, well says:

"We must bear in mind that the German states, although under different governments, are not nations as distinct from, and independent of each other, as France and Spain, or as Russia and Great Britain. Each of the German states is influenced more or less by every other; the whole lying in close juxta position, and being linked together by the bond of a common language and literature. The boundary line that separates Prussia from Hesse on one side, or from Saxony on another, is not more defined than that of a county or parish in England. A stone in a field, or a post painted with stripes, in a public road, informs the traveler that he is passing from one state into another, that these territorial divisions make no change in the great characteristics of the people: whatever the name of the state, or the color of the stripes, the people, with merely provincial differences, are the same: from the Baltic to the Adriatic, they are still Germans. The national spirit may always be gathered from the national songs, and in Germany the most popular are those which speak of all Germans as brothers, and all German states as belonging to one common country, as may be gathered from the following passage of a song of M. Arndt :

"What country does a German claim?

His Fatherland; know'st thou its name?
Is it Bavaria.-Saxony?

An inland state, or on the sea?
There, on the Baltic's plains of sand?
Or mid the Alps of Switzerland?
Austria, the Adriatic shores?

Or where the Prussian eagle soars?
Or where hills covered by the vine,

Adorn the landscape of the Rhine?

Oh no, oh no, not there, alone,
The land, with pride, we call our own,
Not there. A German's heart or mind
Is to no narrow realm confined.
Where'er he hears his native tongue,
When hymns of praise to God are sung,
There is his Fatherland, and he
Has but one country-Germany !"

ever.

schools in the towns and villages, that the little children of all the faithful might learn letters from them; "let them receive and teach these with the utmost charity, that they themselves may shine as the stars for Let them receive no remuneration from their scholars, unless what the parents through charity may voluntarily offer." A council at Rome, in 836, under Eugene II., ordained that there should be three kinds of schools established throughout Christendom; episcopal, parochial in towns and villages, and others wherever there could be found place and opportunity. In 836, Lothaire I. promulgated a decree to establish eight public schools in some of the principal cities of Italy, "in order that opportunity may be given to all, and that there may be no excuse drawn from poverty and the difficulty of repairing to remote places." The third council of Lateran, in 1179, says: "Since the Church of God, as a pious mother, is bound to provide that opportunity for learning should not be withdrawn from the poor, who are without help from patrimonial riches, be it ordained, that in every cathedral there should be a master to teach both clerks and poor scholars gratis." This decree was enlarged and again enforced by Innocent III. in the year 1215. Hence, in all colleges of canons, one bore the title of the scholastic canon. The council of Lyons, in 1215, decreed "that in all cathedral churches, and others provided with adequate revenues, there should be established a school and a teacher by the bishop and chapter, who should teach the clerks and other poor scholars gratis in grammar, and for this purpose a stipend should be assigned him."

Such was the origin of the popular school, as now generally understood-every where the offspring, and companion of the Church; sharing with her, in large measure, the imperfections which attach to all new institutions and all human instrumentalities; encountering peculiar difficulties from the barbarism of the age and people through which it passed, and which it was its mission to enlighten; and every where crippled by insufficient endowments, unqualified teachers, and the absence of all text books, and necessary aids to instruction and illustration. The discovery of the art of printing, in 1440, and the consequent multiplication of books at prices which brought them more within reach of the great mass of the people; the study and use of the vernacular language by scholars and divines, and particularly its employment in the printing of the Bible, hymns, popular songs, school books, and in religious instruction generally; the recognition by the municipal authorities of cities, and at a later period by the higher civil power, of the right, duty and interest of the state, in connection with, or independent of the church, to provide liberally and efficiently for the education of all children and youth; and above all, the intense activity given to the human mind by the religious movement of Luther, in the early part of the sixteenth century; the assertion of the right of private judgment in the interpretation of the scriptures; the breaking up of existing ecclesiastical foundations, and the diversion of funds

Digby's Mores Catholici.