IMPRESSIONS OF AMERICA. 



339 



forth and stabbed. Other women also were put 

 to death. But most touching of all was the end 

 of the wife of Panteus. She was still very young, 

 and exquisitely beautiful, and she was still in the 

 raptures of first love. When her husband left 

 Sparta for Egypt, her father had refused to let 

 her go with him, and confined her. But she 

 found means of escape. She mounted a horse 

 and rode to Taenarus, and then embarked on a 

 vessel sailing for Egypt. Now, she moved about 

 the women encouraging and consoling. She led 

 Cratesicleia by the hand to the place of execu- 

 tion. She decently laid out the bodies of the 



women who were slain. And then, adjusting her 

 Rn robe so that she might fall becomingly, she 

 offered herself to the executioner without fear. 

 Thus ended the second effort at Spartan reforma- 

 tion, and henceforth autonomous Sparta and her 

 women disappear from history. We may well 

 conclude the story with the closing words of 

 Plutarch, who, thinking of the dramatic contests 

 that were held in Greece, says, " Thus Lacedoe- 

 mon, exhibiting a dramatic contest, in which the 

 women vied with the men, showed in her last 

 days that virtue cannot be insulted by Fortune." 

 — Contemporary Review. 



IMPRESSIONS OF AMERICA. 



Br K. W. DALE. 

 IV. — Popular Education — (Concluded). 



fT^HE latest returns showing the revenues and 

 -*- expenditure of the several States and Ter- 

 ritories for educational purposes are for 18*75. 

 These show a total revenue of $88,648,950, or 

 £17,729,790 ; and a total expenditure of $81,- 

 932,954, or £16,386,590. 1 The State taxes yield 

 $15,194,525, or £3,038,905 ; the local taxes, $59,- 

 050,191, or £11,810,038 ; the total from taxation, 

 including $2,246,261 not assigned in the returns 

 to either source, was $76,490,977, or £15,298,195. 

 By far the larger part of this enormous reve- 

 nue is derived from taxation, and the amount 

 received from taxes levied and administered by 

 the local authorities exceeds by $43,855,666, or 

 £8,771,133, the amount received from taxes levied 

 by the State Legislatures. Some of the forms in 

 which money is raised for school purposes are 

 curious. In New Hampshire a railroad-tax for 

 schools yields $6,401, and a "dog-tax and con- 

 tributions" are credited for $24,883; why the 

 dog-tax and the voluntary contributions of zeal- 

 ous educationists should be classed together is 

 not very intelligible. In Delaware there is an 

 educational revenue derived from marriage and 

 tavern licenses. North Carolina appropriates to 

 the maintenance of schools the taxes levied on 

 auctioneers' licenses. In some of the States the 

 ordinary tax on property is supplemented by a 

 poll-tax. 



Part of the educational revenue consists of 

 the annual income derived from "permanent 

 1 Eaton's "Report," p. xxxiii. 



funds." These are of a very miscellaneous char- 

 acter. Some of them are " local," consisting of 

 property appropriated to educational purposes by 

 cities and townships, or of money contributed by 

 private donors. Others are State funds. In 

 Iowa the permanent school fund receives 5 per 

 cent, on the net proceeds of the sale of all public 

 lands ; in Florida it receives 25 per cent. ; other 

 States levy a varying percentage. Escheated es- 

 tates, fines which have been paid for exemption 

 from military service, fines levied in courts of 

 justice, are in many States appropriated to the 

 same purpose. The permanent fund is also large- 

 ly increased by private donations. Mr. Peabody 

 devoted a considerable proportion of his vast 

 wealth to the encouragement of education in the 

 South. 



Congress has no power to levy any tax for 

 the support of education, but it has appropriated 

 an enormous amount of public property to the 

 creation and augmentation of the permanent 

 school funds in the several States. 



As long ago as 1785 the Federal Government 

 provided for regular surveys of the whole of the 

 national territory at the public expense. " By a 

 series of lines perpendicular to each other, the 

 one set running north and south, the other east 

 and west, the Federal lands were to be lotted out 

 into townships of six miles square ; these town- 

 ships to be subdivided by similar lines into thirty- 

 six sections, each containing a square mile, or six 

 hundred and forty acres. . . . One section in each 



