143 STATE EDUCATION. [CHAP. XL 



reprimand before the class, and keeping them back after school 

 hours. The look of intelligence in the countenances of the greater 

 number of them was a most pleasing sight. In one of the upper 

 classes they were reading, when we went in, a passage from Paley 

 &quot; On Sleep,&quot; and I was asked to select at random from the school- 

 books some poem which the girls might read each in their turn. 

 I chose Gray s Elegy in a Churchyard, as being none of the 

 simplest for young persons to understand. They each read a 

 verse distinctly, and many of them most gracefully, and explained 

 correctly the meaning of nearly all the words and allusions on 

 which I questioned them. 



We afterward heard the girls of the arithmetic class examined 

 in algebra, and their answers showed that much pains had been 

 taken to make them comprehend the principles on which the 

 methods of calculation depended. We then visited a boy s gram 

 mar school, and found there 420 Protestant and 100 Catholic 

 boys educated together. We remarked that they had a less re 

 fined appearance and were less forward in their education than 

 the girls whom we had just seen, of the same age, and taken 

 from the same class in society. In explanation I was told that 

 it is impossible to give the boys as much schooling, because they 

 can earn money for their parents at an earlier age. 



The number of public or free schools in Massachusetts in 

 1845-6, for a population of 800,000 souls, was about 3500, 

 and the number of male teachers 2585, and of female 5000, 

 which would allow a teacher for each twenty-five or thirty chil 

 dren, as many as they can well attend to. The sum raised by 

 direct taxation for the wages and board of the tutors, and for 

 fuel for the schools, is upward of 600,000 dollars, or 120,000 

 guineas ; but this is exclusive of all expenditure for school-houses, 

 libraries, and apparatus, for which other funds are appropriated, 

 and every year a great number of newer and finer buildings are 

 erected. 



Upon the whole about one million of dollars is spent in teach 

 ing a population of 800,000 souls, independently of the sums 

 expended on private instruction, which in the city of Boston is 

 supposed to be equal to the money levied by taxes for the free 



