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tion, reduced as it is, per force, to dry recitations or mecbanical 

 exercises, is barren in the lower grades, where this evil is the 

 worst, while in the higher grades it cannot but be fettered, and 

 must produce results below what might be expected from so 

 choice a bod}^ of teachers, and so excellent an organization. 



School Manuals. — Every one of the various courses of study 

 that we examined has joined to it, by way of complement, 

 pedagogic directions for the use of teachers. Prepared, as 

 these are, by competent persons, they bring the attention of 

 teachers to the carrying out of the courses of study, the mode 

 of conducting recitations and the nature and aim of practical 

 exercises; in a word, they give the school system a unity tbat 

 secures the regular progress of instruction, while it renders 

 inspection more effective. 



Country Schools. — Owing to the representations of certain 

 enthusiastic travelers, a most lovely idea of the American 

 rural school-house is common in France: it is pictured as a 

 nest among flowers. Thither resort, each morning, on prancing 

 ponies, red-cheeked lassies and lads, grave and proud and 

 respectful to their young mates as our cavaliers of the good 

 old times. The mistress — herself young — smilingly receives 

 them at the entrance, o'ershadowed by great trees. How 

 remote is the reality from this picture, this charming exception 

 to a state of things still in its rude beginnings! We traversed 

 the vast plains where the husbandman struggles against an 

 unconquerable vegetation, and the still half-wild valleys in the 

 regions of iron, coal and oil, — and it was not our lot to find 

 any such school idyl. 



In the country, stone or brick school-houses form the excep- 

 tion ; frame buildings, so cold in winter and so scorching in 

 summer, are much more numerous, and the log-house has not 

 yet disappeared. In the most flourishing States, what com- 

 plaints are made against defective school accommodations ! 

 Let it not be said that, in describing the rural schools of the 

 United States, we have sought out exceptional cases ; we have 

 tried our best to do justice to that great country, but we cannot 

 conceal the fact that in the rural districts the school-houses are 

 poor affairs and poorly equipped. Thus in Pennsylvania and 

 New Hampshire, out of twentj^-two teachers' reports, fourteen 



