widely recognized. Attendance at college may constitute a good training, or it may not. If he has no degree, there is no proof that a candidate for a mastership received any benefit from his university course. If he has a degree there is some guarantee that he has been a successful student, and has carried off some benefit from his university. Of those who are graduates in the schools visited, the great majority teach the classical and mathematical departments; and, from the manner in which the majority of these departments are conducted, as compared with other departments, it appears that university training is of undoubted advantage to the teachers. Some of the classical teachers are men of high attainments and sound scholarship.

Normal-school trained teachers are not much employed in the Middleclass schools. Only nine per. cent. altogether are so returned. It is probably better that it should be so. Though technical education in the art of teaching is undoubtedly of much value for all masters, the exclusively routine teaching of the Normal schools is apt to be narrowing to the mind of the recipient. The Normal-school stamp of man is inferior as an intellectual type to the well trained University man. The former lacks the vivacity of mind and variety of illustration which comes readily to a more widely-read and more highly educated man. Their method of teaching is too contracted for the higher class of schools. In Elementary schools, the originality and power of mind which are fostered and brought out by a successful course of University instruction are not essential, or at least the absence of these qualities is not remarked. But in schools professing to give a secondary education, where the scholars are older and more advanced, the narrowing influence of exclusively Normal-school training and the stereotyped method of instruction derived from it, are at once apparent, and do not appear to be productive of good results. For the younger and more elementary classes in the Burgh and Middle-class schools, Normal-school men might profitably be employed as assistants, and, indeed, for elementary teaching, none better could be found-but not in the higher and more responsible positions. For these, a completed university course culminating in a degree, or, still better, a degree with honors, would appear to be desirable.

In respect to the numerical ratio of scholars to teachers, and the maximum and minimum numbers of scholars in one class and under one teacher, there is a wide difference to the public and private schools, and in public schools in different localities. Taking the average throughout the whole number of schools, it appears that there are fifty-two scholars to each teacher. But taking the average number of scholars to each teacher in Public schools in burghs it is seventy-three; in Public schools not in burghs, it (including Trinity College, which is only eleven) is thirty-eight; and in Private schools it is nearly fourteen. This represents a very great diversity in teaching power, but it can be explained in the following manner :-Many of the smaller Burgh schools, such as

Arbroath, Linlithgow, and Dunfermline, are undermastered. In the first of these there are three hundred and forty-nine boys and girls in all stages of advancement in every subject, and only one master to teach them; in the second, seventy to one master; and in the third, seventyfour. In the Private schools again, visiting teachers have been returned to us as masters, and in some cases assistants have been designated as masters, and in others as assistants. In point of fact, therefore, it is almost impossible to come to a satisfactory statistical result upon this subject both for the reason above given and because any such estimate must be fallacious, as there is such a remarkable diversity in the different schools, in the different departments of the same schools, and in the different classes of the same departments.

In some schools, we found teachers with classes containing upwards of a hundred scholars; in many others we found active and energetic teachers exhausting themselves day after day with classes of five or six scholars. In both cases the result is bad. From the scholars' point of view, as well as from the teachers' point of view, large classes or very small classes are unsatisfactory. In the former case, it is impossible that a teacher can make the most of his scholars in any subject but writing. In the latter case, the stimulus of emulation is wanted to make the boys put out their strength. In large classes the teacher must neglect either the backward or the forward scholars. If he spends half of his time drilling seventy-five boys at the bottom of his class, in what the twentyfive at the top of the class know well, they must inevitably be idle and waste their time. If he devotes the greater part of his time to the twentyfive at the top of the class the remaining seventy-five will inevitably do nothing. In most of the large classes which we saw at work, we could not help remarking such results as these, producing carelessness at the top of the class, waste of time in the middle, and indolence at the bottom. In some cases, too, the discipline in these large classes was defective, and the class-room was turned into a bear-garden. In the midst of disorder, noise, and inattention, the teacher would address questions to the whole class, and in answer to each of them boys from all parts of the room would rush round him, snapping their fingers and creating a commotion in the class bewildering to scholars, teacher, and onlookers.*

*In the best schools in England, classes numbering a hundred scholars are unknown. The following table shows the maximum and minimum numbers in one division in the nine Public Schools:

In the Report by the Public School Commissioners, it is distinctly laid down as a canon of

The personal relations between teachers and scholars, so far as they go, seemed to be highly satisfactory. As the schools are almost all dayschools, and the scholars and teachers are independent of each other when the day's work is over, there can be no opportunity for developing that personal intimacy and mutual dependence on each other that exists between the masters and the older boys in the English Public schools. In them the relation is quite special. The head boys in each house in these schools are placed in a manner between the master and the younger boys, and carry on all the internal discipline of the school. They are as much interested in the well-being of their respective houses as the masters, and from this relation there springs up a confidence between master and scholar, and a personal intimacy which is quite special, and which can not exist in day schools. In these the relation is more distant, and if we may use the expression, objective. It is always one of teacher and scholar interested in each other's studies, but not in each other's lives. It would be almost impossible that a friendship could be formed between a Scottish schoolmaster and his pupil of the same kind as is common in all the English Public Schools. They are never on terms of equality or of mutual dependence. The teacher's interest in the pupil, for the most part, is confined to the school-room, and when the work is over for the day, each comes under his own home influence, and there is nothing that they have in common. In school, however, the relations seemed to us to be highly satisfactory. As a rule, the bearing of the scholars to their masters was respectful, and that of the masters dignified.

The total number of scholars in the schools from which we have returns amounts to fifteen thousand, one hundred and forty-six, of whom ten thousand, eight hundred and twenty-three are boys, and four thousand, three hundred and twenty-three are girls. There is a considerable difference between the ages of those who attend public and those who attend Private schools. The scholars go earlier to the former, and leave earlier. In Public schools, about sixteen per cent. of the scholars are under eight years of age, and very nearly forty per cent. are eight and under twelve; whereas in the Private schools only five per cent. are under eight, and thirty-two per cent. are eight and under twelve. The percentage rises to fifty-three in the Private schools between twelve and sixteen, and in the Public schools it falls to thirty-seven. Above sixteen it is ten per cent. in the Private schools, and only six per cent. in the Public. In other words, more than half the Public-school scholars are under twelve, and nearly three-quarters of those in the Private school education, that the average number in one division should not exceed 30; and the Commissioners add that Dr. Temple, the head master of Rugby, would prefer a still smaller number. “His present average," they say, "is thirty-three. He thinks that by reducing it to twenty-six the teaching would be improved." In the Scottish schools the maximum is much higher than this, and the minimum much lower. As a single instance, the Edinburgh Academy may be adduced, where two of the classes number ninety-four and ninety-one respectively, and one of them numbers only eight.

schools are above that age. This is all the more remarkable, as two of the Private schools are essentially elementary, and intended only as preparatory to the Public schools. With regard to the statistical results of the attendance of girls, we have no returns from Private schools. In the Public schools there is no great difference between their attendance and that of the boys. It appears that of girls eighteen per cent. are under eight, forty-one per cent. are eight and under twelve, thirty-six per cent. are twelve and under sixteen, and five per cent. are above sixteen. It may be said, therefore, that they go to school rather younger, and leave rather earlier than the boys.

The conclusion to be drawn from these returns is that, theorically, the Burgh-school course is one of eight years, three years being assigned to elementary, and five to more advanced instruction. Few, however, in the Public schools complete this course. They are drafted off at an early age to enter merchants' or lawyers' or bankers' offices, and a proportion from the best schools proceed young to the universities. In the Private schools, as we have seen, the boys remain rather longer than at the Public. This can be accounted for by the fact, that the Private schools are attended by a class of boys who are richer than the average of the Public-school scholars. They are therefore kept longer at home, and can afford to remain longer at school. In illustration of this, we may quote the answer of the head master of one of the private schools examined in answer to the question, "What difficulty if any, do you find in the discharge of your duty!" "The chief source of difficulty," he says, "is wealth. Many of the boys know that they are provided for in life, and hence the want of the spur of necessity to compel them to work." This difficulty does not occur in the public schools. The class of scholars who attend them belongs almost exclusively to the middleclass population. We have no statistical results on this subject, embracing all the schools visited, but from the tables in the special Reports, it is easy to see that the scholars belong almost without exception to the classes between the highest and the humblest. There are few, if any, of the sons or daughters of the landed aristocracy or the wealthiest professional or mercantile classes attending the ordinary Burgh schools, and very few of the sons or daughters of the laboring classes. The former class educate their boys in Private schools or in the Public schools in England or on the Continent, and their daughters at home, or in schools exclusively attended by girls. The latter class can not afford to pay the fees, low as they are, which are exacted in the Burgh and Middle-class schools and they can not afford the time occupied by the school year. Such of them as desire to prosecute their education find it cheaper and better to remain at Parish schools, and schools on that model until they are old enough to take advantage of the course of study pursued for six months in the year at the universities. Hence it is that we found a great similarity in the social condition of the scholars in nearly all the public schools visited. They are essentially Middle-class

schools, and educate the sons and daughters of the middle classes and none other.

As to the influence of Mixed Schools upon the boys and girls who attend them, the conviction that it is desirable that the sexes should be kept separate after they have emerged from childhood, to which we were led from our inquiries into the Elementary School, has been strengthened. In almost every school in which boys and girls of fifteen and sixteen years of age were brought together, strangers could not help noticing the existence of irregularities that were unnoticed by the teachers. In some cases, also, it seemed a matter of questionable expediency, whether very young assistants were the best persons to be responsible for large classes of boys and girls. Some teachers of experience considered the presence of the girls had a civilizing effect upon both teachers and boys. So far as we could judge the influence of the girls upon the boys had no perceptible effect, whereas, that of the boys upon the girls was not civilizing. In schools in which they mixed together, the tone of the latter was of a rougher and less modest character than is desirable, and it appeared as if they they had formed their manners on those of the boys; in schools in which they were taught in separate class-rooms, the tone appeared good. The fact that they are taught at different hours in the same class-room is not sufficient. In schools where this is the custom, they meet on the stairs or passages going from one class-room to another, when they are not under the master's eye, and thirty or forty noisy boys set free from a class-room are certain, from the exuberance of their spirits, to treat a number of girls, whom they meet at the entrance to their class-room, with less respect than is becoming. And this can not fail to have an influence upon girls which is the reverse of civilizing.

On the other hand, where the boys and girls were pitted against each other in their school work, the latter did quite as well as the former. At Kirkcudbright Academy, where for a small school the classical attainments are high, the second best scholar, both in Latin and Greek, was a girl under sixteen years of age, who was reading Homer and Virgil. At Dumfries Academy, where mathematics was taught and learned at least as well as in any school in Scotland, the best geometrician in the class that was examined was a girl of fourteen years of age; and in the highest Latin class at Arbroath High School there was a girl of seventeen who had been five years in Latin, and was reading the first Book of Livy quite as successfully as the boys in the class with her. These instances we mention as indicating that girls are as capable of studying the more abstruse subjects of instruction as boys. In modern languages they are distinctly better scholars than the boys. Both in French and German the girls' classes were able to take more advanced papers than the boys, and they were almost invariably better done. In Dundee High School, Dollar Institution, Perth Academy, and Inverness High School, the examination of the girls in French was very much higher than any thing attempted by the boys in these schools. These, however, were not