As to the expense of this system, compared with that of the unsystematic management of 1809, the balance is greatly in favour of the present mode of educating the poor. The nine schools of mutual instruction, with their 3,507 scholars, cost, during the past year, only 11,500 dollars, whereas the same number of pupils in 1811, on the plan then in operation, would have cost no less than 34,900 dollars. In speaking of the effect of the present system, the controllers observe :

The experience of each successive year confirms the opinion often proclaimed, concerning the utility of the Lancasterian method of instruction; and the controllers have only to lament that the number of pupils is not equal to the liberal opportunities furnished for their education.

If we mistake not, every report which the controllers have yet made, has contained some similar lamentation about the indifference of the poor, both parents and children, to these "liberal opportunities." We entertain the highest opinion of the public spirit and intelligence of Mr Vaux and the gentlemen associated with him in this work of benevolence; and as we are sure, that their sagacity must penetrate the true cause of this reluctance on the part of the poor, so we feel confident, that their candor and patriotism will ere long impel them to expose the evil, and suggest the remedy.

In 1822, the city and incorporated boroughs of Lancaster county, were erected into "the Second School District," with powers, privileges, and duties similar to those just described. Two or three other counties likewise obtained modifications of the law of 1809, so far as the same applied to themselves. But local and partial legislation could not satisfy the demand of the times. Ignorance still abounded. The march of improvement in other states was fast leaving Pennsylvania in the back ground as to every thing that commands respect in the intellectual character of a community. The richest and the poorest classes were in some sort provided for, but multitudes who could not be ranked among the former, and would not be placed in the latter denomination, were almost or altogether without the means of mental improvement. None of the effects of such a system as was contemplated by the constitution, were yet visible. It was perceived, that the plan of erecting separate schools for the poor, adopted in Philadelphia and Lancaster, might answer indifferently well, where the poor were numerous enough to form large classes, and keep each other in countenance, while they accepted the

public bounty; but that the same plan would not prosper in the country, where but few could be embodied, and those few preferred ignorance to the humiliation of being set apart and distinguished as a corps of paupers. Exertions were therefore made by those who saw the necessities of the State, to supply her deficiencies, by laying the foundation of such a system as should not only comply with the letter and spirit of the constitution, and with the practice of other states, but also in some degree with the demands. of the age and of the national character. With these ends in view, the legislature, in 1824, passed the law, whose title we have placed first in the list, at the head of this article. It provided, that every township should elect three suitable persons, to be called "schoolmen," who should superintend the education of the poor children within their townships, and "cause them to be instructed and treated as other children are treated." This last injunction, we think, it must have puzzled even "the schoolmen," with all their ingenuity, to obey, so long as the difference of treatment was founded on a distinction created by public authority.

This law was applicable to the whole State, with the exception of the two school districts before named. The funds for defraying the expenses of educating the poor were still drawn from the county treasury, and paid under the authority of the schoolmen to the teachers whom they might approve, for instructing the indigent students. But when any township voted to accept the further provisions of this law, it authorized the schoolmen to fulfil the directions of those provisions; which were to divide the township into school districts, and to erect and establish schools at the public expense, to which all children belonging to the district might be sent for three years, at any time between the ages of six and fourteen. Under these provisions, also, the monies raised for the purposes of education, were assessed by the schoolmen, and applied under their sole direction; they examined the teachers, and had a general supervision and control over the schools in their respective townships and boroughs.

In speaking of this law, we use the past tense, for it is no longer in existence. While penning these remarks, we are informed, that the legislature at Harrisburg have, in their wisdom, unconditionally repealed the whole law.

Thus that famed matron, wife t' Ulysses,

Each night, each day's work picked in pieces.

We think the "glorious uncertainty of the law," was never more unfortunately exemplified. But the present legislature has

not acted without precedent. The University of Pennsylvania passed through the hands of their predecessors, first, from the state of a royal, to that of a constitutional college; next to an university; then back to its chrysalis state, of "College, Academy, and Charitable School;" and, finally, to the form of an university once more.

The exertions made in some of the counties to obtain the repeal of the law of 1824, gave rise to the publication of a series of essays in a weekly journal in favour of its continuance. These essays have since been collected into a pamphlet, whose title is among those which we have quoted above. It contains some very just and original remarks, and cogent reasonings in favour of common schools. But it is principally occupied with the details of a report, made some time ago, to the legislature of Kentucky, by commissioners appointed for that purpose. The author labours, by his quotations and reflections, to establish two points, which, we think, require no proof.

First-That the education of the labouring class is in the highest degree desirable.

Secondly-That for the promotion and attainment of this important object, the system of common schools for the gratuitous instruction of all classes, is the cheapest, the most efficient, the least objectionable, and the most congenial to our free institutions.

So far, however, are these self-evident truths from being received in Pennsylvania, that she has just destroyed the only practical acknowledgment which she has ever made of their justness and utility. The lately abolished law repealed that of 1809, and, as no provision for its revival is contained in the act just passed, we do not perceive, that even the poorest of the poor have now any legal provision for instruction. The colleges* and academies are, however, daily multiplying; and these, so far as they produce any visible effect, are only increasing the distance between the different ranks of society, a distance, which, if we understand their character, Pennsylvanians ought to be the last to approve. Since, 1809, the number of academies has been in

*The dates of incorporation of the several colleges and universities are as follows: The University of Pennsylvania, first chartered in 1753-erected into a university, March 16, 1780; Dickinson College at Carlisle, incorporated September 9, 1783; Franklin College at Lancaster, March 10, 1787; Washington College at Washington, 1787; Jefferson College at Canonsburg, January 15, 1802; Alleghany College at Meadville, March 25, 1817; Western University at Alleghany near Pittsburgh, February 18, 1819; Lafayette Military College at Easton, March, 1826. This last institution embraces, among other objects, instruction in military tactics and civil engineering.

creased from fifteen to fifty,-of the colleges, from three to five, and a second university has been added. The number of laws passed since the revolution, in relation to education,-including those which have made and unmade systems, which have aided or encumbered seminaries, and which have created or annihilated "bodies corporate forever," is no less than one hundred and fifty-four. Now supposing, what seems to us a very moderate calculation, that each law occupied in its various stages one entire day of the time of both houses, and that the number and pay of members were the same as at present; then the enactment of these laws alone, without taking into the account the sums voted away by them, must have cost the state more than sixty thousand dollars. The whole amount of appropriations for education in colleges and academies, since the foundation of the government, is about 150,000 dollars. And yet, if we except the medical department of the University (which, in truth, has no connexion with general education), there is not a seminary in the State, to be compared to even the second rate institutions in other parts of the Union. Had one tenth part of the money which has passed into the pockets of legislators for making partial, local, inefficient enactments, been expended forty years ago in maturing a well digested system of common schools and higher institutions, Pennsylvania might have spared herself the disgrace of containing many thousands of persons, who are annually called upon to exercise the rights of citizens, in voting by ballot, who can neither write a ballot, read it when written, nor even read their own names, whether written or printed. These are considerations which belong, it is true, principally to our brethren of Pennsylvania; yet, as Americans, we cannot but feel a portion of that reproach, which so glaring a neglect of the duties of freemen must cast upon every member of the republic. We confess, that to us, there seems so manifest a disproportion between the immense resources of Pennsylvania, and the trifling extent to which they are employed for developing the intellectual character of her citizens, that we cannot but regard the neglect of this subject, as a signal contempt of the bounties of nature and of Providence.

We cannot more appropriately close these remarks, than in the language of the pamphlet last cited.

The greater conformity to republican principles and institutions. in the system [of common schools] now advocated, has been frequently referred to, in its happy effects upon all classes; especially in rescuing those particularly to be benefited, from the degradation

of being considered and treated as an inferior class. It cannot fail to strike the observant and intelligent statesman, that one of the pleasing results of the system would be to place all classes more upon the desirable footing of greater equality, and to diminish the combination of rudeness, servility, and insolence, sometimes abserved in the poorer classes, whilst it would equally tend to check the pride, the arrogance, and the assumption of superiority too often found in union with wealth. There cannot be conceived a more efficient mode of equalizing the gifts of fortune, than that of improving the minds of the less fortunate; nor one better calculated to compensate for the inequalities, which, under the most equal system of laws, will, in consequence of a variety of circumstances, be found to prevail.

Recollections of the Last Ten Years, passed in occasional Residences and Journeyings in the Valley of the Mississippi, from Pittsburg and the Missouri to the Gulf of Mexico, and from Florida to the Spanish Frontier; in a Series of Letters to the Rev. James Flint, of Salem, Massachusetts. By TIMOTHY FLINT, Principal of the Seminary of Rapide, Louisiana. Boston. 8vo. pp. 395.

THE author of this work is a very different person from the ignorant and conceited tourists, who have occasionally favoured the public with their observations in the Valley of the Mississippi. We have had enough of the sayings and doings of these trimmings of civilized society, who, though well enough in their place, are nothing out of it; and we are glad to see, at last, an account of this interesting country from a person, whom good sense, education, and experience have rendered worthy of confidence.

The author of the work before us is a clergyman, who, ten years since, left New England for the western country, in search of health, and some other blessings, which circumstances had deprived him of at home. He was accompanied by his family, and, as it appears from his book, has not escaped the usual fortune of emigrants to newly settled and strange countries. He appears to have found that sickness and sorrow cannot always be left behind, or sold off with other household matters, that they follow a man, and abide with him, and are as familiar to the fertile prairie of the West, as to the rocky hills of the North and East. With the domestic calamities of the writer, however, we