THE BAREFOOT BOY. I like the barefoot boy. He is enjoying himself very much. I should like to be in the woods and commune with nature. The bees somehow express my thoughts. I watch the deep blue sky with its fleecy clouds, and I too long to float with the winds in a dream of happiness. I hope my dreams will come true, and that I shall be the President of the United States. The other was an effort of a much higher order, and I made bold to question the possibility of a child so young writing anything so mature, but the earnest and repeated asseverations of several teachers dissipated my dismay, and increased my progressive bewilderment. The border in this case, by a subtle adaptation of sentiment to expression, was in plain black and white, while the accompanying illustration glowed with a passion of color not to be met with outside the works of accepted masters. It represented a great variety of crystalline forms, but interwoven with them and binding them into a poetico-scientific unity, was a vine-like assemblage of optical instruments and other physical appliances, telescopes pointing at groups of stars, goniometers, the spectrum (this in rainbow hues), and the spectroscope, lenses simple and combined, mirrors with perfect and grotesque reflections, microscopes of different kinds, the electrical apparatus and showers of sparks. The picture above the poem showed a weird alchemist in his cell, surrounded by his retorts and alembics, and on a stand of novel design and finish under his wrapt workmanship a number of clear and prismatic substances, evidently intended for diamonds, were forming by means of a combination of plates and vessels, which I did not understand, and which I felt certain belonged to the newest and latest developments of chemistry. CRYSTALS. I love the crystals bright and clear, We may not make the shining gold, But we may change our being's dross And carbon black of thought may grow To spirit white as new-fallen snow. I do not believe that these elegant and finished lines can be matched by anything in the whole range of literature produced by the famous poets in their youthful years. The little girl to whom this precocity was due, and who was barely seven years old, was not in her place this morning, being confined to her room by peculiar pains affecting her spine and the base of her brain. Her portrait, painted by one of the pupils a few years in advance of her, hung upon the wall. She was not altogether an attractive child, her face having something of an open-eyed and amazed look, but genius is constantly in the presence of vision not granted to persons of coarser mold, and one finds generally in the faces of poets and prophets that appearance of engagement with the supersensible which is at once their sorrow and prerogative. The hour for dismissal had now arrived. The doors were thrown open, and the music of a brisk march, played by a brass band stationed in the hall and heard throughout the building, was the signal for departure. To these gay and invigorating sounds the happy groups dispersed and were soon seen making their way across the velvety lawns and under the shadow of the venerable trees. As I left the building I chanced to look back and saw on a white slab over the door a curious contexture of what seemed letters, but on closer inspection it proved an indecipherable hieroglyph. A passing teacher on being interrogated shuddered at the attempt to understand it. It was the sacred mystery of the place, the sign and seal of the influence pervading it, the polygram of the transcendent ones, who had given their life to the cause of what they denominated education, who had left behind them the memory of so undivided a devotion to truth and diplomacy, and who, marvellous to relate, were now nothing more than an undisentangled interweaving of a few undiscoverable letters. Musing upon the uncertainty of human achievement, I left the place in the expectation of exploring at no distant time the hitherto unattempted labors and methods among the children of a larger growth. THE SEPARATE SCHOOL SYSTEM IN CANADA. IN BY GEORGE ILES, NEW YORK CITY. N the Dominion of Canada, as a whole, Roman Catholics form 45 per cent. of the population. In the province of Quebec they number seven-eighths, and from the very inception of a school system, separate provision has been made for Catholic and Protestant pupils. When confederation took place, in 1867, the divisions of school management which it found in Quebec, as in other provinces, were respected and conformed. In Quebec the old-time methods have been systematized and extended, leaving unchanged the distinctions of control and support based upon differences of religion. The direction of education in the province rests with the Council of Public Instruction which is composed of the bishops and other chief clergy of the Catholic church, who are members ex officio; an equal number of Catholic laymen appointed by the Lieutenant Governor in Council; and an equal number of Protestant laymen appointed in the same way. While the Protestants of the province are but one-eighth of its population, their representation is thus one-third. The same generosity toward the minority comes out in the formation of the examining boards in Montreal and Quebec, in each city the Protestant members number one-half. A provincial Normal School for Protestant teachers is also established; a like privilege is not extended in Ontario to the Catholics, who there form a minority. It is the rule throughout Canada wherever separate schools are organized to exempt from examination teachers of any Christian faith, if ordained or attached to a religious order. As in the province of Quebec most of the teachers are priests, Christian brothers and nuns, this exemption takes a very wide range. The selection of books teaching religion and morals for Catholic pupils devolves upon their clergy, for Protestant pupils it rests with the Protestant boards. In Catholic schools the inculcation of religion is paramount, prayers recur throughout the day, and the pupils have always before them pictures, images, and symbols intended to emphasize their faith. No textbook of history, or of any other subject, is admitted which is not in harmony with the doctrines and claims of the Catholic church. The atmosphere of instruc tion is Catholic and all studies centre upon that of religion. In Protestant schools instead of this pervasive religious zeal, there is the simple reading of a portion of the Bible and the offering of prayer as part of the daily exercises. The largest city in the province, Montreal, presents the best wroughtout phase of the Quebec system. It has two distinct school boards. The municipal school-tax is one-fifth of one per cent. on real estate, with exemptions such as are usual in the United States. Without making any charge the city collects the school-tax with its other annual levies. The school-tax paid by a Catholic proprietor goes to the support of Catholic schools, that of a Protestant to Protestant schools. Joint stock companies pay taxes into a fund which is divided as the ratios of Catholic and Protestant population. As the holdings of Protestant shareholders in these companies are larger than those of Catholics, there has more than once arisen complaint as to the way in which this fund is divided. To this complaint it has been answered that the provision of education should be measured by the number who need it, rather than curtailed for the majority class because it is the power. Were the complaint seriously pressed it would be quite within the power of the Catholics, constituting as they do an immense electoral majority, to move for a division of the whole school fund on a basis of population ratios. This done a good many Protestant boards would find their incomes seriously reduced. Anywhere in the province a separate, or as it is called, a dissentient school may be founded if even as few as fifteen children attend it. In every such case a due measure of support is meted out from the provincial treasury as part and parcel of a general plan of supplementing local school-taxation. Ontario, the most populous of the Canadian provinces, and much the richest, is only one-sixth Catholic. In some districts, chiefly in the eastern counties adjoining Quebec, Catholics are either in the majority, or are numerous enough to control elections. A conviction that the Catholic minority in the province is constantly gaining in numbers and strength is in part responsible for a recent movement which strenuously opposes what are conceived to be undue privileges employed by Catholics. This movement, of which more is to be said, has culminated in the formation of an Equal Rights Party. Separate schools in Ontario are not a new thing, legislation authorized them as far back as 1843. When any five families in a district petition for a separate school, whether Protestant or Catholic, it is established and is entitled to share in the provincial school-fund, but not in any local public school fund. In any divided district the taxes levied on joint stock companies are paid to the respective boards in sums proportionate to the holdings of Protestant and Catholic proprietors. As yet only three-eighths of the Catholic pupils of the province are gathered into separate schools, but the pressure on the part of the priesthood to increase the proportion is unremitting. For the fact that so few Catholic children attend Catholic schools two reasons are given. In many districts the Catholic population is too sparse to support a school, and so excellent are the public schools that many Catholic parents prefer to incur priestly censure rather than to disadvantage their children with a second-best education. The Equal Rights Party formed early last year to resist the alleged aggressions of the Roman church, on 1st March, 1890, issued an address to the people of Ontario wherein are set forth objections to the separate school system held sufficient to justify its abolition. 1. On the ground that that system apportions public money for sectarian purposes, in effect the same thing as supporting church and clergy by public taxation. 2. Separate schools injure the state by vigilantly keeping apart those who should grow up together in a common citizenship. 3. The faith of Catholic children is in no way tampered with in public schools; it being specially provided that if their parents so desire, they need not be present at prayers or Bible reading. 4. The Catholic schools are admitted to be inferior to the public schools, and from their smallness and fewness their inferiority is likely to continue, to public injury and loss. It is to be observed that an essential difference exists between the systems of Quebec and Ontario. In Quebec education is on strictly denominational lines, in Ontario education in the main, is on the model of American public schools. In 1885 a noteworthy attempt was made to devise religious exercises in which both Catholic and Protestant children might join. A selection of scripture readings was made and submitted for criticism to representative clergymen of all denominations, including the Roman Catholic archbishop of Toronto. Duly approved, the selection was adopted for the public and high schools, certainly marking a very signal degree of mutual concession on the part of Christians most diverse in faith. No sooner, however, did the volume make |