Public schools are designed for the general education of the people. The system employed differs in every country, but their fundamental principle is the same, which, briefly told, is as follows: They are founded and maintained at the expense of the people. The necessary amount of money is raised in the form of taxation, and their administrations are in the hands of officers appointed by the government for that purpose.

Such being the case, every citizen has a right to send his child to a public school in his district.

I have said that, in a private school, the company is select; but here the table is turned. In a public school every grade of society, intelligence, and refinement, has its representatives, and usually in such numbers as to overcrowd recitation rooms.

Such being the state of things, we shall not be surprised to find that each pupil does not receive as much attention as might be wished. This, no doubt, is a strong disadvantage of public education, and consequently loudly decried by the advocates of private schools.

Admitting their accusation to be well founded, there is another thing in public schools which almost redeems this defect.

Everything is done so openly and impartially here that scholars soon feel that in order to obtain the honors of the school, they must first distinguish themselves in their studies.

This circumstance fosters laudable ambition among them, especially that strong incentive to faithful labor, emulation. Nobody will question that this state of things will have a most beneficial effect upon their character.

Another charge brought against public schools is, that the course of study is not sufficiently extended for the various requirements of its members.

Those who say this, are thinking only of the interest of a small portion of the community, and not that of the whole, sovereign community.

The mass of people want a simple course of education, which is exactly what public schools purpose to give to their scholars. There is but one road to the field of knowledge, and those who think there are several, will never reach that glorious goal. In a public school, students must pursue such a course of study as may be prescribed; in a private school, studies are, to some extent, at the option of its pupils.

The pupil of a public school, when told what he has to do, in nine cases out of ten concentrates all his energy on the work before him, and comes out of the severe ordeal with something substantial, with which he may begin the arduous duties of life with some hope of suc

cess.

In a private school, the case is far different. In the first place, a young gentleman is not sure what studies he will undertake. When at last the important question is settled, he is not pleased with the stern realities of the work. Let us take a case: A young gentleman, besides the regular studies, to which he does not do justice, begins the French, for instance, because it is fashionable, or because he remembers, with chagrin, an occasion when he was laughed at, for writing in a friend's autograph-book "votre amie,” which elegant phrase was, to his astonishment, translated, Your female friend. By the time he can say "Comment vous

portez vous ?" without reference, he has had enough of the French language, and turns his weary eye to the German, or Latin, in which he will fare no better.

If the critical history of a private school be written, it will be found that it has sent out by far the greater portion of its students to swell the ranks of that class of persons who know a little of a good many things, but nothing in particular to any extent. I think, however, that the chief merit of public schools lies in the fact that the child is not sent away from home at a tender age, the time when his character, still all chaos, so to speak, is just forming itself into some shape, and with whose completion his destiny is to be fixed.

How critical a period this is for him, no sensible man will question.

It is true, that as he goes to school daily, he sees all sorts of juvenile vices, but he does not associate with their possessors to such an extent as to be influenced to a great extent; and even if he is affected a little, there is on hand a good remedy in the love of his parents. The reason why public schools are not fully appreciated, is because there are so many in the country.

Whatever is abundant is very apt to be slighted. Thus, a man once observed, after profound consideration, that the rays of the moon are more precious than those of the sun, because the former we get in the night, which would otherwise be dark, while the latter comes to us in the daytime, when we do not want any light at all. In order to appreciate fully the importance of public schools, imagine them all destroyed. In the course of time the people would be utterly degraded, and only a small minority of the people

have an opportunity of education, and also that of exercising a most galling tyranny over the ignorant mass of people.

As men in this state are actually dead to the intellectual world, we cannot measure the loss to humanity of those great minds which, though containing all the power of shining as star of the first magnitude, go out of existence as quietly and as little developed as those of the lower orders of creation. To illustrate this, let us refer to the life of the late Professor Mahan of West Point. We need not here speak of his long, steady, and glorious career. We need not speak of his melancholy death, but let us ask how his great mind was developed. His parents were poor, and, in all probability, could not have given to their son a good education; but the brightness of the boy so attracted the attention of Hon. Willoughby Newton, in whose congressional district he was born, that he became a warm patron of the boy, and sent him to the Military Academy at West Point, thus snatching as it were from the hands of fate, one of the greatest scientific soldiers of modern times. The relation which private schools sustain to public schools is very similar to that between cavalry and infantry in the army. Cavalry can be employed only on the plains. Infantry can be employed under every possible circumstance. It is true, cavalry does great service, but the fact that it cannot act independently, brings it at once to a secondary rank. The same may be said of private schools.

That an army may, if necessary, dispense with the service of cavalry, is evident when we study the campaigns of Napoleon in Egypt.

The battle of the Pyramids, for instance, was gained only

by the bayonets of the French soldiers, against the array which the best cavalry then in the world charged in vain.

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In the same manner, public schools can ple without any help from private schools. been said, it will be evident that private schools, with all their excellencies as institutions of learning, are but so many squadrons of cavalry, in the army of education; hence we come to the conclusion that the system of the private schools is a strong auxiliary force to that of public schools, but that they ought never to supersede wholly the latter.

CHRISTMAS.

BY N. KANDA.

Every nation in the world, where the people receive Christianity, observes the 25th of December as a holiday, because it is the birthday of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who was born in Bethlehem of Judea, a part of Palestine in the western part of Asia, on the shore of the Mediterranean Sea. The mother of Jesus was Mary, the wife of

Joseph.

Jesus Christ was sent from God. "For God so loved the world that he gave his only-begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life." He was on the earth for thirty-two years, preaching the Gospel, and doing a great many miracles; and great multitudes of people believed in him. He had twelve apostles, who always followed him from place to place, as he went preaching the Gospel and doing miracles. There were a great many who did not believe that he was sent from God, and they tried to find some fault in him, that