One single statement, made up from these reports of the county superintendents, and presented by the head superintendent in his report, speaks volumes on the neglect of modesty, decency, neatness, and purity. In the whole state there are six thousand schoolhouses destitute of any kind of woodhouse or privy; and of the whole number, only about one thousand have privies provided with separate accommodations for children of different sexes.

It appears, also, that though the schools and teachers are fast rising in character, and that many now are of uncommon excellence, yet that many of the teachers are notoriously depraved, while intellectual training, in the majority of cases, is deplorably low, and the moral training still more defective.

One superintendent remarks, "Gloomy, indeed, are the impressions made by our schoolhouses. The lessons of immorality and indecency often taught there would cause a shudder to thrill every sensitive mind." Another says, "There are, I regret to say, many teach ers whose morals, manners, and daily exam ple wholly unfit them for their duties." An other says, "In some instances, moral qualifi

cations have been wholly disregarded, and teachers notoriously intemperate employed." Says another, "I have found a number whose language was low, obscene, and sensual, still employed in teaching."

Says another, "If the tastes, associations, and moral sentiments of the teacher lack elevation and dignity, what literary progress will atone for examples so pernicious? And yet such are the moral influences shed about them by many licensed to teach.”

After presenting all these shocking details, the chief superintendent, in 1844, thus remarks:

"No subject connected with elementary instruction affords a source for such mortifying and humiliating reflection as that of the condition of a large portion of the schoolhouses as presented in the above enumeration. Only one third of the whole number visited were found in good repair; another third in only comfortable condition; while three thousand three hundred and nineteen were unfit for the reception of man or beast. Seven thousand were found destitute of any playground, nearly six thousand destitute of convenient seats and desks, nearly eight thousand destitute of any proper facilities

for ventilation, and upward of six thousand des titute of a privy of any sort. And it is in these miserable abodes of filth and dirt, deprived of wholesome air, or exposed to the assaults of the elements, with no facilities for exercise or relaxation, with no conveniences for prosecuting their studies, crowded together on benches not admitting of a moment's rest, and debarred the possibility of yielding to the ordinary calls of nature without violent inroads upon modesty and shame, that upward of two hundred thousand children of this state are compelled to spend an average period of eight months each year of their pupilage. Here the first lessons of human life, the incipient principles of morality, and the rules of social intercourse are to be impressed on the plastic mind. The boy is here to receive the model of his permanent character, and imbibe the elements of his future career. Here the instinct

ive delicacy of the young female, one of the characteristic ornaments of her sex, is to be expanded into maturity by precept and example. Such are the temples of science, such the ministers under whose care susceptible childhood is to receive its earliest impressions.

Great God! shall man dare to charge to thy dispensations the vices, the crimes, the sickness, the sorrows, the miseries, and the brevity of human life, who sends his little children. to a pesthouse, fraught with the deadly malaria of both moral and physical disease? Instead of impious murmurs, let him lay his hand on his mouth, and his mouth in the dust, and cry "Unclean!"

Let it not be imagined that this picture is peculiar to New-York. The superintendents of the common schools in Ohio, and even in Massachusetts and Connecticut, have reported similar evils as existing, to a greater or less extent, in the schools in their respective states; and if such things exist in the states where most has been done for education, what can be hoped for the neglected and abused little ones where even less is done by law for their comfort and improvement? In view of such utter destitution of schools in the greater part of our country, and of the sufferings and neglect endured by little children in other portions, the inquiry must be earnestly pressed, "What can be the reason of this deplorable state of things?"

The grand reason is, the selfish apathy of the educated classes, and the stupid apathy of those who are too ignorant to appreciate an educa tion for their children. In those states where no school system is established by law, the intelligent and wealthy content themselves with securing a good education for their own chil dren, and care nothing for the rest. When any project, therefore, is presented for obtaining a good school system, the rich and intelligent do not wish to be taxed for the children of others, and the rest do not care whether their children are educated or not, or else are too poor to pay the expense.

In those states where a school system is established, parents of intelligence and moral worth, seeing the neglected state of the common school, withdraw their children to private schools. And feeling no interest in schools which they do not patronise, they pass them with utter neglect. And thus, neither rich, nor poor care enough to be willing to be taxed for their elevation and improvement.

Thus, too, it has come to pass, that while every intelligent man in the Union is reading and hearing, and saying, every day of his life