Boys and girls of all classes attend the same schools--children of rich merchants and county gentry side by side with those of coolies or humblest peasants. Our schools are essentially national institutions for all classes on an equal footing. No class distinction is to be found in them. This holds good with higher institutions. There exist, of course, no longer any colleges like those of former days, which belonged to feudal lords, and were more or less exclusively used by the Samurai class. The emperor and empress have established, out of special interest for the education of nobility, a peers' school and a peers' girls' school in Tokio. But even these schools are not exclusively attended by boys and girls of the nobility; for children of the commons who possess a satisfactory social standard are admitted to them. On the other hand, too, children of the nobility do not necessarily join those schools only; for many such children are sent to ordinary schools, from convenience of locality or from some particular inclination of the parents. The zeal for education has been carried to such an extent, that primary education was made universally free, by a recommendation of the Diet. Without questioning the means of the family to which the children belong; although, under some special circumstances, trifling fees, almost nominal, may be imposed by special permission of the proper authorities. The method of teaching in Primary Schools has developed itself in the following manner. A few years after the abolition of the feudal system, namely in 1872, the first Normal School was established in Tokio; and some seventy young students were collected. An American school teacher was engaged to train these youths for the purpose. They were divided into two classes, those who acquitted themselves with greater credit at the entrance examination having been given a place in the first class. The American teacher taught the first of these two classes exactly in the same manner as he did in America, the students having become as mere children. One or other of the students belonging to the class so taught, taught in turn the other class in a similar manner, though somewhat modified to suit our requirements. In conjunction with this practice, charts and simple text-books were prepared by some officials of the Ministry of Education who were attached to the school. This was soon followed by an establishment of five more Government Normal Schools in different parts of the empire, and a Women's Normal School in Tokio. In the course of a few years each Prefecture came to establish its own Normal School under subsidy of the Government; and the Government Normal Schools were abolished, except those established in Tokio, which were maintained as before, as a model for the local Normal Schools.