The buildings from a design of Roelandt, an artist of Nieuport, are in a style of chaste Corinthian architecture, the portico ornamented with sculpture in alto relievo, the vestibule superbly flagged in a mosaic of colored marbles, and the hall and staircase ornamented with busts and caryatides in white marble. The theatres are on a magnificent scale, richly furnished and lighted by lofty lanterns in the vaults of the roof. The course of education, besides most extensive primary schools, comprises the faculties of law, medicine and divinity, with science and belles-lettres, and the number of students is between 300 and 400 attending the classes of thirty professors. There is attached to the University a library of sixty thousand volumes, a collection of philosophical apparatus of great value, and museums of antiquities, natural history, mineralogy and comparative anatomy, and the whole institution having been recently remodelled and placed under the care of a vigilant and anxious committee, it promises to be one of the most important and beneficial foundations in the kingdom. The entire system of primary education, however, is in anything but a satisfactory position in Belgium. Under the regence of Holland, the Dutch system of rational education was imparted to Belgium. Schools were established in every district, under the superintendance of provincial committees, instruction was supplied gratuitously, and the children of the poor were required to avail themselves of it, whilst to secure its efficiency, no teacher was allowed to be employed who had not undergone a thorough examination, and been furnished with a diploma of competency. This feature of the government was from the first vehemently opposed by the Belgian clergy, who saw in it an encroachment upon the right claimed by the Catholic Church to regulate the quantity as well as the quality of national education, and when in 1830, they succeeded in effecting the “repeal of the Union,” between the two countries, the entire system was abolished at one fell swoop.[19] Education, like every thing else, was declared to be free, and the new government did away with all official supervision of schools, and the necessity for any enquiry into the competency of teachers. The result of this has been, that although the number of schools has not been diminished, the nature of the instruction and the qualification of the teacher, is of so very low a description, as to be thus characterised in a modern work upon the subject, by M. Ducpétiaux,[20] himself, a distinguished Belgian, and intimately acquainted with the subject.