The subject of the Parochial School System of Scotland claims some attention at the present moment. Following up certain ominous proceedings of other parties high in authority, Lord Melgund, M. P. for Greenock, has given notice of a motion for the appointment of a select committee of the House of Commons to consider the expediency of a fundamental revision of that system. The question here involved is one of national importance; and the family and other ties by which Lord Melgund is connected with the Government, are likely, we fear, to secure for his proposed innovations on that institution which has been hitherto, perhaps, the pre-eminent glory of Scotland, a certain degree of favour. It may be of some use to preface the few observations we have to offer on the Scottish system, and the proposed alterations of it, by a brief recapitulation of some of the more prominent methods and statistics of popular education in other countries, taken chiefly from a very carefully prepared and important Appendix to the Privy Council committee's _Minutes_ for 1847-8. The information was obtained through the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, from the Governments of the principal states of Europe and America. The _cost_ of public instruction is defrayed by different means in different countries--means varying, however, more in detail than in principle. In Prussia, a regular school-rate, varying from 3d. to 6d. per month, according to circumstances, is levied upon all who have children; but this is supplemented by a grant from the state budget which, for elementary schools alone, amounted in 1845 to £37,000. A similar practice prevails not only in the other countries of Central Europe, but in Pennsylvania, where it was introduced by the German emigrants, and, of late years, also in some other parts of the United States. The income of schools in the Austrian Empire is derived from a variety of sources, of which school-money constitutes little more than one-third; the remainder, as far as we can understand the technical phraseology of the report, being partly derived from old endowments, partly from provincial revenues, and partly from the imperial treasury. In Holland, the governments of the towns and provinces are charged with the cost of maintaining their own schools, aided by grants from the state. On the first year that separate accounts were kept for the northern provinces, after their separation from Belgium, the sum raised in this way amounted (in a population of 2,450,000) to no less than £76,317. In Belgium, where the funds are derived from old foundations and local endowments, aided by the government, two-fifths of the scholars received, in 1840, their education gratuitously; but the provision seems to be not very complete, for in that year, out of 2510 communes, 163 were without any school.