In countries where there is any Free Education, the traveller must observe its nature; and especially whether the subjects of it are distinguished by any sort of badge. The practice of badging, otherwise than by mutual consent, is usually bad: it is always suspicious. The traveller will note whether free education is conferred by charitable bequest, (a practice originating in times when the doctrine of expiation was prevalent, and continued to this day by its union with charity,) or whether it is framed at the will of the sovereign, that his young subjects may be trained to his own purposes,--as in the case of the Emperor of Russia and his young Polish victims; or whether it arises from the union of such a desire with a more enlightened object,--as may be witnessed in Prussia; or whether it is provided by the sovereign people,--by universal consent, as the right of every individual born into the community, and as the necessary qualification for the enjoyment of social privileges,--as in the United States. The English Christ Hospital boys are badged: Napoleon's Polytechnic pupils were badged; so are the Czar's orphan charge. Wherever the meddling or ostentatious charity of antique times is in existence,--times when the idea of liberty was low and confined,--this badging is to be looked for; and also wherever it is necessary to the purposes of the potentate to keep a register of the young subjects who may become his instruments or his foes:--but where education is absolutely universal, where any citizen has a right to put every child, not otherwise educated, into the school-house of his township, and where the rising generation are destined to take care of themselves, and legislate after their own will, no badging will be found. This apparently trifling fact is worth the attention of the observer. The extent of popular education is a fact of the deepest significance. Under despotisms there will be the smallest amount of it; and in proportion to the national idea of the dignity and importance of man,--idea of liberty, in short,--will be its extent, both in regard to the number it comprehends, and to the enlargement of their studies. The universality of education is inseparably connected with a lofty idea of liberty; and till the idea is realized in a constantly expanding system of national education, the observer may profitably note for reflection the facts whether he is surrounded on a frontier by a crowd of whining young beggars, or whether he sees a parade of charity scholars,--these all in blue caps and yellow stockings, and those all in white tippets and green aprons; or whether he falls in with an annual or quarterly assembly of teachers, met to confer on the best principles and methods of carrying on an education which is itself a matter of course.