Eliminating from the problem the foreign and colored factors, we find a native white population in 1870 of 28,121,816, and native white illiterates, of ten years of age and over, to the number of 2,102,670--less than 7-1/2 per cent. Of this number of native white illiterates, 1,443,956--two-thirds of the whole--are reported from the States lately known as Slave States. In these States, as is well known, there are peculiar reasons for the illiteracy of the white as well as of the colored native, outside of any consideration of the difficulty of mastering English orthography. This survey takes no account of the native children with foreign parents, as it would not materially disturb the percentage, nor of the populations of New Mexico, Arizona, Southern California and Colorado, all largely settled by Mexicans and Spaniards, among whom there is doubtless a larger percentage of illiterates than among the same number of native whites in the Northern States. If account be taken of all these elements, I think the percentage of illiterates proper to be charged up to the English language and American institutions would be reduced to about 3-1/4 per cent. The next consideration is as to the cause of this large percentage of illiterates among the native white population of the United States. Professor March ascribes it in part to "the difficulties of the English spelling," and he adds: "We ar now having ernest testimony to this fact from scholars and educators in England." He names Max Mueller and "Dr. Morell, one of Her Majesty's inspectors of schools," and quotes from both of them. Dr. Morell states that in some examinations for the civil service, out of 1972 failures, "1866 candidates were pluckt for spelling; that is, eighteen out of every nineteen who faild, faild in spelling." Max Mueller, as quoted, bears testimony to the fact that in the public schools of England 90 per cent. fail "to read with tolerable ease and expression a passage from a newspaper, and spell the same with tolerable accuracy." This is the substance of the "ernest testimony" from "scholars and educators in England." All this testimony has been previously given by the same "reformer" and by others without variation or corroboration. The facts stated seem to be isolated ones, as well as "grand, gloomy and peculiar." One swallow does not make a summer, nor do one eminent philologist and one uneminent educator make "scholars and educators." But when the testimony is carefully viewed, what does it amount to? Some of the very elements necessary in the consideration of the testimony are wanting. What was the extent of the failures by the candidates for civil service? Did they miss one word or more? Were they more deficient in spelling than in other branches? Of the 90 per cent. of the public-school pupils who failed, what is the class composing those pupils? Were they as deficient in other branches as in spelling? What were the newspaper passages selected for trial? What is meant by