"tolerable ease and expression" and "tolerable accuracy"? According to the testimony itself, the reference of Max Mueller is to the "new schools" established since the late extension of education in England. Confessedly, then, this applies to classes of pupils who had formerly been deprived of educational advantages and privileges. It is a wonder that 10 per cent. were successful. The testimony furnished is more "ernest" than valuable. The state of education in Protestant countries where other languages than the English are spoken is taken as a conclusive argument for the efficiency of phonetic orthography. Denmark, Norway, Sweden and Switzerland are named as shining exemplars in this regard. It is because the languages of those countries are orthographic models that the people are so highly educated. The general fact is incontrovertible that among those people there is less illiteracy than among those who speak the English language. As Switzerland has no national language, the Swiss people should not have been named except in company with those others whose languages they use. But the bare fact of the smaller percentage of illiteracy among the people above named is not conclusive as to the retarding and depressing influence which the "difficulties of English spelling" have upon the spread of education among the American people. In Denmark attendance upon school for seven years by every child of school age is compulsory. The number of children of school age for 1876 was 200,761, while the number in attendance upon the public schools was 194,198, the attendance being 96 per cent. of the whole number of children of school age. In addition to the attendance upon the public schools, there were 13,994 in attendance upon private schools: some of these evidently were above or below school age. We thus see how efficiently the compulsory system is enforced. This system is not new to that country, but has been in existence for many years, and the results seem to justify the statement in the _Report of the Commissioner of Education for 1871_, that "even among the lower classes a remarkable knowledge of general history and geography, but more especially of Scandinavian literature and history," is found. In Norway, as in Denmark, from the eighth to the fifteenth year attendance upon school is obligatory. In 1866, of a total of 212,137 country children of school age, 206,623, or more than 97 per cent. of the whole, were in attendance at school. In the towns and cities less than 1 per cent. failed to attend school. In Sweden compulsory attendance upon school is the rule. In 1868, of the whole number of children of school age, the average attendance amounted to 97 per cent.