From the churches to the schools is a natural transition. The founders of Boston's greatness placed the two influences side by side in importance, and their wisdom in doing so has had its justification. The current "poking of fun" at the "Boston school-ma'am," her glasses, her learning and her devotion to Browning; and the Boston infant, who converses in polysyllables almost from his birth, has its foundation in the fact, everywhere admitted, that nowhere are intelligence and culture so widely diffused in all ranks of life as in Boston. The free-school system, an experiment which she was the first American city to inaugurate, is considered by educators to lead the world. The city's annual expenditures for her public schools, of which there are over 500, amount to about $2,000,000, and from the kindergarten to the High School, where the pupils can be prepared for college, the youth of the city are carefully watched, trained, instructed, and all that is best in them drawn out. Even in summer, "vacation schools" are held, where the children who would otherwise be running wild in the streets can learn sewing, box-making, cooking and other useful branches. The English High and Latin School is the largest free public school building in the world, being 423 feet long by 220 feet wide. It is a fine structure in Renaissance style, with every advantage and improvement looking to health and convenience that even the progressive Boston mind could think of. It would be a sluggish soul indeed that would not be thrilled by the sight of the entire school-battalion going through its exercises in the immense drill-room, and realize the hopeful future for this vast army of coming citizens, who are thus early and thus admirably taught the priceless lesson of discipline. The Boston Normal School, the Girls' High School and the Public Latin School for girls, fully cover the demand for the higher education of women. The latter institution is the fruit of the efforts of the Society for the University Education of Women, and its graduates enter the female colleges with ease. Wellesley, the "College Beautiful," as its students have fondly christened it, is situated close to Boston in the beautiful village of Wellesley, where feminine education is conducted almost on ideal lines. No woman's college in the world has so many students, or so beautiful a home in which to shelter the fair heads, inwardly crammed and running over with knowledge, and outwardly adorned, either in fact or in prospective, with the scholastic cap of learning. Since its opening in 1875, Wellesley has almost created a new era in woman's education, and its curriculum is the same as those of the most advanced male colleges. The College Aid Society, which at an annual cost of from $6000 to $7000 helps ambitious girlhood, for whom straitened means would otherwise render a university education impossible, is an interesting feature of the college. [Illustration: COMMONWEALTH AVENUE, BOSTON.]