In 1844 Dr. Ryerson was appointed Chief Superintendent of Education for Upper Canada. He immediately set himself to awaken the country to a proper estimate of the importance of education, and to improve the qualifications of teachers. He urged the people to build better schools and to pay better salaries, so that well-qualified teachers could be engaged. He visited foreign countries to study their systems and methods that he might make the schools of Upper Canada more efficient. A Provincial Normal and Model School was established in 1847, better books were provided for the pupils, more and better apparatus and maps for all schools. All this was done in the face of many difficulties inevitable in a new country--popular ignorance, apathy, lack of means to build schools and support them, lack of time to attend them. The opposition of many who did not set the same value on education that he himself did had also to be faced. With unwearied zeal, steadfast courage, and unfailing patience, he met these difficulties. For over thirty years, he devoted his matured manhood and great endowments to the task of developing a public sentiment in favour of education, and of building on sure foundations a system of elementary and secondary schools that is the just pride of our Province and his own best monument. In 1876 he resigned his position of Chief Superintendent, and was succeeded by a Minister of Education. He had nobly fulfilled the promise he made on accepting office in 1844--"to provide for my native country a system of education, and facilities for intellectual improvement not second to those in any country in the world." He died in 1882. To honour him in his death as he had served it in his life the whole country seemed assembled, in its representatives, at his funeral. Members of the Legislature, judges, University authorities, ecclesiastical dignitaries, thousands from the schools which he had founded, and above all, the common people, for whose cause he never failed to stand, followed to the grave the remains of the great Canadian who had lived so faithfully and well for his country. NOTE.--If the pupils have been told about the Pilgrim Fathers, and the U.E. Loyalists, a review of those stories will add interest to this lesson; if not, it will serve as an introduction to them. For a Form IV class, the following should be included in the lesson: