The copy-books were handed me for inspection. Here is a specimen of the copies: "Virtue is the persute," etc.; "Do a good child tell stories?" The chirography was unmistakably original and inimitable, but the spelling was not from Webster, nor the grammar of Butler's approval. The pupils were in tolerable order--the secret of which, no doubt, lay on the table, in the form of a huge leather strap--that relic of barbarism revived--and a piece of plank for the more incorrigible cases. The Catholics have two separate schools for the education of males and females, besides a mixed school for colored children. The female school, containing about sixty pupils, is under the direction of the Dominican sisterhood. The children all arose and bowed politely when I visited them; but no opportunity was offered for ascertaining their method of teaching, or the proficiency of the young ladies, although I politely asked to hear them recite. These wimpled teachers veil their movements also. The Catholic school for boys is under the tutorage of an old gentleman of the Irish style, whose looks resemble the description given by Goldsmith of the "village school-master." The children were talking aloud, caricaturing on slates, and exhibiting it to their companions, whistling, and shaking their fists behind the teacher's back, these employments being the principal exercises during my visit. The teacher was energetic in his efforts to preserve order and hear the recitation. He placed one offender on his knees for penance, and struck some more of them with an immense ferule which he carried in his hand. When the din and confusion drowned his voice, he resorted to jingling a bell and screaming "Silence!" He evidently had a bigger contract than he knew how to manage. The Pensacola boys are said to be very bad, whether from association or the original sin born in them, has not been decided--probably a combination of both. Let no one imagine that in all this dross there is no pure gold. Mrs. Scott, wife of the present rector of Christ Church, teaches a parochial school, patronized by all, irrespective of creeds or forms of worship, being always open to inspection for the friends of education. The pupils exhibited a thoroughly progressive knowledge of all the branches which they were studying. This school is governed by a direct appeal to the elevating and moral qualities of the heart and soul, which lead the mind upward, thus restraining their natural impulses. The pupils evinced a surprising familiarity with blank verse, by transposing and parsing lines from Paradise Lost--the work of that colossal mind whose soul, illumined with inward light, soared beyond the star-lit domes of space, to commune with chaos and the great mysteries of its unrevealed depths. CHAPTER XXV.