_Our readers_ will anticipate with much interest a new book by Judge Tourgee—“Bricks Without Straw”—which is announced for September. It deals with the problem of negro education, and is by one who has made it a profound study. * * * * * _The public sentiment_ of Virginia, in regard to free schools, as gathered from the reports of the county superintendents, may be summed up in the language of one of them as follows: “I might content myself by saying that most of the educated in my county are now decided advocates of the present system. At first, a large majority were hostile to it; but a few days ago, one of the first men of the county said to me that he tried hard to believe it a ‘Yankee innovation’ upon our good old Virginia plan, and as such it should be opposed by all true Virginians; but now he had become a decided advocate of it, and believed that the only hope of educating a large majority of our citizens, indeed, that our very existence, as a free and independent people, depended upon the preservation and extension of some good system of popular education.” An examination of one hundred and three such reports discovers the fact that in less than a dozen counties is there any very great opposition to the system. The reports show an almost uniform and decided growth of public sentiment in favor of it. * * * * * _A Correspondent_ of the New Orleans _Times_ draws a discouraging picture of public school prospects in that city and State, and an editorial in the same issue adds: “It is, indeed, true, that our schools are in a very sad condition. What is more to be regretted is that the prospect of their improvement is by no means encouraging. Once we took pride in them, and gloried in the advantages which they offered to our children for obtaining an education. That pride appears to exist no longer. There is a sort of apathy about the schools, which justifies the inference that they have not the hold on popular favor that they once had. * * * If there were a prospect of a better condition of affairs next year, there would be, perhaps, no immediate occasion for discouraging forebodings. But there is not; there is no reason for believing that the provisions for the maintenance of the schools next year will be more ample than they are this year. There is one thing very certain, and that is that if we are to have efficient public schools in this city, the money to support them must be forthcoming.” * * * * * _The Negro Bishop_ of Hayti, Theodore Holey, a native of the United States, and consecrated in Grace Church, New York City, who, during the recent gathering of the Bishops of the Anglican Church in London, was much honored by all his brethren, and who at the invitation of Dean Stanley preached in Westminster Abbey, on St. James Day, closed his address with the following eloquent words and remarkable prayer: