The Government supports a good university at San José, under the direction of Dr. Juan F. Ferras, and a system of free graded schools, managed by the Minister of Education, who is a member of the cabinet. Education is compulsory, the law requiring the attendance of all children between the ages of eight and fourteen; and it is enforced, except in the sparsely settled districts where the schools are infrequent. Those who send their children to private schools, or do not send them at all, are subject to a heavy fine, which goes into the school fund. There is also a poll-tax for the support of the educational system. The schools are entirely free from sectarian influences. In fact, both the Minister of Education and the Director of the University belong to the German school of materialists, towards which all men of education in these countries drift when they leave the Mother Church. There is no other place for them to go. The Protestants in San José have a little chapel where the Church of England service is recited, hymns are sung, and usually Sabbath mornings a selected sermon from some published volume is read by a lay member; but the flock is too small to support a pastor, and none of the missionary societies in England or America appear to care to enter the field. During the administration of President Guardia there was a constitutional amendment adopted separating the Church and the State. The monks and nuns were expelled from the country, the monasteries and nunneries confiscated, and by legislation the priests were deprived of much of their power and perquisites. In 1884, a few months before his death, the late President Fernandez expelled the archbishop from the country. The latter went to him demanding a voice in the management of the university, and a share of the public funds for the use of the Catholic Theological Seminary. The controversy was heated, and when the archbishop departed from the Presidential mansion he left the curse of Rome behind him. Fernandez, hearing that his Grace was talking about a revolution, sent him a passport and a file of soldiers to escort him out of the country, to which he has not been allowed to return. The confessional is open and public by law, and the priests are forbidden to wear their vestments in the streets. But these statutes are not enforced, and, regardless of the offensive attitude of the Government, the devotion of the masses to the Church is quite as marked as in any of the Catholic countries. The intelligent families, however, are gradually growing unmindful of their ancestral religion, and the next generation will see a more rapid decline of the power of the priests. Business and professional men never attend mass, leaving that duty to their wives and daughters and servants. They are seldom seen inside a church, except upon occasions of ceremony or at funerals. But the women invariably attend mass each morning.