The appointment of Miss Johnson to the head of the Normal School at Framingham will open the way to a similar change in many quarters, if what Governor Bullock has not disdained to call the "policy of Massachusetts" is consistently carried out. I do not know what salary is offered to Miss Johnson; but, if it were equal to that of the man who preceded her, would not the newspapers have told us? The comparative value of these salaries is not shown by the figures. It depends on the prices of gold, and of food and provisions, each year. It cannot be half as great as an inexperienced person would think. There is a great want of female teachers of Latin and French. School committees assure me, that proficients in language would be certain of good pay in our high schools. For the most part, women prefer to devote themselves to mathematics. I used to say, with a smile, in the Western States, that all the women could read the "Mécanique Céleste;" but they found Cæsar and Télémaque equally uninteresting. Later, Colonel Higginson bears witness to the impossibility of getting good classical teachers. It is a common idea, that the standard of education is higher now than it was thirty years ago. It may be doubted. More things are taught in schools,--ologies, isms, and the like; but the most thorough teachers are not the most popular, and it may be questioned, whether in the best minds on the Continent, in England, or this country, so great progress has been made as has been generally claimed. There is much more liberality in regard to the general question, but no more in regard to the ideal standard. In one of Niebuhr's letters to Madame Hensler, he says, in speaking of Klopstock: "The character of the women is a remarkable feature of the time of Klopstock's youth. The cultivation of the mind was carried incomparably farther with them than with nearly all the young women of our days; and this we should scarcely have expected to find in the cotemporaries of our grandmothers. It was not, therefore, the influence of our native literature; for that first rose into being along with, and under the influence of, the love inspired by these charming maidens. For some time after the Thirty Years' War, the ladies of Germany, particularly those of the middle classes, were excessively coarse and uneducated. This wonderful alteration must have taken place, therefore, during eighty years,--between 1660 and 1740; though we are quite ignorant how and when it began."