has brought into the national schools not only the poorest but the lowest class, those who can afford it must be excused, and even commended, if they take advantage of other opportunities, where some principle of selection is applied. And as there are different classes of children, representing on the whole different kinds of home-upbringing, so there will be different ranks of teachers, varying widely in their status and emoluments. The question of numbers will always among day-schools give the town teacher an advantage over his country brother; the question of fees, in so far as these are not counter-balanced by endowments or State support, will draw the most highly-qualified teachers to the schools that serve the rich; and the secondary teacher will, on the whole, rank above the elementary teacher, partly because greater attainments are required from him, and partly because the higher teaching, requiring a prolonged school course, is demanded chiefly by the well-to-do classes. That this economic differentiation would become so marked could scarcely have been foreseen three centuries ago, and even though it already existed, Mulcaster was doing good service in protesting against its extremer forms. His claim that the elementary teacher is the most important of all, that he should have the smallest classes to deal with, and that he should be the most highly paid, must of course be taken as a counsel of perfection, but if there is no present prospect of its being fully admitted in practice, there is certainly a growing acceptance of the principle underlying it, that the most critical period of education is in the early years, when the first impressions are being received, and that no influence deserves to be so well considered as that which is to call forth an individual response from the awakening intelligence. Difficult as the attainment of Mulcaster’s ideal of the position of teachers may have been, he was undoubtedly on the right path to seek it, when he advocated that their training should be entrusted to the universities. The demand for adequate preparation is the only reasonable means of securing at once a fitting status, and a reward sufficient to attract the best talent, and the recognition of the work of education as deserving to rank with the other learned professions for which a special academic training is required, is the natural expression of a healthy public sentiment on the matter. The higher the requirements are pitched, the safer will be the guarantee that aspirants will be drawn to the work by a genuine belief in it as their true vocation, for the sake of which it is worth while to make some sacrifice. The atmosphere of a university, moreover, offers the fullest opportunity to the teacher of acquiring the breadth of general culture, and the _savoir vivre_, in which he is so apt to be deficient.