In the Province of Ontario every child can receive a free education, and can pass from the Public School to the High School or Collegiate Institute, and thence to the University, where the fees are small and many scholarships are offered to the industrious student. The principles which lie at the basis of the system are local assessment to supplement State aid; thorough inspection of all schools; ensuring the best teachers by means of Normal Schools and competitive examinations, complete equipment, graded examinations, and separate schools. The State recognises its obligation to the child, not only by contributing pecuniary aid, but by exercising a general supervision, by means of a Superintendent in Quebec and by a Minister of the Crown in Ontario. The system of Ontario, which has been the prototype for the legislation of all the smaller provinces, is eclectic, for it is the result of a careful examination of the systems that prevail in the United States, Prussia, and Ireland. As in the larger provinces, much apathy was shown in Nova Scotia for many years on the subject of the education of the people. Unhappily this apathy lasted much longer; for the census of 1861 proved that out of a population of 284,000 persons over five years of age, no less than 81,469 could not read a printed page, and 114,877 could not write their names. It was not till 1864 that Sir Charles Tupper, then Premier, brought in a comprehensive measure containing the best features of the Ontario system; and the result has been a remarkable development in the education of the province. In New Brunswick, where the public schools were long in a very inferior state--though parish schools had been established as early as 1823--the system was remodelled, in 1871, on that of Ontario, though no provision was made for Separate Schools--an omission which has created much bitterness in the province, as the political history of Canada for the subsequent years abundantly testifies. In Prince Edward Island the first free schools were established in 1852, and further improvements have been made of recent years. In British Columbia, the Legislature has adopted substantially the Ontario School Law with such modifications as are essential to the different circumstances of a sparse population. In the North-west, before the formation of the Province of Manitoba, education was in a much better condition than the isolation and scattered state of the population would have led one to expect. In 1857 there were seventeen schools in the settlements, generally under the supervision of the clergy of the Roman Catholic, Episcopalian, and Presbyterian bodies. In the Collegiate School, managed by the Church of England, and supported, like all other institutions in the country, by contributions from abroad, Aeschylus, Herodotus, Thucydides and Livy were read with other classics besides mathematics. In 1871 a school law of a liberal character was passed, provision being made for Protestant and Roman