These statistics prove conclusively, that Canada occupies a foremost position among communities for its zeal in developing the education of the people, irrespective of class. The progress that has been made within forty years may be also illustrated by the fact that, in 1839, there were in all the public and private schools of British North America only some 92,000 young people, out of a total population of 1,440,000, or about one in fifteen, whilst now the proportion may be given at one in four, if we include the students in all educational institutions. But it must be admitted, that it is to Ontario we must look for illustrations of the most perfect educational system. There, from the very commencement, the admirable municipal system which was one of the best results of the Union of 1840, enabled the people to prove their public spirit by carrying out with great energy the different measures passed by the Legislature for the promotion of Public Schools. 'By their constitution, the municipal and school corporations are reflections of the sentiments and feelings of the people within their respective circles of jurisdiction; their powers are adequate to meet all the economic exigencies of each municipality, whether of schools or roads, of the diffusion of knowledge, or the development of wealth.' [Footnote: Hon. Adam Crooks, Minister of Education, Report on Educational Institutions of Ontario, for Philadelphia Exhibition, p. 45.] As a result of such public spirit, we find in Ontario the finest specimens of school architecture, and the most perfect school apparatus and appliances of every kind, calculated to assist the teacher and pupil, and to bring into play their best mental faculties. But there can be no doubt that the success of the system rests in a very great measure on the effort that has been made to improve the status of the teacher. The schoolmaster is no longer a man who resorts to education because everything else has failed. He is no longer one of that class of 'adventurers, many of them persons of the lowest grade,' who, we are told, infested the rural districts of Upper Canada in olden times, 'wheresoever they found the field unoccupied; pursuing their speculation with pecuniary profit to themselves, but with certainly little advantage to the moral discipline of their youthful pupils.' [Footnote: Preston's 'Three Years in Canada' (1837-9), p. 110, Vol. ii.] The fact that such men could be instructors of youth, half a century ago, is of itself a forcible illustration of the public indifference to the question of popular education. All the legislation in Ontario, and in the other provinces as well, has been framed with the object of elevating the moral and intellectual standing of a class on whose efforts so much of the future happiness and prosperity of this country depends. On the whole, the object has been successfully achieved, and the schoolmasters of Ontario are, as a rule, a superior class of men. Yet it must be