If M * * * * wishes to learn what our schools ought to be, let him go to the State of Illinois. A child there enters school at the age of six. Each school is divided into ten grades; at the end of each year there is an examination, and a child goes up one or more grades according to his proficiency. A lad going through all the grades acquires an excellent liberal education; if he passes through the "high school" he is, by a very long degree, the educational superior of the majority of our youths who have spent years at Eton or at Harrow. All this does not cost his parents one cent. Rich and poor alike send their children to the public schools, and thus all class prejudice is early stamped out of the American breast. Another advantage of these schools is that boys and girls are taught together. The girls thus learn early how to take care of themselves, and the boys' manners are softened. When grown up, boys and girls are not kept apart as though they were each other's natural enemies, nor are there any ill effects from their associating together. If some marry, the relations of those who do not are those of brothers and sisters. The Duke of Wellington is reported to have said that Waterloo was won in the Eton playing fields. Not only was the Union maintained in many battlefields, but America has become the most forward nation {43} in the world owing to her schools. How pitiably small and narrow does our school system appear in comparison with theirs! Why cannot we do what has been done in America? Why? Because the land is too full of men ... ignorant, servile, and aware that their only chance of succeeding in life is to perpetuate class distinctions, and to deprive the vast majority of their fellow-citizens of the possibility of competing with them by depriving them of the blessings of any real education. Which would be to the greater advantage of the country, a Church Establishment such as ours, or a school establishment such as that of Illinois? What Radical entertains a doubt? If so, why do not we at once substitute the one for the other?[4]