There is not much in a group of children coming out of school.  So one might say at first sight, but a little reflection will show the fallacy of the remark.  One would naturally suppose that in every well-regulated State of antiquity measures would have been taken to ensure the education of all classes of the community, but such was not the case.  The Spartans under Lycurgus were educated, but their education was mainly a physical one, and it did not reach the lower orders.  The education of Greece generally, even when the Greek mind had attained its highest culture, was still largely physical—­philosophers, statesmen, and poets priding themselves as much upon their athletic feats as upon their intellectual endowments.  The schools of Rome were private, and were confined to the patricians.  There was a change for the better when Christianity became the established religion.  Public schools were recommended by a council in the sixth century, but rather as a means of teaching the young the rudiments of their faith, under the direction of the clergy, than as a means of giving them general instruction.  It was not until the close of the twelfth century that a council ordained the establishment of grammar schools in cathedrals for the gratuitous instruction of the poor; and not until a century later that the ordinance was carried into effect at Lyons.  Luther found time, amid his multitudinous labors, to interest himself in popular education; and, in 1527, he drew up, with the aid of Melanchthon, what is known as the Saxon School System.  The seed was sown, but the Thirty Years’ War prevented its coming to a speedy maturity.  In the middle of the last century several of the German States passed laws making it compulsory upon parents to send their children to school at a certain age; but these laws were not really obeyed until the beginning of the present century.  German schools are now open to the poorest as well as the richest children.  The only people, except the Germans, who thought of common schools at an early period are the Scotch.

It cost, we see, some centuries of mental blindness to discover the need of, and some centuries of struggling to establish schools.

[Illustration:  THE BRIDGE OF SIGHS.]

A GLIMPSE OF VENICE.

The spell which Venice has cast over the English poets is as powerful, in its way, as was the influence of Italian literature upon the early literature of England.  From Chaucer down, the poets have turned to Italy for inspiration, and, what is still better, have found it.  It is not too much to say that the “Canterbury Tales” could not have existed, in their present form, if Boccaccio had not written the “Decameron;” and it is to Boccaccio we are told that the writers of his time were indebted for their first knowledge of Homer.  Wyatt and Surrey transplanted what they could of grace from Petrarch into the rough England of Henry the Eighth.  We know what the early dramatists