Is this magnificent system of public instruction, the glory of the world, to turn out merely a vast machine for grinding down Young America, just as the system of middle-men, similarly organized, has ground down the Irish peasantry?  Look at it! as now arranged, committees are responsible to the public, teachers to committees, pupils to teachers,—­all pledged to extract a maximum crop from childish brains.  Each is responsible to the authority next above him for a certain amount, and must get it out of the victim next below him.  Constant improvements in machinery perfect and expedite the work; improved gauges and metres (in the form of examinations) compute the comparative yield to a nicety, and allow no evasion.  The child cannot spare an hour, for he must keep up with the other children; the teacher dares not relax, for he must keep up with the other schools; the committees must only stimulate, not check, for the eyes of the editors are upon them, and the municipal glory is at stake:  every one of these, from highest to lowest, has his appointed place in the tread-mill and must keep step with the rest; and only once a year, at the summer vacation, the vast machine stops, and the poor remains of childish brain and body are taken out and handed to anxious parents (like you, Dolorosus):—­“Here, most worthy tax-payer, is the dilapidated residue of your beloved Angelina; take her to the sea-shore for a few weeks, and make the most of her.”

Do not you know that foreigners, coming from the contemplation of races less precociously intellectual, see the danger we are in, if we do not?  I was struck by the sudden disappointment of an enthusiastic English teacher, (Mr. Calthrop,) who visited the New York schools the other day and got a little behind the scenes.  “If I wanted a stranger to believe that the Millennium was not far off,” he said, “I would take him to some of those grand ward-schools in New York, where able heads are trained by the thousand.  I spent four or five days in doing little else than going through these truly wonderful schools.  I staid more than three hours in one of them, wondering at all I saw, admiring the stately order, the unbroken discipline of the whole arrangements, and the wonderful quickness and intelligence of the scholars.  That same evening I went to see a friend, whose daughter, a child of thirteen, was at one of these schools.  I examined her, and found that the little girl could hold her own with many of larger growth.  ‘Did she go to school to-day?’ asked I.  ‘No,’ was the answer, ’she has not been for some time, as she was beginning to get quite a serious curvature of the spine; so now she goes regularly to a gymnastic doctor!’”