the name has appeared excepting Sheikh Nasif el Yazijy.  Schools have been discouraged, and learning, which migrated with the Arabs into Spain, has never returned to its Eastern home.  There are in every Moslem town and city common schools, for every Moslem boy must be taught to read the Koran; but with the exception of the Egyptian school of the Jamea el Azhar in Cairo, there had not been up to 1867 for years even a high school under native auspices, in the Arabic-speaking world.  But what the Turks have discouraged and the Arab Moslems have failed to do, is now being done among the nominal Christian sects, and chiefly by foreign educators.  During the past thirty years a great work in educating the Arab race in Syria has been done by the American Missionaries.  Their Seminary in Abeih, on Mount Lebanon, has trained multitudes of young men, who are now scattered all over Syria and the East, and are making their influence felt.  Other schools have sprung up, and the result is, that the young men and women of Syria are now talking about the “Asur el Jedid,” or “New Age of Syria,” by which they mean an age of education and light and advancement.  The Arabic journal, above referred to, is owned by the Turkish government, or rather subsidized by it, and its editor is a talented young Greek of considerable poetic ability.  It is not often that he ventures to speak out boldly on such a theme as education, but the pressure from the people upon the Governor-General was so great at the time, that he gave permission to the editor to utter his mind.  I translate what he wrote, quite literally.

“There can be no doubt that the strength of every people and the source of their happiness, rest upon the diffusion of knowledge among them.  Science has been in every age the foundation of wealth and national progress, and since science and the arts are the forerunners of popular civilization, and the good of the masses and their elevation in the scale of intellectual and physical growth, therefore primary education is the necessary preparation for all scientific progress.  And in view of this, the providence of our most exalted government has been turned to the accomplishment of what has been done successfully in other lands, in the multiplication of schools and colleges.  And none can be ignorant of the great progress of science and education, under His August Imperial Excellency the Sultan, in Syria, where schools and printing presses have multiplied, especially in the city of Beirut and its vicinity.  For in Beirut and Mount Lebanon, there are nearly two thousand male pupils, large and small, in Boarding Schools, learning the Arabic branches and foreign languages, and especially the French language, which is more widely spread than any other.  The most noted of these schools are the French Lazarist School at Ain Tura in Lebanon, the American Seminary in Abeih, the Jesuit School at Ghuzir, and the Greek School at Suk el Ghurb, the most of the pupils being from the cities of Syria.