Then there are in Beirut the Greek School, the school of the Greek Catholic Patriarch, the Native National College of Mr. Betrus el Bistany, and there are also nearly a thousand girls in the French Lazarist School, the Prussian Protestant Deaconesses, the American Female Seminary and Mrs. Thompson’s British Syrian School, and other female schools.  And here we must mention that all of these schools, (excepting the Druze Seminary,) are in the hands of Christians, and the Mohammedans of Beirut have not a single school other than a common school, although in Damascus and Tripoli they have High Schools which are most successful, and many of their children in Beirut, are learning in Christian schools, a fact which we take as a proof of their anxiety to attain useful knowledge, although they have not as yet done aught to found schools of their own.  And though the placing of their children in Christian schools is a proof of the love and fellowship between these two sects in this glorious Imperial Age, we cannot but say that it would be far more befitting to the honor and dignity of the Mussulmen to open schools for their own children as the other sects are doing.  And lately the Imperial Governor of Syria has been urging them to this step, and they are now planning the opening of such a school, which will be a means of great benefit and glory to Islam.”

The editor then states that the great want of Syria is a school where a high practical education can be given, and says:—­

“We now publish the glad tidings to the sons of Syria that such a College has just been opened in Syria, in the city of Beirut, by the liberality of good men in America and England, and called the “Syria Protestant College.”  It is to accommodate eventually one thousand pupils, will have a large library and scientific apparatus, including a telescope for viewing the stars, besides cabinets of Natural History, Botany, Geology and Mineralogy.  It will teach all Science and Art, Law and Medicine, and we doubt not will meet the great want of our native land.”

Five years have passed since the above was written.  Since that time the number of pupils in the various schools in Beirut has trebled, and new educational edifices of stately proportions are being built or are already finished, in every part of the city.  It may be safely said that the finest structures in Beirut are those built for educational purposes.  The Latins have the Sisters of Charity building of immense proportions, the Jesuit establishment, the Maronite schools, and the French Sisters of Nazareth Seminary, which is to be one of the most commanding edifices of the East.  The Greeks have their large High School, and the Papal-Greeks, or Greek-Catholics their lofty College.  The Moslems have built with funds drawn from the treasury of the municipality, a magnificent building for their Reshidiyeh, while the Protestants have the imposing edifices occupied by the American Female Seminary, the British Syrian Schools, the Prussian Deaconesses Institute, and most extensive and impressive of all, the new edifices of the Syrian Protestant College at Ras Beirut.