under the charge of the active and zealous Bishop M'Coskry. In Florida a diocese has been organized during the present year under promising circumstances. In Virginia, the Church has nearly recovered her former standing, and under eightyfour faithful pastors, with the superintendence of two excellent bishops, is a blessing to the country. The course of events throughout the American Church seems to promise that the neglect and devastation of former years will yet be repaired, and that the experience of the past will teach wisdom for the future.

This narrative cannot be more appropriately closed, than by recording an event still fresh in the memory of American Episcopalians. Bishop White, the good and great prelate, whose character this portion of the Catholic Church will ever regard with reverence, died on the 17th of July 1836, in the eighty-ninth year of his age, the sixtysixth of his ministry, and the fiftieth of his episcopate. He was raised up by Providence at a crisis when a person of his description was pre-eminently necessary. Steady and sober from his youth, he was prepared to advise in time of peril and excitement. Conciliatory in his measures, he was a man perfectly adapted to the promotion of harmony, at a time when diversity of opinions and high claims respecting the independence of dioceses, threatened

K

194 HISTORY OF THE AMERICAN CHURCH.

to rend the Church in pieces. Under the influènce of his blended meekness and wisdom, objections to the Liturgy and Articles melted away; and many a root of bitterness was plucked up and allowed to die. The General Convention is the offspring of his prudence and brotherly love; and from its first organization till the last meeting before his death, he was always at hand with his pacific counsels, superior to paltry manoeuvre and selfish policy. His humility and piety were evinced more by actions than by words; and he always acted on the maxim, that for any man to assume dictatorial airs, on the ground of ecclesiastical distinction, is in America most unwise, and in every country most unbecoming. Hence while he lived, he was venerated as a patriarch and loved as a man, and when he died, the event was regarded by the Church as an irreparable loss, and by the nation as a public calamity.

CHAPTER XII.

EDUCATION.

Arrival at Lexington.-Common schools in New England, New York, &c.-Benefits of common schools.-Inadequate remuneration of teachers.-Grammar schools.-Colleges.-Their number, students, classes, and teachers.-State Colleges.Theological Seminaries.—Their number, students, classes, and teachers.-Course of study in Kenyon College and Theological Seminaries.—Female schools.--St. Mary's Hall.—Republicanism of students.-General remarks on American education.

I ARRIVED at Lexington in May, 1834, and immediately entered upon my duties as professor of Sacred Literature in the Theological Seminary of the diocese of Kentucky. It is my object in the present chapter to present the reader with a concise view of education in America, and of theological education in particular.

If recent statistical reports may be credited, the common rudiments of education are more generally diffused in the United States than in England, but less generally than in Prussia. Yet between the

several states there is a great difference in regard to the means as well as the diffusion of education. In Massachusetts, for example, the laws have made ample provision for the instruction of young persons. Every district and every village in the state possesses the means of regular instruction in the elementary branches, and, where there is wealth to justify it, the further advantage of schools competent to the preparation of boys for college. The money to maintain these schools is not levied by the government, but granted at an annual meeting of the inhabitants of the several townships, and afterwards collected with the other taxes. The result of this system is visible in the high degree of intelligence possessed by all classes. Even in the humblest walks of life a citizen of Massachusetts will hardly be found incapable of reading and writing, or ignorant of grammar and arithmetic ; while there are thousands, who, through the instrumentality of the higher schools sustained by public expense, have acquired a respectable classical education. Throughout New England the same method of supporting schools is generally prevalent, viz. by a tax imposed by the people of the several districts upon themselves in conformity with the requisitions of the law. In Connecticut, however, the expense is met by a common fund, a method which is said to be less efficient than where the voluntary

principle is encouraged. In the state of New York a school fund of more than two millions of dollars has been raised by the sale of lands appropriated by the state to the purposes of education. Grants from this fund are allowed to those districts alone which have made some provision for themselves. In the year 1832, New York contained a population of about two millions, half a million of whom, (or one in four) were at school. None of the remaining states are equal to New York in this respect. Pennsylvania is still very backward, although active efforts are making to atone for past negligence. The states in which slavery prevails are likewise greatly inferior to the northern portions of the Union, both as to the means and the character of education. In the free states of the north-west large tracts of land have been set aside for school purposes, from the first settlement of the country. In Ohio, which sixty years ago was a perfect wilderness, the school system has been thus brought into full operation, and promises before long to equal that of New York.

The schools above referred to, it will be recollected, are, with some exceptions in New England, of a purely elementary kind, conveying little instruction beyond reading, writing, grammar, geography, and arithmetic. Yet, such as they are, they constitute the strongest bulwark of the demo