versity, which shall embrace departments of agriculture, mechanic arts, and mining, to be controlled by a board of regents, whose duties shall be prescribed by law.

SEC. 5. The legislature shall have power to establish normal schools and such different grades of schools, from the primary department to the university, as, in their discretion, they may deem necessary; and all professors in said university or teachers in said schools, of whatever grade, shall be required to take and subscribe to the oath as prescribed in article sixteen of this constitution. No professor or teacher who fails to comply with the provisions of any law framed in accordance with the provisions of this section shall be entitled to receive any portion of the public moneys set apart for school purposes.

SEC. 6. The legislature shall provide a special tax of one-half of one mill on the dollar of all taxable property in the State in addition to the other means provided, for the support and maintenance of said university and common schools: Provided, That at the end of ten years they may reduce said tax to one-quarter of one mill on each dollar of taxable property.

SEC. 7. The governor, secretary of state, and superintendent of public instruction shall, for the first four years, and until their successors are elected and qualified, constitute a board of regents to control and manage the affairs of the university and the funds of the same, under such regulations as may be provided by law. But the legislature shall, at its regular session next preceding the expiration of the term of office of the said board of regents, provide for the election of a new board and define their duties.

SEC. 8. The board of regents shall, from the interest accruing from the first funds which come under their control, immediately organize and maintain the said mining department in such manner as to make it the most effective and use ful: Provided, That all the proceeds of the public lands donated by act of Congress approved July second, eighteen hundred and sixty-two, for a college for the benefit of agriculture, the mechanic arts, and including military tactics, shall be invested by the said board of regents in a separate fund, to be appropriated exclusively to the benefit of the first named departments to the university, as set forth in section four above; and the legislature shall provide that if, through neglect or any other contingency, any portion of the fund so set apart shall be lost or misappropriated, the State of Nevada shall replace said amount so lost or misappropriated in said fund, so that the principal of said fund shall forever remain undiminished.

SEC. 9. No sectarian instruction shall be imparted or tolerate in any school or university that may be established under this constitution

NEBRASKA.

Organized as a Territory in 1854. Area, 63,300 square miles. Admitted into the Union March, 1867.

Its constitution has the following article on

EDUCATION.

SECTION 1. The principal of all funds arising from the sale or other disposition of lands, or other property granted or intrusted to this State for educational and religious purposes, shall forever be preserved inviolate and undiminished; and the income arising therefrom shall be faithfully applied to the specific objects of the original grants or appropriations. The legislature shall make such provisions, by taxation or otherwise, as, with the income arising from the school trust fund, will secure a thorough and efficient system of common schools throughout the State; but no religious sect or sects shall ever have any exclusive right or control of any part of the school funds of this State.

SEC. 2. The university lands, school lands, and all other lands which have been acquired by the Territory of Nebraska, or which may hereafter be acquired by the State of Nebraska for educational or school purposes, shall not be aliened or sold for a less sum than five dollars per acre.

The School Reforms and Extension, inaugurated by Frederick II. in his adoption of the Real School of Hecker, and converting the same into a Seminary for Teachers; his recognition of Teaching as an Art, in which apprenticeship should be served under experienced masters; and his careful organization of Elementary Schools in Silesia, are facts of immense significance in the History of Public Instruction. Their direct influence on the school systems of the United States, and of Austria, are easily traced. [Barnard's Nor. Schools.] FROM LETTERS ON SILESIA, WRITTEN IN THE YEARS 1800 AND 1801.* LETTER XLII.-Schools and Seminaries for the Instruction of Youth in Silesia-System of Education established by Frederick II. upon the recommendation of Felbiger.

BERLIN, March 7th, 1801.

I HAVE promised in this letter to give you some account of the institutions in the province of Silesia for the education of youth. The university at Breslau and the academy of nobles at Liegnitz I need not mention, having noticed them in my letters at the time when we visited those places. Besides these, there are what we call grammar schools, where Latin is taught in almost every town of the province, and usually in connection with some church or convent. But the arrangements and regulations of the trivial schools, as they are here called-schools destined for that elementary instruction which ought to be diffused over the whole mass of the people-particularly deserve your attention, because you may, perhaps, as a native of New England, entertain the prejudice, that your own country is the only spot on earth where this object is rightly managed, and where the arts of reading and writing are accomplishments almost universally possessed.

Probably no country in Europe could so strongly contest our preëminence in this respect as Germany, and she, for this honorable distinction, is indebted principally to Frederick II.; to the zeal with which he pursued the purpose of spreading useful knowledge among all classes of his subjects, and to the influence of his example and of his success even beyond the limits of his own dominions. To enter upon this topic, with the details of which it is susceptible, might, perhaps, not amuse you, and would lead me too far from my subject, I shall, therefore, confine myself to the measures he adopted and the system he introduced in this particular into Silesia.

At the time of his conquest education had seldom been made an object of the concern of governments, and Silesia, like the rest of Europe, was but wretchedly provided either with schools or teachers. In the small towns and villages the schoolmasters were so poorly paid, that they

* First published in consecutive numbers of the Port Folio, Philadelphia, in 1803, and collected and republished in a volume of 387 pages, in London in 1804. The letter on the School System of Silesia was copied, with commendation as an example to the English Government, in the Edinburgh Review for October, 1804, and in the London Quarterly Journal of Education for January,

could not subsist without practicing some other travesides their occupation as instructors, and they usually united the character of the village fiddler with that of the village schoolmaster. Even of these there were so few, that the children of the peasants in general, throughout the province, were left untaught. This was epecially the case in Upper lesia. Frederick issued an ordinance, that a school should be kept in every village, and that a competent subsistence should be provided for the schoolmaster, by the joint contribution of the lord of the village and of the tenants themselves. The superintendence of the schools was prescribed as the duty of the clergy.

But in order that this ordinance might have its due execution, it was necessary to form the teachers themselves properly qualified to give useful instruction. This was effected by the persevering intelligence and zeal of a man by the name of Felbiger, an Augustine monk, belonging to a convent at Sagan; a man, says a Silesian historian, whom a great par of Germany must thank for a revolution, not less important, though of slower progress and milder character, than that which, two centuries and a half earlier, was accomplished by another monk of the same orderby Luther.

Felbiger, after spending some years at Berlin to obtain a perfect knowledge of the best method of instruction practiced in the schools there, returned to Sagan, and made the convent to which he belonged a seminary for young ecclesiastics and candidates as schoolmasters to ac quire the knowledge of the improved mode of teaching. Several other institutions of the same kind were, in due time, established at Breslau, Glatz, and other places, upon his principles, and conducted by persons whom he had formed. To defray the expenses necessary for the support of these seminaries, a fund is raised, consisting of one quarter's salary, which every Catholic curate is obliged to pay upon being first settled in a parsonage.

With each of these seminaries are connected certain schools, where the young candidates for the clerical or teaching office are obliged to attend and observe the practice of the method, the theory of which they learn at the seminaries themselves. The clergy are required, no less than the teachers, to go through this process, because the superintendence over the teachers is intrusted to them. No young man can be admitted to either of the offices without an attestation of his qualification from one of the seminaries.

After all these preparatory measures had been carried into effect, an ordinance was published in the year 1765 prescribing the mode of teaching as adopted in the seminaries, and the manner in which the clergy should superintend the efficacious establishment of the system. The regulations of this ordinance prove the earnestness with which the king of Prussia labored to spread the benefits of useful know.edge among his subjects. The teachers are directed to give plain instruction, and upon objects applicable to the ordinary concerns of life; not merely to load

the memory of their scholars with words, but to make things intelligible to their understanding; to habituate them to the use of their own reason, by explaining every object of the lesson so that the children themselves may be able to explain it upon examination. The candidates for schoolkeeping must give specimens of their ability, by teaching at one of the schools connected with the seminary, in the presence of the professors at the seminary, that they may remark and correct any thing defective in the candidate's method. If one school suffices for more than one village, neither of them must be more than half a German mile distant from it in the flat country, nor more than a quarter of a mile in the mountainous parts. The school tax must be paid by the lord and tenants without distinction of religions. In the towns the school must be kept the whole year round. It is expected that one month shall suffice to make a child know the letters of the alphabet; that in two it shall be able to join them; and in three to read. The boys must all be sent to school, from their sixth to their thirteenthar, whether the parents are able to pay the school tax or not. For poor, the school money must be raised by collections. Every parent or guardian who neglects to send his child or pupil to school, without sufficient cause, is obliged to pay a double school tax, for which the guardians shall have no allowance. Every curate must examine weekly the children of the school in his parish. A general examination must be held annually, by the deans of the districts, of the schools within their respective precincts; and a report of the condition of the schools, the talents and attention of the schoolmasters, the state of the buildings, and of attendance by the children, made to the office of the vicar-general, who must transmit all these reports to the royal domain offices. From these, orders are issued to the respective landraths to correct the abuses and supply the deficiencies indicated in the reports. This system was at first prepared only for the Catholic schools; but it was afterwards adopted, for the most part, by most of the Lutheran consistories. Its truly respectable author, Felbiger, was, in the sequel, with the consent of Frederick, invited to Vienna by the Empress Maria Theresa, and her son Joseph II., who appointed him director of the normal schools or seminaries in all the Austrian dominions. His regulations have been introduced and are acted upon in almost all the Catholic countries of Germany.

In Silesia they had at first many old prejudices to contend with. The indolence of the Catholic clergy was averse to the new and troublesome duty imposed on them. Their zeal was alarmed at the danger arising from this dispersion of light to the stability of their church. They considered alike the spirit of innovation and the spirit of inquiry as their natural enemies. Besides this, the system still meets resistance from the penurious parsimony and stubborn love of darkness prevailing in some parts of the province. Many villages neglect the support of their schools; many individuals, upon false pretexts, forbear sending their children to school for the sake of saving the tax. The compulsive measures and the

penalties prescribed by the ordinance are used seldom and with reluc tance. The benevolent design has not been accomplished to the full extent of which it was susceptible; but as far as it has been accom. plished its operation has been a blessing. That its effects have been very extensive is not to be doubted, when we compare the number of schools throughout the province in the year 1752 when they amounted only to one thousand five hundred and fifty-two, with that in the year 1798 when they were more than three thousand five hundred. The consequences of a more general diffusion of knowledge are attested by many other facts equally clear. Before the seven years' war, there had scarcely ever been more than one periodical journal or gazette published in the province at one time. There are now no less than seventeen newspapers and magazines which appear by the day, the week, the month, or the quarter, many of them upon subjects generally useful, and containing valuable information and instruction for the people. At the former pe riod there were but three booksellers, and all these at Breslau. There are now six in that capital, and seven dispersed about in the other cities. The number of printing-presses and of bookbinders has increased in the same proportion.

Dr. Johnson, in his Life of Watts, has bestowed a just and exalted encomium upon him for not disdaining to descend from the pride of genius and the dignity of science to write for the wants and the capacities of children. "Every man acquainted," says he, "with the common principles of human actions, will look with veneration on the writer, who is at one time combating Locke, and at another time making a catechism for children in their fourth year." But how much greater still is the tribute of admiration irresistibly drawn from us, when we behold an absolute monarch, the greatest general of his age, eminent as a writer in the highest departments of literature, descending, in a manner, to teach the alphabet to the children of his kingdom; bestowing his care, his persevering assiduity, his influence and his power, in diffusing plain and useful knowledge among his subjects; in opening to their minds the first and most important pages of the book of science; in filling the whole atmosphere they breathed with that intellectual fragrance which had before been imprisoned in the vials of learning, or inclosed within the gardens of wealth! Immortal Frederick! when seated on the throne of Prussia, with kneeling millions at thy feet, thou wast only a king. On the fields of Leuthen, of Zorndorf, of Rosbach, of so many other scenes of human blood and anguish, thou wast only a hero. Even in thy rare and glorious converse with the muses and with science, thou wast only a philosopher, an historian, a poet; but in this generous ardor, this active and enlightened zeal for the education of thy people, thou wast truly great-the father of thy country-the benefactor of mankind.

Yours, &c.