ness, and excellence of the present well-adjusted system is felt in all the classes, but is most perceptible in the lower divisions. Those who remember the schools under the old system cannot fail to have noticed these vital improvements in regard to the discipline and progress of the lower divisions of the Grammar Schools. The increased responsibilities of the assistant teachers, who now teach in separate class-rooms, and have thus been made less immediately dependent upon the master, have naturally tended to lessen the number of weak and incompetent teachers, and have gradually led to a very general and well-marked progress in their classes. The frequent visits and examinations of the Committee have promoted these advances. They have been the more evident and important in those Grammar Schools where the masters of the schools have initiated and continued a thorough system of semi-annual examinations of all the classes and divisions under their charge. This system is not yet so general, nor in all cases so thorough as it should be, and only where it is done by the master in person, and not by deputy, can it be regarded as complete.

With these manifest benefits derived from this change, we may, without fear of reproach on the score of parsimony, or illiberal economy, refer to another demonstrable superiority of the present system over that which is now remembered only as of the past, the almost inconceivable extent to which it lessens the annual expenses of our public schools. If our school expenses, instead of being as they have been at times, one third of the total expenditures of Boston, are now hardly one seventh, we may attribute it in part

at least to the fact that the present system is so much less expensive than the one it succeeded. Under the old system the average number of pupils in each Grammar School was about four hundred. Each boys' school was taught by two masters, two ushers, and four female assistants. Each girls' school was taught by two masters and six female assistants. In the year 1862 there were a little more than six thousand five hundred boys, and six thousand girls, in the Grammar Schools of this city. Under the old system there would have been sixteen schools for boys and fifteen schools for girls, with a total of sixty-two masters, thirty-two ushers, and one hundred and fifty-four female assistants. At present salaries the annual costs for their payment would have been $225,300. The actual cost to the City for the salaries of Grammar School teachers that year, was $166,700. This exhibits a difference of nearly $ 60,000 in a single year, in favor of the present system. We can make only a proximate estimate as to what must be the saving in the cost of twenty Grammar schoolhouses instead of thirty-one, with their annual expenses for warming and other incidental costs. It would, however, involve an average annual saving hardly less in amount than that in salaries. It is certainly within bounds to estimate that the present system costs less by $100,000 per annum than the old one would have cost, while it is far more efficient, and is productive of better results.

For nearly ten years the Grammar Schools of this city have enjoyed the benefits of the new system without interruption. It has now become so thoroughly incorporated as a fundamental and essential element in our school organization that almost

the memory of the former arrangement has passed away. Few among us can at this day realize the earnest, persistent, and for a long while successful, resistance once made to a system now universally conceded to be at once simple, efficient, and philosophical.

During the year important changes have been made in the list of text-books in the Grammar Schools. At the commencement of the year the introduction to Bullions's "Analytical and Practical Grammar" was substituted for Tower's Elementary Grammar," and subsequently Kerl's Grammars were adopted in place of Bullions's. Revised editions of the Arithmetics and Reading-books were substituted for those in use; Adams's Spelling-Book for advanced classes was added to the list, and other changes suggested by the report of the Text-Book Committee were adopted. Appended may be found this report in full, with the orders as adopted by the vote of the Board.

LATIN SCHOOL.

Enjoying increased opportunity for instruction in the enlargement of the edifice occupied jointly with the English High School, the Latin School during the past year has witnessed a corresponding increase in the number of its pupils. The prosperity and reputation of this, the most ancient of all the public schools of this city, afford the most gratifying evidence that there is no abatement in the excellence and thoroughness of the instruction it affords to its pupils. The classic scholarship of Boston to a large extent, certainly nearly all that is indigenous, claims this institution as its parent. The sons of

the rich and the poor may here alike enjoy privileges for laying the foundations of a good classical education, the like of which is probably to be had nowhere else in the country.

ENGLISH HIGH SCHOOL.

The object of this school is to carry to a higher point than can be reached in our Grammar Schools the course of study the foundations of which are laid in the latter. Besides a higher course of English studies, including the higher branches of mathematics and history, attention is here paid to the two modern languages deemed most important for commercial purposes, French and Spanish.

For more detailed information concerning the Latin and English High Schools, the Committee refer to the reports of the committees of these schools, as well as to the statistical tables annexed to this Report.

GIRLS' HIGH AND NORMAL SCHOOL.

This school, originally established in 1852, as a Normal School for girls, was subsequently, in 1855, so far modified as to become, more strictly speaking, a High School. All the higher branches usually taught in High Schools, including the Latin, French, and German languages, are contained in the list of studies, though the branches taught are not all required studies. Combined with these are exercises particularly adapted for the instruction of those who wish to become teachers.

As a High School, furnishing to the daughters of our poor

est and humblest citizens an education equal in all respects to the best that can be obtained in the most expensive private school, we can hardly overestimate the benefits conferred by it upon the public. As an experiment, of at first supposed doubtful expediency, its success has surpassed the most sanguine expectations of its friends. A constantly increasing number yearly go out from this school, fitted by the thorough and careful instruction there received, to become in turn so many centres from which shall radiate, in their own social circles, improving and elevating influences upon society. By these means an improved social culture is steadily and constantly diffused from this central source, spreading wide its elevating and ennobling influences. All who derive from this school the benefits of thorough and matured instruction, though they may not all, or even the larger portion, become teachers in the restricted sense of that term, may yet all become teachers in another and hardly less important sphere. The means of social improvement which the hundred yearly graduates of the Girls' High and Normal School carry out with them to their own several homes, must be regarded as a large and very important part of its invaluable work. In their future homes the children of such parents cannot fail to receive, in their turn, incalculable advantages derived from lessons taught to their mothers in their youth.

As a Normal School, in supplying a large and yearly increasing number of able, well taught and accomplished teachers for the schools of this city, its success has been all that could have been reasonably anticipated. Much has been already done in this direction. A very large proportion of all the teachers