in all, eighteen thousand six hundred and thirty-nine, at a total cost of $61,585. When it is remembered that all or very nearly all of those thus instructed in the simplest elements of education, would have been otherwise deprived of the privilege but for the special character of these schools, and thus doomed to a life of ignorance, we may rightly estimate the great value of these schools to that community.

In the city of Brooklyn, the last year, nine evening schools afforded instruction to four thousand eight hundred and twenty-three persons, at an expense of $6,369.

The rules of the School Board of Cincinnati provide that evening schools may be opened and continued four months from the third Monday of October, in any district in that city where an average nightly attendance of thirty-five can be secured.

In St. Louis, before the civil war had so seriously interrupted and for a while closed the richly endowed public schools of that city, a successful commencement had been made towards the permanent establishment of evening schools. They were first established in the fall of 1859, to be conducted and supervised exclusively by the Board, without any assistance from any corporation. Previously to this, evening schools had been carried on under the auspices of private supervision, the School Board defraying one half of the whole expenses. Marked improvements are noticed in the evening schools under the management of the School Board, in several respects, especially in that of cost and regularity of attendance. The entire cost of these schools, as managed by the Board, was $2,040. They were kept sixteen weeks, and were attended by eight hundred and sixty-one persons, all of whom were over

twelve years of age, and the per cent. of attendance was eighty-five and one half.

The city of San Francisco, through its Board of Education, provide for evening schools, to be held every evening of the week except Saturday," "from seven and a quarter to nine and a half P. M." The Regulations provide that these schools shall commence on the first Monday of September, and close with the last Friday in April. They are for only male children from eight to eighteen. Over eighteen the payment of one dollar per month is required. From the Report of the Superintendent of Schools for 1861-2, it appears that these schools were first established in 1856, that after the manifestation of much indifference for the advantages by those for whose benefit it was established, for a while, "at no former time did the school show such proofs of healthy progress.'

The great end and aim sought to be accomplished in the establishment of evening schools is to enable those who would otherwise be absolutely unable to obtain it, the simplest elementary instruction in reading, writing, and arithmetic. By means of these schools it is sought to save a large class among us, and the community of which they are members, from just so much of ignorance and its consequent evils. It will not require any argument to demonstrate that if it is desirable to educate this unfortunate class among us, none can do this so well and none so cheaply as the Public School Board. The enactments of 1857 establish, beyond all question, the right and power of this City to establish such schools without any restrictions. Unless established by the action of the Board and in accordance to these provisions, they may not, legally, be

aided by funds from the public treasury, but must depend upon the precarious and limited support obtained from individual charity.

In nearly every other large city in this country, evening schools have become established and recognized as an essential part of their educational system. With them it is the concurrent and universal testimony that no expenditure of money is more advantageously made than in keeping up these schools through the four winter months. However abundant may be the educational facilities, there must always be, in a community like this, a large proportion who, while they most need them, are least able to avail themselves of the benefits of the public schools. Poverty, and the necessity of laboring for their daily food, compel many to leave school long before they have been able to acquire even a rudimentary education, and prevent others who have never enjoyed these advantages, in their earlier life, from now obtaining them. To all of these their evenings afford the only opportunities for obtaining the benefits of education. There are, also, in all large cities into which has poured any considerable proportion of foreign emigration, persons of both sexes past the school-age, who have had in childhood none of the advantages of education, but who are desirous and capable of receiving invaluable advantages from free public instruction, were the opportunity offered. When other cities throughout the continent have thus set the example, and demonstrated the value of free public evening schools, shall Boston remain any longer unconscious of her duties to the suffering classes in our midst? Shall we hesitate, by the best means within our reach, and as far as it is in our power, to repair

the wrong done in their youth to those among us who have not enjoyed the priceless blessings of education?

Having thus presented in review, as concisely as their importance would permit, those points connected with our public school system which chiefly claimed their notice, the Committee will only add, in conclusion, the expression of their confident belief that upon this great and beneficent system of free public instruction, of which our own public schools form an important part, alone can we rely for the successful development and growth of this Republic. At a moment when so large a portion of our territory is desolated by civil war, and drenched in fraternal blood, can we fail to estimate at their full value the priceless blessings we enjoy in the institutions bequeathed to us by our ancestors? Can we fail to recognize in our free public schools that solid foundation upon which alone a public State can be erected, secure against any and every storm that may assail it from without? Who can now sufficiently admire the forethought of those good and wise men who, almost coeval with the first settlement of New England, established our common schools,—who, “in the first clearings of the forest, by the side of the first dwellings which they erected for shelter, built the schoolhouse; and of the produce of the first crops planted for their precarious subsistence, apportioned a share for the maintenance of teachers"? Be it our task to see that the altar-lights of knowledge and piety which they have kindled, and of which we now enjoy the rich fruits, may never go out among us!

We cannot more fitly close this report than by the concluding portion of one made to our own State Board of Education by its secretary, which, although made nearly twenty years since, is even more appropriate to the present hour than it was at that period of its delivery:

Surely, never were the circumstances of a nation's birth so propitious to all that is pure in motive, and great in achievement, and redundant in the means of universal happiness. Never before was a land so consecrated to knowledge and virtue. Never were children and children's children so dedicated to God and to humanity, as in those forestsolitudes, that temple of the wide earth and the overarching heavens, girt around with the terrors of ocean and wilderness, afar from the pomp of cathedral and court, in the presence only of the conscious spirits of the creatures who made and of the Creator who accepted their vows, we, their descendants, were devoted to the cause of human freedom, to duty, to justice, to charity, to intelligence, to religion, by those holy men. The contemplation of these historic events brings more humiliation than pride. It demands of us whether we have retained our vantage-ground. It forces upon the conscience the solemn question, whether we have been faithful to duty. Stewards of a more precious treasure than was ever before committed to mortal hands, are we prepared to exhibit our lives and our history as the record of our stewardship? Have we prevented the growth of vice and pauperism amongst us, by seeking out every abandoned child within our borders, as the good shepherd seeks after the lambs lost from his flock;