 the
nineteenth century, - what did it consist of but here and there a few
microscopic oases in a vast, unbroken wilderness? The proportion of individuals
capable of intellectual sympathies or refined intercourse, to the mass of their
contemporaries, used to be so infinitesimal as to be in any broad view of
humanity scarcely worth mentioning. One generation of the world to-day
represents a greater volume of intellectual life than any five centuries ever
did before.
    There is still another point I should mention in stating the grounds on
which nothing less than the universality of the best education could now be
tolerated,« continued Dr. Leete, »and that is, the interest of the coming
generation in having educated parents. To put the matter in a nutshell, there
are three main grounds on which our educational system rests: first, the right
of every man to the completest education the nation can give him on his own
account, as necessary to his enjoyment of himself; second, the right of his
fellow-citizens to have him educated, as necessary to their enjoyment of his
society; third, the right of the unborn to be guaranteed an intelligent and
refined parentage.«
    I shall not describe in detail what I saw in the schools that day. Having
taken but slight interest in educational matters in my former life, I could
offer few comparisons of interest. Next to the fact of the universality of the
higher as well as the lower education, I was most struck with the prominence
given to physical culture, and the fact that proficiency in athletic feats and
games as well as in scholarship had a place in the rating of the youth.
    »The faculty of education,« Dr. Leete explained, »is held to the same
responsibility for the bodies as for the minds of its charges. The highest
possible physical, as well as mental, development of every one is the double
object of a curriculum which lasts from the age of six to that of twenty-one.«
    The magnificent health of the young people in the schools impressed me
strongly. My previous observations, not only of the notable personal endowments
of the family of my host, but of the people I had seen in my walks abroad, had
already suggested the idea that there must have been something like a general
improvement in the physical standard of the race since my day, and now, as I
compared these stalwart young men and fresh, vigorous maidens with the young
people I had seen in the schools of the nineteenth century, I was moved to
impart my thought to Dr. Leete. He listened with great interest to what I
