Of All The Public Schools I Have Ever Seen - By Public Schools I Mean Schools For The People At Large Maintained At Public Cost - Those Of Massachusetts Are, I Think, The Best.

But of all the educational enactments which I ever read, that of the same State is, I should say, the worst.

In Texas now, of which as a State the people of Massachusetts do not think much, they have done it better: "A general diffusion of knowledge being essential to the preservation of the rights and liberties of the people, it shall be the duty of the legislature of this State to make suitable provision for the support and maintenance of public schools." So say the Texans; but then the Texans had the advantage of a later experience than any which fell in the way of the constitution- makers of Massachusetts.

There is something of the magniloquence of the French style - of the liberty, equality, and fraternity mode of eloquence - in the preambles of most of these constitutions, which, but for their success, would have seemed to have prophesied loudly of failure. Those of New York and Pennsylvania are the least so, and that of Massachusetts by far the most violently magniloquent. They generally commence by thanking God for the present civil and religious liberty of the people, and by declaring that all men are born free and equal. New York and Pennsylvania, however, refrain from any such very general remarks.

I am well aware that all these constitutional enactments are not likely to obtain much credit in England.

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