leave the problem unsolved. That the supply of books has fully
kept pace with every other means of culture is patent enough. The
Congressional Library has risen in half the century from the shelves
of a closet to nearly four hundred thousand volumes--an accumulation
not surpassed in '76 by more than two libraries in Europe. It now
demands a separate edifice of its own, fit to stand by the side of
the fine structures which have within a generation recreated the
architectural aspect of the Federal metropolis with the most stately
government-offices in the world. Other public libraries, belonging to
colleges, schools, societies and independent endowments, show similar
progress. While none of them are equal, for reference, to some of the
great European establishments, they are generally better adapted to
the purposes of popular instruction. Their literary wealth is fresh
and available, little encumbered by lumber kept merely because old or
curious. Thus adjuncts, in some sort, of the newspaper and the common
school, their catalogues prove, as do the bookcases of private houses,
that the newest and deepest results of European thought and inquiry
are eagerly sought and used by our people.

[Illustration: THE SCHOOL-HOUSE OF THE PAST AND THE PRESENT.]

Our system of public schools, long classed among the "peculiar
institutions" of the country, is notably gaining in scope and
efficiency, be the English and Prussians right or not in their claim
of greater thoroughness and a higher curriculum. The different States
have engaged in a series of competitive experiments for the common
good, and cities and counties, in their sphere, labor to the same end.
Schools of higher grade are being multiplied, and the examination of
teachers, still lax enough, becomes more exact and faithful, as befits
the drill of an army of two hundred and forty thousand charged with