INFANT SCHOOLS IN HUNGARY.


The Austrian government has for some years been exerting itself, in
connection with the clergy, for the improvement and spread of
education in all the provinces of the empire, being anxious to do all
in their power to save the country from those excesses which are so
often found in connection with ignorance. As an Englishman, living in
friendly intercourse with members of the imperial family, and many
persons high in the administration, I am happy to avow my thorough
conviction, that such, pure and simple, is the object held in view in
the establishment of schools throughout the empire, and above all, in
that of the infant schools, which are now planted in every place where
there exists a sufficiency of population. I have all along taken a
deep interest in these little seminaries in the kingdoms of Bohemia
and Hungary, and am highly sensible of the liberal and humane
principles on which they are conducted.

Each contains from two to three hundred children, between one and a
half and five years of age, all of them being the offspring of the
humbler classes, and many of them orphans. All are instructed in the
same room, but classed apart; that is, the girls occupy one half of
the apartment, and the boys the other, leaving an avenue between them,
which is occupied by the instructors. The boys are under the
superintendence of a master, and the girls under that of a mistress.
Both, however, teach or attend to the various necessities of either,
as circumstances may require. Infants too young to learn, and those
who are sent, either because they are orphans, or because the extreme
poverty of the mother obliges her to do outwork, are amused with toys