EDUCATION.

Though not the first among the states of the con-
federacy to introduce the system of universal educa-
tion, New-York

may, with some truth, be said to
have surpassed all the other states, in the liberality,
as well as the sound policy, of her provisions for its
maintenance. She has happily taken the due means
between relying wholly upon taxation on the one
hand, and upon accumulated funds on the other, for
the support of schools throughout her community.
She has avoided the error of applying all her legis-
lation to a single class of institutions; thus showing
a spirit above the petty jealousy that would annihi-
late the higher, and a sense and patriotism that im-
peratively forbade her to neglect the lower semina-
ries of learning. We do not find colleges and uni-
versities multiplied till one actually devours another,
while the mass of the community is without even
the ordinary rudiments of knowledge; nor do we
perceive, on the contrary, the avenues to classical at-
tainments so hedged about by the expensiveness, the
useless requisitions, and the forbidding ceremonials
which might appal the youth, whose treasures were
only of the mind, from attempting to gain the station
in society, for which his natural endowments had
qualified him.

There does not appear any ostentatious display
of extravagance in her expenditures for education,—
nor any of that niggardly parsimony which would
compel the people to buy a cheap commodity of
learning, sure, at the same time, that it must be a
poor one.

She has not hesitated, while prosecuting the most
magnificent schemes for improving the value of her
physical resources, to devise and execute plans far
more magnificent for the development of her intel-
lectual treasures. It has not been the spirit of her