different classes for the different branches of his instruction, was prevalent; since 1820 this system has been gradually superseded by the Classensystem, which keeps the pupil in the same class for all his work. The course in each of the three lower classes is of one year, in each of the three higher of two years, making nine in all; it being calculated that a boy should enter the gymnasium when he is nine or ten years old, and leave it for the university when he is eighteen or nineteen.

The Lehrplan, or plan of work, is fixed for all Gymnasien by ministerial authority, as in France and Italy. It is far, however, from being a series of detailed programmes as in those countries. What it does is to fix the matters of instruction, the number of hours to be allotted to them, the gradual development of them from the bottom of the school to the top. Within the limits of the general organisation of study thus established, great freedom is left to the teacher, and great variety is to be found in practice.

Some years ago the hours of work were 32 in the week. This was found too much, and since 1856, in the lowest class of a gymnasium there are 28 hours of regular school work in the week, in the five higher classes there are 30 hours. The school hours are in the morning from 7 to about 11 in summer, from 8 to about 12 in winter; in the afternoon they are from 2 to 4 all the year round. As in France, there is but one half-holiday in the week, and it is in the middle of the week.

Latin has ten hours a week given to it in all five classes below prima, and eight in prima. Greek begins in quarta, and thenceforward has six hours a week in each class, by which the reader will at once see that we are no longer in France or Italy, but in a country whose schools treat the study of Greek as seriously as the best schools among ourselves. The mother tongue (and here we quit the practice of English schools) has two hours a week in all classes below prima, and three in prima. But in the two lowest classes it is always taught in connection with Latin and by the same teacher, and time may, if necessary, be taken from Latin to give to it. Arithmetic or mathematics

have four hours a week in secunda and prima, three in quinta, quarta, and tertia, and four again in the lowest class. French begins in quinta, and is the only modern language except their own which the boys learn as part of the regular school work; it has three hours a week in quinta, and two in all the classes above. Many gymnasiums offer their pupils the opportunity of learning English or Italian, but as an extra matter. Geography and history have two hours a week in sexta and quinta, and thenceforward three hours. The natural sciences get two hours in prima and one in secunda; in the rest of the school they are the most movable part of the work, the school authorities having it in their power to take time from them to give to arithmetic, geography, and history, or to add time to them in places where there is no Realschule and the boys in the middle of the gymnasium wish to study the natural sciences in preference to Greek. Drawing is a part of the regular school work in the three lower classes of the school, and has two hours a week. Sexta and quinta have three hours a week of the writing master.

Every class has religious instruction; sexta and quinta for three hours a week, the four higher classes for two. All the boys learn singing and gymnastics, and all who are destined for the theological faculty at the university learn in secunda and prima Hebrew; but these three matters do not come into the regular school hours.

I have said that in places where there is no Realschule boys in the middle division of a gymnasium may substitute other studies for that of Greek. Where there is a Realschule accessible, this is not permitted; and in the upper division of a gymnasium it is nowhere permitted. In general, the gymnasium is steadily to regard the allgemeine wissenschaftliche Bildung of the pupil, the formation of his mind and of his powers of knowledge, without prematurely taking thought for the practical applicability of what he studies. It is expressly forbidden to give this practical or professional turn to the studies of a pupil in the highest forms of a gymnasium, even when he is destined for the army.

Progymnasiums are merely gymnasiums without their higher classes. Most progymnasiums have the lower and

middle divisions of a gymnasium, four classes; some have only the lower division and half of the middle, three classes; some, again, have all the classes except prima. The progymnasium follows, so far as it has the same classes, the Lehrplan of the gymnasium. In the small towns, where it is not possible to maintain at once a progymnasium and a Realschule, the progymnasium has often parallel classes for classical and for non-classical studies. But in general the tendency within the last five years has been for the progymnasium to develope itself into the full gymnasium, and when I was at Berlin Dr. Wiese, a member of the Council of Education there, to whom I am indebted for much valuable assistance, pointed out to me on the map a number of places, scattered all about the Prussian dominions, where this process was either just completed or still going on.

*

To reform the old methods of teaching the classics, to reduce their preponderance, to make school studies bear more directly upon the wants of practical life, and to aim at imparting what is called 'useful knowledge,' were projects not unknown to the seventeenth and eighteenth century as well as to ours. Comenius, a Moravian by birth, who in 1641 was invited to England in order to remodel the schools here, and in the following century Rousseau in France and Basedow in Germany, promulgated, with various degrees of notoriety and success, various schemes with one or other of these objects. The Philanthropinum of Dessau, an institution established in pursuance of them, was an experiment which made much noise in its day. It was broken up about 1780, but its impulse and the ideas which set this impulse in motion, continued, and bear fruit in the Realschulen. The name Realschule was first used at Halle; a school with that title was established there by Christoph Semler, in 1738. This Realschule did not last long, but it was followed by others in different parts of the country. They took a long time to hit their right line and to succeed; it is said to be

* Dr. Wiese has written an interesting work on the English public schools, but his book on those of Prussia, Das höhere Schulwesen in Preussen; Berlin, 1864 (pp. 740), is a mine of the fullest, most authentic information on the subject of which it treats, and is indispensable for all who have to study this closely.

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only from 1822 that the first really good specimen dates. This one was at Berlin, and though it did not begin to work thoroughly well till 1822, it had been founded in 1747, and had been in existence ever since that time. Its founder's name was Johann Hecker, who was a Berlin parish-clergyThe Government began to occupy itself with the Realschulen in 1832, and as the growth of industry and the spread of the modern spirit gave them more and more importance, a definite plan and course had to be framed for them, as for the Gymnasien. This was done in 1859.* Realschulen were distinguished as of three kinds; Realschulen of the first rank, Realschulen of the second rank, and higher Burgher Schools. For Realschulen of the first rank the number and system of classes was the same as that for the Gymnasien; the full course was of nine years. The Lehrplan fixes a rather greater number of hours of school work for them than the Gymnasien have; 30 for the lowest class, 31 for the class next above, 32 for each of the four others.

All three kinds of Realschulen are for boys destined to callings for which university studies are not required. But Latin is still obligatory in Realschulen of the first rank, and in the three lower classes of these schools it has more time allotted to it than any other subject. In the highest class it comes to its minimum of time, three hours; and in this class, and in secunda, the time given to mathematics and the natural sciences amounts altogether to eleven hours a week. As the Realschule leads, not to the university, but to business, English becomes obligatory in it as well as French. French, however, has most time allotted to it. Religious instruction has the same number of hours here as in the Gymnasien. Drawing, which in the Gymnasien ceases after quarta to be a part of the regular school work, has in the Realschule two hours a week in each of the five classes below prima, and three in prima.

It is found that after quarta, that is, after three years of school, many of the Realschule boys leave; and an attempt

*By the Unterrichts- und Prüfungsordnung für die Realschulen und die höheren Bürgerschulen, of the 6th of October in that year.

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is therefore made to render the first three years' course as substantial and as complete in itself as possible.

The Realschulen of the second rank have the six classes of those of the first; but they are distinguished from them by not having Latin made obligatory, by being free to make their course a seven years' course instead of a nine, and, in general, by being allowed a considerable latitude in varying their arrangements to meet special local wants. A general, not professional, mental training, is still the aim of the Realschule of the first rank, in spite of its not preparing for the university. A lower grade of this training, with an admixture of directly practical and professional aims, satisfies the Realschule of the second rank.

Where a gymnasium and a Realschule are united in a single establishment, under one direction, the classes sexta and quinta may be common to both, but above quinta the classes must be separate.

The term Bürgerschule was long used interchangeably with that of Realschule. The regulations of 1859 have assigned the name of higher Burgher School to that third class of Realschulen, which has not the complete system of six forms that the Gymnasien and the other two kinds of Realschulen have. The higher Burgher School stands, therefore, to the Realschule in the same relation in which the Progymnasium stands to the Gymnasium. Some Burgher Schools have as many as five classes, only lacking prima. The very name of the Bürgerschulen indicates that in the predominance of a local and municipal character, and in the smaller share given to classics, they follow the line of the Realschulen of the second order. Still Latin has three or four hours a week in all the best of these schools. They are, however, the least classical of all the higher schools; but several of them, in small places where there cannot be two schools, have gymnasial classes parallel with the real classes, just as certain Gymnasien, in like circumstances, have real classes parallel with their classical classes.

As the elementary schools pursue a course of teaching which is not specially designed as a preparation for the higher schools, it has become a common practice to establish