and constitution, and follow the Lehrplan, fixed by public authority for the five classes of public secondary schools, and by so doing obtain the status and privilege of such schools. Are there not a great many important establishments, then, the reader may next ask, which do not care to get this status, but prefer to be independent? I answer: No school in Prussia can be independent, in the sense of owing no account to any one for the teacher it employs, or the way in which it is conducted; for every school there is a verordnete Aufsichtsgewalt, an ordained authority of supervision. But private persons are no doubt free to open establishments of their own, give them a constitution of their own, and follow a Lehrplan of their own. There are ten large private schools in Berlin for the class of boys who go to secondary schools; these private schools, however, have the public schools in view, and take boys whose parents do not like to send them very young to the great public schools, classical or non-classical; but when these boys are ready for the middle division of the public Gymnasium or Realschule, they pass on there. These private schools are merely preparatory schools for the public schools, and accordingly they are organised as progymnasiums and as higher Burgher Schools. They represent no anti-public-school feeling, no rival line in education. Two remarkable institutions which did not prepare for the public schools, which gave a complete course of secondary instruction of their own arranging, and which were private schools, écoles libres, in the full sense of the term, the Plamannsche Anstalt and the Cauersche Anstalt,— existed at Berlin not long ago, but they exist there no longer. Experiments of the same kind are being tried elsewhere. The Victoria Institut, at Falkenberg, is a prominent specimen of them; it is a regular private boarding school, charging 400 thalers (607.) a year, and it professes to give the training either of the gymnasiums or of the Realschulen, whichever the pupil prefers. The English generally know more of schools of this kind than of the public schools in Germany, because this kind of private school has a boarding establishment and the public schools have not, and a foreign parent generally looks out for a school with a boarding

establishment. For the most part he is no judge at all of schools on their real merits; he sends his son to a foreign school that he may learn the modern languages, and the boy will learn these at a private school just as much as at a public one. But the Germans themselves undoubtedly prefer their public schools. An attendance in the public secondary schools of 74,000 pupils, in a population of 18,500,000, which is Prussia's population, shows that the Prussians prefer them. And it is the same in other German countries.

CHAPTER XVII.

PREPONDERANCE OF PUBLIC SCHOOLS. THE ABITURIENTEN

EXAMEN.

PREFERENCE FOR PUBLIC SCHOOLS-THE LEAVING EXAMINATION (ABITURIENTENEXAMEN); ITS HISTORY — PRESENT PLAN OF THE LEAVING EXAMINATION IN

GYMNASIEN OBJECT PROPOSED BY THE FOUNDERS OF THE LEAVING EXAMINATION-LEAVING EXAMINATION IN REALSCHULEN-EXAMINATIONS OF PASSAGE.

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BELIEVE that the public schools are preferred, in Prus

sia, on their merits. The Prussians are satisfied with them, and are proud of them, and with good reason; the schools have been intelligently planned to meet their intelligent wants. But the preponderance of the public schools is further secured by the establishment in connexion with them of the leaving examinations' (Abiturientenprüfungen, Maturitätsprüfungen, Entlassungsprüfungen, Abgangsprüfungen), on which depends admission to the universities, to special schools (Fachschulen) like the Gewerbe-Institut or the Bauakademie, and to the civil and military service of the State. The learned professions can only be reached through the universities, so the access to these professions depends on the leaving examination. The pupils of private tutors or private schools can present themselves for this examination, but it is held at the public schools, it turns upon the studies of the upper forms of the public schools, and it is conducted in great part by their teachers. A public schoolboy undoubtedly presents himself for it with an advantage; and its object undoubtedly is, not the illusory one of an examination-test as in our public service it is employed, but the sound one of ensuring as far as possible that a youth shall pass a certain number of years under the best school-teaching of his country. This really trains him, which the mere application of an examination-test does not; but an examination-test is wisely used in conjunction with this training, to take care that a

youth has really profited by it. No nation that did not honestly feel it had made its public secondary schools the best places of training for its middle and upper classes, could institute the leaving examination I am going to describe; but Prussia has a right to feel that she has made hers this, and therefore she had a right to institute this examination. It forms an all-important part of the secondary instruction of that country, and I hope the reader will give me his attention while I describe it.

Before 1788 admission to the Prussian universities was a very easy affair. You went to the dean of the faculty in which you wished to study; you generally brought with you a letter of recommendation from the school you left; the dean asked you a few questions and ascertained that you knew Latin; then you were matriculated. The Ober-Schulcollegium, which was in 1788 the authority at the head of Prussian public instruction, perceiving that from the insufficiency of the entrance examination the universities were cumbered with unprepared and idle students, determined to try and cure this state of things. In December of that year a royal edict was issued to the public schools and universities directing that the public schools should make their boys undergo an examination before they proceeded to the university; and that the universities should make the boys who came up to them from private schools undergo an examination corresponding to that of the public schoolboys. Every one who underwent the examination was to receive a certificate of his ripeness or unripeness for university studies (Zeugniss der Reife, Zeugniss der Unreife). The candidates declared to be unripe might still enter the university if their parents chose; but it was hoped that, guided by this test, their parents would keep them at school till they were properly prepared, or else send them into some other line. No plan of examination was prescribed, but the certificate was to record, under the two heads of languages and sciences, the candidate's proficiency in each of these matters.

The Allgemeine Landrecht, promulgated in 1794, after complaints had been rife that the universities had still a number of unprofitable students, and that young men went

there merely to escape military service, made yet stricter regulations. It ordered the examination held at the university for boys coming from private schools to be conducted by a Commission; and it forbade the matriculation of any one who did not obtain a certificate of his ripeness.

But the omitting to prescribe a definite plan for the examination, and the entrusting them to two different bodies, the schools and the universities, caused the intentions of the Government to be in great measure frustrated. There was no uniform standard of examination. The schools made the standard high, the universities made it low; and numbers of young men, leaving the public schools without undergoing the Abiturientenexamen there, waited a little while, and then presented themselves to be examined at the university, where the examination was notoriously much laxer than at the school.

The great epoch of reform for the higher schools of Prussia is Wilhelm von Humboldt's year and a half at the head of the Education Department. The first words of a memorandum of this date on a proposal not to require Greek except of students for orders: Es ist nicht darum zu thun, dass Schulen und Universitäten in einem trägen und kraftlosen Gewohnheitsgange blieben, sondern darum, dass durch sie die Bildung der Nation auf eine immer höhere Stufe gebracht werde,* -might be taken as a motto for his whole administration of public instruction. It was Wilhelm von Humboldt who took the most important step towards making the Abiturientenprüfung what it now is. He was the originator of a uniform plan of examination obligatory on all who examined candidates for entrance to the university. Schleiermacher, who, as I have said, was a member of the Education Council, wished to take away this examination from the universities, and to give it entirely to the schools. This was not done, but the course of examination was strictly defined, and a form of certificate, fully indicating its results, was prescribed. The certificate was of three grades; No. 1 declared its possessor to be

The thing is not, to let the schools and universities go on in a drowsy and impotent routine; the thing is, to raise the culture of the nation ever higher and higher by their means.'

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