urteen.
Beyond this, the High School offers a training for practical life and
business, and the _Gymnasium_ a classical and scientific training
leading to the special studies of the University. The course of study
in the _Gymnasia_ is similar to those of our colleges, some of the
studies of the latter, however, being relegated to the University. A
boy at nine years of age enters the _Gymnasium_ for a course of nine
years, in which Latin and Greek receive the chief emphasis. The same
great division of opinion as to the comparative merits of linguistic
and scientific training which exists in the rest of the world,
agitates the German mind. The _Gymnasium_ with its classical training
is the child of the present century, and its growth all along has been
disputed by those who claim greater advantages from a curriculum which
lays chief stress on science, omitting the Greek and half the Latin,
for a part of which modern languages are substituted. This has given
rise to what are called the Real Schools, corresponding to our
Scientific Schools. These receive their inspiration from the people
rather than the learned classes, and are regarded as still on trial.
Meantime, until quite recently, the graduates of the _Gymnasia_ have
had a monopoly of competition for positions as teachers and
opportunity to practise the learned professions. A recent change
allows graduates of the Real Schools to compete for teacherships. The
graduates of _Gymnasia_ only are allowed to enter the professions of
Medicine and Law. The Prussian _Gymnasia_ are about two hundred and
fifty in number, and the Real Schools somewhat over one hundred. In
point of military service, these schools are all on an equal footing,
a pupil who completes a course of six years in either being obliged to
serve but one year with the colors. It is said that a large number of
those who graduate in these schools do so for the sake of thus
shortening their term of military service. I was present at an evening
entertainment offered by the older students of one _Gymnasium_ to the
friends of the school. It was a rendering, in Greek, of the Antigone
of Sophocles, with considerable adjuncts of scenery, costume, and
Greek chorus. A brief outline of the play in German was distributed to
the audience. For the rest, a knowledge of Greek was the only key to
what was said by experts to be well done.

But if this one personal glimpse of the scholarship of the higher
schools for boys was all