s this
expression too strong, he may satisfy himself of its correctness by
inspecting some of the few specimens of them which still remain.

"The earliest effort at reform was directed to this class of buildings.
By presenting the idea of taxation, this measure encountered the
opposition of one of the strongest passions of the age. Not only the
sordid and avaricious, but even those whose virtue of frugality, by the
force of habit, had been imperceptibly sliding into the vice of
parsimony, felt the alarm. Men of fortune without children, and men who
had reared a family of children and borne the expenses of their
education, fancied they saw something of injustice in being called to
pay for the education of others, and too often their fancies started
into specters of all imaginable oppression and wrong.

"During the five years immediately succeeding the report made by the
Board of Education to the Legislature on the subject of school-houses,
the sums expended for the erection and repair of this class of buildings
fell but little short of _seven hundred thousand dollars_. Since that
time, from the best information obtained, I suppose the sum expended on
this one item to be about _one hundred and fifty thousand dollars
annually_. Every year adds some new improvement to the construction and
arrangement of these edifices.

"In regard to this great change in school-houses--it would hardly be too
much to call it a _revolution_--the school committees have done an
excellent work, or, rather, they have begun it; it is not yet done.
Their annual reports, read in open town meeting, or printed and
circulated among the inhabitants, afterward embodied in the Abstracts
and distributed to the members of the government, to all town and
school committees, have enlightened and convinced the state."

_School-houses in New York._--About ten years ago, special visitors were
appointed by the superintendent of common schools in each of the
counties of this state, who were requested to visit and inspect the
schools, and to report minutely in regard to their state and prospects.
The most respectable citizens, without distinction of party, were
selected to discharge this duty; and the result of their labors is
contained in two reports, made, the one in April, 1840, the other in
February, 1841. "It may be remarked, generally," say the visitors of one
of the oldest and most affluent towns of the southeastern section of the
state, "that the school-