ion of wealth and national
progress, and since science and the arts are the forerunners of popular
civilization, and the good of the masses and their elevation in the
scale of intellectual and physical growth, therefore primary education
is the necessary preparation for all scientific progress. And in view of
this, the providence of our most exalted government has been turned to
the accomplishment of what has been done successfully in other lands, in
the multiplication of schools and colleges. And none can be ignorant of
the great progress of science and education, under His August Imperial
Excellency the Sultan, in Syria, where schools and printing presses have
multiplied, especially in the city of Beirut and its vicinity. For in
Beirut and Mount Lebanon, there are nearly two thousand male pupils,
large and small, in Boarding Schools, learning the Arabic branches and
foreign languages, and especially the French language, which is more
widely spread than any other. The most noted of these schools are the
French Lazarist School at Ain Tura in Lebanon, the American Seminary in
Abeih, the Jesuit School at Ghuzir, and the Greek School at Suk el
Ghurb, the most of the pupils being from the cities of Syria. Then there
are in Beirut the Greek School, the school of the Greek Catholic
Patriarch, the Native National College of Mr. Betrus el Bistany, and
there are also nearly a thousand _girls_ in the French Lazarist School,
the Prussian Protestant Deaconesses, the American Female Seminary and
Mrs. Thompson's British Syrian School, and other female schools. And
here we must mention that all of these schools, (excepting the Druze
Seminary,) are in the hands of _Christians_, and the Mohammedans of
Beirut have not a single school other than a common school, although in
Damascus and Tripoli they have High Schools which are most successful,
and many of their children in Beirut, are learning in Christian schools,
a fact which we take as a proof of their anxiety to attain useful
knowledge, although they have not as yet done aught to found schools of
their own. And though the placing of their children in Christian schools
is a proof of the love and fellowship between these two sects in this
glorious Imperial Age, we cannot but say that it would be far more
befitting to the honor and dignity of the Mussulmen to open schools for
their own children as the other sects are doing. And lately the Imperial
Governor of Syria has been urging them to