NOTE.-Exhibit No. 7, "Ontario," also included some Models of Educational Institutions sent from the Province of Quebec, and a few Educational matters from Nova Scotia. boys, who have been committed to it on being tried for criminal offences. Part of their time is given to instruction and part to training in various industries, and the general results of the treatment have proved favourable. of The CENTRAL PRISON was established by the Province in 1873, for the purpose reforming ordinary offenders whose sentences were of limited duration. The prison has been constructed at an expense of about $420,000, and is probably one of the best prisons, in all respects, to be found on the continent. The short experience of its effects shows that the influences are of a beneficial and reforming character. Offenders consigned to it are free from the contaminating associations to be found in the ordinary gaols of the Province, and being instructed in various trades, leave the prison better fitted for earning an honest living in the future. The Public Schools are unable to reach the class of neglected children which are to be found in cities and the larger towns, and Boys and Girls' Homes have been established by individuals and Societies to meet this want. They care for, educate and train a large number of such children, and their efforts are aided out of the Provincial Treasury according to the number who are cared for in each institution. Finally, while religious instruction in the Public Schools is optional with trustees, teachers, parents and pupils, the Sunday Schools existing in the Province exceeded in 1875, 3,900, with 236,600 scholars, and 22,700 teachers. Relying upon these popular and national agencies, and those which special considerations have developed, the Province of Ontario is steadily pursuing a career of progress,. material, moral and intellectual. While the foregoing presents some indication of the efforts of the Province in striving to become a civilized and well-ordered community, its people understand that their future progress, welfare and happiness mainly depend upon the continued efficiency and improvement of these educational agencies under their free constitutional system of gov ernment. EDUCATION DEPARTMENT, ONTARIO, ADAM CROOKS, Minister of Education. PART XI. THE EDUCATIONAL EXHIBITS OF VARIOUS STATES AND COUNTRIES AT PHILADELPHIA. In order to present a complete view of the educational features of the Exhibition, as a whole, I shall refer to the more striking points in of the educational collections of various countries as exhibited at Philadelphia. I shall then give in connection with this reference, a brief companion sketch of the present condition of education in these States and Countries. It is due to these States and Countries, to say that I have taken them in the order, as it appeared to me, of the comparative merit of their respective educational exhibits. For this reason I shall have to abandon any attempt at geographical classification or sequence; but this is necessary, in order to judge of the quality, extent and variety of each country's exhibit. With this view, I have classified the exhibits as follows:- 1. The State of Pennsylvania. 2. The (Kingdom) of Sweden. 3. The Empire of Russia. 5. The Kingdom of Belgium. 6. The Empire of Japan. 7. The United States (Bureau of Education). 8. The Republic of France. 9. The State of Massachusetts. 10. The State of Ohio. 11. The State of New Jersey. 12. The Kingdom of the Netherlands. 14. The State of Rhode Island. 17. The State of Illinois. 24. Education in Countries not repre- I. THE EDUCATIONAL EXHIBIT OF THE STATE OF PENNSYLVANIA. The educational exhibit made by the State of Pennsylvania, was by far the most extensive and systematically arranged of all of the School exhibits at Philadelphia. It just lacked, however, what the Ontario exhibit had in such variety, in order to make it the most complete, as it was the most extensive of the educational collections at the Centennial. The skill and energy which the State Superintendent of Public Instruction (Hon. J. Wickersham) evinced in collecting and arranging the material placed in the "Educational Hall" of his State, was remarkable. Every educational interest in Pennsylvania seemed to have had a fitting representation in the niches or alcoves of the "Hall;" while the whole exhibit, taken together, presented an admirable bird's-eye view, or coup d'œil, of the material results and progress of education in the State. That such was intended to have been the character of the entire American Educational Exhibit is clear from the observations on the subject made at public meetings, by the able United States Commissioner of Education (General Eaton), by the Hon. Mr. Wickersham himself, as well as by other noted American Educationists. Had the views of these gentlemen prevailed, "the American Educational Exhibit," would, as a whole, have been, as Mr. Wickersham expresses it, in his last report, "the grandest and most interesting American feature of the great display." The American people had the strongest incentive to realize this hope of their own countrymen, and the expectation of strangers. Not only had they won a highly honourable educational position at Vienna, in the very centre of monarchical Europe in 1873, but enlightened European Statesmen and Educationists had, in most complimentary terms, referred to the fact that it was to the United States they looked with so much interest for examples of the highest development in America of systems of Public Instruction. This was the view expressed, (as already quoted in this report, page 3) by the Austrian Minister at Washington, Baron Von Schwarz-Senborn, Director General of the Vienna Exposition of 1873, Austrian Commissioner at the International Exhibition of London in 1851 and 1862, and of Paris in 1855 and 1867. M. Kippeau, also a well-known French writer on Education, in speaking of the then forthcoming American Exhibition of 1876, says: "There will be many objects to attract the attention of foreign visitors, but we may boldly affirm that none will produce a deeper impression than the Educational Exhibit, and |