Page:Civilization and barbarism (1868).djvu/405

Rh their acceptance of the ministry, but after waiting and working a year in the most indefatigable and persevering manner, and allowing himself to be the subject of much abuse, he succeeded in setting the matter in operation, in the midst of intestine political difficulties of various kinds, invasion by the Indians, attempts at usurpation, and capture of the city by warlike and ambitious chiefs, and various modes of opposition to his views. A resolution had been offered to appropriate 600 dollars in gold to set in motion all the schools of Buenos Ayres! He succeeded at last in obtaining $127,000, and erected a splendid building called the Model School, which was afterwards emulated in another parish of the city. Monsieur Banvard, the architect of school-houses in France, said there was not in all France such architecture, such apparatus, and such luxury of appliances consecrated to the education of the people. The furniture and apparatus were procured in the United States. In 1860, when he left Buenos Ayres, there were 17,279 children in the schools. The Señora Manso had written him in 1864, that since his departure the number had decreased by five thousand. To this he replies, that by the natural increase the number should then have been 35,000, instead of 12,450, as she reports:—

"I assure you," he says, "that the revelation of so sad a fact has killed me, and I am tempted to leave behind me useless honors of position, and present myself again to the provincial government of Buenos Ayres, saying to it, 'Give me the department of schools—this is all the future of the Republic.' . . . 'The United States, with their schools from the beginning, as a basis, have