Page:The Homes of the New World- Vol. II.djvu/395

Rh That which I sought for there was the New Man and his world; the new humanity and the sight of its future on the soil of the New World.

I will tell you what I have so far seen and found.

I spent the last autumn and winter in the north-eastern States of the Union, New York, Massachusetts, Connecticut;—the mother States from which the swarm of people have gone forth, and still go forth to populate the American Continent, and to give it laws and manners. That which is most admirable in these mother-States is the number of great institutions for the education of youth and in aid of the unfortunate, schools and asylums. These are the offspring of a large heart, and they have a broad basis. It is a joy to see and hear the children taught in these public schools, which are all free-schools, in large and airy halls. One can see that they are all awake and full of life; one can hear that they understand that which they read and learn. The great reformation which has taken place in the conduct of schools, and the impulse which has been given towards an universal popular education in America, are the result, in great neasure, of the enthusiasm, perseverance, and determined resolution of a single individual, Horace Mann; and this fact is, without question, one of the most beautiful and the most significant phenomena of this national cultivation, especially as it embraces woman as well as man, and places her side by side with him as the teacher of the rising generation. I have traced this from the East to the West, from those magnificent academies where five hundred students, boys or girls, study and take degrees preparatory to public life, as teachers and teacheresses, to the log huts