For the study of the commanding subject of education the provision made
at the present exhibition is exceptionally great. In bulk, and probably
in completeness, it is immeasurably beyond the display made on any
preceding occasion. The building erected by the single State of
Pennsylvania for her educational department covers ten or eleven
thousand square feet, and other States of the Union make corresponding
efforts to show well in the same line. The European nations all manifest
a new interest in this branch, and give it a much more prominent place
in their exhibit than ever before. The school-systems of most of them
are of very recent birth, and do not date back so far as 1851. The
kingdom of Italy did not exist at that time or for many years after, yet
we now see it pressing for a foremost place in the race of popular
education, and multiplying its public schools in the face of all the
troubles attendant upon the erection and organization of a new state.
The historian will find aliment less abundant. A century or two of
Caucasian life in America is but a thing of yesterday to him, and,
though far from uninstructive, is but an offshoot from modern European
annals. For all that, he finds himself on our soil in presence of an
antiquity which remains to be explored, and which clamors to be rescued
from the domain of the pre-historic. It has no literary records beyond
the scant remains of Mexico. It writes itself, nevertheless, strongly
and deeply on the face of the land--in mounds, fortifications and tombs
as distinct, if not so elaborate, as those of Etruria and Cyprus.
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