Of the murderer, I am unable to speak positively, either in defence or extenuation. He fled as soon as the crime was committed, and the particulars of it had not been ascertained when I came away. It was said, however, to have resulted from a quarrel, in which the manslayer was not the aggressor.

CHAPTER II.

System of Public Education. Central Schools. Obstacles in the way of Instruction. Hamlet Schools and Scenery.

THE first subject to which I desired to give my attention, was the state of education, and the way was greatly smoothed for me by Colonel Beckwith, whose personal inspection of every school, during his long residence in the valleys, had enabled him to make some accurate notes upon the manner in which the schools are conducted. The following he was kind enough to allow me to transcribe.

PUBLIC INSTRUCTION.

"The system of public instruction is carried on among the Vaudois, in

1 Grammar School, 15 Great Schools, 126 Small Schools *,

These small schools vary in number with the means of supporting them. According to the report of the Table in 1826, there were then only 76 open. In 1829, when I was in the valleys, the number reported to me was 112.

4 Girls' Schools, supported by the London

committee,

4 Girls' Schools, supported by individuals, Containing, in round numbers, 4500 children, of whom the smaller half consists of girls.

"The 15 great schools ought to be held ten months, but from the small stipends of the schoolmasters, and from the circumstance of the children's being employed in various ways by the parents, many of them are held only for five or

six.

"The smaller schools are held for five, (very few) four, and three months. In bad weather these schools are filled with children; but in open winters, the parents send the elder children en pâture' with the sheep and goats, so that these children receive an imperfect education for four or three winter months.

"These schools are directed by schoolmasters, some of whom speak French tolerably well, and write a pretty good hand, but in general they neither speak French well, nor write well. They all read French, but have a very imperfect knowledge of that language. The greater part of them are in the habit of speaking patois, and there are no means of learning French grammatically in the valleys. They can all cypher a little, but have no books of arithmetic, slates, or slate pencils. "These schoolmasters teach by means of a small spelling-book called a Carte,' Ostervald's

Catechism, the New Testament, and Bible. They set copies upon detached sheets of paper in round and small hand, and sums in the four first rules of arithmetic from memory; these the children work out also on sheets of paper, but this mode of teaching is too expensive for the parents, so that the children are obliged to stop until the parents can afford to purchase more paper.

"The children generally speaking, particularly in large schools, are arranged by classes. The master sets a lesson to each child, and they come up in succession; but where the school is numerous this cannot be more than twice or thrice in the day. The children idle away the rest of their time.

"When the small schools are closed, many children frequent the great schools for some time longer.

During the winter also, many persons prefer sending their children to the great schools, where they learn to write and cypher better; but the system of instruction is the same as in small schools.

"Notwithstanding all these defects and obstacles, the children in the course of years learn to read their catechism, a book of 125 pages, and the Bible, with considerable fluency; they know a good deal of their catechism by heart, write, a few very well, and the greater part very tolerably, and make some progress in arithmetic, but probably not much.

"Other systems of education, if they were permitted, would bring on the children much faster, but in the present state of the country', and of the population, it would be difficult to carry them into effect. The greatest defect of the present system is, that the means used to teach French do not effect the object so as to enable the population to read and listen to the Scriptures with the profit that is desirable. There does not appear to be any immediate remedy for this; first, on account of the expense of forming masters, the want of means to pay these masters, and the difficulty of teaching a foreign language to peasants who are occupied in supplying their daily wants in a country where there are no books written in the dialect spoken by its inhabitants. The wants of these schools are New Testaments, slates, and slate pencils; of the latter there are none in Piemont, and they might probably be supplied cheapest from England, by way of Genoa."

The grammar school, of which Colonel Beckwith speaks, is maintained principally by contributions from Holland, and so are the great or central schools, and the small or hamlet schools.

The benefactions received from Holland in 1829, amounted to 9600 francs, or about 3847., and it

1 The Vaudois are prohibited by an edict of government, issued July 1826, from having any committee of their own for the regulation of public instruction, and from using any system of mutual instruction.