EDUCATION IN THE SOUTH.

Rev. A. D. Mayo delivered a most interesting lecture last night in Sever Hall, on the progress of the public school system in the southern states before and after the war. He spoke in part as follows:

I wish to speak tonight more of education in the south as it has been built up by the South than of the work done by the North in promoting education in the Southern States.

Thomas Jefferson at an early period mastered a system of education for Virginia but he only established what we might call the steeple of the church without the church. He nevertheless woke up a band of thoughtful men in the South who believed in and later acted upon his ideas. The Civil War prostrated all educational plans completely and from 1860-1870 the Southern States were more lacking in schooling than any other people in the world within the last fifty years. When the war finally ended colleges and academies immediately sprung up, but nobody could afford to send their sons to these institutions; therefore a system of public schools became absolutely necessary and was accepted with eagerness. For teachers, their most eminent men, beginning with General Lee, stepped forward, while even the women did their full share. Partly by aid given them from the North, but more through their own determination and perseverance the South gradually developed for itself a great public school system.

Of course the sparseness of population is a great drawback to public schools, but yet there has never been in this world such a demonstration for education as has been shown by the South in the last twenty-five years. The Norht may have invested $25,000,000 in education in the South, but the Southern people have paid $75,000,000 in the last 25 years for the education of children whose fathers were their slaves.

Education and education only can lift up the South, improve the condition of the people, and bring them in perfect harmony with the rest of the Union.