children to school at a certain age; but these laws were not
really obeyed until the beginning of the present century. German
schools are now open to the poorest as well as the richest
children. The only people, except the Germans, who thought of
common schools at an early period are the Scotch.

It cost, we see, some centuries of mental blindness to discover
the need of, and some centuries of struggling to establish
schools.


[Illustration: THE BRIDGE OF SIGHS.]




_A GLIMPSE OF VENICE._


The spell which Venice has cast over the English poets is as
powerful, in its way, as was the influence of Italian literature
upon the early literature of England. From Chaucer down, the
poets have turned to Italy for inspiration, and, what is still
better, have found it. It is not too much to say that the
"Canterbury Tales" could not have existed, in their present
form, if Boccaccio had not written the "Decameron;" and it is to
Boccaccio we are told that the writers of his time were indebted
for their first knowledge of Homer. Wyatt and Surrey transplanted
what they could of grace from Petrarch into the rough England of
Henry the Eighth. We know what the early dramatists owe to the