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upon their hands, shows their immediate need of education. This they feel and acknowledge; hence their unusual welcome and attendance upon schools is confined to no one class or age. Those advanced in life throw up their hands at first in despair, but a little encouragement places even these as pupils at the alphabet.

Such as are in middle life - the laboring classes - gladly avail themselves of the evening and Sabbath schools. They may be often seen during the intervals of toil, when off duty as servants, on steamboats, along the railroads, and, when unemployed in the streets of the city, or on plantations, with some fragment of a spelling-book in their hands, earnestly at study. Regiments of colored soldiers have nearly all made improvements in learning. IN some of them, where but few knew their letters at first, nearly every man can now read, and many of them write. In other regiments deserve great credit for their efforts in this respect. The 128th United States Colored Troops, at Beaufort, I found with regularly detailed teachers from the line officers - a neat camp school-house, erected by the regiment, and the colonel with great interest superintending the whole arrangement, - Chaplains have also been the schoolmasters of their respective regiments with much success, and greatly increasing their usefulness.

Even in hospitals I discovered very commendable efforts at such elementary instruction.

But the great movement is among children of the usual school age. Their parents, if at all intelligent, encourage them to study. Your officers in all ways add their influence, and it is a fact, not always true of children, that among those recently from bondage the school-house, however rough and uncomfortable, is of all other places the most attractive; the average attendance being nearly equal to that usually found at the north. For instance, in the District of Columbia, the daily attendance at the white schools is but forty-one (41) per cent., while at the colored schools of the District it is seventy-five (75) per cent. In the State of New York, the daily attendance at the public schools averages forty-three (43) per cent. At the colored schools in the city of Memphis it is seventy-nine (79) per cent.; and in Virginia eighty-two (82) per cent. The most thorough attendance at public schools at the north is probably in the city of Boston, where it is ninety-three (93) per cent. In the comparison, therefore,

schools of colored children do not suffer (especially when we consider lax government at home, and opportunity for truancy) with the most vigorous system found among our own children. Love of their books is universally apparent. Dull and stupid ones there are, but a very common punishment for misdemeanor is the threat of being kept at home for a day. The threat, in most cases, is sufficient.

TOTAL UNDER INSTRUCTION.
The whole number of pupils in the colored schools of the eleven States lately in insurrection, including Missouri, Kentucky, Maryland, and the District of Columbia, up to the last date of reports, is ninety thousand five hundred and eighty-nine (90,589); teachers, one thousand three hundred and fourteen, (1,314); schools, seven hundred and forty, (740.) These numbers have increased rather than diminished since that date.

The above schools are sustained under your superintendence by the various benevolent Associations of the north, with the exception of a few in charge of tax commissioners, and those in Louisiana until recently supported by military tax on the people of that State. But those Associations are indebted to the government for transportation of teachers and of school furniture, for military protection, and, in many cases, for the occupation of buildings in possession of this Bureau. The loyal people of the country will, it is believed, do much more of this philanthropic work, if they can be furnished with the needed accommodations and protection. Most of the school-houses, churches, and other property hitherto occupied by them have now been returned to their former owners, and this immense system of education must fail, or be greatly crippled, unless permanent real estate for their use can be in some way secured. The above Associations would, in many cases, erect buildings with their own funds, if they could obtain land on which to do it.

VIRGINIA.
The best schools in this State are at Hampton and Norfolk, and the adjacent plantations, where the field could be occupied soon after the war commenced. Attainment in all the branches of a common education has been most commendable, and no abatement of zeal or slackening of progress is apparent among scholars most advanced. The higher classes are destined to go still higher, if opportunity is afforded them.

In order parts of Virginia, these educating efforts have