EDUCATION, LIBRABIES, ETC. Boston is noted as one of the greatest educational and literary centres of the country. Its public-school system comprises, besides kindergarten, primary, and grammar schools, a liberal number of high schools, and also normal and Latin schools. The Boston Latin School, founded in 1635. and the English High School occupy the largest school building in the United States. Among the higher institutions of learning are Boston University (Methodist Episcopal), Boston College (Roman Catholic), Massachusetts Institute of Technol ogy, the medical and dental schools of Harvard University, Tufts College Medical School, Col lege of Physicians and Surgeons, Saint John's Ecclesiastical Seminary (Roman Catholic), and the Massachusetts College of Pharmacy. The New England Conservatory of Music has an enviable reputation, and the Lowell School of Design, the Massachusetts Normal Art School. and the school connected with the Museum of Fine Arts are representative of Boston as a centre of art education. Besides these regular institutions, the great system of, free lectures on a wide variety of subjects practically con stitutes a great university. The lectures in the
Old South Meeting House have been mentioned; the work of the Lowell Institute, which is spe cially endowed for this purpose, is also worthy of note.
The Boston Public Library maintains fifty seven or more agencies, including several branch stations with large permanent collections, besides numerous reading-rooms and delivery and de posit stations. In the metropolitan district there are sonic 30 free libraries, with a total of 1,300,000 volumes, ‘vhile the collections "pen to investigators aggregate 3,000.000. Among other noted collections in the city are those of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Boston Athenamin (founded in 1807. with nearly 200,000 volumes), Boston Library .So ciety. Congregational Library, Massachusetts historical Society (founded in 1791), Massa chusetts llort ieultural Society ( founded in 1829), New England Historic Genealogical So ciety, State Library, Social Law Library, and Natural History Society, besides those of the leading educational institutions.