Prussia—Germany.
Although education is almost compulsory in Prussia, it fails most egregiously to produce that which it ought to be the object of education and knowledge to obtain. Female chastity marks more closely than any other thing the moral condition of society. They may go through an entire course of scholastic discipline, but the regulation of the passions is more the result of home influence than of reading and writing, or Latin and Greek, inculcated and taught by educational sergeants or clergymen in primary schools and gymnasia. It is no uncommon event in the family of a respectable tradesman in Berlin to find upon his breakfast-table a young child, of which, whoever may be the father, he has no doubt at all about the maternal grandfather. Such accidents are so common that they are regarded, if not with indifference, as mere youthful indiscretions. In 1837 the number of females in the Prussian population between the beginning of their 16th year, and the end of their 45th year—that is within child-breeding age—was 2,983,146. The number of illegitimates born in the same year was 39,501, so that 1 in every 75 of the whole of the females of an age to bear children had been the mother of an illegitimate child. The unsettled military life of every Prussian on his entrance into the world as a man, inculcates habits of frivolity and thoughtlessness, and is peculiarly calculated to form the character of the young man for evil rather than for good.