proved by the memorable conversation which Dr. Johnson held with his physician, Dr. Brockelsby. A little before he died, he turned to him with great earnestness,-"Doctor," he said, "you are a worthy man, and my friend; but I am afraid you are not a Christian. What can I do better for you than offer up in your presence a prayer to the Great God, that you may become a Christian in my sense of the word?" Instantly he fell upon his knees, and put up a fervent prayer. When he got up, he caught hold of his hand with great earnestness, and cried, "Doctor, you do not say, Amen." The Doctor looked foolish, but after a pause, cried "Amen." Johnson said, "My dear Doctor, believe a dying man; there is no salvation but in the sacrifice of the Lamb of God."

With this witness Dr. Johnson died. With his reason unclouded, and with the strength of an intellect which sickness did not subdue, he gave this remarkable testimony to a simple Faith in Christ-a testimony specially valuable at the time when it was delivered.

Why from this anxious spirit the clear view of truth was so long withheld-why the light arose upon his mind in the evening of life after a weary time of doubt and darkness-are questions which we are, perhaps, not called upon to examine; which, at all events, it would demand a long and cautious inquiry to resolve. From this we abstain; enough for us to know, that this man of high philosophy and vigorous thought reached the resting-place of a Christian's hope in the same way as the weakest among us may gain it on his knees; and that the peasant, who hears the Gospel, and accepts it with a child-like trust, enjoys through life a peace which the great moralist only reached on his death-bed, and which he then felt to convey a pleasure immeasurably greater than that which is derived from the acquirements of learning, the esteem of society, and the utmost splendour of fame.

NATIONAL EDUCATION-THE BLUE BOOKS.

1. Minutes of the Committee of Council on Education: Correspondence, Financial Statements, and Reports. By HER MAJESTY'S INSPECTORS OF SCHOOLS. 1855—6.

2. Minutes, &c., 1856-7.

3. Minutes, &c., 1857-8.

TWENTY years have scarcely elapsed since the Government of the day made their first grant for educational purposes. It was a small sum, nine or ten thousand pounds; but it was all that the

friends of Education ventured to ask; and far more, as we can well remember, than some of them expected. It has gone on increasing annually, and, we have no doubt whatever, will, in a few years, become far larger; for there is no grant which the House of Commons appears to make less grudgingly, and which is regarded by men of all parties with equal favour. The sums thus voted from the national purse are placed at the disposal of "The Committee of Privy Council for Education," whose ponderous Blue-Books now lie before us. Their first Vice-President was the Right Hon. William Cowper; and is now Mr. Adderley, who represents North Staffordshire in Parliament, and is, of course, a member of Lord Derby's Administration. Their funds are administered to all denominations who comply with their conditions, with an impartial hand; and Inspectors are appointed, whose duty it is, each in his own district, to travel from place to place, make inspection of the schools which have received Parliamentary grants, and report thereon to the Committee of Privy Council. The "Reports" and "Tabulated Statements" of these gentlemen form the bulk of these Blue-Books; the "Minutes," though important, filling but a few pages; and from them may be gathered, though not without some painstaking, more information as to the real state of Education in Great Britain than from any other source whatever. There is, no doubt, a large class of very useful schools which, having had no assistance from Government, are passed by unnoticed in these Reports; but neither is there any good account of them to be met with elsewhere. On the "Statistics" of Education these "Minutes" are our safest guides.

We do not mean to burden the reader's attention with a multitude of figures. These, and the necessary explanations, require an ample space, far beyond the limits we impose upon ourselves; and after all, their interest, we suspect, is very partial. It may be sufficient for general purposes to state, that the number of children under education in our elementary schools is about two millions, leaving two other millions apparently untaught. But the figures are fallacious; as in many another instance; for, as one of the Inspectors has remarked, the two millions who profess to be at school, are often absentees, while the two million absentees are frequently at school. Connected with this a second fact arrests attention; namely, that few children remain steadily in the same school twelve months together in our towns; and that neither in town nor country does the attendance of a child exceed two years altogether. A third and still more painful fact is, that the children are generally removed from school at ten years of age: the per-centage of those who are allowed to remain till eleven or twelve is small indeed. In Middlesex, in 1851, the per-centage of children above twelve years of age at school was eleven and a fraction; and, owing probably to the pressure of the times, it had sunk as low as eight and a fraction in 1856, so that in a school of

one hundred children, ninety-two were below the age at which the education of the upper classes in public schools begins. In the Midland counties the returns are very similar. Mr. Bellairs reports that the children above twelve years old at school are only nine and a fraction per cent., and that the number of those who have attended less than one year is nearly forty per cent. this is all the education that the working classes of the next generation are likely to receive; for few indeed in any rank of life, and still fewer of the sons of toil, have the courage in after-life to retrieve the intellectual neglects and losses of their childhood.

Amongst a crowd of other thoughts which these brief statements will immediately suggest to the Christian philanthropist, there are two of special importance to which we must now confine ourselves. In the first place, since the time during which we have the instruction of the poor man's child is so short, are we using our scanty opportunities with him to the best advantage? During the year or the two years of his school life, is he well taught those few things which he has the capacity to acquire, and which it is of the greatest importance he should learn? And secondly, what reason can be assigned for the apathy or selfishness of a class so shrewd, and, in the domestic relations of life, unquestionably so affectionate, as the working men of England? In a matter of such concern as the education of their offspring, why are they indifferent? The solution of these two problems involves the happiness and well-being of the State, if not high considerations of a still more solemn character.

As to the quality of the education given, we may learn much from the Reports before us. in connection with the Church of England. The Wesleyans, the British and Foreign Schools, those of the National and Free Church of Scotland, and of other denominations, have their own Inspectors, and seem to be doing their work as effectively as our own is done. The Roman Catholics are also inspected by their own visitor, who takes occasion to display, to the best advantage, the institutions of his Church; a proceeding of which we have no right whatever to complain. Protestants who think fit to vote the public money for the extension of the Romish faith will at least have the satisfaction of learning that their generous intentions are not frustrated by the apathy or incompetence of Roman Catholic functionaries. A lithograph of St. Mary's Training College at Hammersmith, will convey to the dullest understanding, through the eye, some notion of the ambitious aims of Rome, and of the scale on which she has planned the work of English education. Four coloured lithograph plans of the "Female Training Roman Catholic College" at Liverpool decorate the Minutes of 1856-7, the only ornaments of the kind in that bulky volume of eleven hundred and seventy pages.

We shall confine ourselves to schools

On three points our own Inspectors are unanimous, and they

are points of no mean importance. They utterly condemn all schemes of merely secular education; they protest against the cramming, learn-by-rote, or parrot-like method of teaching; and they ascribe whatever degree of efficiency Church of England Schools have reached, to the zealous co-operation, and often selfdenying labours of the Clergy. With regard to the secular system, Mr. Kennedy, the Inspector for Lancashire and the Isle of Man,

says,

"Every parent ought to be allowed to send his child to any school, and to claim exemption for it (if he will) from the religious lessons. This is right; but to grant more than this would be fatal to the religious teaching of schools. If the managers of a school ever consent that religion should be taught at a fixed hour only, farewell to the religion of that school! . . . . It is folly, and worse than folly, to talk of the youthful poor being instructed duly in their religion by means of stated hours,' or 'Sunday Schools,' or by their parents at home.' No! with the youthful poor the schoolmaster or no one must be their religious instructor, and his personal religion must leaven his whole work. For religious men to abandon this point at the intolerant demand of the Secularists, would be for the sheep to give up their dogs at the demand of the wolves."

All speak to the same effect. Thus Mr. Norris, the Inspector for Cheshire, says :-" Without religious knowledge, a school ceases to be a place of education, and becomes a mere lecture-room, where instruction in certain specified subjects is given, at certain hours of the day." A sentence, we take leave to add, to be inscribed in every Training College in letters of gold. And we are happy to find that by religious knowledge Mr. Norris understands something more than the mere communication of Scriptural facts. He adds,

"I cannot discuss any educational question of this kind without wishing to remind myself that the value of a school, after all, does not depend upon the branches of learning which are studied in it—no, nor, more, upon the amount of religious instruction given in it-so much as upon the life that is lived in it. . . . Spend an hour or two in one school, and you feel all the while as a man feels who is confronted for some time by a bad countenance. Go into another, and all is right and healthy again. And even before you inquire what branches of instruction are there taught, you are convinced that it cannot but be well for children to spend their days in so bright and wholesome an atmosphere. Whatever be the value or direction of the intellectual teaching, there is heart, and love, and healthy moral influence at work; and therein lies the real education on which the character of the after-man or after-woman depends. It is this surely that Milton had in view, when he said that the end of education was to repair the ruins of our first parents, by regaining to know God aright; and out of that knowledge to love Him, to imitate Him, to be like Him.""

So far, the Church of England Inspectors are of one mind; and

these, we admit, are vital points, and of primary importance. But now we descend to the details, only less weighty; and here we find a marvellous want of agreement in their views on almost every subject on which they touch.

Supposing, then, that we have collected our children, shall the sexes be separated, or shall they be taught together in a mixed school? "No system of mixed teaching," replies one of these gentlemen, "can produce anything comparable to a good girls' school," conducted by such a mistress as he describes. "A mixed school," he maintains, "lowers the tone of the female character." But another Inspector "thinks that it presents advantages not otherwise to be attained." "It is cheaper, on the whole, to maintain a mixed school: and I am fully persuaded, from experience as a school manager, that the moral value of the mixed system is higher than that in which the sexes are separated." "Are mixed schools," writes a third, "sufficient or desirable for our girls? If education means knowledge, they are. If it mean moral training, they cannot be." Again, "Is the tender age at which the children leave the schools, and go to work, a serious evil ?" "Yes," replies one Inspector, or rather a chorus of Inspectors. "Notwithstanding all that has been done, and that is being done, the great obstacle to progress remains, the school children are too young to be taught much, too soft to be permanently impressed. Neither the head nor the heart, at their tender age, is fit for the burden laid upon it, nor the duty required of it. No wonder, then, that the crop does not answer our expectations, and that, when we might, under fair circumstances, expect a return a hundredfold, we are content if we get our seed again, and all does not perish under the choking tares." But another Inspector, "admitting that they are infants after all, leaving us at about eleven to work for their daily bread," dissents entirely from this conclusion:

"I am not able myself, at present, to join very loudly in the outcry against children going to work at eleven or twelve years old, if only the work is suited to their physical strength. It seems to me practicable so to have instructed a child before that age, that every step that it takes afterwards, whether in the field, the workshop, or the house, shall be fruitful in additional instruction. It is very easy, by adroit methods and entertaining contrivances, to enable a child by that time to read, write, and cypher with ease."

But now, when we seem to have made some progress in the knotty question, another Inspector trips up our heels, and lays us on our back, flat and prostrate. He thinks that the attainments of children of ten years old, or rather the attempt to load them with a burden of instruction which they cannot carry, is very likely to produce an "intellectual indigestion;" it is much like "giving them breakfast and dinner in one meal."

And so on through almost every point of detail, down to the presence of visitors at an inspection. One almost regrets that few Vol. 58.-No. 253.

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