visitors gladden the occasion with their presence; he would have the children cheered and stimulated by the presence of their friends and patrons, though he feels that their embarrassment and shyness are increased. Another, complains that the country gentlemen crowd to the annual inspection as to a sight. Some even bring their dogs with them, though "for what purpose," he says, "he could never exactly discover." He "would have the transaction as private and as quiet as an operation in the sick-ward of an hospital." Even on the far more important question, what the children shall be taught, there is no better agreement. One insists on the importance of experimental science; he recommends the teaching of "common things." He "would willingly see the abridgments of history and the compendiums of geography entirely banished," and in their stead he would introduce "books of biography and travel." Another fears, and with too much reason, that at present our National-school boy "skims over too many things;" and he speaks with contempt of "your dealer in facts, your dabbler in applied science, and your smatterer in common things." "I venture to believe, that the holding up of this style of things, namely, the system of facts' and 'common things,' as the proper staple of education for a boy, is the most fatal and foolish thing possible." In short, the system does not enlarge the mind; it has but little tendency to educate the reasoning and thinking faculty; and from the day on which he leaves the school to the last moment of his life, if indeed the process is not completed in a much shorter period, a mental drainage goes on, leaving less and less of his so-called education, until the pert and forward schoolboy sinks at length into the deep slough of a profound and stupid ignorance.

Some of the Inspectors speak with a warmth bordering on enthusiasm of the wonderful improvement in National Schools since "My Lords" of the Privy Council took the supervision of the work in hand. One of them draws a graphic picture of the old National School, torpid, listless, and depressing; and compares it with the life and energy now so characteristic of every good school. Others tell a different tale. The boys write worse than twenty years ago, partly by virtue of the steel pens they try in vain to handle, and still more because the teachers are ambitious of hurrying them on to higher things than mere good penmanship. Several complain that, after all, few of the boys can read tolerably. The girls are more accomplished. From the Queen of England down to the village school, women read better than men. But of the boys, few are qualified to sit down by the cottage fire-side at night and really entertain the family with a well-read chapter out of "Robinson Crusoe;" nor can they even read the New Testament aloud, except in that doleful sing-song which sets the father, wearied with his day's work, to sleep before the task is finished. "The reading," says one Inspector, "is still bad." "The reading, even of a first class," reports another, "is

deficient in that articulation and expression which would make it an available resource on a Sunday evening by a cottage fire-side." In the face of these admissions, we confess ourselves slow to comprehend how any great improvement can have taken place within the last twenty years in our National Schools. We have in our mind's eye at this moment more than one old Parochial School in which, though less was professed, as much or more was really taught and learned than, judging from these Reports, is now generally achieved. The system was less ambitious, but more solid. Under a pious and sensible master or mistress, it answered its purpose fairly, and this is the utmost that can be said at present. One Infant School we knew, the mistress of which would unquestionably have failed had she submitted to the examination of our Inspectors, with a view to being "Certificated;" but her school was beyond all comparison the best we ever saw. It was in such schools as these those working-men were educated, whose eloquent speeches, before audiences of several thousand of their fellow-townsmen, won a high eulogium from Lord Brougham the other day at Liverpool, and from Lord Shaftesbury not long since at Birmingham.—In short, in Education, as in other matters, it is possible to fast; and already the engine seems in danger of running off the rails. We offer these remarks in no captious spirit. We have suppressed the names, and even the references to the pages from which our extracts are made, lest we should seem to array Her Majesty's Inspectors of Privy Council in personal warfare against each other. Our object is to show, what indeed some of them candidly admit, that no scheme of National Education has yet been framed which deserves the public confidence; none which answers with tolerable fidelity to the conditions required. The work is in its infancy; it is at present only a great experiment. It ought, therefore, to be regarded with much forbearance on both sides. On both sides, we say; because the pertinacity of the Privy Council, in insisting upon minute and insignificant details, deserves more than a passing censure; and the rigid tenacity of the Inspectors has, in some instances, injured the cause which we give them full credit for every desire to serve. "My Lords" of the Privy Council, for instance,-many of our readers in the Midland and Northern counties will scarcely think we are in earnest, refused for a length of time to assist any school which had not a boarded floor; though not a cottage or a farm-house within miles around, perhaps, could boast of such a luxury; or nuisance rather, as every honest housewife in the parish would have thought it, where brick floors or flag-stones are universal. We should have had something to say, too, on the curt, and sometimes peevish and unreasonable, statements of the Inspectors with regard to the condition of the various schools, in their "tabulated Reports." But these, we learn, are no longer to be

printed and laid before the public; and we readily allow them to condone for past offences, on the condition that such rudenesses are not to be repeated.

The painful truth, then, confronts us, that, after all, the working classes place but little value upon the education, such as it may be, which is brought to their doors, and almost thrust on their acceptance. Why is this? for that it is so, the concurrent voice of all the Inspectors testifies. Wales is the one exception. Every where else, through the whole of England at least, the same complaint arises. The poor are indifferent to the advantages of education; in many districts their indifference positively increases from year to year, judging from the ages of the scholars and the average periods of their attendance. In Yorkshire, the number of children in attendance during the year 1856 was two per cent. less than during the year 1855; and, year by year, not only in Yorkshire, but throughout all the densely populated districts, the age of the children under instruction is gradually narrowed down towards infancy. "Year after year," reports the Inspector for Northumberland, and the three great northern counties of Durham, Cumberland, and Westmorland, "year after year the average age of the children attending school has declined, and the attendance has become more desultory. I do not think that there is any school that I have visited during the last three years, where I have not heard these complaints. The average falls, in all cases, till it reaches the earliest age at which employment is offered to children." (Minutes, 1855-56, p. 497.) Above ten years old the numbers under instruction are constantly diminishing. Under ten,-nay, under seven-they as steadily increase. And, what is still more disheartening, this is not the pressure of hard times, or the griping hand of poverty. Where work is plentiful and wages high, this marked declension is more apparent than where manual labour is scarce and poverty stalks abroad gaunt and famished. It tells a mournful tale of indifference and heartlessness; but so it is. The child is an available resource, a little machine for earning money; and the sooner his little head can be crammed with the modicum of knowledge absolutely necessary, the sooner he is set to work. Education, for its own sake, as enlarging the mind, or as a discipline for the heart and understanding, has at present no charms for the bulk of English parents of the working classes. "The better the school," mournfully exclaims one of the Inspectors, "the shorter the attendance." (Minutes, 1856-57, p. 290.) The skilled mechanic has not yet learned that in educating his child, the shortest method is not, and cannot be, the best. He does not yet perceive that the habit of mental application is of a thousand times more importance to his child than the lessons actually learned; that if all that is learned in two years could be learned in one, that one would be a year wasted in nine cases out of ten.

The causes of this indifference are variously explained. The field is wide as it is gloomy, and at present it is but imperfectly explored. "Employers of labour do not value children more for having been at school, and therefore the parents do not care to send them." (Minutes, &c., 1857-8, p. 418.) But the chief hinderances lie with the parents. And of these, no doubt, the greatest is their own spiritual indifference. Unconcerned, to a sad extent, for their own eternal welfare, they are of course still more unconcerned for the religious instruction of their children. Nor does that religion present itself in general, in our National Schools, under the most engaging forms. There are some admirable remarks upon religious instruction, and especially on the hard drill of the Church Catechism, learned by rote, but never understood, in the Report of one of the Inspectors, the Rev. W. H. Brookfield, which we would gladly transcribe at length, had we not already ventured beyond the usual limits of a paper on so dry a subject as popular Education :-

"It grieves me—who am not prone to use such words-it grieves me to think how this daily half-hour, which is usually spent in learning the Catechism by rote, and with such poor success, might have been spent in learning small portions of it, such as the Lord's Prayer, the Commandments, and the duties towards God and our neighbour, thoroughly and well, and with intelligence, and with really apt and appropriate Scripture illustrations; and how, in the course of those years which result in such grotesque results as I recited, almost every recorded word of the Redeemer might have been stored in the memory, never to be forgotten. This would, indeed, have been 'bread upon the waters.' (Minutes, 1855—6, p. 436.)

We

We are sorry to write in what may seem a moody strain. feel the disadvantage under which a public writer lies, whenever he sets himself against the stream of public opinion; rushing, as it does, stronger and deeper day by day. But in spite of these considerations, we must conclude our review sermon-wise, with three reflections, which, we fear, may prove unwelcome.

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First of all, the Elementary schools, so much in favour, are not what the working classes want. They want their boys to read well, to write well; and, to use their own expression, to cast accounts well. They want their girls, omitting the last accomplishment, to substitute in its place some skill in needlework; they want them to know how to make Father's shirt," and their own clothes without the expense of a dressmaker. They care nothing, for they know nothing, of higher accomplishments. If we would consent to offer this in a kindly, sympathizing spirit, mingling religion with it, more would probably be welcomed by and by. At present, we offer, in the language of commerce, an article which is not in request. We offer an education they do not value; and which,

after all, the Inspectors themselves being witnesses, often fails to secure for the child even these simple elements of learning.

Mr. Kennedy, whose long experience as an Inspector must give weight to his opinions, thinks that it might be well to divide our National Schools into three classes: the first, for infants under seven years old; the second, for children of ten or twelve, or even fifteen, if they could be induced to remain; the third, for those of fifteen years old and upwards, in which those higher branches of learning, vainly attempted in our present elementary schools, might be really well taught. To this we will add a suggestion of our own; which is, that the schools of this higher class should not be conducted at the public expense, but by private teachers, supported by weekly payments from their scholars. The teachers, in the spirit of the Canon of our Church, should have a license from the Bishop; not of course (for the attempt would be preposterous) that they should be compelled to obtain a license; but that, having obtained one, their school should be considered a Church-of-England School; and as such, open at all times to the visits of the Clergyman of the parish, and once a year to the inspection of the Privy Council. We have no doubt the instruction would, upon many accounts, be given and received more heartily, and therefore more effectively, than under the present system. A load of anxiety and toil would be transferred from the Parochial Clergyman to, probably, some of the most trustworthy and exemplary of his flock; and the State would be relieved from an expenditure which certainly does not fairly belong to it; for it is hard to tax one man that another man's child may learn, not the elements of Christian faith and practice, but the higher branches of a somewhat liberal education.

In the second place, the tone of our National Schools with regard to religion is not what it ought to be. Great pains are taken to cultivate the intellect of pupil-teachers and future masters; but the one sterling qualification of real piety is not often made essential. The attainments of a Queen's scholar in a training college, if we may judge by the Examination Papers printed with these Minutes, are those of a Bachelor of Arts of any of our Universities; those, indeed, to which many a Bachelor has never attained. We think them extravagant. We think a young man who can pass such an examination must feel, and ought to feel, himself fit for a higher post than that of a village schoolmaster, upon whom every village tradesman, who subscribes his half-guinea to the school, looks down as his inferior. The report of more than one of the Inspectors fully bears us out. Young men of the right class and character will not contend for these scholarships. Why should they, when a tradesman's shop opens for them far greater secular advantages? And if their desire be to work for the glory of God, the clerical office itself is