A careful examination of the table, in which are recorded the results of the entrance examination, enables the rector and tutors to determine, with almost perfect precision, the place which each student should occupy, and the studies to which his attention should be chiefly directed. The attainments of the young men in Biblical knowledge, in English literature and grammar, in geography and history, are not so unequal as to render necessary or desirable a separate classification, while prosecuting the study of these branches. Nor has it been found expedient to arrange the students in different sections, when engaged in the study of French, chemistry, drawing, and music; and both in the practice of teaching, and in listening to the exposition, by the rector, of the various methods and systems, or to his criticism of the mode in which particular lessons have been communicated by particular students, no separate classification has been made.

By the Time Table, drawn up for the regulation of the students in 1849, it appears that five hours weekly (one hour a day) are devoted to Biblical instruction; four hours to English literature and grammar; two hours to history and geography; two hours to lectures, in connection with recitations in a text book, in chemistry; two hours to drawing; three to French; and two hours to instruction in music, with practice at intervals every day. In the higher departments of study, Latin, Greek, geometry, algebra, plane and spherical trigonometry, with their practical applications, the students are arranged into divisions, junior and senior. The proficiency in these branches is not very great, although the stimulus of competition for the bursaries is showing itself in drawing to the institution a large number of right-minded, and properly-prepared candidates, and in a more comprehensive and thorough course of instruction during their connection with the institution. A knowledge of the history, principles, and practice of education, is given as follows:

First, The rector expounds, conversationally, but with a degree of minuteness and care that shows how fully he appreciates the importance of this department of his labors, the methods that are employed in the model schools of the institution, in teaching the various branches. He himself exemplifies the application of every principle that may seem in the least recondite, gives its philosophy, and shows how it may be applied in conducting the work of the school-room. In this way it may be said, that every method deserving examination, as based upon any philosophical principle, is not only elaborately examined and minutely expounded, but skillfully exemplified in the presence of the

students.

Second, Essays are prescribed to be written on subjects, embracing the whole theory of teaching, and requiring, for their discussion, a good extent of reading and study. The best of these essays are afterward read in the hearing of the assembled body of students, and their merits and defects carefully pointed out.

Third, A systematic analysis and examination of all the leading educational works in our own language is made during the session. A particular work is assigned to each student, in turn, who is charged with the preparation of a careful analysis and examination of its contents. This paper is read before the rector in the presence of all the students, who express their opinion generally, and specify what they consider to be most valuable in the views presented in it. The rector sums up by an exposition of what appears to him to be its real character and value.

In this way the students have an opportunity, during the session, of acquiring a tolerably satisfactory knowledge of the principles and history of teaching, of the various methods which deserve examination, as well as of all the details of school organization and management.

The practical instruction of the normal pupils is obtained through the model schools attached to the institution. These schools contain upward of five hundred children, arranged in six classes, under ten teachers, and nineteen pupil teachers, acting under the personal direction of the rector, who has the immediate charge of the first class.

In these model schools the students have an opportunity of seeing all the branches usually pursued in the Elementary school of Scotland, taught by skillful and experienced masters, and, in their observations of the methods practiced, have the advantage of the personal direction and superintendence of the Rector. The means by which they themselves are trained to skill in the communication of knowledge are twofold.

First, They are employed two hours weekly in teaching, in the model schools, under the superintendence of the rector, together with the master of the department in which they are practicing.

Second, One hour, weekly, is set apart, for the purpose of hearing a certain number of the students give lessons, in the presence of the rector and the other students, on particular and previously prescribed subjects. These subjects are varied in such a manner, that, ere the end of the session, each student has had frequent opportunities, both of himself conducting each educational process, and of seeing it conducted by his fellow students. While these lessons are being given by those appointed to this work, their fellow students are busy observing the manner in which the various processes are conducted, and marking in their note-books any thing that may seem to deserve or call for comment. An opportunity is afterward afforded them of expressing their opinions, in regard to the manner in which the various lessons had been given, and of criticising minutely the whole process gone through by the students, who had been engaged in the business of the class-room. An hour is devoted to this work of public criticism.

The teachers consisted in 1852 of a rector, who has special charge of Biblical instruction, and the theory and practice of teaching, a mathematical tutor, a classical tutor, a teacher of drawing, a lecturer on chemistry, and a music master.

IRELAND.

THE checkered experience of Ireland,-its dark and its bright sides,forms one of the most instructive chapters in the history of popular education. It commences, according to the testimony of the earliest chroniclers, with institutions of learning, not only of earlier origin, but of higher reputation, than any in England or Scotland,-institutions which were resorted to by Engl ish youth for instruction, who brought back the use of letters to their ignorant countrymen. According to Bede and William of Malmesbury, this resort commenced even so early as the seventh century, and these youth were not only taught, but maintained without service or reward. The great college of Mayo was called "the Mayo of the Saxons," because it was dedicated to the exclusive use of English students, who at one time amounted to no fewer than 2000. Bayle, on the authority of the historian of the time, pronounces Ireland "the most civilized country in Europe,* the nursery of the sciences" from the eighth to the thirteenth century, and her own writers are proud of pointing to the monastery of Lindisfarne, the college of Lismore, and the forty literary institutions of Borrisdole, as so many illustrative evidences of the early intellectual activity and literary munificence of the nation. But Ireland not only abounded with higher institutions, but there were connected with monasteries and churches, as early as the thirteenth century, teachers expressly set apart "for teaching poor scholars gratis." When the country was overrun by foreign armies, and torn by civil discord, and governed by new ecclesiastical authorities, set up by the conquerors, and not in harmony with the religion of the people, a change certainly passed over the face of things, and there follows a period of darkness and educational destitution, for which we find no relief in turning to the history of English legislation in behalf of Ireland. Indeed there is not a darker page in the whole history of religious intolerance than that which records the action and legislation of England for two centuries, toward this ill-fated country, in this one particular. Even the statute of Henry VIII., which seems to be framed to carry out a system of elementary education already existing before the new ecclesiastical authorities were imposed upon the country, was intended mainly to convert Irishmen into Englishmen. By that

*These facts are stated on the authority of a speech of Hon. Thomas Wyse, in the House of Commons, in 1835.

statute, every archbishop and bishop was bound to see that every clergyman took an oath "to keep, or cause to be kept, a school to learn English, if any children of his parish came to him to learn the same, taking for the keeping of the said school such convenient stipend or salary as in the suid land is accustomably used to be taken;" and both higher and lower authorities, archbishops and their beneficed clergymen, are subjected to a fine for neglect of duty. The fatal error in this and in all subsequent legislation and associated effort for education in Ireland, until the last twenty years, was its want of nationality; the schools were English and Protestant, and the people for whom they were established were Irish and Catholics, and every effort, by legislation or education, to convert Irishmen into Englishmen, and Catholics into Protestants, has not only failed, but only helped to sink the poor into ignorance, poverty and barbarism, and bind both rich and poor more closely to their faith and their country. Every system of education, to be successful, must be adapted to the institutions, habits and convictions of the people. If this principle had been regarded in the statute of Henry VIII., Ireland, which had the same, if not a better foundation in previous habits and existing institutions, than either Scotland or Germany, would have had a system of parochial schools recognized and enforced by the state, but supervised by the clergy. This was the secret of the success of Luther and Knox. What they did was in harmony with the convictions and habits of the people. So strangely was this truth forgotten in Ireland, that until the beginning of this century, Catholics, who constituted four-fifths of the population, were not only not permit ted to endow, conduct, or teach schools, but Catholic parents even were not permitted to educate their own children abroad, and it was made an offense, punished by transportation, (and if the party returned it was made high treason,) in a Catholic, to act as a schoolmaster, or assistant to a schoolmaster, or even as a tutor in a private family. Such a law as that in operation for a century, coupled with legal disabilities in every form, and with a system of legislation framed to benefit England at the expense of Ireland, would sink any people into pauperism and barbarism. especially when much, if not most, of the land itself was held in fee by foreigners, or Protestants, and the products of the soil and labor were expended on swarms of church dignitaries, state officials, and absentee landlords. But even when these restrictions on freedom of education and teaching were removed in 1785, the grants of money by the Irish and Imperial Parliaments, down to 1825, were expended in supporting schools exclusively Protestant. Upward of $7,000,000 were expended on the Protestant Charter Schools, which were supported by a society which originated in 1733, on the alleged ground "that Protestant English schools, in certain counties inhabited by Papists, were absolutely necessary for their conversion.". By a by-law of this society, the advantages of the institutions were limited exclusively to the children of Catholic parents. On the schools of the "Society for Discountenancing Vice," which originated in 1792, and which was soon converted into an agency

of proselytism, the government expended, between 1800 and 1827, more than a half million of dollars. In 1814, the schools of the "Kildare Place Society," began to receive grants from the Parliament, which amounted in some years to £50,000, and on an average to $25,000, and in the aggregate to near $2,000,000; and yet the regulations of the Society, although more liberal than any which preceded it, were so applied as practically to exclude the children of Catholics, who constituted, in 1830, 6,423,000, out of a population of 7,932,000.

In 1806 commissioners were appointed by Parliament to inquire into the state of all schools, on public or charitable foundations, in Ireland; who made fourteen reports. In their last report, in 1812, they recommend the appointment of a board of commissioners, to receive and dispose of all parliamentary grants, to establish schools, to prepare a sufficient number of well-qualified masters, to prescribe the course and mode of education, to select text-books, and generally to administer a system of national education for Ireland. To obviate the difficulty in the way of religious instruction, the commissioners express a confident conviction that, in the selection of text-books, "it will be found practicable to introduce not only a number of books in which moral principles should be inculcated in such a manner as is likely to make deep and lasting impressions on the youthful mind, but also ample extracts from the Sacred Scriptures themselves, an early acquaintance with which it deems of the utmost importance, and indeed indispensable in forming the mind to just notions of duty and sound principles of conduct; and that the study of such a volume of extracts from the Sacred Writings would form the best preparation for that more particular religious instruction which it would be the duty and inclination of their several ministers of religion to give at proper times, and in other places, to the children of their respective congregations."

In 1824, another commission was instituted to inquire into the nature and extent of the instruction afforded by different schools in Ireland, supported in whole or in part from the public funds, and to report on the best means of extending to all classes of the people the benefit of education. This commission submitted nine reports, concurring generally in the recommendations of the committee of 1805.

In 1828, the reports of the commissioners were referred to a committee of the House of Commons, who made a report in the same year, in which they state their object to be "to discover a mode in which the combined education of Protestant and Catholic might be carried on, resting upon religious instruction, but free from the suspicion of proselytism." The committee therefore recommend the appointment of a board of education, with powers substantially the same as possessed by the former commissioners. The following resolution presents their views on the matter of religious education

"That it is the opinion of this Committee, that for the purpose of carrying into effect the combined literary and the separate religious education of the scholars, the course of study for four fixed days in the week should be exclusively moral and literary; and that, of the two remaining days, the one to be appropriated