He afterwards introduced it at Kendal, and made attempts with small success to obtain its adoption in Edinburgh. Settling down soon after as rector of Swanage in Dorchester, he was secluded from the world for seven years; yet he retained his strong opinion of the value of the new system of education, and had the school at Swanage conducted on that system.

In the meanwhile Joseph Lancaster, son of a Chelsea pensioner, in the Borough-road London, opened a school in his father's house, in the year 1798, at the early age of eighteen. He had been usher in schools, and being of an original, enterprising, and ardent character, he had himself made improvements in tuition. Dr. Bell's pamphlet having fallen in his way, he adopted the Madras system with eagerness, making various alterations in its details. In the year 1802, he had brought his school into a very perfect state of organization, and found himself as well able to teach 250 boys with the aid of the senior boys as teachers, as before to teach 80. His enthusiasm and benevolence led him to conceive the practicability of bringing all the children of the poor under education by the new system, which was not only so attractive as to make learning a pleasure to the children, but was so cheap as exceedingly to facilitate the establishment and support of schools for great numbers of the poor. He published pamphlets recommending the plan, and in one of them ascribes the chief merit of the system to Dr. Bell, whom he afterwards visited at Swanage. His own school he made free, and obtained subscriptions from friends of education for its support. The Duke of Bedford, having been invited to visit it, became a warm and liberal patron of the system. Lancaster pushed his plan with the ceaseless energy of an enthusiast; nothing daunted or discouraged him; he asked subscriptions for new schools from every quarter; and at length he was admitted to an interview with the king (at Weymouth in 1806.) Being charmed with what he heard of his large designs, the admirable order and efficiency of his schools, and also with the simplicity and overflowing benevolence of the man, his majesty subscribed £100 a year, the queen £50, and the princess £25 each, to the extension of the "Lancasterian system." The king also declared himself to be the patron of the society which was soon afterwards formed to promote education on this system. Such was the origin of the "British and Foreign School Society."

Dr. Bell's method thus publicly brought forward and advocated, in process of time was adopted in the Lambeth schools, by the Archbishop of Canterbury: and in the Royal Military School, by the Duke of York's authority; numerous schools forthwith springing into existence upon

Originally designated "The Royal Lancasterian Institution for promoting the Education of the Children of the Poor." In 1808, Lancaster resigning his affairs into the hands of trustees, it assumed more of the character of a public institution. Mr. Lancaster died in 1838, supported, in his latter days, solely by an annuity purchased for him by a few old and attached friends. Dr. Bell died in 1832, leaving the princely sum of £120,000 for the encouragement of literature and the advancement of education.

what is known to this day as the Madras system; the distinctive features between these and such as were founded by Lancaster's party, consisting in the extent to which the religious instruction should be mixed with the secular; the former, as a clergyman of the established church, advocating the inculcation of the truths of Christianity as held in the church articles and formularies; the latter, representing the dissenting interests, admitted the reception of the Bible as the foundation of all instruction, but without any note or comment. This still remains the essential difference between the two societies and the schools conducted on their principles. In 1808, Dr. Bell endeavored to induce the government to take up his plans, and to establish "A National Board" of education, with schools placed under the management of the parochial clergy. In this he failed, but friends of the established church rallied round him, and, through their efforts and under the patronage of the bishop and clergy, the National Society was eventually formed in 1811.

The earliest voluntary agency of popular education was "the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge" founded in 1698, to aid in the establishment of charity schools, and the publication and circulation at a low price of religious books. By 1750, the society had aided in the establishment of sixteen hundred Church Charity Schools. From 1733, when the society began to report its annual issues of publication, to 1840, it had distributed upwards of 94,000,000 millions of books and tracts. The annual returns for publication is about £55,000, and its income from dividends, contributions and legacies, about £33,000.

The Religious Tract Society was instituted in 1799, for circulating religious works of its own, in the British dominion and foreign countries, under the direction of a committee of churchmen and protestant dissenters. Its total distribution to March, 1849, was nearly 500,000,000 of copies of its publication. Its gross income is £60,000 per annum, of which £12,000 was derived from annual subscription.

The first school established in Great Britain, exclusively for adults, was at Bala, a village in Merionethshire, in 1811, by Rev. T. Charles, minister of the place. This was so successful as to induce their establishment in other places. In 1812, William Smith, aided by Stephen Prout, commenced a similar school in Bristol, which led to the establishment of the "Bristol Institution for instructing the adults to read the Holy Scriptures." In 1813 the object was extending to teaching writing. In 1816, a similar society was founded in London. These schools were introduced into over thirty towns in the course of a few years.

The first evening school was established in Bristol in 1806, by the "Benevolent Evenings School Society" to afford gratuitous instruction to the sons of the laboring poor, who from the nature of their circumstances are obliged to work hard during the day for their subsistence. Instruction was confined to reading, writing, and arithmetic. Up to 1849, 13,002 persons had been enrolled as members of the schools.

Both adults and evening schools accomplished much good, and prepared the way for the gradual extension of the system of Mechanic

Institutes, into which they have been merged. Through their instructions, upwards of 30,000 of the poor of England, 180,000 of Wales, 30,000 of Ireland, and a large number in the Highlands of Scotland, making an aggregate of over 250,000 adult persons were taught to read. In 1815 the first infant school* was established by James Buchanan at New Lanark, under the auspices of Robert Owen; and in 1819 at London, under the patronage of Mr. Brougham and Lord Lansdowne, and others; and through the labors of one of the first teachers, Mr. Wilderspin, its methods were widely disseminated throughout the kingdom. These methods were greatly improved and more wisely applied in the model schools of the Home and Colonial Infant School Society, founded in 1836. The objects of the society are, 1. To qualify masters and ministers, by appropriate instruction and practice. 2. To visit and examine schools when required. 3. To circulate information, and prepare books and fixtures appropriate to these schools.

The history of the Mechanics' Institution through all its phases of development, from the earliest young men's mutual improvement society established in London, in 1690, with encouragement of Defoe, Dr. Kidder, and others, under the name of "Society for the Reformation of Manners"-the Society for the Suppression of Vice-"the Reformation Society of Paisley" in 1787; the Sunday Society in 1789, the Cast Iron Philosophers in 1791, the first Artisans' Library in 1795, and the Birmingham Brotherly Society in 1796, all among the working classes of Birmingham; the popular scientific lectures of Dr. John Anderson, to tradesmen and mechanics in Glasgow, in 1793-the establishment of the Anderson's University at that place in 1796, and the incorporation into it of a gratuitous course of elementary philosophical lectures by Dr. Birbeck in 1799, for the benefit of mechanics,-the Edinburgh School of Arts in 1821, the Glasgow Mechanics' Institute, the Liverpool Mechanics' and Apprentices' Library, and the London Mechanic Institution in 1823-which from this date, through the labors of Dr. Birbeck, Mr. Brougham and others, spread rapidly all over the kingdom until there are now over 700 societies scattered through every considerable village, especially every manufacturing district in the kingdom, numbering in 1849, 120,000 members, 408 reading-rooms, and 815,000 volumes-constitute one of the most interesting chapters in the educational or social history of Great Britain. They have created a demand for a system of national education, which found its first expression in Parliament in 1833, in a grant of £20,000, on motion of Lord Althorpe.

In 1825, as one of the direct results of the extended and growing in

*The founder of infant schools was J. F. Oberlin, Pastor of Waldbach in the Ban de la Roche, in the north-eastern section of France, who in his educational reform in his parish appointed females, (paid at his own expense,) to gather the poor children between the ages of 2 and 6 years, and instruct and interest them by pictures, maps, and conversation, and to teach them to read, knit, and sew. In Germany there is now a class of schools called Kribben-or Cradle-and Garden Schools where literally infant children, whose mothers are obliged to go out to work by day, are received and properly cared for and instructed during their absence.

terest in mechanic institutions and popular libraries, the "Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge" was formed, which commenced immediately a series of cheap and useful publications in a great variety of subjects, and thus lead the way to a new era in English literature-the preparation of books adapted in subject and mode of treatment, as well as in price, to the circumstances of the great mass of the people. In 1831, this society commenced a quarterly journal of education, which was discontinued in 1836, at the close of the tenth volume. In 1836, two volumes of essays on education, several of them delivered as lectures before the American Institute of Instruction, was published by this society. These twelve volumes, and the four volumes* published by the Central Society of Education, composed of several of the most active and liberal-minded members of the former society, contributed a large mass of valuable information as to the organization, administration, and instruction of public schools in different countries, and prepared the way, in 1839, for the appointment of the Committee of Privy Council on Education. Before noticing briefly the action of Parliament, and the measures of this government committee, we will conclude our sketch of the voluntary agencies in behalf of popular education.

Among the most important agencies now at work in Great Britain, are the Industrial, Ragged† and Reform Schools, designed for pauper, neglected, and criminal children.

Ragged schools in London had their origin in the operations of the London City Mission-the first school being founded in 1837, in Westminster, by Mr. Walker, an agent of that society. Its success led to the establishment of similar schools in the most debased and debasing streets of the metropolis, and gathered in mendicant and ragged children, already sunk in ignorance and vice, and unfit to mix with the scholars of an ordinary school. In 1844, the Ragged School Union was formed to encourage and assist those who teach in this class of schools, and to suggest plans for their extension and more efficient management. In 1852, the union embraced 60 schools with 13,000 children, and had an income from subscription and contributions of about $14,000, in addition to the sums contributed in each locality for its own schools.

The most systematic and successful enterprise of this class was instituted and carried out by William Watson, Sheriff-substitute of Aberdeenshire in Scotland, who organized, in 1841, a system of industrial schools which embraced in its operations all classes of idle vagrant chil

The fourth volume entitled the Educator, consisted of the prize essay, written by John Lalor, "On the necessity and means of elevating the social condition of the Educator," and other essays by James Sampson, Rev. E. Higginson, and others.

+ The first Ragged School was instituted by John Pounds, a poor cripple in Portsmouth, who, while pursuing his vocation as a shoemaker in a vicious neighborhood near the dockyards in that town, gathered into a school in his shop, such outcasts as he could by kind word, and needful food, until before his death in 1839, he had instructed over five hundred children who would otherwise have grown up in ignorance, and led lives of vice and crime. He died leaving

For epitaph, a life well spent,
And mankind, for a monument.

dren, and cleared a large town and county of juvenile criminals and beggars-thereby establishing an enviable reputation as a wise political economist, an efficient magistrate, and a practical benefactor of his country and race. His plan, which was developed gradually, embraced, first, gratuitous education. This succeeded only partially. He next, held out, three substantial meals a day, and four hours of useful but self-imposed occupation. This was a stronger inducement; but all the vagrant children did not come. Then, under the police act, all street begging was prohibited, and all found begging were sent to the industrial school for food, instruction, and work. And to reform those who still gained their bread by thieving, a child's asylum was founded, to which these young criminals were sent to school, or be taught useful knowledge and a trade, instead of to a prison. By these various agencies, street vagrancy and juvenile crimes has been annihilated. Some of the features of this system have been tried in all of the large towns in the kingdom, and with great success; and the success has been greater or less, as the plan adopted embraced more or less of the Aberdeen system. The whole number of ragged schools in the kingdom in 1852, was about 180, with about 20,000 pupils; of these about 4,000 attend industrial classes.

The first reform school was instituted by the Philanthropic Society, in 1788, for criminal and vagrant children in London, which was removed in 1848–9, to Redhill, near Reigate, and farm labor substituted for industrial training in shops. More than 3,000 boys have been admitted, of which number over two-thirds were reclaimed from criminal and vicious habits, and permanently improved. Similar schools have been from time to time formed by other societies with the same object in view, for particular sections of the country; the most successful of which, are the Refuge for the Destitute at Hoxton, and the Warwick County Asylum at Stratton.

The system of discipline and instruction adopted in these professedly reform schools, has been introduced into county gaols, and houses of correction, and with good results, especially into the County House of Correction at Preston, of which Rev. John Clay has been chaplain for many years. The success of these schools and methods of instruction, and the enormous increase of juvenile delinquencies in the large towns of England, induced Parliament in 1836, to make provision for the establishment of a governmental institution for young criminals at Parkhurst, in the Isle of Wight, which was opened in 1839. Although the system of discipline adopted, partook too much of that of a prison, and the industrial training was confined almost exclusively to shop labor, in which large numbers were employed together on the silent system, and the reformatory results were not, in consequence, so satisfactory as in institutions conducted on the Family and Farm School plan at Mettray, in France, and other places on the continent, still enough has been done, to awaken a desire and determination to extend and improve all existing means, not only of reforming, but of preventing the growth of juvenile