and another came up," but the established order of things under which the earth was ruled, seemed as if it abode for ever; when "France before the ark adored and slept." Even in those peaceful days we were taught to believe that the soul be without knowledge, it is not good." But in our own times, to leave the people uninformed, or half informed, is to leave the edifice of our social system resting upon a quicksand, if its foundation be not rather like the sides of a volcano. Should there, however, be any that deem such apprehensions chimerical, I will come to a very practical view of the matter. I am not inquiring how far the happiness of a rational creature can be secured even in this world, without drawing away his mind from the contemplation of sensual objects, winning over his affeetions from the taste for gross and groveling indulgence. On that subject, indeed, I have no kind of doubt; but let us come to the more common-place topic of the Gaol Roll, the Assize Calendar. I pretend to prove that, without waiting for the comparatively slow progress of general improvement by the operation of knowl edge universally diffused, six or seven years would not elapse before every prison, and every circuit, and every sessions in the country felt the blessed effects of infant schools, if the State did its duty, and took that effectual, that only effectual mode of preventing crime, instead of vainly trusting to the Gibbet, the Conviet ship, and the Hulks, for deterring by the force of example, that feeble, because misapplied force, which operates only on the mind at a moment when the passions are still, and has no more power to quell their tempest, than the rudder has to guide the ship through a hurricane which has torn every sail to rags. If Infant Schools were planted for the training of all children between three and seven years of age, so as to impress them with innocent and virtuous habits, their second natures thus superinduced, would make it as impossible to pervert them, as it is to make men and women of the upper classes rush into the highways each time they feel the want of money.

It is certain, that as things now stand, the two great parties into which the community is unhappily split upon this mighty question, are resolved that we should have no system of education at all,-no National Plan for Training Teachers, and thereby making the schools that stud the country all over, deserve the name they bear, no national plan for training young children to virtuous habits, and thereby rooting out crimes from the land. And this interdict, under which both parties join in laying their country, is by each pronounced to be necessary for the sacred interests of religion. Of religion! Oh, gracious God! Was ever the name of thy holy ordinances so impiously profaned before? Was ever before, thy best gift to man, his reason, so bewildered by blind bigotry, or savage intolerance, or wild fanaticism-bewildered so as to curse the very light thou hast caused to shine before his steps-bewildered so as not to perceive that any and every religion must flourish best in the tutored mind, and that by whomsoever instructed in secular things, thy word can better be sown in a soil prepared, than in one abandoned through neglect to the execrable influence of the evil Spirit?

Let the people be taught, say I. I care little, in comparison, who is to teach them. Let the grand machine of national education be framed and set to work, and I should even view without alarm the tendency of its first movements toward giving help to the power of the clergy. How? Just as my friend James Watt, when he has constructed some noble steam-engine, which is to bear the trade of England, and with her trade, the light of science and helps of art, into the heart of a distant continent, views without discomposure the piston-rod swerve from the perpendicular, well assured that the contrary flexure of the circles, his illustrious father's exquisite invention, has provided a speedy adjustment; and sees with still less apprehension the divergency of the balls, aware that the yet more refined provision of the same great mind has rendered that very centrifugal force the cause of its own counteraction, and prepared a remedy in exact proportion to the disturbance,-just so should I see unmoved the supposed tendency of a National School Bill to increase clerical ascendancy, being quite sure that the very act of spreading knowledge, which seems to increase the disturbing influence, must, in exact proportion to its own operation, control its evil effects upon our social system.

I know that nothing like a provision has been any where made for infant training, by far the most essential branch of tuition,-the one to provide which is the duty of our rulers, above every other duty imperative upon them, and which, if they discharge not, they forfeit their title to rule. But if they have not discharged

that duty, if they have planted no schools where the habits of virtue may be induced, stretched forth no hand to extirpate the germs of vice-they have kept open other schools where vice is taught with never-failing success-used both hands incessantly to stifle the seeds of virtue ere yet they had time to sprout-laid down many a hot-bed where the growth of crime in all its rank luxuriance is assiduously forced. THE INFANT SCHOOL LANGUISHES, which a paternal government would have cherished; but Newgate flourishes-Newgate, with her thousand cells to corrupt their youthful inmates; seducing the guiltless, confirming the depraved. THE INFANT SCHOOL IS CLOSED, which a paternal government would have opened wide to all its children. But the penitentiary, day and night, yawns to engulph the victims of our stepmother system,-the penitentiary where repentance and penance should rather be performed by the real authors of their fall. THE INFANT SCHOOL RECEIVES NO INNOCENTS whom it might train or might hold fast to natural virtue; but the utterly execrable, the altogether abominable hulk, lies moored in the face of the day which it darkens, within sight of the land which it insults, riding on the waters which it stains with every unnatural excess of infernal pollution, triumphant over all morals! And shall civilized, shall free, shall Christian rulers, any longer pause, any more hesitate, before they amend their ways, and attempt, though late yet seriously, to discharge the first of their duties? Or shall we, calling ourselves the friends to human improvement balance any longer, upon some party interest, some sectarian punctilio, or even some refined scruple, when the means are within our reach to redeem the time and do that which is most blessed in the sight of God, most beneficial to man? Or shall it be said that between the claims of contending factions in church or in State, the Legislature stands paralyzed, and puts not forth its hand to save the people placed by Providence under its care, lest offense be given to some of the knots of theologians who bewilder its ears with their noise, as they have bewildered their own brains with their controversies? Lawgivers of England! I charge ye, have a care! Be well assured, that the contempt lavished for centuries upon the cabals of Constantinople, where the council disputed on a text, while the enemy, the derider of all their texts, was thundering at the gate, will be as a token of respect compared with the loud shout of universal scorn which all mankind in all ages will send up against you, if you stand still and suffer a far deadlier foe than the Turcoman,-suffer the parent of all evil, all falsehood, all hypocrisy, all discharity, all self-seeking,-him who covers over with pretexts of conscience the pitfalls that he digs for the souls on which he preys, to stalk about the fold and lay waste its inmates-stand still and make no head against him, upon the vain pretext, to soothe your indolence, that your action is obstructed by religious cabals-upon the far more guilty speculation, that by playing a party game, you can turn the hatred of conflicting professors to your selfish purposes !

Let us hope for better things. Let us hope it through His might and under His blessing who commanded the little children to be brought unto Him, and that none of any family of mankind should be forbidden; of Him who has promised the choicest gifts of His Father's kingdom to those who in good earnest love their neighbors as themselves!"

In 1838, Mr. Wyse in the House of Commons made a motion for an address to the Queen to appoint a Board of Commissioners to provide for the impartial and careful distribution of the government grants, and for the immediate establishment of schools for educating teachers. The motion was lost by only a majority of four against it.

In 1839, in her speech at the opening of the session, the Queen prepared the country to expect some legislation on the subject, by expressing the hope that parliament would do something for the religious education of the people. Before the close of the session, Lord John Russell, in a letter to the president of the Privy Council, communicated the desire of the Queen, that he and four other members of the council, viz., the Lord Privy Seal, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, the Secretary

of State for the Home Department, and the Master of the Mint, should form a Board, or Committee for the consideration of all matters affecting the education of the people.

The Committee of Council on Education were fortunate in their selection of Dr. James Phillip Kay, (now Sir James Kay Shuttleworth) as Secretary. Dr. Kay had early interested himself in improving the condition of the manufacturing population, and in 1832 published an elaborate essay on the "Moral and Physical condition of the working classes employed in the cotton manufacture of Manchester." He was soon after made one of the Assistant Commissioners of the Poor Law Board. While acting in this capacity in the Norfolk or Suffolk district, in 1836, he submitted to that board a report on the evils of the system of apprenticeship education under the old Poor Law, and, in 1838, “a plan for the proper training of pauper children, and on district schools," which was made the basis for a reorganization and improved management of schools for this class of children. In 1839, having been removed to the superintendence of the Metropolitan district, he was specially charged with the improvement of schools in workhouses, and in maturing the school of industry at Norwood, into an example of what district schools for pauper children might become. To accomplish this, Dr. Kay made himself personally acquainted with the best methods of school management and teaching, as practiced in the schools of Scotland, Belgium, Holland, and France, and entered on the difficult task of training up a class of teachers moved by Christian charity to the work of rescuing by an appropriate physical, industrial, intellectual and religious education, the outcast and orphan children, from the mischief wrought by vicious parentage and cruel neglect. This was the origin of the training school at Battersea,* which was sustained until its success was beyond question, mainly, by the personal efforts and large pecuniary sacrifices of its projectors. While maturing the plan of this institution, Dr. Kay was appointed Secretary of the Committee of Council on Education; and to his industry, enthusiasm in the work, and great administrative talents, may be attributed the large measure of success which has attended the efforts of that committee to extend and improve the means of elementary education, and especially the system of governmental inspection, and training of teachers in 1843 he assumed the name of Shuttleworth, in consequence of receiving a legacy from a person of that name, and in 1849, on retiring from the office with shattered health, he was knighted by the Queen for his services to the cause of popular education-the first and only instance of honorary distinction conferred for this grade of public service.

Under his able administration the measures of the Committee of Council have been framed, and under his instructions and correspondence, these measures have become almost a system of national education.

A full description of the Battersea Training School will be found on page 791, et seq.

What-and how extensive-these measures of Government for the advancement of education really are, is not, we believe, generally known; we have therefore collected the following particulars in respect to them from the volume of Minutes for the years 1848-9-50, which is now before us. They appear to be framed with a due regard to the rights of conscience and the diversities of religious opinion; and, with a wise and statesmanlike precaution on the part of the Government, to avail itself of local sympathies, and to stimulate voluntary contributions.

1. Aid is offered by these minutes towards the erection of school buildings; and since the year 1839 Government has contributed under this head an aggregate sum of £470,854, towards the erection of 3782 schoolhouses, drawing out, thereby, voluntary contributions to, probably, four times that amount, and affording space for the instruction of 709,000 more children than could before be taught. These grants have been distributed as follows:

Eighty-two per cent. of the whole amount granted under this head has been paid to Church-of-England schools.

2. Aid is offered toward the erection of normal schools for the training of teachers or for the improvement of the buildings of such schools; and the total amount thus granted in aid of eighteen normal schools, is £66,450; of which £35,950 is to the Church of England; £12,000 to the British and Foreign School Society and the Wesleyan body; and the rest to the Scotch Church.

3. Aid is offered towards the maintenance of such students in these normal schools, as shall appear, on examination, to possess the qualities and attainments likely to make them good teachers, in sums varying from £20 to £30 annually for each student. The total sums so contributed to thirteen training schools were, in the year 1847, £1705; in 1848, £2138; in 1849, £2373.

4. Annual grants are paid in augmentation of the salaries of such teachers of elementary schools as, upon examination, have been judged worthy to receive certificates of merit, such certificates being of three different classes, and the augmentations varying from £15 to £30. The number of teachers so certificated is 681, and the total amount payable annually in augmentation of their salaries £6133.

5. Stipends are allowed to apprentices to the office of teacher, increasing during the five years of their apprenticeship from £10 to £18. The number of schools in which such apprentices have been appointed being 1361, and the number of apprentices, 3581.

6. Provision is made for the instruction of these apprentices by annual payments to the teachers to whom they are apprenticed, being at the rate of £5 annually for one, and £4 for every additional apprentice, their competency to instruct them being tested by annual examinations. The sums payable under the three last heads are stated in the following table :—

7. They offer supplies of books, apparatus, and school fittings, at reduced rates, the reduction being effected by the purchase of large quantities at wholesale prices; and by grants to the extent of one-third of these reduced prices. The total reduction thus effected averages sixty-two per cent. on the retail price; and, the total amount of the grants so made by the Government being £6664, it is probable that the retail price of the books, maps, &c., so distributed, is not less than £17,500.

8. They provide for the annual inspection of normal schools, and of all elementary schools in which apprentices are appointed, or which are taught by certificated teachers. Also for the annual examination of apprentices and of candidates for the office of apprentice, and of teachers who are candidates for certificates of merit.

For this purpose they maintain a staff of twenty-one inspectors of schools, -of whom eleven are inspectors of church schools; two of British and Foreign, and Dissenters' schools; and two of Scotch schools; one of Roman Catholic, and five of Workhouse schools. The cost of this inspection, in 1849, for salaries and travelling expenses, was £16,826. The schools at present liable to inspection are 12 normal schools, 4296 elementary schools, and about 700 workhouse schools.

The general result of this action of the Government on the education of the country, in respect to quantity, may be gathered from the fact, that in the ten years from 1837 to 1847, the number of children under education in Church schools had increased from 558,180 to 955,865, being an increase of eight elevenths.

It was not, however, so much in respect to the quantity of the education of the country. as in regard to its quality, that an alteration was needed: and it is in this respect that most has been done. The two questions of quality and quantity have, however, a relation to one another, for a good school is almost always a full one. This relation of the number of the scholars to the quality of the school is strikingly illustrated in the returns made from schools in which certificated teachers and apprentices have been appointed, and which are, therefore, regularly inspected. These schools may be reasonably supposed to have improved from year to year and it appears that the numbers of children who attend them have, in like manner, steadily advanced. In the first year after these measures came into