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subjects. A yearly examination would be trusted to for testing the amount of work which had been done in the school throughout the year. Schools examined in the summer would be in much better case than those examined in winter. Schools examined just after any harvest, or during the prevalence of any childish malady, would gain next to nothing. Irregular, dull, and backward children, and children beyond eleven years of age, would be neglected. The moral and religious character of schools would be lowered. The teachers would, as a class, be demoralised by the constant temptation to refuse or neglect non-remunerative pupils, and to falsify their registers. Religious instruction would be degraded from the first place which it now holds in our national schools, to the position which it occupies in Mr. Lowe's and Earl Russell's favourite schools connected with the British and Foreign School Society. A line would be drawn by authority between secular and religious teaching. Pupil-teachers, where retained, would be less carefully taught, and more likely to abandon their profession. Training colleges would suffer great pecuniary loss. Actual teachers would be unjustly treated. Future teachers would be trained for but one year; many would be not trained at all. Expenditure would be increased by the necessity of increasing the number of inspectors.

Then where does the strong point of the Revised Code lie concealed? Is there any? We believe there is, and we believe that it will be our true wisdom to sift out the wheat before we throw away the chaff; for the New Code does strive to embody a principle which is of the utmost importance, and to give expression to a feeling which is deeply seated in the country, and which is shared by all sober-thinking men. The object of schooling is to obtain results, and the results to be desired in the schooling of the poor are a sound unambitious education, free from extravagance, and fitted for the state of life to which the poor belong. We do not quarrel with the Revised Code for aiming at results, but with the plan devised by it for testing results.

We say with confidence that such an examination as takes place at present under an inspector who knows his duty is a real test of the 'results' produced by a school. The inspector notes the tone, and order, and discipline of the school-a 'result' more valuable than a thousand long-division sums. He notes whether the children have clean faces, smooth hair, ready smiles. He notes the appliances and apparatus of the school. He notes the ability and willingness of the teachers. He notes the success or failure of every class in reading, in writing, and in arithmetic; and still more in religious knowledge; and if any go Vol. 111.-No. 221. beyond

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beyond these subjects, he notes that too. Finally he notes for he has become familiar with this recondite branch of knowledge) the progress made by the girls in plain sewing. These are all' results' intellectual, religious, moral, physical, mechanical; and the 'results' contemplated by the Revised Code, as compared with them, are as ditch-water to the ocean. Yet a hint may be well taken from the Revised Code. The fault of the present system is, that there is not an immediate connexion between the amount of results which the test discovers, and the amount of money paid to the school. A very simple enactment will do all that requires to be done. It is this: let notice be sent to the managers of schools, that henceforth no capitation will be paid to schools in which the inspector reports that religious knowledge, reading, writing, and arithmetic are below 'fair,' and that one-fourth of the capitation will be lost in case any one of these four subjects is so reported; and further, that the augmentation grants to the masters will in like manner be withheld or curtailed. Such a regulation would secure all the good proposed to be secured by the Revised Code's examination, and would avoid its many evils. Results would then be fairly tested, and payment would be according to results.

There are yet two other points in which hints may be taken from the Revised Code. It has been remarked that the masters and mistresses who have obtained a first-class certificate are not always the best teachers. This may readily be met by placing all who successfully pass the examination for certificates on a level, so far as payment is concerned, at the commencement of their work, and giving them means of raising themselves solely by exhibiting practical success in their calling. The place which they won in the class-list might still be noted and made public, but only as an honorary distinction. Students who have left the training institution at the end of the first year might be placed a degree lower than those who have completed their course. We may also express our approval of the fourth-class certificate, which it is proposed to substitute for registration.

The other subject to which the Revised Code most properly directs our attention is the means of making night-schools more efficient. The way in which this is attempted to be done by the provisions of the Code would be found, we fear, to be impracticable; though any effort at solving a difficulty which the present system leaves in effect untouched is welcome. We do not believe it possible that a master could teach in the morning and afternoon schools, besides giving instruction to pupil-teachers, and, in addition to this, hold an evening-school, without ruining his health in the course of a few years. The permission to teach

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the pupil-teacher at the night-school is really a permission not to teach him; for what amalgamation can there be between the studies of the rough, unlettered young men who present themselves at night-schools, and of a boy capable of teaching in a day-school? A probable result would no doubt be the substitution of a night-school for an afternoon-school-a proposal of Mr. Fraser's, the adoption of which appears to have made him a warm advocate for the Code. But this is not what is wanted. It is not desirable that any young enough to attend the day-school should attend the night-school, and there shame the ignorance of their untaught but willing elders. Nor, on the other hand, is it desirable that boys and girls should attend school but once in the day. The attendants at the day-school and the attendants at the night-school must be different, as they differ in age, though they belong to the same class. Let them be regarded as separate schools, and let adequate help be given when they are under satisfactory management, according to the need of each, and not according to the relation which they bear each to the other. The Committee of Council created the masters of day-schools; by a similar machinery they may create masters of night-schools. A practical plan of this sort would soon multiply night-schools, as it has already provided day-schools; and we have sufficient confidence in the zeal of the parochial clergy to believe that the one set of schools would be under their management and control as much as the other.

ART. IV.—1. The Story of Burnt Njal; or Life in Iceland at the end of the Tenth Century. From the Icelandic of the Njal's Saga. By George Webbe Dasent. 2 vols. 8vo. Edinburgh, 1861.

2. Iceland; its Volcanoes, Geysers, and Glaciers. By Charles S. Forbes. London, 1860.

3. The Oxonian in Iceland; or Notes of Travel in that Island in the Summer of 1860. By the Rev. Frederick Metcalfe. London, 1861.

4. Oxford Essays. London, 1858.

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AT the entrance to the Arsenal in Venice stand a pair of

colossal lions, brought from Athens in 1687, when that city was taken by the Venetians under Francesco Morosini. The lions, which are of antique workmanship, and have been celebrated in verse by Goethe, stood originally in the Piræus; and on the body of one of them is carved a Runic inscription, which has recently been deciphered and explained by the learned

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Northern

Northern archeologist, M. C. C. Rafn. It records the capture of the Piræus by Harald Hardrada; that famous 'King of Norse' to whom his namesake, Harold of England, promised seven feet of ground, or somewhat more, as he was a tall man,' when the Saxon king met and defeated him at Stamford Bridge in Yorkshire, about a month before he fell himself at Hastings. Before he became King of Norway, Harald had been Captain of the Varangian Guard at Constantinople; and after the fall of the Piræus had, no doubt, employed the hand of one of his countrymen to trace, in the mystic characters of the North, the story of his conquest on the old Greek lion.

The fiercest Viking spirit had become somewhat tamed before the days of Harald Hardrada; but this singular monument, with the strange mixture of races and countries which belongs to its history, is, perhaps, one of the most suggestive memorials of the Northern sea-rovers remaining in Europe. Full of interest as are all the details of their story, there is nothing about it which takes a firmer hold on the imagination than the wide stretch of their wanderings and conquests, the consequent jostling of the old world and the new, and the sharply-contrasted pictures thence arising, which the Sagas indicate even more frequently than they supply at full length. Far wanderings and strange adventures are at once suggested when we read of a robe of Byzantine silk, embroidered with golden palm-leaves, worn by some Kiartan or Thorolf, and glancing in the red firelight of an Icelandic drinking-hall; or when we find the same Greek word as Homer would have used, employed to designate the support of the mighty vessel of mead or of beer which cheered the hearts of Norse sea-kings on the shores of Caithness, or under the shadow of Heckla.* To meet Goliath of Gath in an Icelandic version of his story, rejoicing in the title of that accursed Viking,' is scarcely more startling or unexpected.†

Hoards of Byzantine and Oriental coins, with Greek and Cufic inscriptions, are still brought to light from time to time in Iceland and Norway;-tangible relics of the old sea-kings, and proofs of their distant wanderings. Traces of their ancient prebe found, too, on shores far from their own countries,

sence may

*Trapeza' is the word used for the beer-table in more than one Saga. Possibly a support for the great mead-vat was itself a refinement brought from Byzantium.

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The word viking,' as Mr. Dasent points out, is in no way akin to 'king.' It is derived from "vik," a bay or creek, because these sea rovers lay moored in bays or creeks on the look-out for merchant ships. The "ing" is a well-known ending, meaning, in this case, occupation or calling. In later times the word is used for any robber,' as in the Biblical paraphrase referred to above.—Dasent, vol. ii. p. 353.

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in the shape of some monumental stone with its dragons and carved runes, or of such an inscription as that on the Venetian lion. But what remains of their influence on the cognate races with whom they mixed, first as conquerors and then as colonists? And how far is it possible to recognize the lingering presence of the spirit of the North, not only in the kirks' and 'bys' which dot the eastern and northern counties of England, and in the Scandinavian words and phrases which occur in the local dialects, but also in the dispositions and character of the people themselves? Without by any means asserting with Mr. Laing that we derive little or nothing from our Saxon ancestors, and that we are indebted to the infusion of Scandinavian blood for every free institution and good gift we possess, we may at least admit that the Northman has had his full share, both through the settlements of the Danelagh and the great conquest at Hastings, in the gradual formation of

This happy breed of men-this earth-this England.'

Hence, besides the picturesque character of the narratives which show us the Northman in his own land-besides their strongly-contrasted colours, and their wild lights and shadesthey have for us an especial interest as presenting us with fulllength portraits of our own ancestors-on one side at all events— drawn with the minutest accuracy of detail, and as full of life and character as the most speaking canvases of Titian or Giorgione. It is not a little interesting to compare the features of such remote kinsmen with those of their later descendants, and to trace the Icelander of the tenth century in the hospitable English Franklin of Chaucer's time, and, still more clearly, in the Condottieri captains-such as Hawkwood and Sir John Fastolfe of the fifteenth century, or in the adventurous searovers-such as Drake and Cavendish-of the sixteenth and seventeenth.

For the best aid toward such a comparison the English reader is under the deepest obligation to Mr. Dasent. The Northman is nowhere more completely shown to us than in the Sagas of ancient Iceland; and of these none is more important or more valuable, from the variety and minuteness of its details, than the Njal's Saga-the 'Story of Burnt Njal'-of which we are now presented with a most admirable translation. Only those who are acquainted, however imperfectly, with this grand old story in its original language, can fully appreciate the beauty and fidelity of Mr. Dasent's version. Not only is the clear and simple English such as modern writers-to their own infinite lossseldom care to employ, but, without any affectation of antiquity,

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