minds the house; and the rhetoric of all the education theorists in Great Britain will not alter matters here. It is the same with boys. At seven or eight years old, in town or country, they must go to work. We are speaking of the children of the really poor. In the country, squires and farmers, and those, too, benevolent men, friends and promoters of education, have assured us that unless the lads are turned out thus early, they are never fit for out-door life. So they begin with stonepicking and bird-minding. Many a mere child drives the team, and manages the horses which by no contrivance, except the aid of another urchin like himself, he can mount. In towns, there are jobs and errands to be done; and even, much as we deplore it, there is sedentary toil of various kinds, on which mere children will be employed. For these the infant school is invaluable. But the code almost excludes it from

the nation's charity! No child under five years old receives head money under any circumstances; nor, should it have an idle winter, and its parents wish to send it to school again, as often happens, after it is eleven years old, nor indeed at any time, whatever be its age, unless it can attend a hundred days in the year, will the state assist. The code might have been drawn up with the special intention of excluding this class of children from any share or participation whatever in the nation's paternal care or charity. We impute no bad motives; we think our friends a little hard upon the well-meaning gentlemen at Whitehall. But we read their new code as we have often read their blue-books, with this exclamation rising on our lips: "How little you gentlemen in office know of the real condition of the working people of England and their families!"

But the new code wanders further from the mark than ever. The head-money, or capitation fee, is to be paid after an educational test. This educational test (we are now quoting from a document issued from the Adelphi after a public meeting, and bearing the signatures of the secretaries of the Home and Colonial and Metropolitan training institutions) is limited to reading, writing, and arithmetic; and failure in any one of these forfeits one-third of the grant earned by attendances. The objections to this are palpable. The old system of inspectorship was open to many objections; it was felt to be arbitrary; in some cases it was unjust; and for several years past the inspectors have been obliged to discontinue the publication of their justly obnoxious "tabulated reports." But to the new system the objections are still more formidable. First, it omits religion altogether. This alone is fatal to it. And yet, perverse as we may seem, if it had not omitted religion we should have been still more dissatisfied. For what is the minimum test to be, in religion?— bearing always in mind that in too many a school the minimum test will be the maximum attainment of the child. Shall it be

the ancient catechism of the church of England; "the creed, the Lord's prayer, and the ten commandments?" We should not be satisfied with this, for our own part. If the child can learn so little, it ought to be instructed, from some simple catechism, in the saving doctrines of the cross of Christ. But, again, who shall fix upon the elementary catechism for national use? And if we were to accept that which is all the church of the reformation required from candidates for confirmation, even this is far beyond the possible attainment of many of those poorer children for whom the bounty is most needed, and who are most entitled to it. But we have a still more serious objection to an examination on which so much depends, upon the subject of religion. Who shall inspect the inspectors? We are not yet rid of the leaven of Popery. Parishes are insulted even now, though not so often as a few years ago, by the ministrations of men who apostatize a few days after they have preached their last sermon, and join the church of Rome. The Essayists are still amongst us, holding benefices. Who shall say what our inspectors may be five years hence? We hear it echoed on all sides, that this is but the first step towards an entirely secular system; the introduction, as some of the speakers said at the meeting we have referred to, of the thin edge of the wedge. We do not think this a charitable view of the case; we hope, and we believe, that it is not a just one; but still it may have such a tendency. Money must be had. The anxiety of the managers will, after all, be to secure the highest grant, and their attention will be given to the subjects which form the tests. "Pecuniary pressure will necessarily cause so much time to be given to these subjects, that the cultivation of the intellect, the communication of general information, and, above all, the moral and religious training of the children, must greatly suffer." Otherwise we would far rather be let alone. Thus it appears to us the minute cannot possibly be worked; it must be suspended or repealed. But with a view to further regulations which must inevitably succeed to it, we suggest that on religion, instead of an examination by the inspector, a declaration signed by the master or mistress and counter-signed by the clergyman, should be accepted; and it should state, in specified terms, that the children, or perhaps that each child, has been duly instructed in the Christian faith.

Other objections, formidable, if not fatal, in their way, have been raised. The following will perhaps be thought suffi

cient :

"The test will fail to reach the irregular and idle, the class for whom it is most especially designed. Take any list of boys for whom the present capitation grant is paid, and add the others who have attended 150 days, and it will be found that ninetenths or more of all the earnings from the 1d. attendances will

come from that class (about half the school), few of whom need the stimulus of a test. The sum obtainable from the irregular and idle residue, after the most persevering efforts, will be so small that it will not pay to teach them.

"The application of the test will be intolerable. Will it be endured that the inspector's judgment on each case is to be secret, and that £50. or more in a school should depend on the caprice or peculiar standard of the examiner? This remark was made in our hearing by an experienced inspector. Or will the judgment be openly pronounced in presence of an influential company of managers? Will they submit to see a scholar rejected when they think he reads well? How many false spellings in the dictation lesson will forfeit one-third of the grant? What weight is quality of writing to have in the dictation lesson? Is one slip in working a sum to be fatal, or is a boy to have a second trial? Will the inspectors undertake such an invidious duty? Or, again, what will happen when the inspection occurs in a severe frost?-or during a prevailing epidemic?or in agricultural districts within a month or two of harvest?"

Again, the new code is fairly chargeable with a breach of faith, and this both to the masters and pupil-teachers, and to the managers of the schools; and "the manager" is in nine cases out of ten no other than the hapless, helpless clergyman. How it will affect the former, we could only explain by shewing at large the operation of the new system as compared with the old one. Their position will be altered; the masters will suffer, first in the training schools with their now crippled resources, and afterwards from their lower status and diminished scale of payment. The pupil-teachers will cease to be apprentices. It will be the interest of managers and teachers to dispense with them as much as possible; the time allotted for their instruction will be diminished by one third; and when at length they obtain a teacher's certificate, its value will be greatly reduced. In bare justice to a very deserving class, we add our protest against this sudden change as more than a hardship, an injustice. The minute should at least have been prospective. But after all, the clergyman will suffer most. The government grant is, as we have stated all along, a bounty to the parent. It is so in fact. But the payment is actually made to the schoolmaster and pupil-teachers, through the manager; and in almost every case, in church of England schools, that manager is the clergyman. It is a grinding task; but so it is. It is an incubus under which he groans, but he cannot throw it off; for if he should, his school is closed. No one but himself will either do the work, or submit to the pecuniary responsibilities. It is he who engages the master; it is he who pays the stipends; it is he to whom the master and mistress look each quarter day

with confidence. Whether there be funds in hand or not, is not their concern. One thing they know; the clergyman will pay their quarter's stipend. He goes about pauper-wise soliciting subscriptions, and he meets with a pauper's reception; he corresponds with the official gentlemen at Whitehall; he does all the work, and when the funds fail at last, he makes up the deficiency. Without him the whole system within the church of England would fall to pieces, and three fourths of the schools in England would be closed. Now how will this "manager," so called, be affected by the change? One clergyman, who has a thousand children in his schools, tells us that it will inflict upon him a loss of seventy, if not a hundred, pounds per annum ! But we will take an estimate which we have met with in a newspaper which advocates the principles of Mr. Bright and the voluntary party; for they too cry out lustily; and their voice may perhaps be heard where that of the clergy will not reach. We find in the Star and Dial the following statement; it is signed by a schoolmistress, who represents schools in which there are upwards of five hundred children, of whom 458 are entitled, under the old system, to the government bounty. After comparing each child's attendance for the past year with her performance in the examination, we found that in our schools we should obtain 7s. 3d. per head on the attendance (458). All these schools have been well reported on by her Majesty's inspectors, and are in as fair a position for gaining grants under this new code as the majority of national schools. Let me shew your readers, and especially school managers, the effect of the new regulations on our funds. Our average aggregate receipts under the old code have been exactly 3451. per annum; under the revised code they will be 1661. Os. 6d., making an annual deficit of 1797. How our managers will make up this serious loss, I cannot say; for I know they have enough to do to make both ends meet now. From what I hear, I am led to believe that factory schools would suffer worse than ours."

At such a juncture, two things are earnestly to be desired; the first is, that the church of England, whatever course other denominations may pursue, should meet the government in a conciliatory spirit, and endeavour, not merely to obtain a reversal of the code, that we take to be a matter of course,-but, if possible, to lay down the outlines of a system of education that may really deserve to be called a national one, religious, comprehensive, and yet simple in all its details. And in the second place, that the clergy should seize the opportunity to disengage themselves at once from a thraldom in comparison of which that "serving of tables," so distasteful to apostolic men, was an easy yoke; we mean the pecuniary responsiblity, and with it no small part of the laborious fag and the wasteful expenditure of time and strength, now lavished on their schools.

UNFULFILLED PROPHECIES OF THE OLD TESTAMENT.

"AND he said, Go thy way, Daniel: for the words are closed up and sealed till the time of the end.

Many shall be purified, and made white, and tried; but the wicked shall do wickedly and none of the wicked shall understand; but the wise shall understand." (Dan. xii. 9, 10.)

While all the true members of Christ's church are perfectly agreed in the one hope of their calling,-that to as many as believe God has given everlasting life, and that this life is in His Son, there is a wide difference amongst us in relation to the abiding effects of man's fall. One party believes that "in the last days perilous times shall come," and that "evil men and seducers shall wax worse and worse,' till that hour of temptation is brought upon us which shall "come upon all the world, to try them that dwell upon the earth." Another party is persuaded that by the preaching of the gospel the whole world shall be converted to the acknowledging of the truth.

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We are told by the latter, that error is short-lived, and truth immortal; in other words, that "a lying tongue is but for a moment, but the lip of truth shall be established for ever." And this is as certain as that " our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh out for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory;" this being the scriptural estimate of time as to individuals: their whole lives are but a moment in comparison of eternity. For surely man is "born to sorrow as the sparks fly upward." In like manner as to the world's duration-supposing it six thousand years-it is but a small moment when measured with the ages of eternity. We confess ourselves to be of those who are persuaded that "though a great work is allotted to the church, it is of the firstfruits, not of the harvest; of preparation, not of the full triumph. The redemption will be assuredly complete, but it will dawn in righteous judgments. Before the stone shall become a mountain, and fill the whole earth, the iron, the clay, the brass, the silver and gold, must be broken to pieces together, and be driven away like the chaff of the summer threshing floor." (Brooks on the Destruction of the Great Image.)

It is well observed by a late writer, that the "Essays and Reviews," though ominous signs of the times indeed, are not the primary cause of the evil. They are but the bold and outspoken expression of thoughts which, in loose and unsystematic form, have been floating in men's minds for some years past. These flitting forms-the shreds and patches of old mischiefshad first presented themselves to the religious imagination through the popular literature of the day."

While fully assenting to these remarks, we would humbly