senting communities, after a momentary paralysis of amazement, all was commotion over the length and breadth of the country. Displeasure and alarm were followed by instantaneous action, and the most determined resistance sprung up at a thousand points at once, and thickened on all sides. It was soon understood, every where but in the legislature, that though the Bill should pass, its working was out of the question. It was regarded by the mass of Non-conformists as a measure which would have the certain effect of throwing the education of the whole people into the hands of the Established Church. Such a Bill, they said, might have been regarded as an act of grace under the Stuarts, a boon to those who were delivered from the "Schism Bill,"* only by the death of the last of that race; but now better things were expected: we were near the middle of the nineteenth century; and this measure seemed a retrograde movement in the march of rational freedom. The Bill was considered as marking a great crisis, and its failure no doubt constitutes a memorable epoch in our domestic history. One of the incongruities, not the least remarkable, which we meet with in human affairs, is the unacquaintance which has sometimes been betrayed by legislators and statesmen with things which, as it should seem, they of all mankind are most concerned to know. It might be imagined, for instance, that the state and feelings of religious parties would be one of the most obvious studies for him who aspires to govern a nation, and to legislate for the adjustment of its varied and conflicting interests. Certainly nothing can be a substitute for this knowledge : for without it many aspects of society must be wholly unintelligible; man must often seem a perfect enigma to man; and the most vital errors may sometimes be committed. The ignorance of the real aims and opinions of vast bodies of the men who are to be governed which has often made its escape even in Parliament itself, would sometimes have been amusing if it had not rather been pitiable—and this in the case of men whose opinion has been almost law with their party in Parliament, for carrying or rejecting measures that were to affect the interests of millions. So easy a matter is it to govern the world! It might be a curious question for statistics, to ascertain in what year of grace there was a maximum number of legislators who did not very well know what sort of people were the descendants of the peaceable, patient, but profoundly meditative and resolved men who suffered the loss of all things for liberty of opinion, in 1662-what their ideas-what their *Prohibiting any but Conformists from instructing youth. F sensibilities to what note the whole mass of them would respond through all their diversities: at all events, the year of the lowest number of such legislators would not seem to have been 1843. Seldom perhaps was there a more striking exhibition of the want of tact and information prevailing in the Cabinet itself respecting latent public opinion, than in the case of this abortive measure. Never, in our times, was there a more obvious and striking example of the moral force of that same formidable power. It had to contend not only against the government, but also against the known views of both Houses, against the daily press, and against the cordial though silent concurrence of the Church: the Tractarians, and the extraliberal members of the Establishment, alone excepted. Well might the minister of state who proposed the Bill feel dismayed and panicstruck when he saw the flood of petitions, amounting sometimes to 5000 in one night, which came pouring into the House of Commons against the measure, and against every thing resembling it. Tardy of conviction, reluctant and somewhat obtuse in arriving at the truth, the government did, at last, see that there must be something inapt or impracticable in a project which, in a few weeks, called forth against it an array of no less than 13,369 petitions, with 2,068,059 signatures; and which, in its "amended" form, was immediately confronted with 11,839 new remonstrances, and 1,920,574 fresh signatures. It was now time to withdraw what was anything but a "healing measure;' ;"* and to cease holding forth what it was evident would be regarded as only a rod of coercion, under the name of an "olive-branch of peace." But in the moral power that was strong enough to constrain the government to abandon a position taken up at so advantageous a moment, so well fortified with supporters, so tenaciously held-in that moral power, there was a lesson which cannot easily be forgotten, either by the teachers or the learners. Since this event, the government has still continued to make grants for popular education through the medium of the National and British Societies, on the required preliminary conditions, which are strictly adhered to. This appears from a parliamentary Report printed in September, 1846, containing the correspondence which had taken place between the Committee of Council, and the York and Ripon Central Diocesan Society for the Education of the Poor, respecting * Expressions used by Sir James Graham when introducing the Bill into Parliament. the establishment of Normal Schools at York. The government required application to be made through the National Society, and some delay in the grant arose in consequence of the partial fulfilment of the condition-that no balance should be left unpaid on account of the purchase of the site, the erection of the premises, the furnishing of them, the legal expenses, nor on account of any other outlay incident to the establishment of the Normal and Model Training Schools, excepting the balance which would be defrayed by the grant of the Council, amounting in this case to £4,500. CHAPTER V. THE AIM AND SPIRIT TO BE CHERISHED IN THE WORK OF THE question which has long occupied the public mind, if reduced to its lowest possible range, is-how can the children of the labouring poor be brought, in the greatest numbers, and for the greatest length of time, under a system of day-school instruction: how can such schooling as is practicable for them, under present circumstances, be rendered most effective in imparting knowledge and discipline to the intellect, and salutary regulation to the heart? Just as this view of the question mainly is, there appears some danger lest our aims should be too low. The voluntary principle has effected much, and may do more; but care should be taken lest what is done should be found below worthy models, and should sacrifice efficiency and system to the immediate occupation of the ground. We are told that, in our aims, allowance must be made for the state of the population, the habits and feelings of a commercial people, and the reaction of these circumstances both on parents and on teachers. Let all this be admitted to the utmost limit that will not interfere with our laying the foundation of such a school-system for posterity, as shall be generous in its aspirations, and able at no distant time to vie, in the amount and quality of its instruction, with the best of what has been done on the grand scale in other countries. Let our aims be high, and let us have a basis that will bear a superstructure worthy of the object. The notions that may be entertained as to what education really is, may affect our whole view of the question-the sort of education we should seek to give, the qualifications and reward of the teacher, the parties capable of securing an educational system adapted to the young millions of an empire. Vague ideas are still current of the nature of education, and these not exclusively among the untaught. In the minds of those who are spoken of as the "lower classes," education stands for reading and writing; and one who can neither read nor write, is said to be "no scholar." Add a little cyphering, extending to the four rules worked by rote, with no understanding of principles, and we have all the education that has generally been obtained in England, in past times, not only by those of the working classes who have been to school, but also by a large proportion of shopkeepers; multitudes of whom cannot spell correctly, and are greatly inferior in elementary learning, and expertness in the use of what they know, to many boys now at a National or British school. To reading, writing, and some arithmetic, add now a little English grammar learnt by heart without principles, and possibly a little geography of local names, and we have what we may hear called, among some of the middle classes, a good English scholar." Again, education has frequently been intended to mean chiefly classical learning, which was long considered as the appropriate mark of a "gentleman"-a word ambiguous enough, but which seems to have mostly signified one not employed in manual labour or retail trade. Education for the higher middle classes, in grammar-schools, has often meant little else than Latin and Greek. The same may be said of the great public schools for the upper classes of society, such as Eton, Winchester, Westminster, and others. If salutary changes have, in some instances, incorporated themselves with the grammar-school system, they are but of recent date. At the ancient universities, again, we find a preponderance of classical learning; in Oxford, at least, where all innovations on the old system were long and strenuously resisted in Cambridge, classical and mathematical learning have nearly divided the sway. We are not, in these remarks, undervaluing classical learning, but only stating facts. Classical learning, philologically pursued, as at Cambridge, may be rendered an instrument of mental development inestimably valuable, and certainly inferior to no other. On the whole, however, have not our aims in education been such as to leave ample scope for improvement, either as relates to strict intellectual discipline, or moral training, or both? Education at ordinary private schools, has often consisted chiefly in a smattering of ill-taught Latin and Greek, at the price of some five, six, or seven years of life, the most precious and opportune for learning, to the neglect of the elementary principles of science, and it may be of the mother tongue. Though schools of all kinds have greatly multiplied within the last thirty years, and private schools have in many |