to society in all its relations the elements of justice and equity, on which alone it depends for permanence and prosperity. The press, with its ten thousand instrumentalities in the shape of cheap publications, is now busily and unceasingly at work with a view to these very results-the overthrow of every form of oppression, the diffusion of intelligence, the establishment of popular rights,-and a powerful engine it is for these purposes. When Lord Brougham said that the "schoolmaster was abroad," he meant the press. There has never been any "schoolmaster abroad" in England but the press, we mean for the people at large. There have been schoolmasters for the titled orders, but none for the people save the press. And here the order of nature has been reversed. The teacher should go before the printer, and not the printer before the teacher. People must learn to read, before they can estimate the value of books. Teach them

sufficient to expand the mind and prepare it for the duties of life. Without the aid of other knowledge, it is not possible that those distinctions and qualifications should be made which parts, at least, of the sacred Scriptures require, and which are rendered necessary by the lapse of ages and by the existence of a totally different order of circumstances. If these distinctions and qualifications are not made, the most erroneous conclusions may be drawn from the Bible, and the most unrighteous purposes may be in appearance made to receive a sanction from it. The Scottish Covenanters justified their murders by appealing to the severities practised by the Israelites. The German Anabaptists made use of the disinterestedness of the first Christians in sharing their property with the destitute in an emergency, in order to authorize their spoliation of the goods of others. The madman, Thom, appealed to the Bible in support of his delusions. Chartism flourished most vigorously, and in its most offensive form, in cases where the Scriptures were the text-book.'

The civil commotion which has prevailed, during the greater part of the last year, over a considerable portion of Wales, affords a fresh instance of the perversion of the Bible in the hands of ignorance. Large bodies of the farmers of Wales, feeling themselves aggrieved by the number of turnpike gates, and the high rates of toll exacted for passing through them, combined together and commenced the work of midnight demolition. In the prosecution of their enterprise several lives have been lost, and a vast amount of property destroyed. A military force has been marched into the country to put down the disturbances; and a judicial commission raised to try the offenders, is now sitting. These violators of the law and depredators upon private property, profess to be very religious. They derive their name, and justify their outrages, from Scripture. They call themselves 'Rebeccaites,' or 'Rebecca and her Daughters;' and they quote the following text as a sanction of their proceedings: 'And they blessed Rebecca, and said unto her, Thou art our sister, be thou the mother of thousands of millions, and let thy seed possess the gate of those which hate them.'-Genesis xxiv. 60. According to their interpretation of this passage, they are the seed of Rebecca, and the owners of turnpike stock are 'those which hate them,'whose 'GATES,' therefore, they are commanded to 'possess,'—that is, to destroy."

to read, and then the cheap publication, the newspaper, the penny magazine, the popular tract, will speak to the heart in tones of truth and power. A nation of readers is a nation of freemen, or it will soon become such; but reading, writing and printing united, form an alliance, before whose resistless force no power of injustice, untruth and usurpation can long prevail.

The evils resulting from the adoption of a partial, in pre-" ference to an universal or national, system of education, as developed in the reports of these English commissioners, are, the glaringly unequal distribution of the means of instruction among the people.-the enormous disproportion in the salaries of the teachers, who receive an amount depending not on their qualifications and fitness, but upon the endowment of the institution; the very low standard of education which prevails in many of the schools, and the ignorance of whole masses who receive no education at all, or such as is of very little value. To these may be added, the mischievous character of the text-books employed in the schools, books prepared by infamous compilers and used by teachers as infamous, "full of vile caricatures and low ribaldry, at once degrading to the taste and fatal to the moral sensibilities," an evil which prevailed also to an equal extent in Ireland, before the introduction of a national system of education into that country.

It will be difficult in England,-it will be difficult in the United States, or in any country where this partial system has once obtained foothold, to overthrow it. There is a morbid sensibility, on the part of government, in respect to the supposed rights of teachers, who have hitherto had the control of the whole business of education-as far, at least, as the higher orders of society are concerned and an unwillingness to interfere with those rights: and, on the other hand, there is a strong jealousy, on the part of teachers, towards any contemplated action of government on the subject. They have expended time, capital, labor and skill in building up profitable institutions, and are disposed, from motives of interest, to unite against the introduction of any new establishments likely to prove hostile to their own:

"When the 'Central Society of Education,' in England," says Mr. Mann, "were lately prosecuting their inquiries in regard to the relative numbers of children in school and out of school, in different towns, they were obliged to proceed with the greatest caution, lest they VOL. VII-NO. 13.

2

should alarm the fears of the private teachers, and obtain either no answers or false answers to their questions; and in some instances, these teachers combined and sent on forged lists of schools and scholars, in order to diminish the force of the argument for a national system, by showing that schools enough already existed. This fact was communicated to me by a gentleman engaged in the inquiry." p. 83-4.

In order to obviate this difficulty, which lies at the very threshold of reform, it is not necessary that government, whether national, state or city, should adopt forcible measures to destroy the competition resulting from the existence of these rival institutions. Such a course of proceeding would be both impolitic and unjust. All that is necessary in order to meet the evil, is, to convince the people, first, that the public institutions are better than the private ones, better regulated, afford higher advantages of moral and intellectual culture; and, secondly, that they are preferable on the score of economy. These will be unanswerable arguments in any community. Good private institutions may be sustained for a time by the partiality of their patrons, even where the price of tuition, as is often the case, is exorbitant, but better public ones, where the expenses of obtaining a first rate education are less, will be ultimately preferred by most, if not all parents. A regard for the welfare of their children, and the superior cheapness of education, will be all-controlling considerations. The idea which prevails among some, that where the cost of education is high, the instruction given must be proportionably excellent, is the merest folly, and will soon be dissipated by facts involving very different conclusions.

School-houses in Europe are generally badly constructed, with the exception of the private establishments of England and France, some of which are built on a scale of great magnificence. The school-houses at Leipsic, in the kingdom of Saxony, are excellent; but in Prussia, and generally throughout the German States, they are inferior to those in the State of Massachusetts. Mr. Mann points out one valuable feature in all school buildings of the larger kind in Europe, their division into class-rooms,-where each class, under its own separate teacher, can pursue its studies, and recite its lessons, without interruption from the other classes composing the establishment. The practice of furnishing a separate desk and seat for each scholar, which is adopted in the school-houses of Boston and New-Orleans, does not pre

vail in Europe. In Holland, scientific modes of ventilating and warming school-rooms are resorted to, but little or no attention has been paid to the subject in Germany, and the laws of health and life, so far as they depend on a pure or an impure atmosphere, and the general principles of physiology, are much neglected. Apartments are provided in the German and Prussian schools for the residence of the teacher and his family-a feature peculiar to those institutions. The reading-books used in most of the European schools, are excellent. They are of a more didactic, scientific and practical character, than those in use in the schools of this country. Mr. Mann gives a specimen from the table of contents of a German First Reading-Book for the lowest classes, in elementary schools. It is as follows:

"1st PART. LESSON I, The parental home; 2, Building materials, stone, lime, wood; 3, Construction, iron and glass; 4, The four elements; 5, Comparison of building materials; 6, The inner parts of houses; 7, House utensils and tools; 8, Clothing; 9, Food; 10, Inhabitants of houses; 11, Household animals and their uses; 12, Continuation,-the winged tribe; 13, Injurious animals in a house; 14, Conduct towards beasts; 15, Language, advantage of man over beasts.

'2d PART. QUALITIES OF THINGS. LESSON 1, Colors; 2, Forms; 3, Qualities which a house may have; 4, Qualities of some building materials; 5, Qualities which an apartment may have; 6, Qualities which tools may have; 7, Qualities which a road may have; 8, Qualities which water may have; 9, Qualities which food may have; 10, Qualities which articles of clothing may have; 11, Qualities which an animal may have,-bodily qualities; 12, What one learns from the actions of beasts; 13, Qualities which a man may have,— bodily qualities of a man; 14, Continuation,-moral qualities; 15, Qualities which a man must not have.'

A selection from the residue of the lesson, follows:

'LESSON 17, Sounds and tones of beasts: 19, Sounds of inanimate things; 20, Properties and actions of plants and animals; 21, Actions in schools; 23, Household arrangements; 25, Country occupations; 26, Conduct of children towards others; 41, Adding to the name of a thing a word of quality

'3d PART. MORAL INSTRUCTION. LESSON 2, Order in Families; 3, Duties of parents,' &c. &c.

Then follow 'stories for exciting and cultivating moral ideas and sentiments;' and the book closes with songs and prayers for the awakening and animating of religious feeling.'

The following titles are from 'A course of Elementary Reading,' by J. M. McCullock, D. D., eleventh edition, Edinburgh, 1842.

PHYSICAL SCIENCE. On the pleasures of science; General properties of bodies,-Impenetrability, Extension, Figure, Divisibility, Inertia : Attraction of Cohesion; Attraction of Gravity; First lines

of Mechanics; Motion; Momentum; Centre of Gravity; The Mechanical Powers; Pressure of watery fluids: Capillary Attraction; The Winds; Aqueous Vapor; Clouds and Mists, Rain, Dew, Snow, Hail; Powers of Vision; The quantity of Matter in the Universe.

2. CHEMICAL SCIENCE. Properties of Free Caloric; Radiation; Conductors; Chemical Attraction; Simple Bodies; Oxygen, Hydrogen, Nitrogen, Carbon, Sulphur, Phosphorus; The Metals; Compound Bodies, Atmospheric Air, Water; Effects of Caloric, &c. &c.

3. NATURAL HISTORY. The Three Kingdoms of Nature. Minerals, Diamond, Flint, Asbetos, Clay, Slate, &c. &c. The Malleable Metals, Platina, Gold, Mercury, Silver, Copper, Iron, &c. &c. Clothing from Animals, Fur, Wool, Silk, Leather. Vegetable Physiology, Motion of the Sap Leaves, The Seed, Germination, &c.; Circulation of the Blood. Vegetable Clothing, Flax, Hemp, Cotton. The Animal Economy.' &c. &c.

The Fourth part of this work consists of pieces classed under the head of 'Geography and Topography;' then follow Religious, Moral and Miscellaneous pieces, in prose and poetry, which complete

the book.

There are hundreds, and perhaps thousands, of reading books in the different languages abroad. I have selected the above as a fair specimen of what I saw; and I believe most educators will agree with me, in thinking them far better suited to the tastes and capacities of the young than most of our own." p. 95.

The apparatus of an European, is not very dissimilar to that of an American school-room. The black-board is in universal use. In Holland, the actual weights and measures of the country are employed in arithmetical calculations;also, large sheets or cards are hung upon the walls of the room, containing fac-similes of the inscription and relief,face and reverse, of all the current coins of the kingdom,-also, practical directions respecting important duties and emergencies in life, such as the best mode of proceeding to resuscitate a drowned person, of curing a bruise, of staunching a ruptured blood-vessel, etc., are sometimes suspended from the walls. In the schools for the deaf and dumb, there are collections of natural objects for the use of the pupils, such as shells and minerals, seeds of plants arranged in boxes, models of utensils, also of machines, mills, carts, etc., made by the pupils themselves. The pupils are required to learn the uses and names of all these things:

"The great Burger and Real schools are generally supplied with fine instruments for lessons and practice in natural philosophy, chemistry, and mechanics. In Carlsruhe, besides the admirable endowment of such apparatus, which both the state and the friends of education have furnished to this class of schools,-the Grand Ducal cabinets, the physical cabinet, collections of natural objects, picture