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and the idiom of the language of the people among whom they are current, than we could do by many pages of descriptive statement. A people which employs such energetic and philosophical proverbs, though in a state of the grossest barbarism, must possess elements of mind, and be amenable to suggestions of conscience, which, by the blessing of God upon the instruction of his servants who are labouring among them as missionaries, may be turned to excellent account.

The following brief specimen of the proverbs of a nation with which we are likely to come into intimate relations-the Chinese-forms a singular counterpart to the wisdom of South Africa. The Chinese are a somewhat metaphysical nation; and even their most absurd discourses have a touch of philosophy in them; with a constant appeal to "the moral sense.'

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The man of first-rate excellence is virtuous independently of instruction; he of the middling class is so after instruction; the lowest order of men are vicious in spite of instruction.

The spontaneous gifts of heaven are of high value; but the strength of perseverance gains the prize.

The heart of a worthless man is as unfixed and changeable as a mountain

stream.

In the days of affluence always think of poverty; do not let want come upon you, and make you remember with sorrow the time of plenty.

The same tree may produce sour and sweet fruit; the same mother may have a virtuous and vicious progeny.

It is equally criminal to the governor and the governed to violate the laws.
Doubt and distraction are on earth; the brightness of truth, in heaven.

Meeting with difficulties, we think of our relations: on the brink of danger, we rely on our friends.

In learning, age and youth go for nothing; the best informed takes the prece

dence.

Do not love idleness and hate labour; do not be diligent in the beginning, and in the end lazy.

The world's unfavourable views of conduct and character are but as the floating clouds, from which the brightest day is not free.

Wine and good dinners make abundance of friends; but, in the time of adversity, not one is to be found.

Let every man sweep the snow from before his own doors, and not trouble himself about the frost on his neighbour's tiles.

Worldly reputation and pleasure are destructive to virtue; anxious thoughts and apprehensions are injurious to the body.

Better to be upright with poverty, than depraved with an abundance. He, whose virtue exceeds his talents, is the good man: he, whose talents exceed his virtue, is the mean one.

SANCHO.

ON THE SEPARATION OF BOYS AND GIRLS IN SCHOOLS.

For the Christian Observer.

IT may not be known to all our readers, that among the innovations which have of late been strongly urged in the usual system of education in England, one is that of training boys and girls together in one common school and one common play-ground. We are reminded of the subject by a paper which Mr. Stow, the Honorary Secretary of the Glasgow Educational Society, and author of "Moral Training," and other works, has inclosed to us in his letter inserted in a former page of our present Number. The conductors of the Glasgow Educational Society strongly object to "the separation of the sexes in education;" a large phrase, which includes, and is meant to include, not mere chil

dren, but young persons up to the age of manhood and womanhood. Had the plan been advocated only by a few theorists, without much effort to carry it into practice, we should not have thought it necessary to advert to the subject; but it is being taken up with ardour, and brought into operation under the auspices of the Glasgow Educational Society, the influence of which is very considerable, as may be gathered from the fact that as long ago as 1840 the Society had sent out from its Normal Seminary nearly six hundred teachers, ("trainers," they are called) and that the Glasgow system of training has been introduced not only into many towns and villages of Scotland, but also of England, Ireland, and some of the colonies. Mr. Stow stated in 1840, that from England and Ireland the Society had received demands for four or five times the number of trainers which it had been able to supply; sixteen had gone out to Australia, twenty-four to the West Indies; and the demands were rapidly increasing. From the minutes of the Committee of Council on Education for 1841, 1842, we learn that the Committee has granted the Glasgow Educational Society £4500 towards the very large outlay which it has incurred for its Normal Seminary. Upon the Glasgow system of teaching, as compared with rival systems, we feel incompetent to pronounce any decisive judgment. We have come pretty much to the opinion that in many cases that which is best administered is best; and the Glasgow system has not only many excellent characteristics, but it has been ably and zealously administered; so that it deservedly stands in good estimation, especially in regard to what Mr. Stow calls "Bible Training.”

But the proposition for uniting Boys schools and Girls schools, except in the case of schools for little children, appears to us unadvised and fraught with evil. It is retrograde reform; adopting from choice what is only to be submitted to when unavoidable. In Scotland, Ireland, and Wales, the practice, where it exists, has arisen chiefly from inability to keep up two schools, the neighbourhood being poor or the population scattered; but in England it has always been discountenanced; and we are not convinced by the Glasgow arguments in its favour. We will however, in all fairness, allow our readers to judge of those arguments for themselves, as they are ably laid down in the paper with which Mr. Stow has obliged us.

"There is one part of moral training which is too important to be overlooked, viz., the separation of the sexes in school education.

"We are all aware of the softening and humanising effect which female society has upon the male creation. It influences the fireside, the social circle, and the public meeting. It restrains rudeness and impropriety of every kind; and while the men are thus improved, the females are not less benefited in their intellectual and moral character. Deprive man of female society, and he would soon approach to, if not actually sink into, barbarism; and exclude females from the society of the other sex-the history of nunneries will unfold the consequences. What is morally and intellectually true in regard to grown persons, is equally so in respect of the young; and if men and women ought to act properly towards each other when they meet, aud meet they must, then children cannot be too early trained to practise this virtue.

"Every one is satisfied that boys are improved by the presence of girls-a wholesome restraint is obviously experienced. It is not so apparent, however, that girls are improved by the presence of boys. We believe it is perfectly mutual, although not so obvious. The girls are also under restraint, less visible, it is true, because they are less boisterous, but equally valuable in elevating and strengthening the real character, by preventing the evercise of tittle-tattle, evil speaking, &c., &c., and substituting things ennobling, which females are perfectly capable of attaining. Let each approach the other nearly half-way, and then each in manner and real character will be certainy and equally improved.

"The consideration of the separation of the sexes in education is exceedingly important; for if it forms a part of moral training, no parent who calmly considers the good of his children can treat the subject with indifference or neglect. It is a subject that cannot be too often repeated, and therefore we would again ask and answer, as on a recent occasion, the question:

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Ought boys and girls to be educated separately or together? The youth of both sexes of our Scottish peasantry have been educated together, and as a whole, the Scots are the most moral people on the face of the globe. Education in England is given separately, and we have never heard from practical men that any benefit has arisen from this arrangement. Some influential individuals there, mourn over the popular prejudice on this point. In Dublin a larger number of girls turn out badly who have been educatedalone till they attain the age of maturity, than of those who have been otherwise brought up-the separation of the sexes has been found to be positively injurious. In France the separation of the sexes in youth is productive of fearful evils. It is stated on the best authority, that of those girls educated in the schools in convents, apart from boys, the large majority go wrong within a month of their being let loose on society, and meeting the other sex. They cannot, it is said, resist the slightest compliment or flattery from the other sex. The separation is intended to keep them strictly moral, but this unnatural seclusion actually generates the very principles desired to be avoided.

"We may repeat that it is impossible to raise girls intellectually as high without boys as with them, and it is impossible to raise boys morally as high without the presence of girls. The girls morally elevate the boys, and the boys intellectually elevate the girls. But more than this, girls themselves are morally elevated by the presence of boys, and boys are intellectually elevated by the presence of girls. Girls brought up with boys are more positively moral, and boys brought up in school with girls are more positively intellectual, by the softening influence of the female character. The impetuosity and pertness of a boys' school are by no means favourable, even to intellectual improvement; and the excessive smoothness of female school discipline does not strengthen or fortify the girl for her entrance into real life, when she must meet the buffets and rudeness of the other sex. Neither sex has participated in the improvement intended by Providence by boys and girls being born and brought up in the same family. Family training is said to be the best standard for school training; and if the schoolmaster, for a portion of each day, is to take the place of the parent, the separation of the sexes in elementary schools must be a deviation from this lofty standard.

"Much may be said on this highly important subject. We would solicit tho se benevolent ladies who sigh for the establishment of girls' schools, to the exclusion of the other sex, to examine carefully and prayerfully whether the exercise of such tender benevolent feelings may not actually prove injurious to society as a whole. It is very pretty, and truly sentimental, to witness the uniform dress and still demeanour of a female school; but we tremble at the results. Most certainly moral training wants one of its most important ingredients when the sexes are not trained together to act properly towards each other. The English are beginning to feel the evils of separation in school; and the opposite course, in many cases, is beginning to be pursued; and, but from popular prejudice, would, ere long, be universal. In Scotland, unfortunately, the practice of separation and defective moral training is beginning to be introduced among all classes of the community.

"A number of the schools established of late years in the towns of Scotland, even where the system pursued has been modern, have been, we are sorry to say, for boys alone, or for girls alone-the projectors acting as if they trembled at a shadow or a phantom of their own imagination. Man, whether male or female, is, no doubt, a sinful creature; and sin and folly are to be avoided and checked on their first development.

"Under twelve or thirteen years of age, nearly all lessons may be given to boys and girls in the same class with mutual advantage. Beyond that age, the branches useful to each in the sphere in which Providence intends they should be placed, although in some points the same, yet they naturally and gradually diverge. Absolute separation, however, we conceive to be positively injurious.

"In the Normal Seminary of Glasgow, the most beneficial effects have resulted from the more natural course. Boys and girls, from the age of two or three years, to fourteen or fifteen, have been trained in the same class-rooms, galleries, and play-grounds, without impropriety: and they are never separated except at needlework. Nay, during the last fifteen years, between seven and eight hundred students, chiefly between the ages of eighteen and thirty, have been trained in that institution, three-fourths generally being males, and one-fourth females-and

for two-thirds of the day they have been together, in the same model schools, class-room, and play-grounds, and not one case of impropriety has occurred. It may be imagined that such a course might lead to imprudent marriages, but, so far from this being the case, only one marriage has taken place between two of the students a very prudent one-and the parties had been acquainted previous to entering the Seminary. During the day, all, both old and young, are under the superintendence of the masters of each department. After school hours, the children are at home with their parents, and the students from the country are lodged in respectable private families in the immediate vicinity of the Institution-thus copying, as closely as possible, the most natural and improving of all modes of education, School, under the master during the day, and at home, under the parents in the evening. Even where the conduct of the parents is not altogether exemplary, we prefer this mode to any other; the moral training of the school proving a powerful, if not a complete, antidote; and the moral conduct of the children is often found to have a reflex influence on their parents, promoting cleanliness and sobriety, and even piety, at home."

We cannot but think this reasoning opposed both to sound argument and to experience. The intimacy of brothers and sisters, and the guarded intercourse of young persons in well-ordered society, do not apply to the case of large assemblages of " boys and girls of fourteen or fifteen," and of young men and women "from eighteen to thirty," in schools, factories, collieries, barracks, or prisons. We mean nothing offensive in this juxta-position. The analogy strikes us as just. If the familiar intercourse of several hundred boys and girls of "fourteen or fifteen and upwards, in a factory, is found to lead to much evil, can we reasonably expect that nothing but good will result from their consorting together "in the same class-rooms, galleries, and play-grounds," so that "they are never separated except (while the girls are) at needlework?" And does the Glasgow Educational Society really believe that it would conduce to good order, purity, studious habits upon the part of young men, and sensitive delicacy upon the part of young women, to mix two or three hundred young ladies of the higher classes of society with the young gentlemen of their own age and station, at Eton, Winchester, and Harrow, or at Oxford and Cambridge, assigning to them the same "class-rooms, galleries, and play-grounds;" so that they should never be separated during the day," except where their studies happened transiently to diverge? It may be said that the habits of the higher and the lower classes of society differ; and so they do: for the poor, especially in dense neighbourhoods, must often be exposed to miscellaneous consortings, which among the rich would be considered offensive and demoralizing: but the Glasgow Educational Society does not restrict its reasoning to any particular class of persons; it lays down broad principles: it does not speak of the associating together of large numbers of boys and girls, and young men and women, in the school-room and playground, as an inconvenience unavoidable and to be submitted to; but as a thing desirable in itself, and to be urged upon the patrons of English schools as the "natural course," and the ground-work of "moral training." To us, with our English notions-or, as our Scottish friends account them, our prejudices-the project-we mean no offence, we only speak our mind-is preposterous and mischievous. We would not, even in our private families, invite two or three young gentlemen from "fifteen " to "eighteen," and upwards, to be class-mates to our daughters of the same ages, in order to elevate the character" of the young ladies; nor would we send our daughters to academies formed upon this principle, to consort with young gentlemen in school and play-ground for the same laudable purpose. With regard also to our sons, we should CHRIST. OBSERV. No. 62.

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not think it advisable to send them to a College where young ladies would be their associates. We will not, however, pursue the subject; we will only urge the patrons of Education to pause and consider the matter well, before they are seduced by the eloquence of their Glasgow friends to knock down partition walls.

REVIEW OF NEW PUBLICATIONS.

MADDEN'S MEMOIR OF THE LIFE OF THE REV. P. ROE.

(Continued from page 45.)

WE left Mr. Roe at Kilkenny in the early years of his ministry, exerting himself with diligence and faithfulness in his Lord's vineyard. We have now the pleasing task of selecting from the memoir of his life a series of passages descriptive of his opinions, character, and labours. The following paper, which seems to have been written in 1803, may serve to exhibit that methodical allocation of his time, by which he was enabled to go through much with apparent facility.

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Sunday.-Lecture, eight; catechise, ten; half-past eleven, service; vestry; general hospital; six, evening service. Monday.-Eight, M. G. meeting; ten, asylum; twelve, vestry; one, blankets; three to four, private in vestry. Tuesday.-Factory; school; gaols. Wednesday. Gaols; eleven, church; twelve, catechism, Mr. L--'s; one, poor school; three to four, private in vestry; half-past five, lecture. Thursday.-Factory; charter school; poorhouse; lecture for the men. Friday.Ten, gaols; eleven, church; twelve to two, catechise in church; half-past five, lecture. Saturday.-Spend as much of it at home as possible; practise for singing at one o'clock. Read a little every day in the Greek Testament. Visit at least two sick people every day. Beware of procrastination. Mark on Sunday those who are absent, and speak to them on Monday. Every night before tea write the day's observations. Whom did you intend to visit? Whom did you visit ? What prevented you? What letters are unanswered? Are you careful to lend books? Are you careful to distribute tracts ?,'

period was remarkable. His in-
come was only sixty pounds per
annum, yet he devoted al arge
portion of it to the poor, and to
the distribution of religious tracts
and books. He always breakfasted
on bread and milk; and if he
dined at home, his dinner was
bread and cheese, and a glass of
ale. He never had a dinner
dressed for himself. In his diary
is the following entry :-“I find
I am much to blame for the un-
profitable manner in which I lay
out my money.
I find it wastes

away by little and little, and that
nothing is done. I trust that I
shall resolve for the future to take
more care of it, and use it as a gift
from the Lord, for which I must
give an account. Thus shall I be
enabled to relieve the wants of the
distressed."

success.

Besides his home occupations, he was occasionally called on to plead the cause of charity in Dublin, and with extraordinary A sermon in St. Catherine's Church for the parochial school, in 1805, produced three hundred and twenty-two pounds, a sum unexampled in that part of the metropolis. The interest excited by his preaching was only exceeded by that called forth by Dean Kirwan. The churches used to be crowded to such excess, that the very windows were filled even outside. His father's servant was

His self-denial at this early obliged constantly to stand the

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