than any other portion of the globe, the working-class education was in a more discreditable position than that of any other civilised country. In those European countries which were usually considered the seats of despotism, and also amongst the Anglo-Saxons across the Atlantic, a man so ignorant would be positively an object of wonder. But whenever a complete general, unsectarian, and impartial system of education has been proposed, the exclusives, -viz., the lords in the ascendant, "pigmies perched on Alps," who have made up their minds to drown all progression by their dogmatical vetos,-these antagonists seem to be continually getting astride of some minor crotchet, and denominating it a principle; and, though suffering no injury from the prosecution of the plan, would deny the working-man education, because they would not administer it exactly in the way that accorded with their own convictions or views. The time is come to set aside all obstacles and stumbling-blocks that stand in the way of "my people and your people." The ignorant and reckless must be raised, if crime so rife is to be crushed; and crushed it may be in the seed, provided the lever is pointed in the right place to elevate those born under unfavourable circumstances, "conceived in sin, and shapen in iniquity;" moulded in utero to sin ad libitum.

"When I was yet a child, no childish play
To me was pleasing; all my mind was set
Serious to learn and know, and thence to do
What might be public good."

These are the lines of Milton. Sometimes, however, the vernal ray quickens the blossom into unseasonable bloom,

and the fragile stem droops beneath the weight of the flower. The dew of praise, for the most part so salutary and cheering, destroys, while it seems to quicken the power of vegetation; and the living energy of the plant expands itself into one burst of colour and fragrance. We cannot often say of the Jupiters of literature, that their reward is equal to their toil; "pawing to get free." Seeking truth for the love of it, noble and high-souled minds will be satisfied, apart from the plaudits of the public.

We emphatically contend it is high time we attend to the physical laws of our being, with more particularity; to begin at the beginning, ere we attempt to lift men out of the mud, and improve their social and moral position. We are sorry to hear and to have ocular evidence, that there are men still to be found, even in crowded industrial communities, and more particularly in agricultural districts, who look upon labouring men as mere machines and instruments to execute their bidding, and as a class that never could be raised. We repudiate the low contracted idea of those who presume to say who are and who are not recipients of great truths. Be it never forgotten, nearly all our mental giants have sprung from the common people.

Many a flower is born to blush unseen,

And waste its sweetness on the desert air."

We concur with those who advocate a silent and spontaneous growth, simulating vegetables and flowers: it is Dame Nature's plan in all things. Whatever is brought

up rapidly, soon withers; hot-house plants are frail and soon perish.

No physician doubts (says the Quarterly Review), that precocious children, in fifty cases for one, are much the worse for the discipline they have undergone. Their minds seem to have been strained, and the foundation of insanity is laid. When the studies of mature years are stuffed into the head of a child, people do not reflect on the anatomical fact, that the brain of an infant is not the brain of a man; that the one is confirmed and can bear exertion, and the other is growing and requires repose; that to force the attention to abstract facts-to load the memory with chronological and historical, or scientific detail-in short, to expect a child's brain to bear with impunity the exertion of a man's,-is as irrational as it would be to hazard the same sort of experiments on its muscles.

The primary objects of education are few and great; nobleness of character, honourable and generous affections, a pure and high morality; a free, bold, and strong, yet a temperate and well-governed intellectual spirit. The means which nature has provided for attaining the great ends of education, are infinitely various. To each she has assigned an industrial character; some blessed with almost Divine power, such as Milton, Homer, and Shakspeare; and to another race a dimmer revelation. According to a man's character, must be man's virtues, his happiness, his knowledge. Feelings and affections are different to different minds; desires that reign powerfully in one heart, are unknown in another; faculties of intelli

gence infinitely diversified, springing into glad activity, and by their unseen native impulses; all these make to each one's own mind a various allotment of love, joy, and power; a moral and intellectual being, constituting his own individuality. This is a circumstance which peculiarly exposes us to the danger of thwarting the providence and bounty of nature, and of overruling in our rude unskilful ignorance, the processes she is carrying on, in her wisdom, for the happiness, the virtues, and the power of the human soul she is rearing up for life. The mind of such a creature is anything but a blank; a tabula rasa; a sheet of white paper. We view it rather as a germ that is to germinate into a tree by the throne of GOD; that grows fast, and gives birth to perennial fruits.

The highest philosophy, whether natural or mental, leads to Christianity. Indeed, the highest mental philosophy is Christianity in earnest. But all beneath the highest is either dangerous or unsatisfactory; while the low and the lowest is nothing more than blind, base scepticism, alternating between superstition and atheism. An ill-instructed or confusedly and imperfectly informed person, who plumes himself upon and trusts to his understanding alone, we commiserate. We heartily believe with a celebrated writer, "without religion, the poor are poor indeed; with it, they may be the only rich." It is not for poor feeble creatures like ourselves to say who may not, by a suitable education, and the best appliances to boot, be raised to the utmost pitch of which intellect is capable, by the distribution of useful and entertaining knowledge but all should, we think, be placed under the

most favourable circumstances for the obtaining of education. No brain was ever organised but for use (not abuse); no man is without a spark of ambition, or wishes to pass through the world a cypher. In England, professional knowledge is generally the best guarantee for professional distinction; but none of the eminent of the three professions spring with a bound from the bottom of the Tarpoin rock to the summit of the Capitol: each must tread the great highway of the professions, and prove his prowess in many a hard-fought battle, before eminence and honours are the reward of his patient drudgery and unremitting toil.