the harmonies of the bard, but when that lyre was no more swept, the animal nature has recovered its strength, and the lower instincts have returned. The higher and religious nature of man needs our first care. We, therefore, earnestly strive that the education of the people be so conducted, that it should be rested upon a true regeneration,-the expulsion of the beast, the evocation of the saint,—the triumph of a new creature, an effect beyond the power of even moral means to produce, but which may only be sought in their diligent and prayerful application.

While the evil is menacing, while it is principally found in the increase of population* over means of instruction, which were recently more adequate than at present they are, let us not be drawn away from its anxious consideration, by questions which serve but to amuse the politicians of the day. Among these is the theory of a national education. It is little esteemed by those who urge it. It is ever and anon argued to satisfy a party. Nothing is done, and none know better than they who urge it, that nothing can be done. But it gains time. It staves off difficulty. It appeases importunity and clamour. Things

*

According to the scale of past experience, we may look for an increase of two millions and a half in the next ten years.

"From what you say, and from what I have heard from others, there is a very natural desire to trust to one or two empirical remedies, such as general education, and so forth."-Life of Sir Walter Scott. Letter to J. B. S. Morritt, Esq., Rokeby.

remain as they are. This is what such politicians wish. They can admire Gray's Ode to Ignorance still, which the bard never completed, and which for his fame he ought not to have begun for, satire as it is, though these Boeotians perceive it not, it is poor and tame. The guilt of the delay and of the failure, is devolved upon certain opponents. The advocates are clear, and appeal to their best, though unfortunate, efforts. Thus, the resistance of the Factory Bill, brought into Parliament during the session of 1843, is ingeniously described as the resistance of a wise, comprehensive, plan to educate the poor. An argument is very commonly raised upon that resistance, that they who were active in it, are bound in a most peculiar manner to assist national education. If, indeed, they had defeated a measure which would have wrought it well, and secured it permanently, the argument would be as stringent as just. But we hold that they defeated not a true and enduring instruction of the people, but its mockery and gag. The fact is, that it proscribed the best teachers of the young, and warred, to destruction, against the best existing methods of instructing them. The entire host of those petitioners against it, the 2,068,059 appellants to the senate to cast out a measure whose fraudulency, dissimulation, bigotry, words were never made to describe and to denounce, saw that the intention was to stop the moral advancement of the people. He who dared this insult, under the garb of benevolence, and in

the name of religion, must have grasped at honours. which vizier and inquisitor had hitherto left unattempted. *

It is not necessary to mention distinctly the grounds of opposition to that nefarious measure. It may suffice to say, that it was most unequal to tax those who had already made large sacrifices for education alike with those who had hitherto made none. It was, also, most invidious, laying the charge of the greater ignorance on the manufacturing population, rather than on the agricultural, the monstrous reverse of fact. It must have proved physically ruinous to the very parties whose benefit was avowedly intended, for such were its conditions, that it could

Though the "Olive Branch" was rejected, the reader may accept it as a beautiful image of that education which a free people not only need, but will, of themselves, provide, being reminded of the description in Sophocles :

Ο τάδε θάλλει μεγιςα χωρα

Γλαυκᾶς παιδοτρόφου φυλλον ελαίας.” κ. τ. λ.

"For in our land there flourishes a plant which is unheard of in Asia, and even in Doris, that great isle of Pelops, self-planted and self-produced, defying every hostile sword, no where so healthy as in these parts, the cærulean, leafy, and youth-sustaining, Olive.”— Edipus Colon: lin. 725.

but throw a very considerable portion of the children out of employment. It was defective, even in its own purpose, for it could not have reached to the fiftieth part of the youth who need instruction in the mill districts. But its un-English, its Jesuitical, features, betrayed themselves. It fell before a blast of scorn and execration. The Catiline fled amidst the storm.

In a spirit, far removed from polemical, we must declare the eternal withdrawment of another agency beside the State. The Spiritual power was a wellknown and clearly understood idea in the dark ages. It was every where present. It held a fearful rule. It grasped universal life. It called the thunder of other worlds to its aid. At the Reformation, we only see the last and successful struggle of man to escape from it Many had been his strong but unavailing attempts. Since then, it has not formally

subsisted among Protestant people. They have shaken

off the intolerable yoke.

bigoted and fierce control.

It is a tyranny passed

away. Education can never come again beneath its

Endeavour after endea

vour may be made: but it must be impotent. The Spiritual power, as a ghostly instrument of oppression over the souls of men, has ceased. They must be as foolish as they are wicked, who can hope to revive it. Religion will only the more gain its proper influence, and her ministers stand upon their just ascendancy.

Nationalism will no more be the decoy.

What

mischief has the dream already done! National education, in the sense of that watchword which the oppressors of mankind love to interchange, this country can never brook. Its spirit, its character, its free institutions, are not the stems for that bitter graft. Such machinery may consist with slaves, but not with its sons. Liberty is their glory and their being. Darkness conceals all, a little light discovers only a little truth, but the full day exposes each diversity of things. Our various opinions and feelings are but as the prismatic decomposition of our intellectual and moral light. We ask not the uniformity of dull ignorance: the monotony of rigid obsequiousness. Nationalism! It is nothing! The Nation! It is every thing! Let the leaven work in all parts. Let the light kindle from all directions. But that freedom which is our birthright, our father's legacy, our children's hope,-most needed in education,-shall not be immolated on its altar.

There are to be found many champions of general liberty, who, in other times, would have agreed in these opinions. They, however, think that now they see an end of the threatened danger. Their confidence is in civil liberty. They cannot fear any result of religious domination so long as we retain our free institutions. They laugh our anxieties to scorn. Knowledge defies superstition, and the security of political rights, of consequence and of necessity, seals