ployment, (hear, hear,) which ought to form part of every plan of general education." (Hear, hear.)

On the propriety of a system of Inspection, and on the limits to be assigned to it, one fruit of the recent discussions in Parliament seems to be a concurrence of opinion in the highest authorities, and in the representatives of the Government and the Church.

The whole discussion tends to prove the importance, not to say the necessity, of an inquiry into the state of Education in England and Wales. Our precise statistical information is limited to a few districts in which the spontaneous exertions of individuals have collected facts. The knowledge we have of the extent of destitution is general only, and therefore not satisfactory to minds accustomed to a careful induction. Such an inquiry will doubtless prove of eminent service by stimulating the spontaneous exertions of society for the extension of education, and by diffusing information to guide its newly awakened zeal. We may hope, by such means, also to obtain a more intimate acquaintance with the opinions of all classes on this momentous subject; and that the wants and moral and social peculiarities of different districts may be examined, so that when the period arrives that a more comprehensive measure can be submitted to the Legislature, it may be welcomed by a greater concurrence of popular opinion.

CHAPTER IV.

KAMINATION OF THE MINUTE OF THE COMMITTEE OF COUNCIL OF the 11TH OF APRIL, RESPECTING THE ESTABLISHMENT OF A NORMAL SCHOOL WHICH MINUTE IS NOW SUPERSEDED BY THAT OF THE 3RD of June.

THE most important part of the plan originally submitted by he Committee of Privy Council to Parliament, was, as we have aid, abandoned in consequence of the difficulty encountered in attempting to reconcile a due regard to the legitimate claims of the Established Church with a respect for the rights of conscience. Though the establishment of a Normal School has been for the present postponed, it may be useful to shew what were the views of the Committee of Privy Council respecting the principles on which such an establishment ought to be conducted, and on the details of its internal economy. The departments of religious and general instruction, and of moral and industrial training proposed in Lord John Russell's letter to the President of the Council were included as elements of the plan of this school. It will be most convenient to consider the arrangements for religious instruction last.

The Committee of Council appear from that Minute to have been impressed with the fact, that throughout the country the number of schools for the poorer classes is inadequate to the reception of those who need instruction, but that this defect, from its extent and notoriety, appears to withdraw attention in some degree, from the equally lamentable inefficiency of the teachers commonly employed in the primary schools, arising from their imperfect attainments, their ignorance of correct methods of instruction, and still more from their want of skill in training the habits and developing the characters of the children, so as to prepare them for the persevering discharge of their duties in life. In many cases, the profession of the

educator has fallen into the hands of persons who are destitute of means, not merely from want of ability, but from defects of character, and who resort to this calling after they have been proved to be unfit for any other. The exertions of the Clergy and Ministers in the religious instruction of the population would be materially assisted if the instruction of the children of the poor were given in such a form as not merely to inform their minds on their duties to God and to man, but to influence their habits and feelings, so that a sense of the true source of all moral and social obligations, might be not merely instilled as a precept on the understanding, but be imbibed from every part of the daily routine in such a way as to influence the life. It is feared, that the teachers now employed, often content themselves with requiring that the approved formularies be committed to memory.

In order to abate these evils the Committee of Council intended to found a school in which candidates might acquire knowledge necessary to the exercise of their future profession, and be practised in the most approved methods, both of moral training and instruction.

By such means alone can the parochial, village, and town schools, as well as the endowed and charity and private schools throughout the country be supplied with teachers duly impressed with the great responsibilities of their vocation-entering on the discharge of their functions, as on a mission of truth and civilization-and furnished with such attainments, such skill in the practice of their art-with minds and habits so disciplined as to fit them to become at once the guides and the companions, the instructors and the foster parents of the children whose temporal and eternal welfare is committed to their care.

Such a school necessarily included a Model School in which children might be taught and trained, and it appeared expedient that it should comprise children of all ages from three to fourteen, in sufficient numbers to form an Infant School, as well as schools for children above seven. A considerable portion of the children were to board and lodge in the establishment,

in order that the means of moral training might be proportionately more complete, and opportunities afforded to the candidate teachers for acquiring a knowledge of the method of regulating the moral condition of such a household greater than any which could be obtained in a school attended solely or chiefly by day scholars.

The Model School, thus formed, would have afforded examples, of approved methods of instruction in each stage of proficiency and in each department of knowledge. The earliest information of alim p rovements would have been obtained; they would have been systematically examined, and introduced when approved, in that form which might appear to render them most easily applicable to the wants of the country. Industrial and moral training were to be developed, so as constantly to give a practical tendency to the entire instruction of the school, supplying the future handicraftsman, or domestic servant, with the knowledge required in his station, and reducing precept to habit.

The Model and Normal School were to have been beneath the superintendence of a Rector, acting under the regulation of the Committee of Council. The selection of Teachers and of candidates for the office of teacher would have been a subject of great difficulty and importance. Diligent inquiry, under direction of the Committee of the Privy Council, concerning their previous habits and associations, an examination of their attainments, evidence of gentleness of disposition, and a fondness for the duties of an educator, together with a sense of the secular and religious responsibility of the office, would have been essential preliminaries to the admission of a candidate teacher.

The internal organization of the Model School indicates the method of instruction which was to have been adopted. The Committee of Council proposed to arrange the classes in separate rooms, or sections of the same apartment, divided by partitions, so as to enable the simultaneous method to be applied to forty or fifty children of similar proficiency. The Committee intended also to use the gallery, commonly em

ployed only in the Infant School, as a means of giving lessons on objects of sense, or requiring illustrations from objects of sense, to the older children in larger bodies than when assembled in the classes for mere technical instruction. The gallery would also have been used at periods when the teacher desired to assemble the children for serious moral admonition. Such arrangements would have enabled each teacher not merely to convey his instructions with greater success, shut out from the noise and confusion incident to the assemblage of large numbers in the same room, but to have cultivated moral relations with his scholars, who would gradually have learned to regard him with affection as well as respect, resulting from the paternal character of the discipline. All the lessons in which it is important that the sympathies should be awakened, as well as the understanding, might be conveyed by the teacher in a more impressive manner in a separate apartment than in the large hall of a school filled with some hundreds of children. Without such arrangements, the design of the Committee of Council to interweave moral training with the whole tissue of instruction would not have been fulfilled; and the teachers must have been content with whatever success they could attain in the merely intellectual advancement of their pupils.

The simultaneous instruction which the Committee of Council apparently intended to combine with the monitorial or mutual instruction prevalent in this country, depends for its efficacy on the fact that, by the simultaneous method, the mind of the teacher may be more constantly in contact with that of every child under his care. The moral agencies employed are, under such a method, greatly superior to those in operation where the child receives instruction chiefly, if not wholly, from a boy but little older than himself.

The successful prosecution of the simultaneous method supposes that the teacher is accustomed to a careful analysis of the subjects of instruction to their simplest elements, and that he proceeds by a suggestive method from the previous limits of