HIM, who the boundless waters weigh'd
I' th' hollow of his hand;

Who the thick cloud their garment made,
Darkness, their swaddling band:

Fear HIM; and HIM alone I fear,
Who to the ocean said,

"Hitherto shalt thou come, and here
Shall thy proud waves be stay'd."

Amid the tempest's wildest swell,
TO HIM I'll fondly cling,
Content in life or death to dwell,
Beneath his shadowing wing.

I crave not of his power to still
The troubled waves to rest;
His goodness I implore to fill,
With holy calm my breast.

Then as it listeth blow the wind,
Cast as it will the foam,
In Heav'n I shall a harbour find,
In God's own courts a home.

THE FAITHFUL DEAD.

Name them not dead - the faithful whom
Green earth closed lately o'er;
Nor sadly search the dusty tomb

For those who die no more.
The cold grave hides them from our love,
But not from HIM who rules above!

Their parting-as the sunset hour,

Left gloom on mortal sight;
But sun-like, thro' redemption's power,
They dwell in cloudless light.

Thought's fever, care, the bruised breast
Of sorrow, pain, are gone!
And, with the lamb, they calmly rest
By the eternal Throne.

Time, like an evil dream, hath past,
And death fell pointless at the last.

Weep not for them-yet weep, for woe
Brings chastening to the heart;
Weep for thyself, and pray, that so
Thou also, may'st depart.

THE CHRISTIAN'S COMPASS.
When first the seaman's vent'rous hand
The light bark to the billows gave,
With cautious eye he watch'd the land,
Nor trusted to the distant wave,

Tho' hence constrain'd with breakers hoarse,
And rocks and shoals to hold his course.

But when the sage in happy hour,
The magnet's hidden virtue stole,
And gave the balanc'd steel the pow'r
To indicate the northern pole;
He fearlessly his sails unfurl'd,
And soon explor'd another world.

Thus when the sinner first begins,

Impell'd by fear, his heavenward quest,

He does but hover near his sins,

And makes no progress, finds no rest;
Still striking on some hidden reef

Of folly, guilt, and unbelief.

!

THERE is no subject connected at this moment with Ireland, so absorbing in its interest as that of Education. It engrosses the public attention with an influence the more remarkable, because that public had so long continued indifferent to its importance, and from the minister in the senate, to the demagogue at the public dinner, Irish Education is the theme of every tongue, and the subject of every declamation. Those who never thought upon the subject before seem now to think of little else; and the painful and patient labourer who had been accomplishing in obscurity the work about which others were talking, is undervalued because he is modest, and his practical experience runs a risk of being disregarded because it is not obtruded. Far be it from us to lament such an occupation of the public mind; far be it from us to regret that though late, the British Empire is convinced that there is an evil in so many hundreds and thousands of their fellow subjects remaining in ignorance moral, intellectual, and religious: the "many who" from various motives “run to and fro in” our land, will we trust produce some good, and "knowledge will be increased." But we do exceedingly regret that from various circumstances, the cause of Education should be connected with politics, and the temporal and eternal weal of our fellow-creatures, ranked among the popular subjects of declamation, to point a vulgar libel, or to cheer a vulgar triumph. We do regret that the highest and holiest interests of mortality should be degraded to become the watch-word of a party, to be argued in the spirit and urged with the aniVOL, II.

X

mosity of party broils. If the circumstances of the country have compelled the government to establish their Commission,—an assertion on which we hesitate not to express our doubts,—we trust that the valuable collection of facts which has been published, will be well and seriously considered; we trust that the executive and the legislature will pause before they pass from the Commissioners' premises to the Commissioners' conclusions, and above all, that they will yield nothing to clamour from whatever quarter that clamour may arise.

Nothing is better calculated to produce surprise and to afford pleasure than the many different societies, with different names, and funds and agents, directed to various objects, and pursuing various expedients,-to see so many labouring at once in the field of Irish Education. There was a zeal and an energy produced by mutual rivalry; an earnestness to prove one's own plan most feasible and useful, a partiality approaching to partisanship, which by mutual emulation prevented the danger of inactivity. Nor was the stimulus to the agents the only good obtained by this division of labour: the circumstances of Ireland which produced this system required it :-its unequal surface demanded a variety of treatment, which might meet equally the varying wants of the people, and the various prejudices of their benefactors. The system which could be efficient in one part of the country where a single creed ruled in solitary supremacy, would not be received in another where many held "divided sway," and the conscientious landlord who would support with vigour one mode of instructing his tenantry, might find it repugnant to his principles to adopt another. Now this was met by the very circumstance to which we allude. The individual who wished for Bible Schools, had them in every gradation from those that required to those that permitted the reading of the Scriptures:-did the friend of Education wish for catechisms to instruct the Protestant, he had the Association to assist him :would he be satisfied with the committal of the Scriptures to memory, the Hibernian School Society became his auxiliary :-did he object to more than the mere perusal of the Sacred Volume, he could call in the aid of the Kildare-place Society; and was his liberality so extensive as to exclude nothing but religion from his system, the same valuable body by its books, and its stationary, and its furniture facilitated his plan; while the fastidious philanthropist who could find no niche in his school-room for any of these bodies, might seek aid from the fund placed at the disposal of the Lord Lieutenant's Commissioners; or in one day in seven join interests with the Sunday School Society, that supremely useful and unobtrusive ally of all societies. Now this diversity of operation producing equally accuracy of inspection, emulation of success, adaptation of means, and variety of expedient, seems to us to have been eminently fitted for Ireland, while the managers of each society, instigated only by benevolence, and giving for that cause and that only, their unpaid and unpurchased services,

secured, and it is a point to which we are most sensible in Ireland, the whole system from the imputation of interestedness.

But it may be said that however plausible this scheme may appear in theory, it did not answer in fact; that the people were not educated, the schools were not attended, the population remained in ignorance, and the thousands which public bounty and private benevolence contributed were seed thrown upon the desert, bread cast upon the waters. Now this imputation we must deny; the system we have attempted to describe did succeed so far as it had been fairly tried, and was succeeding to an extent far beyond the belief of the careless observer, and fully equal to the expectation of the warmest Protestant and the fears of the most timid Roman Catholic. Education of the best kind, founded on religion and entwined with her precepts and her doctrines during every step of the progress; Education which was more valued as it was the result of free and spontaneous choice, not of exerted power either ecclesiastical or lay; Education was progressive, it was penetrating the mass of the people, it was leavening the unfermented heap of ignorance and vice, and was introducing the habits, and manners, and modes of thinking which are the precursors and the accompaniments of industry and morals. It was progressive, and in its course laid all the ages, and almost all the ranks of the country under its influence; the same cottage has witnessed the grandsire and his grand-child becoming scholars at the same moment; the same school-room has beheld the titled peer and the humble peasant employed in the same gracious labour, conveying to the yet sleeping mind of ignorance, whether adult or infantine, the light of life and intellect. It was progressive, and those who with hostile exultation have asked for the fruits of Education, and argued to the absence of the cause from the supposed deficiency in the effect, proved that they were but indifferent observers, not to perceive existing results, and not less indifferent philosophers, when they demanded that those results should be more conspicuous. Educa tion to be permanent must be gradual : "the blade, the ear, the full corn in the ear," belong not more to religion, than to the instituted means by which that religion is to be extended, and although short cuts to information and learning have been devised for the rich who have leisure to take them, we question the utility of their application to the poor. Besides when we recollect on what materials we have been labouring, and consider that at least the generation which has been the object of instruction must have time likewise to digest and reduce that instruction to effect, we shall be inclined to think that the objectors in demanding that " nation should be born in a day," have forgotten that even that nation must have time to grow up and to mature.

a

That the systems of Education were so available we, deem an irrefragable truth. We appeal to the experience of all connected with Education; we appeal to the lists of scholars, given on testimony not to be questioned