ceiver."

proved that a head unskilfully managed may become a caput mortuum, and, in many cases, to use proper scientific phrase, an "exhausted reYou cannot conceive the wonders an Act of Parliament can do! it is already compelling chimneys to consume their own smoke, and it will compel heads (which are alone in fault) to consume their own vices. Thus will both atmospheres, the moral as well as the air we breathe, be purified, and wicked man by this new exhalation and inhalation be within the process of conversion into an angel. You surely will not unadvisedly call in question the intuitive wisdom of our Minister for the Home Department, whose business it is to know with extreme accuracy all that relates to our home civilisation and capabilities of the people, especially when now he has nothing else to do but to cultivate peace and our domesticity in the midst of war; thus sacrifising his natural propensity, advanced by experience, and from a lion abroad becoming a lamb at home, a believer in innocence, the companion and teacher of children. You will not doubt that he has well weighed the matter, seeing with what silent loathing he turns away from the sinners his colleagues, with what affectionate solicitude towards his sinless protegées. We have been all in the wrong, and badly taught, when we believed that the "heart is deceitful above all things," and that it has by nature any wickedness in it. The Secretary for the Home Department assures the people of England, that, far from being "born in sin," all children are born good-that it is by mixing with evil people only that they become bad. No one has had greater experience of such associates. It is desirable, Eusebius, that he should evolve a little more clearly this new philosophy; for here is a dilemma-if all are born good, so must have been those from whom the wickedness is learnt. How came they by it? How came it into their heads? for in course of his argument their hearts can have nothing to do with it. And if all are thus naturally good, what possible use can there be in all this projected education, which

fesses to make them good? Yet

we must remember that good is only a positive good, to be converted by the grammar of our day-schools into its comparative better, and, under inspector's teaching, into a superlative best.

Take all this, my dear Eusebius, as mere preface or prelude to the solemnity of the Census, to which I must introduce you. Tragedy, tragi-comedy, and even broad farce, are not brought upon the stage without a prelude; and you will think, perhaps, the Census entitled to one, as in some degree partaking of all three.

But I must enter a short prefatory protest against being misunderstood by any to whom you may show this letter, as if I were an enemy to the people's education. You know me better, Eusebius-far from it! I wish that every man, woman, and child within these realms should be taught reading, writing, and arithmetic. I wish much more, that every man had daily served up to him, by visible or invisible hands, with his pot of good ale and his hot steak, the Times newspaper, for the very purpose of the reading of which, and newspapers in general, the "education of the people" has been so continually forced upon public consideration. But being no "contributor" to the Times, I do not want to be a contributor for it. Let it go to the Education Committees gratis-well and good-I will extend my wishes to that. The people's ignorance is welcome to my benevolence that way, and I claim no merit upon it, for, as Sydney Smith said, it is a common virtue, this benevolence. "A never sees B in distress but he wishes C to relieve him." I don't wish to be taxed that every man, woman, and child should read the Times; and I mistrust any educationtax, not only for its impracticabilities, which are many, but because it is not needed. On the contrary, I feel convinced that it would be impossible to keep back education. The people of all grades are in that state that they will have it. We are not in a deadalive epoch of the human history. The very fact of a daily press of consummate ability, and of varied and everapplicable information, has created, and is further creating, a necessity for education. The freer circulation of the

business of the world, of markets, and of all trades, imposes such a necessity. A farmer cannot now count his cattle, as Proteus did his sea-calves, by his five fingers. The people, left to themselves, will be sure universally to acquire the three great elements of learning-reading, writing, and arithmetic. They know very well that without these they will be as foreigners in their own land who want a language. But education, in busybody-sense, means a great deal more than thata portion of certainly useful with a vast quantity of very useless know ledge.

I here for the present entirely separate religious education from the schemes (an education the importance of which no man ought to doubt), because, however it is put forth as a motive, it is not the animus of the mass of promoters, and because it really depends, in the first place, upon the basis of the elementary learning. Will not elementary learning insure every other learning according to capabilities? They who can write and read well have their foot upon the ladder. They who can, and whose benefit it is to climb, will, and surely vast numbers do climb; but shall I be met by the anathema of inquisitors and inspectors if I assert not only the impracticability of some to climb, but that it is best for them that they should not? All-wise Providence, the universal maker of the machinery of Nature, fits individuals for One community: Nature therefore gives outelaborates in the complicated evolutions of her working-more varied capacities than even the best philosophers wot of. Society is made up of classes-it will never do to have too many in one class. Works of different kinds are to be performed, and well performed; therefore, as nature evidently regulates the balance of sexes, so does the same nature economise and distribute capacities. Due proportions are born for head-work and for hand-work, and these in multiplied gradations. This is visible in physical formation. The broad band and broad foot are for their peculiar labour: they hold firmly and press down strongly the spade in the earth. With handicraft or manufacture springs up another form, of less strength, but more apt agility.

And so similar adaptations run through all nature-civilisation, in other words, society, is the collective result. Society wants a certain number gifted with high inventive faculties, others to work out their inventions. One Newton is enough in an age. Had we many Newtons at a time, there would be confusion and comparison in a people's mind, and not the one great result. I doubt not that there must be a certain number of Master Slenders, very many of them for every Newton, and for every-no, for the one-Shakespeare who immortalised them. Gravity must be lightened by merrymaking; society must have its mirth, or it will be a sad world. We must have tragedy to sober down the too abundant comedy of errors of life, and comedy to cheer, when the fountains of sorrow have poured out all their tears. Be it not said with disrespect to his ermine, the buffoon is necessary as the judge; and that poor rank can more easily bear multiplication than the better and wiser. The player, whom the census-maker, in a splenetic mood of Puritanism, classes with vagabonds, acts his due part in the drama of amalgamated society, as on his own histrionic boards. The poor tumbler who uses his head as his heels holds his place properly, and may claim for his art a recognition among the social virtues. Some are gifted with stronger heels than heads, perhaps fewer with heads stronger than their heels. Such are the elements of society all the world over, coming out, like the stars themselves, in the night of the world, to fulfil their several parts, high and low, shining, or more obscure, as they are wanted in civilised and uncivilised society. I fear wisdom would be unheeded if folly did not walk behind and hold up her train. It will be a vain attempt for any model schoolmaster at home or abroad to pare or to dilate the heads of all these pupils for the world's school to one measure. You cannot fit the head to the cap; you may fit a cap to a head. Make one for all, and it will be large enough to hide many faces. You will make but a "fool's cap" of it, as some do; and perhaps they are wanted, that there may be some fool's play, and the world have its laugh. If this be

so, Eusebius, where is the wonderful education-cap for all scholars? What a conjuror must the master-man be who shall profess truly to fit it on. Oh for the new professorship!

Of necessity how varied must education be. No one centralised manufactured scheme can be suited to all; and here is the mistake that is made. The education for a high class is thrust upon all classes. Hence the many who do not, cannot, and whom nature never intended to come up to it, are put down by statisticians as ignorant; while a still more miscalculating sect of a new philosophy, taking advantage of this epithet ignorant, make it the apology for crime, and deprecate punishments. The people of this country, Eusebius, the great mass of the people, are not ignorant. Few, indeed, are so little informed as the fashion is to make the multitude appear to be.

Great as may have been the progress of education in England and Wales from the commencement of the present century, and wide as may have been the benefit arising from it, surely the Census Report a little exaggerates the old evil to magnify the present good. "The records and the recollections which describe society so recently as fifty years ago, bear testimony to a state of ignorance and immorality so dense and general, that if any member of the present generation could be suddenly transported to that early period, he would probably be scarcely able, notwithstanding many abiding landmarks, to believe himself in England, and would certainly regard the change which half a century has witnessed in the manners of the people as but little short of the miraculous. Comparison is scarcely possible between the groups of gambling swearing children. no unfavourable example of young England, then-whom Raikes of Gloucester, in 1781, with difficulty collected in the first Sunday-school, and any single class of the 2,400,000 scholars, who now gather with alacrity, and even with affection, round their 318,000 teachers." Nor is this view either of manners or affection quite kept up in the account of the difficulties besetting the ragged-school teachers. You will d this note p. lxvi.

"The ordeal through which a ragged-school teacher has to pass is occasionally one of no trifling character. Mr Locke describes himself as having been sometimes obliged, by the attacks of his protegés, to fly from the school, and seek the protection of the police." You remember well-for you have often repeated the lines-Goldsmith's description of the village school, scholars, and master. Goldsmith painted from nature; there was some good bringing-up at any rate in those days. But Goldsmith, it will be said, does not describe children in the towns, but a country village. True, and that village was in Ireland. But that town-population of children, an adventitious population, did not then exist as now; it was the creation of the present century. Before that infantine aggregation in manufacturing towns, education in England, with regard to the class he has introduced into his poem, may be supposed to have been not unfairly described. The great want of education sprang up with the manufacturing system, under which, at an early age, children were removed from their parents, artificially brought up, scarcely knowing a home, and thus excluded from the ameliorating charities of life. And if manners are spoken of, it is not very easy to put a philosophic finger upon the cause. For manners among the best educated have also changed. Intoxication, for instance, how has it departed; and that which was a fashion is now the lowest vulgarity. And this is a change not altogether to be ascribed to any great advancement in those classes in learning. But if under manners-mores-morals are to be included, there is not quite so much reason to boast as may be assumed; outward manners may hide very bad morals. There has a great change also taken place in our whole trade-system, so as to alter for the worse the character of our trading population. Trade honesty used to be the pride of England. Where is it gone? When it is acknowledged that every article of trade is almost universally adulterated; that it is a delusion to imagine you can obtain anything genuine; and when it is taken into account what a very large proportion of our population are ma

nufacturing traders and shopkeepers, statisticians may have reason somewhat to doubt of our moral improvement. See how widely these iniquities extend, and to what degree the population must be vitiated. Take the case I alluded to in my last letter -the adulteration of tea. They who adulterate it do it not too privately every tradesman employs many hands-they must be cognisant of the cheat; they are therefore corrupted if they are fathers, they of course corrupt their children. In the instance quoted children were employed, sent out to strip certain trees of leaves, for the known purpose of adulteration. Surely, Eusebius, it is in these middle classes of great and petty tradesmen that moral education is mostly wanted. While the villanous system of fraud is allowed to exist and to progress as it does, it is very discouraging to scheme for a people's education in mere learning. There is another kind of education going on, which makes the proposed learning a dubious good, and establishes schools to make sharpers. 1 cannot find space to express adequately the abhorrence, the disgust, and the indignation at the sufferance of these iniquities. They are spreading and corrupting the whole people. Our criminal population is engaging the attention of Legislature - experiments are tried to convert convicted prisoners into good citizens by education. But the trade criminals, the general adulterators, are not prisoners; theirs is a game of less risk. But if they become not prisoners themselves, they make prisoners, for by so wide an example of dishonesty they put a mockery on fair dealing, and infect all below them. A wholesome severity upon criminals of this description would be the best preliminary step in the education of the people.

According to the opinion of the Census, what proportion of the population should be under tuition? It is calculated that in England and Wales there ought to be at school 4,908,696 children. And what is the school age? "Some send their children to school as early as from three to four; while others retain them at home till five or six. So some remove their children from school at the age of ten

or twelve, whilst others defer this step till the age of sixteen or seventeen. Nevertheless, sufficient agreement exists to enable us to indicate the earliest age at which instruction from home in general commences, and the latest age at which it generally terminates; and if we fix upon three as the former period, and fifteen as the latter, these, perhaps, will fairly represent the two extremes, beyond which scarcely any day-scholars, in the ordinary elementary schools, can be reasonably expected to be found. Doubtless some few children go to school before three, and some stay later than fifteen." The writer laments the extent to which the demand for juvenile labour interferes with school instruction. If, however, they are to begin at three, I should rather make it a subject of lamentation that they have so little time for the enjoyment of infantine life. It is frightful to think that work, whether at school or in other employment, is to commence so soon, and to last so long. Children are placed out as early as nine in permanent farm situations. It is much worse in manufactories. "Children begin to be employed in factories in needle-making, in buttonmaking, as errand-boys, and in various other capacities, some as early as six, others at any time from six to ten." Poor children! How are they sacrificed by thousands. What is the age of a child at Liverpool and Manchester? We read with horror of the poet's fabulous monster, that once in many years was to be appeased by the sacrifice of one young and beautiful victim. How many must annually die to satiate our trade monster!

Here is an extract from a recent Times :

"At Liverpool there is a large Irish population, living as they do everywhere. At Manchester and Salford, more than two hundred children have perished from diarrhoea. • The reason,' says the Registrar, 'is to be found in the out-door occupation of the mothers, and consequent neglect of the children, and in the indifference with which the early symptoms of disease in the very young are usually regarded.'"

Much has been said in the Census