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face of Jesus Christ, with such a sweet and chastened splendour that we can gaze with daily renewed capacities. "There be Who will show us any good?" that many Cease your fruitless search, ye wanderers, and pause at the cross of Calvary,-behold the brightness that beams from your Saviour's bleeding brow, and cry-" Lord, lift thou up the light of thy countenance upon us!"-F. J.

WHERE THERE'S A WILL THERE'S A WAY; OR
TRUE STORIES ABOUT SCHOOL.

"I will tell you of a girl about fifteen years old when the school was opened, the daughter of parents from whose habits of life nothing was to be expected. When she saw other children go to school, and heard what they were doing, a great desire was excited in her mind to go herself; and a kind neighbour, seeing this, offered to send her. Before coming, feeling ashamed of being placed with the little children learning their A B C, she contrived to learn her letters, and after the school had been opened about three months, she ventured to come; and although having in a great measure to earn her own bread, such has been her industry and attention, that she is now in the upper half of the first class. About a year ago, very shortly after being placed in the class reading the Third Dublin Lesson Book,' which she had bought, she had managed to save up her pence to the amount of a shilling, which she took to the master, begging him to keep it for the Fourth Lesson Book;' and on his explaining to her that it would be long before she wanted it, she answered, she hoped to be able to remain at school till she did want it, and perhaps she might not then have the money! She is now reaping the fruits of her own prudent foresight, and reading this said Fourth Book' to her very great delight. She has from the time of her first coming been extremely neat and clean in her person and dress, and actually contrived, for some time, to place the few best clothes she was possessed of, when not wearing them, in a little box, and drew them up to the roof of the cottage to keep them out of the dirt.

"Another pleasing trait in the conduct of this girl

came under my observation a short time ago. She is one of ten girls who sing in the church; and from a feeling that there was a propriety in having hassocks to kneel upon, she made one for each girl, telling them, that if they could afford it, they were to pay her twopence each, the cost of the material, a kind of sedge growing in the parish."

"Another girl, fifteen last June, (her mother has been dead some years,)—the father, a brother about seventeen, and herself, form the whole family at home. For the last two years which she had attended school, she had done all the work of her father's cottage, sewing, mending, and making shirts for them all, rising early in the morning, and getting her work done before school hours. She is allowed to be absent one day in the week for washing; the dinner for her father and brother she cooks the night before, and they take it cold, and have a hot meal for supper instead. The way in which this girl manages to get through her work, attend school, and keep up with her class, is most pleasing."

"There is another instance, where the difficulties of attendance are almost as great as in the former one; as it is on condition of her doing the household work, that she is allowed to attend; and in this case the good done by the sister's reading in an evening to a brother considerably older than herself, and before not very steady, (chiefly from not knowing how to spend his evenings,) has been very great. On Monday last she told me that she had but little time for writing her account of the sermon the evening before, as she and her brother had been reading 'Outlines of Sacred History,' and when they stopped, she looked at the clock, and found that it was half-past eight; and she scarcely thought it could have been six, the time had passed so swiftly."

"There is another very interesting case, of a girl in the first class, who, for the last six months, since the death of her grandmother, has taken care of her grandfather's house. He tells me, the moment her work is done in an evening, she sits down so cheerfully and happily to her lessons, that it is quite a pleasure to see her, and that he does not think that she has been out one evening since she has

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been with him. The same old man, speaking of another grandchild, a boy in the second class, said, Why, sir, I have learnt more from him than I ever knew in my life before; I know all the towns round about the coast of England.""

"Two girls, who had not been able to return to school after harvest, asked permission to do any written exercises which their class had to do in an evening, and send them by the monitor to the school, hoping to get back again, and in this way keep their class. One has returned, the other still hopes to do so."-Extracts from a letter in the "Minutes of the Committee of Council on Education."

To those of our young friends who may read this we would say, "Go and do thou likewise."

Were we asked, what parents in the higher walks of life are most anxious to procure for their children, should we answer riches? No; undoubtedly we should reply, a good education; it is for this they strive, it is for this they deny themselves, it is for this they give up, oftentimes, their ease, their comforts, and their time, their pleasures and their amusements. They know its value, and deem no sacrifice too great to obtain it. They look upon it, (and justly,) as the best fortune they can give their children, the best means they can take to secure their happiness, either in this world or the next. Wherefore then are our poorer neighbours insensible to this advantage, now offered to them so generally at our National Schools, and at so reasonable a rate, that poverty can seldom be the real cause of the absence or irregular attendance of their children at school? It must be, because they are not fully aware of the great benefit to be gained there, or they could scarcely be indifferent about sending them. They surely do not love their children less than their richer neighbours, who make such sacrifices to obtain education for their little ones; and yet I believe that parents, and principally the mother, are the great hindrance to the regular attendance of a child at school. If you find a group of children in the street, playing at marbles during the school-hours, and say, "Why are you not at school to day?" the

answer is most likely, "Please, sir, mother sent me for a bit of coal;" or, "Mother's gone out, sir, and I stayed to watch the baby;" or, " Please, sir, mother said I wasn't to go this morning;" or, "Mother wanted me at home." It. really seems that there is no errand so short, nor business so trifling, as not, in the mother's eyes, to be more important, than for her child to be late or absent at school. And the worst of it is, that the mischief often begins on a Monday, and then it goes through the week. If you ask a mother, "What is John doing at home today?" (Friday.) "Please, sir, he didn't go to school on Monday, so I kept him with me." Thus another week of the poor child's one hundred weeks of education is lost. Meanwhile the schoolmaster is blamed, both by the parents of the child and the managers of the school, if this boy, whose life has been about equally divided between home employments and street amusements, does not make rapid progress in his learning; whilst the fault is the mother's, and at her door it must be chiefly laid, if the lad turn out a dunce, or what is far worse, a bad

man.

To fathers and mothers, then, would I speak a few words; but especially to mothers. Do you expect a good crop in a garden, which is neither digged nor hoed, no nor even weeded, and in which no seed is sown, or at most only a little scattered here and there it may be, by accident, by the wind, or by the birds? You would laugh at such a question, and say, "Do you take me for a fool, sir?" But we answer, that you may just as well look for an abundant crop of good vegetables and fruit in this neglected garden, as expect your children to grow up a comfort and a blessing to you, without education and without care. You would be horror-struck, were you accused of leaving your young ones exposed on a bare common, without clothes and without food, to perish in the winter's frost; but is it more kind to allow that more precious part, the soul, the spirit breathed into them by God Himself, to starve and die for lack of knowledge, amidst the temptations and sins and troubles of life? And how is the child to learn without a teacher ? for you have neither time nor probably ability to instruct him;

a school is opened near, and you neglect to send him; and is not this leaving him to perish?

But let it be so no more; remember that when you had but one child, you did not hire another to watch the baby, or to fetch the coal. Make then some sacrifice to give your child the advantage of a good religious education at the national school; let the good seed be there sown; pray to God for the dew of his Holy Spirit to bless the increase of it, and you will reap in due time an abundant harvest for remember, that "a wise son maketh a glad father; but a foolish son is the heaviness of his mother;" and that "even a child is known by his doings, whether it be good and whether it be right."-Chiefly taken from the Minutes of the Committee of the Council on Education. T. F. G.

EXTRACTS FROM THE PUBLIC NEWSPAPERS, &c.

MARLBOROUGH-STREET.-CRUELTY TO CATTLE.-George Heald, a lad in the service of Mr. Duddy, butcher, Drummond-street, was summoned by the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, for having wantonly and cruelly ill-treated and beaten an ox.

John Ditton, constable in the service of the society, said he saw the defendant on Monday last beating an ox over the head with a bludgeon about as thick as his wrist, and with a spike at each end. The defendant struck the animal with all his force over the nose, causing the blood to flow freely. Next he struck a blow over the eye, which caused a swelling as big as a fist; and lastly he struck the animal on the hock, and brought it instantly to the ground. Witness had never seen an animal beaten with greater cruelty.

Mr. Hardwick fined the defendant 20s. and costs.

LUCIFER MATCHES.-Mr. Hearder, a late lecturer in Wales, warned people to be cautious in the use of lucifer matches. If kept in warm places they were, he said, liable to take fire spontaneously; and if left about in the way of children, instant death would follow from sucking them. Two children have been poisoned at Plymouth in this way; and each lucifer match contained poison enough to kill a man.

MARTHA BROWNING, who was executed at Newgate, was a native of Alton. Her parents being very poor, she was early sent out to service, and maintained an excellent character as long as she remained in her birthplace. In London it was her grievous misfortune to be hired into irreligious families. In one, as she told the chaplain of Newgate, she was required to do a large wash every Sunday: in another, the mistress kept the needlework to be done on that day; and she had not entered a Church since she left home till after committal. Subsequent to her sentence she appeared deeply penitent, and repeatedly said that "all her sins were to be traced to Sabbath breaking." Her religious principles were thus blotted out from her mind, and, being surrounded with enticements to sin, she fell

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