such a system, and also morally and intellectually qualified for their office, may, by the Divine grace, become a blessing to the nation, second only to the sacred ministry itself.

The following is the succinct account of the institution in the last Number of the Report of the National Society, which we prefix as an introduction to our extracts from Mr. Coleridge's statement:

The

"Your Committee last year stated that, in accordance with public opinion strongly expressed upon the subject, preparations had been made to open an establishment for training youths to be School-masters at Stanley Grove, Chelsea, where an eligible site, comprising eleven acres of land, had been purchased by the Society for that purpose. Your Committee have now to report, that the dormitory for the accommodation of fifty-six pupils has been completed; that a chapel to contain four hundred persons has been erected and consecrated; and that a Model-school, as a place of practical instruction for the pupils in the art of teaching, is now in operation, and attended by 110 scholars. The original outlay upon this establishment is large; it exceeds 20,000l. But taking into account the extent of ground purchased, the number of buildings to be erected and fitted up, and the respectability of appearance considered necessary in edifices of a somewhat collegiate character, the Society could not expect to do so much on cheaper terms. The annual expense to the Society is estimated at 2000l., and will be strictly limited to that sum. payments of pupils (of course not included in the above sum) are at the rate of 251. annually from each pupil during his period of training, which, by recent arrangements, may vary from one year and a half to three years. Each pupil, after a probation of three months, is apprenticed to the Society till the completion of his twenty-first year. The number of apprentices is at present thirty-five, of whom ten are entirely free, and ten partly so, being charged 15l. a year instead of 251. For these exhibitions, which were considered necessary at the opening of the Institution, special grants have been voted. The chief deviation from the original arrangements is, that the pupils will not necessarily remain three years under tuition, but will be sent out as teachers and assistants as soon as they have attained a certain standard of proficiency. It is the determination of your Committee to exercise the strictest economy, and to expend nothing that can be spared consistently with the efficiency of the Institution. The criterion by which your Committee will estimate that efficiency is, the annual production of competent masters in a fair proportion to the original cost and annual outlay. And in estimating that competency, your Committee will have continual and vigilant regard to the humble sphere of labour for which the candidate is designed. His studies will be suited to the station of a parochial schoolmaster, or teacher of the poor; and not such (except in special cases) as would prepare him for the charge of a middle school, or an academy. He may be taught the rudiments of Latin; but the object of such teaching will be, not to ground him in a learned language, but to give him a more complete command of his own. The branch of knowledge, of which he will learn most, will be that most important to himself and to his future scholars, - the knowledge of the Gospel, which, if it be sound and practical, will never tend at any time to unfit him for his station.

"An establishment for Female Pupils, corresponding in character with Stanley Grove, has been opened by your Committee at Whitelands, in the parish of Chelsea. Accommodation is there provided for forty young females, who will remain under instruction for a period of at least twelve months, at a charge of 15l. a year to each pupil. The annual cost of the institution is estimated at 750l. Its object is to provide a class of schoolmistresses higher in attainments than have hitherto been frequent among female teachers of the poor. In their course of training, while due regard is paid to religious and intellectual cultivation, attention will be also given to works of female industry."

We shall now proceed with our proposed extracts from Mr. Coleridge's memorial.

"Notwithstanding the admirable facilities afforded by the parochial system of the Church (facilities which have been by no means neglected), the means at present available for popular instruction are not merely inadequate in extent, but unsuitable, or at least imperfect, in kind; and to this insufficiency the confessedly defective state of national education in this country is mainly to be attributed. If this be made apparent if it be admitted that education, considered as an engine of moral and religious improvement, is possible only under certain conditions not generally fulfilled in our schools, it will be easy to explain, and needless to justify, the steps actually taken by the National Society in this matter. It will be apparent whither they tend, and how they must be supported; and though some anxiety may remain as to the result, yet in every event good will have been effected, and nothing but good.

"I have said that the present state of popular instruction is confessedly defective. Of this ample proof may be found in the last Reports, as well of the National Society, as of the Committee of Council. I might add some striking facts in confirmation, if any were needed, from my own experience in examining candidates for admission into this institution. Let not the case be overstated. Much has been done, for which a large measure of gratitude is due to the elder friends of education. They have fought and won the battle of public opinion. They have warmed indifference, and overcome prejudice, not only in the clergy, but in a large portion of the influential laity. An extensive machinery has been brought into play, and assuredly not without effect. Great efforts have likewise been made to give a right direction to the spirit thus awakened,-to communicate a religious character to the instruction imparted, and to make the parochial school a nursery for the Church. It is not to be feared that all this has been in vain. Yet, on the other hand, it cannot be denied that the apparent results have, on the whole, been sadly disproportionate to the means. This has been perceived by many of the warmest supporters of our National Schools; and it has led some of them to a melancholy inference, as if education had no power to correct, perhaps even tended to aggravate, the evils of society.

"The truth is, that the education given in our schools (I speak of those open to the poor for cheap or gratuitous instruction, but the remark might be extended much more widely) is too often little more than nominal, imparting, it may be, a little knowledge, sometimes hardly this, but leaving the mental powers wholly undeveloped, and the heart even less affected than the mind. Is this owing to an accidental or to an inherent defect? Are the means employed inadequate merely, or essentially unfit ? If the former, we may trust to time and gradual improvement. We may proceed, if possible, more carefully, but in the old way. If the latter, a different course must be pursued we must do something else. I venture to take the latter position.

"To what end do we seek to educate the poor man's child? Is it not to give him just views of his moral and religious obligations-his true interests for time and for eternity, while at the same time we prepare him for the successful discharge of his civil duties-duties for which, however humble, there is surely some appropriate instruction? Is it not to cultivate good habits in a ground of self-respect? -habits of regular industry and self-control.; of kindness and forbearance; of personal and domestic cleanliness; of decency and order? Is it not to awaken in him the faculties of attention and memory, of reflection and judgment?-not merely to instil knowledge, or supply the materials of thought, but to elicit and to exercise the powers of thinking? Is it not to train him in the use of language, the organ of reason, and the symbol of his humanity? And while we thus place the child in a condition to look onward and upward, - while we teach him his relationship to the eternal and the heavenly, and encourage him to live by this faith, do we not also hope to place him on a vantage ground with respect to his earthly_calling?-to give to labour the interest of intelligence and the elevation of duty, and disarm those temptations by which the poor man's leisure is so fearfully beset, and to which mental vacuity offers no resistance ?

"But is this an easy task? Can we hope that it will be duly performed for less than labourers' wages, without present estimation or hope of preferment, by the first rustic, broken down tradesman, or artisan out of employment, whom necessity, or perhaps indolence, brings to the office? Not to put an aggravated case, however common, can any half-educated man from the working classes (and the majority of those who seek to be schoolmasters are all but uneducated), be safely entrusted with duties, the very nature of which it would be impossible to make him understand? Almost uninstructed, and utterly untrained, with little general fitness for his calling, and no special apprenticeship, he may teach a little, and this not well, but he cannot educate at all. But will not a little preparation suffice? May he not be taught a system? He may indeed be taught a system; but surely it will not suffice. He wants the first conditions of a teacher. He cannot teach what he does not know. He cannot explain what he does not understand. He may learn a particular method, but not how to apply it. The best preparation which he can receive-short of a complete course of training is superficial and formal. He must himself be educated before he can educate others. Morally and religiously

considered, the case is still worse. He cannot suggest motives, or inspire feelings, of which he is himself unconscious. If he be a pious man, it is indeed much: yet his principles, or at least his mode of explaining them, will be uncertain. If he be a sincere Churchman, he is not an intelligent Churchman. It may be enough for others to be what they are, but a teacher must know what he is, and why he is so. Direct religious instruction may indeed be given, more or less extensively, by the parochial minister; but unless the indirect teaching, the habitual influence of the master, be in harmony with it, it will be of little avail. That division of labour by which one person is to teach the words, and another the meaning of a lesson, is most impractical. The latter is in effect the master of the school, and must devote a considerable portion of every day to the task. But which of our parochial clergy have time for this?

"Here, then, I think we have the root of the evil. The object on which so much zeal and ingenuity bave been bestowed has been not to procure proper masters, but to do without them. The attempt has been to educate by systems, not by men. School-rooms have been built, school-books provided, and methods of instruction devised. The monitorial, the simultaneous, the circulating, the interrogative, the suggestive systems, have each been advocated separately or in combination. Meanwhile the great need of all, without which all this apparatus is useless, and in comparison with which it is unimportant, has been all but overlooked. It has been taken for granted that the machinery of education would work itself, as if there had been a living spirit in the wheels. The guiding mind, by which even an imperfect mechanism might have been controlled to good effect, was to be superseded: nay, the conditions under which alone it can be provided, adequate support and just estimation, - have been regarded as not merely unattainable, but as positively objectionable. The result is exactly what might have been anticipated.

"I have described the education of a poor man's child with a reference to the ends for which I suppose it to be given; and I have contended that this education cannot be given through the instrumentality of such men as are commonly employed for that purpose. The educator must himself have been both sufficiently and suitably educated. This will be denied by none; but every one will affix his own meaning to the words. I say further, to teach letters, in however humble a capacity, is not a mechanic employment; to educate, in the full sense of the word, is as liberal an occupation as any in the commonwealth. In plain terms, then, and in old-fashioned language, my conclusion is, that the schoolmaster must be an educated

And this necessity is not at all affected by the class of children which he has to train. The amount of acquirement may differ; but this is the least thing to be considered. I am utterly opposed, I had almost said hostile, to the notion that any number of attainments, or any facility in teaching them, can qualify a schoolmaster for his arduous office. Attainments may make a particular teachera professor, as such teachers affect to call themselves but a mere teacher has much to learn before he can undertake to educate. A sound, and, to a considerable extent, a cultivated understanding; a certain moral power, the growth of religious principles but developed by intellectual culture, --surely this is an essential pre-requisite in every educator, every schoolmaster, before we inquire into his special fitness for the class of children of which his school may be composed. And let it not be assumed that this is less requisite in the teacher of the poor than of the rich. The parochial schoolmaster, in which term I include the master of every Churchschool for the poor, is encompassed with difficulties to which an ordinary Commercial or Grammar School offers no parallel. Not merely has he a greater number of children to instruct, with less assistance and in a less time-children for the most part of tenderer years, and less prepared by previous instruction and hometraining; but he has more to do for them. They are more dependent upon him for their education. His scholars have, in a manner, to be taught, not merely to think, but to speak, if they would express any thing beyond animal passions and animal wants. He has to supply all the indirect teaching to which the children of the better-provided classes owe much, and perhaps the best, of what they know. And when to this we add the moral training which they require; when we take into account the actual position of the Church in this country, and remember that on the parochial schoolmaster the children of the poor are too often dependent, not merely for catechetical instruction, but for the first implantation of religious sentiment; that he has too often to give that first presumption in favour of holy things, as they are set forth in the Church of our fathers, of which there should be no rememberable beginning; that he has to interpret that sound of Sabbath-bells, which ought to have a meaning to the ears of earliest childhood, as often as it carries to the cottage its message of peace; when, lastly, we add to this the influence for good which the honoured teacher may and ought to exercise over the youth long after he has quitted the school, an influence which he can only maintain by the ability to direct and assist him after he has ceased to be a child; - in a word, when we see that the Church schoolmaster has not merely to minister to the clergyman in some of his most arduous and important functions, the instruction of childhood, and the guidance of youth, but to make up much that is wanting, and correct much that is perverse, in the circumstances and tendencies of humble life, shall it be said that I have overstrained the point, and contend for too high a standard? But if this be a just picture of what we want, then look at what we have, and be my earnestness forgiven!

"What, then, is to be done? for it is time that the inquiry should take a practical turn; and here I should wish that facts might speak for me, or rather for themselves. What has been done?"

(To be continued.)

REVIEW OF NEW PUBLICATIONS.

PUBLICATIONS ON THE OXFORD TRACTS.

(Continued from p. 511.)

1. The Bishop of Oxford's Charge.-2. Episcopal Testimonies.3. Difficulties in the Bishop of Oxford's Charge, by Rev. W. GOODE. -4. The Case as it is, by Rev. W. GOODE.-5. The present Crisis of the Church, by Rev. J. DAVIES.-6. Dr. Pusey answered, by Rev. W. ATWELL.-7. No middle stand, by Rev. C. LUTWIDGE.8. Visitation Sermon, by Rev. J. TWELLS.-9. Strictures on Rev. C. Wordsworth's Sermon, by Rev. W. VEITCH.-10. Church Doctrine of Repentance, in reply to Wordsworth, by Rev. W. NICHOLSON.-11. Catholicity versus Sibthorp, by Rev. G. BIBER, LL.D.. -12. Answer to Sibthorp's Inquiry, by A Spectator.-13. A Voice from Ireland, in reply to Sibthorp, by R. BLAKENEY.-14. Serious Remonstrance to Sibthorp, by Hull Clergymen.-15. Why a Clergyman of the Church of England should not become Roman Catholic, by H. DRUMMOND, Esq.-16. Reasons by a Jew, in reply to Sibthorp, by R. HERSCHELL.-17. Remarks on Sibthorp, by a Clergyman. -18. Lent Sermons in Rome, by Rev. J. GRAY.-19. On an Oxford Advertisement, by an Aged Layman.-20. Examination of Tract 90, by Rev. F. BEASLEY.-21. Correspondence on Tractarianism.22. A Sermon for the Times, by Rev. D. DRUMMOND.-23. Life of Bishop Bonner.-24. Provincial Letters, by Rev. G. FABER.-25. Index to Tracts for the Times, by Rev. D. CROLY.

We were addressing ourselves very reluctantly to our irksome task-for however necessary controversy may often be, and however much some may surmise that reviewers have no distaste for it, we can truly say that it is a toil and grief, which only a sense of duty could induce us to encounter, and gladly should we be persuaded that we might conscientiously pretermit this invidious portion of our monthly la

bours; - we were addressing ourselves, we say, to the resumption of our remarks upon Tractarian matters, when there fell into our hands, very seasonably for our encouragement and instruction, a sermon upon the duty of "Contending earnestly for the faith once delivered to the Saints," preached by the Rev. W. Dealtry, D.D., Chancellor of the diocese of Winchester, at recent ordination in the

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