ideas of more than a few of the young audience. The skill also by which every answer and every incident is turned to account by an adroit master, for moral or mental discipline, cannot be gained without attention and cultivation; and the absence of this skill, and of the power to recast the subject-matter of instruction, and convey it to the minds of the children in clear and simple lan"* leaves to guage, and in the "natural order of acquirement," the Infant School little beyond its external form and semblance, and scarcely more results than can be expected to flow from kindly treatment, rote learning, regularity, and discipline. Among the defects which I noticed at some of these schools, were the repetition of songs and lessons above the comprehension of the children; the use of tunes of sacred music and chants, to aid the memory in learning arithmetic tables-a thoughtless, desecrating practice, which I believe a few words of observation put an end to; and the absence of well-devised employment for the younger children, either in slate-writing or copying, as introductory to learning their letters, or in some simple mechanical occupation. In a few instances I found a practice of designating each child by a number which either hung from the neck or was attached to the forehead by a string passing round the head. I heard no argument of convenience or of occasional expediency which could outweigh the obvious tendency of such a plan to obstruct and weaken the growth of that intercourse of affection, confidence, and sympathy, which it is especially requisite for the teacher of children, of the class to which these belonged, to cultivate. In two or three schools the singing, which had been taught on Miss Glover's plan, was pleasing; and the reading and intelligence of some of the more advanced children tolerably satisfactory. The best of those I had an opportunity of seeing at Norwich was the St. James's Infant School, one of those which had been aided by the public grant. It is chiefly supported by persons dissenting from the church. The teacher had formed a juster estimate of the nature of the art which he professed and the responsibilities he had undertaken. A supply was wanting of books and apparatus to enable him to carry on his own improvement as a master, and to give greater efficiency to the methods he pursues. The small garden attached to the building was neatly kept, and was found very useful as an auxiliary in the process of moral training. The school is situated in the district containing perhaps the lowest and most neglected portion of the population of the city. The master stated that, when he first opened the school in 1838, he was liable to frequent insults in passing through the streets in the neighbourhood. Persons who are in a position to be able to judge correctly now remark that a manifest improvement has taken place in the demeanour of the lower portion of the inhabitants. Parents have confessed to the master and to others that their children now give them less trouble. An interest also *Dugald Stewart.

in their mental progress has been awakened in their minds, and has been to them a source of pleasurable surprise. They have felt themselves insensibly influenced by the ideas and conduct of their children. There is reason to believe that only a very small part of the population of that neighbourhood ever attends a place of worship nevertheless, it may be hoped that in this, as in other instances, and not alone as regards the youthful portion of such a community, the school may by degrees be found to be the vestibule to the temple.

A most generous effort in behalf of the improvement of the labouring population of Norwich has been made by Mr. Geary, to whose intelligence and enterprise the city is also indebted for the introduction of a species of manufacture differing in kind from those that have for a long time formed its now declining staple. Mr. Geary erected in 1838, at his own expense, in a good situation, with playgrounds annexed, a handsome building capable of containing upwards of 500 boys, girls, and infants, in three separate schoolrooms. To these he added an equally spacious and handsome building for the purpose of an industrial school, capable of accommodating at least 300 children to receive instruction in the elements of common trades. Mr. Geary's design was that the Infant School should in part supply the two others; and, to meet the numerous cases in which the parents could not afford to pay even the most trifling sum, he opened the Industrial Schools on the footing that those children who paid nothing should work half the day at some trade for the benefit of the establishment. It is to be regretted that a plan which contains so much that is suitable to the circumstances of the population should not yet have met with complete success. The three schools at the period of my visit confained together 275 children, only 40 of whom were occupied in the industrial school. Considering the number of children in Norwich attending day-schools, whose parents were probably unable to make any payment, however small, for such purposes, the smallness of the numbers at the industrial school must be taken as an indication of misapprehensions existing in the minds of those for whose benefit it was designed. Accordingly, I found an impression very widely prevailing among such persons, that in laying out so large a sum of money in building school-rooms, Mr. Geary could have been actuated by no other motive than that of making money by the labour of their children. Unfortunately, the ignorance, and the suspicious and hostile feeling towards their masters and towards all above them, so prevalent among the mass of the population, makes it the more difficult to help them by any plan, however well devised, for their good. I cannot pretend to pronounce whether those feelings of hostility and repulsion have had their origin in any sufficient causes; but I should not be justified in suppressing the fact, or in withholding the reasons given by the men themselves. These seemed in general to point to the neglect and disregard or want of dué consideration on the

part of the masters for the interests of those in their employ. They were possessed by the conviction that advantage was taken of their necessities to lower the rate of wages in undue proportion to the market value of the work produced. They are therefore unable to believe that any design emanating from that quarter can have any other source than selfishness or a desire to oppress them. Unhappily also, the form in which religious differences manifest themselves in the classes above them, and the inducements held out by opponent sects, having the appearance of a canvass and competition for their children, tend greatly to confuse their partially enlightened intelligence, and to make them often regard as a favour that which is one of the plainest of their duties; and the more so, as this zeal for their spiritual wants is, they say, unaccompanied by a corresponding regard for their great and increasing physical privations, at all times very imperfectly relieved by the contributions, large as they sometimes are, and but seldom by the personal sympathy and attention of the classes that are at ease. Another pregnant cause of the too frequent neglect of duty to their children and to themselves may be found in the proceedings connected with the fierce and reckless political contests in which they are called upon to take part. Those who (most lamentably for the cause of private morality and public virtue) have lent the sanction of high example to the practice of bribing the poor man, cannot know, unless by specific inquiries and personal observation, from which they are far removed, or which they may disregard, the extent of the evil they are inflicting. Money thus poured into the lap of a man subject to privations is irresistible; but it not the less certainly ruins his self-respect and that of those about him; it is squandered in debauchery as long as the means of indulgence last; it breaks in upon all steady and industrious habits, and substitutes, for a careful and provident economy, a depraved craving after a re-opening of this floodgate of unnatural wealth, to satisfy debts, accumulated in anticipation of it, and arising from a taste, thus stimulated, for indulgences which his honest industry could not procure. The first to suffer from the vices of a man thus corrupted are his children an effect sufficiently well known to all who are most observant of the condition of the working classes. An imperfectly instructed man, subject to such temptations, is little disposed to scan anxiously moral differences, and to make sacrifices to duty; and he has need at all times of all the aid of correct example to lean upon, to keep him right. A man whose days are passed in unvarying mechanical operations has need of every external aid of instruction to inform, direct, and enlarge his mind, and to keep it pliable. Neither public example, nor any general opportunities existing at Norwich, can afford him this direction. For the adults, there are neither lectures, nor public gardens, nor other readily available sources of rational instruction, relaxation, or amusement. For those who are rapidly rising up to become adults, neither the

benevolent exertions of Mr. Geary, nor the general efforts on behalf of education as displayed hitherto in the schools of the town, have met the manifest necessities of the case before them.

If the mental and moral condition of the rising generation is to be usefully affected through the medium of schools, as auxiliaries and interpreters to higher and more sacred ministrations, wider views must be taken of what it is requisite to teach, and of the instrumentality by which it is to be communicated. It is still necessary to repeat that what is commonly called education, namely, the teaching the mechanical art of reading and writing, with a little arithmetic, and the dogmatical inculcation of scripture formularies, very imperfectly understood, if at all, is not in fact education, or anything more than its unformed, undeveloped germ; possibly containing within it that which may give some additional power to the mind, but very probably in no way reaching and impressing the heart. It is necessary also to repeat that, if the legitimate educator does no more than this, there are those who will do more; the Chartist and Socialist educator-the publisher of exciting, obscene, and irreligious works-he who can boldly assert and readily declaim upon false and pernicious dogmas and principles. To inculcate the leading doctrines of our faith, and to present the main incidents of the holy Scriptures in such manner as shall interest the affections of the young, and not alone burden the memory; and to impart some real knowledge applicable to the state of society in which they live, and to the world around them, is the work in hand. This the ordinary master or mistress at from 6s. to 10s. a-week cannot do. I observed some teachers in Norwich, receiving much higher salaries than those, who were incapable of explaining the meaning of very ordinary words, who could not spell correctly, and whose capacity for clearing up and making interesting to a child's mind the subject of instruction where books of general reading had been introduced, was manifestly very limited. Remains also of the art of governing by force of lungs or arm were not wanting. In some schools a little geography had been recently attempted, but not extending in most instances beyond catalogues of names; the master often appearing to think that to point out the hardest names in the interior of China and Tartary was the most dexterous feat of geographical learning. In a few cases I found that the maps hung on the walls, not yet used-objects apparently still of respectful and distant wonder alike to master and pupils. I could see no signs of any capability to make geographical instruction really profitable, by connecting with the physical facts some knowledge of the several peculiarities and of the condition and mode of life of the various inhabitants of the globe. Such information could not be otherwise than valuable to the people of Norwich, whose failing sources of industry in their own locality would seem to force upon many of them the necessity of seeking a field of employment elsewhere. At present the Norwich weaver (I speak of a great majo

rity) appears strongly indisposed to quit his own town and neighbourhood, partly from natural and laudable attachment to it, partly because he is retained by poverty, partly because his mind has become rigid, and his frame enfeebled by his monotonous and often exhausting labour, partly because of his ignorance of the world beyond the bounds of his horizon, by reason of which he persuades himself that any change to another country must be either to America, which for some cause or other he dislikes, or otherwise a "wild dedication of himself to unpathed waters, undreamed shores," where nothing but severer privations than those he encounters at home can await him. While nothing less than a systematic and continuous effort, proceeding from without them, could so operate as to reduce by emigration the present pressure on the labour-market, and thus relieve themselves, their wives and children (the latter of whom would from the first make useful emigrants, and they themselves also after a period of out-door work and better food) from their actual normal condition of suffering, and the town from the burden of maintaining them either by rates or private contributions: much might be done to prevent the rising generation from falling into the same state, by expanding their minds in time, and giving a new direction and a wider scope to their thoughts and wishes. At present, notwithstanding the state of the trade for some years past, every weaver marries between 18 and 22, and brings up his children to weaving; they are useful to him in many subordinate processes about the loom; unfortunately, also, they are too often the only means by which he obtains for himself or for them their daily meal. Whatever may be already the excess of the number of hands seeking employment, and however clearly it may appear that early marriages must add without limit to this excess, the Norwich weaver unhappily perceives two arguments in its favour: first, that it may be the means of saving him at times from the workhouse; and secondly, that things can, in his opinion, scarcely alter for the worse. Perhaps there is no more deplorable result of a depressed condition than the recklessness which, as in this case, accompanies and increases it. In order to procure the coveted employment for his children, either in the factories, in attending hand-loom weavers, or in other work, he frequents a market, held in an open space close to the great market-place of the town: it is held every Monday morning, and is called the children's market. I saw, between six and half-past seven in the morning, about 400 men and women and children of both sexes, waiting for opportunities of making the bargain of the week. The anxiety displayed on the appearance of any one likely to hire, denoted the pressing need that brought together so many competitors for employment. The pale and emaciated countenances of the men, and the poor condition of the dress of all, showed that this need was not of yesterday. Yet it is no heartless process of bargain and sale to the first comer; for, to the credit of those whose privations might