information or advice which these pages may give him, or as to his own hopes and prospects.

Having thus endeavoured to give a few useful hints, respecting a college career itself, we will now advert briefly to the preparation advisable, to which we have already alluded. A boy brought up at a public school, which either has or has not claims, such as scholarships and exhibitions, upon the colleges at Oxford or Cambridge, usually has his studies so directed by the masters, that there can be little said with reference to him; but it may not be useless to offer a few hints for boys educated at private establishments, or at home. In either case we would advise the tutor or parent, when the time for his going to college approaches within at least a couple of years, and the decision is in some measure made as to which university, and which college of either, the youth is to enter, then to ascertain from the Calendar the usual routine of public examinations; and from the tutors of the college, and as much as possible from any friends there, the general course of lectures and studies carried on: when once ascertained, let the pupil's reading be carefully directed to them. We have all along professed to write rather for the ordinary class of students than those of shining abilities; therefore, if there seem little probability from health and intellect of his attaining more than a common or Poll ( Too) degree as it is termed, the Calendar will pretty well guide him to his subjects-e. g. Euclid, books 1, 2, 3, and part of the 6th, Arithmetic, Algebra, (first part of Wood), Mechanics and Hydrostatics, the Acts of the Apostles in the original, and two Classical subjects, with Paley's Moral Philosophy. In most of these he ought to be thoroughly prepared before he goes up. The two Classical subjects cannot of course be ascertained; but if his previous training be sound, a Greek play, or a book of Thucydides, or Herodotus, or Homer, or Virgil, or Horace, Cicero, or Juvenal, will not cause him much uphill labour to master when the subjects are once announced. A boy who would contend for honours should certainly add to a very good knowledge of Arithmetic, Algebra, Trigonometry, and Euclid, some acquaintance with Natural Philosophy, Newton's Principia, and Pure Mathematics; but we must not forget to urge two things, with reference to all preparations for college-1st. to use invariably the books used at Cambridge, especially in Mathematics,—and 2nd. to ascertain, if possible, the mode of using them there, and to adhere to that as closely as may be. If these be not attended to, the freshman will find that he will have to unlearn much that he had hoped was learnt already. W. W.

THE STATE CANNOT EDUCATE THE PEOPLE-WILL THE

CHURCH?

MY DEAR SIR,-You have hitherto preserved a dignified silence upon the measure lately proposed by government, for improving the school instruction of children working in factories in England; but now that that well meant attempt to harmonize the pretensions of the church, the

state, and dissent, has been finally abandoned, I am unwilling that a single month should elapse, before an appeal is made through your columns to English churchmen, urging them to do that without compromise of the truth, which the state has confessed to be beyond its power to effect. Be it never forgotten, that though the government remedy has been withdrawn, the evil which it was designed to correct is still as urgent, as menacing as ever! It is not because the state of the manufacturing districts is more satisfactory that this measure is no longer requisite, and was therefore withdrawn, but rather that the evil has become so inveterate, that human policy is baffled in devising a corrective. This is expressly stated by Her Majesty's government. In this crisis it depends on churchmen, the wealthy laity in particular, now that a fair field is presented for their exertions—the inability of government to occupy it confessed and proved-the intensity of the evil and danger on all hands acknowledged, resolutely and liberally to give free scope to those means which they believe to be alone divinely ordained, and therefore, to be the only ones capable of regenerating mankind. Let it now be manifest to all the world, and to that cloud of witnesses from whom the doings of the city on a hill cannot be hid, that the Holy Catholic Church" is the only institution which in such a crisis can be the salvation of our country. It really seems as if this open trial had been appointed us, in order that in our days and in our country might in the presence of all be nobly vindicated the power of the Church and God's glory. Let us then each fear, lest through his slackness the cause of truth should in the day of trial suffer detriment. The church expects every son to do his duty! Let then the National Society, her recognised means of supplying schooling to the poor, be liberally supported by plentiful funds placed at her disposal, for supplying factory education on the soundest principles. Let her then be able to point to an adequate supply of daily schools in every town throughout Lancashire and Yorkshire, as she already can to a few, in which thousands of children are gladly receiving at the hands of the church that full and uncompromising teaching in Catholic doctrine, which she alone is commissioned to afford, and which at her hands alone will be accepted.

Bad principles in regard to education have been stoutly opposed— dangerous compromises coldly received by the church-the day of her final and most arduous trial is come; the time for protestation or simply holding herself aloof is passed-that for instant energetic liberal action has arrived. We must now or never prove the soundness of our principles by the value of their fruits. This is the decisive test now applied, viz., can our principles hitherto applied partially, be so universally brought into operation, that none can gainsay their soundness and sufficiency? The field of trial has been chosen for us where all will confess that circumstances are least in favour of victory. The ground has been accurately surveyed: the enemy's position has been ascertained to be so strong, that a powerful government has quailed and declined to storm it. In the meanwhile, the church has her trenches open, her officers are ready, and all that is wanted are the sinews of war; the funds to supply the men, and material for taking possession

at once of the disputed territory. To drop all metaphor. The National Society is ready to lay out with discrimination the bounty of churchmen, in aiding the erection of factory schools, and in organizing the course of instruction according to the best methods. The diocesan boards of education, presided over by the Bishops of Chester and Ripon, educate teachers for these schools, and supply inspectors for their superintendence; thus offering to the public, and to the inhabitants of their respective dioceses, the readiest means of forwarding the object in view. These are the authorised channels through which the bounty of churchmen can be at once directed, and their means of usefulness are only limited by the amount of their funds. The poor people are ready without scruple to avail themselves of the church education offered them, the government would approve and probably assist, no power could resist the church in the execution of her proper work of preaching the gospel to every creature. The church, I say again, expects in this crisis every son to do his duty.

Hoping that either in your own words, or, for want of better, in mine, you will strongly place before the laity of the church in England the need of instant and zealous exertion,

June 20, 1843.

*

I am, dear Sir, yours very truly,

T. T.

** The Editor has no better words than those of his esteemed correspondent. For himself he is not at all concerned-rather the contrary—at the withdrawal of the government measure, for which he has been long prepared. The heading which he has given to this article, pretty well says all he has to say upon the subject. He hopes, however, that the friends of sound education will all take the hint given at the commencement of the last Report of the National Society :

"THE progress of education, like that of every other intellectual pursuit dependent on the co-operation of numbers, is subject to phases and vicissitudes. A few years since, when a general apprehension prevailed that the legitimate authority of the Church in regulating this department of ecclesiastical and civil economy, was about to be diminished or superseded, great exertions were called forth among the friends of order and sound religion to avert the threatened evil. Large funds were collected; schools in every quarter of the kingdom were simultaneously raised; the claims of the Church to be the teacher of the people were energetically maintained; and at length the arrangement was concluded for settling, with regard to some essential points, the respective boundaries of secular and spiritual influence in the all-important national work of training up the children of the poor. After this arrangement, however, when exciting questions were no longer under discussion, it was to be expected that a calmer state of things would follow. There was even reason to apprehend, that not tranquillity only, but indifference might in certain cases ensue, and more particularly, that the pecuniary sacrifices, which under other circumstances were cheerfully offered, might gradually be withheld."

A VILLAGE SCHOOL IN SOMERSETSHIRE.

MY DEAR SIR,-If I comply with your request, and send you A short account of my Village School as it exists at present," it is in the humble hope of affording some encouragement to others similarly situated with myself, and of showing that, with limited funds, and in no great space of time, it is possible to carry out many of the suggestions which, in the first number of this Journal, I ventured to make for the improvement of the system of education in this country. On returning in September last from a tour in search of health, I found that my schoolmaster had left me, that subscriptions had fallen short, and that a considerable debt had accrued in consequence of necessary repairs and additions to the school during my absence. After what I had seen, however, abroad, and at the Central School, Westminster, and at Mrs. Tuckfield's institutions, I doubted not that, with an efficient and pious instructor, duly chosen and well paid monitors, a proper selection of books, and a good division of time* and labour, these, and other diffi

culties which followed in their train, might be overcome; and as (the district in which I reside being agricultural), it is therefore all but impossible to retain lads under tuition after ten or eleven years of age, I determined to dispense with the schoolmaster altogether, to unite the two adjoining school-rooms, and to place both boys and girls under the direction of the mistress of the girls' school, with whose general conduct and ability I had much reason to be satisfied. Duly instructed monitors it was not indeed easy to find; but by selecting steady elder girls from those who were leaving, or had just left school, and by paying them from 2s. to 6d. per week, I provided tolerably useful assistants; who at the same time, it might be hoped, would improve in the course of a few months, both in their own knowledge, and in the art of imparting it to others.

The principal ideas which influenced me in the other two important points of making a proper division of time and labour, and of selecting suitable books, may be thus briefly stated.

I thought that the monitresses and first class, as they could bear, so

All the Girls in the School are employed at Needle-work during the whole

Afternoon

Bell rung at 2 o'clock-Doors closed at 10 minutes past 2. After which no children admitted.

Books, Slates, &c., inspected and put by-Prayers-the 3rd & 4th Classes are dismissed

At 5 o'clock the whole business of the School

is ended-Two Monitors remain to sweep and

The 1st and 2nd Classes with

clean the rooms and to prepare them for the fol- learn Singing, from half past 4 tlll 5onitors

lowing morning's school

o'clock.