in favour of the present Government system, and of its extension. But there is scarcely one of these witnesses who is not directly interested, as a manager or promoter of schools, in the receipt of Government aid. Bounties are given to induce people to teach; bounties are given to induce children to learn. You might as well examine West India proprietors as to the merits of a system of bounties on colonial produce. The witnesses who entertain a contrary opinion are those who have been concerned in the distribution of the money, not in the receipt of it, as Dr. Temple, Mr. Chester, and to some extent Mr. Lingen himself. This fact is highly significant.

The Commissioners wind up their eulogy on the system of pupil-teachers and trained masters with one remark, which appears to us to convey the severest animadversion on the whole plan. They are satisfied (as we may well believe) that the trained teachers not only are comparatively far superior to the untrained, but are, in every respect but ONE, positively good. That exception, however, is a most important one. It is that 'the junior classes of schools, comprehending the majority of chil'dren, do not learn, or learn imperfectly, the most necessary part 'of what they come to learn-reading, writing, and arithmetic.' (Report, p. 168.) It is impossible to carry bathos further. This vast expenditure, this huge machinery, this office of State, this army of examiners and inspectors, and this elaborate Report of a Royal Commission, end with the admission that everything is most perfect, except that the majority of children do not learn, or learn imperfectly, the rudiments of human knowledge which we profess to teach them!

This is, in fact, the criterion of the whole system. It must be judged by its fruits. We confess it is with surprise, but with even more regret, that we gather from the Report and evidence of the present Commission, that if the results of popular education in this country are to be judged of, not by the lavish expenditure of the promoters of schools, nor by the numbers of scholars attending them, but by the positive acquirements of those scholars, these results are pitiable and discouraging. This point is so essential to the further consideration of the subject, that we must pause to lay before the reader some of the painful, ridiculous, and astonishing particulars. The schools to which these remarks relate are inspected schools, many of them under trained masters; they are, therefore, schools for which the Education Committee may fairly be held to be responsible. The account of them is taken from the Reports of the Government Inspectors. As for uninspected schools, taught by un

VOL. CXIV. NO. CCXXXI.

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trained masters, they open a lower depth into which we shall not venture to descend.

It must be premised, in fairness to those who are concerned in these schools, that there, as elsewhere, the large majority of children never reach the first class. Throughout England and Wales more than three-fifths attend the same school less than two years, and more than two-fifths less than one year. Mr. Fraser tells us that we must make up our minds to see the last of a peasant boy, as a day scholar, at ten or eleven; but he conceives it to be possible to teach a child of that age to spell common words, to read as much as he cares to read, to write a letter to his mother, and to cast up a shop bill, in such a manner that he will not forget these accomplishments. I have no brighter view of the future or the possibilities of English elementary education, floating before my eyes than 'this. If I had ever dreamt more sanguine dreams before, 'what I have seen in the last six months would have effectually and for ever dissipated them.' Truly so. For as the Commissioners next inquire, Is this standard actually attained? Very far from it. It is known that only about 25 per cent. of the whole number of scholars ever reach the first class at all; and the attention of the master is naturally more constantly directed to the higher class and to the instruction of his pupilteachers, than to the rudimentary efforts of the junior classes. Mr. Fraser adds:

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"Not that I would be understood as implying that one half, or " even one quarter of the children at ten years of age carry with them "into the business of life even the humble amount of accomplishments "which I have named." In a subsequent part of his report, he says, "It thus appears that out of 282 schools only 100, little more than "one in three, are in a condition that ought to be satisfactory either "to teachers or managers; while not more than 23, or scarcely one "in twelve, are in that state of efficiency which shall send forth a "child at ten years of age into the world, for the work of life, with "that amount of scholarship which I attempted to describe," in the passage quoted.'

Upon this statement the Commissioners observe:

'We start, then, with the general opinion expressed by Mr. Norris so lately as 1859-60, that "three out of four children leave school "with only such a smattering of education as they may have picked "up in the lower classes;" and "that we are successfully educating "one in eight of the class of children for which the schools were "intended." We may combine with this an opinion equally strong of Mr. Bowstead.

"I do not believe that the results attained, even in these first-class

schools, are altogether satisfactory in themselves. On the contrary, I fear that the mass of the young people who go forth from them do so with very crude notions even upon the staple subjects in which they have been instructed, with but little taste for reading, and slight appreciation of the value of intellectual pursuits, and with only transient impressions of the principles which their teachers have endeavoured to inculcate. It seems certain that a large proportion of those among them who enjoy no further educational advantages, forget the greater part of that which they have learnt, and relapse almost entirely into the condition of the uneducated. This disheartening result is to be attributed, not to any defect in the ability of their teachers or the system on which they are taught, but solely to the short period of their attendance at school, and the early age at which they leave it.""

Let any man who has ever watched the growth of a child's mind, even under the most favourable circumstances of affluence, intelligence, leisure, and a cultivated home, ask himself what amount of education can be imparted between the ages of nine and eleven, and what would be the result on his own child if the processes of instruction were then stopped for ever. But the

failure is to be attributed both to a defect of ability in the teachers and still more to the system. The sort of ability fostered in the teachers does not fit them for teaching under these conditions, nor for teaching the things really wanted.

The

The first object of secular instruction is, of course, to teach children to read, by which word we describe two distinct processes; the one to read aloud with correctness and articulation so as to make others understand what is read; the other, to apprehend correctly the meaning conveyed by print. Inspectors generally report that reading aloud is not taught as it ought to be; that good reading is extremely rare; and that it is seldom good enough to be an available resource for a Sunday evening by a cottage fireside. The children fall into 'slovenly habits-indistinctness of sight as well as speech-in the lower classes, which become ineradicable.' Good reading aloud depends in the first instance on a quick and clear apprehension of the sense of what is set down. Without that, all expression and even meaning must be wanting. But even when the art of connecting certain signs with certain sounds has been mastered, sounds and signs are alike devoid of meaning to the childish and uncultivated mind. Take the following examples. Mr. Forster tells us:

'I met with very few day schools indeed in which it seemed that the words read or repeated from a book, even with apparent ease, conveyed any idea to the mind of the pupil. For instance, a smart little boy read the first verse of the ninth chapter of St. Matthew's

Gospel, "And he entered into a ship, and passed over, and came into "his own city." I asked, "What did he enter into?" "Don't "know, thank you, Sir," replied the boy politely. "Read it again. "Now what did he come into?" "Don't know, thank you, Sir." In another school, a girl of about thirteen years of age was directed to "say her geography" to me, and after she had repeated the boundaries of several countries, I asked "What is a boundary?" "It's a "year's wages." My question had suggested to her mind the terms on which the pitmen are in some collieries bound for a year to their employment. Doubtless she did not dream of its connexion with the lesson she had just repeated. These are fair specimens of the usual results of any effort to elicit the children's apprehension of what they were learning-either total silence or an answer perfectly irrelevant. The truth, which has been forced upon me in a way it never was before, is, that the language of books is an unknown tongue to the children of the illiterate, especially in remote situations. It is utterly unlike their vernacular dialect, both in its vocabulary and construction, and, perhaps, not less unintelligible than Latin generally was to the vulgar in the middle ages. The gulf between is the more impassable wherever, as in the collier villages, there is little or no intercourse with persons of the middle class.

"In order to "illustrate the extent to which sounds may be taught, "without any commensurate appreciation of the sense," Mr. Brookfield published two answers written on slates by children of average intelligence of eleven years of age. They were answers to the questions from the Church catechism, "What is thy duty towards God? and "What is thy duty towards thy neighbour?" They were as follows:

"My duty tords God is to bleed in him, to fering and to loaf "withold your arts, withold my mine, withold my sold, and with my "sernth, to whirchp and to give thinks, to put my old trast in him, "to call upon him, to onner his old name and his world, and to save "him truly all the days of my life's end."

""My dooty tords my nabers, to love him as thyself, and to do to "all men as I wed thou shall do and to me, to love, onner, and suke 66 my farther and mother, to onner and to bay the Queen, and all "that are pet in a forty under her, to smit myself to all my gooness, "teaches, sportial pastures and marsters, to oughten myself lordly "and every to all my betters, to hut no body by would nor deed, to "be trew in jest in all my deelins, to beer no malis nor ated in your arts, to keep my ands from pecken and steel, my turn from evil "speaking, lawing and slanders, not to civet nor desar othermans good, but to lern laber trewly to git my own leaving, and to do my dooty in that state if life and to each it is please God to call "men."

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It curiously illustrates this writing if we compare it with the following answers made to Mr. Fraser in a promising school: — "What is a region?"" After some delay one little fellow put out "his hand. Well?' 'A roundabout.' He might have had a faint "idea of the meaning, but more probably only had the jingle of

"the New Testament phrase in his ear, All the region 'round "' about.'"'

The answers given to Mr. Brookfield supply a vivid illustration of the sort of evils to which Dr. Hodgson refers when he speaks of the children's tendency to "slur over the words so that it could not "be told whether they were rightly or wrongly pronounced," or which Mr. Foster is describing when he says that the language of books is an unknown tongue to the illiterate.' (Report, p. 257.)

The same may be said of arithmetic and theology. In 1859 Mr. Brookfield put the two following questions to 1344 children in the first classes of 53 schools containing 6890 scholars; 17 of the schools were good, 19 fair, and 17 inferior:

"What is the cost of five dozen eggs at five for twopence?" "What do you mean by that state of life unto which it shall please "God to call you?" In the second case, he says, he always varied the question thus:-"Tell me of any state of life to which it has "pleased God to call anybody that you can think of; to what state "of life has He called you, or is likely to call you, if you live to be "a little older?" "I put these questions," he adds, "with every "advantage of time and elucidation (short of suggesting answers) "that I could devise." Of the whole number, 256 answered the question in arithmetic, and 142 the question on the catechism. "In "other words," says Mr. Brookfield, " 4 in 100 of the total number "of scholars in 53 schools, and 19 in 100 of the first class, found the "price of five dozen eggs at five for twopence; and 2 in the 100 of "the total scholars, and 11 in 100 of the first classes, knew what "was meant by 'the state of life to which it shall please God to "call me."

This last example shows how very wide of the mark those excellent persons are who imagine that because they have adopted certain religious forms, they are making their schools and their scholars religious. We have not the slightest doubt that the comprehension of these momentous, but difficult subjects, which play so great a part in our school education, is more defective than people willingly believe.

In an essay read at the Educational Conference of 1857, Mr. Jelinger Symons said, "In Scripture I find nothing commoner than "a knowledge of such facts as the weight of Goliath's spear, the "length of Noah's ark, the dimensions of Solomon's temple, what "God said to David, or what Samuel did to Agag, by children who "can neither explain the atonement, the sacraments, or the parables, "with moderate intelligence, or tell you the practical teaching of "Christ's life."' (Report, p. 260.)

Discreditable as this statement is to the schools in which the Bible and especially the Old Testament is made the chief instrument and object of popular instruction, with such inadequate