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now begin to make themselves increasingly felt and apparent in Europe. As Englishmen we cannot refuse civil and educational rights to our Roman Catholic fellow-subjects. But we have a right to resent and spurn the dictation of a Cullen, and to refuse to regard his voice as the voice of the Irish people. That the Irish people sustain Cardinal Cullen's demands in regard to national education there is no proof; whatever evidence there is appears to lean in the other direction. But at all events, so long as the national revenue is charged with the establishment of the schools, and with fivesixths of the cost of maintaining them, it is evident that, whatever may be the character of the schools in Ireland, their management ought to be entirely out of priestly hands, and entirely in the hands of the National Board.

That the present Government, or any Government, will consent to a subversion of the national school system in Ireland we no more believe than that any Government will consent to the subversion of the educational institutions already set up by denominational effort in this country. There may be modifications of the one system as of the other; but in both countries alike we cannot but hope that the principles we have now indicated will be respected. Government, it is true, might interfere with the Irish system without the infringement of denominational rights, and without doing violence to the feelings of private benefactors, the Irish system not having been voluntary in its basis. But even in Ireland denominational rights have grown up, and, besides this, nearly forty years of working have built up a system with which it would be extreme folly rudely to interfere.

No doubt it would be desirable, if it were possible, to reduce the educational system of the empire under one common principle. But we see only one conceivable way of doing that, and, although conceivable, and, indeed, attractive as an ideal, we cannot imagine that the way of which we are thinking can ever be realised. The ideal element in the Irish system is the model school. Of such schools there may be a score or less in Ireland. The non-vested schools are alien grafts on the Irish system. The vested schools are vitiated by the system of personal patronage. Now if it were possible to do away with the non-vested schools, to let the vested die out, to multiply and extend the model schools over the whole country; and at the same time, discouraging and providing for the transfer or transformation of English denominational schools, to fill England with schools after the pattern of the Irish model, the ideal views of some men of high character would be satis

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fied. We perceive that this is the dream which is floating before the minds of some admirable men. We are obliged to say, however, that we see no likelihood of its being fulfilled.

It must be remembered that the principle of the model school is separate secular and combined religious instruction, with the reading either of the Scriptures or of a collection of Scripture extracts. Against this plan in England would be combined all the influence of the denominationalists and of the Birmingham secularists; while in Ireland the whole force of the priesthood, together with not an inconsiderable array of Protestant denominational influence, would be arrayed against it. The Report of the Irish Commission on Primary Education, which will no doubt exercise considerable influence with members of both parties in Parliament, goes in the direction exactly contrary to this idea.

We have said nothing of rates, or of management by local boards. These are points of detail; our desire has been to define landmarks of principle to be observed in legislation. In a sense, indeed, rating may be regarded as a point of principle. Looked at in the abstract, rating appears to us to be a right principle. So also local management seems to us to be a point to be embraced in the provisions of future legislation. Nor do we imagine that many would be found to oppose these concessions. But how provision may best be made for local management and for local rating-these are points of detail full of difficulty, and only to be determined after much consideration and calculation, and more or less from experimental induction. It seems to us evident that a municipal council, or an ordinary parochial board, would be about the most unlikely sort of committee that could have the management of municipal or parochial education. While we write, the names of Norwich, Bridgewater, Beverley, as boroughs, and of St. Pancras as a parish, rise to our recollection. So also the history of the common schools of America demonstrates, with a superabundance of evidence, that under a system of maintenance by local rates, whether municipal or parochial, niggardliness is certain, in very many places, to deform and degrade the schools. Besides which, it can never be proper that the whole charge of the schools (if justice is to be done to them) should fall as a rate upon the eighty or ninety millions of rateable annual value, and not upon the six hundred millions of personal income distributed throughout all classes of the nation. To us it appears that a certain proportion of the charge of schools established in virtue of purely national, or municipal,

or parochial action, should fall upon the locality in the form of rates; and that some locally-constituted committee should have immediate oversight of such schools, but that the school rating should be kept separate from other local rating, should not be either municipal or parochial, and that the local management should be under the direction of a specially constituted board, not by any means of the town council or of a parish board." Neither have we spoken expressly on the subject of secular schools. We do not believe that secular schools will be generally desired by the people. Secondary instruction may be secular, but primary education, in our judgment, ought to be religious and pervaded by a spirit of Christian sympathy. Nevertheless, we think the mere fact that a school is secular ought to be no bar to the receipt of Government grants for secular results. The way for testing the value of secular schools ought, in our judgment, to be left open.

There is still another point of the gravest importance, on which we have not even touched, that is the provision and training of teachers. The teacher makes the school; as is the teacher, so is the school. The normal college is the factory where the teacher is fashioned and tempered for his work. The Birmingham League has nothing to say about normal colleges, or the training and qualifications of teachers. The omission is vital. On the basis of Christian conviction and Church organisation and influence, a large supply of admirable teachers from the normal colleges has now for some time been established. But where are the colleges for Birmingham secularism; on what basis are the teachers to be trained and imbued with the right spirit; by what organisation is the needful supply of the right quality of pupil teacher and of trained teacher to be procured?

Meantime, we await with good hope the Government proposals, and we earnestly trust that nothing will prevent the passing of a measure in the next session. Only extreme agitators can wish for delay. Let the Government come forward with a measure at once conservative and liberal, building partly on the past, but yet extending the foundations in order to rear a broader and more truly national structure, sacrificing nothing good which has been gained, but opening the way for new ideas and fresh adaptations; the Ministry of Mr. Gladstone and the Vice-Presidency of Mr. Forster will then have earned a special title to the respect and confidence of the English people.

The Diary of Henry Crabb Robinson.

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ART. II.-1. Diary, Reminiscences and Correspondence of Henry Crabb Robinson, Barrister-at-Law, F.S.A. Selected and Edited by THOMAS SADLER, Ph.D. In Three Vols. London: Macmillan.

2. Walter Savage Landor. A Biography. By JOHN FORSTER. Two Vols. London: Chapman and Hall.

NEARLY five years ago we offered to the readers of this Review our reminiscences of a writer who had just before died at the good old age of ninety. We mentioned in those reminiscences how the subject of them had declared of a certain friend of his that he was the best talker who ever lived. Both talker and writer have passed away, the first surviving the second a little over two years, and exceeding his long span of life by about the same interval. Both have been brought prominently before the public during the year just closed. Mr. John Forster has written the Life of Walter Savage Landor, Dr. Sadler has edited the Diary and the Correspondence of Henry Crabb Robinson. Of the first book we must content ourselves with saying a few words, inasmuch as it would not be desirable to tell again the story of that erratic life, which was made up of such opposing elements and led to such discordant results. We must not be thought to be bandying compliments, nor to be merely repaying the commendation which Mr. Forster has bestowed upon the article before mentioned, when we say that he has done his work well. Some of the critics have given a different opinion. But these could not have known Landor. He was simply one of the most impracticable of men. For that reason he was one of the most difficult of subjects to a biographer resolved to extenuate nothing, and to set down nought in malice. His quarrels with his wife, his friends, his tenantry, his neighbours, Mr. Forster has not overlooked, could not overlook if he were resolved to be a faithful biographer. Nevertheless, he has treated them with great delicacy. Nor can any one truly say that Landor's many good qualities have not been set forth. The impression which Mr. Forster's book will produce is that of a hot-tempered, irascible man, of a generous-hearted

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man, abhorring every kind of meanness, grandly intolerant of tyranny and tyrants, and all forms of evil. That impression is a faithful one. It may be open to question if Mr. Forster has done wisely in devoting so large a space to criticism and analysis of Landor's works. One would like to have had more about the mornings at Gore House with Lady Blessington, more about the evenings at Naples and Florence with Sir William Gell, and less about Gebir and Count Julian. Yet it must be remembered that Landor's works are very little known. As we said on the former occasion, "there have been few men at once so many-sided and so crotchety, so much admired, and yet so little read, as Walter Savage Landor." Mr. Forster had, therefore, to introduce his readers not only to the man but to the author. If he should incite any one to study the Imaginary Conversations, he will have done a greater service to literature than by becoming Landor's biographer. These Conversations we hold to be the purest well of English undefiled in our literature. It would be well if the writers of to-day would draw from this source. Thereby they would save us from much turgid oratory and stagnant slip-slop.

We now pass from the writer to the talker, from Walter Savage Landor to Henry Crabb Robinson. The two friends were born in the same year, Landor on January 30th, and Robinson on May 15th, 1775. Both were contemporaries of Washington and of Grant, but the few months longer of life allotted to the second enabled him to say what the first could not have said, that he saw not only the first great American rebellion during the first month of its conflict, but the close of the second great rebellion with its tragic martyrdom. And this longevity was, in Robinson's case, accompanied by very little decay of mental power. During the closing years of his life he showed none of that irritability which so sorely tried the friends of Landor. He was calm, and placid, and full of kindliness. After he had become a nonagenarian his readiness to help those who needed aid was as great as it was in his younger days. It was but a few months before his death (as we have reason to know) that, hearing of the pecuniary misfortunes of a young relative who had suffered during the panic, he set forth on an omnibus journey of some miles to visit her, and offer her substantial assistance. Almost to the last his breakfast parties were continued. Very pleasant The bachelor host used to gather around parties they were. him students from the medical schools, young Templars, and rising literati, and would tell them how he and Goethe had

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