the public efforts in behalf of the Highlands were centered in it; but when, after the lapse of so long a period, it was found that an immense proportion of the people, unable to read their own language, were still buried in ignorance and poverty, and that the exclusion of Gaelic from the schools had frustrated the great ends of education, without materially extending the knowledge of English, as the ordinary medium of intercourse, it seemed time to try the effects of another system. The population, too, of the Highlands and Islands had, in less than a century, received an increase of 100,000. The number of public schools of all kinds, when the population was much less, had been, even if conducted on the most faultless plan, far behind the necessities of the country. But with a population so much increased-a population, too, panting for instruction-it was manifest that renewed efforts were deEnanded, and that whatever could be done might still be insufficient. In the year 1811, therefore, the Gaelic School Society of Edinburgh was formed. Its declared object was to teach Gaelic reading exclusively; and that its funds might accomplish the greatest possible good in the shortest time, it was resolved that the schools should be ambulatory, and that no school should be continued above two or three years in one spot.

The good already done by this Institution is very great. The list of schools, by the Society's last Report, is 77, containing 4300 scholars. The funds, which are raised by annual subscriptions, donations, &c. are expended as fast as they are received, no permanent fund being laid up for the future. In this it differs from the former Society, which, having accumulated consider able property, is not so dependent on voluntary contributions. The yearly expenditure of the Gaelic School Society, by their last Report, was £.3100, of which £.1200 was laid out in the purchase of Bibles, and in the purchase and printing of school-books.

Following the example of Edinburgh, a similar Institution was formed in the succeeding year in

Glasgow. It was at first proposed to be wholly auxiliary to that of Edinburgh; but the Glasgow Society being of opinion, that although Gaelic should be taught generally in the first instance, yet that their schools should not be devoted to that exclusively, it was determined, subsequently, to endow ambulatory schools of their own, in which English reading, writing, and arithmetic, should be united with the Gaelic. The Glasgow Society, at the date of their last Report, supported 48 schools, containing, by computation, 2600 scholars. This Society is also maintained wholly by voluntary contributions, having no funds in stock. Its expenditure for the year

1824 was £.476.

The Report next proceeds to state the origin and progress of the Inverness Society, by which it has been prepared. The inhabitants of the northern counties had, till a recent period, been inactive spectators of these benevolent labours. But considerations of the peculiar duty de volving on all residents within the Highlands, gave rise, in 1818, to the Inverness Society. It has received the most distinguished support, both at home and in some of the colonies, and auxiliaries in aid of it have been formed in Aberdeen and Dumfries. Latterly, its receipts have fallen far behind its expenditure. Its plan is, in most respects, like that of the Glasgow Society. While the reading of the Gaelic Scriptures forms its primary object, instruction in English reading, writing, and arithmetic, are parts of its system. It has at present a fund only equal to a few months expenditure. It depends, therefore, wholly on voluntary contributions. The highest number of schools maintained by it was 77. The present number is 65, containing above 3000 scholars. The expenditure of the Society for the past year was £.1013, while the income for the same period was only £.493. It must therefore, unless liberally supported by the public, soon contract its establishment greatly, or cease to exist altogether.

Since the commencement of the present century, other efforts of various kinds have been made to bene

fit the Highlands. The British and

Foreign Bible Society has published several editions of the Gaelic Scriptures, amounting, in all, to 35,000 Bibles, and 48,700 New Testaments, many of which have been circulated gratuitously. Persons of learning have translated several useful theo logical works, amounting, in all, to about twelve, and the Edinburgh Tract Society has printed about twenty little tracts in Gaelic. Among the books translated, we observe Blair's Sermons, Burder's Village Sermons, Doddridge's Rise and Progress of Religion, Boston's Fourfold State, and Miss Sinclair's Principles of Religion. These translations, with a few volumes of Poetry, comprise the whole extent of Gaelic literature. Of late, some itinerant missionaries have been sent through the country, by various classes of Dissenters; and recently, Government has adopted the important measure of building and endowing forty new churches at the national expense. With all these means and appliances, it is still to be deplored that the Highlands and Islands are, and we are afraid must long continue, defective in many of those subsidiary circumstances which promote instruction, and which are both the causes and effects of increasing knowledge. Some of these are stated in a note in one of the pages of the Report. The population living in towns, containing above 1000 inhabitants, does not make above onetenth of the whole; and these are chiefly on the eastern shores. Excepting in these parts, there is hard ly a circulating library or book shop; and Inverness contains the only printing-presses and newspapers in the Highlands. The system of Sunday-school teaching, so approved of in the south, is almost unknown in the Highlands. There are no local Societies for circulating tracts, and none for promoting general education, excepting that at Inverness. There are, it is true, Bible and Missionary Societies in the larger towns, but no branches of these in the villages or remote country parishes. There are only three Academies on the eastern coast-at Inverness, Tain, and Fortrose.

Each of the Societies which have been mentioned, at some period of

its progress, instituted inquiries into the general state of education; but these inquiries were generally conducted in a manner so loose, that no very definite results could be obtained from them. All accounts, down to the latest period, agreed generally, that in the more remote districts an immense proportion remained uneducated; but none could show correctly, either what had been done or what remained to be done. The Inverness Society, from its outset, strove to collect accurate information; but its efforts failed, until it entered on that course of investigation, the plan and results of which are presented to the public in the Report now under our consideration.

The investigation was undertaken in 1822, and was at once comprehensive in its range and minute in its details. It related to the whole extent of the counties of Argyle, Inverness, Nairn, Ross, Cromarty, Sutherland, Caithness, Orkney, and Zetland, and the Gaelic districts of Moray and Perth, comprehending 171 parishes, and a population, by the census of 1821, of above 416,000 persons. The information was obtained chiefly by the agency of the Clergy, and by methods calculated to insure accuracy; and, with the exception of those Reports laid before the General Assembly a few weeks ago, may be considered as by far the most valuable series of statistical details of this description that has ever been produced in this country.

The returns to the circulars and schedules, sent to the parochial Clergy, were filled up with care and accuracy, and merit the fullest confidence. When the immense toil, required to investigate personally the situation of every family in a wide district, is considered, the Report well observes, that the exertions of many of the Clergy, in aid of the inquiry, must be pronounced as meriting the highest encomiums. It states, that these worthy individuals bestowed the warmest approbation on the plan of inquiry, and that, troublesome as it was to them selves, they entered on the execution of it with the most cordial zeal and alacrity. In several instances, where

The average number of scholars, given in the different Societies' Reports, does not appear to be above 50 for each school, in regular attendance; and taking parochial schools and all others, this calculation gives less than 25,000 for the whole, not amounting to half the number to be educated. This is exclusive of 100,000 uneducated adults, of whom numbers in the Highlands press eagerly to the schools. The schools, too, have only existed in their present numbers for a very few years. Some assistance is, no doubt, given by private schools; but throughout most of the Gaelic districts, owing to the poverty of the people, this is extremely nugatory. About a century ago, when the population was not more than 300,000, the parish schools, and those of the Society for Propagating Christian Knowledge, amounted in number to 250. Now, when it has increased one-third, our schools, with all the recent efforts of our Societies, are no more than doubled; therefore we are not much better furnished with the means of education than our predecessors in the last century, and the results of their tuition have only proved its deplorable inadequacy. It follows, then, that the field is not nearly occupied, and that, even if population were to remain stationary, existing institutions, instead of relaxing their efforts, are called upon vigorously to renew and extend them

The progress of population has hitherto rendered abortive many of the measures adopted for educating the country. The increase in the Hebrides and Western Isles is almost incredible. They have doubled in numbers in 70 years, as appears from the tables of Dr Webster, framed in 1755. The effect of this great change is equally lamentable, in the great disproportion to the population of clergymen and churches, as well as of schoolmasters and schools. In 1725, when the popu

lation was 300,000, there were 200 parish ministers and missionaries, and that number was then justly regarded as extremely inadequate. Now, in a population of more than 400,000, there are, including the 40 new appointments to be made by Government, only 264 belonging to the Establishment, and 35 of every denomination of Dissenters.

At the Reformation, 1000 people, even when concentrated, were considered an ample field for the labours of one clergyman, one catechist, and one schoolmaster. The 29 parishes of the Synod of Glenelg, comprehending all the Northern Hebrides, average 3000 each, while some of them amount to 5000 and 6000, scattered over wild and rugged districts, extending, in many cases, in length and breadth, ten, twenty, thirty, and forty miles; some thus containing singly 1000 square miles, with churches inaccessible to most of the people, from intervening mountains, rivers, lakes, and arms of the sea; and yet, with the recent Government appointments, there are still no more than two clergymen of all denominations in each of these wide districts, and only ten catechists in the whole Synod. Many of the parishes in other parts are equally populous and extensive, and equally defective in point of public instructors; while the people show everywhere, by the sacrifices they make to obtain instruction,-by their long journies by sea and land to attend the ordinary public services of religion, and by the deprivations they endure, to send a single child to a distant school, that he may return, to be perhaps the sole instructor of a sequestered hamlet,-that, amid all their poverty and loneliness, they are not untouched by the finer feelings of their country. The conclusion is therefore irresistible, that numbers of new schools and churches are still loudly called for throughout the Highlands.

The want of a law, to make it imperative to subdivide a parish, which, at the death of an incumbent, shall have attained a certain maximum of population, is probably the cause of much of that ignorance which still overspreads the country. The evils which such a regulation is fitted to cure, if it be at all practicable, are not confined to the Highlands of Scotland, or to places remote from crowded cities; and unless some such permanent resource can be found in the laws of the country, there is ground to fear, that all the efforts of voluntary associations, however powerfully and zeal ously supported, may struggle in vain to overtake the growing necessities of a growing population. While, however, the regular ecclesiastical establishments continue in number so inadequate to their purposes, it is to be hoped that establishments, supported by voluntary contributions, will continue to lift a willing and vigorous arm in aid of the Scottish Highlands. But it is perhaps the power of Government alone which can send forth the means effectually to enlighten the dark glens of our mountain-land, and raise its interesting and longneglected people to a full participa tion in that moral lustre which adorns the Scottish name.

Such is an abstract, or rather almost a transcript, of this interesting Report. In its conclusion, various general reflections are introduced on the vast utility of even that limited share of education which it is the object of the Inverness Society, and of similar institutions, to communicate. It very justly observes, that "the mere art of reading ought not, in strictness, to be called Education, yet the power which this art confers of applying to our own use the recorded wisdom of every age, and the advantage derived from it of personal access to the truths and maxims of religion, render it alone the most effective instrument of human improvement. That the human mind is strengthened, purified, and elevated by right culture, and that such culture is not the peculiar birth-right of one class of men, are truths demonstrated equally by reason and by the Christian religion.

The impressions of early education give shape and modelling to the mind, however perverse and rugged its inherent tendencies. All the va ried gradations of intelligence, in individuals and in nations, spring from this fertile source. Multiplied proofs of this truth crowd upon us in society at every step. Our arts and institutions, our noblest distinctions, and most refined enjoyments, all are the gifts of education, without which we descend almost to the level of the beasts that perish."

It was hardly necessary for the Report to pass one reflection on the wretched argument, that attainments in knowledge render men less disposed to industry, and to social and political subordination. The argument is now utterly stale and exploded. Indeed, it stands so manifestly in opposition to facts, that it is astonishing any person capable of the slightest observation could have ever maintained it. Demonstrations of its fallacy may be collected in abundance from the history of every people. But the strong contrast between the moral and peaceful habits and prosperous condition of that portion of Scotland where education is most general, and the lawless and reckless habits of the ignorant and miserable population of Ireland, furnishes an example suited to determine this question for ever. Knowledge is a source of discontent and restlessness only when it is a rare possession, for it impels men to separate themselves from ignorant and vicious associates, and not from necessary duties. The universal diffusion of a right education is an object which should alike be ardently promoted by patriots and politicians, because the universal intelligence of the people is the best safeguard of social order, of freedom, and of peace,-because it is the prime stumulus of enterprise, the creative source of public wealth, the most stable foundation of political strength and splendour,-and because our present progress in it, imperfect though it be, is the distinction to which we mainly owe our proud rank among the nations. Men of learning and taste should cherish it, because the elements of education are the instru ments which can bring into full