made should be read simultaneously. In order that the hymn may be sung with propriety, the Commissioners have directed the children to be trained in psalmody; and they confide to you the selection of the verses, as also of the hymn and of the prayer. With this view the teachers are directed to await your instructions in this matter. "One hour daily is to be devoted to the reading of the Scriptures in those superior classes of the school which are able to read fluently in the Old and New Testament. The object of this lesson is, not to improve the children in the art of reading, in which the classes so employed are supposed to have attained considerable proficiency, but to enable the children to attain such a knowledge of the Holy Scriptures as may, in after life, exercise a practical influence on their thoughts and conduct. "The Commissioners recommend that these lessons be given to classes of 40 or 50 children, arranged at the parallel desks, and that the simultaneous method of instruction be as much as possible adopted, tested by special individual interrogatories, and written answers, both immediate and from memory. This method is commended to your adoption, because the Commissioners entertain a strong conviction that you will find it useful in sustaining the attention of the children, in awakening their sympathies, in calling their feelings into active exercise on the important subjects to which it will be your duty to direct their thoughts, and, in short, in bringing their minds into the closest harmony with your own. "The Commissioners are desirous that you should personally conduct the religious instruction of one class at this hour daily, and that you should give such directions as you may deem necessary to guide the teacher in the instruction of any other class to which it may be desirable that similar instruction should be conveyed at this appointed hour. "Every class, and consequently every child in the school, will thus at least once every week, have the benefit of your religious instruction, though the children able to read in the Old and New Testament will probably claim a greater portion of your time, because they may be expected to leave the school soon. "The Commissioners further express to you their sense of the importance of regulating the order of reading the Scriptures from day to day, during the appointed hours of religious instruction, by some method which may serve to show the connexion between the historical and prophetic writings of the Old Testament, and the Gospels and Epistles of the New. The great success which has attended the system of biblical instruction conveyed by Mr. Wood, the conductor of the Edinburgh Sessional School, induces the Commissioners to solicit your perusal of his 'Account' of that institution, and your special attention to the method adopted in that school in the biblical instruction of the children. The weekly recapitulation of previous lessons appears an important part of the plan pursued by Mr. Wood. "The hour devoted to religious instruction should be punctually observed, care being taken to commence and conclude the lesson precisely at the appointed period. This is necessary, not only for the maintenance of order in the routine of the school generally, but because certain children may, H by the provisions of the 19th section of the Poor Law Amendment Act, be withdrawn from the school during this period: and as it may be convenient, to allot this interval to the teaching of such licensed ministers as the parents or natural guardians of such children may appoint for that purpose, greater inconvenience would result from a want of punctuality in this portion of the daily routine than in any other. "If the afternoon were selected for this purpose, you would probably find it desirable to conduct the evening prayer from time to time personally. The Commissioners wish your attention to be directed to the accomplishment of their desire, that the children who are on alternate days employed in the workshops, should on those days read the Scriptures, either at the hour appointed for religious instruction, or at such other time as may be most convenient. "You will appreciate the propriety of selecting, for the use of the teachers, such forms of grace and thanksgiving at meals as you may consider most suitable to the understandings of the children, and in closest harmony with the design of the establishment. The Commissioners have directed Mr. Aubin to supply a sufficient quantity of Bibles, Testaments, and books of Common Prayer, and they entrust to your direction the steps to be taken for making the children (not withdrawn from your care) acquainted with the Catechism and formularies of the Church. "The master employed to teach the children psalmody has been directed to instruct them in chanting those portions of the ritual directed to be sung, in order that Divine service may be conducted with greater solemnity on Sunday. This, the Commissioners have reason to believe, will obtain your cordial approval." Such are the views and such are the practical arrangements which have been adopted by the Poor Law Commissioners in their great pauper school, and which would have been followed up on a more complete scale in the establishment proposed by the Committee of Council. Such are the views and arrangements which are approved by bishops at Norwood and attacked by bishops at Whitehall. Exaggeration and mistrust magnify the imaginary invasion of our holiest institutions; whilst they veil the evil of palpable ignorance and real inability to combat it. In the hands of a conscientious chaplain it cannot be doubted that the religious instruction of the Normal School would have taken its tone and borrowed its forms from the Church of England. In the school at Norwood, containing considerably more than one thousand scholars, the number of children withdrawn from the Church-catechism and Church-worship is extremely small, although as that is a pauper, not a voluntary school, it might be supposed that a greater number of parents would decline a form of instruction in which their choice is not consulted. The evidence of Mr. Wigram and other competent witnesses clearly proves that no objection is made by the great mass of dissenters to the mode of religious instruction prescribed even by the National Society. Dissent is less a matter of doctrine, or theological conviction, with the lower classes, than it is the effect of a taste for the preaching of the conventicle, or of gratitude for the more humble offices of the Methodist parson. The Roman Catholics form a class apart, recognising as their head in all spiritual matters a power wholly foreign to the state of which they are members, and they could not consistently have approached a normal school founded under such auspices. In short, the chief defect in the minute of the Committee of Council, which was so promptly surrendered, appears to us to consist in provisions for difficulties which would probably never have arisen at all. We have dwelt not so much on those provisions and details as on the spirit by which it was suggested and which it was calculated to carry into practice. If there be one feature common to all the plans for educating the people now afloat, it is the recognition of the want of teachers. This is a symptom not only of the increase of schools, but of an increasing sense of the importance of teachers as they ought to be. To meet the want our present means are glaringly inefficient. Here, a school is languishing for a want of the stimulus of a competent master; there, an establishment is handed over by some well-intentioned committee, utterly ignorant of the subject, to the grossest quackery or the foppery of the last new method. "For none more ready than these guides of youth We have before us some specimens of one of these systems, which has been introduced to a considerable extent in and near the metropolis. It proceeds from the brains of a Mr. Wirgman, who some years ago papered half the dead-walls of London with tricoloured advertisements of his "Divarication of the New Testament," which he professed to have extracted from the philosophy of Kant. Mr. Wirgman has proceeded to divaricate for the use "of every good boy and girl in all the infant schools throughout the "kingdom." The following production is sung to the tune of the "Highland Laddie ;" and as the whole system is based on the "divarication" of the senses, the following verses may be taken to contain the great Arcanum: "Ear, tongue, and nose, you may suppose These three senses, These three senses Create our TIME as on it flows. Inward senses, Inward senses; One after another goes through time- The hand and eye feel all at once; These two senses, These make SPACE or I'm a dunce; Outward senses, Without extension, what would be Mr. Wirgman assures his pupils and the public that "when this is adopted, virtue will supersede crime, and establish peace and harmony on earth." But to make the regeneration of mankind certain, the children educated on this system are examined at suitable periods in the twenty categories of the pure reason, and tortured with all the purposeless refinements of metaphysical subtlety*. This transcendental method would not deserve more notice than the productions of any other philosopher within the walls of St. Luke's hospital, if we had not positive evidence that it is at this moment received and adopted by one at least of the bodies on whom the management of large schools devolves. It has been well observed in defence of public instruction generally, that if you will not open schools to teach * Putting aside the intolerable nonsense of teaching any metaphysical system to children of from ten to thirteen years of age, Mr. Wirgman does not teach Kant's doctrines, or anything like them. people to be religious, moral and reasonable beings, the younger generation will be greedily caught up by the schools of gross prejudice or superstition, by the academies of vice and crime, and by every means which encourage folly or inculcate immorality. But the same argument holds good with regard to schools maintained with the best motives, if the supply of masters is inadequate; if there be no recognised means provided for securing proper persons to manage them; and if there be no power of visiting by prompt exposure and repression such attempts as this of the "Divarication of the five senses," in which nothing is clear but the divarication of he senses of Mr. Wirgman. This evil is almost inaccessible to inspection, because there will always be a multitude of schools in this country which the jealousy of local government—so valuable a guarantee to many of our social privileges-will cover from the correction of the State. But if public training schools are instituted, they will raise the standard of public instruction to a higher level, and they will render the mischievous medley of routine and rhodomontade, which is now too often miscalled education, if not utterly impossible, at least less common. We therefore look forward with great interest, for the sake of the metropolitan schools, to the performance of the promise made in the last report of the National Society; which, though less complete, bears considerable analogy to the plan we have already described from the report of the board at Exeter. "The Committee propose to found without delay, an institution for the boarding and training of young persons who are desirous to become teachers; to be managed under their own superintendence by a resident clergyman, being a graduate of one of the universities, and such other assistants (male and female) as the numbers under instruction may require. The period hitherto appropriated to training schoolmasters will thus be greatly extended; the difficulties and objections which have been experienced from the lodging of the probationers in different parts of London will be done away; young persons who are found to possess the natural requisites for teaching and managing children will be received into training before they have been engaged in other professions; the science of education and the best practical methods of instruction will be systematically taught; and a course of religious and moral culture and intellectual training pursued. The preliminary education of all pupils received into the institution will be the same in principle though not in extent. Facilities for the prosecuting of studies, peculiarly needful, whether for infant, national, |