defects, yet both comprise highly useful regulations, and either may be made greatly subservient to the intended benevolent purpose. They who first reduced these systems to practice deserve to be honoured as universal benefactors.

Without entering into the comparative merits of these modes of public instruction, we may wish, with a philanthropic gentleman,* who has paid great attention to the subject, "that half of the ignorant poor of this kingdom" had "the benefit of one mode, and the other half of the other."

It may, however, be permitted, to doubt whether the seminaries that receive only the children of parents who adhere to the church establishment, would not gain by a general admission of all protestant children; nay even of Catholics.† Many might, perhaps, be drawn within the national ecclesiastical pale, whose exclusion from the schools more effectually drives them from it. It is said that, in Jersey, the Methodists and the Calvinists admit into their seminaries children of all other religious denominations, without any restriction respecting their places

Sir Thomas Bernard, bart.

↑ "Religion, let it embrace whatever faith it may, and education, must inevita"bly create a love of social order: superstition and ignorance must ever engender "a spirit which is hostile to it."

Carr's Stranger in Ireland.

or modes of worship; and thus, probably, in several cases, make proselytes both of them and their parents. In the "church militant," this is a very allowable ruse de guerre, even should it be dictated by policy alone: the dissenting Christians appreciate its importance, and thus blend general liberality of sentiment, with the particular interests of their own community.*

CIVIL AND MILITARY HISTORY.

The origin of small states can seldom be properly ascertained. Absorbed in the history of larger territories, they seldom become objects of notice; and when they have engaged the attention of any early writer, the account transmitted to posterity is generally a tissue of real facts and fabulous extravagancies, so interwoven as to render it difficult and frequently impossible to unravel them.

Jersey has, in this respect, shared the fate of other minor countries; it is, therefore, quite uncertain at what time it became peopled, or who were its ab-origines. It

* See Note (HH).

was, unquestionably, inhabited at an early period: the various monuments of Celtic worship, that formerly existed, some of which still remain, sufficiently attest this; and the Punic, the early Roman, and the Gaulish, coins, discovered at different times and places in the island, corroborate it.

About 120 years before the Christian æra, Transalpine Gaul was portioned out among three nations. The Celtæ, called by Cæsar, Galli or Gauls, occupied more than one half of the territory. Their dominion extended from the Seine to the Garonne. It was at the above period that the Romans meditated the conquest of these nations, all of whom had originally migrated from Italy.

We

To the Celts, therefore, succeeded the Romans. are ignorant respecting the precise time; though, as the greater part of Transalpine Gaul was subdued by Julius Cæsar, about forty-eight years prior to the birth of our Saviour, it is most likely that these islands were conquered by the Romans at nearly the same period.

That part of Mont-orgueil castle, called Le Fort de Cesar, the immense earthen rampart near Rosel, and the remaining traces of a camp at Dielament, together with the many Roman coins found in different parts of the island, ascertain that it was a place of some consequence under that people yet as no historical records, while it

continued under their government, now remain, it may be presumed that Jersey was only a military station, though an important one.

After the Romans, the Franks or French, by expelling them, became masters of the island. They first visited the western coast of Europe about A. D. 280, at which time they sailed from Sicily, coasting round Spain and Gaul; but it does not appear that, at this early period, they attempted to form any settlements on the Atlantic shore. In A. D. 536, their sovereignty in Gaul was firmly established. They issued from Germany in the fifth century, and spread themselves in every direction. Under their sovereigns of the Merovingian* and Carlovingian† races, they founded an empire which extended from the ocean to the Danube. Its more general division was into west France and east France; the first called Westria, and afterwards Neustria, which now is Normandy, though far more circumscribed than the ancient Neustria. The islands in its vicinity very naturally constituted a part of the district.‡

About the year of Christ 550, Childebert, king of France, and son of Clovis, made a gift of these islands to

So called from Merovius, the grandfather of Clovis.

+ So named from Charles Martel.

See Falle's History.

Samson, archbishop of Dol, in Armorica, so far as respected their ecclesiastical government.

About A. D. 837, during the reign of Ludovicus Pius, son of Charlemagne, the Normans began to carry on a piratical war, on the western coast of France. By degrees, their ravages became frequent and more extensive. Their vessels were light, which enabled them to ascend the rivers, and sack the interiour of the country. In their blind zeal for idolatry, they committed the most horrid barbarities, fire and sword marking their steps. So great was the terror excited, throughout France, by these Pagans, that, in the public service of the church, an addition was made to the litany. After saying from plague, pestilence, and famine, they subjoined, AND FROM THE FURY OF THE NORMANS, good Lord, deliver

us.

These islands were not exempted from the depredatory visits; and if they did not suffer in the same degree as their continental neighbours, it was more from the pover

ty

of their inhabitants than from their means of resistance. In one of these descents, the Normans murdered St. Helier, a venerable anchoret, whose cell still remains on a rock near Elizabeth castle. Their incursions continued nearly eighty years. At length Charles the fourth, surnamed The Simple, concluded a treaty with Rollo, the