it appears, has visited, during the year, in the counties enumerated, 305 schools, including those for boys, girls, and infants; and he records a variety of particulars relating to these schools in a table annexed to his Report. Mr. Allen has not, however, cast up this table, and thus given the totals, but as other Inspectors have done so, and there does not appear any striking or indeed material difference in the general results, it is not necessary to supply the omission.

Mr. Allen opens with a somewhat cheerful view. He says:"No man who has taken pains to observe what has been going on in our schools for the poor will, as I suppose, fail to recognise, during the last seven years, a happy progress in the right direction. The plans and minutes, as well as the counsel and help afforded by your Lordships, have doubtless contributed mainly to the improvement visible in the construction of school buildings. More attention is gradually being directed to the choice and arrangements of the subjects of instruction, and (what is of chief importance) the effects of our training schools are being distinctly felt, in the rise which has taken place in the attainments, qualifications, and character of our teachers."-P. 132.

The following extracts are conceived in the best spirit, as indeed is the whole Report. We wish our limits would allow us to increase the number of extracts, but we have too much before us.

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My desire that teachers should realize the responsibility of their position has led me to regard with extreme jealousy any proposal that might seem to limit the services of a schoolmaster for the poor to the communication of secular instruction; unless the teacher feels that he is intrusted with the training of the noblest part of the child's nature, I do not believe that, in ordinary cases, the most serious men will give themselves to the work of school-keeping.. The schoolmaster of the poor ought (in my judgment) to be trusted with the most important teaching of the poor-a -a fellow-labourer with the minister of religion. If the schoolmaster be not so trusted, many favourable opportunities for dropping here and there seed which may prove fruitful in infinite good, will, as I think, be lost. Commonly, those observations that seem to rise spontaneously, and that take children by surprise, produce impressions more lively than direct teaching; they are remembered by us, and acted upon during all our subsequent lives."-Pp. 132, 133.

The following extract must not be omitted, though it shows how slow we are to learn, how little we listen to the voice of experience. This writer (speaking of John Brinsley, a schoolmaster of 1612), Mr. Allen tells us,

"Utters a strong protest against a practice which, I regret to say, has not yet disappeared from our schools-I mean that most objectionable one of the master having always at hand a cane, or some other instrument of corporal punishment. If any schoolmaster read these lines, and feel that he is not clear of this charge, I would earnestly beg of him to reconsider his conduct in this respect. Although one should commit an error in deciding, without further inquiry, that such a schoolmaster was a bad one, I would readily stake the value of all the experience that an observer in my condition might be supposed to acquire, on the assertion, that such a schoolmaster is not

nearly so efficient as he might be if he would lay down for himself the rule, that he would keep a record of every corporal punishment administered, and in no case suffer himself to inflict it except after the interval of an hour or two for reflection."-P. 138.

Mr. Allen proceeds :

"I have previously had occasion to notice buildings that are attended by barely a tithe of the number which they are calculated to contain, and I believe that my experience in this respect can be paralleled by some of my brother Inspectors. In such cases, the interest of the money lavished on an empty structure would go far towards providing means for the support of an efficient teacher. I wish to see no school-room, except, perhaps, such as are built for infants, constructed for more than 100 children, and I believe that a smaller number, as eighty, will afford sufficient work for a good master, assisted by a pupil teacher."-P. 141.

We know not why an exception is made in this extract in favour of infant-school rooms. It is very desirable that schools of this description should be brought near to the population. Parents cannot or will not send infants far, particularly in the winter months. It follows that three or four infant-schools, for 80 or 100 each, are far more desirable in a large town than one for 200 or 300. We may add that for infant training to be at all worthy of the name, every fifty or sixty infants should have one teacher; large schools are not therefore very desirable even in an economical point of view.

Mr. Allen concludes with some valuable remarks on the insufficiency of the supply of good secular reading books, and with an endeavour to remove an impression, prevalent with the local Committees of many national schools, that they are, by their union with the National Society, necessarily confined to the books printed by the Society for promoting Christian Knowledge, an impression which he thinks altogether erroneous.

Report on the Elementary Schools in the Midland Districts, by the Rev. Henry Moseley, M.A., F.R.S.

Mr. Moseley reports on 306 schools, containing, at the time of his inspection, 4,780 boys, 3,574 girls, and 1,688 infants. The average number of boys in each school was fifty-eight, of girls forty-four, of infants eighty. The schools were mainly taught on the monitorial system. Of the ages of the children he says :

"It is a general impression amongst those persons who are likely to be the best informed on the subject, that the average age of the children who attend our elementary schools is steadily sinking.

"We may be educating more, but they are, I believe, younger children, and stay with us a less time. The labouring poor are apparently less disposed than they once were to make sacrifices that their children may go to

school. A disposition to employ them from the earliest period at which their labour is available, towards the maintenance of the family, is growing upon them, and a public opinion unfavourable to the school, first, probably, set in motion in the manufacturing districts, is extending itself to all others." -P. 150.

From a table given in the Report it appears that in twentyseven schools, containing 2,044, one-half the boys were under nine years of age, and that only one boy in four was above the age of eleven, and only one in twenty-five above the age of thirteen. If Mr. Moseley had made a little inquiry into the circumstances of the parents of the boys above eleven,—an inquiry which we recommend the Inspectors in every case to make,-he would have found that the parents of no child above ten were ordinary labourers, either agricultural or manufacturing. Our own inquiries have convinced us that those children who remain beyond ten, or even until that age, are almost invariably the children of shopkeepers and small tradesmen, of gardeners, hostlers, and others, considerably above the class of labourers. We may indeed venture to assert, without much fear of contradiction, that the child of a bonâ fide unassisted labourer, ten years of age, is a rara avis in ninety-nine schools out of 100 throughout England; a fact which we trust our readers will not forget as we proceed.

Of the shifting character of the attendance of schools, Mr. Moseley says:

"In the boys' school at there were 156 children on the books when I last inspected that school (August, 1846), and 144 had left, and 128 entered it since the date of my preceding inspection (September, 1845).

"There were, therefore, not probably more than twelve or fourteen of the children in this large school present at my second inspection whom I had seen there twelve months before.

"This school of 156 children is taught by a single master, aided, on alternate days, by fifteen monitors, whose average age is ten one-tenth years, and only two of whom are above twelve years of age.

"However zealously and laboriously the services of the master might be given to the duties of so large a school, if the parents were found dissatisfied with it, it would not excite my surprise.

"I am not aware that it differs essentially from others in the circumstances to which I have directed your Lordships' attention. It may, indeed, be taken as the type of a large class of the schools which I have inspected. "The National School contains at the present time ninety-six children, and eighty-eight have left it within a period of one year and nine months, terminating at Chrstmas, 1845.

"The average time these children had remained in the school was one year, eleven months, two weeks, four days."-Pp. 152, 153.

Mr. Moseley proceeds to make some remarks on the register books used in schools, and the arrangement of desks, which are well worth attention.

On the subject of religious instruction, he quite agrees with Mr. Allen, and says:

"If, as a class, these, the children of our poorer brethren, are to be instructed in the doctrines and precepts of our holy religion, and brought up as Christians, it must be in our elementary schools; and I have accordingly found that in all the schools which I have visited, whilst religious instruction enters in various proportions into the prescribed course, as compared with secular instruction, the first place is invariably assigned to it. In the higher classes a very considerable amount of scriptural knowledge is, in fact, often acquired." P. 158.

This is good, as far as it goes, but when so large a majority of our children leave school before eleven, we need not call attention to the necessarily limited number who reach the higher classes. This question is a most serious one. Religious instruction must begin far earlier and be much more efficient among "the least and the lowest," if it be desired that it should really pervade the population.

Of reading, Mr. Moseley says, he found of 10,042 children, 4,108 who were learning letters or monosyllables-2,847 reading simple narratives-1,373, (that is, one in seven and three-tenths, or, omitting the infant schools, one in six,) reading with tolerable ease. We beg our readers to mark this fact; it is important, as well as the early age at which children leave school, and it will be useful to us as we proceed :—nor let us forget, also, that schools under inspection are mainly modern- -built since the Government made grants for school-rooms-that the certainty of inspection has a tendency to keep the teachers alive-that they are, in truth, picked schools, and are doing their very best with their present

means.

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Mr. Moseley concludes his remarks on reading, as follows:"Considering that teaching to read' is the principal occupation of our National schools, that it is a drudgery begun with the first opening of the intelligence of a child, and continued without intermission until the last day which it passes in the school, it is to me very wonderful that so imperfect and so inadequate a result is obtained.”—P. 162.

Of writing, Mr. Moseley says:

:

“2,055 children, being one in every five, are learning to write on paper. This proportion is less than in the schools which I inspected last year.

"In one or two instances only have I found any attempt made to accustom the children to convey their own thoughts in writing on paper; or, writing applied to any other useful purpose of instruction than to teach the children to spell."-P. 162.

Of arithmetic:

"I find that 2,701 children, being about one in four of those present at my inspection, are learning the first four rules of arithmetic; 852 being one in twelve, have advanced to the compound rules; and 220, being one in forty

seven, are in the rule of three. This last number includes only five girls."

P. 163.

Of English history and grammar:—

"The proportion of the number of children learning each of these subjects, to the whole number present in the schools I have inspected, is nearly one in eleven. Very many are, however, said to learn them, who possess, nevertheless, no knowledge of them; and I have sometimes found a great profession of teaching them in schools, where not only the higher branches, but the simplest elements of instruction have appeared to me to be neglected.”— P. 163.

Mr. Moseley proceeds to offer some remarks on the resources of schools. He makes the average expenditure per year in a certain number of schools 12s. 10d. each child, and the income 10s. He then gives various interesting extracts from his diary; we have room but for a single specimen; it is, however, important.

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“I have the following record of a case in which the ambition of the schoolmaster to become a clergyman had obviously impaired his efficiency as a teacher.

"The master, who was last year fresh from

Diocesan Training

School, appears already to have lost a good deal of his earnestness and some of his school knowledge and aptitude as a teacher. He aspires to holy orders, is studying Latin and Greek, and has written a sermon, which has been shown to the Bishop, and received his commendation.'

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Of the records I have made of inefficient schools, I transcribe the following:

"Of fifty boys in the school, three only could read with ease in the Epistles, and one only knew the multiplication table; two only could spell the word "piece," and one the word "wheel." None knew the names of the quarters of the globe; only one knew the name of the country in which he lives; and yet, by a strange contrast, these children knew a good deal of the geography of England. Only one knew who governs the country in which he lives, or, when told it was the Queen, could tell her name. Only one could repeat the answer to the question in the Catechism," What is your duty towards your neighbour ?" And not one could tell the name of any one of our Lord's parables.'

"The master is from a training institution, conducted under high sanction. He belongs to a class of men who can do nothing out of their system, and their system cannot be worked in schools like this. It is a characteristic of the bad teaching of this school that the children are incapable of attending to anything that is said to them, or of reflecting upon it, or of understanding it. "The following specimen of their answering will illustrate this remark. It is an example of that vagrant state of mind, approaching to idiotcy, which it is the direct tendency of bad teaching and strict discipline to produce: "Q. Who came into the world before our Saviour " to prepare his way before him?",

"Q. Tell me of some of the miracles our Lord wrought?'

"A. Commandments.'"-Pp. 175, 176.

The Report concludes with some excellent observations on