Let us not deceive them as to present or future prospects. While the profession of a schoolmaster is justly represented to them as one of the noblest they can be engaged in, let them be cautioned against the vanity and discontent so common amongst present schoolmastersquerulously murmuring about their dignity and their respectability, complaining of the want of respect shown them, and spluttering great sayings and hard speeches in small periodicals. Let them be shown that true worth rises securely in the estimation of all, and that a quiet perseverance in the path of duty will constitute the true dignity of every man: that "in quietness and confidence shall be their strength." Let the trials incident to the profession be placed fairly before them, not in a spirit of despondence, but as difficulties to be encountered with courage and cheerfulness. I might pursue this subject further, for it seems inexhaustible. The remarks I have made have been suggested by experience, and are only meant to be hints: they lay no claim to originality or novelty, and may demand perhaps no further attention than respect for the spirit by which, it is due to myself to say, they are prompted. Particular circumstances guide particular cases; let us all be faithful, earnest, and depend upon God's help, and our difficulties will vanish in proportion to our trust and perseverance.

THE USE OF ANECDOTES IN SCHOOL.- "The value to the teacher, of a fund of anecdotes and illustrations, upon which he can draw whenever occasion requires, can hardly be overrated. With mature minds,- -even with those best able to appreciate reasoning, comparisons, illustrations, or allusions, are often more forcible than arguments."-American Journal of Education.

THE VOLUNTARY SYSTEM.

No fruit to perfection, and

exotic is more tender than a political system: while in its native

excites the envy or admiration of less-fortunate climates; transplanted, the fountains of its fruitfulness may be dried, or, like the upas, its shadow may blight and wither. The abstract ideas of freedom, the theoretic principles of right and justice, are, in the main, similar on the banks of the Neva and the banks of the Thames; yet a system framed solely with reference to those principles might be a blessing in the latter case, but would certainly prove a curse in the first. The fact is, that political systems, however their theoretical perfection may attract the admiration of the few, commend themselves to the many, not as they fall in with their opinions, but as they harmonize with their prejudices, adapt themselves to their idiosyncrasies, and are so moulded to the circumstances of ordinary life, as to afford scope for the exercise of peculiar virtues, and control without jarring with that which the observer may reprobate as national vice. Hence the diversity of means by which different governments aim at, and attain, the same object; some by a direct and single movement, some by a complex process, which will appear absurd if it be not considered that systems of government owe, rather than give, their form to the general habits of the governed; that they are adaptations to necessities or expedients induced by circumstances. It is easy to legislate for Utopia, because we may shape our subjects to our system; but a practical system must stand, not upon its logical consistency or ideal beauty, but upon its fitness to circumstances which we can modify, but not destroy. Some of the dozen constitutions which the bureau of Abbé Sièyes boasted, were doubtless worthy of a mathematician, and some of the governments which his country has endured were, perhaps, intrinsically more excellent than the despotism they succeeded; but the history of their failure is simply the history of a people falling from systems foreign to their habits and unsuited to their temper. The institutions of Lycurgus subsisted for five hundred years, because he built with materials which the prejudices of his nation had consecrated; and that constitution which we are taught to believe will outlast all human institutions, owes nothing to theory, nothing to logics, but everything to prejudices, habits, circumstances, and experience.

To devise a National System of Education is the problem of the day, -the ambition of modern statesmen. Every parliamentary session brings its educational measure as regularly as its chancellor's budget. The school must become emphatically an "Institution;" the instruction of the people, reduced to a system, must remove that ugly aspect of ignorance which mocks the collective wisdom of the land. The whole state of popular education is declared to be a national disgrace, and the efforts already made to advance it are pronounced a failure. Without admitting these premises, we are not disposed to deny the conclusion, that it is the mission of the men of this generation to place England, in respect to popular intelligence, in the same relative position to other nations, as that which she holds in political weight and material strength. It is the sense of this inferiority which is most galling to

British vanity. It will weigh with complacency manufacturing skill against the acknowledged artistic taste of a rival people, and contrast the conveniences of a colossal trading capital with their architectural splendours; but there is no mollifying balm to this inferiority of ignorance: wealth, freedom, mechanical progress, throw out the dark blot, as objects are defined upon the brightness of evening sky. The national mind, therefore, addresses itself to the question with its characteristic earnestness it contrasts the perfect mechanism and success of continental systems, with our own rude bundle of expedients and assumed failure, and challenges the skill of the statesman to rival or imitate their perfection. To lift the intelligence of the people to the German standard, our system must assimilate to the German model. But though we may look to continental systems for incentives to emulation, it may not be safe to tread the track by which they have reached success. To be a national system, ours must be shaped, not to a model, but fashioned in a mould of national habits and party prejudices, which we may lament, but not ignore it must enlist benevolence; conciliate selfishness; do no violence to convictions of duty already formed, to zeal already engaged, to suspicions which will always exist; and yield to circumstances, of which arbitrary governments make no account, but which are the conditions upon which the existence of our own depends.

This is a statement of truisms; but the statement is not unnecessary. The last abortive attempt at educational legislation was made by a veteran statesman, who seems to have forgotten them. In the interval-may it be long !—which intervenes between his failure and the next novelty, it will be well to consider whether the system which has grown up amongst us be not exactly the system we require; and whether the educational necessities of the country will not be better served by its development than by innovation. That it has some defects we admit,― these are incident to the character of most of our institutions, being commonly the results of a compromise between contending principles; but its great recommendation appears to be the ease with which State influence is made to co-operate with those prejudices, which, if not with, would be against it; so that while it receives much of the regularity and precision of an organized system, it loses nothing of the generous and healthy vigour of Christian benevolence.

A retrospect of a few years will present the educational means of the country before they were united by the present measure of State control; and a small experience of popular habits and national temper will approve the wisdom which attempted no stronger link.

First is a large mass of funded charity, the bequests of ancient philanthropy Few parishes are without some monument of the piety of past generations, making itself known by the desire to dispense that knowledge, the value, or perhaps the need of which, had been taught by "charitable trust " long misapplied; some experience; some 66 grammarschool" or "foundation" long misgoverned; some bequest of eccentric benevolence which it would be simple fidelity to the donor to apply more wisely; some fund, which, in the hand of the trader, would have increased fivefold, hidden in the earth by indifferent trustees. The assistance which national education might legally demand or honestly receive from this source is still withheld by local interests, vested rights, or an abuse of circumstances which has an aspect of dishonesty..

Then ready to our hand is the treasury of a large-hearted contemporary charity. Some deduction from the degree of contempt with which the assumed failure of the voluntary system is sometimes regarded, might be made on an estimate of the efforts which sustained it. If we cannot congratulate ourselves on the result, we may point with national pride to the benevolence which has spent itself on the futile effort. But it is not in its resulting subscription-lists that the value of this auxiliary to a national system is seen. The mere material wealth is as nothing to the moral energy which this generous source supplies. The contributed guinea is increased in value a hundred-fold, from its being the symbol of the sympathy which engages the donor to the cause which he assists; and this is no little gain. A system of police will work well supported by murmuring rate-payers; a town may be well paved and lighted by citizens bent to a man upon escaping from the payment of their dues; and although recent events would negative the supposition, an hospital may be effectively conducted upon the coldest routine, and by the most mercenary of officials. But the task to which the national mind is impelled by pure benevolence cannot be performed without the aid of benevolence. Popular education is a work which bears some resemblance to missionary enterprise: its commencement was due, not to the pressure of a political necessity, but to Christian sympathy for men who sat in darkness. The instruction contended for is the lessons of the Gospel. The public or the senate would hear with apathy, or with the interest excited by a financial scheme, the advocate for education, did education imply mere secular knowledge; but it is because education to the vast majority of minds implies the communication of the loftiest truth, the formation of a religious, rather than of a scientific habit, that every scheme for its dissemination is examined with interest and debated with zeal. A scheme for evangelizing an Indian province, for political reasons, and by a government agency, would bear some resemblance to the work of education deprived of the sympathies of benevolent and Christian men. The School can no more dispense with the spirit of active benevolence, to which it owes its existence, than can the Church with that love of souls which it receives from its Master. It is easy to see how deep a gulf the imposition of an education-rate, the prominent feature in the Russell and Pakington schemes, would cleave between this spirit and the school. When the tax-gatherer's face, not hostile, is turned from the door, the payer conceives his duty to be discharged. Henceforth he has no thought of the necessities of the state, the majesty of the empire, and the value of social order, subjects with which he might have lightened the burden of payment; his thought is of watchfulness against waste, and whether, on the whole, his priceless civil privileges might not be enjoyed with an inferior outlay. Men do not pay a poor's-rate in the same spirit that they give alms, a question is never raised whether an act of voluntary benevolence might not be done at half the price; but when a man is compelled to a work not otherwise distasteful, he claims to do it with the least possible exertion. Therefore the rate-supported school would become an object of interest to the benevolent by nature, or the benevolent from fashion, no greater than the "Union ;" and the desire for sound popular education would degenerate into a desire for the cheapest system and the lightest rate. Benevolence is a jealous spirit; it desires

a neglected and exclusive field for labour: what the State or the Parish professes to do, it leaves for that which selfishness or necessity has not undertaken; and thus the state-supported school would fall into a cold routine of secular knowledge; none but official religion could be admitted within its walls, and the scholar would be left to the moral influence of historical facts and mathematical principles.

Auxiliary to the same work is the rivalry of religious denominations. How much soever popular education is indebted to the spirit of charity, it owes more to sectarian emulation and sectarian jealousy. The purity of the religious, and therefore of the moral atmosphere, is preserved like that of the physical atmosphere, by the conflict of unprevailing currents; and as the natural world would stagnate in the blight of a perpetual calm, so would the world of men, but for the movement of contending creeds. No small portion of every-day religion consists in antagonism to a rival church. But society does not lose by that which the Christian would lament. There is that in even the partisan's zeal for religion which insures the blessings contingent upon its propagation; it may even be doubted whether civil liberty and social progress owe more to the unanimity than to the strife of the Christian world. Norway amongst Protestant, and Spain amongst the nations of the Roman communion, are at once the most ignorant and most united of the civilized people of Europe. Thus with Britain: the machinery of education would want much of its efficiency in many a district, had not the conservative principle of the Establishment and the aggressive principles of the sectarian generated it of their mutual animosity. The old parochial schools, which, during a drowsy existence of a century, made their mission to centre in the parish boy's badge and leather breeches, might have slumbered still, but for the rude jostling of the "Lancastrian" school. The schools of the City, long possessed of the monopoly of education, and jealously guarded against the innovations that make sweeping work beyond its walls, are, with one or two exceptions, the least efficient in the metropolitan district. But the good consequent upon this rivalry depends upon its being carried on upon no common ground. Confine it to a board-room or vestry, and it would degenerate into a parochial squabble, dividing the house against itself, deranging the steady operations of the school, furnishing newspapers with stinging paragraphs, and dead walls with "posters." Some such result may be anticipated, when the payment of an education-rate shall qualify every parochial agitator to make the schoolroom his forum, and communicate the wisdom to settle the faith of the district.

Again, we may render subservient, or inimical to our aim, the sturdy English feeling of independence. Next to the hand of power, the English mind can submit least patiently to the hand of charity. It is no ignoble pride that dislikes equally assistance and control in the affairs of social and domestic life; it is a salutary prejudice that connects the receipt of alms with a sense of shame, and makes pauperism the next worse stigma to that of crime. Gratuitous instruction is, from such prejudice as this, not popular. The desire for knowledge is accompanied with the desire to purchase it. The ancient parochial school, though it may have kept pace with its "national neighbours, ranks its acute graduates far below theirs, and even below those of the worst academy "lacking the symbol of independence—the weekly payment.

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