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be a resident matron and mistress, kitchen and cook; for the privileges of the hall the workman will pay one shilling per quarter, and he will have a cheerful room to spend his evenings in, and obtain his breakfast, dinner and tea, at a cheap rate. The firm with which this projected hall originates, and will be connected, is Messrs. Ransome and May's. Everything is to be hoped from such a building, judiciously conducted. How many thousands may be saved from hasty and improvident marriages? And what an

increase of comfort and relaxation from toil, when compared with the vicious relaxation of the publichouse, or the miserable coffee-house.

What topics grow and widen around us as we proceed, connected with the education of the people; how numerous, and how interesting: so that if we expressed ourselves however briefly, we should need the whole of our volume, rather than a single section. In speaking of the education of the people, we are, of course, compelled to include all that elaborate and extensive machinery of Platform, and Lyceum, and Institute, and Club, where the thousands of the people are obtaining their ideas, and steadily prosecuting their pathway to obtain furniture for the mind. Nor must we omit the press-what a sceptre it wields over the minds of men-what power in a book, in a tract-what a perfect repertory of varieties a Newspaper; the fate of thrones and the last bankrupt, the doings of the Imperial Parliament and advertisements of quack medicines, the Court Circular and the Police Court, the hangman and his victim and

the reviewer and his last article, the last fashion and the monster now exhibiting at the rooms of Signior Vantdecash; the high-toned and most patriotic leader, so full of knowledge of cloudy height and muddy profundity, so full of what is seen, devout adherence to the cause of truth-and of the pocket: so full, too, of what is not seen, an editor nodding over his pen, kept awake by glasses of brandy-and-water. The people have had, as yet, few to serve them by the pen and the press Albany Fonblanque and Edward Miall have not had many fellows. The majority of our newspapers are, of course, known to be most venal and corrupt; how many are the mere panderers to ignorance, sensuality, and sin. Perhaps never in any age was there such an amount of intellect laid upon the altar of avarice and cupidity; not, indeed, that with reference to intellect we can speak of newspapers; with few exceptions, they are as deficient in intellectual fervour as in moral power and honesty, as deficient in genius as in truth. The genius of the press needs consecration; its breath is the glare of the desert rather than the animating and healthy life of the grove. There is a moral chill over some of our best productions, while those unfortunately which the people read are rabid with the fury of demoralization and sin. We need the precious things of former times to be fused down into condensed sentences, rather than elaborated into volumes. The might of the press is comparatively undeveloped yet; there are many villages and hamlets even in our own country where its power has not

travelled, and energetic spirits may so take captive the vicious agencies of the age, that the very means by which its life is sustained may be the vehicle for the excitement of superior tastes and the affording of nobler stimulants.

But with these hints, broken and scattered, this section must go. The schoolmaster, the minister of instruction, has to create the appetite for all these better and nobler things. The age has not a nobler fellow-worker-not one, perhaps, so noble; he is the great tool-maker-he is preparing the aliment for mental and moral life. Man shall be what he, under God, makes him. What art thou about there, then, in that school-room of thine; the marble is before thee, but what shall the shape be? Flesh and blood I

see;

but what shall be the soul?

Art thou a Frank

enstein, raising a demon to crush us, or a Phidias, creating an Apollo to enrapture, to charm, and to instruct us? One or the other thou art, and art doing beyond a doubt.*

* Beyond all comparison, the most perfect analysis of education, and all belonging to it, is in a very cheap volume by the Rev. Benjamin Parsons, Education the Birthright of every Human Being. It is pre-eminently a practical, critical, philosophical, and statistical book. This, and The Mental and Moral Dignity of Woman, by the same author, should be possessed by every schoolmaster and mistress, indeed, by all persons interested in moulding and shaping souls.

CHAPTER VIII.

WOMAN THE REFORMER.

PROLOGUES OF QUOTATIONS.

"Women of my country! Exaltados! if such there be. Women of English, old English nobleness, who understand the courage of Boadicea, the sacrifice of Godiva, the power of Queen Emma to tread the red-hot iron unharmed. Women who share the nature of Mrs. Hutchinson, Lady Russell, and the mothers of our great revolution-have you nothing to do with this? You see the men how they are willing to sell, shamelessly, the happiness of countless generations of their fellow-creatures, the honour of their country, and their immortal souls, for a money-market and political power. Do you not feel within you that which can reprove them, which can check, which can convince them? You would not speak in vain; whether each in her own home, or banded in unison."

MARGARET FULLER.-Woman in the Nineteenth Century.

"Can man be free if woman be a slave?"

SHELLEY.

"Would we advance our age we must look for its improvement in the elevation of women.

BENJAMIN PARSONS.-Mental and Moral Dignity of Woman.

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