without reflections rising in his mind which tend to make him both a better and a happier man?-Who can witness the familiar habits of the robin, and see how contentedly he will perch himself on a neighbouring bush close to your side, and pour forth his song, without having his own feelings tempered down into harmony with nature?-How can man in the midst of all this, which points out the intention of an all-wise Creator, think that he of all God's creatures is the only one intended to be unhappy!

No!-let him learn to admire the beauties of nature-let him learn to occupy his hours of leisure in trying to understand them-to find

66

Tongues in trees-books in the running brooks-
Sermons in stones-and good in everything."

Nature never did betray

The heart that loved her; 'tis her privilege,
Through all the years of this our life, to lead
From joy to joy: for she can so inform
The mind that is within us, so impress
With quietness and beauty, and so feed
With lofty thoughts, that neither evil tongues,
Rash judgments, nor the sneers of selfish men,
Nor greetings where no kindness is, nor all
The dreary intercourse of daily life

Shall e'er prevail, that all which we behold
Is full of blessings. Therefore let the morn
Shine on thee in thy solitary walk;

And let the misty mountain winds be free
To blow against thee; and, in after years,
When these wild ecstasies shall be matured
Into a sober pleasure, when thy mind
Shall be a mansion for all lovely forms,
Thy memory be a dwelling-place

·For all sweet sounds and harmonies; oh! then

If solitude, or fear, or pain, or grief,

Should be thy portion, with what healing thoughts
Of tender joy wilt thou remember me,

And these my exhortations !*

* Nature, enchanting Nature, in whose form
And lineaments divine I trace a hand

WORDSWORTH.

That errs not, and find raptures still renew'd,
Is free to all men-universal prize!
Strange that so fair a creature should yet want
Admirers, and be destin'd to divide
With meaner objects ev'n the few she finds!

COWPER.

How important the bearing and influence which such trains of thought, inculcated in youth, might have in every class of life it would be wise to consider; how little they have hitherto had, is humiliating to think. A dry remark, many years ago, in a college lecture-room occurs to me as full of meaning, although at the time intended for sarcasm. Asking an undergraduate a question on the refraction of light, with which he was not acquainted, and who answered, "he did not know much about refraction," the lecturer drily added, " about reflection either, I am afraid." I hope this will not be lost upon the schoolmaster; not that I wish him to make his remarks in the same spirit.

nor

That the sphere of enjoyment of the labouring and middle classes might be enlarged by education there can be no doubt, and it has been observed by a celebrated moralist, more than a century ago, that "man in all situations in life should endeavour to make the sphere of his innocent pleasures as wide as possible, that he may retire into them with safety, and find in them such a satisfaction as a wise man would not blush to take; for although the world may not be so happy as that we should be always merry, neither is it so miserable as that we should be always melancholy."

With respect to that part of the instruction in the foregoing pages which is of a scientific kind, I would say, and I do so from a feeling of conviction which experience gives, that in no way can the teachers in our higher class of elementary schools give such a character of usefulness to their instruction, as by qualifying themselves to teach in these subjects; introducing simple and easy experiments, which illustrate the things happening before their eyes every day, and convey conviction with them the moment they are seen and explained. It is a great mistake to suppose that boys of twelve and thirteen years of age cannot understand elementary knowledge of this kind, when brought before them by experiment ;-seeing the way in which the bigger boys were interested in it here, and the tendency it had to raise the standard of teaching, and to give rise to a wish for information, it has proceeded further than I at first contemplated-the result has been, that the school is provided with sufficient of a philosophic apparatus for all the common experiments of a pneumatic and hydrostatic kind, a small galvanic battery, an electric apparatus, &c. One little

book used as a text-book is a volume of Chambers's Edinburgh books, Matter and Motion,' and this is illustrated by experiment.

The end of all education ought to be, to prepare them for those duties and those situations in life they are called upon to fulfil-whether they be "hewers of wood or drawers of water,' of those who belong to the labouring, the middle, or the upper classes in life, to make them in their respective stations good citizens and good Christians; and I think it will be found that, according as a teacher keeps this in view, making his instruction bear upon the ordinary duties of life, or loses sight of it (I am speaking of a teacher competent to his work), he will succeed, or the contrary. I am perfectly convinced that many well-meaning efforts have not been attended with the success expected from them, entirely owing to their leaving out all instruction relating to the occupations by which they were, in after life, to earn their bread.

Although these hints are addressed to the schoolmaster, I am not without hope that they may be of some use to many in my own profession, and to others who take an interest in advancing the happiness and respectability of the uneducated classes in this country.

The schoolmaster, especially in the present state of things, is not able to do all that is wanted. He is very often insufficiently educated himself-his social position is not what it ought to be the poor are inclined to resist bis authority over their children-to send impertinent messages through them, &c., so that, at first, he wants strengthening in these respects. Then, again, the more wealthy do not place him in that scale of society that he ought, from his usefulness, to be placed in.

In saying this, I am not seeking for him a better position than the interests of society require that he should have, and which, in the end, his own usefulness will work out for him; -there is no doubt that the schoolmaster who conducts himself well-who can succeed in raising the standard of education in his school, and in making it what it ought to be, and what it hitherto has not been, a benefit to all classes around him— will establish claims upon all, the labourer, the tradesman, and the farmer, and upon all in his locality, which will cause him to be estimated in a very different way, and place him in a very different position from that which he has hitherto held. At

present, ignorance, and jealousy arising from it, produce in many of the uneducated a sort of dislike to all the instruments of education—a sort of jealous feeling, the result of which is to endeavour to bring all those leaving school to a level with themselves to make them mere masses of clay, animated, it is true, but in every other respect a mere "bundle" of ignorance.

Notwithstanding all the difficulties with which education is beset, but which must prove less and less every year, I hope many of those who persevere in this useful work may live to see the labouring classes of this country much more enlightened than they are at present-much more respectable in their conduct-honest, manly, and straightforward in everything they have to do-not looking upon insolence as independence, which ignorance does, but feeling that it is a duty which they owe to themselves to be respectful to their superiors, civil and obliging, neighbourly and kind to all about them, and that, when they fail in these things, they are wanting in their duty both to God and man.

It is painful to observe how the uneducated classes, the labourer and those above him, will sometimes, from pure ignorance of what is due to themselves, go out of their way to insult others, from a feeling that this is, as they call it, showing their independence, When I see this, I am always sorry that it does not occur to them that in doing so, they are only lowering themselves in the scale of humanity and of civilization, and that feelings of self-respect ought to deter them from it; education will teach that it does not, at least ought not, to belong to civilized life.

As a means of animating those who, from their situation in life-from their education or their position, may have it in their power to assist in advancing the cause of education in their own neighbourhoods, I can only say, if they once experience the heartfelt satisfaction which arises in contrasting the state of the educated child with that of the totally uneducated one-the intelligent countenance of the one, with the stolid, unmeaning countenance which ignorance produces in the other- the good effect of education on their industrial habits -on their social habits-(in fact, so far as my own experience here goes, and judging from those who have left school, it makes them, generally speaking, a totally different race of

beings), they will not hesitate as to the course they ought to pursue.

It may not be consistent with the occupations of those engaged in a very busy and active life to pay much attention to the education of those among whom they live, yet there are many ways in which they may give encouragement to it and to the schoolmaster without much encroachment upon their time. They are many of them alive to the beauties of Nature -they can enjoy the growth and expansion of a flower-watch each petal unfold itself, and look with pleasure to its full opening and beauty-watch it from its blossom to its fruitwhy not, then, take some interest in the opening and expansion of the human mind?* What can be more gratifying to the feelings, than seeing its gradual improvement under your influence, and that you are rendering it capable of using those reasoning powers with which it is endowed, and which are intended as the source of its highest gratification?

That there are many among those who have paid attention to the subject of education, both of my own profession and others, who have fears of doing too much-some for one reason and some for another-there is no doubt; but if they will

"The natural state of man must be reckoned, not that in which his intellectual and moral growth are stunted, but one in which his original endowments are, I will not say brought to perfection, but enabled to exercise themselves, and to expand like the flowers of a plant; and especially in which that characteristic of our species, the tendency towards progressive improvement, is permitted to come into play.

"A plant could not be said to be in its natural state which was growing in a soil or climate that precluded it from putting forth the flowers and the fruit for which its organization was destined. No one who saw the pine growing near the boundary of perpetual snow on the Alps, stunted to the height of two or three feet, and struggling to exist amidst rocks and glaciers, would describe that as the natural state of a tree which, in a more genial soil and climate a little lower down, was found capable of rising to the height of fifty or sixty yards. In like manner, the natural state of man inust, according to all fair analogy, be reckoned, not that in which his intellectual and moral growth are, as it were, stunted and permanently repressed, but one in which his original endowments are, I do not say brought to perfection, but enabled to exercise themselves and to expand like the flowers of a plant; and especially in which that characteristic of our species, the tendency towards progressive improvement, is permitted to come into play. Such seems to have been the state in which the earliest race of mankind were placed by the Creator."-ARCHBISHOP WHATELEY'S Introductory Lectures on Political Economy.