dishonest? We e may, it is true, divert fortune from the virtuous; but it is only as Satan's aid is fabled to be won to the wicked, at the price of our souls, and then only by a temporary pact.

For the discrepancies of fortune, if they prove anything, prove only that this life is not the whole cycle which the human soul has to travel. In the great totality of existence, all must resolve itself into order-the moral no less than the physical. Without this great cosmical perfection there could be no such thing as a cosmical existence. When we are told, therefore, that the scheme of earthly order and progress has too many conditions to fulfil to allow of a universal measure of justice, or to secure men the convenience of a perfect accord between their fruits and their labours between their needs and deserts, between their work and their happiness, we say, so much the better the ruder this shell of truth which often costs us a lifetime to break, of the purer essence will be the kernel which we shall then attain to; the attainment carrying with it, by the very nature of our souls, an enjoyment perfect as it must be infi

nite.

Let us conclude, then, that in ascribing human events to chance or fortune, men have but avowed their ignorance while covering it under a specious term. Fortune is but an ill manner of naming Providence, showing Paganism at default in her religious knowledge. The merit of

Christianity is that it does, even for children, what philosophy scarcely succeeded in doing at its highest intelligence; it authoritatively excludes the casual, the fitful, the aimless, from the scheme of cosmical existence, and vindicates for all its vast and complex action an ever-watchful cause, all-seeing as to intelligence, allsufficient as to power. And, hence, while the ancients placed themselves at its mercy, making skill, energy, opportunity, at best but its instruments, believing that it sometimes suggested the means, sometimes secured the end, but always demanded an abnegation of the judgment; the Christian is taught to see in it but the hand of an all-wise Deity, and when even bending to the power as a superstition, is led to bend to it but as an instrumentality. Timoleon turns his house into a Temple of Chance, in grateful commemoration of his good fortune. Lord Chatham, in a like case, declares that chance is but another name for an unaccountable nothing, and that the more he became versed in affairs, the more he found the direct agency of God in everything." It would seem that society in a great measure is but coming back by science and revelation, where it was first placed by nature; for, just as, according to Plutarch, the ancients went from God to Fortune in the progress of their deterioration, so do we gra dually return from Fortune to God under better lights and a higher instruction.

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best of all ways, it is one in which we are rapidly advancing towards a better state of things. Whilst we are disputing on the best mode of edu cating the labouring classes, we do not stand still over our argument; we quote our statistics and nibble at our knotty points as we go along. The number of schools of different kinds increase, the number of scholars rapidly multiply, the per centage of those receiving an education of some kind amongst us, as compared with the people of other countries, continually augments. That at least is satisfactory.

From financial and other tables relating to education, it appears that in the year 1854, £369,602 was expended upon educational grants, making a grand total, since 1839, of £2,002,586.

cer

Last year, £71,287 was appropriated to the building and enlar ging of elementary schools; £2,455 to books and maps; £44,878 to augmenting the wages of tificated masters and mistresses; £143,806 to the stipends of pupil teachers; £39,960 to normal schools; and £30,241 to inspectors; £239,977 was expended on Church of England schools; £14,975 on Wesleyan schools; £13,272 on Romanist schools in Great Britain; and £9,802 on workhouse schools.

In Scotland, the Established Church schools received £22,959, and Free Church schools, £20,963.

The number of children for whom new schools were built from 1839 to 1854, amounted to £438,980: the number for whom schools were enlarged and improved, to 19,081; and the number for whom accommodation was created, improved, or extended, to 458,061.

Last year new schools were built for 33,460 children, and the number of children for whom accommodation was created, extended, or improved, was 36,918. The number of certificated teachers actually employed in teaching amounts to 3,432; of these, 2,242 are men, and 1,190 women. The number of assistant teachers is 221, of whom 48 are women; and the number of pupil teachers is 8,524.

The number of persons presented for examination to her Majesty's inspectors, between 1841 and 1852, amounted to 4,407; and of these

2,882 received certificates; 283 of the first class, 1,027 of the second, and 1,572 of the third class. No less than 417 teachers have thrown up their vocation for other more profitable occupations, and 241 have been withdrawn by sickness and death. The number of 9,788 pupil teachers and stipendiary monitors were trained at the public expense to become teachers, but were not received into the normal schools between 1847 and 1855.

That does not betray a very inert state of things as regards education in England; but the facts brought forward by Messrs. Baines and Unwin, and quoted by Sir James Graham in the debate on Lord John Russell's propositions, are still more indicative of the progress of this activity. The day scholars in England, in 1818, were 674,000, or one in seventeen of the population; in 1833 they were 1,276,000, or one in eleven of the population; in 1851 they were 2,144,000, or one in eight of the population. The Sunday scholars in 1818 were 477,000, or one in twentyfour; in 1833, they were 1,548,000, or one in nine; in 1851, they were 2,407,000, or one in seven of the population. Now in Prussia the proportion is one in six; in Holland, one in seven; in Bavaria, one in eight; in France and Belgium, one in ten; in Sweden, one in eleven; so that England is equal, in point of popular education, to all the countries where state education prevails, except onePrussia.

By the late educational census, it appears that we have in England and Wales 46,042 day schools, educating 2,144,378 children; 23,514 Sunday schools, educating 2,407,642 children; and 1,545 evening schools, with 39,783 scholars. The total of schools is, therefore, 71,101, with 4,591,802 scholars. There are said to be 4,908,696 children between the ages of three and fifteen requiring education. This would leave only 316,894 children that are going without education; but as the real number is admitted to be 968,557, a good many of these children must attend different schools, day, evening, or Sunday.

Let us now look hastily at one or two of these items. In 1818 the total number of children receiving education in day and Sunday schools

But we shall obtain a more lively idea of what has been the educational progress in the British empire during the last half century, if we take a slight retrospective glance towards the year 1800. Darkness, ignorance, and crime are what meet our astonished gaze. In George III.'s days, Wyndham and other statesmen con· tended in Parliament, that we must encourage not learning amongst the people, but bull-baiting, dog and cock-fighting, to keep up the true bull-dog English spirit! The consequence was, the crimes and bloody laws of that reign, when people were not merely hanged for stealing a sheep, but a woman having an unweaned child, was actually executed for purloining, in a state of - starvation, a yard and quarter of calico.

Sunday schools, founded in 1780, by the Rev. John Stock and Robert Raikes in Gloucester, were the first things which broke in on this Cimmerian darkness. Sunday schools had been introduced, indeed, as early as 1763, by the Rev. Theophilus Lindsay, incumbent of Catterick, in Yorkshire. This was imitated at Bedall by Mrs. Cappe, the wife of a clergyman at York; and afterwards, in 1769, by Miss Ball, at High Wycombe; but it was only by the exertions of Raikes that Sunday schools were made popular, through his paper, The Gloucester Journal.

Next came the Infant Schools, I which were first suggested in this country, very naturally, by a woman-Mrs. Turner, the wife of the Reverend. William Turner, of

Newcastle-on-Tyne, in 1818. Mrs. Turner said to Robert Owen that she had often wished that the children of poor parents could be taken out of their hands and educated in their earlier years, and Mr. Owen immediately tried the experiment at his works at New Lanark. The real originator, however, of infant schools was Oberlin, the celebrated pastor of the Ban de la Roche, who introduced them into that district long before the end of the last century; and as early as 1802, there was one at Detmold, in Germany, founded by the Princess Pauline of Lippe Detmold. Lord Brougham actively promoted them after their introduction to this country; but the man who more than all others extended their existence, and who may be considered the inventor of the infant-school system of teaching, is Mr. Wilderspin. He spent the best portion of his life in perfecting and establishing these schools in various parts of the kingdom, and is now, we believe, living somewhere in the north of England upon a paltry pension allowed him a few years ago.

While these important organs of popular education were springing to life, Mechanics' Institutes were nascent in the mind of Dr. Birkbeck, who in 1800 suggested their plan to the trustees of the Anderson Institution at Glasgow, who treated the idea as utterly visionary. But the Doctor was one of the various instruments which Providence was raising up to give a new era to civilization. He clung to the idea, established a mechanics' class in Glasgow in 1802, and never ceased his exertions till he saw his scheme formally realized by the inauguration of the London Mechanics' Institute in 1823, and by another in Glasgow the same year.

Then came the schools of Bell and Lancaster, originating the National Society and the British and Foreign Society. These schools, demonstrating what vast numbers might be taught a large amount of useful knowledge in a cheap way, alarmed the educated public. Bell and Lancaster were assailed on all sides by cries that education would unfit the people for useful labour, would set them above their betters, and disqualify them for ever as servants, destroying every principle of reverence,