rate establishment, is peculiarly liable to the objections, which have been sometimes (however unjustly) urged against any instruction of the poor, even as day scholars.It unfits them for a cottage life, and cottage fare. It disqualifies them for hard labour. It raises their views above the condition wherein they were born. It teaches them to undervalue their parents; and breaks and destroys the sacred connection between parent and child, the mutual endearments of which constitute the most valuable blessing of our temporal existence.

2. IT also excludes one of the greatest advantages to be derived

from education, in the im

Advantage of day scholars.

provement of the other poor.-The beautiful and affecting narrative, in the Cheap Repository, of the sinful father reformed by the piety of his educated child,* is supported by

* See the account of HESTER WILMOT, in the Cheap Repository Tracts.-The reader will also have pleasure in referring to an interesting anecdote given' by Mr. RAIKES, of Gloucester. A father of one of

a variety of facts. The examples are numerous. But these effects of pious education are not confined to individual cases. I have witnessed in St. Giles's free chapel, many instances of parents (persons who had not before thought of a church) attending there constantly, in consequence of the admissionof their children into the free-school connected with that chapel. And recently, at Sunderland and Wearmouth, the very opening of the new schools there, brought a numerous attendance of their parents to the parish churches.-Again, as to the good effects produced upon the child's brothers and sisters, a well disposed boy* of ten or eleven years of age will teach his younger friends at home, the first rudiments of know

his scholars thanked him for the benefit he had himself received in his School; being asked how, explained himself thus :-" The good instructions you give my boy, "he brings home to me; and IT IS THAT, SIR, "WHICH HAS MADE ME REFORM MY LIFE."

Lessons for Young Persons in Humble Life, p. 37.

*I do not mean that sisters are less capable than their brothers of giving instruction at home. They are commonly more acute and intelligent than boys of the same agc.

knowledge, better and more pleasantly than any schoolmaster;-especially if he has been so fortunate as to be taught upon the Madras system, which forms the instructor at a very early age, and makes the power of teaching go hand in hand with the receipt of instruction.

3. CONSIDERED with a view either to difficulty or expense, the comparative effect of teach

Comparative

expense.

ing day scholars is almost beyond conception. The cost of maintaining and instructing a boy in one of our charity schools, is from twelve to eighteen guineas a year; that of educating him at a day school,* upon the Reverend Dr. Bell's system, from four to ten shillings a year. I will take their average; that of the former at fifteen guineas a year, that of the latter at seven shillings; and we shall find that the sum of one thousand five hundred guineas, expended

*Mr. LANCASTER, who, in his school in the Borough, has the merit of having carried Dr. BELL'S system into execution, upon a very great scale, and with more economy than any other person, has kept the average expense of each boy or girl under four shillings a year.

C

on the board and tuition of one hundred children, would have provided for the education of FOUR THOUSAND FIVE HUNDRED day scholars; and (supposing that among parents, brothers, and sisters, three individuals receive moral benefit from each day-scholar) this trifling sum might have produced moral and religious effects on 18,000 persons.

WHAT then will follow? Do I propose to discontinue the maintaining

Suggestions.

By no means.

of any charity children?—

Let them be maintained to

the full extent of the founder's intention. But do not deprive the other poor of the portion of general instruction intended for them. Make those endowments subservient to, and not exclusive of, the education of other children. Adopt the system which Dr. Haygarth introduced at Chester* in 1783, and which the Bishop of Durham has recently adopted at Auckland. Admit a

* This account will be found in a subsequent part of this volume. It was originally published in the Society's Reports, vol. ii.

considerable number of day scholars, and make pre-eminence in the day school, the motive for admission into the house, as was done with great effect at Chester: or, if the Trust allows it, extend the rule to the day schools of the adjoining district; and, at the same time, abbreviate the term of continuance in the house, so that its benefits may be more extended.-The qualification for admission on the foundation of the Bishop of Durham's school at Auckland, where all the expenses are defrayed by his Lordship, is excellence and regularity in any day school in his diocese. A similar regulation, adopted in other endowments, might supply a stimulus to attention and good conduct, that would be invaluable.

IN the establishment of a general system of education, potent means of action may be derived

Dr. Bell's method.

from the Rev. Dr. BELL's new mode of instruction; which, while it facilitates the attainment of the elements of knowledge, possesses a simplicity and certainty in its