one after another of the classes himself, and examine a few individuals in each on what they had been professedly learning recently. If it was only to repeat the first prayers, yet the very way in which the child repeated the Our Father or Hail Mary-whether each one could repeat it, and that accurately and reverently and intelligently, would reveal a good deal. He could not fail to see whether the children were interested in the subject, attentive and respectful, and whether the knowledge ran through the class, or was chiefly confined to a few forward children. Here is an elder class, the children in it have made their Confession and first Communion. Do they know how often they should go, and what is the nature and preparation of the Sacrament? Perhaps questions on the Commandments will test better than anything else whether the children are carefully, intelligently instructed so as to know what in practical daily life is an offence against God and what is not.

Do any of the classes learn hymns, psalms, and selected passages of Scripture by heart? Is Scripture History a part of the course? Is the whole story read or only isolated historical facts? Can the children give an account of Scriptural events, and especially the miracles and parables of our Lord in their own language?

Then as to religious practices and matters of devotion, are there any? and what are they? Do they vary with the season or time of year? Are they enforced? or is anything left to the free will of the children? Are there any fixed rewards for proficiency in secular knowledge? any for religious? any for good conduct? What are they? Who gives them? Does any one assist in the religious instruction besides the teacher, or visit the school? and how often?

One other point, and not the least important, is the Episcopal Visitor's observations on the discipline of the school. For schools differ from one another in that some give religious instruction and teach the theory of a Christian life, but others teach its practice. In some there is a silent training going on under the daily routine of school life, inasmuch as the children see the teachers acting in conformity with the instructions they have given, and themselves setting the example of observing them, and they feel that they are expected to act, and are made to act in the way they are taught to do,-that those who do so are honoured, put forward and rewarded, and those who do not are

frowned upon and corrected. The children's feeling of this is expressed by saying that the teacher means what he or she says. Now, just as a physician will let the patient who comes to consult him talk on, while he meantime reads in his voice and look and manner indications of his true condition, so the skilled visitor of schools sees in the looks and ways and demeanour of teachers and children the system that is going on in the school and the character of the education given in it. If what he sees satisfies him that the school is a good one, in which the children are individually looked after and cared for, he will easily make allowance for the imperfections and occasional failures incidental to all human undertakings, and such a school will have no need of his interference, further than to assure himself that it is still maintaining its character, and to give its teachers and managers that recognition of their success which is always a cheering encouragement to those who are working with a will.

But if the school is not in a satisfactory condition, the Episcopal Visitor would, we suppose, not merely have power to report that it is so, but be in a position to require improvement. Conferring with the teachers or managers of the school, and pointing out the nature of its deficiencies, may be sufficient in the first instance till he makes another visit and notes what has been done to improve things. Such a school will, for a time, require his more particular attention to ascertain whether his judgment of it is correct -whether the faults are capable of being mended, or whether the state of things is such that it must rather be ended. A strong man will not let tenderness to teachers or to his own feelings prevent him from securing at all costs that the children for whom the school exists should have the advantage of a good religious instruction and training. It must come to be seen that he will not let an indifferent school alone, so long as it is unsatisfactory as a place of Christian education for the children who are sent to it.

Such might be the sort of thing answering to one meaning of religious inspection. But, probably, this is not what most would understand by it, but rather something corresponding to what was set on foot by the Bishops in England nearly thirty years ago. For when the system of Government grants and Government inspection first began, the English Bishops, after much consideration, agreed that Catholic schools might accept a grant on certain conditions,

one of which, assented to by the Education Department, was, that the Government Inspectors should not, in the case of Catholic schools, examine the children in religious knowledge, but leave this to the care of the Bishops who undertook to see that it was attended to; and it was to secure this being done that they subsequently arranged a system of religious inspection, which began at once to take effect in some dioceses, and later on in all. The idea and plan of this system was, that just as the Government Inspector visited the school to ascertain the efficiency of secular instruction, and to determine the amount of the grant which it had earned, so the Bishop's Inspectors should in like manner visit the school and examine the children in religious knowledge, and apportion the reward to which its success entitled it. A course of religious instruction was appointed, suitable to the students in the Training Colleges, and to the pupil teachers or apprentices, as well as to the different classes of children in the school. A fixed allowance of time was to be set apart for the one subject as for the other. In short, the religious inspection was to run on all fours with the Government inspection.

Having been appointed to carry out this system from its first institution in one of the dioceses, and endeavoured to carry it out and make it efficient during a period of twenty-six years, I shall venture to put down what experience has forced on my conviction-first, as regards the most essential points to be attended to in it, and secondly, the difficulties that unavoidably accompany it, as if there is any thought of establishing a similar system in Ireland, it may be worth while to consider what is to be said about its working in England.

If, then, the religious instruction is to be carried on in the same manner as the secular instruction, and to compete with it, the first and most essential thing is to secure that a sufficient time should be allotted to it in the schoolday, and that it should be a well-chosen time. In England it is a condition for obtaining any grant that each school attendance should be two hours long, and the time should be given uninterruptedly to subjects of secular instruction. Religious instruction must needs therefore come at the beginning or the end of the hours of attendance. If the school opened at the ordinary hour of 9 A.M. the work might begin with an hour of religious instruction. This was done in many schools, but it was not an hour at which the clergy could count on visiting the school to

examine or assist. Moreover, the children, especially those who live close at hand!- so it is often come late, and so miss a part at least of the religious instruction and interrupt and distract by their entrance into the school, the instruction which the others are receiving. The school-door might indeed be locked against late comers, but many managers and teachers are averse to this. Suppose, then, the school begins with secular instruction, and the religious instruction is given at the end of the morning or afternoon attendance. This puts it to some disadvantage, inasmuch as the teacher and the children are more or less wearied; some, too, plead reasons for going home early, and all are apt to be fidgety and in a hurry to be off. Why should this disadvantage fall day after day on religious instruction? Some, then, lessen this difficulty by giving a short time of recreation, say a quarter of an hour, after the secular instruction, and then giving an hour, or at least three quarters, to religion, at eleven or half-past eleven; while others take this subject at the first opening of the school, but enforce punctual attendance by closing the doors against all who come late, and it is found that as soon as this rule becomes known and established, it has no effect in lessening the numbers in attendance. Those who mean to come take care to be in time, as those do who travel by railway train, and it teaches them habits of punctuality. While, however, the particular hour set aside for religious instruction will vary with the circumstances of different localities, the essential point to be attended to is that the hour so selected is one in which the subject can be as successfully taught to all the children, as reading or arithmetic (1) from their being necessarily present at it, and (2) from the time so allotted to the subject being fully and uniformly devoted to it, and not continually interfered with, under all sorts of pretexts of devotions, or feasts, or amusements, or preparations for coming examinations. A certain and adequate time, from half an hour to an hour should be sacred to religious instruction, seen and felt to be so by the children, and the teachers kept up to the mark in its observance.

After securing a definite and adequate time for religious instruction, the next preliminary is to provide that the best books for religious instruction should be used. The Catechism must of course be the basis of all; but for the instruction to be efficient it will be necessary to have reading books also on this subject, and this to assist the

teacher, who cannot give suitable oral instruction to more than one class at a time; nor can it be expected that teachers should in general be so well versed and skilful in giving religious instruction as to be able to dispense with the use of books. If the books are written in an easy style and enlivened with illustrations and examples, they help to make the subject interesting, in the same way that in the present day so many other subjects are made captivating to children's minds by the simple way in which they are treated. Then as regards Sacred History and the Gospels, I have never found anything so effective in giving life and interest to religious instruction as these. But it is so only when the story and narrative of them is read in full. If, instead of this, short summaries are used and the history is reduced to tables of chronology and lists of Judges and Kings, or of parables and miracles, it is but a repast of dry bones, from which the children may indeed be able to pass a shallow examination with success, but without getting in the process any nourishment for the soul. Nay, worse, when religion is taught by cram books and in preparation for a religious inspection, the children do not see that this is done only as means to an end. Their notion is that it is the end itself. Are they ever right? Well, plenty of good reading of religious books, and learning parts and passages of them by heart as well as prayers and hymns and the words of the Gospels, are great helps to getting these things well into their minds, so as to stick there. It will not do to leave teachers quite to themselves in this matter: they require to be directed and looked after. They are too apt to use books that will serve to get up subjects in the memory only, and do not see the mischievous consequences of Sacred History being learned in this way.

And this leads to a third caution that is necessary as to the teacher's methods of instruction. Simple, homely, practical instructions at a good mother's knee are in themselves the most heart-stirring and efficacious, but if these are not to be had or cannot be relied on, but instead of them we are to have a religious course of knowledge taught at school like other subjects, then we must at least see that it is taught with no less skill and efficiency than other subjects. For in these later years great progress has been made in the art of teaching. It is surprising and admirable how much more easy it is to learn than it used to be. Training Colleges and other modern institutions have made