tional advantages; a separate system of denominational schools is less favourable to the interests of education, and may be used with much greater effect as an instrument of proselytism. The present system has given us a generation better trained, more enlightened, and more liberal than any the nation has yet seen. A return to the separate system would again divide the nation into hostile camps whose leaders would be more zealous for the success of their peculiar tenets than for the great national interests at stake. These arguments were very ably sustained. Mr. Pollock's plan, better known in Ireland as the Bishop of Ossory's, has proceeded from this party. It is simply a proposal to reconstruct the Board, to place the secular education alone on a national footing, leaving the religious instruction entirely to the school managers, free from all inspection or restraint. This scheme would not, in working, be very different from the present; it would retain the excellent secular instruction established by the Board, and get rid of what has been the great and real grievance urged against it, the deceit and petty tyranny too often practised in regard to religion. The national system, in so far as religious instruction was concerned, was proved to be in reality denominational. Why not, it was justly asked, call the schools by their right names-call a Protestant school a Protestant school, and a Catholic one Catholic? Only about one-fifth of the national schools were mixed, and it could not but happen that, when either the Catholic or the Protestant children were in a small minority, those children deserting school during the hours of religious instruction would be looked upon unfavourably by both master and fellow-pupils. Then the pictures of the Catholic had to be covered up and the altar concealed from the little Protestants; and the Bible of the Protestant marked "Dangerous" for the protégés of the priest. Over and above the petty deceptions to which such things lead, the daily reminder of religious differences must have an effect the reverse of beneficial on the minds exposed to it.

Nothing short, however, of the entire annihilation of the Board will satisfy either the ultramontane party among the Catholics, or the adherents of the Church Education Society. These two powerful and bitter opponents are at one on this point. They demand a purely denominational system, that they may go forth fully armed with the money and authority of the State, to teach their respective creeds. Why should we fear proselytism, says the Catholic champion? The Catholics both fear it less and practise it less than their opponents, and in this they are wise. The 12,000 children of Catholics at the schools of the Church Education Society are not likely, by the teaching they receive there, to become good Protestants, unless their parents are very bad Catholics indeed. The counteracting influence of the creed taught by their parents and priests is strong enough to negative the teaching they receive at the school. Exposure to conflicting teaching might indeed unsettle all religious belief, if the matters under controversy were not really too subtle for the understandings of the very young children attending the national schools. The faith and practice of the parent and minister will have the preponderating in

fluence on the faith of the child; and justly so, as, while the child is under the control of the parent, the discrimination is wanting which every conscientious mind would desire to see exercised in the adoption of a new religious belief. Catholics are willing to take the risk of their children attending Protestant schools, or none at all, in order that where there are Catholic schools they may be entirely under their own control, and that no restriction be imposed on them in the matter of religious teaching. Protestants, for the same reason, are willing to run the same risk, counting too on their being a rich and powerful minority, and able to make overwhelming reprisals; and also, it must fairly be added, on their firm hold of the truth!

The effect of the discussion of these various differences of opinion was, at first sight, not very apparent. There was much fear and trembling among the local promoters of the meeting as to the result, and it was even proposed that the subjects on which these differences were likely to be manifested should be passed over. But this would have been to forsake the very aim and object of the meeting, and was not to be entertained. The opposing parties were brought face to face, as they had never been before, and their differences were stated more broadly than ever. To an onlooker the principle laid down by the Irishman, who was asked by his friend which side of the fight he ought to take, and answered, "No side at all, but whenever ye see a head hit it," might seem to prevail. Whenever a head-of argument -did appear, it was hit strongly and fairly, sometimes from one side, sometimes from another, the dreaded controversy revealing that the real differences were fewer and less insurmountable than had been supposed. The great principles of liberty of conscience and religious education came out clearly as common to parties who had believed that it was in principle, and not alone in modes of action, that they had been opposed; and so it became evident, as the latter are capable of infinite modification, that a meeting point was not impossible. One result of the discussion has been to awaken the hope that such a meeting point may be discovered.

The industrial or ragged day-school has not taken root in Ireland to the same extent as in the sister countries, owing to its having been made so much an instrument for proselytism. It is found necessary, in order to retain the vagrant children in these schools, to give them one or more meals daily. Thus many of them came to receive the opprobrious name of "Souper Schools." The "soupers," while outwardly conforming to the religion of the sect establishing the school, commonly adhere in secret to their original faith, and withdraw their children gladly if a rival establishment of the right kind is started, distributing equally satisfactory doles of soup and bread. This has disgusted honest Catholics and honest Protestants alike. But the necessity for special schools for a class below the working-class, and still free from criminal habits, is felt in Ireland as well as in England. Under the wing of a national school in Dublin there is a ragged school of a kind which appears to meet the necessities of the case, and seems to furnish a hint for the solution of some of the difficulties which have been

encountered in providing for this class in England. The children in the lower school form a distinct class; in the upper school they pay from 2d. to 5d. a week, while, in the lower, the parents are unable to contribute the smallest weekly sum. To secure regular attendance it is found necessary to furnish the first meal of the day, a simple piece of bread, as the children are often kept at home till it can be earned or begged, so entire is the destitution of their homes. The teachers of the two schools are distinct, the master testifying that their admission into the upper school of the miserable and wholly uncivilized children from the lower would degrade the whole tone both of the teaching and the discipline. The bread is furnished by private charity, but otherwise the lower school is under the National Board, and is worked as a department of the upper one. Is not this a very simple way of getting rid of some, if not all, of the embarrassments with which the friends of ragged schools have had to contend? It gets rid of the objection of making permanent institutions for a class which ought not, in the opinion of many, to exist, though about the fact of its existence there is little doubt, and for the hope of its non-existence, to say the least, very little foundation. It also allows for the children an easy transition into the higher class, whenever their improvement should be such as to warrant it. A ragged day-school of this kind might form part of the machinery of any large national school in the poorer districts of a great town, and thus be worked more cheaply and advantageously than a separate establishment. There is no reason why industrial training should not be added.

The able address of Sir John Shaw Lefevre was confined almost entirely to University education, regarding which it afforded much. valuable information. In speaking of the Civil Service examinations, he stated that he considered the present results of elementary education anything but satisfactory. These results were not to be estimated by the reports of inspectors, but a very fair test was afforded by the examinations as to the real acquirements possessed by masses of the population. This is certainly just; very much of what the inspectors see is mere surface work, much that he hears mere loose information; only what is rooted in the nature is real education, and that alone can be retained and applied when the boy enters on the business of life; the rest must perish, and is therefore comparatively useless. The Very Rev. Dean Graves, in his able paper on the Civil Service Examinations, states the principle which underlies the competition movement when he says, that the sound healthy brain which enables its owner to achieve the greatest success in intellectual efforts, extends its action through his entire frame, reaches the hands and feet, and imparts a general vigour and activity.

On one evening in the week, the Association extended its influence to a still wider circle than the members and associates assembling in its departments. Each of these departments had its exponent to an audience composed of the young men in connexion with the various literary and educational associations of Dublin. The subject of education was allotted to Mr. G. W. Hastings, the Honorary General

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Secretary of the Association. After giving an account of the progress of elementary education during the last generation, he pointed out some of the defects of the Privy Council system, which made that system far from popular in England, and which, as was shown at the meeting of the Association in Glasgow, was productive of little save dissatisfaction in Scotland. He then most appropriately directed the attention of the meeting to the subject of evening schools and mechanics' institutes as the great remedies for the early withdrawal from school which the pressure for the means of subsistence rendered necessary for so large a portion of the community. To the development of these institutions the future progress of national education would be largely indebted, for they were sustained by the great principle of self-education. No education that was not voluntary could be really valuable. Real education depended on individual effort, and what was gained by the boy at school, was too often lost by the youth in whom no interest in self-culture had been awakened, while the class who pursued education as one of the noblest aims of life, the class who supported mechanics' institutes and evening schools, carried up to manhood the thirst for knowledge, and had produced a band of intelligent workers, whose labours would hereafter be felt in the industrial progress of the country.

The meetings of the National Association ought to be looked upon not as a time of reaping but as a time of sowing. Fruit in the shape of practical social improvements can only be sought for in the future. It is a seed-time from which a harvest of good may be expected to spring, when due time has been allowed for the rooting and ripening of the opinions which it scatters so plentifully. Expectations so formed have already, in many instances, been realized; and those who are intimately acquainted with the working of the Association have been often cheered by seeing the results of some discussion bearing fruit in the locality of one of its early meetings, in a higher tone of municipal government, in vigorous and enlightened measures of sanitary and other reforms; in other instances by the knowledge that it has been the means of awakening and guiding individual effort, and in others still, that it has quickened the progress of the Legislature in the enactment of measures of national and lasting usefulness.

In the great discussion which took place at Glasgow last year, opposing parties met for the first time face to face, and the hope sprang up that a full and free discussion of their differences and difficulties might furnish the means of reconciling the one and overcoming the other. Let us hope that the Dublin meeting will lead to a similar approximation of opinion there. Irishmen, like Scotsmen, have now found that they can meet and discuss their differences with mutual moderation, and part with a higher respect and tolerance for each other. The difficulties attending a settlement of the education question in Ireland are not great, if dealt with in a spirit of candour and conciliation, and it may be trusted that such a spirit will permanently survive the week of the meeting which called it forth and tested it so severely. ISA. CRAIG.

XI. CURRENT LITERATURE.

UNQUESTIONABLY the most important literary event of the past quarter has been the abolition of the paper-duty, a happy consummation of the labours of those who have striven so long and so earnestly for the removal of "taxes on knowledge." We cannot be wrong in anticipating from the change an immense impetus to every department of literary and educational labour. In the meantime, it has had a somewhat singular effect in deepening the usual dulness of the autumn months in the publishing trade. The Act does not come into operation till the first of October, the day of the publication of our present Number. Till after that time, accordingly, many books which were in active preparation, some of which, indeed, had been announced for immediate publication months ago, have been delayed; so that next quarter may be expected to rise as much above the average of its activity as this one has fallen below that of its stagnation.

It would seem, however, that no considerations of economy can restrain the popular taste for light literature. There is a certain class to whom a weekly-sometimes a daily-novel is as much a necessary of life as most people now feel the newspaper to be. New works of the two and three volume class, accordingly, issue from the press by scores, week after week, with unabated vigour. In the course of a year they are reckoned by hundreds. Yet it is strange how few of these books, which form the staple of the reading of thousands, have any permanent value. The vast majority of them are lost in the eddies of the circulating library, having no strength to work their way into the stream of our national literature. Mr. Dickens's Great Expectations is not likely soon to meet with such a fate. It is not many weeks since its publication was completed in the pages of a weekly magazine, where it must have been read by thousands; yet, the collective issue of it already lies before us in its fourth edition. Though we cannot accord to the work as a whole that high place which Mr. Dickens's admirers seem to claim for it, we admit that the first volume at least, and some parts of the other two, are well worthy of its author's best fame. Pip, Joe Gargery, and Wemmick have already taken their places in the gallery of fictitious heroes, beside imaginary full-lengths of the Tootses, the Wellers, and Dick Swivellers of the past; while the death-scene of old Magwitch alias Provis, will compare with that of Paul Dombey, or of Thackeray's Colonel Newcome. We cannot say, however, that the great expectations which the first volume excites in us are, any more than Pip's, at all realized in the end. The first and third volumes are as different from each other as

are the earlier and later styles of Mr. Dickens. The first is representative of the low comedy period of Pickwick and the Old Curiosity Shop; the third of the melodramatic period of Dombey and Bleak

Great Expectations. By Charles Dickens. 3 vols. Fourth Edition. London : Chapman and Hall, 1861.