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Sir William Dawson called attention to the wants of the Faculty of Arts, which faculty had practically sustained all the other faculties and also the High School of Montreal. When McGill gave his endowment, men only were considered eligible for college life, but we have now a second McGill in the person of Sir Donald Smith, who has considered the case of the other sex; and Sir William Dawson knew that Sir Donald Smith had before his mind not merely the establishment of a department for women, as at present, but of a college for women, which Sir William Dawson hoped would be called the Donald Smith college. This college would have not only its Faculty of Arts, but professional faculties as well, providing the training required for all the learned professions to which women might care to devote themselves. If this ideal of a college could be realized at the small cost of, say, half a million dollars, it would be a tower of strength and a friendly rival of McGill College. The address concluded by stating that if in our own corner of the world the English population is to hold its own and escape extinction, this will depend not so much on professional training as on broad and liberal culture, fitting both men and women for every contingency which may arise. The Principal, however, had no fear for McGill College and its endowments. As in older countries educational institutions and endowments have survived all political and social revolutions, so it will be here.

-The interest which some of our agricultural theorists are taking in the matter of introducing lessons in agriculture in our schools has its counterpart elsewhere. HORTICULTURE is the latest career offered to intelligent women. The Alexandra College in Dublin has started a course of lectures on the subject, with a view to enabling ladies to become practical market gardeners. England does not lag far behind. Mrs. Richmond, of Clare House, Tiverton, Devon, is the apostle of horticulture as an employment for women, and it is on her suggestion that it is proposed to open near London, in the coming spring, a school specially devoted to this object. That there are some few kinds of garden work beyond an ordinary woman's strength is admitted. Trenching and digging are examples, but this may be easily got over by the occasional employment of unskilled labor. Mrs. Richmond looks forward to the time when ladies who need to earn their own living will be employed in this way to the great advantage of our gardens, both as regards utility and beauty.

-The city board of education of Chicago have unanimously voted down the proposition that extracts from the Bible be read daily in the public schools. The report on which the vote was

based said simply that the committee on school management, after hearing the arguments advanced in favor of Bible reading, had carefully considered the subject and decided that for the general welfare of the schools the prayer of the petitioners ought not to be granted.

-The Bootle School Board possesses a member, in the person of a Mr. Lynch, who may be trusted to look after its finances. On a proposal to raise the wages paid to three of the Board's schoolmasters by the enormous amount of 1s. per week, he felt bound to point out that already the teachers of Bootle were over-paid. Happy Bootleites! We were under the impression that in no place in the kingdom were there teachers who were overpaid. We would like to know the extent to which these fortunate men and women are receiving remuneration in excess of the value of their services to the community.

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-DR. B. G. NORTHROP, who has given much time and attention to this subject, has just written a valuable article or tract, full of the best and most practical suggestions as to how to organize" a society for village improvement. Dr. Northrop says: "In hundreds of cases, public spirit first awakened in village improvement has led to better schools and school-houses. In view of such manifest results, the American Institute of Instruction, at one of the largest gatherings of educators ever held in New England, lately passed a resolution, inviting the cooperation of teachers of America in organizing village improvement societies over the country.' If the 400,000 teachers of America should impress this sentiment upon the 10,000,000 youths under their care, as they could without any diversion from other lessons, who can estimate their influence for the realization of the true ideal of the home and the school? This movement has been greatly aided by the press, daily, weekly, and monthly; by pamphlets and books, lectures and sermons; for clergymen have been the foremost advocates of the cardinal idea, that the home is the moral level which is to lift up humanity."

-We regret to have to announce the death of the Rev. Robert Herbert Quick at the age of 59. He was away from home on a visit to Professor Seeley, and while out on a walk was smitten down with a severe attack of paralysis, from the effects of which he never recovered. He was educated at Trinity College, Cambridge, and was during some years a master at Harrow, and subsequently vicar of Sedberg, in Yorkshire. On the establishment by the University of Cambridge of a special syndicate for the training of teachers he was selected as one of the first group of lecturers, and gave before the University a course on "The His

tory of Education," a work for which his accurate knowledge, critical insight, and deep interest in educational problems preeminently fitted him. He was a frequent contributor to reviews and the leading educational journals, but he is best known to students by his "Essays on Educational Reformers," a work which was published in 1868, and for a time almost neglected, but which has since steadily increased in repute and influence. It was reprinted and largely used in America, where it has become a text-book in training colleges for teachers; and it is now the chief recognised authority as a history of educational ideas and methods. Since his resignation of the vicarage of Sedberg, Mr. Quick has been living in retirement at Redhill, and the last few months of his life were chiefly occupied in the task of revising and re-writing this work, of which a new and much enlarged edition has recently appeared.

-A singular experiment recently took place in Palestine to test the accuracy of Dr. Colenso's statement that the people of Israel assembled in the valley between Mount Ebal and Mount Gerizim could not hear the curses and blessings delivered from the heights above them. A party was travelling in the neighbourhood of these mountains, and two Scotchmen ascended Mount Ebal and two Welshmen Mount Gerizim, while the rest of the party remained in the valley. One of the Scotchmen read the curses, and from the opposite mountain a Welshman read the blessings. Both were easily heard below, where the party added the amens. Both readers were perched upon the natural platforms near the summits.

Literature, Historical Notes, etc.

-The following historical reference in connection with the McGill Normal School is worth preserving, and we trust it will induce some of those connected with the institution to make the account even more complete :

"Opened in 1857, the history of McGill Normal School is virtually the history of Protestant common school education in Montreal, and for some hundreds of miles around it since that time, now precisely 34 years one and a half months ago. Its usefulness has steadily increased with the years. Interest in its history has as steadily increased with lapse of time; and, well as that history may have been from time to time written in words, it is safe to say that far more indelibly is it written in its benefits to the Province, in its splendid array of teacher graduates who, holding its diplomas, have gone forth to practically educate, train

and build up for the battle of life the rising generation of a great and growing country; it is written in the labors of those ardent educationists who first discerned the need of a Normal School, and, fighting valiantly for the rights of a Protestant minority, obtained it; it is written in what, in a word-it has done.

-The ten years from 1850 to 1860 were singularly promotive of the cause of common school advancement in both Upper and Lower Canada; a veritable renaissance so to speak, in respect to middle class education generally. Space forbids, in an article such as this, any lengthy reference to that most interesting decade; suffice it to say, that it not only witnessed the first establishment of seminaries for the special preparation of teachers in their art, notably the Normal schools of Montreal, Toronto and elsewhere, but also the realization, only in more perfect degree of those schemes for free school education with John Groves Simcoe, first Govenor of Upper Canada at the beginning of the century, the Duke of Richmond, in 1818, and other Govenors, had proposed, but which political disturbances and the apathy following such, had for the time rendered abortive. The apostles of education who at the appointed time were to-and did-rise up and bring about these realizations were Egerton Ryerson, Pierre J. O. Chauveau, William (now Sir William) Dawson, and Sir Edmund Head, Governor-General of Canada. The first named as Superintendent of Education for Upper Canada, obtained from the Government, in 1851, Normal Schools and a complete system of almost free schools for the masses in his Province, while the Hon. Mr. Chauveau, later on, in 1856-57, obtained the same for Lower Canada. It was found in this, however, that slender or no provision had been made for Protestants, and the latter at once resolved to have their own school separate and distinct. Sir William Dawson, with others, took up the subject in a spirit of determination, the former enlisting the powerful sympathy of his personal friend, Sir Edmund Head, himself an old and ardent educationist; the results were decisive; the Protestants of Lower Canada were guaranteed three Normal Schools, one being in Montreal, as we to-day have it. It should however be added that Mr. Chauveau throughout in this matter showed himself "the Apostle" of Normal schools, only in so far as related to his Roman Catholic co-religionists. "I would have the word Protestant' struck from the calendar," he is reported to have exclaimed in discussing the question, and it was only when compelled to do so that he conceded the Protestants claim to their separate institution. The absolute merit rests with the venerable head of McGill University.

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Thus much in the abstract; something in the concrete may now be of interest, as exhibiting what the Montreal institution really has done, is doing, and what the necessities are for the extensive building additions now in progress. The school register's figures are convincing. By this it is found that 2,174 diplomas for teachers have been granted since the close of the first session, July, 1857. The school opened on March 4 of that year with 52 pupils; 16 diplomas were granted. Sir William Dawson was principal. There were in all five teachers, viz., three male for the Normal and one female and one male for the Model departments. There are this year seven male and three female teachers on the staff of the Normal department, and one male and seven females on that of the Model; in all 18 teachers, an increase of nearly fourfold. Last session, 1890, 73 persons received diplomas, 13 being academy of the first class; 23 model school and 37 elementary school diplomas, an aggregate in increase of over fourfold. The total admissions to the Normal department for the current year, 1891, have been 103, and the attendance in the Model department is between 300 and 400. The grant this year from Government is about $13,500. Some few of the pupils obtain more than one diploma, but for such, taking off the 174, the 2,000 left will actually represent the number of teachers that have gone forth from the school since it opened. Each one of these, at very lowest estimates, may be assumed to have educated 100 common school pupils which will give an aggregate of no less than 200,000 receiving their education by means of the institution since it began. Positive facts, if obtainable, would probably double the figures.

"Progress so substantial, it is needless to say, pointed long since to the absolute necessity for more ample building accommodation, but it was only towards the close of the past year that it was deemed practicable to carry such into effect. Once resolved upon no time was lost. The governing body associated by statute with the corporation of McGill University, known as the "Normal School Committee," were the right men in the right place. It consisted, as it at present stands, of Sir William Dawson, chairman, and Messrs. Samuel Finley, George Hague the Rev. George Cornish and J. R. Dougall, with an acting secretary, Mr. J. W. Brakenridge, and under their immediate direction the work is now well under way."-Montreal Witness.

-"The scholar shames us by his bifold life. Whilst something higher than prudence is active, he is admirable; when commonsense is wanted, he is an encumbrance. Yesterday, Cæsar was not so great; to-day, Job is not so miserable. Yesterday,

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