If the scene before us is appalling, what must have been the profound darkness of those ages on which the Prophets looked, or which the twelve Apostles proposed to illuminate? But none of these servants of God exhibited the least symptom of dismay. So confident did they feel in the omnipotence of truth, that they often seem rather to record the past than foretel the future; and Isaiah, in particular, more resembles an historian of the millennium, than a prophet who lived upwards of seven hundred years before the advent of Messiah, and at a time when the glory of Israel was on the wane, and the despotism of Babel was threatening to enslave the whole world. "Iniquity was not then full," and the Prophets saw the rise and the desolating influence of the four great empires which were to scourge the earth previous to the reign of the Lord Jesus, but still they were not afraid for the issue. They knew that in the first promise there was a spiritual leaven, which never had ceased to work, and never would, until the entire world was leavened. "The seed of the woman shall bruise the serpent's head," was a declaration which contained in it all the blessings which the Gospel ever has, or ever shall, confer upon man. The millennium, and even heaven itself, are only the full blossom and matured fruit of this sacred germ. The tree of life was to spring from the smallest of all seeds; but the Prophets knew its divine vigour, and regaled themselves under the shade of its wide spreading branches, at a time when even the generality of believers were hardly aware that it had taken root. The evangelical principle, from the days of Adam until now, has neither been dormant nor stationary. The events that seemed to threaten its existence or its growth, have always accelerated its progress. The course of the river of life may have been serpentine, and many a barrier may have been raised to obstruct its streams, but still its motion has always been onward. The farther it has flowed, and the more it has been interrupted, the deeper and the more irresistible its current has become; and such is its force in our day, that it would be as easy to drive back the Ganges or the Mississippi, as to prevent the "knowledge of the Lord from covering the earth." Geologists demand thousands upon thousands of years for the formation and deposition of their various strata; still they tell us, that though the mode was tedious, it was always progressive, and adapted to prepare the globe to be the habitation of man. Even the mightiest convulsions were as favourable to this consummation as the

has been the current of events in the intellectual and moral world: "God's eternal thought" of mercy and salvation "has moved on"

"His undisturbed affairs;"

and the present is a period of the brightest promise to the philanthropist and the Christian that has ever dawned upon the world. We have knowledge, books, schools, teachers, liberties, property, and benevolence; and, if we choose, we can, in one short twenty years, change the entire face of our own country, and, from our extensive foreign influence, effect a wonderful moral revolution throughout the earth. There is then nothing to be despaired of in the present aspect of things. Thanks to commissions, &c., we know the disease, and in the Gospel we have a perfect remedy. The country never wore a more rational or moral appearance than it does now; but were it instantly reduced to all the ignorance and vice of the dark ages, or of the days of Nero or Nebuchadnezzar, still, with less facilities than we now possess, we would not be dismayed. We have faith in human docility, in evangelical tuition, and the promised presence of the Redeemer, and outpouring of the Holy Spirit. Myriads of our brethren in Britain, and throughout the world, are in a degraded state because we have done so little to elevate them to their proper intellectual and moral position. Let us do our duty, and we shall yet see the dawn of the millennium.

In inquiring into the present state of Education in our own country, we shall consider the numbers taught in day-schools, in Sunday-schools, the proportion of boys to girls-the comparative state of education in agricultural and manufacturing districtsthe character of teachers and tuition-the time allowed, &c.

Respecting the numbers who are actually receiving daily instruction, we have no parliamentary returns since 1833; and, as that document is the only official report for the whole country, we must make the best use we can of its contents. According to the usual rate of increase, the population for England and Wales, which in 1831 was 13,897,183, in 1833 would be 14,400,000. At that time the children in infant and other day-schools amounted to 1,276,947, or little more than one-eleventh of the entire population. The numbers in Sunday-schools were 1,548,890, or above one-ninth of the population. Since this calculation was made the population has increased at least one million and a half, and during that time very considerable zeal has been manifested by all parties in the cause of education; and therefore we may be ready to conclude that the proportion of scholars has been greatly multi

plied. But we must not reckon too fast. The erection of a National or British school bas in most places broken up a number of dame and other schools, and also greatly lessened the attendance at many private academies. I have known four or five little schools entirely disappear at the opening of a public one; and though this has been a very great benefit in consequence of the superior instruction given, yet I query whether the actual number of scholars has very much increased. In Mr. Baines' lucid tables we find, that in the three counties of Yorkshire, Lancashire, and Cheshire, upwards of one-fifth of the population are enrolled in Sunday-schools, and that one-tenth are taught in day-schools. Every one who has visited or resided in agricultural or manufacturing districts must be fully aware that there are not more schools in the former than in the latter; and therefore Mr. Baines' calculation affords as fair a criterion for judging of the present numbers attending day-schools as any that can at present be used. If we take the country as a whole, and especially if we include Wales, where there is a great deficiency of day-school instruction, I should say that the average is rather above than below the real proportion of children who receive daily tuition; so that we shall not underrate the educational efforts of the country if we take one-tenth as the medium.

It is now generally allowed that one-fourth of the population consist of persons between the ages of five and fifteen, and it has also been stated that these ten years ought to be spent at school; or that the period between five and fifteen is the educational period. According to the census of 1841, the population of England and Wales is 15,906,741; one-tenth of this number will be 1,590,674, and one-fourth will be 3,976,685, and if we subtract the former from the latter, the remainder will be 2,386,011: and if one-tenth is the proportion receiving some kind of daily tuition, then the remaining number, to the amount of 2,386,011 souls, who ought to be at school, are left without any proper daily tuition. This fact, viewed in all its bearings, is a very solemn one. All these immortals must have some kind of tuition, and if not instructed aright, will be educated in vice and depravity. Not a few of them may fill stations in the middle and higher ranks of society, and will become in their different spheres intellectual and moral pests. Multitudes of this number also will become the parents and guardians of another generation, and thus will render their errors and viciousness, to a great extent, hereditary. We shall find, in our attempts to spread the blessings of knowledge, the ignorance of these parents to be one of the greatest obstacles.

Many may object to the average of onetenth as the proportion now enrolled in day

schools. To some the ratio will appear too high, and to others it will be too low. We fear that some who have been anxious to make out a case for parliamentary interference have shown a disposition to underrate what has already been done by the friends of knowledge. They wish it to appear that things at present are so bad that nothing short of a system of national education, projected and supported by the state, and superintended by the Established Church, can save the country. Some of these writers are the determined enemies of the voluntary principle. The various Commissioners have, with scarcely an exception, been in favour of the interposition of Government, and the Inspectors are for the most part of the same opinion. In few of the reports can we perceive an impartial estimate of what has been effected by Christian philanthropy. The Inspectors have been in several instances limited to time. Perhaps not more than thirty days have been allowed for three or four counties, and we are sorry to find that these gentlemen have not unfrequently overlooked the exertions of Dissenters. We know that this mode of procedure has been fashionable of late; but then those who are guilty of it, ought not to wish their reports to be published as veritable documents. In such conduct there is a sacrifice of honour and veracity, and an attempt to deceive both the Parliament and the people. Such a course, were it not incorrect, would be exceedingly injudicious; for if the Dissenters are really insignificant, then a full, true, and particular account of their chapels and their schools would be one of the most likely means to prove that they are undeserving of notice. Truth, rather than prejudice, should be the polar star of Commissioners and Inspectors; otherwise they may prompt Parliament to legislate on false data; and any sect or denomination must be in a very unhealthy state, if its partisans require that the real statistics of their operations should be misrepresented.

In a foot note, page 5, of the Rev. Thomas Page's "Letter to Lord Ashley," it is stated that only 51,822 children were taught by Dissenters in 1833; and as the whole number enrolled in day-schools, according to the Parliamentary Returns for that year, was 1,276,947, deducting the number mentioned above, it is said that the remaining 1,225,125, were educated in Church schools. This estimate Mr. Page quotes from "Archdeacon Wilberforce's Letter to Lord Brougham." In the same page, we are told that the Bishop of Winchester asserted in his Charge, 1841, that, of the children receiving daily tuition, only one-twenty-fourth are taught by persons unconnected with the Church of England. According to this calculation nearly one-twelfth of the entire population was taught in Episcopal day-schools, and only one 277th in the day-schools of Dissen

such a remarkable effect on those who dislike voluntary efforts on the one hand, and the sudden assembling together of so large a number of uneducated children on the other, would have struck the country at that time as little less than a miracle. We have given these calculations to show that in them ample scope is allowed for the zeal and benevolence of the Church, and that truth is the only object we have in view.

It is evident then that the number of children belonging to schools under the superintendence of the Church in 1833, could not have exceeded 612,562; and yet at that time the Bishop of Winchester lays claim to 1.225,125. The parliamentary returns for that pe iod tell us, that there were 1,276,947 children instructed in day-schools, and striking off Archdeacon Wilberforce's 51,822 for Dissenting schools, we have still onehalf of the remainder, or 612,562, receiving daily education, but not under the eye of the Church. Of course, these consist of children taught in dame-schools, infantschools, British schools, and various other private boarding and day schools for the middle and higher classes. Now it must be admitted, that some of these schools were conducted by members of the Establishment, and some by Dissenters. In most cases, probably, there was a compromise. The Churchmen not enforcing the peculiarities of their creed on the children of Dissenters, and the Dissenters not educating the children of Churchmen in the principles of Dissent. The religious instruction, therefore, in such cases may perhaps have been, strictly speaking, neither Episcopalian nor Dissenting. It is well known, that in former years the generality of day and boarding schools for the middle and higher classes were looked upon as entirely secular. Religion was hardly thought of, and especially sectarian religion; in fact, it was not at all deemed necessary that the master should be a religious man, and consequently it was admitted that a dissenter could teach writing and arithmetic, &c., without endangering the Episcopalianism of his pupils; and that a Churchman could impart secular knowledge without converting his scholars to his creed. And this was the case in most of the private dayschools to which the operatives sent their children. It is therefore manifestly unjust for the Bishop to claim for the Church, not only all the National and infant schools under the immediate superintendence of the clergy, but also all the other schools over which they had no control, and in which no particular creed was taught. Many of them were conducted by Dissenters, and mainly supported by dissenting parents; and in most of them there was a liberality of creed quite as favourable to Dissent as to Episcopalianism.

These observations show, that Churchmen

have claimed for their day-schools at least one-half more than belonged to them, and have attempted to fasten on their dissenting fellow-citizens the charge of being reckless of their own education, and that of the country. The tactics adopted are very remarkable; for when anxious to make out a case of educational deficiency, the National Society tells us that only 488,918 are taught in episcopal day-schools; but, when the wish is to show that the Church does everything, and that dissenters do nothing worthy of notice, then the number is almost immediately raised to 1,225,125. It has not been unusual of late, when calculating the numbers that belong to the Church, for the clergy to obtain the amount of the dissenting congregations, to subtract this sum from the whole population of the parish, and put down the remainder to the Establishment. Of course any other denomination is at perfect liberty to do the And in the present instance, the dissenters might strike off for the Church 612,562, and subtracting this sum from the parliamentary return of 1,276,947, might claim the remaining 664,385; but then few persons would admit the fairness of such a proceeding, nor would such calculations and conclusions be worthy of credit.

same.

2. In the letter of the Rev. T. Page, pp. 16-19, quoted chiefly from National School Reports, we are told that in the diocese of Rochester the proportion instructed in day-schools is one-seventeenth of the population;* in the diocese of Salisbury, oneeighteenth ;† in the diocese of Winchester, one-twentieth; and in some districts of that diocese only one-twenty-sixth. He adds, that in the report of the Chester Diocesan Board, it is stated that the largest amount of children in day-schools over which the Church has any cognizance is nine per cent., or one-eleventh of the population, and the smallest two per cent., or one-fiftieth of the people; affording an average for the diocese of one-thirtieth. These calculations give an average of about 1-21st for the four dioceses. In some other of Mr. Page's personal inquiries we find that things are not quite so bad. In Chertsey he found one-seventeenth in dayschools; in Chobham, one-eleventh; in Windlesham, one-ninth; in Woking, onetenth; in Battersea, Clapham, and Tooting, one-tenth; in Wandsworth, one-ninth.From Mr. Inspector Allen, he quotes Wallsend, one-tenth; Heworth, one-twentieth ; Chester-le-street, one-twentieth ; and North Shields, one-eighteenth.

It should be observed that the numbers given for the parishes into which Mr. Page personally inquired represent only the supposed average attendance, and include schools of all denominations; while the statistics