CHAPTER XX.

EDUCATION.

ARE the necessities of the poor amongst you properly

inspected and relieved? and is due care taken of the EDUCATION of their offspring? This Query (remarked a leading Friend) is the one answered annually without an exception; but before the way is described by which the latter part of it came to be so fully answered, a few observations may be made on the general subject of Education in the Society.

For their youth of both sexes to have a sound English education was from the first a desired object in Friends' families, which it was the easier to secure from the circumstance that several of the earliest adherents to the Society had previously been schoolmasters, and there has never been wanting a succession of those qualified to conduct educational establishments. Besides many of a private character, some have been undertaken under the care of committees of the Quarterly Meetings, and a high class standard of instruction is given in some of these.

It is interesting to observe how some of the earliest of these establishments for girls were commenced and conducted by women Friends, so earnest for securing education and right training as to give their services gratuitously, thus reducing the cost of the establish

ment to that of maintenance only. At one of these commenced in York by the daughters of William Tuke, the attempts of these volunteers to teach English systematically led to the production of the well known Lindley Murray's Grammar.

This Friend was a retired American merchant, living in the outskirts of York for the benefit of his health, and became so greatly interested in this object as to encourage the visits of these earnest minded teachers to him, with whom he would hold long conferences in explanation of the structure of the English language; such were so often prolonged to a late hour that their father's servant would be seen, lantern in hand, guiding them homeward across the fields. A natural desire on their part that such valuable matter should have wider influence in a more permanent form, induced their kind councillor to commit his grammatical teachings to writing, and if any proof were needed of the service it has had in English education, it would be shewn by the two hundred separate edititions of this grammar, which have been called for by the public since its first appearance in 1795.

Several other works of Lindley Murray's followed with the same educational object, chiefly in reading lessons.

In reference to the important duty of assisting parents whose circumstances did not permit their children to share these advantages, much care has been extended by the Society, by an early establishment of schools for this class of children, in the neighbour

hoods of London, Bristol, Leeds, and some other places. But the Yearly Meeting in its watchfulness, lest all of this class were not being thus reached, added in 1737 to its list of general enquiries, a request to be informed of what was being done towards the education of such children; from which such prevalent deficiencies became apparent as to awaken its desire for some Institution of its own of more general educational use for the offspring of those who were not in affluent circumstances, that these might have the same kind of benefits which parents who could afford it, obtained for their children at the private or other schools of the Society.

Amongst those earnestly solicitous for a solution of this question was Dr. John Fothergill, a member of a family largely instrumental in the zealous reformation of the Society, and himself become eminent as one of the leading physicians of the day and a generous promoter of scientific and philanthropic objects. Truly was he one in whom talent, generosity, and high principle met in close combination. "My only wish," he said, "in entering on the medical profession was to do what little might fall to my share as well as possible, and to banish all thoughts of practising physic as a money-getting trade with the same solicitude as I would the suggestions of vice and intemperance." As a native of Westmorland he was accustomed (in later life) to retire thitherward for his annual recess, and on one of these journeys heard there was at Ackworth, near Pontefract, an estate with some