4.-School requisites granted for such schools, and no other book of secular instruction to be used in the schools.

5.-Grants of money to be determined by the commissioners, according to the merits and wants of schools, number of pupils, amount of independent support, conduct of the master, efficiency of the school, and such other considerations as the commissioners may think proper.

6.-Every patron applying for aid to state the rules for religious instruction, such rules to be placed on a board over each school house.

Neither of the recommenders of this scheme consider it faultless, but one which, under all the circumstances of the country, may lead to a solution of the vexed question.

It may be objected that this scheme is fatal to united education, but this theory experience has proved impracticable.*

1. It has also been objected that many schools would not have any assistance, as they could not show a sufficient attendance; but it may be said they would not be worse off than at present.

2. No system could justify Government in expending State money on schools containing from ten to a dozen pupils.

3. Experience abundantly proves the possibility of supplying such schools from private sources.

It is sufficient to say that, while I may be unable to recommend such a scheme to the Government of the country, there seems no reason for refusing to receive aid under it. "1. It would secure for all the poor children of Ireland one uniform system of sound secular instruction. 2. It would provide religious instruction for every child. 3. It would vindicate for religious men liberty of religious teaching. 4. It would present no obstacle to hinder a conscientious man from uniting and co-operating with the State in the great duty of national education, what form soever of Christian faith he may profess."

In making these suggestions, or offering these opinions, I desire it to be distinctly understood that I am merely offering my own advice and opinion; I do not appear as the representative of any society.

Whether the Government of the country will extend aid to Church Education schools, or continue as heretofore to refuse, I trust that the patrons of those schools will still continue to uphold in them the supremacy and sufficiency of sacred Scripture, and the right and duty of all to read it; that they will continue to maintain the principle, that instruction in divine truth shall accompany all other instruction, and that whether they can educate few or many, they will send them forth to the battle of life thus prepared and thus equipped; that, to use the eloquent words of Dr. Chalmers, "they will continue to place the Word of God in the foreground of their system of education, and render it the unequivocal, the public, the conspicuous object that is becoming Christians and Protestants."

* See the return ordered on the motion of Isaac Butt, Esq., Q.C

STATUS OF TEACHERS.*

What are the best Means for improving the Status of Teachers, and for securing for the Public sufficient Guarantees for the Efficiency of their Teaching? By Professor D'ARCY THOMPSON.

F you were to enter a thronged schoolyard, and see three hundred little fellows busily and merrily engaged at a variety of exhilarating games, and were informed that the urchins were embryo-sailors or embryo-soldiers, a gleam of romantic sentiment would lighten up your imagination; you would throw yourself into a distant futurity,-into one, perhaps, on the yonder side of your own grave, and you would picture to yourself frozen seas explored, winds and waves subdued, or gaily-dressed battalions moving measuredly to fife and drum music, and the cries of triumph on some smoky field of battle.

Had you been told that every one of the romping children before you was destined to be an undertaker, your sense of the ridiculous would first have been aroused, and then you would, perhaps, seriously have wondered if some half dozen of these youngsters might not live to wear funny hatbands and drink copiously of porter after your own funeral.

But had you been assured that the institution was a hatching nest of future schoolmasters, your sentimentality would have been hit between wind and water; you would have been thrown into a dull and opaque mood of melancholy reflection.

The instances are rare and exceptional where youths apprenticed to the sea take to soldiering in manhood; where medical students turn to the law; where young lawyers diverge to commercial pursuits; where engineers blossom into popular preachers. The majority of existing schoolmasters, even in the leading schools of England, had no definite forecasting of their future calling at their first entry into academic life. Until their degrees were taken, the Bar and the Church would flit alternately before their eyes; but at length a day would come when they would be brought suddenly face to face with a world of stern realities; a world peopled with butchers and bakers and grocers; a world giving nothing for nothing. A little capital and a little influence might carry them over the interval of slack-tide between student-life and professional self-supporting days; but the capital and interest, and oftentimes the courage, the patience, the self-denial, and self-reliance are lacking. The novices look wistfully into the face of circumstance; feel in their pockets for bits of coin to pay their way withal; and draw out reluctantly their testimonial medallions of classical and mathematical attainment. And thus it is that many a would-be parson and would-be pleader drifts into the weary, half-resigned, half-repining schoolmaster.

* For Discussion, see p. 431.

What is the reason, then, that our profession is one so seldom sought out at all; so very seldom sought out with eagerness; so often one into which, as into a pit, poverty or disappointment is pushed by an adverse fortune, or stumbles out of fear and irresolution? How is it that, in the middle class of life, we should congratulate a youth on being admitted into a thriving mercantile firm; or on passing his preliminary examination for a naval cadetship or an army commission; on being called to the Bar; ou his appointment to a dispensary, or to an ecclesiastical cure? The answer is a plain and simple one. It is because, in any of these cases, we should feel that the object of our congratulations was now at the outset of a career in the course of which, with health and strength vouchsafed, he would, humanly speaking, be sure of achieving a competency by the possession of moderate abilities, and the moderate display of perseverance, integrity, and discretion; and of attaining to wealth and social distinction, if upon moderate abilities he could bring to bear, in addition to homely virtues and qualities, the motive power of a vigorous and energetic nature. If, again, we were bidding farewell to a youthful relative, as he quitted a country home to seek his fortune in some capital or academic city in the walks of pure science or pure literature, we should, indeed, view the adventure as a hopeless one, if our youth were gifted only with moderate abilities; but, if his call to science or to letters were to our minds a genuine and indubitable one, we should cheerily wish him God-speed upon his journey, on the grounds that, although the blanks in his chosen career were numerous, there would assuredly be in it much of enjoy. ment; that the prizes, if they turned up at all, would be striking and valuable; and that the field for work and utility would be inexhaustive and illimitable. But alas! if the object of our solicitude, after a prolonged and successful course at school and college, had just succeeded, after an arduous competition, in procuring a nomination as under-master in an ordinary grammar-school, the generality of us would feel it difficult to throw much of warmth or enthusiasm into our congratulations. We should feel that a young fellow of good abilities and tried industry were entering the scholastic den, at the opening of which most of the footprints were seen to point one inward way; that he was upon the outset of a career which was not a career; that he was walking, half unconsciously, into a professional cul-de-sac. Our forebodings would be very materially lessened if he were reentering, as teacher, some old and wealthy institution in which he had been educated in his youth; he would be now, in fact, constituted a member of a powerful and quasi-commercial corporation, and nothing but persistent misconduct could divert him from the path to comfort or to affluence. Our feelings would be those of absolute hopefulness if, on entering the scholastic profession, our friend or relative should, in defiance of logic, legally qualify himself for a higher but altogether independent calling, to be followed here after, if it should at any casual date offer higher emoluments or a rise in social position.

If, then, our statements be correct, that of some nine careers open to educated youth, there is one that holds out fewer inducements by far than any of the rest, it would be most unreasonable in us to conclude, without diligent investigation into all the circumstances of the case, that the low estimate of this one profession were altogether undeserved.

A sentimental person will speak feelingly of the drudgery of a schoolmaster's life, and touchingly of the trials of governesses. It is thus that self-complacency by the discharge of empty words imagines to relieve itself of a weighty responsibility. A mother will be naturally anxious about the instruction of her girls, and yet, in selecting a governess, she will be probably swayed by the partially or totally irrelevant considerations that this or that candidate has a clear touch on the piano; that her hands are small and white; or that her father was a clergyman, and died recently, leaving a family wholly unprovided for. An ordinary English father will assure you, with a great command of feature, that the education of his sons is to him a matter of extreme anxiety; that day after day the importance of sound instruction is being brought more and more home to his appreciation; and that he has in his later years bitterly repeuted or regretted the lack of assiduity or of advantages in his own youth. By and by, he will accompany one of his boys to a neighbouring grammarschool, and will enter him under one of the under-masters, and, on returning home, will comfort his wife and himself by the intelligence that the lad's new master is a gentlemanly-looking man, a clergyman, distantly related to one of their own county families, that he was a junior optimè at Cambridge-ignotum pro magnifico, to the wife at least-that he took a first-class in classical honours, and gained a gold medal for a Greek ode in sapphics upon "The taking of Seringapatam."

With all our serious talk, then, of the importance of efficiency in teachers—and their efficiency is of incalculable moment, to the community, we all, as a rule, follow blindly in a groove of routine, like sheep after a bell-wether of fashion. But how is it in secular and personal matters of avowedly minor import. ance infinitely minor importance? No sane man would consent to have a back-tooth extracted by an unqualified tooth-extractor; no affectionate and sensible parent would entrust a boy with the measles or a consumptive daughter to the care of a medical amateur, although the latter were a close relation of his own, or the inheritor of a lordly estate; no man but a divinely sublime toady would put out to sea in dangerously rough weather with the son of an emperor at the helm, if the latter were practically inexperienced in boating and yachting; no man would entrust a legal case of the very slightest importance to his nephew, if the latter, although long ago called to the Bar, were known to be utterly unacquainted with the very technicalties of his profession. Why is it, then, that we are so trustful, so unquestioning, in the case of the schoolmaster? Is it that, in the serious matter of intellectual development, we are, for the

most part, unbelievers and hypocrites? Do we, notwithstanding all our protestations, consider the duties of the teacher to be easy, trivial, unimportant, perfunctory?

So far as my own experience goes, I would unhesitatingly assert that the great majority of parents are little interested in the mental development of their boys, provided only that they are kept out of their own or harm's-way, that their health is attended to, that the school-fees for extras are not exorbitant, that their holidays are not too frequent and too long, and, above all, that they mix only with children of equal rank in our social scale. I grant that our solicitude increases in intensity as our boys advance towards youth. The illregulated temper, that was amusing in years past, is becoming ungovernable; the ignorance, that in petto was an indirect flattery to our own comparative knowledge, is now a matter of alarm. Our responsibilities are beginning to stare us in the face. We are approaching the autumn of our children's schooldays; we sowed no seed, or poor seed in the spring-time; and we are disappointed now at the miserable promise of the harvest.

So long as childhood and boyhood are little esteemed, so long the schoolmaster must be content to hold a Pariah rank among professional men. That he does hold such a rank is a lamentable but an incontestable fact. The fault lies partly with himself and partly with the outer society. The remedy does not lie in his own hands altogether; but it does lie in his own hands to a very great extent. He must improve his wares; must expose better articles for sale must throw away all wooden nutmegs. For a while his old customers will miss these latter articles; but in a very little while they will awaken to a sense of the old delusion, and the commercial rule will work its invariable way: the vendor of good and necessary produce will find a lucrative market; the dispenser of good and indispensable things will be himself held good and indispensable.

For the sake of convenience we shall confine our remarks for the present to the case of our independent or semi-independent grammarschools. Any suggestions or remarks made regarding them may be easily modified to suit the case of proprietary or private institutions. We have in these grammar-schools alone a numerous body of academically trained men, out of which all who have foregone the obvious advantages of holy orders belong to no definite and recognized calling. There has been no peculiar line of study, even at the close of, or subsequent to, an academic training, leading up to their present position; there is no path to honour marked out for the eminently able and ambitious. Indeed, as a general rule, the duties of a subordinate teacher are so limited and monotonous, that it is very hard to display eminent ability in their working. In the great majority of schools a master has the instruction of one particular class, which, after a year's attendance, passes to a colleague's exclusive care; and year after year a gradually diminishing class changes its teacher, until a remnant of it closes its school-time under the charge of the head-master. In other words, the division of