for lessening intoxication, one ever active and most malignant source of crime would be diminished.

There is one class of punishments frequently inflicted for minor offences, which appear to me too often open to a similar objection-I mean pecuniary fines. Among the poor the punishment falls, not on the offender, but in reality on his family. A drunken or violent man is more likely to sacrifice the comforts, nay, the necessaries, of his wife and children, than to forego even his own indulgences to pay a fine. The former may suffer to some extent by the loss of his labour during imprisonment, but he must bear at least the chief part of the pain inflicted by it: of the fine they bear nearly all. For the wealthy, fines, such as we often see inflicted even for serious assaults, are so inadequate that they are in truth no punishment at all.

I have said that this Section of the Association deals with questions which arise only where crime exists. The review upon which I have ventured may lead us to the conclusion that the field is not the most hopeful to labour in. The fear of punishment is weak, and its application uncertain. Reformation works in a limited sphere. Other known remedies for existing crime are few and imperfect. Statistical evidence of the decrease of crime shows to some extent the success of such measures; but we are aware how fallacious such evidence is. Many other causes leading to the same result co-operate, for which allowance must always be made-the general improvement of society, the spread of education, and the higher moral tone which pervades all classes. If then, while the tendency to crime exists, no punishment can be so certain and severe as effectually to deter, and no discipline so well-devised as surely to reform, where are we to look further for improvement? Let the effects of these co-operative influences teach us. The great social problems, how to banish the want and misery which so often stimulate and seem to excuse crime, and the ignorance and vice which make the fitting instruments for its practice, are those which go to the root of the matter. They embrace a field more hopeful and more extensive than is open to the labours of our special Section. They aim at preventing the growth of the noxious plants which our labours but struggle to destroy; they annihilate the disease which our labours can only mitigate. It is a great advantage of this Association that all these questions are considered more or less in connexion with each other. It is perhaps not to be hoped for among imperfect beings as we are, that society will ever exist in that exalted state which philanthropic enthusiasts have delighted to paint, when crimes

will be no more; but it is not a wholly visionary hope that we may approach it more and more nearly. Let us trust, under the blessing of Divine Providence, that the topics we have been considering will yearly become less and less important, and that the time may yet arrive when the least engrossing branch of our studies will be that which deals with punishment and reformation; and the least extensive field of our labours, the "Repression of Crime."

HE history of modern, or at least of Christian, education in Europe, as distinguished from that of ancient Greece and Rome, may be traced, on the authority of an authentic record, to the period immediately preceding the irruption of the Goths under Alaric into Italy. În an epistle written about the year 401, and addressed to Læta, a Roman matron, Jerome expounds with his usual ability the course of training and education befitting, in his opinion, a young female of gentle birth and Christian principles. The younger Paula, to whom this epistle refers, was grand-daughter of the celebrated Paula, the friend and fellow labourer of Jerome, and belonged to one of the most illustrious families of Rome; a descendant in one line from the Gracchi and the Scipios, and connected in another with the imperial house of the Cæsars. Notwithstanding the austerity of his views, the ancient Father does not hesitate to borrow largely from the Institutes of Quintilian, and, in his counsels to Læta, ascetic principles are singularly mixed with maxims of worldly wisdom. Paula is neither to hear nor to utter anything not marked by reverence for God. Her playmates and attendants are to be kept from unhallowed associates, lest they may communicate in a worse form the evil they learn from others. In her school learning, she is to have companions whose success may stimulate her to exertion, and even rouse her envy. She is not to be rebuked, if slow, but is to be excited by praise, so that she may rejoice when successful and grieve when defeated. A dislike to study must be guarded against with especial care, lest the feeling acquired in infancy might continue in riper years. Paula's education is to be chiefly entrusted to a master of erudition and probity; a proposal justified by Jerome on the plea, that a learned man should not be ashamed to do for a noble virgin what Aristotle

did for the son of Philip. Jerome dwells strongly on the importance of early training, and compares the difficulty of restoring either the manners or the morals, when injured by faulty treatment, to that of restoring its pristine whiteness to a garment dyed with Tyrian purple. The zealous Father does not hesitate to denounce the use of ornaments, and some of his observations on this subject may even now be read with profit. "Pierce not the ears," he exclaims, "nor paint with white and purple a face consecrated to Christ; neither press the neck with gold and pearls, nor load the head with precious stones, nor dye the hair with red."

"Nec capillum irrufes," are the words of Jerome, not less applicable to the fashions of the present day than to those of the remote age in which they were written. Paula is to be instructed both in the Greek and Latin languages, after the example of the distinguished ancestress whose name she bore. The duty of the parent is enforced by Jerome in memorable words, which I cannot refrain from quoting in the original. "Te habeat magistram, te rudis imitetur infantia. Nihil in te et patre suo videat, quod si fecerit, peccet. Mementote vos parentes virginis, et magis eam exemplis doceri posse, quam voce." Let the unformed child have thee its mother as guide and pattern. Let it behold nothing in thee or its father, which, if it were to imitate, it would sin. Remember that ye are the parents of the virgin, and that she will learn more from example than from precept.

In little more than a century after the death of Jerome, the rude tribes, who overran the Roman empire, arrested almost completely the pursuit of learning, and a very dark night succeeded to the brilliant day, which opened with uncommon splendour in the age of Homer, and closed dimly and obscurely in that of Boëthius. The first glimmering of returning light was seen in the island where we are now assembled, and in the seventh and eighth centuries, the schools of Armagh, of Clonard, of Ross, and of Bangor became famous throughout Europe. The testimony of Alcuin, the friend and preceptor of Charlemagne, would be conclusive on this point, even if it were not confirmed by the statements of Bede. Alcuin, in his life of the missionary Willibrord, who rose to great eminence in France during the reign of Pepin, relates how Willibrord was attracted to Ireland by the celebrity of its schools, and how he spent twelve years there in scholastic and sacred studies. But of these schools no works or other monuments remain, and they are known to us only by the descriptions of foreign writers.

The foundation in the twelfth and following centuries of

universities, in which the liberal arts and sciences were taught by distinguished masters, the revival of the study of the Roman law, and the cultivation of the literature of Greece, gave an impulse to human thought at the close of the middle ages, which even in this time of progress it is difficult fully to estimate. The earliest universities in Europe were those of Bologna and Paris; in the latter, the students are stated, on good authority, to have been at one time as numerous as the citizens, and they enjoyed rare and peculiar privileges. Before the year 1500, Germany possessed fourteen universities, Italy twelve, France ten. In Spain and Portugal, in Denmark and Norway, in the Low Countries, in Switzerland, in England and Scotland, universities were to be found, the students in many of them being counted by thousands. In Ireland, the state of things was very different. Far from possessing, as it did, six hundred years before, schools of learning which attracted the youth of other lands, it was almost the only country in Western Europe, at the time of the Reformation, without a university. In the early part of the fourteenth century, Clement V. issued a bull founding a university in Dublin, and another bull for the same purpose was promulgated by his successor, John XXII. The Dean of St. Patrick's was appointed Chancellor, and the cathedral was used, or intended to be used, for the purposes of the university. But the university, or the country, was too poor to maintain the students, and notwithstanding the encouragement of the Church, the project terminated in failure; so that, in the language of a public document of the reign of Edward IV, "Ireland had then no university, nor general place of study within it." An attempt to found one in Drogheda, in 1465, was not more successful. The present university of Dublin dates from the year 1591, and has proved a successful and prosperous seminary of learning.

In order to confine my observations within moderate bounds, and to give them a definite direction, I propose, in the remainder of this address, to give a short outline of the history of primary or elementary education in Ireland, and at the same time to refer to its history in England, as far as may be necessary for a clear apprehension of the present state of the question in the two countries. The early history of education in this country presents some features of permanent interest, and may even now be read with advantage. It will be found that in every measure for the promotion of education in Ireland, some other object of public policy was at the same time aimed at, and the intellectual improvement of the people was, in every case, made subordinate to the attainment of that