pose, and fully am I satisfied that a specific training is requisite for the office of an educator. There is scarcely an officenot even the ministry of religion itself-which requires more peculiar aptitudes; there is scarcely an office which involves higher or more sacred obligations; and it is indeed to be regretted, that even in the least insufficient class of instructors, the business of education should have been made a mere appendage to another profession—a means to eke out the resources which a certain position in society requires. Nor am I a believer in the doctrine that a less competent set of instructors will suffice for our popular schools. I do not indeed say that they demand the same extent and variety of knowledge as is needed in the Grammar-school. Yet in this very difficult and very important work, it is not easy to mention the branch of knowledge which may not be made serviceable even in a parish school;-but the great want is of persons who have studied, carefully studied, education as a science, who have therefore made themselves well acquainted with the human mind-the material, so to say, with which they have to work-who have had what may be a natural aptitude for communicating knowledge, and training the mental and moral powers, well disciplined and developed; who have acquired that first great lesson in the art of commanding, the habit of rational obedience, and have been led to govern themselves as an essential preliminary to governing and improving others. Now if these high results, these superior accomplishments are essential requisites in a good educator, how are they to be acquired if the work of education is still left to those who have failed in other pursuits-to those who have other and most absorbing duties,-how, in short, except by the adoption of a suitable plan for educating our educators? Something may be done by indirect means. If you establish good schools here and there up and down the country, and place in them the best masters you can find, you will not fail to exert a beneficial influence in the respective neighbourhoods. But all who have made the attempt are fully aware that the great difficulty is to find teachers competent to work out the ideas they have formed, and the plans they set in action. In no one thing more than in a school does success depend on the principal who is employed in its duties. The best devised system will prove of little avail and will soon degenerate into mediocrity or worse, unless you place over it a competent head; and even a bad system in good hands shall produce better results; for in a school it is emphatically true that the government which " is best administered is best." We have then no adequate resource—we have no sure warrant for

able instructors, but in an instrumentality which shall secure a good education for our educators.

One immediate consequence of such a preparatory discipline would supply ANOTHER REQUISITE-it would tend to create a rational confidence on the part of parents and patrons. One effect of the excitement which has now for some time prevailed on the subject of education, is in the existence of a restlessness and proneness to dissatisfaction on the part of parents towards the teachers of the young. So much, and for the most part so justly, have existing modes of tuition been impeached, that parents, whether able to form a correct judgment or not, and even to some extent children themselves, have become imbued with a disposition to find fault, to doubt, distrust, and perhaps subvert the plans which in any case may be pursued. This is an unhappy state of things. I do not mean that I wish it had never existed. It is a necessary part of the transition through which we are going, from what was very bad to what I believe will prove something better; and I would far rather that the uneasiness and discontent were universal as well as intense, than that society should continue to suffer under its educational wrongs. At the same time it is an evil. It doubles the difficulties of the teacher, interferes with his plans, his discipline, his peace, and general efficiency. However enlightened he may be, however zealous in the discharge of his duties, the educator, if liable to anxious, distrustful, and perhaps unwise interference from the parent, will find in that influence his greatest impediment, and cannot fail to have no small part of his labours and hopes frustrated. Many illustrations of this remark have come within my own knowledge. I know a teacher who received charge of a boy that had been subjected to habitual flogging, in order to secure his progress in the Latin language. He was but a child, and the result, as might have been anticipated, was, a thorough dislike of the study, and an entire inaptitude for its prosecution. Acting on the judicious plan that abstinence is the best remedy for a diseased appetite, the new teacher did not allow the boy to proceed with the language, but told him that he should do so when he had made progress in other pursuits. The plan was proceeding with every promise of a good result, when the parent interfered, intimated that he "paid for a classical education, and wished his son to have it." Explanation was tendered by the instructor-but in vain. The Latin was resumed, every effort was made-but no progress. Abstinence was again ventured on-again set aside by the parent; and the final result was, that the boy acquired little more good than a slight abatement of his inveterate distaste for the

study. I know of another case in which a boy who had contracted in low company the habit of using gross and offensive language, was removed from an institution because only moral means were tried for his correction, his parent stating that he thought it better his son should go where flogging was customary, as if even his actual master would depart from his practice and inflict corporal punishment on him, he should object to its being done, for then the discredit and the pain would be too marked and severe; and so the boy was sent to a school where the cane, by being in constant requisition, lost the only value it can have, in being used very seldom and but for special delinquencies.

If, however, teachers had in general received a competent education before they entered on the duties of their office, and if some outward sign and seal were adopted by which the instructed educator should be known, the confidence of parents would be at least so far conciliated, that they would be ready to think favourably of teachers till experience had proved their incompetency and thus the intelligent among them would not have their efforts obstructed, but enjoy full opportunity for carrying out their ideas into practice, and of proving their sufficiency for their important engagements. And such confidence would also not only increase their influence with their pupils, enabling them to realise their plans and wishes, and to dispense with severity of discipline, but also raise the profession generally in public esteem, secure it a less incompetent remuneration, and call into its walks persons of superior endowments. Next to the ministers of religion, there is no body of functionaries in whose character the public has so great an interest as in the instructors of the young. With them lies no small portion of the influence which determines the happiness of each successive age; true, they make not the laws, but theirs it is to form the character of the age which gives its bearing to legislation; they do not dispense justice, but they make our judges, and determine the complexion of our calendars; and if, of any class, emphatically of the most numerous, the most exposed to temptation, the least prosperous, and the least restrained by general refinement and prescriptive observances, emphatically of the working myriads, the educators demand our most careful attention. Once raise them, raise them to a sense of the importance and dignity of their office-to no niggard sufficiency for its duties; especially raise them to a high moral tone, to a self-respect, to genuine Christian benevolence, and you have by this one act done much to elevate and refine the tone, and enlarge the happiness of the great mass of the nation. The instructors of

the youth of the labouring population, are a body of men who associate more in our Protestant country with the adult portion of them, than any other educated class. At present these instructors are too little elevated above the people and too dependent on them, to exert a very beneficial influence; indeed it is to be feared that, as they are sometimes chosen by them for qualities which are more imposing than estimable, so do they even (inadvertently it may be,) encourage in their patrons the very habits of thought, feeling and action, which they ought gently but faithfully to resist and wear away. But if the instructors were themselves duly instructed, and especially if they were men of a high but not severe moral tone, of kind and courteous deportment, yet possessed of firmness of character, they could not fail to make their indirect influence highly advantageous to the people at large. A salutary stream of moral purity, as well as of intellectual light, would go forth from each school-establishment, and while we only aimed to educate the young, we should, in reality, be securing the improvement of the mature an improvement which in its turn would act beneficially on the schoolmaster as well as the school, refining his own character while it increased the efficiency of his direct instructions.

This train of thought brings me to a fourth requisite ; one of not less consequence than any I have yet noticed. There must be a change for the better in the character, feelings, and conduct, of not a few of the parents, before we can realise our wishes for the children. Whatever time may be occupied in school duties, how many hours does a child spend during which the professed instructor has no influence over him; spend under influences for which the parent only is and can be answerable! And these are the very periods when the young are most susceptible of impressions; when the moral and intellectual life opens spontaneously to surrounding influences, and receives them therefore most readily and most deeply. If in the actual state of things I am asked, who and what educates our young-I answer, their mother and their father, their brothers and sisters, their playmates, their casual companions. As it is, school is very much what the French term, "a false position," a state of unnatural and irksome restraint a sort of intellectual prison, whence the young escape as soon as they can, and escape with that gladness and impetuosity which give a zest and an impulse to every other influence in which they may be engaged. Thus even a factitious power is given to influences which are in themselves sufficiently strong; and whatever, therefore, presents itself to their acceptance out of the boundaries of the school, is eagerly accepted and VOL. III. No. 11.-New Series.

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warmly cherished. It is true that this may render the good of home a greater good than it would otherwise prove; but it also magnifies any evil which in any case may attach to it, while it makes the seductions of evil companionship irresistible. And only think how much danger there is that the evil, both within and without the precincts of home, should preponderate, when so many of the parents are either engaged in the factory, or other out-of-door employments, early and late, or offer to their children, in temper or in conduct, examples which it would be far better for them they should never behold. I can never regard it as any thing but a most unnatural and baneful state of things for the mother of a family to be found any where habitually, but in the midst of her domestic concerns. Hers is the in

fluence which Nature designed to be the creator of her children's character. There is no influence equal to that which she sheds forth; no teacher of morality comparable for effect with the kindness of her eye and lip, the warmth of her heart, the gentleness, sincerity, and simplicity of her bearing. Unhappy the child that is severed from these fostering and guardian powers; more, infinitely more unhappy he or she in whose case these ministers of purity and love are replaced by the harsh tone, the tongue of violence and deceit, the oft uplifted hand, the brow of anger, and a life of intemperance. Even under the worst domestic training, and the greatest domestic neglect, a good school education will do something; but how much of its good will be frustrated, how much of its best influence will be overpowered in such a case; nay, there is a fear that the very knowledge which this school imparts, may be converted into power for evil, by the perverting influence of an immoral home. Yes! we must look to the parents as well as the instructors of the young. We must cleanse and enlighten the hearths of our cottages; we must strive to wean the father from guilty pleasure, and to take the mother out of the factory, and train her to love and pursue her domestic duties, ere we can reasonably expect to reap the natural rewards of a good system of popular education. And here let me bear my humble but earnest testimony to the need, the urgent need there is, for a good system of female education, especially in our manufacturing districts. The general remarks, indeed, which I made in the two previous papers, are designed to apply as much to the education of girls as to that of boys; but so long as the first are to continue to be drafted off at an early age into our factories, special efforts for their improvement, both during their school time and subsequently, are imperatively required. As it is-what, let me ask-what training does a girl engaged in factory labour receive, of a nature to prepare her for those maternal