When this man came to Manchester, he brought his wife and five children. Four months afterwards a sixth child entered his family circle. He is now earning 18s. per week; he abstains from intoxicating drinks, and he uses no tobacco. His wife is a clean, indus trious, and careful woman, and the family appears altogether very respectable. The weekly 18s., according to the statement of the wife, who has the disposal of the whole, is expended as follows : Rent of the house 1 cwt. of coals Six of the family are members of a burial club Candles, soap, black-lead, oil, sand, and other A doctor's bill is owing, for which a weekly Total Thus 7s. 3d. per. week finds its necessary use before anything is provided for food and clothing, and we have 10s. 9d. left for these purposes, for the family of eight persons. This is spent as follows: The bulk of the children's food is dry bread, Potatoes, 20 lbs. ANIMAL FOOD. Butcher's meat for Sunday, 1 lb.; bacon for 0 7 0 0 0 8 : the week, 2 lbs. GROCERIES. 0 20 The 18s. is now exhausted, and the children have no milk, treacle, or fruit; and still worse, there is nothing left for clothing. The animal food amounts to an average of about seven-eighths of an ounce per day for each person of the family, and the butter to one-eighth of an ounce per day per person. Of sugar there is a quarter of an ounce per day for each. No fresh clothing can be obtained for any of the family until some of the children go to work, unless one of the family should die, and the burial-club money should be obtained, The wisest man or the most economical woman would find difficulty in showing how the children's school fees are to be paid. And to talk to a family in this position about Providence and economy would be the bitterest satire. The importance of such an instance lies in the fact that it represents tens of thousands of cases all over England. Although this man's family is large, it is not unusually so, and his earnings are also large, compared with those of very large classes everywhere. Looking at such a picture, many things are explained. The constant struggle for life, with many, wears down patience and moral courage; with others health fails, and refuge is found in a premature grave. Hence, all such inquiries as those I have mentioned, show an immense number of families without fathers. The Statistical Society found that of 1,054 families visited, the heads of 205, or nearly 20 per cent. of the whole, were widows. Hard work, insufficient food and clothing, confined dwellings, and never-ceasing anxiety, thus tell upon thousands. If the people were well-trained, it would be utterly impossible that such masses of them could remain in their present condition. It is because their best faculties have never been awakened that they are thus depressed. Mental poverty is with them the cause of material poverty. If our masses were educated, a spirit of enterprise and of mental activity would be awakened, which would raise the whole nation into a higher social and economical condition, and would all but annihilate pauperism. The Malthusian fallacy that there are so many places and no more, "at Nature's festive board," is long since exploded. There is an unbounded elasticity in Nature, and she yields her returns in proportion to the spiritual forces which man brings to bear. Our present system of society is an attempt to keep men with the dormant energies of a semibarbarous state, where the population is far too great for any but a highly advanced and complex society to exist. We are guilty of a neglect that must, ere long, re-act upon the intelligent and governing classes, if some decisive step be not taken to educate the whole nation. We do not need any radical change in the present system, to begin to do what is requisite. The one transparently manifest want at present is, the providing of free education for those who cannot pay. It would certainly be much better to have legal provision for this, than to provide it as a charitable boon; because many parents would be glad to claim education as a right, who would not take it from charity. In most large towns, the number of day-schools needs doubling. At present, local and benevolent efforts must be relied upon to provide these. If, in other towns, societies like the Education-Aid Society of Manchester were commenced, they would be of great service, not only in sending many poor children to school, and in aiding the formation of schools, but, probably, also, in showing what further legislation is required, and in preparing the way for some better system, by which, at length, education might be secured for every child born in these realms. The existing government system cannot possibly do all that is Ꮓ necessary. And it is not at all likely or desirable, that in this country, the central government should ever have the power of founding schools, appointing masters and mistresses, and wielding the influence and patronage which such an arrangement would give them. Yet the existing system has its definite sphere of useful action, the limitations of which are clearly marked out. Local organisations are needed to take up and help forward the work, without interfering either with the government inspection and grants, or the existing school management. English institutions are generally of gradual development and of slow growth. They are seldom founded on the overthrow of older institutions. It would appear to be in keeping with the national character that we should gradually improve, develope, and supplement existing organisations, rather than revolutionise them. Where there is sufficient public spirit and sincere desire to help forward the education of the people, to form a good general committee, representing all the chief sections of the community, this may be done. There is no more reason why sectarian differences should interfere with the impartial distribution of funds appropriated to such a purpose, than with those administered by municipal governments, or guardians of the poor. The government system has already prepared a clear line of impartiality, and as many local committees as are necessary may adopt the same general principles with perfect security. CLASSICAL EDUCATION. Classical Instruction. Why? When? For Whom? By W. B. HODGSON, LL.D. F.C.P. OUR shores are visited from time to time by intelligent foreigners eager to study our political institutions, our social customs, our processes of agriculture, or of manufacture. Let us suppose that such a one as the Parsee gentleman, whose zeal in the cause of Indian women won the sympathy of us all, a few days ago-understanding our language, but only slightly acquainted with our history and social condition, had arrived in this country anxious to to extend his knowledge and to turn his observations to practical account. I may well be excused from attempting to sketch in even the vaguest outline the elaborate and complex civilisation, with its bright lights and dark shadows-which would attract and bewilder, and almost overwhelm his attention. Let us suppose that, after a time, he gained some general insight into our mode of government, our manners, our religion, our laws, our mechanical industry, our commerce, our manifold and ever multiplying relations with all other nations of the globe, our rich and various literature our national character. Such a man might reflect thus : childrer are in this country as in every other, born weak, helpless, ignorant, -yielding easily, with a few marked individual exceptions, to the plastic hands of those who would mould them in this or that form, to this or that belief-capable of healthy growth and development from within, under the application of outward stimulus, but also of being crushed, stunted, or perverted; of becoming, in short, either lovely flowers and useful fruit, or useless-it may be even noxious-weeds. Such a reflection as this would naturally suggest the question: What is done in the way of teaching and training to qualify and dispose the embryo citisens of this great nation to take a useful and honourable place in the social system in which they are destined to live, to promote their own good, and that of their fellows; and, not least, to ensure that the next generation shall be wiser, better, happier, than that which is swiftly moving off the stage of life? To such a man as I have supposed it might perhaps occur:-In this country there are rich people and poor people; all have not equal means or opportunities; from all, equal results are not to be expected; but, surely, in the case of even the moderately rich, all will be done that the most enlightened intelligence can suggest to form, and store, and guide the youthful mind, and in the case of those less favoured by fortune, this same object will also be aimed at, and proportionately realised. Probably, then, the children of parents of the higher class are carefully instructed in the nature of their own constitution, bodily and mental, the conditions on which its soundness and happy working inevitably depend; its relations towards the diversified existences, animate and inanimate, which surround it; the terms on which future well-being must be, if at all, attained. In the structure and use of their own language- so rich and flexible and strong, so that even thought itself might grow clearer from the clear medium of its utterance. In the art of tracing the relation of cause and effect so as to avoid not only mental error and confusion, but unwise and injurious conduct also; in the elements of the arts and sciences, on the knowledge and application of which hangs the prosperity of the world, and especially of this nation; in their own country's literature-abounding, as it does, in noble monuments of every kind of mental activity, and with equal power to instruct, to rouse, to purify, to direct, to charm, to polish, to strengthen, to refine, to make strong the delicate, to make delicate the strong; in the languages and literatures of other nations, whose social characteristics are more or less different, but with all of whom the advantage and even the necessity of free intercourse are daily on the increase, and from all of whom much is to be learned, without the sacrifice, nay, to the enhancing of national and individual originality and independence. Our supposed foreign visitor might not, and probably would not, work out in any great detail the programme of a system of instruction (i. e. building up), such as he might expect to find; but it is not at all improbable that, looking at the facts of the case, and estimating future obligations and necessities, he would reckon most confidently on finding a foremost place assigned to such studies as I have roughly indicated. Well, what would be his astonishment if he were told that in the school-training, not of the poor only, but of the rich also, the very rich, every one of these subjects is more or less neglected, that what seemed to him the most important and indispensable things of all are left to future chance, or, at the most, to a later provision; that during the whole course of the school-life, extending over ten, twelve, or more years, the mind is applied almost exclusively, in the best cases mainly, to the languages and literatures of two ancient nations who ceased to exist centuries ago, who lived before even the infancy of our modern arts and sciences, whose religion and morals were widely at variance, if not wholly inconsistent, with the religion and morals which here prevail, and which are held as a revelation from heaven itself, nations whose people, whose great men even were stained with gross vices, whose military glories (in the case of one of these at least) have so dazzled the eye and corrupted the moral sense of subsequent generations as greatly to retard the peaceful progress of commerce and civilisation! Even if he found, as doubtless he would find on farther inquiry, that these literatures contain much, very much, that is beautiful and good, and that examples of heroism and virtue, worthy of all praise, are scattered over the blood-stained records of their history, I do not think that his astonishment would be greatly diminished; while it would be vastly increased, and would approach amazement and even incredulity, were he to learn that, on the authority of able men, themselves the subjects of this system and favourable to its continuance, this system, as pursued in its most richly endowed and in all ways most favoured institutions, is declared a failure-" a failure," and here I quote the "Times" Summary of the Report of the recent Commissioners-"a failure even if tested by those better specimens, not exceeding one-third of the whole, who go up to the Universities. Though a very large number of these have literally nothing to show for the results of their school-hours from childhood to manhood, but a knowledge of Latin and Greek, with a little English and arithmetic, we have here the strongest testimony that their knowledge of the former is most inaccurate, and their knowledge of the latter contemptible. A great deal is taught under these two heads, but very little is learned under either. A small proportion become brilliant composers and finished scholars, if they do not manage to pick up a good deal of information for themselves; but the great multitude cannot construe an easy author at sight, or write Latin prose wthout glaring mistakes, or answer simple questions in grammar, or get through a problem in the first two books of Euclid, or apply the higher rules of arithmetic. A great many, amounting to about a third at Christ Church, and a fifth at Exeter College, fail to pass the common Matriculation Examination. Not less than a fourth are plucked for their Little-go, a most elementary examination in the very subjects which we have just mentioned; and of the rest |