schoolmaster of at least seven years' standing," whilst the inspectors report "on the discipline, efficiency, and general character of the school."

It is obvious that these examiners might just as well be appointed by the Committee of Council as by any local board, and that the above very suitable premium or grant might at once be extended to all examined schools if the Committee of Council adopted tomorrow so judicious a decision. Some such allowance for results, whether attained through a certificated master or not, and whether in a school with a boarded floor or not, has long been contended for, and nothing is needed for it but the willingness of officials, which would readily be backed by Parliament and the country.

As to cost, we may again refer to the Report of Mr. Mattthew Arnold on French schools, where, after speaking of the small salaries and efficient examinations of French inspectors, he adds :

The habits of our country are hardly compatible with official salaries as low as those of France. But there can be no doubt that a certain plainness and cheapness is an indispensable element of a plan of education which is to be very widely extended. In operations on a really vast scale, that rigid economy, even in the smallest matters, which in very limited operations may be thought overstrained, becomes an imperious necessity. The department to which I have the honour to belong is, perhaps, the most rigidly administered of any of the English public departments; it is of very recent date; it has grown up under the broad daylight of publicity. But its habits were formed when the schools under its supervision might be counted on the fingers. "On ne dote pas une armée," mournfully cries M. Eugène Rendu, contrasting the condition of French inspectors with that of their English brethren; but an army the English school inspectors must become if they are to meet the exigence of a national school system. Yet what nation can afford to employ in such a service 275 highly trained diplomatists, selected to conduct delicate negotiations with important Rectors? The thing is impossible; a vast body like that of the French inspectors must necessarily be taken from a large class, paid at a lower rate, and recruited in part, as the French inspectors are with eminent advantage recruited, from among the masters of elementary schools. "Should you not gain in some respects by having your inspectors drawn from a higher class in society?" I asked M. Magin. He said that the work of primary inspection was perfectly well done by the present staff, and, so far as I had the means of observing, I entirely agree with him.

The Commissioners conclude this part of their Report by declaring, "We especially adhere to the principles to which the present system is indebted for no small part of its success, non-interference both in the religious training which is given by different denominations of Christians, and absence of all central control over the direct management of schools. Omitting all other grounds on which we think this course desirable, our present inquiry has im

pressed us with the conviction that no other is practicable in the present state of religious feeling in England. Not only does it seem to us certain that the members of all religious bodies would be dissatisfied with any change in this respect, but the fact that religious education has been working with success upon this basis during the last twenty years, has given to this principle a position in the country from which any attempt to dislodge it would destroy much that has been gained, and would give a dangerous shock to our system of education."

In comparing mixed and denominational education, one thing strikes us at first sight, although we are not surprised that the Commissioners do not seem to have been struck by it. Mixed education, if it favours any one, favours the minority, denominational the majority. Can we doubt that this is the real reason why, hitherto, the same men have been in very many cases strenuous in supporting denominational education in England, and in opposing it in Ireland? For in Ireland the Protestants are the minority, in England the Catholics.

Against compulsory education the report of the Commissioners is decisive. They, however, seem favourable to the plan of extending to all occupations the "half-time" clauses of the Factory Act, of which the Rev. J. Marshall says:-"It has, so far as my experience and observation enable me to judge, been eminently successful, and is, I think, the best mode of applying a compulsory motive to the parents, and ought to be extended to all employments of the working classes without exception, by such steps and with such modifications as may be found necessary"; of course taking due care that no child is sent to any school except such as may be approved by its parents.

The other modes of indirect compulsion suggested are, that parents should pay school fees for their children, whether they attend school or not; and that no boy or girl should be employed who does not produce a certificate of having passed a certain school examination. These and possibly other suggestions deserve careful consideration. The object aimed at is good, but care must be taken that, in the endeavour to attain it, hardship be not inflicted or conscience violated. The chief difficulty is in agricultural labour.

The Committee of Council, in their last Report, say:-"The inspectors who refer to the question of compulsory education express themselves, without exception, as favourable to the principle of it." This is rather inexact. Mr. Byrne (p. 41) reports, after referring to the growing feeling amongst farm labourers in favour of education, "If the very humblest of farm labourers already counts schooling as among the things he cannot do without, there is yet hope that, in course of time, education may become

virtually compulsory without the need of any legislative enactments.' Mr. Du Pock (p. 82) writes:-"Of compulsory education as insisting upon parents sending their children to school under certain penalties, I have rarely found an advocate among either country gentry or country clergy. I have sometimes found a disposition to approve of a law by which indirect compulsion would be brought to bear upon parents, in the form of a prohibition of their children being engaged in actual agricultural labour before some fixed age, unless they have passed some standard of examination in elementary subjects before one of Her Majesty's inspectors." Indeed, this seems to be the principle of indirect compulsion which some other inspectors recommend. And Mr. Mitchell (p. 140) writes: Build your schools, establish your masters, provide your appliances, let these have their full play; let the parents, nay, even the children themselves, observe the benefits to be derived from education properly conducted, and your schools will fill. All good schools are filled with scholars, and, if not quite self-supporting, are nearly so. Your success will then relieve you of the necessity for any general compulsory act. Having thus sifted the corn from the chaff, it will become more easy to apply compulsion on the idle, the indifferent, the licentious, the base, and the criminal. To pass a law which includes the respectable and the disreputable, the active and the industrious with the dissolute and worthless, is an insult to the former."

Circumstanced as we are, our care should evidently be to do nothing which may overthrow or injure the great system of education already working well, but to introduce such measures as are necessary to extend its benefits to the whole country, and, as far as we can, to increase its efficiency.

Mr. Stokes makes some valuable suggestions as to the means by which the benefits of the existing schools may be extended to classes now excluded from them. Our space compels us merely to refer to them (p. 323). There is also a valuable suggestion that in many instances women might be employed as teachers instead of men. This we think specially likely to be useful in Catholic schools. An inspector reports that this change is rapidly spreading, and has been found to answer in the United States as well as in England. "A good mistress is better than a bad master, and a good mistress may be had for the salary usually paid to an inferior master" (p. 175).

An inspector reports that injury has arisen from the "hard-andfast line which allows no child to be presented for examination who has attended less than 200 times.' He proposes to subtitute for this twenty-four times. We have no doubt good would result from the change. We have selected only a few out of many practical suggestions as examples of the means by which our present system might easily be made more effective.

We are glad to observe Mr. Stokes reporting: "Schoolmasters are growing more content with their position and prospects. The laborious and efficient men find that payment by results tends to increase their credit and their pay. Some who were scared away in the panic are returning to the employment of teaching. More lads offer themselves for apprenticeship as pupil-teachers; in short, the many and considerable advantages of the teacher's lot begin to reassert their influence." We would hope that their worldly prospects may be still further improved both by further expansion of Government aid, by co-operation amongst themselves, and by material encouragement from others to provide by special insurance annuities for teachers in old age. The last report of the Committee of Council expresses the opinion that "the want of some provision by the masters themselves for sickness and old age is a matter deserving the serious consideration of the Government."

In closing these volumes, we are forcibly struck with one consideration. We who desire to defend and perfect the existing system of education, have an immense advantage in the fact that what we urge is in exact accordance with the national feelings, habits, and, we will add, prejudices of Englishmen. It has grown up like most of our institutions, no one very well knew how. Men who wished to introduce other systems found themselves obliged to fall by degrees into this and to content themselves with it, because the English people with whom they had to do would have nothing else. Thus in the course of thirty or forty years it has fallen so well into its place among English institutions, and jolted in so firmly among them as the machine of English administration made its way over somewhat rough roads, that it could not now be removed without giving a shock to our whole system. Nothing can be more in keeping with our whole polity than a great system which has thus grown up, because in one place after another it was found to "work well," although it might not be easy to have laid down beforehand the theory on which it is built. Our opponents, on the contrary, are proposing to overthrow institutions for the education of the poor, which have been the natural result of our own experience, and instead of them apply all at once to every part of England, town and country alike, a system never yet tried in England, and which, in foreign nations where it has been tried, was adopted on mere theory, and has in every one of them broken down in practice. And this system is one at first sight inconsistent with all our habits, institutions, and maxims. For instance, they are undertaking to persuade a nation whose boast is, that "an Englishman's house is his castle," and that the word "home" is peculiar to their language, that the education of children belongs not to their parents but to the State. If Catholics are defeated in a struggle which they begin with such advantages, it will certainly be their own fault.

ART. II.-ROME.

Le Parfum de Rome. Par Louis VEUILLOT. Paris: Gaume Frères.

HE unity which runs through all God's dealings with

the earth, Jerusalem and Rome. They are both God's cities, the "cities of the Great King," His "holy mountains." The one founded by the Most High Himself, but cast away by Him because it knew not the hour of its visitation; the other conquered from the grasp of the "Prince of this world," and made holy to God and to His Christ. Jerusalem and Rome sum up within themselves the destinies of man. What can be more touching than the language of human affection in which the passionless and changeless God deigns to clothe the revelation of His election and reprobation of Jerusalem, even before He had taken upon Himself the nature of man, and stood in her streets, and taught in her temple? And when He came in the flesh, and stood upon the Mount of Olives, and looked down upon Jerusalem, how unutterably tender is the compassion of the human tears which He shed over the city of His love!

But marvellous as was the love of God for Jerusalem, until she forced Him by her own self-willed blindness and in. gratitude to leave her, it is even more marvellous to think of the relation in which she stood both to God and man. She was the throne of the Majesty of the Uncreated, the dwellingplace of the God of Israel, the one only city on the whole earth which the true God could call His own, the "city of perfect beauty, the joy of all the earth." From everlasting God had chosen her to be the type not only of His bride, His spotless one, His future Church, both militant on earth and triumphant in heaven, but of every human soul espoused by Him in the mystical nuptials of His grace. Jerusalem was the one beacon-light in the world-wide ocean of darkness and error, until He Who is the "true light which enlighteneth every man who cometh into the world" came down from heaven, and the knowledge of the Lord began to cover the earth as the "covering waters of the sea." She was the seat of truth, for in her alone was the temple and priesthood of the living God. She was the well-spring of all light, and hope, and peace, and forgiveness, and love, and joy, and rest, so far as these could exist on earth, until He appeared in Whom