applied for the benefit of the grant, but the petition was passed over, and the money appropriated to Scotch schools exclusively; on what grounds we are not aware. Certain it is, that the National Society has

no less than forty model or central schools, any or all of which might easily be improved and placed upon a footing altogether becoming the service for which they are constituted, by the aid of a limited public grant. And other societies, there can be no doubt, would gladly extend the sphere of their operations, and carry similar plans into execution, from which they are only withheld by the want of funds.

The following account of the Glasgow Model School is introduced as a specimen of the kind of institution, some four or five of which ought to be immediately formed under the direction and control of the Church, out of the existing Central training schools:

"The seminary will consist of infant, juvenile, and commercial schools; a female school of industry, with one class-room to each model-school, and thirteen for training the Normal students; also rector's-hall, museum, library, and committee-rooms; each of the model-schools to have a play-ground for healthful exercise and moral superintendence. Such an establishment required a much larger space of ground than could easily be procured, except at a most extravagant price, contiguous to a dense population of the working classes. A small field was fixed on,-value 2540.,-and purchased at a moderate price per square yard. The situation is Dundas Vale,-in the immediate vicinity of a large manufacturing population.

"The buildings when completed, including the ground, will cost 9000. At present, however, as government has declined giving any answer to the applications made, the committee are proceeding with the two great wings, embracing two-thirds of the proposed buildings, at a cost of about 6500l., leaving the rector's-hall, library, museum, and several other rooms, unprovided. The four model-schools, with seventeen class-rooms, and two teachers' houses, are embraced in the two wings.

"In these buildings there will be accommodation for the daily training of one hundred teachers and above one thousand children, with every arrangement fitted to render the seminary a complete school-masters' college for the training of the teachers of youth.

"Besides salaries for the model-school teachers, a music-master, and one or two other masters for the Normal students, a respectable salary must be provided the rector, so that a permanent endowment will be required of at least 7001. a year, in addition to the small fees that are expected from the scholars. With the increased accommodation the new buildings afford, the committee will be enabled to carry out the training system to its fullest extent,-a system already so successful, and so calculated morally to elevate the whole mass of the population; for while it embraces the best elementary and scientific instructions, its foundations are, at the same time, laid broad and deep in the Scriptures of

* See National Society's Report, 1856, Appendix, VIII.

divine truth,—on the principle of our ancient parochial school system." -Glasgow Educational Report, 1836, p. 22, &c.

5. Grants in aid of prizes upon the examination of a given number of schools, with a salary or fee to inspectors, would be extremely useful at the present time.

*

The plan we have before our minds is stated in detail in all of the National Society's reports. The whole process is laid out there. It is very effective in some parts of the country, and would be so in all parts, if there were funds and sufficient prizes offered, nor would the promoters of schools hesitate to subscribe and meet grants offered for such a purpose. Lord Brougham's bill involves the appointment of a number of inspectors far more than would be sufficient to do all the work of this kind which we contemplate. In fact, the clergy, with other helpers, might do it themselves. Their certificates are deemed sufficient for obtaining the payment of the school-room grants; and they are already accustomed to make reports upon which, from time to time, the National Society votes small grants for prizes in the manner bere proposed. Suppose that six grants were assigned to each county, three of 51. each, two of 101. each, and one of 201., to be given away, with some increase from the county education fund, as prizes to the best schools, upon an accurate report of the examination of not less than forty or fifty different schools, after the plan which the National Society has pursued, the report to be certified by that or the British Society (or both, where both schools existed) as satisfactory and correct. The whole expense to the country would be less than 3000l. a year; and we are satisfied that the stimulus, trifling as it appears and really is, would suffice, nevertheless, to call forth a degree of exertion on the part of the teachers, (and even of the clergy, who would be kindly disposed to aid those who are their own helpers in the teaching and training of the young,) which would have a highly beneficial effect.

6. The last item we propose is the aiding in the purchase of playgrounds adjoining school-rooms, especially in large towns, for the purposes of healthy exercise to the children, and in order that they may be under some kind of superintendence during the hours of

recreation.

It would lead us into matter of inconvenient length to justify the recommendation to this effect. We trust that it may be taken up by the Committee of the House of Commons to which we have referred. But we willingly embrace the opportunity of offering our humble tribute of praise to the exertions and tact of the Educational Committee at Glasgow. They have drawn attention to this subject in a forcible manner. They have suggested many valuable improvements in the system of education which are mainly dependent on the turning of the play-ground to its proper account. They would have it made the means of acquiring a knowledge of the habits and disposition of the

See Appendix (every year) on District Societies and Examination of Schools.

pupils, when their minds are unbent and their spirits free as air, during the relaxation which follows the school-room occupations. #

If our suggestions on these particulars should gain any attention, we should of course expect that some of the plans proposed would be tried by way of experiment, rather than the whole of them be brought into operation at once, but if all were tried in the course of the next year, the experience which has been gained in the management of the school-room grants justifies us in stating that there need be no additional expense at public offices, on account of the work. It would be performed by the voluntary Societies, as in the case referred to; and the whole of the grants for the six different plans, (including the usual 20,0007. for the school-rooms,) need not exceed sixty thousand pounds.

See Third Report of Glasgow Society, quoted before.

NOTE.-Since the preceding article was written, the Bishop of London has published a sermon preached on behalf of the National Society, in compliance with the Queen's Letter. Those who know his lordship's happy style of exposition, the clearness of diction, and the singleness and unity of purpose for which his sermons are remarkable, will at once form an idea of the value of his testimony at the present moment, grounded and supported throughout by the text, "Wisdom is a defence, and money is a defence, but the excellency of knowledge is, that wisdom giveth life to them that find it." We refer to this publication because we conceive that it affords general and unqualified support to the arguments which it has been our business to set forth. There is a preface to the sermon of much value, in which his lordship renews "the protest he had already made, as a member of the legislature, against all attempts to introduce in this country a system of general education, which excludes, or omits, all direct instruction in the Bible." The protest against the Central Education Society, "which argues for the exclusion of religion from the regular intellectual instruction of schools," is repeated, and the charges against that institution are substantiated. His lordship is of opinion, and, we think, proves the point, that "neither the Central Society, nor the government itself, were it disposed to make the attempt, (which he does not believe to be the case,) could succeed in forcing upon the people of this country such an education as the former (Central Society) contemplates." He goes further and says, what we believe to be most true," that no system of education can be forced upon the people at large, which shall not be in conformity with the principles of the Church of England, and work by its instrumentality. It will be our own fault if it be otherwise!" The example of Holland, as favouring, to a certain extent, the views of the Central Education Society, is considered at some length, with other important matters, and we are happy to find that one of the plans we have enumerated (No. 2, p. 372) has his lordship's countenance and is likely to be carried into effect. "I entirely agree (his lordship writes) with Mr. Horner, (the translator of M. Cousin's work on Holland,) in thinking that an effort should be made to establish schools of a better sort; not merely however for the children of the working classes as we commonly understand the expression, but for the class next above them, the little tradesmen and artisans, for whose children a good and useful education, comprising sound religious instruction, might be provided at as small a price as that which they now pay for the worst possible kind of tuition. I have long been desirous of seeing this effort systematically made, and I now rejoice in the certainty of its being made, either by the National Society or by some kindred association acting upon the same principles."

ART. IV. 1. The Study of Morals vindicated and recommended, in a Sermon preached before the University of Oxford, February 5, 1837. By Henry Arthur Woodgate, B.D. Fellow of St. John's College.

2. The Law of the Mind and the Law of the Members, a Sermon preached before the University of Oxford on St. Peter's Day, 1837, with Notes and an Appendix. Wherein the Existence of an innate Moral Faculty is maintained, and some Observations are offered on Mr. Woodgate's late Sermon. By Charles Henry Craufurd, M.A. Rector of Old Swinford, Worcestershire, and Chaplain to the Marquis of Londonderry.

3. On the Foundations of Morals. Four Sermons preached before the University of Cambridge, November, 1837. By the Rev. William Whewell, Fellow and Tutor of Trinity College. 4. The Dangers and Safeguards of Ethical Science, the Inaugural Lecture of the Rev. W. Sewell, M.A. Professor of Moral Philosophy in the University of Oxford, and Sub-Rector of Exeter College.

5. Remarks upon the Aristotelian and Platonic Ethics, as a branch of the Studies pursued in the University of Oxford. By the Rev. Frederick Oakeley, M.A. Fellow of Balliol College. GREAT discoveries are not to be expected in moral philosophy. We can never be masters of its propositions as we are of those in mathematics and physics. For its objects are external to our understandings, and have a reality independent of, and co-ordinate with, or anterior to our own. The forms to which we refer material objects, when we are said to explain or understand their relations, are purely intellectual, and comprehended by our intellect. When they are once defined, we possess the means of deducing from them innumerable relations expressed in terms of space and time, and that with a certainty which we cannot question. But it is impossible to define any single object of moral philosophy without introducing some term, whose meaning we do not thus comprehend. Nor can our apprehension of the meaning of such terms be secured from error by mere instruction or attention, as it requires a certain state of the habits and affections, and presupposes acts and feelings.

Hence the existence of manifold errors in moral philosophy is no proof that the subject has not been in the main satisfactorily treated, any more than mistaken notions about the sun, held by Hottentots or Esquimaux, are a proof that the outlines of the

solar system were not correctly drawn by Newton, or filled up by La Place. Indeed it would rather be a phenomenon craving solution, if we saw the Church, the great organ of moral education, so crippled, and so limited in her operations as she is, and yet no growth of false systems arising from the undirected workings of human intellect, invited to high thoughts by her presence, but not duly aided by her guiding hand.

Those fundamental notions, which Mr. Whewell so well describes as being essential to the progress of physical science, are capable of being fixed and defined in terms purely intellectual, and the apprehension of these requires a certain intellectual education and exercise. But those of the science of Man can only be apprehended by Man educated as in his true spiritual state, and in the experience of his true spiritual relations.

Error may indeed often be demolished by the exposure of its inconsistency, but that process is not enough to supply its place with truth. And in such subject-matter as that of morals, the scattered fragments of an erroneous system are apt only to fall back upon a new centre, somewhat more remote than before, and assume again the appearance of a system capable of similar demolition and reconstruction.

Such is eminently the case with Utilitarianism, a system built on the negation of any real centre of our moral perceptions, and supposed proved when they are so ranged round an imaginary centre, that no inconsistency remains in sight. To every one who is not satisfied to build his system on its own baselessness, the primary negation of any absolute good prior to pleasureable sensation, is the one great inconsistency which disproves the whole. But that granted, the parts gravitate no-whither, and admit of endless refinement of adaptation.

But when the main principles of the science are assumed, and the truths of Revelation which exhibit them in life are believed, men are still liable to inaccuracies of thought, and are allured on all sides by systems professing to give the mind a mastery of this science, the notion of which is as flattering to pride as it is repugnant to reason.

The danger of these is obviated partly by the exposure of error, partly by the effects of discipline, partly by the right use of authority, and partly by the striking out of such lines of thought as may exhibit in a true order and coherency those objects which for the time being mainly engross the attention of thinking men.

Bishop Butler's Analogy and Sermons are an excellent specimen of this last. The balance of the faculties, and what deterVOL. XLVI. APR. 1838.

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