with diving-machines live in the space of a helmet, which merely confines the head. In the majority of instances of the defective ventilation of schools, the palid countenance and delicate health of the schoolboy, which is commonly laid to the account of over-application to his book, is simply due to the defective construction of the schoolroom. In the dame-schools, and schools for the labouring classes, the defective ventilation is the most frequent and mischievous."

"Mr. Riddal Wood, an agent of the Manchester Statistical Society, thus describes some of the crowded schools found in the course of examinations, from house to house, of the condition of the town-population in Manchester, Leeds, Hull, and York:

"I may mention, that in one school, where the average attendance was, I think, thirty-six, not above eight children were present. Upon my inquiring of the mistress as to the reason, she stated that the remainder of her scholars had been taken with the measles. I perceived a bed in the school-room, upon which lay a child much disfigured by that complaint. Another child of the mistress had died of the measles. I had reason to believe that the contagion had been communicated originally from that child, because the cases of the scholars all occurred subsequently. In a school in Liverpool, having above forty scholars in average attendance, I found the number diminished to somewhere about ten. On inquiring into this case, I ascertained that it arose from the prevalence of scarlet fever, and the master made this remark: It is a very strange thing how this fever should have attacked almost all the children coming to my school, whilst none of my neighbours have got it.' I attributed that to the very crowded state of the school. The room was very low. When the whole of his scholars were in attendance, it must have been excessively crowded. There was no thorough ventilation. I found that in many of the schools there were from twenty to (in some cases) nearly a hundred scholars crammed into a dirty house or cellar, without air or ventilation, the effluvia from whose breath and clothes was very offensive, and must, I am sure, be very injurious to the children's health. In most of these places, too, I have found that the ordinary household occupations have been carried on by the old women.-(pp. 119, 120.)

"Another inquirer states, that in the neighbourhood of Bolton he saw seventy scholars cooped up in a badly ventilated room, not twelve feet square."

The several extracts here given from this very interesting and valuable Report, are but a few instances, and those not the most frightful, of the condition in which it too clearly proves that the larger part of our countrymen --by far the larger part of the working men and their families are, in Christian England. I have not transferred to these pages the pictures of the cellars of Liverpool and Manchester and our other manufacturing towns, nor of the inhabitants (there are 9,500 of them in Liverpool alone) who rot in these loathsome dwellings, often lying twelve or more on the ground of a single cellar, without even straw or shavings under them, and with typhus fever "constantly present among them :" nor of the hardly less appalling misery of the cottages of the peasantry in many parts of the country, where, as in the cellars of the towns, men, women, and children are huddled together by day and night in a single room, and where the moral degradation of beings made in the image of God-His children, and our brothers and sisters -might make us for a moment almost forget the sore evils of body under which they are bowed down without hope, almost without desire, of deliverance. Let the reader turn to the book, and study these for himself; he cannot do it too thoughtfully, too religiously. And then let him ask himself, What remedy? The evidence is conclusive and the more so, because given by witnesses whose bias (at least of all of them who are connected with the administration of the Poor-Law, of which the avowed object is to induce habits of independence and self-guidance

among the poor), is exactly the other way-that these degraded multitudes will not and cannot help themselves: that if they are not to sink lower and lower, drawing all above them into the same gulf, some deliverance must come to them from without. That an effectual deliverance is possible, no man can doubt who believes that 'to Almighty God all things in heaven and earth, and under the earth, do bow and obey;" and that He is the Lord of this Nation, having made a covenant with our fathers and with us to be our King, our Ruler, and our Deliverer, "for a thousand generations." As little can we doubt, that the instrument of God's work is to be the Church, which, and which alone, has done all the work of this kind from the dawn of our history: the Church, first employing her own proper organization through the land, and then influencing the State, and all of us as incorporated members of the State, to co-operate with her. For the aid of these must not be wanting, or the work will fail. The clergy must know and feel, not only that they are the ministers of the Catholic and Apostolic Church, but also that they are members of an Estate of the Realm, endowed with civil rank and property that they may be the centres of civilization in every parish of England: and laymen must act not only as laymen of that Church, but also as landlords or masters, as magistrates or aldermen, or town-councillors, or whatever else may be their respective civil places in their Estates, as peers or commons. Lastly, the State itself, legislative and executive, must do its part. Of the duties of the State, and of all of us as members of the State, and of their indispensableness in the work of moral reformation and intellectual enlightenment -in a word, of EDUCATION. I have spoken thus on the authority of the Report before me: for I think that Mr. Chadwick fully makes out the conclusions quoted at the beginning of this article (as indeed those I have not given), and also that the evils therein recited are proved to be remediable by the united efforts of Parliament and of men of station and influence in their respective neighbourhoods.* But the reader will observe, that these conclusions are (for the objects we are considering), negative. They show that education will not stop physical deterioration, unless it act by teaching people to call in the aid of physical remedies, and that physical deterioration can and does make men almost incapable of education or moral influences, while physical health is favourable to these. But the education itself is still to be found, and that not only for the poor, who are to be raised out of their wretched condition, but also for the rich who are to raise them.

The reader-the parish schoolmaster, for it is for the honour of being read by him that we aspire in this Journal-will doubtless run before me in his thoughts. He will see his own place and calling in the great work of healing our national diseases clearly marked out: if he feels how deeply, how all but hopelessly those diseases have eaten into the heart of his country, he must not therefore despond, much less throw

Since this was written, Sir J. Graham has announced that Mr. Chadwick has been instructed to prepare a Bill for carrying into effect the recommendations in their Report, and that it will be submitted to a Commission, which the Crown is about to appoint for inquiry into such subjects, before being proposed to Parliament.

up his task in despair, but only thence learn to trust more habitually in a strength not his own if he sees in his every-day practice that not systems and mechanical arrangements, nor even intellectual energies, will suffice to produce that real and effectual impression on his scholars which alone deserves the name of education, then may he learn to believe more fully that spiritual powers-powers by which he can address the hearts and consciences of those scholars-are entrusted to him as a member and officer of the Church of Christ.

This Report suggests another important consideration in reference to Education. When the Government proposed four years ago to esta blish a system of State Education, the country refused, with unusual unanimity, to permit such a scheme; and the result was an arrangement with the heads of the Church, of which the purport was, that the Church should retain its old position as the source and the channel of the Education of the nation, but that the State, by its inspectors, should see that the streams were really and efficiently conducted to all parts of the land. Yet those who then yielded to the voice of the country have not given up the hope of ultimate success; and there is so much philanthropy and moral earnestness in the purpose that we may expect to see the numbers of its advocates increased from the ranks of our truest patriots. It is not my intention to enter upon this question, or to attempt to argue with those who have drawn their conclusions and entered upon a course of action in favour of State education, in a work designed to give practical help to schoolmasters. But there is a growing moral feeling among politicians of all ranks, a feeling that the State, and the legislature of the State, are bound to have moral ends in view in all their acts and good as this feeling is in itself, it is leading, or in danger of leading, many of the more earnest men among us into the fatal error of looking favourably on that scheme of State Education as a means of effecting great reformation of pressing national evils with less difficulty or delay than any other. And as I think this tendency must be strongest among earnest schoolmasters, because they are best acquainted with the need of education, I would suggest to those of them whose thoughts are inclining that way, to weigh well the evidence of this Report, and the opinions which the able framer of it has come to upon that evidence, and then see whether these do not supply ample proof that the State and Statesmen have indeed a moral work to do, and that unless they do it no Education of the people is possible: but that that work is not, and cannot be, Education itself.

EDW. STRACHEY.

Poetry.

THE YOUTH OF THE WANDERER.
[A continuation of "The Boyhood, &c.," in p. 63.]

Such was the Boy,—but for the growing Youth
What soul was his, when, from the naked top
Of some bold headland, he beheld the sun
Rise up, and bathe the world in light! He look'd-

Ocean and earth, the solid frame of earth
And ocean's liquid mass, beneath him lay

In gladness and deep joy. The clouds were touch'd,
And in their silent faces did he read
Unutterable love. Sound needed none,
Nor any voice of joy; his spirit drank
The spectacle: sensation, soul, and form
All melted into him; they swallow'd up
His animal being; in them did he live,
And by them did he live; they were his life.
In such access of mind, in such high hour
Of visitation from the living God,

Thought was not; in enjoyment it expired.
No thanks he breathed, he proffer'd no request;
Rapt into still communion that transcends
Th' imperfect offices of prayer and praise,
His mind was a thanksgiving to the Power
That made him; it was blessedness and love!

A Herdsman on the lonely mountain tops, Such intercourse was his, and in this sort Was his existence oftentimes possess'd. O then how beautiful, how bright appear'd The written Promise! Early had he learn'd To reverence the Volume that displays The mystery, the life which cannot die; But in the mountains did he feel his faith. Responsive to the writing, all things there Breathed immortality, revolving life, And greatness still revolving; infinite; There littleness was not; the least of things Seem'd infinite; and there his spirit shaped Her prospects, nor did he believe,-he saw. What wonder if his being thus became Sublime and comprehensive! Low desires, Low thoughts, had there no place; yet was his heart Lowly; for he was meek in gratitude,

Oft as he call'd those ecstacies to mind,

And whence they flow'd; and from them he acquired
Wisdom, which works thro' patience; thence he learn'd
In oft-recurring hours of sober thought

To look on Nature with an humble heart,
Self-question'd where it did not understand,
And with a superstitious eye of love.

So pass'd the time; yet to the nearest town
He duly went with what small overplus
His earnings might supply, and brought away
The Book that most had tempted his desires
While at the Stall he read. Among the hills
He gazed upon that mighty Orb of Song
The divine Milton. Lore of different kind,
The annual savings of a toilsome life,

His School-master supplied; books that explain
The purer elements of truth involved

In lines and numbers, and, by charm severe,

(Especially perceived where Nature droops,
And feeling is suppress'd) preserve the mind
Busy in solitude and poverty.

These occupations oftentimes deceived
The listless hours, while in the hollow vale,
Hollow and green, he lay on the green turf
In pensive idleness. What could he do,
Thus daily thirsting, in that lonesome life,
With blind endeavours? Yet, still uppermost,
Nature was at his heart as if he felt,

Though yet he knew not how, a wasting power
In all things that from her sweet influence

Might tend to wean him. Therefore, with her hues,
Her forms, and with the spirit of her forms,
He clothed the nakedness of austere truth,
While yet he linger'd in the rudiments
Of science, and among her simplest laws.
His triangles-they were the stars of heaven,
The silent stars! Oft did he take delight
To measure th' altitude of some tall crag
That is the eagle's birth-place, or some peak,
Familiar with forgotten years, that shows
Inscribed, as with the silence of the thought,
Upon its bleak and visionary sides,
The history of many a winter storm,
Or obscure records of the path of fire.

And thus before his eighteenth year was told,
Accumulated feelings press'd his heart

With still increasing weight; he was o'erpower'd
By nature, by the turbulence subdued
Of his own mind; by mystery and hope,
And the first virgin passion of a soul
Communing with the glorious Universe.
Full often wish'd he that the winds might rage
When they were silent; far more fondly now
Than in his earlier season did he love

Tempestuous nights-the conflict and the sounds
That live in darkness:-from his intellect
And from the stillness of abstracted thought
He ask'd repose; and, failing oft to win
The peace required, he scann'd the laws of light
Amid the roar of torrents, where they send
From hollow clefts up to the clearer air
A cloud of mist, that smitten by the sun
Varies its rainbow hues. But vainly thus,
And vainly by all other means, he strove
To mitigate the fever of his heart.

In dreams, in study, and in ardent thought,
Thus was he rear'd; much wanting to assist
The growth of intellect, yet gaining more,
And every moral feeling of his soul

Strengthen'd and braced, by breathing in content

The keen, the wholesome air of poverty,

And drinking from the well of homely life.— Wordsworth.