in committee. On August 1st, 1870, the bill received the royal assent. The second branch of the upas-tree had been hewn down; but the woodman's axe had yet to be laid to a branch of tougher fibre, well calculated to turn the edge. of even the best weapon, and to jar the strongest arm that wielded it. Mr. Gladstone had dealt with Church and land; he had yet to deal with university education. He had gone with Irish ideas thus far.

CHAPTER LIX.

66 REFORMATION IN A FLOOD."

ON June 10th, 1870, men's minds were suddenly turned away from thought of political controversy by a melancholy announcement in the morning papers. The Irish Land Bill, the question of national education, the curiously ominous look of affairs in France, where the Emperor had just been obtaining, by means of the plebiscite, "a new guarantee of order and liberty;" the terrible story of the capture and massacre of young English tourists by Greek brigands in the neighborhood of Marathon; these and many other exciting topics were forgotten for the hour, and the thoughts of millions were suddenly drawn away to a country-house near the Gad's Hill of Shakspeare, on the road to Rochester, where the most popular author of his day was lying dead. On the evening of June 8th Mr. Dickens became suddenly seized with paralysis. He fell into an unconscious state, and continued so until his death, the evening after. The news was sent over the country on the 10th, and brought a pang as of personal sorrow into almost every home. Dickens was not of an age to die; he had scarcely passed his prime. Born early in February, 1812, he had not gone far into his fifty-ninth year. In another part of this work an attempt has been made to do justice to Dickens as a novelist; here it is only necessary to record the historical fact of his death, and of the deep impression that it made. No author of our time came near him in popularity; perhaps no English author ever was so popular during his own life. To an immense number of men and women in these countries Dickens

stood for literature; to not a few his cheery teaching was sufficient as philosophy, and even as religion. Soon after his death, as might have been expected, a certain reaction took place, and for awhile it became the fashion to smile quietly at Dickens's teaching and his influence. That mood, too, will have its day, and will pass. It may be safely predicted that Dickens will be found to have made a firm place in English literature, although that place will probably not be so high as his admirers would once have claimed for him. Londoners were familiar with Dickens's personal appearance as well as with his writings, and certain London streets did not seem quite the same when his striking face and energetic movements could be seen there no more. It is likely that Dickens overworked his exuberant vital energy, his superb resources of physical health and animal spirits. In work and play, in writing and in exercising, he was unsparing of his powers. Like the lavish youth with the full purse in "Gil Blas," he appeared to believe that his stock could never be spent. Men who were early companions of his, and who had not half his vital power, outlived him many years. He was buried in Westminster Abbey, although his own desire was to be laid quietly in Rochester church-yard. It was held that the national cemetery claimed him. We cannot help thinking it a pity the claim was made. All true admirers of Scott must be glad that he rests in his dear and congenial Dryburgh; most of the admirers of Dickens would have been better pleased to think that he lay beneath

green turf of the ancient church-yard, in venerable and storied Rochester, amidst the scenes that he loved and taught so many others to love.

Nothing in modern English history is like the rush of the extraordinary years of reforming energy on which the new Administration had now entered. Mr. Gladstone's Government had to grapple with five or six great questions of reform, any one of which might have seemed enough to engage the whole attention of an ordinary Administration. The new Prime-minister had pledged himself to abolish the State Church in Ireland, and to reform the Irish Land Tenure system. He had made up his mind to put an end to the purchase of commissions in the army. Recent events and experiences had convinced him that it was necessary to intro

duce the system of voting by ballot. He accepted for his Government the responsibility of originating a complete scheme of National Education. Meanwhile, there were many questions of the highest importance in foreign policy waiting for solution. The American Government did what every cool and well-informed observer must have known they would do; they pressed for a settlement of the claims arising out of the damage done by the Alabama, and other Southern cruisers, which had been built in English dockyards and had sailed from English ports. In the mid career of the Government the war broke out between France and Prussia. Russia took advantage of the opportunity to insist that the Treaty of Paris must be altered by the cancelling of the clause which "formally and in perpetuity" refused to every Power the right of having a fleet in the Black Sea. Each of these questions was of capital importance; each might have involved the country in war. It required no common energy and strength of character to keep closely to the work of domestic reform, amidst such exciting discussions in foreign policy all the while, and with the wartrumpet ringing for a long time in the ears of England.

Mr. Forster's Education Bill may be said to have been run side by side with the Irish Land Bill. The Government undertook a great and a much-needed work when it set about establishing a national system of elementary education. The manner in which England had neglected the education of her poor children had long been a reproach to her civilization. She was behind every other great country in the world; she was behind most countries that in nowise professed to be great. Prussia and nearly all the German countries were centuries in advance of her; so were some, if not actually all, of the American States. We have al ready shown in these pages by what pitiful patchwork of compromises and make-shift expedients England had been trying to put together something like a plan for the instruction of the children of the poor. Private charity was eked out in a parsimonious and miserable manner by a scanty dole from the State; and, as a matter of course, where the direst poverty prevailed, and naturally brought the extremest need for assistance to education, there the wants of the place were least efficiently supplied. For years the

statesmanship of England had been kept from any serious attempt to grapple with the evil by the doctrine that popular education ought not to be the business of a Government. The idea prevailed that education conducted by the State would be something un-English; something which might do very well for Germans and Americans and other such people, but which was entirely unsuited to the manly independence of the true Briton. It therefore came about that more than two-thirds of the children of the country were absolutely without instruction. One of the first great tasks which Mr. Gladstone's Government undertook was to reform this condition of things, and to provide England, for the first time in her history, with a system of National Education. On February 17th, 1870, Mr. Forster introduced a bill having for its object to provide for public elementary education in England and Wales. The basis of the measure was very simple, but also very comprehensive. Mr. Forster proposed to establish a system of School Boards in England and Wales; and to give to each board the power to frame by-laws compelling the attendance of all children, from five to twelve years of age, within the school district. Government did not see their way to a system of direct and universal compulsion. They therefore fell back on a compromise, by leaving the power to compel in the hands of the local authorities. Existing schools were, in many instances, to be adopted by the bill, and to receive Government aid, on condition that they possessed a certain amount of efficiency in education, that they submitted themselves to the examination of an undenominational inspector, and that they admitted a conscience clause as part of their regulations. The funds were to be procured, partly by local rate, partly by grants from the Treasury, and partly by the fees paid in the paying schools. There were of course to be free schools provided, where the poverty of the population was such as, in the opinion of the local authorities, to render gratuitous instruction indispensable.

The

The bill at first was favorably received. But the general harmony of opinion did not last long. The task proved to be one of the most difficult that the Government could have undertaken. The whole body of the English and Welsh Non-conformists soon declared themselves in strong hostility

to some of the bill's provisions. Mr. Forster found, when he came to examine into the condition of the machinery of education in England, that there was already a system of schools existing under the charge of religious bodies of various kinds: the State Church, and the Roman Catholic Church, and other authorities. These he proposed to adopt as far as possible into his scheme; to affiliate them, as it were, to the Governmental system of education. But he had to make some concession to the religious principles on which such schools were founded. He could not by any stroke of authority undertake to change them all into secular schools. He therefore proposed to meet the difficulty by adopting regulations compelling every school of this kind which obtained Government aid or recognition to accept a conscience clause by means of which the religious convictions of parents and children should be scrupulously regarded in the instruction given during the regular school hours. On this point the Non-conformists as a body broke away from the Government. They laid down the broad principle that no State aid whatever should be given to any schools but those which were conducted on strictly secular and undenominational principles. It ought to be superfluous to say that the Non-conformists did not object to the religious instruction of children. It ought not to be supposed for a moment that they attached less importance to religious instruction than any other body of persons. Their principle was that public money, the contribution of citi zens of all shades of belief, ought only to be given for such teaching as the common opinion of the country was agreed upon. The contribution of the Jew, they argued, ought not to be exacted in order to teach Christianity; the Protestant rate-payer ought not to be compelled to pay for the instruction of Roman Catholic children in the tenets of their faith; the Irish Catholic in London or Birmingham ought not to be called upon to pay in any way for the teaching of distinctively Protestant doctrine.

Therefore, they said, let us at any cost establish a strictly national and secular system in our public elementary schools; let us teach there what we are all agreed upon; and let us leave the duty of teaching religion to the ministers of relig ion, and to the parents of the children. About the truths of