this statement as public as we can. Finding their usefulness so unparalleled, their principles so identical with those of the Board, their discipline and method of teaching so much in consonance with our idea of the National system, and their labours so very great, we were certainly astonished at the inadequate grant the Commissioners have made the school-£7 per annum for every hundred adults in actual average attendance nightly, or about £3 10s. for every hundred on the roll. There are seven nuns regularly engaged. and this gives exactly ten shillings to each for every hundred she teaches, or something less than a penny-farthing per head per annum Yet there are people so utterly blinded by a spirit of pugnacity and intolerance as to rail at the Board for endowing convents. Endowing them indeed!! The grant to the Belfast Evening School hardly pays for the gas consumed. However, there are odd people in the world. Those who are opposed to the National System think that the convent ought to be denied participation in the public grants, because grants are refused to schools conducted by Protestants on proselytising principles. And these good opponents, forsooth, fancy that there is a parity between their case and that of the nuns. In what does it consist? The nuns enter in all heartiness into the spirit and letter of the system; offer obedience and respect to its rules, open their doors to children of all denominations, and solemnly guarantee that the wishes and scruples of parents shall be respected, and that the religion of no one shall be tampered with. The opponents to the system, on the contrary, condemn and stigmatize the rules of the Board, refuse their allegiance to the system, and repudiate its principles, found and maintain an institution in open hostility to the system, and close their doors to children of all denominations, unless they yield themselves up, body and soul, to whatever mysteries, prayers, and dogmas may be preached and recited in their schools. Is this a parity? It is asserted that B is black and W is white, and, because it is so, the opponents of the national system asseverate that B and W are incorporate, identical, and entitled to the same privilege. For sagacious people we must certainly pronounce this to be a very childish dialectic delusion.

We shall not, however, enter further into the general question of sustaining the Convent National Schools out of the public funds. It is a question of little or no complication,

and in its proper place can be easily disposed of in a paragraph

or two.

We allude to it here simply because the smallness of the grant to the Belfast school suggests the necessity of exposing the absurdity of the cry that the Education Commissioners are endowing the convents. The nuns support themselves. They have generally ample means for the purpose, but they think, legitimately enough, that their school ought to be supported out of the funds granted by Parliament for the purpose of National Education. We trust that the award to this school is only experimental, and that, as soon as the Commissioners become cognizant of its immense public advantages, they will, by making a commensurate grant, encourage others to embark in the merciful enterprize of Adult Female Education.

When the evening business had concluded we entered into earnest conversation with the Superioress and the sister in charge of the school. They saw their success, but, feared to name it so. We have seldom met with persons who were better fitted for their positions and their high and peculiar duties. The Superioress was affable, learned, and accomplished; she had a countenance expressive of an enduring enthusiasm; no project that was destined to make her fellow creatures wiser and better was too formidable for her; no check, no baulk, nor cross, nor frustration could apparently sink her heart or diminish her hopefulness. Her voice was of that right womanly kind, it was sweet, firm, and impressive; and she moved from class to class amongst her devoted pupils with the dignity and gentleness of a hostess passing from guest to guest, and had a smile and a word for each, that all might feel the assurance of her welcome and her desire to make them happy. The sister who had charge of the school was one of the cleverest and most practical teachers we ever met. Her brow was radiant with intelligence; she was thoughtful, inventive, and eminently preceptive; her features were naturally vivacious, but subdued and softened by discipline and religion. She knew the name and could tell something interesting of every pupil in the school; her heart and soul were lost and absorbed in the glorious mission of her life; and her mind. was of that delicately cultivated order that she was esthetical whilst saying or doing the most commonplace things.

We were anxious that our memorandum book should con

tain the names of two such benefactors of the human race; but true worth, instead of wishing its laudation often defaces the recording word of praise engraven on the tablet. We could only learn that the superioress bore the name of Mother Mary Philomena, and from the skilful, learned, and intelligent superintendent of the school, we could gather no more than that in religion, she bore the name of Mary Borgia. Mary Philomena, uttered her name as the proud title of some sainted one, she would imitate, and Mary Borgia whispered her title in religion, as the name of some one in the Calendar of Heaven, whom she felt it her glory and her privilege to revere.

There were seven sisters present on the occasion of our visit, and, in addition, the superioress of a neighbouring convent (at Downpatrick,) who happened to have had business in town, was also present, and efficiently acted as a volunteer in the good work. We have seen the best training institutions, and visited the highest order of schools; but we are bound to confess that the Belfast evening school is of a kind entirely different from those in which the education of the poor is usually conducted. When we were returning from the school, we observed a large number of the school girls standing waiting in the hall; they were waiting for ointments, plasters, &c., which the nuns were distributing amongst them for maimed or sick relatives at home, or for ailments of their own; and thus do these christian teachers, complete the beautiful mission of their lives, by adding the last link to the long chain of the attributes of mercy.

In addition to the great school which we have just described, there are a few other evening schools in Belfast; but, like those of Dublin and elsewhere in Ireland, they are merely gasping for life, and are attended more by children who ought to be at day-schools than by men and women whose early education has been neglected; they are mere speculations, and bad ones, of the poor teachers; come into existence, live fretfully, pine and die away, without eliciting the pound of the Capitalist, the sympathy of the Philanthropist, the interest of the clergy, or the countenance of the public; for all are equally indifferent to the national good on this question. Dublin has the wretched old excuse of a metropolis that has little or nothing to say to the manufacturing operative; but Belfast has no such apology for its neglect. We are saddened to find ourgreat manufacturing town so slow to acknowledge its duty in reference

to those who are ignorant,-whether children or adults-and we are as much astonished as grieved to find a town, once in the enjoyment of the pet name of the Athens of Ireland, without a Mechanics' Institute, or anything analogous to one, for the elementary instruction of young artisans and labourers. There are young men's societies, religious societies, reading rooms, &c., all very good in their way, and no doubt creditable to their promoters and conductors; but it is, nevertheless, a patent fact, and a very deplorable one too, that there is little or no provision for the elementary education of an adult. The existence of an evening school in connection with the convent, we suppose can only be traced to the zeal and enterprise of its own conductors: the town, as a municipality, has done nothing for adult education. It takes sage men to make a town great, but it takes sager to keep it so. The seducing jingle of the gold must not lull men into an unconsciousness of their duty, or an obliviousness of their sins of omission; and yet we fear that when the censor, a watchful public man, upbraids,

"Then music, with her silver sound,

With speedy help doth lend redress."

This state of things, however, will not do and cannot last long. Mill owners must tread the way to the school-house as well as to the exchange or bank-and they must for their own sakes, and in the interest of humanity, take care that their mills shall not be huge depositories of moral and intellectual wretchedness. -The immortal Milton called the forefathers of the great men of Belfast, "highland thieves and redshanks," and fixed the geography of their town "in a barbarous nook of Ireland." History has shown that the stigmas were unjust, but if the mill workers of the town are forced, through want of opportunity, to remain buried and lost in their ignorance, we fear that the writers of some other time may be looking back at the corner which Belfast occupies as indeed "in a barbarous nook of Ireland." We trust that the path has only to be pointed out, and that their good sense will lead the Belfast merchants for the honour of their country to pursue it. The school we have described will be an incentive to them to establish similar institutions in the town; and we cau fortunately point to a school in the neighbourhood of Belfast that in many respects is one well worthy of imitation. Long before school organizations were so perfect as they now are, Miss Grimshaw

had a nightly gathering of some of the female workers of her father's mill, in the National School of the village of Whitehouse. This village is about two miles from Belfast, and is the first station which is met on the Belfast and Ballymena Railway; and perhaps the comfort and comparative independence which the people of the village can boast of, through the kindness and consideration of its factory proprietors, are only minor blessings compared with the good fortune they have for years back enjoyed in the beneficent interest taken in the education of themselves and their children by Miss Grimshaw. With the assistance of a few friends, this excellent lady was able to gather together for instruction a goodly muster of the mill girls every evening. She classified and arranged them in due working order. The number of pupils was not very considerable, and this in many respects was an advantage at the commencement of the experiment; for the school assumed the appearance of a family group, in which words of confidence could be spoken and friendly chidings made without much exposure.

Miss Grimshaw and her friends taught many a poor mill girl how to read and write; how to use a Bible or a prayer book or to communicate with a father and mother far away. There was no price paid by those poor mill girls for what they received; it was not an affair of barter; no offering of conscience or gold. The good Protestant benefactor saw the victory that was before her, and she saw that it was to be won, if worth the winning, by respecting religious scruples and deferentially regarding a religious conviction as unpurchaseable and outside the circle of commercial exchanges. She went night after night to meet her pupils; and by perseverance, by sacrifice, by enthusiasm and by labor, she succeeded in spreading a taste for education amongst the mill workers of the locality-This taste for the acquirement of knowledge, naturally spread to the young men who were engaged in the mills, and to satisfy their desires, and to extract the advantages of the school as much as possible, a department for boys was soon opened-This led to the regular appointment of Teachers, and to the retirement from the position she had so ably and so humanely filled, of Miss Grimshaw-Since then she has been an active patroness of the school; to her continued support, is to be attributed much of its present efficiency and success. The school now consists of boys and