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by which a right education is to be attained; and the reason we know so little of the actual influence of mere secular knowledge is to be looked for in the fact that they are employed as tests, in all our official returns. We can never know how far England is educated, until Reading and Writing cease to be regarded as Ends, rather than as Means.

That they form a very insignificant figure, indeed, in the constituents of a good education is abundantly evident. Our prison returns clearly shew that they are not only destitute of any moral bearing on the mind; but that they furnish no criteria whatever of intelligence. On the other hand, they are often fruitful in every form of evil.

By a Return of Criminals for Sussex, in 1846, it appears that out of 504 who were able to read, 48 only could explain most of the words in the passage selected for perusal; and no more than six knew the meaning of the whole. The excellent chaplain of the Preston House of Correction furnishes, on this point, a highly suggestive and important piece of information. “To one young man," says he, "I expressed my surprise that though he could read so well, he should be ignorant of what he read." He replied in a tone of indignation-whether at what he considered injustice or imposition I know not, "Why! they never learned me the understanding of the words." But this same young man easily comprehended, assisted by coarse but intelligible engravings, the exciting stories of "The Newgate Calendar Improved," and of "Dick Turpin and his black mare."

This incident, which may be regarded as the type of ten thousand others, shews very forcibly the extreme danger of an Education void of religious and moral influence, and thoroughly explains why our jails are thronged with the partially instructed classes. When knowledge rises only above the low mark of imperfect reading, its votaries "see men as trees walking," and naturally grope through the twilight, after the distorted spectra that people the new world to which they have been thus introduced. The power of Reading, in itself, gives no bias either for good or evil, but acted on by the impulses incident to a fallen humanity, turns in the wrong direction, and necessarily becomes dangerous in the extreme. On this question, what

can speak more plainly than the fact, that at one book warehouse in Manchester, where seven copies only of sound and elevating periodicals are disposed of, no fewer than 289 of infidel and immoral tendency find a ready sale. A bad Education would seem, therefore, under this view of the case, to be decidedly worse than none.

This appears to be a point demanding far more consideration than it has as yet received. Our largest number of offenders against the law is unquestionably drafted—not from the utterly ignorant-but from the mere Spellers and Scrawlers. The dim-sighted are furnished with edge-tools; and, as a natural consequence, they wound themselves. Remove the film from the eye, or lend them a directing hand, and the danger is obviated. Let Secular Knowledge be saturated with Religious Truth, and directed by Moral Training, and Society will be regenerated.

The vital question for consideration by the friends of Education is not, indeed, so much the antagonism of Education to Crime, as the comparative merits of Religious and Secular-of thorough and rudimental, Education. Our Statistics on this subject usually regard quantity, whereas it is by quality alone that a right view of the case must eventually be established.

HEART AND INTELLECT.

BEFORE we pass from this particular train of thought-the importance of associating moral and religious worth with mental power and culture-I would deduce from it another lesson. Some of us here present may have-forgive me the supposition -but poor Heads. We are no geniuses, but very ordinary, humdrum plodders. We have had little schooling, and what we had is associated in our memories with the bottom of the classthe dunce's cap-the ridicule of our sharper-headed schoolfellows, who carried off all the prizes; with the frowns and cuffs of the pedagogue, who believed implicitly and loyally, according to the tradition of school-masters, in the quickening influence of strap, and cane, and birch, upon the young idea, which like the hedges in a late spring was long in shooting. O how we thumbed the spelling book, and watered Bonny

castle and Walkinghame with hot, scalding, tears! How decimals bewildered us! How we stuck at the far-famed " "pons asinorum" of Euclid! How our very heart sickened, and our heads reeled, and our eyes swam over angles and triangles, and circles and polygons, and tangents, and sines and cosines! “Amo”—“ I love "— how it puzzled the school-boy! easy and pleasant as it has become to the man.

Well; we were dull boys and stupid girls, and we are no geniuses now that we are men and women. Our brains have not grown, whatever our limbs have done-the manipulations of the phrenologist would result in an account of our organization by no means calculated to heighten our self-esteem. Let us take heart, though we be not of the race of the giants. The world needs not to be peopled with giants intellectual, any more than giants physical. A man intellectually little may be morally great. A dullard needs not to be a drone. There is work for us in the vineyard; a place for us in the "rank and file.” We may attain to the greatness of goodness. Best of all, we may serve God and our generation; and further His glory who died for us. The church of Christ needs not that we be all geniuses. The church's Head can employ for noblest uses, and can prosper to greatest ends, the "weak things," and the "foolish things," and the "things that are not." We may "shine," though it be as rushlights, and not stars, or suns, or comets. Well is it indeed when intellectual and moral greatness are combined in Christ's service-when the cherub, who knows most and the seraph, who loves most, are combined in one-the piety of a Newton, with a Newton's intellect. But what good old Mr. Simeon said of ministers, is, I believe, true universally, that (he gave it as the result of his long and varied experience,) the men whom God most honours and prospers with actual usefulness, are not the men of greatest intellect, but those in whom are united sterling piety-average talentand persevering industry. "This witness is true."—Heads and Hearts, by Rev. J. C. Miller.

CIRCUMSTANCES.

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As a cunning workman can mould an image from stance, so a wise man should deal with fortune.-Seneca.

AN OLD MANSION.

IT was in mid-winter when my visit to Hardwicke, in Derbyshire, the oldest seat belonging to the Duke of Devonshire, took place, as a sort of episodical variety from the festivities of Chatsworth, where I was spending a few days with his Grace. Hardwicke lies about fourteen miles beyond, towards Chesterfield. What a contrast it was to all I had left behind me! Silence, gothic gloom, uninhabited chambers, corridors and galleries! The vast bay and auriol windows of the larger apartments, without a curtain drawn across them since the days of the famous Countess of Shrewsbury, the foundress of the mansion in 1598. The moon appeared at the full, and her light, more than the wax flambeau I held in my hand, helped to serve me in my peregrinations towards midnight across those spacious and singularly characteristic chambers. Here King William III held a court out of compliment to the first Duke of Devonshire, the handsomest man of his time, and who had been the most active of William's partisans in placing him on the throne. A magnificent portrait of the Duke on horseback, as large as life, is seen above the mantelpiece of one of these apartments; and in this court-room stand the very chairs whereon the courtiers and attendants of King William sat. A piece of tapestry covers the door way which connects the room with the great gallery-160 feet in length. You draw this tapestry aside, and stand amazed as you look to the right down this very gallery, the sides of which are covered with most ancient and curious portraits. At such a season, in such a place, at such an hour, it requires something almost beyond mortal courage to proceed, especially if the moon chance to "stoop her head” beneath a succession of black over-spreading clouds.-Dibdin.

THE TURNING POINT.

It sometimes happens that a single occurence is the hinge on which a man's whole character for life may turn. One violent temptation, according as it is successfully resisted or complied with, may have the effect of a fixed determination for good or

for evil. You will probably remember the instance that Foster gives in his Essay "On Decision of Character," of a young man who had wasted his paternal estate by his profligacy, and who upon surveying the lost property from a neighbouring hill, came to the determination to recover it again. The resolution was formed, and he immediately began to put it into execution, and succeeded. But I will relate a fact still more in point, which I think I have given in one of my other publications. An eminent minister of religion, a native of this town,* when a youth, was engaged in secular pursuits, and apprenticed as well as born and educated here. From some cause or other he determined to abscond. On the morning of his elopement, he passed through the room in which his employer usually sat in the evening; on the table was a heap of mixed, and evidently uncounted money. The youth paused-he was going out illprovided with cash, and gazed for a few seconds upon the tempting heap; it was suggested to him, he needed it-his master would not miss it if he took some; and if he did miss it, he who took it, could at some future time replace it. It was a crisis of his moral history. Temptation was strong and urgent. Principle came to his relief, and he exclaimed, "No, I will not touch a farthing. I am determined not to go out a thief." Had he yielded to the temptation, his character by that act would have taken an entirely different turn to what it did, and he might have ended a swindler, instead of becoming a minister of religion. To the latest hour of his life, he never thought of his resolution but with gratitude, as having considerable influence in the formation of his character.-Rev. J. A. James.

GROW IN GRACE.

As it shall be once in glory, so it is in grace; there are degrees of it. The Apostle, that said of his auditors, they have received the Holy Ghost as well as we, did not say they have received the Holy Ghost as much as we. We know the Apostles had so much, as to give it to others; none, besides them, could do so. It is a happy thing, to have any quantity

These remarks form part of a Lecture delivered in Birmingham.

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