Montesinos. There may be too much superintendence, as well as too little; but this remedy would go far towards putting an end to the tyranny exercised by the senior boys, which is the worst evil that the want of superintendence has produced. There would be more difficulty in making social worship retain, or rather resume, its proper character and uses; the effect at present, both at schools and universities, being to deaden the instinct of piety, instead of cherishing and maturing it. Here we have a difficulty which had no existence in days when monasteries were the only seminaries of learning.

'Sir Thomas More.-The pupils in such establishments saw that the practice, or at least the profession, of religion, was the main business of life for those under whose tuition they were placed, or by whom they were surrounded. Moreover, it was the service in which they had enlisted, and to the higher grades of which they were looking on; by it they were to be elevated in society, and it was the only means of elevation for those who were not of noble birth; by it they were to obtain, at all events, security in an insecure age, subsistence, respectability, ease and comfort: wealth and luxury were accessible to their desires; if ambition inclined that way, the highest earthly dignities entered into their prospect; if it took a loftier direction, the higher honours of altars and images might be reserved for them at last. Here, then, everything tended to make them feel the temporal and spiritual importance of religion. If their minds were not impressed by the ceremonials of a splendid ritual, they were at least engaged in it; there was something to occupy them,.. something for the eye, and the imagination. Should the heart remain unaffected, it was, nevertheless, entertained in a state which made it apt to receive devout impressions, and open to their influences. You threw away your crutches too soon, mistaking the excitement of that fervour, which the religious revolution called forth, for confirmed and healthy strength. Now, when the excitement has worn itself out, a stage of languor has succeeded, which has a dangerous tendency to terminate in torpor and indifference. But this is an unnatural state of mind, for man is a religious creature, and it is amongst those who seek to escape from it, that superstition finds an eager demand for its opiates, or enthusiam for its cordial elixirs.'-vol. i. p. 94-97.

Montesinos.-But no where is a boy in so ill a disposition to receive religious lessons as at school, and perhaps uo where are lessons so ill taught. My old master, Dr. Vincent, endeavoured to repel this charge, as it affects public schools, when it was brought against them some fiveand-twenty years ago by Dr. Rennell. He took up the argument with natural feeling and becoming warmth, in defence of an establishment with which he had been so long and so honourably connected, and he wrote, as he always did, vigorously and well. But the case failed him; he could only show that books of catechetical instruction were used in the school, that scriptural exercises made a part of the course, and that theological lectures were read to the king's scholars. So far is well; there is no fault of omission here, and what is done is performed

as

as well as it there can be. It is true, also, that the school is always opened and prorogued with a short prayer, and that in the boarding houses prayers are read every night by the head boy of the house; but performed as this is, and necessarily must be, it were better left undone. And Vincent did not reflect on the effect of compulsory attendance at divine service, at times when the service is merely perfunctory, and under circumstances which render attention to the duties of the place, at all times, impossible. Public worship is never presented in so unattractive, . . almost, I might say, in so irreligious a form, . . as it is to school boys. Now, though we are, as you have justly said, religious creatures, (and it is the noblest distinction of human nature that we are so,) youth is not the season of life in which the development of our religious instinct naturally takes place; in boyhood it must be awakened, and requires to be kept up by continual culture. Habitual irreverence soon deadens, even if it does not destroy it; but habitual irreverence is what is learnt at school, and certainly not unlearnt at college. A distaste is thus acquired for public worship, . . not to say a dislike for it; and young men when they become their own masters, cease to frequent church, because they have been so long compelled to attend its service in an unfit state of mind.

'Sir Thomas More.-Such absentees are, probably, more easily made Dissenters, than they can be brought back to the fold which they have once forsaken.

'Montesinos.—Men, who have received this higher education, seldom enter into the ranks of dissent; their connexions in life are rarely such as would lead them towards the meeting-house. A few become Socinians; and perhaps there are more who pass from cold indifference to a feverish state of what may better be called religiosity, than religion, for little charity can be perceived in it, and less humility. Professional engagements bring back a greater number into the right way, and keep them there. Others are restored by the gentle and natural effects of time, or the sharper discipline of affliction, which teaches them where to find the only source of comfort, the only balm for a wounded heart, the only rest for an immortal spirit. But too many fall into habits of practical irreligion, and, according as there may be more or less of vanity and presumptuousness in their disposition, become the proselytes, or the propagandists of speculative impiety. Even while the Jews were living under a visible dispensation, and before the glory had departed from the temple, fools were to be found among them, who said in their heart, There is no God. Much more may this worst and deadliest infatuation be expected to show itself in these latter times, when so great a part of mankind live as if there were none, and when the ways of the world, its pursuits and its pleasures, its follies, and, . . Heaven help us!.. its philosophies, have interposed an atmosphere of darkness palpable between us and the light of His presence, though in that light only is there life!-vol. i. p. 100-104. The mischievous effects of this lack of early religious education, and, consequently, of adequate religious knowledge among the

c 2

middle

middle and upper classes, may lie dormant for a time; but it must ever be borne in mind, that the greatest revolutions in the moral, as in the physical world, are ultimately brought about by the_imperceptible operation of causes daily and hourly at work. It is by the insensible perspiration that the substance of the human body is changed more materially, than by all the visible infirmities which flesh is heir to. It is the labour of a very contemptible, but very industrious worm, that by degrees protrudes those coral rocks, whereon the proudest vessel finds a breaker and a grave; and, in like manner, it is by the silent, ceaseless operation of moral principles (those infused by means of education above all) that a nation is transformed, whether for the better or the worse, far more essentially, than by the convulsions which engross attention because they happen to be clamorous, and engross it so effectually, that both governors and governed awake, perhaps, from the contemplation of such matters, (which, after all, are but signs of the times,) to find out, too late, that old things have, meanwhile, passed away, and that all things are new. The full development of the evil we are considering may not, therefore, be yet come; but its partial effects may be traced already. For instance, we know not what is so likely to have contributed to the present degraded condition of the press (a great and crying evil) as a want of wholesome early impressions on the part of those who keep it in activity. Persons of education, in one sense, they must be; but the education has been defective; defective precisely in that particular which was calculated to govern the motions of so formidable an engine, and save it from destroying in its fury itself and all around it. And though we would speak with all due deference on such a matter, yet we must observe that the same original defect in our system of education manifests itself in that want of acquaintance with their subject which our legislators sometimes discover when questions of a religious complexion happen to come under discussion. On such occasions, we feel that much is uttered which would not have passed the lips, we do not say of a professed theologian, for to expect this would be unreasonable, but of a layman of the old school of the school of Lord Clarendon or Sir Matthew Hale -much that must create uneasiness in the minds of men who compare the vast interests at stake with the sense apparently entertained of them by many at whose mercy they lie.

We trust that the advocates themselves of the great measure which has recently stunned the nation will not think a temperate declaration of these suspicions, on the part of the friends of the church, unreasonable, when her future safety confessedly depends so greatly upon her vigilance.

Thus does the defect of which we complain impair the

public prosperity, through the more powerful classes of society; whilst amongst the lower, (uninfluenced as they are by many subordinate restraints, which exercise a wholesome controul over those above them, even independently of religious principle,) its disastrous consequences are still more apparent,-aggravated as they are, in this case, by the misfortune which, until lately, has further attended these same classes-that of systematic exclusion from all participation in the public worship of their Maker, owing to the inadequate supply of churches. Now such neglect would have engendered corruption in any nation, but more especially in one like our own, where the increase of commerce and manufactures, and the increase of temptations to wickedness attendant thereupon, have called for every aid which could be offered to the moral principle of the people. We have been in haste to grow rich-money we must have, and then, if it happened so, virtue. To declaim, however, against commerce and manufactures is idle

Their course will on

The way it takes, cracking ten thousand curbs
Of more strong link asunder, than can ever
Appear in our impediment.

Commerce and manufactures will on; and the wants of mankind, not the maxims of moralists, will determine the degree to which they will be extended. But the mischief is, that no correction has accompanied their march. They, like other schemes, have good in them of their own which should be cherished, and evil-which it should be the conscientious task of all who embark in them, as far as possible, to suppress. The problem to be solved is, to obtain the maximum of good of which the system is capable, with the minimum of evil which is incidental to the system; and it can never be sound political economy, however common it may be, to overlook the moral consequences involved in the measures proposed for a nation's prosperity, and to forget that it is possible to buy gold too dear,

Et propter vitam, vivendi perdere causas.

The system of trade, like many other systems springing out of the structure of society, may surely be made tributary to the advancement of mankind in virtue, if such an object were steadily kept in sight. There might be more Christian simplicity in the secluded habits of ancient days, when few persons emigrated from the village which bred them, than in the habits of our own times, when there is not, perhaps, one man in a thousand (except among the higher families) who, if he lives to manhood, is buried with his fathers;' but that same commerce which thus dissipates families, sends forth our vessels over an empire on

which the sun never sets, and, with them, sends forth a knowledge of revelation to those who would otherwise have sat in darkness. Thus, whilst the British artisan is incidentally debased by the pestilence of a profligate workshop, the Indian, or the South-Sea islander, is exalted by the Christian intercourse which the labours of that very artisan secure to him. Why should not this balance of evil and good be made less equivocal? Why should not wholesome superintendence be exercised over a body of spinners and weavers, such as might enable England to impart those blessings to the world, of which commerce is the ordinary channel, without at the same time polluting herself? Much might be done by a general adoption of those wholesome rules which in some manufactories already obtain-the separation of the sexes-again of the married and unmarried-by the establishment of a school, where the children of the workmen might be brought up in the fear of God-by the expulsion of vicious members-by the encouragement of saving-clubs-by the circu ation of moral and religious books-by the example of the employer himself. If to these regulations of police (for so they may be called) there were superadded some short form of morning and evening acknowledgment of a world beyond the grave, and of Him to whom we are all responsible-an acknowledgment which the previous habit of the school would gradually prepare all for paying reverentially, and which the living spectres among them must proclaim seasonable to be paid by beings whose lease of life appears as frail as their own thread,-under some such auspices, might not the temples of Mammon be consecrated to better things, and the energies of the people be wielded with less danger to the public, and with greater advantage to themselves-to their employers?

The present state of opinion may make much of this seem visionary; but there are times when honest men must not be afraid of the sneers of philosophers in a small way,' and such times are these. In Roman Catholic countries, the fisherman, the muleteer, the vetturino repair to the nearest church for matins, before they go forth to their labours, and join in vespers when their weary task is done. Time has been, too, when Protestant artisans have been found zealous enough to quit their land in a body merely for conscience sake; and, indeed, the weavers of Glastonbury (for to them we more especially allude) appear, in many respects, to have realised the picture we have drawn. Nay, so far from dead to religious impressions did the mechanics of our own country show themselves, that, on the preaching of methodism, it was this very class that supplied the greatest number of converts; and even amongst the noble army of martyrs, whose heroism lives in the pages of John