associates. A boy of strong health, bodied in action the doctrine which bold spirits, fair parts, good memory, I am feebly propounding. Or, if you and moral recklessness, gets through prefer it, read Miss Edgeworth, and a public school well enough; but if see what she says on the subject of deficient in any of these qualifications, justice among children. My own his existence is often embittered, far persuasion is, that few boys leave our beyond the wretchedness of a child in large schools with a delicate sense the lowest stations of society. Children of justice; and to this I attribute are never naturally just to each other; much of the tortuous proceeding there requires the constant vigilance which we witness in our houses of of their elders to keep this virtue of parliament, and among our public justice in exercise among them; and men. The state of the anti-slavery this vigilance is not generally exer- question is a striking comment on cised in public schools. Justice this subject. I must say, that much would require that when a boy had as I disapprove of the peculiar docevidently done his best, he should be trines of the Quakers, I honour them cherished and encouraged; but for for the scrupulous care with which this purpose the master must know they inculcate the virtue of justice, his boys, and observe them in their or what they consider to be justice, private hours, and measure their upon their children. relative capacities and application, and act as God acts towards mankind, judging us according to what wé have, and not according to what we have not. Give me a bold, bad, but clever boy, and I will engage that he shall go through a public school with tolerable comfort; whereas a boy amiable, sensitive, moral, conscientiously diligent, but of weak body, and perhaps not powerful mind, will be constantly oppressed by his school-fellows, without redress, and likely enough be frequently in punishment for his lessons, not because he would not, but because he could not, keep up with readier intellects, though his application might be far greater than theirs. A conscientious private tutor, like a parent, takes all these contingencies into the account: he perhaps praises one boy who has several mistakes in his verses, and reproves another who has fewer; he does not flog one whom a sick head-ache prevented manufacturing his tale of bricks, and reward another whose quick memory gulped down some hundred lines of Greek, while he was living like a fiend incarnate among his companions. You may think, my friend, that I am exaggerating: it may be so, but the impression I intend to leave is right. Go to a well conducted infant school, and you will see em I have been led to these remarks by the mention of the name of Mr. Bristed, whose defection from his country, and his hostility to our institutions, were generated by what he considered the injustice of an English public-school. I am almost unwilling to quote even a portion of his remarks, as they relate in part to individuals now living; but as they have been printed and re-printed, and as the circumstances to which they refer are of so old a date that time has worn out any impressions of pain which an allusion to them might otherwise cause, I will copy a few paragraphs just sufficient to illustrate my argument. I need not however add my conviction, that Mr. Bristed must have greatly overcharged the picture, especially in his very severe, and I verily believe not fair, allusions to one individual; but this adds to the force of my argument, as it shews how deeply the impressions of supposed injustice were infixed upon his mind, and how they have led him so long after to speak of a now very aged and much respected individual, in terms which can only be applicable to the system which that learned and venerable person was called officially to administer. Balancing therefore both sides of the question, I venture to give you the extract. It is not often that a writer exhibits to the public eye, as Mr. Bristed has done, the changes which have passed in his own mind and the causes of them. The severity of his remarks might have been moderated; and justice would require, I doubt not, considerable allowance to be made for his having viewed the circumstances he describes through a distorted medium. Besides all which, it would not be fair to conclude, that all that was wrong in any given place forty years ago, is equally wrong now. Let all due credit be given to modern improvements, and all deductions made for exaggerated statements. Then, after you have thrown away all this husk, just extract the kernel of the moral which is within. The following is Mr. Bristed's statement. My father, grandfather, and great grandfather, were all beneficed clergymen in the Church of England; and I was myself, according to the custom of men under that national establishment, marked out for the clerical calling from my very birth. It was, in truth, the dearest wish of my most venerable father's heart, that all his sons should be devoted to the ministry of reconciliation. In order to lay the basis of a liberal education, I was sent, while yet quite a child, to Winchester College, which, then under the auspices of its head-master, the Rev. Dr. Joseph Warton, of classical and poetical memory, was reputed to be one of the best of the great public schools in England. During the year in which I was candidate for admission, there were forty applicants, and only three vacancies; but through the nomination and influence of a clerical brother of Sir William Blackstone, the celebrated commentator upon the laws of England, I gained admittance as an alumnus of St. Mary's College, Winton. At Winchester, as at Eton and Westminster, two junior seminaries which derive their forms and models CHRIST. OBSERV. No. 355. of instruction from Winchester, every effort is directed to make the boys good classical scholars; to render them familiar with the best writers of Greece and Rome, and to teach them a facility of composition, both prose and verse, in the English, Latin, and Greek languages. But how far the formal routine of the chapel prayers and cathedral services, repeated so often on the weekdays, Saints'-days, and Sundays; the indiscriminate admission to the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper of all the boys in the sixth form, as a matter of course, without any previous knowledge of or inquiry into their spiritual state; together with a pretty general negligence, on the part of the warden, masters, and fellows of the college, as to the tone of morals prevailing among the students, is calculated to promote the cause of religion, more especially as by far the greater portion of the boys on the foundation' of these distinguished institutions are regularly trained in them to become clergymen in the Anglican Church, has long been doubted by many of the ablest, best informed, and most pious men in the British empire. But what direct religious instruction is afforded in these public schools? Young men, generally, leave them with very imperfect notions, even of the first principles of Christianity. Children, in the National and Sunday schools, are for the most part better grounded in the elements of revelation, than these embryo bishops, judges, and statesmen. Youth is the most favourable for inculcating religious principles: and if this important duty were performed in the great schools, the Anglican Church would exhibit a far greater number of true friends; of men exhibiting that they have religion really at heart, and pulling down the strong-holds of Dissent by the resistless warfare of a pure evange lical faith, and a holy consistent life. Fagging, or shagging, as it is called at Winchester, is a system of 3 H slave trade, and corrupts the heart by sowing in it the seeds of tyranny and servility; two poisonous plants, extremely adverse to the growth of the Christian religion. "The habits formed in the public schools are carried to the universities, whose discipline they generally render ineffectual. Indeed, the foundation scholars who "speed," receive an ample provision, independently of their conduct at Oxford or Cambridge, or their application to study. Presently, these men enter the Established Church; which is thus, as well as by other means, constantly supplied with a shoal of secular, self-indulgent, formal clergy, whose religion consists mainly in railing at Dissenters, and in calumniating and persecuting all Evangelism within the pale of the hierarchy. "I had been at Winchester but little more than three years, and had ascended from the lowest class up to nearly the head of the senior part of the fifth form, when a general rebellion against the severe and capricious authority of Dr. Huntingford, then only warden, now both warden of Winchester College and Bishop of Hereford, broke out among the gownsmen, or students on William of Wykeham's foundation. This rebellion was headed, and the oath of universal conspiracy administered, by Richard Mant, then one of the prefects in the sixth form, and now one of the editors of Mant and D'Oyley's Family Bible. "In order to set an example of vigorous discipline, the warden and fellows of Winchester, after an express pledge on their part to bury the whole under an act of general amnesty, expelled the first forty boys who stood senior on the college rolls. Although much too young, and somewhat too small, at that time, to render any very efficient aid in a riot, which proceeded so far as to lock up the warden, masters, and fellows, in their own respective apartments; to expel the cooks, butlers, porters, bell-ringers, and other servants from their habitations; to shut the college-gates, mount the watch-towers, and defy the Marquis of Buckingham's militia, drawn out and paraded to terrify the insurgents, I yet participated in this paternal benediction, my name happening to stand the twenty-first on the roll from that of the head boy, who was then prefect of the hall. "Dr. Huntingford is said to have written, in the true spirit of primitive Christianity, a circular to the heads of houses in the universities of Oxford and Cambridge, containing the names of those boys whom he had expelled from Winchester, and requesting that not one of them might be admitted as a student in any English college. This benevolent request, breathing perpetual perdition against youthful offenders, who had been already punished to the extremest verge of scholastic vengeance in the loss of the large sums expended on their education, and in being shut out for ever from all participation in the prospective emoluments and honours attached to one of the wealthiest and most ancient institutions in England, was, in general, disregarded by the Cambridge and Oxford dignitaries, who permitted the rejected alumni of St. Mary's Winton to matriculate with them. Of these, one, at least, has lived to seat himself upon the same episcopal bench with my Lord of Hereford. His old friend, Richard Mant, who led the Winchester rebellion, has been recently transmuted into an Irish bishop by the British government. Whatever might be the effect upon others, certain it is that the serious impressions caused by the religious education given by my revered parents to all their children, were very considerably diminished in me. The daily study of the Scriptures, so fervently and so frequently enjoined upon me by my sainted father, had been grievously intermitted; and the poets, orators, and historians of Greece and Rome had might finally settle down, and wheresoever I might be ultimately situated, to set apart some portion of every day for the study of the Scriptures and commentaries and systems of divinity, and books in any way calculated to explain or illustrate the word of God. shouldered out the oracles of God. and lasting impression upon my unA few years of residence under the experienced unballasted mind, and parental roof, aided by the kindness, induced me to relinquish all thoughts vigilance, and wisdom of my un- of the church, and embrace the callequalled sire, served to restore the ing of a physician. My ever to equilibrium between sacred and pro- be revered father was exceedingly fane studies. Until I was seventeen, grieved at this determination, but did my steps were steadily directed to- not oppose it, because he thought wards an entrance into the vestibule most justly that the fact of my of the Church of England. At the pausing as to a preference of any age of seventeen, in several converother vocation was full proof of my sations with the Rev. Dr. Septimus unfitness to enter upon " the ministry Collinson, Provost of Queen's Col- of reconciliation." His prayers and lege, Oxford, my resolution as to tears, however, were to the last hour of taking orders was considerably his lengthened life continually rising shaken. The main substance of up before the throne of God, that the learned Provost's arguments, in his wilful boy might yet be brought order to dissuade me from entering by the blessed influences of the Spirit the church, was, that as all the of God, to see and feel the infinite livings in the Establishment were superiority of faithfully proclaiming under the controul of patronage, the doctrines of the Cross to any public or private, either ministerial, worldly vocation. And he solemnly as representing the government; or enjoined me, in whatever calling lay, as belonging to individual no- I blemen and gentlemen; or clerical, as vested in single bishops, or in religious bodies,- -a man's location or ascent in the national church did not depend exclusively, or chiefly, or probably at all, upon his own talents, learning, and character; but upon some extrinsic influence, some remote contingencies and probabilities over which he had no controul. In addition to which, he represented the clerical market in England as being overstocked; the number of parishes and church benefices bearing no reasonable proportion to the multitudes of the national clergy. Whence he concluded, that either of the other learned professions, whether law or physic, would be preferable for a young man to pursue, as rendering him in a greater degree the master and carver out of his own fortunes. All these and other similar observations, to be sure, bore only a secular aspect, and had nothing to do with preaching the Gospel, either to the poor or to the rich yet falling from the lips of a clergyman, high in the Establishment, advanced in years, and distinguished for his talents and learning, they made a deep : "My objections to the Church of England were then, and are now, confined exclusively to her political position; her close alliance with the state; her system of patronage, whether lay or clerical, excluding the congregations altogether from any choice of the clerk who is to minister to them spiritually, and her provision of tithes. Her Liturgy, Articles, and Homilies, are all strictly scriptural; and when faithfully set forth, and supported by the preaching and living of Evangelical clergymen, are eminently calculated, under the gracious influences of the Holy Spirit, to call men from darkness into light, and from the power of Satan uuto God." So far this recreant ex-Wykeamite, Mr. Bristed; whose statements I have extracted for you, not as articles of faith, but as materials for thought. I am quite willing to believe that a very strong per-contra statement might be exhibited, and I have no wish to weaken its force, or to urge personal or local charges, which, whether true or false, exaggerated or unexaggerated, tend to no conclusive result. But, taking the matter generally, I fear that after every deduction, and allowing for every modern improvement, there is too much truth in the above representations; and that, as I set out with remarking, our endowed scholastic establishments have not made those advances in a religious view, which we might have hoped for, in consequence of the Protestant Reformation. Much remains to be done to place them practically on that footing which would render them meet appendages to our revered apostolical communion, and seedbeds to the church of Christ. I am sorry, my dear friend, to conclude my letter with so painful a topic. My next for I purpose taking you back to my casement, where I left you looking out with me on a variety of interesting objectswill, I hope, embrace some more amusing if not more useful points of observation. In the mean time ruminate upon the foregoing; and reprehend me freely where you think I have written amiss. On some points, I fear I may have not your concurrence, but you are not answerable for my misdeeds. In the main, however, I trust we shall not disagree in our opinions; and where we do I shall weigh yours with a respect and indulgence which I should not venture to afford to my May the Father of lights guide us both. So prays, my dear friend, yours, &c. &c. own. URGENT NEED OF BISHOPS IN INDIA. To the Editor of the Christian Observer. HAVING read with much interest the Life of Dr. Middleton, the first bishop of all India, by the Rev. C. Webb Le Bas, I am more than ever convinced of the imperious necessity which exists for increasing the number of bishops in our eastern possessions, and cannot but express my surprise that you have not of late, or at least only faintly, raised your voice on the subject. Surely while you are so strenuously bringing to light, and proposing remedies for abuses in our church establishment at home, you ought not to be unmindful of the wants and necessities of the Church of England abroad. Mr. Le Bas observes: "For all civil purposes ourEastern possessions are divided into three presidencies; each having its separate governor and council, and its separate judicial, civil, military, and medical departments; while, in ecclesiastical matters alone, the British interests are placed under the administration of a single individual. The statesman who governs India is assisted by the judgment of responsible councillors, and by the advice of legal authorities; and, besides, he is relieved from the burthen of official drudgery, by a liberal apparatus of secretaries and preparatory boards. The bishop who administers the church of India has no such assistance or relief. He is without the aid of a clerical chapter, and even responsible or legal advisers; and he has no bureau at his command to lighten the manual labour of an incessant and very extended correspondence. He is, in short, a solitary, unaided functionary, weighed down at once with cares which demand the highest faculties of his mind, and with toil which exacts the most unsparing sacrifice of his bodily ease: an enormous portion, both of his time and strength, must inevitably be consumed in protracted and harassing expeditions both by sea and land. In a tropical region, no human energies can, for many years together, endure such a course of application." Archdeacons, it is true, have been appointed to each presidency. But "there are various functions, which, according to the constitution of the Church, none but |