original a man. Mrs. Trimmer objects to this practice, that it destroys female modesty, and inculcates in that sex a habit of giving boxes on the ear.

"When a boy gets into a singing tone in reading (says Mr Lancaster), the best mode of cure that I have hitherto found effectual is by the force of ridicule.— Decorate the offender with matches, ballads (dying speeches if needful); and in this garb send him round. the school, with some boys before him crying matches, &c., exactly imitating the dismal tones with which such things are hawked about London streets, as will readily recur to the reader's memory. I believe many boys behave rudely to Jews more on account of the manner in which they cry 'old clothes,' than because they are Jews. I have always found excellent effects from treating boys, who sing or tone in their reading, in the manner described. It is sure to turn the laugh of the whole school upon the delinquent; it provokes risibility, in spite of every endeavour to check it, in all but the offender. I have seldom known a boy thus punished once, for whom it was needful a second. time. It is also very seldom that a boy deserves both a log and a shackle at the same time. Most boys are wise enough, when under one punishment, not to transgress immediately, lest it should be doubled.”. (Pp. 47, 48.)

This punishment is objected to on the part of Mrs. Trimmer, because it inculcates a dislike to Jews, and an indifference about dying speeches! Toys, she says, given as rewards, are worldly things; children are to be taught

that there are eternal rewards in store for them. It is very dangerous to give prints as rewards, because prints may hereafter be the vehicle of indecent ideas. It is, above all things, perilous to create an order of merit in the Borough School, because it gives the boys an idea of the origin of nobility, "especially in times (we use Mrs. Trimmer's own words) which furnish instances of the extinction of a race of ancient nobility in a neighbouring nation, and the elevation of some of the lowest people to the highest stations. Boys accustomed to consider themselves the nobles of the school, may, in their future lives, from a conceit of their own merits (unless they have very sound principles), aspire to be nobles of the land, and to take place of the hereditary nobility.”

We think these extracts will sufficiently satisfy every reader of common sense, of the merits of this publication. For our part, when we saw these ragged and interesting little nobles, shining in their tin stars, we only thought it probable that the spirit of emulation would make them better ushers, tradesmen, and mechanics. We did, in truth, imagine we had observed, in some of their faces, a bold project for procuring better breeches for keeping out the blasts of heaven, which howled through those garments in every direction, and of aspiring hereafter to greater strength of seam, and more perfect continuity of cloth. But for the safety of the titled orders we had no fear; nor did we once dream that the black rod which whipt these dirty little dukes would one day be borne before them as the emblem of legislative dignity, and the sign of noble blood.

Order. The order Mr. Lancaster has displayed in his school is quite astonishing. Every boy seems to be the cog of a wheel-the whole school a perfect machine. This is so far from being a burden or constraint to the boys, that Mr. Lancaster has made it quite pleasant and interesting to them, by giving to it the air of military arrangement; not foreseeing, as Mrs. Trimmer foresees, that, in times of public danger, this plan furnishes the disaffected with the immediate means of raising an army; for what have they to do but to send for all the children educated by Mr. Lancaster, from the different corners of the kingdom into which they are dispersed to beg it as a particular favour of them to fall into the same order as they adopted in the spelling class twenty-five years ago; and the rest is all matter of

course

Jamque faces et saxa volant.

The main object, however, for which this book is written, is to prove that the Church Establishment is in danger from the increase of Mr. Lancaster's institutions. Mr. Lancaster is, as we have before observed, a Quaker. As a Quaker, he says, I cannot teach your creeds; but I pledge myself not to teach my own. I pledge myself (and if I deceive you, desert me and give me up) to confine myself to those points of Christianity in which all Christians agree. To which Mrs. Trimmer replies, that, in the first place, he cannot do this; and, in the next place, if he did do it, it would not be enough. But why, we would ask, cannot Mr. Lancaster effect his first object? The practical and the feeling parts of reli

gion are much more likely to attract the attention and provoke the questions of children, than its speculative doctrines. A child is not very likely to put any questions at all to a catechising master, and still less likely to lead him into subtle and profound disquisition. It appears to us not only practicable, but very easy, to confine the religious instruction of the poor, in the first years of life, to those general feelings and principles which are suitable to the Established Church, and to every sect; afterwards, the discriminating tenets of each subdivision of Christians may be fixed upon this general basis. To say that this is not enough, that a child should be made an Antisocinian, or an Antipelagian, in his tenderest years, may be very just; but what prevents you from making him so? Mr. Lancaster, purposely and intentionally, to allay all jealousy, leaves him in a state as well adapted for one creed as another. Begin; make your pupil a firm advocate for the peculiar doctrines of the English Church; dig round about him, on every side, a trench that shall guard him from every species of heresy. In spite of all this clamour you do nothing; you do not stir a single step; you educate alike the swineherd and his hog;—and then, when a man of real genius and enterprise rises up, and says, Let me dedicate my life to this neglected object-I will do everything but that which must necessarily devolve upon you alone-you refuse to do your little, and compel him, by the cry of Infidel and Atheist, to leave you to your ancient repose, and not to drive you, by insidious comparisons, to any system of active utility. We deny, again and again,

that Mr. Lancaster's instruction is any kind of impediment to the propagation of the doctrines of the Church; and if Mr. Lancaster were to perish with his system tomorrow, these boys would positively be taught nothing; the doctrines which Mrs. Trimmer considers to be prohibited would not rush in, but there would be an absolute vacuum. We will, however, say this in favour of Mrs. Trimmer, that if every one who has joined in her clamour, had laboured one hundredth part as much as she has done in the cause of national education, the clamour would be much more rational, and much more consistent, than it now is. By living with a few people as active as herself, she is perhaps somehow or another persuaded that there is a national education going on in this country. But our principal argument is, that Mr. Lancaster's plan is at least better than the nothing which preceded it. The authoress herself seems to be a lady of respectable opinions, and very ordinary talents; defending what is right without judgment, and believing what is holy without charity.