pretensions, under the walls of one of our most renowned seminaries. We see it in S. Mark's College, Chelsea; and we have something like it in S. James's College, Hagerstone, U. S., of which an account is given in Waylen's Ecclesiastical Reminiscences; but our public schools have yet to attain it. They have, no doubt, or most of them have, the morning and evening prayers in chapel, if not daily, at least on all holydays; but these are commonly attended in so perfunctory and irreverent a manner, that, to many of the scholars, more evil accrues from them than good. This, it may be said, is the scholars' own fault, and not that of the system. This is true; and yet there is a fault in the system where such results are frequent. The truth is, that the services are ordinarily set before the boys, without any concomitant incentives or restraints except those of penalty. The spirit of the Church does not, as it should, pervade, as the intelligent informing life, the whole mass of education. Without this spirit, the services of the Church will become as distasteful as "The dull dry lesson, forc'd down word by word.”† If our public schools have found the way, as they certainly have, to interest their scholars in the remains of antiquity, though making them the subject of compulsory instruction, surely the privilege of frequenting the courts of the MOST HIGH,-Surely the blessing of communion with His saints, should not be loathed or neglected, where the pleasure of intercourse with Homer and Virgil, with Plato and Cicero, is so fully appreciated. so fully appreciated. We may add that opportunities themselves are sometimes withholden. From one of the works before us, it appears that, until very lately, there were but three communions in the year at Winchester College!—the minimum which the Church permits to her members ! What domestic roof does not afford more frequent opportunities than this? Some remedy for the present untoward state of matters is found in the chapel pulpit; and this has been of late very effectively directed to the spiritual training of public scholars. Dr. Arnold, though teaching an erroneous and defective system, yet appealed with much earnestness and kindness to his scholars at Rugby. Dr. Wordsworth at Harrow, and his brother, the Rev. Charles Wordsworth, together with his superior, Dr. Moberly, at Winchester, have addressed boys in a language and a spirit which they can appreciate and improve. It is with the two brothers that we "At twenty minutes before seven all the household are in chapel for Morning Prayers, which on Wednesday and Friday, and on all Holydays, are the regular Morning Service of the Church. .... At ten minutes past twelve, the chapel bell rings to remind all of the duty of devotion at that hour. Some repair to the chapel, where a short Service is performed; attendance on which is wholly voluntary..... After tea, a short space of silence is set apart for reading the Holy Scriptures; immediately after which are the Evening Family Prayers in the chapel.' -Waylen's Ecclesiastical Reminiscences. + Childe Harold, iv. Disc. XXII. are at present concerned. Of these we prefer the author of "Christian Boyhood." His earnestness, clearness, and well-adapted eloquence, his soundness of views, and most judicious selection and treatment of subjects, prove how well he is suited to the position which he occupied, and to that more responsible trust to which a sister Church has called him. We shall proceed to lay before our readers some passages, not actually perhaps the best in his volumes, but directed to the supply of those defects, and the counteraction of those dangers to which we have already adverted, and throwing some light also on the nature of public school-training as it is, or has been. From the first of our selections it will appear that the practice of private prayer-the very basis of religious duty-the first religious duty taught by Christian mothers--the duty never neglected in any private education professing to be Christian,-has, in the professedly religious foundation of Winchester,-in the creation of Wykeham, and the cradle of Ken,-been systematically and totally neglected for generations of scholars, and is now only partially restored! This defect is certainly not inherent in public education; but we confidently affirm that it could, by no possibility, creep into private. Mr. Wordsworth's account of the matter is curious: 66 But, besides the occasion which the present hour [Easter Eve] affords for reflections such as these in common to all Christians, you, my young Friends, have another and peculiar reason to feel interest in observing this sacred Eve, as being the anniversary of the introductionamong you of the regular and established practice of Private Prayer. It is now five years ago the generation of Boys who were then in College has since almost wholly passed away. Very few of you who are present this Evening can remember the circumstances of the change to which I am referring, or are aware, perhaps, of the state of our Society at that time; and yet it is very important that these circumstances should not be forgotten (for reasons which I shall presently point out), and that you should all of you be acquainted with them. Up to the Evening of which I speak-now, as I have said, five years ago-it was, I believe, notorious that no Boy in College was in the habit of saying his Prayers openly in his Chamber by his own bedside. The influence of evil, and the fear and shame of doing what all doubtless knew to be right, were too powerful for any one to venture to stand up and fight against them. Each followed the multitude-not precisely to do evil,' but to leave undone the first, most needful, and most essential good. In such a state of things, to read (as it was my duty to do) an occasional Lecture upon the necessary preparation for the Holy Communion, you may well suppose, was a task full of anxiety, and painful misgivings; and addressing the Prefects, at this hour, when I hoped their minds would be most open to good impressions, I put the case to them in as solemn a way as I could. I reminded them of the uselessness, and worse than uselessness, of any occasional preparation for the LORD's Supper, without the constant, habitual, daily practice of Private Prayer, which was itself the truest and most effectual preparation. I pointed out to them, that to celebrate the Eucharist, and to profess love and thankfulness to their REDEEMER, without attempting to rescue His little ones (over whom they were set as Tutors and guardians,) from habits of ungodliness, could only be regarded by Him as false-dealing and hypocrisy. If hitherto they and their predecessors had lived far too much in forgetfulness of God, I called upon them now 'to stay the plague,' to stand between the dead and the living, to say courageously, but humbly and resolutely, to the spirit of impiety, thus far shalt thou go and no further,' to snatch, as it were, from the altar of CHRIST'S Sacrifice the torch of a Christian example, and, like the youths in the ancient Festival, to pass it down from hand to hand, and from generation to generation. I referred them to the time when the great and good Bishop Ken, formerly a Scholar and afterwards Fellow of this College, found, perhaps in this very Chamber, an attentive and willing audience for lessons of a purer and more exalted piety than either I was competent to offer, or they able to receive; when he could congratulate the Scholars whom he addressed that they had the Scriptures daily read to them in the Hall before dinner and supper, and at night when they were going to bed, that they might close the day with holy thoughts.' I entreated them to exert the influence and authority which they enjoyed as Prefects, in God's service and for His glory. He had prospered their course so as to raise them to the dignity they had so long coveted; let them show their thankfulness, by causing His Name to be hallowed, and His worship to arise from their own lips, and from the lips of all those who, as fellows of the same Chamber' (socii concamerales), were now committed to their charge. I added that if they were willing as a Body to do this, the Officers' were at liberty to come to me after the Lecture, and I would gladly assist them by proposing some plan for carrying it into effect. "After a few minutes' consultation, the Officers' came. They expressed, on behalf of the whole Body, their full concurrence in what I had said, and, at the same time, thanked me for having brought the matter before them as I had done. It was at once arranged to establish the following regulation in all the Chambers. Upon retiring at night, after Chapel, when the clock struck, Prayer-time was to be called, and the Prefect in course in each Chamber was to hold himself responsible for keeping order during a short interval, sufficient for each Boy to say his Prayers without the fear of disturbance or interruption. The Prefects bound themselves to say their Prayers openly, either at the same time with the rest, or at their own proper time for going to bed.”. Vol. i. pp. 148-151. "Having said so much as I have in this Lecture upon the subject of your Private Prayers, you will naturally expect me to make some allusion to the attempt which, I have understood, very many of you have made-and made successfully-to extend the practice, before observed only in the Evening, to the Morning also. I need not tell you how truly delighted I was when I first heard of that attempt,-how sincerely - I rejoice over what has been already done,--and how heartily I wish you 'GoD speed' in carrying out the same (if it be not yet wholly and universally established) still more effectually. You have gone far, by God's grace, to verify the prediction which, when the regulation for Private Prayer was originally made and confined to the Evening, I expressed, five years ago, to the Prefects, whom I was then addressing, in these words: You may remark that I have said nothing as if I intended the advice and directions which I have given you to apply to the Morning. I do not wish to endanger the fate of the whole proposal by pressing it at once to its full extent. I am content, for the present, to fall short, in this respect, of the practice of your ancestors. I do not desire to tempt you beyond that you are able. But, provided you now enter upon the course which has been suggested, GoD may hereafter enable you to go from strength to strength,' and bestow additional ' grace and worship' upon His servants, if not in their own time, at least in that of their Posterity. And blessed indeed will be that day, which shall behold, at its dawn, every member of this useful Family kneeling in private Prayer before the footstool of our HEAVENLY FATHER, nor close with the shades of night till it has witnessed again the same Family on their knees, each begging GoD's pardon for his sins, each entrusting himself to His protection, each praising Him for all His goodness and loving-kindness, which they have severally enjoyed?' "Has this day yet risen upon you? If not, may it rise to-morrow with the rising of JESUS CHRIST!"-Vol. i. pp. 156-158. It does not appear that there was any early response on the part of the Prefects to this pious prayer. In the sermon following, preached about a twelvemonth after, we find Mr. Wordsworth complaining of the late attendance of the Prefects in chapel, and addressing them, "I cannot but fear that the practice of your private morning prayers, in several of the chambers, is not quite what it ought to be."* We cannot doubt it. Yet it appears that afterward some attention was paid to this admonition. There is, as we have observed, common prayer daily in our public schools. This is a happy and glorious privilege, for which no Christian can be sufficiently thankful-and it is one which, in the present position of matters with us, cannot always be realized in private education. But where it can, it will, we apprehend, be commonly received, with more gratitude and profit than the following extract shows it to be accepted at Winchester. "Nor should the signal punishments, attached by the ALMIGHTY Himself to the guilt of profanation under the old covenant, be without their warning to us, who are taught, under a more perfect dispensation, still not to disobey the Law and the Prophets, but to fulfil. If the anger of the LORD was kindled against Uzzah, and He smote him, because he put his hand to the ark"; If 'Ahaz, by cutting in pieces the vessels of the House of GOD, provoked to anger the LORD GOD of his Fathers"; are they (and would to God there were none such * Vol. i. p. 179. among us) are they, I ask, in no danger, who so far profane the Divine Presence, in which we are here assembled, as to employ the time set apart for His service in desecrating the place dedicated to His honour; and who denying, as it were, the Name of the Most High, even in His Holy Temple, raise to themselves an idolatrous memorial at once of barbarism and ungodliness? Surely unless we purge away this evil, this pollution, from our House of GoD, the imprecation of the Psalmist shall light upon us: Lift up Thy feet, that thou mayest utterly destroy every enemy which hath done evil in Thy sanctuary.' Surely if we are thus guilty of not discerning the LORD's Body in this His Tabernacle, no less than in the sacramental Tabernacle of His Body and Blood, we kindle God's wrath against us, we provoke Him to plague us with divers diseases, and sundry kinds of death. Nor indeed are examples wanting in the History of the Church in earlier ages, of the Divine vengeance displayed in the most awful and instantaneous manner, upon such sacrilegious and profane offenders. Judge, therefore, yourselves, Brethren, that ye be not judged of the LORD."-Vol. i. pp. 200, 201. Dr. Wordsworth has a sermon "on Making the Responses in public Prayer," from which it appears that this duty was as much neglected at Harrow, as his brother's sermon on the same subject shows it to have been neglected at Winchester: for he adds, "some progress was made towards the desired result." Habitual consecration of the LORD's day is, we believe, always attainable in private education; and evil books, "books of a licentious and corrupting tendency," could scarcely find admission at all. Yet Mr. Wordsworth has "little doubt" that such are sometimes THE STAPLE (!) of SUNDAY studies (!!!) at Winchester! "At present I have little doubt that many of you are in the habit of exercising no reserve whatever with respect to the Books you read on a Sunday. Some, perhaps, who feel most keenly the suspension of games, and all other active and bodily amusements, and are little disposed at any time to bestow a serious thought upon the cultivation of their mental faculties, may even find their consolation in assigning to this very day the perusal of Books, which form the staple of their voluntary studies, and which, it is to be feared, are too often of a vulgar and unprofitable, if not of an actually licentious and corrupting tendency. At the same time, on the other hand, I am fully aware that Works on Theology, of a strictly and exclusively religious character, such as Sermons and other Treatises of that kind, are so little in accordance with the general tastes and feelings of the young, that were I to wish to insist upon the stated and regular perusal of any such, as requisite to perfect the fulfilment of your Sunday duties, I should probably meet, at best, with very slight and partial success. But I do wish to remind you that there are other Books, which in your case might well be admitted to supply the place of those of a graver caste, and which, I am persuaded, you would find by no means unattractive; but, on the contrary, both entertaining and instructive in the highest degree. I could now |