challenged they dare not call in question the doctrine of the eternal Love of God, they should correct their differences by referring them to the touchstone of this immortal truth, and unhesitatingly reject any interpretation that may be found at variance therewith. There are few points to which it would not afford a solution ; and, so tested, their creed would become far simpler, and would thereby gain in power of appeal to the human reason and conscience.

My task is done. My simple object has been to suggest a few thoughts, that others may themselves take up and perchance pursue, and which may help to a truer and more consistent faith in goodness—¿.e., in The Good; ie, God.

As from the bosom of a thunder-cloud

Fierce lightnings flash,

And rive the knotty oak in twain, with loud,
With horrid crash ;

So flashed the lightning from the stripling's eye
At thought of shame;

So rushed he on the foe, resolved to die
With honoured name.
"Am I unworthy of fair France?" he cries
With wild despair.

His shouts high o'er the din of battle rise,
Rending the air.

Fiercely he whirls his musket o'er his head,

Felling the foe.

A Russian serf is numbered with the dead
At every blow.

A moment he is heard above the strife,
Then heard-no more;

A moment bravely battles for dear life,

Then-all is o'er.

R. J. B. (1868).

Sball we Teach Our Boys to Work with their hands?

HERE seems to be a growing desire on the part of parents of the middle classes to have their boys taught to perform some handicraft, so that when they have left the parent nest they may be better able to bear possible reverses of fortune, and may at any rate have "a trade in their fingers."

No doubt this desire is constantly ministered to by the experience which almost every day brings of the difficulty of finding remunerative employment for the merely well-educated-who have average ability, and nothing more. Most men and most women have some relative or connection who is like the fabled stone of Sisyphus to them, and who certainly does not gather any "moss" in the course of his perpetual rollings. No sooner does this unfortunate individual appear to be lodged in some comfortable crevice of an appointment, than something is sure to occur which sends him bounding down the hill again with his old persistence, once more to test the friendship of his friends and the perseverance of his patrons. In nine cases out of ten the human incubus is amiable in disposition, and anxious to be at work. But in those plastic years of his life, from fourteen to twenty-one, when the faculties are wax to receive and marble to retain," he was taught no special art or mystery, and in consequence has grown up doing everything in general but nothing in particular; and as it is quite impossible for him to learn any business now, he will be a stone of Sisyphus to the end of his chapter, whose weight will be felt to be a burden sometimes even by those who love him best.

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But while there is a growing feeling in favour of handiwork, as a last resource, if everthing else should fail; there is to the average middleclass mind a great attraction and fascination about the regular and orthodox channels of professional life, and a good deal of social superstition--specially believed in by women-against a gentleman concerning himself with anything like handiwork except as a recreation. prejudice against craftsmanship-a prejudice which does not trouble the fathers and mothers of the future nation which Board Schools are bringing to the front--will only succumb to the changes which are gradually but surely coming over the conditions of English life.

This

When it is discovered, as it infallibly will be discovered more and more, that our professional men are altogether too thick upon the ground,

and that only exceptional ability and "push" can secure success; when it is found that thousands of well-meaning gentlemen are lamenting the fate which consigned them to a genteel and white-handed uselessness; or that some of them are even availing themselves of such methods of escape from it as are afforded by cab-driving or the colonial police; there will probably be a decline in that feeling of antagonism to "trade" which is at present so decidedly characteristic of many English minds.

Even supposing that other things are equal, the effort to make a raw schoolboy into a professional man is an expensive experiment for a father to try. He will find that he cannot produce a lawyer under a less cost than about a thousand pounds; and that if he makes a parson, a soldier, or a doctor of his son it will probably cost him more. And when it is considered that the effort is, after all, scarcely anything more than a mere experiment, and that the subject of it may be doomed to long years of the vivisection of disappointment and hope deferred; it may well occur to the parental mind to examine the possibilities of other fields of employment, even though they may not be surrounded with the halo of respectability which is assigned to the professions.

The Micawberish idea that dwells in the minds of some parents to the effect that their clever and capable boys will make a living "somehow," no matter how crowded the avenues to success may be, is simply cruel and unnatural. No man has a right to condemn his son to the years of penal servitude which lie before the untrained youth who has never been placed in one of the regular grooves of life; and if the professional grooves are too expensive, or are not suited to his characteristics, by all means let the lad be taught to work at some honest calling which will, at all events, save him from the necessity of tasting the bitterness of pauper's bread.

The ultimate resource of our boys, if they can find no opening for their energies in the old country, must, no doubt, be emigration; and with our population increasing at its present rate, it is in many cases the kindest and most parental thing a father can do to furnish his son with such practical knowledge as will enable him to utilise the magnificent resources of the colonies. The men who grow rich there are those who are perfectly acquainted with some sort of agricultural or mechanical work. Why should our sons, if they have to go abroad, have less chance of success than others?

Here another difficulty crops up. If a lad is to be taught a trade, he must begin to learn it when he is fourteen, and must go on learning it until he is twenty-one. And by all means he must be apprenticed. Now it is very difficult for a father, whose boy is making fair progress at school, to take him away and put him on to a farm or into a workshop. The lad's mother pleads that he may remain at school at least until he is sixteen-when it may be determined whether his future course shall be academical or technical.

But in the great majority of instances it is useless to put a lad to a trade at sixteen, if the best results are to be obtained; and, besides, at sixteen he will be less inclined to accept the necessary drudgery of a beginning at manual work than he would have been at fourteen.

It remains to be said that, given the good grounding in elementary education, which every boy may now get between eight and fourteen, there is in technical training nothing which need militate against his attaining a very fair amount of higher education if he care for it; and that, probably, the four or five years immediately succeeding his coming of age might be with advantage devoted to study, while for scientific research there could be no better field of investigation than is presented by the workshop and the manufactory.

The five great grooves of work in which boys may be placed, with a view to furnishing them for a possible future, are agriculture, building, engineering, manufacturing, and the artistic handicrafts, which comprise the tilling of the soil, working in wood and metals, the making of textile fabrics, and the thousand processes of modern manufacturing and artistic skill.

If our boys are to be taught to work with their hands it is essential that they shall make a serious business of it—they must not merely play at being workmen.

If a lad is to be taught agriculture, for instance, his success will probably depend within certain limits on the smallness of the farm on which he is trained.

The occupation of a "gentleman farmer," while it affords a pleasant way of spending money and time, is not a remunerative one, and the boy who is to succeed in the colonies must learn something more than to ride over the farm on a good cob, and say "Good morning" to the bailiff, who is the real ruler of the acres. We want to train our boy so that he may not be altogether confounded when he is placed on newlycleared land in Dacotah or Manitoba, if that should be his destiny. We do not want to teach him simply to be a charming rosy-cheeked fellow who rides straight to hounds, and who is favourably known in the county as a good sportsman. While we hope he will retain his true gentlemanliness, he must learn to work, and must be able to give the cleverest rustic of them all long odds; and, consequently, he must work with his own hands and feet at ploughing, sowing, reaping, and all the operations of the farm. We will not, therefore, send him to one of those "model" farms on which the proprietor is losing some hundreds per annum with equanimity; but will rather choose one of those smaller holdings on which money is still made in England-where the farmer literally puts his hand, if necessary, to the plough, and if he finds it expedient, works with his men; and whose last thought it is to occupy his life principally with field sports. The working farmer does not make such an ornamental figure as the farming squire, but we have our boy's future to think of, and at all hazards we must make him practical. There is a great deal of difference between knowing when a thing is well done and being able to do it oneself.

In many cases the first result of sending a boy to learn a practical trade or handicraft, is to produce in him a great disgust for the rough path on which he has entered. Especially is this the case with those in which the rougher class of work has to be encountered and mastered.

He