Amongst many diverting sketches of manners, there is one of the mode of celebrating New Year's Day at Berlin :—

'Our ball was a very gay one, for the 31st of December is a day of great festivity in Berlin. When the hands of the clock marked midnight, and we were all engaged in a country dance, the music suddenly ceased; each musician snatched up a French horn, and blew in the new year in such a sonorous manner that one would have thought Eolus's bag was, de nouveau, rent asunder.

The first blast brought the dancing to an end, pro tempore only; and there ensued such a chaos of hugging, kissing, congratulating, shaking of hands, as I never before witnessed. Of course I followed the general example, and saluted all the pretty girls present.'

It may give fair readers an additional interest in these Diaries to say that they abound in proofs that the writer in his adolescent state bore a strong resemblance to Cherubino, in the 'Mariage de Figaro,' when he tells Suzanne: 'Je ne sais plus ce que je suis; mais depuis quelque temps je sens ma poitrine agitée; mon cœur palpite au seul aspect d'une femme.'

We cannot afford space for more extracts, which we regret; for by no means the least interesting of the letters and diaries are those written in Spain, where the writer was an eye-witness, or close observer, of the events of that anxious and uncertain period of our Peninsular operations which preceded the battle of Talavera. An animated description of that battle contains incidents which are new to us :-

'Cuesta was then suffered to continue his retreat unmolested, and to take up a position with his right on the town of Talavera, and the French turned their whole force against Mackenzie, who was posted in a wood, and from not expecting the attack, was nearly surrounded -the enemy having crossed at two fords above the bridge, attacking in front, as well as sending a corps round to the right. This was the most critical part of the whole action. Sir Arthur saw this last movement, and ordered two regiments to make head against the enemy, at the same time warning them that they would be attacked instantly, and that everything depended on their maintaining their ground. He himself got on the top of a small house in the wood, to superintend the whole, and there had the mortification to see those two regiments give way, and the enemy pressing on in such numbers, and with such rapidity, that he had but just time to drop himself from the roof of the house, mount his horse, and order the whole of the corps out of the wood, to form in line in front of it. This they did with great rapidity, and poured some most destructive volleys on the French as they advanced, which checked them, and our troops retired in good order, and took up another position.

The famous charge of the 23rd (cavalry) Regiment took place in the

plain between the above-mentioned hill and the Sierra to the left, where the sharpshooters were placed. A ravine runs there, which, being covered with brushwood, was not perceived beforehand, and they all fell into it-thus one of our finest regiments were cut to pieces, opposed to solid columns of the advancing enemy. The ill-timed impetuosity and rashness of the Guards was also the cause of much mischief, but gave occasion for the execution of a very beautiful manoeuvre-the first line opened en échelon, allowing the retiring Guards to pass through their intervals, then forming again in close line, with a rapidity and precision which all who saw it speak of as admirable.'

According to Napier, a part of the 23rd struggled through the ravine and, led by Major Ponsonby, furiously charged the French. According to the same authority, it was the 48th, led by Colonel Donovan, that opened to allow the Guards, who were falling back in confusion, to pass through. But such points of difference illustrate the value of diaries written on the spot, and the inestimable aid, independently of their interest to the general reader, that future historians may derive from them.

ART. VIII.-1. The Bible in the Public Schools. Arguments in the case of John D. Minor versus the Board of Education of the City of Cincinnati, with the Opinions and Decisions of the Court. Cincinnati and London, 1870.

2. Mr. Knatchbull-Hugessen's Speech upon Education spoken at Sandwich, Jan. 26, 1872.

3. The Marquis of Salisbury's Speech at a Meeting of the National Society for Promoting the Education of the Poor held at Liverpool, April 5, 1872.

WE

WHEN a change was made, so vast in itself, and so foreign to widely prevalent ideas about the functions of Government, as that implied in a public measure for the education of a whole people, it is not wonderful that important questions of principle should have been raised. We are thrown back, in truth, on some of those organic questions which concern the very foundations of human society-the rights of men as individuals, the rights of parents, and the rights and duties of society as a whole. Nor need we regret that it should be so. However undesirable it may be in the ordinary working of society to be continually and unnecessarily reverting to first principles, there are times and circumstances in which such an exercise is wholesome as well as necessary. In such periods, the true wisdom lies in probing to the bottom all questions that must be raised, so as to ascertain the truth in regard to them, and

to

to settle the minds of thinking men on solid foundations. Truth never can ultimately suffer by such an ordeal. In the present controversy about national education, we are persuaded that the investigation of some important general principles has become necessary and must be useful. We are confident that such an investigation will result in a refutation of the loose and dangerous views which have been lately set afloat in certain quarters, and in a clear establishment of the main positions assailed. Thus the vital principles, that it is the duty of the State, by the use of legitimate means, to see that the whole people are educated, and, at the same time, that all true and safe education ought to be based upon religious truth, are being enforced on both sides of the Atlantic and amongst all sections of the Anglo-Saxon family; and they are insisted on anew in France and Italy as the only hope of a sound basis for national life and vigour.

On the first principle involved in National Education there is now happily a general consent. Under the pressing sense of the social evils of ignorance, and the danger of placing political power in the hands of the uninstructed, this first principle was assented to by many, without taking time to consider the issues involved in its application. Controversies have thus arisen, which ought to have been shut out by a really intelligent conviction on this primary question, What right has the State to educate the children of the people? It has been asked, Do not children belong to their parents, and not to the State? That parents have a primary duty in regard to the education of their children is not only fully admitted, but it is a consideration of vital importance. But men and families grouped into societies and nations must no longer be considered as mere units, and therefore this admission does not in the least invalidate the position, that the State or nation is also deeply interested in the question of the management of children. The State is entitled to adopt means to train virtuous citizens, because it is bound to punish vicious ones. It cannot, therefore, be maintained that the parental authority over children is so absolute and paramount as to warrant any class of parents in bringing up a race of children in such neglect that they shall be pests to the general community, and thus entail great burdens upon the State for the repression of crime. A man has no more right to let loose upon the community a family of neglected children, under pretence of the sacredness of parental rights, than to send forth amongst them children suffering from the small-pox or scarlet fever. On the other hand, as prevention is better than cure, the State, by promoting the universal and sound education of the

people,

people, obviates the necessity for undue measures of coercion. This course is also in every way more kind and benevolent. All this, however, is so evident, that every attempt which has been seriously made to maintain the opposite position has signally failed.

But this first principle has been consented to on practical grounds, with a very inadequate consideration of all that it involves. Many cannot get free from the mistake of regarding the State as a power distinct from the collective action of the people. However elementary the error, it has important consequences. It is not the fact that Government comes in as an external power to take in hand the education of the people; but the people themselves have resolved to provide means and aids for the education of their children. Nor have they even intrusted the carrying out of this resolution to the executive Government. When the existing organizations do not provide sufficient means for the education of the people in any locality, the work is committed to boards chosen on the freest principles of local representation, with only guidance and supervision from the Government, and that subject to the will of Parliament. The fullest liberty is therefore given, within the limits prescribed by the representatives of all the people, to those who represent them in their several localities. Hence the schools in every district are sure to be taught and governed as the people who support them wish; and whatever objection may arise to the teaching and government, will come only from a minority.

Of that minority all classes, and even individuals, have their conscientious scruples as to matters of religion fully respected and carefully guarded. This having been done, the minority can have no right to put a sort of Polish veto on the collective action of the council in which all parties are fully and fairly represented.

If, indeed, in the necessary exclusion of the very lowest class from a direct share in this representative system, we exclude the parents of the children whom it is most needful to reach, we should be the more careful to protect their true parental rights and to respect their sound parental feelings. We admit the principle that a parent ought to educate his child. But because some will not, and others cannot, and others neither can nor will, the whole social body comes to the help of its weaker members, with so much compulsion (and, we will at once add, so much only) as is needful to make the reluctant use that help. We claim to do for them what they ought to do for themselves; but we must do it as they would do it if they had both the power and the enlightened will.

It is not for us, like a despotic Government, to take the children out of their families and mould them into mere units in the machinery of the State; nor have we any right to model their minds according to philosophic theories which may be in fashion for the time. It is our most solemn duty to strengthen the parental and filial tie, which is the first bond of the whole social system; to make the children of the poor good sons and daughters before everything. In thus 'turning the hearts of the children to the fathers and of the fathers to the children," we shall reunite those sacred family bonds, in the disruption of which the dissolution of social order begins.

This principle involves the teaching of duty and its sanctions; it forbids our withholding such teaching; it stamps as a tyrannical abuse of our power over the poor the attempt to force on them any system which would be rejected by the enlightened conscience of a parent. It is only by respecting these considerations that we can reconcile the seeming paradox of undertaking to fulfil what is properly a parental duty, by taking the education of neglected children out of their parents' hands. It is only by founding the education of the people on the solid basis of morality as enforced by religious sanctions, that we can fulfil this duty. Nay, we hesitate not to affirm that only by preserving the Bible in our schools shall we consult the real desires of the great mass of parents, and make the system one truly of popular education.

We oppose these principles, at the very threshold of the discussion, to the doctrine of purely 'secular' education, which has unhappily found favour with a large body of the Nonconformists. Some years ago the Nonconformists denied the right of the State to educate the people at all. Many will remember with what clamorous earnestness they tried to enforce their peculiar views. In his celebrated speech on education, in the House of Commons in 1847, Lord Macaulay eloquently exposed this fallacy :—

'Can you mention a single great philosopher, a single man distinguished by his zeal for liberty, humanity, and truth, who from the beginning of the world down to the time of this present Parliament ever held your doctrines? You can oppose to the unanimous voice of all the wise and good of all ages, and of both hemispheres, nothing but a clamour which was first heard a few months ago, a clamour in which you cannot join without condemning not only all whose memory you profess to hold in reverence, but even your former selves. This new theory of politics has at least the merit of originality. It may be fairly stated thus. All men have hitherto been utterly in the wrong as to the nature and objects of civil Government. The great truth, hidden from every preceding generation, and at length revealed, in the year 1846, to some highly respectable ministers and elders of

dissenting