all this in the after life and character of the pupils? If a purely secular system had been inaugurated by the minutes of 1846 and 1847 this indifference to religious worship and conduct would have been charged on that system. Some time ago I made enquiries, as far as I was able, as to the practical result of the religious instruction given in our parish schools. 120 pupils were grown up and still living in the parish; some of them married, with children passing through the same course of religious instruction. Only nine were in the habit of attending any place of worship regularly, and twoof these were paid singers. Ninety, so far as I could learn, had never been either to church or chapel since they earned their own living, except to a wedding or a baptism. The complaint that the working classes as a rule never go to any place of worship is, I fear, a sad reality; but where is the result of all our denominational teaching and religious instruction? Theology and Scripture proofs of various doctrines are no doubt taught in most of our schools, but religion is not taught, and cannot be taught. The one is a science, the other a sentiment; and we have been mistaking the one for the other. You must not infer from this that I am insensible to the great blessings of a religious life; but the teaching of dogmatic theology never secures it. The tone and atmosphere of a school-room should stand in contrast with the wretched dirty homes from which many of the children come. They should be surrounded, as far as possible, with everything which tends to soften and refine their hearts and feelings; for it is through the senses that the better impulses of our nature are called into activity and life. We want clean and cheerful school-rooms, with good pictures on the walls, and specimens of good art, and these may now be obtained at a small cost. The obstacle in the way of progress is the ever active spirit which seeks to obtain supporters to particular views and disciples for particular sects. The love of power unconsciously takes the semblance of religious anxiety, and every man acts as if he alone had the true faith which ought to be taught to the young. The only practical way is for the State to restrict itself to teaching those truths upon which we all agree. All knowledge which is cognisable by our senses may be safely taught at the public expense. It is only when we leave the things of this world, and enter upon the consideration of those of the next, that we lose the means of deciding who is right and who is wrong. But I think we must all agree that the more perfectly men are educated in a knowledge of undisputed truths the better they will be prepared for the study of Divine truth. This is most assuredly the basis upon which we ought to start. Society and human nature must be taken as it is, and not as some think it should be. For these and other reasons I shall have much pleasure in rendering what assistance I can in promoting the objects you have in view. Yours truly,

J. C. BUCKMASTER.

GEORGE DIXON, Esq., M.P.

From the Marquis of Lorne, M.P. for Argyleshire.

Dear Mr. Dixon,

The Queen's Hotel, Glasgow, Sept. 17th, 1869.

Your very kind letter has only just reached me, and I therefore hope you will excuse my apparent neglect in not having answered before this.

I shall not be able, I am very sorry to say, to attend the meeting, as I mean to spend the time between this and November in Ireland.

I am still more sorry that I cannot attend your meeting on reading through your Education Society's Report. It seems to me a convincing proof that the voluntary denominational system is in great towns a failure, and unless you forbid me, I shall use its statistics to that effect at Bristol. That it is a failure in country parishes I know from twenty-seven years' experience as a parson.

I remain,

Your much obliged,

C. KINGSLEY.

I am much gratified by finding in your second Education League list so many names personally dear to me, and so many of my own cloth.

From Sir Henry A. Hoare, M.P. for Chelsea.

Dear Mr. Dixon,

Stourhead, Bath, 17th Sep., 1869.

I received yours of the 15th this morning. I cannot, as I told you in town, undertake to be present in Birmingham on the 12th and following day, but I shall be truly glad to hear that the General Meeting has done something.

I do hope that with respect to the principle of compulsion there will be no faint-heartedness, and no dilution whatsoever of the power to enforce attendance.

I remain,

Yours very truly,

B

HENRY A. HOARE.

My dear Sir,

From Professor Huxley.

Swanage, Dorset, September 21, 1869.

I received your letter of the 17th yesterday, after I had written a reply to that of earlier date.

I wish again to say how very sorry I am I cannot do what you and the Committee desire of me; but not being a bird, as Mr. Boyle Roach said, I cannot be in two places at once, and I am bound to be lecturing in London on both the twelfth and thirteenth of October.

It would give me the greatest pleasure at the approaching Meeting of the National Education League, at Birmingham, to read a paper on the great necessity there is in this country for compulsory education, a subject upon which I feel very strongly, but unfortunately the time of the meeting coincides with the reassembling of our College, so that it is even more than doubtful whether I shall be able to attend the meeting.

I am extremely sorry, therefore, that I am unable to have the honour which your Committee has assigned to me, by inviting me to prepare a paper

for the occasion.

I am, dear Sir, yours truly,

L. SCHMITZ.

From E. H. Brodie, Esq., Inspector of Schools. Education Department, Council Office, Downing Street, London, September 29th, 1869.

Dear Sir,

It is with the greatest regret that I write to say that I am unable to attend the meeting of the National Education League, at Birmingham.

My official engagements for October are heavy and numerous, and I cannot spare even half-a-day.

I shall read the newspaper accounts of the meeting with the deepest interest.

After 10 years' experience of the present system of education, I have quite come to the conclusion that the poor both are not and never will be reached by it, except very partially, especially in our large towns, so fruitful of the criminal class. Assuring you of my sincerest sympathy for the cause, and regretting my unavoidable absence,

I remain, dear Sir,

TO JESSE COLLINGS, Esq.

Faithful yours,

E. H. BRODIE.

From P. A. Taylor, Esq., M.P. for Leicester.
Aubrey House, Notting Hill, W., October 9th, 1869.

My dear Mr. Dixon,

I am sorry that it will not be in my power to attend the

Conference next week.

Do not attribute my absence to any lukewarmness in the cause.
Of all the great reforms we have before us, this is perhaps the greatest.
I am entirely at one with your programme.

You may rely on my humble support on all occasions.

GEORGE DIXON, Esq., M.P.

Yours truly,

P. A. TAYLOR.

From an oversight the following important letter was not read

at the meeting.

From the Rev. J. J. Brown.

Birmingham, 8th Oct., 1869.

My dear Sir,

I beg to inform you that at the Autumnal Session of the Baptist Union, held at Leicester on the 7th Oct. instant, the following Resolution was adopted:

"That this Union, without pledging itself to the support of the programme of the National Education League, hereby requests the Chairman (Dr. Brock) and Secretary (Rev. J. H. Millard, B.A., Huntingdon), with the Revs. Drs. Underwood and Haycroft, J. Bigwood, and J. J. Brown, to act as its representatives at the General Meeting to be held under the auspices of the League next week at Birmingham."

I am, dear Sir, yours faithfully,

TO FRANCIS ADAMS, Esq.

J. J. BROWN.

Sir,

From Blanchard Jerrold, Esq.

SCHOOLS OF SKILL.

Reform Club, S. W., Oct. 13, 1869.

Being unavoidably detained away from the meetings of the League by professional duties, the Executive will, I trust, permit me to state in a letter the heads of the subject I was anxious to submit viva voce to the friends of popular education who are at this moment assembled at Birmingham.

It seems to be pretty generally agreed that the distress under which so many thousands of our fellow countrymen are suffering is caused, not by overpopulation, but by a superabundance of that labour which the continual extension of machinery has depreciated. The demand for unskilled labour is ever on the decline-a fact on which we should have every reason to congraulate ourselves if the instruction of labour were keeping pace with the spread of machinery. But, unfortunately, while the inventive genius of our race and the energy of our capitalists have given no truce to time, the friends of popular education have been squabbling all the while because they go different ways on Sundays-unmindful of Farquhar's warning. Hence the growth of blind Labour in the face of the Machine, its mighty and unconquerable rival; and hence the increase of pauperism, and of that saddest condition of life-work without hope, which "draws nectar in a sieve."

The point on which I am anxious to insist, and which will, I am sure, find a wide acceptance in the Midlands, is this. The superabundance of blind labour being the cause of the wide-spread distress and heavy poor-rates that afflict and fetter us, our first care must be to teach skill. It is because skill and taste are wide-spread among the working population of France that our neighbours have not the parallel of those townships of even misery which are black spots upon the map of every considerable city in this kingdom. In the front of the education movement Trade Schools must be placed. The State is bound to see that every child is duly provided for the battle of life with those doughty weapons, the three R's. Granted. But surely the first duty society owes to the child is to fortify it so as to assure it, at maturity, the self-dependent strength of perfect citizenship. The children of the poor should first be taught some form of skill by the exercise of which they may raise themselves out of the slough of poverty to which the untutored labour of their parents has sunk them.

Had the Ragged Schools been sound trade schools, less given to the Old Hundredth and more to the profitable methods of bread-earning, they would have effected more good in city lanes and alleys than they can fairly claim to have done with the teaching of the three R's.

If the schoolmaster of the poor were himself re-educated, and taught to implant in his pale scholars the art of living by work-if the primary school