submitted at once to such refining influences, would work like the spell of the enchanter; and, simultaneously with the great moral movement, coarseness of thought and expression, vulgarity of tone, ungrammatical language, and clumsiness of manner, would all disappear in a single, or, at farthest, a second generation. Nor are these expectations extravagant; the extravagance is in refusing to believe that certain influences, which invariably do produce certain results on as many as are subjected to them, would not produce similar results on all were all subjected to them. During the years that the children of the present generation remain in the infant schools, every exertion should be made by the State Education Establishment to have a sufficient number of primary schools ready for their reception; not, indeed, so much for the sake of the further instruction in learning, however desirable, as because the young children, on quitting their first asylums, would still be of too tender an age to be flung on a state of society in which so much corruption would as yet remain among the adults of the old generation, who, in their childhood, had possessed no such advantages. It is one thing to assert that nothing can be done without infant schools, another thing to suppose that they can do everything. This second step, also, would be rendered much easier by the aid of the already educated classes. By their co-operation, in short, we should be enabled both to complete the machinery of the system of public education, and also to raise the standard of admission as teachers to its highest elevation in a much shorter period than would otherwise be possible. If, however, the force of prejudice should prove unconquerable, and prevent these classes giving us their aid, it is not the less the duty of government to proceed, though more slowly, no doubt, yet as quickly as they are able, with such instruments as they can command., In this case, indeed, it may be necessary, at first, to give the charge of infant asylums to many persons who are capable of little more than preserving from evil training, and putting in practice a few plain rules drawn up for their use by persons at the head of the system, understanding the science of mind, and its application to moral training. But, ultimately, when the difficulties of establishing the system are got over, and there has been time to train one generation of teachers from infancy by selecting from all the infant schools the best trained pupils, of the sweetest tempers, and clearest intellect, and preparing them for future teachers by a special course of teaching to train, and by passing them through the whole series of schools;-then we shall be enabled, though after a much longer interval, to raise the standard of admission to the post of teacher under the State Education Establishment to the full height already suggested. And then it would be desirable that the teacher of every infant school should thus be fitted by his June, 1845.-VOL. XLIII.—NO. CLXX. M acquirements to pass on as teacher through the complete series of schools, and eligible, both by law and ability, to rise to the rank of minister of public instruction. Indeed, teachers having been themselves trained in their infancy is a condition of due preparation so important, that when the establishment shall be complete, it should never be dispensed with. At present we must submit to the necessity, and meet the urgency of the case, by working with the best tools we can find, and such as we can hastily prepare. Though we cannot (all at once) do everything, we can immediately do something; we can, at least, preserve from street training, and in this we have not a moment to lose. Each generation of little beings whom we are permitting to grow out of that tender age at which they are most susceptible of training, we are thus subjecting to sufferings which we might, in a great measure, prevent, and robbing of portions of happiness which our privileges of light and leisure render us accountable to diffuse among them. It is a solemn consideration, that the training of the rising generation may be neglected, but cannot be delayed! While we are idle, those great universal teachers (circumstances) are at work. The greater part of those infants whom we are not training for good, they are training for evil. Too many, alas! for the convict ship, the gaol, and the gallows. Can any of us, then, lay our heads on our pillows with an approving conscience, who have allowed the day to pass without endeavouring to forward this great object-moral training for the whole infant population, as far as any mite of influence we may each of us possess can go towards its promotion? CHAPTER V. Is religion the obstacle? But some have conscientious scruples. Is religion, then, the obstacle ? Is that religion which says, "Suffer little children to come unto me," perverted into a source of delay which devotes generation after generation of those children to destruction? There is something wrong here, no matter how specious the pretext. If, then, we be not prepared to declare that we are willing to see the moral plague of suffering and crime continue to rage for yet an indefinite period, we must, while the points which are found difficult to reconcile are being argued, give, at least, asylums from street training to the whole infant population, with the plain, simple, moral training already described, which cannot offend any conscience; and followed up by primary schools for the reason of continued shelter already assigned, and conducted on the same broad and simple principle. Whatever more a child's parents and pastor may choose to teach it at their leisure, the child cannot, in the meantime, be the worse for having been habituated, for some years, to be kindly and honest, for the love of God and its neighbour, and to feel the happier itself for being so. Is not this religion-all the religion a child can well understand? Surely this is not separating religion from education! Until some such sanctuary, then, be provided, where "babes," too young for the "strong meat" of mysteries, 'shall be fed with the milk of human kindness, teaching them to do as they would be done by, and sheltered the while from the evil training of hosts of adult thieves and murderers, who need them for their tools, what hope is there for humanity? Give the meat to all who will, but give the milk to all. While the mind of Christendom remains in its present disgraceful state of civil warfare, while the ministers of peace are buckling on their armour and drawing their swords upon each other, who is to save the innocents from the hand of the destroyer? While the missionaries of the Gospel of peace are bringing "railing accusations against each other," who is to bring the heathen and the savage to the knowledge of the truth? In short, while the shepherd of each flock is too intently occupied in proving that all his Christian brethren are without the pale of salvation to have an argument or a hand to spare to lead the erring and the ignorant within what ought to be their peaceful fold, who is there to keep the wolves from the sheep? Christians! put up your swords; "you know not what manner of spirit ye are of !” What drove the inquiring mind of Gibbon without the pale? Not the scoffs of the heathen; no-it was the misdirected arguments of the two great divisions of the Christian world. Each exhausted every resource of rhetoric to prove the errors of his brother's creed, rather than the truth of his own; and Gibbon, thus convinced by each that the other was in the wrong, rejected both. See Dr. Chalmers's denunciation of the Church Establishments, English and Scotch. CHAPTER VI. Is expense the obstacle? Is it the expenditure that we dread? Shall a nation calling itself great, the colossal fortunes of whose rich sound in the ear of the stranger like fairy tales or Arabian Nights' Entertainments, whose merchants seek the wildest speculations to employ their surplus capital, refuse to purchase with that wealth the blessings of moral order? The pearl is beyond price. Should not a nation sell all she hath to purchase it? But are we sure that even in actual expenditure we should not ultimately be gainers? Are our prison systems, our criminal courts, our penal colonies, all maintained without expense? Every county town has its gaol. No one seems to murmur at the expense. County gentlemen meet and vote in a day thirty thousand, forty thousand, fifty thousand pounds, to build a new gaol. The penitentiary model prison, on the north side of London, cost eighty thousand pounds. In the name of the God of mercy, why are we so liberal to punish what we are so grudging to prevent? Let us give real education, based on early moral training, as unsparingly as we give the means by which we hope to deter from crime, and all this frightful apparatus shall become unnecessary. Then shall we, at no very distant period, be enabled to convert this magnificent model penitentiary into a great model moral training asylum for infants. Nor would this be the only temple, consecrated to suffering and guilt, which would change its destination and become the sanctuary of all the holy instincts and kindly feelings of many a young heart which had else been trampled down by overwhelming circumstances into the one general mass of wretchedness and corruption. For, with nations, and with nations of children, as with individual children, the only effectual preventive of violent and unruly passions, is the culture of their counterbalancing influences, the kindly and gentle affections; the only effectual check on selfish conduct, the calling the human sympathies habitually out of self; the only means of lifting the being above grovelling desires, the presenting the natural faculty of veneration with objects worthy of its worship, and calculated to excite its enthusiastic admiration, and awaken the natural ambition of the soul to resemble what it approves. Then, and then only, does the faculty which perceives the connection between causes and their effects, cease to be a servant of sin, and become an instrument for the production of good. Hitherto, kings, parents, and teachers have directed almost all their efforts to the impossible task of disconnecting effects from their causes, without intervening adequate interrupting causes. Thus they have attempted to prevent, by commands and threats, the evil effects of which (by neglecting to cultivate the moral faculties) they have permitted the causes; while they have lost sight of the great master fact, that in the necessary connection between cause and effect dwells the secret of power. This is nature's oath of allegiance to him who knows her laws. The knowledge of those laws is the sceptre by which alone intelligence can rule. And this knowledge is the power which he who made the laws of nature intrusted to man when he gave him intelligence to perceive those laws, accompanied, however, with moral faculties and human sympathies to check the use of that power for evil, and to urge its exercise for good. When, in short, he made that marvellous apparatus, a human soul, which, in its moral faculties, thus contains a revelation of the uses for which its intellectual powers were given; and which, by the profession of this light, is rendered responsible for the use it makes of this power. Let society, then, represented by her rulers, have faith in this power, wielded by the guidance of this light, and she shall "remove mountains" of ignorance, sin, and misery which now weigh on her labouring bosom, and "cast them into the ocean" of the past. THE CAPTIVE ARAB GIRL IN THE PERSIAN HAREM. BY MRS. CRAWFORD. OH! give me sweet music, the plaintive and tender, No more shall I see him, my brave-hearted lover, No more his approach in the distance discover, By the strain that he sings-my own Araby's song: Though Mosella's bright roses around me are blowing, • Dur-el-Baheer means "Pearl of the sea." |