some of the great centres of population than the parochial school ever at any time provided for boys of the middle and upper classes. It seems to me that higher qualifications in the teachers would not have materially arrested the operation of these two causes, and that in the course of another decade, a considerable reduction in the numbers learning Latin will have to be reported, even in the districts for which the Dick Bequest is intended, where the masters are unquestionably more highly qualified for teaching the higher branches than any other class of Scotch schoolmasters, past or present.

With regard to the qualification of the new race of schoolmasters for giving the higher instruction, and the influence of the Privy Council on it, it will be universally admitted, that while the general qualifications of the teacher, whether we regard the knowledge he professes or the training he receives, have been very much raised under the influence of the Government Minutes, his special qualification as a teacher of Latin and Greek has been lowered. This result is the necessary consequence of the Normal School programme of study, which is arranged by Government with a view to the educational wants of England, and then, without inquiry, applied to Scotland. Nor is it probable that any plan of training teachers can ever be devised, even under more favourable circumstances as regards the central administration, which will be suited in all respects to the

requirements of Scotch parishes, so long as our Universities are ignored as schools for teachers, and left outside the machinery employed for producing them.

This brings me naturally to speak more explicitly than I have yet done of the class of teachers who occupy the parochial schools in the north-eastern counties which benefit by the Bequest.

CHAPTER VIII.

THE CLASS OF PAROCHIAL TEACHERS IN ABERDEEN,

BANFF, AND MORAY.

THE teachers of the north-eastern counties are almost without exception graduates of the University of Aberdeen, and four-fifths of them are licentiates in theology. Only a very small proportion are excluded from participation in the Dick Bequest in consequence of failure to pass the examination of the Trustees. These facts guarantee not only the solid acquirements of the teachers, but, which is of more importance, an elevation and solidity of moral and intellectual character, which are of inestimable value in attaining the true ends of the school. Those schoolmasters who have received their preparation for their work in our Normal Colleges certainly exhibit, in the very first year of their professional life, a capacity for organization, a knowledge of good methods, and a skill in teaching, which University men attain only after many years of conscientious labour. Nor, indeed, save in a few exceptional cases, do the latter ever come to a full appreciation of the ways and means and the important little things of the schoolroom. This is a defect which can be cured

only by the careful study of teaching as an art resting on philosophic principles, and upon the critical observation of the organization and methods of model schools. But, on the other hand, the University men not only bring higher accomplishments and more disciplined powers to the work of the school; they also bring that force of character which tends to reproduce itself in those committed to their care. Accordingly, although in certain respects the Normal teacher cannot fail to excel his less skilful competitor from the University, he falls very far short of him in training the young to thoughtfulness and intensity of character. Now it is precisely this roult which has in the past been, and still is, the peculiar and distinguishing feature of the Scotch parochial school, and this frequently to the detriment of technical facility in reading, writing, and arithmetic, and almost always to the comparative neglect of the junior classes. These technical accomplishments it is the teacher's duty to give, nor can any pretext of cultivating the intellect exempt him from the thorough discharge of that duty, and from laying strong and broad in the junior classes the substructure on which higher profession must rest, if it be sound. But while it is comparatively an easy matter for the University trained teacher to adapt his powers to the discharge of this duty, or to the attainment of any desired result in the school, whether of method or acquirement, the higher discipline which almost unconsciously flows from him is quite beyond the reach of the more shallow product

of the Government Training College. The curriculum laid down for our Normal Schools embraces subjects so multifarious, and calling so largely on the mere cramming power of the student, that they divert him from the close pursuit of any one subject involving a thorough intellectual discipline. The consequence is that the students leave the Colleges with minds very inadequately trained, in the larger sense of the word,full of facts and figures, but wanting that firm hold of either language or mathematics which will insure the further prosecution of these subjects, and which tends to give the student that solidity of intellect which thorough acquirement in any one direction scarcely ever fails to confer. Coming to the Training College after having exercised premature authority as pupilteachers, and already by anticipation revealing some of the less attractive features of their profession, the Normal students too often leave it, we fear, confirmed in their self-esteem; and this, partly because their intellectual horizon is diligently confined by a Govern ment programme which does not admit of a liberal discipline. Now, it stands to reason that a lad who has to fight his way to the University gives a guarantee in that very fact that he possesses moral qualifications for the work of a teacher, which must be altogether wanting in the young man who, from the age thirteen, has been the protégé of the Government, whose every step has been made easy, and for whom perfect security has at every stage been carefully insured, as if by a paternal hand. The atmosphere,

of