science, one cannot but hope that even in New York-where numerous recently-arrived Irish emigrants have, by some evasion of the laws, been permitted to exercise the power of voting-they would lay it down as a rule that the Scripture History be read and questioned upon, at least as diligently as that of the United States. It seems to me grievous to see the real Christian influences which would be shed from many of the teachers, neutralised by this vain cry of liberty of conscience. Children do not learn arithmetic and geography without teaching-but they are supposed to know Christianity by intuition, and to exercise conscience before it is enlightened. Liberty of conscience! Poor dear ignorant offspring of fallen Adam! Let it be called liberty of sin-liberty of forgetting God -liberty of neglecting the Saviour-liberty of slaying their own souls; but let not the citizens be deluded by supposing that training which omits instruction in reference to God and his thoughts toward themselves is honest genuine liberty.

Protestants have thus heedlessly, in keeping with the constitution of their government, as they reckon it, slighted the means of conveying early knowledge of the Bible, and are not awake to the proceedings of the enemy, who, with unsleeping eye, discerns where and how he may insinuate his baleful influences. Amid many pleasant moral songs which form the peculiar attraction of a school examination, you may not hear one Protestant hymn. No

strain of adoration or of love is put into those young hearts. But watch, and when you inquire what are the words of that noble and striking air, you will discover that it is the chant of a Popish pilgrimage. What those sweet cadences of thanksgiving? they are praise for the pleasant rest to be obtained before the little shrines which stud the deep and meritoriously stony ascent, crowned by the image to whose sacred fane the pilgrims are climbing on their knees. Think we such strains are adopted by accident? They are certainly, by carelessness in some quarter, but it must be of purpose and by Popish influence in some other. In England we are sufficiently accustomed to such wiles, and we have seen music made the plea for the introduction of many an Ora pro nobis to the Virgin, which the unthinking have accepted because of its beauty.

Another mode of insinuating mischief is the prize books which are distributed on a day of examination. Many are good and useful, many are pleasant, but, if one may venture to say so, too juvenile and silly, and some are unwholesome and dangerous. In selecting a set of books, when an eye must be turned to the cost, and to the attractive aspect of the prize, it is not difficult for the designing to introduce mischief under cover of blue and gold. In such a livery have I found, in the hand of a girl of fifteen, the Beauties of Festus, as her reward for attainments in the highest class. Festus!-a work which, in spite of all its talent and fine thinking, I threatened to

burn on account of its blasphemous tendencies, when a young person proposed to leave it on my table. Festus-which introduces among its dramatis persona the Sacred Three, and daringly inserts in the margin the holy names, mixed up with its other interlocutors! I turned over the Beauties of Festus with eager fear, and found that no delicate omission had been made; as is the book, so are its beauties-and this the reward of a studious girl!— Surely an enemy hath done this!

Another painful effect of this liberty-of-conscience scheme struck me again and again in attending the Inspector's examinations, viz., the abridgment of his liberty, and that of any Christian minister's who might be present, so that their final addresses were limited to stories of obedient boys, good morals and good manners, and not a word hinted of the Divine law, of the gospel, and of the bright prospects which the gospel unfolds. The rewards proposed to them are, that they may be respected, may become magistrates, governors, senators, or even President of the United States. One grieved to see the Christian sentiment kept down in the speakers, and the Christian motive withheld from the listeners; and as one looked over the pleasant, orderly, ductile-looking youth, one felt how much finer things are in store for those who love the Lord, and how delightful it would be, instead of senators and presidents, to tell them of crowns, and palms, and harps, and of the city where there is no night, no pain, no difficult

tasks, and no death. The idea also arises, that there is an over-tenderness in the examinators. If a whole class blunders over a question, as I have repeatedly remarked to happen more in English Grammar than in any other branch, it is glided by, some loophole for excuse is found, so that neither teachers nor pupils feel the deficiency sufficiently to be put on the alert in correcting it. Why not say simply, This needs to be amended? The general tenor of remark is of a complimentary character. Is this lest free pupils should take offence and leave the school? Then surely the pupils are much more free than their examinators. One expects genuine

freedom to use great plainness of speech, and that, in cases of this sort, the performance of duty demands it a painful evidence that in New York city, liberty is sliding gradually under an influence which domineers over conscience wherever it reigns, is found in the blackening of one page in a whole edition of a school lesson-book. And what is this page, bearing so condemning a mark? Nay, it is carefully obliterated, and so past my reading, except that through its gloom the name of Martin Luther is dimly perceptible. Is there liberty of conscience here, or is there not rather incipient Papal domination?

With these exceptions, but they are grave ones, the Common School is an admirable institution, furnishing the fundamentals of all learning, and the books employed in teaching, to every rank of chil

dren. No one need be uneducated if willing to be taught. The school-houses are, in general, erected by the district, which also elects trustees, who manage the school for one year, and appoint teachers, while the teachers are paid from the general school fund. A difficulty about obtaining steady attendance arises from the very liberality of the plan. Caprice leads to leaving one school, and entering another. Or a new and airy school-house in the next ward, may thin the benches of the school in this. It is our experience in Britain that we prize less what we get freely, and therefore, the mother who sends her penny with her infant on Monday morning, will have more scruple about keeping the child at home for a trifling reason, than she would have if she paid nothing. We need not weigh the penny against lost time and opportunity, and the contraction of idle habits-any one who can "calculate" sees that, and the absence of charge is hinted at as a difficulty with the Common School teachers as well as with our own.

There is a very becoming courage in the manner the pupils give out their attainments, and a pleasant music in their recitation, and at times a swelling feeling of the sentiments they utter, or a suppressed consciousness of the drollery of the dialogues which they recite on exhibition days, which always drew forth my heart to the young people. In no country does one feel so clearly that courage exists apart from boldness, and that frankness has no necessary