neglected. It appeared by a recent return, that out of 38,577 children of outdoor paupers in London, only 3125 were paid for at school by the Guardians. At St. Pancras there are 2136 such children, and not a single one is paid for: in the Strand Union the Guardians actually have the face to answer, 'Nothing known about such an Act.' Evidently such a state of things ought not to be allowed: the Guardians have had a fair trial under a permissive system, and now we hope that the screw will be put on at once. All this belongs to the Home Office; we wish that our experience of its energies were more satisfactory. But Mr. Bruce would find an easier field here, and might actually wipe out the remembrance of his cab legislation and his Licensing Bill.

These and other similar precautions must be taken, and the fervour of new-born converts to compulsion must be tempered by the remembrance that it is our last resource-that, like the rod, it may often be most effective by being kept simply in terrorem-that its failure would leave us in a far worse plight than at present, while it is still untried. But it must be attempted; on its success more depends than even on the other points on which we have already dwelt. If we are really discriminating and make allowance for the difficulties which society imposes on the individual, then we may be just and fear not. The work will succeed, and it will be one which our children and our childrens' children will bless.

In these ways we hope that a real improvement may take place in the work of our Elementary Schools; and we look forward, lastly, to another influence acting in the same direction, to stimulate and to test such improvement. The Government inspection must be in some way extended, so as to reach at least all Elementary Schools. Probably almost all the large schools will come into the present system, simply making themselves Public Elementary Schools' in the meaning of the Act. But a beginning has been made, which will hardly be allowed to remain fruitless, towards a larger and more varied system. All the existing schools not already under regular inspection are to be now called upon to submit to be inspected by the Education Department, in order to test their efficiency in teaching, under pain of being ignored in estimating the educational resources of the various localities. We understand that the inspection (as indeed is necessary) is to be conducted by rather freer and less technical methods than usual, looking to tolerable efficiency of any kind, rather than to efficiency after a particular type and pattern. We cannot but hope that the experiment will not be altogether dropped, when it has done its immediate duty.

The

The Public Elementary Schools' will be our regular forces, and we care not how strictly they are drilled and disciplined: but there may well be an outside fringe of valuable but irregular combatants against ignorance, who may be all the more useful for being somewhat more loosely ordered. So, we think, shall we best secure that general inspection, without which no regurity and universality of educational work can be for any length of time ensured.

These are some of the directions in which, confidently, almost certainly, we expect to see true progress. But independently of these special forces and modes of action, we rely on the great and thorough awakening of public interest in education, the evidences of which actually crowd upon our view. Nothing is more remarkable than the deep interest shown in the School Board elections, and the high class of men who have become candidates and have been elected. That they should have been willing to undertake a task which is full of labour and difficulty, of doubt and responsibility, and which brings with it no compensating advantages of remuneration and position, shows at once the amount of interest felt, and the strong public spirit, which is ready, now as always, for public duty. That they should have been so generally elected, that the ratepayers should have chosen men who put education first and economy second, and who desire to do their work in a liberal and uncompromising spirit, is a proof that the country at large is leavened with that same interest in the subject which hitherto has been confined to certain classes. The proceedings of the Boards themselves have shown a desire, not only to make Elementary Education thorough, but to remember that National Education must be looked upon as a whole, and that no system is good which does not weld together the various classes of schools, and therefore the various classes of the community, so that not only shall a good average of knowledge be obtainable by all, but there shall be, for those who are capable of higher things, a means of climbing the ladder, which has (to use a phrase now famous) its foot in the gutter and its top in the University.' In all these things we rejoice: they may last in full vigour only for a time, but in that time they will give an impulse which will never be lost. If a reactionary feeling should come over us, and a stationary period succeed the present, still a vastly higher level will have been reached, and in these matters there can be no steps backward.

It is not (as we have said) on mere legal obligation or a sense of expediency that we rely. Fill our schools that you may empty our workhouses and our gaols,' is a good common-sense

cry,

cry, but such cries never reach the depths: they may support, but cannot create enthusiasm. The intellectual zeal for the discovery and the spread of truth, the sense of our moral duty to our fellow citizens and of the need of morality for their own culture and happiness, the warm spirit of sympathy which shrinks from seeing the misery of ignorance in others, as it would from the misery of poverty and starvation-all these elements must act upon the spirit of the nation, to make it rise to its high duty. And we are stating no matter of theory, but a matter of sober historical fact, when we say that hitherto in the annals of the world no movement has united and harmonized these various elements in its service, unless it has been able to invoke the spirit of religious belief and religious enthusiasm, and to regard not only a citizenship of this world, but also a citizenship in heaven.'

NOTE TO THE ARTICLE on The Chronology of the Gospels,' in No. 260, p. 507. The name of one of the Governors of Syria, Volusius Saturninus, has been inadvertently omitted. It should stand thus on the list:

THE

QUARTERLY REVIEW.

ART. I.-1. Experimental Investigation of the Spirit Manifestations, demonstrating the Existence of Spirits and their Communion with Mortals. By Robert Hare, M.D., Professor of Chemistry in the University of Pennsylvania. New York, 1858.

2. Quarterly Journal of Science. London, July, 1871. 3. The Spiritualist. London, July 15, 1871.

4. Table-Turning. A Lecture by the Rev. R. W. Dibdin, M.A. London, 1853.

5. Robert Houdin, Ambassador, Author, and Conjuror. Written by himself. Paris, 1858.

A

BELIEF in occasional direct communications between the disembodied spirits of the dead and the souls of the living, as well as in the possession of occult' powers of various kinds, derived from this intercourse with the nether world, by the individuals to whom such communications are vouchsafed, seems to have prevailed, under some form or other, from the earliest historic period. And at the present time it not merely lingers as a superstition among races that have made but slight advance on their primitive rudeness, but is extensively and seriously entertained in the very heart of nations that claim to lead the van of modern civilisation; being professed not only by the ignorant but by the well-instructed, and alike by those who avowedly trust-as to all that relates to the unseen--in Faith rather than in Reason, and by such as glory in their entire freedom from antiquated prejudices of every description.

For a time, indeed, the mental tendencies which lie at the foundation of this belief developed themselves in a different direction. The Witch Mania that had given occasion to frightful persecutions, under the influence of the most bigoted form of Roman Catholicism, in various parts of Continental Europe, and under that of a gloomy and fanatical Calvinism in Scotland and New England, had passed away by the middle of the last century. A more healthy Rationalism was beginning to grow up; the theory of Evidence was beginning to be better understood, Vol. 131.-No. 262.

X.

and

and its rules more strictly applied; and sober-minded people had come to be ashamed of the credulity which had subjected so many harmless victims to the most terrible tortures, and had caused the sacrifice of so many innocent lives. The ultraRationalism which, in the form of a sceptical and materialistic philosophy, held almost undisputed sway in France during the latter half of the eighteenth century, and was embraced elsewhere by many who welcomed it as releasing them from the trammels of slavish superstition, tended still further to throw discredit upon the narratives of spiritual visitations which had been previously received with a childlike trust. And the great scientific discoveries in which that epoch was so fruitful made its savans look to an increased acquaintance with Nature, rather than to supernatural agencies, for the explanation of phenomena that seemed beyond the scope of ordinary knowledge. Thus, shortly before the outbreak of the first French Revolution, we had Mesmer and his followers claiming to be the vehicles of a new force, allied to electricity in its potent action on the living body, and derived, not from communication with the spirits of the dead, but from their own intense vitality. The tremendous cataclysm which occurred soon afterwards, and the gigantic struggles which followed it, absorbed the attention of Europe for the next quarter of a century; but so soon as the general peace left the public free to think of other than great political and social questions, Mesmerism cropped up again, and soon underwent a development so remarkable as to gain for it a very decided hold upon the minds not merely of the credulous vulgar, but of men distinguished in various departments of science. In fact, there were few who had witnessed its phenomena who were not inclined to admit that there must be something in it,' though there was an entire want of accordance as to what that something' might be ; until the researches of the late Mr. Braid, a surgeon of Manchester, on a form of artificial somnambulism which he found himself able to induce in a large number of subjects by a very simple process, gave a clue to the mystery. Of these researches, and of other enquiries in the same direction we gave an account in the pages of this 'Review,' exactly eighteen years ago; essaying to guide our readers as to what to believe' in regard to Mesmerism, Electro-Biology, Odylism, Table-turning, and (we were almost ashamed to be obliged to add') Spirit-rapping and Table-talking. We have the satisfaction of knowing that our exposition was regarded as satisfactory, not merely by the highly intelligent class to whom it

*

*Vol. xciii. p. 501, seqq., October, 1853.

6

was