There is thus room for ten girls engaged at work during the day. We began with four boarders, or a household of eight in all. Two or three simple rules were laid down. The boarders, it was agreed, should pay 1s. 6d. a week, that sum including what we call the minimum washing-what is absolutely necessary for the common comfort. Extras they arrange for as they please. All the inmates take what we call the minimum board, what is absolutely necessary for health. Extras they arrange for as they please. This makes our book-keeping simple. We stock our store-room with tea, sugar, butter, &c., at wholesale prices. Whatever goes out of the store-room daily is noted in the dietary, and whatever else is needed be the wives and friends and home-helpers of our youth and manhood. How much must depend on their knowing what a true home is, and how it can be made bright and pure and helpful to all that is best in human life! Families that keep servants are constantly brought in contact with families that keep none, for the one class get their servants from the other; and the constant jars and vexations of mistresses and maids prove how much our home life, at various levels, is in need of reformation. Those who know anything of the habits of our working girls in manufactories, warehouses, and shops, know at what extremes of practical view they try to live: the industry, economy, earnestness and beauty of womanly life with which many are distinguished; and the vanity, impru--such as bread, milk, and meat. Nothing is charged by way of profit. dence, recklessness, and sin, in which so many sink out of sight. Something is needful to help girls in various ways to a happy, helpful home life. The present paper is intended to describe an experiment made in this direction, and to give such details of what has already proved successful, that others interested may not only attempt but easily achieve similar | work. Two years ago, after much meditation and preliminary experiment, large kitchen was built in connection with an enlargement of the Wynd School. It was furnished very simply and plainly, so that if the attempt should not succeed, the fittings and furnishings would not be a great loss, and the kitchen could be turned into another class-room. The kitchen was built there because, in a school of more than four hundred children, girls were at hand for training, and they could not only have cooking les sons, but ordinary work in the daily cleaning of the class-rooms. About a hundred girls, from 10 to 15 years of age, were told off for weekly lessons in sets of from 15 to 25, so that each set might have a series of lessons in domestic work during the winter. Then about another hundred of young women, at work during the day, were induced, at first with some difficulty, to take lessons on the Saturday afternoons. A working woman, for a small sum weekly, undertook to superintend the little girls for an hour each morning before school-time at sweeping, dusting, and scrubbing; and two members of the Church undertook gratuitously to teach cooking two days a week. The cooking lessons embraced almost everything needful for a plain family table, and for the sick-room, with pastry, cakes, and shortbread, and such other things as might make the tea-table attractive. The expense of material for the two classes during the winter was only £7. The more expensive materials were brought by the girls, and taken home when prepared. As the lesson proceeded, the various quantities necessary were explained, and the expense noted, to the fraction of a farthing. The girls were not allowed to attend unless they were perfectly tidy in person, and they were furnished with the use of aprons to keep their dresses clean. When the lesson was over, the table was neatly spread with white cloth, spoons, knives and forks, and a simple repast taught the girls how to sit and wait at table. The lessons were extremely popular, and the influence radiating upon many homes quite wonderful. At the end of the week these sums are added up, and the total divided by the number of inmates. Great care is bestowed on the dinner, which is plain, wholesome, and varied. No restriction is laid on the food. There is no want, but there is no waste. At the end of the first few weeks, the board came to 3s. 11d., then to 3s. 6d., and then to 3s. a week, or less than 54d. a day. It has been even at 2s. 10d., but we wish to keep it at 3s. The work-room has been made an advanced department of the industrial school. A sewing-machine, a forewoman, and four apprentices completed the first experiment; and, after paying all expenses, the first month left for the house 17s. The probable income of the house may thus be stated :— Ten boarders at 1s. 6d. a week,......£39 0 0 ......... -£68 0 0 or nearly 9 per cent. on original cost. 0 Less housekeeper and servant, ...£30 0 45 12 0 £22 8 0 or 3 per cent. Which will go far to pay taxes, coal, gas, and soap-leaving the expense of the two girls in training for service to be met by subscription. In other words, half the salary of a Bible-woman would amply cover the whole annual surplus expense of such an institution, and do a far greater amount of domestic mission work. The direct work is not to be measured by the number of inmates. Hundreds of homes come into contact with these reforms. Young women will not be satisfied with their ordinary style of home life; especially when it can be improved at less expense than it is now conducted. A dozen girls, who have no mother's house and may never have a husband's, might arrange to keep house together under a good matron, who would be glad of a home without much salary; and they might do without a servant— apportioning the house-work among them. At all events, a model home, in the present low average of domestic comfort and attainment among the masses, is a desideratum among our mission agencies, and may be easily established. THE IRISH CHURCH QUESTION. We have no wish, nor do we suppose most of our readers have any, to agitate this question needlessly. The Church of Ireland, as working in a Popish country, has many claims on our good-will; and it is generally free from the disguised Popery which alarms us in the English Church. Yet all men see that the question must now be faced. The Irish Church has, indeed, been frequently before the subject of parliamentary discus It was now resolved to proceed with the building of a house, in which a complete domestic training might be carried on all the year round. During the summer and autumn this was done, and on last New Year's Day it was opened. The house has the disadvantage of being built in the Old Wynd, but it was necessary to have it in connection with the Wynd School for various economical reasons. It was built so that the first floor should be raised about sixteen feet from the ground, both to secure better air and not to trench on the area used for the play-ground. The first floor consists of a spacious kitchen-which becomes the family sitting-room--housekeeper'ssion and of legislative enactment. Such concessions as Roman Catholic parlour and bedroom, and light store-room. The second floor has two dormitories, furnished with large wardrobes stained and varnished, and iron beds, single and double; a bath-room, with lavatories, &c.; and the garret forms a large work-room, with a bedroom for two. In all, there is sleeping accommodation for fourteen. The work-room is heated from the kitchen boiler, and the bath-room is, at the same time, supplied with hot water. The whole building, with fittings and furnishings, cost about £700. The kitchen previously in use now forms the laundry. The house was intended as a model mission-house for girls-a Christian home, where purity and piety might be combined with womanly work. As it was intended for working girls who might be working men's wives, it had to be carried out on economical principles-be, as far as possible, selfsustaining, and in every department encourage a thrifty housekeeping. As all the inmates are free to leave unless they are comfortable and happy, the house must be conducted with such restrictions only as are necessary to the common comfort, such as a good and careful mother would require of well-conducted daughters. The house has a housekeeper and a servant, and two young girls under training for service, whose board is provided. emancipation, the commutation of tithes, the reduction of Irish bishoprics, the enlarged and confirmed grant to Maynooth, and the extensive modifications of the national-school system in favour of the Roman Catholics, have each in turn been employed in soothing agitation and arresting the rising force of hostile opinion. But the tide has now risen so high that it is no longer to be rolled back, or even stayed, by such makeshifts in legislation. The hour of trial has at length come when the Irish Church must stand, not on its connection with the Irish landed interest on the one side, or on the English Church interest on the other—not on political engagements or the place it occupies in the Articles of Union— but solely on its own merits. What are the facts which have impressed statesmen of all parties with the conviction that some fundamental change must be made? Why has it become impossible, in the face of the convictions which now regulate public opinion, to sustain the Church of Ireland as an Established Church-at all events, as the only Established Church— in that country? The case against the Irish Church stands thus: It is the Church of a small minority of the people of Ireland. Its adherents amount to only one-eighth of the population. In every part of the country it is in a decided minority. In many districts it possesses a mere fraction of the people; in some it has not a single adherent. The Church of Ireland has 2200 clergymen to communicate instruction and consolation to less than 700,000 souls; and two archbishops and ten bishops, with a gross income of £80,000 a year, and upwards of 320 deans and prebendaries, &c., richly endowed, to take the superintendence of a much smaller population than is intrusted to the charge of many single English prelates. In 199 parishes it has no members, and in two-thirds of the parishes of Ireland it has less than 100 adherents. In one-half of its 1510 benefices the average Episcopal population is 184. In other 615 livings there is an average of 77 Episcopalians. In 229 of these benefices the average Anglican population is only 23, where religious instruction costs £15 annually a head. There are 85 benefices in which the average number of Anglicans is 11, and their cost averages £20 a head out of the ecclesiastical revenues. There are thus at least 600 incumbents in the Church of Ireland holding benefices, but having nothing deserving the name of a congregation-shepherds without a flock-drawing revenues with no duties to perform—“ crying aloud in the wilderness," as Sydney Smith remarks; "preaching to a congregation of hassocks and stools." There are benefices made up of from three to nine parishes, and yet embracing an aggregate Anglican population of only about thirty souls. There are non-resident incumbents in whose parishes no divine service is ever performed. There are pluralists of so monstrous and grotesque a character that their existence can scarcely be credited by those who are not conversant with the facts of the case. One has held for forty years two livings, embracing fifteen parishes in two different dioceses. His curate, who receives from him £75 a year, discharges the pastoral duties in nine of these parishes; and, along with that cure, holds other two livings with the entire breadth of the county of Tipperary-from Slievenaman to the Galtees-intervening between them. Another reverend pluralist is the sole pastor of four widely-separated benefices, situated in two distinct dioceses; while a third is the incumbent of seven benefices, comprehending ten parishes. We are frequently told, in euphemistic phraseology, that these monstrous abuses are simply anomalies, from which no Church is wholly exempt. But the truth is, the whole system is made up of such "anomalies;" its very existence is an anomaly. The late Dr. Whately, though himself an archbishop of this Church, did not hesitate to say that its position in large districts of Ireland is such as, by the help of a map, you might establish in Turkey or in China. No such "anomalous" institution does exist, or ever did exist, in the civilized world. "There is no abuse like it," said the late witty Canon of St. Paul's, "in all Europe, in all Asia, in all the discovered parts of Africa, and in all we have heard of Timbuctoo." The case against the Irish Church is strengthened by the fact that it is not only the Church of a small minority of the people, but of a minority that is decreasing in number. It has now nearly 160,000 fewer adherents than it had thirty years ago. It has decreased both absolutely and relatively in nine of its dioceses; in four it has just maintained its ground; while in six the gain is on the side of the Roman Catholics. During this period the Ecclesiastical Commissioners have spent no less than £110,000 in repairing, re-building, and building churches, and in erecting new livings; and we are told with exultation that some three hundred new churches have been erected within the last quarter of a century, so that the Establishment is richer and more evenly, as well as better endowed, and has more solid and comfortable edifices than at any time in its previous history. But unfortunately the increase of churches has brought with it only a decrease of churchmen; the augmentation of its livings has been accompanied by a diminution of its adherents, and the country is every year paying more money for the instruction of fewer people. It cannot be alleged that the Irish Church affords religious instruction to the mass of the Irish nation, for its adherents amount to less than twelve per cent. of the population. It does not minister to the wants of the poorer classes of the community, for whose sake ecclesiastical endowments are mainly required. In the management of Irish affairs, the laws both of political and ecclesiastical economy seem to be reversed. The rich are filled with the good things of the Church, and the hungry are sent empty away. The defenders of this Church allege as an argument in its favour, that though its adherents are comparatively few in number, they for the most part belong to the wealthy and intelligent class of society. With a true Hibernian felicity, this institution has contrived to combine against it all the arguments which have been adduced in favour of ecclesiastical Establishments, and all the arguments in favour of the Voluntary system."All the weights are in one scale." It has adopted, in a sense very different from its original meaning, the saying of our Lord, "Unto every one that hath shall be given, and he shall have abundance; but from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath." We are told, however, that the Irish Church must be regarded as a missionary Church-a proselytizing Church—a Church established not merely to supply religious instruction to its own adherents, but also to convert the Roman Catholics to Protestantism. There have been and are men in the Irish Church of devoted missionary spirit, who have laboured with a measure of success; but neither their labours nor their success form the historical character of the Irish Church. We can appeal to the experience of three hundred years to decide the point. From the year 1560 downward, the Establishment has been in full operation in Ireland. Yet its adherents have dwindled away in successive centuries. Two centuries ago they were to the Romanist as the proportion of three to eight, at the present moment they are little more than one to seven. Experience, therefore, has demonstrated that as an instru ment for the extension of the Protestant faith the Irish Church is not only cumbrous and costly, but utterly inefficient. It would have been strange, indeed, had the result been otherwise. The Irish Church avowedly and even boastfully claims to represent the alien and conquering powers in the country. It is Irish only for the Hibernian reason that it is intensely English, that it was originally established in marked antagonism to Irish opinion and feeling, and that it has been since upheld against the all but universal dissent of the Irish people. Twenty years ago, Mr. Disraeli branded the Established Church of Ireland as an alien Church, dependant for its very existence on English support; and this witness is true. It is regarded by four-fifths of the Irish people as a badge of conquest, a mark of degradation. Its revenues, as they believe, were once the property of their own Church, were forcibly and unjustly taken from them, and are still unjustly withheld from them. It is associated in their minds with two centuries and a half of penal legislation, which, for its mingled barbarity and meanness, and its appeals to all the baser passions of human nature, is scarcely paralleled in the history of civilized nations, and with successive generations of indolent and grasping, and not unfrequently immoral, sinecurists, pluralists, and absentees. It has never aimed at becoming a National Church, though at one time it might have done so with great probability of success; and has never regarded the instruction of the whole people in the truths of the gospel as any part of its duty. The sacred Scriptures were not printed in the Irish language till this Church had existed more than one hundred and twenty years. And when the publication at last took place, the expense was defrayed by a layman, the illustrious Robert Boyle. Until of late, it has not only neglected, but even opposed the education of the people. We readily admit that the present race of its clergy differ widely from their predecessors, and that not a few of them are pious, learned, and devoted men, willing "to spend and be spent" for the cause of Christ. But the zeal of an apostle and the virtues of a saint would not avail to overcome the difficulties of their position, or to remove the deep alienation which the history and character of their Church have produced on the minds of the Irish people. These are some of the reasons on account of which it is now admitted on all sides that it is impossible much longer to maintain the Irish Church in its present position. Is it wonderful that practical statesmen can now-a-days no longer stand against them? The alternative now presented to the country is total disendowment or universal endowment. Not a few of our leading statesmen, both Conservative and Liberal, have avowed their preference for the latter, and the ministry have openly declared their willingness to "level up" the other demonstrations to the platform occupied by the Established Church, and to "make all Churches equal," by endowing all from the national treasury. The prompt and bold step taken by Mr. Gladstone in declaring for the total disendowment of the Established Church, and the withdrawal of all grants of public money to the other religious bodies in Ireland, has fortunately nipped in the bud this unprincipled project, which is as unpolitic as it is immoral, and which, while it would shock the conscience of any true Protestant in the kingdom, would utterly fail to remove the disaffection of the Irish Romanists. But the fact that we have so narrowly escaped the danger of the national endowment of Popery ought surely to induce every enlightened friend of the Protestant faith and of the peace and prosperity of Ireland to strive for the speedy overthrow of a system which, while it affords a plausible pretext for this and other similar projects, has utterly failed to attain any one of the ends for which an Established Church is founded and supported. It must always be remembered that it will not do to reason out the case as if Ireland were simply and only a part of the United Kingdom-a piece of England, divided from it by the sea. The consciousness of a separate The consciousness of a separate nationality is a fact which we in Scotland should be able to understand. The safety of the United Kingdom must henceforth depend, not on disregarding such feelings, but on deferring to them within reasonable bounds. The general conscience of the united people may be the supreme arbiter, but the separate feelings of each race must be treated with respect. And if the Irish are unfortunately averse to our faith as the Protestant faith, it is a miserable aggravation of the evil that they should find it thrust upon them as the English faith, and in that character made part of their domestic constitution. Can any candid person doubt that this Establishment, if maintained, will render Ireland year by year a source of more dangerous temptation to the State? Its maintenance has brought upon us the sin and folly of the Maynooth Grant. Now it threatens us with the endowment of the Romish priesthood, the establishment of a Popish university, the destruction of the national system of education, and other equally arrogant schemes of Papal aggression. If we value the principle of national religious obligation, shall we burden it with such an anomaly as this? With the Irish Church, as a Church, we have no quarrel; we have no wish to look grudgingly on any of the advantages which she derives from the State. We sympathize, in a measure, with those who pause before the uncertainties of so great a change as the disestablishment may prove to be. But they ought to be fully aware of the alternative before us. If the opposition which will no doubt be made to the disestablishment of the Irish Church should prove to be too strong to be overcome, the next step that will follow is beyond doubt. Three-fourths probably of the members who constituted Mr. Gladstone's majority are prepared to endow the Church of Rome, if they cannot remedy the ecclesiastical confusion in Ireland in the other way. The policy of the present Government, hardly concealed, is the same; it is disguised merely until the party can be educated. It is for the Protestants of England and Scotland to choose. If they connive at the maintenance of the Irish Establishment, they support the Establishment of Popery as truly, and almost as directly, as if they voted for it. SUSTENTATION FUND MOVEMENT. We are not about to enter into any discussion with reference to the Sustentation Fund in its general principles and features. Its merits stand in little need of explanation or defence. But one opinion prevails in the Church as to the wisdom with which it was devised, the high ends it is fitted to serve, and the immense amount of good it has been the means of effecting. We wish for the present to fasten attention on that important movement in connection with it which was resolved on, with rare unanimity, at last General Assembly. From the time of the Disruption, £150 had been named as the minimum equal dividend—that is, as the lowest sum at which the Church should unitedly aim and with which she should be satisfied as an income from this source for all her ministers. Again and again has she pledged herself to its realization. Lately, however, it began to be strongly felt that such a stipend, always small, had become wholly inadequate. In the course of the twenty-five years of our history, the expense of living in almost every department has greatly increased, so that the same amount of money will not go nearly so far now as it did at the commencement of that period. The remuneration of the various trades and professions has risen in proportion, the advance reaching from 20 per cent. on the lower, to 150 on the higher kinds of employment. This being indisputably the case, £200 would not be relatively more at present than £150 was a quarter of a century ago; and it was accordingly agreed by last Assembly to fix on that larger sum as the dividend to be aimed at in future. But what wisdom or propriety was there in such a resolution, seeing the lower amount had never been reached? If the Church had failed after many attempts to come up to the £150, did it not seem chimerical to propose £200? It certainly would have been so had no modification of the former system been introduced, no new method designed and fitted to secure the necessary increase. But the Assembly approved of a plan suggested for this purpose, and which appears to be admirably adapted to its accomplishment. According to it, the old established principle of an equal dividend up to the highest sum ever previously proposed to or sanctioned by the Church is to be faithfully maintained. All the money contributed to the Central Fund, by congregations and otherwise, is to be applied, in the first instance, to that object, and it alone. Whatever surplus remains after that end is secured, is to be divided among the ministers whose people show the greatest spirit of liberality. Those whose rate of giving is 7s. 6d. annually per member and upwards, are to receive a share of the balance; while those whose rate is at least 10s. are to get double the amount of the former class-that is, two-thirds of the surplus-none, however, drawing from it more than the £50 required to make up the stipend of £200. The only exception is, that congregations whose whole contributions are less than £60 are not to reap any benefit in addition to the higher and surer equal dividend, and that because of the large sum they derive from the general fund for their support. Such, briefly, is the scheme which was adopted by the last Assembly, with the greatest unanimity and cordiality. It evidently possesses the highest recommendations. It is fitted to reconcile the conflicting views which have prevailed in the Church on the subject of the Sustentation Fund, for it embraces the advantages of an equal dividend with those of one proportioned in some measure to the liberality of congregations. It furnishes security to the ministers, for it does not touch that provision which has hitherto been enjoyed by them irrespective of the contributions. of their own people. It preserves it, increases it, raises it to a higher point, and imparts to it a new stability. For, manifestly, as the surplus can come into existence only after the amount required for the equal dividend of £150 has been obtained, whatever is fitted to produce the surplus must operate in favour of the full equal dividend. On the other hand, it applies a stimulus to the people. All former attempts have failed, because, while a large number of congregations responded to almost every appeal, so many either remained stationary or declined, thus neutralizing the efforts of the more willing and liberal. The effect of this has been disheartening in the extreme. Things had indeed reached such a point, that any new movement or decided improvement seemed well nigh hopeless. It was felt to be utterly vain to strive for the accomplishment of an object which had been defeated and might still be defeated by want of co-operation. But now there is an inducement held out that cannot fail to stimulate congregations to aim at a high standard of liberality, seeing an obvious benefit is to be derived by them, and that in some proportion to the amount of their contributions. It was scarcely to be expected that in the course of the first year the scheme would be fully successful. Started at last Assembly, it was necessarily for a time but partially known and understood. It had to be brought by deputies before the whole Presbyteries of the Church-a task which took not only weeks, but months, for its performance. Then it had to be explained by Presbyteries to the office-bearers and congregations within their bounds. And this had to be followed up by the more direct and detailed work of deacons and collectors. The consequence was, that a considerable portion of the year was gone before the scheme came into any sort of practical operation. It is gratifying to find that, notwithstanding, very considerable progress has been made. The increase at the 15th April is £7079, 10s. 1d. And this does not convey any adequate idea of the improvement. improvement. The number of advancing congregations is also far greater than it ever has been in any former year. If the increase is maintained for the last month of the year, and raised proportionably, then, at the very least, the equal dividend of £150 will be realized. That will be something for which to be thankful. That will be no insignificant result. But we cannot express too strongly the importance of having a considerable surplus to divide. We need have little fear for the scheme, were this attained, were its provisions but seen in their practical application. The most strenuous efforts should be put forth for this purpose, not only to hold the ground already gained, but to go considerably in advance. This would give new heart and hope to the real friends of the Church, and draw forth a liberality greater far than any yet witnessed. This would be the best answer to the insinuations and misrepresentations which some parties have been recently scattering on this subject, we shall not say with the design of damaging the whole movement, but certainly at the risk of bringing about such a result. Then we might start on another year's effort with the prospect of seeing a large number of our ministers receiving at its close the full £200 from the General Fund. Surely, when we think of the interests involved, we may well exert ourselves to the very utmost. We are living in eventful times. Apart altogether from the political movements which are taking place, it is more and more evident that faithful servants of Christ must look not to State support, but to the liberality of the Christian people. How great the honour conferred on the Free Church, should she be enabled to solve the problem how the gospel may be maintained over the length and breadth of a land, in the most thinly inhabited as well as the most populous districts, among the poor equally with the rich, without endowments-which can no longer be regarded as given for the support of truth-and solely by the free-will offerings of the Christian community itself! Correspondence. Correspondents will be good enough to send their names and addresses, not necessarily for publication, but for the purpose of guaranteeing the bona fide character of the corre spondence. The Editor reserves the right to give the substance of letters briefly. PRELIMINARY EDUCATION FOR HIGHLAND TO THE EDITOR OF THE PRESBYTERIAN. FOUNTAINHALL, ABERDEEN, 6th April 1868. MY DEAR SIR,-The strong attachment of so very many of the Gaelic-speaking population to the Free Church is felt to lay upon her peculiar responsibilities in connection with the social and spiritual condition of the Highlands and Islands. And those responsibilities are all the weightier, that nowhere perhaps can the ministers of the gospel wield a more powerful influence among their people than in those comparatively remote regions. If the Church would discharge the duty that she owes to her Gaelic-speaking adherents, it is of the utmost consequence that she should supply them with a ministry the best instructed that it is possible for her to provide. Various excellent means are already in operation with a view to this end; but I would take the liberty of suggesting with great deference whether something more might not be done. Perhaps the most serious disadvantage under which all men labour who are brought up in Gaelic-speaking districts is, the great difficulty of obtaining a thorough preliminary education. There are many things one should learn when he is a boy, that, if he be not thoroughly grounded in them at school, he is not likely ever to learn afterwards, and the want of which must be a source of weakness to him through life. It is difficult for a lad labouring under this disadvantage, when he enters college, to hold his ground against the more highly-favoured students who have been trained in the larger schools of our principal towns. Would it not be very desirable to help as many as possible of the young men from the Highlands and Islands to get thoroughly grounded before they enter college, and thus put them in a position to compete, on equal terms with others, for the bursaries and prizes that are open to all. But how is this to be accomplished? The following plan has commended itself to some persons who take an interest in this subject. Let an effort be made to institute, if possible, several small bursaries— say twenty-to help Gaelic-speaking lads to spend at least one session, if not two, in some of the first-class schools in our university cities, before they enter college. By a combined effort on the part of the Synods more particularly interested, and on the part of generous friends elsewhere, it should not be difficult to raise twenty bursaries of the value of £15 or £18 each, the Synods contributing one-third of this sum-i.c., £5 or £6 to each bursary. On a bursary of this value, together with what his own friends might be able to give him, a boy could with economy pass a session of ten months in a first-class school at any of our university seats. The right to these bursaries should be determined by competition; and the competitions should be held in certain places within the bounds of the several Synods, where the boys could conveniently assemble to be examined. No boy should be allowed to compete but one recommended by his minister. The minister's recommendation could be the guarantee for the boy's character; and any minister whose congregation is contributing to the Synod's bursary fund should have a right to recommend any boy attending any school connected with his congregation. The advantages of such a scheme would be these:(1.) It would put the possibility of receiving a college education within reach of any boy of good character and superior talents, in even the most remote school. (2.) The annual competitions would give a strong stimulus to education all over the Highlands and Islands. (3.) The scheme would every year secure to twenty picked lads the benefit of the best preliminary education, and would put them in the way of being thoroughly trained for the university competitions. (4.) It would help to bring the best talent in the North into the Church. And (5.) it would place a number of students in the most favourable circumstances to fight their way through college, and would foster in them a spirit of manly self-reliance. Should this scheme commend itself to such of your Books. Wayside Thoughts: being a Series of Desultory Essays on THESE works may be taken as exponents of a move- an exodus from the Egyptian bondage of a conventional, new languages and new literatures have been evoked; the geometric knowledge of the Alexandrines and the natural science of Aristotle have branched off into numerous channels. Why should any single one channel remain unexplored? . . . The question becomes, What is the meaning of the terms classics' and ' mathematics?' The former word meant originally ordinary,' 'regular,' 'ranked;' and the latter, 'subjects of learning.' Into the former category have crept the works of Dante, Ariosto, Tasso, Alfieri, Montaigne, Pascal, Corneille, Racine, Molière, Des Cartes, Buffon, Montesquieu, Voltaire, Richter, Kant, Schiller, Goethe, Shakspeare, Milton, Gibbon, Cervantes, Lopez di Vega, Calderon. If these are not classics, who are more deserving of the title, if the nomenclature be a title of honour ?"* All this may seem to our readers simply axiomatic and elementary. Everywhere, indeed, save within the charmed precincts of English school and college life, it really is so. The wonder is not that some of our Anglican neighbours should be awaking at last to the recognition of these things, but that they should have been so long of awaking. Perhaps the most amazing phenomenon in all literary history is the intellectual conservatism which, in the most enlightened kingdom of modern Europe, and into the highest noon of modern civilization, has preserved essentially unchanged a curriculum of study originated some hundred years before our era, when the very language of Shakspeare and of Bacon was unknown, and when whole realms of human knowledge, full of wonder, beauty, and quickening power, were yet unexplored. Mr. Thompson testifies against the old system, not with the coldness of a neutral critic, but with the energy of a victim just escaped from the prison-house :— 66 Naked came I into St. Edward's†-literally naked, for I even stripped to the skin, and re-clad in my new regimentals. Naked came I in; and what am I carrying out in my carpet-bag? Let us examine: One very great friendship, and some few lesser ones; affectionate and grateful recollections of three masters and friends; some mathematics and French stowed away neatly and compactly, and a great lot of classics rather confusedly huddled together; and in amongst the classics has tumbled a deal of alcaic sawdust, hexametrical cinders, iambic chaff, and other intellectual marine stores. Well, never mind; if the latter are of no earthly use in the outer world, they are highly valued at the university of Camelot, to which I am proceeding; so we may just as well take care of them for three more years, and then we may with safety throw them all away into the eternal dust-bin."‡ At the university the scenes and circumstances were different, but the essential character of the work remained unchanged. In the drowsy cloisters of "St. Ignavia's" to wit, Pembroke College, Cambridge-with its twenty-seven listless students, and its two or three mediocre and perfunctory tutors, our author finds himself a little further on in his way, but still on the same narrow and barren track. There is no leader of thought known there younger than Aristotle and Euclid; nothing dreamt of in heaven or earth higher or nobler than the integral calculus and the mysteries of Greek and Latin verse. The two all-commanding triposes fix the attention of all eyes as the utmost goal of human ambition and intellectual effort, and cast all other interests and considerations into the shade. To be senior wrangler is the highest aim on earth; to be senior classic, the second. All who are within hope of such superhuman glory, are drawn irresistibly into the current; while those who are without the taste or strength for such a contest, drop into the rear, and seek their The tone of these writers is not only liberal, but occasionally almost revolutionary. They are for breaking fairly with the traditions of the past, and cordially joining hands with the present and the future. They throw off the old trammels, not only with decision, but with an indignant energy. The ancient reign of classics and mathematics, as the exclusive instruments of intellectual discipline, is to cease. A smattering of Latin and Greek, with one or two books of Euclid, are no longer to be regarded as the all in all of the culture and mental furnishing of an English gentleman. The venerable idol of Latin verse, the doom of schoolboys and the trivial accomplishment of university classmen, is hurled from its pedestal. Modern languages, modern literature, modern history, modern philosophy and jurisprudence, modern science and art, are to be largely blended with the ancient learning in the richer nutriment that is to feed the life of the new age. The old titles of the "classics" and "mathematics" may indeed be retained, but with an ampler meaning and a wider scope. The true classic masters are the classics, not of one age only, but of all the ages, and embrace the Shakspeares and the Miltons of yesterday, and the Tennysons and Carlyles of compensation in as pleasant a life and as easy a pass to-day, equally with the Homers and the Platos of the far past; while the true mathematics is the circle of all the sciences. To use Mr. Thompson's words :— "The two favoured branches in Cambridge have hitherto been classics' and mathematics.' Let us preserve the old names, but generalize their significations. Language and science are eternal; their childhood is hidden from us by an impenetrable veil of obscurity; their maturity, we know, is not yet reached; their old age is in a futurity beyond our conception. . . . The word university' is said by some to mean the place for study of the full curriculum of the world's knowledge. Let us accept the interpretation, and act upon its accuracy. Since the days when the silver age of Roman literature shed a dim light upon Europe, as possible. The entire result of this course of training, extending over sixteen precious years of school and college life together, Mr Thompson thus sums up : "The greater portion of the latter ten of these years was, in regard to study, devoted chiefly to perfecting myself, to the best of my faculties, in Latin and Greek I do not think that composition, prose and verse. Methuselah could with prudence have expended as much time out of his abundance upon so elegant, yet so superfluous an accomplishment. And, strange to say, though I had devoted the greater portion of my sixteen * "Wayside Thoughts," pp. 225, 226. + Christ's Hospital, or the "Blue Coat School." "Wayside Thoughts," pp. 82, 83. years to the acquisition, for reading and writing purposes, of two dead languages, I had never once from the lips of teacher heard a hint concerning the science of language, or the secrets of history which philology has aided to unfold. At the age of twenty-three, after an academic career of moderate success, I stood, a trembling novice, upon the confines of a strange world. I had a thousand causes for feeling grateful for kindness shown to me by my elders in the old school times and the recent college years. But I felt in a singular way chagrined, mortified, disheartened. I was possessed of a certain amount of old-fashioned learning, which I found it difficult to exchange into useful and current coin. I was ignorant of the elements of law, experimental physics, natural history, physiology, psychology, political and social science. I had left school crammed with scraps of quaint old curiosity-shop knowledge, and inordinately conceited of my broken china attainments. The conceit within me had been toned down by the wholesome social influences of college life. But in my capacity of student I had worked on and on in the old groove, and I now stood helpless and unpractical in the face of a busy practical generation. I was equipped, as it were, with battle-axe and breast-plate to cope with rifle and cannon. I had been educated after a particular fashion; not upon the ground that the fashion in question was suited to this place or to the epoch, but simply because youth had been so educated from the days of Augustus Cæsar.”* Things, indeed, have happily greatly changed for the better since the time to which these trenchant criticisms refer. Ever since the days of Thomas Arnold, and especially since the recent University Reform, a new life has breathed over the whole surface of English school and college life, and manifests itself everywhere more and more in larger views and more enlightened methods of intellectual and moral culture. At Cambridge, indeed, notwithstanding all the efforts made by some of her distinguished sons to give prominence to moral science studies, the old triposes still hold undisputed reign; but in Oxford, philosophical reading now largely mingles with mere technical scholarship in the requisites necessary for the attainment of the highest honours in the classical school. The old honours examination in classics has recently been divided into twotechnically called "moderations" and the "final schools" -of which the one is an examination in scholarship, and the other an examination in philosophy; and of the two arenas of distinction, the latter and not the former is regarded as the greater. "Modern languages are encouraged by free lectures and by university scholarships. Several names are usually published for honour, together with those of the successful candidates. The examiners for modern history honours also give weight to knowledge of foreign historians in their own tongue. Modern history is fully recognized, and obtains distinction and endowments. No study has done more to bring out latent ability where classical tutors expected nothing of the kind. The natural sciences have a good staff of professors, a museum and library, and an honour-list of their own, with such crumbs of endowment as may fall from the richly-furnished tables of the classics."† So far, so good. The encyclopædic knowledge of the modern world is admitted within the charmed circle of university honour and reward, though as yet only as a Lazarus gathering crumbs from the rich man's table. Dives himself, too, though still wearing the purple and fine linen, and faring sumptuously every day, is visibly less supercilious and exacting than of yore. It is a significant fact that proficiency in Greek and Latin verse is no longer necessary for the attainment of the highest honours in any of the schools; while, generally, it may be said that, in the whole spirit and working of the university, in the character of the teaching, and in the contests alike for honours and more substantial rewards, thought, intelligence, breadth and depth of culture, are held at a higher and higher price, and mere technical scholarship at a less. These changes are all in the right direction, and it may well be gratifying to us Scotchmen to note that they are all more or less movements of approach towards the spirit and methods of our own university system. If sometimes deficient in thoroughness and accuracy of classical scholarship, we have always aimed at least at something of that catholic breadth of culture the importance of which our English neighbours are only now discovering. Take the two great departments * "Wayside Thoughts," pp. 109, 110. Mr. Parker, in "Essays on a Liberal Education," p. 75. of classics and mathematics in the comprehensive sense for which Mr. Thompson contends, and interpose between them another grand department of mental and moral philosophy, and you have the identical curriculum of liberal study which has been so long familiar to Scottish students, and to which the leaders of reform in Oxford are at last only gradually feeling their way. The success of so many of our Scottish alumni in the contests of the English universities is a gratifying proof that we are borrowing something of their scholarly precision and accomplishment: it is pleasant to see on the other side a disposition to emulate our comprehensive breadth and freedom. Ecce Homo. By the Right Hon. W. E. Gladstone. Strahan and Co., London. 1868. Pp. 201. WE are very well pleased to meet with Mr. Gladstone among the crowd of writers who have criticised "Ecce Homo;" yet not because that book seems to us of such transcendent value that we rejoice in every new evidence of interest or admiration which it has excited, nor yet because there is anything in his criticism which will greatly enhance his reputation. But Mr. Gladstone occupies so prominent and influential a position in our country, and has all along taken such a part in religious as well as political discussions, that it was well to know something of what he thought about a book which has given rise to so much speculation. And at a time of life when broadening sympathies, arising from wide experience of the world, are thought to have modified the exclusiveness of Anglican High Churchism for which he was at first distinguished, there might have been anxiety felt lest this broadening had taken a wrong direction; and, especially, lest his political severance from Oxford Pharisaism might have had the effect of throwing him into the arms of a Sadducean or a sceptical party. It is a source of real gratification to us to find not a trace of this in the little volume before us. We do not take so favourable a view as he does of Ecce Homo;" but we see nothing to permit us to doubt his own firm adherence to the whole truth of God which we suppose him to have hitherto held and confessed. The nature of his critique will be manifest from the following analysis of the book. It consists of three parts, which appeared as articles in "Good Words." In the first part he notices how it has been the lot of the writer of " Ecce Homo" to displease in general both believers and unbelievers; and he states the substance of the common objection by thoughtful believing men to be this, that in view of the fact of the double nature of our Lord, he ought not to be exhibited in any Christian work as a man only, but as God and man. Assuming that this mode of procedure is chargeable upon Ecce Homo," is it really a fault? Or may it not be a lawful course of procedure, considering how long it was before the Church arrived at the full statement to which we are accustomed now from our early childhood, that the eternal Son of God became man, and so was, and continues to be God and man in two distinct natures and one person for ever? May there not even be advantages likely to accrue from this course, when there are various considerations which give probability to the suspicion that the Saviour's manhood is often overlaid by his Godhead in popular conceptions? And granting that there is a want of " the care and caution of language which would be observed, and ought to be observed, by a sound believer, not to say by a trained theologian," yet the preface informs us that the author of "Ecce Homo" wrote it for the satisfaction of his own mind; so that we may be bound to judge it as a tentative and not as a didactic work. Nay, allowing that the author approaches the character of our Saviour on its human side exclusively (which Mr. Gladstone wishes us carefully to distinguish from exhibiting our Lord only in his human nature), he is not prepared to admit that a just objection can be founded on this. "Can no work which confines itself to approaching the character of our Saviour on its human side have its just and proper office in the Christian teaching of this or of any period of Christian experience? Or would it be too bold to assert, in direct opposition to such an opinion, that, while such a mode of treatment is open to no insurmountable preliminary objection, it is one eminently suited to the religious exigencies of the present age?" He proceeds to notice that both Jews and Gentiles had notions and expectations of God made man, or in a human form; but that there was so much of falsehood and impurity mixed up with these notions, that there was need of the very greatest care in bringing the divinity of Christ before them. In God's providence, too, it was so arranged that the staple of the first three Gospels should be Christ's miracles and ethical teaching, while the more doctrinal and abstract portion of his instructions was reserved for communication in the later Gospel of John; and this furnishes a presumption in favour of the writer, " inasmuch as he is principally charged with this, that he has not put into his foreground the full splendour and majesty of the Redeemer about whom he writes." The second part of the critique is devoted to an exhibition of "the reserve and limitation that attends the teaching of our Lord, as reported by the synoptical evangelists, in regard to the central and fundamental doctrines concerning his own Person." This is discussed in connection with our Lord's history, his discourses, his injunctions to many who were the subjects or witnesses of his miracles, his method of teaching by parable, his commissions or charges to the twelve apostles and the seventy disciples, and the distribution of doctrinal teaching in the Gospel of John. "It appears then, on the whole, as respects the Person of our Lord, that its ordinary exhibition to ordinary hearers and spectators was that of a man engaged in the best, and holiest, and tenderest ministries, among all the saddest of human miseries and trials; of One teaching in word, too, the best, and holiest, and tenderest lessons, and claiming, unequivocally and without appeal, a paramount authority for what he said and did; but beyond this, asserting respecting himself nothing, and leaving himself to be freely judged by the character of his words and deeds." And this is what he thinks is done in "Ecce Homo," extracts from which constitute the third part of the volume, with merely a few sentences to connect them. It will be seen that Mr. Gladstone's approbation of Ecce Homo," or perhaps we should rather say his plea in defence of it, is connected with what he regards as its apologetic value, its contribution to the evidences of the Christian faith as against the infidel and the sceptic. In this connection we agree with him that the book has a certain value. The writer of "Ecce Homo" is, in an important sense, no sceptic. He contrasts "the gradual development of character" and the " ripening or change of opinions," which men may trace in other biographies, with the absence of all this in the Gospels. "Christ formed one plan, and executed it: no important change took place in his mode of thinking, speaking, or acting; at least the evidence before us does not enable us to trace any such change” (p. 18). And he is diametrically opposed to that theory on which alone the great unbelieving students of Scripture in Germany for a generation past have endeavoured to rest; that mythical theory which represents the history and character of Christ a production of the Church, in order to avoid the necessity of believing that the Christ of the Gospels really lived and produced the Church. He says, “The present treatise aims to show that the Christ of the Gospels is not mythical, by showing that the character those biographies portray is in all its large features strikingly consistent, and at the same time so peculiar as to be altogether beyond the reach of invention, both by individual genius and still more by what is called the consciousness of an age'" (p. 43). Renan had previously taken up the same position; and though in learning and logical power he was obviously far inferior to the German advocates of myths, still he had a better knowledge of human nature when he conceded the reality of the gospel history (so far as there were no miracles in it), and returned to the old deistical attempt to make out a historical Christ who was not supernatural. The enormous sale of Renan's" Life of Jesus" is probably a proof that it fitted into the state of mind of multitudes in Europe who were resolved to have some theory on which to justify their unbelief. That book, however, has been clearly shown to be no history, but a mere historical romance. We do not wish for one moment to put it and "Ecce Homo" on the same level; yet the extraordinary popularity of these two books on the same subject leads us to speak of them together. And we are willing and disposed to take the most favourable view we can of "Ecce Homo," and to infer from its popularity that it has supplied a certain want, and spoken to the heart of multitudes who were thinking about the Gospels, and were in danger of being swept away into vulgar infidelity. On other grounds, Mr. Gladstone thinks that an apology in this strain was needed; and though, if this be so, we must form an |