manhood-who concern us most importantly. But now, of all the children born in our country in the equal state of nature's ignorance, which is the class where our labors of education ought to be chiefly directed? The case is as clear as day—the class which without our aid will be LEFT in ignorance!

At the base of our social pyramid lie two great orders of human beings. In the one, the parents, whatever be their poverty, desire and seek for their children the best education they can procure; and what they fail to give in school learning is, in an important sense, supplied by all the beneficial influences of an honest home.

But beneath this visible stratum of society there lies another, too often hidden from our careless glance. There is a class in which the parents (if any living ones be found to acknowledge the hapless children) do NOT desire or seek, in any way, to educate them. During their whole adolescence the boys and girls of this class are left as wild and uncared-for in the wicked streets, as so many young leverets or rabbits in the woods. But, alas! the comparison stops here. When the human creature seeks its lair at night, it is no innocent ferny form-no safe, soft burrow its parent has prepared for it—rather a very kennel of unclean iniquitous devouring hellhounds. The child's HOME (oh, holy word profaned!) is a filthy room in a lodging-house where whole families herd like obscene swine. A home where drunkenness is the rule, theft the instruction, blasphemy the language, and prostitution the trade!

Of these two classes of children can there be a question which deserves our most strenuous efforts? Shall we go on for ever devoting our whole care to the garden well fenced from evil and planted already with many a flower, and shall we never work in the desolate field where no good seed has ever taken root, but where the enemy has sown so many tares that the crop thereof may well overrun our whole land in years to come? "But surely this class of wholly uneducated children must be a mere nominal fraction of the community?" It contains at this moment 2,861,000 souls.*

Now it is difficult to speak adequately of a question which concerns the spiritual well-being of nearly 3,000,000 human souls-souls to be left to the influences of the streets, the gin-palace, the lodging house, and the brothel, or to be brought under the best teaching our utmost efforts can offer them to counteract all the mischief of the rest.

If the hearty co-operation of the powers which dispense the national educational funds were engaged on the side of these efforts, much hope might be entertained of waging successful war. But what can we expect to accomplish when we find that the aid granted to every other class of education stops short precisely at the schools

See speech of the Prince Consort at Educational Conference :—“ The Claims of Ragged Schools," p. vi. It is not asserted that all these children belong actually to this lowest class, but that the figures represent all those

instituted for the benefit of these lowest children, and after "giving to him that hath that he may have more abundantly," actually takes away from him that hath not, the little which it had seemed designed should be given him! Miss Carpenter, in the very able pamphlet before us, calls the public attention to a state of things which it is of the utmost importance should be generally understood before the next annual parliamentary grant is debated in the House.

By a minute of the Committee of Council of December, 1857, the grant which had been previously vouchsafed to Ragged Schools was virtually withdrawn; that is to say the industrial element in them alone was aided, and all other education left unassisted. The real onus of their support is therefore thrown upon private benevolence. But the labors of fourteen years, which have established beyond all doubt or question the incalculable utility of such schools, have yet left it evident that the resources of private charity are not sufficient to meet all the cost, and that the energies of the managers are most cruelly cramped by the deficiency of funds. One cause of this deficiency is patent-Ragged Schools are and must be perfectly unsectarian. The consequence is that neither the church nor any sect of dissenters adopts them nor gives them congregational support. In every sense of the word the poor children are out of the pale of society. They are disowned by the ordinary patrons of education, by the public at large, and by the churches, and now they are disowned by the state also, and left to the mercies (tender, indeed, but unhappily very feeble) of the few benevolent individuals who have interested themselves in their behalf. Yet, as we have seen, here, if anywhere, lies the central point whereto our Moral Sanitary Reform ought to direct its strongest efforts. A government inspector speaks in one of his reports of the "grovelling condition" of the Ragged Schools. True enough they "grovel." But who is to blame? Is it those who give something, or those who give nothing, towards supporting them? Is it the individuals who labor arduously in this most humble field, or the government itself which leaves these schools alone in the empire almost unaided by the national wealth, and then condemns them, because, in sooth, they "grovel" in a state of semivitality and partial inutility.

We beg our friends to acquaint themselves with the pamphlet wherein Miss Carpenter has stated this case, and quoted all the facts necessary to be known so briefly and lucidly, that an hour's attention will suffice to put the reader in possession of the whole. Then, by urging the claims of these schools, each, in her own circle, may do much to awaken the public interest and attention. Especially is it desirable that members of parliament should be induced to study the subject, and be prepared, when the next grant is made, (in May,) to vote for liberal assistance to the Ragged Schools," as an integral part (and a most important integer) of the educational movement of the country."

Hebrew Children. Poetic Illustrations of Biblical Character. Edinburgh: William Elgin and Son.

AN unpretending book of verses, with much tenderness of thought and sweetness of expression. We shall best serve the author by a few extracts, shewing the way in which her subjects are treated:

"SISERA."

"HE lies on his mother's bosom,
His cheek is soft and fair,

Her hands are twining dreamily
Amid his silky hair.

Upon his marble brow they track

Each blue and slender vein;

What sends her heart's swift current back,
With such a thrill of pain?

"Fold thy wings, young eaglet!
Close thy starry eyes,
While o'er her prophet-spirit,
The vision gleams and dies.
One little hour of peace and rest,
Ere yet the storm-clouds be;
My young child-sleep may be the best,
Life has in store for thee.

"Hush! ye babbling breezes,
Steal not his passing sighs;

Fast asleep and weary,

On the low tent floor he lies;

A woman watching by his head,

His foeman at the door,

The cold red nail in his temple pale,

He shall awake no more!

The introductory and closing verses of "The Innocents," will afford a specimen of the thought which is scattered through the book:

"THE INNOCENTS."

"SADLY and strange the stars would gleam above us,
High in the splendour of those cold, dark skies,
Did we not know that there is One to love us,
Past the deep shadow of their golden eyes.

"How should the soul, in this uncertain region,
Break from the rigor of her captive chain,
Or fight the sleepless foe whose name is Legion,
Weary with watching, and outworn with pain,

"But that those shady silences are haunted

With the dim presence of the God of peace?
And Faith may bear her battle-shield undaunted,
Until the anguish of her warfare cease.

"Fold thy sad wings,-what do these weary pinions,
Beating the blast, and struggling with the wave?
Earth's deep unrest pervades her wide dominions,
Life has no tearless refuge but the grave.

"Yet take thy dread burnt-offering to its altar,
Lay thy crushed heart on duty's holy shrine,
Faith shall uphold thy footsteps when they falter,
Hope cheer thee onwards with her words divine.
"Christ, in His majesty of patient sorrow,

Takes the pale vesture of the Martyrs' King,
Thou from His eyes so pure and deep may'st borrow
Light and encouragement for everything.

"And if thy heart be tortured nigh to breaking,
Take the wild burden to thy Saviour's breast,
And the dumb agony of thought forsaking,
Lean on that deep eternity of rest.

"His gentle eyes are on thy soul for ever,

He marks the anguish of the strife within,
Reads the perplexities thou can'st not sever,
Discerns between infirmity and sin."

LX.-OPEN COUNCIL.

[As these pages are intended for general discussion, the Editors do not hold themselves responsible for the opinions expressed.]

MADAM,

To the Editor of the English Woman's Journal.

I rejoice to learn from the interesting communication of your correspondent "Dorothy" that the plan of educating boys and girls together is pursued in many of the public academies of Scotland, and with, so far as she had opportunities for observing, a favorable result.

That this may be expected from the system, we may surely infer from the circumstance that nature associates boys and girls in the same family. Had she not intended them to be trained together, we may presume that the relationship of brother and sister would never have existed, and that while Mr. and Mrs. Brown were blessed with sturdy sons alone, Mr. and Mrs. Jones would have rejoiced only in the possession of blooming daughters.

Where the education of the two sexes together does not succeed, I believe failure will be found to proceed from the incomplete or injudicious manner in which the principle has been acted upon, not from any unsoundness in the principle itself.

Any remarks upon this subject from those of your readers who have had opportunities of observing the practical working of the system of associated education, would be of value, and would perhaps tend to diminish that arbitrary separation of boys and girls in early life which causes so many evils, not the least of them being that it prevents the sexes from ever acquiring a just appreciation of each other's character. Your obedient servant,

December 23rd, 1858.

F.

LXI.-PASSING EVENTS.

"To be, or not to be," is the question which has agitated Europe since the first day of the new year, suggested by a few ambiguous words from the mouth of Louis Napoleon, and which, to all appearances, is likely to agitate it for

some time to come.

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"To be," say those who sympathise with the oppressed and who believe in the power of the right to vindicate itself in the long run; while, not to be," is the argument of those who love peace at all costs, and who, so long as markets are steady and funds high, care but little for the chains and dungeons of Naples, the misery and suffering in the Papal states, or the political degradation of great nations. Meanwhile, France bullies, Piedmont maintains a dignified and defensive attitude, and Austria, with whom the quarrel is being picked, marches troops to the frontiers and realises her property in the Lombardo-Venetian states, preparing for the brunt of war.

All sorts of possible and impossible sacrifices are speculated upon for the aversion of so great a calamity as an European war, but, one sacrifice is in the act of perpetration, to our thought, as cruel and more terrible than the fate from which Poerio and his gallant comrades in captivity have just been delivered, the sacrifice of a young, noble, and tenderly nurtured girl to a middle aged adventurer, whom she is said to hold in abhorrence. Private letters from Turin corroborate the rumours which have lately gained ground in the daily papers as to the Princess Clotilde's aversion to the marriage; an aversion, which, whether springing from personal dislike, or the Austrian blood that flows in her veins, would, it might have been hoped, be suffered to outweigh political advantages in the mind and heart of her royal father.

"Our homeless poor" have, during the month, occupied a large share of public attention and sympathy. A letter of appeal, backed by an eloquent leader in the "Times," evoked an inundation of subscriptions. Necessary as these refuges appear to be, it should not be lost sight of, either by their advocates or supporters, that, with few exceptions, they offer only alleviation to a symptom, while the disease remains untouched. After all, the truest charity is that which helps the poor to help themselves, and we cannot avoid thinking there is danger that the ready and generous response of the public to the appeal made in behalf of Refuges for the Homeless Poor, may provoke and encourage mendicity, a fact to which the sudden influx of beggars into the streets of the metropolis during the last few weeks bears evidence.

Let us not be misunderstood. The poor want help from the rich; they want not only money but personal sympathy and superintendence, and nowhere more than in our workhouses, whose casual wards, it appears, remain unfilled, while Field Lane and other refuges are crowded, because in our workhouses poverty is insulted and treated as a crime.

Let then those who have money to give, give liberally to schools, and more especially to refuges where the poor are not only received for the night but where they are taught to help themselves, while those whose time only is at their disposal, may, by giving that time, ensure a different order of things in workhouses which shall result in making them indeed " Refuges for our Homeless Poor." As Lowell, the American poet-philosopher, expresses it in a beautiful poem but little known on this side of the Atlantic, and where our Saviour is supposed to be speaking :

"Who bestows himself with his alms feeds three,