our modern pupils, if the views of the patrons of these
schools were realised. The diet they offer is not the natural diet for
infant and juvenile minds. The faculties are over-strained, and not
exercised with that simultaneous operation which ought to be aimed at as
far as is practicable. Natural history is taught in infant-schools by
pictures stuck up against walls, and such mummery. A moment's notice of
a red-breast pecking by a winter's hearth is worth it all.

These hints are for the negative side of the question: and for the
positive,--what conceit, and presumption, and vanity, and envy, and
mortification, and hypocrisy, &c. &c., are the unavoidable result of
schemes where there is so much display and contention! All this is at
enmity with Christianity; and if the practice of sincere churchmen in
this matter be so, what have we not to fear when we cast our eyes upon
other quarters where religious instruction is deliberately excluded? The
wisest of us expect far too much from school teaching. One of the most
innocent, contented, happy, and, in his sphere, most useful men whom I
know, can neither read nor write. Though learning and sharpness of wit
must exist somewhere, to protect, and in some points to interpret the
Scriptures, yet we are told that the Founder of this religion rejoiced
in spirit, that things were hidden from the wise and prudent, and
revealed unto babes: and again, 'Out of the mouths of babes and
sucklings Thou hast perfected praise.' Apparently, the infants here
contemplated were under a very different course of discipline from that
which many in our day are condemned to. In a town of Lancashire, about
nine in the morning, the streets resound with the crying of infants,
wheeled off in carts and other vehicles (some ladies, I believe, lending
their carriages for this purpose) to their school-prisons.

But to go back a little. Human learning, as far as it tends to breed
pride and self-estimation (and that it requires constant vigilance to
counteract this tendency we must all feel), is against the spirit of
the Gospel. Much cause then is there to lament that inconsiderate zeal,
wherever it is found, which whets the intellect by blunting the
affections. Can it, in a _general_ view, be good, that an infant should
learn much which its _parents do not know_? Will not the child arrogate
a superiority unfavourable to love and obedience?

But suppose this to be an evil only for the present generation, and