ng of love between the children
of a school and their teacher. If, founding on the experience
of our own early years, we think of the schoolmaster, not in
his present relation to ourselves as a fellow-citizen, or as a
servant of the Church, but simply in his connection with the
immature class on which he operates, we will find him circled
round in their estimation (save in perhaps a very few exceptional
cases) with greatly more of terror than affection. There are no
two classes of feelings in human nature more diverse than the
class with which the schoolmaster and the class with which the
minister of the gospel is regarded by their respective charges;
and right well was St. Paul aware of the fact, when he sought
in the terrors of the schoolmaster an illustration of the
terrors of the law. And in this fence of terror we may perhaps
find a reason why Christ never committed to the schoolmaster
the gospel message.' We are afraid we do but little justice, in
this passage, to the thinking of our deceased friend; for we
cannot recall his flowing and singularly happy language, but we
have, we trust, preserved his leading ideas; and they are, we
think, worthy of being carefully pondered. We may add, that he
was a man who had done much in his parish for education; but
that he had at length seen, though without relaxing his efforts,
that the religious teaching of his schools had failed to make
the rising generation under his charge religious, and had
been led seriously to inquire regarding the cause of its
failure.

{15} Mr. Combe, however, may be regarded as an extreme man; and
so the following letter, valuable as illustrating the views of a
not very extreme opponent, though a decided assertor of the
non-religious system of tuition, may be well deemed instructive.
The writer, Mr. Samuel Lucas, was for many years Chairman of that
Lancashire Public School Association which Mr. Fox proposes as
the model of his scheme:--

TO THE EDITOR OF THE SCOTSMAN.

SIR,--In your paper of the 26th ultimo, I observe among the
advertisements a set of resolutions which have been agreed to and
signed by a number of parties, with the view of a national
movement in favour of an unsectarian system of national
education. It is perhaps too early to say, that though the