A FEW WORDS TO SUNDAY SCHOOL TEACHERS. AMONG the various remarks upon our first number with which we have been favoured by friends and correspondents, the only one that has greatly disappointed or surprised us-and certainly we were not at all prepared to expect such an objection-was, that it contained nothing for Sunday School Teachers. "Strange indeed, if true," was the immediate reply, "for no class of persons has been more in our thoughts in all that we have hitherto had to do with the Journal." The mystery, however, was cleared up the next moment by the rejoinder of our friend, that he had scarcely observed the name of Sunday School Teacher, except upon the title page. Now, as it is by no means improbable that others may have formed the same judgment of us, and upon the same grounds, we take the earliest opportunity (just observing, as we pass on, if we may do so without irreverence, that the same argument would go to prove that the Holy Bible does not teach the doctrine of the Trinity, nor the Book of Esther the being of a God,) of stating, in few words, why we regard Sunday School Teachers with peculiar interest, and how the ENGLISH JOURNAL OF EDUCATION is intended to be of service to them.

There is no point upon which we are more anxious, than that education should always be a living thing--the bringing out, or bringing up, of a man; that the formation of character and habits should be regarded as the chief end, in every department of the work; that training, not teaching, should be the grand aim throughout. It is on this account that we object to the substitution of the modern term, " training," not being willing to acknowledge that the thing is new, or to take a part, even the best part, for the whole. The danger perhaps is, that our readers may be wearied by the repetition of these truisms; our principles, as mammas say of little children, should be seen and not heard." At all events it is not necessary to dwell upon the point in addressing Sunday School Teachers. Their teaching is chiefly meant as training they recognise practically the great principle so happily set forth the other day by Mr. Gladstone in his inaugural address at Liverpool :

-"That, although it is important to supply every man with the means of honourable pursuit of his earthly calling, yet that the paramount purpose of education is not so much to supply a man with tools and instruments whereby he may fashion all things to his pleasure, as to fashion and mould man himself; so to act upon and form his mind, so to cherish the seed of life eternal, that he may be conscious of the utter ruin of his condition, that he may not bind his view to temporary and perishable objects, but that, recognising that which was the state of his first parents before their fall, he may constantly bear in mind, that to recover that state is the great end of his being upon earth; and to make him feel, that, whatever may be his position and his lot, whatever is about him and pertaining to him, constitutes part of the wonderful discipline devised by Divine wisdom for the renovation of human nature."

Such being the very aim of Sunday School Teachers, in volunteering to devote a considerable portion of the weekly festival to the instruction of the children of their poorer neighbours, we cannot but regard them with affectionate interest as fellow-labourers in the good cause to which VOL. 1., NO. 2. FEBRUARY, 1843.

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this Journal is devoted; and our strong feeling that the Sunday school would be but a poor substitute for the week-day school, rather increases than diminishes this interest, since in many instances the former is the only chance of education within the poor child's reach. Most happy, therefore, shall we be, if our pages should be found a comfort and a help to them in their important and self-denying exertions; and we are not without hope, that this may be the case, and perhaps to the best purpose where little or no allusion is made to Sunday schools in particular. Certainly, we shall not aim at getting into their good graces by idle flattery, or gossiping news, or doctrinal essays, or controversial excitement, or preaching addresses, or indeed by speaking of them or to them in any way as an isolated class of educators. Nevertheless, we do expect to be of service to them; and, we repeat it, the more so in proportion as we treat them as fellow-labourers with others, and particularly with the Clergy, in the work of "sound learning and religious education." And this we hope to do in a manner that will at the same time supply the greatest, though not perhaps the most strongly felt defect in their whole system.

There can be no doubt, that they generally bring to their work a considerable portion of religious feeling; and their zeal is sufficiently proved by their disinterestedness. And though they often complain themselves of their want of knowledge, yet, if we may judge of the teacher's information from the progress of the pupils, (for it is surprising how much the children often learn, considering the shortness of the time they are actually under instruction, and that only one day in the week,) Sunday School Teachers are not much hindered in their work by any defect of this sort; indeed the amount of information required is but small. The only considerable drawback to their success, humanly speaking, (how far they look up in faith to Him who alone can prosper their undertaking, must be left to each man's conscience to determine,) seems to arise from their small acquaintance with the general principles of education; with the practical art of governing children in classes; with the most effectual methods of keeping up the attention of numbers, and of teaching as applicable to all subjects; with the art of rapid and varied questioning: and, in short, with what we may term the professional part of schoolkeeping. It is lamentable to see what liberties, so to speak, many a little urchin takes with his teacher, even in Church, and how much trouble and annoyance he gives him in a hundred ways, not one of which would he ever think of with a well-trained master. The latter, too, finds far less difficulty in keeping up the most lively attention in a class of fifty, than the former often does with a tenth of the number. Now it is in these ways, especially, that we hope to make this Journal of service to those lay-helpers to the Clergy in our populous parishes, but for whose diligence and self-denial many a poor child would grow up in utter ignorance of Him whom to know is life eternal. There is in the world a vast fund of what we have ventured to term professional knowledge in educational matters, which has never yet, to any extent worth mentioning, been brought to bear upon our Sunday schools. Our readers will not misunderstand us, as if we were about to propose any new system: nothing is farther from our thoughts. We

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had almost said, the less of system in a Sunday school the better; but there we should have justly laid ourselves open to misconception. will say, however, that the Sunday school should be as unlike the dayschool as possible. Still, in a thousand ways the experience of those who have devoted their lives, whether professionally or otherwise, to the improvement of education, at home or abroad, may be turned to the account of Sunday School Teachers in the remotest corner of our land; it may be made to increase their success as much as it lightens their toil. Of course, much of this will apply to parents and private teachers, whom we shall often be thinking of most, when we name them least. In point of fact, the principles of education, and the arts of governing children, and of unfolding their minds, and of training them to good habits, are one and the same-in the family or in the school-room; on the week-day or on the Sunday; whether the pupils be of high or of low degree; and whether they be instructed singly or by hundreds. And every one practically engaged in the work, especially Sunday School Teachers whose object is so completely identified with our own, will find, that by studying the whole question, and making themselves acquainted with the labours and writings of the most distinguished educationists, they will advance with more ease and pleasure, as well as with more success, in what we trust is their grand aim as well as ours, namely, to make the school a nursery for the Church.

ON ATTACHING THE MIDDLE AND LOWER ORDERS TO THE CHURCH.

GRAMMAR SCHOOLS-THE ANCIENT MEANS OF EFFECTING THIS.

My Dear Sir, I send you a few lines on one of the problems which is now engaging the attention of earnest-minded men, and which may, I hope, be appropriately treated of in your Magazine. The problem I mean, is how to raise feelings of affection and sympathy towards the Church in the minds of her humbler members, and thus to enlist in her direct service those intellectual and moral gifts, which are bestowed as largely on the poor as on the rich.

The great and rapid improvement of the character of the Clergy, the powerful way in which this is operating on the country at large, and the increasing respect daily accruing to the sacred profession, is indeed most cheering. We have all read or heard of the state of things during the last century, when the entrance of young men of high worldly rank or connexions into the Church was limited to cases where, through the means of family patronage, or some such channel, the certain and immediate prospect of a secular provision was open to them; but the clergy, as a body, were considered an inferior caste, and not unfrequently finding their access to the houses of the aristocracy limited to the housekeeper's room, were led, from choice or necessity, to consort chiefly with the farmers of their own parish. This state of things, except perhaps in one or two remote corners of the North of England, has become a

matter of tradition. But the whole tendency of the change has been to draw down candidates for the priesthood (if such a mode of speech is allowable) from the higher classes, not to raise up neophytes from the lower; for, owing to the clerical profession having become honourable in the eyes of the rich in this world, so, in proportion, has the Church found greater facility in recruiting her ranks from that source. And she has consequently become less and less careful to provide for her poorer members, who are unable to obtain a clerical education for themselves, the means of doing so.

The clergy being thus identified with the gentry of the country, not so much from reverence for their sacred character, as from their gentle birth, another consequence has arisen, namely, that their families have become, in common estimation, gentle likewise. So that if in any case the clergyman himself has sprung from the lower or middle classes, he becomes permanently separated from them, and absorbed in another sphere. It is indeed but seldom, that the occupier of the manor farm, or of the village mill, has the disposition or the means of educating his son for the Church, or the elevating pleasure of witnessing his admission to his sacred functions; but should this occur, he cannot look forward to his grandchildren resuming the calling which he himself followed; they are compelled by a social necessity to struggle after permanently maintaining themselves in that rank which ought to have been confined to the personal office of their parent. Hence originate those distressing appeals which are now frequently made in behalf of the children of clergymen, tenderly and delicately nurtured, and led to anticipate suitable prospects in after-life; all of which is suddenly broken off by their father's death, and the cessation of the income, which depended on him alone. Hence, also, originate those schemes for the liberal education of such children on easy terms, well intended, indeed, but dangerous as tending to foster, while it cannot cure, the evil we have spoken of. Till the last few years, the difficulty of obtaining a title for orders, owing to benefices being so exclusively the subject of private patronage, and to the less frequent employment of curates, contributed, no doubt, to the exclusion of all but the higher classes from the priesthood. But even the great demand which now exists for more clergy, and the imposition of very onerous duties, has but little changed the state of the case. The humblest curacies are accepted by gentlemen of good birth; and not to speak of those purer motives, which are daily actuating young men more and more, every one with active energies, and wishful for the means of employing them, naturally prefers an immediate sphere of duty to the distant prospect of the bar, or the precarious expectation of some civil or colonial appointment.

Now, if, together with this exclusion of the middling and lower classes from the clerical order there co-exists a great want of sympathy on their part with the Church,-and who that knows anything of the state of our manufacturing towns, where Sectarianism may till lately have been considered the established religion; or of the difficulty with which the farmer is induced to co-operate in any diocesan or even local good work for the benefit of the Church; or, lastly, of the sluggish state of the labourer's mind, whose instinctive traditionary attachment to the

parish church is likely to be shaken by the first exciting preacher who visits his village, will deny this,—the question naturally arises, whether there is not some connexion between the two phenomena, whether the Church's loss of power over the affections of these classes is not in some measure owing to the exclusive gentility of her priesthood? We cannot indeed, do otherwise than admit, that other and perhaps still more influential causes,—the infringement of Catholic unity, and the neglect of many Catholic practices and doctrines, have contributed to the same result. But this is beyond our present scope; as regards this, our minds revert to the days of William of Wykeham, and William of Waynflete, whose very surnames (supplied as they are by the place of their birth, in default of any family patronymic) attest their humble parentage, and we inquire of history by what means the talents of such men became consecrated to the Church, and her system invigorated by their energies.

In the following lines I will confine myself to giving what seems to be the true account of the mode by which our ancestors effected this object. In a second letter (if you will kindly afford it admission) I will inquire how far this ancient mode is still available for the immediate exigencies of our own day, and offer a few suggestions on the best practical means of supplying them.

And now to begin at once with the present branch of my subject. It was in great measure the endowed Grammar schools, and their connexion by means of exhibitions with the Colleges, which anciently gave to the less opulent classes the means, first, of obtaining for their children the rudiments of a really Christian and liberal education, and next, of carrying on those rudiments to maturity, in the higher sphere of the University.

As regards the Grammar schools themselves, it would be a mistake to suppose that it is from the Reformation period alone that these institutions bear date. Dean Colet's noble foundation of St. Paul's School took place in the last year of the reign of Henry VII. (1508), and in his Life by Knight we are told that within the short period of thirty years prior to the Reformation, the schools enumerated in the note* were founded. And with regard to the numerous schools nominally founded by King Edward VI., it is to be observed, that most of them

"One at Chichester, by Dr. Edward Story, Bishop of that see, who left a further benefaction to it by his last will, dated 8th December, 1502; and then at Manchester, by Hugh Oldham, Bishop of Exeter, who died in 1519. Another at Binton, in Somersetshire, by Dr. Fitz James, Bishop of London, and his brother, Sir John Fitz James, Lord Chief Justice of England. A fourth at Cirencester, in Gloucestershire, by Dr. Thomas Ruthal, Bishop of Durham. A fifth at Roulston, in Staffordshire, by Dr. Robert Sherborn, Bishop of St. David's, predecessor to Dr. Colet in the deanery of St. Paul's. A sixth at Kingston-upon-Hull, by John Alcock, Bishop of Ely. A seventh at Sutton Colfield, in Warwickshire, by Dr. John Harman (alias Veysey), Bishop of Exeter. An eighth at Farnworth, in Lancashire, by Dr. William Smith, Bishop of Lincoln, born there. A ninth at Appleby, in Westmoreland, by Thomas Langton, Bishop of Winchester. A tenth at Ipswich, in Suffolk, by Cardinal Wolsey. Another at Wymbourn in Dorsetshire, by Margaret, Countess of Richmond. Another at Wolverhampton, in Staffordshire, by Sir Stephen Jennings, Mayor of London. Another at Macclesfield, in Cheshire, by Sir John Percival, Mayor of London; as