Next follows the simple explanation of the Christian Faith, and Doctrine, and precept, such that children may understand, then the art of reading and so acquiring greater insight into these from GOD's own Word;-and so on through the successive points of a good National School Education.

We will suppose a master thus qualified to go forth to his work. He has been himself educated in the true sense, and moreover as far as ordinary attainments extend well qualified for his task. He knows his Bible well, his Catechism thoroughly, as grounded upon that Holy Book; he can read, and teach reading well, understands the mysteries of Caligraphy, the Double Rule of Three, and Fractions, has a fair amount of Algebra at command, can explain an eclipse, and is acquainted with the situation and climate of Timbuctoo, the history of his own country, and his country's Holy Church; but at the same time is a person of but moderate ability, -and altogether may be taken as a fair specimen of the class to which he belongs.

He hears of "Astro-Theology" by the great Inspector, the Rev. H. Moseley, and of its being written with an especial reference to the Education of Elementary Schoolmasters; and forthwith provides himself with a copy.

He opens it, and reads the heading of the first chapter; "Isolation of the Earth in Space."

This is a fine subject; and he reads on. "It is not easy to conceive the entire isolation of the Earth in Space."

And nobody can deny this who follows the writer through his first chapter.

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"That it does not spread out its dimensions into the abysses of the universe, until at length it attains some immovable basis upon which it may repose; that it rests on no pedestal, hangs upon nothing, floats space, not being buoyed up; and not being supported does not fall; are ideas which lie at the foundation of all our knowledge of the wisdom and power of GoD in the universe; but to realize which it is necessary that we approach them if not by the steps of a rigid demonstration, at least by those of a gradual progression,"

Looking upon the earth, again, says the Rev. H. Moseley, (we quote the substance of his words,) it appears a surface broken into hill and dale, everywhere terminated by the concavity of the Heavens; we seem to be moving on a flat if not an even surface, we appear to be nowhere descending, or climbing its acclivity; on an extended plain. Astronomy, however, tells us of a huge sphere, in the midst of interminable space.

"How can we realize the idea, and reconcile it with what we see?"

To answer this, a traveller is supposed to travel on ad infinitum, in the same direction, traversing sea and land in one direction. He at first supposes it to be a surface of infinite extent. This,

however it cannot be, for travel on as far as he may in any one direction, his onward journey brings him back to the starting-place. Hence he concludes that the surface on which he travels is a continuous one, returning into itself.

This experiment has been tried repeatedly, and is still being tried continually, "scarcely a week passing in which this great fact is not tested by experiment."

"Never does, perhaps, a week pass in which there does not arrive, in some port of Europe or America, some vessel which having sailed from that port continually on the same course, or deviating only to the right and left of that course, has nevertheless returned to that port again; which it never could have done if the earth's surface were other than that of a continuous solid; if it were a flat, or infinitely extended, or a terminated surface, not returning into itself or a small portion of the surface of an infinitely extended plane; or an island floating in the abysses of space; or the summit of a mountain, whose base reposes in some fathomless region unknown to us."

. With regard to the island floating in the abyss of space, we should have imagined this to be the most likely idea that a child would form on the subject; with perhaps the simple addition that the island was a sphere. With regard to the mountain, it would appear to be an idea little likely to enter into a child's head at all; and to put it there, merely for the purpose of afterwards removing it seems but useless.

"This earth of ours is a huge mass, self-poised, supported upon nothing, hung upon nothing, enveloped by the air which we breathe, and surrounded by the space of the heavens. How many thoughts does the mind embrace in this idea."

This idea is elsewhere repeated, as at p. 34, "The earth is a solid mass, of great but finite dimensions, resting upon nothing, joined to nothing, hanging upon nothing, but self-poised, floating, self-supported in the infinity of space." And again, at p. 63: "The fact that it exists a mass, isolated in space, resting upon no other, having no friction against any other, resisted by nothing, constitutes an independent probability that it is in motion."

The propounding of this idea occupies more than a hundred lines of very small print; long before the reading or explanation of one half of which, a child's attention would be far away, wearied and oppressed with the great fact.

We should have preferred some such shorter and simpler definition and explanation as the following

Suspend from the ceiling of a room a sphere of the requisite dimensions, in such a position that it may be made to revolve freely round a given centre; that centre being, of course, immediately below the point of suspension.

In causing this sphere to move in a circle, it will have two

motions; one round its own axis (though irregular), and the other round the given centre, which may be, for the purpose of illustration, a light.

In explaining this to the class,-first, it represents the earth's motions; but they must imagine no string to suspend the globe; GOD stretcheth out the North over the empty space; and hangeth the earth upon nothing; He has commanded, and it has stood fast in the course wherein He ordained it.

His will alone sustains it; the sphere which they see revolves round a small centre to be held in the hand; but the mighty globe of this world revolves round one still mightier than itself.

This sphere describes a narrow circle in the room before them; but the earth makes its mighty journey in boundless space, without limit or check on any side; without change or alteration, in the one fixed course.

And all this is because the Creator of the world has so willed it, and His power is over all in earth and Heaven: before whom "the whole world is as a little grain of the balance, yea, as a drop of the morning dew that falleth upon the earth." Eccl. ii. 22.

Some such explanation as this would, we imagine, give to children as clear and forcible idea of "the great fact" as a ponderous and laboured explanation of a half-dozen pages.

We said that we feared much how far Mr. Moseley's disquisitions would be found useful for practical purposes to the generality of Elementary Teachers. Let us therefore cite a few more specimens:

At p. 57, he is illustrating "the general principle of relative motion," in continuance of his explanation of the earth's motion. The principle itself is this :-" if any number of bodies be moving in any way in respect to one another, and you communicate to them all other motions equal to one another, and in parallel directions, and towards the same parts, then whatever are the amounts of those motions, provided they are thus equal and whatever are their directions, provided they are thus parallel and towards the same parts, the motions of the bodies in respect to one another, and their positions at all times in respect to one another, will remain unaltered;"-that is, these bodies will all be in the same position in respect to one another, and at the same distances from one another, at any given time, as they would have been before. So much for the principle. "To illustrate this principle, let the reader conceive to himself a number of people moving about in any regular motion on the deck of a ship at anchor-the sailors working the capstan, for instance; and to communicate to them equal motions in parallel directions, let the men be supposed to continue to work the capstan after the anchor is weighed and the ship under sail. The motion of these men in space will now be entirely different from what it was before; so that if each man as he moved could leave his footsteps marked on the surface of the sea,

the trace would be in a curve of a far more complicated nature than that circular path of which he would have left the trace, if the ship had remained at anchor; yet will the motion of every man, although in reality tortuous, be, in respect to the rest, and to the different parts of the ship, precisely what it was before. Had, indeed, a portion of the ship admitted of separation from the rest, and had a different motion been communicated to that portion, it is manifest that the positions of the men in respect to one another on the two portions would have been changed; it is the fact of the whole receiving parallel and equal motions that constitutes the identity of their relative positions in the two cases."

Let the reader, if he is mathematical, conceive this; and then the following, as adapted specially for elementary teaching.

"To connect this illustration more immediately with the problem of the Heavens, let us suppose that there are two ships, one of which is at anchor, and that the other sails round it in a circle. Let us further suppose, that round the capstan of this last there are five men working, and not all moving round it in the same time as men usually do who work a capstan, but in different times, bearing the same proportion to one another, and to the time of the revolution of one ship round the other, that the periodic times of the planets do to one another and to the time of the apparent revolution of the sun. Let them moreover work at different distances from the capstan, having the same relation to one another, and to that of the one ship from the other, that the distances of the planets and earth from the sun have; these men will evidently come into precisely the same position in respect to the fixed ship, that the planets appear by observation to come into in respect to the earth.

"Now let us suppose the anchor of the fixed ship to be weighed, and forces to be applied to the two ships, such as would be sufficient, if they were both at rest, to communicate to both of them motions precisely equal to that of the moveable ship, but in an opposite direction; the force thus applied to, the moveable ship acting against the force which moves it, and being equal to that force will bring it to rest; whilst that communicated to the fixed ship will give it a motion precisely equal to that which the moveable ship had before, and therefore cause it to revolve round it in a circle concentric (if its capstan be in its centre) with those in which the men are working. We have now, then, the case of the one ship, and the men on the deck of the other, all working round the same centre, and in the same direction. Moreover, the relative positions into which they are thus brought, are precisely the same as they were before; for by communicating to the two ships equal and parallel motions, we have in fact communicated to the one ship and to all the men in the other, equal motions in parallel directions, by communicating which we can in no way have altered their relative motions. Thus, then, the relative motions of the men and of the second ship are the same, whether we suppose that ship

to be at rest, and the first to carry the men working the capstan round it; or whether we suppose the first to be at rest, and the second to sail round it in the same direction in which the men are working round the capstan. Let the first ship represent the sun, and the men working round its capstan the planets, and the second ship the earth, and the analogy to our system of the universe will be complete. The same conclusion then applies to it. The relative positions of the planets, the sun, and the earth, will be the same whether we suppose them each to revolve in its proper orbit round the sun, and the sun to carry them all round the earth; or whether we suppose them to revolve round the sun at rest, and the earth also to revolve round him in the same direction as they revolve, and in a similar orbit."

Let the reader conceive this, and then if possible that it is a practical explanation for the elementary schoolmaster.

Again, at p. 63, we have the following:

"It is a law of motion, founded upon observation, that when once communicated to a body, it can never cease to exist in that body, in the same quantity and direction as it existed at first, provided there be not, or have not been, some resistance or other force tending to destroy or divert it. It is another principle of motion, that if it be communicated by impact or otherwise, to a mass in any other direction than through its centre of gravity, the mass when left to itself will have two motions, one a motion of translation, in which all its parts, including its centre of gravity, will partake equally; the other a motion of rotation which will ultimately become steady about a certain axis passing through its centre of gravity, and in which its different parts will partake differently as they are at different distances from that axis. And it is a remarkable fact that these two motions of rotation and translation will be quite independent of one another; so that the motion of translation will be the same as though there had been no rotation, and the motion of rotation the same as though there had been no translation. To illustrate this, let the reader tax his imagination to conceive gravity to have become extinct, and the atmosphere to be removed from the earth's surface, as indeed it would then remove itself; and let him suppose that under these circumstances I were to take a ball in my hand, and holding it up that I were to place it in the void before me, releasing my grasp from it. It would be impossible that in so releasing my grasp I should not communicate to it some motion: with that motion, (by the first of the two principles just stated,) it would move on for ever.

"Moreover it is in the highest degree improbable that this motion · shall have been communicated to the ball by my hand precisely through its centre of gravity; and this not being the case, the sphere would by the second principle begin instantly to spin round some axis passing through that point, that is, through its centre, and would thus move continually forward in a straight line, spinning at the same time on an axis within itself, until it was lost in immensity. It has been stated that it would be impossible to release the ball from the hand without communicating to it some motion, and this is perfectly true, as anybody