sum as £20 per annum than to the support of such a school. I con fess to having heard, with much surprise, from the Rev. Mr. Stock, that the master is an efficient teacher, and most successful in bringing on kis pupils. I, of course, had no opportunity of ascertaining how far he had brought them on; but he must be a more remarkable man than I supposed, if, without knowledge of his own, rules for his guidance, books for his pupils, advice, direction, or control, he can have had any measure of success whatever.-[23rd October, 1856.] Drumcliffe; Muninean, Erasmus Smith's English School.-It is right to state that the school has hitherto been under the conduct of inefficient teachers. Appended to a somewhat unfavourable notice of the working of the school, from the Church Education Society's inspector, appearing in the report-book, is a comment of the late master, to the effect that the report was malicious and untrue. My experience of these cases leads me to consider this circumstance proof sufficient of the unfitness of the late master for his place; and additional proof is furnished by the ignorance of the pupils in the most elementary branches of instruction. The Scriptures may be said to be the only reading and general lesson book in use. The style of reading is as bad in this as in any other parish school, and the meaning of words as little known. All were alike ignorant of grammar; and I could not obtain the name of a single European island. The master, in reply to the question, what punishments were resorted to, in the course of examination upon oath, enumerated, amongst punishments to which he resorted, the practice of making offenders read verses of Scripture. I expressed my surprise that he should resort to the Scriptures as a means of punishment, when he at once retracted his statement, and said he had made it through inadvertence. I was not satisfied with this explanation, and, accordingly, examined one of his pupils, upon oath, as to the nature of the punishments to which he was habitually subjected, and he swore distinctly that he had been obliged to read the Scriptures by way of punishment. The master, however, having interrupted my examination to ask the witness whether such punishment had proceeded from himself, the witness answered that it had not; but the answer was manifestly suggested by the master's question.-[22nd October, 1856.]

We have treated the subject of education in Ireland, not by any means with reference to the subject of endowed schools merely, nor exactly according to the view in which the latter subject was considered by ourselves before the appointment of the late Commission. One feature, at all events, of the inquiry just furnished, is its completeness, and the abundance of the materials which it supplies for the treatment of the question of education generally. There is no class of schools in our country not found to include a sufficient number of endowments, to enable us to

form an opinion, a strong conjectural opinion, at least, as to the state of education in that portion of the class which lay outside the field of the Commission, as well as in that which lay within it. There was, moreover, one large subdivision of schools admittedly endowed, the vested schools of the National Board, upon which the Commissioners did not consider it necessary to report, but which we have no reason to doubt, altogether resembled the remainder of their class. And further, large as was the number of schools taken in by the definition of the Commissioners, it excluded from the list of endowed schools a class which for many important purposes may be considered as endowed; the schools supported by parliamentary grant from the early estimates; so that dealing with the subject of national education generally, we might still be said to keep within the subject of education in endowed schools, The inquiries of the Commissioners into such of these schools as were included within their own definition furnished us with a large though not complete indication instances upon which to grant our perferment as to the entire class, and therefore as to she entire National system. The same may be said to a still greater extent, as we have always observed of the rival, or Church Education system. Again, the Commissioners differed in opinion upon questions of high principle equally applicable to unendowed, or temporarily endowed Schools, as to Schools endowed in perpetuity. The principle involved was that of mixed education; and in arriving at a judgment upon the subject, no better materials could be found than those prepared for us by the Commissioners. We learned, not only from their general report, but from their tabulated statistics, and from the special reports of the assistant Commissioners; that the National Schools are substantially separate establishments, under the direction of the Catholic clergy, although governed by rules not altogether in harmony with the feelings of that body. We learned further that those schools being of the character and under the direction we have described are good schools and instrumental in the diffusion of solid and useful educatian. We were further taught, that the essentially Catholic schools of the Christian Brothers were also the most perfect of their class, or rather that they form a class quite apart from, and superior to any schools that might be supposed to rank with them; and we found

If

lastly, that the schools under the immediate care of the clergy of the Established Church were such as have been described in the foregoing extracts. Upon a review of the entire case; while anxious to preserve for ourselves the intellectual superiority communicated to our youth by systems like those of the Christian Brothers, and while anxious to extend the application of those systems to intermediate and upper education; we are far from anxious to perpetuate the degradation to which the parish schools have been reduced by the neglect of the Protestant clergy, and their contempt of secular instruction. If the clergy of the Established church would loyally agree to concern themselves with their own congregations merely, and to embrace frankly the denominational system, we should gladly meet their views. In three of the provinces there is no such thing as united education, and in the fourth it is adopted with great jealousy and with no little heart-burning. If there must be a Protestant and Catholic National school in each parish; be it so; but let them be as emphatically and conspicuously distinct as the Protestant and Catholic churches. Catholic parents think proper to send their children to the Ministers' school, let it be upon the distinct understanding that the teaching is as Protestant as Calvin could desire. The system of mixed education does not in reality exist; we have only separate education hampered by inconvenient rules. The attempt to extend even the theory of mixed education to intermediate schools would be quite hopeless, and involve the country again in the disastrous controversy that attended the establishment of the Queen's Colleges, and which might have been so easily avoided by allowing open competition to separate and independent universities, with equal advantages and rights. The State has an opportunity of adjusting the long disputed question now, and of reconsidering the entire subject of education. We for our part are not anxious to encroach upon any educational endowments whether of state or private foundation that have been regarded as belonging peculiarly to Protestants. We make no reference at present to the revenues of the Church Establishment. That is an altogether different question. But speaking for ourselves merely, we are quite willing to leave to the Protestants every one of the educational endow

ments they claim as theirs, or that Mr. Stephens claims for them, not by any means, in the case of the schools of State foundation as a matter of right, but as a peace offering merely and upon conditions. We hold what will hardly be disputed, that in the distribution of favours as well as of burthens Catholic and Protestant should stand upon opposite sides of an equation. No one can pretend that they stand in any such relation at present. In respect of primary education the state endowment is nearly all upon the Catholic side for the reasons so abundantly discussed already. In respect of intermediate education it is all the other way, and we for our private part are content to leave it so. In respect of superior education we have upon the Protestant side the University of Dublin, a great Protestant institution, to the secular teaching, and to some of the prizes of which Catholics are admissible, but upon the Catholic side we have absolutely no equivalent; while the Queen's Colleges, being open to Protestant and Catholic alike, are common quantities, and cannot restore the balance. Complete the equation by giving to the Catholic interest a quantity to balance the University of Dublin. The material is ready to our hands in the Catholic University.

It is not many years ago since the Times, when such an institution was first in contemplation, suggested that if Catholics should be so fortunate as to obtain for their projected University the services of some of the disciplined minds of Oxford and Cambridge that have passed over to their communion, it would entitle them to some sort of countenance. They have obtained for their University all that was suggested, but they do not receive more countenance or support on that account, than if the Rector and Professors were so many hedge-school-masters. The Herald bade welcome to the coming University on the somewhat peculiar ground that Luther was the alumnus of a Catholic University. But now that the University has come, neither the Times out of respect for the literary training it supplies to Catholics "Ilium in Italiam portans," nor the Herald in anticipation of its promised crop of Luthers, has given to it the support they seemed to hold out Never was a moment more propitious for the adjustment of the question. The existence of free and recognised universities side by side with the State university, and enjoy

ing every privilege of a University, is a fact in Belgium, why not in Ireland? Mixed education, like the Turkish empire, has no friends, and yet no one is quite prepared to do without it. This is certainly a favourable time, and the rivalry between the great educational establishments of the country for the prizes thrown open to them by competitive examinations, could not fail to promote the general interests of education. And greater than all would be the gain of the country in harmony and good feeling, by the abandonment of theories and frank adoption of realities. Catholic and Protestant must have mixed education in the great school of the world, even if they learn their alphabet and construe their classics apart. They must meet and rub together, and educate each other in the counting house or stock exchange, at the railway board, in the hall of the Four Courts, in municipal councils, in the same or in a different political connexion in the legislature; but the attempt to confuse the boundaries of Protestant and Catholic education, primary, secondary, or superior, we regard as wrong in principle, and if right not practicable. The bare agitation of the question will estrange the fathers, who will bequeath the estrangement to their sons; suspicion and watchfulness far more than wholesome for the peace of the State will be generated between the parties it was intended to unite; and the substance of that union which mixed education has been instituted to forward, will be lost in the worship of the shadow.