Part 11 (2/2)

But, notwithstanding the useful labours of Ruddiencies, renant condition, nor had any sensible improvement been achieved in the educational machinery of that portion of the e Mental training and culture, as they are now understood, are the growth of the last half century But the cost of such accoow, Aberdeen, and St

Andreas lower than in England, and the standard higher than in Ireland; and from both countries pupils were often sent in former days to complete their education, where their parents could not have afforded the e From a hundred to a hundred and thirty years since, the fees at Glasgow University did not exceed 20 a year, and a frugal lad found seven or eight shi+llings a week sufficient for his board and lodging

III Many causes contributed, toward the anisation and decay of scholastic learning; but, above all, the outbreak of the Civil War, and the consequent disorder, depression, and inquietude, seem to have reduced the educational standard, and to have thrown the task of instruction, in a great nuy, from the want of funds or the lack of inclination to support the former lay-teachers The acute political crisis, which lasted without interruption from 1640 to the commencement of the Protectorate in 1653, affected even the ancient academical and civic endowments; and the two Universities, the noble foundations of Edward VI, and the public sereat centres by private munificence, suffered a common paralysis

The alliance between the Church and the schools was one formed or developed at a period of exceptional difficulty and pressure; but even when the ier, and affairs in England had returned to their nory saw too clearly the iained on the national training and thought to allow education to pass back, farther than was avoidable, under lay control

In the time of the Commonwealth, and when Cromwell assumed the supreland and Wales, men in holy orders and in the enjoyment of benefices who combined with their sacerdotal functions, as many do still, the duties of school them there were some fairly qualified for the trust which they received and undertook; but the ed, in an authentic official document before me of 1654, to have been far otherwise This State-paper is called ”An Ordinance for the Ejection of Scandalous, Ignorant, and Insufficient Ministers and Schoolmasters,” and was published in the autuular features it unquestionably possesses: the intiue, and the striking picture which it presents to our view of the lax and profligate condition of the class which Cromwell and his advisers saw thus clothed with the twofold responsibility of mental and spiritual tuition

The points on which the Commissioners of the Protectoral Government were authorised to inform themselves, and to exercise the discretion vested in them by the ordinance, reveal a very unsatisfactory and corrupt state of things, and the existence of abuses for which neither the Civil War nor the Republican adht to have been answerable

There is scarcely a vice or irregularity which is not named or implied in the instructions delivered to the Coee-plays, or such like licentious practices,” strikes one as relatively a very venial offence against good morals and professional decorum But the antipathy to sports and draid Puritans, and the Articles of Inquiry in the archidiaconal visitations of this period never forgot such profane infringements of clerical morality

The persons ere selected to sit on these committees for the several urban and provincial districts includedtype; but at the sament and impartiality, and the printed lists exhibit a notable proportion of divines and others not likely to sanction or recommend too violent a course

In fact, so considerate was the temper of the Administration itself, that an express proviso was inserted in the ejecting ordinance, by which some of the stipend of the cure was to be set apart, where the ed incompetent, for the support of his family

Samuel Harmar, in his _Vox Populi, or Gloucestershi+re's Desire_, 1642, represents the want of proper hto contribute liberally to the object; to the burden on faratuitous instruction of children, who, if they were but in the way of earning even twopence a day, ht help themselves and their parents, whereas they wasted their ti about the streets, and acquired the habit of swearing and other iey accounts for the dearth of literature shedding real and valuable light on the condition of the young and the state of schools in very early days; and Harical ineptitudes His main proposal was excellent; it declared for the establishhout the country; but even this wasbefore advocated, and partly accomplished, in Scotland

There is a little volu a ser of the Free School of feckenhaes of which there is not an iota worthy of citation, nor a hint serviceable to ht have been, had a layman been the writer!

XIII

Feht at ho clerical control--Ignorance of the rudihters--Golds Ladies_--Rise of the Ladies' School--Political ilect of fedom down to a recent date proceeded froanisable machinery for the purpose, and fro by men in early times In Scotland this mischief was re to the institution of Academies, where both sexes received instruction under one roof from the saeneral superiority of the Scots, within certain limits, to the Southern Britons in this respect, the better upbringing of theitself to her children

Coirls were not wholly unknown in England, however, but they were of very rare occurrence, and have now become still rarer, as they barely exist at all except as dame-schools

Now-a-days, of course, the most elaborate and costly apparatus is provided for the irls of all ranks; and the daughter of a citizenbeyond the reach of daughters of kings Formerly the lower classes of fe rank of entlewooverness But in the Middle Ages, and long after the revival of learning, the only persons capable of conducting the education of a lady who had ee were ecclesiastics; and the layradually qualified themselves for the task, such as Aschaained their proficiency in the gymnasia and universities of Italy, Germany, or France The Italian influence was doubtless the earliest, but the Ger

In France from a very remote period the dame-school appears to have existed in some measure and form, for a fourteenth-century sculpture, already mentioned in the remarks on scholastic discipline, depicts an establishment of this kind--a petty school for boys kept by a wo us, I have met with no record of it; but the practice, from the early intimacy between those countries, would be more apt to find its way first of all from the French into Scotland

To such as have had under their eyes the letters and other literary monuments which reveal to us the condition of the lish female community in the old days, it seenorance of the _principia_ of knowledge, and on the fallow state of the intellectual faculties which these evidences establish The Paston and Plumpton Correspondence, Mrs Green's _Letters of Illustrious Ladies_, and Sir Henry Ellis's three Series of Original Letters, ht into the present aspect of the question before us; and I think that theproofs of the inattention to female culture in this country are to be found in docuht to bear on the sex was alreat political and religious movement which Henry VIII was enabled by circue share of lay feeling and prejudice to the educational syste the short reign of Edward VI by the foundation of chartered schools throughout the kingdoraress thus made did not sensibly affect the other sex