Education a National Concern. 563 



the child belongs to ignorant parents who are able to impart nothing 

 to their offspring except their own evil habits and narrow prejudices, 

 arid especially, when as in the rural districts his opportunities of 

 observing character are confined within a scanty village, then his case 

 is truly pitiable and requires that some means should be adopted, by 

 which he may rise to his proper dignity as a human being. If edu- 

 cation be good at all, surely it is our duty to procure the best for 

 those who most need its blessings; and we feel most strongly impressed 

 with the conviction, that these blessings cannot be made either effec- 

 tual or universal, until we rise, as a great nation, provide the means, 

 and order the machinery that shall work this mighty reformation. 

 The dame and the parish-schoolmaster have been tried and found 

 wanting ; and the clergy have too generally confined their instruc- 

 tion to sectarian dogmas for the most part unintelligible to children : 

 the field is yet open, and it remains for the Legislature to send la- 

 bourers for its culture. 



EDUCATION in all its branches and at all its periods from the ear- 

 liest years of the infant to the time when the full-grown man enters 

 on his profession, is the subject which the Central Society of Educa- 

 tion (whose general objects we gladly announced some months back, 

 and whose first publication we now notice) desires to patronise and 

 advance ; and in the publications to which their name gives currency, 

 there will constantly be found essays by practical men on the best 

 methods of conducting the different branches of instruction, and much 

 valuable information, besides, on the state and progress of education 

 in this and other countries. We are most happy to perceive from 

 Mr. Duppa's leading paper, that the feeling of the Central Society is 

 so strong in favour of national education ; and it is to be hoped that 

 all opposition will soon yield to the calm but firm endeavours made 

 for its establishment by the most enlightened men of the present day 

 both in and out of Parliament The Education Committees, Lord 

 Brougham's Bill, the Statistical Societies in London and Manchester, 

 the members of the British Association, and lastly, the Society of 

 Education, are all strong agents in producing the end so much to be 

 desired ; and we are sure that we shall not have long to wait for the 

 consummation of our wishes. 



To proceed to describe this book a little en d&ail, we have an essay 

 by Mr. Wyse on the progress and prospects of education in the United 

 Kingdom, distinguished by that power of thought and thorough know- 

 ledge of the subject so visible in his larger work. He gives a 

 very brief but comprehensive view of the history and present state of 

 education in the three kingdoms, from which he concludes that, 

 though there be evils, great in magnitude as in number, yet that we 

 ought not to sink in apathy or despondence. Improvements, however 

 slight, have been real ; there is ground for encouragement even in 

 our past progress ; and the future offers much more. His observa- 

 tions on the present state of education in England are as follow : 



" The limits of this paper preclude the possibility of going into much de- 

 tail on the history or state of education in England. Here, as in Scotland, 

 elementary education, whether in the hands of societies or individuals, is 

 tolerably extended, but altogether incomplete ; frequently miserable in amount, 



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