SCRIPTURAL EDUCATION. 97 



surely,&quot; our hostess said, &quot;it was the twenty-ninth of 

 King-Charles-and-the-Oak day.&quot; In her husband s time, 

 they used always to keep it in good style, ornamenting their 

 house all over with oak boughs, and all the stage-coaches and 

 the horses used to be decked with oak boughs too. &quot; How 

 beautifully,&quot; says C., aside, &quot;do such pretty simple customs 

 keep alive the remembrance of old historic facts !&quot; &quot; But 

 why do they carry about the child ?&quot; She did not recollect 

 clearly, but she had the impression that King Charles was a 

 baby when it occurred. She had forgotten exactly how it 

 was, she said, &quot; but it told all about it in the Bible.&quot; &quot; In 

 the Bible ! mother ; you mean in the History of England, do 

 you not 1&quot; said her daughter, smiling. &quot; Was it 1&quot; replied 

 the old lady, &quot; I never had time to read much in the large His 

 tory of England. Let me see why, no ; now r I am sure it 

 was in the Bible. Don t you remember what s his name 

 Zack Zack Zacheriah ? yes, Zacheriah ; how he climbed 

 up into an oak tree to see King Charles go by !&quot; 



A large and most powerful class, including many even of 

 the more conservative of the dissenters in England, are terri 

 bly afraid of a national system of education that shall be 

 free from Church influence. The people had better be left to 

 grow up in ignorance, rather than that they should not be 

 instructed in theological dogmas. I have actually heard a 

 refined and educated gentleman, occupying an influential po 

 sition, advocate the idea that all the education the common 

 people needed was so much as attild enable them to read 

 their Bible, prayer-book, and ca^Biism. Except for this, he 



Icftiever let them have a t^Bner, but would leave them 

 He would break up every dissenter s school 



have no school in the land that was not a part^&amp;gt;f the 

 The godless system of education which was now 

 favoured in high quarters (on the plan of our New- England 



9 



