AN AMERICAN FARMER IN ENGLAND. 



band's time, they used always to keep it in good style, ornament- 

 ing their house all over with oak boughs ; and all the stage- 

 coaches and the horses used to be decked with oak boughs too. 

 " How beautifully," says C. aside, " do such pretty simple customs 

 keep alive the remembrance of old historic facts ! " " But why 

 do they carry about the child?" 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, 

 " but it told all about it in the Bible." " In the Bible ! mother ; 

 you mean in the History of England, do you not ? " said her 

 daughter, smiling. "Was it?" replied the old lady; "I never 

 had time to read much in the large History of England. Let 

 me see why, no ; now 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 ! " 



A large and most powerful class, including many even of the 

 more conservative of the Dissenters in England, are terribly 

 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 theo- 

 logical dogmas. I have actually heard a refined and educated 

 gentleman, occupying an influential position, advocate the idea 

 that all the education the common people needed was so much as 

 would enable them to read their Bible, prayer-book, and cate- 

 chism. Except for this he would never let them have a teacher, 

 but would leave them to the parson. He would break up every 

 Dissenter's school have no school in the land that was not a 

 part of the Church. The godless system of education which was 

 now favored in high quarters (on the plan of our New England 

 common schools!) he verily believed, if adopted, would be a 

 national sin that God would arise in his anger to punish. 



