188 SECULAR EDUCATION. [CHAP. XIII. 



as applicable to the teaching of children of their own denomina 

 tion. Their efforts, however, though fortunately defeated, were 

 attended by some beneficial results. It is obviously the duty of 

 every government which establishes a national system of secular 

 education, to see that no books are used in the schools, containing 

 sectarian views, or in which the peculiar opinions of any sect 

 are treated with marked contempt. The Catholics complained 

 that some of the works put into the hands of children, especially 

 those relating to English history, were written with a strong 

 Protestant bias, and that, while the superstitions of popery and 

 the bigotry of Bloody Mary were pointedly dwelt upon, the per 

 secutions endured by Romanists at the hands of Protestant rulers 

 were overlooked, or slightly glanced at. The expunging of such 

 passages, both in the State of New York and in New England, 

 must have a wholesome tendency to lessen sectarian bitterness, 

 which, if imbibed at an early age, is so difficult to eradicate ; 

 and children thus educated will grow up less prejudiced, and 

 more truly Christian in spirit, than if the Romish or any other 

 clergy had been permitted to obtain the sole arid separate train 

 ing of their minds. 



I have often mentioned the absence of smoke as a striking and 

 enviable peculiarity of the Atlantic cities. For my own part, I 

 never found the heat of a well-managed stove oppressive, when 

 vessels of water were placed over it for moistening the air by 

 free evaporation ; and the anthracite coal burns brightly in open 

 grates. Even in a moral point of view, I regard freedom from 

 smoke as a positive national gain, for it causes the richer and 

 more educated inhabitants to reside in cities by the side of their 

 poorer neighbors during a larger part of the year, which they 

 would not do if the air and the houses were as much soiled by 

 smoke and soot as Manchester, Birmingham, Leeds, or Sheffield. 

 Here the dress and furniture last longer and look less dingy, 

 flowers and shrubs can be cultivated in town gardens, and all 

 who can afford to move are not driven into the country or some 

 distant suburb. The formation of libraries and scientific and 

 literary institutions, museums, and lectures, and the daily inter 

 course between the different orders of society in a word, all 



