tion of a double system is perfectly sincere; and that such a plan would be attempted with good faith, after it should have served the purpose of the moment;-we hold it to be quite im practicable, at least in the desired extent, from the nature of the thing. The essence of the new method consists in economizing the expense of education, by teaching very large numbers at once. Beautiful and useful as it is, when applied to schools of a certain size, it is wholly inapplicable to small seminaries; at least, it loses all its advantages. One teacher now superintends a school of 1000 or 1200 chikdren. Wherever, therefore, the whole poor children of the district do not exceed this number, it is exactly doubling the expense, to have two schools. And where they do exceed this number, how are they to be divided? We cannot expect that, of 1600 children, 800 will belong always to the church, and 800 to the different sects. In some places, the sectaries may be very few in number, perhaps 10 or 15; but if they were 20 or 30, they are too few,--and they therefore can take no benefit whatever from the new system. In all such cases, the Church of England poor may be educated; but the Dissenting poor must go without instruction, or must conform to the Church; that is, must sin against their consciences, and (like our first parents) purchase knowledge at the expense of innocence. There are other places, however, where those proportions are reversed,-where the bulk of the poor are not of the Church; and, here, the sectaries may be educated under the new system, but not the others; or, at least, no school can here be established where the Catechism is taught; so that the poor of the Church must either go uneducated, or resort to the Dissenting school. It is true, they may do so with a safe conscience;-and this is the very point in which the plan recommended by us, of excluding all peculiar Catechisms, so greatly excels the other. But, were the community marshalled by their creeds, as our alarmists would have them, it requires no great gift to foresee, that, in a district too full of Dissenters to allow of a Church of England school, the poor of the Establishment would knock in vain at the door of the Nonconformist for the bread of knowledge. And we verily believe, that they whose outcries had persecuted the religious world into such an unchristian state, would be the first to accuse the Dissenters, their victims, of uncharitableness, should they demean themselves in the manner which their treatment had made so natural. But, after all, and laying out of our view the facts of the case-supposing, for a moment, that the new system (call it by whatever name you please) is capable of being applied in C 3 the the double form now recommended-supposing, too, that the principle is carried farther, and that each sect has its separate establishment-let us figure to ourselves a complete adoption of this plan, a regular marshalling of the community, according to their religious creeds, for the purpose of exercising the charities of their common faith, nay, the charities of their common nature-and then let the mind of man fancy, if it can, a more preposterous, a more disgusting sight-we will not say, a sight more repugnant to every precept of the gospel, but one more painful to every sense of propriety, and every right feeling of the heart. What is really the substance of the doctrine maintained by these reverend watchmen of the Church? And by what devices do they seek to uphold her strength? Do they not all lead to such maxims as the following? Give no alins, but to them of your own sect-pour no oil into the stranger's wounds -pass by on the other side with the Pharisee and the Leviteand let the Samaritan, who has no church to support, do as him lists. What though our Saviour held out his conduct as ⚫ a pattern to his followers? Times are now changed; and his church can only be supported by a direct disobedience to his "precepts. This is the very theme of those worst of enemies to the Establishment, who would sustain it on the ruin of the best principles of our nature-in defiance of the most sacred truths of religion. When the question is, of educating the poor-of erecting schools where all poor children may learn to read and study their Bibles-of forming an institution which may spread such seminaries over the empire, and put down ignorance and vice among those orders, where ignorance, most prevailing, has planted the chief nursery of crimes-those afarmists step forward, and bid us pause. They warn us, that we endanger their Church, if we join with Dissenters in forwarding the best of good works-tell us, that Churchmen must only associate with Churchmen in promoting such charities, and that the sectaries must be left to associate together. The work shows the motives that lead to it-its manifest effects. All go for nothing, if the sectaries bear a part in such labours of love-the stream is polluted, and must run to mischief. So, when the project is to disseminate the Scriptures among the poor, and among the heathen;-to diffuse the blessings of religion in countries yet sitting in darkness, and over those classes of our own country which have not the means of reading the Bible-forth come the same alarmists, and require that no friend of the Church shall join with sectaries in such an indiscriminate exercise of clarity;-that. no man, who values the Establishment, shall be accesary to distributing Bibles, unless with the Scriptures there shall be circulated the Articles, the Catechism, the Liturgy, and all those formulas of the Establishment, which no conscientious Dissenter can have any hand in diffusing. Tests are the delight of these holy bigots; and no work of charity is pleasing, or even tolerable, in their eyes, unless it is strictly confined to the members of their own body, by the imposition of terms which, however great his love of charity may be, no Dissenter can possibly comply with. We consider this subject, of the patronage fit to be bestowed on the new Institution, so important, as to justify us in making a plain and frank appeal to every person who is doubtful whe ther he shall encourage it or not-we mean, every one belonging to the Church Establishment-and assailed, on the one hand, by the clamours of political preachers-on the other, by the cries of the ignorant poor. Does any man really believe that the attachment of the people of England to her Church, arises from the knowledge of its peculiar doctrines and ceremonials, or the regard for its institutions instilled into their infant minds, at the seminaries where youth are taught the alphabet and the other very first rudiments of learning? If this be so-if the empire of the Church is founded on this base, woe be to her! She is indeed in danger-or rather her existence is next to a miracle. What teacher of children from five to seven years old (and the question relates to none other) ever yet dreamt of explaining to them the points in controversy between the Establishmeut and the Dissenters-much less inculcated the superior claims of that Establishment, as a political institution, to their veneration? Nay, did any child ever leave school with so much as a notion that such a thing as a Church establishment existed? These matters, we dare to assert, were never yet mooted in such seminaries, any more than real hinds and panthers ever discussed the Nicene fathers. Is it then by teaching the infant the mysteries of the Athanasian creed, and The analogy here stated between the two questions of Lancaster's Schools and the Bible Society, is too striking to escape any reader: the same persons have accordingly taken part in each discussion-if discussion we can call it, where all the argument lyes on one side. We purpose soon to call the attention of our readers more fully to the other controversy. In the mean time, we earnestly recommend to them the work of Mr Dealtry, entitled, "A Vindication of the British and Foreign Eible Society;" one of the ablest and most satisfactory controversial pieces that we have ever seen, and only unfortunate in the unequal force with which it has contend. the Thirty-nine Articles, that we have hitherto made the man a friend of the Establishment? Can any one, reflecting on his own case, seriously believe that this has been the origin of his preference for the Episcopalian Establishment? If it has, then the effect has, we greatly fear, in most instances, long survived all recollection even of the cause. But the fact is suffi cient. Every man knows that at childrens' schools the teacher, be he ever so closely connected with the Church, and ever so zealous to inculcate her doctrines, finds his time occupied in making his pupils learn to read; and that whatever they learn of catechisms and articles, they learn by mere rote, and as a method of reading and spelling. Happily for the Church, men support her, at first, because the Law and the Government favour her because their families have lived and died in her bosom--because they have attended her ordinances from their earliest years before they went to school-during the intervals of school attendance-and wholly independently of their schoolmaster. They afterwards give her a more rational support' from their reason, by turning towards the question those facul ties which they have been enabled to exercise, that knowledge which they have been enabled to acquire by school education, at a period when their minds were too young for controversy, and when they never heard of its existence. We shall close these observations with narrating a fact, illustrative of what has been stated respecting the necessity of teaching-without reference to any particular ecclesiastical system, if we would teach at all. It is doubly interesting, because it relates to Ireland and to the Catholic body, and speaks to us with a loud voice on perhaps the most important application of the new method, and one which promises the greatest harvest of public benefit. A Lancasterian school had been established at Waterford-it was open to poor children of all sects-the Scriptures, or extracts from them, were alone taught-and the Roman Catholics sent their children as freely as those of any other persuasion. This beneficent Institution had proceeded for some time, dispensing to no less than four hundred poor infants the greatest of earthly comforts, when a zealous member of the Established Church unhappily had influence enough to procure the introduction of the Church catechism; and instantly one half of the children were taken from the school. Happily the Dublin school, arranged by Lancaster, is preserved on the original plan; and it appears from the Annual Reports, that as nothing but the Scriptures themselves are taught in it, the Catholic and Protestant poor derive from it, in common, the lights of knowledge and of religion. For For the Church as established in this country-we allude more especially to the Anglican Church, for happily our Scottish institutions have never been fruitful of such disgraceful contentions-but for the Church of England, we cherish the utmost respect. We not only grudge her none of those rights wherewithal she is plentifully endowed-not only wish to see her safe from all disputes as to her title-all attempts to lay her low; but we go farther-and would have her dignities and her honours secure: We will have her to exalt her mitred front in Courts and Parliaments;' and will view an enemy to the State in every one, who, either by open assault, or by secret treachery, or by the still more dangerous enmity of injudicious and disreputable friendship, would bring her rights or her power either into jeopardy or suspicion. Hence it is, that we view with more than common indignation the men whom we have now been occupied in exposing to the public; because in them we see at once the enemies of the Poor, and of the Church-of Education and of Religion-men who would bring ruin upon the Establishment, by opposing the most enlightened and disinterested attempt that ever yet was made, in any country, for scattering the bles sings of knowledge and moral improvement among the more helpless classes of our species. ART. II. An Inquiry into the Changes induced on Atmospheric Further Inquiries into the Changes induced on Atmospheric Air, &c. &c. By the same. London. 1811. Edinburgh and IN every stage of our inquiries into the properties of surrounding bodies, there is a certain portion of truth, which it is always in our power, by minute and accurate observation, to acquire; and when we have acquired this, our knowledge of the particular subjects investigated may be considered as complete; at least till new instruments or methods of investigation shall bring new phenomena within the sphere of our observation. But if, on the one hand, it is only by full and correct observation, that we are led to the discovery of permanent truth, so, on the other, it will be found, that error of every kind is invariably referable to observation that is careless and imperfeet. Thus it is, that, in the investigation of causes, some phenomepa are occasionally overlooked which materially influence a re sult, |