shews will end in the utter ruin of the whole establishment. To appoint a master for his scholarship, without school experience, is as absurd as to make a man a manager of a bank from his knowledge of arithmetic.

Again, want of money prevents a school from ever recovering itself, if once it begins to sink. A most excellent and experienced master, who commenced with a proprietary school, and lately died, deeply regretted, in a foundation school, in which he had rendered most efficient service, said, "All schools are liable to fluctuate. If your funds remain the same, if the masters feel secure of their income, the establishment stands safe, though small, till times are changed; but proprietary schools cannot wait, but are obliged to sell up." My experience enables me to say, that as a preliminary step to make assurance (of selling up) doubly sure, the first species of economy thought of, is to reduce the salaries of the masters; which is only lighting the candle at both ends-diminishing the energy on which alone preservation depends, not to mention the probability of change of masters which, by causing the removal of pupils, always involves a loss of far more than any reduction of salary can save.

Again, not only the use but the marketable value of every good servant's labour increases with use, local influence, and experience. Nothing is more common than for the secretary in a bank, or other house of business, to be offered an increased remuneration by some party with whom

long service has enabled him to form connection. Four such cases have very lately come to my knowledge. Their employers considered they should lose more than the difference if they parted with them, and therefore, to retain their services, paid as much as they were offered elsewhere. Now, I believe, there is no business to which a change causes loss so great as in a school. What then shall we say of the security of establishments that have no reserved funds for these very probable contingencies?

This is why I say that £50 a-year is less than is consistent with sound policy; still, though this declaration may benefit future schools, it cannot injure any already existing, because, by advising parents to take full advantage of this seeming imprudence, I thereby advocate the support of institutions which have no other faults than an excess of liberality and too great zeal on the part of their directors. In this over-zeal, in this very common interference, I can again say that the parent is little concerned: this concerns the very proprietor for the safety of his investment, because the school may be too far reduced by changes to recover itself. While a proprietary school remains open, even under the greatest disadvantages, it will be entitled to a preference over most private academies. I speak of eight different cases when I say that experience as well as common judgment convinces me that masters, of the class from which appointments are usually made, are far too independent to afford the slightest founda

tion for the complaint that they are liable to alter their managements, to the prejudice of pupils, at the caprice of directors. A master cannot be tied by rule; he feels he must act according to and on the very moment of each emergency, which admits of so many forms and combinations, and requires measures so prompt that to expect a master to consult a Board of Directors is as absurd as to require a captain to send to the Admiralty every storm. Basil Hall says, that not even the Americans can stand democracy on board ship. Neither could they in a school. Most of the successful proprietary schools have all had their revolutionary war; and have ended in a form of government very much like a military despotism.

My advice to parents, having assigned my reasons, I now repeat;-not to be deceived by the fallacy that proprietary schools do not answer, but to say, “they answer to us ;"" while they are open they are unexceptionable," "when they are shut we will go elsewhere."

I have already remarked, that companies, like individuals, grow wiser by experience. When a new proprietary school is forming, I hear of advice coming from distant establishments of the same kind. If you interfere, you are lost. Choose good men, and trust-you may change their faces, not their faults. Consequently, there is a general increase in the powers of the executive.

We can

not, they say, have a court-martial before a boy is flogged, or a court of enquiry to take into due consideration the comparative advantages of mould

candles and dips, because the school might remain all the winter months in the dark.

Before I conclude any comparison between public and private schools, I must seriously consider one point in which the whole question of eligibility is undoubtedly involved. I have been asked, "Is it not true that at public schools prayer is laughed at, and religious conduct discouraged. to the extent, that when an innocent-minded boy, carefully nurtured in the fear of the Lord, goes to his crowded chamber, he is obliged, for the first time in his life, to try if he can close his eyes without first kneeling in prayer at his bed-side?" Now, without dwelling on particular facts of this kind, the whole question seems to be this, "Is there any tendency to discourage spiritual improvement in public that does not exist in private schools?" For advantages of all kinds, whether temporal or spiritual, are after all comparative, and by comparison must be judged. Temptations prevail every where, among the young as well as the old, or this would cease to be a state of probation; but, since every parent will of course be anxious to lessen the danger he cannot avoid, he will naturally ask where temptation is least to be dreaded. My own opinion is, that this question cannot be settled merely by the advocates of each system enumerating alleged instances of unholy practices in the other. In private schools, as well as in public, there prevails much that is trying to youthful piety. The faults of the latter may seem more frequent, because more frequently quoted.

The only way to decide as to their several tendencies, is to consider their several effects. If the public schools send forth their fair proportion of faithful servants in the one good cause, I consider that the answer is quite as strong as the objection. Whether such be the case, each person will decide according to his own experience; but lest he fall into error, I must remind him that the comparison must be instituted between boarders at public and boarders at private schools. If, without regard to this principle, the proportion of good Christian men from the public schools appears, as I think it may, sufficient, then the probability is greatly in their favour. I may well be asked what I mean by "the Public Schools." Of those in the Metropolis I would speak with caution, but from what I have seen of the pupils of Eton, Winchester, Harrow, and Rugby, I should say that, in defiance of particular assertions of gross indifference to holy things, of which some can, though many cannot, be substantiated, these pupils could not have had less advantages of spiritual education than the average of those from private schools. Spiritual instruction and spiritual improvement are not always commensurate. The more I reflect on the past, the more I am encouraged to think that most mercifully it has been ordained that eternal happiness and the preparation meet for its inheritance should be affected much more than is commonly supposed by our own humble endeavours and hearty yearnings for Divine assistance, and much less by extraneous