The Express.
London, England, 1864-11-11 00:00:00

FRMLI.

TrItIN. Nov. 10.

Official advices received here from Venice to-day
announce that an armed band of insurgents has
been discovered on Mount Rauth, in Friuli. They
fired a few shots, wounding three soldiers, and then
disappeared. A band of about 50 men, probably
not the same, entered Venzoue ou the ith instant.
At Fouteba, a large village ou the road, they seized
the post horses and withdrew towards Carnia.
Troops have been sent iu pursuit.

THE MURDER AT BOULOGNE.
(anon oca OWN CORRZSPONDEXP.)
(BY SI. LOLA/LINZ TILLYGILAPH COMPANY.)
BOULOGNE, Nov. 10.
Leducq has confessed that ho is the murderer of
his two children.

THE CAMBRIDGE " APCsTLE.,.."—Tbia societv
existed for forty-four yearn in the University of Cambridge.
Its own name is the Conversezione Society. It is limited in
number to twelve actual members in residence. undergrs-
dames or bachelors of arts Hence the name of "Apostles,"
given at first in derision. Thirty years ago, the fame, then
already considerable, of one, of whom few would now say
that his works, if lost, world not be mined, or that he had
not done wonders in the domains of thought soil imagine.
Lion—the fame of Alfred Tennyson, ands band of his friends
and contemporaries, all members of the society, amoog
whom may be named Arthur Menem, Milnes,Tre'och, and
Alford, bad made for the society in Cambridge a mune which
has never since departed from it. Poetry was not its sole
or special pursuit. in 18.14, the actual members had the ad.
vantage of the continued presence ineambridge, and friendly
counsel, and familiar companionship, of a large number of
I college tutors and lecturer', who bad taken high university
honours, and had already, according to the rules of the so-
ciety, become honorary merrirrers. Among these were W,
H. Thompson, the present Regius Professor of Greek,
Blakeeley, now a canon of Canterbury, Charles Merivale,
the historian of Rome, G. S. .enables, and Edmund Lush-
' iogtoo, the Professor of Greek at Glasgow. In this year,
1&34. an agitation and controversy having arisen about the
admission of dissenters to degrees in the universities, and
great fears having been expressed by Mr. Goulburu in the
House of Commons, and by Dr. Tortoo, then Regius Pro-
fessor of Divinity, in a pamphlet, of mischierous theological
controversies among undergraduates, that giant in !craning
and intellect, Counop Thirlwall—then an assistant- tutor of
Trinity, soon after made Bishop of St. Ds•id's—scouted the
alarm with a reference and a tribute to this society. Ad-
dressing Dr. Tortes, Mr. Thirlwall said, "If you are not
acquainted with the fact, you may be alarmed when I inform
you that there his long existed in this place a society of
young men, limited indeed in number, but continually re.
ceiving new members to supply its vacancies, and selecting
them by preference among the youngest, in which all sub.
jects of the highest interest, without any exclusion of those
connected with religioo are discussed with the most per.
fed freedom. But, if this fact is new to you, let me in•
stoutly dispel any apprehension it may excite, by assuring
you that the members of this society, for the moat part,
• have been sod are among the choicest ornaments of the
university, that some are now among the ornament, of the
church, and that. so far from having bad their affections
embittered, their friendships torn sod lacerated, their union
has bee, one rather of brothers than of friends." Among
those, who, in academic youth, were members of this society
are three distioguished living ornaments of the House of
Commons, to two of whom it has been given to be members
of the cabinet, or again as Tennyson says—
To mould a mighty statra decrees
And shape the whisper of the throne,
and the other of whom is one of our abl.st parliamentary
orators. The three are Mr. Walpole, Lord Stanley, and Mr.
Horsman.—Mormillan's Matm:ane for November.
TEAuIIINc; GeotaiArily IN NaTIoNaL ScHOOl.,,
Or take, again, a lesson in geography. Of what does it
commonly consist! Of things, of Dairies, learnt era re-
peated by heart, which are, in fact, absolutely without
meaning to the minds of the children who repeat them,
gaol of facts which, if they do not forget them as fast as
they learn them, are entirely useless. They run glibly
enough over the names of rivers and lakes and mountains
in India, or China, or Central Africa, and can prolask4
point them out on the wonderful maps which decorate the
walls of the schoolroom ; they can enumerate what ore
called the productions of distant parts of the globe, while
they know little or nothing of their own country—not
even of the district io which their own village is situated,
very seldom of the bearings of their own parish. The
inspectors are by no means free from blame in all this. i
Imagine an inspector &Aim • class of school-children, as
one of those gentlemen did not long ago, to oame the
watersheds of Asia! We wish we could believe this to be
a solitary instance. We venture to say that not a dozen
children, in any moderate.sized school, can say whether the
nearest market town lies north, south. east, or west of
their father's cottage. And as fur the geographicil terms
with which they are so familiar, it may well be doubted
whether such words as isthmus, mountain, strait, peninsula,
convey any ides whatever to their minds. To say this is
not, after all, materially to impugn the intelligence of the
children. Let anyone try to remember bow little notion
he obtained in his own earlier dais of the aspect or con- '
figuration of a country from the study of a map—if he
obtains any now, it is from the habit he his acquired of
comparing maps with the actual features of the district j
they are intended to delineate. So far as it is dune at all,
it is purely a matter of experience. He argues from the !
known to the unknown. The study of maps should be sup-
plemented, where it is possible, by observation ; where that I
Is wholly wanting, there is nothing, in fact for the mind
to act upon. The most obvious mode, one should have
thought, of teaching the children of a village-school the
use and meaning of • map, would be to familiarise them
with the Ordnance survey of the surrounding district.
They would learn, at any rate in a general way, what
the marks and outlines on a map are intended to repre-
eent—• matter of which they are now, for the most part,
profoundly ignorant. Yet we never remember to have
seen au Ordnance map on the walls of soy one of the
many schoolrooms which we hove visited, nor to have
noticed is soy of the leeks of articles furnished at a low
rate by the National and other societies for the us
of achoolm—Praser's Magazine fortiovernber.