The Sun.
London, England, 1852-01-23 00:00:00

LITERATURE

GIT TII' BAIRNS T' SC11001L! or, a Work.
big Man's Notions about the Present Education
Controversy. Leeds: John Beaton, Briggate.
We are rejoiced to find that the working men are
at length taking an active part in the education con-
troversy ; it is a controversy in which themselves and
their families are more peculiarly interested than any
other members of society, and is therefore one which
they should make the object of their peculiar study,
and we cannot recommend to them a safer guide than
the author of the very clever and convincing pam-
phlet now before us. " Git th' Bairns t' Schooil " is
the point that all who really wish to see true educa-
tion progress should insist upon, and it is because
they do not really and truly desire to " Git th' Bairns
e Schooil," and yet have not the courage to openly
declare their desire to keep the people in ignorance,
that those who dread the cultivation of the reasoning
powers of the masses insist that education shall
always be accompanied with the inculcation of dog-
matic theology. Fifty years ago the predecessors of
the present opponents of secular education vtere vehe-
mently opposed to all education whatsoever. They
knew right well that the existence of their power
depended upon their keeping the people in ignorance,
that an educated and reasoning people would question
the grounds upon which they were called on to pay
implicit obedience to the behests of men with whom
they would then be on a perfect intellectual level, and
consequently the dogmatists were opposed to every-
thing like education ; they considered that reading
led to sedition and treason, writing to forgery, and that
as to the multiplication table, it was downright blas-
, pbemy. Still, however, education progressed in spite
of the opposition of the apostles of ignorance, wbo,
finding they could not prevent, determined to pervert
it, and consequently assumed the more fraudulent and
more dangerous character of false friends. Oh !
yes, they exclaim, we are friends of education ; edu-
cate the people by all means, but educate them, not as
human beings, but as sectarians; let the children be
thoroughly imbued with the odium theologicum, and
be brought up to be " maist releegiously in love with
themselves and in hatred with the rest of mankind."
To certain well-meaning persons who, instead of ex-
ercising their own reason on this important matter,
have suffered themselves to be led away by the dog-
matic assertions of those interested in misleading
them, we commend the following extract from this
admirable little pamphlet:—
" In the first place, I think that working men are en-
titled to speak their minds freely on this subject. Those
who have spoken heretofore are mostly parsons, dissent-
ing ministers, and people belonging to the wealthy
middle classes, who are themselves well educated, and
think they have nothing to do but to settle among
themselves what is the best for us, without ever consult-
ing our own opinions on the subject.
" I find the bulk of them, for instance, are of the

opinion that any school education for the working
classes, must be taught in connexion with some religious
creed, of course their own; and that if there are any
among us who choose not to accept one or other of their
creeds for our childsen, then they must go without edu-
cation altogether. The door is to be shut in their faces.
That's really the drift of it.
" Now, before I go farther, I must tell you that I'm a
Dissenter. I know most people will be ready to call me
narrowminded, a bigot, and an enemy of education,
when I tell them I'm a Dissenter ; but never mind ;
hear me out, and listen to what I've got to say for
myself.

-"
Perhaps I have no merit nor demerit in being a
Dissenter, seeing I was born one; but ask the Catholic,
or the Churchman, or the Jew, and he will tell you
the same thing: he was born such. As it is, however,
I am conscientious. I endeavour to be consistent. I
believa that the truths which I hold need only to have
free courso to triumph; and I know of no other truths
with which the religious truths I entertain need fear to
come in contact.

" I'm not afraid of giving the whole people the power of
reading, examining, and judging for themselves, whether
my truth is the right one, or somebody else's. I don't fear
the alphabet, or the child's primer, or the multiplication
table, imparted to everybody, independently of whether they
accept my creed or not.
" Some of you may call me godless for this. I don't
care. I'll speak my mini. I want to see the people get
knowledge, to make them strong, self-reliant, provident,
and thoughtful. I know that it is knowledge only that
makes the Man, and that wo are but two-legged beasts
without it.

"Don't think I undervalue religion. I teach what I
can of it to my own children. And my minister and
the Sunday-school teacher do the rest. I have been
taught, and believe in, the power of the Voluntary
Principle in religion. I should be confessing my own
disbelief in it, were I to say, that children should be
refused the A, B, C, unless they accepted my religious
creed. Everything in its right place. I would not drag in
niy particular notions on religion into the day-school, any
more than I would into the benefit club, or the workshop."
Hid observations on the absurdity of those who con-
tend that it is the duty of the different religious bodies
to educate are deserving of all consideration, and we
cannot sufficiently admire the convincing but impitoy-
ab le logic with which he carries out the arguments of
these persons to their legitimate conclusions :
" Yuu say, perhaps, 'Let the religious bodies educate
the people: they are the parties to do it.' Well, but
they don't do it. That's one answer. Another is, that
those who try, do it badly to the extent that they do
educate. But any third answer is, that the religious
bedies, as such, have no more business to undertake the
work of secularly educating the people, than they have
to learn young men their trades, or young women cook-
ing and housewifery.
Besides, I don't think it's the business of any
church to teach secular knowledge. If ministers of re-
ligion were to do the work of their own province, they
would find a large enough sphere for all their labours
and energies. But I'm afraid they are now thinking
less of their own business than of the business which is
none of theirs. I don't find anything either in the Bible
or in the New Testament which requires them to teach
my children to read and write, or to interfere with that
in any way.
" Can't we learn the multiplication table without the
Assembly's catechism, or chemistry, if we wish it, with-
out the Thirty-nine Articles? Why should religious
men of any sect say, Your children shall not be taught
unless they take our creed with our A, B, C?'
" What have Christian men, as members of churches
or chapels, to do with reading, writing, and account-
keeping, any more than they have to do with shoemak-
ing, cooking, or street-paving? Carry out your views,
and you would erect a pulpit and place a chaplain iu
every workshop, mill, and manufactory; and you would
have baths and wash-houses in connexion with your
churches and chapels; only this would be rather too
absurd. Still it would be only carrying out your own
principles."
His statistics prove to demonstration the utter failure

of all attempts to educate the people upon the volun-
tary and sectarian system, and the pamphlet is one of
the most convincing arguments in favour of the
establishment of a general state system of purely
secular education that has, yet appeared. We cor-
dially recommend it to all who take an interest in
real educational progress, and more especially to the
working classes, and recommend them as their watch-
word " Git th' Bairns t' Schooil."

THE PORTRAIT GALLERY. Part I. Orr
and Company.
Twenty-four monthly instalments will place sub-
scribers in possession of a very beautiful re-issue of
this well-known and valuable publication. As pre-
senting to us examples of the " human face divine,"
eeleeted from the portraits of most of the illustrious
personages who have ever existed, the work has al-
ways appeared to us eminently entitled to admiration.
It commences, appropriately enough, with the effigies
of the great men of Italy, who, in the thirteenth cen-
tury, began the great labour of enlightening the
human family, by reviving literature through the
medium of the intercourse between Rome and Byzan-
tium—thereby obtaining for themselves the glory of
being the pioneers of modern civilization. There, for
example, is the thin, wrinkled, sardonic visage of
Dante Alighieri, the first of the poetic cele-
brants of Christianity. There too is the plump,
cowl surrounded, womanish face of Petrarch, im-
mortal as the lover of Laura, and famous as the poet
laureate of Christendom. There again are the dark,
sensuous, and almost uncleanly-looking features of
Boccaccio—bearing to our thinking somewhat of a
resemblance in general aspect to Leigh Ilubt as the
latter is represented to have been about the period of
middle life. The rigorous but melancholy visage of
Lorenzo the Magnificent completes the series of
Italian worthies here given in the initial number of
the Portrait Gallery. The hoary and bearded
Wiclif contrasts in the same number the boldly
chiselled and generous countenance of the great
Cardinal Ximenes. While the list of specimens
lying before us in part one is completed by
that charming plate which pourtrays the bearded
head, gentle, wise, and, to us, most beautiful,
of old Geoffrey Chaucer—a bead such an artist
would love to see graven upon the surface of an an-
tique cameo. Such are the seven portraits comprised
i onpthoilmasoanpthhers ,
n the opening instalments of the present most
byinte-
resting
othersstatesmen, a ndoi
divines,
e s the
painters,
distinguished
Poets, month
re-issue, portraits which will be followed from
m
archi-
tects, engineers, lawyers, and physicians of Christen-
dom---the engravings being
theac beautycompanied with appro-
priate biographies. From themselves, as well as from the
celebrity
its
hr of
ityeltrheeedyplaac-
quired by this publication in
entirety, we look to
a s
the fact of the present re-issuethe most effectual
means of extending its reputation.
THE D

ALTONS. Au. XXI. By Charles Lever.
Thanks to his experience as a novelist, Mr. Lever
contrives to throw an interest over each successive chap
ter of this the latest of his periodicals. The etchings
by Phiz to the number of The Daltons for January
are, as usuril, excellent—the first humorous, the second
s the latter representing Norwood's " exit,"
and the Alfred's selection of a wedding gar-
mtnctedrnt t both of them incidents pointinc clearly enough
to the conclusion of the narrative. Up to the present
crisis in the plot, the ",three roads of life " have proved
eminently entertaining, if they have failed to equal the
merits of the memorable !!ilarry ,Lorrequer.'.