The Sun.
London, England, 1864-09-02 00:00:00

of an important question, as sacred as it is practical
and useful—popular education, with its contingent
questions of professional teaching and freedom of
teaching. On these points we may easily agree
with the adversaries of the Church. There are
two secondary points of the education question,
which are its gratuitous and obligatory chae
rectors, which we have to contest. The
Church claims specially the right of found-
ing schools, and that in virtue of the commission
she received from her Divine founder. "Go and
teach," he said to her, and she has ever since gone
on, never stopping as long as schools had to be
founded. The first Councils ordered priests to be
schoolmasters, There still exists a pastoral of
Theodule, Bishop of Orleans in the ninth century,
in which he bids his priests to attend personally to
the schooling of children. What, then, can be
the worth of the pretensions of the libercitres—
not liberals, I say, for, like Felix de Merode,
1 cannot call our adversaries liberals any more
than a mardtre (stepmother) can be called
a mother. The name of liberals in such
a case is not French. Fenelon and Bossuet are my
true liberals. France and Belgium are united in
language, as they are sisters in Christ. I wish that,
being what you are, our souls remain ever united
in devotion to Christ and His Vicar, the Holy
Father. But now let us trace up the career of the
Church in her efforts in behalf of popular education.
We can go back to the documents of every century
—say the Bth, 7th, or 6th even. In 589 the Coun•
cils of Narbonne, and later, those of Lateran, order
that priests should go and instruct the children in
their districts, and that not only in the villages
(per vicos), but even in the hamlets or detached
farms (per villas). At the very time when Voltaire
speke of certain classes as ignorant blackguards
(grueux z:gnorants), who were not to be taught
(pion n'enseigne pas), a priest of the diocese
of Rheims, the Venerable De la Salle, was founding
a religious order of schoolmasters in France, and
the Pope of that time, the great Benedict XIV,,
blessed and confirmed this order, and wrote—
" Ignorance is the origin of all evil, especially among
the industrious classes." In this nineteenth century
two brothers of the name of Lamenais made them-
selves celebrated. The one, on whose unhappy end
I will not dwell, made a great noise but left no
disciple ; the other established schools in Senegal,
in the isle of Bourbon, in the West Indies, for the
education of the children of the Negro slaves. And
now the zeal of our missionaries leads them every-
where to establish at the7same time churches and
schools, The letters of Saint Francis Xavier testify
to this constant pursuit of founding both churches
and schools lat the same time. And the
society which now has enlisted in its ranks,
the children of Belgium, as well as those of France
and other Catholic countries, is that of the holy
childhood, which keeps up schools for Chinese
foundlings. And, then, we are told that there is a
prejudice among religious men against popular in-
struction. We deem some certainly dangerous; but,
then, only when it is given by bad teachers, and I
repeat, with the eloquent orator you heard last year,
M. Cochin, " the worst teacher of all is ignorance."
I bless the progress of inventions, and especially
that which allows me to come and see you here, and
to return to Orleans, without loss of time and detri-
ment to my charge, but I feel that the more these
material inventions are developed and multiplied
the, more need there is of a moral restriction.
The ~,arch of competition gives us better workmen,
beater cultivators, and improves their material con•
dition. Let it march and march onwards, but let
it march in the light of the Gospel. Otherwise all
instructed workmen will be discontented, and all
ignorant workmen will become paupers. Let not
those who pretend to instruct the people take them
from the guidance of God, and represent him as a
mere sentiment, something useful, perhaps, but not
necessary, Not necessary ! Why our God made
heaven and earth. It is our God who now multi-
piies at this very moment teaching orders in France,
till I can reckon more than 40 containing 150,000
members. And yet they are not sufficient. And
yet we are told that religions teaching is not
wanted. To those who tell us so, we may ash,
where were sour schools i❑ France when we
founded ours ? Have you any in Thibet ? we
have ! And then we are taunted with opposing
and neglecting the education of females. Instruct
them, we do. Instruct them you, also, as much as
you like. But, do not make mothers who cannot
take care of their children. Napoleon I. said to
the mistress of his schools, " Give me mothers
who can bring up their children 1" De Maistre said
that Christian mothers alone could teach their
children to fear God, and not to fear death. In
Belgium you have an admirable law on primary
schools, which is due to M. Dechamps', ministry
in 1862. In France we have been struggling for
something like it for the last twentyfive years. I
struggle myself for it as much as I can, I try not to
insult any adversary, and to be always in the right,
but I mu3t say 1 enjoy particularly, leaving nothing
to say to my opponents. Not long since an im-
portant personage insisted upon it to me that we did
nothing for girls' schools. I had no answer ready
for him at the time; but I made inquiries, and
found that out of the 21,000 girls' schools existing
in France, 14,000 have been founded, and are di•
rected by the Catholic clergy. Oa the other hand,
it cannot be denied that the men in power are very
busy in that respect, and are applying the public
money in founding normal wheels, &c. The Gene-
ral Council of a department in France has ever
proposed a premium for the schoolmasters who
should marry schoolmistresses ! I do not know,
however, whether they always recollect that
women have to be brought up from the
interior life of a family; that their chief
characteristics should always be self-devotion and
modesty. Women of talent are all very well ; but
among the popular classes only ask their husbands
what they think of them. As for me, I reverence
good sahoolmistresses, but my ideal of a girls'.sohool
is that in which the image of the blessed Virgin is
set before the eyes of the pupils, whose school-
mistress goes to communion."
I have given you thus far the very words of the
illustrious orator as far as I could note them. I
feel it impossible to abridge the rest of his dis-
coarse. It seems to me a profanity to attempt
it. I find that I am reaching the limits
of my present communication, and prefer to
end here the specimen I can give you of the
matchless and, above all, intrinsic eloquence which
riveted us for two hours and a half to the lips of
the Right Rev. Academician. An involuntary re•
mark was in everyone's mouth who had attended at
the previous meeting, and it was for the highest
praise that could be bestowed—" Montalembert
himself has been distanced." None will acknow-
ledge it so readily as that truly Christian great
man, and there seems no invidiousness whatever in
the comparison.

On leaving the hall I was quite astonished
to find among the crowd an American gentleman,
from California, and his wife, who had both
come up that very day from Antwerp to hear
Mgr. Dupanloup, paying the ticket for the whole
of the Congress meetings, to hear that oue great
speech ; and who, although they had but an imper-
fect knowledge of French, were overjoyed at having
been present at such an event. In the evening we
had, at half-past seven, a most interesting lecture on
" Spiritism, Table-turning, and other Spirit Mani-
festations of the Present Time," by the Chevalier
Deglageux Desmousseaus.

DZATII OF SIR JOHN RATCLIFF.—BIRMINGHAM,
Thursday Evening.—Sir John Itatol;ff died at his resi-
dence, Wyddrington, at noon to-day, after a few weeks'
illness, the immediate cause of death having been diabetes.
The deceased was Mayor of this town three times consecu-
tively, and on the occasion of the Queen's visit to open
Aston Psrk he received the honour of knighthood. Ho
was for many years engaged in trade in the town, and had
realised a large fortune.

BRANDING IN THE ARMY,—We understand, Says
the Medical Times and Gazette, upon good authority, that
his Royal Highness the Field-Marshal Commanding-in-
Chief has seen fit to issue a circular from the Horse Guards,
by which the present very objectionable plan of branding
soldiers is removed. When the necessity for marking a
soldier occurs, the operation is to be performed by the
drum or trumpet-major at the orderly room, in the presence
of she adjutant, and under the immediate supervision of a
regimental or staff medical officer. This is es it should be,
and we congratulate the profession that a medical officer
no longer occupies a derogatory and false position, and the
Duke of Cambridge that ho has bad the good sense to con-
cede an alt.eratiou Iyhiett was very urgently required,