The Sun.
London, England, 1863-08-06 00:00:00

SCIENCE AND ART DEPARTMENT.

The report of the Science and Art Department
for the past year statee that 2,543 persons have
been under instruction in science .classes taught by
certificated masters, and, besides, about 870 stu-
dents at Glasgow and Manchester, taught by un-
certificated masters, have been examined by the de-
partment. At the examination, held at 55 local
centres, 1,239 persons were examined, 1,943 papers
were worked, and 1,480 passed. The students of
seven Irish schools, numbering only 374, were
successful in obtaining 149 prizes and 12 medals
out of a total of 689 prizes and 35 medals.
There are now 127 certificated science teach-
ers, all educated without any expenditure
of public money by the department, except five
or six who were trained before the minute was
passed. A minute has been issued assimilating the
aid granted to navigation classes to that afforded to
general science classes, with due regard to the pecu-
liar nature of navigation schools, and encouraging
a sounder system of instruction. As respects art,
the department consider that the time has arrived
when the local schools have become sufficiently ad-
vanced in their studies to enable them to train
students for masterships up to a certain grade of
competency, and a minute has, therefore, been
passed by which no further payments in London
will be made to assist students to take the first cer-
tificate for a mastership. On the other hand, it is
proposed to revert to the system of scholarships in
the central school, which had been somewhat pre-
, maturely established in the schools of design. These
scholarships will be open to competition to the ad-
vanced students of all local schools, and the holders
of them will have the opportunity of making prac-
tical use of the collections of the Art Museum. In
1862 8,896 children of poor schools in London were
taught through the agency of the central school.
The total number of schools of art now open in the
United Kingdom ie 9U. In the central schools
15,908 persons received instruction in the year, in
the public schools 71,423. 4,672 payments were
made to schools of art in respect of results of exami-
nations. Payments on results have for the last ten
years formed part of the system by which art mas-
ters have been remunerated, and the working of the
system has been such as to justify its complete
adoption; minutes have accordingly been prepared
extending the application of this principle to all the
instruction given in or through the means of art
schools. These minutes will also tend to restrict
the aid of the State to those classes that are enable
to provide such education for themselves. In the last
year 87,389 persons were taught drawing through
the agency of the department, the fees paid by them
amounting to £18,017. Of this sum £5,038 was paid
by evening students, who are almost wholly arti-
sans paying not more than 6d. a week for three
lessons. Several foreign Governments, from a sense
of the great influence of the science and art depart-
ment on the industrial progress of this country;
have made application for detailed information o
of that the
the working of the department—a pro
enlightened views of the Prince Consort in
a
een found-
ing the South Kensington Museum h p-
ave b
ingdoto, but by other
preciated, not only in this k
nations.

FATAL GUN ACCIDENT NEAR NOTTINGIUM.—At
the Shirehall, Nottingham, on Wednesday, the 6th
inst., a young man about 20 years of age, named Bennett
Carnal!, was brought before Lord Belper and the sitting
magistrates, charged with shooting a child named Elizabeth
Oldham, three years old. It
apphalf-past six o'clock the
eared from the evidence
that on the previous evening
at
her ilus
n
tinned
theh deceased
was shooting birds with an air gun from the win_
dow of his mother's house at Beeston (four miles from
Nottingham), and the deceased was playing with other
children behind a hedge about 20 yards from him. lie eo
ot i La g foro
someta the h
time,ead7a d bespatteredhnenabullet
all around. An alarm was made, and the
from his
brains
struckiued s
police were com-
municated with, the prisoner being shortly
ap-
prehended by Sergeant Dolby and conveyed afterwards
The poor child lingered a fewto Nottingham.
minutes
The and thenI
when. the ed.
turday, expir
case was remanded until Saof
the coroner's inquest will be known: remit

What was it Carlyle once wrote of some reptile
antagonist ? " Squelch it, by heavens, squelch it r
Precisely in this summary fashion has the pitiless
Saturday Review acted by Mr. M'Ghee's transla-
tion of M. Cretineau•Joly's History of the Jesuits.
Saith the critic, coming down upon the Exeter
Hallite with a pancake-making weight of ridicule
in every sentence :
Whether piqued at being turned into a waste-paper
basket, or desirous to furbish up his old pamphlets afr3sh,
Mr. M'Ghee has thought proper to add to the injury he
has done M. Cretineau-Jolt' by his queer translation, by
swamping him, fore and aft, with 23 pages of preface and
136 of notes, besides peppering the test all along with
amenities such as the following :—" The notes (to the Irish
Bible) teem with intolerance and treason ;" "the silent
stealthy movements of that body are like the noiseless tread
of the tiger as he steals to spring on his prey : "here it is
demonstrated that the whole Repeal movement in Ireland
was the work of the General of the Jesuits,and that O'Con-
nell, the bishops, and the priests were their tools" (the un-
fortunate sentence that " demonstrates" this being the
rather harmless assertion that the separation of the Jesuits
in Ireland from those in England " promised to produce
fruitful results") ; " whenever they volunteer the profes-
sion of any apparent good, is merely a cloak to cover the
evil exactly opposite ;" " there are certain historians who
ought proverbially to have good memories," and the like
ad nauseam. What imaginable enemy he hopes to con-
quer, or what friend to warn, by the flora literarum, Mr.
M'Ghee must be the best judge. Our own feeling is simply
that, if the Jesuits did all the good that is reported of them
in the text, and if nothing more reliable can be said
against them than is stated in this writer's notes, the work
is to well calculated to serve their cause—if only there were
any chance of its being read—that we could imagine the
book written by one of the order.
Into his " notes and commentaries" we simply decline to
enter. They remind us of nothing so much as a school
playground after a sth of November, with its spent squibs,
disembodied crackers, blackened cases of extinct Roman
candles, and an unpleasant smell of burnt powder all around.
In 136 pages we at least expected same contradiction of M.
Cretineau-Joly's facts, or some correction of his inferences.
Nothing of the sort is to be found. Long quotations from
Nicolini, a Mr. Grinfield, Mr. Steinmetz, and weary twaddle
of his own composition, fill up the dreary pages ; and the
chief effort of his logic is expended in showing that for the
whisky-shops within convenient distance of the Roman
Catholic chapels, and for the temporary success of Father
Matthew's crusade against whisky drinking, the Jesuits
are alike responsible.
And here we take leave of Mr. M'Ghee in his own open-
ing words :—" We cannot present this translation to the
public without anticipating, with not unnatural sympathy,
the sentiments of indignation which must pervade the breast
of every honest Englishman when he shall have arrived at
its conclusion." A more entirely trashy book it has never
been our lot to review; but we must qualify the statement
by adding that we never had the misfortune to read any
other of this gentleman's productions.