afford to this subject of Iceland; not so much for its own. special objects, though from the extracts we have quoted from Captain Forbes, it is evident that these are neither few nor trivial, but for the much larger theme of which it forms but a part, and which it at once suggests. How deep an interest even in a purely geographical sense attaches to the stories of the early voyages of the Norsemen, and what a large amount of the actual history of ancient commerce and navigation is shut up in the Sagas relating to Vinland and Greenland, we have pointed out in a previous portion of this paper. As to our particular subject, viz., Captain Forbes' book on Iceland, we have also expressed our judgment on this point at the beginning of the article. Our readers may judge from the extracts we have cited, and the general account of it, which we have laid before them, whether that judgment has been partial or otherwise. That this work has contributed its share-great or small, who can tell?-to spread abroad the name of Iceland, and to get up a feeling of curiosity and enquiry about Icelandic affairs amongst a very large circle of readers, is a matter of public notoriety. Whether it has had anything to do with originating the spirited speculation that has undertaken to open a regular monthly line of communication during the spring, summer, and autumn months between England and Iceland, with a special view to the accommodation of tourists, we cannot say. But such a line is actually advertised, and we may soon expect to hear, not that the slopes of the Alps have waned in popularity; but that the volcanoes, geysers, and glaciers of Iceland have become better known and more frequented.

D

ART. II.-Report of the Commissioners appointed to inquire into the State of Popular Education in England, Vol. 1.-Presented to both Houses of Parliament by command of Her Majesty. London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1861.

NO country in the world possesses the raw material of legislation in any degree to compare with our own. The only question that may perhaps he raised is, whether we have not almost too much of it. We have just learned that the weight of the forms issued by the Registrar General to the officials engaged in taking the census, amounted to forty-five tons. We should like to learn the weight of the Parliamentary Papers, Returns, and Blue Books, that each session fill the shelves of members of parliament. Now that statistics have become so exact a science, can no one calculate for us the number of all these many pages that our legislators have read, and the average number read by each of them? We, too, for whom all this prospective legislation is intended, can go to the queen's printers and buy as many Blue Books as we can carry away, with tables of figures enough to last us all the days of our life, and if we should happen to think that seven hundred beautifully printed pages of facts and figures are very cheap at four shillings, the idea might possibly cross our minds that we have something to do with the payment of the printer's bill.

However, no one would be likely to begrudge the cost of the noble Report before us with its five supplemental volumes; and every one will feel that the Royal Commissioners, who have bestowed such time and labour gratuitously on this important subject, have deserved well of their country. For ourselves we have but one regret, and that is, that if the government did not appoint a Catholic Commissioner, the Commission itself did not select one as an assistant Commissioner. The consequence is that we have no information, save some imperfect statistics, on Catholic education. "Information was afforded to the assistant Commissioners upon all the subjects of their inquiry, by almost every one to whom they applied for that purpose, though they had no compulsory powers. The only exception of importance was in the case of the Roman Catholic schools, admission to which was uniformly re

fused." (p. 10.) It would have been well, if, instead of
referring in this place to the correspondence with the Hon.
C. Langdale, the Report had stated the grounds on which
Catholics refused their co-operation. It would be far
better for us not to have any share in the parliamentary
grant for education, than to receive the share of it to which
we are justly entitled, on the condition of our schools being
rendered subject to Protestant inspection. The refusal on
the part of the Duke of Newcastle, the chairman, to
appoint a Catholic assistant Commissioner to report upon
our schools was the harder because the Nonconformists were
represented on the Commission itself by Mr. Miall; and
the assistant Commissioners consisted of two beneficed
clergymen of the Church of England, five lay-members of
the same denomination, two Protestant Dissenters, and
one member of the Established Church of Scotland.
(p. 34.)

But an accurate statement of the position held by Catholic schools among the educational institutions of the country, useful as it would have been, would not have been sufficient. We cannot but feel that the Report of the Commission sins against us on the one hand by omission, and on the other by the want of adequate provision in all its recommendations for religious liberty, an evil that always in practice affects us more seriously than any others. Both these defects the presence of a Catholic at the Board of the Commission would have prevented. If such a one had been there he would have been able to have elicited from the witnesses some information as to the manner in which the religion of Catholic pauper children is disregarded in their education, especially in the metropolis; and thus the provisions for liberty of conscience to which, with respect to schools for the independent poor, the Report freely alludes, would not have been entirely ignored in that portion of the Report which treats of the education of the children in workhouse-schools.

The remark made by the Commissioners with respect to certain parishes where the only school existing is a Church of England one, should have been applied with treble force to workhouse-schools, which are not partially, but entirely supported by taxation, and in which the children are universally educated as Protestants, and in the majority of cases have no religious teacher but the chaplain of the workhouse. They say, "It sometimes happens that in

places too small to allow of the establishment of two schools, the only one to which the children of the poor in those places can resort, is placed by the managers under regulations which render imperative the teaching of the Church Catechism to all the scholars, and the attendance of all at Church. In such cases it may result that persons of other denominations are precluded, unless at the sacrifice of their conscientious convictions, from availing themselves of educational advantages for their children, furnished in part by public funds to which, as tax-payers, they contribute. This is manifestly unjust."-p. 344.

So, again, a Catholic would have protested that the conscience clause" in the Bill proposed by the Commissioners for the compulsory education of outdoor pauper children, was entirely inadequate. In a former article* we described to our readers the Act of Parliament which the Education Commissioners propose to amend. We then availed ourselves of a Return, printed by the House of Commons, later in date by three years than that upon which the Commission founds its arguments. From both Returns, however, we come to the conclusion that the Act has been a failure, and requires amendment. As it at present stands, the Act provides that the Guardians " if they deem proper," pay for the education of the child of any poor person in receipt of outdoor relief, "in any school to be approved of by the Guardians," and the Poor Law Board may issue their orders as "to the mode, time, and place, in or at which such relief shall be given, or such education received," And the Poor Law Board at once warned the Guardians that they were not to use this authority as a means of interference with the dictates of the religious tenets of the poor person to whom this relief is to be applied, or of giving any undue preference to any particular school over others.'

66

may,

The Commissioners, who had previously described "Boards of Guardians" as "independent authorities not easily controlled or persuaded," who, "except in the larger towns, care little for education and much for expense, (p. 377), propose that this outdoor relief for educational purposes shall be compulsory. The school they describe as any school to be approved by the Poor Law Board,

66

Dublin Review, No. XCVI. p. 293.

for such time and under such conditions as the Poor Law
Board shall see fit." Surely the Commission do not mean
that the Poor Law Board are to settle in every individual
case the school to which the child is to be sent. If not,
they probably mean that the Guardians may send the child
to any school certified by the Poor Law Board, unless the
latter authority should interfere. No doubt the Poor Law
Board, if asked to do so, would send a Catholic child to a
Catholic school, but we have already had quite sufficient
experience of the results of constant appeals from Boards
of Guardians to the central authority when the Acts of
Parliament are defective or obscure. It is absolutely ne-
cessary that it should be compulsory upon the Guardians
to send children to schools in which the religion is taught
which their parents profess, unless the parents expressly
name some other school. Thus the very objectionable
'conscience clause" proposed by the Commissioners be-
comes unnecessary. It runs as follows:-

"Provided always, that no child admitted to any school under the provisions of this Act shall be required to learn therein or elsewhere any distinctive religious creed, catechism, or formulary, or to attend any particular Sunday school or place of religious worship to which the parents or surviving parent, or the person having the care of such child shall in writing signed by such parents, parent, or person, and attested by one witness and addressed to the trustees, managers, or proprietors thereof, object."-p. 383.

Attendance at the Sunday school is the point on which the Dissenters lay the greatest stress. More than seventysix per cent. of all the children receiving education are on week days in Church of England schools, but less than forty-six per cent. are Church of England Sunday scholars. On the other hand, the Wesleyans have less than four per cent. in their week day schools, but they have nineteen per cent. on Sundays. The Congregationalists only two per cent. on week days, but eleven per cent. on Sundays. And the Baptists, and four sects of Methodists, who have together but little more than one per cent. of the children on week days, muster in their Sunday schools the large proportion of twenty-two per cent. A regulation, ensuring leave to attend their own Sunday school, would apparently be all that these Dissenters would require to secure to them liberty of conscience, for it is clear from these statistics,that they do not care what manner of Protestant school educates their children on week days, provided that the Sunday