slightly wounded, and returned at once to his men.

He sent the

Scotch spy to the king to explain to him how all had happened, so as to show his own innocence in the matter. But the king followed at his heels and slew many of his men. Amleth was in consequence in great danger the following day, and was obliged to raise up his men's dead bodies with sticks and stones and tie them on to their horses, that his army might look stronger than it was in reality. The dead men ranged in battle order were nearly as many as the live ones. This was a wonderful warfare, but Amleth succeeded notwithstanding. The English were seized with terror and were overcome by the dead, whom, when alive, they had themselves defeated. The king fled and was slain by the Danes, who followed hard upon him. After this victory, Amleth won much booty in England, and then left with his two consorts for Denmark.

In the meantime King Rörick had died, and was succeeded by Viglet, his son. He tormented Amleth's mother, saying that her son had by false pretences assumed the government of Jutland, which to bestow belonged only to Denmark's king, residing at the castle of Leyre, the capital. Amleth kept his counsel, and, sending presents taken out of the English booty, he showed King Viglet all due honour and service, till he found an opportunity to revenge himself. He then sent him an open challenge and defeated him. In this same war, he also defeated Fialler, the commander in Sconen, who fled to a place called Undensacre,' but which place nowadays is quite unknown.

Viglet collected his forces anew from Seeland and Sconen, and challenged Amleth to fight. Amleth foresaw his own ultimate defeat, but preferred to die with honour rather than to live with shame. He was only anxious about Hermentrude's fate, and desirous to secure for her a good husband before he separated from her. But Hermentrude said she would follow her lord and master in the war, and that she was not a true woman who feared to die with her husband. This promise Hermentrude did not keep. Amleth having been slain in Jutland by Viglet, she willingly betrothed herself to him.

Such was Amleth's end. Had he been as fortunate as he was clever and brave, he would have come up to Hercules' renown, and gained a name amongst the greatest warriors. The field in Jutland where he was buried is still called after him: Amleth's Heath.

FALBE.

IS THE EDUCATION ACT OF 1870

A JUST LAW?

To propose the repeal of the Education Act of 1870 would be like proposing the repeal of the Gregorian Calendar. We cannot go back twelve days behind the rest of the world.

The Act of 1870 was necessary. The population had outgrown all existing means of education. The children uneducated counted by hundreds of thousands, perhaps by millions. The standard of education was on a low level. England was behind both Germany and France in the diffusion of intellectual culture, at least among the lower and middle classes of the people.

The principles embodied in the Act of 1870 cannot be rescinded; they ought rather to be carried out to their full and complete application.

The principles and intentions may be stated as follows:

1. That education, whether by voluntary schools or by rate schools, shall be universal, and co-extensive with the needs of the whole population.

2. That an education rate shall be levied in all places where the existing schools are not sufficient for the population in number or in efficiency, and that such rate shall be administered by a board elected by the ratepayers.

3. That the standard of education shall be raised to meet the needs and gradations of the people.

4. That all schools receiving aid, whether by Government grant or by rate, shall be brought under the provisions of the statute law. 5. That all such schools shall be under inspection of Government, and bound by all minutes and codes of the Committee of Privy Council as sanctioned by Parliament.

6. Lastly, it has been since that date enacted that education shall, under certain conditions and for certain classes, be compulsory.

Now, these principles have been so long admitted, and have worked themselves so deeply into public opinion and daily practice, that no scheme or proposition at variance with them would be listened to.

The condition thus made for us being irreversible, our duty is to work upon it and to work onward from it for the future.

Assuming then that the principles of the Act of 1870 are good and their results beneficial, the promoters of that Act cannot but desire that it should be carried out to its fullest extent. If this be so, then, in the first place, let the education rate be levied upon the whole population.

Putting away all ecclesiastical questions, it cannot be denied that the State is justified in providing for the education of its people. It has a right to protect itself from the dangers arising from ignorance and vice, which breed crime and turbulence. It has a duty also to protect children from the neglect and sin of parents, and to guard their rights to receive an education which shall fit them for human society and for civil life.

If the civil power has these rights and duties towards the people, it has the corresponding rights and powers to levy upon the people such taxes or rates as are necessary for the due and full discharge of such duties.

But correlative to these rights of the civil power are also the rights of the people. If the Government may tax the whole people for education, the whole people have a right to share in the beneficial use of such taxation. An education rate raised from the whole people ought to be returned to the whole people in a form or in forms of education of which all may partake. If any one form of education can be found in which all the people are content to share, let it be adopted; if no one such form be possible, let there be as many varieties of form as can with reason be admitted. No one form of religious education would satisfy Catholics, Anglicans, Nonconformists, and unbelievers. No form whatsoever of merely secular instruction will satisfy the great majority who believe that education without religion is impossible. Therefore, if no one form can be found to satisfy all, many and various forms of education ought to be equally admitted, and equally allowed to stand on the same ground before the law. This does not mean that every individual or every caprice may claim a share in the education rate; but that every association or body of men having public and distinct existence, already recognised by law, should be recognised also as a unit for the purposes of education, and, being so recognised, therefore admitted to a participation in the education rate; reserving always to the Government its full inspection, and to the ratepayers their due control and audit of accounts. But of this in detail hereafter.

Having thus cleared the ground, and made it impossible that any one should say with truth that they who oppose the way in which the Act of 1870 has been hitherto carried out oppose the Act itself, or that they are friends of darkness, or that they would hinder the education of the people, or that they ask for public money to spread

their own religious belief, we may go on to see in what the present way of carrying out the Act is open to the censure of inequality and injustice.

1. First of all, the exclusive enjoyment and control of the edumation rate is given to one only class of schools, which represent one and only one form of opinion, and that form which is repugnant to the majority of the people of the United Kingdom-namely, that such schools should be only secular, to the exclusion of religion. The exclusion of religion excludes the vast majority of the people from those schools; and such schools, being exclusive, are truly and emphatically sectarian. And here, lest I should seem not to know, or, knowing, to omit to say, that the Bible is read now in the majority of Board Schools, I cite the fact to prove that religion is not taught in them. All doctrinal formularies and catechisms are expressly excluded by the Act of 1870. But religion without doctrine is like mathematics without axioms, or triangles without base or sides. I heartily rejoice that the life, and words, and works, and death of the Divine Saviour of the world should be read by children. But that is not the teaching of religion, unless the true meaning and the due intrinsic worth of all these things be taught. But this would perforce be doctrinal Christianity, prohibited by law. There can be no mathematics without precise intellectual conceptions and adequate verbal expression. The undergraduate who went into the schools with a general notion of his Euclid was plucked.

2. But, secondly, the school rate presses unequally on the rich and on the poor. On the poor it is a sensible burden, on the rich it is absolutely insensible. For so great a sensible burden the poor ought to receive a sensible benefit.

3. Thirdly, the Board Schools were avowedly intended to receive the children of the poor. But the character of the Board Schools has been gradually so raised that the poor children are thrown upon the voluntary schools; and the Board Schools are largely frequented by the children of the middle class. The poor, therefore, so far, are paying for schools in which their own children are not taught, and the tradesman's children are educated on the rate paid also by the poor. The London School Board has now proposed to found schools of a higher standard. I heartily go with the desire to provide such schools, but it is removing them still further from the poor and still further into the middle class.

4. Fourthly, the amount of money spent by the School Boards out of the rate, and by loans upon the rate, amounts in ten years to about 13,000,000l. There has been no doubt profuse and needless expenditure, for gold may be bought too dear, and money may be wasted even in education, but nevertheless education is, if not the highest, at least inseparable from the highest interests and duties of a commonwealth. Education is vital to the commonweal. No amount of money really

needed for the education of the millions that cannot pay for their own education ought to be thought too much, if only it be expended with due care and prudence, and if all who pay share equally in the benefit. But this is not so at the present time. It is of this inequality that we complain, and this inequality is a grave injustice.

5. Finally, the injustice will be seen to be still graver and more glaring, if we compare the manner in which voluntary schools and Board Schools have been dealt with since the Act of 1870 became the law of the land.

There are at this time two sources from which public money flows into the work of education. The first is the Consolidated Fund out of which since the year 1838 the Committee of Privy Council has made grants to voluntary schools. The second is the school rate created by the Act of 1870.

Now, in the grants from the Consolidated Fund both voluntary schools and Board Schools share equally. The two classes of schools can earn according to the same minutes and codes fixed by the Committee of Privy Council. Thus far the voluntary schools and the Board Schools are on equal terms; so far they stand on the same level before the law. But here ends equality, and here an inequality, which nothing can justify, begins. The voluntary schools are absolutely and altogether excluded from the school rate. The founders and managers of such schools must buy sites, erect buildings, pay teachers, bear all costs of management out of their own selfdenial.

The Board Schools have exclusive enjoyment and control of the school rate. With the public money they buy sites, erect buildings, pay teachers, and all costs of management, without contributing a six pence by free gift or self-denial. On what principle can this be justified?

The voluntary self-denial of those who founded and maintained schools before 1870 had expended millions of money of which there is no accurate record. They were, till 1870, the sole educators of the people. Parliament was lagging behind. It voted a paltry 600,000l. a year for education. Every year 1,200,000l. at least was contributed by voluntary self-denial. The voluntary schools in 1870 were about 8,000 in number, and were educating 1,700,000 children. Nevertheless, there were perhaps a million of children, as we are told, without education. Who was to blame? First, every successive Government and Parliament which had neglected this great obligation and overlooked this crying need. Who next was to blame? All those who, by apathy and want of generous self-denial, had never taxed themselves, or opened heart or hand, for the education of the people. They, colle mani alla cintola, looked on while others laboured. Who alone were not to blame? The founders and managers of voluntary schools, who in those dreary and starving days.