We have alluded to the necessity which began to be felt for the mental improvement of the adult population; still more important were the steps taken from time to time to educate the children who are the old people and the adults of the present day. The present century, among many wonderful changes which it has witnessed, has seen a complete revolution in the means of education for the masses. Many generations since, Milton, with that clear mental vision which was in him like a kind of second sight, foretold that a time would come when the bulk of the people would get a better education "in extent and comprehension far more large, and yet of time far shorter, and of attainment far more certain, than hath yet been in practice;" and although we may not have exactly reached the point prefigured by the poet-seer, some marvellous strides have been taken during the present century. A dramatist of Milton's own period makes a man of substance reply, in answer to the query, "Can you read and write then?" "As most of you gentlemen do, my bond has been taken with my mark at it."[2] At the beginning of the present century little had been done for the education of the masses. Grammar schools for the children of the middle classes, and Free schools, as they were called, for an infinitesimal fraction of the poor of our towns had been long established, and, so far as they went, with certain enough results; but, if we except the establishment of Sunday schools by Mr. Raikes of Gloucester in 1783, nothing had been done for the educational wants of the general poor. Malthus in his "Essay on Population," published twenty years after this date, says, "It is surely a great national disgrace that the education of the lower classes should be left merely to a few Sunday schools supported by subscriptions from individuals," adding at the same time, that the country "lavished immense sums on the poor which we have every reason to think have constantly tended to aggravate their misery." "In their education," he goes on to say, "and _in the circulation of those important political truths that most nearly concern them_, which are perhaps the only means in our power of really raising their condition, and of making them happier men and more peaceable subjects, we have been miserably deficient." What the state neglected, private enterprise took up; earnest men like Raikes and Pounds, the working shoemaker, not only set an admirable example in their own spheres of labour, but roused to action other men who applied to the work greater powers of mind and the benefits of greater system. Dr. Bell and Mr. Lancaster were two of these, who nearly at the same time expounded their views of a general scheme for educating the people; and who were strengthened in their opinion, as one of them tells us, of its necessity, by the clamour of many who held that the stability of our institutions was only sure so long as the people were kept in ignorance. Mr.