"Note.--These books are confined to no religious denomination, and do not prevent the Masters from teaching such Catechism as the parents of the children may adopt. "8. Every day to close with reading publicly a few verses from the New Testament, proceeding regularly through the Gospels. "9. The afternoons of Wednesday and Saturday to be allowed for play. "10. A copy of these Rules to be affixed up in some conspicuous place in the School-room, and to be read publicly to the Scholars every Monday morning by the Teacher." No doubt much good teaching was done in schools nominally governed by similar codes of instruction. The teacher is always the real force in a school and good teachers are never slaves to mechanical rules. These "rules," however, suggest a form of punishment that was largely used in those days even by good teachers and has not yet been wholly banished from the schoolroom--ridicule. Here we see it offered as an improvement upon corporal punishment. It may have had its advantages over the brutal punishments sometimes inflicted in the old days, but I think Dr. Johnson was right in saying that a reasonably severe corporal punishment was better for both teacher and pupil than either "nagging" or ridicule. No doubt the systems of Bell and Lancaster were responsible for the use recommended of ridicule in the Niagara District in 1820. One important Bill, "An Act to Provide for the Advancement of Education,"[54] became law during the session of 1839. This Bill set apart 250,000 acres of waste lands for the support of District Grammar Schools, made provision for additional schools in districts where they were needed, and provided for the erection of new buildings and assistant masters. The Bill also placed the revenue and management of these schools under the Council of King's College. In this way King's College, Upper Canada College, and the District Grammar Schools--all the machinery of higher education--were brought under central authority. [54] See Journals of Legislature of Upper Canada for 1839. Legislative Library, Toronto. See also copy of bill in D. H. E., Vol. III., pp. 170, 171. From a careful reading of a despatch[55] sent by Sir George Arthur to the Colonial Office, in connection with the Act referred to above, it seems quite clear that the land grant of 250,000 acres now set apart for District Grammar Schools was the balance of the original 549,217 acres granted by the Crown in 1798 for the endowment of Free Grammar Schools and a University. Thus, after forty years, the intentions of the Crown regarding Grammar Schools were to be realized. But only in part, because the Act of 1839 did not make the Grammar Schools free. [55] Reprinted in D. H. E. See Vol. III., pp. 173-183.