For let none of my readers think me mad enough or wild enough to hope that any effort, or repentance, or change of conduct, could now save the country from the consequences of her follies, or the Church from the punishment of her crimes. This St. George’s Company of ours is mere raft-making amidst irrevocable wreck—the best we can do, to be done bravely and cheerfully, come of it what may. Let me keep, therefore, to-day wholly to definite matters, and to little ones. What the education we now give our children leads to, my correspondent’s letter shows. What education they should have, instead, I may suggest perhaps in some particulars. What should be done, for instance, in the way of gift-giving, or instruction-giving, for our little Agnes of the hill-side? Would the St. George’s Company, if she were their tenant, only leave her alone,—teach her nothing? Not so; very much otherwise than so. This is some part of what should be done for her, were she indeed under St. George’s rule. Instead of the “something new,” which our learned Master of Arts edits for her in carolling, she should learn, by heart, words which her fathers had known, many and many a year ago. As, for instance, these two little carols of grace before meat:— What God gives, and what we take, ’Tis a gift for Christ His sake; Be the meale of Beanes and Pease, God be thanked for those and these. Have we flesh, or have we fish, All are Fragments from His dish: He His Church save; and the King; And our Peace here, like a Spring, Make it ever flourishing. Here, a little child, I stand Heaving up my either hand; Cold as Paddocks though they be, Here I lift them up to Thee. For a Benizon to fall, On our meat, and on us all. These verses, or such as these, Agnes should be able to say, and sing; and if on any state occasion it were desired of her to say grace, should be so mannered as to say obediently, without either vanity or shame. Also, she should know other rhymes for her own contentment such as she liked best, out of narrow store offered to, her, if she chose to learn to read. Reading by no means being enforced upon her—still less, writing; nothing enforced on her but household help to her mother; instant obedience to her father’s or mother’s word; order and cleanliness in her own departments and person; and gentleness to all inoffensive creatures—paddocks as well as lambs and chickens.