The position of the committee of council on education is, simply and fairly, this: They have yielded to the religious sentiment of an overwhelming majority in the nation, and have consented to the experiment of conducting the secular education of the people by the instrumentality of the various ecclesiastical associations into which the people are divided. But with reference to the church, as to all other communions, they insist upon the laity having a fair voice in the administration of those schools which are in part supplied by the public money, and which have in view secular as well as religious instruction. The clergy of only two communions seek to thwart them in this object, and to arrogate all power over the schools to themselves. The conduct of the ultra-High Church faction in the Anglican establishment we have attempted to make clear. The conduct of the Roman Catholic clergy has been more temperate, but hardly less insincere or invidious. Their poor-school committee declare that their prelates would be unwilling "to accept, were it tendered to them, an appellate jurisdiction over schools in matters purely secular;" but at the same time they claim for their "ecclesiastical authorities" the power of deciding what questions do or do not affect "religion and morals." The committee of the council, on the one hand, are exerting themselves to give effect to the desire of a great majority of the English public, that religious and moral shall be combined with intellectual education; and, on the other, to guard against their compliance with this desire being perverted into an insidious instrument for enabling arrogant priesthoods to set their feet on the necks of the laity. We challenge for public men thus honorably and usefully discharging important duties a more frank and cordial support than it has yet been their good fortune to obtain. Several ornaments of the church, conspicuous for their learning and moderation--such men as the Bishop of Manchester, Archdeacon Hare, and the Rev. Henry Parr Hamilton--have already borne direct and earnest testimony to the temper and justice, as well as straightforward, honesty of purpose, displayed by the committee of council. It is to be hoped that the laity of the church will now extend to them the requisite support; and that the Nonconformists and educational enthusiasts, who, by their waywardness, have been playing the game of the obscurantist priests, may see the wisdom of altering this very doubtful policy. [From the London Athenæum.] WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. The great philosophical poet of our age, William Wordsworth, died at Rydal Mount, in Westmoreland--among his native lakes and hills--on the 23d of April, in the eighty-first year of his age. Those who are curious in the accidents of birth and death, observable in the biographies of celebrated men, have thought it worthy of notice that the day of Wordsworth's death was the anniversary of Shakspeare's birth.