society, and may be best employed and improved amidst the intercourses of the world. Let there remain a tribe of book-worms still; and Heaven forbid that the classics should fall into contempt! But let scholastic honours be bestowed according to the sympathies of the many; the many being meantime so cultivated as that they may arrive at a sympathy with intellectual toil. With the progress of science, the diffusion of science becomes necessary. The greater the power of the people to injure or rebel, the more necessary it is to teach them to be above injuring and rebelling. The ancient tyrant who hung up his laws written in so small a character that his people could not read them, and then punished offenders under pretence that his laws were exhibited, was no more unjust than we are while we transport and hang our neighbours for deeds of folly and malice, while we still withhold from them the spirit of power, and of love, and of a sound mind. Bring public education to the test, and it will be found that badgery is _pomp_, while universal instruction is essential to the _support_ of the state. A pretty new church that! But I should scarcely have supposed it wanted while there is a new Methodist meeting-house on one side the way, and the large old Independent chapel on the other. The little church that the lady is sketching before it comes down, might have served a while longer, I fancy, if the necessity had been estimated by the number of church-goers, and not of souls, in the parish. Whatever may be thought of the obligation to provide a national scheme of worship after the manner in which a national scheme of education is certainly a duty,—however the essential circumstance of distinction is overlooked, that every member of the state has, without its assistance, opportunities of worship, while such is not the case with instruction,—whatever may be thought of the general question of an ecclesiastical establishment,—it is not pretended by any that its purposes are answered by the application of its funds to the augmentation of private fortunes instead of the religious instruction of the people. Time was when he who presented to a _benefice_ was supposed to confer a _benefit_ on the people connected with it. Now we have the public barter of such presentations for gold; and whether most regard be always paid to the qualifications of the candidate or to the gold he brings, let the face of the country declare. Meeting-houses springing up in every village, intelligent artizans going off to one class or another of Dissenters, while the stolid race of agricultural labourers lounge to church,—what does this tell but that the religious wants of the people are better met by the privately-paid than the publicly-paid church? The people are not religiously _instructed_ by the clergy, as a body. Look into our agricultural districts, and see what the mere opening of churches does for the population,—for the dolts who snore round the fire