"The evils and dangers of the present system of educating and bringing up the boys and girls of our country, are too obvious to require minute description. Irreligion and infidelity are progressing _pari passu_ with the advance guards of immorality and crime, and all are _fostered_, if _not engendered_, by the _materialistic system of school instruction_, and the consequent wretched training at home and on the play-ground. The entire absence of all religious instruction from the school-room is fast bearing fruit in a generation of infidels, and we are becoming worse even than the Pagans of old, who had at least their positive sciences of philosophy, and their religion, such as it was, to oppose which was a criminal offence. To those who would dispute this somewhat horrible assertion, the author would point to the published statistics of church attendance, from which it appears that of the entire population but a very small proportion are habitual church-goers. Deducting from these, again, those who attend church simply as a matter of fashion, or from other than religious motives, and there remains a minimum almost too small to be considered, abundantly sustaining our charge. The disintegration of the prevalent forms of religious belief, the rapid multiplication of sects, the increase in the ranks of intellectual sceptics, the fashionable detractions from, and perversions of, the Holy Scriptures, acting with the influences already mentioned, may well cause alarm. "But we have not only the removal of the salutary restraints of religious influence from our popular system of education; we have the promiscuous intermingling of the sexes in our Public Schools, which, however much we may theorize to the contrary, is, to say the least, subversive of that modest reserve and shyness which in all ages have proved the true ægis of virtue. We are bound to accept human nature as it is, and not as we would wish it to be, and both Christian and Pagan philosophy agree in detecting therein certain very dangerous elements. Among the most dangerous and inevitable is the sexual instinct, which, implanted by the Creator for the wisest purposes, is, perhaps, the most potent of all evils when not properly restrained, retarded, and directed. This mysterious instinct develops earlier in proportion as the eye and the imagination are soonest furnished the materials upon which it thrives; and, long before the age of puberty, it is strong, and well-nigh ungovernable, in those who have been allowed these unfortunate occasions. The boy of the present generation has more practical knowledge of this instinct at the age of fifteen, than, under proper training, he should be entitled to at the time of his marriage; and the boy of eleven or twelve boastfully announces to his companions the evidences of his approaching virility. Nourished by languishing glances during the hours passed in the school-room, fanned by more intimate