In these latter the drift is certainly more and more lay; and as knowledge and culture spread, and the influence and fruits of masculine thought make themselves more and more appreciable, the Church in England will gradually loosen its grasp of the national intellect, and will probably owe to the higher education of women its collapse and downfall. The ladies of England have propped up the tottering edifice long enough, and no one whose opinion is worth entertaining will lament the inevitable issue. But whether the consequences of this vital movement will be otherwise beneficial, it has scarcely yet, perhaps, been in active operation a sufficient time to enable us to judge. If it involves the sacrifice in any important measure of feminine refinement and dependence, we shall be forced to confess that the help to be rendered by our daughters and grand-daughters to the cause of intellectual enfranchisement and victory will have been bought at a cruel price. As the old foundations discovered it to be imperative to comply with the growing philosophical temper in order to enable them to exist side by side with the improved types of school and teacher, so the successful conduct of ladies' colleges will become impossible in the future unless that liberality of doctrine and sentiment in all matters connected with theology which breathes around them and us is cordially recognised. A spirit of disaffection to clerical guidance and clerical imposts has for some time shown itself in Great Britain among those who are becoming, in the natural course of events, husbands, fathers, and ratepayers; the revolt of the other sex has also commenced; and the wise initiative of the Board School in excluding the Bible and Catechism from their programme must be ultimately obeyed by every school in the three kingdoms. The Bible is for scholars, not for school-folk; and, as Jeremy Bentham demonstrated nearly a century ago, the Catechism is trash. XIV. The Abacus or A. B. C.--Its construction and use--The printed A. B. C.--The first Protestant one (1553)--Spelling-books--Anecdotes of the A. B. C.--_Propria quæ Maribus_ and _Johnny quæ Genus_--The Catechism and Primer. I. The manner in which the earliest _Abaci_ were constructed and applied is precisely one of those points which, in the absence of specimens of remote date and documentary information as to their form and use, we have to elucidate, as far as possible, from casual allusions or internal testimony. The most ancient woodcuts representing a school interior display the method in which the master and pupils worked together; but here the latter appear, as I have stated elsewhere, to reiterate what their teacher reads from a book, or, in other words, the scene depicts a later stage in the educational course.