they may prove unable to resist the employment, in a modified shape, of the principle which they regard as pernicious. It will be much to the advantage of Great Britain if the education of Catholics in England, as well as in Ireland, be made thoroughly Catholic. The vast, and in many respects admirable system of national education in Ireland, which, twenty or thirty years ago, was favorably regarded by very many of the Irish Catholic bishops and clergy, has long since been declared unsatisfactory by the Catholic hierarchy. The elementary national schools are now merely tolerated. The national model schools are loudly denounced. The national system aimed at giving to all children a combined secular instruction and at affording opportunities for separate religious instruction. The priest and the parson were invited to become joint patrons of schools. The board of education were to supply school-rooms, teachers, books, and requisites for a secular instruction in which all the pupils were to share. The ministers of various denominations were to supply, either personally or by deputy, a religious teaching to their respective pupils. Thus an hour or more was to be set apart for religious teaching. During that hour the Catholic children were to be taught the Catholic religion by the priest, or by one of the masters under the priest's direction, and the Protestant children were similarly to be taught the principles of Protestantism in another room by the parson, or by one of the teachers under his control. It was supposed that all ministers of religion would join in carrying out a system which thus provided for the general education of the poor, without interfering with the conscientious discharge of that part of the ministerial duty of clergymen which relates to the religious teaching of the young. The idea of instructing Catholic and Protestant children together and bringing them up in habits of mutual affection and esteem, was specious and captivating. Who could withhold his quota of aid toward realizing the prospect thus held out of future generations of educated Irishmen of various creeds, each respecting the religious principles of the others while strong in his own, and all loyal to the impartial government of the British crown? Yet, at its very outset, the clergy and bishops of the Protestant establishment held aloof from the national board. They refused any partnership with Catholic priests in the management of schools, and declared that their consciences would not permit them to consent to support a system which set limits to the free use of the holy Scriptures during secular instruction. In vain was it shown that in Protestant universities, colleges, and higher schools, nay, that in the very order for divine service according to the ritual of the establishment, a limit was actually set to the use of the holy Scriptures by the appointment of fixed times and places for the study and reading and exposition of the sacred word. In vain was