The most active advertisers are the schoolmasters. It is now the happy time of the Midsummer holidays; and the pedagogues make wonderful attempts to encourage parents, and to attract fresh pupils for the ensuing half-year. Of all these announcements that of MADAME SHANAHAN (a delightful name) is perhaps the most brilliant. ‘To Parents and Guardians.--Paris.--Such parents and guardians as may wish to entrust their children for education _in its fullest extent_ to MADAME SHANAHAN, _can have the advantage of being conducted to Paris_ by her brother, the Rev. J. P. O’Reilly, of Church Street Chapel:’ which admirable arrangement carries the parents to Paris and leaves the children in Dublin. Ah, Madame, you may take a French title; but your heart is still in your country, and you are to the _fullest extent_ an Irishwoman still! Fond legends are to be found in Irish books regarding places where you may now see a round tower and a little old chapel, twelve feet square, where famous universities are once said to have stood, and which have accommodated myriads of students. Mrs. Hall mentions Glendalough, in Wicklow, as one of these places of learning; nor can the fact be questioned, as the universities existed hundreds of years since, and no sort of records are left regarding them. A century hence some antiquary may light upon a Dublin paper, and form marvellous calculations regarding the state of education in the country. For instance, at Bective-House seminary, conducted by Dr. J. L. Burke, Ex-Scholar T.C.D., no less than _two hundred and three_ young gentlemen took prizes at the Midsummer examination: nay, some of the most meritorious carried off a dozen premiums a piece. A Dr. Delamere, Ex-Scholar T.C.D., distributed three hundred and twenty rewards to his young friends; and if we allow that one lad in twenty is a prizeman, it is clear that there must be six thousand four hundred and forty youths under the Doctor’s care. Other schools are advertised in the same journals, each with its hundred of prize-bearers; and if other schools are advertised, how many more must there be in the country which are not advertised! There must be hundreds of thousands of prizemen, millions of scholars: besides national schools, hedge schools, infant schools, and the like. The English reader will see the accuracy of the calculation. In the _Morning Register_, the Englishman will find something to the full as curious and startling to him: you read gravely in the English language how the Bishop of Aureliopolis has just been consecrated; and that the distinction has been conferred upon him by--the Holy Pontiff!--the Pope of Rome, by all that is holy! Such an announcement sounds quite strange _in English_, and in your own country, as it were; or isn’t it your own country? Suppose the Archbishop of Canterbury were to send over a clergyman to Rome, and consecrate him Bishop of the Palatine or the Suburra, I wonder how his Holiness would like _that_?