assuredly no efficient schoolmaster ought to bear; for while his profession holds in Scripture no higher place than the two _secular_ branches of the learned professions, physic and the law, he is as certainly worthy of his reward, and of maintaining an independent position in society, as either the lawyer or the physician. In schools truly national--with no sheepskin authority to sleep over on the one hand, and no idle dream of semi-ecclesiastical 'induction' to beguile on the other--the item of religious teaching, brought into prominence by both the Free and the Established Churches in the preliminary struggle, would assert and receive its due place. Scotland would possess what it never yet possessed,--not even some twenty years or so after the death of Knox,--a system of schools worthy, in the main, of a Christian country. We are told by old Robert Blair, in his Autobiography, that when first brought under religious impressions (in the year 1600), 'he durst never play on the Lord's day, though the schoolmaster, after taking an account of the Catechism, dismissed the children with that express direction, "Go not to the town, but to the fields, and play." I obeyed him,' adds the worthy man, 'in going to the fields, but refused to play with my companions, as against the commandment of God.' Now it is not at all strange that there should have been such a schoolmaster, in any age of the Presbyterian Church, in one of the parish schools of our country; but somewhat strange, mayhap, considering the impression so generally received regarding the Scottish schools of that period, that Blair should have given us no reason whatever to regard the case as an extreme or exceptional one. Certainly, with such a central board in existence as that which we desiderate, no such type of schoolmaster would continue to hold office in a national seminary.