from home.

In fine, we seldom fail to condemn in the one sex a shortcoming which we commonly condone in the other.

Another marked difference between the religion of the sexes is, that women are as a class highchurch and fond of ritual. Men, on the other hand, even good churchmen-as we accept the term -though they like things to be done decently and in order, are more moderate, and if anything anti-ritualistic. It may be that we are less artistic and less imaginative, and that with an equal sense of decorum we care less for outward form and adornment. To a man a new coat is a nuisance: a new dress has a lively fascination for a woman. So the forms and ceremonies, the coloured stole, the changed altar-cloth, things which attract the fair sex, a man regards with an indifference which borders rather contempt than irreverence. We might add, that if a woman crosses herself or bows to the altar it does not strike us as singular or out of place; similar acts on the part of a layman arrest our attention, and we instinctively suspect a motive.

on

Further it may be said, that how ever strongly a man may feel about religion, there is no subject on which he is more reticent himself or more disinclined to invite confidence from a brother layman. To our mind the scene in Tom Brown,' where East pours out his religious difficulties to his schoolfellow, is at least as unnatural as it is striking and original. Abhorrence of uttering or listening to anything which could by any possibility be construed into cant, almost seems to form part of an Englishman's character. It is only on rare occasions that a clergyman will penetrate this barrier of reserve, and then only

because he is recognised as a duly accredited practitioner.

All this may sound foreign to our subject, but it may serve to emphasise our reiteration, and— as we think, though we may be wrong-Mrs Creighton's opinion, that it is from the mother that we must claim the early training of her children in church matters. Only in rare cases will the child satisfactorily learn from a man at school what it is so natural and so simple for the mother to teach at home. Honesty, truthfulness, straightforwardness all these lessons a father may teach and a wise father will teach, but church teaching for her child is the mother's privilege and duty. And under the head of church teaching we would include such things as the knowledge of some short form of prayer on entering and leaving church; the habit of reverence in church; the knowledge-elementary knowledge indeed-that it is usual to kneel during the prayers and to stand at certain times; an acquaintance with the order of morning and evening prayer; the habit of giving something to the offertory; the recollection that baptism is a sacrament, that the churchyard is holy ground, that loud talking on the way to and from church is, if not wrong, at least unseemly; and the habit, to come nearer home, of private prayer and of private reading in the Bible at night. All these things are better learnt as a lesson of love from a mother's lips than later on as matters of school discipline; and we would fain hope that such lessons as the former are not things to be forgotten at the first convenient opportunity like the latter, but are rather sacred links in the chain of memories that bind the boy's mind to his home. We may even go beyond the hope. That churchgoing is often

irksome to boys is a misfortune partly of an age ever restless and impatient of restraint-more so, perhaps, of their sex. To the latter it is a repetition of Naaman's impatience. "If the prophet had bid thee do some great thing!" To a sex intolerant of activity, mental or physical, to sit quiet and repeat the same simple words Sunday after Sunday partakes more of the nature of a penance than a service,—is even in some cases, and to some natures, a form of martyrdom more severe and more trying than any physical pain. But, on the other hand, take many a man who will occasionally make an excuse to stay away from church, try to compel him under threat of a lingering death to abjure that religion which he apparently does not value or practise, hold out to him fair promises if he will become a Mohammedan or a Brahmin-will he do it? No; rather death or bondsanything rather than give up that which was his mother's religion before him, and which he learnt from her lips. "If our God and our country require," Englishmen, as their thoughts float back to childhood's days, will face death with as steadfast a heart as ever did Jephthah's daughter.

And yet we may be told-for parents, as we read not long ago in a bishop's address on this very subject, are inclined to "put off the responsibility of the religious teaching more and more on others" -the perfect schoolmaster, if there exists such an individual, will teach, or should teach, all these things. "But," said the same speaker, "the teaching never comes with the same force from strangers' as from the mother's lips." To strangers, at all events-we make this addition to Mrs Creighton's words-"most boys will not say much about their religious feelings." To teach for

the first time those very simple things which we enumerated, if not exactly beyond a master's province, is at any rate beyond what should be his province. Religious teaching in some form or other is clearly part of a preparatory schoolmaster's duty, but the soil he works on should not be virgin ground: rather is it his office and his responsibility to cherish the seedlings of home growth. Advice to keep up a habit; occasional reminding not to drop, or encouragement to continue, this or that practice, these things we may with justice require and expect of the schoolmaster, but the habits and the practices themselves should be of an earlier date.

The

Even a little more than this we may fairly claim of the parent,— such a thing, for instance, as a little instruction as regards the holy days of the Church; why Easter Day and Christmas Day are feasts, and what events they commemorate; why a little difference should be made between Lent and other periods of the year. most sacred days of the Christian year, as it happens, most small boys spend at home; and, apart from their school teaching, a fair proportion of the rising generation connect Christmas Day with little else beyond plum-pudding, mincepies, and turkeys, and regard Good Friday as the first day of the holidays, and, as such, "to be marked with white chalk." This is no exaggeration of facts, and we record it rather as a protest against the not uncommon cry that there is a decadence in the religious instruction of boys in higher-grade schools. The substitution of the word "homes" for "schools" would bring us nearer to the truth.

And now to turn to secular education. "What would you like my boy to be pushed on in?" is a very common and a very pertinent

principle. For to a good-natured parson not so many years ago there came a neighbour with the request that the parson would allow the neighbour's small boy of ten to come to his study and do some examination papers in his presence.

"He's a sharp boy enough," said the fond father, "and he can do the work all right. But the regulations require that the papers shall be done in the presence of a beneficed clergyman, who will send them straight up to the Office. Of course you won't give him any help-in fact, he's not likely to want any; but you might just keep him up to the work, and see that he spends a proper time over it. The people will send you the papers, and some sort of form to fill up.'

The parson readily consented: papers and form to fill up arrived in due course, and on the appointed day a small tallow-faced boy of eleven was duly ushered into the study. The parson gave young hopeful a few kindly words of encouragement, arranged him comfortably at the table with a goodly choice of pens, and taking up a book himself, prepared for a lengthy spell of the boy's company. He had previously cast his eye over the contents of the paper, and thought it well suited to test a boy's powers, and to occupy most of the three and a half hours allowed for it. It was a fairly easy paper of the orthodox typesome miles to be reduced to feet, gallons to be added to pints, Troy pounds to be brought to cwts., pence to be subtracted from pounds, some decimal and some vulgar fractions, proportion, practice, a room to be papered, a yard to be paved, the rate of a ship to ship to be calculated, &c., &c. It was lengthy, there being in all some sixteen questions arranged on a graduating scale- the sort of paper, in fact, in which an ordin

ary boy might be expected to satisfy the examiners, a mathematical genius to make up for any deficiency in other subjects.

The parson was pleased to note that his young protégé apparently lacked neither diligence nor enthusiasm, but plunged at once into his work with that amount of snorting and grunting which, coupled with inkiness, denotes that a small boy is very much in earnest. Scratch, scratch, scratch went his pen without cessation for fully half an hour or more; then came a pause of a few minutes, and then, as the parson looked up, there, standing at his elbow with smiling face and folded paper, was the tallow-faced boy.

"Well, my boy, what's the matter?" quoth the parson, cheerily.

"I have finished it."

"Finished! Done all that you can do? Oh dear, no!" said the parson, mindful of his promise to keep his little friend up to the mark. "Don't give in, my boy; try again. Sit down and think a bit, and you'll soon be able to do some more—there's a brave boy."

But," said the boy, with a superior air, "I have done it all."

"Done the whole paper?" exclaimed the parson, fully awake to the fact that he himself, in his very best day, could never have accomplished so stupendous a feat with such apparent ease and rapidity. "What makes you so awfully clever?" said the grandson to Father William, in that quaint book, 'Alice in Wonderland.' And some such thought passed through the parson's mind as he stared at that self-satisfied and tallow-faced boy.

The fond father had indeed said that the boy was sharp enough, but sharp enough was only a feeble description of that youthful prodigy who could reel off those sixteen questions in little over half an hour.

"You've really done every single question?" interrogated the parson

once more.

"Oh dear, yes," was the cheery reply.

There was clearly nothing more to be said: the paper was accepted, and the boy dismissed with a reminder that the Latin paper would be forthcoming at the same hour on the following day.

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And the parson was left alone with the paper. Strictly speaking -for so said the regulations-he ought to have sealed the paper up at once and despatched it to London. But a spirit of envious curiosity had possessed his soul. Why or how came it that his neighbour should be blessed with such genius in his son? Why should that man above all men be the sire of a "natum tali ingenio præditum"? It was unofficial, of course, but there could be no harm in peeping -just one peep. He peeped once and again, and lo! the whole contents of Pandora's chest were revealed to him. The gay young arithmetician had evidently studied reduction to some purpose, and had offered a practical illustration of its value by at once reducing that lengthy paper to some four or five questions. Troy pounds, quarts, pints, miles, and feet, had been accurately added together, reduced to farthings, and then subdivided by another lot of farthings, the result of the addition of pounds and shillings which had figured in Question I. In the decimal question the silly little points and a few preliminary noughts had been eliminated as obviously inserted "only to annoy," and the other figures had then been added together, and also called farthings, to be in their turn divided by another lot of farthings, the result of two long questions in vulgar fractions. And any apparent difficulty in producing this fourth

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batch of farthings had been obviated by the simple process of removing the line between the numerator and denominator, and putting it into what was clearly the proper place for it,-sic & (ans.) The room had been papered by some half-dozen itinerant haymakers, who had figured in the proportion sum, and had been added to some stray weeks and days from the same sum, and their forces had been further recruited by some ounces and pennyweights assisted by some odd pence and farthings, which had formed the burden of the practice sum. Then this large army having been raised for the express purpose of papering that room, had by some enchanter's wand been miraculously converted into inches, and in that form left to the mercy of the examiner to retain, disenchant, or further convert to feet and yards, as he might feel inclined. The time that the ship occupied in reaching some given place from Liverpool being clearly a problem, had to rest contented with the verbal answer, "Somewhere about a week."

In short, if regarded from the standpoint of an ingenious if somewhat reckless circumvention

of difficulties, the result was a masterpiece. The perusal of this work of art so far upset the moral equilibrium of the parson, that on the following day he took a cursory glance at the Latin paper, the execution whereof had been equally speedy. The answer to the first question amply repaid his inquisitiveness :

"What are the three concords in Latin? Give examples."

"The first concord is when you put an accusative case; the second concord is when you put a verb instead of an accusative case; and the third concord is when you don't

SCOTTIE

H CONSERVATIVE CLUB