the case in most Scottish schools, but that some mode of examination be adopted, similar to the middle-class examinations, with the view of stimulating to advanced scholarship, whilst undue attention to the best boys, to the neglect of the weaker ones, should be prevented by every out-going boy being examined before leaving, by, or in the presence of, a committee of governors, as is at present the case at Heriot's and George Watson's. A stimulus of this kind is especially necessary in institutions where satisfactory educational results are not indicated by a numerical increase in the school, and where the fidelity, or even zeal, of the teacher is not followed by any pecuniary advantage.

I am glad to understand that the new Fettes College will soon test some of these suggestions. Although called a college, it still comes under my definition of an hospital, being "a place where boys are boarded and educated out of a charitable fund." The features specially to be admired in this collegiate hospital, are:-1. That the head master (who is to be well-salaried) is to be under no restriction as to celibacy, and is to be assisted by a sufficient number of well-paid resident masters. 2. That the number of resident pupils is not to exceed fifty. This manageable number is to mix with an equal number of non-residents, who, although dining with the residents daily, will spend the early and late portions of the day at home. 3. That the pupils are to be the sons of "parents who have either died without leaving sufficient funds, or who from innocent misfortune, during their own lives, are unable to give suitable education to their children." 4. All promising students who pass a satisfactory examination at fourteen, will be allowed to stay at the college until their seventeenth year, when they will be permitted to compete for one of the Fettes Exhibitions of £60 a year for four years to the University of Edinburgh, the further advantage of a Fellowship of £100 a year being held out to the best of their graduates.

I can only hope, in conclusion, that the directors of the older hospitals may be induced, by the example of the enlightened trustees of this latest and grandest of Scottish hospitals, to inquire whether any alteration in their constitution will help to make the labours of their officials more satisfactory, and tend to remove any of the popular objections against what is called the "Hospital System of Scotland."

STATISTICAL TABLE OF SCOTTISH EDUCATIONAL HOSPITALS IN THE ORDER OF THEIR FOUNDATION.

† Forty of these Children have their board paid for them.

* About £4,000 out of this Fund is devoted to the support of the 12 Heriot Foundation (Day) Schools. Out of the revenue of this Hospital is supported a Free Day School, with 145 Male and Female Pupils.

349

On the United Industrial School, Edinburgh. By

J. R. FINDLAY.

THIS Institution has a peculiar claim to the attention of a body of practical philosophers in the fact that it exhibits, in a manner perhaps unexampled, the successful application and development of the most important principle involved in the great problem of a comprehensive unsectarian system of national education. Those to whom the name of the United Industrial School of Edinburgh is unfamiliar, will infer that there must be something striking in the character of a Ragged School, among whose founders were such men as the late Lord Dunfermline, Lord Minto, Lord Murray, and Lord Jeffrey, George Combe, Professor Gregory, Sir James Gibson Craig, and Sir Thomas Dick Lauder; and that still counts amongst its supporters the present Earl of Minto, the Earl of Elgin, Lord Dunfermline, Adam Black, M.P., Sir William Gibson Craig, William Chambers, John Hill Burton, Dr. John Brown, and Dr. Schmitz.

Into the circumstances of the origin of the school it is not necessary here to enter, further than to say that it was instituted as a practical protest against the virtual exclusion from Ragged Schools of a class of children for whom such schools were especially required. Sixteen years ago the Rev. Dr. Guthrie attracted attention to the condition of the juvenile beggars of Edinburgh, and his proposal to establish a ragged school supported by "Christians of all denominations and all parties was eagerly taken up. The unqualified expressions of liberal views. indulged in by the promoters of the scheme drew to its support men of all classes and of all religious persuasions. It soon appeared, however, that Dr. Guthrie and his immediate supporters contemplated nothing beyond a sectarian school, or, in other words, a school managed solely by Protestant directors, conducted exclusively by Protestant teachers, and in which the religious instruction should be strictly and only Protestant. Many of the subscribers to the scheme at once perceived that such a school could not be attended by Roman Catholic children, who constituted the majority of the fit subjects for such schools, without violation of conscience. The temptation to such violation alike to child and parent was peculiarly strong inasmuch as the pupils were to be supplied with food (they are also in Dr. Guthrie's school so far supplied with clothing); so that these poor creatures were exposed to the risk of being drawn to sell their birthright of freedom of religious opinion for a mess of pottage. Of course it would have been easy to have counteracted the sectarianism of one side by sectarianism on the other; that is, by the establishment of Roman Catholic ragged schools, and this is probably the too simple solution arrived at in other places where a similar difficulty occurred. But the sagacious and truly liberal men, to whom the United Industrial School owed so much in

its infancy, especially the late Lords Dunfermline and Murray, saw in the circumstances of the case opportunity for an important educational experiment, and set themselves to educe out of the great evil of sectarian narrowness, the greater good of Christian co-operation and harmony, in the grand work of relieving the necessities, physical, moral, and religious, of the juvenile poor of the community.

The plan, then, on which the United Industrial School was instituted in 1847, and on which it has been for more than fifteen years conscientiously and successfully conducted, is that of "combined instruction in things secular, separate in things religious." The school is attended by both Protestant and Roman Catholic children, boys and girls. The pupils receive all the instruction of the school, educational and industrial, in common classes, without the slightest reference to the difference of their religious creeds. They take all their meals and enjoy all their recreations together, and they separate only for one hour daily, when the Protestant children receive religious instruction from a Protestant teacher, and the Catholic from a Catholic one. No part of the general funds of the school is devoted to religious instruction. Not a penny which the Protestant supporter of the school gives as his subscription to that general fund goes to teach Roman Catholicism; and not a penny of the Roman Catholics' subscription goes to teach Protestantism. But every child must by the constitution and rules of the school, daily receive instruction in his or her own faith. The funds for such instruction are provided, and their management arranged by separate committees of Roman Catholics and Protestants, those committees of religious instruction being formed from the general committee of the school, which is a mixed committee of Protestants and Catholics.

The directors of the United Industrial School claim to have thus practically solved the greatest difficulty of "the educational question," and they invite the strictest investigation into the validity of such claim. They court the closest inquiry into the conduct and results of these schools. They believe that every candid inquirer will be thereby convinced that this so-called "educational difficulty" is a bugbear that requires only to be boldly faced to vanish for ever. They maintain that such a system as they have pursued for fifteen years, often in circumstances of great discouragement, but with unfailing fidelity, is perfectly unassailable in principle, as it has been highly successful in results. These results are not, of course, attributable merely to the school having for fifteen years fought a battle against sectarian intolerance, and held up an unsullied banner in the cause of purity of conscience. For they believe that the practical working of the school has been as sound as its originating principles. It was one of the earliest institutions of its class to give effect to the discovery that the training of "ragged school " pupils in such mere mechanical and elementary work as teasing hair, picking oakum, net making, and the like, was little better than waste of time, and that initiation in skilled handicrafts of the simpler order was indispensable to qualify such children to assume, on

leaving school, something like an independent position in life. The importance, too, of keeping the ordinary branches of instruction of a strictly practical, and comparatively elementary, character, has been carefully recognised. It is undoubtedly to a wise and circumspect conduct of the schools in all these particulars that the directors owe that remarkable degree of success to which they allude in their Annual Report for 1860, in the following terms:-"It appears that the total number of children who have received the benefit of our school is 950, and Mr. Ferguson has, by patient and laborious investigation, during six months past, ascertained the present earnings of upwards of two-thirds of that number. These earnings represent the scarcely credible sum of £11,596 per annum." From the report for the following year, 1861, we learn that the superintendent, by a continued and more strict investigation, found that the sum of annual earning in that year was nearly £1,000 higher, the net sum being £12,472.

Report of the Standing Committee of the Department.

In making a rapid survey of the position of our Educational Establishments, we notice, in connexion with those devoted to "Higher Instruction," that the Scottish Universities Commissioners concluded their labours in December, 1862. To the extent to which they have interfered with past arrangements, they are generally considered to have done so with knowledge and prudence. The only organic change effected by them has been the widening of the constitution of the Universities by admitting all graduates as members of the University Council, and conferring on the council the right to hold two meetings annually, and to make representations to the governing body,-the University Court, a limited board representing the various interests of the University.

With regard to "Middle Class Education" there are no facts of importance to mention. The efficient working of the University Middle-Class Examinations continues to exercise a beneficial influence on middle-class schools, but nothing more has been done during the past year, to secure the more solid organisation of this department of national education, although from many quarters the attention of the public is from time to time being called to the subject.

The events connected with the department of "Primary Education" every year become more intimately associated with the movements of the Privy Council Committee. The working of the Revised Code in England has not yet been such as to justify the alarm shared both by school managers and teachers. At the same time there are still glaring defects in the code which will require to be removed if the operation of the code is to be equitable. It is manifest that some arrangement must be made for the recognition of those pupils who have attended not less than two hundred times, but who from illness or other causes, are absent from school on the day of the inspector's