brought in, when he burst into tears, uttered fervent thanksgiving that he had been permitted to finish this work, and said he was now ready to depart. In its internal arrangements the house is thoroughly Indian-more so than many of the more modern Calcutta "Palaces." It is spacious and open, with pillars and arches and large public rooms. One of these is a handsome library, in which hangs a portrait of Dr. Marshman. But the chief charm of the house is its wide-pillared verandah, looking on to the glorious river, and across to the noble park of Barrackpore. There Government House, Lady Canning's monument, and many other buildings, and pretty white bungalows gleam out from amidst numbers of the most beautiful trees, standing in clumps or fringing the river-bank, and in the distance almost cheating you into the belief that they are the goodly oaks of old England. Indeed, I do not know anything more lovely than this view is, especially in the early morning or at sunset, when woods and waters, and earth and sky are all aglow, and there is such deep repose that the boats and clouds and other objects cast soft reflections over the glassy calm of the water. It makes me very idle, especially this swift, silent, shining river at our feet, for its aspects and moods are ever changing. The boats too, in number and variety, are something marvellous. Fleets of these dart about in all directions; and especially when the tide turns there is a rush of craft of all sorts (up or down, as the case may be), the sails set and oars plying, while the current carries them past with wonderful rapidity. In Carey's day, and before the era of railways, the river was the highway to Calcutta-and still, I need not tell you, it is a pleasant way. In Bengal, indeed, except the Grand Trunk, there were no other roads than the rivers; and notwithstanding the railways, these are still covered with traffic. At one extremity of the compound, not far from the house, stands the chapel, and a little further on, the printing press. Still further, and also by the river, there is the Missionary College, which stands in a spacious compound of its own, and is a fine large upper-storied building. This college is still doing very effective service in the great work of communicating Christian education to the youth of India. The chapel is a small white building, unpretending and plain, but for the four pillars which support the portico-roof, and the pretty floor inside-which, for coolness as well as beauty, is paved with grey marble. The pulpit is that in which the great Missionaries preached-a quaint little wooden box, of most primitive construction. It stands at one end of the room, and in front of it is the baptistery, which is simply a little tank in the floor, always covered up except on the occasion of a baptism. At the foot of the room is a small organ-loft. On each side pews are arranged to seat about a hundred people. You are summoned to the service by a Sabbath bell-always a home-like, pleasant sound. Only that this bell has evidently known better days, and, doubtless, was perfectly sonorous when it gathered the members of the Mission to church fifty years ago. Might not some kind friend, for the love of Carey's name, present a new bell to the little chapel at Serampore? But what chiefly attracts the attention as you enter the church is, that on each side of the pulpit, in the wall, there is a tablet of white marble in memoriam. The tablet in the Lutheran Church, where Carey and his colleagues preached, for the Danes, for a quarter of a century, bears the following inscription : IN MEMORY OF WILLIAM CAREY, D.D., Born at Paulerspury, Northamptonshire, 17th Aug., 1761. Died 9th June, 1834. JOSHUA MARSHMAN, D.D., REV. WILLIAM WARD, THE SERAMPORE MISSIONARIES, Who, in addition to their many other labours in the cause of religion and humanity, from the opening of this Church, in 1805, to the end of their lives, gave their faithful and gratuitous ministrations to the congregation here assembled. The tablets in the chapel simply commemorate the three missionaries with their "beloved associate," Mr. Mack, a Scotchman, and Dr. Marshman's wife, herself a great missionary. You at once feel that the simple building is filled with a light from the past, and has received the truest consecration in the hopes and prayers and heart-longings of the devoted missionaries, who rest from their labours, but whose works do follow them. These works are by no means confined to the founding of the Serampore Mission, though it has its college and schools and Christian village. The work of translating the Scriptures into the leading languages of India was accomplished by them, and they were undoubtedly the great missionary pioneers in Northern India. An influence went forth from this place, which gave a new impetus to Indian Missions. Now, happily, Serampore is no longer an oasis in the desert; its Mission is surrounded by many others, which "well may yet make all India as a watered garden." I must not forget to tell you of another interesting memorial of the past at Serampore. This is a picturesque little ruin called "Henry Martyn's Pagoda," to which a pretty pathway by the river leads you. The pagoda was the resort of this saintly man when he wished to retire for study and prayer, and communion with God. It was fitted up for him by his friend, the Rev. D. Brown, and on his being appointed to Dinapore, it was here his friend met him to ask God's blessing on his future work. The hallowed little place is now quite a ruin, overgrown with jungle; and a peepul tree, which is busy striking its roots into the crannies, will, I am afraid, ere long, bring it to the ground.-From A Missionary's Wife among the Wild Tribes of South Bengal. BY MRS. MURRAY MITCHELL. Edinburgh: J. Maclaren. 99 Short Notes. THE EDUCATION TURMOIL.-One of the great questions which now agitates the Continent is that of denominational education, and the great object of the Roman Catholic countries of Austria, Italy, and France is to extricate public education from the control of the priesthood. The struggle is severe, but the result, however remote, cannot be doubtful. The agitation in England on the subject of education may be said, to a certain extent, to bear the same character. It has been kindled by the Educacation Act, the professed object of which was to provide a system of national and unsectarian education, supported by national taxation; but which has been marred by the application of it to the support of denominational instruction. When the education question was introduced in Parliament large grants were being made from the Treasury to schools which had been established by voluntary efforts, seven-eighths of which were in the hands of the clergy, and it was wisely determined, by common consent, not to interfere with this educational machinery, but to establish School Boards, with powers of taxation and compulsion, which it was expected would complete the provision for the wants of every locality. The Ministry were constrained to concede the principle that these schools should be unsectarian, and that all creeds, catechisms, and formulas should be excluded from them. At the same time, however, Mr. Fors ter increased the Government grant to the existing schools connected with the Established Church by fifty per cent., and stimulated the multiplication of them by a large grants for the building of new schools for which application might be made before the end of the year. Every effort was, therefore, made to get up applications for them by members of the Church of England, and in a few months they exceeded 3,000, all for denominational schools to participate in the enhanced grant made from the Treasury. The natural inference from this procedure was that, while Mr. Forster was anxious to diffuse education through the country, he wished it to be effected, to the utmost possible extent, in connection with the doctrines and the interest of the Church of England. This impression was strengthened by the insertion of a clause in the Educa tion Act to allow School Boards to pay the school fees where the раrents were too poor, or said they were too poor, to afford them. In theory, the rule appeared to be impartial, inasmuch as the fees were to be paid indiscriminately to the schools of all denominations: but as it was known that the great bulk of the existing schools belonged to the Establishment it could not fail to become, in practice, a fresh subsidy to those schools. This is exemplified in the case of Salford, where the Board disbursed £22 4s. 6d. of the rates in one week in the payment of the children's fees; of which more than one half, £12 8s., went to Church of England schools; £4 8s. 10d. to Roman Catholic schools; £4 2s. 10d. to the Wesleyans, and the remaining four or five per cent. to those of other denominations. The number of children thus provided for amounted to 1,856, and the fees ranged from 2d. to 4d., and it is a significant fact that of the 1,856 children no fewer than 1,467 were already in attendance at the schools, but were withdrawn as soon as the payment of the fees by the School Board was announced; and the result has been that the number of new scholars for whose education the Board has provided is reduced to 389, and at an expense, calculating from the week, of £1,155 a year, or at the rate of £3 a head. The other 1,467 have been simply pauperized. Very strenuous efforts were made by the members of the Church of England to prevent the establishment of School Boards, with their unsectarian schools, and they were denounced in no measured terms by one of the most eminent dignitaries of the Church; but as these Boards find it easier to subsidize old schools than to build new ones, they are found to be not only innocuous, but, with discreet management, may be come valuable auxiliaries to the Church of England. The struggle is therefore transferred to the election of members, when a vacancy occurs, so as to securea majority of denominationalists. The contests are as bitter and uncompromizing as the old contests over the church rates, and the animosity which they engendered has been revived with greater intensity; and simply because the 25th section of the Education Act is converted into the means of violating the spirit of it. It is lamentable to perceive that a measure of so noble a character, calculated to attract the sympathies and to unite the exertions of all Englishmen, has become the occasion of this demoralizing discord. Seldom indeed, have we witnessed so signal a legislative failure. Churchmen and Conservatives, and not a few Whigs, are delighted with the Act, and the Nonconformists are assailed in bitter terms with obstructing the progress of a measure of such importance, to subserve the paltry interests of their own sectarianism. The pub. lic journals, which with rare exceptions are most hostile to Dissenters, lay the whole blame of this agitation on their bigotry. But may not they reply with some show of reason: We cannot be charged with endeavouring to promote our own sectarian interests, when we eschew all sectarian education whether supported by imperial grants or parish rates, and are perfectly content with the reading and expounding the Oracles of truth in the schools, without any denominational creeds or formulas? But we do object strenuously to the conversion of the parish rates, which were designed by the Act for national and unsectarian education, into a denominational subsidy. Having got rid of church rates, after a struggle of thirty years, we object to being taxed in our parishes for an education rate, the greater proportion of which is to be handed over to the schools of the Church of England, which are considered as one of its strongest bulwarks. In this age of religious equality we consider it unreasonable to be subjected to this new form of contribution to the support of the State Church. If it be said that we did not raise any objection to the continuance and increase of the grants to the educational establishments of the Church of England, amounting to a million, from the national exchequer to which we contribute, is our moderation in declining to interfere with a system of education, which, though denominational, was an instrument of much good, to be turned against us when we raise our voice against subsidizing denominational tuition by a new and more irritating impost? We cannot but think that the members of the Church of England have not acted with wisdom in their efforts to make the parish education rate contribute to their own schools. They might have been content with the bounty lavished on them by Mr. Forster to enable them to inculcate on the rising generation their own creeds and catechisms and formulas; with the addition of 50 per cent. which he made to the former subsidy from the Exchequer, and with the encouragement he gave to the erection of additional schools of the same type by building grants. They might have been content to leave the small dole of parish rate to unsectarian schools. This struggle to obtain a majority on the School Board, with the hope of turning that rate to the support of their denominational schools, has evoked a spirit which may not eventually be content with the repeal of section 25, but raise a national clamour against the contributions they receive from the State, which they have hitherto been allowed to enjoy without challenge. There is the powerfully organised League of Birmingham insisting on secular instruction, and gaining fresh adherents from every fresh dispute over the Education Act. With the views of the League we have no sympathy, but it is easy to perceive that the attempt to convert the education rate to denominational uses, and the discord which it creates, is rapidly multiplying the converts to its principles. The difficulty with which the ministry will have to deal in the coming session appears to us to consist in overcoming Mr. Forster's ecclesias tical predilections, which it is now generally believed it was the main object of the Education scheme to subserve, under an appearance of impartiality. While every encouragement is given to denominational education in England, it cannot consistently be refused to Ireland; but any disposition to dally with the claims of the Roman Catholic hierarchy would be fatal to Mr. Gladstone's administration. THE INACTIVITY OF THE SCHOOL BOARDS. Much of the agitation which now distracts the country might, we think, have been avoided, if the School Boards had given any token of their existence beyond endless debates and resultless resolutions. Every phase of the education question has been the subject of discussion; but these disquisitions, however earnest, and refined, and philosophical, have led to no practical results. They have made no impression on the mass of ignorance and vice the Boards were appointed to clear away. There has been nothing to show for a year's labours, but what is facetiously called talkeetalkee. Of the two antagonist principles which now divide the country, the unsectarian has been entrusted to the School Boards, while the denominational is under the championship of the Church of England and the Church of Rome. But while the former have been wasting their time in empty debates, the latter have set their shoulders to the wheel, and have far out-stripped their rivals in the actual establishment of schools of their own type, since the passing of the Act. If the Boards, instead of passing week after week in discussions, had made a beginning by opening schools, on however humble a scale, they would have gained the confidence of the public where they now meet only with its contempt, and they would |