day, threw up her hands in horror. Our Lady's head was gone! and the head of the little Jesus! She spread the fearful news through the quarter. In two hours it had reached the palace. The King, Francis the First, "was so wroth," says the old chronicler," and so upset, that he wept right sore, they say." He offered a thousand gold crowns as reward, and sent officers to every house, for detection of the malefactors. Special processions of nearly all the churches of the city visited the spot. The King himself went most devoutly with many clergy. He carried a lighted taper, and was bareheaded, and had with him the hautboys and several clarions and trumpets, "which made a glorious show, so melodiously did they play."

Francis and his clergy did not show all the "wisdom of the serpent" in giving such prominence to this sacrilege. What should have been left to the consciences and fathers of a comparatively humble quarter of one city grew into an affair of national interest. The heretical act produced its like in other towns, which else had never heard of it. A group of Protestant artisans, tradesmen, laborers, would go out quietly at night, with bar and hammer and long knife or short sword, and clip the nose off a Saint Peter, strike the book from Saint John's hand, heave over the group of Mother and Child, or cut the altar paintings. In some churches they cut the large organ into splinters, broke up altars, tore the robes and tapestries and altar-cloths which they found in the sacristies. They laid their hands upon nearly five hundred churches, and destroyed nearly five hundred thousand du

cats' value. But what is very remarkable, these despoilers never committed any robberies or thefts, nor allowed any of their following to do so. They hanged one man for an attempt to steal vessels from an altar. They proceeded to and through their work with the sincerity and gravity of men of principle and conviction. They refused large bribes offered them to stay their destructive hands. They left gold articles and money untouched upon the ground. Some of their number declared themselves to be

the "consuming fire" of God-pure themselves, and predestined to purify, as by fire, the groveling and idolatrous generation around them. They moved by an inner light. Certainly, they asked none from their superiors in rank and learning, for all the Protestant leaders held apart from or denounced them.

In one fortnight from its beginning, the

HERETIC ICONOCLASTS.

And now, a picture of the other extreme of the Iconoclastic movement of the times. It is the figure of Rabelais,-as peculiar, eccentric a phenomenon as the one just described.

Guizot, in his Philosophy of Civilization, presents, as one of the few primitive historic forces, the Great Man. Doubtless the Great Man does create history rather than spring from it. One hesitates, however, to bestow such a title upon the natural as well as professional vagrant, the almanacmaker, the traveling physician, the reckless jester, the twenty Heinepower scoffer of his day, known in every drinking-shop of Europe, as by every reader in France-François Rabelais.

But he was a power; in his own day recognized as such; doubly recognized by us, who can better judge the power by the effects. Let us call him a lesser volcano-in the Virgilian phrase," vomiting forth mud" and slag, hideous smoke-forms, and sickening vapors; but amid these, also, some fires that help to clear the stagnant air, and whose heavings shake asunder the edifices of men, or weaken their foundations for the future attacks of time.

In the philosophy of education, as advanced by the thinkers of France, Rabelais, was the wiser father of Jean Jacques. Doubtless he furnished the latter with the seedthoughts of "Emile." While, at the present day, "Gargantua and Pantagruel" is a work which only professional duty should compel one to endure, it will justly interest and will profit any thoughtful person to glance at this field of its author's influence.

In an age enslaved by precedents and forms-by precedents, the mummies of once living systems; by forms that were fast making mummies of the living beings who submitted to them,-in such an age, Rabelais, with many co-workers in other fields than his, struck bold and mortal blows at the precedents and forms of education. Under the scholastic, exaggerated syllogism, he placed the slow match which should yet blow it, with its majors and minors, to the limbo of all such pedantic trash. The metaphysical search for causes, instead of the practical experiment for discovery of values, he also assigned to a new and its proper place. He

claims of natural science, when nature was considered the realm of the prince of dark

ness.

He suggested the true end of culture to be, not mere symmetrical being, but efficient doing. He suggested these fundamental truths, because it would have been vain to assert them explicitly. As to the

RABELAIS.

mold into which he cast them for public effect, it can only be said that he was the child of his age as well as one of its masters. His aimless, vagrant, unmanly life proves this. His greatest literary utterance proves it still more conclusively.

The monarch and the philosopher-monk, the pious devotee and the equally pious desecrator; love and battle, the tormenting ambition and the luxurious or imbecile indifference of kings, deeds of honor and of shame, these are the full-lengths and the compositions which have happened to arrest our eye in this brilliant picture-hall of the sixteenth century. With nearly all the clearness of form and vividness of color that brighten the scenes of the Crusades, they glow with as rich a sentiment, with a deeper tone of principle and conviction. We emerge from the stories of the preceding age as from

those low-walled galleries of Versailles, which held unending lines of battle-pieces alone. We think man an animal that feeds and fights. In this sixteenth century apartment, we find the fighting animal with the thinking mind and the adoring soul. The individual was still a true object of the historian's attention, for he made history; and the individual is the true subject of art. Men, too, while they hated well, loved well also. They did both with an expressiveness which rejoiced the artist's eye. They were not ashamed to weep, to embrace, to kiss at meeting or farewell, to kneel their reverence or loyalty, to leap out their delight. The

costumes of civil life, the accouterments of war, were still full of individuality and every picturesque grace, from the flaming red cloak, to the cool light of the warrior's silver shield; and the street duel, the goodnight of Jessica and Lorenzo, the brawl of the servants of Capulet and Montague, the commonest outdoor or indoor incident had an architectural setting which made a picture of its own.

Every condition of sensuous and heroic art at once fulfilled-the beautiful, the tender, the tragic! The bare story of the age, one of the strongest, grandest frescoes in the Walhalla of the nations!

PREVIOUS to the year 1870 no attempt had been made in England and Wales to meet the educational requirements of the entire nation, and consequently a considerable proportion of the population was growing up ignorant of the elements of culture. It was only thirty years earlier that Government made its first grant in aid of common schools. Lord John Russell, from the Whig benches of the House of Commons, was the statesman who succeeded in procuring this innovation, which was strenuously opposed by the Tory party. It is astonishing to us, living but one generation later, to read the utterances made by members of the British Parliament against the proposal. Sir Robert Inglis, for example, is reported to have said: "The best thing is to keep the people ignorant, and they will serve efficiently and well; but educate them and make them wise, and they will be discontented, they will be our masters." Sir John Russell, however, as stated above, carried his proposal, and in 1840 a grant of about £150,000 was made. The amount allowed by the Government steadily increased year by year, the Church of England, Roman Catholic and Wesleyan Methodist bodies of Christians availing themselves of the assistance offered, which implied their obedience to conditions declined by the remaining more influential religious denominations, who are conscientiously opposed to receiving financial aid from the State for any object. Year after year the advantages of enlarged facilities for popular instruction became more patent with their growth, and

us

by 1870 the public mind was ripe for the adoption of a scheme of elementary education intended to compass the national need. Accordingly a bill "To Provide Elementary Education in England and Wales" was in that year proposed by the Gladstone Government, our late visitor, the Right Honorable William E. Forster, Vice-President of the Committee on Education, being intrusted with its conduct. It was received with general approval at the first, due, in a great measure, to the success of Mr. Forster's speech when he introduced it. Soon, however, as its features became better known and understood, it encountered great opposition, which has been continued ever since, a powerful section of politicians objecting to its maintenance of the denominational principle, by which is meant the granting of aid to religious bodies. But even the late House of Commons, the most radical ever elected, was not prepared to forego altogether the principle upon which grants had hitherto been made, and the bill as passed meets the views of denominationalists. At the same time, as will be more fully explained afterward, it practically recognized a broader principle, which will, doubtless, in time prevail over the older and conservative one. To hasten the abrogation of grants to the churches, an organization called the Birmingham Educational League was established a few years ago. Mr. George Dixon, one of the members of Parliament for Birmingham, is one of its most conspicuous adherents, and many eminent names appear in its executive and membership. Speaking

broadly, their platform, if carried out, would cover the land with schools supported on the same principle as the public schools in the United States. It may be mentioned here, as indicating one tendency of political thought in England, that the act of 1870 makes it compulsory in all Government aided schools, that the time when religious instruction is given shall be distinctly stated by the school management, and also limits the time, thus affording opportunity for the absence of those children whose parents object to their receiving it. To those who know England in the rural districts it need not be said, that practically the "Conscience Clause" is therein a dead letter, although conspicuously posted in the school-room; for the simple reason that the clergyman of the Establishment possesses an almost autocratic influence in his parish, and very few parents have the moral courage to create an invidious distinction-perhaps the adjective is a trifle too strong-between their own and other children. Manifestly the adoption of the League platform would imply a large expenditure in consideration of the vested interests of the churches who have provided those conditions under which Government aid is given, and who have received it accordingly.

The Elementary Education Act, 1870, which received the royal assent on August 9th, in that year, and was amended in 1873, divided the whole of England and Wales into "school districts," and required defined local authority in every district to supply information with respect to educational provision, to the Government Education Department. Otherwise, persons may be appointed by this authority to report thereupon. If the Department is not satisfied, after such inquiry, that sufficient educational provision has been already made for the whole population in any district, it is empowered to cause a "School Board" to be formed by popular election, in boroughs by burgesses, in parishes by rate-payers; this body to be elected for a three years' term of office, to be a body corporate, with power to acquire and hold property and to possess an official seal, and empowered to raise a "School Fund" in the form of a tax for the payment of the expenses necessary to the discharge of its function, which is to make such adequate provision. School Boards, moreover, have power to enforce attendance at school, and some have availed themselves of it, and procured magisterial convictions against offending parents. The

Board is to be elected by ballot and cumulative voting. Very few School Boards have been, in this way, compelled into being. Most of them have been voluntarily provided, as the act requires, upon the demand of not fewer than fifty rate-payers in borough districts, and one-third of the rate-payers in parishes. It is scarcely necessary to add, that in many districts, owing to the exist ence already of adequate school accommodations, the formation of a School Board has not been necessary.

The election of a School Board is, in most places larger than a village, an exciting occurrence, second in importance only to a Parliamentary contest. Candidates are as distinctly divided into denominationalists and adherents of the policy of the Birmingham League, as, in the other case, into Liberal and Conservative. Newspaper records, preliminary to and after the election, give the religious profession of the candidates, which varies from Roman Catholic, through the degrees of removal from that church to the Friend and Freethinker. A good deal of adverse criticism has been bestowed upon the system of cumulative voting, which may need a word of explanation. If, say, there are ten candidates, the voter is provided with a paper upon which the names of the whole number of persons are printed, and may give, if he so please, ten votes to one candidate, or distribute his marks if he will. This peculiar system induces frequently the placing of the Roman Catholic clergyman at the head of the poll, many members of his flock dutifully giving him their undivided favors. The School Board, in addition to the levying of funds, building, the engagement of teachers and such other arrangements as are necessary to the supplementing of existing educational agencies, so as to make the instruction in secular subjects of all the children in the district practicable, is empowered to decide whether any, or what character of religious exercise shall be practiced in the schools, and many and fierce are the debates in some instances to be fought out before a decision on this delicate matter is arrived at.

Elementary schools are intended for the education of children between three and fifteen years of age, and the weekly fee charged to each child must not exceed ninepence.

It is most frequently much less than this amount, varying from one penny to three or four pence. The pupils are divided into "Standards," six in number, based upon degrees of proficiency in reading, writing,

and arithmetic; and, in the upper Standards, other elementary subjects, which are liable to a yearly change, when the "Code," defining the requirements made by the Government in every Standard, is subjected to a revision. A "Government Inspector," generally accompanied by an "Assistant Inspector," who has been an elementary teacher, and whose duties relieve his superior of the detail of inspection, visits every school receiving Government aid once a year. In anticipation of his coming, elaborate returns must be drawn up of the attendance of the children, the number to be submitted to him for examination in every Standard, expenditure in building, school furniture, salaries, and so forth. No child can be presented for examination who has not made two hundred and fifty attendances. The school-rooms are occupied twice a day five days in the week during the year.

The conditions as to the attendance and proficiency of the child being fulfilled, and expenditure in the various ways above indicated being made equal to half the esti

mated cost of each child's education for the year, the remaining moiety, fifteen shillings, is allowed by the Education Department. This sum is the "Government Grant," as distinguished from the local proceeds in the form of fees and subscriptions, and, in cases where School Boards have been formed, the School Fund. It is probable that during an early session of Parliament the grant will be raised to eighteen or twenty shillings, to keep pace with the necessity for remunerating teachers more liberally, and the increased variety and value of educational apparatus of various kinds. The amendments to the Act, made in 1873, provide principally that the Board of Guardians-elected to superintend locally the administration of relief, raised by poor's rates, to the poor, subject to the authority of the Local Government Board of the Imperial Administration-shall pay school fees for pauper children; and makes exceptions to the requirements of the original Act, chiefly in order to provide additional labor in agricultural districts, as during the harvest, for example.