To support, however, a school in a proper state of efficiency—that is to say, to furnish it with properly trained teachers, male and female, and with the requisite books and other instruments of teaching—we do not think that we are overstraining the point if we assign the annual sum of one hundred pounds as necessary. This sum might either be divided in the proportion of sixty pounds per annum for a male teacher, and forty pounds per annum for a female,—or it might most advantageously, in some cases, be bestowed on a teacher and his wife, supposing them both capable of undertaking such duties. Of course, in all cases suitable buildings, including school-rooms for both sexes, residences and gardens for the teachers, should be provided at the public expense, and maintained in repair from a distinct fund. We shall then perceive that the sum mentioned above, amounting in round numbers to one hundred thousand pounds per annum, would be sufficient for the purpose; and we think that it would not only be so, but that, it would be made to furnish a sufficient sum for retiring and superannuated pensions, on the principle adopted in several of the Continental states, of an annual percentage being deducted from the salaries of all civil servants to form a fund of this nature, specially devoted to their own benefit. We do not throw out any specific hints for the collection and management of this fund; but it might be raised along with other local rates, and by the same local officers, so that the smallest possible addition might be thereby made to the cost of collecting it.
One part of this plan, however, without which the whole would be inefficient, would be the forming of a body of inspectors, and the establishing of training-schools or colleges for teachers. The latter are already beginning to exist, and machinery for the former is now at work under the direction of the Committee of Council. But we should hope to see training-schools established on a much larger and more efficient scale than at present; and we should desire to see the appointment of inspectors, and the management of the education funds, taken out of the hands of such a body as the Privy Council, and given to the local and provincial authorities, civil and ecclesiastical, of Wales. If such appointments remained in the hands of government, political jobbing would act upon them with greater intensity than through the medium of local interests and county influence; and, what would be far worse than this, another impulse would be given to the principle of centralisation, one of the most fatal for national spirit and national freedom that can be devised, and which we are called upon to resist at all times, but especially when a party of Whig politico-economists, as wild and destructive in the ultimate tendencies of their theories as the Girondists of France, are in possession of the reins of power.
We say nothing on the subject of Sunday schools; we leave them altogether to the consideration and support of the Church, and the various sects in Wales, by whom, if they are wanted, they can be efficiently maintained without any interference of the state. But we call loudly upon the legislature of the United Kingdom to give at least the initiative and the moving power to the natural inertness of the Welsh people; and we would summon them, as they value the happiness, the tranquillity, and the moral advancement of that portion of the country, to take the matter of education under their primary control, and to form a general system, harmonious in its manner of working, comprehensive in its extent, and tolerant in its religious tendencies. Much opposition and prejudice and clamour would have to be combated, as upon every question seems now to be the case in what we fondly consider the model of all political constitutions. But unless the legislature and the statesmen at the head of affairs are prepared to meet these obstacles, and to remove them in their sovereign wisdom, they had better declare their incapacity openly, and renounce their functions.
THE SILVER CROSS.—A CAMPAIGNING SKETCH.
FROM THE GERMAN OF ERNEST KOCH.
NIGHT-QUARTERS.
In the village of Careta, upon the mountains near the Arga, which flows from the Pyrenees to Pampeluna, the wind whistled and the snow drifted upon a stormy January evening of the year 1836. It was about seven of the clock: José, a sturdy peasant, sat by his kitchen fire, on which withered vine-branches blazed and crackled, and dried his hempen sandals. Beside him knelt a haggard old woman, handsome in the ugliness of one of those strongly-marked, melancholy, yellow countenances, in which a legend of the Alhambra seems to lurk. Dressed in rusty black, she crouched like an animal by the hearth, poking and blowing at the fire, which sometimes broadly illuminated the remotest corners of the room and rafters of the roof, at others was barely sufficiently vivid to light up her mysterious old physiognomy. Suddenly a tremendous gust of wind burst open the wooden shutter, and howled into the apartment.