THE THREE KINGDOMS.

THE month of May 1851 will be long memorable as that of the opening of the Great Exhibition. The mere
excitement of the show has even yet not subsided. The time is doubtless at hand when it will begin
to yield the graver lessons which, in the presence of that wealth of natural products and those triumphs of human
industry, may be expected to address themselves to nations as well as men. For the first time in the history
of the earth have its workers and thinkers assembled from its remotest parts to show what each may give
and each receive in a generous interchange of thought, invention, ingenuity, and taste; nor is it possible to
imagine but that the world itself must largely profit by that first common assemblage of her children for a
purpose so noble and peaceful. But such greater agencies hitherto have been working in silence. On the
surface only curiosity and excitement have been visible; and these so insatiable and eager as to have
pushed aside every other description of enjoyment, almost every other claim of duty. The theatres have
been deserted, the shops unfrequented, gardens and picture galleries unattractive, the railways cheated of their
summer crowds, and parliament counted out every other night. Nobody has had a care or thought but for
the gay furniture of Austria, or the veiled sculpture of Milan, or the jewels of the Queen of Spain, or the
mountain of light from Lahore, or the regal treasures of India, or Pugin's mediæval court, or the carpets
and lace of Brussels, or the glass of Bohemia, or the shawls and brocades and packsaddles of Tunis, or the
stuffed animals from Wurtemberg, or the scarfs and tobacco-pipes from Damascus, or the Sèvres china and
tapestry, or the English pottery and porcelain, or the little boy who presides over the envelope-folder of
Mr. Delarue. Graver matters are therefore still waiting their turn. There will come a time for the ploughs
and scarifiers, for the mules and power-looms, for the centrifugal pumps and vertical printing-presses, for the
hardware and textile fabrics, as well as for the raw materials of produce, the mineral, vegetable, and animal
treasures out of which industry and art have hitherto won so much, and are now contemplating the
acquisition of so much more. With the earnest desire that these hopes may not be disappointed, and that in
its results this extraordinary undertaking may minister as largely to the enduring triumphs of science and
the useful arts, as it has already ministered to the curiosity and pleasure of all classes of the people, we may
leave for the present the Great Exhibition.

With that desire one subject of overmastering importance cannot fail to connect itself, and it happens to
be one of the few which even above the dust and din from Hyde Park has been able to make itself visible
and audible in the House of Commons. Mr. Fox has again attempted, and failed, to obtain the consent of
that house to a plan for promoting the education of the people by the establishment of free schools for
secular instruction, to be supported by local rates and managed by committees elected specially for that
purpose by the rate payers. His speech was temperate, and based on principles as well as facts the most
irrefragable. He repeated and reinforced the truth never to be too often insisted on, that education is
the only social safeguard against crime; and he exhibited the awful inadequacy of the means at present
existing to render that safeguard effective, or to cope with the increasing mass of misery and vice
which eludes all resources of police, as it baffles all the efforts of philanthropy. He contrasted the
gains of education and skilled labour in England with the degradation and loss attendant upon the
ignorance in which our unskilled labourers are kept. He exhibited the energy and genius of Englishmen
unsurpassed in the contest of intellect and skill, wherever the means were offered; he dwelt upon the
glories of our national institutions, of our literary fame, of our naval and military achievements; and
he pointed out with what just pride we might contemplate the rank we took in the great national
competition of arts and industry which now absorbed the public attention. It was not till the condition
of what are called the lower orders amongst us attracted inquiry that we were obliged to descend from
our proud pre-eminence. Then it became no longer the question whether or not we stood first, but
whether we stood sixth, tenth, or twelfth in the means and appliances of popular education. None of
these statements were denied—to dispute them was impossible. But the old arguments of principle were
urged (for in detail all other points of difference might easily have been accommodated) to any system of
education with which religion was not compulsorily joined. The insincerity as well as fallacy of this objection lies
in its imputing to the advocates of secular education what is called an indifference to religion. Nothing can
be more uncandid or more untrue. All of them would argue, as Mr. Fox did, that without religion there
can be no education deserving of the name; what they add to this, and would agitate for, is the conviction,
such is the variety and inveteracy of the several forms of sectarian belief in England, that the efforts of
the schoolmaster, in schools maintained by the public, should be confined to preparing and expanding the
mind for receiving religious training from the parents at the domestic hearth, and from the ministers of
religion in church or chapel. Is it conceivable that what is called secular education should have any other
effect than this? What is the education for which alone all the better provided classes are indebted to their
several schools, if it be not strictly secular? How much of the Bible is held inseparable from Homer and
Horace, how much of the Evidences from Thucydides and Livy, in the schools where all our senators are
bred? Admitting the paramount importance of religious instruction, who can possibly doubt, excepting
those wise senators themselves, but that this importance is enhanced and confirmed by instruction in other