and if they prove less apt or
less capable learners because they have been taught reading, writing,
grammar, geography and arithmetic in secular schools, it argues some
defect in your theology or its teachers. If you really wanted the
children taught Religious truth, you would be right glad to have them
taught letters and other rudimental lessons elsewhere, so as to be
fitted to apprehend and retain your inculcations. It should suffice for
the condemnation of all Established Churches ever more, that the
State-paid Priesthood of Great Britain is to-day the chief impediment to
a system of Common Schools throughout the British Isles.

The Catholic Clergy have more excuse. They, too unite in the
impracticable requirement that the dogmas of their Church shall be
taught in the schools attended by Catholic children, when they ought to
teach them these dogmas out of School-hours, and be content that no
antagonist dogmas are taught in the secular Schools. But _they_ receive
nothing from the State, and have good reason to regard it as hostile to
their faith, therefore to suspect its purposes and watch narrowly its
movements. If they would only take care to have a good system of Common
School Education established and efficiently sustained in Spain,
Portugal, Italy, Mexico, and other Countries wherein they are the
conscience-keepers of the great majority and practically omnipotent in
the sphere of moral and social effort, I could better excuse their
unfortunate attitude here. As it is, the difference between them and
their State-paid rivals here seems one of position rather than of
principle. And, in spite of either or both, this generation will yet see
Common Schools free and universal throughout this realm. But even a year
seems long to wait for it.

TOWN GOSSIP.

Preparations are on foot for a grand banquet at Birmingham to the Royal
Commissioners, the Foreign Commissioners and the Jurors at the
Exhibition, to take place on or about the 16th. This is to be followed
by one still more magnificent given by the Mayor and Council of London,
which the Queen is expected to attend. The East India Company give one
to-morrow evening, but I hope then to be in France, as I intend to leave
for Paris to-morrow. The advertisements promise to put us "through in
eleven hours" by the quickest and dearest route. Others take twice as
many.

Miss CATHARINE HAYES, a Vocalist of European reputation, who sang the
last winter mainly in Rome, mea