ry. Fancy a _National_
School which teaches the children no more of the state and history of
Ireland than of Belgium or Japan! We have spoken to pupils, nay, to
masters of the _National_ Schools, who were ignorant of the physical
character of every part of Ireland except their native villages--who
knew not how the people lived, or died, or sported, or fought--who had
never heard of Tara, Clontarf, Limerick, or Dungannon--to whom the
O'Neills and Sarsfields, the Swifts and Sternes, the Grattans and
Barrys, our generals, statesmen, authors, orators, and artists, were
alike and utterly unknown! Even the hedge schools kept up something of
the romance, history, and music of the country.

Until the _National_ Schools fall under national control, the people
must take _diligent care to procure books on the history, men,
language, music, and manners of Ireland for their children_. These
schools are very good so far as they go, and the children should be
sent to them; but they are not _national_, they do not use the Irish
language, nor teach anything peculiarly Irish.

As to solitary study, lists of books, pictures, and maps can alone be
given; and to do this usefully would exceed our space at present.

As it is, we find that we have no more room and have not said a word on
what we proposed to write--namely, Self-Education through the
Temperance Societies.

We do not regret having wandered from our professed subject, as, if
treated exclusively, it might lead men into errors which no
afterthought could cure.

What we chiefly desire is to set the people on making out plans for
their own and their children's education. Thinking cannot be done by
deputy--they must think for themselves.

THE HISTORY OF IRELAND.

Something has been done to rescue Ireland from the reproach that she
was a wailing and ignorant slave.

Brag as we like, the reproach was not undeserved, nor is it quite
removed.

She is still a serf-nation, but she is struggling wisely and patiently,
and is ready to struggle, with all the energy her advisers think
politic, for liberty. She has ceased to wail--she is beginning to make
up a record of English crime and Irish suffering, in order to explain
the past, justify the present, and caution the future. She begins to
study the past--not to acquire a beggar's eloquence in petition, but a
hero's wrath in strife. She no longer tears and parades her wounds to
win her smiter's mercy; and now she should look