But not only were there many bishops without any fixed territorial jurisdiction, but they were often attached to monasteries, and were subject to their respective abbots, though these were only presbyters. From the story given by Dr. Todd (pp. 11-13) it appears that St. Brigid had a bishop attached to her monastery at Kildare, to perform all the functions peculiar to the episcopate, without, however, giving up any of her own authority or jurisdiction. This, and many other stories, fully confirm the accusation made as to the want of fixed dioceses. The story in the 'Book of Armagh,' of St. Patrick's consecration by Amathorex, plainly shows (whether the tale be true or not) that in Muirchu's time (about A.D. 700) it was not considered an irregularity that a bishop should be consecrated by a single bishop. Dr. Todd (pp. 74-77) gives other proofs of this. The ordination per saltum, i. e., conferring episcopal orders upon one who had not received the previous orders of deacon and priest, rests upon more slender evidence, though it is not improbable that it may have existed along with the other practices which we have mentioned.

All these show either that the customs of the Irish Church were not derived from Rome, or that the insular position of the Church, and its want of intercourse with the Latin Churches had caused the introduction of anomalous practices. The probability seems to be, that the Irish Church derived many of its customs through a portion of the Gallican Church, from Asia Minor; and its insular position preserved many of these customs long after they had been completely obliterated elsewhere. The traces of orientalism in the early Irish Church are undoubtedly wrapped in much obscurity; but we must not dismiss as mere idle legends the tradition that ascribed their time of keeping Easter, their tonsure, and their liturgy* to the appointment of St. John.

We cannot linger over these topics, which offer so tempting a theme to the student of Church History, but must now take leave of St. Patrick and his biographer. On the whole, notwithstanding its solid merits, we confess to some feeling of disappointment in Dr. Todd's book. It does not place us so far in advance of the knowledge given by others as we expected; and the arrangement of the work takes much from its interest. We say the arrangement; for certainly the defect is not in the style, or in the want of interesting matter. The extracts we have given are sufficient to show that Dr. Todd handles his subject clearly and philosophically, and writes in an attractive style. Notwithstand

* See the curious tract printed by Dr. Moran, p. 243, which traces the Irish Liturgy cursus Scottorum, from St. John through Irenæus, Polycarp, Germanus and Lupus.

ing, his book is a heavy one to read through. This seems to arise from a defect in the plan, which not only reverses the natural chronological order, but scatters the remarks upon a single topic among different parts of the book. But though we notice this defect, we willingly testify that Dr. Todd has rendered a great service to the literature of his country and the history of the Church; and we believe that the name of his biographer will long be remembered in connexion with that of the Apostle and patron Saint of Ireland.

ART. VII.—1, Principles of Education. By the Author of ' Amy Herbert,' 2 vols.

2. Woman's Mission.

1865.

N more than one treatise on the education of women, we have

them for the duties of maternity. They are to be taught and trained to the end that they may be able to teach and train their children. If this theory is to be admitted, at least there should be no offence to the theorists in a faint smile at the inadequacy of the means to the end, under modern systems. Shallow, superficial, rapid as modern female education too often is, it is not quite fair to assume that the rising generation stands to it in the exact relation of fruit to tree. And, notwithstanding familiar instances of great men, whose character, ability, and genius have been directly traceable to maternal character and influence-notwithstanding Napoleon's dictum that the fate of the child is always the work of his mother,' and the corroborations of it in the case of John Wesley, the Napier family, and many othersmuch remains to be said for the other side of the question, and examples, such as the second Pitt and the second Peel, may be urged to show that not seldom it is from the male parent that ability, energy, and intellect descend to his offspring. Without at all undervaluing that benignest influence, to have lost or never to have known which is one of the sorest earthly privations, the softening, winning, humanising influence of a mother, we think that it is an incomplete and narrow view of the scope of education to limit it to training woman for a destiny that may never be hers. Rather should that system recommend itself which purports to educate for the wider object of producing the perfect woman, nobly planned,' who shall be equal to the occasion, whether it be to bring up children, to be companion to a husband, whose home it is denied her to bless with offspring, or, perchance, to illustrate in single blessedness the sunny afternoon

of

of unmarried life.' The primary and divine idea of woman is 'a help meet for man.' And if so, in educating her for her vocation, respect must be had, not less to such provisions as may fit her to exercise her proper influence as a wife over her husband, or as an unmarried woman over society, than to such as may make her a model mother to her boys and girls. In each sphere, if she realises her mission, she has it in her power to be vainqueur des vainqueurs de la terre;' the more cultivated her mind and heart, the more complete her spell in whatsoever state of life she finds herself occupying under the allotments of Providence. The childless wife, if highly educated, has the greater power to solace her husband's regret at lack of offspring by being all in all to him herself; the maiden lady, whose youthful training has ministered to her the essentials for becoming, if need be, agreeable company to herself, is the more likely to be welcome in society, because she brings to it the grace of contentment with her lot, and the power and will to contribute to it additional ornament and brightness. It is the lack of sound early education and intelligent preparation for life which makes the dissatisfied old maid, no less than the silly wife, and the weak incompetent mother. The whole subject, then, has a wide interest for the other sex. Considerations affecting woman's development claim our ready sympathies. When in Mr. Froude's Henry the Eighth the paradox is mooted, if we recollect aright, that in a world without women that monarch would have been faultless, it occurs at once to the male reader that in such a world, humanly speaking, it would be indifferent whether one were good or bad. The joys and sorrows, the ups and downs, the prizes and the reverses of man's life, can scarcely be conceived of except in relation to his gentler helpmate. What, then, more natural than that the steps to fit her most completely for her mission should form an ever-welcome topic-a thesis, on which aught novel that can be said, anything old that can be dressed in newer fashion, is well-nigh sure of favourable reception. In this belief we venture a few remarks on female education from a male point of view, deferring all the while to the opinion of really qualified female writers on the subject, and freely admitting that a man's estimate of the matter is in danger of being one-sided and selfish.

On the first point for consideration, the time over which female education should extend, we have little fear of being at issue with those most capable of dispassionate judgment, although we may perchance do despite to the views of modern young ladies, and contravene the principles of worldly-wise mammas. About early training all are more or less agreed. A good mother begins teaching her child from the moment it can crawl, and the educa

tion of the first years is ever the most indelible. Happiest that childhood where the mother's teaching goes on longest; next to it that where the direction, if not the details, are under the mother's eye. But as to rudimentary teaching, no one doubts the wisdom of beginning to impart it early, and in gradual, moderate draughts. It is when the rudiments are mastered, and the girl in her teens, that difference of opinion arises touching the hours and years of female instruction. Here, if one may judge by common practice, the verdict of mothers and daughters is as much at variance with that of disinterested lookers-on, as universal suffrage differs from the decision of a select committee. While lookers-on are wont to deem that the meet preparation for cultivated womanhood is gradual unforced acquisition of such knowledge, graces, and endowments, as will sit easily, cling lastingly, and minister the most unfailing resources to the future life, it seems as though those most nearly concerned had come to the conclusion 'that the main object is to crowd so much of music, languages, sciences, graces, and accomplishments, into the years between twelve and seventeen, that at the latter limit a girl may be pronounced to be 'out,' may look to take her part in the grownup world, and be at leisure to contemplate an eligible investment in the matrimonial market, before her younger sisters arrive at the margin of this immature Rubicon. Yet it can scarcely be doubted that this kind of forcing is physically as well as morally hurtful. The ablest authorities are unanimous in saying that a young girl's intellect is in far greater risk of being overstrained than that of her hardier brother. He has his safety-valves in cricket, football, boating, riding, running; and his rougher system is less susceptible of peril from too much mental food, which it rejects, than the carefully-tended, delicately-nurtured, sooner-developed organisation of the girl, which will retain, it may be, the instruction crowded into a space too small for it, but retain it, too frequently, at the risk of health, and generally to the hurt of mental digestion. A boy at seventeen is entering the most telling years of his mental culture. At the very same age the hot-house plant, his sister, is transferred from the schoolroom, where every appliance has been used to facilitate precocious ripeness of mind and manners; and henceforth the round of gaiety, the engagements of society, the 'no-leisure' of a restless age, preclude, for the most part, the further cultivation of previous studies. We say for the most part, because we must except the light literature and the music, which still divide the hours with croquet, because most attractive to the male sex, most fitted for reproduction in small talk, and most favourable to an indolence resulting from undue previous taxing of the intellect.

Doubtless

Doubtless it may be a human weakness to be evermore singing Ætas parentum pejor avis' as we grow older, and, as such, especially to be distrusted is the inclination to exaggerate the excellencies of our grandmothers and great aunts; yet surely it is noteworthy that, while their training lasted longer, it extended over far less ground, and that of them we may say, without controversy, that they were neither weaker mothers, worse wives, nor less pleasant and agreeable spinsters than are produced under the Procrustean system of the present day. To justify such a system, we must first concede the axiom that girls ought to be taught everything, and taught it moreover by the age of seventeen. And this axiom is one which the more sober-minded of either sex will, we suspect, be loth to grant. It strikes them, on the contrary, that very much ought to be left for after-study; that a great deal of what is non-essential may be passed over, where there is no manifest talent for acquiring it, and that, above all things, the cultivation of bodily health and vigour should go concurrently with the ripening of the mind. For boys and men the stimulus of emulation is wholesome and desirable; but as it is quite out of place among girls, whose sphere is the home circle and whose grace a sweet retiringness, it is surely enough if their schooldays be spent in acquiring such modicums of knowledge as can be easily digested; for these will prove more in the end than the crude notions which a modern schoolgirl carries off from her multifarious lectures. Sound education and instruction effect this chiefly, that they open the door to knowledge, so as to enable the pupil to avail himself of access to it. Let female education recognise this, and extend itself over the eighteenth year, with the understanding that even then it is but intrusted to a girl's own hands, instead of her teacher's, and the fruits will be visible in higher aims, less frivolous tastes, more definiteness of purpose, and greater strength of character. Such common-sense training is the course by which to earn the high and discriminating praise which De Quincey awards to Miss Wordsworth: 'She was content to be ignorant of many things; but what she knew and had really mastered, lay where it could not be disturbed-in the temple of her own fervid heart.'*

Enough has been said to indicate strong dissent from the foolish system of making schoolgirls slaves to the acquisition of accomplishments for which they have no taste; and there is a natural transition to the questions what and how to teach, in negative as well as positive aspects. And here a division meets us which it is less than ever possible to ignore in the present day,

*De Quincey's Works, vol. ii. p. 136.

that