is only necessary to exercise a rigorous judgment in the selection.

There is one plan more which ought not to be overlooked in providing the poor with materials for their private reading, and which, in the present circumstances of the times would be peculiarly beneficial; namely, founding Parochial Libraries throughout the kingdom. The nature and extent of these institutions might vary with the circumstances of the case. In large towns they would perhaps be sometimes difficult to regulate; but, in country parishes, they might be kept up and watched over at very little trouble and expense. The plan might even be adopted, on a small scale, either by an individual clergyman, or by one or more benevolent persons in a parish. A few pounds' worth of well-assorted books and tracts would furnish the poor with a circulating library which might have a powerful effect in superseding vain and immoral publications, especially as they would possess the advantage of coming to them free of expense. It is earnestly to be hoped, that the excellent Society of Dr. Bray's Associates, or some other institution, may be enabled before long to take up this measure on a large scale, so that no poor man in any part of the country shall henceforth have it in his power to say that he resorted to

exceptionable publications from inability to procure good ones. A parish library in every vestry in the kingdom, well selected and duly managed, if we may judge by the instances in which the practice has been hitherto adopted, might produce a most powerful effect in promoting devotion and church principles *.

It is highly important, that in all these measures for the promotion of piety and church principles, and indeed in every other plan of benevolence in which the poor are concerned, there should be a constant aim to make them as far as possible their own almoners. Much may be done in this respect by endeavouring to inte rest them in the object, and by leading them to look chiefly to their own agency to carry it into effect; though wisely availing themselves of the guidance of those whose benevolence of disposition, and whose influence or station in life, constitute them their natural guardians. Till the

* The author little thought when he wrote the above, that he should have the satisfaction of stating within less than a month after, that the Society for promoting Christian Knowledge had taken up the scheme of parochial libraries. Not having been able for some time to attend the Monthly Board of the Society, he was not aware that such a plan was in agitation; and he feels the more pleasure in the unexpected concurrence, as it tends to satisfy his mind that the other plans which he has ventured to propose are not visionary.

character of the lower classes shall be elevated by means like the preceding-of which early Christian education forms the chief-we shall look in vain for any very general improvement either of their moral or their physical condition. But in proportion as they can be raised to the dignity of willing agents in their own amelioration, we may augur favourably of their advancement. The effects of various charitable societies have been peculiarly auspicious in this respect. Taught, by means of such institutions, to feel for the wants and welfare of others, many of the poor have insensibly found their own condition improved; their habits of life have been elevated; they have attained a higher degree of comfort and respectability; their dormant virtues have been stimulated into action; and the endeavour to husband something from their little store, for the benefit of those whose necessity was still greater than their own, far from diminishing their pittance, has increased it, by fostering habits of providence and self-denial-and, so far as their motives have been of a right kind, doubtless by drawing down the blessing of God upon their exertions. In no country whatever, and least of all

*

By the poor is not, of course, meant literally paupers, but the comparatively poor; the labouring or manufacturing classes, for example.

in a country like our own, can the poor be managed, or ought they to be managed, like a herd of irrational animals. They must be guided through the medium of the affections and faculties with which a merciful Providence has endowed them, in common with their more wealthy neighbours. The same sort of agency which a judicious preceptor unobtrusively contrives in order to actuate a well-disposed, but high-spirited, pupil for his good, must be employed in reference to the poor. They must rather be taught to feel pleasure in the consideration that the path in which they are proceeding is that of duty, and that which is really most conducive to their welfare, than to listen, as it were, only to the sound of the scourge which is to goad them, like beasts of burden, to unwilling toils. And it should be added, that the cultivation of such a spirit and such habits among them, will greatly promote both the civil and the religious prosperity of the country. For the well-informed and devotional poor cannot be made the easy dupes, either of a seditious or an anti-Christian philosophy; as, besides their reverence for the injunctions of Holy Writ, they learn to feel that they possess real and substantial sources of comfort and respectability, which neither the flights of Theophilanthropism nor the reveries of human

perfectibility can bestow. In addition to abstract sanctions, in addition to the commands of Scripture and the example of good men, such characters have a personal bond of attachment to the institutions of their country, and the temples. of their God, in their daily experience of the blessings which they themselves enjoy, and which they will be anxious to transmit unimpaired to their posterity.

If persons of wealth and local influence would more diligently exert themselves to promote such a spirit as this in their respective, neighbourhoods, they would confer a blessing of no ordinary magnitude on their country, and would also find their charity "twice blessed" by means of its re-action on themselves and their families. And here it is most necessary to recur to what has been already so earnestly mentioned the importance of personal example. In vain will those who profess to desire an extension of religion and church principles, institute, schools, or instruct the adult population, or visit the abodes of poverty, if they do not themselves shew their sincerity by their practice, their faith by their works. And in fact, the poor have a right to consider every Bible, Prayerbook, and tract, distributed among them, with every subscription to National Schools or other religious institutions, as an express promise and