and the aged master or mistress teaching the mechanical art of reading or writing, and thinking that they are teaching that alone, I feel that the aged instructor is protecting life, insuring property, fencing the altar, guarding the throne, giving space and liberty to all the fine powers of man, and lifting him up to his own place in the order of Creation.

“There are, I am sorry to say, many countries in Europe which have taken the lead of England in the great business of education, and it is a thoroughly commendable and legitimate object of ambition in a Sovereign to overtake them.  The names, too, of malefactors, and the nature of their crimes, are subjected to the Sovereign;—­how is it possible that a Sovereign, with the fine feelings of youth, and with all the gentleness of her sex, should not ask herself, whether the human being whom she dooms to death, or at least does not rescue from death, has been properly warned in early youth of the horrors of that crime, for which his life is forfeited—­’Did he ever receive any education at all?—­did a father and a mother watch over him?—­was he brought to places of worship?—­was the Word of God explained to him?—­was the Book of Knowledge opened to him?—­Or am I, the fountain of mercy, the nursing-mother of my people, to send a forsaken wretch from the streets to the scaffold, and to punish by unprincipled cruelty the evils of unprincipled neglect?’”

From zeal for education, we go on to love of Peace.—­

“A second great object, which I hope will be impressed upon the mind of this Royal Lady, is a rooted horror of war—­an earnest and passionate desire to keep her people in a state of profound peace.  The greatest curse which can be entailed upon mankind is a state of war.  All the atrocious crimes committed in years of peace—­all that is spent in peace by the secret corruptions, or by the thoughtless extravagance, of nations—­are mere trifles compared with the gigantic evils which stalk over the world in a state of war.  God is forgotten in war—­every principle of Christian charity trampled upon—­human labour destroyed—­human industry extinguished—­you see the son, and the husband, and the brother, dying miserably in distant lands—­you see the waste of human affections—­you see the breaking of human hearts—­you hear the shrieks of widows and children after the battle—­and you walk over the mangled bodies of the wounded calling for death.  I would say to that Royal child, Worship God by loving peace—­it is not your humanity to pity a beggar by giving him food or raiment—­I can do that; that is the charity of the humble and the unknown—­widen you your heart for the more expanded miseries of mankind—­pity the mothers of the peasantry who see their sons torn away from their families—­pity your poor subjects crowded into hospitals, and calling in their last breath upon their distant country and their young Queen—­pity the stupid, frantic