25 JANUARY 1868, Page 2

Mr. Lowe concluded by a very forcible denunciation of educa-

tional endowments, which he considered as bribes given by a bar- barous age to a civilized age to keep it back as near as possible to the standard of its own barbarism. After this, which is quite as just as any epigram can be, Mr. Lowe went on to what seems to us, we confess, buncombe quite unworthy of him,—a protest against any interference of the State,—which means pracally the highest education of the country,—with the curriculum of public schools and colleges. " It is the privilege and prerogative of the parents of England to direct the education of their children,"—i.e., the privilege and prerogative of a person who is too much absorbed in his till and his counting-house to note the greater affairs of the world at all, to guide his children by the light of his own ignorance. If the State cannot make its public schools good enough to guide the judgments of parents, the parents will never make much of it for themselves.