SCHOOLS IN CONNEXION WITH St. JOHN'S COLLEGE, BISHOP'S AUCKLAND. (From the Bishop of New Zealand's Tour in 1848.)

New Zealander, Volume 5, Issue 379, 1 December 1849, Page 6

SCHOOLS IN CONNEXION WITH St. JOHN'S C OLLEGE, BISHOP'S AUCKLAND. (From the Bishop of New Zealand's Tour in 1848.)

Beyond the cbnpel and burial-ground, and nt the corner where the Auckland road brunches off to the Isthmus on the south, and to the Tamski Terry on the norih, a handsome wooden building contains the masters and scholar! of the nalire school, which generally numbers from twenty to twenty-five, but it could be extended indrfiniteiy if our arrangements were lufficiently complete. The Government has recently allotted considerable funds in aid of Industrial Schools, and it will probably bo in this department that we shall make the first attempt at a considerable extension. That there is no difficulty In procuring a supply of promising icholurs, is proved by the f.ict, that lam now wri'ing with my cabin full of native boyi buiy learning the Collect for the day (St. John Baptist). I have eleven in all on board : three are old scholars returning from their holidays with their friends in the south ; and c ght are new scholars, selected from Croixilles Harbour, Otaki,Waikanae, and the Chatham Islands. One old father and mother at Otaki area pattern to all parents. Three years as;o I selected their 8011 out of a class of seventy on the Manawfttu ri»er; and took him w.th me to emlnrk at Port Nicholson, hit aged parents walking with me to see him on board, and resigning him with such a blessing ai un'>«p'ized believers can bestow. A year ago the father tent me a letter, of which the following is a literal translation : — I " O Bishop, with you be the thought, to send your child Simeon back to us, that we may see our life ; and then he ahull return to you to work at your joint work. Your dear Fi iend,— Mat aku." This short letter disproves many assertion! that have been made of the impossibility of maintaining native ichools : — 1, that the parents would not part with their children; 2, thut the boys would always rim away, and never come hack ; 3, that the parents would not allow the boys to work, or learn any industrious habits. As far as my own cxpeiience has extended, I can say that I can procure from the must distant par t of the country as many boys ;u I can m lintaiu and educate ; that the worst often run away, but that a steady remainder of the belt boys grow up under our care ; and that they can be sent home for the holidays like English boys, with the same expet ta ion of their returning in due time ; and, tiuther, that there is no honest or useful woik which the boys are not willing to 1-arn, or which the parents are not willing that they should be taught. In forming an opinion of the impo's bility ol civilizing the whole rising generation of New Zealanderß, I have nvrer perceived any practical iinnedimrnt, exteptlhe difficulty of ob dining a sufficient number of English instructors who would d< vote themnelvts with all their hearts to the work, and do for the native children whit every Christian parent wishes to do for his own. But such a system inunt not only provide thu means nt education, but also instruction in the mott minute details of daily life, md in cvjry useful and industiious ha.it. We are apt to (or. et the laborious processes by wl ich we ncquiicd in early Me the i online dut ci of cleanliness, order, method, and ptiiu tual ty and we often expect to find ready made in a native people, the qualities which we ourselves have learned with difficulty, and which our own counirymcn rupidly lose in the unsettled and ii responsible slovenliness of colonial life. We wxnt a large supply of Oberlins and Felix NcOs, who, having no sense of their own dignity, will think nothing below it : and who will go into ihe lowest and daikest comer of the native clmnirter, to see where the difficu'ty lioa which k eps them back from btinfj assimilated to ourselves. Tucy have received the Gospel freely, and with an unquestioning faith : but the unfavoura* le tendency of n itive hnbiti is every day dragging b;c!c many in o tin state of sin from which they seemed to have escaped. Tliue is scarcely anything so small as not to affect the pirnunsneeof Christianity in this country. Were quite men wl.o will number cvciy hair ot a native's h>Md, a« part of the work of Him who made and reUi dried ih: world. The hist of the college buildings on this tide of the roid is a parochial day-school, conducted by Mrs. Sclwvnap'l urn,u m, Purcha*, with the assistance of other

neighbours. It is small at present, but it is intended hereafter to be a normal school, where the principles of teaching may be practically explained to our students ; that the Clergy may become their Own " organizing matters," uniting, we may hope, more of the spirit, with an equal knowledge of the form, of education. Two important obstacle! will always prevent our employing stipendiary schoolmasters for this purpose— that-, we have neither tl.c men, nor the mean* of remunerating them. It is no aquestiou with us, what is the best mode of conducting our system, but what plans are practicable within the limit of our resources. For thin reason we dispense as much as possible with nehoolmwuern, parish clerks, and other subordinates of the Church, by taking their duties upon ourselves. When we have a regular Rucccssion of candidates for holy ordeia to fill those offices, the system will work smoothly, nnd the clerical body will be iehevedfrom a part of its present duties.

SUPPLY QF CLERGY. Out of a community subject to such tendencies, it became my duty to recruit the ranlu and augment the numbers of the clergy of New Zealand. Many, who had failed in every secular undertaking, thought that they might succeed in the easier duties, as they teemed to them, of the ministry of the Church. To try every thing, and fail, aud then to apply to the Bishop for ordination, seemed to be thought a wise combination of wordly prudence with religious zeal. The notion was favoured, no doubt, by the opinion so current in England, that a Clergyman who is inefficient at home may do good service in a Colony ; that is, that he who it unequal to the less will be ccjml to the greater: for the difficulties of the ministerial office are tenfold greater in a Colony than in the mother country. To | fill up our stations at once with an inactive Clergy teemed to be likely to entail a perpetual curie of inefficiency upon the New Zealand Church. My friends in England tried in vaiti to procure me candidates for ordination, even from the second-rate grammar-schools. My last resource, therefore— and it may prove to be the best — is in the youth now growing up in New Zealand itself, where there is scarcely a cottage without its swarm of healthy children, and a climate which neither enervutcs their bodies nor deadens the intellectual faculties. Why should not bU".h a country yield as good a supply as the relaxing and exhausting c'icnateof Hindostan? If Uiihop's College, Calcutta, succeeds, why »hould St. John's College fail ? But the difference between the two cases is this : We have no privileged or monied classes, who can buy for their children such an education as may predispose them to tSe ministry ; we must go to all orders of colonists, and to the native people without reipect of persons, and select from among their children the future candidates fur Holy Orders. But can I invite a son, whether of a settler or a native, to enter the College specifically as a candidate ? or can I take his parents' authority, that at the age of fourteen or fifteen he has shown the evidences of the Spirit ? or can I discern myself at that early age the characters which are to be seen in the ear and not in the blndc ? And if I find after some years, that the early hope and promise of good has been ful1 iciouß, can I turn a youth adrift upon the world, with that most worthless and unmarketable of all talents, a mere smattering of literature? Or, in the case espe- ' cially of the native youth, knowing their chief bane and danger to be indolence and sell-con ceir, — can I encourage the delusion, that by connecting himself with the College he will obtain an honourable distinction above his fellows, and an exemption from nil piiticipa tion in their labouis? Such false inducements would soon fill our classes with such proselytes as those of the Pharisees, who disengaged themselves from the duties ol life under the pretense of giving their ser/ices to God. If, then, we had not been led by convict on, we should have been driven by necessity, to nuopi our pre c ent plan, of associating our young men with the Co'le^e in some secular capacity, without pledges on either side as to their future course of lile ; but with the understanding that the Bishop's eye i* over them all, and that, when their term of probation is ended, lie will advise them whether il will be expedient for them to enter upon a stricter course of study, with a view to

I'oly Oider\ or to persevere in the practice of the art which they have learned. It will he no reproach to a student if he should prefer the secular employment ; nor will his pnrcnU have incurred any pecuniary obligation, ii 3 his charges at the College will have been borne, in great part, by the woik of his own hands.

Am.rgkd Effects ov E/incTKiciTY on the Cholera.—The following is a letter addressed by j\l. Audrand to the President of the Academy of Paris, rcipccting his experiments on the absence of electricity in the atmosphere as lending to the increase of epidemic diseases — especially cholera. It is at this time exciting mui-h attention in Paris. — M. le President, — Since the cholera has been raging in Paris with more or less intensity for three months, I have made daily observations of the action of the electric machine in order to ascertain of there is not a certain relation between the intensity of tlin ncourge and the absence of the electric fluid, habitually spread in the atmosphere. The machine I have used for my daily observations is rather powerful ; in ordinary weather it gives, ufter two or three turns of the wheel, brilliant spatks of five or six centimetres. I have remaiked that since the invasion of the epidemic, I hare not been able to produce on any one occasion the fame effect ; during the mouths of April and May (ho sparks, obtained with great trouble, have never exceeded two or three centimetres, and their variations accorded very nearly with the variations of the cholera ; nnd this was already for me a strong presumption that I whs on the traces of the important fact that I was endeavouring to find. Nevertheless, I wai not yet convinced, because one might attribute the effect to the moisture of the air, or to the irregularities of the elcctiic machine. Thug I waited with impatience the arrival of fine weather and heat, to continue my observations with more certainty. At last fine weather came, and, to my ustorrshtnent, the machine, frequently consulted, fur from showing, as it ought to have done, nn augmentation of electricity, hnt given tigns less and less sensible, to such a degree that during the dayn of the 4th, sth, and Oth of June it was impossible to obtain anything but slight crackling, without sparks. On the 7'h the machine remained qui'e dumb, 'Una new decrease of tbe electric fluid has perfectly accorded, as is only too well known, from the renewed violence of the cholera ; for my part I was not more alarmed than astonished ; my conviction was complete. I smw only the consequence of the fact already supposed. It may be imagined with what anxiety in these moments of the crisis I consulted the machine, the sad and faithful interpreter of a great calamity. At last, on the morning of the Bth, some feeble sparks reappeared, and from hour to hour their intensity increased. I frit with joy that the vivifying fluid was returning in the atmosphere. Towardt evening a storm announc d at Paris that the electricity had re-entered its domain— to my eyes it was the cholera which disappeared with the came which pro duced it. The next day, Saturday, the 9ih, I continued my observations, the machine at the least touch rendered wiik facility some lively sparks. I have thought it my duty, Mr. President, to give immediate information of these /acts to the Academy. The question to me seems now perfectly demonstrated, ;that nature has provided in the atmosphere a mass of electricity which contributed to the support and maintenance of life. If by some cause this mans of electricity decreases, or at any time becomes impoverished nearly to exhaustion, whit happens? Everybody suffers ; those who carry within themselves a sufficient stock of persoml electricity resist, those who can only live by borrowing elec'ricity from the common mass, this mass being exhausted, perish. This explnins, clearly and in a rational way, that not only cholera, but perhaps also all the epidemic, which from time to time afflict humanity, are caused by the decrease of electricity. If this great fact was r^cogdized and admitted in principle, it would be I believe, easy for mcdi cal science, which possesses many means of producing and maintaining electiicity, to prepare itself to combat with success, if it should again return, the scourge that now seems to be arrested in its march.

Charles Dickens's Ravens.— The raven in this story is a compound of two great originals, of whom I have been, at different times, the proud possessor. Tha first was in the bloom of his youth when he was discovered it) a modest retirement in London by a friend of mine, and given to me. He had from the first, ns Sir Hugh Evan* says of Anne Page, " good gift*," which lie improved by study and attention in a most exemplary manner. He slept in a stable, generally on h rsebaclc, and so terrified a Newoundland dog by his preternatural sagacity, that he has been known to walk off unmolejiei with the dog's dinner from before his face. He was rapidly rising in acquirements and virtues when, in anoril hour, his stable was newly painted, lie obseived the workmen closely, saw that they wero careful of the paint, and immediately burned to possess it. Oa their going to dinner hs ate up all that was left behind, confuting of a pound or fwo of white lead. arid this youthful iudiicretion terminated in death. While I wai yet inconsolable for his lost, another friend of mine in Yorkshire discovered an older and more, gifced raven at a village public-houie, which he prevailed upon the landlord to part with for a consiJe - ut on, and sent it up to inc. The first act of this sags was lo admin'ster to the effects of his predecessor, by duinterrin<; all thu cheese and halfpence he had buried in the garden, a work of inrncnbc labour and research, to which lie devoted all the energies of his mind. When he had achieved thit task, he applied himsjlf to the acquisition of stable language, in which he soon became tuch an ndept that he would perch outside my window and d<ive imaginary horses with greit skil 1 , all day. Perhaps even I never saw him at his best, fop his former master sent his duty with him, " arm ir 1 wished the bird to come out very strong, would I he so good as to show him a diuuken mm," — which I never did, having, unfortunately, nono but sober people ut hund. But I could hardly have respected him more, whatever the stimulating influences of his sight might have been, lie had not the least respect, I am sorry to say, for me in ietarn, or for any body but the cook, to whom he was attached, but only, I fear, as a pol ceman might have been. Once I met him unexpectedly, about half u mile off, walking down the middle of the public street, attended by a pretty large crowd, and spontaneously exhibiting the whole of his accomplishments. His gravity under the c c trying circumstances I never can forget, nor the extraordinary gallantry with which, refusing to be bi ought home, he defended himself behind a pump, until overpowered by numbers. It may have been that he was too bright a genius to live 1 >ng, or it may have been that he took some pernicious substance into his bill, and thence into his maw— which is not improbable, seoing that he new-pointed the greater part of the garden wall by digging out the m rtar, broke countless squares of glass by scraping away the putty all round the fVumoi, and tore up, and swallowed in splinters, the grea'er part of a wooden staircase of six steps at.d a landing; but, after soma three years, he too was taken ill, and died before tjho kitchen fire. He kept his eye to the last upon the meat as it roasted, and suddenly turned over on his back with a sepulchral cry of, " Cuckoo ! " Since than I have beeu ravenless.— Preface to the Neio Edition of Par. naby Ruclge,