History of the Text Book.

What is this book ? and how far does it justify these pretensions? Some precise information as to its origin and history might have been expected from the promoters of the present movement, but there is wisdom in their reticence. My only authority on the point is some meagre references in Archbishop Whately's life. Shortly after his appointment to the See of Dublin in 1831, and largely through his exertions, the book was compiled by an anonymous editor, and introduced into the Irish schools by the National Education Board, of which Whately was a member. Dr Murray, the then Roman Catholic Archbishop of Dublin, approved of the book, but his successor, Cardinal Cullen, withdrew his consent, with the result that the Board prohibited the book in 1853, and Whately resigned his seat. As to the amount of good or evil wrought by the book during those twenty years I can get no information, nor can I ascertain that it has ever been introduced again. I am told, however, that it has been established for some forty years in New South Wales. The critics who have ascribed the vices of young New Zealand to the absence of the Bible from our schools may legitimately find the triumph of the Irish Text Book in the superior "sweetness and light" of the Sydney larrikin.