practical representations of the spurious radicalism of some of our Transatlantic brethren, which declares, “The only lesson to be learned from the example of the past is to teach us to do otherwise and better."

We cannot be understood to assert that this is the universal character of all writers on education within the last few years. That it is so of a vast number of them we need not say. The treatise before us we by no means include in that catalogue. We believe it to be the production of a sincere inquirer after truth, though we think that what certainly looks like a very beautiful system may have induced a somewhat enthusiastic hurry towards a foregone conclusion.

The title of the first chapter may prepare the reader for the waging of dire war against existing modes of education. It is entitled "The fallacy of the supposed connection between reading and writing and morality and intelligence." In the developement of his views, Mr. Mayhew complains that the term "education" is used in a sense too much restricted, being confined to Intellectualization only, whereas it should include moralization and prudentialization, to adopt his own momenclature. He objects that it is even more limited in meaning,— that "it would seem that education is thought both by the tutors and parents of the scholars there [in our public schools] to lie almost entirely in what may be called the latinization of the being." "The classics, according to the popular opinion, are essential, morality is only incidental to education."

A thing is useful, says Mr. Mayhew, in a chapter which shortly states Butler's argument in the sermons on Human Nature, as it promotes happiness. The greatest happiness is derived from promoting that of others. The moral faculty must therefore be fully developed, and the intellectual faculty made to subserve it. Leaving for a future treatise the education of the moral faculty, he proceeds to consider what constitutes Intellectualization.

Intellect referring to the act, and intelligence to the habit, of perceiving relations, perfect intellectualization comprises the eduction of both. We are to make the child, says our author, "not only intellectual, but intelligent; we are to give him not only a perception of the agreements and differences among the various substances and circumstances in nature, but also to cherish in him a spirit of inquiry-to encourage in the pupil such a habit of observing the relations of things, that every object may be to him in after years, the suggestor of new and beautiful thoughts. There are only three things of which we can take cognizance-sensations, thoughts, and emotions. The knowledge of the first constitutes natural philosophy; of the second, mental phi

losophy; of the third, moral philosophy. And these three philosophies, he argues, in chapters devoted to a consideration of the specific benefits of each, should be the subjects of teaching. He then states his reasons "why a knowledge of languages, history, &c. should be added, instead of as now, prefixed, to intellectual education."

In discussing the second question, "How to teach," the author commences with an able disquisition upon the differences of intelligence in different minds. He refers them eventually to the different powers of attention; and thence immediately follows the consideration how attention is to be excited. Attention must be excited by curiosity or the love of knowledge. Rewards and punishments do not excite curiosity or the love of knowledge. Therefore they do not excite attention, and are not fit means of teaching. They do not only no good, but much harm. The use of the birch, says Mr. Mayhew, "violates the very first principle of all morality-that man is sacred from injury-and thus it may be said to sow the "seed of murder."* After some severe remarks upon the repetitive as opposed to the intellective method of education, by which the child is "parrotized" instead of taught, he proceeds to analyze Dr. Brown's laws of association; and with this conclusion of his own theory, he admits, or rather does not object in the final chapter, to reading and writing as a supplemental aid, after the tutor has done his part, to enable the pupil to go on by himself, and perhaps at length to teach others.

In this analysis, we think the reader will perceive much truth and much error. To say broadly of more than half the existing methods of tuition, that they teach what is wrong, and teach that the wrong way, is a charge which, ingeniously as it is supported, is not made out to our satisfaction in Mr. Mayhew's treatise. And we cannot help thinking, that he is less successful in rearing his own system, than in throwing down old ones. Somehow or other, under methods of tuition gradually improving, our country has certainly reared its share of great men. Whether directly in consequence, or in spite, of these methods, or because there is in the human mind an accommodating power which prevents the natural effect of adverse circumstances, we who merely question Mr. Mayhew's views, are not called upon to decide; but surely he who endeavours to overthrow those systems, ought to have given some account of the fact.

Nor can we acknowledge that the proper object of education, (including the moralization of the being,) has been so entirely neglected hitherto as Mr. Mayhew would assert, or that it would be better ac

*The italics are in the original.

complished by his plan. We have always felt that morals formed the earliest and chiefest subjects of education, that upon almost every occasion where there is a right and a wrong, where a child has a choice, (and this holds true especially of early life,) not only is the fact of the choice, but its nature, pressed forcibly on his attention. There must be a time, and that time must be very early, with all diligence on the part of Mr. Mayhew's boy-ridden tutor, when a child is left in a great measure to teach himself. But if there is one subject rather than another of which a child knows more on entering school, or learns more in every page of history during his stay there, it is practical moral philosophy. Of the science, of the abstract philosophy itself, we grant he knows nothing, and indeed, little enough is known. Nor do we think the tutor would be very successful, who should attempt to teach the philosophy as philosophy to a child. Take, for instance, the lines of Wordsworth

"Pious beyond the meaning of your thought,

Devout beyond the intention of your will."

Of

How much must be known before these lines can be understood. how many minds must the child have taken the essence, before he understands the exact appropriateness of thinking piously, of willing devoutly, of meaning in thought, of intending in will.

Mr. Mayhew, concentrating the spirit, even while he contradicts the letter, of Horace's maxim, would have reading and writing taught after the child has learnt from the tutor his natural, mental, and moral philosophy. Now if we wanted one decisive argument in favour of the present system, it is that it does not subject the child to the teaching of one, but of many; so that his volatile spirit, which Mr. M. so strongly insists upon, can expend itself in inexhaustible variety. And we really do think the tutor ought not to be forgotten. We would not be teachers on Mr. Mayhew's conditions, though we were patent pedagogues, and had patent pupils.

We are almost afraid to enter upon the system of rewards and punishments. Believing that man cannot have too strong motives, nor too many, to act well, we should defend them as accessary, and not principal means in tuition. We cannot follow our author in his distinction between extrinsic and intrinsic rewards and punishments. Does he refer to direct and indirect, or to certain and uncertain sequence? The former is a difference merely in degree. And we do not the less recognize on account of its uncertainty, the just fate of unsuccessful wrong-doing. A prize or a flogging is in no sense more extrinsic than other results of actions among "children of a larger growth."

Want of space obliges us to conclude; but not without expressing our concurrence in Mr. Mayhew's views respecting the differences in intelligence. We have long been convinced of the essential equality of the human mind; that there is no difference but in developement in the mind of the poet who wrote the Paradise Lost, and the mathematician who asked, What does it prove?-between Newton and Grimaldi, the one of whom, it has been wittily said, "fixed for ever the laws of gravity, which the other was all his life long labouring to overturn." The argument, however, by which Mr. Mayhew supports this doctrine, in which intelligence, and by parity of reason intellect, is made to depend on a feeling of identity; which necessitates the reference of differences to developement, as the feeling of identity does not admit of degrees, is entirely new to us, and, we think, entirely successful. "Intelligence," says Mr. Mayhew, "is the act of perceiving the agreements and differences of things. A difference is said to

exist between two or more things in a certain respect, when there is an absence of agreement among them in that respect. To explain, therefore, that which makes things agree or appear similar, is also to explain that which being absent causes them to differ or appear dissimilar. The agreement or similarity of one object with another, depends upon an identity between them in some circumstances, coupled with a diversity in others. An agreement in the appearance of several substances consists in the identity of their operation, in one or more respects, upon our senses-an agreement in their nature, in the identity of their operation upon other substances-and an agreement both in nature and appearance, or positive sameness, in the identity of their operation both upon us and other things. To discover an identity of appearance or action among the various substances in nature, is then the sole object of man's intelligence. Does this power, per se, differ in different individuals? This, it is evident, cannot possibly be; since the power itself depends upon a feeling of sameness or identity, and that feeling is one which does not admit of degree. Two or more things may seem more or less like to different persons, because the parties may respectively perceive a greater or less number of points of identity or sameness among the things compared." We wish this treatise success, not because we think the author has discovered the exact bounds of truth, but because he has hovered so near that additional search may more easily find them out. J.

LONDON: FISHER, SON, AND CO. PRINTERS.

THE

LONDON UNIVERSITY

MAGAZINE.

ART. I. THE LATE ATTEMPTS ON THE LIFE OF HER MAJESTY.

It is but four months since the publication of our last number, and in that interval the life of our beloved Queen has been twice attempted. We cannot refrain from expressing our abhorrence and detestation of the crime, and, in the only way open to us as Members of the London University, offering our humble and heartfelt congratulations to Her Majesty on her happy escape, and our prayers that her life may still be happy, and her reign long, over the people of these realms.

We sincerely trust that the late melancholy occurrences-melancholy for the spirit they evince, though the design was mercifully frustrated -are not to be taken as evidence of any assimilation of even the dregs of British character, to the desperate ferocity of the would-be regicides among the French. We fully believe that nothing more than the manner, the single-handed attempt, is drawn from their example: the fact of the first crime, being caused by a craving for notoriety, and of the late repetitions, by the injudicious manner in which that attempt was treated. The case was most difficult to deal with. That a young Queen, without a single personal foe-can we speak so moderately?— a Queen, wife, and mother, for whom no true Englishman in this kingdom but feels the strongest sympathy, apart from that strong personal affection which it is our national boast to feel for the Sovereign on the throne-that this Princess, who bids fair to rival in historic fame her illustrious predecessor, while she combines with her queenly qualities, those domestic virtues to which Elizabeth feared to lay claim -that there should be found one thing so lost, on English ground, who would centre upon himself, by attempting her life, so much of the