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ever come across his mind?-would | sacrificed in gaining these little delicahe ever dream that such men as Adam cies. It would be of use that we should Smith and Lavoisier were equal in go on till fifty years of age making dignity of understanding to, or of the same utility as, Bentley and Heyne? We are inclined to think, that the feeling excited would be a good deal like that which was expressed by Dr. George about the praises of the great King of Prussia, who entertained considerable doubts whether the King, with all his victories, knew how to conjugate a Greek verb in μι.

Another misfortune of classical learning, as taught in England, is, that scholars have come, in process of time, and from the effects of association, to love the instrument better than the end; -not the luxury which the difficulty encloses, but the difficulty;-not the filbert but the shell; -not what may be read in Greek, but Greek itself. It is not so much the man who has mastered the wisdom of the ancients, that is valued, as he who displays his knowledge of the vehicle in which that wisdom is conveyed. The glory is to show I am a scholar. The good sense and ingenuity I may gain by my acquaintance with ancient authors is matter of opinion; but if I bestow an immensity of pains upon a point of accent or quantity, this is something positive; I establish my pretensions to the name of Scholar, and gain the credit of learning, while I sacrifice all its utility.

Another evil in the present system of classical education is the extraordinary perfection which is aimed at in teaching those languages; a needless perfection; an accuracy which is sought for in nothing else. There are few boys who remain to the age of eighteen or nineteen at a public school, without making above ten thousand Latin verses; a greater number than is contained in the Eneid: and after he has made this quantity of verses in a dead language, unless the poet should happen to be a very weak man indeed, he never makes another as long as he lives. It may be urged, and it is urged, that this is of use in teaching the delicacies of the language. No doubt it is of use for this purpose, if we put out of view the immense time and trouble

Latin verses, if the price of a whole life were not too much to pay for it. We effect our object; but we do it at the price of something greater than our object. And whence comes it, that the expenditure of life and labour is totally put out of the calculation, when Latin and Greek are to be attained? In every other occupation, the question is fairly stated between the attainment and the time employed in the pursuit :

but, in classical learning, it seems to be sufficient if the least possible good is gained by the greatest possible exertion; if the end is anything, and the means everything. It is of some importance to speak and write French; and innumerable delicacies would be gained by writing ten thousand French verses: but it makes no part of our education to write French poetry. It is of some importance that there should be good botanists; but no botanist can repeat by heart the names of all the plants in the known world; nor is any astronomer acquainted with the appellation and magnitude of every star in the map of the heavens. The only department of human knowledge in which there can be no excess, no arithmetic, no balance of profit and loss, is classical learning.

If a

The prodigious honour in which Latin verses are held at public schools is surely the most absurd of all absurd distinctions. You rest all reputation upon doing that which is a natural gift, and which no labour can attain. lad won't learn the words of a language, his degradation in the school is a very natural punishment for his disobedience, or his indolence; but it would be as reasonable to expect that all boys should be witty, or beautiful, as that they should be poets. In either case, it would be to make an accidental, unattainable, and not a very important gift of nature, the only, or the principal test of merit. This is the reason why boys, who make a considerable figure at school, so very often make no figure in the world; and why other lads, who are passed over without notice, turn out to be valuable important men. The

test established in the world is widely | suspects every man whose boldness and different from that established in a place originality call upon him to defend which is presumed to be a preparation his opinions and prove his assertions. for the world; and the head of a public school, who is a perfect miracle to his contemporaries, finds himself shrink into absolute insignificance, because he has nothing else to command respect or regard, but a talent for fugitive poetry in a dead language.

A very curious argument is sometimes employed in justification of the learned minutia to which all young men are doomed, whatever be their propensities in future life. What are you to do with a young man up to the age of seventeen? Just as if there were such a want of difficulties to overcome, and of important tastes to inspire, that, from the mere necessity of doing something, and the impossibility of doing anything else, you were driven to the expedient of metre and poetry; - as if a young man within that period might not acquire the modern languages, modern history, experimental philoso

The present state of classical education cultivates the imagination a great deal too much, and other habits of mind a great deal too little; and trains up many young men in a style of elegant imbecility, utterly unworthy of the talents with which nature has endowed them. It may be said, there are profound investigations, and subjects quite powerful enough for any under-phy, geography, chronology, and a constanding, to be met with in classical siderable share of mathematics ;-as if literature. So there are; but no man the memory of things were not more likes to add the difficulties of a lan- agreeable, and more profitable, than guage to the difficulties of a subject; the memory of words. and to study metaphysics, morals, and The great objection is, that we are politics in Greek, when the Greek alone not making the most of human life, is study enough without them. In all when we constitute such an extensive, foreign languages, the most popular and such minute classical erudition, an works are works of imagination. Even indispensable article in education. Up in the French language, which we know to a certain point we would educate so well, for one serious work which has every young man in Latin and Greek; any currency in this country, we have but to a point far short of that to which twenty which are mere works of imagi- this species of education is now carried. nation. This is still more true in clas- Afterwards, we would grant to classical sical literature; because what their erudition as high honours as to every poets and orators have left us is of other department of knowledge, but infinitely greater value than the remains not higher. We would place it upon a of their philosophy; for, as society footing with many other objects of advances, men think more accurately study; but allow to it no superiority. and deeply, and imagine more tamely; Good scholars would be as certainly proworks of reasoning advance, and works duced by these means, as good chemists, of fancy decay. So that the matter of astronomers, and mathematicians are fact is, that a classical scholar of twenty-now produced, without any direct prothree or twenty-four years of age is a man principally conversant with works of imagination. His feelings are quick, his fancy lively, aud his taste good. Talents for speculation and original inquiry he has none; nor has he formed the invaluable habit of pushing things up to their first principles, or of collect ing dry and unamusing facts as the materials of reasoning. All the solid and masculine parts of his understanding are left wholly without cultivation; he hates the pain of thinking, and

vision whatsoever for their production. Why are we to trust to the diversity of human tastes, and the varieties of human ambition, in every thing else, and distrust it in classics alone? The passion for languages is just as strong as any other literary passion. There are very good Persian and Arabic scholars in this country. Large heaps of trash have been dug up from Sanscrit ruins. We have seen in our own times, a clergyman of the University of Oxford complimenting their Majesties in Cop

that both will be placed on a firmer basis, in proportion as the minds of men are more trained to the investigation of truth. At present, we act with the minds of our young men, as the Dutch did with their exuberant spices. An infinite quantity of talent is annually destroyed in the Universities of England by the miserable jealousy and littleness of ecclesiastical instructors. It is in vain to say we have produced great men under this system. We have produced great men under all systems. Every Englishman must pass half his life in learning Latin and Greek; and

tic and Syro-phoenician verses; and yet we doubt whether there will be a sufficient avidity in literary men to get at the beauties of the finest writers which the world has yet seen; and though the Bagvat Gheeta has (as can be proved) met with human beings to translate, and other human beings to read it, we think that, in order to secure an attention to Homer and Virgil, we must catch up every man-whether he is to be a clergyman or a duke,- begin with him at six years of age, and never quit him till he is twenty; making him conjugate and decline for life and death; and so teaching him to estimate his pro-classical learning is supposed to have gress in real wisdom as he can scan the verses of the Greek tragedians.

produced the talents which it has not been able to extinguish. It is scarcely possible to prevent great men from rising up under any system of education, however bad. Teach men dæmonology or astrology, and you will still

nius, in spite of these or any other branches of ignorance and folly.

There is a delusive sort of splendour in a vast body of men pursuing one object, and thoroughly obtaining it; and yet, though it be very splendid, it is far from being useful. Classical literature is the great object at Oxford. Many minds so employed have produced many works, and much fame in that department; but if all liberal arts and sciences useful to human life had been

The English clergy, in whose hands education entirely rests, bring up the first young men of the country as if they were all to keep grammar schools in little country towns; and a noble-have a certain portion of original geman, upon whose knowledge and liberality the honour and welfare of his country may depend, is diligently worried, for half his life, with the small pedantry of longs and shorts. There is a timid and absurd apprehension, on the part of ecclesiastical tutors, of letting out the minds of youth upon difficult and important subjects. They fancy that mental exertion must end in religious scepticism; and, to preserve the principles of their pupils, they confine them to the safe and elegant imbe-taught there,- if some had dedicated cility of classical learning. A genuine Oxford tutor would shudder to hear his young men disputing upon moral and political truth, forming and pulling down theories, and indulging in all the boldness of youthful discussion. He would augur nothing from it, but impiety to God, and treason to kings. And yet, who vilifies both more than the holy poltroon who carefully averts from them the searching eye of reason, and who knows no better method of teaching the highest duties, than by extirpating the finest qualities and habits of the mind? If our religion is a fable, the sooner it is exploded the better. If our government is bad, it should be amended. But we have no doubt of the truth of the one, or of the excellence of the other; and are convinced

themselves to chemistry, some to mathematics, some to experimental philosophy, and if every attainment had been honoured in the mixt ratio of its difficulty and utility,-the system of such an University would have been much more valuable, but the splendour of its name something less.

When an University has been doing useless things for a long time, it appears at first degrading to them to be useful. A set of lectures upon political economy would be discouraged in Oxford *, probably despised, probably not permitted. To discuss the enclosure of commons, and to dwell upon imports and exports, -to come so near to common life, would seem to

*They have since been established.

the feast.

be undignified and contemptible. In public life, we would exhort him to the same manner, the Parr, or the Bent-contemn, or at least not to affect the ley of his day, would be scandalised reputation of a great scholar, but to in an University to be put on a level educate himself for the offices of civil with the discoverer of a neutral salt; life. He should learn what the constiand yet, what other measure is there tution of his country really was,-how of dignity in intellectual labour, but it had grown into its present state, the usefulness and difficulty? And what perils that had threatened it,- the ought the term University to mean, malignity that had attacked it,― the but a place where every science is courage that had fought for it, and the taught which is liberal, and at the wisdom that had made it great. We same time useful to mankind? Nothing would bring strongly before his mind would so much tend to bring classical the characters of those Englishmen literature within proper bounds as a who have been the steady friends of steady and invariable appeal to these the public happiness; and, by their tests in our appreciation of all human examples, would breathe into him a knowledge. The puffed up pedant pure public taste, which should keep would collapse into his proper size, and him untainted in all the vicissitudes of the maker of verses and the rememberer political fortune. We would teach of words, would soon assume that him to burst through the well paid,` station, which is the lot of those who and the pernicious cant of indiscrimigo up unbidden to the upper places of nate loyalty; and to know his Sovereign only as he discharged those duties, and We should be sorry, if what we have displayed those qualities, for which the said should appear too contemptuous blood and the treasure of his people are towards classical learning, which we confided to his hands. We should deem most sincerely hope will always be held it of the utmost importance, that his in great honour in this country, though attention was directed to the true prinwe certainly do not wish to it that ex- ciples of legislation,—what effect laws clusive honour which it at present en- can produce upon opinions, and opinions joys. A great classical scholar is an upon laws, what subjects are fit for ornament and an important acquisition legislative interference, and when men to his country; but, in a place of edu-may be left to the management of cation, we would give to all knowledge their own interests. The mischief an equal chance for distinction; and occasioned by bad laws, and the perwould trust to the varieties of hu- plexity which arises from numerous man disposition, that every science laws, the causes of national wealth,— worth cultivation would be cultivated. the relations of foreign trades, the enLooking always to real utility as our couragement of manufactures and agriguide, we should see, with equal plea- culture, the fictitious wealth occasure, a studious and inquisitive mind sioned by paper credit,—the laws of arranging the productions of nature, population, the management of poinvestigating the qualities of bodies, verty and mendicity-the use and abuse or mastering the difficulties of the of monopoly, -the theory of taxation, learned languages. We should not care whether he were chemist, naturalist, or scholar, because we know it to be as necessary that matter should be studied, and subdued to the use of man, as that taste should be gratified, and imagination inflamed.

In those who were destined for the church, we would undoubtedly encourage classical learning, more than in any other body of men; but if we had to do with a young man going out into

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the consequences of the public debt. These are some of the subjects, and some of the branches of civil education, to which we would turn the minds of future judges, future senators, and future noblemen. After the first period of life had been given up to the cultivation of the classics, and the reasoning powers were now beginning to evolve themselves, these are some of the propensities in study which we would endeavour to inspire. Great

knowledge at such a period of life, we
could not convey; but we might fix a
decided taste for its acquisition, and a
strong disposition to respect it in others.
The formation of some great scholars
we should certainly prevent, and hinder
many from learning what, in a few
years, they would necessarily forget;
but this loss would be well repaid,
if we could show the future rulers of
the country that thought and labour
which it requires to make a nation
happy, or if we could inspire them
with that love of public virtue, which,
after religion, we most solemnly believe
to be the brightest ornament of the mind
of man.

FEMALE EDUCATION.

(E. REVIEW, 1809.)

Advice to Young Ladies on the Improvement of the Mind. By Thomas Broadhurst. 8vo. London, 1808.

MR. BROADHURST is a very good sort of a man, who has not written a very bad book upon a very important subject. His object (a very laudable one) is to recommend a better system of female education than at present prevails in this country-to turn the attention of women from the trifling pursuits to which they are now condemnedand to cultivate faculties which, under the actual system of management, might almost as well not exist. To the examination of his ideas upon these points we shall very cheerfully give up a portion of our time and attention.

tural difference of original conformation of mind. As long as boys and girls run about in the dirt, and trundle hoops together, they are both precisely alike. If you catch up one half of these creatures, and train them to a particular set of actions and opinions, and the other half to a perfectly opposite set, of course their understandings will differ, as one or the other sort of occupations has called this or that talent into action. There is surely no occasion to go into any deeper or more abstruse reasoning, in order to explain so very simple a phenomenon. Taking it, then, for granted, that nature has been as bountiful of understanding to one sex as the other, it is incumbent on us to consider what are the principal objections commonly made against the communication of a greater share of knowledge to women than commonly falls to their lot at present for though it may be doubted whether women should learn all that men learn, the immense disparity which now exists between their knowledge we should hardly think could admit of any rational defence. It is not easy to imagine that there can be any just cause why a woman of forty should be more ignorant than a boy of twelve years of age. If there be any good at all in female ignorance, this (to use a very colloquial phrase) is surely too much of a good thing.

Something in this question must depend, no doubt, upon the leisure which either sex enjoys for the cultivation of their understandings:-and we cannot help thinking, that women have fully as much, if not more, idle time upon their hands than men. Women

A great deal has been said of the original difference of capacity between men and women; as if women were more quick and men more judicious-are excluded from all the serious busias if women were more remarkable for ness of the world; men are lawyers, delicacy of association, and men for physicians, clergymen, apothecaries, stronger powers of attention. All and justices of the peace- sources of this, we confess, appears to us very exertion which consume a great deal fanciful. That there is a difference in more time than producing and suckling the understandings of the men and the children; so that if the thing is a thing women we every day meet with, every- that ought to be done if the attainbody, we suppose, must perceive; but ments of literature are objects really there is none surely which may not be worthy the attention of females, they accounted for by the difference of cir- cannot plead the want of leisure as an cumstances in which they have been excuse for indolence and neglect. The placed, without referring to any conjec- lawyer who passes his day in exaspe

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