persons educated either at home or at private schools; but this little advance gained at a public school is so soon overtaken at college or in the world, that, to have made it, is of the least possible consequence, and utterly undeserving of any risk incurred in the acquisition. Is it any injury to a man of thirty or thirty-five years of age-to a learned serjeant or venerable dean that at eighteen they did not know so much of the world as some other boys of the same standing? They have probably escaped the arrogant character so often attendant upon this trifling superiority; nor is there much chance that they have ever fallen into the common and youthful error of mistaking a premature initiation into vice for a knowledge of the ways of mankind: and, in addition to these salutary exceptions, a winter in London brings it all to a level, and offers to every novice the advantages which are supposed to be derived from this precocity of confidence and polish.

According to the general prejudice in favour of public schools, it would be thought quite as absurd and superfluous to enumerate the illustrious characters who have been bred at our three great seminaries of this description, as it would be to descant upon the illustrious characters who have passed in and out of London over our three great bridges. Almost every conspicuous person is supposed to have been educated at public schools; and there are scarcely any means (as it is imagined) of making an actual comparison; and yet, great as the rage is, and long has been, for public schools, it is very remarkable that the most eminent men in every art and science have not been educated in public schools; and this is true, even if we include in the term of public schools, not only Eton, Winchester, and Westminster, but the Charterhouse, St. Paul's School, Merchant Taylors', Rugby, and every school in England at all conducted upon the plan of the three first. The great schools of Scotland we do not call public schools, because, in these, the mixture of domestic life gives to them a widely different character. Spenser, Pope, Shakspeare, Butler, Rochester, Spratt, Parnell, Garth, Congreve, Gay, Swift, Thomson, Shenstone, Akenside, Goldsmith, Samuel Johnson, Beaumont and Fletcher, Ben Jonson, Sir Philip Sidney, Savage, Arbuthnot, and Burns among the poets, were not educated in the system of English schools. Sir Isaac Newton, Maclaurin, Wallis, Hamstead, Saunderson, Simpson, and Napier, among men of science, were not educated in public schools. The three best historians that the English language has produced, Clarendon, Hume, and Robertson, were not educated at public schools. Public schools have done little in England for the fine arts-as in the examples of Inigo Jones, Vanbrugh, Reynolds, Gainsborough, Garrick, &c. The great medical writers and discoverers in Great Britain, Harvey, Cheselden, Hunter, Jenner, Meade, Brown, and Cullen, were not educated at public schools. Of the great writers on morals and metaphysics, it was not the system of public schools which produced Bacon, Shaftesbury, Hobbes, Berkeley, Butler, Hume, Hartley, or Dugald Stewart. The greatest discoverers in chemistry have not been brought up at public schools-we mean Dr. Priestley, Dr. Black, and Mr. Davy. The only Englishmen who have evinced a remarkable genius, in modern times, for the art of war, the Duke of Marlborough, Lord Peterborough, General Wolfe, and Lord Clive, were all trained in private schools. So were Lord Coke, Sir Matthew Hale, and Lord Chancellor Hardwicke, and Chief Justice Holt among the lawyers. So also, among statesmen, were Lord Burleigh, Walsingham, the Earl of Strafford, Thurloe, Cromwell, Hampden, Lord Clarendon, Sir Walter Raleigh, Sydney, Russell, Sir W. Temple, Lord Somers, Burke, Sheridan, Pitt. In addition to this list, we must not forget the names of such eminent scholars, and men of letters, as Cudworth, Chillingworth, Tillotson, Archbishop King, Selden,

Conyers Middleton, Bentley, Sir Thomas More, Cardinal Wolsey, Bishops Sherlock and Wilkins, Jeremy Taylor, Isaac Hooker, Bishops Usher, Stillingfleet, and Spelman, Dr. Samuel Clarke, Bishop Hoadley, and Dr. Lardner. Nor must it be forgotten, in this examination, that none of the conspicuous writers upon political economy which this country has as yet produced, have been brought up in public schools. If it be urged that public schools have only assumed their present character within this last century, or half century, and that what are now called public schools partook, before this period, of the nature of private schools, there must then be added to our lists the names of Milton, Dryden, Addison, &c. &c. ; and it will follow that the English have done almost all that they have done in the arts and sciences without the aid of that system of education to which they are now so much attached. Ample as this catalogue of celebrated names already is, it would be easy to double it; yet, as it stands, it is obviously sufficient to show that great eminence may be attained in any line of fame without the aid of public schools. Some more striking inferences might perhaps be drawn from it; but we content ourselves with the simple fact.

The most important peculiarity in the constitution of a public school is its numbers, which are so great that a close inspection of the master into the studies and conduct of each individual is quite impossible. We must be allowed to doubt whether such an arrangement is favourable either to literature or morals.

Upon this system a boy is left almost entirely to himself, to impress upon his own mind, as well as he can, the distant advantages of knowledge, and to withstand, from his own innate resolution, the examples and the seductions of idleness. A firm character survives this brave neglect ; and very exalted talents may sometimes remedy it by subsequent diligence: but schools are not made for a few youths of pre-eminent talents and strong characters; such prizes can, of course, be drawn but by a very few parents. The best school is that which is best accommodated to the greatest variety of characters, and which embraces the greatest number of cases. It cannot be the main object of education to render the splendid more splendid; and to lavish care upon those who would almost thrive without any care at all. A public school does this effectually; but it commonly leaves the idle almost as idle, and the dull almost as dull, as it found them. It disdains the tedious cultivation of those middling talents of which only the great mass of human beings are possessed. When a strong desire of improvement exists, it is encouraged, but no pains are taken to inspire it. A boy is cast in among five or six hundred other boys, and is left to form his own character-if his love of knowledge survive this severe trial, it in general carries him very far: and, upon the same principle, a savage, who grows up to manhood, is in general well made, and free from all bodily defects; not because the severities of such a state are favourable to animal life, but because they are so much the reverse that none but the strongest can survive them. A few boys are incorrigibly idle, and a few incorrigibly eager for knowledge; but the great mass are in a state of doubt and fluctuation : and they come to school for the express purpose, not of being left to themselves --for that could be done anywhere-but that their wavering tastes and propensities should be decided by the intervention of a master. In a forest, or public school for oaks and elms, the trees are left to themselves; the strong plants live, and the weak ones die; the towering oak that remains is admired; the saplings that perish around it are cast into the flames and forgotten. But it is not, surely, to the vegetable struggle of a forest, or the hasty glance of a forester, that a botanist would commit a favourite plant; he would naturally seek for it a situation of less hazard, and a cultivator whose limited occupations

would enable him to give to it a reasonable share of his time and attention. The very meaning of education seems to us to be that the old should teach the young, and the wise direct the weak; that a man who professes to instruct, should get among his pupils, study their characters, gain their affections, and form their inclinations and aversions. In a public school the numbers render this impossible; it is impossible that sufficient time should be found for this useful and affectionate interference. Boys, therefore, are left to their own crude conceptions and ill-formed propensities; and this neglect is called a spirited an 1 manly education.

In by far the greatest number of cases, we cannot think public schools favourable to the cultivation of knowledge; and we have equally strong doubts if they be so to the cultivation of morals,-though we admit that, upon this point, the most striking arguments have been produced in their favour.

It is contended by the friends to public schools that every person, before he comes to man's estate, must run through a certain career of dissipation; and that if that career is, by the means of a private education, deferred to a more advanced period of life, it will only be begun with greater eagerness, and pursued into more blamable excess. The time must, of course, come when every man must be his own master; when his conduct can be no longer regulated by the watchful superintendence of another, but must be guided by his own discretion. Emancipation must come at last; and we admit that the object to be aimed at is, that such emancipation should be gradual, and not premature. Upon this very invidious point of the discussion we rather wish to avoid offering any opinion. The manners of great schools vary considerably from time to time and what may have been true many years ago is very possibly not true at the present period. In this instance every parent must be governed by his own observations and means of information. If the licence which prevails at public schools is only a fair increase of liberty, proportionate to advancing age, and calculated to prevent the bad effects of a sudden transition from tutelary thraldom to perfect self-government, it is certainly a good, rather than an evil. If, on the contrary, there exists in these places of education a system of premature debauchery, and if they only prevent men from being corrupted by the world, by corrupting them before their entry into the world, they can then only be looked upon as evils of the greatest magnitude, however they may be sanctioned by opinion, or rendered familiar to us by habit.

The vital and essential part of a school is the master; but, at a public school, no boy, or, at the best, only a very few, can see enough of him to derive any considerable benefit from his character, manners, and information. It is cer tainly of eminent use, particularly to a young man of rank, that he should have lived among boys; but it is only so when they are all moderately watched by some superior understanding. The morality of boys is generally very imperfect; their notions of honour extremely mistaken; and their objects of ambi tion frequently very absurd. The probability then is, that the kind of discipline they exercise over each other will produce (when left to itself) a great deal of mischief; and yet this is the discipline to which every child at a public school is not only necessarily exposed, but principally confined. Our objection (we again repeat) is not to the interference of boys in the formation of the character of boys; their character, we are persuaded, will be very imperfectly formed without their assistance; but our objection is to that almost exclusive agency which they exercise in public schools.

After having said so much in opposition to the general prejudice in favour of public schools, we may be expected to state what species of school we think preferable to them; for if public schools, with all their disadvantages, are the

best that can actually be found, or easily attained, the objections to them are certainly made to very little purpose.

We have no hesitation, however, in saying that that education seems to us to be the best which mingles a domestic with a school life, and which gives to a youth the advantage which is to be derived from the learning of a master, and the emulation which results from the society of other boys, together with the affectionate vigilance which he must experience in the house of his parents. But where this species of education, from peculiarity of circumstances or situation, is not attainable, we are disposed to think a society of twenty or thirty boys, under the guidance of a learned man, and, above all, of a man of good sense, to be a seminary the best adapted for the education of youth. The numbers are sufficient to excite a considerable degree of emulation, to give to a boy some insight into the diversities of the human character, and to subject him to the observation and control of his superiors. It by no means follows that a judicious man should always interfere with his authority and advice, because he has always the means; he may connive at many things which he cannot approve, and suffer some little failures to proceed to a certain extent, which, if indulged in wider limits, would be attended with irretrievable mischief: he will be aware that his object is to fit his pupil for the world; that constant control is a very bad preparation for complete emancipation from all control; that it is not bad policy to expose a young man, under the eye of superior wisdom, to some of those dangers which will assail him hereafter in greater number, and in greater strength-when he has only his own resources to depend upon. A private education, conducted upon these principles, is not calculated to gratify quickly the vanity of a parent who is blest with a child of strong character and pre-eminent abilities: to be the first scholar of an obscure master, at an obscure place, is no very splendid distinction; nor does it afford that opportunity, of which so many parents are desirous, of forming great connections for their children: but if the object be to induce the young to love knowledge and virtue, we are inclined to suspect that, for the average of human talents and characters, these are the situations in which such tastes will be the most effectually formed.

DISTURBANCES AT MADRAS. (E. REVIEW, August, 1810.) Narrative of the Origin and Progress of the Dissensions at the Presidency of Madras, founded on Original Papers and Correspondence. Pp. 114 and App. Lloyd, London.

1810.

Account of the Origin and Progress of the late Discontents of the Army on the Madras Establishment. Cadell and Davis, London. 1810,

Statement of Facts delivered to the Right Honourable Lord Minto. By WILLIAM Petrie, Esq. Pp. 64 and App. Stockdale, London. 1810.

THE disturbances which have lately taken place in our East Indian possessions would, at any period, have excited a considerable degree of alarm; and those feelings are, of course, not a little increased by the ruinous aspect of our European affairs. The revolt of an army of eighty thousand men is an event which seems to threaten so nearly the ruin of the country in which it happens, that no common curiosity is excited as to the causes which could have led to it, and the means by which its danger was averted. On these points we shall endeavour to exhibit to our readers the information afforded to us by the pamphlets whose titles we have cited. The first of these is understood to be written by an agent of Sir George Barlow, sent over for the express purpose of defending his measures; the second is most probably the production of some

one of the dismissed officers, or, at least, founded upon their representations ; the third statement is by Mr. Petrie,—and we most cordially recommend it to the perusal of our readers. It is characterised, throughout, by moderation, good sense, and a feeling of duty. We have seldom read a narrative which, on the first face of it, looked so much like truth. It has, of course, produced the ruin and dismissal of this gentleman, though we have not the shadow of doubt, that if his advice had been followed, every unpleasant occurrence which has happened in India might have been effectually prevented.

In the year 1802, a certain monthly allowance, proportioned to their respective ranks, was given to each officer of the Coast army, to enable him to provide himself with camp equipage; and a monthly allowance was also made to the commanding officers of the native corps, for the provision of the camp equipage of these corps. This arrangement was commonly called the tent contract. Its intention (as the pamphlet of Sir George Barlow's agent very properly states) was to combine facility of movement in military operations with views of economy. In the general revision of its establishments, set on foot for the purposes of economy by the Madras Government, this contract was considered as entailing upon them a very unnecessary expense; and the then commander-in-chief, General Craddock, directed Colonel Munro, the quarter-master-general, to make a report to him upon the subject. The report, which was published almost as soon as it was made up, recommends the abolition of this contract; and, among other passages for the support of this opinion, has the following one :—

"Six years' experience of the practical effects of the existing system of the camp equipage equipment of the native army, has afforded means of forming a judgment relative to its advantages and efficiency, which were not possessed by the persons who proposed its introduction; and an attentive examination of its operations during that period of time has suggested the following observations regarding it."

After stating that the contract is needlessly expensive-that it subjects the Company to the same charges for troops in garrison as for those in the field -the report proceeds to state the following observation, made on the authority of six years' experience and attentive examination.

"Thirdly. By granting the same allowances in peace and war for the equipment of native corps, while the expenses incidental to that charge are unavoidably much greater in war than in peace, it places the interest and duty of officers commanding native corps in direct opposition to one another. It makes it their interest that their corps should not be in a state of efficiency fit for field service, and therefore furnishes strong inducements to neglect their most important duties."-Accurate and Authentic Narrative, pp. 117, 118.

Here, then, is not only a proposal for reducing the emoluments of the principal officers of the Madras army, but a charge of the most flagrant nature. The first they might possibly have had some right to consider as a hardship; but when severe and unjust invective was superadded to strict retrenchment-when their pay and their reputation were diminished at the same time-it cannot be considered as surprising that such treatment, on the part of the government, should lay the foundation for a spirit of discontent in those troops who had recently made such splendid additions to the Indian empire, and established in the progress of these acquisitions so high a character for discipline and courage. It must be remembered that an officer on European and on Indian service are in very different situations, and propose to themselves very different objects. The one never thinks of making a fortune by his profession, while the hope of ultimately gaining an independence is the principal motive for which the Indian officer banishes himself from his country. To diminish the emoluments of his profession is to retard the period of his return, and to frustrate the purpose for which he