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CLASSES.

The school-rooms, which lay immediately under the dormitories on the ground-floor, consisted of a number of detached chambers, each of which issued upon a corridor. They were airy-there was plenty of air at Yverdun-and lofty as became so venerable a building; but they were unswept, unscrubbed, peeled of their paint, and, owing to the little light that could find its way through two very small windows punched out of the fortress walls, presented, save at mid-day, or as the declining sun illumined momentarily the dark recess, as comfortless a set of interiors as you could well see. It required, indeed, all the elasticity of youth to bear many hours' daily incarceration in such black-holes, without participating in the pervading gloom. Such dismal domiciles were only fit resorts for the myoptic bat, who would occasionally visit them from the old tower; for the twilight horde of cockroaches, which swarmed along the floor, or the eight-eyed spiders who colonised the ceiling. The tender sight, too, of a patient just recovering from ophthalmia would here have required no factitious or deeper shade-but merits like these only rendered them as ungenial as possible to the physiology and feelings of their youthful occupants. If these apartments looked gloomy in their dilapidations and want of sun, the sombre effect was much heightened by the absence of the ordinary tables and chairs, and whatever else is necessary to give a room a habitable appearance. Had an appraiser been commissioned to make out a complete list of the furniture and the fixtures together, a mere glance had sufficed for the inventory. In vain would his practised eye have wandered in quest of themes for golden sentences, printed in such uncial characters that all who run may read; in vain for the high-hung well-backed chart, or for any pleasing pictorial souvenirs of Esop or the Arkneither these nor the long "coloured Stream of Time," nor formal but useful views in perspective, adorned our sorry walls. No old mahogany case clicked in a corner, beating time for

the class, and the hour upstriking loud that it should not be defrauded of its dues. No glazed globe, gliding round on easy axis, spun under its brassy equator to the antipodes on its sides being touched. No bright zodiac was there to exhibit its cabalistic figures in pleasing arabesques. In place of these and other well-known objects, here stood a line of dirty, much-inked desks, with an equally dirty row of attendant forms subjacent alongside. There was a scantling-it seldom exceeded a leash-of ricketty rush-bottom chairs distributed at long intervals along the walls; a coal-black slate, pegged high on its wooden horse; a keyless cupboard, containing the various implements of learning, a dirty duster, a pewter plate with cretaceous deposits, a slop-basin and a ragged sponge ;-and then, unless he had included the cobwebs of the ceiling, (not usually reckoned up in the furniture of a room,) no other movables remained. One conspicuous fixture, however, there was, a gigantic Dutch stove. This lumbering parallelogram, faggot-fed from the corridor behind, projected several feet into the room, and shone bright in the glaze of earthenware emblazonments. Around it we would sometimes congregate in the intervals of class: in winter to toast our hands and hind quarters, as we pressed against the heated tiles, with more or less vigour according to the fervency of the central fire; and in summer either to tell stories, or to con over the pictorial History of the Bible, which adorned its frontispiece and sides. We cannot say that every square exactly squared with even our schoolboy notions of propriety in its mode of teaching religious subjects; there was a Dutch quaintness in the illustrations, which would sometimes force a smile from its simplicity, at others shock, from its apparent want of decorum and reverence. Pre-eminent of course among the gems from Genesis, Adam and Eve, safe in innocency and "naked truth," here walked unscathed amidst a menagerie of wil beasts—there, dressed in the costume of their fall, they quitted Eden, and left it in pos

session of tigers, bears, and crocodiles. Hard by on a smaller tile, that brawny "knave of clubs," Cain, battered down his brother at the altar; then followed a long picture-gallery of the acts of the patriarchs, and another equally long of the acts of the apostles. But, queer as many of these misconceptions might seem, they were nothing to the strange attempts made at dramatising the parables of the New Testament-e. g. a stout man, staggering under the weight of an enormous beam which grows out of one eye, employs his fingers, assisted by the other, to pick out a black speck from the cornea of his neighbour. Here, an unclean spirit, as black as any sweep, issues from the mouth of his victim, with wings and a tail! Here again, the good Samaritan, turbaned like a Turk, is bent over the waylaid traveller, and pours wine and oil into his wounds from the mouths of two Florence flasks; there, the grain of mustard-seed, become a tree, sheltering already a large aviary in its boughs; the woman, dancing a hornpipe with the Dutch broom, has swept her house, and lo! the piece of silver that was lost in her hand; a servant, who is digging a hole in order to hide his lord's talent under a tree, is overlooked by a magpie and two crows, who are attentive witnesses of the deposit :-and many others too numerous to mention. much for the empty school-room, but what's a hive without bees, or a schoolroom without boys? The reader who has peeped into it untenanted, shall now, if he pleases, be introduced, dum fervet opus full and alive. Should he not be able to trace out very clearly the system at work, he will at least be no worse off than the bee-fancier, who hears indeed the buzzing, and sees a flux and reflux current of his winged confectioners entering in and passing out, but cannot investigate the detail of their labours any farther. In the Yverdun, as in the hymenopterus apiary, we swarmed, we buzzed, dispersed, reassembled at the sound of the bell, flocked in and flocked out, all the day long; exhibited much restlessness and activity, evincing that something was going on, but what, it would have been hard to determine. Here the comparison must drop. Bees buzz to

So

some purpose; they know what they are about; they help one another; they work orderly and to one end,"How skilfully they build the cell, How neat they spread the wax, And labour hard to store it well

With the sweet food," &c. &c. In none of these particulars did we resemble the "busy bee." This being admitted, our object in offering a few words upon the course of study pursued at the chateau is not with any idea of enlightening the reader as to anything really acquired during the long ten hours' session of each day but rather to show how ten hours' imprisonment may be inflicted upon the body for the supposed advantage of the mind, and yet be consumed in "profitless labour, and diligence which maketh not rich;" to prove, by an exhibition of their opposites, that method and discipline are indispensable in tuition, and (if he will accept our "pathemata" for his "mathemata" and guides in the bringing up of his sons) to convince him that education, like scripture, admits not of private interpretation. Those who refuse to adopt the Catholic views of the age, and the general sense of the society in which they live, must blame themselves if they find the experiment of foreign schools a failure, and that they have sent their children "farther to fare worse."

And now to proceed to the geography class, which was the first after breakfast, and began at half-past eight. As the summons-bell sounded, the boys came rushing and tumbling in, and ere a minute had elapsed were swarming over, and settling upon, the high reading-desks: the master, already at his work, was chalking out the business of the hour; and as this took some little time to accomplish, the youngsters, not to sit unemployed, would be assiduously engaged in impressing sundry animal forms-among which the donkey was a favourite-cut out in cloth, and well powdered, upon one another's backs. When Herr G had finished his chalkings, and was gone to the corner of the room for his show-perch, a skeleton map of Europe might be seen, by those who chose to look that way, covering the slate this, however, was what the majority of the assembly

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never dreamt of, or only dreamt they were doing. The class generally though ready when called upon to give the efficient support of their tongues-kept their eyes to gape elsewhere, and, like Solomon's fool, had them where they had no business to be. The map, too often repeated to attract from its novelty, had no claim to respect on other grounds. It was one of a class accurately designated by that careful geographer, old Homer, 25 " μαψ ου Κατα Κοσμον.” Coarse and clumsy, however, as it necessarily would be, it might still have proved of service had the boys been the draughtsmen. As it was, the following mechanically Herr G's wand to join in the general chorus of the last census of a city, the perpendicular altitude of a mountain, or the length and breadth of a lake, could obviously convey no useful instruction to any one. But, useful or otherwise, such was our regime,-to set one of from fifty to sixty lads, day after day, week after week, repeating facts and figures notorious to every little reader of penny guides to science, till all had the last statistical returns at their tongue's tip; and knew, when all was done, as much of what geography really meant as on the day of their first matriculation. Small wonder, then, if some should later have foresworn this study, and been revolted at the bare sight of a map! All our recollections of map, unlike those of personal travel, are sufficiently distasteful. Often have we yawned wearily over them at Yverdun, when our eyes were demanded to follow the titubations of Herr G- -'s magic wand, which, in its uncertain route, would skip from Europe to Africa and back again-qui modo Thebas modo me ponit Athenis; and our dislike to them since has increased amazingly. Does the reader care to be told the reason of this? Let him -in order to obtain the pragmatic sanction of some stiff-necked examiner -have to "get up" all the anastomosing routes of St Paul's several journeyings; have to follow those rebellious Israelites in all their wanderings through the desert; to draw the line round them when in Palestine; going from Dan to Beersheba, and "meting out the valley of Suc

coth;" or, finally, have to cover a large sheet of foolscap with a progressive survey of the spread of Christianity during the three first centuries and he will easily enter into our feelings. To return to the class-room: The geographical lesson, though of daily infliction, was accurately circumscribed in its duration. Old Time kept a sharp look-out over his blooming daughters, and never suffered one hour to tread upon the heels or trench upon the province of a sister hour. Sixty minutes to all, and not an extra minute to any, was the old gentleman's impartial rule; and he took care to see it was strictly adhered to. As the clock struck ten, geography was shoved aside by the muse of mathematics. A sea of dirty water had washed out in a twinkling all traces of the continent of Europe, and the palimpsest slate presented a clean face for whatever figures might next be traced upon it.

The hour for Euclidising was arrived, and anon the black parallelogram was intersected with numerous triangles of the Isosceles and Scalene pattern; but, notwithstanding this promising début, we did not make much quicker progress here than in the previous lesson. How should we, who had not only the difficulties inseparable from the subject to cope with, but a much more formidable difficulty-viz. the obstruction which we opposed to each other's advance, by the plan, so unwisely adopted, of making all the class do the same thing, that they might keep pace together. It is a polite piece of folly enough for a whole party to be kept waiting dinner by a lounging guest, who chooses to ride in the park when he ought to be at his toilet; but we were the victims of a much greater absurdity, who lost what might have proved an hour of profitable work, out of tenderness to some incorrigibly idle or Boeotian boy, who could not get over the Pons Asinorum, (every proposition was a pons to some asinus or other,) and so made those who were over stand still, or come back to help him across. Neither was this, though a very considerable drawback, our only hindrance the guides were not always safe Sometimes he who acted in

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would shout "Eureka" too soon; and having undertaken to lead the van, lead it astray till just about, as he supposed, to come down upon the proof itself, and to come down with a Q. E. D.: the master would stop him short, and bid him-as Coleridge told the ingenious author of Guesses at Truth" to guess again." But suppose the "guess" fortunate, or that a boy had even succeeded, by his own industry or reflection, in mastering a proposition, did it follow that he would be a clear expositor of what he knew? It was far otherwise. Our young Archimedes unacquainted with the terms of the science, and being also (as we have hinted) lamentably defective in his knowledge of the power of words-would mix up such a "farrago" of irrelevancies and repetitions with the proof, as, in fact, to render it to the majority no proof at all. Euclid should be taught in his own words,-just enough and none to spare: the employment of less must engender obscurity; and of more, a want of neatness and perspicacity. The best geometrician amongst us would have cut but a bad figure by the side of a lad of very average ability brought up to know Euclid by book.

Another twitch of the bell announced that the hour for playing at triangles had expired. In five minutes the slate was covered with bars of minims and crotchets, and the music lesson begun. This, in the general tone of its delivery, bore a striking resemblance to the geographical one of two hours before; the only difference being that "ut, re, me had succeeded to names of certain cities, and "fa, so, la" to the number of their inhabitants. It would be as vain an attempt to describe all the noise we made as to show its rationale or motive. It was loud enough to have cowed a lion, stopped a donkey in mid-bray—to have excited the envy of the vocal Lablache, or to have sent any prima donna into hysterics. When this third hour had been bellowed away, and the bell had rung unheard the advent of a fourth

presto-in came Mons. D, to relieve the meek man who had acted as coryphæus to the music class; and after a little tugging, had soon produced from his pocket that without which you never catch a Frenchmen -a thème. The theme being announced, we proceeded (not quite tant bien que mal) to scribble it down at his dictation, and to amend its orthography afterwards from a corrected copy on the slate. Once more the indefatigable bell obtruded its tinkle, to proclaim that Herr Roth was coming with a Fable of Gellert, or a chapter from Vater Pestalozzi's serious novel, Gumal und Lina, to read, and expound, and catechise upon. This last lesson before dinner was always accompanied by frequent yawns and other unrepressed symptoms of fatigue; and at its conclusion we all rose with a shout, and rushed into the corridors.

On resuming work in the afternoon, there was even less attention and method observed than before. The classes were then broken up, and private lessons were given in accomplishments, or in some of the useful arts. Drawing dogs and cows, with a master to look after the trees and the hedges; whistling and spitting through a flute; playing on the patience of a violin; turning at a lathe; or fencing with a powerful maître d'armes ; such were the general occupations. It was then, however, that we English withdrew to our Greek and Latin; and, under a kind master, Dr M- acquired (with

the exception of a love for natural history, and a very unambitious turn of mind) all that really could deserve the name of education.

We have now described the sedentary life at the chateau. In the next paper the reader shall be carried to the gymnasium; the drill ground behind the lake; to our small menageries of kids, guinea pigs, and rabbits; be present at our annual ball and skating bouts in winter, and at our bathings, fishings, frog-spearings, and rambles over the Jura in

summer.

THE CROWNING OF THE COLUMN, AND CRUSHING OF THE PEDESTAL.

Ir was said in the debate on the Navigation Laws, in the best speech made on the Liberal side, by one of the ablest of the Liberal party, that the repeal of the Navigation Laws was the crowning of the column of free trade. There is no doubt it was so; but it was something more. It was not only the carrying out of a principle, but the overthrow of a system; it was not merely the crowning of the column; but the crushing of the pedestal.

And what was the system which was thus completely overthrown, for the time at least, by this great triumph of Liberal doctrines? It was the system under which England had become free, and great, and powerful; under which, in her alone of all modern states, liberty had been found to coexist with law, and progress with order; under which wealth had increased without producing divisions, and power grown up without inducing corruption; the system which had withstood the shocks of two centuries, and created an empire unsurpassed since the beginning of the world in extent and magnificence. It was a system which had been followed out with persevering energy by the greatest men, and the most commanding intellects, which modern Europe had ever produced; which was begun by the republican patriotism of Cromwell, and consummated by the conservative wisdom of Pitt; which had been embraced alike by Somers and Bolingbroke, by Walpole and Chatham, by Fox and Castlereagh; which, during two centuries, had produced an unbroken growth of national strength, a ceaseless extension of national power, and at length reared up a dominion which embraced the earth in its grasp, and exceeded anything ever achieved by the legions of Cæsar, or the phalanx of Alexander. No vicissitudes of time, no shock of adverse fortune, had been able permanently to arrest its progress. It had risen superior alike to the ambition of Louis XIV. and the genius of Napoleon; the rude severance of the North American colonies had thrown only a passing shade over its fortunes; the

power of Hindostan had been subdued by its force, the sceptre of the ocean won by its prowess. It had planted its colonies in every quarter of the globe, and at once peopled with its descendants a new hemisphere, and, for the first time since the creation, rolled back to the old the tide of civilisation. Perish when it may, the old English system has achieved mighty things; it has indelibly affixed its impress on the tablets of history. The children of its creation, the AngloSaxon race, will fill alike the solitudes of the Far West, and the isles of the East; they will be found equally on the shores of the Missouri, and on the savannahs of Australia; and the period can already be anticipated, even by the least imaginative, when their descendants will people half the globe.

It was not only the column of free trade which has been crowned in this memorable year. Another column, more firm in its structure, more lasting in its duration, more conspicuous amidst the wonders of creation, has, in the same season, been crowned by British hands. While the sacrilegious efforts of those whom it had sheltered were tearing down the temple of protection in the West, the last stone was put to the august structure which it had reared in the East. The victory of Goojerat on the Indus was contemporary with the repeal of the Navigation Laws on the Thames. The completion of the conquest of India occurred exactly at the moment when the system which had created that empire was repudiated. Protection placed the sceptre of India in our hands, when free trade was surrendering the trident of the ocean in the heart of our power. With truth did Lord Gough say, in his noble proclamation to the army of the Punjaub on the termination of hostilities, that "what Alexander had attempted they had done." Supported by the energy of England, guided by the principles of protection, restrained by the dictates of justice, backed by the navy which the Navigation Laws had created, the British arms had achieved the most wonderful triumph recorded in the annals of

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