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 progress in real wisdom as he can scan the verses of the Greek tragedians.

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 nobleman, 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 imbecility 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 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 classical learning is supposed to have 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 have a certain portion of original genius, 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 taught there,-if some had dedicated themselves to chemistry, some to mathematics, some to experimental philosophy, and if every attainment had been honoured in the mixed 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 be undignified and contemptible. In the same manner, the Parr, or the Bentley of his day, would be scandalised in an University to be put on a level with the discoverer of a neutral salt; and yet, what other measure is there of dignity in intellectual labour, but usefulness? And what ought the term University to mean, but a place were every science is taught which is liberal, and at the same time useful to mankind? Nothing would so much tend to bring classical literature within proper bounds as a steady and invariable appeal to these tests in our appreciation of all human knowledge. The puffed up pedant would collapse into his proper size, and the maker of verses and the rememberer of words would soon assume that station which is the lot of those who go up unbidden to the upper places of the feast.

We should be sorry, if what we have said should appear too contemptuous towards classical learning, which we most sincerely hope will always be held in great honour in this country, though we certainly do not wish to it that exclusive honour which it at present enjoys. A great classical scholar is an ornament, and an important acquisition to his country; but, in a place of education, we would give to all knowledge an equal chance for distinction; and would trust to the varieties of human disposition, that every science worth cultivation would be cultivated. Looking always to real utility as our guide, we should see, with equal pleasure, a studious and inquisitive mind arranging the productions of nature, investigating the qualities of bodies, or mastering the difficulties of the 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 public life, we would exhort him to contemn, or at least not to affect the reputation

We speak merely of reputation. Sad indeed is the fate of this University if its object has been classical literature alone; and it has failed even in that.

of a great scholar, but to educate himself for the offices of civil life. He should learn what the constitution of his country really was, how it had grown into its present state, the perils that had threatened it,— the malignity that had attacked it—the courage that had fought for it, and the wisdom that had made it great. We would bring strongly before his mind the characters of those Englishmen who have been the steady friends of the public happiness; and, by their examples, would breathe into him a pure public taste, which should keep him untainted in all the vicissitudes of political fortune. We would teach him to burst through the well-paid, and the pernicious cant of indiscriminate loyalty; and to know his Sovereign only as he discharged those duties, and displayed those qualities, for which the blood and the treasure of his people are confided to his hands. We should deem it of the utmost importance, that his attention was directed to the true principles of legislation, what effect laws can produce upon opinions, and opinions upon laws,—what subjects are fit for legislative interference, and when men may be left to the management of their own interests. The mischief occasioned by bad laws, and the perplexity which arises from numerous laws,-the causes of national wealth,-the relations of foreign trade, the encouragement of manufactures and agriculture,— the fictitious wealth occasioned by paper credit, the laws of population, the management of poverty and mendicity, the use and abuse of monopoly, the theory of taxation,—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 mind 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.

ENGLISH PUBLIC SCHOOLS.

Remarks on the System of Education in Public Schools. Svo. Hatchard. London, 1809.

THE HERE is a set of well-dressed, prosperous gentlemen, who assemble daily at Mr. Hatchard's shop ;-clean, civil personages, well in with people in power-delighted with every existing institution-and almost with every existing circumstance :—and, every now and then, one of these personages writes a little book ;-and the rest praise that little book-expecting to be praised, in their turn, for their own little books :-and of these little books, thus written by these clean, civil personages, so expecting to be praised, the pamphlet before us appears to be one.

The subject of it is the advantage of public schools; and the author, very creditably to himself, ridicules the absurd clamour, first set on foot by Dr. Rennel, of the irreligious tendency of public schools: he then proceeds to an investigation of the effects which public schools may produce upon the moral character; and here the subject becomes more difficult, and the pamphlet worse.

In arguing any large or general question, it is of infinite importance to attend to the first feelings which the mention of the topic has a tendency to excite; and the name of a public school brings with it immediately the idea of brilliant classical attainments: but, upon the importance of these studies, we are not now offering any opinion. The only points for consideration are, whether boys are put in the way of becoming good and wise men by these schools; and whether they actually gather there those attainments which it pleases mankind, for the time being, to consider as valuable, and to decorate by the name of learning.

By a public school we mean an endowed place of education of old standing, to which the sons of gentlemen resort in considerable numbers, and where they continue to reside, from eight or nine to eighteen years of age. We do not give this as a definition which would have satisfied Porphyry or Dun-Scotus, but as one sufficiently accurate for our purpose. The characteristic features of these schools are their antiquity, the numbers, and the ages of the young people who are educated at them. We beg leave, however, to premise, that we have not the slightest intention of insinuating anything to the disparagement of the present discipline or present rulers of these schools, as compared with other times and other men: we have no reason whatever to doubt that they are as ably governed at this as they have been at any preceding period. Whatever objections we may have to these institutions, they are to faults, not depending upon present administration, but upon original construction.

At a public school (for such is the system established by immemorial custom), every boy is alternately tyrant and slave. The power which the elder part of these communities exercises over the younger, is exceedingly great-very difficult to be controlled—and accompanied, not unfrequently, with cruelty and caprice. It is the common law of the place, that the young should be implicitly obedient to the elder boys; and this obedience resembles more the submission of a slave to his master, or of a sailor to his captain, than the common and natural deference which would always be shown by one boy to another a few years older than himself. Now, this system we cannot help considering as an evil, because it inflicts upon boys, for two or three years of their lives, many painful hardships, and much unpleasant servitude. These sufferings might perhaps be of some use in military schools; but, to give to a boy the habit of enduring privations to which he will never again be called upon to submit-to enure him to pains which he will never again feel—and to subject him to the privation of comforts, with which he will always in future abound-is surely not a very useful and valuable severity in education. It is not the life in miniature which he is to lead hereafter-nor does it bear any relation to it: he will never again be subjected to so much insolence and caprice; nor ever, in all human probability, called upon to make so many sacrifices. The servile obedience which it teaches might be useful to a menial domestic; or the habits of enterprise which it encourages, prove of importance to a military partisan; but we cannot see what bearing it has upon the calm, regular, civil life, which the sons of gentlemen, destined to opulent idleness, or to any of the three learned professions, are destined to lead. Such a system makes many boys very miserable; and produces those bad effects upon the temper and disposition, which unjust suffering always does produce;—but what good it does we are much at a loss to conceive. Reasonable obedience is extremely useful in forming the disposition. Submission to tyrrany lays the foundation of hatred, suspicion, cunning, and a variety of odious passions. We are convinced that those young people will turn out to be the best men, who have been guarded most effectually in their childhood from every species of useless vexation and experienced, in the greatest degree, the blessings of a wise and rational indulgence. But even if these effects upon future character are not produced, still four or five years in childhood make a very considerable period of human existence: and it is by no means a trifling consideration whether they are passed happily or unhappily. The wretchedness of school tyranny is trifling enough to a man who only contemplates it, in ease of body and tranquility of mind, through the medium of twenty intervening years; but it is quite as real, and quite as acute, while it lasts, as any of the sufferings of mature life: and the utility of these sufferings, or the price paid in compensation for them, should be clearly made out to a conscientious parent, before he consents to expose his children to them. This system also gives to the elder boys an absurd and pernicious opinion of their own importance, which is often with difficulty effaced

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