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 μ.

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

come, 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

siderable share of mathematics ;—as if the memory of things were not more agreeable, and more profitable, than the memory of words.

The present state of classical educa-were such a want of difficulties to overtion 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 literature. So there are; but no man likes to add the difficulties of a language to the difficulties of a subject; 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

tic and Syro-phoenician verses; and yet | that both will be placed on a firmer we doubt whether there will be a suffi- basis, in proportion as the minds of men cient avidity in literary men to get at are more trained to the investigation of the beauties of the finest writers which truth. At present, we act with the the world has yet seen; and though minds of our young men, as the Dutch the Bagvat Gheeta has (as can be did with their exuberant spices. An proved) met with human beings to infinite quantity of talent is annually translate, and other human beings to destroyed in the Universities of England read it, we think that, in order to secure by the miserable jealousy and littleness an attention to Homer and Virgil, we of ecclesiastical instructors. It is in must catch up every man- -whether he vain to say we have produced great is to be a clergyman or a duke,- begin men under this system. We have prowith him at six years of age, and never duced great men under all systems. quit him till he is twenty; making him Every Englishman must pass half his conjugate and decline for life and death; life in learning Latin and Greek; and 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 ob ject, 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 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.

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 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

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.

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 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 prin

the feast.

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 trades, 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,

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 ex-ciples of legislation,-what effect laws clusive 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

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