the key to the temple. He desired to awaken the intellect of each individual boy, and contended that the main movement must come from within and not from without the pupil; and that all that could be, should be done by him and not for him. In a word, his scheme was to call forth in the little world of school those capabilities which best befitted the boy for his career in the great one.'

SCHOOL INDULGENCE.

Nothing is more prejudicial to after-success in life than indulgence to youth when at school. Sir James Mackintosh felt and acknowledged this error. He tells us that when he left school he could only imperfectly construe a small part of Virgil, Horace, and Sallust: he adds, "Whatever I have done beyond, has been since added by my own irregular reading. But no subsequent circumstance could make up for that invaluable habit of vigorous and methodical industry which the indulgence and irregularity of my school-life prevented me from acquiring, and of which I have painfully felt the want in every part of my life."

Another mistake is a profuse allowance of Pocket-money at School: we once heard an old Westminster declare that to his unlimited supply of money when at the college he attributed over-indulgence in luxuries which had injured his health, and often rendered him the dupe of mean and designing persons-full-grown parasites-mischievous as the plants of that name, which bear down the trees they attack, and rob them of the food intended for their own leaves and fruit.

UNSOUND TEACHING.

The general unsoundness of what is termed an English education is, to a great extent, accounted for by the little attention paid in the Universities, Colleges, and Schools to teaching our native language, and especially to the proper teaching of English in schools for the people. The results of this neglect of the mother-tongue are multitudinous. “The *Quarterly Review, No. 204. In the latter sentence is conveyed the advantage which education in a large school has over education at home.

Unsound Education.

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mass of our population, in spite of all that has been done, must be considered densely ignorant. Millions never open a book. Nearly fifteen millions never enter church or chapel. Other causes may operate, but the want of a knowledge of language is a potent one. People whose vocabulary is limited to about three hundred words cannot follow a sermon, and clergymen who have never been taught the value of plain Saxon English cannot preach one. Then, amongst the middle and upper classes, how superficial is the knowledge of English. How few can write a common letter without faults in grammar, choice of words, or spelling. Punctuation is absolutely ignored by many. What are the speeches at public meetings, or rather, how would they appear in print but for the talent of the reporters, who bring order out of chaos? The results of the Civil-Service Examinations abundantly prove the justice of these strictures; and the fruits of University training, or rather non-training, are too patent to require illustration. Our clergy often carry into the prayer-desk and pulpit all the defects of early life,—the provincial accent, the sing-song tone, the nasal twang, the lisp, or burr, or stammer; indistinct utterance, inaudible reading and vociferation, wrong emphasis, undue stress on enclitics, and many other faults. Good sermons are the exception rather than the rule; for if sound in doctrine and full of zeal, the style is often obscure or pedantic or inflated, and the delivery monotonous and soporific. In the Senate, though most of the Members are University men, there are but few really effective speakers. Were our senators trained to speak well-that is, to the point-much time would be saved, and public business despatched more rapidly.”

The remedies suggested by the Rev. Dr. D'Orsey are:

1. Training-schools for nursery governesses, who, without knowing or pretending to know French and Italian, should speak English without vulgarisms. 2. Greater attention in our present training colleges for schoolmasters to due instruction in English, especially in correct and fluent speaking. 3. More encouragement to men of talent and education to become and to remain schoolmasters, by holding out the prospect of honourable offices to distinguished teachers. Why should Inspectorships of Schools be always given to clergymen and barristers, to the exclusion of the schoolmaster? 4. The appointment of a thoroughly accomplished scholar as English Master in every great public school, of equal rank with the other masters. 5. The endowment of at least one Professorship in every University. 6. The recognition of English as a subject in every examination not strictly scientific, and

K

rewarding distinction in composition or oratory in the same substantial manner as eminence in classics or mathematics.

Sir John Coleridge relates the following inefficient examples of school-teaching which have come under his observation: "An Examiner was about, and he had a class before him-the first class in arithmetic. They were able to answer questions; they had gone through all the higher branches of arithmetic, and were prepared to answer any thing. But he said, 'I will give you a sum in simple addition.' He accordingly dictated a sum, and cautiously interspersed a good many ciphers. Suppose, for instance, he said, 'a thousand and forty-nine.' He found there was not one in the class who was able to put down that sum in simple addition; they could not make count of the ciphers. That showed him the boys had been suffered to pass over far too quickly the elementary parts of arithmetic. The examiner took them in grammar, and quoted a few lines from Cowper

I am monarch of all I survey,
My right there is none to dispute.

'What governs right?" There was not a boy could say, till it was put to them, 'none to dispute my right.'

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Let me impress upon you that the best motto you can take for yourselves in this respect is that which was taken by a most eminent man who made his way from a hairdresser's shop to be Chief Justice Tenterden. What was his motto? When a man is made a judge, he is made a serjeant; and as serjeant he gives rings to some of the great officers of State, with a motto upon each. His motto was 'Labore.' He did not refer to his own talents. It was not 'Invita Minerva.' To his immortal honour be it said—from the hair-dresser's shop in Canterbury to the Free School in Canterbury; from the Free School in Canterbury to Corpus Christi College; from Corpus Christi College to the bar; from the bar to the bench; from the bench to the peeragehe achieved all with unimpeachable honour, and always practising that which was his motto at last. One of the most gratifying scenes I have ever witnessed was when that man went up to the House of Peers in his robes for the first time, attended by the whole bar of England."

Two Educations.

SELF-FORMATION.

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The one great object-the finality-of rational Education is Self instruction. In mind as well as body we are children at first, only that we may afterwards become men; dependent upon others, in order that we may learn from them such lessons as may tend eventually to our edification on an independent basis of our own. The knowledge of facts, or what is generally called learning, however much we may possess of it, is useful so far only as we erect its materials into a mental framework; but useless, utterly, as long as we suffer it to lie in a heap, inert and without form. The instruction of others, compared with self-instruction, is like the law compared with faith; a discipline of preparation, beggarly elements, a schoolmaster to lead us on to a state of greater worthiness, and there give up the charge of us. Every man," says Gibbon, "who rises above the common level, receives two educations-the first from his instructors; the second, the most personal and important, from himself." Almost all Lord Eldon's legal education was from himself, without even the ordinary helps, which he disdainfully flung from him; and of no one could it be more truly predicated, that he was not "rocked and dandled" into a lawyer.

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The Rev. Sydney Smith has thus sketched a scheme, in which he deems it of the highest importance that the education of a British youth were 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 a multiplicity of laws; the causes of national wealth; the relations of foreign trade; the encouragement of agricultures and manufactures; the fictitious wealth occasioned by paper-credit; 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 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 remaining powers were beginning to evolve themselves, these are some of the propensities in study which we would endeavour to inspire.

PRACTICAL DISCIPLINE.

The want of Practical Discipline has been thus put by a writer in Blackwood's Magazine: "What is the use of battering a man's brains full of Greek and Latin pothooks, that he forgets before he doffs his last round-jacket or puts on his first long-tailed blue, if ye don't teach him the old Spartan virtue of obedience, hard living, early rising, and them sort of classics? Where's the use of instructing him in hexameters or pentameters, if you would leave him in ignorance of the value of a pennypiece? What height of stupidity it is to be fillin' a boy's brains with the wisdom of the ancients, and then turn him out like an omadhaum, to pick up his victuals among the moderns!"

With equal truth, but finer humour, has Sydney Smith, at his own expense, exposed this neglect of the practical as a fair indication of the mode of English education. He is writing to his publisher, whom he tells: "I have twice endeavoured to write the word skipping- skipping spirit.' Your printer first printed it stripling,' and then altered it into stripping. The fault is entirely mine. I was fifteen years at school and college-I know something about the Romans and the Athenians, and have read a good deal about the præter-perfect tense-but I cannot do a sum in simple addition, or write a handwriting which any body can read.”

"CRAMMING."

Cramming, which in our time was a cant term in the Universities for the art of preparing a student to pass an examination by furnishing him beforehand with the requisite answers, has travelled far beyond the tether of Oxford or Cambridge. Its abuse is well described by Watts: "As a man may be eating all day, and for want of digestion is never nourished, so these endless readers may cram themselves in vain with intellectual food." It reminds one also of the Baconian saw-of those who can pack the cards, yet know not how to play them.