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I might soon write a very large one." "Ay, doctor! how so?" "Why, Sir, by putting in all that I know, and all that you do not know."

DUTY-Financially a tax which we pay to the public excise and customs; morally, that which we are very apt to excise in our private customs. “Les hommes,” says Voltaire, "se piquent toujours de remplir un devoir qui les distingue." If singularity be a distinction, they might easily attain it by a conscientious discharge of religious and moral duty.

DUTY-PARENTAL-Sometimes consists in making our children a stalking-horse for our own failings and vices. Of all the virtuous disguises which self-love is made to assume, the most accommodating, the most sanctimonious, the most demure-looking, is the mask which gives to us the appearance of loving others.

The avaricious man, the gambling speculator, the fraudulent dealer have all the same plausible excuse; they are making fortunes for their children, which, however, they never give to them, when acquired, until the hand of death wrenches the booty from their grasp. It is remarkable too, that many of the loving fathers who boast what great things they are thus doing for their offspring, are the last to do small things for them, refusing them the most trivial indulgence, ruling them with a rod of iron, and making them at one time the stalking-horse, and at another the scape-goat of their own humours and propensities. Oh! how pleasant is it when the affectionate parent can in this manner throw a garb of goodness over his evil passions, and sin with a safe conscience!

EAR-Pleasures of the.-The most spiritual of all enjoyments, the least sensual of the senses. Where can its sensibilities be so well cultivated, and impart such a hallowing character to delight, as amid the various and exquisite harmonies of nature, the vocal fields, the rustling woods, the deep

mouthed and sonorous sea? Let each of these pleasant sounds, as it falls upon the drum of the ear, be as a reveille, calling upon our thoughts to arise, and be wafted heavenward upon the symphonious air. These are the feelings that make all music sacred. No wonder that the deaf are often morose and dejected, while the blind, shut out as they are from the world, almost invariably draw in cheerfulness through the ear.

EATING and DRINKING-Supplying the lamp of life with cotton and oil. "The proverb's somewhat musty," but it cannot be too often repeated that we should "eat to live, not live to eat," for if we make the stomach a cemetery of food, the body will soon become the sepulchre of the soul.

“Pone gulæ metas, ut sit tibi longior ætas,”

whether in this world or the next: for to make a god of your belly, is to sell yourself to the devil.

One half of mankind pass their lives in thinking how they shall get a dinner, and the other in thinking what dinner they shall get; and the first are much less injured by occasional fasts, than are the latter by constant feasts.

ECHO-The shadow of a sound-a voice without a mouth, and words without a tongue. Echo, though represented as a female, never speaks till she is spoken to, and at every repetition of what she has heard, continues to make it less, an example recommended to the special imitation of chatterboxes and scandal-mongers.

ECONOMY-A pauper without a parish, whom no one will own or adopt, unless compelled by necessity. It has long since been driven out of every rich house, while the churchwardens and overseers take good care that it shall never be admitted into the poor-house. Government, after having long

turned a deaf ear to its remonstrances, must take it up, or the government itself must break down.*

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EDUCATION-Modern-a game of cross purposes.'Aujourdhui," says Montesquieu, "nous recevons trois éducations différentes ou contraires; celle de nos pères, celle de nos maitres, celle du monde. Ce qu'on nous dit dans la dernière, renverse toutes les idées des premières. Cela vient en quelque partie, du contraste qu'il y a parmi nous, entre les engagemens de la religion et ceux du monde, chose que les anciens ne connaissaient pas." Every one's experience and observation must have confirmed the truth of this averment. At five years of age, the father begins to rub the mother out of his child; at ten, the schoolmaster rubs out the father; at twenty, the college rubs out the schoolmaster; at twentyfive, the world rubs out all its predecessors, and gives us a new education, till we are old enough to take reason and religion for our pastors, when we employ the rest of our lives in unlearning all that we had previously learnt. The universe is the best university, for it teaches us to forget a great portion of what we have acquired at all the others.

When most of our colleges and public schools were founded, a knowledge of Latin and Greek was the paramount desideratum, not only because the classics were the fashionable study, but because all learning and science, whether ancient or contemporary, was confined to those tongues. The scholars, moreover, were mostly intended for the professions, an object which rendered a knowledge of Latin indispensable, the Bible and the Church service, the law and the law proceedings, as well as the mysteries of medicine, being locked up in that language. All this is now totally changed: the

*Had the author lived, he would doubtless have been gratified to find that this article-thanks to the patriotic exertions of the Whig Government-was no longer applicable, either to our parochial or national expenditure.-Ed.

classics are accessible in a variety of excellent translations,—— Literati publish in the language of their respective countries, -and the professions, with the solitary exception of medical prescriptions, which may be, and are, learnt by heart, without the least knowledge of Latin, are all carried on in English. And yet under circumstances diametrically opposite, our educational system remains precisely the same, and boys, at a costly sacrifice of toil and suffering, waste several of the most precious years of life in laying up stores for oblivion, in composing nonsense verses, which they have the good sense to forget as rapidly as they can, and in acquiring a mere smattering of Latin and Greek, which not one in a hundred retains after he has embarked in the business or pleasures of life. completely survived its original aims and nothing therefore so imperatively demands a thorough reform, as our scholastic and collegiate establishments. Aware of this fact, the founders of the London University have given it a system much better adapted to the spirit and the wants of the times. Modern and foreign literature are cultivated under able teachers; lectures are delivered on a variety of useful subjects, totally neglected at our old institutions; and professorships have been established for every branch of science with which an accomplished gentleman ought to be con

versant.

Nothing has so intentions, and

It is remarkable, that while our sons continue to be educated at our old colleges and public schools upon the same system that existed several hundred years ago, the tuition of our daughters has undergone a total change. For housewifery, formerly the one thing needful, we have substituted the accomplishments, which however ornamental and attractive, are scarcely more enduring than the nonsense verses of the boy. After a ridiculous waste of money and time upon a French dancing-master, the pupil is told, upon her coming out, that as nothing is so vulgar as to dance, she must forget all her saltatory lessons, and walk through a Quadrille as quietly as possible. At a not less costly outlay, she is taught

by an Italian to sing a Bravura; but if colds, sickness, or time do not lay siege to her voice, she is sure to lose it when she marries, for few indeed retain their accomplishments after they have answered their purposes of procuring a husband. Thus successfully do they rival their brothers, by forgetting in two or three years, what it has required eight or ten to drill into them.

As a proof how little a college education, even when it has been most successfully prosecuted, qualifies a man for the business and duties of the world, it has been ascertained that very few of those who take their degrees with the greatest eclat, have ever attained any subsequent eminence. In Archdeacon Wrangham's Sertum Cantabrigiense-privately printed, Malton, 1824, is a list of those who took honours at Cambridge from 1754 to 1823. Of two thousand nine-hundred names thus registered, hardly any in after life obtained the smallest distinction. Even of the seventy senior wranglers, very few became afterwards known. So much for the university tests of talent!

Even the partisans of the old system, with all its cherished ineptitudes, are but the blind instruments for advancing that of which they would fain arrest the march. Rough-hew their purposes how they will, individuals, classes, nations, are all receiving an unconscious education, over which they have little control, from the divine Schoolmaster, who, looking upon the whole human race as his scholars, and generations as his successive classes, is preparing us, by the gradual developement of our energies and talents, for that loftier position in the scale of existence, to which man is eventually destined.

EFFECTS-do not always result from causes, as many a lawyer, whose bill remains unpaid, knows to his cost. A suitor for the hand of a young lady at Harrowgate, had been repeatedly warned that she was of a violent and ungovernable temper, but persisted in attributing the information to

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