and conducts, himself, the education of somewhat more than a fifth part of that number, who are put under his immediate care about the age of twelve or thirteen, and remain with him two years. About a year and a half before the publication of the Tentamina, we are given to understand, he began to train the higher boys to the making of nonsense and sense verses in school; devoting to that object only those scraps and odd ends of time which were employed in drilling the lower boys in the lesson of the day. By degrees, he encouraged them to add a few lines of their own to sense which he had dic. tated; and at last gave out themes for original composition. These were ge nerally set on Saturday; the verses to be shown up on Tuesday or Wednesday morning. Among other encouragements, the boys who gave up verses were exempted from some lesson or exercise required from the rest of the class, but of little importance to them. The subject was given out without any injunction on particular boys to write, or any denunciation of penalty against those who should not. The exercises were collected on the appointed morning by the head boy; looked over, characterized, and returned by the master next morning to be corrected. If they were particularly good, they were mentioned as such in presence of the class, hung up in the room for the inspection of all, and the writer occasionally allowed an hour or two to play. Those boys near the head of the class who did not present verses, suffered no greater punishment than the loss of a single place forfeited to the boy below who had shown up a copy.

In no instance (and we gladly mention a fact so much to the honour of our young countrymen, especially in a case where flogging has been reckoned indispensible) in no one instance was corporal chastisement inflicted, either by way of stimulus to write verses, or punishment for the want of them. Yet, by these means, and by never expecting verses from those who were unable to write them, eighteen or twenty boys, about the head of the class, scarcely ever failed to show up copies.-Such is the effect upon ingenious minds of gentlemanlike treatment, honourable emulation- laudumque arrecta cupide.' -These verses were of various degrees of merit; but each bore a distinctive character that could not be mistaken. It was scarcely possible, indeed, for verses to be given; every boy having his hands full with his own; and, among so small a number, detection was inevitable,

We do not mean to generalize this individual instance, so far as to say, that of one hundred and fifty boys, from twelve to fourteen years of age, whe

that partial adoption of Mr. Lancaster's system of teaching by monitors, in conse quence of which, he is enabled to do very nearly twenty times as much as could possibly have been done without some such contrivance. The details of his plan could not easily be brought within the compass of a note;-but the result is, that every individual boy, in a class or form of one hundred and sixty, is now called up, and thoroughly examined, at least two or three times every day, instead of being left for two or three days to inactive or counterfeited attention; and a spirit of industry and emulation is diffused through the whole body, instead of being confined, as formerly, in a great degree, to the boys near the head of the school.

have gone through the same preparation; we are in no case to look for more than eighteen or twenty capable of writing verses from their own sense, and doing all the ordinary business besides. The number, we have no doubt, might be increased, by perfecting the previous discipline; though, we are disposed to think, not to any considerable amount. It will vary, of course, from year to year, as well from the differences of preparatory training, as from the varying proportion of boys of talent. But we cannot help thinking, on the whole, that an incalculable good must result, both to masters and pupils, from any arrangement that confines the composition of verses to the higher and more ambitious boys. The master will be saved the irksome, thankless, and unprofitable labour of licking into shape the unseemly productions of dull plodders, whose industry, on the other hand, is turned into channels more likely to be useful. Much fraud and flogging, and unworthy connivance will be avoided. Instead of a low drudgery, enforced by ignominious punishment, the writing of verses will be raised to its proper character-of an ennobling and elegant exercise-reserved for the able and assiduous student-performed from the most laudable motives-and rewarded with honourable distinction. Of this description are all verses that gain a boy credit, or do him good. Why, then, insist on wringing a few meagre lines from hard bound brains, by efforts that would be far more usefully directed to the common business of translating the classics?

To all this panegyric upon Mr. Pillans, I give no assent. Whether at school, or at the army, the motives of honour, emulation, ambition, ought never to be lost sight of; but when a duty is to be done, there must be compulsion also. I am glad the practice of making verses, is about to be adopted in the Scotch seminaries of education, because I am fully persuaded that it is the shortest. and the most effectual method of making good scholars that has ever yet been invented; and it has given a superiority to the English schools and to English writers in matters of taste from the time of queen Elizabeth, that can no other way be accounted for.

The practice of making Latin verses, is not very prevalent on the continent, unless as I suspect in Italy; of this I judge from Pope's Poemata Italorum selecta; an elegant collection in two vols. Augerianus and Secundus, Owen, Casimir, and Buchanan, have done great credit to modern Latin poetry: and some good things are to be found in the Muse Anglicanæ collected by Addison, the Horatian Carmina of Loveling, who disgraced his pages by elegant panegyrics on Betsy Careless; in the Lusus Westmonasterienses, the Musa Etonienses, and above all the

exquisitely correct and beautiful trifles of Vincent Bourne. A new edition of the Musæ Anglicanæ is badly wanted, to include some pieces by Dr. Jortin, Dr. Johnson, sir W. Jones, Mr. Wrangham and others, and the Latino-Danish poets.

But it is not for the sake of modern Latin poetry, that I regard the making of verses indispensible as a school exercise; so indispensible, as to make me doubt whether a profound knowledge of the language can be obtained without it. Let us consider how it operates.

A boy (after going through his course of scanning and nonsense verses) has a given subject, upon which he has to compose half a dozen hexameters and pentameters for instance; the usual measure began with, and followed by Sapphic, Alcaic, and Iambic exercises. He settles first the train of ideas by which he proposes to illustrate the theme. He then runs it over in his mind in prose Latin, and begins to arrange it into metre. For this purpose he must know or search for not only the quantity of every syllable, but the synonime of every word, and not only the synonime of every word, but all the various methods of expressing and paraphrasing the same idea; for his language must bend to his metre. He must search his classic authors for his authorities; for useful as the Gradus ad Parnassum, and Labbe's Catholici Indices may be, they will not always suffice. When his verses are produced, his tutor calls upon him now and then for his authorities for certain meanings or certain quantities, and authors must be diligently hunted to find them.

I will venture to say that a dozen Latin verses composed as they must be composed, will give a boy more knowledge of quantity, more recollection of various meanings, more command of words and of phrases, and more insight into elegant construction of a sentence, and propriety of periphrasis and imagery, than a week's labour at merely construing a classic author.

Then he will understand something of the beauties that Latin versification is capable of, and he may read Vossius and the Metron Ariston, with some pleasure. Nor will he offend the cultivated ears of a learned foreigner, by those horrible attacks upon quantity, that even the well educated among the American youth, are too apt to be guilty of.