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considerable force, as well as terseness of expression. The lines in general are fluent, and at the same time energetic in their course; but we apprehend that before the author can command success, he must implore his muse to inspire him with a more lofty strain, than he has been able to reach in the present attempt. The task which he has proposed to himself is an extremely difficult one. No genius inferior to that of Milton has succeeded in adorning the sublime doctrines of religion with the attractions of verse. Young's Night Thoughts contained the history of a mind wrapped in the gloom of melancholy; and so far they affect us. When he descants on the higher themes of heaven, and the great truths which are known and practised there, he either descends into common-place, or by attempting too high a flight, incurs the charge of affectation and bombast.

The author of the poem before us has not steered clear between these two vicious extremes. It is hardly fair, however, to judge of his talents for this species of composition from a single specimen. He is manifestly a practised writer, and seems actuated in producing this work by the most amiable motives. We select a single passage as a favourable example of his style.

And can there be who doubt there is a God,

And life eternal! When the river flows,

Deny the fountain-head who will, the wave,
That curling murmurs farthest from its source,

That source attests. Shew me some well-wrought work
Of matter or of mind; though you produce
No author, I conclude that such there was,
Or this had never been, and give him praise.

And why should sense demur? When the poor slave,
Doom'd by some tyrant's hard decree to starve,
Wakes in his dungeon, on his rocky bed,
From sleep, then wildly casts his eyes around,
As if in search of death, let him espy
In osier frame sweet herbage of the field
To greet his famished lip, and from the spring,
In earthen jar, the lucid draught to cheer
His parching tongue, will he not straight exclaim,
That some kind hand hath op'd his prison-door
And brought this bounty? will he not invoke
A blessing on the donor as he tastes,
And feels the temperate tide of health return
To cool the heated vessels of his heart,
And pacify the fever in his brain?

you could not thus

pp. 8, 9.

Tell him 'twas chance: —
- but no ;-
Abuse his ear, nor wound his swelling soul
presence of the angel Gratitude.'

In

224

ART. XIV. The Book of Churches and Sects. By the Rev. T. Charles Boone, B. A. 8vo. pp.560. 14s. London. C. and J. Rivington. 1826. THIS is a very useful book for all denominations of Christians. Its great object is to exhibit a succinct account of the tenets and customs of the various sects, to which so many opposite interpretations of Scripture have given rise.' The texts upon which each particular mode of faith has been founded, are brought together under one head, and the reader can not only see at a single glance the doctrines of each sect, but he can, without any great trouble, compare them together, and decide which of them deserves his preference.

The manner of execution seems, on the whole, tolerably impartial. The author has properly, wherever it was practicable, given the opinions of each sect in their own words. He has abstained from commentary in the body of his work, though he has added to ita Refutation of Unitarianism, and an Arrangement of Texts in support of the Tenets of the Church of England.' This addition the reader will, of course, treat as his inclination leads him, but that part of the work which is more extensive in its character, and which has particularly attracted our notice, will, we think, be universally acceptable.

For instance, a reader who wishes to become acquainted with the peculiar belief of that respectable sect, the Quakers, has only to refer to the table of contents, where under that denomination he will find all the passages in Scripture which go to form a complete account of their tenets. Where a passage of Scripture is disputed, the opinions upon it are classed in a chronological order. Mr. Boone is evidently a young and a sanguine author, and a staunch advocate for his own form of worship. For this he is not to be blamed; still less so, when he acknowledges that he wrote from ignorance, or, in other words, for the purpose of "adding to his own stock of theological knowledge.' We can further say, that his work is eminently calculated to augment the theological knowledge' of all those who may choose to give it their serious attention.

ERRATA.

6

In the first Number of this Series, page 68., line 36., the letter h and the word his were omitted at the end of the line.

Page 71., line 26., for “admits of such an instrument," read" admits of no such instrument."

**Subscribers are informed, that the APPENDIX, containing the TITLEPAGE, CONTENTS, and INDEX, to Vol. cviii. of the former Series of this Journal, and also the usual number of articles on Foreign Literature, was published on the 2d of January. Those who have not yet completed their volumes are requested, at their earliest convenience, to send orders for their copies of the Appendix to the Publishers; where also a few copies of the first Number of the New and Improved Series may be had by a timely application.

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THE

MONTHLY REVIEW.

MARCH, 1826.

ART. I. Harry and Lucy concluded; being the last Part of early Lessons. By Maria Edgeworth. 4 Vols. 12mo. 16s. Boards. Hunter.

1825.

THERE is no business or art that administers to the necessities or conveniences of mankind, which has not from time to time been beset with empiricism. Of this, education has had more than its full share. It may be doubted whether medicine itself has exhibited among its professors and practitioners a greater quantity of quackery. The philosophy of the human mind has been a principal and favourite subject of study with the wise and learned of all ages, and its professed aim, as a science, has ever been the improvement of the intellectual faculties of man, as the means of advancing his knowledge. Yet from Aristotle down to Bacon and Descartes, practical education (as far as the improvement of the intellectual powers was its object) was almost wholly confined to teaching how to wrangle by rule; and since the appearance of these two great lights, notwithstanding the vast and salutary change which they produced in the methods by which the philosophy both of mind and of matter has been conducted, it would be difficult to point out a writer of eminence who made the mental faculties the object of his enquiries, and who did not at the same time set up as the maker or destroyer of a system. The consequence of this, in these practical days, is just what might have been expected in an age in which the useful has begun to be almost universally followed in preference to the curious. • Metaphysics,' as Miss Edgeworth observes in her preface to the little work now under notice, after being too much in fashion, have been thrown aside too disdainfully, and their use and abuse have been confounded.' So much is given in all works of this nature to mere speculation, and so little to the practical application of proved and admitted truths, that the very name of metaphysics sounds to the ear of a modern reader as a word denoting something

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very profound, very perplexed, very troublesome, and very useless, and upon the whole exciting a certain vague feeling of antipathy almost amounting to horror. Yet it is most certain that without an attentive examination of the operations of the mind, especially as they are developed in early life, every attempt at systematic instruction is mere working at random, as much so as Harry's repeated and unsuccessful endeavours to build a bridge, without having learnt the principles upon which arches are constructed.

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The great merit of Miss Edgeworth and her father, as writers on education, may be stated in her own words:

Surely it would be doing good service to bring into popular form all that metaphysicians have discovered, which can be applied to practice in education. This was early and long my father's object. The art of teaching to invent -I dare not say but of awakening and assisting the inventive power by daily exercise and excitement, and by the application of philosophic principles to trivial occurrences, he believed might be pursued with infinite advantage to the rising generation.'-Preface, pp. xvii, xviii.

The application of metaphysics to the practical business of early instruction has been seldom attempted by metaphysical writers. Locke is the only metaphysician of much eminence who has written professedly on education in our language. Since his time Watts, and, in our own days, Mrs. Hamilton, have endeavoured to apply the principles of mental philosophy to the cultivation of the intellectual powers. But these, and other far inferior writers, have proceeded upon a plan so purely didactic, and have mingled with their practical remarks so much of speculative reasoning, that their writings are too often looked upon as belonging to a class of abstruse and learned disquisitions, excellent in their kind, full of important truths, and always to be spoken of most reverently, yet only to be studied as a task, and chiefly suited to the capacities of grave and learned persons. Of a very different character is the Essay on Practical Education. There is nothing like a process of reasoning from the beginning to the end of it. It is essentially a treatise written for the crowd. Every page contains remarks for which authorities might be quoted from the works of the profoundest and most celebrated philosophers, from Bacon down to Stewart; but all is expressed so briefly and familiarly, and the whole work is so crowded with illustrations and examples of the simplest and most obvious kind, that it seems to the common reader nothing more than a lively and agreeable essay upon the tempers and capacities of young folks, written by two goodnatured people who were fond of amusing themselves with children.

The only circumstances connected with this work which we have ever much regretted, are, that it was not compressed into a smaller compass, and that it should have been represented by some absurd admirers as containing some new inventions or discoveries in education. Both circumstances have undoubtedly served to hinder it

from working all the benefit which its benevolent authors designed. The immense majority of those who can be expected to read it, are persons who are little disciplined to habits of patient study, and for whom the quantity of print contained in two well-filled and goodly-sized quarto volumes, has a very formidable and disheartening aspect. And the idea of its teaching a new system excited some doubts in many who would have been willingly led by its plain sound sense, if they had reflection and knowledge sufficient to convince them, that the "Edgeworth system of education" was, in truth, as old as Milton, and of course not younger than Locke; and that its authors did little more than enforce, with greater earnestness, and in a more popular form than any other modern writers, the necessity of so exercising the faculties of children that they should become in part their own instructors, and of adding to those more common incentives to study which consist of punishments and rewards, the far surer and more effective stimulants of curiosity kept alive by variety, and the pleasures of successful

invention.

The great problem of education is, how the young mind can be best taught to think. The authors of the Essay on Practical Education have not solved this problem: the limited knowledge which mankind yet have of their own nature still renders the question one of considerable difficulty; nor, perhaps, will any thing more be ever done than the making of nearer approaches to its solution. But scanty as our information is of the manner in which the faculties of the mind unfold themselves in early life, or perform their functions when mature, we know that attention is essential for either recollecting or reasoning, and that memory and reasoning are essential to invention. It was to show the importance, and, at the same time, the ease of cultivating those faculties in children, that Miss Edgeworth and her father wrote their admirable Essay: it was chiefly to inculcate these truths in various ways, and by diversified examples, that she has written some of the most delightful volumes which the present age has added to the permanent literature of Britain; and it was for the same purpose of illustration that her father commenced, and that she continued, the " Early Lessons" which she has now concluded.

Such is the main object and such the chief merit of these little volumes. We are not sure, however, that it would be at once perceived by any but an attentive reader, and for this reason we have dwelt more upon this point than we shall perhaps have occasion to do upon the other more obvious qualities of the work. It explains, simply and familiarly, sometimes in conversations between Harry and Lucy and their parents or friends, more frequently in dialogue between the children themselves, the rudiments of science, principally of chemistry and natural philosophy, and the application of these to the common purposes of life.

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