he may be most cunning in the virtues and management of spondees and dactyles, and "perilous shrewd" in the wonder-working properties of syllogisms, and the various useful applications of the figure of Barbara, and in all the other innumerable fine "cob-webs" and verbal jugglings of logic; and yet scarce be able to write home a sensible letter to his parents, or competent to argue a common question with the first bumpkin he may chance to meet. And the reason of this imbecility is sufficiently apparent. The studies which the misguided disciple has been accustomed to pursue, may have exercised the memory, but they can scarcely have improved the understanding. He has never been used to combine and collate the results of his knowledge, or to search within himself for a fresh and original succession of ideas; and the genius, as might be imagined, is meantime allowed to remain wholly dormant, or is overlaid by the cumbrous and mystifying jargon of annotators and critics. Sir William Temple very happily compares this mischievous process to the conduct of him, who, wishing to excite a sparkling fire, heaps on too many worthless sticks, and thus foolishly "suppresses, and sometimes quite extinguishes a little spark, that would otherwise have grown up to a noble flame." The beau ideal of education, according to our humble conception, is to improve the reasoning powers by precept and employment; to exercise the different faculties and natural tendencies of the mind; and to store it peculiarly with that sort of instruction in fact and in theory, which is most likely to be available in social business and intercourse. And whilst we would not be apprehended to insinuate that these results cannot be produced, to a certain limited extent, merely by the study of the classic authors of antiquity,—provided that study be properly and metaphysically conducted,-which, we regret to say, is not at present the case in Oxford,-we will confidently affirm, knowing abundantly that the position, strange as the fact may seem to the world, will be pretty generally disputed by college tutors, and other such like intellectuallyfoundered hacks, who are employed in the great rotten borough of learning to carry the young mind into the high-way of knowledge,—we affirm, we repeat, it is chiefly to the literature of recent days, that we must look for really useful and practical information; and half the precious years which are consumed in drawling listlessly over the pages of the canonized elders of Oxford lecturerooms, or in committing to memory the crabbed terms of a worthless logic, and grammatical dicta, only learned to be forgotten, would be sufficient to initiate the student, at the least, in all the most useful branches of science, and to imbue his mind with the rich and varied literature of his native land "Which no bold tales of Gods or monsters swell, Waller. Northcote relates, in his Life of Sir Joshua Reynolds, that the celebrated Professor Porson once lamented, in his presence, that so considerable a period of his youthful time had been spent in acquiring the Greek tongue. "If I had a son to educate," he added, in his wonted sarcastic manner, "I would make him study his native language, and I would give him, as his task every morning, a sufficient portion of the pages of Gibbon for him to translate into English." In his general principle, the Professor here approaches infinitely nearer to the truth, than it is often the good fortune of "his order" to attain; for it is from our home-bred speculations in letters and philosophy alone, that the genuine essentials of British education can be derived and turned to account. It is these that lend the permanent colouring and impress to the actual conduct of our lives. The classics, at the best, are but valuable auxiliaries. The former constitute, as it were, the true key-stone of the arch of knowledge; the latter may not inaptly be represented by the flutings, the friezes, and the purely ornamental decorations. And it is quite ridiculous to contend, that the acquire ments on which we lay so much stress, can be easily made at some after period in the course of the student's progress to age and honours. If circumstances should so far favour him, he assuredly owes no gratitude to Alma Mater for his most valuable accomplishments; but, unfortunately, ninety-nine persons out of every hundred, when they have fairly entered into the business of life, have their attention sufficiently engrossed with the details peculiar to their profession; and those to whom fortune may have been more propitious, are little apt to encroach upon their leisure, or to pick a quarrel with their indolence, in order to labour after attainments which they have always been accustomed to hear treated with disrespect by their early instructors. "The dedication of colleges and societies," says Lord Bacon," solely to the use of professory learning, has not only been an enemy to the growth of sciences, but has contributed likewise to the prejudice of kingdoms and states. Hence it is that princes, when they would make choice of ministers fit for the affairs of state, find about them a marvellous solitude of such men; for this reason, because there is no collegiate education designed to this end, where such as are framed and fitted by nature for that office may, besides other arts, study chiefly history, modern languages, books and treatises of policy; that so they may thence come more able and better furnished to the offices of state." "In vain," observes an able and judicious writer, "will a youth perplexed with difficulties in the world, invoke the learning of Greece and Rome, if he be ignorant of the constitution of our nature, the modes of thinking which prevail, and the nice shades and distinctions that exist between right and wrong. He should understand well the constitution, laws, and genius, civil and military, of his native country, and he should not be imperfectly acquainted with the civil polity of surrounding nations. The Latin and Greek languages, considered as models of taste and fine writing, are useful to form the style and sharpen the wit of men. But a Coryphoeus in ancient learning is but a mere pedant, if he be ignorant of the nature, beauties, and power of his mother-tongue. His learning, which would otherwise be an useful ornament to his more practical knowledge, cannot but impede his progress in the world. An Englishman destined to reside in his native country, is to think, write, and speak in English, not in Latin or Greek; and the greatest cause that has hitherto obstructed the refinement of English literature, is the total neglect of our own language during our education. Our acquaintance with the authors of antiquity should have taught us better." The writer here refers to the authoritative example of the Romans. That considerate people, according to the concurring testimonies of Cicero and Quintilian, made the Latin tongue, and their own home-bred knowledge, the first and the principal objects of study; and it was not until after these acquirements had been fairly mastered, that the attention was solicited to the foreign language of Greece. The origin of a contrary practice in England, is to be ascribed to the peculiar circumstances which accompanied the revival of letters. At that memorable æra, the present languages of Europe could scarcely be said to possess an existence; and the unprepared minds of men, altogether blinded it may be with the excess of light poured upon them from the classics, long groped about amid the "blear illusions" of school dialectics, and the mystic and mistifying subtleties of theology, for the means of improving the intellectual powers. Their best compositions were only bald imitations of the favorite authors whom they had recovered, and they timidly and servilely adopted the dialect of these writers, instead of attempting to refine and enrich their own. The Latin tongue, accordingly, became the consecrated vehicle as well of religious instruction as of science and the belles lettres, and custom continued what barbarism had commenced. It was whilst modern literature was yet in this grovelling condition that the English universities were founded; and, as the clergy engrossed at that period the whole body of learning, for their conve nience, and in conformity with their professional views, that scheme of education was then introduced which even the innovating hand of time has scarcely yet modified or improved, and which still remains "dark, dark, dark, amid the blaze of noon." In point of fact indeed, it has now in many important respects deteriorated from what it originally was. At a former period the students, instead of being kept, as is customary in our times, at the great schools of Eton and Winchester, until the age of manhood has arrived, were removed to the University when not older than twelve or fourteen, and some even earlier,* and there they remained seven instead of the four years which are at present the utmost duration of a residence in college. If the first portion of this time, therefore, was exclusively devoted to the perusal of the classics, and perhaps at the tender age to which the pupils had attained it could not have been much better employed, there still remained three years in which a more general course of study might be prosecuted with advantage; and to facilitate an object so desirable, the treasures of the Bodleian library were then thrown open to the student. The modern practice of abridging the residence, has, besides introducing other evils, rendered this splendid repository of learning perfectly valueless to the junior members of the University, as the old rule of denying admission to under-graduates is still rigidly enforced, and few of course find it convenient to remain in Oxford after having acquired the " open sesame" which the taking of a bachelor's degree confers. And, truly, when a man has reached the ripe age of three or four and twenty, which we believe to be the usual period of life of those who now-a-days take the first degree at the universities, it is high time, we are inclined to think, that he should be looking about him for some more profitable employment, than unravelling the worthless mysteries of Greek choruses or metres; and that he should be sharpening his reasoning powers, and increasing his knowledge of mankind and of human relations, by the help of some more competent and enticing manual of instruction than Aldrich's Compendium of Logic. SONG. I HEAR a little bird sing ladye, Of all its tribe the king, There's not a bird in the gay green wood So sweet a song can sing And every note of its delicate throat, I know-and it doth say, ""Tis the evening hour, fair maid, to the bower, I hear a little bird sing ladye, A fluttering, fleeting thing There's not a bird in the gay green wood So ready away to wing But ere it plies its course through the skies, It pipes this parting lay ""Tis now the hour, fair maid, for the bower, And Love may no longer stay!" * Cardinal Wolsey must have been admitted when only eleven, since he took his bachelor's degree at fifteen. SCENES IN POLAND.-No. 2. (1816.) VARSOVIE-DOBRAVICE-ST. Petersburgh. ONCE more then I am in Poland, the same Poland of whose fate I was the bearer twenty-four years ago,—that noble republic, first slaughtered and then devoured by the monster Legitimacy. The unprincipled Prussian and the perfidious Austrian have however surrendered part of their ill-gotten spoil, and the Russian now holds almost the whole in his deadly grasp. Aye, and deadly is the grasp indeed! Blood and desolation every where! "Opoczno," says the black table; remember it well; saw it burning with its magazines, and its inhabitants in the flames. The town walls still lie shattered in the moat, and instead of the flanked tower they have substituted a gate, surmounted by the double eagle, to spare themselves the trouble of storming it a second time. "Geich Excellency! no horses; have all been taken by his Imperial Highness the Cesarowitsch and suite, going to Warsaw; the town is to be illuminated by orders of government this night in honour of the new viceroy." The postmaster, a Russian, while making his report, watches and watches, his back curving at the same time to a couple of blows, for which he seems to have made up his mind, provided he can catch from my countenance what is passing within me. No, I am not in a beating humour. A bitter laugh was going to burst from my lips, but I am in Poland, and the man is a spy ex officio. "In half an hour the horses must be ready, or" The man creeps away, and I descend from the carriage to enter his hotel. The bar-room smoked-black and bleak; in one corner a huge timepiece, in the other an ugly statue of a mitred saint, once red and blue; the tables and benches saturated with gorzalka, and the walls covered with one sable sheet, a living mass of flies-buzzing, buzzing. Ho! it is impossible to enter here! "A cup of Polish coffee and some eggs into the carriage; I shall take a ramble through the town." Opoczno, illuminated! What a cruel satire! One house rebuilt since the twenty-six years that have succeeded its conflagration; another still full of balls and bullets; a third in ruins, and so all over the town. And these wretched abodes illuminated! Yes, to have the tidings transmitted to the arch-hypocrite at St. Petersburgh, that all Poland was in ecstasy at his gracious clemency in appointing an imperial bète to be its viceroy. The market-place is rather crowded-must see by what. A drove of cattle, destined to Silesia, Germany, and so forth, on the one side; on the other a detachment of recruits, five hundred at least, enclosed in a hollow square of Russian infantry. They are shivering with cold, for they stand naked as they entered the world, the surgeons of the regiment inspecting them to see whether they are worthy of being shot. A couple of gigantic corporals follow these examinators, dealing a sound lash to each of the approved, just to try the strength of his nerves. Alas! the dignity of human nature ! I stroll back to my carriage. The eggs and coffee are ready, the horses coming. Well, let's be off. Still forty-eight miles to P- -y Castle! Drive on, Kotschi, for I am tired, heartily tired. I am not forty-eight hours within the dominions of his Muscovite and Polish Majesty, my master forsooth,— and I am sick of this progressive horrible misery and oppression. Yes! thus, exactly thus, a country must look, ground down by brutish violence! Burned towns, teeming with soldiers; miserable villages of scattered red mud cabins, with no chimney, no window, but holes in the walls and roofs, through which the smoke seeks its outlet; the room the common property of cows, calves, dogs, and the horse, if the wretched man be so happy as to own one. Before these sinks of dirt and wretchedness a dunghill, on which the children roll, joined on a Sunday by their mother, who, as a pastime, is employed on a pedicularian search; the husband dead drunk, smothers his misery in gorzalka, obtained from the Jew at two hundred per cent. interest, payable with the next crop. Land of wretchedness! where there is no appeal but to the knout and the cane, must I find thee thus again? And no help! Clutched by the tyrant and his myrmidons, like Laocoon and his hapless sons in the folds of the serpent,-is there no hope?-no redemption? None! Corruption and baseness within, violence within and without: if this iron bondage hold out twenty years longer, generous Poland will not be worth the saving. But enough, even thoughts are dangerous here. Ah look! What is in yonder field? A herd of cattle with a dozen of people, girls, boys, and peasants; two of them carry large screens, on each of them a cow painted. They are advancing slowly step by step; now they are halting just over against us, again they move onward. Softly postillion, it is a partridge trapping, gently, or you will startle the flock, and your ears will be saluted by a whole legion of sacramensky Niemczi.+ * This partridge trapping is very common in many parts of Poland. The scene of the sport is a large stubble field, where the cattle are grazing. At a distance of about four hundred yards from the spot where the flock has been discovered, the net is fixed in the following manner: two streaks of net-work, each from fifty to one hundred and fifty feet long, and about half a yard wide, and ending in a sack of from five to ten feet in length, are spread in the form of an angle of forty-five degrees. Into this angle, the latera of which, as mentioned, are formed by the net, it becomes necessary to coax the birds. This is effected by one or two screens, on which a cow is painted. The partridges, accustomed to the sight of cattle, are seen tripping before the painting. Sometimes they take it into their head to nestle down; the screen bearer has then patiently to wait till they start again, and arrive finally at their prison. + Sacramensky Niemczi, cursed Germans. Nieme signifies foreigner, but more particularly German. The Pole has some reason to hate the Germans, and especially their crowned heads. |