صور الصفحة
PDF
النشر الإلكتروني

ithout a base :-a structure so vast, so brilliant, so tractive, that the greater portion of mankind are ontent to gaze in admiration, without any enquiry to its basis or any solicitude for its durability. If, >wever, it should be that the gorgeous temple will > able to stand only till Christian truth and light come predominant, it surely will be wise of those ho seek a niche in its apartments as their paraount and final good, to pause ere they proceed. If ey desire a reputation that shall outlive guilt and tion, let them look to the basis of military fame. this fame should one day sink into oblivion and ontempt, it will not be the first instance in which ide-spread glory has been found to be a glittering abble that has burst and been forgotten. Look the days of chivalry. Of the ten thousand Quixttes of the middle ages, where is now the honour or e name? Yet poets once sang their praises, and he chronicler of their achievements believed he was ecording an everlasting fame. Where are now the lories of the tournament? Glories

"Of which all Europe rang from side to side." Where is the champion whom princesses caressed nd nobles envied? Where are the triumphs of Scotus and Aquinus, and where are the folios that erpetuated their fame? The glories of war have adeed outlived these; human passions are less muable than human follies; but I am willing to avow he conviction, that these glories are alike destined o sink into forgetfulness, and that the time is aproaching when the applauses of heroism and the plendours of conquest will be remembered only as ollies and iniquities that are past. Let him who seeks for fame other than that which an era of Christian purity will allow, make haste; for every our that he delays its acquisition will shorten its luration. This is certain if there be certainty in the promises of Heaven.

But we must not forget the purpose for which hese illustrations of the Military Virtues are offered to the reader;—to remind him not merely that they are fictions, but fictions which are the occasion of exress of misery to mankind-to remind him that it is his business, from considerations of humanity and of religion, to refuse to give currency to the popular delusions-and to remind him that, if he does promote them, he promotes, by the act, misery in all its forms and guilt in all its excesses. Upon such subjects, men are not left to exercise their own inclinations. Morality interposes its commands; and they are commands which, if we would be moral, we must obey. UNCHASTITY. No portion of these pages is devoted to the enforcement of moral obligations upon this subject, partly because these obligations are commonly acknowledged how little soever they may be regarded, and partly because, as the reader will have seen, the object of these Essays is to recommend those applications of the Moral Law which are frequently neglected in the practice even of respectable men. But in reference to the influence of public opinion on offences connected with the sexual constitution, it will readily be perceived that something should be said, when it is considered that some of the popular notions respecting them are extravagantly inconsistent with the Moral Law. The want of chastity in a woman is visited by public opinion with the severest reprobation-in men, with very little or with none. Now, morality makes no such distinction. The offence is frequently adverted to in the Christian Scriptures; but I believe there is no one precept which intimates that, in the estimation of its writer, there was any difference in the turpitude of the offence respectively in men and women. If it be in this volume that we are to seek for

the principles of the Moral Law, how shall we defend the state of popular opinion? "If unchastity in a woman, whom St Paul terms the glory of man, be such a scandal and dishonour, then certainly in a man, who is both the image and glory of God, it must, though commonly not so thought, be much more deflowering and dishonourable."* But this departure from the Moral Law, like all other departures, produces its legitimate, that is, pernicious effects. The sex in whom popular opinion reprobates the offences, comparatively seldom commits them: the sex in whom it tolerates the offences, commits them to an enormous extent. It is obvious, therefore, that to promote the present state of popular opinion, is to promote and to encourage the want of chastity in men.

That some very beneficial consequences result from the strong direction of its current against the offence in a woman, is certain. The consciousness that upon the retention of her reputation depends so tremendous a stake, is probably a more efficacious motive to its preservation than any other. The abandonment to which the loss of personal integrity generally consigns a woman, is a perpetual and fearful warning to the sex. Almost every human being deprecates and dreads the general disfavour of mankind; and thus, notwithstanding temptations of all kinds, the number of women who do incur it is comparatively small.

But the fact that public opinion is thus powerful in restraining one sex, is a sufficient evidence that it would also be powerful in restraining the other. Waiving for the present the question whether the popular disapprobation of the crime in a woman is not too severe-if the man who was guilty was forthwith and immediately consigned to infamy; if he was expelled from virtuous society, and condemned for the remainder of life to the lowest degradation, how quickly would the frequency of the crime be diminished! The reformation amongst men would effect a reformation amongst women too; and the reciprocal temptations which each addresses to the other, would in a great degree be withdrawn. If there were few seducers few would be seduced; and few therefore would in turn become the seducers of

men.

But instead of this direction of public opinion, what is the ordinary language respecting the man who thus violates the Moral Law? We are told that "he is rather unsteady;" that "there is a little of the young man about him;" that "he is not free from indiscretions." And what is he likely to think of all this? Why, that for a young man to have a little of the young man about him is perfectly natural; that to be rather unsteady and a little indiscreet is not, to be sure, what one would wish, but that it is no great harm and will soon wear off. To employ such language is, we say, to encourage and promote the crime-a crime which brings more wretchedness and vice into the world than almost any other; and for which, if Christianity is to be believed, the Universal Judge will call to a severe account. If the immediate agent be obnoxious to punishment, can he who encouraged him expect to escape? I am persuaded that the frequency of this gross offence is attributable much more to the levity of public notions as founded upon levity of language, than to passion; and perhaps, therefore, some of those who promote this levity may be in every respect as criminal as if they committed the crime itself.

Women themselves contribute greatly to the common levity and to its attendant mischiefs. Many a female who talks in the language of abhorrence of Milton Christian Doctrine, p. 624.

an offending sister, and averts her eye in contumely generally the destruction of her moral principle. if she meets her in the street, is perfectly willing to What is to be understood by collecting virtue int be the friend and intimate of the equally offending one point, it is not easy to discover. The truth is man. That such women are themselves duped by that as popular notions have agreed that she wh the vulgar distinction is not to be doubted-but then loses her chastity shall retain no reputation, a prin we are not to imagine that she who practises this in- cipal motive to the practice of other virtues is taken consistency abhors the crime so much as the crimi- away-she therefore disregards them; and thus by nal. Her abhorrence is directed, not so much to the degrees her moral principle is utterly depraved. I violation of the Moral Law as to the party by whom public opinion was so modified that the world did not it is violated. "To little respect has that woman a abandon a woman who has been robbed of chastity, claim on the score of modesty, though her reputation it is probable that a much larger number of these may be white as the driven snow, which smiles on unhappy persons would return to virtue. The case the libertine whilst she spurns the victims of his law- of men offers illustration and proof. The unchaste less appetities." No No.-If such women would man retains his character, or at any rate he retains convince us that it is the impurity which they re- so much that it is of great importance to him to preprobate, let them reprobate it wherever it is found: serve the remainder. Public Opinion accordingly if they would convince us that morals or philan-holds its strong rein upon other parts of his conduct, thropy is their motive when they spurn the sinning sister, let them give proof by spurning him who has occasioned her to sin.

and by this rein he is restrained from deviating into other walks of vice. If the direction of Public Opinion were exchanged, if the woman's offence were held venial and the man's infamous, the world might stand in wonder at the altered scene. We should have worthy and respectable prostitutes, while the men whom we now invite to our tables and marry to our daughters, would be repulsed as the most aban

curious illustration.-Amongst the North American Indians "seduction is regarded as a despicable crime, and more blame is attached to the man than to the woman: hence the offence on the part of the female is more readily forgotten and forgiven, and she finds little or no difficulty in forming a subsequent matrimonial alliance when deserted by her betrayer, who is generally regarded with distrust, and avoided in social intercourse." *

The common style of narrating occurrences and trials of seduction, &c., in the public prints, is very mischievous. These flagitious actions are, it seems, a legitimate subject of merriment; one of the many droll things which a newspaper contains. It is humiliating to see respectable men sacrifice the in-doned of mankind. Of this I have met with a terests of society to such small temptation. They pander to the appetite of the gross and idle of the public-they want to sell their newspapers.-Much of this ill-timed merriment is found in the addresses of counsel, and this is one mode amongst the many in which the legal profession appears to think itself licensed to sacrifice virtue to the usages which it has, for its own advantage, adopted. There is cruelty as well as other vices in these things. When we take into account the intense suffering which prostitution produces upon its victims and upon their friends, he who contributes, even thus indirectly, to its extension, does not exhibit even a tolerable sensibility to human misery. Even infidelity acknowledges the claims of humanity; and therefore, if religion and religious morals were rejected, this heartless levity of language would still be indefensible. We call the man benevolent who relieves or diminishes wretchedness: what should we call him who extends and increases it?

In connexion with this subject, an observation suggests itself respecting the power of Character in affecting the whole moral principles of the mind. If loss of character does not follow a breach of morality, that breach may be single and alone. The agent's virtue is so far deteriorated, but the breach does not open wide the door to other modes of crime. If loss of character does follow one offence, one of the great barriers which exclude the flood of evil is thrown down; and though the offence which produced loss of character be really no greater than the offence with which it is retained, yet its consequences upon the moral condition are incomparably greater. The reason is, that if you take away a person's reputation you take away one of the principal motives to propriety of conduct. The labourer who, being tempted to steal a piece of bacon from the farmer, finds that no one will take him into his house or give him employment, and that wherever he goes he is pointed at as a thief, is almost as much driven as tempted to repeat the crime. His fellow labourer, who has much more heinously violated the Moral Law by a flagitious intrigue with a servant girl, receives from the farmer a few reproaches and a few jests, retains his place, never perhaps repeats the offence, and subsequently maintains a decent morality.

It has been said, "As a woman collects all her virtue into this point, the loss of her chastity is

It becomes a serious question how we shall fix upon the degree in which diminution of character ought to be consequent upon offences against morality. It is not I think too much to say, that Lo single crime, once committed, under the influence perhaps of strong temptation, ought to occasion such a loss of character as to make the individual regard himself as abandoned. I make no exceptions-not even for murder. I am persuaded that some murders are committed with less of personal guilt than is sometimes involved in much smaller crimes but however that may be, there is no reason why, even to the murderer, the motives and the avenues to amendment should be closed. Still less ought they to be closed against the female who is perhaps the victim-strictly the victim--of seduction. Yet if the public do not express, and strongly express, their disapprobation, we have seen that they practically encourage offences. In this difficulty I know of no better and no other guide than that system which the tenor of Christianity prescribes-Abhorrence of the evil and commiseration of him who commits it. The union of these dispositions will be likely to produce, with respect to offences of all kinds, that conduct which most effectually tends to discountenance them, while it as effectually tends to reform the offenders.. These, however, are not the dispositions which actuate the public in measuring their reprobation of unchastity in women. Something probably might rightly be deducted from the severity with which their offence is visited: much may be rightly altered in the motives which induce this severity. And as to men, much should be added to the quantum of reprobation, and much correction should be applied to the principles by which it is regulated.

Another illustration of the power of character, as such, to corrupt the principles or to preserve them, is furnished in the general respectability of the legal

Hunter's Memoirs.

[ocr errors]

with much less of aversion than that of less gifted
men. To be great, whether intellectually or otherwise,
is often like a passport to impunity; and men talk as
if we ought to speak leniently of the faults of a man
who delights us by his genius or his talent. This
precisely is the man whose faults we should be most
prompt to mark, because he is the man whose
faults are most seducing to the world. Intellectual
superiority brings, no doubt, its congenial temp-
tations. Let these affect our judgments of the man,
but let them not diminish our reprobation of his of
fences. So to extenuate the individual as to apolo-
gize for his faults, is to injure the cause of virtue in
one of its most vulnerable parts. "Oh! that I could
see in men who oppose tyranny in the state, a dis-
dain of the tyranny of low passions in themselves.
I cannot reconcile myself to the idea of an immoral
patriot, or to that separation of private from public
virtue which some men think to be possible."
bably it is possible: probably there may be such a
thing as an immoral patriot: for public opinion ap-
plauds the patriotism without condemning the im-
morality. If men constantly made a fit deduction
from their praises of public virtue on account of its
association with private vice, the union would frɔ-
quently be severed; and he who hoped for celebrity
from the public would find it needful to be good as
well as great. He who applauds human excellence
and really admires it, should endeavour to make its
examples as pure and perfect as he can. He should
hold out a motive to consistency of excellence, by
evincing that nothing else can obtain praise un-
mingled with censure.
constant and uniform.

Pro

rofession. We have seen that this profession, haitually and as a matter of course, violates many nd great points of morality, and yet I know not hat their character as men is considerably inferior > that of others in similar walks of life. Abating ne privileges under which the profession is preimed to act, many of their legal procedures are as agitious as some of those which send unprivileged rofessions to the bar of justice. How then does it appen that the moral offenders whom we imprison, nd try, and punish, are commonly in their general onduct depraved, whilst the equal offenders whom e do not punish are not thus depraved? The prioner has usually lost much of his reputation before e becomes a thief, and at any rate he loses it with e act. But a man may enter the customary legal ourse with a fair name: Public Opinion has not so eprobated that course as to make it necessary to ́s pursuit that a man should already have become epraved. Whilst engaged in the ordinary legal ractice he may be unjust at his desk or at the bar, e may there commit actions essentially and greatly wicked, and yet when he steps into his parlour his haracter is not reproached. A jest or two upon is adroitness, is probably all the intimation that he eceives that other men do not regard it with perect complacency. Such a man will not pick your ocket the more readily because he has picked a undred pockets at the bar. This were to sacrifice is character: the other does not; and accordingly ll those motives to rectitude which the desire of reserving reputation supplies, operate to restrain im from other offences. If public opinion were ectified, if character were lost by actual violations of the Moral Law, some of the ordinary processes of egal men would be practised only by those who had ittle character to lose. Not indeed that Public Opinion is silent respecting the habitual conduct of the profession. A secret disapprobation mani-praises of Shakspeare, it has almost never alluded to estly exists, of which sufficient evidence may be ound even in the lampoons, and satires, and proverbs, which pass currently in the world. Unhapily, the disapprobation is too slight, and especially t is too slightly expressed. When it is thus expressed, the lawyer sometimes unites, with at least apparent good-humour, in the jest-feeling, perhaps, hat conduct which cannot be shown to be virtuous, t is politic to keep without the pale of the vices by a joke.

FAME. The observations which were offered respecting contributing to the passion for glory, Involve kindred doctrines respecting contributions generally to individual Fame. If the pretensions of hose with whose applauses the popular voice is filled, were examined by the only proper test, the test which Christianity allows, it would be found that multitudes whom the world thus honours must be shorn of their beams. Before Bacon's daylight of ruth, Poets and Statesmen and Philosophers without number would hide their diminished heads. The mighty indeed would be fallen. Yet it is for the acquisition of this fame that multitudes toil. It is heir motive to action; and they pursue that conduct whien will procure fame whether it ought to procure it or not. The inference as to the duties of individuals in contributing to fame, is obvious.

"The profligacy of a man of fashion is looked upon with much less contempt and aversion than that of a man of meaner condition."* It ought to be looked upon with much more. But men of fashion are not our concern. Our business is with men of talent and genius, with the eminent and the great. The profligacy of these, too, is regarded

Ad. Smith; Theo. Mor. Sent.

This endeavour should be The hearer should never be allowed to suppose that in appreciating a person's merits, we are indifferent to his faults. It has been complained of one of our principal works of Periodical Literature, that amongst its many and ardent

his indecencies. The silence is reprehensible: for what is a reader to conclude but that indecency is a very venial offence? Under such circumstances, not to be with morality is to be against it. Silence is positive mischief. People talk to us of liberality, and of allowances for the aberrations of genius, and for the temptations of greatness. It is well. Let the allowances be made.-But this is frequently only affectation of candour. It is not that we are lenient to failings, but that we are indifferent to vice. It is not even enlightened benevolence to genius or greatness itself. The faults and vices with which talented men are chargeable deduct greatly from their own happiness; and it cannot be doubted that their misdeeds have been the more willingly committed from the consciousness that apologists would be found amongst the admiring world. It is sufficient to make that world knit its brow in anger, to insist upon the moral demerits of a Robert Burns. Pathetic and voluble exfenuations are instantly urged. There are extenuations of such a man's vices, and they ought to be regarded but no extenuations can remove the charge of voluntary and intentional violations of morality. Let us not hear of the enthusiasm of poetry. Men do not write poetry as they chatter with their neighbours: they sit down to a deliberate act; and he who in his verses offends against morals, intentionally and deliberately offends.

After all, posterity exercises some justice in its award. When the first glitter and the first applauses are past-when death and a few years of sobriety have given opportunity to the public mind to attend to truth, it makes a deduction, though not a due deduction, for the shaded portions of the great man's

Dr Price: Revolution Serm.

of the contents of one number of a newspaper ma be small, but it is perpetually recurring. The edit of a journal, of which no more than a thousand cop are circulated in a week, and each of which is re by half a dozen persons, undertakes in a year a pa of the moral guidance of thirty thousand individual Of some daily papers the number of readers is great, that in the course of twelve months they ma influence the opinions and the conduct of six or eigh millions of men. To say nothing therefore of edi tors who intentionally mislead and vitiate the publi and remembering with what carelessness respectin the moral tendency of articles a newspaper is filled it may safely be concluded that some creditable editor do harm in the world to an extent, in comparison wit which robberies and treasons are as nothing.

character. It is not forgotten that Marlborough was avaricious, that Bacon was mean; and there are great names of the present day, of whom it will not be forgotten that they had deep and dark shades in their reputation. It is perhaps wonderful that those who seek for fame are so indifferent to these deductions from its amount. Supposing the intellectual pretensions of Newton and Voltaire were equal, how different is their fame! How many and how great qualifications are employed in praising the one! How few and how small in praising the other! Editions of the works of some of our first writers are advertised, "in which the exceptionable passages are expunged." How foolish, how uncalculating even as to celebrity, to have inserted these passages! To write in the hope of fame, works which posterity will mutilate before they place them in their libra- It is not easy to imagine the sum of advantages whic ries-Charles James Fox said, that if, during his would result if the periodical press not only exclude administration, they could effect the abolition of the that which does harm, but preferred that which doe slave trade, it "would entail more true glory upon good. Not that grave moralities, not, especially, tha them, and more honour upon their country, than any religious disquisitions, are to be desired; but tha other transaction in which they could be engaged."* every reader should see and feel that the editor main If this be true, (and who will dispute it?) ministers tained an allegiance to virtue and to truth. There i usually provide very ill for their reputation with hardly any class of topics in which this allegiance posterity. How anxiously devoted to measures com- may not be manifested, and manifested without any paratively insignificant! How phlegmatic respect- incongruous associations. You may relate the com ing those calls of humanity and public principle, a mon occurrences of the day in such a manner as to regard of which will alone secure the permanent do either good or evil. The trial of a thief, the parhonours of the world! It may safely be relied upon, ticulars of a conflagration, the death of a statesman that "much more unperishable is the greatness of the criticism of a debate, and a hundred other mat goodness than the greatness of power," or the great-ters, may be recorded so as to exercise a moral i ness of talent. And the difference will progressively increase. If, as there is reason to believe, the moral condition of mankind will improve, their estimate of the good portion of a great man's character will be enhanced, and their reprobation of the bad will become more intense until at length it will perhaps be found, respecting some of those who now receive the applauses of the world, that the balance of public opinion is against them, and that, in the universal estimate of merit and demerit, they will be ranked on the side of the latter. These motives to virtue in great men are not addressed to the Christian: he has higher motives and better: but since it is more desirable that a man should act well from imperfect motives than than that he should act ill, we urge him to regard the integrity of his fame.

THE PRESS. It is manifest that if the obligations which have been urged apply to those who speak, they apply with tenfold responsibility to those who write. The man who, in talking to half a dozen of his acquaintance, contributes to confuse or pervert their moral notions, is accountable for the mischief which he may do to six persons. He who writes a book containing similar language, is answerable for a so much greater amount of mischief as the number of his readers may exceed six, and as the influence of books exceeds that of conversation, by the evidence of greater deliberation in their contents and by the greater attention which is paid by the reader. It is not a light matter, even in this view, to write a book for the public. We very insufficiently consider the amount of the obligations and the extent of the responsibility which we entail upon ourselves. Every one knows the power of the press in influencing the public mind. He that publishes five hundred copies of a book, of which any part is likely to derange the moral judgment of a reader, contributes materially to the propagation of evil. If each of his books is read by four persons, he endangers the infliction of this evil, whatever be its amount, upon two thousand minds. Who shall tell the sum of the mischief? In this country the periodical press is a powerful engine for evil or for good. The influence

[blocks in formation]

fluence over the reader for the better or the wors That the influence is frequently for the worse needs no proof; and it is so much the less defensible be cause it may be changed to the contrary without a word, directly, respecting morals or religion.

However, newspapers do much more good than harm, especially in politics. They are in this country one of the most vigorous and beneficial instruments of political advantage. They effect incalculable benefit both in checking the statesman who would abuse power, and in so influencing the public opinion as to prepare it for, and therefore to render necessary, an amelioration of political and civil institutions. The great desideratum is enlargement of views and purity of principle. We want in editorial labours less of partizanship, less of petty squabbles about the worthless discussions of the day: we want more of the philosophy of politics, more of that grasping intelligence which can send a reader's reflections from facts to principles. Our Journals are, to what they ought to be, what a chronicle of the middle ages to a philosophical history. The disjointed fragments of political intelligence ought to be connected by a sort of enlightened running commentary. There is talent enough embarked in some of these; but the talent too commonly expends itself upon subjects and in speculations which are of little interest beyond the present week.

And here we are reminded of that miserable direction to public opinion which is given in Historical Works.* I do not speak of party bias, though that is sufficiently mischievous; but of the irrational selection by historians of comparatively unimportant things to fill the greater portion of their pages. People exclaim that the history of Europe is little more than a history of human violence and wickedness. But they confound History with that portion of history which historians record. That portion is doubtless written almost in blood-but it is a very small, and in truth a very subordinate portion. The intrigues of cabinets; the rise and fall of ministers

"Next to the guilt of those who commit wicked actions, s that of the historian who glosses them over and excuses them." Southey: Book of the Church, c. 8.

wars and battles, and victories and defeats; the lunder of provinces; the dismemberment of emires; these are the things which fill the pages of he historian, but these are not the things which comose the history of man. He that would acquaint imself with the history of his species, must apply to ther and to calmer scenes. "It is a cruel mortifiation, in searching for what is instructive in the istory of past times, to find that the exploits of onquerors who have desolated the earth, and the reaks of tyrants who have rendered nations unhappy, re recorded with minute and often disgusting accuacy, while the discovery of useful arts and the progress of the most beneficial branches of commerce, re passed over in silence, and suffered to sink into oblivion." * Even a more cruel mortification than his is to find recorded almost nothing respecting the ntellectual and moral history of man. You are presented with five or six weighty volumes which proess to be a History of England; and after reading hem to the end you have hardly found any thing to satisfy that interesting question-How has my country been enabled to advance from barbarism to civilization; to come forth from darkness into light? Yes, by applying philosophy to facts yourself, you may attain some, though it be but an imperfect, reply. But the historian himself should have done this.

The facts of history, simply as such, are of comparatively little concern. He is the true historian of man who regards mere facts rather as the illustrations of history than as its subject matter. As to the history of cabinets and courts, of intrigue and oppression, of campaigns and generals, we can almost spare it all. It is of wonderfully little consequence whether they are remembered or not, exrept as lessons of instruction-except as proofs of the evils of bad principles and bad institutions. For any other purpose, Blenheim! we can spare thee. And Louis, even Louis "le grand!" we can spare thee. And thy successor and his Pompadour ! we can spare ye all.

Much power is in the hands of the historian if he will exert it: if he will make the occurrences of the past subservient to the elucidations of the principles of human nature-of the principles of political truth of the rules of political rectitude; if he will refuse to make men ambitious of power by filling his pages with the feats or freaks of men in power; if he will give no currency to the vulgar delusions about lory:-if he will do these things, and such as these, he will deserve well of his country and of man; for he will contribute to that rectification of Public Opinion which, when it is complete and determinate, will be the most powerful of all earthly agents in ameliorating the social condition of the world.

CHAPTER XI.

INTELLECTUAL EDUCATION.

Ancient Classics-London University-The Classics in Boarding-schools-English grammar-Science and LiteratureImproved system of Education-Orthography: Writing: Reading: Geography: Natural History: Biography: Natural Philosophy: Political Science-Indications of a revolution in the system of Education-Female Education-The Society of Friends.

"It is no less true than lamentable, that hitherto the education proper for civil and active life has been neglected; that nothing has been done to enable those who are actually to conduct the affairs of the world, to carry them on in a manner worthy of the age and country in which they live, by commu• Robertson; Disq. on Anct. Comm. of India.

nicating to them the knowledge and the spirit of their age and country."-" Knowledge does not consist in being able to read books, but in understanding one's business and duty in life."-" Most writers have considered the subject of Education as relative to that portion of it only which applies to learning; but the first object of all, in every nation, is to make a man a good member of society."-" Education consists in learning what makes a man useful, respectable, and happy, in the line for which he is destined." *

If these propositions are true it is evident that the systems of Education which obtain, need great and almost total reformation. What does a boy, in the middle class of society, learn at school of the knowledge and the spirit of his age and country? When he has left school, how much does he understand of the business and duty of life?

Education is one of those things which Lord Bacon would describe as having lain almost unaltered "upon the dregs of time." We still fancy that we educate our children when we give them, as its principal constituent, that same instruction which was given before England had a literature of its own, and when Greek and Latin contained almost the sum of human knowledge. Then the knowledge of Greek and Latin was called, and not unjustly called, Learning. It was the learning which procured distinction and celebrity. A sort of dignity and charm was thrown around the attainments and the word which designated them. That charm has continued to operate to the present hour, and we still call him a learned man who is skilful in Latin and Greek. Yet Latin and Greek contain an extremely small portion of that knowledge which the world now possesses; an extremely small portion of that which it is of most consequence to acquire. It would be well for society if this word Learning could be forgotten, or if we could make it the representative of other and very different ideas. But the delusion is continually propagated. The higher ranks of society give the tone to the notions of the rest; and the higher classes are educated at Westminster and Eton, and Cambridge and Oxford. At all these the languages which have ceased to be the languages of a living people-the authors which communicate, relatively, little knowledge that is adapted to the present affairs of man-are made the first and foremost articles of Education. To be familiar with these, is still to be

a

"learned" man. Inferior institutions imitate the example; and the parent who knows his son will be, like himself, a merchant or manufacturer, thinks it almost indispensable that he should "learn Latin.”

It may reasonably be doubted whether, to even the higher ranks of society, this preference of ancient learning is wise. It may reasonably be doubted whether, even at Oxford, a literary revolution would not be an useful revolution. Indeed the very circumstance that the system of education there, is not essentially different from what it was centuries ago, is almost a sufficient evidence that an alteration is needed. If the circumstances and the contexture of human society are altered--if the boundaries of knowledge are very greatly extended, and if that knowledge which is now applicable to the affairs of life is extremely different from that which was applicable long ages ago-it surely is plain that a system which has not, or has only slightly, accommodated itself to the new condition and new exigencies of human affairs, cannot be a good system, cannot be a reasonable and judicious system. How stands the fact? When young men leave college

* Art 4; Education. West. Rev. No. 1. Playfair Causes of Decline of Nations, p. 97, 98, 227.

« السابقةمتابعة »