and to neglect them, is the most fearful fate that can befal a creature of eternal responsibilities. But preachers and poets have proclaimed this great truth for ages: the charge now lies at the door of our educators, and they only can impress on the world its highest and most inalienable duty-that of living for the good of others. He, however, who teaches religion without exemplifying it, loses the advantage of its best argument. If we would perpetuate our fame or reputation, and do credit to our doctrines, we must do things worth writing, or write things worth reading. Education is a companion which no misfortune can depress, no clime destroy, no enemy alienate, no despotism enslave; at home a friend, abroad an introduction, in solitude a solace, in society an ornament. It subdues vice, it guides virtue, it gives at once grace and ornament to genius. Without it, what is man? a splendid slave! a reasoning savage, vaccilating between the dignity of an intelligence derived from GoD, and the degradation of brutal passion. But how is it physical education is still thrown in the background of the picture, instead of standing out boldly and emphatically? In broaching our candid opinions on education, we have ventured to step out of the path of official routine, knowing full well by so doing we incur the odium and ridicule of the ordinary conformists to old opinions. We speak of the seat of intellect, and the seat of learning. Vicarious punishment was the rule of the old school discipline; for whenever the head was at fault, the other end was sure to suffer:-hence, perhaps, the expression, being "backward in learning." CHAPTER IV. EDUCATION OUT OF SCHOOLS.-MENTAL AND MORAL EVILS. MATHEMATICS CONSIDERED. A FEW words on the education out of schools. Education does not commence with the alphabet: it begins with the mother's look, the father's nod of approbation, or sign of reproof; with the gentle pressure of the hand, or a brother's noble heart of forbearance; with handsful of flowers in green and daisy meadows; with birds' nests, admired but not touched; with creeping ants, and almost as imperceptible emmets as the most warm and enthusiastic homœopathist could desire; with humming bees and glass bee-hives; with pleasant walks in shady lanes, and with thoughts diverted in sweet and kindly tones and words, to nature, to acts of benevolence, to deeds of virtue, and to the source of all good, to God Himself. As touching the infant and the mother, as the infant begins to discriminate between the objects around, it soon discovers one countenance that ever smiles upon it with peculiar benignity. When it wakes from sleep, there is one watchful form ever bent over its cradle. If startled by some unhappy dream, a guardian angel seems ever ready to soothe its fears. If cold, that ministering spirit brings it warmth; if hungry, she feeds it; if happy, she caresses it in joy or sorrow, in weal or woe, she is the first object of its thoughts. Her presence is heaven: the mother is the deity of infancy. There are traces of the Divine hand of the Creator in us all. Whether we look upward or downward, in society, if we only see each other rightly, we may come to no truer conclusion than that men are good fellows in the main. The bond of fellowship knits all society together, and is a law of Nature much more powerful than all the laws of all the lands. A recognition of this truth should be at the basis of all discussion about man. Woe to any people who cultivate the beautiful, regardless of the true and the good! These, severed from the first, tend to taskwork, and lose the charm which it is the purpose of the beautiful to create. "What religion ordains, and philosophy prizes, art makes us love," are the words of an eloquent modern writer. Without despising the shadows and garments of the sublimities of truth, we protest against that captious and flimsy judgment that recoils at bones and muscles. If the clock of the tongue be not set by the dial of the heart, it will never go right. Some people suppose that every learned man is an educated one: this is a mistake. Such cannot have read Hazlitt's Ignorance of the Learned. That man, and he only, is educated, that knows himself, and takes accurate common-sense views of men and things around him. Some learned men, we are told on no low authority, are the greatest fools in the world; samples of which class are but too prevalent in every parish. The reason is, they are not 'educated men. Learning is only the means-not the end; its value consists in giving the means of acquiring; the use of which, properly managed, enlightens the mind. All honour to the able and diligent tutor! "If that potter have fame who has moulded the unresisting clay to forms of beauty, what glory shall he receive, who, faithful and diligent in his functions, has shaped the minds of men and all to honour !" If, as the bachelors sneeringly say, women govern us, let us try to render them perfect. As Sheridan well remarks-the more they are enlightened, so much more shall we be. On the cultivation of the minds of women, depends the wisdom of men.* Those who pursue the stream of truth to its source, have much fatigue to encounter, much climbing to do. Man truly stands in need of a helpmate: both are amply repaid-they see great sights. Beauty is, however, a rock on which many a man makes shipwreck while in search of the pearls which adorn it. Nothing tends more (says Burke) to the corruption of science, than to suffer it to stagnate. These waters must be troubled before they can exert their virtues. The careless one would say gaily, and with bravado, ergo, get a wife. Nothing shews a deficiency of physical education so much as the last census report as to the term of human life. There is no apparent reason why the mean life time in England should be 40 years; and as it is found to range * See an Article by Sidney Smith, in the Edinburgh Review, in extent, under different circumstances, from 25 years in Liverpool and Manchester, to 45 years in Surrey, and in other localities to a number of years still higher, there is good ground for believing that it may gradually be raised nearer to the complete natural life time. The way is not closed to great and immediate ameliorations; but as it has pleased the Author of the Universe to make the food of mankind chiefly the product of labour,-their clothing, of skill, their intellectual enjoyment, of education,-their purest emotions of art; so health, the natural life time of the race, is in a certain sense evidently to be the creation of the intellect and the will; and it is only with the observation, experience, science, foresight, prudence, and decisions of generations of men at command, that the battle of life can be fought out victoriously to the end. There are other causes operating, curtailing the natural duration of life,-" The one power" painted so graphically by Punch. What, then, are the inferences deducible from these premises? That, if you would not have atrophy and moroseness of mind, bodily labour is, or ought to be, a precursor to mental, social, and moral attributes. Let us never forget-what may be proved by any one of us-that bodily labour soothes the distresses of the mind, fixes its natural restlessness, causes health, patriotism, religion, and happiness, to flourish among the people. Our physical, therefore, holds our moral nature under a strict and necessary dependence: our vices, and our virtues, sometimes produced and often modified by social education, are frequently, too, the results of our organisation. An Englishman's definition of a difficulty, is |