shelter they afford broke forth the first great regenerator of practical politics; and the origin of the Wealth of Nations was founded in the industrious tranquillity of a professorship at Glasgow.*

Let us then eschew all that false and mercantile liberalism of the day which would destroy the high seats and shelters of Learning, and would leave what is above the public comprehension to the chances of the public sympathy. It is possible that endowments favour many drones-granted-but if they produce one great philosopher, whose mind would otherwise have been bowed to lower spheres, that advantage counterbalances a thousand drones. How many sluggards will counterpoise an Adam Smith! "If you form but a handful of wise men," said Julian, you do more for the world than many kings can do." And if it be true that he who has planted a blade of corn in the spot which was barren before is a benefactor to his species; what shall we not pardon to a system by which a nobler labourer is enabled to plant in the human mind an idea which was unknown to it till then?

But if ever endowments for the cultivators of the higher letters were required, it is now. As education is popularized, its tone grows more familiar, but its research less deep-the demand for the elements of knowledge vulgarizes scholarship to the necessity of the times-there is an impatience of that austere and vigorous toil by which alone men can extend the knowledge already in the world. As you diffuse the stream, guard well the fountains. But it is vain for us-it is in vain, sir, even for you, how influential soever your virtues and your genius, to exert yourself in behalf of our Educational Endowments, if they themselves very long continue unadapted to the growing knowledge of the world. Even the superior classes are awakened to a sense of the insufficiency of fashionable education-of the vast expense and the little profit of the system pursued at existing schools and universities.

One great advantage of diffusing knowledge among the lower classes is the necessity thus imposed on the higher of increasing knowledge among themselves. I suspect that the new modes and systems of education which succeed the most among the people will ultimately be adopted by the gentry. Seeing around them the mighty cities of a new Education-the education of the nineteenth century-they will no longer be contented to give their children the education of three hundred years ago. One of two consequences will happen: either public schools. will embrace improved modes and additional branches of learning, or it will cease to be the fashion to support them. The more aristocratic families who have no interest in their foundations will desert them, and

Dr. Chalmers eloquently complains, that they made Dr. Smith a commissioner of customs, and thereby lost to the public his projected work on Jurisprudence.

vantages of connexion; was it to be a connexion in profusion and in vice? Was it to impair the fortunes of his son, and not to improve them? This question points to no exaggerated or uncommon picture. Look round the gay world and say if loss, and not gain, be not the ordinary result of such friendships between the peer's elder son and the gentleman's younger one, as survive the trials of school and college. The latter was to profit by the former-but the temptations of society thwart the scheme; the poor man follows the example of the rich; dresses-hunts-intrigues-games-runs in debt, and is beggared through the very connexion which the father desired, and by the very circles of society which the mother sighed that he should enter. I do not deny that there are some young adventurers more wary and more prudent, who contrive to get from their early friend, the schemed-for living or the dreamt-of place; but these instances are singularly rare, and to speculate upon such a hazard, as a probable good, is incalculably more mad than to have bought your son a ticket in the lottery by way of providing for his fortune.

The idea then of acquiring at public schools a profitable connexion, or an advantageous friendship, is utterly vain. 1st, Because few school connexions continue through college; 2nd, Because, if so continued, few college connexions continue through the world; 3rd, Because, even if they do, experience proves that a friendship between the richer man and the poorer, is more likely to ruin the last by the perpetual example of extravagance, than to enrich him by the uncommon accident of generosity. Add to these all the usual casualties of worldly life, the chances of a quarrel and a rupture, the chances that the expected living must be sold to pay a debt, the promised office transferred to keep a vote-the delays, the humiliations, the mischances, the uncertainties; and ask yourself if, whatever be the advantages of public edcation, a connexion with the great is not the very last to be counted upon

"But, perhaps, my boy may distinguish himself," says the amlitious father; "he is very clever. Distinction at Eton lasts through life; he may get into parliament; he may be a great man; why not a second Canning!"

Alas!-grant that your son be clever, and grant that he distinguish himself, how few of those who are remarkable at Eton are ever heard of in the world; their reputation "dies and makes no sign." Ard this, for two reasons: first, because the distinctions of a public scho are no evidence of real talent; learning by heart and the composition cl Latin or Greek verso are the usual proofs to which the boy's intellect is put; the one is a mere exertion of memory- the other, a mere felicity of imitation;-and I doubt if the schoolboy's comprehensive expression of "knack" be not the just phrase to be applied to the faculty both of repeating other men's words, and stringing imitations of other

men's verses. Knack! an ingenious faculty, indeed, but no indisputable test of genius, and affording no undeniable promise of a brilliant career! But success, in these studies, is not only no sign of future superiority of mind; the studies themselves scarcely tend to adapt the mind to those solid pursuits by which distinction is ordinarily won. Look at the arenas for the author or the senator; the spheres for active or for literary distinction; is there any thing in the half idle, and desultory, and superficial course of education pursued at public schools, which tends to secure future eminence in either? It is a great benefit if boys learn something solid, but it is a far greater benefit if they contract the desire and the habit of acquiring solid information. But how few ever leave school with the intention and the energies to continue intellectual studies. We are not to be told of the few great men who have been distinguished as senators, or as authors, and who have been educated at public schools. The intention of general education is to form the many, and not the few; if the many are ignorant, it is in vain you assert that the few are wise :-we have, even supposing their wisdom originated in your system, a right to consider them exceptions, and and not as examples. But how much vainer is it to recite the names of these honoured few, when it is far more than doubtful even whether they owed any thing to your scholastic instruction; when it is more than doubtful whether their talents did not rise in spite of your education, and not because of it; whether their manhood was illustrious, not because their genius was formed by the studies of youth, but because it could not be crushed by them. All professions and all ranks have their Shakspeare and their Burns, men who are superior to the adverse influences by which inferior intellects are chilled into inaction. And this supposition is rendered far more probable when we find how few of these few were noted at school for any portion of the mental power they afterwards developed; or, in other words, when we observe how much the academical process stifled and repressed their genius, so that if their future life had been (as more or less ought to be the aim of scholars) a continuation of the same pursuits and objects as those which were presented to their youth, they would actually have lived without developing their genius, and died without obtaining a name. But Chance is more merciful than men's systems, and the eternal task of Nature is that of counteracting our efforts to deteriorate ourselves.

But you think that your son shall be distinguished at Eton, and that the distinction shall continue through life; we see, then, that the chances are against him-they are rendered every day more difficult-because, formerly the higher classes only were educated. Bad as the public schools might be, nothing better perhaps existed; superficial knowledge was pardoned, because it was more useful than no knowledge.

But now the people are wakened; education, not yet general, is at

least extended; a desire for the Solid and the Useful circulates throughout mankind. Grant that your son obtains all the academical honours; grant, even, that he enters parliament through the distinction he has obtained, have those honours taught him the principles of jurisprudence, the business of legislation, the details of finance, the magnificent mysteries of commerce ;-perhaps, even, they have not taught him the mere and vulgar art of public speaking! How few of the young men thus brought forward ever rise into fame!

A mediocre man, trained to the habits of discerning what is true knowledge, and the application to pursue it, will rise in any public capacity to far higher celebrity than the genius of a public school, who has learnt nothing which it is necessary to the public utility to know. As, then, the hope of acquiring connexions was a chimera, so that of obtaining permanent distinction for your son, in the usual process of public education, is a dream. What millions of 'promising men,' unknown, undone, have counterbalanced the success of a single Canning! I may here observe, that the abolition of close boroughs is likely to produce a very powerful effect upon the numbers sent to a public school. As speculation is the darling passion of mankind, many, doubtless, were the embryo adventurers sent to Eton, in the hope that Eton honours would unlock the gates of a Gatton or Old Sarum. Thus, in one of Miss Edgeworth's tales, the clever Westminster boy without fortune receives, even at school, the intimation of a future political career as an encouragement to his ambition, and the Rotten Borough closes the vista of Academical Rewards. This hope is over; men who would cheer on their narrow fortunes by the hope of parliamentary advancement, must now appeal to the people, who have little sympathy with the successful imitator of Alcæan measures, or the honoured adept in longs and shorts.' And consequently, to those parents who choose the public school as a possible opening to public life, one great inducement is no more, and a new course of study will appear necessary to obtain the new goals of political advancement.

I have thus sought to remove the current impression that public schools are desirable, as affording opportunities for advantageous connexion and permanent distinction. And the ambitious father (what father is not ambitious for his son?) may therefore look dispassionately at the true ends of education, and ask himself if, at a public school, those ends are accomplished? This part of the question has been so frequently and fully examined, and the faults of our academical system are so generally allowed, that a very few words will suffice to dispose of it. The only branches of learning really attempted to be taught at our public schools are the dead languages. Assuredly there are other

* Formerly a nobleman, or rich gentleman, in sending his son to school, sent with him a private tutor, whose individual tuition was intended to supply the de

items in the bills-French and arithmetic, geography and the use of the globes. But these, it is well known, are merely nominal instructions: the utmost acquired in geography is the art of colouring a few maps and geography itself is only a noble and a practical science when associated with the history, the commerce, and the productions of the countries, or the cities, whose mere position it indicates. What matters it that a boy can tell us that Povoa is on one side the river Douro, and Pivasende on the other; that the dusky inhabitant of Benguela looks over the South Atlantic, or that the waters of Terek exhaust themselves in the Caspian sea? Useful, indeed, is this knowledge, combined with other branches of statistics;-useless by itself,-another specimen of the waste of memory and the frivolity of imitation. But even this how few learn, and how few of the learners remember!

Arithmetic, with its pretended acquisitions, is, of all scholastic deJusions, the most remarkable. What sixth-form ornament of Harrow or Eton has any knowledge of figures? Of all parts of education, this the most useful is, at aristocratic schools, the most neglected. As to French, at the end of eight years the pupil leaves Eton, and does not know so much as his sister has acquired from her governess in three months. Latin and Greek, then, alone remain as the branches of human wisdom to which serious attention has been paid.

I am not one of those who attach but trifling importance to the study of the Classics; myself a devoted, though a humble student, I have not so long carried the thyrsus but that I must believe in the God. And he would indeed be the sorriest of pedants who should affect to despise the knowledge of those great works, which, at their first appearance, enlightened one age, and in their after restoration, broke the darkness of another? Surely one part of the long season of youth can scarcely be more profitably employed than in examining the claims of those who have exercised so vast and durable an influence over the human mind.

But it is obvious that even thoroughly to master the Greek and Latin tongues, would be but to comprehend a very small part of a practical education. Formerly it was obviously wise to pay more exclusive attention to their acquisition than at present, for formerly they contained all the literary treasures of the world, and now they contain only a part. The literature of France, Germany, England, is at least as necessary for a man born in the nineteenth century, as that of Rome and Athens.

But, it is said, the season of childhood is more requisite for master

ficiencies of the public course of study. This custom has almost expired, and aristocratic education, therefore, instead of improving, is still more superficial than it was.