receive the first, Unit education. Must neither be * Party annarrate system will never option from his servile it will be an admirMelton, Newmarket, of the society of cultivated Enguish, nobleman, it LEFF and Perunatent aversion. LearnTreaty puisucu; and we must CUBECIRE, Wils that money cau LA ~2, terany de case, ་ In the case of minds aus cried, nursed, even of parents andewed with more han rumaryuugment; steeped vo pre more nclined to wonder that so many of our young men and intellectual habits, scholars as well as gentlemen, rather than that others aspire to no nigher eminence than that of Almack's dandies or gambling roués. It is the great advantage of our whole system of education, as well at the public schools as at the universities, that it is in perfect nizon with our national institutions. In a social system which like ours admits a triple aristocracy of birth, wealth, and talents, whatever whatever tends to mingle together the different classes upon a footing as equal as possible, mitigates in some degree, and softens away those disadvantages and jealousies inseparable from all distinctions of rank. Aristocracy of every kind has a natural tendency to exclusiveness. Each has its narrow pride, which induces it to insulate itself within its peculiar circle, and to despise all distinctions but its own. There may be some truth in the theory espoused with so much bitterness, and exaggerated with animosity no less vulgar and unphilosophical than the arrogance which they condemn, by some of the second-rate novelists. and the party-writers of the day, that the hereditary aristocracy has maintained a jealous and undue ascendency over the government of the country. The real extent, and the advantage or pernicious consequences to the community from this long predominant influence, would be to a candid and dispassionate mind a subject of historical inquiry of equal interest and importance. But we scruple not to assert that but for the public system of education, this influence, whatever it may have been, would have been more dangerous and repugnant to the independent spirit of the nation. It is at the public school that birth and wealth receive their first, and their most salutary lessons of equality. The aristocracy of title and fortune has its first collision with the aristocracy of talent, and is taught that it may be, and will, without strenuous exertions, be worsted, and be obliged to submit to confessed inferiority in the contest. It is first taught that there is something besides hereditary distinction, which is of importance in the sight of the public. The boy, who in Eton phrase is frequently sent up for good, stands higher with the independent mass of his schoolfellows than the expectant heir to twenty thousand a year, or to a ducal title. The trifling distinctions which are permitted to persons of rank in the great schools, as well as in the universities, enforce little respect among the boys themselves; unless he is gentlemanly in his manners, courteous and unpresuming in his behaviour, the young patrician will come in for his share of that ruder discipline by which boys are apt to correct presumption and insolence. A plebeian boy will thrash an impertinent lord with most indiscriminating impartiality, and a high-born dunce will be laughed at with as little scruple as the blundering son of a tradesman. If the aristocracy has not degenerated into a caste-if it has not kept entirely aloof from the common opinions, feelings, and interests of society-we may thank this early fusion with the other classes. The tuft-hunter and flatterer will beset them in this outset of life, but the general and prevailing tone in a public school is that of bold and generous independence; not only cleverness and superior attainments, but strength and activity, Time fills his lenient and oblivious urn; And sprinkling the pained heart, with process slow But certain, medicates the deepest woe.The orphan's smiles revived, and cheered her sire, As vernal beams the willow bent with snow. But soon, too soon, those smiles were to Her Father's eyes, obscured by torpid age, charms condemn Their holiest charm to peril. Not the stem By moths that steal into the folds of By social vanities, was ate away. This Outcast of the Sea, is Eve, "The How from the form-fenced ledge of ornate ease To such a depth of wretchedness she By what terrific plunge, or slow degrees, The search of kindred whose relenting Would yet have screened her in their northern dell. Contempt, compassion, thus alike denied, In squalid want she lived, in woe consummate died.' Impalpably the precious zone of duty, Of purity the strong though silken stay, We apprehend we can hardly be mistaken when we pronounce the writer of these stanzas something more than a mere versifier. We conjure him to clear his head' of politics, scandal, and all manner of uncharitableness, and not to let life slip away-for we cannot for a moment fancy him a very young man-without seizing the days and the nights that must be given to the worthy completion of a monument of genius. ART. VI.-Some Remarks on the present Studies and Management of Eton School. By a Parent. Fifth Edition. London. 1834. 6 2. The Eton Abuses considered; in a Letter addressed to the Author of Some Remarks on the present Studies and Management of Eton School.' Second Edition. London. 1834. 3. A few Words in Reply to Some Remarks upon the present System and Management of Eton School.' By Etonensis. London. 1834. 6 4. The Eton System of Education vindicated; and its Capabilities of Improvement considered in Reply to some recent Publications. London. 1834. 5. Oxford as it is. By a Foreigner of Rank. Loudon. 1834. 6. Oxford in 1834: a Satire, in Six Parts. London. OF F all our national institutions, perhaps our great public schools are the most characteristic; those which we should almost despair of making intelligible to an inquiring foreigner, or even to acute and sensible men in our own country, who in their youth have breathed an entirely different atmosphere. In some respects, they seem to set at defiance all the general principles, and to be at war with the whole theory of education, so that a dry detail of the school business, and of the daily and weekly exercises, may be accurate to the very letter, yet will give as inadequate, if not as unfair, a view of the real system, as the skeleton does of the breathing and animated man. We are the last to deny that much is wanting to bring these institutions up to the rising level of general information; the age demands an expansion of their system: but this may be effected without abandoning its primary and essential characteristics. Education, especially when intended to comprehend that class of English youth whose birth and fortune place them above professional ambition, and who, however they may take a share in the public business of the country, must have much idle and unoccupied time-education, to this class especially, and indeed to those who aspire to fill the several departments of the learned professions, has not discharged its high and important function, when it has forcibly exacted the acquisition of certain rudiments of learning, and by incessant diligence driven into the reluctant and unconsenting mind the barren and ungerminating seeds of knowledge: it must excite rather than pretend to satisfy an ardent appetite for still increasing information; and encourage that love of letters and knowledge, without which the compulsory lessons of the school will either stagnate into pedantic self-sufficiency, or, as is more usually the case, be cast aside, and utterly forgotten, immediately that the constraint is removed. Education cannot, perhaps, implant, but it may foster and stimulate, to an incalculable degree, this selfimproving spirit; and it has certainly been the good fortune, if not the deliberate aim, of the great school to which most of these pamphlets refer, to justify, by its success, in thus kindling the enthusiasm of youth towards the studies of the place, the ardent and somewhat exclusive attachment of its admirers. In Eton, this spirit, according to the general direction of study long adopted within its walls, has taken the turn of correct and elegant classical attainment. Years back this may be traced in the pure and exquisite, though perhaps fastidious and overwrought, poetry of Gray; in later days, after mingling with the fervid oratory, and giving a peculiar lucidness to the vehement invectives of Fox, it retired with him to St. Ann's Hill, to throw a quiet grace over the evening of his agitated life, and to impart a delightful occupation to a mind exhausted with political turbulence; it has shown itself not less distinctly in the statesman-like, yet highly-polished, public documents which have proceeded from the Wellesleys and Grenvilles; VOL. LII. NO. CIII. K it it added the last perfect finish, the curiosa felicitas, to the vivid and harmonious eloquence of Canning. To extinguish or chill this spirit would, in our, perhaps prejudiced, opinion, be fatal to an institution, which, from its numbers, must depend rather on the prevailing tone of mind and feeling which pervades the general body, than on the close and particular superintendence of each individual. A more formal, burthensome, and mechanical ritual of instruction might have the effect of repressing this tendency to self-improvement; and while such a system might be better for the mass of students, whom it would force upwards to a higher standard of mediocrity, there is danger lest it should trammel and subdue the more generous and independent spirits, to whose perfect development greater freedom appears essential. The grand problem of education, at least of liberal education, is to teach enough, and not too much; not to cultivate the memory alone, which in the dullest may perhaps, by assiduous and incessant diligence, be constrained to lay up stores of reminiscences which will never ripen into useful and productive knowledge, while the other powers of the understanding are either dormant or overweighed with the burthen under which the whole mind is labouring. After all, the self-educated will be the best educated; the pupil for whom the teacher apparently does least will often derive the most essential advantage from his tuition; the highest skill of the instructor, and the perfection of the system of instruction, is to stimulate the spontaneous expansion of the mind; to keep alive, wherever, either by the bounty of nature or by early habits, it may have been implanted, the ardent thirst for knowledge; to guide into proper and useful courses of study the active energies of the young understanding; to be ever at hand to remove difficulties which might repel, without making the smooth as to require no exertion; and, finally, to maintain that generous emulation, which is by no means necessarily connected with the narrow and baser passions of envy or jealousy. This honourable emulation, indeed, in a great public school, is of far wider influence, even as regards the attainment of knowledge, than mere competition in the comparative excellence of the school exercises, or proficiency in school learning. There is a constant secret operation, both of the honest shame of being thought ignorant by his compeers, and of the generous desire of surpassing them in acquirements, which, though not demanded, may still sometimes be brought to bear even upon the ordinary business of the school-particularly in the compositions, which are upon such a variety of subjects, that an ingenious youth has perpetual opportunities of drawing on his own private stock of information. Thus, a sort of latent system of mutual instruction is continually way so at |