Or all the questions which agitate the public mind, we believe none is destined to take a more prominent place, and that at no distant day, than the question of Educational Reform. The vastness of the subject, the interests involved in it, and the difficulties connected with it, while on the one hand they might well deter us from rashly meddling with it, yet, on the other hand, they call imperiously and pressingly upon us not to shrink from the discussion of the subject. We have, like most inquirers, thought over this subject of education, and talked over it, too, and fancy we have gained some information; and so we are determined to let the public have the benefit, as we consider it, of our information and reflections on this subject. As, however, we dislike writing apropos to nothing, we shall relieve the dulness of our remarks by introducing to the notice of our readers one of the books* most recently published, in accordance with the ideas of the reformers of school education for the middle classes.

The experiments in education, of

late years, have been principally confined to the public education of the children of the poorer classes of our citizens, or, as we term them, when affectionately disposed, the masses. This, we presume, is in accordance with the ancient maxim-"Experimentum fiat in corpore vili." We have been more anxious for the education of the children of the poor than of our own class; and in Ireland, at least, have fought more earnestly for the right of the poor man's child to read the Bible, or not to read it, than, perhaps, under like circumstances, we should have done for our own flesh and blood. The Government, as usual in this country, has interfered in the question, and, as usual, increased the difficulties by meddling. It is not long since the foundation-stone of an institution for training masters for the education of the English poor was laid, with no small stir and flourishing of the penny-trumpets of the daily press: the trowel was wielded by a personage no less distinguished by the peculiar military rank which he holds, than by the enlighten

ed views of education which he is supposed to possess. The public money was voted, was spent; the usual nominations and appointments were made on the usual grounds; and yet such was the want of intelligence, according to some, or prudent foresight, according to others, of the great parties of the English Church, both high and low, and broad and narrow, that they rejected the proffered boon, and preferred their own system of educating the children of the poor to that kindly forced upon them by the Government at Kneller Hall.

The education of the Irish poor is a subject upon which we have so often expressed our opinion, that it is unnecessary now to disturb the sufficientlytroubled waters. The interference of the Irish Government is known to all our readers. Their indignation at the rebellion of the Irish clergy; their revengeful system of Church patronage founded thereon, together with its natural fruits, have been sketched in these pages by able hands; and we only allude to the subject at present, to illustrate the difficulties of this branch of the subject of educational reform.

It is not our intention to enter upon this wide department of our subject; and we believe that this abnegation on our part will cause no inconvenience to our readers, who are already in possession, or might easily become so, of all the facts connected with a question which has occupied so much of the public attention.

Our aim, on the present occasion, is rather to direct our readers' attention to a branch of the subject of education, much less understood, and much more intimately affecting their interests-we mean the education of the middle classes. As the wealthier classes of the community can afford to pay for the blessing of religious education for their children, and as there are schools and colleges to suit every shade of religious belief amongst us, it has followed, as a natural consequence, that the subject of religion is not the subject around which the controversies respecting middle-class education have clustered; and the attention of reformers has been, in this instance, directed more exclusively to the literary side of the question. We obtain one advantage from this circumstance that the controversy has

been divested of extraneous subjects of discussion, and turned more directly upon the systems of education them selves.

It cannot be denied, however, that these systems of education have been more or less connected with religious controversies, and that the parties into which our Church is unhappily divided, have each advocated systems of education, supposed to be suited to develop a tone of feeling and mode of thought in the young, in unison with the religious training to which they are respectively subjected. Notwithstanding this natural connexion, the secular and religious aspect of educational systems admits of being considered separately, and it is to the former exclusively that we would now direct our attention.

In the rapid sketch which we are about to give of the more prominent of our educational systems, we shall be forced to confine our attention almost exclusively to England, where the subject of education is more attended to, and the experiments on it tried on a scale vastly exceeding the feebler efforts of our own country.

First on our list we find the grammar and cathedral schools and colleges of England, some endowed with princely fortunes, and recognised as the nurseries of our most brilliant statesmen and most distinguished scholars; and others, almost unknown, labouring in solitude and poverty, neglected, mismanaged, and almost forgotten, excepting in the tenacious memory of some reforming member of the House of Commons, who may propose annually the appointment of a Commission of Inquiry into the management of the public schools. It is but rarely, however, that he can obtain a hearing for his grievance amid the complicated and interminable discussions which illustrate the wisdom of our parliamentary representatives, and are supposed to conduce to the good government of the country. Supposing our reformer, however, to be at length successful, and to attain his object-his Commission is appointed, consisting of, say, one archbishop, with a bag wig; one ditto of Whig principles; one lord of similar principles and mechanical tastes; an astronomer; two lawyers, and a paid secretary-this Commission sits upon the school grievance, which is not likely to be much benefited by the operation. It inquires-is resisted

by the cathedral deans and dons; is invited by them to dine, but steadily refused all access to their coffers and books. At length the Commission reports and buries the results of its labours in the usual blue book, which is paid for by the House of Commons, and forgotten; but the conscience of the reforming member is relieved, and he turns to the contemplation of other grievances, and the appointment of other Commissions of Inquiry.

It was our fortune once to visit an old cathedral town, of crooked streets and narrow lanes, where, however, the country so struggled for pre-eminence with the town, that you could not decide to which it should belong. Its massive cathedral, with lofty octagonal lantern, and beautiful western porch its bishop's palace and dean's residence, and college, marked it as a town; but there was not a Gothic window in its narrow streets which was not overgrown with ivy, and from each corner of its crooked lanes the green trees and yellow harvestfields could be seen terminating the view; a clean and comfortable hostel, adorned with a creaking signboard, representing either a golden lamb or a silver bell (we forget which), received the weary stranger, whose comfort was not disturbed by grinning waiters or sulky Boots. On market-days this inn was frequented by all that was portly and comfortable of the surrounding farmers, who, after dinner, seated behind long clay pipes, discussed gravely the prices of their neighbours' farms, the prospects of sinking for clay beneath the peat, or the all-important question of drainage. Let us suppose our peripatetic Commission to arrive at such a place, to inquire into the working of the cathedral schools, and having established themselves in the best rooms of the inn, to sally forth in search of their object every person they meet can tell them where the National School is, or the British, according as the dean happens to be High or Low Church; but the Cathedral School appears to be unknown. The farmers could tell them the latest price of superphosphate, but do not appear to understand the georgics of the mind. At length, a little boy is met, with a square cap on his head, and a Latin grammar in his hand, who shows them the way to the college, which consists of a few rooms,

situated over a moss-grown Gothic gateway, nestling under the shadow of the cathedral; the access to this college consisting of a toilsome ascent of a spiral stone staircase, in a dark and narrow turret. From the slender slits, through which the sunbeams creep, not unimpeded by green ivy leaves, into the turret, alternate glimpses are obtained of the sturdy oaks and broad fields, and of the Gothic pinnacles and stained windows of the old cathedral. Inside the college there is a hum of many boys, who look, and are, happy, notwithstanding the unpromising symptom, that each holds before him a Latin grammar, which book, alternately with the English Bible, forms the mental pabulum of the schoolboys of our cathedral town.

Our Commissioners are shocked and pleased. The savant is horrified at the absence of chemistry, geology, and botany, and naturally asks, what is the use of so much Latin in an agricultural district? The lawyers complain that the schoolboys are trained up in total ignorance of their country's laws, and of the glorious constitution under which the little sinners have the happiness to live. The bishops, however, shake their heads, and express their satisfaction that the Bible is so constantly and carefully taught, and incline to the opinion, that the Latin grammar as naturally accompanies a' scriptural education as roast-beef does plum-pludding.

From the quiet repose of the old cathedral town, let us pass to the hum and turmoil of busy London, whose public schools are endowed and nurtured on a scale suited to the magnitude of the mighty Babylon. Hidden in the city in narrow lanes, where almost every building is a wealthy warehouse, they reckon their scholars by hundreds, although many of their nearest neighbours seem almost unconscious of their existence; they boast of generations of scholars, honoured and rewarded for their learning at Oxford and Cambridge, and pride themselves on being still able to turn out the best Latin versemakers in England; in some, the number of the scholars is determined by the mystic number of the fishes taken by the seven disciples in the sea of Tiberias; in others, by the good-will and pleasure of the turtle-loving city alder

men. Do our readers wish an education for their sons, holding out the prospects of success at college and in life, difficult to obtain, coveted by many? Let them seek for a nomination in these princely schools. If successful, they will have the inexpressible gratification of seeing their darling hope figuring in a hideous costume, oppressed with heat in summer, and chilled with cold in winter; his thin and shivering legs coated with yellow stockings, and inserted into shoes resembling butter-boats, the size of which is to be determined by the keeper of the wardrobe, not by the dimensions of the urchin's foot, but by the date of his baptismal registry; and should the unhappy boy have overgrown his lawful age, his feet are pinched in purgatorial shoes;

or

should he not have attained the normal stature of Saxon boys, he is fitted with appendages to his feet which would almost enable him to float, like a water-spider, on the mud of Cheapside. Costume, however, like other externals, is nothing; or it may be a matter for difference of opinion; and to the aldermanic eye, a pair of yellow stockings may appear as proper for a schoolboy as to the Celtic peasant the purple shirt of his venerated prelate.

Your boy, good reader, is placed at school; your eye has grown used to the deformities of his dress; and you console yourself with the hope that the clothing of his mind will not bear any resemblance to the oddity of his dress. You never were more mistaken, for his dress is the exact counterpart of his education; your son will return home to you skilled in making verses, but perhaps unable to assist you in making up your accounts; learned in the wars of Greece and Rome, but ignorant of the history of his own country; and it may even happen that almost the only useful knowledge he possesses he has acquired by stealth, and out of the routine of school. If his taste lay not in the study of dead and weary languages, he was set down as slow of comprehension, and left to perish in his ignorance; he could not, and did not become a Grecian, and he must, therefore, die a boor.

We could mention cases by the score in which a capacity for mathematical or physical research existed of no mean order, and was subsequently developed, in those who had been mea

sured by the puny standards of classical pedants and found wanting. And yet this system has its advocates; and one of its most gifted defenders, now at rest, has declared that he would rather his child should believe that the sun went round the earth, than devote his life to the pursuit of physical science.

The hours of such ignorant assertions are numbered, and we believe the assertors will soon become as rare as Tories who believe in the divine right of kings, or Whigs who do not love a job; pending, however, the dissolution of the classical system of education, we must expect to see many a fierce and furious contest amongst its expectant heirs. We have almost as many systems as teachers in our private schools; and even in the public schools, conducted on a scientific basis, there is far from unanimity as to the foundations on which they should be laid. In many cases science is narrowed to the elements of mathematics, and in others, the natural and physical sciences are taught in a manner too often recalling to mind the experi ments and prodigies of the vendors of quack medicine.

In one of the hottest, smokiest, and blackest of the towns in the north of England we arrived, some years ago, late at night, and were driven to the nearest and, as it happened, the best hotel. Swallowing a hasty supper, we retired to bed, but not to rest; the flickering glare of the neighbouring furnaces gleamed into our windows; the whiz of countless wheels in motion crept up the walls and ran along the ceiling and the floor; and the steady blows of heavy hammers, wielded by swarthy smiths, fell with wearisome regularity on our ears. When we slept, we dreamed of the hotel on fire; when we wakened, it was to undergo our former pangs. At last the wished-for morn ing dawned, and we heard with pleasure the first and only natural sound which met our ears in this Cyclops' forge; it came from the throat of a Spanish cock, who was evidently, like ourselves, not at home in a manufacturing town; the long, black feather which alone remained of his once proud tail, drooped down, and at intervals the drops of rain which trickled from his back fell from his only feather upon the wet flags; his comb was draggled and torn at the base; his