law, but by turning the feelings and passions into a purer channel, by giving a higher object to generous ambition, by centering the active energies on more worthy pursuits; by teaching them, in short, to find their highest gratification in mental and moral culture. Let a man's pride be to be a gentleman-furnish him with elegant and refined pleasures, imbue him with the love of intellectual pursuits, and you have a better security for his turning out a good citizen, and a good Christian, than if you have confined him by the strictest moral and religious discipline, kept him in innocent and unsuspecting ignorance of all the vices of youth, and in the mechanical and orderly routine of the severest system of education.

We have deviated much farther than we intended from the important subject of the connexion between the improvement of our public schools and that of our universities; or rather with the restoration of our universities to something nearer to their original design. If they have been in some degree lowered from the mark, the fault, however, is not their own. If the College tutors are employed in drudgery which is beneath them-in instilling the rudiments, or almost the rudiments, of Greek and Latin into their pupils-it is because those pupils are not sent to the University in the advanced state which they ought to be; but by being thus degraded (we use the term with reference to the higher studies to which his labours ought to be devoted) to the business and the toil of an usher, the mind of the tutor himself must in general be lowered, or at least prevented from expanding and improving itself as it might, if employed only in the cultivation of more mature scholarship, and more advanced science. He too contracts a distaste for his servile toil. The wearisome repetition of elementary lessons relaxes and enfeebles his interest for intellectual pursuits: at all events, he has little time for any studies, but those of preparing his pupils for the schools. The tone of his lectures is of necessity lower than it should be; and where what is absolutely necessary for a degree can be acquired only by such unremitting attention on his part, he can by no means encourage or advise his pupil to undertake any other course of study. We are persuaded that at Oxford at least, generally speaking, too much is done even for the superior young men; if they were more incited, and less unnecessarily urgedmore guided than compelled-more left to themselves, under the honourable stimulants of emulation and ambition, rather than saturated and drugged with constant lectures, the result would be far better. A few comparatively dull youths would not be screwed up by a kind of mechanical power to a higher standard; but talent would be more freely and more profitably developed. A higher tone of taste, and of intellectual feeling, would be generated; the youths would feel themselves men, labouring for their

own

own improvement-not school-boys, drilled to perform an exacted task.

It is highly to the credit of the tutors, that with both classes-the uninstructed, and those who are of better promise-they have submitted to this voluntary servitude. If we could advise their selfemancipation from this thraldom, we are convinced that it would be for their own interest, for that of their pupils, and would tend to raise the general tone and character of the University. As to the first class of pupils, the tutors have a right to claim from the Schools, that they should not leave their proper work to be conducted by the colleges. The remedy is in their own hands. In the Prussian universities, the pupil, we believe, is not admitted without a certificate of competent proficiency from a gymnasium. No young man-at least, a candidate for a degree-should be admitted to the University without sufficient at least of Latin and Greek to pass the first Oxford examination. We know the objection to this, that it would be an edict of exclusion to many young men of rank and fortune, who have no ambition for obtaining University honours, and have already shown their contempt for such plebeian attainments by the lordly rejection of the lessons at the school. The University certainly would lose little, in peace or fame, by the refusal to enrol these unpromising members among her more hopeful scholars. But society perhaps might suffer, if all such youths of importance-not for their personal character or talents, but from their station-should be thus thrown loose upon the world, at that critical period of life, without even that slight degree of discipline and instruction which they cannot altogether elude at the University. But for these we should suggest the possibility of forming some other kind of education, which, however imperfect, might be the best which the case would admit. Those who have acquired little Latin and no Greek at school before seventeen, may as well, perhaps, abandon the unprofitable study. Declaring then their intention not to proceed to a degree, such young men might be compelled to attend lectures on modern history, or other branches of liberal, not classical, education. Christ Church, or Trinity at Cambridge, might try the experiment, and surely would not want some accomplished member of their body qualified to instruct in these branches of literature.

If a higher standard of admission were demanded, the degree might be taken earlier, and a year at least be left for scientific or historical lectures-for chemistry, geology, astronomy, natural history-for ancient and modern history-for political economyfor the studies of an university, in contradistinction from a school education; or if it be considered objectionable that the degree should thus be hastened, much more time would be applicable to

such

such pursuits, even by those most assiduously employed in the ordinary studies for the degree. In some such manner the mutual claims and interests of the various branches of an universal education might be reconciled and harmonized; a higher general system of teaching would prevail; and the Universities might again, instead of devoting their highest energies to the cultivation of the elementary parts of learning in the minds of yet almost uneducated youth, take the lead in the advancement of every branch of science and learning.

The

It is of incalculable importance that the Universities should maintain their connexion not only with the theology, but with the literature and the science of the country. But if the tutors are enslaved to the drudgery of school-instruction, or confined to the routine of books which are usually required for the public examinations-if they become heads of colleges only after their intellectual activity and literary tastes have become wearied and worn out by years of such unremitting toil-they will scarcely be able to maintain their proud position in the estimation of the country, and indeed of all Europe. They ought to consider that these magnificent establishments are meant to act as guardians of the general education of the higher classes-and that their education must in no point fall below the intellectual standard which an age of unexampled activity in every branch of literature and of science will require. The youth distinguished at his University must be prepared at all points to stand his ground in the great contest for intellectual distinction among men. Professors, some of whom at least are men of European reputation, instead of being, (we speak of Oxford,) with the exception of the Regius Professors of Divinity and Hebrew, rather a race of ornamental dignitaries, whose lectures the great mass of undergraduates, entirely occupied with their classical or mathematical studies for the schools, and the tutors, worn out with preparing the undergraduates, have no leisure to attend, might assume their proper place in the general system of education. The Bucklands, the Daubenys, or even the Wilsons, might not merely have a comparatively few ardent and zealous votaries, but it would be considered a disgrace, among all who aspire to the honours of an university education, to be entirely ignorant of any important branch of knowledge, or to have neglected such valuable opportunities of improvement, as would be afforded in every branch of polite literature, or general information.

ART. VII.-Lettres de Napoléon à Joséphine, pendant la première Campagne d'Italie, le Consulat et l'Empire; et Lettres de Joséphine à Napoléon et à sa Fille. 2 tomes. 8vo. Paris. 1833. THESE letters are undoubtedly authentic; but-strange to add-they are worth nearly as little as if they were forgeries. We had no conception that authentic and confidential letters from Buonaparte to his wife could be so utterly valueless. They contain neither facts, nor sentiments, nor traits of character, nor domestic incidents, nor even gossip. Almost the only thing we learn from them is, that Buonaparte had little confidence in Josephine, and held her in a degree of estimation so low as to approach to contempt. Yet they are published by Madame Louis Buonaparte, ci-devant la Reine Hortense, with the professed object of doing justice to her mother's memory against some slanderous insinuations to which Buonaparte gave utterance in the Mémorial de St. Hélène. This Reine Hortense must be a very silly woman. We knew very well that Buonaparte was guilty of the deplorable indelicacy of amusing his followers at St. Helena with anecdotes about both his wives, and that some of these stories were not much to the credit of either the understanding or the character of poor Josephine; but her daughter would have shown better taste-even if she had the means of complete refutation-in leaving these petty scandals to rot forgotten, amidst the mass of falsehood in which they are imbedded, and, above all, more sense in not publishing, as a vindication of her mother, a mass of trumpery notes, which have no relation whatsoever to the points in dispute, and which, on the whole, tend, we rather think, to justify the tone in which Buonaparte is represented as having spoken of her. They prove, indeed, that he was or pretended to be passionately fond of her, during the first Italian campaign, but it was a fondness so childish, so ludicrous even, considering the age and preceding history of the object of such Philandering, that it does little credit to either party. Å letter from before Mantua, 18th July, 1796, tells her,

'I am very uneasy to know how you are-what you are doing.-I have been in the village of Virgil-on the shores of his lake-by a silvery moonshine, and not a moment without thinking of Josephine.' -vol. i. p. 51.

Again, next day,

A thousand kisses, as burning as my heart-as pure as you -I sent for the courier; he told me that he had seen you, and that you told him that you had no commands for him.-Oh fie-naughty, ugly, cruel, tyrannical, pretty little monster! You laugh at my threats, at my folly. Ah, you know that if I could put you into my heart, you should remain there in prison,'-vol, i. p. 55,

We

We shall give the whole of a letter from Mona, 17th September, 1796, which exhibits at once the trivial affectation of a boyish passion, and the slight way in which he slurs over the events which a man of sense would most dwell upon to a wife whom he respected.

You are

I write, my dear love, very often, and you hardly ever. naughty, ugly-as frightful as faithless, (laide autant que légère.) It is shocking to deceive a poor husband so―a tender lover! Must he lose his rights because he is absent, overwhelmed with business, fatigue, and trouble?-Without his Josephine-without the certainty of her love, what remains for him upon earth?-How could he live in this world? We had yesterday a very bloody affair-the enemy suffered considerably and was completely beaten. We have taken the faubourg of Mantua. Adieu, my adorable Josephine! One of these nights I shall force open your doors as if I were jealous, and there I am-in your arms.

'Mille baisers amoureux !

-

And all this to a middle-aged lady, who had been a widow some years before she became the object of this romantic flame, and from a man engaged in the highest, and the most important, and the most hazardous concerns !-No real confidence-no interchange of mind-not one touch of true feeling-no communication of serious thoughts-no identity of interests-nothing that marks the mutual respect and affection which dignify and bless the married state; but-instead-we have these boyish tirades, which betray, by their gross exaggeration, the insincerity of the man and the silliness of the woman. Our readers will have observed the playful delicacy with which the husband talks of a favoured lover, and the significant hint that his love and jealousy may prompt him to make an unexpected visit. This might pass for a clumsy badinage, but we find that Buonaparte continues to harp upon it.

Verona, 13th Nov. 1796.

'No-I don't love you at all-no, I don't love you at all-on the contrary, I detest you! You are ugly-awkward-stupid-a very cinder-wench!You don't write to me-you don't love your husband, you know the pleasure he takes in you-and yet you won't throw away six lines on him!-What are you about, madam, all day? What important business prevents your writing to your dear, dear love ?— What new affection supersedes the love-the constant tender love you promised me? Who is the new and dandy (merveilleux) lover who absorbs all your time-engrosses all your leisure, and drives your husband out of your head ?-Take care, Josephine-one fine night your doors will be burst open, and there I am.-I hope, before long, to clasp you in my arms, and to cover you with kisses burning as if under the equator.'-p. 83.