'hey might be. under monitors, or are altogether idle.

On the other hand. if the teacher can devolve the exhausting business of mere preparation and repetition on others, it is clear that so much time and strength as was lost on this can now be devoted to the proper business of instruction.

sor Walker, to despair altogether of the cause of classical literature beyond the Tweed, and to denounce the present system, not merely as a futile abortion in itself, but as one of the greatest hindrances to a rational system of education, that the three angles of our triangle contain. In "As little, however, is it to be denied that England, wherever the old system of ex- even this preparation and repetition, and clusive classicality still prevails, we have much more so the instruction, properly so callat least one thing thoroughly studied in the ed, when they are superintended by scholars, schools, and carried afterwards in the uni-do not admit, with regard to all subjects, of versities to that point of perfection in which being efficiently carried into practice; for there is always something mechanical' about intellectual pleasure and profit are com- the teaching of a monitor which, if teaching is bined; but classicality in Scotland is a mere to be intellectual, necessarily renders the inobstructive heap of grammatical thorns and strument inadequate to the effect desired. brambles, neither producing any fruit of This may be granted; but there are certain itself, nor allowing seeds of a more hope-subjects that admit of being communicated, if ful character to find their way through its not altogether, at least in some degree, only in a manner that may comparatively be termed choking superincumbence. † mechanical; nay, we may go further and say We shall now give the English reader a that the extraneous admixture of spurts of sample of Herr Beneke's sensible and thor-spirit. so to speak, into these subjects, tends to oughly practical views on the methods of produce confusion rather than to excite intereducation; and from this part of his subject est, and is, consequently, more prejudicial we can select nothing more appropriate than than beneficial to the real work of teaching. the remarks on the monitorial system. Fully tinction; and, unless where sorry necessity We shall, therefore, do wisely to make a disalive to the necessary defects of this overcompels, apply the monitorial method only to trumpeted machinery, the Berlin professor those subjects in which the instruction given has too much judgment to overlook its man-must necessarily be in a great measure meifold advantages. The monitorial system, chanical; as spelling, writing, drawing, arithwisely applied, teaches the educator to make a virtue of necessity; and he who can do this commands a charm, not of the highest kind, but one which, in such a world as the present, is likely to be more generally available than any other.

metic, and the external frame-work of geography and history. To the province of the monitorial method (to repeat what we have said jects, and those subjects only, that can be under another phase) belong all those subtransferred so completely by a good teacher to an apt scholar, that the scholar can feel the "Let us first consider the quantity of in- communicated elements, so far as they go, struction given by the method of Bell and perfec ly in his own power, and is ready to Lancaster; and here it seems to us evident transfer them distinctly and without confusion where there is an ordinary degree of skill dis-to another; while, on the other hand, all those played in the school arrangements, that each of a pupil teacher, which are capable only of a subjects are to be withheld from the handling individual scholar receives a greater share of the master's time and attention under the very imperfect transference from the master monitorial system than by the common plan to the scholar. To this category belong all according to which scholars of all different de-exercises prescribed especially for the training grees of advancement fall to be instructed by ion, in morality, and in the inner spirit and of the understanding, all instruction in relia single teacher. For in proportion as diversities of this kind exist in a class, the master significance of history. But with all this limitation, is it not a decided gain that what may is forced to split his time and attention into so many altogether independent sections; and nd must be taught, to a certain degree, mewhile he is occupied with one section the oth-chanically, is by the monitorial method taught ers will either be less heneficially occupied than more certainly in a school with only one master than it can be without this instrumientality?

Evidence before the Royal Commission for visiting the Scottish Universities, 1827.

"If we consider further to what an extent We happen to have lay besides us an extract this merely mechanical part of instruction is from an old number of the Edinburgh Review,' ind must be practised in every school, let the which expresses in a single sentence the essentially false position of classical learning in Scot-teacher be as vivacious and intellectual as he land. Nothing has more contributed in this leases; we shall be forced on a review of the country to disparage the cause of classical educa-real details of the matter to admit that unless tion than the rendering it the education of ALL With us the learned languages are taught at once too extensively, and not intensively enough.'

n a few peculiarly fortunate cases, a certain number of the scholars will, in all classes, soon begin to fall behind; and whenever this takes

instinct of corporeal movement which is so characteristic of healthy young persons. But besides this incidental gymnastics the scholars are thus accustomed to submit not merely to the direct power of discipline embodied in the person of the master, but to subordination and

place, the teacher, where he has no assistants, cipal teacher, not merely not mechanical in the must either allow this number to lag, and offensive sense of that word, but one of the most finally give them up as a hopeless job, or by healthy and beneficial of intellectual exercises. extraordinary care bestowed upon a few dul- j "But there are indirect advantages resultlarde, déprive the good scholars of that attening from the monitorial system, not inferior, tion of which they are more worthy. I know perhaps, to its immediate influence; and among it from the best authority that, high as our sys these we must mention the various postures tem of elementary instruction in Prussia un-and movements which the execution of this doubtedly stands, and zealous as are the exer-method renders necessary, and which form a tions of our educational officials, there are most convenient channel for the outlet of that nevertheless children even here, in Berlin, who, alier four or five years regular attend ance at school, can either read nor write with any readiness. If such things happen in the green tree, what are we to expect from the dry? And is it then wise, to remain in a state of vain self satisfaction with an imagined per-control in a much wider and more varied fection, and refuse the aid of a method, which, whatever may be its defects, can certainly, when actively superintended, be made to achieve that which our most active men with out it must in the nature of things often fail to do? Let monitors, therefore by all means be employed, to do that which can be done by monitors: and if the instruction which they can give is at best merely mechanical, let us bear in mind that this intellectual mechanics is at least in itself better than nothing, and that when once there, it may readily be made the bridge to something higher, that could never have existed without it.

sphere. For however much of mere surface work there may be in this sort of school training-something analogous to the externalities of which common military drill is made up-it is not the less certain that the observance of this external discipline removes the occasion for many an offence both of an inward origin, and drawing inward and moral consequences in its train. Discipline once acknowledged in a few mechanical outward acts, may by degrees control and mould the whole character. And accordingly we find, that, while within the walls of the school, the Bell and Lancaster teachers have been able to boast that their method has enabled them to dispense with every kind of corporeal punishment, beyond these bounds it is alleged that of those who have been subjected to thorough discipline under this system, a smaller proportion has been convicted for police offences than of children educated in the ordinary schools. In addition to all this, we must observe the important moral lesson daily taught to those who are under the influence of the monitorial system; namely, that no man lives for himself alone in this world, but that every man, according to his ability and opportunities, must endeavor to make himself useful to his fellows: and this great truth is not impressed upon the memory Such is the clear gain for the taught of the young scholar merely, but it is imprintscholar; for the teaching scholar the profied on his heart, transferred to his will, and is much higher. The object that had hith-worked into the daily habitude and custom of his existence. erio been his only by actual adoption.

"It now remains to make a remark or two on the quality of the instruction communicated by the mutual method. Now here, the main advantage seems to be-what indeed we have already mentioned-that by portioning out the scholars, according to their diff rent progress and capacities, into a great many separate groups, and giving each a suitable drilling by appropriately furnished monitors, every scholar at very individual moment is kept actively employed according to the exact measure of his wants and attainments, and neither above nor beneath this mark. Now when details are to be taken up mechanically in teaching, this is not something merely, but it is all.

becomes, in the very act of teaching, his "A single word now remains for the influby inward energetic vitality, the inalien-ence of this method on the principal teacher. ale property of his knowing faculty. The On this head the most discordant opinions are frequent repetition which he practises gives him certant; and confidence in the application of what he knows; what he had first learned diligently it may be, but imperfectly and more or less clumsily, he now learns to use with ready dexterity and decided talent. Then there is the special pleasure that arises in the mind from the consciousness of a thorough command of a subject: this again begets a warmer love to the subject, and acts as the most active of all spurs to further acquisition; so that, taking every thing together, the mechanical part of teaching becomes to the teacher-scholar what it never can be to the prin

every where expressed and we hear in the same breath the complaint that the constant superintendence and eager watchfulness over every part of a complicated machinery which this method requires, is too much for the strength of a common man; and that other complaint, which is certainly not consistent with it, that by handing over the principal part of his work to his scholars, the master is apt to become lazy and inefficient. Now with regard to this point it appears to me that they are decidedly in the wrong who imagine that the Bell and Lancaster method, because it enables a good teacher to do more than he could other

wise accomplish, is therefore an easier method for him, and a method which may be satisfied with a less efficient man than the common service demands. So far from this, it seems certain that to teach by monitors is a more difficult task for the masters than to teach without them a more vivid and energetic power of generalship must be exhibited, The commander-in-chief in a great battle, though he has and can have no particular post, is in fact present every where.' As a compensation, however, for this greater demand upon his energy, the monitorial system spares the teacher a great part of' that merely mechanical inculacation which is so wearisome; and saves him from that stupifying and blunting influence, which long continued and unremitting occupation with the mere elementary part of teaching never fails to exercise on the intellect."

LORD JEFFREY'S CONTRIBUTIONS TO
THE EDINBURGH REVIEW.

From the North British Review.

We promise our readers much pleasure and profit in the perusal of this article, our first cutWe think, from ting from the new Review. the specimens before us, we shall be inclined often to use it.-ED.

Contributions to the Edinburgh Review. By Francis Jeffrey, now one of the Judges of the Court of Session in Scotland. 4 vols. London. 1844.

THE name perfixed to these volumes would, at any time within the last forty Here our limits command us to refrain. and interest of the public. have ensured for them the attention years, The author's The extracts we have made are sufficient, early celebrity and long-sustained reputawe think, to convince the friends of edu- tion, must have rendered any effort from cation in this country that a complete trea- his pen an event in the republic of letters tise, conceived in the same catholic and which a faithful historian would hasten to comprehensive spirit, and so thoroughly record. To us, who are just commencing discriminating and practical, must be reour career of criticism, the present work garded as a most valuable contribution to comes laden with peculiar lessons and rea branch of social science, more talked collections; and on these we may be allowabout in these times than perhaps any ed to dwell shortly without apology to our other, but less understood. There are readers. It is a service of honor and duty, plenty of loose ideas, indeed, afloat on this as well as of gratification, to introduce our important subject, but comparatively few efforts in the cause of sound literature by fixed principles; and the cause of this con- some notice of this remarkable collection, fusion is plain: people must study so complex a subject before they can hope to comprehend it; study first its principles in the psychology of the human mind, and then its details in the practice of various skilful persons. To all who are in search of a wise pilot through these seas, we can most conscientiously recommend Dr. Friedrich

Beneke.

ALGERIA A VICEROYALTY.-We have positive information that there has been lately discussed in the Council of Ministers a question of erecting Algeria into a viceroyalty, and conferring it upon the Duc d'Aumale. It has even been intimated to the Court of Naples, that the daughter of the Prince de Salerno is destined to fill the rank of Vice-Queen. The idea has been adopted by the council in principle, but we are not able to say that any final decision as to its mode of execution has been come to.-Galignani.

TALLEYRAND.-Those who may be disposed to study the character of that modern Machiaval, Prince Talleyrand, will find it admirably portrayed in the remarkable work of the Baron Menneval, entitled Napoleon and Marie Louise.-Court Jour.

and to consider what instruction we may derive in our self-imposed labors from the writings of the greatest living master of our

art.

Other eminent writers in the Edinburgh Review have already published separately the most celebrated of their contributions. A comparison of those now before us with the essays of contemporary critics, naturally suggests itself as the most appropriate test we could use, for estimating accurately their peculiar merits in the school of composition to which they belong. But howin such a contrast, it occurs to us, that it is ever high we may be disposed to rate them not in that way, or under a process of discrimination so conducted, that their qualities-their best and highest qualities—can be rightly appreciated. They were not written for publication in such a shape: neither were they intended as popular writings, simply suited to catch the taste or excite the enthusiasm of the day. They were all parts of a great and gradually matured system of criticism; and the object aimed at in by far the greatest proportion of the essays before us, was not so much to pro

duce a pleasing, or attractive, or interest- think for themselves, either on matters of ing piece of writing, as to enforce great public policy, or on the lighter subjects of principles of thought-to scourge error, and literature and taste. Terrified by the horbigotry, and dulness-to instil into the rors of the French Revolution, the great public mind a just sense of the essential majority of the nation abandoned all conrequisites of taste and truth in literature-cern about their liberty, and trusted blindly and to disperse and wear away, by constant to their rulers for freedom and safety and energy, that crust of false sentiment which the universal feeling which absorbed nearly obscured and nearly extinguis ed the gen- all the enthusiasm of the age, was dread ius of this country, at the commencement of and detestation of revolutionary principles the present century. It is difficult, indeed, to look back without None of these Reviewers, certainly, a smile to the childish panic which appears wrote for separate publication; but perhaps to have possessed the country, of which it is only of Jeffrey that any such systemat- more than one indication may be found, ic plan can be predicated. Not only had even in the calm and philosophical pages the occasional contributors to the Review now before us. In the crisis of the imagthe advantage, for the most part, of choos- inary danger, every thing venerable and ing their own subject, and their own time, sacred to British liberty was forgotten. which an editor could not enjoy; but, in Even its first principles became suspected, general, their writings partake much more if a Jacobin taint could be discovered in of the nature of fugitive essays than of dis-them; and all were laid, with the confiquisitions connected by any common ob- dence of infatuation, at the foot of the ject, or tending collectively to any specific Crown, or the Minister of the day. result. Macaulay's Reviews, for instance, It cannot be denied, that however unenare not criticisms, and might often more ap- lightened these sentiments may now appear, propriately have had men than books for they entirely occupied the minds, not meretheir subject. They are philosophical dis-ly of the majority of the Houses of Parliacourses-gorgeous descriptions-pictur-ment, and of the aristocracy, but the great esque reflections on history and literature; body of the people. On the other hand, but they have seldom any claim to a place in the pages of a Review beyond the use of it as the vehicle of their communication to the public. With Jeffrey's criticisms it is altogether different. They are occupied much more with the work immediately in hand, and treat it as a subject for analysis more than as a mere text for discourse. The dissertations which occur in them are always brought directly to bear upon the peculiar task of the Reviewer. No man, indeed, who reads these volumes can fail to admire the vast range of subject which this selection embraces, and the wonderful ver-pery about these men and their opinions, satility which has so successfully compassed which, even if they had not been distracted so wide a circuit of literature and philoso- by the turmoil of the times, and the danger phy. But these are not their greatest tri- to which the minority in which they stood umphs. They are to be regarded not mere- exposed them, was as fatal to the freedom ly as the types or indications, but as, in a of thought, or the generous action of the great measure, the instruments of a great mind, as the blind zeal of their opponents. intellectual progress of a change which, Between these two sections there stood, infor its extent, might almost be called a rev-deed, a middle party, which with all its olution-in the tone of thought prevalent in this country both in politics and letters. At no time in our history, perhaps, had originality or manliness of thought sunk so low as at the end of last century. On all subjects, independence of action or opinion seems to have been renounced by the great mass of the people. Men had ceased to

there was another, an infinitely smaller class, whose opinions, though very different, were hardly more conducive to the health and vigor of public feeling. These were the disciples of the French Revolutionmen who, looking to that great event as the harbinger of a renovated state of society, regarded the name of antiquity as equivalent to tyranny-seeing nothing august or wise in any established institution, and searching for the foundation of liberty in the dispersion of all acknowledged axioms of religion or government. There was a fop

faults, kept alive the flame which has since burnt so brightly, under a leader, who may well be regarded as the impersonation of broad, manly intellect. But, great in talent, it was a band of little weight with the country. The stain of the Coalition, and the personal enmity of the Sovereign, had left Fox, during the remainder of his polit

ical career, without the means of public influence a star too far removed from the political orbit, to warm by its beams, even while it dazzled by its brilliancy. It was one, and not the least of the calamities of the time, that England's greatest statesman was excluded from her service, and his vast endowments of mind, exercised for half a century in his country's service, produced no result so great, as has that legacy he left her, in the lessons of masculine philosophy, and the burning love of freedom, which breathe through the disjected remains of his eloquence, and will last while the constitution endures.

who flourished during the commencement of the period, it is impossible to deny a respectable place among British authors. Goldsmith, Gray, and Collins, were all, individually, poets of no mean order; and although none of them entitled to rank in the first, may be considered as high in the second class. But whatever their individual power or merits may be, and these cannot be denied or undervalued, they not only did not rise to the highest walks of the art, but they eminently failed in producing effect on the public taste, or stamping their genius on the character of the times. The fetters which Pope had worn so gracefully, remainThat such a state of public sentiment ed as an heirloom to his poetical descendshould have chilled and repressed all the ants, till all the fancy and elegance of the independent efforts of genius, is not won- first master had disappeared, and nothing derful. But the poverty of the land in lit- remained but a certain smooth and empty erature, at the time we speak of, can hard- monotony, without music or strength, and ly be traced to any cause so recent. In- full of exolete tropes, and insipid extravadeed, speculations on the causes which lead gance. This slavish adherence to the artito that constant ebb and flow of literary tal- ficial rules of a school which it required all ent, which may be observed in the history the genius of its author to reconcile with of all countries, are at the best unsatisfac- vigor or energy, completely degraded the tory. The contingencies from which they poetry of the age. The whimsical humors spring are generally too intricate, and their of the Rolliad, or Peter Pindar, or the causes too remote, to admit of accurate de- Anti-Jacobin, do infinitely more credit to duction on the subject. We might theorize its originality, than many volumes of what long and learnedly enough on the dreary in those days, passed for the inspired efinterval between Pope and Cowper, with- forts of a more ambitious muse. The herout discovering any satisfactory solution of mit voice of Cowper, speaking from his solit in the state of the community, public or itude, in rough and nervous English, and social, during the latter half of the eight- the impassioned strains of Burns, couched eenth century. Looking at it in the mass, in a language all but foreign to ordinary from whatever causes the result may be sup-readers, were among the first examples of posed to arise, no similar period of British emancipation from this ancient thraldom, history, since the age of Elizabeth, was so and the assertion of the genuine power of little respectable in learning or in fancy. vigorous and unfettered fancy. But they The earlier portion of it, no doubt, produc- were no indications of a purer tone of pubed Hume, Gibbon, and Robertson-names lic sentiment. Thrown on their own reas great in their own sphere, as any of sources, and drawing from the deep spring which our country can boast. Bolingbroke, of their own thoughts, the English recluse, their superior in power as in acquirement, and the Scottish peasant, spoke the lanwas a giant of a former age. Burke, his guage of nature, because in them it had not pupil, belonged rather to politics than lit-been corrupted by constant contact with a erature; and his writings, ardent and en- vitiated standard of taste. thusiastic as they were, rather served to But towards the end of the century, the scathe and wither up independence of spirit waters were being stirred. When society in the nation. The great historians, on the is moved to its depths, powers otherwise contrary, alike in the florid delineations of dormant are called forth; and thus great the English and the classic accuracy of the public convulsions are always found to proScottish authors, are marked by an artifi- duce unusual manifestations of intellectual cial coldness and indifference, which was vigor. So the Augustan age followed the one of the features of the time. No natur-wars of the Republic; and all our own al passion, no heart-born enthusiasm or for- great masters of literature burst into a getfulness of art, find place in their great and elaborate works. In poetry, the retrospect is still more barren. To a few, indeed,

blaze, from the struggles of the Reformation and the Commonwealth. The singular agitations of the public mind, produced by