from this difference in their mental constitution, aided by more Imitation than we have. Every faculty being active, has a language of its own, easily intelligible to those who have the same in an ordinary degree. Now the natural language of Love of Approbation is the display of every quality to attract notice, and the vivid and unrestrained emission of every thought as it rises in the mind. The natural language of Secretiveness, on the other hand, is that of the cat watching the mouse; it is quiet and concealment; that of Cautiousness is attention and seriousness. In point of fact, therefore, we exhibit the natural language of the different faculties quite as correctly as the French do. The only difference is, that the faculties which predominate in us are only secondary in the mind of the Frenchman, and vice versa. So that an Englishman meeting a stranger, with a grave face and silent tongue, exhibits the natural language of his predominant feelings, quite as much as the more vivacious Frenchman with the friendly smile, polite bow, and shrug of the shoulders.

The French have long excelled as elemental writers in natural and physical science, from the clearness and precision with which they apprehend and communicate their ideas. This is to be explained, partly from their large Individuality enabling them to perceive and to retain for use what they have once acquired, and partly from a large Concentrativeness, which enables them to separate what is essential from what is of no importance, and merely to state what bears upon the point. Individuality furnishes them with a ready command of the ideas which they have in store. Hence the perspicuity and fluency of many of their lecturers, Guy Lussac and Thenard, for instance, who never use written discourses or even notes.

There is another general but important difference which phrenology has more clearly brought to light and explained, and for it I beg leave to use the words of the Edinburgh Review, lest it be imagined that it is a difference perceptible only to "oculi interni.”

"To their ability in the art of war, the French have joined considerable glory in literature, in the fine arts, and much ingenuity, but hardly any of these things which denote or constitute dignity of intellect, or energy of character, or vast and comprehensive capacities; in short, they are deficient in most of the features which the large pencil of history would paint as exalted. In painting true and general nature, in delineating great features of mind, and strong emotions of soul, they cannot be compared to us, because they have an imperfect original of these things before their eyes." Some of these peculiarities are referable to the particular combination of faculties already mentioned, but the

general defect is to be attributed to a smaller size of the brain, as a whole, than is found in England. It is general size alone, joined to a favorable combination, which gives a commanding power and energy to the mind, and fixes the attention and makes an indelible impression on the minds of others, and it is in such cases that every tone seems to an inferior mind the natural accent of command. In our own profession, Gregory was an excellent instance of this effect of size, and Abernethy is still another. The French have not this quality; they have greater activity of brain, they work more cleverly, and go over a great deal of matter in a very pleasing manner and in a short time; but there is no overpowering sense of greatness to weigh down the hearer, or make him feel his inferiority. Such are a few of the distinguished characteristics of the French and English characters, and such is the explanation of them afforded by phrenology; it is for you to judge how far it is sound or satisfactory.

ARTICLE IV.

ON THE STUDY OF HUMAN NATURE, AS A BRANCH OF POPULAR EDUCATION.*

The past history of man, we are all in the habit of admitting to be a record of inconsistencies and errors. The admission, indeed, seems rather to soothe than to disturb our self-complacency. We find something pleasing in our implied superiority, when we sit in judgment on our predecessors, censuring each successive generation, and forgetful how closely we are acting over the same scenes, and how soon we are destined to become subject in turn to the same tribunal. It is well, now and then, to change our procedure, to look upon ourselves in the light in which posterity will view us, and to inquire whether ours may not prove a history of paradox, and we found as much mistaken in our estimate of our own acquirements, as we know our predecessors have been in theirs. The view may not be agreeable to our Self-esteem, but it is not therefore the less useful. The zealous liberal, who, on either side of the Atlantic, lavishes his ink in support of equal rights and ultra-democracy, and in the same breath upholds the despotism of Napoleon; the agitator who alarms John Bull with his fearful tales of the burdens of the assessed taxes, while he applauds his Isaachar-like patience under the weightier matters of the excise and customs; the legislators who have immortalFrom the Annals of Phrenology, No. 3d, vol. 1.

ized themselves by spending thousands of the public money on the exact settlement of the last cent of an appropriation item; what judgment may the statesmen and economist of another age be expected to give of their consistency?

But it is not with mistakes of this class that we have at present to deal. There are others, less suspected indeed, but not less important in their results on the public. We live in a time, when much, though by no means too much, attention is directed to the subject of education, and we are continually boasting of our own doings in this respect. We contrast the difficulty-making system, once the glory of our teachers, with the labor-saving machinery of our our present schools, and the still more accommodating spirit of their ancestors. We talk of popular, as opposed to scholastic education, and insist on the necessity of teaching a few, at least, of the useful realities of life, instead of making a school course what it once was, a mere matter of words and names. In the olden time, say the eulogists of present fashions, it was maintained that obstacles in the way of knowledge were but so many blessings in disguise to those whose fate led them along its dry and steep ascent; and religiously would the pedagogue preserve, if indeed in the sincerity of his faith he did not at times increase, its time-honored inequalities, lest the energies of the pupil's mind should be too little overtasked at each successive step. Hence the everlasting labors of the spelling-lesson, the undirected though not unpunished operations of the copy-book, the mysteries of the Rule of Three,' the difficulties of the Pons Asinorum,' the ambiguity and intricacy of the English grammar, and, worse than all, the superadded dog-latin of the 'propria quæ maribus' and lexicon. Nor was the region, thus roughly traversed, of itself the most inviting. Reading, writing, arithmetic, and grammar, each taught after a fashion, were the components of an English education, and more was never thought of except by the few whom their friends' or their own choice engaged in literary or professional pursuits; while even to these few an acquaintance with some of the abstruser results of Euclid's axioms, with the pedantry of the so-called learned languages, and with the absurd and often disgusting legends of their mythology and history, a passing glance at some marvellously short abridgment of Aristotle's logic, and a smattering of what was styled Mental Philosophy, were held out as the highest achievements of the liberally educated. We have changed all this, they tell us. Reading, both as regards its orthoepy and its elocution, is fast becoming a tolerable, if not actually an attractive task. Teachers of penmanship engage already to convert, as if by magic, their pupils into masters in a day; and, quackery apart, there are those of them

whose pretensions are but a trifle less extravagant, and who actually redeem their pledges. Our new elementary books of Arithmetic, Geometry, and Grammar, have changed the entire aspect of affairs in their departments, and our scholars now seem to travel happily as on a rail-road of the newest and most approved construction. Still further, a new world of knowledge, so to speak, has been opened to us, and by its means, many old acquirements, before esteemed of little value, have become available for the most important uses. Natural Philosophy in its various departments is made the sequel to the less directly useful branches of the pure Mathematics, and has indeed in its outlines become a source of popular amusement to many who have never mastered the abstrusities of the introduction. The observation, too, of the world around us, has given origin to a host of other sciences, each at once practical and interesting; and the external features of our globe, its internal structure, its various productions, vegetable and animal, are all examined and reasoned on with enthusiasm and success. The pursuit of the living languages, again, has been added to that of the dead, and has brought to our knowledge new literatures, abounding many in works not surpassed, perhaps not equalled, by any of the wonders of Rome or Greece. All this, and more too, we are told, has been effected, and we often seem disposed to sit down in quiet exultation, content to follow on in the tracks already opened, without once inquiring if there may not be still other pursuits, equally if not even more important, to which our attention might advantageously be directed.

In this our combination of zeal for the advancement and diffusion of our favored sciences, with indifference to the addition of others to their catalogue, is there not an inconsistency, and one which we ought by all means to be willing to remove? It is our present object to show that there is, and that it concerns us nearly, that we lose no time in undertaking its removal. That much has been done of late to improve education, that most of what is now taught, (always of course excepting those of our institutions whom a reverence for antiquity has prevented from giving way to modern innovation) is eminently useful, that the mode of teaching it is in the main good, and that to return towards the older landmarks would be to change for the worse; all this we are ready as any to admit. Our position is, that there exists a wide field, to which the great body of our teachers never for a moment look, but which, if properly attended to, could not fail of producing even more good fruit than that on which our efforts have as yet been expended. "These things ought ye to have done, but not to leave the other undone."

When we have succeeded in giving to our architects and linguists

their due amount of mathematical and literary schooling, with the smallest possible expense of time and money, have we done all that should be done to fit them for their several pursuits? They have each a nature of their own, which it will be theirs, as the case may be, to improve or neglect; are they, under the existing system, in the least instructed in regard to it? Some things are conducive to, others destructive of, corporeal health; have they been urged to study the organization of the body, and the laws which determine its relations of health or disease, that they may obey those laws, and reap the advantages of obedience? They have natural impulses or feelings, ever urging them to action of one kind or another; have we taught them any thing in regard to those feelings, so that they may recognize them in their results upon themselves or others, and may so combine and modify them as to make them ever the ministers of good, rather than of evil? They have intellectual powers; do they know their range and character, or the laws by which their improvement and discipline is by the Creator's fiat regulated? As members of society, have they learnt the nature of their duties to its other members, in their several capacities of sons or fathers, friends o strangers? As citizens, have they any knowledge of the modes of operating with advantage on their fellows, of the principles of reasoning, teaching, legislation, &c., in ignorance of which, they must of necessity be perpetually the dupes of their own whims, or of their neighbors' cunning? As beings to whom is addressed what purports to be a revelation from their Maker of his will in regard to them, have they, that they might understand its messages, been instructed to compare them with the character and circumstances of those to whom they have been sent; and have they, by such comparison, been shown, what without it cannot be fully shown, the perfect fitness of the message, the nature of the duties it imposes on them, and the mode in which its advantages may be best conveyed to others? We are not to be understood as saying that there is literally nothing done in these respects. Our charge is simply this, that what has been done is very little, and that, generally speaking, even our educationists are making no exertions for its increase. If this charge be true-nay, if any of these branches of education be neglected in our present system, (and surely no one can deny that they are) then we maintain that to be indifferent to such an extension of the system as will embrace them, and to be all the while indefatigable in our efforts to learn and teach the size and color of a pebble, leaf, or spider, is an inconsistency as glaring as any of those for which we laugh at or condemn our forefathers.

What class, then, of our institutions can, as such, claim exemption