pedantically, but intimately,-to be nursed in severe and discriminating feelings of taste, to be familiar with the most correct models of composition. The scholar may thus lay up oblectamina for the evening of age, and, through all changes of life, derive enjoyment from refined literature, which interests in solitude, and which gives the most cultivated charm to conversation and character. But is this all? Let the name of Lowth, and of him whose life I am recording, and of a thousand others whom I could mention, be THE ANSWER! I do not say the system must invariably succeed, but the " BREAD IS CAST ON THE WATERS." Ken, after the requisite examination, must have been so placed on the roll, as would justify a parent's hope that, a vacancy occurring in the course of the year, he would be admitted to a Fellowship in the kindred munificent foundation of William of Wykeham in Oxford. But, before we attend his progress to the next scene of life, after the durance and exercises of a cloistered school,-we shall take this opportunity of adding some reflections on a very important subject, the system of public-school education in England, so much, in the present day, discussed. The interval between school and the new scenes of life, which an University presents, is generally passed by the young student among his friends at home. The advantages of the English mode of public education are not perceived by an anxious parent till a son, sent a boy to Westminster, Eton, or Winchester, returns a manly and high-minded youth to his parents when this part of his education has been completed. He has now, by collision with others, been taught to estimate himself justly. If his parents move in the highest stations of society, the edge of domineering vanity has been worn down; and nothing, in after life, appears of that conceit, which is invariably found when there is no collision of equal minds and equal station. All petty arrogance in a public school finds its level; qualities are estimated, not station; though, afterwards, a due respect to station, when not arrogantly assumed on one side, will be always liberally and cheerfully granted on the other. The fondest mother, remarking the pleasing manners, the generous and frank mind, the scholarlike but unpedantic acquirements, the demeanour without conceit or awkwardness, of "a favourite " son, will feel a tear of joy start to her eye, that his father was not deterred by the chimeras of tyranny, cruelty, &c. from giving his child that education which has produced a Walpole, a Chatham, a Liverpool, Ministers of State; a Pulteney, Chesterfield, Bolingbroke, Fox, Sheridan, Canning, Lansdowne, Wellesley (Marquis), Holland, Grey, &c. Parliamentary orators; Onslow, Cornewall, Addington, Abbott, Sutton, Speakers; among poets and scholars, a Milton, a Cowley, an Addison, a Gray, and a Collins; Wellington, a soldier and statesman; among Bishops, a Sherlock, a Lowth, and a Ken. It will not be imagined, from what is here said, that any one could be so absurd as to suppose all virtue and talent are monopolized by public schools.* No! but the chance, in my opinion, is nearly two to one in favour of wisdom and virtue; and, if I have adverted to some conspicuous examples of public eminent characters, I believe in no instance will it be found, while we lament talents and station disgraced, that such characters as a Wharton or a Rochester, would have been, or could have been, so infamously distinguished, had their system of education been public; a mode of *There are no such establishments, I believe, in France, or on the Continent: is there, then, no virtue or wisdom in France, as well as England? Who would ever think of affirming this? but I believe every one will say, that there is no comparison between the general ignorance and frivolousness of the classes of the educated or noble young men of one nation, and the moral and intellectual eminence of the same rank in the other; or that England, in moral dignity, yields to any nation. A great deal is owing to the moral effect of our institutions of education; and I contend, the public and academic institutions of this country are one of the most effective means of furnishing those distinguished characters in the first ranks of English society-the scholar, the gentleman, the Christian. education which was expressly interdicted by their parents, for fear of injuring their MORALS, *—the morals of a Rochester or Wharton! How often has it been my lot to have heard arguers possessed of intelligence and talents, descant on the evils of public schools; when the intrusive thought could not be repressed, that if those very men, so energetic on the cruelties and folly of the system, had experienced in their youth the advantages of such an education themselves, it would have subdued that opinionated fervour, the existence of which was owing to the want of the discipline they decried! But the cloistered gates are thrown wide: the young disciple, starting into life, looks for a moment back upon the dark walls of discipline with many reminiscences of school-day hours, and companions from whom he is to be parted for ever; and lingeringly he bids adieu to the shades of his monastic incarceration, rising over the watery pastures * Certain good ladies' fears as to morals, I have even heard from some academical tutors! There is infinitely more oppression, and more immorality, in private schools. The difference is this. At private schools, I speak of course generally, the quiet boy, who comes the youngest and weakest, is "put upon," as the phrase is. In larger schools, he is protected. One act of cruelty, in three hundred years, in a school where there is a succession of five hundred boys, is held up as a necessary consequence of such a mode of education!! of Itchin, with emotions so exquisitely described by Sophocles, and in language so familiar to him: Χαιρ ̓, ὦ μελαθρον, ξυμφρουρον εμοι, Νυμφαι τ' ενυδροι λειμωνιάδες. - The author's feelings on leaving the same scene of early study, many, many years ago, were thus expressed at the time: I go, not unrejoicing, but who knows- And hear from yonder Fane the slow bell sound, * Poems, vol. ii. |