THE STATE AND POPULAR EDUCATION.

I hold that it is the right and the duty of the State to provide for the education of the common people. On this subject I can not refer to higher authority, or use more strong terms, than have been employed by Adam Smith; and I take his authority the more readily, because he is not very friendly to State interference; and almost on the same page as that I refer to, he declares that the State ought not to meddle with the education of the higher orders; but he distinctly says that there is a difference, particularly in a highly civilized and commercial community, between the education of the higher classes and the education of the poor. The education of the poor he pronounces to be a matter in which government is most deeply concerned; and he compares ignorance, spread through the lower classes, neglected by the State, to a leprosy, or some other fearful disease, and says that where this duty is neglected, the State is in danger of falling into terrible disorder. He had scarcely written this than the axiom was fearfully illustrated in the riots of 1780.

Mr. David Hume, after laying down the general principle of non-interference of the government in matters where individual interest is sufficient to prompt to necessary efforts to realize the highest advantages to the public, admits that there are some useful and necessary ends to be secured, which require the intervention of the government, either by means of money, or distinctions, or both. Now the experience of England shows that the schools for the people and teachers for those schools will not be provided without such intervention.

GENERAL CULTURE FOR CIVIL SERVICE APPOINTMENTS.

Dr. Donaldson cites the following passages from Mr. Macaulay's Report on the East India Civil Service Examinations in 1854, in favor of a liberal general education over a narrow special training, although more immediately practical:

'We believe that men who have been engaged, up to 21 or 22, in studies which have no immediate connection with the business of any profession, and of which the effect is merely to open, to invigorate, and to enrich the mind, will generally be found, in the business of every profession, superior to men who have, at 18 or 19, devoted themselves to the special studies of their calling. The most illustrious English jurists have been men, who have never opened a law-book till after the close of a distinguished academical career; nor is there any reason to believe that they would have been greater lawyers, if they had passed in drawing pleas and conveyances the time which they gave to Thucydides, to Cicero, and to Newton.'

Of the Mathematical portion of the examination they say:'We think it important that not only the acquirements, but also the mental powers and resources of the competitors should be brought to the test.'

Speaking of the Moral Sciences, as included in the scheme, they remark:'Whether this study shall have to do with mere words or things, whether it shall degenerate into a formal and scholastic pedantry, or shall train the mind for the highest purposes of active life, will depend, to a great extent, on the way in which the examination is conducted. . . . The object of the examiners should be rather to put to the test the candidate's powers of mind than to ascertain the extent of his metaphysical reading.'

With the same reference to the immediate objects of a competitive test, they recommend that eminence in classical composition should have a considerable share in determining the issue of the competition:

'Skill in Greek and Latin versification has, indeed, no direct tendency to form a judge, a financier, or a diplomatist. But the youth who does best what all the ablest and most ambitious youths about him are trying to do well, will generally prove a superior man; nor can we doubt that an accomplishment, by which Fox and Canning, Grenville and Wellesley, Mansfield and Tenterden first distinguished themselves above their fellows, indicates powers of mind which, properly trained and directed, may do great service to the state.'

And with regard to the Examination in general they observe with truth:'Experience justifies us in pronouncing with entire confidence that, if the

examiners be well chosen, it is utterly impossible that the delusive show of knowledge, which is the effect of the process popularly called cramming, can ever be successful against real learning and ability.'

It is clear, from these explicit statements of their views, that the able and eminent persons, who framed the scheme for the civil service examination, had no wish to send out to India clever smatterers, feeble bookworms, scholastic pedants, and one-sided mathematicians; but to select the most energetic and vigorous young men from the crowds who were likely to offer themselves as candidates for a share in the administration of our most important Satrapies. The particular kind of knowledge, which would be most serviceable to them in the presidencies, was to be prescribed to those selected by the first test, and this subsequent course of study was to be stimulated by a second examination. But, for the preparatory selection, it was only necessary to test existing methods of education, and to discover the best men they could produce. The reasonableness of this procedure was manifest. On the one hand, as the candidates would come from schools and colleges, which had long pursued fixed systems of instruction, differing in different parts of the country, it was necessary that the touchstone should be applied fairly to them all. On the other hand, as only a limited number of the candidates could be successful, it was essential that the whole body of applicants should not be drawn away from their general studies by specialties, which might be of little or no use to those who would not ultimately proceed to India. But, independently of these considerations, suggested by the distinctive peculiarities of the appointments themselves and the means of filling them, the framers of the scheme of examination could not but foresee that such an object of competition would soon produce an effect on the educational system of the whole country, and that teachers would address themselves to the immediate preparation of candidates. They, therefore, wisely laid down some general principles, applicable to the future no less than to the present. They have declared unreservedly that they want the fruits of real mental discipline, that they desire habits of exact thought, and not a wide range of diversified information; and thus they give their adhesion to the old rather than to the new form of education, and would prefer the solid groundwork of the old school of arts rather than the showy stucco-work of modern sciolism. They indicate that, up to a certain time of life, it is of much less consequence what we read than how we read it; and that the young man, who would prepare himself for future distinction, must be frequently less anxious to advance than to know the route which he has already traversed. The student, who is worthy of the name, must be willing to acquiesce in those teachers, who, in the older universities, were called repetents -a sort of intellectual drill-sergeants; he must often remind himself of the words of the Platonic Socrates: 'Perhaps it would not be amiss to go over this ground again; for it is better to accomplish a little thoroughly, than a great deal insufficiently.' In the words of a modern philosopher (Hamilton), he will thus learn that as the end of study is not merely to compass the knowledge of facts, but, in and from that knowledge, to lay up the materials of speculation; so it is not the quantity read, but the degree of reading which affords a profitable exercise to the student. Thus it is far more improving to read one good book ten times, than to read ten good books once; and non multa sed multum, 'not much, perhaps, but accurate,' has, from ancient times, obtained the authority of an axiom in education, from all who had any title to express an opinion on the subject.'

Adopting these principles and thus confining the competitive test to the results of a liberal or general education, these exponents of the newest demands upon intellectual culture have not only given the most important place to the old basis of instruction, namely, classics and mathematics, but have even declared their preference for the more old fashioned of these two departments of study. For while mathematics have only 1,000 marks assigned as the maximum of credit, 1,500 marks are allotted to Greek and Latin. And thus in our newest educational stimulus we have, as in our oldest academical institutions, a premium for the cultivation of classical scholarship even as compared with mathematical science.

FEMALE EDUCATION IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY.

The second wife of Sir Nicholas and mother of Francis Bacon was Anne, one of the daughters of Sir Anthony Cooke, a man of distinguished learning who had been tutor to Edward the Sixth. Sir Anthony had paid considerable attention to the education of his daughters, and lived to see them all splendidly and happily married. Their classical acquirements made them conspicuous even among the women of fashion of that age. Katherine, who became Lady Killigrew, wrote Latin Hexameters and Pentameters which would appear with credit in the Musa Etonenses. Mildred, the wife of Lord Burleigh, was described by Roger Ascham as the best Greek scholar among the young women of England, Lady Jane Grey always excepted. Anne, the mother of Francis Bacon, was dintinguished both as a linguist and as a theologian. She corresponded in Greek with Bishop Jewel, and translated his Apologia from the Latin, so correctly that neither he nor Archbishop Parker could suggest a single alteration. She also translated a series of sermons on fate and free-will from the Tuscan of Bernardo Ochino. This fact is the more curious, because Ochino was one of that small and audacious band of Italian reformers, anathematized alike by Wittenberg, by Geneva, by Zurich, and by Rome, from which the Socinian sect deduces its origin.

Lady Bacon was doubtless a lady of highly cultivated mind after the fashion of her age. But we must not suffer ourselves to be deluded into the belief that she and her sisters were more accomplished women than many who are now living. On this subject there is, we think, much misapprehension. We have often heard men who wish, as almost all men of sense wish, that women should be highly educated, speak with rapture of the English ladies of the sixteenth century, and lament that they can find no modern damsel resembling those fair pupils of Ascham and Aylmer who compared, over their embroidery, the styles of Isocrates and Lysias, and who, while the horns were sounding and the dogs in full cry, sat in the lonely oriel, with eyes riveted to that immortal page which tells how meekly and bravely the first great martyr of intellectual liberty took the cup from his weeping jailer. But surely these complaints have very little foundation. We would by no means disparage the ladies of the sixteenth century or their pursuits. But we conceive that those who extol them at the expense of the women of our time forget one very obvious and very important circumstance. In the time of Henry the Eighth and Edward the Sixth, a person who did not read Greek and Latin could read nothing, or next to nothing. The Italian was the only modern language which possessed any thing that could be called a literature. All the valuable books then extant in all the vernacular dialects of Europe would hardly have filled a single shelf. England did not yet possess Shakspeare's plays and the Fairy Queen, nor France Montaigne's Essays, nor Spain Don Quixote. In looking round a well furnished library, how many English or French books can we find which were extant

Lady Jane Grey (Lady Guilford Dudley) was the daughter of Frances Brandon (the daughter of Mary Queen Dowager of France and sister of Henry VIII. and Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk) and Henry Grey, Marquis of Dorset, who was descended from Elizabeth, Queen to Edward IV. Her teacher was Mr. Elmer, or Aylmer, who was made Bishop of London in 1576. Roger Ascham records that he found her reading Plato's Phedon while her parents and their guests were hunting in the park-declaring that she owed her love of learning to the greatest benefit God ever gave me, a gentle schoolmaster, who teacheth me so gently, so pleasantly, with such fair allurements to learning, that I think all the time nothing while I am with him.'

REESE LIBRARY

OF THE

when Lady Jane Grey and Queen Elizabeth received their education? Chaucer, Gower, Froissart, Comines, Rabelais, nearly complete the list. It was therefore absolutely necessary that a woman should be uneducated or classically educated. Indeed, without a knowledge of one of the ancient languages no person could then have any clear notion of what was passing in the political, the literary, or the religious world. The Latin was in the sixteenth century all and more than all that the French was in the eighteenth. It was the language of courts as well as of the schools. It was the language of diplomacy; it was the language of theological and political controversy. Being a fixed language, while the living languages were in a state of fluctuation, and being universally known to the learned and the polite, it was employed by almost every writer who aspired to a wide and durable reputation. A person who was ignorant of it was shut out from all acquaintance, not merely with Cicero and Virgil, not merely with heavy treatises on canon-law and school-divinity, but with the most interesting memoirs, state papers, and pamphlets of his own time-nay, even with the most admired poetry and the most popular squibs which appeared on the fleeting topics of the day, with Buchanan's complimentary verses, with Erasmus's dialogues, with Hutten's epistles.

This is no longer the case. All political and religious controversy is now conducted in the modern languages. The ancient tongues are used only in comments on the ancient writers. The great productions of Athenian and Roman genius are indeed still what they were. But though their positive value is unchanged, their relative value, when compared with the whole mass of mental wealth possessed by mankind, has been constantly falling. They were the intellectual all of our ancestors. They are but a part of our treasures. Over what tragedy could Lady Jane Grey have wept, over what comedy could she have smiled, if the ancient dramatists had not been in her library? A modern reader can make shift without Edipus and Medea, while he possesses Othello and Hamlet. If he knows nothing of Pyrgopolynices and Thraso, he is familiar with Bobadil, and Bessus, and Pistol, and Parolles. If he can not enjoy the delicious irony of Plato, he may find some compensation in that of Pascal. If he is shut out from Nephelococcygia, he may take refuge in Lilliput. We are guilty, we hope, of no irreverence toward those great nations to which the human race owes art, science, taste, civil and intellectual freedom, when we say, that the stock bequeathed by them to us has been so carefully improved that the accumulated interest now exceeds the principal. We believe that the books which have been written in the languages of western Europe, during the last two hundred and fifty years,-translations from the ancient languages of course included,-are of greater value than all the books which at the begin ning of that period were extant in the world. With the modern languages of Europe English women are at least as well acquainted as English men. When, therefore, we compare the acquirements of Lady Jane Grey with those of an accomplished young woman of our own time, we have no hesitation in awarding the superiority to the latter. We hope that our readers will pardon this digression. It is long; but it can hardly be called unseasonable, if it tends to convince them that they are mistaken in thinking that the great-great-grandmothers of their great-great-grandmothers were superior women to their sisters and their wives.-Edinburgh Review, July, 1837.-LORD BACON.

PUBLIC INSTRUCTION IN INDIA.

[The following extracts are taken from Trevelyan's Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay. Vol. I., p. 353-362.]

When Macaulay arrived in India in 1834, all educational action had been at a stand for some time back, on account of an irreconcilable difference of opinion in the Committee of Public Instruction; which was divided, five against five, on either side of a controversy, vital, inevitable, admitting of neither postponement nor compromise, and conducted by both parties with a pertinacity and a warmth that was nothing but honorable to those concerned. Half of the members were for maintaining and extending the old scheme of encouraging Oriental learning by stipends paid to students in Sanscrit, Persian, and Arabic; and by liberal grants for the publication of works in those languages. The other half were in favor of teaching the elements of knowledge in the vernacular tongues, and the higher branches in English. On his arrival, Macaulay was appointed president of the committee; but he declined to take any active part in its proceedings until the Government had finally pronounced on the question at issue. Late in January, 1835, the advocates of the two systems, than whom ten abler men could not be found in the service, laid their opinions before the Supreme Council; and, on the 2d of February, Macaulay, as a member of that council, produced a minute in which he adopted and defended the views of the English section in the committee.

How stands the case? We have to educate a people who can not at present be educated by means of their mother tongue. We must teach them some foreign language. The claims of our own language it is hardly necessary to recapitulate. It stands preeminent even among the languages of the West. It abounds with works of imagination not inferior to the noblest which Greece has bequeathed to us; with models of every species of eloquence; with historical compositions, which, considered merely as narratives, have seldom been surpassed, and which, considered as vehicles of ethical and political instruction, have never been equaled; with just and lively representations of human life and human nature; with the most profound speculations on metaphysics, morals, government, jurisprudence, and trade; with full and correct information respecting every experimental science which tends to preserve the health, to increase the comfort, or to expand the intellect of man. Whoever knows that language has ready access to all the vast intellectual wealth which all the wisest nations of the earth have created and hoarded in the course of ninety generations. It may safely be said that the literature now extant in that language is of far greater value than all the literature which three hundred years ago was extant in all the languages of the world together. Nor is this all. In India. English is the language spoken by the ruling class. It is spoken by the higher class of natives at the seats of government. It is likely to become the language of commerce throughout the seas of the East. It is the language of two great European communities which are rising, the one in the south of Africa, the other in Australasia; communities which are every year becoming more important, and more closely connected with our Indian empire. Whether we look at the intrinsic value of our literature, or at the particular situation of this country, we