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quite manifest that in France it cannot and will not be placed altogether under their control; as a body, we must acknowledge that we do not think that they are themselves sufficiently advanced to be entrusted with such a charge; they have enough to do in their own more important department; their position in the new order of society, their duties, their poverty, their yet suspected influence, must leave them no higher an office than auxiliaries, rather than directors, of the popular instruction; but by becoming useful, zealous, and sincere auxiliaries, by maintaining not merely a good understanding, but a feeling of sympathy and concord with the schoolmaster, they will obtain a directing and controlling power, the more efficient because less felt; by showing no unworthy jealousy, they will secure, in the schoolmaster, a friend instead of a rival, who, far from refusing them a share in the attention, in the respect, in the heart of his pupils, will perceive how his own lessons are elevated, improved, by being blended with religion.

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But we must not pursue this subject: we will only add that M. Girardin's book likewise contains an account of the military schools of France, for the navy as well as the army, and the engineering. These, we doubt not, are excellent. He has one chapter devoted to the instruction of public men, from whom he demands qualifications which we fear might, if severely exacted, repel many who aspire to be statesmen in England as well as in France. The aptitude for this high mission is only esprit vaste jugement sûr-présence d'esprit-volonté ferme-caractère conciliant-haute moralité.' What would be the effect of the application of this test to the cabinets of Europe? M. Girardin considers that professional instruction for public life exists in Paris,-'à peu de chose près-mais rien n'est coordonné, rien n'est obligatoire.' The principal sources of instruction for his young statesman would be the higher lectures delivered in the College of France. In the following list there are some names which would command universal respect :

'Ainsi l'Economie Politique, que devraient savoir également le chef du bureau, le sous-préfet, le préfet, le conseiller d'état, le professeur de l'université, le magistrat, l'officier, le marin, le diplomate, le ministre, tous les fonctionnaires publics enfin, à quelque branche de l'administration qu'ils appartiennent, est professée au Collège de France, les Mardi et Samedi, par M. Rossi; et au Conservatoire des Arts et Métiers, par M. Blanqui, aîné.

La Philosophie est professée à la Faculté des Lettres, par M. Valette, suppléant de M. Laromiguière; par M. Poret, suppléant de M. Cousin ; et par M. Jouffroy, suppléant de M. Royer-Collard.

L'Histoire est professée au Collège de France, les Lundi et Jeudi, M. Michelet; à la Faculté des Lettres, par M. Lacretelle, et par M. Lenormant, suppléant de M. Guizot.

par

'L'Histoire

'L'Histoire des Législations comparées est professée au Collège de France, les Mardi et Samedi, par M. Lherminier.

'L'Histoire du Droit de la Nature et des Gens est professée, les Lundi et Vendredi, au Collège de France, par M. de Portetz, et à la Faculté de Droit de Paris, par M. P. Royer-Collard.

'Le Droit Administratif est professée à la Faculté de Droit de Paris, par M. le Baron de Gérando, conseiller d'état.

'L'Histoire du Droit est professée à la Faculté de Droit de Paris, par M. Poncelet.

.

• Le Droit Constitutionnel Français est professée à la Faculté de Droit de Paris, par M. Rossi.

'L'Eloquence Française est professée à la Faculté des Lettres, par M. Géruscz, suppléant de M. Villemain.

La Géographie est professée à la Faculté des Lettres, par M. Guigniaut.'-pp. 397, 398.

M. Girardin and others would propose to erect a new faculty under the appellation of Faculté des Sciences Politiques et Administratives.'

We have thus laid before our readers the present state of education in France, with what appear to us, in many respects, wise and enlightened suggestions for its improvement. As to the exact truth of the statements of M. Girardin, and the practicability of his measures, we are content to wait the sounder and better informed judgment of that calm and sagacious statesman who now takes the lead in the administration of France. Often as the noble

lines of Virgil have been cited, and sometimes on unworthy occasions, we are so struck with the justice of their application to M. Guizot at the present juncture that we cannot but recall them to the minds of our readers:—

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Ac veluti magno in populo quum sæpe coorta est
Seditio, sævitque animis ignobile vulgus ;

Jamque faces et saxa volant; furor arma ministrat :
Tum, pietate gravem ac meritis si fortè virum quem
Conspexere, silent, arrectisque auribus adstant;

Ille regit dictis animos, et pectora mulcet.'

But the storm is lulled, not allayed: the depths of the ocean are yet, and must be still, we fear, for some time, in a state of angry and dangerous fermentation. The only permanent change in national character can be wrought by national education. To this subject the penetrating mind of M. Guizot, enlightened by the study of mankind in the pages of history, has been especially devoted. To him we look with confidence that all will be done, and well done, which the circumstances of the times, the national character, the condition of the people, permit to be achieved by an upright and patriotic minister.

ART.

ART. V.—Fugitive Verses. By Joanna Baillie. London. 1840.

IN

N a late article in this Journal on some of the most distinguished living authoresses of our country, we observed that the name of Mrs. Joanna Baillie was designedly omitted. She stood alone and aloof from the rest, and needed neither praise nor notice. The celebrity which fixed the attention of our boyhood

Cui nostra primo paruit auspici
Ætas,-

and which has long since ripened into an enduring fame, seemed to wave away the periodical critic from this venerable lady's retirement.

The publication, however, of the present volume is a direct address to us; and we would fain take the opportunity which it affords us to say a few general words on the writings of one whom, as a poet, we scruple not to oppose to every other woman of ancient or modern times, save only that immortal lyrist of the old Greece, whose words breathe and burn, and whose broken snatches are the pulsations of a heroine's heart.

In that entire and wonderful revolution of the public taste in works of imagination, and indeed of literature generally, which contrasts this century with the whole or the latter half of the preceding, and which-while referring to Cowper, and not forgetting Lewesdon Hill,' or Mr. Bowles's first two or three publications-we must nevertheless principally, and in the foremost rank, ascribe to the example, the arguments, and the influence of Wordsworth and Coleridge,-in this great movement Joanna Baillie bore a subordinate, but most useful and effective, part. Unversed in the ancient languages and literatures, by no means accomplished in those of her own age, or even her own country, this remarkable woman owed it partly to the simplicity of a Scotch education, partly to the influence of the better portions of Burns's poetry, but chiefly to the spontaneous action of her own forceful genius, that she was able at once, and apparently without effort, to come forth the mistress of a masculine style of thought and diction, which constituted then, as it still constitutes, the characteristic merit of her writings, and which at the time contributed most beneficially to the already commenced reformation of the literary principles of the country. Those only who can now remember the current literature of the end of the last and the beginning of this century; those only who have read Darwin, who have read Hayley, who have read-divitias miseras—or even looked over, or looked at, the mountain of vapid trash which, in

the

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the shapes of epic and lyric, didactic and dramatic, poems, then papered the town, and was worshipped as Parnassus itself; such only can adequately conceive all the merit, or all the effect, of 'De Montfort,' Ethwald,' or Basil.' The Remorse,' though written before, was not given to the public till long afterwards; and Mr. Wordsworth's tragedy was, where it now is-and will, we fear, ever be-in the bottom of a box

'where sweets compacted lie.'

It is true that these dramas have not succeeded on the stage; and the cause of their failure in that respect may be pointed out without much difficulty; but the good service they were to do upon the poetic criticism of the country depended infinitely more on the deliberate perusal of intelligent persons, especially the young, than on the transient and too frequently capricious approbation of a theatrical audience. The Plays on the Passions' were slowly, but in the end extensively, circulated. Many, whose yet unyielded prejudice made them neglect or even ridicule the Lyrical Ballads,' were unconsciously won over to the adoption of the essential principles of the literary reformation then in progress, by works in so different a form, and coming from so opposite a quarter. The very defects of the views and arguments with which the authoress--not herself fully sensible of the part she was in truth acting-accompanied her works, made her less an object of suspicion to those whose literary animosity had been provoked by the determined, unevadeable protest and manifesto of Wordsworth, in his celebrated Preface; and hundreds gradually learned to understand and appreciate the merit of unsophisticated expression and truthful thought and feeling from these entertaining Plays, whom that Preface and Alice Fell-assumed to be an exemplification of its principles-had indisposed to the study and admiration of some of the finest poems in the English language, which were unluckily printed in the same volumes with it.

Mrs. Joanna Baillie's plays have not succeeded on the stage. They never will succeed there-except that perhaps one or two of her comedies, cut down to farces, might possibly pass current with good broad acting. Omitting some subordinate obstacles, we think the one, universal, and sufficient cause of this to be the singular want of skill with which she conducts the interest of the plot. You have little to expect and nothing to see grow in the progress of the action. Your tears flow in the first act, which is half a sign that they will not flow in the last. The cardinal secret of the play is invariably out in the very commencement, and the auxiliary secrets are accordingly deprived of their proper effect. This is a fault decisive on the stage. The most spirited dialogue, the most moving situations in particular parts, can

never countervail it. The popular playwrights of the present day understand the rule perfectly, and very prudently neglect every other consideration in comparison with it. No matter how trashy the dialogue, they keep up the interest; they very cleverly augment it as they go on, and the adroitest hand amongst them explodes it in the last scene, as from a Leyden jar. He goes off in a flash of fire, and the spectators feel a shock. Whereas, Mrs. Joanna Baillie's electricity escapes; it never accumulates for a discharge.

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Fatal as this is on the stage, where curiosity and a craving for stimulus are the almost exclusive emotions, it interferes in a comparatively small degree with the calmer and better founded pleasure of the mere reader. He has time and attention for the separate parts, can feel the merit of lively dialogue, weigh the truth of a general reflection, and muse on the beauty of single images. Who has ever witnessed the representation of those two great tours de force of the master of the Gothic drama-the Merchant of Venice,' and 'Henry VIII.'-without experiencing a sense of languor during the last act of each? Yet who, again, ever finished the quiet perusal of those same acts without-especially in the latter instance-being steeped in deep, trance-like repose of mind, through which the dark passions of the past action faintly appear like the distant skirts of a broken thunderstorm in an evening of June? Hence it is, that weak and pointless as these Plays on the Passions have appeared when tried on the stage, they are pre-eminently entertaining, if we may venture so to express it, to the leisurely student: the want of that unicity, growth, and consummation of interest, which is essential to the acted drama, is to the reader partly compensated by the diffusion of a gentle and more equal interest throughout all the parts, and partly by the easy vigour and flowing originality of the dialogue. In this lies the peculiar strength of Joanna Baillie; in this she is as unquestionably superior to the present fashionable playwrights as they are to her in producing an effect by striking positions and startling development. The colloquial inaccuracies omitted— how they survived a first edition we cannot conceive-the style of these tragedies is almost faultless. It is never affected, never forced, never stuffed with purple patches of rhetoric; it has no ranting harangues or claptrap epigrams; it is always clear, direct, sensible; it is tender and passionate, grave and dignified, and, rising upon occasion, rises with a natural spring, and soars, like all true passion, but for a moment.

It was no doubt a mistake to set about composing separate plays on separate passions. It is not according to the course of human action: no man in his senses is ever so under the dominion

of

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