bold, clear, idiomatic style of writing; the works of the more eminent among them are treasuries of our language as well as of poetic thought. If, as regards actual life, they present no image of their times which we can trust or take literally, though doubtless their faults of manners and of morals are reflections of the age they lived in,-yet we find in them chiefly the poetic mind of that golden time' of our literature. In Chaucer, poetry was in its keen, bright, rosy dawn; in Spenser, with Sidney by his side, we see its brilliant morning; Shakspeare and his dramatic contemporaries form its noon-day splendour; and Milton may be regarded as the purple sunset, serene, sublime, magnificent: never was the pomp of the heavens so great, though the ardour and energy of the light had abated, as when that great poetic day was drawing to a close. The next light that rose in the sky was bright and fair, but it was a reflected, and comparatively a cold and lesser radiance. Even Byron would not have denied that the imaginative poetry of Queen Anne's time was to that of the age of Elizabeth and James as moonshine to warm sunlight.* Beaumont and Fletcher were too large a part of the noon-day beaming to be neglected by any lover and servant of the English Muse; they are too extensive, and, in a literary point of view, too pure writers to be passed over by any regular student of our language; and such students will not be ungrateful to Mr. Dyce. Mr. Darley's edition is one of those double-columned large octavos which have brought so much good literature, within the last few years, into the reach of persons who have not money, nor perhaps room, for works spreading over a long series of volumes. It is very neatly printed, and marvellously cheap. We owe both it and Mr. Dyce's standard Library book to the same publisher, Mr. Moxon. For the many readers who will still desire only specimens of our graceful but unequal old dramatists-and the many more who must wish to have specimens fit for young people at their command-it is fortunate that the task of making selections fell into the hands of Lamb, whose charming book also has been recently reprinted by this bookseller. Those two small volumes contain many of the most exquisite gems of English verse-and the Editor's observations have been not unjustly described as 'quintessences of criticism.' Cowper may be fancifully looked on as a morning star which heralded another sunrise, in the dim evening of which new day we now meditate on the past and hope for the future. ART. V. ART. V. 1. Manuel Réglementaire à l'usage des Elèves de l'Ecole d'Application du Corps Royal d'Etat-Major. 1846. Paris. 2. Krijgskundige Leercursus ten Gebruike der Koninklijke Militaire Akademie. Handleiding tot de Krijgskunst voor de Kadetten van alle Wapenen. Door J. J. Van Mulken, Major der Infanterie. Breda. 1846. 3. Etat Actuel de l'Artillerie de Campagne en Europe. Par G. A. Jacobi, Lieut. d'Artillerie de la Garde Prussienne; ouvrage traduit de l'Allemand par le Capitaine d'Artillerie Mazé, Professeur à l'Ecole d'Application d'Etat-Major. Paris. 1838. 4. On the Royal Artillery Wilmot, Captain R.A. IF Institution at Woolwich. By Eardley F among our readers there should be any who witnessed, in the beginning of last July, the public examination of students in the Normal School at Chelsea, there must, we should think, have been awakened within them a spirit of earnest, even of anxious speculation, concerning the issues of the great experiment to which the government has committed itself. For a great experiment this plan for acting upon the soldier's temper and feelings through his intellect must be admitted to be. We are about to rely on moral means for preserving order and subordination among bodies of armed men. We are going to try whether the necessity of visiting revolting crimes with revolting punishments may not, to a great extent, be obviated by creating in the soldier a distaste for the commission of such crimes. We are preparing a machinery, through the right application of which we hope to discipline the minds as well as the bodies of our recruits; and to render them thereby, while yet in the ranks, more contented under the restraints of military law, as well as better qualified to perform their parts as citizens after the term of their military service shall have expired. The object sought is confessedly righteous; and a righteous object seldom fails to be attained, unless through great mistakes, wilful or otherwise. Still, beyond all question, there are risks in this case which only that extreme caution which springs not from timidity, but from an enlarged view of human nature, can obviate. For example, it must not be assumed that Parliament votes money for the support of this Training Institution, or that young men are received into it, for the mere purpose of communicating to soldiers in the ranks an exclusively professional education. To give the recruit a knowledge of the principles of his art, and to show him how best its details are to be practised, is the business of the officers 2 E 2 officers and non-commissioned officers of the army, any interference with whom in the discharge of their proper duties would be impertinent. But the schoolmaster has his own peculiar province too, which will be found to work advantageously for both the officer and the private; provided the latter acquire under his management that increased quickness of apprehension, combined with steady moral conduct and a cheerful disposition, which we should anticipate as the results of an intellectual training based upon a solid foundation. On the other hand, the mere sharpening of the intellects of the men, apart from the formation within them of principles of truth and a reverence for duty, could not fail of working harm. The schoolmaster must therefore be received into the army not merely as the teacher of A, B, C, but as a functionary to whose exertions the higher powers have a right to look for sowing the seeds at least of pure tastes and habits. And hence arises, we do not say the policy, but the absolute necessity, of giving to the schoolmaster a just position in the service. It will never do to speak of a pupil from the Training Institution as about to fill the place of one of the oldfashioned schoolmaster-sergeants of regiments. The extent of his acquirements, the tastes and habits which he has been encourage to cultivate-his manners, his appearance, his very dress-have already removed him into a different sphere. To think of depressing him to their social condition as soon as he shall enter upon the active discharge of his duties, would be to injure, not him, but the service; for a cultivated mind which is dealt with as if it had received no touch of cultivation, grows of necessity torpid and therefore useless, or else, first getting soured and then reckless, it ends in becoming an engine potent for mischief. And herein beyond doubt lies the peril, such as it is, of the adventure in which we are embarked. We give to a particular order of men such an education as must stand between them and familiar companionship with the great majority of non-commissioned officers in our regiments, and we peremptorily refuse, at the same time, to place them upon a footing of equality with the commissioned officers. Where, then, shall we rank them? and what are we to do with them? It appears to us that, if there be on all sides an honest desire to act rightly, an escape from the supposed dilemma is not difficult. The young men from Chelsea will go to the army neither as officers nor as non-commissioned officers. They are trained to become schoolmasters, and as schoolmasters they will be enlisted. Their calling marks the place which they ought to fill in society, and society-whether military or civil-need have no reluctance in allowing it. The army schoolmaster, pro vided his acquirements and tastes be on a par with those of the civil schoolmaster, will naturally look for the same sort of treatment. Go into a well-regulated parish, and observe how the clergyman and the schoolmaster work together, and you will find a guide to the sort of footing on which the officers of corps may be expected to stand towards this new order of instructors. Visit any one of the Normal or Model schools in the metropolis-St. Mark's, Battersea, Westminster, Chelsea, or the Borough Road-and the terms on which the head lives with his assistants will give you perhaps a still better idea of the fit aim. The incumbent and the head of the house know their station and keep it. The parish schoolmaster and the well-informed assistant in the seminary know theirs also, and never dream of passing out of it. In like manner, officers in command of regiments or garrisons may rely upon it that the more frank and generous they are in their dealings with well-educated teachers, the more zealously and effectively will these men labour in their vocation. Can any man who observed the Chelsea Normal scholars under examination, and took note of their manner of communicating with the teachers, doubt that these understand the importance to themselves of a meek spirit and a perfect control over temper? Let no one, therefore, who is interested in the moral improvement of the British soldier, permit a groundless fear to take possession of him, in regard to the proper manner of treating a body of men whom the government are rearing up to assist in so noble an undertaking. Give them comfortable quarters; let them derive from their profession an adequate maintenance; take care that their authority in school is supported, and their persons treated with respect by their pupils out of doors, and they will fall into their own social places without causing you an hour's trouble. Remember that they who are to work upon others by moral means, must themselves be governed and directed chiefly through the power of moral influences. A rigid external discipline, which is necessary in the management of boys and unlettered men, becomes simply galling-it never accomplishes good-when applied to educated persons. There must be no attempt, therefore, to subject these men to the strictly military obligations of rollcall and reveillée. The most effective rule of right will come to them of its own accord, through the consciousness that their position before the world is scarcely less responsible than that of a minister of religion. And the dress which they wear, distinguishing them from every other functionary in the garrison, will operate as a continual remembrancer, that any attempt on their part to use liberty as a cloak of licentiousness must lead to consequences at once hurtful to a holy cause and ruinous to themselves. We We are not now going to balance the comparative merits of the regimental and the garrison systems as applicable to the working of schools of which the machinery is so delicate. Doubtless they whose business it is to decide the point, will do so after mature consideration, when the fitting moment comes. But, having opened the inquiry at all, it seems impossible to stop where we are, or to leave another question, at least as important, without an answer. Is the country, which is taking so much pains to educate the private soldier and to raise him by this and other means in the scale of social life, prepared to act upon a similar principle in its dealings with his officer? And herein limine-do not let us be misunderstood, as on a former occasion we appear to have been. The officers of our army are, we dare say, as regards both morals and intelligence, pretty much upon a par with gentlemen of their own station and standing in other professions; and we know that there are among them many individuals of whom it would be hard to over-estimate the worth. But the point with which we are for the present concerned is simply this-whether in our military system there be any safeguards of sufficient potency to prevent the army from being officered by persons who shall be wanting in the qualifications for command; and we are forced to acknowledge that, if there be any such safeguards, we have yet to discover them. is reasonable to assume that officers, coming chiefly from the higher and middle walks of life, have received in their youth the ordinary education of gentlemen. But in what walk of civil life can people get into important positions on the mere assumption that, being respectably born, they must have been duly educated? Nay, the sister service afloat-ay, that very branch of it which, in the memory of most of us, used to be rated far below its deserts-is as careful on this score as any of the professions called learned. The boy who puts on a blue jacket with the high resolve of rivalling Nelson, must pass through three examinations, each more searching than the other, before he can win his first commission; nor does the candidate for a second-lieutenancy of marines effect his purpose till his attainments have been similarly sifted. Why should command in the army be the only post of power to which young gentlemen may aspire, without the slightest inquiry being made in regard to their fitness for the exercise of power? That the British army did wonders with the Duke of Wellington at its head, all the world allows. Neither can it be denied that under Hardinge, Napier, Gough, and other chiefs reared in his Grace's school, the present race of soldiers have well sustained the glory of their fathers. But the British army has had its reverses, too, both before the Peninsular war It and |