sighted; and all those many and various events which have given to a decorous profession of religion, and a seemliness of private morals, such an unwonted weight in the attainment and preservation of public power. We are unable to determine whether it be more consolatary or humiliating to human nature, that so many complexities of event, situation, character, age, and country, should be necessary in order to the production of a Mr. Pitt. [From Household Words.] IGNORANCE OF THE ENGLISH. THE in wealth, but wallowing in ignorance, is put to the experimentum crucis of "his mark." The number of petty jurors-in rural districts especially-who can only sign with a cross is enormous. It is not unusual to see parish documents of great local importance defaced with the same humiliating symbol by persons whose office shows them to be not only "men of mark," but men of substance. We have printed already specimens of the partial ignorance which passes under the ken of the Post Office authorities, and we may venture to assert, that such specimens of penmanship and orthography are not to be matched in any other country in Europe. A housewife in humble life need only HE lamentable deficiency of the commonest turn to the file of her tradesmen's bills to disrudiments of education, which still exists cover hieroglyphics which render them so many among the humbler classes of the nation, is never arithmetical puzzles. In short,, the practical so darkly apparent as when we compare their evidences of the low ebb to which the plainest condition with that of people of similar rank in rudiments of education in this country has fallen, other countries. When we do so, we find that are too common to bear repetition. We can not England stands the lowest in the scale of what pass through the streets, we can not enter a truly must be looked upon as Civilization; for place of public assembly, or ramble in the fields, she provides fewer means for promoting it than without the gloomy shadow of Ignorance sweepany of her neighbors. With us, education is a ing over us. The rural population is indeed in commodity to be trafficked in: abroad, it is a a worse plight than the other classes. We duty. Here, schoolmasters are perfectly irre-quote-with the attestation of our own experisponsible except to their paymasters; in other ence—the following passage from one of a series countries, teachers are appointed by the state, of articles which have recently appeared in a and a rigid supervision is maintained over the trainers of youth, both as regards competency and moral conduct. In England, whoever is too poor to buy the article education, can get none of it for himself or his offspring; in other parts of Europe, either the government (as in Germany), or public opinion (as in America), enforces it upon the youthful population. What are the consequences? One is revealed by a comparison between the proportion of scholars in elementary schools to the entire population of other countries, and that in our own. Taking the whole of northern Europeincluding Scotland, and France, and Belgium (where education is at a low ebb), we find that to every 2 of the population, there is one child acquiring the rudiments of knowledge; while in England there is only one such pupil to every fourteen inhabitants. It has been calculated that there are, at the present day in England and Wales, nearly 8,000,000 persons who can neither read nor write that is to say, nearly one quarter of the, population. Also, that of all the children between five and fourteen, more than one half attend no place of instruction. These statements-compiled by Mr. Kay, from official and other authentic sources, for his work on the Social Condition and Education of the Poor in England and Europe, would be hard to believe, if we had not to encounter in our every-day life degrees of illiteracy which would be startling, if we were not thoroughly used to it. Wherever we turn, ignorance, not always allied to poverty, stares us in the face. If we look in the Gazette, at the list of partnerships dissolved, not a month passes but some unhappy man, rolling perhaps morning newspaper: "Taking the adult class of agricultural laborers, it is almost impossible to exaggerate the ignorance in which they live and move and have their being. As they work in the fields, the external world has some hold upon them through the medium of their senses; but to all the higher exercises of intellect, they are perfect strangers. You can not address one of them without being at once painfully struck with the intellectual darkness which enshrouds him. There is in general neither speculation in his eyes, nor intelligence in his countenance. The whole expression is more that of an animal than of a man. He is wanting, too, in the erect and independent bearing of a man. When you, accost him, if he is not insolent-which he seldom is-he is timid and shrinking, his whole manner showing that he feels himself at a distance from you, greater than should separate any two classes of men. He is often doubtful when you address, and suspicious when you question him; he is seemingly oppressed with the interview, while it lasts, and obviously relieved when it is over. These are the traits which I can affirm them to possess as a class, after having come in contact with many hundreds of farm laborers. They belong to a generation for whose intellectual culture little or nothing was done. As a class, they have no amusements beyond the indulgence of sense. In nine cases out of ten, recreation is associated in their minds with nothing higher than sensuality. I have frequently asked clergymen and others, if they often find the adult peasant reading for his own or others' amusement? The invariable answer is, that such a sight is seldom or never witnessed. In the first place, the great bulk of them can not read. In the next, a large proportion of those who can, do so with too much difficulty to admit of the exercise being an amusement to them. Again, few of those who can read with comparative ease, have the taste for doing so. It is but justice to them to say, that many of those who can not read, have bitterly regretted, in my hearing, their inability to do so. I shall never forget the tone in which an old woman in Cornwall intimated to me what a comfort it would now be to her, could she only read her Bible in her lonely hours." We now turn to the high lights of the picture as presented abroad, and which, from their very brightness, throw our own intellectual gloom into deeper shade. Mr. Kay observes in the work we have already cited: "It is a great fact, however much. we may be inclined to doubt it, that throughout Prussia, Saxony, Bavaria, Bohemia, Wirtemberg, Baden, Hesse Darmstadt, Hesse Cassel, Gotha, Nassau, Hanover, Denmark, Switzerland, Norway, and the Austrian Empire, ALL the children are actually at this present time attending school, and are receiving a careful, religious, moral, and intellectual education, from highly educated and efficient teachers. Over the vast tract of country which I have mentioned, as well as in Holland, and the greater part of France, all the children above six years of age are daily acquiring useful knowledge and good habits under the influence of moral, religious, and learned teachers. ALL the youth of the greater part of these countries, below the age of twenty-one years, can read, write, and cipher, and know the Bible History, and the history of their own country. No children are left idle and dirty in the streets of the towns-there is no class of children to be compared in any respect to the children who frequent our "ragged schools"-all the children, even of the poorest parents, are, in a great part of these countries, in dress, appearance, cleanliness, and manners, as polished and civilized as the children of our middle classes; the children of the poor in Germany are so civilized that the rich often send their children to the schools intended for the poor; and, lastly, in a great part of Germany and Switzerland, the children of the poor are receiving a better education than that given in England to the children of the greater part of our middle classes." "I remember one day," says Mr. Kay in another page," when walking near Berlin in the company of Herr Hintz, a professor in Dr. Diesterweg's Normal College, and of another teacher, we saw a poor woman cutting up, in the road, logs of wood for winter use. My companions pointed her out to me, and said, 'Perhaps you will scarcely believe it, but in the neighborhood of Berlin, poor women, like that one, read translations of Sir Walter Scott's Novels, and many of the interesting works of your language, besides those of the principal writers of Germany.' This account was afterward confirmed by the testimony of several other persons. Often and often have I seen the poor cab-drivers of The Berlin, while waiting for a fare, amusing themselves by reading German books, which they had brought with them in the morning, expressly for the purpose of supplying amusement and occupation for their leisure hours. In many parts of these countries, the peasants and the workmen of the towns attend regular weekly lectures or weekly classes, where they practice singing or chanting, or learn mechanical drawing, history, or science. The intelligence of the poorer classes of these countries is shown by their manners. The whole appearance of a German peasant who has been brought up under this system, i. e., of any of the poor who have not attained the age of thirty-five years, is very different to that of our own peasantry. German, Swiss, or Dutch peasant, who has grown up to manhood under the new system, and since the old feudal system was overthrown, is not nearly so often, as with us, distinguished by an uncouth dialect. On the contrary, they speak as their teachers speak, clearly, without hesitation, and grammatically. They answer questions politely, readily, and with the ease which shows they have been accustomed to mingle with men of greater wealth and of better education than themselves. They do not appear embarrased, still less do they appear gawkish or stupid, when addressed. If, in asking a peasant a question, a stranger, according to the polite custom of the country, raises his hat, the first words of reply are the quietly uttered ones, 'I pray you, sir, be covered.' A Prussian peasant is always polite and respectful to a stranger, but quite as much at his ease as when speaking to one of his own fellows.” Surely the contrast presented between the efforts of the schoolmaster abroad and his inactivity at home-refuting, as it does, our hourly boastings of "intellectual progress"-should arouse us, energetically and practically, to the work of educational extension. LINES BY ROBERT SOUTHEY. (FROM AN UNPUBLISHED AUTOGRAPH.) THE days of Infancy are all a dream, How fair, but oh! how short they seem'Tis Life's sweet opening SPRING! The days of Youth advance : Manhood-matured with wisdom's fruit, Reward of learning's deep pursuitSucceeds, as AUTUMN follows Summer's prime And that, and that, alas! goes by; And what ensues? The languid eye, The failing frame, the soul o'ercast; 'Tis WINTER's sickening, withering blast, Life's blessed season-for it is the last. pletely show his character, and at the same time relieve the reader's indignation by something ludicrous in their excess. We had a few boarders at the school; boys, whose parents were too rich to let them go on the foundation. Among them, in my time, was Carlton, a son of Lord [From the Autobiography of Leigh Hunt.] THE SCHOOLMASTER OF COLERIDGE AND LAMB. BY LEIGH HUNT. BOYER, the upper master of Christ-Hospital Dorchester; Macdonald, one of the Lord Chief -famous for the mention of him by COLERIDGE and LAMB-was a short, stout man, inelining to punchiness, with large face and hands, an aquiline nose, long upper lip, and a sharp mouth. His eye was close and cruel. The spectacles which he wore threw a balm over it. Being a clergyman, he dressed in black, with a powdered wig. His clothes were cut short; his hands hung out of the sleeves, with tight wristbands, as if ready for execution; and as he generally wore gray worsted stockings, very tight, with a little balustrade leg, his whole appearance presented something formidably succinct, hard, and mechanical. In fact, his weak side, and undoubtedly his natural destination, lay in carpentry; and he accordingly carried, in a side-pocket made on purpose, a carpenter's rule. Baron's sons; and R- the son of a rich merchant. Carlton, who was a fine fellow, manly, and full of good sense, took his new master and his caresses very coolly, and did not want them. Little Macdonald also could dispense with them, and would put on his delicate gloves after lesson, with an air as if he resumed his patrician plumage. R was meeker, and willing to be encouraged; and there would the master sit, with his arm round his tall waist, helping him to his Greek verbs, as a nurse does bread and milk to an infant; and repeating them, when he missed, with a fond patience, that astonished us criminals in drugget. Very different was the treatment of a boy on the foundation, whose friends, by some means or other, had prevailed on the master to pay him an extra attention, and try to get him on. He had come into the school at an age later than usual, and could hardly read. There was a book used by the learners in reading, called "Dialogues between a Missionary and an Indian." It was a poor performance, full of inconclusive arguments and other commonplaces. The boy in question used to appear with this book in his hand in the middle of the school, the master standing behind him. The lesson was to begin. Poor whose great fault lay in a deep-toned drawl of his syllables and the omission of his stops, stood half-looking at the book, and half-casting his eye toward the right of him, whence the blows were to proceed. The master looked over him; and his hand was ready. I am not exact in my quotation at this distance of time; but the spirit of one of the passages that I recollect was to the following purport, and thus did the teacher and his pupil proceed : The merits of BOYER consisted in his being a good verbal scholar, and conscientiously acting up to the letter of time and attention. I have seen him nod at the close of the long summer school-hours, wearied out; and I should have pitied him, if he had taught us any thing but to fear. Though a clergyman, very orthodox, and of rigid morals, he indulged himself in an oath, which was "God's-my-life!" When you were out in your lesson, he turned upon you a round, staring eye like a fish; and he had a trick of pinching you under the chin, and by the lobes of the ears, till he would make the blood come. He has many times lifted a boy off the ground in this way. He was, indeed, a proper tyrant, passionate and capricious; would take violent likes and dislikes to the same boys; fondle some without any apparent reason, though he had a leaning to the servile, and, perhaps, to the sons of rich people; and he would persecute others in a manner truly frightful. I have seen him beat a sickly-looking, melancholy boy (C-n) about the head and ears, till the poor fellow, hot, dry-eyed, and confused, seemed lost in bewilderment. Cn, not long after he took orders, died out of his senses. I do not attribute that catastrophe to the master; and of course he could not wish to do him any lasting mischief. He had no imagination of any sort. But there is no saying how far his treatment of the boy might have contributed to pre- Master. "God's-my-life, young man! have a vent a cure. Tyrannical schoolmasters nowa-care how you provoke me.' Master. Now, young man, have a care; or I'll set you a swinging task." (A common phrase of his.) Pupil. (Making a sort of heavy bolt at his calamity, and never remembering his stop at the word Missionary.) "Missionary Can you see the wind ?" (Master gives him a slap on the cheek.) Pupil. (Raising his voice to a ery, and still forgetting his stop.) "Indian No!" (Here a terrible thump.) days are to be found, perhaps, exclusively in Pupil. (Always forgetting the stop.) "Missuch inferior schools as those described with sionary How then do you know that there is such masterly and indignant edification by my such a thing?" friend Charles Dickens; but they formerly seemed to have abounded in all; and masters, as well as boys, have escaped the chance of many bitter reflections, since a wiser and more generous intercourse has come up between them. Pupil. (With a shout of agony.) "Indian Because I feel it." One anecdote of his injustice will suffice for all. It is of ludicrous enormity; nor do I beI have some stories of Boyer, that will com- lieve any thing more flagrantly willful was ever I heard Mr. C youth of high spirit, whom he had struck, went to the school-door, opened it, and, turning round with the handle in his grasp, told him he would never set foot again in the place, unless he promised to treat him with more delicacy. "Come back, child—come back!" said the other, pale, and in a faint voice. There was a dead silence. Favell came back, and nothing more was done. done by himself. the suf- did not like such matters to go before the govferer, now a most respectable person in a governors. Another time, Favell, a Grecian, a ernment office, relate it with a due relish, long after quitting the school. The master was in the habit of "spiting” C———; that is to say, of taking every opportunity to be severe with him, nobody knew why. One day he comes into the school, and finds him placed in the middle of it with three other boys. He was not in one of his worst humors, and did not seem inclined to punish them, till he saw his antagonist. "Oh, oh, sir!" said he; what! you are among them, are you?" and gave him an exclusive thump on the face. He then turned to one of the Grecians, and said, "I have not time to flog all these boys; make them draw lots, and I'll punish one." The lots were drawn, and C- -'s was favorable. "Oh, oh!" returned the master, when he saw them, "you have escaped, have you, sir?" and pulling out his watch, and turning again to the Grecian, observed, that he found he had time to punish the whole three; "and, sir," added he to Cwith another slap, “I'll begin with you." He then took the boy into the library and flogged him; and, on issuing forth again, had the face to say, with an air of indifference, "I have not time, after all, to punish these two other boys; let them take care how they provoke me another time." A sentiment, unaccompanied with something practical, would have been lost upon him. D, who went afterward to the Military College at Woolwich, played him a trick, apparently between jest and earnest, which amused us exceedingly. He was to be flogged; and the dreadful door of the library was approached. (They did not invest the books with flowers, as Montaigne recommends.) Down falls the criminal, and, twisting himself about the master's legs, which he does the more when the other attempts to move, repeats without ceasing, "Oh, good God! consider my father, sir: my father, sir; you know my father!" The point was felt to be getting ludicrous, and was given up. P—, now a popular preacher, was in the habit of entertaining the boys that way. He was a regular wag; and would snatch his jokes out of the very flame and fury of the Often did I wish that I was a fairy, in order master, like snap-dragon. Whenever the other to play him tricks like a Caliban. We used to struck him, P. would get up; and, half to avoid sit and fancy what we should do with his wig; the blows, and half render them ridiculous, behow we would hamper and vex him; put gin moving about the school-room, making all knives in his pillow, and halters in his pew." sorts of antics. When he was struck in the To venture on a joke in our own mortal per- face, he would clap his hand with affected sons, was like playing with Polyphemus. One vehemence to the place, and cry as rapidly, afternoon, when he was nodding with sleep over "Oh, Lord!" If the blow came on the arm, he a lesson, a boy of the name of Meaer, who stood would grasp his arm, with a similar exclamabehind him, ventured to take a pin, and begin tion. The master would then go, driving and advancing with it up his wig. The hollow, ex- kicking him; while the patient accompanied hibited between the wig and the nape of the every blow with the same comments and illusneck, invited him. The boys encouraged this trations, making faces to us by way of index. daring act of gallantry. Nods and becks, and then whispers of "Go it, M. !" gave more and more valor to his hand. On a sudden, the master's head falls back; he starts, with eyes like a shark; and seizing the unfortunate culprit, who stood helpless in the act of holding the pin, caught hold of him, fiery with passion. A "swinging task" ensued, which kept him at home all the holidays. One of these tasks would consist of an impossible quantity of Virgil, which the learner, unable to retain it at once, wasted his heart and soul out "to get up," till it was too late. What a bit of a golden age was it, when the Rev. Mr. Steevens, one of the under grammarmasters, took his place, on some occasion, for a short, time! Steevens was short and fat, with a handsome, cordial face. You loved him as you looked at him; and seemed as if you should love him the more, the fatter he became. I stammered when I was at that time of life; which was an infirmity that used to get me into terrible trouble with the master. Steevens used to say, on the other hand, "Here comes our little black-haired friend, who stammers so. Now, let us see what we can do for him." The consequence was, I did not hesitate half so much as with the other. When I did, it was out of impatience to please him. I Such of us were not liked the better by the master, as were in favor with his wife. She was a sprightly, good-looking woman, with black eyes, and was beheld with transport by the boys, whenever she appeared at the school-door. Her husband's name, uttered in a mingled tone of good-nature and imperativeness, brought him Sometimes, however, our despot got into a dilemma, and then he did not know how to get out of it. A boy, now and then, would be roused into open and fierce remonstrance. recollect S., afterward one of the mildest of preachers, starting up in his place, and pouring forth on his astonished hearer a torrent of invectives and threats, which the other could only answer by looking pale, and uttering a few threats in return. Nothing came of it. He down from his seat with smiling haste. Some- labor is so expensive, take it back 13,000 miles, times he did not return. On entering the and undersell the native manufacturer. Labor school one day, he found a boy eating cherries. is dearer in America than in any part of the "Where did you get those cherries ?" exclaim- world, and yet we dread and fear their competied he, thinking the boy had nothing to say for tion more than that of any other nation. The himself. "Mrs. Boyer gave them me, sir." He reason of all this is obvious. All the advantages turned away, scowling with disappointment. which the Hindoo possesses are far more than counterbalanced by his intellectual inferiority to ourselves; while we dread the American, with reason, because he is, intellectually at least, our equal, and, considering the general intelligence and good conduct of the hands he employs, our superior. To what cause, except that of a decided superiority in captains and crews, can we attribute th fact that the Americans have deprived us of so large a portion of the whale fishery, as in a measure to have monopolized it? American clocks, which we now see in almost every hall and cottage, ought to set us thinking. We may be sure of this, the commerce of the world will fall into the hands of those who are most deserving of it. If political or philanthropic considerations should fail to show us the necessity of educating our people, commercial considerations will one day remind us of what we ought to have done. We can only hope that the reminder may not come too late. Speaking of fruit, reminds me of a pleasant trait on the part of a Grecian of the name of Le Grice. He was the maddest of all the great boys in my time; clever, full of address, and not hampered with modesty. Remote rumors, not lightly to be heard, fell on our ears, respecting pranks of his among the nurses' daughters. He had a fair, handsome face, with delicate, aquiline nose, and twinkling eyes. I remember his astonishing me, when I was "a new boy," with sending me for a bottle of water, which he proceeded to pour down the back of G., a grave Deputy Grecian. On the master asking him one day, why he, of all the boys, had given up no exercise (it was a particular exercise that they were bound to do in the course of a long set of holidays), he said he had had “a lethargy." The extreme impudence of this puzzled the master; and I believe nothing came of it. But what I alluded to about the fruit was this: Le Grice was in the habit of eating apples in Enlightenment is the great necessity and the school-time, for which he had been often re- great glory of our age; ignorance is the most buked. One day, having particularly pleased expensive, and most dangerous, and most pressthe master, the latter, who was eating apples ing of all our evils. Among ourselves we find himself, and who would now and then with great a variety of motives converging upon this conostentation present a boy with some half-penny clusion. The statesman has become aware that token of his mansuetude, called out to his favor- an enlightened population is more orderly, more ite of the moment : "Le Grice, here is an ap- submissive, in times of public distress, to the ple for you." Le Grice, who felt his dignity necessity of their circumstances; not so easily hurt as a Grecian, but was more pleased at hav-led away by agitators; in short, more easily ing this opportunity of mortifying his reprover, replied, with an exquisite tranquillity of assurance, Sir, I never eat apples." For this, among other things, the boys adored him. Poor fellow! He and Favell (who, though very generous, was said to be a little too sensible of an humble origin) wrote to the Duke of York, when they were at college, for commissions in the army. The duke good-naturedly sent them. Le Grice died in the West Indies. Favell was killed in one of the battles in Spain, but not before he had distinguished himself as an officer and a gentleman. EDUCATION IN AMERICA. and more cheaply governed. The political economist is well aware of the close connection between general intelligence and successful enterprise and industry. The greater the number of enlightened and intelligent persons, the greater is the number of those whose thoughts are at work in subduing nature, improving arts, and increasing national wealth. The benevolent man is anxious that all should share those enjoyments and advantages which he himself finds to be the greatest. Both Churchman and Dissenter know well enough that they are under the necessity of educating. And the manufacturer, too, who is employing, perhaps, many more hands than the colonel of a regiment commands, is now becoming well aware how much to his advantage it is that his men should prefer WHAT is the enterprise and general pros- a book or a reading-room to the parlor of a perity of the Americans to be attributed to (their country is not naturally so rich or fruitful as Mexico), except to their general enlightenment? The oldest manufacturers of cotton in the world are the Hindoos; labor with them is cheaper than it is in any other part of the world yet we take the cotton that grows at the doors of their factories, bring it 13,000 miles to this country, manufacture it here where VOL. I.-No. 2.-0 public house; should understand what they are All |