principles of geography, principles of agriculture and domestic economy, first principles of industrial mechanics (the force and resistance of different materials), first principles of chemistry, first principles of physics and natural history, first principles of physiology and hygiène, first principles of civil and public law, first principles of national and foreign history and geography. As to moral instruction, M. Girardin draws the proper distinction, which Rousseau had long ago pointed out, between instruction and education. The schoolmaster cannot supersede or supply the place of the parent, by whom all the early habits both of body and mind must be formed. In the school, the objects of chief importance are the choice of books, and a judicious plan of emulation and of punishment. The great principle of the latter is to avoid all discouraging and degrading punishments, which may harden the character, sear the heart, and give the child a dislike to his studies. It is of the first 'importance to make him like work, which is the main spring of public and private morality.' As to religious education, We consider,' says M. Girardin, that at the present day, with the prejudices which exist against the supposed encroaching spirit of the clergy, it must be separated from the functions of the schoolmaster. The liberty of worship having been recognised by the constitution, the necessary consequence of this is the obligation to leave to the ministers of each commune the duty of initiating the children in the belief of their parents.' On this subject we shall hereafter make some observations. Singing (le chant) M. Girardin has judiciously, we are of opinion, transferred from the second and superior to the first and more elementary part of popular instruction. It is of equal importance as a means and as an end. We have heard much of the extraordinary success of M. Wilhem, who is now appointed director and inspector-general of this science in the schools of France; and, by a simple instrument called a diapason, has introduced a taste and skill in music among adults as well as among the children of the schools, not less surprising from the feeling, or rather the passion, which it has excited, than from the remarkable fineness and accuracy of execution:

'It is no longer (we are informed in a note by the editor of this volume) a few groups of children who come to catch the tone of this magic instrument, but multitudes, of which the number amounts in the schools of Paris alone to 2262; nor are they the children alone which this study attracts from all parts, but men of mature age, fathers of families, who come with their children, and are in turn their monitors or rivals; they are artisans who are not prevented by the fatigues of their daily labours, but with an incredible assiduity and perseverance qualify themselves to join in the crowded concerts which we have had

the

the opportunity of applauding in the largest room in the Sorbonne, The number of adult pupils amounts to 1200, divided into eleven classes.'

Music, or rather singing, which has always been among the chief methods of teaching, or at least of influence and guidance, in our infant-schools, is now introduced very generally into our national and other schools for older children. A gentleman, named Turner, has, with a very liberal devotion of his time and talents, set the example in our national schools; and various other systems have been adopted, with greater or less success, in other parts of the country. Though, perhaps, we are not to expect the same sudden outbreak of musical ardour and feeling in our graver and less sensitive population, yet the extraordinary taste for music which now seems to pervade English society shows the importance and the practicability of cultivating it to a great extent among our lower orders. For this reason we should be glad to hear that the system and the instrument of M. Wilhem had received a fair trial among us. The improvement of our parochial psalmody would in itself be of inestimable value. Our cathedral churches in the metropolis, on the Sundays, are crowded beyond the means of accommodation, and even on the week-days there is a visible increase in the attendance, which may at least be ascribed in part to the greater taste for sacred music; and we cannot but see that, while our theatres are comparatively deserted, or, indeed, abandoned to a musical entertainment, the vast room of Exeter Hall is crowded with hundreds of all orders, listening with the most absorbed attention to the sublime oratorios of Handel. In a lower sphere, cheap musical entertainments are offered in what used to be the most shamelessly licentious and offensive part of the metropolis, and rooms crowded with casual visitors, among whom the most prudish and sanctimonious could not detect the least levity or impropriety of manner. is indeed not merely a blameless, and therefore most desirable, popular amusement; but it may be made, as of old in Greece, and, as we conceive, in the present day in Germany, a legitimate and very powerful instrument of civilisation. It is the faithful ally of peace, of order, of religion. It becomes, then, those who take a lead in the important question of national education to try to improve and to perfect this powerful instrument of popular improvement to the utmost of their ability. The fewer Cassii we have in all orders the better. M. Wilhem's diapason, we trust,

It

* We understand that a class for the instruction of schoolmasters in music, upon the plan of M. Wilhem, has been opened at Exeter Hall by M. Hullah, under the patronage of the President of the Council, the Bishop of London, and many other prelates of the church, and distinguished laymen.

has

has not yet maddened to the Marseillaise; and even at any time, were England forced into a defensive and therefore necessary war, she would not be less formidable if she had learned to march, like the Lacædemonians of old,

In perfect phalanx to the Dorian mood.

Of flutes and soft recorders.'

M. Girardin places at the head of his superior kind of elementary instruction writing from dictation, analysis, the art of expressing the thoughts with ease, and book-keeping.' All these methods of teaching, except, we believe, the last, are now introduced, to a greater or less extent, in our better schools for the poor. They form part of what is called the Edinburgh system of Mr. Wood, are partially and successfully practised, if we remember right, at Norwood; and indeed facility of expression is best gained from the system of clear and rapid questioning, by which a good teacher may in general be distinguished from a bad one, and which is the vital principle of all large and successful schools.

But by far the most important and peculiar part of M. Girardin's system is the high place which he assigns to the first principles of husbandry and domestic economy. His theory is, that by nature France was designed for a great agricultural country. As yet she has not been true to her vocation: but, in raising agriculture to a science, and the cultivation of the soil to an honourable profession, in the elevation of the cultivators in intelligence, wealth, and virtue, he sees a counterpoise to the dominant influence of the great cities, and especially of the capital,a check to the perpetual drain of the hardy and useful country labourers into towns where the arts and manufactures are already overloaded with workmen, and the higher professions and means of employment afford no fair avenue for exertion; he sees, in fact, a corrective of what we have ventured to call the dangerous barbarism of a large class, who are almost of necessity goaded into turbulence, and at war with all order and government, the extension of a calm, peaceful, and happy civilisation, enriched by increased production, occupied by constant but not exhausting labour, content, though not without salutary emulation,-attached to the free institutions of the country, which give security to their property, their improvement, their domestic happiness.

The landed proprietors hold in their hands the destinies of France: for, by raising the lands which they possess to the value of which they are capable, they cannot fail to acquire a local influence, which, causing them to pass successively through the exercise of the elective franchise, the municipal councils, the office of mayor, the council of the arrondisse

ment,

ment, the general council, must inevitably bring them at last to the representation of the interests of the country, and at the same time give them a real acquaintance with its wants.'-p. 186.

We must bear in mind, in any estimate of the future prospects of France, the subdivision of property, which is the natural effect of the present law of inheritance, equally among all the children. The result which might be expected from this law would be the gradual growth of a proprietary yeomanry, the cultivators of their own estates, a class to whom good education would be of the highest importance; but then, unless the law is in some way evaded or counteracted, this yeomanry must sink lower and lower, till we can scarcely understand how there could be sufficient capital to do justice to the land. The practical operation of the law, from what reasons we are unable clearly to explain, has been as yet by no means so extensive, nor the subdivisions of property by any means so minute, as might have been expected from the time at which it began to take effect. But M. Girardin founds his argument on the actual state of the cultivation and produce of France. The statistics we presume to be correct, as we are not aware that they have been controverted in France. We shall take them, as given in more full detail, from a memoir which he addressed, in 1834, to M. Thiers, then minister of commerce and public works:

The surface of France contains fifty-three millions of hectares of which twenty-five millions are of land capable of cultivation, and yet scarcely a third of the population eat (qu. wheaten?) bread; while four millions of hectares of good land, well cultivated and sowed with wheat, would be sufficient to feed, healthily and substantially, its thirtythree millions of inhabitants.* In England, agriculture occupies 13,396 square leagues. In France, agriculture occupies 27,400 square leagues, and the produce is about (à peu près) a seventh less. In England, 13,396 square leagues, worked by 7,500,000 husbandmen, yield a gross produce of 5,480,000,000 francs, that is, 40,000 francs per square league, or 722 francs per head. In France, 27,400 square leagues, worked by 22,000,000 labourers, yield only a gross produce of 4,500,000,000 francs, that is 16,000 francs per square league, or 200 francs per head. ' Of 49,863,609 hectares of land liable to taxation in France,

* A hectare of fertile land, well cultivated and sown with corn, produces easily 22 hectolitres, which weigh 1694 kilogrammes; while the average annual consumption of an individual may be estimated at 197 kilogrammes of wheat. The hectare is 2.473614 acres.-Note of the Author.

'The

The remainder is in gardens and buildings.

"In England, the neat weight of bullocks for the slaughter-house is 554 lbs; in France, 350 lbs. The same proportion holds good as to calves, sheep, and lambs consumed in the respective countries. England possesses 10,500,000 head of cattle; and France, with a territory much larger, and a population so much more considerable, reckons only 6,700,000. In England, the cultivation of the rutabaga, the Swedish turnip, has increased its territorial revenue a milliard (of livres); while France still pays annually forty millions for silk from Piedmont and Lombardy, which she might grow on her own soil.'pp. 448, 449.

This unenterprising and unimproving routine of agriculture does not prevail uniformly throughout France. Some districts have set the example of a bolder and more skilful cultivation; and their success is so great as to afford the highest encouragement.

'If we would only go and see the degree of perfection to which agriculture has attained in the departments of the North, of the Drôme and the Isère, we should at once be convinced of the progress which still remains to be made, and the increase of produce of which it is capable; since the hectare of land, of prime quality, is worth, in certain parts of the Ardèche, for instance, 12,000 francs, in that of Morbihan 400 francs. However distressing, then, the condition of the cultivators may yet be, their sons ought to be very cautious how they abandon agriculture for any other employment, art, or profession; for the chances of profit are precisely in proportion to the progress which is still to be made.'p. 167.

M. Girardin's plan for the improvement of the agriculture of France embraces the instruction both of the labourer and the proprietor. He would make the first principles of agriculture, and of all the sciences which bear on agriculture, part of the primary education which is to be bestowed, at the cost of the state, on the whole labouring poor; he would raise agriculture to an honourable profession, and substitute, among the sons, at least, of the smaller farmers and proprietors, a strictly-professional education for that of the universities, which still retains, in his opinion, too much of the old classical system for this order.

In my opinion,' he observes, the government of France cannot occupy itself too actively in promoting a taste for agriculture; it cannot develop it too soon; the greater the general and manifest tendency to abandon husbandry for manufactures, on account of the higher wages of the latter, or even for the liberal professions, in order to the gratification of vanity; the greater the tendency to prefer a residence in towns to that of the rural communes-the higher is the importance of diverting and combating it by good books, placed in the hands of children, which will give them at once the desire of remaining in the condition in which they have been born, and of improving that condition; which will teach them very early how precarious are the wages of manufactures, how dangerous are the illusions held out by the liberal professions, and what

horrible