"THE CELEBRATED MEN OF GREECE-LEARNED OR WISE MEN (SAVANTS), PHILOSOPHERS, POETS, ORATORS, ARTISTS. I extract the whole of this chapter :

"The Greeks were above all illustrious by the progress which they made in the arts. No country has produced a greater number of celebrated men in every department. These are the most remarkable wise men (savants) and philosophers-Thales, of Miletus; Periander, of Corinth; Solon, of Athens; Bias, of Priene; Chilon, of Sparta; Cleobulus, of Lindum; Pittacus, of Mitylene; whom they call the seven wise men of Greece. Pythagoras, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Diogenes, and Zeno.

"Historians:-Herodotus and Xenophon. "Orator:-Demosthenes.

"Poets-Homer, Pindar, Sophocles, and Euripides. 'Sculptor :-Phidias.

"Painters:-Zeuxis and Apelles."-Voilà tout!

Would it not have been infinitely better to have attempted no list at all of Greek worthies, than to have given this meagre and mutilated account of them? Just enough to encumber the memory, without raising the mind to a single principle which they maintained, or sentiment which they left as a κτῆμα εἰς ἀεί. Not even a γνωμὴ of the seven wise men, nor the toe of a single intellectual Hercules! Omitting the very greatest names, as of Thucydides, Isocrates, Eschylus, and Aristophanes! Might not some great thought of the first have been quoted, to teach the Parisian mob that they are but plagiarists, and by no means brilliant ones, of the Athenian Suos-some soul-stirring passage from patriotic old Eschylus, or keen sarcasm of the witty Aristophanes ?

But whatever scanty appreciation the Greek writers may have obtained in this "précis" of the annals of their nation, the Roman genius would seem to have fared worse. For in the compendium of that history, from the first settlement of the Trojan Æneas-which is certainly a starting point sufficiently remote to the capture of Constantinople by Mohammed the Second, and the fall of the Eastern division of the empire, about the middle of the fifteenth century,-a period containing some two thousand six hundred years, and occupying just eighteen pages of small and not very close octavo,-there is absolutely no incidental mention of any Roman sages, bards, or historians, who may have taught, illustrated, or handed down in their writings the fashion of their times. This omission seems the more palpable, when we consider that these authors were for the most part actors in the scenes they describe. We do not read of Cæsar fording the stream of history with his sword in one hand and his Commentaries in the other; or of Cicero opposing the agents of rebellion with the force of eloquence and the consular power; of Sallust, darkly mixed up with the intrigues which he relates; of the grace, molle atque facetum, of Virgil, and the wit of Horace, in connexion with the friendship

of Augustus; or of Ovid sighing, like some banished Bonapartist, for the loss of the imperial favour. For what we learn from this manual, all the Decades of Livy might have been irreparably lost; Persius have been wholly unintelligible; and the nervous satire of Juvenal obliterated in some dark age, when parchment was dear, to make way for a monkish legend. But why should I mention names, with which every schoolboy ought to be familiar?

"Hoc monstrant vetulæ pueris repentibus assæ."

The chapter on the history of France is, as might be expected, somewhat less curtailed, and gives a pretty clear account of the different races and epochs. It does not discourage the national vanity, by dwelling upon events which are generally considered untoward by the rest of the world. It explains away the defeats of French arms, and ignores the disasters of French diplomacy. In describing the philosophical system of French calligraphy, the authors recommend some expedients unknown to our simple teachers; though, by that perversity which sometimes runs counter to the most plausible theories, our schoolboys, on the whole, write legibly without them. I, for one, have often found it difficult to decipher a French epistle. Their cramped and angular pothooks, and diffusive lettres en queue, often puzzle a foreigner of short sight and plain understanding. The English nation, as we are informed by the authors, have, from the time of Elizabeth, written upon totally false principles (par de mauvais principes): we write from the wrist, a fault for which a simple mechanism has been devised. The hand is to be enveloped in a silk riband, so as effectually to prevent the play of the wrist-joint; and we are assured that the evil will thus be cured in a fortnight. In order to keep the pupil from leaning on the outside of the hand, (le bord cubital de la main,) they recommend a little instrument of copper, which is designed to throw the hand over to the left or inner side. To keep the hand, thus bandaged and supported, in a right direction, they have invented another ingenious machine of the same material. I ought in fairness to mention, that, in the great school of the Christian Brothers, near the church of St. Sulpice, where the writing is very beautiful, these artifices are unknown. The Brothers teach in a plain, common-sense way, and informed me that these cunning engines existed only in books.

If the public instructors in France teach arithmetic, as it is set forth in this volume, they begin at the wrong end of the subject. The geometry gives a concise resumé of that beautiful science, mixed with a very little trigonometry. It is very good as a primary course. The physics consist of mere fragments of information. The chapter on chemistry treats of its application to the domestic arts, and therefore deserves attention.

The

chapter on natural history consists of mere nomenclature and barren classification, as might be expected in a volume condensing so many subjects in so narrow a compass. Mr. Hullah would be little satisfied with the short sketch of Wilhelm's system of vocal music.

From this slight review of some of the contents of this multifarious compilation, it would appear that the whole plan is mnemotechnic and unsuggestive in its aim, incomplete and partial in its form and execution. It concludes with a brief summary of the methods of instruction which at different times have been adopted in elementary schools. It very properly rejects the old, or individual system, as unsuitable to a number of children. It prefers the simultaneous to the mutual* system in rural districts, for the following conclusive reasons: that the senior scholars, who should be monitors, are early forced into agricultural pursuits, and that country boys are not adapted to teach their fellows, on account of the greater familiarity which prevails among them, as compared with youths brought up in towns. It contains, among other directions, the following, which does not sound well to an English ear, especially in connexion with recent events: "Mendosum tinnit." Talleyrand is reported to have said that he had sworn to obey eighteen constitutions. How many busts may the poor lads of France live to see deposed from their place of honour!

"Deinde ex facie toto orbe secundâ

Fiunt urceoli, pelves, sartago, patellæ."

"Article 2084! Above the master's seat should be placed a crucifix and a bust of the king. If the expense should appear too great, there should be at least an engraved picture of the sovereign, and another, which should offer to all eyes Christ upon the cross. In entering into a French school, all ought to see manifestly there that the education is religious and monarchical."

It is but a short year since the last edition of this volume was published. The monarch, whose image and superscription was to be placed so close to that of our Blessed Redeemer, is an exile in the land of the stranger; and the nation, that expelled him as a common enemy, hovers between Republic and Empire; while ancient Legitimacy stands by, and bides its time.

I should not have been so diffuse in noticing this book, if I did not believe that it represented the perfunctory character of popular instruction in France, under the control of the central university.

*

*

*

*

It would be entering on too wide a field at present, and perhaps foreign to our plan, to maintain that ultra regulation and perpetual interference pervade the whole economy of French

*I. e. the monitorial.

It ought to prefer it in all districts.-ED.

government. So little room is left to free enterprise and independent effort, that the only chance for intellect without patronage is the rappel and a revolution. Bureaucracy at Paris governs the details of every public department. With a change of ministry everything is changed. If an émeute on the Place Carrousel is successful, not only the details of government may be altered, but the very constitution annihilated and constructed anew. What regime can be more unfavourable to settled institutions? Just imagine the Lord Lieutenancy of Yorkshire directly dependent on fluctuating majorities in the House of Commons, and the stalwart men of Lancashire obliged to bow before a revolution concocted amidst the tan-pits of Bermondsey, and the marshes of Lambeth! The very omnibuses are reduced to system, and the horses trot under the reins of state direction. The practical result is, that France cannot form colonies, or reproduce herself. So much for the leading-strings of paternal government!

Dec. 28, 1848.-To-day we went, on the recommendation of the Rev. Adolphe Monod, the eminent clergyman of the Oratoire, to visit the Protestant Normal School of Courbevoie, a considerable village, pleasantly situate between Paris and Versailles. This modest, but valuable, college is supported by the Protestant Society for the Encouragement of Primary Instruction. Its finances have been painfully embarrassed by the revolution of February last. The derangement of public credit, and the loss of property caused by that disastrous outbreak, have reacted unfavourably on the incomes of all benevolent institutions.

The director, the Rev. M. Gauthey, is well known to the patrons of Christian education among the poor, as the late principal of the Normal School of the Canton de Vaud, in Switzerland. This noble undertaking succumbed to the tyranny of the democratic revolution, which overswept that country in the year 1845; and which, while it professed to be for the people, was as unfavourable to popular as to Christian education.

It is no part of my present task to describe the efforts which M. Gauthey made there, or the success that attended them. He has found an able exponent of his plans and writings in the person of Sir John P. Boileau, Bart., who has introduced them to the English public, in a pamphlet entitled "Some Account of the Normal School of the Canton de Vaud, translated from the work of M. Gauthey, director of that establishment." This pamphlet was published by Ridgway, in the year 1840. It does not appear to have met with the attention it deserves.

M. Gauthey speaks with the liveliest interest of a visit which was paid to his normal school in Switzerland, by Mr. Kay Shuttleworth and Mr. Edward C. Tufnell, who were at that time about to found the Battersea Training College.

M. Gauthey was the personal friend and confident of Pestalozzi, and showed me some interesting letters from the Abbé Girard. He gave me a lively description of the points of difference and similarity between these eminent teachers. Both, he says, have been remarkable for the skill with which they have divided and distributed the difficulties of all elementary studies. The Abbé has sought to cultivate the affections, and to strengthen the reasoning faculties, by graduated lessons on language, beginning with the simplest efforts of a child to express its nascent ideas. Pestalozzi rather leaned to science in pursuing the same object, perhaps from his love of proving everything.* M. Gauthey thinks, that in the later years of his life, Pestalozzi acknowledged that something for the complete formation and development of the mind was wanting in his scheme, which might be supplied by a strict course of language, and that he was contemplating a work on that subject, especially in relation to foreign languages, when death overtook him. M. Gauthey appears to concur in the idea so prevalent among English scholars, that Pestalozzi's system of teaching, by simplifying too much, left little to be accomplished by the industry and patient research of the pupil; and that it was not adapted to the discipline and development of the highest order of minds. stancing the case of one eminent person, M. Gauthey said, that he was always accurate in his logic, and clear in his moral perception of a subject, but wanted, what the French call élans, the spirit of self-dependent and energetic progress.

In

While M. Gauthey speaks in warm terms of the courtesy manifested towards himself and his institution by the public authorities, both those of the general government and of the commune in which he resides, he appears to deplore the inevitable tendency of a centralized board, to stereotype, as it were, public instruction. Another eminent person, with whom I conversed, described (whether rightly or wrongly I will not pretend to determine) any efforts of a central government to render instruction everywhere uniform, for the convenience of its own subordinates, as a cruel conspiracy against the liberty of education. At the same time I should be a partial and unjust observer if I omitted to state that many of the ablest friends of popular instruction are convinced that it is to the efforts of the central government alone that education owes the patronage which it has of late years received. Some spoke very strongly on the subject. They said that in many villages, and in the poorer faubourgs of large towns, there would be literally no instruction whatever, if the work were left to the voluntary efforts of pious

* A story is current that Girard once said to Pestalozzi, "I would not send a child to be taught by you, because you would prove to him that he ought to love his father."