not a return to the Eton grammar, on the one hand, or chance, on the other, but that details should not be pursued to the exclusion of principles; that the great principle of education should be a regard to the greatest ultimate happiness of the pupil; and that the operation of this principle should be determined by the facts of the pupil's own constitution, as well as by those of his location. This is professed to be the design of every system of education that is offered to notice; but we must acknowledge that we have found it pure and complete only in the quiet administration of parents who make their own good sense their chief guide, and who, while learning from every system, profess none.

Before science had driven chance from the conceptions, and almost from the vocabulary, of wise people, it was perfectly natural that an education of fortuitous influences should be supposed sometimes a very happy, and sometimes a very harmless thing. But now that it is known to a certainty that there is no such thing as chance, and that a continually progressive power is given to the human will (in proportion to the enlargement of human knowledge) over all the agents whose nature can be discerned, it seems as barbarous a proceeding to leave a child to be educated by nature, as to leave it in the woods to be bred up by savages. Man has been learning to modify the influences to which his offspring are exposed. Man is convinced that in course of time he will be able to do this so completely, that, having acquainted himself with the primary conditions of his children's being, he will be able to make them what he chooses: and, by means of the coöperation of a sufficient number of parents, to place the offspring of all in an atmosphere of virtue and wisdom by which their being shall be nourished up to a perfection we may conceive of, but must wait long to witness. We are now somewhere between the extremes of a fortuitous education and a perfectly conducted one. We are bustling and

striving after some special methods in which we are apt to imagine resides general efficacy. We are so eagerly exerting our influence in some particular modes of operation, that we forget our equal responsibility in others. What good principles we have laid hold of, we do not carry out far enough; what specific processes we have found to be good, we are apt to apply too pertinaciously and too generally. Health is not yet, as it may be centuries hence, a matter of course; morals cannot be taught merely by exercising the intellect, nor science by administering to the affections. We make our pupils learned at the expense of their nerves, and pious while we neglect their understandings; and yet exercise and diet are as much under our control as religious influences, and the operations of the reasoning faculty as much as either.

Careful as we should be, therefore, in adopting any new systems of education, our proneness to the partial cultivation of our pupils should make us doubly watchful of those systems which relate only to particular departments of education. Among these is the system of Jacotot, which has nothing to do with physical or moral development, though it advances extraordinary pretensions as far as the intellect is concerned. Now, before we examine these pretensions, we must express our doubts whether this system can by any good management on the part of the teacher be pursued by the pupil with that relish, - whether it can ensure to him those encouragements and rewards which are essential to the healthful prosecution of any study, and to its beneficial moral effects. Of any but the intellectual results of these methods we know nothing; but we feel pretty sure that we could not in childhood have gone through such wearisome labor as is here prescribed without losing more in one way than we could gain in another.

"The Universal Instruction has but one route. The pupil is required to commit to memory the first six books of Telema

chus, as an introductory exercise. These he must know perfectly, so as to be able to repeat them from one end to the other without the slightest hesitation; and whenever the teacher mentions the first word of a paragraph or sentence, to continue the paragraph or sentence without the omission of a single word. Many persons to whom this has been mentioned have been at once startled at what they considered so vast a requirement, not recollecting, at the same time, that much more, and to infinitely less purpose, is exacted from the pupil by the common method. When the six books of Telemachus, or an equivalent portion of any eminent work in the language which the pupil may be studying, is once thus thoroughly impressed on the memory, his labor is almost all over. Every exercise afterwards required of him is little better than amusement; he is in possession of all the necessary materials, and his mind will almost spontaneously employ them.” "Learn by heart and understand,' says Jacotot, 'the first six books of Telemaque, or an equivalent portion of any eligible work in the language to be acquired, and repeat it incessantly. Refer every thing else to this, and you will certainly learn the language.' The following is the method proposed by Jacotot, in order to attain that perfect mental retention The necessary to the efficient operation of this system. pupil must learn every day a sentence, a paragraph, or a page, according as his memory is more or less habituated to this exercise; and he must never fail to repeat all that he has previously learned, from the first word of the book. Thus, if he learns one sentence at first, on the following day he learns the next sentence, but repeats the two, commencing with the first word of that previously learned. The same method is pursued to the end of the sixth book. As, however, this repetition, as the pupil goes on, necessarily occupies much time, it is sometimes found advisable to divide the portion thus accumulating; but still the general repetition of the six books must have place at least twice a week. The oftener the whole is repeated, the more prompt and durable are the results. It is confessed that the preceding exercise

is tedious and wearisome, and great care is required on the part of the teacher to prevent it from becoming repulsive and disgusting to the pupil. Too much must not at first be exacted. If the child cannot learn a paragraph in a day, let him learn two sentences, one sentence, or even a single word. At all events, he must learn something thoroughly; on the next day he will learn something more, still repeating what has been previously learned; and after a fortnight's practice, there will be little reason to tax him with want of memory. When the pupil knows the first six books thoroughly, it is not necessary to commit the remaining eighteen to memory; but he must read every day some pages of them, with a degree of attention sufficient to enable him to relate what they contain.

This second exercise, however, on no account excludes the general or partial repetition of the first six books, which the pupil must go through at least once a week, even when they are fixed immoveably in his memory."— pp. 20, 26, 27.

This "introductory exercise " being finished, the elements of all science and wisdom are to be drawn out, and framed into completeness, by a system of interrogation, which we should think equally wearisome to teacher and pupil. Then follows a system of exercises, all bearing reference to the portions impressed on the memory; and the same (with the exception of the scientific part) has to be gone through with every new language that is learned. If, as it appears to us, all the mental processes which are necessary to the acquisition of the sciences are totally independent of this prodigious exertion of memory, the question comes to this- is this drudgery too heavy a tax to pay for the acquisition of a language? Feeling how our own understanding would be disgusted, and our temper irritated, by such a process, we conIclude that it is. We do not doubt Jacotot's promise, “You will certainly learn the language; " but we inquire, "At what cost?"

pretty piece of

Many who

We have quite as strong a conviction that the intellectual results of such a plan of repetition cannot be good. Let any one's experience declare whether to learn by rote is not to lose the power of judgment and the pleasures of taste, in reference to what is committed to memory. "No, I won't learn it by heart," said a little girl, about a poetry, "because I want to go on liking it." repent of their early voluntary exercises of memory, and who now find that to retain in perfect accuracy is not to enjoy, will sympathize with this child's feeling. They will find how the pleasure arising from choice pieces committed to memory is irrecoverably gone; how impossible it is to reason on, judge, compare, and in any degree appreciate, what, by being retained in words, has lost its power of appealing to other associations. No allurements could incite us, no management could enable us, to reason on any thing presented in a form of words repeated twice a week, with the vigor and freedom with which we should attack new thoughts, or even old ones, presented under a new mode of expression. It is very true that by Jacotot's method a vast quantity of materials are stored up by the pupil; but we doubt whether the power of using them would not disappear during the process of accumulation. If we thought that the proved efficacy of Jacotot's system depended as much as its advocates declare on this particular exercise, we should hesitate to express ourselves as we have done; for wonders have certainly been done in some societies of his disciples abroad. We will explain what we suppose to be the causes of success, when we have given a brief account of the origin and nature of the system.

M. Jacotot, a native of Dijon, being made, in 1818, Professor of the French language at the University of Louvain, found himself called upon to teach the French language to pupils whose native tongue he did not understand. He gave