Imatges de pàgina
PDF
EPUB

broiled pope's flesh, and part of a schoolmaster; the joint is not specified, but I suppose it to have been the rump. Then came a senator's lights and a lawyer's tongue.

When they have eaten of these dainties till the distended stomach can hold no more, Virtus comes in, and seeing them send off the fragments to their Tartarean den, calls upon mankind to bestow some sustenance upon her, for she is tormented with hunger. The demons and their ministers insult her and drive her into banishment; they tell Nature that to-morrow the great King of Orcus will come and carry her away in chains; off they go in a dance, and Nature concludes the piece by saying that what they have threatened must happen, unless Justice shall be awakened, Virtue fed, and Veritas restored to life by the sacred book.

There are several other dialogues in a similar strain of fiction. The rudest and perhaps oldest specimen of this style is to be found in Pierce Ploughman, the most polished in Calderon, the most popular in John Bunyan's Holy War, and above all in his Pilgrim's Progress. It appears from the dialogues that they were not composed for the use of youth alone as a school-book, but were represented at college; and poor as they are in point of composition, the oddity of their combinations, and the wholesome honesty of their satire, were well adapted to strike young imaginations, and make an impression there which better and wiser works might have failed to leave.

But Guy
What he

A schoolmaster who had been regularly bred would have regarded such a book with scorn, and discerning at once its obvious faults, would have been incapable of perceiving anything which might compensate for them. was not educated well enough to despise a writer like old Textor. knew himself, he had picked up where and how he could, in byways and corThe book was neither in any respect above his comprehension, nor below his taste; and Joseph Warton never rolled off the hexameters of Virgil or Homer, ore rotundo, with more delight, when expatiating with all the feelings of a scholar and a poet upon their beauties, to such pupils as Headley, and Russell, and Bowles, than Guy paraphrased these rude but striking allegories to his delighted Daniel.

ners.

The intellectual education which young Daniel received at home was as much out of the ordinary course as the book in which he studied at school. Robinson Crusoe had not yet reached Ingleton. Sanford and Merton had not been written, nor the history of Pecksey and Flapsey and the Robin's Nest, which is the prettiest fiction that ever was composed for children, and for which its excellent authoress will one day rank high among women of genius when time shall have set its seal upon desert. The only book within his reach, of all those which now come into the hands of youth, was the Pilgrim's Progress, and this he read at first without a suspicion of its allegorical import. What he did not understand was as little remembered as the sounds of the wind, or the motions of the passing clouds; but the imagery and the incidents took possession of his memory and his heart. After a while Textor became an interpreter of the immortal Tinker, and the boy acquired as much of the meaning by glimpses as was desirable, enough to render some of the personages more awful by spiritualizing them, while the tale itself remained as a reality. Oh! what blockheads are those wise persons who think it necessary that a child should comprehend every thing it reads!

THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY.

MEMOIR.

THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY, made Baron of Rothley in 1857, but who achieved his title to the peerage of his country by his splendid contributions to English literature and his fidelity, in and out of office, to the cause of civil and religious liberty, was born at Rothley Temple, October 25, 1800. His father was Zachary Macaulay, a West India merchant and eminent philanthropist of the evangelical type, and son of Rev. John Macaulay, a Presbyterian minister in the West of Scotland. His mother was Selma Mills, the daughter of a bookseller of Bristol, of a Quaker family. His early education was domestic, and in the conversations and associations of such a home we find the germs and leanings of the future opinions which he so manfully upheld by his pen and voice. He entered Trinity College, Cambridge, at the age of eighteen, where he acquired a brilliant reputation as a scholar, both in mathematics and languages, and as a debater and writer. He twice won the Chancellor's medal for excellence in English literature, first in 1819; and in 1821 he obtained the Craven Scholarship. He took his first degree in 1822, was made Fellow of Trinity in the same year, and in 1825 was made Master of Arts-the same year in which his famous Essay on Milton appeared in the Edinburgh Review, the first of that series of critico-historical essays, which now constitute a distinct department of English literature. He had already begun his apprenticeship as a literary journalist, by contributions to Knight's Quarterly Magazine, several of which are of such merit as to be included in his collected works.

In 1826 he was called to the bar at Lincoln's Inn, but was borne along with the current of political agitation, then running high, and in which he shared as Whig, until he entered Parliament for the borough of Calne in 1830. In the memorable struggle for Parliamentary Reform, he made several effective speeches; and to the first reformed House was returned as member for Leeds in 1831. member he was always an unflinching advocate of religious freedom

[blocks in formation]

As a

-his first speech was in support of a bill to repeal the civil disabilities of the Jews. He defended the Roman Catholic Relief Bill, and when a member for the city of Edinburgh, in 1846, supported a grant to Maynouth College and other measures, calculated to correct abuses in the government of Ireland, and remove just discontent from that portion of the Empire. For this magnanimous policy he was ousted of his seat in 1847, but was returned without any personal effort on his part by the same constituency in 1852. In the Melbourne Ministry he was made Secretary for the Board of Control for India, and in 1738 he went out to India as a member of the Supreme Council. Here his chief labor was in the preparation of a new penal code, and a system of public instruction. To his study on the spot of British rule in India we owe his masterly essays on Clive and Warren Hastings.

In 1840 he was appointed War Secretary, and it would seem as if under its inspiration, he appeared in 1842 as the author of those martial ballads, the Lays of Ancient Rome. In 1846 he was made Paymaster-General. In 1848 appeared the first two volumes of his History of England from the accession of James II., in which he produced not merely the lives of kings, statesmen, and generals, but the development of arts and sciences and the progress of the people in every rank, in domestic comforts and good government. In 1849 he was chosen Lord-Rector of the University of Glasgow; and in 1855, the third and fourth volume of his History appeared 'with a rush for copies on the publishers and circulating libraries, such as only a popular novel usually exhibits.' In 1857 he was elected a foreign associate of the French Academy of Moral and Political Sciences; and in the same year he was made Baron Macaulay of Rothley, and in Dec. 28, 1859, he died. His remains were buried in Westminster Abbey. His works, which are his best monument, have been published in a uniform edition, by Lady Trevelyan.

From first to last he was the advocate of a broad and liberal system of public instruction-from the elementary school for the entire mass of the people to universities for the highest science and literature, as well as for the greatest practical utilities, in every section of the Empire; and he was one of the first to recognize the special value of different studies in mental culture, and helped, by his report on the mode of appointment to office in India by competitive examination, to inaugurate a civil service based on educational qualifications.

ACADEMICAL EDUCATION IN ENGLAND-1826.*

That there are defects-great and radical defects in the constitution and studies of the two Universities we are strongly inclined to believe. What those defects are we shall attempt to state with frankness and candor. We would earnestly entreat the admirers of the two Universities to reflect on the importance of this subject, the advantages of calm investigation, and the folly of trusting, in an age like the present, to mere dogmatism and invective. If the system which they love and venerate rest upon just principles, the examination which we propose to institute, into the state of its foundations, can only serve to prove their solidity. If they be unsound, we will not permit ourselves to think, that intelligent and honorable men can wish to disguise a fact which, for the sake of this country, and of the whole human race, ought to be widely known. Let them, in tead of reiterating assertions which leave the question exactly where they found it; in tead of turning away from all argument, as if the subject were one on which doubt partook of the nature of sin; instead of attributing to selfishness or malevolence, that which may at worst be harmless error, join us in coolly studying so interesting and momentous a point. As to this, however, they will please themselves. We speak to the English people. The public mind, if we are not deceived, is approaching to manhood. It has outgrown its swaddlingbands, and thrown away its play-things. It can no longer be amused by a rattle, or laid asleep by a song, or awed by a fairy tale. At such a time, we cannot doubt that we shall obtain an impartial hearing.

Objections to Oxford and Cambridge.

Our objections to Oxford and Cambridge may be summed up in two words, their wealth and their privileges. Their prosperity does not depend on the public approbation. It would therefore be strange if they deserved the public approbation. Their revenues are immense. Their degrees are, in some professions, indispensable. Like manufacturers who enjoy a monopoly, they work at such an advantage that they can venture to work ill.

Every person, we presume, will acknowledge that to establish an academic system on immutable principles, would be the height of absurdity. Every year sces the empire of science enlarged by the acquisition of some new province, or improved by the construction of some easier road. Surely the change which takes place in the state of knowledge, ought to be accompanied by a corresponding change in the method of instruction. In many cases the rude and imperfect works of early speculators ought to give place to the more complete and luminous performances of tho e who succeed them. Even the comparative value of languages is subject to great fluctuations. The same tongue which at one period may be richer that any other in valuable works, may, some centuries after, be poorer than any. That, while such revolutions take place, education ought to remain unchanged, is a proposition too absurd to be maintained for a moment.

If it be desirable that education should, by a gradual and constant change, adapt itself to the circumstances of every generation, how is this object to be secured? We answer-only by perfect freedom of competition. Under such a system, every possible exigence would be met. Whatever language, whatever art, whatever science, it might at any time be useful to know, that men would surely learn, and would as surely find instructors to teach. The professor who should persist in devoting his attention to branches of knowledge which had become useless, would soon be deserted by his pupils. There would be as much of every sort of information as would afford profit and pleasure to the possessor-and no more.

• Edinburgh Review: February, 1826. The London University.

But the riches and the franchises of our Universities prevent this salutary rivalry from taking place. In its stead is introduced an unnatural system of premiums, prohibitions, and apprenticeships. Enormous bounties are lavished on particular acquirements; and, in consequence, there is among our youth a glut of Greek, Latin, and Mathematies, and a lamentable scarcity of everything else.

University Studies too Few and not of the Right Kind.

We are by no means inclined to depreciate the studies which are encouraged at Oxford and Cambridge. We should reprobate with the same severity a system under which a like exclusive protection should be extended to French or Spanish, Chemistry or Mineralogy, Metaphysics or Political Economy. Some of these branches of knowledge are very important. But they may not always be equally important. Five hundred years hence, the Burmese language may contain the most valuable books in the world. Sciences, for which there is now no name, and of which the first rudiments are still undiscovered, may then be in the greatest demand. Our objection is to the principle. We abhor intellectual perpetuities. A chartered and endowed College, strong in it; wealth and in its degrees, does not find it necessary to teach what is useful, because it can pay men to learn what is useless. Every fashion which was in vogue at the time of its foundation, enters into its constitution and partakes of its immortality. Its abuses savor of the reality, and its prejudices vest in mortmain, with its lands. In the present instance, the consequences are notorious. We every day see clever men of four and five-and-twenty, loaded with academical honors and rewards,scholarships, fellowships, whole cabinets of medals, whole shelves of prize books, enter into life with their education still to begin, unacquainted with the history, the literature, we might almost say, the language of their country, unacquainted with the first principles of the laws under which they live, unacquainted with the very rudiments of moral and political science! Who will deny that this is the state of things? Or who will venture to defend it?

This is no new complaint. Long before society had so far outstripped the Colleges in the career of improvement as it has since done, the evil was noticed and traced to its true cause, by that great philosopher who most accurately mapped all the regions of science, and furnished the human intellect with its most complete Itinerary. "It is not to be forgotten," says Lord Bacon, "that the dedicating of foundations and donations to professory learning, hath not only had a malign influence upon the growth of sciences, but hath also been prejudicial to states and governments: For hence it proceedeth, that princes find a solitude in respect of able men to serve them in causes of state, because there is no education collegiate which is FREE, where such as were so disposed might give themselves to hi tories, modern languages, books or policy and civil discourse, and other like enablements unto causes of state." The warmest admirers of the present system will hardly deny that, if this was an evil in the sixteenth century, it must be a much greater evil in the nineteenth. The literature of Greece and Rome is now what it was then. That of every modern language has received considerable accessions. And surely, “books of policy and civil discourse" are as important to an English gentleman of the present day, as they could be to a tubject of James the First.

We repeat that we are not disparaging either the dead languages or the exact sciences. We only say that, if they are useful, they will not need peculiar encouragement, and that, if they are useless, they ought not to receive it. Those who maintain that the present system is necessary to pro

« AnteriorContinua »