NEWMARKET.

BY THE EDITOR.

THE taste for general reading which is every day extending, and being more and more ministered to by the increasing flood of miscellaneous writing which the press is hourly pouring forth, is destined to work far more important results than a superficial consideration would lead us to imagine. The objection to it, that the interests of science and useful knowledge are by no means likely to profit from books written simply for the purposes of amusement, is urged conventionally, not from conviction. The fields of science have not yielded a harvest that there were none to gather. They have not only been reaped, but gleaned with industry and care. There has been no lack of labourers to collect the rich stores with which they abound; but, till the system of periodical publications became general, their combination and diffusion, the scheme of a literary commonwealth was never effectually attempted. By civilization, the social elements are converted into a mighty machine, in which the minutest particle of the complicated workmanship is brought to aid the general purpose. Each part of the engine is not equal in importance or value, but the meanest is necessary to enable it fitly to discharge its office. theory of the social and the literary condition is the

The same.

All are not

poets, logicians, divines, or orators; neither would exclusive perfection in any of the liberal arts confer on him who had attained it now, the consideration with which such possession was regarded in the earlier stages of society. We contemplate with wonder and admiration the breathing marble which antiquity has bequeathed us; yet we feel that, if the chisel of Praxiteles be no longer seen to compete with nature, the skill whose object is to combine the useful and ornamental, is no inefficient substitute for that whose sole occupation was to embellish.

The principle here contended for, though its application is general, we will only consider with reference to the present literary state of this country. It is true that the system of education has undergone a great revolution during the last twenty years; that it is infinitely better than it was, there is no doubt; but that it is still capable of improvement, that it requires great and radical reform, is equally true. The literary food of our public schools is almost wholly composed of Greek and Roman compounds, with scarce enough of the leaven of modern learning to make it wholesome or palatable. The monopoly so long enjoyed by the classics, will hereafter be looked upon as one of those chronological absurdities with which the page of history, in all ages, is defiled. It has often struck me as unaccountable, that the stage, whose proper office it is "to hold the mirror up to nature," has not more extensively availed itself of the grotesque moral crudities which, within the present century, have been sent, in shoals, from our schools and colleges, "into this breathing world, but half made up." He who, born within the circle compassed by the sound of Bow bells, is

made to inquire, by what process a goose is enabled to suckle her goslings, might not without success have sought his counterpart on the banks of Cam or Isis. So far from such ignorance being a reproach, it was actually assumed, that men might regard with awe the wisdom whose mighty labours and exalted studies soared above the concerns of every-day life. Of this style of affectation, a notable instance occurred in 1837, at the Spring Assizes at Norwich, when a judge of the land, addressing a jury, affirmed, that "he did not know the difference between a horse and a mare!" He who could perpetrate this folly is behind the spirit of the age in which he lives, no doubt, but it serves to illustrate the bias of early prejudicesit is typical of impressions which a perverse education engendered and left behind.

But how, it may be asked, do I associate the improved educational system at which we have already arrived, and which is so usefully advancing, with the taste for light reading so extensively promoted by the great diffusion of periodical literature? Nothing is of simpler solution.

The character of works of this nature is suited to the times for which they are written. By portraying the habits and tastes of the various divisions of which society is constituted, they become so many graphic delineations, or charts, of real life in its present state and relations. As a traveller to foreign countries, with a knowledge of the language alone of the people he was about to visit, was his condition, who drew from the works of fiction, professing to describe domestic manners and scenes during the last, and the commencement of the present, century, his ideas of the real business of life. That era was not

without its Fieldings, Smolletts, and a few like them, content to deal with the world as they found it; but what could they avail against the whole population of Parnassus, who had donned their stilts, and set off on a wild-goose chase in search of the romantic, the sentimental, and the pathetic? The effect of the class of publications now so popular, is to organize a healthy and a natural literary taste. Instead of appealing to the feelings and sensibilities through the medium of a maudlin, morbid sentimentality, they are intended to excite high and generous emotions by pictures drawn from nature, or to arouse a liberal spirit of inquiry, social and physical, from the consideration of which we may come with an accession of useful or amusing information. The consequence of a search after knowledge is always to create "an appetite by what it feeds on." The more we know, the more we find we have to acquire; hence the service bestowed upon the great cause of learning and science by such samples of the waters of life as induce us to drink deep of the Pierian spring.

To these important uses of the modern press, many others may be added, more humble in their office, but not the less real in their advantages. How often would we be induced to the indulgence of a stroll in some green path, whereas, if the penalty for tasting the liberal air was to be paid for with the preparation for the public promenade, we would forego the pleasure and profit altogether! Again, where marble or granite might be found too costly, how many a graceful design would go undeveloped, did there not exist materials of less price, whereof it could be constructed! While books maintained high prices, not