In Oxford, Logic is acquired, like Greek and Latin, altogether by private tuition, but morals constitute scarcely any part of the academical course; a deficiency which we have heard much regretted by the well-wishers of that great seminary. In the Scotch colleges, morals form a principal object of attention: but the manner of teaching varies in the different Universities.

At Glasgow the business of this class is conducted so nearly upon the plan of the logic class in the same university, that it is almost unnecessary to detail it at length. The professor lectures five hours in the week, and employs six in reading the exercises of his pupils, and in recapitulating and illustrating in various ways the subject of his prelections. He prescribes essays once a-week, which must be written by every individual; besides which, he encourages voluntary exercises on topics selected by the students themselves, either immediately from his lectures, or from subjects closely connected with them. There is another practice kept up at Glasgow, which can neither be too much applauded nor too generally imitated, I mean the custom of setting apart three hours in the week for reading the philosophical works of Cicero and the Novum Organum of Lord Bacon, an exercise which serves the double purpose of making the student cultivate or retain his acquaintance with the Latin language, and of giving the professor an opportunity of setting forth the doctrines of the old philosophy, as well as the principles of the new. A lecture is pronounced upon a very difficult subject, in the hearing of a hundred and fifty or two hundred boys or very young men; concerning which they are not once asked a question, not once called upon to arrange their ideas, or to give one proof that they have paid the least attention. No elementary class in any other university of Great Britain is taught in this manner. At St. Andrew's, where the moral class meets but one hour a-day, as at Edinburgh, there are examinations and exercises. At Glasgow it meets two hours a-day, and one is set apart for exercitations. At Aberdeen it meets three hours a-day, and the heads of every lecture are dictated to the students, who commit them to writing. Some sort of means, in short, is used every where but at Edinburgh, to ascertain whether the young men know what is going forward, whether they are diligent and do any thing at home, what difficulties they encounter, and what assistance they may require.

The natural philosophy or physic class at Edinburgh, I am sorry to say, is conducted quite in the same way as that of ethics; a lecture is delivered five times a-week, which the students are left to improve as they see fit, having neither examinations to attend nor exercises to perform.

At Glasgow, on the other hand, the professor not only delivers a lecture every day; but he also devotes an hour to go over again with his pupils the subject of it in the way of examination; and a third hour, three times a-week, for a course of experiments, Thus fourteen hours are employed weekly in that seminary, to REV. SEPT. 1817.

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teach the same branch of science which in Edinburgh is got over in five hours; a circumstance which alone would lead to suspect deficiency in the means of instruction which are used in it.'

After these comments on the Universities of Edinburgh and Glasgow, Mr. R. proceeds to pass in review the minor institutions of Aberdeen and St. Andrew's. In these seminaries, the number of students is much smaller; and the professors are enabled, without any extra-exertion, to act up to the plan which he recommends of examining and prescribing essays to the young men. It is to be regretted, however, that in these colleges, as at Edinburgh, very little stress is laid on the public examination at the end of the term or session. Glasgow (p. 159. et seqq.) is the only northern University that employs this potent method of stimulating the industry of youth. An account of the improved method of conducting examinations in late years at Oxford and Cambridge is given at p. 154., and the example is strongly recommended to imitation on the other side of the Tweed.

Before we advert to the second of Mr. R.'s tracts, we shall introduce a few observations respecting the first of them, and the author. He allows (p. 90.) that he is a young writer, and his composition bears evident marks of the ardour and inattention to method that are common in early essays. Repetition, vehement censure, and a want of deliberation in stating the arguments for and against a question, are all blemishes of his treatise, and diminish greatly the value of his remarks. His style, moreover, is pervaded by an habitual diffuseness; and he occasionally uses stiff words, indicative not of pedantry, but of his want of familiarity with the practice of composition. Thus he employs the word curriculum' repeatedly for what might as well be called in plain English "a course of study." In another passage, he speaks of teaching boys "the laws and constitution of verse; and (in p. 63.) of explaining the canons of Catholic taste. His sentences also are too long; and his different letters or sections should have had a notice of the contents prefixed to each. A subsequent edition of his tract, however, will easily admit of a correction of these errors, and of putting his arguments into that plain style which may adapt them to the comprehension of parents in general, as well as of literary men.

Another error of an ardent writer consists in being hurried along by a predilection for a particular train of reasoning, without allowing himself to be restrained by stopping to take a negative view of the subject. Mr.R., like other enthusiastic advocates for the diffusion of general knowlege, does not seem aware of

the

the length of time that is necessary to attain eminence in any particular pursuit; nor of the resolution with which he who aims at this point should restrict his excursions into other departments of study. He animadverts very justly on the impropriety of teaching the classics to youths who are intended for a mercantile life: but he omits (p. 57.) the almost equally necessary recommendation that those who hope for distinction in any specific department of literature should, soon after the termination of their college-course, bid adieu to miscellaneous inquiry, and fix their minds in the selected direction of their labours. Under this impression, we can by no means agree with him in his encomiums (p. 144.) on the prolonged cultivation of mathematics; or consider it as advisable except for those who intend to make it a pursuit or a professional object for life. Mr. R. seems to be a convert to the notion that mathematical study tends to fix the attention, and to give a habit of careful reasoning in the affairs of life: but we apprehend that this doctrine will scarcely be sanctioned either by men of intercourse who have watched the practical result of such study on individuals, or by the philosophic observers' who draw their conclusions in their closet from the radical difference between moral and mathematical evidence. Nay, to come to a plain example, we apprehend that a theoretical mathematician will be found very indifferently prepared to give an opinion on a practical point of engineering; a circumstance to which we advert as illustrative of the fundamental difference in the habits necessary for success in a line which, to the common observer, appears separated only by a slight discrimination.

Classical study has evidently the advantage of a closer connection with the feelings and habits of ordinary life. It embraces, likewise, a larger portion of the subjects which ought to be familiar to a well educated mind; and we agree with Mr. R. that those who are capable of relishing the admired writers of Greece and Rome would on no account consent to relinquish the gratification afforded by them.' Yet it is equally clear that to follow up this course, with all the minuteness and attention to verbal criticism which are required at Oxford, would form a large inroad on our time, and would be advisable only in a case in which it is meant that our future occupation shall consist in a great measure in teaching or writing on such subjects. Whoever intends to confine himself to a particular branch of study, such as oratory, morals, poetry, modern history, or biography, will not find at his disposal more time than is necessary for the perusal of the writers, whether antient or modern, in his specific department.

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department. Those whose sanguine minds indispose them to receive these negative admonitions will do well to remember, that to diversify our objects is not only to subject ourselves to a loss of time, but to blunt our faculties of acquisition. If we turn to a familiar example, such as the acquisition of a living language in addition to our own, we shall find our progress in the one accompanied by a partial loss of the other. When, by dint of long study and practice, we succeed in making French as familiar to us as it is to a native of France, we shall perceive that, as in the case of Mr. Gibbon, our thoughts will occur to us first in that language, and the consequence will be a diminished facility in the use of our mother-tongue. Mr. Hume, without passing many years in France, allowed his English style to bear the marks of French idioms; a fact to which we might add twenty others, in proof of the fallacy of attempting to be what is called "a general scholar." In literature, as in other things, the true plan is to aim at nothing beyond a mediumknowlege in matters distinct from our professional pursuits. It is in this respect that we recognize the advantages of a Scotish course: which has great variety, and gives a young man that partial knowlege of classics, mathematics, morals, and physics, which suffices to divest him of ignorance; without carrying him so far as to cause a loss of time that would be injurious to the prosecution of the particular branch, on which he may fix as his principal object through life.

While we thus differ in a few points from Mr. R., we must express ourselves highly satisfied with the general character of his essay; and we trust that it will be only a prelude to a more finished composition on the subject: in which, after having re-arranged his own ideas, and studied the small portion of useful observation that is to be found in preceding writers, he may give to the public a work of permanent utility. We should invite him to consider the manner in which the late improvements in education, ascribed to Bell and Lancaster, may be applied to the higher branches of it. Their chief merit seems to consist not in facilitating by any new discovery the acquisition of knowlege, but in keeping alive the attention of youth, and in thus converting a toil into a pleasure. A continued contemplation of the subject of education might suggest a number of minor considerations: such as the expediency of placing youths at our English Universities under the eye of the tutor at other hours than those of lecture; and of restricting them in the appropriation of the money remitted by their parents, by depositing it in the hands of a college-officer. Much, we are aware, has been done in the way of amelioration at Oxford and Cambridge within the

last

last ten or twelve years: but it relates chiefly to public examination, and leaves open a wide field for improvement concerning both the interior discipline of the particular colleges and the introduction of new objects of general study.

Mr. Russel's second tract is similar to its predecessor in point of plan, and contains, in many places, a repetition with additional illustrations of the views and arguments already before the public. Unluckily, together with what was valuable in his first production, Mr. R. has retained that which we have pointed out as exceptionable, and as materially hurtful to the force of his reasoning: we mean a strange want of brevity in diction, and an almost equal want of method in classing his materials. He sets out, however, with dividing his present essay into three parts, which treat, Ist, Of the Study of the Classics: 2dly, Of that of Moral and Natural Philosophy; and 3dly, Of the Importance of public University

examinations.

Ist. We have already seen that classical studies in Scotland ought, in Mr. R.'s opinion, to be carried to a much farther length at school; on the plan of postponing the removal of a youth to college until he has attained an age, and habits of attention, that may lead him to make a discreet use of the greater share of freedom which is allowed in the disposal of his time at the higher seminary. Why, he asks, should we remove our children, while they are mere boys, from school, where they are taught ten months in the year, to college, where they are taught during only six? At their early age, a daily examination is requisite, because boys have little idea of learning a lesson unless they are called to repeat it; and they are inclined, otherwise, to think that their labour is lost. Now a daily examination is totally out of the question in the numerous classes of the Scotch Universities; in fact, it has not unfrequently been the practice to call up only the better scholars, and to leave the others, after a few unsuccessful efforts, to the unavoidable consequence of their dullness and inattention. The age of thirteen or fourteen requires much more the pointed superintendence and strict discipline of a school-master, than the lax and confiding treatment of a professor. In saying this, we by no means allude to corporal punishment, but to the habit of close inspection, frequent examination, and taking rank in a class according to the capacity evinced; considerations of much more energetic operation on a youth's mind than the vague recommendation of the value of learning, or of the propriety of acquitting himself to the satisfaction of his relatives. Yet so strangely are parents prepossessed in favour of college-instruction, on the

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