England than that of any other nation on the continent. The states of Sweden consisted of four separate chambers or houses of parliament, in whom were vested the deliberative faculties of the government, as the executive powers were in the sovereign. By these chambers it was deemed a particular part of their duty to watch over the education of the heir apparent of the Swedish crown. For this

purpose, at particular seasons, the young prince was called upon to undergo a public examination before the states of the kingdom, and his proficiency in general knowledge, in religion, in the science of government, and in all those acquirements which are so necessary to be possessed by him who is destined to fill a throne, was gathered from the readiness with which he answered the various questions proposed to him by the clergy, the nobles, the burghers,

or the peasants. It was not a mere state ceremony, an imposing spectacle to captivate and delude the vulgar, but a real and efficient measure of national policy, and the young prince was dismissed with applause, or his instructors with censure, in proportion as he realized the hopes, or they disappointed the expectations of the representatives of the nation.

Had a ceremony of this kind prevailed in England, as free from restraint as it did in Sweden previous to the revolution by which the liberties of that people unhappily were wrested from them, we probably should not have heard of a complaint, too often made, of the bad education of our princes. Whether it is expedient that princes should be scholars, is a question, we think, which will not admit of much diversity of opinion: but it is the reproach of English education, that

ornamental objects are preferred to those of utility; and an invariable mode of forming a scholar is applied to all the purposes of life. It must be evident to every mind of the least reflection, that a system of education, however well calculated to form the private gentleman, the senator, or the nobleman, is not that system which is best adapted for the cultivation of the understanding of one whose high desti, nies call him to rule over millions, and to influence the fate of nations. Louis XIV. though by no means a well educated prince himself, but, on the contrary, through the arts of Cardinal Mazarin, brought up almost in profound ignorance, was fully sensible of the distinction that was necessary to be observed in the education of princes, when he called on Fenelon to undertake the instruction of the dauphin. Philip of Macedon, when he

confided the education of his son

Alexander

to Aristotle, said he

thanked the God not so much for having given him a son, as for having given him at a period when he could have the benefit of the instructions of so great a philosopher as Aristotle. The late Empress of Russia, in the education of her imperial grandsons, appears to have proceeded upon the same idea. It was not to make those young princes proficients in the belles lettres, to give them the manners of polished gentlemen, or accomplished courtiers, that she called the virtuous La Harpe from Switzerland, and committed to his care the future hopes of the empire which she had raised to such a pitch of splendour; but it was that their minds, by the tuition and diligence of one of the most enlightened and disinterested philosophers of modern times, might be imbued with an early love of virtue,

and, at a future day, prove worthy of the cares of the empire.

These observations may be differently applied. The philosopher in his closet may lay down a theory for the education of a young prince, which in his judgment shall appear infallible, yet, when it is attempted to be reduced to practice how abortive will the trial prove! The business of real life is so unlike what sages conceive in their closets, that it is no wonder their most beautiful speculations should often be found utterly inapplicable to it. Nero, it is well known, was the scholar of Seneca, one of the most severe and rigid moralists of all antiquity; but whatever might have been the value of Seneca's instructions, it is certain that a more atrocious monster than his pupil never dishonoured human nature. James I. rec 2