Readers have, in good truth, multiplied exceedingly, and have waxed proud. It would require the intrepid accuracy of a Colquhoun to venture at the precise number of that vast company only, whose heads and hearts are dieted at the two public ordinaries of Literature, the circulating libraries and the periodical press. But what is the result? Does the inward man thrive on this regimen? Alas! if the average health of the consumers may be judged of by the articles of largest consumption; if the secretions may be conjectured from the ingredients of the dishes that are found best suited to their palates; from all that I have seen, either of the banquet or the guests, I shall utter my Profaccia with a desponding sigh. From a popular philosophy and a philosophic populace, Good Sense deliver us!

letters of the same size and splendour. "Why, dis is voonders above voonders!" exclaims the Dutchman, takes his seat as first comer, and soon fatigued by waiting, and by the very hush and intensity of his expectation, gives way to his constitutional somnulence, from which he is roused by the supposed showman at Hounslow, with a “In what name, Sir! was your place taken? Are you booked all the way for Reading ?-Now a Reading Public is (to my mind) more marvellous still, and in the third tier of Voonders above, Voonders."

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At present, however, I am to imagine for myself a very different audience. I appeal exclusively to men, from whose station and opportunities I may dare anticipate a respect able portion of that "sound book learnedness, into which our old public schools still con‐ tinue to initiate their pupils. I appeal to men in whom I may hope to find, if not philosophy, yet occasional impulses at least to philosophic thought. And here, as far as my own experience extends, I can announce one favorable symptom. The notion of our measureless superiority in good sense to our ancestors, so general at the commencement of the French Revolution, and for some years before it, is out of fashion. We hear, at least, less of the jargon of this enlightened age. After fatiguing itself, as performer or spectator in the giddy figure-dance of political changes, Europe has seen the shallow foundations of its self-complacent faith give way; and among men of influence and property, we have now more reason to apprehend the stupor of despondence, than the extravagancies of hope, unsustained by experience, or of self-confidence not bottomed on principle.

In this rank of life the danger lies, not in any tendency to innovation, but in the choice

of the means for preventing it. And here my apprehensions point to two opposite errors; each of which deserves a separate notice. The first consists in a disposition to think, that as the Peace of Nations has been disturbed by the diffusion of a false light, it may be re-established by excluding the people from all knowledge and all prospect of amelioration. O! O! never, never! never! Reflection and stirrings of mind, with all their restlessness, and all the errors that result from their imperfection, from the Too much, because Too little, are come into the world. The Powers, that awaken and foster the spirit of curiosity, are to be found in every village: Books are in hovel. The Infant's cries are every hushed with picture-books; and the Cottager's child sheds his first bitter tears over pages, which render it impossible for the man to be treated or governed as a child. Here as in so many other cases, the inconveniences that have arisen from a things' having become too general, are best removed by making it universal.

The other and contrary mistake proceeds from the assumption, that a national education will have been realized whenever the People at large have been taught to read and write.

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Now among the many means to the desired end, this is doubtless one, and not the least important. But neither is it the most so. Much less can it be held to constitute Education, which consists in educing the faculties, and forming the habits; the means varying according to the sphere in which the indivíduals to be educated are likely to act and become useful. I do not hesitate to declare, that whether I consider the nature of the discipline adopted, or the plan of poisoning the children of the poor with a sort of potential infidelity under the "liberal idea" of teaching those points only of religious faith, in which all denominations agree, I cannot but denounce the so called Lancastrian schools as pernicious beyond all power of compensation by the new acquirement of Reading and Writing.

But take even Dr. Bell's original and unsophisticated plan, which I myself regard as an especial gift of Providence to the human

*See Mr. Southey's Tract on the New or Madras system of Education especially toward to the conclusion, where with exquisite humor as well as with his usual poignancy of wit he has detailed Joseph Lancaster's disciplinarian Inventions. But even in the schools, that used to be called Lancastrian, these are, I believe, discontinued. The true perfection of discipline in a school is-The maximum of watchfulness with the minimum of punishment.

race; and suppose this incomparable machine, this vast moral steam-engine to have been adopted and in free motion throughout the Empire; it would yet appear to me a most dangerous delusion to rely on it as if this of itself formed an efficient national education. We cannot, I repeat, honor the scheme too highly as a prominent and necessary part of the great process; but it will neither supersede nor can it be substituted for sundry other measures, that are at least equally important. And these are such measures too, as unfortunately involve the necessity of sacrifices on the side of the rich and powerful more costly, and far more difficult than the yearly subscription of a few pounds! such measures as demand more self-denial than the expenditure of time in a committee or of eloquence in a public meeting.

Nay, let Dr. Bell's philanthropie end have been realized, and the proposed medicum of learning universal: yet convinced of its insufficiency to stem up against the strong currents set in from an opposite point, I dare not assure myself, that it may not be driven backward by them and become confluent with the evils, it was intended to preclude.

What other measures I had in contem