But great art must be sometimes used before they can thus impose upon the public. To this purpose a prologue written with some spirit generally precedes the piece, to inform us that it was composed by Shakespeare, or old Ben, or somebody else who took them for his model. A face of iron could not have the assurance to avow dislike; the theatre has its partisans who understand the force of combinations, trained up to vociferation, clapping of hands and clattering of sticks: and though a man might have strength sufficient to overcome a lion in single combat, he may run the risk of being devoured by an army of ants.

I am not insensible that third nights are disagreeable drawbacks upon the annual profits of the stage. I am confident it is much more to the manager's advantage to furbish up all the lumber which the good sense of our ancestors, but for his care, had consigned to oblivion. It is not with him, therefore, but with the public, I would expostulate; they have a right to demand respect, and surely those newly revived plays are no instances of the manager's deference.

I have been informed that no new play can be admitted upon our theatres unless the author chooses to wait some years, or, to use the phrase in fashion, till it comes to be played in turn. A poet thus can never expect to contract a familiarity with the stage, by which alone he can hope to succeed; nor can the most signal success relieve immediate want. Our Saxon ancestors had but one name for a wit and a witch. I will not dispute the propriety of uniting those characters then; but the man who, under the present discouragements, ventures to write for the stage, whatever claim he may have to the appellation of a wit, at least he has no right to be called a conjurer.

From all that has been said upon the state of our theatre we may easily foresee whether it is likely to improve or decline; and whether the freeborn muse can bear to submit to those restrictions which avarice or power would impose. For the future, it is somewhat unlikely that he hose labours are valuable, or who knows

value, will turn to the stage for either

fame or subsistence, when he must at o flatter an actor and please an audience

CHAPTER XI.

On Universities.

INSTEAD of losing myself in a subjec such extent, I shall only offer a few thoug as they occur, and leave their connex to the reader.

We seem divided, whether an educat formed by travelling or by a sedentary be preferable. We see more of the wo by travel, but more of human nature remaining at home; as, in an infirma the student who only attends to the a orders of a few patients is more likely understand his profession, than he w indiscriminately examines them all.

A youth just landed at the Brille rese bles a clown at a puppet-show; carria amazement from one miracle to andr from this cabinet of curiosities to t collection of pictures: but wonderig not the way to grow wise.

Whatever resolutions we set ourde not to keep company with our county abroad, we shall find them broker vis once we leave home. Among we consider ourselves as in a solituda a it is but natural to desire society.

Stran

In all the great towns of Europe: are to be found Englishmen residing. from interest or choice. These ge lead a life of continued debauchery. are the countrymen a traveller is like meet with.

This may be the reason why English are all thought to be mad or melan by the vulgar abroad. Their mone giddily and merrily spent among sha of their own country; and when the gone, of all nations the English bear w that disorder called the maladie du p

Countries wear very different appe ances to travellers of different cins stances. A man who is whirled thro Europe in a post-chaise, and the pilg who walks the grand tour on foot, form very different conclusions.

To see Europe with advantage, a m should appear in various circumstances fortune; but the experiment would bet dangerous for young men.

There are many things relative to other untries which can be learned to more vantage at home; their laws and policies e among the number.

The greatest advantages which result to uth from travel are an easy address, e shaking off national prejudices, and e finding nothing ridiculous in national culiarities.

The time spent in these acquisitions uld have been more usefully employed home. An education in a college seems erefore preferable.

We attribute to universities either too ich or too little. Some assert that they : the only proper places to advance ming; while others deny even their lity in forming an education. Both are

oneous.

Learning is most advanced in populous es, where chance often conspires with ustry to promote it; where the members his large university, if I may so call it, ch manners as they rise; study life, not ic, and have the world for correspon

ts.

he greatest number of universities have been founded in times of the greatest

rance.

lew improvements in learning are sel1 adopted in colleges until admitted ywhere else. And this is right: we ild always be cautious of teaching the ig generation uncertainties for truth. s, though the professors in universities been too frequently found to oppose advancement of learning, yet, when established, they are the properest ons to diffuse it.

here is more knowledge to be acquired one page of the volume of mankind, e scholar only knows how to read, than lumes of antiquity. We grow learned, wise, by too long continuance at

and support every day syllogistical disputations in school philosophy. Would not one be apt to imagine this was the proper education to make a man a fool? Such are the universities of Prague, Louvain, and Padua. The second is, where the pupils are under few restrictions, where all scholastic jargon is banished, where they take a degree when they think proper, and live not in the college, but the city. Such are Edinburgh, Leyden, Gottingen, Geneva. The third is a mixture of the two former, where the pupils are restrained, but not confined; where many, though not all, the absurdities of scholastic philosophy are suppressed, and where the first degree is taken after four years' matriculation. Such are Oxford, Cambridge, and

Dublin.

As for the first class, their absurdities are too apparent to admit of a parallel. It is disputed which of the two last are more conducive to national improvement.

Skill in the professions is acquired more by practice than study; two or three years may be sufficient for learning their rudiments. The universities of Edinburgh, &c. grant a licence for practising them when the student thinks proper, which our universities refuse till after a residence of several years.

The dignity of the professions may be supported by this dilatory proceeding; but many men of learning are thus too long excluded from the lucrative advantages which superior skill has a right to expect.

Those universities must certainly be most frequented, which promise to give in two years the advantages which others will not under twelve.

The man who has studied a profession for three years, and practised it for nine more, will certainly know more of his business than he who has only studied it

for twelve.

The universities of Edinburgh, &c. must certainly be most proper for the study of those professions in which men choose to turn their learning to profit as soon as possible.

The universities of Oxford, &c. are improper for this, since they keep the student from the world, which, after a certain time, is the only true school of improvement.

When a degree in the professions can be taken only by men of independent fortunes, the number of candidates in learning is lessened, and, consequently, the advancement of learning retarded.

This slowness of conferring degrees is a remnant of scholastic barbarity. Paris, Louvain, and those universities which still retain their ancient institutions, confer the doctor's degree slower even than we.

The statutes of every university should be considered as adapted to the laws of its respective government. Those should alter as these happen to fluctuate.

Four years spent in the arts (as they are called in colleges) is perhaps laying too laborious a foundation: entering a profession without any previous acquisitions of this kind is building too bold a superstructure.

Teaching by lecture, as at Edinburgh, may make men scholars if they think proper; but instructing by examination, as at Oxford, will make them so often against their inclination.

Edinburgh only disposes the student to receive learning; Oxford often makes him actually learned.

In a word, were I poor, I should send my son to Leyden or Edinburgh, though the annual expense in each, particularly in the first, is very great. Were I rich, I would send him to one of our own universities. By an education received in the first, he has the best likelihood of living; by that received in the latter, he has the best chance of becoming great.

We have of late heard much of the necessity of studying oratory. Vespasian was the first who paid professors of rhetoric for publicly instructing youth at Rome. However, those pedants never

made an orator.

The best orations that ever were spoken were pronounced in the parliaments of King Charles the First. These men never studied the rules of oratory.

Mathematics are, perhaps, too much studied at our universities. This seems a science to which the meanest intellects are equal. I forget who it is that says, "All men might understand mathematics, if they would."

The most methodical manner of lectur

ing, whether on morals or nature, is, rationally to explain, and then prod the experiment. The most instruc method is to show the experiment à curiosity is then excited, and attem awakened to every subsequent dedu Hence it is evident, that in a well-for education a course of history should precede a course of ethics.

The sons of our nobility are permi to enjoy greater liberties in our univers than those of private men. I should bå to ask the men of learning and virtce w preside in our seminaries the reason such a prejudicial distinction. Our ys should there be inspired with a love philosophy; and the first maxim an philosophers is, That merit only m distinction.

Whence has proceeded the vain ma ficence of expensive architecture in colleges? Is it that men study to advantage in a palace than in a cell? single performance of taste or genius a fers more real honours on its parent versity than all the labours of the dise

Surely pride itself has dictated 15 fellows of our colleges the absurd p of being attended at meals, and oth public occasions, by those poor men sho willing to be scholars, come in upee so charitable foundation. It implies 14 tradiction, for men to be at once k the liberal arts and at the same an treated as slaves; at once studying free and practising servitude.

CHAPTER XII. The Conclusion. EVERY subject acquires an advento importance to him who considers t application. He finds it more connected with human happiness that rest of mankind are apt to allow; hest consequences resulting from it whic not strike others with equal convic and still pursuing speculation beyond bounds of reason, too frequently bec ridiculously earnest in trifles or absara

It will perhaps be incurring this im tation, to deduce a universal degena of manners from so slight an origin as depravation of taste; to assert that, 1 nation grows dull, it sinks into debauch

tsuch, probably, may be the consequence literary decay; or, not to stretch the ught beyond what it will bear, vice and pidity are always mutually productive ach other.

Life, at the greatest and best, has been npared to a froward child, that must humoured and played with till it falls eep, and then all the care is over. Our 7 years are laboured away in varying its asures; new amusements are pursued h studious attention; the most childish uities are dignified with titles of importe; and the proudest boast of the most iring philosopher is no more than that provides his little playfellows the atest pastime with the greatest inno

ce.

Thus the mind, ever wandering after isement, when abridged of happiness one part, endeavours to find it on ther; when intellectual pleasures are greeable, those of sense will take the

The man who in this age is enured of the tranquil joys of study and ement may in the next, should Íearnbe fashionable no longer, feel an ition of being foremost at a horse se; or, if such could be the absurdity he times, of being himself a jockey. son and appetite are therefore masters ur revels in turn; and as we incline e one, or pursue the other, we rival Is or imitate the brutes. In the purof intellectual pleasures lies every te; of sensual, every vice.

is this difference of pursuit which ks the morals and characters of man; which lays the line between the htened philosopher and the halfht citizen; between the civil citizen illiterate peasant; between the lawing peasant and the wandering savage frica, -an animal less mischievous, inI, than the tiger, because endued with

The

fewer powers of doing mischief. man, the nation, must therefore be good, whose chiefest luxuries consist in the refinement of reason; and reason can never be universally cultivated, unless guided by taste, which may be considered as the link between science and common sense, the medium through which learning should ever be seen by society.

Taste will therefore often be a proper standard, when others fail, to judge of a nation's improvement or degeneracy in morals. We have often no permanent characteristics by which to compare the virtues or the vices of our ancestors with our own. A generation may rise and pass away without leaving any traces of what it really was; and all complaints of our deterioration may be only topics of declamation, or the cavillings of disappointment: but in taste we have standing evidence; we can with precision compare the literary performances of our fathers with our own, and from their excellence or defects determine the moral, as well as the literary, merits of either.

If, then, there ever comes a time when taste is so far depraved among us that critics shall load every work of genius with unnecessary comment, and quarter their empty performances with the substantial merits of an author, both for subsistence and applause; if there comes a time when censure shall speak in storms, but praise be whispered in the breeze, while real excellence often finds shipwreck in either; if there be a time when the muse shall seldom be heard, except in plaintive elegy, as if she wept her own decline, while lazy compilations supply the place of original thinking; should there ever be such a time, may succeeding critics, both for the honour of our morals, as well as our learning, say that such a period bears no resemblance to the present age!