article is glad to acknowledge his own early obligations. Nor could better service be rendered to the cause of historical instruction than by publishing a volume of prints of universal history, accompanied with a very short description of each. Correctness of costume in such prints, or good taste in the drawing, however desirable if they can be easily obtained, are of very subordinate importance: the great matter is that the print should be striking, and full enough to excite and to gratify curiosity. By these means a lasting association is obtained with the greatest names in history, and the most remarkable actions of their lives while their chronological arrangement is learnt at the same time from the order of the pictures; a boy's memory being very apt to recollect the place which a favourite print holds in a volume, whether it comes towards the beginning, middle, or end, what picture comes before it, and what follows it. Such pictures should contain as much as possible the poetry of history: the most striking characters, the most heroic actions, whether of doing or of suffering; but they should not embarrass themselves with its philosophy, with the causes of revolutions, the progress of society, or the merits of great political questions. Their use is of another kind, to make some great name, and great action of every period, familiar to the mind; that so in taking up any more detailed history or biography, (and education should never forget the importance of preparing a boy to derive benefit from his accidental reading,) he may have some association with the subject of it, and may not feel himself to be on ground wholly unknown to him. He may thus be led to open volumes into which he would otherwise have never thought of looking: he need not read them through-indeed it is sad folly to require either man or boy to read through every book they look at, but he will see what is said about such and such persons or actions; and then he will learn by the way something about other persons and other actions; and will have his stock of associations increased, so as to render more and more information acceptable to him.

After this foundation, the object still being rather to create an appetite for knowledge than to satisfy it, it would be desirable to furnish a boy with histories of one or two particular countries, Greece, Rome, and England, for instance, written at no great length, and these also written poetically much more than philosophically, with much liveliness of style, and force of painting, so as to excite an interest about the persons and things spoken of. The absence of all instruction in politics or political economy, nay even an absolute erroneousness of judgment on such matters, provided always that it involves no wrong principle in morality, are comparatively of slight importance. Let the boy gain, if

possible, a strong appetite for knowledge to begin with; it is a later part of education which should enable him to pursue it sensibly, and to make it, when obtained, wisdom.

But should his education, as is often the case, be cut short by circumstances, so that he never receives its finishing lessons, will he not feel the want of more direct information and instruction in its earlier stages? The answer is, that every thing has its proper season, and if summer be cut out of the year, it is vain to suppose that the work of summer can be forestalled in spring. Undoubtedly, much is lost by this abridgment of the term of education, and it is well to insist strongly upon the evil, as it might, in many instances, be easily avoided. But if it is unavoidable, the evil consequences arising from it cannot be prevented. Fulness of knowledge and sagacity of judgment are fruits not to be looked for in early youth; and he who endeavours to force them does but interfere with the natural growth of the plant, and prematurely exhaust its vigour.

In the common course of things, however, where a young person's education is not interrupted, the later process is one of exceeding importance and interest. Supposing a boy to possess that outline of general history which his prints and his abridgments will have given him, with his associations, so far as they go, strong and lively, and his desire of increased knowledge keen, the next thing to be done is to set him to read some first rate historian, whose mind was formed in, and bears the stamp of, some period of advanced civilization, analogous to that in which we now live. In other words, he should read Thucydides or Tacitus, or any writer equal to them, if such can be found, belonging to the third period of full civilization, that of modern Europe since the middle ages. The particular subject of the history is of little moment, so long as it be taken neither from the barbarian, nor from the romantic, but from the philosophical or civilized stage of human society; and so long as the writer be a man of commanding mind, who has fully imbibed the influences of his age, yet without bearing its exclusive impress. And the study of such a work under an intelligent teacher becomes indeed the key of knowledge and of wisdom: first it affords an example of good historical evidence, and hence the pupil may be taught to notice from time to time the various criteria of a credible narrative, and by the rule of contraries to observe what are the indications of a testimony questionable, suspicious, or worthless. Undue scepticism may be repressed by showing how generally truth has been attained when it has been honestly and judiciously sought; while credulity may be checked by pointing out, on the other hand, how manifold are the errors into which those are betrayed whose intellect or

whose principles have been found wanting. Now too the time is come when the pupil may be introduced to that high philosophy which unfolds "the causes of things." The history with which he is engaged presents a view of society in its most advanced state, when the human mind is highly developed, and the various crises which affect the growth of the political fabric are all overpast. Let him be taught to analyze the subject thus presented to him; to trace back institutions, civil and religious, to their origin; to explore the elements of the national character, as now exhibited in maturity, in the vicissitudes of the nation's fortune, and the moral and physical qualities of its race; to observe how the morals and the mind of the people have been subject to a succession of influences, some accidental, others regular; to see and remember what critical seasons of improvement have been neglected, what besetting evils have been wantonly aggravated by wickedness or folly. In short, the pupil may be furnished as it were with certain formulæ, which shall enable him to read all history beneficially; which shall teach him what to look for in it, how to judge of it, and how to apply it.

Education will thus fulfil its great business, as far as regards the intellect, to inspire it with a desire of knowledge, and to furnish it with power to obtain and to profit by what it seeks for. And a man thus educated, even though he knows no history in detail but that which is called ancient, will be far better fitted to enter on public life than he who could tell the circumstances and the date of every battle and every debate throughout the last century; whose information in the common sense of the term, about modern history, might be twenty times more minute. The fault of systems of classical education in some instances has been, not that they did not teach modern history, but that they did not prepare and dispose their pupils to acquaint themselves with it afterwards; not that they did not attempt to raise an impossible superstructure, but that they did not prepare the ground for the foundation, and put the materials within reach of the builder.

That impatience, which is one of the diseases of the age, is in great danger of possessing the public mind on the subject of education; an unhealthy restlessness may succeed to lethargy. Men are not contented with sowing the seed unless they can also reap the fruit; forgetting how often it is the law of our condition, that "one soweth and another reapeth." It is no wisdom to make boys prodigies of information; but it is our wisdom and our duty to cultivate their faculties each in its season, first the memory and imagination, and then the judgment; to furnish them with the means, and to excite the desire of improving themselves, and to wait with confidence for God's blessing on the result.

THE

DISCIPLINE OF PUBLIC SCHOOLS.

This article appeared in the Quarterly journal of Education of 1835, as a reply to a previous censure in that Miscellany of the "Flogging and Fagging" as practised at Winchester School.

LIBERAL principles and popular principles are by no means necessarily the same and it is of importance to be aware of the difference between them. Popular principles are opposed simply to restraintliberal principles to unjust restraint. Popular principles sympathize with all who are subject to authority, and regard with suspicion all punishments-liberal principles sympathize, on the other hand, with authority, whenever the evil tendencies of human nature are more likely to be shown in disregarding it than in abusing it. Popular principles seem to have but one object-the deliverance of the many from the control of the few. Liberal principles, while generally favourable to this same object, yet pursue it as a means, not as an end; and therefore they support the subjection of the many to the few under certain circumstances, when the great end, which they steadily keep in view, is more likely to be promoted by subjection than by independence. For the great end of liberal principles is indeed "the greatest happiness of the greatest number," if we understand that the happiness of man consists more in his intellectual well doing than in his physical; and yet more in his moral and religious excellence than in his intellectual.

It must be allowed, however, that the fault of popular principles, as distinguished from liberal, has been greatly provoked by the long-continued prevalence of principles of authority which are no less illiberal. Power has been so constantly perverted that it has come to be generally suspected. Liberty has been so constantly unjustly restrained, that it has been thought impossible that it should ever be indulged too freely. Popular feeling is not quick in observing the change of times and circumstances: it is with difficulty brought to act against a longstanding evil; but, being once set in motion, it is apt to overshoot its

mark, and to continue to cry out against an evil long after it has disappeared, and the opposite evil is become most to be dreaded. Something of this excessive recoil of feeling may be observed, I think, in the continued cry against the severity of the penal code, as distinguished from its other defects; and the same disposition is shown in the popular clamour against military flogging, and in the complaints which are often made against the existing system of discipline in our schools.

The points which are attacked in this system are two-flogging and fagging; and we will first consider the question of flogging. We have nothing to do with arguments against the excessive or indiscriminate use of such a punishment: it is but idle to attack what no one defends, and what has at present hardly any real existence. The notion of a schoolmaster being a cruel tyrant, ruling only by the terror of the rod, is about as real as the no less terrific image of Bluebeard. The fault of the old system of flogging at Winchester, alluded to in your last Number, was not its cruelty, but its inefficiency; the punishment was so frequent and so slight as to inspire very little either of terror or of shame. In other schools, eighty or a hundred years ago, there may have been a system of cruel severity, but scarcely, I should imagine, within the memory of any one now alive. But the argument against all corporal punishment applies undoubtedly to an existing state of things; and this argument, therefore, I shall proceed to consider.

"Corporal punishment," it is said, "is degrading." I well know of what feeling this is the expression; it originates in that proud notion of personal independence which is neither reasonable nor Christian, but essentially barbarian. It visited Europe in former times with all the curses of the age of chivalry, and is threatening us now with those of Jacobinism. For so it is, that the evils of ultra-aristocracy and ultra-popular principles spring precisely from the same source—namely, from selfish pride-from an idolatry of personal honour and dignity in the aristocratical form of the disease-of personal independence in its modern and popular form. It is simply impatience of inferiority and submission-a feeling which must be more frequently wrong or right, in proportion to the relative situation and worthiness of him who entertains it, but which cannot be always or generally right except in beings infinitely more perfect than man. Impatience of inferiority felt by a child towards his parents, or by a pupil towards his instructors, is merely wrong, because it is at variance with the truth: there exists a real inferiority in the relation, and it is an error, a fault, a corruption of nature, not to acknowledge it.

Punishment, then, inflicted by a parent or a master for the purposes of correction, is in no true sense of the word degrading; nor is it the