ART VII.-1. Education Reform, or the necessity of a National System of Education. By THOMAS WYSE, Esq., M. P. London: 1836. 8vo. pp. 553.

2. Hints on a System of Popular Education. By E. C. WINES. Philadelphia: 1838. 12mo. pp. 255.

3. Report on Elementary Public Instruction in Europe, made to the Thirty-sixth General Assembly of the State of Ohio. By C. E. STOWE. 12mo. pp. 61.

4. Annual Report of the Regents of the University of the State of New York, made to the Legislature, March 1, 1838. 8vo. pp. 220.

No one of the many enterprises for the moral improvement of mankind, now claiming public attention, is of such momentous interest, as that which forms the subject of the publications placed at the head of this article:-how shall the rising generations of man be prepared for their duty and their destiny? is the true import of the question they present. In this wide sense, it is a question of very recent origin-the plan of making education universal and a concern of the state, is a suggestion of the present age, and in claiming for it this honor, we are not forgetful of what is due to New England, and Scotland, for their early established free and parochial schools. The usages of antiquity in relation to the whole matter were entirely different from those of modern times; education was then altogether an individual care-there were no national institutions of learning-none for public gratuitous instruction. The schools in Persia, Egypt, Palestine, and India, were royal, or priestly, or Braminic; the schools of philosophy in Greece were limited to the single object which their name expresses, and not intended for youthful disciples. The education of children was everywhere domestic; the training was parental, and the teaching private; which system was continued when they advanced to maturer age. The laws of Lycurgus and Solon did not form an exception-the Spartan education was purely military, for public service-the Athenian was not paid out of the public treasury. The rhetorical schools

of Rome in her imperial days, and the Athenæa at Athens, may have answered some of the purposes of our modern universities, but they were open only to a small portion of the community,

and they furnish no reason for believing that general, intellectual culture, was ever regarded as an essential element of ancient civilization. Nor did the introduction of Christianity materially affect the condition of society in this respect; it is not its province to supersede the necessity of human exertion in anything, which by the laws of man's nature depends on the exercise of his own faculties. Besides, at the time when its authority was first recognized, the world was scourged by devastating wars, and wide spreading invasions, which would have defeated every effort to establish institutions of learning, had any been attempted. The little there was of learning assumed the cowl, and fled for refuge to the cloister; the clergy alone had the keys of knowledge, and they opened its treasures only to those whom they trained for their own order. Conventual and cathedral schools, which they superintended, instructed but a small number, and confined their instruction to a very narrow circle of studies. This circle was first enlarged by the liberal mind of Charlemagne ; he formed plans for a broad system of national education-every parish was to have its common schools, and every bishop's see and convent, a higher seminary for the instruction of the clergy and public officers;-unhappily for the great cause he had espoused, his life was too short for the accomplishment of his vast projects of improvement; and as the inheritors of his throne were not also inheritors of his genius and spirit, these projects were either forgotten or neglected. Not a century afterward, a similar attempt was made in England by the wise and benevolent Alfred, and in like manner with only partial success; the splendid school establishments which he founded, scarcely outlived his own time. When we examine minutely into the plans of education formed by these two great princes, we find them narrow and exclusive, compared with the system of our own days, broad and liberal as they were for the times in which they originated; the schools of Charlemagne prove to have been establishments substantially ecclesiastical, and those of Alfred open only to the children of freeholders possessed of two ploughs; and they certainly did not sow the seeds from which more popular institutions were to spring, as neither of the countries in which they were established has as yet produced such fruits. For centuries there was no subsequent attempt to provide institutions for public instruction, as liberal even as those just cited; but as soon as learning escaped from the cloisters, it was everywhere greeted with a generous and general enthusiasm; thousands and tens of thousands collected in voluntary societies to listen to its

revelations which societies received the name of universities, as the teachers and students were united in one corporate body. Thus, these establishments, vilified as aristocratic, were, in their origin, purely popular gatherings-a rush of the multitude, thirsting for knowledge, to the fountain which had burst forth to supply it. It was not a royally endowed institution; it was the eloquence of a poor Benedictine monk that so crowded Paris with students in the twelfth century, as to make it necessary to extend the walls of the city, their number, as is said by contemporaneous writers, exceeding that of its stated inhabitants. The impulse once given, or rather the shackles once removed from the human mind, a desire for knowledge spread throughout Europe, and filled it with universities. Still the volume of man's destiny was not then sufficiently unrolled to develop the great improving principle, that now promises more for the elevation of his individual character, and the amelioration of his social condition, than all other influences, Christianity excepted. It was an intellectual and not a moral light that broke forth upon that age; it dispelled ignorance, but it did not warm the social affections; even the triumph of liberty was but partial-it established republics in Italy, and freed the communes in France and Germany, but the use of the victory was rather selfish than generous -the few were enfranchised, the many were left manacled-the doors of the upper rooms only of the prison were opened, those of the cells and dungeons remained as firmly barred and bolted as ever. A system of popular education could not therefore at that time have been devised; no such notion could have entered into the breasts of those who alone had power to establish it, and there was no people, properly speaking, to receive the benefits of it; a great political action, which required centuries to mature and effect, was the necessary precursor of this grand step in the march of humanity.

Various opportunities for intellectual improvement were provided for a portion of the community, by the chapter, and charity, and other schools for higher instruction. The intercourse which the Crusaders had opened with the East, and still more the flight of many learned Greeks from Constantinople, made Western Europe acquainted with the precious relics of ancient learning of which that city had been the depository, and determined the course of all higher mental culture and discipline from that time to the present, and, as we hope, until genius directed by philosophy shall invent a more perfect language than the Greek, and the inspirations of the poetic muse breathe forth in loftier

strains than 'those of Homer. From the time of the discovery of America, which happened not long after the revival of learning and the invention of printing, until the beginning of the last century, no important change was made in the system of education generally established in Europe. The schools confined their instructions to the vernacular languages, the Greek and Roman classics, and mathematics, to which in the universities were added scientific and professional studies, and but few were permitted to enjoy these privileges; by far the greater part of the youth in civilized, christian Europe, were denied an opportunity of acquiring even elementary knowledge. It is certainly strange that mind, which is given by God as the distinctive characteristic of human beings, should have been of so little account by society, in providing for the welfare of a large portion of its members, but not more strange than many other impositions to which men have submitted from want of spirit to free themselves from them. The reasons already suggested will certainly explain, if they do not justify, the tardy recognition of the claims of humanity for a more comprehensive system of moral and intellectual improvement, and the rapid survey of the action of the state with respect to education at different periods of the world, shows that the modern ideas on this subject have naturally arisen from an extension of man's political privileges. If the rights of citizens are to be exercised by all, the duties of citizens must be understood by all, and the means of knowledge open to all. What makes a nation great, if it be not some grand achievement for the benefit of mankind. One such, ours has already accomplished, but that, all-glorious as it was, cannot alone be the fulfilment of our destiny; we have set the first example of a nation of self-governing freemen-humanity demands of us a guaranty for the success of the experiment, by giving to our youth such an education as will enable them to perpetuate their birthright. We must not believe that we comply with the spirit of the guaranty, unless we provide as fully for the inculcation of moral principle, as for the extension of knowledge. It would be a fatal error to regard instruction as the whole of education; and we are not led to think it so, because statistical reports show that many crimes have multiplied, in proportion as the people have been taught to read and write, for we have not much confidence in figures as an estimate of morals; it is too plain a common sense principle to need such a confirmation.

In the remarks we may make on popular education, we hope not to be misunderstood; we declare in the outset, that we hold up

both hands in support of it, but we do not recognize for education the charlatanism which asumes the name. To secure all the blessings it is capable of bestowing, it must be begun at a suitable age, be conducted by able and well trained teachers, and embrace all its proper objects-it must be a thorough bringing up—a nurture of the heart, as well as of the head, and the springs of knowledge must flow with waters from the fountain of life. We differ from

those of its friends, who would make infant schools the cornerstone of the fabric. The voice of nature and of reason cries out against a system, which transfers the child from its mother's arms, or the nursery, to the pinfold of an infant school room, where with ninety and nine other lambs of the flock he is penned up to bleat away several hours of tedious confinement, restrained from every expression of free and playful and natural vivacity if he moves, it must be with the stateliness of a veteran soldier-for amusement, he has the manoeuvres of a wearisome drill; an abacus is his rattle, an uncomfortable and crowded bench his rocking horse, and a sort of treadmill his hippodrome-his infant mind is subjected to the culture of a forcing house and the machinery of a manufactory—he must listen to, remember, and lisp out, twenty-two lessons on material objects, fourteen on the senses, seventeen on matters and things in general, and an indefinite number on classification, comparison, analogy, and other like simple subjects. "The ideas imparted by the lessons in these four series," says an advocate of the system, "are sufficient from two years old to six, the infant school period." Sufficient, in one sense they certainly are; but as to the knowledge acquired by them, which is claimed to be, above all, real, we believe it to be as unreal and evanescent as the dreams which enter by the ivory portals of sleep. Dr. Mayo, the great promoter of the plan of instruction by lessons on objects, as they are called, is rather more reasonable; he waits until his pupils are eight years of age, before he allows them to discover scientifically that sugar is sweet, that knives will cut, glass break, sealing-wax melt — that the eye is for seeing, the ear for hearing, and the limbs and other parts of the body for some appropriate use. The experience of the Edinburgh school pronounces this an uncalled for loss of time; with the aid of the Cheam-patent educator, they effect a development of any and all the intellectual faculties, before the six years are passed;-the little girls and boys, by a certain arrangement, like that of the pins on the cylinder of a barrel organ, with a master or mistress to turn the crank, are made to discourse divinely on Geography, Astronomy, and the whole cir