again, private effort (that peculiar English way of doing things) set earnestly about the very same business: and even to this day, as you walk through many an English town, the quaint vision of little oldfashioned children, in knee-breeches and yellow stockings, testifies to the zeal and liberality of the contemporaries of Edward VI, and Queen Elizabeth. Aye, and if the grasping love of pelf-(the "Auri sacra fames") had not diverted this stream of pious benevolence into wholly illegitimate channels, we should be actually inheriting in this age, from the early times of the Reformation, wealth enough to place well nigh every child in the kingdom beyond the reach of ignorance and brutality.

In Scotland (as you well know) the parochial system of education, (to which thousands of this country owe their first mental enlightenment) dates its rise from the efforts of John Knox himself,-who may well bear the title of the Luther of the North, for his double zeal, both as an educationist, and a reformer. Nothing, I think, more clearly shews how imperfectly we have as YET carried out the ideas of the first reformers, than the lethargy into which (until lately indeed) the country has fallen in reference to the intellectual elevation of the people. And surely we cannot wonder that those men who talk about the danger of over-educating the working classes, should begin to find out that they themselves are, at heart, no friends to any kind of intellectual advancement; that they are becoming traitors to the cause of human reason; and having lost their hold here, are relapsing once more into that old,-stereotyped, stupid,-sluggish repose in mere authority,—the knell of which we had fain thought was rung three centuries ago.

The Reformation, then, we may set down as a great era, nay, the great era, in the history of human education: it was the age in which (the light of reason having become predominant) the necessity of developing the whole of the faculties became apparent, and

of developing them too, unstintingly, through all classes of the community. The only question was— how was this great end to be accomplished? In what way was human nature to be more and more perfected? What course should the educator follow, in order to bring about the highest results? This has been the real problem of our modern civilization, and it is a problem not yet fully solved.

For some time, (as was very natural,) great trust was placed in ancient methods. All teaching was to be done by words; the ancient masters were still to be the guide; grammar, and logic, and rhetoric, (taught according to the plan of the olden times) were to be the great instruments of human culture; nay, even the sciences were to derive their light from the relics of the old world-from Galen, Celsus, and Aristotle himself. The Baconian philosophy, however, introduced a mighty change (when once it became predominant) into the whole idea of scientific teaching. Men, it was seen, were no longer to learn from books, but from things themselves. They were no longer to trust to old-established propositions; but to draw the milk at first hand from the maternal bosom of nature herself. Here, accordingly, the old system of logical verbalism began to give way to a system of realism, in which the perceptions, and the observing powers were mingling their results with the generalizations of the understanding.

Locke, as is well known, wrote a work-(one of the earliest systematic works we have)-on the principles and methods of education. In this work he opposed the exclusive Latin training of the age, and shewed how important it was that a due regard to positive and real science should be joined with the more direct culture of the understanding; and how necessary it was, likewise, that physical health and practical activity of mind should both be kept in view, if the man was to become a really useful member of the community.

While efforts were thus making on various hands, to arrive at some complete idea of human education; -while some were adhering to the old idea of a mere Grammar School training,-others, like Locke, to a more real and scientific method of mental culture; and others, like Franke in Germany, to a more severe and ascetic system, based upon the notion of the inherent corruption of human nature, and the necessity of renovating it ab initio ;-while these various points of view (I say,) were being taken up and pursued in different quarters,-an author, from whom it might least have been expected, viz. Rousseau, sent forth into the world a treatise, which at once fixed upon it the regards of well nigh the whole of Europe. Rousseau's fundamental principle, as expounded in the Emile, is. —that human nature, viewed abstractedly, is essentially good, tending alike towards truth and virtue ;and that all the evils, sins, and miseries which afflict it, arise from the anomalies and imperfections of human society. He pictures, accordingly, an ideal case, in which an infant is to be brought up from the very first according to the principles he has laid down;-shews, how he is to be shielded from the corruptions of society;-how he is to be left open to the influences of nature and conscience;-how the mind is to be allowed to expand;-how, and in what order the faculties are to be enlightened;-by what means the passions are to be repressed; the will strengthened; the natural feelings of religious reverence developed; until he grows up a perfect specimen of what man ought to be, in his intellectual, moral, and social relations. This work of Rousseau, though by no means very deep in its philosophy, or profound in its analysis of the human faculties, yet produced a marked effect upon European society. It was formed just to meet the spirit of the age in which it was written. Denouncing the materialistic princi ples of the French philosophy on the one hand, but yet starting from a purely scientific and anti-theolo

gical basis, it just supplied the wants of those who were looking out for a safe path between the merest naturalism on the one side,-and the sternpietistic school on the other. Germany especially felt the effects. A number of men, who received the name of Illuminati, entered into a bond of philanthropy, to reform the evils of society, and educate its children on rational and moral principles. And much was such a reformation needed. The old method in Germany, as in England, was miserable enough to the poor victims, into whose minds it plagued and cramped. Mechanical reading, learning from memory, and an unintelligible half Latin jargon called grammar, were driven by dint of whip and spur. The most ordinary punishment inflicted was, to learn off the 119th Psalm by heart;-everything conspired to make the process dull, uninteresting, and repulsive. Against all this, the philanthropists protested; they formed themselves practically into a society for the suppression of cruelty to children, as we do of cruelty to animals; and, although (as might be expected) they ran into many foolish extremes, on the other side, and tried to make learning too much of a mere recreation, yet, by nurturing a kindly spirit towards the young, by studying their wants and aspirations, as well as their duties; by throwing a pleasing hue over the process of school management, and introducing a variety of useful topics hitherto excluded from the very atmosphere of the schoolroom, they did much to break down old abuses, and prepare the way for a better system of things. The most remarkable results of this whole movement, (which began, as I have shewn you, with Rousseau's Emile) were seen in the life and the labours of Pestalozzi. A man of purer motives;-of more inextinguishable zeal ;-of more tender and loving spirit ;— of more laborious energy than Pestalozzi never existed. His whole being was thrown into the work of social improvement based upon the education of

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the young;-for this he sacrificed his time, his money, his comfort; and in it he finally consumed life itself. The great merit of Pestalozzi (that for which the world owes him a lasting debt of gratitude,) was his demonstration of the hollowness and futility of mere verbal teaching, unless it is based upon real mental experiences, otherwise acquired. Nurtured in the philosophy of that age, Pestalozzi held that all human knowledge is based upon the senses,—that the perceptive powers, therefore, must be cultivated in the first instance,-and that whatever is afterwards taught by words, must be brought back to the testimony of the senses for its final verification. philosophy led him both into a truth and an error. The truth into which it led him was, as I have said, the hollowness of mere verbal instruction;-it shewed him that words have no positive force at all; that different persons may hold a hundred different ideas under them, without knowing it; that the bare verbal knowledge of propositions, therefore, does not in the slightest degree involve the knowledge of the thing itself; and that unless the intuitive powers are first enriched, all your subsequent teaching will be unavailing, because there is nothing in the mind answering to the terms you make use of. So far, Pestalozzi was right, and has driven home a lesson to the mind of the practical teacher, which he ought never to forget.

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On the other hand, his philosophy, or rather his principle of human knowledge, was undoubtedly wrong the principle, namely, that all human truth really lies hidden from the first in the senses. consequence of this error soon became visible in his teaching. His method of proceeding was a constant oscillation between sense and reason. Every principle in arithmetic was to be proved by an appeal to the ball-frame; every proposition in geometry demonstrated by presenting the fact involved in it to the eye; every mechanical power explained by shewing