warning. I might have produced an instance in the Drama, where such is our fondness for little things, that we have determined to crowd to no play but children's play. And so profitable has this become, that in order to prevent the publick from being imposed on by old young Rosciuses, and stunted performers, the managers are determined to apply to the nurseries at first hand. This excellent plan, and the increasing taste for pantomime, will complete that facility of being pleased which I have thought proper to celebrate in my present lucubration. And surely, if extreme good-nature requires no apology, and if they are to be com→ mended, who, instead of being fastidious in taste or temper, are pleased with every trifle exhibited before them, I shall hope that what I have advanced will amount to all the vindication of which the parties alluded to in this Paper are capable, and I flatter myself it will appear to be all which they can reasonably expect.

THE PROJECTOR. N° 48.

Inspicere, tanquam in speculum, in vitas omnium Jubeo: Atque ex aliis sumere exemplum sibi."

TERENT.

September 1805.

Ir the progress of education in this country were to be measured by the treatises which have been written upon that important subject within the last half century, knowledge and virtue would, doubtless, have been extended over the whole nation, and would have been exemplified and practised by every individual. It would have been as difficult to trace the past state of ignorance and vice, as it is now to discover the age and architecture of certain antient buildings, the use or construction of which we can only conjecture by a careful inspection of their ruins, by accidentally meeting with an old painting, or by decyphering some antiquated record or charter. So equally, indeed, and so profusely, would knowledge have been distributed, that conversation must have languished

from a want of any thing that required telling; pride would have in vain sought for gratification in inferiority, and an accidental discovery of the most miraculous kind could alone have distinguished one man from another.

But these are dreams in which the actual state of mankind will not permit us to indulge ourselves. Whatever Whatever may be the reason, the salutary effects of these voluminous treatises on Education have not yet borne any considerable proportion to the hopes or the abilities of the writers. Some men have not yet been able to profit, from being unable to read; and others, who have been able to read, have been unwilling to profit. Ignorance is not yet entirely banished from our country, although I am willing to allow that it has often been exported in very great quantities; and certain kinds of vice and folly are still practised with incorrigible obstinacy, or with stupid insensibility. The time, therefore, is perhaps now come, and I think it is hastened by such disappointments, when it may be worth while to consider how far the writers on Education ought to feel their mortifications; and to inquire whether they have not indulged hopes, which, in this imperfect state of man, are not to be justified by experience in other matters; and whether (but this I submit

with great deference) the means they propose have been always adequate to the end.

Perhaps, indeed, one very common error has prevailed in this affair, for which the writers on Education are not to blame. It is, if I am not mistaken, a maxim with the regular faculty, that no new medicine ought to be rejected until it has obtained a fair, a long, and a general trial; but as to these receipts to make men wise and virtuous, I am afraid that too many have done little more than give them a cursory reading, applaud the writer's taste and style, and fly to the next that may be offered. This, as I have hinted, must certainly be the fault of the publick, and not of the author; for what author ever presented a System of Education, who did not at the same time think it the best that human ingenuity could devise, and who did not sincerely wish that it might be adopted in all schools and seminaries, within or without the kingdom, to the latest period of time? The fault, therefore, of neglecting to practise so many new rules as are daily offered, must lie with those parents who are more desirous of knowing what can be said, than of trying what can be done.

It may yet be within the memory of a few of my readers, that some years ago a learned gen>

tleman, besides giving public lectures on the subject, wrote several books, to prove that all the evils, natural and artificial, that are incident to human life, might be cured by ELOQUENCE; and that as soon as men become masters of graceful elocution, a new order of things would arise; vice and folly would no more taint the human character; wars would cease throughout the earth, and the world would present a scene little short, if at all short, of the happiness of the millennium. Yet so insensible were this gentleman's contemporaries to the advantages of his scheme, that I know not that there is a single instance upon record of his success. The elocution and graceful read ing, which he proposed, are not known to have prevented a single crime at the Old Bailey, nor a single faux pas in the fashionable world. Still the inventor was not to blame, since mankind did not choose to try the experiment. The Parliament, which may be supposed a little acquainted with the effects of eloquence, afforded him no encouragement; the courts of law went on with their old punishments; nor do I remember that any condemned malefactor was offered his life on condition of submitting to this gentleman's experiments on his hard heart.