6 By moths that steal into the folds of By social vanities, was ate away. This Outcast of the Sea, is Eve, "The How from the form-fenced ledge of ornate ease To such a depth of wretchedness she By what terrific plunge, or slow degrees, The search of kindred whose relenting Would yet have screened her in their northern dell. Contempt, compassion, thus alike denied, In squalid want she lived, in woe consummate died.' Impalpably the precious zone of duty, Of purity the strong though silken stay, We apprehend we can hardly be mistaken when we pronounce the writer of these stanzas something more than a mere versifier. We conjure him to clear his head' of politics, scandal, and all manner of uncharitableness, and not to let life slip away-for we cannot for a moment fancy him a very young man-without seizing the days and the nights that must be given to the worthy completion of a monument of genius. ART. VI.-Some Remarks on the present Studies and Management of Eton School. By a Parent. Fifth Edition. London. 1834. 6 2. The Eton Abuses considered; in a Letter addressed to the Author of Some Remarks on the present Studies and Management of Eton School.' Second Edition. London. 1834. 3. A few Words in Reply to Some Remarks upon the present System and Management of Eton School.' By Etonensis. London. 1834. 4. The Eton System of Education vindicated; and its Capabilities of Improvement considered: in Reply to some recent Publications. London. 1834. 5. Oxford as it is. By a Foreigner of Rank. London. 1834. 6. Oxford in 1834: a Satire, in Six Parts. London. OF F all our national institutions, perhaps our great public schools are the most characteristic; those which we should almost despair of making intelligible to an inquiring foreigner, or even to acute and sensible men in our own country, who in their youth have breathed an entirely different atmosphere. In some respects, they seem to set at defiance all the general principles, and to be at war with the whole theory of education, so that a dry detail of the school business, and of the daily and weekly exercises, may be accurate to the very letter, yet will give as inadequate, if not as unfair, a view of the real system, as the skeleton does of the breathing and animated man. We are the last to deny that much is wanting to bring these institutions up to the rising level of general information; the age demands an expansion of their system: but this may be effected without abandoning its primary and essential characteristics. Education, especially when intended to comprehend that class of English youth whose birth and fortune place them above profes sional ambition, and who, however they may take a share in the public business of the country, must have much idle and unoccupied time-education, to this class especially, and indeed to those who aspire to fill the several departments of the learned professions, has not discharged its high and important function, when it has forcibly exacted the acquisition of certain rudiments of learning, and by incessant diligence driven into the reluctant and unconsenting mind the barren and ungerminating seeds of knowledge it must excite rather than pretend to satisfy an ardent appetite for still increasing information; and encourage that love of letters and knowledge, without which the compulsory lessons of the school will either stagnate into pedantic self-sufficiency, or, as is more usually the case, be cast aside, and utterly forgotten, immediately that the constraint is removed. Education cannot, perhaps, implant, but it may foster and stimulate, to an incalculable degree, this selfimproving spirit; and it has certainly been the good fortune, if not the deliberate aim, of the great school to which most of these pamphlets refer, to justify, by its success, in thus kindling the enthusiasm of youth towards the studies of the place, the ardent and somewhat exclusive attachment of its admirers. In Eton, this spirit, according to the general direction of study long adopted within its walls, has taken the turn of correct and elegant classical attainment. Years back this may be traced in the pure and exquisite, though perhaps fastidious and overwrought, poetry of Gray; in later days, after mingling with the fervid oratory, and giving a peculiar lucidness to the vehement invectives of Fox, it retired with him to St. Ann's Hill, to throw a quiet grace over the evening of his agitated life, and to impart a delightful occupation to a mind exhausted with political turbulence; it has shown itself not less distinctly in the statesman-like, yet highly-polished, public documents which have proceeded from the Wellesleys and Grenvilles; VOL. LII. NO. CIII. K it it added the last perfect finish, the curiosa felicitas, to the vivid and harmonious eloquence of Canning. To extinguish or chill this spirit would, in our, perhaps prejudiced, opinion, be fatal to an institution, which, from its numbers, must depend rather on the prevailing tone of mind and feeling which pervades the general body, than on the close and particular superintendence of each individual. A more formal, burthensome, and mechanical ritual of instruction might have the effect of repressing this tendency to self-improvement; and while such a system might be better for the mass of students, whom it would force upwards to a higher standard of mediocrity, there is danger lest it should trammel and subdue the more generous and independent spirits, to whose perfect development greater freedom appears essential. The grand problem of education, at least of liberal education, is to teach enough, and not too much; not to cultivate the memory alone, which in the dullest may perhaps, by assiduous and incessant diligence, be constrained to lay up stores of reminiscences which will never ripen into useful and productive knowledge, while the other powers of the understanding are either dormant or overweighed with the burthen under which the whole mind is labouring. After all, the self-educated will be the best educated; the pupil for whom the teacher apparently does least will often derive the most essential advantage from his tuition; the highest skill of the instructor, and the perfection of the system of instruction, is to stimulate the spontaneous expansion of the mind; to keep alive, wherever, either by the bounty of nature or by early habits, it may have been implanted, the ardent thirst for knowledge; to guide into proper and useful courses of study the active energies of the young understanding; to be ever at hand to remove difficulties which might repel, without making the way so smooth as to require no exertion; and, finally, to maintain. that generous emulation, which is by no means necessarily connected with the narrow and baser passions of envy or jealousy. This honourable emulation, indeed, in a great public school, is of far wider influence, even as regards the attainment of knowledge, than mere competition in the comparative excellence of the school exercises, or proficiency in school learning. There is a constant secret operation, both of the honest shame of being thought ignorant by his compeers, and of the generous desire of surpassing them in acquirements, which, though not demanded, may still sometimes be brought to bear even upon the ordinary business of the school-particularly in the compositions, which are upon such a variety of subjects, that an ingenious youth has perpetual opportunities of drawing on his own private stock of information. Thus, a sort of latent system of mutual instruction is continually at at work; and where that desire of self-improvement has taken root, the youths among themselves, or the single boy in his private study, may often be not less profitably-or even more so perhaps, since they are willingly and eagerly-employed, than they would be in the more constant, but constrained attention to the immediate business of the school. The announcement of a fifth edition,' on the title-page of a pamphlet of such moderate ability as that entitled Some Remarks on the present Studies and Management of Eton School,' may be assumed as an evidence, that this great establishment is of itself, and without involving the general question of public education, an object of no inconsiderable public interest. If the Parent' had confined himself to a calm and dispassionate examination of the present system of instruction, pointed out its deficiencies with temper and moderation, introduced the really useful suggestions which his pamphlet contains without the offensive tone of superiority, the scornful dictation, which provokes a closer investigation of his right to assume authority on such subjects, we should have honoured his motives, as a father anxious for the moral and intellectual improvement of his sons; and we are mistaken if he had not obtained a patient and candid hearing from the Governors of the Institution. But the Parent' has unfortunately condescended to adopt the language of the Pessimists, that prevailing school, which has but one universal axiom, Every thing that is, is wrong; he has chosen to cull some of the choice flowers from the eloquence of departed reform pamphlets, not quite in keeping with the relative importance of the subject under discussion. The grandiloquence of his declaration of war might perhaps kindle a smile, by no means of the serious or Sardonic cast which the author would anticipate, upon the countenance of some of the tasteful and classical masters of Eton. 'There are men whose wisdom consists in a stubborn refusal to improve. With a blindness, which baffles explanation, because it leads directly to their own downfall, they hate reform as if it were revolution, being apparently ignorant that they are proceeding the right way to ensure a revolution which will be no reform. But they are wrestling with a power that will laugh to scorn their puny endeavours. (!) Their brazen gates will be but as touchwood before the strong arm of the giant. (!!) With such men, I fear, any exhortation on my part will have but little weight. The wisest suggestion that could be offered-the most modest remonstrance that could be madewill by them be received with the same grin of contempt, and the same scowl of hate; but I shall not be deterred from giving advice, because it is likely to be rejected; nor shall I fear to assail the citadel of bigotry, because I feel assured that the garrison will defend it to its last gun. (!!!) Amongst other public institutions in England, which K 2 have have signalized themselves by an undeviating adherence to antiquated errors, I am compelled to instance Eton School as holding an unfortunate pre-eminence. Whilst every other public school has chosen the wiser part, and accommodated itself to the demands of the age by timely and judicious reformation, Eton alone seems resolved to make a stand against improvement, and to fight single-handed the battle of prejudice and wrong.'-Some Remarks, &c. pp. 5-7. This is in the right Ercles vein,' and really unworthy of the good sense, and we would willingly believe, the good intention evinced in other parts of the pamphlet. But we are afflicted with a stubborn and inconvenient habit of inquiring into the facts of a charge, however it may be couched in the most positive and overbearing language. We are credibly informed that considerable alterations have taken place in the Eton system; we venture to doubt the fact that every other public school has taken the lead in timely and judicious reformation. Under the present very able master some alterations have been introduced at Harrow; and in another considerable school a more bold and experimental plan has been adopted. In a recent Number of the Quarterly Journal of Education, there has appeared a detailed account of the system pursued in the school at Rugby, as in former Numbers of that at Harrow. The degree of success which Dr. Arnold has met with in the working of his new arrangements will be a question of great interest to all who consider the importance of public education in our great schools. Some parts of his scheme appear to us well worthy of general adoption; as to other parts, we confess that the successful result would alone convince us of their general practicability. As to Eton-it would of course be inferred from the tone of some of the pamphlets before us, that the public voice had made known its dissatisfaction with the instruction afforded by the present (or we must rather now write, late) master of Eton, by repeated remonstrances from the press, or by that more silent and unanswerable sign of diminished confidence, the visible defalcation of the numbers in the school. But it so happens, that under Dr. Keate, and that within a very recent period, the number of scholars-(considerably above six hundred)-stood higher than at any former period of the establishment. Other circumstances might tend to keep up the illusion with the masters at Eton. Notwithstanding the obstinate adherence to a wornout and antiquated system, the perverse pupils have persisted in obtaining their full share of academical distinctions at the Universities, and have gone forth into life, at least in equal numbers, men eminent in the public service, and in all the learned professions. At the same time, with a still more inexplicable hypocrisy, these same neglected pupils, who ought to have been indignant |