to a sense of plain duty, and to a distinct perception of the demands of God's revealed law. And having done this, he has labored to lead his hearers forward to a knowledge of the Gospel, as a scheme mercifully instituted for the purpose of exalting all our moral qualities and performances, and, at the same time, of providing remedy and atonement for all our moral defects. The whole is rendered singularly interesting and useful by the selection of such topics of reproof, correction, and instruction in righteousness, as are peculiarly appropriate to a congregation of school-boys. Our criticism, on the whole collection, may be summed up in the declaration, that we should regard it as a signal blessing to all parents and children, if these discourses (or such as these) should be delivered to his pupils, or provided for them, by every schoolmaster throughout England. And we should greatly rejoice to see them in such a cheap and popular form as might secure their circulation among all the schools and families in the empire.

There is, to us, one eminent recommendation in these discourses; they show that the author is not blind, and does not affect to be blind, to those evils, which make many a parental heart to sink when the child is committed to the society which Cowper denominates "a mob of boys." Dr. Arnold very plainly tells his boys, that public schools have been stigmatized as little better than seminaries of depravity; and, in order that the public may know how plainly he has told them this, we shall produce his own words. Having first endeavoured to show his youthful hearers, that "the law must be their schoolmaster, to bring them to Christ," — that the pure and perfect will of God must be set before them, in order that they may contrast with it their own principles and practices, and so be made to feel their sin and danger, and the need of that deliverance which none can effect for them, but their Lord and Saviour; having first labored for this end, Dr. Arnold proceeds:

*

"What the aspect of public schools is, when viewed with a Christian's eye, and what are the feelings with which men, who do really turn to God in after life, look back upon their years passed at school, I cannot express better than in the words of one, who had himself been at a public school, who did afterwards become a most exemplary Christian, and who, in what I am going to quote, seems to describe his own experience: 'Public schools,' he says, are the very seats and nurseries of vice. It may be unavoidable, or it may not; but the fact is indisputable. None can pass through a large school without being pretty intimately acquainted with vice; and few, alas! very few, without tasting too largely of that poisoned bowl. The hour of grace and repentance at length arrives, and they are astonished at their former fatuity. The young convert looks back with inexpressible regret to those hours which have been wasted in folly or worse than folly and the more lively his sense of the newly discovered mercies, the more piercing his anguish for past indulgences.' Now, although too many of us may not be able to join in the last part of this description, yet we must all,

The late Mr. John Bowdler. Edition.

See his "Remains," Vol. II. p. 153. Third

6

I think, be able to bear witness to the truth of the first part. We may not all share in the after repentance, but we must know that our school life has given ample cause for repentance. Public schools are the very seats and nurseries of vice. It may be unavoidable, or it may not; but the fact is indisputable.' These are the words of the sensible and excellent man whom I have just alluded to; and with what feelings ought we all to read them, and to listen to them. I am afraid the fact is, indeed, indisputable, 'Public schools are the very seats and nurseries of vice.' But he goes on to say, 'It may be unavoidable, or it may not:' and these words seem to me as though they ought to fill us with the deepest shame of all. For what a notion does it give, that we should have been so long and so constantly bad, that it may be doubted whether our badness be not unavoidable, whether we are not evil hopelessly and incurably. And this to be true of places which were intended to be seats of Christian education; and in all of which, I believe, the same words are used in the daily prayers which we use regularly here! God is thanked for those founders and benefactors, by whose benefits the whole school is brought up to godliness and good learning.' Brought up to godliness and good learning, in places that are the very seats and nurseries of vice! But the doubt, whether our viciousness be or be not unavoidable, is something too horrible to be listened to. Surely we cannot regard ourselves as so utterly reprobate, as so thoroughly accursed of God. The earth, which beareth briers and thorns, is rejected and is nigh unto cursing, whose end is to be burned. But, beloved, we are persuaded better things of you, though we thus speak;' or else, indeed, our labor would be utterly vain. But then our hope that this viciousness is not unavoidable, depends upon you, whether or no you choose to make it so. Outward order, regularity, nay, even advancement in learning, may be, up to a certain point, enforced; but no man can force another to be good, or hinder him from being evil. It must be your own choice and act, whether, indeed, you wish this place to be unavoidably a seat and nursery of vice,' or whether you wish to verify the words of our daily thanksgiving, that, by the benefit of our founder, 'you are here brought up to godliness and good learning.'

999

We have here a distinct and honest avowal of the "bad eminence" hitherto supposed to belong to the institutions framed for the nurture and discipline of our children; but we have likewise a noble and courageous protest against the notion that the mischief is inevitable. And the reader will be gratified to find, that this protest is followed up, throughout the volume, with an unsparing, but at the same time, a truly paternal exposure of "the sins, and negligences, and ignorances, "which are sure to beset a community of lads. Their selfishness, their coarseness, their brutality,— their false conceptions of courage and of honor, their positive dread of the approbation of their teachers, lest it should fix upon them the badge of mean, servile, pigeon-livered submission; their resolute and systematic habit of regarding all authority as a legitimate object of open hostility, or secret stratagem ; · the execrable tyranny which is inflicted by worthless hardihood over helpless and retiring merit: these, and a multitude of other pernicious crudities, are exhibited by Dr. Arnold in their native ugliness; and in a manner which, one would hope, must deprive all but the incurably depraved of any pretence for continuing to glory in that which is

their shame. At the same time, it is satisfactory to observe, that all this is done by him in the spirit of one, who feels it the most sacred duty of a Christian teacher to speak the truth in love, and to avoid all resemblance to an intolerant and unfeeling satirist. His object is, not to break and trample down the expanding spirit of youth; but to engage it on the side of all that is truly honorable, and lovely, and of good report, if there be any virtue, if there be any praise, to compel his youthful aspirants to think of those things.

The task which Dr. Arnold has assigned to himself is one that requires no ordinary address and firmness; for many of the evils which he has to combat have been growing up for centuries. Our scholastic seminaries were, many of them, established in times of comparative barbarism. There is an aspect of Spartan austerity and hardness about them, which, of itself, is well fitted, to suppress all the more domestic and filial attributes of the youthful character. It was a maxim among our sturdy ancestors (a maxim, too, not confined to schools, but often rigorously applied to families), that the wills of children should be, not merely bent and moulded, but broken; that they must be tamed, almost like the unreasoning brutes, with bit, and bridle, and scourge. It would not be easy to imagine a system better calculated to harden a child's heart, - to destroy all confidence and affection between master and scholar, -to produce an habitual feeling of slavish sullenness, and to plant a rooted principle of insurrection against all authority. Neither would it be possible by any other means more effectually to deaden the more refined and generous impulses, which ought to govern boys in their intercourse with each other. A gradation of tyranny would naturally establish itself, from the pedagogue downwards; and, with it, a partial extinction of those better habits, which can flourish only under the influences of justice and of kindness. We are far from asserting, that these vestiges of a more savage period have not been gradually wearing out. But it can scarcely be doubted that they continued in pernicious activity long enough to leave a task of fearful difficulty to those who have labored, and who may still be laboring, to make education what it ought to be, a blessed process, by which the noblest energies of the mature and experienced scholar and Christian may be made to distil, like the gentle dews of heaven, into the very depths of the youthful heart.

And here let us not be told of the danger, lest the tone of the youthful mind should be unbraced, and its powers of hardy endurance impaired, by a more liberal infusion of the spirit of the Gospel into the discipline of our schools. Christianity, it is true, is the religion of love; but, if judiciously inculcated, it is likewise the religion of genuine heroism. Unless its spirit be egregiously mistaken, it will make no man or boy a driveller, or a coward. There can be nothing effeminate in the faith which has produced Apostles, and martyrs, and confessors, and men, who out of weakness, were made strong, and waxed valiant in fight, and turned to flight the

armies of the aliens. Christianity, it is true, claims a rightful supremacy over all other principles of action; but there is nothing in it which refuses alliance with the loftiest conceptions of honor, or the noblest feelings of generosity, or the grandest motives of patriotic daring. Add to your faith virtue (agery), says the Apostle, - that is, adorn your religious profession with such manly firmness of purpose, such stedfastness of integrity, as heathens might look upon with admiration. It is nothing better than vile and despicable cant to harp upon the fear, lest the school boy should grow up a Puritan, or a saint, and, perchance, a hypocrite. This perversion is, indeed, possible enough under incautious or fanatical treatment. But the apprehension is purely chimerical, where the formation of the character and habits is entrusted to learned, sober-minded, and accomplished men. Let any parent peruse the volume of Dr. Arnold, and then let him say, whether he would not gratefully rejoice if his son should turn out to be almost, or altogether, such as that volume unquestionably tends to make him? Of Dr. Arnold's personal demeanor among his pupils, we know nothing. Judging of him, however, by the only criterion which we have the right or the opportunity to apply, we should say that he bids fair to realize, in the truly Christian sense, the brightest views entertained by the Roman moralist, when he exclaimed,

"Di majorum umbris tenuem et sine pondere terram,
Spirantesque crocos, et in urnâ perpetuum ver,

Qui preceptorem sancti voluêre parentis

Esse loco."

The five remaining sermons in this volume are parochial discourses, addressed, as the author informs us, to congregations of the usual character.

The last sixty pages are occupied with an Essay on the Right Interpretation of the Scriptures. It contains some very valuable and useful suggestions; the application of which, however, demands great integrity of purpose, and no ordinary rectitude of judgment. In the first place, Dr. Arnold maintains, that the Divine commandments, addressed to one man, or one generation of men, are binding on other men, and other generations, only so far forth as their respective circumstances and conditions are similar. The canon here propounded may, undoubtedly, provide abundant opportunities of evasion, or perversion, to the spirit of dishonest casuistry. This, however, cannot be helped. It is a part of our moral probation; for which, prayer, and docility of heart, will very sufficiently prepare us and, under these influences, the way of the Lord will, assuredly, be made plain before us.

ART. VIII. - Lives of the most Eminent Sovereigns of Modern Europe. Written by a Father for the Instruction and Amusement of his Eldest Son.

A PECULIARLY melancholy interest attaches to this work, the posthumous production of a nobleman respected for his amiable qualities and literary tastes, and whose youth warranted the presumption that many years yet remained for their exercise. We understand that the last sheet was corrected by Lord Dover only a few days before his death. The dedication to his little son, rendered affecting by the subsequent event, is as creditable to the author's feelings, as the narratives themselves are to his understanding and talent. After a brief summary and contrast of the characters and exploits of the monarchs whose lives are delineated in the volume, it thus concludes:

"I trust you will ever bear in mind, that it is not the most showy and brilliant actions of kings which ought to be admired, but those which have for their object the benefit and happiness of their people. You must, above all, never forget, that no acts of fallible human nature can be really and thoroughly good, which are not founded in a sincere piety and a desire for the glory of the Almighty."

The biographies are four in number, having for their subjects Gustavus Adolphus, John Sobieski, Peter the Great, and Frederick the Great.

As a specimen, we subjoin the account of the death of Gustavus Adolphus.

"Meanwhile Gustavus, at the head of his right wing, had beaten the enemies opposed to him; when he heard of the retreat of the other part of his army. He then charged Horn to follow up his victory, and set off at full gallop, followed by a few of his attendants. He passed the ditch, and directed his course to the part where his troops seemed the most pressed. As he passed rapidly along, a corporal of the Imperialists, observing that every one made way for him, said to a musqueteer near him, 'Take aim at that man, he must be a person of consequence.' The man fired and broke the king's arm. In a moment a cry of horror broke from the Swedes, 'The king bleeds! the king is wounded!'-'It is nothing,' replied Gustavus, 'follow me ;' but overcome with pain, he was obliged to desist, and turning to Francis Albert, duke of Saxe-Lauenberg, he entreated him to lead him quietly out of the crowd. They rode away together, and proceeded towards the right wing, in order to arrive at which they were obliged to make a considerable circuit. By the way Gustavus received another ball in the back, which took away the rest of his strength. I am a dead man,' said he, with a feeble voice, 'leave me, and try and save your own life.' At the same time he fell from his horse, and, pierced with many wounds, expired in the hands of the Croatians, who were scouring that part of the field. While on the ground, he was asked who he was, and replied boldly, 'I am the King of Sweden, and seal with my blood the Protestant religion, and the liberties of Germany.' A sentence of almost prophetic truth. He then added in a faltering tone, Alas, my poor queen! and as he was expiring, he said,' My God! my God!' In an instant his body was stripped; so anxious were the Imperialists to have any trophies of so great an enemy.