women, or even yeomen and tradesmen, becoming food for the curiosity of the reading world; and if they were all chronicled, little or no pain would be inflicted. The demand is confined to the concerns of the higher orders; they are sure to furnish matter which will interest every reader; while its publication is hurtful chiefly to them, because it destroys that intercourse of private society, which is to all a great source of enjoyment, to many the only object of life. Is it not marvellous, then, that they should be the persons who promote beyond all others, an evil which themselves alone are menaced with-nay, which is an evil only to them? Assuming them to be the real encouragers of such reprehensible publications as we are alluding to, we would remind them very seriously of the risk they are running, nay, of the danger into which they have already gotten themselves. We suppose the booksellers may have given five hundred pounds for some of those works. The waiting-maid of a woman of fashion has perhaps forty pounds a year; and if she loses one place, she may change her name and find another. What a temptation to such a female would a fortune of 500l. be! and can the bookseller be hard to find who will give this for all the secrets of some distinguished family, when there has not been wanting avarice shameless enough to buy and sell the disgusting anecdotes that have lately polluted the press;-including, among others, as we are credibly informed, for we have not read it, the letter of a husband describing his marriage night? Yet, what right would any woman of fashion have to complain of publicity given to her most private life, who has either purchased such books, or laid on her tables newspapers filled with extracts from them, and accompanied with no one comment or even hint, of disapprobation-and how indeed can they condemn the publication of that which they are in the act of making still more public?

We submit these reflexions to the publick generally, but especially to the higher classes, warning them, that if they do not at once set their faces against practices so pernicious, the mischief must of necessity go on, increasing, until either all social intercourse is destroyed, or all feeling eradicated of delicacy, propriety, and shame. We have no manner of doubt that the classes of society to which we allude will join loudly enough in the reprobation of what has been done, will feel all the alarm which the risk they run so fully justifies, and will, as usual, vent their spleen upon the newspapers and the press! Let them reflect, however, who alone it is that encourages the mischief they reprehend, and they will find that the danger which they dread is of their own creating, and that they are the only persons who have no right to complain.

ART. III. Plans for the Government and Liberal Instruction of Boys in large Numbers, drawn from Experience. 8vo. pp. 238, London, 1823.

THI

HIS is a remarkably clever and sensible little book, on the principles and theory of Education,-illustrated by a very clear and interesting account of a large experimental establishment which, has been maintained, with constantly increasing success, at Hazelwood, in the neighbourhood of Birmingham, for nearly ten years. The soundness, manliness, and modesty of the views that are taken in the theoretical part, incline us to defer very much to the practical suggestions to which the author has been conducted; and give us at all events the most implicit confidence not only in the substantial truth, but in the absolute accuracy of the statement he has recorded of the result. We must add, however, that we do not go along with him in the importance he ascribes to all these suggestions; and suspect that he has fallen into the common error of imputing to some favourite device or contrivance, in itself altogether inoperative, or worse, that success which is truly due to the general spirit of diligence and good sense with which the undertaking is practically conducted, and which would have been equally conspicuous under any other harmless scheme of forms and observances. Such forms, we are disposed to think, are often in education of no more value than rites and ceremonies are in religion-sometimes disturbing the true spirit of rational devotion, and sometimes slightly promoting it but never essential to its support, and capable of being infinitely varied, without prejudice or benefit to the

cause.

Our readers, however, will be better able to judge of the value of our scepticism in those particulars, when they know the extent of it on the whole subject of education; and, as we could not well explain our opinion of the improvements suggested in the volume before us, without explaining our notions as to the necessary limit of all such improvements, we shall take the liberty of premising a few words on this subject, before giving any particular account of the establishment at Hazelwood, and the doctrines of its able conductors.

It is impossible for any persons to have a deeper conviction than we have of the infinite importance of extending the means of instruction to as large a portion of the population as possible, and consequently of the value of those arrangements by which the time and the money necessary for such instruction

may be best economized. Upon these points we have no doubt or hesitation; and the whole tenor of our speculations has shown, we trust, that we have no want of confidence or zeal. But we profess, in the first place, an entire unbelief in all projects for regenerating mankind, and giving a new character to future generations, by certain trite or fantastic schemes of education. In the next place, we have great doubts whether any thing material can be done towards the formation of moral character or habits, by any course of early or elementary instruction, or any thing, in short, that depends on schools and preceptors; And finally, we consider it as of no very great importance, even as to the culture of the understanding, what the studies are to which the time of the pupils is preferably devoted in such seminaries, or in pursuit of what acquirements they acquire habits of attention, self-command, and reflection. On the first of these articles of unbelief we suppose we need say nothing, as we do not find that the extravagances of Mr Owen are making much way in the world. But as to the other two, we wish to be indulged with a few words of explanation.

Moral character, principles, or character in general, are not formed by precepts inculcated at school, or by observations made, or experience collected in that narrow and artificial society, but by the unconscious adoption of the maxims and practices that prevail among the free agents around us, and the spontaneous assimilation of manners and sentiments which results from this contagion. The true measure of morality, to which every man is primarily and passively trained, is that of the age and country in which he lives, and the class and circle of society to which he belongs. He may improve upon this, or degenerate from it, according to the strength of his reason, his passions, or temptations; but this is the fixed point, from which these variations are calculated, and from which, in the great majority of cases, they never recede very widely. The society of a school may have a little share in the adjustment of this standard, but its discipline and training scarcely any. The habitual sentiments and habits of the boys, in their idle and unrestrained intercourse with each other, will no doubt form a part of it, and it may even be affected by the master's habits and conduct in private life, in so far as these come under their observation: But all the intercourse that is regulated, all the training that is imposed, will go nearly for nothing as to the formation either of habits or of opinions.

All children, at every school, and we may almost say in every home, are taught the same precepts of morality,-warned against

lying, and thieving, and gluttony, and quarrelling,-and exhorted to be industrious, obedient, and obliging. Nay, they are not only taught these doctrines, but they are all aware, generally, of their truth. They know well enough what is right and what is wrong-and why things are called the one or the other. What they do not know, is the true practical extent of the penalties which would be incurred by doing wrong-and the advantages that may be secured by doing right. But it is entirely according to their views of these, that their power or disposition to resist temptation can be measured,-or, in other words, their moral character and moral conduct. Now, under the artificial discipline and: arrangements of a school, these penalties and advantages never exist in the same proportion as in the natural world; and, in spite of all the cunning contrivances that may be resorted to, are known all the while to the boys not to exist in that proportion. Wrong, on the whole, is much more certainly and severely punished, and merit much more certainly and signally rewarded, in these seminaries than out of them;-and though the conduct of the boys, while subjected to this discipline, may consequently be accommodated to its severer rules, they know perfectly well that a greater latitude is habitually assumed by those who are not subject to it, and square their notions of morality and purposes of general conduct by the standard of the free agents, and not of the subjects to authority around them. Even if it could be supposed that they were kept underany delusion in this respect while at school, and really believed that there was no other practical standard of morality than that which was there established, it is plain that this illusion would be dissipated as soon as they entered the world, and that the discovery would probably tend to discredit rather than to confirm that part of their early training which was in conformity with more natural maxims.

Some few men, of bold and vigorous understanding, may found their morality on reflection, and regulate their conduct by principles which they have thoroughly weighed and digested into a system. This, however, can never happen in early life-and by far the greater number never give themselves any trouble about the matter; but are guided, in their notions and their actions, by that practical standard, of the general opinion of their equals and their own experience of consequences, to which we have already referred. Men, in point of fact, always follow their inclinations, and yield to their passions, as far as it is safe, or not plainly dangerous to do so; the only real check. being that fear of consequences, that anticipation of the ultimate pains of indulgence, which this standard supplies. It is quite

plain, however, that these consequences and these deterring pains are quite diferent, both in amount and in certainty, in the artificial society of the best regulated school, and in the common world-that world from which the boys came when they went to school, to which they must return when they leave it, and of which they have all the time such glimpses and specimens as to keep them perfectly in mind that it is the only real world by which their conduct is to be judged, and their place among their fellows determined.

While this is the case, it really seems quite idle to expect that any permanent effect on the moral character will ever be produced, either by the precepts or the constrained practices of a school. In so far as those are merely coincident with the great course of training, which the general opinions and practices of the world is imposing on all who live in it, they may be regarded as merely indifferent. In so far as they differ from, or outgo that general training, it seems impossible to suppose that they should produce either habits or sentiments that will outlast the constraint in which they originate;-and we might as reasonably expect the pupils of such seminaries, to go on all their lives rising at five, and going to bed at nine, as to find them generally adhering to a more rigid and exact observance of morality than prevails among their natural associates in the world, in virtue of any doctrines or practices that had been imposed on them at school.

On these and on other grounds, we profess to set the least possible value on the effects of institutes and arrangements for teaching a patent morality at schools; and are persuaded that the best that can be said of the elaborate contrivances and ingenious machinery that have been resorted to for this purpose, is that they do no harm, and produce no permanent effect whatsoever; -so that the year after the boy has left the school, he will be precisely in the same state, as to actual and prospective vice and virtue, as if he had been all the time at home, or in the hands of some old fashioned preceptor, who used no contrivances at all, and adopted no precautions but such as common sense and common affection must prompt to every one in his situation.

So much for our scepticism as to the effects of moral training in schools. As to intellectual culture again, it goes this length, that all that is really worth caring about in early education being the regular exercise of the faculties, it is no great matter in the acquisition of what kinds of knowledge they are so exercised; and that it is scarcely worth while to dispute about the relative value and utility of any one study that can be adopted among rational men, as compared with any other. Systems