but whosoever the fault may be, the sorrowful and shameful fact stands unaffected. But sins like this, we are sorry to say, are by no means confined to this side of the water. Half a million of dollars have already been expended upon the purchase of grounds and erection of the exterior of University College, London; and one-third of this vast sum was spent upon the portico and dome, portions of the work purely ornamental, while the rooms under the dome have remained for fifteen years not fitted up, and wholly useless. When the professor of chemistry inquired for the chimney to his laboratory, he was told there was none; and one had to be carried up which encroached upon a handsome stair-case, and thus destroyed the harmony of the artist's design. Still greater was the dismay of Sir Charles Bell, upon discovering the anatomical room fitted up like a Greek theatre, adapted to the recitation of plays. The builders were informed that an anatomical theatre ought, in construction and form, to resemble a well, so that every student could look down and see distinctly the subject under demonstration. The room was accordingly altered at considerable cost. The liberal sums contributed for the erection of another college, King's College, of London, were more flagrantly squandered, and that, too, like Girard, long before the academical body came into existence. These remarks cannot be confined to the high quarters to which they have been applied. Those of our readers accustomed to travel through the state of New-York, need not to be told, that in almost every village of the interior, huge, cold, and ungainly, but expensive buildings have been created for the accommodation of academies, now, in a majority of cases, extinct; while, if the money appropriated to their erection, had been placed by its trustees in a situation to have yielded an income, and more moderate buildings erected, it is not too much to say, that the present literature fund of the state would have been a less indispensable assistance to the very existence of threefourths of the academies, than it now is. We could write a chapter on a subject to which our limits can afford but a paragraph. Not exactly in connection with this subject, Mr. Lyell discusses the comparative merits of the American and English university systems, through which, although he does not draw any particular conclusion with regard to their comparative excellences, we will endeavor to follow him. We are aware that scarcely any subject connected with English institutions, is less perfectly understood by the American publie than this same one, and hence we approach it the more willingly, from the hope that what we say may, at least, possess the charm of novelty. We are inclined to believe that education, in its widest and highest sense, is about as well attended to in the eastern and middle states as in any part of Great Britain. We do not, of course, allude here to that elementary education taught in our common schools, and so universally diffused among our people-here at least, England cannot offer a parallel. Nor do we mean to be understood as saying, that England and Scotland cannot afford some better specimens of scholarship than our wealth, and our society, and our political institutions have as yet been able to produce. We know that the remark will startle many of our readers, who have been accustomed to look upon those old and time-honored institutions, which so many of the Newtons and Porsons and Addisons of England have honored with years of their toil. But we repeat our assertion, that we believe that a larger number of well-educated young men are sent forth into the world from our own Yales and Harvards and Unions, than in the same period are graduated at Oxford and Cambridge. That we have not come to our conclusions unadvisedly we shall be at some pains to show. Our readers are too well acquainted with the American collegiate system, to require any particular description of it from us. Our young men are received into them after a preparatory academic course, and are then during the four years appropriated to each class, instructed in those branches of classical, mathematical, and scientific education which are best designed to lay the broad foundation for future learning, or best adapted to secure that discipline of mind, and that enlarged and comprehensive view of human learning, which always distin guishes the true scholar from the mere pedagogue. The English system differs from this in a good many essential particulars. There is less difference in the age at which American and English youth enter college and leave it than is commonly supposed. Mr. Lyell represents the average age of graduation in the English universities at twenty-two, and an investigation would show that the average age of graduation in this country would hardly vary from the same mark. As with us, English youths enter the university after a preparatory course, spend a much less fraction of four years within its walls than is customary here, and at the end of the probation receive their degrees. But here the analogy stops. In the first place, Oxford University consists of nineteen distinct colleges and five halls, while Cambridge is made up of sixteen colleges and halls, the residents in each varying in number from 10 to 140, and the whole business of educating these separate sections of youth is restricted to the tutors of the respective colleges; consequently, "Two or three individuals, and occasionally a single instructor, may be called upon to give lectures in all the depart ments of human knowledge embraced in the academical course of four years. If the college be small there is only occupation and salary sufficient to support one tutor; any attempt, therefore, to subdivide the different branches of learning and science among distinct teachers is aban doued. There is no opportunity for one man to concentrate the powers of his mind on a single department of learning, to endeavor to enlarge its bounds, and carefully to form and direct the opinious of his pupil. In a few of the larger colleges, indeed, some rude approach to such partition is made, so far as to sever the mathematical from the classical studies; but even then, the tutors in each division are often called upon, in the public examinations, to play their part in both departments. Thus, a single instructor gives lectures, or examines (hears recitations we suppose) in the writings of the Greek and Roman historians, philosophers, and poets, together with logic, the elements of mathematics, and theology. * "In the next place I may state, that the choice of teachers to whom so arduous and ambitious a task is allotted, is by no means left open to free competition, like profes sorships in most ancient and modern uni versities, but on the contrary, is confined within very narrow bounds. The college tutors are selected from graduates who are on the foundation of their respective colleges, and who may have obtained their appointment originally, some, because they happened to be founders, kin, or were educated at a particular school; others, because they were born in a particular town, county, or diocese; a few only being selected from merit, or as having distinguished themselves in examinations open to all candidates. This latter class has, however, it is true, increased of late years. Most of these teachers forfeit their fellow ships, and most probably with it their office of tutor, if they should marry, or, if after a certain number of years they do not embrace the clerical profession. They also look to preferment in the Church, from their position in the college, so that they have every inducement to regaid the business of teaching as a temporary calling, subordinate, and subsidiary to another of a different, and to them, more advantageous and important kind." Mr. Lyell goes into a pretty full account of the manner in which the entire constitution of these universities has been, since a short time anterior to the reformation, changed; but our limits will not allow us to follow him. It is sufficient for our purpose to say, that formerly great crowds of students were attracted by the fame of the public teachers of these universities, numbering at Oxford, sometimes, we are told by ancient chroniclers, whom we may refuse to credit, as many as ten, twenty, and even thirty thousand. Halls or inns were provided for the accommodation of these students, and tutors were appointed to each of these halls, to overlook the morals and manners of their inmates, and to see that they regularly attended the lectures of the public professors. Circumstances finally ruined the poorer of these halls, and transferred the power of the universities into the hands of the few which remained and grew fat on the ruin of the others. At length the universities became so organized, that no measure of improvement could pass until sanctioned by the tutors to whom allusion has been made. Students were therefore no longer required to attend public lectures regularly; and they frequently allowed some of the professors to desist from lecturing altogether, which many of them, from indolence, and from finding their audience fall off, were disposed to do, especially as their instructions were given gratis. Thus in process of time, the influence and power, and official duties of the public professors, were annihilated, and absorbed by tutors to whom originally no scholastic duties had appertained, and such is their condition now. The public professors do yet indeed exist; but when we say, "That chemistry and botany attracted, between the years 1840 and 1844, at Oxford University, from three to seven students; geometry, astronomy, and experimental philosophy scarcely more; mineralogy and geology still taught by the same professor, who, fifteen years before, had attracted crowded audiences, from ten to twelve; political economy still fewer; even ancient history and poetry scarcely command au audience; and, strange to say, in a country with whose destinies those of India are so closely bound up, the first of Asiatic scholars gave lectures to one or two pupils, and these might have been absent, had not the cherished hope of a Boden scholarship for Sanscrit induced them to attend." to the established Church; and degrees are only conferred upon such of those as are able to pass a thorough and critical examination upon a confined and narrow list of classical and elementary mathematical studies. The progressive sciences being omitted in the list selected for the trial of strength, are virtually blotted out from the college course; for the honors being no empty bubbles, but direct paths to emolument and distinction in the university and Church,-to degrees, and often to fellowships, livings, prebendal stalls, and bishoprics-no student can afford to neglect the substance for what false enactments have in effect made the shadow. The rector of Lincoln College called it a "system of cramming and partial teaching, after which the student would go out into the world with a narrow mind and darker understanding." Indeed, the system has itself effected a change within itself. "As the business of education had previously passed from the public readers and professors to the college tutors, so the But when we say all this is true of latter are now in no small degree superseOxford, and that at Cambridge "The professors of chemistry and anatomy, who had formerly considerable classes, have only mustered six or seven pupils; and that the chairs of modern history and of the application of machinery to the arts, are in like manner deserted-" We are compelled to look the fact in the face, th it Oxford, with the weight of a thousand years resting upon her, with her Bodleian and her 400,000 books; that Oxford, whose Isis Addison sung-that Cambridge, whose name the possession of a Newton has rendered immortal-that two universities, which have given a longer list of truly great men to the world than any other hundred that ever existed, have dwindled down into a couple of paltry sectarian schools, each useful, to any great degree, only, as helping to maintain a great and overgrown hierarchy. The practical working of the system as it now exists, may be briefly summed up as follows: The universities are neither of them allowed to give degrees to, and but one of them to receive students from, any class not belonging ded by the private tutors or crammers.* There are graduates chosen by the young $300 per year, to read with them both in men themselves, at an expense of $250 to term-time and vacation, and prepare them for examination. An Oxford tutor informed less than 250, or one-fifth of the resident me, that in the years 1840 and 1841, no students, procured this kind of assistance; the aggregate sum paid by them amounting to more than £10,000 ($50,000) per year! These young teachers watch the examinations, are acquainted with the style of the questions, whether viva voce or on paper, and often with the peculiar to prevent their pupil from wasting his views of the examiner. It is their business strength on topics not likely to be adverted to, and often to enable him to get by rote answers to certain interrogatories." One more fact with regard to the practical working of the system, and we have done. "Nevertheless," says Mr. L., "the majority of the body of public examiners is often under the age of thirty, and some of them only twenty-five years old! They of college tutors after serving two years. go out of office in succession-consisting On this fluctuating body of young men, responsible to no one for their decisions, whether in passing students for degrees or in awarding honors,-a body having the power of modifying at their caprice the whole style and tenor of the public examinations, the direction of academical education in this great country has practically devolved!" We have been thus particular in tracing out the leading characteristics of the English university system as compared with our own, both to make good the premise with which we set out, and to set in its true light a matter which has been but imperfectly and partially understood by the public. We might say more to the same purpose, but time and space forbid. We next follow Mr. Lyell to the south, where he passed the winter of 1841. His evidence upon the subject of slavery is as follows. We let it pass without note or comment. "The owner of the property-[a certain piece of ground]-lent me his servant as a guide, and I found him provided with a passport, without which no slave can go out after dusk. The exact streets through which he was to pass in his way to me were prescribed, and had he strayed from this route he might have been committed to the guard-house. These and other precautionary measures, equally irksome to the slaves and their masters, are said to have become necessary after an insurrection brought on by abolitionist missionaries, who are spoken of here in precisely the same tone as incendiaries, or beasts of prey, whom it would be meritorious to shoot or hang. * * Many proprietors live with their wives and children quite isolated in the midst of the slaves, so that the danger of any popular movement is truly appalling. "The negroes, as far as I have yet seen them, whether in domestic service or on the farms, appear very cheerful and free from care; better fed than a large part of the laboring classes of Europe, and though meanly dressed, and often in patched garments, were never scantily clothed for the climate. We asked a woman in Georgia whether she was the slave of a family of our acquaintance. She replied, merrily, 'Yes, I belong to them, and they belong to me.' She was in fact born and brought up on the estate. "On another occasion, we were proceeding in a well-appointed carriage with a planter, when we came unexpectedly to a dead halt. Inquiring the cause, the black coachman said he had dropped one of his white gloves on the road, and must drive back and find it. He could not recollect within a mile where he had last seen it;we remonstrated, but in vain. As time passed, the master in despair took off his own gloves, and saying he had a second pair, gave them to him. When our charioteer had deliberately put them on, we started again."-pp. 134-5. "After the accounts I had read of the sufferings of slaves, I was agreeably surprised to find them in general so remarkably cheerful and light-hearted. It is true, I saw no gangs working under overseers on sugar plantations; but out of two millions and a half of slaves in the United States, the larger portion are engaged in such farming occupations and domestic South Carolina. I was often for days toservice as I witnessed in Georgia and gether with negroes who served me as guides, and found them as talkative and master's wealth and their own peculiar chatty as children, usually boasting of their merits. * "I am aware that we may reflect and philosophise on this peculiar and amusing form of vanity, until we perceive in it the evidence of extreme social degradation; but the first impression it made on my mind was very consolatory, as I found it impossible to feel a painful degree of commiseration for persons so exceedingly well satisfied with themselves. "On the same farm I talked with several slaves who had been set to fell timber by task work, and had finished by the middle of the day. They never appeared to be overworked; and the rapidity with which they increase beyond the whites in the United States, shows that they are not in a state of discomfort, oppression and misery. The effect of the institution upon the progress of the whites is most injurious; and, after travelling in the northern states, and admiring their rapid advance, is most depressing to the spirits. There appears to be no place in society for poor whites. If they are rich their slaves multiply, and from motives of kindly feeling towards retainers, and often from false pride, they are very unwilling to sell them, hence they often become involved in their circumstances, and finally bankrupt. The prudence, temper, and decision of character required to manage a plantation successfully are very great. It is notorious that the hardest task-masters to the slave are those who come from northern free states. "I often asked myself, when in the midst of a large plantation, what steps I would take if I had inherited such a property from British ancestors. I thought first, of immediately emancipating all the slaves; but I was reminded that the law humanely provides, in that case, that I should still support them, so that I might ruin myself and family; and it would still be a question whether those whom I had released from bondage would be happier, or would be prepared for freedom. I then proposed to begin with education, as a preliminary step. Here I was met with the objection that, since the abolition movement, and the fanatical exertions of missionaries, severe statutes had been enacted, making it penal to teach slaves to read and write. "The more I reflected on the condition of the slave, and endeavored to think on a practicable plan for hastening the period of their liberation, the more difficult the subject appeared to me, and the more I felt astonished at the confidence displayed by so many anti-slavery speakers and writers, on both sides of the Atlantic. The course pursued by these agitators shows that, next to the positively wicked, the class who are usually called well-meaning persons,' are the most mischievous in society."-pp. 147, 8, 9, vol. i. 6 We make one more quotation from the evidence of this enlightened and liberal witness, and then conclude our extracts upon this subject. After speaking of the charges of cruelty laid at the doors of the slave-holders, and of the necessity which the ease of escape forces upon the owner of slaves to be not over severe with his servants, he says: "It has made me desire to see a fair statement of the comparative statistics of crimes and punishments in slave states and free countries. If we could fairly estimate the misery of all offenders in the prisons, penitentiaries, and penal settlements of some large European province, and then deduct the same from the suffer ings of the slaves in a large southern state of the Union, the excess alone ought, in fairness, to be laid at the charge of the slave-owners. While pointing out the evil unreservedly, we should do the owner the justice to remember, that the system of things which we deprecate, has been in herited by him from his British ancestors; and that it is rarely possible or safe to bring about a great social reform in a few years."-p. 151, vol. i. Mr. Lyell's observations about churches, and preaching, and the voluntary system, are as follows: The preaching in most of the Episcopalian, Presbyterian, Baptist, and Unitarian churches which he entered in the United States, he thought good, and he admired the handsome style of building, and fitting up of pews, and says of the voluntary system "There seemed to me to be two great advantages, at least, in the voluntary principle: first, that the ministers are in no danger of going to sleep; and secondly, that they concern themselves much less with politics than with us. To be without a body of dissenters, dissatisfied with their exclusion from ecclesiastical endowments, is a national blessing, which not only every statesman, but every churchman will admit." He tells us, however, that he is by no means sure that there may not be a balance of evil sufficient to outweigh all this, though he does not take the trouble to point out any of these evils. That they cannot be pointed out is a principle which the experience of seventeen millions of people, who constitute about the only portion of the world who ever gave the matter a fair trial, would bear an ample and unanimous witness. Our author adverts to the universal prejudice against color existing in the United States, and certifies from his own experience, that the prejudice is not a natural one; but still he admits that he has no doubt that a few years' residence in America would tinge his own mind with the same repugnance. But whether the antipathy be a natural or an acquired one it most certainly exists, and doubtless always will; and analogies to it are not differently found. In Lower Canada are two races, the conquered and the conquerors, still preserving a strong, and apparently not decreasing prejudice against each other. The Irish and their conquerors illustrate the same principle. Suppose the villeins of Europe had, like our slaves, some indelible mark of bondage, is it probable that the mutual feeling of inequality of which even English writers admit the existence, would have been softened down to its present state? One idea which he advances upon this subject is particularly interesting in this state at the present time; it is this: That where colored men are admitted to the elective franchise only upon a property qualification, the tendency must be to increase the respect for that portion of them who secure the privilege, both from their own and from the dominant race. It is at least a question which we have a right to discuss, whether or not the throwing |