A MERELY INTELLECTUAL EDUCATION

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Tickler. Let us resume our philosophical conversation. Shepherd. Wi' a' my heart. My stamach's no fu'er the noo o' eisters than my head is o' ideas. Opium! what's opium to yill? Opium dazes-yill dazzles-opium carries a man intil the cluds-yill raises him to the sky.

Tickler. We were speaking, sir, of education.

North. Education! what manner of man is he whom we wish to have produced? Who in civil and private life will be "the happy warrior?" Must he not be high-mindedly courageous-generous in his intercourse with all his fellowcreatures-full of deep and tender affections, which are the support and happiness of those nearest and dearest to himcapable of sympathy with all joy and all suffering-with an imagination, not only the source of enjoyment to himself, but aiding to make all the aspects of things, serious, solemn, religious, to his spirit,

Shepherd. Nae grandeur o' national character, sir, you say weel, without imagination. But, nooadays, a' her records are accoonted auld wives' tales, and the speerit o' Poetry is driven out o' edication sought to be imposed on the people, as if it were the plague. The verra claes o' a callant noo that has been found porin ower an auld ballad, maun be fumigated afore he is suffered to re-enter the school,—he maun perform quaranteen, sir, like a ship frae Constantinople or Smyrna, afore the passengers are alloo'd to land on our untainted shores. Is this an impreuvment, think ye, sirs, on the wusdom o' our forefathers? If this plan be persisted in, after twathree generations, what will be the Spirit o' the Age? A barren spirit, and a' aneath it bare as broon bent in summerdrought, without ony drappin o' the sweet heaven-dews. Milton weel says, that in the sowl are many lesser faculties— Reason the chief-but what sort o' a chief will Reason be without his tail? Without his clan, noo a' sickly or extinck, ance poo'rfu' alike in peace and in war, to preserve or destroy, to build up and to pu' doun, beautifyin wi' perpetual renovation and decay the haill face o' the earth. O sirs in anither century or less, 'twill be a maist monstrous warld, fit only for your Utilitawrians - and in less nor a second century, no fit even for them.

North. Intellectual all-in-alls, who will perish of hunger and thirst, destitute of the bread of life, and of its living waters. Shepherd. I really believe, sirs, that were I lang to habi

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DOES NOT CULTIVATE THE FEELINGS.

tuate mysel to this Glasgow rum, it would drive out the Glenlivet-except for caulkers. Only pree this het tummler o' toddy.

North (sipping). A Christmas box, James, from my valued friend, the Modern Pythagorean.1 Quite a nosegay.

2

Shepherd. Ma smell's gane-and sae maun yours, wi' a' that snuffin, man; Prince's Mixtur, Prince's Mixtur, unce efter unce, I wunner ye dinna snivel; but what for do ye aye keep thoom-thoomin at it in the shell-it's an ugly custom. What's this I was gaun to say? Hae ye read the Modern Pythagorean's wark on Sleep?

North. Several times entirely-and often by snatches. It is admirable.

Tickler. Come, I must keep you, Kit, to the subject in hand. That treatise deserves a separate article from your own pen.

North. And sooner or later-it shall have it. Keep, then, to the subject in hand. What was it?

Tickler. A thousand powers, each bringing its own blessing, spring up by feeling, and in feeling have their own justification-which such an education never can give, but which it will deaden or destroy.

Shepherd. Eh?

Tickler. They are justified, James, by the idea which they themselves bring of themselves, in the mind which produces and harbours them; they bear witness for themselves; the man has felt them good-sua bona novit—and he clings to them unto the death. Who taught you patriotism?

Shepherd. Mysel.

Tickler. Not the Schoolmaster, who is now abroad 3— at Botany Bay, perhaps, for forgery-but the Schoolmaster at home-your own heart, James-teaching itself the task it conned on the side of the sunny brae, or the ingle of your father's hut

Shepherd. What ken you about my edication, sir? Yet the lang-legged chiel's no far wrang, efter a'.

Tickler. What kind of a nation, my dear Shepherd, does your heart rejoice in?

1 Dr Macnish. See ante, p. 108.

2 Unce-ounce.

3 "The Schoolmaster is abroad" was a popular phrase at this time, intended to express the general diffusion of education, and the desire felt for it.

IMPORTANCE OF THE FEELINGS.

Shepherd. In the British-especially the Scotch.

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Tickler. Are they better now, in any one sense whatever, than of old?

Shepherd. In a few things, better-in a hantle, waur.

Tickler. What do we want in a nation? Not a quantity of reasonable contented-steady-sober-industrious inhabitants-mere Chineses

Shepherd. Chineses?

Tickler. And nothing more-but you want men, who, if they are invaded, will spring up as one man-loving their ancestors, who cannot do anything for them

Shepherd. That's truth-but wha hae dune for them incalculable and inappreciable things

Tickler. And doing everything for their posterity, who have done and can do nothing for them

Shepherd. True again.

Tickler. Men among whom crime is restrained, not by a vigilant police, but by an awful sense of right and wrong.

Shepherd. Existing naewhere but in minds deeply imbued wi' religion.

Tickler. Who love their soil, though unable to analyse it-
Shepherd. Gude!

Tickler. To whom poverty and its scanty hard-wrung pittances are the gift of God—who are sustained and animated in this life by the operation on their minds of their belief in another—a people in whose vigorous spirit joy is strong under all sorts of external pressure and difficulty

Shepherd. That's no easy-neither is't impossible.

Tickler. I speak, James, of a country naturally poor—such as Scotland

Shepherd. Scotland's no puir-she's rich, if no in the sile o' the yerth, in the sile o' the sowl

Tickler. Were I to speak of England

Shepherd. Shut his mouth, Mr North, on England, for he's England-mad

Tickler. Well, then, James, I sink England, and say, that Honesty depends also upon Feeling, as a principle of action opposed to mere intellect—and that this is not known to many of our popular, and preaching, and itinerant Educationists. True, that "Honesty is the best Policy;" but Policy without

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INTELLECT VERSUS FEELING:

Honesty does not find that out. Honesty, both pecuniary and immaterial,-to wit, that will not wrong another in any way, by word, or deed, or thought, as a national trait, rests upon kindly generous feeling. Courage, frank and fearless, and kindheartedness, by the very terms, rest on the same founda

tion.

Shepherd. And what then?

North. What then, James? Why, that all this present fume and fuss about intellectual education will never produce the desired result, but, in all probability, impede the growth of true national virtue.1

1

Shepherd. You've aften heard me say that, sir.

North. So much the likelier is it to be true, James. Intellect walks in certain evidences of things-treating objects of positive knowledge-fixed relations-mathematical axiomsand truths drawn from itself-facts given by the senses.

Shepherd. A' verra true and verra important. Say awa', sir. North. The character of Intellect is, that it is satisfied when it can refer what is now presented to it, to what it already knows; then, and then only, it seems to understand. But when Feeling springs up upon occasion, it springs up for the occasion, new, original, peculiar, not to be referred. The man does not say to himself, "I recollect that I felt so on such an occasion, acted upon it, and found it to answer; " but the feeling, even if he has so felt and done, comes up as if he had never felt it before-sees only the actual circumstances, the case, the person, the moment of opportunity, and imperatively wills the action.

Shepherd. That's the sort o' state o' the sowl I like-say awa, sir.

North. It is the unretrospection for authority, or precedent, as the unprospection of consequences, that makes the purity and essential character of feeling. We may reason and chastise our hearts, afterwards and before, in time of reflection and meditation; but not then when the moment of feeling has arisen,

1 "I meet a man of inexhaustible dulness," says the author of Friends in Council, "and he talks to me for three hours about some great subject, this very one of education, for instance, till I sit entranced by stupidity-thinking the while 'and this is what we are to become by education-to be like you.' Then I see a man like D———, a judicious, reasonable, conversible being, knowing how to be silent too-a man to go through a campaign with; and I find he cannot read or write."

THEY SHOULD BE CULTIVATED TOGETHER.

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and we are to act by the strength which we know very well is to be had from it.

Shepherd. Profoond, yet clear like a pool i' the Yarrow.

North. Now, James, the mind that relies habitually on intellect, and does not rely on feeling, will bring the estimate of consequences to the time when it should only feel.

Shepherd. A fatal error in chronology indeed.

North. Such a mind, James, is disposed to distrust, nay, to discredit and resist, everything that offers itself per se, and is irreducible to the experienced past. It resists, therefore, miracles, and sneers at Christianity.

Shepherd. That's sad.

North. Then see how stone-blind it is to much in which you and I rejoice. The common understanding forms a low estimate of the great facts of Imagination and Sensibility. They are to it unintelligible—and it will not even believe that they ever have been felt, except by imbecile enthusiasts. Shepherd. They lauch at the Queen's Wake

North. Ay, at the Paradise Lost. The deeper, the bolder, the more peculiar the feeling, of course the more it puzzles, estranges, repels such an understanding. I do not well know myself, James, what feelings are the most deep, bold, and peculiar; but near to the most must be, I think, the purest and highest moral, the purest and highest religious feelings. For compare with them Imagination, and surely they are deeper far.

Shepherd. Far, far, far!

North. There is reason enough, then, James, in Nature, why Understanding, cultivated without a corresponding culture of feeling, should be adverse to it, for their causative conditions are opposite. Either cultivated alone becomes adverse to the other. Cultivated together-which is not the mode of popular education now,-they are friendly, mutually supporting, helping, guiding, and making joint strength.

Shepherd. Excellent, sir. But said ye never a' this to me afore.

North. Never at a Noctes, that I recollect. If feeling do exist, how must it "languish, grow dim, and die," under the distrust, or contempt, or ignorance of the understanding that ought to cherish it!

Shepherd. There's Tickler sleepin.