few parents. The best school is that which is best accommodated to the greatest variety of characters, and which embraces the greatest number of cases. It cannot be the main object of education to render the splendid more splendid, and to lavish care upon those who would almost thrive without any care at all. A public school does this effectually; but it commonly leaves the idle almost as idle, and the dull almost as dull, as it found them. It disdains the tedious cultivation of those middling talents, of which only the great mass of human beings are possessed. When a strong desire of improvement exists, it is encouraged, but no pains are taken to inspire it. A boy is cast in among five or six hundred other boys, and is left to form his own character; -if his love of knowledge survives this severe trial, it, in general, carries him very far: and, upon the same principle, a savage, who grows up to manhood, is, in general, well made, and free from all bodily defects; not because the severities of such a state are favourable to animal life, but because they are so much the reverse, that none but the strongest can survive them. A few boys are incorrigibly idle, and a few incorrigibly eager for knowledge; but the great mass are in a state of doubt and fluctuation; and they come to school for the express purpose, not of being left to themselves-for that could be done any where-but that their wavering tastes and propensities should be decided by the intervention of a master. In a forest, or public school for oaks and elms, the trees are left to themselves; the strong plants live, and the weak ones die: the towering oak that remains is admired; the saplings that perish around it are cast into the flames and forgotten. But it is not surely to the vegetable struggle of a forest, or the hasty glance of a forester, that a botanist would commit a favourite plant; he would naturally seek for it a situation of less hazard, and a cultivator whose limited occupations would enable him to give to it a reasonable share of his time and attention. The very meaning of education seems to us to be, that the old should teach the young, and the wise direct the weak; that a man who professes to instruct, should get

among his pupils, study their characters, gain their af fections, and form their inclinations and aversions. In a public school, the numbers render this impossible; it is impossible that sufficient time should be found for this useful and affectionate interference. Boys, therefore, are left to their own crude conceptions and ill-formed propensities; and this neglect is called a spirited and manly education.

In by far the greatest number of cases, we cannot think public schools favourable to the cultivation of knowledge; and we have equally strong doubts if they be so to the cultivation of morals, though we admit, that, upon this point, the most striking arguments have been produced in their favour.

It is contended by the friends to public schools, that every person, before he comes to man's estate, must run through a certain career of dissipation; and that if that career is, by the means of a private education, deferred to a more advanced period of life, it will only be begun with greater eagerness, and pursued into more blamable excess. The time must, of course, come, when every man must be his own master; when his conduct can be no longer regulated by the watchful superintendence of another, but must be guided by his own discretion. Emancipation must come at last; and we admit, that the object to be aimed at is, that such emancipation should be gradual, and not premature. Upon this very invidious point of the discussion, we rather wish to avoid offering any opinion. The manners of great schools vary considerably from time to time; and what may have been true many years ago is very possibly not true at the present period. In this instance, every parent must be governed by his own observations and means of information. If the licence which prevails at public schools is only a fair increase of liberty, proportionate to advancing age, and calculated to prevent the bad effects of a sudden transition from tutelary thraldom to perfect selfgovernment, it is certainly a good, rather than an evil. If, on the contrary, there exists in these places of education a system of premature debauchery, and if they only pre

vent men from being corrupted by the world, by corrupting them before their entry into the world, they can then only be looked upon as evils of the greatest magnitude, however they may be sanctioned by opinion, or rendered familiar to us by habit.

The vital and essential part of a school is the master; but, at a public school, no boy, or, at the best, only a very few, can see enough of him to derive any considerable benefit from his character, manners, and information. It is certainly of eminent use, particularly to a young man of rank, that he should have lived among boys; but it is only so when they are all moderately watched by some superior understanding. The morality of boys is generally very imperfect; their notions of honour extremely mistaken; and their objects of ambition frequently very absurd. The probability then is, that the kind of discipline they exercise over each other will produce (when left to itself) a great deal of mischief; and yet this is the discipline to which every child at a public school is not only necessarily exposed, but principally confined. Our objection (we again repeat) is not to the interference of boys in the formation of the character of boys; their character, we are persuaded, will be very imperfectly formed without their assistance; but our objection is to that almost exclusive agency which they exercise in public schools.

After having said so much in opposition to the general prejudice in favour of public schools, we may be expected to state what species of school we think preferable to them; for if public schools, with all their disadvantages, are the best that can actually be found, or easily attained, the objections to them are certainly made to very little purpose.

We have no hesitation, however, in saying, that that education seems to us to be the best which mingles a domestic with a school life, and which gives to a youth the advantage which is to be derived from the learning of a master, and the emulation which results from the society of other boys, together with the affectionate vigilance which he must experience in the house of his

parents. But where this species of education, from peculiarity of circumstances or situation, is not attainable, we are disposed to think a society of twenty or thirty boys, under the guidance of a learned man, and, above all, of a man of good sense, to be a seminary the best adapted for the education of youth. The numbers are sufficient to excite a considerable degree of emulation, to give to a boy some insight into the diversities of the human character, and to subject him to the observation and control of his superiors. It by no means follows, that a judicious man should always interfere with his authority and advice, because he has always the means; he may connive at many things which he cannot approve, and suffer some little failures to proceed to a certain extent, which, if indulged in wider limits, would be attended with irretrievable mischief: he will be aware that his object is to fit his pupil for the world; that constant control is a very bad preparation for complete emancipation from all control; that it is not bad policy to expose a young man, under the eye of superior wisdom, to some of those dangers which will assail him hereafter in greater number, and in greater strengthwhen he has only his own resources to depend upon. A private education, conducted upon these principles, is not calculated to gratify quickly the vanity of a parent who is blest with a child of strong character and preeminent abilities: to be the first scholar of an obscure master, at an obscure place, is no very splendid distinction; nor does it afford that opportunity, of which so many parents are desirous, of forming great connections for their children: but if the object be to induce the young to love knowledge and virtue, we are inclined to suspect, that, for the average of human talents and characters, these are the situations in which such tastes will be the most effectually formed.

TOLERATION. (E. REVIEW, 1811.)

Hints on Toleration, in Five Essays, &c. suggested for the Consideration of Lord Viscount Sidmouth, and the Dissenters. By Philagatharches. London. 1810.

IF a prudent man sees a child playing with a porcelain cup of great value, he takes the vessel out of his hand, pats him on the head, tells him his mamma will be sorry if it is broken, and gently cheats him into the use of some less precious substitute. Why will Lord Sidmouth meddle with the Toleration Act, when there are so many other subjects in which his abilities might be so eminently useful when enclosure bills are drawn up with such scandalous negligence- turnpike roads so shamefully neglected and public conveyances illegitimately loaded in the face of day, and in defiance of the wisest legislative provisions? We confess our trepidation at seeing the Toleration Act in the hands of Lord Sidmouth; and should be very glad if it were fairly back in the statute-book, and the sedulity of this well-meaning nobleman diverted into another channel.

The alarm and suspicion of the Dissenters upon these measures is wise and rational. They are right to consider the Toleration Act as their palladium; and they may be certain that, in this country, there is always a strong party ready, not only to prevent the further extension of tolerant principles, but to abridge (if they dared) their present operation within the narrowest limits. Whoever makes this attempt will be sure to make it under professions of the most earnest regard for mildness and toleration, and with the strongest declarations of respect for King William, the Revolution, and the principles which seated the House of Brunswick on the throne of these realms; and then will follow the clauses for whipping Dissenters, imprisoning preachers,