quarters; but here, we think, it will meet with fewer difficulties. There are not the habits and the prejudices of ages to combat: it is much clearer ground, and may more speedily and easily be prepared for building. Pestalozzi, as has been seen in the extract, p. 145, speaks strongly against knowledge "which does not concern us.' We think him too exclusive-for any innocent knowledge is better than none, inasmuch as it tends to produce, proportionately, intellectual habits, which certainly are better than animal ones. But we agree with him to the extent that it is most strongly advisable to begin, at the least, with knowledge fitted to the circumstances and wants of those to be instructed.

The question now is, how is such education to be given?-By what means is this inestimable blessing to be propagated? It would, indeed, be most difficult to chalk out a general plan which, at once, should embrace all that is to be desired on so extended and so diversified a subject-on one point, indeed, and that the most momentous of all, any general plan would be impossible. It will be seen that we allude to RELIGION. None but the most general doctrines-doctrines universally recognized by believers of all classes-can be touched upon in any general system of spreading intellectual and moral knowledge. The vast variety of sects render this absolutely impossible—for if any declaration were made in favour of one, the others would at once recoil.

And here we must raise our voice, with anxious entreaty, to such as hold the opinion sincerely, and with indignation and scorn against those who use it merely as a bugbear, a lying image to scare conscientious but unenquiring persons-as to the allegation that not declaring adherence to any particular system of religious opinions is, in fact, a denial of all. This has been urged by the enemies of knowledge with a fierce and venomous activity, made greater from the impossibility of individualization noticed above. They know that the strength of the Friends of Knowledge would be reduced into comparative inanition if their efforts were limited to one class of believers. And surely, with this most palpable reason for abstaining from detailseven supposing, which is not likely, that the promoters of education were themselves all of one way of thinking-it is monstrous to allege, that the never using more than the most general language on the topic of Religion, is a token of indifference. No! as far as can be consistent with giving offence to none, that prospect of immortality which Revelation inculcates-that veneration for the Almighty, in which all classes of believers coincide, should be constantly held up as among the most needful motives of action-as calculated, above all things, to lead, through the prospect of the next world, to Virtue, and consequently to Happiness, in this.

It will be seen that our latter observations have pointed at some of the attacks made upon the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge a body which it is next to impossible to write on the subject of general education without alluding to. Much as we admire the principles on which that body is congregated, and all that they have done since their formation, we respect them only for their great efforts in the cause of intellectual cultivation; and if we thought they merited

what has been so maliciously urged against them, we would join in the blame as eagerly as we have now striven to refute it. But we consider that Society as having, in the midst of most various and numberless difficulties, done the good work of propagating sound and pure knowledge, without one iota of alloy to lessen its value.

We shall not be accused of being blind worshippers of the Society, when we say that we think that it is now time that they should do more than they have yet done in the nature of that moral instruction, to which we have attached such paramount importance throughout all that we have said. We are quite aware that every thing which has been published by them of a general nature, such as history and biography, has been composed in that spirit of "peace and good will towards men," which, especially after the long prevalence of an opposite practice, should be the pervading feeling of every well-wisher of mankind who now writes history. But, we confess, we would wish for something more immediately devoted to the inculcation of kindly feeling and strong principle-not in the direct nature of essay or dissertation-but in some shape in which the lessons would come in incidentally, and in a manner calculated to win as well as to teach. We do not see why the form of fiction—a philosophical novel, for instance, called by some simpler name-should not be adopted. It would not derogate from the title of the Society-for all "knowledge" leading to a good end must be "useful."

It is beside our present purpose, however, to enter into details like these. We hope that our suggestion, which we make in all respect and humbleness, may perhaps find favour in the eyes of the Society, unless indeed they may, as is exceedingly likely, have already formed some intention of the kind. We have great hopes, indeed, in this particular from their announced new series of a Library of Entertaining Knowledge. We proposed when we began this article, to have concluded with some observations upon the effects of Education, even in its present early state, upon crime. A valuable paper in the Society's Companion to the Almanac for the present year, would have furnished their groundwork. But after the very general discussion into which our subject has led us, we think that statistical details would probably be felt to be out of place. We shall, in all likelihood, say something on this subject in our next number.

We fear, that some of our readers may have thought that we have indulged too much in metaphysical discussion: but a subject of such a nature as the compatibility of the moral and mental advancement of mankind necessitates metaphysical enquiry;—and we believe we have given the results in language wholly free from any of the jargon which the perhaps fantastic accuracy of some of the modern systems has caused to be so often attributed to metaphysical language.

The subject of Education is one to which we attach an almost paramount importance, as affecting the progress of human happiness. We are always most anxious to remove any of the objections which, from time to time, are made to its diffusion-we may say painfully so, when any partial difficulties are stated as existing in minds which, naturally, should be all our own. The writer of the letter which has given rise to these observations, manifestly agrees in the advantage and im

portance of the diffusion of even only intellectual cultivation: may we venture to hope that what we have said will shew to our friend, and those who think similarly, that mental is quite compatible with moral cultivation, nay, that it is calculated to assist it, and that EDUCATION, in its real sense, includes both? Long, long may Knowledge, Virtue, and thence Happiness, be its fruits!

A LOOKING GLASS FOR THE COUNTRY.

No. I.-WINDSOR, AS IT WAS.

My earliest recollections of Windsor are exceedingly delightful. I was born within a stone's throw of the Castle-gates; and my whole boyhood was passed in the most unrestrained enjoyment of the venerable and beautiful objects by which I was surrounded, as if they had been my own peculiar and proper inheritance. The king and his family lived in a plain barrack-looking lodge at his castle foot, which, in its external appearance and its interior arrangements, exactly corresponded with the humble taste and the quiet domestic habits of George III. The whole range of the castle, its terrace, and its park, were places dedicated to the especial pleasures of a school-boy. Neither warder, nor sentinel, nor gamekeeper interfered with our boisterous sports. The deserted courts of the upper quadrangle often re-echoed, on the moonlight winter evenings, with our whoo-whoop; and delightful hiding places indeed there were amongst the deep buttresses and sharp angles of those old towers. The rooks and a few antique dowagers, who had each their domiciles in some lone turret of that spacious square, were the only personages who were disturbed by our revelry ;—and they, kind creatures, never complained to the authorities.

But if the inner courts of Windsor Castle rang with our sports, how much more noisy was the joy in the magnificent play-ground of the terrace! Away we went, fearless as the chamois, along the narrow wall; and even the awful height of the north side, where we looked down upon the tops of the highest trees, could not abate the rash courage of follow my leader. In the pauses of the sport, how often has my eye reposed upon that magnificent landscape which lay at my feet, drinking in its deep beauty, without a critical thought of the picturesque! Then, indeed, I knew nothing about

"The stately brow Of Windsor's heights,"

nor could I hid the stranger

"Th' expanse below

Of grove, of lawn, of mead survey."

My thoughts, then, were all fresh and vivid, and I could enjoy the scenes amongst which I lived, without those artificial and hacknied

associations which make up the being of the man. Great, too, was my joy, when laying my eye to the edge of the eastern wall, and looking along a channel cut in the surface, I saw the dome of St. Paul's looming through the smoke at twenty miles distance. Then, God be praised, my ear had not been shattered, nor my heart hardened, by dwelling under the shadow of that dome ;-and I thought of London, as a place for the wise and the good to be great and happy in :-and not as an especial den in which

"All creeping creatures, venomous and low,” might crawl over and under each other.

The Park! what a glory was that for cricket and kite-flying. No one molested us. The beautiful plain immediately under the eastern terrace was called the Bowling Green;—and, truly, it was as level as the smoothest of those appendages to suburban inns. We took excellent care that the grass should not grow too fast beneath our feet. No one molested us. The king, indeed, would sometimes stand alone for half an hour to see the boys at cricket;—and heartily would he laugh when the wicket of some confident urchin went down at the first ball. But we did not heed his majesty. He was a quiet good humoured gentleman, in a long blue coat, whose face was as familiar to us as that of our writing-master; and many a time had that gracious gentleman bidden us good morning, when we were hunting for mushrooms in the early dew, and had crossed his path as he was returning from his dairy, to his eight o'clock breakfast. Every one knew that most respectable and amiable of country squires, called His Majesty; and truly there was no inequality in the matter, for his majesty knew every

one.

This circumstance was a natural result of the familiar and simple habits of the court. There was as little parade, as can well be imagined, in all the movements of George III. and his family; and there was infinitely more state at such places as Stowe and Alnwick, than in the royal lodge at Windsor. The good man and his amiable family, perhaps, as a matter of policy, carried this freedom of manners to a little excess;-and it was from this cause that the constant attacks of Peter Pindar, in which the satire is levelled, not only against the most amiable of weaknesses, but against positive virtues, were so popular during the French revolutionary war. But, at any rate, the unrestrained intercourse of the king with those by whom he was surrounded, is something which is now very pleasant to look back upon. I have now no recollection of having, when a child, seen the king with any of the appendages of royalty, except when he went to town, once a week, to hold a levee; and then ten dragoons rode before, and ten after his carriage, and the tradesmen in the streets through which he passed duly stood at their doors, to make the most profound reverences, as in duty bound, when their monarch looked " every inch a king." But the bows were less profound, and the wonderment none at all, when twice a week, as was his wont during the summer months, his majesty, with all his family, and a considerable bevy of ancient maids of honour, and half-pay generals, walked through the town, or rode at a slow pace in an open carriage, to the Windsor theatre, which

was then in the High-street. Reader, it is impossible that you can form an idea of the smallness of that theatre; unless you have by chance lived in a country town, when the assembly-room of the head inn has been fitted up with the aid of brown paper and ochre, for the exhibition of some heroes of the sock and buskin, vulgarly called strollers. At the old Windsor theatre, her majesty's apothecary in the lower boxes might have almost felt her pulse across the pit. My knowledge of the drama commenced at the early age of seven years, amidst this royal fellowship in fun ;-and most loyally did I laugh when his majesty, leaning back in his capacious arm-chair in the stage-box, shook the house with his genuine peals of hearty merriment. Well do I remember the whole course of these royal play-goings. The theatre was of an inconvenient form, with very sharp angles at the junctions of the centre with the sides. The stage-box, and the whole of the left or O. P. side of the lower tier, were appropriated to royalty. The house would fill at about half-past six. At seven, precisely, Mr. Thornton, the manager, made his entrance backwards, through a little door, into the stage-box, with a plated candlestick in each hand, bowing with all the grace that his gout would permit. The six fiddles struck up God save the King; the audience rose ;-the King nodded round and took his seat next the stage; the Queen curtsied, and took her arm-chair also. The satin bills of their majesties and the princesses were then duly displayed-and the dingy green curtain drew up. The performances were invariably either a comedy and farce, or more frequently three farces, with a plentiful interlarding of comic songs. Quick, Suett, and Mrs. Mattocks were the reigning favourites;-and, about 1800, Elliston and Fawcett became occasional stars. But Quick and Suett were the King's especial delight. When Lovegold, in the Miser, drawled out" a pin a day's a groat a year," the laugh of the royal circle was somewhat loud ;-but when Dicky Gossip exhibited in his vocation, and accompanied the burden of his song "Dicky Gossip, Dicky Gossip is the man," with the blasts of his powder-puff, the cachinnation was loud and long, and the gods prolonged the chorus of laughter, till the echo died away in the royal box. At the end of the third act, coffee was handed round to the court circle ;-and precisely at eleven the performances finished, and the flambeaux gleamed through the dimly-lighted streets of Windsor, as the happy family returned to their tranquil home.

There was occasionally a good deal of merriment going forward at Windsor in these olden days. I have a dim recollection of having danced in the little garden which was once the moat of the Round Tower, and which Washington Irving has been pleased to imagine existed in the time of James I. of Scotland. I have a perfect remembrance of a fête at Frogmore, about the beginning of the present century, where there was a Dutch fair,-and haymaking very agreeably performed in white kid gloves by the belles of the town,-and the buck-basket scene of the "Merry Wives of Windsor" represented by Fawcett and Mrs. Mattocks, and I think Mrs. Gibbs, under the colonnade of the house in the open day—and variegated lamps-and transparencies and tea served out in tents, with a magnificent scramble for the bread and butter. There was great good humour and freedom on all these occasions ;-and if the grass was damp and the young