hour hanging on abject conditions, every ex-order and virtue ? It may not be improper to pression of personal preference in religion and throw a classical relief over the comparison. politics scornfully denied, we may wonder at Where did the ancient mythology place its their forbearance. They are often cared for most monstrous forms? In the gardens, by There reign less than the clod of the valley, or the herd of the streams, among the woods. the stall. Soils will be improved; breeds shall Pan and Silenus, the Sylvani, the Satyrs, the be perfected; stock shall be adjudged with Fauns. The Dryads are also there. They honor; cultivation shall be assisted with every approach not the cities nor disfigure the towns.' experiment, and be rewarded with every prize. pp. 46, 47. And then, when some monstrous growth, some crass carcase, some field implement, has been The Fifth Report of the Registrar-Genlauded to the echo which applauds again,-a eral, concerning marriages, published in poor laborer is introduced, and he shares in 1843, shows the comparative state of eduthe honors of the show, for having brought up cation in the rural, and in the city and manuso many children without parish pay! Nature and ingenuity have been racked in the facturing districts. It is required that parother instances of success, and surely not less ties who cannot write their name shall sign in this! It is an appropriate climax to the with a mark. In Suffolk, Essex, and Camfête. An admiring district can scarcely deter-bridgeshire, there were forty-seven in the mine where the greater glory of the invention hundred compelled to sign with a mark; falls.'-pp. 41-46. in Bedfordshire, forty-nine; in Herts, fifty; but in the metropolitan divisions, only

The next extract brings out another point eleven in the hundred. The inference from in this comparison :

these facts cannot be mistaken. Of the kind of education which Dr. Hamilton in

culcates, the reader may judge from the following passages:

which will draw up the soul from its depths, and liberate it from its fetters. This is the true praxis of education. Self-knowledge, self-control, self-examination, self-culture, will follow as effects You have caused him who was created a thinking being to think; you have done reverence to the Father of Spirits in the evocation of that spirit.

'The question of the comparative morality of these departments is, of all, the most important. It is not to be decided by a glance. It is commonly taken for granted that the country 'Any education is nearly worthless that is is the favorite scene and haunt of the virtues. not intelligent. The mind must be aroused to The cottier is the old Adamite, dressing his think for itself. Mental digestion alone proplot on the outer fence of Eden. The village duces mental life and health. Violent efforts green and oak might be the neighborhood of of the memory often discourage even that lower Mamre. Here simplicity has received no blight, faculty without strengthening the judgment. and purity no taint. Pastorals fill the air, and Let children be taught the reasons of facts; and the melodies of the brooks and woods swell the when this cannot be done, let it be shown how chant of native reeds. But there may be ob- reasonable is the ground of conviction in their servers who yield to no such romance; they approved truth. Why is it?-how can it be? yet hold that, in the rural portions of the king--wherefore do you believe it? are questions dom, there is a more spotless state of morals. Now, will it be contended that there is in them as exalted sense, as generous practice of morals, as is often demonstrated in our city marts! It is maintained that the vices of our towns are not rife in our villages? Perhaps the complaint simply respects the number of offences. Our country calendars must determine that. Then, do we feel bold in the argument, that the 'We feel that something is wanting to raise most numerous and most odious crimes come the national mind; it is oppressed by habitude not from the towns, but from scattered hamlets and phlegm. We desire to bring it to a greater and solitary dwellings. The quarter sessions, force and quickness; it stands in need of acit will be said, dispose of cases that come from tivity, perception, vigor. It has been long overthe towns, and they are not heard of in the borne by tyranny and besotted by ignorance; gaol delivery of the shire. But these enormi- it has been bought by gifts and suborned by ties, wherever committed, must go to the high-bribes. There is a natural love of justice and er court. And are there not sessions for the tone of generosity in it; it strongly inclines to counties, and the divisions of the counties, as independence, but it has been worn down by well as for the boroughs? Let the truth-it is neediness and beaten down by rigor. It comextorted from those who are impartial-be prehends all the elements of greatness; it resimply told. The proportion of criminals to sembles some noble falchion capable of the every thousand inhabitants is higher in Wor-keenest edge and the brightest polish, uninjured cestershire than in Middlesex, and is equal to in its temperament even now, but blunted, that of Lancashire. Herefordshire exceeds soiled, threatened to be corroded by its rust. Leicestershire. Dorset surpasses Notting-It must be awakened to exertion, and to greater hamshire. The county of Oxford is on a par confidence in itself; it must be drawn from the with that of Stafford. Does this account just-low amusements which have hitherto been its ify the transcendence of rural over municipal only recreation. It is ready for growth in know

ledge, it invites, it even thirsts for education. ties. In France, the schools instituted by Stimulated by that discipline which we incul- the government, exist in thirty-three thouscate, it will rouse from sloth; possessing the mo- and communes, or parishes, out of thirtytives for improvement, its inborn energy will

vindicate itself; it will stand forth in its viva-seven thousand, in which three millions of city without lightness, in its strength without children are educated. Where practicable, violence, in its stability without grossness, in separate schools exist for catholics and its activity without lubricity, in its ascendancy without disdain.

'It is almost unnecessary to say, that the instruction of the child is as nothing, save as you imbue him with the taste and furnish him with the means of self-education. 'Every man,' says Gibbon, who rises above the common level has received two educations: the first, from his teachers; the second, more personal and important, from himself. Once inspired to think wisely and religiously, it is not very probable that he will relapse. Study will be his habit, and piety his inner life. Should he never rise in society he has already gained an honored and a holy position; he carries with him a blessed charm to lighten toil, to assuage affliction, to purify attachment, and to conquer death. He has been trained in the way in which he should go, and when he is old, he will not depart from it.

protestants; and where the schools are mixed, the best available provisions are made to secure the rights of conscience from invasion. There are also forty-six royal colleges, in which a higher education is given, including some eighteen thousand students; and two hundred and eighty-seven communal colleges, in which there are more than twenty-six thousand students. In 1842, the government voted £80,000 towards the expenses of these colleges. Attendance of children at the primary schools is voluntary. Even now, however, about one-third of the people of France can neither read nor write. The Prussian system covers its territory more completely than the French, and is compulsory. In all other respects, France has followed the example of Prussia. 'We would, therefore, when certain writers urge moral training, admit the idea, but at the Systems of this complexion obtain, with same time greatly expand it beyond their am- slightly varying degrees of efficiency, as is bition. We see clearly that education has well known, in Austria, Switzerland, Holhitherto scarcely touched the spiritual good land, Belgium, Norway, Sweden, and the of man; the higher principles of Christianity United States. Everywhere they are subhave found little access to the people's heart. stantially the same, subject in part to local In them is the power which is now wanted to regenerate society. General discipline may management, but holding the same relation do much for the public mind, and even public to a central government, which enjoins morality, but there it stops; it leaves the real their existence, and authorizes the taxation nature of man the same; something more is necessary for their support. In six of the required to stem the eager passions of its self-states of the American Union the proportion ishness. Are the masters always the true re- of the population under instruction rises so formers of the soul? Do not the Titans assail high as one-fourth. In an average of eight heaven? Is mental process the invariable of the countries the most advanced in this guide to virtue and piety? Is infidelity the mistake of the ignorant? Is war the exclusive respect in Europe, the proportion is onedelight of the rude? Is there not now an in- sixth. From the 'Report of the Hon. and tense activity of mind laboring with all the Rev. Baptist Noel,' printed in the 'Minutes prodigies of evil? But in the gospel we pos- of the Committee of the Council of Educasess the instrument which called into existence tion,' relative to the state of education in the first Christians. It is eternally the same; Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool, Salyet, with an ever-adapting faculty, it anticipates the wants of each social condition. It ford, and Bury, we think it may be made belongs to all truth and all goodness; it is the to appear that about one-sixth of the popula inheritance of every age; it is the friend of tion in those five towns, do receive some man in his every estate; it works by an as- kind of school instruction. But if we may similating action; it turns all into itself. What be allowed to take those five towns as a samwould a nation of Christians be? What would be a world? That is the ultimate design, that the blessed reward, that the glorious victory, of true education!'-pp. 84-86.

The chapters on the advantages of popular education, and on Sabbath schools, contain much valuable matter; but we pass on to those relating to the foreign systems and means of education, the state of education in this country, and to our consequent du

ple of the kingdom, it must be remembered that the term, instruction,' as relating to the eight states on the Continent, is to be understood as referring to the full training of the day schools, while with us, this number of the taught must be made up of all who come under instruction in any form or degree, from the lowest dame school, or mere Sunday instruction, upwards; not more than a fourth of this number being

among them. Under them are the inspectorsconstituted over their respective provinces. general. Then the heads of the academies are All is detail and surveillance; there is nothing which can elude the jealous care of the most

attendants at the elementary day schools | A royal council assists the minister. The designed for the working classes. Com-seven functionaries, of which it consists, divide paring ourselves with the continental and the faculties and departments of education American states adverted to, we cannot be said to place the same number under instruction; but in the amount and quality of the instruction given, we fail much more than in the number of the taught, few being ed-balanced system. But freedom is sacrificed ucated in our elementary schools in so good a degree, so far as the usual elements of school learning are concerned, as in the schools of the same class in most of the states referred to, both in the old world and the new.

On the whole, it must be confessed, that in this comparison, the scale turns, and somewhat strongly, against us. Two causes preclude our adopting the continental system-the exclusiveness of our national church, and the more advanced social intelligence and feeling of our people. No system, we think, could be made acceptable to this nation which should be so adjusted as to satisfy our established clergy. And if that difficulty could be removed, the power of the government among us is still so formidable, that many calm and thoughtful men cannot avoid the conclusion, that the remedy, as coming from that quarter, would be worse than the disease. It might cause a greater degree of school-learning, but might occasion a loss of many things, which are more excellent. On this subject, however, we prefer that our author should speak. He would vest the responsibility of educating the young in the parent, and not in the state. He contends that this is the law of Revelation, and that, as a rule, the parent is better fitted and better disposed to the discharge of this duty than the state. We counsel those who may be inclined to despise his reasoning on this ground to attempt to grapple with it. In the following extract the reader may trace the drift of Dr. Hamilton's argument on this subject:

'National education does exist in many of the continental states. It has operated long enough for its decided effects to be seen There is abundance of organization: there are grand referendaries; there are portfeuilles and bureaux. Local check is unknown; selfgovernment is repudiated; all hangs upon one centre. Let us examine the great scholastic regimen of France. There is a minister of public instruction; he is the master of the university, which is the keystone to the whole edifice of education. It has dependent upon it, academies, royal colleges, commercial colleges, institutions, pensions, primary schools.

on the elaborate altar; teacher and pupil cannot know it. The school is the ward of one before the door. The work of Professor Lorgreat panoptic prison-house, with the keepers rain gives a deplorable account of the state of things. He was one of the four hundred and ninety inspectors sent forth by Guizot to examine into the primary schools. He proceeds upon their general reports. The tale is almost incredible of the miscreants who were

called schoolmasters, and the hovels that vice, the squalor, the audacious dissimulation were called schools. The incapacity, the and deception, nearly surpass the power of belief. The moral influence is too apparent. It is the characteristic of the brave and free to rest upon themselves. The desire of the true patriot is in everything to circumscribe the province of government, where it can be done In our country, the loan of the state is generally by extending the sphere of individual action. deprecated; we would allow nothing of our commerce or our undertakings to fall into its hands. But when education is resigned to it we are henceforth children; the mind is discouraged and debased; we consent to receive with a royal device. We are under tutors and our ideas, and those only, which are minted governors. Self-reliance, the soul of virtue, the talisman of success, is beaten down. France is infidel or superstitious at a bidding; generation is a conflict with generation as the educatory machine is set. The nation looks up for its direction to the existing ruler or bondage. It is not the people, but that power. government; it can, therefore, only be in That power is a great deputation to do everything. And why is this? Because the mind of the nation is made prisoner, and led captive by the training which it meets at the outset of life, which binds it to uniformity, impresses it with helplessness, and satisfies it with dependHence the absence of enterprise, the dearth of large and stirring views, of great and far-seeing principles. The quarrel of the people may be with the government; emeute but they keep to the one idea, the one idol of may shake it, or revolution may overthrow it, form of the nation, the regeneration of the the government still. The high-souled rethink themselves free, but it is in the sale of people, enters not into their thoughts. They their freedom. They capitulate to a system of egregious vain glory; for empty honor and pageant, they lay down their arms and abantime their folly. It will not be long before don their garrisons. They may find out in they see how 'men ride over their heads,'

ence.

ceeds. To this is a noble people made slave and victim. What high deeds can such discipline provoke? Where are the excellences which this culture can inspire? They who anticipate the reign of mind and religion, can see in all of this mechanism, no preparatory process, no encouraging earnest, no prophetic hope!'-pp. 242, 243.

They have bowed themselves to the despot- sinks it to the same. A dull monotony sucism, and they must not complain that it tramples upon them. Like other fortifications, they will at last learn that educatory bulwarks are for their own intimidation. All will be turned against themselves. We have a hundred governments in England; if they do wrong, the tribunals proscribe and punishbut with one much-grudged exception, (save that of the registration, which requires a central safe-keeping and archive,) centralization, that subordinate ramification which gives to a Parisian board its national ubiquity, is unknown to us.'-pp. 239-241.

The Prussian system finds no more favor

with our author than the French.

We have been more free than usual in our extracts from this volume, partly that our criticisms on the style and manner of the author may not go forth without suitable and sufficient illustration; and partly in the hope that our readers will be disposed by these specimens to make them'The education which is established in selves acquainted with the entire work. Prussia is a theme of very wide and vehement In a volume embracing so great a variety eulogy. It has been exalted as a model of of topics, and topics on which there is so perfection. The best, the only safeguard of much room for diversity of judgment, we liberty, is hitherto withheld. The constitution shall not be thought to concur in everything which was promised, when a popular spirit was to be awakened, which was the signalwe meet with. The coloring is sometimes cry for levies of youth and treasure, is still partial; and positions of some peril are ocperfidiously and ungratefully refused. The casionally taken, as we think, with more fast and the present monarch have borne their resoluteness than discretion. But, as a faculties meekly, and have exhibited many whole, the publication is admirable. We amiable virtues. But poor and to be accursed conclude by recommending it, not merely are 'the virtues which undo a country. The to the perusal, but to the meditative thought private excellence and domestic goodness of of our readers. It is a work characterized the despot are not uncommon. His nature

of households.

not do half the mischief of a William and a

must have some vent of tenderness. Wield- by sound information, large views, and ing a mighty machinery of oppression, it is not close reasoning; and in the eloquence likely that be will carry cruelty and violence which pervades it, bespeaks equally the phiinto his home. It is a respite of self-torment lanthropy, the patriotism, and the piety of its to find here pastime and caress. It is relief author. But the friends of a self-sustained from the heavy powers of state. It is only a variety of selfishness. Who commends the popular education must remember, that their work is not done because eloquent lion, as it devours its prey, that it is loving to its mate, and playful with its cubs? No more things have been written about it. Nondire misfortune has fallen on man than this conformists, especially, will do well to bear amiableness of tyrants. It often is pretence. in mind, that their responsibilities in relaBetter were it to be so. Often it is real. It tion to this subject are the most weighty is then pleaded for excuse to crush millions of that Providence has ever laid upon them. families, to send desolations through millions Their social position in the time to come A Nero and a Caligula could will depend greatly on the manner in Nicholas. What is this country of which we which they acquit themselves with regard to speak-this kingdom of boasted light-this this duty. land of universal education? A camp of manœuvrers, an arsenal of weapons, a barrack of troops. All are trained to military service. Upon this martial regulation is founded the system of instruction. It supplies, of course, immense facilities for it. A thousand subalterns are ready to conduct it. Pedagogues are the orderlies and sentries. The drum and the drill are the notions and exercises. An elementary education, very complete as far as it goes, is confessedly afforded. But what is the national character which it can shape? It severs the proper sympathies of parent and tes and the physiognomist, which in our child. It extinguishes the proud conscious- opinion, however, proves nothing but that ness of free agency and personal accountabil- the latter had not got beyond the rudiments ity. It raises mind to one level-it as often of his art. Being asked to decipher the

BULWER'S MUSCLES OF THE MIND.

. From Frazer's Magazine. "Is there an art

To find the mind's construction in the face?"

We have all heard the anecdote of Socra

from the decision, and can scarcely allow even Lavater himself to be a good substitute for a jury of twelve stupid honest Englishmen.

In spite of all this, however, we maintain that the language of the passions is written upon the countenance; that its character, though obscure, indeed, and known only like the Egyptian hieroglyphics to a few, are not perfect enigmas; and that Gregory Nazianzen, in painting the expression and gestures of Julian the Apostate, furnishes us with ample materials for forming a conception of the construction of his mind.* But to understand this language it is necessary to be acquainted with the alphabet in which it is written; not merely to glance at the letters on the page of the human countenance, which would be like attempting to discover the mechanism of a telegraph by seeing it work, but to take them one by one, analyze their nature, study their conformation, and attain a clear idea of the force and signification of each.

face of the wisest and most virtuous of men, he could discover nothing in his features but folly and vice. He imagined-for we cannot accept the excuse of Socrates for himthat deformity of visage necessarily indicated deformity of mind, and could not detect the expression of the saint beaming forth from the coarse persona (дóσлоv) of the man Socrates. The ancients indeed generally, in their treatises or scattered observations on physiognomy, seem in a great measure to have sought for indications of the mind's character from those parts which were most likely to resist the impressions of passion and the plastic operations of the soul. Hippocrates and Aristotle, among others, lay more stress on the conformation of the nose, the size of the eye, the greater or less protuberance of the forehead, the color of the hair, than on the subtle variations of form which distinguish one mouth, for example, from another; and they have not been without their followers in modern times. Gaspar Taliacottus, whose wonderful achievements are celebrated in Hudi- These letters are what Bulwer calls" the bras, and who ought to have known some-muscles significative of the affections of the thing of noses, since he made a good many mind." They have one peculiarity, which with his own hands, appears to have ima- is, that when they have been often disposed gined that his favorite feature was the pal-in a certain order upon a face, they have an ace of the mind, whose shape could be as- aptitude to assume that order once more. certained, like that of an ankle through a For this reason, a countenance which has silk stocking, by the most cursory inspection. A nose with a sharp edge, he says, indicates aptitude for anger; a thick and depressed nose denotes most vicious inclinations; a full, solid, and obtuse nose, like that of lions and Molossian dogs, is a sign of courage and audacity; a hooked and aquiline nose reveals a royal and magnificent mind, but a crooked soul is betrayed by a nose that is bent and on one side. These, and such as these, are the conclusions to which his nasal studies led Taliacottus, who doubtless assisted in forming the theory of Walter Shandy, Esq. However this may be, we must venture to dissent toto cælo from his conclusions, Bulwer is of opinion-but who is Bulespecially as such a theory pushed to ex- wer? Not a baronet, certainly, nor the autremes might lead to very serious conse-thor of a dozen novels? No. John Bulquences. Already has the sage Valesius, in his Sacred Philosophy, proposed to introduce the science of physiognomy into the courts of law. When two persons accused of crimes, he says, are brought up before a judge, let him unhesitatingly select the most ill-favored of them, and put him to the torture: there is no doubt about the matter; rack him till he confesses-he is the villain; woe betide the morning that he was born with so ugly a face! We beg to appeal

been accustomed to represent certain passions acquires at length from this circumstance what is called an expression; that is to say, the animal spirits, if it be the animal spirits by which the effect is brought about, wear themselves a beaten path, an habitual state is induced, and the more flexible features at length constantly represent the favorite posture of the mind. Idiots have no expression, because they are very rarely intent for a sufficient length of time upon one object. Their vacant stare reveals accurately the character of their thoughts.

wer, son of Thomas Bulwer, was surnamed the Chirosopher, and wrote a book "now seldom pored on," entitled, Pathomyotomia; or, a Dissection of the Significative Muscles of the Affections of the Mind: being an Essay to a New Method of Observing the most Important Movings of the Muscles of the Head, as they are the nearest and immediate Organs of the Voluntary or Im

*Hist. Eccles. iii. 19.