Humility, which is the first step to sound wisdom, as it is the foundation of every christian virtue, is seldom found coexistent with that superficial species of information, on which some men pride themselves, and which goes by the name of Learning. We must enter the Temple of Minerva as we approach the church of God, like little children, if we hope to be accepted. There is one thing which distinguishes the humble Christian, and the man of genius, whereby they may be alike known, namely, an infantile simplicity of temper; and where any traits of disposition manifest themselves irreconcilable to such naïve innocency, we should be very inclined to infer the hollowness of pretensions to either title. The ability to read and write, now so generally extended, even did it reach from those lower elements to all the objects of literature and science, would, in our opinion, be worse than worthless, divested of the regulating principle which religion supplies, and unaccompanied by a correspondent education of the mind. It cannot be too distinctly understood, or rung too often in the ears of this flippant generation, that the accomplishments of intellect are not knowledge, any more than superstition, or the acquirement of divinity, is religion. They may peradventure serve a man to make a fool of himself, since, according to the old proverb, un demi-savant est plus sot qu'un ignorant; and over and above, they may fret his neighbour, as children suffered to play with edged weapons not only hurt themselves, but put others in pain; or the presumptuous confidence of his attainments, in which he hugs himself, may prove a will-o'the-wisp to lead the soul from the narrow way to heaven, into one of the myriad of devious paths that tend to utter destruction. Nay, exactly in the ratio that the individual is stored with mere worldly information, would seem to be the necessity of his being disfranchised from the trammels of self,.. of his being disciplined in habits of virtue and self-control. Could we at will close up to the human mind every avenue of knowledge, it might perhaps be made a question whether, taking all things into consideration, the mental pericrania of the lower classes should be brought into cultivation, or (were such a course possible in the present advanced and active period of man's history) be left in their original state of vacancy. But on ascertaining the impracticability of that policy-for knowledge of the one kind or the other is sure to come unsoughthaving once resolved to entrust the weapons from Pallas' arsenal in their hands, she must instruct them in their uses, lest they be perverted to suicidal purposes, and work to the destruction of society.

We are assured by Plato, that if a man be only half-educated, he is the wildest, the most untractable of all earthly animals, ἀγριώτατον τῶν ὅσα φύει γῆ.

This is a truth of all time, but one which takes an em

phasis from the dangers peculiar to an advanced stage of civilization.

Now the knowledge of the obliquities of this wide and dangerous world, which springs up in the rank soil of the heart, like weeds on a neglected tomb, is precisely that half education which the philosopher alludes to, and deprecates; and which can only be uprooted and rendered innoxious, by inculcating on the rising generation subjected to our control, antagonist impressions of religion, and principles of practical wisdom. Thus there will be substituted, in the place of that discontent, which in after years too often corrodes their moral and social feelings, a cheerful acquiescence in that graduated order of things, on the lowest round of which it hath pleased Providence to place them: so only will they discover what are the objects of the understanding, and stoop to the first principles of wisdom: ... so only will they come to feel, in common with the wisest and brightest of men, who ever crossed this threshold of eternity, that "the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom: and to depart from evil, that is understanding."

But how different is the course pursued by such as are placed in authority over us, in an age which we are so fond of extolling, as being more enlightened than any which have preceded it! We will grant that the rudiments of learning are imparted to the youth of both sexes, in Sunday and other schools, though nothing like so generally throughout the country as is commonly supposed. But, as we have already stated, such an education is not all that is requisite. If the workhouses contained seminaries for instruction in other matters, more germane to every day in the week than reading and writing,... were the children put to employments suitable to their abilities, and adapted to their comparative weakness, they would become habituated to industry, and to order themselves lowly and reverently to all their betters ...they would moreover enter upon that course, which is the penalty we all must pay for "man's first disobedience," under more favourable auspices than ever mere book learning will induce. It is not simply that they would be more likely in after life to turn out worthy citizens and skilful artisans;... though that, rightly considered, is not a consummation to be despised, but those objects which are infinitely higher in the account, so far from being impeded by the practice we recommend, would often take their rise out of the child's occupation of his time, and cultivation of his powers.

The early associations and impressions of the adult would receive a moral bias, and be on the side of virtue. His passions, as they successively develop themselves, would acquire a healthful tendency, and their grosser impulses be corrected by a coercive system of morals. Habits of application befitting his station in life would be formed, obedience rendered to such as may be placed

in authority; and above all, the little human creatures would be instructed to live in a humble and grateful sense of their continual dependence upon God, and imbibe the fact of their solemn accountability before him,... that Great Being, their latest stay in this world and their safeguard in the next, in whose eyes rank and wealth and knowledge are the vain baubles of time; and who hath pronounced his benediction upon them, and declared that "of little children is the kingdom of heaven."

This would be a method of education, which, by the assistance of Divine grace, would ensure the end of their being, and extend its advantages beyond the brief interests of this life. Compared with such results, worldly attainments are utterly insignificant. At the best, unless they be corrected by the medium of their application, and all along rendered subservient to immortal issues, they may only tend to facilitate the course of delusion, and therefore be more fraught with injury than substantial benefit.

Not the least of the many perversions to which the sapience derived from books is obnoxious, and which, alike in the case of the smatterer released from college, and the urchin from his dame school, we most sincerely deprecate, consists in that overweening opinion of his abilities, which such factitious sageness is apt to generate in the youthful mind, the tyro in both cases becoming "puft up with deignful insolence," in the persuasion of superior acquirements... Miseri, quibus intentata nites, whether a Pyrrha or a Pallas.

The experience of a life will perhaps hardly suffice to correct the false estimate of his intellectual superiority thus unhappily imbibed. The accomplished collegian is prepared to look down, as from a tower, upon the wisdom of his ancestors; to grasp all knowledge, human and divine, in his mind's eye; to contemplate, with the superciliousness of mediocrity, the institutions of his native land; and, fancying he can compass ends infinitely beyond the reach of his pigmy intellect, and that he is commissioned to improve, what he ought humbly and gratefully to admire, and rectify what he is pleased to style abuses, but which may for ought he knows be correctives, and have their use, or perhaps nothing more than means adapted to, and correspondent with objects that he never dreamt of... he sets up for a reformer of Church and State, and as in the vastness of his yvwotę, (knowingness) he fancies that he comprehends all things, so, out of the penury of his imagination, he reverences nothing. O Patribus plebes, O digni Consule patres!

With such pseudo-statesmen is the genius of our unhappy country pestered and overlayed in these perilous times. The diffusion of a superficial education quickens them all over the three kingdoms, and the whole genus owns this attribute in

* Spenser.

common; a vain confidence in their own mediocre talents, founded on an undue depreciation of the capacity of every other human being. They heed not the advice of Bacon, "to beware that they apply their proficience to charity and not to swelling;" but spread in every direction, they constitute the innumerable foci of that democracy, where all are unwilling to be subordinate to their fellows, but not one thinks of qualifying himself in the laborious detail of mental discipline to take the lead. In fact, never that we can recollect, since Great Britain had a history, did she stand in such need as at this hour, of a master mind to wield the heterogeneous elements into which society seems resolving itself,... of a mind capable of taking a comprehensive view of the circuit of affairs, in order to embrace in one enlarged defined system of policy the whole compass of conflicting phenomena. The art of administration is now reduced to a mere alternation of palliatives and expedients. We legislate extempore, and our measures are like the incongruous picture of Horace,

"Velut ægri somnia, vanæ

Finguntur species."

There is in truth, no vision in the land. The Minister takes no thought beyond the ignoble present. Still it must be admitted, like his prototype in Claudian, he strains after effect:

66

Semper nova, grandia semper

Diligit, et celeri degustat singula sensu."

But despite all his endeavours, clouds and darkness rest upon the future, and alas, there is no star from on high to give us promise of the dawn of a brighter day.

There seems a break in the chain and continuity of our history; and, to judge from the conduct of men in office, we might be led to the conclusion, that all government was provisional, every measure determining ultimately in itself, without reference to any more distant aim. The Denique sit, quod vis, simplex duntaxat et unum, which is at least as true of legislative performances as of literary, is disregarded at every step. We appear not to entertain the least idea that we possess only a life tenure in the advantages achieved for us at Runnymede, at Lambeth, and at Trafalgar; and that we are bound by every law, human and divine, to hand them down unimpaired, as the richest legacy we can transmit to our descendants. The present generation seems unlinked with every other. Properly and essentially selfish, it is quite oblivious of what it owes, not only to the memory of the primate Langton and his peers, of the six prelates and of Nelson, but to their posterity and ours. Magna Charta, involving the Habeas Corpus and Trial by Jury, was not insisted on and enforced, that the sublimated essence and spirit of King John's dastardly tyranny should in after years be allowed to influence

the conduct of the hydra-headed monster of democracy. A monarch was not hurled from his throne for committing the bishops to the Tower, and ordering the Church of England to be prosecuted, that in less than a century and half from that memorable epoch, a corps of sacrilegious legislators, actuated by all the bull-headed violence of James, without his purity of motive, should threaten with impunity a similar stretch of authority.

Nor did Nelson flourish, that the flag which had braved a thousand years' the battle and the breeze,' should be struck by his descendants. His whole life was his country's;... and did he die, only for the Bosphorus to be closed to British vessels, and our colours insulted off our own coasts in Newfoundland?

Let it not be objected that this hath little to do with the subject-matter we are bound to handle. We may seem to be descending from lofty ground; but the chain which connects the foreign policy of a government with its domestic authority, although not always obvious, does exist, as our rulers may find one day to their cost. Of the malign influence which contempt hath upon an administration, a very little knowledge of English history will inform us.

As often as the anniversaries of the 17th and the 19th of June come round, one would think certain slaves of "low ambition' must sink into the earth, appalled by the awful apprehension of posterity sitting in judgment on their misdeeds and omissions, arraigning them of abuse of the trust reposed in them, and proclaiming their degeneracy with indignation to the nations. This is a responsibility which they cannot, if they would, avoid. They had better retrace their headlong career in time.

And now we will revert to the deleterious effects which a superficial acquaintance with books, unaccompanied by the corrective influence of the higher discipline of the morals, and not at all purified by the cultivation of the heart, is calculated to produce on the principles and conduct of those classes, which form the basis of the social fabric. Ungrounded in the essentials of education, unfixed in principle, and unanchored in religion, their heads are naturally less able to stand the inebriating draught, than even those of their superiors. Their inspiration of the not-Pierian gas works up their vanity to madness, and overpowers their intellect in the same proportion that it seems to strengthen it. Thus they become the fittest instruments to execute and follow up the designs of calculating villany, and are at once the destined tools and victims of conspiracy and

treason.

It is amongst this class, who are possessed of just sufficient mental acquirement, to unfit them for the performance of their humble duties, and to make them discontented with the state of life, unto which it has pleased God to call them, that the seeds of insubordination, immorality, and unbelief are scattered with