read in a pothouse by an idle lawyer's clerk out of employ, was hereafter to speculate in his solitary Attic, by the aid of a flickering dip, upon the undulating theory of light, or pore over a paper on Porisms communicated by an embryo Newton to the philosophers of Somerset House, who, "with leaden eyes that love the ground,"

"Muse o'er the gibberish symbols, seen in lines,

Where dulness plus +, and genius minus shines."

The real object was, however, to undermine the outworks of Toryism, which was supposed to have its stronghold in the prejudices of early feelings, and which the patrician system of education in all classical schools was thought to encourage. By that system, a distinct line of demarcation was drawn between those who were, and were not, destined for the liberal professions, and through them to the emoluments of place first, and of state honours afterwards; while those who were destined for a counting-house, were compelled to be content with an education, suitable enough for all the honours of the civic mace, but not for the circle of lettered wits, or a brilliant display before the Speaker's chair.

To effect, then, the diminution first, and the subversion afterwards, of Tory influence, every effort was made; but nothing was done, except under the cover of far different motives, to break down all the barriers between the different classes of society; and by making the hard-working man, whose only patrimony was the use of his hands, feel more acutely than he did before, the bitterness of his lot, to goad the millions to madness, and then to prepare them as fitting instruments for the creation of that pressure from without,† which would lead to the rise of the Whigs on the ruins of the Tories.

* For the benefit of the uninitiated, we beg to state, that gibberish is derived from al-gebra; where gebra is only a part of the Gnostic gibberish-abra-geg-abra; a word perfectly intelligible to those who know that the Greek aßake and Latin abacus mean a calculating table, because, in the parent language, from which both are derived, letters were used for numbers, as is the case in Greek; while to the same source is probably to be traced the word bekky, the vernacular name for an accountant in the East Indies: and thus the numerical abacus is properly distinguished from the literal alphabet. With regard to the origin of the word aẞaks, by comparing the Oriental bekky, one would suspect that it was originally written aßeç: for thus the letters a, B, Eks would mean 1, 2, 6, and all three make up 9, the number of digits in the decimal notation; while by comparing εç (6) with dɛka (10), it is probable that dɛka is ò (4), and ɛɛç (6).

The first allusion made, we believe, by Lord Brougham, to the utility of a pressure from without, was in the Edinburgh Review, Vol. XXX. p. 206, in the year 1818, and the last in his celebrated tour through the provinces, when, in an evil hour, he gave his too pressing

With regard to the movements in detail of this war in disguise, it must be confessed, that Lord Brougham has exhibited all the combinations of a consummate general; and though he is probably destined, like Napoleon, to die in a political St. Helena, or to be the counterpart of that hero, who

"Stalked sullen o'er the desert plains, from man apart,

And crowd-trod paths avoiding, lonely ate his heart,”

still has he ably planned, and successfully executed, operations, as extensive as they were required to be secret; for, whenever an intended forward movement was likely to excite the suspicion of the enemy, he suddenly drew in his videttes, as if preparing to retire; but when the enemy was lulled into security by an apparent indecision of purpose, and a confession of weakness, he has dexterously occupied a position left unguarded, because it was thought to be of no importance, until his opponents, unwilling to take the initiative in offensive operations, found themselves surrounded by numerous bodies of light troops, which, although they were totally unable to meet an enemy in the field, could carry on effectually a harassing guerilla warfare.

To drop, however, our military metaphors, the plan too successfully put into practice by his Lordship's party, was not to touch the old oaks of the country, whose stems were too strong, and hearts too sound, and roots too widely spread, to be pulled down or up. It was an easier task, and one more certain of success, to prevent the saplings from getting any hold of the ground, by giving them frequent shakings. Accordingly, the rising generation were told that their fathers were a parcel of friends a rap on the knuckles for requiring the machine of government to travel at the new railroad rate of reformers, instead of the old packhorse pace of the Tories. Little, however, did the ex-Chancellor dream that his Grey leader would bolt, and himself be thrown from his seat, as the guard of the letter-bags, in consequence of a new firm starting an Irish car, on the neck-or-nothing principle of 'no stoppages' on the Road to Ruin.

* They who remember the pamphlets under this title, written by Mr. Stephens, once a newspaper reporter, and afterwards an M.P., and subsequently a master in Chancery, and to which Lord Brougham replied in the Edinburgh, will perceive at once the applicability of our present language.

Against this charge of corrupting the rising generation, Lord Brougham will probably console himself by reflecting, that a similar accusation was made against the wisest of mankind; but whose character has been vindicated by an attached disciple, in a way to prove that the virulence of the calumny was equalled only by its falsehood. But, whatever his Lordship's flatterers may tell him to the contrary, he may rest assured, that there is nothing in common to the Edinburgh Reviewer and the Sculptor of Athens. For while the former is a decided friend to the higher branches of mathematics, the latter was unwilling that his pupils

old fools-that it was far more philosophical for a son to teach his father, than a father his son; for that the young man could stand upon the bent body of his dad, and thus see farther than if both were on the ground: whereas the dad, even if he could stand upon the upright body of the son, could not see beyond his nose; that the immortal Verulam had taught a benighted world, that as the moderns are the elder children of Time, they must be wiser than their younger brothers;-that, in proof of the truth of this Baconian paradox, it was only necessary to refer to the state of education in England, which any man with half an eye could see was worse than useless, absolutely mischievous;

should pore over difficult geometrical diagrams; for he knew, what his Lordship has to learn, and what is confessed by another writer in the Edinburgh, that mathematics have a tendency to produce equally irrational scepticism and unfounded belief; and as such studies can never make men wiser or better, either as individuals or the members of a state, it is probable that he who aimed to bring philosophy down from the clouds, to dwell with mankind, would have sneered at the modern calculus, the great object of veneration to his Lordship; who is constantly trumpeting forth the praises of that science, whose greatest victory has been to solve problems that would have puzzled an Archimedes, but which have added not an iota to the sum of real knowledge; for though we may now calculate, more easily than Halley could do himself, the return of his own comet, yet we cannot calculate whether it will appear at its return with the brilliancy of a farthing candle, or flaming like a meteor through the troubled air, and bringing with it a cholera morbus or a scarcely less fatal influenza. Still less is the similarity between the lover of philosophers and the hater of sophists, whom Socrates, as we learn from the Gorgias of Plato, ridiculed, as being merely mental cooks, whose trade it was to make their sweetmeats as agreeable to the taste of their followers, as the cook does his sweetbreads to the palate of his customer; and thus, while the Pantologists of the past boasted, as those of the present day do, of their power not only to enrich themselves, but to teach others the art of getting money in the city and influence in the state, the man who said he knew nothing was anxious rather to draw persons to the performance of duties suited to a life free from the cares of wealth and ambition, and alien to the cultivation of talents, which were to dazzle the many and keep them in a state of perpetual fever, and as restless as if they were afflicted with a St. Vitus's dance; for he knew there was good sense in the story of Midas, who, although he turned every thing he touched to gold, was compelled to suck his victuals through a quill; an effect not very unlike that which will result from the march of artificial improvements; by which the Midases of the present day will obtain more than they can use of luxuries, while of the necessaries of life their enjoyment will not be increased one atom; for should they eat more or drink more than is good for their health, their very abundance becomes but a source of annoyance, by placing before them dainties they cannot devour, or only in such small quantities as can be made up into a pill or a potion.

for it was purposely contrived to keep the lower orders in ignorance, and thus to make them more patient drudges to rich lords and tyrant Tories;-that at our public schools, to say nothing of all the abominations of heathen mythology, every feeling of delicacy was outraged by the system of flogging, and that of freedom by fagging, by which boys were taught to be alternately fawning slaves and ferocious masters; that delicately formed children, like Cowper, the amiable author of John Gilpin, were frightened out of their wits at the very sight of a birch, and rendered imbecile in after-life, instead of having all their energies called into voluntary exercise by the hope of a penny trumpet, which would give them a taste for music, and enable them to enjoy with greater zest "The soldier tired of war's alarms;" while they might be still more attracted by the present of a pewter medal dangling from their dear little necks, as honourable as the star of the Legion d'Honneur, or the Order of the Garter, and by the examination of which they would be lead to the useful knowledge of dealers in old metal, and the still more valuable art of money-coiners.*

To the preceding denunciations against the psychological portion of English education were added others, touching the manner of teaching an English boy Greek through the medium of Latin; an absurdity equalled only by the Hottentot, who was taught Chinese through the medium of the defunct Celtic;†

* We take this opportunity of stating, that the long-sought secret of the philosopher's stone has been thrice discovered in our times; first by the concoctors of the bubble schemes in 1825; and again by the projectors of joint-stock banks and railroads in the present day; and thirdly, by the only real alchymist, Wollaston, who made a fortune of thirty thousand pounds by uniting metals in such a way, that the composition had all the properties of gold, or at any rate, so completely stood the test used by the assayers of the Mint, and those employed by the Jews, that none could detect the deception; and thus the spurious gold of the metallurgist was actually exchanged for the real gold of the government and of the dealers in bullion; the latter of whom found, to their cost, thet the metal of Abel Drugger was as worthless as the paper of Mendiz-abel.

†The absurdity complained of was first practically corrected by the late Dr. Valpy, who compiled both a Greek and a Latin grammar in English. But strange to say, the plan did not prove as successful as the advocates of the more rational system anticipated. For whether it is that Reading is unfavourable to reading, or that the boys forgot as fast as they learnt, certain it is the Doctor did not turn out better scholars upon his new plan than others did upon the old. Since that time, we have seen the introduction of Greek and English lexicons, in the place of the old fashioned Greek and Latin Schrevelius, and Hederic. But with this increase in the facility of acquirement, we do not find a corresponding increase in the quantity and quality, but rather the

while, as regards the matter, we were told of the lamentable waste of time* devoted to the study of two dead languages; which after all were taught so imperfectly, that not a single boy could express in Greek or even in Latin-" May I trouble you for the liver wing of that chicken?" or, "Do you take tea or coffee?" while not a single educated female, but could say to a foreigner, playing the agreeable, and pausing for a reply, "Malheureusement, Monsieur, je ne parle pas Français."

It was not however, meant to say, that Greek and Latin should be entirely neglected; but only that they should not be studied to the exclusion of the modern languages, history, geography, pure and mixed mathematics, metaphysics, political economy, chemistry, botany, and all the ologies;† in other words, that a

reverse; for crib translations have multiplied, both interlinear and literal, and equally unintelligible and equally acceptable to the professor and pupil; for they have saved the necessity of inquiries, that the latter need not make, and the former could not answer. But even Dr. Valpy was insensible to the ridicule thrown upon the greatest waste of time, arising from the practice of making boys write Latin verses (which Horace himself says he could not do without scratching his head and biting his nails) for never did poetry, from the time of Homer to Southey, make the pot boil;—and hence it is a manifest perversion of terms to call such an acquisition Useful Knowledge; for if it be done ever so well, it would only countenance the dictum of that otherwise silly fellow Aristotle, who talked of poetry purging the passions, when he ought to have said that it administered an emetic.

*To prevent the waste of time complained of, the Council of the London University recommended that two years should be assigned to the study of the Greek language; for, said these "potent, grave, and reverend seigniors" of our modern Areopagus, a student who comes prepared with the accidence of the Greek grammar, and can read (not construe, for such was the language of the ex-Professor in his inaugural address,) with some degree of accuracy the simple and perspicuous language of Xenophon, will by his own exertions, and under the guidance of his teachers, be able to read without great difficulty the best portions of the best Greek authors. The new Amphictyonics must have found out a railroad to Greek, if they fancied that two years would be sufficient to do, what neither Joseph Scaliger nor Hugo Grotius nor even the admirable Crichton could accomplish. Surely it were better to reject Greek altogether, than to adopt a system, the only effect of which will be to create a dislike for that, which, if properly taught, no man has given up but with his breath; and which a Cato in past times, and a Payne Knight in our own, learnt late in life, fascinated by a language, whose influence has been felt wherever man has emerged from barbarism, or is not on the verge of it, misled by the jack-a-lanthorn of Utilitarianism.

In the Edinburgh Review, vol. xlviii. p. 253, mention is made of the introduction of new subjects at the London University, and of the appointment of professors of the languages of Germany, France, Italy,