fourteen, has also been brought satisfactorily to the test of several years' experience. Mr. Cunningham of Edinburgh, and his successor Mr. Little (Mr. Cunningham having been compelled through ill health to relinquish his charge), Mr. Dorsey of the English Department of the High School of Glasgow, and several others, have been adduced in proof. I beg leave now to bring forward another seminary, which, in an interval of my recent educational labours in the great towns of Yorkshire, I have had much pleasure in visiting;- I mean that at Worksop in Nottinghamshire, under the charge of Mr. Heldenmair. Sixty or seventy boys, from six to sixteen years of age, most completely and somewhat elegantly lodged and boarded, receive their instructions in bandsome and commodious apartments, and are exercised in gymnastics and calisthenics in extensive grounds, large enough for cricket and other athletic games. The branches of instruction are such as to exercise all the intellectual powers, and to impart all the branches useful and ornamental, which are addressed to these faculties: —reading, grammar, writing, accounting, drawing; the knowledge of the surface, structure, vegetables and animals of the earth, in geography, geology, botany, and zoology; the knowledge of the atmosphere and the heavens, in meteorology and astronomy; the composition of the substances of the material world, and the changes produced by their action on each other, and their mechanical powers and relations, in chemistry and natural philosophy; the sciences of measurement and number, in geometry and algebra; English literature, with the history of nations and biographies; and vocal and instrumental music. Religious instruction is statedly given, the Bible read, and morning and evening worship performed by the assembled school; and as there are places of worship of different persuasions in Worksop, the parents can have a choice to which of these their children shall go; the Establishment being the resort when no other is stipulated for. Besides the thorough elementary education above described, both classical and modern languages are taught, in a manner that does not encroach upon more useful studies. German and French are much spoken in the School, most of the teachers being from Germany or Switzerland. They are also read and learned by the little-toilsome mode of direct translation and incidental parsing. Latin and Greek are wisely delayed till late in the curriculum, and are more rapidly and more efficiently studied in consequence.

The intellectual department being thus provided for, up to the most modern improvements, permit me a few words on the moral system of the place. No pupil has previously had the great advantage of the training of an infant school. The age

is not yet wise enough to extend this best of all human means of improvement, beyond the children of the poor. It is yet too good for what are called, by a title daily becoming more questionable, the better classes. Much, however, is done at Mr. Heldenmair's School to compensate for this early deficiency. As it is a Boarding School, the pupils residing in the house, and most of them far from home, pains are taken to give to the system as much as possible the character of a private family. Pupils are there at so young an age as five and six years. These no doubt, in most cases, bring with them the faults arising from the utter blank in anything like moral training which most nurseries exhibit, and not a few of the ill habits which positive nursery training instils in so many instances. Yet much may be done, by system, to moralise and refine even after six years of age. The system of benevolence, kindness, gentleness, -in short, love, reigns paramount in Mr. Heldenmair's Establishment. Look what way he may, the new-comer sees it influencing his teachers and his playmates, and no choice seems left him but that of conforming to it. Coarseness and violence are in such jarring discord to the key-note of the establishment, as to be felt to be bad taste and absolute singularity. The excellent head-teacher and all his assistants become necessarily objects, not of fear, but of love. They all join in the outdoor sports. It happened to be Mr. Heldenmair's birth-day, and a handsome present was made to him, for which all the boys had secretly subscribed. The presentation was really affecting, and could not be exceeded in filial affection, by children on a father's birth-day. By way of a father's return, the whole party set off next day, in various conveyances, on a day's excursion to some beautiful scenery; their teachers with them, to turn all they should see into utility as well as pleasure. They enjoy many shorter excursions in furtherance of health and knowledge. But there is another feature in the establishment, of a beauty and novelty which yet remains to be described. Mr. Heldenmair is married to a most amiable lady of his own country. Mrs. H. and two of her sisters, one of them wife to another of the teachers, have departments of great importance in the establishment. All three, especially Mrs. Heldenmair, take not only an interest, but a part in the education of the pupils of all ages. They are seen in the class-rooms of the elder as well as of the younger boys, assisting in the studies and encouraging the students, and evidently exercising a sort of maternal influence upon every member of the numerous family. This is perhaps the greatest novelty in the advanced education. I had seen it before, with equal pleasure, in the excellent establishment at Bruce Castle,

under the Messieurs, and, I add with pleasure, the Mesdames Hill. In that seminary there is the same advanced intellectual and ornamental, and the same moral and religious education, as at Worksop. Indeed, having visited both at three months' interval, I sometimes forgot at Worksop that I was not repeating my visit to Bruce Castle. Perhaps, of the two, from local advantages, there is externally more of the tasteful and elegant in the noble Elizabethan mansion, beautifully wooded grounds, and well laid out gardens of Bruce Castle; all tending to give habits and feelings of refinement, by the constant activity of Ideality, the nearest and best ally of the moral sentiments. So far as his certainly handsome premises and grounds will admit, Mr. Heldenmair's whole externals are tasteful. But in all that is essential to exercise the higher feelings, there is a perfect similarity between the schools at Worksop and Bruce Castle; in the cheering, humanising, and gentlemanising presence of the ladies, their truly maternal reign, and the willing obedience of the pupils, who look up to them as parental friends, and who dare not be idle, or listless, or perverse, or unmannerly in such presence. For these advantages, it matters not into which of the two seminaries the stranger goes; whether he witnesses the exciting, lively sway of Mrs. Arthur Hill, or the quieter but not less powerful sceptre of Mrs. Heldenmair. It is not easy to conceive anything more in harmony with the truth that Benevolence is power, than this the chief ornament of these new schools. It breathes of that mild practice in which "love casteth out fear." It had no place, it has none, in the gloomy cloisters of monkish schools, associated with laborious and useless classical tasks and corporal punishments. The studies and sufferings of barbarism fly like ghosts at sunrise, the instant gentle and refined females are admitted to smile upon a youthful band of happy students, to mingle with them, give lessons and share in them, and are seen in the play-ground, reconciling rarely-occurring disagreements, and with a word subduing the occasionally refractory; -for there is no rule so powerful. At both places the masters told me, that when they have been foiled by an obdurate boy from one of the old schools, they have handed him over to the ladies, who never failed to soften him. The phrenologist will have no difficulty in analysing their kindly influence, and distinguishing the faculties to which it addresses itself. Preferring, as I do, the alternation of Dayschool with Home, I am aware it cannot always be commanded. Almost all females resident in the country must send their boys to boarding-schools. No improvement has done more to assimilate the boarding-school to the private family than this female

superintendence, extending from mere housewifery to intellectual, moral, and social intercourse. I would earnestly recommend it to all boarding-schools for boys. I am, &c. JAMES SIMPSON.

November 7th, 1837.

VI. The Connexion of Disease with War.- From DR. BARLOW's Dissertation on the Causes and Effects of Disease.

THOUGH it may be difficult to determine in what manner a contagious poison is generated in the living system, yet it is very easy to point out under what circumstances this takes place, and to specify the conditions favourable to its production; for these are matters of experience so notorious, that both ancient and modern history affords abundant instances of their reality and confirmation. The crowding together of considerable numbers of men in camps and besieged cities, where, to all the horrors of war, fatigue, famine, and despair are added; the privations and sufferings consequent upon military operations in general, especially when these are associated with defeat and mental depression - are causes which have been known so frequently to give rise to malignant contagious diseases, and to be the occasions of their spreading, that the connexion has become proverbial; and the appearance of the pestilence has justly been regarded as an almost necessary consequence of drawing the sword. There is scarcely any instance, says Sir John Pringle, of a town being long invested, without some malady of this kind breaking out. In this way arose the plague at Athens, as described by Thucydides. In a similar state of things appears to have originated that fearful disease, which has been traced to the troops of Charles VIII. engaged in the siege of Naples in 1494, and from thence spread so rapidly over Europe, and with such dreadful devastation, that, to use the words of Dr. Traill," it seemed to threaten the extirpation of the whole civilised world, and was by many attributed to the hand of Heaven inflicting punishment for the enormous flagitiousness of mankind."

The history of small-pox affords, another case in point; and its connexion with Mahometanism is not a little remarkable.*

The connexion with Mahometanism is not remarkably close, seeing that the disease appeared amongst Abyssinians even before the birth of Mahomet, and has been spread over the earth by Christians more than by Mahometans.- EDITOR P. J.

This disease first appeared in the Abyssinian army besieging Mecca, two months before the birth of Mahomet; and, thus contemporaneous with the Prophet, was speedily spread abroad by his reckless adherents, who conferred it on the conquered along with the faith for which they fought. Introduced into Europe by the successes of the Saracens in Sicily and Spain, and its extension promoted by the mistaken zeal of the infatuated Crusaders, it became naturalised amongst us, and was subsequently carried to America by the merciless followers of the inhuman Cortez a scourge more severe than either the fire or the sword. Thus associated and propagated the companion of warfare and wickedness we may well view it with no ordinary feelings of horror, and might naturally expect that many centuries of comparative peace must needs elapse, before a disease so virulent and so widely sown would be found to lay aside its formidable character. In process of time, the nation which first disseminated the contagion supplied also a remedy *, and inoculation was imported from the capital of Turkey, into that of almost every country in Europe. Happily, however, for the welfare of our race, the century which saw the adoption of one remedy, witnessed also the application of anotherone of much greater value, and for which we are indebted to the observation of a physician, of whom his country may feel justly proud. In 1798, Dr. Jenner announced his discovery of vaccination, and from that period to the present, variola has no longer been an object of terror. But while we admire that provision in our economy by which a mild disease may be substituted for one that is severe, and the manner of the remedy, we must not omit to recognise, both in relation to the fact itself and the mode of its discovery, the overruling hand of that Providence, who, in compassion to human sufferings occasioned by human depravity, after that we had endured awhile the consequence of our folly, made known to us a remedy whereby we might be healed.

The wars which upon the continent of Europe succeeded the French Revolution, were attended more or less uniformly with febrile epidemics. During the first ten years, typhus appeared in various parts of Germany and Italy. Afterwards it prevailed in other European countries, very nearly as the seat of warlike operations was changed. In 1805 it appeared in Austria after the battle of Austerlitz; in 1806 and 1807 it broke out violently and mortally in Russia and Poland. The war between France and Austria in 1809 was attended by a similar epidemic, and the miserable remains of the French army which

Inoculation is little entitled to be called a "remedy," as medical statists say that the practice increased the mortality from small-pox. — EDITOR P. J.