paid to any of their number-to such as Bates, or Baxter, or Lardner, or Doddridge, or Robert Hall. These men were as distinguished for eloquence, for profound thought, for imagery, for classical acquisition, for professional zeal, as any Episcopalian. Amongst the Dissenters still are men whom a just posterity will equally revere; men beloved and respected by their flocks; men whose philanthropy has civilized islands; whose zeal has awaked the Church of England to her duty, and yet this prejudiced scribbler, blind to all excellence which does not in some measure flatter his own self-complacency, has the hardihood to denounce them 'as the engines of Satan!'

We make the foregoing remarks in a spirit far from unfriendly to the Church of England. Our intention is solely to insist upon the absurdity of that arrogance with which such men as Mr Lathbury contend for the inviolability of all her institutions. God knows we are far from sympathizing with many of the absurdities amongst the Seceders from the English Church. We are just as disposed as the highest Episcopalian to reprehend many of their follies but we cannot forbear demanding, in the name of all charity, what right has Mr Lathbury to come forth, as if with St Paul's power, 'to deliver unto Satan,'-to designate the present Dissenters 'engines of the devil!' We trust that the public will show that it does not sympathize with so uncharitable and bigoted a spirit; that whilst it entertains not a superstitious but enlightened reverence for a Church which has been and is adorned by sound doctrines, and devout members, it can still be alive to its deficiencies, and seek their correction; that whilst it prefers the consolidation and wisdom of an Establishment, it can respect the motives and the worth of those who dissent from it.

ART. VI.-Three Lectures on the Proper Objects and Methods of Education in reference to the different Orders of Society; and on the relative Utility of Classical Instruction. Delivered in the University of Edinburgh, November, 1835. BY JAMES PILLANS, M.A., F.R.S.E., Professor of Humanity in that University. 8vo. Edinburgh : 1836.

W

TE regret that circumstances prevented our noticing these discourses in either of our last Numbers. They are a good word spoken in due season; and sure we are, that it will not be spoken in vain, if our Scottish countrymen are not wholly disabled from appreciating at their real value, this vindication of classical studies, and the objections by which they have been here recently assailed. It would, however, be a disparagement of these lectures to view them as only of temporary and local value; far less as merely an answer to what all entitled to an opinion on the matter must view as undeserving of refutation or noticeon its own account. They form, in fact, a valuable contribution to the philosophy of education; and, in particular, one of the ablest expositions we possess of the importance of philological studies in the higher cultivation of the mind. As an occasional publication, the answer does too much honour to the attack. Indeed the only melancholy manifestation in the opposition now raised to the established course of classical instruction, is not the fact of such opposition; but that arguments in themselves so futile -arguments which, in other countries, would have been treated only with neglect, should in Scotland not have been wholly harmless. If such attacks have had their influence on the public mind, this affords only another proof-not that ancient literature is with us studied too much, but that it is studied far too little. Where classical learning has been vigorously cultivated, the most powerful attacks have only ended in the purification and improvement of its study. In Germany and Holland, in Italy, and even in France, the objections, not unreasonably, made to an exclusive and indiscriminate classical education, and the experimental changes they determined, have only shown in their result that ancient literature may be more effectually cultivated in the school, if not cultivated alone; and that whilst its study, if properly directed, is absolutely the best mean towards an harmonious developement of the faculties-the one end of all liberal education, yet, that this mean is not always relatively the best,

when circumstances do not allow of its full and adequate application.

It is natural that men should be inclined to soothe their vanity with the belief, that what they do not themselves know is not worth knowing; and that they should find it easy to convert others, who are equally ignorant, to the same opinion, is what might also confidently be presumed. Ce n'est pas merveille, si 'ceux qui n'ont jamais mangé de bonnes choses, ne savent que 'c'est de bonnes viandes.' On this principle, Scotland is the country of all others in which every disparagement of classical learning might be expected to be least unsuccessful. For it is the country where, from an accumulation of circumstances, the public mind has been long most feebly applied to the study of antiquity, and where it is daily more and more diverted to other departments of knowledge. A summary indication of the more important of these circumstances may suffice to show, that the neglect of classical learning in Scotland is owing neither to the inferior value of that learning in itself, nor to any want of capacity in our countrymen for its cultivation.

There are two principal conditions of the prosperity of classical studies in a country. The one,-the necessity there imposed of a classical training for the three learned professions; the other, the efficiency of its public schools and universities in the promotion of classical erudition. These two conditions, it is evident, severally infer each other. For, on the one hand, where a certain amount and quality of learning is requisite for the successful cultivation of the law, medicine, and divinity of a country, this of itself necessitates the existence of schools and universities competent to its supply; and on the other, where an efficient system of classical education has become general, there the three professions naturally assume a more learned character, and demanda higher complement of erudition from their members. The prosperity of ancient learning is every where found dependent on these conditions; and these conditions are always found in harmony with each other. To explain the rise and decline of classical studies in different nations and periods, is therefore only to trace the circumstances which have in these modified the learned character of the professions, and the efficiency and application of the great public seminaries.

It would be foolish to imagine that the study of antiquity can ever of itself secure an adequate cultivation. How pleasant and wholesome soever are its fruits, they can only be enjoyed by those who have already fed upon its bitter roots. The higher and more peculiar its ultimate advantages and pleasures--the more it educates to capacities of thought and feeling, which we

should never otherwise have been taught to know or to exert— and the more that what it accomplishes can be accomplished by it alone the less can those who have had no experience of its benefits ever conceive, far less estimate their importance. Other studies of more immediate profit and attraction will divert from it the great mass of applicable talent. Without external encouragement to classical pursuits, there can be no classical public in a country; no brotherhood of scholars to excite, to appreciate, and to applaud-συμφιλολογειν καὶ συνενθουσιάζειν. The extensive diffusion of learning in a nation is even a requisite of its intensive cultivation. Numbers are the condition of an active emulation; and without a rivalry of many vigorous competitors there is little honour in the contest, and the standard of excellence will remain low. For a few holders of the plough there are many prickers of the oxen; and a hundred Barneses are required to afford the possibility of a single Bentley.

In accounting, therefore, for the low state of classical erudition in Scotland, we shall, in the first place, indicate the causes why in this country an inferior amount of ancient learning has been found sufficient for its law, medicine, and divinity; and, in the second, how our Scottish schools and universities are so ill adapted for the promotion of that learning.

I. Of the professions-Law can be only viewed as conducive to the cause of classical erudition, in so far as (what in most countries is the case) it renders necessary a knowledge of the Roman jurisprudence; the necessity of such a knowledge being, in fact, tantamount to a necessity for the cultivation of Latin history and literature. For while the Roman law affords the example of a completer and more self-connected system than the jurisprudence of any modern nation can exhibit; without a minute and comprehensive knowledge of that system in its relations and totality, its principles can neither be correctly understood, nor its conclusions with any certainty applied. This, however, is impossible, without a philological knowledge of the language in which this law is written, and an historical knowledge of the circumstances under which it was gradually developed. On the other hand, an acquaintance with the Roman jurisprudence has been always viewed as indispensable for the illustration of Latin philology and antiquities; insomuch, that in most countries of Europe, ancient literature and the Roman law have prospered or declined together: the most successful cultivators of either department have indeed been almost uniformly cultivators of both. In Italy, Roman law and ancient literature revived together; and Alciatus was not vainer of his Latin poetry, than Politian of his interpretation of the Pandects. In France, the critical study of

the Roman jurisprudence was opened by Budæus, who died the most accomplished Grecian of his age; and in the following generation, Cujacius and Joseph Scaliger were only the leaders of an illustrious band, who combined, in almost equal proportions, law with literature, and literature with law. To Holland the two studies migrated in company; and the high and permanent prosperity of the Dutch schools of jurisprudence has been at once the effect and the cause of the long celebrity of the Dutch schools of classical philology. In Germany, the great scholars and civilians, who illustrated the 16th century, disappeared together; and, with a few partial exceptions, they were not replaced until the middle of the 18th, when the kindred studies began, and have continued to flourish with reciprocal luxuriance. Classical literature and Roman law owe less to the jurists of England than to those of any other country. The English common law is derived from sources which it requires no classical erudition to elucidate; in no other nation, except our own, has jurisprudence been less liberally cultivated as a general science,-more exclusively as a special practice; and though of some recognised authority in certain English courts, so little has the civil law been made an object of professional study, that an English lawyer rarely hazards an allusion to the Imperial Collections, without betraying his ignorance of their very titles. Classical learning has, however, been always laudably cultivated in England, and English jurists have accordingly sometimes acquired, as scholars, a legal erudition, wholly superfluous in professional practice.

In Scotland the causes are different, although the result is nearly the same. In this kingdom the Roman jurisprudence formerly possessed a high, but always an indefinite, authority. It exerted a conspicuous influence on the genius and original developement of the Scottish law; where not controlled by statute or custom, its determinations were usually admitted as decisive; and some of the most eminent of our jurists have even recognised it as the written law of Scotland. It was usual also, until a comparatively recent period, for those educated for the Scottish bar to study the Roman law under the illustrious civilians of France or Holland; and they returned from the continental universities, if not always profound scholars, more aware, at least, of the value of classical learning, and with a higher standard of classical attainment. Still, however, the authority of the Civil law in Scotland was never strong enough to constrain the profession to its profound and universal study; and the necessity of resorting to foreign seminaries for the requisite education, showed that this could not adequately be procured at home. Among the myriads