and Latin, which will never be of any service to them; for the boys at our middle schools do not study these languages long enough for the tone of their minds to be in any sense influenced by classical literature. There is no reason, however, why both science and language should not be taught side by side in these schools: we only object to the exclusive teaching of the one to the total neglect of the other.

With regard to the" honours and rewards" of life, we are quite of opinion that it would be advantageous to the country if the two universities would grant degrees solely for attainments in physical science, and, what is more substantial, confer fellowships upon men eminent in this department. This would be the means of inducing a larger number of persons to concentrate their attention and energies upon science, and would thus produce a higher degree of excellence in it than would otherwise be attainable. Steps have already been taken in this direction, and we may hope that these are the harbingers of further progress. There is a very important result about which we are able to speak with great confidence, considering that it has become increasingly manifest since the very first day of the Exhibition. We mean the alteration it has produced in the disposition of the people at large towards foreigners. This may be regarded as the education of one people to a proper bearing towards others. Before this great gathering of the nations, it was comparatively unusual for foreigners to be seen in this country. Nay the specimens of them that were seen (with their hirsute faces and slouched hats, and with their dirty pipes dangling out of their mouths,) were not such as to inspire an Englishman with very great respect. Besides, the jealousy entertained by our tradesmen against. foreign competition, and our old national antipathy to the French, the natural result of our incessant wars with them, had not died out, and had even extended itself, in the minds of ignorant people, to the Germans, and other nations, with whom we never were at war; in fact, they were all included under the general denomination of Frenchmen, and treated accordingly. But the thousands of good-looking and welldressed foreigners, who came over from the Continent during the Exhibition, with their uniformly courteous conduct, have convinced us that we have been doing them a great injustice; while the superior excellence of many of the objects exhibited by them over our own productions of the same class, and the great amount of skill and ingenuity displayed by their contributions generally, have shown us that they have made quite as much progress in the arts and sciences as ourselves and in some directions even more.

We trust, finally, that the Exhibition will in the widest sense contribute to the promotion of national charity, and we are sure that the closing petition of the prayer which the Bishop of London offered up to Almighty God on the last day of the Exhibition will be re-echoed throughout the land: "Grant, O Lord, that this gathering of thy servants from every nation may be the token and pledge of a continued intercourse of mutual kindness between the different branches of Thy universal family. May it contribute to the growth of Christian love and hasten the coming of that blessed reign of peace, when nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more."

CORPORAL PUNISHMENT.

(Concluded from page 367.)

Every system of government rests ultimately on its penalties. Yet there is no part of government which receives so little reviewal as its penal code, and which has to wait so long for revisal. A hundred pages are written on the methods and subjects of education, for one that treats of its sanctions, or endeavours to weigh well the punishments by which it is to be enforced. This must be our apology for detaining our readers a few minutes longer on a subject rather necessary than perhaps palatable.

Not by any means the least important part of the question is the principle on which corporal punishment should be administered. There are two theories of this; two distinct modes in which it is calculated upon as acting, so as to prevent the recurrence of the offence for which it is applied. Some would have it viewed mainly as disgrace and dishonour; others, as an equitable retribution, in the shape of pain, in return for self-indulgence. Without saying that the sense of shame either can or ought to be altogether excluded, still it is certainly not that to which it will be wise in an instructor chiefly to appeal. For, in the first place, is it possible, as human nature, and especially a boy's nature, is constituted, that you can ever persuade him that idleness and inattention, that loving play better than work, though punishable, are very flagrant offences? Will not the great familiarity of a boy's own mind with these tendencies, the constant observation of them in his schoolfellows, the levity with which these faults, whether rightly or not, are generally spoken of by all but the schoolmaster, compared, we mean, with other offences-will the common feeling on these points be counteracted by anything the master can say on the subject? Besides and this is rather more to the point-does the master himself, annoyed as he may be, conscious as he may be, that common school faults, if allowed, must be an impediment to all progress-does he really and truly consider his pupil seriously disgraced by punishment administered for what he knows to be so natural; or is he, when he professes himself to be ineffably shocked and disgusted, only acting the part of a solemn old hypocrite? Of course the punishment can only be viewed in connection with the offence by which it has been earned. Most improper may such merriment be, but has not nearly every uncle, or godfather, when he gives his five shillings, or, in the present day, his sovereign, sly jokes about idleness and its consequences, with a certain demoralizing reference to his own experience in such matters. What man of healthy mind looks back with any intensity either of shame, or anger, on these school castigations? We have often been present at the anniversary of a large public school, and have heard frequent allusions made to past corporal inflictions, but never gravely, much less with heart-burning. But suppose you could excite in a boy's mind an acute sense of degradation by the mere fact of punishment for faults not very flagrant, would you be right in so doing? Is this feeling of shame, on which you lay such stress, given you to trifle

with, which you are doing if you excite it greatly, and call it into activity on any but the most important occasions? You tell a boy that the touch of the cane is degradation, being at the same time quite aware that in all probability he will have to be caned, and that more than once, for these minor matters, nay till it ceases altogether to be a novelty. Do you know what the effect of real degradation is on a high-spirited and high-minded boy? To some it is little short of ruin. Again, if a boy is to consider himself degraded when you use this class of punishments, if you would be consistent, and not play the fool with him, you should sustain towards him a kind of reserve; now this coolness between the master and the pupil, if the latter feels that he is really under a cloud, clogs actual business, checks the cheerful current of work, and damps the energies, rather than excites them. For the sake of common sense and common feeling act according to the other view of corporal punishment in all ordinary cases. Let the punishment come with the certainty and calmness of a physical result. Expend no more time or oratory on these occasions than will suffice to make your own understanding and that of your pupil meet on these simple points that he is sent to you to be instructed; that it is your duty to make him learn whether he likes it or not; that if he will grant himself the indulgence of play when he ought to be at work, or if showing his own temper in opposition to your will, you must and will invariably give him more than an equivalent in bodily inconvenience, and that without loss of time or temper on your part. With how much calmness, and how much equity, a judicious master can punish for ordinary faults, most parents, who seldom resort to blows except when they are violently exasperated, can have little idea. Before leaving this part of the subject we would say, that of all instruments of chastisement the rod, national as it is, appears the most objectionable; particularly when it supersedes other forms of punishment, personal exposure is far more degrading than mere submission to pain, except in the case of the very young: besides, where the rod is used, its ceremonials being somewhat troublesome, long intervals are often allowed to elapse, during which habits of inattention and incorrectness are often formed which might be checked by a slight immediate punish

ment.

Many are the abuses of corporal chastisement, most of them too palpable to require mention here. One of the worst, however, into which some masters seem to fall almost unconsciously, is the habit of selecting two or three victims in each class who are made the scape goats of the whole community. Now, when a man finds the intellect of a pupil rather below par, it is surely unreasonable to visit his natural inertness and stupidity more severely than the carelessness of quicker boys, in whose case well-timed severity is far more likely to be efficacious. Yet how many instances have we known when the lively boy, who can, almost when he pleases, redeem his character and his place, has made endless mistakes of thoughtlessness with impunity, whilst neither patience nor mercy have been shown to the unhappy tardigrade. Ascham's remarks are excellent here, though certainly too universal..

"But this I will say, that even the wisest of your great beaters do as oft

punish nature, as they do correct faultes. Yea, many times, the better nature is sore punished: for if one, by quicknesse of witte, take his lesson readilie, another, by hardnesse of witte, take it not so spedelie, the first is always commended, the other is commonly punished; when a wise scholemaster should rather discretlie consider the right disposition of both their natures, and not so much weigh what either of them is able to do now, as what either of them is likely to do hereafter."

He proceeds to show, that, what he calls these hard and slow wits, make often the most useful men, if not discouraged by over-severity. It is however for its downright injustice that this selection of victims is most open to censure, and the most ruinous too to a master's usefulness. A judicious teacher's desire would rather be to except from chastisement boys of slow capacity, and here lies the schoolmaster's grand difficulty, not merely as regards corporal, but as regards all punishments. He feels that to be true of the management of a school, which the great Sully asserts of the government of a kingdom—“ A kingdom ought to be governed by general rules; exceptions only occasion discontent, and produce complaints." He feels it absolutely necessary that he should maintain his character for justice, and justice too of a very broad kind; that he must not make distinctions which his pupils cannot, perhaps, we should rather say will not, understand; that in this point he is scarcely at liberty to follow, in one sense, even his own judgment, but to study rather the appearances of equity, than its essence. Supposing, for instance, the lesson set to be a reasonable one, and the neglect of a class to have been general, it will not do to punish all the rest, excepting this boy for his weaker capacity, and that for his feebler constitution. However much he may lament over the necessity, it will, on the whole, be better for the master to make his treatment uniform. Those who wish their children not to be educated singly, but to enjoy the advantages of a system, must submit to the imperfections to which all systems are liable. It is for parents to judge whether their children are too dull, or too infirm, to enter into competition with other boys, and to share their punishments. We must not expect to make our modes of government; and distributions of penalty, more perfect in all respects than that moral government of rewards and punishment to which, as men, we are subject and must submit. How many of what would be commonly called "hard cases do we see around us daily? The man of feeble body, nervous temperament, excitable passions, is shattered to pieces by slight excess, whilst his friend of more powerful frame, and stronger nerves, who has gone through in his time double the amount of dissipation, and who has reformed, after warnings, looks back from the bosom of his family on his past life, and his perished companion, and moralizing with a somewhat pitiless self-complacency exclaims, "Ah, poor fellow, he fell a victim to his vices:" thousands of instances which appear to us in the highest degree mysterious, meet our view without authorizing us to question the supreme justice, and so we fear must it always be in schools, even the best governed. Where the offence is an individual one, the teacher has, of course, the opportunity in a far greater degree of considering all circumstances, and moderating the penalty accordingly. And here it may be observed that a head master

should intrust his subordinate teachers, whom we presume to be well chosen, with the power of administering correction themselves; for it certainly is not desirable, though the practice at some schools, that the Principal should be the general executioner. No one can know exactly what degree of punishment is deserved, and modify it accordingly, except the person who is familiar with the boy, or class, and the palliating or aggravating circumstances; these can rarely be fully entered into or explained to the head master; besides, as was before remarked, the prompter the punishment for most faults, the better.

All that we have said has reference to the general form of education in England. Boys might learn Latin from their nurses, like Montaigne; or imbibe, like the young Russians (according to Kohl) four languages at once from different domestics. He might adopt the free and easy manner suggested in the "Taming of the Shrew."

"The mathematics, or the metaphysics,

Fall to them as you find your stomach serves you :

No profit grows where is no pleasure ta'en ;

In brief, Sir, study what you most affect."

We might consult individual genius or fancy. "Ut sive ad rem militarem, sive ad juris scientiam, sive ad eloquentiæ studium juvenis inclinasset, id universum hauriret ;" but this is not the style of Education which suits our nation, our age or our circumstances. Nor by it would the invaluable government of the will be gained; labour—if free, well, if not, compulsory-must have its share with pleasure in the process of education.

Obedience is to be taught, and foundations are to be laid upon the levelled will, by using for a time, and it need not be for a long time, unflinching and temperate firmness; habits of industry are, without dallying and temporising, to be formed whereby those elements of knowledge may be acquired which are often so nauseous when they need to be picked up in after-life. Other motives gradually rise to supply the place of fear. Application, now habitual, will be comparatively easy. The mind will rejoice in the progress which she has been compelled to make. Drudgery over, taste will seek and find its objects: ambition, interest, and excitements which would at an earlier stage have been insufficient, are now powerful, and all these a judicious master will enlist in his service. Now

"Consideration like an angel comes,

And whips the offending Adam out of them." But till consideration came, it was necessary for some one in the mean time to perform its office. Had such a substitute not been found, the green withs of that Dalilah Indolence would have gradually hardened into Philistine irons, for a far greater number of men have been fascinated and seduced from mental exertion by indulged sloth, at last unconquerable, than were ever rendered averse to it by such severity as would ordinarily be met with in our schools.

The transition it is true is gradual, hence the error of those who speak of the effects of corporal punishment as if the passage were a momentary one, from the state in which the main stimulus is that of fear, to one in which it has almost ceased to exist, as if the subdued mind had no power or resources of self-recovery.