he is promised by the same law, that he shall live in a community, where universal education shall keep the foundations of society safe, and afford him a personal security greater than that offered by the terrors of prisons and tribunals of justice. The system of free-schools in New England, therefore, is to be regarded, and is there regarded, as a great moral police wisely supported by a tax on property, to preserve a decent, orderly, and respectable population; to teach men, from their earliest childhood, their duties and rights, and by giving the mass of the community a higher sense of character, a more general intelligence, and a wider circumspection, to make them understand better the value of justice, order, and moral worth, and more anxious and vigilant to support them.

On this point no one has spoken with so much power as Mr. Webster, now the first statesman in New England, and probably in the United States, who, alluding in public debate to their free-schools, where he himself received his earliest training, said:

'In this particular, New England may be allowed to claim, I think, a merit of a peculiar character. She early adopted and has constantly maintained the principle, that it is the undoubted right, and the bounden duty of government, to provide for the instruction of all youth. That which is elsewhere left to chance, or to charity, we secure by law. For the purpose of public instruction, we hold every man subject to taxation in proportion to his property, and we look not to the question, whether he himself have, or have not, children to be benefited by the education for which he pays. We regard it as a wise and liberal system of police, by which property, and life, and the peace of society are secured. We seek to prevent, in some measure, the extension of the penal code, by inspiring a salutary and conservative principle of virtue and of knowledge in an early age. We hope to excite a feeling of respectability, and a sense of character, by enlarging the capacity, and increasing the sphere of intellectual enjoyment. By general instruction, we seek, as far as possible, to purify the whole moral atmosphere; to keep good sentiments uppermost, and to turn the strong current of feeling and opinion, as well as the censures of the law, and the denunciations of religion, against immorality and crime. We hope for a security, beyond the law, and above the law, in the prevalence of enlightened and well-principled moral sentiment. We hope to continue and prolong the time, when, in the villages and farm-houses of New England, there may be undisturbed sleep within unbarred doors. And knowing that our government rests directly on the public will, that we may preserve it, we endeavour to give a safe and proper direction to that public will. We do not, indeed, expect all men to be philosophers or statesmen; but we confidently trust, and our expectation of the duration of our system of government rests on that trust, that by the diffusion of general knowledge and good and virtuous sen

timents, the political fabric may be secure, as well against open violence and overthrow, as against the slow but sure undermining of licentiousness.'-Journal of Debates in the Convention to revise the Constitution of Massachusetts, 1821, p. 245.

Another benefit, which was not foreseen when free-schools were first introduced, and which, like the last, both facilitates their extension and ensures their permanence and efficacy, is the great interest they excite, and the consequences that follow it. By the mode in which they are managed, the whole population is led to take an interest in them; and each individual, as it were, is called on to assist in carrying forward some one school in the way best suited to the wants of his family and neighbourhood, as well as to the universal demand. The people, in their town meetings, vote the money for the schools; the people, by their district committees, spend the money they have raised; and the people, by their own children, get the benefit of the money. It is, indeed, the people's affair from beginning to end; the whole people's affair and as it is one that comes home every day to their notice, supervision, and wants in the daily education of their children in the very schools where they were themselves taught, it is sure to be understood, and equally sure not to suffer materially from neglect. The committees will not fail to get as good teachers as the money entrusted to them will procure, that their judgment may not be disparaged among the little body of their constituents; they will have the schools as numerous as they can afford, that none of the children may be kept from them by distance; and the people themselves, feeling they have thus paid for the instruction, are sure to claim the benefit of their own sacrifices by sending their children to get it. Popular education has thus long been the most important subject that occupies and agitates the little villages and neighbourhoods of New England; and this stir, this interest, this excitement about it, constitute a more watchful superintendence, and produce a more sagacious adaptation of the means to the end, than could result from any apparatus devised for the purpose by the government, or any other interference of the constituted authorities of the state. One of the most important effects then of the New England system of free-schools is, that it has developed this strong popular interest, and made it an effectual agent in popular education.

Another indirect, but more obvious benefit arising from this system is, that it gives an upward tendency to the whole population. It gives the first means of intellectual culture to all, and, with the use of these means, there comes inevitably, in more ingenuous minds, the desire to rise. It is

true, the state does little more than give this first impulse and opportunity; but the people, sometimes with, and sometimes without the assistance of the state, create everywhere the rest for themselves. New England, besides eleven colleges, which are chartered institutions offering the best education America yet affords, possesses not less than one hundred and fifty chartered academies; a sort of gymnasia between the free-schools and the colleges, often founded or assisted in their foundation by the state, from which few young men of promise are excluded, and where they receive, certainly not a thorough classical or scientific training, but still one that fits them to be efficient, practical men in the concerns of the world. In this way many are led onward step by step, almost without being aware of it, from the freeschools, through the academies, the colleges and the studies of a profession, until at last they find themselves suddenly standing, they hardly know how, on the very threshold of life, and entering the most important places in society. The benefits arising from this effect of the free-schools of New England are undoubtedly more wide and important than could have been anticipated, and are every day increasing. Many persons in that country are now distinguished in the learned professions, and in the management of the state, who, but for the means offered them in the free-schools of their native villages, would never have emerged from the humble condition in which they were born.

The last benefit of this system, which is becoming every day more and more perceptible, is that it is certainly the safest, and perhaps the only safe foundation on which to trust the popular institutions of the country. In a government where the people hold practically the sovereign power, and where they meet repeatedly every year in their small communities to exercise that power in matters of moment ; where the most important offices in the state are filled annually by universal suffrage, and where the very elements and action of the constitution are, from time to time, submitted to the same test, it is plain there can be no ultimate security for liberty or property, so deep or so effectual, as a universal education, which shall cultivate the moral sense of the whole people, and, by instructing them in their own rights, make them wise enough to respect the rights of others. Such an education is to be supported by law, on the same principle on which the administration of justice is supported by it; and can be defended at least as successfully as church establishments for the religious instruction of the people. But it goes deeper and broader than either of them. It lays the foundation not only for the religious instruction of the

whole people, but for their instruction in all their rights and duties as men and citizens.

On the whole, therefore, the experiment of subjecting the property of all to taxation for the purpose of giving the first elements of education to all, which has now been going on in New England for nearly two centuries, must be considered as having been fairly tried and eminently successful. Success, too, has had its natural effect, and has produced, and is producing, imitation. The other states of the American republic, though education has always been greatly encouraged and widely spread among them, have of late shown renewed anxiety in relation to it; and many have already begun by legislation to attempt to place it on the same ground on which it has so long stood in New England. Indeed the idea seems more and more to prevail throughout the whole republic, that all popular institutions of government can only rest safely on some similar system of education, protected by law and founded on property.

But the introduction of such a system, whether into those parts of the United States where it does not yet exist, or into other countries where it is entirely unknown, must, in order to produce all its good effects, be gradual, as must any change intended to reach and affect the character of a whole people. For such a change cannot be brought about by the enactment of a statute, or the providing a fund. It can be brought about only by gradually interesting the whole population in it; by making each town, each village, each neighbourhood assist in it, contribute to it, and superintend and watch it, as a private interest of their own, which they will not trust out of their own hands. They must feel too, that it is not a charity, or a favour granted to them by others, or sent down from their ancestors, but a right purchased and paid for by themselves, to which they have as clear a claim, as they have to the protection of the laws or the offices of religion. This is, of course, the work of time, of habit, and of experience. The statute book can no more do it, than it can compel a man to manage his own business skilfully, or regulate his household with discretion. It is, therefore, only where popular education has been the anxious care of the people, until it has become to them as a personal interest or a domestic want, that we can expect from it the wide practical results in the character and condition of a country, which it is undoubtedly, at last, able to produce.

REVIEWS.

Beschreibung der Stadt Rom von Ernst Platner, Carl Bunsen, Eduard Gerhard, und Wilhelm Röstell. With Contributions by B. G. Niebuhr, and a Geognostic Essay by F. Hoffmann. Illustrated by Plans, Elevations, and Views, by the Architects Knapp and Stier, and accompanied by a separate Collection of original Documents and Inscriptions, by E. Gerhard and Emiliano Sarti. Vol. i. 8vo.

THE Volume before us forms the introductory part of a work which, whether we consider the nature of the subject, or the distinguished names associated in the undertaking, and the time and labour that have been dedicated to it, claims the attention of all who take an interest in ancient literature and history. A worthy description of Rome, though it may be most attractive to those who have visited the Eternal City, and who would revive and recollect the images it once called up in their minds, or to those who hope to enjoy that happiness, and who wish their steps to be guided and their eyes armed for a discerning contemplation of that marvellous scene, is not less valuable for those whose conceptions of the subject must be formed entirely from secondary sources. The origin and history of this important work are related by the editor, Mr. Bunsen, in a preface which also contains a critical notice of the literature appertaining to Roman topography, including every production of any note in this field, from the time when it first began to be cultivated in the middle ages to the present day, with a general outline of the proposed nature, plan, and arrangement of this book. It grew, like its vast theme, out of a very diminutive beginning. Its original design extended no further than to a remodelling of Volkmann's German compilation from Lalande's Voyage en Italie. The publisher Cotta, during his stay at Rome in the winter of 1817, engaged Mr. Platner, whose studies had long been directed to the history and arts of Italy, to undertake this task, commencing with that volume of Volkmann's work which contained the description of Rome. Niebuhr, who was then Prussian envoy at the Papal court, promised his assistance in superintending the antiquarian part, and the present editor, who was then secretary to the legation, offered a contribution to illustrate the Christian monuments of Rome.