Latin author for his matter, and not one in ten thousand a Greek one; and that the very few who do acquire, or appear to acquire, a full knowledge of the tongues themselves, are precisely those who never study the authors for any other purpose, than to haberdash in accents, quantities, and particles; to arrange punctuation, and to squabble about the stupid, useless, endless, notes, of stupid, useless, and endless commentators and scholiasts.

A language that can be read is nevertheless worth something; but a language that can be spoken as well as read, has at least one value more. If a language which we want every day as a means of intercourse, is a desirable acquisition, a language which includes a thousand authors, ought also to be more valuable than the one which contains a hundred and if therefore language is an exercise of the faculties, if it is the only applicable one, it is more than evident that the one which can be spoken, the one in which we can read, through a long life, is the best worth cultivating, because we gain two ends by one purchase.

Does the man exist, who, if he were freed from the mystery, the cant, and the fallacy of the system, would not prefer a mastery of the German to the Greek, or the French to the Latin? If youth is to be educated in language only, common sense would tell us to educate them in the languages of Europe, or in the languages of the living world. We cannot despise the languages of the living world if we would; as Greece did from conceit, and Rome by the sword. It is another world than it was, in communication, interference, and relation; and the literature of that world also, is somewhat different from what it was in the days of Greece and Rome.

But, tied down by the monopoly of this system, we do not learn even our own language. The Greeks and the Romans were here wiser than ourselves. But to pass this, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, abound in literature which we acknowledge and-despise. They contain uncounted treasures of literature and science, which are closed to all but the few who, late in life, and when time has become rare and precious, must labour to acquire what they might have gained, without labour, in early youth; what they would, at least, have gained while they were doing nothing; on which they would have fallen, with a delight, the counterpart of their present aversion to languages, because they could witness the use and foresee the end; and because the toil might have been rendered a plea

sure.

The world, too, is in a constant motion of intermixture; we, above all, are a travelling people: yet, for want of modern languages, of the means of intimacy, or almost of communication, we wander to no end, and return as we went, unable to hear or see, unable to discover or profit. Ambassadors, consuls, merchants, scattered over the world, it is a vast consolation, assuredly, that we are scholars, and can scan an ode of Horace on our fingers, when we live, as in the society of the speechless, deaf, and dumb, ignorant, deceived, or cheated. The ambassador of Britain to France

is unable to pay a compliment of ten words, from the king his master, to the king his master's friend. Perchance, he could have spoken them in Greek or Latin; for to what other end did he not learn French at Westminster or Trinity College? Perchance, indeed: when have British ambassadors spoken or listened in Greek? This is not nothing. The unlucky merchant who has destined his son for trade, and who has spent a thousand pounds of his money, and fifteen years of his son's life, in maintaining the ushers and masters of Westminster School, must send him to Boun, or Cadiz, or Genoa, to spend more money and more time, that he may acquire the language which is indispensable to his duties and his success; to prepare for action when he ought to be acting. Hayleybury must spend money and time, also, in rebellion and disorder, that its pupils may forget such as in præsenti," as they have learnt, and acquire Bengalee and Persian. A hundred thousand of us contrive to govern half as many millions of oriental foreigners; and are prepared for that end, not by acquiring Sanscrit or Arabic, Persian or Hindostanee, but by learning barbarous rhymes about Mars, Bacchus, and Apollo. China cheats us every day of our lives, and we have not yet learned to discuss with a Hong merchant in his own tongue, or to dispute about a fraudulent chop with a mandarin. We attempt to bully or wheedle the bearded Turk into ill humour with Russia, through a knavish Greek interpreter whom the Russians bribe to interpret falsely. But my lord Strangford is a scholar, and can translate Tibullus. That is a vast consolation. We can make neither war, nor love, nor a bargain, nor a law, in Greek; we are making love to half the females of the globe, war to half the males, and bargains with the whole; and we prepare ourselves for all these ends, most philosophically, it cannot be denied. Let Cadiz and let Naples tell; but luckily, love can speak a language of its own.

We have passed to the subject of modern languages, and to the superior expediency of learning them; but we do not mean to admit, that, for any other purposes than that of being used, the study of language is the proper study of youth. There is here something for youth to avoid, and something for it to gain. If, as in past ages, the whole attention of youth is not, or is not to be, directed to the mere acquisition of two extinct languages, neither ought it now to be directed to mere literature, to that which is the only good consequence that can flow from this system. Literature, we have said it before, is a cant word of the age; and, to be literary, to be a litterateur (we want a word), a bel esprit, or a blue stocking, is the disease of the age. The world is to be stormed by poetry, and to be occupied by reviews and albums. He is to be a statesman because his Greek verses carried the prize; to conduct a political journal, because he is a poet; or the Excise perchance; or an embassy, or the secretaryship of Bermuda, or that of the Admiralty. All this is extremely pleasant and entertaining; as we

love poetry, and do not dislike blue stockings, provided their eyes also, are "darkly, deeply, beautifully, blue."

But ledgers do not keep well in rhyme, nor are three-deckers built by songs, as towns were of yore. And, really, if there are some difficulties in governing states, we consider that they are best conquered in prose, as we also conceive of our enemies, naval and terrestrial. As to our acts of parliament, indeed, it might not be amiss if they were put into ottava rima, as there would then be some chance of understanding them.

In sober and utilitarian sadness, we should be extremely glad to be informed, how the universal pursuit of literature and poetry, poetry and literature, is to conduce towards cotton-spinning; or abolishing the poor-laws; or removing stupid commercial restrictions; or restraining the holy alliance; or convincing the other half of England that a Catholic is a Christian; or recasting the Court of Chancery and exterminating the half of our laws, and two-thirds of our lawyers. States have been governed here and there, heaven knows how; but not by poetry, it is certain. Literature is a seducer; we had almost said a harlot. She may do to trifle with; but wo be to the state whose statesmen write verses, and whose lawyers read more in Tom Moore than in Bracton.

This is a dangerous taste, a dangerous state of society; for it renders useful learning (we dare to use the word) without credit, and tends to banish it. The real happiness of man, of the mass, not of the few, depends on the knowledge of things, not on that of words. We desire a statesman who understands politics, legislation, commerce, not Pulci; who should receive suffrages for an able treaty, not for the loves of the triangles or Whistlecraft. We do not desire elegance of composition in a conveyance, nor a prescription in rhyme. The state demands that every man, in his own vocation, should understand his duties, be they what they may; and thus only can it flourish; tractent fabrilia fabri; and if it is the only qualification of a commissioner of the navy, that he is an elegant scholar, it is fully time that the workman should depose him to his proper occupation with words, and take his place in things.

Be the education in languages, or in literature; be the acquisition Greek and Latin alone, or let the fullest effect that can be imagined from the real, not the supposed, acquisition of these languages, or of any languages, be granted; we are entitled to ask, first, how they can qualify a man, any man except a mere litterateur, for the duties of life; and next, whether they do thus qualify them. It would require some ingenuity to show, a priori, that the extinct languages, or literature, do render a man fit to wield the state; to conduct a fleet or an army; to make or administer laws; to defend the property of the people; to carry on commerce; to understand diseases and their cures; or to practise the arts with success. Yet of such actions as these is the life of the state; by the due performance of them must it live in happiness and power,

or poverty and debasement; live or die. If the state is to prosper, every member of it must understand his own profession, at least, whatever ornament he may superadd. It is a wise state that endeavours to make all its members useful; but that state are not we..

To try the system by its effects, is to examine many details; details, which, as far as our greater interests are concerned, we could not well examine without more personal allusion than we approve of: not, also, without a much longer history of past errors than we could find space for. But let any man investigate the history of our political conduct for the last century; of our policy, as well foreign as domestic; of our treaties, our wars, our commercial regulations, our legislation; and then say whether they are not marked by errors which were the produce of disgraceful ignorance. We see them now, partly by experience of their effects; but we see them also without this proof, because we see that their principles were faulty. We are better informed, because, by whatever means, we have been better educated; and we know that a better education would have saved us from much suffering, through a long space; suffering, of which we are still the victims.

This returns us to the question of a vicious education, or what is the same, of an useless one. If we have just said that, in education, there is something to avoid, and if we have shown the dangers, or the inutility, of what is called a literary education and a literary age, so there is something also to gain. It is a double gain, to avoid evil and choose good. If we educate a man for the purpose of building a ship, it is among timber, and rules, and ships, in a carpenter's yard. But he who is to administer the state; to direct taxation and commerce; to contrive laws; to administer, or to learn them; to conduct armies; or prescribe physic; does not learn legislation, or politics, or physic, or the military art, but Latin and Greek, syntax and poetry. Is education, then, but a name, or are the privileged orders to know every thing by intuition, while the operating ones must learn in youth to do what they are to perform in age? That statesmen do not learn their trade by intuition, their errors prove. That the soldier, the lawyer, and the physician, must learn theirs when they ought to be practising it, they feel but too plainly. Well may they weep their lost hours, and repent in vain their errors, and execrate the system which has robbed them of their youth, their liberty, and their money, and paid them in words and wind. Nay, not even thus. It is an age of literature, we have admitted. But solid literature is still a trade; and it is acquired by persevering industry, not at, or by, school and college, but after it, as are law and physic. The proof is before us; for those who have not had leisure or inclination after their school-days, have not acquired it, have not even acquired the simple art of writing their own language decently, of telling the world what they did, and thought, and saw. Are there many lawyers who have written in a style superior to that of an act of parliament? Britain has been engaged in a series of splendid wars, by sea and land, and it has fought them splendidly.

It has been, and is, the rival in arms of Greece and Rome; yet not one of all its officers has produced a history of his own actions; nay, hardly one has penned a despatch that would have gained credit to a school-boy. At this moment, we have not a British history of our late "glorious" deeds of twenty years; except, indeed, Dr. Southey's. We have not even a writer on the military, or on the naval art, who deserves to be named. Such is the produce of Westminster and Eton, Oxford and Cambridge. They profess, at the very least, to teach letters, and yet they do not succeed in teaching their pupils to tell a plain story in their own tongue, or in any other tongue. To what other tests can we bring the system of our education? It has broken its promise; it has broken it in every way. It has not taught even the little it pretended to teach. Had it taught all, we have ploughed the field we were not to cultivate, and sown the seed which we never meant to reap.

Education, if intended for any thing, is intended to prepare subjects for the state. It is plain, therefore, that it should bear an analogy to its pursuits, and occupations, and laws, and constitution. The system which acted on the reverse principle, would be faulty; one which did not act on the direct principle, would be pronounced defective. The Catholic countries of Europe have erred in both ways; we err chiefly in the latter: not solely, however.

The Greeks and Romans, we have said it before, were wiser than we are. It was their object to form statesmen, legislators, orators, and warriors; and they trusted the education of their youth to orators, statesmen, and legislators, or to philosophers professing those sciences and arts. It has been said by one who has anticipated us on this subject, but in vain, that Solon would not have trusted the Spartans with the education of the Athenian youth, and that still less would Lycurgus have put his pupils under the Helots. It was to Antipater they made the noted reply, when he demanded a hundred and fifty of their children as hostages, that they preferred giving a hundred and fifty men, lest an improper education should corrupt their children.

Heaven forbid, however, that we should have been the first to say, what we may repeat after the same writer, that the governments of Europe have selected, and have acted absurdly in selecting, the clerical body, exclusively, to conduct the education of their youth. In Britain, indeed, it has not been placed under the control and direction of a body which esteems the head of its religion beyond the head of its government, which loves its own order above its country, and its exclusive institutions more than the laws of the state. It is not under a foreign control.

And yet it is conducted and directed by the clergy, and the clergy does all in its power to retain the direction in its own hands. Tailors educate tailors, and boatswains seamen; but the clergy of Britain educates statesmen, and lawyers, and soldiers, and merchants, and physicians. We will not say of them, that they have intruded into this office; we trust that we are too libeVOL. VII. No. 42.-Museum.

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