of action should be very limited, yet the difference between knowledge and no knowledge, within that sphere, may be very great.

The question of Education in this country has become more interesting from the great change that has long been taking place, and the end of which it is not easy to foresee, in the condition, and consequently in the character, of our population. There has been a great extension of the power of commerce, not only in itself, including, of course, manufactures, but in the commercializing of agriculture. Hence innumerable old relations are broken up, local attachments extirpated; the close, daily, familiar, loving bond between the higher and lower dissolved: therefore the power of opinion and manners as hereditary, as of one class binding another, as of immutable vicinage, is undermined and reft. Further, the commercial condition, principle, or element in the social structure is this, that each man traffics in himself; that is, without disparagement, that in respect of the first great necessity-maintenance, out of which nature has forged one of the most felt, seen, and infrangible bonds of society, he freely and absolutely chooses,-one may say he is loose to choose,-his Relations. Formerly, he was in these respects strongly bound, though still free, by personal and local relations. He would not leave his village-his service. His was a state intermediate between villanage and commercial independence, which are the two extremes. Then, relations in which was strong, always good feeling, helped greatly to determine, where, and of whom, he should receive maintenance. Now he estimates it in money-his labour is worth so muchhe has it to sell-he takes it to market. This is the solution of old ties, of old structure, by the infusion of the commercial element. Of old the unrooting of a peasant was like the unrooting of a tree. Moreover, the farming labourer lived in the farmer's house-now in his own, and, in many districts in England, lodges in public houses. Here is the institution of the estimate of value for the estimate of relations; or of value receivable in money, for value received, there is no denying it, by the heart, measu

red in feelings and in sentiments. This state of things exposes the agricultural population more to the influence of vice and of ignorance. They need more than they did knowledge and instruction, and more than ever such knowledge and instruction as is of a genial, generous, and moral kind, supporting their best affections within their own nearest and closest relations of sons, brothers, fathers, and keeping alive, if possible, that kindness and respect for the higher orders, which of old the bold peasantry of England, their country's pride, rejoiced to shew after their own homely and independent fashion.

How far, were this subject pursued into all its bearings, we should have to regret this change, we shall not now take upon us to say; but to be regretted or rejoiced in, the change demands attention from all who wish well to the character of the people. Advancing wealth, and arts multiplying and augmenting their power, split the ancient frame of society. In earlier times, men are all bound together, high and low, rich and poor. They sleep under one roof; they eat at one board. As they go on, two things happen :-The society comes to consist of a much greater variety of orders or classes of societies within the society; and, secondly, what was done for love is done for money. Both are principles of division. A patriarch might have some of his people who were artists at need; afterwards there are confraternities of artificers. Those who are thus separated become more and more self-dependent. So that in the early time, the contexture and strength of society by personal dependencies was much greater; afterwards it depends upon other principles, upon a rational estimate of the right and necessity of union, upon the sense of common interest, upon moral views and sympathies, on an idea of the obligation of patriotism, and of civic allegiance. Thus there is a continual dissolving of the old bonds, and a substitute of new principles of union. If it may happen that the bonds are dissolved faster than the new principles spring up,-for that period there will be relaxation and impairing of the union of society. The end of all this is, that the spirit which accompanied the closer union, is in a great measure

gone, the spirit of control of opinion of the higher classes over the lower, of more intimately shewn and moralizing example, of befriending and salutary advice, and further, that cordial and endearing spirit that gladdened the face of every day's life, and was sunshine upon merry England.

Then, there is a great part of England, nearly a third of it all, where the country labourers are all, without any individual or national distress, but as a calm, regular, and immutable procedure, paid half their wages out of the poor rates. This is so wholly uncalled for, and so flagrant an absurdity, and is so visibly of no use to the labourer, but simply a device by which the landlord helps to pay the farmer's man, for which in all probability he is repaid in the shape of higher rent, that there can be no difficulty in its being swept away, at a week's notice, by an act of Parliament. And the system itself must be so blighting upon the character of the people, though it is real repayment of labour,-by the mode of it, being repayment with the aspect of alms, and other degrading circumstances connected with it, that the first indispensable step to raising the character of the people where it exists, must be to remove it.

Then, with regard to the proper servants of commerce in manufactures in great towns and districts, they generally have great leisure from high wages, in prosperous, which we be lieve are their natural times, though we have seen deep distress, and they have often a command of money. Of them, particularly, it may be said, that the modern extension of commerce has made an era, since it has suddenly made them a most large proportion of the population; and on account of them there is occasion for interfering now, to give instruction, if for no other moral utility, for the innocent employment of time. It is probable that, between self-respect, and the habit of better, among other things of more domestic, employment of his leisure, the workman who from the times, or at all times from the nature of his more skilful work, got wages beyond present maintenance, would lay the excess by; and instead of spending even a portion, sometimes a large one, of the time due to labour, in presently consuming its produce, would attend

steadily to his duty, thus serving his employer and the community at the same moment, besides making himself, by his property and his respectability, a valuable member of society. Besides, what cannot be overlooked, by his better manner of spending, exciting, as a consumer of a higher order, the higher industry of the country. We are at a time when the question, what the character of our commercial population is, is of mighty moment, and is likely to become every day of mightier still. The first part of instruction we are bound to provide is Religion; and that is provided by our Establishments, if those who accept of the offices fulfil them. It is not less than the duty of the minister, when this is, from the numbers, humanly possible, to know that every parishioner, every soul within his cure, is instructed. The Country offers much to the senses, if they are open; much variety of occupation; taking hold, through elementary feelings blended with the senses, on the will.

Hence, in such occupations, a natural virtue. In towns and manufactories, occupation has often much mischief in it. Minds are separated from natural attachments, from the sky, from the earth, from localities. The man is more left to what is internal, and is more immixed with society. Therefore in himself, and in his social relations, more is to be demanded, and more to be produced, that is good. Give him, therefore, knowledge; make it an occupation; quell his inferior by his higher nature. We do not enquire so anxiously how he will apply, how he will appropriate it. The peasant hardly needs instruction for an occupation; he needs it for the influence of the ideas it has imparted upon his mind, whilst that mind bears them often silently unperceived in itself. In the town, we want it for the occupation, the possession of the man by it, from moment to moment, from hour to hour.

There is no need of entering at present into any argument on the comparative character of our agricultural and manufacturing population. But this is certain, and it is obvious to all eyes, that with great intelligence, and many estimable qualities, there is among the latter much moral evil, which never can be cured by a merely

secular education. Let us not deceive ourselves by believing that the people of any great commercial country will ever be able to guide themselves safely by cultivated intellect. Christianity alone is the strength of the State. If the Bible be neglected-we must not say despised-but if it be laid aside merely for Sabbath hours, and those perhaps unfrequent, interrupted, and inspired by no very devout spirit, and all other kinds of knowledge elevated to a higher place in men's opinions than " saving knowledge,' panegyrised by the most eloquent in the land, as the foundation on which the pillars of a nation's prosperity rest; so that a man belonging to the working classes comes to value himself chiefly on account of the acquisitions he has made, perhaps, in some branch of physical science or art, if, by insensible degrees, religion comes to be considered by the poor man as a thing of secondary importance, and it is not easy to see how that can be otherwise, if his whole mind, during its leisure hours, is to be applied, with all its faculties and feelings, to knowledge lying out of the sphere of religion, then Education, so far from being a blessing, will be a bane, and that which men call light will be darkness. Symptoms of some approaching evil like this are visible in the aspect of the times. Those who think that human nature is sufficient in itself for its own earthly destiny, and would rather wish to keep religion, that is, Christianity, in the back-ground, will give a different interpretation of these signs. Many persons there are, who, wishing well to their species, and electing them

selves members of the Philosophical Order, declare that the Religion of the State ought to be respected; but what their eyes chiefly regard, is the march of intellect. Others again fear philosophy-fear the diffusion of knowledge-would keep the bulk of mankind, if not in darkness, certainly "now in glimmer and now in gloom," and in almost a blind subjection to a creed. To neither class would we wish to belong; but this we will say, that no man who desires to promote the interests of his fellowcreatures, will scruple to declare his faith, and to uphold it, from the fear, in this liberal and enlightened age, as we are proud to call it, of being thought a bigot, and no philosopher. It is the blessed nature of our religion, that it teaches to the unintellectual that which lies beyond the faculties of the wisest of the sons of men. The meek and humble cottager, who has seen only that small segment of the visible creation that is bounded by the hills encircling his native valley, and who has read few books but One, knows more in his simple heart of perfect morality, than the highest mind that ever trusted entirely to the illumination of its own reason.

On these grounds, therefore, have we all along been zealous for the diffusion of knowledge among all orders of the people. Into some of the schemes proposed for the spread of Education, we purpose ere long to enquire; and also into the state of Education, as it is carried on in our highest Universities, and in our humblest Parish-schools.

It is commonly supposed that an inseparable connexion exists between literature and the fine arts; but upon examination it would seem this is an erroneous opinion. They are both, in their highest efforts, the results of certain occasional states of the public mind affecting the peculiar endowments of individuals.

In so far as the productions of literature suggest topics for the chisel or the pencil, it may be said an alliance exists between the sculptor, the painter, and the writer, and inasmuch as the creations of sculpture and painting furnish matter for the descriptive pen, the connexion and reciprocity are indisputable; but still there is a want of precision in ascribing that connexion and reciprocity to any natural or necessary mutual dependence.

In their highest, as well as in their lowest faculties, a distinctive principle peculiar to each is so clear and defined, that it may almost be described as an organic difference. Indeed, this distinction is so prominent, that it requires some degree of consideration to discover any mutuality amongst them; the alleged connexion being an after thought, formed subsequent to, and in consequence of, the occasional aids they reciprocally give to each other. A horse as developed from the marble by a sculptor, and the horse of Homer or of Job, have no obvious moral similarity. The sculptor may exhibit both, but the one which is the product of his own conception, and those which come from the suggestions of others, will be very different.

It is a curious fact, long determined by experience, that there is an imitative faculty possessed by many professors of the fine arts, altogether different from the peculiar creative faculty which constitutes the genius of a genuine artist. The fine copies of the great works of the old masters, as they are called, are the productions of this imitative faculty. It would even seem that there is a third class of artists, consisting of those who have the power of embodying the suggestions of others, but which power deserts them to a

VOL. XXVII. NO. CLXI.

great degree when they attempt to give form and pressure to their own conceptions.

The noblest progeny of the arts, however, spring not from literature, but are of the artists' own minds. They come perfect from their imaginations, as Minerva from the head of Jupiter. Such are the works of Claude. From what book, or poem, or description, did that elegant and sensitive student of nature derive the subjects of his unrivalled pencil?

The Apollo is equally the conception of the artist; and scarcely one of all the great pictures of Raphael can be said to owe their subjects to any literary description. The merest hints are all that literature has supplied to him.

No doubt the intelligence diffused by literature assists in exalting and refining the spirit of artists; but it is not essential to them, as the fact of many excellent artists being ignorant even of the commonest generalties of literature sufficiently proves. In the time of Julius II. and Leo X., when the arts had attained a brighter ascendency than they have since done, literature was not so generally diffused as it is in our time, when art is as much cultivated as it was in those epochs.

Claiming, then, an independence for art from literature, acknowledging at the same time the reciprocity which exists between them, we assume, that a taste for the one may be cherished without engendering any predilections for the other. Indeed, connoisseurs and dealers in works of art, are in general distinguished for their literary ignorance; nor does it appear to be at all necessary that the taste to discern the professional merits of a painting, or of a piece of sculpture, should be dependent on a knowledge of the history or legend of the subject, or on any knowledge of literature at all.

We have been led into these reflections by having lately, in a cursory manner, inspected the state and progress of the new ornaments of the metropolis, and by occasional conversation with some of the most esteemed artists of the day.

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