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what they are about; they help one
another; they work orderly and to
one end,-

"How skilfully they build the cell,
How neat they spread the wax,
And labour hard to store it well

session of tigers, bears, and crocodiles. Hard by on a smaller tile, that brawny "knave of clubs," Cain, battered down his brother at the altar; then followed a long picture-gallery of the acts of the patriarchs, and another With the sweet food," &c. &c. equally long of the acts of the apostles. But, queer as many of these miscon- In none of these particulars did we ceptions might seem, they were no- resemble the "busy bee." This being thing to the strange attempts made at admitted, our object in offering a few dramatising the parables of the New words upon the course of study purTestament--e. g. a stout man, stag- sued at the chateau is not with any gering under the weight of an enor- idea of enlightening the reader as to mous beam which grows out of one eye, anything really acquired during the employs his fingers, assisted by the long ten hours' session of each day; other, to pick out a black speck from but rather to show how ten hours' the cornea of his neighbour. Here, an imprisonment may be inflicted upon unclean spirit, as black as any sweep, the body for the supposed advantage issues from the mouth of his victim, of the mind, and yet be consumed in with wings and a tail! Here again, the "profitless labour, and diligence good Samaritan, turbaned like a Turk, which maketh not rich;" to prove, by is bent over the waylaid traveller, and an exhibition of their opposites, that pours wine and oil into his wounds method and discipline are indispenfrom the mouths of two Florence sable in tuition, and (if he will accept flasks; there, the grain of mustard- our "pathemata" for his "mathemaseed, become a tree, sheltering already ta" and guides in the bringing up of a large aviary in its boughs; the wo- his sons) to convince him that educaman, dancing a hornpipe with the tion, like scripture, admits not of priDutch broom, has swept her house, and vate interpretation. Those who refuse lo! the piece of silver that was lost in to adopt the Catholic views of the her hand; a servant, who is digging a age, and the general sense of the sohole in order to hide his lord's talent ciety in which they live, must blame under a tree, is overlooked by a mag- themselves if they find the experipie and two crows, who are attentive ment of foreign schools a failure, and witnesses of the deposit:-and many that they have sent their children others too numerous to mention. So "farther to fare worse." much for the empty school-room, but what's a hive without bees, or a schoolroom without boys? The reader who has peeped into it untenanted, shall now, if he pleases, be introduced, dum fervet opus full and alive. Should he not be able to trace out very clearly the system at work, he will at least be no worse off than the bee-fancier, who hears indeed the buzzing, and sees a flux and reflux current of his winged confectioners entering in and passing out, but cannot investigate the detail of their labours any farther. In the Yverdun, as in the hymenopterus apiary, we swarmed, we buzzed, dispersed, re-assembled at the sound of the bell, flocked in and flocked out, all the day long; exhibited much restlessness and activity, evincing that something was going on, but what it would have been hard to determine. Here the comparison must drop. Bees buzz to some purpose; they know

And now to proceed to the geography class, which was the first after breakfast, and began at half-past eight. As the summons-bell sounded, the boys came rushing and tumbling in, and ere a minute had elapsed were swarming over, and settling upon, the high reading-desks: the master, already at his work, was chalking out the business of the hour; and as this took some little time to accomplish, the youngsters, not to sit unemployed, would be assiduously engaged in impressing sundry animal formsamong which the donkey was favourite-cut out in cloth, and well powdered, upon one another's backs. When Herr G- had finished his chalkings, and was gone to the corner of the room for his show-perch, a skeleton map of Europe might be seen, by those who choose to look that way, covering the slate: this, however, was what the majority of the assembly

never dreamt of, or only dreamt they were doing. The class generallythough ready when called upon to give the efficient support of their tongues-kept their eyes to gape elsewhere, and, like Solomon's fool, had them where they had no business to be. The map, too often repeated to attract from its novelty, had no claim to respect on other grounds. It was one of a class accurately designated by that careful geographer, old Homer, as "pay ov Kara Koopov.' Coarse and clumsy, however, as it necessarily would be, it might still have proved of service had the boys been the draughtsmen. As it was, the following mechanically Herr G- -'s wand to join in the general chorus of the last census of a city, the perpendicular altitude of a mountain, or the length and breadth of a lake, could obviously convey no useful instruction to any one. But, useful or otherwise, such was our regime,-to set one of from fifty to sixty lads, day after day, week after week, repeating facts and figures notorious to every little reader of penny guides to science, till all had the last statistical returns at their tongue's tip; and knew, when all was done, as much of what geography really meant as on the day of their first matriculation. Small wonder, then, if some should later have foresworn this study, and been revolted at the bare sight of a map! All our recollections of map, unlike those of personal travel, are sufficiently distasteful. Often have we yawned wearily over them at Yverdun, when our eyes were demanded to follow the titubations of Herr G's magic wand, which, in its uncertain route, would skip from Europe to Africa and back again-qui modo Thebas modo me ponit Athenis; and our dislike to them since has increased amazingly. Does the reader care to be told the reason of this? Let him-in order to obtain the pragmatic sanction of some stiff-necked examiner-have to "get up" all the anastomosing routes of St. Paul's several journeyings; have to follow those rebellious Israelites in all their wanderings through the desert; to draw the line round them when in Palestine; going from Dan to Beersheba, and "meting out the valley of Succoth;" or, finally, have

the

to cover a large sheet of foolscap
with a progressive survey of the
spread of Christianity during
three first centuries-and he will
easily enter into our feelings. To re-
turn to the class-room: The geogra
phical lesson, though of daily inflic-
tion, was accurately circumscribed
in its duration. Old Time kept a
sharp look-out over his blooming
daughters, and never suffered one
hour to tread upon the heels or trench
upon the province of a sister hour.
Sixty minutes to all, and not an ex-
tra minute to any, was the old gen-
tleman's impartial rule; and he took
care to see it was strictly adhered to.
As the clock struck ten, geography
was shoved aside by the muse of ma-
thematics. A sea of dirty water had
washed out in a twinkling all traces
of the continent of Europe, and the
palimpset slate presented a clean face
for whatever figures might next be
traced upon it.

The hour for Euclidising was arrived, and anon the black parallelogram was intersected with numerous triangles of the Isosceles and Scalene pattern; but, notwithstanding this promising début, we did not make much quicker progress here than in the previous lesson. How should we, who had not only the difficulties inseparable from the subject to cope with, but a much more formidable difficulty-viz. the obstruction which we opposed to each other's advance, by the plan, so unwisely adopted, of making all the class do the same thing, that they might keep pace together. It is a polite piece of folly enough for a whole party to be kept waiting dinner by a lounging guest, who chooses to ride in the park when he ought to be at his toilet; but we were the victims of a much greater absurdity, who lost what might have proved an hour of profitable work, out of tenderness to some incorrigibly idle or Baotian boy, who could not get over the Pons Asinorum, (every proposition was a pons to some asinus or other,) and so made those who were over stand still, or come back to help him across. Neither was this, though a very considerable drawback, our only hindrance-the guides were not always safe. Sometimes he who acted in that capacity

would shout "Eureka" too soon; and having undertaken to lead the van, lead it astray till just about, as he supposed, to come down upon the proof itself, and to come down with a Q. E. D. the master would stop him short, and bid him-as Coleridge told the ingenious author of Guesses at Truth" to guess again." But suppose the "guess" fortunate, or that a boy had even succeeded, by his own industry or reflection, in mastering a proposition, did it follow that he would be a clear expositor of what he knew? It was far otherwise. Our young Archimedes unacquainted with the terms of the science, and being also (as we have hinted) lamentably defective in his knowledge of the power of words-would mix up such a farrago" of irrelevancies and repetitions with the proof, as, in fact, to render it to the majority no proof at all. Euclid should be taught in his own words,-just enough and none to spare: the employment of less must engender obscurity; and of more, a want of neatness and perspicacity. The best geometrician amongst us would have cut but a bad figure by the side of a lad of very average ability brought up to know Euclid by book.

Another twitch of the bell announced that the hour for playing at triangles had expired. In five minutes the slate was covered with bars of minims and crotchets, and the music lesson begun. This, in the general tone of its delivery, bore a striking resemblance to the geographical one of two hours before; the only difference being that "ut, re, me" had succeeded to names of certain cities, and "fa, so, la" to the number of their inhabitants. It would be as vain an attempt to describe all the noise we made as to show its rationale or motive. It was loud enough to have cowed a lion, stopped a donkey in mid-bray-to have excited the envy of the vocal Lablache, or to have sent any prima donna into hysterics. When this third hour had been bellowed away, and the bell had rung unheard the advent of a fourth

presto-in came Mons. D--, to relieve the meek man who had acted as coryphæus to the music class; and after a little tugging, had soon produced from his pocket that without which you never catch a Frenchman a thème. The theme being announced, we proceeded (not quite tant bien que mal) to scribble it down at his dictation, and to amend its orthography afterwards from a corrected copy on the slate. Once more the indefatigable bell obtruded its tinkle, to proclaim that Herr Roth was coming with a Fable of Gellert, or a chapter from Vater Pestalozzi's serious novel, Gumal und Lina, to read, and expound, and catechise upon. This last lesson before dinner was always accompanied by frequent yawns and other unrepressed symptoms of fatigue; and at its conclusion we all rose with a shout, and rushed into the corridors.

On resuming work in the afternoon, there was even less attention and method observed than before. The classes were then broken up, and private lessons were given in accomplishments, or in some of the useful arts. Drawing dogs and cows, with a master to look after the trees and the hedges; whistling and spitting through a flute; playing on the patience of a violin; turning at a lathe; or fencing with a powerful maître d'Armes;· such were the general occupations. It was then, however, that we English withdrew to our Greek and Latin; and, under a kind master, Dr. M- acquired (with the exception of a love for natural history, and a very unambitious turn of mind) all that really could deserve the name of education.

We have now described the sedentary life at the chateau. In the next paper the reader shall be carried to the gymnasium; the drill ground behind the lake; to our small menageries of kids, guinea pigs, and rabbits; be present at our annual ball and skating bouts in winter, and at our bathings, fishings, frog-spearings, and rambles over the Jura in summer.

THE CROWNING OF THE COLUMN, AND CRUSHING OF THE PEDESTAL.

IT was said in the debate on the Navigation Laws, in the best speech made on the Liberal side, by one of the ablest of the Liberal party, that the repeal of the Navigation Laws was the crowning of the column of free trade. There is no doubt it was so; but it was something more. It was not only the carrying out of a principle, but the overthrow of a system; it was not merely the crowning of the column, but the crushing of the pedestal.

And what was the system which was thus completely overthrown, for the time at least, by this great triumph of Liberal doctrines? It was the system under which England had become free, and great, and powerful; under which, in her alone of all modern states, liberty had been found to coexist with law, and progress with order; under which wealth had increased without producing divisions, and power grown up without inducing corruption; the system which had withstood the shocks of two centuries, and created an empire unsurpassed since the beginning of the world in extent and magnificence. It was a system which had been followed out with persevering energy by the greatest men, and the most commanding intellects, which modern Europe had ever produced; which was begun by the republican patriotism of Cromwell, and consummated by the conservative wisdom of Pitt; which had been embraced alike by Somers and Bolingbroke, by Walpole and Chatham, by Fox and Castlereagh; which, during two centuries, had produced an unbroken growth of national strength, a ceaseless extension of national power, and at length reared up a dominion which embraced the earth. in its grasp, and exceeded anything ever achieved by the legions of Cæsar, or the phalanx of Alexander. No vicissitudes of time, no shock of adverse fortune, had been able permanently to arrest its progress. It had risen superior alike to the ambition of Louis XIV. and the genius of Napoleon; the rude severance of the North American colonies had thrown only a passing shade over its fortunes; the

power of Hindostan had been subdued by its force, the sceptre of the ocean won by its prowess. It had planted its colonies in every quarter of the globe, and at once peopled with its descendants a new hemisphere, and, for the first time since the creation, rolled back to the old the tide of civilisation. Perish when it may, the old English system has achieved mighty things; it has indelibly affixed its impress on the tablets of history. The children of its creation, the AngloSaxon race, will fill alike the solitudes of the Far West, and the Isles of the East; they will be found equally on the shores of the Missouri, and on the savannahs of Australia; and the period can already be anticipated, even by the least imaginative, when their descendants will people half the globe.

It was not only the column of free trade which has been crowned in this memorable year. Another column, more firm in its structure, more lasting in its duration, more conspicuous amidst the wonders of creation, has, in the same season, been crowned by British hands. While the sacrilegious efforts of those whom it had sheltered were tearing down the temple of protection in the West, the last stone was put to the august structure which it had reared in the East. The victory of Goojerat on the Indus was contemporary with the repeal of the Navigation Laws on the Thames. The completion of the conquest of India occurred exactly at the moment when the system which had created that empire was repudiated. Protection placed the sceptre of India in our hands, when free trade was surrendering the trident of the ocean in the heart of our power. With truth did Lord Gough say, in his noble proclamation to the army of the Punjaub on the termination of hostilities, that "what Alexander had attempted they had done." Supported by the energy of England, guided by the principles of protection, restrained by the dictates of justice, backed by the navy which the Navigation Laws had created, the British arms had achieved the most wonderful triumph recorded in the annals of

mankind. They had subjugated a hundred and forty millions of men in the Continent of Hindostan, at the distance of ten thousand miles from the parent state; they had made themselves felt alike, and at the same moment, at Nankin, the ancient capital of the Celestial Empire, and at Cabool, the cradle of Mahommedan power. Conquering all who resisted, blessing all who submitted, securing the allegiance of the subjects by the justice and experienced advantages of their government, they had realised the boasted maxim of Roman administration

* Parcere subjectis et debellare superbos,"

and steadily advanced through a hundred years of effort and glory, not unmixed with disaster, from the banks of the Hoogley to the shores of the Indus from the black hole of Calcutta to the throne of Aurengzebe.

strange an anomaly, if we did not recollect how wayward and irreconcilable are the changes of the human mind: that action and reaction is the law not less of the moral than of the material world; that nations become tired of hearing a policy called wise, not less than an individual called the just; and that if a magnanimous and truly national course of government has been pursued by one party long in possession of power, this is quite sufficient to make its opponents embrace the opposite set of tenets, and exert all their influence to carry them into effect when they succeed to the direction of affairs, without the slightest regard to the ruin they may bring on the national fortunes.

The secret of the long duration and unexampled success of the British national policy is to be found in the protection which it afforded to all the national interests. But for this, it must long since have been overthrown and with it the empire which was growing up under its shadow. No institutions or frames of government can long exist which are not held together by that firmest of bonds, experienced benefits. What made the Roman power steadily advance during seven centuries, and endure in all a thousand years? The protection which the arms of the legions afforded to the industry of mankind, the international wars which they prevented, the general peace they secured, the magnanimous policy which admitted the conquered states to the privileges of Roman citizens, and caused the Imperial government to be felt through the wide circuit of its power, only by the vast market it opened to the industry of its multifarious subjects, and the munificence with which local undertakings were everywhere aided by the Imperial treasury. Free trade in grain at length ruined it; the harvests of Lybia and Egypt came to supersede those of Greece and Italy,

"Nulla magna civitas," said Hannibal, diu quiescere potest-si foris hostem non habet, domi invenit: ut praevalida corpora ab externis causis tuta videntur, suis ipsis viribus conficiuntur." When the Carthaginian hero made this mournful reflection on the infatuated spirit which had seized his own countrymen, and threatened to destroy their once powerful dominion, he little thought what a marvellous ecnfirmation of it a future empire of far greater extent and celebrity was to afford. That the system of free trade -that is, the universal preference of foreigners, for the sake of the smallest reduction of price, to your own subjects-must, if persisted in, lead to the dismemberment and overthrow of the British empire, cannot admit of a moment's doubt, and will be amply proved to every unbiassed reader in the sequel of this paper. Yet the moment chosen for carrying this principle into effect was precisely that, when the good effects of the opposite system had been most decisively demonstrated, and an empire unprece--and thence its fall. To the same dented in magnitude and magnificence had reached its acme under its shadow. It would be impossible to explain so

cause which occasioned the rise of Rome, is to be ascribed the similar unbroken progress of the Russian ter

"No great state can long remain quiet; if it has not an enemy abroad, it finds one at home, as powerful bodies resist all external attacks, but are destroyed by their internal strength."-LIVY.

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