English life seems to have inspired him with much respect for the household virtues of this land; and, without endowing us with the unsuitable romantic attributes which our foreign admirers are sometimes willing to ascribe, he speaks of us in a discriminating tone of praise, creditable alike to the eulogist and his subject. His occupation as teacher naturally directed his attention a good deal to the subject of education, and the observations which he makes upon this extensive topic are, with few exceptions, sound and judicious.

He admires the well-constituted intercourse and happy terms which so frequently subsist between parents and children---the mild consideration of the former, and the respectful freedom of the latter the care bestowed upon the disposition, the repression of ebullitions of temper, and the wholesome lives of temperance and activity which young people are caused to lead. Count Pecchio is alluding only to home education, and, we presume, knows little of our public schools, or the tenor of his remarks would probably have been less eulogistic. There is much wellexpressed truth in the following:

"Liberty is the mistress of every thing in England. The restrictions employed are few, and such only as are indispensable. Their trees are rarely pollarded, or distorted, or clipped, but grow luxuriantly, spreading in the parks and fields as nature prompts; their pleasure-grounds are not made symmetrical, but in imitation of nature; their houses are not constructed with a view to architectural ornament at the expense of internal convenience; but whatever may be the irregularities of the outward design, they are almost always well arranged and commodious within. Their horses are not fretted or cramped with useless exercises and artificial paces, but are strong, spirited, and very swift. Here, finally, education is rather a rule, a guide, than a system of coercive modelling. The English are, of all highly civilized people, those who depart least from nature."

Count Pecchio, in order to prove that he is not a blind admirer of anything that is done in this country, then tells us there are two things in our system of education of which he cannot approve;— one of these is "excess of reading," especially at an early age. The other may excite a smile of surprise in those who are not prepared for the very extensive meaning which Count Pecchio is inclined to attach to the word "education." It is "the prevalence of tight-lacing with females." Though we cannot admit that a reprehension of this practice finds its place very naturally in the midst of strictures on education, we will say, that we believe the physical evils he complains of, as resulting from it, are pretty generally acknowledged; but that it is no longer necessary to denounce a custom which comparatively prevails so little. With

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respect to "reading," we concur with him in much that he says. We believe it is too much the practice of English parents and teachers to force the mind at an early age. The intellectual education," as he says, "is made to begin at three years old ;" and though there may be little harm in its beginning then, it should assuredly be prosecuted with peculiar gentleness and moderation. It is better, while children are very young, to bestow attention upon the cultivation of their moral than of their intellectual qualities, to improve the disposition rather than to load the memory with knowledge which is not yet convertible. The infrequency of early prodigies retaining their intellectual superiority, and producing much good fruit in mature life, is a practical illustration of the impolicy of the forcing system, even where it has seemed most successful. It is, moreover, the published opinion of an eminent physician, that extreme cultivation of the intellectual faculties, previous to the age of seven, is injurious both to mind and body, and may even be regarded as a proximate cause of the increased prevalence of insanity. Count Pecchio's objections to excessive reading among adults are not very serious, nor particularly valid. He says,

"When Rousseau wrote his Emile, in England they read very little, and perhaps too little. But now they read too much. There is such an inundation of poetry, novels, romances, and periodicals, that many intellects must be quite smothered under them. . . . The mind has not time to digest this incessant feast. The romance of this week makes one forget that of the preceding, as one wave obliterates another. It happened to me several times to ask one youth or another, what was the plot of a romance he had read a few months before. He had scarcely more than a faint recollection of it, as if it had been a dream. A more certain inconvenience, resulting from this assiduous reading, is the weakness of sight, which is very common in England. I don't know if this opinion of mine is correct; because English education, especially that of the mind, has undergone an alteration within the last twenty years. The effects, whether good or bad, of this assiduous and irregular reading cannot hitherto have rendered themselves visible. We shall require twenty years more in order to judge with accuracy whether, with regard to solidity of judgment and vigour of body, the consequence has been gain or loss."

We willingly acknowledge the justice of the last two sentences. As for the alleged alteration in the system of English education, within the last twenty years, we do not know to what he alludes. That "certain" inconvenient result-" weakness of sight," which he says is " very common in England," is much more common in France and Germany. His instances of forgetfulness of the plot of a romance are not powerfully conclusive. He does not tell us that this forgetfulness is to be attributed solely to the vast deal that had been read subsequently; and he must not be too sure that it is not feigned. There are many who would plead forget

fulness, rather than undergo the trouble of giving an account of what they had been reading. Besides, in the case of mere light reading-reading undertaken for amusement, and not for information, it may be doubted whether the alleged forgetfulness be an evil at all. If the romance is a good one, the benefit it can afford will consist, not in impressing on the memory of the reader the useless imaginary facts of a fictitious narrative, but in infusing, almost imperceptibly, such general impressions as will conduce to the confirmation of his principles and the refinement of his taste. We wish there was the slightest ground for fearing that the minds of young Englishmen are in danger of being overwhelmed with excess of general information. Few, at the time they go to the university, are, in this respect, on an equality with their sisters; and this land has not yet begun to groan under the infliction of over-educated females.

Count Pecchio's mind seems much alive to inquiry into the sources of the wealth and civilization of England. Among the elements which conduce to these results, he has not omitted to notice the excellence of our means of internal communication. At the same time, he explains, very sensibly, an apparent anomaly which has struck some foolish travellers with wonder, namely, that while so solicitous to expedite communication as much as possible, we should have roads much less straight than many that are to be found on the continent. He says,

"Straight roads, and symmetrical cities, suppose the existence of a despotic power, little regardful of the rights of property. The straight line is like the sword of Alexander, which cut the gordian knot instead of untying it. The two most symmetrical cities in Europe, Turin and Berlin, sprung up under two military monarchies. Who does not see in the interminable straight roads of France and Poland a despotic hand that has traced them so? On the contrary, in England, that ancient land of liberty, the roads are winding, with frequent turns, and many of its cities are clusters of habitations, the chance result of caprice or need, instead of being composed of rows of houses, drawn up in rank like so many battalions of soldiers. Nevertheless, the English love order, expedition, and economy of every thing true; but more than all, they appear to have esteemed the rights of property.

"The footpaths, which line every street in their towns, and frequently even the roads through the country, show that the people are and can make themselves respected. The traders have their canals, travellers in carriages have the middle of the street, the foot passengers have the side path. The footpath is the triumph of democracy. The common people are not, as elsewhere, entirely set aside. They have their rights, humble in truth, but inviolable. On the continent, on the other hand, the roads seem made only for the wealthy and for horses."

He then enters sensibly into the question (on which opposite

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opinions are maintained by Verri and Adam Smith,) whether the money requisite for the support of roads should be levied by tolls or a general impost, and supports, for the most part, the opinion of the great Scotch political economist against that of his own countryman.

The following remarks on our practice of recruiting are graphic and pointed, and as such we quote them, though we cannot entirely concur with the sentiments of the author.

"It is known that the English army is in a great measure raised by recruiting. There is not yet any conscription in England. The conscription, it is true, is a tax of blood; the more grievous when it is paid to a tyrannical government, or to a foreign government, which oppresses the conquered by means of the conquered themselves. But under every circumstance I prefer the conscription to recruiting. Even under a spurious government it is less shameful to serve by compulsion than by choice. Besides, recruiting is a contract between a knave and a fool. About three in the afternoon, just when the fair is most crowded, one hears the sound of four or five drums and a few fifes; one sees a party of soldiers, with ornaments dangling to their watches, ribbons in their helmets, and faces sleek and chubby, (as if war was le pays de cocagne,) better in dress and appearance than other soldiers, in order that they may more easily seduce and deceive; one sees, I say, this recruiting party leading into the midst of the fair, and showing in triumph to the crowd, two or three youths, who for three or four guineas have sold their lives, and know not whether to their country, their king, or their love of idleness. They have their hats ornamented with silk ribbons, just as in ancient times they decked with garlands the horns of the rams that were destined to be sacrificed. This simulated pomp, this false gaiety, seem to me similar to that festival which used to accompany the vow of chastity and perpetual seclusion which girls pronounced when they took the veil. The English speak with horror of the slave trade. Where is the difference between an African, who sells himself, as frequently happens, deceived by a slave merchant, and a man who, heated with wine and delusive promises, sells himself for a few guineas to a lying corporal?"

If Count Pecchio had often indulged in such flights of futile exaggeration, we should not have thought his work worth notice, The information he gives respecting the mild methods of bribery and persuasion so often employed by the African slave merchants, is new to us. Relying too confidently on all other authorities, we had feared the case was different. "The English," he says, "speak with horror of the slave trade." True; but they speak with no horror of the practice of recruiting, and yet they are as jealous of their own liberty as of the liberty of other people. Is it then possible that there can be so strong an analogy between recruiting and the slave trade? If he had asked himself this question, he would probably not have framed the absurdity we have quoted. It is not clear upon what plea he prefers the conscription to

recruiting. The latter has plainly the advantage of being voluntary, while the former is a system of compulsion. But deceit, according to our author, is as bad as compulsion: and "recruiting is a contract between a knave and a fool." This is too sweeping an assertion. The contract may be such as he describes, and so may any contract between the employer and the employed; but it is not necessarily such. The military ardour of inex perienced youth, though it may lead to a measure at which prudent friends will shake their heads, does not deserve to be so severely stigmatized; and any one who will compare the condition of the soldier with that of the distressed mechanic or the ill paid day-labourer of the south of England, will come to the conclusion, that enlistment may often be adopted, not by a fool at the suggestion of a knave, but by a well-judging poor man upon a calm and prudential view of comparative advantages; and such we know is frequently the case.

The little tract entitled "Un' Elezione di Membri del Parlamento in Inghilterra," is pleasingly and judiciously written, and without having much pretensions to profundity of thought, or extensiveness of research, is well calculated to give the author's countrymen a tolerably accurate notion of the mode in which elections used to be conducted in this country. Count Pecchio is one of that commendable class of travellers, who, without abstaining from a due admixture of inferences and speculations, do not exhibit them to the exclusion of facts, but give us pictures as well as essays. Instead, therefore, of quoting Blackstone and Delolme, he has given, as specimens of the workings of our system, a vivid description of what he witnessed in two English elections in 1826; one for the county of Nottingham, the other, a severe contest of ten days' duration for the county town.

"In describing to my countrymen the forms and incidents of an election such as I myself witnessed, I have not pretended to present to them a perfect model. Whoever studies the art of government, knows that numerous defects are contained both in the national representation of England, and in the conduct of its elections."

We are glad to think that since the appearance of this little work so many of those defects have been removed; and that those portions of his description which are least flattering to our country are but the history of a system which no longer exists. Whatever doubts may exist with respect to the working of the Reform Bill (and doubts must exist with respect to every untried measure) we think it cannot be otherwise than cause for congratulation among well meaning men of every party, that we shall be no longer liable to a whole fortnight's continuance of such disgraceful incidents as the following.