480 The Four Nations. [MAY, 



come from what point of the horizon it may. Hence the Scottish system, 

 of education is not only more general in its subjects than the English; it 

 is also more general in its application ; and, equally to peasant and peer, 

 it is in so far a general or intellectual education, without any reference to 

 its immediate application to the business of life. Of late years, and more 

 especially in the very populous and manufacturing districts, which are 

 rapidly assimilating to England, this difference is diminishing ; and, with 

 far more practical dexterity in writing and casting accounts, and with much 

 more knowledge of the modern languages, the education of the middle and 

 lower classes in Scotland is not nearly so intellectual now as it was forty 

 or fifty years ago. Parochial schools existed then, as they do now ; the 

 teachers in them were, as they are now, generally speaking, men far 

 above the average both in natural talents and acquired knowledge ; but 

 then they were attended by youths and young men whereas now they 

 are chiefly attended by children, who are compelled, by the great number 

 of additional wants which fashion has introduced, and the greater diffi- 

 culty of supplying those wants, to begin labour at an earlier age than their 

 fathers left school. This has already produced a very great change in the 

 Scottish character ; and the change which it has produced will, in all pro- 

 bability, continue to increase until a uniformity be established in all the 

 rich agricultural and manufacturing districts of the island. For it is per- 

 fectly evident, that children of ten or eleven years old (and the average age 

 at the parish schools is now much under that), how rapidly soever they 

 may commit to memory, and how dexterously soever they may use 

 their fingers, cannot take the same intellectual grasp of a subject, and so 

 speculate upon its connection with other subjects, as lads of eighteen or 

 twenty. 



One great cause which made the middle and lower classes of the Scots 

 a much more intellectual people than those of any other of the nations at 

 least in so far as education is concerned (and beyond that there is no phi- 

 losophising) is the peculiar aspect which the reformed church assumed 

 in Scotland. The livings under that establishment were originally exceed- 

 ingly poor ; even now they are not rich ; and there is no performing of the 

 labour, which is very considerable, by a cheap deputy. After, therefore, 

 the lords of the covenant had slept with their fathers, and the fashion and 

 novelty of the thing had gone by, there was not, and there is not yet, any 

 thing that can tempt the sons of the higher classes of the Scots to enter 

 the church. In England and Wales matters are very different; for, though 

 a clergyman may begin to officiate upon a curacy worth only 40 or 60 

 a year, a strong gale of patronage may blow him up to half as many thou- 

 sands, enable him to take precedence of temporal peers, and give him as 

 much patronage and influence as a German prince. Thus that which is 

 preferment and honour to the middle and lower classes in Scotland, is pre- 

 ferment and honour to the higher classes in England ; and while the Scot- 

 tish peasant sets his noblest ambition upon the hope of his son's filling the 

 pulpit of the parish, the English peer is equally ambitious that the younger 

 son shall sit in canonicals on the right hand of majesty, roll in the sacer- 

 dotal chariot, and be even spiritually considered a great man according to 

 the flesh. The door of church preferment is, as it were, open to the 

 peasant and shut to the peer on the north bank of the Tweed, and shut to 

 the peasant and open to the peer on the south bank. 



In Ireland in as far as the established church, and the people profess- 

 ing the doctrines of that church, are concerned circumstances are the 



