152 CRITICAL NOTICES OP NEW PUBLICATIONS. 



will at once meet the attention which his known zeal and devoted- 

 ness to this special range of scientific inquiry have so deservedly 

 guaranteed — the confidence that it will not be profitlessly expended. 

 Though personally, perhaps, unknown to him, yet the writer of 

 this cursory notice (from having been one of his fellow-students, 

 now six years since, whilst under the instruction of the manly and 

 estimable Professor Graham), is well aware that, prior and subse- 

 quent to the period to which he has casually adverted, the time and 

 means of Mr. Watson had and have been devoted to his successful 

 prosecution of the arduous investigations respecting the GeographL 

 cat Distribution of British Plants, in connexion with latitude, eleva- 

 tion, and climate. May his success be commensurate with his Stirl- 

 ing and unobtrusive merits, so invitingly manifested in the pages 

 of the two volumes which have elicited the foregoing remarks. — T. 



M. Victor Cousins' Report on the State of Public Instruction in 

 Prussia. Translated by Sarah Austin. Second Edition. Lon- 

 don : Wilson, Royal Exchange. 1836. ^ 



Op all the subjects contemplated for the benefit and happiness of 

 the human race, which could be brought under the consideration of 

 the statesman and the philosopher, none can equal in importance 

 public instruction on an unlimited scale ; and to the immortal honour 

 of the Prussian States, although fettered by arbitrary laws, from 

 which our Government is happily exempt, is due the great merit of 

 chalking out the road, the track of which other civilized countries, 

 however tardy, must eventually follow. We have had our Madras 

 and Lancasterian schools, it is true, in operation some years; 

 but how incomplete and inefficient such institutions, when com- 

 pared with the admirable system adopted in the Prussian schools. 

 Amongst nations, as amongst individuals, there is too often a jealous 

 rivalry which sometimes consents to abandon a positive good, be- 

 cause it emanates from a foreign source : but, in this case, we are 

 confident that no petty causes can have the power to check the ad- 

 vancement of a great national benefit which every civilized mem- 

 ber of a community has an interest in supporting. Give a man 

 education — instil into him the desire of knowledge — animate him 

 with the hope of lettered distinction — and, conscious of being a re- 

 spectable member of society, he spurns the low pursuits of depraved 

 life. From a mere animal machine, he becomes a spiritual being, 

 fitted for those high destinies which await on intellectual suprema- 

 cy. The idle fears of the affluent, that a general education would, 

 in the course of time, annihilate the useful body of artisans, hus- 

 bandmen, and servants of all descriptions, is now nearly exploded, 

 since it has been proved that education tends rather to sooth and 

 satisfy the mind on the point of station, than to exhibit the fretful- 

 ness of discontent. And even if it were not so, let education take 

 the widest range which can be imagined, there would always be left 

 A due supply of persons whose tastes and capacities unfit them for 



