CRITICAL NOTICES OP NEW PUBLICATIONS. 153 



more than common duties, and by whom the drudgeries of life would 

 be readily given for the equivalents of food, clothing, and habitation. 

 To discountenance a system so valuable by these or any other me- 

 thods, is most unworthy, uncharitable, and indefensible ; but the 

 spirit of the age will not suffer these cold-blooded cautions to dis- 

 pel the rising flame of intelligence, A bright dawn seems to have 

 broken on most of the civilized countries of the earth, and its reful- 

 gence is not now to be obscured by the formal protest of the sage 

 sticklers for antiquated customs. It is too late even for the baleful 

 sneer of ridicule to arrest the progress of knowledge, when a simul- 

 taneous effort has been made by an enlightened people to break the 

 bonds which have hitherto held them in thraldom. The light has 

 at length broken upon us to which no darkness will succeed. 



Within the narrow limits to which we are confined, it is utterly 

 impossible to do justice to the important subject which has thus oc- 

 cupied the time and attention of Victor Cousin. The energies of 

 his capacious mind have been called into action on every point relat- 

 ing to the modes of general education now and for many years pur- 

 sued in the kingdom of Prussia ; and the endeavour to engraft the 

 admirable plan on the institutions of his country (for he is a French- 

 man) is the professed object of this report, addressed to the minister 

 of Public Instruction and Ecclesiastical Affairs, the Count de Mon- 

 talivet. 



Mrs. Austin candidly acknowledges that utility, and not mere 

 amusement, is the chief characteristic of this book ; and that it will 

 be instructive only to the patient reader who will consent to the toil 

 of following the author in a progressive investigation. Although 

 portions may be selected which manifest the spirit pervading the 

 whole, its merit as a piece of legislation can only be duly appreciated 

 when studied connectedly and in detail. It would be doing an in- 

 justice to the work, therefore, to quote disjointed paragraphs; but 

 we affirm that there is no publication which has ever yet appeared, 

 to be compared to it in solidity and usefulness ; and we trust that 

 the plan, in all its ramifications, will immediately be adopted in 

 every town and village in this kingdom. 



What a reproach to this country, the numerous institutions of 

 which we laud so much, is the prevailing mode of its general in- 

 struction ! Valets and ignorant men, the very quacks of literature, 

 calling themselves travelling tutors to some pretended nobleman, or 

 gentleman of fashion, with a smattering of the French, Italian, and 

 German languages, which if they can partially speak, they can nei- 

 ther write nor read, are the men that usually set up as schoolmas- 

 ters in the large towns and villages of this country, without a par- 

 ticle of previous instruction in the knowledge and duties of their 

 serious avocations — men who never fail to tack half the letters of 

 the alphabet to their names, as long as the tail of a comet, signify- 

 ing that they are fellows of this, and honorary members of that, 

 learned foreign society, and thus impose on the weak and credulous, 

 who take them to be learned and respectable on their own impudent 



