1852. ] 
our ancestors, into the cotton-engine, 
the steam-engine, and the three-decker, 
and multiplied thereby our wealth, our 
resources, our comforts, our power and 
our rank in the world, to a degree which 
no mind could have anticipated,” the 
reviewer then proceeds :— 
“ Yet our improvements on their ma- 
chinery have been nearly limited to the 
machinery of wealth; to the inanimate 
world ; to length, and breadth, and depth, 
and weight. We have forgotten mind in 
our pursuits of matter. We have dis- 
covered that the soil will yield a tenfold 
produce by the exertions of our mechanical 
skill; that value a thousand-fold can be 
added, by our dexterity and industry, to 
the most worthless of nature’s productions. 
But. we have scarcely discovered that pa- 
rallel exertions of industry and attention 
may be applied to the cultivation of the 
rude, metaphysical soil of the mind of man” 
—‘‘ We have wanted courage to invent 
and apply, for ourselves, to mind, as we 
haye done to matter, new powers, new 
eombinations and new proceedings.” 
“ Yet we maintain, with all our vigour 
of argument, and example, and anger, the 
system which cultivates the rough, desert 
of man’s mind as it was cultivated when 
man was a tyrant or a slave, when he was 
ignorant of arts and sciences, comfortless, 
powerless, and debased; which makes 
monks when there are no longer con- 
vents.”’—“ In the time of Alfred, the busi- 
ness of society, the national honour and 
the public good, demanded that men should 
be educated so as to perform their several 
duties in the society. And they were edu- 
eated to this.”’-—“ The soldier was trained 
in the exercises appropriate to his business 
—the churchman was taught Latin, be- 
cause Latin was the language of his trade ; 
and he who sought to be accomplished, as 
men seek that still, studied the languages, 
which then embodied all the known litera- 
ture of the world.’’ 
And here, according to the Review- 
ers, in this respect we still remain— 
“ The church has fled before Luther, 
and the monks before Henry; yet West- 
minster and Harrow, Winchester and Eton, 
are seminaries for monks.” —*“ If the pre- 
sent world of Europe is a world of litera- 
ture, it is also a world of science and art. 
Whatever remoter debts it may have to the 
former, itis to the two latter that it looks 
immediately for all its comforts, all its 
wealth, and all its power. Directly and 
immediately, we have risen to the station 
which we oecupy, not by literature, not by 
the knowledge of extinct languages, but by 
the sciences of politics, of law, of public 
economy, of commerce, of mathematics ; 
by astronomy, by chemistry, by mechanics, 
by natural history. It is by these that we 
System of Collegiate Education. 
235 
are destined to rise yet higher. These 
constitute the business of society, and in 
these ought we to seek for the objects of 
education. Yet these are not the objects 
of our great and organized system of edu- 
cation. The monopoly remains what it 
was six centuries ago; and it is to inter- 
lopers that we are indebted for almost all 
that we possess of an education suited to 
the wants and the spirit of the age.” 
Such is the pith and marrow of the 
five first pages of the article under con- 
sideration; and we confess that, in the 
greater part of this and of what follows, 
we go with the Reviewers very cor- 
dially ; and we are much disposed to a be- 
lief, thatif a complete catalogue of all the 
works and inventions of real social utility 
were made out, together with the names 
and educational biographies of their 
respective authors, that the regularly 
educated (the members of “ the mono- 
poly,” as the Reviewer calls them) 
wonld make but a poor figure by the 
side of the (uneducated, or self-educat- 
ed, or chance-educated) “ interlopers.” 
Yet, at the same time, we cannot with- 
hold the opinion, that here, and through- 
out this and. similar articles, the West- 
minster Reviewers (i. e. those of this 
department) under-rate considerably the 
value of literary and classical attain- 
ments:—that there is a sect among 
them so exclusively infatuated by the | 
new science of political economy, and 
the pursuits and calculations obviously 
connected with it, as to have persuaded. 
themselves, that there is no value or 
excellence in any thing else : that they 
have become mere political economists ; 
and, like the mere anythings else—mere 
classics, or mere horse jockies — they 
think their own knowledge is the only 
real knowledge, and all the rest to be 
mereignorance, They seem to forget the 
quickening power which the aggregate 
human mind derives from studies and 
attainments merely intellectual—from 
those pursuits that expand the genius 
and kindle the imagination: they do not 
perceive, what nevertheless is the case, 
that these (though the immediate attri- 
butes but of a few) diffuse their quicken- 
ing influence through the general atmo- 
sphere of society, which becomes breath- 
ed by myriads unconscious of its source: 
—that even the mechanic arts which 
most immediately administer to the 
progress of national wealth and accom- 
modation — to agriculture, manufac- 
tures and commerce—to the increase 
of Renz, and the profitable employ- 
ment of Lasour, owed their first origin, 
2H and 
