274 Education. 



A further circumstance, in some degree pectin 

 liar to modern education, and which, no doubt, 

 produces a considerable effect, is the early age at 

 which students are admitted into the higher semi- 

 naries of learning, and, as a necessary consequence, 

 their premature entrance into the world. Lord 

 Bacon somewhere remarks, that it was a defect 

 in the plans of education, in his day, that students 

 were introduced at too early an age to the more 

 abstruse and grave parts of their philosophic stu- 

 dies. This remark, in the eighteenth century, may 

 be applied to the general period of beginning the 

 academic course. The universities and colleges 

 of modern times, especially in the United States, 

 are filled with children, who are unable either 

 suitably to appreciate the privileges they enjoy, 

 or so much to profit by them, as at a more mature 

 period of life. If these higher seminaries be in- 

 tended, as they commonly are, to complete the 

 education, then to send pupils to them before they 

 have emerged from the state of childhood is al- 

 together unwise. That this circumstance has an 

 unfavourable influence on the dignity and gene- 

 ral success of a course of public instruction can 

 scarcely be doubted. That it should co-operate 

 with other causes to render the number of superfi- 

 cial scholars greater than they would otherwise 

 be, seems to be an unavoidable consequence; and 

 that it tends to diminish the subordination and the 

 regularity of modern academic systems, experience 

 abundantly demonstrates. 



The last century also produced considerable im- 

 provements in the means of instruction. These 



is certain that helps of this kind, to abridge the toil of the indolent and 

 careless, never before had so general a circulation ; and it is proverbially 

 true, that acquisitions made by means of long and patient labour, are more 

 deeply impressed on the mind, longer retained, and usually held in higher 

 .-stimatioii, than those which cost but little time and pains. 



