168 BEYIEWS — THE COURSE OF COLLEGIATE EDUCATION. 



" On the course of Collegiate Education, adapted to the circumstances of 

 British America. The Inaugural Discourse of the Principal of 

 McQill College, Montreal" By J. W. Dawson, F. G. S. Mon- 

 treal : H. Ramsay. 1855. 



" TJie Progress of Educational Development : a discourse delivered be- 

 fore the Literary Societies of the University of Michigan." By 

 Henry P. Tappan, D. D., LL. D., Chancellor of the University. 

 Ann Arbor : E. B. Pond. 1855. 



" On the advancement of learning in Scotland : a letter to the Patrons 

 of the University of Edinburgh." By John Stuart Blackie, M. A., 

 Professor of Greek Literature, Edinburgh University. Edin- 

 burgh : Sutherland & Knox. 1855. 



No subject merits, or perhaps receives at this present moment, a 

 more widely extended and anxious consideration in Canada than the 

 great question of Education. In many forms and under divers as- 

 pects it meets us on all hands. The Separate Schools difficulties, 

 the Medical Schools difficulties, the denominational and general 

 Colleges difficulties, and the University Reform difficulties of every 

 sort, abundantly suffice to prove that the subject is being weighed, 

 and measured, and discussed in all its bearings. Eor we are a free 

 people claiming and exercising the right of private judgment in this 

 British Canada of ours, and have no paternal Frederick "William of 

 Prussia to drill us into an educational uniformity and save us the 

 trouble of thinking. In this respect we are only following the ex- 

 ample of the Mother Country. University Reform, a National system 

 of Education, Industrial and Ragged Schools, with Schools of design, 

 people's Colleges, and Museums of Economic Art and Science, engage 

 scarcely less attention at home, even than the engrossing theme of 

 Eastern War. 



The learned discourse of the Chancellor of Michigan University, 

 the title of which we have copied above, traces the rise and progress 

 of the European Collegiate system from its first germs. Indeed, with 

 that comprehensive cast of thought which American orators are prone 

 to favour, he goes back a little farther, and begins his investigation 

 with that primitive Collegiate Institution : " The Garden of Eden !" 

 This which he classes in the first of the " three stages of learned 

 association : The primal or ancient," was followed by the " middle, or 

 ecclesiastical and scholastic," with which we have a little more to 

 do. The one essential element of difference between that medieval, 

 and our modern era, in relation to our educational Institutions, may 

 indeed be embodied in that word " ecclesiastical." 



