of scolarship began to be laid aside, and general information was more prized than what is technically called learning. Books of voyages and travels were printed in considerable numbers, and read with avidity. Hakluyt published his collection of voyages; he was appointed lecturer on geography at Oxford, and was the first to introduce maps, globes, and spheres into the common schools. Purchas published his Pilgrimage; George Sandys, his Travels and Researches on Classical Antiquities; Knowles, his History of the Turks; Camden, his Annals of Queen Elizabeth; Speed, his Chronicle; Lord Herbert of Cherbury, his Life of Henry VIII.; and Lord Bacon, his Life of Henry VII.

Among the earliest results of the intellectual progress of the age was an extension of the established plan of education, as far, at least, as regarded youths of family and fortune. Peacham's

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Complete Gentleman," addressed to his pupil, Thomas Howard, fourth son of the Earl of Arundel, presents us with a summary of the requirements at this time necessary to a man of rank. He stigmatises the class of schoolmasters, so often ignorant and incompetent, and generally rough and even barbarous to their pupils, who were "pulled by the ears, lashed over the face, beaten about the head with the great end of the rod, smitten upon the lips for every slight offence, with the ferula," etc. Domestic tutors he represents to have been still worse; ignorant and mean-spirited men, engaged by sordid persons at a pitiful salary, and encouraged to expect their reward in some family living, to be bestowed as the meed of their servility and false indulgence. Peacham blames parents for sending to the universities "young things of twelve, thirteen, or fourteen, that have no more care than to expect the carrier, and where to sup on Fridays and fasting nights; no further thought of study than to trim up their studies with pictures, and to place the fairest books in open view, which, poor lads, they scarce ever open, or understand not." “Other fathers, if they perceive any wildness or unstayedness in their children," hastily despairing of their ever proving scholars or fit for anything else, to mend the matter, send them either to the court to serve as pages, or into France and Italy to see fashions and mend their manners, where they become ten times worse." We gather from Peacham's work, that geography, with the elements of astronomy, geometry, and mechanics; the study of antiquities, comprising mythology and the knowledge of medals, and the theory and practice of the arts of design,—were parts, of learning now almost for the first time enumerated amongst the becoming accomplishments of an English gentleman.

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Lord Herbert of Cherbury has sketched a plan of education still more extensive, being modeled apparently on his own acquirements. He advises that after mastering the grammar, the pupil should proceed with Greek, in preference to Latin, on account of the excellence of the writers of that language "in all learning." Geography and the state and manners of nations he would have thoroughly learned, and the use of the celestial globe; judicial astrology for general predictions only, as having no power to foreshow particular events; arithmetic and geometry “in some good bold measure;" and rhetoric and oratory. Like Bacon, he seems much addicted to medical empiricism, and enjoins the study of drugs and antidotaries. He speaks of botany as a pursuit highly becoming a gentleman, and judiciously recommends anatomy as a remedy against atheism.* He recommends riding the great horse and fencing; but disapproves of "riding running horses, because there is much cheating in that kind, and hunting takes up too much time.” "Dicing and carding" he condemns.

Female education, in the higher class, shared in the advancement. In classical learning, the reign of James supplied no rivals to the daughters of Sir Anthony Cooke, to Lady Jane Grey, or Queen Elizabeth; but Lady Anne Clifford received instructions from Daniel in history, poetry, and general literature; Lucy Harrington, afterward Countess of Bedford, was a medalist and Latin scholar; Lady Wroth, born a Sidney, was both herself a writer and a patroness of the learned. Mrs. Hutchinson, whose admirable Memoirs of her husband bespeak a highly cultivated mind, informs us that at about the age of seven, she "had at one time eight tutors in several qualities - languages, music, drawing, writing, and needle-work."†

A GOOD EDUCATION IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY.

"To learn to read and write" appears to have been the sum of good Education two centuries and a half since. Dekker, a dramatist at the beginning of the seventeenth century, however, makes a man of substance who is asked, "Can you read and write, then?" reply, "As most of your gentlemen do- my bond has been taken with my mark at it." Public records of the days of Elizabeth and James I. show that some of the men in authority worshipful burgesses and aldermen -as commonly made their marks as others signed their names in fair Italian or German hands. There must be a general reason for this, besides

*Memoirs of the Court of King Charles the First. By Lucy Aikin.
† Ibid.

the particular aptitude, or the particular unfitness, of the individual for acquiring the rudiments of learning. The reason is tolerably obvious. The endowed Grammar-schools which survived the Reformation were few in number, and were not established upon any broad principles of diffusing education throughout the land. Where they were established by Royal charter, or by the zeal of individuals, they did their work of keeping the sources of knowledge open to a portion of the people; some of the children of the middle classes availed themselves of their advantages, and could write a Latin letter as well as make a fair ledger entry; others, and there was no consequent derogation from their respectability, kept their accounts by the score and the tally, and left the Latin to the curate. The learning of the middle classes was then won by them as a prize in a lottery.

Now, at the end of two centuries, we find the same inequality still prevailing amongst what we term the lower classes. The old test of the spread of the rudiments of knowledge, in the exhibition of the ability to write, existed to our time. The Report of the Registrar-General for the year 1846 says: "Persons when they are married, are required to sign the marriage register; if they cannot write their names, they sign with a mark: the result has hitherto been, that nearly one man in three, and one woman in two married, sign with marks."

SIR MATTHEW HALE'S PLAN OF INSTRUCTION.

The great lawyer of this and the succeeding reign, Sir Matthew Hale, in his "Advice to his Grandchildren," and "Counsels of a Father," has left the following course of instruction for sons: Till eight, English reading only. From eight to sixteen, the grammar-school. Latin to be thoroughly learned, Greek more slightly. From sixteen to seventeen at the university, or under a tutor: more Latin, but chiefly arithmetic, geometry, and geodesy. From seventeen to nineteen or twenty, "logic, natural philosophy, and metaphysics, according to the ordinary discipline of the university;" but after "some systems or late topical or philosophical tracts," the pupil to be chiefly exercised in Aristotle. Afterward, should he follow no profession, yet to gain some knowledge of divinity, law, and physics, especially anatomy. Also of "husbandry, planting, and ordering of a country farm." For recreations, he advises "reading of history, mathematics, experimental philosophy, nature of trees, plants, or insects, mathematical observations, measuring land; nay, the more cleanly exercise of smithery, watchmaking, carpentry, joinery

work of all kinds."

NEWSPAPERS INTRODUCED.

In

The Newspaper, which has now existed in England for nearly two centuries and a quarter, has from the first proved an active element of civilization, instruction, and popular enlightenment; until it has finally been elevated into a "Fourth Estate." former times, much of the intelligence conveyed in newspapers was crude and ill-told: but so gigantic have been the improvements in the newspaper of the present century, that it is not too much to regard it as a powerful adjunct, if not a direct agent, in the education of the people. Its origin, therefore, should be noticed in the present work.

Until lately it was believed that the three numbers of "The English Mercurie," preserved in the British Museum, and professing to record the attack of the Spanish Armada, were the first newspapers printed in England; upon the credit of which the invention was given to Lord Burleigh. In 1840, however, this "Mercurie" was proved to be a clumsy forgery.* Pamphlets containing foreign news began to be occasionally published during the reign of James I. The first of these news-pamphlets, published at regular intervals, appears to have been "The News of the Present Week," edited by Nathaniel Butter, which was started in 1622, in the early days of the Thirty Years' War, and was continued, in conformity with its title, as a weekly publication.

But the English newspaper, properly so called, at least that containing domestic intelligence, commences with the Long Parliament. The earliest discovered is a few leaves, entitled "The Diurnal Occurrences, or Daily Proceedings of Both Houses, in this great and happy Parliament, from the 3d of November, 1640, to the 3d of November, 1641." More than a hundred newspapers, with different titles, appear to have been published between this date and the death of Charles I.; and upward of 80 others between that event and the Restoration.

Where our modern newspapers begin, the series of our chroniclers closes, with Sir Richard Baker's "Chronicles of the Kings of England,"-first published in 1641. It was several times reprinted, and was a great favorite with our ancestors for two or three succeeding generations; but it has now lost all its interest, except for a few passages relating to the author's own time; and Sir Richard and his Chronicle are now popularly remembered principally as the great historical authorities of

*For the details of this discovery, see Popular Errors Explained and Illustrated, pp. 61-63.

Addison's Sir Roger de Coverly.-(See Spectator, No. 329.)*

To conclude the educational effect of Newspapers has resulted from the perusal of them encouraging and keeping alive the habit of reading; for a newspaper is to the general reader far more attractive than a book - in fact, a man can read a newspaper when he cannot read anything else. He often finds, however, that fully to understand the news of the day, he must have recourse to books. so difficult is it for educated persons, who now write in newspapers, to write with sufficient simplicity to be invariably understood by the uneducated, or rather the imperfectly educated. It is, moreover, in chronicling the progress of our educational institutions from the university to the raggedschool—and in the fearless advocacy of the great cause of public instruction and political rights-that the newspaper must be regarded as the most powerful aid to education.

MILTON'S SYSTEM OF INSTRUCTION.

Of the educational movements of this period, the above was the most remarkable, inasmuch as it was grounded upon active experience. The education of John Milton, one of the great lights of this period, and himself "an actual schoolmaster," was conducted with great care. He was born Dec. 9, 1608, in Bread-street, Cheapside, where his father was a scrivener, living at the sign of the Spread Eagle, the armorial ensign of his family. The poet was baptized in the adjoining church of Allhallows, where the register of his baptism is still preserved. He was first placed under a person of Puritan opinions, named Young, who was master of Jesus College, Cambridge, during the Protectorate. At fifteen he was sent, even then an accomplished scholar, to St. Paul's School, London, under Alexander Gill. From St. Paul's he proceeded to Christ's College, Cambridge, where, as the college register informs us, he was admitted, Feb. 12, 1624. At the university he was distinguished for the peculiar excellence of his Latin verses, and, according to his own statement, he met with "more than ordinary favor and respect' during the seven years of his stay here. Dr. Johnson, however, "is ashamed to relate what he fears is true, that Milton was one of the last students in either university that suffered the public indignity of corporal correction," or flogging; but there appears

*During the time that Sidney Godolphin filled the office of Lord High Treasurer, between the years 1701 and 1710, he occasionally visited his seat in Cornwall. No conveyances then proceeded regularly onward further west than Exeter; but when certain masses of letters had accumulated, the whole were usually forwarded together by what was called "the Post." But the Lord High Treasurer engaged a weekly messenger from Exeter to bring his letters, dispatches, and the newspaper: and on the fixed day of the messenger's arrival, the gentlemen assembled at Godolphin House, from many miles round, to hear the newspaper read in the Great Hall.