elicit our gratitude. Throughout the whole range of English theological literature, we are acquainted with no treatise which displays a profounder insight into our nature, a more thorough acquaintance with the various forms of religious conviction, or a deeper and more penetrating sympathy with the wants and perplexities of the human heart, than Mr. Foster's Introduction to Doddridge's work. We earnestly commend it to the thoughtful and repeated perusal of our young friends. Memoirs of Felix Neff, John F. Oberlin, and Bernard Overberg. Translated from the German by Mrs. Sydney Williams. Bristol : Wright and Albright. These three memoirs, collected in one volume, and published at the low price of eighteen-pence, will be welcomed by a large class of readers. NOTE TO ARTICLE V., DECEMBER, 1839. We have received a letter from the author of Jethro,' directing our attention to the following sentence in the advertisement of the Congregational Union, offering the two prizes of which our respected correspondent obtained the first. 'While all other religious and literary qualities of the essays will receive due attention in deciding on their respective merits, especial regard will be paid, in awarding the prizes, to the PRACTICAL PLANS they may set forth, as practical results are especially contemplated in the whole procedure.' From this announcement you will find,' says our correspondent,' that practical plans' receive all the emphasis that small caps can impart, and are announced as constituting that on which the adjudication will wholly turn. On this principle wholly Jethro' was written, and on this principle it was honored with the first place.' There is force undoubtedly in this defence, and we frankly acknowledge that, if the suggestion of the Union had been present to our minds at the time, we should have worded one or two of our sentences somewhat differently. Without affecting the judgment we might have passed on the intrinsic qualities of the two publications, it would undoubtedly have moulded the expression of our opinion, on their comparative merits as viewed in relation to their proposed design. We trust this explanation will be satisfactory to our esteemed correspondent, than whom we scarcely know a man more honorably distinguished by a catholic spirit and an unwearied consecration to the ministry of the gospel. May his various labors be eminently blessed to the enlargement and sanctification of the church of Christ! 240 Just Published. Chartism. By Thomas Carlyle. Memoirs of the Court of England during the Reign of the Stuarts, including the Protectorate. By John Heneage Jesse. 2 vols. Visits to Remarkable Places: Old Halls, Battle Fields, and Scenes illustrative of Striking Passages in English History and Poetry. By W. Howitt. The Catholic Spirit of True Religion. Observations on the Financial Position and Credit of such of the States of the North American Union as have contracted Public Debts. By Alexander Trotter, Esq. Holiday Exercises: or Familiar Conversations on Mind and Matter. By Samuel Blair. Grecian Stories. By Maria Hack. The Temperance Emigrants; a Drama descriptive of the Difficulties and Encouragements incident to Temperance Societies and General Temperance Life. By John Dunlop, Esq. The Union Harmonist, a Selection of Sacred Music, consisting of Original and Standard Pieces, Anthems, &c. Suitable for use in Sunday Schools, Congregations, and Musical Societies. Arranged by Mr. T. Clark, Canterbury. The Life and Opinions of the Rev. W. Milne, D.D., Missionary to China. By Robert Philip. A Biblical and Theological Dictionary. For Bible Classes, Sunday School Teachers, &c. By Samuel Green. The Shield of Dissent; or Dissent in its bearings on Legislature, with Strictures on Dr. Brown's Work on Tribute. By Edward Swaine. Millenarianism Incompatible with our Lord's Sacerdotal Office: a Letter to the Rev. Edward Bickersteth. By George Hodgson. Advice to Mothers on the Management of their Offspring. By Pye Henry Chavasse. The Theory of Horticulture, or an Attempt to Explain the Principal Operations of Gardening upon Physiological Principles. By Dr. Lindley. Othareil and other Poems. By Thomas Aird. Narrative of the Revival of Religion at Kilsyth, Cambuslang, and other Places in 1742. By the Rev. James Rose, A.M. With an Introductory Essay by the Rev. R. Buchanan. Letters of the late John Love, D.D., Minister of Anderston, Glasgow. Glimpses of the Old World, or Excursions on the Continent and in Great Britain. By the Rev. John A. Clark, Rector of St. Andrew's Church, Philadelphia. 2 vols. 12mo. An Account of the Edinburgh Sessional School and the other Parochial Institutions for Education Established in that City in 1812, &c. By John Wood. Fifth Edition. Memoirs of Thomas Cranfield. By his Son. The Pagan's Altar and Jehovah's Temple. An Essay to excite Renewed Interest in Public Worship, in our Common Christianity, &c. By R. Weaver. Dr. Goldsmith's Abridgment of the History of England, with a Continuation to the Accession of Queen Victoria, &c., for the use of Schools and Private Students. By Robert Simpson. The History of Scotland to the Accession of Queen Victoria, &c., &c. By Robert Simpson. The Drama of a Life. By John Edmund Reade, Esq. The New Bubble Burst! or the Doctrine of Apostolical Succession Exploded; in a Dialogue between Alfred Weston and William Colvill. THE ECLECTIC REVIEW FOR MARCH, 1840. Art. I. Two Lectures on Education. By GEORGE COMB. Edinburgh. 2. (Art. 5. Third Vol. of Central Society of Education.) What are the Advantages of a Study of Antiquity at the present time? By GEORGE LONG, Esq. 3. On the Introduction of the Natural Sciences into general Education. A Lecture by HENRY MALDEN, M.A., Professor of Greek in Univ. Coll., London. London: Taylor and Walton. EDUCATION is a thing which concerns every body, and therefore, by a common fallacy, every body thinks he understands it, and thinks his own opinion on it as good as any one's else. Hence multitudes of persons, who have never made this subject their actual study, yet consider themselves at liberty to write (that is, to instruct the public) on it. Now, on the subject of gunnery, or dancing, or shooting, or military tactics, this is not the case; every one is not concerned in these, as he is in education; and hence it is not every one who has, or even thinks he has, an opinion on them. Education, however, is a thing which every one is in some way or other connected with or interested in; and every person, therefore, who has thought a little more than others about it, though he may never have done any thing at all in it practically, regards himself as competent to teach teachers how to teach, and to instruct instructors in the modes of instruction. But in education, as in religion, practice is as necessary as study; as Cicero says, satis est habere virtutem, quasi artem aliquam, nisi 'utare' Act and you will learn. All preachment apart from practice, is mere vox et praeterea nihil, worth nothing. Those, ' non VOL. VII. therefore, who have had no actual experience in teaching, must, when attacking old and established methods, and proposing new ones, be regarded as visionaries and theorists,-well intentioned, no doubt, but at the same time weak and ill-advised; they may lay down principles, concoct plans, prophecy results, and jump to conclusions in their studies, which they never would have imagined in the atmosphere of the school-room: they may in their chair by the fireside entertain dreams of rapid improvement and unheard of acquirements, which the actual daily routine of class instruction would soon have dissipated: they may pleasantly draw out schemes for teaching the whole circle of the sciences-schemes for teaching BOYS what few MEN know, and half of which, when men, they would not care to remember, if they could,-schemes, which would never have entered into the head of an actual, working grammar schoolmaster. Persons of this description have not sprung up of late for the first time. The ancients had their educational visionaries, as well as ourselves; and with them frequently, as with us, the way has been led by men of the highest intellect, who, however, have lacked the one thing needful, the actual school experience. In one word, they have not been schoolmasters. Great men who have been schoolmasters (for any length of time), have seldom been educational visionaries; but great men who have not been schoolmasters, and yet have written decidedly on education, drawing out plans of their own, and proposing alterations in the present methods, have frequently been visionaries on that subject, owing sometimes to constitutional peculiarities and antipathies, and sometimes to personal quarrel, and sometimes to the exercise of mere imagination, excited by the largeness and extent of the subject, but unguided by the unerring rudder of experience. It is melancholy to find the great Milton writing like an empiric on the subject of education. His letter to Hartlib is a signal instance of the inefficiency of mere speculation to the construction all at once of a good, practical, working system, especially where the material to work on is mind, and not matter; it is a monstrous notion that boys of ten and twelve should be able to understand the authors and subjects which were there proposed to be taught, and were said to be taught by Mr. John Milton. Imagine the lads in his academy in Aldersgate Street, who had scarcely ever seen an acre of ploughed land or a field of oats, ploughing through Columella and Varro de Re Rustica, while the great poet sat expatiating on the beauties of the country and the loveliness of nature, to boys, who ought to have been writing exercises on the rules of syntax, or drumming over the still earlier stages of the nouns, adjectives, and verbs. But while Milton's letter to Hartlib, so lamentably demonstrates the speculative absurdities of the author, how does his great poem by its side give the lie to his assertions, and proclaim the superior value of a sound and thorough classical education. It is a curious fact too, mentioned by Vincent, and we will give it in his own words, that we know nothing of Milton's success as a schoolmaster, for 'not a name of all his pupils is upon record; but we do know 'that the brightest luminaries of the age issued from the school of 'Busby.' In all the writings of the educational visionaries, we find pretty nearly the same trains of thought, and we may trace them home to the same fallacious and sophistical notions. It will generally be found that the writers in question take low views of education, as a mere preparation for business; although some, like Milton, regard it as a sort of process for making men angels, giving specious statements of its perfectibility, and warm anticipations of an era of ideal excellence. We propose in this paper to make some remarks on the principal fallacies which lead persons to form mistaken opinions of education as it is, and of education as it should be. FIRST FALLACY. It is considered that education (as such, not knowledge, or science, but the art of educating) is in its infancy, and that results of which we can now hardly conceive may be expected from its more perfected development. This notion is of course entertained only by persons who are not teachers, or have had but little experience in teaching; and therefore it might safely be dismissed as summarily as any of the numerous quack-specifics with whose pretended virtues ignorant people are deceived; we say it might be so dismissed, if it were not, that a notion seems almost to be entertained, though it may never have been brought out in words, that persons who are not teachers are the best judges of teaching, as a person who looks on at a game of chess often sees good moves which escape the eye of the player. The comparison is to a certain extent admissible; but after all, the looker-on might not play the whole game so well as the one who seems to him to make such oversights. So persons who look on upon the great work of education, may sometimes see things which escape the notice of the actual teacher, and suggestions, as of a patient to his physician, would be well received. But when persons wholly ignorant of the practice of education presume to dictate, or wish to dictate, to those whose business it is to educate, and who have had long experience in educating, they are certainly acting as they would hardly act even to their carpenter or bricklayer. If such a person had work to be done by a carpenter, and he were to propose a different way of doing it from that which the carpenter was going to adopt, and the carpenter replied, I have tried that, Sir, and it did not answer; or I have known that to be tried and it did not succeed; would he persist in his own notion, or give in to the carpen |