fitter to make the future sovereign a bigot or a despot, than the generous and manly leader of a generous and manly people.

The old controversy on the rival merits of public and private education was now revived; and, to do the controversialists justice, with less of the spirit of rational inquiry than of fierce and prejudiced partisanship.

The great schools were panegyrised, as breeding a noble equality among the sons of men of the various ranks of society; as inspiring those feelings of honour and independence, which in after-life make the man lift up his fearless front in the presence of his superiors in all but knowledge and virtue; and as pre-eminently training the youth of the land to that personal resolution, mental resource, and intellectual dignity, which are essential to every honourable career; and are congenial, above all, to the free spirit and high-minded habits of England.

All those advantages must be conceded, though burlesqued and tarnished by the fantastic and selfish tales of extraordinary facilities furnished to the man by the companions of the boy; of the road to fortune smoothed, the ladder of eminence miraculously placed in his grasp, the coronet, the mitre, the highest and most sparkling honours of statesmanship, held forth to the aspirant by the hand of early association. Hopes, in their conception. mean, in their nature infinitely fallacious, and in

their anticipation altogether opposed to the openness and manly self-respect, which it is the first duty of those schools to create in the young mind. Yet the moralist may well tremble at that contamination of morals which so often defies the vigilance of the tutor; the man of limited income is entitled to reprobate the habits of extravagance engendered in the great schools; and the parent who values the affections of his children, may justly dread the reckless and unruly selfwill, the young insolence, and the sullen and heartless disdain of parental authority, which spring up at a distance from the paternal eye. But the question is decided by the fact, that without public education a large portion of the youth of England would receive no education whatever; while some of the more influential would receive, in the feeble indulgences of lent parentage and the adulation of domestics, an education worse than none. The advantages belong to the system, and to no other; while the disadvantages are accidental, and require nothing for their remedy beyond increased activity in the governors, and a more vigorous vigilance in the nation,

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But of the education of a British prince there can be no question. It ought to be in its whole spirit public. Under all circumstances, the heir to a throne will find flatterers; but at Eton, or Westminster, the flattery must be at times sig

nally qualified; and his noble nature will not be the less noble for the home truths which no homage can always restrain among the rapid passions and fearless tongues of boys. The chance of his falling into the snares of early favouritism is trivial. School fondnesses are easily forgotten. But, if adversity be the truc teacher of princes, even the secure heir to the luxurious throne of England may not be the worse for that semblance of adversity which is to be found in the straightforward speech, and bold, unhesitating competitorship of a great English school.

Under Lord Holdernesse and the preceptors, the usual routine of classical teaching was carefully inculcated, for Markham and Jackson were practised masters of that routine; and the prince often afterwards, with the gratitude peculiarly graceful in his rank, professed his remembrance of their services. But, though the classics might flourish in the princely establishment, it soon became obvious that peace did not flourish along with them. Rumours of discontent, royal, princely, and preceptorial, rapidly escaped from even the close confines of the palace; and, at length, the public, less surprised than perplexed, heard the formal announcement, that the whole preceptorship of his royal highness had sent in their resignations.

Those disturbances were the first and the inevitable results of the system. Lord Holdernesse

obscurely complained that attempts were made to obtain an illegitimate influence over the prince's mind. Public rumour was active, as at all times, in throwing light on what the courtly caution of the noble governor had covered with shade. The foreign politics of the former reigns, the Scotch premier, and the German blood of the queen, were easy topics for the multitude; and it was loudly asserted, that the great object of the intrigue was to supersede the prince's British principles by the despotic doctrines of Hanover.

Similar charges had occurred in the early life of George the Third. That prince's governors were alternately accused of infecting his mind with arbitrary principles, and with a contempt for the royal authority; with excessive deference to the princess his mother, in opposition to the due respect for the sovereign; and with a humiliating subserviency to the will of the sovereign, in neglect of the natural affection for his mother. Preceptors had been successively dismissed; committees of inquiry held upon their conduct; books of hazardous political tendency, -Father Orleans' Revolutions of the House of Stuart, Ramsay's Travels of Cyrus, Sir Robert Filmer's Works, and Père Perefixe's History of Henry the Fourth, --had been reckoned among the prince's peculiar studies; and the whole scene of confusion ended, as might be expected, in the greater misfortune of Lord Bute's appointment to

the governorship

an appointment which gave a

form and colour to all the popular discontents, alarmed the public friends of the constitution, furnished an unfailing fount at which every national disturber might replenish his eloquence, and for many years enfeebled the attachment of the empire to a king whose first object was the good of his people.

A new establishment of tutors was now to be formed for the Prince of Wales. It bore striking evidence of haste; for Lord Bruce, who was placed at its head, resigned within a few days. Some ridicule was thrown on this rapid secession, by the story that the young prince had thought proper to inquire into his lordship's attainments, and finding that the pupil knew more of classics than the master, had exhibited the very reverse of courtiership on the occasion. Lord Bruce was succeeded by the Duke of Montague; with Hurd, Bishop of Lichfield, and the Reverend Mr. Arnald, as preceptor and sub-preceptor.

The choice of the preceptors was harmless. Hurd was a man of feeble character, but of scholarship sufficient for the purpose. He contributed nothing to his profession but some "Sermons," long since past away; and nothing to general literature but some "Letters on Chivalry," equally superseded by the larger research and manlier disquisition of our time. It had been his fortune to meet in early life with Warburton, and to be