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from one sect to another, and some have passed away entirely. We lament the cause; it was the want of suitable endowment; but our countrymen seem disposed to renew the fatal experiment, in a multitude of instances, and, young as we are, we can already show the ruins of some colicges, and the tottering decrepitude of others.

Living as we do in a country where the demand for gospel labour is such as all our colleges together cannot supply, it strikes us strangely to learn from such an authority as Dr. Chalmers, that there is an excess of licentiates or probationers in the established church. In the Scottish Establishment, there are, at a fair estimate, not quite thirty nominations to churches yearly, to supply which demand, two hundred theological students would be amply sufficient. But in 1821, there were upwards of seven hundred. Dr. Chalmers considers the profession as greatly overstocked. We cannot but express our conviction, that in this state of the case, our Scottish brethren have not begun a day too soon to send off their sons among the Gentiles. The method of remedying this evil, which he proposes, is to raise higher the demands of intellectual discipline and preparation. Whether right or wrong in this application of his principles, he certainly speaks to our convictions and echoes our experience when he declares the radical error of such a system to be the too early admittance of youth to the Universities. We know less of Scotland, but we can answer knowingly of

7. King's College.-Pearson, Oughtred, Gouge, Walsingham, Waller, Collins the freethinker, Sir Robert Walpole, Horace Walpole.

8. Queen's College.-Bishop Patrick, Erasmus, Wallis, Thomas Fuller. 9. Catharine Hall.-Lightfoot, Sherlock Junior, Hoadly, Reay.

10. Jesus' College.—Archbishop Cranmer, Elliot the Missionary, Flamstead, Fenton, Jortin, Hartley, Sterne, Gilbert Wakefeld, Henry Venn.

11. Christ's College.-Latimer, Bishop Porteus, Milton, Mede, Quarles, Howe, Sanderson, Paley.

12. St. John's College.-Gauden, Stillingfleet, Roger Ascham, Cecil, Lord Burleigh, Ben Johnson, Otway, Cave, Prior, Bentley, Ambrose Phillips, John and Thomas Balguy, Ogden, Soame Jenyns, Theophilus Lindsey, Horne Tooke, Churchill.

13. Magdalene College.-Waterland, Lord Stafford, Waring.

14. Trinity College.--Wilkins, Barrow, Smith (Optics), Tunstall, Newton (Prophecies), Bishop Watson, Bacon, Newton, Middleton, Dryden, Lord Essex, Donne, Coke, Cowley, Pell, Cotes, Conyers Middleton, Atwood, Maskelyne, Porson.

15. Emanuel College.-Farmer (Shakspeare), Bishop Hall, Chandler, Hurd, Horrox, Matthew Poole, Charnocke, Sir William Temple, Law (Serious Call), Martyn (Botany).

16. Sidney Sussex.-Ward (Mathematics), Cromwell, Wollaston.

It would be very easy to draw up a list far more complete and striking; but we choose to avail ourselves of Dr. Chalmers's own selections.

America, that this single evil has been the mother of thousands. We are surprised indeed to observe that students are admitted to the Scotch universities on a stock of classical preparation much smaller than what is demanded by those of our colleges which merit the name: we know of no institution, for instance, which would receive a youth,' without the first elements of Greek.' But we have learnt from the professors of more than one seminary, how much of the brief four years' course, is often absorbed in the attempt, generally futile, to inculcate into college lads, that which they should have gained under the ferula of a master. The reference of our author to the Gymnasia of Germany, seminaries namely between the grammar-school and the college, is one which has suggested itself to many practical teachers in this country; but such is the burning haste of youth to be men, and of tiros to be in professions, that parents are hoodwinked, schoolmasters are almost constrained to infund the tiny accomplishment which shall be a viaticum to the Freshman seats, and professors find themselves bringing up the rear, with such a retinue of scholars as they would dismiss instanter, if it were practicable to carry on the work of education without them. Our older and more established colleges have for some years been increasing the pains requisite for initiation, but, to judge by the classical attainments of graduates from a number of institutions, whom we have had occasion to hear examined, we should think the emendatory process only half complete.

To escape these inconveniences, some have prescribed a certain age, under which no one should be matriculated; a wise method, if the attainments were always in the ratio of the years, but one which would have excluded a Bacon, an Ussher, a Milton, an Owen, a Grotius and a Barratier; and one which Dr. Chalmers very justly rejects. He suggests, as a better plan, that no youth should be entered of a college, without competency to execute certain prescribed versions, to translate the easier Latin authors ad aperturam libri, or above all without acquaintance with the syntax and grammar of the language, together with as much Greek as might be expected from two years' study. In England, young men receive a far higher preparation for the university than we give in America; our practice being in this respect too much like that of the Scotch. Dr. Chalmers freely admits the advantages derived in the class room of the English tutor, with its perpetual task-work and over

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hanging vigilance;' while he claims benefits for the Scottish system of instruction by lectures, in which last particular again our best colleges resemble those of Scotland.

"We maintain, that by our peculiar methods, students can be effectually prepared for such a trial," that, namely, of public examinations, " and that from the lecture-rooms of our Scottish professors, there might issue youths as thoroughly accomplished in the principles of the ethical and intellectual philosophy, in political economy, and the various branches of a theological education, as if they had been made to undergo that more elaborate distillation which is imaged to take place in the tutor's class-rooms of Oxford and Cambridge. There is doubtless a certain style of close and almost compulsory tuition by which every doctrine of a text-book might be infused into the scholar's mind, and which can be better accomplished by a Fellow in his chamber, with a few pupils, than by a Professor, in his lecture-room with many. But, then, however needed by boys, it is not needed by young men who have outgrown their boyhood. For example, a class might thus be most minutely and thoroughly lessoned in every chapter and paragraph of Paley's Moral Philosophy: and yet we are confident that, by the ordinary collegiate methods of Scotland, and more especially if an hour of examination were superadded to the hour of lecturing "—a method familiar to American professors-" a tenfold number of youths could not only be instructed, but soundly instructed, and that within half-a-year, not in the doctrine of this book only, but in all the doctrines of any worth or prominency which are to be found in the most distinguished works on ethical science. In that space of time, the professor could take a wide compass over the whole literature of his subject; and he could deliver with fulness and effect all the truths of permanent importance which have been expounded by our best writers, from Bacon and Butler, to Brown and Dugald Stewart of our own day; and he could make full exposure of the scepticism and the infidel sophistries by which the orthodox system of morals has been assailed; and he could sit in judgment on all his predecessors; and without either trampling on that which is precious, or going wildly astray after the novelties of wayward speculation, he could nevertheless cast the science in the mould of his own understanding, and transmute it into his own language, and throw all the freshness of an original interest over the lessons of his course; and with these lessons he could thoroughly imbue the great majority of his pupils, traversing along with them the whole length and breadth of his department, and giving them, we are sure, a far greater amount of instruction than they ever could acquire by conning over the dicta of any single author, in the pages of an established text-book. For giving effect to this high professional mode of teaching, all that we require is a sufficient age for our pupil. This is the great reformation wanted; and not that we should exchange the methods of Smith, and Stewart, and Playfair, and Jardine and Black, for the mere pedagogy of the English colleges."

The second subject which has attracted our particular attention in these works, is that of Church Establishments. We do not propose to investigate the general question. Even the potent arguments of Dr. Chalmers do not move us. But in so far as our own country is summoned as a witness, and set forth as an example, we certainly have a word or two to We have never happened to meet with an American Presbyterian who was in favour of an established church; we expect not the sight of such a one. But while this is

say.

true, and while we further believe that the occasional outcry about church and state is, in regard to our country, a most senseless and a most hypocritical clamour, and that the very antagonism of the several sects will alone serve for ages to come to preclude such a connexion, it is no less true, that in regard to the existing establishments of the old world, there is more to be said, than is apparent at first view, to every declaimer on the subject. Dr. Chalmers, it is well known, is the champion at once of Church Establishments, and of the Headship of Christ, the defender of endowments and the opposer of patronage. It is for him, and no man is better able, to clear the paradox of these positions.

There are those who talk of destroying the English Establishment as coolly as if it were the taking down of a scaffold, or the bouleversement of a paper constitution by a primary convention. Let such hear a powerful but perverse master of English idiom and of native logic,-let them hear William Cobbett, as quoted by Dr. Chalmers; and first as to the probable permanency of the Establishment: "Go upon a hill, if you can find one, in Suffolk or Norfolk; and you can find plenty in Hampshire and Devonshire and Wiltshire; look to the church steeples, one in about every four square miles at the most on an average--imagine a man, of small learning at the least, to be living in a genteel and commodious house, by the side of every one of these steeples, almost always with a wife and family; always with servants, natives of the parish, gardener, groom at the least, and all other servants. A large farm-yard, barns, stables, threshers, a carter or two, more or less of glebe and of farming. Imagine this gentleman having an interest, an immediate and pressing interest in the productiveness of every field in his parish-being probably the largest cornseller in the parish, aud the largest rate-payer-more deeply interested than any other man can possibly be in the happiness, harmony, morals, industry and sobriety of the people in his parish. Imagine his innumerable occasions for doing acts of kindness; his immense power in preventing the strong from oppressing the weak; his salutary influence coming between the hard farmer, if there be one in his parish, and the simple-minded labourer. Imagine all this to exist close alongside of every one of these steeples, and you will at once say to yourself, hurricanes and earthquakes must destroy this island before that church can be overthrown. And when you add to all this, that this gentleman,

besides the example of good manners, of mildness, and of justice, that his life and conversation are constantly keeping before the eye of his parishioners-when you add to all this, that one day in every week he has them assembled together, to sit in silence; to receive his advice, his admonitions, his interpretation of the will of God as applicable to their conduct and affairs; and that, too, in an edifice rendered sacred in their eyes, from their knowing that their forefathers assembled there in ages passed, and from its being surrounded by the graves of their kindred-when this is added, and when it is recollected that the children pass through his hands at their baptism, that it is he alone who celebrates the marriages, and performs the last sad service over the graves of the dead-when you think of all this, it is too much to believe that such a church can fall."

"Yet fall it will "--adds Cobbett. And as the obverse of the medal, he gives us his opinion of the actual working of the establishment.

"This is an Established Christian Church; and this, the parsons will tell the people that they actually have; and you will tell the people who have no house and land, that in calling for the abolition of tithes, they are in fact calling upon the rich to take from them, the poor, the only property that they have in the country. Alas! you will tell them this in vain. They know that the church is not this thing now to them; they know that you do not visit their houses and comfort them when they are sick, except in instances so rare, that they hardly ever hear of them; they know that you do not teach their children, and that, though the churchwardens annually certify the bishop that the children communicate, hardly a workman in the kingdom ever saw or heard of such a thing being done; they know that you are frequently on the bench, perched up as justices of the peace; they know that you frequently sentence them to punishment without trial by jury, and sentence to transportation for what is called poaching. This is the capacity in which they now know you; and to induce them to stir hand, foot, or tongue, in defence of this establishment, is no more possible than it is to induce a Jew to give a farthing of his interest."

We say Dr. Chalmers quotes these and other like passages from Cobbett, and he quotes them in order to show that this able but prejudiced writer saw clearly how to distinguish between the machine and the working of it. But is

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