WYSE ON EDUCATION REFORM.

DIE aim of the author of' this able and elaborate volume is, thoroughly to exhaust the subject of Education, both as regards its theory and practice—both as to what it ought to be and what it is. With this view, he first considers the principles of national education ; and, admitting that the means must vary according to the general state of the world, and the peculiar character and con-

dition of the nation, lays down as a universal rule, that "perfec- tion through the performance of duty" is the great end of all edu- cation. To achieve this thoroughly, of course requires the deve- lopment of all our faculties; which naturally divides education into three branches—physical, moral, and intellectual. Having thus arrived at the general theory of the subject, Mr. Wvss: proceeds to consider what national education should be; and decides that The best system of national education is that which enables each citizen Mast perfectly to fulfil the various dutica which his several relations, public and private, in society impose upon him, by giving to the physical, intellectual, and moral faculties the full perfection of Winch they are susceptible."

He then, confining his views to home, enumerates the various studies that should be taught, and the best mode of teaching them,

Or rather the objects at which the teacher should aim : and no one who reads over even the titles of his branches, from Gymnas- tics, the first in physical education, to Religion, the last in the moral division, will think him a niggard either in the instruction be proposes, the industry he requites from his pupils, or the de- gree of " perfection" he looks for in the man. Having thus settled what should be taught, lie next examines who should be taught ; and decides, every one. Lastly, in the present volume, he investigates the point as to whether national education should be permanently supported ? and since, as a rule, many cannot be taught without money, come by what means and from what quar- ter it may, he concludes that a national system of education must be supported by the nation ; the Government establishing the schools, the People managing them; a board with a permanent Minister of Education being instituted for the first object, and local committees, &c. for the lust.

To the execution of this large undertaking, it must at once be stated that Mr. Wyse has brought two great requisites—zeal, and knowledge. He is enthusiastic in the cause of national edu- cation ; he is familiar with the results of all the modern experi- Ments(for these are scarcely mere) that have been made by foreign countries, as France and Prussia, or by the noble exerti.ms of such men as PESTALOZZI. He brings moreover to his task con- siderable logical skill, though rather dashed with the formal pedantry of the schools. He shows an extensive acquaintance With t he different studies of the human mind, and their uses either In forming the intellect or fitting their possessor for the future busi- ness of life. He has also great fluency and vigour of style, with

picturesque power which frequently rises to eloquence. .

These high excellences are counterbalanced by defects. He DOW and then tires the attention, by overlaying his subject with subordinate ideas, which weaken the lot of the leading ones. Sometimes his meaning is veiled under a cloud of words; his sentences do not so much convey ideas, as indicate them — they would have been thoughts, bad they been thought out ; Whilst he occasionally indulges in a Milesian sort of composition balancing between eloquence and no-meaning. As a pure theory of education, the extent of his views is just : for the purposes of practical application, its truth may be doubted ; for its fulfilment would not only require more time but more capability, than the average of mankind will ever possess,—for instance, his excellent plan for teaching languages, would imply a knowledge of a tongue Which would fit the possessor to write its history. Nor are these faults to be considered as mere critical defects : in a publication of this kind, whatever checks the reader in his perusal, or disposes him to doubt the practicability of the plan, operates pro tanto against the establishment of the author's system.

One strong argument of Mr.Wysg for a philosophical system of universal education, is the circumstance that people will be taught something or other, and that it is of the last importance that they should be taught correctly. Another, and an equally cogent rea- son, is the lowering and effeminate tendencies of modern civiliza- tion, which require the counteraction of a lofty, generous, and Masculine training, to prevent the growth of a general epicurean Character of mind. The following splendid passage—though its germ may be found in the admirable article on "Civilization" in

the Number of the London and Westminster Review—is remarkable alike for the depth of the thoughts and the power of the language. But civilization has also its vices and abuses. The extraordinary activity which it gives to thought is not always fertile in benefit : it impresses at times directions on opinion and action injurious to both the moral and intellectual man. In certain points of view, it exhibits the seeds even of decay and dete- rioration. The very arts, which seem most to raise and embellish life, intro- duce also in their train habits of effeminacy and self-indulgence. They create new wants, which become, in turn, from servants, masters. They con- centrate the entire being within self; they render self sacrifice an absurdity, duty a difficulty ; they fix all enjoyments in the material world; they add to riches a fictitious value, measured by the lowest passions of our nature. Tbe political economy, and much also of the moral philosophy of the day, harmo- nizing too closely with this sensualism,—estimating as nothing in the social scale what cannot be reduced to some material utility,—substituting, too often calculatinn for conscience, and measuring virtues by vrhat they will fetch in thrir market,—has cuntributed not only to disenchant existence, but in many instances to lower it ; to dry the heart, to deaden the understanding, and to wither the noble and the generous in every department of life. To this general influence, arising out of general circumstances, others of a more special nature may be added. While the diffusion of knowledge tends, on one side to enlarge, on the other, the division and subdivision of labour, mental and physical, tends not less to restrict the free exercise of our faculties. Even the highest professions are not exempt from this defect. Prejudices innumerable, contracted habits, little ideas, a disproportion, bordering on distortion, in their mental organiza- tion, disturbing all intellectual and often all moral beauty, dispositions fatal to independence both of thought and action, arc the frequent consequences of this vaunted improvement of modern times. In the prison of a single meow- tion, how few can breathe the free air and gaze on the broad sky of intellec- tual or moral speculation ! how clamped their corporeal and mental vigour! how stunted and curtailed all the original movements and energies of their na- ture! True it ie, that society out of this partial evil educes commou good this very subdivision is the creator of all the magnificent and gigantic marvels

in which our modern civilization glories as her peculiar boast. But it may still

be doubted, whether, with all this, there is not, in the infection which indivi- dual misery, ignorance, and depravity arising out of these causes', must more or less comniunicate to the mass a heavy balance of evil, which, in the mind of the mot alist, is scarcely compensated by all the seeming power and wealth by which it is concealed.

Nor is this evil confined to professions : it is the characteristic, in a minor degree, of all modern civilization—if the principle of the perfection, the prin- ciple also of the feebleness of our whole modern system. The very security and facility which it produces, the little demand upon individual powers, and the dead reliance upon combined ones, have gone far to extinguish that personal energy, that sense of soul, that will of iron, allied to the higher qualities of our nature and the glory and the strength of ancient and barbarous time. Our crimes, for the most part, are weaknesses—want of virtue more than vice ; we omit rather than conimit : we dwell in dccencies ; we allow evil ; we would not take the trouble to injure our neighbour; bet neither would we walk a single step to save him. This negative virtue, this passive vice, has, however, pro- duced as much corruption and far less heroism than the fierce but generous pas- sions, the vice and virtue, the half -god and half-if:mon spii it of barbarism. It has let down the whole scale of our social existence imperceptibly ; in compar- ing with each other, we do not perceive the alteration—so exactly are propor- tions preserved ; it is only by looking to the paints which we have passed in our voyage onward to civilization, that we at last become sensible of the humi,.. liating change.

The following curious collection of facts, is from a note to the section on the Education of the Senses. And we may say, by the by, that the notes of Mr. Wyse are often as interesting as his text ; illustrating, not his meaning, but his subject, with specific facts which would have been out of plaoe in the body of' the work.

Of the influence of this education of the senses on intellectual progress, it is almost neeilleaa to speak. Clearness of idea, accuracy ot language, justice of reasoning, knowledge, invention, application—all the utilities, in tine of intel. lectual culture, are obviously derived from this single source. The effect even on organization, on the senses themselves, is remarkable. The hunter tribes Of the ludians have the muscles of the ear much more developed than Europeans. The same peculiarity may also be traced in the eye. Compare sailors and shep- herds with students. Here even organization seems the result of early and constant exercise—of education. The ancient statues ate deficient in these characteristics. Already the hunter and pastoral characteristics of the oily races had disappeared. The oftFatec prihuxers of the Egyptians, on the con- trary, are given with great truth in all their painting and sculptuie. Theglare of a strong sun, drifts of sand, white rocks, and constant exposure to theelfects of the Libyan and Avabian deserts, had produced this detect. On the same principle might not the nayopion, or short-sightedness, at present so prevalent amongst the inhabitants of these countries, be in great part ascribed to the candlelight reading, late hours, microscopic trades, (such as watchmaking and seal-cutting,) and the early and immoderate use of small print and ill adapted glasses? I once heard a distinguished lecturer attribute to a want of this early education a more serious defect,—the difficulty he constantly experienced in distinguishing the nicer shades of colours from each other. Ginl.e states, asan instance of the delicacy and discrimination to which this sense may be brought, that the mosaic artists of Rome employ 15,000 varieties, and 50 shades of each colour-750,000 in all. This sounds marvellous ; but it is less, perhaps, then what every painter of ordinary skill is habituated to in the course of his pro- fession. The Gobelin manufacturers go still further ; they must not only apply these shades, but under great disadvantages. They work their tapestry On the wrong side, arid carry on as it were a running calculation of the effect. SO also the painters on china. Their colours, when just put on, differ materially from their after-appearance when burnt iu. It is a sort of constant algebraic operation : they take colours as they would expressions, work theirs apparently in the dark, but always with an acute obsei vance of their several reletions; and, the work finished, convert them by a single operation to their real value. The ear is still more in need of education than the eye. A jeweller sees a thou- sand differences between two diamonds to the uneducated eye perfectly alike; but then, they are before him ; he can repeat and correct his ohm vations. Nut so a musician : a note heard is lost, yet must he appreciate its truth or false-

hood in the very moment of passing, and in the midst of all the apparent chaos of an orelnstia. Few ears, indeed, out of many millions, are thus trained ;

and many differ very little from the Tusk, who mistook the tuning for the over- ture: yet between two extremes there surely is a medium, easily attainable by the majority ; and to that medium at least every ear should be taught to tend.

In the section on the effects of education upon the community at large, Mr. WINN does not confine himself to mere argument, but vivifies his reasonings with graphic personations of' the edu- cated and uneducated of different classes. Here is a vigorous sketch of

AN IGNORANT RUSTIC.

There are few villages in the country which do not present us epecitnens of the uneducated : we meet him in the gin-shop and in the street he is an idler, a drunkard, a quarreller : we hear of him in every riot, be is an eider and abettor in every outrage. His family are elovenly, reckless, debased, wretched. He is a quarreller, because a drunkard; and be is a drunkard because hale idle. But why is be idle? Because he has never felt the value of labour, the pleasure of thinking, the joy of a good conscience. He has never been habi- tuated to form judgments of these thing'. The powers necessary to form such judgments have been neglected. He has never been taught to examine, to in- quire, to attend. He has become .passive. He feels the pressure of want brought on by his own habits; but how does he try to remedy it ? All his life he has been taught to spare, as much as possible, his own exertions, and to hung, beggar-like, as much as possible on those of others. He is the slave, from lazi- ness, of authority. It is not in a sudden emergency he is likely to throw it off. All his life he has sacrificed, with the shortsighted selfishness of ignorance, the future to the present, and every into est, public and private, to his own. He is turbulent, but not independent : he talks of freedom, and is a slave to every man and thing around. But indolence is not a merely passive vice. Better to "wear out" than to " rust out" has been truly said ; but he who "rusts out" " wears out" too. No greater bulden than sloth; no greater consumer of the spirit and body of man than doing nothing and having nothing to do. Every day spent in Inactivity renders action more difficult ; every hour which does not add steals away some instrument of virtue and happiness, and leaves the sluggard more at the mercy of those visitations of sickneas or want to which even the industrious are exposed. Nor is this all. Omission of duty soon be. comes commission of crime. Painful reflections now beset him. They are sought to be extinguished, but not by reform. Conscience drives him to fresh vice. This goes on for a time ; but health, means, companions, must at last fail. Then it is that he sees, for the first time, how buotlenly he has squan- dered away the healthy morning-tide, the winking hours of life. He has paid down existence, and all that mikes existence a glory and a good, in advance. Body and soul are spent. He becomes sullen and sour. Disappointments thicken on him, and they are all of his own causing. His farm is covered with weeds, his shop deserted, his children profligates and rebels, his household a hell. He gradually becomes an enemy to all social ordinance, to law, justice, truth, good faith—to all that makes community to man. He envies and hates the good and happy : be looks on every check as a wrong, on every prosperous man as a foe. Whither is lie to I ush for rescue from these encompassing evils? The Gospel he never understood, and therefore never practised. His religion is an hypocrisy or a superstition. It affords him now no direction in his errors, no consolation in his afflictions. He finds in it neither warmth nor light. The religion he learnt never penetrated to the spirit : it was a tinkling cymbal, ajargon of meaningless and profitless words. But crime, which had long been ripe in thought, is at last on the point of bursting into act. He is at last ready for every desperate attempt. Education has been held up as the great principle of all modern restlessness and disorder. Is this the case? Let facts answer. Here are men uneducated enough, ignorant enough' to produce the most perfect quiet, if ignorance and absence of education could produce it. Yet is it from materials like these you ate to expect the tranquillity and prosperity of a great nation? Is it in the nature of things, that out ot elements so utterly evil, peace and happiness should emanate? Private vice has but to make a few steps and a few proselytes, and it becomes public corruption individual discontent wants only time and circumstance to spread out into general disoider. Such, indeed, are the real revolutionists; men bad and blind—blind because they are bad—a huge Poly phemua, sightless and strung, waiting only some crafty guide to lead the monster on against society. Nor is such want likely to remain long unsupplied.

From the same part there is a sharp description of the English Aristocracy : but it is too long. Instead of it, we will close our extracts with one of the best defences we have seen for the scholarship of our ancestors ; which, if not altogether new in it- self, is stated with the effect of novelty. It should be remarked, however, that Mr. Wyse is not a foe to the dead languages, but merely to their half-learuing by those who have no necessity for them.

The learned languages are still considered by many, emphatically, education. To teach them, and to teach little else, was a portion of the wisdom of our an- cestors: but though wisdom in them, it does not follow it is such in us. With them it was knowledge, not for ornament but use. It was the instrument of action as well as of thought. Law, diplomacy, medicine, religion, all was Latin: a man who was no " Lathier " was a mere " villein" in education; be was deemed unfit in civil life for any situation destined for the "ingenuous" and free. But to insist on it at present, but above all as the only thingneces- sary, and to the sacrifice of many other things really so, is a folly of which our ancestors could not have been guilty : they 41141 not require Hebrew to prescribe for a patient, nor was it in Greek trocliales they negotiated loans or ratified treaties of peace. Our social existence has been multiplied and spread out by recent discovery and extensive and rapid counnunication to an extraordinary degree. We require means and instruments corresponding with this diversity

and extent ; and we are still to be limited to one little manageable, and, as we are taught to manage it, of little use. Of what advantage to a merchant, to

the head of a manufactory, to a military man, or to any of the numerous classes dependent on our public offices' the most complete knowledge of the ancient languages? It is a luxury, but luxuries are but poor substitutes for necessaries.

Alen cannot live on cakes, neither will erudition conduct through life. If they si ill read the ancient autliets, let them lead them in translations. It is not the

best, but the hest is attainable at too dear a rate. We live too first in the pre- sent age to spend so much time in words. Things press upon us at every step ; and an education dealing with things—a teal or reality education, as the Ger- Diana term it—is the education best fitted for the practical, the reality-men- fur the active classes of the community.