Soon after his

wept, and some of them fainted on hearing the news. death a ragged school was established at Aberdeen, first to afford only instruction to all the vagrant children of the city; and when this was but partially successful, it was determined to supply them also with food and industrial occupation. Of this attempt the managers state as the result, "that whereas a few years since there were 320 children in the town, and 328 in the county, who prowled about the streets, and roved far and wide, cheating and stealing their daily avocation; now a begging child is rarely to be seen, and juvenile crime is comparatively unknown." Of a ragged school opened in one of the worst parts of London, it is mentioned, that "the beneficial effect of it was felt almost immediately after its establishment by the shutting up of two notorious houses, one a coffee-shop, named by the boys themselves the "Dark Den," where they used to share the produce of their plunder; the other a house of ill-fame, (now used as the industrial school,) kept by the mother of one of the boys. The son and daughter of this woman we took into our school, and they were the means of breaking up this den of infamy." An anecdote is related of a notorious thief, who asked to be allowed to go over one of the ragged schools, and then said, “I shall subscribe a sovereign annually, for if these schools had been in existence some years ago, I should not have been what I now am." "At least 2000 children," says a teacher, "have passed through our ragged school since its commencement. I have watched and questioned many of them, and have invariably found that the cause of their distress and misery may be traced to the parents, more especially the mothers." Some of these children are orphans, many of them the children of thieves, or persons of that description, who have been early trained to bring their small pilferings to the common stock, and beaten if they returned empty-handed. In coming to a ragged school, they enter a room where persons, at least in easy circumstances, are found voluntarily to expose themselves to insult and ill-usage, and to respond only by gentle expostulations. The first feeling, as the writer remarks, is perhaps incredulity; but the next is confidence in, and affection towards those who seem to have no earthly interest in what they are doing. And, he adds, it is not easy for those who have never seen it, to form any conception of the fond affection with which these children regard their favourite teachers. Though the sharpness of observation and promptitude which a life of thievery makes necessary, has the effect of developing the intellect at a very early age, and though there is generally a good will to learn, yet it is found by the teachers of ragged schools, that the attention of the pupils very quickly flags, and can scarcely be kept up for above half an hour at a time. This leads the author to speak of amusements; and from what he says upon this subject we will give in conclusion two extracts, as both confirmatory and illustrative of what has been recently advanced in the pages of the "Journal :".

"Nothing is a more general taste than that of music, and it has been found very advantageous to set songs of an innocent or moral description to known and easy tunes, which the boys could learn and sing for their entertainment, besides the hymns taught them. Two or three concerts of this kind,

n which the boys and teachers were the sole performers, have been held, and with the greatest success; some bread and butter, or pudding, concluding the entertainment, to the satisfaction of all.

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As vocal music is the most attractive, as well as unattended with any expense, it presents itself at once as one of the easiest and best modes of supplying the great desideratum of innocent amusement. The slight knowledge of the science which is requisite to singing in parts might be communicated with ease the nature of a third, fifth, and octave is easily understood, and the very exercise of thus forming the common chord by means of different voices is amusing: the ear once formed to these intervals would very soon become acquainted, with the others, and the few chords which enter into ordinary compositions would be easily acquired. The knowledge of music thus given would not be great, but these are the first steps of music as a science; and if any one among the children thus taught the rudiments should choose in after years to go further, he has at any rate a foundation laid for instrumental no less than vocal performance.

"I have mentioned music as one of the amusements which almost all are alive to, but there are others for which a taste might be awakened. Drawing especially many children find pleasure in, and by means of a black board and chalk it may be practised at a very small expense. The accuracy of the eye, which even a slight knowledge of this art engenders, is essentially useful in every sort of mechanical operation. A few large prints hung on the walls, and a board or two properly prepared, would be all that would be required to enable many of the children to amuse themselves pleasantly in the school when weary of other things, and would open to them not only a source of recreation but of after-profit, should they arrive at enough proficiency to be pattern drawers. The reading to them sometimes an amusing story, or travels, by some one who can give it point and effect, would create a higher taste; for the reader could stop to explain what was difficult, and the cheap literature of the day supplies enough of really good publications to meet the demand of the poorest, if the taste for such could be aroused. All these and many more modes of recreation are possible, not only in ragged schools but in parochial ones."

OF A LIBERAL EDUCATION IN GENERAL; AND WITH PARTICULAR REFERENCE TO THE LEADING STUDIES OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE. PART 1. PRINCIPLES AND RECENT HISTORY. PART II. DISCUSSIONS AND CHANGES, 1840-1850. BY W. WHEWELL, D.D. (London, John W. Parker.)

This work well deserves the attention of those who take an interest in the higher branches of education. Though it treats more especially of the studies at Cambridge, it throughout discusses them with reference to the principles by which a liberal education must everywhere be regulated. The author has, to use his own words, "during a long course of years, occupied a series of active educational offices in the university, and has been engaged, along with others, in shaping most of the changes which have, during that time, taken place in the educational system of the university; and he has so far attended to the general principles of education, as to have repeatedly published upon them." These circumstances, together with his distinguished name, his talents and varied acquirements, and the commanding position which he still holds, render his observations of no small importance, both to those who are engaged in preparing young men for the university, and also to those who are themselves either preparing for, or going through, a course of university education, and are desirous of fully

understanding the objects of such a course, and the benefits that may be derived from it. Information, more comprehensive and more definite, upon these subjects, has long been needed, which this publication by Dr. Whewell will do much towards supplying. In noticing such a work, our limits do not permit us to do more than to invite attention to it, and to give a general outline of its contents. We may hereafter find occasion to speak more in detail upon some of the principles laid down in it.

The author begins by observing, that the education of the upper classes, termed liberal education, and the higher education, is important, both as being the education of those who must direct the course of the community, and as alone exhibiting, in any completeness, the idea of education. For the education of the middle classes (that is, we suppose, what is sometimes spoken of as the lower division of the middle classes) will commonly be, in its highest parts, animitation of the higher education, more or less incomplete; and the education of the people, when they are educated, must generally be an elementary education, including little more than the first elements of the higher education. In this work the author expressly omits the consideration of moral and religious education, and treats of intellectual education only, and of that with especial reference to the present condition of the University of Cambridge. This intellectual education he divides into two kinds, which, with reference to these subjects, he describes as Permanent and Progressive Studies. To the former belong those portions of knowledge which have long taken their permanent shape-ancient languages, with their literature, and longestablished demonstrated sciences. To the latter belong the results of the mental activity of our own times-the literature of our own age, and the sciences in which men are making progress from day to day.

The permanent studies he considers to be mainly such as are fitted to educe two principal faculties of man, considered as an intellectual being-namely, Language and Reason. The faculty of language is chiefly cultivated by the study of classical authors and of philology; that of reason, by the study of mathematical works, in which truths respecting measurable quantities are demonstrated by chains of the most rigorous reasoning, proceeding from principles self-evident, or at least certain; and it is from this employment of them that such studies derived their name of mathematics or disciplinal studies. Under this head may be ranked logic, as well as mathematics. As applied to those who pass through the usual course of English schools and universities, grammar and arithmetic at the schools-classical authors and logic, or classical authors and mathematics, at the universities-have represented the two classes of permanent studies by which the faculties of language and reason are to be educed and unfolded. In permanent classical studies is included not only to know and understand the text of classical authors, but to understand the grammar of their sentences. In permanent mathematical studies, the geometrical modes of treating the various branches of mathematics-the geometrical forms of trigonometry, conic sections, statics, and dynamics, and not any analytical substitutes for them, must be employed. The permanent studies must necessarily precede, in order to form a foundation for the

progressive; for the present progress has grown out of the past activity of men's minds, and cannot be intelligible, except to the student of past literature and established opinions.

But the progressive studies must be added to the permanent; for though they may form the business of life, they may with advantage be begun in the specially educational period of it, before each man's course of study is, as in after life it generally is, disturbed and perplexed by the constant necessity of action. And progressive studies are in particular necessary in the science of mathematics, in which there has been for the last three centuries, and still is, a rapid progress taking place. Almost all the modern portions of mathematics are of the analytical kind, and to the copious use of analytical mathematics among permanent educational studies, Dr. Whewell is strongly opposed. To his able observations on this subject, in a section devoted to it, we must be content to refer our readers. He considers that these objections do not apply to the case of progressive studies; that, when the reasoning faculties have been educed and confirmed, the student's powers of symbolical calculation, and his pleasure in symbolical symmetry and generality, need no longer be repressed or limited; and that, when once well disciplined in geometrical mathematics, the student may pursue analysis safely and surely to any extent. He further adds, that in most minds the significance of analytical methods is never fully understood, except when a foundation has been laid in geometrical studies. He then points out those portions of modern mathematical literature which are best suited to be admitted, as progressive studies, into a liberal education; for the details of which we must refer our readers to the work itself. He also observes, that classical studies occupy an important place in education as progressive studies, which engage men in the speculations, discussions, and mental movements still going on. Ancient philology, philosophy, and history, are the subjects of progressive speculations. The origin, growth, revolutions, and decline of languages, systems, and states, are still matters full of interest for the classical student; and a classical education would not be the highest education, if it did not impart to the student a share in this interest, and give him some acquaintance with these speculations. In classical, as well as in mathematical educational studies, it is important to keep the permanent and the progressive studies distinct, and especially not to allow the latter to supersede the former. For no second-hand knowledge of the philological criticism, philosophical doctrines, and political events of the Greeks and Romans, can at all compensate, as a branch of education, for the lack of a knowledge of the original authors in the original languages.

Having thus marked the distinction between permanent and progressive studies, he proceeds to observe, that by assigning importance to the former, education is not made stationary and unprogressive, because by recommending the latter also, the subjects taught are brought up to their most recent condition. But in order to prepare the student for such subjects, there is a necessity for permanent studies, by which the habits of following scientific reasonings, and interpreting classical writings, may be formed and fixed. The progress of the human mind

is one of the main objects of education; and the progress of the individual mind, as a participation in the faculties and fortunes of the mind of man in general: but in order to present and future progress, an acquaintance with the past is requisite. Considered with reference to mental progress, a large portion of education is preparatory only; but it is an indispensable preparation. If we reject the discipline of permanent studies, we may indeed still learn to use the phrases in which men express the recent progress of science or literature, and may flatter ourselves that we share in the superiority which such a progress bestows; but, in reality, such phrases have for us no real meaning, but are mere empty forms of language. The charge of filling the mind with conventional forms, void of real value and efficacy, lies far more truly against those who pretend to teach new truths to persons incapable of understanding them through their want of ordinary culture, than to those who dwell long upon those parts of human science and literature which have, in all ages, been found to be the most effective means of cultivating the intellect and the taste.

Upon the union of mathematical and classical studies, both permanent and progressive, he observes :-"No education can be considered as liberal, which does not cultivate both the faculty of reason, and the faculty of language; one of which is cultivated by the study of mathematics, and the other by the study of classics. To allow a person to follow one of these lines of study, to the entire neglect of the other, is not to educate him. It may draw out his special personal propensities; but it does not draw out his general human faculties of reason and language. The object of a liberal education is, not to make men eminently learned or profound in some one department, but to educe all the faculties by which man shares in the highest thoughts and feelings. of his species. It is to make men truly men, rather than to make them men of genius, which no education can make them."

For the manner in which the author applies these general principles to the recent and present condition of education at Cambridge, and to the alterations that have been proposed and in part adopted there, we must refer our readers to the work itself. In the concluding chapters of this first part, much useful information will be found upon college lectures and professorial lectures; upon examinations; upon the relation between the university system and school teaching; and upon preventing superficial reading; as also an interesting account of the old system of Cambridge, and the successive changes it has undergone, with suggestions for its further improvement, and observations upon the system of private tuition there. In the second part, those suggestions, noticed in the first part, which have since been adopted by the University, are detailed, together with remarks upon the four triposes, and upon the courses of reading suitable for each. Some remarks in both parts upon the relation between the university system and school teaching, and upon the great classical schools, appear to us so important, that we shall hope to give some extracts from them in a future number of our journal.

THE FAMILY ALMANACK AND EDUCATIONAL REGISTER FOR THE YEAR

of our Lord, 1851. (London : J. H. Parker.) THE first issue of a very useful publication, which is to be continued