not by design, stops but a second or two; in the course of which looks are exchanged, which, though you cannot translate, you feel must be of most important meaning. After these, the eyes are sheathed up again, and the figure resumes its stony posture. During the morning, numbers of visiters come, all of whom meet with a similar reception, and vanish in a similar manner; and last of all the figure itself vanishes, leaving you utterly at a loss as to what can be its nature and functions.

That singular figure is Nathan Myers Rothschild, the Jew, who holds the purse to all the kings on the Continent, and opens or closes it just as he lists; and who, upon certain occasions, has been supposed to have more influence in this country than the proudest and most wealthy of its nobles-perhaps more influence than the two Houses of Parliament taken together. He takes that post, to be in the midst of his scouts; those visiters who appear to come casually, are all there by appointment. They communicate their information, receive their instructions, and hasten to act; and probably at each application of them to the grand calculating machine, it was willed that a million of money should change masters, or that a potentate who calls himself absolute, should alter his purpose, dismiss his

minister, or change the system of his politics. Ungainly as his external man is, and detached as it seems from business, and incapable of thought, it is the case of perhaps the most curious, and certainly the most powerful calculating machine, that ever existed.

The prodigies of calculation which have from time to time been exhibited, all sink into nothing before this one. They could play with numbers, in a manner wonderful enough, no doubt; but their play was unproductive, was nothing but a meteor marvel to be soon forgot; but this wields the purse of the world, and by means of that, all the powers in it. Along, too, with the intuitive magic of numbers which this singular being possesses, there must be a magic over the passions of men; but what it is, or how it works, the possessor will not tell, and nobody else can.

Even this secresy, however, forcible and fell as it is, cannot last forever. The former high priests of Mammon have suffered reverses, have been swept of all their wealth, driven to despair, and perished by their own hands; and therefore the man who lives upon the produce of his daily industry, must be more happy, and may be more secure, than Rothschild the Jew, amid all his wealth and power. So much for the very acme of the remnant of Jacob.

LET every man who wishes to do his heart good by witnessing a system of education, at once rational in its principles, powerful in its machinery,

and rapid in its effects, pay visitsone, two, three, and as many more as he can, to the Edinburgh Sessional School. In this age of base, blind,

"breathing in content

The keen, the wholesome air of poverty, And drinking from the well of lowly life." Let those who cannot visit the Edinburgh Sessional School-and those, too, who can-buy this little invaluable four-and-sixpence volume. We do not hesitate to say, that Mr. Wood is absolutely a man of genius. His whole spirit seems possessed by his beneficent scheme of education, of which, though not the inventer, he is assuredly such an improver, that his name will forever be united with the Institution now flourishing under his unwearied superintendence, and exhibiting, throughout all its departments -really with no defects of much consequence that we can perceive, though he himself admits there may be many -a most beautiful exemplification in practice of a system which, in theory too, bears the indisputable marks of an original mind. But in this world, the head can achieve nothing great or difficult without the heart; and nobody who knows Mr. Wood, either in his school-for we shall call it his—or in his book-(of his character elsewhere, amiable and estimable as it is in all relations, it belongs not to us to speak,) does so without also knowing that what his head clearly conceives, his heart earnestly feels, and his hand energetically executes. Industry, perseverance, resolution, zeal, and enthusiasm, such as his-all ex4 ATHENEUM, VOL. 2, 3d series.

erted, too, in such a cause-could, by no possibility, belong to any one but a good citizen, a good man, and a good Christian.

Before entering on an account of the method of instruction pursued in THE EDINBURGH PAROCHIAL INSTITUTIONS, Mr. Wood, in an introduction admirably well written, speaks generally of the principles on which that method of instruction is framed ; and we cannot deny ourselves the satisfaction of quoting an excellent passage

"In all their arrangements they have regarded their youngest pupil, not as a machine, or an irrational animal, that must be driven, but as an intellectual being who may be led; endowed, not merely with sensation and memory, but with perception, judgment, conscience, affections, and passions; capable, to a certain degree, of receiving favorable or unfavorable impressions, of imbibing right or wrong sentiments, of acquiring good or bad habits; strongly averse to application, where its object is unperceived or remote, but, on the other hand, ardently curious, and infinitely delighting in the display of every new attainment which he makes. It has, accordingly, been their anxious aim to interest no less than to task,-to make the pupil understand (as much as possible) what he is doing, no less than to exact from him its performance,-familiarly to illustrate, and copiously to exemplify the principle, no less than to hear him repeat the words, of a rule, to speak to him, and by all means to encourage him to speak, in a natural language, which he understands, rather than in irksome technicalities, which the pedant might approve, to keep him while in school not only constantly, but actively, energetically employed,—to inspire him with a zeal for excelling in whatever is his present occupation, (whether it be study or amusement,) and, even where he is incapable of excel ling others, still, by noticing with approbation every step, however little, which he makes towards improvement,

to delight him with the consciousness of excelling his former self."

We venerate the benevolent Bell he has done as much good as most men of his generation-but it is a pity he should ever have so far forgotten the necessary and inevitable imperfection of all things human, as to have said of his system, in his Manual, that the art of man can add nothing to it, and take nothing from it." Now, the Sessional School is not in Utopia-but in the Old Town of Edinburgh; and Mr. Wood, if not wiser than Dr. Bell, and we do not say he is, is certainly much more moderate-much more modest, when speaking of his own achievements. Indeed, we have seldom, if ever, met so modest an enthusiastic man as Mr. Wood appears to be as he is-both in his school and in his book. Attributing to himself-and to his worthy and able coadjutors-no other merit than that of good intentions strenuously carried into practice, and common sense-he does not write a dozen pages without making his readers feel that he is no such ordinary man-but is gifted by nature with very rare endowments. What these are will appear in our analysis, often in his own words, of his most interesting Book.

After a candid admission that there are defects in the system, especially in the working of it, which its conductors are incessantly laboring to supply-he observes, that he is anxious to guard his readers against the erroneous notion that the success of any seminary can ever depend entirely, or even principally, upon its machinery, or external system of arrangement. The systems of Bell and Lancaster have, by the facilities they have given to this department, greatly contributed to the cause of general education.

"Every judicious conductor of an establishment for education, accordingly, will be at the utmost pains to render his system in this respect as perfect as he can. But, when this is done, he will keep in remembrance, that the weightier matters remain behind. He will consider, that it is not

upon the nature of the scaffolding or building apparatus, however skilfully devised and admirably adapted to its own purpose, that the beauty or usefulness, or stability of the future fabric is to depend; nor will he suffer himself to forget, how often it has happened, that on the removal of the scaffolding, some deformity or flaw in the structure itself has been disclosed, which the apparatus had hitherto concealed from the eye of the spectator. From inattention to this fundamentally important truth, how large a proportion, unfortunately, of the schools instituted even upon the most justly celebrated systems, have been allowed to become little better than mere pieces of mechanism, pretty enough indeed in external appearance, but comparatively of little use, in which the puppets strut with wondrous regularity and order, and with all that outward 'pomp and circumstance,' which are well calculated to catch a superficial observer, but in which all the while the mind is but little exerted, and of course little, if at all, improved."

There is also much sound sense in what Mr. Wood says about the liability of the scheme adopted in the Sessional School, to the imitation of injudicious and hurtful admirers. The servile and slavish copyist, destitute of sense and feeling, may imitate all the forms, without catching the spirit, and thus exhibit a miserable mockery, or, say rather mimicry, of the Sessional School scheme. For what artificial contrivance can ever supersede the necessity of diligence and zeal, earnestness and kindliness, on the part of the instructer! Pupils are not automata, neither can you cram them with knowledge, like turkeys with drummock, to fatten them into mature scholars. The great object of the Instructer is to inspire the taste for knowledge, and to cultivate the power of acquiring it. The boy who repeats rules by rote with a slavish precision, is a parrot, and will continue a parrot; and of all parrots the most absurd is the methodist, who pronounces with

formal tone and measured cadence and inflection, a mere jargon of words, to which, of course, the creature has never learned to attach the slightest signification. Heavens in a school, how palsying and deadening to the whole nature of youth is a dull, cold, lifeless routine!

Nothing can be more common-place than remarks like these; but people forget the most important commonplaces, and often continue all their life long to look on placidly and wellpleased at the most hideous and fatal abuses and perversions of "good old rules"-all the while believing that they see something else, the very reverse of what is before their eyes; nor are they aware of the mischief done both to the souls and bodies of children, though it is as obvious as pale sickly faces can be, yawning jaws, sleepy eyes, and a general lassitude.

But besides-Mr. Wood, hating all quackery, wishes that there should be no exaggeration of the character or operations of his scheme; and says, with much liveliness-" Struck with the alleged success of the system as exhibited in the Sessional School, one may investigate every its minutest detail with no less punctilious care than that of the poor savage, who, restored on one occasion to health by the administration of a particular drug, ever afterwards fondly treasures up in his memory, with a view to the recurrence of a similar exigency, the recollection of the day of the moon, the hour of the day, the position of his own body at the time of receiving the medicine, and every other little adventitious concomitant of his case." The application is obvious.

Still the externals of the system are necessary to the preservation of its spirit. Neither monitors, nor all the other arrangements of Bell and Lancaster for facilitating mutual instruction, can, it is true, of themselves insure success to any seminary. But Mr. Wood believes that the Sessional School could never have attained its present character without them, by the mere operation of a purer love of

excellence, or still purer love of knowledge, or love of duty, superior to either. Without these no good can be done; but they always need support, and they receive that support from every part of the system.

There is another danger to which this method of education is exposed, and which it requires knowledge and wisdom in the instructer to guard against and avoid. Children must not be treated like men, any more than like machines. The mind of a child is wondrously powerful-far more so than shallow or superficial observers have any idea of; but it is only powerful when exerted on the right materials-that is, the materials which nature herself spreads out before it. All other nutriment is as poison. Children must be fed on "milk, not on meat." "Above all, they must not be crammed," says Mr. Wood, "with the strong meats" either of the theologian or the philosopher.

"Great care must be taken, to distinguish between the kind of information and mode of communication applicable to the younger children, and those which may be employed in the more advanced classes of the same seminary. A single year at the opening of life, it ought ever to be remembered, makes prodigious difference in the capacity of the human mind. So also in Schools, where children are retained till they arrive at twelve or fourteen years of age, a much wider range of information may be attempted, than would be at all proper where they leave it at eight or nine. In a school, also, for children of the humbler ranks of life, whose whole education is in all probability to be confined within its walls, it may be advisable to crowd a greater quantity of useful information into a narrow space, than will be either necessary or expedient, in the case of those more highly favored individuals, whose circumstances hold out to them the prospect of a more protracted education, and leisure for a more gradual, extensive, and systematic course of study. But nothing, in short, can be more injuri