APPENDIX. The following passage from Mr. Frederic Hill's work on National Education is worthy the very deepest and most attentive consideration. It is taken from the first volume of the book, page 214. The whole work forms the best history of the educational aspect of the Nation before the benefits of a wise and comprehensive system was attempted:— Mental Education of Females among the Middle Classes.-Public attention has lately been called by several excellent articles in the Journal of Education and elsewhere to this subject; and we trust that enlightened views respecting it have already made considerable progress: and that a silly admiration for Oriental ignorance and mental torpor among females, will soon give way to just appreciation of the superior beauty of a vigorous intellect and a cultivated mind. Limited, however, as in the present range of female education,devoid as it is in so many respects of matter to call forth the reasoning and inventive powers, little as it is calculated, even in its engrossing province of ornament, to accommodate different tastes and various talent,-it is not during the period passed at school that the inferiority to male education is principally marked. The musical gamut is in our opinion quite as intellectual as the propria quæ maribus of the Eton grammar: and the poor girl, who, without any taste for natural beauty, love of imitation, or idea of form and colour, is forced to pass hour after hour in trailing her pencil over the leaves of a drawing-book, is not more unprofitably occupied than the boy who is driven through page after page of authors who are treating on subjects in which he takes no interest,-employing a style the beauties of which are entirely lost upon him,-and using a language the acquisition of every word of which is to him an irksome and disgusting task. It is not, then, in school education that female instruction is so far behind that of males; it is in the time immediately following the period passed at school that the disparity is greatest. It is then that a young man chooses his occupation for life, and sets vigorously to work to qualify himself for its successful pursuit. With a clear object before him, and seeing how the acquirement of various kinds of knowledge will facilitate his progress, he no longer looks upon study as a burdon to be avoided by all possible contrivances. Formerly, he was like an obstinate child taking medicine; who does not admit one more drop into his mouth than is forced into it. He now takes willing and copious draughts at the fountain of knowledge; and months do more for him than years under the old régime. Meantime, how is the young female situated? What objects can she select for attainment, and pursue with steadiness, as the main business of life? The road to wealth and distinction, even by the most quiet and unobtrusive paths, is, for the most part, closed upon her: and what is opened in its stead? On what course of persevering exertion has she any sufficient inducement to enter? It is too evident, that however great and varied may be her talent, she has scarcely any of the ordinary motives for cultivating it. Hence to a great extent the frivolous habits too often contracted or indulged in at this period of life; and hence a want of mental energy and a dearth of knowledge. Nor is the intercourse with the other sex often such at all to correct this evil. Rarely meeting, except at times of relaxation, our youth naturally avoid such subjects as call for a vigorous exercise of the understanding; and our young countrywomen are led to suppose that the most important questions on which they shall be called upon for an opinion, or on which they must presume to reflect, do not go beyond the merits of the last published novel, the prima donna of the Italian opera, the oratory of some fashionable preacher, or the illustrations to a new batch of annuals. Unhappily, women are not true to their own cause in protesting against this state of mental slavery; a state to which we doom them, partly from a selfish desire to retain all power in our own hands, partly from an overweening idea of the strength of our own minds, (backed by an unfounded conception that those of females will not bear labour), and partly from a persistence in the customs and feelings of by-gone ages of ignorance. Nor when we reflect for a moment, is it surprising that women who have grown up under this bad system should be opposed to its amendment. Many must feel that their best age for acquiring know. ledge has passed, and that in the new career they should soon be outstripped by their juniors. We have no doubt that to a like motive may be attributed the continuance of many an objectionable system besides the one under consideration. A man who has spent the best portion of his youth in the exclusive study of Latin and Greek, for example, is not likely, unless he be of a superior cast of mind, to look with a friendly eye on proposals for giving more extended education to those who in a few years may become his competitors in the world. This motive may not be present to his mind he may not even suspect its existence; but that it does exist, and is powerful in its operation, can, we think, admit of no doubt. To return to female education. Doubtless it is more easy to enlarge upon an evil than to point out the remedy; but we think that among others inquiries as to the cause of the evils we have pointed out, it might be worth while examining whether that rule of modern schools by which the sexes are kept entirely apart has not been carried somewhat too far? Under defective management, indeed, a departure from this rule might be very objectionable: but where active supervision is combined with sound discretion, would such deviation be equally objectionable? Many an instrument which is useless and dangerous when wielded by an ignorant man, has only to be put into skilful hands to become the means of effecting great good; and perhaps the fear with which we have shunned what we consider the mistake of our forefathers on this point, may in a measure have arisen from the badness, not of the plan, but of its administration any change, however, would have to be made with caution. It is possible that the monastic and nun-like system of education is the less of two evils; though an evil it certainly is. : Without any wish to see girls become boys, or boys girls, we hope we may safely desire that the character of the former had somewhat more of strength, and that of the latter somewhat less of coarseness and disregard of the feelings of others. To us it appears worth considering, whether, with a view to these desirable changes, the established rule might be so far relaxed as to allow boys and girls to associate occasionally in some of those studies which are common to both. We are sometimes inclined to hope that such a measure would be followed by advantages which are at present little expected from such a source. We are sometimes inclined to imagine that much of the feeling which gives rise to impure thoughts, and precocious love-fits, may be fairly ascribed to the nervous anxiety that exists in parents, guardians, and teachers, on the subject of separation:-an anxiety which is constantly forced on the attention of those concerned, and which endows the proceedings of each sex with a mysterious interest which does not naturally belong to them. We cannot but hope that the occasional presence of their sisters, cousins, and other females of the same rank as their own, would in general be an effectual check to the boys in the expression of coarse ideas or rude language; and we should also anticipate a favourable effect on their deportment to each other at times when they are alone. The female character too would, we trust, be benefited by this occasional association. We cannot but think that, by the greater mental energy which would be thus infused, and the interest which would be thus awakened on a variety of important subjects, the young female would be better fitted for the high task she has to perform as man's companion and helpmate,-the sharer of his joys, and his comfort in affliction. ART. IV.-NOVELS OF THE DAY. The novelist, like the historian, has a double mission to fulfil; if the latter is required not only to detail facts, but to detail them impartially as well as correctly, the former is expected to deal with the acts, motives, and characters of human life, not as his own passions or prejudices might direct him to pourtray them, but as they are. Both historian and novelist mistake the real utility of their callings egregiously when they suffer their minds to be warped by particular distastes, or carried away from their proper vocation by one-sided views, in the hope to please or find favor with one section of the community, rather than to enlighten and elevate all. With the historians of the day, we have at present nothing to do, but before we commence our observations on some of the popular fictions of the past season, we must hazard a few remarks on the spirit in which many of them have been conceived and executed. Any one who takes up either the Moral or Fashionable Tales of Maria Edgeworth, will perceive that the most wholesome and salutary lessons may be inculcated in a form perfectly free from either political or religious bias, and therefore the more likely to extend their own utility by not giving offence to any one. She was too wise to convert a good novel into an imperfect sermon; and far too prudent to weaken real religious feeling by making her heroes and heroines speak like saints, and act like sinners, with tags of Scripture perpetually in their mouths, and a spirit greatly opposed to it in their hearts. To take up a book of "Light reading," and to find it a heavy homily, is to go into a theatre and find it turned into a conventicle; there are theological essayists enough who are perfectly well able to fight the partisan battles of disputed opinion, and therefore it is altogether out of place to expect, or to desire, that novel writers should perform a double duty, and give us scraps from the Pentateuch and sentiments fresh from London drawing rooms at the same time and in the same page. This want of artistic propriety is a monster of modern growth, and the sooner its hydra heads are cut off as unseemly excrescences, the better. When the authoress of "Evelina" put to shame and to flight the circulating library impurities which Sir Anthony Absolute called "an evergreen tree of diabolical knowledge," she did so not by a semi-theological jargon which sickens the sense and disgusts the taste, but by giving us pictures of character, individualized by the discrimination of genius, but untainted by the puritanical leaven which seems to be fast superseding the functions of nature herself, in the present day. In all the multitude of characters given us by Jane Austen (clergymen included), we find nothing approaching to it. As we have said before, it would vainly be looked for in the multifarious volumes of our accomplisned countrywoman, Maria Edgeworth, and still more vainly in those of Lady Morgan, who in her utter dislike to it, sometimes ventured a little too far the other way. If we look to the superior. order of masculine spirits who have made novels the vehicles. of instruction and amusement, we will, for the most part, find the same diffidence in making an olla prodrida of the sacred and the profane. Sir Walter Scott, indeed, has shown his distaste to the old religion of Christendom, by painting monks and abbots with huge appetites and unspiritual propensities, but these caricatures are the least happy of his efforts, and to those who feel sore on the subject, the tu quoque argument might present itself, by contrasting the lordly equipage of a "mitred prelate" of our own day, proceeding in state to a court festival, with the "sumptuous housings" of Prior Aymer's "palfrey," or the dinner carte of Lambeth Palace on a company day, with the venison repasts of Abbot Boniface in his more unpretending " refectory," surrounded not by "dissipated nobles," but simple monks. We believe, as far as we can trace their origin, that it is to America belongs the honor and glory, such as they are, of introducing what are now known by the name of "Religious Novels," as a new kind of manufacture in the literary workshop. They certainly all have a smack of "the camp-meetings" and the "love feasts" of our transatlantic friends, and, in the curious jumble they treat us to, are redolent of "spiritual embracings", and other innocent exercises, which "high religious enthusiasm" may sanction, but which a less fervent christianity could very well do without." A religious novel" is, in itself, a paradoxical sort of production, which contains-and neces |