He observed, that, among the families of the old nobility, domestic happiness and virtue had much increased since the Revolution, in consequence of the marriages which, after they lost their wealth and rank, had been formed, not according to the usual fashion of old French alliances, but from disinterested motives, from the perception of the real suitability of tempers and characters. The women of this class in general, withdrawn from politics and political intrigue, were more domestic and amiable; many wives, who had not formerly been considered as patterns of conjugal affection, having made great sacrifices and exertions for their husbands and families during the trials of adversity, became attached to them to a degree of which they had not perhaps known themselves to be capable, during their youthful days of folly and dissipation. With regard to literature, he observed, that it had considerably degenerated. For the good taste, wit, and polished style which had characterized French literature before the Revolution, there was no longer any demand, and but few competent judges remained. The talents of the nation had been forced, by circumstances, into different directions. At one time, the hurry and necessity of the passing moment had produced political pamphlets, and slight works of amusement, formed to catch the public revolutionary taste. At another period, the crossing parties, and the real want of freedom in the country, had repressed literary efforts. Science, which flourished independently of politics, and which was often useful and essential to the rulers, had meanwhile been encouraged, and had prospered. The discoveries and inventions of men of science showed, that the same positive quantity of talent existed in France as in former times, though appearing in a new form.' II. 283-4.

He very narrowly escaped being detained on the breaking out of the war; and came afterwards to Scotland, where he left one of his sons, and where the literary society of this city had a transient opportunity of admiring the talents of his affectionate biographer. Mr E. scon after lost two children of the greatest promise and interest; and was actively employed in the establishment of telegraphic stations from Dublin to Galway. In 1806, he engaged in the greatest, and by far the most useful of all his public undertakings, the introduction of a better system of Education for the poor of his native country. He was one of the Commissioners appointed for that great national object, under the enlightened government of the Duke of Bedford, and cortributed the most valuable of those Reports by which their labours have since been so wisely directed, and copied in other quarters. In 1809 he also took a most active and zealous part in the labours of another Parliamentary Commission for surveying and reclaiming the bogs of Ireland, and made up a most minute and elaborate Report upon the condition of that

district which had been allotted for his immediate superintendence. The result of the whole inquiry was, that there were near three millions of acres of peat or bog soil in Ireland, of which more than one half might be profitably converted to purposes of agriculture. Mr E., in particular, was so perfectly convinced of the practicability of this operation, that he offered to take a very large tract into his own management, and at his own risk; but there were some difficulties in giving a title that should fix the boundaries beyond the chance of future disputes; and the experiment was never tried.

There is next a pretty minute account of the different publications in which Miss E. was conjoined or assisted by her father, of all which she very dutifully ascribes the chief merit to him, and takes the blame of all the faults on herself. The account, however, which she gives of their joint labours, and of the way in which their parts were cast, is very interestingthough we can no longer afford room for an extract. She bears an honourable testimony to the liberality with which they were dealt with by their respectable bookseller the late Mr Johnsonthough she has fallen into something like a Bull in her farewel notice of him. The last letter," she says, poor Johnson ever wrote, or rather dictated, was to my father. It was in his nephew's hand, and communicated to us the following account of his death!'

The following remarks are consolatory, and lead to most serious practical conclusions.

The middle classes of gentry in this part of Ireland have, within these last thirty or forty years, improved much in their general mode of living, in manners, and in information. The whole style and tone of society are altered.-The fashion has passed away of those desperately tiresome, long, formal dinners, which were given two or three times a year by each family in the country to their neighbours, where the company had more than they could eat, and twenty times more than they should drink; where the gentlemen could talk only of claret, horses, or dogs; and the ladies, only of dress or scandal: so that in the long hours, when they were left to their own discretion, after having examined and appraised each other's finery, many an absent neighbour's character was torn to pieces, merely for want of something to say or to do in the stupid circle. But now, the dreadful circle is no more; the chairs, which formerly could only take that form at which the firmest nerves must ever tremble, are allowed to stand, or turn in any way which may suit the convenience and pleasure of conversation. The gentlemen and ladies are not separated from the time dinner ends, till the midnight hour, when the carriages came to the door to carry off the bodies of the dead; or, till just sense enough being left, to find their

way straight to the tea-table, the gentlemen could only swallow a hasty cup of cold coffee or stewed tea, and be carried off by their sleepy wives, happy if the power of reproach were lost in fatigue.

A taste for reading and literary conversation has been universally acquired and diffused. Literature has become, as my father long ago prophesied that it would become, fashionable; so that it is really necessary to all who would appear to advantage, even in the society of their country neighbours. A new generation of well-informed young people has grown up, some educated in England, some in Ireland; while those of former days have been obliged to change their tone of real or affected contempt for reading people. They have been compelled, either to cultivate themselves in haste, to keep pace with their neighbours, or to assume at least the appearance of understanding, and of liking that which has become the mode.

About the year 1783 or 1781, my father happened to be present in the only great bookseller's shop then in Dublin, when a cargo of new books from London arrived, and among them, the Reviews, or the Review, for the Monthly Review was the only one then sufficiently in circulation to make its way to Ireland. Of these, my father found, on inquiry, that not above a dozen, or twenty at the utmost, were ordered in this island. I am informed that more than two thousand Reviews are now taken in regularly. This may give some measure of the general increase of our taste for literature. The Edinburgh and Quarterly Reviews are now to be found in the houses of most of our principal farmers; and all therein contained, and the positive, comparative, and superlative merits and demerits of Scott, Campbell, and Lord Byron, are now as common table and tea-table talk here, as in any part of the United Empire.

The distinction, which about half a century ago was very strongly marked between the manners and mental cultivation of a few families of the highest class of the aristocracy in Ireland, and all of the secondary class of gentry, has now, by the diffusion of literature, and the general improvement in education, been softened so much, as to be effaced in its most striking points of contrast. What might be termed the monopoly of elegance and information, it is no longer possible to maintain. This may be mortifying in some few instances to pride; but good sense, to say nothing of benevolence or patriotism, will see ample compensation.' II. 375–378.

There is scarcely any thing more of narrative or anecdote to be added. Mr E. continued usefully active, and uniformly cheerful and social in his family and neighbourhood, till he died, placidly and happily, in 1817, in the 73d year of his age.

The most important part of Mr E.'s studies, were those which related to Education; and no inconsiderable part of his daughter's invaluable publications have been upon the same subject. The great merit of these works, has always appeared to us to consist in their embodying, for the use of ordinary and inexpe

rienced persons, in plain rules and examples, those observations as to the most effectual methods of instruction, which experience and reflection must have suggested to all minds of a higher order. It has been supposed, however, that they contained a new System or principle of education; and some peculiarities which they certainly did recommend, have been appealed to as proofs of this suspicious originality. To us, these peculiarities have ever presented themselves as blemishes; and it was therefore with great satisfaction that we found the greater part of them renounced and abjured in the work now before us.

Rousseau's plan, of postponing all sorts of teaching till the faculties were pretty well matured, was tried by Mr E. on his eldest son, and confessedly failed in a signal manner the youth becoming irreclaimably headstrong, self-willed, and intractable, when the period for instruction arrived-and absolutely refusing to submit himself to any kind of discipline, or course of application.

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The other peculiarities in the Edgeworth scheme of education, so far as we can recollect, are the jealous seclusion of the children from the society and conversation of servants —a nervous abstinence from all compulsion, fatigue, and constraint,—and the excessive use of the stimulants of praise, surprise, and curiosity, in order to excite both to application and invention. Now, all these peculiarities, which we confess always appeared to us fantastical and absurd, we are told in the work before us were ultimately abandoned by Mr E., and, with them, all pretensions to system, or originality in his scheme of education, renounced. Thus, with regard to servants, we find it here acknowledged, that further experience convinced him that it is impossible, in the world in which we live, to exclude from the sight, hearing, and imagination of children, every thing that is wrong; that the seclusion necessary for the attempt would be not only difficult, but dangerous, because it would leave the judgment and resolution uninformed and unex⚫ercised on many points of conduct and manners;' and that his early impressions upon this subject had been formed from the peculiarly bad race of servants that were to be found in Ireland in the time of his youth. As to the other points again, it is also observed, that Mr E., with his last pupils, found the advantage of having the common elementary knowledge taught early and securely. He became sensible, that more of what may be called drudgery of mind, than he had formerly thought advantageous, is not only useful but necessary for children, to train them to that degree of application, to which the quickest talents must submit, before they can succeed in any profession, or before they can advance in any path of business,

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⚫ science, or literature: Crowded as every path now is with competitors, even genius is doomed to labour before it can succeed.' And it is added, that, for boys, he conceived a public education to be, on the whole, the most advisable; and that it would require a very uncommon concurrence of circumstances to make any other be thought of. It is also stated, that, in his later practice, less praise and less stimulus of all kinds were used, than with his earlier pupils; upon the maxim, which applies as well to the mind as to the body, that the least quantity of stimulus that will preserve it in healthy action, is 'the best.'

Now in all this we most cordially concur;-and we think the Edgeworth scheme of education very signally improved by the corrections which its authors are here said to have made on it. But when these are once made to their full extent, in what can this scheme be said to differ from any other rational one that has been announced to the world, from the days of Xenophon and Quinctillian down to those of Milton and Locke? We have no great faith, in short, in any pretended discoveries in this, more than in any other department of mental philosophy,and are noway curious or sanguine as to any new or patent method of making men wise, virtuous, or free. The substance of what is taught at any period of society, is generally prescribed by the usages of that society; and may be fairly considered as beyond the control of any private individual. Whatever opinion we may entertain as to the importance of the learned languages, for instance, every gentleman must now learn them-as every lady must learn dancing and music; and any alteration in these respects is not so properly to be considered as an improvement in the methods of instruction, as a change in the habits of the nation. When we speak of improvements in education, therefore, we mean either contrivances for teaching what is commonly taught with more ease and security than is common,-or such observances as promise more effectually to excite and strengthen the intellect and judg ment, or to form the character by the cultivation of moral habits and sensibilities. The last is, beyond all doubt, the most important; but it is in the first only, we think, that any real improvement has ever been made by the ingenuity of individuals. There have been infinite and undeniable improvements in the methods of teaching all the different branches of knowledge; and, so long as society continues to be progressive, such improvements will necessarily multiply and accumulate. Almost every invention in the arts and sciences themselves, may indeed be considered as a means of facilitating their acquisition;—as the notation of music-the introduction of logarithms and alge= K

VOL. XXXIV. No. 67.