edly easy to conceive this tendency to be arrested, but not probably by causes consistent with the moral and physical well-being of the race. Whether human population may have increased or not during the last two thousand years, is a matter of little import, we conceive, to the question before us. We know that it is now spreading itself over many parts of the globe, under influences far different from those under which it has heretofore extended,-the influence of Christianity, and of that higher civilisation which must attend the pure doctrines of our religion. We believe that this extension and increase of the civilised races of mankind will continue; and, however it may be temporarily checked by the hardships and evils to which man is subject, we can hardly understand how this tendency can be effectively and finally arrested before the population of the globe shall have approximated to that limit which must be necessarily imposed upon it by the finite dimensions of man's dwellingplace. We know not what might be the views of political economists on this ultimate condition of human population; but we feel it difficult to conceive its existence, under merely human influences, independently of physical want, and possibly of that moral debasement which so frequently attends it. In fact, those who regard man simply in his human character and in his relations to nature, and not in his relations to God, must find in his earthly future the most insoluble problem which can offer itself to the speculative philosopher. It would seem equally difficult to assign to the human race an indefinite term of existence, or to sweep it away by natural causes from the face of the earth. But it is in such questions as this that a steady faith in man's Creator and Redeemer affords to the embarrassed mind a calm and welcome resting-place. Those who believe man's introduction on the earth to have been a direct act of his Almighty Creator, will not think it necessary to look for his final earthly destiny in the operation of merely secondary causes, but will refer it to the same Divine Agency as that to which he refers the origin of the race.'

Geology, by William Hopkins, M.A., F.R.S.; Cambridge Essays, 1857.

The School of Life.

WHAT IS EDUCATION?

BISHOP BURNET seems to have given the reply in the fewest words when he observes: "The education of youth is the foundation of all that can be performed for bettering the next age."

"Education," says Paley, "in the most extensive sense of the word, may comprehend every preparation that is made in our youth for the sequel of our lives; and in this sense I use it. Some such preparation is necessary for all conditions, because without it they must be miserable, and probably will be vicious, when they grow up, either from the want of the means of subsistence, or from want of rational and inoffensive occupation. In civilised life, every thing is affected by art and skill. Whence a person who is provided with neither (and neither can be acquired without exercise and instruction) will be useless, and he that is useless will generally be at the same time mischievous, to the community. So that to send an uneducated child into the world is injurious to the rest of mankind; it is little better than to turn out a mad dog or a wild-beast into the streets."

Who are the uneducated? is a question not easily to be answered in a time when books have come to be household furniture in every habitation of the civilised world. All that men have contrived, discovered, done, felt, or imagined, is recorded in books; wherein whoso has learned to spell printed letters may find such knowledge, and turn it to advantageous account.

D'Israeli the younger, in one of his politico-economic speeches, remarks: "As civilisation has gradually progressed, it has equalised the physical qualities of man. Instead of the strong arm, it is now the strong head that is

the moving principle of society. You have disenthroned Force, and placed on her high seat Intelligence; and the necessary consequence of this great revolution is, that it has become the duty and the delight equally of every citizen to cultivate his faculties."

TEACHING YOUNG CHILDREN.

Coleridge relates that Thelwall thought it very unfair to influence a child's mind by inculcating any opinions before it should have come to years of discretion, and be able to choose for itself. "I showed him my garden," says Coleridge," and told him it was my botanical garden." "How so?" said he; "it is covered with weeds." Oh!" I replied, "that is only because it has not yet come to its age of discretion and choice. The weeds you see have taken the liberty to grow, and I thought it unfair in me to prejudice the soil towards roses and strawberries."

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Madame de Lambert, in her work Sur l'Education d'une jeune Demoiselle, says: "The greatest enemy that we have to combat in the education of children is self-love; and to this enemy we cannot give attention too early. Our business is to weaken it, and we must be careful not to strengthen it by indiscriminate praise. Frequent praise encourages pride, induces a child to value herself as superior to her companions, and renders her unable to bear any reproach or objection however mild. We should be cautious, even in the expression of affection, not to lead children to suppose that we are constantly occupied with them. Timid children may be encouraged by praise; but it must be judiciously bestowed, and for their good conduct, not for personal graces. Above all things, it is necessary to inspire them with a love of truth; to teach them to practise it at their own expense; and to impress it upon their minds that there is nothing so truly great as the frank acknowledgment, 'I am wrong.'

Harriet Martineau observes: "It is a matter of course that no mother will allow any ignorant person to have access to her child who will frighten it with goblin stories or threats of the old black man. She might as well throw up her

Education at Home.

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charge at once, and leave off thinking of household education altogether, as permit her child to be exposed to such maddening inhumanity as this. The instances are not few of idiotcy or death from terror so caused."

Children should not be hedged-in with any great number of rules and regulations. Such as are necessary to be established, they should be required implicitly to observe. But there should be none that are superfluous. It is only in rich families, where there is a plentiful attendance of governors and nurses, that many rules can be enforced; and it is believed that the constant attention of governors and nurses is one of the greatest moral disadvantages to which the children of the rich are exposed.

Coleridge has well said: "The most graceful objects in nature are little children-before they have learned to dance."

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Grace," says Archbishop Whately, "is in a great measure a natural gift; elegance implies cultivation, or something of more artificial character. A rustic, uneducated girl may be graceful, but an elegant woman must be accomplished and well trained. It is the same with things as with persons; we talk of a graceful tree, but of an elegant house or other building. Animals may be graceful, but they cannot be elegant. The movements of a kitten or a young fawn are full of grace; but to call them 'elegant' animals would be absurd. Lastly, elegant' may be applied to mental qualifications, which graceful' never can. Elegance must always imply something that is made or invented by man. An imitation of nature is not so; therefore we do not speak of an elegant picture,' though we do of an elegant pattern for a gown, an elegant piece of work. The general rule is, that elegance is the characteristic of art, and grace of nature."

EDUCATION AT HOME.

Education at Home has been thus aptly illustrated: History and Geography should begin at home. If we want a boy to know some day the families of the Herods and the Cæsars, let him start by learning who was his own grandfather. The Church Catechism rightly commences by mak

ing the child tell his own name; it would be in many cases almost puzzling, but in all cases and senses a most proper question, to ask him, further, the names of his godfathers and godmothers; and so carrying him gradually onward, he would know, what seldom happens, the kings of England before he attempts those of Israel and Judah. This principle holds as true of places as of persons. The things that touch us nearest interest us most. Geography should begin from the school-walls: "Which side of this room does the sun rise on?" "Does Church-lane run west or north?" "Whither does the brook flow that rises on Squash-hill?" In this way the young scholar would in time be brought to comprehend the round world and his own position on it, and probably with some clearer perception of the truth and relation of things than if he had begun by rote: "The earth is a terraqueous globe, depressed at the poles, consisting of," &c. But we are all taught on the contrary plan. We begin at the wrong end; for, in the ladder of learning, Ego, not Adam, is the true No. 1. We start from the equator instead of High-street, and the result is the lamentable fact, that even educated men are strangers in their own country, and thousands die within the sound of Bow-bells who have never seen the inside of St. Paul's. Topography, then, should precede geography. Yet perhaps there is not a schoolroom in England where a county map is to be found hung up on the wall. Frightened by the remembrance of having been once the deluded subscriber to a Topographical Dictionary, even students have a horror of the word; and the subject is consigned, in expensive folios, to a few professed antiquaries, or to some eccentric member of a county family, who emerges every third or fourth generation to preserve a provincial dignity which he would not willingly let die.*

TENDERNESS OF YOUTH.

Leaving home the first time, for school, has been thus pathetically described by Southey: The pain which is felt when we are first transplanted from our native soil, when the living branch is cut from the parent tree, is one

* Quarterly Review.