all those exercises which could improve their bodily strength, and enable them with most skill to make use of it: they went into the field cased in armour, and with every possible advantage of weapons, while the common soldiers had little to protect them, and were exposed upon every desperate service which their lords had not courage to undertake. Gunpowder, learning, a better sense of honour, and a growing sense of humanity, have long since put an end to this iniquity. But what was attempted and effected in those days by wicked means, must now be brought about by righteous ones. Some advantages, more than those of estate, the influential classes must continue to preserve, or they will cease to be influential; the power with which they are now intrusted, and which may best and safeliest be intrusted to them while they are worthy of the trust, will assuredly be wrested from incompetent hands. They must improve their favourable circumstances of fortune to their intellectual advancement; they must keep pace with the age, not in its frivolities, its accomplishments, and refined elegancies alone, but in sound knowledge. But, in order to maintain this relative superiority, they must begin in time: schools and universities must be made what they ought to be, and no longer considered as places through which indeed it is necessary to pass in the routine of a liberal education, but where it is not necessary that any thing should be thoroughly learnt, or that they who are not ambitious of the prize should do any thing more than walk over the course.

There are two obvious defects in our system of education; the first and most important is, that the instruction to which it is confined, is in the great majority of cases so imperfect, that youth go to college with the faint intention or forlorn hope of learning there what they have failed to learn at school: the second is, that the course itself is not sufficiently comprehensive. The Greek and Latin must always form the basis of a generous education; those languages which, as Hobbes says, 'have put off flesh and blood, and are become immutable;' and, which in a certain sense, may be said to have put on immortality. Some few years ago, there appeared in one of our monthly journals a proposal, that seeing schools for the instruction of the common people were about to be opened all over Europe, which must consequently give a new impulse to the public mind, analogous to the introduction of printing, a new and rational alphabet should be adopted, and all elementary books printed in it; and the advantage to be derived from this was stated to be, that it would at once obliterate all extant literature, and enable the rising generation to use epurated editions of all standard books! Hæc seriò quemquam dixisse summa hominum contemptio est: seriously however it was said;

and

and there are march-of-intellect men among us fanatical enough to wish that it were done. Men of this stamp, as well as some of the untaught, the ill-taught, and the self-taught, would willingly have the dead languages buried if they could; and if extant literature were as destructible now, as in the age of the Saracen conquests, Omar would have ready imitators whenever opportunity occurred. But there is a reasonable objection against the great expenditure of time employed in learning, or in not learning these languages; and that objection would be obviated if it were shown by experience, that in the years allotted for schooling, there is abundant time for learning them, and for whatever else it can be expedient or desirable to learn in that stage of our growth; this, too, by a method as easy both to pupils and teacher, as it is effectual and sure, a method as well devised for bringing into action the intellectual powers and improving them, as the best regulated gymnastic exercises are for increasing agility and strength. Professor Pillans will vouch for the efficacy of this method; the details have long been before the public in the third part of Dr. Bell's Elements of Tuition; a series of elementary books, compiled upon the principles of that work, is all that is wanting; and if this system be established in the school of the new King's College, its beneficial effects will be felt as well in the Universities as in that College. Other schools must adopt the method of intellectual tuition, or they will lose their place in public estimation,mere prescription will not support them there; and when that method is adopted, the course of instruction will become as efficient for all, as it now is for the few who apply themselves diligently to their studies, and those few may be carried much farther in the same time. There will be time for algebra and mathematics, time for the modern languages, time for any special pursuit, without overtasking the mind, or wearying it for whatever is learnt, being learnt thoroughly, step by step, the progress becomes as easy and as pleasurable as it is certain. Long ago it was wittily said, that there is no royal road to learning, but, thanks to Dr. Bell, there is now a macadamized one.

The school, both in itself, and as preparatory to the college course, is a most important part of this very useful design. In the Belfast Institution (where the experiment of disregarding the religious opinions of the Professors has been tried and been proved injurious) the schools have answered well, and in a very short time defrayed their own expenses. This of the King's College being situated in the metropolis, it is likely that a great proportion of the scholars will be day boys; and nothing can, in our judgment, be more desirable than that boys, while they have all the advantages at school which can be derived from wholesome and well-regulated emulation,

emulation, and from free intercourse with their fellows, should continue to enjoy the moral benefits which are only to be had at home. In the Report of the Commissioners of Irish Education Inquiry, upon the Belfast Institution (an institution highly useful and honourable to that great town), it appears that the persons whom they examined laid great stress upon the moral advantages of home education: the opinion, indeed, was expressed with regard to colleges and not to schools, but it related to persons young enough to be called thoughtless boys; and it may be questioned whether, for such boys, schools, as they are, do not afford as many opportunities for evil as are found at universities. Some evils of their own they have; and one has been brought before the public at this time by Sir Alexander Malet, in a temperate and gentlemanly manner, which must win respect even from those who may differ from him upon the point in question. It is not necessary to deliver an opinion upon the circumstances which have called forth the pamphlet, and which have attracted considerable attention; the case itself is of less consequence than the general system of fagging which is thus brought under review. We know not either when or how this abominable practice grew up in our schools; nor how schoolmasters, who ought to have considered it a most important part of their duty to cultivate good inclinations and correct evil ones in the pupils committed to their charge, should have suffered boys to establish among themselves the law of the strongest, and reduce tyranny to a system. It could not have existed, at least in its present form, when it was customary for a boy to take to school with him a lad of his own age in the capacity of a servant. In those days something of the same kind of tyranny, which is now exercised over juniors at school, was practised upon freshmen at college; it has long ceased in the universities, and much longer it cannot be permitted to continue in schools. There is nothing to be said in defence of the system which might not be applied in defence of the slave-trade, or the Turkish despotism; and it is to be hoped that public opinion will put it down before some flagrant case of brutality shall call for a public example. A great national good will be effected if, in a school which must necessarily become, in no ordinary degree, an object of general attention, we should see those improvements introduced, which render the progress of the scholars easy and certain, and those abuses precluded which corrupt the disposition and harden the heart.

1

The scheme of the new college is not yet before the public; but we hope that a certain course of study may be prescribed for every student, comprising those things which are the foundation of all solid learning. There will be abundant time for collateral and

pro

professional pursuits. The Swedes have a good regulation, by which every young man who graduates at Upsal is required to produce a printed dissertation in Latin, upon some topic of national antiquities. If more attention were paid, during education, to our own history, men would not be betrayed so easily as they now are into political errors and delusions: there would be less of contented ignorance-less of pragmatical sciolism.

Some good may be expected from the fair rivalry between the King's College and the Gower-street one. They are already mutually beholden to each other. King's College will owe its existence to the earlier institution; and to the announcement of the later one it is owing that the irreligious principle of the Gowerstreet scheme has been abandoned. There is room for both. The dissenters and the absenters, and those who are of any denomination which ends in ist or in arian, will properly encourage the college in which any religion may be taught, or none; and some will prefer it for considerations of local convenience or personal predilections. But upon all who are attached by feeling and principle to our free constitution in church and state-emphatically free in both; upon all who know and can justly appreciate how happy it is for them to have been

'born under good stars,

Where what is honest they may freely think

Speak what they think, and write what they do speak'upon all such the King's College has a strong and paramount claim, being founded in support of those principles which have made England what it is, and the English what they are.

The city of London (let us be permitted to add) could not do a more fitting thing than to convert the Gresham lectureships into fourteen scholarships for this college, retaining the name and reserving the right of presentation. A bounty which is at present useless would thus be rendered efficient, and to the very end which was intended by Gresham himself. An act of parliament would be necessary; and the annexations would of course take place as the lectureships became vacant.

ART. V. Journal of a Second Expedition into the Interior of Africa, from the Bight of Benin to Soccatoo. By the late Captain Clapperton, of the Royal Navy. To which is added, The Journal of Richard Lander, from Kano to the Sea-coast, partly by a more Eastern Route. With a Portrait of Clapperton, and a Map of the Route. London. 4to. 1829.

A NARRATIVE of travels into regions of the earth hitherto unexplored, while it is sure to awaken curiosity, must be dul indeed, and its author destitute of the talent of common ob VOL. XXXIX. NO. 77.-Q.R. servation,

19

servation, if it fail to communicate new and amusing information. The posthumous Journal of the late lamented Clapperton, which contains a copious detail of occurrences, mingled with lively sketches of the scenery of a country untrodden by Christian foot, and of the manners and customs of tribes of people entirely unknown, will not disappoint the expectations of the reader in this respect; while regret and sympathy will be strongly excited by the sufferings, the unkind treatment, and the untimely fate, of a brave, straightforward, and kind-hearted officer, who, at the very outset of the journey, had the melancholy misfortune of burying the only two companions joined with him on an expedition full of interest and enterprise. Thus left alone, and in a state of great debility himself from disease, he boldly pushed forward, determined, should life remain, to accomplish, as far as human means would admit, the object of his mission.

When Denham and Clapperton returned from their successful mission into the central parts of Northern Africa, the latter brought back a letter from Bello, the Sultan of the Fellans, or Fellatas, resident at Soccatoo, addressed to the King of England, in consequence of conversations that had passed between him and Clapperton. In that letter the sultan proposed three things ;-the establishment of a friendly intercourse between the two nations, by means of a consul, who was to reside at the seaport of Raka;— the delivery of certain presents described, at the port of Funda, supposed to be somewhere near Whidah; and the prohibition of the exportation of slaves, by any of the Houssa merchants, to Atagher, Dahomey, or Ashantee.

On the arrival of Clapperton in England, Lord Bathurst, then secretary of state for the colonies, conceived these proposals to afford a fair opportunity for endeavouring to carry into effect objects of such considerable importance; and Clapperton immediately volunteered his services on the occasion. He had arranged with Bello, that his messengers should, about a certain time, be at Whidah, to conduct the presents and the bearers of them to Soccatoo. Clapperton was allowed to take with him, on this novel and hazardous enterprise, two associates; one of whom was Captain Pearce, of the Navy, an excellent draughtsman; and the other, Dr. Morrison, a surgeon in the navy, well versed in various branches of natural history; and, at his particular request, a fellow-countryman, of the name of Dickson, who had served as a surgeon in the West Indies, was added to the list.

These gentlemen, with their servants, embarked on His Majesty's ship Brazen, on the 25th August, 1825, and arrived off Whidah on the 26th of the following November. Mr. Dickson, for some reason or other, landed at Whidah, and proceeded, in

company