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Of the motives to improvement we have already treated at length *; and we have shown that no insurmountable obstacle exists, to their all being brought to bear upon the subject of our present examination. We have next to consider how far we can supply good models, or examples; and here we must confess we have a greater difficulty to overcome.

When the foreign student makes it understood by signs that he is in want, for instance, of a glass of water, and is told how he ought to express himself in the language of the country, the pleasure which he feels in his acquisition, and the vivid associations which are produced in his mind by the reality of the transaction, assist in fixing the lesson in his memory.

The nearest approach that we can make towards placing our pupils in this situation of the foreigner is, to engage them in committing to memory the dramas of the language which they are studying; and this we do: but we are aware that representative conversation does not come home to the feelings, like that which spontaneously arises from the real business of life. Because the circumstances, habits, manners, and modes of thinking, of the dramatist, not being those of the student, they cannot present such vivid images to the mind, and of course cannot produce associations of equal force and duration; neither is the language so committed to memory furnished at the precise moment when its want is felt.

None but the experienced instructor can properly estimate the value of creating a wish for information before he supplies it. There is a hunger of the mind as well as of the body, and it is equally necessary to render the mental aliment either palatable or nutritious.

But with all these drawbacks, the acting of plays is a most valuable means of acquiring languages. Even shadows affect the mind, to a certain degree, and consequently strengthen the links of association; besides, many of the objects which are spoken of in the dramatic dialogue, as armour, weapons, chains, dresses, &c., can be brought upon the stage. Many of the actions represented as taking place can be really performed. Characters are com, pletely separated in the minds of the pupils, by being assumed by distinct persons. Motive is given for many rehearsals; by which not only the words are fixed in the memory, but the allusions are gradually discerned and made familiar to the learner. Actors, it has been said, are the best of commentators; and the master will find, that an obscure passage is often cleared to his satisfaction, while teaching the inflections of the voice, and the gesture of the body, requisite for its due effect upon the audience. So that although this exercise has not all the power of actual conversation, it is very much superior to a drawling repetition-lesson, in which the pupil stammers out his half-learnt words, without affixing to them any ideas, without feeling interest in them, and consequently without a chance of preserving them in his recollection.

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The ease with which ideas are retained in the memory, when associated with objects of sense, is well known, and has often been pointed out. The recurrence of sounds which are connected with any event often recals the circumstances of it strongly to the mind. A return to the scenes of early youth will awaken recol lections which have lain dormant for years; and, with some persons, perfumes, and even objects of taste, have the same power. This great law of our nature has hardly met with due attention in the business of education; it forms, however, the foundation of almost all schemes of artificial memory, and is the secret by which so many wonders have been wrought.

The magical effects of artificial memory have induced us at various times to try if some one of the many plans before the world might not be serviceable in our own school; but hitherto our attempts have not been successful.* The great defect in all the schemes which have come under our notice, is, that the image which the pupil is directed to attach to the words of his lesson is not that naturally raised by them. Thus we recollect, in a work purporting to be a detail of the system of Professor Feinagle, directions are given for learning Goldsmith's Hermit, which begins →→→

"Turn, gentle hermit of the dale."

First, the pupil is told to conceive of a large tower, like the Tower of Babel, with a winding ascent on the outside; then to suppose a hermit standing upon the top of it, "turning with inconceivable rapidity!"

That it is possible by such a process to commit any number of words to memory, we do not at all doubt. We are equally willing to admit that the pupil "will as readily repeat them backwards as forwards;" nay, we go farther, for we think that for all purposes of either pleasure or profit the backward repetition will be quite as eligible as the forward.

The fact is, that these false images entirely drive the true ones out of the mind; so that, unless it is useful to know mere idle words without any real signification, nothing is learned by this process. Yet after all, it may be doubted whether the topical system, or that of associating ideas with places, may not be useful, when the subject itself is not necessarily connected with imagery of its own. On this latter question we speak with diffidence, because our course of experiments is not completed; but of the impolicy of substituting false imagery for true, we have a more confident opinion.

We have wandered thus far from our subject, in order to show, even by these (as we conceive) mistaken systems, the power of sensible ideas on the mind. The lesson which we have drawn from a consideration of the different plans of artificial memory, that have at various times come under view, is, that although it is not politic to load the minds of children with false imagery, it is highly

* Grey's Memoria Technica" is an exception, but its utility is confined to numbers.'

important

important for them never to commit a passage to memory, or, if possible, even to read it, without gaining an accurate conception of its real and natural associations.

With this view, we strongly recommend instructors to supply themselves, when teaching the classics, with ancient maps and plans, and with plates or drawings of ships, temples, houses, altars, domestic and sacred utensils, robes, and of every object of which they are likely to read. A classical garden, too, or a collection of plants and shrubs mentioned by the poets, would be a desirable accession to a school; nor would a collection of models of ancient warlike machinery be less useful.

It is impossible to calculate the injury which the minds of children suffer from the habit of receiving imperfect ideas. It gradually weakens, and in some instances destroys, the powers, both of reasoning and imagination: the reasoning powers-because reasoning is the act of comparing ideas with ideas, which must evidently stop for want of materials, if those ideas are so shadowy as not to have "a local habitation and a name" in the pupil's mind: the powers of imagination- because imagination is the act of forming ideas into new combinations, which is equally impossible, unless they have distinct shapes and definite forms.

To return to our imitation of the method by which a foreigner learns languages. We have attempted to show, that the two great advantages of stimulus, and the opportunity of imitating good models, which are so much insisted upon in the case of foreigners, may, to a certain extent, be enjoyed at home; but there is another advantage, rarely adverted to, which requires a very careful consideration.

A child and a foreigner learn synthetically: they are told, for instance, that a certain building which they inhabit is called a house; this fact is, by association, firmly fixed in their minds; the child considers it a proper name, (for with children all names are at first proper,) and so would the foreigner, if he had not already learnt how to generalize in his own language: he is, however, aware that it is generic, and uses it according to the analogy to which he has been accustomed; but he does not trouble himself with all the restrictions and extensions of the genus; - he does not, for instance, learn on the same day, and at the same time, that certain houses are called cottages, and certain others palaces; nor is he reminded, that a family, a commercial establishment, and sometimes a council of legislators, are called a house; but the idea is left to settle itself in his memory, before it receives these little modifications; and when he finds that the word house has another meaning, he at the same time has some new association given to him, which fixes the subsidiary fact as firmly in his memory as the first. The child is obliged to learn altogether thus; but the foreigner may turn to his dictionary, and find all the meanings of the word; and as he does not do this until he has felt the want of the information of which he is in search, he seizes it with eagerness, and preserves it without difficulty. It is the same with the inflexions of words. A foreigner (and indeed a child, after he has

begun

begun to generalize) will inflect all his words regularly; but, when he has made a few mistakes, he will thank you for a grammar, and esteem a complete list of exceptions a great prize.*

This appears to us to be the natural way of learning and we think, that if our readers carefully retrace the history of their own minds they will find that the greater part of knowledge is gained in the same manner; that is, by learning particulars, and then arranging those particulars into classes; for we find, that even those who begin to teach by means of rules, always add 'an example, which (as far as our own experience goes) is more depended upon for conveying ideas than the rule itself.

Thus the principle of what we contend for is conceded, and all the difference between the system which we advocate, and that in common use, is, that we would store the mind of the learner with many examples, before we call upon him to classify them, and de duce from them rules and general principles.

The disposition to generalize soon arises in the mind; and if the teacher were careful not to give his pupil a rule, until he was sure that the boy must have felt the want of one, it would be eagerly acquired, and readily apprehended; nor would he have so often to reproach his pupil with the faultiness of his memory."

We could wish that less occasion really existed for the author's comments on the habit of leaving tasks once under taken in an unfinished state: but we apprehend that his view of the mischiefs arising from such a practice will be recognized by many individuals as too true a picture.

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6 One of the most valuable habits of life is that of completing every undertaking. The mental dissipation in which persons of talent often indulge, and to which they are, perhaps, more prone than others, is destructive beyond what can readily be imagined, A man who has lost the power of prosecuting a task the moment its novelty is gone, or it is become encumbered with difficulty, has reduced his mind into a state of the most lamentable and wretched imbecility. His life will inevitably be one of shreds and patches. The consciousness of not having persevered to the end of any single undertaking will hang over him like a spell, and par

b. The intelligent instructor, must often have observed, in teaching a boy the rules and exceptions of a grammar, that he learns to consider both as of equal importance to be remembered; or perhaps, indeed, the exceptions, as they occupy the largest space in the book, will have the superiority: in learning from prac tice, (and using the grammar only as a book of reference) as he must meet with many more words following the rule than deviat ing from it, the proper order of importance is preserved. In the list of exceptions, we often find words, which a student might have read, the classic authors for years without meeting with: surely a knowledge of them, and their inflexions, ought not to be put on a level in his mind with that of a general rule." Bb

REY. DEC. 1822.

alyze

alyze all his energies; and he will at last believe, that, however fair may be his prospects, and however feasible his plans, he is fated never to succeed.

The habit of finishing ought to be formed in early youth. We take care to reward no boy for fragments, whatever may be their excellence. We know nothing of his exertions until they come before us in a state of completion. The consequence is, that every one learns to measure his powers. He undertakes nothing which he has not a rational hope of accomplishing; and having begun, and knowing that he can receive neither fame nor profit by instalments, he is urged forcibly on to the end of his

course.'

The author's grounds for preferring public to private education of boys are sensible: but his accounts of bell-ringings, and drillings, and gymnastic exercises, seem unnecessarily extended, and calculated merely ad captandum vulgus. Indeed, we cannot but regret that he did not write a general treatise on education, instead of publishing a book which is so interlarded with details of the discipline and routine of some imaginary or existing institution, that we scarcely know whether to characterize it as a treatise on education or as an Irish advertizement of some unspecified school.

ART. V. Dramas of the Ancient World. By David Lyndsay. 8vo. pp. 278. 10s. 6d. Boards. Edinburgh, Blackwood; London, Cadell. 1822.

THE

HE dramas contained in this volume are in number ostensibly eight; viz. the Deluge, the Plague of Darkness, the Last Plague, Rizpah, Sardanapalus, the Destiny of Cain, the Death of Cain, and the Nereid's Love:- but the two Plagues are in fact but portions of the drama of Moses, and those which relate to the first murderer must be placed together as the drama of Cain. Rizpah consists of only one scene, and the Nereid's Love is a sort of pastoral. Instead, therefore, of eight Dramas of the Antient World,' the volume presents to us two dramas of the ancient world, fragments of two sacred dramas, one play from profane history, (Sardanapalus,) and a dramatic poem founded on the heathen mythology. quently, as far as a title and a table of contents may be expected to indicate what is to be found in a book, we think that the title and the table before us are neither fairly characteristic nor properly illustrative.

Conse

In a prefixed advertizement, Mr. Lyndsay (if such really be the writer's name) entreats permission to assert, and credit when he does assert, that the coincidence of his having chosen the same

subject