renewal of mutual regard and mutual interest. They encourage the master to regard his servant, and the servant to have respect to his master, and, what is for better, they induce both to inspect themselves, and mutually to prosecute their duty steadfastly. Indeed the whole rural population seems now to be convinced, that employment and the re-establishment of those bonds, which heretofore compacted them together, is the true and only restorative for the disorder of distress; and thus allotments, giving the labourer a stake in the land and a resource when work fails, begin to be generally substituted for the unproductive and degrading assemblies upon the road and in the gravel pit. Instead of this degrading employment, and, when their labour ceases for the day, becoming the constant frequenters of the ale-house, we now see them when their masters' work is done labouring on their own little farms, weeding and clearing their crops till daylight fails, and sometimes by the light of the moon, and then returning to their homes with the pleasing anticipation of their labour making them eventually independent of the parish, whilst the laudable pride of possessing some stake in the soil, raises the man in his own estimation, increases his attachment to the spot, from which he derives his living, fosters his loyalty, nullifies the influence of the political demagogue, and will we trust, do away with those diabolical burnings of farm produce, now unhappily so prevalent. We have been frequently led to rejoice at not only the moral, but the religious feeling, with which some of the meetings, for the payment of the yearly rent by the occupiers of the land, have been conducted; on one occasion the rents having just been paid, the tenants with one accord lifted up their voices in a loud and cheerful hymn of praise to Him "from whom all blessings flow," thus testifying their sense of the benefits conferred, and of their debt to the great Author of all good. The friends of the system now triumphantly challenge the scrutiny of every opponent, by the labour that would have been lost, but which has been thus saved to the community, by the hours that have been drawn from the beer-house to the allotment, by the interest awoke in the poor man's mind from his having a stake in the hedge-from the revival of a moral sense-from his having now a character to sustain-by his glad harvest home-by his grateful affections towards his earthly benefactor, and his cheerful song of praise to his heavenly Master-by his gladdening prospects for the dreary winter-by the revived hopes of the partner of his cares and anxieties-by the smiles that play on his children's cheeks; in a word, by all that can speak to the heart of man-by all that can reach the Philanthropist, the Patriot, and the Christian; we are most anxious to press this and similar plans on public attention, hoping that such efforts may crown the best feelings of which human nature is capable, to make common cause in the improvement of man as a social and intelligent being.

THE

EDUCATIONAL MAGAZINE.

FEBRUARY, 1835.

EDUCATION IN ENGLAND.

No. I. THE INFANT SYSTEM.

THE vast load of vice, and its consequent misery, under which society still groans, call aloud for the exertion of the highest and best energies of our nature. Of all obstacles to its removal ignorance is the most formidable; like a dreadful incubus it rests upon the body politic, and not only paralyzes it, and prevents it rising up in the majesty of human nature, but distresses it with frightful and unreal visions, entangles the understanding, and defaces the reasoning faculties with vague and indefinite, but no less painful and dangerous, ideas. While such ignorance, general or partial, exists, the labours of the legislator will be vain, and the efforts of the philanthropist futile. Remove it, and society will rise under their energies, like fabled beauty from a sea of tumult, and become adorned in the garments of resplendent truth.

We look with confidence to Education to do more than any other thing can possibly do for society. The mind must conceive before the will can determine, or the body execute; therefore correct actions can alone proceed from right principles, and these can only flow from right notions of things. The man who has never known any thing of rain coming from the clouds, will be very unlikely to provide himself with an umbrella. Forethought is the result of experience; experience is knowledge acquired by suffering from the effects of ignorance. The ignorance of the child induces him to put his hand into the fire; the ignorance of the man makes him believe that poverty and distress can be cured by the government, and that he is less blameable than his rulers, although he may get intoxicated every day, and spend more than he earns.

It

There exists a vast difference between the Education of means and that of things. A knowledge of the arts of reading, writing, and arithmetic, can exist with the most profound ignorance as to all those things upon which it is positively essential the populace should be informed. Reading, considered by itself, is a mean for the acquisition of truth; but it is no less so for the acquirement of error. enables the mind to imbibe both wholesome and hurtful food-either the physic or the poison; but when the poison is sweetened by sophistry, and "candied o'er" with self-gratification, can we wonder that the poison and not the food, much less the medicine, is preferred. VOL. I.-Feb. 1835.

I

The error of Education has therefore been the mistaking of the means for the end; and the over solicitude about means has totally thrown into shade the objects to be attained. The Education of the last thirty years, has done much towards the formation of the Christian character, and has, to a certainty, prevented the spread of infidelity. No one can possibly calculate what would have been the effect of the preachings, the writings, and the discussions of the infidel teachers, had not the religious instruction given at our schools set the gospel theory and practice before the minds of our youth. But, at the same time, the total abstinence from the inculcation of the truths of civil and moral relation, of the structure of society, and ofthe nature and true interests of man in a social state, has had the effect to render that portion of our population, now bursting into manhood, the tool of the dangerous demagogue, and the believer in all those political sophistries which would set the world in arms against itself, and destroy every thing in society worthy of sacred preservation.

We are compelled to advance, that the systems of Education pursued in England are not the best calculated to produce a wise and consistent social order. The acquisition of knowledge has been made almost as mechanical a process as the piling of timber; and the formation of the understanding has been entered upon without rule, without order, and without discretion. The end of Education should be the formation of the Christian and the manly character; the teaching of man to look for Divine guidance on one hand, and within himself on the other, for the principles of conduct and knowledge; the supplying of a counteracting influence from virtuous principle early inculcated, by which the evil effects of the world's temptations may be as much as possible neutralized, and the mind, with all its unborn capabilities and yearnings, confirmed, developed, and encouraged in its onward progress towards that possible good, the desire of attaining which is at once its best stay, and the surest pledge of its high destiny the rescuing of the will from the bondage of things outward; and the building up of a firm and consistent structure, on the broad foundations of religion, in love, and freedom, and harmony. The Education we would term religious, goes infinitely beyond the zeal of interest, of sect, or of party; and is founded on the superstructure of reason and intelligence. It is not to make men fit for one profession more than another ;-it is not to arm them with weapons of argument against their fellow creatures, or to furnish them with a chart of one narrow road alone; it is to awaken in them, or to sustain, the consciousness of the common brotherhood that exists among mankind;-that the first business of life is the reciprocal performance of duties towards those that surround them; to clear away away the obstacles that choke up the opening of living waters, so that they may flow on, fertilizing and in joy, beautiful in themselves, and the source of happiness to all that dwell beside them.

There are powers in the mind ab origine, not existing from any exercise of the sensitive faculty, but are the very conditions under which the sensitive faculty becomes capable of furnishing the understanding with the phenomena which enter into the constitution of knowledge. These fun

damental principles, it is the province of education to draw out, and to develope and to improve; and its whole essence will then be the strengthening of the feelings which constitute religion, and the developement of those powers of the understanding which are the germs of all knowledge, and in the due combination of which, the social character exists. We must ever have in view the fixing of the mind upon itself and its powers, as regulating both in ethical and physical science; the leading it to discover in its own sphere the laws of its moral being, and the principles of that ordination which supplies a life and unity to the otherwise disjointed and dead facts of the material universe.

Among the designs of an advancement to a philosophical method of instruction are the Infant Schools; whose very existence, bad as the principles are understood and ineffectually as they are carried out, is a proof that a better hope is springing up among us; and with this assurance we would believe, that better days are at hand; and deem that the seeds of a new social order is sown with higher ends, and better feelings, than belong to that which they will displace. It is true that they are the offspring of the last century; that they derive their being from a simple village girl, though an exalted disciple of the devoted Oberlin. But they were not in the spirit of that age, and therefore they were every where opposed and thwarted by it; and the system of developement took too much of the character of a happier and older philosophy, to meet the approbation of the miserable scoffers of France, and their scarce more deeply grounded antagonists of England. Locke and Voltaire, Hume and Cordillac, alike reject the notion of anything to be developed, and England has yet to emancipate herself from the bonds of their shallow psychology.

It is now about thirty years since Louise Scheppler, a young female peasant, then scarcely fifteen years of age, was so forcibly impressed with the character and virtues of the pious Oberlin that although she enjoyed a small patrimony, she begged to enter into his service, and take a part in his charitable labours. From that time she never accepted any wages; she never quitted him; she became his help, his messenger, and the guardian angel of the rudest huts. She offered the inhabitants every species of consolation; and in no instance can we find a finer example of the power of feeling to exalt the intelligence. This simple village girl entered into the elevated views of her master, even astonishing him by her happy suggestions, which he unhesitatingly adopted in his general plans of operation. She it was who remarked the difficulty that the labourers in the fields experienced in combining their agricultural employments with the care of their younger children, and who thought of collecting together even the infants of the earliest age in spacious halls, where, during the absence of their parents some intelligent mistress should take care of, amuse, instruct in their letters, and exercise them in employments adapted to their ages.

From this institution of Louise Scheppler, arose the infant schools of England and France. The honour of the idea which has produced

already such striking results, and which is calculated to do so much for society is solely due to this poor peasant of Ban de la Roche; to this she consecrated all her worldly means, and what was of more value, her youth and her health. Even now, although advanced in years, she, without receiving the smallest compensation, assembles a hundred children round her, and instructs them according to their capacities.

This poor maiden also merits the honour of the invention of the Loan Funds, as she founded and regulated a sort of Mont de Piété, of a peculiar kind, which is likely to be multiplied like the infant schools. It is among the very small number of institutions which merit the name given to them, for money is here lent without interest and without securities. When M. Oberlin died, he by will left Louise Scheppler to his children; and these, faithful to the wishes of their father, were desirous of bestowing upon Louise the inheritance of a daughter; but nothing could induce this generous woman to lessen the small patrimony left by her master; and all she asked was permission to add the name of Oberlin to her own. Those who claim this honourable appellation as a birth-right, think themselves further honoured by her sharing the title.

The idea of Louise Scheppler was first carried out in England by Robert Owen, at New Lanark, under the superintendance of Mr. Buchannan, and the utility of such institutions being soon recognized, Mr. Buchannan; was engaged to superintend a school opened on Brewers Green, Westminster, by Lord Brougham, the Marquis of Lansdowne, John Smith, Esq., James Mill, Esq., Zachariah Macauley, Esq., Thomas Babington, Esq., Lord Dacre, Sir Thomas Baring, William Leake, Esq., Henry Haze, Esq., Benjamin Smith, Esq., John Walker, Esq., and Joseph Wilson Esq.; and shortly after the latter gentleman established one at Quaker Street, Spitalfields, which was opened July 24th, 1820, under the management of Mr. Wilderspin, who succeeded admirably in systematising a method of managing infants in a mass. Public attention was drawn to his establishment; visitors went away pleased from the schools, and schools were opened in various places; and at Liverpool the members of the Society of Friends opened a very large one, and subscribed among themselves in one day no less a sum than a thousand pounds.

Soon after this, in 1824, a meeting was held in Freemasons' Hall, the Marquis of Lansdowne in the chair; in which Lord Brougham, Sir James Mackintosh, Mr. Wilberforce, Mr. Smith, Dr. Thorpe, William Allen, Lord Calthorpe, and Dr. Lushington took an active part; and a liberal subscription having been commenced, upwards of £700 was collected before the meeting separated.

From this time Infant Education has been progressing; Mr. Wilderspin has carried this system into Scotland and Ireland; there now are supposed to exist about one thousand schools in the country, about three hundred of which are in and around London, although there are no means of arriving at the exact number.

The principle of infant government, or rather management, is best exemplified by Mr. Wilderspin in the following account of his com