freshening, life-giving breeze ever sweeps across its surface, why should it not repose in dark stagnation for ever?"

Mr. Mann states that a remarkable proverb has obtained currency in Prussia: THE SCHOOL IS GOOD, THE WORLD IS BAD. The activity generated by the one, dies of disuse in the other. Still the expansive force of knowledge and justice cannot altogether be subdued, and it is impossible to doubt that the time is coming when the people must assert their rights, and demand an outward life in harmony with their ideas. The late King promised a constitution to his people, lived twenty-five years afterwards, " and died forsworn." It is said that suspicions are entertained that the present sovereign is not favourable to the great intellectual movement which is not only preparing his people for self-government, but making it certain that they will one day demand it.

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The section on Corporal Punishment' is chiefly remarkable for the gratifying testimony that on the Continent it is almost entirely obsolete—and that in Great Britain it is fast becoming so. With regard to solitary confinement, however, as a punishment in schools, he mentions circumstances which we do not know how to believe, but of which he affirms he had personal knowledge.

"In large establishments at Birmingham, Liverpool, &c., I saw cells, or solitary chambers, four or five feet square, for the imprisonment of offenders."

We should be glad to be informed where it is in Liverpool, that "not mere children, but young men,' ""lads fifteen or sixteen years of age, dressed in cap and gown," are immured in cells four feet square, that is, in holes less than the dimensions of the small table at which we write. Mr. Mann is a credible witness, and the matter challenges inquiry.

Much useful information is communicated respecting the modes of conveying moral and religious instruction in the various Schools of Europe, but especially of England and Scotland. In some countries, as in Holland, all doctrinal religious instruction is excluded from the schools. The Bible is not read in them, and though the children are permitted to withdraw at a fixed hour, for the purpose of receiving a religious lesson from their pastors, they are not required so to do. In England there is neither law nor system on this or any other matter connected with popular Education, and, except in the schools of the Church of England, every variety of practice prevails. Mr. Mann gives several examples of the miserable

manner in which such instruction is given in the schools of Great Britain.

In a school of high standing near London, he expressed a desire to hear the teacher communicate information on the social virtues, such as regard to truth, observance of the rights of property, &c. The teacher turned to his class, and asked, "What instances of lying are given in the Bible?-A. The case of Ananias and Sapphira. Q. Against whom was that crime committed?-A. Against the Holy Ghost. Q. What doctrine of the Bible does this prove?-A. The doctrine of the Trinity. Here he stopped as though the subject of lying were exhausted."

He mentions the case of a school in Edinburgh, in which he no sooner read any portion of any verse in the Gospels and Epistle to the Hebrews, than the pupils announced the book, the chapter, and the number of the verse,-but in which the only answer he could obtain to the question, 'What is honesty,' was,To give money to the poor,-a definition, he adds, to which the whole class assented.

In Prussia only two systems of religion prevail, the Protestant Evangelical and the Catholic. In the cases where the children all belong to one religious denomination, the teacher gives the religious instruction. Mr. Mann states that in the schools, gymnasia, and universities of Prussia, a large proportion of the teachers are inwardly opposed to the doctrines they are required to teach. On asking one of these how he could teach what he disbelieved, and whether to do so was not of the essence of falsehood, he was told, "It is a lie of necessity. The Government compel us to do this, or it takes away our bread." On another occasion a school-inspector of great intelligence expressed the opinion that it would be impossible for any government to stand which did not select some form of religion to be enforced through the school and the pulpit on the whole community,-and it afterwards appeared that this man was a pantheist, and a disbeliever in the Book whose use and whose Doctrines, as interpreted by the State, he was enjoining upon all the schools of his charge.

The conclusion of this Report is remarkably eloquent. The picture of America's privileged condition, by her origin, and her distance from the social evils, and established sources of evil that oppress other lands, and of her consequent obligations, is a very striking piece of writing. We must close our extracts with a passage that is intended to describe the present condition and prospects of the great masses of this country. It is largely and fearfully true.

"No truth can be more certain than this,—that after the poor, the ignorant, the vicious, have fallen below a certain point of degradation, they become an increasing fund of pauperism and vice,-a pauperengendering hive, a vital, self-enlarging, reproductive mass of ignorance and crime. And thus, from parent to child, the race may go on, degenerating in body and soul, and casting off, one after another, the lineaments and properties of humanity, until the human fades away and is lost in the brutal or demoniac nature. While the vicious have pecuniary means, they have a choice of vices in which they can indulge; but though stripped of means to the last farthing, their ability to be vicious, and all the fatal consequences to society of that viciousness, still remain. Nay, it is then that their vices become most virulent and fatal. However houseless or homeless, however diseased or beggarly, a wretch who is governed only by his instincts may be, marriage is still open to him; or, so far as the condition and character of the next generation are concerned, the same consequences may happen without marriage. This also the statesman and the moralist should heed, that however adverse to the welfare of human society may be the circumstances under which a foredoomed class of children are born, yet the doctrine of the sanctity of human life protects their existence. Public hospitals, private charities, step in and rescue them from the hand of death. Hence they swarm into life by myriads, and crowd upwards into the ranks of society. But in society there are no vacant places to receive them, nor unclaimed bread for their sustenance. Though uninstructed in the arts of industry, though wholly untaught in the restraints and obligations of duty, still the great primal law of self-preservation works in their blood as vigorously as in the blood of kings. It urges them on to procure the means of gratification; but, having no resources in labour or in frugality, they betake themselves to fraud, violence, incendiarism, and the destruction of human life, as naturally as an honest man engages in an honest employment. Such, literally, is the present condition of large portions of the human race in some countries of Europe. In wide rural districts,—in moral jungles, hidden from public view within the recesses of great cities, those who are next to be born, and to come upon the stage of action, will come, fifty to one, from the lowest orders of the people,-lowest in intellect and morals, and in the qualities of prudence, foresight, judgment, temperance; lowest in health and vigour, and in all the elements of a good mental and physical organization;-strong only in the fierce strength of the animal nature, and in the absence of all reason and conscience to restrain its ferocity. Of such stock and lineage must the next generation be. In the mean time, while these calamities are developing and maturing, a few individuals,-some of whom have a deep stake in society, others moved by nobler considerations of benevolence and religion,—are striving to discover or devise the means for warding off these impending dangers. Some look for relief in a change of administration, and in the change of policy it will insure. With others, compulsory emigration is a remedy, a remedy by which a portion of the household is to be expelled from the paternal mansion by the terrors of starvation. There are still others who think that the redundant population should be reduced to the VOL. VI. No. 25.-New Series.

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existing means of subsistence; and they hint darkly at pestilence and famine, as agents for sweeping away the surplus poor,-as famishing sailors upon a wreck hint darkly at the casting of lots. Smaller in numbers than any of the preceding, is that class who see and know that, while the prolific causes of these evils are suffered to exist, all the above schemes, though executed to their fullest extent, can only be palliatives of the pain, and not remedies for the disease;-who see and know how fallacious and nugatory all such measures must be towards the laying anew of the social foundations of strength and purity. They see and know that no external appliances can restore soundness to a fabric, where the dry rot of corruption has penetrated to the innermost fibres of its structure. The only remedy,—this side of miracles,-which presents itself to the clear vision of this class, is in a laborious process of renovation, in a thorough physical, mental, spiritual culture of the rising generation, reaching to its depths, extending to its circumference, sustained by the power and resources of the government, and carried forward irrespective of party and of denomination. But a combination of vested interests has hitherto cut off this resource, and hence they stand, appalled and aghast, like one who finds too late that he is in the path of the descending avalanche. Under circumstances so adverse to the wellbeing of large portions of the race, the best that even hope dares to whisper, is, that in the course of long periods yet to come, the degraded progeny of a degraded parentage may at length be reclaimed, may be uplifted to the level whence their fearful descent began. But if this restoration is ever effected, it can only be by such almost superhuman exertions as will overcome the momentum they have acquired in the fall, and by vast expenditures and sacrifices corresponding to the derelictions of former times."

ART. II.-MENTAL HYGIENE: Or an Examination of the Intellect and Passions, designed to illustrate their influence on Health and the Duration of Life. By WILLIAM SWEETSER, M.D. (Reprinted from the American Edition.) Edinburgh 1844.

WE cannot call this a scientific work. It is hardly even a digest of practical observations. It contains the sensible remarks of a medical man whose attention has been drawn to a most important subject, arranged under convenient heads, and illustrated with such anecdotes and authorities as his reading happened to afford. It presents some useful materials, and offers some good advice, but has small pretensions to be an Examination' of a subject so extensive and refined. An amusing and practically useful, if not a very instructive, Article might be furnished, by culling from its facts and stories. The author commences with stating the conduciveness to health of mental activity, and combats the prejudice, which we cannot say ever happened to come across us, that intellectual pursuits are prosecuted at the expense of life. No doubt this is the tendency of excessive exercise of the brain,-but we thought it was universally conceded that some use of the mind was the salt of the body. To remove this fear from aspiring youths, a list is given of the longevity of the brain-workers. Newton lived to eightyfive; an unsatisfactory example however, for all that distinguishes him was executed in very early life. Galileo died at seventy-eight; Locke at seventy-three; Franklin at eighty-five. "By living twelve years," says the latter, "beyond David's period, I seem to have intruded myself into the company of posterity, when I ought to have been a-bed and asleep. Yet had I gone at seventy, it would have cut off twelve of the most active years of my life, employed too in matters of the greatest importance." The author somewhat fancifully and freely cites the Peripatetics and Academics as examples of the higher regard paid by the ancients to physical Education, as though they had selected their methods of lecturing for the benefit of their health, and, as it would appear, differed on the subject.

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The diseases to which literary men are subject, from intellectual excess, are said to be chiefly apoplexy, epilepsy, inflammation of the brain, and dyspepsia. This is a formidable list, but the author very candidly admits that they are likely to result not so much from studious habits, as from a combination of these with injudicious and luxurious living,-from the desire