Scenes of active life are painted by the author of the Kuzzilbash with the same truth, accuracy, and picturesque effect, which he displays in landscapes or single figures. In war, especially, he is at home; and gives the attack, the retreat, the rally, the bloody and desperate close combat, the flight, pursuit, and massacre, with all the current of a heady fight, as one who must have witnessed such terrors. We regret we have not space to give a further extract; and still more that we cannot add to these just praises any compliment to the art with which the author has conducted the incidents of his story-which are, to say the least, very slightly put together, and frequently place out of perspective the hero and his affairs. The historical events are dwelt on so often, and at such length, that we lose interest for the Kuzzilbash, in tracing the career of Nader and the revolutions of Persia. This is a sin which, we hope, the author will not cleave to, on further experience. We must also hint, that the moral characters of the agents whom he introduces are not sufficiently discriminated to maintain much interest with the reader; they too much resemble the fortem Gyan fortemque Cloanthum. It may be answered, with plausibility, that people, trammelled by the dogmatic rules of a false religion, and the general pressure of an arbitrary government, are not apt to run into the individual varieties of character to be found in a free and Christian community. But a more close inspection of that great mass which preserves, at the first view, one dull appearance of universal resemblance, gives a great many differences both of a national, a professional, and an individual kind. While, then, we sincerely hope the author of the Kuzzilbash will resume the pen, we would venture to recommend that he commence on a more restricted canvass, and lend considerably more attention to the discrimination of his characters, and the combination of his story, In this case, with his stores of information and powers of language, we cannot help thinking he will secure public favour.

In the meantime, and with our recollection of the remarkable circumstance, that English literature has found an interest even in Persia, we feel disposed to nourish hopes that the taste may increase. Why may not European productions become, in time, as indispensable to the moral habits of a Persian, as a Chinese leaf to an European breakfast? Such expectations may appear extravagant to that sect of dampers who may be termed the Cuibonists. What would be the good consequence, they may ask, should Britain be able to introduce into Persia the whole trash which loads her own circulating libraries? We reply that these volumes of inanity, as Johnson would have termed them, are yet not more inane than the romances of the middle ages, which spread

wide over Europe the system of chivalry, and thereby wrought a more powerful change on human manners than ever was produced by any one cause, the Christian religion alone excepted. Let any one who lists,' says a lively French author, 'make laws for a people, so I have liberty to compose their songs :' a similarity of books paves the way for a similarity of manners; and the veil of separation once rent, there is no saying how soon it may be altogether removed.

The possibility of a great change being introduced by very slight beginnings may be illustrated by the tale which Lockman tells of a vizier who, having offended his master, was condemned to perpetual captivity in a lofty tower. At night his wife came to weep below his window. "Cease your grief,' said the sage, go home for the present, and return hither when you have procured a live black beetle, together with a little ghee, (or buffalo's butter,) three clews, one of the finest silk, another of stout packthread, and another of whipcord; finally a stout coil of rope.' When she again came to the foot of the tower, provided according to her husband's commands, he directed her to touch the head of the insect with a little of the ghee, to tie one end of the silk thread around him, and to place the reptile on the wall of the tower. Seduced by the smell of the butter, which he conceived to be in store somewhere above him, the beetle continued to ascend till he reached the top, and thus put the vizier in possession of the end of the silk thread, who drew up the packthread by means of the silk, the small cord by means of the packthread, and, by means of the cord, a stout rope capable of sustaining his own weight, and so at last escaped from the place of his duresse.

ART. IV.1. Principles of Elementary Teaching, chiefly in reference to the Parochial Schools of Scotland; in two Letters to T. F. Kennedy, Esq., M.P. By James Pillans, F.R.S.E., late Rector of the High School, and now Professor of Humanity in the University of Edinburgh. Edinburgh. 1828. 2. Elements of Tuition. Part III. Ludus Literarius: The Classical and Grammar School; or, an Exposition of an Experiment in Education, made at Madras in the years 17891796; with a view to its introduction into Schools for the higher orders of Children, and with particular Suggestions for its Application to a Grammar School. By the Rev. Andrew Bell, D.D., LL.D., &c., Master of Sherburn Hospital, Durham.

1828.

3. A Letter to John Hughes, Esq., M. A., on the Systems of Education proposed by the Popular Parties. By the Rev. John Phillips Potter, M.A., Oriel College, Oxford. 4. A Letter to the Right Honourable Robert Peel, on the subject of the University of London. By Christianus. 1828. 5. Some Account of the System of Fagging at Winchester School; with Remarks, and a Correspondence with Dr. Williams, Head Master of that Public School, on the late expulsions thence for resistance to the authority of the Præfects. By Sir Alexander Malet, Bart. London. 1828.

NURSED, say the Rabbies, be he who keepeth a pig, or

who teacheth his son Greek! If Latin had been included in the anathema, many a poor boy in Christian countries might have wished himself a Jew, that so he might have come under the benefit of the saving malediction. The cruelty by which barbarous times are characterized, and which reaches far into more civilized ages, is not more strongly marked in the laws of every European people, than in the history of scholastic education.

It began in cloisters, and this alone might explain wherefore it was originally conducted upon a principle of severity. The children who were there brought up were devoted to a religious life; and whether this were to be secular or monastic, the first thing which the preceptors deemed necessary was to subdue the will, and break the spirit to the yoke of a rigorous discipline.

We continually read in our hagiologists of children running to the shrines of the saints, in the hope of there obtaining protection against the cruelty of their masters. A boy in that hope clung to the tomb of St. Adrian, at Canterbury; and the master, disregarding in his anger the sanctity of the spot, chastised him as he clung there: the first and second strokes were allowed to be given with impunity; but the offended saint stiffened the arm which was raised to inflict a third; and it was not until the master had implored forgiveness of the boy, and the boy had become his mediator with the defunct and beatified bishop, that the use of the limb was restored. Another miracle, which it would require a very different degree of credulity to believe, but which undoubtedly exemplifies the temper in which scholastic punishment was administered, is also related by Capgrave, in the legend of the same saint. The culprit ran to his shrine, calling upon him for help, and the master is represented as declaring in reply to these appeals, that even if Christ himself were to interfere in his behalf, the boy should not escape unpunished. A dove, beautifully white, is said instantly to have alighted upon the tomb, and by bending its head and fluttering its wings, as if in the attitude of supplication, to have disarmed the repentant

repentant pedagogue of his wrath, and made him fall upon his knees, and supplicate forgiveness for his own impiety. The friendly relation which St. Adrian held to the scholars of Canterbury, was filled by Queen St. Ermenilda, at Ely. Do you imagine that St. Ermenilda is always to be your patroness when you have done wrong?' said the schoolmaster, as he forced some of his boys from their place of refuge, and flogged them to his heart's content (usque ad animi satietatem verberat); but in the ensuing night, the insulted saint appeared to him, and compressed his hands and feet more tightly than if she had fastened them with manacles and fetters; all power of motion was instantly taken from the contracted parts, till the boys, of whom it was now his turn to pray for forgiveness, had forgiven him, and then being carried as a penitent supplicant to the shrine, he was restored to the use of his limbs. In such miracles the manners of the times are truly represented, as in the drawings with which the manuscript of an old romance is illustrated.

It is one of the best things recorded of Archbishop Anselm, a man not otherwise remarkable for meekness of mind, or gentleness in his course of life, that he perceived the folly as well as the barbarity of this servile discipline, and remonstrated against it. A certain abbot, talking one day with him of the affairs of the monastery (Canterbury is very likely to have been the scene), asked him what could be done with the boys who were bred up there. They are perverse, he said, and incorrigible; we never cease beating them day and night, and yet they are always worse than they were before. What, replied Anselm, do you never cease beating them? And what sort of persons do they turn out to be, when they are grown up? Stupid and brutal, said the abbot. Then, answered Anselm, how well have you bestowed all your pains in education when you have educated human beings so as to make brutes of them! But what else can we do? said the abbot, abashed at the rebuke, and yet not made sensible that he had proceeded upon a wrong system. We use all means for compelling them to learn, and yet they make no proficiency. For compelling them?' repeated Anselm. Tell me, I pray you, Sir Abbot, if you planted a young tree in your garden, and were presently to shut it up so closely on every side, that it could nowhere push out its branches, what sort of a sapling would it prove to be, when, at a year's end, you came to set it free?truly a worthless one, with crooked and intertangled boughs; and this from no fault except your own, in having so unreasonably cramped it. Certes it is just thus that ye are doing with your schoolboys. They have been planted as an oblation in the garden of the church, that they may grow there and bring forth

fruit unto God. But you keep them under a perpetual constraint by fear, by threats and stripes, so that they are not allowed to enjoy any liberty. And, therefore, they who suffer under this injudicious oppression acquire such evil thoughts and desires, which grow up like thorns in their minds; and these they feed and cherish, till they have acquired such strength as to resist obstinately every means which you can possibly administer for correcting them. Hence it results, that because they never perceived in you anything of love-anything of compassion-anything of benevolence or kindness toward them, they can have no belief afterward of any thing good in you, but are persuaded that whatever you did proceeded from hatred and malice: and the miserable consequence is that, as they grow in years, their dispositions being thus contorted, and rendered prone to evil, suspicion and hatred grow with their growth. Having themselves never been trained by any one in true charity, they can never look upon others but with a downcast brow and an eye askant.' It was the best sermon that ever Anselm preached,—one that entitles him to a far more honourable and endearing remembrance than any thing which is recorded of him in the civil and ecclesiastical history of England. For God's sake,' he pursued, tell me why it is that you treat them in this spirit of annoyance? Are they not human beings are they not your fellow creatures? Would you that they should do unto you as ye do unto them, if your relative situations were changed, and ye were what they are? But admit that your intention is to form them to good manners by blows and stripes; did you ever know a goldsmith form a plate of gold or silver into a goodly shape only by hammering it? I think not, indeed! But how then? to the end that he may bring his plate into the form desired, he, with his instrument, gently presses it, and taps it gently, and carefully, and with gentle touches smoothes and shapes it; and so must ye, if ye desire to accomplish your boys in good learning, bestow upon them the alleviation and the aid of paternal compassion and kindness, as well as the use of stripes.' The abbot was not yet convinced, but maintained his cause like a sturdy disciplinarian. What alleviation?" he asked, 'what aid?' 'We endeavour to force grave and good manners upon them. Bene quidem,' answered Anselm. Bread, and any kind of solid food, is good and wholesome for those who are able to eat it; but take an infant from the breast, and give it him instead of his natural food, and you will see him choked by it, rather than comforted and delighted,-I need not tell you why. But hold you this for a truth, that as there is for the weak body and the strong their appropriate food, so is there for the weak and the strong mind. The strong mind delighteth in, and is nourished