obliged to go out of the country, to come up to the European standard of scholarship. All our existing literary institutions would be exceedingly advanced by the establishment of such a standard of comparison, and by the source it would furnish for the supply of thoroughly educated professors; in this latter view alone, it is of importance enough to call forth every exertion to create it. We have now no institution in which professors of the requisite learning can be formed; it is almost an uniform usage, as soon as a young man is appointed to an academic chair, to send him off to Europe for a year or two, in the hope, probably, that he may find there some fountain at which he can drink his fill, and return as learned as Erasmus, for he has little chance of becoming learned in the allotted time, except by some magical process. We have some learned, aye, very learned professors, who have never been in Europe, but they are indebted to their own persevering labors and painful study for their learning, and not to the influence upon them of the college in which they were educated.

Constant reference has been made to European systems and usages in discussing the question of university education, but we do not take Europe for our standard in these or other things, any farther than we find her practices sanctioned by experience and suited to our condition. The question of adaptation to our own state of society, is decidedly the most important of all; but this does not require of us to reject indiscriminately all that has been, and insist upon entire originality in our system of education and plans of institutions for instruction; and to say that we must have it, is to say that we will throw away all practical knowledge, and embark upon a sea of untried experiments. In the experiments of other countries and ages, we enjoy an immense advantage, and it would be highly absurd in us to refuse to profit by their results.

It would require a volume to discuss all the minor questions which present themselves in reflecting on this subject; we did not start it with a view of going into details at this time, or pointing out the precise manner in which it is to be accomplished; we only say, in the full view of all the difficulties of local, religious, and political jealousies and prejudices, that we believe it can be done, and we think we perceive strong indications of public sentiment demanding to have it done. For the present we must stop here; we cannot go farther without entering upon a wider field than we can survey within the due limits of a single article.

ART. IV.-Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Bart. By J. G. LOCKHART, ESQ. Second Edition. Edinburgh:

1839.

FOR a period of about a quarter of the present century, the name of Walter Scott was more widely familiar on the tongues of men than that of any other contemporary author, for the same length of time. That he outlived the glory of his popularity is undoubted. An amazing fertility of authorship was followed by the natural sequel of exhaustion. Powers of invention never husbanded, but rather tasked to the uttermost, at length betrayed their almost inevitable failure. The inferiority of many of Scott's later productions gave to the world a pretext for that injustice which is so often the penalty of speedy popularity. The recoil came-the season of reaction. There was even danger that the world would make up its mind on Scott's claims to a permanent fame, judgingand in condemnation-on the works of his weaker age: these had brought disappointment often enough almost to make it cease to be so, and to awaken a distrust as to the real merits of previous productions which had won for him his honors. This was the state of opinion during the closing years of Scott's life, and perhaps for some time after his death. Time, that settled the earth in his grave, was beginning to give consistency to this judgment. People were begging back from the dead man the fame they had given with such open hand to the living. He was not so great as once he was thought to be; not because there was a more matured estimate of the writings which had gained his renown, but because these had been followed by others of inferior merit. The latter mintage had shown the fainter impression of a worn die, and an increased alloy, and so the credit of the whole currency was depreciated. In good time came the biographer, with the task before him of giving to the world materials for a full and true judgment-the story of Scott's entire career-recalling, instead of that sentiment of disparaging commiseration bestowed on his decline, the feelings which had accompanied his years of prosperous authorship. The measure of Walter Scott's might may now be fairly

The Edinburgh press has recently issued a second edition of Lockhart's book-admirably enriched with illustrations— the various likenesses of Scott at different periods of his lifethe members of his family, "household faces that were his own;" Camp and Maida not forgotten-the localities most intimately associated with the work-in short, the visible semblance of what a stranger would most desire to picture to his fancy. With this publication will, in all probability, close the long series which may be traced in their origin, directly or indirectly, to Walter Scott. Henceforth all that concerns him will be matter to be looked back to. The theme has been brought to its appropriate ending by the pen of Mr. Lockhart. Much as has been written on the subject, we cannot consent to dismiss in silence that which has filled so large a space in the literary history of our times.

Seldom has a biographer been placed in possession of such abundant materials, as Mr. Lockhart had at his command. His own personal and domestic intimacy-the recollections of a large circle of friends-the autobiographical fragments and sketches-Scott's correspondence and his private diary, left nothing to desire. Sad havock might have been made with these rich materials. The memory of Scott might have been spratted, if we may be allowed to invent a word to express that peculiar injury which was done to the memory of the poet Cowley, when in an evil hour his papers were committed to one, who was far better fitted to be the historian of the Royal Society than the biographer of his thoughtful, "melancholy friend." The letters of Cowley to his private friends, says Dr. Sprat, expressed the native tenderness and innocent gayety of his mind; and then by an extraordinary perversion of judgment he determined that their "native clearness and shortness, a domestical plainness and a peculiar kind of familiarity, can only affect the humor of those to whom they were intended," and thence he propounds with a self-complacency scarce endurable, the dogma that such letters should be suppressed, because "in them the souls of men appear undressed." Dr. Sprat may perhaps have been an uncommonly modest man, as well as one of strange judgment. If that invocation, which Milton sang of, could be made effectual to summon back Musæus and Orpheus, and Chaucer to finish the tales he "left half told," we should crave a portion of the mighty magic with which to conjure the ghost of Cowley's wrong-headed biographer, demanding oyer (to borrow a tech

nicality) at the same time of his correspondence; if we could recover one of those suppressed familiar letters, which have probably long since perished, the courtly Bishop Sprat, might carry back with him every sheet of that history in which he placed before the world in full costume the sages of the Royal Society.

The ancient grudge, to which we have just given some vent, has been recalled by contrast with the very different mode in which Mr. Lockhart has dealt with his materials. It is evidence of his biographical skill, that wherever it has been possible, he has withheld his own pen, and left Scott to tell in his own fashion the story of his life. It is matter of compliment to Mr. Lockhart, that a very large portion of the work is not of his composition. The memoir is a kind of composite production-biography and autobiography-better than either: the result has been, that in point of agreeable qualities and of deep interest, it may challenge comparison with any work in the language, with which it would be reasonable to institute a parallel. The portraiture of Scott is complete; we have the whole representation of his genius, its growth and constitution, and the sad sequel of its decay.

The account of his childhood presents a good deal of matter for curious speculation, and one can scarce fail to be struck with the accuracy with which Scott's mind, from all periods. of his life, travelled back into that dim and oblivious region. The power of early recollection, so different in different intellectual constitutions, was possessed by him undoubtedly in an uncommon degree, though it must always be borne in mind that it is a process, peculiarly exposed to self-delusion, so hard is it to discriminate between actual reminiscence and what we have chanced to hear of our early days. The account of Scott's childhood is however not derived solely from his own recollections, and indeed the best confirmation of its authenticity is to be found in the palpable foreshadowing of his career.

The parents of Walter Scott, before the birth of that child who was to make the name illustrious, had seen six of their infants laid in their little graves, and when again the household was gladdened by children's voices, the same dark economy of providence, which before had made their hearts desolate, caused the unformed strength of the tottering infant to be stricken with an old man's malady. By a sudden paralysis, in his second year, Scott was a cripple for life. Among

various remedies, he was sent from Edinburgh to dwell for a time in the open air of a neighboring farm, where the regimen which invigorated his sickly frame wrought manifestly upon his genius. It was at Sandy Knowe that his education began, his first teacher an illiterate shepherd, and the infant school the rough ground of a Scottish sheep-fold. When the old man went forth to watch the flocks, as they browsed upon the hills, the child was carried along, and Scott, long after, said "it was his delight to roll about upon the grass all the day long in the midst of the flock, and that the fellowship he thus formed with the sheep and lambs had impressed his mind with a degree of affectionate feeling towards them which lasted throughout life." Such, with his earliest consciousness of existence, was the beginning of his education-the shepherd and the shepherd's dog and the flock his daily companions. But more than this, he was thus placed in familiar intercourse with nature herself, and while no one can divine how it is that the material world around us exercises its influence upon the spiritual world within us, it is no overstrained fancy to say, that the senses of the little child began even then to be tributary to his imagination and his moral being. For what an image of a poet's childhood is presented in the tradition, illustrative of such influences, which tells of his having been one day forgotten among the knolls in a thunderstorm, and being found lying on his back, clapping his hands at the lightning, and crying out " bonny! bonny!" at every flash.

Another part of this education consisted of the old songs and tales familiar to his daily companions, as the lore appropriate to the spot itself, for the summit overhanging the farm house commanded the prospect of a district of which it was said every field had its battle, and every rivulet its song. With these the child became familiar, thus, no doubt, acquiring much before he could read. But besides his communings with the outward world, and with the minstrelsy, with which it may almost be said, without exaggeration, the air was filled, there is one reminiscence which shows that his mind must early have dwelt with some earnestness on the pages of books. A lady writes to Mr. Lockhart, that she distinctly remembers "the sickly boy sitting at the gate of the house of one of his relatives, with his attendant, when a poor medicant approached, old and wo-begone, to claim alms. When the man was retiring, the servant remarked to Walter, that he ought to be thankful to providence for having placed him above the