ART. VII. The Institutions of Popular Education. An Essay, to which the Manchester prize was adjudged. By RICHARD WINTER HAMILTON, LL.D. D.D. 12mo. pp. 340. Hamilton, London, 1845. Two years have passed since Sir James Graham abandoned the Education Clauses in his Factory Bill. At that time a liberal churchman of Manchester offered the premium of a hundred guineas for the most meritorious essay, on the best means of extending the benefits of education to the humbler classes of our people without aid or intervention from the state. Advertisements were issued; many valuable treatises were written; and to the essay at the head of this article the prize was awarded.

It is manifest, that the parties in this country who concern themselves with popular education consist of two classes-of those who believe that education is due to the commonalty, and that it will be in every sense a good both to them and to society generally; and of those who are more or less doubtful, if not altogether so, on both these points, but who, finding that the stream has set in this direction, yield to it, and become themselves educators, rather than see the work of popular instruction pass entirely into other hands. In the labours of this latter class, there is more of the partizan than of the patriot or the philanthropist-more of the sectary than of the Christian. But perfection is nowhere. The separate agency of every man includes, of necessity, a mixture of the wise and the foolish, the good and the evil; and what is true in this respect of the solitary man, is at least equally true of parties and communities. Nevertheless, though the agency in this case may not always be pure, the result must be good. Popular enlightenment may owe much even to envy and strife; but the general effect of such enlightenment will be social improvement. The age in which ignorance was regarded as the mother of obedience, and when it was fenced about and carefully handed down from generation to generation, as the guarantee for social order, is gone; and the most devout worshipper of the dependent, unreasoning passiveness of the former times, has nothing left to him, but to shape himself to the new course of things as he best may. Obedience he may still realize, but it must be by another process, and on other grounds. He may find it inconvenient that the multitude should have learnt to expect something more in return for their toil than to be housed and to be fed; but whether exactly agreeable or not, this sort of learning has come to them, and in

future he must be content to deal with them accordingly. In the history of the question of popular education in Great Britain, we may see the vast importance of announcing right principles, and of acting in some measure upon them, whether the wise in their generation shall be disposed to hear or to forbear. Let the principle be just, and the classes of men who abuse it now, will be constrained to adopt it ere long. Let the effort made be humane, Christian-like, and the men who traduce it for awhile as contemptible or mischievous, will soon be compelled to go and do likewise. Society, we regret to say, is often more indebted to the pride of parties than to their principles.

The history of Sir James Graham's attempt in the way of peace-making on this question, has placed protestant nonconformists in a new position with regard to it. They have not only declined the overture made by the state in the form proposed, but, as the effect of discussion, have become much more decided than previously in their opposition to state interference with the education of the people in any form. It should be carefully remembered, however, that having precluded the state from doing this work, it will behove them to see that it is done, and done at least as effectually by some other agency. They have never stood so committed to effort of this nature, either by avowed principles, or by circumstances, as at the present moment. They have said to the legislature, concerning this department of the public service, leave that to the nation-so leave it, and it shall be done. The census of education, in 1850, will, perhaps, show how far this has been the language of presumption, or that of a wisely regulated purpose.

In the meanwhile, the author of the volume before us has honourably acquitted himself in relation to this great duty. This essay is the production of a writer whose mind is stored with large knowledge, both of the past and present. His tastes have rendered him familiar with the history of art, literature, science, and society, from the remotest time to our own. The countries and the dwelling-places of the rude and the civilized in all ages live before him, and lend their pictures inexhaustibly to illustrate his theme. Over all these treasures, his understanding exercises a mastery which is at once refined and manly, discriminating and powerful. Nearly everything he touches takes the form and colour which cultivated mind only could bestow upon it. Of his wit we say little, because, exuberant as it is known to be, it is rarely indulged beyond the circle of his friends. His efforts as an author have been almost restricted to the exercise of his graver faculties. We are disposed to think that he has acted somewhat too rigidly upon this rule; but if our lighter literature has been a loser from

this cause, our more weighty questions have had the benefit. To Dr. Hamilton, there is little in the problems of political science, or of social economy, to produce bewilderment. He has confidence in man, confidence in himself, and is satisfied that the perplexities in human affairs admit of sufficient abatement to render life endurable, and, in the main, tranquil and happy. In human feeling, even in its humblest, its most neglected, it may be in its most despised form, he can separate between the precious and the vile-presenting the poor, in all their wretchedness and wrong, as the exemplars of virtues, in which their rich neighbours, if placed in the same circumstances, would often be found wanting. It is not in his nature to contemn humanity. He can pity it he can rebuke it, but he cannot think meanly of it. In its lowest state it is before him as an angel ruined. In its deepest degradation it has its signs of life, its traces of greatness, such as command reverence, awake sympathy, and warrant hope. How he has learnt thus to view man is manifest. He has himself sat at the feet of One who came to teach such wisdom. Our author is no stranger to the study of man as he may be seen amidst the splendour of Thebes and Babylon, of Athens and Rome; but it is as seen from Calvary and Mount Zion, from Sinai and Eden, that humanity assumes in his view its surpassing interest. The care evinced about it there, and the price set upon it there, are felt as wonderful. It is not for mortals to contemn the workmanship on which such value has been placed by the Infinite. Never does the language of this writer seem to be more appropriate to his conceptions and emotions than when partaking of that solemn or tender imagery which he so well knows how to borrow from the pages of the Hebrew prophets-the men who spoke to the infancy, and the early peoples of our world, in the name of its Maker. Their fine antique forms of speech, harmonize with the cast of his imagination, with his massy thoughts, and with his deep but controlled feeling. In the survey of universal history, his mind turns with its fondest, its most reverential bias, towards the course of such men, as towards the stream of light, which it should be pleasant to trace in its windings and inequalities, as it mingles with the shadows of our dark world.

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But our words must not be all words of commendation. more we find in an author to commend, the greater is the need to distinguish between his excellences and such peculiarities as may not be comprehended under that term. The characteristics of Dr. Hamilton's style are condensation and force; but these qualities are secured at the cost of verging continually on the abrupt and obscure. Give him one sentence of Coleridge, and

he would break it up into a score. The former writer runs you out of breath; the latter checks you so perpetually as hardly to allow you time to breathe at all. The terse bits, shot forth, as it were, in the pages of Dr. Hamilton, are often admirable, and they sometimes come in a series, as though manufactured to serve as mottos or apothems. To many readers this author must appear to write in the manner of a person who has turned with disgust from the smooth mediocrity of such scribes as Dr. Blair, and who has resolved to break in upon that wretched formalism by pushing an opposite style to extremity. Every sentence,' says Dr. Blair, should have a complete sense.' I demur to 'that,' replies Dr. Hamilton; I think it will be better given in half-a-dozen, provided always that my six consist of fewer words than your one.' But with all submission, we must say, that it does not appear to us strictly natural, that thought, any more than other living things, should be born piece-meal. Of course we account an abrupt strength as immeasurably preferable to an attenuated weakness; but there is a middle course here, as in most things. If the soft and smooth style may become distasteful, as resembling the gait of the effeminate lounger; on the other hand, the trenchant style may degenerate into mannerism, so as to resemble a strut or swagger, and thus be as little consistent with a gentlemanly or even with a manly bearing. We expect much when we require that men should allow us to lay down the law for them; we expect more when we require them to receive that law from us in the shortest and most peremptory terms we can command for the purpose. Still more do we tax the humility and patience of these parties, when the terms we employ are so few as to leave our meaning uncertain. In some instances, it would seem to be the design of our author that his whole meaning should not be at once seen-that his sentences should present glimpses rather than full disclosures of his purpose. In the manner of the Greek orator, he appears to compliment his Athenian auditory, by intimating, that to minds of such culture, single words or hints must be abundantly sufficient. Unhappily, all men were not Athenians, and even Athenians were sometimes more concerned to be reputed wise than to possess wisdom. Nor is the language of Dr. Hamilton less remarkable than the general structure of his composition. His diction embraces the extremes of our mother tongue-words the most idiomatic and indigenous, harnessed to their office with others the most foreign and unfamiliar. His acquaintance with Horace has not prevented his becoming a student of Tim Bobbin. Words so erudite, and exhibiting such strange compounds and applications, as to perplex the most learned, come up side by side with forms

of our Saxon speech so racy and ancient as to be rarely found now-a-days in books. Nor are these selections the result of accident. There is a wilfulness-a positive and a formed taste in what is thus done. The writer has a heart to give to all human interests and affections-whether home or foreign, whether of our time or of past time. On the whole, his writings are singularly adapted to furnish employment to that small breed of critics, who find their paradise in nibbling at words and phrases, and such-like matters. The comfort is, that the strength of Samson suffices to make a light affair of the withes of his enemies.

We doubt if there be another living writer who, in one sense, is so little understood by his readers. The style of Dr. Hamilton, both in the language and the form of it, is uniformly regarded by those to whom he is not otherwise known, as unnatural and vicious in an extraordinary degree-as the result of study and art, and as realized only by great effort. But we can assure such persons that, unnatural as composition of this order might be in another man, it is not unnatural in the author of this essay. In his case it is not so much a something learnt, as a something which we suspect he would find it exceedingly difficult to unlearn. If we mistake not, his thoughts and their costume are born together. His diction, his classical and learned allusions, and his grape-shot sentences, all bespeak, not the pedant nor the phrasemonger, but the man. In the language of his books, we see his vernacular speech-that which has been natural to him from his boyhood. Nevertheless, we deem it a misfortune that these peculiarities should be so marked as to render it expedient that people should be told thus much.

Should any of our young divines be disposed to imitate the highly-gifted author on whom we have ventured to make these observations, we would say to them, emphatically-beware. Let them not only remember that copyists are almost invariably imitators of the eccentric and the questionable; but let them be assured, before they assume the manner of Dr. Hamilton, that they possess his varied knowledge, his disciplined intellect, his power of imagination, his rich general taste, and his strong, healthy, and devout feeling; and then, if it were possible for such a man to be an imitator at all, even then let it be remembered, that what is nature in one man, may not pass for such in another, however perfect the resemblance. Dr. Hamilton is what he is, not by means of the singularities of which we have spoken, but in spite of them.

This essay includes ten chapters, under the following titles:— Preliminary Thoughts on certain Portions of our PopulationOn the Poor as a Class-On the Principal Divisions of the