self of the requisite qualifications to command. The penalty is a monument of feeling that must stand the same uncontradicted to all eternity. It can never be remitted when once incurred, except by some substitute that shall make the same manifestations of the moral governor's heart which the penalty would have done. Hence a penalty is a necessary part of law, as is also reward. The mere will of the moral governor, without a penalty expressed or implied, never can have the force of authority. It is no command. It contains no expression of his heart, as it must in order to constitute a law. The author is manifestly in error when he separates penalty from law, as he does on page 137.

In taking leave of this work, we are free to say that it would give us much satisfaction to dwell upon its excellences, which are many; but these will commend themselves, and afford much profit to any who may give the work a thorough perusal.

ARTICLE II.-THE STUDY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE.

ANCIENT Writers have left us a curious account of the conquest of Great Britain, which the Roman Emperor, Caligula, projected, but can hardly be said to have achieved. A large number of men were marched to the coast of the narrow seas which sunder the island from the continent. The troops were drawn up in battle array, the charge was sounded; then, after these imposing preparations were ended, the soldiers were commanded to fall at once to work and gather the shells lying on the shore. With these spoils of the vanquished ocean, as he complacently termed them, the Emperor returned to Rome, and no doubt found there admirers eager and able to celebrate his courage in disregarding established methods of carrying on war, and the unexampled success which had attended his exploits. Some such course of action, followed by some such result, has not unfrequently formed part of the history of many modern reformers in their work of overthrowing old and estabishing new systems of education. We are informed beforehand confidently, though vaguely it is true, of the glorious achievements that are to be accomplished. Old things, they tell us, are passing away; the golden age of instruction is about to be ushered in; and the adage that there is no royal road to learning will be quoted no more. We have only to wait until the new macadamized highway to wisdom, constructed with all the modern improvements, is laid open for travel, in order to find our soldiers marching easily from victory to victory. So, with drums beating and banners flying, army after army sets out to demolish ancient strongholds of erroneous education, and to rear over their ruins the standard of the pure and perfect system. We read in the newspapers that the assault has been begun; we hear details of the battle that is raging; we await with anxiety the result, and are at last assured that a glorious victory has been gained. But when we come to inquire what has actually been accomplished, to ask

for the trophies of the conquest, we usually find that it is only a collection of shells that has been gathered.

And yet so numerous are the imperfections in existing systems of instruction, that it is melancholy to think that so much honest effort to remedy these defects should, through misunderstanding and misdirection, come to nothing. Above all, it is painful that men, who talk so long and learnedly of the evil of studying other languages, should not have as yet thought it worth while to suggest some satisfactory plan of studying their own. For in no department of education is there a louder call for reform than in the one which has been taken as the subject of this Article. To assert that to the members of an Englishspeaking race no language can be so important and no literature so interesting as their own, would not be likely to subject any man to the accusation of making a statement either very original or very striking: and yet, if one considers solely the actual amount of attention paid in our schools to both our language and literature, it might not unreasonably be deemed an idea that had never occurred to any human being before. So thoroughly, indeed, has this particular branch of learning been neglected, that the very ideas in regard to the proper method of its study, which to the outside world of scholars will appear commonplace and matter of course, will to many of those engaged in the business itself of teaching, seem radical and revolutionary. For of all the cultivated languages to which, with us, the attention of students is directed, English is the one in which the least instruction has been given, and in which the little that has been given has been of so unsatisfactory a quality. In a large number of our institutions of learning, it is, strictly speaking, not taught at all; and it is in very few, indeed, if in any that the study has been carried on in a scientific spirit. Assuredly it is no wild statement to make, that in many of our colleges a man might go through a four years course, and never hear once from the lips of any of his teachers the names of Shakespeare or Milton; and there are still very few of our schools in which he would ever be reduced to the necessity of reading a single line of their works.

It is undoubtedly quite true that not everything can be studied in a four years course, though that fact has apparently es

caped the attention of some. But without entering into any argument as to the comparative importance of different branches of learning, it is sufficient to say, that with us, men sometimes make use of Latin, Greek, French, or German, but they always speak English; that they are occasionally lawyers, clergymen, physicians, engineers, and chemists, and as such are necessarily conversant with the literature of their respective professions; but they all without exception are members of an English-speaking race, or at least of an English-speaking people, and as such are bound to be acquainted with the literature of the language they hear and employ. For it is here that the men of all occupations, however wide apart they may be, can meet on common ground; it is here that tastes, however diverse in other respects, can feel the bond of a common sympathy and the unity of a common interest. Yet up to this time no attention has been paid to these considerations. In our schools, scarcely any preliminary preparation has been furnished. The student either picks up at hap-hazard any knowl edge he may acquire of the structure of our own tongue, or he does not acquire it at all: and where instruction is ostensibly given in the literature, it is in most cases taught at rather than taught.

If these seem to be strong statements, we hope in the course of this Article to make it clear to every thinking man that they are neither exaggerated nor unjust. No one, indeed, will see his way clearly to any reform in this matter, unless he fully comprehends how thoroughly existing systems have solved the problem of how not to do it; unless he is fully persuaded in his own mind that English should never be taught in the way it is taught, whenever instruction in it is given at all. The subject, therefore, naturally divides itself into three parts, First, what is the study which in our schools now usually goes under the name of "English Language and Literature,” and what is its value? Secondly, what should the study be? and thirdly, how should it be carried on?

Nearly all our higher institutions of learning go upon the principle that the whole duty of man, so far as regards instruction in English, has been fully and faithfully performed, when some exercises in composition have been required of the

student, and when some manual of our literature has been gone over. This, at present, seems to be the Ultima Thule upon which our educational pilots have fixed their eyes; it is but few of them that dream of the possible existence of a continent beyond. The subject of essay-writing, as it is only indirectly connected with this question, need not be spoken of for the present. But as there is a vague popular impression as to the immense benefit to be derived from the study of textbooks treating of English literature, as from them alone the student usually gets all the knowledge which, as a student, he does get, it will be well to ascertain precisely the value of all such manuals, and to examine critically the nature and importance of the information they furnish. Histories of every literature do unquestionably have a certain value: yet it can hardly be doubted that in the vast majority of cases they are immensely overrated. To some it will seem almost a sacrilege to deny the value of works of this kind, held, as many of them are, in high repute. Yet in spite of the great scholars who have been employed in the composition of them, there can hardly fail to lurk in every reflecting mind a suspicion that there must necessarily be a vast deal of deception in the pretensions which such histories make, and in the results they purport to accomplish. When we consider how immense is the literature of any one cultivated people; how profound a study is required of the writings of any great author before, in any proper sense, they can be said to be understood; how long a term of years is required to master any one system of philosophy; how vast is the number of inferior writers, whose works are of value, if not so much in themselves, for the effect they have had upon their own and upon succeeding times: when we bear all these things clearly in mind, and many other things closely related to them, we can hardly fail to find ourselves feeling considerable distrust of all histories of literature, of the accuracy of the knowledge they impart, of the justice of the criticisms they make, and of the general conclusions to which they come. For most of those who have written these works are not content with the literature of any one people or of any one limited period, though either, if faithfully executed, is apparently a sufficiently arduous task for a life-time. But projects so