tories, in which he has to produce the knowledge which he has acquired. I believe this to have been the mode of teaching employed among us from the earliest times. In that College, at least, of which I know most, such a method is enjoined in the statutes. Disputations are to be constantly held in the chapel ; verses written and affixed in the hall; and the lecturers are to employ half an hour in expounding their author, but a whole hour in examining their class*. But besides these practical lectures, we have always had lectures of the speculative kind, delivered by the University professors. Such lectures on history, morals, political economy, law, medicine, anatomy, geology, botany, mineralogy, chemistry, the mechanical sciences, and other subjects, have constantly been going on in our Universities; and have, especially of late years, often excited very great attention. We may, therefore, distinguish our practical and speculative teaching, as college lectures and professorial lectures ;and such a distinction corresponds to the phraseology commonly in use among us.

It may be said, that with professorial lectures examinations may be combined, and that such lectures may thus be converted into practical teaching. Nor do I intend to deny that, under certain conditions, which I shall afterwards endeavour to determine, this effect may be produced. But without now entering

* Lectorum singuli horam in dies singulos quibus legere tenentur in classe suâ examinandâ consumant; dimidiatam vero in authore interpretando. Stat. Trin. Coll. Cant. cap.9mo, De Lectorum Officio.

into this subject, I trust that the main features of the distinction, which I am trying to point out, of the two kinds of teaching, are already sufficiently clear.

Now it must be observed that, though all branches of science and speculation, old and new, fixed and moveable, may be made the subjects of exposition in lectures, practical teaching is applicable only to a limited range of subjects;—those, namely, in which principles having clear evidence and stable certainty, form the basis of our knowledge; and in which, consequently, a distinct possession of the fundamental ideas enables a student to proceed to their applications, and to acquire the habit of applying them in every case with ease and rapidity. The idea of space, of number, of the general relations of grammar and the force of language, are necessary and immutable parts of the furniture of the human mind. And mathematics and languages, which are the developement and working of these ideas, can be practically taught, for we can appeal to these ideas, and familiarize the mind with a series of vast and varied, yet certain consequences, to which they lead. But when we come to the wider physical sciences, we can only present the facts as a matter of observation, and the speculation as dependent on the facts. Here there is no room for acquiring habits of interpretation which can be tested by the teacher. And in sciences which are not physical, as morals or metaphysics, the philosophy of history, or of taste, the instruction is still more inevitably of the speculative kind. The teacher must be content to tell, and the learner to receive, what has been thought,

or ought to be thought, on these subjects. He does not, by learning them, acquire a new faculty, which he must practically exercise. Such subjects as I have just described, may, perhaps, without impropriety, be distinguished by the collective title of "philosophy; and if this be allowed, it will, I think, appear, that philosophy is only fitted for speculative, as mathematical and classical studies are for practical, teaching. In saying this, I do not at all profess to know, whether I am employing the term "philosophy," in the sense attached to it by other persons, who may have written on the subject; but it may, I think, designate appropriately a large class of studies, all of which admit of the same mode of communication to the student.

In such studies, moreover, even if examinations be added to lectures, they can hardly constitute a practical teaching; for in such instances, the knowledge which lectures convey, is either merely retained in the memory, or is employed as material for further speculation by the student, and is not assimilated and converted into a practical habit of intellectual action. Examinations, therefore, in these cases, may test the goodness of the memory, and the clearness of the apprehension or general faculties; and we may also conceive examinations of a higher kind, that call out the powers of original thought, and detect the activity of talent and genius. But the trial of mere memory and clearheadedness is not practical teaching, in the same sense as the acquisition of a power of interpretation or calculation; and the higher kind of examination which we have mentioned, presupposes that practical teaching of

which we here speak, and is not to be confounded with it. And thus, even with the addition of examinations on subjects of general philosophy, there will still remain, between those studies and the mathematical and classical pursuits of the English Universities, that difference which I describe by calling the former speculative teaching.

Thus the distinction of speculative and practical instruction, which at first sight appears to be a difference of the manner of teaching, is found, on examination, to imply a difference of the subjects taught. When we have determined that we will teach practically, we have decided that we must lecture, not on philosophy, not on metaphysics or speculative morals, or political economy, but on subjects of a different kind;-on the works of Greek and Latin authors;-the properties of space and number;-the laws of motion and force.

Of course, I mean only, that so far as we teach practically, we must select such subjects. Nothing prevents us, and as I have said, we have not been prevented, from giving, in addition to our college courses, professorial lectures on all the other subjects which I have mentioned. But it is not on that account the less important to my purpose, to keep the consideration of the two kinds of study distinct. It is obvious also, that, in many cases, the same subject admits of being dealt with in both ways. We may not only ascertain that our pupils can translate Sophocles, but we may present to them the widest speculative views at which critics have arrived,

respecting the history and structure of the Greek language, or the Greek drama. We may enter into discussions respecting the metaphysical grounds of the axioms of geometry, the processes of algebra, the laws of motion. Such speculations and discussions are of the highest interest and value; but it is easy to see that they are something in addition to the teaching of Greek and mathematics. They add immensely to the value of the practical acquisition of language and mathematical habits, but they presuppose the acquisition; and when these philosophical views are substituted for the practical instruction, they are altogether empty and valueless as means of education.

But I do not here insist upon this point. In the present section, my object was to distinguish the two systems, before I compared them. Trusting that the distinction is now sufficiently clear, I proceed to the comparison. And this I shall consider with reference to such points as these:-the effect on the intellectual and on the moral character of those who are educated, and on the general progress of national culture and civilisation.

SECT. 2.-OF THE EFFECT OF PRACTICAL TEACHING ON THE INTELLECTUAL HABITS.

THE advantages which belong to the study of mathematics, as an intellectual discipline, have been often stated by various persons. I may repeat language which I have already used:"In mathematics, the student is rendered familiar with the