with priestcraft, to avow sentiments and opinions that were adverse unto the schemes of temporal dominion. The foolish and ill educated are ever to be led by turning all things out of the road of right reason, into the road and guise of tragedy and entousiasmos ; and so it is that we see all the homilies of religious agitators, filled with tragic representations of the sufferings of our blefsed Lord and of his followers, instead of those bright and infinitely wise lefsons of justice and goodnefs, to establish which, in opposition to priestcraft, he came, and for which he suffered. How hard must it have been in the midst of all this delirium, at the time of the first millennium, when the priests declared the reign of the saints, and Peter the hermit preached the crusades, and the extermination of the Saracens, for a man to have sustained his reputation without yielding to the phrensie of the times! Surely (saith Plutarch,) I had rather a great deal, that men fhould say there was no such man at all as Plutarch, than that they fhould say, "there was one Plutarch that would eat his children as soon as they were born," as the poets and superstitious speak of Saturn; as the contumely is greater towards God, and the danger greater towards men, from such dreadful conceits, than from unbelief. Now in all these difficult postures, or such like, whereof the variety must needs be infinite, it is a main point in the art of life not to think silence the wisdom of fools, but, if rightly timed, the honour of wise men, who have not the infirmity, but the vir tue of taciturnity; and speak not out of the abundance, but out of the well weighed thoughts of their hearts. As the love of God, and kindness unto our fellow" men, are the two main pillars of religion and virtue, so a divine temper of mind, and especial humanity towards persons of all parties, howsoever contentious together,, may preserve a man harmless, and even happy, in the most troublesome and dangerous times, whereof we have had anciently a notable example in the life of Pomponius Atticus, and in our own days that of Michael Montaigne in France, who passed through all the hot spirits and times of the ligue, not only without evil, but with much solacement of general friendship and contentment. To be continued. HINTS FOR ESTABLISHING A SEMINARY OF EDUCATION ON A NEW PLAN. THE Continued from p. 47. HE education of youth consists of two principal branches, the acquirement of languages, and of sciences. A proper seminary of education therefore fhould contain two separate institutions, one to be chiefly adapted to teaching of languages, and the ether for instructing in science, and those arts which depend upon it. But though these institutions should be distinct, they ought to be so connected as that both can be carried on together when necefsary; for ma ny advantages will be found to result from this kind of union between the different branches of education. On this principle, though in the following efsay I fhall treat of these as separate institutions, distinguishing the school for languages and exercises by the title of the gymnasium, and the school for science under the name of the academy, yet I am to be understood to mean that these together form only ONE general seminary of education, under the patronage and direction of one controuling power only. And first, OF THE GYMNASIUM, Or school for languages and exercises. Languages may be acquired in two ways, by simple imitation only, and practice in using them, or by dogmatic instruction and grammatical precepts. The universal experience of mankind clearly proves, that every language can be acquired with ease by imitation, in a very short time, by every human being who has the use of reason, and the organs of speech and hearing. Children in every country, in this manner, acquire a considerable knowledge of the language spoken in their hearing, long before their organs can be brought to modulate the words they understand; and if they chance to be placed among those who speak with propriety, they also speak the language with propriety and fluency, long before they are able to form an idea of the reasons for those grammatical niceties which they in practice so carefully observe. They thus mechanically adhere to the rules of grammar without ever having heard May 23. the word, or formed any idea of what it means; and vary and inflect, with justnefs and propriety, all the variable and flexible parts of speech in the Language they use, without ever having spent a thought on the clafsification of words of any kind. This therefore must undoubtedly be the easiest, the most expeditious, and the pleasantest method of reaching languages of every kind to young persons; for their minds are then active and restlefs, and their euriosity and desire to supply their wants, is so keen, as necefsarily to insure a wonderful progrefs in this mode of teaching, though they are at the same time so unsteady, and so little accustomed to mental abstractions and nice discrimination of circumstances, as to make every other mode of teaching that has been thought of, to them tedious, painful, laborious, and inaccurate. This is what we might, from reasoning, expect hould be the case; and it is abundantly confirmed by experience. Of all the abstract sciences on which. the mind of man can be employed, perhaps the the ory of language, which forms the foundation of eve sy grammar, is one of the most intricate. So very. Intricate indeed it is, and so very imperfectly has it been studied, that no man has ever yet been able to explain these principles in a clear and satisfactory manner; and of course, all the grammars that have been formed are full of inaccuracies and impreprietics, which, when dogmatically taught to youth in any one language, serve only to confuse and perplex his understanding, if his reasoning powers are vigorous, and to involve him in intricate mazes, from which his mind during the remainder of his life, never can be fully disentangled. If indeed his mind be inactive, and his reasoning faculties weak, he will, in this case, form no new ideas to perplex himself, and will be disposed implicitly to adopt the dogmas of his preceptor; and of course, may be able to retain with facility the lefsons he has recei ved but that must be a wretched system indeed whose perfection consists in annihilating the noblest powers of the mind. On these principles, I conceive it to be an uncon trovertible truth, that the nearer our system of teaching languages approaches to that natural one of practice, in the familiar use of words, the morë easy and perfect it will be; and that the more it partakes of that grammatical plan, which has been too long very generally adopted in Britain, the more dif ficult, tedious, and imperfect it is. I would by no means be here understood as undervaluing gramma tical disquisitions, which are, doubtlefs, not only use ful, but absolutely necefsary to be attended to by every one who wishes to acquire a critical accuracy in the use of any one language; but what I here wish to inculcate is, the inutility of entering upon these niceties with one who is not capable of reada ing and understanding, or of speaking with ease in a colloquial way, that particular language he is studying, and the absurdity of attempting to make a child comprehend the meaning of those niceties, before he understands the words and phrases, or ge |