Smith's remark that the universities are in the habit of taking credit for all the mind they do not succeed in extinguishing, it is pretty certain that the small number of graduates who give character to the school are those who would succeed under any system. So far, indeed, as the great body of the students are concerned, there is small ground for boasting of the success of the English system. When we consider the wealth and resources of the English universities and great public schools, when we remember their ancient prestige, the talent at their command, and their high place in public confidence, in the light of the results produced, we can cordially agree with Prof. Blackie, of Edinburgh, in his letter to Dr. Hodgson, when he pronounces the whole system "a superstition, a blunder, and a failure."
School-discipline can never be divorced from the nature of school-occupation. If the studies are repulsive, if they do not take hold of the feelings, or if they produce indifference or antagonism, force is the teacher's only alternative, to keep the school in order, and carry on its work. The essential implication of coercion in influencing conduct is a penal policy. A compulsory system is one that punishes for a breach of rules. In civil society, where the object is simple protection, government has nothing to do but to attach penalties to the violation of law. But it is widely different in education, the object of which is to incite the student to put forth his energies; for, in the end, all true education is self-education. But a punitive system appeals to the lowest motive, the fear of the infliction of some form of pain, and it can never stimulate to the best or highest action. In the past history of education, flogging has been its almost constant accompaniment, and this has been coincident with schemes of study that have failed to enlist the sympathies of pupils, and to quicken their nobler emotions. Take the one element of language, the study of which constitutes the staple of school-drudgery, and which is habitually pursued as arbitrary and irrational task-work, and what can we expect but that students will require to be driven through the irksome routine of daily toil. Prof. Halfourd Vaughn indulged in no exaggeration, when, called before a committee of the British Parliament to testify as to the working of the English system, he said: "There is no study that could prove more successful, in producing, often thorough idleness and vacancy of mind, parrot-like repetition and sing-song knowledge, to the abeyance and destruction of the intellectual powers, as well as to the loss and paralysis of the outward senses, than our traditional study and idolatry of language." Two hundred years ago, Milton criticised the education of his time from exactly this point of view. He denounced it unsparingly, and went so far as to declare that a better system was not only possible, but might do more even for dunces than the prevailing method could do for brighter minds, and he put the statement in the following quaint and pungent form: "I doubt not that ye shall have more ado to drive our dullest and laziest youth, our stocks and stubs, from the infinite desire of such a happy nurture, than we have now to haul and drag our hopefullest and choicest wits to that asinine feast of sow-thistles and brambles, which is commonly set before them as the food of their tenderest and most docible age."
THE FAREWELL BANQUET TO PROFESSOR TYNDALL.
Prof. Tyndall having closed his labors in this country, has sailed for home. His work has made a deep impression upon the public mind, as was testified by the farewell dinner given in big honor in this city, before leaving. The affair was, in several respects, re-
