orthodoxy, so loudly uttered by worldly statesmen, and the evangelical dissenters are made to feel that their favourite whigs, for whom they have made such great and generous sacrifices, are not "a staff," but "a broken reed, whereon, if a man lean, it will go into his hand, and pierce it." The support given to this Bill will not be forgotten at the next election, especially as, in some instances, gratuitous taunts and insults were added to legislative wrong.

A ministerial crisis was produced on Friday, June 14th, by a vote on Sugar Duties, when Sir Robert Peel was in a minority of twenty; but on the following Monday, marvellous to record, the house revoked its own decision by a majority of twenty-two, some honourable gentlemen having voted for Mr. Miles' motion on Friday, and against it on the Monday! This act, like several others on the Factory Bill, outrages the common sense and common honesty of the people, and unquestionably disposes the popular mind to listen to all sorts of projects to secure, if possible, something like upright legislation.

A disclosure has been made respecting the conduct of the government in opening letters confided to our Post-office, which has astonished the country. A Polish and an Italian refugee have complained that their letters, sixty or seventy, have been opened by secret machinery, kept for that purpose at the Post-office. A Ministerial majority crushed a motion for inquiry, but the public will strongly feel the justice of Mr. Thomas Carlyle's remarks upon it. "Whether the extraneous Austrian Emperor and miserable old chimera of a Pope shall maintain themselves in Italy, or be obliged to decamp from Italy, is not a question in the least vital to English men. But it is a question vital to us, that sealed letters in an English Post-office, be, as we all fancied they were, respected as things sacred: that, opening of men's letters, a practice near of kin to picking men's pockets, and to other still viler and far fataller forms of scoundrelism, be not resorted to in England, except in cases of the very last extremity."

IF ELAND has witnessed, with astonishment, her great agitator and his associates cast into prison, by a sentence pronounced with strange emotions by Judge Burton. His sentence being imprisonment for twelve months, a fine of £2,000, and personal and joint security to the amount of £10,000 for seven years. Happily, no popular outbreak has occurred; but the question is regarded as not finally adjudicated, an appeal being made to the House of Lords.

NOTICES TO CORRESPONDENTS.

Favours have been received from the Rev. Messrs. J. A. James, J. Griffin, A. J. Morris, J. C. Bodwell, George Taylor, George Smith, H. J. Rook, Henry Quick, A. King, A. Reid, D. Blow, A. Wells, S. Thodey.

Messrs. Joseph Nunneley, J. M. Strongman, G. H. Hartland.

A Subscriber from the Commencement. A Subscriber.

The Editor regrets that he is compelled to omit many interesting articles of intelligence for want of room, although there are twenty extra pages in the present number.

THE

CONGREGATIONAL MAGAZINE.

AUGUST, 1844.

ADDRESS TO THE SUPPORTERS AND PUPILS OF

MILL-HILL SCHOOL,

ON THE PUBLIC DAY, JUNE 19, 1844.

BY THE REV. RICHARD WINTER HAMILTON, LL.D., D.D.

A REVIEW of nearly thirty-five years,—the half of "the days of our years," of the thirty-five years which are necessarily the most determining and active of all the "threescore and ten," when even that sum of life is allowed,-must fill the mind that takes it with subjects of pensive interest. But the capacity to form such review implies that it is something more than the first half of our earthly being. A large proportion of our infancy was scarcely a thing of consciousness: to a larger share memory does not reach. The computation cannot then include our earliest years. The date I have described is reckoned from setting youth and opening adolescence. For so long is it,— thirty-five years! since I sat a school-boy among school-fellows in this fair retreat of knowledge and education,-since I partook of their tasks and their pastimes,-since I first gazed, with sentiments difficult to recall and impossible to renew, on the landscapes of this enchanting scenery, which seems, by its identity of aspect, its hill and dingle, its upland and plain, its rivulet and brook, to contrast and proclaim every other change. What has not changed? The material world, with all its seeming transformations, renews itself. The sun comes back to the same degree of its swerving track. The vernal foliage glitters on those branches which lately were despoiled and scathed. The streamlet murmurs and ripples on, whose channel a few months since was dry. But there are revolutions which may not be so repaired. Intellect and character receive fixed and immutable impressions. Truth or error, knowledge or ignorance, religion or impiety, have their exclusive operation on the mind. That is their seat and subject. It is of this

solemn process

that we speak. Within the supposed term, how widely and dreadly has this process worked! There have passed, through this Institution, new generations in their succession, each pupil's mind here developing a type or receiving a cast. These are yet pursuing their way in this world, or they have entered the eternal state. The course of their training in this place could not be indifferent-can never be indifferent! The bias, the plastic touch, the formative power, still is felt! It is yet going on! The immortal spirit confesses it equally with the tenant of our earth! Where are ye, beloved companions of far distant years,-mates of my youth? I can only trace a little band. Many images are in my memory, but I ask of the originals in vain. Not a few I fail to evoke from a long forgetfulness. But every spirit of once cheerful and smiling youth, whatever its lot, whatever its sphere, is living on, conscious, recollective, undying, and this its former local habitation continues to inspire its gratitude or to embitter its remorse. Faces may be turned hither, eyes may look forth upon this scene,—with what different expressions! -the patriot and the outcast, the holy and the wicked, the useful and the noxious, the honoured and the disowned,-from as different directions, from homestead and exile, from posts of influence and bypaths of obscurity, from the high places of our land and from the ends of the earth: ay, from more fearful extremes, glances may be meeting here from heaven and from hell! Yes,-while the perpetuity of nature in her great outlines and features prevails, we alone are changed our luxuriant locks thin and grey, our sunny countenances pale and worn, our vivacious eyes sunk and dimmed,-we alone are changed cares, sorrows, responsibilities, have saddened and awed us, -we can scarcely realise the past as belonging to us, we may hardly identify ourselves,-we, we, alone are changed! We can no more

return!

Passing from thoughts like these, sad and mournful, let me offer congratulations that this Institution has endured so long and proved so advantageous. Many regarded it as a doubtful experiment. The mind of the dissenting churches seemed scarcely to require it. The idea of education was very low. The means of education were as unworthy. The private seminary sufficed for nearly all. Twice seven years attained, trade and profession stood ready with indentures and articles to claim the tyro for the third. Jealousy was felt of the public school. Bigotry was scandalised at a liberal discipline. Little favour, doubtful auspices, smiled upon your foundation. Certainly that portion of public opinion upon which you must depend, was not prepared for your project. You broke away from narrow prejudices. They were the fetters which you burst. There have sprung up around you new conceptions, new classes, new exigencies. You held a noble advance. But it is now to be maintained. You must guide the power

which you have called into existence. You must stand foremost of the movement which you have impelled. And as the great science of teaching perpetually seizes clearer principles and ampler facilities and broader grounds, you are bound to allow it all its most philosophic range, while you equally guard it against all the conceits and impertinences of an empirical innovation.

Fifty years ago, our Nonconformist literature must have become strangely degenerate. The thinking habits, the tastes, the refinements, of a higher age seemed lost. They understand not the soul of Puritanism who speak of it as unlettered, nor do they appreciate the genius of Dissent who describe it as ungentle. Learning did of yore flourish among us. Our earlier writings are full of deep scholarship. They are imbued with the spirit of antiquity. Their raciness seems distilled from the ripest fruits which knowledge and elegance ever trained. They are settings of the brightest classic gems. But at that time, and even long before, a new race, most admirable for their piety, but otherwise rude as well as untaught, associated with us, bringing with them a great numerical strength, but also an unyielding force of prejudices. They certainly were not favourable to mental enlargement. They were the men of phrase, of prescription, of untutored feeling. With them the olden Nonconformist, spiritually improved by their contact, wrestled in many an intellectual struggle. Our learning had to be restored. Still shall we assert that, though a mixed multitude has come up with us, our communities never restrained and disparaged not only useful but accomplished learning. Great and almost insuperable were their difficulties. The universities of the south were shut against their members. Those of the north, though more liberal, were distrusted. We contended against the irruption, or, we would rather express it, the not quite congenial alliance; but it required wariness and energy to succeed. Our vocabulary had lost much of its clearness, strength, and ornament. Our ministerial furniture was slighted. Our sounder philosophy was disesteemed. Our theology, too deeply infected already by the vices of a pseudo-rationalism and of a lax interpretation, was threatened by the plausibilities of a loose, mean, and luscious declamation. It was an anxious era. The divinity, the scholarship, the noble character and ascendency of our holiest ancestry, our richest patrimony, our only inheritance,—were at stake. The course of a descending scale had begun. It was then that a few men of gifted mind and fearless zeal hastened to the breach. Our drooping colleges were revived. But no index of this melioration was so decisive as the plan and the resolve to establish this Institution. It struck a new chord among us, a summons to nobler efforts and higher deeds.

And in an age of calculation, a mechanical age, it was the honour of this school to seek and uphold grammar learning. The temptation,

the increasing temptation, the sordid temptation, was to turn all instruction into a craft, a manipulation. There was appetite for very little more. No clamorous importunity demanded this sterner style. Objections were even heard against it. Its likelihood of superfluousness was urged. Its irreligiousness was denounced. But here our "timehonoured," holy, Nonconformity made its stand. It would parley with none of the common-places of vulgar ignorance or mistaken scrupulousness. It joined its assent to the authority of universal experience, that the acquirement of languages, especially of the classic languages, is the foundation of the greatest learning, and the instrument best fitted for intellectual outgrowth. None contend for exclusive attention to them. None suppose that they comprehend the utmost materials of indoctrination. Mathematical and physical inquiries deserve no mean place in our institutes of tuition. But is the youthful mind capable of their highest principia? Ought it not to pass through a strengthening, expanding, preparation? Would not rigid science overstrain it? The cultivation of the richest languages, in the mean while, elicits and braces its energies. Oh how narrowly do they understand, or rather how unrighteously do they propound, the case, whose sole notion of learning a language is to get a glossary by rote! They know not that language is the expression of some people's inward life and heart! They know not that language is the minute inscription of habits and tastes which no public monuments can record! They know not that the words of the wise are the chronicles of their wisdom, and the words of the good are the emanations of their goodness! They know not that in the loss of these particular dialects of human speech, the loss must follow of the experience furnished by the most wonderful nations of the world! They know not that men must think in words, and that by words only can they be induced to think! They know not that language is the best analytic test of mental precision, so that rarely is that justly conceived which cannot be expressed! Thus the ancient Greeks declared reason and speech by the same word.*

This is not the time to defend our curriculum. That time is past. We cannot renew the controversy. It is settled. It is fatuous to regard it in a way the most hypothetical as that it can be disturbed. It is a fixed, demonstrated, Copernican, truth.

Only there is a defence of it almost worse than its impeachment. We love not selfish considerations in the unfoldings of the rational and moral principles of our nature. We would not press the care of youthful training upon a scale of social convenience and utility. "Maxima debetur puero reverentia." A smattering of this lore is, forsooth, to be tolerated, because it may assist the conquest of the

* Λόγος.