From new, and seemingly irregular, methods of education, perhaps something extraordinary and uncommonly great may spring. At least there would be a fair chance for such productions; and if something odd and eccentric should, now and then, arise from this unbounded liberty of education, the various business of human life may afford proper spheres for such eccentric geniuses.

Education, taken in its most extensive sense, is properly that which makes the man. One method of education, therefore, would only produce one kind of men; but the great excellence of human nature consists in the variety of which it is capable. Instead then of endeavouring, by uniform and fixed systems of education, to keep mankind always the same, let us give free scope to everything which may bid fair for introducing more variety among us. The various character of the Athenians was certainly preferable to the uniform character of the Spartans, or to any uniform national character whatever.

Is it not universally considered as an advantage to England, that it contains so great a variety of original characters ? And is it not on this account preferred to France, Spain, or Italy?

Uniformity is the characteristic of the brute creation. Among them every species of bird build their nests with the same materials, and in the same form; the genius and disposition of one individual is that of all; and it is only the education which men give them that raises any of them much above others. But it is the glory of human nature, that the operations of reason, though variable, and by no means infallible, are capable of infinite improvement. We come into the world worse provided than any of the brutes, and for a year or two of our lives, many of them go far beyond us in intellectual accomplishments. But when their faculties are at a full stand, and their enjoyments incapable of variety or increase, our intellectual powers are growing apace; we are perpetually deriving happiness from new sources, and even before we leave this world are capable of tasting the felicity of angels.

Have we, then, so little sense of the proper excellence of our natures, and of the views of Divine Providence in our formation, as to catch at a poor advantage adapted to the lower nature of brutes? Rather, let us hold on in the course in which the Divine Being Himself has put us, by giving reason its full play, and throwing off the fetters which short-sighted and ill-judging men

have hung upon it. Though, in this course, we be liable to more extravagancies than brutes, governed by blind but unerring instinct, or than men whom mistaken systems of policy have made as uniform in their sentiments and conduct as the brutes, we shall be in the way to attain a degree of perfection and happiness of which they can have no idea.

However, as men are first animals before they can be properly termed rational creatures, and the analogies of individuals extend to societies, a principle something resembling the instinct of animals may, perhaps, suit mankind in their infant state; but when we advance in the arts of life, let us, as far as we able, assert the native freedom of our souls, and, after having been servilely governed like brutes, aspire to the noble privilege of governing ourselves like men.

are

If it may have been necessary to establish something by law concerning education, that necessity grows less every day, and encourages us to relax the bonds of authority, rather than bind them faster.

Secondly, this scheme of an established mode of education would be prejudicial to the great ends of civil society. The great object of civil society is the happiness of the members of it, in the perfect and undisturbed enjoyment of the more important of our natural rights, for the sake of which we voluntarily give up others of less consequence to us. But whatever be the blessings of civil society, they may be bought too dear. It is certainly possible to sacrifice too much, at least more than is necessary to be sacrificed for them, in order to produce the greatest sum of happiness in the community. Else why do we complain of tyrannical and oppressive government ? Is it not the meaning of all complaints of this kind that in such governments, the subjects are deprived of their most important natural rights, without an equivalent recompense; that all the valuable ends of civil government might be effectually secured, and the members of particular states be much happier upon the whole, if they did not lie under those restrictions?

Now of all the sources of happiness and enjoyment in human life, the domestic relations are the most constant and copious. With our wives and children we necessarily pass the greatest part of our lives. The connections of friendship are slight in comparison of this intimate domestic union. Views of interest or ambition may divide the nearest friends, but our wives and children are, in general, inseparably connected with us and attached to

us.

With them all our joys are doubled, and in their affection and assiduity we find consolation under all the troubles and disquietudes of life. For the enjoyments which result from this most delightful intercourse, all mankind, in all ages, have been ready to sacrifice everything; and for the interruption of this intercourse no compensation whatever can be made by man. What then can be more justly alarming to a man who has a true taste for happiness, than either that the choice of his wife, or the education of his children should be under the directions of persons who have no particular knowledge of him, or particular affection for him, and whose views and maxims he might utterly dislike? What prospect of happiness could a man have with such a wife, or such children? (From Civil Liberty.)

SAMUEL HORSLEY

[Samuel Horsley, 1733-1806, bishop successively of St. David's, Rochester, and St. Asaph, was born in the parish of St. Martin's in the Fields, London, where his father was lecturer. He appears to have received a home education until his admission at Trinity Hall, Cambridge, in 1751. When he received Holy Orders he became his father's curate at Newington, and succeeded to the living on his father's resignation in 1759. In 1767 he was elected Fellow of the Royal Society, and in 1768 he accompanied Heneage Finch, Lord Guernsey, to Christ Church, Oxford, as private tutor. In 1774 he was presented by his pupil's father to the rectory of Albury, in Surrey, and in 1777 he became domestic chaplain to the Bishop of London, Dr. Lowth, and Prebendary of St. Paul's. In 1781 he was appointed Archdeacon of St. Albans and in 1777 he received through Lord Chancellor Thurlow a prebend at Gloucester. In 1788 he was raised to the Bench as Bishop of St. David's, and in 1793 he was translated to Rochester, holding with that see, as several others had done, the Deanery of Westminster. In 1802 he returned to Wales as Bishop of St. Asaph. He was an energetic and useful prelate in both his Welsh dioceses, as well as in his English one. He was twice married, and left one son by his first wife, who became an eminent clergyman in the Episcopal Church of Scotland, in the measures for the relief of which Bishop Horsley took a leading part in the House of Lords. He died at Brighton, 4th October 1806.]

As a master of English prose Samuel Horsley had few equals in his own day. The reputation he gained among his contemporaries and their immediate successors was quite out of proportion to the bulk of his writings, but not at all out of proportion to their merits. He was in fact regarded in the early part of the nineteenth century as, in point of abilities and attainments, far above all other writers and speakers on the side of the Church. Men of the most widely differing sentiments agree in this. Thus Bishop Jebb, the high churchman, calls him "our ablest modern prelate ; Dean Isaac Milner, the low churchman, "the first Episcopal authority (if learning, wisdom, and knowledge of the Scriptures be any foundation for authority)"; Bishop John Milner, the