fuch happiness, as no human being ever yet attained; and fuch as nature and providence with all their bounty never will bestow. By the conftant perufal of narratives of this defcription, the youth of both fexes are encouraged to cherish expectations, that never can be realized; and to form notions of each other, which painful experience will every day refute. The mind too, by exercifing only its weaker powers, becomes enervated and enfeebled, incapable or impatient of ftronger and better exertion; difgufted with the tumult of bufinefs, or the roughness of contradiction ; and with all the realities of nature and of truth; and the moft valuable feafon of life is fpent in the sport of mufing, inftead of the labour of thinking; in the indulgence of the fairy visions of hope, and the reveries of a perverted imagination; inftead of the purfuit of fcience, the formation of maxims of wif 1 dom, dom, and the eftablifhment of the principles of moral duty. I am not prefumptuous enough to fuppofe that any obfervations of mine will correct a folly, that is at once fo fafcinating and so fashionable; that a folitary effay on education can prevail against a hoft of novels and romances. The votes of the judicious, however, I doubt not, are in my favour; but the practice of the majority is clearly on the other fide; and against meafures which they can neither approve nor prevent, all that the minority can perform, is to affert the arguments of truth, and to enter the teft of reprobation. pro CHAP. CHAP. XV. On Compofition in Profe and Verse. OF tant. Four exercifes at fchool compofition is unquestionably the most impor To this all others are not only inferior in value, but generally fubfervient in their ufe. They may be confidered as the theory, this as the practice. They are the means, of which this is the end. With great juftice, therefore, does it occupy fo much of the time and attention of our publick fchools. The first written exercife, in almost every feat of literary education amongst us, are nouns and verbs declined and conjugated, with the proper tranflation of every cafe and tenfe, upon the fpecimens exhibited in the accidence; and in many of of them, the next employment is to rectify the Latin in the compilation of Bailey, Turner, or Clarke. The use and propriety of the former practice are too obvious to ftand in need of recommendation. It compleats the knowledge of the firft and moft effential part of grammar; and it is performed at an age, when little elfe can be obtained. But in the next ftep of our progrefs ferious objections may be urged against the ufe of fuch compilations as have been mentioned. The business is too mechanical. They require little exertion of the memory, the inven tion, or the judgment of the ftudent. They teach him terminations alone; or as an able fchoolmafter obferved, to make bad Latin into worfe. The Exempla Minora and Moralia of Eton, and the particles of Wyllimot are much better adapted to the purposes of a fchool. The youth has here not only the Latin words to feek: but the phrafeology to study; the fentence to conftruct; and, ndeed, indeed, every thing else to perform, that can lead him to imitate the ftyle of the authors he has read; or to make himself mafter of the language, into which he is called upon to tranflate the paffages before him. The fecond of these publications, however, is not without fuch imperfections, as the directors of Eton fchool could not have been expected to have allowed, and certainly ought to correct. In fome of the fentences tranflated from the Latin authors, the meaning is either defignedly changed, or ignorantly mistaken; and that confequently is rendered impracticable, which might often be thought defireable, and which the compilers feem to have intended, a comparifon of the tranflation of the ftudent with the original. In other paffages the expreffions are not only without elegance, but fometimes fo aukward and obfcure, as hardly to be intelligible; and by what means the pupil is to make that good fense in his Latin, which is already non fenfe |