1821.] St. Donat's Church.-Education of the Poor defended. 491 sel, Arg. a chevron between three manches, Sable. The Registers commence in 1570; in which are the following notices : On the first page of the Register: "1652. Thomas Carne married to Jane Stradling, 27 April. Edw. Turberville, esq. to Elizabeth Stradling, Sept. 1653. Mem. The above ladies were daughters of Sir John Stradling, bart, and his wife Elizabeth Gage. He being nephew of Sir Edward Stradling, bart*, and she a niece of Lady Stradling, whose name was Agnes, daughter of Sir Edward Gage. They, dying without issue, adopted their relations, Sir John and Elizabeth, above mentioned, who were married and had ten children, whose posterity continued to Sir Thomas Stradling, the last of the family of the Stradlings. (Vide Monument.) "N. B. The marriages of this family commence in 1574; baptisms in 1660; burials in 1573; agreeable to Register. In the church-yard is a very fine Cross on the top of which are the remains of a figure of the Virgin and Child on one side; and of our Saviour on the Cross, with two females kneeling, on the other. There is a tomb in the church-yard which, although of no antiquity, is worthy of notice, as it records a melancholy event which occurred in the vicinity of St. Donat : Sacred to the memory of Sackville Turner, esq. a Captain in his Majesty's 33d regiment, and of Sarah, his wife, who were cast away and drowned near this place on the night of the 5th of September, 1774. He was born at Therfield in the county of Hertford, 1740. She was born at Warton, in the county of Norfolk, 1752. They lost two children; the eldest not a year and a half old. Loved, esteemed, and respected, for every good quality that could adorn human nature; blessed with a genteel competency, with health and content to enjoy it; happy in themselves, and above all so in each other, this couple, without a moment's warning, was cut off!-Reader! Let not this severe stroke of affliction to all that knew them be thrown away upon thee. thou, like them, prepared!" Be Mr. URBAN, THE April 21. HE Education of the Poor is a subject on which a great many opinions subsist. Many are the objections raised against it, and great is the odium thrown on its avowed advocates. Of all the objections urged against it, there are only two, which appear to possess any share of plausibility; and, consequently, only two which merit serious confutation. The first is, that the Education of the Lower Orders increases their natural aversion to subordination; the other, that it lays them open to the influence of that mass of profaneness and disloyalty, which daily issues from the press. I now propose to consider the first objection; viz. that the Edu. cation of the Lower Orders increases their natural aversion to subordination. There are two weapons with which: we combat opinion-argument and experience. I shall begin with a few words, by way of argument;-Is it not a universally received axiom, in the system of Modern Education, with re gard to the Upper Classes, that the more the mind is opened, the more it becomes sensible of its own defi ciencies, and, consequently, the more favourable to the growth of humility? And why should the same cie cumstance produce a quite opposite effect on the Lower Classes? If the Poor are instructed, from the perusal of their Bibles, to follow the precepts therein contained, it follows that the strength of the argument greatly depends on what line of conduct the Bible enforces. Now does the Bible teach insubordination? Or, does it enforce submission to lawfulauthority, and respect to the superiority of rank and station? The lafter most undoubtedly-the Bible places the duties of obedience and subordination, in a much higher point of view than they can be in a buman code of laws. In our Statute Book, they are only introduced as affecting man's temporal interest; in the Statute Book of the King of kings, they are, co-equally with every other virtue, made the foundation of our hopes of a blessed eternity. I appeal then to the common sense of every reader, whether an intimate knowledge of the Bible is at all calculated to cause discontent and pride in the minds of the Poor. I ask, which is most likely to 492 Education of the Poor. to make a good member of society, he who acts from the impulse of his own uncultivated mind, or be who has been early instructed to seek for the most valuable knowledge, from its only genuine source. The System of Educating the Poor has, in some places, notwithstanding the strong prejudices existing against it, been carried on a sufficient length of time, for experience to assist in combating those very prejudices. Do we then find the Poor less will ing to fill the lower situations in life? Do we find them more averse to the most menial offices? Do we hear the language of insubordination, arising exclusively, or even principally, from those cottages, where the ameliorating influences of Education have been felt? Do we invariably, or even generally, see on the countenances of those who can read and write, the sullen gloom of discontent, or the yet more alarming symptoms of desperation? These are questions I would ask of those whose situations enable them to answer them from experience. They are put with candour: let them be answered without dissimulation. They are dictated by philanthropy:-let them be considered without malevolence. Within my own sphere of observation, I can truly say the effects have been otherwise. In the Parish where I reside, and where the Education of the Poor has been carried on for some years, no pernicious effects have yet resulted. No instances have occurred, of individuals so puff ed up with their own mental attainments, as not to feel grateful to the benevolent hand that placed them in a situation in which to gain their own livelihood, how subordinate soever that situation might be, and how menial soever the offices required of them. Neither when once engaged in the service of their superiors, has a spirit of insubordination or disobe dience manifested itself. Yours, &c. PHILOMUSUS. PROGRESS OF LITERATURE IN DIF FERENT AGES OF SOCIETY. (Resumed from p. 417.) THE meridian of England, or Scotland, and may it not be said of Sweden, and likewise of some other Northern countries of Europe, have appeared, in modern days, more con genial to the exercise and cultivation of the several departments of science than that of Italy, or the fruitful Islands of Greece and the Mediterranean, although in some cases these last have been equally the abodes of civilization and the elegant arts. The Northernmost parts of our Continent,-soils exhibiting for the most part perpetual barrenness and snows, as Finland, and even Greenland, have, in their poetry, often discovered a vein of sentiment,-a liveliness of thought, a pathos and beauty of description, which their artless and untaught efforts,-strangers as they are to the elegancies of diction and of taste,-have scarcely known how to polish to the regular, and articulate effusions of our more Southern schools. The Poems of Ossian, of Gesner, and of Klopstock, may be deemed the offspring of a Northern soil,although it must be owned, that this last partakes rather more of the false glow and turgid sentiment which have, at various periods, been imparted to us from the East, than of the pathos and simplicity of the Northern bards. Iceland is decided to have been the receptacle of learning, and the school for learned men, when Europe lay in comparative darkness and, to pass over the New World,all the tribes inhabiting the countries bordering upon Hudson's Bay and the vast chain of lakes in North America, although savage, and, with more than primitive ignorance, exhibiting all the wandering habits of our first fore fathers,-bave yet a native expression of descriptive imagery and fine and impassioned sentiment which, rude as it is, proclaims that Nature, or the scenery with which they are surrounded, has inspired them with ideas of animated description in a far higher degree than similar hordes in the vicinity of the Tropics, although ranking, as to outward habits of life, equally high in cultivation. Upon the credit of the most intelligent travellers who have resided among them, we admire the metaphorical, but plaintive language, in which these people express their assent, or deliver their compacts. Inexorable and remorseless whenin battle, or when irritated to frenzy, they 1821.] Progress of Literature in different Ages. they are yet hospitable, docile, and susceptible of emotion in their intercouse with those with whom they are on terms of friendship. Of few ideas, and incapable of serious thought, or the process of mental illation, they smoke the pipe of peace, or take up the hatchet of war, apparently with a composure denoting the same indifference;-and although in this they may be accused of bordering on that apathy of cha racter which distinguishes the tribes of a milder latitude, and, notwith standing the picture which M. de la Condamine, with a too great freedom, has drawn of them,-in their general delineation of feature, they are yet acknowledged to be wholly dissimilar. The plaintive style of their remonstrances, under supposed injuries, which occasionally distinguish them, their sincere proffers of friendship, their energetic gusts of emotion whilst venting sorrow, or allegorizing their ideas, in the former,-and the paroxisms of fury with which they exem plify the fiercest passions of human Dature, when incited to the latter by some sudden sense of wrongs, or breach of public faith,-have alternately been the objects of admiration and dismay of the intelligent traveller. And, if we ascend to regions yet higher towards the Pole, we find in their forlorn inhabitants an occasional warmth of sentiment and of feeling, a glow of passion apparently incompatible with their native snows, animating their breasts. They have, occasionally, shewn, although in artless numbers, that a privation of the sun's resplendent beams is not able to efface those susceptibilities which Nature bas implanted, more or less, in all her sons. Of the vast continent of America it may be said, that, notwithstanding the charge of sterility of invention, which has been occasionally brought against her inhabitants, she seems, in some at least of the climates which prevail on her ample territory, to have been regulated in former days by laws physical, or inoral, or both, somewhat differing from those of the Old World. The Mexicans and Peruvians, although it is true, the only nations which at its first discovery were found 493 to have made any progress in civi lization, or to be acquainted in any degree with the mechanical or fine arts, were situated, the former be tween the Tropics, and the latter almost immediately under the equator, and were certainly, (if indeed we may draw a comparison from the suspected accounts we have received through the Spaniards,) higher in civilized existence than either the extensive islands lying within the Tropics of the Pacific and Indian Archipelagos, or the Kingdoms of Africa in the neighbourhood of the rivers Gambia, Senegal, and Niger, although the antiquity of the people inhabiting the former, may be thought, if not higher, to be at least coeval with that of the former. "Through the whole extent of America," exclaims the philosophical M. Pauw, in his usual sweeping style," from Cape Horn to Hudson's Bay, there has never appeared a philosopher, an artist, a man of learning, or of parts, whose name has found a place in the history of sciences, or whose talents have done credit to himself, or been of use to others *." "Europe," proceeds our Theorist, "is the only part of the world in which are found Poets, Philosophers, and Astronomers; for the Chinese, with all their boasts, have neither. They have no more their Sculptors, Painters, or Architects, than the other nations of Asia ;-as to their Poets, they are mere Troubadours; and for their Drama, there is as great a difference between their Taba-o-chi-couell, their best tragedy, and the Phadra of Racine, as between the Alaric of Scuderi and the Pucelle of Chapelain and the Ænead.” That the New World, taken in the aggregate, in this yet infant state of its civilization and intellectual existence, should not have been remarkably fertile in the production of the first-rate men of genius, or in its con *This distinguished Speculator does not sometimes discriminate with sufficient accuracy;-in his taste for new discoveries and bold assertions, his proscription of the genius of America does not, whatever of truth it may contain, accord with strict fact. The names of West and Franklin, indigenous on that soil, are alone abundantly sufficient to rescue it from the imputation. *་ tributions 494 Progress of Literature in different Ages. tributions to the general cause of science, although we have there favoured an bypothesis somewhat different, is perhaps, by no means a phenomenon; and may, in part, be explained from the circumstance of the human mind being slow in its advances to know ledge, when not accelerated by adventitious causes, either physical, moral, or political. But that China, a vast and populous empire, of very high antiquity, and amongst whom the sciences and liberal arts are represented to have been known, and even cultivated, in the days of their celebrated Confucius, should, at this day, rank so low in intellectual exercises, may be said to present a phenomenon altogether anomalous to the usual course either of human progression or of human vicissitude. The jealousy with which they have always regard ed the intrusive visits of foreigners, and the scrupulousness with which they have ever affected to preserve their name, character, and privileges, as a unique and secluded people, although it may have assisted in perpetuating those narrow and contract ed views which are generally observed to attend a people unenlightened by the influx, the counsels, or the opinions of other nations, is altogether inadequate to explain it. We find amongst them the same indefatigable industry applied to the useful, and even to the polite arts, and attended with pretty much the same results as before the Christian Era. Practice and long experience seem at least, in the latter, not to have improved their taste, quickened their invention, or enlarged the sphere of their mental knowledge. Their Paintings are, still, scarcely emancipated from the character of mere daubs, tame and spiritless compositions, and if they have sometimes acquired the character of expert and neat copyists, it has rather been in the minuteness or servility of the imitation, than in the vigour or conception of the design. Their sculpture and architecture are represented, by the most intelligent travellers, as altogether void of genius or of grace. With them magnitude-not beauty or proportion, constitutes the perfection of their art; their triumphal arches, their ornaments, and many of their public buildings, exhibit a mon [June, strous and depraved taste, while their most ingenious efforts have scarcely enabled them to mould a bust or an effigy, which, in Europe, would be tolerated in the shed of a common statuary. As Physicians, Astronomers, and Geographers, their knowledge is scarcely of a higher order. Notwithstanding the great facilities they possess, in their mildness of cli. mate and clearness of atmosphere, their attainments in exploring the heavens, -in developing the true system of the universe, or ascertaining its laws,-are extremely low, so low indeed, that they may be said to be by no means equal to those of the antient Assyrians, who at least framed conjectures, and maintained ingenious hypotheses;-while their speculations in the science of Geography discover at once ignorance and puerility. As Physicians indeed, they pretend to some eminence,and voluminous treatises have been written and studied upon this important science; these, however, have been termed little better than her bals, and an essential acquaintance either with the human system, or with the system of the universe which stretches round them, their sagacity and industry have yet to acquire, Thus, it would appear, that China, with all its natural advantages, and the patriarchal jurisdiction which its emperors and nobles are pretended to exercise over its vast population, has yet (may it not be said,) some thing in its soil and atmosphere not decidedly propitious to the growth and developement of genius. The human mind, with all its native and inherent curiosity, seems here to have been wrought upon to surpass the efforts of a former age, neither by an honest emulation, or by the principles imbibed, turned into fresh channels of thought,-yetraLIB ancestors and, those of Britain, or of Greece, inherited from Nature, it must be presumed, the same capaci ties, and partook of one common origin. Can it then, by any human enquiries be fixed, what are the meri dians best calculated to call forth and direct the mental energies,—to temper them to the reception of literary refinement, or rouze them to the bold enterprise of discovery?-The subject, in all its relations, involves considerable 1821.] Progress of Literature in different Ages. considerable intricacy;—it would appear presumptuous, perhaps, in the limits here assigned to our speculations, to determine a point which rather demands the long and the deliberative contemplation of the enlightened student. A few hints, however, for the assistance of the enquirer may, perhaps, in closing, be adduced from what has taken place in the course of human experience. It is well known that the Antients deemed the tropical or middle regions unfit, not only for intellectual expansion, but likewise for human, if not for animal existence. As the observations of men, it is true, become more enlarged, it was found that civilized life, and moral dispositions, were capable of being generated, and exercising their functions, under the most intense heats which visit our Globe. Europe, however, has been the concentrated spot, where, in the great aggregate, the talents of our world may, in all ages, be said to have been displayed, which fact certainly, in some degree, argues in favour of a temperate zone for the maturity of intellect. 495 tude, whose lands present few objects for the repose of indolence, or the indulgence of luxury.-Those who inhabit them, if indeed they possess strength of body and activity of mind, are driven to culti vation for a subsistence, and afterwards to procure those conveniences which their neighbours, of other latitudes, gather by stretching forth the hand. These habits of industry, and of mental application, which are thus generated, at first through a sort of necessity, may be said not to cease, when their wants are supplied, but gradually to expand into more noble and dignified pursuits than the mere gratification of their animal wants. It is observed by Sir William Temple, in his remarks upon the climate and character of the Dutch, that, in their moist atmosphere, their ideas move slower and heavier, though the impressions of it are deeper, and last longer,- "the motions of thought are less light and quick, and the range of imagination more contracted than in constitutions which are more airy and volatile." Particular countries, however, on It will not, perhaps, be departing the other hand, of this our quarter too much from matter of experience, of the globe, such as Greece, Rome, finally to assume that, in some Northand Sicily, have, in antient times, ern countries, the keen, subtle, and turued the scale of intellect in favour bracing air of the bleak atmosphere, of a sultry atmosphere and a fertile when not infected by fogs and exha soil, and, in modern days, the inhalations, are more propitious to strength bitants of Spain and Portugal,-however sunk, now, from their "high sphere," were the active and persevering instruments who opened to mankind new discoveries of an extent and magnitude far surpassing any ideas which the wildest conceptions of fancy might have formed previous to this epoch. With regard to the Northern countries of Europe, we see, in our own day, mental cultivation and knowledge carried to a distinguished height; -the sentiment, however, of Montesquieu, just now quoted,-that soils, spontaneously producing the richest fruits of nature, or, in other words, an atmosphere warmed by the continual presence of a cloudless sun, will naturally produce civilization, and its consequent mental superiority; this might, perhaps, even in theory, with greater truth, be applied to countries of a higher lati of mind, sound judgment, and intense application. Following the same rule, although exceptions will frequently occur, it will appear, that the nearer we approach the Equator (except in the countries in its immediate neigh bourhood, where languor, and aversion to mental exercise are usual characteristics), vivacity of imagination, airiness of spirits, and quickness of parts mark the human dispositions, and are often found to be distinguishing and predominating in the genius of nations so situated, although eircumstances of a moral or political kind may frequently intervene to turn the tide of thinking, and suppress the native energies which would other wise expand in their full force. Whilst surveying the richly-cultivated tracks, fertilized and adorned by the industry and talent of former days, contemplation will naturally suggest topics of illustration, and pro |