ine, they produce no sort of impression. Nature simply rejects
them; they are not the food which she requires. They do not do much
mischief to such persons in themselves; but they are of incalculable
detriment by the time and the industry which they absorb to no
available purpose. Ten years of youth--the most valuable and important
period of life--are wasted in studies which, to nineteen-twentieths of
the persons engaged in them, are of no use whatever in future years.
Thus our young men, of the highest rank and best connexions, are sent
out into the world without any ideas or information which can enable
them to visit foreign countries with advantage. Need we wonder that,
when they come to write and publish their travels, they produce such a
woful brood of ephemeral bantlings?[2]

The reaction against this enormous evil in a different class of
society, has produced another set of errors in education--of an
opposite description, but perhaps still more fatal to the formation of
the mental character, which is essential to the useful or elevating
observation of foreign countries. The commercial and middle classes of
society, educated at the London university, or any of the numerous
academies which have sprung up in all parts of the country, have gone
into the other extreme. Struck with the uselessness, to the great bulk
of students, of the classical minutiae required at one of the
universities, and the mathematical depth deemed indispensable at the
other, they have turned education into an entirely different channel.
Nothing was deemed worthy of serious attention, except what led to
some practical object in life. Education was considered by their
founders as merely a step to making money. Science became a trade--a
mere handmaid to art. Mammon was all in all. Their instruction was
entirely utilitarian. Mechanics and Medicine, Hydraulics and
Chemistry, Pneumatics and Hydrostatics, Anatomy and Physiology,
constituted the grand staples of their education. What they taught was
adapted only for professional students. One would suppose, from
examining their course of study, that all men were to be either
doctors or surgeons, apothecaries or druggists, mechanics,
shipwrights, or civil-engineers. No doubt we must have such
persons--no doubt it is indispensable that places of instruction
should exist in which they can learn their various and highly
important avocations; but is that the school in which the enlarged
mind is to be for