Passage from Professor WHEWELL's pamphlet, referred to, in the note, page 196.

"I think most highly of the tenor of our present education. No one feels more deeply than I do that the object and functions of the two English Universities are of a peculiar nature, and such as to separate them very widely from institutions bearing 'the same name in other places. No one would think the evil more fatal and ruinous to the best interests of the country, if there should be any tendency to 'divest them of their present valuable and characteristic ' reference to the wants and relations of the English 'social system, and to substitute instead, any arrangement dictated by theoretical generalities. No one is more thoroughly convinced, that the cherished studies ' of the place, the exact study of the best classical ' authors, and that of portions of mathematical science, ought ever to be the leading elements of a liberal 'education; and I am most fully persuaded that the rejection of this kind of education, and the substitution for it of a mere knowledge of experimental physics or theoretical politics and morals, would be attended, in a single generation, with a more striking and lament'able retrogradation in the habits of thought and in'tellectual character of cultivated Englishmen, than 'has yet occurred in any country. I hold it thus 'to be in us a sacred and indispensable duty to transmit 'to our successors, as we have received from former ages, 'the impression of that culture of the human intellect ' and imagination, which has been going on from the

'earliest ages of Greece to the present day; and to 'which the most resolute advocates of the philosophy ' of material phenomena and of palpable utility owe 'the habits of abstraction and deduction which they love 'to exercise.

'But though I think thus of the elements of our present system, I conceive that there is still something 'which we are most seriously called upon to provide. No 'system of education can at the present day be considered

as sufficient or satisfactory, from which the Natural 'Sciences are excluded. They form a body of human 'knowledge worthy to stand by the side of classical literature and mathematical speculation, being in their ' details as varied and striking as the products of imagina❝tion, and in their principles as rigorous and symmetrical

as the sciences of quantity. They have for two centuries been perpetually becoming more conspicuous 'and more important, as most attractive and worthy 'employments of the speculative powers of man; and 'have now grown into the possession of a vast direct and indirect influence upon the habits of thinking of all persons of any degree of cultivation. In this

manner the Natural Sciences, (without taking into account their professional necessity and practical use) 'have an efficacy in forming the intellectual character of the present generation, as indisputable' as the deep ' and powerful effect which has been, through the medi'ation of ages, produced by the literature of Greece and Rome. The time appears to be arrived, when no one can be considered as fully deserving the character of a liberally educated man, who has received

་

no impression from the prevalence of such studies. Nor would it be creditable to the character of our 'education here, that persons should go forth from ' among us, as having passed through the preparation 'which we can give, who have not not imbibed some 'such interest in the progress of the Natural Sciences, 'some such perception of the views and principles in'volved in these branches of knowledge, as they will 'elsewhere find to be universally diffused among men ' of cultivated minds and literary habits. However well the habits of abstraction and inference may have been fixed and exalted by severer studies, however successfully a taste for the graces of composition and 'the philosophy of language may have been fostered, the ' additional element of the inductive and classifying spirit will be looked for in the well-educated man, and ought to be here infused. It is therefore a duty 'incumbent upon us not to acquiesce in any radical deficiency in the means of conveying knowledge of 'this kind. We must look upon the communication ' of such knowledge as an essential part of our system; and we must, I conceive, make the character of this 'branch of instruction agree, as far as it is carried, ' with that which prevails in our long established studies 'of philology and mathematics: that is, it should be accurate and systematic enough for the most diligent ' and profound students; in the view that its influence upon others, as well as upon those, may be unexceptionably sound and beneficial.'

6