718

THE NATURE AND CAUSES OF

duty, force or restraint can scarce ever be necessary to carryon any part of education. Such is the generosity of the greaterpart of young men, that so far from being disposed to neg-lect or despise the instructions of their master, provided heshews some serious intention of being of use to them, they arcgenerally inclined to pardon a great deal of incorrectness inthe performance of his duty, and sometimes even to concealfrom the public a good deal of gross negligence.

Those parts of education, it is to be observed, for theteaching of which there are no public institutions, are gene-rally the best taught. When a young man goes to a fencingor danciug school, he does not indeed always learn to fenceor to dance very well; but he seldom fails of learning tofence or to dance. The good effects of the riding school arcnot commonly so evident. The expense of a riding schoolis so great, that in most places it is a public institution. Thethree most essential parts of literary education, to read, write,and account, it still continues to be more common to acquirein private than in public schools; and it very seldom happensthat any body fails of acquiring them to the degree in whichit is necessary to acquire them.

In England the public schools are much less corruptedthan the universities. In the schools the youth are taught,or at least may be taught, Greek and J.atin; that is, everything which the masters pretend to teach, or which, it is ex-pected, they should teach. In the universities the youthneither are taught, nor always can find any proper means ofbeing taught the sciences, which it is the business of thoseincorporated bodies to teach. The reward of the school-master in most cases depends principally, in some casesalmost entirely, upon the fees or honoraries of his scholars.Schools have no exclusive privileges. In order to obtain thehonours of graduation, it is not necessary that a person shouldbring a certificate of his having studied a certain number ofyears at a public school. If upon examination he appears tounderstand what is taught there, no questions are asked aboutthe place where he learnt it.

The parts of education Avhicli are commonly taught inuniversities, it may, perhaps, be said are not veiy well taught.But had it not been for those institutions they would nothave been commonly taught at all, and both the individualand the public would have suffered a good deal from thewant of those important parts of education.