3rdly. The study of ourselves, considered as individuals, and as social beings. Under this head are included ethics and metaphysics, moral and political philosophy, and some other kindred subjects of great complexity, hardly touched on in our academic system, and to be followed out in the more mature labours of after-life.

The object of a liberal education, says Mr. Whewell, is to develop the whole mental system of man, and thus to bring it into consistency with itself; to make his speculative inferences coincide with his practical convictions; to enable him to render a reason for the belief that is in him; and not to leave him in the condition of Solomon's Sluggard, who is wiser in his own conceit than seven men who can render a reason. This complete mental culture must, no doubt, consist of many elements; but it is certain than an indispensable portion is such a discipline of the reasoning power, as will enable persons to proceed with certainty and facility from fundamental principles to their consequences*. No person has a higher claim to define a liberal education than he whose vigour and capacity of understanding have so easily attained it. But that muscular energy and flexibility of mind which encircle, so to speak, every study, crushing its difficulties,

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Thoughts on the Study of the Mathematics as a Part of a Liberal Education.

and reducing the whole into a state suited to the mental digestion, fall to the lot of few.

A liberal education is composed of many elements, and can only be properly styled liberal, according as these elements are fully combined. Perhaps the most exalted idea of such an education is contained in Milton's celebrated Tractate. It would furnish a very excellent corrective to many a scholar of the present day, whose only memorial is in the column of a Calendar, were he to read the list of acquirements set down by this great man merely as embellishments of severer studies; and all to be learnt between the ages of twelve and twenty-one. Milton seems to agree with Coleridge in requiring "a certain measure of logic, of which so much as is useful is to be employed with all her well-concluded heads and topics, until it is time to open her contracted palm into a graceful and ornate rhetoric," taught out of Plato, Aristotle, Longinus, and, let us add, Quintilian. Milton's whole argument is directed to the general cultivation of the mind, and, in a minor sense, of the body also. A similar spirit pervades Cowley's plan of a Philosophical College; the object of both being so to rear and train the mind at the same time, as to lead it up to manhood in that state of healthful fulness and symmetry which constitute moral, as well as physical, beauty.

There you see Imagination hand in hand with Reason, mutually assisting and illustrating each other, Imagination lighting the feet of Reason, and Reason restraining the riot of Imagination; an under-current of poetical feeling runs through the remarks of Milton and Cowley. Davenant called poetry the only liberal science, and in such men, nourished as it was by every stream of knowledge, it certainly deserved the name. But abandoning the wider field of inquiry, opened to us in the speculations of Milton and Cowley, let us conduct our argument into a narrower path, and examine how far the system adopted in this University fulfils our idea of a liberal education.

The number of those who pursue mathematics with a view to distinction in after-life, we apprehend to be very inconsiderable. As taught at Cambridge, the study resolves itself into a corrector and strengthener of the reasoning faculties; and the question to be discussed is, whether it be beneficial to the developement of the intellectual powers, that so large a segment of time should be devoted to the attainment of this mental discipline; whether the end corresponds with the toil; whether the fruit repays the tillage. Reading Men at the University, to employ a proverbial phrase, may be divided into two classes,-those who read for mathematical

T

honours, and those who read for classical; although the latter study implies a certain acquaintance with the former. Now, in looking at the study of mathematics, pursued with reference to honours, the first thing that strikes us is its complete exclusiveness; the irresistible dominion it exercises over the mind throughout the entire period given to its cultivation. Thus are nearly four years swallowed up in the endeavour to attain a constituent part of a liberal education. And let not the uninitiated reader suppose that hard mathematical reading—and such reading can alone answer the object proposed-admits of application to other acquirements. This intellectual Despotism suffers no brother near its throne.

The art of reasoning we take to consist in the clear enunciation and arrangement of our thoughts; in which every link attaches to the preceding, and so attaches, that no alteration in its position could improve the strength or beauty of the chain. None will deny this accuracy of the mental eye in adapting and fitting all the comthat it may ponent parts of an argument, so that it may become equally elegant to the sight, and equally firm in the grasp, to be a very valuable accomplishment. But it must be apparent to all, that a discipline professing to act in this manner upon the mind, ought to be continually supplied with matter to

work upon; that this plastic power, which is to give coherency and symmetry to our thoughts, should have elements susceptible of its moulding influence. And in this light was the study regarded by our elder scholars; we have seen Fuller calling it the ballast of the vessel, carefully distinguishing it from the freight. But under the exclusive and all-engrossing system of mathematical reading, this machinery only works in theory; no complicated questions in philosophy are submitted to its operation; no entangled train of metaphysical subtilties are unravelled by it; for these solutions would gain no marks in the Senate-House, and we are assuming these studies to be followed, as they usually are, with a view to the Tripos List. How then stands the case with the mere mathematician? Why, that with reference to knowledge, as comprised in a liberal education, he has the power of combining, with nothing to combine; the plan of a building, without the materials; or, to wind up the whole in a saying previously quoted from Butler, he can reckon up any sum of money, but has

none.

He leaves the Unversity, therefore, with only one branch of a liberal education; it may be urged in extenuation, that the foundation for knowledge is firmly laid, that his mind is familiar with habits of analysis, that he carries with him a very beautiful