Italics oviate remarks.

Enough has been adduced to prove that we do not recklessly assert that Mr. Inspector-General Gleig's School Series is-if we may judge of the whole from the two books which are now before us-one of the most wretched productions which we have ever seen in the way of school literature. The only one thing that we can say favourably of the books is, that they are well printed, in imitation of Mr. Parker's series.

Thanks to the public generally, and teachers particularly, we are independent of booksellers; we well know the penalty for writing an unfavourable critique, but we are determined not to compromise our principles. It always gives us pleasure to speak well of a good school book; we are not of those who find fault that so many new books on every subject are year after year submitted to the public; but we always hope to find literary rivality something more than pedler's competition. We are surprised that Messrs. Longman should publish such a work as the "First Book of History;" for, although the public may at first be attracted by a lowpriced book, an inspector-general's editorship-a specious, puffy, and delusive preface, and the imprint of a highly respectable firm-such books, after a few short years, are forgotten, or remembered only to be despised. There are publishers, to be sure, who care little or nothing what they publish so long as their publications "sell." There is always a venal press, to "puff" literary quackery for advertisement "considerations." Hence we find that the majority of quoted "opinions of the press" are from insignificant local papers, or from magazines and periodicals known principally from advertisements, placards, and window tablets.

We trust that no consideration shall induce us to neglect the interest of the profession; and that those publishers, who are offended with us for plain truthful speaking, will eventually see that their interests are compromised in no small degree by those, who by praising everything do good to nothing. The editor of the contemplated "Ashton-cum-Thorny Mercury" has adopted as a motto "Where advertisements, there eulogies;" in imitation of the Latin “Ubi amor ibi fides." We should recommend the Reverend Inspector-General Gleig, M.A., to send the prudent editor his "School Series."

MATERNAL EDUCATION; OR, MUSINGS FOR MOTHERS. CHAPTER III.

CONSTITUTIONAL TEMPERAMENT.

THE term "constitutional temperament" is not pleonastic; for what is, in the abstract, called "temperament" always retains-however modified by educational and other circumstances-a disposition, predilection, turn, or

cast, which, whether manifestly hereditary or not, is not inappropriately called the "natural disposition."

The "natural disposition" has been traced by some to physical and by others to metaphysical causes; but it is not within the compass of our design to enter into elaborate disquisitions. Suffice it for our purpose that all will admit the fact, that a natural disposition, however carefully guided, however powerfully restrained, or even however subdued, is rarely, if ever, annihilated. The course may be changed, the streams may be diverted till they diverge in every direction, but the spring is immoveable and unchangeable.

We repeat, that although the infinitude of modifications to which the constitutional temperaments of individuals are subject sets all attempts at complete classification at defiance, there are nevertheless general principles well worthy of attention.

We may be accused of something like heterodoxy when we submit to the consideration of our friends our opinion that human beings have, in common with the inferior animals, instinct, and that the instinct of human beings is peculiar to their species, but nevertheless quite as distinct from reason as is the instinct of the brute creation. We have already instanced this on several occasions, when speaking of maternal affection-an affection which is so evidently instinctive, so characteristic of numerous other species of animals besides the human family, that it is almost presumptuous to assert dogmatically that maternal affection is stronger in the genus homo than in any other animal genus. No one has yet succeeded in drawing a line of demarcation between reason and instinct. "Shall we," says a French writer, "reduce animals merely to instinct? Shall we say that they act without intelligence, like the springs of a machine? Before we attempt to delude ourselves by such poor sophistry, let us observe what is passing around us. Here is my dog asleep in the chimney-corner; his sleep is disturbed; he is dreaming of pursuing his prey, he attacks his enemy, he sees him, he hears him; he has sensations, passions, ideas. When I rouse him his vision disappears and he becomes calm; when I take up my hat he darts out, jumps about, looks me in the face, and studies my actions; he crouches at my feet, runs to the door, is joyful or sorrowful according to the will which I express. What, then, has taken place in his brain? What combination of ideas between my words and the excursion which he anticipates? How does the simple action of taking up my hat awaken in him a reminiscence, a desire, a will? He hopes, he flatters me, he whines, he fawns upon me, in order that I may caress him. He seeks to please me by his joy or to affect me by his sorrow. combinations of my intellect could go no further; he is at once a pathetic orator and a courtier full of wiles. . . I find in his intelligence the phenomena which exist in my own; a correspondence is even established between our wills and our thoughts; our two selves (moi) meet and under

The

stand each other. If I call him he runs to me, if I scold him he is apprehensive, if I forget him he fawns upon me; we understand each other because he thinks. The thoughts of an animal! Can matter think? . . . . . . The intelligence of the shepherd's dog becomes developed by all the circumstances of his active and attentive life. Continually occupied in the care of the flock, everything which relates to his office finds a place in his memory. His eye watches, his ear listens: he concentrates himself into a double attention---looking to his master in order to obey him, looking to his flock to guide it. There are some actions which he tolerates, and others which he does not allow. He at once distinguishes the green corn which must not be touched from the pasturage on which the flocks may be allowed to feed. He draws the line between the one and the other, always bringing back to order the greedy and ignorant multitude, imposing upon the rash by movements which frighten them, and chastising the obstinate for whom the first warning is not sufficient. . . When brutes do things which we could not do without reasoning and judging, we are bound to believe that they reason and judge." Now whilst we confess that we cannot see why we are "bound to believe" that brutes reason and judge, from the fact that they do things which we could not do without reasoning and judgment, we feel ourselves bound to believe that human beings possess not only reasoning and judgment, but also every animal faculty approximate to them.

Woman has characteristics-

I. As an animal;

II. As a human female;

III. As an educated individual;

and these characteristics, inseparably combined from her earliest existence, form what we now allude to as her natural disposition, or constitutional temperament.

I. THE CHARACTERISTICS OF WOMAN AS AN ANIMAL are those of her

species-man. The natural inquiry now is, if we regard man as a mere animal, what, apart from physical conformation, distinguishes him from other animals? No satisfactory answer has ever been given to this inquiry; it were vain, therefore, to attempt one now. Do we reply, that man is the only animal that clothes himself, we are told that there are savages who evince little or no idea of clothing. Do we, with Burke, say that man is the only animal that cooks victuals, cannibalism or other barbarisms are instanced to show that man is not universally a cooking animal. Do we, with Dr. Adam Smith, define man as an animal that bargains, we are told that if it can be shown that man is universally a bargaining animal, it cannot be proved that other animals do not bargain and make compacts with those of their own species, or even with those of kindred species.

But let us, for the sake of argument, admit,

1. That man is an animal that clothes himself, and we must at the same time admit that the love of dress is not only more strong but also more refined in the female than in the male animal man. Let us admit,

2. That man is an animal that cooks his victuals, and we must also admit that in all ages and in all countries cooking has ever been mainly performed by females. In the first recorded instance of domestic life we read, "And Abraham hastened into the tent unto Sarah, and said, Make ready quickly three measures of fine meal, knead it and make cakes upon the hearth" (Gen. xviii. 6). The more laborious and exhilarating occupations of hunting, slaughtering, fishing, and fowling generally falls to the lot of men, but as a rule women are the cooks. But if we admit,

3. That man is an animal that makes bargains, we shall perhaps be told that bargaining, as it is exemplified in trade and commerce, devolves principally upon the male sex. This we grant; but still we maintain that from the earliest age down to the present, women have not evidenced less of the characteristic than men. Was it not a woman's bargain that entailed misery on the human race? "When the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof" (Gen. iii. 6). Here we find that the hope of gain prompted Eve to disobedience. It is remarkable, too, that the propensity to bargain is observable in nearly every female Scripture character.

Turn we to profane history, and we learn that almost every writer on ancient Egypt--the first civilised nation of which any record remainsmentions that the women managed the greatest part of such business as was transacted out of doors, and that the commerce of the nation was peculiarly allotted to them. If it be objected, that for long ages past women have had little or nothing to do with great commercial affairs, our reply is, that woman's degradation by the male sex is no argument against her adaptation to, and her participation in, the characteristics, whether of instinct or intellect, which distinguish man from other animals.

Truly has it been said of the physiologist, that, "ascending from the shell-fish to the insect, from the insect to the dog, from the dog up to man, he exhibits to us thought attached to the organisation, and developing itself in the same proportion, always more vast, always more powerful in proportion as the animal is higher in the scale of beings and to the perfection of its organs. He recognises in the palpitating fibres a material law which comprises all creatures; man is to him only the first among animals."

Having taken the lowest view of the case, we proceed to notice,

II. THE CHARacteristics of WOMAN AS A HUMAN FEMALE; and the natural inquiry now is, What are the characteristics of human beings? To this inquiry we reply briefly,

Man has a soul-an immortal soul. None of the faculties which man possesses in common with other animals belong to the soul. Man's characteristics, with regard to dress, or food, or commerce with his species, do not. elevate him to a higher status in the creation than that of an animal, because they may all be traced to animal volitions-they result from sensation, thought, memory, imitation, the exercise of animal senses and organs, of which the soul is wholly independent.

Man, with all his wisdom-all his physiological and metaphysical knowledge is incapable of comprehending the nature of his spiritual existence. Physiology and metaphysics with him often seem to clash. He feels within himself a moral principle-a conscience-which can be lulled, and drugged, and seared, but which cannot be destroyed-a principle which asserts supreme authority in a voice soft yet terrible, and opposes all that is contrary to the law she teaches the law of eternal truth and justice. Man feels within himself a sense of infinity, a sense of the beautiful, and of unalloyed never-ending happiness, which neither space nor time can satiate, and which nothing "of the earth, earthy" can possibly realize. Well may Israel's sweet Psalmist, when addressing the Eternal Deity, exclaim, "What is man that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man that thou visitest him? For thou hast made him a little lower than the angels, and hast crowned him with glory and honour. Thou madest him to have dominion over the works of thy hands: thou hast put all things under his feet." (Ps. viii.)

"Vain man would be wise," and philosophers for thousands of years have endeavoured to solve the problem of the immortality of the soul by the power of the intellect. They have wandered in mazy uncertainty, and arrived at truth-clouding doubt.

To define is to separate from the infinite. As the faculties of the soul necessarily pertain to what is immaterial and infinite, we may describe, but we cannot define them; nor indeed can we say, with any degree of certainty, how far they influence-or blend with-faculties of sense which the animal man has in common with inferior animals.

As believers in the truths of Divine revelation-as Christians-we cannot but believe that, in the full and best sense of the term, the education of the spiritual man is solely the work of the Holy Spirit in, what is metaphorically called, "the heart;" at the same time, as educationists we are bound to believe that the spiritual man, or in other words the soul, has in every living human being such an influence over, what are termed by metaphysicians, the mental or intellectual faculties, that man is not only what some assert, the noblest animal, but that being in the scale of creation but "little lower than the angels"-being as an animal of an organisation wonderful beyond description with reference both to his physical conformation and his metaphysical capabilities-whilst as a spiritual being, made