1562, only exists in the English translation made the next year. Le Clerc's "Establissement de Foi" was suppressed by the government soon after its publication in 1691. Of the eight accounts of the Huguenot occupation of Florida, given by eye-witnesses, used by our author, none can be said to be works easily attainable or generally known to exist; and two of them are still in the original manuscript, and only unearthed so to speak-by his investigations. With resources of this sort dispersed over the world, and buried in many obscure recesses, Mr. Parkman says that it has "been his aim to exhaust the existing material of every subject. treated;" and he expresses a confidence, which we cannot think misplaced, that nothing of importance has escaped him. Indeed, the internal evidence of untiring research, and judicious selection, and careful weighing and comparison of authorities, furnished by the volume itself, is sufficient to show that there is little left for the gleaner in the field where he has gathered and bound the sheaves.

But it is not merely in the examination of the special authorities for the immediate transactions and incidents that he records, that Mr. Parkman has appreciated and accomplished his duty. That more general study and cultivation which enables him to grasp the whole of his subject; to exhibit it as a whole, and not as a series of fragments; and from the mass of colors, and the confused lights before him, to make one intelligible, interesting, and agreeable picture - has preceded and accompanied the work of detail. He has himself personally followed much of the trail. He has possessed himself of the tone and spirit of pioneer life by an actual experience of its haunts and its habits; and such has been the result of the strenuous effort at French subjugation of this continent, that, in many an instance, he can describe, from his own observation, scenes of his drama, still as wild, as savage and deserted, as when they were first seen by the adventurers whose progress he narrates. As he has thus prepared himself, by a personal acquaintance, with the actual boundaries of his subject, he has, by the study of the history and literature and romance of the times of which he writes,

imbued himself with the spirit and fathomed the character of those with whom he speaks, and made habitual to himself a clear and accurate judgment of their principles, their passions, and their motives. He is as much at home in the intellectual and spiritual sphere of his drama, as in its outward and local one. He groups his actors as well as he paints and shifts his scenes; and brings back to us, as, far as seems possible, the "very form and image of the times."

ART. V. ENGLISH COLLEGES AND SCHOOLS.

1. Classical and Scientific Studies, and the Great Schools of England. A Lecture. By WILLIAM P. ATKINSON.

2. On the Cam. Lectures on the University of Cambridge in England. By WILLIAM EVERETT. Cambridge: Sever & Francis.

THESE two books, between them, embrace the whole subject of the Higher Education in England. One takes for its subject the Public Schools; the other, the Universities: the second thus taking up the subject where the first laid it down. But here the continuity ends. The two accounts do not dovetail into each other at all. So far from one supplementing the other, the two are so violently contrasted, that it would seem hardly possible to believe that they were written on subjects so closely connected. If we are to believe Mr. Atkinson, the English system is below contempt; it is more than a failure: it is a cheat and a sham. If we follow Mr. Everett, it is a noble, a magnificent scheme of education; second to none in the world; unapproachable, indeed, in its own line. Mr. Atkinson brings forward his evidence to show that the public schools send a wretched set of ignoramuses to college. Mr. Everett gives his to the effect, that the English schools send to college much better classical scholars than the American colleges graduate. At first sight, then, we seem obliged to decide in favor of one of two witnesses, who flatly contradict each other;

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and should probably incline to favor that of the eye-witness: for Mr. Atkinson gets at his facts from a parliamentary bluebook, while Mr. Everett obtained his by actual residence at an English university. The real truth, however, is, that the two are looking at the same object from opposite directions; Mr. Atkinson fixing his eyes exclusively on the defects, while Mr. Everett looks chiefly at the excellences, of the English system.

Let us proceed, then, to examine each of these witnesses separately. For we shall find that each has valuable truth to tell, truth that it behooves the American educator to consider, and that quickly: for it will not be denied now, if ever it was denied, that the destiny of a first-rate nation is coming upon us; and that that destiny is coming upon us faster than we can educate first-rate minds to meet it. Mr. Atkinson has a cause to plead, which he rightly feels to be noble, — the cause of science. His earnest advocacy of this ennobles his pamphlet, and makes it, in spite of many unfairnesses, a most welcome contribution to educational literature. The sum of what he would say is this:

"The study of Physical Science is as ennobling as the study of Language or of Mathematics, and ought therefore to have an honored place in any comprehensive system of education. Further, there are some minds, of a very high order, who gravitate toward Physical Science, just as surely as other minds gravitate toward Language or Mathematics; and it is a grievous injustice to such minds that their scientific faculties should not be developed at as early an age, and with as constant care, as the language faculties and the mathematical faculties are already developed. At present, partly from the lack of competent instructors, and partly from the general ignorance which prevails upon the subject, this is nowhere adequately done; the English public schools being, perhaps, the most conspicuous and most outrageous offenders in this respect.

To enforce this idea, he makes admirable use of the Report of the Commissioners of Public Schools. The evidence he quotes, weighty or ludicrous, as the case may be, is all brought to bear upon this central topic. The criticism is just. Mr.

Atkinson has hit upon the great, palpable, glaring defect of English education. He does this, not in a spirit of faultfinding, but with an eye to the defects of American education in the same direction, and with a view to their remedy. To correct those defects is his special aim; and if one only of his suggestions were carried out, namely, that proficiency in scientific studies should be accepted at the examination for entrance at our colleges, - as an equivalent, say, for the study of Greek, we should soon see a marked improvement in our system of instruction.

It is, indeed, enough to rouse the indignation of the lover of his race, to think of the deplorable waste of the most valuable minds which is perpetually going on in England, and elsewhere also. A one-sided system of education is a sin against the Holy Ghost. On all other sides, "we are all of us, as it were, naturalists by accident," says Professor Owen, mournfully. When God sends England an embryo chemist, a geologist, or a naturalist, she does not know what to do with him. There is tragedy, as well as comedy, in "Tom Brown's " account of the treatment of Martin the naturalist, at Rugby. Such minds as his are the Ugly Ducks of the English system.

This indignation Mr. Atkinson has felt to the full; and it is this which partly excuses, and accounts for, his really unfair account of what the English public schools do accomplish in their own line. One word, however, of caution, before we attempt to prove our statement. The change which Mr. Atkinson is working so manfully to effect is of such vital importance, and the educational world owes him so heavy a debt for having come forward as he has done, that we would sooner lay down our pen without writing a word of criticism, than weaken in the mind of a single reader the immense force of his positive statements. We trust that he will continue to cry aloud, and spare not, until Science, long defrauded, has her just rights, at last, in every scheme of liberal education. We trust also that every careful reader will ponder the really tragic significance of the evidence of scientific men, given before the Commission; the quintessence of which Mr. Atkinson has given us in his admirable Appendix.

With Mr. Atkinson's main purpose, then, we deeply sympathize. We simply criticise his picture of the public schools of England, by saying that he puts a part, and that the worst part, for the whole; gives their bad side, without seeming even to be aware that there is a good side. Even here, then,. we must not be misunderstood. Mr. Atkinson's criticisms and quotations are only too true a picture of a certain type. The genus he paints exists, nay flourishes, in every public school and every college in England. It is as true a picture as that Dickens gives, in "Martin Chuzzlewit," of the Jefferson Bricks of the American press, and the land-sharks of Western speculation. But our criticism of Dickens is that he gave undue prominence to the hateful type, and thus left an impression of American society as unfair as a true picture of the thieves' corner in St. Giles's would be if given as the type of London society in general. Mr. Atkinson unconsciously commits the same injustice when he would have us believe that cricket and nonsense-verses are the two great staples of an English publicschool education; the real curriculum being the former, and the sham the latter.

There are several ways of accounting for this. First, he has only the evidence of others to go by,-evidence which may be, and sometimes is, very one-sided; and has no immediate acquaintance with the facts himself, as a corrective to this one-sidedness. Secondly, without any argument or preface whatever, evidently thinking that it needs neither,he lays down, as if it were as self-evident as an axiom of geometry, the following entirely one-sided method of weighing the value of an educational system:

"The true merits of a school are determined by what it does for the great mass of average minds. . . . The education of the able minority is never a true test of the worth of a system or of the character of a school."

If any one admits this as an axiom, it is not too much to say, that he can no more pass a true judgment on the English system of education, than a blind man can judge of colors. For the peculiar merit of the English system lies just here,