down at the feet of royalty in supplicating it to take | Burdett took frequent part in it. My attention was their will for its pleasure. The former hold themselves fixed on their persons, if not on their discourses. erect and firm before their monarch, who leads them by the nose, suffering them all the while to proclaim themselves at their ease, the true sovereigns of the kingdom. Mr. Henry Lytton Bulwer is a young radical who leads a life altogether aristocratic. He is renowned for the elegance of his grooms and of his vehicles. Nobody wears a black frock so short and so tight. He speaks Mr. Abercromby, the present speaker, by no means well and easily, with a voice somewhat unpleasant, his solicited the honor of the chair which, at the opening of head elevated and thrown back after the fashion of men the session, was decreed him by the first act of the of small stature. He is the elder brother of the novelist, reformers. Constrained to maintain, in the name of the and is himself the author of a work on France, in which house, the privileges of that body, he represents that he judges of French manners, society, politics and literassembly with all the dignity that his grotesque wig ature with a degree of insane ignorance hardly less will permit. Happily he has thick grey eye-brows, disgusting than the naïve buffoonery of Lady Morgan. which harmonize extremely well with his light-colored It is a distinguishing characteristic of the English, to official perruque. In spite of the enormous quantity of write without knowledge, observation or study on every hair that overshadows his person, there is nothing country they pass through. It is a pity that a man of savage in his appearance; on the contrary, a mild and common sense and intelligence such as Mr. Henry Lytaffable dignity eminently distinguishes him; his man-ton Bulwer, should have made his literary debut by so ners are marked by a noble ease; he also speaks well, and his full and sonorous voice is admirably suited to the station which he occupies as president of a large and popular assembly. The conservatives will never forgive him for having, even involuntarily, dethroned their candidate. They regret the airs of a superannuated dandy, and the oldfashioned elegance of Sir Charles Manners Sutton, who, having grown old in the chair, had been long accustomed to regard toryism with a favorable eye. It is true that Mr. Abercromby, an avowed partizan of the reformers, has not, in consequence of his acceptance of the speakership, become the inexorable censor of his radical friends. So that when O'Connell, provoked by some imprudent noblemen, branded them with epithets never to be effaced, Mr. Abercromby was guilty of the heinous crime of not interposing to check the vengeance of the outraged orator. Impartiality, according to the tories, would consist in permitting their attacks, without allowing the insulted or injured party the rights of defence. I have now given you a general and hasty sketch of the leading characteristics of the house; it only remains for me to carry you to one of its sittings. We will select the occasion of the presentation of the bill for the reform of the English and Welch Corporations, which was, after a month of argument, finally voted. On the evening of the 5th of June, then, it was known that Lord John Russell was to introduce his bill in the Commons. What was to be the nature of this measure, so long promised and so impatiently expected on one side, and so much feared on the other? Curiosity in London was at its height; it was the third day of the Epsom races! No matter! Every one returned to the city-horses were abandoned for politics. As early as twelve the crowd began to encumber the environs of Westminster, pressing towards the gates of the palace of the Parliament. With great difficulty I succeeded in squeezing myself into the public gallery. At three, prayers being said, the speaker having counted with the end of his little flat three-cornered hat the members in attendance, and more than forty being present, the session opened. There was at first a long discussion of a bill regulating the distribution of water in the parish of Mary-lebone; the debate was of but little interest, though Mr. Henry Lytton Bulwer, Mr. Hume, and Sir Francis vulgar a piece of national gaucherie. There is nothing about the person of Mr. Hume that would strike you; he looks like a good-natured, unaffected, broad-shouldered countryman, independent in his character, and utterly careless of fashion. His mere manner, to say nothing of his words, expresses invincible aversion to all ceremony. His appearance does not belie his character. His enunciation has all the ease, firmness, and roughness of his opinions. One of the chief priests of radicalism—an inexorable and incorruptible reformer, he has sworn never to sit, but on the benches of the opposition; it is from fidelity to his oath, not from sympathy, as you might well conclude, that he now sits in the ranks of the conservatives. Sir Francis Burdett differs from Mr. Hume both in his air, height, and figure. Picture to yourself a long body, about five feet ten inches, in white velvet breeches, with boots turned down at the top, and a blue frock. A white vest, a white cravat, a little bald, flat head, well powdered, will complete the portrait. The fate of public men who outlive themselves, is often singular. Sir Francis Burdett, ten years since, was as fashionable as his dress. He was the favorite of Westminsterthe popular orator of the House of Commons. He caused himself to be imprisoned in the Tower, for having dared to speak too boldly against royalty. Now he is suspected by the people—they suspect him of voting with toryism. They despise him, they accuse him of versatility. "But," he replies, "it is you, perhaps, who have changed. Reformers formerly, you are now radicals! Tories in my day, you are now reformers! I have preserved my opinions and my dress!" Well! the error is with you, Sir Francis Burdett; you should have changed also, or not have lived to become old. If you had died at the proper time, perhaps you might now have your statue of bronze near that of Canning, in Westminster square. Who knows if to-morrow the same people who formerly carried you in triumph, may not ornament your white breeches with the mud of the streets leading to the Parliament house? At last the discussion touching the waters of Maryle-bone draws to a close. The house having to vote on this unlucky bill, the galleries for the reporters and the public were cleared. This is the custom of Parliament; decisions never take place but with closed doors. When I returned to the gallery, the hall presented quite an altered appearance. The less piece was finish- | known to the whole city. Add to this the most refined ed-the great one was about to commence. The ranks impertinence of vanity, a sublime contempt for every on the right and left grew thicker every moment-each one not of the exclusive circle into which they alone find member hastened to his post. admission, and an ambitious senseless jargon. Lord Castlereagh is the perfect type of this first and principal class of London fashionables. The second, Mr. Edward Lytton Bulwer, the well Lord John Russell, the official commander in chief of the reformers, had appeared on the ministerial benches, to the right of the speaker. By his side, you observed his principal aides-de-camp, the Chancellor of the Ex-known author of Pelham and other novels, is, like his chequer, Mr. Spring Rice, with a large bald forehead, and the countenance of a Satyr, the most ready, if not the ablest speaker in the cabinet; Lord Morpeth, secretary for Ireland, a large young man whose premature grey hairs, appear at a distance to be of a light yellow, looking like a timid and blushing youth; Lord Palmerston, an old bloated dandy, whose fat face seems to swell itself out between his thick whiskers with more satisfaction since he is no longer led by the nose by Talleyrand-Lord Palmerston, who has not wished to be made a peer since his last return to power, pretending that his eloquence has a more open field in the Commons than it could have in the House of Lords. In front of the ministerial group, and separated from it only by the table of the clerks, sits Sir Robert Peel, surrounded also by his conservative aids, among whom you may distinguish Lord Granville Somerset the quasimodo of Westminster, whose double hump does not prevent him from being one of the most alert to sound the Protestant tocsin against Popery. Here and there you may have observed other distinguished members of the house; Daniel O'Connell, the great O'Connell, calm and absorbed in the reading of some new book, of which he is cutting open the leaves, in the midst of his sons, his nephews, and his Irish Catholics, who form what is called his tail; a tail, if you please, but one which leads the head of the state. After them, Lord Stanley, the young heir of the house of Derby, that ambitious and disappointed elegant, who has yet only in heart deserted the benches of the reformers. Next you have remarked two young men standing up, and differing as much in their height and figure as in their opinions; but equally celebrated, each one in his own way, in the world, and who, in consequence, deserve to be described. The first is Viscount Castlereagh, son of the Marquis of Londonderry, a mad conservative like his father, but less simple and possessed of much more discretion. Thin and pitiful in his person, without figure and without talent, it is not in the house that he really exists; in the saloons of the west end is his true atmosphereit is there alone that his stupidity finds the air that it can respire. Lord Castlereagh is one of the chiefs of the new school which has regenerated English fashion. This school is entirely different from that of Brummell, which founded its distinction upon dress. The new fashionables of the sect of the noble lord, affect, on the contrary, entire negligence in the dress, and the greatest freedom of manners. Nothing is brilliant in their equipages, nor in the style of their servants. Their vehicles are of dark colors and sombre liveries; for themselves extreme simplicity in appearance. No flowered vests; no gold or silver lacing about them; no jewels; at the most the end of a gold chain at the button of a black coat; an engraved ring betraying some mysterious sentiment | brother, an avowed radical. He is large, and would, did he not stoop and hold himself in other respects badly, appear to advantage. His hair is thick, light, and curly. His long inexpressive countenance, and his large moist and fixed eyes, scarcely reveal the writer of genius. I suppose it is in some measure the incontestible success of his writings that has opened to him the doors of that exclusive society, with which he is very much at home. For the style of his costume he is indebted to old traditionary fashions. You will rarely ever meet him but with his bosom open, the skirts of a luxuriant surtout lined with velvet or silk floating to the wind, with the rest of his dress of clear brilliant shades, and varnished boots, brandishing some cane encrusted with a rich head. He would remind you of those parvenus of bad taste who encumber the avant scenes of the opera at Paris. I do not deny the really interesting character of some of the novels of Mr. Bul wer, though they are in other respects so wretchedly written; but it seems to be that he acted very ridicu lously in endeavoring to exaggerate their real value, at the expense of exhibiting the absurd vanity betrayed in every page of the sad rhapsodies he has recently published under the title of the Student. I would however sooner pardon him for this last work, than an act of his of which I have been informed. A young Ame rican called on him the other day, with letters of introduction. "I am delighted to see you, sir," said Mr. Bulwer, "but I will tell you beforehand that it will be difficult for me often to have that honor; I have already more acquaintances than my leisure will allow me to cultivate, and, in conscience, it is to them that I owe the moments at my disposal." Do you not discover in this piece of politeness something that even surpasses the characteristic amiability of the English? The English do not ruin themselves by hospitality. If a stranger is introduced to them by letters of introduction, they give him a heavy and long dinner, with a supper for dessert; then, having stuffed him with roast beef and filled him with Port and grog, and having spared no pains to cram him, they take their leave of him; and if the unfortunate individual survives this cheer, their doors are afterwards closed against his entrance. Sir Walter Scott, who was perhaps as great a novelist as Mr. Bulwer, did not consider himself exempt from the common duties of politeness and attention to visitors who happened to be introduced to him. So far from it, he treated them with much more hospitality than is the custom in England; it is true, however, that Sir Walter, though a great novelist, was not a great fashionable. There also you may have recognized Doctor Bowring searching about, running up and down, from one bench to another, shaking the hand of every member who will allow him to do so. The doctor is well known in Paris ; and as he did not quite waste his time in promenading the streets of that capital, he soon discovered that charlatanism was one of the most powerful means of success. As soon as Lord John Russell had resumed his seat, and in the midst of the various murmurs which his speech had excited, Sir Robert Peel rose to address the speaker. He took the most direct route to attain his end, and pro- | details, not without letting fly some well sharpened ceeded straight to the journals. The French journalists, arrows against the corrupting influence of the tories when one knows how to deal with them, are compla- over the municipal constitution, the reform of which he cency itself. In a short time no one was talked of but demanded. Doctor Bowring. The doctor did not take a single step that was not duly registered; it was Doctor Bowring here, and Doctor Bowring there, every where the doctor; and the honest public of the French capital, deafened by these trumpet-tongued praises, took him for some extraordinary important personage. On this side of the channel we better understand the puffs of the press, so that every body laughed, I assure you, when this Doctor Bowring was strutting through France, so splendidly decked out with the importance which he had purchased from the newspapers of Paris. He returned to London, but without this glorious mantle. That had been detained at the custom house as a sort of prohibited French merchandise. In fine, the doctor remains just what he was before, that is to say a reformer, anxious to profit by reform, a pale disciple of the utilitarian school of Lord Brougham; a sort of travelling clerk of the foreign office, speaking sufficiently well three or four living languages; a poet, who furnishes some stanzas of ordinary poetry to the magazines; as for the rest, the very best physician in the world. The ex-first lord of the treasury is of moderate height; his figure would be elegant, but for the fatness which has already begun to render it heavy; his dress is neat and studied without being dandyish; his manner would not convict him of the approach of fifty; his regular features have an expression of contemptuous severity; he seems to affect too much the manners of a great | man; natural distinction has more ease and carelessness about it. Moreover, studied affectation is also the prevailing characteristic of his oratory. Gesture and language both betray his ambitious affectedness. He has more of the actor than becomes a public speaker. It is irksome to see him agitate, struggle, and throw himself incessantly about. I do not like to see a statesman exhibit so much acquaintance with the positions of an elocutionist. It may be well enough by one's own fireIt was now near six; no one remained to be heard; side to cross one leg over another and to play with the the moment had arrived for opening the lists. Accord-guineas in the pockets of one's pantaloons. One may ing to the order of the motions for the day, the speaker play with his collar in a drawing room, or throw back gave the floor to the minister of the home department. the skirts of his frock, without any great impropriety; Suddenly the waves of the assembly subsided; a pro- but in public, and, above all, in places devoted to the found silence ensued; Lord John Russell rose to speak. solemn discussion of the laws of a nation, this style of Lord John Russell, third son of the Duke of Bedford, flirting manners is by no means appropriate. Sir Robert is extremely small, scarcely five feet high; the small-abuses the purposes for which his hands and arms were ness of his person almost renews his youth; one would given him. One almost loses his words in the incessant hardly suppose him forty-five years of age, as he really agitation of his person. is. A head large about the forehead, and small towards the chin, forming a sort of triangle; chesnut-colored hair, short and thin; large eyes surmounted by well arched brows; a countenance pale, calm, soft and phlegmatic, marked by a sort of half-concealed cunning, are the features that would alone strike you. His manner of speaking is in perfect harmony with his modest and quiet exterior. His voice is weak and monotonous, but distinct. In speaking, his body is scarcely more animated than his discourse. All his action consists in gliding his left hand behind his back, seizing the elbow of his right arm, and balancing himself indefinitely in that position. Lord John Russell expresses himself plainly and without effort; his language is cold and dry, but clear and concise. An author more concise than elegant, his style of writing exhibits itself in his off-hand speeches. He has nothing of the tiresome volubility of Thiers, who is minister of the home department in France; he says no more than is necessary, while he says every thing that he wishes. His sarcasm though frozen, is not the less sharp. The blade of his poignard does not require to be made red hot to inflict a deep wound. He has none of those sudden flashes which electrify and inflame an assembly; his light is of that peaceable and steady nature that illuminates and guides. His mind is a serious one, full of appropriate, condensed, and well resolved reflections. In less than an hour he had unrolled the whole plan of his bill, and concisely explained its principles and In other respects I will acknowledge that his elocution is spirited, easy, and intellectual; he may be listened to with pleasure. I am always well pleased with the manner in which he applies his rhetorical skill to public affairs. He has every thing which the art of speaking can give him; but the warmth which animates him is always artificial. The true fire of conviction which is so naturally communicated from the speaker to his audience, is always wanting. There is no sincerity about him. He is an ambitious tory in disguise, who, in order to seize again the golden reins of government, has hypocritically cloaked himself under the mantle of a reformer, and who would pass over to the radicals with his arms and baggage, if there was any chance of remounting by their aid to the power which he covets, and of securing himself in its enjoyment. In accepting, with ample reservations, the principle of the bill, Sir Robert Peel, in answer to the sharp insinuations of Lord John Russell, made several witty and amusing observations, which diverted a good deal the house. The minister replied in a few polite but firm observations. The serenity of the noble lord is perfectly unchangeable. He is as calm when defending himself, as when attacking his adversaries. I consider this political temperament as the most desirable for a statesman actively engaged in public affairs. Such coolness disconcerts the fury of one's assailants. One is never worsted in a combat when he retains such undisturbed self-possession. Some remarks on the details of the bill were made by different members. No one having opposed its introduction, the members began to move off. It was already night, and the hour for dinner; the candles were not yet lit; the house rose in a body. An individual in a brown curly wig, and dressed in a blue frock, whose broad shoulders and athletic form displayed great personal strength, descended from the ministerial benches, and stepped in the centre of the hall. The sound of his voice called every one back. Silence ensued. This was the great Irishman, the giant agitator, as he is called-a giant they may well call him. This energetic old man has alone more youth and life than all the young men in the Commons toge ther, than the whole chamber itself. with the ground. To overthrow such things is not destruction; it is but the clearing of the ground to build up public liberty. O'Connell is unquestionably the best speaker, and the ablest politician in Parliament. Friends or enemies, every one acknowledges, at least to himself, that he is the master-spirit; thus he is the true premier. The members of the cabinet are nothing but puppets, dressed up for show, and worked by his agency. His influence over the masses of the people is also immense and universal. He is not the popular idol in Ireland only, but also in England and Scotland. Long life to him! the hopes and future welfare of three nations are centered in his person. I have nothing further to say of the sitting of the 5th The darkness of the evening was not sufficiently of June, except to remark, that a sufficient number of great to conceal him from my view. I see him now working members were left in the room to continue for before me, erect on his large feet, his right arm extend-many hours the despatch of business of secondary imed, and his body inclined forwards; I seem to hear him portance. It is but justice to the House of Commons speak. His remarks were not long; he said but a few to state, that great political questions do not retard the words, but all his power was condensed in them. The execution of local and private business. They will lion fondled while he growled. His approbation was often get through in a single night, more work than the imperative and threatening. "So the bill has only French Chamber of Deputies would in a month of looked to England and Wales! Must Ireland then be thirty days. always forgotten, that its turn never comes but after the other countries of the United Kingdom? Has it not enough of venal and corrupt municipalities? Ne-without deep mortification, as you may imagine, but vertheless, he would support openly and with all his strength, the plan of ministers. It was a noble and glorious measure; he wished for nothing more for Ire land." You have seen that the opposition of the conservatives gave way before the corporations bill. It was not prudence rendered it indispensable. It is necessary, at any sacrifice, to assume the appearance of not hating too violently the principles of reform. The plan is not without cunning. He did not wish for more, that is to say, he did not But the opposition counts with confidence on regainorder more for Ireland. The wishes of O'Connell are ing its ground on the question of Irish tithes and their not to be despised. In consequence, Mr. Spring Rice | appropriation. It is on this question that it has halted hastened to satisfy him. "He need not give himself any uneasiness," said the Chancellor of the Exchequer; "the government would equally do justice to Ireland. It should likewise have its corporations reformed, and perhaps during the same session." "Thanks!" murmured O'Connell, mixing himself with the crowd of members pouring out of the hall; "I will remember this promise for Ireland." and offers combat. "We have abundantly proved," say their proclamations, "that we are reasonable reformers, but our love of change cannot induce us to sacrifice the church." And their church, that ungrateful and unnatural daughter, which has denied and plundered its mother, invokes with all its power the old prejudices of the Protestants to the aid of its champions; it sounds the tocsin with its bells taken from Catholic steeples. Every where it stations its bishops in its temples without altars, and makes them preach a new Ireland! you should have heard him pronounce its name with that excited, trembling accent, so full of tenderness, which emphasizes and lingers on every syl-crusade against Catholicism. Hear them: Of the inlable of the beloved word; you should have heard him, to comprehend the power of his irresistible eloquence. Pure love of country lends one a super-human strength. A just cause, honestly and warmly embraced, is an irresistible weapon in hands capable of wielding it. numerable religious sects which encumber the three kingdoms, taking them in alphabetical order, from the Anabaptists to the Unitarians, there is not one so hateful and dangerous as the Catholic church. The Popish sect is the only one that endangers the state, the throne and the property of individuals. It is necessary to I am not surprised that desperate conservatives, see-burn again the Pope in effigy and in processions, as ing their tottering privileges ready to be trodden under the feet of O'Connell, should treat him as an agitator, madman, destroyer. But how is it, that among the reformers themselves, he has so many inconsistent admirers, who will never pardon him for the bitter violence and inexorable severity of his speeches? Do these moderate and quiet men believe that honeyed phrases, and the submission of prayers, would have obtained the redress of even the least of the Irish griefs? No! had he not struck roughly and pitilessly, the old edifice of usurpation and intolerance would be still entire. Let him go on-let him be pitiless; he has made an important breach in the walls-let him level themance. formerly under the reign of Queen Elizabeth; and it would not be bad to burn on the same occasion that impious majority in the Commons, who wish to appropriate a part of the Protestant tithes in Ireland to the education of the poor of all religions! God be praised, the selfish and insensate voice of the conservatives has only cried in the desert. Their fanaticism will not succeed against the general good sense of the nation. Within as without the chamber, their defeat is inevitable. To use the beautiful metaphor of Mr. Shiel, the first Irish orator after O'Connell, the church of Ireland will be the cemetery of toryism and Protestant intoler THIRD LECTURE Of the Course on the Obstacles and Hindrances to Education, arising from the peculiar faults of Parents, Teachers and Scholars, and that portion of the Public immediately concerned in directing and controlling our Literary Institutions. On the Faults of Teachers. may be paid to them, like unexpected and unmerited favors; for if they themselves do not appear to hold entitled, who else can they expect to rate it any higher? their own profession in the honor to which it is justly In the second place, teachers are often enemies to their professional brethren in the jealousy manifested towards each other-in a restless and ill-restrained propensity to depreciate each other's qualifications, and a too frequent co-operation with the slandering part of the community, when they find the children sent to them from other schools ignorant and ill-disposed, to ascribe it all It will be recollected, my friends, that my last effort was to expose the vices and faults of parents, so far as they obstruct the progress of education. Those of instructers shall next be exhibited, since they are certo the defective manner in which they have been taught, tainly entitled at least to the second in rank in their power to do mischief. I might sum up all their faults in one sweeping condemnation, by saying that they render the persons guilty of them enemies to themselves, to their professional brethren, and to the public But specifications are wanting, and such I propose to give, as minutely and distinctly as I can. rather than to the real and very frequent causes of incapacity, bad temper, or bad early habits. By such practices, many foolishly imagine that they are promoting their own particular interests, when, in fact, they are deeply injuring the general interests of the whole class of teachers, by contributing to impair the public confidence in all schools whatever. For what can more effecIn the first place, they injure themselves by the style tually do this with the majority of mankind, than to and language often used when they tender their services hear those who set up for their instructers in morals, as to the public. The expressions are frequently such as well as in general science, continually finding fault with to encourage the idea, already too prevalent, that they each other, or silently acquiescing in its being done by are the only party to be obliged-they alone to be the persons not of their own profession? Such conduct receivers of favors never to be adequately compensated. places them in this desperate dilemma; if what each Whereas the truth is, if they are really fit for their says of every other be false, the public must think them business, and desirous to perform it faithfully, they all base calumniators: if it be true, the conclusion is never receive the millionth part of a cent for which | inevitable that they are all incapable; and either alterthey do not make a most ample return-a return, the native would speedily and most deservedly strip the real value of which can never be measured by mere whole of employment. dollars and cents. But the language in which they Lastly, teachers are often enemies to the public in so seek or acknowledge employment, often expresses a many particulars that I scarcely know with which to degree of humility below the lowest gospel require- begin; not that I mean to charge them with being inment a doubt of their own qualifications to teach, tentionally so-for it frequently happens with the best which, if true, ought forever to exclude them from the people in the world, that they are among the last to see class of instructers. It sometimes, in fact, deserves no their own greatest defects. Some of the :aults of teachbetter name than a servile begging for patronage, as if ers may be considered as belonging exclusively to themthey considered it a species of gratuitous alms. Ought selves, and for which they can find no excuse w whatever it to be wondered at, when this is the case, that the in the faults of others-such, for example, as the two first public should understand them literally, and treat them enumerated. But those which I have now to expose, are accordingly? If they avoid this extreme in tendering so intimately blended with the faults of their employers, their services, it by no means follows, as a necessary of their children, and of that portion of the world with consequence, that they should run into the other, which which they are more immediately connected, that, like is also very common, of making themselves ridiculous the reciprocating action of the various parts of certain by extravagant pretensions. The middle course in mechanical contrivances, these faults must be viewed this, as in many other things, is best. Let them always as causing each other. Thus, the parental fault of state plainly and explicitly, without exaggeration, what blindness to their children's defects, both natural and they believe they can do―their willingness to make the moral, and their consequent injustice to the instructers attempt with persevering fidelity, and the pecuniary | who ever blame or punish them, give birth to the equally compensation expected for their services. If this were always fairly and fully done, there could not be even the shadow of a pretext on the part of any who might then choose to accept their offers, for underrating their labors, and talking or acting as persons who had conferred obligations beyond all requital, by giving much more than they had received, or could be paid. When teachers are treated in this way, it is, in a great measure, their own fault, and it arises chiefly from the causes just stated. To render their intercourse with their employers what it ought to be, and what it certainly might become, there should be not only a feeling of entire reciprocity of benefit as to the money part of their dealings, but a mutuality of respect and esteem well merited on both sides. This kind of regard can never be felt towards teachers who receive such civilities as fatal fault in teachers of carefully avoiding every hint of incapacity, and studiously concealing the ill-conduct of their pupils, because well aware that they probably will not be believed. If compelled to make communications on so perilous and ungrateful a subject, they are so softened and frittered away, as to produce a far less pardonable deception than entire silence, since a sensible parent would ascribe the last to its proper motive, when the glossing and varnishing process might lead them entirely astray. The same knowledge of the self-delusion, and consequent injustice of parents, leads teachers to the frequent commission of another fault, in which they often engage their particular friends as participators. At their public examinations (where they have any) they contrive a sort of Procrustes' bed, which all their pupils are made to fit, but rather by the VOL. II.-61 |