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    imprisonment , are not lawful means for the attainment of any object ; and the sooner the Sardinian ^ legisla ture puts an end to such blots and excreseences on the constitutional regime , the better . To preserve them any longer would be at once a crime . and a blunder .

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    THE FUTURE O ^ THE SCOTTISH UNIVERSITIES . The disadvantages which characterise the Scottish University system , as contrasted with the ancient Academical institutions of our own country , are obvious , and have been dwelt upon in every discus-¦ sion of the subject . The absence of endowments and emolument prevents the long residence of students who want to achieve more than the rudimentary elements of knowledge in the scenes where -these first instructions were gained . The absence of the imposition of an examination for graduation , -as the necessary culmination of the student ' s course , and a- pre-requisite for admission into a _ JjeaEued , -p ~? 6 fession , has necessarily acted against the high education of Scotland ' s teachers ; and $ he want of private guidance and instruction has necessitated the fruitlessness of the larger ' portion of public prelections . These obvious ^ drawbacks have been alleged with almost . painful reiteration ; but we confidently believe that the opposite of the picture has not been sufficiently displayed . This converse , constituting as it does the . specialties and peculiarities of Scottish College

    teaching , is , in other words , the existing capacities ¦ which further opportunity ought to use . Every reform is the best which finds in the thing about which the reform is to be achieved the elements of improvement . It is easier to nourish weak and « icfcly shoots into maturity and fruit-bearing , than it is to graft upon them entirely foreign substances . And , to apply our general rule , it is better for the 'Scottish colleges to seek in their own old intent , 'history : and practice , the seeds of future reforms , ¦ than to weaken and denationalise themselves in . the

    Tain endeavour to-. make-of St . Andrews and Glasgow , an Oxford and a Cambridge . If this view be granted , it must follow that to point out these existing advantages , to show in what direction they ought to be fostered , arid to endeavour the dis-¦ covery of what safeguards ought to surround and restrain them ^ is the best course to pursues The deepest in its nature and the widest in its influences of these specialties , is the popular basis ¦ on which the Scottish colleges are founded . In England and in Scotland both , promising youthful talent is not denied access , as a general rule , even if poor , to further academical instruction . This

    beneficial end is in each case attained by different means . Jn England , universit y education is very ^ expensive ; but by the foundations established by piety and by the network of close connexion which $ > inds each old . county and provincial school to its own college and university , a talented boy is pro * vided with a whole or a part of the means which enable him to achieve graduation and further university advantages . In Scotland , on the other iiand , with exceptions which are so trifling as not in the least degree to affect the contrast , no such means are provided by public spirit for defraying the charge of the university education of the poor ; tout then , on the other hand , the expenses of college

    • education are so slight as to bring it within the xeach of almost all who choose to make the necessary and testing sacrifices . , ,.. , ,,, . It may be said , then , that practically the English and-the Scottish colleges are both equally popular on this score . This view fades away on a little deeper inquiry . 3 ? or , after all , this pecuniary assistance in England ban only reach some of those yr \\ Q wish and are deserving of it . And then , if , once on the foundation of a school , talent will ensure a farmer university training , 'on the other hand , it must be remembered that , in many instances , only interest and influence can admit you into the school , and place you in the right groove . Howover munificent , then , the legacies and bequests

    tish student there have been y , far separated and d isjointed it may be , of a barque which ) if ever completed , will be much nobler , much more capacious . It will be answered at once , and most fairly , that you had better produce a self-consistent culture in the minds of most , than merely lay foundations of intellectual development , which , in nine cases out of ten , have never one timber more laid upon them , for the sake of the tenth case where a fabric , more or less complete , is reared . But the extenuation lies here : the Scottish student has only

    laid down onlribs in England ; there is in Scotland more creation in the mind of wants . This we believe to be the great distinction between the effects of Scottish and English collegiate training . The English graduate knows more , and apprehends what he knows more thoroughly and systematically , than he who has just quitted the Natural Philosophy and Rhetoric classes at Edinburgh , at the conclusion of his four years' course . The English student sails out of harbour a neat , small craft , with all his appointments complete . In the mind of the

    bcotwhat we may call the term of his under-graduateship to receive all the benefits of university training . And you must attempt to do for a quick and promising Scottish student , in the four years which elapse before he betakes himself to . law , divinity , or business , all that you can do for a man who studies at an English , college over a number of y ears of indefinite extent . But it must be allowed , after all , that in considerable measure Scott ish colleges are themselves remedying this defect of the small fabric on the large foundation . Scotland supplies its philosophic teachers from itself , but as it is only

    now and again that it has produced a Ruddiman or an Adam , and as it is itself convinced that it has , no more Playfairs aud Leslies ,, with a wise liberality of spirit it has sent to England for Mr . Kelland , of Edinburgh , and the accomplished Professor Thompson , of ( jlasgow ; just as it has there filled its classical chairs from the same source . Partially to recapitulate what we have said , hut more to make application of our remarks in the light intended in the outset , we have only now to add that , while the popular basis of a Scottish collegiate teaching is a benefit which ean

    hardly be over estimated , the benefit can only blossom into full fruition and perfection if additional facilities , such as those which exist in . England , are afforded for deeper and higher instruction . While Scotchmen may still point with pride and satisfaction to the influence of the public teachings of Hutcheson , who vivified with soul and spirit the cold materialism which , in his day , occupied the whole philosophical domain , and repelled men from the study of mind ; while they may still be proud that from a Glasgow Professor ' s chair came the philosophical method which has proved itself as ap-) licableto the reputation of the transcendentalisms of leid ' s future , as it did to the plausible sophistries

    prevalent in his own day ; while they have a right to proclaim the fact that pugald Stewart sen , t to London a school of politicians who have guided the public progress of the century ; that many a mind now speaking to the ears and eyes of England through press and pulpit , received its culture as it hung upon the words of Sir William Hamilton ; while these and matiy similar instances are just grounds for the high laudation of the eJRcacy of professorial teaching , they ought not to blind the national mind to the fact that , although here and there a giant . oak , or pirn way arise , from a seed planted bv fortuition the moat unexpected ,

    the humble but necessary broad crop of waving grain requires the modest efforts of the patient tiller , as well as the broadcast seed-sowing of him who plants the germ . Tutorial instruction without professorial teaching will only reduoe to culture powers only half developed in their energy and in their numbers . But just as truly , professorial prelection without tutorial inculcation may produce here and there a mighty monument of its influence , but will leave barren and fruitless many a spot of soil , good in itself , and unprolific only from the absence of the ¦ hunnhlft nnrn ^ f t . hn intnr .

    • over undeniable the advantages to the country which they produce , their exercise is , at the best , only partial and incomplete . In Scotland , on the other hand , the only element to the enjoyment of the privileges of college education for' the very ^ borest is the perseverance and . self-sacrifice -which as rtlieir essential pre-requisite condition . And no pnefcan ' say but that that condition is the very one 1 wluqK wisdoni would have speculatively suggested . . - , TUei » ia < roqre filling of the mind with , knowledge

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    persed by the pook-uawkers through every department of the kingdom , it has been the-practice of all who wished to disseminate widely their opinions to commit their publications to the hands of these indefatigable agents . Ear better than any professional propagan dists they . we ' re supposed to do the work of political and social propagandism . With his literary pack , upon his shoulder ^ or suspended from his neck , the hawker trudged from village to villa ge , and from town to town , displaying in each his latest assortment of cheap editions of old books and tempting

    copies of new ones . Histories compressed into ¦ tw o-franc volumes ; biographies , with striking portraits , for half the money ; and some without those stem embellishments , for seventy-five centimes ; pocket collections of Beranger ' s songs , and Ten of the most celebrated dramas of the classic school , compacted intoouc dwarfish tome ; political brochures and piquant novels ; almanacks and lives of . saints ; cookery books and gaudy-looking missals ; something , in short , for every age and taste was to be found iu the wallet of the impartial pedler . Now and then a gendarme , more officious than the rest of

    his fraternity , would look inquisitively through the miscellaneous heap'as it lay spread forth upon some tavern bench ; and now anil then an austere curate , who had detected one of his youthful .. penitents in the perusal of a tale of Balzac or George Sand , would denounce as emissaries of Satau all itinerant vendors of profane and worldly publications . But the appetite was too strong to be scared either by priest's ' maledictions or policeman ' s frowns into abstinence from the mental fare it once had tasted : and neither Charles X . nor

    Louis Philippe ever ventured . openly to tamper with the popular gratification . They were well aware that books of a radical tendency were widely circulated by the -colporteurs , in renmlc districts , where otherwise the philosophic theories of Paris" would never have been known ; but they wisely shrank from meddling with , a ' . custom that had become thoroughly national , ' and coiiteuled themselves with encouraging such count . eractive agencies as were suggested to them from t hne to time .

    The present " paternal governor " of France has characteristically undertaken to determine what three-and-thirty millions of people shall intellectually eat , what they shall mentally drink , and wherewithal they shall morally be clothed . Under the restored Empire steps have been taken for the first time to bring colportage under the direct control of Government . An index erpurgalorius as rigorous as that of Koine has been framed at the Ministry of the Interior , in which is inscribed every work obnoxious to the powers that be . This list is not of course made public ; but manuals of instructions are furnished to Mie presets , magistrates , and com mi . sauries

    of police throughout the ; departments . With these precious guides for their inquisitorial feet , I lie local authorities have made it part of their ordinary business to rummage the p ^ acksof the bouk-liawkors , and at their discretion to rifle their contents of whatever smells of political or social freedom . Stimulated moreover by the clergy , with whom their imperial master affeots to have such intimate relations , they have extended their dctqct . ive cure to nil books deemed heterodox by the established church . Speculative inquiry must bo suppressed , as tending to subvert the foundations of onloj ; and sectarian controversy of every kind must bo treated as contraband of priestly ' war . Logically

    following out those premises to their practical conclusions , cheap copies of the Bible wore ia many places seized , as being calculated to bring the religion of the State , and thereby tho bum iwo " i into contempt . How could the belief in miraculous manifestations like that of the White Lady ol Lourdes bo hoped for if the right of private judgment were anarohically permitted , and its ff ' p charter actually placod within the reach of all men . Or how would the nation coino to regard t no profusion of imperial , expenditure on Catholic churolics and institutions of oyor y kind , if donbLs wore ouoo permitted to bo sown broadcast inrouglr"nro -l » ua as to the exclusive truth of Catholicity F

    BOOK-HAWKING IN PRANCE . Among the many objeots of permanent suspioidjbt to the Prenoh Government tljierc are few that from time to time have caused more anxiety than the sale of books , pamphlets , and periodicals , by means of what ia termed , ooljpotiage . Ever since tho days of Paul Courier , who was ill a certain senso the Cobbett of BVanee , and whose writings were

    dis-In the department of tho Sarthc , some person * of consideration ventured la . tclyi however , to remonstrate against tho perpetration of tins new strotoh of tho " paternal syst . om . " lloproscntetions woro made in high quarters , and the Mom des JJm . v Monties , the Journaldos Ddhatx , the kttcte , and other journals courageously took up tho iloiontw of this last remnant of departed liberty . A » *

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    - ^ THE LEADER . [ No , 444 , September 25 , 1858 . J \ JXjJj . . - ¦ ¦ - . . . ; : ¦ . . ¦¦¦¦¦ i ^ Mi rrrr—n n rri riiMi ^^^ " - ""* ' —— ' -

• Citation
  • Leader (1850-1860), Sept. 25, 1858, page 1002, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse2.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2261/page/18/