Our scholars are little else than pedants and antiquaries and grammarians, who have never exercised any faculty but memory; and our reasoners are for the most part but slenderly provided with learning." But, as if afraid of having proved too much against the slenderly learned, his Lordship adds, "At least they make but a slender use of their learning?"-Now, without stopping to inquire how a person with slender learning can make any but a slender use of it, we will proceed with this curious exposure of the Pantological system by its very founder; who tells us that, "Of the two, the deeply-learned but shallow reasoners, and the slenderly-learned but deep reasoners, the latter are by far the best off, and on many subjects have really profited by the separation." Aware, however, that the profoundly-learned have been seldom, if ever, shallow reasoners, while the slenderly-learned have been generally unable to reason at all, from the want of facts on which to base their conclusions, his Lordship adds,-" It is true that the days of Cudworth and Barrow, of the Hookers and Taylors, have passed away;" none of whom, it is confessed, were shallow reasoners, although profoundly learned; but, says the reviewer,-"No modern would, if he could, reason as a Barrow or Cudworth." Why not, think you, gentle reader? "You will probably answer, Because the modern writer has not talent enough to follow the march of such men. He can neither toil up the steeps, where they could walk with a firm step, and at an easy pace; nor will he venture into a cavern,

that "it must be confessed, the combined efforts of the present age surpass those of any former state of society; but it is very doubtful if many of us attain to an equal elevation with the best minds of former periods." Now as this sentiment was broached in the presence of Lord Brougham, by whom Mr. Long was appointed the editor of the defunct Quarterly Journal of Education, and of the still blooming Penny Cyclopædia, it is easy to understand in whose favour the exception was made of rari nantes in gurgite vasto. We wish, however, Mr. Long had told us where the counterparts of the seven wise men of Greece are to be found in our modern Gotham; for we deny most stoutly that in Classical Literature, (and we presume the ex-Professor of Greek was alluding only to the dead languages,) the combined efforts of the whole race of modern Lilliputians have equalled, or can equal, the effects produced by a single Gulliver of the olden time. Where are we to look for a Scaliger, a Casaubon, a Bentley, or even a Valckenaer? Certainly not amongst the Boeckhs, or the Muellers, or the Hermanns of Germany; and as for the other parts of Europe, where is this galaxy of learning to be found? Sure we are that the ex-Professor himself will be too modest, and we hope too wise, to number amongst the double stars of scholarship two fellows of the Metropolitan University, who have verified the remark of Lord Kaimes, that the best way to learn a subject is to write a book about it.

where their only light was a reflection from the mind." Oh! no such thing. His Lordship says that "modern scholars, who can reason, have ceased to make a parade of their learning;" and yet we know of at least one modern soi-disant reasoner, who, though a scholar of elaborate erudition in the opinion of the Westminster Reviewer, has made a great parade of his learning: with what success let our last Number tell. It was therefore singularly noble on the part of the reviewer, after praising the good sense of the slenderly-learned modern for modestly hiding his light in a dark lanthorn, to confess that the very persons whom he was decrying united profound learning to great powers of understanding, and with vast and varied stores of acquired knowledge, possessed energy of mind enough to wield them with ease and dexterity;-a compliment which posterity will, we venture to predict, be happy to repay with interest to the Pantologists, should they ever produce a writer, who with only half the learning of the pupils of the old school, shall exhibit only half the shallowness of the founder of the new.

With regard to the fruits already gathered, or expected, from this newly discovered species of intellectual pippin, we confess that too little time has elapsed since the planting of it to require from the head-gardener even a show of blossom. But if we may, according to the notion of Thucydides, predict the future from knowing the past, we guess,* to use the phrase of a Ken

*To this conclusion have we come by observing, that so far from the lower classes treading upon the heels of those just above them, and the middle in like manner imparting to the upper an intellectual pressure from without, all are, in the language of the drill-serjeant, "as they were ;" and we defy the founder and friends of the Pantological school to name a single work, exhibiting originality of conception, depth of learning, and patient investigation, or possessing the ingredients of any but commonplace talents, to which the Useful Knowledge era has given birth, with the exception of Ebenezer Elliot's Poetry; who, as long as he fleshed his Sheffield knife in the carcases of the Corn Lords, was considered a Byron blade in the hands of the political anatomists; but no sooner did he give a quietus with his best-tempered bodkin to the Cotton Lords, who are the salt of the land in the eyes of political economists-for, say these wise-no-acres, corn is only chaff, but cotton the staff of life,than did the Edinburgh fleshers lay out poor Ebenezer himself for dissection, and the cutler was cut up into Scotch collops. It is true that the Library of Useful Knowledge contains some articles as heavy as lead; but the greatest part of such metal is imported, like false hair for ladies fronts, from Germany, and prepared for the lower orders in England by one of the firm of Lardner, Keightley, and Co., who, by a flux of their own, contrive to extract the silver from the lead; and while they wisely pocket the one, they cleverly pass off the other as German plate. Nay, such is the dearth of fancy even in the lighter fabrics, that

tucky-man, that although the tree will be loaded with blossoms, no fruit will ever set; or if it does, that instead of the golden apples of Hope, we shall pluck only the sour crabs of Disappointment. For already has the world seen, in the case of Priestley, the Pantologist of his day, how little a man benefits himself by not permitting the bee of his mind to feed upon the honey it has collected with so much toil.

Speaking of the American philosopher, whose brains, like the water in a kitchen copper, were always simmering, his Lordship has sketched a portrait, of which it may be said, as of the Childe Harolde of Byron, that the painter has drawn from himself. "Priestley," observes the Edinburgh Reviewer, (vol. ix.) " was so impatient to be doing, that he would spare no time for thinking; and erroneously imagined that science was to be forwarded rather by accumulating facts, than by meditating upon those already discovered. He seems to have been actuated rather by a vague and restless curiosity to learn the issue of certain combinations, than to steadily elucidate, by a few decisive experiments, the great processes of nature. He forgot the maxim of Bacon, that experiments should be few and convincing, and preceded by hypothesis, founded upon well-ascertained analogies; for, without such a foundation, to make experiments, however numerous and pretty, was to grope in the dark, and could never lead to valuable and certain conclusions. The greater part of Priestley's experiments were of this description; and there is as much philosophy in them, as sweeping the sky for comets." But though the fellow-chemist of a Whig bishop and the theological opponent of a Tory one was thus, as a philosopher, utterly incapable of instructing the well-informed, he was of signal service in teaching the tyro; "for," says the Reviewer, "his elementary treatises are excellent. They are plain, rational, and engaging. The author never forgets that his reader is supposed to be ignorant; or that the subject may be repulsive to a beginner. His peculiar talent, indeed, seems to have been to make knowledge popular and easy; and though far inferior to

an article purporting to be of English make is found to have been manufactured at Paris forty-five years ago. We beg our readers to compare an article that lately ran through four numbers of Blackwood, with a French work under the following title :-" Alcibiade enfant, jeune homme, homme fait, et vieillard. Paris. 1792;"-a copy of which is in the British Museum; for without such comparison it would be difficult to believe that any English scribbler would turn a literary resurrection-man, and have the impudence to make, à la Tussaud, a living wax figure of the dead. But as Æschylus says-Αναφαίνεται δ' ὁ θνήσκων, Ὀτοτύξεται δ' ὁ βλάπτων, or, as the modern copies read-Οτοτύξεται δὲ ΒλακFω, where the digamma is to be pronounced, as it is always, like the English w.

Franklin in originality and vivacity of expression, he seems to have derived from him some of that unpretending simplicity of statement and power of familiar illustration, so captivating to those entering upon a new course of study." But all this power of making study fascinating eventually produces the contrary effect to what is expected by those who have yet to learn that facile parta facile dilabuntur; that in all mental pursuits there must be some difficulties, else a youth of vigorous intellect will turn with disdain from trifles fitted only for fools; that the road to learning may be made not only smooth but slippery; that, as Elmsley stated in the Edinburgh Review, vol. liii. p. 229, those difficulties should be left unexplained which would merely exercise and improve the knowledge and acuteness of the reader, and consequently the assistance given by the teacher should be rather too little for the idle than too much for the industrious pupil. But as Pantological quackery can be supported only by persons appearing to know a little of every thing, its supporters must advocate a system of education by which any science can be acquired superficially; for thus only could a man, after appearing in the character of the first lawyer in the land, be able, if required, to learn the duties of a Baron of the Exchequer, or feel himself competent to sit in a court of appeal, a peer by creation and a judge by courtesy.

Hitherto the whole question has been viewed with reference to its bearings upon politics and science; but there is one point which the Pantologists have studiously kept out of sight,-that which relates to religion. Of course we are aware that when the idea of the London University was first started it was intended to exclude religion altogether; for it was said the parents of the children must look to that: and though every man is not fit to be a professor in a single ology, and only one man in all the ologies, yet every head of a family is, like the Chancellor, the legal guardian of infants, and by prescription S.T.P.P., Sanctæ Theologiæ Psychologica Professor; and as England is split into fractions infinitessimally small of heresy, it would, said the Numas of the new school, be impossible to find the integer of religion, and therefore it was better to assume the unknown quantity equal to zero. Here, as before, the object was apparently philanthropic, and totally unconnected with party purposes. But it was easy to perceive, in despite all the attempts to conceal the real object, that this indifference towards one religion was intended to lead the way to the destruction of all. Accordingly, coexistent with the design of introducing a new system of education, measures were taken by the Pantologists in this country, similar to those adopted by the philosophers of France, previous to the reign of Reason and Terror;-those twin supporters of a democracy, which unfurled with one hand the standard of Egalité, and with the other pointed to the guillotine,

as the best comment on Horace's Pallida mors æquo pulsat pede pauperum tabernas, regumque turres. But as no esprit fort could be found in England to write the Encyclopædia of a Condorcet, or the Philosophical Dictionary of a Voltaire, an esprit faible was employed to compile a Penny Cyclopædia from the one, and a Penny Magazine from the other; while recourse was had to the pages of a Bayle, to bring the Aristotelian Philosophy into disrepute, because it was thought that the dialectics of the Stagirite, under whose shield the Roman Catholic church had fought so long and stoutly, had given too strong a support to those acute reasoners, who, like Berkeley, had entered the arena with Locke, or like Bentley had laid a Collins prostrate in the dust.

To whom the praise is due of being the first to lay bare the real design of making religion, in parliamentary phrase, an open question, we know not. The suspicions, however, of the more watchful friends of the Church were excited very early; and, alarmed at the rapid strides made by the new school through their fascinating cry, "in the name of Profit, Pounds,"-some individuals (we say it with all due respect to their motives, and admiration of its present working,) quickly subscribed to build the King's College; but with the odium attached to it of the step having been taken more in the spirit of a trade-like competition than of principles, which disdain to look at pounds, shillings, and pence, when higher interests are at stake. For ourselves, we cannot help thinking it would have been far more dignified in the friends of the Establishment to send, as they did before, their children to respectable schools, than to sanction by their imitation the money-saving principle on which the London University was founded.

Had the friends of the Pantological system stated distinctly, as the founders of the Unitarian Coward College and of the School at Hackney did, that they were willing to endow an University where the children of dissenters might obtain an education denied them at other places, the whole proceeding would have been fair and intelligible; nor in a country where a Jumper, a Ranter, and a Joanna-Southcotian, are all permitted to get, if they can, a congregation, should we have any right to complain; but it is the covert design that we are anxious to unmask, of preparing the rising generation to reject all religion, under the hollow plea that it is unphilosophical to fetter the youthful mind with any prejudices on that point; which, if true, we say should be put in the front, and if false, rejected entirely and openly.

And here we will challenge the whole of the Anythingarians to show that any state of civilized society has existed, or could exist, without some integral religion, and not merely fractions of it. Where, we ask, has the law been able to repress crime, when