New York: Harpers This is a reprint of the En, over which it possesses the i advantage, common to most American books, of having the leaves ready cut for tle reader, After the multitudinous re-which have appeared in- Engliah, American, Contivental periodicals which amonget them have repro:
nearly every anecdote and brilliant nig found within the volumes,—it would be worse than superfluous to attempt a criticism here, We, therefore, confine ourselves to drawing attention to Lord Macaviay's solution of a question laid before him in India which has in an almost identical shape cropped up in China, We refer to the relative advantages of teaching 1 acienco through the medium of into the vernacular, and of first imparting a European language through which alone scientific teaching is to be conveyed, We ha the latter alternative ourselves upon finding that our judgment in supported by one of Lord BMacavzay's authority. We formed that ati sent moment there are many shely ed and unprinted transi: of trontises on physics, natural science, exch one, more wuintelligible than tion in edticational matters had pended, on account of an equal division of the members of the Committee of Public Iustruction, upon the question whether the higher branches of knowledge should be taught in English, or liberal grants be made to encourage the publication of scientific works in Sanscrit, Persian, and Atsbic, The following is taken from his minute How stands the case? We have to educate people who cannot at present be educated by meane'of their mother tongue. We must }ome modern language'... hundred and twenty ously been ous as that in which our
gradual emer, from tncettota ware. before Siak WY wan ce, and among civilised Russia: There is'now in in no wise inferior to the most accomplished men who adorn the best circles of Paris.and melon... How was this change effected? "Not by flattering national prejudices " but by teaching those foreign ages in which the greatest mate of 2n-all that information within reach.
2 en laid up, 108 putting \liliough for the excellent and perfectly obvious' reason which we have already given, we abstain from re-doing what has already been 80 fully done, we cannot close the volumes before us without declaring our belief that this biography is the only itextant, which half a century mentioned in the same breath with Boswell's Johnaoii. Its charm is indescribable. We are led back and forward out of the hot strife of party into the retirement of an academic cloister, and thence' into the domestic circle with a rapidity which does not impress us with suddenness or incongruity only on account of the consummate skill of the biographer. In a senso precisely the reverse of thal which the description is given by Charles Lame, Macaviay's Life and Letters in a book that no gentleman's library should be without.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.