of three.

1871.

Compared with France, it is found that 250 French conscripts out of 1,000 know less than the five who know least among the Zurich recruits; whilst only between 62 and 72 would come up to the standard of the Zurich second class. In our own army, the figures of the latest report of the Director-General of Military Educ2tion are not quite so bad as those of France; though, as they apply to the whole army, and not to recruits only, and therefore include, presumably, to some extent the results of the education which is being given in the army itself, the comparison they afford is not an exact one. Out of 178,356 men, 10,724 can neither read nor write, giving a proportion of over 60 per thousand as against the French 250, but as against less than two in Zurich. 9,543 can read, but not write, making over 53 per thousand, as against five in Zurich. With respect to the 99,910 English soldiers who can read and write, and the 58,179 who are better educated, it is impossible to establish any comparison with the Zurich results. But, on the whole, we shall probably be within the mark if we say that the army of the Zurich democracy is at least ten times as well educated as our own. At the same time, it may be said that the standard of an army raised by conscription from the whole population ought to be higher than that of one like our own, voluntarily recruited in great measure from its lowest class.

being called upon to describe his father's ever; and one-tenth have a superior house, the school where he had been education. The examinations, it may be educated, his barracks, &c. In arithme- added, were not continued beyond 1872, tic, sums were set in interest, or rule as the results were found to be exactly the same on all points, except that there The very nature of the exercises suf- was a slight rise in the marks, the averfices to show the surprisingly high stand-age being 2.68 in 1872 against 262 in ard which the men were expected to have attained. But the results are more surprising still. They were denoted by the marks 4, 3, 2, 1, and o. In reading, o did not mean that the recruit could not read at all, but simply that he did not do so fluently; I meant that he committed faults; 2, that he "left something to be desired as respects understanding and punctuation;" and 4 and 3, either that he read fluently and with expression, and with a full understanding of the subject (4), or (3) that he did so somewhat less perfectly. Out of 1,000 recruits only 5 had the mark o, 83 had 1, 273 had 2, 462 had 3, and 177 had 4. In writing again, o meant not that the recruit could not write at all, but that he could only form words or letters; I, that he could just write and spell; 2, that (besides writing and spelling) he could just be understood; 3, that the substance of the composition was right, but the form not perfect; 4, that the composition was correct, and in an agreeable style. Here, again, only five had the 0, 134 the 1, 395 the 2, 355 the 3, and strange to say, 411 the mark 4, so that literally the largest of the five classes was the one with full powers of written expression. In arithmetic, lastly, where o denoted blunders in the four first rules, I a knowledge of those rules only, 2 a comprehension and more or less satisfactory solution of problems, 3 a correct but slow and heavy solution of them, and 4 the rapid and correct solution of them, both mentally and in writing, 6 had o, 43 had 1, 233 had 2, 518 had 3, and 200 had 4, the third class here being, as in reading, the most numerous. Hence it follows that out of 1,000 Zurich recruits only from 5 to 6 read, write, or cypher badly (not" and cypher," for out of 1,479 in all, only two had o in everything); whilst from 639 to 766 read fluently and understand what they read, express themselves in writing correctly and intelligibly, or solve correctly sums in interest and rule of three. One hundred, moreover, out of 1,479, were in the fourth class in every instance. In other words, from six-tenths to seventenths of the Zurich population are educated men, qualified to rise by further self-improvement to any position what

Now, it is not pretended that the institutions which may suit a small canton with the population of a large English city are adapted to those of the United Kingdom, with its over 30 millions of inhabitants. But the example of Zurich shows that the fullest power given to the whole people may be wielded for the benefit of the whole people. Rocks ahead there may be, nay, there must be, in the course of any ship of State. But there are channels between those rocks, and this Swiss Canton, instead of being wrecked upon them, as from a distance we might fancy it was, has found a way through them. We may surely do the same, trusting in God, and in the good sense and good feeling of our people.

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From The Quarterly Review.
MODERN CULTURE.*

"Republic; " Bacon and Sir Thomas More in the "Atlantis" and "Utopia." But both the last were the mere sportive fancies of practical statesmen, while Plato says of his own republic : Perhaps in heaven there is laid up a pattern of it for

66

THE struggle between the Girondins and the Jacobins in the first French Revolution has a far wider significance than the passing strife of rival factions. It represents the rupture between two ele- him who wishes to behold it, and beholdmentary forces of the Revolution, tem- ing to organize himself accordingly. porarily combined for a common object' And the question of its present or future of destruction—the men of action and existence on earth is quite unimportant.” the men of letters. The philosophic The problem was not strange to theology, party, of which the Girondins were the and on speculations of the kind Butler political expression, had given the move- remarks, with his usual strong sagacity: ment its first form and impulse, had "Suppose now a person of such a turn of clothed it in heart-stirring phrases, spe- mind to go on with his reveries, till he cious sophistry, and brilliant romance. had at length fixed upon some plan of So long as action was restricted to an nature as appearing to him the best; — assault on existing institutions, the mon- one shall scarce be thought guilty of dearchy, the aristocracy, and the Church, traction against human understanding, if the Girondins were the men who encour-one should say, even beforehand, that aged and guided the mind of the people. the plan which this speculative person But when, after the revolution of the 10th would fix on, though he were the wisest August, the philosophers found them- of the sons of men, would not be the very selves, for the first time in the history of best, even according to his own notions the world, the sole rulers of a great na- of the best." tion, their political incapacity was at once apparent. Not one act of statesman-like energy can be credited to the Girondins during the brief period of their power. They were undecided before the enemy on the frontier, impotent among the mob in Paris, powerful only within the walls of the Assembly, and after a bare year of nominal rule all of the party who were not in hiding in the provinces had perished beneath the guillotine.

Yet this finite capacity of the human mind was precisely what the revolutionary philosophers refused to admit. Each of them assumed that the conception of perfection he had himself formed had a positive external equivalent. Hence their reasoning was constructively valueless, for it was based on a petitio principii, or an assumption of what it was really necessary to prove. On the other hand, the magic of the word "perfection,” and the natural inclination of men to overlook its essentially relative character, made it irresistible as a weapon of de

What was the cause of a rise so prodigious and a fall so disastrous ? The aim of the literary or Girondin party was perfection a dream that has always at-struction. "It would be advisable,” said tracted and amused the minds of philosophers. Plato had given it form in his

Danton, speaking in the Girondin dialect, "that the Convention should issue an address to assure the people that it wishes to destroy nothing, but to perfect everything; and that if we pursue fanaticism, it is because we desire perfect freedom of religious opinion." How easy on such premises to argue that all human frailties and crimes were to be ascribed to the imperfection of existing institu tions, and that if the belief in revealed religion and the fear of tyrannous authority were destroyed, the mind would reassert its native dignity! So, at least,

reasoned Condorcet, who thought that the first step towards perfection was to annihilate the idea of a personal God. And such was the dream of Madame Roland, who, in her hatred of an aristocracy socially superior to herself, conceived that the earth, relieved of such an incubus, would presently bring forth Brutuses and Timoleons with all the austere virtues of imaginary republics. No wonder, therefore, that when the first fruits of liberty and equality appeared in the September massacres and the rise of the Mountain, the Girondins were filled with dismay and despaired of the situation. The character of the party is well expressed in the epigram of Dumouriez, who said that the republic, as conceived by the Girondins, was like the romance of a clever woman.

question to an open issue, and we sh Il endeavour in the present article to extract from the new culture, of which we hear so much, a precise account of its meaning, to track it to its source, to subject it to proof, and thus to decide how far its actual powers are equal to its proposed end.

And first we are led to remark on the change in the meaning of the name. In the idea attaching to the word “cultivation" there are usually two main elements, society and criticism. By a cultivated age we mean an advanced state of society, recognizing certain laws or standards, both moral and intellectual, to which members of the community who desire a character for refinement are expected to conform. Such was the age of Pericles at Athens, of Augustus at Rome, of Louis Girondism has survived the Girondins. XIV. in France, of Anne in England. Though checked on the field of politics, We do not call the age of Elizabeth, philosophy has not yielded one tittle of though in many essential points a nobler her pretensions to universal spiritual epoch than either of the two last, a cultidominion. But she has shifted her vated age, because, in the first place, ground. Perfection, which was once society, in the modern sense, was only in sought in the state of nature, is now its infancy, and, next, because criticism placed in the realms of art. The wide was almost unknown. Now the meaning philosophical movement called "cul- in our day specially attaching to the word ture" has sapped the foundations of culture is "self-cultivation." The source positive belief in Germany; its ideas of the movement, as we have said, is have long been extolled by our own phi- Germany, and the name of its prophet is losophers; it is now in the midst of perhaps the greatest, and certainly the society itself. "Are not new lights," most representative, in modern literature. asks one of its professors, whose doc- No terms of panegyric are too extrava"Knowest thou," trines we shall presently examine, "find-gant for his disciples. ing free passage to shine in upon us? says Mr. Carlyle, "no prophet, even in They are; and the question is, whether the vesture, environment, and dialect of these are mere ignes fatui, or proceed, as this age? None to whom the godlike the philosophers affirm, from the beacon has revealed itself through all meanest of eternal truth. To every one who re- and highest forms of the common, and flects it must be plain that society in by him been again prophetically revealed, England is now being exposed to a sol-in whose inspired melody, even in these vent like that which operated in France rag-gathering and rag-burning days, before the Revolution. On the other man's life again begins, were it but afar hand, philosophy no longer occupies the off, to be divine? I know him, and same masterful position as before the name him, Goethe." In his early days downfall of the gospel of Rousseau. Her Goethe was an ardent apostle of the new approaches against the outworks of Chris- principles of Rousseau, which he emtianity are masked under a cautious mod-bodied in "The Sorrows of Werther." eration, and even under the show of a But his clear perception detected their patronizing friendship. It is, therefore, inadequacy even before the catastrophe the interest of those who rest on the of the French Revolution. truth of an ancient tradition to bring the

One of the first to perceive the faults of