sanction, which is never given without full and accurate reports.— The same remark is applicable to the universities. They govern themselves, it is true, but by fixed laws. The professors elect their deans and their rectors, and are nominated themselves by the minister. The end of the entire organization of public instruction in Prussia is to leave details to the local powers, and to reserve to the minister and his council the direction and general impulse of the system. Dr. Fisk, in his Travels, notices the subject of education in Prussia in the following terms: tem. 1. One of the features of education in Prussia, as in France, is, that the superintendency of the schools is made a distinct department of government, with an efficient minister at its head.* He, with his council and subordinate officers, looks after the whole sysHe not only takes care of the funds and of their distribution, but he sees that well-qualified teachers are employed, proper textbooks introduced, suitable houses provided, &c. To carry out the system efficiently, the country is divided into provinces, and these into regency circles, and these again into smaller circles, and, finally, the smaller circles into parishes. Each parish must have a school. This school is under a parochial committee and inspector, subject to the supervision of the higher councils and of the minister of instruction. 2. Every parent is obliged by law to send his child to school from the age of seven years to fourteen. He can, however, by permission of the committee, take out his child before the age of fourteen, if the pupil shall have gone through the course of primary instruction; and, if the parent is not able to furnish the child with suitable clothing, &c., to attend school, the public furnishes them. 3. Each parish is obliged by law to establish and maintain a primary school. 4. The school houses are well fitted and suitably located. A play ground is generally laid out in connection with the school house, and often a garden, orchard, &c. 5. In addition to suitable books and maps, cheap apparatus and collections in natural history are required. 6. Religion is taught in the schools, and where there are different religions a spirit of accommodation is enjoined; and if there is more than one master when the parish is divided in its religious views, the head master is to be of the religion of the majority, and the assistant of that of the minority.† 7. Girls' schools are required, as far as practicable, to be separate from the other sex. 8. In addition to the ordinary branches of a primary education as given in our country, drawing, singing, and the elements of geo * Why should not this feature be introduced into the respective states in our country? In Connecticut there is an officer to superintend the school fund. But of how little avail is it to have a fund, and to have it well taken care of, unless it is also properly expended? + It should be recollected that this accommodation is effected where the population is divided between Catholics and Protestants, as is the case in a great part of Prussia. How much easier might this accommodation be effected between different Protestant sects? metry are required. Agricultural instructions and gymnastic exercises are also insisted on. 9. But that which, more than any thing else, gives character to these schools is the competency of the instructors. To secure this there are forty-two normal schools, where teachers are trained to their profession. They are not only taught what to teach, but how to teach; and to this end they are required to take a three years' course; at the end of which, if found qualified, they receive a certificate, specifying their qualifications, aptness to teach, &c. As these teachers are educated at the public expense, they are required to pursue the business of teaching where the consistories appoint.Those who excel are promoted; those who are negligent are fined, and, if they continue unprofitable, they are dismissed. No one is allowed to teach who has not his regular diploma or certificate. 10. Although there seems to be much of the exercise of strong authority in this system, it is nevertheless remarkable that a great portion of the machinery that enters into it is made of the managing committees and councils appointed by the different parishes and circles; so that the business of government, after all, seems to be to form the general plan and exercise a general supervision, while the immediate superintendency falls upon the people immediately concerned. This gives a general interest in the schools, which could not otherwise be secured, and which is indispensable to the success of the plan. So satisfied is the government of the necessity of enlisting the popular feeling in order to secure success, that, when the new provinces on the Rhine were acquired by the arrangement of 1815, the law requiring parents to send their children to school under the sanction of severe penalties was suspended until, by gentler means, a public sentiment could be formed in favor of popular education. In 1825 this law was also put in force in these provinces. It is supposed that there is now scarcely a child in all the Prussian dominions capable in body and mind of attending and receiving instruction between the ages of seven and fourteen, who is not in a process of primary or higher instruction. In 1831, out of a population of twelve millions, seven hundred and twenty-six thousand, eight hundred and twenty-three, which was the reported population of the entire kingdom, there were attending the public primary schools two millions, twenty-one thousand, four hundred and twenty-one. In addition to her primary schools and private seminaries, Prussia has one hundred and ten higher schools called gymnasia; and, above these, she has six universities, viz., at Berlin, the capital of the kingdom; at Halle, in Saxony; at Bonn, on the Rhine; at Breslau, in Silesia (this is principally under the control of the Catholics;) at Konigsberg, in East Prussia; and at Greifswalde, in Pomerania. These universities are generally in a very flourishing condition, and are, as well as the other universities of Germany, supplied, for the most part, with splendid libraries. ART. XI.-CRITICAL NOTICES. THE following notices of recent publications we have copied from the American Biblical Repository, a quarterly periodical of distinguished literary merit, published in this city, edited by Dr. A. Peters: Researches into the Physical History of Mankind. By JAMES COWLES PRICHARD, M. D., F. R. S., M. R. I. A., Corresponding Member of the National Institute of France, Honorary Fellow of King's and Queen's College of Physicians in Ireland, Member of the Royal Academy of Medicine of Paris. Third edition. London, 1836-7. Vols. I. and II. Pp. 376, 373. Dr. Prichard, the author of the volumes before us, has already made himself favorably known to the literary and scientific world. Besides the former editions of the present work, he has published a Treatise on Insanity, said to be the best work on mental derangement in the English language; a Review of the Doctrine of a Vital Principle; and a learned Analysis of the Egyptian Mythology. The diversities of structure in the human family early engaged his attention, and in 1808 he selected this subject for the argument of a Latin inaugural essay, printed at that time. The same treatise was translated and enlarged in 1813, and under this new form it made the first edition of the present work. After farther and laborious investigation he brought out a second edition în 1826, to which in 1831 he added an able philological essay on the eastern origin of the Celtic nations, proved by a comparison of their dialects with the Sanscrit, Greek, Latin, and Teutonic nations. He now presents to the public a third edition. In the words of the author "each edition has been almost entirely written anew: every topic comprised in it has been reconsidered, with the advantage of such additional information as I have been in the interval enabled to acquire." The physical history or physiognomical ethnography of the human race is a department of knowledge of the most recent dateindeed it owes its origin to an author now living, Professor Blumenbach, of Göttingen. Dr. Prichard had, however, thought deeply upon the subject before the works of Blumenbach fell into his hands, and with these for a foundation it has been presented in a better form and with clearer illustration. The comparative physiology and psychology of the different human races has never before been made the express subject of inquiry. In the first of these volumes, Dr. Prichard has impartially investigated the question with regard to the unity of the origin of the human races, which he successfully endeavors to decide by analogies drawn from the vegetable and animal world. He takes a stand (in which Lawrence* agrees with him) in opposition to the French philosophers, who openly proclaim, in defiance of the sacred Writ, the diversity of origin of whites, negroes, etc., etc. The degrading theories of Voltaire, Desmoulins, Rudolphi, Bory de St. Vincent, Virey, and Lamarck, are satisfactorily confuted, and the truth of the Mosaic account is fully substantiated. Researches into the physical ethnography of the African races, with comparative vocabularies of African languages and dialects, are comprised in the second volume of the third edition. The * Lectures on Physiology, Zoology, and the Natural History of Man. London. 1819. soundness of his arguments, the clear and philosophical language which he employs, together with his extensive information and unwearied industry, render Dr. Prichard's work highly instructive, as well as essentially different, and more satisfactory than any other treatise on the same subject. "It would be difficult," says Dr. Wiseman, "for any one in future to treat of the physical history of man without being indebted to Dr. Prichard for a great portion of his materials."* The work will probably extend to several volumes, as by far the most interesting and the largest portion of the human family is yet left uninvestigated. Professor Bush's Commentary on Genesis. New-York. 1838. We have received a few of the first pages of this Commentary. It is much in the form of Mr. Barnes's Notes on the New TestaWe have before, frequently, expressed our high opinion of the value of Mr. Bush's exegetical labors. His remarks exhibit extensive learning, yet modestly and not unnecessarily protruded, and the happy talent of exhibiting perspicuously and briefly the meaning of the sacred writers, while his moral reflections are generally pertinent and striking. It is not a preaching commentary, but a thoroughly exegetical one, and well adapted both to the learned and the common reader. The theories which are occasionally advanced to account for particular facts are not dogmatically propounded, and serve, on the whole, to give liveliness and interest to the observations. Professor Bush has had extensive opportunities to become thoroughly versed in the great department of Biblical illustration. The pages before us give the rich fruits of that knowledge. The author's mind is too candid and liberal to induce him to wish that others should accord with him on every point, at least until after thorough examination. With many of the notes on the first chapter of Genesis we entirely concur. Respecting the correctness of a few statements we are in doubt. On page 26 it is remarked, that "it is a matter rather of rational inference than of express revelation, that the material universe was created out of nothing. Yet it is such an inference as cannot be resisted without doing violence to the fundamental laws of human belief." It appears to us, however, that the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews asserts directly, (xi, 2,) that the world was created by God out of nothing. "The things which are seen [i. e., the visible universe] were not made of things which do appear." The Tò EK μn paivoμévwv would be equally conclusive against any pre-existing materials, to whatever geological theory we may be attached. Professor Bush adopts, page 31, with some distinguished geologists, the theory of indefinite days. If the fact adduced by geologists (see Introduction to Buckland's Bridgewater Treatise) be well established, that of the three thousand species of the fossil remains of plants and animals, in the tertiary formation, less than six hundred are identical with living species, while the mass of those that are identical occur in the uppermost members even of the tertiary strata, or, in other words, that the fossil remains do not correspond with the order of the six days' creation, then the theory of indefinite days is unsound and * Lectures, p. 112. As unnecessary. Bib. Repos., vi, 309: "And for days and years. the word for is here omitted before years, though occurring before each of the other terms, the sense of the phrase is undoubtedly 'for days even years;' implying that a day is often to be taken for a year, as is the case in prophetical compilations." We think that it is much more probable that days here means twenty-four hours only, and that there is an ellipsis of before D'IV. The Septuagint has eiç éviavroús. Mr. Bush's theory in respect to the topography of Eden is, that it embraced the countries known at present as Cabool, Persia, Armenia, Koordistan, Syria, Arabia, Abyssinia, and Egypt. The Pison is supposed to be the Indus, the Gihon the Nile, and Havilah to be situated on the borders of India. There are, unquestionably, serious difficulties connected with either of the almost innumerable hypotheses on the topography of Eden. Yet the one which assigns the location to Armenia is, we are constrained to believe, the most probable. Some of the other theories assume that the deluge produced greater changes in the earth than seem to have been possible, or at least probable. The True Intellectual System of the Universe: wherein all the Reason and Philosophy of Atheism is confuted, and its Impossibility demonstrated. Also a Treatise on Immutable Morality; with a Discourse concerning the true notion of the Lord's Supper; and two Sermons on 1 John ii, 3, 4, and 1 Cor. xv, 57. By RALPH CUDWORTH, D. D. With References to the several Quotations in the Intellectual System, and an Account of the Life and Writings of the Author. By THOMAS BIRCH, M. A., F. R. S. First American edition. In 2 vols. Andover and New-York. Gould and Newman. 1838. Pp. 804, 756. Dr. Cudworth was born in 1617, at Aller, in Somersetshire, of which parish his father was rector. He was admitted a pensioner at Emanuel College, Cambridge, at the age of thirteen. His diligence as an academical student was very great; and, in 1639, he took the degree of M. A., and was elected fellow of his college. He became so distinguished as a tutor that the number of his pupils exceeded all precedent. In due time he was presented by his college to the rectory of North Cadbury, in Somersetshire. In 1642 he took the degree of B. D., and was chosen master of Clare Hall, and in the following year was made Regius professor of Hebrew. In 1651 he was made D. D., and in 1654 was chosen master of Christ College, Cambridge. Here, in the bosom of his family, he spent the remainder of his days. In 1678 he published his great work, The Intellectual System. The moral as well as mental character of this distinguished scholar stood very high, and he died universally lamented, in 1688, in the 71st year of his age. The Intellectual System was intended, in the first instance, to be an essay against the doctrine of necessity only; but perceiving that this doctrine was maintained by different individuals on various grounds, he arranged these opinions under three separate heads, which he intended to treat of in three books; but his Intellectual System relates only to the first, viz., "The material Necessity of all things without a God, or absolute Atheism." Many of our readers will welcome this handsome American edition of this great man's works. The matter which, in the English editions, is contained in two cumbersome quartos or in four octavos, is here comprised in two compact octavos, besides embracing what none of the English editions of the Intellectual System do contain, VOL. IX.-Oct., 1838. 60 |