e it has the same comprehensiveness of
object, and is in some degree a further expansion of their method and
their principles; but also because the author himself strikingly
resembles the Edgeworths in style and composition of mind; with this
single difference perhaps, that the good sense and perception of
propriety (of what in French would be called _les convenances_), which
in both is the characteristic merit (and, when it comes into conflict
with any higher quality, the characteristic defect),--in him is less
coloured by sarcastic and contemptuous feelings; which in all cases
are unamiable feelings, and argue some defect of wisdom and
magnanimity; but, when directed (as in the Edgeworths they sometimes
are) against principles in human nature which lie far beyond the field
of their limited philosophy, recoil with their whole strength upon
those who utter them. It is upon this consideration of his
intellectual affinity with the Edgeworths that we are the less
disposed to marvel at his estimate of their labours: that, for
instance, at p. 192 he styles their work on education 'inestimable,'
and that at p. 122, though he stops short of proposing 'divine
honours' to Miss Edgeworth, the course of his logic nevertheless binds
him to mean that on Grecian principles such honours are 'due to her.'
So much for the general classification and merits of the author, of
whom we know nothing more than--that, from his use of the
Scotticisms--'succumb,'--'compete,'--and 'in place of' for 'instead
of' he ought to be a Scotchman: now then for his system.

[Footnote 33: _Plans for the Government and Liberal Instruction of
Boys in large Numbers; Drawn from Experience._ London: 1822. 8vo.]

[Footnote 34: The distinguishing excellence of the Madras system is
not that it lodges in the pupils themselves the functions which on the
old systems belong to the masters, and thus at the same blow by which
it secures greater accuracy of knowledge gets rid of a great expense
in masters: for this, though a great merit, is a derivative merit: the
condition of the possibility of this advantage lies in a still
greater--viz. in the artificial _mechanism_ of the system by which,
when once established, the system works itself, and thus neutralises
and sets at defiance all difference of ability in the teachers--which
previously determined the whole success of the school. Hence is
obtained this prodigious result--that henceforward the blessing of
education in