THE CIRCASSIANS.-A SCENE FOR THE YOUNG. fendant must respectively maintain their assessors and witnesses. The successful party has also to make a payment to the judge, varying from two to four per cent. These are all the charges which each of the party can be put to. It is incumbent on the fraternities to enforce the execution of the sentences of the tribunal, and each fraternity must aid the families of its members (according to certain fixed proportions), in paying the fines imposed for homicide (of whatever sort), and other criminal or fortuitous delinquencies. Time (often to a considerable extent) is allowed to the culprit or his family, for the payment of his proportion of the fine awarded against him; but in some cases, such as homicide, death, or some other severe penalty, is inflicted, in the event of over-protracted payment. The fines are mitigated if the culprit be poor, except in cases of injury to the person; in these the fixed fine must always be paid. The fraternities are of all numbers, from fifteen or twenty to two or three thousand. Smaller fraternities are frequently combined together in one large one. But although a fraternity always pays (proportionally) the fines for homicide committed by its members, it is usual, after the commission of two or three homicides by the same individual, to punish him by death, or selling him to slavery. These punishments are also inflicted in other cases of incurable delinquency; the sentence of death being executed by throwing the condemned person into the sea, or a river, with his arms tied. Traitorous correspondence with the Russians is a crime par excellence, and is punished by the enslavement or death of the culprit, the seizure of his family and effects, and the sale of the members of the family into slavery -the proceeds of the sale being divided amongst those who detect the crime, or aid in its punishment. The fines for civil crimes are levied from the members of the fraternity of the party aggrieved; the person aggrieved, or the immediate relatives of one killed, receive (as the delinquent also pays) only a small proportion more than the other members of the fraternity. A person condemned to death by his own fraternity may, if he can, fly to the member of another, and make a konak of him, and the konak, with his society, becomes bound to protect or pay for him. The common people have of late raised their fine for homicide to the level of that of the nobles-200 oxen. The fine for the homicide of a prince was here, till recently, and is still, to the eastward, about ten times higher; while that of a khan, or sultan, appears to remain undefined in amount. "These fraternities are said to be of great antiquity; and it appears strange that so singular a feature in Circassian society should not have been mentioned, so far as I have observed, by any writer upon this country. They are essentially the government of Circassia ; and any improvement in it must be grafted upon them, deeply rooted as they are in the habits and affections of the people." A SCENE FOR THE YOUNG. A CHILD'S QUESTION. 69 WILL you please to tell me, mamma, what book you have just been reading? It is not a book, dear, but only a number of what is intended to become a volume, to be followed, probably, by many others; it is called "The Journal of Civilization." you, Why, mamma, what can that be about? That is a question, Emily, which I may ask for you know enough to give me a reply. What should you suppose it to contain ? O mamma! I am afraid I cannot tell. Perhaps not at once, love; but you know the attention of a quarter of an hour will do easily what it would be impossible to accomplish in a single second. The air you have just finished could not be played by you at sight, yet how soon was it perfectly easy! and the sum which preceded it, frightful as an idler would have thought it, was done and proved in a very little time. If, then, my question has puzzled you, let us see if we cannot remove all difficulty, and make the inquiry I put to you as plain as the last things on which you have been employed. Thank you, thank you, dear mamma; but how can I begin? Suppose I were to tell you a story, Emily, and to say, Once on a time there was an island, where the people lived in clay huts, or in holes made in the ground; when they wanted food they plucked the wild herbs and roots, or slew the animals they chased with their rudely-formed weapons. When fire was needed they made a small heap of dried leaves, and then set light to them by rubbing one piece of wood in a groove made in another, that the small particles produced by this rubbing might be kindled. For garments they took the skins of beasts slain in the hunt, or did without them, painting their bodies with hideous figures. And as they had no ships, when they wished to go on the water, it was in boats of basket-work. Now, I think, you can tell me where such an island is, what was the name given to its people, and in what state they were said to be. O yes, mamma, you have told me about England, and the ancient Britons, when they were savages. Just so, love; and now as you look at the children of that very people, and see that houses, towns, and cities have been built; that there are fields and gardens bringing forth abundance from the skill of man; that garments are plentifully provided for comfort and ornament; that we have vehicles to carry us over the land, and vessels across the sea to the most distant parts of the earth; that we have machines by which the means of doing so are largely produced; that we have books, teachers, and advantages, far too many at once to remember and relate,-how would you describe them now? Many hundred years have passed since the inhabitants of Britain were savages. THE COMPARATIVE CIVILIZATION OF EUROPE.-FRANCE. THE subject now introduced-and which we trust Yes, dear mamma, they have long, very long been will be examined without any of that carping discivilized. True, Emily. Now tell me if the people of all other islands and continents are like ourselves in these respects? position to hunt out faults, and close our eyes on the excellences of the social system of various portions of Europe, which have, in some measure, compelled different degrees of civilization—is so extensive, No, mamma, they are not. There are many who that we shall be compelled to divide it into different are savages still. You are quite right, Emily; but, unhappily, we know little of the state of millions of our race. We want those who travel abroad, and others who have opportunity of observing the people of this land, many of whom have yet to be civilized, to describe to us their condition. We want others to collect their information, to give us some part of it in a brief form and for little money, and also to tell us where more may be found. And we want this done that those who call themselves Christians may not be like the priest and the Levite, who looked only at the man that fell among thieves, and then passed by on the other side; but that as their fellow-creatures, needy, helpless, and perishing, are placed before them, they may become good Samaritans, prompt to pity, and generous to relieve. That would be delightful, indeed, mamma. I think so too, Emily. Now suppose, therefore, a Journal designed to do all this; that it pointed out to view the evils of barbarism, to awaken and stimulate compassion; that it showed how some people had risen and others were rising from degradation and wretchedness, to prove that the same means which had been successful should again and perseveringly be used; and that it exhibited the advantages accruing from so great a change-what would you call such a work the Journal of? Of Civilization, mamma! Exactly, love; the Journal of Civilization; its necessity, progress, and blessings; and that is the very title of the number I have just been reading. There, you see, is an end of the puzzle. It is, indeed, plain enough now, mamma. Will there not be in it what I shall like to read? Yes, Emily; it is promised that the young shall be remembered; and never was there a time in which so many good and clever people thought of them and wrote for them so much and so well as they do now. Besides, there are other parts of this work which will supply me and many other mammas, and papas too, I doubt not, with subjects to interest and instruet their children. But now, Emily, we may change our employments, breathe the pure air of heaven, and gaze on the beauties of nature, which, on such a morning as this, invite us urgently to enjoy them. When we return, we will read "A Chapter for the Young." sections, each of which will, however, form as much as possible a separate and distinct article. It is of course obvious, that without any undue degree of egotistical preference for our own country, it must, in a great degree, form the standard of our ideas with reference to the comparative civilization of the rest of Europe; and we shall not be accused of too much individualizing on general subjects, when we bring that civilization, in almost every case, into a decided juxtaposition with our own, for the purpose of ascertaining its superiority or inferiority to that standard. The first country which will fall under our notice-from many reasons, as well as from the intimate relations which must subsist between the springs of our policy and its own, since the change which modelled its government on a liberal footing-will be France. The apparent claims put forward by that country to extent of civilization will, at first, seem very high indeed; but we are apt to think on nearer inspection, and a more careful judgment, it will sink many degrees in the scale; save in some very few instances where the peculiar genius or instinct of the Gaul has led him to outstep the termini which bound him on other sides. It would, perhaps, be unfair to dissect the principles of the French constitution, until a few more years have enabled us to judge of its real value; it is at present both too young in existence and experience for us to know what it is, or what it may eventually be capable of; but we surely have a legitimate and fair field of examination in the police of France, her literature, her education, and her manufactures-as well as in the minor conveniences and usages of conventional life amongst the higher and lower classes which may incidentally come before us. Whilst far from regarding an extensive and organized system of police, when existing in any country, as a proof of its high civilization, we are at the same time disposed to allow that we shall most frequently find them companions; and shall, therefore, be called upon to show in what respects we consider that police the effective agent of good to the nation, and in what we consider it a decided and arbitrarily restrictive barrier to the advance of national improvement. Amongst the latter we must inevitably place the restrictions to which the press is subject, and which appear to be one of those relics of the Im THE COMPARATIVE CIVILIZATION OF EUROPE.-FRANCE. perial government which should, as soon as possible, be wholly removed. That the most offensive characteristics of these restrictions no longer exist we are aware that by them much abuse of power is prevented in the press, we admit. But we challenge boldly and fearlessly a comparison of the beneficial effects produced by our own wonderful and noble system of journalism-for with all its defects, and all its party spirit, and all its illiberality, it is so with the limited and paltry presses of all countries where the people have not yet erected themselves a tribunal, in which public opinion can gibbet its offenders, with a mental retribution unknown to those whose daily and weekly literature is as much the organ of kingly or ministerial power, as it is the instrument of popular opinion. Again-lessened as it has been, and lessened still more as it will be by the silent progress of years and time—is the system of police espionage even at the present moment existing in France, worthy of that civilization which its people pretend to? We fear not. If the test of civilization be, and we hope it is, freedom, in what a voice does this appeal to us! With all her fame France has much, and will have much to learn on the subject of freedom yet, ere she will wholly have emancipated herself from the trammels of that imperial and warrior power, to which, whilst men owe many advantages, they owe as many obstacles in the path of human improvement. In the law we shall find one of those vast benefits which France owes to Napoleon, and in examining its comparative speed, and its lesser expense, rendering its redress far more accessible to the poor than our own, shall a second time be compelled to regret that its general excellence should be defiled with such blots as the restriction of the press and the police espionage, with which the Emperor thought fit to saddle his gift to the French people. We now come to the literature of France, and, by a singular anomaly, we shall find the restriction put upon political opinion wholly unexercised upon the side of morality. Day by day, we had almost said hour by hour, the most vicious productions are put forth by the French school-spawned with a readiness and a fecundity that can only be attributed to the depravity of an appetite as capable of receiving as of generating them. Not that the individual writers are to be included in a condemnation which must necessarily involve the mass. Chateaubriand, Lamartine, and others, are names of which any age and any country might be proud. But it is with the more bitterness we anathematize the Balzacs, the Hugos, and the Sands, of a school which we feel is daily and perniciously corrupting the pens of our own writers. Now, if the corruption of a literature be proof of its civilization, then must the ages of Catullus and of Crebillon be allowed the pre-eminence in beauty that they 71 | have achieved in sensuality; but, fortunately, it is not thus ; and whilst we admit that the progress of humanity has banished grossness of language, let us not also shrink from acknowledging grossness of thought to be the test of inferiority in that scale of civilization which is hurrying on with swift and certain strides to form one element in themillennium of human happiness which the Christian, guided by divine inspiration, distinctly foresees. In theoretical science we shall find French literary labour at present but sparingly employed, whilst it is more sedulously cultivating practical improvements than it has hitherto done: the consequence is, that those manufactures which we have been accustomed to despise, are rapidly advancing in quality and beauty. Amongst other things, their mode of dyeing their cloth is well worthy our attention-an art in which they have been making rapid progress. Their cutlery and their iron works are still far inferior to our own. Not a good lock is made in the country. Not a knife of any excellence, except of English make, is to be procured there. Their machinery, or at least the whole of their best machinery, is In education as compared with the general system pursued in our country, France appears for the most part beneath us; although in one very important branch, she would now seem to show a disposition for taking a positive lead in European civilization. This branch is, as may be expected, from the care military affairs seem, with an almost exclusive degree of preference to obtain there-the education of the army. Their military colleges already providing for a supply of intelligent and educated officers, the government has lately turned its attention to the education of the men; and a Monsieur Roland has supplied it with a scheme which seems eventually likely to replace all other systems of public education. The profound secrecy at present observed with respect to the details of this system, with the view of preserving its inventor the advantages he so richly deserves, will prevent our learning, for some time, its exact nature; but the effects, as evidenced by the reports of two colonels and a general officer employed to inspect its progress, and the attestation to its excellence given by M. Roland's appointment to the post of schoolmaster-general to the French army, are too clear for us to doubt its eventual success. And when it is known that in the space of two months, hundreds of soldiers, purposely selected from the most uneducated men in the regiments stationed about Paris, were collectively taught, with one hour's instruction given to the men daily, to read, write, and cipher to a certain extent, we shall be disposed to justify the eulogium which gives this plan of education the praise of railroad-like rapidity, in comparison with the other and slower systems generally pursued. But to quit the broader and general lines of civilization, and step rather more into private life than we have yet done; in which we shall perhaps discover more of the distinctive refinements and grossièretés of a people distinguished in private life so very widely from ourselves; in what rank of civilization shall we place the people who seem scarcely yet to have learnt the truth of the maxim of the Earl of Orrery, that "disappointment is sure to attend him who steps out of the circle of domestic life in search of felicity?" and whose whole private economy, especially in the middle classes, compels them to pass the larger portion of their lives in a species of public existence, for which their numberless cafés, restaurants, and tables-d'hôte seem expressly calculated? But even going further, the abomination of the barrier-duel obtrudes itself upon us, the most barbarous and the most exclusively French of all the forms in which the atrocious evil of duelling presents itself. Were a single fact to govern our conclusions, what one is there that could place a nation more low in point of civilization than this? What one is there that could more determinately induce us to attribute an innate barbarism of character in a people that could tolerate it? The duelling of Germany is, if like our own in general character, highly reprehensible, and utterly inconsistent with Christian principles, at least less horrid; but this seems designed, with diabolical ingenuity, to enhance as much as possible the crime which arms the hand of an individual against another's life. Another time, perhaps, it may fall within our province to dissect the theory of a practice which the progress of true civilization can alone destroy-a practice as repugnant to the feelings of the philanthropist as it is damnable in the eyes of the Christian. In cleanliness, as in that domestic comfort which they seem neither to appreciate nor enjoy, we shall find the French, as a nation, decidedly below ourselves, and most of the other Teutonic nations; although by the side of their neighbours, the Spaniards and the Portuguese, the comparison would tell very favourably for themselves. Their higher society, yet unsettled from that discordant mass of varied and dissimilar materials which have composed it since the Revolution; formed from small portions of the old noblesse, and grafted on a military, literary, and financial peerage; presents, as might be expected, a strange union of its numerous and incongruous elements, subsiding gradually into the form which aristocracy more or less takes in all countries; whilst its tone, without being perhaps less refined, possesses a somewhat fresher spirit than that of nations whose various classes have been less jostled together by the throes of political change. In their cookery and their dress, although we ourselves rarely see a French gentleman without fancying something outré in the character of his attire which is anything but gentlemanly, common opinion will be disposed to admit the pre-eminence of his countrymen ; we scarcely know why: but in a thousand other points, carriage-building, posting, public conveyances, (especially in the more thinly populated parts,) roads, and agriculture-on which alone a volume might be filled-mercantile transactions, engraving, landscape-painting, (higher art would be probably a contested point,) and house architecture, we must assert not only our own superiority, but, in most of the points enumerated, that of the Dutch. Our merchant navy it would be idle to dwell upon. As for the system of colonization, which has established the English tongue and English civilization in every quarter of the world; a system which has demonstrated that feeling of enterprize, individually as much as collectively, which has made Britain what she is, and which has latterly become so much the object of French emulation-she should bear in mind that the sword's point is not the only means for locating a settlement, nor the bayonet the only way for humanizing R. the barbarian. SCHOOLS IN THE TIME OF SHAKSPEARE. AT the period when Shakspeare was sent to school, the study of the classical languages had made, since the era of the revival of literature, very rapid progress. Grammars and dictionaries had been published by various authors; but the grammatical institute then in general use, both in town and country, was the grammar of Henry VIII., which, by the order of Queen Elizabeth, was admitted to the exclusion of all others. The object of another initiating book, which he most probably studied, was to panegyrize the character and government of Elizabeth and her ministers, and it was therefore enjoined by authority to be read as a classic in every grammar-school, and to be indelibly impressed on the memory of every young scholar in the kingdom. Education was, however, most erroneous and defective. Severe and indiscriminate discipline prevailed among the teachers of that time. The diseases,' says Peacham, whereunto some of them are very subject, are humour and folly, (that I may say nothing of the gross ignorance and insufficiency of many,) whereby they become ridiculous and contemptible both in the schoole and abroad. I knew one, who in winter would ordinarily, in a cold morning, whip his boys over for no other purpose than to get himselfe a heat: another beat them for swearing, and all the while he swears himselfe: he would forgive any fault saving that.'" |