such latitude to a naturally malignant or vindictive spirit, to personal pique or even literary jealousy, as the disgraceful fact of shielding and rewarding the informer, and preventing the accused student from resorting to the right of an open, and consequently a fair, trial? Such a course fosters the worst passions, and deepens hatred, animosity, suspicion, and all uncharitableness in those who should be gentle, affectionate and candid. Instances without number have occurred in which even the punishment of expulsion has been inflicted upon testimony thus conveyed. It will scarcely be a subject of wonder, that an invitation thus solemnly given by the President of the College to the body of the students, to recommend themselves to his patronage by assuming the character of secret informers should be eagerly complied with, and that the internal Government of the College should at this moment present a perfect parallel to the Inquisition at Venice, where a number of "Lion's mouths" were perpetually open to receive, in the darkness of night, the secret whisper and the malignant calumny of an unseen and shielded informer; no wonder that, in either case, a "holy" and irresponsible tribunal, dispensing with the ceremonial of publicly producing their witnesses, trampling on the rights of the subject, and laughing to scorn the system of trial by jury, should take the secret inuendo for incontrovertible evidence; and grounding upon it their

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ruthless sentence, should fulminate against their devoted victim the most frightful rigours of an uncontrolled and unsparing ecclesiastical authority.

Admirable system for the formation of the characters of the future Roman Catholic Priesthood of Ireland! What a state of things in the heart of one of the British Islands! And what a source of gratification it must be to her Majesty's Government, to think that in the Queen's dominions, a system of this description, for the education of youth, has been pursued for many years, with the most perfect immunity, from their interference.

MAYNOOTH EDUCATION.

THE Course of Classical Education pursued at Maynooth College is very meagre indeed; until lately, there was no examination in Greek at entrance, as will be perceived by a reference to the evidence of one of the professors, the Rev. Mr. CAREY, before the Commissioners of Irish Education Inquiry, (page 129.) If a respectable knowledge of the Classics, of English Grammar, Geography, History, Writing, and Arithmemetic, things of which the great majority of them know nothing, were required from the Students at their entrance, it would be a great improvement on the present system. The Latin course includes a few of the Books of Virgil, a little of Horace and Livy, and four of Cicero's Orations. The printed card includes the works of the most celebrated Greek and Latin authors. Sometimes portions of Longinus on the sublime; of Demosthenes' Philippics and Olynthiacs, with a part of Quintilian's Institutes, together with Horace's Art of Poetry, are read for show. The entire knowledge of those authors consists in bare translation. At all events,

nothing like an observation, such as an accomplished Philologist would make-nothing like a critical analysis of the beauties, whether of style or sentiment, of a classic author, is ever heard in Maynooth.I should observe, that since the Commissioners visited Maynooth, and since the exposure in the Quarterly Review, of the studies prosecuted there, the system has been a little varied. In addition to the Rhetoric and Humanity Class, there are the following incidental classes :-English-Rhetoric, Hebrew, French, Irish, and a Class of Catechism, which the junior Students attend, and in which a portion of the Scriptures is taught. The Class of English Rhetoric may be designated with truth, as being in the first instance, A Large Grammar School, in which pronunciation and reading are taught; as then merging into a school of juvenile composition, in which the exgrammarians take up the essayists' pen, and play all manner of antic tricks, with tropes and figures of speech. At this period, it also assumes the respectable character of a school of penmanship and orthography, in both of which the nine-tenths of those who enter the class are deficient to a degree that would almost exceed belief. Each student must attend this class during the first year of his course; but after that, all attention to English Literature ceases. It is not exaggerating to say, that one half of them, before they enter that class,

have never scraped with ink upon paper, except when making their "pothooks," and afterwards, while inditing their Latin themes at school; and that no English author has ever undergone the ordeal of their scrutiny, if those erudite works-" Reading made Easy," "Irish Rogues and Rapparees," and the various " cogs," or translations of the Latin classics be excepted. Of the Hebrew, French, and Irish classes, it is unnecessary for me to say more than that those languages are taught much more imperfectly that at many schools throughout the country.

I now come to the course of Mathematics, or as it is called at Maynooth, of Physics, which in the printed card furnished to the Government and the country, includes a course of Algebra, Geometry, Plane and Spherical Trigonometry, Conic Sections, Mechanics, and Astronomy, with the following branches of Experimental Philosophy, Electricity, Galvanism, Hydrostatics, and Pneumatics. This card sounds very respectably, and if properly taught within the compass of one academical year to young men, nine-tenths of whom on their entrance into the class would find difficulty in telling the product of thirteen multiplied into itself, it would be entitled to our admiration. Nothing, however, can be more delusive, than the course of Physics as taught in Maynooth College. They run over it with a steeple chase rapidity; and as the jockey who rides upon such