CONTENTS OF THIS NUMBER.

EDUCATION,

PAGE

77

I. British Museum, London..... II. MISCELLANEOUS.-The Cheerful Giver (Poetry.) 2. Free Schools in Canada. 3. Age and connections of the Czar. 4. Amber Fishing. 5. Reform in the Civil Service of England. 6. Recent Census of Great Britain. 7. Japan and the Japanese. 8. Chinese Agriculture. 9. Friendship.... 79 III. EDUCATIONAL INTELLIGENCE.-1. Canada, Port Hope Grammar School. 2. University College, Toronto. 3. Great Educational Enterprise in Chatham. 4. British and Foreign Monthly Summary. 5. Wellington College. 6. Oxford University Reform. 7. Schoolmasters in Bavaria. 8. United States Monthly Summary. 9. Facts of the Census......... 81 IV. LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC INTELLIGENCE.-1. Monthly Summary. 2. Editors of the British Reviews. S. Extinct American Race. 4. Exploration of Africa....

83

V. EDITORIAL.-1. Explanatory Note. 2. Public Libraries in U. C. Law, Rules and Regulations relating to Libraries. 4. Legislative Aid to Worn-out Teachers in Upper Cauada. 5. Provincial Certificates granted 11th Session, Normal School.... 84 VI. Apportionment of School Grant of 1854, and Circulars to County Clerks, City, Town and Village Clerks, and to Local Superintendents..

87

Canada.

No. 5.

The British Museum originated with a bequest from Sir Hans Sloane, a most industrious naturalist, of whose history the following sketch may not be unacceptable to our readers. Born in the north of Ireland, but of Scottish family, young Sloane showed an early love of natural history and medicine, and was carefully educated accordingly. At 16 years of age he was attacked by spitting of blood, which dangerous symptom caused him permanently to adopt a strict regimen, and to abstain from the use of all stimulating liquors. Continuing this course ever afterwards, he not only enjoyed a fair proportion of health, but lived to an unusual age. After many years of diligent study he settled in London as a physician, and became a Fellow of the Royal Society but in three years we find him embarking for Jamaica as physician to the Duke of Albemarle, governor of that Island. Owing to the death of the Duke, he was only fifteen months in Jamaica, but he managed to accumulate a vast number of specimens in natural history, which afterwards formed the nucleus of his museum, on which he spent large sums of money, enriching it in every possible way. He was appointed physician to Christ's Hospital, hut never retained his salary, always

The

retired altogether from public life. At his own manor-house at Chelsea he lived on to the great age of 93, when a brief illness terminated his life in the year 1753. He bequeathed his museum to the public on condition that 20,000l. should be paid to his family, the first cost of the whole having amounted to at least 50,000l. His books and manuscripts were included in this bequest, the former consisting of 50,000 volumes. The conditions offered by Sir Hans Sloane were responded to by Parliament, and his museum became the property of the nation. At the same time the Harleian Manuscripts were purchased by government, and the whole, with the Cottonian Library, which had been given for public use in the reign of William III., was formed into one general collection. A mansion in Great Russell-St., called Mantagu House, was purchased of the Earl of Halifax, for 10,2507.; and between the years 1755 and 1759 the different collections were removed into it, the new institution being thenceforth called the British Museum. As the contents of the Museum became more multiplied, new steps were taken, as thus detailed in the Synopsis sanctioned by the trustees:-Till the arrival of the Egyptian Antiquities from Alexandria in 1801, Montagu House was competent to the reception of all its acquisitions. Egyptian monuments, most of them of too massive a character for the floors of a private dwelling, first suggested the necessity of an additional building, rendered still more indispensable by the purchase of the Townley Marbles in 1805. A gallery adequate to the reception of both was completed in 1807, after which, although the trustees meditated, and had plans drawn for new buildings, none were undertaken till 1823, when, upon the donation from his Majesty King George IV. of the library collected by King George III., the government ordered drawings to be prepared for the erection of an entire new Museum, a portion of one wing of which was to be occupied by the recently-acquired library. This wing, on the eastern side of the then Museum garden, was finished in 1828; and the northern and a part of the western compartment of a projected square have been since completed. The principal floor of the northern portion is devoted to the general library, removed frrom the former house; that of the western, both below and above, to ancient sculpture and antiquities generally. A part of the lower floor of the eastern wing is devoted to the library of MSS. The upper floors, both of the eastern and northern sides of the square, contain the collections of Natural History. The new southern front of the Museum is at present in progress. The last remains of the original building was removed in 1845. The new buildings were designed by Sir Robert Smirke, and are entered by a massive portico, which was not completed till 1847.

Among all the antiquities for which the British Museum is famous, the most celebrated are the Elgin marbles, a collection of exquisite specimens of Grecian art, which have been the wonder and admiration of sculptors, and of all who have taste to appreciate their beauty, since the Earl of Elgin brought them to this country in 1801. These marbles adorned the Parthenon at Athens, a model of which building assists the visitor to understand the position once occupied by statues and bas-reliefs, now arranged in their mutilated state around the walls and on raised stages in what is called the Elgin Saloon. Marbles contemporary with these, found in the ruins of the Temple of Apollo Epicurius, near the ancient city of Phigalia, are arranged in the Phigalian Salcon. The Temple of Apollo was built by Ictinus, an architect of the time of Per cles, who also built the Parthenon. A series of tombs, bas-reliefs, and statues, of an earlier date than the Parthenon, were discovered in the ruined city of Xanthus, and brought to England by Sir Charles Fellowes. These are called the Xanthian or Lycian Marbles. A series of very ancient and interesting marbles brought from the supposed site of Nineveh, on the left bank of the Tigris, have recently been added to the Museum through the zeal and laborious researches of Dr. Layard. A grand central saloon and several other rooms are devoted to remains of Greek and Roman art. Among these are forms of exquisite beauty, grace, and truth, which afford to modern sculptors and artists most valuable subjects for study. But perhaps the most popular part of the gallery of antiquities, to the great masses of visitors who crowd the Museum on holiday occasions, is that which contains the collossal sculptures of Egypt. These huge relics of an extraordinary people cannot fail to impress the beholder with wonder and curiosity. He longs to see the body to which that huge fist belonged, or the Sphinx which bore that immense but finely-wrought ram's head. The swarthy heroes of the Nile seem to look down on him with a calm sense of superiority; and as he views their colossal proportions, and looks around on ancient stone coffins, also of colossal size, he can hardly persuade himself but that there were giants in those days, and that these were the works of their hands. He might even go on to fancy that the insect world of Egypt presented the same exagerated proportions, for here we find a beetle in dark granite of such a size that

a man cannot sit comfortably astride upon its back. This represents the sacred Scarabæus of Egypt. Another interesting and important object is the Rosetta stone, which first suggested to Dr. Thomas Young a mode of deciphering the mysterious inscriptions on Egyptian monuments. This stone bears the same inscription in three different characters, one in hieroglyphics, one, in a written character called enchorial, and the third in Greek. Thus by means of the Greek inscription the hieroglyphics were for the first time rendered intelligible.

Besides the Egyptian Saloon, there is another collection of antiquities from Egypt in an upper room called the Egyptian Room. These consist of figures of various deities in silver, bronze, porcelain, wax, steatite, wood, &c.; various articles of household furniture; a collection of objects for dress and the toilet; a great number of vases, lamps, and miscellaneous articles; but above all in real interest, a large collection animals, as the cat, dog headed baboon, bull, ram, sheep, lamb, ibis, of human mummies, male and female, and also mummies of numerous crocodile, snake, &c.

Next the Egyptian Room is the Bronze Room, containing valuable Greek and Roman bronze figures, a collection of vases, terra cottas, &c. The celebrated Etruscan vases are in a separate room.

The Medal Room contains a large collection of coins and medals, of which Sir Hans Sloane's and Sir Robert Cotton's collections were the basis. Great additions have been made through the munificence of King George IV., and also by the bequests of the Rev. C. M. Cracherode and R. P. Knight, Esq., and the gifts of Lady Banks and W. Marsden, Esq. It comprehends-1, Ancient Coins; 2, Modern Coins; 3, Medals. The Greek coins are arranged in geographical order, and include all those struck with Greek characters, in Greece or elsewhere, by kings, states, or cities, which were independent of the Romans.With these are also placed the coins of free states and cities which made use of the Etruscan, Roman, Punic, Spanish, or other character. The Roman coins are placed, as far as it can be ascertained, in chronological order. The modern coins consist of Anglo-Saxon, English, Anglo-Gallic, Scotch and Irish coins, and likewise the coins of foreign nations. The coins of each country are kept separate.

and is contained in five rooms. The Zoological collection of the British Museum is a very fine one, The first room contains skulls of the larger mammalia, tubes of anulose animals, &c. The second room contains a collection of reptiles, &c., preserved dry and in spirits; a portion of the radiated animals, a variety of lizards, snakes, serpents, tortoises, crocodiles, batrachian animals, and star fish. The third room displays rabbits, &c.; while the tables are covered with beantiful specimens apes and monkeys in great variety, rats, beavers, squirrels, porcupines, of coral. The fourth room contains fish, insects, and crustaceous animals. The fifth, various forms of sponge and molluscous and radiated animals in spirits.

The mineralogical collection is very extensive and valuable, and affords admirable opportunities of study to the student of this branch of science. It is arranged in sixty cases, contained in four rooms in the North Gallery. The system followed is, with slight deviations, that of Berzelius, founded upon the electro-chemical theory of definite proportions, as developed by him in a memoir read before the Royal Academy of Science at Stockholm.

The collection of organic remains is not yet perfectly arranged. It commences with fossil vegetables. Then come the osseous remains of large reptiles, with some of the gigantic extinct species; then various mammalian remains. A complete skeleton of the large extinct ek of the Irish bogs, of the American mastodon, and other fossil wonders, occupy the fifth and sixth rooms of this collection, and at the west end of the latter is the fossil human skeleton, embedded in limestone, brought from Guadaloupe by the Hon. Sir A. Cochrane.

The Library of the British Museum contains about 500,000 volumes, and is visited by about 70,000 readers during each year. There are two spacious reading-rooms for their use (which are entered from Montague-St., Russell Square), where every accommodation is afforded in the pursuit of their studies. The access to these rooms, however, is to be sought by an application to the chief librarian, backed by a proper recommendation, and the ticket of admission has to be renewed half-yearly. No books are allowed to be taken away for perusal, and while the individual is using them in the library, he is responsible for their safety. This library ranks in importance with the best continental libraries, but the number of separate works is greater in Munich and Paris.

During the last three weeks the arrangements of the works of art in the gallery of sculptural antiquities have been completed. The Nineveh marbles are now entirely removed from the basement, and duly clasified in the galleries especially constructed for their reception, where they are now to be seen to much advantage; several of the new rooms in this department of the Museum are now ready for the recep tion of works of art. The Lords of the Treasury have approved the project for the erection of a glass building, to cover the quadrangle, for a reading room, and as an addition to the printed book department; this arrangement will give room for half a million more volumes.

Miscellaneous.

THE CHEERFUL GIVER.

"GOD LOVETH a cheerful giver.” "What shall I render thee, Father Supreme, For thy rich gifts; and this the best of all ?" Said a young mother, as she fondly watched Her Sleeping babe.

There was an answering voice

That night in dreams: "Thou hast a little bud "Wrapt in thy breast and fed with dews of love. "Give me that bud. "Twill be a flower in heaven." But there was silence. Yea, a hush so deep, Breathless and terror-stricken, that the lip Blanched in its trance. "Thou hast a little harp, "How sweetly would it swell the angel's song! "Give me that harp." There was a shuddering sob As if the bosom by some hidden sword Was cleft in twain.

Morn came. A blight had touched

The crimson velvet of the unfolding bud.

Like harp-strings, ran a thrilling strain and broke
As that young mother lay upon the earth

In childless agony.

Again the voice

That stirred the vision: "He who asketh of thee,
Loveth a cheerful giver." So she raised
Her gushing eye, and ere the tear-drop dried
Upon its fringes, Smiled. Doubt not, that smile
Like Abraham's faith was counted righteousness.
MRS. SIGOURNEY.

FREE SCHOOLS IN CANADA.

We have for the last two years devoted considerable attention to the working and progress of our Free School system, believing as we do that free schools, when properly managed by men of education and enlarged views, are destined to confer incalculable benefits on the rising generation, and their influence must be felt operating for good in future time throughout the Province. We have zealously supported free schools because their aim is (or at least should be) to educate the masses. This being the case, the poor man's child in common with the rich, stand on equal footing,-both drink from the same fountain of learning. This is a noble system, and well worthy of the support of every man who feels an interest in the future progress of education for it is destined to work a wonderful change in the youth of the community, who are enabled by our free school system to obtain at least a good English, and in many places a classical education, such as to qualify them for any of the professions atla very small expense. By the present arrangement made with the Grammar School, the son of the poorest laborer may obtain an education equal to that of the son of the most wealthy merchant, or the highest dignitary of the land; and if he be endowed with superior talents, he may aspire to and obtain a University education for a less sum yearly, than was paid 18 or 20 years ago for a common school education of a very superficial kind, for the fees at the Toronto University have been reduced to such a moderate rate, that its advantages are now within the reach of the most humble individual; while to the youth who is ambitious of learning and distinction, the number of scholarships present rare inducements of acquiring a classical education (free) at this institution, which is second to none in Britain.-Hastings Chronicle.

AGE AND CONNEXIONS OF THE CZAR.-Nicholas " Emperor of all the Russias, and King of Poland," was born July 6, 1796, and is there. fore in his fifty-eighth year. He succeeded his brother Alexander on the throne December 1, 1825, his elder surviving brother and heir to the Crown having refused to accept it. The Emperor married, July 13, 1817, Alexandria, sister to the King of Prussia, born July 18, 1798. The issue of the marriage has been as follows:-Alexander, born April 29, 1818, married Maria, sister of the Grand Duke of Hesse Darmstadt-issue, Nicholas, born September 20, 1843; Alexander, born March 10, 1845; Vladimir, born April 22, 1847; Alexander, born January 2, 1850; Mary, August 18, 1819; married, July 14, 1839, Maximilian, Duke of Leitchenberg; Olga, born September 11, 1822; married, July 13, 1846, Charles, Prince Royal of Wurtemburg; Constantine, born September 21, 1827; Nicholas, born August 8, 1831; and Michael, born October 25, 1832. Thus it will appear that the Czar is nearly related, by marriage to the Kings of Prussia and Wurtemburg, to the reigning Duke of Nassau, another monarch of the confederated States, who married Elizabeth, Archduches of Russia, in 1844, to Charles Frederick, the reigning Duke of Saxe-Weimar, who married Maria, sister of the Emperor of Russia, in 1804; and to Otho, King of Greece, and brother of the King of Bavaria, King Otho having married Amelia, daughter of the Duke of Oldenburgh, in 1836.

AMBER FISHING AND GATHERING.-The amber fishing is generally carried on after a storm. Men wade out into the sea, provided with open-mouthed nets; they gather the sea weed which floats upon the water; they bring it to shore and spread it out on the sands; and then women and children carefully turn over the weed, and pick out bits of amber therefrom. Sometimes the men go out further from land, and scrape up bits of amber from the sea bottom; being clothed in dressess of leather, they care not about the ducking; but they are sometimes in danger from the violence of the waves. Besides the amber mining and the amber fishing, there is a third method, which may be called amber gathering, more dangerous than either of the other two; the men arm themselves with iron hooks attached to two long poles, and go in boats to explore the precipitous cliffs of the coast; these they carefully examine by detaching loose masses with their hooks; but it happens not unfrequently that the boats are dashed against the cliffs, or that large masses of loose rubble fall upon them, and maim or even kill the men. The King of Prussia contrives to obtain a little revenue of from ten to twenty thousand dollars annually from the amber which is found on his shores. It is said that at one time the revenue reached twenty-five thousand crowns per month. -Dickens' " Household Words."

PROPOSED REFORM IN THE CIVIL SERVICE IN ENGLAND.

"It is proposed to throw open upwards of 16,000 salaried places to the general competition of the country. From appointments of great importance and pecuniary value, demanding the attainments and worthy pursuit of the most educated Englishman down to the small posts which might recompense the industry of the head boy in the village school, the door is to be thrown open wide to all comers who can prove their superiority before impartial and responsible examiners. Any person who is able to give satisfactory testimonials of moral character and physical health, may without interest or intrigue, succeed to an honorable position in the service of his country, merely by the use of those gifts of talent and education with which nature's fortune may have endowed him. It is proposed, as, indeed, is the necessary consequence of such a change to sweep away for ever the entire system of patronage, which has been hitherto considered essential to party government-to put an end to the barter of a place for support, and to all that net-work of solicitation and intrigue which involves even high minded men, and proves how much morality is a thing of custom, and that the purest cannot be long in contact with a bad system without defilement. The plan advocated by the Government is one, the importance of which all classes ought to feel; yet it involves a change of such magnitude, and will effect social habits to so great a degree, that it can hardly be appreciaietd at first. Nothing less is purposed than the creation of a new lib. eral profession, as freely open to all as the church, the bar, or the hospital. From the moment this measure receives the royal assent, it will be the fault of the people if the public service do not become their birthright, acording to the talent, education, and industry of each, without any hindrance from those sinister influences which have hitherto, as a general rule, made access dependent on a powerful connexion or a seared conscience.

* * * *

"As to general education, the effect must be immediate and abi ding. Complaints have been made of the small numbers which our Univesities instruct; the true cause has been disregaded, viz, that there is no incentive to a long course of study. This need no longer be the case. University education unfits a man for many things, and at present only opens the way to two overstocked proefssions. The Bar where the majority never earned a shilling; and the church, whose sacred duties must be too often their own reward. How many, as it is, lounge about after their undergraduate course is over and wish hourly that they had been sent into the counting-house at sixteen. For these there will be a ready resource in the periodical examinations for the service; and the candidate will be as sure of his merited place as in a college contest. The large number of good appointments at home, added to those of India, under a similar system, will be a greater stimulus to education than an infinity of discourses on the advantages of liberal study.

"Nor will the humbler ranks of life fail to reap a corresponding benifit. At present peasants as frequently ask, "What is the use of writing?" as parents in the middle class ask," what's the use of Greek?" The erudition of the village school is speedily forgotten, with the exception of a few texts, which are repeated with but a vague idea of their meaning. But it is intended that the lower class of appointments shall be filled up by just such an examination as the readiest and best conducted lad si nthese schools would succeed in. Of course, such a class are not readily alive to their own intrests, yet the more affluent and edcuated would feel a pleasure in placing a promising youth in the way of such advancement, and this end and aim of exertion would soon be held out by every common schoolmaster in the kingdom.-[From the Times" Feb 9, 1854.]