shillings per annum each child, and for a greater number of children, the expence may be reduced to four shillings per annum each child. In the case of Mr. I ancaster's own school in the Borough Road, the expence did not exceed three shillings and six-pence per child, for the ' last year.' These particulars cannot be too generally known; and the manner in which the author of this comparative view urges the subject is so impressive, that we shall transcribe it: I appeal to the benevolence and generosity of my countrymen, whose property and situation in life qualify them for usefulness on behalf of the rising generation. I wish to see an universal attempt made to instil into the minds of youth a sacred regard for the precepts of Divine truth, which can only be effected through the medium of education. The ignorance which so much prevails amongst the lower classes of the people, ought to be regarded as a national calamity, and is the great source of that depravity and vitiosity of manners which no serious mind can contemplate without the deepest regret. Schools may be established at a very small expence, and every child may be taught to read the HOLY SCRIPTURES; from which source, and from which source alone, mankind can derive that knowledge which, in this life, will direct them in the paths of morality and virtue, and make them wise unto salvation. Persons must judge for themselves as to the particular plan on which they will organize their schools; and, according to their views, adopt the limited plan of Dr. Bell, or the more extended one of Mr. Lancaster. By either method " Knowledge will be increased;" and the anxious desire expressed to Mr. Lancaster, by our VENERABLE MONARCH realized, THAT EVERY POOR CHILD IN THE NATION SHOULD BE ABLE TO READ THE BIBLE *.' Mr. Fox advocates the cause of Mr. L. against the claims of * In the summer of 1805, when the Royal Family were at Wey.. mouth, Mr. Lancaster had the honour of being noticed by his Majesty, and was commanded to wait upon him, in order that he might explain his plans of education. At this interview, which lasted about an hour and an half, were present, the King, the Queen, the Princesses, and the Duke of Kent, Mr. L. related his method of teaching reading, writing, and arithmetic. Their Majesties expressed the most lively interest in the descriptions Mr. L. gave of the business of each class, and made many enquiries as to all the minutiae of the plan. The King was pleased to encourage Mr. L. to form schools in various parts of the Kingdom; and to assist him in this useful and important work, their Majesties immediately presented him with a considerable subscription, in which they were followed by their Royal Daughters, since then by the Prince of Wales, and the Royal Dukes, and these subscriptions have been regularly paid up to the present year. This solicitude of our beloved Monarch for the diffusion of knowledge amongst all ranks of his subjects, ought to operate as a powerful example; and to all those who wish well to the prosperity of the Nation, I would say, Go ye, and do likewise." Dr. Dr. B. with increasing energy, in the subjoined remarks on the fourth edition of Dr. B.'s work; and, in the Hints, the general adoption of the British plan of education is urged on the score of its superior comprehensiveness, as well as on the ground of the great saving both of expence and labour which it occasions. We highly applaud the benevolent zeal of this amiable writer. SINGLE SERMONS on the Jubilee. Art. 34. The National Jubilee, celebrative of the Fiftieth Anni versary of the Reign of George the Third, politically and morally improved. By a Magistrate. 8vo. pp. 74. 2s. Matthews and Co. This title affords no indication of a sermon: but, though the author has told "the truth," he has not given "the whole truth," by merely designating himself as a magistrate. We find that he is a Clergyman, as well as a Justice of the Peace; and in the former character, not in the latter, he has presented us with an animated and appropriate exposition of Matth. xxii. 21. in which he has distinctly unfolded the duties which we owe to the civil ruler, and to the King of kings, and has displayed the great importance of religious principle to the well-being of the social body. To excite our gratitude for the long life of our beloved Monarch, he compares him with the sove reigns who, from the Conquest, have filled the English throne; directs our attention to the great virtues which adorn his character; and holds him up to the veneration of every loyal subject, as a good, a patriot, and a Christian King. To the most liberal and tolerant principles, this clergyman unites a zeal for "the things which are God's," and this part of his discourse is very impressive.-The sermon, we learn, was preached in a small village in Surrey. Art. 35. The Jubilee; or Motives for Thanksgiving and Congratula tion, derived from a Consideration of the Character and Conduct of our Most Gracious Sovereign King George the Third,-preached in the Chapel of the Foundling Hospital, on Wednesday, Oct. 25, 1809; being the Day on which His Majesty entered on the fiftieth Year of his Reign. By the Rev. John Hewlett, B.D., Morning Preacher to the said Charity, &c. 8vo. IS. Rivingtons. After having briefly adverted to the Jubilee year as instituted by Moses among the Jews, to the Secular Games of the Romans, and to the Jubilees of the Romish Church, this preacher proceeds to the occasion specified in the title. In delineating the character of our Sovereign, he will not be suspected of flattery, when he assures us that he has little to hope and nothing to fear. Regarding the virtues and example of the Monarch as a ground of national thanksgiving, he enlarges with satisfaction on the mildness of his government,-on his diligent, regular, and indefatigable attention to the duties of his high station,-on his encouragement of agriculture and the arts,-on his private charater, and on his reverence for religion. Art. 36. The Year of Jubilee considered, in a Discourse delivered at the Unitarian Chapel in Essex-street, on Sunday, October 22, 1809. By Thomas Belsham. 8vo. Is. 6d. Johnson. Though this discourse was preached on the Sunday preceding the day of Jubilee, it naturally belongs to this class; and it has peculiar merit, as it very fully explains the circumstances of the remarkable institution of the year of Jubilee among the Jews. We trace the outlines of this able preacher's explanations in Vol. II. (misprinted in a note Vol. IV.) of Jennings's Jewish Antiquities: but his remarks on the institution of the Jubilee are his own, and are eminently appropriate. Whether the word, whence the word Jubilee is derived, signifies a trumpet, according to Parkhurst, or liberty, according to Josephus, or probably both, it is of little moment to inquire: but the celebration of a Jubilee every fiftieth year (Levit xxv. 10.) in which all debts were forgiven, prisoners and slaves liberated, and all the land was to remain uncultivated for that and the year following, or sabbatical year, is a circumstance which, if strictly observed, must not only occasion famine, but prove highly inju rious to the soil, without the intervention of a miracle. Mr. Belsham may probably be right in his conjecture, that the appointment of the Jubilee year was intended to prevent the accumulation of property, so dangerous to civil liberty: but it does not appear that, from the settlement of the Israelites in the land of Canaan to the time of the Babylonish captivity, a single sabbatical or Jubilee year was observed (2 Chron. xxxvi. 21.); and it is hardly possible to conceive how a people could submit to so grievous an agrarian law.' By this ordi nance, or legislative regulation, it was designed to preserve landed property in statu quo: but it is perhaps impracticable in the nature. of things to effect this object. At the end of half a century, many families become extinct. It was perhaps discovered that the plan could not, without much confusion, be carried into execution, and it was therefore abandoned. As a typical appointment it is more rational to contemplate this celebration; in which view, it affords Mr. B. an opportunity for many sensible and pious remarks. CORRESPONDENCE. We have certainly hitherto overlooked the publication of which Dr. H. reminds us; and the time which has now elapsed is an objec tion to the notice of it, unless its contents have a degree of interest and importance which would render the omission of it undesirable. Mr. Bailey's work will most probably appear in our next number. The wish of X. Y. will be fulfilled in our next Appendix, to be published with the Review for December. R. S.'s impatience is natural on his part, but he little knows the extent of our labours, and the obstacles to which they are liable. The letter signed Vixen seems to be very appropriately subscribed. We wish always to be polite to the fair sex, but we acknowlege that we congratulated ourselves that this fair correspondent was no wife of She appears as if she would be more inclined to pick a hole in eur coats than to mend one. burs. Rev. for October, p. 162. 1. 32. dele though, before it.' THE MONTHLY REVIEW, For DECEMBER, 1809. ART. I. The Life of George Romney, Esq. By William Hayley, Esq. 4to. pp. 416. 21. 28. Boards. Payne. 1809. EVEN VEN the most general sketch of a powerful and original genius, from the hand of admiring yet judicious friendship, cannot fail to supply a variety of agreeable observations : but we must include Mr. Hayley in the complaint which we have had such frequent occasion to level against modern biographers, that they weaken the effect of their narrations by describing too much and relating too little by exhibiting in desultory terms their own views of intellectual habits and moral characters instead of recording such acts and sayings of the party concerned, as might enable the reader to draw his own inferences on the subject. Not that we require, in every instance, the minute fidelity of Boswell in delineating Johnson; few, indeed, are the minds which could endure so close an inspection, and fewer still would reward us for the trouble of making it but, wherever a character is to be portrayed, the writer falls far short of his undertaking, if he omits to mark the great peculiarities of the individual, not only in temper but in opinion,-in the education which formed his mind and the accidents which imparted its bias, in the habits which either imperceptibly grew on him and overpowered his resolution, or in those which he laboured to acquire as the means of attaining excellence in his art or profession,-and above all in the judgment which he pronounced on every important topic to which his attention was seriously devoted. Yet Mr. Hayley prides himself on the precision of his statements, and on the sacrifice which he sometimes has made of the feelings of friendship to the interests of truth. Here we have a still stronger objection, since he appears to us to have dwelt much more on the unhappy infirmities of his friend than on his great and acknowleged powers. indeed his painful duty, in writing the life of Romney, to describe him as subject to that nervous malady, that extreme VOL. LX. Z It was sensibility - sensibility to trifles, which long obscured his happiness and finally clouded his reason: but, in speaking of such a painter, we should have expected him to employ other epithets, and other periphrases, than those which he has usually adopted and repeated almost ad nauseam; viz. the tender artist, the tender and apprehensive artist,' (the latter is a favourite and frequent adjunct,) the sensitive. the timorous,' — ' our beloved and dejected artist,' — the interesting invalid,' &c. Though such might be the character in which Romney presented himself to the restorative air of Eartham and the soothing friendship of Mr. Hayley, very different are the qualities with which that friend should have seen him invested, in contemplating his mind with the design of representing it to strangers and to posterity. The expectations of those young artists should have been considered, who will open the volume with sanguine hopes of discovering the recorded opinions of one of his most distinguished countrymen on the works of foreign art, which he frequently explored; and they will close it with the greater disappointment, from being informed that the professional discussions of Romney, of which no trace is here preserved, were eloquent, original, judicious, and so full of vehemence and enthusiasm that they frequently betrayed him into tears. The apologies, too frequently urged by Mr. Hayley for inserting the letters of his friend on the subject of Eartham and its owner, would have been more properly applied to the numerous sonnets which crowd these quarto pages; and which have generally so littie connection with the main subject, that they might be not improperly denominated, in the oldfashioned phrase, "poems on several occasions." The author has also re-edited his poetical essays on painting, first published in 1778, in the form of Epistles to Romney-an insufficient reason, we think, for including them in a life of that painter. Even this unexpected accession is, however, in our opinion, preferable to the tame elegiac stanzas composed by a godson of Romney, aged ten years and eight months,' at the instigation of Mr. Hayley, who wished to afford him an opportunity of displaying his poetical genius to the public. They are just what might be expected, full of Pindus and the Aonian maids." We will be no longer detained by extrinsic circumstances from attending to the distinguished subject of this memoir.George Romney was born in December 1734, at Dalton in Furness, a singular and picturesque tract of high and low land in the county of Lancaster, and died in November 1802. His father, who is sometimes styled a cabinet-maker, and sometimes 7 |