more decided advantage-in addition to family character and position-which Silvio enjoyed in the superior mind and accomplishments, no less than the religious dispositions of his mother, a native of Savoy, whose maiden name belonged to the house of Tournier. It has often been remarked that the characters of extraordinary men have been more or less moulded by early maternal care and judgment; and it has almost uniformly been asserted by genius itself, in various walks of literature and of science, that to this source was to be chiefly attributed the degree of excellence to which it attained. In all the vicissitudes of fortune, the mother of Silvio retained the same courage and the same well-regulated affection for her children; and, in virtuous opposition to the prevailing custom, she was at once their nurse and their earliest instructress. Nor was his father Onorato a man of inferior mind; his good sense and his sound views united with a poetical temperament -which in the son rose into the fire of brilliant genius-called forth the suspicions and persecutions of political enemies. In his flight from his native city, and its consequent sufferings and sorrows, he had occasion to give his son those first lessons of patience and humility in the school of adversity, which he applied with such admirable courage and fortitude, under circumstances the most afflicting and appalling to which human nature can be subjected. On his father's restoration to his' country and his property, the home of Silvio presented at once a model of generous hospitality, christian charity, and courtesy towards neighbours, combined with a propriety and elegance of manners which made it the favourite resort of genius and of social virtue. Here expanded the germs of that strong filial affection which he always felt and expressed with so much enthusiasm; elevated, as it was, by the esteem which he entertained for the characters of those he loved. With liberality of feeling and warm devotion they united general tolerance in matters of religious faith; and it was thus that their gifted son had the good fortune to escape the infection of all hereditary enmities, superstition, fanaticism, and injustice, while he had an example of cultivating sentiments of charity towards the superstitious, the fanatical, and the unjust themselves. The education of Silvio thus consisted, not in a dry routine of intellectual acquirements unaccompanied by the formation of character, but, -- under maternal skill and devotion, in a study of example, of character, of society, morals, and manners, all which she assiduously held up to view, and illustrated from the daily and hourly occurrences of domestic life. The object of a moral and religious education like this-as distinct from education in the ordinary sense of the word, as cunning from wisdom, or prudence from virtue is to acquire those qualities which, founded on christian principle as well as on reason and knowledge, produce harmony and strength of character. Such a character alone is capable of executing the good intentions, the virtuous motives and resolves which it conceives, and of resisting all the temptations to pursue an opposite line of conduct. The result of the prevailing system, on the other hand, conducted upon mere prudential and intellectual grounds, is to produce either undisciplined or really weak and ignoble characters; inasmuch as, although they may be equally aware of the direction of their duties, nourish equally good intentions, and form virtuous resolutions, they will possess neither the strength to undertake, nor consistency of purpose to persevere in a virtuous course of action. The mind of Silvio Pellico was not formed in the latter of these modern schools. His education was not an isolated fragment of his existence, a mere course of college studies, without reference to the past, or without influence upon his future career. It differed from the erroneous system pursued in most countries, and in few perhaps more than England at the present day, the fallacy of which consists in considering education as something in itself distinct from the future life and conduct of man, distinct from the teaching and development of his duties in his social and professional relations, preparatory to his discharging those of a good citizen, a good patriot, and a good subject. It was not made to consist in filling up a certain portion of time; in acquiring a given sum of intellectual attainments within a fixed period; or being initiated into the conventional form and manners of college life, and habits of collegiate studies, too often at direct variance with the future career and course of action it is intended we should pursue. In this lies the grievous error hitherto pervading all national systems of education, and which no enlightened and improved views, from the time when Milton wrote to the present moment, have succeeded in eradicating from the old established code more or less in force throughout the existing institutions of every land. To those leading institutions the systems partially introduced by Pestalozzi, by Lancaster, Hamilton, and othershowever useful to some classes of the people-have not been made generally applicable. The first step, it would appear, towards the remodelling of the system now pursued, would be the sanction of the new principle, or at least its new application, as shown in the education and life of Silvio Pellico. The whole scope of his youthful as well as more matured tuition seems to have been regulated by the objects held in view, by the combined cultivation of the speculative and the practical, of the intellectual and moral, in the entire range of the mental faculties. Thus the former were not precociously brought into display, as we too often see, at the expense of the latter, which are more slow in their operations, and more gradually developed. By avoiding an exclusive cultivation of the intellectual faculties, not only the moral but the practical powers of the mind, in forming habits of patient investigation, perseverance, and physical application, in all their respective details, were called |