BLACKWOOD'S EDINBURGH MAGAZINE. NO. CCCCIII. MAY, 1849. VOL. LXV. CONTENTS. COLONISATION--MR WAKEFIELD'S THEORY, 509 THE REACTION, OR FOREIGN CONSERVATISM, 529 MADAME D'ARBOUVILLE'S "VILLAGE DOCTOR," 542 NATIONAL EDUCATION IN SCOTLAND, 567 ARARAT AND THE ARMENIAN HIGHLANDS, 577 LEGITIMACY IN FRANCE, 590 THE COLLEGE. A SKETCH IN VERSE, 601 JACK MOONLIGHT, 606 MOONLIGHT MEMORIES. BY B. SIMMONS, 613 AUSTRIA AND HUNGARY, 614 EDINBURGH: WILLIAM BLACKWOOD & SONS, 45, GEORGE STREET; AND 37, PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON. _To whom all communications (post paid) must be addressed._ SOLD BY ALL THE BOOKSELLERS IN THE UNITED KINGDOM. PRINTED BY WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS, EDINBURGH. BLACKWOOD'S EDINBURGH MAGAZINE. NO. CCCCIII. MAY, 1849. VOL. LXV. COLONISATION--MR WAKEFIELD'S THEORY.[1] We agree with those, and they are the majority of reflective minds, who, taking a survey of our half-peopled globe, and considering the peculiar position which England occupies on it--her great maritime power, her great commercial wants, her overflowing numbers, her overflowing wealth--have concluded that colonisation is a work to which she is especially called. She is called to it by her marked aptitude and capability for the task, as well as by an enlightened view of her own interests. Without too much national partiality, without overlooking our own faults, and that canker of a too money-loving, too money-making morality, which has eaten into our character, (though perhaps not more so than it has corroded the character of other European nations, who have quite as strong a passion for gold, without the same industry in obtaining it,) we may boldly say that the best seed-plot of the human race that now exists (let the best be estimated as it may by the moralist and the divine) is to be found in this island of Great Britain. To plant the unoccupied regions of the earth, or regions merely wandered over by scattered tribes of savages, who cannot be said to possess a soil which they do not use, by off-sets from this island, is itself a good work. It is laying no ill foundation for the future nations that shall thus arise, to secure to them the same language, the same literature, the same form of religion, the same polity, or, at all events, the same political temper (the love and obedience to a constitution) that we possess; to make native to them that literature in which the great Christian epic has been written, in which philosophy has spoken most temperately, and poetry most profusely, diversely, and vigorously. Nor will England fail to reap her own reward from this enterprise. In every part of the world an Englishman will find a home. It will be as if his own native soil had been extended, as if duplicates of his own