twenty-seven years ago, which England is now copying; and schools and universities placed on so firm a basis that the calumnies of Lord Brougham can only recoil on his own head. From the descriptions of what is called the Prussian compulsory system, one would be inclined to believe that the children were coupled together like hounds, and driven every morning with blows to be trained! Should a parent be so wicked as not to give his children any education, and purposely keep them from school and church, the law justly gives the magistrates a right of guardianship. This remote threat may have had a salutary effect in individual cases, but I have never heard of the actual application of outward compulsion—_obtorto collo_. Morality, sense of honor, general custom, conviction of the great advantage of a careful education, suffice among us to excite all parents _voluntarily_ to send their children to school. In perfect accordance with our school laws it is considered as equally sinful to withhold nourishment from their minds as from their bodies. If we duly appreciate the spirit of the laws, cavils about the letter fall away; but even the letter has had a wholesome influence, and without the application of corporal restraint, in promoting the intellectual emancipation of the people. Our author's letter on the _Finances_ of Great Britain will be read with surprise and doubt by many, but with respect by all. He commences with an analysis of finance in general, and with a brief survey of many financial distresses which are as old as history itself. His remarks on the absence of all finance in the middle ages will arrest attention. In these days men had no money, and yet did more than in modern times—they effected every thing, and we can effect nothing, without the circulation of the “golden blood.” Every individual in those days, garnered, says Raumer, without the medium of money, what he wanted; and the whole was entirely kept together by ideas. It is only since Machiavelli—since the power of the middle ages was lost in the feudal and ecclesiastical systems, that we have had to seek a new public law, and a science of {509} _Finance_. In regard to England, our author runs through all the most important epochs of its monied concerns, and shows effectually that she has no reason to tremble at present. He alludes to what is called the enormous burden of her taxes, and of her debt—whose interest is more than 30,000,000_l._ per annum—far more than half of its revenue, and more than four years revenue of the whole Prussian monarchy! He admits, for the sake of argument, that England must sink under this intolerable pressure, and become bankrupt—but the public debt and its interest, he says, would then at once be annihilated. To the assertion that this remedy is worse than the disease, and would produce a degree of distress much exceeding what is now complained of, he replies, that such an