most essential parts of literary education, to
read, write, and account, it still continues to
be more common to acquire in private than in
public schools; and it very seldom happens,
that anybody fails of acquiring them to the
degree in which it is necessary to acquire
them.
In England, the public schools are much
less corrupted than the universities. In the
schools, the youth are taught, or at least may
be taught, Greek and Latin; that is, every
thing which the masters pretend to teach, or
which it is expected they should teach. In
the universities, the youth neither are taught,
nor always can find any proper means of
being taught the sciences, which it is the business
of those incorporated bodies to teach.
The reward of the schoolmaster, in most
cases, depends principally, in some cases almost
entirely, upon the fees or honoraries of
his scholars. Schools have no exclusive privileges.
In order to obtain the honours of
graduation, it is not necessary that a person
should bring a certificate of his having studied
a certain number of years at a public school.
If, upon examination, he appears to understand
what is taught there, no questions are
asked about the place where he learnt it.
The parts of education which are commonly
taught in universities, it may perhaps be
said, are not very well taught. But had it
not been for those institutions, they would
not have been commonly taught at all; and
both the individual and the public would have
suffered a good deal from the want of those
important parts of education.
The present universities of Europe were
originally, the greater part of them, ecclesiastical
corporations, instituted for the education
of churchmen. They were founded by
the authority of the pope; and were so entirely
under his immediate protection, that
their members, whether masters or students,
had all of them what was then called the benefit
of clergy, that is, were exempted from
the civil jurisdiction of the countries in which
their respective universities were situated, and
were amenable only to the ecclesiastical tribunals.
What was taught in the greater part
of those universities was suitable to the end
of their institution, either theology, or something
that was merely preparatory to theology.
When Christianity was first established by
law, a corrupted Latin had become the common
language of all the western parts of
Europe. The service of the church, accordingly,
and the translation of the Bible which
were read in churches, were both in that corrupted
Latin; that is, in the common language
of the country. After the irruption of
the barbarous nations who overturned the
Roman empire, Latin gradually ceased to be
the language of any part of Europe. But
the reverence of the people naturally preserves
the established forms and ceremonies of religion
long after the circumstances which first
introduced and rendered them reasonable, are
no more. Though Latin, therefore, was no
longer understood anywhere by the great
body of the people, the whole service of the
church still continued to be performed in that
language. Two different languages were
thus established in Europe, in the same manner
as in ancient Egypt: a language of the
priests, and a language of the people; a
sacred and a profane, a learned and an unlearned
language. But it was necessary that
the priests should understand something of
that sacred and learned language in which
they were to officiate; and the study of the
Latin language therefore made, from the
beginning, an essential part of university
education.
It was not so with that either of the Greek
or of the Hebrew language. The infallible
decrees of the church had pronounced the
Latin translation of the Bible, commonly
called the Latin Vulgate, to have been equally
dictated by divine inspiration, and therefore
of equal authority with the Greek and
Hebrew originals. The knowledge of those
two languages, therefore, not being indispensably
requisite to a churchman, the study
of them did not for a long time make a necessary
part of the common course of university
education. There are some Spanish
universities, I am assured, in which the study
of the Greek language has never yet made
any part of that course. The first reformers
found the Greek text of the New Testament,
and even the Hebrew text of the Old, more
favourable to their opinions than the vulgate
translation, which, as might naturally
be supposed, had been gradually accommodated
to support the doctrines of the Catholic
Church. They set themselves, therefore, to
expose the many errors of that translation,
which the Roman catholic clergy were thus
put under the necessity of defending or explaining.
But this could not well be done
without some knowledge of the original languages,
of which the study was therefore gradually
introduced into the greater part of
universities; both of those which embraced,
and of those which rejected, the doctrines of
the reformation. The Greek language was
connected with every part of that classical
learning, which, though at first principally
cultivated by catholics and Italians, happened
to come into fashion much about the same
time that the doctrines of the reformation
were set on foot. In the greater part of universities,
therefore, that language was taught
previous to the study of philosophy, and as
soon as the student had made some progress
in the Latin. The Hebrew language having
no connection with classical learning, and,
except the Holy Scriptures, being the language
of not a single book in any esteem