On this page

• Text (1)

  Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.

  • 

    Untitled Article

• Transcript

  • Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.

    Additionally, when viewing full transcripts, extracted text may not be in the same order as the original document.

    Untitled Article

    and the two Treatises of Tacitus $ " nay even to . master the difficulties of Arisjiptte ' s ^ Treatise of Poetry , and learn to call U by its proper name ? * Whatever humiliation it behoves the ^ ocinian dissiden ts to feel , when they

    cpmpare their own armour , % aAx € ia , ivvs&fioiai , with the golden " panoply divine , in which have issued forth a Porson , a Parr , a Burney and a Wake-Seld / ' ( p . 83 ,. Note ) it is clear that the attainments of Mr . W . himself are by

    no means of that colossal magnitude , beneath which the pigmy scholarship o £ the Dissenters must peep about to seek itself a dishonourable grave . A n ^ an w ho takes upo n him to schoo l < nher » s for their deficiencies in ^ Latin aad Greek , should be very sure that he himself can write English . But did it

    ever befal a literary body before , to be d € fended by an advocate , who could print such a sentence , nay many such sentences , as the following ? * ' Respecting Dr . Hartley ' s celebrated theory of solving the phenomena of the human mind by the agency of vibration and association , the former of these doctrines

    is certainly subject to great difficulty of actual proof , " &c . < R 64 , Note . ) Had such a sentence occurred in the theme of a student in the first half of his first session at a dissenting academy , we hardly think he could have escaped a

    rebuke for prefixing a " respecting to that which nothing respected $ and he would certainly have been informed that a theory of solving was a combination , of English words , which " non Di t non homines , non concessere columnce" ' - ¦ .

    The short dwration of dissenting acadexnies is ' another circumstance on which Mr . W , dwells , and he contrasts it with ? complacency with the antiquity of universities , ' * \ j £ t any one direct his view to . the seminaries p rojected at various times fgr the education of those wjio call themselves 'Rational

    Dissenters , ( to say nothing of sirrnlar foundations for the independents and Methodists ) ir } which tfte defects and corruptions of the ijuglish universities were-professed to be avoided , and the acquirements 1 * of learning to fye

    ac-Hf * The Poetics of Aristotle / ' as Mr . W . * ' * ¥ ? t . JJ ^ cl he tearq at Couajb $ jdge to speak ^ ws R ^ tor ^ ; jhLS ^ w ' rms ^'^ ^ < M . *^ * «*^ ttitffiSwr ^ ridlhiib ^ isild aSt yMth

    Untitled Article

    jr complished with infinitely lets toil arid consumption of time ; fet him observe the sticcess of these visionary attempts , and , ask where are now the academies of War ri ngiton , Dayen try anil ¥ fark ney , and what is the condition of the few

    which have escaped the wreck of their companions , and "he will be less disposed to indulge in urireasdnable declamations against those venerable and magnificent institutions which have

    endured the trial of so many ages , or to be led away by the chimerical dreams of the possibility of exemption from practical error . " - We were aware that it had been , and still is , an object with the Dissenters , to provide the means of giving education to their youth , without serVding them to the universities . Were the studies pursued at these places as well adapted to sect ire the great objects of education , and their disci pline as favourable to morals ^ as Mr . \ V . alleges them to be , still no Dissenter could be

    admitted to partake of these privileges , at Oxford , without trampling on the faith of his forefathers , nor at Cambridge , without joining in a worship , the form and invocations of which he must fdeeni unscriptural . But at the time when the Dissenters formed those

    institutions , in whose decline Mr . W . triumphs , Oxford was still covered with the thick darkness . of the scholastic ages , and not one of those reforms had been made , which have since placed her at least upon a footing of equality with Cambridge , in intellectual and moral discipline . Was it then-, an

    unpardonable presximption in the Dissenters , to have perceived , half a century earlier , the unfitness of university plans to the true objects , of education , arid-while they preserved their youth from the ev ils of relaxed disci p line , and temptations to dishonest contorrnity , to attempt to provide for them a course of stucly , more likely to qualif y them for the duties of real life r That it was

    tjieir object to abridge tjiat needless infinity of toil to which yoiit > g men would be exposed at an university , we neve ^ heard , and we require better evidence of the fact than the assertions of o ^ c who writes so ' much at random as

    may be accomplished , the acquirement ? of learning are things which may be attained or purchased but not accomplished * N « 7 TMf &te * f ty / iotri < rl tm rtyftccToc < rawr * . § ee la ^ t © ate . Xen . Hist . Gr . 1 V , 4 . 10 /

    Untitled Article

    Remeto . — Wmnewriglit on the Pursuits of Cambrid ge * 40 &

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), July 2, 1816, page 409, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2454/page/37/