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Untitled Article
ever . '—[ Christ and Christianity , vol . li . p . 5 . ] This Christianity is confined to no sect—why should any other be taught ? All that part of the book which relates to the want of
encouragement for literature in England will be found very interesting . The author conceives that the government must ere long" devise some means of supporting those classes of literature which ' public favour will not support / and of rewarding those labours that ' public taste will not reward /
" The first of these means is , of course , to secure to men of talent some pecuniary benefit — to hold out to them some object which the exertion of the mind and industry will certainly obtain ; and thus to make them feel that the employment of their talents , the occupation of their time , and even the considerable pecuniary expenses which many branches of research require , will no longer be in vain ; to show them that their duty to themselves and to their families is not lost
sight of while labouring for the public benefit ; and that the cold meed of the applause of the few , or the still more desolate portion of posthumous renown , is not all that is to attend their genius , and repay their exertions . Did literary men in England feel this to be the case , many of the most worthy would dedicate themselves to greater objects than they can or ought to pursue at present ; and foreign nations would no longer have to reproach us with carrying commerce into
our literature , and devoting ourselves exclusively to the manufacture of what will sell . This , my Lord , you must well know is a common reproach against us amongst foreigners ; but while they make it , they forget that England is the only country in Europe where the government does nothing to promote or encourage literature . * * * Shame , shame , to think , + hat men who have honoured their country by the noblest exertions of the human mind—whose names will stand
reverenced by posterity as long as the English language is knownwhose writings form a brilliant part of our national glory—should have lived unhonoured , undistinguished , by the governments under which they shone 1 I could almost fancy that I was writing of some period of the dark ages , and of some country where the light of learning and civilization never appeared ; but it is enough to say that such a state of things is a gross and glaring evil , and should he amended . "—p . 133 .
Allusion is made to the provision for the encouragement of literature in France , Prussia , Germany , and Ilussia . The remarks on foreign literature are concluded thus , ' * We are marked out , and peculiar , and distinguished from the rest of Europe , not more by our insular situation than hy the fact of our being" the only nation the government of which does nothing for the reward of literary exertion . How long should such a state of things he suffered to exist ? "
If an illustration is wanted , these words may serve—they wore the outpouring of bitter disappointment endured by one whose genius originated the idea of an effective national education nearly half a century ago , and whose energy succeeded in obtaining one for bis own country , the progress ol which was only stopped by the desolation of war .
Untitled Article
36 The Educational Institutions of Germany .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Jan. 2, 1836, page 36, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2653/page/36/
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