The Press.
London, England, 1854-04-15 00:00:00

THE PRESS.

4..
,
prOspeiity-, arid achieved a career which wile
may desire, none need despair to imitate.
Of Mr. Kaye's book a few words. It is
generally well written, the remarks judicious,
the narrative graphic. His chief fault is that
of diffuseness and an occasional affected turn
of phrase which we do not remember to have
perceived either in his essay on Indian govern-
ment or his history of the Afghan war. E. g.,
" these conjectural deductions hover on the
" extreme verge of the Absurd," p. 9 ; "with-
" out wandering into the regions of the great
" Far-fetched," p. 9; " the act belonged to the
" great family of the Well-meant," p. 24. Page
82, Lord Wellesley is described as " a little
" man with great aims "—a criticism which we
cannot believe serious, and which, if not se-
rious, is a foolish jingle of words. Page 85, a
financier becomes " commander of the Money-
bags." Page 118, "this project was flung,
" like many others, into the great Hereafter; '
and much more to the same effect. We note
such blemishes only because a second edition
may remove them.

Collegiate and Professorial Teaching and Disci-
pline, in Answer to Professor Vaughan's Stric-
tures. By the Rev. E. B. Pusey, D.D.
Oxford and London: J. H. Parker.

Pn•stY has here giyen us an interesting
treatise on the relative merits of collegiate and
professorial instruction; in other words, of
teaching by lectures, or teaching by examina-
tions. The value of such an argument at the
present time is great, for of all the suggested
Oxford reforms none is more popular with a
certain class than the substitution of profes
sorial lessons for those of public or private
tutors as usually given at the present day.
To us this step seems a retrogression, not an
advance. The arguments used by Dr. Pusey
are in the main these :-
1. A lecture orally delivered and listened to
is at best " a text without notes." No digres-
sion, no turning aside to deal with small de-
tails, is possible, for it involves the distraction
of the student's attention, and the breaking of
the chain of argument ; yet such illustrations
and expansions of a writer's meaning often-
times form the most valuable part of his trea-
tise. In a lecture, if we may so illustrate Dr.
Pusey's reasoning, the whole picture is fore.
ground. There can be no light and shade. All
points touched upon stand out in equal pro-
minence.
2. The modes of lecturing are and alit ays
have been twofold—" dictation" or slow de-
livery, which, in fact, turns the lecture into a
book, of which each student is expected
to take a MS. copy ; and fluent delivery, or
oratory. Each method has advantages pecu-
liar to itself. In times when printed books
were scarce, dictation was not only a useful
but almost a necessary practice. It is now
superfluous (books abounding) and incon-
venient, since the manual labour of copying
or taking notes renders simultaneous mental
effort impossible. In fact, the proceeding be-
came so purely mechanical that, as Dr. Pusey
tells us, at Padua, in the sixteenth century, the
scholars sent down clerks, or servants, to take
notes for them. This mode of lecturing is not
likely to find favbur in England. But the
opposite is equally faulty, though in a different
way. No close reasoning, no condensed
thought, can be conveyed in an off hand
speech. Admitting the lecturer to possess the
rare gift of extemporaneous accuracy, a very
different thing from mere verbal fluency, the
student's memory may still fail. He carries
away a part only of what he hears, not the
whole—even that part perhaps incorrectly.
Here let Dr. Pusey speak for himself :
Oral delivery, as compared to the study of a book, wastes
time in two opposite ways What is easy is delivered too
slowly ; what is difficult too fast. A lecturer may pause
upon some sentence which he wishes to impress on his
hearers ; or he may deliver somewhat more rapidly whatis
necessary to be said but not to be dwelt upon. But in both
ways he is limited. The words must be enunciated one
after the other ; there is no pause ; no looking back ; no
recovering what was not grasped at first. It is gone. in
the more difficult parts the perception remains what it was,
indistinct. No one who values time or knowledge would
ever turn the book back into a lecture by having a printed
book read aloud to him. This is done sometimes for
social ends ; but whoever would study a book knows that
he must stuck), it for himself. In this way too what passes
through the ear makes less impression than what is sub-

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