comprehend your meaning; and for them there is no opiate like a book. If they succeed in learning a lesson, they stammer it out half asleep, and rarely retain the impression. Unlike the sanguineous, for the lymphatic the play-ground has no attraction; the very fact that sports and pastimes demand bodily exertion, includes a reason why he refrains. Whether, then, in the play-ground or school, he is in a dormant state; and, like the boa constrictor, he appears to possess only sufficient energy to awake and eat, and then to sleep again.

Now, as a means of inciting this sluggish temperament, flogging is altogether inoperative, at least for good. It does not succeed even in awakening the latent animal passions to resent; for the very fact that resistance presupposes considerable exertion, at once quiets the irritation of the violated feelings. Moreover, instead of any improvement being effected in the character, it is necessarily deteriorated; and the lethargy which was innate becomes cultured instead of repressed. For, as the lymphatic are unable to bear fatigue without recourse to sleep, drowsiness usually supervenes on flogging; and thus the inactivity of the temperament becomes deepened by the temporary excitement. To say, then, nothing of the extreme cruelty in "punishing, as we often do, rather the weakness of nature than the fault of the scholar,"* we perceive that no remedy was ever less calculated to remove a chronic disease, than is flogging to overcome the lethargy blended in the lymphatic temperament.

The remaining class to be considered is the nervo-bilious. In lads under fourteen, the average is scarcely 5 per cent. This is essentially the temperament of mental, as the sanguineous is of physical action. The intellect, if not manly in grasp, is at least so in pursuit: no pleasure equals that of study; physical exercise is neglected, and the brain is tasked to the utmost. Boys of this character are never happy except when engaged with their books; they read during their meals; books are their bed-companions; never behind, but always before, with their lessons, they evince that, with a temperament like theirs, if there be mental power, it must work. This procedure unhappily precludes physical education. If the lymphatic boy slinks from the play-ground, it is because he loves sleep; but if the nervo-bilious relinquishes it, it is because it prevents study.

In this case, at least, it will be admitted that no stimuli are required--least of all, those which are founded on anticipations of pain. Training, indeed, is desirable; but to be sound,

*See Roger Ascham's "Schoolmaster," wherein is a valuable section on the mental injuries engendered by school flogging.

it should be based on direction rather than excitement; and the due development of the physical structure, without which the brain ill-nourished must decline, should be the principal object. But yet excitements are applied, as if the natural tendencies were not sufficient without being lashed into a fever-heat. It is true that the appeal is chiefly addressed to Approbativeness; but, inasmuch as the principle of corporal punishment is known to be recognised, and its practical use occurs daily, there is a possibility before him, and Cautiousness is too ready to insinuate, that he too may be a victim: knowing, that unless the lesson be acquired, chastisement will ensue, the learner tasks every faculty to the uttermost to preclude the anticipated disgrace. And thus he is seen with. hectic flush, a thin unfleshy cheek, and an unnaturally bright eye-all telling that the brain never sleeps, that it has been fed at the expense of the body, and that, as a consequence, consumption will speedily claim another victim. Well would it be if teachers recollected that such intellect needs no forcing-house; and that to stimulate the naturally too active brain is to educate it for the madhouse or the grave.

Thus it appears that school-flogging is essentially injurious to every temperament, and more calculated to enfeeble the mind than to increase its powers. Nor would it be too much to affirm that it has destroyed the energies of thousands; in the one case, by breaking down Hope and Approbativeness-the best incitors of the backward; and in the other, by causing the brain to be tasked beyond the natural power, so that, at least, it displayed the fatuity of senility in early youth. Cardinal Wolsey, therefore, merely noted a fact when, in inditing the rules of a school which he founded, he said-" One point that we should think proper to be noticed as of first importance is, that the tender age of youth should never be urged with severe blows; for, by this injurious treatment, all sprightliness of genius either is destroyed, or is, at any rate, considerably damped." Happy for the world will it be when this doctrine is reduced to practice.

To indicate some of the tendencies of school-flogging, I shall relate two cases; one of which reached my own observation, and the other was noted in the course of reading. With temperaments directly opposite, and characters equally diverse, the results were deplorable; and both traced much that was undesirable in their characters to the evil influence of school-flogging.

C. A. possessed the lymphatic temperament, with a dash of the sanguineous. He manifested no intellectual energy; and

his perceptive organs, though large, were too sluggish to acquire the simplest lesson-in fact, immediately upon trying to learn a task, he went to sleep. Having an invincible repugnance to bodily exercise, the time employed by his class-mates in the play-ground was devoted by C. A. to sleep. His teacher knew nothing of mental philosophy-his educational creed being comprised in a few words "If a boy don't learn, it is simply because he wont learn.” Acting on this theory, and being naturally in temper a Wackford Squeers, whenever a boy had not acquired the lesson assigned, he was immediately lashed to the back of another boy, and flogged. For the space of two years C. A. underwent this punishment never less than once a-day, and often thrice. In addition to the general absence of mental vigour, he had a defect which he has not overcome to this day-that inability to calculate which a phrenologist would predicate from his small organ of Number. His teacher, however, knowing nothing of innate deficiencies, referred the inability to obstinacy-and the customary remedy was employed. As might be expected, chastisement did not strengthen the feeble organs; but, on the contrary, the faculties became perceptibly less active, and, as he believes, positively stunted. He complained of a haziness of perception, which prevented the least mental application; and he learnt nothing, because he understood nothing.

Nor was the influence of punishment on Cautiousness of a more satisfactory character. Each morning C. A. might be found at the entrance to the school an hour before the commencement of the business of the day, in order that he might creep into his class unnoticed. Whilst standing by the door, he would be found with pale cheek and stertorous breath; cold, indeed, through fear, in the heat of summer. Cautiousness never slumbered, and at length he appeared to have scarcely any instinct save fear. He became also a somnambulist. Every night, and generally several times in the same night, he arose from his bed, and with fierce gesticulations flogged the self-created image of his teacher. The day-scenes, also, were reproduced in his dreams: Cautiousness never tired, not even during sleep. The physical system, of course, became deteriorated: acid eructations, and sick headaches, from which he was never free, indicated that the digestive organs had ceased to fulfil their functions. Such, then, were the evil results of attempting-vain task!-to coerce, instead of to educe, the faculties.

I will now consider the effects of school-flogging as illustrated by one in whom there was the sanguine-bilious temperament a combination which indicates an equal bias to

bodily and mental action: I refer to Martin Luther. In speaking of his boyhood, Luther writes-" My parents used me very harshly, and rendered me very timid. They thoroughly believed that they were doing me good: but they could not discriminate between minds differently constituted. My mother chastised me one day so severely that the blood issued for some time." According to Merle D'Aubigne, he was treated even more harshly at school; for although fond of study, he was equally fond of play, and sometimes preferred rambling in the woods of Eisenach to learning his lessons. To repress this truant disposition, Luther was flogged almost daily on one occasion ounishment was inflicted fifteen times successively. At first the organ of Cautiousness was alone affected; and he, who afterwards laughed at the thunders of the Vatican, shrunk from the presence of a superior, and drew his breath inly when addressed by his teacher. Referring to this period in after-times, he said " My heart was doubtless rendered timid by the threats and tyranny of my master to which I was exposed." But at length this impression wore off; repetition of punishment steeled him against fear or disgrace; and he was accustomed to ascribe his remarkable firmness of character to the power of repressing his feelings which he acquired at school. The teacher of Luther observed the change-how the boy, fond of praise, became careless of censure-but, like many teachers in the present century, unable to perceive that they themselves have trained the animal organs, exclaimed"It is of no avail that Martin is flogged; for he only becomes the more obstinate the more he is chastised." But let not us, who peruse this chapter, in the life of the monk of Wittenberg, forget that if his animal organs sometimes became ungovernable, at least his teachers had done nothing to tame his fiery spirit. It is in vain for us to treat men like brutes, and expect that they shall act like angels.

I have thus described the effects of school-flogging on boys of various and opposite dispositions; and shewn that in every instance the result has been unmitigated evil. It does not enter into my view to consider the question in all its varied aspects; but in shewing that it enfeebles the mind, that it trains men to become wild beasts, and that it consigns thousands to a premature grave, I have adduced sufficient evidence to prove that its infliction is most hurtful, and that John Locke, who shrunk from the idea of school-flogging as men shrink from a venomous reptile, was not actuated by any unreasoning impulse. Let these facts have but due weight, and flogging must cease without, as it already has within, lu

natic asylums. Remembering that the will to do, and the' power to do, are not necessarily combined, kindness will supplant force, and we shall train rather than coerce; and it will be found, as it has ever been found in past ages, that, to use the eloquent language of Dickens," men are best ruled by the strong heart, and not by the strong, though immeasurably weaker, hand!"

BRUNSWICK TERRACE, ISLINGTON,
October 1843.

II. Mr Spencer Hall and the "New Organs." By Mr W. R. Lowe, Wolverhampton.

For the last two years few subjects have more agitated the public mind than Mesmerism; and in consequence of the alleged ability to excite the various cerebral organs during the mesmeric trance, without the consciousness of the subject operated upon, phrenologists, as a body, have perhaps felt more interested in the investigation of mesmeric phenomena than any other class of individuals. There are doubtless believers in Mesmerism who are not phrenologists; and, vice versa, that there are phrenologists of highly respectable character and attainments who are not mesmerists, is equally undeniable. There are also believers in both sciences (if Mesmerism, in its present little understood and unsystematized condition, can lay claim to that appellation), who yet refuse to believe the applicability and importance of the one as a means of confirming the other. Still it may, I imagine, be stated as a fact, that the great majority of those who have paid attention to the two subjects, consider them not only to be closely allied, but to shed a reciprocal light upon each other; the mesmeric excitation of different portions of the brain, and the correspondent evolution of the mental manifestations without either the will or consciousness of the party operated upon, proving alike the reality of that abnormal condition called "the mesmeric trance," and the correctness of the phrenological localization of the various mental organs. This class of investigators (to which, after much examination and thought, though once perhaps something more than a sceptic, I must now confess my adherence), deem mesmeric excitation, if not the only, at least the best, means of discovering and actually demonstrating the functions of the various portions of the mind's central apparatus,-the grand tribunal before which the claims of every candidate for admission into the list of the primitive faculties can best be examined,-the