your brothers or sisters. The rod sproduces an effect which terminates »in itself, n A child is afraid of being whipt, and gets his task, and there's an end on't; whereas, by exciting emulation, and comparisons of superiority, you lay the foundation of Jasting mischiefs you make brothers and sisters hate each other."> 21 Bibshoot Q. To the Editor of the Christian Observer. I HAVE been in no small degree surprized, while reading in your valuable miscellany several papers on the subject of the increasing Expensive ness of a College Education, to observe into what extremes, your correspondents seem to have been led. By RUSTICUS and other correspondents, it appears, that some young men require no less a sum than 6001. and others 8001. per annum, to defray their expenses; the greater part of which, it must be evident, can only be spent by means of great extravagancies. Your last correspondent, however, who signs bimSelf AN OLD FELLOW, appears to have run into the contrary error: he asserts, that a prudent young man may live at college for 501. per annum, and even some may have to receive instead of to pay money. Now, Mr. Editor, this Old Fellow, puts this 501. per annum under the head of actual college expenses. By these actual college expenses I sup pose to be meant the payment of tutors, rent of rooms, taxes, pay ment of college servants, &c. If this be the case, it may be allowed that a young man's setual college expenses come to about 50l. per annum; but then, there are other expenses greater than these, which he is under the necessity of incur ring; viz. for his food, clothes, books, furniture for rooms, surplices and academical dress, fees for degrees, &c. "{ ཉྭ"r With regard to food (for which, at some colleges, more is paid than at others), I do not conceives that any man, I speak of pensioners at Cambridge) who diges sih bis hall every day in the week, and who breakfasts and takes tea in his own rooms, can possibly bes at an less charge than from 30s. to 355. per week. Of the expense of clothes and books, anyone may form la judgment, at the same time remembering, that a young man is obliged to dress respectably, and that there are certain books he must possess, some of which are expensive. Furniture for rooms, surplices, and academical dresses, it may be said, are only expenses of the first year; but still they require no small sum of money, and must be classed among the absolutely necessary expenses of college. Let not parents, then, under the idea that any young man can live there for so small a sum as 50% per annum, impute or suspect extravagancies in their sons, if they should very considerably exceed that sum. Fees for degrees are also heavy, and in the last academical year, make a.considerable addition to the expenditure. For B. A., they amount at least to 157. Of such things as wine, horses, &c., I make no mention, because these, in general, (though by no means always, and especially with very studious men) are luxuries and extravagancies which might well be dispensed with... I am far from wishing to impute blame to the tutors, and heads of the several colleges; but there is one thing which ought to be mentioned, as in some measure aggravating the evil alluded to. It is this the tradesment of Cambridge send in their bills to the tutors, for the se veral young men. The tutors, in their accounts, state only the total sum, as taylors, so much; grocers, so much; &c. Now, if the tradesmen were previously to carry round the bills to the young men, in order them, to their being signed by signatures sent in to the tutors, this might obviate much of that fraud which it is to be feared is practised. On the present 2811 2 plan, the opportunities of commit commit ting fraud are very great. For instance, a young man may have a suit of clothes of his tailor, and perhaps a few other things. The taifor, if he be not an honest man, may charge for articles which have been had. This it is impossible the tutor should know, unless the bill is first submitted to the inspection of the young man himself. But it seldom happens that he has seen the bill. This statement applies more forcibly to the bills of some of the other tradesmen, than to that of the tailor. Now surely, this practice ought to be reformed. Since I have been a member of the university, only one of the bills sent up to the tutor has ever been brought to me for signature. I do not mean to assert, that frauds have therefore been committed; yet there certainly have been great opportu nities of committing them." pages, allow an ex-professional man papery allow antes profesional man briefly to suggest, that in his fiamble opinion, equality ought to be the grand basis of a provision for children, as in all other instances, so especially in a testamentary dispo sition. Modifications there may and ought to be arising from the ever-varying circumstances of the case (and your ingenious correspondents in vain endeavour to antici. pate these); but still, partiality, that bane of family peace and harmony, should as much as possible be avoided. A Christian parent will not readily suffer the economy or the improvidence, the good or the bad conduct of a child, to deprive him of that quota to which, if not expressly by the law of nature, yet by received usage (in modern times at least), he may well be considered as having acquired a species of right; however expedient it may be found, in certain cases, to guard and to qualify such a bequestion the other hand, a child influenced by similar principles will not be hasty to assert that right, to deny the authority; or to impeach the conduct of his parent, in doing what he will with" that which, after all, is in this own." Each must and ought to attend to his particular dety, and owde it heartily as unto the Lord." Apare from these motives, what security is there against partiality and caprice on the one hand, or greediness and discontent on the other?& omnisv T I shall be obliged by the favour of your giving an early insertion to this paper, which has been written with a view to give some more adequate and just views upon this sub ject than your former correspondents appear to me to have given, and to furnish parents with some idea of what are the necessary expenses of a college life; so that they may in some measure be directed in making a due allowance to their sons, and that neither extravagance may be encouraged on the one hand, nor young men be so distressed on admits in common with both the other, as scarcely to be able to your correspondents, that an excep pay their way through the univer tion may justly be made in the vie sity, and thereby become depressed of large possessions, by givingba in their spirits, while their ardour preference to an eldestmordanly in the pursuit of knowledge is son; not merely conforming 10 Word general acceptation, but on account ma checked. With my earnest prayers, and of its tried utility in preserving ranki best wishes for the success of your and distinction in society. Do that work, Stow 100 m Sigalo granite a judgments and conscience of the I am, &c. Jasad owner of newly acquired property A CAMBRIDGE PENSIONER, it must be left to determine sasto smice to the amount, which will well watrantz es old:1971m bum budete pored to him to commence the establishment To the Editor of the Christian Observènd of a family place und abnantesd nom Os the subject of wills, which has The implied contract: betweenu the's occasionally been discussed in your parents on the martigel ofis shajoa etion .v5d28(„TULAHO ON A minister of the Established Church had been attending the anniversary, meeting of a neighbouring Auxiliary Bible Society, On his return bonie, in the evening, a poor person who had been in the company, came to his parsonage, entered his sturly, and said, "Sir, we were stopt on our road from the Bible Society, and were asked to walk into a cottage, to see a poor woman who has been in a lingering consumption for six years: she makes no complaint of her bodily sufferings, which are very great, but is continually imploring God's mercy upon her soul. We gave her the best advice in our power, but having heard of your daily visits to the sick, she wishes much to see you: you may, perhaps, administer consolation to her wounded conscience." The parish in which this poor sufferer lived, had not a resident clergyman:..the minister in ques zion, bastened therefore, the next morning, to her cottage. On entering the door, he distinctly heard a CHRIST, OBSERV. No. 155. plaintive voice above, saying "What shall I do? To whom shall I look for help? I am lost for ever!" He ascended the wretched staircase, and beheld a woman about sixty years of age, poor and emaciated; her arms extended; the one a mére skeleton, the other swollen to a fearful size. She lost no time in describing her bodily diseases; but exclaimed, with tears, alnost in the language of the gaoler at Philippi; "What must I do to be saved?" The minister could not have a better precedent than that which is recorded of the great Apostle of the Gentiles; when he said, “ Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved." Earnest as she had been in ber supplications for mercy, she seemed deplorably ignorant of the nature of the Gospel, and of the various offices of the Redeemer! Jesus Christ, appeared to occupy no place in her system. The gracious plan of redemption was then pointed out to this poor ignorant inquirer. Christ was described as the only Saviour; as a full, perfect, and sufficient sacrifice for sin; as the appointed Mediator between God and man; as bearing our sins in his own body upon the tree; as becoming, according to the happy expression of Bishop Beve ridge, The Son of man, that we might be made the sons of God." He was exhibited as fulfilling all the commands of a broken law, and offering a free pardon to the guilty. Nor was the necessity of holiness of life forgotten in this conversation; holiness, without which no man shall see the Lord, Prayer, founded upon these grand truths, closed this interview. she perceived death approaching with hasty steps, knew that she must stand before God in judgment, and was conscious of her own utter unworthiness to appear before him. "No man cometh unto the Father but by me." " If ye had known me, ye should have known my Father also." "Whatsoever ye shall ask the Father in my name, be will give it you."" Hitherto ye have asked nothing in my name: ask, and ye shall receive, that your joy may be full." These were truths of which she was at first ignorant, but by which, when she became acquainted with them, she was lifted from earth to heaven. They were to her a rod and a staff, when walking through the valley of the shadow of death. She lingered for four months, the minister visited her every week; and before mortality was swallowed up of life, life seemed to be swallowed up of mortality. This poor woman had felt herself (as it has been wellexpressed by a writer of no ordinary attainment, in a recent publication*), 1 quite guilty but she had never been taught to lift her eyes to the cross of a Saviour. She bad felt berself weak; but no one had led her to the Comforter, to that Spirit who, with his holy fire, dries up the tears of the miserable. May I, in conclusion, venture to suggest the following hint? Whilst we are all busily employed in evangelizing the heathen, in distributing the Sacred Volume, and in convert ing the seed of Abraham, let us not overlook this melancholy fact; that there are many persons in this highly favoured country, as igno rant as the heathen, and as much bewildered as the Jew; and, that the shepherds of the flock can never be too diligently employed in searching out the lost sheep at home, remembering the words of the good Shepherd himself, “Varily I say unto you, there is joy amongst the angels of God over one sinner that repenteth." REVIEW OF NEW PUBLICATIONS. Pensées de BLAISE PASCAL. 2 tom. 12mo. Paris: chez Ant. Aug. Renouard. 1812. AN edition, new to us, and, as we believe, to this country, of a work so eminent among the Christian classics as Pascal's Thoughts, might very pardonably draw some mention from us, even if it furnished no excitement to attention beyond its novelty. The present publication, however, adds other claims. It is a stereotype impression; and the editor, M. Renouard, to whom French literature is indebted for inany valuable republications, has been at great pains to render it worthy of perpetuity. The volumes are very beautiful. The text is not only printed correctly, but the editor is boo Velvet Cashion, p. 105.00 m has been careful to verify it, both by a collation of former editions, and by a personal and laborious examination of Pascal's scarcely legible autograph, which still subsists in the Bibliothéque Royale. This exami nation has also enabled him to increase the collection in some slight degree, by adding a few Thoughts never before printed. In all these points, the present edition is very honourably distinguished; but our attention, wẽ own, has been chiefly attracted to it by a less happy peculiarity. The respectable editor designed, he says, a complete edition," and thought it necessary to this end-why necessary, we cannot even conceive→→ to annex the notes of Condorcet and Voltaire. Some of our readers pro(bably know a little of those notes, for it has not always been practica ble to procure copies of Pascal free from them. Those who do not, at least know more or less of the anno tators that wrote them, and may easily imagine how Pascal, and the subjects on which he meditates, and the truths which he loves, were likely to fare in such hands. → Condorcet's edition of the *Thoughts" was first published in 1776, but without the name of the editor. To this edition he prefixed what he called an Eloge on Pascal, as if from the pen of a friend, but, in fact, written by himself. He also added notes; some extracted from Voltaire, who had already criticised the "Thoughts" with infinite free dom in his Lettres Anglaises. Con dorcet, who revered Voltaire as his preceptor, cites these criticisms with vast commendation both of them and of their author. He likewise inserted in his edition an essay on Pascal's argument for a future state, commonly (though, Voltaire thinks, erroneously) ascribed to Funte nelle; in which a Christian missionary is introduced, vainly defend ing the argument in question, against a philosopher of China. The edition of Condorcet, whatever its faults, had the merit of exhibiting a better arrangement than had yet been given of the "Thoughts," which, it is well known, were left by their illustrious author in the state of mere unconnected and form less fragments. Erot even menaced with personal punishe ment; bot escaped by pretending that the book had been published; not by himself, but by a treacherous secretary, and by having friends in power who were kind enough to believe the tale. The Eloge of Condorcet appeared at a time when Pascal's reputation, in spite of the disparaging remarks of Voltaire, stood very high. A man of genius may sometimes choose a hackneyed subject for his panegyric, in order to shew his own originality. Such could hardly have been the object of Condorcet. His discourse is in no sense an eloge, unless that be the French word for damning with faint praise." What is worse, even the faint praise in the text is further frittered down in the notes below. Voltaire himself al lows that it is not so much an eloge, as a faithful portrait; and, certainly, were this true, we should allow that, though not an eloge, and though falsely called such, it was in fact a better thing. But it might not per haps be difficult to prove, if we had the opportunity, that this pretended portrait is as unlike as it is unfavourable; that the discourse, with its notes, contains much unfair criticism-much direct misrepresentation and a studious and exagge rated exposure of what the writer conceived to be Pascal's weaknesses, at the very moment when he affects to be censuring similar indiscretion {in the friends of that great mansion. Voltaire's edition, which was also anonymous, came out in 1778. It was a republication of that of Con dorcet, whose praises Voltaire took the opportunity of returning with interest, though without naming hin; but it contained also a second crop of notes by the new editor. It was printed at Geneva, and with good reason. The Lettres Anglaises," Sin which & Voltaire first attacked •Pascal, had been published at Paris, and had given such offence that it was suppressed by an arrêt du con seil, and a copy burned by order of the Parliament. The author was ́ To enter further, however, sinto this subject, would be irrelevant. The compiler of the work before us, who thinks Voltaire's and ¿ Cous dorcet's notes essential to the com pleteness of transedition of Pascal, has, by a happy inconsistency, taltally omitted Condorcet's Eloge, and Fontenelle's Essay, though, both were thought essential by Voltaire. In place of the Eloge, M. Renouard very judiciously inserts the excellent discourses on the life and writings of bis author, by M. Bossut, the editor of 1779 We cannot indeed help missing the simple, honest, and af |