It may be that since 1833, when this was written, some improvement has taken place.  We hope it has.  But that the system is still common—­nay, that it is in some cases carried to a greater extreme than ever; we can personally testify.  We recently went over a training-college for young men:  one of those instituted of late years for the purpose of supplying schools with well-disciplined teachers.  Here, under official supervision, where something better than the judgment of private school-mistresses might have been looked for, we found the daily routine to be as follows:—­

At 6 o’clock the students are called, " 7 to 8 studies, " 8 to 9 scripture-reading, prayers, and breakfast, " 9 to 12 studies, " 12 to 11/4 leisure, nominally devoted to walking or other exercise, but
     often spent in study, " 11/4 to 2 dinner, the meal commonly occupying twenty minutes, " 2 to 5 studies, " 5 to 6 tea and relaxation, " 6 to 81/2 studies, " 81/2 to 91/2 private studies in preparing lessons for the next day, " 10 to bed.

Thus, out of the twenty-four hours, eight are devoted to sleep; four and a quarter are occupied in dressing, prayers, meals, and the brief periods of rest accompanying them; ten and a half are given to study; and one and a quarter to exercise, which is optional and often avoided.  Not only, however, are the ten-and-a-half hours of recognised study frequently increased to eleven-and-a-half by devoting to books the time set apart for exercise; but some of the students get up at four o’clock in the morning to prepare their lessons; and are actually encouraged by their teachers to do this!  The course to be passed through in a given time is so extensive, and the teachers, whose credit is at stake in getting their pupils well through the examinations, are so urgent, that pupils are not uncommonly induced to spend twelve and thirteen hours a day in mental labour!

It needs no prophet to see that the bodily injury inflicted must be great.  As we were told by one of the inmates, those who arrive with fresh complexions quickly become blanched.  Illness is frequent:  there are always some on the sick-list.  Failure of appetite and indigestion are very common.  Diarrhoea is a prevalent disorder:  not uncommonly a third of the whole number of students suffering under it at the same time.  Headache is generally complained of; and by some is borne almost daily for months.  While a certain percentage break down entirely and go away.

That this should be the regimen of what is in some sort a model institution, established and superintended by the embodied enlightenment of the age, is a startling fact.  That the severe examinations, joined with the short period assigned for preparation, should compel recourse to a system which inevitably undermines the health of all who pass through it, is proof, if not of cruelty, then of woeful ignorance.

The case is no doubt in a great degree exceptional—­perhaps to be paralleled only in other institutions of the same class.  But that cases so extreme should exist at all, goes far to show that the minds of the rising generation are greatly over-tasked.  Expressing as they do the ideas of the educated community, the requirements of these training colleges, even in the absence of other evidence, would imply a prevailing tendency to an unduly urgent system of culture.