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or venomous plants are represented be charged a florin or two, none but wealthy people are enabled to buy it, and the poorer classes – therefore the majority – are not benefited by such publications.
It can scarcely he conceived, why the superabundant means of the ennobled press should have been hitherto overlooked. But this neglect did not remain without injurious consequences. What comparative ignorance will be met with, if we question the unlearned youth on matters foreign to the profession to which he devoted himself! How unpleasant are the observations that less wealthy parents make with regard to their own infomation; how sad are the perceptions that will be gathered by well-informed people on examining the unlearned children of poor families! Let us cast a glance over the state of apprentices, and we shall find that they do not possess the most indispensable information that might be expected of a child, if the press had supplied the required school-books. But let us quit the department of the useful and let us talk of the most indispensable – how are children taught religion, which is the moral basis of the whole human life, and what do they retain of the numerous octavo—volumes which they committed to memory without the least reflection ? – and the reply will he – according to the experience of persons well-versed in such matters — a very decouraging one. Bow are children taught the geography or the history of their native country? In the lower primary-schools these departments are not taught at all, and in the higher classes in so slovenly a manner, that no practical use is derived from the tuition. Where is, therefore, the patriotic enthusiasm to come from, or whence self-confidence and consciousness, if they are not inoculated in earliest youth on the minds of the people by means of figurative representation? But unfortunately, this evil does not remain stationary – it increases continually – and the next step from ignorance of one's own country is our over-estimation of foreign countries.
Many a one who has remained unacquainted with his home, travels abroad, and finds – because there he sees and reads
