Page:History and characteristics of Bishop Auckland.djvu/142

THE GRAMMAR SCHOOL. To write on education and educational endowments, although both form at the present time rather tempting subjects, is a critical matter. They belong, speaking strictly, to the political economist rather than the historian, and we must, therefore, be content with merely stating that the necessity for the education of the masses is no new fledged notion or emanation of modem times. We can scarcely go into any village or town of importance in this locality, without finding endowments for educational purposes ; for our forefathers seem to have had an idea that in education was to be found a remedy for many of the evils, both social and domestic, with which society was afflicted. That ignorance and crime are twin brothers and go hand in hand, our criminal records every succeeding year proves more clearly. The human mind is like a piece of uncultivated ground, and if the seeds of a good education are not sown in it during the early stages of its existence, it becomes rank with weeds and like a wilderness, productive of things not only hurtful to itself, but to the community at large. However men may difier respecting the method by which the problem of education may be solved, or by what means the mass of ignorance existing in this our country may be best reached, or with what kind or quantity of theological dogma that education ought to be served up, yet all must agree that it is only by cultivating and strengthening the more noble faculties of man's nature, until they gain a predominance over those of his more gross and animal ones, and society at large becomes permeated and leavened, as it were, by intellectual culture, that the great desideratum can be obtained. The mind requires food as well aa the body, and just as the original constitution of the body may be strengthened and improved by the aliment supplied to it, so may the mind be strengthened and improved by the mental food by which it is fed and nourished. Pope has very justly said — 'Tis education forms the common mind. Just as the twig is bent the tree's inclined ; And though it may not be in the power of the schoolmaster to infuse into his pupils the genius of a Shakespeare, or the great moral principles of an "Admirable" Crichton, yet the most duU and obtuse, if brought within the range of intellectual culture, will feel its elevating influence and partake in some degree of the increase of its wealth ; for, unlike the distribution of riches of a more sordid kind, each may become proportionably richer, and not as in the case of the baser metal, at the corresponding poverty of the other. But the education of the masses is a work which can only be brought about gradually, and will prove a task for our teachers and legislators for many years to come. We may here remark, with respect to our educational endowments, that had Government inserted a clause in their Bill, empowering school boards to investigate and inquire into them, we fear it would have led to discoveries not very creditable to those into whose hands they have been entrusted ; and we have no doubt, had these endowments been judiciously administered, their revenues, at the present time, would have proved amply sufficient to have defrayed the cost of educating every poor man's child in the parish. Their history forms by no means a pleasing retrospect, their management having drifted into the possession of those who, careless of their trust, have allowed the revenues to be oft misapplied, and directed into channels for which they were never intended by their original donora The Grammar School of Bishop Auckland, in some respects, seems to form no exception to this general state of things. King James I., by his letters patent under the privy seal, dated, at Westminster, the 7th December, 1604, in the second year of his reign, at the petition of Ann Swyfte, of the City of Durham, widow of Robert Swyfte, foimded a Grammar School at Bishop Auckland, to be called Digitized by Google -