how it was his suit did not prosper. For the present, suffice it to add, the world gives him credit for wealth, and—ubi mel, ibi apes.
EDUCATION.
THE RACING SEASON.
Some half-dozen recent incidents which have no apparent connection with each other, have carried back my thoughts to my school days, and revived, for the hundredth time, my dreary wonder at the process of middle-class education in the beginning of the century. Our sons and daughters complain pretty loudly now, on behalf of our grandchildren; and the stir about improving education shows how much improvement is needed: but I, for one, tell the youngsters that they would see us greybeards much wiser than we are if we had had half their new advantages.
Take the case at the best. The best that middle-class parents generally could expect for their children was an education (so called) at the grammar-school of the town in which they lived. There were not such grammar-schools everywhere, nor within reach of half the respectable manufacturers, shop-keepers, and professional men of our town population, while the farmers’ children were entirely out of the way of them; but, as far as they went, what did they accomplish?
How the old sensations come over me as I call up the subject! There was the gobbling one’s breakfast, in order to be passing under the old gateway as the nine o’clock bell rang, and the run through the streets, with a light or heavy heart, as the case might be. I have at my fingers’ ends the very feel of the greasy calf-skin of the Latin Grammar (the Eton one) and of the dogs’-ears of the Eutropius, or the better-liked Ovid. Then there were the three hours in school, from nine to twelve,—at first intolerably long to little boys, but becoming shorter, even to the point of indifference, as years went on. I seem to hear the peculiar resonance of the masters’ voices in that vaulted hall, and to see the shafts of sunlight thrown through the tall pointed windows. My class-fellows rise up in memory, with their young voices, their provincial dialect, and their respective degrees of ability. The sing-song of the grammar-rules, the stupid blundering of the dunces which formed the staple of school-jokes, and the sense of gratification from the able performance of some superior boy,—all this and much more carries me back to school, as school was to me from seven to fifteen years of age. Then, there was the playtime in that glorious playground, the Cathedral Close. The caw of the rooks in quiet school hours, and the shouts of the boys from noon till the one o’clock dinner hour, and again at five in the afternoon;—the delectable ball games and races, and the runnings and hidings behind those prodigious old elms; and the quizzing of the old ladies and clerical gentlemen, and other cathedral functionaries, who were always passing through the Close,—these old images are leading me away from my subject,—middle-class education as it has been, and as it will be.
It was a great thing that all the parents in a large town could send their sons to an eminent school at a very cheap rate:—a great thing compared with such destitution as, for instance, we now see in Ireland, where many shop-keepers and manufacturers have to send their boys twenty miles by rail daily to school, or leave them untaught, or send them to costly boarding academies, or to the National Schools, at a penny per week, occupying a place not intended for boys of their class. Some Irish parents send their childdren to English schools, as their only chance; and in my time, there was no such chance for the children of thousands of anxious parents. To live near a great grammar-school was therefore an object with parents; and the mixture in such schools was as various as it could well be. The sons of the professional men in the town were there, as a matter of course; and from them the social quality descended to the lowest at which education was possible. The artisan family united their efforts to send the youngest boy to school; and the boy himself had to hie home at noon to work, instead of trap-balling in the Close. It was a good thing, undoubtedly, that all ranks should meet thus in a common pursuit of education, and subordination to discipline. It was a good thing that the physician, barrister, or banker of after years should through life entertain a feeling of fellowship with the baker, butcher, innkeeper, or linendraper, who had grown up at his elbow, at work and play. But the main question is—what was the education?
Do we not remember the pity of tender mothers for the little seven-year-old (and up to ten at least), who was nightly bothered with his hard grammar-lesson,—who started up in his sleep to say his declensions, and could never explain to inquirers what he was learning at school? Do we not remember the grave doubts of fathers who could not make out, at the end of five years, that there was any one thing that their boys knew or could do to any purpose? Do we not remember the humbled writing-master, who had little command over the lads because he did not properly belong to the school? Have we ever forgotten his copies, and his sums, and the use of the globes, which we could always learn at the moment, and always had to learn over again, because it seemed to belong to nothing, and would not fit into the mind?—This was about all. The lad who was going to the University, and he who was going behind his father’s counter, or to carry round the meat tray and butcher’s bills, had spent seven or eight of their most impressionable years in making Latin verses, and reading half-a-dozen easy classics, with a scanty garnish of geography and the use of the globes,—with, in rare cases, some advanced arithmetic and a little Algebra,—thanks to the humble writing-master. Sydney Smith exposed the evil of the bad handwriting acquired in those schools; and the scholars had to unlearn (if they ever did unlearn it) their habit of bad reading. We hear much at present of the bad reading in church; and there is no’ doubt much truth in the explanation that the hesitation, abruptness, and general blundering manner which belongs to painful construing in class affects the practice of reading aloud for life, unless carefully counteracted.
I am not at all disposed to find fault with the study of Latin, in the case of boys or girls of any
