A Commonplace Book of Thoughts, Memories, and Fancies Part 21

I wonder what the Athenians would have done to such a man? they who banished the judge of the Areopagus because he flung away the bird which had sought shelter in his bosom?

[Ill.u.s.tration]

20.

I return to Dr. Arnold. He laments the neglect of our cathedrals and the absurd confusion in so many men's minds "between what is really Popery, and what is but wisdom and beauty adopted by the Roman Catholics and neglected by us."

21.

He says, "Then, only, can opportunities of evil be taken from us, when we lose also all opportunity of doing or becoming good." An obvious, even common place thought, well and tersely expressed. The inextricable co-relation and apparent antagonism of good and evil were never more strongly put.

22.

The defeat of Varus by the Germans, and the defeat of the moors by Charles Martel, he ranked as the two most important battles in the history of the world. I see why. The first, because it decided whether the north of Europe was to be completely Latinised; the second, because it decided whether all Europe was to be completely Mahomedanised.

23.

"How can he who labours hard for his daily bread-hardly and with doubtful success-be made wise and good, and therefore how can he be made happy? This question undoubtedly the Church was meant to solve; for Christ's kingdom was to undo the evil of Adam's sin; but the Church has not solved it nor attempted to do so, and no one else has gone about it rightly. How shall the poor man find time to be educated?"

This question, which "the Church has not yet solved," men have now set their wits to solve for themselves.

24.

When in Italy he writes:-"It is almost awful to look at the beauty which surrounds me and then think of moral evil. It seems as if heaven and h.e.l.l, instead of being separated by a great gulf from us and from each other, were close at hand and on each other's confines."

"Might but the sense of moral evil be as strong in me as is my delight in external beauty!"

A prayer I echo, Amen! if by the _sense_ he mean the abhorrence of it; otherwise, to be perpetually haunted with the perception of moral evil were dreadful; yet, on the other hand, I am half ashamed sometimes of a conscious shrinking within myself from the sense of moral evil, merely as I should shrink from external filth and deformity, as hateful to perception and recollection, rather than as hateful to G.o.d and subversive of goodness.

25.

Here is a very striking pa.s.sage. He says, "A great school is very trying; it never can present images of rest and peace; and when the spring and activity of youth are altogether unsanctified by anything pure and elevated in its desires, it becomes a spectacle that is dizzying and almost more morally distressing than the shouts and gambols of a set of lunatics. It is very startling to see so much of sin combined with so little of sorrow. In a parish, amongst the poor, whatever of sin exists there is sure also to be enough of suffering: poverty, sickness, and old age are mighty tamers and chastisers. But, with boys of the richer cla.s.ses, one sees nothing but plenty, health, and youth; and these are really awful to behold, when one must feel that they are unblessed. On the other hand, few things are more beautiful than when one does see all holy and n.o.ble thoughts and principles, not the forced growth of pain, or infirmity, or privation, but springing up as by G.o.d's immediate planting, in a sort of garden of all that is fresh and beautiful; full of so much hope for this world as well as for heaven."

To this testimony of a schoolmaster let us add the testimony of a schoolboy. De Quincey thus describes in himself the transition from boyhood to manhood: "Then first and suddenly were brought powerfully before me the change which was worked in the aspects of society by the presence of woman; woman, pure, thoughtful, n.o.ble, coming before me as Pandora crowned with perfections. Right over against this enn.o.bling spectacle, with equal suddenness, I placed the odious spectacle of schoolboy society-no matter in what region of the earth,-schoolboy society, so frivolous in the matter of its disputes, often so brutal in the manner; so childish and yet so remote from simplicity; so foolishly careless, and yet so revoltingly selfish; dedicated ostensibly to learning, and yet beyond any section of human beings so conspicuously ignorant."

There is a reverse to this picture, as I hope and believe. If I have met with those who looked back on their school-days with horror, as having first contaminated them with "evil communication," I have met with others whose remembrances were all of sunshine, of early friendships, of joyous sports.

Nor do I think that a large school composed wholly of girls is in any respect better. In the low languid tone of mind, the petulant tempers, the small spitefulnesses, the cowardly concealments, the compressed or ill-directed energies, the precocious vanities and affectations, many such congregations of _Femmelettes_ would form a worthy pendant to the picture of boyish turbulence and vulgarity drawn by De Quincey.

I am convinced from my own recollections, and from all I have learned from experienced teachers in large schools, that one of the most fatal mistakes in the training of children has been the too early separation of the s.e.xes. I say, _has been_, because I find that everywhere this most dangerous prejudice has been giving way before the light of truth and a more general acquaintance with that primal law of nature, which ought to teach us that the more we can a.s.similate on a large scale the public to the domestic training, the better for all. There exists still, the impression-in the higher cla.s.ses especially-that in early education, the mixture of the two s.e.xes would tend to make the girls masculine and the boys effeminate, but experience shows us that it is all the other way. Boys learn a manly and protecting tenderness, and the girls become at once more feminine and more truthful. Where this a.s.sociation has begun early enough, that is, before five years old, and has been continued till about ten or twelve, it has uniformly worked well; on this point the evidence is unanimous and decisive. So long ago as 1812, Francis Horner, in describing a school he visited at Enmore, near Bridgewater, speaks with approbation of the boys and the girls standing up together in the same cla.s.s: it is the first mention, I find, of this innovation on the old collegiate, or charity-school plan,-itself a continuation of the monkish discipline. He says, "I liked much the placing the boys and girls together at an early age; it gave the boys a new spur to emulation." When I have seen a cla.s.s of girls stand up together, there has been a sort of empty t.i.ttering, a vacancy in the faces, an inertness, which made it, as I thought, very up-hill work for the teacher; so when it was a cla.s.s of boys, there has been often a sluggishness-a tendency to ruffian tricks-requiring perpetual effort on the part of the master. In teaching a cla.s.s of boys and girls, accustomed to stand up together, there is little or nothing of this.

They are brighter, readier, better behaved; there is a kind of mutual influence working for good; and if there be emulation, it is not mingled with envy or jealousy. Mischief, such as might be apprehended, is in this case far less likely to arise than where boys and girls, habitually separated from infancy, are first thrown together, just at the age when the feelings are first awakened and the a.s.sociation has all the excitement of novelty. A very intelligent schoolmaster a.s.sured me that he had had more trouble with a cla.s.s of fifty boys, than with a school of three hundred boys and girls together (in the midst of whom I found him); and that there were no inconveniences resulting which a wise and careful and efficient superintendence could not control. "There is,"

said he, "not only more emulation, more quickness of brain, but altogether a superior healthiness of tone, body and mind, where the boys and girls are trained together till about ten years old; and it extends into their after life:-I should say because it is in accordance with the laws of G.o.d in forming us with mutual sympathies, moral and intellectual, and mutual dependence for help from the very beginning of life."

What is curious enough, I find many people-fathers, mothers, teachers,-who are agreed that in the schools for the lower cla.s.ses, the two s.e.xes may be safely and advantageously a.s.sociated, yet have a sort of horror of the idea of such an innovation in schools for the higher cla.s.ses. One would like to know the reason for such a distinction, instead of being encountered, as is usual, by a sneer or a vile innuendo.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

NIEBUHR.

LIFE AND LETTERS, 1852.

26.

In a letter to a young student in philology there are n.o.ble pa.s.sages in which I truly sympathise. He says, among other things: "I wish you had less pleasure in satires, not excepting those of Horace. Turn to the works which elevate the heart, in which you contemplate great men and great events, and live in a higher world. Turn away from those which represent the mean and contemptible side of ordinary circ.u.mstances and degenerate days: they are not suitable for the young, who in ancient times would not have been suffered to have them in their hands. Homer, aeschylus, Sophocles, Pindar,-these are the poets for youth." And again: "Do not read the ancient authors in order to make aesthetic reflections on them, but in order to drink in their spirit and to fill your soul with their thoughts; and in order to gain that by reading which you would have gained by reverently listening to the discourses of great men."

We should turn to works of art with the same feeling.

On the whole, all my own educational experience has shown me the dangerous-in some cases fatal-effects on the childish intellect, where precocious criticism was encouraged, and where caricatures and ugly disproportioned figures, expressing vile or ridiculous emotions, were placed before the eyes of children, as a means of amus.e.m.e.nt.

If I were a legislator I would forbid travesties and ridiculous burlesques of Shakspeare's finest and most serious dramas to be acted in our theatres. That this has been done and recently (as in the case of the Merchant of Venice) seems to me a national disgrace.

27.

It is strange, confounding, to hear Niebuhr speak thus of Goethe:-

"I am inclined to think that Goethe is utterly dest.i.tute of susceptibility to impressions from the fine arts."(!!) He afterwards does more justice to Goethe-certainly one of the profoundest critics in art who ever lived; although I am inclined to think that his was an educated perception rather than a natural sensibility. Niebuhr's criticism on Goethe's Italian travels,-on Goethe's want of sympathy with the people,-his regarding the whole country and nation simply as a sort of bazaar of art and antiquities, an exhibition of beauty and a recreation for himself: his habit of surveying all moral and intellectual greatness, all that speaks to the heart, with a kind of patronising superiority, as if created for his use,-and finding amus.e.m.e.nt in the folly, degeneracy, and corruption of the people;-all this appears to me admirable, and so far I had strong sympathy with Niebuhr; for I well remember that in reading Goethe's "Italianische Reise," I had the same perception of the artless and the superficial in point of feeling, in the midst of so much that was fine and valuable in criticism. It is well to be artistic in art, but not to walk about the world _en artiste_, studying humanity, and the deepest human interests, as if they were _art_.

Niebuhr afterwards says, in speaking of Rome, "I am sickened here of art, as I should be of sweetmeats instead of bread." So it _must_ be where art is separated wholly from morals.

28.

He speaks of the "wretched superst.i.tion," and the "utter incapacity for piety" in the people of the Roman States.

Superst.i.tion and the want of piety go together; and the combination is not peculiar to the Italians, nor to the Roman Catholic faith.

29.

In speaking of the education of his son, he deprecates the learning by rote of hymns. "To a happy child, hymns deploring the misery of human life are without meaning." (And worse.) "So likewise to a good child are those expressing self-accusation and contrition." (He might have added, and self-applause.)

I am quite sure, from my own experience of children who have been allowed to learn penitential psalms and hymns, that they think of wickedness as a sort of thing which gives them self-importance.

30.

"Only what the mind takes in willingly can it a.s.similate with itself, and make its own, part of its life."

A truism of the greatest value in education; but who thinks of it when cramming children's minds with all sorts of distasteful heterogeneous things?