Rides on Railways Part 8

We should have stated that Dr. Arnold's skill as a teacher was unrivalled; he imparted a living interest to all he touched, to be attributed mainly to his habit of ill.u.s.trating ancient events by "modern instances." Thus, Thucydides and Napier were compared almost page by page; thus the "High Church party" of the Jews was pointed to as a type of "the Tories." By means of his favourite topic, physical geography, he sought to bring the actual theatre of events before his pupils. Thus he would describe (when living at Laleham), the Vatican and Janiculum hills of Rome, as being "like the hills on the right bank of the Thames behind Chertsey;" the Monte Marie as being "about the height and steepness of Cooper's Hill," and "having the Tiber at the foot of it like the Thames at Anchorwick."

To philology even, the deadly science of dead languages, and the great business of public schools, he contrived to impart life by continually pointing out its bearing on the history of the races of mankind. The interest thus given to study was something before unknown in schools.

So far we have confined ourselves to the effect of Arnold's system on the mind, but the source of his most anxious thoughts and constant solicitude lay deeper than this; it related to the spiritual condition, or, according to the German phrase, "the inner life," of the boys. With his usual indifference to personal labour he a.s.sumed the preachership of the chapel, declining however, also, with characteristic disinterestedness, the salary attached, hitherto given to increase the stipend of a junior master, and his famous "quarter of an hour" sermons, into which he threw all the power of his character and his intellect, no doubt gave him an opportunity of confirming, on certain minds, that influence which was primarily due to his earnest acts of heart and head.

We here approach a portion of his career on which difference of opinion must always exist. Impressed with an abiding conviction that all earthly things were subordinate to the relation between man and his Maker; keenly appreciating all that was "of good report," and impatient of evil, or what seemed to him to be of evil tendency, even to intolerance, it must be admitted that in Arnold there was something of the zealot. With his acute sense of responsibility as to the spiritual state of the boys, it was natural that he should seek to impress those with whom he was brought in contact, and he did so. The personal notice he bestowed on boys of serious tendencies, asking them to his house and conversing with them on solemn subjects had this effect, and soon engendered "a sect" in the school. Now, the boys who were thus susceptible and formed this sect, were generally of the milder order of character, and not of that precocious virility which always gives influence in a great school; hence arose among the natural leaders of the school, the strong in character and the stout in heart and hand, a reaction against Arnold and against Arnold's views, as being opposed to the traditional notions of the school. This reaction was strengthened by the peculiar nature of some of these views, such, for instance as those on the subject of the code of honour. Arnold, although himself a man actuated by a nice sense of honour, felt it his duty to set himself strongly in words against the code of honour; it was the constant object of vituperation on his part, even from the pulpit. His notions on this point, however, never gained ground with his hearers, who could not be brought to believe that their master (himself as true a knight errant as ever drew sword or pen,) was serious when he told them that the spirit of chivalry was "the true Antichrist."

The attempt to introduce a more highly-wrought tone of religious feeling than was perhaps of wholesome growth in very young minds was, therefore, not without its drawbacks; the antagonism to some of his own views which it called forth, combined with the utter disregard to established views which characterized his own teaching, and which the school caught from him, told upon the boys' minds. The direct and indirect effect of Arnold's school of thought may indeed, now, we think, be traced in the general distrust of hitherto received opinions, which, but little tinged in England it is true with either licentiousness or irreverence, is nevertheless characteristic of the present generation.

These effects are also more manifest now that Arnold's personal influence can no longer be exercised. So long as he was at his post, his earnest simplicity of character, his purity of life, his intellectual vigour, his fearless seeking after truth, carried away the sympathies of all who were brought in contact with him; not one of whom but will say, on looking back to the impression he left on them, "Behold an Israelite indeed in whom there was no guile!"

Thus the reform introduced into Rugby by Arnold, and indirectly into other public schools through him, was then very different from that which was antic.i.p.ated from him. He did, it will be seen, none of the things he was expected by his party to do. He strenuously inculcated the views of Christian doctrine most opposed to those of the Lat.i.tudinarian party. {71} He stoutly adhered to the system of "f.a.gging," as being the best mode of responsible government for the school "out of school," founding his opinion on his own experience at Winchester, on which he often dwelt. He raised and improved the standard of cla.s.sical learning in its wider sense, so that the scholars of Rugby gained a high standing at the universities; and by showing that this was attainable consistently with acquirements in other branches of learning, and with the utmost amount of intelligent interest in the knowledge of the day, he confirmed that opinion in favour of the advantage of cla.s.sical learning, as a sound philosophical means of training the faculties for worldly affairs, which we have seen lately advocated and applauded even in the heart of Manchester itself, at the opening of Owen's College.

The change he introduced was thus more thorough, more deep and comprehensive, than any which the suggestions of his partisan supporters would have accomplished. It was a change in the very spirit of education, reaching beyond the years of boyhood or the limits of school walls.

COVENTRY TO BIRMINGHAM,

Instead of turning off from Rugby by the new route to Leamington, we will keep the old road, and so push on straight to the great Warwickshire manufactory and mart of ribands and watches. First appears the graceful spire of St. Michael's Church; then the green pastures of the Lammas, on which, for centuries, the freemen of Coventry have fed their cattle, sweep into sight, and with a whiz, a whirl, and a whistle, we are in the city and county of Coventry--the seat of the joint diocese of Lichfield and Coventry--which return two members to Parliament, at the hands of one of the most stubbornly independent const.i.tuencies in England; a const.i.tuency which may be soft-sawdered, but cannot be bullied or bribed.

A railroad here branches off to Nuneaton, distant ten miles, a sort of manufacturing dependency of the great city; and on the other, at the same distance, to Leamington, with a station at Kenilworth.

In addition to its manufacturing importance, an importance which has survived and increased in the face of the changes in the silk trade and watch trade, commenced by Huskisson, and completed by Peel, Coventry affords rich food for the antiquarian, scenes of deep interest to the historical student, a legend for poets, a pageant for melodramatists, and a tableau for amateurs of poses plastiques.

Once upon a time Kings held their Courts and summoned Parliaments at Coventry; four hundred years ago the Guilds of Coventry recruited, armed, clothed, and sent forth six hundred stout fellows to take part in the Wars of the Roses; at Coventry the lists were pitched for Mary of Lancaster, and Phillip Mowbray, Duke of Norfolk, to decide in single combat their counter- charges before the soon-to-be-dethroned Richard II.

At Coventry you will find the effigy of vile Peeping Tom, and can follow the course through which the fair G.o.diva rode naked, veiled by her modesty and flowing tresses, to save her townsmen from a grievous tax. To be sure, some English Niebuhrs have undertaken to prove the whole story a legend; but, for our parts, we are determined to believe in tradition and Alfred Tennyson's sonnet.

There are three ancient churches in Coventry, of which St. Michael's, built in the reign of Henry I., is the first; the spire rising 303 feet from the ground, the lofty interior ornamented with a roof of oak, curiously carved, and several windows of stained gla.s.s.

[COVENTRY: ill11.jpg]

St. Mary's Hall, a large building, now used for corporation council meetings, and festivities, erected in the reign of Henry VI., is one of the richest and most interesting vestiges of the ornamental architecture of England. The princ.i.p.al room has a grotesquely-carved roof of oak, a gallery for minstrels, an armoury, a chair of state, and a great painted window, which need only the filling up of royal and n.o.ble personages, their attendants, and the rich burgesses of Coventry, to recall the time when Richard II. held his Court in this ancient city, and, with "old John of Gaunt," settled the sentence on Harry of Hereford, and Philip of Norfolk.

In this chamber is to be seen a beautiful piece of tapestry, executed in 1450, measuring thirty feet by ten, and containing eighty figures.

In the free school, founded by John Moles, in the reign of Henry VIII., Sir William Dugdale, the antiquarian and historian of Warwickshire, was educated.

The income is about 900 pounds a-year, and the scholars have open to compet.i.tion two fellowships of St. John's College, Oxon, one at Catherine's Hall, Cambridge, and six exhibitions at either University. Previous to the investigations of the Charity Commissioners, the fine school-room was locked up, and the books of the library torn for waste paper to light fires. At present, under the reformed system, the school is attended by a large number of scholars.

There are more than a dozen educational and other charities for the benefit of the poor, enjoying a revenue of many thousands a-year.

There are also several curious specimens of domestic architecture of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries to be found in Coventry. It is, however, on the whole, a dark, dirty, inconvenient city. The surrounding belt of Lammas lands on which the freemen have the right of pasturing their horses and cows, has prevented any increase in the limits of the city.

In the middle ages Coventry was celebrated for its "mysteries and pageants,"

of which an account has been published by Mr. Reader, a local bookseller.

The chief manufactures are of ribands and of watches, both transplantations from the Continent. The electors of Coventry distinguished themselves by their consistency during the Free-trade agitation. They exacted a pledge from their members in favour of Free-trade, except in watches and ribands.

More recently these same Coventry men have had the good sense to prefer a successful man of business, the architect of his own fortunes, to a Right Honourable Barrister and ex-Railway Commissioner.

[THE SHERBORNE VIADUCT, NEAR COVENTRY: ill12.jpg]

One thing needful to preserve the manufacturing position of Coventry is, a first-rate School of Design--labour, and coal, and ample means of conveyance they have, east and west, and north and south; and now the manufacturers only need the cultivation of true principles of taste among the whole riband- weaving population. For taste is a rare article, and many draughts of small fry must be made before one leviathan salmon can be caught. Great advances have been made recently in the production of the best kinds of ribands. A specimen produced by subscription for the Hyde Park Exhibition of 1851, proved that Coventry was quite able to rival the choicest work of France in the cla.s.s of machine-made ribands. The application of steam power to this cla.s.s of manufactures is of but recent date. Coventry surveyed, and this may be done in a few hours, unless the traveller is able and willing to examine its rich manufactories, it is difficult to resist the invitation of the railway porter, bawling, to Kenilworth, Leamington, and Warwick, names calling up a crowd of romantic a.s.sociations, from Shakspeare to Scott and Bulwer; but for the present we must keep steadily on to Birmingham, where steam finds the chief raw materials of poetry and fashioner of beauty.

BIRMINGHAM.

A run of nineteen miles brings us to what the inhabitants call the Hardware Village, a healthy, ugly town, standing upon several hills, crowned with smoke, but free from fog.

The old railway station stands at the foot of one of these hills, leaving a drive of a quarter of a mile through a squalid region, almost as bad as the railway entrance into Bristol, before entering into the decent part of the town; but the new station, now in course of rapid completion, will land pa.s.sengers behind the Grammar School, in New Street, the princ.i.p.al, and, indeed, only handsome street of any length in Birmingham.

At the old station there is an excellent hotel, kept by Mr. Robert Bacon, who was so many years house steward to the Athenaeum Club, in Pall Mall; and at the refreshment-rooms a capital table d'hote is provided four times a-day, at two shillings a-head, servants included, an arrangement extremely acceptable after a ride of 118 miles.

[NEWTON ROAD STATION, NEAR BIRMINGHAM: ill16.jpg]

At the new station similar refreshment-rooms are to be provided, and it is to be hoped that the architect will plan the interior first, and the exterior afterwards, so that comfort may not be sacrificed, as it usually is in English public buildings, to the cost of an imposing portico and vestibule.

As a railway starting point, Birmingham has become a wonderful place. In addition to those main lines and branches pa.s.sed and noted on our journey down, it is also the centre at which meet the railroads to Derby and Sheffield; to Worcester, Cheltenham, Gloucester, and Bristol; to London through Oxford, by the Broad Gauge Great Western, to Shrewsbury and Chester through Wolverhampton, beside the little South Staffordshire lines, which form an omnibus route between Birmingham, Walsall, Dudley, and Lichfield, and other iron nets "too tedious to describe."

To a stranger not interested in manufactures, and in mechanic men, this is a very dull, dark, dreary town, and the sooner he gets out of it the better.

There are only two fine buildings. The Town Hall, an exact copy externally of the Temple of Jupiter Stator at Rome, built of a beautiful grey Anglesey marble, from the designs of Messrs. Hansom and Welch, who also undertook to execute it for 24,000 pounds. It cost 30,000 pounds, and the contractors were consequently ruined. A railway company would probably have paid the difference; but, in such cases, communities have no conscience, so the people of Brummagem got the Hall of which they are justly proud "a bargain."

The interior is disappointing, and wants the expenditure of some more thousand pounds in sculptures and decorative details, to bring it into harmony with its n.o.ble external effect. The great room, 145 feet in length, by 65 feet in width and height, will contain upwards of 8,000 persons.

Musical meetings are held here periodically, for the benefit of certain charities; but the sight best worth seeing, is the Hall at the period of an election, or of political excitement, crowded with a feverish army of workmen, cheering, groaning, swaying to and fro, under the speeches of their favourite orators. Then in this Pagan temple may be seen a living specimen of a Brummagem Jupiter, with a cross of Vulcan, lion-faced, hairy, bearded, deep-mouthed swaggering, fluent in frank nonsense and bullying clap-trap, loved by the mob for his strength, and by the middle cla.s.ses for his money.

The lofty roof re-echoes with applause.

The temple, the man, and the mult.i.tude, all together, are well worth a journey to Birmingham to see.

There is also the Free School of King Edward VI., in New Street, a stately pile, built by Barry, before he had become so famous as he is now; which supplies first-rate instruction in cla.s.sics, mathematics, modern languages, and all branches of a useful English education, after the plan introduced into our public schools by Dr. Arnold, to the sons of all residents, at an extremely cheap, almost a nominal rate. Ten exhibitions of 50 pounds each for four years at Oxford or Cambridge are open to the compet.i.tion of the scholars.

The salary of the Head Master is 400 pounds a-year, with a residence, and the privilege of boarding eighteen pupils. Of the Second Master, 300 pounds.

Beside Under Masters.

These liberal appointments have secured a succession of competent masters, and cannot fail to produce a permanent and favourable change in the character of young Birmingham. The diffusion of sound cla.s.sical learning was much needed to mitigate the c.o.xcombical pretensions of the half-educated, and the vulgar coa.r.s.eness of the uneducated. The inhabitants of manufacturing towns are apt to grow petty Plutocracies, in which after wealth, ignorance and a.s.sumption are the princ.i.p.al qualifications. Bra.s.s turns up its nose at iron, and both look down upon tin, although half an hour in the world's fire make all so black as to be undistinguishable.

Besides this, which we may term the High School, there are four schools supported out of King Edward VI.'s foundation, where reading, writing, and arithmetic, are taught.

The funds on which these magnificent ecclesiastical establishments are supported, arise from lands in the neighbourhood which originally produced only 21 pounds a year, and were part of the estates of the Guild of the "Holy Cross." After being occupied first as fields and then as gardens, the rise of manufactures and extension of the town of Birmingham, converted a great portion into building land. The present revenue amounts to about 11,000 pounds per annum, and are likely to be still further increased.

Twenty years ago, school lands which are now leased for terms of years, and covered with buildings, were occupied as suburban gardens at trifling rents.

Eventually the Birmingham Free School will enjoy an income equal to the wants of a university as well as a school. Meagre accounts of the income and expenditure of this n.o.ble foundation are published annually, under the regulations of an Act of Parliament pa.s.sed in 1828; but no report of the number of scholars, or the sort of education communicated, is attached to this balance sheet. It would be very useful; and we hope that the self- elected corporation, who have the management, will see the propriety of supplying it.

Birmingham also possesses a chartered college, "Queen's College," similar to that at Durham; first established as a medical school by the exertions of the present dean, Mr. Sands c.o.x, since liberally endowed by the Rev. Dr.