Toronto of Old Part 14

Sir Peregrine Maitland, who probably was present, is told that he might in this manner immortalize his name:

"O Maitland blest! this proud distinction woos Thy quick acceptance, back'd by every muse; Those feelings, too, which joyful fancy knew When learning's gems first opened to thy view, Bid you to thousands smooth the th.o.r.n.y road, Which leads to glorious Science's bright abode."

"The Anniversary of York and Montreal Colleges antic.i.p.ated" is a kind of Pindaric Ode to Grat.i.tude: especially it is therein set forth that offerings of thankfulness are due to benevolent souls in Britain:

"For often there in pensive mood They ponder deeply on the good They may on Canada bestow-- And College Halls appear, and streams of learning flow!"

The "Epilogue" to the day's performances is a humorous dissertation in doggrel verse on United States innovations in the English Language: a pupil of the school is supposed to complain of the conduct of the master:

"Between ourselves, and just to speak my mind, In English Grammar, Master's much behind: I speak the honest truth--I hate to dash-- He bounds our task by Murray, Lowth and Ashe.

I told him once that Abercrombie, moved By genius deep had Murray's plan improved.

He frowned upon me, turning up his nose, And said the man had ta'en a maddening dose.

Once in my theme I put the word _progress_-- He sentenced twenty lines, without redress; Again for 'measure' I transcribed 'endeavour'-- And all the live-long day I lost his favour." &c, &c.

At the examination of the District School on August 7th, 1816, a similar programme was provided.

John Claus spoke the prologue on this occasion, and the following boys had parts a.s.signed them in the proceedings. The names of some of them appear in the account for 1819, just given: John Skeldon, George Skeldon, Henry Mosley, John Doyle, Charles Heward, James Myers, John Ridout, Charles Ridout, John FitzGerald, John Mosley, Saltern Givins, James Sheehan, Henry Heward, Allan McDonell, William Allan, John Boulton, William Myers, James Bigelow, William Baldwin, St. George Baldwin, K. de Koven, John Knott, James Givins, Horace Ridout, William Lancaster, James Strachan, David McNab, John Harraway, Robert Baldwin, Henry Nelles, Warren Shaw, David Shaw, Daniel Murray.

In 1816, Governor Gore was at the head of affairs. He is advised, in the Prologue spoken by John Claus, to distinguish himself by attention to the educational interests of the country: (The collocation of names at the end will excite a smile.)--

"O think what honour pure shall bless thy name Beyond the fleeting voice of vulgar fame!

When kings and haughty victors cease to raise The secret murmur and the venal praise, Perhaps that name, when Europe's glories fade, Shall often charm this Academic shade, And bards exclaim on rough Ontario's sh.o.r.e, We found a Wellesley and Jones in Gore!"

We have ourselves a good personal recollection of the system of the school at York, and of the interest which it succeeded in awakening in the subjects taught. The custom of mutual questioning in cla.s.ses, under the eye of the master, was well adapted to induce real research, and to impress facts on the mind when discovered.

In the higher cla.s.ses each lad in turn was required to furnish a set of questions to be put by himself to his cla.s.s-fellows, on a given subject, with the understanding that he should be ready to set the answerer right should he prove wrong. And again: any lad who should be deemed competent was permitted to challenge another, or several others, to read or recite select rhetorical pieces: a memorandum of the challenge was recorded: and, at the time appointed, the contest came off, the cla.s.s or the school deciding the superiority in each case, subject to the criticism or disallowance of the master.

It will be seen from the matters embraced in the programme given above, that the object aimed at was a speedy and real preparation for actual life. The master, in this instance, was disembarra.s.sed of the traditions which, at the period referred to, often rendered the education of a young man a c.u.mbersome, unintelligent and tedious thing. The circ.u.mstances of his own youth had evidently led him to free himself from routine. He himself was an example, in addition to many another Scottish-trained man of eminence that might be named, of the early age at which a youth of good parts and sincere, enlightened purpose, may be prepared for the duties of actual life, when not caught in the constrictor-coils of custom, which, under the old English Public-School-system of sixty years since, used sometimes to torture parent and son for such a long series of years.

Dr. Strachan's methods of instruction were productive, for others, of the results realized in his own case. His distinguished Cornwall pupils, were all, we believe, usefully and successfully engaged in the real work of life in very early manhood. "The time allowed in a new country like this," he said to his pupils at Cornwall in 1807, "is scarcely sufficient to sow the most necessary seed; very great progress is not therefore to be expected: if the principles are properly engrafted we have done well."

In the same address his own mode of proceeding is thus dwelt upon: "In conducting your education, one of my princ.i.p.al objects has always been to fit you for discharging with credit the duties of any office to which you may hereafter be called. To accomplish this, it was necessary for you to be accustomed frequently to depend upon, and think for yourselves: accordingly I have always encouraged this disposition, which when preserved within due bounds, is one of the greatest benefits that can possibly be acquired. To enable you to think with advantage, I not only regulated your tasks in such a manner as to exercise your judgment, but extended your views beyond the meagre routine of study usually adopted in schools; for, in my opinion, several branches of science may be taught with advantage at a much earlier age than is generally supposed. We made a mystery of nothing: on the contrary, we entered minutely into every particular, and patiently explained by what progressive steps certain results were obtained. It has ever been my custom, before sending a cla.s.s to their seats, to ask myself whether they had learned anything; and I was always exceedingly mortified if I had not the agreeable conviction that they had made some improvement.

Let none of you, however, suppose that what you have learned here is sufficient; on the contrary, you are to remember that we have laid only the foundation. The superstructure must be laid by yourselves."

Here is an account of his method of teaching Arithmetic, taken from the introduction to a little work on the subject, published by himself in 1809: "I divide my pupils," he says, "into separate cla.s.ses, according to their progress. Each cla.s.s has one or more sums to produce every day, neatly wrought upon their slates: the work is carefully examined; after which I command every figure to be blotted out, and the sums to be wrought under my eye. The one whom I happen to pitch upon first, gives, with an audible voice, the rules and reasons for every step; and as he proceeds the rest silently work along with him, figure for figure, but ready to correct him if he blunder, that they may get his place. As soon as this one is finished, the work is again blotted out, and another called upon to work the question aloud as before, while the rest again proceed along with him in silence, and so on round the whole cla.s.s. By this method the principles are fixed in the mind; and he must be a very dull boy indeed who does not understand every question thoroughly before he leaves it. This method of teaching Arithmetic possesses this important advantage, that it may be pursued without interrupting the pupil's progress in any other useful study. The same method of teaching Algebra has been used with equal success. Such a plan is certainly very laborious, but it will be found successful; and he that is anxious to spare labour ought not to be a public Teacher. When boys remain long enough, it has been my custom to teach them the theory, and give them a number of curious questions in Geography, Natural Philosophy and Astronomy, a specimen of which may be seen in the questions placed before the Appendix."

The youths to be dealt with in early Canadian schools were not all of the meek, submissive species. With some of them occasionally a sharp regimen was necessary; and it was adopted without hesitation. On this point, the address just quoted, thus speaks: "One of the greatest advantages you have derived from your education here, arises from the strictness of our discipline. Those of you who have not already perceived how much your tranquillity depends upon the proper regulation of the temper, will soon be made sensible of it as you advance in years.

You will find people who have never known what it is to be in habitual subjection to precept and just authority, breaking forth into violence and outrage on the most frivolous occasions. The pa.s.sions of such persons, when once roused, soon become ungovernable; and that impatience of restraint, which they have been allowed to indulge, embitters the greatest portion of their lives. Accustomed to despise the barriers erected by reason, they rush forward to indulgence, without regarding the consequences. Hence arises much of that wretchedness and disorder to be met with in society. Now the discipline necessary to correct the impetuosity of the pa.s.sions is often found nowhere but in well-regulated schools: for though it should be the first care of parents, they are too apt to be blinded by affection, and grant liberties to their children which reason disapproves. . . . . . That discipline therefore, which you have sometimes thought irksome will henceforth present itself in a very different light. It will appear the teacher of a habit of the greatest consequence in the regulation of your future conduct; and you will value it as the promoter of that decent and steady command of temper so very essential to happiness, and so useful in our intercourse with mankind."

These remarks on discipline will be the more appreciated, when it is recollected that during the time of the early settlements in this country, the sons of even the most respectable families were brought into contact with semi-barbarous characters. A sporting ramble through the woods, a fishing excursion on the waters, could not be undertaken without communications with Indians and half-breeds and bad specimens of the French _voyageur_. It was from such sources that a certain idea was derived which, as we remember, was in great vogue among the more fractious of the lads at the school at York. The proposition circulated about, whenever anything went counter to their notions, alway was "to run away to the Nor'-west." What that process really involved, or where the "Nor'-west" precisely was, were things vaguely realized. A sort of savage "land of c.o.c.kaigne," a region of perfect freedom among the Indians, was imagined; and to reach it Lakes Huron and Superior were to be traversed.

At Cornwall the temptation was in another direction: there, the idea was to escape to the eastward: to reach Montreal or Quebec, and get on board of an ocean-going ship, either a man-of-war or merchantman. The flight of several lads with such intentions was on one occasion intercepted by the unlooked-for appearance of the head-master by the side of the stage-coach as it was just about to start for Montreal in the dusk of the early morning, with the young truants in or upon it.

As to the modes of discipline:--In the school at York--for minor indiscretions a variety of remedies prevailed. Now and then a lad would be seen standing at one of the posts above mentioned, with his jacket turned inside out: or he might be seen there in a kneeling posture for a certain number of minutes; or standing with the arm extended holding a book. An "ally" or apple brought out inopportunely into view, during the hours of work, might entail the exhibition, article by article, slowly and reluctantly, of all the contents of a pocket. Once we remember, the furtive but too audible tw.a.n.g of a jewsharp was followed by its owner's being obliged to mount on the top of a desk and perform there an air on the offending instrument for the benefit of the whole school.

Occasionally the censors (senior boys appointed to help in keeping order) were sent to cut rods on Mr. McGill's property adjoining the play-ground on the north; but the dire implements were not often called into requisition: it would only be when some case of unusual obstinacy presented itself, or when some wanton cruelty, or some act or word exhibiting an unmistakable taint of incipient immorality, was proven.

Once a year, before the breaking-up at midsummer, a "feast" was allowed in the school-room at York--a kind of pic-nic to which all that could, contributed in kind--pastry, and other dainties, as well as more substantial viands, of which all partook. It was sometimes a rather riotous affair.

At the south-east corner of the six-acre play-ground, about half-an-acre had been abstracted, as it were, and enclosed: here a public school had been built and put in operation: it was known as the Central School, and was what would now be called a Common School, conducted on the "Bell and Lancaster" principle. Large numbers frequented it.

Between the lads attending the Central School, and the boys of the Grammar School, difficulties of course arose: and on many occasions feats of arms, accompanied with considerable risk to life and limb, were performed on both sides, with sticks and stones. Youngsters, ambitious of a character of extra daring, had thus an opportunity of distinguishing themselves in the eyes of their less courageous companions. The same would-be heroes had many stories to tell of the perils to which they were exposed in their way to and from school. Those of them who came from the western part of the town, had, according to their own shewing, mortal enemies in the men of Ketchum's tannery, with whom it was necessary occasionally to have an encounter. While those who lived to the east of the school, narrated, in response, the attacks experienced or delivered by themselves, in pa.s.sing Shaw's or Hugill's brewery.

Mr. Spragge, the master of the Central School, had enjoyed the superior advantage of a regular training in England as an instructor of the young. Though not in Holy Orders, his air and costume were those of the dignified clergyman. Of the Central School, the words of Shenstone, spoken of a kindred establishment, became, in one point at all events, true to the letter:--

"E'en now sagacious foresight points to shew A little bench of bishops here,-- And there, a chancellor in embryo, Or bard sublime."

A son of Mr. Spragge's became, in 1870, the Chancellor of Ontario, or Western Canada, after rising with distinction through the several grades of the legal profession, and filling previously also the post of Vice-Chancellor. Mr. John G.o.dfrey Spragge, who attained to this eminence, and his brothers, Joseph and William, were likewise pupils in their maturer years, in the adjoining more imposing Royal Grammar or Home District School.

Mr. Spragge's predecessor at the Central School was Mr. Appleton, mentioned in a preceding section; and Mr. Appleton's a.s.sistant for a time, was Mr. John Fenton.

Across the road from the play-ground at York, on the south side, eastward of the church-plot, there was a row of dilapidated wooden buildings, inhabited for the most part by a thriftless and noisy set of people. This group of houses was known in the school as "Irish-town;"

and "to raise Irish-town," meant to direct a s...o...b..ll or other light missive over the play-ground fence, in that direction. Such act was not unfrequently followed by an invasion of the Field from the insulted quarter. Some wide c.h.i.n.ks, established in one place here between the boards, which ran lengthwise, enabled any one so inclined, to get over the fence readily. We once saw two men, who had quarrelled in one of the buildings of Irish-town, adjourn from over the road to the play-ground, accompanied by a few approving friends, and there, after stripping to the skin, have a regular fight with fists: after some rounds, a number of men and women interfered and induced the combatants to return to the house whence they had issued forth for the settlement of their dispute.

The Parliamentary Debates, of which mention has more than once been made in connection with the District School, took place, on ordinary occasions, in the central part of the school-room; where benches used to be set out opposite to each other, for the temporary accommodation of the speakers. These exercises consisted simply of a memoriter repet.i.tion, with some action, of speeches, slightly abridged, which had actually been delivered in a real debate on the floor of the House of Commons. But they served to familiarize Canadian lads with the names and characters of the great statesmen of England, and with what was to be said on both sides of several important public questions; they also probably awakened in many a young spirit an ambition, afterwards gratified, of being distinguished as a legislator in earnest.

On public days the Debates were held up-stairs on a platform at the east end of a long room with a partially vaulted ceiling, on the south side of the building. On this platform the public recitations also took place; and here on some of the anniversaries a drama by Milman or Hannah Moore was enacted. Here we ourselves took part in one of the hymns or choruses of the "Martyr of Antioch."

(Other reminiscences of Dr. Strachan, the District Grammar School, and Toronto generally, are embodied in "The First Bishop of Toronto, a Review and a Study," a small work published by the writer in 1868.)

The immediate successor of Dr. Strachan in the school was Mr. Samuel Armour, a graduate of Glasgow, whose profile resembled that of Cicero, as shewn in some engravings. Being fond of sporting, his excitement was great when the flocks of wild pigeons were pa.s.sing over the town, and the report of fire-arms in all directions was to be heard. During the hours of school his attention, on these occasions, would be much drawn off from the cla.s.s-subjects.

In those days there was not a plentiful supply in the town of every book wanted in the school. The only copy that could be procured of a "Eutropius," which we ourselves on a particular occasion required, was one with an English translation at the end. The book was bought, Mr.

Armour stipulating that the English portion of the volume should be sewn up; in fact, he himself st.i.tched the leaves together.--In Mr. Armour's time there was, for some reason now forgotten, a barring-out. A pile of heavy wood (sticks of cordwood whole used then to be thrust into the great school-room stove) was built against the door within; and the master had to effect, and did effect, an entrance into his school through a window on the north side. Mr. Armour became afterwards a clergyman of the English Church, and officiated for many years in the township of Cavan.

The master who succeeded Mr. Armour was Dr. Phillips, who came out from England to take charge of the school. He had been previously master of a school at Whitchurch, in Herefordshire. His degree was from Cambridge, where he graduated as a B. A. of Queen's in the year 1805. He was a venerable-looking man--the very ideal, outwardly, of an English country parson of an old type--a figure in the general scene, that would have been taken note of congenially by Fuller or Antony a Wood. The costume in which he always appeared (shovel-hat included), was that usually a.s.sumed by the senior clergy some years ago. He also wore powder in the hair except when in mourning. According to the standards of the day, Dr.

Phillips was an accomplished scholar, and a good reader and writer of English. He introduced into the school at York the English public-school traditions of the strictest type. His text books were those published and used at Eton, as Eton then was. The Eton Latin Grammar, without note or comment, displaced" Ruddiman's Rudiments"--the book to which we had previously been accustomed, and which really did give hints of something rational underlying what we learnt out of it. Even the Eton Greek Grammar, in its purely mediaeval untranslated state, made its appearance: it was through the medium of that very uninviting manual that we obtained our earliest acquaintance with the first elements of the Greek tongue. Our "Palaephatus" and other Extracts in the _Graeca Minora_ were translated by us, not into English, but into Latin, in which language all the notes and elucidations of difficulties in that book were given.

Very many of the Greek "genitives absolute," we remember, were to be rendered by _quum_, with a subjunctive pluperfect--an enormous mystery to us at the time. Our Lexicon was _Schrevelius_, as yet un-Englished.

For the Greek Testament we had "Dawson," a vocabulary couched in the Latin tongue, notwithstanding the author's name. The chevaux-de-frise set up across the pathways to knowledge were numerous and most forbidding. The Latin translation, line for line, at the end of Clarke's Homer, as also the _Ordo_ in the Delphin cla.s.sics, were held to be mischievous aids, but the help was slight that could be derived from them, as the Latin language itself was not yet grasped.

For whatever of the anomalous we moderns may observe in all this, let the good old traditional school-system of England be responsible--not the accomplished and benevolent man who transplanted the system, pure and simple, to Canadian ground. For ourselves: in one point of view, we deem it a piece of singular good fortune to have been subjected for a time to this sort of drill; for it has enabled us to enter with more intelligence into the discussions on English education that have marked the era in which we live. Without this morsel of experience we should have known only by vague report what it was the reviewers and essayists of England were aiming their fulminations against.

Our early recollections in this regard, we treasure up now among our mental curiosities, with thankfulness: just as we treasure up our memories of the few years which, in the days of our youth, we had an opportunity of pa.s.sing in the old father-land, while yet mail coaches and guards and genuine coachmen were extant there; while yet the time-honoured watchman was to be heard patrolling the streets at night and calling the hours. Deprived of this personal experience, how tamely would have read "School-days at Rugby," for example, or "The Scouring of the White Horse," and many another healthy cla.s.sic in recent English literature--to say nothing of "The Sketch Book," and earlier pieces, which involve numerous allusions to these now vanished ent.i.ties!

Moreover, we found that our boyish initiation in the Eton formularies, however little they may have contributed to the intellectual furniture of the mind at an early period, had the effect of putting us _en rapport_, in one relation at all events, with a large cla.s.s in the old country. We found that the stock quotations and sc.r.a.ps of Latin employed to give an air of learning to discourse, "to point a moral and adorn a tale," among the country-clergy of England and among members of Parliament of the ante-Reform-bill period, were mostly relics of school-boy lore derived from Eton books. Fragments of the _As in praesenti_, of the _Propria quae maribus_; shreds from the Syntax, as _Vir bonus est quis_, _Ingenuas didicisse_, and a score more, were instantly recognized, and const.i.tuted a kind of talismanic mode of communication, making the quoter and the hearer, to some extent, akin.

Furthermore; in regard to our honoured and beloved master, Dr. Phillips himself; there is this advantage to be named as enjoyed by those whose lot it was, in this new region, to pa.s.s a portion of their impressible youth in the society of such a character: it furnished them with a visible concrete ill.u.s.tration of much that otherwise would have been a vague abstraction in the pictures of English society set before the fancy in the _Spectator_, for instance, or Boswell's _Johnson_, and other standard literary productions of a century ago. As it is, we doubt not that the experience of many of our Canadian coevals corresponds with our own. Whenever we read of the good Vicar of Wakefield, or of any similar personage; when in the biography of some distinguished man, a kind-hearted old clerical tutor comes upon the scene, or one moulded to be a college-fellow, or one that had actually been a college-fellow, carrying about with him, when down in the country the tastes and ideas of the academic cloister--it is the figure of Dr. Phillips that rises before the mental vision. And without doubt he was no bad embodiment of the cla.s.s of English character just alluded to.--He was thoroughly English in his predilections and tone; and he unconsciously left on our plastic selves traces of his own temperament and style.

It was from Dr. Phillips we received our first impressions of Cambridge life; of its outer form, at all events; of its traditions and customs; of the Acts and Opponencies in its Schools, and other quaint formalities, still in use in our own undergraduate day, but now abolished: from him we first heard of Trumpington, and St. Mary's, and the Gogmagogs; of Lady Margaret and the cloisters at Queen's; of the wooden bridge and Erasmus' walk in the gardens of that college; and of many another storied object and spot, afterwards very familiar.

A ma.n.u.script Journal of a Johnsonian cast kept by Dr. Phillips, when a youth, during a tour of his on foot in Wales, lent to us for perusal, marks an era in our early experience, awakening in us, as it did, our first inklings of travel. The excursion described was a trifling one in itself--only from Whitchurch, in Herefordshire, across the Severn into Wales--but to the unsophisticated fancy of a boy it was invested with a peculiar charm; and it led, we think, in our own case, to many an ambitious ramble, in after years, among cities and men.--In the time of Dr. Phillips there was put up, by subscription, across the whole of the western end of the school-house, over the door, a rough lean-to, of considerable dimensions. A large covered s.p.a.ce was thus provided for purposes of recreation in bad weather. This room is memorable as being a.s.sociated with our first acquaintance with the term "Gymnasium:" that was the t.i.tle which we were directed to give it.--There is extant, we believe, a good portrait in oil of Dr. Phillips.

It was stated above that Cricket was not known in the playground of the District Grammar School, except possibly under the mildest of forms.

Nevertheless, one, afterwards greatly distinguished in the local annals of Cricket, was long a master in the School.

Mr. George Antony Barber accompanied Dr. Phillips to York in 1825, as his princ.i.p.al a.s.sistant, and continued to be a.s.sociated with him in that capacity. Nearly half a century later than 1826, when Cricket had now become a social inst.i.tution throughout Western Canada, Mr. Barber, who had been among the first to give enthusiastic encouragement to the manly English game, was the highest living local authority on the subject, and still an occasional partic.i.p.ator in the sport.

We here close our notice of the Old Blue School at York. In many a brain, from time to time, the mention of its name has exercised a spell like that of Wendell Holmes's _Mare Rubrum_; as potent as that was, to summon up memories and shapes from the Red Sea of the Past--