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finite dread of knowledge, as if it were points upon which we have insisted,— capable of producing these effects. It Why the disproportion in knowledge might almost be supposed, from the between the two sexes should be so dread which the propagation of know-great, when the inequality in natural ledge has excited, that there was some talents is so small; or why the undergreat secret which was to be kept in im- standing of women should be lavished penetrable obscurity, that all moral upon trifles, when nature has made it rules were a species of delusion and capable of higher and better things, we imposture, the detection of which, by profess ourselves not able to understand. the improvement of the understanding, The affectation charged upon female would be attended with the most fatal knowledge is best cured by making that consequences to all, and particularly knowledge more general: and the to women. If we could possibly un- economy devolved upon women is best derstand what these great secrets were, secured by the ruin, disgrace, and inwe might perhaps be disposed to concur convenience which proceeds from negin their preservation; but believing that lecting it. For the care of children, all the salutary rules which are imposed nature has made a direct and powerful women are the result of true wisdom, provision; and the gentleness and eleand productive of the greatest happi- gance of women is the natural conse ness, we cannot understand how they quence of that desire to please which are to become less sensible of this truth is productive of the greatest part of in proportion as their power of dis- civilisation and refinement, and which covering truth in general is increased, rests upon a foundation too deep to be and the habit of viewing questions with shaken by any such modifications in accuracy and comprehension esta- education as we have proposed. If you blished by education. There are men, educate women to attend to dignified indeed, who are always exclaiming and important subjects, you are multiagainst every species of power, because plying, beyond measure, the chances of is connected with danger: their human improvement, by preparing and dread of abuses is so much stronger medicating those early impressions, than their admiration of uses, that they which always come from the mother; would cheerfully give up the use of fire, and which, in a great majority of ingunpowder, and printing, to be freed stances, are quite decisive of character from robbers, incendiaries, and libels. and genius. Nor is it only in the busiIt is true, that every increase of know-ness of education that women would ledge may possibly render depravity influence the destiny of men.-If womore depraved, as well as it may in- men knew more, men must learn more crease the strength of virtue. It is in—for ignorance would then be shameelf only power; and its value de- ful--and it would become the fashion pends on its application. But, trust to be instructed. The instruction of to the natural love of good where there women improves the stock of national no temptation to be bad-it operates talents, and employs more minds for where more forcibly than in educa- the instruction and amusement of the No man, whether he be tutor, world; it increases the pleasures of guardian, or friend, ever contents him- society, by multiplying the topics upon self with infusing the mere ability to which the two sexes take a common inacquire; but giving the power, he gives terest,-and makes marriage an interwith it a taste for the wise and rational course of understanding as well as of exercise of that power; so that an affection, by giving dignity and imporeducated person is not only one with tance to the female character. The Stronger and better faculties than others, education of women favours public but with a more useful propensity-morals; it provides for every season a disposition better cultivated -and of life, as well as for the brightest and associations of a higher and more im- the best; and leaves a woman when she portant class. is stricken by the hand of time, not as she now is, destitute of everything, and

In short, and to recapitulate the main

neglected by all; but with the full power and the splendid attractions of knowledge,-diffusing the elegant pleasures of polite literature, and receiving the just homage of learned and accomplished men.

PUBLIC SCHOOLS.

(E. REVIEW, 1810.)

Remarks on the System of Education in Public Schools. 8vo. Hatchard. London, 1809.

By a public school, we mean an endowed place of education of old standing, to which the sons of gentlemen resort in considerable numbers, and where they continue to reside, from eight or nine, to eighteen years of age. We do not give this as a definition which would have satisfied Porphyry or Dun-Scotus, but as one sufficiently accurate for our purpose. The characteristic features of these schools are, their antiquity, the numbers and the ages of the young people who are educated at them. We beg leave, how

slightest intention of insinuating any-
thing to the disparagement of the pre-
sent discipline or present rulers of these
schools, as compared with other times
and other men: we have no reason
whatever to doubt that they are as
ably governed at this, as they have been
at any preceding period. Whatever
objections we may have to these insti-
tutions, they are to faults, not depending
upon present administration, but upon
original construction.*

THERE is a set of well-dressed, pros-ever, to premise, that we have not the
perous gentlemen, who assemble daily
at Mr. Hatchard's shop ;-clean, civil
personages, well in with people in
power,-delighted with every existing
institution-and almost with every ex-
isting circumstance:—and, every now
and then, one of these personages writes
a little book; -and the rest praise that
little book-expecting to be praised, in
their turn, for their own little books:
-and of these little books, thus written
by these clean, civil personages, so
expecting to be praised, the pamphlet
before us appears to be one.

At a public school (for such is the
system established by immemorial cus-
The subject of it is the advantage of tom), every boy is alternately tyrant
public schools; and the author, very cre- and slave. The power which the elder
ditably to himself, ridicules the absurd part of these communities exercises
clamour, first set on foot by Dr. Rennel, over the younger, is exceedingly great
of the irreligious tendency of public-very difficult to be controlled-and
schools he then proceeds to an investi- accompanied, not unfrequently, with
gation of the effects which public schools cruelty and caprice. It is the common
may produce upon the moral charac-law of the place, that the young should
ter; and here the subject becomes be implicitly obedient to the elder boys;
more difficult and the pamphlet worse.
In arguing any large or general
question, it is of infinite importance to
attend to the first feelings which the
mention of the topic has a tendency to
excite; and the name of a public school
brings with it immediately the idea of
brilliant classical attainments: but,
upon the importance of these studies,
we are not now offering any opinion.
The only points for consideration are,
whether boys are put in the way of
becoming good and wise men by these
schools; and whether they actually
gather, there, those attainments, which
it pleases mankind, for the time being,
to consider as valuable, and to decorate
by the name of learning.

and this obedience resembles more the
submission of a slave to his master, or
of a sailor to his captain, than the
common and natural deference which
would always be shown by one boy to
another a few years older than himself.
Now, this system we cannot help con-
sidering as an evil,-because it inflicts
upon boys, for two or three years of

best cure for the insolence of youthful
A public school is thought to be the
aristocracy. This insolence, however, is
not a little increased by the homage of
natural check in the world. There can be
masters, and would soon meet with its
no occasion to bring 500 boys together to
teach to a young nobleman that proper
demeanour which he would learn so much
better from the first English gentleman
whom he might think proper to insult.

E

quite as real, and quite as acute, while it lasts, as any of the sufferings of mature life: and the utility of these sufferings, or the price paid in compensation for them, should be clearly made out to a conscientious parent, before he consents to expose his children to them.

The

This system also gives to the elder boys an absurd and pernicious opinion of their own importance, which is often with difficulty effaced by a considerable commerce with the world. head of a public school is generally a very conceited young man, utterly ignorant of his own dimensions, and losing all that habit of conciliation towards others, and that anxiety for self

natural modesty of youth. Nor is this conceit very easily and speedily gotten rid of; we have seen (if we mistake not) public-school importance lasting through the half of after-life, strutting in lawn, swelling in ermine, and displaying itself, both ridiculously and offensively, in the haunts and business of bearded men.

their lives, many painful hardships, and tranquillity ofmind, through the medium much unpleasant servitude. These of twenty intervening years; but it is sanerings might perhaps be of some use in military schools; but to give to a boy the habit of enduring privations to which he will never again be called apon to submit-to inure him to pains which he will never again feel-and to subject him to the privation of comforts, with which he will always in future abound-is surely not a very useful and valuable severity in education. It is not the life in miniature which he is to lead hereafter - nor does it bear any relation to it :-he will never again be subjected to so much insolence and eatrice; nor ever, in all human probability, called upon to make so many Beruices. The servile obedience which it teaches, might be useful to a meaal domestic; or the habits of en-improvement, which result from the terprise which it encourages, prove of importance to a military partisan; but we cannot see what bearing it has upon the calm, regular, civil life, which the sons of gentlemen, destined to opulent idleness, or to any of the three learned professions, are destined to lead. Such a system makes many boys very miserable; and produces those bad effects upon the temper There is a manliness in the athletic and disposition, which unjust suffering exercises of public schools, which is as aways does produce;- but what good seductive to the imagination as it is it does, we are much at a loss to con- utterly unimportant in itself. Of what ceive. Reasonable obedience is ex- importance is it in after-life, whether tremely useful in forming the disposi- a boy can play well or ill at cricket; tion. Submission to tyranny lays the or row a boat with the skill and precifoundation of hatred, suspicion, cun- sion of a waterman? if our young lords ning, and a variety of odious passions. and esquires were hereafter to wrestle We are convinced that those young together in public, or the gentlemen of people will turn out to be the best the Bar to exhibit Olympic games in men, who have been guarded most Hilary Term, the glory attached to effectually, in their childhood, from these exercises at public schools would every species of useless vexation: and be rational and important. But of experienced, in the greatest degree, the what use is the body of an athlete, blewings of a wise and rational indul- when we have good laws over our ence. But even if these effects upon heads, or when a pistol, a post-chaise, fature character are not produced, or a porter can be hired for a few shilstill, four or five years in childhood lings? A gentleman does nothing make a very considerable period of but ride or walk; and yet such a ridihuman existence: and it is by no culous stress is laid upon the manliness means a trifling consideration whether of the exercises customary at public they are past happily or unhappily. The wretchedness of school tyranny is triling enough to a man who only contemplates it, in ease of body and

schools-exercises in which the greates blockheads commonly excel the mostwhich often render habits of idleness inveterate and often lead to foolish

expense and dissipation at a more ad-cuous person is supposed to have been vanced period of life. educated at public schools; and there One of the supposed advantages of are scarcely any means (as it is imaa public school, is the greater know-gined) of making an actual comparison; ledge of the world which a boy is con- and yet, great as the rage is, and long sidered to derive from those situations; has been, for public schools, it is very but if, by a knowledge of the world, is remarkable, that the most eminent men meant a knowledge of the forms and in every art and science have not been manners which are found to be the educated in public schools; and this is most pleasing and useful in the world, true, even if we include, in the term of a boy from a public school is almost public schools, not only Eton, Winalways extremely deficient in these chester, and Westminster, but the particulars; and his sister, who has Charterhouse, St. Paul's School, Merremained at home at the apron-strings chant Taylors', Rugby, and every school of her mother, is very much his superior in England, at all conducted upon the in the science of manners. It is pro- plan of the three first. The great bably true, that a boy at a public school schools of Scotland we do not call pubhas made more observations on human lic schools; because, in these, the mixcharacter, because he has had more ture of domestic life gives to them a opportunities of observing, than have widely different character. Spenser, been enjoyed by young persons edu- Pope, Shakspeare, Butler, Rochester, cated either at home or at private Spratt, Parnell, Garth, Congreve, Gay, schools but this little advance gained Swift, Thomson, Shenstone, Akenside, at a public school, is so soon overtaken Goldsmith, Samuel Johnson, Beaumont at college or in the world, that, to have and Fletcher, Ben Jonson, Sir Philip made it, is of the least possible conse- Sidney, Savage, Arbuthnot and Burns, quence, and utterly undeserving of any among the poets, were not educated in risk incurred in the acquisition. Is it the system of English schools. Sir Isaac any injury to a man of thirty or thirty- Newton, Maclaurin, Wallis, Flamsteed, five years of age-to a learned serjeant | Saunderson, Simpson, and Napier, or venerable dean-that at eighteen they did not know so much of the world as some other boys of the same standing? They have probably escaped the arrogant character so often attendant upon this trifling superiority; nor is there much chance that they have ever fallen into the common and youthful error of mistaking a premature initiation into vice, for a knowledge of the ways of mankind: and, in addition to these salutary exemptions, a winter in London brings it all to a level; and offers to every novice the advantages which are supposed to be derived from this precocity of confidence and polish. According to the general prejudice in favour of public schools, it would be thought quite as absurd and superfluous to enumerate the illustrious characters who have been bred at our three great seminaries of this description, as it would be to descant upon the illustrious characters who have passed in and out of London over our three great bridges. Almost every conspi

among men of science, were not educated in public schools. The three best historians that the English language has produced, Clarendon, Hume and Robertson, were not educated at public schools. Public schools have done little in England for the fine arts-as in the examples of Inigo Jones, Vanbrugh, Reynolds, Gainsborough, Gar rick, &c. The great medical writers and discoverers in Great Britain, Har vey, Cheselden, Hunter, Jenner, Meade, Brown, and Cullen, were not educated at public schools. Of the great writers on morals and metaphysics, it was not the system of public schools which produced Bacon, Shaftesbury, Hobbes," Berkeley, Butler, Hume, Hartley, or Dugald Stewart. The greatest discoverers in chemistry have not been brought up at public schools : - we mean Dr. Priestley, Dr. Black, and Mr. Davy. The only Englishmen who have evinced a remarkable genius, in modern times, for the art of war,-the Duke of Marlborough, Lord Peter

borough, General Wolfe, and Lord | ment is favourable either to literature Clive, were all trained in private or morals. schools. So were Lord Coke, Sir Upon this system, a boy is left almost Matthew Hale, and Lord Chancellor entirely to himself, to impress upon his Hardwicke, and Chief Justice Holt, own mind, as well as he can, the distant among the lawyers. So also, among advantages of knowledge, and to withstatesmen, were Lord Burleigh, Wal- stand, from his own innate resolution, singham, the Earl of Strafford, Thurloe, the examples and the seductions of Cromwell, Hampden, Lord Clarendon, idleness. A firm character survives Sir Walter Raleigh, Sydney, Russell, this brave neglect; and very exalted Sir W. Temple, Lord Somers, Burke, talents may sometimes remedy it by Sheridan, Pitt. In addition to this list, subsequent diligence: but schools are we must not forget the names of such not made for a few youths of preeminent scholars and men of letters, as eminent talents and strong characters; Cadworth, Chillingworth, Tillotson, such prizes can, of course, be drawn Archbishop King, Selden, Conyers but by a very few parents. The best Middleton, Bentley, Sir Thomas More, school is that which is best accommoCardinal Wolsey, Bishops Sherlock and dated to the greatest variety of characWilkins, Jeremy Taylor, Isaac Hooker, ters, and which embraces the greatest Bishops Usher, Stillingfleet and Spel- number of cases. It cannot be the main man, Dr. Samuel Clarke, Bishop Hoad- object of education to render the splenley, and Dr. Lardner. Nor must it be did more splendid, and to lavish care forgotten, in this examination, that upon those who would almost thrive none of the conspicuous writers upon without any care at all. A public school political economy which this country does this effectually; but it commonly has as yet produced, have been brought leaves the idle almost as idle, and the up in public schools. If it be urged dull almost as dull, as it found them. that public schools have only assumed It disdains the tedious cultivation of their present character within this last those middling talents of which only century, or half century, and that what the great mass of human beings are are now called public schools partook, possessed. When a strong desire of before this period, of the nature of pri-improvement exists, it is encouraged; vate schools, there must then be added to our lists the names of Milton, Dryden, Addison, &c. &c.: and it will follow, that the English have done almost all that they have done in the arts and sciences, without the aid of that system of education to which they are now so much attached. Ample as this catalogue of celebrated names already is, it would be easy to double it; yet, as it stands, it is obviously sufficient to show that great eminence may be attained in any line of fame, without the aid of public schools. Some more striking inferences might perhaps be drawn from it; but we content ourselves with the simple fact.

The most important peculiarity in the constitution of a public school is its numbers, which are so great, that a close inspection of the master into the studies and conduct of each individual is quite impossible. We must be allowed to doubt whether such an arrange

but no pains are taken to inspire it. A boy is cast in among five or six hundred other boys, and is left to form his own character-if his love of knowledge survive this severe trial, it, in general, carries him very far: and, upon the same principle, a savage who grows up to manhood is, in general, well made, and free from all bodily defects; not because the severities of such a state are favourable to animal life, but because they are so much the reverse that none but the strongest can survive them. A few boys are incorrigibly idle, and a few incorrigibly eager for knowledge; but the great mass are in a state of doubt and fluctuation; and they come to school for the express purpose, not of being left to themselves-for that could be done anywhere-but that their wavering tastes and propensities should be decided by the intervention of a master. In a forest, or public school for oaks

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