Essays
Mock-Essays and
Character Sketches
ESSAYS MOCK- ESSAYS
AND
CHARACTER SKETCHES
REPRINTED FROM THE
"JOURNAL OF EDUCATION"
WITH ORIGINAL CONTRIBU-
TIONS BY THE HON. LIONEL
A. TOLLEMACHE AND OTHERS
LONDON
WILLIAM RICE 86 FLEET STREET E.G.
WHITTAKER & CO. PATERNOSTER SQUARE E.C. AND
66 FIFTH AVENUE NEW YORK
PREFACE.
A S a volume of reprints seems to need some
apology, the Editor may venture to explain its
genesis. Prizes offered about a year ago for the best
imitations of essays by Bacon and other standard
English essayists produced such a number of excellent
compositions that it was impossible to find room for
several of high merit, and disappointed candidates
were consoled by the promise that they should
appear in a fourth volume of the series of Prize
Translations. But on second thoughts it seemed
doubtful whether a book consisting solely of prose
parodies would be much appreciated except by the
authors, and thus these Mock Essays have devel-
oped into Essays and Mock Essays, a mixture of
seria ludo. With the material of twenty years to
choose from, the task of selection has not been
easy. The articles chosen may all be classed as
educational in the widest sense of the word, but
esoteric pedagogics have been eschewed, and nothing
has been admitted but what is likely to appeal to
lay as well as to professional readers. If education
labours under the aspersion of dulness, one reason
is that those who write and talk about it too
v
Preface.
commonly know nothing of its actual working, and
this volume may be taken as a practical vindica-
tion of schoolmasters against Charles Lamb's too
sweeping charge of pedantry and priggism. The
Editor takes this opportunity of heartily thanking
those staunch friends who supported the Journal
of Education in its struggling years of infancy, and
in particular his brethren of the " U. U."
VI
CONTENTS
PREFACE
ESS A YS
RECOLLECTIONS OF MY GRANDFATHER'S
LIBRARY 3
BY MARY ELIZABETH CHRISTIE
ON TRIFLE-BLINDNESS ... 19
" BLESSED ARE THE STRONG, FOR THEY
SHALL PREY ON THE WEAK" . . 34
BY THE HON. LIONEL A. TOLLEMACHE
MENTAL CULTURE . . . 7 a
BY PROF. JAMES WARD
ART IN SCHOOLS .... 99
BY DEAN FARRAR
WHAT IS A COLLEGE? . . . .126
BY MARK PATTISON
CHILDREN AND POETRY . - . . 140
GAMES: A "U. U." ESSAY ... 150
BY E. E. B.
vii
Contents
PAGE
THE HOUSE OF RIMMON 166
BY E. D. A. MORSHEAD
IDEALS OF WOMANLINESS . . .189
BY SOPHIE BRYANT, D.Sc.
MOCK-ESSA YS
THE SPARROW COLONEL (After O. W. Holmes} 211
BY THE HON. MRS L. A. TOLLEMACHE
OF CYNICISM (After Bacon} . . .215
BY THE HON. LIONEL A. TOLLEMACHE
ON THE SHAKING OF HANDS (After Charles
Lamb} ...... 224
BY C. LAWRENCE FORD
THE PERFECT HEADMISTRESS (After Bacon} 232
OF PARTING (After Bacon} . . 236
BY SYBIL WILBRAHAM
OF CONTEMPT (After Bacon) . . .239
CHARACTER SKETCHES
JOWETT AND HIS PERSONAL INFLUENCE 243
BY THE HON. LIONEL A. TOLLEMACHE
TOM HUGHES AND THE ARNOLDS . . 254
BY THE HON. LIONEL A. TOLLEMACHE
viii
Contents
PAGE
REMINISCENCES OF LORD HOUGHTON
AND PROFESSOR FREEMAN (In the man-
ner of Hayward) . . . .259
BY THE HON. LIONEL A. TOLLEMACHE
THE REV. S. H. REYNOLDS ... 269
BY THE HON. LIONEL A. TOLLEMACHE
HEAD-MASTERS I HAVE KNOWN . . 285
I. DR MOSTYN ... 285
II. DR RUTTY .... 295
C. S. CALVERLEY .... 304
THE NEW OLD MAID . . . .310
AN EPISODE . . . . . 322
BY J. W. LONGSDON
POETRY
THE HAMMERERS' STRIKE (Frai^ois Coppee's
Greve des Forgerons) .... 333
BY F. STORR
TERENCE MACRAN A HEDGE SCHOOL
STUDY 341
BY JANE BARLOW
THE DREAM OF MAXEN . . . , 353
BY GEORGE E. DARTNELL
IX
Essays.
RECOLLECTIONS OF MY GRANDFATHER'S
LIBRARY. 1
BY MARY ELIZABETH CHRISTIE.
" A ND the Library What room will you make
^ a Library of?" I asked of a friend who was
showing me over a handsome new house he was
beginning to inhabit, and "claiming my admiration
for a thousand and one ingenious contrivances for
comfort, beauty, and convenience. I had praised
the lift, and the electric bells, looked with respect at
ventilators and speaking-tubes, and tried to believe
that every grate would consume its own smoke with
graceful economy. I had done my best to suppress
every outward symptom of the sort of moral chill I
was conscious of catching from surroundings of such
faultless order and uniform newness. We had visited
bedrooms, sitting-rooms, the kitchen, the billiard-
room, and the smoking-room, and now at last we
stood in the master's Study. So he told me, at
least ; otherwise I should have thought we were in
an office. So bare was the room of the books or
even accommodation for the books I have been
accustomed to regard as the indispensable furniture
of a study. But I said to myself, " Habits differ
as much as tastes. It is possible that B cannot
1 Journal of Education, September 1882.
3
Essays.
work among his books. Perhaps their crowding
presences oppress him, and he prefers to take one or
two apart and enjoy them in intimate privacy, as we
do the society of chosen friends. Doubtless the
Library adjoins the Study. . ." And I fixed my eye
on a curtained recess, fondly persuading myself that
there was the opening into the spacious chamber, in
which I pictured the noble company of writers
ranged in ordered dignity upon innumerable shelves.
B followed my observation, and approached the
curtain with a gait of happy eagerness. " This," he
said, " is a dodge of my own, and I like it as well as
anything in my house. It is simple enough, how-
ever, and may very likely not take your fancy as
much as it does mine."
I hastened to assure him that simplicity would
not prejudice it in my eyes ; but, before the words
were well out of my mouth, the curtain was with-
drawn, and my blank look confessed that B 's
pet little dodge did not take my fancy as much as it
did his. We stood jjefore a case of shelves con-
trived so as to hold, with perfect economy of space,
a year's issue of all the important papers and
periodicals of the day. Each publication had its
particular place allotted to it and labelled with its
title, and every section was subdivided into monthly
or weekly partitions.
" One must keep up with the literature of one's
time," said B , whom my unsympathetic manner
had lowered precipitously to the level of apology.
"One must read, you know, and I hate a litter of
papers about the place."
4
My Grandfather's Library.
" Oh, certainly," said I, " one must read." And
then it was that I asked what room was to be the
Library.
" The Library ? I don't intend to have one," was
the answer. "I consider the private library an
exploded superstition. We have an excellent public
library in the town, to which I make a point of sub-
scribing liberally. Mudie sends us fifteen new books
every week, and if I want to make anything like a
study of a subject it is open to me to run up to
London and spend a few days at the British
Museum. To my mind, our modern civilization
shows few more satisfactory symptoms than the
tendency of the public library everywhere to displace
the private one. It is good, every way. The pres-
ence in a dwelling-house of a large collection of old
books is extremely detrimental to health. Not only
do they gather dust and so become nests for the
breeding of fevers, but I am competently informed
that the old leather of their bindings emits an odour
that is directly productive of phthisis. I believe that,
in nine cases out of ten, the family library is at the
root of the consumption that carries off the children
of the house. I am so firmly persuaded of this that
nothing will ever induce me to stay with people who
use their book-room for a general sitting-room. I
would as soon dine with the skeleton in the cup-
board, or sleep in the family vault. There is a
peculiar atmosphere about such rooms that oppresses
me morally and physically."
"Ah," cried I, unable to hold silence any
longer, "there is indeed an atmosphere peculiar to
5
Essays.
the library of an old house an air of the past, a
presence of the generations who went before us, a
breath of antiquity. . . ."
" Oh, come, come ! " broke in B . " Let us
call things by their right names, and say at once a
dusty, fusty mustiness, that no lungs can breathe
healthily, and such an array of prejudice, error, dul-
ness, and superstition, as may deter the most daring
mind from the attempt to add to the stock of know-
ledge, by confronting it with the reminder that these
old fogies, whom nobody looks at now save as
curiosities, were once the advanced spirits of the
world, and the suggestion that a like fate may be in
store for all the thinking and scribbling of our
time."
" For these writers of newspapers and magazines,
certainly," said I with some heat. " For these
worthless productions which you shrine religiously,
and I consign, often without even opening them, to
a handy waste-paper basket."
" But pardon me," said B , with a politeness
that betrayed a certain irritation, " Pardon me if I
say that there is less difference than you think
between our methods of dealing with ephemeral
literature. You burn your papers at once. I store
mine out of sight for one year, and then make them
over to the waste-paper merchant. If I had not
provided myself with these convenient shelves, I
should probably do exactly as you do, and suffer the
inconvenience of having to go outside my house
every time I want to look up a fact or a remark that
is older than four and twenty hours."
6
My Grandfather's Library.
"But how when you want the thoughts whose
age is counted by centuries?"
"Then, as I said before, I think it worth while
to go to town and burrow in the British Museum.
But, between ourselves, I don't go there often. I
repeat, I am not fond of old libraries, and like more
modern surroundings. I feel myself a little out of it
in such venerable company in such a consecrated
air."
" The company of the centuries," I said almost
involuntarily ; " an air thick with the emotion of the
generations that have made us what we are ; a place
warm with their sympathies, stirring with their activi-
ties, hallowed by their faith, damp with the tears and
the blood of their martyrdom. . . ."
" Oh, damp by all means," cried B , " damp
as a charnel house, or a cathedral crypt where a
rheumatic sexton asks you to believe that some
oozing stone, which your nose tells you is the
imperfectly cemented covering of a poisonous drain,
is wet with the sacred blood of a meddling monk or
priest, most righteously punished there some five or
six hundred years ago. My dear fellow, believe me,
all this sort of thing is the most unprofitable cant of
sentiment with which you can possibly encumber
your life. And as for the books, tell me frankly,
did you ever in all your life do any reading that was
of the smallest use in an old family library ? The
book a practical man wants to read is the new work
of the day, or the latest edition of the classic who is
just in vogue. These you can get from your circulat-
ing library. And, having got them in this way, you
7
Essays.
will read them for three excellent reasons, first,
because everybody else is reading them secondly,
you have them in clean, handy volumes, with good
type and modern spelling; and thirdly, your wife
and daughters will give you no peace till you have
done with them, and are ready to exchange them for
something newer still."
I laughed, and admitted that, for the purposes of
getting books read and quickly read, there was cer-
tainly much to be said in favour of the circulating
library as opposed to the stationary library at home ;
which concession B took as a surrender of the
whole position, for, said he, " as reading is the only
use books can be put to, it is obvious that whatever
system promotes most reading is best." I was con-
tent to let the subject drop, and shortly afterwards I
took my leave of B , wishing him joy of his lifts,
and his electric bells, and his pigeon-holes.
But, as I walked home, my mind went back to the
old library in my grandfather's house, where I first
learned to reverence all books and love some, and
acquired that taste for the company of a crowd of
musty volumes, which B finds so senseless and
so unwholesome. I can see the room now, and feel
myself back in it. As I do so, I am conscious first
of a general surrounding of brownness of a rather
dingy brownness on dull days, but of a golden brown-
ness that was truly glorious on days of sunshine, or
whenever a fire was lighted to air the books and ward
off damp and worm. I must confess, at once, that
I never knew anybody but myself take a book down
from the shelves of that library except to clean it.
8
My Grandfather's Library.
In so far as to promote reading is the object of
libraries, that of my grandfather was a failure. The
house was not a reading house. It was a riding,
driving, hunting, eating and drinking life that was
led in it ; a life of genial hospitality and easy country
manners. Nobody stayed much within the house.
The garden doors front, back, and side had a
trick of standing open at all seasons of the year ; a
trick which would have been extremely unpleasant if
the fires had not had a compensating way of burning
with generous wastefulness, and equal disregard of
the calendar. My grandfather lived on horseback ;
my grandmother was always " about the place " ; my
uncles and aunts were all either dead, or married
and scattered, before I remember the house; but
their rooms kept their names, and so did the super-
annuated horses and dogs that had been favourites
of this one or that. It was characteristic of the
place that whatever came there, stayed, and whatever
stayed there did as he or she or it liked, without
regard to convenience or economy. Visitors came
in hurriedly after breakfast to ask a favour, or deliver
a message, and dawdled on till luncheon-time, then
were seduced into staying to tea, and, having had
that meal, to linger on till it was too late to get home
to dinner. It was an aimless way of life without
plan or order, thriftless, fruitless, stagnant. I dare
not say that it was a good way ; and, as I look back
upon it all with older eyes, I read between the lines
my memory draws, much of sad and even tragic
explanation of the causes that made the place the
temple of chance and drift I found it. I dare not
9
Essays.
say that it was a good way, or, for those most con-
cerned, a happy way of life ; but I cannot deny that
to me, in my childhood, it was very pleasant, and I
think that there were features in it which were worth
reproducing in modern houses, if we could but find
time and space for them in our arrangements of
organised economy. And, chief among these, I
rank the presence, within doors and without, of so
many things having no direct reference to the tastes
and convenience of the actual occupants. This was
the point of contrast between my grandfather's house
and my father's. At home, we were busy, purpose-
ful, modern. We bought things because we wanted
them ; we used them, and, when we had done with
them, we cast them away. We had one horse and
a wagonette, which took my father daily to the
station, and my mother out shopping and visiting.
We had two maid-servants, who did the work inside
the house efficiently, and a man, who was a miracle
of general usefulness in the garden and the stable,
besides doing a thousand things that women could
not do within doors. At my grandfather's, there
were any number of men-servants and maid-servants,
and nothing was ever done punctually or well. On
the same principle, there were a dozen horses and
ponies, and very often not one that was available for
necessary work. There was a lumbering old carriage
that had belonged to George the Third, and another
that had held Buonaparte; there was a battered
landau in which my great grandmother had sat to
see Bliicher pass, on the occasion of his visit to
London; but, for purposes of actual use, the only
10
My Grandfather's Library.
available thing on wheels was a very small and
dilapidated pony-carriage, in which a pair of old
Shetland ponies went, whenever one or both of them
was not ill, or supposed to be so. And so it was
with everything about the place. A willow, of which
the sapling had been brought from Napoleon's tomb,
struck its roots into the well from which we drank,
and hindered our water-supply ; and this tree, which
no one ever thought of removing, has become to my
mind the type of the whole way of living in my
grandfather's house.
It cannot have been a comfortable house for people
who had business to get through ; but for me, who
had no business, I say again it was a very pleasant
house, and I think an educating one. I do not,
however, pretend that I got much solid information
or regular instruction out of my grandfather's library.
All that was given me at home. Ours was much the
better educated house of the two, and we had plenty
of books and shelves to put them in. The difference
was, that we had no one room given up to them.
Moreover, I knew the story of them all, when they
had been bought, and why; each set marked an
epoch that I knew about, either by memory or hear-
say. There were the well-bound books in calf and
gold, which were especially " papa's books," " your
college-books " my mother used always to call them,
in speaking of them to him. And there was a case
full of law-books, which represented daily work and
the means of living. Then there were the " drawing-
room books " in pretty bindings, which my mother
read. And there were the prizes my elder brothers
ii
Essays.
had got at school; besides a shabby lot of lesson
and story-books which were called the " school-room
books." On the whole, I believe we possessed a
very fair collection of books, and I know that I made
a very fair use of them, and had a genuine affection
for many of them at a very early age. But neither
from some of them, or all of them, did I imbibe
anything like the sentiment that gathered about the
shelves of my grandfather's library. There was a
mystery about the books at the older house. Their
origin was unknown to me; the purpose of their
presence I vainly tried to understand. It seemed to
me that they must have been there always. I could
not imagine either my grandfather or my grandmother
buying them. I knew that they never read them.
Nor yet my uncles and aunts, when they came back
now and again to the family home. The books
existed, as far as I could see, for their own sakes.
They were religiously dusted and aired. There was
a complete catalogue of them, which looked to me
as old and brown as the oldest of them all. I liked
reading this as much as any volume on the shelves.
It was like a game to look up the names of books in
it, and then hunt down the actual volumes according
to the neat directions given. Though I must have
made some thousands of experiments in this species
of verification, I cannot remember any single occasion
on which I failed to find the book in the place where
the catalogue said it should be. Whose, I often
wonder, was the careful hand that made that faultless
list, and placed the volumes where they stood? I
never knew, and now I hardly desire to know. To
12
My Grandfather's Library.
refer the arrangements of that old library to anything
so arbitrary as an individual will, would, I think,
break the spell by which it holds my affection. I
prefer that its history should begin and end with the
two words, // was.
On the other hand, my memory holds and
cherishes every detail of its arrangement. No room
that I have lived in since, not my own bed-room or
study of to-day, is so clearly pictured in my mind as
is that old haunt of my childhood. It was a square
room by how many feet square, I cannot pretend
to say, that is a point on which childish recollection
is not to be trusted but I remember it as a large,
though not a very large, room. The book-shelves
ran unbroken round two sides of it ; on a third side,
they were interrupted in the middle by a wide win-
dow that opened into a conservatory from which, it
seemed to me, a scent of heliotrope came in con-
tinually through all the seasons of the year. (Per-
haps it is because the odour of heliotrope mingles in
my fancy with that of worn leather and paper, that I
am unable to think as B does of the smell of an
old library.) On the fourth side, was a large old-
fashioned fire-place, with an arched window on either
side of it. There were seats in the sills, and outside
was a wooden verandah, heavily laden with jessamine
and cottage clematis. These windows must have
looked west, for I remember that the afternoon
sunshine used to stream through them pleasantly ;
so pleasantly, that I never could resist the tempta-
tion of pulling the blinds right up, at the risk of
taking a little more colour out of the dim Turkey
13
Essays.
carpet and the curtains, which had once been claret
colour, but were now a yellow pink, and the backs of
the books, and the stamped velvet of the chairs.
This was the only subject on which I was ever
scolded by my grandmother. Hardly a sunny day
passed without my being admonished by her on this
point admonitions to which it never occurred to me
to pay practical attention, though in all other matters
I obeyed her religiously. But on this point I not
only disregarded her wishes, but disregarded them
without compunction. If the books themselves
could have spoken, or the prints on the wall, I
should have obeyed unhesitatingly, or if I had found
it written in the catalogue as a rule of the room;
but, without any articulate process of reasoning on
the matter, I had arrived at the conclusion that the
library was subject to the authority of no living per-
son. And I knew that, in so far as use and know-
ledge and enjoyment make a title of possession, I
was more the owner of the place than any actual
inhabitant of the house.
But I must not give an impression that I read
very deeply, or thoroughly, in the books about me.
Though, I believe, there was not a volume in the
collection of which I did not know the name and
position so well, that I could have found it almost in
the dark had anyone asked for it, there were very
few that I read through or knew well internally. I
was fond of skimming metaphysics and moral philo-
sophy, and of making sudden dives into poetry. I
liked making journeys upon maps, and constructing
historical characters on the lines of portraits ; and of
My Grandfather's Library.
these there were a great many, both in the books
and on the walls above the ten feet of book-shelves.
But, for purposes of connected reading, I eschewed
solid books, I preferred novels and essays. The
British Essayists, in dark red morocco and innumer-
able array of volumes, delighted me especially. So
did the British Novelists, bound to match. I liked
these outside and in. Among the Waverley novels,
I remember reading again and again the " Talisman,"
" Ivanhoe," " The Antiquary," "Kenilworth," " Wood-
stock," and " The Fair Maid of Perth." But I never
opened any other volume of the set. I had a passion
for " King John," and " Julius Caesar," and " Romeo
and Juliet," and I am quite unable to say what
accidents directed my choice to these plays. I only
know that at these I stopped. I knew no more
Shakespeare till I was grown up. I read " Paradise
Lost," and found my way to the " Life of Milton "
in a crumbling edition of Johnson's " Lives of the
Poets," bearing the date 1783. An early edition of
" Cecilia," with portraits of the principal characters,
and a carefully accurate plan of Delvile Castle, I
was particularly fond of. And I positively loved two
big volumes of " ^Esop's Fables," printed in noble
type, and "embellished," as the title-page had it,
" with one hundred and twelve plates." Other books
I remember liking chiefly, if not only, for their pic-
tures. Among these was a many-volumed Gibbon,
with plates, on which a number of heads, each a
separate medallion, were grouped together in pat-
terns ; a Hume, with portraits of all the Kings and
Queens ; a life of Fox, with a good collection of
Essays.
contemporary statesmen and wits and beauties ; and
a Pope's Homer, with Flaxman's illustrations. Other
books, again, I loved as mere objects. There was a
Latin " Utopia " of which I could not understand a
word, save the name " Thomae Mori," and the date
1563. But I delighted in it none the less. I liked
the type and the paper, the square blocks of orna-
mentation that held the initial letters of the chapters,
and the pretty disposition of their concluding lines.
And, above all, I liked the elaborate working of the
vellum binding with the portraits in relief of Queen
Elizabeth on its two sides, and the massive ridges
across the back. I also liked very much the sixty
volumes of Voltaire in very red and shiny leather,
with gold edges and gold lettering in large sloping
italics ; the little Rousseau, too, in twenty - five
volumes of smaller size. But, indeed, what books
in that room did I not note and love, and do I not
now remember, if not the contents, at least the out-
ward appearance of?
Cut bono ? B asks. And I do not attempt
to answer him. Of what use to do so ? All super-
stitions are not for all men. He believes in his
pigeon-holes of daily papers : I in my grandfather's
library. I doubt not he derives good from his super-
stition : I know that I connect mine with all that I
value most in my culture. From companionship
with those old volumes that nobody used and no-
body talked of, I got in earliest childhood a sense
of an imposing world behind me and beyond me.
I learned to associate feelings of reverence and awe
with the names of thinkers whose thoughts I could
16
My Grandfather's Library.
not understand ; and, if in many cases my reverence
was misplaced in respect to individual writers, I do
not think that matters much. It is better to give
reverence sometimes where it is not due, than to
grow up in the habit of not giving it at all save
under compulsion.
And not this only. That little used and yet care-
fully kept library carried into the region of intellec-
tual and spiritual things the wholesome lesson, which
was suggested by all the other arrangements of the
house. Like all else about the place, from George
the Third's coach, and the willow from Napoleon's
tomb, to the old straw hat that had belonged to an
uncle long since lost at sea, the books stood on their
shelves, and got their regular dusting and airing, not
because they were wanted by anyone of the living
generation, but out of recognition of some right of
such high sanctity, as to override all considerations
of utilitarian economy. My grandmother's wardrobe
was exiguous, her ponies were infirm, her carriage
was shabby and inadequate ; all the appointments of
the house showed that money was not over-abundant.
The books have since been sold, and have realized a
sum that would have been undeniably convenient to
my grandparents in their lifetime. But, till both
were under the ground, no article of property that
had come down from the past ever went to the
hammer. They wanted many things ; for instance,
I often heard my grandmother express a wish for
some modern book, but I never knew her suggest
that an old one should be given in exchange for it.
Such sacrifice of convenience to tradition is not
B 17
Essays.
according to the spirit of modern life, and I grant
that there are excellent reasons for not attempting to
bring the fashion of it back. But, just because it is
a fashion so faded, and one not likely to be revived,
it delights me now and again to recall the influence
it had on the beginnings of my mental life ; and I
do not think that there can be any danger in express-
ing a wish, that the present generation of educators
might see their way, without turning their backs
upon recent improvements in the machinery of
instruction, to finding place in their admirable
systems for some corresponding monument of the
past, under the shadow of which children might,
unguided and unchecked, save by their own happy
instinct of sympathy, "walk in spirit" with the
immortal dead, and "fathom hidden wonders, and
explore the essence of great bosoms now no more."
18
ON TRIFLE-BLINDNESS. 1
" Hereby I learned not to despise,
Whatever thing seems small in common eyes." Spenser.
<?EMPER ego auditor tantum t I would gladly be
so, for my own sake, and yours, but friends
and fate have willed it otherwise. I am essentially
a one-horsed man, a man of one notion, with which
I have teased my colleagues ad nauseam. My
notion is that of Condillac or somebody, That
poetry being a secretion of the brain, and religion of
the lower viscera, a boy is in effect but a function of
oxygen, light, and a few simples as nitrogen and
carbon taken internally (it is long since I had any-
thing to do with them myself, at least so as to
know anything about them, but such is my recollec-
tion and impression) ; and that a master or staff of
masters is but a clumsy and temporary substitute for
a self-adjusting automatic arrangement of Erewhon
and the future, ventilative, illuminative, nutritive,
digestive, possibly worked by steam, more probably
by magnetism or the odd force. Having never been
able to keep myself in decent health of body or soul
all my life, I have the most intense respect for
George Combe, and would gladly see his " Constitu-
1 A paper read to a Society of Public Schoolmasters \_Journal
of Education, December 1874 and September 1880].
19
Essays.
tion of Man " (to whose impetus England owes
more than she is aware), with Wilson's " Hygiene,"
Dr Parkes's "Manual of Health," and De Chau-
mont's " The Habitation in relation to Health,"
made the sole subjects of entrance examination for
pupils, and of qualification for so-called teachers.
Dr Liebreich should be made absolute Minister of
Education, and none but experienced physicians,
sanitary engineers, or head-plumbers, admitted to
be Governors or Head-masters. It is true that
one's best efforts in promulgating this gospel of
externals are trumped ever and anon by the re-
joinder that a really good workman is very indepen-
dent of the quality of his tools ; that the giants of
former days have flourished and reared a Titanic
brood amid far greater disadvantages ; that really
great lungs rather thrive on carbonic acid, and really
great eyes become keener by innumerable impacts
of ill-arranged light-waves. But, alas ! there were
giants, I suppose, in those days. We cannot, it is
too true, carry our three bottles as they did. And,
moreover, I humbly submit that the total drain upon
the best of them was often about a tenth of what is
required of men now ; while, as to boys, there was
a good deal of play given to the principles of natural
selection and survival, if not of the fittest, at least of
the hardiest and hardest.
This prejudication, that a good workman is in-
dependent of his tools, is, I am sure, even now too
largely assumed, and is one which I would resist at
the outset. It ought to be gibbeted along with
those other fallacies in the " Essays of Elia," as that
20
On Trifle-Blindness.
ill-gotten gain never prospers, or, that the warmest of
two disputants is always in the wrong. The hand
does become all too readily subdued to what it works
in, and the constant friction will tell, and tell fatally,
at last. The mass of masters may be roughly
divided into two classes : young vigorous energetic
men, who drive their work, and less vigorous ones,
who are dragged at its chariot wheels. And many of
the countless little sufferings, irritations, and ineffi-
ciencies of the latter are due, I maintain, in number-
less instances, to little matters which they have
grown too dull to perceive, or too callous to rectify,
until some outsider forces daylight in upon them :
while of the former, some are apt to forget, in the
plenitude of their strength, what may come home to
them at last ; and they forget, too, when esteeming
so lightly the effect of these minutiae of externals
upon the weak or undeveloped organization of their
pupils, that it is just because they were above the
average in their general vigour, just because they
had that kind of stamina which, in all but rare
cases, is needed for a successful exit from the
Universities, that they have come to be in the
position in which they find themselves.
Besides these two classes, there is a small residue
of persons who are keenly alive to all these flaws in
the machinery, and, as they believe, the serious
effects of them ; not that they perhaps really know
them better than others everybody is supposed to
know them but that perhaps, being, like the
present rambler, little occupied with the intellectual
or moral sides of education, they have nothing else
21
Essays.
to do but to worry themselves and their friends with
the mechanico-physical. Such persons, I beg to
believe, are invaluable, and from this class there
ought to be appointed detached censors or in-
spectors, say one to every two great schools, with
a salary of ^1000 a year, and good house-room at
each. When such appointments are made, I shall
solicit your suffrages for the first of them.
A friend suggested : " Why not do an Essay on
some ' morality,' e.g., school veracity ? " I have no
objection to this being considered, not an essay, but
a kind of humble haggis on all school morality.
And I beg to submit the thesis that boys never do
wrong, and that all seeming aberrations are really
traceable to the fact that we are still in the morning
of the times, and, despite all that we have done,
have still left so many weak points in our little
external arrangements. Of course it is understood
all round that nobody is to blame for these things.
It is all the doings of nature, or history, or the genius
loci. But these are very malleable entities after all,
and, by giving nature or the genius loci a timely dig
in the ribs, we may hope for some better results in
those far-distant days when even the indefatigable
vigour of our friends B. and C. has melted away
with their havannahs into the infinite azure of the
past.
" But we know all this," grumble those members
who are still awake ; " it is not quite new, we have
heard something like it before. The air has been
full of it for years past, both theory and practice."
True. But there is still, I maintain, a vis inertia
22
On Trifle-Blindness.
and a dull vision that wants quickening, and it is to
deepen the impression of this, and to stir you to
apostleship, that I am now hammering at my hobby.
I concede the wonders that have been done for
health and comfort and easy working. I can never
sufficiently admire the way in which boys now-a-
days are aided, for instance, curare cutem, their
fezes and flannels, their tubs and towels, and all the
rest of it. Nor am I aspiring to read a treatise on
any of the greater departments : gymnasiums, or
sanatorium s, or the like. I can but gather up one
or two more-neglected scraps, if perchance they may
be a gleaning of Ephraim, trusting that this Society
is like the elephant's trunk, not more capable of
wrestling with the Demon of Socrates or Philological
Roots, than of picking up pins, and enucleating nuts.
It is obvious that in my desultory illustrations of
some of these trifles of the blindness to, or under-
estimation of, these trifles I must not be under-
stood as necessarily taking my experiences from this
or that school or staff; they must be taken imper-
sonally. Nor do they involve necessarily a culpable
neglect on the part of a Head-master. A Head-
master will see them with the eyes of those most
concerned. And it is the obstructive blindness of
those concerned which so often wants enlightening.
I want to make every master more restless and
fidgety under such trifles ; more quick to detect
them, and more querulous for the reform of them.
Patience and contentment are virtues ; but they are
out of place when the stairs are on fire, or poison in
the pot. And I want to see some of these trifles
2 3
Essays.
elevated to their proper place in your hatred, with
petroleum-gas, or sewage poison.
Air, light, food, school-fittings I shall fire off
a few shots about each.
As to air, everybody acknowledges the need of
ventilation, and yet in hundreds of cases nothing is
really done. Some ventilator, by which a patentee
has made his fortune, has been put up it has
proved a failure; some supplementary holes are
knocked at random ; the room is made perhaps only
five times as unhealthy as it ought to be, instead of
six, and so we drive on culpably content. Now it is
not only a fact that, as Dr Carpenter says, all nervous
activity is immediately and directly dependent upon
a due supply of oxygenated blood, but it is a fact of
the very first importance. There is a very small
percentage of school-rooms in the kingdom in which
there is not partial asphyxiation of the pupils, and in
a less degree of the master, going on increasingly
during the whole lesson. The effect, as we all
know, is to a great extent insensible. It is abun-
dantly established that the senses of the victims
are absolutely no measure whatever of the mischief
that is going on. The dead loss to intellectual
vigour, to attentive and retentive power, is most
serious each hour ; the total sum in the year enor-
mously and astoundingly wasteful. The deadly pro-
ducts of gas consumption are poured into each boy's
blood to back up the carbonic acid. 1 The strongest
1 The products of the combustion of gas should never mix with
the air of a room. Dr Franklin says, "Only 4 per cent, of
coal gas is illuminating ; 96 per cent, is rubbish, which heats and
pollutes the air. "
24
On Trifle-Blindness.
brains could not effect one-third of their proper
work under the conditions, much less the weak and
undeveloped ones that we audaciously, cruelly, and
criminally undertake to train. If the Athenians
were, as Gallon says, as much above us in intel-
lectual vigour and elasticity as we are above the
negro, depend upon it freedom from carbonic acid
and sulphuretted hydrogen had largely to do with
it as the negro's chronic sunstroke and malarious
swamps have to do with his debasement. And yet,
with all that is known, spoken, written, in our
century, this same ventilation is you may deny it,
but it is still treated as a secondary, not a primary
matter. It is treated with ^5 notes and 10
notes, where it should be subsidized by the ;ioo.
The very first duty, absolutely the first, of a govern-
ing body in a public school ought to be to make air
shafts, draught furnaces, wet screens, steam engines
if needful, anything, everything, for this end, before
allowing money to be spent on any other, or almost
any other, object whatever. ^1000 spread over
ten years, or five, would be well spent in many of
our great schools in this way. And among our-
selves ; for one man in a staff that really knows and
will fight for this truth, there are five that think they
know it and don't. These must be worried and
educated (or improved off the earth's surface) till
their standard is just ten times as high as it is now.
Pure air is the first requisite of a school, next in
importance to scholars, more important than teachers.
I only remember one school in whose rooms I have
met an approximation to it, and that was a school
2 5
Essays.
of 1 200 girls in Edinburgh. The vigour, clear-cut
attention, and interest in the lessons of the scholars,
the keenness, precision, and good temper of the
teachers, were what might be expected.
I will only stop to supplement my remarks on air
by two more. All gas pipes should be carried where
they can be got at. It has been my lot more than
once to make a row, day after day, about what I
was sure was an escape of unburnt gas. Other
people would not or could not smell it. But in each
case I was justified, and escapes were found. But
the pooh-poohing, the smile of compassion for one's
sensitiveness or irritability, the yielding at last as
though to a spoiled child these are the things that
must always be expected from servants, stewards,
landlords, plumbers, and id genus omne, and, alas !
too often from educated men. And yet, you have
only to read the latest medical essays on the subject,
to learn that, when the gas escape reaches the senses,
it has already this is particularly emphasized has
already been working mischief in the blood and
brain, from which mischief it ought to be not our
fifth or tenth, but our very first care to guard those
who are entrusted to us. Here again the standard
is miserably low. The other point in connexion
with air, only half considered, is dust. I know a
school-room, nay a set of school-rooms, in which
this happens, and I dare say many of you do so too.
The man comes round on the half-holidays, raises a
vast cloud of dust innumerable, ineffable, impon-
derable by hasty sweeping. Then he casts away a
peck of it in a shovel, the grosser, more capturable
26
On Trifle-Blindness.
nucleus. For ten minutes afterwards that lighter
subtler cloud settles gently down into every nook
and crevice, and the air is clear. From day to day
the process is repeated, and the resident dust
becomes finer, subtler, more penetrating, more in-
sidious, a microscopic debris of old wood, of mud,
and what William Johnson used to call paidosm.
Each time that thirty boys enter the room to work,
this is stirred up from all corners, and pervades
every cubic inch of air they breathe. The old hands
those hardened worthies who are so hard to rouse,
and whose insensibility so often forms the barrier
between reform and the executive recognise, per-
haps rather like, the delicate aroma of the well-
known fustiness. We, the apostles of attention to
trifles, know that it is settling on every lung, filling
and clogging the pores of every skin. It will not
kill, it will not even, without the carbonic acid and
hydrogen, do much harm to health, because the
system can throw it off. But what does that
mean? Why it means simply so much nervous
energy detracted from the lesson, so much less
interest, so much less memory, at the end of a year
so much less growth all round. Now the trifle-
blindness I speak of was well shown when I re-
marked on this to a colleague. He answered,
"Yes, that thin film of fine dust is very annoying;
but why don't you do as I do ? " pointing to an
elaborate holland cover drawn over his books on his
table. As if it was the books that mattered a straw !
But he couldn't see it. Now where this same resi-
dent dust affects certain apparatus, the master has
27
Essays.
insisted on having wet tea-leaves used, as in house-
holds, and with good effect. But this sprinkling
for all school-rooms would require more time, more
work, part of the pay of another servant. Yet
money could not be better spent. But as yet the
demand would seem disproportionate. The subject
has not been elevated to its due place. The trifle-
blind still preponderate. Opinion recognizes big
dust, but is not educated up to microscopic dust.
If anyone has a room in an old school building
above another one, and the lower room pours into his
its air vitiated by lungs and gas-burners, through a
few holes and a long chink or two between the
boards, he will find a fine test-object for the trifle-
blindness of his friends. Let him point out that
one-third of the air his boys are consuming has been
consumed once already ; and for one that will catch
his meaning, and vote the state of things at once
intolerable and instantly to be remedied, five will
pass it by with a smile, and say it has been so for
thirty years, and So-and-so never said anything about
it. While talking of dust, I may just mention the
intense delight and relief with which in a certain
very hot summer, in a certain large school-room, I
remember we boys used to hail the advent each
afternoon of a friendly watering pot, thoughtfully sug-
gested by someone who was not trifle-blind. If such
simple methods are so valuable, every facility should
be given to them when once invented or suggested.
I must cut down the next three important sub-
jects to mere headings or suggestions. Thus : Light
is the most important of all school matters, except
28
On Trifle-Blindness.
perhaps air and space. Light is even now really
ignored by scores of masters, who would be sur-
prised to be told they were as crass about it as the
last generation were about sewage poison. Hardly
any money could be too much to expend on old
schools, or, alas ! often on new ones, where there is
either a glare in the eyes of the boys or of the master.
Sometimes the radical fault is the directly adverse
or opposite position of a window ; again and again
it is that the window is low, the light on a level
with, instead of above, the head. Where this can
be cured by a few shillings and a few hours' car-
pentry, by shutters, screens, or reflectors, it is a
crime of the first order, on the part of all concerned,
not to force the reformation at once. Where it
would involve bricking up the lower part of a
window and knocking out the upper part higher, it
ought to be elevated by Governors and Head-
masters from a secondary to a primary question,
and hundreds should be spent, if needful, where
sovereigns would now seem extravagant. These
remarks are not the obvious truisms they seem.
And men are most strangely ignorant of this, to the
great damage of themselves, their boys, and the
work. I have lately seen one such man who has
gone too far, in whom a blinding light in such a
radically bad room has contributed to ruin his eyes,
or at least hastened their ruin by twenty years, and
to whom it apparently had never occurred till I
talked to him to interpose a dark screen as at least a
makeshift. He consulted the natural science master
and got it done perhaps too late. Men are, as in
29
Essays.
ventilation, insensible and not to be trusted. And
the effect on the boys they will only realize in ex-
treme cases, not in the every-day ones. A friend
only the other day conceded to me that certain
school-rooms were bad for the master's eyes, " but
not for the boys," he said, laughing me to scorn,
" not for the boys." And yet I could have shown
him, at any lesson, one boy after another showing
the unmistakable signs, if he could only read them,
of the defect of light, which he would not have been
able to detect. So much slight winking, shifting of
head and book, rubbing of eyes, losing of place,
slightly headachy, uneasiness, due to this cause
solely, it being a case where the lower half of the
window should be bricked up, and the window
heightened at some twenty pounds' expense, regard-
less of the not very valuable external architecture.
Men think that boys' eyes can stand anything, and
do not know that, as a fact, a huge number in our
schools can be proved to have defective sight and
incipient mischief, which we ought to strain every
nerve to stop. This statement they would think an
exaggeration, just as some do still the complaints of
sewage gas or poisoned water. No master should
remain ignorant of the gain, not only to England
but to English education, in respect both to light
and school seats and other fittings, from the migra-
tion here after the last war of Dr Liebreich.
On this head of seats and fittings I have absolutely
no time to dwell. I will only take one example of
trifle-blindness. In a certain school-room, in several
ways adapted to ruin the health, temper, and work
3
On Trifle-Blindness.
of all who enter it, is an ancient fixed bench. It
has no merit except the conservative one of exist-
ence. A joiner and an hour's work would abolish
it. It is an inch or more too high from the ground,
and is meant for small boys, backward and fidgety,
to sit on. I have never seen it filled but with one
result. After a few minutes the circulation in the
lower part of the thigh is impeded. The physical
malaise caused by being compelled to sit still goes
on increasing. The boy begins to be inattentive, to
move restlessly, to lose the thread of the lesson, to
worry the master's temper, and finally to be pun-
ished. All this through a cause instantly and easily
remediable, so soon as the fact and its immense
cumulative mischief from month to month can find
its way to the executive. I seldom mention this
without raising a laugh; and yet it is intensely
serious. The laugh is the measure of the trifle-
blindness. I may mention, apropos of this, that
even where the seats are perfect, immense advan-
tage is gained, to afternoon lessons especially, by
giving your boys leave to stand up whenever they
like, or even move forward to lean against some
adjoining desk for a while. They can easily be
brought to do it without the slightest folly or dis-
turbance, because it is such a relief that they will
not readily forfeit the boon. And the gain to the
lesson in attention is enormous. I commend this
changing of position within reasonable limits, as one
of the trifles worth attending to. Merely drawing
your attention to Dr Liebreich's most ingenious and
rational inventions, which will in another generation
Essays.
become cheap commonplaces, I must pass on. I
must just insist for a moment on my favourite trifle
of light-coloured fittings. I never see black desks
and walls without thinking, Within the navel of
this hideous wood there are sorceries of the most
insidiously destructive kind.
In regard to food, the proper allowance of interval
between breakfast and dinner, the utter impossibility
to a large number of boys of carrying any real
abiding results from a first lesson without the brain
stimulus, sometimes but not uniformly enough pro-
vided, of a biscuit and cup of coffee first (just one of
those things which the trifle-blind hold an exaggera-
tion, for want of physiological sympathies), and the
violation, still too frequent, of the most elementary
principles in allowing boys to take violent and com-
petitive exercise close upon dinner, and immediately
before exacted brain-work these are points which
are constantly only half dealt with, and to which I
would call for more rigorous attention. As to the
last, though some gentle exercise such as the invalu-
able punt-about at Rugby is requisite, yet I do not
suppose there is an adequate medical authority in
the kingdom that would not deprecate a real game
of football either so close upon the principal meal as
it is too often the custom to take it, or so close
before the preparation of a lesson. Here again,
men will only concede this in a general way. They
take a light luncheon then themselves, or they are
among those exceptionally vigorous whom I spoke
of before, or they don't believe boys have digestions.
I cannot stop to argue the point farther, but I am
32
On Trifle-Blindness.
sure, while acknowledged, it is often not acknow-
ledged heartily and practically enough.
Bells and bills, paper and panellings, and a hun-
dred other things might afford me illustrations. I
will merely mention the possibility of a school going
on for years calling over by two relays in a cramped
room, before it occurred to anyone to do it out of
doors (a most unmistakable gain), as an example of
the necessity of keeping the trifle-eyesight awake.
I have now brought my rambling remarks to a
conclusion. I cannot wish that they should all
meet with your approval, for then I should have
failed to excite that friendly discussion which would
be my consolation for their poverty.
The Society is not given to recording its convic-
tions, or I should ask you to register these for
resolutions :
1. That a boy, and we believe a girl, that an
adult or so-called teacher, that the work commonly
called education, are all functions of certain
material elements and physical forces.
2. That one able physicist at least (practical not
ornamental), should be on each Board of Public
School governors, and should come humming around
the school-plant pretty frequently, to receive and give
suggestions from and to all parties without reserve.
3. That officers, such as I above suggested, be
appointed in the schools themselves, with adequate
salary, and that I be one of those officers.
4. That no new schools be founded or old ones
be tinkered without special consultation with Dr
Roth, Dr Relfe, and Dr Liebreich.
c 33
"BLESSED ARE THE STRONG, FOR THEY
SHALL PREY ON THE WEAK." 1
BY THE HON. LIONEL A. TOLLEMACHE.
TT is proposed in the first part of this essay to
inquire whether the evolutionary difficulties in
regard to the origin of morality and religion are
as insuperable as they are sometimes thought to
be; and then to notice, in the second part, how
evolutionary and kindred theories have given a
peculiar colour a sort of neutral tint to the
writings of one of our chief men of letters, who
is himself the representative of a class.
I.
A FRAGMENT ON EVOLUTIONARY ETHICS.
" Multaque turn interiisse animantum saecla necessest
Nee potuisse propagando procudere prolem.
Nam quaecumque vides vesci vitalibus auris,
Aut dolus aut virtus aut denique mobilitas est
Ex ineunte aevo genus id tutata reservans.
Multaque sunt, nobis ex utilitate sua quae
Commendata manent, tutelae tradita nostrae."
LUCRETIUS, on the Survival of the Fittest.
In the National Review for July 1893, p. 611, I
remark that " the evolutionary beatitude, ' Blessed
1 Journal of 'Education^ January and February 1894.
34
" Blessed are the Strong."
are the strong, for they shall prey on the weak? has
not a Christian ring about it." x
An eminent scientific friend writes to ask me,
"Is not this a caricature of the fairest reading of
Darwinism ? ' Strong,' ' prey ' and ' weak ' may all
be interpreted in so many ways, up to law quell-
ing anarchy ; sense overcoming nonsense ; beauty
replacing ugliness ; altruism superseding egoism,
etc."
As my assertion has been challenged by so high
an authority, I think it right to give a word of
explanation. First, then, when I speak of the
strong, I am not thinking merely of thews and
sinews. I include under strength such qualities
as skill, energy, and, above all, the power of com-
bination that power which (according to Mill), if
lions and tigers had possessed it, would have
enabled them long since to extirpate the race of
men. It is plain that such a power of combination
can exist only by enforcing a kind of morality, con-
sisting chiefly in mutual fidelity and mutual forbear-
ance. This morality is needful (as Plato has re-
minded us) to the success even of freebooters ; and,
when thus misdirected, it becomes what the French
designate as egoisme a plusieurs, and the English as
faith unfaithful, or as honour among thieves.
Secondly, my epigram has reference to those pro-
vinces of the animal kingdom over which Evolution
1 It should be mentioned that this "evolutionary beatitude"
re-appears in my Memoir of Jowett, and that Mr John Morley
has given it currency by quoting it in his Romanes Lecture on
Machiavelli. L. A. T. (1898).
35
Essays.
with her two vice-regents, Struggle for Existence
and Natural Selection exercises her iron sway.
She extends that sway over the brutes both in
their relation to each other and also as dealt with
by man
" Of half the world the butcher and the tomb."
But in regard to the dealings of man with his
fellows, her prerogative is limited ; and it becomes
more limited as civilization advances. Weak races
and individuals are no longer stamped out. When
Zenghis Khan thought of massacring the entire
population of a large part of Asia, he was not an
exemplary moralist ; but he may have been in a
certain sense a practical evolutionist. 1 This is, of
course, an extreme case. Let me, therefore, give a
simpler, or, at least, a more modern illustration of
1 This was written before my feelings had been stirred by
the appalling nightmare conjured up by Mr Pearson in his
eminently suggestive book on "National Life and Character."
If it is decreed that the yellow and dark races are one day to
lord it over Western civilization Si res Europae nostramque
evertere gentem Immeritam msum Superis will not our ousted
posterity give to Zenghis Khan and Hyder Ali a place in the
Evolutionary (or Comtist) Calendar of the future ? To speak
more seriously : such acts as Qesar's summary treatment of the
Gauls and his wholesale massacre of the Germans will excite
less indignation in our descendants than in us, if they ever
come to believe that natural selection among races can be
brought about only through force of arms only through the
military superiority of the higher races asserting itself betimes
and doing its work unsparingly. Nay, to clothe a barbarous
thought in no less barbarous diction, may not the more head-
strong of those descendants propose, ere it is too late, to give
effect to the blessedness of strength by laying down the stern
maxim : " Salus civilizationis suprema lex " ?
36
" Blessed are the Strong."
the strife between evolution and ethics. A philo-
sophical statesman will do what he can for the good
of India ; but will he not, in moments of depression,
be haunted by the fear that, in ridding the nations
of war, famine, pestilence, and man-tigers, he is
staying the action, not of God's four sore judg-
ments, but of the beneficent pruning-knives where-
with He keeps down a redundant population ? At
any rate, while he is diligent in promoting all sani-
tary improvements, such a philosopher will vainly
try to forget that Nature levies a heavy tax on them
by making them instrumental in preserving the
sickly fathers of a sickly race. 1 In short, if free
play had been given to natural selection, men would
have been far worse than they now are, but they
would probably have been stronger.
Amiel has noted the anomaly that Darwinians are
generally in favour of equality, while yet "1'egali-
tarisme affirme le droit de n'etre pas mange par son
prochain ; le Darwinisme constate le fait que les gros
mangent les petits et ajoute : tant mieux"
In fact, the ideal of Christianity and civilization is
at war with the evolutionary ideal the latter ideal
demanding that the meet, and not the meek, shall
1 I know not if it be too egotistical for me to quote some
versiculi which appeared four years ago in a weekly journal,
and which by their very exaggeration may serve to illustrate
the question before us ; they are addressed to 7'he Influenza,
which they apostrophize in terms of paradoxical or ironical
praise :
" Stern helper of an age abhorred by Darwin,
An age when often they who weakest are, win ;
Sparing the strong, the invalid thou hittest,
And guardest the Survival of the Fittest."
37
Essays.
inherit the earth. But, as I have said, the evolu-
tionary ideal is giving way is being more and more
encroached upon by the ethical ideal. While, how-
ever, we rejoice at this encroachment, we may yet
doubt as Professor Huxley seemed to doubt
whether the benefit is an unmixed one. Renan
maintains that the military strength of the Hebrew
monarchy was lessened by the long peace that lasted
through Solomon's reign; and he pointedly adds that
such an enfeeblement is always the effect of a long
peace. He evidently looked with disfavour on the
ultra-pacific leanings of our most civilized races, and,
in a word, on the prospect of the complete subordina-
tion of might to popular notions of right on the ex-
tinction of evolution by ethics. Let us take a more
cheering and stimulating view than this, even though
at times we lookwistfully back at Old World Memories,
and though, after contemplating our
" Feeble and restless youths, born to inglorious days," 1
we are tempted to apply to our own forefathers the
line
KapTlffTOi p.kv Hcrav Kal KaprlffTois e/jAxovro.
" Great was the might of our sires, and they mightily fought
with the mighty."
Some years ago, an American minister at a Euro-
pean court, when conversing with an English
acquaintance, said in his haste, " What a good thing
it would be if every Irishman who comes over to us
would kill a nigger and get hanged for it." This
pious wish, if seriously meant, would have shown a
1 Clough.
38
" Blessed are the Strong."
steadfast and impartial devotion to the non-moral
aspect of the Evolutionary Ideal to Evolution
minus Ethics.
From these saddening reflections a somewhat con-
servative corollary may be drawn. The impeded
action of natural selection on man, and the conse-
quent irregularity of his development, have done
much to complicate all questions regarding him.
In this relation it is abundantly evident that what
Bacon has said of Nature is, above all, true of
Human Nature : its subtlety that is, its complexity
is greater by far than the subtlety of argument.
David was better equipped with his modest sling
than with the more pretentious panoply of Saul ; and
there is reason to fear that human society may fare
worse rather than better if it is deprived of those
safeguards which often appear antiquated and trivial,
but which experience has shown to be effective. No
doubt the force of such warnings is lessened by their
generality. They seem to cover the same ground
with James Mill's melancholy exclamation that
human life at its best is a poor thing. Indeed, all
general cautions are more or less dispiriting, and are
wont to have a strong flavour of pessimism. A
peculiar form of such pessimism has been indicated
in a very original remark of Mr Galton :
"We find out. of any group of a thousand men, selected at
random, some who are crippled, insane, idiotic, or otherwise
born incurably imperfect in body or mind, and it is possible
that this world may rank among other worlds as one of these."
If this supposition be true, then what dough's
39
Essays.
paradoxical hero says of Rome may be applied to
the round world and all that is therein ; our poor
little planet may be no better than one of the
"Things that Nature abhors, the experiments that she has
failed in."
Let us, however, observe that this pessimism is not
of an extreme sort, but is rather an epicurean
scepticism about progress. Those who maintain
it will often look upon human life as a good and
happy thing, as far as it goes ; but they will doubt
whether it is likely to become much better or
happier than it now is, and they will utterly deny
that it can ever reach an ideal standard : JVon, si se
ruperit, unquam Par erit. Now, whatever we may
think of such unexhilarating and unstimulating
speculations, we must at all events admit that the
human animal is in a sort of vicious circle. His
morality, by protecting the weak, has crippled
natural selection, and has thus set a limit to his
physical and doubtless also to his moral develop-
ment. As regards his physical development this
is plain. When other animals are forced to migrate
to a colder climate, their warmer clothing has, so
to say, to grow on their backs ; in short, they must
either adapt their bodies to the new conditions or
perish. Man, however, has escaped both the horns
of this dilemma. By means of houses, raiment,
fire, cookery, and other appliances, 1 he, in great
1 Among these appliances I should include the taking of salt
with our food a practice so habitual and so universal that we
find it hard to realize how odd a thing it is that such a practice
has become a necessity. A simple anecdote, related by Sir
40
" Blessed are the Strong."
measure, eludes the motherly or stepmotherly vigil-
ance of Nature. The increase in his numbers and
in his wants l adjusts itself to each physical improve-
ment ; and, in a word, his artificial condition begets
artificial needs. Not but that, man being himself
a part of Nature, all that is artificial in his condi-
tion is, in a wide sense, natural. So that all the
bewildering results pertaining to civilization are in
reality wrought by Nature ; they are the fruit of
evolution. All I contend for is that in this instance,
the direct road having been shut against Nature,
she has had to reach her goal through a by-path.
Mark Pattison once playfully rallied me on the
persistence with which, when the tide seems to
be setting strongly in the Radical or Iconoclastic
direction, I am for setting up one breakwater after
another. This half-serious banter of his may serve
William Gull, may bring this home to us. He said that an old
friend of his brought his daughter, who was anaemic, to consult
him. Gull prescribed iron ; but the father protested that he
had no faith in medicine, and that he wanted some "natural"
remedy. "I knew him very well," said Gull, as he told the
story; "so I said to him: 'You are very foolish. Your
daughter every day takes salt, that is, chloride of sodium. Is
there anything more unnatural in her taking iron occasionally
than in her taking chloride of sodium habitually?' "
1 Professor Bonamy Price told me that he once asked some
female students how man differs from the lower animals in
regard to emotions and aspirations. The best answer was a
concise one: "Man has progressive desires." Alas! is not
this inability to rest and be thankful a chief source of our woe
as well as of our weal ? Does it not render us often tentantes
majora, but seldom praesentibus aequos? "Be content with
such things as ye have" is the injunction of St Paul. " A state
of discontent is a state of progress," is the rejoinder of Carlyle.
41
Essays.
as a preface to an application of the foregoing reflec-
tions to the moral side of man's nature. Of the perils
of a Radical inundation I shall say hardly anything.
Mill has declared that, if men ever rise to the level
of loving their neighbours as themselves, and those
remote from them as those near to them, Communism
will become the only possible form of human society.
In saying this he was doubtless indicating the ideal
which was to be kept in view ; he meant that
human society ought to be made to roll smoothly
and steadily along the democratic lines. But
perhaps a very different conclusion may be drawn
from his principles. So plausible is the logic of
democracy, so easily expounded, and to the masses
necessarily so attractive, that one is tempted to ask :
Why has the democratic triumph been so long
delayed? Some of the a priori arguments com-
monly used by Radical orators would go to prove
that universal suffrage and electoral districts ought
to have been established among the early patriarchs,
if not among the " missing links." Why, then, have
the wheels of the democratic chariot so long tarried?
Why, above all, does the communistic ideal still
seem so immeasurably distant ? Is it not possible
that the causes which have so long retarded the
democratic triumph causes which have often
operated so unexpectedly and so mysteriously are
only in part understood ; that they lie deep in the
nature of things ?
Whether among these retarding causes are in-
cluded the agencies already mentioned, namely,
the impeded action of Natural Selection on man,
42
" Blessed are the Strong."
and the consequent irregularity of his development,
and whether there may be, peradventure, some
fortunate planet, wherein, like Righteousness and
Peace, Natural Selection and Morality may have
met together and kissed each other, it is needless
to inquire. Suffice it to say that for us who bear
the heavy and the weary weight of this disjointed
and unintelligible little world of ours, it may be well,
if so be that we are in haste to square the actual
with the democratic (or any other) ideal it may be
well for us to think upon the lofty utterance of
yEschylus that
OU7TWS
rdv Aibs ap/J-oviav,
Ovar&v irapel-taffi. [SovXal, 1
and upon Matthew Arnold's strong and sad con-
viction that we are compassed about with " the
uno'erleaped mountains of Necessity" which neither
faith nor force can remove.
And, carrying the same line of argument into
higher regions, let us ask : If Worship be not a
permanent need of the human heart, why tarry so
long the wheels of the chariot of Irreligion? The
results of science and criticism really bring to the
front the anomaly implied in this question. Each
fresh wound inflicted by critics and philosophers on
Religion is so speedily followed by at least a partial
recovery as to bewilder us with the sense of her per-
sistent vitality :
" Non Hydra secto corpora firmior
Vinci dolentem crevit in Herculem."
1 " Nought avail the counsels of men against the harmonious
ordering of Zeus."
43
Essays.
As I have here a strong case, I will forbear to dilute
it by the infusion of disputable matter ; and I will
therefore say little about the further question, how
far the constant need of religion raises a presump-
tion in favour of the truth of any particular form of
religion. All I insist on is that, whatever may be
the case with philosophers, who, as a class, have a
peculiar temperament and comparatively few tempta-
tions, never yet among large masses of men has
morality been able to stand firmly on its own
foundations, and to lay aside the buttress of religion.
Will this always be the case ? It is hard to
answer such a question in the negative. But it is
at least as hard to answer it in the affirmative, as
may be shown by quoting a weighty admission made
by a chief apostle of modern thought. "It may
happen," writes Dr Mawdsley, "such possibly is
the tremendous irony of fate that the complete
accomplishment of disillusion shall be the close of
development and the beginning of degeneration."
This foreboding has a flavour of the story of the tree
of knowledge, and may suggest the queer corollary :
Quern diabolus vult perdere, prius illuminat.
How can such a concession be reconciled with
the principles of evolution ? At first sight, it ap-
pears to be fatal to those principles. But in truth
the difficulty may be lessened by referring once more
to my universal solvent, the impeded action of
Natural Selection on Man, and the consequent
irregularity of his development. " The struggle for
existence," says Professor Foster, "has brought to
the front a brain ever ready to outrun its more
44
" Blessed are the Strong."
humble helpmates." Is it not equally possible that,
in the long struggle for existence, the emotions and
the imagination of most men and of all womanly
women may have become as outrageously dispropor-
tionate as the neck of the giraffe or the beak of the
toucan ? May they not, at any rate, have outrun
their less active helpmate, the reason ? Goethe
insists that Man would not be the aristocratic being
that he is in the world, if he were not too aristocratic
for the world. If so, is it not inevitable that a man
of the "aristocratic" the saintly type (after a
nobler fashion than Alexander the Great) aestuat
infelix is chafed and fretted by the pettiness of the
world in which he lives ? Does he not thus acquire
an overmastering need to build up for himself an
ideal world, a world of the imagination, wherewith
to correct the cruelty and injustice of the actual
world ? Thus hope becomes to the saintly character
an essential condition of happiness. It is not true
that " Man never is, but always to be blest," for Man
is moderately blest in the prospect of being im-
moderately blest. The Supernatural steps in when-
ever Reason fails to cheer us and to right us if we
roam. In fact Morality's deficiency is Religion's
opportunity. In the second part of this article I
will add a qualification to the somewhat misty and
depressing theory which I am driving to its extreme
logical conclusion. At present, it is enough to say
that most educated Christians would probably admit
that our posthumous selves are likely to be less
anthropomorphic, and heaven is likely to be less
geomorphic, than, when we give free play to our
45
Essays.
imagination and emotions, we are apt to expect and
desire. 1
I was puzzled in my youth by the promise that
" the meek shall inherit the earth " ; they may inherit
heaven, I said to myself, but the earth is just what
they do not inherit. Difficulties of a like nature have
cropped up in the discussions on Professor Huxley's
" Romanes Lecture." If Evolution, it is asked, in
effect says, Blessed are the strong, for they shall prey
on the weak, and Morality says, Blessed are the meek :
let the weak be diligently tended does not this contra-
diction show that the sources of Morality are to be
sought elsewhere than in Evolution ? In seeking to
answer this question, I will offer two considerations,
premising that the first of them is more open to
1 In the last stanza of " Crossing the Bar," Tennyson speaks
of the future life as outside "our bourne of time and place ; "
and yet in the same stanza he looks forward to "seeing" his
" Pilot face to face." Can the reference to the power of vision
outside space be more than a metaphor, and can any state of
consciousness be conceived unconditioned by time ? Compare
with this the beautiful passage in the "Christian Year" (Sixth
Sunday after Epiphany) beginning : "What is the heaven we
idly dream?" On the other hand, Dr Pusey, whose conception
of heaven might be expected to have been as spiritual as Keble's,
on one occasion betrayed a realistic other-worldliness worthy of
the wife of Zebedee. " Not many weeks after his son's death,"
writes Canon Liddon, "Dr Pusey said, in the course of conver-
sation to the present writer, ' I cannot help thinking that if dear
Philip is allowed, now or hereafter, to be anywhere near St
Cyril in another world, St Cyril may be able to show him some
kindness, considering all that Philip has done in these later days
to make St Cyril's writings better known to our countrymen."
Two great Evolutionary writers have insisted that religious pro-
gress tends towards the de-anthropornorphization of God. Does
it not equally tend towards the de-gcomorphization of heaven ?
46
" Blessed are the Strong."
objection than the second. First, then, Evolution
has so moulded us, that we, at least the best of us,
are not satisfied with an ideal of brute force, or even
of brute enjoyment. We want life to be interesting
as well as happy. Social equality is the direct and
broad road towards happiness, though (like another
broad road) it may end in disaster ; whereas a con-
siderable amount of social inequality is, perhaps,
needed to make life interesting and brilliant. Thus
evil may have its use in the general economy. " If
the devil were made away with," says a paradoxical
French writer, " saints and sinners would alike lose
their occupation. On s'ennuyerait mortelkment"
In a flawless world we might be doomed propter
vitam vivendi perdere causas. Earth might placidly
" stand at gaze, like Joshua's moon at Ajalon." If
the mitigation of suffering is useful as a discipline,
does not suffering itself form part of a complex
phenomenon which gives variety and colour to life ?
Renan had a decided opinion on this subject ; and
clothed that opinion in one of those odd illustrations
which impress and amuse when they do not shock
us. The universe, he said, is like a huge oyster.
It does not seem conspicuous for intelligence, but it
has a sort of clumsy power of adapting means to
ends. Pain is to the universe what the pearl is to
the oyster. We may call pain the disease of the
universe, but it is a disease of priceless value. This,
then, is Renan's ingeniously-illustrated theory. He
might have compared our modern civilization to a
lofty pyramid, which, at its apex, touches the sky,
narrowing as it rises, but which must rest upon a
47
Essays.
broad basis of suffering. And it is not uncharitable
to add that, on the whole, he wished the pyramid
to stand firm. For an intellectual oligarchy is the
ideal of men of culture as a class at any rate, it is
the ideal of the class enervated by culture, of the
class represented by Count Pococurante in "Candide,"
and by the epicurean Cardinal in "John Inglesant." 1
But an ardent philanthropist would call on the man
of culture to prove that a community cannot be at
once brilliant and happy ; and he would, moreover,
add that, if the man of culture is right, if the in-
tellectual distinction of the few is incompatible with
the well-being of the many, every good man should
unhesitatingly pronounce in favour of the common-
place humanitarian ideal the ideal, so to say, of
three acres and a cow.
Such, then, is what I call my first consideration,
and such is the objection to it. So manifest is the
force of this objection that, as I have said, I lay
greater stress on my second consideration, which is
as follows : Every community should be more or less
leavened with meekness. I say " more or less,"
because every community also has need of self-help
and self-assertion. But our poor human nature is
already so much inclined to self-assertion that re-
1 Nearly all elderly humanists have at times a whiff (so to
speak) of that epicurean spirit by which Mr Andrew Lang
more vigorously than seriously professes to be animated :
" We whistle where we once repined.
Confound the woes of human-kind !
By heaven we're ' well deceived,' I wot ;
Who hum, contented or resigned,
' Life's more amusing than we thought.' "
48
" Blessed are the Strong."
ligion is bound to throw all her weight into the
scale of meekness. Is not this trimming of the
balance absolutely required ? It is required all the
more because of the evolutionary arguments that
might be urged in favour of stamping out the weak.
Those arguments, though plausible, are incon-
clusive. To stamp out the weak, nay, even to leave
them to the tender mercies of Nature in the manner
recommended by Plato, would cause more evil by
making men hard than good by making them hardy.
Thus, we may apply to meekness the metaphor that
Bacon has used about a very different quality : it is
" like unto varnish, that makes the ceilings not only
shine but last." l In fact, meekness is a sort of anti-
septic a preservative against moral decay. After all,
do not the manifold and enduring achievements of
Christianity testify to the saving worth of this truly
Christian virtue? They bear such testimony alike
whether Christianity is regarded as a Divine revela-
tion, or as a mere outcome of evolution. If Chris-
tianity is a Divine revelation, opposition is silenced ;
for the Divine revelation enjoins meekness, and
against that injunction there is no appeal. If, on
the other hand, Christianity is a mere product of
evolution, there is still a presumption that the sur-
vival of the Religion of Meekness is the survival also
of the fittest. At this point, therefore, the hostile
parties may join hands. Orthodox Christians and
uncompromising Evolutionists may agree in saying :
Blessed is the Religion of Meekness, for it has gained
and has kept the inheritance of the earth.
1 Essay " On Vain Glory."
D 49
Essays.
II.
RENAN AND RENANISM.
"Ces amis indulgents sont encore les premiers des bien-
faiteurs qui prennent 1'homme entier avec le rire, lui versent
1'experience dans la gaiete, et savent les moyens puissants d'une
joie sensee, cordiale et legitime." STE. BEUVE.
The cheerful scepticism, the acquiescence in
limitation, indicated in the first part of this article,
rose to a height in the compositions of the greatest
prose-writer of our generation. And, therefore, it
may be worth while to bestow some thought on his
account of his own experience. This is the more
needful as in this country Renan is chiefly known
(or known of) by his least satisfactory and one of
his least characteristic works.
It is in the " Souvenirs de ma Jeunesse," and in
some of the " Etudes," more than in the " Vie de
Je"sus," that he bears eloquent witness to the tender
(if slightly patronizing) regret which he still cherished
for his early beliefs. The sun of religion had set for
him, but he loved to bask in the afterglow. And
especially he loved to tell all the world how he came
so to bask, and how he felt when so basking.
Perhaps I may more clearly illustrate Renan's
state of mind by saying broadly that his imaginative
youth throve on Christian aspirations. Great, there-
fore, was the shock to him when his beatific vision
faded away. To fill up the void thence arising, he
replaced the consolations of a saint by the consola-
5
" Blessed are the Strong."
tions of a poet. When in this mood he did not
share Hamlet's objection to being " Promise-
crammed " ; rather, like Hamlet, he was fain to
cry, " Stay, illusion ! " At other times he played
with what Shelley would have called his "wreck
of a dissolving dream," by representing that dream
to himself as nought but an idealized reflection of
his hopes and wishes. Not that he at once
acquiesced in being baffled and cajoled by this
strangely reflecting or refracting medium, this
magic mirror. Like the heroine of " Wonder-
land," he tried but, unlike her, he failed to
penetrate through the looking-glass and to see
beyond. Gradually, however, a sense of impotent
resignation came over him. Or, rather, he still
struggled, but struggled artistically. Out of his
ineffectual longings he made literary capital. He
let himself be regarded sometimes perhaps he
posed as a bird impatient of his cage. He beat
against its bars, not hard enough to hurt himself or
to ruffle his plumage, but just enough to give a
heightened effect to his song.
Renan thus became a glorified representative no
doubt, but still a representative, of what his country-
men call the fin de siecle philosophy. I borrow this
queer epithet because it seems to me not merely
to announce the indubitable fact that our present
philosophy is the philosophy of the end of our
century, but also to have (probably by design) an
ominous and a croaking sound about it seems to
carry with it a suggestion that the old and beloved
order changeth, and that our wonted paths have
5 1
Essays.
to be given up. 1 Renan himself thought that our
lot is cast on halcyon days, not unlike those of the
Antonines. He says we can hardly do better than
"alternately love and hate" the age in which we live;
for it is a very " amusing " and " charming " epoch,
and yet "all Europe is suffering from a sore evil."
I once reminded Pattison of his own forecast, that
haply in two centuries' time the now despised Posi-
tivist will be more powerful than the now dreaded
Catholic ; and I asked him whether he thought that,
if his prediction is fulfilled, the world will be able to
adjust itself completely to the altered state of things.
" I doubt it," he replied. " Human nature requires
discipline. Renan ascribes the sound moral condi-
tion of Brittany to the stern discipline which was
imposed upon them some centuries ago. But this
discipline is being relaxed everywhere, and I do not
see how it is to be restored without religion." A
similar foreboding lurks beneath Renan's assertion
that the societies of the ancient world had learnt that
all is vanity ; and he significantly adds that a society
which has learnt this lesson is on the eve of perish-
ing. And the worst of it was that he regarded this
fatal lesson as no more than the truth. Thus, then,
1 It is noteworthy that two writers of our time who, perhaps
more than any others, undermined the chief bulwark of the
social order, were nevertheless strongly Conservative. " His-
tory," said Strauss, "is a staunch aristocrat." And Renan,
with even greater directness, declared that " les Conservateurs
sont le sel de la terre." Without maintaining this paradox,
the paradox that they best do serve who only stand and wait,
we may yet think that such a proverb as Headstrong goes head-
long, if it does not exist, has need to be invented.
5 2
" Blessed are the Strong."
we see how he came to think that the knowledge of
the exact truth is often unwholesome for the multi-
tudes, and how he was led to admit the principles of
esoterism in religious matters. Scherer has probably
hit the mark in saying that Renan was alternately
fascinated by the ideal, and convinced that the ideal
rings hollow. Scherer was a great admirer of Renan ;
so much so that on one occasion he paid him a
compliment which seems to me extravagant, if not
unmeaning. 1 I was, therefore, surprised when,
shortly before he died, I received a letter from him
saying that "Renan is a jellyfish without backbone." 2
He wrote this under irritation at the tone assumed
by Renan in his strictures on Amiel; but I suspect
that the severity of the censure was partly due to
Renan's affectation of want of seriousness, his some-
what aggressive flippancy. It may be as well to
touch for a moment on this quality of Renan, not
merely because he has incurred reproach among most
Englishmen, and nearly all women, on account of
his levity, but also because this legtrete is the beset-
ting (or " redeeming ") vice of the exponents of the
philosophy which we are considering. It is not,
however, needful to recapitulate in regard to the
genial cynicism of Renan the remarks which, in
1 He compares Renan with Darwin, and speaks of Darwin as
the one who, if either of them had to be thrown overboard,
could most easily be spared. The comparison between two
such dissimilar objects recalls the comment which the sky-blue
young lady (so to call her) made on the Coliseum " It is very
pretty, but not so pretty as Naples ! "
2 I have lately touched on this point in a letter to "Litera-
ture" (Jan. 8th, 1898), entitled "Renan and Mark Pattison."
L. A. T. (1898).
53
Essays.
my "Stones of Stumbling," are applied to the
somewhat acrid cynicism of Pattison. Suffice it to
say that even a serious thinker, if he sees the seamy
side of things all round, is apt to become cynical in
his own despite ; for he must be partly entertained
if he would not be wholly desperate when he per-
ceives that the seams are often very ugly and very
rough, and, moreover, that the seamy side of things
is co-extensive with the presentable side co-exten-
sive, and, alas ! fatally connected with it. 1 Hence
arises that serio-comic contemplation of our sinning
and sorrowing race which the French call ironic, but
for which we have as yet no English equivalent.
The clumsy compound " world-humour " will hardly
serve; but the simple old word "humour," though
still vague in its meaning, is being gradually
narrowed so as to represent this very misunder-
1 Is not cynicism sometimes a whimsical mode of asking for
sympathy? An introspective man of the world, when his
motives seem questionable, is careful not to proclaim them on
the housetop. On the other hand, an introspective writer who
has weak nerves and great need of sympathy, is oppressed by
hearing of the exalted motives which unintrospective persons
arrogate to themselves motives more unalloyed than those of
which he is conscious in his own heart. Wishing to set his too
sensitive conscience at rest, he has a morbid craving to take his
readers into his confidence by telling them that his own motives
will not bear examination, and that theirs are no better. He
is pretty sure to overstate the case ; and, at any rate, his readers,
irritated by what he says or implies against them, are too ready
to take literally what he says or implies against himself. Em-
bittered by being thus misunderstood, the most sensitive of men
will sometimes become a r.ynique malgrt lui. This observation
has special reference to Pattison. May it not, also, in some
measure, be applied to Thackeray ?
54
" Blessed are the Strong."
standable quality. Thus I sometimes think that,
if it is true enough for an epigram that Brevity is
the soul of wit, it is at least as true that Levity is the
soul of humour.
Renan had this ironic or humour in the fullest
possible measure, though in him it generally took the
form of innuendo (vwovoia). To speak strictly, he was
neither a laughing nor a weeping, but a smiling
philosopher. He had much of that " smiling tolera-
tion " which Goethe commends as the characteristic
virtue of the Vicar of Wakefield, and of other good
Protestant clergymen. Hence it always puzzles me
that admirers of Goethe so often abuse Renan.
Was there not much in common between the two
men ? Each of them, after breaking loose from the
popular theology, sought refuge in a mystical religion
a religion hovering between idealism and scep-
ticism. Indeed, Renan's philosophy, or rather his
whole tone of mind and character, would have found
favour with Goethe ; for he was (to translate Goethe's
own words) just the sort of kindly cynic
" Who, casting at the world a scornful jest,
Whispers : I am no better than the rest." *
1 Renan must have known both how to be in want and how
to abound in respect of popularity. A French lady tells me
that there was a saying in Brittany that, if one had to choose
between two paths, Renan being on the one, and Satan on the
other, the latter direction would be the more eligible one. The
extreme opposite of this view was shown when I asked for one
of Renan's volumes at a great publisher's in Paris. With easy
assurance the shopman exclaimed in staccato English : " What !
you desire a book of Mister Renan. He is not only a great
litterateur a great writer but he tells you what you are to
believe about religion ! "
55
Essays.
Such, then, is a brief explanation of the cynical
humour the "neutral tint" mentioned at the out-
set of this article, which is at once the result of
some modern theories, and the cause of some queer
modern forms of expression. The explanation
should be borne in mind both by writer and
reader, as we touch on some of the more be-
wildering of Renan's paradoxes. We should
especially bear it in mind to prevent being over-
much startled by such utterances as the following :
"A force de chimeres, on avait reussi a obtenir du
bon gorille [i.e. I'homme] un effort moral surprenant;
otees les chimeres, une partie de 1'energie factice
qu'elles eveillaient disparaitra. . . . Supprimez
1'alcool au travailleur dont il fait la force, mais ne
lui demandez plus la meme somme de travail.
. . . Ce n'est pas d'aujourd'hui que le bonheur
et la noblesse de rhomme reposent sur un porte-
a-faux." In fact, though Renan regarded the real
world as nought but a play that is played, he, for
that very reason, constructed an ideal world to
satisfy the needs of his imagination and his emo-
tions. He quaintly insisted on everyone's right de
tailler a sa guise son roman de rinfini. He per-
haps considered religion to be the clothing of
morality an artificial protection which (as was
said above of ordinary clothing) the impeded
action of natural selection on Man may have
rendered necessary. He seems to have agreed
with Fontenelle and Gibbon that the beginning
of old age is often the happiest period in life. At
that period, he says, one learns "que tout est
56
" Blessed are the Strong."
vain, mais aussi qu'une foule de vaines choses
sont dignes d'etre longuement savourees." He
maintains that our beatific visions involve " une
impossibilite physique et une necessite absolue
morale." 1 According to this view, the moralist
must value human life and aspirations at some-
thing above their real worth. Or, rather, he must
gaze on the world, as it were, through a stereoscope
through a medium which gives to appearances, to
representations, the look of being substantial.
The only occasion on which I was brought into
any sort of personal relation to Renan, arose from
the surprise expressed in my "Recollections of
Pattison," at his statement that the quality of
humour the capacity de sourire de son ceuvre is
conspicuous in the sayings of Christ. 2 The late
Lord Arthur Russell, a personal friend of Renan,
shared my surprise; and, after referring the diffi-
culty to Renan himself, he communicated to me
what both he and I regarded as Renan's very
unsatisfactory explanation. The explanation, in
fact, amounted merely to this : The sayings re-
corded in the Gospels convey the impression that
spiritual truths cannot be adequately apprehended
1 The two last quotations are given from memory ; but I am
satisfied that they are correct at least in substance.
2 Can Renan have been thinking of Luke viii. 10? If, in
the middle of that verse, the words "that seeing" had been
"lest seeing," the meaning would have been plain. But it is
hard to doubt that, in the passage as it stands, there has been
either a misreport or a mistranslation from the Aramaic, or some
latent irony which neither the reporter nor the translator has
brought out.
57
Essays.
by the human intellect, or at any rate they cannot
be adequately expressed in human language ; whence
it was inferred that what is said about those truths
must be taken as purely symbolical. The foregoing
ascription of humour to Christ is worth mentioning
chiefly because it illustrates the common tendency
among men to make the Object of their worship or
veneration in their own image to attribute to such
an Object qualities akin to their own.
Somebody once complained that an Oxford Pro-
fessor (now a Professor Emeritus] was too fond of
" writing smartly about God " ; and, in like manner,
it must be owned that some of Kenan's theological
epigrams jar on an English ear. Thus, he says that
religions are like women ; nothing can be obtained
from them by violence, but everything by politic
concessions ; in fact, parendo vincuntur?- Our
author is on firmer ground when he contends that
nature treats us like soldiers : she makes us fight
and die in a cause which is not ours. He doubtless
meant that, even as an old wasp shortly before her
death is impelled by a marvellous instinct to store up
for her young, whom she will never see, food of a
kind which in her wasp-state she never ate, so we are
impelled by means of illusion to provide for posterity.
1 Somebody, being in a cynical mood, once said in conversa-
tion that to express a moral or scientific truth in terms of theo-
logy is " to translate it into the Middlesex dialect " the dialect,
he unchivalrously implied, which the more rational sex has to
adopt in talking down to the more emotional sex ! It may have
been partly with a like aim that Renan has laid down for philo-
sophers the general principle : Au milieu de tabsolue fluidite"
des choses tnaintenons FEternel.
58
" Blessed are the Strong."
The splendide mendacia, " the white lies," wherewith
the Great Mother beguiles and entices her human
children, would doubtless include the desire of
posthumous fame and the fear of posthumous
retribution. The ministers and propagators of
this latter form of illusion Renan regarded with
toleration rather than sympathy. A Catholic
priest, he said, is like a bird in a cage. A Liberal
Protestant clergyman, on the other hand, is like a
bird one of whose wings has been clipped ; he seems
free, and so in fact he is until he tries to soar.
From all this it appears that Renan was anything
but an enthusiast about progress. He despaired of
making human life much happier, and his optimism
took the not uncommon form of wishing to make
that life more interesting. " Happy," it is often said,
"is the nation that has no history"; whence it would
seem to follow that Dull are the annals of a happy
nation. It is probable that Renan felt something of
this sort, and he may especially have felt that, when
busy with a bygone age of flat and languid felicity, a
brilliant historian is scarce more minded to rejoice
with them that have rejoiced than he would be if
bidden to infuse liveliness into the chronicles of
Paradise. At any rate, Renan writes :
"Get univers est un spectacle que Dieu se donne a lui-meme ;
servons les intentions du grand chorege en contribuant & rendre
le spectacle aussi brillant, aussi varie que possible. 1 ... La
1 Diderot, writing to Mdlle. Volland, says : " Le monde,
une sottise ! Ah ! mon amie, la belle sottise pourtant 1 C'est,
selon quelques habitants du Malabar, une des soixante-quatorze
comedies dont 1'Eternel s'amuse." One wonders whether the
seventy-three other comedies are equally entertaining.
59
Essays.
fete de 1'univers manquerait de quelque chose si le monde
n'etait peuple que de fanatiques iconoclastes et de lourdauds
vertueux."
These passages are worth noting because they
point to a favourite theory of Kenan's. He held
that there are in the main two clearly defined ideals
of human conduct. There is the Greek or aristo-
cratic ideal, which aims at achieving striking results ;
and there is the Hebrew or democratic ideal, which
aims at producing the greatest amount of individual
happiness. The former of these ideals, we may
remark, corresponds roughly to the evolutionary
ideal, which says, Blessed are the meet ; the latter
corresponds to the ethical ideal, which says, Blessed
are the meek. Renan maintained that on the ideal
which we prefer will depend our entire view of
history and life ; and, in particular, on this preference
will depend our judgment as to whether the general
policy of France has been excellent or detestable.
He himself evidently, and indeed naturally, took the
more favourable estimate. On the other hand, I
(being an Englishman) felt some curiosity to know on
what ground his very high estimate of France and her
doings could be based. My perplexity was, however,
diminished when I came upon some quaintly out-
spoken remarks addressed by Thiers to Nassau
Senior :
" What a nation is France ! How mistaken in her objects,
how absurd in her means, yet how glorious is the result of her
influence and of her example ! I do not say that we are a happy
people ; I do not say that we are good neighbours ; we are
always in hot water ourselves, and we are always the pest and
the plague of all who have anything to do with us ; but, after
60
" Blessed are the Strong."
all, we are the salt of the earth. We are always fighting,
always inquiring, always inventing, always destroying prejudices,
and breaking up institutions, and supplying political science
with new facts, new experiments, and new warnings. Two or
three thousand years hence, when civilization has passed on in
its westward course, when Europe is in the state in which we
now see Asia Minor and Syria and Egypt, only two of her
children will be remembered one a sober well-disposed good
boy, the other a riotous unmanageable spoilt child, and I am
not sure that posterity will not like the naughty boy best."
I think it is in La Princesse de Babylone that
Voltaire makes his hero call the English the grown
men of Europe, but the French, he adds, are her
children, "And with them I love to play."
To return to Renan and his queer sayings. We
should remember that in the examples given above
he is (as the phrase goes) thinking aloud j or, rather,
he is thinking on paper. Nay, his words, instead of
half concealing his soul within, depict that soul in
caricature. Allowance must also be made for such
exaggeration when he seems to imply that mankind
would have been more of a loser if some second or
third-rate Italian city of the Middle Ages had been
blotted out of history, than if the entire American
continent had been so blotted out. After all, such
an over-statement as the above merely illustrates the
sort of picturesque surprise which imaginative his-
torians love to impart. Macaulay showed a similar
bias when he declared that the world owed less to
the empire of Rome than to the city of Athens, and
less to the kingdom of France than to the city of
Florence. On the whole, an unfriendly critic, or
haply a candid friend, might sum up Renan's
teaching on this wise :
61
Essays.
" If all is vanity, is it not vanity of vanities to fret
over the thought that all is vanity ? If human life
is a comedy, it is through thinking it anything but a
comedy that mankind has made it rather a good
comedy. If Nature has decreed that the welfare of
bees should depend on fratricide, is it incredible that
she may have decreed that the welfare of men should
depend on illusion ? S't7 riy a pas un Paradts, il
faut Pinventer. "O vagi evftffttpsi rour' tJvai $a.fj,tv.
Indeed, in according praise and blame, we habitually
substitute practical truth (that is, convenient false-
hood) for literal truth more than we suspect. A Neces-
sarian philosopher, who says to an erring dependent
' You might have done better ' is inconsistent, and
sometimes knows that he is. And every philosopher,
whether Necessarian or not, in the moral judgments
of everyday life, makes little, if any, allowance for
the enormous disadvantage under which many men
labour through heredity, education, and the tempta-
tions of after-life; he has to assume life to be an
even race, whereas he knows it to be a handicap
race. On this and other grounds, it is, to say the
least, difficult to clear of all logical objections the
ground for the obligation of self-sacrifice. 1 Is it
not, then, possible that our higher dreams may
furnish the keystone of the Ideal arch a needful,
if illusory, sanction for a needful but fictitious sense
of obligation ? "
1 In " Stones of Stumbling," p. 166, I have recorded the strong
opinion expressed by Pattison on this subject. Did not even
Bishop Butler hint at a doubt whether the sense of moral re-
sponsibility would bear the strain of severe logical manipulation ?
62
cc Blessed are the Strong."
To represent Renan as thinking thus would
doubtless be to exaggerate his own exaggerations.
And yet there is a large and increasing body of
earnest thinkers who, like him, build, as it were, for
themselves an Ideal home, resting partly on a
foundation of make-believe. At all events, there
are many men, half-poets and half-saints, who
would be at one with the Rector of the Jesuits in
" John Inglesant," when he says of religious beliefs,
" These things are true to each of us, according as
we see them ; they are, in fact, but shadows and
likenesses of the absolute truth, that reveals itself
to men in different ways, but always imperfectly as
in a glass." In a like spirit the saintly Dorothea
asks of Ladislaw, " What is your religion ? I mean
not what you know about religion, but the belief
that helps you most ? " Elsewhere, George Eliot
contends that the truth which religious philosophers
should pursue when seeking sympathy with the
outer world is truth of feeling ; which, after all, is
much what Mark Pattison meant when he said that
such philosophers should practise economy of truth.
In other words, the outer world will never understand
the point of view of philosophers ; and yet it is of
the last importance that these two classes of persons
should have the same springs of moral action. It
is therefore enough if they are united, not by identity,
but by equivalence, of theological beliefs ; the beliefs
of both classes should bear the proper relation to
their respective degrees of intellectual and moral
culture, and should be such as to give an adequate
support to the moral life. Perhaps it may be said
63
Essays.
that religion is in the spiritual world what the atmo-
sphere is in the physical world. It is needed by all,
and is in a sense the same to all ; and yet it is
eminently elastic. At the lowest levels it is dense,
and sometimes of the earth earthy ; whereas on the
heights it is attenuated and often cold, but it is pure,
clear, and invigorating.
It would have been beside my purpose to dwell
so long on the manner and matter of Renan if he
had not been a representative of an important class
of men the class of men who, with Pagan heads
and Christian hearts, aim at uniting the two beati-
tudes, Blessed are the strong, and Blessed are the
meek; or rather who, if the strength, the lasting
strength, of the community is their ultimate goal,
seek that goal through the pathway of meekness.
To this class belonged Amiel and Matthew Arnold.
I once heard W. R. Greg express surprise that
Matthew Arnold, being such a free-lance, was
yet spared by the orthodox party. It certainly
seems that by most educated Anglicans Matthew
Arnold was at worst pitied as a wandering sheep,
whereas Renan was abhorred as a wolf. And
yet the theological standpoint of the two men
was much the same. There was, however, a
marked divergence between the paths that they
followed. This divergence was due in part to
causes outside themselves. Macaulay has lamented
that the English Church, instead of expelling Wesley
and his disciples, did not take a lesson from the
truly Catholic forethought with which the Roman
Church had turned to account the fanatical zeal of
64
" Blessed are the Strong."
St Francis and St Theresa. In this instance, then,
the advantage was on the Catholic side. But, on
the other hand, the Catholic Church has been less
skilful than the English Church, or indeed than
Protestant Churches generally, in the tending and
the pruning of budding Rationalism. The Catho-
lic Church cast off Renan, and practically dared
him to do his worst; whereas Matthew Arnold re-
mained to the last in an odd sort of communion
with the Church of England, and more or less con-
sciously wrote under the restraining influences of
Anglican traditions. Not less strikingly did the
Catholic attitude towards Renan contrast with the
Protestant attitude towards Amiel. Renan piteously
complained that persons with whom he would fain
have been in sympathy met his advances by imposing
the condition Croyez comme nous. In particular,
nearly all women seemed to have an extreme
antipathy to him. Very different was the experience
of the author of the drearily, if not affectedly, melan-
choly " Journal Intime." Amiel was the centre of a
circle of female comforters and admirers, drawn to
him by the force of pupillary attraction ; in illustra-
tion of which I will quote from memory, but I think
accurately, a quaint passage from his " Journal " :
" Pour rester vivant, il faut se rajeunir sans cesse par
la mue des sentiments et par I'amour a la mode
platonicienne." Let me add that Amiel was what I
call a good Neo-Protestant, just as Matthew Arnold
was a good Neo-Anglican. Even as the philosophical
Pontiff, in Cicero's treatise " On the Nature of the
Gods," was loyal to his national religion without
E 65
Essays.
" assigning any reason " for the creed which he pro-
fessed, so, according to Scherer, Amiel " est chretien,
car il veut 1'etre " ; Amiel's religion was " la forme
de sa vie morale." So far is Scherer from blaming
Amiel for his conformity that he thinks him for-
tunate in having been able to practise it fortunate,
that is, in having been born and bred a Protestant.
In this case, therefore, as in nearly every other,
Protestant toleration has shown itself superior to
Catholic.
But let us be just to Catholicism. It is some-
times said that France, with all her faults, deserves
credit for the sympathetic tie wherewith she bound
to herself the hearts of the Germanic Alsatians ; and,
in like manner, it should be noted to the credit of
the great mediaeval Church, with her costly, sonorous,
and incense-laden ritual, that the disowned and de-
tested Renan never ceased to love and revere her
never ceased
"mirari beatae
Fumum et opes strepitumque Romae."
Nay, further : the beautiful passage of Renan which
is printed on the fly-page of " Stones of Stumbling "
shows that at times he was prepared to take as his
motto Nos Christianitas. At this point, therefore,
he would have joined hands with Matthew Arnold
and Amiel. They all claimed in their different ways
to be unwilling promoters of indispensable theological
reforms to be, as it were, the Whigs of religion,
and, therefore, in the truest sense, Conservative.
With many readers, such a claim may move laughter
or indignation. To me the claim seems to be worthy
66
" Blessed are the Strong."
of consideration, and to be, above all, pathetic
pathetic especially because of the half-unconscious
misgivings which those who put it forth are wont to
mingle with their exultations. It is as if the for-
lorn Adam, after manifold wanderings, had been
suffered, before his death, to visit Eden once
more, and had found it still beautiful as ever,
but beautiful after a serene and earthly fashion
had found it unplanted with magical trees, and
untenanted by a talkative snake. More secure
the holy ground thus transformed might have
seemed to him than of old. Nevertheless, would
not a sense of strangeness, of disappointment, have
been present to him, and would not a whispered
" Ichabod " have escaped from him ? Such a com-
parison may serve to illustrate the general outlines
of the somewhat faded religion from which the
disillusionized saint or sage seeks to draw comfort.
May not that religion be more exactly defined ?
I was thinking of such a disillusionized philosopher
as Renan or Matthew Arnold when I said, in
" Stones of Stumbling," that a philosopher's heaven
may be defined as A state of blessedness symbol-
ized as a place of enjoyment; and I will now
add that such a philosopher's religion may be de-
fined as The worship of the Ideal symbolized as the
Supernatural}-
1 Writing about Renan, one catches the malady (if malady it
be) of becoming Renanesque of illustrating grave subjects by
homely metaphors. Let me, therefore, say that, in the case
of every modern counterpart of Marius the Epicurean, old hopes
and illusions may be likened unto tadpoles' tails, which in
mature life seem to be dropped, but are in reality absorbed. In
6 7
Essays.
Such a philosophical religion, however, must
needs be unsatisfactory. The philosophers who
hold to it accept it in a non-literal sense, while
they wish to be regarded by the outer world as
accepting it in a literal sense. Doubtless there is
high authority in favour of thus wearing a life-long
mask. Not only did the worldly-wise Goethe re-
commend the wearing of such a mask, but even the
pious ^Eschylus represents that earliest philan-
thropist, Prometheus, as boasting that he had
deceived mankind for their good, and the poet
himself, speaking through the mouth of the Chorus,
seems to bestow praise on the salutary fraud :
HP. Ti/0Xas ev cti/ro?s e\7rt'5as
XO. fji.{y' u
And is not a like conclusion suggested by Swift's
cynical utterance that happiness consists in the
perpetual possession of being well-deceived ? Still,
however great are the names that may be cited on
behalf of economy of truth, the practice of such
economy, if it is often a necessity, must, at best,
be a necessary evil. It is assuredly an evil to act
on the assumption that Natura humana non nisi
decipiendo regitur. Can nothing be done to lessen
this evil ? In the hope of lessening it, I would
fain offer one consideration, merely for what it is
worth, well contented if by so doing I can restore
some lonely and stranded philosopher to sympathetic
intercourse with his unstranded friends.
the case of Renan, the absorption was perhaps incomplete ; in
the case of Matthew Arnold and Amiel it was as thorough as in
that of Marius the Epicurean himself.
68
" Blessed are the Strong."
It is (or used to be) often assumed that Darwin-
ism pure and simple is subversive of our higher
hopes. Does it in reality thus blot out the beatific
vision ? In touching on the question I shall try
to show the diffidence which an inexpert should
never lay aside when treating of scientific matters.
To one such inexpert, then, it seems that evolu-
tionists, when trying to establish our simian descent,
are too solicitous to prove that every part of man's
physical, mental and moral frame must have had
at least a rudimentary counterpart in the gorilla
and the chimpanzee. Nature, the evolution-
ists often assume, never makes a leap. But,
on the other hand, Professor Huxley admits
that practically Nature does leap. She leaps, for
instance, when she unexpectedly produces a child
with six fingers on a hand. She would be leaping
even if, before achieving this unwelcome result,
she had to produce a generation furnished with
five fingers and a half. But, as a matter of fact,
that complicated organism, a human finger, will
plunge ready-made into being. In such a case, then,
Nature makes a decided leap ; and, when once
she has shown that she can leap, who shall determine
the limits of her saltatory powers? Of course, in
reality such phrases as "leap of Nature " and "sport
of Nature " are mere metaphors. We know that,
when she appears most agile, she is in a manner pro-
pelled by the engine of Necessity. It is, however,
enough for our purpose that from time to time
Nature has the air of being frolicsome and irre-
pressible. And thus, when she seems to disport
69
Essays.
herself by encumbering a child with the dupov adupot
of a superfluous finger, we may fairly, though meta-
phorically, say that she is making an untoward leap
and playing a mischievous prank.
Having prepared my way with this explanation,
I will state my argument simply and shortly. An
amazing leap, as we may call it, was taken by Nature
when she said, in reference to this planet, Let there
be Life. Of course a Perfect Intelligence would have
discerned that, in the floating gas which was to be-
come our Earth, the potentiality of developing living
beings, nay, of developing Newton and Darwin, lay
concealed. But to any quasi-human Intelligence it
would, prior to experience, have seemed scarce more
credible that Life could burst forth from inorganic
matter than that the winds could come from the bag
of ^Eolus. It should also be noted that the utter
failure of all experiments to bring about spontaneous
generation adds, in appearance at least, to the wonder
of what Nature did of old. Once more : I know
that it is well-nigh impossible to fix the point in the
organic scale at which the lowest form of consciousness
begins ; but it may, I imagine, be safely laid down
that at some point or other Nature took another
amazing leap by evolving consciousness out of
unconscious life. If, then, in the long history of
our planet, Nature has made two such prodigious
leaps, why not a third? In other words, may she
not, when she first moulded Man, have drawn new
materials and untried forces from her seemingly ex-
haustless store ? Is it quite contrary to analogy that
she may have developed in him mysterious higher
70
"Blessed are the Strong."
capacities higher capacities with higher aspirations
from the soul-less life of the lower animals ? l
1 Not wishing to go astray in a labyrinth of Inconceivables,
I forbear to speculate on the room that may haply be found for
an anything but exilis domus Plutonia, if there can possibly be
a fourth dimension of space. If there is a fourth dimension of
Space, why not a fifth (ce n'est que la quatrteme dimension qui
coAte), and why not a second dimension of Time ?
MENTAL CULTURE. 1
BY PROF. JAMES WARD.
illustration's sake we may divide the pro-
ducts of Nature and of Man alike into two
classes : those, on the one hand, in which a definite
design or shaping idea has preceded and throughout
controlled their production ; and those, on the
other, in which accident or the blind play of the
elements have brought about a result neither fore-
shadowed nor foreseen. To the latter class we
should refer, for instance, the formation of an island,
where winds, rains, earthquakes, ocean currents, and
the myriad blind builders of a coral Babel, now
combine and now frustrate their unthinking labours
till dry land appears. As an instance of the former,
we might take the growth of a plant, in which we
have first the blade, then the ear, then the full corn
in the ear, a steady unfolding of a definite form, a
mutual adaptation of part to part, which we can only
fairly represent to ourselves as the outcome of an
indwelling and informing idea. Again, a similar
contrast is presented when we compare a modern
building, such as the Houses of Parliament or the
1 Opening Address of the Session 1880-81, delivered before
the Men and Women's College, Queen Square [Journal of
Education , December 1880].
72
Mental Culture.
Law Courts, with one of those bizarre but pictur-
esque piles in every variety of Gothic and Renais-
sance that are happily no uncommon feature of
English scenery : the one erected in execution
of a uniform and complete design, the other a
strange medley of Norman stronghold, Gothic
cloisters, and Elizabethan mansion a multiplicity
of parts, but no united whole. Thus, comparing
these two classes, we find, in the one, no plan and
no economy, and a result which is confused and dis-
connected ; whereas, in the other, there is neither
waste nor disorder, but the steady realization of a
consistent and harmonious whole. So far as our
bodies go, there can be no doubt as to which of
these classes we belong to ourselves : what are we
to say of our minds ? Can we detect there, too, the
same order and system, the same organic unity amid
complexity, the same harmonious working, so patent
in our bodily framework ? Or do we find a partial
chaos of ideas, some disjointed and unsorted, some
half-formed or half-forgotten ? Are there no mutu-
ally destructive principles reposing blindly side by
side, though clearly portending future inconsistency
and internal anarchy? Is there clear evidence of
an informing law of development, selecting and
moulding all its acquisitions, so as to produce a
mind at once full and clear, lively, vigorous, and
methodical ? Or must we, forsooth, acknowledge,
that ideas acquired by chance or caprice have re-
mained unassimilated and so unfruitful, or have been
so distorted or biassed under the stress of prejudice
and superstition as to render at times our very eyes
73
Essays.
blind, and our ears deaf, to what is taking place
before us ? Do we not sometimes to quote
Cardinal Newman " fall in with persons who have
seen much of the world, and of the men who, in
their day, have played a conspicuous part in it ;
but who generalize nothing, and have no observa-
tion, in the true sense of the word " ? " They
abound in information, in detail, curious and enter-
taining, about men and things " ; but " they speak
of everyone and everything, only as so many
phenomena, which are complete in themselves, and
lead to nothing not discussing them, or teaching
any truth, or instructing the hearer, but simply
talking. . . . Perhaps they have been much in
foreign countries, and they receive in a passive,
otiose, unfruitful way the various facts which are
forced upon them there. . . . They sleep and they
rise up, and they find themselves now in Europe,
now in Asia ; they see visions of great cities and
wild regions ; they are in the marts of commerce, or
amid the islands of the South ; they gaze on
Pompey's Pillar or on the Andes ; and nothing
which meets them carries them forward or back-
ward, to any idea beyond itself. Nothing has a
drift or a relation ; nothing has a history or a
promise. Everything stands by itself, and comes
and goes in its turn, like the shifting scenes of a
show, which leave the spectator where he was." l
And, as a set-off against these people, overstocked
with premises, but incapable of drawing conclusions,
do we not find many who have accepted the current
1 "Discourses on University Education," 1852, pp. 215 f.
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Mental Culture.
opinions on a thousand topics, and fearlessly apply
them without a ghost of a notion of the proofs on
which they rest or fail to rest without, in fact, any
feeling for proof at all : fools who rush in where angels
fear to tread, and are equally at home in explaining
a commercial crisis or a thunderstorm men who
out-Darwin Darwin,' are more Gladstonian than the
Premier, and dizzier than the ex-Premier? Sup-
posing we know of such specimens, what are we to
say of them ? It will not do to refer their lack of
mental energy and insight, their mental confusion,
narrowness, extravagance, and incongruity to mere
ignorance or want of education, as ordinarily under-
stood. For these humiliating spectacles are furnished
by men allowed to be well informed, and to have
had the advantages of a so-called University training.
And it may well seem to some of you a piece of
questionable prudence on my part to direct atten-
tion, even briefly, to facts so discouraging, at the
commencement of a new session of study. Of
what good is it, you may ask, for us to devote our
scanty leisure to the pursuit of classics or mathe-
matics, of science or literature, if our minds may
perhaps be neither enlarged nor enlightened in the
process ? Well ! at least the possibility of such
failure will make a wise man ask about the cause of
it, and consider how far it may be avoided. Why,
then, does our modern education so often fail of its
end ? Because, I would suggest, the end has not
been consciously present to direct and control it ;
because we have worked blindly, and without unity
or method. It is not too much to say, of the
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greater number of those said to be liberally educated,
that neither they nor their teachers had any clear
idea or plan of the mental fabric, or rather the living
mental organism, they were seeking to complete and
perfect. The result belongs largely to the class of
accidental products, only very partially to the class
of aims clearly preconceived and rationally pursued.
And I cannot forbear expressing the belief, for
which I trust I shall not be deemed too much a
visionary, that the day will come, when, thanks to
a sound theory of education, the average man will
excel the men of our time in capacity, as much as
they excel their grandfathers in information. What,
then, should be the leading aim of intellectual educa-
tion or mental culture ? what do we mean when we
propose to cultivate and improve our minds ? These
are questions which I venture to think concern you
who are students of this college ; they are not ques-
tions you can afford to leave to your lecturers and
examiners, as a patient leaves his case in the hands
of his physician. In this matter of education, you
are not patients, but agents ; and I might even say
the prime agents : unless you have yourselves clear
ideas of what you are aiming at, lecturers and
examiners will not avail you much. What, then, I
repeat, are we to understand by the improvement or
cultivation of our minds ?
This word " cultivation " is ambiguous ; and there
is a corresponding ambiguity in the notions in vogue
concerning mental culture. The husbandman is
said to cultivate the soil, and he is also said to
cultivate the wheat and the vine. Now, although,
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Mental Culture.
when the question is raised, it is plain that, in
talking of the mind as requiring and capable of
culture, we regard it not as a dead receptacle, but
as a vital germ, that can unfold and flourish, or
shrivel and be starved ; yet, nevertheless, this dead-
receptacle theory of culture is the one we are very
apt to adopt in practice. In other words, we are
apt to seek knowledge rather than intelligence, facts
rather than judgment and insight a mind stored
with learning instead of a mind trained to think.
But the simple fact itself is too commonplace to
dwell upon ; let us look for a moment at some of
the probable reasons for it. One reason, I think, is
this, that we are not sufficiently far from the time
when the absence of printing necessitated what
the smallness of human knowledge rendered possible
universal or encyclopaedic learning. We have not
yet learnt when to use our books to save our brains,
when to rest content with what Mr Latham calls the
index memory, i.e., with knowing where a thing is
to be found when we want it. And so the once
good custom lingers to corrupt the world. Again,
this substitution of instruction for education is,
doubtless, partly due to the fact that knowledge
is so much more tangible than intelligence. All can
appreciate the power which knowledge gives, while
few stop to reflect upon the intelligence, without
which the origin and extension of knowledge are
impossible. Many admire the plays of Shakespeare,
the discoveries of Newton, the inventions of Watt ;
but few consider how much more it concerns us,
were it possible, to reproduce their minds, so to put
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it, than to reproduce their works. I believe the
world's intellectual advancement has been seriously
retarded by what I may call its theory of genius.
No doubt, there are geniuses, as there are giants ;
but to suppose that it is only given to genius to
originate and discover, while average minds must be
content with appropriating, is as false as the super-
stition that regards all prehistoric monuments as the
handiwork of ancient Gogs and Magogs. Yet such
a doctrine, however false, of a mighty few who can
be thinkers, and a feebler multitude who are but
learners at the best, must of course ensure its own
fulfilment the more inevitably, the more implicitly it
is believed. Where there is no faith, there will be
no works. But this carries us to a third point : we
prefer instruction to education, because it is easier :
it is a pleasure to listen and read, it is a labour to
think and write. And here, no doubt, one secret of
genius peeps out. Genius, it has been said, is an
infinite capacity for taking pains. This is what
geniuses themselves tell us : we, however, are slow
to admit what truth there is in it, because of the
censure it implies. But not only is the process of
instruction an easier one for the pupil than that of
education, it is a vastly easier one for the teacher
too. Hangnail's Questions, Pinnock's Catechisms,
and that sort of thing, though a little dull, are yet a
delightfully simple business for both parties. But
the chief reason is, I take it, neither the lingering
tradition of the dark ages, nor want of faith in our
own powers, nor want of energy to exert them ; but
ignorance as to what they are, and how they are to
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be exercised. We have as good as no science of
education, because we have little better than no
science of mind ; it is not likely we can direct a
growth, the nature of which we do not understand.
I must not, however, forget to say that, imperfect as
psychology is, matters would be much better than
they are if those who have to educate others or
themselves, would apply even the little psychology
has to teach. It is a little of this little that I must
attempt to set before you now.
If it be agreed that the true conception of mental
culture regards the mind, not as a receptacle to be
stocked, but as an active power to be developed and
perfected ; what we have to learn, first of all, is the
nature of this activity, and the grounds on which we
say that in one mind it is more perfect and efficient
than in another. Let us look, for a moment, at a
couple of interesting bipeds one with feathers and
one without, a parrot and a philosopher. They can
both see, walk, talk, and handle ; they have the same
organs, senses, affections, passions ; " are fed with
the same food, hurt with the same weapons, warmed
and cooled by the same winter and summer." They
may hear the same learned discourse ; and it would
be hard to say who would repeat it most faithfully,
the parrot or the philosopher. The difference
between their minds then lies, not in the material,
in the sensations and movements with which the
external world and their respective organizations
provide them. This common stock granted ; just as
we might have side by side so many thousand bricks
in a heap, and as many built into a house, so we
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Essays.
should find a like difference in the arrangement and
combination of this common stock of elementary
impressions, if we compared the minds of our parrot
and philosopher. And, as a general statement, we
may say that the activity of the mind consists in nothing
else but this arranging and combining of the multi-
plicity of disconnected ideas, to use Locke's term, with
which its organs of sense and movement furnish it.
The earliest form of this activity by which our stock
of confused impressions is elaborated into distinct
perceptions of objects, has no practical interest for
us just now. At that stage, the process, though one
of mental activity, and not of mere receptivity, can
hardly be called voluntary. Up to a certain point
the level of ordinary common sense heredity, our
daily surroundings, and our mother tongue ensure the
organization of our experience with little more activity
on our part than that of attending and keeping awake.
We are, so far, in the position of apprentices, who get
their work ready tacked together, and have only to
supply the stitches. It is at a later stage, when we
have to do the cutting and fitting all by ourselves,
that the difference between one mind and another
appears. And that mind is the most developed,
the furthest removed from the level of a mere
parrot, that has carried this process the furthest,
and brought most ideas, and brought them most
intimately and completely, into relation with each
other. We recognize this fact, in common language,
when we say of a man that he cannot put two and
two together, that he did not invent gunpowder, and
will never set the Thames on fire. And these are
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things we might say of some very learned people,
without doing them any serious injustice. By these
expressions we mean, that these people, whether
they have the ideas or no, are mentally so power-
less and inert, that they will never compare them
together, and so advance to new truths. It may
appear a startling and extravagant paradox, to repre
sent the difference between a philosopher and a
blockhead, or even between a philosopher and a
parrot, as lying not in the greater extent of the
philosopher's ideas, but in the closer and more
intimate relations which he has established among
them. You will say, the philosopher has more
ideas, knows more, than the parrot and the block-
head. Yes, but the point is, that this additional
knowledge consists not of fundamentally new ideas
that he has received, like his other ideas, from with-
out ; but of ideas of relations and connexions among
these knowledge which he has by his own activity
elaborated from within. That one man knows the
taste of pineapple, or pigtail, and another does not,
constitutes a difference in sense-experience which no
mere mental activity will remove ; but so far is the
difference between the philosopher and the dullard
from being a difference of this sort, that we might
suppose them to exchange their stock of knowledge
as they might exchange their coats or their patri-
mony ; which done, the philosophic mind would by
degrees introduce light and order into the chaos ;
while the living world of ideas, mutually enlighten-
ing, mutually quickening each other, which he gives
in exchange, would soon become a dead and immo-
F 81
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bile tradition, like the wisdom of Confucius in the
mind of a modern Chinee. Nor is this supposition
so altogether extravagant. Something very like it is
continually taking place. On the one hand, we see
the man that thinks worming out of stupid souls
facts which they themselves could never turn
to account; on the other, we see the best
thoughts of such higher minds transferred still
warm with life into sluggish brains, only to be-
come so much dead learning and empty pedantry.
It is utterly false, then, to imagine that the difference
between a first-rate mind and a second-rate is at all
measurable in terms of acquisition, as we may say
the wealth or the weight of Smith is twice that
of Brown. Everybody knows the story of Opie.
Some novice, who supposed Opie's brilliant effects
were due to his wider knowledge of the technique of
his art, once asked him what he mixed his colours
with. To which question he answered, "With
brains, Sir ! " There is a similar story attributed
to another self-made man, Faraday; when pestered
by some wretched fop or other, who fancied the
secret of his marvellous discoveries lay in his stock
of instruments : " Believe me, my young friend,"
he is said to have replied, "an ounce of brains is
worth a ton of apparatus." All Opie's oils and
colours, all the resources of Faraday's laboratory,
would have been useless in hands that lacked their
daring imagination and patient versatility of thought.
Thought, then, it is which is the philosopher's stone,
converting the most commonplace experiences into
gold ; thought it is which discovers the hidden ties
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by which such commonplace experiences are con-
nected together into that systematic knowledge
which alone deserves to be called power. And to
say that a trained mind differs from an untrained
one mainly by reason of the greater intimacy and
complexity of the relations established between its
ideas, is but to say that the difference between the
two lies in their power to think. For thinking
consists in nothing but joining together the ideas of
things because of some resemblance, or in disjoining
them because of some difference, observed between
them. Thus it was because of a resemblance he
perceived on comparing the two, that Shakespeare
said, " All the world's a stage, and all the men and
women merely players " ; or that Bacon called Riches
the baggage or impedimenta of virtue. From science
we may take the stock instance of Franklin's dis-
covery of the physical identity between lightning and
the electric spark, to which he was first led by com-
paring the two and noting their common features.
Or, again, Newton's supposition, long afterwards
verified, that the diamond would be found inflam-
mable, because, on comparing the diamond and
numerous substances known to be inflammable, he
detected, notwithstanding their differences, that they
were alike in strongly refracting a ray of light. Let
us, however, take an instance in which the material
of the thought was common property. All makers
of matches knew that combustion was produced by
applying friction to a mixture of phosphorus,
sulphur, and chlorate of potash; they knew, too,
that the other constituents would not ignite by
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friction if the phosphorus were withdrawn ; they
also knew that accidents were of daily occurrence
from the ready ignition of the mixture of all three.
Here, now, was a problem, how to prevent such
accidents, and the materials for its solution ; but this
time the solution consisted, not in putting two and
two together, but rather in setting them apart. It
was a Swedish match-maker who first saw that to put
your sulphur and potash on the match, and your
phosphorus on the box, would give you the mixture
and the friction together when you wanted them
together, but at no other time. Such was the dis-
covery of the Patent Safety Match such and no
more. There is absolutely nothing new in it except
the thought that 3 + 1 (phosphorus, sulphur,
chlorate of potash + friction) are the same as 2 + 2
(sulphur, chlorate of potash + phosphorus, friction)
when you add them, but not otherwise. But,
instead of multiplying isolated instances, it will be
better to try briefly to suggest to you that the
whole of human science is built up of such identifica-
tions patiently and gradually repeated, beginning
from concrete objects and occurrences, and rising
step by step to the most general ideas and principles.
As a sample of this process, we may consider for a
moment what Bentham called " the matchless beauty
of the Ramean tree." l But of this character are all
the classifications by which we are able to compass
a knowledge of the immense variety of nature's pro-
ductions in the mineral, vegetable, and animal king-
1 Illustrated on the blackboard at the lecture. Cf. Jevons,
"Elementary Lessons in Logic," pp. 103 f.
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Mental Culture.
doms ; it is from our inability to establish such an
order and system among the disconnected facts we
know of man and his institutions and history, that
our knowledge on this side is so imperfect, so un-
scientific. We may, however, take another illustra-
tion, less severely beautiful, but more concrete :
Blumenbach's classification of
ANIMALS
. I I
Viviparous Oviparous
(Mammals) \
r ~\
Red-blooded White-blooded
I I I I
Warm-blooded Cold-blooded Articulated Inarticulated
(Birds)
(Insects) ( Worms)
Breathing by lungs (Amphibia) By gills (Fish)
And not only may we say that the development
of human knowledge has consisted mainly in bring-
ing old and familiar, but isolated, experiences into
relation ; but our conception of this knowledge,
when completed, is but the conception of this pro-
cess of systematizing and unifying carried to an
end. The dream of philosophy is not of new
chemical elements, new forces, new stars, new forms
of life, still to be discovered, but of a point of view
from which everything shall be seen to be related to
everything else, and no fact remain isolated in the
whole universe of knowledge. But I have dwelt too
long on this point. To sum up, then : In answer
to the question, What is the aim of mental culture ?
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may we not reply, The attainment of the power
and the habit of thinking, of comparing all the
items of our experience, so as to ascertain their
agreements and differences, their relations of cause
and effect, and so forth ? In proportion as we have
by this means brought unity and system into our
ideas, in proportion as our faculty of thus connect-
ing our ideas is efficient and active, do we deserve to
be considered men of reason and intelligence.
If this be our aim, we can of course, in pursuit of
it, avail ourselves to the full of the products of
other men's reasoning and intelligence, but our
mode of doing this will be very different from what
it would be if our chief aim were to gain informa-
tion ; just as the communication of it on the
teacher's part will be very different according as
he proposes merely to impart new facts or to train
our minds, to make us walking dictionaries or
coherent thinkers. Of course, our progress in the
one case will be very much slower at the outset than
it will be in the other ; because collecting facts is
very much easier work than connecting them, merely
learning principles than fruitfully applying them.
But we shall be able to advance very much further
in the end. The mere learner, with his head full
of useful knowledge, is like a man who carries all
his wealth in halfpence ; he may be very poor, and
yet burdened to death ; or rather, he is like the old
woman with a big family who lived in a shoe. But
the thinker who has digested and systematized his
knowledge, might be compared to Moses, when,
instead of sitting with all the people by him, from
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morning unto even, wearing out both himself and
them, he placed over them rulers of thousands, and
rulers of hundreds, rulers of fifties, and rulers of
tens.
But it is not merely that the resolve to make
mental training, not examinational proficiency, the
first thing, enables us in the end to advance further
and master more ; it has still another and even
greater advantage, on which I feel compelled to
dwell for a moment. The habit of bringing every
new fact or hypothesis presented to us into relation
with our previous knowledge and experience, observ-
ing how far it squares with them, how far it modifies
them, what old problems it helps to solve, what new
questions it raises, what it presupposes, and what
will follow from it, this is the spirit to which the
world's intellectual advance is mainly due. While
the contrary habit of eagerly appropriating all that
men more learned than ourselves have to tell us,
feeling that they are as safe as the Bank of England
and no doubt they are, still this habit of defer-
ring to authority, even when sound, has been, one of
the greatest drawbacks to the world's intellectual
advance. Men who habitually assume this child-
like and receptive attitude of mind, are like an
audience under the spell of a conjuror they see
what he tells them, or think they do, but they see
no more ; while minds of a more inquiring and
critical mould, range freely over the facts and discern
what is hidden from those led captive by a great
name. I know I am on dangerous ground now,
and might easily be misconstrued or misunderstood.
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Essays.
I do not, of course, mean that a wise and intelligent
man will renounce the aid of experts, and set up as
his own doctor and lawyer, any more than he will
think of becoming his own tailor and baker ; nor
that, distrusting the traditions of all mankind, he will
attempt de novo to construct the fabric of the
sciences for himself. I simply mean, that he will
not leave other people to do all his thinking for
him, because they know more and can think better ;
but that, in availing himself, as he will do freely and
thankfully, of their help, he will avail himself of it
simply as aiding, not as superseding or suspending,
the exercise of his own powers, be they never so
humble. For, by so doing, these powers cannot
fail to be strengthened and expand, so as, in all
probability, to contribute their quota to extend the
bounds of knowledge. Whereas, if not thus exerted,
they would become flaccid and dwindle ; and know-
ledge, instead of being advanced, would, so far as
that man goes, begin to degenerate into dogma.
A most instructive essay might be written, illus-
trating by examples how much the world owes to
men who, without extraordinary powers, have still
dared to think, and had the sublime impudence to
take " a free look," as Goethe called it, at every-
thing which nature and human nature presented to
them.
I am aware that all I have said so far, must seem
to you general, if not vague ; and you may say,
Granted that the ruling idea in mental culture is
the attainment of intelligence as an active principle,
and of a clear and orderly arrangement of one's
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knowledge as a permanent possession : still, when
we see the end, by what means are we to realize
it ? Will any department of human experience and
interest furnish a training in thinking, or must we
exercise our minds on mathematics or on science
or on classics, or will nothing short of philosophy
suffice ? To such an inquiry I should venture to
reply, that any subject can be made a means of
intellectual training that admits of intellectual treat-
ment, i.e., of classification and generalization, of the
search for causes and reasons, or the ascertainment
of effects and consequents. Literature, for example,
will not afford an intellectual training, though it may
still be a source of aesthetic and moral culture,
unless the student criticizes, compares, and analyzes,
unless he generalizes the characteristics of an author
or an age, seeks out the reasons of effects that all
can feel, and so forth. But, when he does this, he
may make indefinite intellectual advance by means
of literature. And even mathematics and science
will not necessarily train the mind, unless studied
in the same active and inquiring spirit. It is a
simple matter of fact, that all the great divisions of
human knowledge mathematics, science, literature,
history have in the past been the means of training
minds of the highest type, and can be so again.
Each has its special educational advantages, no
doubt, and there is much, very much, to be gained
by having some clear and connected ideas about
them all. But this is a point upon which we can-
not now enter. Minds of different bents will attain
intellectual efficiency in different ways, and I only
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Essays.
propose to make two or three remarks, which will
apply to all.
First, as to the raw material of our knowledge ; by
which I mean the elementary perceptions and con-
crete experiences which underlie and form as it were
the texture of our study. Since our intellectual
activity consists only in ascertaining the relations of
these, bringing together facts that agree, and separ-
ating those that differ, discovering resemblances in
the midst of difference, and grounds of distinction
where none were observed before, it is evidently
desirable that there should be no vagueness and
obscurity in the perceptions and ideas themselves.
For many things we are obliged to trust to descrip-
tions and diagrams, but as far as possible it is
desirable to be face to face with the fact itself;
without it our knowledge is sure to lose in freshness
and impressiveness, and our after-thinking is more
liable to be pointless and confused. In the training
of the young, this is a most important point, and
one too often woefully neglected. Children are put
to deal with the ideas of things in books, without
any actual acquaintance with the things themselves.
They talk about Ibs. and dwts., feet and furlongs,
gallons and hogsheads ; islands, peninsulas, moun-
tains, and lakes ; all sorts of birds, beasts, and
creeping things, without any knowledge, not to say
familiarity, with the actual realities to which the
words correspond. No wonder their minds get
thin, fed thus on shadows. For the sake of strong,
healthy, vigorous ideas ideas alive and astir, and
with some stamp of reality about them it is indis-
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pensable we should get our material direct from
nature herself. But imagination and the under-
standing are often opposed, as if strength in the one
faculty meant weakness in the other ; and, no
doubt, imagination needs to be controlled must
always be the servant of thought, never the master.
But an intellect that is not supported by a strong
and lively imagination, will never accomplish much.
It is imagination that marshals our ideas in pro-
cession before us, while we are seeking to determine
some special relation of agreement or difference ;
and it is evident that the more forcibly and dis-
tinctly each is presented, the more various the
groups into which they are thrown, the greater is
the chance of a successful issue. Yet imagination
does but revive and recombine the traces of past
sensible experiences ; there is nothing in the imagin-
ation which has not, at least in its elements, been
received through the senses. Hence, as a first step
towards a well-ordered mind, it is desirable to secure
as vivid and as varied an experience as possible of
the facts on which our minds are to be exercised.
Anyone who has had to do at all with science-
examinations knows how ludicrously false are the
conceptions of even able students, who have got
their knowledge solely from books. But it is not
the greater liability to mistake, which this substitu-
tion of books for things entails, that I want to insist
upon, but the comparative unfruitfulness of such
knowledge, due simply to the faintness and unim-
pressiveness of ideas that have not been derived
direct from things. The importance of first-hand
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impressions is equally great in those cases in which
the impressions are not merely perceptions, but
already thoughts. It is ten times better to read
Shakespeare than to read about him, to hear a
great parliamentary debate than to read an account
of it in the Times.
If we consider sense-knowledge the indispensable
raw material of thought, we may call language the
indispensable instrument indispensable, at least,
the moment we advance beyond the simplest com-
parison of things in the concrete. Accordingly,
whatever be the subject that interests us, if we are to
think to the best purpose about it, we must under-
stand our instrument. As a preliminary to thinking,
we must acquire the power to express our thoughts,
and, properly pursued, this need be no preparatory
drudgery, but itself both interesting and education-
ally valuable. If I might venture to advise, I should
urge every student, whatever his ultimate study may
be, to work at English Grammar till he can parse
and analyse any sentence that can be given to him ;
and not to stop at this, but to practise composition
till he can at least write English plainly. There is,
I believe, nothing which will conduce more to clear-
ness and accuracy of thought than the habit of think-
ing upon paper; without this, the power to think
upon their legs, which so many covet, is an accom-
plishment of quite doubtful value. When occupied
with a book that is really worth study, the old-
fashioned plan of summarizing the gist of it in
a note-book, though it makes large demands upon
our time, is still time well spent. And as to
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difficulties that may arise, the endeavour to give
them definite expression will often bring us one step
nearer to their solution, and so, by continually formu-
lating an objection, we may eventually either dispose
of it, or see clearly where our author has erred.
Whereas, if we had been too indolent to attempt to
embody our difficulty in black and white, it might
have remained a stumbling-block to the end, with
the inevitable result of multiplying obstacles for the
rest of the way.
But, while such a mastery of the grammar and
structure of our own language as will ensure a fair
facility in composition is a requisite of intellectual
culture, a knowledge of other languages is in no
sense necessary to this end. Not only so, but all
the advantages of the study of literature are well
within the reach of those who know no language
but English. Still, other languages may be made a
medium of mental culture, if studied as the classical
languages are supposed to be in our schools and
universities ; but the mental discipline afforded
is very small, if other languages are learnt as modern
languages are usually taught. For the aim of a
teacher of French, German, or Italian, in nine cases
out of ten, is to give his pupil such facility in the
use of the language as will suffice to cash a bill, or
secure a mutton chop, not a training in grammar
and composition as mental exercises ; and this
simply, because, in nine cases out of ten, it is not
intellectual exercise, but some ability in the use of
the new language, that the pupil wants. If he apply
himself for a sufficient time, and with due diligence,
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he may succeed in thus acquiring some knowledge
of two or three languages ; but, intellectually, he
need not have advanced at all. But had he spent
the same time in pondering Plutarch's Lives, or
Shakespeare's Plays, or Mill's Political Economy,
or upon an elementary course of Experimental
Physics, he could hardly have failed in the end to be
a better thinker. As a means to an end, such study
of another language may be justified ; but when that
end is the intellectual training the literature of that
language is to afford, it certainly behoves the student
to consider that, unless he attains a very considerable
mastery of the language, the literature would do him
much more good in translations. There is no case,
I think, in which it is more incumbent upon those
who know to urge intending students to count the
cost, than in this. To get half-way is worse than
nothing; it is nearly as bad as jumping into
a ditch, instead of landing safely on the other
bank.
I have spoken of securing the raw materials of
thought, and mastering the instrument of thought.
I would just add a word as to actual practice in
thinking. The science which treats of the general
structure and process of thought, without regard to
what is thought about, of so much of thinking as is
common to all thinking whatever, is Logic. And
as I believe all students, whose first and chief aim
is intellectual efficiency, should give some time to
English composition, so I think they should also
give some time to logic. In power to analyze a
thought, and sift arguments, the man who has
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Mental Culture.
mastered even so elementary a book as Prof. Jevons's
Lessons in Logic, has an immense advantage over
one, otherwise his equal, but ignorant of logic ; just
as one who can dissect and compose sentences has
an advantage in the expression of his thought over
another ignorant of grammar and composition. Logic
is a subject which, in modern times, has fallen into
most undeserved neglect undeserved, i.e., so far as
the subject goes, though a neglect justly merited by
the extravagant pretensions of the mediaeval logicians.
Logic is not a substitute for knowledge, any more
than a pudding-mould is a substitute for a pudding,
or a map of the way a substitute for a journey. But
it is at least as useful in giving direction and form to
our knowledge as maps and pudding-bowls in the
cases supposed. But, above everything, a course of
logical exercises or problems is good as a training in
thinking. Like drill before a battle, they will train
the thinker in just those essential points of form and
procedure which, in the heat and interest of a hard
tussle for the truth, he will else run every danger of
neglecting.
And now to resume, in the briefest possible space,
all I have said. The intending student who pur-
poses to cultivate his mind, must consider that, to
gather in knowledge like the busy bee, will not suffice
for mental culture ; for knowledge has not to be
stored like honey, but assimilated like food. The
point about food assimilated is, that whatever it may
have been before fish, flesh, fowl, or good red
herring it becomes me, when I eat it : it may have
sported on the Dogger Bank yesterday, but to-morrow
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Essays.
it must go " the Trumpington Grind." l But there
are some that gorge like cormorants, and yet assimi-
late nothing; all they eat goes to fatten wens, or
cancers, or parasites ; they do but fetch and carry,
while others batten on them. You see, then, the im-
portance, physiologically, of keeping that life healthy
without which the food you eat will not benefit you,
but at best make you pabulum for something else.
There is also a physiology of the mind. Here, too,
the life is the chief thing, without which knowledge
will but degenerate into unsightly excrescences, at
best standing to others in place of books, as blind and
dumb, but neither so clear nor so accurate. Take
care of this life, then, and knowledge will take care
of itself. In the mental world, at any rate, there is
no lack of food. It is the digestion and assimilation
that are weak. Therefore, I say, let your chief
anxiety be to understand and think. Never mind,
though at first you learn little, and seem to make
but small advance. Healthy growth is always very
gradual work. Festina lente, make haste slowly,
is the sound maxim here. Only by thinking every
inch of your way, only by thoughtfully employing
what you already know to help you to master the
unknown, will your mind be of a piece, as truly
organized and fitted to discover, invent, and create,
in the world of science, art, and literature, as your
limbs are organized and fitted to shape and build in
the factory or workshop.
Now, of course, there is somebody here saying
or thinking that I have overshot the mark. As a
1 The " constitutional " walk of Cambridge men is so called.
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Mental Culture.
matter of fact, our sober friend reflects, not one man
in a hundred ever does discover a new truth, invent
an improved process, or display any creative wit or
fancy, any really original humour. I grant all this,
my friend, Not one man in a hundred ever does,
because not one man in a hundred has been set to
think, or acquired the habit. I only say many men
in a hundred might attain that liveliness of ideas, that
power of making ever new combinations, following
out faint suggestions of analogy and resemblance,
from which spring the sallies of wit, flights of fancy,
splendid inventions, and masterly generalizations,
that distinguish and adorn original minds. There
was a time when few could swim, though surely all
could learn who chose to get into the water and try.
At present, it is true, few men can do anything
deserving the name of thinking; but then few
seriously and systematically make the attempt. It
is partly through indolence, but an indolence that
shelters itself under the cloak of our sober friend.
But if psychology teaches anything, it teaches this,
that mental flexibility and vigour can be acquired by
practice, as surely as manual dexterity and strength
of muscle. Nobody, surely, will understand me to
mean that it is in any man's power to reach by
practice and perseverance to such a wealth of mental
resource, as to be reckoned among the great of his
generation when his day's work is over. Yet I do
believe that many a great man is lost to the world as
surely as many a great tree is lost to the forest,
because trampled down or choked by underwood
before it had a chance to raise its head. Still, all I
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Essays.
contend for now is, that just as all may learn to
swim, though few can swim like Captain Webb or
Miss Beckwith, so all can become philosophers in
bent and habit, though not all can evolve philoso-
phies and not all, let us hope, will try. , But what
I mean by philosopher, you will be able to infer, I
trust, from what has been the burden of my remarks
to-night. He is also succinctly described in these
words of one of the humblest, wisest, and most inde-
pendent of men, Michael Faraday. "The philo-
sopher," says Faraday, " should be a man willing to
listen to every suggestion, but determined to judge
for himself. He should not be biassed by appear-
ances ; have no favourite hypothesis ; be of no
school ; and in doctrine have no master. He should
not be a respecter of persons, but of things. Truth
should be his primary object. If to these qualities
be added industry, he may hope to walk within the
veil of the temple of nature." Let the intending
student work in this spirit, and he too shall grow to
a philosopher, and have a philosopher's reward.
98
ART IN SCHOOLS. 1
BY DEAN FARRAR.
HP HE whole country is awaking rapidly to a
recognition of the problems which lie before
us in the growth of our great cities. The awaken-
ment is not coming a day too soon. I have long
been convinced that nothing but the torpor of
familiarity on the one hand, on the other an im-
moral selfishness of heart, can cause any man to
view with indifference, or even with acquiescence
the ugliness and squalor of our great cities, or can
blind us to the evils which must result from the
constant growth of such conditions. Long ago,
Cobbett, in his disgust at the condition of London,
called it "a great wen." The wen has become
an enormous tumour; in parts, even a dangerous
imposthume ; and towns, as huge as London was
in Cobbett's time, and much more dirty, have now
sprung up all over the country. The last census
revealed the startling fact that the whole sweet
rural life of England is more and more rapidly
diminishing; that young men are flocking into
cities in increasing numbers ; that our towns already
1 Delivered at the London Institution, November 1884
[Journal of Education, December 1884].
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Essays.
contain half, and may soon comprise two-thirds of
our population ; in one word, that while the country
is undergoing a process of depletion, our towns are
in danger of plethora. Now a physician recently
told us that great cities are the graves of the physique
of our race. That is a serious consideration; but
it is a yet more solemn thought, that the physique
of a race is closely connected with its morale ; that
health and morals act and react upon each other;
that "if you rumple the jerkin, you rumple the
jerkin's lining." A race, pale, weakly, stunted,
miserable, will be the inevitable outcome of a race
distracted, in childhood by over-pressure, in youth
by spurious excitement, in manhood by grinding
struggle, in old age by a miserable dependence on
public charity. In proportion to the peril of a
disorder is the value of each little element of cure.
Let me then touch for a moment on the physical
conditions of our English towns, and afterwards on
the moral consequences, the social and national
dangers, which those conditions inevitably involve.
No one can be unaware of the dreary dulness
which reigns over whole regions of most great
English towns. Speaking of London eighty years
ago, Coleridge sings,
" I was reared
In the great city, pent 'mid cloisters dim,
And saw nought lovely but the sky and stars."
We can hardly say even that much now without a
reservation. In Westminster, I fear that the days
on which we can see the sky as God meant us to
see it a sky of the " sweet colour of the Eastern
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Art in Schools.
sapphire" bathed in the pure serenity of air are
few indeed. We breathe an atmosphere eternally
contaminated by smoke and fog, which clog the
leaves of every tree, and actually blacken the lungs
of permanent residents. Never, as long as I live,
shall I forget the Christmas-day of 1882. London
was covered, all day long, with a pall of grimy and
intolerable midnight, rendered yet more frightful by
gleams of a ghastly and lurid yellow. It was a day
which seemed to have come straight out of Dante's
Inferno, and it rested on the spirits like the smoke
of the abyss. A large proportion of Englishmen
do not know what it is to see a perfectly azure
heaven, or more of sunset than they can catch a
glimpse of through the tops of smoky chimneys.
And then, consider the state of our streets !
Nothing surely but necessity could make human
beings content to live all their lives in such acres
of dreary brickwork as Wapping, and Hoxton, and
Stepney, and Whitechapel, and similar regions in
all our manufacturing towns. Many of us reside
in such places, first, because we must ; next, because
we grow indifferent to their dreariness ; lastly,
because we live in the hope, often frustrated, of
escaping from them at the earliest opportunity.
This accounts for the centripetal force which drives
tens of thousands into town every morning, and the
centrifugal force which drives them out again every
evening. This systole and diastole of the throbbing
heart of London is caused by the attempt at partial
escape from smoke and dirt. But it has its dangers.
The rich and the poor are no longer close neighbours.
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The manufacturer no longer has his home among his
" hands." Two worlds live in all but total ignorance
of each other's methods of life. Not thousands, but
tens of thousands of families, consisting of members
of both sexes and all ages " Misery's sons and
daughters, and the multitude that are ready to
perish " live huddled together in single rooms
under conditions in which delicacy and decency
seem to be impossible. Masses of the poor are
crowded, swept, crushed together in heaps, which
I dare not characterise by the terrific epithet which
a great writer has applied to them, but which has
given to the English language the new and hideous
names of " slums " and " rookeries." Clergymen
know something of such rooms ; their pestilential
atmosphere ; the offensive furniture ; the foul sur-
roundings ; the walls spotted and ringstraked with
perpetual leprosy ; every breath of heaven's air
rigidly excluded, even if heaven's air were to be had.
These are the "homes" if one dare give such a
sacred name to the dens and lairs of human misery
in which myriads of English children, endowed
with as much humanity and as full of eternity as
the children of a palace, are suffered to grow up,
or to die !
And what are the consequences?
The causes and the consequences, inextricably
interfused with each other, like the creatures, half-
human half-serpent, which Dante saw in the seventh
chasm, are Drink, Disease, Degradation. The Huns
and Vandals who shall wreck the prosperity and the
institutions of England, are being trained as we
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have been warned not on the steppes of Asia,
but in the streets of towns. And we must not
suppose for a moment that these consequences are
confined to the immediate victims. The typhus,
or scarlatina, or small-pox, which lurks in some
horrible court, may be conveyed to far other regions
by the dress, or the uniform which the District
Visitor sees being made in an infected room, or
giving warmth to a bed where the sick are lying.
These blind alleys, poverty-stricken amidst wealth,
criminal in defiance of law, dehumanised in spite of
civilisation and. of Christianity, are the hotbeds of
the harlot, the felon, and the drunkard, who are to
England her heaviest burden and her most deadly
curse. They will be, as Professor Huxley has said,
the great Serbonian bog of our future civilization.
The rector of a parish of 20,000 poor people in
the East End of London told me that, when
he considered the hopelessness and wretchedness
of the lives they lived, he felt certain that some
terrible revolution must, sooner or later, come. If
1884 forgets the terrific lessons of 1792, and of
1848, and of 1871, the mountain which has begun
already to mutter may some day burst, and "the
thin blue smoke," which now rises as from a narrow
fissure, may, to borrow the image of a great orator,
become a river of fire, and " the bellowing thunder
of a volcano which shall shake the world."
Now, this being so, it is the duty of every good
man and of every sincere patriot to do everything he
can, great or small, to remedy conditions which are
fraught with individual ruin and national disaster.
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Essays.
The effort which the Association of Art for Schools
is making is a small one, but it is an effort in the
right direction, and will co-operate with thousands of
other beneficent endeavours to alleviate if not to
remove, to delay if not wholly to avert. For one
element, undoubtedly, in the grim tragi-comedy of
which I have spoken a comedy with no humour in
its grotesqueness, a tragedy with no dignity in its
pathos is the increasingly abnormal nature of the
conditions of city life for all of us, but most of all
for the poor. It is useless to say, with the poets,
that
" God the first garden made, and the first city Cain " ;
or
" God made the country, and man made the town."
Life in great cities is, and always has been, an
inevitable necessity of the growth of civilization.
Nevertheless, it is our duty, and all the more our
duty, to restore, to the utmost of our power, the
balance which we have destroyed in the conditions
of life with which God meant us to be blessed. I
rejoice, therefore, that it has occurred to some
kindly and thoughtful persons to provide elementary
schools, not only with works of Art, but also with
plants and flowers. One of the most pathetic one
of the most powerful appeals which God has
addressed to us is that which comes to us from the
beauty which He has lavished upon the world. It
is the very autograph of love. Without necessary
things, we could not, of course, have lived at all ;
but with these necessary things God has, as it were,
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thrown in the not necessary but infinitely blessed
element of beauty. Consider the beauty of water
that pure crystal, that perfect diamond of God in
every undefiled form of it : in the mist upon the
mountain side; in the rivulet which bubbles up
amidst moss and fern ; in the majestic river ; in the
inviolate sea ; in the dew upon the grass ; in the
snowy clouds which catch a gleam of crimson in the
evening sky. Consider the beauty of light : light is
needful to us, but the infinite loveliness and diversity
of colour the hues of the rich unfolding dawn, the
blue sky, the green earth, the splendour of the dove's
neck and the peacock's plume, the sevenfold perfec-
tion of the rainbow's arch these are a gratuitous
gift of God. Consider vegetation : the commonest
of trees, the commonest of flowers
" The great elm-tree, in the open, posed
Placidly, full in front, smooth bole, broad branch,
And leafage, one green plenitude of May.
O yon exceeding beauty ! bosomful
Of lights and shades, murmurs and silences,
Sun warmth, dew coolness, squirrel, bee, and bird,
High, higher, highest ! till the blue proclaims
Leave earth ; there's nothing better till next step
Heavenward."
The rich could hardly render to the poor in cities a
simpler act of kindness than by supplying with
flowers the schools of their children. Even wild
flowers plucked from the lavish prodigality of beauty
on woodland banks, primroses and daffodils,
' ' That come before the swallow comes, and take
The winds of March with beauty,"
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Essays.
might preach to our little city Arabs such " Sermons
on the Mount " as they have never heard before.
Before I proceed any further, let me give some
very simple illustrations of the influences of things
beautiful alike on pure and impure, alike on noble
and ignoble souls. Kingsley tells us how once, in
the streets of London, he stopped to look at a cage
of humming-birds in the shop of a naturalist. " I
was gloating," he says, " over the beauty of these
feathered jewels, and then wondering what was the
meaning, what was the use of it all ; why those
exquisite little creatures should have been hidden for
ages in all their splendour of ruby and emerald and
gold in the South American forests, breeding and
fluttering and dying, that some dozen out of all those
millions should be brought over here to astonish the
eyes of men. And as I asked myself why were all
these boundless varieties, these treasures of unseen
beauty created, I ' turned to share the joy.' Next to
me stood a huge, brawny coal-heaver, in his shovel
hat and white stockings, and highlows, gazing at the
humming-birds as earnestly as myself. As I turned,
he turned, and I saw a bright manly face and soot-
grimed forehead, from under which a pair of keen,
flashing eyes gleamed wondering smiling sympathy
into mine. In that moment we felt ourselves friends.
We only looked half a minute at each other, with a
delightful feeling of understanding each other, and
then burst out both at once with, ' Isn't that beauti-
ful ? ' ' Well, that is ! ' And then both turned back
again to stare at our humming-birds."
Again, a friend of mine tells how a boy, whom he
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Art in Schools.
knew, was observed to make a point of always pro-
curing a flower every day, not to wear in his button-
hole by way of personal adornment, but in order to
lay it beside him on the city desk at which he
worked. He never even told his father why he did
it. He did it as a help against temptation. Un-
imaginative persons might have said to him with a
sneer, " that God was no more present in the flower
than in the desk on which it stood " ; but, neverthe-
less, he found that that flower did speak pure and
sweet thoughts to him. It reminded him of the
sacred and august presence which compassed his
path. It helped him to bear the strain to which he
was exposed.
Or, again, consider the influence of external
objects on minds very different from these. One
day, not long ago, the warder of Millbank prison
found one of the most abandoned women ever
committed to his care leaning her face upon her
hands, and weeping in some great sorrow. It was
found that she was pressing to her cheeks a white
blossom, such as bloomed every summer beneath the
window of her home, in days when she had been an
innocent child. That flower recalled what perhaps
nothing else could have recalled to her conscience
the fatal loss entailed by an evil life. Once more,
take Charles Reade's description of a group of rough
Australian diggers, wrapped into tender and human
emotions as they listened open-mouthed to the song
of a lark, which reminded them of the days when
they had heard that song as white-headed boys in
the sweet lanes of England, before life's pillar of fire
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Essays.
had turned to them its dark and stormy side. These
instances, I think, will prove that, in things of beauty,
there is, for all minds, if not " a joy for ever," yet at
least a very potent, and even, at certain crises, a very
regenerative spell.
Now set by the side of these proofs of happy
influence the anecdote told by one of our inspectors
of schools. A young lady was giving a lesson before
him on " The Bee " to a class of children at Ancoats,
and the tears stood in her eyes to find that the
children only seemed to get blanker and duller as
she proceeded. The inspector interposed, and found
out the reason of their total want of interest in an
interesting lesson. It was because these children
had never seen a bee, and had no idea what it was
like, or where it might be found ! Never seen a bee !
Perhaps you may ask, " What does it matter whether
the children had ever seen a bee or not ? " Well,
only consider all that it implies : the immense loss
of sympathy with some of the sweetest facts of
nature, which have been known to man ever since
man was. Even Homer had watched the
"E6i>ea iro\\& (J.e\urcrdwi>
Herpes t'/c y\a<f>vpTJs alfl vtbv tpxofJ.fv6.ui>,
the dense swarms of bees as they flew out of their
hives in the hollow rock, or hung in grapelike clusters
on the blossoms of the spring. Even ^schylus sings
with delight
Tijs dvOefj-ovpyov a-rdy/jia, Tra/J.<pats /JL\I,
" the gleaming honey-drop of the golden bee." As
for modern poetry, it is full of the
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Art in Schools.
" Murmur of innumerable bees."
Read the delicious lines of Keats :
" 'Mid boughs encradled, where the deer's swift leap
Startles the wild bee from the foxglove's bell ; "
or Tennyson's
" For now the noonday quiet holds the hill ;
The grasshopper is silent in the grass ;
The purple flowers droop ; the golden bee
Is lily-cradled."
Thirty years ago I read some lines by some unknown
poet, which I remember still :
" Beautiful, O woman, the sun on flower and tree,
And beautiful the balmy wind that dreameth on the sea,
And beautiful the hushing of the linnet on her nest,
With her young beneath her wings and the sunlight on her
breast ;
While hid among the flowers, where the drowsy bee is flitting,
Singing unto its own glad heart the village child is sitting."
Even amid the gloom of London there sometimes
flashes upon " that inward eye which is the bliss of
solitude," a privet-hedge in my garden at Marlborough,
behind which were some beehives, and under their
stand I had planted a quantity of borage. To see the
hundreds of bright blue flowers, with myriads of bees
buzzing and revelling among them in the summer
noon, was a sight never to be forgotten. And
imagine the surroundings of children who have
never even seen a bee ! A little girl in Sheffield
was sent a message the other day to a village two
miles off, and, till that day, she had never seen the
lambs in the fields. What do such facts mean ?
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Essays.
They mean that thousands of town children have
lived lives entirely ignorant of the lavish splendours
with which God has adorned our earthly dwelling-
place. Not for these are His fantasies of balm and
bloom in the summer meadows. Not for these does
His grass grow upon the mountains, and green herb
for the use of men.
All the more, therefore, should it be our duty
to teach them, as far as we can, by means of Art,
what nature looks like, and what nature means; to
provide them, for the loss of natural beauty, with
such compensations as Art can give. For when a
man, from childhood upwards, has been wholly
deprived of these, when he hears little but what
is debasing, and sees nothing but what is ugly and
squalid, what can we expect of him ? A true
human being cannot be brought up in a sty.
Finding no refuge anywhere from the meanness and
ugliness of life, he will pass from the dull sty to
the unlovely street, and from the bad street to the
maddening gin-shop.
You will perhaps object that even in the
country, where the poorer classes are surrounded
by all nature's prodigal loveliness where man can
see the apple-blossom, and hear the lark sing, and
stand on moors intertwined with gold and purple
by the gorse and heather that there, too, we find
drink and degradation. It is true. There are
shadows and storm-clouds even over Arcady. Nor
is the reason far to seek. Amiel, in his remarkable
''Journal intime" hearing a company of rustics
howling disagreeable songs on a balmy summer
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Art in Schools.
evening, under the starlit sky, and insulting the
grandeur of solitary and tranquil night with this
effrontery of grossness, attributed it to the sad and
secret instinct which all men have of asserting
themselves at all costs, and so confronting all
nature with an egotism which flatters their lowest
and coarsest pride. But this echo of Satan this
self-assertion of the ape and the tiger in human
nature, the basilisk and the adder in the human
heart is but a distortion of the free will which is
our noblest privilege, and beauty is one of the
elements by which the freewill may be trained
into subjection to the eternal laws of God.
Yet, on the other hand, the country is, as a
rule, morally sweeter by far than the slums of our
great towns. The child who can wander by the
willows and primroses on the banks of such
English streams as we have not poisoned with the
scum of our manufactures, children who look into
the birds'-nests with their blue eggs among the
fragrant may, children whose tread has been on
the yellow sands of the shore or on the mountain
sod, are infinitely the gainers by the sights and
sounds in the midst of which they have grown up.
Except where drink has scorched up their happiness
also with its demon finger, the squalor of country
villages is less revolting, the crime is rarer, and less
intolerably vile.
But we desire to see works of Art introduced
into country schools also ; and here several thoughts
suggest themselves, which are of great importance
for our subject.
in
Essays.
The first is, that our country children, no less
than our town children, suffer, because in them also
the regenerating and ennobling instinct of beauty is
left uncultivated. They are not rightly trained to
see or to admire. When Professor Henslow went
to take charge of a dull and lonely country parish,
he said that, but for the continual interest of botany,
he might have gone mad or committed suicide. He
began to initiate the village children into the elements
of botany. The result was remarkable. The village
girls and boys increased in intelligence, and it was
found that the girls were so useful in awakening the
interests of other children in rural sights and sounds,
that nursemaids from that village were sought for far
and wide. The nation has of late years developed
a most laudable zeal in the cause of education. I
do hope that the education may not become too
burdensome, too artificial or mechanical, too heavy
a load upon the memory, too total a neglect of the
imagination. I do trust that it may not multiply
what has been called "the plague of fermenting
imbecility, striving to make for itself what it calls
a position in life." The whole Education Depart-
ment might well take to heart the remark that
" Education does not mean teaching people to
know what they do not know it means teaching
them to behave as they do not behave. It is not
teaching the youth of England the shapes of letters
and the tricks of numbers, and then leaving them
to turn their arithmetic to roguery and their literature
to lust. It is, on the contrary, training them to the
perfect exercise and kingly continence of their bodies
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Art in Schools.
and souls by kindness, by watching, by warning,
by precept and by praise but, above all, by
example." I have long ago, and often, expressed
my opinion that the education of Englishmen of
all classes, high and low, is in danger of being
ruined and paralysed by the plague-spot of competi-
tion, the dry rot of artificiality, the mandarinat of
incessant and wearying examinations.
Next, even in country schools Art is necessary as
an interpreter of nature. Plato dismisses painters
from his ideal republic, because he says they only
make copies of external things, which are themselves
but copies of the ideal ; that is, of the eternal
realities and archetypes. This was a misconception
of Art altogether. The great artist has a far loftier
aim than the mere copying of the external. His
art, if it be merely imitative of surface, becomes
essentially second-rate. His aim is, through the
sensible object, to give us the inmost idea. " Art,"
it has been said, "is a perfected nature, which
conceives of unity beneath variety; of the general
within the particular ; the moral within the physical ;
the absolute within the relative; and which strives
to reproduce the object of the conception, but by
means of forms more faithful." In one word, " Art
is the representation of the ideal." It does not
imitate, it interprets. It enables men to penetrate
through the squalid to the idea which is dormant
in it. The great artist teaches us to see, what to
see, and how to see. He sees the infinite in things,
and expresses it in the form of beauty. He enables
us to observe, through the medium of his own
H 113
Essays.
genius, that which to our own mediocrity might
otherwise have been commonplace. He shows us,
as Mr Browning truly says,
"The beauty, and the wonder, and the power,
The shapes of things, their colours, lights, and shades,
Changes, surprises and God made them all." . . .
Here, then, we have arrived step by step at
one point the great, the national importance of
trying to educate the noblest side of the nature of
our children, and of teaching them that is, of
developing their best natures by means of good
Art. Intelligent children in cities may and do
learn something from the education of the shop-
windows ; but, unhappily, this education, since it
leaves them the helpless victims of bad Art, does
as much harm as good. Untrained minds, and
minds perverted by familiarity with exclusive ugli-
ness, will probably admire just the wrong things,
if we do not educate them by the right ones. In
shop-windows, if they see occasionally a good picture
or a lovely water-colour, they also see pictures irre-
deemably vulgar and hopelessly meretricious. Of
photographs and prints, which grossly offend against
modesty, I will say nothing, but harm may be done
by some which are ostensibly harmless. There is
one very popular print in shop-windows of late,
which seems to me quite demoralising in its subtle
suggestion of baseness. It represents two French
ecclesiastics, one of whom, with a sheepish face,
has evidently been telling some dubious anecdote
to the other, who is leaning back in his chair with
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Art in Schools.
an explosion of wicked laughter ; and the motto (if
I remember rightly) is " Did she ? " or something
equally suggestive. The print is to me an embodi-
ment of the tendencies which take form in the moral
frivolity and cankering atheism of France. But
coarser, if not lower, depths of vulgarism are common.
For thirty years I have seen some odious pictures
which first disgusted me in the room of an under-
graduate, and which I never pass without a sensa-
tion of loathing. When one sees college rooms
adorned with pugilists, jockeys, and ballet-girls, we
see a frank confession of the tastes and calibre of
the owner; but even pictures of ballet-girls are not
so low as these. One is called "Bon Vin," and
represents an abominable monk patting his stomach
as he ogles a glass of drink ; the other is, if possible,
a still more dehumanised monk gloating over an
oyster which he holds with both hands. The person
who produced these monstrosities deserves a place,
if not with Ciacco, in the Stygian slime of the Inferno,
at least in the purgatorial circle of gluttony and
drunkenness. Conceive the effect upon a man's
mind of only seeing such pictures as these upon
his walls ! " Hang this upon your walls," said a
wise Oxford print-seller to an Oxford undergradu-
ate, as he showed him an etching of an old master,
" and the race-horses and opera beauties will dis-
appear from them"; and, to the great benefit of
that undergraduate, they did disappear. Supposing
that a youth had one or two good reproductions of
Fra Angelico's angels, do you think that he could
hang them by the side of the horses of the turf or
"5
Essays.
the dancing and posing vileness of the demi-monde ?
But, if my remarks about the danger and the pre-
valence of bad Art needed any demonstration, I
think that they are illustrated in massive proportions
by the advertisements which deface our railway
stations and the walls and hoardings of our towns
with acres of hideousness. We are fretted with
miles of odious and obtrusive puffery. One would
think that the main object of English life was to
study the merits of Cadbury's Cocoa, Colman's
Mustard, and, above all, Pears' Soap. This is a
wholesale vulgarization of the nation's taste. I
always see with indignation the corner house oppo-
site our Houses of Parliament. It is plastered over,
windows and all, with glaring theatrical placards, and
some are as brutal and as vulgar as can possibly be
conceived. The English nation has spent tens of
thousands of pounds upon that noble site. There
are our Houses of Parliament, Westminster Hall,
and Westminster Abbey; and we allow the whole
square to be irredeemably spoilt and degraded by
the one object, which from every point of view most
prominently catches the eye. It is an eating-house,
covered with obtrusive representations of vulgarity
and violence, where tawdry yellow strives with dirty
red.
My conclusion, then, is that the decoration,
with good pictures and engravings, of our Board
and National Schools a thing which the slightest
local effort might everywhere effect at very small
cost would have an influence decisively and
beneficently educational ; especially if, as I assume,
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Art in Schools.
they are occasionally explained by the teachers.
Nor is it any matter of ct, priori conjecture that such
objects may train the minds of some children in a
genuine and wholesome sense of beauty, and exercise
upon the minds of others an influence still more
special and decided. Let me try to show you, first,
that we have the highest authority for the theory, and
then that it is thoroughly ratified by actual experience.
In defence of the theory, I will refer you to the
greatest poem ever written, the Divina Commedia of
Dante. Notice how, from the precincts of the
Inferno, he excludes everything which has in it
a single redeeming touch of beauty. Notice his
instinctive sense that there is an impassable chasm
between the Infernal and the Beautiful. There you
have foul rain, murky gloom, the red-hot pinnacles
of the city of Dis, burning tombs silent and awful,
scorching sand, rivers that leap into the abyss " in a
Niagara of blood " ; you have the petrifying Medusa,
the wallowing Minotaur, the indecent fiends, the
loathly Gorgon, the ghastly wood of the suicides,
on whose gnarled boughs sit the obscene harpies of
despair and misery, the hideous distortions, the
human serpentry, Lucifer with his black, yellow,
and vermilion face, and his frozen, tufted, bat-like
wings. Dante seems to have felt instinctively that
even one lovely thing in those regions would imply
a redeeming touch of that mercy which mediaeval
theology compelled him wholly to exclude. And,
therefore, when his poem requires the presence of
an angel, he will not allow the ghastliness and
squalor to be even for a moment banished or
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Essays.
relieved. The angel himself seems to be half
transformed by the horrid medium through which
he moves. He is not radiant and affable, but full
of disgust and indignation. The ruined spirits fly
before him like frogs before the water-serpent, and
with his left hand he moves from his face the gross
air of the abyss. He does not so much as notice
the two poets ; to the fiends he speaks only a few
words of concentrated scorn, and then speeds away
disdainful in a moment. Compare this with the
Angels of the Purgatory, in their radiant beneficence,
with their swan-like wings, and dazzling faces, and
fair hair, and emerald robes, breathing immortal
fragrance, and speaking in words of love ; or with
the spiritual splendours, the living rubies and topazes
of the Paradise. Nor is this all ; for in the Purga-
torio the speaking sculptures on the marble floor
of the Terrace of Pride are used by Dante, as
expressing the strongest and most blessed remedial
agencies. He uses art for the awakenment of sin-
tainted, though not yet sin-ruined, souls.
I pass from theory to practical experience. There
are scores of memorable instances in which the whole
future destiny of children has been swayed for life
by the objects of Art which they have seen around
them. Vauban, the great engineer, attributed the
mechanical bent of his genius to the fact that, as a
child, he used to be shut up in a room which con-
tained no single object except a clock. The destiny
of Chatterton was decided by the old muniment
room and mouldering documents of St Mary's,
Redcliffe. Turner's genius was fired by the acci-
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Art in Schools.
dental familiarity with a very ordinary picture.
Darwin tells us that his bent for travelling had
been decided by the picture of a tropical plant.
Mr Ruskin has somewhere attributed his Art
faculty to the circumstance that, as a child, having
no plaything but a bunch of keys, he spent hours
in tracing out the patterns on the carpet. It is
mentioned in President Garfield's life that the wife
of a farmer, far in the country, being astonished that
her boys, one after the other, developed a passion
for going to sea, the explanation was given when
someone pointed to the picture of a ship at full
sail, which hung over the chimney-piece of the room
with which they were most familiar. We know, too,
of actual schools where the children have shown
themselves sensible to the influence of pictures on
their school-room walls. The other day a kind-
hearted lady invited to her house some of the
children from Whitechapel. They soon began to
talk freely to her, and one of the confidences was :
" We've such a beautiful picture in our school ; it's
all about the sea." Mr Ruskin tells us that not
long ago he gave to a school in a fishing village,
a copy, of little value, of an angel of Fra Angelico,
which he had bought out of charity of an Italian
artist. Nothing could exceed the delight and
gratitude of all connected with the school. It
seemed to the children like a glimpse of Paradise.
I do not think, then, that I exaggerate when
I say that such pictures may especially in the
hands of wise teachers have an educational value of
the highest order. I think that Tennyson felt this
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Essays.
when he wrote his " Princess," and shows how care-
fully Ida filled her college full of all rich memorials,
so that the eyes of the girl-graduates might be daily
and hourly familiarised with deeds and examples of
pure and noble womanhood :
. . . "She
That taught the Sabine how to rule,
The foundress of the Babylonian wall,
The Carian Artemisia strong in war,
The Rhodope that built the Pyramid,
Clelia, Cornelia, with the Palmyrene
That fought Aurelian, and the Roman brows
Of Agrippina."
I daresay that there is hardly one of us who cannot
recall some picture which has exercised, at some time
or other, an intense effect upon himself. Sometimes
it is a mere wood-cut. I remember one of a monk,
his head covered with a cowl, kneeling at the foot of
a cross, which haunted me for weeks. The whole
career of Count Zinzendorf was influenced by an
Ecce Homo in the gallery at Diisseldorf. Diirer's
engraving of " The Knight and Death " inspired La
Motte Fouque^s admirable story of " Sintram and
his Companions." An old piece of tapestry stirred
in Mr Browning the thoughts which find such
immortal utterance in his " Childe Roland to the
dark tower came." Could there be a finer sermon
on the unsatisfying effect of all human knowledge,
apart from divine wisdom, than Diirer's marvellous
" Melancholia " ? Was there ever a more thoughtful
comment on " Behold ! I stand at the door and
knock " than Holman Hunt's " Light of the
World"? If you wanted to impress a youth with
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Art in Schools.
the duty of making a resolute choice, not of
pleasure, but of virtue, might he not be inspired
by Raphael's picture of the " Knight's Dream " ?
Or, if you wanted to assure him of the certain
victory of those who fight against corruption, could
he see a grander allegory of it than in Turner's
"Apollo and the Python," the beautiful sun-god,
in his radiant circle of light, slaying the huge,
hideous, envenomed monster, which bursts asunder
in the midst under the arrows of the dawn ? Once
more not to weary you take the last picture
acquired by the National Gallery, and attributed
to Velasquez. It represents a little child, brought
by his guardian angel to behold, and to seek the
help and blessing of the Redeemer, who has been
scourged and is soon to be crucified. Half-seated,
half-lying on the ground, faint and mangled, He is
fast bound, He cannot move ; yet He turns his face
and reaches as far as the cords will let Him to the
little child, as if He would stretch out His arm to
him and embrace him, only His arms are tied. He
is helpless to help the helpless. And the child,
shocked at the spectacle, half shrinks and half
worships. And the peculiarity of the picture is
this, that it is at once the most repelling and the
most fascinating picture in the collection. There
is not in the whole canvas a gleam of beauty, and
yet so deep, and true, and awful is the parable of
human life which it presents, that no one who has
seen it can ever forget it. For, underlying all this
picture of helpless and hopeless suffering, there is
the pathetic reality of our helplessness and of our
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Essays.
hope, our pathetic insignificance, and the reality of
all that was done to help us. That picture represents,
in a way that art has rarely equalled, the humiliation
which preluded the victory of the Lord of Life and
Death, who is the Brother, the Friend, the Redeemer
of mankind. You have only to stand before it for a
little time to judge of the effect it produces on the
minds of the passers-by. 1
I have little to add. I have not consciously
diverged for a single moment from the subject
before us, and from that wise and generous aim
of the " Art for Schools Association," which I would
most gladly further. I began by showing how dull,
how gloomy, how squalid are our cities. I argued
how sad a thing it was that thousands should thus
have no chance of reading those autographs of love
and blessing, which, for our eternal instruction, God's
own hand has thus inscribed in the stars of heaven
and the hues of earth. I dwelt on this abnormal
exclusion of every elevating and refining influence,
this absence of natural beauty from the lives and
from the very conception of our masses, as one
source of the drink and degradation which meet us
on every side, and I gave instances of the regener-
ative power of nature in awakening the expulsive
force of purer affections. My next aim was to
illustrate the truth that Art is the necessary inter-
preter of nature, and that in Art nature speaks to us
as it were in the tongue of the sons of men. I
showed that where good Art is neglected as an
agent in education, bad Art will exercise unchecked
1 See a sermon by Dean Church.
122
Art in Schools.
its vulgarising, demoralising, almost dehumanising
influence. I brought instances to show that objects
of Art do, demonstrably, exercise an extraordinary
power over the imagination of the young, to the
extent of even influencing their entire destiny ; and
that when rightly used, when duly explained, when
frequently referred to, they may be made an engine
of the best and loftiest moral teaching. It only
remains to sum up, in a few last words, the practical
bearing of the truths which I have been en-
deavouring to impress. Nothing can more clearly
show the doctrinaire character of our educational
system than the extent to which every truth and
principle I have been urging upon your attention
has been ignored. We have been for years paying
tithes of mint and anise and cummin to the three
R's, and have been totally disregarding the weightier
matters of life, the admiration, hope, and love by
which we live. You may go into a city school, and
the children will tell you very rapidly how much
seven-and-twenty pounds of bacon cost at ninepence
farthing a pound, but they may never have breathed
the fragrance of a lily or so much as seen a bee.
We leave our schools, bare and ugly with
" The master's desk,
Deep-scarred by raps official ;
The warping floor, the battered seats,
The jack-knife's carved initial ;
The charcoal frescoes on its walls,
Its door's worn sill, betraying
The feet that, creeping slow to school,
Went storming out to playing."
Whereas we ought to take pride and pleasure in
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Essays.
adding to the happiness of children by making our
schools lovely. We make them like prisons when
we ought to make them as much as possible like
homes, and better than homes. We leave our poor
hard-worked masters and pupil-teachers to toil on in
a wilderness of squalor, when we ought to surround
them with things which would refresh the eye and
relieve the heart. We make Art a mere luxury for
the rich, when it should be our pride to make it a
free gift for the poor. We reduce our schools to
a terra incognita^ because we leave in them no single
object of interest or beauty which might attract any
one to visit them. We spend three millions yearly
on elementary education, and yet spare the mere
fraction of expense which might help to make school-
hours more pleasant and school-buildings less repel-
lant ; and which, if wisely utilised, might develop in
children not only a higher intelligence, but also a
sense of revolt against things brutal, and a sense of
dislike to all that is morally and physically foul. It
is but little that we can do at the best ; and vast,
and terrible, and deeply seated is the work of evil
which has to be undone. We shall not, indeed,
bring Utopia at once into existence by surrounding
the children of the nation with objects of beauty,
and with the reproduction of lovely scenes and noble
works of Art ; but all that we do in this matter will
be work done in a right direction. Utopia after all
such, at least, is the only hope which can inspire
any genuine effort " is but another name for time " ;
and if anyone tells us that our present efforts will
have but an infinitesimal influence for good amid the
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Art in Schools.
weltering surge of human misery which threatens to
sweep over the whole surface of civilization, we may
answer, in the words of an eloquent divine, that
God binds up even the grains of sand in the wings
of the wind, that they may become a barrier for the
raging of the sea.
WHAT IS A COLLEGE? 1
BY MARK PATTISON.
T SUPPOSE the word calls up in most people's
minds the image of a building, a building
of some pretensions externally, of stone, no, not
of stone, in deference to common sense it will really
be built of brick, as drier and warmer, but in defer-
ence to the superstition of architects it will be ven-
eered with stone, that it may look as if it were really
stone, for were not "colleges" in the middle ages
built of stone ? There must be gable ends all about ;
the windows must have mullions and transoms ; the
glass must be very small, and inserted in iron band-
ings, in imitation of the lead lattices in use 300 years
ago, before plate-glass was invented, the glass must
not only be small, it must be thick to let in as little
light as possible, and the whole must be casemented
in iron again, letting in as much wind and rain as
possible. The edifice may have been built possibly
ten years ago, but it must look as if it had been
erected in the time of James I.
This, or something like it, is, I suppose, the idea
which the word " college " excites in our minds.
Perhaps, to most persons it will seem a paradox,
1 Journal of Education, March 1882.
126
What is a College ?
when I say that the word College in its origin, and
for a long time after, did not mean a building at all,
and that its transference to that signification is owing
to an accidental association. College is a term of
Roman law, derived directly into our language from
the Latin. It is in fact the Latin word itself " col-
legium " in the clipt indistinct English pronunciation
of which we have formed the habit, out of fear that
the cold air of our rigorous climate should get down
our throats, if we were to open our mouths wide
enough to enunciate our syllables distinctly. Col-
legium in the civil law means what we call a society,
an association, a club, a chartered company, a firm,
a corporation. One person or two persons could
not be styled a collegium in Roman law, which
knew nothing of the fiction of Corporation sole of
our law, but required at the least three to constitute
a Collegium. The term was only applicable to
persons. Whether or no such a Collegium possessed
properties in lands or buildings, and whether they
were or were not lodged or located in a house, this
was not implied in styling the society a College.
Such, then, are the Colleges of Oxford and Cam-
bridge : they are not the buildings to be found in
those localities, but a number of chartered corpora-
tions of men associated for certain purposes, and
governed by codes of laws known as Statutes. The
motive out of which these corporations sprang must
be dwelt upon, as it is a part of the public history of
our country. There was public munificence before
the thirteenth century, but public munificence then
took the form of founding a monastery for monks.
127
Essays.
The idea was promoting the interests of the Church,
not that of the Commonwealth. No doubt, the
foundation of a convent, under the circumstances of
those ages, was a benefit to the realm of England,
though such was not the intention of the founders.
The city of Oxford abounded in convents, abbeys,
and priories. After the rise in the thirteenth century
of the new idea of knowledge and its cultivation, as
being an object possible and desirable, a new direc-
tion was given to public spirit. As monks had been
congregated in monasteries for the ascetic life, and
for Divine worship more fully to be carried out in
common, so it was easily seen that a thorough,
assiduous, and lifelong cultivation of knowledge
could best be provided for by associating a number
of like-minded men living together, and under a
common rule. Such was the origin of Colleges.
That the first Colleges were founded by wealthy
churchmen, and that the persons who composed
them were ecclesiastics, was inevitable from the con-
ditions of education in that age, almost confined to
the clergy. But this fact cannot hide from us that
the spiritual element, which was thus being endowed
and fostered in the new institutions, was that very
element of human reason which was in the course of
centuries, after long conflict, to vanquish the Church
which had fed and fostered it during its infancy.
Historians sometimes speak as if the College was a
reproduction of the Convent. This may seem on
first view plausible, but a study of the early statutes
discloses to us that the resemblance went no further
than the fact that all the members of the early Col-
128
What is a College ?
legiate Corporations were ecclesiastics, as was inevit-
able at a time when the clerical profession included
all callings that required a lettered preparation. The
essential conception of the College was really anti-
monastic, even though the members of the College
were as churchmen bound to celibacy, and lived
under the common rule of discipline.
As in the dark ages there had been a fashion of
founding monasteries, so after the thirteenth century
there sprang up a fashion of founding Colleges. So,
if you want to imagine what the University of Oxford
was like in the fifteenth century, you must picture
to yourselves first, a body of some three or four
thousand students not more, for the thirty thousand
which the books talk of are legendary boy students
from fourteen to twenty. Secondly, you must picture
some three or four hundred older men, graduates
engaged in instructing or regenting the boys. These
students were lodged partly in private houses, but
chiefly in houses appropriated to this purpose,
governed by a master, and called, in the Latin of the
time, " Aulae," a word which we have aspirated at
the beginning, clipped as usual at the end, and
now pronounced "Hall." Thus the building, or
Hostel, for the board and lodging of students, which
you now call a College, was only known as a Hall.
To complete the picture of the Oxford of the fifteenth
century, you must imagine, thirdly, a dozen or more
bodies corporate, styled Colleges, in some of which
as few as twenty, in others sixty, seventy, or more
graduates, were incorporated and maintained at the
cost of the foundation, for the purpose of devoting
i 129
Essays.
themselves for life to study and learning. Thus
the University of Oxford was a school or place of
education, with boys and their masters, as schools
are now, lodged in their Halls or Hostels ; the Col-
lege was an association for the endowment and
encouragement of learning.
If we recur to the distinction I drew just now
between the preservation of the acquired knowledge
of a community, and the enlargement of its bound-
aries, we may say that the aim of the earlier founders
of the Colleges was exclusively the preservation of
the knowledge extant in their time. The large-
minded ecclesiastics who founded Merton and
New College at Oxford, were deeply impressed by
the spectacle of the wreck and dissipation of the
treasures of science by the influx of the barbarous
tribes into the Roman empire. They sought in
their Colleges to preserve what they could from the
general ruin, and to create a new order of clerics,
who, instead of being given over to the useless
occupation of fasting and psalm-singing, should be
the priests of this new cult, the cult of knowledge.
The quantity of knowledge accessible to the human
mind in the fifteenth century was large not, as now,
immeasurable. It was not impossible, with time, for
one man to compass all that could be known, cer-
tainly all that could be known in one of the three
great divisions of knowledge theology, law, medi-
cine. Fourteen years that is, twice seven, a double
apprenticeship was considered the requisite length
of time for the acquisition of this amount of know-
ledge. Accordingly, fourteen years' continuous study
130
What is a College ?
was exacted as the condition of arriving at the degree
of Doctor in one of the faculties. The College was
designed to give a man a home and a maintenance
during this long novitiate, and after it. The original
object of a College was study, not teaching. What
was offered the student was a maintenance for a
distinct purpose, not an income to carry away and
spend on his own gratification.
The fourteen years' novitiate was divided into
two apprenticeships of seven years each. The first
seven years was to be spent in the study of what
were called the liberal arts, that is to say, that
general knowledge which constitutes the basis of
all education. The second seven years was restricted
to the studies proper to the specialty, whether it were
law, physic, or divinity, to which the student had
decided at the end of his first period to devote him-
self. Such were the Colleges in their origin ; the
object of a College was study. The endowments
were intended to relieve the cleric from the drudgery
of teaching for money, and to enable him to live for
the acquisition of this common fund of knowledge.
Gradually, and in various ways not necessary to
my present purpose to explain, young students who
were willing to pay handsomely for board and tuition
got into the Colleges ; pupils who did not intend to
study, but who came to learn the elements. These
pensioners, pensionarii, soon became the paying part
of the concern. In human affairs it is well known
that, when a pecuniary interest comes into conflict
with sentiments, or with convictions founded on
more remote utilities, the money interest always
Essays.
carries the day in the end. The desire of knowledge
is a natural instinct. The perception of the utility
of the conservation of knowledge in the social body
is a perception derived from easily observed facts.
But both the sentiment and the perception of utility
are crowded out in the struggle of life by the more
urgent and persistent demands of physical existence.
Thus it came to pass that elementary education
gradually became the principal object, and, at last,
the only object of the College residents. The Fel-
lows so the members of a College Corporation
came to be called the Fellows, who held their
Fellowships on the condition of a life of study, dis-
pensed themselves, by their own votes in the con-
gregation of the University, from this condition, and
even from its forms ; and went off, most of them, to
seek pleasure or fortune in the metropolis. Instead
of a maintenance within the College walls, they drew
an income from the revenues, which they made
divisible. The Head, and a few Fellows who re-
mained behind in the building, devoted themselves
to the lucrative profession of taking boarders. This
profitable trade is the sole occupation of every one
of us in modern Oxford. We are able to extract
from the parents of our pupils something like
,40,000 a year in fees alone. But, besides these
fees, we also make very considerable profits on the
rent of our apartments, and on the sums we are
enabled to charge our boarders. The utility and
efficiency of each one of us is now measured, not by
his proficiency in science or learning, but by the
degree in which he contributes to earn this percent-
132
What is a College ?
age of profit. For percentage it is the endowments
of the Colleges, which were given for the encourage-
ment of learning, being now employed as the capital
invested in a scholastic concern. And a most
wasteful employment of capital it is. Take, for
instance, a College endowed with a net annual
income of ^6,000 and several Colleges are so
that income represents a fixed capital of, say
^250,000. Such a College is educating about
100 students, from whom it will be deriving a clear
profit of between ^3,000 and ^4,000 a year, not
2 per cent, on the capital employed.
Thus it is that the function of the Colleges, as
conservators of ancient knowledge, has dropped
entirely out of sight. The commercial value of
a going concern of this magnitude makes such
importunate demands on our attention, that it has
thrust out of sight the spiritual ends for the sake
of which it exists. For the office of academical
teacher indeed, of every teacher is eminently a
spiritual ministration. No one has left a name in
the annals of education who has not conceived of
his office as such. As we ascend from the elements,
from the village school through the various grades
of schools, we leave behind at each stage more and
more of the technicalities of teaching, and advance
to the direct action of intellect on intellect, of char-
acter on character the intellect and character of
the teacher upon the intelligence and character of
the pupil. At each stage mere instruction counts
far less, and stimulation to self-effort far more. It
is a familiar fact that it is not the man who knows
133
Essays.
most who teaches best, but the man who has most
interest in what he teaches. For the same reason,
also, systems of schooling which aim at filling the
mind of the pupil with stores of knowledge are less
efficacious than the system whose principle it is to
infuse the taste for knowledge. The mind and
character of the young are formed by two influences,
by contact in two directions contact with his com-
peers and equals, contact with his elders and
superiors. Competition with equals is to be had
under the most advantageous conditions in our
public schools, of which it is at present the saving
element. It is for the sake of contact with his
superiors in science and learning that a young man
is supposed to come to the Universities.
Occupied as the Head and Tutors of a College
are with the cares of domestic supervision and
management, they have little time for the acquisi-
tion of fresh knowledge, and soon come to lose all
interest in acquiring it. Having neither belief in
nor enthusiasm for science themselves, they cannot
infuse such into their pupils. But if the pupil, or
his parent, did not get value for his money, he would
cease to frequent the College, and we should be left
without our occupation.
To avert this danger of the falling off of our pupils,
from the drying up of the springs of knowledge, we
have had recourse to the famous expedient of prizes.
Unable now to guide the student in the path of
science, we have instituted competitive exercises
opened a vast arena, in which the youth of the
country may race against each other for crowns,
134
What is a College ?
some of olive, some of gold. A youth of any ability
now comes to Oxford for the sake of our honours
and our prizes. He is early put in training for this
end. A clever boy can begin to earn a living by
prize-getting at fifteen or sixteen, in the shape of a
school scholarship. To excel in examinations is a
profitable art. Professors of this art abound in every
part of the country ; even the masters of the Great
Schools are compelled to meet this demand. Parents
expect the masters to watch for scholarships in the
Universities, and to dispose of their sons in the
market to the best advantage. " I will not take less
than ;ioo a year for that boy," "writes a master,
" but I have another, a good useful lad, whom you
can have for ^70." What the parents and the
master want for the boy, and therefore what the boy
wants for himself, is the cash. That the matter in
which the competition has to be stood out is literature,
or mathematics, or science, or history, is in his eyes
an immaterial circumstance. " I was studying law,"
said to me a youth who had just gained a scholar-
ship, " but I am quite ready to read classics, if that
is the condition of tenure of my scholarship." Occa-
sionally a young man conies up to me uncorrupted,
not having passed through the hands of the pro-
fessional trainer; comes up full of ardour for self-
improvement, and expecting, in his innocence, to
meet with a like ardour in the so-called seats of
learning. Such a one I had with me lately, full of
enthusiasm, proposing to learn Sanscrit, and to read
some of the best books in English literature. It
became my melancholy duty to do what I could to
Essays.
damp his ardour, and I had to say to him, " My
young friend, if you have come here with the hope
of devoting three years to the improvement of your
mind, the sooner you lay aside such an idea the
better ; the College has bought you for ^80 a year,
and we have entered you for two Plates Mods, and
Finals ; you have got to get a First in Mods, next
November, and it will take you every minute of your
time to practise your exercises in preparation for
that." The whole time of the student is a prepara-
tion for the examination schools ; and this prepara-
tion is not a free study of any branch of knowledge,
but a drilling of the notes of his tutor into the form
in which he will be called upon to reproduce them
in the candidates' room. The examination is the
measure of all things, and bounds the mental horizon
of tutor and pupil alike.
For the relation of the pupil to the teacher is
revolutionized. The teacher no longer stands to the
disciple in the relation of an exemplar of wisdom
and knowledge, of an inspirer of noble aims, he is
not there to mould, to raise, to educate; he is a
coach who has to take the pupil as he is, and put
his qualities, whatever they may be, to the best
account in the way of earning marks. The pupil
expects the tutor to give him the straight tip that
is, to dictate to his pen a formula of words contain-
ing a fact, or a proposition, which is likely to be
called for in the examination-room. With as many
of these tips as his memory will hold, the pupil goes
armed to the ordeal. When they have served his
purpose for writing out his answers to the expected
136
What is a College ?
questions, the memory lets them go. They never
were knowledge to him. This is the process we
now call University education.
The public that part of the public which is con-
cerned in the matter, i.e., the fathers of middle-class
families think it is all right. They are under the
spell of this word " Education," which meets their
eyes in every newspaper, and is dinned into their
ears on every platform. The parent, who pays the
bill, may be considered to be the employer; he
employs us, the teachers, to do work for him, and
pays us for doing it. But in this branch of industry
the employer is, unfortunately, no judge of the
quality of the article supplied him. If your butcher
sends you in coarse Lincolnshire mutton, or uneat-
able beef, you are at once aware of what he is about,
and take steps to make him know it. But it is in
vain that we appeal to paterfamilias to see to the
nature of the education that his son is getting. He
sends the son to what he is told by someone is a
good College so he can say, " My son has been to
College and had a University education" and he
knows no more than the man in the moon what is
the nature of the training his son has brought away
with him. If he catch some faint echo of our
complaints of the mischiefs of the prize system, he
satisfies himself by some such reasoning as this,
" It is true," he will say to himself, " that the highest
motive of all is the love of learning for its own sake ;
the honest desire of self - improvement, and the
instinct of the thirst for knowledge. But, in how
few out of all mankind are these instincts found !
137
Essays.
Where, in one of a thousand, such noble ambition
exists, it is recognised as genius. But we cannot
expect the average youth of the country to be inspired
by such disinterested sentiments, which are very rare,
even among men. Men will not work except for
bread, and boys will not work but for prizes. A
general system must be founded on average, and not
on exceptional motives. And, after all, what does it
matter what motive takes a boy to College, provided
he goes ; he gets the education all the same." That
is just it ! He does not get the education. If he
did, we should say nothing about the motive. The
burden of our complaint is, that a system of winning
the prizes without getting the education has been
invented ; a system which simulates education and
is not it as Mappin's plate is not silver, but looks a
great deal better; a system into which mind does
not enter, in which the written answer is provided
for the written question in a mechanical way which
makes it no evidence of knowledge. In this system
the aim of the teacher is, not that the pupil should
learn, but that he should be able to perform the
exercises set for the competition. Hence the true
teacher he who knows, and knowing would make
others know is thrust aside by the young sophist,
an expert in the dodges of the school. The pro-
fessor is, in this system, an entirely useless and
ornamental appendage. What avails it to have
spent a lifetime in the acquisition of knowledge,
to have made himself a master in his science, there
is no call for it in the University. From the public
such a one may receive recognition ; he may instruct
138
What is a College ?
the public through the press ; in the class-room his
presence is useless, the student will do well to keep
out of his way.
The University of Oxford is more active now than
it has been for a century past ; but, in the scientific
movement which is going on in the world outside,
our University takes no part. While science is
advancing from discovery to discovery, from inven-
tion to invention ; while the study of antiquity has
been transformed, the methods of history trans-
formed, the science of philology created in the last
quarter of a century, we have been busy in correcting
exercises and awarding prizes. It is quite time to
ask Why should there be any University endow-
ments at all ? The teaching part of the University
is in abeyance, and its function now is only to
examine and award prizes. The proposition has
been made in more than one quarter, that Oxford
should, like the London University, become an
examining body only. The candidates for examina-
tion might more conveniently, and at much less cost,
get their preparation at their own places of residence.
The whole of our large endowments, reserving a few
thousand a year to pay examiners, might be con-
verted into prize money, and distributed annually
among the youth of the country according to marks
ascertained by paper answers. This has been
seriously proposed, and something has been done
in this direction by the last Oxford Commission.
The time perhaps will come when the same policy
can be carried consistently through.
139
CHILDREN AND POETRY. 1
/ T*HE time has happily gone by when Dr Watts'
hymns were regarded as the proper beginning
of a child's poetical education. One of these effu-
sions in particular, beginning, if we remember
rightly, "There is a dreadful Hell," suggested very
undesirable ideas to the youthful mind. There are,
however, one or two mistaken notions, which still
seem to lurk in the minds of many of those who
make selections of Poetry for the young. The first
of these is that poetry about children must needs be
attractive to children. As a matter of fact, the very
opposite of this is the case. If any choice is given
to them, boys, and we fancy girls too, though on this
point we have slighter grounds of confidence, will
with one consent avoid " We are Seven " or " Lucy
Grey." The reason is easy to find if one considers
it. Such poetry appeals to the parental instinct
which exists to some extent in all grown-up people.
To them the simplicity and helplessness of childhood
are full of pathos and, in certain circumstances, of
humour too. Children of healthy mind and body
are not conscious of weakness. They feel them-
selves able to hold their own with other children,
and with grown-up people it never occurs to them to
1 Journal of Education, August 1883.
140
Children and Poetry.
compare themselves. Such poetry as " Lucy Grey "
does not therefore touch them. It may be doubted
whether any poetry dealing with the facts of every-
day life is suited to the tastes of children. Power of
seeing the beauty of common things is the last, as it
is surely the best gift of culture, and literature of the
domestic sort does not in any way appeal to or
stimulate a child's imagination. " I would teach
children only what is not true," was the point of a
recent lecture of Mr Ruskin, and, shocking as the
dictum may sound in the ears of some, it is con-
firmed by experience. Romance, not reality, is the
best literary food for young minds.
In the particular case of Wordsworth's poetry, the
temptation to use it is made stronger by the simpli-
city of the language in which it is expressed.
Surely, it is often argued, no poetry can be fitter
for children than that which contains scarcely a
word beyond the grasp of their unaided comprehen-
sion. If words are the only things to be considered
in poetry and in literature generally, this argument is
tolerably conclusive. Otherwise it seems scarcely
judicious to put before children a poem containing
no word which they cannot understand, and no
thought which they can. We have often been
tempted to set before children by way of experiment
the parody of Wordsworth in "Rejected Addresses,"
and have only been restrained by a sense of the un-
fairness of playing such a trick. We are quite sure
that no child who knew Wordsworth's child-poetry
would have the least suspicion of the fraud.
It may perhaps be replied to this, that no child
141
Essays.
and we are writing of children not more than twelve
years old could be expected to distinguish between
an original and a good and not too ludicrous parody,
if it were gravely presented to them. This argument
is based on the assumption that children have only
the very slightest power of appreciating purely
literary merit. We have seen selections which
appear to have been compiled on the principle that
poetry to suit children must be such as no intelli-
gent grown-up person would care to read. Versified
tracts, foolish stories with an obvious moral attached,
take the place of good poetry, and the inferiority of
such stuff is excused on the plea that children can
understand it. But what is the use of their under-
standing a thing if the thing is not worth under-
standing? Besides, the implied assumption, that
they cannot understand or appreciate what is better,
is untrue. If any teacher who has taken pains to
make his poetry lessons good and interesting, will at
the end of the term ask each child in the class to
write down the two pieces which he likes best of all
that he has learnt, the result of the voting will show
very considerable appreciation of poetical excellence.
The present writer remembers well his own surprise,
two or three years ago, when he first tried this ex-
periment, at finding that Campbell's beautiful little
poem, " Lord Ullin's Daughter," had twice as many
votes as any other piece which had been learnt
during the term by a class of boys whose average age
was under ten years. Yet the term's selection had
included, among other things, "Young Lochinvar,"
" Casabianca," and some of the most spirited sea
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Children and Poetry.
songs and war lyrics in the language, and, in another
style, Goldsmith's " Elegy on the Death of a Mad
Dog." "John Gilpin," too, had been read, and in
part learnt. " Lucy Grey " was the only poem which
could possibly be called superior to the favourite,
and it was disqualified by the fact that it could not
appeal to children's feelings. The result of the
voting was the more remarkable because the tragical
conclusion of the poem had been unpleasing to many
of the boys. This was, however, atoned for by the
spirit of romantic adventure that breathes through
it; and it appeared, from subsequent questioning,
that the force and directness of the narrative, and
the vivid reality of the landscape, had been felt and
appreciated. " It seems as if it was true," said one
little fellow. What we want, then, in poetry for
children, is picturesqueness. The thoughts must be
clear and simple, and the expression direct. The
sense must not be veiled in allusions which require
tedious explanation ; but, on the other hand, un-
known words whose meaning merely requires to be
pointed out once for all are no disqualification.
Indeed, there is no better way of increasing a child's
available vocabulary than by presenting new words
in circumstances where they, and they alone, are
peculiarly appropriate. Above all, the poetry must
be purely objective. Avoid Wordsworth, suspect
Shelley ; Campbell never fails to please ; and some
of Shakespeare's songs may serve as an introduction
to his plays later on. For young children, only
short pieces should be chosen. Their powers of
sustained attention and interest are so soon exhausted,
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Essays.
that frequent change in subject, style, and metre are
necessary, if the lessons are not to become dull and
lifeless. It is a great advance in mental development
when children are able to study, without weariness, a
poem which will employ them for a whole term. To
set them to work upon such a poem is a step which
should not be taken until they can work fast. When
boys can, without difficulty, learn fifty or sixty easy
lines in a week, they may safely begin such a poem,
for instance, as Macaulay's " Horatius." It would not
be easy to find a better poem for the purpose than
this, at any rate, for boys who are learning Latin.
It is interesting, very easy to learn, and good of its
kind. We have often heard it objected that the kind
is not of the highest an objection which would be
valid enough if it were proposed to make educated
men spend their time in learning it. For boys it is
admirable, and, moreover, just long enough to occupy
a term. After this, perhaps " Marmion " or the
" Lady of the Lake " is a good and not too sudden
step in advance. The greater variety of Scott is felt
to be a relief after Macaulay's brisk but monotonous
march, and atones to youthful minds for the greater
difficulty found in learning by heart. The new ele-
ment introduced by the prominence given to scenery
and natural objects is an important step in poetical
education ; and the subjects of the two writers are
nearly enough akin to add force and point to com-
parisons of style and method. Take, as an example,
Macaulay's lines
"In yon strait path a thousand
May well be stopped by three,"
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Children and Poetry.
and Scott's description of the pass in the fifth Canto
of the " Lady of the Lake,"
' ' An hundred men might hold the post
With hardihood against a host."
In the contrast of these two passages may be seen
the whole difference between rhetorical and natural
description.
When the first freshness of Scott's poetry has worn
off, weariness will, so far as our experience goes, come
on apace. Perhaps here we may break our rule, and
prolong the study for some little time beyond this
point. Such perseverance will be useful in showing
why Scott wearies. One may point out his extreme
diffuseness, and the slipshod character of much of
the workmanship ; and it may be shown that couplets,
and even stanzas, might often be omitted, or in-
verted, without much loss to the poem as a whole.
Thus some knowledge of what good poetry really
means, and some faint conception of the poet as an
artist, may be impressed upon young minds. This
lesson may be enforced by choosing " Gray's Elegy "
to succeed the " Lady of the Lake." It will be
necessary to go through this carefully and slowly,
but the poem is worth the pains ; and, in spite of
its difficulty for children, we have almost always
found it understood and appreciated, especially after
a long spell of Scott. Of course, some account of
Gray's life and circumstances is absolutely necessary,
and is always listened to with a wondering interest.
Perhaps there are few more striking lessons than the
contrast between the fluid copiousness of the one
writer and the fastidious minuteness of the other.
K 145
Essays.
By no example can the worth of a little really good
work be better shown.
After some such training as this, children may be
set to work on Shakespeare. This is surely the goal
towards which all previous teaching should tend.
It is often delayed too long from the belief that
Shakespeare is over the heads of children, but we
have not found it so. A previous reading of Lamb's
" Tales from Shakespeare " is a good introduction to
the Comedies and Tragedies ; while for the historical
plays, which are perhaps the best to begin upon, the
knowledge of history which every child of eleven or
twelve ought to possess is enough in the way of
ground-work.
It is, perhaps, needless to say that in suggesting
the lines of study which we have just sketched, we
have no desire to dogmatize on matters of detail.
Other schemes as good or better will no doubt occur
to many. This one has at least proved interesting
to teachers and pupils, and has led many boys to
read for themselves, which is, after all, the best test
which a teacher can apply to his work. Methods of
teaching must of course vary, and no one can say for
another how he should teach this or that subject.
There are one or two points which we would venture
to urge strongly. The first is the value of copious
illustrations from English Literature generally.
Children often fail to answer questions afterwards
put to them about such illustrations, but it must
not be supposed they are therefore thrown away.
Children have naturally greater powers of assimila-
tion than of reproduction, and may often be unable
146
Children and Poetry.
to put into words the impressions which they have
received. They should also be encouraged and
helped to make use of their English reading in
translating from Latin. Many a happy turn may
be given to a line of Ovid or Virgil by re-
miniscences of a poetry lesson, and any touch
of this kind is thoroughly appreciated by intelligent
boys, who will soon begin to vie with each other in
such contributions to the work of the class. Another
question is that of learning by heart. A good many
people in these days seem to regard memory as a
mere slavish faculty not worth the pains of cultiva-
tion. We hear a great deal about the danger of
burdening the memory, and comparatively little
about the advantage of strengthening it. In poetry,
at any rate, the best way to know is to know by
heart, and the power of so learning may be easily
acquired and almost indefinitely increased. Com-
ment and illustration are much, but they must have
the material to work upon, not written in books but
present in the minds of learners.
Something perhaps should here be said about the
manner of reciting poetry. It would be superfluous
to argue against the practice of regarding repetition
merely as a means of discovering whether the work
has been prepared, and of allowing the lesson to be
mumbled or chanted through anyhow provided that
it be known by heart. But many teachers, in their
anxiety to have poetry said in an intelligent manner,
go to the opposite extreme. "Take care of the
sense, and the sounds will take care of themselves,"
is a very misleading maxim in poetry. On the
M7
Essays.
whole, we prefer a child's sing-song, which is due,
after all, only to a misguided sense of rhythm, to
the stop-minding, prosaic fashion of recitation which
reduces poetry as nearly as may be to the level of
prose, and prepares the way for a wholesale
acceptance of the opinions of Lamartine and
Carlyle. Very few children are entirely without
an ear for musical sounds, and the particular kind
of sing-song into which they fall in saying any
piece of poetry represents with considerable accuracy
the rhythm which is most natural to that particular
metre. The varieties of rhythm of which the same
metre is susceptible do not occur to their unaided
intelligence, and must be pointed out to them. By
selecting only the best examples for their study, it is
easy to show how sound may be used to aid and
enforce the sense. If this lesson were more generally
learnt, we should not hear Shakespeare's verse
murdered as it constantly is on the stage, even by
some of our best actors. If clearness of utterance,
due attention to rhythm, and some intelligence of
expression are attained, one may safely leave the
children to develop a style of recitation for them-
selves. Our main object is to get children to
appreciate poetry themselves, not to teach them to
speak to an audience. A reciting child is a fearful
bane in a household. Only we should firmly check
any symptoms of self-consciousness or affectation,
and never tolerate any approach to the rant of a
third-rate actor, or to the unctuous intonations of a
field preacher giving out a hymn.
Poetry lessons are well worth all the pains we can
148
Children and Poetry.
bestow on them. No other lesson offers nearly so
much opportunity of imparting to children the
rudiments of sound taste that power of appreciat-
ing all that is best in literature and art which is
one of the most important elements of happiness in
the life of an educated human being. Moreover, in
the case of boys preparing for the Public Schools,
one has a comfortable assurance that English poetry
will not be a subject for competitive examinations.
149
GAMES : A " U. U. " ESSAY. 1
BY E. E. B.
T AM going to write a plain, practical discourse with
no jokes or paradoxes or epigrams, and one
which will be intelligible to the meanest capacity here.
I had thought at first of describing, after the manner
of Swift or Erewhon, and with a view of suggestive
contrast, a school in which the development of the
body was the primary concern with boys was, in
the time-honoured phrase, " what they came there
for," and the cultivation of the mind was considered
laudable and useful if only undue time were not
thrown away upon it; but I stopped this train of
fancy, on finding that I had drifted into something
curiously like the education of ancient Athens. I
also had it in my mind to put before the meeting an
imitation of a Platonic dialogue, in which it would
be shown from first principles that the sort of person
who is fit to bowl is also the sort of person who is
fit to bat, and should combine the two functions
simultaneously (why how not? Theaetetus would
say), and, that a high score being the right thing,
it would follow would it not? that the best and
more perfect hit was the hit which went highest (it
would seem so, says Philebus), and so on. Racks
1 Journal of Education, February 1884.
Games.
shall not tear from me the reason for which I in the
end abandoned this brilliant idea. And, in the end,
I fell back upon the plainest prose, and am much
confused by having just read in Ruskin that the man
who can do things best is always the man who can
discourse upon them worst ; so that, if this essay is
tame and barren, it follows that my cricket average
is likely to be something quite out of the common.
I have often been told that the mind is superior to
the body ; I do not think this has ever been proved.
It seems to me to be of the nature of those things
which are called pious beliefs. As a rough test, let
us think what it is that we most value our friends
for : Is it for their delicate choice in optatives, which
my friend the composition-master assures me is the
loftiest mental development which we can put before
our youth ; or is it for their temper in other words,
their digestion which is their body ? That isn't
fair, says the composition-master : no cogent argu-
ment ever is, in the opinion of the cogee. He will
urge that the optatives are not the tip-top greatness,
but only go with it and connote it. Well, drop the
digestion itself too, and put instead the fine com-
plexion and something round the chest and proper
coloured hair which connote it. I don't think the
scale has turned. Tom Hughes says somewhere that
your real friend is the man whom, if you saw him
alone and penniless and naked in the street among
the carriages, you would take and dress and feed and
be a brother to. Well, everyone knows you wouldn't
if he had a decided squint. Anyhow, you wouldn't
merely because you knew he was clever. How is it
Essays.
practically with us ? I certainly don't think I have
any one really very ugly friend (I smile to myself as
I write this, to think how when I read it I shall see
everyone furtively glancing at his neighbour to see
if he is looking at him). I repeat, I haven't any very
ugly friend. And, on the other hand, I must say of
some of my friends, with all respect, that their minds
and intelligences are at any rate no better than they
should be.
Well, then, let us assume, till the contrary is
proved, that body is as important as mind (I speak
popularly for convenience : gentlemen who have
been reading their magazine literature diligently can
of course translate this into the proper dialect)
that a well-developed tendon Achillis is about equal
in value to firm grounding in grammar, that you may
put into the same sort of category a tendency to false
quantities and to freckles. Now, will anybody here
please to be good enough to tell me why we school-
masters should give all our care and thought, from
one end of the year to the other, to one side of this
equation, and leave the other to take care of itself ?
I seem to hear the tinkling of many answers,
" Because boys like bodily exercise well enough as
it is." Why don't they like their lessons ? " Because
things do better if left to work naturally." Just go
and apply this to Greek. " Because you can't make
all boys strong and active." Whereas you can make
all learned and clever ? " Because some of the
choicest intellects would be ruined by being forced
to play and run." And are no fine animals ever
ruined by being made to conjugate and compose ?
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Games.
If anyone comes and says, " Well, then, do you
propose to organize athletics like school, or to dis-
organize school like athletics ? " I reply to him that
it is I who am writing this essay, and not he ; and
that I am the best judge of what questions it is con-
venient to answer. But this much I will say, that I
don't know whether the system of letting boys do
what lessons they like has ever had a fair trial, and
that, with a few limitations and laws, I should un-
commonly like to see it tried. And, whether it is
tried or not, I declare upon my honour as a U. U.
that the consideration, which I have been pointing
out, seems to me to be serious and enormously
suggestive.
Whether to any extent, and to what, the school-
master should scholasticize athletics, let us now con-
sider. I will treat the question without any refer-
ence to particular schools, or any particular customs ;
and I would suggest that, in our subsequent discus-
sion, we shall gain more light in proportion as we
avoid individual instances, and speak of common
customs. I begin by the proposition that the
common English school games are of indescribable
value. Without any exaggeration, I declare that in
our whole system there is nothing which, in my
opinion, approaches them in value. I merely
mention that the Battle of Waterloo was won in the
playing fields of Eton, because that remark will have
been generally expected, and it will now not be
necessary to make it again. But I have no objec-
tion to add to it, that the existence of the playing
fields at Eton has been much more to the advantage
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Essays.
of the world than the winning of the Battle of
Waterloo. There will be none here who will deny
that games are good, of course ; but there may be
some who will not join in the strength of my lan-
guage ; and I will enlarge upon this thesis for a few
moments.
In the first place, a good run at football is abso-
lutely a good thing, and grand and beautiful, simply
because I say it is. It is good in the same sense as
an eloquent speech. When it forms part of an
organized game, and is seen and appreciated by
others, the world is ipso facto a gainer. The body
for ever ! Sursum crura I I do not see why this
argument or assertion should not be true, though I
cannot take the trouble of putting it in that particu-
lar metaphysical form which would dazzle and con-
vince. These games are a joy for ever, and that is
the long and short of it.
Next, they give a vast quantity of pleasure.
Next, the social gain is beyond calculation.
Here one drops perforce into truisms, except that
truisms spoken in the ordinary tone do not suffi-
ciently express my opinions, and I am driven rapidly
towards capital letters. I who write have seen and
played probably more school games than anyone
now alive ; and my verdict is " Very good." It
would be tiresome to dwell on this ; but consider
rapidly the habit of being in public, the forbear-
ance, the subordination of the one to the many, the
exercise of judgment, the sense of personal dignity.
The day I began to write this essay, a captain of a
house football eleven asked me to go down to his
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Games.
house-game that day. There was a small local
trouble : two important boys had a quarrel on, and
it was very awkward, and in short, he wanted to be
advised. I played; everything went on as usual.
After it was over, I asked about the quarrel. It
had vanished into the delight of exercise and the
glory of play.
Think again of the organizing faculty that our
games develop. Where can you get command
and obedience, choice with responsibility, criticism
with discipline, in any degree remotely approaching
that in which our social games supply them ?
Think of the ethico-physical side of it; temper,
of course ; dignity and courtesy. I asked a new
boy this quarter what, on the whole, struck him
most in school life as being unexpected and remark-
able ; he said, the politeness with which boys spoke
to one another as compared with preparatory schools.
Has it never struck us all, when looking on at a
game or playing in one, that now is the very moment
one would choose for getting something heroic done ?
Does it never occur to us, in the flush and glow of
play, how little and unimportant things boys' offences
are ? a consideration which always (and not its
opposite) seems to me to constitute the finest atmo-
sphere of moral school life, and which always pre-
sents itself to me with amazing force when I see a
boy sick or hurt. Has it never happened to us to
find, in a walk home from cricket or football, but
especially football, the very best and choicest time
for saying the particular thing that we want a boy
particularly to take to heart ?
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Essays.
And, once more, I offer it as my deliberate
opinion, that the best boys are, on the whole, the
players of games. I had rather regenerate England
with the football elevens than with average members
of Parliament, who are, of course, our wisest men.
When I reflect on the vices to which games are a
permanent corrective laziness, foppery, man-of-the-
worldness, I am not surprised at being led to the
verdict which I have just delivered. And, having
known more than one period, at one school at any-
rate, when cricket was distinctly recognised as being
on one side, and very serious evils on the other, I
find a cricketball or a football becoming in my eyes
a sort of social fetish, of which it is difficult to
realize the fact our ancestors never dreamt the
value.
There be three occasions which fairly overcome
my sensibilities yea, four when you might borrow
a five-pound note of me. One is, when a master
has been leading up to the solution of some small
intellectual problem, and has had the skill to make
it interesting and fairly easy, and the moment has
come when the form has to find it out, when every
single boy is attending, when brainwork is going on
from one end of the class to the other, and when
every face in the room gets a sudden brightened
look as the guesses shape themselves to a solution.
Another is, when something very good in its way
has been done or said among an assemblage of
companions, and there leaps forth that burst of
clapping with the hands which in its high key seems
to pervade space and almost to speak. And, thirdly,
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Games.
when, on the day of the long-expected football
match, the moment has really come, and that which
was to be, is, and the ball is really kicked off, and
now the play has begun. There is education. There
is enlargement of horizon : self sinks, the common
good is the only good, the bodily faculties exhilarate
in functional development, and the make-believe
ambition is glorified into a sort of ideality. Here is
boyhood at its best, or very nearly at its best.
Well, after all, to what was the greatest of the
Beatitudes allotted o/ xadapo! rr\ xapdiq,? Not to
unsensualness only, as the commentators think, but,
higher still, to simple-mindedness. And when you
have a lot of human beings, in highest social union
and perfect organic action, developing the law of
their race and falling in unconsciously with its best
inherited traditions of brotherhood and of common
action, I think you are not far from getting a glimpse
of one side of the highest good. There lives more
soul in honest play, believe me, than in half the
hymn-books.
Quo, Musa, tendisl Let us get back to contro-
versy. " I distinctly prefer that my son should not
be an athlete," said a friend of mine, who is also a
parent, to me the other day. " I don't want all that
excitement and display. I want him to have quiet
family tastes, to care for beetles and butterflies, to
be sober-minded, reasonable, domestic. Your games
are a mere excrescence on a properly disciplined life,
are a factitious pleasure and an artificial employment
of energy." " Thou fool ! " I said to him (I am not
habitually unpolite, but I have been pursuing my
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theological studies a good deal lately), "is not all
school artificial to the last degree ? ' So much the
worst for it, is it ? ' ' That is just what you complain
of? ' Why, is not all our life a purely artificial
product from the lives of past ancestors, and is not
the business of each generation, if Darwinism be
true, nothing else than to artifize its successors?
Beetle me no beetles ! I am not going to give up
what I see visibly to be the food of health and
virtue, because you consider that a Swiss Family
Robinson could do very nicely without it. There
were not enough for an eleven in the days of Adam
and Eve, so they had to do without. But, if you
find people nowadays trying Locke and Rousseau
in practice, and deliberately preferring them after
trial, it will be time enough then to talk of domes-
ticity."
Well, but there may have been a grain of sense in
what my friend said. It is possible that the present
form of some of our games may tend just a shade
too much towards self-display. So far as this is the
case, I should like to point out that it is not the
games that are to blame. A person who did not
happen to be a little behind the scenes of the
athletic world would hardly believe what an eager-
ness there is in it to exploiter the schools, to get
hold of them and make them minister to the dis-
tinction and the purses of enterprising gentlemen in
London. In schools near London, it needs constant
watchfulness to parry these attacks, and it is im-
possible altogether to defeat them. In such matters
as this, authority has a legitimate function. It may
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Games.
regulate with despotic control the conditions under
which a game shall turn into a public exhibition, in
cricket, rowing, football, athletics, shooting, racquets,
or even the lawn-tennis of the future. Ticket this as
Number One.
Akin to this is the danger of extravagance.
Cricket and racquets both foster this a little, and
they have an excellent counter-agent in football,
which, in the outer world, tends in the happy direc-
tion of cheapness. I didn't say I did not say,
vulgarity. In matters of expense, then, the master
is useful and necessary. This is Number Two.
" Sumptuary laws," said someone to me, in the tone
of a Pallas Minerva, last time the subject was upper-
most here, " sumptuary laws always are unwise." I
found it hard to select the most appropriate answer ;
and I think I have remarked upon some of my
friends that their heart was sounder than their head.
My friend might as well have said that moral enact-
ments are out of place, or that a regulation of
locking up at dark had failed when tried in the form
of curfew. The truth is, that sumptuary laws are
fitted for children exactly to the same extent as all
other laws are until, that is, they can do without
them. A master does not do his duty to his games
who does not enact how much shall be paid to
cricket professionals, within what limits the tailor and
hosier may have their fling, what shall be the
maximum value of cups given as prizes.
There is one large question of practical organisa-
tion which fairly falls under the control of masters
that of compulsory games. "Brethren, in the
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Essays.
primitive school " so will hereafter run the service
of the Religion of Corporeal Humanity " there
was a laudable custom that all boys were obliged
to play at games, and, if they didn't, were beaten ; "
and then Professor Harrison or Beesly will wink
a noble wink as he goes on to lament that it can't
be revived again. Now, what is our duty by this
custom ? Evidently it leans for help upon a worthy
idea, that boys form a community, that every member
of the <fii[Los must play his humble part, that inciv-
isme is the worst of vices. This idea is the most
pregnant and the most formative that schoolboys
have. It has immensely wide affinities. Atque
utinam ex vobis units is, I suppose, next to longing
for Chloe, the most passionate sentiment of our
nature. But, though leaning, as I said, on this
sentiment, the custom rests, I imagine, on an
intelligible practical foundation ; it began when
schools were smaller, and when play languished
if there were too few players, or if many boys grew
up unfamiliarised to games. That boys should,
under these circumstances, oblige each other to
play seems reasonable and right ; whether it is
their wisest plan is not to the point. If they think
that the general happiness gains from individuals
joining in football, they have as much right to
impose it as we should have to oblige Samson to
pay police rates, though the police were of no value
to'him. Just up to this point then, as long as the
custom is natural, masters should recognise it ; when
it goes beyond this, when it takes some shape of
superstition or priggishness, or simply ministers to
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Games.
tyrannical love of power, they should regard it
jealously, or even interfere against it. Number
Three.
Health, again, is obviously a matter for superior
control. You may with propriety, if you think it
wise, prevent cricket before Lady-day, or abolish
pole-leaping, or forbid races over a mile long, or
modify bathing rules, or enforce the wearing of
hats or caps. In particular, you may with advantage
insist on the substitution of civilized football rules
for barbarous ones. If you are wise, you will
interfere as little as possible, and as cautiously ;
but, when you do, you must enforce your decrees
with the absolutism of a Peter the Great, and leave
no food for grumbling in the shape of a hope of
reversal. I think I must drop the counting.
How far, however, may masters go with advantage
into the region that lies midway between authority
and fellowship ? Some head-masters almost directly
organize games ; some assistant-masters teach very
elaborately the art of good play; a great many
assistant-masters join in games if nothing else. I
fear that nothing but common-places modified by
experience will answer the question. Masters
should not teach boys to do what they can do
for themselves ; and self-organisation we all allow
to be half the good of the play. But in many cases,
boys, and chiefly small boys, need to be helped to
self- organisation as they are helped to construing.
Big boys have traditions to guide them, and have
more sense and versatility ; but even they are often
very stupid and uninventive, and, if you don't help
L 161
Essays.
them, they go on unimproved, small boys ^ fortiori.
If, then, we say that you mustn't be unnecessary, you
mustn't be officious, you mustn't vulgarize yourself
into a professional coach, you mustn't seem ostenta-
tiously unintellectual, outside of these limitations
you will very often do good by giving your help ;
and a game well directed gives much greater happi-
ness to the players than one of which the organisation
is suggested by the untrained heads of a single
generation. Don't do all or nearly all for the
boys ; but don't be afraid of doing something.
As to mere joining in the games, do so on two
conditions of the utmost strictness: (i) That the
boys like your doing so; (2) That you are perfectly
sure of keeping your temper. Avoid thoughtfully
such rocks as these : Becoming a partisan on one
side with too argumentative eagerness, hurting the
boys at football, taking personal lead in cases where
others can do it, wearying them by an overlong
innings for your own amusement. Seek social
relaxation in it even more than exercise. One
hears the phrase used at times, So-and-So, a master,
is popular because he plays at games. That is
purely ridiculous. To play is no more popular in
a man than in a boy. To play genially, modestly,
good-temperedly, is popular in both; the more so,
perhaps, if the player is really worth looking at for
his skill, though this is of quite secondary value.
And I suppose that, if a man is strong-minded,
sensible, unselfish, brave, sympathizing, lively, these
virtues will have their course, work their influence,
reap their fruit, as much in games as in school.
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Games.
Now, each of us believes that, as it so happens,
these are the particular virtues which he himself
possesses in perfection. That being the case, I
advise everybody, subject to the two conditions
named above, to play with the boys if he can.
One incidental question, If we play in school
games and hear boys use words and phrases, which
well, which are compatible with faint praise, but
not restricted to it, what are we to do? I myself
am one of those who think swearing rather a bad
vice ; we all know that it is in reality hardly a vice
at all, and the fact merely is that the Teutonic race
is, in moments of excitement, prone to the employ-
ment of the medial mutes ; but it is specially wicked
because the criminal knows it is a little wicked, and
could stop it if he liked. Well, then, in the middle
of a game we hear some young St Athanasius making
a characteristic remark. Shall we go away from the
game as if shocked, which is ridiculous hypocrisy ;
or punish him, which is contrary to the theory on
which we play namely, that temporarily and for
the purpose of the game we partly divest ourselves
of our cap and gown; or shall we pretend not to
hear it, which is a suggestion of the devil ? I should
say, behave exactly as you would wish one of the
bigger boys to behave. If it is not a special moment
of excitement, abuse the boy openly, a little angrily,
without any shyness ; if you are shy and underspoken
on the ground of being a guest, things will seem
unpleasant. If the offence was almost excusable,
even still abuse him, but don't exaggerate ; you are
not a prig or a Puritan. If the moment isn't adapted
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Essays.
for moral exhortation, put it off till it is, and then
take him to task, and, if he is a big boy, take him
to a good deal of task.
How very little organisation by authority after
all ! How very free it is ! How largely nature and
instincts, limited only by a few big rules, is left to
itself for the purpose of training the body ! Can
you imagine now, gentlemen, an arrangement by
which this shall be otherwise; in virtue of which
these muscles shall be trained on one day and
those on another, in this manner the back shall be
straightened, in that the sinews shall be developed,
in a third the lungs shall have their work cut out
for them ? Can you conceive that the master shall
lay down and enforce the degrees and the order in
which physical energy shall stiffen into rule, and pre-
tend to be physical enjoyment ? I can ; it is gym-
nasium. There it is ; it exists. It is recommended
by no scientific authorities of repute ; it appeals to
no traditions of past enjoyment ; it awakens no social
interests, and trains no administrative faculties. It
is the mere Greek Iambics of physical training ; has
its element of truth, as all pedantry has, and has in
its physical results a certain poor degree, as all
pedantry has, of success. But what a substitute
for football, and what a reflection for us, that men
who know and have tasted the powers and the
pleasures of play should yet in cold blood drive
the children into this dead and barren routine !
Don't suppose that great traditions can be trampled
on with impunity. How do we know that the school
games are so immovably fixed in school life that
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Games.
the meddlesome intrusion of formal gymnastics may
not in some degree blight and spoil them ?
O pauvres chers enfants, qu'ont nourris de leur lait
Et qu'ont berets nos femmes ;
Ces blemes oiseleurs ont pris dans leurs filets
Toutes vos douces ames.
Si nous les laissons faire, on aura dans vingt ans,
Sous les cieux que Dieu dore,
Une France aux yeux ronds, aux regards clignotants,
Qui hai'ra 1'aurore !
We must not exaggerate ; it will take a good deal of
authoritative gymnastics to spoil cricket; but I do
feel, towards anything which goes in its influence
against the games of which we are so proud, a
jealousy and an aversion which almost make me
blind to its merits.
165
THE HOUSE OF RIMMON. 1
BY E. D. A. MORSHEAD.
T T is reported, I think, of Claude Duval or some
equally celebrated highwayman, that he used to
apologise, in courteous terms, for the self-imposed
necessity under which he laboured of presenting a
pistol at the head of innocent travellers, while he
demanded their worldly goods. I should like to
imitate the courtesy, as I shall seem, I fear, to be
imitating the villainy, of his proceedings. We have,
I believe, assailed before now the Universities, the
governing bodies, and the head-masters. The Latin
Primer seems, under an accusation fostered by this
Society, to have been condemned, respited, and
finally sentenced to a reformatory to that penal
servitude which it has so often inflicted on others.
Not without trembling, I invite the Society to con-
sider some defects, or the possibility of some defects,
not in head-masters, not in Universities, not even
in school-boys or school-books, but in ourselves.
I wish, in fact, to ask whether public school educa-
tion does not suffer, on the moral and intellectual
side, from an undue timidity, in several matters, on
the part of public school authorities. It may be well
1 A Paper read before a Society of Public Schoolmasters
[Journal of Education, April 1885].
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The House of Rimmon.
to add that, for expressing an opinion in a positive
and peremptory manner, my experience has been far
too narrow, too locally limited. My object is to
elicit opinions on a subject which is admittedly
momentous, and, if my own views appear rather
provocative in their expression, I hope it may be
ascribed to this source, and not to over-confidence.
It may be thought, perhaps, from the title of this
paper, that its purport is theological, and that some
attack on the religious teaching at public schools is
intended. That, however, would limit the scope of
the discussion to exactly the most irritating points.
It would be absurd to avoid the religious question
before this Society, and perhaps it should come first
and occupy the post of honour. But it is not, to
me, the main point, and, as far as the title is con
cerned, "The House of Rimmon " might have been
called " The Temple of Mrs Grundy."
First, then, let us ask how far the modern aspect
of a public school conduces to the teaching of
religion in its most candid, and of morals in their
most courageous, form. Here, if I appear to digress
from facts, into inquiry into their causes, I hope to
show the relevancy of such inquiry.
We are mostly agreed, I suppose, that morals and
religion cannot be taught effectively by the same
method as that by which Euclid, or history, or
Greek Iambics are taught. Dogmatic theology
may be thus infused, perhaps ; but the religious
instinct and moral enthusiasm come by a different
channel, when they come at all. In childhood, they
are a sentiment more or less dominant and secure ;
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Essays.
in youth, a sentiment besieged and hard-pressed by
assaults of intellect on one side, of passion on the
other ; in middle age, a sentiment resisting lassitude
and disillusion, and the " yawning fit o'er books and
men," of which Mr Browning sings; but always,
and at all ages, a sentiment, a tone of character,
which can no more be drummed into us by routine,
than the piano can be played with a hammer.
Eventually, as we all know, we must guard or lose
this sentiment for ourselves. But, until that eventual
time arrives, who are the natural guardians and fos-
terers of this sentiment in the young ? Obviously,
one would say, the parents. No one else can speak
with real, as opposed to delegated, authority; no
one else can really reinforce his authority with the
domestic reverence so powerful in the young.
Furthermore, can it be doubted that the moral
and religious training of the family is the appointed
education for middle age ? I believe that the
delegation of this duty to a profession is a mis-
fortune though, perhaps an inevitable one to
the young, and still more to the older.
But it is replied the thing may or may not
be desirable, but is impossible. The pressure of
modern life is so great, the race so hard, that
fathers absolutely cannot support their children and
give them their moral and religious training in
person.
I am well aware how much truth lies in this
rejoinder; well aware also how many parents
succeed in keeping a paramount influence on their
sons' character, in spite of their long separation at
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The House of Rimmon.
preparatory and public schools. But yet, when all
allowance is made, one must remember that men of
complete leisure, of perniciously complete leisure, do
none the less send their sons to others to train, in
large numbers ; and those sons take away with them
the one stimulus which would save those parents
from a dreary and often demoralised ennui. We
must remember, also, how very precarious the hold,
even of the wisest and most revered parent, is, and
must be, over a boy in long periods of absence. It
seems almost innate in boys to be able to live a
double life, one at home and one at school,
and this without any conscious hypocrisy or in-
tentional concealment. I cannot feel any horror
of this fact; it seems to me inevitable that the
young should be especially impressible by their
surroundings. Hence, I entertain graver and graver
doubts, the more I think on the subject, of the
wisdom of cancelling for so long so much of the
home surroundings.
But the boarding-school system is largely in pos-
session of the field; and, though I decline to join
without reserve in shouting beati possidentes, I pass
from what I regard as the cause of one of our diffi-
culties to its effects and inconveniences.
Whoever it was that first described the boarding-
school master as "a professional parent," his sardonic
phrase, I think, touched our public-school system at
a very vulnerable point. A professional parent,
whatever his personal merits and influence may be,
has not that instinctive authority to direct a child,
religiously and morally, in the way that he should
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Essays.
go, which belongs to the actual parent. Delegated
authority has this inconvenience that it is felt, by
those subjected to it, to be delegated, to be official,
to be only half-natural. Much of the silly and
tiresome resistance of boys to very reasonable rules
is, I cannot doubt, owing to a dim half-conscious
sense that they are being ruled by a viceroy, not a
sovereign. But, of late years, a new element of
difficulty has been added. Little as I like the
normal plea, in intellectual and religious difficulties,
that " we are in a transitional period " as if all
periods were not transitional ! it is idle not to
recognise a sharp and rapid change of the personnel
of these viceroys ; they were almost wholly clerical :
they are now, by an increasing predominance, lay
men.
The significance of this change has not, of course,
escaped the notice either of our ecclesiastical or our
educational authorities. The Church Congress of
1883 was largely occupied with it: most of us will
recall with pleasure the paper on the subject read
to that Congress by the Headmaster of Wellington,
whether we agree with its conclusions or not. Neither
is the phenomenon, I believe, a temporary one.
Public schools, like the universities, are passing
into the hands of a lay teaching body. There may
be slight reactions, temporary hesitations in this
tendency, but if clerical head-masters, who cannot
and ought not to extrude the clerical element from
their theoretical staff, still find it harder and harder,
in practice, to secure more than a minority, yearly
diminishing, of clerical assistants, it looks very much
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The House of Rimmon.
as if the finger were writing on the wall : as if, in a
measurable number of years, the teaching body will
be a lay body, so far as assistant masters are con-
cerned. Then lay head-masterships will follow
perforce. To many of us this prospect may seem
brilliant and attractive ; the lay teachers come before
the mind's eye as Argonauts of the future, nimis
optato saeclorum tempore nati Heroes I must not
add, salvete, Deum genus : they will be laymen. But
the cold medicinal hand of advanced middle-age
cures us of the pleasant malady of hopefulness ;
and, for my own part, I neither regret the passing
away of the old system nor shall rejoice uproariously
in the arrival of the new. It is not regret nor exulta-
tation that I feel, but curiosity, how the casuistical
and other difficulties of the situation ought to be
surmounted, how they will be surmounted. And
here, after (I fear) much toiling through desert
sands, the spires and minarets of the Temple of
Rimmon come at last in sight.
It has been already indicated that, in the opinion
of the writer, there is in our system of public
boarding-schools an undue delegation of parental
duties : and especially in the matter of religion
and morals. To bring the matter sharply into
the concrete, nothing but necessity can justify a
system whereby five hundred parents, who are
not agreed about religion, delegate the religious
teaching of their sons for which religious teaching
they are severally responsible to the combined yet
diverging influences of twenty or thirty masters who
are themselves even less than the parents agreed
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Essays.
about religion. Under the old system, where the
teaching body was wholly or virtually clerical, and
safely anchored upon the Articles and inspiration,
and the Church system generally, the situation had
the merits, with the defects, of a candid and open
denominationalism. But it is idle to suppose that
the change of the staff of public schools, from
clerical to lay, involves no change in the religious
opinions of the staff. We may fence and gloze
upon this matter, but to no purpose; the very
uneasiness of the Church Congress upon the subject
shows that the clergy mistrust their lay successors in
the public schools, in the same way (though with
less humorous ferocity) as the Dean of Chichester
mistrusts them at the universities. (Let me hasten
to say, parenthetically, that by " mistrust " I do not
mean narrow or unfriendly jealousy : I mean honest
and candid alarm and anxiety lest education may
have fallen to men unqualified to support one of its
gravest duties.) The Headmaster of Wellington,
for instance, thinks that the more laical the schools
become, the greater will be the danger of a certain
cooling-down, in religion and morals, to a mere
respectability. It is, without doubt, a serious and
ever-present danger nor have I any reply to make
to the argument, except that the remedy suggested
more clericalism has not proved, in the past,
capable of curing the evil, which has dominated
both schools and universities in their most radiantly
clerical periods.
The gayer and more fantastic spirits of the
Congress apprehend even graver things : the gradual
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The House of Rimmon.
enthronement of a cold, half-intellectual, wholly
unmoral, spirit in the seat of education a sort of
Belial, in fact graceful and humane, but either
indolent or, if energetic, energetic only in matters
intellectual, and void of moral or religious en-
thusiasm.
However little we may share in these apprehen-
sions, they are based, like other forecasts, upon some
evidence, however insufficient ; and I venture, more
in order to elicit opinion from others than as feeling
at all confident of my own, to formulate a view of
the case.
I do not see any serious danger, present or future,
that the new educating class will worship Belial, even
in the more decorous and fashionable forms of his
cult. I do see both present and future danger that
they will worship Rimmon. And by worshipping
Rimmon I mean that in matters religious they will,
for various motives, mainly but not entirely credit-
able, pretend to more orthodoxy, more agreement
with the average parental views, than they really
possess; that in matters intellectual they will tend
to that intelligent quietism that dares the premisses
but shrinks from the conclusion, and substitutes, in
Mr Morley's phrase, for "grim intellectual trench-
ancy," "as much trivial low-minded geniality as you
please " ; that in social matters they will shrink from
any real struggle with the dominant public school
ideals, but will try to modify them just so far as is
compatible with popular prejudices, and sing tuneful
incantations over the evil that needs the knife. In
the matter of religious teaching, I admit the large
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Essays.
casuistical difficulty. So long as we maintain the
theory that religious belief differs in some way and
some conditions from other belief, and that an
opinion usefully and harmlessly held by the teacher
would be rank poison if communicated to the pupil,
so long we shall be between the horns of this dilemma
either boys must be taught certain things by people
who do not believe them, or must be entirely taught
by people who believe just what boys are allowed to
believe. The old state of things took the latter horn
of this dilemma ; the present time seems inclined to
embrace the former.
Is the dilemma a necessity ? Is there really any
ground for the extraordinary timidity prevalent ?
I believe firmly there is not. I hold that there
is one principle by which these dangers mainly, if
not entirely, disappear. On the one condition that
the teacher absolutely believes what he says, even
extreme opinions are not really formidable. Boys,
after all, come into communication sooner or later
with many minds and men, and no one master's
opinion will eventually pass for more than it is
worth. If one be evangelical, if another be rational-
istic, if a third be keen on ceremonialism, still, in
the long run, the platitude, the latitude, the attitude,
will all be useful and vivifying, provided they enforce
real convictions, not the faint echo of somebody
else's, not the decorous bowing in the Temple of
Rimmon, not mere acquiescence in what Mr Kegan
Paul speciously calls " the spirit of the place." But
the endeavour to draw to a common level of safety
the opinions of laymen who are not really agreed
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The House of Rimmon.
either with one another or with the previous clerical
tenants of the office to which they have succeeded,
can only lead to " adjustment," a kind of average,
in such things as men "with much toil attain to
half-believe."
" But," one is told, " such careful reticence as is
practised is unknown to the boys, and cannot there-
fore hurt them." I demur to both conclusions. I
am sure that boys do detect unreality instinctively,
though they are hardly conscious what is amiss, and
would label it very badly. And, if it is not detected
by them, I say they suffer still more : they are de-
prived of the most educational I had almost said,
the only educational thing in the world, a man of
ability telling you his exact opinion, and his reasons
for it, on a difficult subject. As an illustration of
what I mean, let me recount a scene I witnessed
several years ago. One of our most brilliant public
school teachers preached a sermon before the Uni-
versity. His reputation made us flock to hear him,
and he selected a subject I do not specify it from
the Old Testament : one of those passages now
regarded by many as allegorical and "not to be
pressed," as I think the phrase is. Well, for five-
and-twenty minutes we were warned against this
terrible scepticism ; the glory and impressiveness of
the original was dwelt on, the many good men who
had unhesitatingly believed it, and so forth. I think
a little surprise was felt at his unexpected attitude to
the subject; still, he seemed to have nailed his colours
to the mast, where they flapped gallantly. Will it
be believed that at the end having left the unhappy
Essays.
sceptics and allegorizers hardly a rag to cover them
he suddenly reversed his action, backed water,
conceded in a dozen sentences all, and more than
all, I should say, that his more free-thinking hearers
had ventured to hold, and, collecting his previous
fervent appeals for literalism in a bundle, " port a
emisit eburna" dismissed them by the gate of
dreams.
Such a somersault before a very critical audience
appeared to us almost ludicrous. To the preacher,
however, it was evidently not so. He was used to
preaching to boys a literalism which he did not
himself hold. He rowed (against the stream) for
his school; he backed water down stream for the
University.
That is an extreme case. I do not want to dwell
on it, except as illustrative of the wrong way out of
a difficulty which presses now, and will press harder
yet, upon the public schools. I know there is
danger in a sharp jar or discrepancy between home
and school teaching. I know how easily the young
pick up the foolish idea that there is something
fine in differing from their fathers and grandfathers.
I know that out of purely negative views comes no
help. But I know also that by far the greatest
insult you can pass on your ancestors is to pretend
to hold their opinions when you do not. I am sure
boys are not profited, but seriously weakened, by
absorbing orthodoxy in its most timid, nervous
shuddering form full of appeals to the moral senti-
ment, but with little to say to the intellect, except
to warn it against its own perils as though you
176
The House of Rimmon.
should keep a child rickety to save it from tumbling
over a cliff.
Matters may seem to have mended slightly in
recent days, but there appears still an unduly large
gap between the actual convictions of teachers on
these subjects and those they communicate to boys.
I do not raise theological points, nor wish to argue
if Adam and Eve be allegory or fact, if Noah's Ark
be or be not a Christian verity, or if Jonah's whale
was a whale or only very like one, and so forth. As
everyone knows, very literal views on these subjects
have no bad effect, on one condition which is not,
I think, usually fulfilled nowadays that is, that
the men teaching them shall believe in them. If
this be not so, the solemnity and bated breath with
which these and kindred subjects are mentioned is
a masquerade, though one for a charitable purpose.
If you are really awed and impressed by a belief
in the Ark, you can rightly and duly impress boys
therewith ; if you are not, if you only think they
ought to be, pro tern., impressed so, you will fail
to impress them, try as you will.
But, we are told, parents do not desire their
boys to be taught your opinions, but theirs, or those
they approve of. There is some truth here, though
I am not sure that parents are all alike. But I
cannot admit that parents are the final court of
appeal, except in the sense that they can choose
a school or a new school for their boys. The
trimming of our intellectual course so as to hit the
juste milieu of parental views is hopeless ; the desire
that we shall seem to be " all in a tale," all agreed
M 177
Essays.
on theology, cannot possibly produce the effect that
our being all agreed would produce. And, after all,
are we so certain that all this worship of Rimmon
succeeds even in its temporary object ? Is there
anything in our own opinions, pro or con, so un-
fathomably profound or unimaginably subtle, as to
be incapable of being imparted, by common-sense,
with safety, to old or young? The illusion comes
from supposing it to be necessary to speak positively
on all subjects when you do speak. I cannot see
this necessity, any more than I can comprehend why
it is the truest modesty to brush away, as unworthy
of consideration, doubts and difficulties which puzzled
Hume or Mill. If you are merely negative and
sneering, like Mephistopheles, I comprehend that
you will do much harm and no good ; but it is really
a cheap trick of third-rate pulpits to identify this with
an intellectual conscience that shrinks from paltering
in a double sense, and using language which has one
import to you, and quite another to your hearers.
And there is an even graver consideration. Are
you sure you are meeting boys' needs by being
normally so reticent of your own wider opinions ? I
give a case in my own knowledge. What is the
use of quiet, persuasive talk about inspiration which
is a very definite idea to boys, however it may shade
off in older minds to a young mind which has just
woke with a start, in the Psalms preceding the
sermon, to the ghastly and impious ferocity of " Let
there be no man to pity him nor to have compassion
on his fatherless children " ? Rimmon will fail us
here : candour, which can venture on the " ever-
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The House of Rimmon.
lasting no," is the only help. The glozing "partly
yes, and partly no " ; the steering (in Newman's
phrase) "through the channel of no meaning,
between the Scylla and Charybdis of Aye and No "
these will fail, and all the more because they may
seem momentarily to succeed.
It may be fanciful, but I have always ascribed
to this early worship of Rimmon some responsibility
for a phenomenon which must have struck us all.
I mean the fumbling way in which the periodical
collisions between ecclesiasticism and what (following
an illustrious example) we may call the " Zeitgeist "
are dealt with. Such incidents, e.g., as Maurice's
condemnation, as the proceedings against Colenso,
as the celebrated note to the Athanasian Creed,
strike us with wonder, not so much that they
happen, as that they happen through wise, moderate,
and enlightened persons. It may well be doubted,
e.g., if those who condemned Colenso really enter-
tained unswerving confidence in Noah's Ark. But
behind these men stood their religious constituents,
so to speak, unconscious worshippers of Rimmon,
trained from their youth in that odd conception of
religion that in it two and two can make five ; that
the same proposition can be true and untrue ; that
the Christian verity is, in its conditions, different from
other verity; that to persecute an atheist is not
religious persecution, because he is not religious ;
lastly, in the words of one of their great journalistic
champions, that " there are some things which, how-
ever true they may be, a Christian bishop is forbidden
to think or say."
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Essays.
This is, perhaps, the richest cloud of incense, the
lowest salaam, ever offered to Rimmon.
Against this immoral, unintellectual view of
religion, I believe we are bound to fight from the
first, not to leave it to the universities. The
intellectual conscience cannot be divorced from
the moral one ; you will never successfully cry
sursum corda, unless you can cry sursum mentes
at the same time. When I am told that a purely
intellectual view of religion is sure to be cold and
unenthusiastic, I sometimes wonder if it be not
equally true that a quite unintellectual one is sure
to be hot, unjust, and absurd.
But, for my own part, I think the worship of
Rimmon in the social management of a public
school is a more serious and indisputable evil.
Here, perhaps, one may use direct language with
less risk of giving offence than on the religious
question. But here too I put forward certain views
as targets for discussion, merely premising that when
I speak of a danger, or a tendency, I do not neces-
sarily mean a universal epidemic, nor even an evil at
present widespread. When I say a danger, in fact,
I mean a danger something to which our public
school system has come to lend itself detrimentally,
unless counteracted. Rimmon, in fact, is only an
evil if he is actually worshipped; as a statue, he
may very likely be artistically effective. Seen for
what he is, he has his uses and perhaps his charm.
Sixty years ago, in pre-Arnoldian days, public
schools were, as far as the boys were concerned,
oligarchies, with the virtues and vices of oligarchies.
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The House of Rimmon.
At the bottom were helots; above them a mixed
multitude graduating towards the clique that ruled
the school, partly by official and sanctioned power,
but largely by "physical prowess," as, with a low
bow to Rimmon, we always call tyranny when we
wish to stand well with the tyrant. The head-
master, if a man of power, had his intellectual and
moral influence, but his social influence was usually
slight, and that of his assistants was nowhere they
were pretty nearly devoid of social influence, and,
indeed, of any social position at all.
The result, of course, was that the school formed
its own ideals, worshipped its own divinities, and
devised its own moral and social code, which was
that of its oligarchs or slave-drivers. Such a body
of rulers has always one peculiarity it knows to a
hair's-breadth what vices are gentlemanly and to be
tolerated, what are condemnable; what virtues are
manly and admirable, what are effeminate and
odious. The ungentlemanly vices are those which,
on the whole, it is not seriously tempted to practise ;
the ungentlemanly virtues are those which, in such
a community, it would be at all hard to cultivate.
The ideals will be those which seem to crown the
gentlemanly virtues, and to allow a pleasant admixture
of the gentlemanly vices.
It is not necessary to point out how great a
change has been worked on the medium, the atmo-
sphere, in which these things happened. Since
Arnold, every head-master has striven to acquire
personal as well as official influence ; assistant-
masters have been quintupled, at least, in number
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Essays.
and status. It is sometimes questioned whether, in-
stead of being too few, they are not too numerous.
This change, though it has come about gradually,
sprang, of course, in the main, from Arnold.
Nevertheless, in spite of Arnold's vigorous icono-
clasm, and that of his distinguished followers, I am
not sure if the social Rimmon is quite in the
fragments to which he should be reduced. The
ideas and ideals of a long past generation of school-
boys seem to be far too dominant still. The full
power of magisterial influence I need not point
out how great it is, when we reflect that almost
every boy now has a definite, friendly, personal
relation with at least one master, and usually more,
the full power, I say, seems not yet brought to
bear upon reforming the ideals and adorations of
boys, but rather aims at bringing their religious
beliefs to an average, and establishing friendly re-
lations with them individually. To speak frankly,
the result appears to me to involve much sacrifice,
sometimes a whole hecatomb, to Rimmon. It is
not that I regret in the least the old relationship
between boys and their natural enemies I saw
enough of its last stage to regard it with complete
detestation. But the bad side of the good change
seems to lie in the retention of the very deficient
ideals which boys formed under the old regime,
practically in the same condition. Leave boys
alone, and they will form, of course, and did form,
purely physical ideals, and a purely gladiatorial
hero-worship ; but if we feed and encourage these
ideals under a different regime, where sympathy
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The House of Rimmon.
and personal influence are potent, we stereotype
the evil. And that the evil is moral as well as
intellectual, hardly needs showing. Let me give
an instance. Nine schoolboys out of ten have a
purely hedonistic idea of the virtue of manliness :
ask them what they mean by the phrase, and they
will explain it in terms of a game. The idea of
manliness takes shape in their minds as the virtue
of being absorbed almost entirely in what ? In
the very thing of which they are naturally fondest !
A more certain method of producing mediocre
morality than this cannot well be imagined. Man-
liness is a word to conjure with ; its attraction for
boys amounts to a spell. But, like the Lord's
Prayer read backwards, it is capable of producing
distressing, not to say alarming results, if mis-
pronounced. Nothing will persuade me that boys
are, as a rule, too dull to comprehend that manli-
ness consists in doing what you do not like, not
what you do. The boy whose soul is in cricket is
seen at his manliest when struggling good man
that he is with that form of adversity called
Iambics; the boy whose heart is in languages
and a library, is seen at his manliest when
struggling, before a curious and diverted crowd,
to acquire some physical accomplishment. But
take either side of the virtue and ignore the
other, and you will speedily produce a vice.
The purely physical idea of manliness is the
natural seductive illusion of boyhood not a
crime, not a catastrophe, no more deplorable
in itself than any appetite. But if allowed to
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Essays.
grow unchecked into an institution, an object
of worship, to boys, and, under modern con-
ditions, it can only become so if masters offer
rich baked meats on this particular altar of
Rimmon, it is, I think, in some degree re-
sponsible for the defects in what is called school
morality : for those occasional explosions of moral
dynamite to which all schools are liable, and
which we are apt to think of as unaccountable
epidemics. The pathetic thing about public school
society, when one considers the high character and
purpose of so many individual boys, is its tendency,
collectively, to worship fifth-rate idols. We have
all seen, as boys if not as masters, the ring of awed
worshippers round these deplorable shrines. Ex-
cellence in some form of pleasure will secure worship
from many (with little remonstrance from any), for
a youth whose influence is and must be detrimental,
half a sot morally, two-thirds a dolt intellectu-
ally, three-quarters a clown socially. How such
an object became in the past reconcileable with any
idealism, I have tried to show ; that it remains a
possibility even now is the worst of Rimmon's gifts.
But the genial and sympathetic view, as it is called,
of all this that it was so in the beginning, is, and ever
shall be seems to me mere lazy cynicism. Nothing
will persuade me but that boys, properly and vigor-
ously stimulated by friendly vice-parents, are readily
capable of recognising Stephano for what he is :
" What a thrice-double ass
Was I, to take this drunkard for a god
And worship this dull fool ! "
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The House of Rimmon.
Opinions must widely differ, of course, as to the
comparative prevalence of shabby ideals at public
schools ; but we shall agree, I think, that, if they
are prevalent at all, the responsibility lies largely
upon masters. Boys, after all, have not a fixed
and immutable disposition ; they are, as we have
been truly and eloquently told, " of imagination all
compact," touchingly susceptible to the influences
and ideals of others, and especially of those with
whom they are on friendly terms. The supposed
horny and impervious devotion of boys to the
traditional objects of school worship, their supposed
unswerving attachment to the ideals of a school
life wholly unlike the present, is, I believe, a
nightmare, a grinning mask of Rimmon not a
reality.
It will be said, perhaps, that to speak in this way
is to take an unduly unfavourable view of the
present. Well, a paper like this is meant to be
a kind of Aunt Sally to throw missiles at, and we
all know what a gusto it adds to that game if the
image has a distorted countenance and a pipe stuck
in very much awry. But perhaps, in conclusion,
I may be allowed to point out one reason why the
worship of Rimmon seems a danger particularly
incident to our profession in its modern shape.
To reform boys' social ideals appears to involve a
good deal of swimming against the stream a good
deal of struggling against passive resistance. This
becomes more disagreeable now that boys have
become, so much more than they used to be,
domestic guests, closely and personally associated
185
Essays.
with masters. It seems as if life would be hardly
worth living if we were to be always cutting boys
against the grain. We all feel this, though with
varying degrees of acuteness. We feel how bene-
ficial, on the whole, the change has been. Cannot
we rest in it and be thankful? or, at any rate,
proceed slowly and undisturbed? It is part, I
suppose, of what the witty showman called "the
general cussedness of human affairs," that even the
very best changes introduce new dangers. The
worship of Rimmon was probably an improvement
on some elementary worship of a "deboshed fish,
half a monster " ; but it played the mischief
between Naaman and his conscience after all.
I think the danger of masters being too sub-
servient to boys' standards a grave one. I do not
wish to be misunderstood as suggesting that, to
secure pleasant domestic intercourse with boys,
eyes are wilfully shut and struggles against the
school idols wilfully shirked. I am thinking rather
of the unconscious influence that does so easily
beset us in these matters the disposition to be
a little bored with intellectual things because they
bore the boys : a little insincere in our public
attitude towards the Bible because parents are very
timid : a little inclined to talk games, and nothing
but games, because we suppose nothing else interests
or can interest the boys (as Mill says, things will
happen unless something is done to prevent them) :
a little nervous how we condemn betting and
gambling, because boys are supposed to love them
by predestination, and to be wholly unable to see
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The House of Rimmon.
the harm of them. It is Rimmon, nothing but
Rimmon, this decorous conventional deity. Boys
are often silly, and deceive themselves easily, but
they are not easily deceived by older people ; and,
to take the last case as an example, I don't believe
there is, or ever was, a boy of fifteen unable to grasp
the fact that to want to win your neighbour's money
is to covet your neighbour's goods, and that to
obtain your ends by provoking him to do ditto, is
simply to form a duumvirate against that section of
the Decalogue. Any boy can see this, though, of
course, I do not say that any boy can easily resist
the temptation, even though his eyes are open to it.
But, in any case, we increase their difficulties by
being hazily undecisive about such things, on purely
fashionable grounds. It is precisely because it is
rather a fashionable and respectable failing that
boys develop a premature appetite for it; it is,
precisely for the same reason, the sort of failing
about which we should be decisive. Boys, I dare-
say, will worship Rimmon somewhat in any case ;
but, if masters serve Rimmon a little, boys, of
course Jehus as they are, will serve him much,
until the day of hewing-down arrives. Why should
it be considered positively necessary to let the
worship outlive school life? That is why it does
outlive university life too.
Let me sum up very briefly a tedious disquisition.
Let us assume that now we are perfect : is there not
a danger that, in future, public school masters will
pretend to be somewhat more clerical in opinion
than they really are ? Is there not a danger that,
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Essays.
from desire of domestic and social peace and quiet,
and freedom from worry, they will rather patch and
cobble at boys' ideals than strike boldly out for fresh
ones, improved in the direction of intellect and
morals, and less enslaved to the conventional, and
mediocre, and muscular?
If these dangers do not exist, neither does the
House of Rimmon as I have dreamed of it. I
earnestly entreat the Society, by discussion, to
dispel my dream.
188
IDEALS OF WOMANLINESS. 1
BY SOPHIE BRYANT, D.Sc.
T T is impossible to doubt though easy to forget
how effective are the ideals of a race or an age
in shaping the development of the youth brought up
under their influence. Generation after generation,
fresh human energy springs into life and pours itself
forth in conduct and character, as freely as the waters
stream down the mountain sides ; but, just as the
direction of the rivers is predetermined by the con-
figuration of the land through which they run, so
does the energy of each generation form itself
according to the thought of the age into which it
is born. The thought of the age works on the
imagination of the individual, and his imagination
of what he should be goes far to determine the
manner of man he will become. As a popular
novelist puts it, in the course of describing his
hero, it is often of much less importance what a
young man actually is than what it is that he gives
himself out to himself to be.
Now the spirit of the ages in common language,
public opinion expressing itself through law, custom,
and literature, has dealt hardly with women in this
matter of ideals. The ideal of manliness has
1 Jotirnal of Education, February 1893.
189
Essays.
developed steadily, on clear well-marked lines, from
age to age, and few men have been born into the
world, with any fair chance of knowing its opinion,
who have not known well enough what manner of
men they were expected to be. Men have always
known that they ought to be, at least, brave and
resolute; and all early, as well as later, literatures
teach the supplementary lesson that gentleness is
needed to humanize strength, and sympathy to
temper resolution. Even in the old Norse litera-
ture, where the worship of manly strength seems
to reach its highest point, the strain of chivalrous
feeling is by no means lacking, and no literature,
ancient, mediaeval, or modern, surpasses the bardic
literature of the early Celt in conceptions of heroic
" sweetness and light." The progress of civilization
shows itself less in the development of the manly
ideal than in the ever-widening extent of its influ-
ence. This is marked more especially by a closer
approximation of real to ideal on the side of the
virtues of gentleness, so that one whom our fore-
fathers would have admired for his strength we
abhor for his fierceness and brutality.
Women, on the other hand, have enjoyed no
such constancy of instruction, except as regards all
those gentler virtues rooted in quick sympathies,
which have been allotted to them from the be-
ginning. A woman might be a coward, might, in
some cases, even shrink from telling truth at her
convenience, but she must be gentle of speech and
aspect, she must be kind of heart, faithful in affec-
tion, and sympathetic always. These good gifts
190
Ideals of Womanliness.
were never conceived as the growth of chivalry in
her; they were, and are, her very nature as a
womanly woman. And to this day these require-
ments lie deep down in our souls as requirements
that must be fulfilled by the real woman, under
penalty of forfeiting all our kindly regard. The
sense of them makes us shudder at the shrill voice
of the virago, and turn in dislike from a woman's
platform oratory, if it run into such mild excesses,
either of vehemence or flippancy, as can be easily
tolerated in a man. And similarly, though we
despise the cowardly woman, our contempt for her
is not like our scorn of the equally cowardly man.
There is some essential difference of ideal here
which instinctively we all recognise. The woman
must be gentle, though surely she ought also to be
brave. The man must be brave, though no one
doubts that he ought also to be gentle.
It would seem that there should be something of
a parallelism in the logical development of the two
ideals. The manly ideal starts, as is natural (con-
sidering man's circumstances and his essential gifts),
from the side of the virtues of strength, and annexes
in addition the virtues of sympathy. The womanly
ideal starts, as is no less natural, from the virtues of
gentleness and sympathy, and should tend to put on
also the virtues of strength.
But this second development has been fitful, and
therein the trouble lies. For women, the stalwart
virtues come into fashion and go out, just as it is
sometimes fashionable to be "tall and gracious,"
sometimes to be " little and arch." The heroine of
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Essays.
one decade may fly screaming from a mouse, and be
rescued by the hero without contempt. The heroine
of the next saves her lover from shipwreck by
courage and skill. This is very confusing to the
modern girl's mind. Is it, or is it not, womanly to
have skill and strength and presence of mind when
danger threatens or overwhelms ? Is it, or is it not,
womanly to have a soldier's instinctive dislike to
turn one's back on an alarming situation? Ought
women to expect the virtues of courage and resolute-
ness from themselves ?
An example will make clearer what I mean by
this simple soldier's instinct that forbids flight and
leaves room for real courage. It is, doubtless, at
the base of character in all brave races, and is closely
bound up with a sense of personal dignity. I have
often thought that the first occasion on which one is
induced (quite rightly, no doubt) by reasonable con-
siderations, to run away must carry with it a great
moral shock. The simple instinct was once shown
to me very prettily by a little baby girl who followed
me into my room one evening when it was quite
dark. I did not strike a light for some minutes.
The little girl did not like the dark ; it clearly stirred
in her vague ideas of danger ; but she was coming
after me as usual, and would not turn back. So
she came along, all by herself, not seeking in the
least my protection, but saying aloud emphatically
to herself, " I'se not afraid, I'se not afraid." She
was afraid, but she could not run away. Perhaps
the event is pretty enough to be considered womanly
even by the least advanced.
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Ideals of Womanliness.
But, granted bravery, is a woman more womanly
for being also strong? Strength and bravery go
together in ideals generally. When bravery is a
virtue, it is natural that strength should be regarded
as a god-like gift, and so it is in the ideal of manli-
ness. The poor modern girl, however, when she
wonders what she ought to expect herself to be, will
get uncertain guidance at this point from the
womanly ideal as presented in literature. Not only
does the ideal heroine vary in all degrees of weak-
ness and strength from Thackeray's Amelia to Sir
Walter Scott's Rebecca but, if the inquiring girl
tries to deal with the subject historically, she will
find that the ideal in this respect shows no sure line
of progression in time. If she read the ancient
Norse love-tale of Sigurd and Brynhild, she will see
the strong wise heroine at her strongest and most
attractive, and, indeed, the strong wise woman is
a favourite in both Norse and Celtic literature,
though with a difference in the two. And there are
women of old in the Bible, also, who were praised
for resolution and strength; nor are they absent
from the classic literatures, nor from the works of
our own great writers such as Spenser and Shake-
speare, and Scott. More modern literature, on
the other hand, abounds in weakly heroines lov-
able enough, and that is the worst of them. In
the last century they suffered from a malady called
"the vapours" whatever that may have been.
Fainting has had its day of grace and attractiveness,
and headaches and neuralgia have an attraction to
some minds even now. Another form of the desire
N 193
Essays.
for weakness, which modern education has brought
into sight, is an insidious notion that there is
elegance in being overworked.
Now a hero in literature may have ill-health as a
foil to his numerous virtues, but a heroine's fragil-
ity is often part of her attractiveness. Therein lies
the difference ; but the inequality lies in this the
hero is never praised because he is deficient in the
qualities essential to the heroine, her gentle ways,
her sympathy and affection. The ideal for him
progresses, for her it flickers. Hence, the real men
are urged to be gentle and sympathetic, more than
the real women are encouraged to be wise, brave,
and strong.
There must be a cause for this, and the under-
standing of this cause might help the modern girl to
make up her own mind as to whether it would or
would not be well to aim at adding, so far as in
her power lies, the virtues and graces of strength
to the virtues and graces of sympathy and tender-
ness.
It seems necessary that we should here go back
a stage, and consider briefly the essential contrast
between these two groups of good qualities, and the
reason why they are assigned, or, as we might almost
say, assign themselves, the one to be the essential
virtue of the man, and the other to make up the
essential virtue of the woman. I doubt that the
thought can be better expressed than in the words of
an old Irish law-writer, who, in the course of his dry
annotations on the Brehon Law, bursts forth into a
derivation, perhaps more quaint than true, of the
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Ideals of Womanliness.
Gaelic words (fer and ban) for man and woman.
Thus they are called, he tells us, " from the kindli-
ness of a woman, and the dignity of a man ; and to
reach these qualities they exist"
Now I take it that the "dignity" of a man
consists in his capacity to hold himself together
and stand firm under all, even the most difficult,
circumstances. His sense of dignity underlies his
bravery in war, his endurance in distress, his general
inability to run away, or give in, under any stress of
hostile circumstances. And the gifts of strength are
associated with dignity, because they give the power
which the strong-souled man assumes in himself.
Dignity, then, turns on this strength of soul or
resoluteness, and its manifestations depend for their
force and amplitude on the possession of strength
in all departments of action, so that the strong-
souled man must of necessity desire every kind of
strength, and seek to acquire these so far as he
may.
So much for the man and this essential manly
quality. I have already pointed out how this comes
to be qualified certainly and steadily by the percep-
tion that great individual strength of character needs,
in proportion to its magnitude, to be tempered by
sympathy and a chivalrous care for the weaker ones.
Hence we find that, in all idealistic literature, the
hero is depicted as gentle and tender just in pro-
portion as he is strong and masterful. He has to
be strong against fate and the external world, able
to guard himself and his home ; but within the
home, and to all weaker outsiders, he is gentle as
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Essays.
a child or as a woman. That he should be both
truthful and true goes without saying : it belongs to
his dignity that he should scorn deceit, the breaking
of treaties, and disloyalty to friends. The growth
of the chivalrous instinct, moreover, emphasises, and
still further sanctifies, this virtue of loyal faith, as an
essential part of sympathetic affection. Self-respect
and other-respect alike make breach of faith impos-
sible to the manly man.
Coming now to the woman, it needs but brief
reflection to show that the different circumstances
of her social position throughout history lead to a
different emphasis in the ideal of her character ; and
the emphasis becomes disproportionately one-sided
in the semt-idea.1 types that abound in literature.
This happens because the semi-ideal heroine must
have those qualities which are essentially womanly,
and is not required to have their complement of
strength as much as the semi-ideal hero is required
to have that complement of chivalrous gentleness
without which his strength becomes a positive social
mischief.
Here we seem to reach the kernel of the matter :
the womanly virtues of gentleness need no counter-
poise, and mere weakness, as a passive evil, in a
woman does not cry out for remedy, like brutal
strength in a man. Hence, not striking the imagina-
tion as an active evil, however much it may destroy
the real comfort of a home, the literary artist is not,
and probably never can be, urged to make general
war upon its cultivation, as he makes war on the
absence of gentleness in strength. All persons, with
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Ideals of Womanliness.
any experience of life, have doubtless, at all times,
known well that the limp heroine, whom, in a story,
it is so delightful to dash in and save from shipwreck
or fire, would probably, in real life, prove somewhat
impracticable, even in the matter of being saved, and
that, for the wear and tear of everyday existence,
whatever its work may be, the capable woman, whose
head is cool and will firm, provided also her heart be
warm, is as much to be preferred to the other type
as is the capable man. Persons of experience have,
in short, always known practically, i.e., in particular
cases, that a woman is the better for the posses-
sion of any and every human virtue, gift, and grace.
But the literary artist, writing chiefly under aesthetic
motives, has not been guarded from one-sidedness in
this case, as in the other, by the self-evident need of
balance in the type ; and the inexperienced, whether
young men in their choice of women to admire,
or young women in their choice of ideals by which
to live, fall readily into the snares laid for them
by the literary artist, whose only aim is, at bottom,
the production of a picturesque effect. Parentheti-
cally, it may be said, at this point, that the simplest
cure of these erroneous views granting them to be
erroneous lies in the production of the living con-
crete capable woman. I never yet knew a man who,
other things being equal, did not prefer the companion-
ship of a capable to that of an incapable woman,
when it came to reality at least, provided the
woman were not more capable than himself; but I
have known many men who declared, in the abstract,
that they did not like clever women, or athletic
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Essays.
women, or women specially capable in some other
respect.
The literary artist aims at picturesque effects.
We are all of us more or less artists, with an eye for
picturesque effects ; and ideals of character, as they
present themselves to us, and are portrayed by the
literary artist, are apt to be affected as much by
the aesthetic as by the direct and serious ethical
motive. We have seen how the ethical requirement
for counterpoise in manliness is, of necessity, more
urgent and uncompromising than the ethical require-
ment, which yet, in a certain sense, is equally
authoritative, for that counterpoise of womanly
dignity, in the sense above described, to womanly
sympathy and bound-up-ness (if we might coin such
a word) in others. The proper use of aesthetic
effects in these matters is to reinforce the ethical
principle at work, nor is it possible to depart far
from the ethical truth without peril to the aesthetic
truth also. It would not therefore, I believe, be
possible to work aesthetic effects with feebleness as
an essential part of the material, unless there were
some special reason for its use in art.
That special reason is not far to seek. The
principle of contrast counts for much in itself. As
a foil to the strength and independence of the man,
an exaggerated weakness and dependence in the
woman can be used with picturesque effect in a
story. Since the contrast of nature when both are
at their best is, in truth, sufficient if treated
effectively, the resource of exaggeration is a mark
of feebleness; and the greater artists would, no
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Ideals of Womanliness.
doubt, always rise above it were they not under the
influence of habits begotten by the influence of
inferior art. Mere contrast, however, is not the
only principle at work here. Development of
character is expressed through the development of
a drama. In the older stories, the hero, with his
independent control of life, played the leading part,
as a rule, and the- heroine's part was apt, uncon-
sciously, to become a mere opportunity for the
further development of the hero's story. Later
on, story came to take note of hero and heroine as
more equally concerned in its making, at least, when
a story of love in its main intent. Not till the last
century, when women themselves took to writing
stories, did the story become common in which
the main interest centred in the heroine, and the
development of her fortunes and character. The
latter kind of story is apt to have a heroine with a
mind of her own, however completely she may
surrender herself in due course when the hero
appears. But the two former, and even now much
more common, types are pretty sure in the main,
by the very law of their existence, to subordinate
the less stable ideal of womanly goodness to the
necessities for the dramatic exercise of the more
stable manly type. There is no doubt that a hero
must be brave and kind ; therefore, in a story he
must have occasion to exercise his chivalry, and the
most picturesque way of doing so is in the service
of a heroine. Hence it is necessary that there
should be a damsel in distress. Monsters and
giants were once most useful means of supply for
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Essays.
the distress, but, with the progress of science,
civilization, and general humdrumness, damsels in
distress from overwhelming external circumstances,
became more rare. Law, order, policemen, and the
disappearance of monsters, enabled women, under
most circumstances, to take care of themselves.
Thus the resources of fiction were seriously crippled.
The ills that still remain to us are at once fewer
and, even to a woman, less overwhelming. Hence
the dramatic utility of the incapable woman. If a
girl is an excellent swimmer she need not drown
when a boat upsets, and so the hero loses a chance
of risking his life to save her from a watery and
certain grave. There are, indeed, many graceful
acts by which the hero of the modern novel can
show, in subtler ways, that valour and chivalry are
by no means dead ; but striking situations of the
romantic and sensational type can no longer be
created in any variety without the introduction of
heroines who are deficient in the qualities and virtues
of strength. In short, the dramatic exigencies of
chivalry are responsible for much of the common
literary depreciation of a woman's strength, and for
that leaning which supports this, to some extent, in
most of us both men and women a dramatic
liking for the picturesque effect thus produced. To
the man, the exercise of his chivalry is delightful and
morally ennobling. To the woman, the experience
of his strength stirs her with delight and admiration,
but may operate as a great moral temptation the
temptation to let her powers lie dormant and
dwindle for want of exercise, so that she may have
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Ideals of Womanliness.
the more pleasure in this superiority at her service
which so pleases her. Thus the woman gets the
worst of the lesson ethically.
The artist, and we all, as desiring the artistic
effects, must make up our minds, first as to the
ethics of the matter, and then demand for our
working ideals that they shall be true to ethics
first, and the artistic effects obtained within the
lines prescribed as right. For my part, I have no
anxiety as to the aesthetic result, even from that
limited point of view which makes the dramatic
interest of story and of life centre in the develop-
ment of the hero's character in action. The best
art will not suffer by laying aside those extravagant
contrasts and extreme occasions for the exercise of
courage and strength which are afforded by the
existence of the more or less incapable heroine.
But even were it not so, there is ample compensation
in the interest of the strong, or shall I say complete,
heroine's own development of character. The stories
which have the heroine, so to speak, for their hero,
supply abundant instances of picturesque effects, due
to the contrast of firmness and sympathy, strength
and tenderness, self-dependence and self-surrender,
" sweetness and light," in the central figure. The
strong, independent woman, quite able to take care
of herself and other people, too becomes trans-
formed, without being changed, into the loving, de-
pendent woman who finds her chief joy in thinking
the thoughts, and feeling the aspirations, and taking
on the will of another than herself.
There is plenty of picturesque contrast in a story
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Essays.
showing this. Probably indeed, in real truth, the
intensity of the second phase is proportional to the
intensity of the first, so prone is the individual human
mind to balance itself by the development of oppo-
sites, much as a skater maintains his balance by
equal strokes on his two feet. A transformation
from one of these phases to the other is not a
change. The loving woman is still the strong
woman, able to stand alone if need be, or, if more
happy, to stand strongly together with another, or
even to take up the post of guardianship for a season
should misfortune require it.
Real women of this kind everyone knows and
everyone admires. Nor is it too much to say that
the ideal thus briefly sketched is true to the nature
of romantic things, while the incomplete heroine of
the story, who is merely the hero's opportunity for
heroism, is not true. And this can be explained.
Weakness cannot appreciate strength as strength
appreciates it, ignorance is insensible to learning,
genius is invisible to stupidity nay, more, it is
even true that cowardice cannot value courage at
its worth. To the feeble, merely dependent, woman,
all a man's manly virtues are at an infinite distance,
or lie even, as it were, in a fourth dimension of space;
they appear to her only as benefits, which she freely
accepts. Of what they are to him she has no con-
ception, that inaccessible fourth dimension being quite
unthinkable to her. But the other woman knows and
understands ; because she has the manly excellences
in her degree, she values superiority in them wherever
it occurs. When she benefits by these virtues in
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Ideals of Womanliness.
another, it is not her mere experience of their use,
but her imagination of their exercise that stirs her the
more the power, the effort, the self-denial, the
thoughtfulness, the endurance. And so, since it is
essential that the heroine of romance should appreciate
the hero, the merely dependent woman is not, for the
most part, true to the nature of romance. I admit
exceptions rare and beautiful exceptions but such
women add to their sympathy and tenderness a rare
strength of soul amid their weakness, and so should
not be counted as real exceptions.
No writer has described the Nemesis of graceful
feminine weakness more fully and yet more tenderly
than Dickens, in the character of Dora. Dora was
sweetness and tenderness itself; she was not selfish,
she was not vain ; she was only very very incapable.
There are few things in literature, to my mind, more
pathetic than poor little Dora's well-meant attempts
to be useful and sympathetic. But " darkly wise
and great" indeed poor David remained to her
throughout. Everyone will remember how her
aspirations ended in the discovery that she could
hold the pens while he wrote. The moral of the
tale lies in this, that if Dora had known earlier the
value of ability, she would have trained herself to
a higher level than that which she reached ; and if
David had valued feminine capacity at its true value
he would not have made the mistake of substituting
Dora for Agnes. The latter is the moral which
Dickens draws, but I submit that the other is even
more vital.
For types of the capable heroine we may turn to
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Essays.
the pages of George Eliot. Few writers have made
the lovableness of strength more apparent. She, too,
in the story of " Lydgate and Rosamond," has a
lesson of warning about the folly of affection based
on the incomplete romantic ideal. In Rosamond,
Lydgate sees or imagines the typical woman, supple-
mentary to himself the man, capable of unlimited
devotion to him, and sympathy, though not under-
standing sympathy, with his feelings and views of
life. But all these are in the fourth dimension for
Rosamond, and sympathy is impossible where no
basis exists in reason and imagination. Lydgate, of
course, should have found the ideal in Dorothea,
but, under the influence of his false traditions, he
judges her, at the outset, to be intellectual and
strong-minded, and therefore deficient in feminine
softness.
It is often supposed that those who set up the
complete human ideal as the type of womanliness,
have chiefly in their minds the independent woman,
and her need of a personal use of the virtues of
strength. It will now, I hope, be apparent that
this need not be so, for throughout we have been
considering women in, rather than out of, their
special sphere, and with reference to a romantic
rather than a utilitarian view of life. I am content
if I have shown that the complete human type is
needed in that sphere, and that its exercise produces
more beauty, as well as more use, in the common
course of social and domestic life. If I have dwelt
on the beauty rather than the use, it is because I
have been dealing with literature and its picturesque
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Ideals of Womanliness.
effects ; and I have chosen to deal with the matter
thus, because beauty makes itself felt far off in
anticipations of romance, while use appeals only to
actual experience of its goodness. The imagination
of youth will, therefore, always fasten itself on the
ideals of romance, and be guided, unconsciously,
by picturesque effects ; and the imagination of youth
forms the character for maturity. At least, this is
so in the absence of a strong and clear ethical con-
ception to the contrary.
Such a conception, however, there is ; and we
now see how it can be conciliated with and made
conducive to aesthetic effects in romance. Think of
a woman first as an end in herself, and incomplete
ideals will be no longer possible. Perfection of
human character in all its aspects, becomes an end
that should be realized in her. It is true, indeed,
that the best women, as also the best men, think
always more of their work in the world than of their
own graceful goodness in doing it ; and this great
principle of the objectivity of moral action should
never be forgotten, while our claim is made that the
individual subjectivity of each person should be
regarded as an end, and for all equally an end, in
itself. This recognition of individuality, in each by
every other, implies the completeness of the true
womanly ideal. But each woman for herself grows
best towards that ideal by playing as efficiently as
she can the part she has to play in the economy of
nature and society.
And thus we reach the conclusion of the whole
matter. All human virtues are virtues for the
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Essays.
woman no less than for the man. Let the woman,
therefore, develop her sense of individual dignity,
with a view to the complete ideal of human excel-
lence. Let her value all good gifts, improve every
talent, and scorn every deficiency in herself. But
let her also keep her face turned towards womanly
duties and womanly responsibilities, with a modest
pride in her household efficiency, her skill of hands,
her social tact, her helpfulness in sickness her
womanly ability to make life within the house full
of comfort, peace, and beauty.
It is this ability to do work well within her own
sphere, and the difference of that sphere, which
makes the human excellence of the woman seem so
different from that of the man ; and this ability, with
the special development of qualities which it implies,
is gained better by doing the work than by reflecting
on specialities in the ideal of womanliness. She
who improves her talents, keeps her conscience
fixed on the great ideals of virtue, and also does her
work well as it comes along, she will become a
womanly woman, and be easily recognisable as such.
Suppose we could throw into a composite photo-
graph all the ideals of manly virtue that have ever
been depicted, and suppose we did this also with
the ideals of womanliness. Each photograph would
show all the features of human virtue, but the
virtues emphasised in the composite ideal man
would not be those emphasised in the composite
ideal woman. The contrast noted by the old law
writer would appear, and must appear as a conse-
quence of divergent spheres of duty the individual
206
Ideals of Womanliness.
dignity of the man, the sympathetic kindliness of
the woman.
Let us now suppose the two composites super-
posed, and a third composite thus developed. The
strong features of each would supplement the weak
features of the other, and the complete human ideal,
balanced and harmonious, would appear. Now, the
conclusion to be drawn from this rambling discus-
sion of ideals may be stated thus. Let each of us,
whether man or woman, look to the complete ideal
as that which we mean to become, and let each,
at the same time, do well his or her own work.
Character is the aftergrowth of activities under the
influence of ideals, and so manly men and womanly
women come into being. The differences which
nature has decreed lie very deep, in subtle contrasts
of abilities and purpose, which the unity of ideal
serves rather to heighten than to suppress. So,
while each grows more like the other in the whole-
ness and unity of reason and right, the sweetness of
diversity remains to all time, " making one music, as
before, but vaster " and more harmonious.
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Mock-Essays,
THE SPARROW COLONEL.
(After O. W. Holmes.}
BY BEATRIX TOLLEMACHE.
A MONO the shifting population of the table d'hote
** meals, I remember that one guest regularly
appeared at the Hotel d'Angleterre, Biarritz, and
also that he had the habit, at the end of a meal,
of gathering up the broken bread left on the table,
and stuffing it into his pockets. Presently, as I sat
at my window, looking on the garden, I saw the
old French Colonel, for such I found he was, scat-
tering crumbs to the birds; they came flocking
round him, and he seemed quite happy and con-
tented. But how fierce and warlike he could appear
if a cat, attracted by the delightful prospect of a
meal, not of .breadcrumbs, ventured to prowl round.
She was quickly routed from the field, and the
sparrows were able to dine in peace.
My further acquaintance with the Colonel grew
out of our common taste for poetry, for the old
soldier now spent his leisure in writing, gardening,
and such-like peaceful pursuits. He wrote in
French, while I wrote in English; what, therefore,
more natural than that he should beg my help in
laying his verses before the bi-lingual readers of the
Petit Courrier. He had written a pretty poem
211
Mock-Essays.
describing his rescue of a nest of birds from some
cruel youngsters. One of these birds became his
pet and companion; he would carry it in his
pocket, let it sleep on his pillow, and it grew so fond
of him that it would not fly away when liberty was
offered to it. This was gracefully described in
thirty-two stanzas. I did my best in translating to
preserve the charm of the original, but with all my
good-will I could not avoid compressing the p6em
into about half the original number of verses : English
sentiment is too inexpansive. He could not bear to
see boys teasing sparrows by tying a string to one of
their legs, and a lady having remarked that if she
saw a boy doing that she would offer him ten sous
and then let the bird loose, the Colonel replied,
" Moi, je lui donnerais un soufflet, et j'emporterais
1'oiseau." I have said that the Colonel often carried
a sparrow in his pocket, but whether the bird was
wet or dry he did not seem to care, for when he
was out walking and saw a nice puddle, he would
take it out and say, " Pierrot, va te laver." He had
laid out a nice garden to the house he had built,
and there was a shallow basin and fountain in it,
where the birds could bathe in safety. Someone
having suggested to him that he seemed to like
birds better than men, he growled, "Les hommes,
je les deteste." This misanthropy may have been
the result of disappointed ambition. He told me
that he had offered his services to the Government
in 1870, but was considered too old, and his offer
refused; certainly his misanthropy was only skin-
deep, and really indicated his sympathy with his
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The Sparrow Colonel.
fellows, for, as Chamfort says : " No man who is not
a misanthropist at forty has ever loved mankind."
In truth, he was always ready to give a helping hand
to anyone in trouble, and I remember his asking
me to translate into English his French appeal for
subscriptions to buy a horse for a one-armed coach-
man who earned his livelihood by plying for hire in
the streets.
There was something of Don Quixote in the
Colonel. In figure he was tall and spare ; he wore
high boots, and a coat so short and cut away, that
it hardly seemed to protect his lean body ; in fact
in cold weather he threw a shawl over his shoulders.
A soft felt hat completed his attire.
He had known Biarritz in the old Imperial days,
and a Republic was not at all to his taste. I re-
member that he looked coldly on me when I avowed
my preference for a Republic in France, and I was
only restored to favour when some time after I
expressed my indignation with the Republican
Government for refusing to allow priests to visit the
hospitals. He then offered me his arm, and marched
me into the dining-room.
On another occasion he had written some verses
about the Empress of the French and her son,
describing the young prince as her joy and consola-
tion in her exile. This he gave me to translate,
and when I had incautiously brought in the words
Empress and Napoleon, I was told such words might
bring him into trouble with the Government. I
then spread a transparent veil over their meaning by
saying Eugenie and her boy. It was only a few
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Mock-Essays.
weeks after that the news came of the tragic death
of the Prince Imperial. . . . Perhaps the Republic
felt safer then.
For years the Colonel's familiar figure stalked into
the garden of the hotel at luncheon time ; but the
end came at last, and after his death his heirs, who
were at a distance, ordered an auction to be held of
his few household goods.
How pathetic it was to see the garden where he
would stroll and compose his verses, invaded by
rough men with pipes, while a crowd of women,
some with their knitting, sat in rows of chairs in
front of the steps leading from the open salon
window.
And yet there was a touch of the comic, as the
auctioneer, who was something of a buffoon, and
wished for his credit to make the sale amusing, came
forward and threw over his head and shoulders a
burnous brought from Algeria by the Colonel; he
then waved in the air some towels before the eyes of
his audience. " Here are English bath towels," he
cried in French, " such as are not to be got even in
Bayonne"; then again he produced some books,
" Here is 'Art's Army List ; who will give anything for
this valuable book ? " For the old Colonel, though
he did not venture to write in English, was able to
understand it, and his library contained some quaint
little editions of English books. And now his kindly
spirit has fled where we trust there may still be birds
and flowers, such as he loved to tend, and I will
close my sketch of my old friend by quoting his
familiar words of parting : Sans Adieu.
214
OF CYNICISM.
(After Bacon.)
BY THE HON. LIONEL A. TOLLEMACHE.
T PURPOSE not to write of the Cynicism of
Diogenes, nor of his rough speech to Alexander
of Macedon, nor of the elegancy of the King's answer.
For these be things known unto all men. Likewise,
the cynicism of our day is not sharp and aculeate, like
the cynicism of Diogenes. For, inasmuch as the word
Cynic deriveth itself from dogs, the quality of him
that dwelt in the tub was such as belongeth to snarl-
ing curs. Whereas the cynicism of our days, which
Frenchmen call finis seculi, putteth me in mind of
silky-haired and mangy lap-dogs, the sickly offspring
of sickly parents, that have been through many
generations tendered and cosseted. A Cynic of this
breed is often perfumed like a milliner, and, after the
manner of Agag, he walketh delicately.
We will speak, first, how cynicism is often dis-
covered among men of parts; secondly, whence it
ariseth ; and, thirdly, to what sort of persons it should
be limited and confined, so as it may be contained
from mischief.
I stand not upon such notable cases of cynicism
as Machiavel or as the Sieur de Montaigne, who
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Mock- Essays.
saith : " He that forsaketh his own healthful and
pleasant life, so as he may serve others, folio weth a
course which I hold to be wrong and unnatural."
But I pass on to examples which lie less open, or, at
the least, are less publicly talked of. Augustus
Caesar, on the day of his death, caused himself to be
bravely attired, and demanded of his friends that, if
the Comedy of his Life had been well enacted, they
should clap with their hands ; even as Rabelais, on
a like occasion, exclaimed : " Tirez le rideau, la farce
est finie."
You shall hear it said that a grave historian, who
hath written excellently well of the Declination and
Fall of the Roman Empire, suffereth himself not to
be decoyed into a smile save when he relateth the
murder of a Priest. I knew one that dwelt in
Oxford, being a Clergyman and the Governor of a
College there, who had a desperate saying, that
" There is no such thing as Sin ; there are only
mistakes." Nevertheless, he is herein held in coun-
tenance by Goethus of Weimar a writer who beau-
tifieth and adorneth the nation of the Germans, who
otherwise are less elegant than other nations in their
writings (as likewise in their manners) for, saith he,
" The Politick Man never hath a Conscience " ; and
a Politick Man out of question Goethus reckoned
himself to be. A Cynic, too, in his way, was the
monk of old time whom Goethus praiseth, who gave
unto himself three rules of behaviour : " Spernere
mundum, spernere se ipsum, spernere se sperni."
I cannot choose but impute Cynicism to a late
eloquent Privy Councillor, a man that feared God and
216
Of Cynicism.
hated all faction and sedition. Some years ago, I
asked of that grave and austere person how he valued
the changes that were being then wrought in Ireland.
He made answer on this wise, pointing therewithal
to his little dog : Look at Fido, that now biteth my
staff. The staff profiteth nought by what he doth;
but I suffer him to bite if, so as he may do no worse
havoc elsewhere. Even so it falleth out with the estate
of Ireland. Ireland preoccupateth the demagogues ;
and certainly \ if they must needs work mischief some-
where, they were better work it anywhere but in
England. Truly he laughed as he conversed thus
with me ; yet methought that he discoursed not
wholly as one that jesteth : as Horace saith, What
hindereth but a man laughing may speak truth 1
I marvel that my lord of St Albans, when he
handleth the Topick of Adversity, saith nothing of
the consolation to be drawn from looking with a
Play Pleasure, as he himself elsewhere calleth it, on
the Theatre of Life. And this is the more strange,
inasmuch as this Play Pleasure appertaineth to Cyni-
cism ; and Cynicism is thickly strewn among his
pages. Certainly he is a cynic when he ascribeth
Virtue to such high and great Spirits as Alcibiades
Philip le Bel, and Edward the Fourth. And he is
cynical likewise when, in his treatise on Anger, his
pencil laboureth as much to describe the means of
provoking wrath as the means of attempering and
appeasing it. As if it could be meet for any Chris-
tian man to seek to put another man into a rage. I
hold him to be yet more culpable when he exhorteth
strong nations to be sensible of wrong, and to search
217
Mock-Essays.
the means of commanding quarrels with their weaker
neighbours, so as they may keep the Body Politick
in healthful exercise. All which things being weighed
and pondered, I trow that whoso taketh delight in
my lord's Essays hath somewhat of Cynicism lurking
in him ; and, if he sayeth he hath it not, he lieth, or,
haply, he doth deceive himself. Peradventure, when
he exalteth those Essays above the Moon, he is in
the humour of self-excusation, and thinketh in his
heart : " If my lord has praise of all men, although
many times he writeth as a Cynic, why should I be
dispraised of men if I write and talk as a Cynic ;
and why should I dispraise myself if I feel as one ? "
Incident to this point is my second Topick : the
Plantation of Cynicism, and where and how it
springeth up. For self-excusation is the April
shower which causeth it to flourish. Few men, I
am sure, have a natural wish to be cynical : and
fewer still have the wish to be thought so, particu-
larly by women. For indeed all women rail bitterly
at Cynicism ; the cause whereof is plain. You shall
see that women, when assailed with arguments, do
defend themselves after the manner of hedgehogs :
they use not their heads at all, but they bristle up
and are fain to prick. Therefore, lacking the habit
and the skill to cogitate, they dive not deep into their
own hearts, and discover not therein the faults for
which they reprehend their neighbours. And, not
being sensible of the wounds of self-reproach, they
have no use for the shield of Cynicism ; and there-
fore, not comprehending that quality, they do utterly
abhor it. Certainly, Cynicism often dependeth from
218
Of Cynicism.
self-examining, being (as it were) its fringe or its
beard. Which appeareth on this wise. Let a man
first consider that, as we condemn much that our
forefathers approved, even so posterity will, out of
question, condemn much that we approve ; and let
him then ponder his own nature and all things that
he deliberately doeth and purposeth to do, and let
him see whether he be not many times a very Tekel,
one who, being weighed in the balance, is found
wanting ; and he shall presently discover that, if he
would not be a martyr, he must needs be somewhat
of a Cynic. At last, peradventure, he will be con-
tent to behave even as others behave. Human life,
he will say within himself, is beset with Gordian
knots, which must be dealt with, and can scarce be
unloosed ; the wisest man is he that cutteth them.
The composition of Cynicism will be better under-
stood if I tell of a shrewd saying of Goethus : "As
old age cometh upon me, I wax more lenient, for,
whenever I hear of a sin committed, I feel that in
the like case I myself might have committed it."
He intendeth, without doubt, that he might have so
transgressed if he had been born, reared, and tempted
as the transgressor was. But it is meet to be wroth
with evil doers, as St Paul saith : " Be ye angry."
Now, when a philosopher groweth as lenient as
Goethus, divers stands and impediments obstruct
the path of his righteous anger. So that, when he
must needs condemn evil deeds and profess bitter
anger thereat, he feeleth that the wheels of his speech
keep not way with the wheels of his thought and
feeling, as Euripides saith : " My tongue swore, but
219
Mock-Essays.
my mind swore not." And he would scarce traduce
such a cynical sage that should ascribe to him the
quality which my lord pronounceth to be one of the
stepping-stones to fortune : He is " not too much of
the honest." It is worthy to observe that my lord
dealeth with this abated probity as Isaak Walton
telleth us that he himself dealt with his live bait he
handleth it tenderly as if he loved it.
Tully saith that jhe vices of the wicked Consul,
Afranius, were such as none, save a Philosopher,
could contemplate without a groan : " Consul est
impositus is nobis, quern nemo, prseter nos philoso-
phos, aspicere sine suspiratu possit " ; as if the moral
palate of Philosophers were used and innured to such
divers meats as nought could any more seem un-
savoury unto them. Certainly a Philosopher is often
at straits to consider any particular sin or sorrow
apart and by itself; insomuch that he must needs
interlace it with all the sin and sorrow in the world.
And, when he thus surveyeth the world, as a whole,
he becometh either an Heraclitus or a Democritus.
He must either continually weep or continually laugh.
But, if he would weep without respite, I see not how
the cistern of his eyes can be replenished
" Mirandum est unde ille oculis suffecerit humor."
Therefore he laugheth at mankind, but he laugheth
sardonically and in his own despite. Such an one
is a Cynic of the honourablest sort. If we go back to
the source whence the word Cynic is derived, we may
say that this cynique malgre lui, as a Frenchman
might name him, hath a bark which importeth more
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Of Cynicism.
than his bite. If ever he seem to rejoice at evil, it
is but with a counterfeit joy which essayeth to dry up
the fountain of his tears. He is the opposite of
what the Greeks call an Eiron ; for he meaneth less
than he saith. Perhaps the " Pecca fortiter " of
Luther intendeth no more than " Be not righteous
over much " ; and the " Nil admirari " of Horace
signifieth " Nil nimium admirari," that is to say, not
to regard things too tragically and austerely. If it
be asked of me wherefore any teacher should on this
wise say more than he meaneth, I reply that he is
like to one that crooketh a bent rod in the opposite
extreme, so as it may thereby be made straight.
" Iniquum petit, ut sequum ferat."
There be some that have the imagination that our
Earth is of no more account with the Higher Powers
than an ant-hill is with us ; for, say they, the learned
Copernicus, notwithstanding what my lord hath
argued contrariwise, hath certainly proved that the
Earth is not the pivot of the Creation ; nay rather,
that it is but a mean and commiserable planet,
one among millions. Whence they do conclude
that we should iterate the mournful musings of
the Psalmist, or rather that, having chewed and di-
gested the monitions of science, we should exclaim
with more of desperation : " When I consider the
Heavens, what is Man that Thou shouldest regard
him ? " Which disputation, when I ponder it in my
heart, so moveth me that I am astonied, and my
reason standeth at a stay. But presently I bethink
me of words, which the dramatick poet, Shakespeare,
hath placed in the mouth of Hamlet of Denmark :
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Mock- Essays.
"All of which though I most powerfully and potently
believe, yet I hold it not honesty to have it thus
set down." Certainly those contemners of human
nature of whom I have spoken deliver themselves
of their judgment : " Fortasse vere, sed ad com-
munem utilitatem parum." If it be indeed true
that, by comparison of the infinite tract of space
and time, our round World, and all the Pigmies
that are therein, and the Oracles and Imaginations
which they fashion for themselves, are even as the
chaff which the wind driveth away, then is the truth
such as, if it were proclaimed on the house-top,
would be disadvantageable to the public weal. And
therefore he that holdeth to that unsavoury and
unwholesome doctrine, which is the very root of
all Cynicism, ought to keep silence thereon, or else
to veil his thoughts in oraculous speeches or, if so
it may be, in a language not understanded of the
common people.
For doubt you not but, if men ever come to
believe that it importeth little what they say or
do, the malignum vulgus will straightways become
maltgnissimum, and more hurt will be done than
hath been wrought by all the froward and pestilent
fellows at divers times called Root-and-Branch men,
or Radicals, who seek to subvert, with tribunicious
disturbance, whatsoever sorteth to the strength and
stability of the Kingdom. God grant that no such
ill may reach unto us or our children.
" Quod procul a nobis flectat Fortuna gubernans ! "
Thus far an honest man will go, but no further.
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Of Cynicism.
For he will forbear to tread in the steps of the
French King, who stuck not to say : " Apres moi
le de-luge."
Let this uncomely saying be noted well; for I
can think upon no more particular instance of the
baser sort of Cynicism, which a good man should
do his uttermost to avoid. Nevertheless, if you
consider the matter heedfully, you shall find that
feelings attuned to the note of "Consulant sibi
posteri" sometimes make their way unawares even
into godly and understanding hearts. For you shall
read that Hezekiah, although he was a righteous
Prince and laboured for the good estate of his
people, yet, when one prophesied unto him that
divers and sore evils should come to pass after his
decease, he scorned not to make answer : " Good
is the word of the Lord. Is it not good if peace
and truth be in my day ? "
223
ON THE SHAKING OF HANDS.
(After Charles Lamb.)
BY C. LAWRENCE FORD.
'IPHE custom of hand-shaking has probably its
* root in primitive times, when all outside the
tribe were natural enemies. It was the badge of
fraternity, of amity, of exclusiveness. It was a
significant rite, a masonic mystery. Then, it meant
much; now, it may mean very little, or nothing at
all. It is an act " soiled with all ignoble use." Its
very commonness hath degraded it. That fine dis-
crimination wherewith our ancestors performed it
hath departed. Commend me to those two English
travellers who met, alone, in the heart of the African
desert, yet shook not hands, nay spoke not, not
having been mutually introduced. This form, the
pledge of good faith, the tangible Amen of friendly
intercourse, is too solemn to be profaned by every
charlatan. Grip strongly the hand of thy lover, thy
friend, thy benefactor,
" But do not dull thy palm with entertainment
Of each new-hatched, unfledged comrade."
A sort of reverence attaches to this old-world sign-
manual of good intentions. Yet, for all that, there is
224
Shaking Hands.
a certain embarrassment attending the practice, which
has sometimes led me to wish it were less exacting
and more optional.
Reader, misconceive me not. I am no mis-
anthrope. Rather am I disposed, naturally, to
honour this custom, not in the breach, but in the
observance, with all good will, and even more
abundantly. I would, like the affable Mr Toots,
resort to this relief every ten minutes, when the
friendly spirit is effervescent, and I am "gravelled
for lack of matter." I would shake hands with the
man in the moon, if I could reach so far. As to
sublunary matters, I would fain shake hands with
the blind beggar at the street corner (drop, Reader,
thy obol into his tin patera as thou passest), with the
man at the barrel-organ, nay, with the Genius loci,
the awful policeman himself. I would shake hands
with all the hospital nurses, with all the breezy
nursemaids that trundle perambulators, and above
all with every ragged street arab that importunes me,
a non-smoker, to buy his matches. I would shake
hands with A , were I not sure that on the
strength of it he would borrow half-a-crown that I
should never see again : or with B , who has
owed me money now for five years, did I not
know that he would straightway comfort himself
with the thought of the statute of limitations. I
would even shake hands with that fellow yonder
who has deliberately insulted me, but that he would
crow over it at his club. Ce n'est pas a moi mettre
les pouces.
But alas ! this sweet expansiveness, this giving of
p 225
Mock-Essays.
myself away, is denied me by the unwritten (and
therefore most imperious) laws of society. I must,
it seems, economize my effusiveness, and curtail
my philanthropy. Tell me then, Reader, with
whom I may, and with whom I may not shake
hands.
May I shake hands with my banker ? Needless
that doubt for thee, Sir Gorgius Midas. Not in
mute awe dost thou stand, somewhat off from the
counter, waiting thy turn. See, the iron face of the
solemn chief cashier relaxeth to a smile. Jove nods
benignly. Fear not to extend thy hand : right
loyally will its grasp be returned. But I with my
humble balance (scarce worth the booking, relegated
to the Petty Ledger) can I dare aspire to so high a
distinction ? Yet stay ! a happy thought strikes me.
I have read somewhere of a smart Frenchman of
limited means who managed to gain large credit
and the reputation of fabulous wealth by the single
payment of a stipulated sum to a certain banker
for the privilege of addressing him, before customers,
in the familiar tutoyaunt style. How much, I wonder,
can I afford to offer for the right of shaking hands
with my banker whenever I timidly enter to increase
or to diminish my slender account ! I am afraid
they do these things better in France.
May I shake hands with my purveyor, my out-
fitter, my cordwainer ? with any of those prosperous
tradesmen who stoop to take my very limited
custom, and may have to wait just a little for their
Christmas bills ? men who awe me with their massive
watch-guards, silent prophecies of the civic chain of
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Shaking Hands.
gold? I mind me once, when the spirit of Toots
was strong upon me, volunteering to shake hands
with my bookseller. It was just after his recovery
from a pleurisy that had well-nigh turned out fatal.
But I immediately felt I had gone too far, and I
have never ventured upon a repetition. For you
must know, Reader, that he is a man of a hundred
thousand volumes, in all known languages : and it is
my firm belief that he knows them every one from
cover to cover, titles and prices included. He is
familiar alike with the world's great classics and
with the latest mushroom spawn. He talketh easily
of Homer and Virgil, and is mighty in black letter
folios and first editions. No, I dare not again shake
hands with him.
There is the clerk of our parish, a worthy man
with a limp, whom I met this morning in the
cemetery. We nod as we pass, and now we got
into talk, but we did not shake hands. Why not ?
What, Reader, is the exact amount of acquaintance-
ship (I say nothing here of relations and friends)
that must justify the act ? And whose place is it
to make the first advance ? With whom, again, may
we now observe, and now waive the right, as we
feel at the moment disposed ? This last is a delicate
question : it is like first addressing your corre-
spondent as Esq., and then as plain Mr So-and-so,
or giving your little boy bread after cake. As
Mistress George Eliot saith, to have spoken once
is a tyrannous reason for speaking again : (not all,
O single-speech Hamilton, can copy thy self-control)
and the same thing may be said of giving, or
227
Mock-Essays.
lending, or of shaking hands. Begin, say the wise,
as you mean to go on.
But, after all, why this tyranny of custom ? Why
may I not meet or part with even my friend, or my
relative, without this rigid formality, this tax of
kindness ? Should I, in my heart, love him any
the less, for not giving him my hand ? I was once
told by an old schoolfellow (peace be to thy shade,
unfortunate R ) whom I was visiting in his
College rooms at University, that the men
made it a rule never to shake hands except at
beginning and end of term. I would plead for
some such restriction on the larger social scale. On
New Year's Day, on the great Christian Festivals, on
Coronation or election-day, or on the news of some
great victory, let there be a general hand-shaking, a
formal settlement of arrears, a payment in full of all
demands. Then, for the rest of the time, let our
hands be off duty. So should our little ones, while
their nursemaids looked out of the window at the
spectacle, ask, like the young Hebrew of old, " What
meaneth this ? " How fine an occasion of instilling,
early, lessons of religion and civic virtue !
I would not, certainly, advocate the entire abolition
of this time-honoured custom, lest the world should
too willingly let die one important diagnosis of
character. But this, with the manner of shaking
hands generally, and many other aspects of the
question, has doubtless been dealt with by my
betters, and I will let it pass. By the by, why
shake hands? What is gained by vertical or hori-
zontal motion? How much better the French
228
Shaking Hands.
serrer la main 1 the courtly Spanish besar la mano
has alas ! declined to a mere epistolary compliment.
But what of the ethical side of this social sacra-
ment, the opus operatum ? If there be somewhat
mysteriously efficacious in the " laying on " of hands,
why may there not be some subtle communicable
influence in the touch, the linking, the grasping of
hands, for the better or for the worse ? What
schoolboy was not morally the better for shaking
hands with Dr Arnold? And who, if he had
unwittingly shaken hands with a Marat, a Locusta,
an Ephialtes, would not be fain to exclaim with
Cranmer : " That unworthy right hand ! "
Right hand ! I have, in my younger days, been
offered the left. I will not now inquire into the
origin of the preference, not easy to account for,
perhaps. But I have been told by a friend of mine,
a traveller of large experience, that among the Arabs
to offer the left hand is a recognized form of insult,
equivalent to a declaration of hostilities; and the
person so treated at once knows that his life is in
danger.
I have known people whose habit it was to extend
to you not the whole hand, but a couple of fingers.
Was it to hide some malformation, or, maybe, some
maiming? Were they, I wonder, pollice truncati?
Or was it that they feared some mesmeric influence
of contact too close, " with our touch, our agony " ?
something mentally infecting, or socially degrading ?
Let us leave such to their bi-digital reserve, and
return heartily the grasp of an honest man, whatever
his station. There are men with whom but once to
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Mock-Essays.
have shaken hands is an honour for life. Reader, I
once (and I swear to thee that this is solemn truth)
missed by a few hours the chance, never to recur, of
shaking hands with the immortal Wordsworth. By
one of those strange freaks of circumstance (lusus
natura rerum), it so happened that he called one
day day marked evermore with white at my
father's house, in my absence, and I was proudly
told of it when I, a mere stripling, came home from
the school. It was his seventy-seventh birthday,
and he wrote his name in a book, the Moxon edition
of his own poems, now in my possession. Nought
but death will part me from that autograph, but
what would I give to be able to say I had felt the
touch of that hand ! I feel sure I should have been
a better man for that hand-shake all the rest of my
life. My loss is incalculable. I count it as one of
the ill turns of Fortune, for which, Reader, I may
whisper to thee in confidence, that I owe her a
secret grudge. For who knows but what, on the
inspiration of that touch, I might one day have been
able to exclaim " Anch'io" . . . Whereas now, my
one volume . . .
" It's still in 's shop, and oh !
The difference to me ! "
Heavens ! to have shaken hands with George
Herbert ! or with Edmund Burke ! or with thee,
gentle Elia, prince of essayists, whose hand even
now I seem figuratively to hold, following thee non
passibus aequis, through this fierce competitive
struggle of thought and action, of grave and gay,
230
Shaking Hands.
of lively and severe, amidst the burning wreck of
fallen hopes and ruined fortunes, and gods that are
deserting their shrines, and shooting stars whose
trail is pointing out the path to a distant land. Ah !
I will shake hands with thy shade, if I may, dis-
cerning thee among the happy group, the select few,
that in the Elysian Fields cluster round Musaeus.
231
THE PERFECT HEADMISTRESS.
(After Bacon?)
OHE hath the gift of sympathy, which the Gre-
*** cians call a fellow-feeling. She remembereth
the name and condition of every person about her,
and she showeth an interest in them all. She com-
prehendeth all natures ; she hath no contempt for
any. Therefore all are attracted to her, and place
their trust in her.
She is, like the Divine Providence, slow to anger.
She considereth that she also is mortal, and therefore
liable to error ; but her subordinates doubt it.
She hath very pretty manners. Being in a figure
royal, she is royally gracious. For she forgetteth
herself in the desire to set at ease them that come to
her.
To live near her is an inspiration. For there is
none that would show any but his best work in her
presence, since she herself giveth always of her best.
She is not equally well skilled in all subjects,
having had no more than the common span of time
in which to perfect the gifts of her intellect. Yet
she knoweth the difficulties of all her underlings ;
her counsel is wise ; she is quick to discern between
the ways that are good and them that be indifferent
or naughty.
To all she is easy of approach, and most easy to
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The Perfect Headmistress.
the perplexed in spirit. She hath an unending
patience, and so great a compassion for dulness,
though it be far removed from the nimbleness of her
own mind, that even the dullest do not fear to speak
of their troubles to her. She is as a Mother
Confessor to every anxious soul. From that chamber
which she calleth her confessional the sad go away
comforted, the ignorant wiser, the slothful inspired,
the rebellious disciplined.
She remembereth that the feminine body is made
chiefly, though not altogether, of flesh and blood,
which are but frail materials ; she hath considered,
with a sigh, that flesh at its best is but weak ; and
she asketh of human nature no more than it is able
to perform.
She is a born administratrix. She marshalleth
her forces even as a skilful general ; she perceiveth
the several capacities of her captains. She dis-
covereth to each that talent which lay hid, as it were,
in a napkin, and showeth him its proper use. But,
while she exalteth the humble and enableth him to
do that good work which he would have left undone,
she also putteth down from his seat too towering
self-esteem ; and this also she achieveth with that
gentleness which causeth the great ones, though
abashed, to give to her even more gratitude than
the others.
She is of them that know well to rule, for that
they have in their own youth practised to obey.
They then that follow her do this of love even more
than of duty ; they know no weariness in her service,
nor are any of her commands hard to them.
2 33
Mock-Essays.
She loveth little children.
She knoweth men, manners, and cities ; she hath
a wide and various experience, and this she putteth
to an excellent use. She esteemeth that which is
trivial at its right value ; and concerneth herself not
overmuch about the anise and cumin ; yet will she
astonish the unthinking when she showeth that from
a matter, seeming to them but small, there depend
great issues.
Yet is of a sanguine humour. Therefore they that
be about her will also be sanguine. And that which
is done is done with spirit, and the burden of
learning groweth light to bear. The sound of
laughter is about her chambers ; in them is acquired
that good gift of courage ; they that learn of her go
forth ready to encounter the sorrows of this life.
She looketh forward into the future, and perceiveth
that the young maidens about her will in a brief
space be women. Therefore she holdeth not al-
together by fluxions and the oratio obliqua, nor even
by the paintings of Botticelli and the works of
Ulrici and Gervinus. She will have her maidens to
be honest, of good report, as truthful as their own
glasses, of a perfect courtesy and modesty, a constant
thoughtfulness for all the weak and distressed, and a
saving common-sense. These virtues she alloweth
in season and out of season, and yet more by
example than precept; for she hath gone by the
advice of a wise poet, and "in her own heart let
them first keep school."
She hath withal a singular humility. Though
there be in her a clearer insight and a riper know-
234
The Perfect Headmistress.
ledge than in any that come to her, nevertheless she
speaketh as one who knoweth that she is yet at the
beginning of knowledge, and herself seeketh counsel
of all, for she perceiveth there is none but can tell
us that of which we are still ignorant, and which it
would profit us to know.
Perpetuity by generation she hath none, yet her
spiritual children, and their children after them, shall
rise up and call her blessed. Salomon, I am sure,
saith, Mulier gratiosa inveniet gloriam ; and again,
Fortitude et decor indumentum f'us et ridebit in die
novissimo.
235
OF PARTING.
(After Bacon.}
BY SYBIL WILBRAHAM.
HP HERE is one saith Parting is sweet sorrow, yet
it shall go hard but a man will find in the
bidding of farewells more of sorrow than sweetness ;
and truly the sweetness sets an edge on the sorrow,
as it should cut the deeper and more vitally. For
as a Nurse shall add the savour of clove or nutmeg
to some nauseous physick that the Child may the
more readily partake thereof, so doth Fortune mingle
a spice in our farewells, nothing heeding our wry faces
after. And this savour of sweetness proceedeth from
the stirring of tender affections, which else had lain
hidden beneath the mask of manner. For the course
of friendship is as the waters of a Stream, which being
dashed against a rock or other Impediment shall part
rippling, and afterward (the Impediment past) flow
together again. Yet doth this present sweetness but
thinly cloak our sorrow : a cold covering in the plains
of solitude. And at parting shall a man's heart the
more fail him as he is prone to go before and pre-
occupate ill-fortune, misdoubting either the constancy
of his friend or the crooked ways of Fate. Certainly
there is a grief of an Exile from his country, which
236
Of Parting.
sinketh in and settleth in the mind, as said the Jews
in captivity : Yea, we wept when we remembered Zion;
or as Virgil telleth of him that was wounded to the
death : C&lumque aspicit, et dulces moriens reminiscitur
Argos.
And you shall see many times how friends become
severed in spirit as in body : whether through the
tattling of busy bodies, as saith Solomon : He that
repeateth a matter separateth very friends, or carried
apart by the opposing tides of their lives. Then it
is odds but their friendship pass and vanish as if it
had never been, like the way of a ship in the sea.
It is not less worthy observing that some shall be
busied in the same affairs, and in their minds never
consort, like the currents of two great rivers, which
(I have heard say) being joined and flowing in one
bed, commingle not, but remain several : one stream
of sluggish gait, the other so swift as it almost outruns
the eye.
I knew one was wont to take (as they now say)
French leave : and that not from lack of feeling,
but its excess. A device to cheat parting of its
pain, as who shall say unto his own heart / go not,
and yet goeth ; and at times this custom sorteth to
inconvenience.
Most grievous parting there is with friends snatched
from us by untimely Death : to whom, beholding for
the last time their faces, we say : Extremum fato quod
te alloquor hoc est. For that there is a great gulf
fixed between us and them, we (being tormented
with vain longing) know well, and need no voice of
Abraham to tell us. And though we trust as there
237
Mock- Essays.
is parting so shall there be meeting, yet are we bereft,
and (in this present world) must go mourning, lack-
ing their sweet company.
But to leave these transcendencies and to speak
in a mean. As there be sorrowful partings, so there
lacketh not on occasion merry ones, as when a tedious
man, after long wearying, taketh his leave. Then
let a wise man beware how he discover aught by the
tracts of his countenance, for that were a weakness
and betraying, but let him hide a heart of rejoicing
beneath a sober visage. Certainly there be to whom
the vision of a natural term or end gilds present
pleasure, who will say with the Epicurean : Let us
eat and drink (with the more zest and appetite) for
to-morrow we part. I hold not with him that saith
(though it be wittily conceived) that a man shall
scarce tender his neck to the tie of marriage if he
bear not in mind that death shall one day loose him ;
yet shall I recite that saying Children and Fools crave
Variety, and as there is in our nature more of the
fool than of the wise, so do even wise men in weak
times seek a change : for we must needs be made
like unto the Angels before we can enjoy Eternity.
To conclude : Parting is the sorrow of friends ;
the relief of enemies ; the sport of the giddy ; the
desperation of lovers; and the common fate of all
men.
238
OF CONTEMPT.
(After J3acon.)
/CONTEMPT, I take it, is the greatest offence
^^ unto charity, for if a man stand upon the
vantage ground of virtue, it beseemeth him to look
upon those who wander in error below not with
swelling or pride, but with pity, and to make some
shift to help them. St Paul saith well : Though I
speak with the tongues of men and of angels and have
not charity, lam become as sounding brass or a tinkling
cymbal.
Charity beginneth at home, saith the voice of the
world, and so, truly, is every scorner his own enemy,
for he deceiveth himself. No man scorneth another
but for that other disagreeth with some humour
wherein the scoffer vaunteth himself, and yet no
man truly knoweth himself or another. Epami-
nondas, being asked concerning Chabrias, Iphicrates,
and himself, which were meet to be best regarded :
You must first suffer us to die, saith he, before that
may be known.
The most tolerable sort of contempt is for those
actions which sort not with virtue rather than for the
men who perform such actions ; yet the virtuous man
had need beware how he despiseth vice, for his own
virtue existeth but through its contrary.
239
Mock-Essays.
If a man would be well esteemed, let him not sit
down in the chair of the scorner. The more he
flouteth the failings of others the more he offers him-
self to scorn.
Contempt procureth a man many enemies : it
stirreth envy and anger.
It is ever the meaner sort which have grown over
the heads of better men, that are full of contempt ;
so, also, are ignorant men who despise what is too
great for their understanding and think thus to get
opinion as wise men. If you would work any such
a one, it is good to note wherein most he censureth
others, for therein doth he think best of himself, and
will best suffer himself to be upheld of the flatterer.
Hear what Cicero saith : Ita fit ut is assentatoribus
patefaciat aures suas maxime qui ipse sibi assentetur
et se maxime ipse delectat.
240
Character Sketches,
JOWETT AND HIS PERSONAL
INFLUENCE.
BY THE HON. LIONEL A. TOLLEMACHE.
TV/1" Y object in writing this article is to bring my
own experience and that of some friends to
bear on a perplexing question which has recently
been raised by Mr Leslie Stephen and other critics
of the " Life of Jowett " : How are we to account for
Jowett's immense personal influence? But, before
dealing with the serious aspects of this inquiry, it
may be well to note one point which he had in
common with Johnson. His social peculiarities,
which of themselves would certainly not have made
him popular, may yet, when known to be associated
with his admirable qualities, have caused those
qualities to be more observed by all who knew
him. His odd corners, so to say, stuck in our
memory and imagination. In my " Memoir " of
him I have noted the curious fact that in his youth
and middle life he was not only a silent man, but
sometimes an imposer of silence on others ; and yet
in his old age he made much of the art of con-
versation. Some facts which have since reached
me have heightened my sense of this strange con-
trast. A lady whose step-daughter was going to
one of the Women's Colleges was asked by Jowett
243
Character Sketches.
what the girl's studies were to be. When he had
obtained the information, he replied curtly: "The
important thing is that she should learn to talk
well." This confirms a statement which I heard on
less good authority, that he once gave offence by
saying publicly before an assembly of ladies : " The
great object of the higher education of women is
that they should learn to converse well." Contrast
with those utterances the practice which he himself
followed in early life, and sometimes even in old
age. A Cambridge friend tells me that in his youth
he called upon Jowett. After the first greetings, the
Master maintained such an obstinate silence that the
wearied guest summoned up courage to ask : " Does
not Wycherley say that the silence of a wise man is
more prejudicial than the speech of a fool ? " Jowett
took the remonstrance in good part, and deplored
his own want of readiness in conversation. Another
illustrative incident may be mentioned, which has
more picturesque details. A lady-friend assures me
that she was spending an evening at the Deanery at
Westminster, when, shortly before the party broke
up, she saw Jowett at the further end of the supper
room. Close to her, an offended wife was giving, in
an audible voice, a premature curtain-lecture to her
husband, who, being a friend of Jowett's, had not
introduced him to her. The victim of course bore
the henpecking with masculine meekness ; but he
suddenly called out : " See, he is alone now. Come
and be introduced." Up jumped the lady, and the
coveted introduction took place. But, alas ! the
effort of converting the storm depicted on her
244
Jowett.
countenance into an angelic calm left her no energy
to think of anything worthy to be poured into the
great man's ears. So she was speechless. Jowett
lent no help; but, after the two had stared at one
another for some minutes, he broke silence by
inquiring : " Will you take some claret-cup ? " And,
without uttering another word, he walked away.
Will it be said that such social short-comings as
these were by no means calculated to make him
widely popular ? Undoubtedly they were not. But,
at the same time, his reserve may, after a fashion,
have drawn him nearer to his friends. In their
view, his bluntness was associated with his utter
guilelessness ; and perhaps, too, his inaccessibility
to the many raised the value of his intimacy with
the few.
I offer this last consideration merely for what it is
worth ; and I feel on much surer ground when I
touch on the direct and serious causes of Jowett's
influence. It is stated in the " Memoir " that Jowett
was sometimes able to retain during long years the
recollection of what related to his pupils this per-
sonal memory being a proof of the deep interest that
he took in them. Their welfare he made his own.
He triumphed in their successes, and he was afflicted
in their failures. Some examples may serve to show
how strong and how endearing his sympathy was. A
brilliant and witty pupil of Jowett's, who through
some accident had missed his First Class, tells me
that after his disappointment Jowett insisted on his
spending the Christmas vacation at Oxford, to try
for a University Prize. When the prize had been
245
Character Sketches.
gained, Jowett congratulated him by saying : " Now
you have made up for your Second Class." I well
remember the affectionate voice and manner with
which Jowett comforted a delicate pupil, whose bad
health and worse eyesight had prevented him from
going in for honours in Moderations : "A man of
your ability must succeed in life ; but you must not
be disappointed if circumstances make you fail in
any particular instance." To the same pupil, when
he had read a College Essay, Jowett said, after com-
mending one or two points : " Your style is awk-
ward " ; but he afterwards added in a quite paternal
tone : " I want to make you a really good writer."
I feel, however, that such sayings as these must
appear tame and disappointing to those who did not
know Jowett; for his kindness, after all, owed no
small part of its effect to that beaming smile and
cherubic chirp of his, to that comitate condita
gravitas, and, in a word, to that personal charm
which his friends loved, but which they vainly
attempt to make quite intelligible to others. 1
1 At the risk of being thought discursive, I will illustrate
Jowett's peculiar pleasantry by mentioning that, seeing the
body of a crow which had been tried, sentenced and exe-
cuted by its peers, he pathetically exclaimed: "That crow
was a heretic ! " This characteristic illustration makes one
feel how each man's speculations on the moral vagaries of
Nature take their colour from his personal experience and pre-
possessions. Jowett, as he himself told me, was rebelled by
the very thought of euthanasia. Otherwise the fate of the
euthanatized crow might have led him, as it were, to make
humorous capital out of the difference between corvine and
human ethics in regard to the best mode of dealing with sick-
ness. In our progressive societies there is an ever-increasing
246
Jowett.
In truth, Jowett was a student-fancier; he came to
divine by a sort of intuition the wants of each indi-
vidual student, just as a skilful bird-fancier can tell
the wants of his birds. In particular, he had at
command something of the pecca fortiter spirit, or,
as he himself might have said, of "roguery," to
serve as a moral tonic for pupils who took life too
seriously, or at any rate too tragically. To a friend
thus afflicted he is reported to have given the sweep-
ing admonition : " Never indulge a scruple." The
delicate pupil whom I have already referred to,
hesitating to conform to an anomalous practice to
which all the world conforms, laid the grounds of
his objection before Jowett. The Master heard
him out, and then, after his wonted pause, ex-
claimed : " Yes ; that sounds logical. But you
know it is wrong" This is a good instance of
his summary way of cutting logical knots with the
sword of common sense. And we are thus reminded
of the remark made by Mr Leslie Stephen (in the
National Review for May 1897), with reference to
him : " What was a defect in a philosopher might
be an excellence in a teacher." All who knew the
Master will feel the truth of that observation. For,
in fact, his peculiar distinction was like Banquo's
"Thou shalt get kings, though thou be none."
Jowett was the intellectual father of some men of
number of persons delicate from their birth of those Benhadads
of Nature whom she "appointed to utter destruction," but who
have been kept alive in spite of her. This anti-evolutionary
philanthropy (so to call it), this protection of the physically
unfit is assuredly a great blessing ; but is that blessing un-
alloyed-?
247
Character Sketches.
great philosophical power : but a philosopher, in the
sense of a scientific thinker, he himself was not.
Perhaps this unformulated Wisdom, this Philo-
sophy minus Logic, of Jowett may be further
illustrated by a reference to the line of inquiry to
which he owes his chief influence as a writer.
While still a young man, he laboured to discover
the hidden springs in which certain time-honoured
beliefs have their origin. The results of that labour
are seen in his Essays on the Pauline Epistles. We
cannot, he concluded (in effect), hold the Pauline
theology in the precise sense in which St Paul him-
self held it ; for the mould in which that theology
is cast bears traces of bygone superstitions. To
speak more generally, Jowett was the first to open
the eyes of his countrymen to the extent to which
the thought of a pre-scientific age is refracted and
distorted by what he called its modes of thought.
It may be confidently affirmed that those limiting
and impeding modes of thought appeared to him to
bear much the same relation to undeveloped thought
that, according to Maine, legal fictions bear to un-
developed law ; they might haply (after the manner
of Coleridge) be nicknamed Thought in circum-
bendibus ; in truth, they are a disease of thought.
And I hope I am not too fanciful if I add that
Jowett, or at any rate some of his disciples,
regarded that disease as a sort of intellectual
measles, a malady which a nation nearly always
goes through in its infancy, and which in its
maturity it is all the better for having gone
through and got over. He would perhaps have
248
Jowett.
agreed with Renan in thinking that it is a sign of
the inferiority of China that she in her youth escaped
that helpful malady; she was too prosaically healthy;
she never dreamed her dream. At all events, there
can be no doubt that it was by the unclerical and
almost unprecedented freedom with which Jowett
discussed aspects of the beatific vision that he first
came into notice. It is true that, somewhat later,
another great Oxonian went even further on the
Neo-Christian lines. Matthew Arnold was on the
same track with Jowett when he counselled his
readers to study the Natural History of Religion,
and to avail themselves of the Comparative
Method; and, unlike Jowett, he followed that
track to its logical conclusion. In short, he was
more of a philosopher than his friend. But the
advantage was not all on his side. For many
persons, and especially many parents, would take
things from the Master which they would not take
from Matthew Arnold. This, then, is one of the
numerous instances in which Jowett, as a teacher,
had his reward for practically assuming that Logic is
a good servant, but a bad master.
I have elsewhere ranked him among the Whigs
of Religion. In this and in other departments
he was an unwilling, and therefore a cautious,
reformer. In fact, he was a sort of captive balloon,
tethered by conservative instincts, and thus secured
against perilous flights. Hence he came to be re-
garded as an oracle by those pupils who wished
indeed to rise above the common level (spernere
humum fugiente pennci) but to keep that level well in
249
Character Sketches.
sight. The pupils were thus brought into intellectual
relation with all those philosophers who agree with
the opinion once expressed to me by the late Sir
James Fitzjames Stephen, that " moderate attainable
ideals are the only ones worth striving for." Many
Oxford Liberals held this view, though they would
perhaps not have acknowledged it so frankly as did
their distinguished Cambridge contemporary. For
it is with justice that the typical Oxonian has been
declared by Paul Bourget to be (as nearly as I
can remember) " profonde"ment et intimement con-
servateur, meme quand il se dit et se croit
liberal."
It will now be understood how it was that so
many Conservative-Liberals fell under the sway of
" little Benjamin, their ruler." In their judgment,
any opinion (to speak roughly) which had received
the Jowett stamp was warranted safe. When an
undergraduate, having to read an essay to Jowett,
feared that some sentiment which it contained might
be thought revolutionary or otherwise unguarded, he
was at once reassured if the great malleus stultorum
came out with his significant "Yes," pronounced
half dubitatively and half as if assent had been
wrung from him. If Jowett let himself talk on
beyond this monosyllabic limit, his halting assent to
the venturesome proposition would probably be en-
veloped in the sort of picturesque haze which is, as
haze in general seems to be, dear to the artistic
temperament. His pupils also learnt that, if now
and then he favoured a dangerous principle, his
trumpet was likely soon to vary its note, or, at any
250
Jowett.
rate, that (as already hinted) he would not press the
principle to any extreme conclusion. They thus
found, or fancied, that they had his sanction for
playing with edged tools ; and it is probable that
they did not altogether dislike that pastime. Indeed,
I have sometimes thought that a modern Ecclesiastes
might preach that there is a time to be consistent
and a time to refrain from consistency. At all
events, in his etude on " Ecclesiastes," the wise
Renan has laid down the suggestive and (so to say)
paradoxical truism : " On ne philosophe jamais plus
librement que quand on sait que la philosophic ne
tire pas a consequence." This, after all, might pass
for a free rendering of Jowett's oft-repeated admoni-
tion not to fall "under the dominion of logic." 1
The mental attitude which he thus drilled into his
pupils may be illustrated by what I have always
thought a very striking and weighty admission on
the part of Fitzjames Stephen. In the Nineteenth
Century, Vol. XXIII., page 126, after expatiating on
Professor Mivart's attempt to put critical wine into
1 Since writing the above, I have heard from an old Balliol
friend that, happening to see Ward's " Nature and Grace" on
Jowett's table, he asked him what he thought of it. "Dark
with excess of logic" was the characteristic answer. As a
disciple of Jowett, I am tempted to think that, if there is a
grain of truth in Swift's definition of " Happiness " as "The
perpetual possession of being well deceived," there would be
at least a grain of it in a definition of " Wisdom "as " The art
of being wholesomely inconsequent." But a philosopher who
thus deliberately plays fast and loose with logic should bear in
mind that he is, at best, approaching truth by the most cir-
cuitous of paths. Perhaps, alas ! he is like the rest of the
world : Vult decipi.
251
Character Sketches.
Catholic bottles, that most philosophical and courage-
ous of our judges went on to say :
" It would, in my opinion, be much better and simpler to
say at once, I do not argue, I merely affirm. I do beg the
question of religion. I find certain moral and what I call
spiritual advantages in it, and I say no more. This kind of
faith no one could reasonably attack, either in Mr Mivart or in
any one else, whether a Catholic priest or a Baptist minister. I
at all events would never do so."
In fact, he was willing, like the Pontiff in Cicero's
famous Dialogue, to accept the national religion
nulla ratione reddita. And, to put the matter
broadly, those Oxford Liberals who practically took
this line were naturally, if unwittingly, drawn towards
Jowett by the wish to have their consciences at ease ;
for he, as it were, absolved them from what Shake-
speare might have called the "virtuous sin" of
Conformity ; or shall we rather say that by his
example, if not by his direct teaching, he granted
them a dispensation to go on conforming ?
I will conclude this article by giving an example
or two indicative of Jowett's claim to be regarded as
the Pope of some Neo-Christians I mean, of some
of those Whigs of Religion who, at a time when the
old order is changing, are earnestly desirous to
reform and spiritualize, instead of revolutionizing,
the orthodox theology ; to abolish Satan, but to
keep Christ. More than thirty years ago, I asked
the late Lady Brodie whether she, as the wife of
one of the leaders of scientific thought, did not
feel in great difficulty as to what orthodox doctrines
should be taught to her children. Her answer was
252
Jowett.
(in effect) : "I try to teach them nothing that Mr
Jowett would disapprove of." As a pendant to this,
I will extract from a letter entitled " Bowen at
Balliol," which appeared in the Spectator of February
6, an apologia pro fide sua which the future Lord
Justice offered in his youth. It is mentioned in
that letter, that, when I once hinted to him that
some of his principles might lead to complete
scepticism, he replied : " If that is the logical con-
clusion, I decline to draw it ; and, if I am incon-
sistent, I am not more so than Jowett ! " Other
analogous instances might be given ; but what has
been said will suffice to show how thoroughly
Jowett's friends put their trust in him. Truly and
heartily may the survivors of them apply to him a
text forming part of the Latin grace which I have
so often repeated in the Balliol Hall : " In memoria
seterna erit Justus."
253
TOM HUGHES AND THE ARNOLDS. 1
BY THE HON. LIONEL A. TOLLEMACHE.
T T is nearly thirty years ago since I first met that
eminently genial and cultivated philanthropist
whom, if I may parody Homer, gods (in latter days)
styled Judge Hughes, but whom men lovingly per-
sisted in dubbing Tom Hughes.
Shortly after making his acquaintance, I heard
from him an anecdote about an Anglo-American
boat race the first I think. The result of the race
was to be wired to the United States after the most
laconic fashion. The victory of the Americans was
to be signified by the word " Hurrah " ; their defeat
by the less pleasing word " Damn." ''
My chief intercourse with Hughes was towards
the end of his life. I found that he was then anti-
Gladstonian, with that peculiar vehemence which is
characteristic of the class which I would designate
as the English " Mugwumps " those who, with
full conviction and somewhat jauntily, followed the
Radical leaders up to a certain point, and then
suddenly broke off from them.
It was on the occasion when these political con-
versations occurred that I found he was regaling his
leisure at Biarritz with the perusal of Maurice's
1 Journal of Edttcation, July 1896.
2 See the " Note " at the end of this Essay.
254
Tom Hughes and the Arnolds.
philosophical works. He owned that he found them
stiff; but he attached the utmost weight to them,
and took their author's speculations quite seriously.
This seemed to me a little out of date ; for, in the
atmosphere of Balliol, Maurice has often been re-
garded as a very nebulous theologian. He has
sometimes even been thought a schoolmaster to
lead men to Jowett, or to Matthew Arnold. With
Matthew Arnold, Hughes had little sympathy. I
asked Hughes whether Matthew had not been sup-
posed at Rugby to give less promise than his
younger brother gave. Hughes told me at some
length, and with great confidence, not merely that
this was the Rugby verdict, but that he believed that
verdict to have been absolutely correct. His praise
of the younger brother makes me ponder with regret on
the results which that accomplished desultor religionum
might have achieved if he had not expended so much
of his energy in vain theological oscillations.
I remarked that Matthew Arnold, in spite of his
championship of " Equality," seemed to me to be at
bottom an aristocrat. " I should think so, indeed,"
said Hughes ; "he was an aristocrat from the crown
of his head down to the soles of his feet. At Rugby
he was called ' Lofty Mat ' ; and lofty Mat he always
remained."
It seemed to me that, when Arthur Stanley wrote
" Christian Institutions," his theology had become
(as Pattison would have phrased it) " defecated to a
pure transparency " ; did not Hughes think that
Stanley, at the close of his life, came very near to
Matthew Arnold ? " No," was the emphatic reply.
255
Character Sketches.
" Arthur Stanley was a real Christian, and Mat was
only a sham Christian." He was evidently irritated
by the suave patronage which that Hebrew prophet
in white kid gloves (as I long ago irreverently called
him), accorded to the manifold forms of theology
a patronage which was never more conspicuous than
when, being asked how, as Inspector of Schools, he
managed to hold the balance between the numerous
and conflicting sects of Nonconformists, he answered
in a tone of benign condescension: "I am splendidly
impartial; for I look with equal contempt on all
their miserable superstitions " ! If this was said half
in jest, the jest was of the kind in which many a true
thing is spoken.
I once asked Jowett what he thought of the pas-
sage in " Tom Brown's Schooldays " where Arthur,
in condemnation of the practice of following the
multitude to use vulgus books, quoted the famous
text in which Naaman (so to express it) begs the
prophet to grant him a dispensation for bowing down
in the house of Rimmon. " This is ridiculous," said
Jowett. " Using the vulgus books is something like
idleness ; and to compare this to bowing down in a
heathen temple is to distort our moral perspective."
Surely this is going too far. On the one hand, crib-
bing is worse than idleness; and, on the other,
Jowett was hardly the man to cast a stone at one
who, like Naaman, resorted to compromise in order
to conform to his national religion the case, more-
over, being one in which the alternative to conformity
would have been impalement, or some such unwel-
come operation. But Jowett, although he overstated
256
Tom Hughes and the Arnolds.
the case, was right in thinking that Hughes in this
instance strained at a gnat. Straining at gnats is the
besetting sin, not of Pharisees only, but of stern
moralists and of pedagogues. Dr Arnold had his
share of that last infirmity of saints, and bequeathed
a full measure of it to more than one of his disciples.
And his disciple, in a special sense, Hughes was, and
continued to be. In this instance the master had
placed the pupil in a hot-bed, which stimulated the
growth of his mind in beauty and luxuriance, but
took away somewhat of its spontaneity and vigour.
The lack of spontaneity is discernible even in the
pupil's unique literary success, which drew its in-
spiration from Arnold, or, at any rate, from Arnold
tempered by Maurice and Kingsley. That bio-
graphical tale of muscular morality stirs very differ-
ent emotions according to the standpoint from
which it is viewed. By an unfriendly critic, the
author of " Tom Brown's Schooldays " might be con-
sidered pre-eminently a homo unius libri ; or, to
adapt an eighteenth-century phrase, he might be
described as Single-book Hughes. But this would,
at best, be but a brutal half-truth. To supplement
such devil's advocacy it should be added that
Hughes has given to our upper-middle intellectual
class their clearest and liveliest impression of the
educational reformer, whose triumphs, like those of
the Whigs in politics, go near to being forgotten
through their very completeness. He is hidden by
his trophies. So thoroughly have some of his prin-
ciples been accepted, that it is now hard to realize
what the state of public opinion can have been
R 257
Character Sketches.
before the struggle, and how numerous and bitter
were the opponents over whom the victory was won.
The vehemence of the opposition was brought home
to me when, long ago, I heard Charles Austin talk
of Dr Arnold as a " pestiferous man " ; it seemed to
him that Arnold, like a modern Luther, had re-
kindled the smouldering flames of fanaticism. The
moral physiognomy of the great reformer of our
public schools, both in his strength and in his
weakness the reformer so vigorous and successful,
partly because so confident, and so confident because
so one-sided has been less fully portrayed by Hughes
than by Arthur Stanley and others. But it is the
glory of Hughes to have popularized, and perhaps
immortalized, the general outline of that physiognomy
in a thoroughly life-like and fascinating sketch.
NOTE. The word of ill omen with which the second paragraph
of this Essay concludes, reminds me of a good saying of another
famous Rugbeian. Forty years ago, when scholars were dis-
cussing whether a telegraphic message ought to be called a
" telegram '' or a " telegrapheme," a Balliol wag suggested that
the unsaintly expletive aforesaid might be made more tolerable
by being expanded into " Dapheme " ! The reputed author of
this happy thought was the future Lord Bowen. He doubtless
spoke in that velvety voice in which, some years later, after
returning from a climb up a steep Alpine peak (or aiguille) with
a party of young ladies, he laughingly said to a friend : " I have
solved the riddle of the Schoolmen ; for I have seen how many
angels can balance themselves on the point of a needle." I am
assured that, being requested by a lady to find a name for a
Society which she and some lively, and so to say, reasonably
frivolous friends talked of starting in opposition to the too
serious Society which glories in the appellation of The Souls,
Bowen paused for a moment and then replied in his semi-
Jowettian chirp : " I think you might call yourselves
Parasols ! "
258
REMINISCENCES OF LORD HOUGHTON
AND PROFESSOR FREEMAN.
(In the manner of Hayward. )
BY THE HON. LIONEL A. TOLLEMACHE.
HP HE names of Freeman and Lord Houghton
suggest points of contrast rather than com-
parison. The contrast was well shown, though
somewhat to the advantage of the historian, when
it was our good fortune to meet them together at
a London breakfast-party in 1875. On that occasion
Lord Houghton, wishing presumably to throw down
the gauntlet, propounded the audacious paradox
that lay scholars ought not to study the Greek
Testament. " The Greek," he said, " is so abomin-
able." Freeman replied with unwonted moderation.
Anxious doubtless to avoid having a contest on the
brink of a precipice, he forebore to give the obvious
theological rejoinder to the imprudent challenge.
He preferred taking the comparatively safe, and to
him familiar, ground that students of Greek literature
should be made to follow it through all its successive
stages. In this friendly passage of arms, both the
combatants acted more or less characteristically. It
was like Freeman to ignore the fact that ordinary
students, having but a limited time to devote to
259
Character Sketches.
Greek literature, must in the main concentrate their
attention on that literature when at its best; and
it was like Lord Houghton to pose as a mere
Humanist, in so much that he might have chosen
for his motto Humanitas humanitatum, omnia
humanitas. By taking this line he seemed of set
purpose to be making himself out less serious than
he was. It was perhaps owing to this tendency to
self-caricature that he often failed to get credit for
his many sterling qualities. We have understood
that Lady Palmerston, being asked why Monckton
Milnes had never mounted higher on the political
ladder, muttered something to the effect that he was
not thought " serious." Was this a true bill against the
future Lord Houghton ? Was he then or at any
time wholly lacking in seriousness ? We ourselves
(calida juventa) met him, as we also met Hayward,
at Cambridge House ; and we have sometimes
wondered how many of the celebrities and aspirants
who thronged to overflowing Lady Palmerston's
drawing-rooms and staircase on those well-remem-
bered Saturday evenings, took anything like so
serious and rational a view of the problems of life
as was taken by those two men of letters, who were
often charged with want of seriousness. Not of
course that Lord Houghton, or anyone else, could
solve the insoluble riddle. But Lord Houghton
perhaps saw better than most men why and how
far it is insoluble ; and at any rate he could re-
ject certain popular solutions of it as utterly inad-
missible and fantastic. In other words, he was an
exception to what Goethe meant by his sweeping
260
Hough ton and Freeman.
generalization that "every Englishman is void of
intelligence."
But assuredly Milnes had the defects belonging
to his good qualities. If he could deftly thread
his way through a maze of metaphysical subtleties
wherein the average Englishman is, as it were, a
John Bull in a china shop, he was thereby impeded
from going straight to a practical end. His native
hue of resolution was sicklied, as well as silvered,
o'er with the pale cast of analysis. Like the
Halifax of the Restoration, he saw practical questions
from too many sides. In fact, he had not what
Bacon regarded as a condition of worldly success :
He was not " something of the fool." Yet, for that
very reason, he was charged with unwisdom, even
by the most useful and admirable of all those
persons comprising the great majority of mankind
whom Bacon and Carlyle would have called fools
and Heine would have called Philistines. The
sketches of him drawn by such worthies were at
times anything but flattering. For example : a late
Conservative Peer, while still a member of the Lower
House, was once admonishing his son (the present
writer) not to try his hand at poetry ; he concluded
with crushing emphasis, "The only poets that I
know are the greatest fools in the House of Com-
mons " ; and there can be no doubt he was espe-
cially thinking of Milnes. In a word, nearly all
witless and humourless men of action disliked
Milnes's seeming levity; and probably between
him and them, as the phrase is, no love was lost.
Oderunt hilarem tristes, tristemque jocosi. Yet he
261
Character Sketches.
himself could be a man of action on an emergency.
Charles Austin told us that he never admired
Milnes so much as once when he went with him
and others for a picnic ; the coachman was seized
with a fit, and the so-called unpractical dreamer, first
or alone of the party, became an extempore doctor
and took all the measures which the case required.
Austin's testimony was all the more valuable be-
cause, regarding Milnes as having been rightly
nick-named "The cool of the evening " by Sydney
Smith, he failed to appreciate the manifold charms
of that genial and delightful friend. 1
A trifling incident may serve to show how he came
to be charged with a sort of dilettante frivolity. At
one time (again calida juventa) we were eager for
Euthanasia, and looked forward to a speedy extinc-
tion of some of the most intolerable of human ills by
the introduction of that simple yet drastic " cure for
incurables." On our asking Lord Houghton what
he thought of this novel philanthropy, he answered,
1 Was not Milnes rightly dubbed " The cool of the evening " ?
He was once spending New Year's Eve in the house of some
kinsfolk of ours, but not of his own. When the clock struck
twelve, he promptly got up and (importing into England the
French and Italian custom) he kissed his astonished hostess
before all the party. On the occasion of another visit to the
same house he joined a game of "magic music," and was him-
self sent out. It was determined to give him a characteristic
task. So two sofa cushions were placed on the ground, and he
was expected to lie down on them. He soon found out what he
had to do. Might it not have been said of him throughout his
life, as of Scott in his earlier years, that he was, in very truth,
" a grandam's child,
Who, half a plague and half a jest,
Was still endured, beloved, caress'd" ?
262
Houghton and Freeman.
in a careless tone : " Oh no, you can't trust the
doctors " ; and then he added, with greater interest,
" Have you heard what they've been doing in
Japan?" He went on to say that a measure had
been brought forward in the Japanese Assembly for
the abolition of Hari-Kari ; and that this measure
had been either carried or lost (we forget which) by
a small majority. There was something, not so much
in what he then said, as in the tone in which he said
it, which left the impression that he regarded Hari-
Kari and Euthanasia as two entertaining episodes in
the universal comedy. At the time we were pro-
voked by his seeming levity; but should we not
rather have felt that he was showing his wonted
tact in thus playfully handling a scheme which,
if not Utopian, at any rate lies beyond the political
horizon of the present century, and indeed of the
present millennium ? Solvuntur risu tabulae,
It may not be amiss to add (or rather repeat)
another illustrative example. The following anecdote
is related in " Safe Studies " : "A singular rebuke was
addressed to me many years ago by Lord Houghton,
when, in a fit of youthful impetuosity, I hinted
that the Liberals ought to disestablish the Church.
1 Don't suggest anything so dreadful,' said he. ' The
philosophers would never be able to do it ; it could
only be done through an outburst of Protestant
fanaticism, which would be a calamity indeed ' ! " x
1 This unecclesiastical Apologia pro Eccksid recalls Charles
Buller's trenchant paradox : " Destroy the Church of England !
You must be mad ! It is the only thing between us and real
religion."
263
Character Sketches.
Here, again, we have a glimpse of Lord Houghton's
peculiar quality. Shall we call it the cynicism, or
the humorous tact, of a man of the world ?
Among the many admirable merits of Freeman,
tact certainly had no place. He was often instant
out of season. A curious example of this inoppor-
tuneness of his occurred when we had the honour
of making his acquaintance. It was in our under-
graduate days (in 1858, or thereabouts) that we
met him at the house of the late Mr Parker, the
Oxford publisher, the late W. H. Gladstone being
also an undergraduate guest. Oddly enough, we
ourselves had never heard of Freeman before, and
we were fairly taken aback by this uncouth specimen
of an Oxford don, who was molesting his orthodox
host by detailing the discrepancies between the
Elohistic and the Jehovistic cosmogonies in Genesis.
Presently he called out : " Parker, give me a Bible.
See how the compiler has put the contradictory nar-
rative side by side without even attempting to recon-
cile them. And will you tell me that this clumsy
piece of patchwork came from the same Moses who
wrote those grand passages in Deuteronomy which
come into my head whenever I think of Louis
Napoleon?" And he went on to spout, in his
strident voice, interrupted now and again by a loud,
exultant laugh, a series of verses which in no wise
savoured of blessing such verses as Cursed shalt
thou be when thou contest in, and cursed shalt thou be
when thou goest out Cursed shalt thou be in the city,
and cursed shalt thou be in the field The Lord shall
cause thee to be smitten before thine enemies Thou
264
Houghton and Freeman.
shalt become an astonishment, a proverb, and a byword
among all nations Thy heaven that is over thy head
shall be brass, and the earth that is under thee shall
be iron. The two undergraduates who heard Freeman
thus declaiming were at their wits' end to keep their
countenances. But they were certainly startled, and
W. H. Gladstone, we fear, was much scandalized.
The British public, it should be remembered, had
not yet been educated up to the acceptance, or even
to the toleration, of Biblical criticism.
Nearly thirty years later, we had direct evidence
that Professor Freeman, notwithstanding his ecclesias-
tical leanings, continued loyal to Biblical criticism
down to the close of his life. We ventured to call
his attention to the article which Professor Mivart
wrote in the Nineteenth Century in 1887, and in
which, good Catholic though he was, he granted to
the critical spirit plenary jurisdiction over, at least,
part of the Old Testament. Freeman's answer was
on this wise : "I have often thought that a Roman
Catholic can, as I believe others do besides Mivart,
afford to deal more freely with the Old Testament
than a Protestant can. He is not in the same way
bound to the worship of a book, just as he is not
bound to the worship of a day ; he has something
behind both. Still the avowals are startling."
Matthew Arnold, let us add, expressed to us an
opinion which coincided with the opinion con-
tained in the last sentence, and which he worded
in a characteristic fashion. " Mivart," said he, " is
stupendous."
It is with reluctance that we advert to a side of the
265
Character Sketches.
historian's character which recalls Horace's description
of the great Achilles :
" Impiger, iracundus, inexorabilis, acer."
That he was sometimes merciless in his chastisement
of persons who, even unwittingly, infringed the laws
of historical criticism, is well known. But it is less
often noted that he was capricious in his administra-
tion of the stripes. We have seen that he was no
Bibliolater. But he was always indulgent to Biblio-
latry. The result was that, in his dealings with
sacred and profane literatures respectively, he was
guilty of an inconsequence strange in a historical
critic, and specially strange in one who was wont
to be a stickler for logical consistency. Venial
errors in non-Biblical criticism were in the wallet
before his face, whilst grave errors in Biblical criti-
cism were in the wallet behind his back. He bade
men strain at William Tell's apple ; but he let them
swallow Jonah and his Whale !
According to a famous critic, Freeman showed his
mental bias in another way, namely, by keeping such
jealous watch over the honour of our Anglo-Saxon
ancestors, and by seeing Teutonism in everything, as
Malebranche saw all things in God. But, in this
short notice of Freeman, we refrain as far as possible
from commenting on him as a historian. Suffice it,
then, to quote, as bearing on the question of his
historical limitations, what Renan has said of
Josephus : " II a le deTaut le plus oppose" la saine
maniere d'e'crire 1'histoire, une personality extreme."
There would be an antecedent probability that such
266
Houghton and Freeman.
a historian as Freeman, with his overweening and
crushing personality, would incur a like censure.
We merely submit the question to our readers : Did
Freeman, or did he not, deserve such a censure ?
It may be worth while to record a circumstance,
at once instructive and melancholy, which was per-
haps not unconnected with the historian's truly
volcanic ebullitions of wrath. It was only a short
time before his death that the Committee of the
Athenaeum elected him. Some years earlier, we
ourselves had suggested in an influential quarter
that so distinguished a writer ought to be thus
elected off-hand and, as it were, pitchforked into
the Club. But we received for answer that, if
ever within the precincts of the Athenaeum Library
Freeman chanced to hear a word spoken in extenua-
tion of the Bulgarian atrocities, that sanctuary of the
Muses would be converted into a bear-garden. It
might, peradventure, have been added that the
members of a refined and peaceful society could
hardly suffer themselves to be affrighted by a
stalwart and bellicose intruder, who had ruthlessly
assaulted some of them with his pen, and who, if
opportunity served, might be tempted to assault
them with his tongue. Even a bookworm may be
trodden on once too often ; and even a Literary
Club must set limits to the unclubbability of its
members !
In speculating on the cause, or perhaps one of the
causes, which retarded Freeman's election, we are, it
must be clearly understood, only giving utterance to
a conjecture founded on very imperfect data. But,
267
Character Sketches.
whatever and however cogent the arguments may
have been which during many years prevailed with
the Committee, it must be acknowledged that our
great Literary Club, so long as it shut its doors
against our great historian, was
" Yet for this want more noted, as of yore
The Caesars' pageant, shorn of Brutus' bust,
Did but of Rome's best son remind her more."
Would not such a historicorum facile princeps, such
an ingenium ingens inculto sub corpore et incultissimis
cum moribus have been more eagerly courted in
Germany ?
Our limits forbid us to consider how Professor
Freeman and Lord Houghton, regarded as repre-
sentative men, symbolized the jarring elements of
which intellectual society is made up, and by whose
inevitable and indispensable concordia discors it is
maintained. Suffice it to say that the application
to them of the Aristophanic antithesis, " The one I
think a clever man, but the other I love," will seem
to be a form of damning with faint praise, until it is
remembered that it was on ^Eschylus and Euripides
that the faint praise was originally bestowed.
268
THE REV. S. H. REYNOLDS.
BY THE HON. L. A. TOLLEMACHE.
" This rudeness is a sauce to his good wit,
Which gives men stomach to digest his words
With better appetite."
Julius CfEsar.
TT is just a year since the Rev. S. H. Reynolds
died in the Hotel d'Angleterre, Biarritz, in
which I was then staying and am now writing ; and
the time seems to have come when, before the dust
gathers over his memory, it may be suitable for me
to record my impressions of him. By way of
preface, let me say that I lost in him not merely
an old and firm friend, but one of the most able
and original men that I ever knew intimately. He
was also a friend of Mark Pattison, and was one of
the very few men whose abilities I have heard
Pattison praise highly and without reserve.
It will be necessary, for the benefit of those who
did not read or who do not remember the friendly
and discerning obituary notice of him which ap-
peared in the Times, that I should relate as briefly
as possible the leading facts of his life. Born
in 1831, he was sent to school first at Tiverton,
and afterwards at Radley under Sewell. When
at Oxford, he obtained the Newdigate Prize for
269
Character Sketches.
English Verse, a First-Class in Littercz Humani-
orcs, a Prize for an English Essay, and a clerical
Fellowship at Brasenose. He was ordained, and
took the College living of East Ham. He was,
during many years, a writer of leading articles in
the Times. He edited for the Clarendon Press
Bacon's "Essays" and Selden's "Table-Talk";
and to the end of his life he continued to collect
materials for new editions of these volumes. In
the autumn of 1896, he was seized with an illness
which he knew to be mortal. At first he was told
that his life might be prolonged for at least a year ;
and, like a true disciple of Pattison, he valued this
expected respite chiefly in the hope of being able to
bring out his two second editions. But Dis aliter
visum. The end came before the new editions could
make their appearance and poor Reynolds may have
felt something of the disappointment which Pattison
felt when, during his last illness, he wrote to a friend
complaining that he would die "leaving Scaliger
unfinished."
In early youth he seems to have expected great
things from human nature ; and he paid the common
penalty of such expectations by grievous disappoint-
ment. The strong terms in which he sometimes
gave vent to that disappointment enabled me to
understand the element of truth which lurks in
Chamfort's paradox that " He who is not a misan-
thropist at forty can never have loved mankind."
In Reynolds there was a leaven of misanthropy.
Or, to speak more precisely, he was a sort of
philanthropic misanthropist trying to help his
270
S. H. Reynolds.
fellow-men, while all the time thinking badly of
them. This was one cause of that abruptness of
his, which I had in my mind when I made choice
of the motto prefixed to this essay. His abruptness,
in fact, was partly natural; but partly also it was
assumed, sometimes as a mask, and sometimes
more or less for effect. He had the skill to make
conversational capital out of his cynicism. His
misanthropy or mock-misanthropy, when it was lit
up by his peculiar humour, and was not carried
too far or displayed too often, was relished as a
moral tonic by friends who understood him ; but
to outsiders it was often highly embarrassing. How
great and how natural this embarrassment was will
become evident as I go on.
Pattison had a story that, in the good old times,
there was a Brasenose don who at the beginning of
each term drove into Oxford in a four-in-hand, and
who gave as a reason that it was unfitting for the
first Tutor of the first College of the first University
in the world to enter Oxford with a pair ! With all
his loyalty to Brasenose, Reynolds would certainly
not have spoken in such terms of his College any
more than of himself; but he went the utmost
lengths in his devotion to Oxford, which seemed
to him to be the Queen of all Universities velut
inter ignes Luna minorcs. Indeed, he blew the
Oxonian trumpet in season and out of season ;
and he had, or affected to have, little love for
the sister-University. There is a story that once,
in a mixed society, he most unwisely set about
abusing Cambridge. His serio-comic mimicry of
271
Character Sketches.
seriousness was not palatable, or indeed intelligible,
to a Cantab who happened to be present, and who
rejoined with natural irritation : " I must tell you,
sir, that I am a Cambridge man." Reynolds
turned round upon him with judicial solemnity :
" Then, sir, I have great pleasure in informing you
that there is nothing in your look or manner or
dress or accent from which I should ever have
suspected it ! " This sample of my friend's not
too conciliatory way of talking is doubtless ex-
aggerated. But I believe the anecdote to be
founded on fact. At any rate, I told the story
to Pattison, who replied with his saturnine smile,
"Yes. There is no setting limits to Reynold's
antipathies ; he hates Cambridge, the Scotch, the
Irish, the French, and the Germans ; and, if he
does not hate the Italians, it is because he does not
know them enough to hate them ! " l With especial
vehemence was his hostility directed against Goethe,
Carlyle, Browning, Jowett, Protectionists, Socialists,
Bimetallists, 2 and Bluestockings. But his friends
knew that, loud as was the report of his gun, he
1 Perhaps, however, his study of Dante, which in his early
days had furnished forth an article, well known to his friends,
in the Westminster Review, had in some measure reconciled
him to Dante's countrymen. See the " Note " at the end of
this essay.
2 Wishing to draw him out, I jocularly asked him in one of
our last interviews which he thought the more objectionable, a
Bimetallist or an Anti-Evolutionist. He rose to the bait, and,
ill though he then was, answered with his usual burlesque of
banter: "I can only say what Johnson said when he was asked
which of two small poets he preferred : 7 cannot determine the
question of precedence between a flea and a louse ! "
272
S. H. Reynolds.
was firing with blank cartridges all the time. And,
therefore, it was with philosophical composure that
we saw him playing at indignation and, like an
Elysian hero, belli sirmilacra cientem. Nay, we even
watched with a sort of kindly entertainment the
half-unconscious action and reaction of the earnest
side and of the humorous side of his complex
nature ; for we felt that he was, in very truth, often
a Don Quixote masquerading as a Sancho Panza
and sometimes, I am bound to add, a Sancho
Panza masquerading as a Don Quixote. But
more especially we felt and I, for onq, can
abundantly testify that, with all his waywardness
and love of paradox, he was, in the manifold
relations of daily life, the kindest as well as the
most upright of men.
His youthful inclination to Positivism is a fact so
notorious among his Oxford contemporaries as well
as among his personal friends that such a notice as
the present cannot possibly pass it over. But I will
touch upon it very lightly. It is certain that, when
or before he was ordained, he became convinced of
the truth that neither Positivism nor any other
substitute for Christianity can do the work among
the masses which Christianity has done and is doing.
At the same time, like Horace and all other gentle-
man-like renegades, he cherished a friendly feeling
for his former comrades; and, much to his and
their credit, he retained their goodwill to the last.
Indeed, shortly before his death, he assured me
that he still attached great value to Comte's famous
principle of the Theological, the Metaphysical and
s 273
Character Sketches.
the Scientific Stages of development ; and he praised,
though with less confidence, the Positivist " hierarchy
of the sciences." On my once asking him whether
he had not, by becoming a parson, given mortal
offence to his old friends, he mentioned the name
of a leading Positivist, and said with more gravity
than I had expected : " recognises the position
of those who conform to the national religion. He
does not approve their conduct, but he does not
condemn it." But, though he thus consented to
play Naaman to the Arch-Positivist's Elisha, he was
perhaps, at bottom, but little enamoured either of
the godless sanctity or of the immortality by proxy
of the Comtists; and he certainly felt a strong
antipathy to what may be termed their Holy Office,
with its inquisitorial censorship, not of morals only,
but of studies.
An old Irish clergyman (now deceased) once said
to me, with a somewhat mechanical and ponderous
politeness : " I have just been reading your ' Recol-
lections of Pattison ' with the greatest attention and
interest. / suppose he was that excellent Bishop who
was so brutally murdered by savages." I told this to
Reynolds, who was much taken with it. Did the
Irishman's compliment seem to him noteworthy as
serving to show with how slender an intellectual
outfit the generality of educated men approach
intellectual problems? At all events, he was con-
vinced that for the mass of men there is an
absolute need of spiritual guidance and control ;
that the best, if not the only, instrument for
permanently satisfying that need, is a time-honoured
274
S. H. Reynolds.
form of worship; and among the competing forms
of worship he preferred that which has the maxi-
mum of guiding and controlling power. So that he
might have admitted that even his enemy, Goethe,
was wholesomely paradoxical in saying : " Only that
which is fruitful is true " ; or (slightly altering Pope)
he might have exclaimed in regard to modes of
faith :
Theirs can't be wrong whose lives are in the right. 1
Let me add that he evidently came to the conclusion
that Man, or at any rate Woman, is a religious
animal, and that, to judge by all past experience,
the belief in supernaturalism is rooted in human
nature (Expellas divos furca, tamen usque recurrent).
Being thus minded, he gave encouragement and
support to those very numerous persons who are
impelled by a moral necessity to materialize their
spiritual aspirations and, as it were, to build castles
in heaven. Hence it came about that he drifted
away from the Comtists.
To a friend who confessed to having more sympathy
with the plain and realizable ideals of the later Stoics
than with the impracticable Orientalisms of the Ser-
mon on the Mount, Reynolds replied : " Go to
Paul's Cross, and preach one sermon from Marcus
Aurelius and another from the Gospels, and see
which will have most effect." He was clearly giving
1 I have ventured to substitute the plural for the singular
pronoun in this line, because a few happily constituted indi-
viduals, even with a creed unsuited to their wants, may be, and
indeed are, virtuous. But could an entire community, when thus
handicapped, prosper in the moral race?
275
Character Sketches.
a sort of Apologia pro sacerdotio suo when he said
to me long ago : " In times of transition, religious
reform has to be carried on by men who have
little esoteric sympathy with the popular theology."
I feel that I am now standing on the threshold of
the vexed question of the Ethics of Compromise.
Into that long and labyrinthine controversy it is
not my purpose to enter. So I will merely remind
my readers that the case for religious conformity is a
vast deal stronger than at first sight appears.
It will now be discerned to how great an extent
Reynolds was a disciple of Pattison. Yet he was at
times an insubordinate and eclectic disciple. It must
be borne in mind that, unlike Pattison, he was not
merely a priest but a parish priest. His parochial
duties kept the sense of his priestly office alive in
him, and (without his fully realizing it) turned his
speculations into a comparatively " safe " channel.
In a poetry-game I once tried to hit off the two
aspects of his character by calling him a pretre-
philosophe. Not indeed that the contending forces
which thus warred in his members were equally
matched. It may be said broadly that the philo-
sopher in him swallowed up the priest, but that, in
being thus swallowed up, the priest disagreed with the
philosopher. He started from the same prinsiples as
Pattison ; but, as will appear further on, he often for-
bore to press them to their conclusions. Indeed, he
sometimes practised this economy of logic deliberately
and avowedly.
In the province of ethics both he and Pattison
were inconsequent ; but the inconsequence of Rey-
276
S. H. Reynolds.
nolds was more marked, because he enunciated his
principles more unreservedly. I might say of him,
as I formerly said of Pattison, that his ethical creed
was "Utilitarianism tempered by Pyrrhonism"; it was,
in fact, what might be described either as colourless
Utilitarianism or as Utilitarianism with its bottom
knocked out. From the tremendous conclusions to
which Utilitarianism may plausibly be pressed, he
escaped by practically admitting with Scherer that :
"la vertu, comme toute autre chose, ne supporte
pas 1'examen." For example : he agreed with Mill in
seeing no a priori reason why the benefit of Utili-
tarian protection (so to speak) should not be accorded
to the lower animals. " The question is," he would
say, " not whether they can reason, but whether they
can feel." And he frankly owned that Utilitarianism,
when thus interpreted, is not easily reconciled with
field-sports, or even with the use of insecticide powder.
Nevertheless, like Pattison, he sometimes fished ; and
indeed, on my playfully beseeching him to give a
hearty welcome to his fellow-creatures, nay, haply his
distant cousins the sparrows when they came forag-
ing in his garden, he replied with his harmless roar
(like that of stage-thunder) : "I wish all the sparrows
had only one neck that I might wring tt." 1
1 In form, though of course only in form, this mock-petulant
outburst reminds me of what my father used to tell me about the
late Lord H , whose eccentricity bordered on insanity, and
who, being physically powerful, looked as if he might be danger-
ous. Dining with some kinsfolk of ours, his Lordship gave the
disquieting admonition : " When I dine with you, never put
me near a stranger ; for, when I am near a stranger, I feel
inclined to wring Ais neck. "
277
Character Sketches.
Being an Evolutionist, Reynolds contemplated
Evolution, or rather Nature, with a sardonic smile.
He seemed to think that Nature is like a tender
shepherd who leads his lambs beside the still waters
and gently fondles them in his arms; and then
hands them over to the butcher all for the general
good ! That such was his opinion I gathered rather
from the drift of what he used to say than from any
particular remark. Now and then, however, he
expressed himself more or less plainly to that effect ;
so that, in fact, he let it be seen that he was half
irritated and half entertained by the pitiless Elimina-
tion of the Unfit and, in a word, by the murderous
beneficence of Nature. I once heard him quote
approvingly a saying of Renan, that Nature treats
us like soldiers ; she makes us fight and die in a
cause which is not ours. I begged him to explain
himself. " How," I asked, " is Nature responsible
for the way in which you, in addition to all your
other occupations, wear yourself out by editing
Bacon and Selden ? " " It is she," he replied with
a grim smile, " who has implanted in me that desire
of distinction, and even of posthumous fame, which
makes me work as I do." And yet he was well
aware that his chance of posthumous fame was
inconsiderable, and, moreover, that the thirst for
such fame is vanity, if not vexation of spirit.
He was once asked by a friend what he thought
of the severe censures passed by historians on
some small act of dissimulation practised by the
future Charles I. during his romantic visit to Spain ;
would not almost any man of the world, in like case,
278
S. H. Reynolds.
have done the same ? and do not reflections of this
sort make one feel ill at ease with one's conscience ?
" They make one feel," was the reply, " that civiliza-
tion, with all that rests upon it, is only skin deep."
It is clear that, when he spoke thus, he was taking
his stand on that giddy and perilous height of philo-
sophical culture where the sense of sin seems, like
the atmosphere, so to press on all sides that its
pressure ceases to be felt. But I should add that,
after making the sceptical admission, he insisted
more earnestly, I suspect, than Pattison would have
insisted that this acquiescence in the rules of Vanity
Fair, this conviction that rideal sonne creux would,
if it became general, be " most mischievous." Here,
perhaps, his parsonic and parochial training made
itself felt. As a philosopher, he weighed doctrines
by the standard of their truth ; as a priest, by the
standard of their utility.
Thus it appears that, whether for better or for less
good, Reynolds was only a rudimentary Pattison.
We all know that Pattison, like the Greek Antholo-
gist, deduced vdvra ysXwg xai irdvra, xovig aal vavra. r6
fj,qdiv from Taira 'yap J akoyuv Ion TO. yiyvofitva.
Or, to speak more precisely, he drew from evolu-
tionary principles the somewhat Montaignesque con-
clusion : Let us read and write, for to-morrow we die.
Reynolds seemed at times to be stricken with a like
paralysing scepticism. But presently he would rush
into the opposite extreme with such a sudden and
pugnacious vehemence, that one's eyes instinctively
turned towards the full-blown clerical attire which he
habitually wore even when at Biarritz, and even when
279
Character Sketches.
going for a bathe. On the whole, we may conclude
that he was, or aspired to be, as much more serious
than Pattison as a moralist, as he was inferior to him
as a philosopher.
Perhaps the sort of intellectual relation which
subsisted between these two eminently original and
interesting men may be best shown in a few words,
by quoting from " Safe Studies " an extract, concern-
ing which I mention, now for the first time, that the
" friend " referred to is Reynolds :
" A friend, walking with the Rector, spoke of Johnson as a
representative Englishman. ' Johnson, ' said Pattison, ' is the
type of an Englishman with an Englishman's defects. ' ' To me,'
objected the friend, ' Selden seems anything but a typical Eng-
lishman. His moral apathy jars all my nerves, like that cab
rattling over the stones. 1 'Look at the cabman's face,' said
Pattison. ' What jars you does not seem to jar him. One who
has daily to drive over these stones should be as little sensitive
as a cabman ; and one who would study human nature without
becoming either misanthropic or miserable should be as little
sensitive as Selden.'"
The grim sayings of my friend which have been
hitherto cited, belong, one may say, to Reynolds
the Don Quixote. We will conclude by supple-
menting them with a few humorous flashes of
Reynolds the Sancho Panza. It must, however,
be premised that the serio-comic sayings of his
which I am about to quote bear a strong family
likeness to his comico-serious sayings which have
been quoted already ; there is such an ingrained
originality such a quintessence (if I may coin the
word) common to all of them !
He had no belief at all in the political capacity
280
S. H. Reynolds.
of women, and but little belief in their sense of
truth. And he used to illustrate this unchivalrous
sentiment of his by means of an apologue, with
respect to which he disclaimed originality, but
which he, at any rate, made his own by the
characteristic stamp which he set upon it. His
primary object was to show what was expected of
a model wife :
A certain man had a wooden leg, and told his wife that he
did not wish the fact to be known. But reports about the
wooden leg got abroad ; which the wife, whenever they
reached her, indignantly denied. Thus far she had only
done what any wife would do. But she proved herself to
be a good wife by the circumstance that, although she un-
screwed the wooden leg every night and screwed it on every
morning, yet, when she denied that it existed, she firmly
believed that she was telling the truth ! l
Behold, how good and wholesome a thing is the
sweet unreasonableness of Woman ! But no. Let
us rather say that the uncourtly and sophistical
legend ought to be reprobated as severely as the
ornithological paradox to which Professor Henry
Smith once gave utterance in conversation, when
he was pointing out the unwisdom of airing original
1 The counsel of conjugal perfection which is thus brought
into focus through a parable may peradventure be further
illustrated by a case, less picturesque indeed, but more related
to everyday life. As a matter of course, a wife should laugh
at her husband's jokes. That is one of the unwritten laws
and universal postulates of matrimony. But the quality of a
good wife is shown in this, that, be the jokes never so pointless
and never so stale, she has the art, not to applaud them merely,
but to enjoy them ! Truly the heart of woman is self-deceitful
above all things and desperately bewitching : who can know
it?
281
Character Sketches.
and misunderstandable opinions in the presence of
young ladies : " We must remember that little ducks
are sometimes also little geese."
Although he had studied harmony scientifically,
Reynolds hated music of all sorts. Music, indeed,
he declared, in his bantering way, to be a survival
of the prattle of " missing links " which, not having
fully acquired the faculty of speech, were fain to
express their semi-human wants in a semi-articulate
jargon !
I ventured to suggest to him that the violence
with which he used often to abuse Bacon was
hardly becoming in one who had edited Bacon's
Essays. Was he not, by editing Bacon, in a
manner holding a brief for him? And, in fact,
had he not thrown himself into something very
like friendly relations with the dead and therefore
defenceless author whose writings, public and
private, he had taken upon himself to examine
at close quarters? By driving home this argu-
mentum ad editorem, I at length wrung from him
a concession in Bacon's favour : " He was a loath-
some scoundrel, but a scoundrel of whom human
nature ought to be proud ! " This verdict, or
rather its damnatory clause, was vociferated with
that growl of counterfeit ferocity wherewith he was
wont to guard himself when skirting the frontier
between jest and earnest.
Perhaps the most generally popular of these
sports of his imagination is one which Lucian
would have entitled " A True History." The narra-
tive bears record that there lately dwelt in one of
282
S. H. Reynolds.
the Colleges of Oxbridge a certain Tutor that was
also a Priest. He was one who minded his own
business ; insomuch that he could not have been
reproached with what Montaigne calls "the wrong
and unnatural course of abandoning a pleasant and
healthful life to serve others." It was his daily
practice to breakfast on two eggs. One morning,
at daybreak, the Angel Gabriel appeared unto him
in bodily shape, and certified that, if he would
forego one of his eggs that morning, he himself
indeed would profit not at all, but unspeakable
blessings would be vouchsafed to his fellow-men.
Smothering his wrath at the presumption of his
unbidden guest, the latter-day saint inquired : " Do
I understand that, if I consent to make this
sacrifice, I myself shall obtain no benefit of any
sort ? " Whereto the Angel made answer : " None
save that exceeding great blessing, the testimony of
a good conscience." This was too much for mortal
man. So, turning his back on the exorbitant
petitioner, the reverend gentleman cried hastily to
his servant : " John, bring up my two eggs at once."
Postscriptum. It was after this essay had been completed that
the article written by Reynolds on Dante was republished in a
volume entitled "Studies on Many Subjects (Arnold)." This
volume of his essays has I need hardly say a deep and
manifold interest. But, in the opinion of one at least of his
friends, the interest is not wholly unalloyed. To speak broadly :
his masterful and inelastic personality, when it could not assert
itself entirely, had to be entirely suppressed. The result was
that, as a writer and especially as a journalist, he had to prac-
tise continual self-effacement ; insomuch that there arose a
literary Reynolds bearing the same sort of resemblance to the
conversational Reynolds that a well-worn coin bears to a coin
283
Character Sketches.
fresh from the mint. At all events, these essays of his, how-
ever excellent as essays, show but few and faint traces of that
refreshing compound of Johnson and Voltaire the Reynolds
of logical fence and of playfully combative discourse ; the
Reynolds, in fact, whom I knew intimately, and whom the
better I knew, the more I loved and admired.
284
HEAD-MASTERS I HAVE KNOWN. 1
I. DR MOSTYN.
T WISH Mr Francis Gallon would turn his atten-
tion to Head-masters ; I do not mean to their
girth, height, and measurement of cranium and
biceps, though something might be made of that ;
but, as he has given us the typical convict face, and
the typical Welch Baptist Minister, so I wish he
would attend the next Conference at Wellington
College, and fuse the photographs of the collected
Head-masters into one ideal portraiture. That
similar influences and surroundings have produced
one recognisable archetype, of which all existing
specimens are only varieties, cannot be doubted.
Who can mistake a Head-master, whether preaching
in full canonicals at the Abbey, or strolling in
mufti up the Morteratsch Glacier? But either
from natural deficiencies, or from the defects of my
education, which belongs to the pre-scientific period,
I have no powers of generalization, and must content
myself with the humbler task of setting down my
recollections of the Head-masters whose acquaint-
ance I have made, first as scholar and then as
assistant master, leaving my readers to generalize
for themselves.
1 Journal of Education, October and December 1881.
285
Character Sketches.
Though it is nearly thirty years ago, I remember,
as if it were yesterday, the first sight I had of a
Head-master in the flesh. From a country parson-
age, where my only teacher was a mild curate, who
smoked latakia, and taught me my Greek alphabet
in slippers, I was sent straight to a public school ;
and, on the morning after my arrival, I found my
way with twenty other new boys to the Library,
where we were told to present ourselves for the
entrance examination. We all wore a sheepish air,
and huddled together in a corner of the room,
hardly exchanging a whisper. I had discovered my
old chum Foley, our Squire's son, and we were
comparing notes as to the respective ordeals we
had undergone as new boys. Foley was telling
me that he didn't funk this exam, a bit, because
his people knew old Mostyn, and said he was the
right sort, when the door opened, and I knew in-
stinctively that the robed form that advanced with
measured steps to the desk was Dr Mostyn. He
was not above thirty, but to us boys he seemed at
least fifty. He was below the middle height, but no
one would have described him as a short man. He
always towered a head and shoulders above common
mortals. His gait was perhaps the most striking
outward characteristic. Day by day, for the next
three years, I used to see him moving at the same
funereal pace from his home to the school, looking
neither to the right hand nor the left, but returning
each schoolboy's salute with military precision. Even
when he rode, his horse seemed to have caught his
master's even pace, and never relapsed into an
286
Headmasters I Have Known.
amble. To go on with my story. I forget all about
my own examination, but I shall not forget Foley's
being put on, and breaking down hopelessly in an
easy bit of Virgil. When his need was at the
sorest, he bethought him of his home acquaintance
with the Doctor, and instead of answering a ques-
tion about the subject of the sentence, began, " I
beg your pardon, Dr Mostyn, but I quite forgot to
ask you how is Mrs Mostyn." Dr Mostyn was equal
to the occasion. "Thank you," he said without
moving a muscle, "can you tell me what is the
nominative case ? " Poor Foley was placed in the
lowest fourth, and Mrs Mostyn was afterwards an
unfailing subject of chaff (I believe the true deriva-
tion of his nickname, Cat's-meat, is Catherine
Mostyn) ; but at the time not one of us so much
as smiled. There was something about the Doctor
that made even the youngest feel that he could not
take liberties with him. The next three years I may
pass over rapidly. Each Sunday I heard the Doctor
in chapel, and, boy as I was, appreciated and admired
the plain simple English, the clear argument, and the
sound sense of his sermons, of which not the least
charm was his low silvery voice, and the earnest,
though somewhat monotonous, tone in which they
were delivered. At home I had been greatly im-
pressed by the extempore eloquence of an Irish
curate, who was said to resemble Dr Macneil ; now it
seems to me the veriest rant. My boyish enthusiasm
was not wholly misplaced, for Dr Mostyn has since
made a name for himself among London preachers,
and, what few preachers can boast, his sermons,
287
Character Sketches.
under the thin disguise of Religious Musings and
Meditations for the Times, sell by the thousand. To
my maturer taste they smack too much of boudoir
theology ; and when last night I took down the old
volume presented to me at leaving, in order to refresh
my memory, it quickly sent me to sleep. Like Mr
Casaubon, Dr Mostyn knows no German, and not
only is he ignorant of science, but he has resolutely
shut himself out from the new ideas that are in the
air, and are imbibed unconsciously by the most
unscientific of a younger generation. When Mark
Winkelreid said to me the other day, " I see Mostyn
now and again at the Athenaeum, he is a good fellow
and I like to meet him, only he is so brutually
ignorant," I was mildly shocked, but I did not
indignantly resent the aspersion on my old master's
knowledge. For schoolboys, such limitations mattered
little. We thought him omniscient, and, whatever
else he was ignorant of, he knew human nature to
the core.
When I got into the Sixth, three-fourths of my
work was done with Dr Mostyn. Mathematics were
looked on as a distraction, and Modern Languages
were a farce. The institution of Sixth Form master
was still in embryo, and a Hertford and Ireland
scholar, who had failed in imparting Caesar and
Greek delectus to a Fourth Form, took occasional
lessons when the Doctor was called away on public
errands. Poor Tommy Jackson ! A brilliant
scholar, and a profoundly learned man, he lacked
the Doctor's presence, and no one thought of
attending to him. I well remember his agonized
288
Head-masters I Have Known.
looks when, after spending three Sundays over the
" great text in Galatians," Jones major was put on,
and began construing 6 8e /Asffmjg ou% &v6(, "Now
a reaper is not of one." Such breakdowns never
happened with the Doctor ; at least, they ' never
happened a second time. He rarely set a punish-
ment, but his "Sit down" was as terrible as the
judge's black cap. His range of teaching, even
in classics, was very narrow, half a dozen authors,
or rather portions of authors, read and re-read, till
he must have known them by heart. I calculate
that, in his fifteen years at Harchester, he must
have gone through Sophocles six times. All other
subjects, even Ancient History, were totally ignored.
I knew something about the Blockade of Pylos, and
the operations of Demosthenes the general ; but I
had never heard of the battle of Navarino, and
Demosthenes the orator was to me little more than
a cyclopedia of Greek syntax. I knew something
about the system of Meton, but what was the cause
of a solar eclipse I did not discover till after I had
left Harchester. Nor would a lesson of Dr Mostyn's
have satisfied Mr Fitch and the Education Society.
I suspect he never looked at one before coming into
school, for he kept at his side a Liddell and Scott,
to which he was constantly referring. He rarely
practised the inductive method, and did not vex
our souls with the Socratic elenchus. Yet, with
all its drawbacks and limitations, Dr Mostyn's system
was not utterly bad ; and, though Professor Bain
would not allow it, he taught us something that was
worth teaching. He had, himself, in a pre-eminent
T 289
Character Sketches.
degree, that linguistic taste, that subtle appreciation
of the finer shades of meaning, that discrimination
of different idioms, which the Germans express by
the one word Sprachgefuhl. On half the form,
it is true, this teaching was thrown away, and they
would doubtless have been better employed in
analysing acids, or perhaps hoeing turnips ; but
the finer spirits caught something of the Doctor's
genius, as they caught the trick of his handwriting,
and the few surviving adepts in the fast decaying art
of Latin and Greek verse, are most of them Dr
Mostyn's pupils. Allied with this gift, was a keen
sense of humour, which made a lesson of Aristo-
phanes with the Doctor a keen intellectual treat.
When Prettyman blushed and boggled over IT*
axpuv vv-yidiuv, the Doctor quietly suggested " on
tip -tail"; xpouvo^vrpoXripaio^ was rendered "a
teetotal-tittle-tattler"; and aT a.7 UuXog t? "Colt
by name, and colt by nature." But his wittiest
hits were dropped, as it were, by accident, with
the slightest perceptible quiver of the lips and
twinkle of the eye. To laugh outright was as
impossible for Dr Mostyn as to run.
Of his social qualities I can say little but by
report. Unlike most modern Head-masters, he did
not even affect an interest in school games or any
sort of school pursuits. He would as soon have
thought of looking on at a fight in the " milling
ground" as at a cricket match. Nor, except in
the case of a few favourite pupils, of whom I was
not one, did he hold any intercourse even with
his Sixth Form. Once a term the Monitors, or
290
Head-masters I Have Known.
upper half of the form, were asked to supper, and
then he would unbend, though still in stately fashion,
and we were all too cowed to meet him half-way.
On one of these occasions I remember a dish of
oysters going round the table untouched, no one
daring to begin on them. When they reached the
Doctor, he helped himself, and said to the head
monitor, " Do try a few, just to keep me company."
On its second round the dish was emptied. The
conversation at these suppers was not very lively,
and, as at city dinners a band fills up the interval
of talk, so the entertainment provided for us heavy
school-boys was a comic dialogue, in the style of
"the happy pair," between the Doctor and his
wife. " My dear," Dr Mostyn would begin, " what
have you done with my spectacles ? " " Why, they're
on your nose, or rather on your forehead," Mrs
Mostyn would reply, taking up the cue; and
then, turning to the company. "You know Dr
Mostyn is the most absent of men. Last night
he came to bed in his trencher, and I fully expect
to see him some fine morning starting for school in
his night-cap." " Sometimes," retorted Dr Mostyn,
"I should be glad to attribute some actions to
absence of mind. As when I heard a lady ask poor
Mr Marinden, who has worn a wig ever since we came
to Harchester, where he had his hair cut, or when
the same lady enquired of a small boy, just after I
had flogged him, how he liked Harchester, and
added that she should write to his mother and tell
her how well he was looking. Notum quid femina
possit t Alford will translate for Mrs Mostyn's
291
Character Sketches.
benefit." Alford had been tripped up that morning
by that well-known line of Virgil, and blushed up to
the ears. "Never mind, Mr Alford," said Mrs
Mostyn, " I don't want to know. Whenever the
Doctor quotes Greek, it is sure to be something too
rude to be said in English." As I write them down
in cold blood, the jokes seem forced and feeble, but
they amused us vastly, and we chuckled over the
discovery that after all Dr Mostyn was mortal, and
that one person dared to stand up to him and give
him as good as he gave.
With the Head of the school Dr Mostyn stood on
different terms. The headship went by seniority,
but the Doctor was fertile in devices for clearing the
way for a favourite pupil. A. would be sent up for
a scholarship at a small College, B. would be offered
a Post in the Civil Service, C. would be advised
to read for his last year with a private tutor, and
in extreme cases D. would be persuaded to decline
the honour. The Doctor was a born diplomatist,
and could carry out such arrangements with the
least possible friction. The Head of the school
was the Doctor's vicegerent in all matters of games
and house discipline. It was he who regulated
fagging, and issued orders about compulsory foot-
ball. Next to the Doctor he was the greatest force
at Harchester, and the Doctor, unlike modern
sultans, stuck manfully to his vizier through good
and evil report.
Everyone who is interested in public schools, has
heard of the cause ceftbre of Vickson v. Bailey.
Little Vickson, who was afterwards Scholar of
292
Head-masters I Have Known.
Balliol, had tunded a lanky youth of six foot in the
Shell, and Bailey's father, who was a Q.C., having
failed to make the doctor punish Vickson, though
the Times and Daily News espoused his cause,
determined to appeal to the law courts. Mr
Bailey's chief object in the suit was to get the
Doctor into the witness box, but he little knew his
man. The doctor's cross-examination was as
damaging to the plaintiff's case as Sam Weller's,
and as witty, without a touch of vulgarity. After
the first few passes Mr Bailey was fairly driven
from the field, and gave over the Doctor to his
junior, who fared no better than his leader. Young
Bailey was removed from Harchester, and Vickson
continued to tund his fags to his heart's content,
though the regulation number of strokes was reduced
to ten.
The Doctor had the largest boarding-house at
Harchester, and I must confess that he was not
a model house-master. He was forced by his
multifarious duties to play the Mikado, and the
Daimio was a virago of a house-keeper. It was,
in fact, a petticoat despotism, tempered by monitors.
The consequence was, that the house was subject to
periodic outbreaks of boyish disorders, to which,
when they came to a head, the Doctor would apply
heroic remedies. I have known him pack off home,
at an hour's notice, a couple or more young black-
guards (the two Fords for instance, who sent little
Wagstaff to the wash with the dirty linen) ; but he
generally preferred painless extinction at the end
of the term, and, though parents were disgusted,
293
Character Sketches.
they were generally wise enough to hold their
tongues. This Arnoldian regime is convenient,
but crude. Anyone can govern in a state of
siege. But the system was at fault more than the
Doctor. We take a Senior Classic, raw from the
Tripos, and we expect him to give as many hours'
teaching as a Board School master, to organize and
regulate a complicated machine, a federation of
republics, to perform the same clerical duties as
Professor Wace or Mr Stopford Brooke, and then,
as if this were not enough, we set him in loco
parentis over half a hundred boys, to whom he has
to act as caterer, counsellor, and father-confessor.
No wonder that the strongest shoulders bend under
such a burden, that the interest of the fifty is sacri-
ficed to that of the five hundred. This was Dr
Mostyn's weak side, and as a faithful chronicler I
have extenuated nothing, though this partial failure
has been obliterated by his general success.
When, at the end of fifteen years, Dr Mostyn
announced that he had accepted the Principalship
of a Clerical Training College, the news was a bolt
from the blue. He was in the very prime of life,
the school had never been more prosperous, he had
more than once refused high church preferment. I
do not pretend to fathom his motives. He was a
true humourist, and took a keen delight in baulking
public expectation. I suspect, too, that he tired
of his empire over boys, among whom he moved
as an Olympian god, and longed to mix with men,
and govern not ex cathedra, but by sheer force of
character and intellect. Whether he intended it
294
Head-masters I Have Known.
or not, he could not have better consulted his
reputation as a Head-master. He was taken away
at the height of his glory. Had he stayed on, he
would have fallen on evil days, Public School Com-
missioners, Modern Sides, and smatterings of Science.
Doubtless he would have survived, and held his own
against the " new learning " ; for he was a versatile
man, and could accommodate himself to circum-
stances ; but he would not have presented the
perfect type of a Head-master under the old
regime, a man of somewhat narrow views, stiff
in opinions, and limited in his knowledge, but after
all a scholar, a gentleman, and a Christian.
One more trait I must not omit. At Harchester
we used to think Dr Mostyn rather close-fisted, and
to jeer at his weak negus and shabby pony-chaise.
It was not till after I had left Harchester that I
discovered that he was the anonymous donor of
^2000 towards the new class-rooms, and that a
quarter of the boys in the Doctor's house paid no
fees.
II. DR RUTTY.
ENGLISH History begins in 449 ; American history
in 1492, and the history of Gilsbury in 1829.
We know, in a vague sort of way, that there
were aborigines who fed and fought, and were
gathered to their forefathers, before Columbus dis-
covered the new world, or Hengist landed at Ebbs-
fleet; but the modern historian ignores them, or
2 95
Character Sketches.
despatches them in his first chapter. We will follow
his example, and pass over the traditions that still
survive of Gilsbury in the dark ages before the
accession of Dr Rutty. Stories are still current of
a Great Rebellion, and a black stain on one of the
panels of the Speech Room is still pointed out as a
record of the inkpot that a young protestant flung at
the head of no imaginary devil. The legend is prob-
ably as mythical as that of Wartburg, but the fact
remains that Dr Rutty's predecessor had reduced
the numbers of Gilsbury to 50, and saddled the
school with a debt of ^20,000. In fact, when
Dr Rutty took the post, his friends regarded the
step in much the same light as Mr Browning re-
garded his friend Waring's disappearance, and bade
him God-speed as though he had been a missionary
bound for Ujiji. It was indeed a bold venture, for
Gilsbury enjoyed a bad pre-eminence among grammar
schools, and Dr Rutty was leaving one of the best-
paid berths in this unendowed age a big boarding
house in a big Public School. But Dr Rutty was a
plucky little man, and knew what he was about. He
had long smarted under an incompetent chief. Epi-
grams had served him as a safety-valve, but failed
to temper an unlimited despotism. There was no
thought in those days of dismissing an assistant
master; but the most long-suffering assistant might
be bullied into resigning, and Dr Rutty was not a
man to suffer long. To his friends who commiser-
ated, his exile was " a crust and liberty " ; to those
who jeered, he retorted, " Better to reign in Loam-
shire than serve with you under Outis " so he irre-
296
Head-masters I Have Known.
verently nicknamed the present Bishop of N ; to
the Governors of Gilsbury he wrote with his testi-
monials, " If you elect me, I will not go till I have
wiped off the debt and raised the 50 to 500 "; to his
new staff his mot cTordre was, " Spartam nactus es,
hanc exorna."
And it was Spartan fare, at least for the first years
that I was a master at Gilsbury. What is known as
the Hostel system prevailed in its pristine rigour.
Each master had a " but and a ben " assigned him,
two small and barely-furnished rooms ; and a salary
that a curate nowadays would sniff at, left little
margin for private luxuries. Like the knights of
Branksome Tower, we quitted our harness neither
by day nor yet by night ; and if we did not drink
the red wine through the helmet barred, for the very
good reason that there was none to drink, we carved
at the meal, each for himself and some fifty boys
besides. That carving was one of Dr Rutty's
chevaux de bataille, his hobby-horse on which he
mounted at each masters' meeting, and rode rough-
shod over us juniors. Armed with statistics fur-
nished by the house-steward, he would prove that
a bad carver made a difference of ^50 a year to
the school, and added significantly, that since the
beginning of the term, when four new masters had
joined, the consumption had risen 2 oz. a head per
day. Great were our rejoicings when the house-
steward was detected in wholesale peculation. We
felt that, if he had not gone, we probably should.
But, though in this instance Dr Rutty's sagacity was
at fault, yet his economy was one of the chief factors
297
Character Sketches.
of his success. Plain living and high thinking has
since become a hackneyed phrase, more preached
than practised in English Public Schools ; but to Dr
Rutty belongs the credit of proving that it is possible
to provide a generous education for something less
than a hundred a year.
It was, however, as a teacher that Dr Rutty was truly
great, and I will do my best to describe him as such.
But, though I observed him closely for more than
five years, and learnt from him more of the art than
any book has taught me, yet I despair of explaining,
much more of imparting, the secret of his success.
That, like all other success, it was founded on an
inexhaustible power of painstaking, goes almost
without saying. Dr Rutty never came into school
with an unprepared lesson. If it was some chapter
of Caesar in which he was reviewing a lower form, his
book would be carefully scored he had crammed up
the geography and history, and settled the line he
should take in questioning. With the Sixth Form
his classical lessons were as painfully prepared as if
he had been editing the author, and six hours was
his allowance for getting up a history or divinity
lesson. He was not a man of very wide reading,
and anything but a profound thinker; but all his
reading and all his thought were concentrated and
brought to a focus on his school work. He was a
living illustration of the apophthegm, that half the
knowledge, with twice the power of applying it, is
better than twice the knowledge with half the power
of application. Even his failings, his intellectual
failings at least, leaned to virtue's side the virtue,
298
Head-masters I Have Known.
I mean, of a schoolmaster. Had he been profound
or original, he would not have been content to put
all his energy into the work of teaching. He would
have written a history of China, or studied Syriac, or
invented Biquaternions, for he had energy and pluck
enough to attempt any of these tasks. But he lacked
that indefinable something we call genius, and his
many talents were all laid out on his professional
work. He was a rapid reader, and had the knack
of skimming the cream of a book and leaving the
whey. He would have made an invaluable Saturday
Reviewer. Thus he would glance through Montalem-
bert's Moines d 'Occident in his leisure evenings, and
give out the gist of the book after looking over the
essays on Monasticism. Lecky, Tylor, Bagehot, Ste.
Beuve, Boissier, were all grist to his mill. His
history lessons were real tours de force. He took
alternately the Great Rebellion and the Age of
Augustus, using Hume and Merivale as text-
books; and on these two periods he had, in the
course of twenty years, accumulated a very con-
siderable stock of information, reading all that he
could lay his hands on, and always adding to his
notes. Most masters would have been crushed by
the weight, but he "bore his learning lightly as a
flower " ; or, rather, he was like the grey-coated man
in Peter Schlemihl, who produced from his pocket
the exact article that each guest wanted. A lesson
never degenerated into a lecture. It was a constant
cross-fire of question and answer, with an occasional
volley from the Doctor, The way he managed this
was by making an individual study of each boy.
299
Character Sketches.
Brown was great at genealogies, and might be
depended on for the stemma Cczsarum. Jones was
a professed republican, and keen to scent out
Hume's mistakes. Robinson came from Devizes,
and woe betide him if he did not know everything
about Roundway Park. An unfortunate boy, whose
father was vicar of Naseby, was so persistently bullied
about the battle-field, which, on the first enquiry, he
described as an uncommon good place for ferreting,
that (so the story went) he persuaded his fond parent
to exchange livings. Dr Rutty was not of Schiller's
opinion, that against stupidity the Gods themselves
fight in vain. Satire, sarcasm, invective were his
weapons; and he had a Quilp-like delight in
establishing a raw in the thickest hide. Yet he
was withal soft-hearted, and repented him of the
evil. I remember Bullock once confiding to me
his troubles. He had begun a paraphrase of " So
careful of the type," " Though, O God, thou art so
painstaking a lithographist," and "the Doctor (he told
me whimpering) gave me the In Memoriam to write
out, and called me a bull of Bashan, though I had
sat up till one o'clock to do it, and now the whole
form call me Og." I pleaded his cause with the
Doctor ; the imposition was ignored ; and ever
after he led a charmed life, and blundered on,
secure of satire, though the name of Og stuck
like a burr to him.
Another characteristic of Dr Rutty's teaching was,
that he was " cock-sure of everything." The teacher
who hesitates is lost. Tell a boy that, generally
speaking, cum with past time takes the subjunctive,
300
Head-masters I Have Known.
but there are certain exceptions, and with later
authors the rule is not strictly observed, and he
goes away with a notion there is a good deal to be
said on both sides of the question, and that the best
way of deciding any particular case is by tossing up.
With the Doctor, black was black, and white was
white ; of greys, or neutral tints, he denied the
existence. " Obtinere" he roundly asserted, " never
means to obtain ; authority can never be rendered
by auctoritas ; Anglo-Saxon is a barbarous compound,
unknown before the age of Johnson ; an English
metaphor can never be rendered literally in Latin
or Greek." Now and again this dogmatism had a
fall, but Dr Rutty picked himself up by help of
" Exceptio probat regulam" and went on his way
rejoicing. It is easy to object that such teaching,
though it stimulates the mass, is likely to cramp or
crush the one or two geniuses who may occur in a
generation of schoolboys. The pupil, qucl pupil, is
not greater than his master ; and Dr Rutty, though
he won Balliol scholarships, and trained Senior
Classics, did not send forth into the world men
stamped with his image and superscription, like the
pupils of Dr Arnold or Prince Lee. But there is
much to be said for Dr Rutty's principle of the
greatest development of the greatest number. As
master of a Board School, Dr Rutty would have
passed his ninety - five per cent. He believed
in the innate stupidity and innate laziness of the
genus schoolboy, and put them all on his treadmill.
The mill was turned by brain power, and was an
elaborate piece of mechanism with cogs and catches,
301
Character Sketches.
spur-wheels and racket - wheels. There was no
scamping work, and it ground exceeding small.
I have left myself small space to describe Dr
Rutty as an organizer and chief; but the school
at large, masters included, was subjected to much
the same method as the Sixth Form. Periodic re-
views were an integral part of his system, and each
form passed under his hands at least once a term.
The reports were duly recorded in a Black-Book
which was kept in the masters' library. I remember
well the first time that I figured in it. I was as in-
dignant as Cassius at finding " all my faults observed,
set in a note-book, learnt and conned by rote to cast
into my teeth," and tendered my resignation. The
Doctor bid me sheath my dagger, and referred me
back to the first report of his Sixth Form master,
" now my best teacher, then a worse one than you."
He had the art of soothing ruffled feelings, and,
though he was a master of jeers and flouts and gibes,
he soon repented of having uttered them, and was
not happy till he was reconciled with his adversary
of the moment.
An irritable, nervous, highly-strung temperament,
a nimble, versatile, discursive intellect, " a fiery soul
which, working out its way, fretted the pigmy body
to decay," busy indeed, yet ever seeming busier than
he was, never resting himself, and never letting
others rest, Dr Rutty put into his ten years'
work at Gilsbury the concentrated energy of a
lifetime of ten ordinary masters. His end (at
Gilsbury, I mean) was sudden. One Christmas
term he had left before the end, his doctor order-
302
Head-masters I Have Known.
ing him two clear months of rest. The announce-
ment that the Governors of the Grey Friars had
appointed Dr Rutty to their vacant Mastership
startled us all on Christmas Day. The post was
honourable but not lucrative, and Dr Rutty was
a man with large outgoings. It was a sinecure,
and Dr Rutty might die but he could not be
idle. By degrees the anomaly explained itself.
First, Dr Rutty was advertised as Editor of the
Public School Primer series; shortly after, he
figured as Chairman of the Scholastic Colonization
Society. He examined for the London University ;
he lectured for the University Extension ; he edited
the Sunday Novelist. He rarely visited Gilsbury,
and I had lost sight of him for years. The renewal
of our acquaintance was somewhat strange. I had
submitted to Messrs Oldbury, the eminent firm of
publishers, my maiden literary effort, a translation of
the Beowulf into Homeric verse. To my disgust
the work was declined with thanks. On my pressing
them to reconsider their judgment, they forwarded
me the opinion of a gentleman " whose name, if we
were at liberty to mention it, would guarantee the
soundness of the criticism." Le style c'est Fhomme,
there was no mistaking Dr Rutty. I thought of
his first review of me in the Black-Book.
33
C. S. CALVERLEY. 1
T T is now nearly eight-and-thirty years since I made
the acquaintance of C. S. Blayds in the Upper
Shell at Harrow. Short, very thick-set, with a round
face and a jolly smile always on it, and with a
bountiful crop of curly brown hair, as strong and
active in body as in mind. His nickname was
" Bull," and very much he reminded me of a " Scotch
polled." I do not remember that he ever dis-
tinguished himself much at cricket, or football, or
rackets.
He was good-natured to a fault; ready, for in-
stance, to do a copy of verses for any friend. His
hand was once detected in a curious way. A boy
showed up a pentameter, " Namque Deus veniam, tu
modo posse, dabit." The master, who had his wits
about him, remarked : " I think I can translate the
line, though you cannot. Blayds dictated to you
' posce,' and you wrote down ' posse.' "
Though never caring much for school-games, he
was a remarkable jumper for his height, and un-
equalled for any feat that required pluck and in-
trepidity. One of his leaps in particular is among
the traditions of the school. The court-yard of the
Old School is bounded by a wall some four feet high,
with a drop of fifteen feet the other side, into the
1 Journal of Education, April 1884.
34
C. S. Calverley.
" milling ground," a turf plot, where fights from time
immemorial have taken place. Someone had dared
Blayds to this leap, and he took it with his hands in
his pockets. He was not a " swat," and yet won his
way to the top of the school, and carried off the
lion's share of school-prizes from competitors like
H. M. Butler and F. V. Hawkins. In our days
most of the energy of the Sixth was devoted to
winning these Governors' prizes, given for Latin,
Greek, and English composition, which were recited
on Speech Day, and a boy's place in examination
was thought of minor account. I may be prejudiced,
but I doubt whether Blayds' Latin composition has
ever been surpassed by a boy at school. I must
give one short specimen, the conclusion of his prize
hexameters on " Mare Mediterraneum." It was of
these, I believe, that Vaughan remarked that it was
impossible to alter anything in Blayds' verses ; they
were pure Virgil.
Volvere, caeruleis fundoque carentibus undis !
Volvere, regna virum tua litora, regna, quibus nil,
Te praeter, superesse aetas dedit. O ubi Persis
Assyriaeque vetus sedes ? ubi Graecia, et ingens
Gloria Romulidum ? Sopor urget ferreus omnes,
Ornnes deperiere. Manes immobilis, idem,
Tu vitreis immensus aquis, nescisque reverti
Ponte ! tot humanos quamquam miscerier aestus
Vidisti, tot sceptra retro, tot proelia ferri.
Nullae in fronte minae ; liquido sed molle susurro
Labere qualis eras primi sub origine mundi,
Qualis in aeternum labere volubilis aevum.
Those were the days when a boy, gifted with that
almost intuitive power of grasping and appropriating
the genius of a language what, in a word, the
u 35
Character Sketches.
Germans call " Sprachgefuhl," might carry all before
him at school, and afterwards in the Classical Tripos
at Cambridge. All this is changed, and no school-
boy now could possibly win a first in the Tripos if
he went in on leaving school, as Blayds certainly
would. At Harrow, his reading, other than classical,
was, I fancy, confined to novels. For the three
years that I was in the Sixth, under Dr Vaughan, I
never remember doing a single lesson in any subject
but classics. Once, however, a holiday-task was set
in Russell's " Modern Europe." Blayds, of course,
had not looked at it ; but he snatched up a book
while we were waiting for the Doctor's entry, and
glanced at the first few pages. When his turn came,
question after question was unanswered, till by a
dt'ia, r\)"xj] the Doctor asked : " And what, Blayds,
were the amusements of the Ostrogoths in those
days?" To which Blayds rolled out, with the
proper sing-song : " They hunted the bear on the
voluptuous parterre, the trim garden, and expensive
pleasure-ground, where effeminacy was wont to
saunter, or indolence to loll." The sentence, re-
produced with verbal exactitude, was received with
a burst of laughter, which not even the Doctor's
presence could suppress, and Blayds sat down,
whispering, " Sic me servavit Apollo."
In the examination for the Balliol Scholarship,
which he gained from Harrow, he had a curious
piece of good luck. The passage for Latin hexa-
meters had been set to the Sixth only a fortnight
before. Blayds' short Oxford career may perhaps
be best summed up in the two epigrams he com-
306
C. S. Calverley.
posed on himself, the first of which, though the less
witty, was alas the truer :
" O scholar running fast to seed,
O freshman redolent of weed,
This moral in your meerschaum put ;
The sharpest Blayds will soonest cut."
" Your wit is tolerable, but
The point you understand ill
For, though the Dons want Blayds to cut,
They cannot find a handle."
Poor Blayds ! I was playing billiards with him at
Rockall's, in Broad Street, the evening before he was
"sent down." It happened in this wise. He was
" gated " for some misdemeanour, but took no notice
of " Tom," or of nine o'clock. I expostulated, but
he said it didn't matter. He could easily elude the
porter by getting over the wall from Trinity, as he
had often done before. This he did, climbing a big
tree in the Trinity entrance with the agility of a cat ;
but boots leave footprints on borders, and the Balliol
gardener conferred with the Balliol porter, who
reported that he had pricked Mr Blayds as having
gone out, but not as having come in. Upon this a
pair of my friend's boots were fetched, and these,
alas ! corresponded precisely with the garden foot-
marks. So a Common Room was held, and the
" handle " was at last forthcoming. I fancy they
must have afterwards very much regretted what
they had done, for they gave him a " bene
discessit," and with this he went to Christ's
College, Cambridge, under the name of Calverley,
which his father assumed at that time.
37
Character Sketches.
Most of Blayds' Harrow contemporaries who
went to Cambridge entered at Trinity, and there
was in those days but little communication between
Trinity and Christ's. At Christ's he was cock of the
roost, and a true Bohemian, he liked to take his ease
in his inn, and had a horror of general society.
Only some admirable skit like his Tripos verses,
some practical joke worthy of Theodore Hook, or
some brilliant success like the Craven Scholarship,
kept his name alive with Harrow men. Some of
the stories told of him, as that, when a tutor, he
used to lecture in bed, with churchwardens and
pewters provided for his class, are doubtless
mythical ; but for one or two I can vouch.
Round the quad, of Christ's there are remarkably
tall iron railings, particularly tempting for a high
jumper like Calverley. One day, the Master, Dr
Cartmell, sent for him, and asked : " How is it,
Mr Calverley, that I never look out of my study-
windows but I see you jumping over the railings
on to the grass-plot?" "Well, Master," replied
Calverley, " it's a remarkable thing, but I've noticed
that I never jump over the railings but I see you
looking out of your study- windows." There was a
young exquisite at Christ's, of the name of Stott
(aesthetes had not yet been invented). Calverley
made a bet that he would make Stott carry a
cabbage, between two and four, down King's
Parade. Inviting the unsuspecting Stott to take
a stroll, he led him through the market-place,
stopped at a stall and bought his cabbage, the
biggest he could find, and tucking it under his
308
C. S. Calverley.
arm proceeded to the Parade. Stott was too polite
to protest, and accompanied him with passive
reluctance. Once there, Calverley pulled out a
pipe and tried to light a match ; then, after repeated
failures, he begged Stott to hold his cabbage for one
instant till his pipe was alight. The cabbage once
transferred the rest of the task was easy, and the
end of the Parade was reached before his pipe got
lit and the cabbage restored to its owner.
With Cambridge my recollections of Calverley
cease. The author of " Fly Leaves " is a public
character, and full, but not excessive justice has
been dealt to him in the Spectator and the Pall
Mall, The last time I saw him he was sauntering
down Oxford Street, pipe in mouth, and an old
Christ's straw on head, bound for the Harrow and
Eton Match at Lords.
His love for Harrow was strong and constant.
In the last letter I received from him he wrote :
" I and my eldest boy went to see him [a nephew]
and the old place, some little time ago, and I
naturally looked into my old room (tenanted now,
as you tell me, by Lord Garlics' brother), and
equally naturally shut my son up in the bed [beds
were made to turn up in the day-time] to show him
the principle. My nephew was simply aghast at the
liberty I had taken with a Sixth Form boy's bed. I
regard, and shall always regard, that room as my
room, and that bed as my bed, all other claimants
to the same, or either of them, being pretenders or
impostors."
309
THE NEW OLD MAID. 1
" Ich bin zu alt um nur zu spielen,
Zu jung um ohne Wunsch zu sein."
Old Maid of the present day, born in the
forties of this century, is a strong contrast
with the Old Maid of times past, before she
bethought herself of overtaking the New Learning
by the aid of the new pair of seven-leagued boots,
Liberty and Leisure, now occasionally offered her.
And if these boots creak somewhat, it is only what
must be expected, and the creaking will soon wear off.
The most important function of the old Old Maid
was to be an aunt. Of her own free will, and with
a mind quite devoid of floating visions of becoming
a lady doctor, a lady nurse, or a lady decorator, she
carried out faithfully the recommendations of Riehl.
He says, " If a woman who is comfortably off is
alone in the world, then she ought first of all to look
round, whether, among her kin, there is any family
into which she can enter and co-operate in its labours,
in the character of ' Old Aunty.' " Probably most
middle-aged people remember a kind Aunty of their
youth (like the Aunt Penelope of Mrs Ewing's
charming tale called " The Land of Lost Toys "),
who supplied her nephews with half-crowns and
1 Journal of Education, February 1887.
310
The New Old Maid.
good advice, and her nieces with silver thimbles and
shell needle-books. She preferred the girls to the
boys, being in this the opposite of the grandmother,
who always leant to the boys. She expanded freely
with any sympathetic stranger into statistics of her
nieces' ages, accomplishments, complexions, and
extraordinary ability ; but the kindly lady felt most
pride in the young people's long eyelashes and short
upper lips. It must be owned that the old Old Maid
had a great love of show, of bright colours, jewellery,
bugles, and flounces ; she had a pleasure in dand-
ling arm-aching babies, and buying them their first
fairy stories ; for she was perfectly innocent of any
wish to inform their minds betimes with useful know-
ledge. She had a nice appreciation of creams and
custards, and the size of strawberries, rather than any
aesthetic admiration of flowers. Her reading was
entirely narrative and anecdotal, and her writing was
angular and infrequent. Her talk was entirely
personal. When she played whist, she picked up
her tricks with an alacrity which argued that she had
not picked up very many valuables in life. She dis-
liked solitude, and never refused a social offer of any
kind. When she went to a place of public entertain-
ment, she outdid the young people in her powers of
endurance, and was always the last to wish to come
home. She resisted the setting-in of old age as long
as possible, and liked trite compliments and well-
worn jokes. Nothing at all out of the common, or
exquisite, was wished for by her, but she was satisfied
with the ordinary joys and jars of her family, and
was fond of moralising over, and if possible being
Character Sketches.
consulted in, small domestic details ; and especially
made efforts to be included in the conversation,
though when it became too abstruse she was wont
to take a nap in public. She liked to be asked to
mend breakages or strike cuttings. Her small
transactions were generally of a frugal character.
She kept up a communication with far-off cousins
in her own generation, who would not have written
to, or, perhaps, were not friendly with, the kin
with whom she was resident. Her very maiden
name was a last link to those ancestral families who
had died out for want of male offspring, a name only
to be found otherwise on tombstones, or on faded
envelopes preserved in old trunks. " There be they
that have left a name behind them, that their praises
might be reported ; and some there be which have
no memorial, who are perished as though they had
never been born." The Old Aunty used to discourse
chiefly of these latter, who were very numerous among
her antecedents. She did not flinch from frequent
reference to plebeian streaks in her ancestry. To be
sure, among her forefathers, she could only boast of
a Bishop and the Head-master of a great public
school (with engraved portraits and biographies) ; but
she really took far more interest in the " Equestrian,"
a word which euphemistically designated the livery-
stableman who had been grandfather to the above-
mentioned celebrities.
Now the old Old Maid was apt to differ from married
women by a minus ; but the new Old Maid is wont
to differ by a plus. This puts the latter into an
entirely different position, and perhaps accounts for
312
The New Old Maid.
her decidedly cool treatment of other women, outside
her chosen friends. Indeed, occasionally it would not
be too hard to say of the new Old Maid, " Femina
feminse lupa est." Her mental acquirements are often
superior to those of her married sisters, and as their
generally superior bodily charms are greatly levelled
and neutralised though not altogether obliterated
by age, she is in a sufficiently strong position to be a
rival, a position to which the old Old Maid could
never aspire. Hence the greater amiability of the
latter. The new Old Maid is often an obscure clever
person, with sufficient acuteness of intellect to feel that
she is " out of it." The drama of life is carried on
without her assistance, and she secretly resents this.
Her position with regard to her family is markedly
different from that of the old Old Maid ; she does
not the least admire her nephews and nieces. She
has a general feeling against their home training, and
thinks it very inferior to what she could give herself ;
an opinion which is often quite true. She is kind
and trustworthy when put in charge of youngsters,
but, as she likes to act independently, and is not the
final authority with regard to the children, she is not
very anxious to come forward and officiate. When
she does, she markedly prefers here again in oppo-
sition to the old Old Maid the boys to the girls,
especially when the latter are grown up. If she has
a profession, the new Old Maid often lives with a
devoted lady friend who is a weak imitation of a wife
to her. She always chooses, for the holder of this
post, some one who is not a blood relation. She is
guided more by feelings of duty than of love towards
Character Sketches.
her kin, who rarely seem to have a power of fully
satisfying her emotions, as they apparently satisfied
those of the old Old Maid. Of course she is thrown
into various positions of trust, and her moral char-
acter is remarkably high and trustworthy, even seri-
ous. She may be a head-mistress of a private ladies'
school, with that curious neatness and propriety of
mind, too often sliding into sterility and routine,
which is common among those who have the charge
of young people in batches ; or a lady doctor, who
has a store of anecdotes as prolific as any university
man's, and mostly drawn too from fellow-creatures'
casualties ; or a lady decorator, who will emblazon
you a drawing-room with sun-flowers or water-lilies
of a Brobdignagian size, with charges to match who
will assure you that your cherished bric-a-brac and all
your wedding presents are quite out of harmony with
the principles of true art ; or a lady nurse or hospi-
tal superintendent, whose family consult her in all
their ailments, though she cannot ever attend them
at a crisis owing to her professional engagements, but
will send them instead an excellently qualified nurse ;
or a well-read lady with literary instincts, who com-
ments and criticises verbally, but does no original
writing she reads perhaps two or three times a
week, with a chosen young woman, say, modern
languages or an old classic, and the chosen disciple
rewards her perhaps with a speech of the kind one
would rather have left unsaid, as, "I am so glad that
you have not taken to writing second-rate books."
Then there are the women on School Boards and
the lady Poor-Law Guardians, who do social micro-
3M
The New Old Maid.
scopic work of an unobtrusive kind, which, if there
is no woman on the board, goes undone because
no man could do it to the great detriment of the
infants, mistresses, female pupil-teachers, etc. These
ladies exert themselves with far less sentiment,
and in a much more unemotional spirit, than
Lady Bountifuls of yore, and are less viewy and
dictatorial.
The new Old Maid is no stay-at-home. She
travels much abroad, speaks French and German
fluently, knows who's who, reads her newspaper and
the last new book which is talked about ; has heard
the fashionable preacher in vogue, been to the Gros-
venor and Academy, and has compact views on most
topics of a social, literary, or artistic nature ; occa-
sionally she adds to her subjects science, philosophy,
and politics. She flocks to drawing-room meetings,
also to Browning societies and committees innu-
merable ; tennis parties, too, she affects, but more
fitfully. She likes to be known as busy, and is
generally engaged of an afternoon, if you desire
to secure her services without due notice.
Goethe's injunctions, endorsed by Riehl, that she
should be always " coming and going, always fetch-
ing and carrying," on behalf of her family ; that her
self-abnegation should reach such a pitch that " the
hours of the night are like the hours of the day to
her " all this she finds most distasteful.
The new Old Maid has a cheerful, but seldom
joyous or beaming expression, which absence of
elation may be explained by a remark of Chamfort
" La froide raison ne rend point heureux. . . . Les
Character Sketches.
passions font vivre I'homme ; la sagesse le fait seule-
ment durer."
Agnosticism, which is far more dangerous to the
emotions than to the intellect, has laid its cold finger
on the new Old Maid with shrivelling effect Whereas
she was brought up in the faith of the " Pilgrim "
and " Uncle Tom," she now oftener reads that
1 La genuflexion du jonc au marecage
N'est pas plus vaine, au fond du bois vague et jauni,
Que les saluts que fait un homme a 1'infini."
She finds it hard to keep her ideas fixed in the
old optimistic framework, for she has no induce-
ments to soften, sophisticate, or allegorise her views
for the sake of others, as her married sisters have
for the sake of their young children. She is not in
that intimate contact with the great facts of life
which forces her into immediate action, and she has,
perhaps, only too much time for self-scrutiny and
hair-splitting. So she mournfully sums up, with the
Pessimist,
' ' There is but one good rest,
Whose head is pillowed upon Truth's pure breast."
Nevertheless, she finds Truth's pure breast an ex-
posed and chilly position a very hard pillow. She
would fain agree with Victor Hugo,
' ' O vivants, vous serez dans le vrai si vous n'etes
Que ce que les vivants d'avant vous ont etc."
Or with Schelling, "La forme artistique dtant la
plus parfaite expression de la ve'rite', la philosophic
elle-meme doit retourner a la poe"sie et au mythe."
316
The New Old Maid.
But her feelings of rectitude do not allow of her
tampering with her intellect, and the very fact of a
thing being pleasant makes it suspicious to her
apprehensive and scrupulous mind.
The love of being a martyr sometimes an un-
necessary one is a very strong feeling in woman-
kind. But, as society is now constituted, it rarely
answers for a woman to be a martyr for anything
but for her family. Now the new Old Maid has
shaken off the incubus of her family, clearly discern-
ing that it handicaps her in her struggles towards the
Higher Life, and therefore she has no delightful
chance of martyrdom left to her. But let her duly
weigh the seriousness of thus burning her ships.
Alas!
" Tout esprit n'est pas compose d'une etoffe,
Qui se trouve taillee a faire une philosophe."
The frequent descent of numerous apparently-
flourishing and well-placed new Old Maids from
their enviable, and often honourable, appointments,
to the obscure and sheltered vale of matrimony,
shows how supremely powerful still is the attraction
to women of their inherited position.
The future of society depends on whether this
attraction will grow weaker or not. Unless it does,
the true soil of their minds which, in spite of all
the fuss and stir of the modern girl's education, has
hardly even been scratched as yet will never
become apparent, nor what will grow in it ever be
ascertained. For, as regards women, family life and
intellectual life (except under very rare circumstances,
Character Sketches.
which must always be exceptional) tend hopelessly
to incessant antagonism. If attempted vigorously
together, health generally gives way, arid the organ-
ism sinks under the double weight, as in the case of
Miss Ellen Watson, the promising young mathemati-
cian, whose genius the Bishop of Carlisle rates so
highly that he pairs her off against Professor Clifford
to disprove Comte's three stages.
When a man and woman, both of capacity, com-
bine in housekeeping together, on the usual small
means, to lead an intellectual life, the woman invari-
ably gives more than she gets, and weakens herself,
by the process, into an inarticulate subordinate, as
in the case of Wordsworth and his sister Dorothy.
Therefore, a liberal competence is far more essential
to a new Old Maid than to a man ; but it almost
needs ill-health in early life which should improve
afterwards to ward off the inevitable pernicious
publicity, crowd of inferiors and frivolous acquaint-
ances, which are the fatal concomitants of talent and
means in a woman, and which prohibit the acquire-
ment by her of any true inward seriousness. Thus,
other things being favourable, the new Old Maid, at
the onset of her career, is generally either belittled
by economical parings, or stifled by the fumes of
riches. She can, alas, never have a wife ! Only a
supreme amount of self-reliance in youth once a
century, perhaps can withstand these blights. All
this may be a comfort to those persons who think
that we are speeding along at a break-neck pace
towards organic and inevitable change in the fabric
of women's lives and destinies, because they see a
The New Old Maid.
few girls' names in the university class-lists, or here
and there in a newspaper an appointment of a woman
to some smalt professorship of political economy, etc.
It may be a comfort to their shattered nerves to know
that such is not the case, but rather this, Innom-
brables rires des mers, vous netes rien aupres des riots
de reves entasses que Fhumanite traversera avant
d'arriver a quelque chose qui ressemble a la raison."
These persons, for a long time to come, may feel a
safe contempt for Armande with Moliere, and for
Mary Bennet with Miss Austen, on the common-
sense ground of the comfortably small effects of
women's erudition, compared with the large effects
of their marrying ; or, if good company of later date
is preferred, two canons and a physician, heads of the
clerical and medical professions, will be happy to
show how the family not the individual is the
unit to be cherished. Canon Liddon at St Paul's
Cathedral, Canon Westcott in Westminster Abbey,
and Dr Withers-Moore as President of the British
Medical Association at Brighton, have each recently
pleaded for the family ; and the latter stoutly opposes
the higher education of women, on the ground that
it either incapacitates or spoils her for becoming a
mother. This is the Race v. the Individual with a
vengeance, indeed ! There is a refreshing, outspoken
bluntness among the doctors which we prefer to the
more guarded expressions (but just as despotic mean-
ing) of the clergy.
Thus Religion and Science, generally not too
friendly to each other, here join with one accord to
extinguish the feeble flickering spark of the new Old
Character Sketches.
Maid's higher life, and to whittle her intellect down
to the tenuity of Frau Wilhelmina's in " Die Familie
Buchholz," that Dutch picture of the Eivig Weibliche,
which, in its unadulterated materiality and prosaic-
ness, shows what the apotheosis of the Family, and
the total abstraction of Transcendentalism, bring
us to.
The disabilities and defects of woman are so
glaring, and so frequently dwelt upon in periodical
literature, that her few points of superior strength,
physical, moral, and intellectual, compared with
man's, have been overlooked. We will take them in
order.
i . Physical. (a) Numerical preponderance at
maturity (in spite of the percentage of male births
being slightly in excess of female births, an advan-
tage neutralised in adults by the greater precarious-
ness of boys' rearing than girls'). Like a large
family, woman will assert herself by mere force of
numbers, and cannot, without great inconvenience,
or even damage to her neighbours, be left without a
metier expressly prepared for her.
(ft) Superior vitality at both ends of life ; for, strange
as it may seem, and even very undesirable, it is a fact,
that more boys and girls are still-born. Her superior
longevity is attested by the insurance companies.
(f) Less liability to disease and accident in child-
hood. Take one's private acquaintances who have
lost young children under ten, and any prolific
dynasty. Out of 18 such families, from two sources,
we find 119 children, 6 1 boys and 5 8 girls, of whom
22 boys under ten died to only 8 girls. This pro-
320
The New Old Maid.
portion is probably excessive, but the scale dips
always on the same side the boys'.
2. Moral. Superior economy and superior self-
denying powers.
3. Intellectual. This is a difficult point to come
to any conclusion about, and at present must be
purely conjectural. We should say that her greater
tenacity to past impressions points to an advantage
for the study of psychology. To use Goncourt's
words, "Son present souffre toujours un peu du
souvenir ou de 1'espdrance." Those who have heard
various women speak in public, must have been
struck with their singular talent for oratory. Mill, in
his "Subjection," has noticed woman's striking fail-
ure hitherto in the fine arts. We are inclined to
think this owing to the excessive sense of propriety
early inculcated on her, to weaker passions, and,
above all, to cheap and gregarious training and
absence of solitude in youth. (There is plenty of
solitude for her in age.)
If these disadvantages are ever swept away, and
freedom is granted her, which, as Mill observes,
" after the primary necessities of food and raiment,
is the first and strongest want of human nature," the
new Old Maid of the future will reap the rich inheri-
tance which the sighs and tears of her less fortunate
sisters have heaped up for her.
321
AN EPISODE. 1
BY J. W. LONGSDON.
T T is now almost a year since the somewhat tragic
death of my friend George Webb. Perhaps he
had not much pluck, but then schoolmastering does
take the nerve out of a man and unfit him for facing
the world in any other capacity. Anyway, I would
like to tell his story, so far as I know it, and, as to
his pluck, you may judge for yourself.
I remember so well it was early in the Summer
term, one Monday morning, when I had stayed in
the " Lab." to get ready some experiments for the
afternoon, that Webb came into me. He was always
an excitable man, and on this occasion was more
than usually moved. He waved a letter in his hand,
and almost shouted : " Dismissed for breach of con-
tract."
More in dismay than surprise I took the chiefs
letter which he held out to me, and I read it through.
It was rather long, and when I had finished all I
could say was (the recollection makes me smile) :
" Thank the Gods, he has done something at last."
This reminiscence of " Hedda Gabler " in allusion to
the chiefs terribly troublesome habit of vacillation in
school matters was but a poor consolation to my
1 Journal of Education, November 1894.
322
An Episode.
angry colleague. My next thought was : " How
long before my own turn comes ? " We were both
in the same boat in this matter, and Webb felt it
rather hard that the blow should fall on him alone.
But he exaggerated. The chiefs letter could not
fairly be described as a dismissal, although within
five minutes of receiving it Webb had written off a
formal resignation of his post.
To explain how all this came about, I must tell
you what I know of Webb's life. In a quiet country
parsonage he had been brought up in all the severe
gentleness of the lingering nineteenth-century Puri-
tanism. Duty was the keynote of his life. " Consci-
entious " was the word his friends used in describing
him. This seriousness had by no means been a
passing phase. It had clung to him at Cambridge,
where he became for a time a devout and enthusiastic
Ritualist. This was the climax of his development
on orthodox lines. A chance question put to his
tutor one day, chiefly with an idea of teasing the
man, seemed to him to mark a definite turning point
in his religious life, trivial though the question had
been. He asked : " How do we, the Church of
England, know that our ritual is right, more correct,
for instance, than that of the Wesleyans ? " The
weakness of the reply set him thinking. As a cure
for subsequent doubts, the same tutor, who was also
a friend of Webb's, advised Liddon's "Bampton
Lectures" and a more rigid attention to the Daily
Offices. " Pray for faith " was his repeated advice.
Webb prayed, and his faith in dogma grew weaker.
About six months later Webb landed in New York
323
Character Sketches.
after a slow journey on a sailing ship. He found, to
his sorrow, that, in spite of all efforts in a contrary
direction, he must practically give up his belief in
the essential Christian doctrines. This was no easy
time to him. The same earnestness of character
which had made him a conscientious believer made
his Sturm und Drang period all the more hard to
him. For it was some time before he won his way
to his new faith. He remained in America two
years not sooner could he face a return to the
old associations.
From a boy he had meant to be a schoolmaster,
and had never faltered in his enthusiasm for the
work of teaching. To aid the shaping of plastic
minds and developing tastes, to live ever amid the
hopeful promise of young life, had seemed to him
the noblest career the world has to offer. But now,
of course, conscientious difficulties crowded upon
him again. Could he with his present views become
a schoolmaster ? He often talked over with me the
way he silenced his scruples at this time. " I
believe," he used to say, " in religion, I believe that
without faith life is valueless. The schoolmaster
must consider the spiritual as well as the mental side
of boy-nature. School chapel, and all that the term
connotes, stands for the highest spiritual aspiration
for religion to the average schoolboy. To cut one-
self off from this is to declare to the boys that one
has no faith in and no sympathy with their efforts
after a higher life." " And this," said Webb, " I
could not bring myself to do."
Such were his ideas when he joined the North-
324
An Episode.
country school where I was science master. I, a
hard practical man of science, believing in nothing
I could not see, was strangely drawn to the eager
enthusiast, whose whole soul was in what we com-
monly dubbed " shop," and who, in quite a short
time, put new life into our formal routine. And
it is to him I owe the discovery that science, as
I then understood it, does not satisfy the higher
aspirations of the soul, as Webb still liked to say.
We had soon struck up something more than an
acquaintance, and before a year passed had become
really intimate and close friends. But I was always
cooler than he. I did not run my head against stone
walls, as my poor friend Webb delighted to do, and
so I escaped much of the obloquy that fell to his
share.
Well, about a year before the time of which I am
speaking, in the summer holidays, Webb and I were
together in Norway. He had long worried over one
particular point. And that was about remaining a
communicant, " sharing the best effort of the boys
after the spiritual life," as he used to put it. How
was the advantage of this to be set against the
undoubted bad effect on the character of any sort of
hypocrisy, however it might seem to be justified, and
however skilfully it might be concealed ? Could a
hypocrite ever exercise a good influence in the school,
or was it indeed hypocrisy to conform to a religion
which was real enough to some boys, and which was
perhaps for the present a sufficient outward expres-
sion of their spiritual life ? Such were the questions
we discussed together in the quiet evenings after our
325
Character Sketches.
fishing. The immediate result was a letter from
Webb to the headmaster, explaining that he could no
longer continue to be a communicant, and offering
as a natural consequence to resign his post. I, by
the bye, had never been a communicant, but to a
science master much is forgiven.
A reply which we both awaited with anxiety,
quickly came. The chief showed himself a warm-
hearted and generous friend, and, as we thought, a
man of sound wisdom. He begged Webb to stay
on, and put off further discussion of the matter till we
met.
I shall not easily forget the interview we had next
term, we two and the chief. He was all kindness,
and rarely, I expect, has there been fuller confidence
between headmaster and assistant than was shown on
this occasion. I ought to say that Webb was a cap-
able master, and, beyond mere teaching, his influence
in the school was undoubtedly good. But the chief
not only wanted to keep him : he was genuinely
shocked and grieved that a man whom he respected
could hold such views. For, in spite of efforts of
conciliation on both sides, it was soon obvious that
discussion was useless. Webb's point of view was so
different from his, so needlessly perverse, as he
thought. Webb could get no farther than this :
" You tell me," said he, " that God has given me
intelligence. Well, I exercise that intelligence as well
as I can, but it does not give me what you under-
stand by Faith." Again came the answer he had
heard so often before. " Be regular in your religious
observances, pray for Faith, and it will come." To
326
An Episode.
Webb this seemed rank hypocrisy, and only meant
that he was to gradually drug his conscience in order
to convince himself against his will that he believed
what in his inmost soul he knew he could never
believe again. Such a process continued would
result in the destruction of all honesty, and, con-
sequently, of all influence. We left the headmaster's
study after making a definite compact. We agreed
that we would be fairly regular in school chapel, and
for the rest would keep quiet.
It was foolish to believe such a compromise pos-
sible. Had it been possible it would have implied
indifference on the part of both of us ; and Webb, as .
I have said, was violent in his hatred of cant, and I,
too, had a way of saying what I thought. The iron
had entered deeply into Webb's soul, and he was,
when stirred, bitter with a bitterness his opponents
did not forgive. The compromise was impossible,
but it had lasted outwardly for two-and-a-half terms
until, indeed, this letter from the headmaster, in
which he said with much sorrow that Webb's opinions
hostile to the Church were the common property of
the school, and it was clear that Webb could not con-
tinue to work in the school.
This was what my friend meant by his exclama-
tion, " Dismissed for breach of contract."
It was a hard blow for him, and made all the harder
by circumstances. Ever since Christmas he had felt
the compromise to be unworkable, and had tried in
several ways to hear of vacancies in other schools.
But where there was a vacancy and correspondence
ensued, it always ended by some question from the
327
Character Sketches.
headmaster as to taking Orders, or preparing for Con-
firmation, and the like. These questions provoked
a hot reply, and the correspondence ceased. Thus
it seemed that all opportunity of schoolwork was now
lost to him. But after his first outburst of indigna-
tion, he seemed to settle down to the usual routine
with no change except that he became quieter and
more concentrated.
With me it was otherwise. My anger at circum-
stances was perhaps all the keener, because I could
not fairly blame the headmaster's action. I felt as
Webb did, that neither of us could stay and still
show the loyalty to the school and to the chief with-
out which no real work could be done. But I soon
found someone else to bear the brunt of my anger.
There was an old-established master some fifteen
years senior to me, who had outlived two head-
masters, and had come to look upon himself as
the virtual head and real authority in the place.
His nickname of " Tub " was to boys in the school,
as to many generations of old boys, a by-word for
hypocrite. He was lazy and cruel. Unluckily for
Webb, soon after he came, he had, with a certain
fiery and righteous indignation, taken Tub severely
to task in common-room, both for his laziness and
his bullying. Tub never forgave this, though he
ceased his hectoring ways in Webb's presence at
least. His revenge was characteristic. He collected
evidence, helped by a junior master, like himself, in
Orders; and, feeling that any weapon is justified
against a disbeliever, had cross - questioned boys,
twisted innocent statements, exaggerated others, put
328
An Episode.
a false construction on everything, and in a serious
letter had laid the results of his inquiry before the
headmaster, and had appealed to him to do his duty
as a Christian.
Webb, I am thankful to say, never knew all this.
His resignation was kept quiet, and Tub did not
have the satisfaction of knowing that his schemes
had succeeded. The little storm calmed down, and
things went on as before to outward seeming.
But Webb had given up all hope of getting a similar
post. All that he cared for in life was to be taken
from him. He was passionately fond of teaching.
The boys, the school, these were his life. He had
no special taste, and was perhaps not young enough,
to find fresh means of earning a livelihood. Perhaps,
too, a certain innate tinge of morbidity in his tem-
perament prevented him from taking a more cheerful
view of the future.
We spent our holidays together, as usual, in
Norway. Webb tried to be cheerful, and quietly
put off all my attempts to discuss his future plans.
But, from certain hints he let drop, I was not
altogether unprepared for the sequel.
One day he refused to come fishing, saying he
had some letters to write. I left him, thinking
little of his desire to be alone, and went off to
my fishing. When I returned to the inn I found
Webb had gone out for a walk. Well, perhaps you
can guess the rest. Some hours later we recovered
his body from the river.
329
Poetiy.
THE HAMMERERS' STRIKE
(Franois CoppeVs Greve des Forgerons.)
BY F. STORR.
TV/I" INE, sirs, is no long story simply this,
The hammerers, one and all, had gone on
strike
No crime in that. The winter was main hard ;
Our street, in short, had, for that bout at least,
Got tired of starving. So one Saturday,
Our pay-night, someone hitched an arm in mine
And drew me to the wineshop, where I found
The old hands no, you'll not learn their names
from me.
They cried, "We're bashful like, but you've more
pluck.
More pay, or not a stroke more work 's the word !
They're bleeding us that's what we ought to say
It's our last chance, and we've elected you
Spokesman, by right of seniority,
To go and give the master a mild hint
Our wretched wages must be raised to-morrow,
Or else each morrow will be holiday.
Are you our man, John ? "
" Yes," said I, " of course,
I must do all that's like to help us all."
1 Journal of Education, December 1887.
333
Poetry.
My lord, I never raised a barricade
An old man that loves peace, and has small faith
In those black-coated gentlemen who bid
The blouses blaze away. Yet it seemed hard
To say them nay. I took the job and went.
He was at dinner, but they showed me up.
I told him of our straits and all the rest
Rents raised and bread gone up, till we could bear
The strain no longer ; figured out at length
His gains and our gains, by the balance proved
(Quite civilly) that he could well afford
To raise our pay. He heard me calmly out,
Cracking the filberts, and when I had done :
" You are an honest fellow, John, and those
Who pushed you forward played a clever game.
For you, John, I shall always have a place ;
But let me tell you this, the terms you ask
Are downright robbery, and I close the works
To-morrow. They're a pack of lazy hounds,
Your demagogues, and you may tell them so
From me ; that's all." I answered, " Very well, sir,"
And took my leave, sadly to carry back
His answer, as I'd promised, to my friends.
It set them all ablaze ; they ranted, swore
Never again to enter the d d shop,
And I begad, I swore too, like my mates.
That night, I'll warrant, when they got back home,
And threw their few francs on the table down,
Some weren't o'er lively, didn't sleep quite sound
For thinking those poor coins might be the last
They'd see perhaps for many a day, and how
They must get used to starving. As for me,
334
The Hammerers' Strike.
It was a facer I'm no longer young
Nor independent-like. When I got home
I took my two grandchildren on my knee
My daughter died in childbed, and the man
Who married her turned out a ne'er-do-weel
And gazing on those innocent rosy lips,
Soon to be pinched with hunger well, I blushed
For shame that I had sworn to stay at home.
But others were as badly off as I,
And, as we workmen stick to what we swear,
I vowed to do my duty like the rest.
Then my old woman came in from her suds,
Bent double with a pile of dripping clothes.
I told my story, half afraid to tell her,
But she, poor dear, had not the heart to chide,
And never moved or looked up ; then at last,
After a pause it seemed an age "Well, John,
You know that I'm a thrifty wife," she said ;
" I'll do my best, but times are very hard,
And if we've got a fortnight's bread, that's all."
I answered, " It will all come right perhaps."
But in my heart I knew there was no hope,
Save turning traitor, and the mutineers,
To make the strike last longer, would be sure
To keep sharp watch and punish runagates.
And famine came. Oh, sirs, you will believe me,
That never when the pinch was sharpest felt
I could have brought myself to be a thief.
The very thought had made me die of shame.
I make no merit of it ; even one
Whom ruin stares in the face from morn till night
335
Poetry.
Can claim no grace for never giving way
E'en to one guilty thought. I make no boast ;
But when, grown old in honest toil, I saw
My brave wife and my grandchildren, all three
Huddling and shivering round a fireless hearth,
Never, with these as tempters children's cries
And women's tears a live group turned to stone-
Never, I swear upon the Crucified,
Not in my darkest hour, did I conceive
The thought of theft to skulk, to prowl, to grab,
Shoplifter, pilferer ! no, 'twere too vile !
Oh ! if my pride is humbled, if I bend
Before you now a moment's space and weep,
It is because I see them, the loved faces,
Whom I was telling you about just now,
For whose dear sakes I did what I have done.
Well, at the first we made the best of it,
Lived on dry bread and put our things in pawn.
I found it hard. To us, you see, our room
Is like a cage ; we cannot stay indoors.
Look you, I've tried since then what prison's like,
And, 'pon my soul, there is not much to choose ;
And doing nothing in itself 's hard work.
You wouldn't think it till you've had to sit
Perforce with folded arms, and then you find
You love the shop ; its murky atmosphere
Of filings is the air you'd liefest breathe.
After a fortnight we were penniless.
I'd spent the time in tramping like one mad,
On and still on, alone, among the crowd
336
The Hammerers' Strike.
The din of cities soothes and muddles one,
And staves off hunger better than a dram.
But once on coming home, about the end
Of a cold grey December afternoon,
I saw my wife, the children on her lap,
All cowering in a corner ; and I thought,
" 'Tis I am murdering them " ; and when my wife
Said meekly, with a half apology,
" My poor old man, the pawnbroker won't take
The mattress, our last mattress ; it's too old.
Where shall you go for bread now ? " I replied,
" I'll go " ; and, plucking all my courage up,
Determined to be off to work again.
And, though misdoubting my reception much,
Went to the tavern first, where I was sure
To find the leaders. What a sight ! at first
I thought I must be dreaming. There they sat
Boozing, aye, boozing on, while others starved.
God's curse on those who paid their drinking score,
And so prolonged our lingering agony !
Let them hear once again an old man's curse !
As I drew near the topers they looked up
And marked my bloodshot eyes and sunken head,
And partly guessed my purpose ; but, in spite
Of scowling looks, I told them why I'd come
Said, " I'm past sixty, and my wife's the same.
I've two grandchildren left upon my hands,
And in our garret, though we've room enough
The furniture's all sold we have no bread.
A workhouse pallet and the sawbone's knife
Are all a wretch like me can well expect.
But with the wife and bairns it's different,
Y 337
Poetry.
So I propose to go back to the works
Myself alone but first must get your leave,
That none may have a right to slander me.
Look you, my hair is white, my hands are black,
I've been a smith these forty years and more ;
Let me go back to the foundry, all alone.
I tried to beg, but could not. Let my age
Excuse me. One whose wrinkled brow is marked
By constant efforts of the hammer stroke
Cuts but a sorry figure begging alms
With outstretched brawny hands. I stretch these
hands
To beg of you now. Would it seem unfair
The oldest should have leave to yield the first ?
Let me go back to the foundry, me alone.
That's all : now tell me if this angers you."
One rose, came three steps forward from the rest,
And hissed out " Coward ! " Staggering 'neath the
shock,
I 'shivered, blinded by a rush of blood ;
Then looked to see who my insulter was.
Tall, ghastly pale beneath the gaslight's glare,
Debauched, a haunter of low music-halls,
With love-locks o'er his forehead like a girl,
He sneered and fixed his mocking eyes on me,
And all the rest kept silence so profound
That I could hear my heart beat hard and fast.
Then all at once I clasped my forehead, cried,
" Right ! They must die, my wife and little ones ;
I will not go to work. But you, I swear,
You, you shall answer me for that word ' Coward '
338
The Hammerers' Strike.
Well fight it out as we were gentlemen.
When? On the spot. My weapons? I've the
choice ;
By God, no other than the anvil hammer,
Lighter to our arms than the sword or pen.
Our seconds ? You, my mates. Come, make a ring,
And, from the litter where they lie and rust,
A pair of sturdy sledges pick me out.
And you, vile mocker of grey hairs, be quick,
Off with your blouse and shirt and spit in your hand."
Then madly elbowing my way among
The crowd of onlookers, from off a heap
Of rubbish in an angle of the wall,
I chose two hammers, peised them at a glance,
And tossed the better weapon to my foe ;
He still was sneering, but as if in play
He picked it up, and, standing on his guard,
" Come, come, old man," he cried, " don't wax so
hot."
I went straight at him that was my reply.
The villain shrank beneath my honest gaze
As I approached him, swinging round my head
My work-day tool, my weapon for the fight.
No hound that crouches 'neath a master's lash,
And fawns with timid, deprecating eyes,
Had e'er a look so craven, so abashed,
As that tall bully, when he backed and crouched
Beneath the shelter of the pot-house wall.
Too late, alas ! too late. A blood-red veil,
A mist of blood, came down and blotted all
Betwixt me and the terror-stricken wretch ;
And with a blow but one I smashed his skull.
339
Poetry.
It's murder a plain case ; and I've no wish
To quibble like your lawyers, and make out
A duel what was downright murder. No,
I murdered him ; and, as he lay there dead,
His brains out-oozing, all at once I felt
Like one to whom is suddenly revealed
The whole immensity of Cain's remorse.
I stood there, hiding with my hands both eyes ;
And when the others drew around, and laid
Upon me trembling hands, I waved them off
Without a struggle, saying, " Stand aside ;
Let me alone. I doom myself to death."
They understood ; and, taking off my cap,
I passed it round as one collecting alms,
Crying, " For wife and children, my kind friends."
That brought ten francs, which one has handed them ;
And then I went and gave myself in charge.
So here you have a plain and true account,
And need not pay attention overmuch
To what those learned lawyers have to say
About my crime. And if I've troubled you
With these particulars, 'twas but to prove
That sometimes such a heinous deed as mine
Comes from a fatal chain of circumstance.
The little ones are in the workhouse, where
Grief killed my brave old help-mate. So for me,
Whether it's prison, or the galley chain,
Or even pardon, does not matter much ;
But if 'tis death, I'll thank you heartily.
340
TERENCE MACRAN A HEDGE SCHOOL
STUDY. 1
BY JANE BARLOW.
IV /f USHA, Mrs Dinneen ! How's yourself, ma'am,
this long time ? I'm finely, thank God,
Barrin' whiles just a touch of the cramp. I'd a right
to not sit on the sod ?
But this win's dhried the wet, an' the cowld of the
air's warm enough in the sun,
So I thought I'd wait here on the bank till the school-
hour widin there is done ;
For you see it's the first day at all me poor Mick's
little Katty's went in
She'll be five come next May, and her granny'd a
notion 'twas time she'd begin.
But the sugarsticks, ma'am, she had swallied, and I
coaxin' her on down our lane,
They'd surprise you; the full pretty nigh of me pocket
she's finished up clane.
'Cause if ever she got her mouth empty, she'd out
wid the woefullest roar
To go home to her granny, so what should I do but
keep givin' her more ?
1 Journal of Education, May 1894.
341
Poetry.
It's herself is the great little rogue. But I waited for
'fraid comin' out,
Left alone be herself wid the childher all bawlin' an'
bangin' about,
She'd be scared. Not that Katty's too aisily frighted,
the sorra a bit :
There's 'most nothin' she puts me in mind of so much
as a wee blue-capped tit,
That hops undher your feet lettin' on it consaits it's
no littler than you,
And 'ill fluff itself out like an aigle at a thrush that
could snap it in two.
Sure, just now, whin I tuk her to lave wid the mis-
thress inside there that looks
Like a plisant young slip of a lass, an' she wrote
Katty's name in her books
An' sez she, civil-spoken an' frindly : " A scholar
we'll have her ere long,
An' she'll like to be gettin' her letters, an' learnin' a
bit of a song ;
An' you'll be a good girleen for sartin'," sez she. But
sez Katty : " I wount."
Troth, she had me ashamed wid her thin; but the
misthress seemed makin' no count,
On'y laughin' a bit. An' bedad if she looked to find
wit fairly grown
In a crathur like Katty, I'd think she worn't throubled
wid much of her own.
ii.
Was you iver to see the new school ? Woman dear,
it's a won'erful sight :
342
Terence Macran.
Such a sizeable room, wid the childher in rows on
the forrms, sittin' quite
As the plants in a ridge of pitaties, the crathurs, an'
scrawmin' away
At their slates an' their sums, and I dunno what
else. But our ould Ah, Bay, Say,
Takes a quare dale of taichin' these times, ma'am.
Sure look at the place there inside,
That's as big as the chapel, wid boards to the flure,
and its windies so wide
They'd hould half the sky's light, an' the grand yella
blinds, an' the figures and all
Wrote that plain you could read them a mile on the
black affair up 'gin the wall ;
An' the counthries in maps hangin' round but who-
iver done thim, I'd ha' said
Made a botch of it; very belike he invinted thim
out of his head,
For the sorra a look of the Ian' I got off thim.
" Here's Mayo," sez she ;
Faith, 'twas just an ould jaggety patch wid green
edges, for aught I could see.
But the offer's a wee thrifle betther he thried at the
blue of the say ;
I'll ha' noticed it somethin' that colour odd whiles of
a smooth shiny day.
Howane'er, it's small thanks to the childher if they
grow up as cute as ould crows,
After all the conthrivance for taichin' thim iverythin'
there in their rows,
Till they couldn't help learnin' if nothin' they done
on'y sit in the class,
343
Poetry.
Same as goin' to chapel of a mornin' you couldn't
miss hearin' the Mass.
in.
Sure I won'er what Terence Macran 'ud ha' said to
it now, he that had
Our ould school, and the on'y one sivin mile round
us, when I was a lad.
Och the divil a table or a forrm you'd ha' found in
the classes he kep'.
But the highest ould thatch iver sthraked an' the
widest ould flure iver swep'
Terence had : for his school was out yonder above
on the side of the hill,
All the same all these years ; I could show you the
place he'd be sittin' in still.
If you take up the grass-slope behind us, an' folly
along be the path
Till the dyke cuts across it, and slip down the
hollow, you're in the ould Rath. 1
It's a many a time I've throoped off there along wid
the other gossoons,
And it's many a time we come late, mitchin' round
to go pick musheroons,
While ould Terence was waitin' as cross as a weasel
up undher the hedge,
Till we'd come wid our turves and our Readiif-made-
aisys. The bank round the edge
Of the Rath's mostly planted wid furzes an' black-
thorns, an' furze for a screen
1 Fort.
344
Terence Macran.
Is worth double of thorns, that be shady an' plisant
as long as they're green,
But no betther in winther than crooky dark claws
makin' grabs in the air,
Whin the furze 'ill be thick as a stook of good thatch
ivery day of the year.
So we'd git a grand shelter; but, sure, since their
iligant school house was built,
If you bid thim sit out on the hillside, they'd think
they were murdhered an' kilt.
IV.
And 'twas cowld enough whiles, wid the pours over-
head, and the wet undher fut,
Or frost white on the grass, or black clouds peltin'
hail-stones as big as a nut.
Yet the bitterest blast iver blew maybe'd do you a
rael good turn,
If you'd come to a bit in your spellin' you'd niver
been bothered to learn,
For 'twas quare if you couldn't conthrive, wid the
win' to lay hould of your laves
Our old books did be always in flitthers and sthrew
thim about like wrecked shaves,
So afore you'd done skytin' to gather the lot litthered
round on the grass,
He'd be apt to ha' tuk up wid somebody else and
let your lesson pass.
And 'twas plisant enough of a mornin' in summer
wid dew on the ground,
An' the sun in the dew flashin' sparkles like rainbows
turned stars all around,
345
Poetry.
An' the scint of the cowslips an' clover like honey
where'er the win' 'd blow,
An' the corncrake far off, an' the larks singin' high,
an' the bees hummin' low.
Sure we'd find out a dale of divarsion 'ud shorten
the time we'd to bide,
An' in that we'd the pull I'm a-thinkin' o'er the
spalpeens on forrms there inside,
If it's thim has the betther of us in the matter of
storms an' polthogues.
For the bank where we sat 'ud be creepin' wid quare
little ants and keerhogues*
An' dowlduffs that's a kind of ould divil you see be
the cock of their tails ;
Or a butterfly'd flutther in raich, on its wings like the
weeny white sails ;
Or we'd thry set a couple of grasshoppers leppin'
along in a race.
Thin if Terence had e'er a quick lad that 'ud learn
at the divil's own pace,
It's discoorsin' they'd stay half the day, till you'd
think their two heads 'ud be dazed,
And he'd clane forgit ivery one else. So the rest of
us done what we plased.
v.
But they've grand regulatin' these times of the lessons
down here in the schools,
An' they've settled a plan to percaive if the taichers
is keepin' the rules ;
1 Small beetles, clocks.
346
Terence Macran.
That's the raison a gintleman comes from the College
aich twelvemonth or so,
Wid the heighth of all manner of learnin' to see what
the school childher know.
And it's thin there's the great work whativer; you
might think the assizes was set,
An' the young ones all standin' their trial, to hear
the quare questions they'll get.
An' the way of it is : for aich scholar who'll out wid
the answers they want,
Somethin' 's ped to the taicher, but sorra the bawbee
for any that can't :
So if taichers thried harder to put the right answers
in every brat's head,
Divil thank thim to do their endeavours, whin they
find it's the way to get ped.
But ould Terence now, he that well knew if the
finest instructions we learned,
Till King Solomon's self was a joke to us, ne'er a
doit more he'd ha' earned,
Whin he chanced on a cute sort of lad, you'd suppose
'twas a fortin he'd found ;
More sot up he'd scarce be wid his taichin' if it
brought him a clare hunderd pound.
An' the next best to that he'd be plased wid a lot of
us squattin' together,
Hummin'-buzzin' away at our book like the bees in
the bloom of the heather,
For he liked a big school, tho' it's many a time 'ud
he vow an* declare
That poor Thady the Fool had more wit than the
most of what bosthoons came there.
347
Poetry.
And a dacint ould innicint crathur, that couldn't
ha' tould his own name,
Was poor Thady. I dunno what notion of schoolin'
he had, but he came,
And wid e'er an ould lafe he could hould upside-
down it's continted he'd sit
Be the hour ; he was wishful to learn, Terence said,
if he'd on'y the wit,
But ourselves that had plinty 'ud liefer be skytin'
about on the hill
Like the scuts of young rabbits than takin' the
trouble to on'y bide still.
And thrue for him bedad. But that same's the con-
thrary quare way things 'ill fall,
For whin folk's grown contint to sit quiet, they've
no chances of learnin' at all,
Or who'll taich thim ? Yet one way or other, wid
all the divarsion we tuk,
We got most of us readin' an' writin' ere ould
Terence's turn of bad luck.
VI.
'Twas one day he caught cowld sittin' out there
above, and it teeming wid rain,
"Cause Pat Blake, that was great at his figures, kep'
axin' him things to explain ;
So he outs wid his bit of white chalk, and all sorts of
consthructions he draws
On the smooth of the earth where the grass-sods
were cut up in patches for scraws ;
And he sted there discoorsin' away wid his lines and
his circles an' such,
348
Terence Macran.
No more heedin' the wet than a speckle-faced sheep,
or not maybe so much,
But that's how he got fairly disthroyed in his chest
wid a quare furrin cowld ;
If it's ouldish he was lyin' down, up he riz agin
oulder than ould,
Not the same man at all was he, body an' bones,
but grown feeble an' failed,
An' that moidhered an' strange, he was wrong in his
head whatsoiver he ailed.
For he'd often forget what he meant to ha' said,
whin he'd scarcely begun,
Or he'd sit in a maze takin' no sort of heed what we
left or we done.
So thin after a bit whin we all of us seen he was
able for naught,
Musha, where was the sinse of our wastin' our time
lettin' on to be taught ?
An' there prisently wasn't a scholar he had, but kep'
stayin' away.
Still ould Terence 'ud come to the Rath, and he'd
bide there the len'th of the day,
Lookin' out for his school that came next him nor
nigh him as long as he'd wait,
And he frettin' belike to himself, and a-wond'rin'
what made us so late.
Ne'er a fut he'd stir home while the sun shone above
him to light him a hope,
Till the hill-shadow laned o'er the glen, an' crawled
up to his feet on the slope ;
And he'd off wid him thin to a shielin' near by,
where a lodgin' he had,
349
Poetry.
Clane disheartened he'd be wid it all, some one
tould me, he thought it so bad.
VII.
But one evenin' be chance young Pat Blake and
meself was stravadin' around,
And we come where you look down above the ould
Rath from a high bit of ground ;
And sure there was ould Terence himself sittin' still
on the watch for his school,
An' the sorra a sowl in it, on'y fornint him just
Thady the Fool,
That had got some ould wisp of a book he was
houldin', and hummin' galore,
Tho' he couldn't conthrive, do his best, what 'ud
aquil the couple of score
Would be in it somewhiles. And I doubt but ould
Terence was vexed in his mind
To be missin' the rest of us all for no raison he
iver could find ;
'Deed it's rael discouraged he was, you might see,
and 'most ready to cry,
Sittin' there wid himself and his throubles out
undher the width of the sky,
An' naught heedin' unless 'twas the win' that wint
rufflin' his hair white as down
On the head of an ould dandelion set round in a
fluff like a crown.
So Pat watched him awhile, and : " Me sowl from
the divil," he sez aisy and low,
"It's poor Thady the Fool has more sinse than us
all." And sez I : "He has so."
35
Terence Macran.
An' sez Pat : " Well ould Terence to-morra," sez he,
" be the powers of smoke,
He'll be taichin' a big school whativer, or else some-
bodies' heads 'ill get broke."
VIII.
An' next mornin' he planned it. Himself was the
up-standin' fair-spoken lad,
So a many 'ud do aught he axed thim ; but if he
was crossed, he'd be mad,
So the others 'ud do what he bid thim. That's how
be some manner of manes
He got plinty of spalpeens persuaded, an' throopin'
along up the lanes
To th' ould school at the Rath. Such a power,
sure, of scholars as niver was seen,
And we all brought our Readin-made-aisys, an'
squatted around on the green.
And our turf-sods we piled in a sizeable stack there
be Terence's place,
Where he sat quite contint ay bedad, he'd scarce
room on the whole of his face
For the smile at the sight of us all, and the sound
of us dronin' away.
" Whethen childher, you're great at the learnin'," sez
he, " and industhrious this day."
He said that, ma'am, and school breakin' up, whin
the sunset was red on the air,
And next day not a one of us all but was glad we'd
had wit to go there ;
For his folk thought he'd on'y slep' on a bit late,
lyin' still in his bed ;
Poetry.
But we'd plase him no more in this world rest his
sowl sure th' ould crathur was dead.
IX.
Ah, it's that was the bell rang widin there school's
up, they'll be gettin' about,
All the childer, this now. Ay, they're openin' the
door, here they are tumblin' out
Like the wasps at their hole in the bank. But
where's Katty ? She's not there at all.
What's delayin' her ? Maybe she's someways behind,
bein' on'y so small.
I'll go look. No, she's yonder, she's out right
enough. Och, the bould little toad,
Did you notice the dhrive, ma'am, she hit Murty
Flynn, 'cause he got in her road,
And he twyste her own size? Come here, Katty
acushla ; I've waited, you see,
To be bringin' you home agin. Gimme your bag,
and I'll mind it machree.
Sure you wouldn't be wantin' to stop here ? You've
iligant places to play
Up at home. Come along till we look what at all
Granny has for the tay.
Keep a hould of me hand, there's a jewel, and just
step on the path where it's dhry
An' there's maybe a sugarstick yit in me pocket,
moorneen, if you thry.
35 2
THE DREAM OF MAXEN. 1
By GEORGE E. DARTNELL.
Maxen, Emperor of Rome,
And how he in a dream did come,
By far strange ways of land and sea, "
To that great hall wherein that he
Saw sitting in the golden chair
A maiden so exceeding fair,
That rest he might not, day or night,
Till he again of her had sight
Though told of old time passing well
That dream be now my tale must tell.
This Maxen was the goodliest man
That ever yet since Rome began,
Of consul, king, or emperor,
Had held the lordship over her.
Full fair was he and great of limb,
Nor yet was any like to him
For valour and for wisdom known
TVtidst all great names of years agone.
Go east or west or north or south,
His praise was still in every mouth,
To all true hearts his name brought cheer,
On all ill-doers fell his fear ;
And evermore in war or peace
1 Journal of Editc ation, April 1892.
z 353
Poetry.
The high gods gave him such increase
Of glory and prosperity,
That no man seemed more blessed than he.
Yet lonely on his golden throne
He ruled, nor cared he for his own
To choose the fairest form or face
Of those sought out from every race
To do his pleasure, or to share
The crown whose burden he must bear.
As one that looks to meet the Queen
Of Love within the myrtle screen
In her own Cyprus, and to have
Such boon of her as he may crave,
And unregarded year on year
Still watches, though she draw not near
Thus Maxen waited, putting by
What others held felicity.
Now, on a morn while yet the grass
Was wet with dew, it came to pass
That he had bidden them bring his steed
And hounds of Sparta's matchless breed,
For he with all his vassal kings
Where Tiber's brimming fountain springs
Would prove what quarry, stag or roe,
Or boar with tushes white as snow,
Night-prowling wolf or savage bear,
His foresters had harboured there.
So gaily forth they rode afield,
To take what sport the hour might yield
In that broad valley. All the morn
The echoes rang with winded horn
And bay of hound, till noon drew nigh,
354
The Dream of Maxen.
And overhead the sun stood high.
Then fell on Maxen strong desire
Of slumber, for the air like fire
Glowed round him ; so their cloaks they spread
On the parched grass, and overhead,
On gilded spear-shafts firmly stayed,
With shields up-reared together made
A broad cool roof. So slept he there,
While all his train around him were.
Now while he lay there, sleeping so,
A dream upon him fell, and lo,
He in that dream did rise and pass
From out the valley of parched grass,
Far up to where its streamlets first
From out the crags and crannies burst.
Full steep that mountain was and high ;
Its bare peaks pierced the very sky ;
And when thereto with toil he clomb,
His backward glance showed nought of Rome,
Or of that vale where he had been,
So thick the gray clouds lay between.
But looking westward, far below
The fairest plains that earth may show
Lay glorious in the noontide's beams,
Broad-pastured, happy, fed with streams
That from those peaks their waters drew,
Till they to mighty rivers grew.
A while he gazed, much marvelling
That of this strange and goodly thing
Within his empire never yet
Had any told him ; then he set
His sword-hilt ready to his hand,
355
Poetry.
And turning toward that unknown land,
That like a golden buckler gleamed,
While high o'erhead the eagle screamed
At the bold comer, and the goat
Fled startled, or from crags remote
Gazed wistfully, he slowly passed
Adown the mountain, till at last
Beside a new-born rivulet
In springing flowers his feet were set.
No pause, however sweet were rest,
Save for one draught ere on he pressed !
So sure he felt, yet knew not how,
Within his eager heart that now
Or ne'er again beneath the sun
His love stood waiting to be won.
The rill should guide him. Caught he not
A voice by day still all forgot,
Yet known and loved from long ago
In dreams, soft-singing thro' its flow
With this for burden, Follow me,
And thou shall win felicity ?
From rill to stream the waters grew,
From stream to river, as they drew
His swift feet ever on to where
A thousand towers rose high in air
About a city rich and great.
Unchallenged passed he thro' its gate,
Unchallenged thro' its streets he passed.
No glance on him did any cast,
Or man or woman ; if he spoke,
No voice made answer 'midst the folk,
As on he went by street and mart
356
The Dream of Maxen.
Across the city's crowded heart,
And down the river made his way
To where the goodly harbour lay.
With merchandise of all far seas
That chapmen brave, were heaped its quays ;
For, stacked in order, lay thereon
Tall cedar-trees of Lebanon
And pines of Pontus, and great oaks
That fell beneath the woodman's strokes
In those dim groves where Druids go
To seek the mystic mistletoe.
And here shone tusks of ivory
By bear-skins from the Northern Sea ;
And here were Persia's carpets gay,
And priceless silks of far Cathay,
And webs by brown maids wove in Ind
Where hideous beast-gods o'er them grinned
From rock-hewn fanes ; there Tyrian dyes,
Myrrh, nutmeg, frankincense, and spice,
Ingots of copper, lead, and tin,
And iron-banded chests wherein
Lay gold-dust, gathered slow in quills
By naked slaves 'midst mountain rills,
And precious gems, and gold-work fine,
And bars of silver from the mine.
And here a fair Greek statue gleamed,
And here a gaudy peacock screamed,
Or laughed the folk where in his cage
There gibbered in half-human rage
An ape from Tarshish. Here and there
From some rich buyer's lustful stare
The half-clad slave-girls shrank abashed.
357
Poetry.
And here a soldier's armour clashed,
As thro' the throng his way he thrust,
Rough-jesting ; here a cloud of dust
Rose whirling round some wild-eyed steer
Or sheep hoarse-bleating in its fear ;
And there was wine in jar and skin,
And honey that the bees did win
On bright Hymettus ; and with these,
Apples and figs and oranges,
Oil-olive in its thin-blown cruse,
And wreaths of roses wet with dews,
And sacks of Libyan wheat, and frails
Where flapped great fish with shining scales.
And to and fro, from shore to ship,
From ship to shore, the driver's whip
Across the quivering gangway drave
The heavy-laden panting slave
To do his bidding. Everywhere
With shouts of seamen pealed the air,
As ship on ship put out to sea,
Or homeward steering sought the quay
With brine-stained sides and storm-torn sails,
And deck heaped high with corded bales.
With that hoarse clamour round him dazed,
Across the harbour Maxen gazed :
And no such harbour had he seen
In any land where he had been.
A thousand masts together stood
As thick as pine trees in a wood ;
And where the widening shores ran on,
A thousand sails like sea-birds shone.
And lo, the very least ship there
358
The Dream of Maxen.
Was goodly-builded, tall, and fair.
Yet past those gallant ships there lay
One fairer, goodlier than they.
Carved on her curving prow there stood
A wide-gaped dragon red as blood :
And from her mast a banner flew
Whereon was wrought that dragon too.
A band of gold, full broad and fair
From stem to stern her bulwarks bare,
But silver 'gainst the lifting tide
Showed all the planking of her side.
And drawing nearer he beheld
A merchant stricken well in eld,
That by that vessel's prow did stand,
And seem to beckon with his hand,
As if to bid him hasten on
Ere time and tide alike were gone.
On sped he. All was yare aboard :
The crew but waited for the word.
As down the quay his footsteps rang,
To every rope a seaman sprang
And stood there ready. Off were cast
The hawsers that had held them fast.
From shore to ship there still was thrown
A gangway of the sea-whale's bone,
Whereon with eager feet he leapt,
And into that fair vessel slept.
And as he touched the deck, behold,
In flew the gangway, fold on fold
The great sails opened to the breeze,
And swiftly down 'twixt crowded quays
They glided seaward, till at last
359
Poetry.
From out the river's mouth they passed
To where the open sea began.
Still North their course lay, still they ran
Before a fair wind thro' the night,
To anchor in a sheltered bight
Ere yet 'twas dawn. The land seemed strange
To Maxen's eyes. Rough range on range
Of hills afar loomed gaunt and grim,
And vapours round their peaks did swim,
And pines hung black there ; but between
Lay valleys of well-watered green.
And such a land it seemed to him
As men will peril life and limb
To win the crown of, such a peace
In all things brought it full increase.
Ashore he hurried. Day by day
That dream still led him on his way
Across the island, till he won
A land whose like beneath the sun
He had not looked on, such a land
As that wherein the Titan's hand
Heaped Pelion upon Ossa high,
Until they touched the very sky.
Such seemed it. Peak on peak arose
Above him, crowned with winter's snows ;
And ridge on ridge sheer down there ran
To where the stunted pines began.
Long league on league afar the main
Loomed northward. At his feet a plain
Spread east and westward, bright with gleams
Of sun-lit lakes and running streams
And towns and castles. Full in face,
360
The Dream of Maxen.
But dwarfed by those long leagues of space
To a mere speck, an islet lay
Amidst the sea's unchanging gray.
And idly glancing at it, back
His glance came to a river's track,
As to and fro it wound along
The nearer mainland with its throng
Of vassal streams to meet the sea.
Now where its harbour needs must be,
There rose a castle great and tall,
With towers set close along the wall.
And as he gazed thereon, he knew
That whisper still had led him true,
And there, or e'er the day went by,
He yet should find felicity.
Right steep the way was, but his feet,
Full fain his heart's desire to meet,
Seemed winged beneath him. Down he sprang,
While round him crag and torrent rang,
Triumphal music, ever on
Till crag and torrent both were gone,
And in their stead thro' flower and grass
O'er gentler slopes his feet did pass
To where that castle stood, and lo,
For warlike need and peaceful show
Him-seemed there was no other one
So great and goodly 'neath the sun.
Now when he to the gate did win,
It stood wide open, so within
He entered and went forward there
Into a hall full broad and fair,
High-ceiled with carven fret of gold.
361
Poetry.
The doors were glorious to behold
With gold beat thin, the walls did blaze
With turkis, topaz, chrysoprase,
Chalcedony and diamond bright,
Beryl and jasper, chrysolite,
Ruby and emerald, and with them
Full many another costly gem.
And in that hall he did behold,
Set fair in order, seats of gold
And. silver tables, and thereat
Two youths with ruddy tresses sat ;
And 'twixt them lay a silver board,
Upon whose chequered squares they pored,
Now this, now that one, moving slow
His golden chessmen to and fro.
Of satin was their raiment fair,
And golden circlets bound their hair
With gems thro' which strange sparkles ran ;
And buskins of fine Cordovan,
With clasps of gold, from foot to knee
Were on them, shapen daintily.
Then by a pillar in the hall
He saw a goodly man and tall,
With white beard flowing to his knee,
Sit in a chair of ivory,
Whereon in ruddy gold carved fair
Two wide-winged eagles beat the air.
His arms were bound with golden bands,
Thick rings of gold were on his hands,
A torque of gold was round his throat,
And on his brow ye well might note
A circlet such as monarchs wear,
362
The Dream of Maxen.
That gleamed above his silver hair.
A golden chessboard by him shone,
With men half-fashioned ranged thereon,
For carvers'-tools with edges keen
And rods of gold were ready seen,
And ever and anon he fell
To carving chessmen passing well.
But little Maxen looked thereat,
For lo, a maiden fair there sat,
With tresses to her feet that rolled,
Within a chair of ruddy gold
Beside the grey-beard. Ah, what tongue
Has words wherein could e'er be sung
Aright her beauty ? Ah, what bard
Its half has told us ? Scarce less hard
To face undazzled noon's high sun,
Than to behold that Glorious One
Undazed. Alternate mist and flame
Before his eyes there went and came,
A wavering splendour ; fast his heart
Fluttered and fainted ; as apart
He stood, half deeming in his awe
It was a goddess that he saw.
Beside that maid earth's haughtiest queen
Had surely seemed a beggar mean !
A golden girdle clasped her round,
Her brow with orient pearls was bound,
Her golden hair fell shimmering low,
Like sunshine on new-fallen snow,
Adown the snowy samite vest
With clasps of red gold at the breast,
The bodice with gold tissue gay,
363
Poetry.
And costly silks of far Cathay.
A golden harp beside her stood,
From which her dreamy touch still wooed
Low music, while she softly sung
A song in some strange Northern tongue :-
" O Sea-wind blown from out the South
And o'er the Land of Dreams,
Thy kiss is sweet upon my mouth,
And fair its promise seems.
"When Time and Tide together meet,
And dreams be proven true,
Then Love shall bring a touch more sweet
Than Dream Land ever knew."
Her glance met his. With sudden start
Her hand was pressed against her heart,
On cheek and lip faded the pink,
And in her seat she back did shrink,
No goddess, but a very maid
Amidst her dreaming self-betrayed !
And seeing this, anew grown bold,
With swift steps up that hall of gold
Strode Maxen, till on bended knee
He gave her greeting, " Hail to thee,
Empress of Rome and of my heart
That shalt be, whosoe'er thou art !
For what to me were life or throne
If without thee I reign alone ? "
As one not yet awake she heard
Her visionary lover's word,
Then starting with a wild surprise,
She paused, down-gazing in his eyes
364
The Dream of Maxen.
With clear gray eyes that seemed indeed
His very inmost soul to read.
Then rose she up from out her chair,
And smiling moved to meet him there,
Her cheek fresh-flushed for Love's sweet sake,
Her hands out-reached his hands to take ;
And round her neck his arms he flung,
And lip to lip close-pressed they clung
A moment, then his senses reeled,
For with his dream blent clash of shield,
And neigh of horse and bay of hound,
And busy stir of all things round ;
And ere he caught the word she spake,
From out his dream did Maxen wake.
Now is The Dream of Maxen told,
And how within that house of gold,
Lip pressed to lip, hand clasped in hand,
In dreams did he and Helen stand.
How rest he could not, day or night,
Till he again of her had sight ;
How three long years for her he sought,
And all his seeking came to nought,
Till far on Britain's rugged shore
At last they met, to part no more ;
Of their high spousals ; how to few
Such love is known as their lives knew,
Yet thro' that love how Britain fell
Another tongue than mine must tell.
The Maxen Wledig of Welsh legend is the Maxiraus of
history. He is said to have married Helen Luyddawc, whom
he first saw in a dream. The story will be found in the
Mabinogion.
365
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SIR G. C. LEWIS AND LONGEVITY.
LITERARY EGOTISM. CHARLES AUSTIN.
RECOLLECTIONS OF MR GROTE AND MR BABBAGE.
MR TENNYSON'S SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY.
PHYSICAL AND MORAL COURAGE. THE UPPER ENGADINE.
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Appendices :
RECOLLECTIONS OF MARK PATTISON.
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"Mr Tollemache is a born raconteur." Evening Standard.
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" Since the death of Hayward, we know of no English littlra-
teur who has, in the same degree as Mr Tollemache, the happy
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and doings of a distinguished man, and piecing them together
in a finished mosaic." Daily Chronicle.
" The ' Safe Studies ' are those to which it is impossible for
any human creature to raise the smallest objection on any
ground whatever, and they are about four times as long as the
'Stones of Stumbling.' These stumbling-blocks may possibly
at some period or other have given scandal to a part of the
population by no means likely to read them ; but in these days
the public has swallowed so many camels that we do not think
Mr Tollemache's gnats would even make any considerable
portion of them cough. . . . We propose to make some obser-
vations on the most important of these charming essays. They
are all singularly well worth reading, and may be described as
the works of a most ingenious, accomplished, and cultivated
man of leisure, who writes in order to fix recollections and
systematize speculations which interest him. and not for the
purpose of advocating particular views in the spirit of a partisan
or propagandist. . . . The only likelihood of Charles Austin
being remembered at all lies in the chance of the survival of the
touching and striking account given of him by his accomplished,
grateful, and most appreciative pupil." The late Mr Justice
FITZJAMES STEPHEN, in the St James's Gazette.
1 ' These very interesting and, in part, very amusing volumes.
. . . Altogether, we can give very hearty praise to the book,
and that is something in the case of matter which has not the
charm of novelty to the reviewer, and with a good deal of
which he disagrees in opinion. Mr Tollemache can tell an
excellent story (such as that of the young lady who, having
spoken enthusiastically about a clergyman, and being asked if
she referred to any sermon of his, said, ' No ; oh ! no. But he
hates mayonnaise, and so do I.'). He manages, though he
himself is very frequently in presence, and the subject of dis-
cussion, never to be unpleasantly egotistic. His work has the
literary flavour throughout, without being merely bookish, and
he can argue a thesis like a craftsman and a master of his
craft." Saturday Review.
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