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 EDUCATION AND SCHOOL.
 
 STATE NORMAL SCHOOL, 
 
 <eles, Cai. 
 
 EDUCATION AND SCHOOL. 
 
 'Ml 
 
 THE REV. EDWARD THRING, M.A. 
 
 HEAD MASTER OF UPPINGHAM SCHOOL, 
 LATE FELLOW OF KING'S COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE. 
 
 SECOND EDITION. 
 
 Hontron an& ©amftritrgr : 
 
 MACMILLAN AND CO. 
 
 1867. 
 
 [All rights reserved.]
 
 Cambrttfjjc : 
 
 PRINTED BY C. J. CLAY, MA. 
 AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS.
 
 TH\--<l 
 
 TO 
 
 THE REV. DRUMMOND RAWNSLEY, 
 
 THE FIRST PERSONAL FRIEND WHO 
 TRUSTED HIM IN HIS PROFESSIONAL LIFE, 
 
 THESE RESULTS OF WORK 
 ARE AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED 
 
 BY 
 
 THE AUTHOR.
 
 PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. 
 
 Everybody has been at school, and everybody in 
 consequence has something to say about schools, 
 and schools have not agreed with some constitu- 
 tions ; but eating an unwholesome dinner does not 
 make a doctor. To feel an evil is something, but 
 it is not all. 
 * At present there are many elementary ques- 
 
 i tions in practical education quite unsettled, which 
 
 <J 
 
 nevertheless must be settled before any true agree- 
 ment or disagreement can be arrived at. For 
 example, is it the business of a school to teach 
 and train every boy, or is it enough to offer
 
 PREFACE TO THE 
 
 knowledge which only the clever and hardworking 
 boys take and digest ? 
 
 The answer to this question involves the gravest 
 differences of construction in schools. 
 
 Again, there is no necessary connexion whatever 
 between what kind of knowledge, Classical, or 
 Modern, or both, or a thousand etceteras, should 
 be taught, and the other no less important but 
 different point, what is the best way of teaching, 
 what is wanted for imparting any kind of know- 
 ledge well, and training the general life. 
 
 A great step will be gained when these t\v<> 
 things are kept separate in every discussion on 
 Education. 
 
 There may be exceeding difference of opinion 
 as to what should be taught, whilst all the ordinary- 
 requirements for good teaching and good life are 
 as capable of being stated with certainty as any 
 mechanism, the requirements of a good ship for 
 instance.
 
 SECOND EDITION. 
 
 A ship that is not seaworthy cannot go with 
 safety anywhere, however good the- Captain may 
 be. 
 
 No school is safe in which certain facts of 
 construction are disregarded, however good the 
 Head-master may be. 
 
 I hope I have done shipwright's work and 
 gathered some knowledge of construction in doing 
 it. If not, it matters little provided the conviction 
 that there is shipwright's work to be done in 
 schools becomes a definite and fixed idea. 
 
 The ordinary machinery for good school-life 
 is a thing of calculation and measurement. But 
 all discussion is in vain unless parents are 
 interested. 
 
 What do they want when they send their 
 children to school ? 
 
 The question is simple, but it admits of many 
 answers. 
 
 The most renowned English schools have given
 
 x PREFACE TO SECOND EDITION. 
 
 their answer; that answer is sure to be a true one 
 on the whole. It certainly represents a prevailing 
 wish and belief. And Schools cannot lightly dis- 
 regard such a fact An effort however has been 
 made in the following pages to put out in a plain 
 way the machinery of a first-rate school. Whether 
 it is practicable at present or wished for, has not 
 entered into the question ; neither is there any 
 opinion offered on the merits of any existing school. 
 Every year of work has brought fresh difficulties 
 to light; and these results of work are offered in 
 the hope that they may be of IUM I rking 
 
 men. 
 
 The School-House, Uppingham, 
 
 October, 1867.
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 This little volume was completed before the 
 valuable and interesting Report of the Public 
 School Commissioners appeared. Nothing how- 
 ever has been added or altered in consequence, 
 on account of the entirely distinct character and 
 aim of this work. The Report is an authoritative 
 judgment on evidence; this is nothing more than 
 a bit of evidence itself. The Report is a judgment 
 delivered on schools as they are; this to a great 
 extent deals with the theory of schools as they 
 should be. The Report makes a statement of
 
 xii PREFACE. 
 
 the success or failure of present results; this is an 
 attempt to explain processes, and to give an idea 
 of how results arc to be attained, and in what 
 manner a school-system should be worked before 
 it is condemned. Tn the last thirty or forty years 
 something of the same kind has come to pass in 
 schools that has been going on in the great 
 manufacturing districts. There has been a sudden 
 growth, a great increase in numbers, an entire 
 alteration in the way of working, a different sort 
 of life set on foot, without any corresponding 
 change in the old means adapted to a lower 
 and less complicated state of things. The Parish 
 boundaries, for instance, and the Parish church 
 remain the same, whilst everything else is changed. 
 But it would be more true in such cases to say 
 that the Parochial system has never been tried, 
 than that it has failed. Fresh powers are wanted 
 to deal with fresh life. So it is with schools. And 
 though it may seem useless to add one more cry to 

 
 PREFACE. xiii 
 
 the tumult' of voices, yet it is hard to stand by in 
 silence, and see our beliefs perishing without fair 
 trial. A message plainly delivered by common 
 lips in time of war may save an Empire, if it is 
 indeed a message. This little volume would fain 
 try to deliver a message gathered from daily work. 
 If the work is true, and the message, it may per- 
 haps at some time or other do its mission. If it 
 is not true, let it go. Or, if there is to be a break- 
 ing up of old things, still in time to come it may 
 be good that our sons should know that some of 
 those who strove and lived before them found 
 meaning which satisfied their hearts, and a reward 
 in that their life, and would not willingly let the 
 things they prized pass away into a dishonoured 
 grave. In such a feeling I have endeavoured care- 
 fully to avoid all personality and anecdote, to put 
 out simple belief, and the principles on which the 
 belief is grounded, that it may be judged on its 
 own merits in no party spirit, and whether rejected
 
 xiv PREFACE. 
 
 or accepted be fairly tried; so that if it be true 
 and to live, it may as little as possible give pain 
 to any working man; if true and to pass away, 
 whether what comes be better or worse, there may 
 still remain no base epitaph of an old belief. 
 
 The School-House, Uppingham, 
 April, 1864.
 
 CONTEXTS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 PAGE 
 Education, a master)- over time. Rank and Class depend on it. 
 Knowledge, its power. The Intellect instrumental. True 
 Life i 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 Some Delusions concerning Education . . . . • -4 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 School Training. Truth, how to be produced. The Conditions 
 
 of Healthy Life 1$ I 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 Training or Cram 37 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 The Classics . -4" 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 Extra Subjects, how to be dealt with 102 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 A great School requires a permanent Staff of Masters . .119
 
 xvi CONTENTS, 
 
 PAGE 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 A great School will not have too few Masters . . . -133 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 A great School will not be a Barrack, or deal in a niggardly 
 
 v/ay 147 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 A great School will not be a Prison 159 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 A great School very costly. How moderate Foundations can 
 
 be made effectual . . . . , . . .168 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 What Houses are needed in a great School . . . .185 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 Whether the House Master shall be a private Tutor, or not . 198 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 School Teaching: its main Character. The Theory of Exa- 
 minations ......... 209 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 Punishments . . . . . . . . . , 232 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 Internal Self-government. Praepostors. Fagging. Bullying . 257 
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 Homes 271
 
 EDUCATION AND SCHOOL. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 UX^ov rj/.u<rv tto.vt6s. 
 
 If half more than the whole be reckoned, 
 
 Make sure the first half, and then seize the second. 
 
 Education of some kind has been In exist- 
 ence from the beginning of the world. Education 
 in England can go back upwards of two thousand 
 years for part of its practice, though its actual 
 condition has been a piecemeal formation of the 
 last three hundred years ; a formation, in which 
 there has been some true growth, but no settled 
 plan ; much mere adaptation to circumstances, as 
 they arose, without any great regard to fitting 
 the several parts together. There is, in fact, a 
 curious mixture of old and new, a strange con- 
 glomerate of material in strange positions. In 
 such a state of things the temptation of trying to 
 construct something by adding a bit in one place 
 
 I
 
 EDUCATION [Chap. 
 
 and taking away a bit in another is very great. 
 This plan however tacitly assumes that there has 
 been a definite original scheme. Whereas there 
 has obviously been nothing of the kind. As fresh 
 needs arose, a prop here and a prop there has been 
 put, a wall, or a buttress been added, each perhaps 
 wanted only because the former piece was imper- 
 fect. And thus all may hold together, each part 
 be most necessary, though not a single portion 
 would stand exactly as it does stand had there 
 been any foreknowledge at the beginning of the 
 necessities which would have to be met. Now 
 there is sure to be much good in any real growth, 
 however defective or incongruous parts may be. 
 How is the good to be got at, and put in its most 
 effective form ? Certainly not by the same kind 
 of patchwork that has already been found wanting. 
 The attention must not be fixed on detached 
 parts which possibly do not belong at all to 
 a right carrying out of a mature plan. There 
 is a necessity in such a case of withdrawing the 
 mind altogether for a time from the actual state 
 of things; of going back to first principles, and 
 examining carefully what is the true object to be
 
 I.] AND SCHOOL. 
 
 striven for. A clear view of the object proposed 
 will suggest a clear outline of the means required ; 
 and then it will be possible to deal in a practical 
 manner with the material in existence, and to 
 choose or reject in no chance way from the mass 
 before our eyes. What then is education? This 
 must be known, before a judgement can be formed 
 on the best way of educating. And by the word 
 education is meant the best training for the 
 young with a view to their after life. We are at 
 once brought face to face with the great question 
 of Time by this statement. What time can be 
 given for training? Time is paramount lord of 
 all progress. CAs soon as men have any time at 
 their disposal over and above what is needed to 
 get food, they employ it in making some advance 
 towards a higher state of life, mental or bodily, 
 that is, they employ it either in getting know- 
 ledge for its own sake, or for the sake of the 
 advantages it brings"! And as years pass on 
 there is much stored-up power which has been 
 acquired in this way. Education keeps the key 
 of this treasure-house. The treasure-house of time 
 is barred and locked. Mankind have to wage a 
 
 1—2
 
 EDUCATION [Chap. 
 
 never-ceasing contest against Time first for food 
 and bare subsistence, then for the mastery over 
 his more precious secrets, and to get the key of 
 his treasure-house. And whether men make 
 him do their bidding and give up his treasures, 
 or follow him wherever he drags them, is no 
 slight difference. It is the difference between being 
 a slave in the world, or a master. The progress 
 of the world turns on this mastery over Time. 
 And this mastery over Time in its best and 
 widest sense is the gift of education. Education 
 is the master and keeper of Time and his trea- 
 sures, and all the main distinctions of man from 
 man, and class from class, depend on it. For, in a 
 free country, all classes are working classes, and 
 the superiority of one class to another in the long 
 run depends on the value of their work ; and the 
 value of the work depends on the capital, intellec- 
 tual or other, required before the work can be 
 done; and both intellectual skill and money, in 
 the ordinary course of events, are the result of a 
 mastery over time. And education gives this 
 mastery. Each generation hands over much of 
 its acquired capital to the next in this way.
 
 I.] AND SCHOOL. 5 
 
 But money differs from intellectual stores in 
 this important particular, that it can be passed on 
 at once to a new possessor, whereas each man 
 must for himself gain possession of the intellectual 
 capital of past generations. The intellectual rank 
 and the skill required for high class intellectual 
 work must be conquered afresh by every man and 
 every class daily. And time is required for this, 
 so there is a constant demand for time. Thus, the 
 main laws of society are simple, and excepting 
 where men approach more nearly to the condition 
 of savages, rank is founded on unalterable distinc- 
 tions; the distinctions which result from effective 
 work, and the power over time that past good 
 work gives to those who have done it, or to their 
 children. For though fortunate and gifted men in 
 a free country can rise rapidly from class to class, 
 the classes of themselves admit of no change, 
 excepting greater graduation. Wherever there 
 •is valuable labour and intellectual power, wherever 
 man rises above the savage state, and becomes 
 higher and nobler in his work and objects, the 
 value of the work done, and the time and capital 
 expended in doing it, will determine the rank and
 
 EDUCATION [Chap. 
 
 class of the workers. And as the main demands 
 never cease, as men must daily work to reproduce 
 the perishable articles which life on earth requires ; 
 the values of different kinds of labour remain a 
 constant quantity, and class-rank is equally con- 
 stant, for it is only another name for value of 
 work done. 
 
 Rank and class then in a well-ordered com- 
 munity mean the mastery over time, and a wise 
 use of it. The higher rank will always be held by 
 that section of the community who have most time 
 at their disposal and use it wisely. This does 
 not depend on opinion, it is a law of nature, and 
 however men rebel against the idea, and endea- 
 vour to make numbers their standard, their efforts 
 will be vain. As far as they are successful, they 
 drop down the scale of powers to the savage's 
 principle of brute force a little disguised, and even 
 then, in an artificial state of society when they 
 come to government, have at once to repudiate 
 their principle, and choose individuals by a differ- 
 ent test to carry out their will and govern in their 
 name. Savages alone have no true class distinc- 
 tion as being without education, and having no
 
 I.] AND SCHOOL. 
 
 valuable work. As long as time is required to 
 learn high-class work, as long as some kinds of 
 work are better than others, there can be no change 
 in the main class distinctions. Demagogues may 
 rave, and multitudes may listen, and in their own 
 country succeed in destroying and pulling down 
 the greatness that offends them; but the laws of 
 nature, outraged in one place, find free scope in 
 another. And the mastery over time and first- 
 rate work break loose from the Trades' Union 
 narrowness of narrow minds, whether of high or 
 low, and reassert their power in some freer place. 
 Unless some great reformer of creation will re- 
 lieve mankind from the necessity, each genera- 
 tion in turn, of getting a living from the earth 
 for itself, this law will remain in force; a necessity 
 which decides at once and for ever that the great 
 majority can have no mastery over time, as they 
 have to begin to labour early in order to live, 
 and to continue doing so. Until this law of 
 labouring in order to live is reversed, time, the 
 great arbiter of wealth and power, is the master 
 and not the servant of men, and will continue 
 to dispense his favours only to those who are
 
 ED UCA TION [Chap. 
 
 independent of him, and can treat him as they 
 please. 
 
 Let it be assumed that on an average this 
 law of labour comes into force at ten years of 
 age for the majority. At ten years of age, then, 
 the majority of mankind have to leave off prepa- 
 ration for life, and begin to work for life, whereas 
 the time of preparation for the higher kinds of 
 labour does not close till the learner is twenty, 
 or even thirty years of age. On this mastery 
 over time depends the progress made by each 
 man, each class, each nation. The classes are 
 sometimes agitated by an idle fear, that those 
 beneath them will oust them from their rank 
 by rising in intelligence. The fear is absurd; no 
 rise in intelligence can take place in a lower 
 class without a correspondingly greater rise in 
 the higher class, if it chooses. Individuals may 
 rise and fall by special excellence or defects, but 
 the classes cannot change places as long as valu- 
 able work requires time to learn how to do it, 
 and the time is not to be got. It is not possible, 
 for instance, that a class which is compelled to 
 leave off training at ten years of age can oust,
 
 I.] AND SCHOOL. 
 
 by superior intelligence, a class that is able to 
 spend four years more in acquiring skill. Neither 
 can they oust those who can give another four 
 years. It is a race. A must be very speedy, 
 or B wonderfully rotund, if A can run ten miles 
 whilst B runs five. The years of preparation are 
 so much start, which cannot be lost without the 
 most culpable negligence. The race is endless, 
 and the great majority are tied by the leg, from 
 the necessity of getting food and clothing, whilst 
 those who are unimpeded pass on, arid the goal 
 still recedes from the most earnest striving into 
 an eternity of successful progress, and uncom- 
 pleted power. Those mighty ten years of training, 
 or five years, or three years, will still keep the 
 first-class, first; the second, second; and so on. 
 Unless any class chooses to throw away its start, 
 and by gross self-indulgence, or by sacrificing the 
 future to present income, to put itself on a level 
 with those who cannot, however much they may 
 wish it, have the same mastery over time. It is 
 not even a waiting race, where endurance might 
 make up for want of speed. Men die, and with 
 them die the special qualities each possessed;
 
 IO EDUCATION [Chap. 
 
 whatever he has gained is merged in the common 
 treasury, and each generation starts again with the 
 same general advantages over its predecessors 
 that they had over theirs. 
 
 The progress of life consists in a perpetual 
 handing over to successors of the results of 
 labour, with the perpetual necessity imposed on 
 those successors of learning how to work and 
 carry on these gains still further, unless they wish 
 to lose them altogether. So the same conditions 
 are always to be renewed, only that, whilst those 
 who have no mastery over time remain compara- 
 tively stationary, the hoard of collected power 
 becomes greater and greater for the children of 
 those who have mastery over time, the interval is 
 widened between them and those behind them, 
 and the start gained by each generation is greater; 
 because, in proportion as the common stock of 
 knowledge increases, more and more time is re- 
 quired by each generation in turn to learn how to 
 make it their own. And every stage of successful 
 progress is calculated to make any competition 
 with the wise masters of time more hopeless. 
 
 But if knowledge of itself has this power, and
 
 I.] AND SCHOOL. II 
 
 gives this advantage to its possessors, not only 
 would the same classes in a nation maintain their 
 places, but the same nation, which originally got 
 the start of other nations, would still keep it and 
 be first, and the relative position of mankind 
 would be unchanged and unchangeable. We 
 should not only have the same class-gradations that 
 there were in ancient Egypt, or Assyria, or in any 
 nation of the civilized early world, but those very 
 nations would still be at the head of civilization, 
 and leaders of the world as of old. For as each 
 generation starts where its predecessor left off, 
 each with its mighty ten years of hoarded time in 
 advance with which to ransack the treasury of the 
 past, these sets of ten years constantly added 
 together, with the constant increase of the stores 
 of knowledge and power collected unceasingly by 
 all trained workers, would soon place any nation 
 quite out of reach of any other nation that had 
 been unable to cultivate knowledge in the same 
 way, and an empire in this way a thousand years 
 perhaps in advance of any other, could not possi- 
 bly be overtaken by any after effort. Thus, the 
 nations of the world would, by degrees, be classi-
 
 12 EDUCATION [Chap. 
 
 fied according to the value of their work, just as 
 the individuals in a nation fall into classes accord- 
 ing to the value of their work; and the great 
 ruling nation at the head would at last have sub- 
 ordinate to it all other nations in a regular and 
 unchangeable gradation, each occupied as they 
 went on in a lower branch of work and knowledge, 
 until a perpetual niggerdom would be the doom 
 of the last to start; who woulcl have to find food 
 and clothing for the rest, whilst the ruling class 
 would devote all their lives to science, philosophy, 
 and government. This is a perfectly logical 
 deduction and would certainly be true in practice, 
 if knowledge was indeed all; and if an advance 
 in science, intellectual activity, and skill was 
 anything more than an instrument, a means to 
 an end, and a power. 
 
 If intellectual progress made men perfect, and 
 was the true advancement of mankind, making 
 men better as well as more powerful, we should 
 still find Egypt, let us say, the first of the nations, 
 by virtue of that law of nature which makes a 
 good start all important, and gives the lead to 
 those who first gain a mastery over time. If men
 
 I.] AND SCHOOL. 13 
 
 really advanced as knowledge advanced, because 
 knowledge advanced, the first civilized nation 
 would continue to be the first civilized nation still. 
 For it is absurd to speak of a perpetual growth 
 towards perfect life from age to age of intellectual 
 progress as the destiny of the world, and to state 
 that the nation, in which this principle of perfect 
 life was strongest, died in consequence. But this 
 is the fact as far ^s regards power gained by 
 knowledge. Assyria, Egypt, Persia, Greece, 
 Rome, and multitudes of minor potentates, 
 worked, were civilized, gathered in knowledge, 
 and, with knowledge, power ; then power brought 
 temptation, and the opportunity of gratifying lust, 
 and even whilst they triumphed they fell. Each 
 in turn rising like giants in bodily and intellectual 
 strength, falling like drunken giants, as each 
 drunkard blindly struck out in riotous insolence, 
 wounding alike friend and foe, and insulting all. 
 History hitherto is only the record of the drunken 
 sons of knowledge pulling down on their own 
 heads the palace they have raised. 
 
 There is another element of progress to be 
 taken into consideration, the guiding principle,
 
 14 EDUCATION [Chap. 
 
 whatever that may be, that sets in motion every 
 instrumental power, whether of money, bodily 
 strength, or intellectual strength, and is alone 
 truly man. For, surely, we do not consider man 
 to be the body, though man cannot be separated 
 in thought from the body, and would cease to be 
 man without it. Nevertheless, the body is not 
 man. We do not love or hate a person simply 
 for bodily qualities, because of bodily strength or 
 bodily weakness. But in a perfect being every 
 quality or feeling is finally merged in love, and as 
 far as man is perfect, all excellence tends finally 
 to excite love, his being having been formed to 
 take this impress. 
 
 "We needs must love the highest -when we see it*." 
 
 Accordingly, children honour their parents, 
 though they grow old and weak; and parents do 
 not love their children less, or think them less 
 the same persons, because they may be ill, or lose 
 a limb. Yet, of course, if the body was what we 
 recognize as the true man, and loved as such, the 
 loss of a limb would by so much diminish his 
 being, and with it our love for him. This is the case 
 
 * Tennyson. Idylls of the King.
 
 I.] AND SCHOOL. 15 
 
 with an animal; no one keeps a horse with its leg 
 off, and for this reason. The body, then, is not 
 man. But is the case different with intellect and 
 intellectual knowledge? Is the intellect the man? 
 Do we really love people because they are clever 
 and know much? We ought to do so if cleverness 
 is the quality which makes man man. But if this 
 was the case, we should transfer our love as soon 
 as any one who was cleverer, and knew more 
 than our former friend, appeared. For love must 
 follow the perception of true excellence of being, 
 though it need not be affected at all by any- 
 thing not essentially being. And friends would 
 be cast off like old hunters and lame horses, 
 in favour of more distinguished claimants. Nay, 
 we should love the same person differently at dif- 
 ferent times; differently in sickness, and differently 
 in health, according as his intellectual power was 
 strong or weak. But the supposition that intellect 
 is the true being of man, and that love depends 
 on intellect is too absurd, when plainly stated, 
 however much mankind may hazily honour it. 
 Intellect is only the highest instrument man pos- 
 sesses, the hand of the soul answering to the hand 
 of the body. Money is a great power as an instru-
 
 1 6 EDUCATION [Chap. 
 
 ment, but it is justly considered vulgar to be purse- 
 proud. Bodily strength was a very great power, 
 and is still in some degree ; ye to live for the body 
 only is to live the life of a beast. So also intel- 
 lectual strength is a great power ; but to live for 
 the intellect only is, as far as it is possible, to be a 
 devil, not a man. A.11 these powers are necessary, 
 but as instruments, not as guides, not as supreme; 
 however much they may have usurped the throne, 
 and are worshipped with a fond idolatry by the 
 majority, although they may be combined with 
 the most destructive or the meanest qualities. 
 Power has no necessary connection with good. 
 But men want to be in extremities in the desert 
 before they find out that water is better than 
 gold, and love, that will share its last drop, 
 than the intellect that schemes how to rob you 
 of your own. No one ought to reverence the 
 clever thief; (the Egyptians however with great 
 consistency did ;) and Reynard the Fox though 
 highly successful, after skinning his old friend's 
 toes for boots for himself, and cutting a knapsack 
 out of another old crony's back, does not inspire 
 much love, and is not generally quoted as a good 
 example.
 
 I.] AND SCHOOL. 17 
 
 Hence it comes to pass that although both 
 bodily strength and intellectual strength arc 
 needed for work, and trained to work, and are the 
 instruments by which the class rank of individuals 
 and nations is attained, they do not ultimately de- 
 cide the fate of their possessors. They are no- 
 thing more than instruments, capable of abuse as 
 well as use, and the start gained by them only 
 continues to profit so long as the true governing 
 power, man's true self, that power by which love 
 and hate exist irrespective of strength and know- 
 ledge, directs these instruments and this start to a 
 right end. This power is supreme, it is the source 
 from which all voluntary actions flow, to which all 
 actions in their effect return. This power is life, 
 and life, as far as it is true, does make perfect. 
 True life makes all its instruments perfect, and 
 puts all to a good use. Both body and intellect, 
 guided by right love and right hate, can do won- 
 derful and lasting things. 
 
 The world has yet to try the experiment whe- 
 ther true life will not keep a nation from falling, 
 and maintain it in the foremost rank. Or rather, 
 whether any nation will so seek after true life, 
 
 2
 
 1 8 EDUCATION [Chap. 
 
 rather than mere knowledge, and hold it fast when 
 found, as to ensure the right use of the two slaves 
 of the lamp, for such they are, bodily and intel- 
 lectual strength. The true life-power then must 
 be the object, if it can be attained, both of men 
 and of nations. It is clear at a glance that it s 
 not inherent in man, for if it was, no teaching or 
 training would be required. There might be 
 growth just as the body grows, but if the nature 
 of man was good, and was true life, men would 
 be good because they were men, and not require 
 to be taught goodness ; just as man's body grows, 
 because it is the nature of the body to grow, and 
 food is received and digested by a natural and, at 
 least as to its effect, unconscious process. That 
 goodness requires to be iaugJit declares at once a 
 fallen nature. That there was original righteous- 
 ness is evidenced both by its vestiges as a natural 
 growth, however faint they may be, and also, to 
 a Christian, by the promised gift of a new life, 
 and grace to restore life in nature, not simply of 
 a law to teach. But there is now no natural 
 progress in the unassisted nature of men towards 
 good. This is evident in the case of individuals,
 
 AND SCHOOL. 19 
 
 although in the case of the onward progress of 
 the world other elements are so mixed up as 
 to disturb the judgment. 
 
 If there was a natural progress towards good, 
 age would be equivalent to goodness, or at least 
 to improvement. But this is not the case ; grow- 
 ing old is not growing good, unless the begin- 
 ning of growth is good. Age only adds to the 
 kind of growth, whatever that may be. In the 
 case of a bad man, where there is no disturbing 
 element to perplex and warp our judgment, it 
 is evident that every successive year makes 
 him worse, unless this growth is checked ; and the 
 older he grows, the worse he is, the more difficult 
 to be moved, the harder against impression for 
 good ; and if bodily vices are the chief evil, 
 every year breaks down bodily life more and more, 
 and kills him more quickly. But if this is the 
 case with the individual, what is there to pre- 
 vent its being the case with a collection of in- 
 dividuals, a nation ? The natural progress is 
 not altered by numbers ; one sheep or a million 
 sheep are all sheep. If age intensifies evil in 
 the individual man and brings death, age will 
 
 2—2
 
 23 
 
 EDUCATION [Chap. 
 
 intensify evil in the collection of men and bring 
 death. And this was just the state of the hea- 
 then world, and what the wisest heathen saw 
 The sons of knowledge grew, to die ; and the an- 
 cient philosophers and writers mournfully acknow- 
 ledge that man, as they knew him, grew worse 
 and worse in each generation, in spite of civiliza- 
 tion, nay, because of it. For there is no natural 
 progress towards perfection. 
 
 Nature has to be restored, not merely to be 
 taught. But because the perverted intellect must 
 share in this renovation, and teaching is the engine 
 that mainly moves the intellect, mankind have 
 mistaken the pains necessary to chasten, purify, 
 humble, and elevate the intellect, for the work of 
 Life ; and have curiously placed intellect on a 
 throne, because of the trouble necessary to de- 
 throne it ; mistaking the importance of bringing 
 the greatest instrumental power under the guid- 
 ance of a right principle of life, for the instrument 
 itself being all powerful : whereas the usurped 
 power of the instrument is the main result of the 
 perversion of the nature which has to be restored. 
 Intellectual power and knowledge then as guiding
 
 I.] AND SCHOOL. 2 1 
 
 principles are usurpers, and do not lead to perfec- 
 tion. The lost life requires to be restored, there 
 is need that man should do good out of right feel- 
 ing and a right state of being. But this restora- 
 tion of a fallen nature which needs renewing, is 
 gradual, and is therefore capable of training. 
 The life-powers require replanting, man's nature 
 wants to cast out false feeling and to feel rightly, 
 to love and hate truly, from its own inward 
 essence ; and to a certain extent cultivation and 
 training pertain to the guiding power under these 
 circumstances, as well as to the instrumental 
 powers. It becomes then all important that this 
 training should be of the best kind. True educa- 
 tion undertakes this. True education is nothing 
 less than bringing everything that men have 
 learnt from God, or from experience, to bear first 
 upon the moral and spiritual being by means of a 
 well-governed society and healthy discipline, so 
 that it should love and hate aright, and through 
 this, secondly, making the body and intellect per- 
 fect, as instruments necessary for carrying on the 
 work of earthly progress ; training the character, 
 the intellect, the body, each through the means
 
 22 
 
 EDUCATION [Chap. 
 
 adapted to each. This is the object of education ; 
 and all the works of discipline and self-govern- 
 ment, of exercising the intellect, of exercising the 
 body, go on at once, and, in a good system, 
 mutually support each other in their appointed 
 places. But all this requires time. 
 
 Once more, then, we are brought to the ques- 
 tion of time. Those mighty ten years still deter- 
 mine, not perhaps who is the best man, for good- 
 ness cannot be gauged like Greek or a knowledge 
 of Euclid, but certainly who are the most highly 
 developed representatives of humanity, amongst 
 whom the most perfect men will be found. Some 
 may be mere intellectual gladiators proud of their 
 skill, standing by the road-side to cut and slash 
 the burdened travellers, if any chance to be a head 
 taller than his fellows, or to bear a more precious 
 burden ; levying black-mail on working men. But 
 the true men are well-trained thoughtful labourers 
 themselves, able perhaps to fight, but viewing the 
 necessity as a sore hindrance to truth, and no 
 glory. Those mighty ten years of preparation and 
 practice determine, as they are used or abused, 
 the position of each nation in the scale of creation.
 
 I.] . AND SCHOOL. 23 
 
 How much depends, then, on where and how they 
 are spent. Whatever ma)' be thought, a great 
 school in a great nation is nothing less than a 
 heart in the body receiving the young blood, and 
 sending it out through every vein, and artery, and 
 limb, aerated and imbued with its power. If the 
 heart is diseased, what of the blood ? If the heart 
 is healthy, it will send health and healthy energy 
 through the whole. The mighty ten years that 
 change the fate of the world are passed at school, 
 and all experience proves that with few exceptions 
 the after life is cast in the same mould as the life 
 at school was cast in. This is certain, there is no 
 such thing as making up lost time. If a man has 
 powers by which he can waste years and never- 
 theless outstrip his companions, he can neither 
 catch up his true self, what he might have been 
 without waste, nor outstrip the mark that still flies 
 before him in the infinite space of undiscovered 
 knowledge. There is no real getting back lost 
 time. As is the boy so is the man, and education 
 is nothing less than the presiding power that de- 
 termines the fate of both. Education is training 
 true life.
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 Little Jack Homer sat in a corner, 
 
 Eating a Christmas pie, 
 He put in his thumb, and he pulled out a plum, 
 
 And said, What a good boy am I. 
 
 EDUCATION is training true life. But too often 
 there is no more sure barometer of the state of 
 the family finances than the sum spent in edu- 
 cation. Retrenchment first begins there. And 
 rightly so if education means, 
 
 Getting the children out of the way with an 
 
 easy conscience: which is a luxury. 
 Getting them an advance on the home nur- 
 sery: which is a luxury. 
 Getting them a good connexion : which is a 
 
 doubtful luxury. 
 Giving them a chance in an intellectual lot- 
 tery: which is a chance. 
 Therefore if retrenchment is needed, by all 
 means let it begin in these things.
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 What is Truth? said Filate; and would not stay for an answer. 
 
 B \> :< »N's Essays, I. 
 
 Now for the mighty ten years. 
 
 There is a double object in school training ; 
 first, the training the life; secondly, the training 
 the intellect and body: first, the setting the loving 
 and hating on a right track ; secondly, the training 
 the instrumental powers rightly. 
 
 The first can only be done indirectly; for for- 
 mation of character and a right spirit is only in a 
 very slight degree capable of being made a matter 
 of imparted knowledge. Boys or men become | 
 brave, and hardy, and true, not by being told to 
 be so, but by being nurtured in a brave, and 
 hardy, and true way, surrounded with objects 
 likely to excite these feelings, exercised in a 
 manner calculated to draw them out unconscious- 
 ly. For all true feeling is unconscious in propor- 
 tion to its perfection. And as there is no moment 
 in which habits are not in process of formation,
 
 26 EDUCATION [Chap. 
 
 there is nothing whatever which cannot be made 
 to bear on this process; nothing indeed which 
 does not of necessity bear on it. In a school, 
 therefore, it is of the utmost importance that the 
 whole government and machinery should in its 
 minutest particulars do this by perfect truth and 
 perfect freedom. 
 
 It follows then that no falseness in the govern- 
 ment, no falseness in the working plan, in or out 
 of school, can make boys true. Whatever is pro- 
 fessed must be done. 
 
 If a school professes to teach, then every boy 
 must have his share of teaching. There must be 
 no knowledge-scramble, or the untruth will make 
 itself felt. 
 
 If a school professes to train, then every boy 
 must be really known, his wants supplied, his 
 character consulted, or the untruth will make it- 
 self felt. 
 
 If a school professes to board boys, then every 
 boy must find proper food, and proper lodging, 
 and no meanness, or the untruth will make it- 
 self felt. 
 
 A sufficient number of masters, variety of oc-
 
 III.] AND SCHOOL. ?7 
 
 cupation, a feeling of being known and cared for, 
 a spot free from intrusion, however small, arc 
 necessities in a good school ; and the want of these, 
 or of any of the other real requirements for train- 
 ing and teaching properly, is a sort of acted false- 
 hood; for that which is professed is not done. It 
 does not the least follow that this is the fault of 
 the men engaged in these schools. The constitu- 
 tion and legal status of a very large number of 
 schools absolutely compels this kind of imperfect 
 system, as will be proved further on. And even 
 where this is not the case, immemorial custom 
 and popular opinion, at least as far as hearty sup- 
 port is an evidence of popular opinion, contribute 
 to maintain such defects, and are almost as strong 
 as law. It is not possible for the wisest or 
 bravest men, individually, to break through the 
 systems in which they find themselves working 
 units. They can but toil and toil, as they do, to 
 make the best of it, and lament their own helpless- 
 ness to do more. 
 
 But the fact remains, whatever may be the 
 cause; and a lower standard of truth and efficiency 
 must be looked for, wherever the theory of a
 
 28 EDUCATION [Chap. 
 
 school is at variance with its practice. It is a 
 certainty that the continual presence of any false 
 influence in a society must have a great effect for 
 evil even when the cause is not known or sus- 
 pected. To train the life truly implies a thorough 
 atmosphere of truth. Like mountain air, the lungs 
 should expand to drink it in, and the limbs will feel 
 the freshness; whilst the languid step and feeble 
 breathing are too surely the consequence of living 
 over sewers, however hidden they may be. Poison 
 is not less poison because it is invisible, or life less 
 life for the same reason. Good air is always in- 
 visible, and the subtle working of a great principle 
 of life and truth can no more be caught and la- 
 belled than the virtue of the air itself. But some 
 of the necessary conditions, in the absence of 
 which it cannot exist, may be laid down without 
 difficulty. 
 
 The training of the life then in the mighty ten 
 years we have to deal with, depends on the con- 
 ditions under which the life is passed, and is 
 affected for good or evil by everything with 
 which the living being is brought in contact. So 
 that every word that in the following pages bears
 
 III.] AND SCHOOL. 29 
 
 on the proper teaching, boarding, amusements, 
 or studies of each boy, and the machinery neces- 
 sary in consequence, treats also of true life and 
 healthy existence, just as an essay on drainage, 
 ventilation, food, proper house-room, proper em- 
 ployment, would be treating of health. And the 
 poor and the schoolboy are alike in this fatal 
 point, neither can change their own circumstances, 
 their dwellings, their occupations, those walls and 
 sanitary conditions, which are, nevertheless, mat- 
 ters of life or death. It must be done by power^ 
 from above, or not done at all. / So, if truth and 
 honour are required in a school, all things must 
 be framed in such a way as to work out the ob- 
 jects professed with thorough truth ; and any 
 want of truth, anything that is false will inevit- 
 ably find its way into the life of the boys, and 
 taint it. And no wonder ; nothing is detected sc 
 soon as inconsistency, and eyes looking upwards 
 see sharply. Those who stand low on the ladder 
 observe the dirt under the boots of those above 
 them, however spotless their coats may be, and 
 are apt to care little for preachments dropped 
 down from aloft, telling them to keep clean and
 
 ED UCA TION I C hap. 
 
 be good. Those who look up ought to see no 
 dirt. Truth is required to produce truth, and 
 when the machinery is right, and all things are 
 working truly, truth may be fairly expected in 
 return, and boys may be trusted, and can be 
 trusted, safely. 
 
 There is no more tendency in boys to betray 
 their friends than there is in men ; nay, far less 
 tendency. But, then, who are their friends ? The 
 whole plan and practice of the school must con- 
 vince them that they and their governors truly 
 form one body, and that the government is their 
 friend. Whereas, in the boy idea, there have been 
 two rival powers side by side, masters and boys, 
 with divided interests; and school life therefore 
 has resolved itself into a match between the two 
 bodies, in a sort of Spartan fashion — power on one 
 side, endurance and cunning on the other. So the 
 fox has never left off preying on their vitals as they 
 stand with a false appearance of innocence before 
 their masters. And there is a sham nobility in 
 this, for if the masters are indeed enemies, in an 
 enemy's country all things are fair, and war knows 
 no nice distinctions. Supposing, however, that pa-
 
 III.] AND SCHOOL. 3 1 
 
 rents love their children, and send them to school 
 because they love them, and school is therefore, 
 for the time, a better place than home, and masters 
 are men who do parents' work better than they 
 can do themselves, how absurd, how pitiable 
 this state of warfare is, this antagonism to those 
 whom parents trust, not antagonism, merely of 
 personal dislike, very often quite the contrary, but 
 of intention and life-objects, systematic, and over- 
 ruling feeling ; a principle of opposition. The marvel 
 is, how this can be considered a training for true 
 life, when honour comes to mean liberty to deceive 
 any master, provided the secret-society bond is 
 held fast*. But, theoretically, the masters are 
 training boys to be true, whilst, practically, to be 
 false to the trainers of truth becomes the recog- 
 nized code of honour amongst the boys who are 
 to be trained, and must do so, as long as there are 
 divided interests. Now there is much excuse for 
 this falsehood. Wherever teaching has got to 
 mean bringing forward the clever, and training, 
 
 * His honour rooted in dishonour stood, 
 And faith unfaithful kept him falsely true. 
 
 Guinevere, T e n n vson.
 
 32 EDUCATION [Chap. 
 
 enforced obedience to some rigid general laws, 
 that fall on all alike, giving, as all general laws do, 
 great opportunity of licence to the bad who evade 
 them, combined with great hardship to the good 
 who keep them — where mob-law of this kind is 
 training, and pouring knowledge into troughs is 
 teaching, and other double purposes exist, under 
 such circumstances it seems right for the boy to 
 stick to his flag. It is the least of two evils for 
 him to be true to his companions at the expense, 
 if need be, of the powers that deal so strangely 
 with them. 
 
 Nothing but truth in all the main plan, and 
 thorough completeness through all its functions in 
 the school machinery, both in doors and out, can 
 make boys feel that the school is but one body, 
 one army; that masters and boys are united in one 
 life, with one standard round which they rally, 
 one battle-cry, truth and honour for all ; one object, 
 true progress and true power. But let this be the 
 case, and then the boy-allegiance becomes due to 
 the common standard, not to the traitor who be- 
 trays it; is due to the good cause, not to the mean 
 coward who deserts it ; is due to the true friends
 
 III.] AND SCHOOL. 33 
 
 and true men who work with him, not to the tap- 
 room heroes whose ideal is a tapster. Then the 
 boys amongst themselves will uphold their laws, 
 just as Englishmen uphold theirs, and think it no 
 shame to make thieves and traitors know their 
 place. 
 
 If there is opposition between boys and their 
 teachers, there will be similar opposition between 
 work and play, though the two are equally parts 
 of education. No great progress can be made 
 until the conviction of the one body, the one army, 
 is stamped on the school heart, and has become 
 its creed. But when it has, every thing is changed. 
 The antagonism between in-school and out-of- 
 school, between work and play, between body, 
 intellect, and heart, disappears; all is in harmony. 
 For the young, learning to have faith in the old, 
 believe with them that life is one piece, and that 
 each good helps all other good; health of body, 
 health of intellect, health of heart, all uniting to 
 form the true man, and being the common object 
 of teachers and taught. Then the old help the 
 young in all good things, imposing no unnecessary 
 rules, thinking energetic power, in its degree, as
 
 34 EDUCATION [Chap. 
 
 good in the field as in the study. For who really 
 wishes to see boys made all head, like misshapen 
 dwarfs, half men, powerful indeed in subtlety and 
 intellect, but stunted in practical life and kindly 
 growth, and cut off from common humanity? The 
 first beginnings of knowledge are never very sweet ; 
 but neither are the first beginnings of most games. 
 Cricket and football are rather exacting in their 
 demands on the patience of their devotees at first 
 The head is not all in all. How many would learn 
 better if knowledge came to them in a human 
 shape, instead of in this dwarfish, magicianlike, 
 uncanny fashion ! how many of those who do learn 
 would be happy and beneficent workers, instead 
 of reproductions of this unhuman power! It is 
 the separation of the parts of life that makes the . 
 difference, the cutting life in two halves, as if a 
 boy's choice lay between manly games or learning; 
 when the choice really is, take both, like bread 
 and wine; for if bread strengthens man's heart, 
 the oil and wine of games make him a cheerful 
 countenance. Life is not all bread, and each helps 
 the other. There is no lack of ability in boys 
 generally, it is character that is wanted to ensure
 
 III.] AXD SCHOOL. 35 
 
 success ; but character may be helped. Cleverness 
 is common enough, but the stedfast worth that 
 can patiently endure, is wanting. Nevertheless, 
 it is one thing to endure patiently, when, in Mil- 
 tonian phrase, Apollo sings, and another not to 
 run away from a hideous and seemingly malignant 
 dwarf. Boys, it is true, may justly be blamed to 
 almost any extent for the want of interest they 
 show, but it should never be forgotten that they 
 come to school to have all good things, as much 
 as possible, put into them; and their condition, 
 however desperate, is the work to be dealt with by 
 a school. The worse their condition as a body, 
 the more difficult it will be for a school to improve 
 it; and the more need will there be that even- 
 conceivable power should be brought to bear on 
 it. Want of good material does not excuse want 
 of power to deal with it, but the direct contrary. 
 The worse the material, the more power is required, 
 and the greater skill in those who work it. There 
 must be a thorough unity in object in teachers 
 and taught, which can only be brought about by 
 all the life being kindly and carefully provided for, 
 not sections only of it, and those imperfectly. Yet 
 
 3—2
 
 $6 EDUCATION AND SCHOOL. [Chap. III. 
 
 it would be easy to draw a vivid picture of the 
 troubles and dangers of a master's life, of its daily 
 vexations, its incessant work, and the criticisms ! 
 which are not powerless, but may be ruin. So 
 that a man digging knee-deep, in a muddy ditch, 
 with banks so high as to shut out the landscape, 
 in a hot sun, and a permanent swarm of flies and 
 gnats round his head, is no unfair description of 
 the life of many a deserving teacher. But the 
 difficulties and dangers form no part of this present 
 investigation, which is only concerned with what 
 is necessary to make a great school perfect. 
 Whether the people of England will require per- 
 fection as far as possible, or enable the schools to 
 aim at it, would belong to an entirely different 
 discussion. At present it is important to lay down 
 clearly that the teachers of truth ought to have 
 everything about them true. For however the 
 doors may be barred, the hole that the cats get 
 through the kitten can get through also, and 
 most certainly will do so.
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 "God willing, he will be a credit to his country," said the 
 
 Burgomaster. 
 
 The words rang in Friedrich's ears over and over again, like 
 
 the changes of bells. They dawned before his eyes as if he saw 
 
 them in a book. They were written in his heart as if "graven 
 
 with an iron pen and lead in the rock for ever." 
 
 " God ■willing, I hope he will be a credit to the tenon." 
 " God willing^ he ~i<ill be a credit to his country" 
 *' He shall have a liberal education, and will be a great man'" 
 Friedrich's Ballad, by J. H. G. 
 
 How then are the ten years to be spent? An 
 important question of principle meets us at the 
 very outset, though the common answer would 
 be readily given, " Get knowledge." But this does 
 not satisfy the inquiry, neither is it the real an- 
 swer. For it does not at all follow even if the 
 ultimate object of the educated man is know- 
 ledge, that therefore the object of his prepara- 
 tion is knowledge. Far from it. Indeed, the 
 very fact of years of preparation implies that 
 there is a necessity for unproductive practice 
 before the real harvest begins. Perhaps the ques- 
 tion may be cleared if we examine first the case
 
 38 EDUCATION [Chap. 
 
 of the body and its preparation. Let us sup- 
 pose that the ultimate object of all bodily power 
 is the attainment of riches; it is clear that health, 
 strength, and aptitude for work, would be the 
 immediate object of any bodily training. It is 
 also clear that as far as power goes, the less 
 the training of the body was cramped by un- 
 duly exercising any one part, the better would 
 be the result; and that if happiness or riches 
 depends on a well-trained body, happiness and 
 riches would be increased in direct proportion 
 to the degree in which the whole body was 
 trained. The first object of a man, then, would 
 be to train the body to be strong, without con- 
 sidering whether the exercise employed in do- 
 ing this would make him wealthy or not. Any 
 kind of labour, however lucrative, that made the 
 young weak in body, would be fatal to the end 
 proposed— to the real gain at last. And any 
 kind of exercise, however barren, which made 
 the young strong, would be the right way of 
 training, and the most productive in the end. 
 But the true object of education is strength of 
 mind and character, and any process that con-
 
 IV.] AND SCHOOL. 39 
 
 duces to give this kind of strength is true, even 
 though little knowledge is gained by it. A 
 weak mind filled with facts collected from others, 
 is not the end proposed. The mind requires 
 healthy exercise, the end proposed is strength of 
 mind, and it is a matter of comparative in- 
 difference, provided the result is sure, whether 
 the years of practice and preparation are full 
 of immediate gain or not. In a word, nothing 
 can be said before the distinction between the 
 strong mind and the stuffed mind, between train- 
 ing and cram, is thoroughly recognized and de- 
 cided. And this is no light matter. The whole 
 tendency of the present day is to glorify quick 
 returns — various knowledge, cram, in fact — and 
 to depreciate thought, training, and strength. 
 But the two are utterly distinct. Cram de- 
 pends partly on memory, which is a good beast 
 of burden, but nothing more ; sometimes a mere 
 jackass, carrying a precious load for others — 
 and partly on the ease and attractiveness of 
 novelty and change. But, on the surface, judi- 
 cious cram is very attractive ; there is no deny- 
 ing that it is pleasant to make a show at a
 
 40 EDUCATION [Chap. 
 
 small cost. 'The worker sits down on sunny- 
 sands, as it were, and goldwashes; the labour 
 is light, the return immediate. All along the 
 surface he scoops here and there, and soon has 
 his little heap of glittering pin-pCints of pre- 
 cious metal, of shining sand, and coloured shells. 
 It is a real pleasure collecting them, they make 
 a nice show at once, sparkle at dinner tables, 
 and are the delight of fond relatives. But when- 
 ever he comes to the hard rock underneath, as 
 he soon does everywhere, the sand-washer leaves 
 it alone. Yet the true gold is there, the bedded 
 gold, which none but the strong can wrest, not 
 the leavings of past workers, but the fresh vir- 
 gin mines, full of gold in themselves, and nerv- 
 ing all the powers of man in the getting it. But 
 quick returns though small, quick, and easy, are 
 more attractive than great returns delayed, and 
 the laborious exercise of the strength required to 
 get them. In fact, sand-washing and rock-cleav- 
 ing, cram and mental training, are distinct things. 
 Any one, with fair intellectual quickness, can 
 skim the surface of subjects innumerable, and 
 find a pleasure in doing so, and make a great
 
 IV.] AND SCHOOL. 4 1 
 
 show, whilst, as yet, the sweat trickles from the 
 brow of the rock-cleaver, and his sinewy arms 
 strain and strengthen, but he can show no gold. 
 
 This is precisely the case that has to be con- 
 sidered in education. Is the mind to be made 
 strong for after life? or is the mind to be stuffed 
 with present seeming gain? Sand-washing or 
 rock-cleaving, cram or training, which is it to be? 
 Though this is not quite a fair statement. For 
 as soon as the mind begins to strengthen, the 
 rock-cleaver, in the intervals of his true work, 
 will be able to collect, as a recreation, far more 
 than his early rival, the sand-washer. The work 
 of the one will be the play of the other. In 
 fact, the question is only the original one of edu- 
 cation versus non-education in a somewhat more 
 subtle form. Every one sees that to learn no- 
 thing, but at once to begin to work for food and 
 clothing, is fatal to wealth or greatness. But, for 
 the same reason, the allowing the prospect of im- 
 mediate gain to withdraw the mind from the 
 slower but more perfect progress of training, is, 
 in its degree, fatal, as interfering with the true- 
 end of education before its time. It may be
 
 42 EDUCATION [Chap. 
 
 necessary — it often is necessary — to direct the 
 mind at once to professional studies, to narrow 
 its range, and endanger its power, but it is a mis- 
 fortune to have to do so; just as much as it is a 
 misfortune to be obliged to spend a shorter time 
 than others in education, and to spend it at an in- 
 ferior school, but inferior schools are better than 
 none, and a shorter time likewise than no time, but 
 they are not advantages as might almost be sup- 
 posed from the practice of many. The various- 
 knowledge-necessity, if it exists, must be dealt 
 with, but it is to be deplored. If it must be, face 
 the must, and mourn over it ; but it is not wise to 
 glory in being a mental sand-washer. It is not 
 wise to glory in gold pins' heads, with the mine 
 untouched before you, and you without courage 
 or strength to work it. Thoroughly to master 
 one noble subject is the only way to test or pro- 
 duce the strong mind. Fifty subjects may be 
 gone over half-way, or even three parts, whilst the 
 last quarter of one only shall foil the strongest. 
 Fifty scoops of sand are no proof whatever of the 
 power that can cleave the rock. 
 
 Training is the object of true education, know-
 
 IV.] AND SCHOOL. 43 
 
 ledge is secondary. And although training can- 
 not be communicated without making knowledge 
 the exercise ground; neither, on the other hand, 
 can it be communicated without carefully guard- 
 ing against making amount of knowledge the im- 
 mediate object. As an actual fact, both mind 
 and body are made strong by doing the sort of 
 things which when strong they will be required 
 to do. But strength is the object, and training 
 the process. The mighty ten years that change 
 the world are years of training. Even if the 
 young miner never split a fragment from the 
 rock in his ten years of toil, but he does split 
 many, he would be turned out more fit, more 
 sinewy, more strong, than the sand-washer with 
 his glittering pin-points ; and certain to succeed in 
 after life from trained power in himself, not 
 merely the master of a little loose treasure. But 
 this requires faith, endurance, waiting. Yet it is 
 ignorance of the true object, rather than any 
 other cause, that misleads so many. The British 
 mind is not tolerant of shams when detected: 
 but the British mind, with its quick perception 
 and hardness, is very apt to forget that a good
 
 44 
 
 EDUCATION [Chap. 
 
 sham does not look like a sham. It is essential 
 to a good sham to appear true. And there is a 
 seeming boast of being practical (a much-abused 
 word) in the unpractical sand-washing, that is 
 practical in its immediate gains, unpractical in 
 its future weakness ; practical in the present in a 
 small degree, unpractical for the future in a great 
 degree. 
 
 The subject also, as all things pertaining to 
 mankind must ever be, is much complicated by 
 the disturbing influence of those who, under any 
 theory or system, would be bad, but whose short- 
 comings are, of course, assigned to the system 
 which has the misfortune to deal with them. Bad 
 teachers and bad workers both contribute to hide 
 or distort truth. For bad or neglectful trainers 
 do not turn out their pupils strong, and yet they 
 have no gold-dust to show. And bad pupils will 
 not work and make their minds strong, and they, 
 too, will have no gold-dust to show. This is 
 inevitable in dealing with human nature. There 
 is no demonstrative truth in such dealing. Belief 
 in principles — in a word, faith — is required in all 
 things that touch the life of man. Statistics, such
 
 IV.] AND SCHOOL. 45 
 
 as can be got, of mental processes, will by judi- 
 cious management, prove any view any one 
 wishes to have proved. The voluntary noodle 
 and the involuntary noodle in theory are different, 
 but in statistics the same. A is fed, and B 
 choked by the same quantity of mental food. 
 The partizans of each have an equally strong 
 case : the one set appeals to the corpse of B, the 
 other to the robust form of A. But neither proves 
 anything as to the merits or demerits of the 
 system they were both under, unless B's intellec- 
 tual death, and A's intellectual life, can be shown 
 to be rightly deducible from the system. Which 
 may or may not be the case. That depends on 
 the principles of the treatment they received. If 
 •B committed suicide, his trainer was not in fault; 
 if he did not, he was. If A fed himself, his 
 trainer deserves little credit; if he did not, but was 
 really trained, let the credit be given where it is 
 due. 
 
 It is well to bear in mind that principles may 
 
 be plain, though the working out of the principles 
 may be far from plain, but may become, for a 
 time and in single instances, a matter of almost
 
 46 EDUCATION AND SCHOOL. [Chap. IV. 
 
 pure faith, as every failure is visible, and success 
 very often not so. It cannot, however, admit of 
 doubt that training is the object of education, 
 however people may differ about the means. It 
 can scarcely be denied that spreading the efforts 
 over too wide a surface is not training. This nar- 
 rows the question to somewhat such limits as 
 these. Let the mind be exercised in one noble 
 subject— a subject, if such can be found, capable 
 of calling into play reasoning powers, fancy, 
 imagination, strength, activity, and endurance, 
 and be sure that in the intervals of work there 
 will be plenty of time for less exhaustive pursuits. 
 The weak man's work is the strong man's play. 
 If the subject also itself embraces a wide field of 
 knowledge, so much the better; working in a 
 pretty country is better than working in a dull 
 one. The universal consent of many ages has 
 found such a subject in the study of Greek and 
 Latin literature — the classics, as they are familiar- 
 ly called. The following chapter will be devoted 
 to examining and justifying this decision.
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 The artificial bird was then made to sing alone, and had equal 
 success to the real one. With what splendour, too, it presented 
 itself, glittering like diadems, necklaces, and bracelets of precious 
 stones. Thirty-three times it sang off the same piece as accurately 
 as clockwork, and yet was not tired. The people would gladly 
 have heard it once more from the beginning, but the Emperor 
 thought that for a change the real nightingale should be heard a 
 little. However, she was nowhere to be found. No one had 
 noticed how, taking advantage of being unobserved, she had flown 
 out of the open window, away into the green forest, where the sea- 
 breeze blew. 
 
 Andersen's Tales. The Nightingale. 
 
 IT seems at first sight very strange that the 
 classics should maintain their ground century after 
 century in spite of progress and science as the 
 main training of the young. A subject is made 
 the principal study of the mighty ten years which 
 only one or two of those who work at it will ever 
 visibly make use of in after life. Nay more, very 
 many will never look into a classical author again 
 after leaving the University. This subject is di- 
 vided by centuries of progress from the present 
 age, and is empty of all the knowledge of which
 
 4 8 EDUCATION [Chap. 
 
 moderns are so proud. The languages are dead, 
 much of the thought in them is dead also, em- 
 balmed, not living. Heathens are the writers. 
 Their writings contain heathen views, and in some 
 of the most celebrated there is much gross immo- 
 rality, which at all events can be read, even if it 
 is not necessary to read it. The two great powers 
 of the world, religion and knowledge, seem alike 
 to forbid this supremacy, and yet they maintain 
 their ground, and will ever do so as long as a 
 nation cares for true education. 
 
 By what magic, then, do these old heathen 
 books continue to sway the world ? 
 
 First of all, they are the perfection of mere 
 humanity, as distinct from that living power 
 breathed into all modern life, literature, and artist- 
 Avork by Christianity. No one can know the true 
 progress of human life and thought, who does not 
 know what it has been. All sound criticism is 
 based on this knowledge. 
 
 Secondly, they are the means by which the 
 history of the early world, its facts, its wars, its 
 treaties, its social life, become known to us. No 
 one can know the true history of the world, or its
 
 V.] AND SCHOOL. 49 
 
 present state, who does not know what the world 
 has been. 
 
 Thirdly, they are the perfection of art, the per- 
 fection of the shaping skill of the human mind ; 
 and whilst all things that appeal to the eye or ear, 
 creation, pictures, sculpture, literature, are in their 
 degree languages of which speech is the most sub- 
 tle, the classics are the perfection of languages in 
 mere word-power and form. 
 
 Fourthly, being perfect as languages in them- 
 selves, they are the fittest training to show how 
 thought should be expressed, calling into play 
 every power of the human mind. 
 
 And lastly, they are as languages the founda- 
 tion of our own; and it is not too much to say 
 that an accurate knowledge of our own tongue, 
 one of the chief ends of education, cannot be 
 attained without them. 
 
 These various reasons are worthy of being con- 
 sidered more at length. To begin with the last 
 two points first. It is scarcely possible to speak 
 the English language with accuracy and precision, 
 without a knowledge of Latin and Greek. It is 
 
 not possible to have a masterly freedom in the 
 
 4
 
 50 EDUCATION [Char 
 
 use of words, or a critical judgment capable of 
 supporting its decisions by proof, without such a 
 knowledge. Very many words actually belong to 
 one or other of these two languages, and are 
 borrowed directly from them, not often in exact- 
 ly the same sense which they bore originally, 
 but always in some sense derived from the old 
 word, which requires to be known in order to have 
 an exact perception of the later meaning. Not 
 unfrequently also these derived words are used in 
 two or more senses in the modern language, and 
 these senses i pparently quite contrary to each 
 other. The word prevent, for instance, in its com- 
 mon usage, and prevent in the Prayer, " Prevent 
 us, O Lord, in all our doings, with Thy most 
 gracious favour," etc. is an example of this. It 
 is a Latin word meaning originally, " to come be- 
 fore!' In the prayer the word is used in the 
 sense of coining before us to guide and help, but 
 commonly it is taken in the sense of coining be- 
 fore to stop and hinder. Now, without this know- 
 ledge, what connexion is there between helping 
 and hindering? Such enigmas are of frequent 
 occurrence. The present Archbishop of Dublin's
 
 V.] AND SCHOOL. 5 I 
 
 book on words is an interesting commentary on 
 this part of the subject. How inexplicable the 
 word civil in its sense of courteous, and civil in 
 the expression civil war> must appear to a person 
 ignorant of its original meaning. Still more puz- 
 zling are the compounded words, such as deceive, 
 receive, and a host of others, whenever any dis- 
 cussion of their exact meaning arises amongst 
 ignorant persons. And the exact meaning of 
 words is the subject of more controversies, and 
 inaccuracy in their use has had more fatal effects 
 on mankind than all the wars that have ever 
 been waged. 
 
 Again, many words from natural friction, as 
 it were, lose much of their power to a mind igno- 
 rant of their real meaning; like old coins, the 
 stamp of the royal mint is worn away, the figure 
 gone, the sharpness of edge and freshness of hue 
 become dulled. How different, it may almost be 
 said, would have been the progress of ideas if 
 the word "edify" had either never been used, or 
 retained its freshness. If in the place of a vapid 
 sense of improvement the living power of bi 
 iii£ up instead of pulling down had sunk deep 
 
 4—2
 
 52 ED UCA T10N [Chap. 
 
 into the national mind. All practical life is con- 
 tained in that single word, " build up." To build 
 up, to construct, is to work like the Creator; to 
 pull down, to destroy, is to be an enemy to life ; 
 but it seems a great power, and many wor- 
 ship it. Or, again, how much has the word tribu- 
 lation lost. Hear the Archbishop of Dublin. 
 " It is derived from the Latin ' tribulum,' which 
 was the threshing-instrument, or roller, whereby 
 the Roman husbandman separated the corn from 
 the husks; and 'tribulatio' in its primary signi- 
 ficance was the act of this separation. But some 
 Latin writer of the Christian Church appropriated 
 the word and image for the setting forth of an 
 higher truth; and sorrow, distress, and adversity 
 being the appointed means for the separating in 
 men of whatever in them was light, trivial, and poor, 
 from the solid and the true, their chaff from their 
 wheat, therefore he calls these sorrows and trials, 
 'tribulations,' threshings, that is of the inner spirit- 
 ual man, without which there could be no fitting 
 him for the heavenly garner." The Archbishop 
 of Dublin then proceeds to quote a poem of 
 George Wither's, which " from first to last is only
 
 V.] AND SCHOOL. 53 
 
 an expanding of the image and thought which 
 this word had implicitly given 1 ." 
 
 But volumes might be written on this sub- 
 ject; it is impossible to do more here than hint 
 at its extent. Neither is it necessary to do more 
 than mention how many controversies in Law, as 
 well as in Religion, turn entirely on a right un- 
 derstanding of words derived from the Greek and 
 Latin languages. It is enough to remark that 
 the gravest questions that can agitate mankind, 
 as well as the most varied, interesting, and 
 amusing treasures of thought, equally belong to 
 the mere knowledge of word-meaning conferred 
 by an acquaintance with Greek and Latin. And 
 how the mysterious feat of spelling is accom- 
 plished without it, must ever remain a wonder. 
 
 But the examination of single words, notwith- 
 standing the infinite fund of information they 
 contain, forms a very small part indeed of the 
 value of these language-studies. The structure 
 of language, its arrangement and grammatical 
 powers, form a curious, subtle, and ever-moving 
 puzzle, calling into play the closest reasoning and 
 logical powers when studied intelligently. The 
 1 Trench On the Study of Words.
 
 54 EDUCATION [Chap. 
 
 main anatomy of language, as language is the 
 body which human thought takes to itself, is the 
 same in all languages. For man is one in nature, 
 and man's thought therefore must have a unity 
 of expression, a oneness of body, which in its 
 groundwork will be the same all over the world, 
 But just as races have their own peculiar type of 
 flesh and blood dividing them as races, so have 
 languages. And, again, as the changes of bodily 
 conformation in the individual are practically in- 
 finite, so that no two persons in the whole world 
 are precisely alike, so also are the changes of 
 individual speech and expression; a dissimilar 
 similarity is everywhere apparent in languages. 
 Now every educated person reads, and every edu- 
 cated person writes, and has to compose written 
 statements constantly. To be able to take a wide 
 view of the books read, and form a sound judg- 
 ment on them, is no mean power, and one which 
 must daily find something to exercise it. Many 
 books would never be written, a still larger num- 
 ber never be read, if the study of the master- 
 pieces of ancient literature could be brought 
 within the reach of a wider circle of students.
 
 V-l AND SCHOOL. 55 
 
 Excellence effectually represses all caricatures of 
 itself. Reading a really bad book is about on a 
 par with kissing a monkey; both are so piti- 
 fully like and unlike humanity. Even our gram* 
 mars are not free from gross errors, which at all 
 events a knowledge of Greek and Latin enables 
 a very moderate linguist to detect. Any person 
 familiar with the Mood forms of the classical 
 languages, and in the habit of seeing the condi- 
 tional particle answering to our "if" used with 
 Indicative Moods will not be likely to acquiesce 
 in a statement that "If" is the sign of the Sub- 
 junctive Mood in English. The fact that it can- 
 not be, would be plain; whether he could prove 
 the absurdity of the statement or not. Further, 
 in English composition the knowledge of Latin 
 and Greek is of direct use in showing the prin- 
 ciples on which words are arranged. For a 
 proper arrangement of words is very powerful. 
 But in English no rules can be laid down that 
 shall not have so many exceptions, as either to be 
 almost useless if disregarded, or a strait waistcoat 
 if observed; whereas the principles of arrange- 
 ment are clear enough, and in Latin and Greek
 
 56 EDUCATION [Chap. 
 
 every sentence illustrates them. In all languages 
 sentences will be arranged so as to present the 
 idea to the mind in the clearest and most for- 
 cible manner. This is done in any language 
 with case-forms by getting as early as possible in 
 the sentence something to represent or lead up 
 to every idea about to be introduced. For in- 
 stance, the following English sentence, which 
 shall be numbered according to its grammatical 
 connexion, "^Eneas perturbed by sudden fear 
 
 34 3 m m 
 
 seizes a sword," appears in Latin as, Corripit hie 
 
 21 2 4 1 
 
 subita trepidus formidine ferrum ./Eneas. 
 
 Observe the English arrangement, 1 12234 
 the Latin arrangement is, 3 2 1 2 4 1 
 
 By which three ideas are introduced to notice, 
 and with greater force, whilst English is bringing 
 forward two. The explanation is easy. In the 
 Latin language, the shape of the word tells at 
 once to what part of the sentence it belongs, 
 therefore there can be no confusion created by 
 introducing each idea in the sentence in its order 
 of importance. And the ideas are presented 
 more rapidly to the mind by having the catch- 
 words of each put as soon as possible, 3. 2. 1,
 
 V.] AND SCHOOL. 57 
 
 instead of i-i. 2-2, and more forcibly as 3. 2. 1, 
 instead of 1. 2. 3, and equally clearly, as the 
 shape of the words prevents confusion in Latin, 
 but not in English. " Seizes by sudden perturbed 
 fear a sword ./Eneas," proves this point. It fol- 
 lows, however, from these and like examples, that 
 the study of different languages is absolutely ne- 
 cessary to enable a person to understand the true 
 principles of arrangement, to give freedom of 
 judgment, and a sound knowledge of what is ad- 
 missible and inadmissible in each language; al- 
 ways bearing in mind that, however intelligible 
 an arrangement may be, if it is contrary to the 
 general habit of the language, the fact of its be- 
 ing unusual will draw attention to it; and at- 
 tention ought never to be attracted without 
 sufficient reason. 
 
 It follows from this, that a study of the Clas- 
 sics is invaluable in the matter of the arrange- 
 ment of words; and arrangement means beauty, 
 clearness, and force. A good Greek or Latin 
 sentence is like a bit of tesselated pavement, 
 where all the separate pieces unite to make an 
 harmonious effect of colour,, besides giving a pic-
 
 58 EDUCATION [Chap. 
 
 ture. The English language is wonderfully rich 
 and expressive, but it is wanting in the clear pro- 
 portions and shapely power of the Classics. 
 
 It may, however, be asserted that modern 
 languages would form an equal training. There 
 are two great reasons why they do not. The 
 first — one that will be entered into further on — 
 that the Classical languages are, as languages, the 
 most perfect in art, and severe in shape, and 
 structure, that the world knows. The other also 
 is not without weight. In a modern language, 
 the fact of its being a living speech is greatly 
 against its being a training power. This may 
 seem strange, but memory is not training, and 
 it is easy to slide into the belief that a modern 
 language is known when a person can speak it 
 well, which is very far from being the case, as 
 nothing may have been employed but memory. 
 German also is the only language familiar to us 
 which has anything like a complete structure to 
 make it valuable as a language-study. In the 
 case of French, the fact that it is principally 
 valued for conversational purposes would of itself 
 render it to a great degree unfit for training pur-
 
 V.] AND SCHOOL. 59 
 
 poses, even if its literature and grammar were 
 all that could be desired ; because conversational 
 fluency has nothing whatever to do with mental 
 training. A subtle pronunciation, too, is a great 
 drawback, as it takes time that might be employ- 
 ed in examining language, and drinking in the 
 beauty of literature, in simply learning to form 
 sounds; and the more a sound-making power is 
 esteemed and glorified, the less attention will 
 be paid to the solid, lasting part of language. 
 Even if we take our own language, valuable 
 as it is as a study, which should always ac- 
 company every other language-training, in itself 
 it wants those qualities which the Classics pos- 
 sess; though very rich, it is not severe in struc- 
 ture, and plain in form; and, moreover, it is not 
 possible to make the mind examine a familiar 
 object with the same attention as an unfamiliar 
 one, until the mind has been trained, and the pre- 
 sent discussion is how to train it. 
 
 It is, then, a curious, but certain fact, that 
 Greek and Latin are wonderfully fitted to be 
 training languages, because they are dead Ian- 
 guages, as this insures the attention being directed
 
 6o EDUCATION [Chap. 
 
 to actual language-study, and not merely to 
 sound-formation or tricks of memory. And the 
 training process is carried out by a constant com- 
 parison of grammar and structure, which calls 
 into play the logical and reasoning faculties in 
 no slight degree; by constant translation and 
 re-translation, boih on paper and viva voce, which 
 exercises the mind in every conceivable way, be- 
 sides suggesting and supplying infinite food for 
 fancy, imagination, and reflection. If any one 
 will consider that the master-thoughts of the 
 ancient world are continually being dissected, 
 criticised, and examined; that they are required 
 to be reproduced in our own tongue both in 
 prose and poetry, at sight or with preparation, 
 on paper or viva voce, and that this is being 
 done for years, some idea may be formed of 
 the amount of readiness and skill in handling 
 mental weapons, of the personal activity, and 
 strength, and defiance of overwork, produced by 
 a successful course of this. The composition 
 alone is a marvellous training, and though verse 
 composition has often been inveighed against as 
 a luxury or worse, it is a great aid in mastering
 
 V.] AND SCHOOL. 6 1 
 
 a language, and quite indispensable in all the 
 more advanced points of criticism, taste, and true 
 power. Even the humblest efforts improve the 
 ear, in some degree enrich the mind, exercise it, 
 and though it may remain blind to beauty, pre- 
 serve it from gross want of taste. It is not pos- 
 sible for a learner to feel the difficulties of lan- 
 guage so vividly as in verse composition. But this 
 means that it is not possible for a learner to learn 
 so effectually the power and beauty of language 
 in any other way. This means that a teacher, 
 who is a teacher, finds verse composition the 
 readiest way to excite thought, call into play 
 observation, and illustrate grammar and word- 
 power generally. Thus, whilst the veriest begin- 
 ner, if in earnest, must get much good, it is not 
 too much to say that a Shakespeare would find his 
 powers exercised in reproducing, in a fitting garb 
 of beauty, the glorious shapes of the ancient 
 world; that is to say as a training, for the work- 
 ing in these old forms acts as a great restraint on 
 free movement, and is intended to do so. It is a 
 sort of drilling, the effect of which is meant to re- 
 main, but not the thing itself. The thing itself
 
 62 EDUCATION [Chap. 
 
 has passed away with the life that produced it. 
 No generation can live in a dead past, or rival in 
 its own masterpieces that past world to which 
 those masterpieces were the outcomings of liv- 
 ing power, the result of the concentrated life of 
 the time. These exercises in prose or poetry- 
 are wonderful examples of training when well 
 done, but nothing more. Nothing can be more 
 beautiful as feats of mental gymnastics than mo- 
 dern Latin verse and Greek iambics, and the cun- 
 ning skill displayed in them ; but they are not 
 poetry. They are only splendid specimens of 
 training, and of power to make the mind perform 
 its master's bidding; they cannot be deemed liv- 
 ing; their excellence is imitative, not original, a 
 workman's carving of dead wood, not his own 
 soul flying on winged words; they cannot be 
 named in rivalry with Wordsworth, Tennyson, 
 and the poets of the day, who embody the 
 thoughts of their own hearts and their own times, 
 a bit more than nude statues and undraped wo- 
 men, imitations of Greek and Roman art, utterly 
 removed from the deep feelings of modern life 
 and its subtle spirit, have any claim to be more
 
 V.] AND SCHOOL. 63 
 
 than specimens of training. A schoolmaster's 
 Greek iambics and a sculptor's statue of Venus 
 are precisely the same in rank, pretty exercises, 
 but dead, unreal, unconnected with modern great- 
 ness, modern life, and modern belief. They are 
 mere practice and stepping-stones, belonging to 
 a dead past, unrivalled in its own limited range, 
 but only fitted now to drill into graceful shape 
 the luxuriant power of higher thought and an in- 
 tenser vision of truth. But of this more hereafter. 
 As training, however, it is not difficult to see 
 what scope there is in these mental exercises. 
 Fancy is quickened by the perpetual necessity of 
 catching word and thought allusions, which touch 
 at points of contact, though dissimilar, and strike 
 out a spark of fire by contact. Imagination is 
 called into play and ripened by the perpetual ne- 
 cessity of new arrangements of word and thought, 
 and by the difficulty felt in transfusing the 
 ideas of one world into shapes of another, which 
 requires a careful analysis of the secret ele- 
 ments of power, so as to be able to reconstruct 
 them. Memory, the beast of burden of the mind, 
 is exercised and strengthened, and loaded with
 
 64 EDUCATION [Chap. 
 
 precious things which the owner has been taught 
 to use ; for a successful scholar can, without books, 
 in a short space of time, turn English poetry or 
 prose into admirable Greek or Latin version of 
 poetry or prose. Quickness is engendered by the 
 perpetual change and variety of verbal problems; 
 order still more so, for without order there can be 
 no quickness. A good scholar must not only 
 know his subjects, but have all his knowledge 
 marshalled for use. That such a process, apart 
 from any knowledge derived, makes the mind 
 strong, and from the very beginning begins to do 
 so, cannot be doubted ; but there are higher rea- 
 sons still for the mighty ten years being so largely 
 given up to the study of Greek and Latin. 
 
 Speech is but the subtlest form of- language, 
 embodying beauty of thought and soul, the sub- 
 tlest form of beauty. All things that strike 
 the eye are languages also. The Creation is 
 God speaking, as far as it goes; it is part of the 
 glory of God clothed in shape that we may be 
 able to see it and to live. It is no metaphor, 
 but the strictest truth, that " the heavens declare 
 the glory of God, and the firmament showeth His
 
 V. AND SCHOOL. 65 
 
 handywork." All that man makes is in like 
 manner language. Pictures and sculpture speak 
 through the eye, conveying the mind of one man 
 to that of another; they tell a story. Architecture 
 also is a language. There can be nothing shaped 
 by man, or clothed in outward form by him, which 
 is not a part of man himself, of his wants,, .or his 
 hopes, or his fears, or his loves, made visible. 
 Whether the shape is noble or mean, be it picture, 
 statue, building, or word, it is a portion, noble 
 or mean, of man's inner life embodied. Speech 
 is the most powerful and the most subtle of all 
 these new bodies in which man multiplies his 
 own image. But the unity of principle which runs 
 through all spoken languages on account of unity 
 of origin must be extended, and for the same 
 reason will run through all languages spoken or 
 visible. The same laws of perfection must hold 
 good with all. This explains why a perfect edu- 
 cation in Literature, which is the highest and sub^ 
 tlest of these bodies, fits the mind to receive and 
 judge every other; for the same nature pervades 
 all, and only the instruments of the work are dif- 
 ferent. A highly educated mind conversant with 
 
 5
 
 66 EDUCATION [Chap. 
 
 great principles can better estimate the true value 
 of Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture, can 
 better appreciate Creation, than those who are 
 only familiar with paints, and chisels, effects, and 
 dexterity, and art. For pride in skill and ma- 
 nual dexterity are strangely antagonistic to true 
 power. As soon as the worker's skill usurps the 
 honour due to thought and feeling, that moment 
 true life departs from work; and a human idol is 
 enthroned ; and man interprets his own self-love, 
 instead of being the interpreter of the Voice of 
 God speaking through him from all the creation 
 of which he is a part. Whilst skill is imperfect, 
 the danger is less; because the beauty of the 
 work must in that case arise from the nobleness 
 of the thought and feeling. As the workmanship 
 becomes more perfect, and acquires an outward 
 shape-beauty of its own, there is a strange danger 
 that this very perfection in the means used 
 should prove fatal, and the body become more 
 than the life. But this external shape-skill may 
 be a very poor, or a very evil thing. Ought we 
 to admire grossly immoral paintings as great 
 works? Not surely until immorality, instead of
 
 V.] AND SCHOOL. 67 
 
 purity and truth, is recognized as good and di- 
 vine. But grossly immoral paintings have been 
 wonderful specimens of working skill. And if 
 art and skill are in themselves good, such pictures 
 must be called great. And mere artists accord- 
 ingly do call such pictures great, taking as their 
 standard the difficulty of arriving at such a per- 
 fection of skill. Yet the art and skill is as no- 
 thing compared with the vile thought. Only the 
 mechanic artist spirit would glorify skill at the 
 expense of life, and truth, and divine inspiration, 
 and the perception of that which is divine in the 
 world. Now a mind trained in the use of far 
 subtler instruments of thought than these eye- 
 languages, and familiar with a far wider range, is 
 not so likely to be led away by mere instrumental 
 skill, and will more readily detect dexterity and 
 handwork than those whose highest ideal may 
 have been dexterity and handwork. But Litera- 
 ture is such a training for the mind. Words are 
 subtler than paints as instruments, and embrace 
 a far wider range of subjects. No eye-language 
 has a wide range, though very powerful each in 
 its own limits. Words, however, interpret all the 
 
 5-2
 
 68 EDUCATION [Chap. 
 
 thoughts and feelings of man. A master of litera- 
 ture, therefore, comes from a higher and wider 
 kind both of instrument and thought, to form a 
 judgment on the eye-languages, and certainly 
 ought, as far as his education is concerned, to 
 have a clearer and truer knowledge of principles 
 and thought-laws than men who have been con- 
 fined, so far as their work is concerned, to less 
 perfect instruments, and a narrower range. And 
 the mechanic artist judgment which glorifies skill, 
 would be made to know its own place if these 
 laws were better understood. For if the true 
 glory of man's language, spoken or visible, is in- 
 deed the setting forth of high thought in a 
 fitting manner, then every picture or form which 
 does not embody good thought is to be con- 
 demned as much, or more than a vile story ; and 
 the more sacred the subject, the more to be con- 
 demned. A holy subject treated so as to make 
 men worship the painter and his skill instead of 
 reverence holiness and God, is an unworthy pic- 
 ture, whoever painted it, or however great the in- 
 tellectual display may be. If Michael Angelo 
 paints heaven, we ought to be led to worship
 
 V.] AND SCHOOL. 69 
 
 God, not Michael Angelo. And this is the test of 
 all good work. That work is wrong in principle 
 which leads the observer to admire the worker 
 instead of the truth he seems to be putting forth, 
 unless indeed self-worship is good. Every work 
 of man ought to give a higher idea to those who 
 see it of the subject treated of in the work. And 
 no subject ought to be attempted which mortal 
 hands lower by touching. And so on in all lan- 
 guages, visible or spoken, the great principles that 
 decide whether works are mean or noble are the 
 same, and first require that the idea shall be pure 
 and noble, however humble the subject may be, 
 and next that it shall find fitting expression. But 
 speech is the most perfect vehicle of thought and 
 feeling. A thorough master in spoken language 
 and its creations will not be at a loss in judging less 
 complicated and less subtle forms, and will be 
 able to distinguish between the mechanic, artist 
 shape, and the ideas and principles of higher life. 
 It will be necessary however to show why 
 here too Greek and Latin claim so preeminent a 
 throne as training. There are two things, as has 
 been stated above, in all embodiments of thought
 
 JO EDUCATION [Chap. 
 
 to be considered, first the thought itself, secondly 
 the shape in which the thought is brought into the 
 world- The first belongs clearly to the inner life 
 of man, the second is a matter of outward shape. 
 If we look at living things again, we shall see 
 all shape in them arises from inward life pushing 
 outwards and growing into shape, growing grace- 
 fully however varied the shape may be, because 
 the life within makes the harmony. How strangely 
 varied are the branches and leaves of a tree, yet 
 how the life-centre ensures that the result shall 
 be harmonious. This is the case wherever perfect 
 life is at work, as in all creation the outward 
 shape is the result of the working of power from 
 within. But when man begins working, his natu- 
 ral tendency is to take the material he finds, and 
 to satisfy his eye and mind by producing a form 
 according to his own judgment. But this is out- 
 side work, in which the worker works down, out 
 of himself, on to his material, assuming in himself 
 full power to originate, control, and judge. Now 
 that which is judged is inferior to the judge who 
 judges. Man therefore looking on himself as 
 superior to that which he works on, is compelled,
 
 V.] AND SCHOOL. /I 
 
 as long as he docs so look on himself, to produce 
 a work which satisfies this sense of superiority. 
 The square house and the churchwarden's white- 
 wash are the expressions of this desire in common 
 life, and belong to a feeling deeply seated in 
 human nature; the feeling of self-worship, which 
 abhors the idea of anything above itself; which 
 hates, as a humiliation, all mystery of height and 
 depth, and all work that suggests this ; which 
 would fain feel in all its own or other's work the 
 pride of lordship over it. This feeling, when 
 carried out by the highest intellectual power, can 
 only be satisfied by extreme perfection of outward 
 form, which the eye and mind can master and 
 delight in as completely fulfilling every desire for 
 beauty of shape. And this beauty of shape is 
 exceedingly fascinating, and, to a certain degree, 
 necessary in all excellence. In the human face, 
 for instance, although exquisite beauty of expres- 
 sion will be adjudged the highest beauty by the 
 best judges, yet even this cannot exist without a 
 certain degree of shape, although there can be 
 great beauty of shape without beauty of expres- 
 sion. And everybody can judge somewhat of
 
 j2 EDUCATION [Chap. 
 
 beauty of form, whilst a few only can judge of 
 beauty of expression. The natural tendency of 
 man, then, is to delight in beautiful shape; and 
 this shaping power of the mind, with its rules and 
 its skill, is generally called Art. Now, in Art 
 the Greeks especially were preeminent. Ancient 
 art, as art, never will be rivalled, because there 
 are only two ways in which man can work. He 
 can either work, as has been said above, as man, 
 as lord and master of the world in which he finds 
 himself, and proceed as a master over a thing be- 
 neath him to shape and hew it into his own 
 shapes. Or, he can look upon himself as an 
 humble learner and pupil in a world full of higher 
 power and glory, and so, following this law of 
 divine life, be led onwards by it, until his works 
 grow as living things in consequence of an inner 
 life received and cherished. Naturally the first 
 way, which is Art, belonged to the heathen. Self 
 was all in all to him. Heaven was too far above 
 him for knowledge, so he peopled heaven with 
 beings like himself, only of larger size both in 
 their virtues and vices. And earth was too far 
 beneath him for him to link himself to it as a part
 
 V.] AND SCHOOL. 
 
 of the same creation, and to see in it a language i »f 
 God, able to teach, and capable of being lovingly 
 waited on. There were no voices for him out of 
 the deeps; so he cried aloud, and listened for the 
 echo of his own voice, and deified it. There was 
 no communion for him in river, stream, or forest, 
 so he peopled the desert with images of himself, 
 and talked with his own shadow. He did not 
 care for anything beautiful in earth, or sky, or 
 sea, excepting so far as it contributed to his 
 comfort. Hence it comes to pass, that in the 
 whole range of heathen literature, wonderful as 
 it is in intellect and symmetry, there is not one 
 passage that rises above a comfortable sense of 
 the beauty of nature, and there are many that 
 show abhorrence of natural beauty, or imply total 
 ignorance of it, apart from comfort. This con- 
 centration on self, this indifference to creation, is 
 only brought out in stronger contrast by the 
 fragments of primeval truth found in the fables 
 and early traditions, which during the renowned 
 and intellectual period of their national pride are 
 like stray lenses of telescopes in the hands of 
 savages; once parts of instruments that brought
 
 74 EDUCATION [Chap. 
 
 other worlds within ken, but broken, unconnected, 
 useless, mere glittering toys, though still telling 
 to the practised eye, that they belonged to men 
 of other hearts, and once had a divine use. So 
 the heathen self-contained looked down from his 
 intellectual throne on the outside of the world, 
 and saw only the outside, for all things worth 
 knowing and loving must be looked up to, not 
 down upon; their power was an outside power, a 
 power to shape — Art; for Art is the shaping 
 power, and Art they worshipped ; and they who 
 sincerely worship get whatever is to be got from 
 their worship ; so in Art they are, and ever will 
 be, preeminent. The Greek temple to the eye 
 embodies this fact, simple, severe, eye-satisfying, 
 "absolutely made, and pure form nakedly dis- 
 played,"* but plain, inexpressive, a grand outside. 
 So also of their statuary. For the skilful disposal 
 of drapery alone gives expression to the human 
 form; without it the body by itself at best is 
 beautiful shape, incapable of any high ministry, 
 with the Curse of the Fall upon it, powerless to 
 elevate or inspire noble thoughts; since mere 
 
 * Clough's Poems.
 
 V.] AND SCHOOL. 75 
 
 shape, apart from messages of feeling, purity and 
 holiness, is a poor thing. And as if to mark this 
 as a divine law, it may be observed that all ex- 
 pressive life-revelation is expressive by sacrificing 
 somewhat of perfect symmetry and form. For 
 symmetry is repose, expression motion ; two op- 
 posing principles, the still outline of death, and 
 the rippling play of life ; a body and a soul ; the 
 soul-power making itself felt by incessant action 
 on the bodily vessel, so that a fair face glows and 
 gleams with changeful beauty, an inward sun 
 perpetually sending light and shadow up from 
 luminous depths. And bright or sad influences 
 are in turn mirrored on the storied surface till all 
 sense of mere shape is lost in the absorbing pre- 
 sence of an invisible world of life floating into 
 being, coming and going at its own will, a 
 breathing gladness, a magic splendour composed 
 of thousand thousand influences, calm, or sweet, 
 or strong, but never without gleams of motion, 
 like sound, as owing existence to the destroying 
 of stillness, a beauty born of rippling waves, and 
 dying when they die. Such is the revelation of 
 life in and through the body, but it is not the
 
 y6 EDUCATION [Chap. 
 
 body itself, not shape ; shape strikes the eye, and 
 can be imitated by mere outward-working skill, 
 the eye sees it, and masters it without any deeper 
 knowledge ; so the shaping power is human. 
 
 Now this human art-power is displayed still 
 more in heathen literature than in their eye- 
 languages. Their literature is perfect art ; but as 
 they never linked human nature to heaven, or 
 studied it together with creation as a thing from 
 God, they are absolutely without the two great 
 living sources of wisdom : first, created things have 
 no analogies or mysteries for them ; secondly, all 
 subtle and sweet emotions are denied them. The 
 first of these sources was opened for mankind 
 when Christ spake the Parables. This voice 
 altered the whole way of looking on the world 
 and man, and breathed a new spirit of infinite 
 variety into it, making all creation a great Hiero- 
 glyphic, the secret key to which is in man's heart, 
 so that as we pass on our way, leaf, flower, and 
 stone, the mightiest elements, the smallest thing 
 that is, may suddenly speak to us of truths un- 
 known, and open worlds of thought and life. 
 The second came with that law of love which
 
 V.] AND SCHOOL, yj 
 
 counts no living creature common or unclean, 
 looking to spirit not to shape, and not requiring 
 size for power or beauty. Hence it comes to pass 
 that a modern play of Shakspere takes in all life. 
 even grotesque life, with perfect propriety, but a 
 Greek play cannot do this. It must carve the 
 subject into a form of severest grandeur, like the 
 temple, a cold, severe, and loveless majesty of 
 form ; and the words must be of the same precise 
 character, but it is devoid of sweet and subtle 
 life; nothing that men count little, nothing 
 unshapely, might be admitted there; all must be 
 clear and clean-cut lines. How absolutely this 
 was the case may be gathered from the fact that 
 these plays were acted to an immense audience, 
 in the open air, by men raised on high-heeled 
 boots to be unreal (heroic it was called). Their 
 faces were masked to be of faultless features, and 
 larger than human ; all expression was sacrificed 
 to this. And the play was shouted out at the top 
 of the voice from these masks. It is evident how 
 entirely the effect of juch plays must have 
 depended on great and strong action and passion, 
 however it might be hewn into shape, and on
 
 yS EDUCATION [Chap. 
 
 striking situations. It is equally evident that all 
 expressive change of feature was excluded by the 
 mask; and all gentle, and subtle, and fine emotion, 
 by the necessity of having to shout out in the 
 open air. Imagine the condition of a bashful 
 man in a large company having to bawl out all 
 his feelings to a deaf person, and you have a 
 lively picture of the situation of Greek Tragedy, 
 and of the utter impossibility, from the nature of 
 things, of any expression, which was not hard and 
 strong. 
 
 Volumes might be written without illustrating 
 the greatness of heathen art, and its absence of 
 inner life, so much as these facts. The heathen 
 believed in Art, and worshipped Art, and there- 
 fore in Art will be unrivalled. For perfection is 
 only attainable by a thorough living belief in that 
 which is done, when the living belief of the gen- 
 eration and age is fused in its intensest reality 
 into the being of some gifted man, and given 
 forth by him to the world. And as no Christian 
 can worship the shaping power, Art, with the 
 intensity of heathen worship, no Christian will 
 rival them in Art. A heathenised Christian is a-
 
 V.] AND SCHOOL. 79 
 
 bad heathen. In Christian works, the life within 
 reverently fostered, the feelings chastened into 
 truth, grow and take shape as living things, 
 depending for their harmony on the goodness of 
 the life that animates the work. So they grow 
 into the completeness of Christian literature, 
 architecture, painting, and statuary. If any other 
 principle is followed, the work is dead. The 
 harmony of Christian work depends on one life, 
 as in a tree, as in creation, making apparent dis- 
 cords harmonious. The harmony of heathen 
 work depends on outward shape and fair propor- 
 tions. Perfect Art, then, is their province,, as 
 distinct from subtle feeling, from the deeps of 
 spiritual power, the beauty of holiness, the tender- 
 ness of modesty, the purity of love, the gentle 
 dignity of suffering, and the glory of patient 
 weakness. 
 
 But Art, albeit narrow in range and deficient 
 in depth, is matchless for severe perfection of 
 form; and in training, this is the thing wanted. 
 For though the highest powers of heart and head 
 in happy combination are beyond the reach of 
 human handling, everybody requires in our pre-
 
 cSo EDUCATION [Chap. 
 
 sent state of existence to be taught not to do or 
 say ungainly and offensive things, or anything in 
 an ungainly or offensive way ; and this is the work 
 of Art. No one is "so pure of heart, so sound of 
 head "* as to be able to dispense with those rules 
 and that Art-training which in all lower things 
 correct natural shortcomings. This may be com- 
 pared to the distinction between a Christian and 
 a gentleman. A person perfect in Christian life, 
 did such exist, would of necessity be a perfect 
 gentleman: because it would not be possible for 
 him to say or do anything which could offend 
 another's eye or ear, on account of the inward life. 
 But as life is not thus perfect, the world has noted 
 the main rules of outward behaviour, and society 
 exacts the observance of these external forms at 
 all events, and calls those who observe ' them, 
 gentlemen. 
 
 This then is a sort of substitute for perfect 
 life ; and in this chequered world, where the inner 
 life is not perfect, people prefer the outer forms 
 which can be judged and seen, even when the 
 inner life is wanting, to the inner life which is only' 
 
 *- Tennyson, In Manonam.
 
 V.] AND SCHOOL. 
 
 partially perfect, when the outer form is wanting. 
 Art-training is of this useful character, that it 
 compels all its pupils to conform outwardly to 
 the lower observances of perfect life, whether they 
 have the life itself or not, and, by so doing, pre- 
 vents very much that is unseemly. Art, moreover, 
 is capable of being taught, which greatly concerns 
 the subject of education. And the masterpieces 
 of ancient Art are wonderful and excellent models, 
 as far as they go, of the shape in which thought 
 should be cast. And though in range they fall 
 infinitely short of the best modern writings, they 
 utterly condemn all false ornament, all tinsel, all 
 ungraceful and unshapely work, and are perfect 
 standards of criticism in everything that belongs 
 to mere perfect form. On this account, then, the 
 great Greek and Latin writers are the perfection 
 of training for the young; for this is preeminently 
 a training power. Without such a training it is 
 not possible to form an equally correct judgment 
 on the language-works of man ; neither is it easy 
 to get from any other quarter Art-rules capable 
 of being adapted to so many circumstances of 
 common everyday life and practice. The highest 
 
 6
 
 82 EDUCATION [Chap. 
 
 will never cease admiring them, and learning from 
 them. No testimony is needed to inspirit those 
 who once are far enough advanced to appreciate 
 their excellence. But the lowest also who never 
 sail in the ship, who do not get beyond the saw- 
 dust of the timber-cutting, nevertheless, dry as 
 their work may have been, do attain to some con- 
 structive power, some slight insight into the 
 excellence of the completed work, in addition to 
 strengthening their muscles for a useful life. As 
 an Art-training the study of the Classics has no 
 rival. 
 
 But as knowledge, the Classics also hold a 
 peculiar and equally preeminent place. What- 
 ever may be the reason assigned, the history of 
 the world, as a fact, is divided by a great gulf, 
 into the two periods before the birth, and after 
 the birth, of Christ. This is no artificial arrange- 
 ment, but an obvious truism. An epoch closed 
 with the Roman Empire, and after a period of 
 what seems at first sight chaotic confusion, but 
 which was in reality the mixing of elements for 
 a new creation, the new world in which we now 
 are living gradually took shape and rose into
 
 V. 1 AND SCHOOL. 83 
 
 existence. There is no similarity in the habits, 
 knowledge, literature, feelings, political or private 
 life of men as they now are, and men as they 
 were then, excepting that general likeness that 
 there must be between human beings as such. 
 All the records of the first period that are trust- 
 worthy are written in Greek and Latin. This 
 and nothing else bridges over the gulf. It is a 
 positive fact, that if Greek and Latin were taken 
 away, with the exception of the Hebrew Bible 
 we should know nothing whatever of the feel- 
 ings, habits, thoughts, intellect, morality, or lives 
 of the greatest nations of the ancient world, ex- 
 cepting from buildings, pictures, and sculpture, 
 until we come to the second period long after 
 the birth of Christ. It follows from this that not 
 to know Greek and Latin is to be reduced to the 
 necessity of taking at second-hand all the best 
 information about the early world and heathen- 
 ism. But this is a very serious thing. Historians 
 are men, and have theories of their own, which 
 are all the better when avowed. A wise man's 
 opinion is a good thing, but an intellectual man's 
 attempt to persuade the unwary that he is 
 
 6-2
 
 84 EDUCATION [Chap. 
 
 uttering absolute truth is very much the contrary. 
 Well, historians are men, and modern historians 
 viewing the past from a standing point of mo- 
 dern thought, very often transmit an utterly per- 
 verted image to the unlearned. Not that this is 
 intentional, or in some degree their fault at all. 
 The difference between the two states is so 
 great, that it is not possible to make this felt, 
 and the writers themselves seldom appear to 
 realize the fact. 
 
 Heathenism in its perfect form has perished 
 from the earth, and left only dregs. Heathens 
 can never be the foremost nations of the world 
 again. The combination of intense intellectual 
 power and activity, with great moral debasement, 
 and just a little salt of earlier simplicity and 
 tradition, fast growing effete, but not yet quite 
 dead, is a spectacle the world has seen for the 
 last time. We have lost the power of reproducing 
 it as a picture even, and we dare not try to do 
 so even in a superficial way. The first chapter 
 of St Paul's Epistle to the Romans is the nearest 
 approach to such knowledge that can be endured. 
 Yet, historians steeped in modern ideas, and car-
 
 V.] AND SCHOOL. $5 
 
 ried away by the great intellectual power of the 
 times they treat of, give no notion of this de- 
 pravity, and depict the habits of the ancients as 
 worthy of being placed in comparison with modern 
 life. Whereas the earlier history of both Greece 
 and Rome is obviously the progress of simple 
 tribes rising into greatness through some moral 
 virtue as yet uncorrupted, and the later history 
 is that of polished barbarians. No one dares pic- 
 ture to himself, or to realize in his mind's eye, the 
 awful state of common social life in the glorious 
 periods of Greece and Rome. No one ever dares 
 try to do so. It is easy to slide over the smooth 
 surface of their literary and intellectual works 
 without ever looking into the deeps of iniquity 
 beneath, or bringing it before the mind as real. 
 The above assertions seem strong, but every 
 scholar who can read Plato, the Tragedians, 
 Aristophanes, Theocritus, Cicero, Juvenal, the 
 Poets, must, if he calmly faces the assertion, and 
 weighs it, admit its truth, and with it admit that 
 no history leads the unlearned to suspect it in 
 the least. The direct contrary would be nearer 
 the truth. What proof, it may be asked, can be
 
 86 EDUCATION [Chap. 
 
 given of this? For many reasons, citing instances 
 of depravity is out of the question, not least, 
 perhaps, that in every age instances of the 
 grossest depravity may be produced ; the whole 
 question turning on the way in which the de- 
 praved acts were done and received, rather than 
 on the acts themselves. For instance, nothing 
 can be more coldblooded than the cruelty that 
 introduced the word " burking " into the English 
 language; yet few would take this as a sign of 
 the age; whereas the practice at Sparta of secretly 
 sending out their noblest to assassinate the Helots 
 when they became afraid of their numbers, is a 
 sign of the age. Try and imagine for a moment 
 a state of society in which our nobles should 
 regularly, at intervals, patrol the country, secretly 
 murdering all the better labourers, because they 
 were better than the rest. But it would be im- 
 possible in an ordinary book to enter into each 
 question in this way. Therefore, although some 
 instances will be quoted, it is not the vices of the 
 heathen world that shall be brought into court to 
 prove that they are on one side of an impassable 
 chasm and we on the other, but their godless
 
 V.] AND SCHOOL. 87 
 
 excellences. There is the proof. To begin with 
 personal bravery, the most animal and savage of 
 so-called virtues, which may have its origin in 
 brutish insensibility, in bodily strength, in vanity, 
 in shame and fear of punishment even, in a sense 
 of misery, ignorance, or despair, and which appears 
 in some degree to be inseparable from well-grown 
 and active manhood. Look at the historical 
 boasts of Thermopylae, and the perpetual paean 
 sung over those Greeks who defended the pass. 
 They were brave men, doubtless; but almost every 
 modern campaign can parallel their bravery. 
 Lord Wellington would not have needed to call 
 for volunteers on such a service, and the next 
 campaign would at once have taken away the 
 singular glory of the achievement. It was the 
 rarity of true bravery that made the things that 
 were done so wonderful, and enshrined them in 
 national song, and made them the watchwords of 
 national glory. 
 
 It is with no desire to do injustice to brave men 
 that these words are written ; they were the noblest 
 of the heathen world, all honour that is true be 
 theirs. But Christianity, or that something which
 
 88 EDUCA TION [Chap. 
 
 some believe in instead, has so raised the meanest, 
 and those who are least affected by it — the general 
 level is so raised — that the common life of these 
 times will furnish daily instances that rival the 
 solitary stars in the heathen night. It is the 
 difference between daylight and night, however 
 starry. There is no doubt that a general darkness 
 does add very much to the apparent lustre of 
 solitary lights. Truth is not served by concealing 
 this. But what is war with its glitter and its pub- 
 licity, with its thousand eyes on men, able from 
 shame to make even the coward appear brave, 
 compared to the quiet heroism which suffers with- 
 out spectators, or with few, without excitement, 
 or any outward support ? No heathen history can 
 parallel the loss of the Birkenhead with its 470 
 men quietly standing silent and uncomplaining 
 to die, whilst the women and children were being 
 saved, firing their last salute as the deep was about 
 to close over them. Nay, ancient history would 
 not even have valued the little Dutch boy, who, 
 having been told that all was lost unless the first 
 leak in a dyke was stopped at once, hearing the 
 trickling water as he ran home from school, having
 
 V.] AND SCHOOL. 89 
 
 nothing else to stop it, thrust in his little hand, 
 and through the long long night crying and 
 wailing in his pain, staying there till they found 
 him. All the world for centuries has been told 
 to admire a Lucretia, when our newspapers, alas! 
 too often tell us of some poor girl far more 
 nobly chaste, and no one thinks it strange. Nor 
 is it. The very fact that it was so strange, so 
 glorified, proves the immorality of common life. 
 Stars only shine in night. The daylight puts 
 out stars. Can any one really picture in his 
 mind's eye the Coliseum, filled with 87,000 of 
 earth's noblest, filled with the masters of the 
 world gathered together to see men and beasts 
 murder and mangle each other ? And if it is hard 
 to believe this of men, how much harder to imagine 
 delicate and highbred ladies — ladies nurtured in 
 all the refinements of most intellectual civilization 
 — crowding to such a shambles as their joy; 
 making it their amusement to see brave men die, 
 or, worse still, to see some old man, as Ignatius, 
 the aged Bishop of the Eastern Church, torn by 
 the lions: or, perhaps women, as well born and as 
 fair as themselves, set in the midst of that pitiless
 
 90 EDUCA TION [Chap. 
 
 circle, for beasts to claw and growl over. What 
 were the homes which sent such ladies out, the 
 conversation, the daily life, and feelings, when the 
 sweetness of womanhood took delight in such 
 sights? Or a little before this. Let any one 
 dream that he is walking in beautiful gardens by 
 a palace more gorgeous than has ever been seen 
 since, on some fresh summer evening, by the river 
 so renowned in story, in Rome, imperial Rome, 
 whilst throngs of lords and ladies saunter there, 
 and pleasant laughter rings, and all the gossip of 
 the day is interchanged with smile and nod. But 
 all the while those gardens are lighted by men and 
 women, smeared with pitch, burning alive, by 
 Nero's order, for his people's pleasure, as they 
 saunter up and down; or are enlivened by mock 
 hunting, where living men are the prey, wrapped 
 in the skins of beasts, and torn to death in grim 
 reality by hounds. And Tacitus the historian, 
 who tells us this, a truly great man, whose works 
 none can read without deep interest and admira- 
 tion for him, does not think it worth his while to 
 blame such cruelty. Yet single facts, however 
 horrible, tell nothing. It is the sense that gradu-
 
 V.] AND SCHOOL. 9 1 
 
 ally creeps over those who attempt to realize the 
 heathen past, however faintly, that the main 
 current of life was cruelty and lust, corrupt and 
 mean, in spite of exceptional cases, and those 
 more in word than deed ; in spite of the wonder- 
 ful intellectual power displayed, which like a 
 wintry sun dazzles without giving warmth. And 
 so historians take their mirrors and catch the 
 glitter, and never heed the corruption it gilds. 
 But even this knowledge, which obviously belongs 
 to the more advanced student only, is an invalu- 
 able gain, though, at first sight, we should scarcely 
 think it so, to the Christian ; enabling him to form 
 a truer estimate of mankind and the progress of 
 the human race. Without it he would be at the 
 mercy of every confident assertion about the 
 advance of man towards perfection, and, seeing 
 that man is advancing now, would easily be led 
 to believe that he was doing so then by his own 
 powers. Historians take their views too often 
 from a few of the best heathen writings, and those, 
 too, written by men who practised very little of 
 what they wrote, and then tacitly compare these 
 writings with the facts of the worst common life
 
 92 EDUCATION [Chap. 
 
 of their own day. The scholar, at all events, has 
 his facts too. And wherever history, as it too 
 often does, contrasts the best writings of the best 
 men of the past, with the actual state of the bad 
 in present times, he can at least contrast writings 
 with writings, and men with men. What a glorious 
 place earth would be, if the New Testament, and 
 the holiest and wisest writings, could be taken as 
 a picture of our own times. But, if this cannot 
 be, why should this fallacy be given us as a true 
 picture of the heathen past ? 
 
 A true picture no one dares give, or can ; but 
 in making this statement it must not be forgotten, 
 that, as far as corrupting influence on the mind is 
 concerned, the Classics are comparatively inno- 
 cuous. The fact of the dead language gives an 
 unreality to much that is narrated, and a con- 
 ventional dress to all, so that no reader, unless 
 he searches out and cherishes the evil, is in 
 danger of pollution ; and who can save those 
 who do? Our youth would not escape the know- 
 ledge of evil things by suppressing the Classics. 
 Modern literature, both English and French, has 
 also its poison wells out of which they would
 
 V.] AND SCHOOL. 93 
 
 drink, and deadlier poison too; to say nothing of 
 the natural corruption of man, which is, alas, 
 in every age the same. Those who choose evil 
 can get evil. Poison cannot be shut up. True 
 medicine puts the body in a state to resist the 
 action of noxious agents; it cannot annihilate 
 the agents themselves. At all events, a study of 
 the Classics, if it contains the poison, contains 
 also the antidote, and gives a good man power 
 against vice, and is a necessity for every one who 
 would know the history of man, or escape surface 
 fictions about it. 
 
 But above all, the New Testament is written 
 in Greek. No religious nation can give up Greek. 
 
 There is one more point connected with the 
 study of the Classical languages, which, although 
 to a certain extent anticipated under the last 
 head, is nevertheless somewhat distinct. The 
 Classics reveal to us the philosophic history of 
 man as well as his social history. No one is 
 capable of forming any judgment on human 
 progress who is cut off from the knowledge of 
 what took place in the first epoch of the world. 
 During the first epoch of the world, man was on
 
 94 EDUCATION [Chap. 
 
 the whole left to himself. The second epoch 
 opens with a claim of God having interposed, and 
 in the fulness of time, when man's efforts had 
 failed, reconstructed the world on a new basis. 
 This affirms that the first and second epochs 
 differ not only in degree but in kind. It is an 
 assertion that tbe human agencies of the first 
 period failed, and the divine humanity of the 
 second period succeeded. Ignorance of the Clas- 
 sical languages implies inability to test this im- 
 portant question. And modern literature shows 
 us too often what that means. 
 
 The first epoch rests its claims on the human 
 agencies of intellectual and physical power. The 
 second on a new fountain of life from God, a 
 change in nature, a new feeling of love for things 
 before unloveable, and hatred for things before 
 esteemed. The life of the old world accordingly 
 ought to be, and is, a record of the development 
 of intellectual and physical power, and the at- 
 tempts of such power to unite mankind; and — 
 the failure of those attempts. There will be 
 progress therefore in arts and civilisation, and 
 retrogression on the whole in true greatness and
 
 V.] AND SCHOOL. 95 
 
 goodness. The heathen histories show us this. 
 In them we observe with wonder how nation 
 after nation rose into power, constructed some 
 sort of colossal empire, and — perished. In the 
 philosophic and poetical works we see the in- 
 tellectual acuteness and unsurpassable mental 
 strength of the heathen champions of thought. 
 However truly mankind may now pride them- 
 selves on the triumphant discoveries of modern 
 times, it would be utterly false to assume from 
 this that the intellectual power displayed is 
 greater than of old. Who that is not blind will 
 boast of surpassing in transcendent intellect 
 Plato and Aristotle, and name after name of 
 ancient glory? Who will match them? 
 
 The triumphant riches of Christian life and 
 thought are not the result of greater intellect, 
 but of a new principle. But if it had been pos- 
 sible for man to say truly that intellectual power 
 had not done its utmost before anything else 
 was tried, man's pride would have made re- 
 demption impossible. Even now this is too much 
 the case, with the example ever present of the 
 narrow range, the ineffectual efforts, and finally
 
 96 EDUCA TION [Chap. 
 
 the hopeless stagnation that was resulting from 
 the human intellect in its highest state of per- 
 fection hammering at the outside of the world. 
 The following quotation from an article in Black- 
 wood's Magazine, Vol. xcin., page 498, puts the 
 last fact in a striking light: "Let us carry our- 
 selves back in pagination," says the writer, "to 
 the state of philosophy which existed at Athens 
 in the time of the Emperor Hadrian, and which 
 Mr Merivale has so pleasantly described in his 
 last volume of The History of the Romans wider 
 the Empire. Philosophy seems to have come to 
 a dead-lock. On every side it was tacitly acknow- 
 ledged that the limits of each specific dogma had 
 been reached; that all were true enough to be 
 taught, and none so true as to be exclusively be- 
 lieved. Their several professors lived together in 
 conventional antagonism, and in real good fellow- 
 ship. Academics and Peripatetics, Stoics and Epi- 
 cureans, Pyrrhonists and Cynics, disputed together 
 or thundered one against the other through the 
 morning, and bathed, dined, and joked together with 
 easy indifference through the evening? This is a 
 true picture of the state of the civilized world.
 
 V.] AND SCHOOL. 97 
 
 All things were at a dead-lock equally.' The 
 intellectual powers of mankind, unless a new- 
 principle of applying them was given, had done 
 their best and— come to a dead-lock. And this 
 dining, and joking, and disputing might be well 
 enough as long as the old imperial shadow of 
 Roman power lasted. But when the flood of 
 Barbarians, already at" the door, burst in, what 
 had' thi$ dead indifference and exhausted in- 
 tellect to bring to bear against them?" History 
 gives the answer. Nothing. They were swept 
 away, and out of the flood by degrees emerged 
 the great life-power, Christianity, triumphant. 
 But the old intellect-empire perished, and had 
 that been all, mankind would have sunk lower 
 and lower into a common ruin, for it had d< ne 
 its best — and been found wanting. 
 t . We must not lose sight of the long darkness 
 in which heathen wisdom set, whilst as yet 
 Christian life had not risen on the world in light, 
 and grown into its youth of power. But the new 
 principle of life by degrees conquered the brute 
 force that overthrew the old dead heathen intel- 
 lect-power, and having in its hands the keys of 
 
 7
 
 98 EDUCA TION [Chap. 
 
 creation and its power, the knowledge why things 
 are, and for what purpose, gradually after having 
 subdued man's heart,, set him to employ his 
 strength intellectually, and bodily, in a right 
 way. And out of this has grown the modern 
 world, with all its discoveries, its science, its 
 marvellous progress, and the change of thought 
 and feeling, that makes it impossible to bring 
 home entirely to the mind what earth has been 
 without it. All this knowledge of the past is 
 dead and lost, unless the Classics are generally 
 studied. And that most important of all truths, 
 the destiny of man himself and his early history, 
 would remain in the hands of a few, who, as is 
 always the case with monopolies, would take 
 great liberties in preparing the article they sub- 
 mitted to the uninitiated, or would be at the 
 mercy of the assertions of the ignorant, or the 
 guesses of philosophers. 
 
 We cannot then cast down the great bridge 
 between the old world and the new, this won- 
 drous combination of training and knowledge, 
 this perfect arch of human intellect, without cut- 
 ting ourselves off from the past, and destroying
 
 V.] AND SCHOOL. 99 
 
 in no slight degree our place in the great world- 
 plan. It is plain that ignorance of what man 
 could do by himself, ignorance of the marvellous 
 intellectual force he could develop, and of the 
 pitiful result morally, and its deadly end politi- 
 cally and socially, is nothing less than a dropping 
 the clue of creation, and becoming totally unable 
 to judge the present state of the world. Whilst 
 at the same time these languages, which are the 
 means by which all this is done, form the best 
 training apart from any higher considerations. 
 
 These are weighty reasons why the mighty 
 ten years should be devoted in a great degree 
 to these studies ; and the masters of time will do 
 well to pause before they substitute lighter gains, 
 and more seductive appearances, for this wonder- 
 ful exercise of mental power, this mine of wealth, 
 this world-wide bridge, this training, which sets 
 a man in the midst of the world, strong and 
 active, able to cope with all comers, whether 
 they steal up from behind out of the half-seen 
 spectral past, or meet him in dread reality 
 in his way towards the unknown future. 
 Whatever a person unskilled in the Classics 
 
 7-2
 
 100 EDUCA TION [Chap. 
 
 may know, he is ignorant of the history of 
 man, and unable, in spite of science, in spite 
 of acuteness, in spite of seeming knowledge, 
 fairly to estimate the world as it is,* or assign 
 to the discoveries of each generation their pro- 
 per place in the world's history. 
 
 Volumes might be written on any and all 
 of the points raised in this chapter, to elucidate 
 and prove them, but enough has been done if 
 the first principles have been stated with any 
 clearness. Enough at least to show that no 
 great nation can let the study of the Classics fall 
 into disrepute, as the training study of its 
 upper classes, and remain a great nation long: 
 enough to show that it is no superstition which 
 makes it part of a gentleman's education in 
 England to know them, and gives honour well 
 deserved to those who know them well, and 
 use them wisely. 
 
 The causes of national greatness lie deep, 
 but whatever a great nation can spare, it can-r 
 not afford to unmoor itself from the past. 
 The study of Greek and Latin is a national ques- 
 tion. All are interested in its being carried on in
 
 V.] AND SCHOOL. 1 01 
 
 the best way. Past generations have done their 
 work nobly, may our posterity be able to look 
 back on us without scorn. The Old Founda- 
 tions, in their spirit and intentions, in their 
 liberality and princely bounty, are worthy of 
 their object, great gifts of no mean-hearted men. 
 There seems no hope of seeing their like again, 
 but to use them well is not beyond the power of 
 all who teach and all who learn, and most of all, 
 of those who trust their children to them. 
 England is interested in this question. 
 
 Nothing need be said about the study of 
 Mathematics, their obvious utility secures the 
 verdict even of the most superficial in their 
 favour.
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 EXTRA SUBJECTS. 
 
 In all things a man must beware of so conforming himself, as 
 to crush his nature, and forego the purpose of his being. We must 
 look to other standards than what men may say or think. We must 
 not abjectly bow down before rules and usages ; but must refer to 
 principles and purposes. In few words, we must think, not whom 
 we are following, but what we are doing. If not, why are we gifted 
 with individual life at all? Uniformity does not consist with the 
 higher forms of vitality. Even the leaves of the same tree are said 
 to differ, each one from all the rest. And can it be good for the soul 
 of a man "with a biography of its own like to no one else's," to 
 subject itself without thought to the opinions and ways of others : 
 not to grow into symmetry, but to be moulded down into con- 
 formity ? 
 
 Conformity. Friends in Council. 
 
 The fact that the Universities give almost all 
 their great prizes to the successful scholars in 
 Classics and Mathematics, determines at once 
 the position of Classics and Mathematics in all 
 the great schools that depend for their success 
 on the judgment of the Universities. That this 
 position is a right one has, we hope, been proved.
 
 Chap. VI.] EDUCATION AND SCHOOL. 103 
 
 But, right or wrong, as long as the Universities 
 do this, so long the schools must also do it. 
 And any scheme for incorporating other subjects 
 with the regular school-work must be abortive, 
 for the following reasons: — Many boys, and 
 those too the best in the school, will look upon 
 the time spent in enforcing some one modern 
 subject on all, as so much time lost to their real 
 work, and, in consequence, will make the classes 
 drag heavily, to the great detriment of those 
 who really are in want of it. In other words, 
 make French, or German, or Drawing, or Natural 
 Science, &c, compulsory on all the boys, and 
 the honest truth is, the boys who really wish to 
 learn the subject are greatly retarded by the 
 large number who do not; at the same time 
 that the large number who do not, are really 
 paying in a great degree for the lessons of those 
 who do. That is, those who really want to 
 learn get a worse article at a lower rate, whilst 
 both the time and money of very many is wast- 
 ed. Though certainly a good deal of show can 
 be made at a small cost in this way, and a 
 captivating appearance of liberality kept up.
 
 104 EDUCATION [Chap. 
 
 But let it be assumed, for argument's sake, 
 that it is desirable to incorporate some one 
 modern language or science with the regular 
 school-work. There are many subjects, and many 
 partisans of each. On what principle is the 
 choice to be made? If the principle is to be 
 an educational one, in the case of a language, 
 the literary merits of the language, and perhaps 
 also the time required to master it, will be the 
 only grounds of choice. And if the principle 
 is not to be an educational one, there can be 
 no agreement arrived at. But the educational 
 principle at once excludes French, the subject 
 which would probably poll most votes, because 
 it is wanted principally for conversational pur- 
 poses, not for its literature, and is singularly 
 unfitted, by its subtle pronunciation, for class- 
 work, as a task forced on unwilling learners. 
 But why should a language at all be chosen? 
 Music, Drawing, Science, and all the useful 
 knowledge subjects, put in strong claims; all 
 are very desirable acquisitions, some cannot be 
 learned excepting by long and early practice. 
 What is to be done? There is one unpalatable
 
 oiMit nu 
 
 VI.] AND SCHOOL. 1 05 
 
 answer, it is the business of school to do the 
 main training, of home, to add what more is 
 desirable. But this is only half an answer. It 
 is, we willingly admit, part of the main training 
 to provide for all real wants of a good educa- 
 tion; the present discussion is, can this be done 
 by incorporating any subject in the school-work, 
 and making it compulsory on all? The question 
 of time puts these subjects, as main training, abso- 
 lutely out of court. Boys are young, and the 
 working hours in the day are not many in num- 
 ber. These various subjects may be in them- 
 selves very desirable; but are they desirable for 
 the school-boy ? A sack of gold is a good thing, 
 but how many of my readers will carry it on 
 their backs ten miles, to have it at the end. 
 Yet wretched little boys are made to stagger 
 along under like burdens. Gold is good, but 
 life is better. 
 
 If general knowledge is the object, then by all 
 means do away with Classics and Mathematics, 
 and begin sand-washing with might and main. 
 If professional education is the object, then by 
 all means establish schools to give it. But they
 
 106 EDUCATION [Chap. 
 
 cannot be the great schools that train for the 
 Universities, for they go on the principle that 
 education is the object. It is true a modern de- 
 partment is supposed to do this. If it really does 
 so, then there are two rival schools at work side 
 by side, and it may fairly be considered an open 
 question, whether the two would not do their 
 work better apart. 
 
 The great fact that a day contains a limited 
 number of hours seems scarcely to have been 
 admitted into the discussion at all ; and its 
 corollary, that any subject imposed on the whole 
 school limits the choice of those who do not abso- 
 lutely want it, by the whole time it takes up, and 
 by taking time and money, prevents time and 
 money being spent in more favourite pursuits. No 
 doubt, if a day was unlimited, and men neither 
 ate, slept, or died, all these languages and studies 
 would be excellent. But as, unfortunately, these 
 three inconveniences of eating, sleeping, and 
 dying, pertain to all mankind, and a fourth, of 
 getting tired also, a choice amongst the. many 
 bundles of hay becomes necessary. Some in- 
 dignant modernist may perhaps think this argu-
 
 VI.] AND SCHOOL. 107 
 
 ment casts a slur on general knowledge. Far 
 from it. No knowledge is to be despised, but 
 a pretence of knowledge is. And a practical 
 examination into what can be done and what 
 cannot be done is very necessary. As long as 
 training is the true object of education, and 
 the Universities demand, and the great schools 
 teach, Classics and Mathematics, as being the 
 best training for the mind, most of the avail- 
 able time is at once disposed of, and the de- 
 bateable ground is narrowed considerably. The 
 question at once assumes this form. There is 
 but a small amount of time to be disposed 
 of, therefore no modern subject, out of the num- 
 bers that it is desirable different boys should 
 learn, can be imposed on the whole school. And, 
 this being granted, how can this margin of time 
 be employed to the best advantage ? The object 
 in view is to give every boy the opportunity 
 of following his own tastes, and cultivating his 
 own intellectual fancies. It is necessary for this 
 that there should be a good choice of subjects. 
 And these two things support one another. 
 To begin, then, with the case of those
 
 -lo8 EDUCATION [Chap. 
 
 boys who are being trained for the University, 
 These boys are working steadily at Classics 
 and Mathematics as their real and main work. 
 With the cleverer boys this will mean that all 
 the time that can be spent in studies so se- 
 vere is spent in them. But neither boys nor 
 men can spend many hours in acquiring new 
 and severe kinds of knowledge. There will be 
 much leisure time in reality, when they can 
 neither play hard nor read hard, which ought 
 to be employed. But it can only be employed 
 usefully in some less severe pursuit than the main 
 work. And a less severe pursuit means something 
 a boy on the whole likes and chooses, and which 
 is not enforced with the same rigid compulsion as 
 the harder work is. But to make a wide choice 
 of subjects for leisure time possible, it is ne- 
 cessary that the compulsory subjects should be 
 few, as otherwise neither time nor money allows 
 much choice. And every parent or boy ought 
 to be at liberty to choose, which cannot be the 
 case if time or money is already pre-occupied. 
 And there will not be funds in many schools suf- 
 ficient to maintain the several branches of study,
 
 VI'.] AND SCHOOL. 109 
 
 unless the choice is really free. For of course as 
 soon as a subject does not pay its expenses it 
 will drop through. Viewing- these subjects, how- 
 ever, as the proper way of employing the margin 
 of time which cannot be spent in hard work or 
 hard play, every boy ought to be made to have 
 one of them going. The main work will certainly 
 gain by such a plan ; partly because the proper 
 employment of time belongs to right trainings 
 and is therefore a branch of the main work, and 
 partly because it is not possible to acquire any 
 knowledge which shall not in some degree help 
 the acquiring of any other kind of knowledge. 
 Learning how to use the mind well in one thing 
 does tend to make the mind fit for use in another, 
 and also very often, by analogies and actual 
 information, makes very unlike things assist each 
 other. Hard subjects also seem to require supple^ 
 mentary exercises, just as in the body severe 
 labour in one set of muscles requires the others 
 to be exercised, in order to restore the balance. 
 And difference of occupation, not idleness, is the 
 best rest for the strong, both in body and mind, 
 after any toil that is not excessive.
 
 no ED UCA TION [Chap. 
 
 But this choice of easier work is of infinitely 
 greater importance to the backward and stupid 
 boy than to his better-trained companion. With 
 him it becomes a necessity for healthy life. 
 The power of training a dull and ignorant mind, 
 neglected in childhood, sprung perhaps from 
 a neglected race, and with nothing done by 
 the time a boy has reached thirteen or fourteen 
 years of age, is very limited. Then it becomes 
 important to furnish as much general knowledge 
 as possible, in the hope that, even if the subjects 
 as a whole are not understood, a number of iso- 
 lated facts may be picked up, which are better 
 than nothing. There must on this account be a 
 large choice of subjects in a good school, to 
 satisfy the wants of various minds, or many will 
 really get no knowledge at all, and very little 
 training. 
 
 Now this is no mere intellectual question. If 
 a considerable number of boys in a school, and 
 those too the least capable of finding interests for 
 themselves, are merely set in a treadmill; if all 
 their intellectual work is, in fact, one long dull 
 punishment, where they get nothing but dis-
 
 VI.] AND SCHOOL. Ill 
 
 credit, and are hopeless of excelling and attain- 
 ing honour, this must fatally injure their school- 
 life. It is really useless for many boys to expect 
 to be able to attain to any great proficiency in 
 Greek and Latin ; they have been neglected too 
 long. They can never hope to sail in the great 
 language-ship and see the world ; they never get 
 beyond sawing the planks, and the sawdust of it. 
 What then must their life be, if they have no- 
 thing else to do? How can they have any feel- 
 ing of the school being a place for them when 
 they are simply no better than outcasts there? 
 In the games, perhaps, they attain some position 
 amongst their fellows; but this only makes the 
 matter worse in many schools, and sets the two 
 phases of their life in stronger and more painful 
 contrast. When self-respect is lost, all power for 
 good is lost with it. And as far as the school- 
 life and training, so called, is concerned, self- 
 respect is lost when perpetual and certain dis- 
 grace is a boy's lot in the only intellectual field 
 open to him. Hence the constant and unneces- 
 sary antagonism between games and icork, &y\yand 
 masters. If a boy finds his only solid position
 
 112 ED UCA TION [Chap. 
 
 in games, what wonder that he avenges himself 
 on the work — reproaches his masters by unduly 
 exalting games, and alas, too often by making 
 vicious indulgence his claim to manliness and 
 power, because masters forbid it. At least where 
 masters are an identical term with convict-gang 
 task-work this adds to the flavour. This state of 
 things must be, as long as a proper standing- 
 point is not found for each boy in the intellectual 
 Jife of the school. This is what boys are sent to 
 school for, and it ought to be found for them; 
 'gross evil will always be the result if it is not. 
 But a choice of subjects gives this. In Music, 
 French, German, Drawing, and various branches 
 of Natural Science, such as Botany, Natural His- 
 tory, &c. ; or of Physical Science, as Chemistry, 
 Electricity, Statics, Dynamics, &c, the. most back- 
 ward in Classical knowledge can take refuge. 
 There they can find something to interest them ; 
 something too which others .do not know, some- 
 thing in which they can attain distinction, and by 
 so doing restore the balance of self-respect, or at 
 least make some progress where many are quite 
 ignorant.
 
 VI.] AND SCHOOL. 1 13 
 
 To bring a number of boys together without 
 taking care that there is plenty of occupation, 
 and something to interest different dispositions 
 and tastes, is not training, whatever it may be; 
 and it is creating much evil, whatever else it 
 may be. As great a variety of extra subjects as 
 possible becomes a necessity in a great school. 
 Healthy moral life very much depends on it. 
 Enough note is not taken generally of the in- 
 evitable consequence of many boys sinking to a 
 lower level, morally and intellectually, from want 
 of proper occupation and training. They not 
 only are injured themselves, but must drag down 
 the condition of their companions. In the sani- 
 tary world it has not been found that a typhus- 
 breeding cottage is a convenient neighbour to a 
 palace, however much a palace it may be. But 
 it is not always easy to fix what people die of. 
 People do die though, and are not comforted 
 because the cause of their illness is unknown. 
 Afterwards it seems sad to the survivors that so 
 simple a cause should have been so deadly. Per- 
 haps by and by, in another age, things will be 
 managed differently, and we may be pitied by
 
 114 EDUCATION [Chap. 
 
 our sons' sons, who by that time will be in the 
 opposite extreme, making school a green-house 
 instead of a garden, planting each boy in a sepa- 
 rate pot, and pulling him up by the roots every 
 morning to see whether he has grown or not. 
 Meanwhile the transition period has its difficulties; 
 amongst them may be reckoned a floating notion 
 that things are not right, which expects possi- 
 bilities or impossibilities with equal confidence, 
 and often is astonished at not getting the impos- 
 sible, whilst careless whether the possible is done 
 or not. But this is a digression. Whether in 
 any given case it is a possibility or an impos- 
 sibility, a great school cannot be without a va- 
 riety of subjects to interest all comers, or if it is, 
 the moral life will suffer. 
 
 The question of professional training still re- 
 mains. It has been shown above to be absolutely 
 impossible to direct the studies of a great school 
 to this end beyond a certain degree, without de- 
 stroying the object of a great school, which is, 
 mental and bodily training in the best way, apart 
 from immediate gain. Still there are very many 
 who wish to have a good education, and at
 
 VI.] AND SCHOOL. 1 15 
 
 the same time to graft some professional know- 
 ledge upon it. This can be done. And the 
 view given above of the extra subjects greatly 
 facilitates the doing it. If the extra subjects 
 form so valuable a component part of a school, 
 and are generally studied as filling-up work, there 
 will be funds to support first-rate teachers, not 
 inferior in any respect to the regular masters; 
 and this will make the giving professional training, 
 as far as it is desirable to do so, easy. It secures 
 competent teachers. 
 
 The next thing to consider is, how far arrange- 
 ments can be made to enable the boys to learn. 
 With regard to the Indian Civil Service, there is 
 no difficulty. A little reduction of the amount of 
 Prose and Verse Composition is all that can be 
 spared from regular school-work for the extra 
 subjects in this case. And if the Mathematical 
 examination gave sufficient marks for a sound 
 knowledge of Low Mathematics, the most useful 
 of all subjects up to the point stopped at, what- 
 ever that may be, a subject absolutely necessary 
 to the education of every well-educated man, the 
 schools would have little cause to fear any rivals. 
 
 8—2
 
 1 1 6 ED UCA TION [Chap. 
 
 The schools can without doubt do the work well, 
 though every year they have less chance of doing 
 so. These examinations, and others like them, 
 do not seem to have distinctly recognized the 
 fact, that an annual demand of a certain character 
 creates an annual supply of a certain character. 
 And if there is an annual supply, where does it 
 come from? The answer is simple. It must 
 either come from existing schools, in which case, 
 the subjects selected must be the subjects taught 
 in those schools, or it must come from new 
 quarters. These examinations, by the number 
 and variety of subjects permitted, and the very 
 elementary knowledge required in some of them, 
 have practically decided against the existing 
 schools on the whole. It does not, however, fall 
 within the scope of this work to discuss whether 
 private enterprize can furnish the kind of man 
 required by Government, or not. 
 
 In the case of other professional knowledge a 
 very large amount of time is gained by cutting 
 off the Verse Composition, without at all break- 
 ing in on the main school-hours, the class-routine, 
 or destroying the purpose of the school by doing
 
 VI.] AND SCHOOL. 1 17 
 
 away with the Greek and Latin Translation les- 
 sons. Obviously this concession to the necessity 
 for immediate gain increases the difficulty a boy 
 finds in really making way in his Greek and 
 Latin, and, as far as it does so, takes away from 
 the benefit he receives. But the main training is 
 still left, and he continues to pursue the same 
 studies with his schoolfellows sufficiently to make 
 him one with them, and not cut him off from 
 their common life. It is dangerous to do any- 
 thing that breaks up a school into parties. The 
 beneficial power of the place will be diminished 
 in proportion to the schism. But in order to 
 mark the school sense of the value of extra sub- 
 jects, to give them school-rank, and make them 
 living parts of the system, it will be well to give 
 up one regular school-time in the week to their 
 use; thus putting them so far on the same footing 
 with the main work. This, of course, assumes 
 that no lessons are learnt in the school-hours, but 
 that all times of preparing lessons, whether with 
 or without masters, are kept distinct ; the school- 
 hours being devoted to hearing the classes do the 
 work they have prepared elsewhere. It also as- 
 sumes that the extra masters are not peripatetic,
 
 IlS EDUCATION AND SCHOOL. [Chap. VI. 
 
 but attached to the school, and able therefore to 
 exercise a certain degree of influence on the boys, 
 and to take care that their lessons are well done. 
 When this is the case, every extra master ought 
 to have his income dependent on his work, and 
 not be paid a fixed salary. After the terms 
 which each pupil is to pay have been settled, the 
 payment should be his ; and his teaching, if suc- 
 cessful, should at once benefit himself. This gives 
 men an interest in their work, and its success, and 
 makes toil sweeter, when toil brings its visible 
 reward. These details may seem to smack of 
 no high principle to some. Those who think so 
 have never done trying work as their life's busi- 
 ness. It is idle to suppose that the best men do 
 not work better when every fair motive for good 
 work is given them. And no system has any 
 right to speculate on always having the best men. 
 No system can stand the wear and tear of prac- 
 tice over a series of years which disregards hu- 
 man nature as it is. Every good working system 
 must be based on a sound calculation of what the 
 average feelings and powers of average men are 
 likely to effect in ordinary circumstances over a 
 series of years.
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 What are a nation's possessions? The great words that have 
 been said in it; the great deeds that have been done in it; the 
 great buildings, and the great works of art, that have been made 
 in it. A man says a noble saying : it is a possession, first to his 
 own race, then to mankind. A people get a noble building built 
 for them : it is an honour to them, also a daily delight and 
 instruction. It perishes. The remembrance of it is still a pos- 
 session. If it was indeed pre-eminent, there will be more pleasure 
 in thinking of it, than in being with others of inferior order and 
 design. 
 
 On the other hand, a thing of ugliness is potent for evil. It 
 deforms the taste of the thoughtless : it frets the man who knows 
 how bad it is ; it is a disgrace to the nation who raised it ; an 
 example and an occasion for more monstrosities. It must be 
 done away with. Next to the folly of doing a bad thing is that of 
 fearing to undo it 
 
 Public Improvements. Friends in Council. 
 
 The ground has so far been cleared that the 
 main object of a good school has been settled ; 
 and also the main studies by which this object is 
 to be attained; and the relative importance of 
 the studies. The constructive part of a school 
 now claims attention, the means necessary to 
 carry out this plan. Now the area to be covered 
 is large. Everything pertaining rightfully to the 
 intellectual, moral, religious, and physical life of
 
 120 EDUCATION [Chap. 
 
 a large number of boys is the demand. Nay- 
 more, everything necessary to train that life 
 rightly. It will be obvious at a glance that this 
 demand cannot be met without having a vast 
 amount of dead stock, if the expression may be 
 used, in Buildings, School-rooms, Play-grounds, 
 and all things pertaining to the efficient use of 
 such buildings and grounds. Work and play, 
 the two great divisions of boy-life, must be tho- 
 roughly provided for. 
 
 No men living can teach and train properly, 
 if they are without the machinery for doing so. 
 Then there must be a sufficient number of able 
 men to make this machinery do its proper work. 
 The true theory is to leave nothing to the ex- 
 cellence of the men who work the school that 
 can be done by the machinery and appliances. 
 All the machinery should be so perfect that the 
 school may be expected to work well under the 
 least favourable circumstances, and a fortiori 
 under favourable circumstances in the hands of 
 earnest and able men will it do its work. It is a 
 crushing disadvantage to the strongest to find 
 himself set to do the work of a steam-engine;
 
 VII.] AND SCHOOL. 12 1 
 
 and the weak just sit down, and as they cannot 
 do what they are expected to do, content them- 
 selves with doing next to nothing. But men are 
 of more value than walls; so the most important 
 constructive fact in a great school is, 
 
 That there shall be a permanent staff of mas- 
 ters, with their incomes depending on their work. 
 
 The next is, that these masters shall not have 
 more boys to deal with than each can attend to 
 individually. 
 
 The next is, that the boys shall not be 
 forced to herd together in large rooms, but each 
 have a sanctum of his own. 
 
 The next is, that the boys shall be boarded 
 in a proper way, that is, that all the domestic 
 treatment shall fairly recognize their station in 
 life. 
 
 And the last is, that the boys shall be trusted, 
 and free to do anything that a wise father would 
 wish his son to do. 
 
 On these five things depends the true rank of 
 any school. 
 
 A great school, great in principle, will not fail 
 in any of the above-mentioned points.
 
 122 EDUCATION [Chap. 
 
 A great school will not have its masters birds 
 of passage. 
 
 A great school will not have too few masters. 
 
 A great school will not be a barrack. 
 
 A great school will not deal in a niggardly 
 way. 
 
 A great school will not be a prison. 
 
 All these things require to be explained, and 
 treated of separately. 
 
 First, then, the masters must not be birds of 
 passage. 
 
 This arises from the character of their work. 
 Their work is twofold. They have to teach, and 
 they have the entire government and manage- 
 ment of the boys. Certainly, if teaching is the 
 instinct, the gift, the interesting pleasure, or the 
 indifferent matter that it is often thought to be, 
 birds of passage can do it well enough. But 
 what is teaching? Teaching is a lifelong learning 
 how to deal with human minds. As infinite as 
 the human mind is in its variety, ought the re- 
 sources of the teachers to be. The more stupid 
 the pupils, the more skill is required to make 
 them learn. And thus it comes to pass that
 
 VII.] AND SCHOOL. 1 23 
 
 whilst the mere possession of knowledge is 
 enough to teach advanced classes, if it is right to 
 profane the word by calling pouring knowledge 
 into troughs teaching, the teaching little boys, 
 and stupid boys, and low classes well, is a thing 
 of wonderful skill. Not that there is not room 
 for skill as great in the higher classes, but the ab- 
 sence of it is not so self-evident. And knowledge 
 is a thing that can be measured and ticketed; 
 skill is not, and therefore makes but little show. 
 Hence young men come from the great know- 
 ledge shops of the Universities, with their hon- 
 ours, their learning, and their intellectual sword- 
 play, and scorn low classes, being ignorant of 
 the variety of the human mind, ignorant of the 
 exquisite skill and subtle simplicity wanted to 
 meet the twistings, and windings, and resistance 
 of uncultivated humanity. They have got hold 
 of a lump of knowledge, and go about with glo- 
 rious effrontery, pushing it into every keyhole, 
 and are angry that the locks will not open. Why, 
 it is not a key at all as yet, and if it was a key, 
 there are more locks than one in the world, and 
 — more minds. Life is too short for any one to
 
 124 EDUCATION [Chap. 
 
 learn how to teach; but not too short to begin 
 learning. Let it be borne in mind, that if a class 
 does not learn, it is the teacher's fault. It may 
 be the fault of the class too. But the teacher is 
 set to train the class, and conquer its faults, 
 not to be baffled by them. A colt may be 
 restive, but it is the bad rider who is kicked off. 
 The true teacher can never be said to have mas- 
 tered his subject, because his subject is co-exten- 
 sive with human nature. As soon as he has 
 trained one boy, another has to be trained, and 
 not the same over again, nor in quite the same 
 way, if he is indeed a good teacher. However 
 narrow the subject itself too may be, the range 
 of illustration is not narrow; the different points 
 of view in which it may be put are not few. Or 
 granted that in some instances they are; how 
 to manage all the different kinds of temper and 
 forms of resistance, to quicken the dull, brace 
 up the idle, master the obstinate, repress here, 
 encourage there, soothe one, subdue another, 
 breathe life and animation into all, is a task 
 of the highest demand on power, and strength, 
 and skill. And this has to be done every day;
 
 VII.] AND SCHOOL. 12$ 
 
 working men will understand the force of this 
 observation. A master in his class-room cannot 
 sink back and think, or rest for a minute or two, 
 if weary, before he goes on again. He must 
 pursue his work also amidst constant interrup- 
 tions. He cannot relax his attention, or let his 
 eye be absent, for a double work is always going 
 on — the work of imparting knowledge and the 
 work of keeping order. Books will wait, books 
 make no noise, books play no tricks, books can 
 be taken up or put down, even by the hardest- 
 worked man, and a certain choice of time is 
 in his hands; if you are in good time your 
 book is; if you are not, your book makes no 
 complaints, though it may be put off till twelve 
 o'clock at night. 
 
 But with boys all this is different. Well 
 or ill, day by day, week by week, month by 
 month, at exactly the same moment, a master 
 must be fresh and active in spirit, or part of 
 his work is not done. Gnawing cares may be 
 in his heart, but his work must not know it; 
 the busy eyes and cunning idleness of boys must 
 not find it out. Few know the meaning of beincr
 
 126 EDUCATION [Chap. 
 
 ready at the same moment always. The work of 
 any one moment may be no such great matter. 
 Neither is walking a mile. It is pleasant to walk 
 ten miles in a pretty country, or twenty, or thirty, 
 to a strong man ; but go on, be forced to do forty, 
 be goaded to fifty, or the extreme limit of human 
 strength, and then be told by the bystanders in 
 the last mile or two that it is only walking, and 
 that it is easy to put one leg before another. 
 Let no one imagine because teaching a willing or 
 clever child occasionally is pleasant, that teaching 
 all comers from all kinds of homes incessantly is 
 pleasant. The work has its rewards, but they 
 are the rewards of the weary at close of day, and 
 not of holiday sport. All enthusiasm, if there is 
 nothing but enthusiasm, is soon rubbed off in the 
 long day's labour, and its wonderful demands on 
 patience and freshness of spirit. There needs a 
 deeper, stronger truth than enthusiasm supplies, 
 to keep a man's heart unseared in the midst of 
 such toil — in the midst of numberless vexations 
 that dealing with human beings always brings, 
 from the conflict of separate wills and principles. 
 The work is interesting, holy, great, and good,
 
 VII.] AND SCHOOL. 1 27 
 
 but no afternoon's by-play, no hireling work, if 
 well done. It may be made so in a great degree 
 by being treated as such ; but for all that, those 
 who really do it must do it in no hireling spirit. 
 Can, then, young men just come and go and do 
 it whilst looking about for something better, and 
 do it well? If teaching is a great reality, and a 
 most severe task, it must be acknowledged as 
 such. These intense interests cannot find place in 
 the heart of a man who has just pitched his tent, 
 and will be off again to-morrow. He can pour out 
 knowledge, but he will be no teacher. He will 
 not so reach the heart — and the way even to the 
 head is through the heart — he will not so reach 
 the heart, and play with skill on the heart-strings, 
 and be able or willing to study each page of hu- 
 manity laid open before him, as to make him an 
 efficient trainer of each boy. Every inducement 
 that it is possible to bring to bear in order to 
 make the work highly esteemed, to give a per- 
 sonal interest, a permanent attraction, should be 
 brought to bear. Birds of passage flit too soon 
 to care enough for it. 
 
 Fathers and mothers do feel about the wel-
 
 128 EDUCATION [Chap. 
 
 fare, each of his own child; it is strange how 
 lightly they think and deal with those who 
 manage all their children. Teaching is a science, 
 and a most deep heart-question. That this is not 
 the popular opinion on the subject does not alter 
 the case, if it is true. And yet only half a mas- 
 ter's duty, and that the least half, has been 
 touched on. He has the whole domestic manage- 
 ment, discipline, and life of a certain number of 
 boys in his hands, for which he is responsible ; at 
 least in all schools where anybody is really re- 
 sponsible for this. Year by year under his roof 
 comes all the evil as well as all the good of English 
 homes. He has to train these boys to be honour- 
 able, free men. He must believe, even against 
 belief, that freedom and liberty to do everything 
 a wise father would wish his son to do, is the only 
 sure means of making boys free men; and that 
 prison walls and prison discipline are no training 
 against vice. Yet they are but boys, boys too 
 from very various homes. All the evil they do 
 comes to the surface from time to time, to vex 
 and rouse suspicion, and break down faith, whilst 
 the good is less obtrusive, even when it is more
 
 VII.] AND SCHOOL. 129 
 
 real. If there are three hundred boys in a school, 
 and each boy commits a fault only once in the year, 
 the minds of the masters are occupied with faults 
 every day. It needs strong faith to prevent the 
 heart-confidence in good principles from being bat- 
 tered down by this incessant artillery. It needs 
 much careful study of character, much patience, 
 much interest in the work, to keep it from being 
 slurred over. Besides this, there is the painful 
 duty of dealing honestly with graver offences; pain- 
 ful in itself, as requiring all a good man's judgment, 
 and probing and vexing his conscience as to how 
 to act best; but painful also in some cases from 
 the attacks, secret or open, which are constantly 
 made to induce men to break down their disci- 
 pline, and lower the tone of the whole school-life 
 by doing so. Unless a school is very strong in 
 reputation, cases of this sort seem, and are, mat- 
 ters of life and death to it, certain loss for the 
 time, possible ruin. And blame is generally 
 most plentifully bestowed where the greatest 
 pains and the greatest anxiety have been ex- 
 pended, for the good boys are easily managed ; 
 he anxiety and labour of school is in the effort 
 
 9
 
 130 EDUCATION [Chap. 
 
 to train the indifferent or the bad. These 
 things tend to harden the heart, and require 
 much power or principle to resist them. Then 
 there are even the more trying instances where 
 good fathers and mothers have to be told of their 
 sons' delinquencies, and the telling is almost more 
 painful to the teller than to them, from his hon- 
 ouring and sympathising with their sorrow. Then 
 sickly seasons — a necessary average of illness, 
 taking year by year — and all the various cares of 
 domestic life, contribute their quota to a school- 
 master's day of toil. In the morning it begins as 
 he leaves his bed-room, when he goes to bed it is 
 still there. No hour in the day is free, no time 
 secure. And human beings are the material 
 dealt with, human hearts and human lives are the 
 stake. Is this a work for a 'prentice hand? is 
 this a work for a man who is here to-day and 
 gone to-morrow? It is a life-long, never-ceasing, 
 ever-beginning learning how to do better. The 
 most valuable interests are at stake. The life- 
 blood of England should not be let run to waste. 
 It is no hireling work. Free men must do it in a 
 free spirit, or the nation will rue the end. Not
 
 VII.] AND SCHOOL. 13 1 
 
 least on this account are the old Foundations a 
 great saving power in the land. Whatever their 
 faults may be, they are generally free from med- 
 ling, free from the necessity of always producing 
 some show, something saleable. They are able 
 to stand a storm without shrinking, and to face 
 with calmness the morning letter-bag and the 
 penny post. But above all, they are strong in 
 the fact that their origin dates from the liberality 
 of the dead. Their roots are in the hallowed 
 past, and out of the grave of great and good 
 men, great and good at all events so far as not 
 grudging money in a good cause, grows the 
 shelter under which the work of education is 
 carried on. Those who believe in Education, be- 
 lieve also in this; and feel a deeper, truer sense 
 of life and work from carrying on a good man's 
 purpose, are freer from not being beholden to liv- 
 ing task-masters, are chastened into more patient 
 endurance by the memory of the trust they have 
 received. It gladdens and cheers them that they 
 are links in a chain of life and light, "Vitai 
 lampada tradunt," and not? merely sitting in the 
 Temple as money-changers. It is essential there- 
 
 9-2
 
 132 EDUCATION AND SCHOOL. [Chap. VII. 
 
 fore that life should be devoted to a work such as 
 this, the waste of which is human blood, and that 
 no motive should be withheld which can be 
 brought to bear, in order to help and cheer the 
 workers. And not the least strong among motives 
 is the sense of having found a home, a permanent 
 interest, a place to abide in, and the not being a 
 bird of passage.
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 "Big and beautiful you were last year, my colt," said the lad, 
 "but this year you arc far grander. There is no such horse in the 
 
 King's stable. But now you must come along with me." 
 
 "No," said Dapple again, "I must stay here one year more. 
 
 Kill the twelve foals as before, that I may suck the mares the 
 
 whole year, and then just come and look at me when the summer 
 
 comes. " 
 
 Yes, the lad did that ; he killed the foals, and went away home. 
 Dappelgrim. Talcs from the Norse. — Dasent. 
 
 The next point in a great school is the necessity 
 that the boys shall not outnumber the masters on 
 a disproportionate scale. The fact of there bein^" 
 too few masters utterly undermines the school 
 life, and causes a fearful waste of the living mate- 
 rial. This affects the school both in its teaching, 
 and in its morale. It is clear at once that too 
 great a number of boys to one master is fatal to 
 teaching, because it becomes an impossibility to 
 attend to individuals, to explain, to inspirit, or 
 in any way to find out their special needs, and
 
 134 EDUCATION [Chap. 
 
 adapt the knowledge given to these. But this 
 alone is worthy of the name of teaching. It is 
 quite true that a lecturer can lecture to as many- 
 people as- can hear him. The only limit is the 
 distance his voice will reach. But lecturing and 
 teaching are different things. Lectures suppose 
 that every one is fairly advanced in the subject, 
 eager to get on, and able to keep up with the 
 pace. Immediately any one of these postulates 
 is not true in fact, the lecture becomes a noise, 
 and nothing more. All schoolboys, of course, are 
 fairly advanced, eager to get on, and able to keep 
 up with lectures. There is a delightful simplicity 
 about this theory which quite marks a great 
 discovery. 
 
 But even if this was the case, how entirely 
 this theory, as far as it is carried out, converts 
 the master into a knowledge-machine, removes 
 him from living contact with his class, makes the 
 boys a more or less orderly mob to him, a nume- 
 rical statement in which individual interest is 
 merged and lost. They are a number of faces, 
 not hearts ; there is no getting near them, no 
 kindly intercourse, or possibility of treating them
 
 VIII.] AND SCHOOL. 135 
 
 as human beings. And the boys, on their part, 
 barely think the master a human being, for he 
 only appears to them an adamantine disregarder 
 of human weaknesses. 
 
 In such a state of things some few may get 
 on exceedingly well, but there is no teaching. A 
 small minority will always get on. A Stephenson 
 will work his way up without any school at all. 
 And eminent success in a school depends far 
 more on the luck of getting clever boys from 
 good homes in the school than is generally sup- 
 posed. In the present state of English education 
 the majority are so illiterate, and come to good 
 schools so late, that no power can make them 
 first-rate. Thus the few schools which enjoy 
 almost a monopoly of the well-trained little boys 
 have nearly the same advantage over the others 
 as regards high honours that a trainer of race- 
 horses would have over a trainer of cart-horses. 
 For a course of doing nothing, or next to nothing, 
 makes a boy by the time he is fourteen intellec- 
 tually a cart-horse. 
 
 The star system is a very fallacious test of a 
 good school, though it holds good thus far, that
 
 136 EDUCATION [Chap. 
 
 no first-rate school will fail in having distinguished 
 scholars in proportion to its numbers in time. 
 But taken simply as conclusive in favour of a 
 good school, it may mean nothing more than a 
 state of things like the old Norse fable, where the 
 fairy horse, that is to win the king's daughter 
 for his master, requires every year that the other 
 twelve foals shall all be killed and their portions 
 given to him. Very satisfactory for the twelve 
 foals and their mothers. The master, however, 
 wins the king's daughter iri grand style. But a 
 great school ought to give the portions required 
 for the one, without killing the twelve to do it. 
 If the numbers are fairly proportioned to each 
 teacher, it can be done. Good teaching improves 
 the lowest, and is more effective than lecturing 
 for the highest. With boys the true way to the 
 head is through the heart. They must, as far as 
 possible, be interested, and made to feel that 
 they are cared for, and that the toil is for their 
 good. Give a master who knows his work the 
 opportunity of touching the hearts of his boys, 
 and many will brighten up who before looked on 
 work as hopeless.
 
 VIII.] AND SCHOOL. 137 
 
 There is very little want of ability in boys 
 naturally, but there is great want of willingness, 
 an ingrained antagonism to learning, and dread of 
 it, and very often utter incapacity for self-teaching. 
 But many a boy can be taught who is quite 
 unable to learn by himself. It is very painful 
 sometimes to see the hopeless despair with which 
 boys, and good boys too, have got to look upon 
 tasks which only require a little explanation and 
 time. Is any one prepared to say that the great 
 difficulty felt in raising the mass of the young, is 
 not the consequence of that settled belief that has 
 gradually sunk into the souls of the untaught, 
 and been transmitted from generation to genera- 
 tion, of learning being a kind of magic gift to 
 some and not to others ; and that the cultivation 
 of the mind is but another name for unmanly, 
 painful toil and degradation ? All can learn who 
 are taught ; and learn on the whole well, if they 
 begin early, are not frightened into thinking it 
 hard, and have any faith in teaching. With a 
 good teacher it becomes a simple question of 
 time. All can learn, but the clever boys learn 
 more quickly. That is all. It is, certainly, a
 
 1 3 S ED UCA TION [Chap. 
 
 serious deficiency in a school to have no teach- 
 ing. But there is no teaching if the numbers are 
 beyond the power of a master to deal with indivi- 
 dually. A few of these may be taught, the rest 
 are killed to feed the fairy horse. Anybody may 
 arrive at a rough estimate of the amount of teach- 
 ing in any school, by a simple arithmetical calcu- 
 lation. If the numbers of a class are known, and 
 the hours spent in school, with the average length 
 of the lessons, it will be easy to find by a division 
 sum the chance each boy has of being called on 
 to do part of the lesson, due allowance being 
 made for the fact, that each boy who is thus 
 called on must take a fair time in doing anything 
 at all. In the case of composition the result is 
 still more attainable, because exercises in compo- 
 sition require to be looked over separately, and 
 ought to be commented on separately ; the ave- 
 rage number of minutes therefore that can be 
 given to each boy is actually attained. For in- 
 stance, if 40 boys do three exercises a week, a 
 master has to look over 120 exercises : supposing 
 five minutes are allowed to each exercise, there is 
 at once a result of ten hours' ceaseless work re-
 
 VIII.] AND SCHOOL. 1 39 
 
 quired to give even this attention to each. And 
 ten hours' ceaseless work is no joke ; it cannot be 
 done without an actual allowance of considerably- 
 more time, taking into consideration the little 
 breaks, rests, and interruptions, that inevitably 
 occur. It must also be borne in mind, that boys 
 never learn unless a certain amount of compulsion 
 is applied. The very best will be idle and inat- 
 tentive, if they are not likely to have their work 
 tested, and many under such circumstances arc- 
 idle and inattentive always. But the object of a 
 school is training, not merely the enabling those 
 who choose to get knowledge. Yet if there arc 
 too few masters, for many boys there is no teach- 
 ing, and, as far as this reaches, no training. 
 
 Nor is this all, nay, it is comparatively a 
 slight evil. It affects the morale, if possible, still 
 more than the intellectual progress of the boys. 
 In the first place, it puts at once a large number, 
 and those too very often distinguished in games, 
 out of the pale of masters' influence, and in direct 
 antagonism to it. The masters become to them 
 mere hinderers of their pleasures, inflicters of 
 disgrace, irresponsible enforcers of laws that can-
 
 140 EDUCATION [Chap. 
 
 not be obeyed, in fact, out of their horizon alto- 
 gether, beings of another sphere, and not a nice 
 sphere either, a sort of compound of book and 
 rod born for their special torture. What a cari- 
 cature this is of the position of a true teacher 
 which can bring to bear more powerful leverage, 
 more human and effectual motives of the best 
 kind than any other relation between man and 
 man. But pupils gathered together to be taught, 
 who only enjoy that excellent substitute for 
 butter, — punishment, scarcely appreciate this fact. 
 The spirit of antagonism is inevitable, it splits 
 the school in two. All is fair in an enemy's 
 country becomes the school creed ; and farewell 
 truth and honour as far as regards the boy-idea 
 of those very men whose duty it is to foster 
 truth and honour in them. All higher interests 
 vanish, and the life that the boys themselves can 
 establish becomes their life. The external laws 
 are worked by the masters, but the real laws 
 which each boy in heart obeys, the society laws, 
 the public opinion laws, are laws of their own ; 
 and will not rise higher than the very limited 
 experience and range of the average boy-mind,
 
 VIII.] AND SCHOOL. 1 41 
 
 and the much tempted and easily deluded philo- 
 sophy of the foolish boy-heart, will let it. Bodily 
 strength and the pastry-cook become divinities ; 
 and must do so, for it is a universal law that low- 
 temptations can only be really got rid of by im- 
 planting higher tastes and higher interests. It is 
 useless to resist the fog as long as you walk in 
 it ; a little higher up the hill there is no fog to 
 resist. The poor navvy, whose ideal, scarcely to 
 be surpassed in his mind by Paradise itself, — for 
 what could Paradise give more ? — whose ideal 
 was a beer-shop, a sanded floor, a bright fire and 
 a fiddle, is after all a representative man. We 
 laugh at his Paradise, but in one form or another 
 it is the Paradise of all neglected beings. If boys 
 never taste the sweets of knowledge, and are 
 practically made to think that knowledge is out 
 of their reach, they will take to the navvy's 
 Paradise. They learn to associate all the higher 
 interests and pursuits of the place they live in 
 with disagreeable and seemingly capricious power, 
 that tells them to do what they cannot do, and 
 punishes them when they cannot do it. The height 
 is impossible, it is also detestable, and yet climb-
 
 142 EDUCATION [Chap. 
 
 ing the height is the only possible deliverance 
 from the navvy's Paradise. Happiness, or some- 
 thing intended for it, must be found somewhere ; 
 under such circumstances where is a boy to find 
 it ? It is not put in his way, so too often he seeks 
 it in idleness and illegal pleasures. And by this 
 door enters the long list of acted falsehoods ; so 
 begins the life-deceit that figures so largely in the 
 creed and practice of the would-be-man boy. No 
 doubt there will always be evil, no doubt too a 
 thoroughly good, well-trained boy will keep clear 
 of evil; but a school ought to train, and not 
 merely furnish implements for the trained. A 
 school ought to weed out evil and false life, not 
 sow it and grow it as a regular crop. The school- 
 life itself ought to be so interesting, so free, so 
 hearty, so full of outlet for all good impulses of 
 body or mind, that low and illicit meannesses 
 should not answer. But this cannot be if the 
 masters are only grinding machines, so over- 
 worked as never to be at liberty, so far removed 
 by their overwork from the social life of the 
 school, as never to be able to find time to know 
 and feel with their boys.
 
 VIII.] AND SCHOOL. 1 43 
 
 It may, however, be thought that the double- 
 life and falseness is confined to the outschool 
 work ; it pervades the school work to a still 
 greater degree. If a class is beyond a master's 
 power to teach on account of its numbers, there 
 is only one way to deal with it. The lecturer 
 must insist on a certain quantum of visible work 
 being produced by all, and take no excuse if it is 
 not forthcoming. There must be so many lines 
 learnt, so many verses done, so much prose, &c, 
 and any defaulter must be punished at once. 
 For he has no time to judge and consider whether 
 every boy can or cannot do this quantity always. 
 He has barely time to see that it seems to be 
 done, and even when he is well aware that the 
 apparent result is a fiction he is quite powerless 
 to alter the system. Everything would go to 
 pieces if he began making distinctions between 
 the boys, and he would lay himself open to un- 
 limited imposition. The great discipline laws 
 must be observed, and the tale of bricks delivered, 
 for there is no means of estimating the work ex- 
 cepting by the fixed tale. This is what meets 
 the eye, but the truth is, the master knows, and
 
 144 EDUCATION [Chap. 
 
 all the boys know, that a fair percentage never 
 make one brick themselves, but by every con- 
 ceivable falsehood, by cribs, by old copies, by 
 getting construes, by having the exercises written 
 for them, make their whole school career one long 
 lie. Of course when found out they are punished. 
 Also, this sort of lie is not rated so low as other 
 sorts of lies, but the comparative value of lies is 
 scarcely the lesson intended to be learnt at school. 
 Yet all this goodly crop is actually sown and 
 grown generation after generation in every school 
 where there are too few masters. 
 
 Plenty of occupation, mental and bodily, is the 
 one practical secret of a good school. And the 
 most important condition, without which plenty 
 of occupation cannot exist, is that there shall 
 be plenty of masters. A considerable experience 
 has shown that an average of about twenty-five 
 boys to each classical master is as much as can be 
 well managed taking the whole school through. 
 And these must form one class, be employed on 
 the same books, and be the sole charge of that 
 master. It has yet to be proved that one man 
 can teach many classes with advantage. When
 
 VIII.] AND SCHOOL. 145 
 
 a master has the whole teaching of one class of 
 manageable numbers, he is able first of all to 
 become acquainted with the subjects he has to 
 teach in all their bearings, as he has time for 
 thought, and his attention is not distracted by a 
 multiplicity of pursuits. This will produce in the 
 case of a. thoughtful man an amount of illustration 
 and teaching power that is not supposed usually 
 even to exist. He is able also to make himself 
 acquainted with the powers and attainments of 
 every boy under him, and as far as his judgment 
 goes to apportion fairly their tasks to each, to 
 help them when needful, to deal with them singly, 
 weighing each case; and though his judgment 
 may err in some instances, errors of judgment arc 
 very different things from arbitrary routine. All 
 the credit, if the class does well, is his, all the 
 discredit, if it does badly. For no one shares his 
 work with him as far as that set of boys, at that 
 time, is concerned. He can be a friend amongst 
 friends with his boys, because he has time to 
 know them, and this will not diminish his power 
 but increase it a thousand-fold. Boys like justice, 
 even severity, if just, and not capricious. A man 
 
 10
 
 146 EDUCATION AND SCHOOL. [Chap. VIII. 
 
 in earnest, and able to know the boys, will not 
 lose them as friends because he is in earnest, even 
 when earnestness means punishing wrong doing. 
 Thus as the teaching is true, as each boy is cared 
 for, as a proper sphere is found for each where he 
 can get healthy interests, as everybody is reached 
 and no one left out, a boy if he does choose the 
 navvy's Paradise and a life of lies, chooses it 
 deliberately, against and in spite of better things 
 set before him. At all events the school does not 
 make him choose it. A great school, therefore, 
 will not have too few masters. 

 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 The line of new boys stood altogether at the further table— of 
 all sorts and sizes, like young bears with all their troubles to come, 
 as Tom's father said to him when he was in the same position. 
 He thought of it as he looked at the line, with poor little slight 
 Arthur standing with them, and as he was leading him upstairs to 
 number 4 directly after prayers, and showing him his bed. It 
 was a huge high airy room, with two large windows looking on 
 the school close. There were twelve beds in the room. Poor 
 little Arthur was overwhelmed with the novelty of his position. 
 The idea of sleeping in the room with strange boys had clearly 
 never crossed his mind before, and was as painful as it was strange 
 to him. 
 
 Tom Brown's School Days. 
 
 " A LONG table and a square table, or seats about 
 the walls," says Bacon, " seem things of form, but 
 are things of substance, for at a long table a few 
 at the upper end in effect sway all the business, 
 but in the other form there is more use of the 
 counsellors' opinions that sit lower." Plalf the 
 mistakes of life are the difference bctwven 
 the long and square table. And this par- 
 ticularly applies to school life, because the boy 
 cannot change the externals of his life. It is a 
 
 10—2
 
 148 EDUCATION [Chap. 
 
 thing- of substance whether all things necessary 
 for training are there or not. Boys are sent out 
 from their homes, where they are at home, and 
 have their little comforts, to be trained amongst 
 strangers. It is excellent that this should be so. 
 How bad it would be if there was no corrective 
 for the different failings of different homes, nothing 
 to take a boy out of the pod in which he found 
 himself, nothing to prevent his thinking that the 
 pod ruled the world*. So boys are sent to school 
 to be trained. This is important. They are not 
 trained men exercising powers already practised, 
 but learners. They come to be taught how to 
 live, to be prepared to meet the trials of life, to find 
 out that as they must some day act alone on their 
 own responsibility, it is well to begin to know how 
 to do so. The preparation then is a preparation 
 for the general habits of life hereafter. They are 
 to be trained first of all to study. They do not 
 understand as yet how to do it, and clearly there- 
 fore are not likely to do it under less favourable 
 circumstances than trained men require in order 
 to study. What then do men require who have 
 
 * Aunt Judys Tales.
 
 IX.] AND SCHOOL. 1 49 
 
 been trained to intellectual work ? They require, 
 above all things, quiet, a place without disturb- 
 ance, where there shall be as little as possible to 
 draw off attention, or distract the mind. And this 
 is after the repugnance to study has been over- 
 come, when the worker knows how to work, and 
 is eager to do it. 
 
 If this is necessary for the trained man, it is a 
 thousand-fold more necessary for the poor boy 
 who has everything to learn, who does not yet 
 know even how to work. If a master is always 
 in the room when work is going on, quiet is fairly 
 secured, but that is all. No choice is given the 
 boy, no training in the management of time, and 
 the great question of leisure is quite unprovided 
 for. If a master is not there, it is a mockery to 
 put a boy into a large room full of all sorts of 
 dispositions, sizes, and strengths, and to call it 
 training for intellectual work. Nay four or five in 
 a room together are nearly as dangerous. If, how- 
 ever, any boys can exist satisfactorily under such 
 circumstances, it must be the older boys who have 
 learnt to take care of themselves; but these arc 
 precisely the boys who are given any advantage
 
 150 EDUCATION [Chap. 
 
 of privacy that there is to be had, in the barrack- 
 system. Yet the little boys most of all require a 
 place by themselves, if it is not possible to give it 
 to all. For they are most unprotected, most ex- 
 posed to temptation, and most in need of a refuge. 
 As far as lessons, however, are concerned, the 
 large room is not so fatal, provided a master is 
 always in it. True, this would be sadly out of 
 harmony with any free system, but it would 
 ensure a certain amount of work. The large 
 room is most destructive to the private life, if 
 such it can be called. A little fellow fresh from 
 home is compelled to spend some of his leisure 
 time amongst a number of boys of all characters. 
 Imagine how pleasant, how favourable to morality 
 this compulsory companionship must be, when a 
 state of things is produced in which it is not pos- 
 sible for a boy to escape from hearing, or seeing 
 whatever the worst boy there dares say or do ; not 
 possible either to escape from the bullying of his 
 most detested tyrants. What is this a training 
 for? Not for manhood, for these are not the 
 customs of after life in manhood. No man is 
 obliged always to be in the company of those he
 
 IX.] AND SCHOOL. 151 
 
 fears or abhors, as too many boys are. Tempta- 
 tion in after life is never brought so near, is never 
 so utterly closing all around its victim with a 
 presence so clinging, a power so absolute, so law- 
 less. And little boys, fresh from all the love of 
 home, who have never known what it is to be un- 
 cared for an hour, are flung into this cold bath. 
 If a boy is a good boy, and not strong, (for 
 strength is the school-boy's idol,) what a martyr 
 he becomes at once. Ridicule and violence are 
 equally brought to bear on all his best feelings. 
 He never knows a moment's peace. Add open 
 dormitories to the picture, and do not suppose, 
 whatever novels may assert, that little Christian 
 confessors say their prayers, and kneel, and at 
 last win the respect of their more hardened com- 
 panions by doing so. It is not done: and cannot 
 well be done, for the coming and going, and 
 talking and stir, of a number of boys in an open 
 room makes it impossible. But if it was done, is 
 this an ordeal that a boy ought to pass through ? 
 What is there like it in after life ? In after life, 
 of course, strangers stand night by night in a 
 man's bedroom and thrash him if he prays, inter-
 
 152 EDUCATION [Chap. 
 
 fere with his dressing and undressing, and perpe- 
 trate all the other nameless tricks and tortures 
 that thoughtless folly or malice can inflict. 
 Doubtless these things do not always take place ; 
 but is it training boys exposing them to the 
 chance of such things ? Many, too many, know 
 and have suffered all, many are now suffering. 
 Many know that such a chapter as ought to be 
 written on this subject to do it justice would not 
 be believed, but set down as a base figment. 
 
 However, the real question is, what is proper 
 training: and when human beings are the subject, 
 principles must be looked to, and their natural 
 results. Facts can be made to tell almost any 
 story an advocate pleases. That is, in this 
 chequered world the best system will have its 
 bad cases where the principles have been defied, 
 and wrong been done in spite of them, — its adverse 
 facts, which an adverse counsel can make a good 
 thing of. And the worst will have its redeeming 
 cases, in spite of its badness, in opposition to its 
 principles, which a favourable advocate can dress 
 up. Faith in principles alone, and a calm consi- 
 deration of them, can save men in dealing with
 
 IX.] AND SCHOOL. 153 
 
 human life. It is for this reason that out of the 
 fund of anecdotes, and personal experience, and 
 facts at command, none are quoted here; in order 
 that the principles, and their logical and certain 
 consequences may be seen, unmystified by party 
 feeling and party facts. Only general assertions 
 are made, based upon the obvious circumstances 
 of each case, in order that an unbiassed opinion 
 may be formed whether these circumstances are a 
 proper training for the young or not. Yet no one 
 who has not experienced it can imagine the deso- 
 lation of helplessness, the utter exposure to all- 
 pervading wrong that can take place under such 
 conditions. Even a slave is safe sometimes, he 
 does not live in the same room with his tyrant, 
 but the boy-slave has his master in the same 
 room always. 
 
 And whereas the most essential part of train- 
 ing is a certain freedom of choice, by which self- 
 management, self-control, and power to resist 
 temptation is fostered, a little boy is sometimes 
 plunged at once into a whirlpool of power and 
 companionship that is fitted to break down every 
 tendency to right and healthy self-government.
 
 154 EDUCATION [Chap. 
 
 One of the great religious commands is "to 
 ponder our ways," to withdraw from the press of 
 busy life, and in our hearts weigh well what is true, 
 and what is not true, in the hurry and glitter of 
 the world. And school sometimes trains boys by 
 never allowing them a moment to carry out this 
 great duty. Yet how needful it is for the little 
 exile from home, with strange new life amongst 
 strangers round about him for the first time, to 
 have a spot, however small, which shall be his 
 own, where he shall be safe, with his books, and 
 his letters ; where he can think, and weep if need 
 be, or rejoice, unmolested, and escape for a season 
 out of the press of life about him and the strange 
 hardness of a new existence into a little world of 
 his own, a quasi-home, to find breathing space, 
 and gather strength before he comes out again. 
 Nowhere on earth is six or eight feet square more 
 valuable than at school, the little bit which is a 
 boy's own, the rock which the waves do not cover. 
 Such things as these just form the square table 
 instead of the long one, which by its mere shape 
 and framework alters all life. No great school 
 will force the boys to congregate together.
 
 IX.] AND SCHOOL. 155 
 
 The next position, that a great school will not 
 be niggardly, needs no proof, but yet requires to 
 be stated. As a matter of fact, the behaviour of 
 any body of men depends very much on how 
 they are treated. But this is not the whole ques- 
 tion. A school ought not only to accept a given 
 state of behaviour, but to train it; to train boys 
 to do right. No possible perversion of idea can 
 make mean and niggardly treatment a training' 
 for rigJit. For instance, if a school does not give 
 the boys proper food, the getting fresh and better 
 food becomes one of the necessities of life, not 
 merely a matter of greediness. But if the school 
 turns the attention of the boys strongly on to 
 food in this way, there can be but little power to 
 restrain them from illicit things. Or again, if a 
 boy never receives a drop of drinkable beer, he 
 may be very wrong in frequenting pot-houses for 
 it, but certainly he is sorely tempted. 
 
 These things may appear at first sight matters 
 of comfort, but they are matters of morality. 
 The deceit, greediness, and drinking that find en- 
 trance in consequence are grievously wrong in the 
 boys who give way to temptation, but to create
 
 156 EDUCATION [Chap. 
 
 temptation is a fearful thing in the power which 
 ought to guard against it. 
 
 Moreover, once let boys have good reason to 
 think that their interests are not the same as those 
 of the masters, and that masters have not their 
 good honestly at heart in all things; let them 
 consciously or unconsciously feel that there are 
 double purposes going on, and the inevitable 
 result will be a want of faith in every precept 
 that goes against the grain. Meanness instead of 
 liberality, untraining instead of training, induces 
 a settled belief that masters command for their 
 own interests, and talk good, because it is their 
 business to talk good, but that it is only talk. Boys 
 are very apt to think themselves wiser than their 
 masters from sheer boyish ignorance and conceit, 
 add to this a well-grounded mistrust in the double 
 purposes that are going on, and perhaps their 
 estimate is not so very far wrong. But we must 
 not lose sight of training ; is this sort of thing 
 training? Does it conduce to truth? 
 
 There is another point also to be considered. 
 It is a curious but well-known fact that it is of 
 the nature of evil to reproduce itself. The slave
 
 IX.] AND SCHOOL. 157 
 
 in power is a tyrant. Those who are ill-treated 
 ill-treat others. What a nursery of bullying and 
 petty cruelty this sort of system is. If there are 
 too few servants, which is a usual concomitant of 
 the above-mentioned evils, some one must do the 
 things that have to be done, and it is not difficult 
 to find who that some one is. The little, the 
 ignorant, and the backward boys who are low in 
 the school, are the some one. So in a regular 
 chain, like the tropical picture, where the tarantula 
 catches the humming-bird, the chameleon the 
 tarantula, the lizard the chameleon, the snake the 
 lizard, the kite the snake, the eagle the kite, and 
 man of course the eagle, the spirit of destruction 
 descends, and instead of a manly feeling of pro- 
 tection and help, the exact contrary in engendered. 
 The personal character of the rulers will certainly 
 tend to counteract this. And no one who is ac- 
 quainted with the generous free spirit, and earnest- 
 ness, that so largely leavens every great school in 
 England from the men at work there, in spite of 
 the machinery obstacles, can doubt that this is 
 the case. But why set earnest men to swim up 
 stream always ? The stream must prevail in
 
 158 EDUCATION AND SCHOOL. [Chap. IX. 
 
 time. It is a natural law that a constant power 
 will overcome anything less constant. The inert 
 mass of any place ought always to be in the 
 workers' favour; for that is a matter of brick, 
 and mortar, and wood, which can be shaped 
 at pleasure. Human hearts ought to be spared 
 all work that brick and mortar can do better. 
 There should be no unnecessary wear and tear 
 of the living material, boys or masters, which a 
 mason and carpenter can prevent. Mortar is 
 cheaper than blood.
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 " After all, Milverton, do you see so much to object to in being 
 a slave? In freedom there is certainly room to dash yourself 
 against things, but it is small comfort to a man to think that he 
 has made a great part of his own misery himself." 
 
 Milverton. "Vet that must be the best education for another 
 world in which there is some freedom for good and evil. If 
 you begin discussing the matter with reference to happiness alone, 
 you may as well take in the animal creation, and contend that 
 they are better off than men. Suffering of all kinds is not without 
 its instruction : but surely that suffering is most instructive, which 
 a man has had something to do witli in making for himself. 
 Perhaps the worst state for man might be denned to be, not that 
 which has most suffering, but that which has most suffering with 
 the least instruction and discipline growing out of it." 
 
 That Slavery is Cruel. Friends in Council. 
 
 The last point that will never be neglected in a 
 great school has, to a great degree, been antici- 
 pated in the previous chapters; the necessity of 
 trusting the boys, and allowing them liberty to do 
 anything that a wise father would wish his son to 
 do. Under a right system, there cannot be any 
 doubt about the matter. One thing is certain,
 
 160 EDUCATION [Chap. 
 
 there is no real halting-place between perfect 
 truth in the system with trust as regards the boys, 
 and complete and constant supervision, walled 
 play-grounds, bolts and bars. In other words, it 
 is safer to trust much than to trust little, and 
 there must either be complete prison rule or a 
 wise trust. The reason is simple. One of the 
 strongest motives for good is the consciousness 
 of having a character to lose. 
 
 As soon as any one sees that his superior does 
 not believe in his character, and only trusts him 
 to a certain point, he is tempted to trespass a 
 little further, if convenient, as he runs no risk of 
 losing his character by doing so. 
 
 Prison rule, as far as it goes, is obviously 
 effective; it gives little trouble, if thoroughly 
 carried out, and keeps up a fair outside. It is 
 clear, that if a wall is high enough, the locks good 
 enough, or a master always present, no outward 
 act of evil can very well be done. But neither the 
 mind nor the tongue can be imprisoned, and, 
 until a lock has been found for these, only the 
 form of the evil is altered. And to what a pain- 
 ful extent. Instead of having a few criminals
 
 X.] AND SCHOOL. l6l 
 
 kept under and scouted by the society itself, and 
 a large number of manly, honourable, and inde- 
 pendent boys, all are mistrusted, and degraded 
 by the mistrust. Instead of a well-trained ma- 
 jority, who can be relied on to do right in sight 
 and out of sight, from having right in themselves, 
 all are treated as suspicious characters, giving 
 the really criminal undue influence ; for in a 
 band of criminals the worst is the greatest man. 
 An effeminate weakness is the best result of 
 such a system ; a corrupt putrescence of sneaking 
 sensuality the worst. 
 
 But it will be better to admit, for argu- 
 ment's sake, that the lock has been found for 
 mind and tongue as well as for the body, and 
 that the prison system is complete and does its 
 work perfectly. Well then, the boys are so shut 
 in that they never do any evil, because evil 
 never comes in their way to be done. What 
 then becomes of the training? In what part of 
 free England, or the lawless world, are these 
 hothouse perfections going to live by and by ? 
 There is something inexpressibly comic, if it was 
 not also inexpressibly sad, in the idea of training 
 
 11
 
 1 62 EDUCATION [Chap. 
 
 boys to take an active part in free, honourable 
 English life, by imprisoning them, by keeping 
 them in an entirely artificial state of existence, 
 enslaving them to make them free. Experience 
 is generally considered of value ; and as in after 
 life the man will have to take care of himself, 
 excepting in a lunatic asylum or a gaol, in early 
 life the boy should learn to take care of himself, 
 unless he is qualifying for a lunatic asylum or a 
 gaol. Great things will hereafter be entrusted to 
 him, and he had better begin by learning to be 
 trustworthy in little things. 
 
 It is, doubtless, a fascinating sight to some 
 people to see a charming uniformity, a trim per- 
 fection ; a strong will can easily produce it in 
 inferiors. Spectators applaud, but as soon as the 
 shears stop work, the brambles take their revenge 
 for having been clipped, instead of rooted out. It 
 is a pleasanter, at least a less vexatious life, for 
 the master to clip the boys to a pattern, and 
 never allow a bramble to be seen, than to trust to 
 growth, to let the brambles grow too, and then 
 pull them out as they appear ; for this makes 
 the fingers bleed ; it makes the heart bleed, and
 
 X.] AND SCHOOL. 1 63 
 
 the lookers-on scoff, but the work once done, is 
 done. 
 
 However, as a fact, in a large school the prison 
 system can never be complete. Another state of 
 things arises in consequence. The great prison 
 rules press with intense severity on the boys who 
 keep consciences, whilst there is great impunity for 
 those who do not. Whoever dares run the risk, 
 and the very daring has its charms, can easily get 
 out of the ill-watched prison, and the risk is not 
 great. Once outside, no one is on the look out ; 
 the discipline does not contemplate any outside 
 work, so the chances of discovery are very slight. 
 Thus, a boy first screws himself up to a lawless 
 pitch before he commits any wrong, and, having 
 done so, is ripe for tenfold the licentious iniquity 
 that he otherwise would be ; on the same prin- 
 ciple that a foreign mob having to face bayonets 
 and artillery at once, is far more dangerous than 
 an English mob, which only contemplates a row 
 with the police. 
 
 It is perfectly true that in a large school with 
 too few masters, and some or all of the inconsis- 
 tencies before mentioned in its internal machinery, 
 
 1 1 — 2
 
 1 64 EDUCATION [Chap. 
 
 there will be much license if it is free. Plenty 
 of teaching, plenty of occupation, plenty of games, 
 combined with good laws, can alone prevent this. 
 But grant it. There can be no doubt that, com- 
 pared with the prison system (which has the license 
 too), it is no evil at all. No boy is compelled 
 to be base and licentious in the free system — nay, 
 many are not even tempted to be, for it may 
 not come much in their way, and does not, if they 
 are heartily taking the good the school provides. 
 But in the prison system the mistrust is like the 
 air they breathe, everywhere, and on all sides. The 
 companionship is compulsory. All the elements of 
 evil are cooped together in a narrow space, and 
 no escape is possible. There may be a sewer in 
 both instances, but a sewer in a town is deadly, in 
 the open fields at worst a nuisance. No one who 
 studies the question can doubt that the free life 
 of most of our English schools is admirable, and 
 that in spite of faults, which have slowly grown 
 up and are hard to remove, there is a noble spirit 
 in them on the whole, and much pure and devoted 
 powertobe found both in masters and boys. Above 
 all they are free, and so far fit training-places for
 
 X.] AND SCHOOL. 165 
 
 the free; full of old traditions of hardihood and fun, 
 strong in the attachment they command both from 
 their antiquity and greatness, and from the personal 
 power, the fine spirit, the earnest zeal, and honour 
 of the men who carry on the work in them. If 
 personal excellence could of itself make a school 
 great without due appliances, then there would be 
 no use in saying another word. But in one thing 
 there has been no shortcoming in the best of them. 
 They are free, and fit training-places so far for the 
 free. No great school will turn itself into a prison. 
 There is, however, another side of this question, 
 and that not the least important, the effect of a 
 slave system on the masters. It is difficult enough, 
 under any circumstances, to find sufficient means 
 of pleasant communication between hard-worked, 
 careful men and light-hearted boys. An earnest 
 man who has his heart in his work is often tempted 
 to go mad over the class-work, and the want of 
 zeal and appreciation of it even in his best boys. 
 Too often it is like pouring the heart-blood on the 
 ground to be trampled on. It is hard to bear the 
 sight of the idle and the foolish yawning over the 
 treasured thought, the harvest of toilsome years,
 
 1 66 EDUCATION [Chap. 
 
 the victorious result of successful battling ; almost 
 harder to see the best swallowing it as a task to be 
 done. Or, in a lower point of view, it is hard to 
 go over day by day, again and again, the same 
 groundwork, which a few minutes of real attention 
 would make even a stupid boy know, but which 
 the boy-power of not caring makes a work of 
 years, and not done then. And this is what the 
 teacher lives for, what he is judged by. If the 
 lessons are the only meeting-ground, and outside 
 the school-room there is no common life found, 
 heaven preserve the masters. The boys will not 
 fare well, but they hate it and escape. But the 
 masters — the iron in such a case must enter into 
 their souls, and make them ill-tempered machines, 
 always turning on one rusty handle. The pleasure 
 of seeing the boys enjoy themselves, of sharing in 
 and promoting their joys, of meeting them in their ' 
 walks, of hearing the last new discovery, of laugh- 
 ing at or seconding the last new plan, of playing 
 their games, of oiling the hinges of old bones with 
 a little of the freshness of young hearts, all would 
 be gone. All the light of the place would vanish, 
 and a suspicious isolation be left. Or perhaps
 
 X.] AND SCHOOL. 167 
 
 an unnatural appetite for mere intellectual prizes, 
 with a proportionate contempt for the more 
 numerous but less fortunate mediocrities, would 
 alone remain. Everything human, in fact, must 
 disappear, and the big-headed, ill-tempered dwarf, 
 pure intellect, reign in his dreary kingdom. Better 
 be the most wretched little boy he wishes to 
 squeeze into bookcovers, illustrate with wood- 
 cuts, and put on his shelves, than the dreary 
 potentate himself. You are avenged, O much- 
 beflogged youngster. You will escape, but your 
 gaoler is a gaoler to the end of time.
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 It is the close observation of little things which is the secret of 
 success in business, in art, in science, and in every pursuit of life. 
 Human knowledge is but an accumulation of small facts, made by 
 successive generations of men, the little bits of knowledge and ex- 
 perience carefully treasured up by them growing at length into a 
 mighty pyramid. Though many of these facts and observations 
 seemed in the first instance to have but slight significance, they are 
 all found to have their eventual uses, and to fit into their proper 
 places. 
 
 Smiles, Self Help, chap. iv. 
 
 The main plan of a great school has now been 
 sketched, and it presents a formidable array of 
 requirements. Numbers of able men, large build- 
 ings, numerous branches of knowledge, with place 
 and instruments for each, numerous occupations 
 and amusements, with place and means for these 
 also, besides all the risk of failure that very com- 
 plex functions carried on by many different men 
 involve. There must be between 200 and 300 
 boys in the school. Every set of twenty-five boys 
 or thereabouts must have a master allotted to it 
 for its main work, exclusive of the extra subjects
 
 Chap. XL] EDUCATION AND SCHOOL. 169 
 
 and their masters, and every boy must have a 
 study or room to himself. These are not mere 
 assertions, all of them have been proved, excepting 
 the necessity for having numbers at all. But 
 numbers are necessary for many reasons, some of 
 which shall now be stated. To a certain extent 
 the whole theory of training boys for life would 
 fall to the ground at once, if there are not a con- 
 siderable number collected together. But there 
 are several considerations which tend to fix on an 
 intelligible basis what the numbers should be. 
 These considerations belong principally to the 
 teaching department. A class can easily be too 
 small ; gradations and variety are wanted, the 
 stimulus of face sharpening face must be supplied. 
 Deadness and a stagnant level of exertion falls on 
 a small class, as different from the spring and elas- 
 ticity of real living power as can well be conceived. 
 The curious effect numbers have in exciting the 
 mind, from the feeling apparently of united force 
 and sympathy, is well known. The actual number 
 a class ought to consist of will depend on experi- 
 ence ; experience must show how many a compe- 
 tent man is able to teach with advantage. Twenty-
 
 170 EDUCATION [Chap. 
 
 five has been named here as the result of careful 
 experience ; but the numbers of the school will 
 depend principally on the number of classes. 
 There is a still greater necessity that there should 
 be classes enough in a school, than that there 
 should be numbers in a class. 
 
 The ages of boys in the great schools range 
 from ten to nineteen years. This furnishes as 
 good a measure as anything can do. There 
 should at least be as many classes as there are 
 years to be dealt with. Not that the boys will 
 fall into their places according to age, but prac- 
 tically what can be learned in a year is quite 
 sufficient to necessitate a new class. There ought 
 to be no abrupt breaks in the work : the work 
 should pass onwards and upwards by as imper- 
 ceptible a transition as possible. It is very in- 
 jurious being compelled to mass together in the 
 same class, boys who are too far separated from 
 each other in attainments. And it is scarcely less 
 injurious to have clever boys running too rapidly 
 through a few classes (as they must do where 
 there are only a few classes), without staying 
 long enough in each to get its special grounding
 
 XL] AND SCHOOL. I/I 
 
 properly, until they arrive at the head class, when 
 they are apt to think the end of the world is 
 come, and do little more. 
 
 It results from this that eight or ten classes 
 at least are necessary in any school that under- 
 takes to educate boys whose ages range from 
 ten to nineteen. It becomes evident from these 
 statements, some of which will be dealt with 
 more fully further on, that a great school is a 
 very costly thing, too costly for there to be very 
 many with advantage. The boys cannot be 
 boarded in less than eight or ten houses. In 
 fact, the necessary buildings and appurtenances 
 alone must be put down at no less a sum than 
 £40,000 or £50,000, and may very easily take 
 double as much. Besides this there must be a 
 large sum for Scholarships and Exhibitions, or 
 it will not be possible to keep up the school. 
 This appears very startling ; but both the argu- 
 ments on which this result is based will bear the 
 strictest investigation, and also experience will 
 confirm them. That is to say, if any inquirer 
 will really set himself to make out clearly what 
 he wants to find in a school, and is not contented
 
 172 ED UCA TION [ C H ap. 
 
 with the chance of a prize in a lottery, inexorable 
 necessity will force him at last to stand face to 
 face with these wants and these requirements. 
 
 But the case is not so bad as it seems. The 
 keystone of the whole fabric is the necessity of 
 training boys of all ages. If this necessity is 
 removed, the question becomes much simplified. 
 The problem that has to be solved presents it- 
 self in this form. Make a school with a mode- 
 rate foundation self-supporting and effective. The 
 difficulty that at present exists is this. All or 
 almost all the small foundations are absolutely 
 compelled by their statutes, or at least supposed 
 by them, to train scholars for the universities. 
 That is, to keep their boys until eighteen or nine- 
 teen years of age. But how can a headmaster 
 and an undermaster really teach the eight or ten 
 classes which are as necessary in a school of all 
 ages which numbers thirty as in one which 
 numbers 200 ? It is simply impossible. But the 
 impossibility lies in the ages of the boys. If 
 there are but 25 boys in a school, and their ages 
 range from ten to nineteen, the disparity between 
 the first and the last will be as great as if there
 
 XL] AND SCHOOL. 173 
 
 were 250. And the number of separate bits of 
 teaching will be as great. But if twenty-five 
 boys reading the same books can be taught by 
 one man as well or better than one boy, then the 
 having to teach one boy only involves, if it is 
 done, the loss of funds resulting from the non- 
 payment of the twenty-four, who might be taught 
 at the same time by the same man. In fact, one 
 boy on this plan costs as much as twenty-five 
 boys, as far as teaching is concerned, even if he 
 was taught as well, which can rarely be the case. 
 For up to a certain point a master's interest, as 
 well as a boy's, is greatly heightened by a fair 
 number, and his teaching improved. 
 
 The having a few boys then of very different 
 ages means no funds for many classes, though 
 many classes are wanted ; means also inferior 
 teaching and learning if the classes existed ; but, 
 as the classes do not exist, it means a jumble of 
 unequal workers, in which no one gets his own 
 needs attended to, or can do so, from the nature 
 of things, unless he is the fairy horse and cats 
 up the portions of the killed. Thus extremes 
 meet, and too great numbers and too small have
 
 174 EDUCATION [Chap. 
 
 exactly the same effect practically in preventing 
 the individual from being taught, the one be- 
 cause there are too many boys to each master, 
 the other because there are no masters for a 
 few boys. 
 
 But all these difficulties vanish at once if 
 such schools are allowed to limit the age of their 
 pupils, to thirteen years say. This at once re- 
 duces the number of classes, and multiplies in 
 equal proportion the power of the masters. In- 
 stead of the six masters really wanted (but never 
 existing) for the twenty-five or thirty unequal 
 boys, one master can now do the work perfectly, 
 do it really well, and for even a greater number 
 of little boys of the same age and attainments. 
 But this is not the only advantage gained. Much 
 of the school work is on a less expensive scale. 
 There is less wear and tear. The buildings need 
 not be so large or fine, or the play-grounds. But, 
 above all, the difficulty of providing masters is 
 much diminished, and their life a much less 
 trying one in every way. All the most serious 
 temptations and vices are at once removed, and 
 the government becomes of a less arduous and
 
 XL] AND SCHOOL. 175 
 
 anxious description, with much less risk of 
 failure. Three moderate, but good sensible men 
 can work efficiently and well, a school of little 
 boys, which could not be worked by less than six 
 if the ages were unequal. In fact, it is not too 
 much to say, that a real preparatory school, in 
 which every boy is under thirteen years of age, 
 does not require more than half the power to 
 carry it on effectively that a school of all ages 
 would do. 
 
 And it can be carried on effectively however 
 small the numbers may be, whereas small num- 
 bers bring no lightening of the burden of the 
 school that admits of all ages, as the number of 
 classes is not diminished by their being but 
 few boys to each class. This will not, however, 
 much diminish the expense of present schools, 
 for the simple reason that they are now being 
 paid for what they try to do and ought to do, 
 but are unable to do. The expense will not be 
 diminished, but the work will be done. Little 
 boys require as good food, as much sleeping 
 room and study room, and as unceasing care 
 and teaching, as their elders. It is a great
 
 176 EDUCATION [Chap. 
 
 mistake to suppose that because a boy is young, 
 there can be any satisfactory saving in these 
 important items. Good men are wanted ; and 
 no one probably will assert that it is reasonable 
 to expect a man of ability and heart to under- 
 take and carry through so serious and incessant 
 a work without a good income. Taking into 
 consideration the education required in a master, 
 the cost of that education, the varied and im- 
 portant character of the work, the capital re- 
 quired to conduct it well, the risk of failure, the 
 fact that success cannot be passed on to a 
 master's children, as his interest perishes with 
 himself, and only lasts for him as long as he is in 
 good health and strong, it will be admitted that 
 honest work well done by responsible men de- 
 serves no grudging payment, even where there 
 are Foundations giving some security against 
 ruin. No reward can be too much for first-rate 
 work when it is done. 
 
 But in the case of a great school it is not a re- 
 ward simply, but a necessity. The strain of body 
 and mind from thorough first-class work amongst 
 human beings, makes many relaxations, which
 
 XI.] AND SCHOOL. i ,"7 
 
 are ordinarily luxuries, a matter of absolute need 
 to the man of high and subtle work : if withheld, 
 the work suffers. The man of fortune goes to the 
 sea-side because he likes it, the overworked man 
 because he must. To use a homely similitude, 
 you cannot groom and house a racer like a cart- 
 horse, and expect him to race. The human racer 
 cannot possibly do his work as such if he is tied 
 down to one place, pressed by one dull un- 
 changing routine, and perpetually in conflict with 
 sordid cares. 
 
 However, let the public judge. In the long 
 run they are the sufferers or gainers. The suppiy 
 will doubtless equal the demand; but political 
 economy unfortunately gives no guarantee that 
 the demand shall be for the right thing. It makes 
 a considerable difference what is demanded. 
 Fathers may demand first-rate teachers in 
 words, and men they will always get, but un- 
 less their demand is made in very deed and 
 truth, first-rate teachers they will not get. The 
 men, if ambitious, will carry their ■ trained 
 powers to the professions which give money, or 
 honour, or both; if religious, will go to parishes 
 
 12
 
 178 ED UCA TION [Chap. 
 
 where the heart is satisfied by a more visibly 
 direct religious work. They will not be school- 
 masters. 
 
 It will be much if good work is made possible 
 where now it is not possible. If the whole level 
 of English educational power can be raised, no 
 mean result will be attained. This can certainly 
 be done by allowing all the small foundations 
 to limit their pupils to a certain age, and then 
 devote their exhibitions to the sending the best 
 boys to any school training for the University 
 the parents may select. 
 
 This latter question, however, belongs to the 
 proper expenditure and management of the avail- 
 able funds; and this is a simple matter. A 
 school can always be made self-supporting where 
 there is a sufficient inducement to keep up a 
 supply of boarders. Whenever there is a founda- 
 tion this can be done to some extent. In large 
 towns and cities the schools ought to be exclu- 
 sively schools for day-scholars, because a large 
 town is- of itself destructive to that free system 
 without which a good boarding-school cannot 
 exist: nothing therefore which is here said affects
 
 XI.] AND SCHOOL. 179 
 
 a city school. A city requires the cheapest pos- 
 sible teaching for all those who are tied to the 
 spot, and has nothing to do with the other 
 branches of training, as the boys should live at 
 home. A boarding-school in a large city or 
 watering place is as admirable an arrangement 
 as a poultry yard in a fox-cover. 
 
 But in all cases the masters should be paid by 
 their work. There should be no fixed salaries. 
 Any system that is to work well over a series of 
 years must be constructed with a view to the 
 powers of average men under average circum- 
 stances. This principle necessitates the paying 
 the masters according to the work dene, as 
 wearing work is never exacted in other profes- 
 sions under any other conditions. But the best 
 way of paying masters according to their work, is 
 to make them earn their own incomes by taking 
 boarders. This ensures that the teaching shall 
 be good, otherwise no boarders will come; and 
 that the superintendence shall also be good as far 
 as it can be insured, for the same reason. It 
 relieves the foundation also from all money pay- 
 ments in salaries, or nearly all, as small guaran- 
 
 j2 2
 
 180 EDUCATION [Chap. 
 
 tees for beginners, and rent-free houses would be 
 found quite sufficient. 
 
 The main funds of the foundation in all cases 
 should be devoted to scholarships and exhibi- 
 tions. In the case of the great schools these 
 exhibitions should be, if possible, to any College 
 at either University. In the case of the prepara- 
 tory schools to any University school the parents 
 may select. The school at Dorchester is on the 
 latter plan. The effects of this are manifold. 
 First of all, it is practically doubling the founda- 
 tion ; for the boarders supply the funds necessary 
 for carrying on the actual school-work both for 
 themselves and the day-scholars ; the latter get- 
 ting a good school instead of a bad one, or none 
 at all, and the former the chance of help at the 
 University in common with the day-scholars. 
 This plan gives the same free education to the 
 day-scholars that they would have had before, 
 only of a much better character, which the new 
 boarder-foundation supplies, whilst both parties 
 have an equal chance of attaining the exhibitions. 
 In many instances the local funds cannot support 
 a school on any other basis. If they can, close
 
 XL] AND SCHOOL. 181 
 
 exhibitions are an acknowledged curse. A little 
 money for three or four years cannot compensate 
 for the life-long loss entailed by worse education 
 and a lower standard of work. But most of the 
 small grammar-school foundations would cease to 
 be grammar-schools altogether from inability to 
 support sufficient masters and a proper school, if 
 this plan were not pursued. There are not want- 
 ing instances of masters without schools even now. 
 But a few exhibitions draw out the power neces- 
 sary to support the school, thus giving the local- 
 ity its free schooling, which otherwise it would 
 not get, without depriving the day-scholars of the 
 chance of the exhibitions either. It is not too 
 much to say that every pound thus spent in 
 prizes to the successful, elicits ten to carry on 
 the general education for all. Moreover, it is 
 notorious that the giving away of exhibitions as 
 a sort of local alms pauperises the morals and 
 intellects, if the expression may be used, of the 
 recipients, and tends to degrade instead of raise 
 a neighbourhood. 
 
 If however the actual education of the district 
 in which the school is situated is carried on by
 
 1 82 EDUCATION [Chap. 
 
 the boarder-foundation, the district clearly can 
 have no exclusive right to the exhibitions as well 
 as to the teaching. One is theirs, but not both. 
 If the foundation funds pay for the school-work, 
 there can be no exhibitions; if for exhibitions, 
 without boarders there can be no school. The 
 boarders form a second foundation to all intents 
 and purposes, with claims on the original founda- 
 tion co-extensive with the benefit they confer, and 
 the addition they make to its working power and 
 funds. Wherever the funds derived from boarders 
 play as great a part, or greater, in the efficiency 
 of the work as the funds derived from the original 
 foundation, there can be no just claim in the old 
 foundation to override the new foundation, for 
 such it is. This leaves undisturbed the whole 
 question of the advantage of having a good school 
 instead of a bad school, or in many cases no 
 school at all of the kind originally intended. 
 Neither is the question affected by the fact, that 
 in some instances the funds have been diverted 
 from a lower class of school to make a higher 
 class. This may be wrong in such instances, but 
 the majority of cases are not of this character,
 
 XI. J AND SCHOOL. 183 
 
 and some of those that seem to be, only seem so, 
 not because the intended teaching has changed 
 its character, but because a different class now 
 takes advantage of that teaching. However that 
 may be, as long as the small foundations are com- 
 pelled by their statutes, or local opinion, to send 
 boys direct to the University, so long the pre- 
 paratory schooling of England will be what it is. 
 What it is will never be known until a different 
 state of things has become possible. No one can 
 work without tools. And how to provide effec- 
 tive education must always be the most vital 
 question a nation can deal with, as it is the most 
 vital question a family can deal with. 
 
 The foundations cannot do their work if im- 
 possibilities are expected from them, or if the 
 ignorance and bigotry of those who deal with 
 them impede their free action. No one is so 
 high as not to be benefited by a good school; if 
 it makes those beneath him better, it is a blessing 
 to him; no one so low as not to be reached by its 
 influence ; if it makes those above him better, it is 
 a blessing to him. And if Cobbett's dictum is 
 worth anything, that the man who makes two
 
 1 84 EDUCATION AND SCHOOL. [Chap. XL 
 
 ears of corn grow where one grew before, is a 
 benefactor, surely it can be no slight matter to 
 try whether it is not possible to do the same good 
 office for education, and to double and treble the 
 power of almost every foundation by demanding 
 from each the work it can do and no more, and 
 giving each the means of doing that in the best 
 way, by applying the funds so as to draw out a 
 maximum of work with the least waste of mate- 
 rial ; remembering always that no work can 
 be done without tools.
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 After his glorious victory, the dying general was 1 icing carried 
 on a litter to the boat of the Foudroyant in which he died. Ik- 
 was in great pain from his wound, and could get no place of rest. 
 Sir John Macdonald (afterwards adjutant-general) put sometl 
 under his head. Sir Ralph smiled and said, "That i> a comfort ; 
 that is the very thing. What is it, John?" "It is only a soldier's 
 blanket, Sir Ralph." "Only a soldier's blanket, Sir," said the old 
 man, fixing his eye severely on him. "Whose blanket is it?" ' ' 
 of the men's." "I wish to know the name of the man whose this 
 blanket is;" — and every thing paused till he was satisfied. "It is 
 Duncan Roy's of the 42nd, Sir Ralph." "Then see that Duncan 
 Roy gets his blanket this very night;" and, wearied and content, 
 the soldier's friend was moved to his death bed. "Yes, doctor," 
 said Lord Dunfermline, in his strong earnest way, "the whole ques- 
 tion is in that blanket— in Duncan getting his blanket that very 
 night. " 
 
 Horac Subsecivac, page 281. 
 
 The question of the theory and living power of a 
 school has now been dealt with in some degree. 
 The next subject that claims attention is the 
 material machinery needed. Machinery, up to 
 a certain point, is everything. No bravery, no 
 strength, can make a stick a match for a rifle. 
 But so it is in all things. As long as the man
 
 1 86 EDUCATION [Chap. 
 
 with the rifle is awake, the man with the stick 
 has no chance. And we certainly should not 
 compliment a person who, having engaged to kill 
 a lion, let him loose, and went at him with a pen- 
 knife. First cage your lion, then perhaps even a 
 pen-knife may slay him. But a cage is, after all, 
 only a few bars in a satisfactory situation. Ma- 
 chinery is everything up to a certain point. No 
 ability, no zeal, no holiness, no intellect, no law, 
 can overcome the disadvantages of working with- 
 out machinery. The first thing the living power 
 does, wherever it exists, is to destroy the ex- 
 ternal barriers that confine good, and render 
 good impossible, and reconstruct in such a way 
 as to confine evil as much as possible. 
 
 First, then, the question of houses presents 
 itself in treating of the machinery necessary for a 
 great school. It has already been proved that 
 large, open dormitories and common halls are in- 
 admissible for a great school. It is not meant 
 by this to assert that they ought not to exist. If 
 there are not funds enough to do more, it is far 
 better to have them than to have nothing; far 
 better that boys should go to such schools than
 
 XII.] AND SCHOOL. 187 
 
 not be taught at all; but they should be esti- 
 mated at what they really are — makeshifts, and 
 not be mistaken for what they are not. 
 
 In every great school each boy must either 
 have a small study to himself and a compart- 
 ment in a small dormitory, or a single room, in 
 which to live and sleep. A large dormitory in- 
 troduces far too great opportunity for undetected 
 evil. The number of cubic feet required for each 
 boy in the two plans is about the same, and the 
 expense of providing either about the same. 
 Which then is the best system ? There can be 
 no doubt that the study and compartment system 
 is the best, for the following reasons. The single 
 room cannot be so healthy. It cannot be good 
 for a boy to be day and night in the same small 
 room; too small for satisfactory ventilation, and 
 with his bed there always. Then the bed is 
 either shut up, in which case it is not aired pro- 
 perly; or open, in which case it takes up too 
 much of the sitting-room, and is untidy. The 
 single room also gives too much opportunity for 
 the boys to congregate together indoors, which 
 makes bullying easy, and is fatal to pure air.
 
 1 88 ED UCA TION [Chap. 
 
 The single room also is likely to be untidy, for as 
 the boy sleeps there, the day-life articles will have 
 to be shifted daily to make room for his sleeping- 
 arrangements. A boy cannot fit up and arrange 
 his room permanently, and leave it arranged. 
 Whereas the dormitory compartment is quite 
 separate from the study. It is never entered 
 excepting at bed-time, and therefore enjoys the 
 advantage of being perfectly aired all day. It is 
 in itself private, but being part of a larger room, 
 derives all the benefit of this in better ventilation, 
 as in a room of fair size fresh air can always be 
 introduced quietly. The little study, moreover, 
 cannot from its size admit of a crowd, and from 
 its size can more easily be protected by law as a 
 boy's own domain. The hall of the house sup- 
 plies a place of common meeting, and as the class- 
 master superintends in common the preparation- 
 work of his class out of school, there is no want 
 of social intercourse, no solitary system in the 
 case. In the study nothing need be moved ex- 
 cepting at the will of the owner, who can arrange 
 it according to his taste, and keep it so arranged. 
 These things may seem slight, but the happiness
 
 XII.] AND SCHOOL. 1 89 
 
 of life turns on them ; they are Duncan Roy's 
 blanket, which though but a blanket, is certainly 
 a matter of misery, or rest, at the time, and may 
 be a matter of life or death, and was not beneath 
 the dying General's care. The kind of life is 
 determined by the blanket or no blanket; and the 
 kind of feeling of superiors, by its being noticed 
 or unnoticed. Each boy should accordingly have 
 his own study and his own sleeping compart- 
 ment. 
 
 But again, exactly the same principle that 
 abolishes the large, open dormitories and common 
 halls, will decide against building the boarding- 
 houses in one great quadrangle, or stack of build- 
 ings, like a college, instead of separating them. 
 The character of the school, of its management, its 
 spirit, its life, is affected by this decision in an 
 extraordinary degree. Probably every one, at first 
 sight, would answer positively, if asked, "Of 
 course, build the houses together like a college. 
 It is far cheaper; it produces a far finer effect to 
 the eye; it is majestic ; it is grand ; it is, See. ; it 
 is the ideal of a school." It may be all this, even 
 the &c, but — it works badly. Dire experience
 
 i 9 o EDUCATION [Chap. 
 
 will force the reluctant conviction on working 
 men that scattered boarding-houses are not only 
 better, but enshrine a different life and a higher 
 life. The principal reasons are these. In the 
 college plan, to call it by that name, the private 
 and domestic character of the life is merged and 
 lost in the public body and its life. And this 
 means a great deal. It means an entirely differ- 
 ent and rougher character of existence. In the 
 college plan the power of combination for evil 
 is very great, the circle is too wide for the same 
 individual interest to be taken, authorities clash, 
 and boys are more free to do wrong. 
 
 In a house by itself, all this is altered. A 
 small number of boys are knit together in a 
 little commonwealth. The house-master and his 
 wife have the entire management, subject to the 
 main school laws. No other authority or power, 
 whether of boys or masters, interferes with their 
 own little kingdom. Theirs is the credit or 
 discredit, quite unaffected by the good or the 
 bad habits of others. They take, naturally, under 
 these circumstances, a great interest in their 
 house, for it is their own, unmixed with any
 
 XII.] AND SCHOOL. 1 9 1 
 
 other influences. They can, and do, become 
 very intimate with their boys, and their boys 
 with them. In fact, it is to both parties a home, 
 and there is a home influence and home refine- 
 ment about it. The management is more easy, 
 for the boys are not numerous, and cannot shift 
 the blame of evil on others, or band together 
 with them. There is no divided authority, and 
 no doubtful jurisdiction. The boys, on their 
 part, love their own house and uphold it. It 
 has a character which they are jealous about. 
 They rejoice at their house being distinguished 
 in school ; they rejoice in its triumphs out of 
 school. In the games, house plays house in 
 friendly rivalry, and great amusement and much 
 vigorous life is the result, an esprit de corps of 
 the most healthy kind. Moreover, in this nar- 
 rower circle the influence of the ladies of the 
 school and their care becomes very appreciable. 
 Any one may sneer at this who chooses, but 
 somehow or other no one sneers when his own 
 blanket has been taken. The home feeling be- 
 comes real, many more opportunities for kindly 
 intercourse arise, and both in sickness and health
 
 192 EDUCATION [Chap. 
 
 the boy-life is gentlef and more civilized. All 
 this takes place without the slightest diminution 
 of the unity of the school, or its combined power 
 for good. The home circle only interferes with 
 evil, and rough useless wretchedness, or rebellion. 
 There is plenty of common life, plenty of public 
 interest, thoroughly to make the school one ; to 
 bind it closely together, and weld it into one 
 body, without in the slightest degree breaking in 
 on the domestic character and valuable respon- 
 sibilities of the separate houses. Two opposite 
 and most necessary principles are both secured 
 by this system ; the civilization and gentler feel- 
 ings of comparative home, with all the hardy 
 training of a great school. The common classes, 
 the common games, the common school honour 
 at the Universities, and in the world, bind the 
 boys closely ; nothing is lost in this way ; whilst 
 the narrower circle of the separate house ensures 
 a more kindly and careful treatment than would 
 otherwise be possible. 
 
 With respect to the number of boys that 
 each house ought to take, this practically is 
 decided at once by the size of the classes ; be-
 
 XII.] AND SCHOOL. 193 
 
 cause although a master might possibly be able 
 to attend to a few more boys in his house than 
 he could teach in school, the plain question rises 
 at once, What is to be done with the surplus ? 
 For as soon as a house contains more boys than 
 the house-master can teach, all above that num- 
 ber are thrown on the school without a teacher. 
 A supernumerary master or two may indeed be 
 appointed without boarders, if there are funds to 
 pay them, but this will not allow any considera- 
 ble margin of boys beyond the class-number in a 
 large school, and can only be viewed as a tem- 
 porary arrangement, a probationary trial of a 
 master's fitness before he is entrusted with full 
 responsibility ; or as giving him time before he 
 embarks in a serious engagement ; and in this 
 way may work very well to a limited extent. Or 
 there may be with advantage two or three board- 
 ing-houses taking half numbers, thus relieving 
 the school classes in some degree, and forming a 
 stepping-stone for the master who manages each. 
 In this way some eight or ten good houses are 
 rl required, each house taking not more than thirty 
 I boys, each boy with his study and sleeping com- 
 
 1 \
 
 194 EDUCATION [Chap. 
 
 partment complete ; and two or three houses, each 
 taking fifteen boys, to make the beginning less 
 expensive and hazardous. For many a deserving 
 man may lack funds to establish a house at once, 
 and it is also a hard thing to dismiss a master 
 who has established himself at much expense ; 
 though indeed in a good system the house itself 
 turns him out, refusing to support a man who 
 is not faithful in his work. More than this will 
 be found too unwieldy to work as one body in a 
 true system ; less than this does not give sufficient 
 graduation in the classes, or secure an equable 
 succession of workers. A school which aims at 
 being first-rate in its educating power will not 
 exceed or fall short of three hundred boys in 
 any great degree. For the limits of a first-rate 
 school in point of numbers are just as well de- 
 fined, and as capable of proof, as the limits of a 
 first-rate class. 
 
 Besides the houses, a large school-room is an 
 absolute necessity, not for the class teaching, 
 but as the common meeting-room of the school. 
 Higher classes are always better taught in sepa- 
 rate rooms. A few of the lower classes indeed
 
 XII.] AND SCHOOL. IQ5 
 
 may be taught with advantage in one room, as 
 it gives a greater impression of discipline and 
 law to little boys. But a large room for all to 
 assemble in is wanted to make the unity of the 
 school felt ; where too they are ready to receive 
 any orders, to be spoken to when necessary, to 
 hear any announcements of honours gained, or 
 of holidays, or punishments, praise or blame ; 
 and also where on the great school occasions the 
 friends and parents of the boys can be worthily 
 received. As to class-rooms, though it is good to 
 have them all in one building, it is not absolutely 
 indispensable ; as in the boarding-house system, 
 each dining hall can be a class-room and pupil- 
 room, and is quite satisfactory as such. 
 
 There is one more great building needed, a 
 Chapel. For though a school ought by no 
 means to be a vehicle of party opinions, still less 
 ought it to be at the mercy of party opinions ; 
 which is the case if the boys are compelled to 
 attend the parish church, whoever the clergymen 
 may chance to be, or however often changed ; 
 and however painfully the building itself may 
 fall short of being a fit place of worship. Neither 
 
 IV- 2
 
 196 EDUCATION [Chap. 
 
 ought the religious life of the school to be put 
 on one side, and the secular on the other. There 
 can be no such separation in healthy practice 
 wherever the whole training of the heart, mind, 
 and body is undertaken. At all events, when 
 there is a chapel, and the entire control is in the 
 hands of the masters, parents know what they 
 are about, and there is no conflict of opinions in 
 the school management, the school-master teach- 
 ing one thing and the clergyman another ; the 
 worst evil almost that can befall any place where 
 training is the object. 
 
 Besides these more important buildings, pro- 
 vision ought to be made for a School Library, 
 Museum, Workshop, Gymnasium, Swimming 
 Baths, Fives Courts, a Garden, or any other 
 pursuits that conduce to healthy life. All or 
 some of them should exist in a great school. 
 And this is not unimportant. The welfare of the 
 majority greatly depends on something being 
 provided to interest every kind of disposition 
 and taste. Plenty of occupation is the one secret 
 of a good and healthy moral life : and schools 
 undertake to train.
 
 XII.] AND SCHOOL. 1 97 
 
 The thin edge of the wedge is recognized in 
 all schools by the fact of a Cricket-ground being 
 provided, but there is no principle on which the 
 cricket-ground exists, which does not equally 
 call for the existence of amusements and occu- 
 pations for those who do not play cricket. No 
 great school will be without many different ap- 
 pliances for securing the interest, and gaining a 
 hold over all the boys who may be entrusted to 
 it to be trained. Training means, everybody learn- 
 ing how to use time well.
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 On starting, he said, "John, we'll do one thing at a time, and 
 there will be no talk." 
 
 This short and simple story shows, that here, as everywhere 
 else, personally, professionally, and publicly, reality was his aim 
 and his attainment. 
 
 Preface, page xxvi. Home Subsecivae. 
 
 It seems necessary here to enter into a question 
 of management, which is important enough, but 
 is not entirely a house question; as to whether 
 the houses shall be simply boarding-houses, that 
 is, the house-master having nothing to do with 
 the boys in his house as a teacher ; or whether 
 each house-master shall also be the private tutor 
 of the boys in his house, and teach them in the 
 out-of-school hours. 
 
 If the house-master is a private tutor also, it 
 means that he has two kinds of work entirely 
 distinct to attend to. He has in that case to
 
 Chap. XIII.] EDUCATION AND SCHOOL. 199 
 
 attend to his public work in the school-classes, 
 which arc composed of pupils from all the houses. 
 
 And he has to attend to his private-pupil 
 work in his own house-classes, which are com- 
 posed of the boys in his own house only. 
 
 And the work of the boys is of this same 
 double character. It is made up of the school- 
 work in the mixed school-classes, and of the 
 pupil-room work, with their own tutor's pupils 
 only. 
 
 There are many important results from this 
 state of things, the most practical of which shall 
 be stated. 
 
 First of all, as the boys in a house are of all 
 ages, and in all parts of the school, the tutor in 
 his pupil-room is really working a miniature 
 school single-handed. It becomes a necessity 
 also that every master throughout the whole 
 school, if efficient, should be able to teach the 
 highest classes in the school as well as the lowest, 
 for his pupils will be in all classes. 
 
 Every master's success will depend upon his 
 own pupils. If they do well, he is popular, and 
 his house is filled ; if not, it is not filled. The
 
 200 EDUCATION [Chap. 
 
 pupil-room work accordingly, and the work of 
 his clever boys, becomes exceedingly important 
 to a master. But in school and in the public 
 work the classes are mixed, and little credit 
 results to a master for doing the school-work 
 well, as the boys come from different tutors' 
 houses, and the credit of success goes to the 
 tutor. The school-work and public work there- 
 fore is comparatively unimportant to a master. 
 This tendency is intensified exceedingly if there 
 is any public Scholarship or Exhibition awarded 
 by an examination in general scholarship, which 
 is the standard of success in the school. 
 
 The rivalry between the pupil-rooms, or rather 
 miniature contesting schools, becomes great, and 
 the work done in common, that is, in class, small 
 in proportion. For the boys, in their eagerness to 
 outstrip each other, think little of the common 
 work, where all have an equal chance, but prize 
 exceedingly the private work, where each thinks 
 he can get a start, and outstrip his rivals. 
 
 But the common work absorbs time. 
 
 Thus, as far as teaching is concerned, there 
 is no common interest in such a school whilst
 
 XIII.] AND SCHOOL. 201 
 
 the boys are at the school. The interests of 
 the pupil-rooms, so far from being identical, are 
 antagonistic. 
 
 The tutor is put in exactly the same position 
 that the head-master of a small foundation finds 
 himself in. He has a number of boys of very 
 various ages and attainments to deal with, and 
 must accordingly have a number of classes. This 
 is a great waste of power. 
 
 It is not possible either in such circumstances 
 for a head-master to appoint the under-masters, 
 with a view to their teaching special classes. Every 
 master must be capable of teaching every class. 
 Yet until some happy era dawns when teaching 
 shall be recognized as the wonderful science that 
 it really is, it is very difficult to give due honour 
 to the lower classes, or to get men full of know- 
 ledge, but empty of skill, to teach them well. 
 The knowledge-men ask for high classes, if, 
 indeed, anything is high in a school ; and " ho- 
 nour" comes to mean having charge of the upper 
 classes. Though, indeed, it is more mortifying 
 sometimes to a really thoughtful man to see his 
 favourite ideas caricatured by the upper boys,
 
 202 EDUCATION [Chap. 
 
 than to put forth what cannot be spoiled to the 
 lower boys. Thus men come to consider promo- 
 tion to be the getting away as fast as possible 
 from the most skilled teaching work. It is so 
 much easier to know a thing than to teach it, 
 so much more flattering to self-love to rail at 
 ignorance than f o try and correct it, that it is 
 no wonder if the knowledge-men endeavour to 
 escape from the mortification of that crucial test 
 of teaching skill, a low class ; and it is no slight 
 condemnation of the private tutor system, that 
 under it skilled teachers are shut out from the 
 school unless they are full of knowledge also. 
 
 One remarkable and very noteworthy result, 
 however, of the system is this. A boy remains 
 with the same tutor during the whole time he is 
 at the school, and the main work is done in the 
 pupil-room. Hence it follows that each tutor's 
 work is to a great degree independent, and not 
 affected by that of his colleagues. Their work 
 may be bad, but if his own is good, that does not 
 matter much to him, he nourishes. His pupils 
 will win honours in spite of it, and these are set 
 down by the public as belonging to the school.
 
 XIII.] AND SCHOOL. 203 
 
 In this way it might happen that all the teaching 
 in the school should be inefficient except his own, 
 and yet he might be successful enough, though 
 a mere fraction of the whole, to gain very con- 
 siderable reputation for scholarship and work 
 both for the school and himself. This is a great 
 element of strength from the school-point of 
 view. The public judges the school by the 
 University Honour Lists, and one house out of 
 many with its picked pupils can win enough 
 honour to satisfy the public, and the numbers of 
 the school will flourish in consequence. The op- 
 posite side of the picture is, that if a boy, from 
 any cause, is put under a bad tutor, he is practi- 
 cally, as far as teaching is concerned, at a bad 
 private school all his time. For the public work 
 does but little to remedy a bad pupil-room, as 
 has already been shown. 
 
 But if the houses are simply boarding-houses, 
 and the house-master has nothing to do with the 
 teaching of the boys because they happen to be 
 in his house, the whole constitution of the school 
 is altered. 
 
 Each master on this system takes one school
 
 204 EDUCATION [Chap. 
 
 class, composed of boys from any houses, as may 
 chance. This class is his sole charge. He works 
 the boys both in school and also out of school, 
 in the same way that the tutor does his pupils. 
 For the time they are the class-master's private 
 pupils wherever they come from ; but the boys 
 come from any house, the work is school-work, 
 there are no double purposes, no double machi- 
 nery in action. 
 
 It results from this, that a master's whole 
 work and interest is centred in one class, instead 
 of being divided amongst many ; that all his 
 time is given to this one set of boys and the sub- 
 jects they are doing. 
 
 This is a great saving of power. 
 
 A master's success thus depends on the suc- 
 cess of the school, not of his own pupil-room, 
 and therefore a very strong school-feeling rises, 
 every one working heartily at the common work, 
 and each and all jealously watchful that their 
 neighbours do not spoil their own labour, and 
 heartily rejoicing in the excellence of their neigh- 
 bours' labour. For it is a very bitter thing to 
 expend exceeding pains and zeal on a class, and
 
 XIII.] AND SCHOOL. 205 
 
 then have to pass it on to another, who, through 
 his apathy, wastes this labour ; and not less bitter 
 to receive up from another boys so imperfectly 
 prepared, that the best efforts can scarcely re- 
 deem the past, or make them a credit to their 
 new class-master ; especially as the worst work- 
 ers, and those who do least, generally make 
 most fuss and find fault most, and most resent 
 interference. The worse a master is, the less 
 will he be guided. This may sometimes be 
 anxious work in the school, but the public do 
 not suffer by it. 
 
 Again, the class-master, as long as the class 
 is under him, is the sole teacher and manager in 
 it ; all the credit is his if they do well, all the 
 disgrace is his if they do badly. There is no 
 other back to put the burden on. The influence 
 this fact has on work is not slight. Then, too, 
 there is no lottery in the choice of tutors ; each 
 boy has all the school can give him, passing 
 successively through the hands of all the masters 
 in turn. The school work is all in all, and the 
 school itself, in consequence, is always open to 
 the judgment of the world.
 
 206 EDUCATION [Chap. 
 
 Under this system it becomes possible to 
 appoint masters for special classes, and to keep 
 experienced teachers permanently with the lower 
 classes. For the masters, as the class-work all 
 dovetails one into the other throughout the 
 school, become by degrees keenly alive to the 
 value of teaching versus mere knowledge, and 
 give it honour accordingly. They find the intense 
 importance both to the boys and themselves 
 of the lower classes being thoroughly well- 
 grounded, and therefore rate the men who do it 
 proportionally. It is small consolation to them, 
 if they get badly-prepared boys passed up, that 
 the delinquent from whom they come, blushes, if 
 it were possible, under the concentrated honours 
 of both Universities. What he can and will do 
 with his class is the question, not what he can 
 put on paper. As St Augustine observes, a 
 golden key is of no use if it will not unlock the 
 casket, and a wooden key is, if it does. This is 
 what masters in a united system discover. They 
 want work with the boys, not self-glorification ; 
 present work for others, not past distinction won 
 for self. Thus the power of teaching gradually
 
 XIII.] AND SCHOOL. 207 
 
 asserts itself, and receives its due, and golden 
 keys are left to rub themselves complacently by 
 themselves in some happier world where glitter is 
 wanted, and unlocking is not. But that world 
 will not be a school in which the work of one 
 and all goes to make up one piece. 
 
 There is one important consequence, however, 
 to masters from this union of powers. There is 
 no possibility any more of the school appearing 
 to be successful through the success of one if the 
 many are below par ; nay, the bad work of one 
 will be sufficient to affect most seriously the 
 labour of all. Thus it comes to pass that what 
 the school really is will be seen ; there is no 
 screen possible by which a successful fraction 
 shall hide the rest. This certainly is so far a 
 weakness in a school, that it necessitates the 
 whole school being in a state of perfect efficiency. 
 It is an arch which cannot afford to have its 
 stones loose, not a wall which, if the buttress 
 next the public road is new and good, may be 
 as tumble-down as possible behind, without the 
 passers-by being much the wiser. Perhaps, how- 
 ever, people in general will not look upon this
 
 208 EDUCATION AND SCHOOL. [Chap. XIII. 
 
 necessity for complete efficiency in all parts as a 
 very afflicting circumstance to them ; and those 
 whom it most concerns, the masters, have the 
 remedy to a great degree in their own hands. 
 Good work need fear nothing. And when the 
 work is good there is tenfold interest in belong- 
 ing to a working society ; there is a closer bond, 
 a more enduring friendship arising out of com- 
 mon work, and common danger, and common 
 honour.
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 "Well, I must see whether I cannot do something to i 
 the general festivity," the merchant's son thought; so he bo 
 some rockets, wheels, and serpents, not forgetting a good supply 
 of squibs and crackers, and having laid all in his trunk, he ascended 
 into the air. 
 
 What a cracking and whizzing there was. The Turks all sprang 
 up in the air with excitement at the enchanting sight till their 
 slippers flew about their ears. Such an aerial spectacle they had 
 never witnessed. There could not now be the shadow of a doubt 
 that it was the God of the Turks himself who was to have the 
 Princess. 
 
 As soon as the merchant's son had got back into the forest with 
 his trunk, he thought, "I must go into the city, just to ascertain 
 what effects it produced." 
 
 And what wonders he heard ! 
 
 He now hurried back to the forest, to seat himself in his trunk ; 
 but what had become of it? A spark from the fireworks had. 
 through his carelessness, remained in it, so the dry wood took fire, 
 and the trunk lay there in ashes. 
 
 The poor lover could no longer fly. 
 
 Andersen's Tales. The Flying Trunk. 
 
 TlIE question of the main character of school- 
 teaching claims attention. It would be out of 
 place to enter into details as to how knowledge 
 should be imparted, or in what manner a subject 
 should be put before a class, but the principal 
 points which require to be kept in sight by a good 
 
 14
 
 2 1 o ED UCA TION [ Chap. 
 
 teacher may well be stated, for they are points of 
 management. In the very foremost place comes 
 the management of time. No teaching system 
 can be good which does not make this one of its 
 chief objects. No more valuable lesson is taught 
 in a great school than this. A boy is brought 
 from home, and its more desultory habits, and 
 dependent, overshadowed ways, in order by de- 
 grees to learn to act for himself, to be his own law, 
 and to have a life of his own. Even the very fact 
 of being separated from home-ties has its great 
 significance. At some time or other every one 
 becomes responsible for his actions; it is good 
 to begin early that gradual breaking away of 
 choking tendrils, however pleasant they may be, 
 which must come at last in one shape or another, 
 and to make life gradually a thing of itself, self- 
 supported, and happy in its energy. A man must 
 learn not to be always leaning on others; or else, 
 in maturer years, all the strong supports, so loved 
 and so habitual, are suddenly severed at once, 
 either by the necessity of beginning professional 
 life, or sometimes by death. Then, at the first 
 going forth into the unknown peopled desert of new
 
 XIV.] AND SCHOOL. 2 1 I 
 
 existence as a working man, he who is not pre- 
 pared, has to add to that severe strain, the feeling 
 of utter desolation that the sense of standing 
 alone in the wide world at such an age brings, the 
 craving anguish for a friendly voice or step that 
 comes as surely then to the inexperienced as if 
 the grave had suddenly swallowed up their all. 
 It is not well to allow the lessons of years to 
 accumulate, until at last in some sad hour the 
 concentrated pain of new work, new habits, new 
 desolateness, new everything, has to be met, and 
 no preparation made to meet it. It is a sort of 
 death to learn to live alone, to work alone, a death 
 to old habits of leaning on others, and a new life 
 rising out of it. This, in some sense, school must 
 teach. It ought to teach it well. The manage- 
 ment of time and the self-government involved in 
 this take the foremost place in what is learnt. 
 The process must of course be gradual, but it is 
 essential to its taking place well that a certain 
 degree of liberty shall be allowed in this as in all 
 other training. This means that the times for 
 preparation must not be laid down with the same 
 rigid punctuality as the times for saying the 
 
 14—2
 
 2 1 2 ED UCA TION [Chap. 
 
 lessons that have been prepared, but that a mar- 
 gin is allowed both to masters and boys in this 
 matter. In other words, all the lessons ought to 
 be learnt out of school; and the regular school 
 hours, which are determined by inflexible law, 
 must be devoted to testing what has been learnt. 
 This preparation in the lower classes should take 
 place under the direct superintendence of the 
 class-master, who, nevertheless, has it in his power 
 to relax or tighten the process as he thinks fit, 
 according to the needs of the boys, their abilities, 
 diligence, or idleness. Then, as a boy passes up 
 the school, this pupil-room work becomes less and 
 less, until in the head-class it ceases altogether, 
 and results only are looked to by the master. In 
 this way a boy is taught by degrees to arrange 
 his own time, to resist the temptation to play 
 when he ought to work, and to get the principle 
 of work in himself, instead of its being a mere 
 matter of compulsion and external force. Above 
 all, the great evil is avoided of treating all the 
 boys in a class as if they were cut to the same 
 pattern, and assigning in consequence exactly the 
 same time to all to learn the same lesson. Ob-
 
 XIV.l AND SCHOOL. 213 
 
 viously they do not all want the same time. Some 
 want more, some want less. And whilst it is 
 injurious to the quick boy to keep him back when 
 he thinks he is ready, wasting his time, and 
 inclining him to dawdle; it is worse still for the 
 slow boy who cannot make up his deficiency by 
 extra labour, but must abide by the regulation 
 minute. The great stimulus too is lost of a boy 
 seeing that hearty work will ensure a quicker 
 release from confinement. It is necessary therefore 
 to have an elastic rule, which shall combine even 
 greater compulsion for the unwilling, with a 
 perpetually increasing liberty to the willing and 
 skilful worker. This can only be done by reducing 
 the regular school-hours to a minimum, never 
 making them hours of preparation, but having 
 all the lessons prepared out of school at the dis- 
 cretion of the head-master and class-masters. 
 
 Two conflicting principles have to be recon- 
 ciled in the matter of the general drift and 
 purport of the work also. There should be a 
 clear perception how far it is wise to explain, and 
 to proceed on the principle of making a boy 
 thoroughly understand his lessons, and how far
 
 214 ED UCA TION [Chap- 
 
 they should be looked on as a mere collecting of 
 material and a matter of memory. It must be 
 borne in mind that with the young memory is 
 strong, and logical perception weak. All teach- 
 ing should start on this undoubted fact. It 
 sounds very fascinating to talk about understand- 
 ing everything, learning everything thoroughly, and 
 all those broad phrases which plump down on a 
 difficulty, and hide it. Put in practice, they are 
 about on a par with exhorting a boy to mind he 
 does not go into the water till he can swim. In 
 the first place, a certain number of facts must be 
 known before any complex thing can be under- 
 stood even by those who are capable of under- 
 standing it. The emptiness of a young boy's 
 mind is often not taken into account, at least 
 emptiness so far as all knowledge in it being of a 
 fragmentary and piecemeal description, nothing 
 complete. It may well happen that an intelli- 
 gent boy shall be unable to understand a seem- 
 ingly simple thing, because some bit of knowledge 
 which his instructor takes it for granted he pos- 
 sesses, and probably thinks instinctive, is wanting 
 to fill up the whole.
 
 XIV.] AND SCHOOL. 215 
 
 But memory is, or may be, very powerful ; the 
 ease with which little children pick up language 
 shows this; parents do not wait till children 
 understand everything before they teach them to 
 talk, and could not if they would, because of the 
 parrot-power of the child. Nature herself pre- 
 scribes a wise collection of material at first, with- 
 out troubling how far it is understood ; be sure if 
 it interests, it is understood enough. This collec- 
 tion cannot begin too early; the same natural law 
 that makes little children talk, makes little chil- 
 dren have inquisitive minds, and power enough 
 to take the next step too, and learn to read 
 nearly as soon as they can talk well. This is not 
 injurious. Injurious work is the forcing the child 
 to continued exertion. The mind in this is like 
 the body; look at the restless activity of the 
 puppy when it is not asleep, but observe every 
 half minute or so it has its little rests and pauses. 
 Look at the young child at play, it is the same. 
 But take the puppy out a set walk, and it will 
 probably die, because it cannot rest when it 
 pleases. This is the law for the very young. No 
 praise or blame must be used to hinder the little
 
 2l6 EDUCATION [Chap. 
 
 creatures from resting when they like, but within 
 this limit let them have every opportunity of 
 active exercise in body and mind. A good nur- 
 sery library which the children may use when 
 and how they please, asking no leave and under 
 no compulsion, is an invaluable boon. Why 
 should not the little restless mind have some- 
 thing to feed on? It is the doing a given amount 
 of work in a given time which kills, whereas, by 
 imperceptible degrees, with actual pleasure and 
 no strain, a child may be allowed to acquire 
 much knowledge in a desultory way. It is no 
 effort, because there is plenty of time. If it is 
 not done in this way, the poor child afterwards at 
 eight or ten years of age is expected to learn in a 
 year or two what might have been spread over 
 the four or six previous years. This is cram, and 
 very useless cram too. 
 
 The fate of too many is decided by the time 
 they are twelve years old, and the stamp of 
 mediocrity pressed down heavily on them. For 
 lost time not only means lost knowledge, but the 
 lost power of getting knowledge. Just as on a 
 journey a man who slept till mid-day always,
 
 XIV.] AND SCHOOL. 217 
 
 would not only be remaining still whilst he slept, 
 but also getting fat and unable to move on when 
 awake. It is too late to wish to run a race, how- 
 ever strong the wish may be, when your antago- 
 nist is not only half the race a-head, but you are 
 too fat to move. 
 
 There can be no doubt that not to give full 
 opportunity of exercise to the young creature, 
 both in mind and body, is as much against na- 
 ture and nature's law, as to force it to continued 
 action by injudicious severity or more injudicious 
 praise. But nature instructs us thus far, that 
 there is a perpetual restlessness of curiosity, com- 
 bined with great capacity for receiving any new 
 impressions, because they are new, whether un- 
 derstood or not, in the young, until art steps in 
 and stops it, sometimes positively, by blaming 
 questions which the hearers find it inconvenient 
 to answer; sometimes indirectly, by telling the 
 little being not to trouble till it gets older. Na- 
 ture, however, teaches us to furnish material for 
 the mind to feed on from the earliest dawn of 
 intelligence; those who are wise will continue to 
 do so ; and at school the same process must foi
 
 2 1 8 EDUCA TION [Chap. 
 
 a time be continued to a great extent. The 
 collection of material for work and thought is 
 the chief object of all school-life, but the almost 
 exclusive object of lower school-life. If a teacher 
 sets to explaining in a low class, he may be the 
 best and most lucid explainer that has existed 
 since the days of Aristotle, but the little boys 
 under him will learn nothing, for he has forgotten 
 the simple fact that there must be something to 
 explain before a man can explain it, and that 
 that something does not yet exist in the minds 
 of the little boys. Their range is so limited that 
 a very small thread of explanation is as much as 
 they can bear to receive. Almost all the work 
 must be collection of material. The memory of 
 the young is wonderful, their logical powers 
 almost non-existent ; but even were they much 
 greater, they cannot, as has been said before, be 
 exercised on nothing. It is hard to follow an 
 argument in a strange language, but it is a strange 
 language if nothing is known before of the facts — 
 the facts and the arguments are both new, and 
 consequently both keep dropping out of the mind 
 almost before they are in. Fill a sieve with
 
 XIV.] AND SCHOOL. 219 
 
 water and a young boy's mind with reasoning — 
 the collection of material is the chief thing. And 
 if boys cared to learn, that is to say, had any 
 heart-belief in learning as a good thing, as they 
 believe that play is a good thing, and man cared 
 to teach in the same spirit, and parents would 
 let them do it, why — Utopia would have begun. 
 Want of faith is the ruin of learning. Boys 
 generally do not believe in education, but look 
 on it as a thing to be gone through to satisfy a 
 rooted superstition ; and if they do believe in 
 its being good, they then think it out of their 
 reach, a sort of happy chance, which falls to some 
 and not to others, like being born to a fortune ; 
 and therefore never set themselves in earnest to 
 learn ; for who attempts the impossible ? So the 
 horse is brought to the water, pulled into it, 
 has his nose thrust under, in his struggles to 
 breathe swallows some, coughs and spits up 
 more, shuffles out as soon as he can with his 
 involuntary drenchings, is nevertheless the better 
 for it, and believes therefore in the process — when 
 over. And sends his progeny to repeat the dose 
 in after years— but with the same fatal want of
 
 220 EDUCA TION [Chap. 
 
 belief in the power and blessing of drinking 
 voluntarily. 
 
 There is another very common mistake too 
 in teachers. They forget that they are part of a 
 system, and that the boys also are parts of a 
 system ; and whilst, so to say, running about in 
 an aimless way, pulling up weeds at random, 
 they never clear a little bit of ground, and hand 
 it over clean to the next master. If attention 
 was directed to getting rid of the worst fault first 
 before spending time over others, and attention 
 directed to getting the contrary bit of know- 
 ledge firmly fixed in the mind, instead of the 
 teacher floating about with no definite aim in his 
 teaching, much greater progress would be made. 
 For work would not have to be gone over and 
 over again so often, and the boy-mind would 
 also learn the meaning of really knowing a thing, 
 whilst quantity might still be exacted, and must 
 be, in the general lesson. 
 
 The boys ought to understand in bringing up 
 a lesson, that a fault involving ignorance of a 
 icw pages of grammar is unpardonable, whilst it 
 will rest with the judgment of the class-master
 
 XIV.] AND SCHOOL. 22 1 
 
 to decide what degree of culpability there may 
 be in not knowing the English of a word, or not 
 being able to make out the sense of a passage. 
 It is well, however, to give boys a very distinct 
 idea that they are as good judges of absolute 
 nonsense as a master is, and that nonsense must 
 be wrong. A simple axiom which meets with 
 but fcxv adherents practically in the boy-world. 
 
 What has already been said has, in some 
 degree, anticipated the question of the length of 
 lessons. The same double principle is at work 
 in this matter also. Amateurs say boldly, Let 
 every thing be learnt thoroughly. Professional 
 men answer, with still greater boldness, that 
 means, in many cases, let nothing be learnt at 
 all. What is meant in most subjects by "learn- 
 ing thoroughly"? The words sound positive and 
 plain, but try and examine them, and they slip 
 through the fingers before you can pinch them ; 
 as well try and catch the flying moment, which 
 everybody, from the time of Adam, has been 
 endeavouring to seize by the ear with but in- 
 different success. But a boy's idea of learning 
 thoroughly is simple enough. It is this. Glance
 
 222 EDUCATION [Chap. 
 
 down a page, look out every word that seems 
 likely to bring the learner into trouble — that 
 done, the lesson is thoroughly learnt. Now a 
 school has to deal with boys, and their idea can- 
 not be disregarded. As long as learning a lesson 
 means the minimum necessary to escape punish- 
 ment, if the lesson is short the boys learn next 
 to nothing ; if it is long, they cannot do it well, 
 and may get a wrong idea of learning altogether. 
 Rather an awkward dilemma, but a very true 
 statement of the case to be dealt with. What, 
 then, is to be done ? To avoid the first evil, the 
 regular lessons should be fairly long, as then, 
 at all events, material is gained ; to avoid the 
 second, there should be breaks at irregular inter- 
 vals in the course of work ; extra half-holidays, 
 some capable of being gained by the head-class 
 in the school itself, some resulting from Honours 
 and Scholarships at the University, &c. This 
 plan enables masters and boys to keep the ba- 
 lance of work more even. The earnest boys get 
 spare time for more free and independent efforts 
 and general reading, and the masters get time to 
 exact any shortcomings from their idler compa-
 
 XIV.] AND SCHOOL. 223 
 
 nions, and compel them to make up for past 
 neglect. 
 
 To ensure diligence as far as possible, there 
 should be examinations before the boys go home. 
 This keeps the interest of the boys alive up to 
 the end of the school time, when otherwise it is 
 apt to flag, tests their progress, and enables the 
 class-master to see what his class really has 
 done. No one who has not had this experience 
 could possibly believe that plain and definite 
 facts could be repeated day by day in the way 
 they can be, and not learnt. The power of re- 
 sisting teaching must be experienced to be cre- 
 dited. It is very easy for a zealous master to 
 imagine the boys are working hard because he 
 feels that he is working hard. It is easy also for 
 him to go over the same ground again and again, 
 until he thinks his class must know it all, because 
 they seem to answer fairly when the question 
 recurs in a tolerably familiar form ; whereas an 
 examination will often reveal that the boys have 
 not really made the knowledge their own, and 
 in consequence of this discovery the master will 
 return to the charge again, which he would not
 
 224 EDUCATION [Chap. 
 
 otherwise have done. Thus, besides its effect in 
 keeping the boys up to their work, an examina- 
 tion enables a master to find out the weak points 
 of his class, and, by so doing, to direct his efforts 
 consciously, and with skill, instead of shooting in 
 the dark. It will be well at this point to attempt 
 to come to some definite principles about exami- 
 nations and their purpose. 
 
 It is clearly no use examining, with a view of 
 finding out something which is not to be found 
 out in that way. Many think an examination is 
 for the purpose of finding out cleverness. But 
 what is cleverness ? and how is it to be dis- 
 covered ? No two persons will return the same 
 answer to these questions. Gauging knowledge 
 and gauging training is to a certain extent de- 
 finite, and can be done, but who is to gauge cle- 
 verness disjoined from knowledge and training ? 
 Mental fireworks and their value are matters of 
 opinion, and opinions vary. A few squibs and 
 crackers let off at an unexpected height, and those 
 too, bought, may very well pass for the god of the 
 Turks, and often do so, whilst their possessor 
 may be but a poor creature after all. Moreover,
 
 XIV.] AND SCHOOL. 225 
 
 if cleverness is to be discovered, the examination 
 
 ought to take those subjects which give freest 
 scope to the powers of the examinees ; the ex- 
 amination ought to be in English, where the 
 mind will be least trammelled and hampered by 
 being squeezed into the strait-waistcoat of a 
 half-known tongue. But all education is a train- 
 ing process, and a test for this is wanted. On 
 this account examinations in Greek and Latin 
 and Mathematics are given, for these test trained 
 knowledge and the power of acquiring knowled 
 
 And an examination should be conducted 
 on definite principles, and be framed to prove 
 whether the examinees have acquired trained 
 knowledge or not. An examiner's opinion of a 
 boy's cleverness is mischievous and delusive if 
 it in any way allows him to be biassed on the 
 actual facts of the papers done. Suppose, for 
 instance, that instead of an examination in th ■ 
 dead languages, we were examining a Frenchman 
 or German in English, to test his training and 
 knowledge, would it not be preposterous bee: 
 we thought his papers clever, to pass over num- 
 berless mistakes which we are sure about in 
 
 15
 
 226 EDUCATION [Chap. 
 
 language selected to try his strength? If he 
 does not know the language he is examined in, 
 he is either unable to master a subject with 
 accuracy and power, though able to display some 
 fireworks, or he has been idle ; in either case the 
 trained result, which a foreign language was se- 
 lected to test, is found wanting. But this is the 
 question in all educational examinations. If the 
 dead languages are selected in order to train, and 
 examinations given in them to test and reward 
 training, no glamour ought to be allowed to gloss 
 over the want of training shown by ignorance of 
 the languages which have been selected to prove 
 this. Every mistake ought to be carefully noted, 
 and the main decision to rest on the presence 
 or absence of mistakes, so far that nothing ought 
 to be taken into consideration until this is settled, 
 or allowed to weigh against it. This is a definite 
 criterion, no god of the Turks ; and certainty of 
 justice is the beginning and the end of an exami- 
 nation. Let either boy or man be sure that a 
 certain and merciless gauge of his progress and 
 work is going to be applied, and he will read in 
 a very different spirit from what he will do when
 
 XIV.] AND SCHOOL. 
 
 he has plenty of excuses ready beforehand about 
 the examination and examiners which it is not 
 absurd to make. Neither can he deceive himself 
 if this is the case into imagining that a lucky 
 chance may land him safe, or anything serve his 
 turn excepting true work and the results of true 
 work. The being able to make plausible or even 
 possible excuses for failure will reduce the axe- 
 rage of reading and hard work to a compara- 
 tively low water-mark. But if the decision is to 
 rest on an examiner's opinion, instead of on the 
 actual facts of the examination, and the presence 
 or absence of mistakes, excuses will always be 
 made and received. The first point in an exami- 
 nation is certainty. All parties must know dis- 
 tinctly beforehand what they are to do and ex- 
 pect. The examinees should be certain that an ex- 
 amination of a given kind will take place in which 
 no subterfuge will avail to conceal ignorance or 
 inaccuracy. The examiner should understand that 
 he is not at liberty to proceed on any other plan 
 than the one laid down, to change the usual style 
 of examination, or substitute his own ideas for 
 the hard facts of mistakes or no mistakes. 
 
 15—2
 
 228 EDUCATION [Chap. 
 
 Another thing is necessary in order to ensure 
 certainty and prevent excuses. No important 
 examination ought ever to be in mixed subjects. 
 When this is the case, unless the result in each 
 department is published, the examinees shift the 
 blame of their failure on the department which 
 they are not unwilling to be supposed com- 
 paratively weak in, and though they would feel 
 exceedingly ashamed at having been known to 
 have failed in some other branch, are not at all 
 ashamed when they can assign their defeat to 
 whichever subject they like to make their scape- 
 goat. If an examination is of a mixed character, 
 Mathematics and Classics, for instance, or Classics 
 and History, the amount of marks attained by 
 the examinees in each, ought to be published as 
 well as the bare result. 
 
 Again, in an examination to test education 
 and training, the desirableness or not of a given 
 branch of knowledge has little, or nothing, to do 
 with its value as a subject for honour examina- 
 tions. History, for instance, as learnt by boys 
 and young men, is a most desirable and ne- 
 cessary branch of knowledge, but must be ranked
 
 XIV.] AND SCHOOL. 
 
 very low as an examination subject to test train- 
 ing. For the following reasons. If the examina- 
 tion is general, then it is a chance which of the 
 examinees have read the periods from which the 
 questions are taken ; for no one can be supposed 
 to know the history of the world with any 
 accuracy as a young man. If the periods are 
 fixed within which the examination is to range 
 then the knowledge required is a matter of 
 memory, which though useful is no great test of 
 intellect. Indeed, to the young, history must 
 always be in a great degree a mere matter of 
 memory, for as it deals with life and life-experience 
 it is obvious that to expect original thought 
 on this subject from those who as yet have no 
 life-experience is a vain idea. They may let off 
 a few mental fireworks, probably made up In- 
 some other thinker, and no more their own than 
 the facts they have learnt by memory, but they 
 can do nothing more; and if the mistake is 
 fallen into of imagining other people's thoughts to 
 be their own, or their own fancies about life to be 
 thought, it is likely to be positively injurious. 
 The value of a subject in an examination depends
 
 230 EDUCATION [Chai\ 
 
 on the mental qualities it tests, and by no means 
 on its desirableness as a piece of knowledge. 
 
 Now the business of a school is to train, and 
 school examinations must be framed with a view 
 to test the training, partly to enable masters to 
 see what is really being done, partly to act as a 
 spur on the boys and keep their efforts in a right 
 direction, and ensure as far as possible that they 
 are vigorous and true. To do this they must be of 
 as fixed and certain a character as it is possible 
 to make them ; and no debateable ground, no ex- 
 cuse-land left. The places should be fixed at 
 the end of every school-time in this way. Every 
 paper set should be carefully looked over, every 
 mistake noted, and marked according to a pre- 
 vious classification. When this has been done, it 
 will be time enough if the mistakes are trivial, and 
 rivals in this respect are equal, to look to the 
 style of the paper and give some credit for this- 
 also. But if a German is examined in English as 
 his test, by what process can mistakes in English 
 be judged unimportant? He has left undone 
 the thing he had to do. And if an Englishman 
 is examined in Greek and Latin, by parity of
 
 XIV.] AXD SCHOOL. 231 
 
 reasoning", if he makes mistakes, he has left 
 undone that which he was set to do, left undone 
 the subject the examination was to test. And if 
 the examination does not test this, which it can do, 
 why have it in this form at all, which is a sort of 
 make-believe if not conducted on strict principles? 
 In no case ought the impression made of clever- 
 ness to count against want of accurate knowledge 
 in the subject set to be mastered. True mental 
 power is shown in the mind doing whatever it is set 
 to do. Great minds think nothing beneath them. 
 It may not be much to do, but then it is all the 
 more culpable leaving it undone. The greatest 
 argument of all, however, is, that an examination 
 should test something that it really can test. We 
 do not set about measuring liquids with tape, 
 or distance by bushels; so also an examination 
 should measure progress in knowledge, which it 
 can do, visible results of mind, and leave the mind 
 itself alone, which at best can only be guessed at, 
 and which no two persons guess at quite alike. 
 Above all things, it is necessary for an examina- 
 tion to have the reputation of being just, certain, 
 and not liable to shift by change of examiners.
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 From the natural course of things vicious actions are, to a great 
 degree, actually punished as mischievous to society. It is necessary 
 to the very being of society, that vices, destructive of it, should be 
 punished as being so ; which punishment therefore is as natural as 
 society, and so is an instance of a kind of moral government, na- 
 turally established, and actually taking place. And since the cer- 
 tain natural course of things is the conduct of Providence or the 
 government of God, though carried on by the instrumentality of 
 men, the observation here made amounts to this, that mankind find 
 themselves placed by Him in such circumstances, as that they are 
 unavoidably accountable for their behaviour, and are often punished, 
 and sometimes rewarded, under His government, in the view of 
 their being mischievous, or eminently beneficial to society. 
 
 Butler's Analogy, Part I. Chap. in. 
 
 Ix these days it is difficult to know whether the 
 subject of punishments should be approached with 
 tears or laughter. There is something so comic 
 in the reaction against the old-fashioned hang 
 — draw — and quarter-him process, which certainly 
 was no laughing matter, that it is almost impos- 
 sible to be grave. A school is pictured by some 
 as a troop of little angels, eager to learn, more
 
 Chap.XV.] education and sa 233 
 
 eager to imbibe goodness, all hanging on the lips 
 
 of their still more angelic preceptors. If these 
 celestials ever do need a rebuke, shame is at once 
 sufficient; and shame is produced by a gentle- 
 but piercing glance (all schoolmasters have eyes 
 of forty angel-power), the victim retires to weep 
 in silence, until he is ready to receive the forgive- 
 ness the thoughtful teacher yearns to give, and is 
 only waiting till the fourth pockethandkerchief is 
 wetted through, to give it. 
 
 But in sober seriousness, this very difficult 
 question merits the closest attention, is full of 
 practical puzzles, and cannot be disposed of 
 lightly, whatever the conclusion arrived at may 
 be. 
 
 As a fact, a great school from time to time 
 receives all the evil of the worst English homes, 
 as well as all the good of the best. What is to 
 be done with it? The boys are sent to be 
 trained ; the angelic theory obviously will not 
 work. The easy way of getting rid of the diffi- 
 culty is to cut the Gordian knot, and dismiss a 
 boy directly, as soon as he gives real trouble. 
 But if this is done, what becomes of the training?
 
 234 ED UCA TI0N [Chap. 
 
 Clearly the boys who are dismissed are not 
 trained: but neither are those who stay behind; 
 for is this summary process likely to have a good 
 effect when they see every difficult case got rid of 
 instead of conquered? Besides, boys know little 
 of the future, and think less; if the present is 
 unpleasant, they are almost always ready to leap 
 in the dark, that is, bad boys are: and dismissal 
 would soon lose its terrors for the bad in conse- 
 quence. Moreover, boys are very jealous about 
 justice, and there is a rude, rough sense of what 
 is just amongst them, that is seldom far wrong in 
 its verdict. They will not consider this clearing- 
 process justice. No boy ought to be dismissed 
 from a great school until he has given cause for 
 judging that the school-power and influence will 
 not reclaim him. The school is a little world of 
 training, because good and evil are in their pro- 
 per positions in it, good encouraged and pre- 
 dominant, evil discouraged and being conquered, 
 not because evil is rudely pitchforked out of it. 
 This, if hastily done, destroys the true training- 
 power. There is no doubt that the getting rid 
 of a bad boy at once, without trying to train
 
 XV.] AND SCHOOL. 235 
 
 and reclaim him, saves masters a great deal of 
 anxiety and a great deal of loss. If masters 
 consulted their immediate worldly interest, they 
 would get rid of a bad boy out of their houses 
 at the first opportunity. There is nothing so 
 disastrous at the time as keeping a bad boy. 
 As long as he is in the school unreclaimed, he is 
 putting their best plans and hopes in jeopardy, 
 bringing discredit on his house and class, and 
 risking their reputations. The more so, because 
 if he really is bad, more frequently than not, both 
 when in the school, and after he leaves, he and 
 his are vilifying everything there with an animo- 
 sity that only disappointed evil can supply. All 
 this protracted danger, and occasionally heavy 
 loss, is got rid of at once by the dismissal- 
 system; for much cannot be said in that case. 
 As a part of ordinary discipline, however, dis- 
 missal is out of the question, as being no training 
 for those who are dismissed, and giving a wrong 
 idea to those who stay behind. It is not right in 
 a master to escape from a difficulty in this way. 
 And it is a grievous injury to the boy, if dis- 
 missal carries with it the disgrace it now docs ; a
 
 2 EDUCATION [Chap. 
 
 s wrong to schools, if an abuse of this 
 power makes i: . _ _ to be terrible. There 
 would still remain the question where the dis- 
 missed are to go, and what Norfolk Island is to 
 .e them, if the practice became common. 
 How then is punishment to be inflicted? 
 The efficacy of all punishment depends, first, 
 on the certainty- of its being inflicted; secondly, 
 on its being speedy. Severity is quite a minor 
 point, and may be very- much disregarded in con- 
 the main question. The deterring effect 
 of punishment is by no means proportionate to 
 
 Certainty of punishment is the first necessity. 
 
 On this turns very much the goodness or badness 
 
 of a government as regards the treatment of its 
 
 -. An uncertain government can never 
 
 be sufficiently severe, it will proceed from cruelty 
 
 ruelty, and nevertheless fail to terrify. Such 
 is human nature; let there be the slightest 
 chance of escape, and ninety-nine men out of 
 a hundred will run the risk, however great, for a 
 very incommensurate temptation. An army is 
 an example of this. A really considerable num-
 
 : ■ - 
 
 ber of men are certa: 
 
 but, because it is uncertain 
 
 iber are t 
 at a very I - 
 ship, and death are the det 
 
 : to nothing the 
 one doubt that if a bar 
 
 rtion of the men er. . 
 fight? In other 
 elusive. It acts as a 
 wher 
 
 But this apf lies to 
 
 .rence between a good and a bad system 
 a good and a bad mast isists in the \ 
 
 th which wrong is i let 
 :ertainty of there being no escape : 
 If a master is inattentive 
 se\ erity will prevent 
 being idle and undisci 
 tive he is capric 
 
 But certain.:; . all; quickness 
 
 ment is ec
 
 238 EDUCATION [Chap. 
 
 far for an illustration; it is certain that all men 
 die : but yet, because the time of death is uncer- 
 tain, and may be far off, this certainty has not 
 the slightest effect on the lives of most men. 
 They live entirely forgetful and regardless of it. 
 Nay, more; we often see during life men wan- 
 tonly incur a certainty of protracted wretchedness 
 for a few short years or even hours of pleasure. 
 The spendthrift, for instance. The short time 
 close to them, being more in their eyes than the 
 long time only a little farther off. Neither the 
 certainty of punishment, nor the severity of 
 punishment, has any effect, if it is not close at 
 hand also, in too many cases. Indeed, cruel and 
 lasting punishment hardens instead of training or 
 reforming its victims, without in any way benefit- 
 ing society, or deterring others. The mind is 
 like the body, a heavy blow is a terrible thing to 
 see, but it deadens the nerves, and destroys feel- 
 ing; and many heavy blows add little or nothing 
 to the pain of the first, they only kill. And with 
 the mind too the first shock is fearful, but con- 
 tinue the shocks, and nothing is added but moral 
 death, which it is not the object of any training
 
 XV.] AND SCHOOL. 239 
 
 to inflict. It is essential that punishment should 
 be certain, speedy, and sharp, not cruel or last- 
 ing; for however cruel or lasting the punishment 
 will be when it comes, if it docs not come 
 quickly, a very slight temptation will in many 
 cases entirely overbear all the remoter conse- 
 quences. There is no accounting for such in- 
 sanity, but it is the fact. Where fear is the 
 only restraining motive, a severe punishment, a 
 little way off, is no match for a slight temptation 
 close at hand. 
 
 There are then two great necessities in all 
 forms of punishment. Punishment must be cer- 
 tain. Punishment must be speedy. Severity 
 without this is always useless, with it almost 
 always needless — a bungler's attempt to make up 
 for want of power and influence. 
 
 These considerations affect schools exceed- 
 ingly, and in many ways. 
 
 In their simplest form they amount to this. 
 No school can punish in a satisfactory manner, 
 where faults are likely to be overlooked and 
 unnoticed, and punishment is occasional and 
 capricious in consequence.
 
 240 EDUCATION [Chap. 
 
 This must always be the case where there 
 are too few masters; since this gives certain 
 impunity to many offences both of idleness and 
 inattention in school-hours, and of breaches of 
 discipline and morality out of school. 
 
 The converse of this also follows. The better 
 the school, or the better the individual master, 
 the less will be the punishment needed in the 
 school or class. For a good master by constant 
 watchfulness, by great personal vivacity and in- 
 terest, by making it certain that no boy will 
 escape detection, and that when detected speedy 
 punishment will follow, prevents misdemeanour, 
 and makes system, and his own personal cha- 
 racter and personal labour, act instead of the 
 external force. 
 
 Before, however, we proceed further, it will 
 be necessary to. see clearly what the object of 
 punishment in a school is. Now, school-punish- 
 ment is not vengeance. Its object is training; 
 first of all, the training the wrong-doer; next, the 
 training the other boys by his example. Both he 
 and others are to be deterred from committing 
 the offence again. Hence, if training is indeed
 
 XV.] AND SCHOOL. 241 
 
 the object, no useless punishment should be 
 inflicted, that is, no punishment which shall not 
 have something in it beneficial in the doing. 
 But, on the other hand, no punishments can be 
 inflicted which take up much of the master's 
 time. This cannot be wasted on offenders to 
 any great extent. Tried by the first of these 
 laws, the common school-punishment of setting 
 a boy to write out and translate his lessons 
 signally fails. It is not beneficial, but the con- 
 trary. It is wearisome without exercising the 
 mind, this is not good. It injures the hand- 
 writing, this is not good. It encourages slovenly 
 habits, this is not good. It contains no correc- 
 tive element, excepting that it is a disagreeable 
 way of spending time ; but time is very precious ; 
 a chief part of right training is the teaching a 
 right use of time ; wasting time therefore is not 
 satisfactory in a good school. The one advan- 
 tage it possesses, and that is not unimportant, 
 is this, it gives no trouble to masters, and does 
 not take up their time. 
 
 Then comes the setting extra work, but this 
 does not reach far. In the first place, if a school 
 
 16
 
 242 EDUCATION [Chap. 
 
 is really properly provided with work, there is 
 something inexpressibly absurd in setting a boy 
 to do more work because he cannot, or will not, 
 do the work he has already. This difficulty may 
 indeed be partially got over by making the 
 work not strictly additional, but by compelling a 
 boy to spend more time on it. But this is only 
 a partial remedy, for two reasons. Beyond a 
 certain point, and that a very early one, work 
 cannot be compelled ; you can make a boy sit 
 in a room, but you cannot make him work ; an 
 idle or obstinate boy soon reaches this point ; 
 what is to be done then ? It is, moreover, an 
 absolute necessity of the gravest kind that pun- 
 ishments, as has been above stated, should not 
 take up too much of a master's time. These 
 two reasons soon bring extra work to a stand- 
 still in bad cases. Learning by heart, perhaps, 
 is the best form of work-punishment, as the task 
 takes a long time to learn, and a short time to 
 hear, is thoroughly useful, and cannot be evaded, 
 if done at all. But, supposing it is not done, 
 what then? All work-punishments with an 
 obstinate boy soon accumulate, and clog the
 
 XV.] AXD SCHOOL. 243 
 
 wheels, till every thing comes to a dead-lock ; 
 the victim cannot do the accumulated heap, but 
 if he does not do it, he is conqueror, and has 
 baffled the master. Thus the range of work- 
 punishments is narrow, and their power soon 
 exhausted in difficult cases. Depriving a boy 
 of part of his playtime is of some use, but health 
 again prevents this being pressed far. For the 
 same reason, depriving a boy of food, or putting 
 him in solitary confinement, are both out of the 
 question. Very heavy punishment, however, can 
 be inflicted in a good school by taking away 
 the privileges and liberties of the offenders. If 
 severity by itself had any great power in punish- 
 ment this would be thoroughly effectual, but it 
 has not, as has been shown above ; and this 
 kind of punishment labours under the defect 
 of not being speedy enough, but often delayed 
 for some time, till holidays, &c. occur. Also, it 
 is too protracted, it keeps a boy too long in 
 disgrace, and thus tends to harden, and must be 
 avoided. Still this power of deprivation is vcry 
 effectual when wisely and sparingly used. 
 
 All kinds of public disgrace cut away the 
 
 16 — 2
 
 244 EDUCATION [Chap. 
 
 very root of good punishment, destroying self- 
 respect, and making criminals, not mending them. 
 Excepting in rare cases, as a deterrent measure 
 for others, rather than corrective to those who 
 suffer, public disgrace must not be thought of. 
 Any one who studies the question will find that 
 the range of good punishments is exceedingly 
 limited. There are but few to choose from, and 
 those few soon lose their efficacy by repetition ; 
 and though effectual enough in dealing with 
 heavy and exceptional cases, they soon break 
 down utterly under the daily wear and tear ; 
 and cannot resist the friction of many and con- 
 stant faults, which are simply inevitable in the 
 complicated difficulties created by many un- 
 trained wills, and intellects requiring training. 
 It follows then from what has been said, that if 
 the school-work is slack and loose, it is easy to 
 punish ; as a boy who is virtually doing nothing 
 can be made to do something ; or if the beneficial 
 effect of punishment is disregarded, it is easy 
 to punish, as useless tasks, but vexatious, can' 
 very easily be imposed. But if the school-work 
 is sufficient and good, setting more work as a
 
 XV.] AND SCHOOL. 245 
 
 punishment is in theory absurd, and in practice 
 very soon becomes impossible. In all these 
 punishments also, limited as their range is, there 
 is an entire want of the great element of speed 
 and decisive impression. Lasting torture is no 
 substitute for a single sharp impression, even 
 if it is thought wise to inflict lasting torture. For 
 the above-mentioned reasons, flogging in some 
 form or other is a necessity in a great school. 
 It is certain, it is speedy, it is much feared, and 
 yet soon over. 
 
 It may be well too to bear in mind, that 
 learning amounts to an actual pain to many be- 
 ginners, and unless pain is met by pain, or the 
 possibility of it, the pain of learning will some- 
 times overcome all other motives in the young. 
 
 The common argument that flogging is a 
 degrading punishment to boys will not bear in- 
 vestigation. 
 
 Parents sometimes flog their children, not- 
 withstanding the tremendous machinery of love 
 for good, and absolute and final control over all 
 their life. But whenever this is the case it is 
 •obvious that a master doing so cannot be a
 
 246 EDUCATION [Chap. 
 
 thousandth part so grievous to the boys. In 
 some homes it would be degrading to a boy to 
 be flogged by his parents, because it would be 
 an outrage to love and honour, a breaking up 
 of the sanctity of home affection. But school 
 is not home ; school has its hold on the good, 
 but it wants that deep and pervading tenderness 
 of inward life, which should be the glory of 
 home ; it is a place of law and righteous rule, 
 but not a charmed circle of love ; it is not 
 home ; it has not the home power in its might ; 
 but many a home for all that is completely 
 ruled by the young tyrants whom their fathers 
 and mothers cannot manage, and alternately 
 pet and fear. They are sent to school quite 
 unmanageable, and unless the story is to be 
 repeated over again there, must learn to submit 
 to lawful authority. 
 
 Setting aside then wounded love, as scarcely 
 belonging to the cases that occur in schools, a 
 punishment is degrading for one of two reasons. 
 Either it is in itself degrading, or it is degrading 
 on account of the circumstances attending it. 
 If a flogging is in itself degrading, as being an
 
 XV.] AND SCHOOL. 247 
 
 outrage on the person, it is manifest that in any 
 society which considers an outrage on the person 
 degrading, there will be a total absence of blows, 
 and every kind of personal chastisement. How 
 much this applies to school will be obvious at a 
 glance. The idea of striking and of personal 
 chastisement is of course utterly foreign to the 
 boy-mind. No blows are ever struck, boy never 
 punishes boy by resorting to the ready fist. 
 Now all this may be, and is, in many cases, very 
 wrong, but this does not affect the question 
 under discussion in the least — that question is, 
 not whether corporal punishment is wrong, but 
 whether it is degrading in itself, apart from the 
 circumstances attending it. Whoever is prepared 
 to say it is, may be a very wise man, but he has 
 never been a boy. No boy ever feels the least 
 mental affliction because he has been struck, or 
 even kicked, by another boy, though the bodily 
 affliction may be considerable, and the feelings 
 with which the infiicter is regarded far from 
 pleasant. The whole boy-life from beginning to 
 end is so utterly regardless of inviolability of 
 body, whether in play or earnest, in fun or
 
 248 EDUCATION [Chap. 
 
 anger, that only theorizers of mature age could 
 entertain the notion of almost any form of 
 bodily correction being in itself degrading. But 
 some men never have been boys. The circum- 
 stances which accompany, or cause it, may cer- 
 tainly render it degrading. If received for gross 
 offences, a flogging is obviously degrading ; but 
 then it is the offence that degrades, not the pun- 
 ishment. This is a distinction often lost sight 
 of: as if disgrace consisted in being found out 
 and punished, and not rather in deserving punish- 
 ment. It is disgraceful to be in prison, if prison 
 means conviction for theft ; but if prison means 
 refusal to betray your country, it is not dis- 
 graceful. 
 
 Whether flogging is disgraceful or not there- 
 fore obviously depends on the class of faults for 
 which it is the penalty. 
 
 There is a general floating notion that flog- 
 ging should be reserved for grave moral offences, 
 to brand them with ignominy. Let us examine 
 this. 
 
 It will readily be granted, that every pun- 
 ishment of the young should be inflicted with a
 
 XV.] AND SCHOOL. 249 
 
 view to correct and train cither the boy punished) 
 his companions, or both. And still more readily 
 will it be granted, that no punishment should be 
 needlessly severe ; for if there was no other 
 reason, it is a waste of power. And waste of 
 power signifies employing means you may want 
 for a great thing in a little thing ; so that when 
 the great thing comes there is nothing left to do ; 
 or employing the wrong means, as using a pen- 
 knife to cut sticks, it will not fulfil its daily 
 work of pen-mending afterwards. 
 
 But grave moral offences, lying, theft, &c, do 
 not form part of the daily life. This is more 
 important than it seems at first sight, for a daily 
 recurring offence, by frequency, much increases 
 the difficulty of punishing it, as punishment has 
 to be provided not only with a view to a single 
 occasional act, but to meet many acts and their 
 growing power. Again, with the young, graw 
 moral offences, when detected, are felt keenly 
 and bitterly, sometimes with exceeding bitterness, 
 but in all cases conscience is roused to aid any 
 right corrective, and there is great danger that 
 wrong measures will deaden instead of improve 
 boys fresh to sin. The object in view in all such
 
 250 EDUCATION [Chap. 
 
 cases is to assist conscience and the inborn shame, 
 and to keep the impression alive as long as pos- 
 sible; whereas, in ordinary punishment, the direct 
 contrary is the case, the punishment impression 
 should be over as soon as possible, or the effect 
 will not be good. Protracted feeling, instead of 
 sharpness, is wanted in dealing with a sin. Un- 
 less it is a wrong to the society, as well as a sin, 
 which may therefore require public acknowledg- 
 ment and atonement, what end is served by a 
 sharp and disgraceful punishment in the case of 
 a boy who has sinned? A boy, unless hardened, 
 ought not to have repentance made difficult, 
 almost impossible, by public disgrace. If he is 
 fit to remain in the school at all — for no school is 
 bound to keep a rebel to its laws and spirit — con- 
 science, and the bitterness of inward shame, makes 
 the task of punishment easy, and utterly forbids 
 public disgrace. A boy ought never to be 
 allowed to think that masters can punish sin as 
 they can punish intellectual or discipline faults. 
 Unless the society-laws have been broken also, 
 the flogging a boy for a sin as a disgrace seems 
 utterly subversive of the right object of punish- 
 ment, repentance; and unnecessary, as quiet and
 
 XV.] AND SCHOOL. 251 
 
 more protracted punishments are better; and a 
 waste of power, as the first impression is strong 
 enough without it. Ignominy cannot be good for 
 heart-offences in the young in a sphere of train- 
 ing. On all accounts, then, flogging should not 
 be the punishment of sins. 
 
 The faults which principally call for the rod 
 are discipline faults and wilful faults. For in- 
 stance, when a boy persists in coming late for 
 school; when a boy is impertinent; when a boy, 
 by wilful idleness, accumulates book-punishments 
 until the work comes to a dead-lock. These and 
 similar cases require the rod ; the more so, as they 
 are entirely in a boy's own power, and no one 
 need incur the penalty unless he chooses. Thus, 
 whether flogging is degrading or not, confining 
 the punishment to voluntary and repeated of- 
 fences removes any reasonable objection to it, for 
 it becomes a boy's own choice; whilst offences of 
 this sort require a sharp and speedy corrective, 
 as the temptations are constant, and sometimes 
 so strong as to be very painful to resist, and a 
 little counter-pain acts as a very salutary check. 
 Moreover, the daily recurrence of opportunity 
 very soon makes offences of this kind, unless
 
 252 EDUCATION [Chap. 
 
 summarily disposed of, become impracticable to 
 deal with. And though often in themselves venial, 
 taken singly, they are utterly subversive of all 
 order, rule, and training, when repeated, and the 
 school would break up, like snow in a thaw, 
 unless some decisive check is found. That there 
 is sensitiveness about being caned or flogged is 
 certain, but it is bodily, not mental, pain that 
 causes it, unless it is administered on wrong prin- 
 ciples, and in a capricious way. Abstract the 
 pain, boys would not trouble about the imaginary 
 disgrace. If the real disgrace of shameful idle- 
 ness, or carelessness, or repeated disobedience, is 
 despised, the imaginary disgrace of a flogging 
 will matter little. The theory always imagines a 
 sensitive, innocent, and unlucky boy flogged, but 
 the fact presents an impudent, idle, or guilty boy 
 who has despised warning, as being flogged. All 
 the evil of English homes comes into schools as 
 well as all the good. Is there to be a school-boy 
 penal settlement, where the dismissed and ex- 
 pelled are to betake themselves? for dismissal 
 and expulsion must soon come into play, if 
 flogging is to cease entirely. 
 
 School-life is real, earnest work, both for
 
 XV.] AND SCHOOL. 253 
 
 masters and boys, and not a matter of rose-water 
 theories. At one time or another, every evil that 
 boys can do will have to be faced by the musters; 
 and every temptation that boy-life is subject to, 
 to be faced by the boys. This requires a strong 
 government. 
 
 Moreover, one of the advantages of school is, 
 that a boy finds himself there in a world of law, 
 and order, and constitutional rights and penalties, 
 whilst still surrounded by friendly and loving 
 influences; instead of under a despotic will, as at 
 home, however sweetened by love, and indeed 
 identical with it. He will have in after life to 
 live by law, it is good he should learn to do so 
 early, and not expect to find everything free 
 from discipline, or hardship even. How much 
 bitterness would be saved if the vagaries of un- 
 disciplined natures, which few neighbourhoods are 
 without, had been checked in boyhood, when law 
 could be applied to such childish ebullitions. 
 Spoilt children of mature years are like grit in 
 the wheels, both in society and in public life. 
 
 For the reasons which have been mentioned, 
 caning or flogging is an absolute necessity for
 
 254 EDUCATION [Chap. 
 
 working the ordinary discipline of a school well. 
 But certain precautions should be taken against 
 its being hasty or unjust. No caning or flogging 
 ought to be inflicted at the moment the offence is 
 committed ; cr by the master under whom it is 
 committed. The headmaster should have the 
 unenviable prerogative of inflicting it in all the 
 more important cases. A lower master should 
 be empowered to do so for petty offences in the 
 lower classes. It should be inflicted at one 
 stated time, and in the presence of all who like 
 to witness it. These are necessary safeguards 
 against temper and haste. Even where there is 
 no doubt about the offence, the question often is, 
 not what a fault deserves, hit what is best for the 
 culprit and the school. And a little reflexion will 
 often decide, that what is best, is an entirely dif- 
 ferent thing from what is deserved. Be this as it 
 may, whatever are the opinions on this subject, it 
 cannot be disposed of in a hurry by a whiff or a 
 sneer. The whole question of punishment is full 
 of difficulty, and must meet with earnest treat- 
 ment from every wise and practical man. 
 
 It would be easy to draw a very true and not 

 
 XV.] AND SCHOOL. 255 
 
 very bright picture of boys, and the difficulty of 
 dealing with them, but it is the purpose of this 
 treatise to show a trainer's duty, rather than his 
 trials. Nevertheless, it would be well to bear in 
 mind that no words can exaggerate the spoiled 
 nursery-tempers, the selfishness, the indolence, 
 the low morale, the carelessness of consequences, 
 the transcendent folly of some boys, united with 
 a conceit coextensive with their foil)-. The 
 power of not learning, too, is quite a gift, which 
 must be experienced to be credited ; the power 
 by which boys, and not bad boys either, will 
 daily be brought in contact with knowledge to no 
 purpose. How, like the children's toy, the same 
 rabbit is moved by the same wires, into the same 
 mouth, down to the same stomach, of the same 
 wooden bear ad infinitum, always swallowed, never 
 digested, a perpetual revolution of purposeless 
 seeming feeding. It is quite certain that what- 
 ever powers of inspiriting, exhortation, rebuke, 
 or punishment it is wise and effective to use, will be 
 needed in a school. 
 
 And in the matter of punishment, practice 
 brings to light that the choice of wise and
 
 256 EDUCATION AND SCHOOL. [Chap. XV. 
 
 effective punishment is very limited ; whilst serious 
 mental mistraining may easily be brought about 
 unawares by bad punishments, which produce 
 habits of slovenly work and haste, distaste for 
 writing and reading. At all events, exceeding 
 waste of time is often the result, though the main 
 object in life is to learn never to waste time. 
 And all this takes place, because men are seek- 
 ing to avoid a phantom, dressed up by popular 
 opinion to be knocked down and abused. 
 
 Grave professional questions are sure to be 
 full of practical difficulties, requiring experience 
 and knowledge to estimate and deal with them. 
 Indeed, most frequently, in actual life and prac- 
 tice, there is no absolute good possible, a choice 
 of the least evil is the only thing open for the 
 wise man to make. The theorizer looks at the 
 map, and goes from London to Oxford straight as 
 the crow flies, the traveller who actually has to 
 get there, drives to the railway-station, though the 
 line does go round. But all will admit how much 
 we should like to float through the air — if we could.
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 Self-reverence, self-knowledge, self-control, 
 These three alone lead life to sovereign power. 
 Yet not for power, (power of herself 
 Would come uncalled for), but to live by law, 
 Acting the law we live by without fear; 
 And, because right is right, to follow right 
 Were wisdom in the scorn of consequence. 
 
 Tennyson. QLnone. 
 
 The internal life amongst the boys themselves 
 needs a few words, as far as it is affected by 
 school laws, and takes its shape from them. 
 Much certainly of what has been stated in the 
 previous pages as necessary for a great school, 
 bears on this closely, and all has a general in- 
 fluence ; but there are some special questions 
 connected with it which require to be stated and 
 understood. If a great school is of necessity a 
 free and trusted commonwealth, it must equally 
 
 17
 
 258 ED UCA TION [Chap. 
 
 of necessity have its own machinery for carrying 
 on a free life ; there must be a recognized consti- 
 tutional power amongst the boys able to guard 
 their liberties, and prevent their being abused. 
 First of all, then, there is something of value to 
 lose. That is the starting-point. The internal 
 order and discipline of every great school ought 
 to revolve round the central principle of the per- 
 fect lawfulness of every outdoor game, or amuse- 
 ment, calculated to train the body and mind, and 
 its corollary, that all unnecessary restraint is 
 removed. The greater the freedom, the more 
 numerous the privileges a school enjoys, the more 
 ground there is for expecting the boys to uphold 
 their system ; the less temptation there is to 
 break it, the greater power of punishment if it is 
 broken. It ought not to pay to do wrong. The 
 loss should be clearly greater than the gain. 
 
 It is quite possible to make the outschool life 
 so full of manly liberty, and to give such scope 
 for all manly pursuits, and true amusement, as 
 entirely to remove any real temptation to do 
 evil, and make it a deliberate and mean choice 
 taken at great risk. But, until this is done, and
 
 XVI.] AND SCHOOL. 259 
 
 the school recognizes that its laws and its privi- 
 leges are its happiness, and that to infringe them 
 and betray them is false and treacherous, and, 
 above all, childish folly, there can be no sound 
 internal government. 
 
 Every society can banish, if it chooses, any 
 offence it thinks good to ban by the exercise of 
 public opinion. A school ought to be made to 
 ban treachery in its daily life. For instance, if 
 the boys are allowed absolute freedom to walk 
 where they please, on the implied contract that 
 they do not go into pot-houses, the public opinion 
 of the school can prevent this being done, or 
 send any culprit to Coventry, as a convicted 
 traitor, on detection. This, however, can only be if 
 the boys amongst themselves have an organized 
 means of expressing their will, and of putting 
 their will in force, a recognized authority which 
 can act without calling in the power of masters. 
 This is provided by the head-master investing 
 the praepostors or upper boys with power, and 
 by their acting as the ordinary guardians and 
 administrators of internal law in the school. And 
 if on any occasion they do not so act, or the 
 
 17-2
 
 260 EDUCATION [Chap. 
 
 school does not co-operate with them in so act- 
 ing, then the head-master, on detecting treason, 
 should punish the whole school by deprivation of 
 privileges for a time, and thus make it the direct 
 interest of every boy to keep the society free 
 from treason. In this manner the school learns 
 to rule itself and manage its own internal life. 
 The wonderful training this is to all parties con- 
 cerned, and how admirably it fits them first to 
 obey laws, and afterwards to be in responsible 
 situations, will be evident at a glance. Under 
 one name or another, and with varying powers, 
 praepostors have existed from time immemorial 
 in the great schools. They are the school par- 
 liament, the constitutional channel of law, the one 
 thing that makes a great school cease to be a 
 despotism, and gives freedom as far as freedom 
 is possible. 
 
 But care must be taken that, although elected 
 from amongst the boys themselves, their autho- 
 rity should not become tyrannical. It requires 
 to be strictly denned. As guardians of the school 
 liberties, and bound to see that they are not 
 treacherously taken advantage of for evil, they
 
 XVI.] AND SCHOOL. 26 1 
 
 should have power to try any case of school 
 discipline, and to punish on conviction. But 
 this power should be limited by compelling them 
 in every case out of the commonest routine not 
 to act singly, but in a body, to try the offender 
 as a court ; and also, before beginning, to give 
 him the choice of having the matter laid before 
 the head-master, if he prefers it ; their sentence, 
 moreover, being subject to an appeal to him. 
 Whilst the head-master on his part never acts 
 as head-master in any case brought before him 
 by them, but simply as their president in case of 
 appeal, as their adviser and executive in case of 
 their consulting him. Such a tribunal furnishes 
 an intermediate power, able to deal with all 
 internal matters, appealed to by high and low ; 
 and in many instances either prevents wrong 
 altogether, or greatly mitigates the penalties 
 which would have to be inflicted if the head- 
 master dealt with the case officially. All the 
 boys also have in this their own coercive power, 
 for if a companion will not attend to a warning, 
 they can appeal to their own officers to make 
 him obey a school-law, and not endanger the
 
 262 EDUCATION [Chap. 
 
 liberties of all for the falsehood of one. This is 
 quite different from tale-bearing; it is a legal 
 remedy. In society no one considers a person 
 mean who brings a thief to justice, because society 
 has its common bond which the good will not 
 permit the bad to imperil. And if masters and 
 boys are a society with their common bond, and 
 this can be the case, why should the thief be 
 protected and the true man betrayed and sacri- 
 ficed ? Certainly if the masters are one body 
 and the boys another, and their interests distinct, 
 by all means let the boys uphold each other in 
 all things ; but if the masters and every boy in 
 the school who is not a low profligate, or on the 
 way to be so, are on one side, why should the 
 mean minority on the other weigh against the 
 honour and good of all ? Set up a standard of 
 truth and liberty in the midst, let both masters 
 and boys rally round it. "Honour amongst 
 thieves" is but another name for dishonour. 
 Leave the "thieves" to themselves, let the true 
 men support one another. 
 
 Self-government is the object a great school 
 proposes to itself in its life and laws, and the
 
 XVI.] AND SCHOOL. 263 
 
 praepostors are the machinery for carrying out 
 this self-government amongst the boys themselves. 
 Without them the masters are despots, and 
 despotic laws must, as far as they can, do the 
 work of sound internal popular government, self- 
 worked, and within reach of all. True liberty is 
 not impossible in schools where there arc no 
 unnecessary restraints, where there is much to 
 lose and little to gain by treachery. The prae- 
 postor-system in such a school is the recognized 
 channel by which that sense of justice, honour, 
 and appreciation of truth works, which many 
 generations of "thieves' honour" have not, and 
 cannot, entirely extinguish amongst the young. 
 
 Another question has been bandied about in 
 a curious way, and suffered much from friends 
 and foes, the question of " fagging." 
 
 Certainly, if fagging means the cruel neces- 
 sity of the younger boys doing all manner of 
 menial offices for the elder, because there are no 
 servants to do them, as there ought to be; if it 
 thus pervades the whole domestic life with labour, 
 and too often with cruelty, no words arc too 
 strong to reprobate the practice. Boys are not
 
 264 EDUCA TION [Chap. 
 
 sent to school to be made something between a 
 housemaid and a shoeblack. 
 
 Or again, if fagging enters into the school- 
 o-ames, and taints them with a sort of curse of 
 slavery for the little boys, this is not much better. 
 
 But if it means, as it should do, a just law, by 
 which all power of compelling the weak to do 
 work for the strong is utterly stopped, and such 
 power as there is, is lodged in the hands of a 
 comparatively small number, whose character 
 and intellects have gained them position in the 
 school, and fitted them to wield it, then fagging 
 is a great defence against oppression, instead of 
 the contrary. 
 
 The matter is generally debated as if the 
 alternative was fagging or no fagging. 
 
 But this is not the true statement. By what- 
 ever name it may be called, there is not a family 
 in the land without "fagging." Some one runs 
 messages and shuts doors, &c. And that some 
 one, somehow, is not generally the eldest son or 
 eldest daughter. 
 
 If a number of boys are gathered together, 
 the same thing holds good. Who, then, shall the
 
 XVI.] AND SCHOOL. 265 
 
 "some one" be? that is the question. If there is 
 no fagging (as some proudly boast), that is to 
 say, no legal form of this, nothing can be simpler; 
 there is no fagging, but — the strong compel the 
 weak to serve. A little boy, however high in the 
 school, cannot be safe from the tyranny of the 
 most stupid and incompetent lout in it, if he is 
 stronger. As a fact, every school has a certain 
 number of big stupid boys, rather low in the school, 
 their "dangerous class." "No fagging" means 
 lodging much power in these clumsy hands, aggra- 
 vated by the bitterness of its being illegal and 
 unjust. Might is the law of such a society. But 
 might is the law of savages. A school with no 
 legal form of fagging is reduced to the level of a 
 savage tribe, and no boy can consider himself safe 
 as long as there is a stronger arm than his own in 
 it. This is a pleasant state of things, and an excel- 
 lent training in habits of law, order, and justice, 
 elevating brute force in the place which of all 
 others should teach how contemptible strength is, 
 unless wisely directed. But a legal system ot 
 fagging at once dethrones these clumsy tyrants, 
 makes them servants instead of masters, care-
 
 266 EDUCATION [Chap. 
 
 fully guards against promiscuous slavery, and 
 removes the bitterness of injustice from the exer- 
 cise of such power as remains. In fact, it is the 
 law of a civilized nation as contrasted with the 
 "might makes right" of savages. No fagging 
 means no law. Decidedly there are many evils 
 in human nature it would be nice to get rid 
 of; perhaps this fact of a few of the higher 
 boys being legally allowed to fag some of the 
 lower boys, though it also makes them their 
 protectors, is one. But human nature is human 
 nature, and any system which abolishes human 
 nature, and is Paradise, will probably be a 
 great success, at least so far as having a very suc- 
 cessful serpent in it. The tenderest mother had 
 much better wish for her son a few masters, and 
 responsible, than that he should find a master in 
 every one stronger than himself, and be trained 
 by the law of the fist. Fagging, so far from 
 being bullying, is a law that protects the weak 
 from the strong by the only means that can 
 effectually do so, namely, by destroying brute 
 force, and reducing it to insignificance in the 
 school-government, and lodging a power, which
 
 XVI.] AND SCHOOL. 267 
 
 must exist somewhere, in the hands of a few, 
 and those the best qualified by position and 
 intellect to wield it well. 
 
 With respect to " bullying," whilst the 
 thoughtless cruelty and selfishness of some boys 
 is very great, and single instances of oppression 
 will, doubtless, from time to time occur, a school 
 that is conducted on a genial and kindly basis of 
 treating all boys carefully and truly — a school that 
 is one society, not two, will be as free from it as 
 possible. Bad treatment breeds bad treatment. 
 The oppressed almost invariably become oppress- 
 ors; a hard and unfeeling government makes 
 individuals hard and unfeeling to one another. 
 
 Bullying can seldom be reached by direct pun- 
 ishment, but every word that has had reference to 
 a good school-system, has had reference also to 
 putting down bullying. The only antidote and 
 safeguard lies in the goodness of the school and 
 main school-life, acting on the minds and habits 
 of the boys, and humanizing them. There must 
 be bullying where there is neglect; it is an in- 
 flammable gas generated in such localities. 
 
 But, directly or indirectly, the question has
 
 268 EDUCATION [Chap. 
 
 already been discussed; so also has that of school- 
 games. For it has been implied that the masters 
 encourage and support the school-games in every 
 possible way, and make common cause with the 
 boys in their amusements. When this is really 
 the case their presence, instead of acting as a wet 
 blanket, will have the directly contrary effect; 
 and if education is to take up its proper position, 
 it will not be by making masters belong to a dif- 
 ferent creation from boys, but by their showing 
 themselves thoroughly capable of understanding 
 and advancing all manly pleasure, even if they do 
 not share in it personally. It is most refreshing 
 to emerge from a slaughter-house of concords, 
 moods, and tenses, strewed with murdered par- 
 ticles of language, into the open air ; most re- 
 freshing, instead of looking on boys as reservoirs 
 of bad grammar and vexation, to escape to a 
 thorough good game, and restore the balance of 
 human nature by a hearty sense on both sides of 
 both understanding a good drive or cut, of both 
 admiring a stinging catch, which sends mutual 
 respect tingling into the tips of the fingers. If 
 the school-life is to be one, and school-honour
 
 XVI.] AND SCHOOL. 269 
 
 depends on this, half the life, the out-door half, 
 and in the boy-mind not the least important half, 
 must not be left out of calculation. There must 
 be thorough unity of purpose with masters and 
 boys in every good thing. Remove this, there is 
 no standing-ground on which to plant the lever 
 that shall move the boy-world, or form the 
 starting-point of the honour and truth of a great 
 school. 
 
 One thing, however, requires to be strictly 
 guarded against. There must be no luxury in all 
 this genial life, not the faintest approach to it. 
 Everything, indeed, should be good, but of a hardy 
 type. There is no doubt that the wintry harsh- 
 ness of the old system, whilst it ruined many, 
 did nevertheless brace up, or drive some few into 
 very vigorous efforts. It was so cold, they were 
 obliged to warm themselves somehow by some 
 fierce exercise; so they took refuge in the excite- 
 ment of hard reading, or hard something or other. 
 This gains applause even when accompanied by 
 hardness of a less delectable kind. 
 
 The whole efforts of a school ought to be 
 directed to making boys manly, earnest, and true,
 
 270 EDUCATION AXD SCHOOL. [Chap. XVI. 
 
 by everything around them, all they do, and all 
 that is done to them, being of the best stamp. If 
 this is done, everything else is but part of it. First 
 make them true, make them men, by the work 
 and life in and out of school, and be sure there 
 will be no want of classmen. Do not, in artificially 
 forcing a few classmen, lose sight of the more im- 
 portant element that they should be men. That 
 will be the best school, which when others claim 
 as their distinctive characteristic the C/ass-ma.n, or 
 
 the Gentle-man, or the man, has set itself 
 
 steadily in all honour and truth to train Men, by 
 making their work true and complete, their play 
 true and complete, their lives true and complete, 
 and out of this, true mm.
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 Not, however, that we should go about, making every man, 
 and above all, every woman, his and her own doctor, by making 
 them swallow a dose of science and physiology, falsely so called. 
 There is much mischievous nonsense talked and acted on in this 
 direction. The physiology to be taught in schools, and to our 
 clients the public, should be the physiology of common sense, 
 rather than that of dogmatic and minute science ; and should be of 
 a kind, as it easily may be, which will deter from self-doctoring, 
 while it guides in prevention and conduct; and will make them 
 understand enough of the fearful and wonderful machinery of life, 
 to awe and warn, as well as to enlighten. 
 
 Horn Subsecivir, Preface, p. xiii. 
 
 So far of schools. Yet a treatise on schools would 
 be imperfect which did not say something about 
 homes. It is a delicate and dangerous subject to 
 touch on ; but after all, the homes first make the 
 schools, before the schools have a chance of making 
 the homes. English education is what English 
 homes choose it to be. Whatever the homes de- 
 mand, in time they get. If their demand is good, 
 they raise men to its level; if bad, they drag them
 
 272 EDUCATION [Chap. 
 
 down to that. It is idle to suppose that the ordi- 
 nary schoolmaster, with every moment of his time 
 occupied, full of anxiety about the school, and 
 with many real difficulties in making it work well, 
 will waste his strength, and risk his success, by 
 withstanding pressure from without; or hesitate 
 in taking the readiest way, that is not dishonest, 
 to establish his reputation, or avoid a dangerous 
 attack on it. The mere exhaustion of hard work 
 makes such a man inclined to give way, if only to 
 escape the trouble of resisting. 
 
 That this is no fictitious picture drawn from 
 imagination, the following extract from an essay 
 written by a schoolmaster, for the benefit of school- 
 masters, and published as such, will somewhat 
 prove. The writer says, "If a boy be obstinate, 
 idle, or lazy, do not trouble yourself about him ; 
 it is not worth your while ; as parents will seldom 
 assist you, but will speak ill of you for punishing 
 him; while they are generally most to blame." 
 So far the essay ; but if this advice is true with 
 respect to intellectual matters, it is tenfold more 
 so with respect to moral delinquencies. It is easy 
 to abuse the Essayist for a low tone of morality,
 
 XVII.] AND SCHOOL. 27; 
 
 but that will not help the boys, nor alter the fact 
 that this is sure to be the result of such a state of 
 things as the writer describes ; and, on common 
 grounds, the result is very defensible. There is 
 no reason why parents, who look upon the school- 
 work as so much money's worth, should get more 
 than they pay for, more than they want. If they 
 object to a master's discipline, and distrust his 
 professional skill, by what worldly principle is he- 
 bound to force his goods on unwilling purchasers? 
 Why run the risk of martyrdom as a Christian, for 
 those who view him as a shopkeeper who does not 
 understand his business? It is perfectly true that 
 in proportion as these views are acted on, schools 
 are lowered ; but, if parents wish it, nothing can 
 be said against it in the market-place, whatever 
 may be the verdict on higher grounds. No one 
 has any right to expect to buy martyrs. Hard- 
 working and able professional men will not endure 
 being treated as if their life-long study and experi- 
 ence was a fit subject for fragmentary discussion 
 and offhand condemnation. They have neither 
 time to fight, nor inclination ; it is a great tempta- 
 tion to them to let things alone. Very often it is not 
 
 [8
 
 274 EDUCATION [Chap. 
 
 possible for a private person to be a fit judge of 
 school questions of discipline and government; 
 they are very complicated, and have many bear- 
 ings ; most men, if attacked on such points, will 
 follow the advice of the writer of the paragraph 
 quoted above, and give his assailants what they 
 ask for, though it is a bad article. 
 
 But if this tendency is true in things which 
 are absolutely in the power of schools to do, or 
 not to do, how infinitely the evil is increased when 
 strong self-interest, the desire for rest, and fear of 
 strife are brought to bear on schools bound by 
 old traditions, powerful and wealthy, in questions 
 which cannot be thus summarily settled within 
 the school itself. Their prestige and stereotyped 
 glory hang like a stone round their neck as soon 
 as they attempt to move. They are safe as long 
 as they are quiet, but are hopelessly fettered by 
 the clinging love of generations. If the ivy is 
 cut away, the pillars that support the wall are 
 gone, for the parasite has become the pillar. 
 Thus they have everything to lose, and little to 
 gain by change. Ignorant and hostile Trustees, 
 loving but exasperated partizans, prescriptive
 
 XVII.] AND SCHOOL. -V? 
 
 rights, divided opinions, unceasing work amidst 
 it all, make school reform no joke to any but 
 those who write about it from an indignant 
 leisure. The ablest and most zealous man alive 
 might well pause before he set to work to put an 
 old and time-honoured school into thorough order. 
 Well might he calculate the chances, and doubt 
 his power, for even if all his colleagues were agreed, 
 and all the internal authorities were agreed, and 
 the way to carry out reform was clear, still there 
 would remain the absolute certainty to an ex- 
 perienced man, that the zealous support given to 
 the old school as it is, means, reversing the shield, 
 the most bitter animosity against effective change ; 
 for change would break up dreams, and convert 
 the sunny indifference of many into something 
 more active and less pleasant. Though a fresh 
 crown and kingdom may be gained in the contest, 
 the old one is almost sure to be lost. Why run 
 the risk? This is the case, if the school is one of 
 ancient glory. If the school is unknown, thi 
 are almost worse. There are far easier ways of 
 passing life not dishonourably, and gathering 
 wealth, than making costly changes, which few
 
 276 EDUCATION [Chap. 
 
 understand, and aiming at an excellence which is 
 rebelled against, and scoffed at, and even when 
 attained, only half believed in; while as long as 
 doubt and difficulty exist, and his heart sinks 
 within him, half faithless to its own belief, a 
 reformer has no friends. 
 
 If any fixed elementary principles were ac- 
 knowledged and recognized as necessary in every 
 great school, and schools were classified accord- 
 ing to the presence or absense of such require- 
 ments, work would be less hopeless. But if 
 there is no such general agreement, it is worth 
 no one's while to be the first to try the ice. If 
 it bears, well and good; but if not, the water is 
 deep and cold, and the crowds on the bank are 
 muttering "fool." Retrenchment in education 
 is the order of the day. But days of retrench- 
 ment are not days for dangerous experiments. 
 
 However, this is certain, the schools of Eng- 
 land will be good or bad, according to the wishes 
 of the homes of England. There is no lack of 
 working-men, if they are wanted ; but how to 
 work in the chaos of cries is no easy matter to 
 decide. Let the homes look to it. If the work
 
 XVII.] AND SCHOOL. 
 
 is great and responsible, endeavour to get the 
 best men, and throw the responsibility on them 
 of doing the work of their lives well. The)' have 
 every thing at stake. Good work will scarcely be- 
 got out of the worker, if the principle followed is : 
 "Chain him up tight, that he may do as little- 
 harm as possible." A system which has for its 
 mainspring, " Provide against harm, no account 
 need be taken of good," will do for dull mechanic 
 workers, and dull mechanic work, but as long as 
 this earth lasts, good work, and wearing work, 
 and responsible work, will not be done by chain- 
 ed workers. Either do not trust great things to 
 men, or else deal in a generous and free spirit 
 with those to whom great things are entrusted. 
 No punishment is too severe if they betray their 
 trust, but no liberty of action is too great till 
 they are proved unworthy. If children are pre- 
 cious, and human lives not to be bought and 
 sold, and to educate well requires all the know- 
 ledge of the trained intellect, all a good man's 
 patience and a brave man's heart, believe and act 
 on this belief. If not, let no one wonder that the
 
 278 EDUCATION AND SCHOOL. [Chap. XVII. 
 
 servants are of the same spirit as their employers, 
 and that* proposals of reform are met, as of old, 
 with the significant cry, " Great is Diana of the 
 Ephesians" — a divinity whose worship will never 
 be out of date. 
 
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