THE LIBRARY OF THE OF LOS UNIVERSITY CALIFORNIA ANGELES />.,-- XXV U ' 't- LECTUEES AND ESSAYS 3 LECTURES AND ESSAYS BY SIR STAFFORD HENRY XORTHCOTE FIRST EARL OF / IDDESLEIGH G.C.B., D.C.L., Etc. WILLIAM I'.LACKWOOL) ANJ) SONS EDINJiUliCJH AND LONDON MDCCCLXXN VII ./// ///;/A/.s reiiny jtost, are (|uite sullicient n-asons for my lje;^innin;^^ a letter to you. If place have anything to do witli comjtosition, I fear this jiroduction will he. A 2 DO STATES, AFTER MATURITY, none of the most amusing, for I am writing from my desk in the very penetralia of the Temple, in a Special Pleader's chamber. On Monday I am to take possession of my town residence, which is situate at 58 Lincoln's Inn Fields, and is a very pleasant one. Till then I am staying at my grandfather's at Roehampton, and come in here every day to work. I am beginning to feel interested in law, but do not as yet make very surprising progress, and the number of pupils who are reading in these chambers is rather pro- ductive of idleness than hard work. We are not indulged with very lengthy or frequent vacations, the only legitimate one being from the 10th August to the 20th October. However, I think I shall take a few weeks at Christmas. I have been at Oxford lately to keep my ]\I.A. term, and have now pretty nearly bid adieu to that ancient seat of learning, after a long deliberation whether I should stand for a fellowship anywhere, which I have at last made up my mind not to do. " I am writing for the English essay this year, though Avith barely the shadow of a chance, not having begun till very late, and having a formidable rival in Stanley, the elite of Rugby and the Latin essayist last year. The subject is, 'Do states, like indi- viduals, inevitably tend, after a period of maturity, to decay '? ' " Xow I must conclude ; therefore witli kind remembrances to jNIrs Shirley and yourself, I remain, yours very affectionately, " Stafford H. Xorthcote." Ecrcrerai y/^OLp or av ttot 6X.o)Xr) IXtos Ipi]. TX^HATEYER may be the feelings of admiration or wonder with which the sight of any of the great and beautiful productions of Nature may inspire us ; however we may associate them in our minds with the ideas of fitness and propriety, or of grandeur and magnificence, yet we can never divest ourselves of the recollection that all these things are but for a season, TEND TO DECAY 1 3 that their days are numbered ; and that although the period of their duration may be long as compared with our own brief span of existence, it is but as a moment in the boundless region of eternity. " I weep," said the Persian monarch, when reviewing the most splendid and mightiest army that Asia had ever pro- duced " I weep to think that in a hundred years not one of these myriads will remain." And well may we echo and dwell upon his exclamation. Generation after generation has been swept away by the great destroyer, Time ; and if their works have remained a little longer, as a memorial of their former greatness, yet have even these soon been overwhelmed in the common wreck ; while the few scattered remains which have hitherto been preserved to us the massive stones of the pyramid, or the yet more precious productions of human intellect serve Init to enhance our rcQ-ret for our loss, and to prove more clearly the unsparing character of the universal doom which awaits both man and liis lal)0urs. The waters of the river are carried away and succeeded l)y fresh ones ; new trees spring u}) to replace tlie ancnent forests, whicli are gradually, but continually, wearing away ; the ver}' ocean is ever parting witli its floods, and receiving new augmentations : so man, also, succeeils man ; city rises upon the ruins of city ; one state is [)()werful to- day, another lias replaecd it to-morrow ! So regulai-, so uniform lias this pnjgress hitherto been, that we cannot (hjubt that it is universal. Surely, when in- 4 DO STATES, AFTER MATURITY, stitutions so difFerent, lines of policy so opposite, ele- ments and causes of greatness so distinct, as those which the page of history continually presents to our notice, have all been observed to tend some in one way, some in another towards the same unvaried conclusion, we cannot but recognise in this striking similarity, where all else appears so difFerent, the workings of some deeper and more general principle of decay than is to be found merely in the particular defects of each separate constitution, or the peculiar manners and habits of each individual people. It is easy to say that one state perished through luxury ; another, by the insubordination of its military ; a third, by the dissensions of its jDrovinces ; that here a despot arose to crush the vigour of the republic ; that there the feuds of two ambitious nobles rent it in twain, or the turbulence of an excited populace dis- ordered the machinery and broke the springs of gov- ernment : just as it is easy to say of individuals, that one was killed by intemperance, another by accident, another by famine, and another by disease. All this may be very true ; and yet there is a further principle behind a principle which operates equally in all, though the forms which it wears in each may be widely different. " It is aj^pointed to all men to die."' So, too, it is appointed to all institutions of men to all kingdoms, and thrones, and dominations, and powers, however great they may be upon earth, all must perish. There is but one kingdom wliioh shall TEND TO DECAY ? 5 stand for ever " the kingdom cut out without hands." So then, as well might an individual hope to escape death by providing against all the various forms under which it has hitherto appeared, as a state expect to secure to itself perpetuity by guarding against the faults which seem to have proved fatal to its several predecessors. Not that we should set at nought the benefits to be derived from a careful examination of the causes which have hastened or delayed the fall of other na- tions because we too must fall ; as neither should men neglect to study what promotes the health or injures the body because all must die : either course would be alike deserving of blame ; and he alone is truly wise who shuns whatever has been found to bring with it premature destruction, and who, fully aware of the sure end which awaits him, endeavours to make the inevitable change as distant and as gentle as pos- sible. It is for the same reason that we should often look back upon the history of early times ; that we should study the beauties, tlie faults, the remarkable points, of the Ijcst known states ; and that, from the manner in wliich each of these was at lengtli de- stroyed, w(3 should gather what is tliat constitution whose decay is likely to be tlie most easy, and its fall tlie most free from suffering. If, tlieii, there is one trutli \vhi(-li al)ov(' all otliers is prominent and r('niarkal>h' l)eft>re all the phenomena which the l)age of history lays before us, it is this, 6 DO STATES, AFTER MATURITY, He wlio disposeth of power as He will, who "ruletli in the kingdom of men," who " setteth up one and putteth down another," has ever been pleased, for wise, but to us unfathomable purposes, to raise up, from time to time, some one nation to a high and exalted rank above all the earth, to be, as it were. His vicegerent here, and has intrusted to it some mighty work to be performed, and honour and glory and dominion that it may be able to perform it. Such have still been His dealings since the foundation of the world ; yet, lest man should be puffed up and exalted beyond measure lest he should say with Nebuchadnezzar, "By the might of my power, and for the honour of my majesty" He has wonderfully ordained that increase of power and greatness shall always and of itself, as it were, bring with it unavoid- able ruin to the state where it is found ; and that the very success which is raising the nation in the eyes of the world shall be ever, in effect, working its destruc- tion. It is not to the sea alone that He saith, "Thus far shalt thou come, and no further ; " human great- \ ness, too, has its bounds, which it can never pass. One state after another has raised itself into suprem- acy one after another has sunk into oblivion ; their courses have been different, but there is a similarity in their very differences. One has sprung up, as it were, in a night it has perished also in a night ; another has been slow and almost imperceptible in its rise and so in its decay it has been long in falling. TEND TO DECAY? 7 This has been raised by the power of its arms ; it has fallen through the insolence of its soldiery : that has owed its success to the virtue and patriotism of its lower orders ; it has owed its fall also to their cor- ruption. Each has risen by the force and excellence of a difterent principle ; in each has the very success of that principle been the cause of its eventual ruin. That government, then, will be the most secure, which combines within itself the greatest number of different principles, if skilfully blended together, so that one may ever form a check upon the rest, and the balance of power be preserved between all. It must be evident to all that those kinds of gov- ernment which we usually call pure, are, in truth, but rarely found, and can never, while human nature remains unaltered, be fitted for the preservation and wellbeing of any state. Could we, indeed, imagine a country where all were influenced by a respect for the laws, by a love of virtue, and by the dictates of religion, how beautiful would any of tlie })ure forms of government be ! AVhat })atriotism would there be in a democracy ! what wisdom in an aristocracy ! what strength and harmony in a monarchy ! It might seem a matter of little consequence whicli of them were ay its ha})py termination, liad placed Athens in a truly [troud and exalted position. During the wliole of that glorious struggle there liad existed a continual rivahy 1>et\veen the aristocratic and the 10 DO STATES, AFTER MATURITY, democratic parties, each labouring to be foremost in the service of their country. National greatness was the necessary result of so noble an emulation. Themis- tocles had preserved his country, and had given her the command of a new element, which was thence- forth to be the scene of her dominion. Aristides and Cimon, by their prudence and liberality, had raised her to the chief rank of Grecian states, and had placed her on a level even with Sparta herself. Thus far all was well : and could the balance of parties have been preserved, the fortunes of Athens might have been very different, equally glorious, but more durable. But it is in such a case as this that we perceive the want of a third principle, which may hold the balance between the two others. There was none such in Athens : this was the main defect of Solon's constitu- tion. Aristocracy and democracy were left to fight out their own quarrel. From a number of circum- stances, which we need not here particularise, the latter was successful ; and the natural result was, the almost total extirpation of the former. Then began the era of Pericles : the star of democracy was in the ascendant ; the people were all in all. The state, too, was flourishing : it had recovered from the eff'ects of the Persian invasion ; it was at the head of a power- ful body of allies, or rather subjects ; it had the com- mand of the sea ; it had able generals and great statesmen. Everytliing seemed to 23rospcr with it ; it ventured to cope with the greatest power in Greece ; TEND TO DECAY ? 11 it put forth its strength in a manner almost incred- ible. We look with wonder and admiration at the activity, the endurance, the sagacity, the resources of this little state ; and we cannot but exclaim. If this be democracy, how great, how glorious, how won- derful it is ! how suj^erior to the cautious and timid spirit of its rival, aristocracy ! Truly, Athens was great ; and she owed her greatness to her democratic government. But let us look a little further on ; let us seek for Athens after a lapse of but seven-and- twenty years, and behold her then, dismantled, en- feebled, crushed almost to the earth, overwhelmed, as it were, for ever ! such is democracy ! Such is democracy ; for whenever any great success is owing mainly to the exertions of the populace, it will speedily follow that they will be so swollen with pride and arrogance as no longer to brook restraint. And as Athens learnt in her prosperity to spurn the authority of her magistrates and the wisdom of her elders, and threw herself headlong into tlie arms of dema<:i:o<]:ues, who ruined her constitution and her in- dependence, so will every popular government be led on stop by step in external strength and internal decay, until at last the same fatal results ensue ; for when once tlie spirit of " extreme equality," as M. ^lontesquieu terms it, Jias crei)t in, all is confusion and disorder ; tlie })(;ople arc no longer content with choosing tlicir magistrates (wliicli is tlicir just and legitimate privilege in a ut what a conti'ast docs the faith- ful conduct of the ivoinan allies and colonics, previous ' Tlni(:y, ]U,<,k v. c !1. 26 DO STATES, AFTER MATURITY, to their admisssion to the franchise, and during the invasion of Hannibal, present to that of Mitylene, Scione, Chios, and the hundred tributaries of Athens, whenever a safe opportunity of revolting to her rival presented itself ! Such was the conduct of Athens. Let us contrast with it the policy of Sparta, a state whose wise and salutary laws forbade the acquisition of foreign do- minions, and confined the people to the limits of their own country. There is but little to admire in the behaviour of the Spartans during the Peloponnesian war : there are, perhaps, as many and as flagrant in- stances of cruelty and injustice on their side as on that of their rivals ; while their slow and cautious movements are infinitely less attractive than the rapid and brilliant successes of Athens. Yet still, through- out the war, in spite of their manifold breaches of faith, and their culpable neglect of their allies, whether in prosperity or adversity, in overweening confidence or needless despair, we find the Lacedaemonians ever looked upon as that which they described themselves to be, as the liberators of Greece, the assertors of freedom, the champions of the oppressed subjects of Athens. Why is this ? Because they aimed not at conquest. They did not even desire to destroy Athens when it was in their power; their object was not to unite Greece into one empire, but to keep it as here- tofore divided, and themselves to occupy only the proud rank of its first free state. TEND TO DECAY ? 27 Athens was a conqiieriiig republic, and she fell in consequence of her conquests. Sparta was hound hj her principles not to conquer, and as long as she kept to those principles she remained entire. But the ambition of Athens proved fatal to others as well as herself. It communicated itself even to her rival, who shortly after the close of the war began to de- part from those principles which had hitherto l)een her main support ; and although the change, being less rapid, was not so immediately destructive, still there can be no doubt that it was one great cause of her eventual decay. The successes of Agesilaus in Asia, glorious as they were, yet tended greatly to corrupt the boasted simplicity of Spartan manners, bv introducino; wealth and luxury into the state. But there were other causes, too, at work, which com- Ijined to overthrow the republic, strong as was the foundation on which it stood. The great defect of the Spartan constitution was the limiting the aristoc- racy to those of Dorian blood, witliout leaving any otlicr road open to the honours of tlie state ; so that the insensil)le decrease of the genuine Spartan fam- ilies, coupled with tlie overweening power of the Ephori, eventually reduce(l tlie government almost to an oligarchy both the kings and the commons being in course oi time neglected ; so that when Agis and Cleomenes, in later times, endeavourecl to I'estore the laws of Lvcurgus, their wise and patriotic measures were thwarted 1a- the selfisli opposition of the I'][)hori, 28 DO STATES, AFTER MATURITY, conscious of the undue share of wealth and power which they had, contrary to those laws, usurped. We have not time to dwell long upon the causes which led to the fall of that extraordinary dominion which was established by the conquests of Alexander. It must be evident to all that the two principal rea- sons of its decay are to be found, first, in its great extent, which made it ungovernable, except by the mighty spirit of its founder ; and, secondly, in the want of virtue among his generals, each of whom preferred his own separate interest to the public good. As, then, this empire was established by military superiority, so it fell by military discord ; for though we would not represent Alexander merely as a vic- torious general, but rather as a wise and far-sighted monarch, yet he had not lived long enough to substi- tute a civil form of government for that which was at first necessary, a military authority. Hence his several chiefs had too much power in their hands at his death. We must also pass rapidly over the revolutions of Carthag;e, althouo;h the celebrity of its form of orovern- ment, as well as the great prosperity of the state, renders it an object of great interest to us, and makes us reijret that we have such meaojre records of its history. It appears to have risen principally by com- merce, and to have extended its discoveries and do- minions into remote parts of the world ; but its wealth and prosperity seem to have prepared it for its ruin, TEND TO DECAY ? 29 since money became the sole passport to honours, and the extortions and corruption of the magistrates soon grew to such a height, that when Hannibal, with true patriotism, endeavoured to remedy them, they de- livered their own greatest hero and best citizen to their hereditary enemies, the Eomans. Can we, after such a dereliction of virtue, wonder that Carthage speedily fell an easy prey to her foes ? But let us now turn to a consideration of the causes which led to the decay of that most wonderful of all the states of antiquity, in whose wide and powerful current all the lesser streams of the ancient world were absorbed which rolled on with daily and hourly increase, in an apparently endless and unebbing flood ; that state from which the kingdoms of modern times have their origin, and, in great measure, tlieir laws and constitutions also ; that state, which of all others seemed the most unlikely to fiill under foreign inva- sion, but which did at last yield to the incursions of tril)es whom it must have held in utter contempt, if, indeed, their names ever reached its ears ; that state whose origin was so small, whose rise was so rapid, whose greatness fille(l the eartli, whose fall shook the nations, whose remains are, even n()\v, an unexhausted and inexhaustible source of wonder and of interest, the eternal city im])erial Home. In wliichever of lier vari(jus ste[)S towards great- ness we contemplat(.' Home, whether in her limited state' under the; early kings, or in her contests with 30 DO STATES, AFTER MATURITY, the greater provinces of Italy under the nobles, and during their struggles with the increasing power of the commonalty, or lastly, in her extended conquests and great foreign triumphs, under that mixed form of government which she gradually acquired, we may still perceive, at each and all of these stages, the same spirit and firmness, the workings of the same prin- ciples, which, variously and yet uniformly developed under these several forms of government, tended to place Rome on that pinnacle of greatness for which she was destined by Providence. The history of Rome is the best possible illustration of a remark of M. Montesquieu, that so long as the principles of a state are untouched, the alterations of the peculiar form of its constitution affect it but little ; but that when the principles are once destroyed, the very slightest change proves fatal. Many and great were the revolutions which took place in Rome during her rise. The changes of the constitution under her several kino-s ; the subversion of monarchy, and the establishment of aristocracy ; the recognition of a popular element of government in the election of tribunes ; the rise and fall of the decemvirate ; the admission of plebeians into the highest offices of state, these and many other equally important changes, which in later times would have shaken the whole fabric of the empire to its very base, were but productive of new vigour in the yet pros- perous repuljlic, which, with a steady and uniform TEND TO DECAY ? 31 course, was achieving a way to the summit of earthly power and magnificence, undaunted by difticulties, unwearied by toils, striving ever to be first among nations, be its domestic government what it might. Contrast with this the wonderful and almost incred- ible effects produced by the most insignificant changes at a time when the virtue and internal viy the (jver-greatness of tlie (m})ire, and }artly by th(.' over-greatness of tlie city. These two causes, operating togctlicr, were ])roductive of incalcu]al)]e miscliief ; for wliih' an ambitious general could render himself f(jrmidal>le to liis country l.)y estal)lis]iing liini- self in a remote })rovince, lie could at the same time for\varidas, but availed lliemselves of its fruits, the doom of tlieij' repul)]i(' was sealed; within three years from that })eriod they had readied the sumuiiL of 36 DO STATES, AFTER MATURITY, their greatness, and had begun to decline in a man- ner so remarkable that the contemporary historian does not hesitate to ascribe it to the divine wrath which their perfidy had awakened. Sparta fell from a want of virtue. And have not all other states fallen from the same cause ? It is not that success in itself destroys a state ; but that success unveils and gives opportunities for the display of the natural corruption of man. '^pxv '^^^ oivSpa Seifet, and, alas ! when has any nation stood the test of great pros- perity ? Some forms of government are more com- plex than others, and are so artfully put together, that one part continues to support another even after the principle and life of the whole has departed ; the several elements remain still balanced, and the strength of the superstructure does not seem to have diminished, although the foundation be decayed and gone. But this seeming prosperity is a shadow which the very smallest impulse from without will suffice to destroy, just as the all but desperate enterprise of seven Theban exiles overthrew the whole power of Lacedsemon. The true security of a state consists in its adherence to the right principle, not to mere ex- ternal forms, for these, as we saw in the case of Rome, may be often changed without danger if the vital principle be sound ; but if that be affected, every change is fraught with the most imminent peril. Let us 1jut consider for a moment how vast was TEND TO DECAY ? 37 that influence which the philosophical sects from time to time prevalent in the ancient nations exercised upon the fortunes of the state. Their progressive changes have been for the most part very similar. At first the rude and simple inhabitants of the woods or small villages were content with legends of heroes and demigods of their own or neighbouring countries ; their worship was confined to these, and to some of those visible powers of nature to which they, in their ignorance, attributed a separate existence. Then, as they emerged from barbarism, and slowly struggled on towards light and knowledge, physical science has progressed, and the heavenly bodies have become the subjects of curious speculations instead of blind adora- tion. The various systems of polytheism have then sprung up, and for several succeeding centuries bpen altered and new modelled as the state advanced to higher degrees of civilisation and intelligence. Th old, fearful, undefined fables of Chaos and Night have gradually given place to the dominion of Uranus and Saturn, and the yet more modern autliority of Jupiter. Much that was absurd and childish is done away, at the same time that much valuable but latent trutli is also rejected ; wliile in tlie progri'ss of the state the same change is taking place, and tlie increase of knowledge is accomjtlisliing its work, bringing with it much (rood and much evil tojj-ctlier. As a li-cci- spirit of inquiry in religion and philoso[)liy lakes place, as superstition loses its lioM upon tlic minds 38 DO STATES, AFTEE MATURITY, of men, and knowledge supersedes ignorance, there will grow up along with these great and inestimable blessings an overweening confidence, a disregard for authority, an impatience of restraint, an assertion of the supposed rights of man, and a determined hos- tility to everything which can by any possibility be imao;ined to invade them. The greatness of the state will now be past its summit ; atheism and lawless- ness will go hand in hand to work evil, as civil and religious light and liberty had before done to work good. Few states afford a more striking example of this than Athens : democracy and the Sophists went together to work her ruin, and they were not long in effectino- it. Soon a luxurious and enervatinsf philosophy, like that of Epicurus, will obtain, and the rulers and people will f^ill into a fatal slumber, offering themselves as an easy prey to the first in- vader. Such was the fate of Rome : the indolent and careless philosophy which, in strong contrast to the stoicism of earlier and better days, marks the con- clusion of the republic, and the greater part of the imperial dominion, was a manifest token of the decay of its civil power. Nor is it a little remarkable that during one brief period, when the sterner voice of stoicism was for a while raised, and an attempt to restore the virtue of the state was made, the ancient sj)irit of Rome seemed for a moment to be roused, and amidst the hopeless career of vice and weakness which her annals in general present to us, the historian loves TEND TO DECAY ? 39 to dwell upou the short but pleasing exception aflforded by the reigns of the Antouines. There is no state whose history we can peruse without perceiving the close connection of its virtue and success, of its immorality and its fall. Number- less are the instances in which a flourishing empire has been on a sudden destroyed, in so wonderful and unaccountable a manner that none can fail to recoo;- nise the just vengeance of the divine power, pro- voked by some flagrant act of wrong and impiety. Numberless, too, are the examples of a slow decay of power accompanying the gradual degeneracy of the nation's philosophical creed. It is not strange that it should be so ; but to us there is a deeper lesson to be learnt from these frequent and striking warnings. If heathen countries, whose very light was but dark- ness, can teach us that the greatness and duration of a state depend on somewhat more than the extent of its dominion, the power of its arms, the splendour of its treasures, the wisdom of its rulers, or the courage of its generals ; if heathen moralists and philosophers can trac(i the pre-eminence of tlicir country to its piety and reverence f )r the gods, and its ol)edience to the dictates of religion ; surely we, who are l)lessed with a lii^ht denied to them a li^iht which teaches us whence alone it is that honour, and greatness, and power, and d(^miniy good example, we ma\' gradu- ally diminish it, and it is our duty to neglect no o})- [tortunity of (hjing so, Ijut wc must not be (lisap[)ointe(l if" \vc find (nir })n)gress slow. The whole life of society has become so inci'ust('(l willi deceit that it is diiliciilt to have honesty in art; at the same time we must 56 ON TASTE. remember that wherever we can introduce that hon- esty we are doing good service not only to the art itself, which we redeem from deception, but to the whole fabric of society, to which it cannot fail to be a blessing to be made acquainted with the nobleness of truth in any part of its occupations or amusements. It would be tedious were I to enter at length upon the nature of the fault to which I have alluded. I will not dilate upon the offence which we commit against good taste when we build a church with a fine side towards the street, and three rubbishy, discreditable walls be- hind, with perhaps a smart parapet showing along the top of them ; or when we dress up our children with paste-diamonds and sham pearls ; or when we put up a false ruin to add beauty to a landscape, or ornament our tables with bouquets of artificial flowers. In all such cases we are insulting those whom we endeavour to please, by attempting to pass ofi" something upon them which they soon find out to be less valuable than we pretend ; we are thereby destroying their pleasure in real beauties by raising a suspicion of their truth, making them, as a modern writer has observed, look with distrust upon real gold in consequence of the immense proportion which we present to them of mere gilding ; and what is worst, Ave are accustoming them and ourselves to be pleased with these attempts to keep up appearances, as it is called, which have led to so much evil in social life ; for the man who takes delight in sham jewels and artificial flowers will go on ON TASTE. 57 to other ways of making a show in the world above his real means will ape the style of living, the plate, the equipages, of those who are much richer than him- self, and sooner than be plain will condescend to an almost incredible amount of meanness. The nature of false taste in such cases as these is clear enough, and requires no further observations ; but before I pass from the subject of honesty as the first requisite of taste, I must allude to a more subtle form of decep- tion which, under the garb of superior truth, some- times creeps in, and does much injury. All imitations, in order to be honest, must show that they are imita- tions and nothing more. If they sliow this plainly enough, they may, if good of their kinds, be in good taste. But when the imitation goes out of its pro- vince and tries to puss itself off for the actual thing of which it is the imitation, it is deceptive and in bad taste. Thus in painting we represent objects on paper or canvas as correctly as we can, and the more cor- rectly we do it the 1)etter the painting is, provided we do not attemj)t l)y any trick of tlie art to give tlie jtroduction the appearance of Ix'ing a reality, and not tlie representation of a reality. A ])icture, like that with which many of you must be familiar from having seen the jn'iiits, of a smuggler on tlic look-out, in which the figure of the man ajipcars to come out of the frame, and gives }-ou at fii'st the. im[)r('ssi()ii of being a solid form, and not a Hat [tainting on th<- can\'as, is a mere dclni'init}', and no more deseiA'es 58 ON TASTE. praise on account of the deception than a ventriloquist deserves admiration for making his voice appear to come from the opposite end of the room. As startling deceptions such things may have their attraction, but the one is just as much a work of art as the other ; and it. is in as bad taste to compare such a picture as that which I have alluded to, with a fine representation of the human figure by a good master, as it would be to prefer a ventriloquist to a finished orator or an accom- plished actor. But the point to which I wish to draw your particular attention is the bad taste exhibited by critics when they condemn works of art for not being natural, the truth perhaps being that the whole charm of the work consists in the trifling deviation from nature of which they complain. I will take as an instance the French criticisms upon the plays of Shake- speare. You know how Shakespeare usually con- structs his plays ; one scene is sometimes laid in Eng- land and the next in France ; one act is perhaps sup- posed to take place twenty years before the next ; an infant is born in the beginning of a play, and married at the end : yet all these events are represented by a set of players on the same boards, and in the course of four or five hours. This appeared to the French critics an unpardonable anomaly. They considered that in order to preserve what they call the " unities " of the drama, nothing should be re23resented upon the stage but what it is physically possible might take place upon a single spot within a few hours. A great deal ON TASTE. 59 of criticism lias therefore been levelled by them at poor Shakespeare, whom the}'" admit to have been what they call a clever barbarian, but whom they regard as having sinned against the fundamental rules of good taste, because he refused to be bound by fetters which would have reduced his plays to mere shadows of what they are, would have invested them with perhaps a fictitious reality, but would have destroyed that truth in the representation of nature, and of the workings of the mind of man, which is now their greatest charm. His writings are true in their essence, false only, or apparently false, in some unimportant accidental cir- cumstances ; while the works of the opposite school, coldly correct and irreprehensible in all that is acci- dental, are too often wantino; in tlie hiQ;her element of essential truth. AVe may, then, conclude this part of our subject by laying down as the first of the rules of good taste, tliat we should look for trutli in the object we criticise, and that the truth we seek sliould be the trutli of essence, not the truth of accident ; truth in conception ratlier than in mere execution ; truth in the mass of tlie work ratlier than mere correctness in its details. Next to the attri1)ute of trutli is that of suita])]e- ness. in nature everything is well suited to its pur- pose, and we never meet witli an instance in which use is sacrificed with a view to l)('auty. (iloriousas tlie woi-ks of nature arc to the sight, and rich as are tlu- impressions ol" Itcaiity which they convey to us, the 60 ON TASTE. forms we admire are more than mere ornaments ; each has its separate use, each its separate excellence : they seem to be created for use ; the beauty they possess is apparently an accident produced without labour or intention. It is perhaps to this circumstance that they owe the influence w^hich they exercise over our minds. Not only is our criticism disarmed when we find that the form we are examining is perfect in respect of the use for which it is designed, and that its beauty is but a further perfection, w^hich might almost seem to be an addition undesigned by its Maker ; but there is something in the very idea of suitableness which is by the law of our minds sugges- tive of the idea of beauty. Otherwise, why is it that we admire in one object the very qualities which would disgust us in another ? A great deal of non- sense has been talked at times about imaginary lines of beauty, which are supposed to be as universally pleas- ing to the eye as the philosopher's stone would be uni- versally pleasing to the pocket ; but we all know well enough that the lines which we should think fine and bold in the projections of a rock would be harsh and unpleasing in the outline of a tree, and that the beau- tiful lightness of a slender flower would be a deformity in the trunk of an oak. It is perfectly true that what is suitable to its purpose may nevertheless be ugly, but it is also most true that what is unsuitable can never appear to us perfectly beautiful ; it may strike us at first sight, and even retain its hold on our ima- ox TASTE. 61 ginatioii for a time, but by degrees tlie question, What does it there ? will more and more often recur, and will at last mar the pleasure we take in beholding. Hence we derive an important rule, never to sacrifice utility to mere beauty, nor to aim at mere beauty without regard to utility. It is a golden maxim in architecture, ornament your constructions, and do not construct your ornaments : if you want a buttress for your building, put up one of sufficient strength, and then carve it, or otherwise decorate it as you please ; but do not put up a buttress, or a sham buttress, where none is wanted, because you think a buttress looks well. The same rule holds orood in other thino;s. If you are painting a picture, introduce what is wanted to do justice to the sul)jcct you have chosen, and make it as beautiful as you can ; but do not introduce matter which has nothing to do with the subject, because you think you can make a })retty thing of it. Remember your principal object, and do not sacrifice it to its accessories. If you arc writing a play or a, story, and have a pretty song ready written l)y you, whicli will suit and assist in tlie development of the main work, you may introduce it, and it will add to tlio beauty of the wliole ; but if you l)i'ing tlie song into a m('ta})liysical treatise, or a historical woi'k, with whicli it has nothing at all to do, its beauty will ])o- conic a d('formit\', and it will spoil instead of cni-icli- in"- the fabric into whicli it is interwoven. Vet here afain we must not state the matter too l)i'o;idl\'. 62 ON TASTE. There may be real harmony without any similarity, and I must not lead you to suppose that I am advo- cating nothing but a dull uniformity. Contrast is sometimes one of the principal elements of harmony, and is by no means to be set aside. What I mean is .this, that in every work, whether that work be a painting, or a poem, or a building, or a piece of dress, or a piece of furniture, there should be one leading idea, and that every part of the composition should be in harmony with that idea, and suitable to the one main object of carrying it out. If this harmony be faithfully preserved, there may be as much variety among the different parts nay, as much violent con- trast between them as the composer pleases, and if the contrast be skilfully managed, the effect of the whole will be pleasing ; as when a great orator in pleading his cause mixes irony with pathos, playful wit with solid reasoning, sometimes introducing a happy illustration, sometimes rising into majestic eloquence, then suddenly changing to the most famil- iar style of explanation at one moment thrilling his audience with fear or indignation, at another exciting them to contemjot, or bringing them into good humour by judicious flattery. Nothing can be more discordant than the materials which he uses, yet the effect of the whole is harmonious, because the whole is subordinate, and immediately conducive, to his one great end that of persuading. And if this be so, it follows that we are not fit ON TASTE. 63 judges of the harmony or want of harmony in a com- position unless we know the eftect which it is in- tended to produce the master-end to which all the parts are subservient. Hence it happens that critics are often misled in their judgments, and blame what is worthy of praise simply because they do not under- stand it. Extensive and well-arrano;ed knowledge is, next to honesty, the greatest requisite for the forma- tion of a good taste. The third cardinal point is enthusiasm, or a love of what is beautiful for the sake of its beauty, and for the sake of the honour which a lovely creation appears to reflect uj^on its Creator. This is the most important, and yet the most difficult part of the whole subject. It appears to us comparatively easy to impart knowledge, and to educate men to be honest, if only they are willing to learn ; but that which we call enthusiasm seems to l)e incapal)le of being given, and to ])e a question of natural tcm})erament, with which education has nothing to do. Now here, I tliiiik, there is a great and mischievous error. \ do not deny that one man is by nature of a warmer and more eiitliusiastic t('in})('r than aiiotlier ; nor do I su})pose it possiljlc tliat aii\' education could inspire the h'ss ardent with tlie genius wliicli flashes spontaneously from the other; but I full}' Ix'lieve that all men, with a few ex(teptioiis, occurring not mon^ fre'jueiitly than the cases of ])ersons deficient in reason or (^ther faculti(is, almost all men, I say, have such 64 ON TASTE. an amount of feeling for beauty implanted in them by nature, as might by good education be improved into sound taste and a reasonable appreciation of what is good in the works of others. The lives which many of us lead are quite sufficient to account for the sup- pression of this faculty in those cases where it appears to be wanting;. AVe are so made that if we neg;lect to use the powers we have, we lose them altogether. A man who should hold his arm by his side for two or three years would find it difficult or impossible to raise it at the end of them ; and so, one who should be accustomed from his earliest infancy to neglect the exercise of his taste for beauty, and to turn all his energies exclusively to the pursuit of gain, and what is called the business of life, can hardly be expected to retain the power of recalling at will what he has so loner abandoned. But even under the most unfavour- o able circumstances, a love of beauty in some form or other, though too often in a perverted one, strives to develop itself in almost every man, and supplies amj)le evidence that the natural quality is not wanting, had it but been duly cultivated, informed, and refined by care. Almost every man, when circumstances allow him and inclination leads him to indulge in relaxation from the business of his life, shows some desire to sur- round himself with beautiful, or what he considers beautiful, objects. Through want of knowledge, and through want of honesty, he is often led into grievous errors of taste, and surrounds himself with deformity ON TASTE. 65 instead of beauty. He loves glitter and splendour, no matter how unreal, no matter how unsuitable, for he has never been educated to perceive beauty in sim- plicity, or to shrink, as it were instinctively, from a parade of false decoration. Never having thought it worth while to pay any attention to these matters in his earlier days, he naturally fails when he attempts to display his taste at last ; just as a man would fail who should expect to perform in music, without having ever taken the trouble to learn the science, and having no other natural advantages for succeeding than an ear which can discern a treble from a bass. The failure of such a man would not be taken as a proof that he was physically incapable of excelling in music : had he spent some years in its study he might have become respectably proficient in it ; and his failure is to be attributed to the want of study and other advan- tages. So, too, the failure of our would-be man of taste is to be attributed to no physical imperfection, but to the absence of acquired advantages. I am speaking, of course, of the causes of his inferiority to that which I believe the mass of mankind might attain to. I do not suppose that any study, or any acquired advantages whatever, could make a Raphael, or a Shakespeare, out of tlie ordinary mould in wliicli men are cast. Great geniuses are of nature's creation, and ap})ear l)ut rarely ; l)ut it is within tlie power of man to raise tlie standard of taste am<;ng ordinary mortals very far aljove the level at which it is usually found. E 66 ON TASTE. There is no doubt that the taste of the English people is at the present moment very far below what it ought to be ; and a very great number of thinking men amongst us have deliberately concluded that their countrymen are physically incapable of ever improving. Now this is a doctrine from which I entirely and indignantly dissent. I believe the English people, if favourably circumstanced, would develop as fine a taste for beauty, in whatever direc- tion, as any other people on the face of the earth ; and though I recognise several important disadvan- tages under which they labour, I think I perceive means by which those disadvantages might be com- pensated or corrected. The first great disadvantage to which I allude is the hurried and business-like character of the life which so many of us lead. The increase of wealth, the presence of competition in all branches of industry, the eager desire to maintain a good position p,mong our neighbours, and the difficulty of doing so, give to our daily life the character of a continued struggle, wherein we must not relax, and which is incompatible with the pursuit of art or of fine literature. These are therefore neglected during the greater part of our lives ; and when the season arrives at which they might be cultivated at leisure, the taste for them is wellnigh gone. For this disadvantage the best remedy will be found in an early education and cultivation of the love of beauty and art in the young. The man w^ho ON TASTE. 67 begins the business of life without any previously acquired tastes of this description, has indeed but a slender chance of making up for lost time afterwards ; but it is comparatively easy, and it is certainly bene- ficial, to keep up and to improve tastes which have been already formed, even in the midst of most serious occupations. Scarcely any man is so wholly absorbed by business as to have no time for recreation, and he might as well employ the time he has in a profitable as in an unprofitable manner. A young man with a taste for music may find time in the evening for an hour's occasional enjoyment of it, which will not inter- fere more with his business, and will be much better for his moral being, than if the same time had been spent in dissipation or idle gossip. Or if he have a turn for poetry, he may give to Shakespeare and jMilton the time which others waste, and do w^orsc than waste, upon an inferior novel or an abusive periodical. His means may be small, yet he may advantageously devote what others spend upon sen- sual pleasures to pleasures of a higher and purer character ; and if a right turn have been given to his taste in youth, and if he can l)e preserved from cor- rupting influences, lie will generally do so. Were education of the ri^dit sort common amonji; those in his rank of life, th(.' danger of iiis l)eing led astray would l)e all the less ; for finding companions with tastes similar to his (jwn, the one would assist the other, and much might be done for mutual cultiva- 68 ON TASTE. tion and instruction. As sequels to a good educa- tion, such institutions as are now becoming common throughout the country such institutions as this which I have the pleasure of addressing will be found peculiarly valuable. They afford ojDportunities, to those who choose to avail themselves of them, of pursuing studies of a refining character, by giving them access to books, by bringing them together to discuss subjects of general interest, and by enabling them to form plans for mutual imj)rovement. At present they are in their infancy, and have not ac- complished one-half the good of which I believe them to be capable ; but the seeds of good are sown, and we may hope that in time they will bear their fruit. An institution like this should not stand alone, but should form part of a series adapted to different parts of a man's education. It should be connected with a museum, with a picture and sculpture gallery, with schools of art, drawing-classes and music-classes, and with a really good library of valuable books. These things cannot start into life in a moment ; but they ought to be borne in mind, and the institution ought to he continually approximating to them. Standing- still in a case of this sort is pretty nearly equivalent to going back. The interest which attaches to mere lectures will diminish ; people cannot go on listening to lectures all their lives without crettiuo- tired of them, unless they have some pursuit to which they can apply what the lecturer has told them. A lecture ox TASTE. 69 on some point of natural history say, for instance, on fossils may be very interesting at the time, and the hearers may go away much gratified and in- structed ; but it would be of tenfold value if deliv- ered in a place where there was access to a museum in which good specimens of fossils could be seen and examined at leisure, and in which there were books for the instruction of those w^ho might wish to enter upon the study of geology. And as for lectures upon the principles of beauty and the laws of taste, half-a- dozen casts of the best of the Greek statues, arranged where they could be properly seen, would be worth all the discourses that ever were penned. It is one of the disadvantages which we labour under in Eng- land, particularly in the provinces, that we have so little opportunity of becoming familiar with beautiful forms. It has always been remarked of the Greeks and the Italians that much of their superiority in the arts may be attriljuted to the fact of their living much out of doors, in countries where the beauties of nature are conspicuously displayed, and could not fail to influence tlie mind. In England the diflerence of climate and of the halnts of the peo})le deprives us of this great advantage ; and it is, therefore, tlie more necessary for us to make u}) for tlie want of it by sur- rounding ourselves witli such objects of art as are acknowledged to l)e among the best models of beauty. Tlie facilities wliicli exist at the })resent time of pro- curing excellent casts of sculpture render it inexcus- 70 ON TASTE. able in us to neglect this means of educating the eye and taste of the people. Paintings are more difficult to obtain : they cannot be mechanically reproduced like sculptures, and it is better to have none at all than to have bad ones ; but with patience and atten- tion something may be done in this way too though the expense of purchasing fine works is a serious im- pediment, and would render the formation of a collec- tion a work of many years. You are, many of you, acquainted with the system which has of late years been introduced for the advancement of art by the establishment of what are called Art Unions, in which a number of subscribers draw lots for prizes of a con- siderable amount, which they are required to expend upon the purchase of a work of art. I have had occa- sion to inquire somewhat minutely into the working of these societies, and have seen enough to satisfy me that, as at present constituted, they do much more harm than good to the cause of art, having a tendency rather to encourage the multiplication of bad pictures than the production of good ones, besides being open to many of the usual objections which aj^ply to lotteries in general. But I fully believe that there is another kind of Art Union which might be turned to very excellent account. If the inhabitants of a provincial town would subscribe towards a fund for the purchase of works of art to be placed in a museum or place of exhibition in their own town, they would do more towards improving the taste of the neighbourhood ON TASTE. 71 than could be done in any other manner. Nothing is more conducive to the formation of a good taste than fimiiliarity with beautiful objects ; the mind and the eye are insensibly brought to appreciate the beauty which is constantly placed before them, and acquire what seems an instinctive love of w^hat is truly lovely. Trace the history of many of the greatest artists, and you will find that they attribute the earliest dawnings of their genius to their familiarity with some noted picture, some fine piece of sculpture, or perhaps some picturesque natural object with which their childhood has been spent ; and on the other hand, where you find a city rich in fine works of art, or a country abounding in beautiful features, there you will find the greatest number of painters or of poets, produced as naturally by such advantages as beautiful flowers or luxuriant trees are produced by favourable climate and a favourable soil. But education, too, is wanting, or, I should rather say, good teaching is wanted, to enable men to turn such advantages to o;ood account. There is too much tendency in our nature to run into what is l)ad, just as there is a tendency in fertile soils to throw up a rank vejijetation. Care and cultivation are needed to produ('(' a right result. I am not one of those who attriljute all the diflerence between man and man to the difl"eren(;e in their education. 1 Ijelievc in natural gifts and natural disparities. But when we see cer- tain defects pervading a wliole class of men, and ol)- 72 ON TASTE. serve at the same time that their education is just of the sort which might be supposed likely to occasion those defects, we cannot help connecting the two cir- cumstances together, and regarding them as cause and consequence. Now there can be no doubt that the English as a nation are behind many of their Conti- nental neighbours in matters of taste ; they are even content to hear the charge made, and are forward to admit its truth. Nine out of ten will tell you it is the defect of the national character, and sit down under the belief that an Englishman is by nature in- ferior to the Frenchman in this respect, as surely as the Indian is more swarthy than the German, or the white man better shaped than the negro. Yet it is suggestive of a doubt whether such hopeless inequal- ity really exists, when we find our leading artists occupying as high a position as any of their foreign contemporaries when we confessedly take the lead in landscape-painting, and are ready to challenge the world to produce our superiors as colourists. If the whole nation were on a lower level, its chief orna- ments would be less bright also. We look, then, a little closer, and we find, that while in England any attempts at giving artistic instruction, beyond the limits of the favoured few, are quite recent and very imperfect, in France, on the contrary, a very sound and excellent system of elementary teaching has been widely diffused throughout the country for more than a century, or a century and a half, AVhen to this we ON TASTE. 73 add that very considerable success actually has at- tended the efforts which have lately been made in England to supply this defect in our system, though as yet that success is not so evident as it will be when the new generation shall have sprung up, we cannot doubt that the disparity between the two nations may be greatly lessened, if not entirely removed. I have on a former occasion given you some account of the schools of design w^iicli have been of late years estab- lished in the manufacturing districts of this country. I described to you the principles upon which they were conducted, and reported the success which had thus far attended them. Since I had the honour of bringing the subject under your notice, this work has not stood still ; several improvements have been made in the working of these establishments, and some very gratifying proofs have been afforded of their utility. Their difficulties, indeed, have not been fully over- come, but they are working with increased energy and hopefulness ; and the active preparations which are being made throughout the country for the great industrial contest of next year have created a demand for crood desifnis, which has had a most beneficial effect upon these institutions. It is the sanguine hope of many who are interested in the promotion of the Exhibition to wliicli I have alluded, that it will Ijring forward much of tlie latent talent, and tliat it will tear away the veil wliicli at })r('sent obscures niu(;li of the neglected talent, of tliis country. I\'rlia})s tlien^ is no other way 74 ON TASTE. in which we could have hoped to throw off the greatest of the burdens which our artists have yet to bear, I mean the prejudice which decries all that is English, and exalts all that is foreign which prefers what is bad, so it bear the name of French, to what is intrin- sically better, but has the misfortune to be homespun. If it should happen, as I trust it may, that in the competition of next year English taste and English art should be so creditably displayed as to gain from the judges of the world's productions that applause which has been withheld by a timid public in this country, we may hope that thenceforward the weight unduly attached to names and traditions will be greatly diminished, and a fair chance given to native merit. This, I own, is the point to which I chiefly turn, when I consider what advantages may be ex- pected to result from the Exhibition of next year. I know so well, and could illustrate, if I pleased, the greatness of the evil to which I have alluded, that I attach particular weight to its removal. But there are, of course, other advantages which we may look for; and the subject is, I think, sufficiently connected with that we are discussing to justify me in intro- ducing some observations upon it in the conclusion of my remarks. I will not detain you by entering into any detail as to the original conception of the scheme of this Exhi- bition by his Eoyal Highness Prince Albert, of the difficulties encountered when it was first proposed, of ON TASTE. 75 its abandonment for some years, or of its ultimate re\Tival and successful publication last year. It is now, I believe, sufficiently known that the scheme is not one which was originated by others and adopted by royalty, but that the merit of the conception, and of the arrangement of many of the leading details, is due to the Prince alone. Its success is now so far assured as to enable us to predict with the greatest confidence that, accidents apart, it will more than realise his expectations. There is every reason to believe that every quarter of the world, and every department of human industry, will be well and fairly represented in it. Looking at it from one point of view, we shall see specimens of all, or nearly all, those raw products of nature which human ingenuity has as yet succeeded in turning to account in the business of human life ; next them, we shall see the results which man has obtained from the application of labour and skill to these raw materials ; and finally, the tools and the machinery with which this great victory of mind over matter has been obtained. In a word, it will be a monument erected to mark the point at which human industry has now arrived. Or, looking again from another direction, we sliall see at a glance the characteristics of different nations, the natural advan- tages of one, tlie acquired skill of another ; here meclianical invention, theri^. refineuKnit of taste, large- ly developed; tlie gifts of (Jod improved in one, in anotlier netilected or misused. I cannot but think V6 ON TASTE. that, in both points of view, the sight will be a re- markable one. To a religious mind it can hardly fail to be suggestive of the thought that man is, as it were, giving an account to his Creator of the progress he has made in fulfilling the original com- mand, "Be ye fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it." Or it may seem like a thankful display of the good things which God has given us, and awaken again with equal appropriate- ness the song of praise which our great poet puts into the mouths of those who hymned the glories of creation : " These are Thy glorious works, Parent of good, Almighty, Thine this universal frame. How wondrous fair ! Thyself how wondrous then ! " Or again, we may consider how the display must strike those who have been labouring all their lives in some obscure corner to produce some one of its humbler, but still essential, elements. If we could imagine a man who had worked all his life at makino; watch-springs, and yet had never seen a watch, and could suppose him introduced to one for the first time, and shown how his own work took its place in it, and how it was one of the most essential parts of a most wondrous piece of mechanism, how very much it would raise his ideas of his occupation ! Probably he had before looked upon it as the most uninteresting possible way of earning a subsistence ; but now a new light would l:)reak in upon him, and he would return ON TASTE. 77 to work with a sense of dignity, as one who is a humble but important agent in great scientific discoveries. Something like this will very probably take place in the minds of hundreds and thousands on the occasion of this Exhibition. Our system of division of labour has been carried so far as very seriously to interfere with the unity of our conception of results. It is one of the evils of which we must complain when w^e are reviewins^ the state of the national taste, that too much attention is given to perfection of details, too little to harmony of the whole w^ork. If we seek merely excellence of execution, we can hardly divide and subdivide labour too much ; but the practice is injurious to originality of conception, unless corrected by such contemplation of general results, and the bearings of different parts upon each other, as I hope this Exhibition will give occasion for. Again, I hope the interest which this occasion is likely to awaken in many quarters will not die away with the close of the Exhibition, but will bear its fruits by developing in many of the spectators tastes wliicli they have not hitherto cultivated. Our national character is too much compounded of eager love of business and indolent repose. Few work harder than we do when we are at work, and few are more rigid in excluding from our l)usiness hours anything like relaxation ; Ijut wlien we are at leisure, too many of us are prone to make up for tliis sacrifice l)y giving ourselves up to frivolous, or even to merely sensual 78 ON TASTE. amusements, in no respect qualified to improve or instruct the mind. The labourer goes to the ale- house, or lays himself listlessly down to pass the hours of rest from toil in simple inactivity. Men of a higher class retire from the desk or counter to read trashy novels or ludicrous periodicals, perhaps to gossip over the fire, or to waste their time in less harmless pursuits. Even among men who distinguish themselves in their own line of life, the same fault may sometimes be found. A very eminent lawyer, on being questioned as to his studies, confessed that he read nothing but law and novels ; and I have myself heard of one of the highest ornaments of the same profession having read a circulating library three times through, though in that particular case I ought to add that he was a man of much o-eneral readins; also. But it cannot fail to strike all w^ho think for a moment on the point, how very much people are now given to light reading ; and when we remember how much more profitably the hours thus wasted might be spent, we cannot but hail with eagerness any prospect of awakening tastes which should never have been allowed to lie dormant. Many a hint will be furnished by this Exhibition which might advantageously be pur- sued, many an interest aroused which ought never to be allowed to flag. In our own city, I am happy to hear that numl)ers of the working classes are preparing to go up to the sight ; let us on our part endeavour to ox TASTE. 79 keep up their interest on their return. I have learnt with very great pleasure within the last few clays that steps are being taken having for their object the establishment of a Library and Museum in Exeter, under the provisions of a recent Act of Parliament which gives fiicilities for such undertakings. This might be a most important step ; it might be the nucleus of such a chain of institutions as I have already suggested to you. But I must not dilate upon it now ; perhaps I am out of order in even mentioning it. All, therefore, that I will say in con- clusion is, that if we wish to raise the condition of our working classes, to render poverty less burdensome to them and labour less distasteful, to give them habits of cleanliness and of decency, and occupations wdiich shall be incompatible with sensual indulgence ; if we wish to refine the middle classes, and to render them as eager in the cultivation of the mental faculties which God has given them as they are energetic in the works of their callings and persevering in their struggle to raise themselves in the world ; and if we wish to apply a corrective to the luxury and the ostentation of the ricli, and to dethrone the idol of wealtli from tlie undue })osition wliich it lias taken up in tlie hearts of men, we must seriously apply our- selves to remedy the defect wliich we have noticed in English education, to cultivate the study of the fine arts, not as an end in itself, but as an important 80 ON TASTE. auxiliary to other branches of learning, and never to rest till we have wiped away the reproach which will most justly attach to us if, with our materials to work upon and our advantages, we come behind the other countries of the world, or any country whatsoever, in this article of National Taste. III. ACCUEACY. A LECTURE DELIVERED AT THE MECHANICS' INSTITUTE, EEOME, IX 1864. Sir Stafford Xortiicote had been spending a quiet autumn in Devonshire, and one of the employments of his leisure time had been in taking lessons from jMr Stokes, who was then in the neighbourhood, in ^Mr Stokes's System of Aids to ^lemory. Prob- ably the attention Sir Stafford Northcote gave to this system, and the carefully drawn-out charts explaining the connection of the method with the objects to be remembered, had brought before his immediate notice the advantages arising from the haljit of accuracy. Sir Stafford Northcote learnt this method partly with a view of using it in remembering speeches made in the House of Commons, more especially those containing dat<3s and figures. In 1865 he applied this system to ^Vfr Gladstone's IJudget s})eech, when he heard it delivered in the House of Commons, and was ])leased to find how accurately it enabled him td take in at the time eacli particular figure. He testeil this accuracy ])y ivferriug to the reports the next day. i S I undcrstuiHl tlic <)l)j('cts cf this Institution, they comprise tlie general })roniotion of education and rati(jniil amusement amoni: the miih.lJe and h>\vt,'r F 82 ACCURACY. classes. I do not conceive that you limit yourselves to the pursuit of particular branches of study ; still less, that you consider yourselves as a mere club for friendly and social intercourse, or the members of a reading-room or news-room, or a society for mere amusement. The view with which Mechanics' Institutes were in the first instance proposed, was that of affording to persons engaged in the daily business of life oppor- tunities for self-improvement, such as were then much needed, because they were not easily to be attained. Times have now changed, and the functions of the Mechanics' Institutes have changed with them. The spread of national education, the development of a cheap and good literature, well suited to the wants of the mechanic and the artisan, the establishment of Schools of Art and Science, the introduction of the system of national and local exhibitions, and many other causes which might be mentioned, have to a great extent done away with the necessity which for- merly existed for some parts at all events of the old Mechanics' Institute. But the Institute still holds a place among us, and its place is one which we could ill afford to leave empty. It still forms a link in the great educational chain,- and wdiere it is well con- ducted, it is of the hio^hest value to the educational cause. In all this movement of which I have been speaking, it is a matter of paramount importance to carry the working classes along with the stream of ACCURACY, 83 progress, to secure their co-operation, to learn their wants, and to facilitate their participation in the ben- efits which it is desired to confer upon them. It is here that the value of the Mechanics' Institute is felt. If the Institute comprises, as it ought to do, the most active and intelligent members of the working class : if it is under the guidance, as it ought to be, of men of ability and liberal views, who possess the confidence of their fellow-townsmen, and who have leisure to work wdth a view to their interests, it cannot fail to be of the highest service in bringing the several measures which are taken for the general good of the public to bear upon their own locality. Tlius, to take an example, the endeavours of the Government to establish a system of instruction in art and science may be most materially aided by the co-operation of a Mechanics' Institute. So again it has been found that the organisation of the Institutes may be made powerfully to bear upon the system of middle-class examinations conducted by the Universities and by the Society of Arts. I have lately had an opportu- nity of seciing that this is so in the case of tlie great union of jMechanics' Institutes which exists in tlie West Hiding of Yorkshire, and which lias l)eon found of sucli va]u(3 tliere. One more illustration I will give of the functions which 1 think the Institutes may discharge, because it will bring me dii'ectly to the sul)j(!ct which I liav(i [)roj)o,s(Ml foi- our considci-ation this evening, and will, 1 hope, at once fui-nisli my ex- 84 ACCURACY. cuse for intruding myself upon your attention, and enable me to explain why I have thought that a sub- ject which is somewhat out of the common line of lecturers may nevertheless be at least as profitable for examination as one of a triter description. I wdll therefore add to my list of illustrations of the services which Mechanics' Institutes may render, the part which I think they ought to play in the solution of the great question of what is (perhaps not very appro- priately) called middle-class education. You are aware that the whole subject of the educa- tion of the people of this country has lately been, and is still, undergoing careful examination on the part of the Grovernment. Two Royal Commissions have sat within the last seven years for the purpose of inquiring, the one into the condition of the lower schools, the national schools for the poor, the other into that of a few of the highest public schools, the schools of the rich. A third Commission is now about to issue, which is to take cognisance of the ground lying be- tween the fields of the other two inquiries, and which will doubtless find itself charo;ed with the execution of a most difficult task. I feel convinced that if any good is to be done in the improvement of the educa- tion of the middle classes of this country, it must be done by the aid of the middle classes themselves ; and I therefore say that here again I see a field of usefulness for the Mechanics' Institutes, second in im- portance to none of those which I liave previously ACCURACY. 85 glanced at. This is my proposition : It may be all very well for Commissions to inquire and to report, but it must be the public, it must be the classes prin- cipally interested, that must act. No opinions which the Commission may express, no measures which they may recommend, will be of much use, unless they succeed in carrying the opinion of the middle classes with them. I believe, therefore, that it is of para- mount importance to induce the middle classes, and indeed all classes, to think the matter out for them- selves ; and I feel sure that the Mechanics' Institutes, if they comprise the classes which I think they ought to comprise, and if they are actuated by the spirit and guided by the intelligence which I cannot doubt prevails among them, may render a public service of the very highest magnitude by contributing in their own districts to form a sound opinion upon a question which is very much misunderstood. X(j\v the fundamental question which we ought to ask ourselves, but which very few persons do ask themselves, in this matter is, What end should we aim at in the education of youth? Hundreds and thousands of parents send their children to school, and go to considerable expense in their education, without having any clear coiKteption of what the end at which they are aiming is. They wish their chil- dren to l)e educated like otlier people's, and they wish tlicni to learn thosi; tilings whicli otlier young persons in their own rank of lif' arc learning. But they have 86 ACCURACY. little or no notion what good is to come of a great part, at all events, of what is taught. They have little or no power of distinguishing between a good education and a bad one. And when the question is raised, as it is now" about to be raised, What reforms are needed in the educational system which actually pre- vails, and what subjects and methods of study should be preferred, and what discontinued ? they are likely to find themselves at sea without a guiding principle to find their way by. It is because I desire to off"er some assistance in discovering such a principle that I have now ventured to invite your attention to the subject of Accuracy. My object in so doing is to lead you to consider and discuss some of the main objects of education, and I have thought we might do so better by confining ourselves to a single topic, than by ranging over the wide and distracting field of educational discussion. I propose first to say a few words upon accuracy itself, upon its importance as a part of man's character, and upon its importance in its application to various purposes and businesses of life ; then to point out to you some of the helps and some of the hindrances to its acquisition, and so to endeavour to ascertain the studies and the methods of study which are most likely to produce it. Do not so far misunderstand me, however, as to suppose that I claim for accuracy the highest place among th(3 qualities which may be developed and improved by education. I select it, partly because I think it is ACCURACY. 87 one which is less sought after than it ought to be ; but chiefly because it will enable me to try whether it is possible to set the question of education before you in a somewhat new light, and to suggest a mode of testing the value of particular studies with refer- ence to their fitness to produce particular qualities, which may be equally applicable to other cases. I need not, I suppose, begin by defining accuracy. The word is sufficiently familiar to you all. I will only say that it is a quality both of the intellect and of the senses, j)erliaps I may add of the moral nature also. We may speak of the accuracy of a man's judg- ment and of his memory, just as we may of the accuracy of his sight or of his hearing. I am not sure that it would be incorrect to speak of the accuracy of his afi'ections ; at all events, the common expression that such a man's heart is in the right place comes some- what near to the same idea. What is, however, more important for us to remark is, that accuracy is not a mere natural gift, but is more or less an acquired quality, and that although it is given to some by nature in larger measure tlian it is to others, yet that education lias in almost every case more to do with its development than nature. Take the common instance of the sight. (Jl)S('rve a new-born infant. lie has no power whatever (f judging of distances. The moon seems as much within his vc-dch as the candle. (h"adu- ally he begins to teach himself to measure s})aee by his eye, lie learns what o1)jeets he can reach, and 88 ACCURACY. what he cannot. As he grows older he learns more and more to judge of distance and of size by the eye, and this kind of education goes on more or less through his life. Thus you will find that those who take pains to cultivate this faculty attain to a degree of accuracy in judging by sight which is surprising to those wdio have taken no such pains. A grazier wdll judge the weight of a bullock, a timber - dealer will take the measure of a tree, a surveyor wall estimate the size of a field by eye alone, and in many cases wdth perfect correctness. And we find that the powder of doing this is one which we all possess, only that it is not called out by our education. Our Volunteers, for in- stance, have lately found that it is perfectly possible even for men advanced in life to learn to judge dis- tances ; and there is no doubt that we might, by taking pains, acquire a very much higher degree of accuracy of sight than we most of us possess. The same is the case with the other senses ; the ear, the taste, the smell, may be almost indefinitely improved by proper cultivation, and may be made to convey much more accurate impressions to our minds than they do. It is familiar to us that the blind have what we call an acuter sense of liearincr and of feeling- and the deaf an acuter sight, than those who are in posses- sion of all their senses. This is not because they have by nature a more perfect organisation than others ; but because, under the pressure of necessity, they take greater pains to use and make the most of the organ- ACCURACY. 89 isation which they have. The Eed Indian tracks his friend or his enemy by the same senses as those which we have in common with him, but which he has cul- tivated, and by dint of cultivation has brought to a far higher pitch of accuracy than his civilised brethren have attained. Those who have seen how a hare- hunting farmer can prick a hare, will have no difficulty in believing that even a white man might have learnt to follow a trail. Now these remarks upon the accuracy of the senses have an important bearing on the question of mental accuracy. Some of our mental powers may almost be called mental senses. The power of observation is little else than the power of making a right use of the senses of the body. The power of memory is a kind of sense. And what I have already said as to the possibility of improving the l)odily senses by educa- tion, may be said also of the possibility of improving the powers of observation and of memory. Few peo- ple observe as accurately as they might, and many observe very inaccurately indeed. But accuracy of observation may be cultivated. Perhaps you remem- ])er tlie story wliich the celel)rated conjurer, Rol)ert Iloudin, tells of his m(.'thod of cultivating his power of observation. lie would walk i-apidly ly a, sliop window with liis soji, and wlien tlicy liad passed by they would try to recall the various things they had seen in the window, and the positions in which they were placed ; after doing which they would return to 90 ACCURACY. the window and see how far they were right. In this manner he acquired an extraordinary power of rapid and accurate observation, which was of great use to him in his calling. But this is an instance of rapid rather than of accurate observation. For instances of the mode in which accurate observation may be culti- vated, you must go rather to the lives of men who have made themselves eminent in science, and from them you will learn not only how accuracy of observa- tion is the foundation of the philosopher's character, and how it leads to the great discoveries which from time to time burst upon the world, but also how it is capable of development and improvement by dint of application. I spoke just now^ of the importance of accuracy as an element of character. There are some to whom it may seem a trivial matter, and even as a symptom of inferior genius. Nothing is more common than a sneer at the accurate man, as though he w^ere deficient in the higher qualities of the mind, and as though his accuracy were but the plodding effort of mediocrity to make up for the want of the creative and imaginative faculty. Nor, on the other hand, is it unusual to hear those who lay claim to what they call the higher gifts speak lightly and carelessly of their own want of accuracy as of a matter of no importance. I do not for a moment dispute that the exaggeration of ac- curacy may indicate feebleness of mind ; that when a man finds himself deficient in original power he is ACCURACY. 9 1 apt to try to cover his defects by a minute and weari- some show of accuracy in trifles. But the highest object to the pursuit of wliich a man can devote him- self is truth ; and it would be easy to show that truth can only be attained by the aid of accuracy, and that in the absence of this quality the most brilliant powers and the most unintermitting labour may not only be of no avail, but may actually lead us astray in our pursuit. In order to attain truth we must, in the first place, observe accurately ; and we must, in the second place, reason accurately from what we have observed ; and in order to convey the truth to others, we must be able to express accurately the conclusions to wliich we ourselves have come. Thus accuracy of observation, of reasoning, and of expression, are the three great points at which we have to aim ; and it may not unreasonably be contended that, in consider- ing the education which we should provide for our children, we ought to require that it should be of such a character as to conduce to the attainment of these three phases of accuracy, if I may be allowed the use of such an expression. IIow, tlien, does the education, wliich in fact we give, answer to that description? I fear we must riiply, \'ery imperfectly indeed. Take first the (juestion of oljservation. C^iii we su\' that we edu- cate our children in any class of schools so as to devel(j[) their [>o\vers of ol)serv;itioii ' It is ol)\'ious that in one een traijied when young to ex(,'r('ise theii- facidties of 94 ACCURACY. observation upon natural objects. But perhaps you may suppose that he means to say these men have not been educated at all, that they are mere clods whose minds have never been broken up by any kind of cultivation, and that it is on that account that they are unable to learn what he wishes to teach them. It is a favourite doctrine that education, more particu- larly what is called a liberal education, if it teaches little that is directly and immediately useful, does, nevertheless, so strengthen and improve the mind, that it gives a man the power of learning whatever he pleases. But Professor Faraday is not less severe upon the highly educated than he is upon the less educated classes : " It is the highly educated man," he says, " that we find coming to us again and again, and asking the most simple question in chemistry and mathematics ; and when we speak of such things as the conservation of force, the permanency of matter, and the unchangeability of the laws of nature, they are far from comprehending them, though they have relation to us in every action of our Uves. Many of these instructed persons are as far from having the power of judging of those tilings as if their minds had never been trained." He goes on to trace the consequence. " Up to this very day there come to me persons of good education, men and women quite fit for all that you expect from education ; they come to me and they talk to me about things that belong to natural science about mesmerism, table-turning, flying through the air, about tlie hiws of gravity they come to me to ask me questions, and they insist against me, wlio think I know a little of these laws, that I am wrong and they are right, in a manner which ACCURACY. 95 shows how little the ordinary course of education has taught such minds. . . . I do not wonder at those who have not been educated at all ; but . . . persons who have been fully educated according to the present system come with the same propositions as the untaught, and stronger ones, because they have a stronger conviction that they are right. They are ignorant of their ignorance at the end of all that education." There can, I think, be no doubt that these remarks of Professor Faraday's involve matter for deep con- sideration. He may or may not be right in saying that table-turning and the other processes of which he speaks are contrary to the laws of nature, and impos- sible. That is not the question. The question is, whether a system of education can be regarded as satisfactory which omits to strengthen the mind by teaching it to observe and to reason accurately, and leaves it a prey to delusions which it has not the power, because it has never acquired the ha1)it, of investigating ? Accurate work of ever}' kind, accurate observation, accurate reasoning, involves labour, and the mind wliicli is untrained shrinks from that lal^our, and prefers to acquiesce in tlie show of accuracy on the part of another rather than go tlirough tlie labour of investifjation fjr itself. This it is which o-ives fallacious statistics sucli daugcrous jxjwer. This it is which causes so man}' to fall before the specious rea- soning of the sceptic wlio (lisj)ut('s tlie truths of reve- lation. The show of accurac}' dazzles tlie inaccurate. What Pope says of learning nia}" be ap})lied here a 96 ACCUKACY. little knowledge is dangerous. A man who is unac- customed to observe accurately for himself does not detect the inaccuracies in the statements and reason- ings presented to him by others. Perhaps I ought rather to say the inaccuracies of the statements, for there is a difference between accuracy of statement and accuracy of reasoning, and it is not a little curi- ous to find that men may be most accurate and acute reasoners, and most slovenly and inaccurate observers. Professor Faraday expressly mentions that some of those who come to him and maintain absurd and im- possible doctrines in matters of natural philosophy are excellent mathematicians. A mathematician has learnt to reason, but he has not learned to observe. He is in the habit of taking his premisses for granted, and looking only to the deductions from them ; and it appears that he is capable of testing every link in his chain of deductions very accurately, and yet may bo utterly astray in the premisses from which he is draw- ino; them. The same is the case with the loojician. He is taught the process of reasoning, and he is taught it without reference to the truth or falsehood of the subject-matter to which it is applied. The conse- quence is, that the logician often goes very wrong indeed. By far the subtlest and most ingenious logi- cians the world has ever seen were the Schoolmen, and they were at the same time the men who advanced and who defended the most absurd doctrines. It was said of them that they were like the astronomers " which did feign eccentrics and epicycles, and sucli ACCURACY. 97 engines of orbs, to save the phenomena, though they knew there were no such things." In like manner it was said that the Schoohnen were always ready to feign what was necessary to support the doctrines they wished to maintain ; and such was the ingenuity of their superstructures that men were prevented attending to the unsoundness of their foundations. Bacon was the great enemy of these men. It was he who introduced a sounder system of reasoning a system founded upon observation. [Charles II. and the fish.i] This inaccuracy of observation is the cause of the great distrust which many persons not unreasonably feel of statistics. The error which misled Dr Price in tlie Northamp- ton tables arose in the following way. He found that 4689 persons had died there l)etween 1734 and 1780. The register of christenino-s showed fewer births than deaths. He therefore assumed that the population ]iad Ijeen k('})t uj) Ijy an immigration of shoemakers from twenty to thirty years of age. He omitted tlie Baptist children, lience his error. ' IltTf Lord I'lflcslciL,']! drew tlie attciiliou of his lK'iiri.'rs to tlio story of Charles FI. ami the ti>Ii, Imw on one occasion the iiionarcli invited the nienihers of the Itoyal Society to discuss wliy, in a tub lirinnnin^' full of water, the introduction nf a li.-li caused no oveillow. ^iany reasons wei'e ^d\'en in exjilanation. One old Scotcli mv(t)it I'eniained silent, and on heini^ a]i])ealeh(iw how [,'roundless was tin; discussion. a 98 ACCURACY. I think it will be sufficiently obvious from what I have said, that accuracy of observation and accuracy of reasoning are two distinct qualities ; and that the one may be cultivated very highly and the other quite neglected. Yet neither is of use without the other. The man who reasons correctly from faulty premisses and the man who reasons incorrectly from true premisses is equally sure to come to a false con- clusion. [Gulliver's suit of clothes.^] It does not signify whether the error was in the data or the calculation. The result was the same. Our system of education, however, provides much better for teachins- us to reason than for teachino; us to observe. We lay great and deserved stress upon the study of mathematics. We lay somewhat less upon that of logic. I think m3^self that we make not sufficient account of log;ic. It would be well if it were taught, not as a separate art, but in connec- tion with every process of reasoning which wc are called on to follow. Logic might be applied to the 1 Here Lord Iddesleigh illustrated his meaning by quoting Gulliver's experience during his residence in Laputa. " Tliose to whom the king liad intrusted me, observing how ill I was clad, ordered a tailor to come -iutxt morning and take my measure for a suit of clothes. The operator did his office after a different manner from those of his trade in Europe. He first took my altitude by a quadrant, and then with rule and com- Y)asses described the dimensions and outlines of my whole body, all which he filtered upon paper ; and in six days brought my clothes very ill made and quite out of shape, by happening to mistake a figure in the calculation." ACCURACY. 99 study of natural science, to the study of political economy, to any study, in sliort, which required the exercise of reason ; and were it so applied, the preju- dice which many feel against it would disappear. Logic and mathematics are the great instruments for the education of the reasoning faculty, and they re- ceive, as I have said, a fair share of attention ; but we bestow far too little pains on the education of the ob- serving faculty. The almost total exclusion of natural science from our curriculum is the most obvious proof of this. But other illustrations might be found in the imperfect way in which geography, for instance, is taught ; and in the neglect of the study of drawing. Englishmen, as a rule, know very little of what is called political geography that is to say, the geography which teaches the boundaries of States, the situation of cities, and the distribution of populations ; and nothing whatever of physical geography that is to say, the conformation of the earth, the mountain-sys- tems and tlie river-systems, the distriljution of races of men, animals, and plants, the isothermal lines, and s(j forth. Drawing, again, is regarded, or has been so till very lately, as a mere accomplishment, which may be very suitaljle for persons with taste and leisure, but which is of little general use. Yet there is no study which would conduc-e mcn'e directly to accuracy <)[ observation than the study of drawing. 1 am happy to think that its value; is beginning, though slowl}', to be rec(^giiisc(l. 100 ACCURACY. So much, then, for the efforts made to promote accuracy of observation and of reasoning. I have still to speak of accuracy of expression. It is to this, perhaps, that our system of education is most carefully directed. The study of language is the great study of the day ; and as natural science develops the power of observation, and logic and mathematics the power of reasoning, so does the science of language develop that of exj^ression. But even here I am compelled to ask, Do we do as much as we ought to produce accuracy ? and I am compelled to answer that I find room for great im- provement in this respect. Accuracy of expression is of the highest importance. Language, whether spoken or written, is the medium by which we conve}^ our thoughts to the minds of others. It is the engine by wdiich we exercise influ- ence over our fellow-men. It is of importance that we should have a perfect command over that engine, and should accustom ourselves to use it ario-ht. We desire to speak and to write elegantly and powerfully; but it is of even greater importance that we should do so accurately. Now there is no doubt that the study of grammar, not only in the dry bones of a syntax but in the living structure of a well-written book, is of high value to us in this respect. A man who has not received a literary education can hardly be expected to obtain the command of words, the power of choosing good expressions, and of putting ACCURACY. 101 liis thoughts into appropriate words, which the classical scholar ought to derive from his study of language. The study of language, and of the classical languages particularly, is most useful in this respect. It is not the only reason for making that study so prominent as we do, but it is one reason. Yet in point of fact, though so large a part of the season of youth is spent in the study of language as to ex- clude other studies of very high importance, such as natural science, it is found that a very lar2;e number of educated persons fail after all to acquire that com- mand of lanouaoje to which so much has been sacri- ficed. Comparatively few either speak or write gram- matically. Very many speak and write, not only ungrammatically, but confusedly and unintelligibly. We have often to supply the defects in a man's words by a reference to his meaning as gathered from the context, or from his action, or his emphasis, or from what we know of tlie circumstances under wliich he is speaking ; and })eople expect this at our liands. A man is generally very indignant if you take him to task upon tlie literal construction of his words, and tells you that it is enough that you know Ills meaning. ( )f (,'ourse, the sort of critical hyper- accuracy which is continually taking exception upon triHes and evading what is really important, is botli irritating and contemptible ; but it does not follow that because the connnents of the listener ai'c some- times out of jdace, it is thei-efbre unneecssary for the 102 ACCUKACY. speaker to be minutely accurate. Those who indulge in looseness and inaccuracy of expression are seldom very precise in thought. Inaccuracy arises in many cases from unwillingness to encounter the labour of working out an idea. We are content to throw it out in the rough, and to leave the trouble of shaping- it to others. It is said that Englishmen are pecu- liarly deficient in accuracy of expression. They are certainly less precise than the French. You will not find in France the slovenly pronunciation or the un- grammatical sentences which we are noted for. jMore pains are taken there to acquire a pure and a correct style, and to avoid equivocal and confused language. It would be well if greater eff'orts were made in this direction among ourselves. But grammatical accuracy is not the only kind at which we ought to aim. It is of far more importance that we should learn to avoid exao-aeration, misstate- ment, and the other substantial inaccuracies, if I may use the phrase, to which we are only too prone. As accuracy is an element of truth, so are these, its opposites, elements of falsehood. Their forms are infinite, and I cannot attempt to describe them all, I will only say that the harm which we may do to our moral nature l3y allowing ourselves in them may be very serious. Truth is the great mark at which we ouo-ht to aim in all thino-s truth in thou2:ht, truth in expression, truth in work. Those who habitu- ally sacrifice truth in small things will find it difii- ACCURACY. 103 cult to pay her the respect they should do in great things. Now, as I found foult just now with the defective- ness in our system of education, so far as relates to the teaching of observation, I must find fault with it likewise as relates to the teaching of expression. In the former case my complaint was that we omit the studies by which observation should be taught ; in the latter case I complain not that we omit the proper studies, but that we do not pursue them aright. Our great fault in what we do teach consists, I think, in our failing to make boys learn aright. AVe do not teach them accurately or expect them to learn accu- rately ; the consequence is, that a great deal of time and labour is thrown away both by teacher and scholar. The boys at our great public schools are taught Latin and Greek almost exclusively for five or six years, or, including the time they spend at private schools, for eight or ten years ; and a good many of them leave school knowint^ next to nothino; of the one or the otlier. How is this ? Because, from some defects in the school arrangements, which I cannot now enter into, they have Ijeen allowed to learn inaccurately. They are n(jt inspired with any hjve of a(tcuracy ; they learn to think it sufticient if they can come near enougli to pass muster wlien th(,'y an.' examined. 'I'hey do not find su})erior accuracy sufficiently valued to make it wortli tlieir while to o'O tlirouuli tlie Ia1)our it in- 104 ACCURACY, volves. Take the case, for instance, of learning by heart. Boys at some schools are required to learn an immense quantity of Latin and Greek by heart far more, indeed, than many of them could do without injury if they did it thoroughly. But they do not do it thoroughly ; they scamp it. They know that they will only be required to say a small portion of w^hat they have been set to learn, and they content them- selves with ingenious devices for guessing the part in wdiich they will be set on, and learning that. Many boys would think that to learn the whole lesson thoroughly well was as absurd an expenditure of enthusiasm as the conduct of the actor who dyed himself all over to play Othello, w^hen it would have been sufficient to black his face and his hands. The same spirit runs through too much of the work of schools, and masters do too little to check its growth. A master is often too well pleased when a boy gives a fair approximate answer to go deeply into the ques- tion how far that answer is supported by adequate knowledo-e. [Hawtrey on Bios.^] These things are trifles, but they are the trifles which form habits of mind. It is of importance that in any reform of education we should aim at the introduction of such methods of ^ Here the lecturer referred to some experience of Dr Hawtrey's with a schohir wlio confused tlie two meanings of the Greek word Bios, hoiv and life. ACCURACY. 105 teaching as may discourage inaccurate learning. It is of far less consequence what boys learn than how they learn. An interesting question of detail has been raised by Mr Halford Vaughan, which has some bearing upon the principles that should guide us in teaching lan- guages. He thinks we teach too many languages at once, and that it would be far better to teach one first and then proceed to another. In this way he thinks that we might teach one more thoroughly than we now teach any, and that we might make room for other studies, such as that of natural science, without unduly encroaching upon the time and strength of the pupil. " The variety of discipline," he says, " be- stowed by the study of language, is efiected through the various efforts of mind which are naturally made in the prosecution of such a study, jind not through the various lano-uaoes which are learnt," He arg;ues, therefore, tliat to employ these efforts upon several languages at once gives no more training than to employ them upon a single language, and that the time spent in learning two or three at once greatly retards the j'rogress of the student. For " 111 ]iroi)()rlioii a.s llic kiiowkul^c of a fsin^lt' laii^uam' ap- ]roacIi('S ti ])('rfectiul whih' 1 mentitm 110 ACCURACY. this instance, in order to show that the fact that a man may carry a competitive examination by cram is no sufficient reason for condemning competitive examinations for the selection of candidates for public employment, I am not insensible to the evils which attend the habit of cramming, and I am alive to the dangers which may result from examinations which have a tendency to encourage it. I am happy to perceive that the examinations which are now extendinsj themselves throuQ-hout the country are conducted upon a sound and careful prin- ciple. The University examinations, in particular, are directed to discover how far the young men and boys who present themselves are well grounded in the rudiments and elements of knowledge. They have brought to light, as our Public Schools Commission brought to light in another way, great defects in this important particular. It is satisfactory to observe that as they proceed an improvement is taking place ; greater accuracy of knowledge is reported ; and the latest report from the University of Oxford speaks of slow Imt steady improvement in the quality of the work done : " The arithmetic, it is quite clear, is really and considerably better than at first," Of grammar they speak less commendingiy : " The work is evidently still far below what it ought to be ; and enough attention is not paid to the groundwork. The delegates are anxious that the schools should see the necessitv of doino' their utmost in this direction." ACCURACY. Ill If we are not doing all that we ought to do, we are at least becoming aware of our defects. I would call to your notice the attention paid in the National Schools to the three elementary sub- jects ; and the prominence given to the spelling and arithmetic test in the Civil Service examination. There is one point upon which the advocates of educational reform may seem to be inconsistent. They urge at once the importance of greater accuracy in the elementary teaching of languages, and that of the extension of the curriculum by the admission into it of a greater number of studies. There are those who advocate reform by deepening, and those who advocate it by widening, education. AVe do both, and we think we are justified. We desire to see the " ologies," as they are contemptuously termed, made instruments of education, not because we think it desirable that men should know a little of everything, Itut Ijccause we believe that there are powers of mind wliicli ouglit to be developed, and whicli can best be developed by studies of tliat kind. AVe desire to rescue the natural sciences from the position of being made pla}'t]iings of. AVe desire to do awa}' witli the rivalry which may l)e engendered between tlie man educated in science and tlie man educatecl in letters. We desire to liai-nionise, tlie education of the country and of all classes in the country. Look how Professor Faraday, the sci(.'nlific man wlio lias not hail a classical education, speaks contem[)tuously of the classically 112 ACCURACY. educated man ; and compare him with Dr Moberly, the classical scholar, whose idea of teaching boys nat- ural science is summed up thus : " You may teach them these things, and they will profit by them much as ladies do. They remember that there was a good deal to be said about the subject, but they forget what it was." These two men are like Touchwood and Cargill in ' St Eonan's Well.' Now, do we wish to expose our literary men, our classically educated men, to the sort of uneven contest which they will have to wage with the man of science, if they are to scather all their ideas of science and the actual world in which they live from classical studies ? [Heraldic Lions.^] Do we think it socially or politically desirable to draw a broad line between the education which is to be given to the two classes, the class which desires and appreciates literary culture, and the class which desires and will insist on having scientific culture ? Why should we have an Athens party and a Chicago party ? AYliy should not the classical student learn somethino; al^out Chica2;o, and the modern student something about Athens ? Let me return to my text. What is the cause of by far the greater part of our difi"erenccs and dis- 1 Guillini, in his treatise on Heraldry, gives a very full description of heraldic lions, but we shoiild hardly expect a student to obtain a sufficient knowledge of the natural liistory of lions from boohs on herald rv. ACCURACY. 113 putes ? Want of accuracy. Want of an accurate know- led!:e of what we mean ourselves and of what others mean. But to know accurately what others mean, we must make ourselves acquainted with their modes of thinking ; we must study their studies, and must learn to think and speak as they do. Hasty, and one- sided, and inaccurate views of the position of our opponents, encountered on their side by equally hasty, one-sided, and inaccurate views of us, lead to misunderstandings which a better acquaintance would have obviated. In a full half of our disputes we are fighting not the opinions of our opponents, but our own exaggerated views of those opinions. AVe make the giants first, and then we kill them. Such mis- understandings are to be deplored when they are the result of imperfect education and imperfect sym- pathies : they arc to be condemned when they are, as is sometimes the case, the result of wilful exag- geration or careless indifference to truth. Accuracy, and its sister virtues of candour and fairness, is a l)ad instrument of party warfare, and we are much tempted in })ul)lic life to deviate from it, and, whotlier consciously or unconsciously, to misstate and mis- represent tlie arguments we desire to coml)at. Those wlio once allow tliemselves in tliis practice find it diffi- cult to check tliemselves. It is at least (lesiral)le tliat we sliould not add to th(; dang(,'r by divergent education. 'I'hus far [ liave dwelt mainly on the mode in which education may be made ('(jiiducive to accuracy: let H 114 ACCURACY. me, ill conclusion, say a parting word in commenda- tion of accuracy itself. For I need not point out to you that if it be a virtue of so great excellence as I suppose it, we are all of us bound in our daily life to strive to attain to it. And first, I would ask you, Does not Nature herself point out to us how good a thing it is, by the pleasure which the consciousness of it awakens in our minds ? However we may profess to undervalue it, yet when we have executed some work, be it of the hand or of the brain, and find that it fits in all its parts, and that it fits its place, we feci a certain satisfaction, which is nothing else than a testimony borne by our inner selves to the excellence of accuracy. On the other hand, consider how an in- accurate person provokes us, how we long to correct his mistakes, how tiresome we think him, when by some incorrect statement he misleads us, and gives us the trouble of following up a wild-goose chase, or of setting to w^ork to rectify the consequences of his blunder. Even in trifling matters w^e upon the whole prefer the accurate man : the man who can tell his story correctly, with the right names and the right facts, is a far pleasanter man to listen to than our friend who mixes up facts and confuses names, and forgets the point of half his anecdotes. True, an ac- curate man may be a bore, if he overdoes us with his accuracy ; but an inaccurate man may be, and often is, at least as great a bore, with the additional disad- vantage of being less useful. But true accuracy is ACCURACY. 115 something quite distinct from tedious minuteness. A man with accurate conceptions will not be tediously- minute ; he will see what are the important salient points on which he is to dwell, and what are to be slurred over and kept in the background. Mr Ruskin, the great champion of accuracy in painting,, does not require that the painter should show every leaf on every tree, at whatever distance : he only demands that when he paints a tree or a leaf, he should paint it truly that it should be an oak, or an elm, or some other particular tree not a tree in the abstract. So, in telling a story, the accurate man gains the advan- tage of being more picturesque, more lifelike, than his inaccurate companion. The accurate man treads firmly, and gives names and places with confidence, while the inaccurate man must either wash out half tlie merit of his story by suppressing all individuality in it, or must expose himself to the risk of correction, IjV inventing names to fit his story. So mucli for tlic amenities of accuracy. [Accuracy in (h^mestic matters, &c.^] Is accuracy incompatil)le with genius ? Far from it. Thcrc^ liave, no doubt, l)een men of true genius who liave l)cen very inaccurate ; and men wlio know tlicm- ^ Ih-re the ]cct\ii-cr icfciTcd tu llie Viilue uf ])uiKtuiility in doiuestic matters, viewiii;,' it as aiiotlier form of accuracy, and illustrated tlie l)cncfit~ of accuracy in notr-wiilin^' and in re|)eatin,L,' stories and nics- sa;ics, liy the exam])les of Morrison's note and ^Lr James's powdeis, but these illustrations are not in the manusrriiit. 116 ACCURACY. selves to be inaccurate are fond of maintainino- that o as there may be genius without accuracy, therefore accuracy is a sign of want of genius. In truth, this is only a specimen of their own inaccurate mode of rea- soning. True genius is, for the most part, accurate ; not always accurate in trifles, but commonly accurate in those matters on which it exercises itself. Where accuracy in these is wanting, it is a fact that some- what derogates from the splendour of the genius which is deficient in them. But even in small mat- ters men of genius are often most accurate. I say small matters rather than trifles, because to a man of real genius that which appears a trifle to others is often perceived to be a matter of importance. I need but mention the two great names of Napoleon and Wellington, in support of my assertion. No two men of modern days have had larger views, greater minds, more acknowledged genius, than these ; and no two men have ever been more keenly alive to the import- ance of scrupulous accuracy. Napoleon, it is true, was often tempted to suppress or to distort the truth in his public declarations ; but this was not from any doubt of the value of accuracy : it was from mistaken notions of policy. We must not confound careless in- accuracy with deliberate fabrication or sujipression. But we have a higher testimony than that of man to the perfect compatibility which exists between accuracy and greatness, in the works of nature which are spread around us. The Creator has wrought and ACCURACY. 117 still works among us on the mightiest scale and with the most perfect finish. No eye has fathomed, no mind has conceived, the mighty abyss of the uni- verse ; no microscope has found a flaw in the minutest atom of which it is composed. If for a time man has believed that he had found an incongruity, further research has only shown that the fault was in his own limited perceptions, and that a more complete ac- quaintance with the great laws of nature could but establish their perfect harmony. We live in a world of which it were well that we knew" more. Of this we may feel assured that the more we know, the more shall we learn to reverence the Almighty Power, by whose Hand all things were made, and by whom they are still maintained in that completeness in every part which Omnipotence alone can give, but which it is for us in our measure humbly and reverently, but diligently, to strive after. lY. DESULTOEY EEADING. ADDEESS DELIVERED TO THE STUDENTS OF THE UNIVEKSITY OF EDINBUEGH, NOVEMBER 3, 1885. Sir Stafford ^orthcote was elected as Lord Eector of the Edin- burgh. University on the 7th I^^ovember 1883, by a majority of fifty-two over Sir George Trevelyan, M,P. Sir Stafford Xorth- cote delivered his Inaugural Address at Edinburgh on the 31st January 1884. After he had been raised to the House of Lords, Lord Iddesleigh wrote his second address, entitled " Desul- tory Eeading." He was at this time much occupied in London attending Cabinets and presiding at the Commission of Inquiry into the causes of the Depression of Trade. Owing to his numerous political engagements, which required many important speeches, he had not been able to obtain a real holiday, and Lord Iddesleigh had found his one relaxation in desultory reading. This fact was the reason of his working up the address in this manner. On the 31st October, just before leaving town for Edinburgh, he spoke in behalf of ]Mr Eaillie Cochrane's candidature at Camden Town. The 3d of Xovember 1885 was the day on which he delivered his address, and immediately proceeded to Glasgow and West Calder, on the 4th and 5th jSTovember, for political speeches of length and importance. TXTHEN I had the honour of addressing you on the occasion of my inauguration, I expressed a hope that it might be in my power to visit you again in DESULTORY READING. 119 the course of my term of office, so that the intercourse between your Rector and the great body of students might not be limited to the single address which cus- tom prescribed, and which has, I think, usually fur- nished the only opportunity for our being brought together. I expressed this hope, knowing that under any circumstances I should feel the advantage of oc- casionally renewing my acquaintance with the Uni- versity. But since the time to w^hich I refer, much has happened to increase, and, if I may use the phrase, to intensify, the feelings of regard and of kindly good- will which were enojendered at our first meetins;. We have rejoiced together and we have sorrowed together. We rejoiced in the interesting proceedings which at- tended the celebration of the Tercentenary ; we sor- rowed at the common loss which we sustained in the death of our esteemed and distinguished friend, the late Principal. I should be wanting in all right feel- ing if I did not take this opportunity of again bearing my testimony to the high qualities and the eminent services of Sir Alexander Grant. I have referred to these two links in the chain of affection which, I hope, binds us together ; but there is still another matter upon which I am anxious to say a few words, and whicli l)rings us more directly to the business of this evening. Within the last two years the students of tliis University have done mucli to quicken and to develop wliat I may call the Univer- sity life. You have felt that, in order to g;iin the full 120 DESULTORY EEADING. advantages which these seats of learning are able to offer, it is necessary for you to adopt some methods of common action, to set on foot an organisation capable of furnishing you with the means of expressing your wants and of taking steps to supply them. It is to this movement, as I understand, that we are to attri- bute your coming together to-night ; and I trust I am a good augur when I foretell that this meeting will be followed by many more, at which I hope you will have the benefit of valuable lectures by eminent men upon the various subjects of interest upon which they will be able to address you. It is a wise idea, and I trust it will not only deserve but command success. And now, gentlemen, you have done me the honour to ask me to open the ball, and to deliver something in the nature of a lecture. If I had had more com- mand of my time, and could have given to any subject which I might have selected the study which a man ought to give before he presumes to appear before the public as a lecturer, I would gladly have made the attempt. But it is not so, and I feel that I must ask your indulgence if I shrink from the inspiriting call which w^ould bid me soar with the Dircoean swan, and content myself with a humbler imitation of the ]\Iatinian bee. Alike in the subject which I shall choose, and in the mode of handling it which I shall adopt, I shall endeavour to avoid the charge of pre- sumption ; and I therefore trust that I may disarm criticism, and escape the mortification of ill success. DESULTORY READING. 121 I shall not attempt to tread the high paths of science, or to enter far into the domain of philosophy. Neither shall I adventure upon the more elevated regions of literature, or seek to explore the temples of the Muses. My theme will be the pleasures, the dangers, and the uses of what is commonly called desultory reading; and I hope to be allowed to decline for my address the more pretentious title of a lecture, and to describe it rather as a desultory discourse. Not that I regard desultory reading as unworthy of philosophical examination, nor desultory study as a contradiction in terms, though some might be disposed to call it so. I can well understand that severer critics might be tempted to apply to me the line of Terence, quoted by Horace, in which the wiser slave tells his young master that love, having in itself neither reason nor judgment, cannot be treated by counsel and by argument ; and that I might be told that desultory work was at best only to be tolerated, and was certainly quite unworthy of serious discussion. I dissent altogether from such a theory as that, and I shall try, before we have done, to set before you some considerations to show not only the charms, but also the utility, of the desultory method. You are, I doubt not, familiar with the distinction between deductive and inductive reasoning. It always seems to me that the severer method of study is the more applicable to the former, and the ligliter or desultory method to tlie latter. The continuous 122 DESULTORY READING. reader will make the better progress in reasoning and in drawing deductions from given premisses. The desultory reader will, or may, succeed more effectually in cultivating the faculty of observation, and in collecting the materials which must form the foun- dation for the inductive science. As regards the comparative pleasures and advantages of close and of desultory study, I would liken the one to a journey by railway, the other to a journey on horse- back. The railway will take you more rapidly to your journey's end, and by its aid you will get over much more ground in the day. But you will lose the variety of the walk up the hill, the occasional divergence from the hard road, and the opportunities for examining the country through which you are passing, which the horseman enjoys. The business man will prefer the train, which will carry him quickly to his bank or his warehouse ; but he will miss many things which the other will have seen and profited by, provided, of course, that he has made good use of his faculty of observation. For it is upon such a proviso as this that the case of the desultory worker really turns. He must not be a loiterer, shuffling out of the trouble which his more methodical comrades put themselves to. He must have an object in view, and he must not allow himself to lose sight of it. We are not to confound desultory work with idleness. It is useful to look to the origin of words. The DESULTORY READING. 123 word "desultory" is of Latin parentage, and it was applied by the Eomans to describe the equestrian jumping activel}- from one steed to another in the circus, or even (as was the case with the Numidians) in the midst of battle. That, certainly, was no idle loitering ; it was energetic activity, calculated to keep the mind and the body very much alive indeed. That should be the spirit of the desultory reader. His must be no mere iinorerino; of books without thouf]jht how they are to be turned to account. He may be wise in not allowing himself to become a book-worm ; but he must take care not to become what is much worse, a book-butterfly. AVhatever is worth doing is worth doing well, and it is possible so to regulate and pursue a seemingly desultory course of reading as to render it more truly beneficial than an apparently deeper and severer method of study. This world of ours is an old world, full of the works and records of many genera- tions. We are in daily contact with the fragments of the j)ast, with traces liere and remains there which attract our attention either for their intrinsic beauty or utility, or as indications of the manners and habits of mankind in former ao;es. Amono- these records assuredly there arc none which are of greater interest, or of higlier value, than tlie records, mere fragments though they may often !)(, of liunian liistory and human thought wliich are to ]hi found in l)ooks. The poet tells us how we may so read the; great book of nature that we may find in the trees, the stones, the 124 DESULTORY READING. running brooks, lessons which may profit as much as sermons. But while cordially accepting this teaching, we may observe that the trees and the brooks w^ould hardly convey all these useful lessons to us if we had not a considerable knowledge of books to begin with. The lover of nature will find much revealed to him which the mere book- worm will wholly fail to notice ; but, on the other hand, the well-read man who can apply the teaching of his books to the objects which he sees around him will profit far more than his illit- erate companion. I do not, however, desire to dwell on what may be considered little more than a truism. What I wish to point out to you is, that so great is the mass of our book-heritage, that it is absolutely impossible for any one, and doubly impossible for one who has other engagements in life, to make himself acquainted with the hundredth part of it. So that our choice lies for the most part between ignorance of much that we would greatly like to know, and that kind of acquaintance wdiich is to be acquired only by desultory reading. When I say this, I do not forget that a third alter- native may be offered to us. Wc may be told that though we have not time to read the books them- selves, we have always the means of becoming ac- quainted with their contents by the aid of abstracts, abridgments, and other convenient instruments for the close packing of information. Nobody is more DESULTORY READING. 125 ready than I am to acknowledge the utility of these pieces of intellectual mechanism. They are most valuable for reference, and are often indispensable for saving time. But to regard them as equivalent to, or even as a decent substitute for, the books themselves, would be a fatal error. They serve the purpose which is served by a dictionary ; and if, as Charles Lamb maintains, dictionaries are not to be reckoned as books, so neither ought these compressed masses of information to be admitted to that honourable title. I may have occasion to return to this point, and to offer a few remarks on the question of cramming ; but for the moment my object is to eliminate this kind of false study from the comparison which I am anxious to draw between the sustained and the desultory methods of true study. With regard to these two methods I would, in the first place, observe that, speaking generally, the world has need of them both. We need students who will give themselves up to strictly limited subjects of study, will pursue tliem with all their heart and mind and stren^tli, and with that kind of devotion which we may call student's love. These must be men ani- mated Ijy tlie s])irit of our old giants of learning, of whoso powers of reading we liear so mucli, and of wliose powers of writing we see r(;maining so many substantial proofs. Yet evc^n with tliese men tlie intermixture of some general and desultory reading is necessary, l)oth for tlie ver}' purposes of their study, 126 DESULTORY READING. and in order to relieve the strain of the mind and to keep it in a healthy condition. I never read so many novels in succession as during the months that I was working for my degree at the rate of ten or twelve hours a-day ; and in the week when I was actually under examination, I read through the ' Arabian Nights' in the evenings. I forget who the great judge was, who, being asked as to his readino-, answ^ered that he read nothino; but law and novels. But there is plenty of literature besides novels, and besides the ' Arabian Nights,' w^hich will be good for the relaxation of the mind after severe study, and I venture to think that the more miscellaneous our selection is, the more agreeable as well as the more profitable it will be. So much for the consideration of one's ow^n mental health. But beyond that, it is, I think, evident that a certain amount of miscellaneous reading is of great importance to the student in relation to his main study itself. Illustrations of his work wdll be pre- sented to him, often from the most unexpected quar- ters, which will sometimes cheer and lighten his labour, and sometimes very usefully supply hints for further or wholly difterent lines of inquiry. As I said just now, for inductive reasoning we need a wide field, where we may pick up materials which may suggest new starting-points in the process of discovery. The student who is also something of a man of the w^orld will often go further than the man who shuts out the DESULTORY READING. 127 light of day that he may give himself wholly to his folio and his lamp. " Study is like the heaven's glorious sun That will not be deep-search'd with saucy looks : Small have continual plodders ever won Save base authority from others' books. These earthly godfathers of heaven's lights That give a name to every fixed star Have no more profit of their shining nights Than those that Avalk and wot not what they arc. Too much to know is to know nought but fame ; And every godfather can give a name." There is a good deal of wisdom in these sarcastic lines, which Shakespeare puts into the mouth of Biron in " Love's Labour Lost." It is the wisdom of the student who is also a man of the world, and who looks suspiciously or contemptuously on " The book-full blockhead, igiiorantly road, AVith loads of learned lumber in his head." I might occupy a good deal of your time if I were to set myself to bring together all the judgments that I could find in our Q;reat literary works aGfainst the pedant. But it would l)e somewhat beside my mark, for there may Ijc desultory readers who deserve the name of pedant as much or more than those clois- tered toilers wlio are chained to the desk l)y the love of tlie study itself, wlio have no thought or wish to parade themselves and tlieir ae.(piirements Ijefore the world, or to seek for })raise and admiration for tlieir learnino;. Cliaucer's Scliolar, who 128 DESULTORY READING. " Would lever have at his bed's head Twenty bookes in white and red Of Aristote and his philosophie Than robes rich, or fidel, or sautrie," had not a touch of the pedant about him. Indeed I doubt whether any true lover of learning for its own sake can ever deserve that unpleasing appellation. But, as you have often been told, " Studia abeunt in mores ; " and it is with a view to give you some hints as to the effects of particular methods of study upon your habits and your characters that I am now inviting your attention to systems of reading. In the first place, I would offer a plea in favour of desultory reading (or at least of a certain amount of it), because it leaves a man more at liberty to pursue the particular line w^hich suits his taste and his capacity. This is, I suppose, the ground on w^hich Dr Johnson commended the practice. " I would not advise," he says, " a rigid adherence to a particular plan of study. I myself have never persisted in any plan for two days together. A man ought to read just as inclination leads him, for what he reads as a task will do him little good." Lord Bacon, too, in his well-known essay, tells us that there are some books to be read only in parts, others to be read but not curiously, and some few to be read wholly and with diligence and at- tention. Both these liig;li authorities, therefore, recosfnise the DESULTORY READING. 129 propriety of leaving the student some latitude in his choice of books and in his method of reading. But while this freedom is largely to be respected, it ought not to be allowed to degenerate into laxity. The tendency of a great many young men, and of old ones too for that matter, is not only to read widely, but also to read indolently ; and indolent reading is as much to be discourao-ed as dilisjent readino; is to be o o o commended. There is a fine passage in Mr Carlyle's Inaugural Address when he was chosen Kector of this Univer- sity. " We ought to cast aside altogether," he says, " the idea people have that if they are reading any book, that if an ig- norant man is reading any hook, he is doing rather better than nothing at all. I must entirely call that in question : I even venture to deny that. It would be much safer and Ijetter for many a reader that he liad no concern with books at all. There is a number, a frightfully increasing number, of books tliat are decidedly, to the readers of tliem, not use- ful. ]jut an ingenious reader will learn also that a certain num])er of liooks were written by a supremely noble kind of people, not a very great number of bo(A's, but still a iium- ])('r fit to occupy all your reading industry . . . jjooks are like men's souls, divideil into shec;]) and goats. Some few are going ujt, and carrying us up heavenward; calculated, I mean, t<; be of ]nic(dess ad\'antage in teacliing in forwar(b ing tb(; teacbing of all generations. Otbeis, a friglitful mul- tituend u})on it tliat a mixed knowledowell s(dects as the butt of his clever satire : ' A reading macliiiu!, ever wound \ip and going, Ht; mastered wliatever was not worth the knowing.' It is to men of this sort that tlie old proverb ap- ])Hi's : they cannot see tlio wood ibi- the ti'ces. Tlicy are so intent tipon details that tlicy h)se all idea of tb(! wliole; and for want of gi-asp of the wlndc tlicy lo.se tl)(! Ix-neJit of th(3 very details wit h wlii- irone by ! But I am not going to take au illustration from Scotland. 1 will call into court an I'jiglislinian, whose memoirs we arc all fond of (liii|iiiig into at our idlest hours, and ncvci- without amu.-cincnt , and }'ct wIkjsc absolute; 138 DESULTORY READING. deficiency in these particulars is unspeakably delight- ful. Mr Samuel Pepys seems to be wholly wanting in all sense of the ridiculous, and to be equally devoid of any spark of fancy. Here is his estimate of the highest, gayest, loveliest piece of fancy in the world : " To the Kind's Theatre, where we saw ' Midsummer Night's Dream,' which I had never seen before, nor shall ever again, for it is the most insipid, ridiculous play that ever I saw in my life." We must not, however, confine our attention to works of humour or of fancy alone. They are, indeed, most valuable in the development, perhaps even in the formation, of character, and we cannot but admire and feel grateful for the lessons which they teach us. But they w^ould pall upon us if we sought to make them our sole companions. As Mr Lowell says of new books " For reading new books is like eating new bread : One can bear it at iirst, but by gradual steps he Is brought to death's door by a mental dyspepsy." So it may be said of books of the lighter class that they would not furnish the mind with the food it requires if our reading were confined to them alone. What, then, ought the young to read ? It is indeed a grave and serious question ; but I am not going to attempt to answer it by prescribing a detailed regimen or course of study. That I must leave to be decided upon according to the circumstances of the student, the profession which he is about to follow, and the DESULTORY READING. 139 advice which his tutors or professors may give him. If his training is to be mainly scientific, then I should say that it is peculiarly desirable that his reading should be mixed and miscellaneous, so that while he is investifjatinoj the secrets of nature, he should not neglect to acquaint himself also with the secrets of the human heart. If, on the other hand, his line is to be literary, I would keep the light literature somewhat down, lest by its fascination it should draw away the mind from the more serious studies. It is sure to be taken up later, and with all the more pleasure and profit if a good foundation has first been laid by steady literary work. Look some day, if you are not already acquainted with them, at Sir W. Scott's remarks upon desultory reading in the early chapters of ' Waverley,' and take his warning against the dissipation of mind to which, with some natures at all events, it is likely to lead. I content myself witli saying tliat it is one of the frreat advantagjes of such places of learnino- as our universities, that every student has the means of readily o])taining advice, guidance, and assistance in laying out and in pursuing a course of serious study. He will liere be introduced to tlie great minds of tlie past to tlie historians, th(.' })]iilosoph('rs, the ora- tors, tin; poets wliose works liave charmed and liave instructed generation aft(ir geiiei'atiou ; and Ik; will be shown how Ijest to eTn[)lo\' his time in turning his ;ic(|Uaintanc to the; current literature rsoiis, and has an interest ibr ihem which it does not ])ossess for others. Aluch, on the other hand, consists of" popular I'enderiiigs (d' 144 DESULTORY READING. abstruser subjects, sometimes admirable and useful to all, sometimes, it is to be feared, of little value or interest for any one. Habit and a little trying ex- perience will soon teach you to discern how much of a periodical is worth the expenditure of much time ; and you will not be long before you acquire some skill in the arts of dipping and of skipping. Of novels I must speak in somewhat the same strain. There is probably no form of idleness so seductive or so enervating to the mind as indis- criminate novel-reading. Yet some of the best and most truly instructive books in the world belong to this class. From ' Don Quixote ' to ' Waverley,' from the ' Vicar of Wakefield ' to ' The Caxtons,' from Miss Austen or Miss Edgeworth or Miss Ferrier to Char- lotte Bronte or George Eliot, you will find what Horace found in those great Homeric poems, humour and wdsdom, and a keen insiorht into the strength and the weakness of the human character. Think what a mine of wealth we possess in the novels of your own great master, what depths he sounds, what humours he makes us acquainted with, from King James in his palace to Jonathan Oldbuck in his study; from Jeanie Deans sacrificing herself to her sisterly love in all but her uncompromising devotion to truth, to the picture of family afi'ection and overmastering grief in the hut of poor Steenie Mucklebackit ; or again, from the fidelity of Meg Merrilies to that of C*aleb Balderstone ! You have in these, and in a hundred other instances. DESULTORY READING. 145 examples of the great power of discerning genius to seize upon the secrets of the human heart, and to reveal the inner meanings of the events which history records upon its surface, but which we do not feel that we really understand till some finer mind has clothed the dry bones with liesli and blood, and pre- sented them to us in their appropriate raiment. I will permit myself to make but one more remark on Sir Walter Scott for I am always a little in dano-er of runnino- wild about him and it is this : Our ancestors and ancestresses read for their lioht literature such books as the ' Grand Cyrus ' and Pem- broke's ' Arcadia.' I never tried the former. I have made one or two attempts on the latter without much success. But I have suthcient general knowledge of their dimensions and of their character to be sure that no one with a volume of Scott at hand would ever delil)erately lay it aside in favour of either of them, ^lay I not liope that the same preference, which you instinctively afford to him over works such as tliose I liave referred to, }'ou will also extend to him in com- parison witli the great floating mass of unsubstantial and e})hemcral literature, which is in truth undeserv- ing of the name, l)ut whicli is unfortunatelv attractive enough to tem})t }'<)U to cln^ke your minds with inferior rubl)is]i ? And now let me say a, few words to ^ou upon ])oeti-\'. A\'e are told on high authority that the poet is born, iKjt made. Pei'hiips the same might, in a K 146 DESULTORY READING. lesser degree, be said of his readers also. There are some natures which approach more nearly to the poetic than others, and these can best appreciate the thoughts that underlie a poem, and the power of ex- pressing those thoughts in appropriate, perhaps in striking, language. But in almost every one I ima- gine there are implanted some seeds at least of the faculty of which we speak, and these seeds are capable of cultivation. A man may not be able to make himself a poet and I am sure we would all join in praying that he may never try but he may be able to train himself to understand and to love the poetry of others. Indeed we cannot doubt that so it must be when we see how widely spread, and among what varying classes of mankind, is the thirst for poetry of some kind. The ballad is, I suppose, the simplest and earliest form of it. Scotland and England have alike contributed largely to ballad poetry ; and whether your ' ]\Iinstrelsy of the Scottish Border ' or the Eng- lish ' Eeliques ' of ancient poetry is to be preferred, I leave you to judge for yourselves, recommending both collections to your favourable notice. Your older poets are, I suppose, now but little read ; yet I was struck by finding some time ago, when I happened to ask at the London Library for Barbour's great poem on the Bruce, that, though the library boasted of three copies, they were all three at that moment lent out. I was pleased to think that in these days, when DESULTORY READING. 147 it is as necessary as it ever was to plead the cause of personal freedom, there should be a run upon a book which contains that spirited apostrophe : "Ah ! freedom is a nol)le thing ! Freedom makes man to have liking. Freedom all solace to man gives ; lie lives at ease that freely lives. A noble heart may have none else, Xor else nought that may him please, If freedom fail ; for free liking Is yearned over all other thing." There has been of late years a striking revival of popularity in the case of Barbour's great contem- porary, Chaucer. Let us hope that your countryman may have a similar fortune. But we cannot easily rank any one with Chaucer. For variety, for powder of description, for touching and tender appeals to the feelings, for genuine, though sometimes rather coarse, fun, and for delineation of character, he occupies a })lace in the world of poetry such as few can aspire to. You liave other poets well worthy to be read. Sir I)uvid Lindsay, Allan liamsay, and others, will be names with which you are familiar, tliough perhaps they may not be widely read. J)iit your greatest poet, excluding or not excluding Scott, is one wliom all, 1 trust, find time to study. I mean, of course, Robert J>urns. ! am al)out to (piote a sentence or two on the cliar- 148 DESULTORY READING. acter of Burns's poetry from the work of a friend whom we have lately lost, well known not only as Principal of one of your famous universities, but also as Pro- fessor of Poetry in the University of Oxford, one much valued by all to whom he was known, the late Principal Shairp. This is his judgment : "At the basis of all his power lay absolute truthfulness, intense reality, truthfulness to the objects which he saw, truthfulness to himself as tlie seer of them. " Here was a man, a son of toil, looking out on tlie world from his cottage, on society low and high, and on nature homely or beautiful, with the clearest eye, the most piercing- insight, and the warmest heart, touching life at a hundred points, seeing to the core all the sterling wortli, not less tlie pretence and hollowness of the men he met, the humour, the drollery, the pathos, and the sorrow of human existence ; and expressing what he saw, not in the stock phrases of books, l)ut in his own vernacular, the language of his fireside, with a directness, a force, a vitality tliat tingled to tlie finger-tips, and forced the phrases of his peasant dialect into literature, and made them for ever classical. Large sympathy, generous enthusiasm, reckless abandonment, tierce indignation, melting compassion, rare flashes of moral insight, all are there. Every- where you see the strong intellect made alive, and driven liome to the mark, by the fervid heart behind it." I will not weaken these vigorous words by any addi- tion of my own. I remember the warning given by Charles Lamb that it is almost more dano-erous for a Southerner to praise Burns to a Scotchman than to dispraise him. But you may well believe that we DESULTORY READING. 149 Englislimeii heave a true and a warm appreciation of the great poet. " Xon obtusa adeo gestamiis pectora." I am sure that it must be unnecessary for me to say anything of the great stream of leading English poets from Shakespeare to Milton, to Dryden, to Pope, to Wordsworth, Scott, and Byron. But there are others less universally read whom I wish to call your atten- tion to especially the great dramatists of or about the Shakespeare age. Ben Jonson probably deserves the first place among them. His racy representations of the follies and oddities, and, as he would call them, the humours of the day, are balanced by the classical reproductions which led ]\Iilton to speak of Jonson's learned sock, thoug-h there are indeed some which almost rise to the dignity of the buskin. The " Al- chemist," the " Fox," and the " Every Man in his Humour," have made themselves well known. Let me commend to you a less read drama, " Catiline," in wliich the story of the great cons])iracy is finely told, }>artly through nol)le })araphrascs of Cicero and Sallust, and partly through tlie }'lay of the dialogue l)et\veen the conspirators. If any of you sliould Ix' tempted to read it, let liim take note of the delicious ])iece <-)f partly personal, partly ])olitical gossip among tin,' itoman ladies, which leads to the betrayal of the plot, 'riiei'c is another cle\cr Koniaii lla\', the " Poetaster," 150 DESULTORY EEADING. which would have been a rather appropriate subject for discussion to-night, for it tells the old, old tale of the struo^ale between father and son when the one enjoins the study of the law, the other flies resolutely to his studies in poetry. There are two beautiful plays of Ford's, the " Broken Heart " and the " Lover's Melancholy," which bear reading- over and over ao-ain : " As for some dear familiar strain Untired we ask, and ask again ; Ever, in its melodious store, binding a spell unheard before." Massinger is interesting, and you doubtless know several of his plays by name, if not more intimately. But I must not linger over these, nor try to find a fit place for Spenser, whom I honour much and read a little, especially his first book ; or for Marlowe, the pioneer of the English drama, whose delicious little song, " Come live with mc and be my love," carries one from the crowd and the struggle of life to country scenes worthy of Izaak Walton himself ; or for that very little read Drayton, whose great ' Polyolbion ' seems as if it might have filled the place of a Brad- shaw's 'Guide' to tourists of the "Arcadia" stamp. Let me tell you that you will find a good deal of ver}' good poetry in that same ' Polyolbion,' if you venture to face it. And I am leaving out Cowley, and Waller, and a hundred more ; and I am not even attempting to enter upon the poetry of the eighteenth or of this DESULTORY READING. 151 present nineteenth century ; nor upon our prose- writers, nor upon the great field of foreign literature ; though it is with difficulty that I turn away from those giants of France, Pascal and Moliere, from whom there is more to be learned than from any two writers of their day, and who well repa}^ the closest study. Nor have I said a word of the classics, whom I fear I must group all together, and bid you "Nocturna versate manu, versate diurna." It might seem, when we are running through a catalogue such as I have been suggesting to you, that we are awakening the dead to bear us company. J\Iay I quote to you some beautiful lines of Southey's to which he gives the title of The Scholar ? " ]\ry days among the dead are past ; Around me I behold, Where'er these casual eyes are cast, The mighty minds of old. i\ry never-failing friends are they, "With whom I converse day by day. "With them I take delight in weal, And seek relief in woe ; And while I understand and feel How much to them I owe, My checks have often Ixsen bedcwi'd AVith tears of thoughtful gratitude. My tlK)Ughts are with th(! dead ; with them I liv(! in long-past ytsars, Their virtues love, their faults condeian, l'artak(; their lujpes and frais ; And fi'om their lessons seek and lind Instruction with a liundjle mintl. 152 DESULTORY BEADING. My hopes are with the dead ; anon My place with them will be, And I with them shall travel on Through all futurity ; Yet leaving here a name, I trust, That will not perish in the dust." And now, gentlemen, my time is dra\Ying to a close, and I must not adventure myself further in seductive flowery fields of desultory charm. I believe it is good for us all occasionally to indulge in such recreation under the shade, even in the midst of a hot day's work. The work will not be the worse done for such a respite. But we must not allow it to be forgotten. Those dead of whom the poet speaks are not only our companions, they stand round us like a great cloud of witnesses to mark how we perform the task which has been given us to do, and fight the battle which has been committed to our hands. If there be any slack- ness or any cowardice on our part, their voices will "sound like a distant torrent's fall," and will reproach our shortcomino;. But if we be honest and valiant, we shall not turn to them in vain for sympathy and for encouragement. Among; them we shall find the records of those who have passed through harder trials and accomplished greater deeds than those which arc de- manded of us. They have, many of them, won eternal fame ; be sure that it did not settle cpiietly upon their brows : it was won in the only way in which fame can be worth the winning it was won by labour. That is the path which they trod : it is the path which you DESULTORY READING. 153 must tread also. I will take my last quotation from one who is well known to you all, whom I need not name, for you will recognise his words at once. " liocking on a lazy billow "With roaming eyes, Cushioned on a dreamy pillow, Thou art not wise ; "Wake the power within thee sleeping, Trim the plot that's in thy keeping, Thou wilt bless the task when reaping Sweet labour's prize." ON THE STUDY OF POLITICAL ECONOMY. A LECTUEE DELIVEEED AT EXETEE, OCTOBER 7, 1845. jNIr N'orthcote had been during the past three years secretary to Mr Gladstone, Mr Gladstone being first Vice-President, then Presi- dent, of the Board of Trade. Prom the beginning, political life had many attractions to Mr Xorthcote, as we often in old letters find him speaking of the interest of such a career, and rather as the goal to Avhich his hopes were tending. As Mr Gladstone's secretary, these hopes became more definite, and it is probable that it was from the interest he always took in public life, that he sti;died the question of Political Economy, and wrote the following lecture, which was delivered at Exeter, October 7, 1845. The newspaper of the day, in noticing this address, after praising its ability, points out the added interest it has in showing that " the higher and lower classes are amalgamating by the best possible ties viz., by young men of talent and station in society devoting their time and thoughts to the good of others less able to obtain knowledge for themselves." This comment points strikingly the change in our social habits, as meetings of all classes to hear speeches are now of everyday occurrence. "pEFOEE commencing the remarks which I am about to make, I ^Yish it clearly to be under- stood that I do not intend this evening to propose ON THE STUDY OF POLITICAL ECONOMY. 155 to you any particular system of political economy as superior to other systems, nor in any manner to enter upon the discussion of those points which are, or which have been, disputed among political economists. ^ly objects on the present occasion will be simply these : first, to endeavour to remove certain miscon- cej^tions and prejudices which I believe to be com- monly prevalent with respect to this science, and to point out its real dignity and im23ortance, in order to do which I shall have to explain to you what the science of political economy is ; and, secondly, to suggest certain cautions with respect to the manner in which the study should be carried on, and the limits within which the doctrines which we may arrive at ought to be applied. The first part of my remarks, therefore, will be addressed principally to those persons (and I Ijelieve them to be a very numerous class) who have conceived a dislike for the study of this science, either from a belief that it is dry and uninteresting, or from feeling ol)jections of a graver nature, which I shall presently toucli upon. The second part will have reference to tliose who have, on the other hand, con- ceived an undue opinion of the value of the science, or of the extent to which it may l)e used, and who frerpiently give occasion, 1)y their exaggerated notions, for the feeling of dislike which is entertained against it by others. To begin, then, with tliose who ol)ject to the study of p(jlitical economy, that it is a dry and uninteresting 156 ON THE STUDY OF POLITICAL ECONOMY. science. Of course, it would be absurd in any one to attempt seriously to persuade a man by argument that what he thinks uninterestino; is interestino-. I cer- tainly do not intend to undertake any such task. There are many people, for instance, who think the study of mathematics exceedingly stupid ; others there are who delight in nothing more. Now you may con- vince one of those who dislike it that it is necessary he should undertake it, because perhaps he is to be a builder, and must know something of trigonometry ; or a sailor, and ought to study astronomy ; and it is possible that while studying it on account of its im- portance he may learn to take an interest in it, and may continue it for its own sake. Again, there are peo^Dle who, having only looked at the elementary parts of the science, are ignorant of its many beautiful applications to common life, and who, if these are pointed out to them, will change their opinion respect- ing the dulness of the stud}'. But if a man, knowing what the science of mathematics is, and beino- eng-ao'ed in a line of life where it is not likely to be of any j^articular use to him, feels no interest in investigating aljstract questions about curves and triangles, I do not Ijelieve it is possible for any one, however inter- ested in such questions himself, to induce that man to feel an interest in them. Now, with respect to the science of political economy, I feel confident that when it is fairly stated what that science is, many of those who now reject it as useless will perceive that it is ON THE STUDY OF POLITICAL ECONOMY. 157 highly important to them uay, that they cannot fulfil their duties to society without engaging in the study of it ; while others, to whom it may not be necessary (if, indeed, there be any such), will, when they find what a wide range of objects it embraces, Ije induced to feel a very great interest in it. But I cannot pretend to do more than to explain what the relations of political economy to the business of life are, and I must disclaim any intention to prove by argument what I know well can only ultimately be a matter of feeling. It may seem superfluous to remind you that every science is connected with some one or more arts, and that every art is based upon some one or more sciences. Thus the science of chemistry is connected witli the arts of medicine, agriculture, and others ; while on the other hand the art of medicine is based on the sciences of chemistry, botany, and so forth. When, therefore, we are about to consider the value of any particular science, we inipiire what are the arts for the practice of which it is re(piired ; and when we desire to know wlicther the professor of any particular art is qualifieil for tlie exercise of it, we ask what arc the sciences on wliich tliat art is l)aHe(l, and wlietliei* lie is versed in all of them. The former consideration will determine those who have leisure time and are iucliners received by Sir Stafford Nortlicote with regard to tlu; subject. T CONFESS that the atteiKhnicc to-night, hii'ge and r(',spectal)h3 as it is, and containing amongst it so many of my old friends here, makes me a little ner- vous, hecansc I cannot h('l[) fcc'ling that it is very possihle yon cx])ect more entertainment from the lecture which I have undertaken to give than \ fear you will receive, 'i'he truth is that the subject of 186 SCHOOLS AND SCHOOL LIFE. education is one which at all times is very full of interest, and must necessarily be full of interest, to meetings such as this to societies such as your own, which are established for the purpose of promoting education amongst the middle classes of a great town like this. But at the present moment one cannot help feeling that there is a peculiar interest attached to the subject on account of the questions which have of late years been raised, and which are now in process of solution, with regard to the education of the middle class, and indeed, I may say, of all classes of the com- munity. But the subject, in truth, is difficult, and may even become dry, just because it is so vast, and so full of material. It is very difficult, indeed, within the limits allowed to a lecturer, to compress all that one would like to say on the subject of our schools in England ; and when one has to select certain portions, and endeavour to weave them into a tolerably suc- cinct whole, one is apt to become rather obscure, or, as is too often the case, dull. There is nothing so difficult as abridgment ; and attempting to deal with the great question of our English schools in "an liour, is something like abridging Hume's ' History of Eng- land ' into the size of a child's manual. I can assure you I feel very strongly that at the present moment the attention of all classes, especially the great middle class of this country, should be very carefully fixed upon the principles of the education which ought to be given in this country. It is a time at which men's SCHOOLS AND SCHOOL LIFE. 187 minds are awaking in one direction or another to the importance of the subject. We know that the Gov- ernment have measures now in contemplation with a view to inquiring into the condition of middle-class education, and that before very long a Commission will issue which will inquire into the subject. Now it is all very well for the Government in England to appoint Commissions, and for Parliament to discuss questions of this sort. But in a matter which so intimately affects every home in the kingdom, it is neither the Government nor the Parliament that can deal with the question at all satisfactorily. It must be the people themselves it must be the parents of England themselves who must settle this question ; and it is, therefore, satisfactory to find, as I have found in other parts of the kingdom, and as I see by the attendance to-nio-ht is the case in Exeter, that the people of England arc becoming alive to the im- portance of the subject, and are anxious to hear what is to be said about it. I am to-nio;ht thouorh what I have said touches upon middle-class education to speak to you princi- })ally, not so much of middle-class education as of higli-class education in this country. You know very well a Commission lias lately been inquiring into the condition of some of our superior public schools, 'i'ou know llic report of tliat Commission is nowl)cfore the public, and shortly sonic steps will [)i'obably be takf'ii by th(.' kcgishiturc with i-espcct to it. Jii view 188 SCHOOLS AND SCHOOL LIFE. of that, you ought to make yourselves thoroughly acquainted with the general nature and character of that report, as bearing upon the question which you your- selves will have to solve with regard to other schools, because you must remember this, those schools upon which this report is based are for the most part con- fined to the upper classes of the country. At the same time, there are principles in their management which are equally applicable to middle and low^er class schools, and in fact the whole of the schools throughout the country. That which England wants at present is to harmonise the system of education throughout the country not, of course, to give the same education, but education on the same principles, to all classes ; and if you can establish the principles of education to be given to the higher classes, you may determine the principles of education to be given to the middle and lower classes as well. That is, that which may be useful in the one case may not be useful in the other, but if you see why it is useful in the one case, you will perceive the reasons and grounds why it will be in the other. For instance, those questions with regard to the teach- ing of classics : that is one of the questions which pre- sents itself through all shades and grades of the com- munity. AYlien you come to the question of the higher classes, the question is, Is it worth while to teach boys, who, when they reach manhood are to become bar- risters, or magistrates, or members of Parliament, or lawyers, to compose Greek verses ? In the same way, SCHOOLS AND SCHOOL LIFE. 189 when you come to the middle classes, Is it worth while to teach boys who are to become tradesmen, or me- chanics, or farmers, or persons in industrial employ- ment, Latin ? When you get to the lowest classes, the same kind of question is raised If the boys are to become ploughmen or day - labourers, is it worth while to teach them readino: and writinor ? for that was the way in which the question used to be presented. Is it worth while, in the education of a boy, to do anything to train his mind and elevate his character in his future occupation in life ? Arc you to train the boy in order to make him a lawyer or physician, a tradesman or labourer, or are you to train him in order to make him a man ? Are you to con- sider how to develop his moral and intellectual char- acter, or are you to consider how to fit him for his occupation in life ? In my opinion, there is no doubt you ought to do both. In the first place, you ought to teach him to develop his qualities as a man ; and in the second place, impart to him such know- ledge as will be useful to him in his particular occu- pation or profession. As tlie su])ject of my lecture I have selected more particularly tlie School Life. Now, the reason why I liave done tliat is tliis : when we send a Ijoy to scliool, we wisli parti(;ularly to form his cliara('ter and to de- veloj) his mind. Ijiit how is it to Ix' done ? It is to Ije done partly ly instruction, and ])ai'tly by tlie lia])its wliich you enable him to acquire, and by the life into 190 SCHOOLS AND SCHOOL LIFE. which you plunge him. The formation of his char- acter, no doubt, depends very greatly upon his rela- tions with those with whom he is brought into contact his relations with his schoolmaster, and with his schoolfellows ; and it depends also upon his relation to the studies he has to pursue, and the amusements in which he indulges. Now, just let us consider these points one by one. Let us see how the experiences we have gained with regard to the public schools bear upon them one after the other. In the first place, what are the relations in which the boy stands to the masters who are placed over him ? What are his relations to a public school ? What is a public school ? for there one question comes after the other ; and that is one of the questions which we find are rather difficult to answer. Dr Moberly, the head- master of Winchester School, in some very able letters published two or three years ago, has endeavoured to answer the question, and he gives these conditions. "A national or public school," he says, "should be (1) a school of sufficient size ; (2) possessed of endowment and constitution so well established as to secure it from the caprices of masters, trustees, proprietors, and the like ; (3) in which the dead languages and their literature form the staple of the instruction given ; (4) above all, wherein certain of the most trustworthy boys are empowered to exercise some real authorit}^ among their schoolfellows, for the purposes of order, morality, and protection, without being SCHOOLS AND SCHOOL LIFE. 191 called upon or expected to report continually every act they repress, or every secret they know." Now, are these altogether the necessary character- istics of public schools ? That is a point upon which I reserve my opinion. I will not weary you by going into lengthy details, but will give a few reasons in support of some of the qualities w^iicli Dr Moberly thinks should be attributed to every public school. Before doing so, I will say this, that Dr Moberly's definition is not altogether satisfactory to my mind. I have quoted it for this reason : there is no doubt that in our large public schools it is a very remai'k- able characteristic whether it is essential to the success of a public school is another question, but, as a matter of fiict, the characteristic exists, that the boys are intrusted with a considerable portion of the government of the school. The reasons which I refer to in support of Dr ]\rol)erly's definition are briefly these : (1) A public school should be large, 1)eeause in Ijcino; so it affords room for an averao-e public opinion, which o})inion would not be liable to ])G swayed by some one or few l)oys of more strength than tlio rest. (2) It should l)e possessed of an en- dowment, for so best is provided stability. Precedent, liistorv, estaljlislied rights, well-understood and well- r(*s[)('et('d privileges ((a])al)le no doubt of legitimate abrogiition and change, but secure against caprice or ill temper), seem essential to the full character of a ])ullic school. {.'>) it should perhaps but not neces- 192 SCHOOLS AND SCHOOL LIFE. sarily be classical. (4) It should be self-governing to some extent. This causes the consciousness of gov- ernment and obedience to be felt down to the secret ways and more intimate communications of boys among themselves. Self-government penetrates the inner life of the school, not in a maojisterial but in a boyish way. It is administered in well-understood laws, and is exercised by a body of boys who are in many ways a check upon one another, in the midst of a very free and intelligent public opinion. I will now turn to the question of the influence which the masters have over the boys. This influence must of course be greater over those boys who board with the masters than over those who come only for the day ; for while one set of boys are controlled by him all day long and are under his roof through the night, the other set are only under his eye during a few hours. The character of a school depends to some extent on the proportion of day-boys to boarders, and this character has been given to the school gen- erally in its inception. If you look into the history of the great public schools, you will find the origin of them varies very much. In many of them the whole of the scholars were day-scholars ; in others, a con- siderable number of boarders were admitted as well as day-scholars. Take the case of Eton. Eton is a school in which there were boarders from the first. It is a college established for the reception of a certain number of boys, who are housed, fed, and even clothed SCHOOLS AND SCHOOL LIFE. 193 at the expense of the foundation ; but besides these boys, there are other classes of boys eligible for ad- mission. There are two classes of boys besides the collegers. There are those who are called oppidans, who are invited from all parts of the countr}^, and come to Eton as mere day-scholars. Then there is another class who board in the college, and pay their own expenses. In very early days we find the Caven- dishes and other noble families came and boarded in that way. These, however, have now disappeared, while the oppidans or day-boys have largely increased. A new svstem with reoard to them has, nevertheless, sprung up. Formerly they came from every part of England and took lod2;iniis in or near the town of Eton, and attended the school only during school hours, being completely independent of any control wlien in their lodo;inos. As the school increased, it Itecanie necessary to have assistant-masters, wlio gradu- ally l)ecame tutors, and now those tutors have (^ome to set up lodging-houses of their own, and take in l)o;inlers, tlie boarders they get Ix'ing the l)oys who ai'c being tutoi'cd b}' tlieni. The o})j>i(lans liavc hanged gr;iut tlic}' do not Ijoard (Ui the school premises. The s;ime gi'eal change has taken ]]ace at. Ihigby, llai'i'ow, and elsewliei-e. The town of I'^ton lias in fact become an aggloniei'at ion of private boai'ding-schools ; and to a great extent. tJie school lifV' of I'^ton is not the school lile ol' the whole N 194 SCHOOLS AND SCHOOL LIFE. school, but of one boarding-house or another. This system, while open to a considerable amount of ob- jections, has done a great deal of good. The tutors o;ive their boys instruction over and above the school course ; but one great effect has been that the school course at Eton has not been modified, as in the lapse of time it ought to have been, the tutors having to a great extent supplied its defects. A great many books are exclusively read at Eton ; but they are by no means enough for boys intended for the universities. I am speaking in the presence of a number of classical scholars, and many of you know better than I do what are the advantao;es and disadvantao;es of the course pursued at Eton. With regard to that course, as you know, the writings of hardly any Attic writers at all are read, except small portions of Thucydides ; the only Greek authors used being Homer and Theocritus, and this in spite of the fact tliat no boy can go up to the universities without having read a certain portion of Attic Greek. That want in the school course is, however, supplied by the tutors, who give private lessons to their pupils. The effect of that, though good for the school is bad for the boys, and it illus- trates how the disadvantao'es of the school are met and counterbalanced by the advantages of the tutorial system. One great evil tliat has arisen through the tutorial system is, that it has caused the establish- ment at Eton to grow beyond its limits, and become unwieldy aiiage 50G : 1 Inja ujDrfirds tif Sixi frni. Jloys KpvdriJ-'^ oj ':Kiy 1-"' .,11 It will tliei'cforc be evident that a niudi smaller ninn- 196 SCHOOLS AND SCHOOL LIFE. ber of boys, in proportion to the size of the school, remain at Eton beyond the age of sixteen than remain at Harrow or Rugby. Looked at from a cricketing point of view, this fact is a little consolatory ; but in the more essential point of view it is a warning to Eton and Eton men. I am not aware whether I am addressing many Eton men ; but the Commission- ers have given great offence by finding fault. Still I would ask, Why does not Eton keep pace with Rugby and Harrow ? The answer is this, Because parents, find- ing their boys to be not getting the education neces- sary to enable them to pass into the university or the professions in a satisfactory manner, consequently remove them at a much earlier age than they would otherwise do. If you inquire further you would find that this is owing- to the school being; too larg:e. There are matters in the relation between boys and their masters, besides that of learning, which are interest- ino^ to consider. Nothing' can be more excellent than the encouragement given to the boys to regulate and govern themselves, but very great care must be taken that this is not carried to excess. There is no doubt that some habits acquired under such a system are open to very serious objection ; for instance, at Eton there is such a thing as shirking practised under that system. Certain boundaries are prescribed by the rules within which the boys are to move about. These are ridiculously small, and nothing can be more absurd or mischievous than to attempt to keep the boys with- SCHOOLS AND SCHOOL LIFE. 197 in them. If a boy is outside these boundaries, and he happens to meet a master, nothing will be said to him, provided he runs into a shop or hides himself in some way. If he does not do so, however, he is pun- ished. The effect of such a practice is to teach the boys that the great harm of doing wrong lies in being found out. Again, the masters labour under the im- pression that they know a great deal more about the life and feelings of the boys than they really do. It is a very easy thing for the masters to think that every- thing is going on smoothly that the boys are conduct- ing themselves like angels ; but undoubtedly several cases have come under the notice of the Commissioners which show that the masters are capable of a consider- able amount of self-deception. One of these points is no doubt the privilege and immunity of monitors. To take one instance from a practice at Westminster, It appears that there the pupils or junior scholars are placed under the care, to some extent, of the monitors, who are calle()() or 400 veai's aLfo in an old school of that 208 SCHOOLS AND SCHOOL LIFE. kind ; and one cannot help feeling that the keeping up of old customs is a great point in the public life of our boys at school, as elsewhere. Therefore one can hardly help regretting, when we read of the festival of the Mons, that the old custom is at last done away with. As you know, it was done away with twenty years ago. It was then a triennial visit, at which many collected. There were many captains of the school chosen ; the boys used to go in procession to the Mons, or Salt Hill, and there wave flags and per- form one or two other ceremonies. They used also to dine together, and it was a great day of rejoicing whicli brouo'ht all Etonians too-ether. That is one of the old customs which has succumbed, as many others have done, to the new state of the world and the new modes of travellino;. It was found that the railwav brought down such a large number of persons of a mixed character, that it was necessary to do away with the ceremony on account of the abuses. The same causes led to the putting down of the great Harrow festival of shooting for the silver arrow. Archery was one great sport at the old public schools. In many of the statutes archery and chess were the only games allowed. In the statutes of Shrewsbury School occurs the following : " Shooting in the long- bow and chess play, and no other games unless it be running, wrestling, or leaping. No game to be above one penny, nor match above fourpence, and betting forl)idden.'*' SCHOOLS AND SCHOOL LIFE. 209 It is curious why the founders selected these two. The practice of archery gave the name to the " shoot- ing fields " at Eton ; and at Harrow and other places they have the name of "The Butts." The Harrow practice was to shoot for a silver arrow : " There were twelve competitors, with fancy dresses of spangled satin ; whoever shot twelve times nearest to the central mark was victor. Whoever shot within the three inches surrounding the central spot was saluted with a concert of French horns. A ball w^as held in schoolroom, and attended by the county families." But the practice was suppressed, I think in the year 1771, by Dr Heath, then head-master, in the first place on account of the vast crowd of people, who came, as to the Eton custom ; secondly, it induced so much idleness on the part of the intending competitors for the arrow, who got so many exemptions from scliool duties and claimed them as a matter of right, tliat it became necessary for the maintenance of school discipline to })ut the festival down. That was one of tlie customs we have lost. Here is another custom wliich seems to have prevailed in some schools and is a V(,'ry interesting one. Prizes of silver pens were oiv(;n to the best scholars and writers at some schools. Here we liave tlie practice as ordained at Lewisham : "And tlie three iK'st writers and Ix'st scliolars sliall have some pretty garland put njion their head, pro- vided for that jnirpose, and which they shall wear afterwanls uj)on their hats with their silver pens, well o 210 SCHOOLS AND SCHOOL LIFE. fastened, for a whole month or six weeks together, and come last and next in order to the master and usher in going to and coming from the public church, whereby they may be known to be the learnedest free scholars of that school." It would a little astonish us now to see boys at public schools going about with pretty garlands and silver pens fastened to their heads. But the spirit which led to these regulations evidently was that of inspiring boys with the desire to distin- guish themselves, and to w^ork and gain prizes the same kind of plan w^hich we find in all schools, and which it is very desirable certainly not to let drop. There was a practice which was something like it, and which was also no doubt the origin of the Westminster challenges. It w^as the practice of " Victoring." Boys used to go about and challenge boys of other schools to answer questions. One boy used to get upon a bank, and had to answer any question put to him by boys off the bank. If any boy off the bank put a question and the other did not answer it, then the boy on the bank lost his place to the questioner. That kind of emulation was very much encouraged in many schools, and seems to have prevailed at one time to a very great extent ; but Dean Connett seems to have forbidden the practice, because it led the boys into mischief and into running about idly. In Strype's edition of Stowe's ' Survey of London ' occurs the following : " I, myself, in my youth, have yearly seen on the eve of the feast of St Bartholomew SCHOOLS AND SCHOOL LIFE. 211 the Apostle, the scholars of clivers grammar-schools repair unto the churchyard of St Bartholomew, the priory in Smithfiekl, where, upon a bank boarded about under a tree, some one scholar hath stepped up and tliere hath opposed and answered till he were by .some better scholar overcome and put down ; and tlien the overcomer, taking the place, did like as the first ; and in the end the best opposers and answerers liad rewards." I stated that I would say a few words upon the relations of bo3's to their studies, the effect upon boys of the studies which they have to pursue, and the method in which these studies are pursued ; and that is of course a matter of very great importance, and a consideration of very serious character. It is now perfectly ol)vious that the system which is pursued in many of our public schools, and which has been exclu- sively a classical system, and which is still pre-emin- ently a classical system, is seriously challenged by the })ublic. There can be no doubt that if we look at tliose schools wliicli we are to take as models for the midv no means clear that in a school for other classes that is the onh' element which 212 SCHOOLS AND SCHOOL LIFE. ought to prevail. If you look at the different subjects of education with reference to their power of forma- tion of character, and of improving the mind of a boy, it is by no means so certain that the study of the classics is the only one of which the mind stands in need. No doubt the study of language is one of the noblest and most important of all the studies to w^hich we can devote ourselves. There can be no doubt that as language is the instrument by which we com- municate with our fellow-man, it is of the highest im- portance that we should study the use of that instru- ment. There can be no doubt, also, that it is of the highest importance to us that we should get the key to all the treasures of thought of former ages, which are locked up for us in the classics. But we must be aware that there are habits of mind which it is essen- tial to cultivate, which may be also cultivated by other studies, and some of which can be better cultivated by other studies than by the classics. There is no doubt that the faculty of observation is one that is neglected far too much in the education of the youth of this country. Boys are all brought up as book learners, and to a certain extent as mathematicians ; but l3oys are not brought to observe the natural objects they see around them ; and there can be very little doubt, I think, that that is a great defect in the education we give to English youths, that we do not teach them natural science as we ought to do. When you con- sider the enormous book of nature laid before us, and SCHOOLS AND SCHOOL LIFE. 213 the very slight power which the majority of us have of reading that book, we must feel there is something neglected in the education, which prevents our getting the key to it. There can be no difficulty whatever that is the concurrent testimony of all able men on this subject in bringing boys, even of very tender age, to understand the principles of natural science. Not only is it most important that it should be en- grafted upon the system of the higher scale of educa- tion, but certainly it ought to be a very prominent part of the education of the middle classes. I believe that it is perfectly possible, without in the least dero- gating from the amount of classical teaching wdiich is given in our higher schools or ought to be given and certainly it would be perfectly conformable with the amount of teaching which ought to be given in our middle schools, that a very considerable amount of instruction in the principles of natural science should be given to all. Tliere is said to Ijc a fear that if the recommenda- tion of the Public Schools Commission be adopted, boys' minds will Ijc overloaded with a number of sub- jects, of which they can only acquire an im})erfect knowledge ; that they would Ijc in the condition of tin; man d(,'scrib('(l by Homer as knowing a great many tilings, but knowing them all l)adly. Nothing is moj-e blamablc than frittering away the time for education by giving a boy such an education, and teaching him t(j knrtion is the habit of shirking work and listening witliout learning l>ad for tliem, because they gain a h.iljit which is very difficult to lose in after-life. List- t'liiiio; to what is imi)arted to them witliout takins: it up, and stum]jlini{ tlirouiih tlieir lessons, and doinjx just cnougli to satisfy tlu; master witliout really im- proving tlicmsclves, nothing can bti worse for boys than that state of things. Yet 1 find that is really 216 SCHOOLS AND SCHOOL LIFE. too much the state of things at our schools. I believe one great secret is that the masters themselves are not sufficiently trained in the art of teaching ; they are ignorant of the real art and science of teaching. I know very well what a great improvement has taken place amongst the lower orders of late years. Any- body acquainted with the advance of education amongst the lower orders must know very well that one of the greatest helps in that advance is the system of train- ing schoolmasters, and teaching them how to teach. Now that will certainly be required in many other classes of schools besides those of the lowest class. I believe myself that it would be extremely advan- tageous even to the masters of many great public schools. In point of fact they do ultimately learn by sad experience, and at a great expense of their own time, and of the time and labour of a great number of generations of their pupils. I say they do learn it at last, and as they get on become much more experi- enced and better teachers ; but it would be far better that they should themselves study the art of teaching before they undertake to teach, and not as some do, venture to take the care of a school without under- standing how to teach a class of boys. I believe if methods of the best kind were employed ; if grammar, for instance, were taught ujjon better principles than are taught in many of our schools, and if a better system were adopted to make boys attentive and make them learn, a great deal more progress would be made SCHOOLS AND SCHOOL LIFE. 217 in classics, and at the same time mechanics, modern hmguages, and physical science might be introduced into the school curriculum. 1 do not mean to say all these things can be taught at once ; but we do know, from what we see in our own children under our care at home, from what we hear of boys at some few specimen schools, and from what we hear of girls, too, at some of the best ladies' schools, that children are quite capable, if properly directed, of acquiring a great amount of miscellaneous knowledge without over-fatiQ:ue. I believe it is a rest to the mind and a great advantage for the mind to have greater variety in the subjects set before it. Then there is another subject which I think is of considerable interest and importance, which is the (|Ucstion how fiir the examination principle may be applied at the great schools of this country. There is dithculty, certainly, in applying the test of examina- tion to scliools of the kind and importance of those whicli we have recently liad to examine into ; but it will bo very probal)ly found wlicn we look into the (picstion of middle-class scliools, that some system of examination will be necessary, in ordin* to test the work of scliools and to enable them to test their own working for themselves. The s3-.stem of examination which has Ijeen pursued b}' the universities recently, b\' the Society of Arts, and by other bodies, is work- ing well ; and 1 believe will furnish a model u[)on which you will find it possible to do a great deal for 218 SCHOOLS AND SCHOOL LIFE. the improvement of middle-class schools. But we cannot rely too much upon examinations, because they are deceptive. Examinations, after all, can only bring out the results of the best boys in any par- ticular school ; and I think that it is very frequently the case that examinations are deceptive, because cer- tain schools distinguish themselves by having a few pupils who pass an extremely good examination. That school gets the credit of being a particularly good school ; whereas in other cases a great deal of honest work has been done by the master of a school, and great improvement has been effected, not only amongst his best boys, but on the whole mass of his pupils, but there cannot but a few^ come forward and distin- guish themselves in the same way as the others did. The examination principle will therefore require to be very carefully watched. It is in its essential prin- ciple right. It is necessary to have examinations in order to see what a school is doing ; but it is necessary not to give it too great prominence, lest it should lead masters to l)ring forward specimen boys and neglect the great mass of the school. It is very like that at Eton, for instance. If you take Eton and judge of the results by the best specimens of boys who come up for examination, you would say it was extremely satisfactory ; for there can be no doubt, I believe, that at Cambridge, at all events, the boys who go up from the college, from the foundation at Eton, are young- men who distinguish themselves very greatly at Cam- SCHOOLS AND SCHOOL LIFE. 219 bridge. There is no school of late years, since the foundation has been thrown open to competition, which has distinguished itself more, or I might even venture to say, which has done so much as Eton has done at Cambridge. And yet, though there is this satisfactory result, if you look at the higher specimens which Eton turns out, when you look at the average of boys, you find the average extremely unsatisfactory. Therefore it is clear that the mere system of examina- tion, and the mere announcing of where the best boys who go up to college come from, is not enough to enable us to judge of a school. The fact is, in this matter, as in everything else, there is no universal recipe, no " royal road " to learning what you want to know. It is necessary for parents themselves to take this question in hand ; to take an interest in the edu- cation of their own children ; to follow them, as far as possible, through all the stages. It is necessary for parents to use their own judgment, and, where they liave the opportunity, to know how tlie school is really working. Tliey cannot neglect the results of examina- tions, but they must not depend on and trust to them too implicitly. And they must not depend either upon tlie work to 1)(! done by the s(;hoolmaster, l)ut must re- int'Uiljer that after all tlie boy must not be sent in an uii[)rcpai-t'(l state to school, with directions to turn out tilt' boy as a scholar. You cannot lia\'c boys turned out scholars to order ; you must do something yiiiion of ])are])ts, and by the ])eoplc of England themselves; 224 SCHOOLS AND SCHOOL LIFE. and it is a question wliicli I invite you to enter upon, and to study for yourselves, with a sincere desire to bring to a satisfactory conclusion the inquiries which are now about to be prosecuted. First Extract Letter from Mr . " December 24, 1862. " My DEAR Sir Stafford, Your very kind letter deserves my best thanks, and will be remembered by me when the unwonted troubles of this year are over. It often strikes me at Eton that what looks like zeal for reform amongst us, who are considered dangerous bold spirits in the body of the residents, may be, in some measure, zeal for the deliverance from the hardest parts of our old work. "We had a little series of discussions some time ago, before we wrote any evidence, and it was as much as one could do to stand up for what is really characteristic of Eton, the tutors' correction of exercises, the process which makes our men at Cambridge (as I am assured on good authority they are) more accurate scholars than Rugby men. The view, which for the time prevailed with us, was that we should not be justified in risking the loss of what we boys and men have at present, a peculiarly strong objection to do exercises, and to do them in time, to turn them out in a presentable state, to revise them in the course of a few days, to review the select ones at the end of the school time, to correct the best of the select ones again for the head- master. Xo thing can be easier than to pull this to pieces : it is against the grain with many of our good and strong men, who nevertheless persevere under a sense of duty which acts like atmospheric pressure. , I believe, is as great a supporter of history and ' bookwork ' as any Kugby man, or any useful knowledge man : yet he takes as much pains with his pupils' exercises as or (born versifiers). Every time he signs a copy of verses, he pays a personal attention to the boy, graduated, of course, wliicli supports the boy's virtue. I T)elieve that we might carry out this process in French prose, but I cannot fancy doing so in that kind of bookwork of which we SCHOOLS AND SCHOOL LIFE. 225 have at present a sample in our Sunday questions. Xothing can be easier than to get out of boys a vast heap of written stuff copied out of books. This was done by for years in the way of Divinity : he got big boating fellows to spend six or eight hours on Saturday and Sunday, covering whole sheets of foolscap with extracts from theological books. This is what some of our men, and many outsiders, would wish to see done with secular history. It would be very nice for us : we should have to look at these masses of manuscript, and perhaps here and there pounce upon a bit of bad spelling ; but our minds and hearts would not be engaged as they are now upon what boys bring us from tlwir minds and hearts, their verses in which they take the pride of authors. By exacting a great amount of bookwork, and by employing the hours spent in class in passing down questions, and in registering numerically the boys' performances, I believe that we should get through a very plausible amount of work without making one- tenth of the intellectual efforts that we make now, and without being nearly so Avell acquainted with the characters of the boys. Our young men say that their work should be reduced, that they may have leisure for their own studies. I very much doubt, and I venture to say for our hardest working man, , that he very much doubts, whether that leisure would be spent profit- ably as the time now spent witli the Ixjys. Of course we ought to liave time to learn our lessons : it should not be argued that we mu.st do nothing but books of extracts because the masters have no time to get up fresh subjects. AVe have time ; we have four- teen weeks' vacation. The Marlborougli masters, I am told, have a prngramine of the next term's work ready in tlie holidays. lUit mr men, wlio cry out against our "waste of laliour" (as if Ave were not all bom to waste and to be wasted, if need be), are not the men who sj)en(l tlieir ftiurteeu weeks in making themselves better scholars. iJesides tli(! correctidu of exercises, they (the young men) assist construing. I was asked tn give reasons for kf(;ping it up. Tliere is on(; reason 1 did not give : it gives us a great clieck one f)n another. A man is bound for liis lionour's pak<', and indeed for his worhlly success, to construe tlie lesson right, or Ise liis pupils go into s( hool ami expuse him : they sonn lind out in tliis way if tlieir tutor i- a [mor scholar, and liis liusiness suiters. I' 226 SCHOOLS AXD SCHOOL LIFE. Converseh', the master in school hears a passage taken in a way that had not struck him, finds he was wrong, and gets quit of the correction, which does him good without annoying him. These points of difference are often openly stated to the boys, who find that philology is not an exact science, but that it is indissolubly connected with the love of truth, and is best pursued by those who are ready to admit error. Again, a young master having a class of lower boys is saved, partly by construing from becoming a mere usher : he is put on his mettle Avhen he has to do harder lessons (not of his own setting, for if it were so he could stick to a narrow beaten track of books read at college, and they would be his stock in trade for life) with young fellows, of whom, though his pupils, he is somewhat afraid, in whose presence at least he would not like to make a fool of himself. I have written this, I confess, in a spirit of jealous opposition to three or four of those mas- ters Avhom the Commissioners have examined. I have gone over these arguments with the young men themselves, but I fear they have been giving evidence, likely to be welcome enough, which tends towards the diminution of their work and the relaxation of bonds that have at present great strength. Second Extract Letter from Mr " Eton- College, May 11, 1864. " My dear Sir Stafford, As far as I can judge from the ' Times,' the Government and the Commissioners, represented in the Commons by yourself, accepted without further inquiry Mr "\Val- pole's assurance that the authorities of Eton are carefully consider- ing the 'recommendations,' and I infer that some importance is attached to the implied promise of voluntary changes to be wrought about here before next session. "\Ve have had three meetings at the head-master's house of all the assistants, including the mathe- iiiaticals, with the head and the lower masters. "We have been invited to say what we liked about the recommendations afiecting the course of instruction, and we have had fair and satisfactory debates. This in itself is felt bv most of us to be a solid 'fain, due to tlie SCHOOLS AND SCHOOL LIFE. 227 Commission. But no votes are taken, and no minutes. The head-master tells us he merely wishes to hear what we have to say before he makes up his mind. On the other hand, I am informed that the College has, at its regular quarterly meetings, talked over that part of the report which concerns itself, as distinct from the school. I cannot presume to say what the Provost and the head- master do by themselves ; but I apprehend that the result of their deliberations will be submitted to the Government in some form or other. I feel very strongly that if you allow Eton to reform itself, you should insist on some weight being given to the assistants in council at least, to some of them selected by the whole body to confer with the authorities. If this cannot be ensured, then I trust you will remember next session that the persons who gave evidence to the Commission in favour of reform have not been really, though they have been seemingly, taken into council. In thanking you, however late, for the blue - books, which I have begun to read, when I came back after the holidays, I cannot deny myself the opportunity of expressing my disappointment at the contents. I see with regret that you take the utilitarian view of modern languages, and I heartily agree with Mr Gladstone's felicitous argument for Italian, and with ^Mr Yauglian's unanswer- able distinction between French and German. I regret that the literary treatment of physical science is passed over, and its bear- ings u{jon composition : holding, as I do, that if boys were taught on IJuskin's ]irincij)les (see Ap{)endix to ' Stones of Venice '), they would write far V>ett(;r coni])Ositions, and woidd be far less super- stitious and frivolous. I regret that you make no irovision for paying us for our school work, or improving our position in any way. Believe me, yours truly, ." KxTitACT Lkttkii I imm ^\n Gladstonk. " 11 Cahmhn llnrsK Tkuhack, June -1, IStJl. " Mv iiKAii Xmuthcoti:, Many tliaiiks for yiiur note rcspcrting til.- I'lililic Scliuols Bill. 1 will speak to Claiviuluii. P.ut L con- fcss I (jo !iol think VdUr Il'itf rniliraces tlie whole case. IS'ol- do 1 228 SCHOOLS AND SCHOOL LIFE. understand the effect of the Bill to be that no regard would be had to the special case of persons appointed in this interval ; but that the doctrine of vested interests, which we carry to lengths per- haps on the whole expedient, but still in many cases most in- convenient in practice, would be set up in these cases in its most unbending rigour, but should rather give place to more general considerations of equity. In haste. Sincerely yours, " W. E. Gladstone." Connected with this subject, we find two allusions in Sir Stafford Henry Xorthcote's letters to Lady Xorthcote in the spring of 1864. The first in a letter dated January 30, 1864 : " 2 Victoria Street. " I came up here this morning by an early train in hopes of signing our Report ; but at the very last moment Yaughan has refused to sign without a protest, and as Twisleton has gone abroad, leaving Bernard his authority to sign for him on the understanding that there were to be no protests, we cannot proceed Avithout com- municating with Twisleton again, and what may ultimately grow out of the affair no one can tell. I am going out to The Grove with Lord Clarendon, and look forward to my visit, though I was very sorry to leave Burghley so soon." The second mention occurs in a letter addressed to Lady ]Srortli- cote on March 9, 1864 : " From Dp;voxshire Place. " You will be astonished to hear that our Public Schools Eeport has actually been presented ! Yaughan's dissent is clever and in- terestin and out shooting with some of the members of his family. One of tlie iarty l)y accident fired a shi)t very close to Sir Stafford, upon wliich an exclamation was made by the rest to "take care." Sir Staffiird turned round with an amused smile, saying: "It is rather an illu^tIation of the story of the man Avho shot at nothing and missfil it." In the same week he went to London for a f<'w days, and returned on the 18th .January. ^Vhen he came back, hi- said, " I havi' l^i-en sn j)rcss('d for time, that I have not l)een abl'- to tliink what I am to say to-nioirow night. I rrally have thouirht of nothing. I think I shall clioose it for my subji'ct." Afti-r thf lecture he stayed with Lady Xortlicote for some of the dancin'' and joined in it. 230 ON NOTHING. " ' What are you doing, Joe ? ' said I. ' Nothing, sir,' was his reply. ' And you there, Tom, pray let me know ? ' ' I'm busy, sir ; I'm helping Joe.' ' Is nothing then so hard to do That thus it takes the time of two ? ' ' No,' said the other with a smile, And grinned and chuckled all the while ; ' But we're such clever folks, d'ye see, That nothing's hard to Joe and me.' " ' Me the contented mind desires, The poor man has, the rich requires. The miser spends, the spendthrift saves, And all must carry to their graves." A LTHOUGH I knew for some time that I was to have the pleasure of meeting you to-night, and that it was right that I should make some observations to you, yet it was only last night, wdth my terril^le habits of procrastination, that I began to think upon what subject I should interest you, and I found my- self in the very greatest difficulty, A great many subjects suggested themselves, but there w^as no time to prepare them, and at the same time it was not reasonable or quite respectful to a body such as those wdio compose the Exeter Literary Society that I should come unprepared upon any subject which would require consideration. I remember very well some years ago, when the late Bishop of Exeter, Bishop Phillpotts, was at the Cathedral on the occasion of a service for the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, it was intended that a Colonial Bishop should preach the ox NOTHING. 231 sermon ; but there had been some mistake about the day, and tlie Colonial Bishop did not come. " Well," they thought, " he will come later ; he has missed the train, perhaps," and the service began. But the Bishop had not made his appearance when the time for the sermon approached, and there was great searching of heart. Finally, Bishop Phillpotts said that he would go up into the pulpit and see whether he could offer somethinsf of a sermon. He did so. Of course, In*, had been taken by surprise, and he therefore began with an apology for the apparent want of respect to his congregation, and expressed a hope that his clergy would not generally follow his example by addressing their congregations in an unprepared state. I parallel that story with one I recently heard of a case in whicli one of the great French preachers (^lassillon), in the time of Louis Quatorze, was directed by tlie King to preach a sermon to him. He asked wliat text lie should choose, and the King told him he would find his text on a piece of paper in the Bil)le when lie got into the pul[)it. The jireaclier went into the, ])ulpit ami drew out tlie })a}er, when, behold I it was blank on both sides, iqxjii whieli he held it u[) to the people, and said, " Tlic're is lu^thing on one side; there is nothing (jii the other; and that, my friends, is an illustration oi" how out of nt)tliing we came and into notliiuL;' we go,' and upon that theme lie jireaeheil his sermon. WCll, 1 thuuglit 1 might \ciiture to take a, hint lioiii the i'"ieiieh bishop*. I n-niembered, h(wever, 232 ON NOTHING. a piece of advice once given me by a great parliamen- tary authority, whose name, as we are not political, I won't mention ; but no doubt you will guess. I re- member asking him on one occasion during a debate, " Shall I speak next ? " and he said, " Have you any- thing to say ? " I replied, " No ; I have nothing to say." "Well," he said, "say nothing." And I applied that sentiment in this way : "I have nothing to lecture upon," said I, " Well, lecture upon Nothing." I shall not be the first person who has ever attempted to treat " Nothing " in a serious manner. There was a poem, a very clever poem, w^ritten by the witty Lord Eoches- ter, the friend of Charles II., addressed to "Nothing." That poem, even, was not the first of the kind ; a Frenchman, I believe, had some centuries earlier written a Latin poem on " Nothing," which, however, was of a very ordinary description. You will find it in Dr Johnson's ' Lives of the Poets.' But it only amounts to this that nothing is richer than gold, nothing is purer than water, nothing is higher than the heavens, and so forth. But Lord Rochester wrote something rather superior to that. I have extracted one or two of his lines, and they are not bad. He began by addressing Nothing : " Xothing, thou elder brother even to shade, Thou hadst a being ere the world was made ; And, well-fixed, art alone of ending not afraid. Great IS^egative, how vainly Avould the Avise Inquire, define, distinguish, teach, devise. Didst Thou not stand to point their dull philosophies ! " ON NOTHING. 233 And then there are some lines which perhaps are not quite complimentary to my pursuits : " While weiglity Something modestly abstains From Prince's coffers and from Statesmen's brains, And nothuig there like stately K'othing reigns." But really, when one comes to consider how the subject was to be treated, the cloud of thoughts that came upon me was very embarrassing. One might treat it as the subject of a very deep and serious lecture. If one had time, and sufficient knowledge of modern philosophy the philosophy of Huxley, Darwin, and Herbert Spencer, and of other great writers it would be very interesting indeed to pursue the question something upon the lines, though probably in a very different manner adopted by the French bishop of whom I have spoken. I shall not attempt to take you into that kind of reasoning ; per- haps it would be too hard and dry for the evening, and certainly I should be very incompetent to under- take it, I will only quote, if you will allow me, an epigrammatic sentence of a friend of mine upon the subject. Lord Beaconsfield, when he said witli regard U) sortance in that wliich she alfectcd to treat JiLihll}', for it identifies the ])erson, and it raises all the assfjciations which ai'c connected with that ixTson, and so suut in course of time, as nations increased, and as it becaine ini})ossible to find dillerent names for every 294 NAMES AND NICKNAMES. individual of the human race, the same name came to be repeated, and then distinctive surnames began to be added, just as I have suggested to you in the case of the towns I have quoted. 1 need not take up your time though the subject is one that would occupy a lecture in itself in trac- ing the dijfferent modes by which patronymics or family names were given by different nations. In one case the grandson was always called after the grandfather; in another case the father was called after the name of his own son, as the father of so-and- so. Various other kinds of patronymics might be mentioned. I will mention one, as being the most elaborate with which we are acquainted, and because it is a system which resembles to a very great extent the system which prevails with us in England. A Roman had necessarily two names ; the jjrt^iiomen, or personal name, which applied to the individual and the nomen, or name, of his gens or family. There were a certain number of gentes, or families, in Rome, and every person was called after the name of the family of which he was a member. Let us take the gens Cornelii. Everybody belonging to that family was called Cornelius, besides his 2^i'<:^iiomen of Publius, or Caius, or Lucius, or something else. After a time, as these families multiplied, there was a great num- ber of persons bearing the same family name, and it became necessary and convenient to distinguish the Ijranches of the different families. AVliat we may call NAMES AND NICKNAMES. 295 nicknames were then liit upon. Nicknames are of still earlier date ; but here, for the first time in the obser- vations I am making to you, we come upon the use of nicknames. There were introduced into the Roman families, besides the name of the individual and family to which a man belonged, a third name, of the nature of a nickname. This was called the cognomen. For instance, Publius Cornelius, because he was in the habit of walking with a staff, is called Scipio ; and he was thus distinguished from the others by being called Publius Cornelius Scipio. All his descendants were called Cornelius Scipio. After a time we come to one who distinguished himself by special actions, by his victories in Africa, and by his defeat of Han- nibal ; and on account of his great success in Africa he gains another honourable name over and above those obtained by his ancestors, and takes the name of Africanus, so that he is known as Publius Cor- nelius Scipi(j Africanus. Thus was added anotlier name in the same family. This was the (Kjnonien. Sometimes it would happen that one of those families was about to become extinct from there being no son in the family. In order to keep up the name, it be- came a })ractice to adopt some one from anotlier familv, and tlien imp(n't tlic name of the (jois, or familv, from wiiicli the ado])te(l person came, and add it to the names of tlie family into which he was adoj)ted. When the Scipios were likely to become extinct, one h' been in the 332 ARCHEOLOGY OF DEVON AND CORNWALL. habit of passing unregarded from day to day, and will open out to you new sources of interest which, perhaps, you hardly conceived were within your grasp. And I introduce my own county, and this picturesque and ancient city, to the Association, in the full and confi- dent hope that they will find them not less rich in the materials of archaeological lore than any other county or any other city which they have been heretofore in the habit of visiting. There is only one danger against which I must warn them : they must not allow themselves to be too much led away by the beauties of nature from the pursuit of those peculiar objects which they come to seek ; for I must warn them, if they are not aware of it, that they are going, as I see by the programme, to visit objects of interest in the midst of most lovely scenery, and they must take care not to allow the scenery to interfere too much with the archseological curiosities they are going to seek. It does not require that we should be very deep archseologists ourselves to enjoy an archaeological gathering like the present. The truth is, that this science is one of the most natural, and, I think I may say, one of the most rational, that men can engage in. We are naturally curious to know how it is that we find ourselves in the position in which we are ; and it is impossible that we can understand rightly what we are unless we know how it is that we have come to be that which we are. We find that we have stepped ARCHiEOLOGY OF DEVON AND CORNWALL. 333 into a rich inheritance, like the people of Israel, who entered into a land full of treasures which they had not collected. We find that our forefathers have collected for us that which adds to the enjoyment and the interest of life ; and beyond that, we find ourselves continually adding to, and improving and advancing upon, that which they have left us. That, it appears to me, is what distinguishes men from the brute creation. I have always thought one of the most interesting definitions of man was that which represents him to be a being looking forward and backward, not looking merely to that which is around him, but considering the progress that he has made, or that his forefathers have made, and what progress he is himself called on to make. It is that which distinguishes man's works from the wonderful works done by animal instinct. If we look at the works of animals, at the works of the brute creation, we find that beavers construct their houses, that birds build their nests, and that other animals perform their ditiV'rent works, precisely as they have done from the beginning of the world. But we are continually advancing; leaving behind us that wliieh was done for us 1)y our ancestors, and advancing from it to something which we shall hand down to posterity. It is l)(;cause ardueology is the science wlii('li leads us to ap[)reciate this ja-ogrcss, which leads us to see and know wliat was done l)v our ancestors, and therefore points out t; to a time so far bygone, that they excite in us little else tlian wonder. You find others which carry us on con- tinuously up to the present day, and seem to have a more living and })res('nt ijitcrest for us. Of ]>oth tliese we liavc. sp(M:imeiis in tliis county. A\'c liave s])ecimciis upon Dartmoor of the old remains of a liy^oiK; time, upon wliich we may exliaust ourselves in spe<-ulation, but which do not seem to touch us witli anything like present and living interest. On 336 ARCHEOLOGY OF DEVON AND CORNWALL. the other hand, we have in every town, in every old church, sometimes in our old houses, and even by the wayside, memorials of times more or less remote, but still with which we seem to feel that we have a con- nection. In both these classes of memorials there is an interest ; but it is a different kind of interest which we have to awaken in the one and in the other. I venture to say that the county of Devon furnishes the archaeologist with very important and very interesting classes of study ; for here it is, if anywhere, that we are to look for the earliest traces of the original in- habitants of this land of Britain. Here in this south- west corner of England, if there are any traces to be found of the earliest inhabitants of the country, we are to look for them. There can be no doubt that the earliest notices which can in any way be considered to apply to England in classical writings, have reference to the Scilly Isles probably to Cornwall ; and if to Cornwall, probably also to the whole or great part of Devonshire. It appears that, in days long before the time of the Roman conquest, there were communica- tions between the tin-producing districts the "tin islands," as they were called, the Scilly Isles and Cornwall and Devonshire and the Eastern nations. We find that the Phoenicians and the Carthaginians traded with the Cassiterides, or tin islands. From all we can gather, it would seem that the tin islands re- ferred to were the Scilly Islands and that portion of England which I have been speaking of In a very ARCHAEOLOGY OF DEVON AND CORNWALL. 337 old book, cattributed to the poet Orpheus, describing the expedition of the Argonauts, and in the works of the father of history, Herodotus, we find references to communications between the ancient world and this part of England. I must not lay too much stress upon all the legends and traditions connected with the intercourse ; but undoubtedly there are a great many circumstances, small in themselves, yet all bear- ing in the same direction, which seem to point to a connection between this south-west of England and an Eastern origin. I daresay I should provoke a smile at my credulity if I referred to old legends about the original colonisation of this country by Brutus and the Trojans who came with him. But the legend is worth some consideration. It says that some time after the destruction of Troy, Brutus, the grandson of .Eneas, came with his followers and landed at Totncs. AVhat is there peculiar about this ? No doubt the story about Brutus and the Trojan descent was put afloat for the sake of o-ettino- a high and noble orio;in for the people of Britain ; but there is something re- mjirkable in tlie chroniclers having fixed upon Totnes as the place to wliicli the colony was supposed to have come. Totnes lies far up the Dart. AVliy should the e,\i)editiou Ik; Ijrouglit to a place far up the river, and not to a })oint on the sea-coast ? That reminds us that Tcjtiies was tin ancient British town. Xo doubt it is a town of very high autiipiity. It lies also con- veniently for the trade of iJartnioor. And this chimes V 338 ARCHEOLOGY OF DEVON AND CORNWALL. in with evidence we have that there was a connection between Eastern nations and the tin-producing dis- tricts of Dartmoor ; for it is upon Dartmoor and the neighbourhood that you find remains of tin-works, which appear to be of very high antiquity. That, I say, is one slight evidence which we have of the con- nection between our people and the East. Then, again, there are those records which are more authentic, and upon which we can rely, of the trade which sprang up between the Phoenicians and the Carthaginians with our own country. The Phoeni- cians preserved a strict monopoly of this trade. He- rodotus says that the other nations were not able to discover where it was that this tin was brought from. We are told at a later period, that, when the Cartha- ginians, as a Phoenician colony, had got possession of the trade, they kept it so secret that the Eomans, who endeavoured to ascertain where the metal came from, were unable to do so. Scipio the younger, who made inquiries, was told that the Gauls and others knew nothing of the district. There was a story current, and probably a true one, that a Carthaginian ship engaged in this traffic, being pursued by a Roman vessel, ran aground in order to prevent its track being discovered ; and that the Carthaginian people were so pleased with the patriotism of this man, who had wrecked his vessel rather than let the secret be dis- covered, that by national contributions they made up the loss to him. Such matters are of interest, because ARCHAEOLOGY OF DEVOX AND CORNWALL. 339 they directly bring to our minds one of those touches of nature which make the whole world akin. It is a specimen of that commercial jealousy which, from the very earliest ages of the world, has been found to prevail among commercial nations. The Greeks, the Carthaginians, the Portuguese, the Spanish, the Vene- tians, the Dutch, all desired to preserve strict secrecy with resjard to the sources whence their wealth was derived. The secret so well kept by the Carthaginians was afterwards discovered by the Greeks, and at a later period by the Romans. But the identity of Britain with the Cassiterides could not have been discovered by the Romans before the invasion of Britain by Caesar. As far as w^e can judge from history, it does not appear that Caesar, when he invaded this country, was conscious that he had got into the great tin- producing laud ; because we are told that he believed, when he first came, he was invading a country full of wealth, and that afterwards he was disappointed. Iliere are writings of Cicero in which he says the country was poor, and that it was a delusion to sup- pose tlierc was anything to be found in it, especially silver, which there was great expectation of discover- ing. It does not seem that Caesar got down to this south - western part. It was much later that the Itomans came here ; l)ut we have some curious evi- dence on tlie part of otlier liistorians, especially Dio- dorus, that Dannioniuni, which com})rised Devonshire 340 AECH^OLOGY OF DEVON AND CORNWALL. and Cornwall, was a country already in communica- tion with foreign parts ; that it was more given to trade, and more civilised, and that its inhabitants were more hospitable people than the rest of the Britons. The Britons generally were savage, rude, and inhospitable ; but these Danmonii were more polished and more civilised. It is, perhaps, one of the reasons that may account for there being fewer Eoman remains to be found here, that there was less necessity for the Romans to plant themselves here in force in order to keep this part of the country in sub- jection ; they were on more friendly terms with this part of the country than they were with some others. These are evidences which we have of the early connection of this part of the country with the navi- gators and commercial nations of the East. Then there are many other small evidences of the same connection. Some of them may perhaps be fanciful ; others have something in them. We hope that those who come here with the power and the habit of test- ing and sifting evidence, will enable us to judge for ourselves how far these matters, which we have been taught to regard as more or less important, have any real w^ortli. For instance, there is the evidence of names. Polwhele, who is perhaps our best local his- torian, traces a Phoenician origin in everything in names, in places, in everything to be found in the west of England ; and we should like to know how far there is any truth in the analogies which he ARCHAEOLOGY OF DEVON AND CORNWALL. 341 discovers ; because we do know that the science of etymology, the comparison of one language with another, often affords the means of ascertaining the connection between one people and another. I should be glad to know if there is any truth in the origin which he ascribes to the names Hartland Point, Start Point, Belston, and others, which he supposes to con- tain traces of Phoenician worshij) ; Start Point refer- ring to Astarte, Hartland Point to Hercules, and Belston to Belus. He speaks of double pillars at Hartland and Start Point, and connects them with the Phoenician worship of the sun and moon, and with the celebrated Phoenician pillars of Hercules. We know that at Cadiz, a point to which the Phoeni- cians attained in Spain, there were two pillars the two pillars of Hercules, one of the great landmarks of the ancient world. These were pillars connected no doubt with Phoenician worship. Polwhele supposes that there were two pillars at Hartland Point, and lie speaks of there being the remains of such pillars at Start Point even now. I do not know^ whether such is tlie case ; Ijut it is a matter for the curious to inquire into. He sees in tliese double })illai's traces of the PlifiMiician worship having l)een introduced into tliis country. (Jiic would l)e glad to know how far tlierc are traces of anytliing that is decidedly Eastern, and that is not to be attril)uted to our neighbours, the (Jaiils. Tlicii there are the remains of l)rui(li(;al wor- shi}) U) be Ibiind on Dai'tmoor; and we should l)e glad 342 ARCHEOLOGY OF DEVON AND CORNWALL. to know whether, on a comparison of these remains with others elsewhere, there is any such connection or difference between them that shoukl lead us to sup- pose they w^ere the work of one people rather than two. We should like to know whether the great work of Stonehenge all belonged to one period, or was placed there by two r^ces ; and if so, we should be glad to know to which period the Dartmoor works belong whether to the earlier or the later, in what the difference consists, and whether it is of such a character as to lead us to suppose that one race was or was not Eastern in its origin. Csesar mentions that there had been an invasion shortly before his time by the Belgse from Gaul, who had driven the aboriginal inhabitants into the interior, and perhaps to the south-west. Looking to another point, we may ask who these aboriginals were ? Were they people of Eastern origin ? If not, are they to be considered people who had had an Eastern impress made upon them by communication with the Phoenicians ? You may put any number of things together in this kind of inquiry ; for archaeology is of all studies the one which seems to me the best described by Shakespeare's saying, that " Trifles, light as air, may be confirmation strong As proofs of holy -writ." You may find any number of small points, each in- significant, apparentl}^ absurd, if you take it by itself. ARCHiEOLOGY OF DEVON AND CORNWALL. 343 yet if you put them together, compare them, collate them with what has been discovered in other parts of the country, they produce, by degrees, first doubt, then suspicion, and then a moral certainty which almost amounts to the strength of demonstration. One would be glad that all these things should be re- corded ; that theories, however absurd in themselves, should be put forth and discussed, and everything that can be brought forward to support these theories be brought forth and stated, in order to determine what is really valuable and really true. Because there is this that is peculiar in this kind of study ; and it is, I really think, an indication that archaeology may be made a very fine and noble training for the intellectual powers and for the judgment of man that you have to combine such difi'erent qualities in order to make a perfect archaeologist. You require not only a great amount of knowledge that, I am aware, is essential with a great amount of industry, necessary in all studies ; but you require a combina- tion of imagination and of judgment, of enthusiasm and of scepticism. You want two kinds of archa3ol- oeiiig taken of tlie tele^aapli to I'lyniouth bfin;^' completed. 368 ox DISTANT CORRESPONDENTS. ton the same evening, in time for us to take action on it. That is a very curious and remarkable contrast to the state of things so graphically described by Charles Lamb fifty years ago. When one comes to consider correspondence, it is natural to ask what are the essentials of correspond- ence ? Speaking roughly, they may be classified as follows, the means of carrying it on, persons with whom to correspond, topics upon which to correspond, and some kind of community of sentiment or interest between them and those with whom they propose to correspond. It would take an evening of itself to call your attention to the enormous improvement that has taken place in the means of correspondence within the last fifty years, and I am more anxious to call your attention to the very great alteration in the class and field of your correspondents. I particularly have a desire to make you to some little extent ac- quainted with the position of those with whom you are in the habit of corresponding. Take, therefore, the three latter branches of my subject the persons, the topics, and the community of sentiment and in- terest as the main object of my lecture ; and yet it is impossible in dealing with those three not to take cognisance of the first point, because there can be no doubt that the great imj^rovement in the means of corres^jondence has a most material eff'ect, I will not say on the number of correspondents, though possibly it may on even that, but certainly on the topics and ON DISTANT CORRESPONDENTS. 3G9 the community of sentiment. Correspondence which is rapid is easy ; correspondence which is slow is diffi- cult. I will therefore say a few words to you in the first instance on the improvements which have taken place in the means of correspondence in the last half- century. The period at which we propose to start is not a bad one, for it was the dawn of many inventions which have since ripened into the means of improved cor- respondence. The first railway in England was opened in 1830 ; the first real ocean communication by steam was about the time of the accession of her Majesty to the throne, when the Sirius and the Great West- ern crossed the ocean ; and the first patent for the electric telegraph was signed in the same year that her ]\Iajesty came to the throne ; then we had the shortening and improving of the routes by which our correspondence is carried, and the greatest and most important of those improvements, the making use of tlie overland route to India, dated from about tlic same periotl. These have been two of tlie great- est causes of the acceleration of our distant corre- s[)ondenco the introduction of new methods, and the making use of new routes. Another improvement connected witli, consequent upon to a certain extent, and render(*(l possible by the otluT.s, was tlie im])rove- nicnt in the administration of the postal service, dating from the great reforms ijiaugurated by Row- land Hill. These lia\(; l)een the great improvements 2 A 370 ON DISTANT CORRESPONDENTS. that have naturally revolutionised our system of cor- respondence. Subsidiary to these there have been other smaller ones, yet not unimportant, such as, for instance, the great development of the newspaper press, and the medium of advertising. I may also refer to the pigeon-post, and the photographing of messages used during the siege of Paris. I believe the pigeon-post was an institution among the Arabs in 965.^ We fre- quently see something which reminds us of our ances- tors. We hear very much of the service of the post now organised; but looking back 150 or 180 years ago, we find that its functions were then rather peculiar. These were some of the things consigned to it in the days of Queen Anne : fifteen couple of hounds going to the King of the Eomans with a free pass ; two servant- maids going as laundresses to my Lord Ambassador Methuen ; Dr Crichton carrying with him a cow and divers other necessaries ; three suits of clothes for some nobleman's lady at the Court of Portugal ; a box containing three pounds of tea sent as a j^resent by my Lady Arlington to the Queen Dowager of England at Lisbon ; a deal case with four flitches of bacon for Mr Sennington of Rotterdam. I was speak- ing just now of the introduction of steamers fifty years ago. In 1820, the number of steamers in the ^ When Fatimites invaded Egypt (about 965), they established a regu- hir service of pigeon-posts ; some of these were still existing in 1450, botli in Lower Egypt and in Syria, stations at from 25 to 80 or 100 miles apart. From Cairo to Alexandria, from Alexandria to Damietta, from Damietta to Gaza, from Gaza to Jerusalem, from Jerusalem to Damascus, &c. ON DISTANT CORRESPONDENTS. 371 United Kingdom was 34, and the tonnage 3019 ; now the number is 2240, and the tonnage 1,039,000. Although I must pass by the correspondence be- tween us and foreign nations generally, there are three, I was going to say two, which I must speak of rather specially. I mean China, Japan, and what I hesitate to call a foreign nation, the United States. In 1820, China was but little known, and Japan not known at all. Instead of the Chinese being now shut up within their own empire, the question is arising whether we can altogether tolerate the mode in which the Chinese are invading our countries, or countries in which we as Englishmen take an interest. Anxiety is expressed in many parts of the English-speaking world as to the laro;e number of Chinese that are tlockino: over as workmen, and are beo;innino; to in- iiuence in some places the character of the population. This is more particularly the case in parts of the United States, and even in Australia ; and in some parts of the English dominions the influx of Chinese is a matter which has become one of serious conse- quences, and which, I Ijelieve, causes some anxiety, althougli perhaps unjustly. rerha})S the stories we hear as to the inconvenience of this Chinese inimiijra- tion rather take tlicnr rise from a little jealousy on the jiart of Anglo-Sax(ju labourers at tlie intrusion of men who work very hard and for lower wages tlian them- selves. But there are many who tell us that tlu; Chinese ought to Ije welcomed with oj)eii arms, thai 372 ON DISTANT CORRESPONDENTS. they ought to cause no anxiety, and that they are most valuable elements in the parts of the world in which they are spreading. The extension of our correspond- ence with our colonies is a matter of serious and great imperial interest. I must point out the wonderful increase of population in the colonies. In 1820 the population of the colonies was estimated at 3,810,000, whereas it is now estimated at 10,690,000. But I believe I shall be putting it at a low estimate if I say that the letters that pass have increased twelve hun- dred per cent. The population of the United States, from 1820 to 1870, has increased from 12,866,000 to probably about 40,000,000, or something more than two hundred per cent ; but the British North American provinces have increased in the same time by about three hundred and seventy per cent. When Charles Lamb wrote, Sydney and Van Die- men's Land were inhabited mostly by convicts ; but now, in speaking of the great Australian colonies, we speak of a great empire, or many empires it may be, growing up on the other side of the world, and assum- ing a position which, in future ages, will be of the highest importance. In 1820 the population of New South AVales was 29,783, of whom 13,814 were con- victs ; but in 1869 the population of the continent of Australia was 1,510,000, and adding Tasmania and New Zealand, 1,847,000. The convict system broke down just as it was beginning to be put on a really good and promising footing. The throwing off of ON DISTANT CORRESPONDENTS. 373 restrictions with regard to trade had caused a great outburst of prosperity in the colonies. Although it interrupts my argument, I will give a few figures con- cerning the development of the shipping of the col- onies. In 1820 the over-sea traffic from the United Kingdom, exclusive of the coasting trade, amounted to 4,000,000 tons, but in 1867 the trade to the British possessions amounted to 28,315,000 tons. To show the value of this, it is necessary to institute a comparison. And accordingly, in 18G9, we find the amount of our trade to the United States to be 17 h millions, and to France 10| millions. Thus the ton- nage employed to the British possessions is larger than to the United States and France put together. These are remarkable figures, showing how glorious an empire we have inherited. I think we shall be a little careful how we talk of casting it away. I have said that the discovery of gold had an especial effect upon the prosperity of the Australian colonies. In 1851 the excitement was first caused by the discovery. In 1853 her Majesty's Government, much against the grain, as far as tlie interests of this c(juntry were concerned, had to abandon the system of transportation. This discovery of gold did much good in taking numbers of the j)eople to parts of tlie country to wlii<'li tliey would not otlierwise liave been atti-acted, and so ])rinixing into cultivation and devel- opment the rt'.S()urc(!S of large tracts of territory wliicli niiglit liave hiiii waste and useless for ages. Those 374 ON DISTANT CORRESPONDENTS. who have been in these colonies tell us that the build- ings in Sydney, and more especially in Melbourne, are grand and magnificent worthy to be compared with buildings in the great capitals of Europe. The whole character of the population is changed. They have their theatres and other amusements, like our own ; they have their Derby, as interesting as the Derby run at Epsom. In these sports we mix our- selves with them ; our cricketers go over there, and international matches are played. I must pass over various of the colonies the AVest Indies, and the great effect that the abolition of slavery has had upon them ; over our South African and West African possessions. I want to say a few words to you concerning our North American possessions. I wish you to understand what the actual possession of this great dominion of Canada actually is. Many per- sons think that it is a great tract of forest, and snow, and lakes, with some fishery ; that it is a territory which the United States covet, and which w^e cannot defend ; which is always wanting us to guarantee their laws or to lend them money ; and that it will one day prove a trap for our soldiers, and the sooner we are rid of it the better. This is not the condition of Canada : it is as interesting a British dominion as it is possible to conceive. A large proportion of the population consists of the descendants of the old French settlers. Lower Canada was acquired, not by colonisation, but by conquest, after it had been ox DISTANT CORKESPONDENTS. 375 colonised by France. We are told that tliey are more French than the inhabitants of France itself. They retain among themselves many old habits, char- acteristics, and laws, which prevailed in France be- fore the great French Kevolution. If you want to see old France, you must not look for it in Burgundy or Brittany, but in Quebec ; and bear in mind the peculiar circumstance of its close contiguity to the United States, with which it has many points of resemblance. We are often told, sometimes with one animus and sometimes with another, that any jealousy or any quarrel between England and the United States must necessarily affect the wellbeing and safety of our Canadian possessions ; while, according to the theory which has taken hold of other people and rides them like a nightmare, the very fact of our having ])os- sessions it is presumed the United States covet is in itself a source of danger to the interests and friend- ship Ijetween tlie United States and England. I hold that to l)e fallacious ; but there is no doubt that the contact between Canada and America gives a very [x'culiar interest to tliat ]arti('ular dominion, with which it is well that you should l)e acquainted. Not many years ago they were a few disconnected provinces l}'ing all along the frontier ; now they have bound themselves into a confederation s]n'eading from the Atlantic to the J'acific, and including the large terri- t. 386 ON MOLIERE. This, at all events, struck me, that I might regard such a subject from two points of view either I might direct your attention to the character and genius of the author himself, or I might call upon you to consider the illustrations which his w^orks afford of the state of the society in w^hich he lived, and the manners of the people of whom he wrote. Both these are interesting and important subjects for consideration. Comedy has been described as the hienseance of society, a rather difficult phrase to render into Eng- lish, but which I would venture to translate as the " proprieties " of society. If the comic wTiter perform valuable services in putting down by ridicule those follies which the severity of the law cannot touch ; and if it is true, as I believe it to be, that of all the comic writers that have ever written since the beo;in- ning of civilised times, Moliere may be ranked as one of the first three (and I should call the other two Aristophanes and Shakespeare), it cannot be otherwise than interesting to study carefully the circumstances under which Moliere wrote, the character of the man, the character of his writings, and compare him with those who preceded and followed him. On the one hand, if you bear in mind that the period at which he wrote was one of the most important and critical periods in the whole history of France I mean the age of Louis Quatorze and when you remember that his works illustrate the state of society at that time. ON MOLIERE. 387 it is worth while for those wishing to study the his- tory, and understand the character, of the French, to attentively peruse Moliere's works. De Tocqueville showed it was in the age of Louis Quatorze that began that state of society which cul- minated in the French Revolution, coming, as it did, after the great French Civil War, introducing a period when the people were pretty well exhausted and had given way to a spirit of intrigue, when the nobles had begun to lose their great position, to quit their coun- try residences, and be attracted to Paris by the Court, so preparing the way for that great breaking up of society which took place fifty years afterwards, when at the same time society and literature were culminat- ino; and bursting; into a brilliance which had oriven to the acre the name of the Aug;ustan age of French literature, and when there was a great development art]y in (()ii,s('(|uenc(' of this great distiiic- lion lictwccii th(; classes, that when (he licvolution broke (lut, r'rciich s(ici('t\' was powci'lcss to resist it. i*eo|ile folllld 1 heiiiselves, as it Were, S]>lit Up into (litlei'cnt level plaiics, which had no lines oC intersec- tion. The hn'i njcolsi,- at that time wei'c no h)ngei' 406 ON MOLIi:RE. men of inferior worldly position to tlie nobles ; they were men of equally good education ; and yet the dis- tinction of caste was so strong that there was no feel- ing of cordiality between the classes. This was most strikingly exemplified by the feeling that existed with regard to marriage. Nothing more odious to the French than the idea of a marriag;e between a noble and a hourgeoise could possibly be conceived ; and there was a very striking illustration of this in one of Moliere's plays. ^ In this respect English society differed materially from the French, as Moliere's contemporary authors in England prove ; for in this country there was no real incongruity in a marriage between members of different classes, and there we have one of the secrets of the strength of the English aristocracy as con- trasted with that of the French. The French aris- tocracy kept itself apart and gradually grew weaker, while the bourgeoisie were rising and gaining strength. On the other hand, the English aristocracy always mixed freely with those who rose from the middle rank, and a current was continually passing from one to the other. The English aristocracy had never been exclusive, like the aristocracy of France, and as a consequence it had maintained itself in a far different way from that of the French. I feci that in this one limited effort it is impossible for me to do justice to such a writer as Moliere. He ^ Georire Dandin. ON MOLIEEE. 407 is ouG who, like Shakespeare, is abundantly quoted from ; but his writings would well repay a very close attention, and would give us not only many an hour of pleasure, but an immense amount of profitable in- formation. Indeed I may urge, from every point of view, the study not only of JMoliere's writings, but those of the other standard classical French authors. The study of French is an introduction to our own languiige, and by no better means can we improve in the know- ledge and expression of our own tongue than by at- tending to the rules of French comj^osition. APPENDIX A CHEISTMAS CHAEADE, 180-2. This was written for a large party of children who were passing their Cliristmas at Pynes, and who acted the little play January 1863. The performers were not limited as to numbers, as tlic bridal scene admitted all too young or indolent to learn a part, in the characters of bridesmaids or pages and chorus singers. Lord Iddesleigh's own eight children, three nieces, and three children of Lord and Lady 8 , intimate friends wlio were staying in the house, all took part in tlie acting, as did Lord Lldesleigh himself as the Doctor. He wrote tlie little play from experiencing th(! difficulty of Ihiding any suitable piece for a party of many young peoi)le to act in. In the case of the little I'ynes troupe, tlie ages of tlie fourteen juvenile performeis varii'd from a boy of tive to one of seventeen. ^ IT I'UEIIIS I'LACHAS. Ml/ fi rd Ifs (hinrs iviili' (ijii iL (]i roll's Til "11, siirr III r irjio /n/.is nii/ sirnml ; Of liinniill ////.s.s- shr littlr /.-/loirs, As '/irrri' lii/iilif/i /III/ tli'i/'d IliJil rhisf : ]\'iiiilil tknt he/- riiU's /inj irju/h iL'i ri' /ic/u/iiil ! 412 APPENDIX. V E E T U E E. SCENE I. The outside of a Country Inn, with signboard, on ivhich the sign is a Rug. Enter Laxdlokd. Laxdloed. Since all that owns The name of Jones, From Anglesea to Dover, May freely claim The Herbert name. In spite of Lord Llanover, Now I, John Bug, Late of the " Eug," Finding my name untoward, Advise you all. Both great and small, I'll dub me Norfolk Howard. And this mv snuo- Old inn, the " Eug," Where long I've lived in peace. With me shall rise Before your eyes, And be the " Golden Fleece." \_Takes dov:n the Eug and hangs u/p the Fleece. Enter Lovel. A CHRISTMAS CHARADE, 1862. 413 LOVKL. Benighted, wearied, famished, and bemired, "Wet tlirough, half fro;^en, lumgry, cold, and tired. Angry and sulky, cross and discontented, Oh, how I wish that railways were invented ! My horse has fallen lame, and in his knee A hlackiethorn as long as this you'll see : Leave him behind, I won't ; go on, he can't. My case is hard, as every one will grant. "Was ever such a poor unlucky fellow ? Look, if it please you, at my new umbrella ! [Disj^lai/s a torn and hroJccn one. "What's this ? An inn I Ye blessed gods, and upper l*owers ! I shall get a bed, a fire, and sup])er. Here Landlord, "Waiter, Cha'am-maid, Ostler, IJoots, Bring beef, hay, brandy, warming-pan, and oats 1 Enter Landlokd, "Waitei;, Ciiambi:i!MAID, and Ostlf.i;, Inirrijinij. Yes, sir Lani)LOi;i). Waitei;. Yes, sir ! ClIAMUKKMAII). "\'es, sir ! ( )STLF.i;. Lanhladv. "\'es, sir ! .As V(u sccni in sunic distress, sii', 'J'iiuimh we've guests in e\ei-y be(h-0()ni, 414 APPENDIX. Wliite room, pink room,. blue room, red room, And can scarcely find a niche in Garret, attic, hall, or kitchen. You shall have a place to pitch in ; And for supper, fish, fowl, flesh, Herrings red, or herrings fresh, Laxdloed. Bass's Ale or Gladstone's claret, Landlady. Soup of onion, pea, or carrot, Laxdloed. "Whisky, rum, or cherry brandy, Landlady. Conserve of figs and sugar-candy, Laxdloed. Home-brewed beer, all malt and hops, Landlady. Beef-steaks, veal-cutlets, mutton-chops, Laxdloed. Then of punch a steaming bowl, Laxdlady. Salmon, mackerel, whiting, sole ; Anything you please to wisli up, We will tell the cook to dish up. LOVEL. On my feet I seem to fall. Take my horse then to his stall : A CHRISTMAS CHARADE, 1862. 415 Draw my wet boots off my legs, And for supper send some eggs Poached, with bacon fried in slices ; Some claret, not at tarifl' jirices ; ^linced collops and a woodcock roast. And a nice ancho\y toast ; A dozen oysters in the sliell, A nice plump capon larded well ; That will do, I make no question, Heavy meals give indigestion. For dessert, just bring me here a I]ottle of your old Madeira. [Ilvit Lovel. Enter GiNEVRA and her maid IiOSE in riding-ludnts. GiXEViiA [to the OsTLEi;]. ])e kind enough to tell me, if you can, How far it is to Dunstable, good man. OsTLEi;. Eleven miles. GiNEVEA. Eleven ! did you ever i i;oSE. Xf>, ma'am, I never did, ma'am never, never! GiNEVKA. Why, really, IJose, we're in a ]retty tix ! When iirst we start(Ml we were told 'twas six ; At the first turnjiike tbey made out 'twas se\en ; 'J'lie next said I'ight, then nine, and now eleven. And still tli(,' fni'tlier on our road we go, The longer does our journey seem to grow. So if this last intelligence is right, 'Tis jdain we shan't reach Dunstable lo-nighl. 416 APPENDIX. Then let us here at this good inn alight : I see the kitchen fire is blazing bright ; Supper is getting ready, welcome sight ! And we no longer with the storm will fight, But make us merry here with all our might. Landlady. It grieves me, madam, such fair hopes to blight ; But here's no room at all. We're packed so tight, I fear you'll have to make a longer flight. GlXEVEA. Can't we some supper have ? Landlady. Xo, not a bite ; It's all bespoke. GlXEVRA. Ah me ! oh luckless wij^ht ! Oh cruel Fortune, oh malicious sprite, That still in human sufferings dost delight. And persecutest me with double spite ! Was ever hapless girl in such a plight ? Are you in earnest ? or are these but white Lies that you tell to put me in a fright ? Are you quite sure you're full ? Landlady [iviih enerfjy\ Yes, madam ; quite. When folks want beds here, ma'am, folks mostly write. EOSE. Oh please, ma'am, don't let's travel any further, Tlie roads are full of men that rob and murtlier. A CHRISTMAS CHARADE, 1862. 417 GiNEVKA. "Well, liose, if we encounter those vile plotters, And lose our lives by means of the garotters, I'll take the best revenge that can be had I'll haunt that landlady and drive her mad. [Lo\ EL 2)uts his head out of the window. LOVEL. Though to sleep I'm inclined, ]\Iy magnanimous mind AVitli conflicting emotions is harassed; And I feel, lying here, ^lost uncommonly (|ueer, When I know how that lady's embarrassed. [rcrceivcs Gixevra. But what a face I see I AVhat grace IJesides beneath that habit ! Sliall she stand tliere And I lie here Close l)urrowing like a rabbit ? No ! ril resign This room of mine ; This four-])osl b^d I'll give lit^'r: r>ut oh ! my heart 'S jiierced witli a dart Fresh (h'awu frmu Cupid's (piiver. ( ;l\hvi:a. < )h ciiiirtcMtus, gallant, Liculk; stranger, I'j. there aloft that sits, See here a helj'h-ss maid, whom danger l-"riulilens hesi(h' her wits! 2 I) 418 APPENDIX. My eyes are weary with long watching, A dreadful cold I feel I'm catching ; I yawn, I stretch, I cough, I sneeze, I burn, I shake, I faint, I freeze My eyes grow dim, my ears are humming, I feel, I know, my end is coming. LOVEL. Fair lady, though I'm no magician, Xor practise as a court physician. For due reward I'll undertake A cure of your complaint to make ; Admit me as your faithful lover, I "Will answer for your quick recovery. Here's my prescription : I resign This bedroom, which is henceforth tliine. The chambermaid sliall warm your bed, In flannel you shall wrap your head ; Jump quickly in, and do not dawdle. Then take a cup of good hot caudle. To-morrow, when you quit your bedding, AVe'll make arrangements for our wedding. [_Curtain falls. SCEXE II. Interior of the ]>kidk's houdoir. Bkide seated in centre, icith BrjDESMAiDS, Pages, d-e., ((ttcndin;j on her. In this scene the arrangement of the liiiiDES.MAiDS, PaCxES vith. fon:ers, Ac, to he attended to. Music Bridal chorus from " Der Freisehutz." FllJST PltlDESMAID. Sweet tlie labour love commands, Litiht the toil to sisters' hands ; A CHRISTMAS CHARADE, 1862. 419 See, our task is ended now ; The curls we've braided on her brow - With silken robes her form we deck, With gems adorn her snowy neck, Xow place upon her temples ]iale Bridal wreath and bridal veil. Second PjRidesmaid. liright the golden lily glows, Sweet the blush of earliest rose, Pleasant to the sight, I ween. The blossom white of myrtle green ; I)ut the gem of all my bower Is the fragrant orange flower That flower that scents the perfumed gale, Meet chaplet for the bridal veil. THiiii) Pkidesmaid. Tlie violet hides lier modest head Underneath her leafy bed, And we love lier Ijeauty Ijest When half cijucealed and lialf confcst. So, more ti:, 'J'lio ("andidato. Mr Hauhis, The I'riictical Hatter. A I'lind I5eggai'. Ladv JjKttv Trr.MorsK. Makiktta. SCKXK !. ("ANDIDATK. ,/ J)r(i iciiuj- Hoiiiii. Eatrr LaDV LkITY and .M AIMKTTA. LaIiV I'.KTTV. low faics jiiv friend, niv bliMUiiiiiL; Marietta 428 APPENDIX. Marietta. Pray call me Mary, dear, I like it better : Indeed I never felt so truly jolly As when at school you used to call me Polly. Lady Betty. Ah, Pretty Poll ! you know you were a pet. Marietta. Yes ; and we used to call you Bouncing Bet. Lady Betty. Ah me ! You were a set of vulgar girls. ]\Iafjetta. ' Daughters of dukes, dear or, at least, of earls. Lady Betty. AYell, all those happy days are gone and past, And life's bright cheerful stream is ebbing fast. Envious old Time, with his insatiate tooth. Is biting mighty mouthfuls from our youth. Say, have my features suffered from his touch ? ^Marietta. Oh ! you've gone off, dear, I can't say how much. Lady Betty. They say my eyes are still as bright as ever. ^Marietta. Oh yes ; they never were bright never, never ! Lady Betty, ]My colours are the lily and the rose. CANDIDATE. 429 ^Marietta. Yes white your cheeks, and hhishing red your nose. Lady Betty. Poets write verses to my raven hair. ^Iarietta. They're fond of fictions ; but the plaits you wear Are really excellent ; I wish you'd tell AVhicli is the shop wliere such good work they sell. Forgive my freedom, dear ; you know I'm frank. Lady Betty. And scarcely mindful, madam, of my rank. ^Lvrietta. You used to think so little of your J )ucliy, lUit since vou married vou're becoming touch v. A 1 IKS sail iancc. Lady I'etty. Mary, liold your tongue : You're growing ]>ert. .Marietta. I see I am not wrong. Indeed it mu^t be owm-d in common charity, She has some riglil to cj^uarrel with Mdgarity. Kill 11- TiTMorsK. TiTMOl'SK. Come, now, 1 thiidv V\v done tin- Ailful I)odg(.'r,- I'\e Ix't him tiflccn buiidrcd on Sir llogcr. 1 rayllicr tliiid-c I'w let the l)od^('i- in, Kriicidv lells me lie is >nri' to win ; [Kelt. 430 APPENDIX. He swears the jury's grand although it's petty : I've laid a bet, now where is Lady Betty ? Makietta. Gone to lie down ; she is not very well, It made her sick to hear you ring the bell. Titmouse. Xot well ! John, George, James, Thomas, call the doctor. Marietta. Xo need of him ! 'Tis you yourself has shocked her. Call in the best physicians of the nation. What they'll prescribe will be a separation. Titmouse. My eyes and blazes ! this is coming funny ; "Why haven't I give her no end of money ? Lor' ! you should see what slie's laid ovit in gowns She's spent a matter of a thousand pounds. She sweeps 'em up, lace, satin, velvet, silk, Just as a pig sucks up a trough of milk. Look ! here's her bill for stays, she calls 'em corsets. Give you my word 'twould buy a pair of horses. She made me fjive a guinea for a stocking. Marietta. Pray, stop, you really are becoming sliocking. Titmouse. IJeg pardon, ma'am, but since I went a-courtin'. It really have a cost me half my fortin'. ]\lArJETTA. I daresay, sir, that may l)e very true : She wanted, sir, vour fortune, and not vou. CANDIDATE. 431 Titmouse. Wliy didn't she want me ? I'd like to know. Marietta. Slie tliou<,dit you don't be angiy rather low. She couldn't bear those men you called "good fellars " ; And said you went to vulgar cider-cellars. Titmouse. I've given 'em up, I have, I'll take my oath, I've given up cider and the cellar botli : I've taken now to smoking in the attic. Marietta. I don't think even that's aristocratic. AVell, if you ever wish to please your wife, I'd have you wholly change your way of life. Take my advice as kindly as 'tis meant ; Leave ofl' the odious manners of a " gent." J)o something practical, and like a man, And be a gentleman ; that's if y(ju can. [E.reuiit. SCKXK 11. Hat." JJuor of the l^rddiral Hatter s slioji. Hakuis t/n: I'mctLccJ 1 1 utter see ted out aide. Uaiikis [.sZ/v/s-]. \\'hat will the next of my i ustomers order ^. What will till! hat that \w choosc.'s he i W"\\\ he (-((nie from I'"rance or from over the iJorder ? 1 know not now, l)Ut I soon shall see. Jle may be tall, or lie may he stum]iy, Hi; may be thin, . They ate his liesli, his bones, liis dog, liis cat ; I'.ut, sec! tliey nt'ver dared to toucli liis hat. < )li no ! not th(;y. I'd just like to have seed 'cin, Tlie hat's the, con; of (Civil-IJeligious) Freedom, i.ook ! here's the hat that Cessler made men bow to, Which stotit oltl William Tell, he knew not how to, ll is the key-stone of the (.'oust it lit ion. 2 I-: 434 APPENDIX. You've heard about the great Trench Eevolution, And how the Sans-culottes, bloodthirsty wretches, Upset the throne, by leaving off their breeches. But what would happen would be worse than that, If Great John Bull should once leave off his hat. Enter a Blind Beggak and his dog. Blind Beggar. Pity my sorrows and my sad condition, Titmouse. Shut up ! I hate, of all things, a petition. Blind Beggar. Petition's bad, but competition's worse : That competition is the army's curse. I've seen some service. Prythee, don't be scoffy, sir, Once on a time I was a smart young officer. I thought to get promotion, but, l)ehold ! Purchase was smashed, and we poor soldiers sold. To purchase anything we were not able, I don't think they'd have let us buy a table. So when I found my money was no use, I spent it all, and then went to the deuce. I hope your honour will bestow a copper. Titmouse. To give to beggars is, I'm told, imprope]-. I go for Charity Organisation. Blind P>eggai;. Those organ-grinders are my ruination, They gets a sliilling wliere I gets a ]")enny, And yet my dog can howl as well as any. CANDIDATE. 435 I'd rather feel his teeth upon my leg, Than hear the noises they make when they beg. Titmouse. Well, here's some halfpence, catch 'em in your hat. [Titmouse, ijoing, throirs some halfpence into the Beggar's liat, the crown of tvhieh comes out, and the halfpence fall to the fjround. Tit- mouse picks them iip, puts them in his pocket, cmd ru7is off laurjhinrj. Blind P)Eggar. Thank you for nothing, you owdacious flat. Somj. The hat that once on Epsom Down Adorned a CJuardsman's head, Xow useless hangs without a crown, And all its nap is lied. Xo more it keeps out rain or dew, Xo better than a sieve ; ,Vn(l sometimes gents drop coppers througli, To show that still they ETTY. ni ^et a Yellow crowd, and you, ^Liry dear, shall get a blue. [The ladies (jo out, and rdurn on opposite sides, liringi/uj in ti'-o erotcds: Titmol'SE mounts the Jiustiwjs, and the Hatteu stands behind hi/n. TiT.MOUSE. < iood ladies all, and gentlemen, i>raY don't be Yery critical, r used to call my s
    roperty. < )ut of my senses I am drove, because slie's turned sensational ; Jler lyranny I can't descril)e, it's undenomiualioual : Sometimes shell storm about a gown, and sumetimes for a mult rai^e, And sometimes shell come down and say, sht; wants tlie Women suflVagi'. And now sIk-'s taki-n up a wliim, the oddest of tlie century. That ;dl .-mart thinus in town are kejit for memlx-rs ]a]liameiitary. So, if \-oii a-k me wliv I'm liei-e ! this oidv 1 can sa\', it is 440 APPENDIX. In order that my lady may enjoy the London gaieties. You soon will make me your M.P., I'll hazard that prediction, And when I am so, you will find I'm open to conviction. One point there is on which my mind entirely up-made is, And that is, that I will put down those very learned ladies. I'll make them stick to needlework, and mind their cradle- rockings, And, for that purpose, I'll propose a tax upon blue-stockings. And one thing more there is to which I've given much reflection, It is that stupid Act they call " The Little Birds' Protection." What I'll protect are gooseberries and nectarines and peaches ; I can't exactly say how far that foolish schedule reaches, For many names I cannot find in lexicons or grammars. But this at least I'm clear upon, I'll kill up yellow-hammers. And now you've heard my sentiment, my colour you shall choose it. And whatsoever it may be, you'll find I won't refuse it. Song. What colour shall he wear ? says the man with the vote ; What colour shall he wear ? says the man with the vote : Shall we deck him with the buff? Chorus. Xo, he isn't man enough, And he talks such horrid stuff, Says the man with the vote. What colour shall we choose ? says the man with the vote ; What colour shall we choose ? says the man with the vote : Shall we trust him with the blue ? Chorus. Xo, that would never do, Tor he never would be true, Savs the man with the vote. CANDIDATE. 441 Now, what colour can it be ? says tlie man with the vote ; Now, what colour can it be ? says the man with the vote. Oluynis. AVliat colour can we mean But a very verdant green ? That's the colour shall be seen. Says the man with the vote. Tableau. [Curtain. SIBYL'S CAVE. Wbitten by Sir Stafford Xorthcote, August 1869, at the desire of Lady S. Fortescue, who wished for a legend of Castle Hill and Sibyl's Cave and brook a cavern with a stream issuing from it of great natural beauty, in the woods that lie around the house. A large party, among whom was the American Minister, had been much struck with the charms of the spot and its romantic name, and felt that, combined, they were subjects that ought to inspire a ballad. The Pixies dance on Oxford Down ; On Castle Field they form a ring ; And when the yew-trees darkly frown, He holds his Court, the I'ixy king. In vain with Lenten roses crowned, With gilticups and violets dear, The elvish maidens tread the round ; The Pixy king is sad of cheer. " The time is come," he sighed, and said, " The day, the fatal hour, is come, When we must quit this well-loved glade, Must leave these hills, the Pixies' home. sibyl's cave. 44; " A Inimaii foot our path has trod, Has scaled our heights, has crossed our dell ; And human hands have turned our sod, And human lips have touched our well. " Soon must these trees, our leafy screen. Before the woodman's axe give way ; The ruthless plough deface the scene Of bygone pomp and revels gay. ' Haste, let us quit tliis hallowed place, Ere yet the ruin be complete ; Fly the profane, the hated race, And seek from man a sure retreat. " Within yon hill's o'erhanging side, That o'er our brooklet casts its shade, Are wondrous mansions, halls of pride, And stately bowers l)y Pixies made. ''The walls with burnished gold are red, The windows liglit witli emerald slieen ; A\'ilh orient ])earls the lioors are s]iread, And tur([Uoise blue and emerald green. "There tliou, my Sibyl, daughter dear, Shalt crown my cup, slialt lead iIk; dance Intruding man tliou shalt not fear Safe slialt thou dwell fr(m human gljince.' " N'ay 1 father, nay ! I caiiiiot Icavi; This lirighl, lliis fair, tliis hapjiy eartli. To livi,' witliiii a suiili'ss caNc; I have 111) hi-ait fur siiiilr>s luirtli. 444 APPENDIX. " I love the hills, I love the flood, I love the meads with flowerets gay ; I love the darkling Easter wood, I love the merry tinkling Bray. " I love to see the great red-deer, I love the salmon in the pool. The blackcock's cry at morn to hear, The beetle's hum at evening cool. " Mine rather be the mortals' fate, ']\Iid scenes like these a life to spend, Than in those halls of dreary state To pine for aye, and hope no end." More had she said, but feared to meet Her sire's dark brow of gathering gloom. He cast the sceptre at his feet ; He spoke the awful Pixy doom, " Peace, senseless maid 1 thy daring tongue Hath broke the law that Pixies own ; Thine own rash words the knell have rung. That drives thee from thy father's throne. " Be thine to share the mortals' lot, Their cares, their toils, their griefs to know : The land of fairies knows thee not ; Hence from my presence, mortal, go ! " It was a knight of nol)le mien Came riding down the Castle Field ; His lance was strong, his sword was keen, Por crest he Ijore a stainless shield. sibyl's cave. 445 Along the quiet brooklet's side He passed until lie reached a spot, AVhere 'mid the hazels he espied The entrance to a rustic grot. And there a form he could discern, AVhich, startled Ijy his horse's tread, Sprang up and plunged among the fern, The fern high waving o'er his head. He sprang to earth, he leaped the brook. He could not choose but feel the charm ; Through fern and hazel-bush he broke, He holds the wanderer in his arm. And there the maiden stood confest. The maid that broke the Pixies' law ; It was the brightest, merriest, best, And dearest face he ever saw. Sucli life was in lier open brow, Sucli life was in her briglit black eye ; Slie smiled, T camiot tell you how; He loved, I well could tell you why. Xeeds ikjL to tell wliat words lie said, Xor liow he wooeil, nor liow he sighed; KuoULjli, I say, lliat well he sped, And Sibyl is the Strong Man's bride. All! blest indeed that Stroiej; Man's lot. And liai)]iy is the Strong Man's life; AN'ell liii'jlit lit; loN'e the riisiic grot W'lieie liist Ik' touiid bis I'ixy wife. 446 APPENDIX. He never asked if face more fair In courtly halls perchance were seen ; To him the brightest beauty there Was dim beside his Fairy Queen. There was not one among them all With step so free, so true, so light ; There was not one among them all With glance so arch, so kind, so bright. It seemed she trod the woodland grove As if the world once more w^ere young ; Each living creature claimed her love, And round her every motion hung. The deer would court her fond caress. The leverets wanton round her feet, The birds their liveliest songs address, The flowers their odours breathe more sweet. She had her share of human mirth. She had her share of human grief ; She felt the woes that haunt the earth, She found the tears that bring relief. Full well her noble lord she loved. Full well she loved her children dear ; Yet as amidst them all she moved. There clung to her a boding fear. And sometimes would she haste away, Draw^n by what force she could not tell, And lie the livelong summer's day Beside the cave within the dell. SIBYLS CAVE. 447 And from within its dark recess Unearthly sounds would to her come : She knew, though none but she could guess. That faint wild horn, that mufHed drum. 'Twas not so nnich her ear that caught The mystic sounds that rolled along ; It was her beating heart that taught The burden of that awful song : " Fallen daughter, hear our spell ; Thine it is on earth to dwell, Shouldst thou toucli the Pixie's water, Once more we claim the I'ixie's daughter." One summer evening forth she strayed, It was the night of fair St John ; The moonbeams on the strcandet played, And brightly on tlie hill tliey shone. At once from out tlie inmost liill Strange music to lier ear is borne, And ringing laugliter clear and slirill, And liark ! the echoing I'ixy liorn. And see ! they come, a juerry band. Once nion; llicir nati\(' haunts to y'ww, Once, more to dance on Tixy's land, Once more to laslc the Pixy's dew. "Come sister, eoine ! " they sudden call, "Too long thou loiteicst fi'oni thy home; Thy seat stands eiii]ity in our hall, Thv couch is spreail ; come, sister, coiue !" 448 APPENDIX. She starts, she flies ; the troop pursue. Haste Sibyl, haste, or all is lost ! How swift her flight, her step how true ! The bank is reached, the stream is crossed. Alas ! what means that piercing scream ? The faithless stepping-stone gave way. Her foot hath touched the Pixies' stream ; They seize, they bear her far away. But where into the brook she fell, Beneath the greenwood's darkling shade, With rough stones more than I can tell A rustic bridge the Strong Man made. And there he ever would abide, Still gazing down into the wave ; Or listening for his Pixy bride Within the vault of Sibyl's cave. Long years have passed, and men forgot The story of that once-loved place ; And yet the hall of Sibyl's grot Is still the home of Sibyl's race. I've heard their laughter in the wood, I've seen their gambols in the plain. And thought that in the merry brood I still could trace the Pixy strain. And when the queen of all the band, Beside the stream, one summer's day, Upon me laid that strange command, And bid me sing lost Sybil's lay, sibyl's cave. 449 It seemed as though a wizard arm Rolled back for me the mist of time ; 'Twas Sibyl's self that spoke the charm, 'Twas Sibyl's self inspired the rhyme. L'Envoi. Fair ladies, since I know you look For something sage to point my stave, Don't wet your feet in Pixie's brook, Lest you be lost in Sibyl's cave. 2 F CLERK OF OXENFORDE. This ballad was found among some old papers, and written appa- rently while Sir Stafford was at Oxford. It was scribbled in pencil, and hardly decipherable, but Sir Stafford has sometimes mentioned the legend. Huber, in his ' English Universities/ vol. i. p. 193, gives it thus: "Each separate College not only has its history but once had its traditions of which, however, the over- wisdom of modern times has scarcely left us one. Among the best was certainly that concerning a scholar of Queen's College, Oxford, who, being attacked during a solitary walk by a wild boar, thrust his Aristotle down the animal's throat, and returned homo in triumph with the head. For this reason the boar's head played a prominent part in the Christmas festivities at this College, and even in Wood's time continued to be greeted Avith the followintr ' The boar's head in hand bear I, Bedecked with baj's and rosemarj* ; And I fray you, masters, merry be, Quot quot estis in convivio. Caput apri refero Reddens laudes Dornlno. The boar's head, as I understand, Is the bravest dish in the land ; Being thus bedecked with gay garland Let us servire convivio. Caput ajyri, &c. Our steward has provided this, In honour of the king of bliss Which on this day to be served is In Reginensi Atrio. Cajyut apri, &c.' " CLERK OF OXENFORDE. 451 1. It was at ancient Oxenforde, In good King Alfred's time, There walked a youth on Headington About the morning prime. 2. Upon his seemly head a cap Close fitted to his crown ; And all about liim in fair wise There hung an ample gown. 3. For he was not a Commoner, As many others are, P>ut he was a wight of learned fame, .Vud a mighty great scholar. 4. ^Vud in his hand a book he l)ore, Wherein he walking read ; It was a mighty tome, I wis, Y-bound in white and red. It was to weet J)au Aristote, In a fair Creciau text ; The iiiitre ihe scholar read tliercin, The more he was per])lext. G. He looked u\>, \n\ Inokecl idiiiid, Tlie iiieauing ior to tiiid, .\iid tliere Iw. was 'ware of a '^real wild Itoar ( 'aiue charijiiiii him behiml. 452 APPENDIX. 7. Like to that beast of Eurymantlie Whom great Alcides slew, Or that which ^Nleleager quelled, This monster was to view. Like to a red hot-coal of fire So blazed his furious eye, And from his grinding tusks about The snow-white foam did fly. 9. Xow Heaven thee help, thou good scliolar, Xo mortal aid is nigh ; Thou canst not hope by flight to 'scape. He cometh so furiously. 10. Then he devised a goodly gest. As e'er in tale was writ ; Who cannot win by force, he said. He needs must win by wit, 11. His back against a sturdy tree Ptight manfully he placed, And with the book in his right hand The mighty boar he faced. 12. Adown the monster's gaping throat That volume then he thrust ; Quoth he, " This book doth puzzle me, It sliall puzzle thee, I trust." CLERK OF OXENFORDE. 453 13. " This book," said he, " hath choked me, It shall choke thee too, I ween ; But an if thou swallow it, thou shalt In evil case be seen." 14. As when a jolly candidate Thinks in the schools to pass. So came the boar right merrily Bounding along the grass. 15. As when the stern examiner That candidate doth lloor. So, overthrown by that good Ijook, Fell down the angry boar. 16. Thrice he essayed to cast it up, And thrice to gulp it down ; Tiien at the last his powerful Ijreath Did yield in mortal swoon. 17. " Xow thaidvs, now thanks, Don Aristote," Tiie scholar 'gan to say ; " I ween the l)est turn e'er thid sing and ( haunt his worthy ])raise, \Vh( sh^w the L'reat wild boar. 456 APPENDIX. 31. Then came they back to Oxenforde In fair array, I guesse, And all around to see that sight The townsmen they did presse. 32. And when they were to dinner sett In midst of spacious hall, That scholar brought the wild-boar head To the table for them all. And still, when merrie Christmas comes. All in his season due, Then doe the Dons of Oxenforde, That festivall renew. 34. "Wlien as the holly decks the hall. And eke the mistletoe. And in the chimney blazing bright The ashen faggots glow, 35. Then doth a scholar deck the board With a boar's head garnisht brave ; And as he setteth it adown. Doth chaunt this goodly stave : 36. " Lordings, your feast is fairly spread, Now give ye thanks therefore ; And in your mirthe remember him Who slew the OTeat wild boar." LINES DUKE OF WELLINGTON'S STATUE. These lines were Avritten by Lord Lldesleigh when he was reading for the I')ar in London, after leaving Oxford, whicli he did in 1839. When he wrote them, the statue of the great Duke of "Wellington on the arch at Hyde Park Corner had recently been put u]i, and was tlie subject of much adverse criticism. After its removal in LS86, Lord Iddesleigh remarked to his wife one day, while walk- ing near the spot, " One of the earliest things I remember, after coming to London to settle in chambers, was writing some verses about that statue. I wonder Avhere they are." The Duke, whom always we've alloweil 'I'lj be tlie iddl of the crowd (Except wlieii tliis or t'otlier sin does i'rovoke llieir stones to break his windows), lias lately, in his green old ai^e, llecfnne, they say, so much the ra,L;t' So lillio;;raj)lied, euLjraviMl, and ])ainted, ilcrhymcd, bepraised, and almost sainlcd ; 111 all his rides, in all bis walks, Whene'er he eats, whene'er he talks 458 APPENDIX. At liome, in church, at board, in bed. So well described from heel to head ; At balls and concerts, plays and ballets, Gaped at by heroes and their valets In royal court, in humblest room. By Whigs, by Tories, and by Brougham ; In short, so much the rage in town. The gods resolved to take him down. 'Twas at the great Olympian Court (Which, by the way, was rather short ; For Venus, though she owned 'twas silly. Could never keep from Piccadilly ; And Mars from time to time must look How all went on about the Duke ; Pallas and Hermes once a-week Went to the Lords' to hear him speak ; And Fame, since first his Grace she knew, Had always had enough to do) ; 'Twas, as we said, at Jove's great levee The gods discussed the subject heavy. Great Jove himself, a despot true, Briefly commenced, " This will not do : Devise some remedy who can. Our thunder else shall strike the man." The words were somewhat of the sternest. But all perceived they were in earnest. And that if something were not done. The game was up with Wellington. Compassion moved each noble breast, The goddesses were most distressed ; A Duke, so stout of heart and limb. They could not sure abandon him ; And 'twould be hard if female wit On some expedient could not hit. LINES ON THE DUKE OF WELLINGTON'S STATUE. 459 Save liim, in short, they will and must, And many a way thereof discussed, Yet though ingenious more or less. Their plans were all without success : Xone turned the wrath of Jove away, And all he granted was delay. That night, as Juno lonely sate. Lamenting o'er her hero's fate. With aching head and bosom sore, A knock was heard at the outer door, " Admit the stranger," Juno cried, And straightway through the portal wide The stranger came a goddess she, ]hit not of first-rate quality ; Full seldom loved, full often feared, At Court hut rarely she appeared ; Sliunned by the gods on days of state, They sought her when they learnt to hate, For none could crush tlieir enemies So skilfully as Nemesis, Her face was singular enougli, Seen from above, 'twas hard and rough ; I)Ut tliose wlio saw it from below Have said more mild it seemed to grow. AVitli i)lain address and liauglity mien. She stood l)efore the goddess queen. 15o()ts not to give their conversation; This was, in fine, tlie i)eroration : "(Ireat (pujcn, to Vulcan's forge I hie, 'l"o order there this monstrous guy. And when our sovereign sees ilie wonder, \'ou'll find he thinks no more of ihunth-r." 'I'hus havint,' sairary from which it was borrowed. rTT^ OLAPRl 3l9di> Form L9 ACS Idde sleigh - 119 1 Lectures and e ssa y s* UC SOUTHERNJEGJON_AUIBRAR>J ACIta A A 000 038 844