-NRLF

Henry D. Bacon,

St. Louis, Mo.

U NIVERSITY OF . Q\LIBORNIAr

G-IFT OF

HENRY DOUGLASS BACON.

1877.

Accessions No._/_j?_&_4<:0___ Shelf No.. _'_..^:^: ,

THE

SCHOOL OF THE FUTURE.

By the same Author,

HOW MUCH LONGER ARE WE TO CONTINUE TEACHING

NOTHING MORE THAN WHAT WAS TAUGHT TWO OB THREE CENTURIES AGO? 8vo. Is. HATCHARD, Piccadilly.

And,

WHY MUST WE EDUCATE THE WHOLE PEOPLE? AND WHAT PREVENTS OUR DOING IT? 8vo. 1*. GROOMBBIDGE, Paternoster

LONDON :

SPOTTISWOODKS and SHAW, New-street-square.

SOME THOUGHTS

ABOUT THE

SCHOOL OF THE FUTURE!

A SKETCH OF THE SOLUTION WHICH

TIME APPEARS TO BE PREPARING FOR THE DIFFERENT EDUCATIONAL QUESTIONS OF THE DAY.

REV.. FOSTER BARHAM ZINCKE,

VICAR OF WHERSTEAD, NEAK IPSWICH.

0?

LONDON:

LONGMAN, BROWN, GREEN, AND LONGMANS, 1852.

PREFACE.

THE title which I have ventured to give to this little work seems to require a word or two of ex- planation. I have adopted it merely for the pur- pose of indicating the kind of education, and the kind of school-system which I conceive would most effectually meet the wants, and enable us to avail ourselves of the resources, of the present day. I cannot but think that the enlightened philanthrophy of the upper classes, and the rapid increase now taking place among the lower classes in all the chief elements of social and political power, — in their numbers, intelligence, wealth, and means for com- bined action, — will lead to the creation of some such system ; and that the character of the instruc- tion given in our future schools will not be very dissimilar to that which I have sketched. Nor can I imagine any other way in which the management of the schools of a free country can be conducted.

WHERSTEAD VICARAGE, Feb. 3rd, 1852.

CONTENTS.

THE SCHOOL OF THE FUTURE - Pages 1 — 160

APPENDIX.

No. I. — The late Exhibition, regarded as an exponent of the present state, and of the tendencies, of Society ; and as affording grounds for a comparison of the present with the past - - 161

II. — On the influential position which the Schoolmasters of the future will probably occupy - - 215

III. — On the present position, and the prospects, of Literary and Scientific Institutions, Mechanics' Institutes, Provincial Museums, and other voluntary Associa- tions of an educational character - 217

IV. — That the competition of the United States will oblige us to improve and extend popular education - 222

V. — A proposal for the appropriation of the surplus funds of the late Exhibition - - - 227

TJSIVERSITY

SCHOOL OF THE FUTURE.

THE master-conditions under which we have to con- struct our system of Education appear to be the following : —

I. That every member of the community must now be educated, and, therefore, that the School ought now to be at every man's door.

II. That, in consequence of the extension of knowledge, and of the variety of the wants and requirements of the present state of society, and in consequence of what have now become the conditions of success in life, and of well-being, particularly among the vast industrial populations of our towns, the range of subjects upon which instruction ought to be given must now be very much extended. This would almost seem to imply, that the practice of restricting ourselves to what a single master is capable of teaching (which is for the most part the case in our present classical, commercial, and primary schools), ought to be considered rather as having

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2 SCHOOL OF THE FUTURE.

belonged to the circumstances of the past than as suitable to our present wants.

III. That, as the social and political relations of the different orders of the people are, by the diffusion of knowledge, and through the operation of other causes connected with the progress of society, now assuming new aspects, education must be made to meet the new state of things, and, as far as possible, to prepare all orders for it, in such a manner as that good and not evil may be the result.

In other words, all must be taught; each must have the opportunity of learning whatever it will be most conducive to his own and to the general advan- tage that he should know; and in organizing our schools we must not ignore the social facts and irre- sistible tendencies of the present day.

While considering this question, we must never lose sight either of the present state of knowledge, or of the present state of society in this country.

It may, however, be worth while, as a preliminary consideration, to dwell for a few moments upon some of the most prominent evils of the present state of education amongst us. This shall be done as briefly as possible.

1. In the first place, our present schools teach very little of what ought in these days to be taught. In two pamphlets which I published upon this sub- ject, one last year, and the other in the previous year, I endeavoured to draw attention to the fact that our

DEFECTS OF PRESENT SYSTEM. 3

public schools and the University of Oxford were then hardly beginning to think about teaching any thing more than what was taught two or three cen- turies ago. The advances which knowledge has made since our present system of education was established do, perhaps, exceed in amount and im- portance the advances which had been made in all the previous thousands of years during which man had existed upon the earth. Physical Science in its numerous departments, and almost endless minuter ramifications ; Physical Geography, which shows the bearings and connections of so much of Physical Science ; Modern History, containing so large a por- tion of the history of Man and of Civilisation ; Eth- nology ; General Philology ; the Social and Econo- mical Sciences ; the Literature of the polished nations of modern Europe; — have all now become highly important branches of study : any one of them can well bear comparison, in respect of its intrinsic value, with the study of Latin and Greek, and yet all of them are excluded from our schools ; the reason, perhaps, being, that the knowledge which we possess upon these subjects has been acquired — the reader will be aware of the few deductions which may be made from this remark — subsequently to the esta- blishment of our present system of classical educa- tion. What we know upon these subjects constitutes the highest and most important (which might almost be inferred from the fact of its being the most B 2

SCHOOL OF THE FUTURE.

recent) part of the knowledge which man has been allowed to acquire. The new powers of various kinds, and of infinite application, which modern Science has conferred upon us, and the ideas and sentiments which have been derived from an enlarged study (now possible) of Man's History, and from a successful in- vestigation of the laws to which society is subject, do in a great measure support our present civilisation, and carry it forward, modifying as well as elevating it day by day. Knowledge of this kind interprets, as far as we have attained to their interpretation, the greater part of the phenomena and facts by which we are surrounded, and in the midst of which, and with a reference to which, we have to act our part in life, and upon our ability to cope with which our success in life depends ; and yet it can hardly be said that any part of this all-important knowledge has gained admission into our schools. In our higher schools we are only just beginning to think of looking beyond the language and literature of Greece and Rome. Enter any good library, arid you will be struck with the smallness of the proportion of the works upon classical subjects ; or take up any one of our modern Cyclopedias, and, although some centu- ries back there was scarcely any thing to be learnt excepting what was contained in the Classics, you will at a glance perceive how small is the proportion of space which it is now thought necessary to allot to subjects of classical interest ; and yet an acquaint-

PROPOSED REMEDY UNSATISFACTORY. O

ance with the Classics formed the object and the instrument of the education of every one of us. And, besides, we go on teaching the language and the literature of Greece and Rome in such a manner, that, while it is certain that in a great majority of cases not even these will be learned, it is all but impossible to engraft any thing else upon the system. A proof of this may be found in the fact, that even in our two chief Universities the Professors of many of the above-mentioned sciences, though very able men, and though they are desirous of forwarding the study of the subjects upon which they are commis- sioned to teach, are, notwithstanding, unable to make themselves of any use.

It has been proposed that some part of the Uni- versity course should be devoted -to the study of science, modern history, and modern literature. This proposal shows a misapprehension of the ques- tion before us. I. In the first place, its adoption would contribute towards perpetuating the idea of the disconnection of the different branches of know- ledge ; whereas it ought to be a main object with us, throughout the whole course of education, to show their connection and inter-dependence. II. In the next place, after the student has devoted his attention up to about the twentieth year of his age to classical studies, so that his mind has become habituated to the idea of restricted and exclusive study, and pre- occupied with classical tastes, an inaptitude and dis-

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6 SCHOOL OF THE FUTURE,

taste for general knowledge and more enlarged studies will be acquired. After this has been done, it will be futile to direct his attention, for some part of the University course, to the general body of human knowledge* III. And furthermore, this way of settling the difficulty only affects the case of the Universities, leaving the case of the schools entirely out of the question ; whereas both the relative and intrinsic importance of universities is daily diminish- ing, while the importance of the school, where all but the whole population will receive the whole of their education, is daily increasing.

As to our public schools, and our grammar schools, at present, as far as the character of the instruction given in them is concerned, they can hardly be re- garded as more than nurseries and feeders of the Universities. To introduce the study of modern subjects and general knowledge into them would be a still more difficult task than that of introducing it into our Universities. At the Universities there are professors of almost every department of knowledge ; and, if it were desirable, their number might easily be increased ; so that, with respect to them, we do already, to a considerable extent, possess the machin- ery requisite for teaching all that ought in these days to be taught ; and much might be done, were it not that the whole system and genius of the place (I speak with more particular reference to the Uni- versity of Oxford) are thoroughly opposed to the

WRONG AIMS OF OUR PRESENT SCHOOLS. 7

feelings and ideas which such teaching would intro- duce. The attempt, however, to give instruction of a more general character can not be made at our public schools without entirely recasting the whole of their present system. The system of instruction they pursue was devised for the purpose of teaching one thing, and it cannot be expanded into a system which shall embrace a much wider range, or which shall aim at teaching many things. There is no way in which it can be made to admit of a variety of studies. The ten years spent at a public school in the study of Latin and Greek is not sufficient time, in nine cases out of ten, for the acquisition of a compe- tent knowledge of those languages ; nor will it be, as long as we continue to teach them in the manner in ivhich they are at present taught in our public schools. And for this almost every thing else is sacrificed.

Nothing need be said of the inefficiency of those schools, which professedly undertake the education of the commercial or middle classes.

There remain the schools at which the bulk of the people are supposed to be educated — the only schools which are open to the children of the labour- ing classes. These schools are for the most part more or less of an eleemosynary character ; and have even less reference, than our grammar or commercial schools, to the circumstances of the times, and the wants of the class whose children frequent them. Their object is not, to enable those who will be en- B 4

8 SCHOOL OF THE FUTURE.

tirely dependent through life upon their own know- ledge, industry, and prudence, not only for their well-being, but for their very bread, to see how they may turn their powers to the best account, and so be able to provide for themselves. Speaking generally, in these schools religious instruction occupies the place which is held by classical instruction in the education of the upper orders ; while, from the hum- ble character to which almost all these schools are doomed by our present system, this religious instruc- tion seldom goes beyond the Text of Scripture. Most persons who take an interest in educational matters have now acknowledged that this is of very little practical value. There are two ways of in- fluencing a mans conduct; one is by training his feelings and the moral part of his nature aright ; and the other is by enlightening his understanding, and so giving him the means of coming to right conclusions : the best system of education would unite the two : these schools are incapable of doing either to any effectual extent,

2. Another evil, inseparable from the present sys- tem, is its enormous expense, both as a whole, and to the individuals who avail themselves of it. The expense to which the smaller gentry and the middle classes are put for the education of their children is very severely felt ; in many cases families are crippled by it ever afterwards. Many a professional man, many clergymen, and many officers in the army and

EXPENSIVENESS OF OUR PRESENT SYSTEM. 9

navy, are paying 100Z. a year for each child at our public schools. At some of our great public schools the expenses do even exceed this sum. How many hundreds does it often require to educate a family upon the present system ! It is not improbable that there are many cases in which the education of single families is now costing what, in these days, would be sufficient to support a really good school, capable of educating, up to their thirteenth or four- teenth year, two or three hundred children.

The cost, indeed, of our present system of classical education is almost incredible ; nor is it easy to see how it can be diminished as long as we make the acquisition of the old learning the main object of education. Suppose we were to undertake to sup- port a part of the population upon some exotic delicacy, which could only be brought to maturity by laying out vast sums in glass-houses, fuel, and at- tendance, while, at the very time, the surrounding fields were teeming with a great variety of better and more wholesome food. The folly and expense of such a proceeding would illustrate the folly and expense of our present system of education, which retains for its object an acquaintance with the litera- ture of Greece and Rome.

If our common schools taught what the people understood the value of, and were desirous of learn- ing, we might maintain a good school in every neigh- bourhood ; and our great public schools would be all B 5

10 SCHOOL OF THE FUTURE.

the more flourishing. In school matters, as in every thing else in these days, we must " go for numbers'* — we must have a system which will command the support of the great body of the people : and such a system of schools for the people will, in the most effectual manner, assist, improve, and strengthen our higher schools and universities.

Now if we were but to avail ourselves of the faci- lities and resources (what these are will be pointed out) which we do at the present moment possess, for the purpose of establishing good local schools, in many cases almost the whole of this expense might be saved, and in all cases up to the thirteenth or fourteenth year of a child's age. Under such a sys- tem as we might now organize, an education, or, at all events, the foundations of an education, worthy of these times, might be given at a yearly cost of per- haps not more than what parents are now paying for the travelling expenses of their children to some dis- tant school, four or six journeys between home and the school being made every year. .

The expensiveness of our university education is notorious.

The greatest obstacle also to the extension of education amongst the labouring classes is the diffi- culty of raising sufficient funds for the erection and maintenance of schools conducted on the present system.

3. Another evil, which is inseparable from our

CHILDREN SENT FROM HOME TOO EARLY. 11

present system of education, as far as the children of the upper, and a great proportion of the children of the middle, classes are concerned, is the want of proper supervision at its commencement, we may say from the age of seven or eight to that of thirteen or fourteen. For children of this age no substitute can be found for the affectionate vigilance of a parent. A child who, up to the age at which children are usually sent to boarding schools, has been secluded from every evil influence, and trained to virtue with ever watchful affection and care, is on a sudden sent off to a boarding school, where he will have to live amongst a number of boys of various ages. Few parents can submit their children, at so impressible an age, to this ordeal, without some serious misgivings; perhaps without some bitter pangs. Many a child is thus prematurely introduced to, and familiarized with, much that is bad and contaminating. This is a fault of the system which no supervision or vigi- lance on the part of the masters of the school could prevent. Do what they may, it must take place : there is no remedy for it : it belongs to the system. Arnold was fully aware of this objection to public schools ; and it is one which every day will be felt more strongly. It is often met by the observation, that this early familiarity with evil is a good pre- paration for the world. This seems to be a mistake. Early familiarity with evil may be a good preparation for the clever and discreet practice of evil in after

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12 SCHOOL OF THE FUTURE.

life, but it can hardly be a good preparation for any thing else. How many bad habits — such as extra- vagance, irregularities of various kinds, disinclination to any kind of study, or of mental exertion — has the public school system a direct tendency to produce.

That there are great advantages also in our public school system few people are disposed to deny : the question is, how may we secure these without running a very great risk of more than counter-balancing evils ? Perhaps this might be done by keeping the child, up to about his thirteenth year, under his parents' eyes, and in the mean time giving him, in company with other children) a better education than he could possibly receive at a public, or a boarding, school. During this time, which is the very period in which we receive the strongest and most abiding impressions, principles might be implanted which would after- wards enable a youth to pass three or four years at a public school without any very great risk. Perhaps we now possess the means of constructing a general school system which might be fully adequate to the instruction of all children, at least up to a certain age, when those who were intended for public schools might proceed to them, better prepared for turning to good account the peculiar advantages of the public school system, and less likely to suffer from its dangers. Under the present system a boy is sent to a public school before he has acquired any habits of attention, or industry, and almost before

DOES NOT ADMIT OF COOPERATION. 13

he is acquainted with the difference between right and wrong ; and is left to form his own opinions and habits, as chance, and the public opinion of the school, may influence him.

4. A fourth evil inherent in our present system of education is the fact that each part of it stands by itself, entirely isolated and disconnected from all the other parts. Our public schools and univer- sities in no way aid, nor are they in any way connected with, our middle or commercial schools. Nor, again, do our schools for the labouring classes receive any aid from, nor are they in any way con- nected with, our middle schools, or our universities. These three divisions of our educational system, which might upon a better organised plan very effectually assist and strengthen each other, stand entirely aloof from each other. This is a very serious impediment to the improvement and progress of education amongst us : in what way it is so will be pointed out more fully when we have arrived at another part of our subject: at present my" object is only to direct attention to it as one of the evils of the present state of education in. this country. The friends of education would do well not to lose sight of the necessity of providing some remedy for it in any plan for which they may be desirous of obtain- ing the attention and favour of the public.

It can hardly be necessary to say that the pre- ceding remarks contain nothing that is in any degree

14 SCHOOL OF THE FUTURE*

inconsistent with the highest appreciation of the value of classical knowledge. What is wanted upon this point is, not that the classics should be neglected — for then we should lose our connection with the past; we should lose one of the most important chapters in the history of man's mind, and one of the most important in the history of his fortunes — but that they should be studied by better methods, and to better purpose, and with a better economy of time ; and that they should be studied conjointly with other subjects and departments of knowledge, which would necessarily conduce to a better understanding, and a higher appreciation, of the classics themselves.

I again repeat that I have no wish to depreciate classical learning : far from it. I simply, but ear- nestly, wish to deprecate the continuance in these days of the practice of making an acquaintance with the classical tongues (for we can hardly call it an acquaintance with classical literature) the real ob- ject, and almost the sole instrument, of school education; the reasons which once made this abso- lutely necessary having, in this present state of knowledge, of society, and of our own literature, ceased to have any existence.

Latin might be taught — attention being directed merely to the language, and not at all to the litera- ture — with great advantage in all good schools. There would be no harm in the more intelligent among the children of small farmers and trades-

QUALIFICATIONS FOR TEACHING THE CLASSICS. 15

men, and even of labourers^ being brought in this way to have more distinct ideas on the subject of grammar, some insight into the nature of language, and a better understanding of their own tongue. But then it must be taught upon a totally different plan from that now- adopted in our public schools.

The qualifications necessary for the profitable teaching of the classics in our higher schools and universities are, — 1. Extensive philological know- ledge ; because the study of Language should be one of our objects in teaching them ; 2. Correct taste, and enlarged views of literary criticism ; because in some departments of literature the classics are very far from being the best models, and in no depart- ment ought they to be presented as models without comment; 3. An acquaintance with metaphysical, ethical, and political theories, of our own times as well as of the classical period ; for the constitution of society is at present totally different from what it was in classical times ; and the spirit and views which pervade classical literature are in many essential points at variance with the views and spirit of our own day ; 4. Extensive historical knowledge, that the bearing, and import, and value of the events of those times, as a portion of general history, might be explained and illustrated.

Neither ought it to be inferred, from any thing which may be found in these pages, that there is in them a concealed intention to depreciate the efforts

16 SCHOOL OF THE FUTURE.

of those who are now carrying on the work of edu-? cation in our classical schools and colleges. The public is fully aware that they are actuated by a conscientious desire to carry out the objects of the system with which they are connected. It is not with them, but with the system, that fault is found. The evils of the system are in these days very great, and perhaps ineradicable. It is a system inapplicable to the knowledge and circumstances of the times in which we live. It prevents much good from being done ; and does indirectly produce a considerable amount of evil. It is not so much a few alterations and a few additions which are needed, but that we want new views and a new system — not the views and the system which were best for 1550, but what would be best for 1850.

WE WILL NOW proceed to consider in what way a school might aim at fulfilling the conditions imposed upon us by those circumstances of our times, which bear upon education. The reader will recollect that of these conditions the three most important — the master-conditions of any system which is to meet the wants of the present day — have been already specified. He will also, perhaps, be disposed to be of the opinion, that of the three kinds of schools established in this country — that which undertakes

SKETCH OF A GENERAL SYSTEM. 17

the education of the upper classes ; that which under- takes the education of the middle classes ; and that which undertakes the education of the labouring classes — not one attempts to fulfil these conditions: or, in other words, to adapt itself to the present state of society, and the present state of knowledge.

There ought, then, to be found in every neigh- bourhood a school, or schools, so situated as not to be at an inconvenient distance from any part of the neighbourhood ; the system of instruction adopted in these schools — all the schools in a neighbourhood working connectedly, the larger ones giving higher and more advanced instruction than the smaller ones — should be such, that every thing which it is de- sirable we should be taught in these days, might easily, and as it were naturally, be taught in them, either by the regular masters, or by extraneous aid. Such arrangements, and such methods of instruction, should be carried out, that all classes (at all events up to a certain age) might, supposing parents were desirous of it, receive instruction in the same class- rooms, and at the same time ; and the school fees should be fixed on such a scale that, while the expense of educating their children would scarcely be felt by the middle classes, a good education for their children would be within the reach of the labouring classes.

L1O

It may be as well to state at once what is meant when it is said that the schools to be proposed in

18 SCHOOL OF THE FUTURE.

these pages ought to be such as that the children of the middle, and even of those above the middle, classes might attend them with advantage. It is not supposed that many children from these classes would frequent them at first ; nor, of course, would they ever do so, unless it became very manifest, that to do so would be greatly to their advantage. What I shall endeavour to show is, that in these days we ought to have, and that we easily might have, schools in which a better education might be given to all, than the children of the upper classes are now receiving, at all events for the first five or six years of their school career, at the schools now appropriated for their especial use ; and that we shall never have good schools, or make any very great advances in the cause of popular education, as long as we adhere to the plan of establishing schools for the labouring classes exclusively.

In recommending a change from a system appli- cable to a by-gone state of things to a system applicable to the wants and circumstances of our own times, we shall be compelled to encounter many prejudices, and perhaps some interests. The reader, however, will see that it does not constitute a bar to the consideration of what will be proposed to him, that there never has been a time when any thing like it has, or could have, been adopted amongst us. There never has been a time in his- tory — the present in this respect stands quite alone

A GENERAL SYSTEM. 19

— when there were millions of the lower, and of the middle, classes to be educated ; when there existed the means for educating them ; and also the necessity for doing it. This at once makes it evident that we are discussing a question in which references to the practices and wisdom of our fore- fathers are inapplicable : being placed in new cir- cumstances, and rinding ourselves beset by new wants, we must decide for ourselves what is the best way of meeting these wants.

I would begin, then, by setting aside the idea that there ought to exist essential differences be- tween the kind of instruction given in primary, in middle, and in high schools. Whatever differences may exist in the schools of districts or parishes, where it may be thought advisable to have several schools, ought not to be looked upon as essential differences, but merely as different steps in the de- velopment of the best scheme of instruction which we can devise : as differences in degree, not in kind. In these times what is a good education for one man is in the main a good education for all others. The admission of this will at once reduce to the commu- nity the cost of education, by enabling schools and classes to co-operate, which are now standing apart, or even perhaps in an attitude of opposition to each other.

Up to a certain age all children must receive primary instruction : a department, therefore, for

20 SCHOOL OF THE FUTURE.

primary instruction ought to belong to every school ; whether, however, under the same roof, or not, would of course be merely a matter of arrangement. It ought to depend upon the number and character of the population of a district, whether this formed a separate preparatory school, or a part of a single school, to which we may suppose that it would be desirable for some districts to confine their efforts. If a child is in any way capable of availing himself of the advantage of remaining at school beyond a cer- tain age, he ought, irrespective of his station in life, to have the opportunity of learning more than can be taught in a primary school.

The effect of. this would be two-fold; in the first place, a great improvement would be effected in the character of the schools which we now call primary, because the main idea respecting the school, which would be present to the mind both of the master and of the pupil, would be, not that it was a place where instruction was to be restricted to a few elementary subjects, but that it was itself a school, or that it was connected with schools, in which a good educa- tion, advancing and expanding, in proportion to the increasing age and capacity of the pupil, was to be given. The other effect would be an economical one: there are at present many districts which pos- sess only primary schools, these being too of a very low character, and very inefficient ; now it might not be difficult, by the adoption of a better system.

A GENERAL SYSTEM. 21

to raise these into good general schools, their primary classes being retained. This would very much lessen the cost of educating their children to a great many, who are at present obliged to have recourse to dis- tant schools. In this way the whole expense at pre- sent incurred for the maintenance of elementary schools in any neighbourhood, and the whole ap- paratus of masters, school-houses, &c., would at once become available for the purpose of maintaining good and efficient schools, at which all the children of the neighbourhood, whose parents were desirous of allowing their children the advantages such schools would offer, might be properly educated. We can- not, however, expect to see any thing of this kind done, until the well-to-do and intelligent part of the community shall have become aware how much they are themselves interested in maintaining good schools within reach of their own doors. The want of this feeling is at present a serious obstacle in the way of the extension and improvement of popular education.

Supposing such a school to exist in any neigh- bourhood, the working of the system would be some- thing of this kind : children who stayed long enough, would pass out of the primary or elementary classes into those where the subjects of instruction were higher and more varied. Some, as would be the case generally with the children of the poor, would leave the school before making much progress in

22 SCHOOL OF THE FUTURE.

these higher classes. Still it would have been an advantage even to them to have frequented a school where general knowledge and enlightenment of the understanding were distinctly aimed at, and where reading, writing, and arithmetic were regarded as useful instruments, and not as the ultimate objects for the attainment of which they had been sent to school. If any, however, of the children of the poor had given decided indications of talent, means would, in some way or other, be found for continuing such children at school. By availing ourselves of resources, which will be pointed out presently, a great deal more than most of us would now think possible, might be taught in what would then be our humblest schools.

The excellence of the school ought, of course, to increase in proportion to the populousness of the parish or district.

The larger villages, in which a few shopkeepers and mechanics were to be found, would have better schools, which might be attended by the older chil- dren from the smaller parishes around, who had got beyond the means of instruction possessed by the schools of the smaller parishes.

Every town possessing nine or ten thousand in- habitants, and no part of the country is far distant from such a town, ought to support a kind of col- lege, where a system of instruction might be carried on in perfect harmony with that of the schools, the difference being that the range of subjects would

A GENERAL SYSTEM. 23

be still further increased, and these more extended studies carried on under abler superintendence. These colleges might take charge of the education of the elder children of the towns, and as many from the neighbouring districts as had got beyond the country schools, and had the means of attending the classes of the college in the town. Being supported by a considerable number of students, and being in towns, they would find themselves able to secure the ser- vices of able instructors. Higher and more sys- tematic instruction would be given in them than would be possible in the country or district schools. Those, therefore, who were desirous of carrying their education further than these schools admitted, would, at about the age of fifteen or sixteen, begin to attend the classes of the neighbouring college ; where they might remain two or three years, that is, until they were in their seventeenth or eighteenth year.

Above all these would stand our great Universities, upon which the pressure from without, and from be- low, has already begun to tell, and which will, per- haps, before long, voluntarily adapt themselves to the requirements of the age, and so make themselves worthy of the position which they occupy. Vast numbers of real students would be prepared for them by schools and colleges of the kind which I am pro- posing for the reader's consideration.

With respect to the education of the children of the upper orders, hitherto we have regarded the

24 SCHOOL OF THE FUTURE.

grammar school, within the walls of which nine or ten months out of the twelve are spent, as the place where their moral character is to be formed ; and, with respect to the children of the lower orders, we have hitherto regarded the parochial school as the place where their religious character is to be formed. In neither case, however, has the result been answer- able to the expectation ; both the moral training of the grammar school and the religious training of the parochial school are all but complete failures ; nor could it be otherwise, because, as constituted and worked at present, neither of them possesses the means and opportunities necessary for succeeding respect- ively in these objects. In the former case, the devo- tion of several years to that which to a child must ever be the driest of all studies, — namely, that of the grammar of a dead language, and which does not awaken a single emotion in the mind of the child but that of wearisomeness and disgust, and which neither has, nor can have, any interest for him ; and this, too, at the very period of childhood when the rnind is most open to receive moral impressions, — must have a very prejudicial effect upon the right and full deve- lopment of the moral faculties. While in the case of the children of the poor the religious feelings are too frequently stunted and deadened by a similar misuse of the Text of Scripture. There is, however, no doubt but that schools might generally be so organised and managed as that good feelings and

WHY OUR TEACHERS ARE HELD IN DISREPUTE. 25

good motives would be predominant in them ; there is no doubt of this, because several such schools already exist. Such schools would aid most effectu- ally in the right development of the moral and religious feelings. For these purposes, however, wherever circumstances admit of their superintend- ence, parents must always be in many respects the best educators, and home the best school. Hence the value of a school system which would give pa- rents the opportunity of keeping their children at home till about the twelfth or thirteenth year, after which they might be sent to a distant school; which, if not entered till this age, when some foundations for character had been laid, would have great advan- tages, with but small counterbalancing risks. Under such a system home-influences, which are the in- fluences ordained by nature, and on some points the only influences which can be brought to bear, would not be lost, as is the case at present in the education of the children of the upper orders, while all the influences for good which public schools possess would be made the most of.

Every one who is desirous of seeing a higher and more effectual education given to our children, — an education which shall really nurture gentleness, and goodness, and patience, and which shall really teach self-reliance and self-denial, love of what is good, and distaste for what is evil ; arid which shall prepare the mind for the intellectual work required of it in these

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26 SCHOOL OF THE FUTURE.

days, — regret the disrepute into which the office of teacher, the living instrument by which all this is to be effected, is pretty generally held in this country. Now this disrepute in which the teacher is held seems to result from the disrepute into which the system which he is employed in carrying out has fallen. If a master of a school were known in his neighbourhood as possessing knowledge which in these days men value and respect, he would be him- self valued and respected. No persons in this country are more valued and respected than those who are distinguished in any department of know- ledge about which people are interested. Now, if masters of schools were possessed of knowledge of this kind, or if their schools belonged to a system by which this knowledge was conferred upon our children, they would then naturally command our respect and our regard, because we should all see, without any doubts as to the fact, that they were conferring the greatest benefits upon our children. We should see that there was a connection be- tween their instruction and the success in life and happiness of our children. They would therefore, as a matter of course, occupy a high place amongst us, and be regarded with feelings of affectionate esteem. But it is impossible to look in this light either upon those who are nothing more than dis- tant instruments in a system for communicating to our children, at a cost of twelve or thirteen years,

ARNOLD. 27

some acquaintance with the classical languages, the connection of which with the work of these times, and with virtue and happiness, few are able to trace ; or upon those who, in the capacity of the humble dependants of the Parochial Clergy, teach little more than the Church Catechism and a textual acquaintance with Scripture. The common sense of mankind informs them, that those who give these kinds of instruction, however estimable they may be on other accounts, are not entitled for their works sake to a very high place in public estimation.

The regard in which Arnold was held, and the fame he left behind him as a schoolmaster, resulted in a great measure from the vigour and success of his attempt to give to classical education a practical bearing on the questions of the present day, and to connect it with the higher intellectual work of the age. He saw that the defect of this part of our system consisted in its not aiming at any thing, either of a moral, a religious, or a practical kind : this extraordinary deficiency he laboured to supply.

The discredit that deservedly belongs to antiquated and fruitless systems will, notwithstanding all the regrets which may be expressed on this subject, attach itself to those who are employed in carrying them out. Under a different system, worthy of and suitable to our own times, those engaged in educa- tion would command the respect of all. All would delight to honour them. Let the system of educa- c 2

28 SCHOOL OF THE FUTURE.

tion be improved, and the schoolmaster would be immediately elevated in the estimation of the public. We must now extend the range of instruction throughout all our schools from the highest to the lowest with a constant reference to the present state of knowledge, and to the present state and want of society amongst ourselves. Our object must be to teach what it will be of advantage in these days for those whom we educate to know, and what it will be for the advantage of the community should be known. This is the task to which not only the friends of education, but also both those who think it impos- sible to arrest, or change, the career of the modern civilisation, and those who approve of its spirit and tendency, must now direct their attention. It can hardly now be necessary to give a warning against regarding with feelings of satisfied complacency what has been done of late years in the erection of schools. It is doubtless very gratifying, on a comparison of the present with the past, to find, that in almost every neighbourhood a school of some sort or other does now exist, or rather the beginning of a school. The next step, however, and that which at the present moment we are called upon to take, is the attempt to make these schools fulfil the pur- poses at which schools ought in these days to aim. What ought to be taught is entirely a relative ques- tion : the circumstances and wants of the times must be considered. All that it was necessary for a

EDUCATION A RELATIVE QUESTION. 29

New Zealand savage to learn was how to kill and cook his enemies. In the middle ages the Clergy alone felt that learning was necessary. At the Reformation there was no necessity for giving school instruction to any except the upper classes ; and a man then became an accomplished gentleman, and fitted for the work of his age, through an acquaint- ance with classical literature, metaphysical questions, and theological controversies. At the present day to educate, in such a country as Russia, the moral and intellectual capacities of the bulk of the people would be the most revolutionary measure that could be imagined. Sound policy there consists not in elevating and strengthening the moral and intellectual, capacities of the people, but in dwarfing, depressing, and perverting them : nothing need be educated except the feelings of superstition and submission. In this country, at the present day, we are obliged by a social necessity, which is every day becoming more strongly felt, to educate the whole people, so as to prepare every man for taking care of himself in the midst of a free, busy, and enlightened com- munity ; this cannot be done without moral and intel- lectual culture ; and the more there is of this culture the more effectual will be the preparation. In the education of the lower classes we must aim distinctly and earnestly at this culture, for the simple reasons that those who have to take care of themselves must be enabled to see their way; and that those in whose

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30 SCHOOL OF THE FUTURE.

hands the circumstances of the times and the course of events have placed social and political power, must be taught how to exercise it. Since this is what we have to do, what amount of instruction that our schools are capable of giving can be considered too much, or what amount of moral culture too high ? In the present state of things, every step gained in the cultivation of the moral and intellectual capa- cities of any individual , be lie ivlw he may, is just so much gained both for the individual himself, and for the community to which he belongs.

WE WILL NOW turn to the consideration of the kind of school which ought to exist in every large rural parish, or in every district of three or four small rural parishes — the easy accessibility of the school from every part of the district being the consideration which must settle the extent of the district. We will take, for the purpose of illustrating the system, the schools which would occupy the lowest place in a general system of education adapted to the wants and knowledge of the present day. But as the wants of society, and the knowledge which we must now make use of in the work of education, must ultimately force us to give, in the main, the same education to all classes, these schools will form the basis of the system. The higher schools will, in more than one respect, rest upon these, differing from them chiefly

A PAROCHIAL, OR DISTRICT, SCHOOL. 31

in aiming at a fuller and more complete development of the ideas which will be embodied in all alike.

A school, then, of this kind should, in the first place, be so conducted, and the instruction given in it should be such, that all the children of the parish or district — at least, up to a certain age — might receive instruction in it together. Under any of the present systems this would be impossible. At any former time it would have been impossible. Perhaps, however, it may not be found an impossible task in these days to establish district schools of this cha- racter, in which professional men at all events might feel that their children up to a certain age would receive, through the joint influences and in- struction of the school and of home, a better edu- cation than would be possible in a distant school, especially if the aims and system of that distant school were those of our present schools.

We will, then, suppose some locality containing about 250 children, of an age to attend our school ; and that of these four-fifths belong to the labouring classes, the remaining fifth belonging to the middle classes, that is to say, being made up of the children of farmers and of persons in trade : for at present we will not take any credit for the children of profes- sional men, and of the smaller gentry. This is re- stricting ourselves to less than what has already been done at King's Somborne. In Scotland, too, we know the children of different classes have for a long

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32 SCHOOL OF THE FUTURE.

time been educated together with the best effect. For the present, however, we will confine ourselves to 200 children from the labouring classes, and 50 from the class of farmers and tradesmen.

And here there are two considerations which we ought to bear in mind for the sake of the encour- agement which they contain: the first being that we possess, almost ready made to our hands, such abundant means for establishing really good schools, means so far superior to those possessed by the in- habitants of any other country, or by those who have gone before us in this country, that we may reason- ably expect to effect such improvements in popular education as would formerly have been thought un- attainable. Should these expectations be realised, we need not fear but that our schools will obtain all the support which we desire for them. The other consideration is, that, supposing we are able to send out from our schools, every year, several thousand persons, educated in the manner we contemplate, it can matter very little from what order of society they may have originally come : there they will be in the midst of us, doing good to others and to themselves — better and happier than they otherwise would have been. No one would be dissatisfied with such a result.

We have supposed, then, a case in which we have to educate about 250 children. They are the children of a rural parish — a large village ; and we have to

IMPORTANCE OF FEMALE EDUCATION. 33

provide for the education of both the boys and the girls. Now, the first questions which arise are those connected with masters and mistresses ; — how many must we have ? what ought their qualifications to be ? &c. Questions of this kind precede on the present occasion that of ways and means, because the point before us just now is, what a school ought to be, in order that it may meet the wants of, and be worthy of, these times. When we shall have come to some conclusions upon this point, we shall be better able to judge how much it will require to maintain it. And when we know how much may be required, we shall be in a better position for inquiring how our funds are to be raised.

One good master then, and one good mistress, at least, are indispensable. It would doubtless very much simplify our inquiries, if no allusion were made in these pages to school-mistresses, or to female edu- cation : to do this, however, would be to omit, at all events as far as the lower orders are concerned, half our subject. In the present state of society the education of woman is as important as that of man : I say in the present state of society, because it was not so under the feudal system, or under the ancient civilisation ; nor, to take the state of society most dissimilar to our own, has it ever been so under the oriental civilisation. Amongst ourselves, however, in the management and well-being of the family, it is as important that the duties which devolve upon

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34 SCHOOL OF THE FUTURE.

woman, as that those which devolve upon man, should be rightly arid intelligently discharged. Individually, too, without reference to the conduct and well-being of the family, woman is as much interested as man in receiving the best moral and intellectual culture. Whatever observations, however, we may venture to make on the subject of mistresses and girl-schools, will be intended to apply to the education of the daughters of those who belong to the labouring classes, and to the lower strata of the middle classes ; because it is plain that they must always be educated at schools of a more or less public kind, while per- haps a home education will always continue to be the best for the daughters of the wealthier classes.

What then ought to be the qualifications of the master, and what the qualifications of the mistress? What these ought to be will come out more distinctly as we proceed. A rude way, however, of measuring their qualifications, but still to a certain extent an intelligible one, is that of measuring them by the amount of the salary which is supposed to represent the value of their services. Now, the master ought to be a teacher whose attainments and character would command for him a salary of not less than 901. a year ; while the services of the mistress ought to be worth not less than 7(W. a year, each being in addition provided with apartments. Of course it would be very desirable that the salaries should be higher, and so perhaps after a time they will be ; for

MASTERS — MISTRESSES — INFANT SCHOOLS. 35

the present, however, we may suppose that they receive respectively the above sums. Now this would show at once that the master was a person whose services were considered of quite as much value as those of the curate of the parish ; and that the mistress was a person whose services were con- sidered worth quite as much, when estimated in money, as those of the governesses in the houses of the neighbouring gentry.

There would, then, out of the 250 children, be about 50, for we are taking all the children of the village, who might be considered as fit subjects for an infant school. These we will at once dispose of For the moment we will suppose that the room in which the infant school is to be carried on has been provided, and that it has been furnished with all the requisite apparatus. Each of the 50 children would pay %d. a week. Now the amount of these weekly fees would go far towards defraying the ex- penses of this department, if the infant school were under the same roof as the girls'-school ; in which case it might be taught by the elder girls, or pupil- teachers, as was done at King's Somborne, each taking her turn under the direction and supervision of the mistress of the girls'-school. So far would this be from interfering with the studies of the elder girls, or pupil-teachers, that it would, most probably, be found that no part of their time was more profitably employed. It would teach them the

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36 SCHOOL OF THE FUTURE.

management of children, and would be an early initiation into the difficulties and the art of teaching. In towns, and wherever the infant school was a large one, of course the experience and authority of a regular mistress would be indispensable.

We now have to provide for two schools, one con- taining about 100 boys, and the other about the same number of girls. At present we must content our- selves with a single master and a single mistress for each respectively ; nor will 100 children form too large a school for a skilful teacher, aided in the in- struction of the junior classes by his most advanced pupils, for which the present system of allowing pupil-teachers gives great facilities ; supposing him also at the same time to have some assistance, about which I shall speak particularly a little further on.

But how shall we provide for the salary of a master whose services are worth at least 90/. a year, and of a mistress whose services are worth at least 70/. a year, each being also provided with apartments ? It would of course be better if the salaries were higher ; it would also be better if both master and mistress had an assistant, but as such schools as I have taken for the purpose of illustration might be carried on without assistance of this kind, I shall omit for the present the consideration of what it would cost. Nothing, however, at all worthy of these times can be done without the efficient, and, therefore, the high- priced, master and mistress, so that if we cannot afford

HOW SCHOOLS ARE TO BE SUPPORTED. 37

to pay for their services, then the attempt to establish 3 system of education, which shall give the moral and intellectual culture adapted to the present state of knowledge, and the present state of society, must be abandoned, and nothing more need be said upon the subject. This is the first and most necessary con- dition of success. Should our inability to pay such salaries be proved, we must rest satisfied with our present state of precarious, eleemosynary, elementary, and inefficient education, for the great body of the people, at the very time when the education of the masses, and of the lower strata of the middle classes — on account of the manner in which they have of late years increased in numbers, power, and half- informed, and often ill-directed, intelligence — has become of such supreme importance as to be among the very first necessities of the present state of society.

How, then, shall we raise this 90/. a-year for a competent master, and this 70/. a-year for a com- petent mistress? This 1601. a-year is absolutely necessary for the kind of work we wish to have done. The reader will remember that at this mo- ment I am only proposing the introduction of a certain kind of school here and there, wherever circumstances may be favourable. If this is the kind of school we want, and if it be the kind of school best suited to the times we live in, the sooner we begin to exhibit it in operation here and there,

38 SCHOOL OF THE FUTURE.

the sooner may we hope to see it generally adopted. Now perhaps there are some places so circumstanced that it might be possible to raise in them this sum ; and the greater the variety of ways in which it may be raised the better ; and this variety probably exists, for what is quite inapplicable to one locality may perhaps be the very thing which can most easily be carried out in another.

1. First, then, there are many places where it might be advisable to require an uniform payment from all the children alike of 2d. a week; the farmer's and tradesman's children paying no more than the labourer's. Labourers in many districts will gladly pay 3d. a week for the schooling of their children, even at some of the worst of our present schools : this was the ordinary payment at the old dames' school. At the Birkbeck schools, which have been established for the education of the upper stratum of the labouring classes, the payment is 6d. a week. But supposing an uniform payment of %d. a week, after deducting six weeks for holidays, which will be amply sufficient for children residing at home — three weeks at harvest, two at Christmas, and one at Whitsuntide — we shall have 76/. 13s. 4?d. from this source. Now there are a great many parishes where the remaining deficiency might at once be made up out of an existing educational endowment. This arrangement, then, would be sufficient for a great many places.

UNIFORM AND GRADUATED FEES — ENDOWMENTS. 39

The advantages of this uniform payment are, that managers of schools would thus escape the difficulty of settling who are to pay the higher and who the lower scale of fees.

And a feeling of independence and of honest pride would be encouraged in the poor by the knowledge of the fact that they were paying as much as those above them for the education of their children.

It would also be a great advantage gained that no child would feel himself in an inferior position to the other children whom he met in the school.

2. In places where other circumstances were fa- vourable for the establishment of such schools, but where the endowment was so small as that a larger sum than 76/. must be raised each year from the scholars, the King's Somborne, or graduated, system of payments might be adopted. The children of the labouring class — that is, of those who live by weekly wages — might be required to pay 2d. a week each, while the children of tradesmen and farmers would be required to pay 10s. a quarter each. This would give, supposing one-fourth, or fifty, of the children belonged to the latter class — this proportion of course would vary, for in "small country towns it might frequently become much more considerable — a sum of 100/. a year; and for the remaining 150 a yearly sum of 57 /. 10s.

At King's Somborne this plan has been found suf- ficient for the entire maintenance of schools, the

40 SCHOOL OF THE FUTURE.

excellence of which is known every where, no aid being received either from endowment or subscrip- tions. This plan, then, may be brought in to aid a very small endowment ; or, where there are active and intelligent persons to manage the schools, it has been demonstrated by the example just referred to, that it is possible to work it in such a manner, as to enable the schools to be entirely self-supporting. The success of this plan will entirely depend upon the character of the schools ; in other words, upon the activity, kindly feelings, and intelligence of those who manage them : narrow views, whether of an edu- cational, or religious, or social kind, would be fatal to its success.

3. A third method would be to bring an (at present voluntary) school-rate-in-aid to supply the deficiency of either the first or the second scheme of school fees. It would, just at the present moment, be a great point gained if this could be done any where ; and I cannot help thinking that there must be some neighbourhoods, where, by the example and influence of some great proprietor, or of the clergy- man, or of some person of weight in the parish, the majority of the parishioners might be brought to see how desirable it would be for them, and how much it would conduce to their own pecuniary interest, and to the lasting advantage of their chil- dren, that they should contribute to the maintenance amongst themselves of such schools.

SCHOOL-RATE PARLIAMENTARY GRANTS. 41

An advantage which might be expected to follow the adoption of such a school-rate-in-aid would be, that every one who paid it would be interested in the efficiency and success of the schools.

It would also immediately lead those in any parish who were called on to contribute towards a school, to see first whether any endowment for educational purposes which might exist in the parish, was being made the most of, and applied to the purposes for which it was intended. By the sure operation of this motive we should soon find the educational endowments of the country, which exist in great numbers, and in many cases are of very considerable value, looked into, and turned to good account. The cause why so many educational endowments are at present misappropriated, is that, under the present system, no one is interested in seeing them rightly applied.

4. A fourth means which may be indicated is that of grants-in-aid from the Educational Com- mittee of the Privy Council.

I altogether exclude from this enumeration that to which we now almost universally have recourse, I mean the system of supporting our schools by sub- scriptions. It is quite unnecessary to say anything for the purpose of showing, that under such a system it is impossible to have either good schools, or a general plan for the education of the whole people.

42 SCHOOL OF THE FUTURE.

Though perhaps the majority of our schools are dependent upon it, there are several reasons which make it most objectionable. I do not at all mean to imply that we can at present dispense with the aid which we receive from this quarter ; without it many of our present schools would be unable to exist. I avoid, however, on account of the various and serious objections which may be made against it, setting it down here as one of the means which it would be desirable to have recourse to in our attempt to intro- duce a better system of education.

We must remember that a large proportion of those who at present are ready to subscribe would be in favour of a rate. Those, however, who sub- scribe for the purpose of keeping the education of the people in their own hands, and of modifying it according to their own ideas, would most probably be opposed to a rate.

Of course the objections which lie against main- taining a school by subscriptions do not apply to building and starting a school by contributions and donations. Not that, under an improved system of general education, it would be desirable to resort to contributions even for this purpose ; but at present we are only speaking of the attempt to introduce an improved system to general notice ; and until we shall have got beyond this point, there can be no objection to receiving contributions for the purpose of building schools, or for improving existing school buildings.

HOW SCHOOLS ARE TO BE STARTED. 43

And when we consider how much is done in this way for the purpose of promoting our present in- efficient system of education, we may be sure that not less will be done, when the motive for doing it will be very much strengthened by the acknowledged efficiency and value of the kind of school to be bene- fited by such contributions.

Suppose 400Z. or 500/. were required for altering or adding to existing school buildings in any place, so as to fit them for the kind of school of which we have been speaking, including apartments for the master and mistress : this certainly would be a large sum : there are, however, ways in which it might perhaps be raised for such a school. There are thoughtful and benevolent persons who might easily be brought to understand the advantages of our pos- sessing schools of this kind, and who, therefore, would think it a happiness to present to their respective neighbourhoods the requisite school-buildings, or the funds necessary for altering existing buildings, if found inconvenient and unsuitable to the purposes of an improved system. Even as things now are, we see this done frequently. In former times it was looked upon as a pious and noble act of munificence to endow schools : and many schools, such as suited the wants of those times, were consequently built and endowed by individuals. Men can hardly feel in this way with respect to schools of the kind which we are now maintaining. The desire, however, to do good

44 SCHOOL OP THE FUTURE.

was never more strongly felt ; only let the object pre- sented to the good intentions of the benevolent be a school of such a kind that it will be manifestly suited to the wants of the present day, and we cannot doubt but that so excellent an object will revive the old practice.

Or part of the necessary sum might be granted out of the fund which Parliament places at the disposal of the Educational Committee of the Privy Council ; the other part having been previously raised, no matter in what way, in the locality itself. We are here only speaking of the means to which we may resort for building and starting schools, not about the different ways in which they may be supported afterwards. Now, no valid objections lie against the proposal that Government should aid in building and starting schools, though some serious objections lie against the proposal, that Government should continue to contribute to their support.

Or perhaps in some cases where endowments exist, a sum might be raised for erecting new school-build- ings, or for improving those already in use, the interest of the money raised for such purposes being in these cases paid out of the endowment. Our endowments must some day be thoroughly looked into, and it will be found in many cases that the purposes of the endowment will best be answered by securing such school-buildings as will render the existence of a good school possible. It must be

SCHOOL-RATE ULTIMATELY NECESSARY. 45

evident that there must be a great many localities in which more would be done for the improvement and extension of education, and therefore for the position of the schoolmaster himself, by providing suitable buildings for the school, than by allowing things to remain as at present. If, for the purpose of providing such buildings, twenty or thirty pounds a year were deducted from that part of the school- master's income which the endowment supplies, the part which he derives from his scholars would in many cases be increased to an amount which would far more than compensate for this deduction.

Eventually — that is, if any thing of a general kind is ever established — -our school-system must rest upon a system of local school-rates : we must always — I am now speaking of a general system — be able to de- pend upon the aid of an extraordinary rate for the purpose of enabling us to start a new school, where one may be wanted ; or, at all events, supposing the government should think it best that the assistance necessary in starting a school should come from the general resources of the country (and perhaps it would be better that it should be so), we must always be able to depend upon local rates for supplementing our school funds derived from other sources to the amount requisite for carrying on the school effi- ciently, and in such a manner as to provide for the proper education of all the children in each district.

With respect, however, to school-rates, this must

46 SCHOOL OF THE FUTURE.

be remembered, that the possession of power to impose them is not all that is wanted. There will be very great difficulties in the way of raising an adequate rate, but a still greater difficulty will be found in turning to any useful account what has been raised, if the school to be built, or maintained, be intended for the children of the lower classes only. In such a case perhaps not one of the rate- payers of the district, or parish, would take any interest in the erection and success of the school. But if, on the contrary, the school proposed be of such a character, that its establishment would be a general benefit, then all might be brought to join even in the self- imposition of a sufficient rate ; and many would interest themselves in seeing that all that the school required for its efficiency was provided.

Perhaps, however, the best method of proceeding under present circumstances would be that a moiety, in some cases a larger proportion, of the cost of starting our schools should be paid out of a parlia- mentary grant, on the other moiety, or certain pro- portion, having been raised by subscriptions, or donations, or bequest, or rate, or in any way. The means, however, of maintaining schools, except in some special cases, ought to be supplied by those who are within the district to which the school be- longs, and ought not to be drawn from the public purse.

If the middle classes can be brought to understand

THE INTEREST OF THE MIDDLE CLASSES. 47

the value to themselves of good local schools, we shall soon find them springing up all over the coun- try. And the most effectual way of persuading these classes of their value is to get as soon as pos- sible such schools established here and there about the country. In this way we must endeavour to show to parents, that they may keep their children at home under their own watchful superintendence, and at the same time give them a higher moral and intellectual education, and, too, at a much less cost than is possible at the schools they are now obliged to make use of.

In towns there would be much less difficulty in raising the funds necessary for the first establishment, as well as for the after support of such schools.

Nothing has been said of the way in which the expense of repairs, fuel, and attendance would be met. • In such establishments the cost of these items would not be great ; but as it would constitute a yearly charge, it would be necessary to meet it out of the same sources, whatever in each case those sources may be, to which the school shall have re- course for paying the salaries of the master and mis- tress. Books may either be paid for out of the same fund, or by the children themselves ; each plan having certain advantages.

If these schools are properly managed, and if the instruction given in them is what it ought to be, the probability is, that the classes above the farmer

48 SCHOOL OF THE FUTURE.

and tradesman will, for the education of their own children up to the age of twelve or thirteen, avail themselves of the advantages which they will offer, and which they will be unable to find elsewhere. This would proportionally raise the income of the schools as far as it depended upon fees, and so render a larger number of them able to dispense with the rate.

Of course, in the majority of purely rural parishes, so large a school as that of which I have been speak- ing would not be required. In every instance the school-managers would decide upon what was best for their own neighbourhood. In some places, per- haps, they would decide on having a master only, in others still smaller, perhaps a mistress only. Now, as things are at present, this would be a very serious disadvantage, but under an improved general system most of the disadvantages which at present would belong to cases of this kind would be removed by the connection and understanding which would na- turally spring up between neighbouring schools when the object of all the schools was the best edu- cation of the people, and not the benefit of the schoolmaster, or the gratification of the wishes of some influential person in the parish. Many of our present difficulties do not fairly belong to the subject of education, but are accidental, being the result of the present position of the question ; and will dis- appear as soon as more enlightened views and prac-

PUBLIC SYMPATHY NECESSARY. 49

tices shall have begun to prevail. A very striking evil of the present state of things is that each school is entirely isolated from all others, no school receiv- ing any assistance from those in its neighbourhood : the fact often being that they are competing against, and hostile to, each other.

With respect to the education of the labouring classes, in far the greater number of cases, the only person who takes an active part in the maintenance and conduct of the schools is the Clergyman of the Parish. As long as this shall continue to be the state of things, we may have good schools here and there, but it will be impossible to have good schools generally. Wherever, on the contrary, a neighbour- hood generally shall have become interested in the maintenance of a good school, a good school, as a matter of course, will be created and maintained. To create this interest in the public mind ought to be a main object with those who desire to promote the education of the people. It is upon this that the success of our schools must ultimately depend. It will be utterly impossible to have good and efficient schools, except under a system which shall command the sympathy and aid of those persons in the neigh- bourhood whose intellectual attainments, and the weight of whose character, make their sympathy and aid necessary conditions of success. If persons of this description stand aloof from the school, and

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show that they think disparagingly of it, the school will never be able to effect much good.

Schools of the kind which I am describing must form the broad basis of any plan for the education of the people of this country* If we cannot get these schools, little will be done. If we can get them, every thing else that we wish for will follow easily and naturally. They will interest every body in the work of education. Four-fifths of the popu- lation will receive some part of their education in them. The great body of those who are to carry on the intellectual work of the age will come from them. A large proportion of our merchants, our tradesmen, our farmers, our teachers, our lawyers, our medical men, our manufacturers, our literary men, our clergy, will find themselves under obligations to them. This will react upon the schools themselves. Interest and pride will be taken in them. They will receive endowments from those educated in them ; but, what will be far more valuable than endowments, many who shall have been educated in them will repay the debt by endeavouring to improve and perfect them. They will give its tone and character to the education of the country, because they will be the schools in which the bulk of the people, the stirring and active, the thinking and thriving men of the country will have been educated, or will have received the earliest, and most important, part of their education,

But I again repeat that every thing will depend

THE SCHEME OF INSTRUCTION. 51

upon the interest which the school shall be capable of exciting in the minds of the better sort of people in each neighbourhood, and which no body supposes can ever be felt for our schools as long as they shall remain what they are at present. Nor will any in- terest of this kind be felt for secular schools, esta- blished through an external influence, for the educa- tion of the children of the poor ; while every body will be interested about a school in which many of his acquaintances and friends were educated, and in which perhaps his own children are receiving some portion of their education under his own eyes.

WE WILL NOW pass to the scheme of instruction. In this the master-idea ought to be, that all the various departments of human knowledge — just like the various departments of the inner and of the external world, which respectively form the subject-matter of each — are inter-connected and inter-dependent, and constitute together one great harmonious whole. If we do but allow this idea to rest in our minds for a moment, in how ridiculous a light will it place our present practice of restricting the education of the upper orders to a little Latin and Greek, — in most cases only to a sham attempt to teach this little, — and that of the lower orders to a Catechism and to the Text of Scripture, dealt with in much the same kind of way. The map, at least, of the vast,

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varied, and rich domain of knowledge, so many fields of which since the revival of learning, but more par- ticularly of late years, have been explored and culti- vated, should be exposed to view. As things are at present, when the work of education is completed, it can seldom happen that a young man has had his attention directed to views and ideas of this kind ; if he has been so fortunate as to have caught a glimpse of the knowledge of what is around him and before him, he was not indebted, even for that glimpse to his school-work. Any scheme of instruction worthy of these times ought to be based upon the idea that it is necessary to give a general acquaintance with the different divisions of knowledge ; at all events, to such an extent, as that some ideas may be obtained respecting the nature of the different parts, and respecting the relation in which they severally stand each to the rest.

For this purpose I would propose the following plan, as adapted for the kind of school which I have been describing. I do not propose it for adoption in our classical, or commercial, or present parochial schools ; it could not be grafted upon the systems of instruction pursued in any one of these three kinds of school. But I would propose it for the improved kind of school for all, up to the age of thirteen, four- teen or fifteen, whom their parents may be disposed to send, and which kind of school we have yet to create. For schools of this kind we still have to form both our scheme of instruction and our m??.ters.

PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY. 53

In the present state, however, of public opinion, and with our present educational resources, we need not be dismayed at finding how much we have to do. If we set to work in an honest and common-sense spirit, I do not conceive that we shall find any very great difficulties in the way, either of forming the kind of school which we are in want of, or in pro- curing suitable masters. With respect to the future education of the bulk of the people, we have, to a far greater extent than is generally supposed, a clear stage, and are almost entirely at liberty to decide upon whatever is abstractedly the best.

I would propose, then, — I repeat that I am not speaking of classical, or commercial, or of our present parochial schools, nor of schools in which children will remain beyond their thirteenth, fourteenth, or fifteenth year, — that a more or less systematic, at all events an extensive acquaintance with the operations, forces, arrangements, and productions of nature, should be made to constitute a distinct object and pro- minent part in the scheme of instruction, and that physical geography should be the frame in which the greater part of this knowledge should be arranged ; and that the physical geography of the immediate neighbourhood of the school, with which the children are to a certain extent naturally acquainted, be the foundation upon which the whole shall be built, and the standard to which the physical geography of the other parts of the world shall be referred, and by a » 3

54 SCHOOL OF THE FUTURE.

reference to which it shall be made intelligible. I would teach a kind of Comparative Physical Geo- graphy, in which the Physical Geography of the neighbourhood of the school should occupy the place both of a starting-point, and of a constant standard of comparison.

The teacher might begin with the most obvious objects, and those which are the first to attract the attention of children. For instance, he might com- mence with the quadrupeds, birds, &c. (zoology) of the neighbouring fields. He might point out the dif- ferences existing among these as to appearances, use, habits, &c., and then pass on to the animals of other parts of the world, making use of whatever illustra- tions he could procure. This, besides giving them some ideas respecting the infinite variety of nature, would lead to much collateral and connected know- ledge, — such, for instance, as that of the character of different countries and latitudes, and of the condition of the people who inhabit them, the distribution of animals, &c.

The same plan might then be pursued with respect to the plants (botany) of the neighbourhood. " In the fields round our village," the teacher might say, " the trees of which you see the most are the oak, the beech, the ash, the elm, &c. ; but in some countries " (describing the countries) " the trees most commonly seen are of the fir kind ; in others, again, we have mahogany, and furniture woods, and dye woods, &c. Tn other countries, again, the various kinds of palm

HOW TO BE TAUGHT. 55

are very conspicuous." And here he might describe the arid deserts of Northern Africa and Arabia, and show how useful in such places the date-palm is, &c. ; and an interesting account might be given of the appearance and various uses of the cocoa-nut palm, &c. " Here," the teacher might go on to say, " you see growing in the fields wheat, barley, clover, tur- nips, &c. ; in other places cotton, rice, sugar-cane, maize, the vine, the olive, tobacco, tea, &c. are cul- tivated." A great deal of interesting information might be given respecting each of these. He might go on to say, that in China a great part of their furniture, and even of their houses, the sails of their ships, &c. are made from a kind of grass, some species of which grow above sixty feet in height (the bamboo), &c. &c.

The teacher might afterwards go on to speak about climate, &c. (meteorology). " Here," he might say, " you see ice and snow in winter, and we have long hot days in summer, and here we have variable winds, and there is no knowing when we shall have fine weather, and when wet weather ; but in some parts of the world there is perpetual ice, in others perpetual heat. In others they know what wind will be blowing at certain times ; they know in some places when they are to expect dry weather, and when to expect wet." He might then go on to explain the more obvious phenomena of heat, moisture, and of the atmosphere ; illustrating his

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explanations by the barometer, thermometer, air- pump, &c. &c.

The character of the soil in the neighbourhood ot the school, — the contents of the pits and quarries (geology and mineralogy) might be pointed out. The height of the hills might be compared with the height of mountains in other parts of the world, and the streams of the neighbourhood compared with the rivers of other countries, &c. &c.

The reader will see that the above sketch may be greatly extended, in fact that it is the merest outline. The detail and filling up must depend upon the knowledge and ability of the teacher. It presup- poses a full mind, and one capable of imparting knowledge in such a manner as to interest children. It is a scheme of instruction which cannot be adopted by those masters who only hear lessons.

With such a master, and with classes of children, who had passed two or three years in our improved infant- schools, all this knowledge might without any exer- tion be easily acquired by the age of thirteen or four- teen. The object-lessons of our infant-schools would form an excellent preparation for it. The intellect of a child who had acquired this knowledge would be quickened. Such a child would be elevated in the scale of intelligent beings. There would be much less chance of his sinking in after-life into a pauper, or a thief. Wherever he might be he would find materials for thought and agreeable reflection. The

TAUGHT EASILY — ADVANTAGES. 57

chance of useful discoveries being made, by which the material well-being of mankind might be ad- vanced, would be greatly increased. Every man, whatever his condition in life, would be the better for such knowledge. Its moral effect would neces- sarily be good.

, To the more advanced children some general knowledge might be given upon the subjects of Astronomy and Chemistry, the amount being in proportion to the forwardness of the children, and the abilities of the teachers. We, who have been brought up at schools where the mere words, Physical Geography, Astronomy, and Chemistry were never heard, will perhaps be disposed to think that all knowledge of this kind ought to belong exclusively to scientific men, savans, and philosophers, and will therefore be disposed to regard the proposal to draw the attention of children to, and to interest them about, the works, operations, and phenomena of Nature, as extremely visionary and wild. Such ideas are the natural result of our classical system of education. The truth, however, is that what has just been proposed might be taught with far more ease than any thing now taught in our schools, and, also, that it might easily be taught in addition to all that is now taught. If taught in the manner recom- mended such instruction would be regarded by the children not with the distaste which is now felt by them for almost every thing that is now taught them,

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but with much interest, as something which they were capable of understanding, and as something which gratified their natural desire for acquiring knowledge. It must be evident that nothing else which we can teach children is so well adapted for this purpose. The intelligence which such teaching would awaken, and the interest it would create, would probably extend itself to the other depart- ments of the school work, and so have a strong and good effect in other directions upon the subsequent lives of many of the children.

To proceed to other departments of instruction : the advantages of teaching Drawing are great and obvious, and it will soon be considered, were it only for the manner in which it trains the eye to habits of accurate observation, as an indispensable part of education : it does not, however, appear necessary to say more at present either upon this subject, or respecting Arithmetic and Geometry, than that they ought each to be taught by the ordinary methods as well as possible. Some remarks, however, may be made upon the subjects of Grammar and of History; but first of History, for I would propose, even in such schools as these before us, and at which we do not contemplate retaining the children beyond their fourteenth year, that History should be taught — only with this difference, that the method in which it be taught be very dissimilar from that which we are using in our present schools.

HISTORY — HOW IT MAY BE TAUGHT. 59

History is for the most part taught in schools in such a manner as to render the time spent upon it worse than wasted ; for not only has nothing after all been taught, but the pupil has by the process been thoroughly disgusted with the study of history. Every one can judge how far this is true by com- paring it with his recollections of his own school- days. The dates of prominent events, and the suc- cession of emperors and kings, were the chief things taught. Lessons of this kind are, learnt with diffi- culty ; they have no connection with any thing in- teresting to the child ; and are soon forgotten. Such an exercise of the memory, for it cannot be dignified with the name of knowledge, is of no value at all. The mere fact that these things are learnt with difficulty, and soon forgotten, is quite enough, even supposing that there were no other objections to make, to show that we ought to resort to a different method for fixing in children's minds the historical knowledge which we wish them to possess.

In teaching history, then, to children in such a school, I would proceed upon a somewhat similar plan to that which I have just recommended for drawing their attention to, and interesting them about, Nature. I would, for instance, take as a starting point what they already knew, what was before them and around them, their own condition, that of their village or town, and proceed from this to

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the history of other times, other countries, and other races of men. Nothing should be taught except what they could understand, connect with previous knowledge, — at least compare with previous know- ledge,— and take an interest in ; and therefore would be likely to remember.

Supposing that there was an old castle in the neighbourhood, the master might begin a series of lessons by saying, " You see that that castle is built in a very different way from Mr. So-and-so's new house. At the time when the castle was built people not only built differently from the style in which we build, but they also lived in a different fashion. Many things were very unlike what you now see. In many particulars each generation has lived differently from the generations that preceded it, and from those that followed it. The builders of that castle differed from us in dress, in amusements, in occupations, in knowledge, in the way in which •they spent their time, in their social relations," &c. I would have him go backwards from the present state of things in the castle, or old manor house, or hall, through the last century — the great rebellion — the reformation — the wars of the roses — the feudal times. Upon all these different particulars he might say much that would interest the children. In order to secure as distinct an apprehension as possible of what he was saying, he should use all the illustrations which he could procure. He might proceed to show

HISTORY — HOW IT MAY BE TAUGHT. 61

what were the munitions of war, and what the state of the art of war, which rendered it worth while to erect such buildings, which once were strong places, but now would be incapable of defence. A great deal might be said upon the difference in the con- dition of society implied by the erection of such a building, &c. &c.

For the basis of another series of historical lessons he might take the village church. He might picture to them the state of things in Cromwell's time as connected with their own church. And again, what was the state of things at the Reformation. What was the form of worship, and what the ceremonies which that village church had witnessed in the middle ages. How perhaps Barons and Crusaders had been buried in it. How it happened that their church had been built at all. What was the state of religion in this country before churches were built. How Christianity was introduced. How the people, who in old times lived where now they were living, had been idolaters and savages, &c. &c.

For another series, he might even take the neigh- bouring fields. " They were not always cultivated as you now see them. Not very far back there were no root crops in the fields, and if you go back a little further, there were no haystacks in the farm-yards ; cattle were killed when grass began to fail in autumn, and were salted for winter provision. There was then a great deal of wood,

62 SCHOOL OF THE FUTURE.

because we had not begun to use coal. Going back further, a great part of the country was covered with wood, and there were then plenty of wolves in the woods." Something might be said of the different modes and products of agriculture in other countries ; and that some savage tribes manage to live without any agriculture at all, &c. &c.

Their own dress might be made the starting-point of another series. He might point out the chief changes which the dress of the different classes had undergone. How leather was once used very gene- rally amongst the lower orders. How silk and cotton had been introduced. This would be an opening for showing how commerce had connected nations to- gether, and was now connecting all the nations of the earth. Something might be said of the manner in which formerly the lower orders used to wear wool- len next the skin, unchanged and unwashed, and that this was supposed to be one of the causes which at that time predisposed people in this country to receive the plague, and other complaints which are now much diminished, or unknown. The pictur- esqueness, and richness, and variety of the costume of former times might be dwelt upon. How the women of their village had in old times employed themselves in spinning. That machinery had cheap- ened clothing, &c. &c.

On the subject of language the master might say, " Those who were living here four or five hundred

HISTORY — HOW IT MAY BE TAUGHT. 63

years ago spoke a language which we should not now understand." And then he might go back to all the different languages which have been spoken in England. He would show where the different people who introduced them came from ; and give some account of these different people ; and show how things were in such a state, as that they could invade us. Some ideas might be given respecting the history of our language. Something might be said of the varieties of languages which exist, of the manner in which they form families, and of the way in which languages alter, and die out, &c. &c.

On the subject of their own homes ; he might say, " You all have chimneys and glass windows in your houses. In former times these wrere not to be found in the houses of kings and emperors." He might speak of huts, log-houses, Amsterdam built upon piles, the Bedouin's tent, the Tartar's waggon, &c., for the purpose of giving an idea of the different circumstances and conditions under which men live, &c. &c.

Their lessons in physical geography would have made them acquainted with the different countries of the earth : the master then would have oppor- tunities for comparing with their own condition that of the inhabitants of other and distant countries. This might be done with respect to a great variety of particulars ; the main comparison being between themselves, as Europeans, and the inhabitants of the

64 SCHOOL OF THE FUTURE.

East; and again between themselves and savage tribes, &c. &c.

By working upon this idea the teacher might give a pretty just and extensive knowledge of the past and present condition of man in different countries. To gain this knowledge is one of the main objects of studying history. Of course history can only be taught in this way out of the fullness of the teacher's own knowledge. I am far from recommending that historical reading books should be disused; what I would recommend is, that they should be used con- jointly with oral instruction of the kind which I have been endeavouring to sketch.

The reader will recollect that I am not proposing a method of teaching or of studying history, but merely a method for conveying what historical know- ledge we can — in as useful a form as we can, and in a manner which shall interest them so much that they may perhaps be induced afterwards, should opportunities occur, to add to their little store — to children under fourteen years of age. The study of history is a very different thing from what I have been recommending, but children are incapable of studying history. What, however, I have been re- commending would give many ideas ; historical in- struction of this kind might be remembered ; it might eventually include the dates and lines of succession, with which it is most absurd to begin ; and might, and probably would, create an interest

MAN, AND THE EXTERNAL WORLD. 65

in historical knowledge, and in some cases predispose to historical studies in after-life.

I have dwelt, then, at some length on the two subjects of Physical Geography and History ; and I have proposed a method for teaching them to the class of children who would attend the schools I now have in view. I have done this because I conceive that a foundation might thus be laid — by means of these two subjects taught in the way I have described — for the further study of the two great divisions of human knowledge ; one being the knowledge of Man himself, of his faculties, his affections, his duties, his fortunes, his works, and his power ; the other being the knowledge of Nature, of its forces, operations, productions, and laws. The correlation of man and of surrounding nature obliges us, in forming a scheme of education, adapted to the present age, to provide for the joint and connected study of both. Man has been made the centre of this mundane system of things. Every object in nature, and every law of nature, whatever other relations and ends may be imagined and inferred, has at all events a reference to him ; but he can only exercise his dominion, as far as he has been made lord of all things, after he has acquired the power of reading and interpreting Nature. Knowledge of Nature is the talisman by which he compels Nature to yield to him her stores and treasures, and to do his bidding ; and knowledge of himself, and of the past history, and present con-»

66 SCHOOL OF THE FUTURE.

dition of his race, teach him how, and for what ends, and in what spirit he ought both to labour, and to use the fruits of his labour.

If the schools which have been before us in the foregoing pages should ever be established, it would inevitably follow that from them would be drawn a large proportion of the students for our higher schools and colleges. And this class of students would be found well-grounded, arid well-disposed, for more advanced and detailed studies. In those cases, too, constituting the vast majority, in which formal edu- cation ended with the instruction given in these schools, much good would have been effected ; the range of thought would have been enlarged ; botli would a right direction have been given to thought, and also some materials for thought to work upon ; and much would have been done towards giving the preponderance to the moral and intellectual elements of our nature.

It will perhaps be found that in good schools of this kind sufficient grammatical knowledge or suffi- cient accuracy in speaking English, may be obtained without much difficulty, and without the sacrifice of much time. The difficulty of teaching us to speak our own language correctly has been very much over- rated in consequence of the prevalence of the strange idea, which our old grammar schools originated, and still continue to foster, that the best way of teaching us to speak English with grammatical precision, is

GRAMMAR. 67

to teach us Latin and Greek, or rather to attempt to teach these languages, for the attempt does not succeed even moderately in one case out of five ; while it is evident that the great majority of those in any country who speak their mother tongue with purity have no idea at all of the formal rules of grammar. Perhaps the best method of proceeding in schools of this kind, would not be to require that the children should get by heart a volume of rules, the advantage of which is uncertain, even though several years may have been spent in the task, but rather that the master should keep the volume by him for reference and illustration, being always very attentive to correct mistakes in conversation and writing, giving in each case the reasons and all the necessary explanations. So that, supposing a child were to leave a school of this kind at the age of fourteen, without the intention of proceeding to any other place of instruction, he would by that time have obtained enough grammatical knowledge for the purposes of the kind of life a person who finishes his education at fourteen will most probably lead. At all events we may be quite sure of this, that if, by the kind of instruction I have been endeavouring to sketch, and about which more will be said pre- sently, a taste for reading and a desire for knowledge shall have been implanted in a boy's mind, his attention having been drawn constantly, in the man- ner I have pointed out, to the grammatical accuracy

SCHOOL OP THE FUTURE.

of his language, this boy will on the whole be better educated, and will eventually speak the English language — which is the point now before us — more correctly, than one who had spent a large propor- tion of those hours of his boyhood, which are ordi- narily devoted to study, in poring over the pages of a grammar. The present system seems to defeat its own object : it prevents the acquisition of higher and more useful knowledge, which would, if accom- panied with grammatical instruction of the kind I am recommending, lead certainly to the acquirement of the desired power of expressing one's self correctly.

If, however, at the age of twelve, thirteen, or fourteen, a boy were to proceed from one of these schools to a higher school in a town, — of these pre- sently,— or to one of our public schools, there would then be, according to our present system, which keeps a youth at school till his eighteenth year, four, five, or six years for Latin and Greek, before the age required by our present University system had arrived. Now it cannot be supposed but that those who had commenced their education with schools of this kind, and had acquired at them habits of thought and attention, as well as a considerable amount of knowledge, and who, before they set to work upon the grammar of a dead language, had had their attention drawn to the nature of grammar, and taught to speak their own language correctly, would acquire, by the time they reached their eighteenth

IT OVERLAYS OUR PRESENT SYSTEM. 69

year, a far more profitable knowledge of Latin and Greek than is usually acquired under the present system ; to say nothing about what would probably be their turn of mind, what other knowledge they would actually possess, and what they would be likely to acquire in after-life.

It may be worth while to consider whether in these days we do wisely in assigning to grammatical instruction its present position in the work of edu- cation : we are still continuing to make it both a main object, and a main instrument, of our highest education. Formerly this was necessary ; there was nothing better to teach ; it might almost be said that there was nothing else at that time which children could have been taught : the choice lay between this and no instruction at all. It also happened that those who were to be taught belonged to the upper orders, and so had twelve or fourteen years to de- vote to this study. Now it was out of these circum- stances that our public school system of teaching Latin and Greek arose, which we again repeat was formerly not merely the best, but the only, thing we had to teach ; and to which we are on more accounts than one under the greatest obligations ; and which ought still to form a most necessary part of a high education. When, however, we consider the advances which our own literature has made, and the advances which knowledge has made in so many fields of in- quiry, and the great demand which now exists for

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knowledge, then the old, narrow, daudling, gram- matical system of education must at once appear to be thoroughly out of date. What can be a stronger proof of this than the fact that scarcely any one seems to regret that so many of those who are brought up under this system, the proportion amount- ing to all but a few out of a hundred, fail to attain to that which is the aim of the system — a critical acquaintance with the languages of Greece and Rome : very few people regret this, because very few people think that, if attained, it would have been of much benefit. The loss of time and labour was great, and is exceedingly to be regretted ; but we should have to search for a man who is of opinion that their failing to attain to that particular knowledge for which the loss of time, and the labour were incurred, is, in these days, a matter of much consequence.

Grammar-schools, then, or schools in which the old classical languages were taught, were, at the time when the languages of modern Europe had no literature of their own, our best, our highest, and our only schools. In the history, therefore, of modern culture an epoch of grammar-schools was necessary. Has not, however, knowledge now reached that point at which we ought to begin to look upon this kind of knowledge, in any scheme of instruction, rather as an incidental, or subsidiary, or subordinate study, than as the main one ?

PHILOLOGY AND COMPARATIVE GRAMMAR. 71

Our continuing to maintain our old grammatical system of education for the upper orders has had a prejudicial effect upon the schools which we have established for the lower orders : in the education which we ourselves received, the main effort was to enable us to acquire a critical acquaintance with the classical languages ; as a consequence of this, when we establish schools for the working classes, if our ideas get beyond a catechism proved by texts, they stop short at English grammar, just as if there was nothing else in the world which it would be of advantage for them to know.

In our classical schools the study of language is evidently made too much of; every thing else is so completely subordinated to it, and thrown into the shade by it, that it appears to occupy the whole ground, to constitute the end-all and the be-all of edu- cation. Almost the same remark may be made of our universities, with the additional objection that they do not pursue this study, as they might and ought to do, in a comprehensive manner, and with enlarged and profound views : they seem to disregard general Philology and Comparative Grammar, and to restrict the study of language, a restriction unnecessary even at the grammar-school, to the limits of the two kindred tongues of Greece and Rome. As far as the study of language is concerned, our universities seem to think that an acquaintance with Latin and Greek is all that is either desirable or possible ; and

72 SCHOOL OF THE FUTURE.

yet Oxford, at all events, has at her disposal the services of Professors of Arabic, Hebrew, Sanscrit, and Anglo-Saxon, and of teachers of German and French. The history and affinities of the Indo-Germanic family of languages, as far as its history can be recovered and its affinities traced ; the history of our own language, which gives good promise of becoming the chief language in each of the four quarters of the globe ; the points of resemblance and the points of contrast, which are presented by the different families of language; — are objects in the study of language to which a great university ought to direct its attention. If it be said, that what our universities teach is only meant for a foundation for future superstructures, we may reply by asking two questions: — 1. By the age of twenty-one ought not something more to have been attempted than the laying of a foundation ? 2. And what is the number of those out of a thou- sand university men who in after-life add in this way to these foundations ?

Here we may be met by the objection, that though it would be doubtless very desirable that the instruc- tion given at Oxford, not on the subject of Language only, but on all other subjects also, should thus be raised in its character, and aim higher than at pre- sent, yet that it is quite impossible to act upon such views, because the majority of the students would be unequal to such studies, having neither sufficient abilities nor sufficient previous attainments. Now

IN THESE DAYS UNIVERSITIES SHOULD TEACH 73

this is a most erroneous principle for a great univer- sity to act upon, particularly at the present day. I think we may attribute no small part of the disre- pute in which Oxford is now held, to its having in a great measure lowered and confined its teaching to the requirements of this false principle. One reason for its having thus lowered and restricted its teaching may be found in the fact, that its students are not, from a variety of causes, a large proportion of the studious youth of this country, who have sought out the university as the best place for pursuing the studies in which they are interested ; but that they are mainly young men, who, with the consent of the university, have been forced upon her, and who there- fore are there nominally as students, but in reality merely for the purpose of fulfilling a preliminary con- dition required by the Church from candidates for Ordination. This regulation, in the present state of society, and in the present state of knowledge, is evidently prejudicial to the best interests of the Church ; still it is maintained : this obliges a great many young men to enter the university who other- wise never would have been there, and so are not pro- perly university students. The university, however, seems to have adjusted her whole system of instruc- tion for the purpose of meeting the wants of this particular class. If the reader is interested in this point of the education question, perhaps he will allow me to refer him to my second Pamphlet, where

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74 SCHOOL OF THE FUTURE.

I was led to make some remarks upon the mutually prejudicial effects of this alliance between the Church and the Universities.

The principle of having a compulsory scheme of instruction — which, because compulsory, must be low and restricted — is, of course, the right principle for regulating the studies of a school, but is cer- tainly out of place in an university. At school foundations are being laid ; these are the same in all cases : here it would be ridiculous to talk about choice. The students, however, of an university are in these days not boys, but young men, who must to a great extent be presumed to know what it will be of advantage for them to study, and what they have a turn for. This, it is true, does not apply with so much force to those who are compelled to pass through an university course. All, however, with as few restrictions as possible, ought to be allowed to study what they have a turn for, or what, from any reason of their own, they may wish to study; and the university ought on its part to furnish them with facilities for carrying on their studies, what- ever they may happen to be, supposing they fall within the range contemplated by the university : these facilities should consist in the ablest teachers, extensive libraries, and well-chosen collections, if the subject of study be connected with any branch of natural history, or with the fine arts, or if it be any science, in the study of which models, specimens,

WHAT MEN WISH TO LEARN. 75

and preparations are required for illustration. We must not neglect the old learning, but we must, while we retain the old, make room for the new. Or, in other words, we must act upon the admission, that the old learning is of no value at all, unless viewed in connection with, and incorporated tvith, the new. We must not regard our universities in these days as large schools, where certain stated lessons are set to all alike, which lessons all must learn, and nothing else, but as places where young men may have, on easy terms, facilities unattainable elsewhere, for carrying on the cultivation of whichever of the fields of human knowledge, now greatly increased in number, they may select. The old system in its rigour is not suited to the wants of one in five of those who in these days wish to become real students.

The honest adoption of this principle — and the value of that which is now excluded will oblige us to adopt it — implies a complete change in the scheme of our university teaching. Oxford, then, instead of being satisfied with seeing that the colleges have tutors lecturing on the subjects which the young men were taught at school, will at once direct her atten- tion to the enlargement of her scheme of instruction, and to the perfecting of her means of teaching each particular subject. At present no attempt of this kind is made, because the instruction given by the university is carried out very much upon the idea that the university is only a large grammar school. This

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is why so many of her professors are at present little more than ornamental appendages to her system ; under the present scheme of instruction their services are not required. The corps of professors, however, which the university possesses may be considered as an acknowledgment on her part of the value of the different branches of knowledge which they severally represent. If it be thought advisable, let additional professors be appointed for additional studies, and assistants, too, if requisite. Let those students who have been compelled to enter the university as a pre- liminary to ordination be obliged to go through whatever course may be thought necessary, not by the university, but by those who obliged them to enter the university ; but let voluntary students who come for the purpose of study, and of whom we have not many at present) study what they please. Let us give to all whatever facilities we can for doing this. Unless this be done, however much we may perfect our instruction in Latin and Greek, and though our wealthy classes may become far more numerous than at present, and though the appetite for knowledge may become much more general than at present, the credit and influence of Oxford will go on decreasing, and, too, with reason, because as know- ledge increases, and as facilities for seeing the world increase, the value of four years, and the amount of what may be done and learnt in four years, go on in- creasing in an equal proportion.

CLASSICS WOULD NOT BE NEGLECTED. 77

It is evident that in such a scheme of instruction every thing we now teach would find its appropriate place. In saying this, I have more particularly in view our present classical studies. I think that the number of those who would study to good purpose the literature of Greece and Rome would not be diminished ; that some of the difficulties which at present attend this study would be re- moved ; and that its real advantages would be better understood. Should the very reasonable outcry, now beginning to make itself heard, against the manner in which almost every thing is being sacri- ficed to a long, aimless, and inefficient system of classical instruction, issue in the neglect of all clas- sical studies, it would be a very undesirable result. Without an acquaintance with classical literature it is impossible to know anything about the past history of that division of the human family to which we belong; or to know what were the beginnings and first stages of our modern civilization. Should the literature of Greece and Rome be forgotten, some of the most valuable and instructive chapters in the history of Mind would be lost. Our study of language, too, without an acquaintance with the languages of Greece and Rome, would be very im- perfect. With schools, however, of the kind which I am endeavouring to describe in these pages, and supposing at the same time certain changes, which

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such schools for the people would force on, in our higher schools and universities, the probability is, that we should have many more really good classical scholars than at present ; men who would study the monuments of the ancient literature with far more enlarged views than those with which they are at present regarded in our grammar schools and colleges, and with far more fruitful results.

Be this, however, as it may, still that the student should begin with, and have almost his whole atten- tion directed for thirteen years to, classical studies, is a system of education which, though aided by the largest educational endowments in the world, by the whole power of the Church, and by the sentiments which an old system, which once did good service, can always enlist on its behalf, must in these days fail to produce the very result for which so much is sacrificed. The spirit of the times, and the variety and importance of other kinds of knowledge, are such as must prevent all but a very small number, even of the classically educated, from giving themselves up to the study of classical literature with anything like devotion. We present it to young men as the only, or the chief, object of study; and this they very soon find out to be a practical absurdity : they find that in their education they were made the victims of an antiquated system ; and therefore, by a natural reaction, as soon as they become their own masters they neglect the old literature more than they would

CIRCUMSTANCES OF PRESENT TIME. 79

have done had no more than that degree of import- ance which, at the present day, justly belongs to it, been assigned to it. Our present system, on account of the preposterous manner in which it attempts to exalt the old learning, is a direct cause of its being unjustly neglected, decried, and undervalued.

If these remarks lead any one to suppose that our proposed scheme of instruction aims too high, I would request him to bear in mind that some of the leading circumstances under which we have to set about our work are entirely new. For instance, the very necessity we are under of educating the whole people is a new necessity belonging to our own times. The objects, too, at which we have to aim, as well as the means which we have at our disposal for doing the work, are in a great measure new. It must also be borne in mind that nothing effectual, or worthy of this great cause, can be done, unless the higher, or at least the middle, classes can be brought to take an interest in, and to support, our schools ; and this is what they never will have any motive for doing, and, therefore, never will do, as long as the schools to be supported shall be intended for the use of the labour- inq classes only. Should we ever succeed in con-

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vincing the classes above the lowest that they are interested in the existence of good parochial or district schools, we shall soon find them desirous of maintaining and improving such schools : our schools

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will then be what schools of the present day ought to be ; and the fear that the lower orders may be too highly educated will not be felt any longer.

With respect to the religious teaching given in schools of this kind, it is not improbable that there would be no very serious difficulties after all. It is very generally found, whenever an attempt is made to establish a really good school, that all difficulties of this kind soon disappear ; or, rather, the discovery is made that they had existed more in theory and anticipation than in reality. At all events, we must now acknowledge, and this acknowledgment will at once remove a great many difficulties, that it is not enough to say that the scheme and amount of reli- gious instruction ought to be left entirely to the decision of those who may have the management of the school : for not only ought this to be done, but it must be done ; because in any general scheme of education for the whole people, these school-managers will in each place represent those who pay the school- rate. The school will be theirs. The general prin- ciple, therefore, must be, that whatever they may judge right upon this head must be acted upon. Nor need we fear the result of this, because these school-managers will be themselves fathers of fami- lies, and will have a greater interest in the character of the religious instruction given in their respective schools than any other parties can possibly have : it

RELIGIOUS TEACHING — SECULAR SCHOOLS. 81

will be the religious instruction which their own children, in many cases, will be receiving, or, at all events, the children of their neighbours, by whose conduct in after life they may themselves be affected in no inconsiderable degree.

Of course, too, the clergy will everywhere have a share in the management of these schools ; while in the rural parishes they will have the chief share. In many cases, also, we may eventually have clergymen for masters. Now all these circumstances give as good security for the tone of the religious teaching as we now possess in our present schools, or can reasonably expect in a matter of this kind. It will be far more easy to give a religious tone to the kind of instruction proposed for these schools, than either to our present system of classical education, or to that given in our commercial schools, or to the read- ing, writing, and arithmetic, accompanied with cate- chism and texts, of so many of our parochial schools.

To make compulsory the maintenance of purely secular schools, against the wishes and convictions of those who are to pay for their maintenance) is a very questionable kind of liberality; but to compel people to send their children against their wishes and con- victions to such schools (for in many cases it would come to this) would certainly be an act more worthy of an arbitrary, or even of a revolutionary, than of a free government. If in any district it were

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to happen that the majority of the parents of the children were desirous of excluding religion from the instruction given in the school, the question of a secular school for that particular neighbour- hood might fairly be entertained by the school- managers ; but surely there is no other ground for admitting the question. The right principle appears to be to leave the question in each case to the decision of the school-managers, who will, of course, decide eventually in accordance with the circum- stances, the wants, and the feelings of their respective districts. This is a self-adjusting principle ; the adoption of which will at once set aside a host of objections, which are at present impeding our efforts for the improvement and extension of popular edu- cation. At all events, to condemn a neighbourhood to maintain a secular school, in opposition to the wishes of the educated inhabitants of, and of those who have weight and influence in, the neighbourhood, would be condemning the school to inefficiency and worthlessness.

THE TASK OF finding masters and mistresses capable of undertaking the management of these schools would not, even as things now are, be a very difficult one. We must not be misled here by our old ideas, and by the experience of the past. We have to disabuse our minds of much that has been impressed

MASTERS. 83

upon them by the schools with which we are familiar. The schools we want neither resemble our old gram- mar schools, though grammar will be taught in them, and though, perhaps, those who are to come after us will find that many a good classical scholar will have received his earliest intellectual culture in them; nor do they resemble our present parochial schools. In the former we teach what once had a direct prac- tical object, and was, for those times, of inestima- ble value, and to which we still continue inconsi- derately to assign the same importance, though it has little direct connexion with the work and the ideas, or with the moral feelings and intellectual aims, of the age in which we are living ; and in the latter we dole out instruction of the kind, and in the measure, which we now happen to think suit- able for the working classes. Now we do not want schools at all like either of these, and, consequently, we do not want masters such as would be required for either of them. There are difficulties in finding masters for both of these kinds of school. The knowledge required for the master of a classical school is not the natural growth of the present day : it is a highly artificial production, a forced com- modity, the result of endowments and bounties. We must, therefore, pay very highly for it. And when we suppose that we have got what we want, and have sent our children to a classical school, very few of us are capable of judging whether the master is, after

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all, properly qualified for teaching what he has undertaken to teach. Few of us know any thing about the matter, nor do we care much to know any thing. And with respect to the teachers of our present parochial schools, the qualifications required of them, and the position given them, are not such as to attract persons of any attainments, or of any standing in society : we are even obliged to collect our parochial school-masters, through the instru- mentality of the training school, from the lowest classes. As, however, the position of master in the kind of school we are considering would be a good one, and as the knowledge required of him is in a great measure that which is the natural growth of these times, and that of which we all know the value, the situation would at once become a desirable one : many persons of previous attainments would be anxious to qualify themselves for it. But about this presently.

Not an unimportant part of the instruction given might consist of lectures, delivered by persons uncon- nected with the school, and engaged from time to time for the different courses. These lectures would form a very valuable addition, or complement, to the instruction which the masters were able to give. The lecturer would be an instrument made use of by the master for the purpose of conveying inform- ation to the school upon subjects where the master needed assistance. The whole of the moral training

LECTURES. 85

of the school would remain with the master ; he would also have opportunities of giving whatever moral turn he thought fit to the knowledge conveyed by the lectures. At all events, it would be a part of his duty to point out the bearing of the different courses upon, and their connexion with, the other studies of the school, and their place in the system of general knowledge. We will suppose that there would be four courses of these lectures in the year, each course being in a separate quarter, and contain- ing four or five lectures. All the children above a certain age would be present in the school-room, or class-room, each seated at his own desk in order that he might take notes of the lecture.

This part of the system must not be judged by a reference to our recollections of the schools at which we were ourselves educated, but by a consideration of the intellectual and educational wants of the present day, and of the resources which are now available for the purpose of meeting these wants. This complementary instruction, over and above what the masters are capable of giving, was not wanted formerly ; while in the present day it is necessary, because the teaching of the school must have constant reference to the knowledge existing on the outside of the school, in order that the school may be enabled to meet the wants of the day. Had instruction of this kind been needed formerly, it would have been impossible to have procured it;

86 SCHOOL OF THE FUTURE.

and, had it been possible to have procured it, it would have been impossible to have connected it with the old narrow single-subject system.

There would be no difficulty in finding persons well qualified to give these lectures. The extent to which the various departments of knowledge have of late years been cultivated amongst the upper and the middle classes would ensure our obtaining an ample number of lecturers of this kind. In every neigh- bourhood there would be some who would volunteer their gratuitous services from the interest they felt in the school at which their own children and their neighbours' children were being educated. In con- sidering what might be done in a matter of this kind, we must look at the present moral and intellectual character of the different classes of society ; we must take into account their actual intelligence and knowledge — their feelings and aims: nor must we lose sight of the great changes which have of late years taken place in the very materials of society. Formerly five-and-twenty contiguous parishes might have been found without a single resident clergyman, in every one of which a clergyman is now residing, and, if from no other motive, at least from the pres- sure of public opinion, employing himself more or less actively. And, comparing the whole number of parishes in the country with the whole number of clergy, we find almost two clergymen for every parish. Now a large proportion of this vast body of

LECTURERS. 87

men, in number almost 18,000, and who are spread evenly over the country, are capable of giving in- struction on some subject or other of interest ; in many cases, of course, on subjects connected with or ancillary to biblical criticism and interpretation ; in many cases, also, on subjects of literary, of scien- tific, or of general interest. Of those who would be capable of doing this, we cannot doubt — judging from the manner in which the clergy in the metro- polis, and, indeed, all over the country, are coming forward upon the platforms of lecture-rooms, class- rooms, and mechanics' institutes — but that many would be glad to aid in the same way in schools of the kind we are recommending. The fact, too, that the incomes of the clergy are diminishing, while their numbers, intelligence, and activity are increasing, supplies another reason for our calculating with some degree of confidence upon our schools receiving from them this kind of aid. In short, the clergy I think would be, from more than one motive., among the first to acknowledge the value of these schools.

Every town at the present day contains a con- siderable number of intelligent persons in the middle classes, who have devoted themselves to some parti- cular study or other, and who would be glad of opportunities for giving lectures in schools of this kind.

Mechanics' institutes and country-town museums have already given rise to a class of persons who

88 SCHOOL OF THE FUTURE.

make it their business to give lectures. Our schools might avail themselves of the services of these pro- fessional lecturers ; and the demand for their services in our schools would lead to an increase in their number.

Masters of neighbouring schools would also assist each other, each lecturing for his neighbour's school upon some subject with which he was better ac- quainted than his neighbour.

The Professors, also, of the college in the neigh- bouring town would render the same kind of assist- ance.

In these various sources, then, we possess an ample supply of materials for this part of the system. And if it were a fixed rule that a paid lecturer should never receive less than the fee which a physician now receives for his advice, or which a clergyman receives for preaching a sermon, we may be sure that there would never be any difficulty in procuring a duly qualified lecturer for any subject, upon which the master needed assistance. Many lecturers of this kind would become itinerant and occasional school-teachers.

We might also expect that some of those who would be ready to give lectures would also readily undertake to teach classes on their particular subjects. If our schools were so organised and conducted as to supply an opening for something of this kind, we may be sure that there would be many who would avail

LECTURERS. 89

themselves of it. The missionary spirit exists strongly amongst us. Here would be a field for its exercise at every .man's door. There are numbers of intelligent and benevolent persons, with some leisure time at their disposal, who might be of great use in this way. And here again we might calculate more especially, though not at all exclusively, upon the assistance of the clergy. Many of the highly educated would see in these classes an opportunity for turning their philanthropy and their knowledge to some account, and for doing much good. Wherever any thing of the kind was done we might expect to see some improvement in the mutual feelings of classes, which are at present but slightly acquainted with each other. At all events, this teaching of regular classes upon particular subjects by those in the neighbourhood who were willing and able to do it, and of whom the master and managers might approve, would virtually be an increase in the number of masters, and would assist us much in carrying out the idea of our proposed schools, a very essential part of which consists in a considerable extension of the present range of instruction, the extension being chiefly in the direction of the knowledge in which interest is now felt, and which is now bearing fruit in the midst of us. As a general rule, it would be better that a school should pay for any aid of this kind which it received.

90 SCHOOL OF THE FUTURE.

I WILL NOW endeavour to show where I think we shall find a supply of masters duly qualified for undertaking, and ready to undertake, the manage- ment of these schools. We have supposed that our master will receive about 100/. a year. This will be for the kind of village or district school, of which we have been speaking ; in towns and in larger villages the salary might be proportionably increased. Apartments also ought to be provided for him, if possible, under the same roof as the school itself. This, of course, would be equivalent to an augmentation of salary. Now, when we consider the respectable position the master would occupy, and that no kind of display or unnecessary expense would be required of him, his income would go farther than an equal one in the hands of other members of the community not so situated.

As far, then, as salary was concerned, the master would be in a position superior to that of the gene- rality of curates.

Now as all his evenings, and all his time, with the exception of the school-hours, would be at his own disposal (which, of course, can never be the case with those who are chained down to the hourly duties of a boarding-school), he would have more time for self- improvement, recreation, and society, than falls to the lot of the members of other professions.

As the children would be under his charge

ADVANTAGES OP THE MASTER'S POSITION. 91

during school-hours only, the master would not be oppressed with the load of responsibility which, under the present boarding-school system, must always be felt, and always, too, more or less unavailingly ; for while the present system transfers to the schoolmaster the parental duty of watching ceaselessly over the formation of the character of the child, it fails to give him, nor can it ever give him, the opportunities and the means necessary for the effectual performance of the duty. The system, however, which is recom- mended in these pages will divide the responsibility, up to the thirteenth or fourteenth year, between the schoolmaster and the parent, assigning to each that part which each can most effectually perform ; thus removing from the mind of the conscientious school- master that which at present forms a very distressing incident of the office.

With respect to his standing in society, there can be no reason for supposing that he would be received on a less favoured footing than other professional men.

The master of such a school as we have been con- sidering might also look forward to securing a situa- tion in some larger school, or in a high school or college, — such as would be established in the towns. This would be an inducement with a great many for continuing to study, and to increase their store of knowledge and their attainments. If there were means of rising in this way, it would have a very beneficial effect upon the class of schoolmasters,

92 SCHOOL OF THE FUTURE.

because greater numbers than at present would devote themselves to their work with the feeling that it was to be the work of their lives.

With these advantages to offer, it cannot be sup- posed that there would be much difficulty in finding the masters we should require. Many who are now holding curacies would feel, supposing that their turn of mind and attainments fitted them for the position, that they might, by taking charge of a school of this kind instead of a parish, turn their talents and devotedness to better account. We have seen that such a change would not be one for the worse in respect of worldly circumstances, and we cannot suppose that it would be for the worse as respects their position in society. Our master's position might even be an enviable one to not a few of the beneficed clergy. We may therefore suppose that many of these schools would at once be filled by candidates from the Church, and by men who had received an university education. This would not long be the case, because if the place of school- master be made a desirable one, society is now in such a state in this country — that is to say, education is becoming so general, and the means of finding remunerative employment for educated persons so difficult — that the demand would soon be met by a fitting supply. At first, however, we should expect to see many who were in orders, or who intended to enter the ministry, occupying the master's place in

SOME WOULD BE IN HOLY ORDERS, 93

our larger schools, because no other class would be just now able to supply so many candidates, or can- didates so well qualified.

Here, then, would be a new, and, for some time to come, an inexhaustible field opened to the exertions and the talents of the younger portion of the clergy. Many of our chief difficulties about school-masters, and more especially about training schools, would be removed. The education which our upper and middle classes receive, our universities, and even the Church itself, would all indirectly, but still to a very great extent, in many cases even adequately, supply the necessary training.

The standing and advantages given to the office of the teacher would make the situation of assistant master a very desirable temporary position for a young person entering life. Of course this remark applies more to the case of some professions than to that of others. At all events, we should here have more suitable employment for a young man only twenty-three years of age than the cure of souls and the charge of a parish.

Indeed, can we imagine any better training for Holy Orders ? A young man might either be or- dained on obtaining a school appointment (a college fellowship at present is allowed to give a title to orders), or he might be ordained from the school after he had acquired some experience of life, and some familiarity with the office of teacher, which is

94 SCHOOL OF THE FUTURE.

very near of kin to the office of Christian minister. It need hardly be said that we possess at present no kind of school of which it would be possible to make this use.

This would not only elevate the school and the teacher, but would also bring a considerable accession of strength to the Church, both by extending its influence particularly among the lower orders in a thoroughly legitimate manner, and by enabling many of the clergy to receive a more useful and practical training for parochial work than is at present possible. Such candidates for Orders would have to offer for the service of the Church a certain amount and variety of general and modern knowledge, the tact and discretion which they had acquired in their necessary intercourse with the parents of the children, aptness to teach, and a familiarity with the feelings and ideas of the people.

This would at present be the natural result of such a school-system, though of course it would not be its intended effect ; because the single object of the system wrould be to give to every member of the community such an education as would be suitable to the present wants and the present condition of society. Those, therefore, who had established such a school for their own parish, or district, or town, would necessarily feel that they had the deepest interest in choosing the fittest persons for masters. Their only aim would be to get the best man. The

OTHERS SUITED FOR THE WORK. 95

questions asked would be, What do you know ? and What is your character ? Not Where do you come from ? Where were you educated ? and Who are your friends ? But that this would at the present moment result in strengthening the Church would follow from the present position and efficiency of the Church : many of the fittest candidates, the school- managers being the electors, would be persons in Holy Orders ; many more would be persons whose ultimate destination was Holy Orders.

Perhaps, also, it might be found that, just as at present, many persons who have some little means of their own, either in possession or reversion, do now become clergymen, so, under such a system of schools, would many persons similarly situated, if such a system of schools were established, become teachers in our schools.

But one great point which will bear repetition is, that this system would not only offer an appropriate field for the talent and energy of well-educated young men at a time of life when they are incapable, in most cases, of employing themselves usefully in any other way, but that it would also offer a regular and fitting field, such as we do riot at present possess, for the labours of thousands of benevolent and well- informed persons amongst us, some of them persons who have retired from the active duties of life, and who would gladly avail themselves of such oppor- tunities for taking a part in what we must all now

96 SCHOOL OF THE FUTURE.

consider as the highest, and the allotted, work of the period upon which we have entered.

An opportunity here offers for mentioning another advantage which such a system of schools might be made to yield. On all hands it is allowed that the expense of our university course is a very serious evil. I would propose, then, that an under-graduate might be permitted to commute a year of his univer- sity course for a year spent in one of these schools as an under-master or assistant teacher. This would at once lessen the expense of an university education by at least one-third to all who chose to avail them- selves of the permission. Young men of this age are allowed, as soon as they have taken their degree, to become private tutors to the undergraduate members of the Universities ; there can, therefore, be no objection, on the score of age, or attainments, to their assisting, under the authority of the master, in the instruction of children in such schools as those we have been speaking about.

Our universities direct their attention mainly to clerical education, and have, in a great measure, sacrificed their character of universities to their zeal for maintaining what they imagine to be the best education for Holy Orders. Now we cannot imagine any better training for the duties of a parish clergy- man than a year's teaching in such a school as I have been describing. What more useful addition could be made to our present clerical education ? 0*%

GOOD PREPARATION FOR HOLY ORDERS. 97

rather, if this suggestion could ever be acted upon — and it is only proposed to make it optional — it would form a good beginning for the work of clerical edu- cation, for which after all it can hardly be said that any direct or effectual provision has been made.

Perhaps the certificate of a year spent in this manner would be amongst the best testimonials which a candidate for Holy Orders could present to the bishop from whom he was seeking ordination.

Of course the experience of many kinds which would be gained in this manner would be of the greatest value to the future clergyman : it would be excellent training for that which was to be the work of his life. But who is there that would not be benefited, whatever may be the profession upon which he is afterwards to enter, by spending a year of his life in this manner ? We may safely predict that whatever may be the employment of a man's after life, this year would always be acknowledged to have been spent more profitably than any other throughout the course of his education.

The practicability of the above suggestion entirely depends upon the establishment of the particular kind of school, and of the school-system, recom- mended in these pages. Unless the schools were open and public, so that every thing which went on in them might be known, and unless they were so arranged — as these would be — that by self-acting causes every thing would go on rightly in them, it

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would be unwise to attempt such a plan. Such a position in a private school would not possess any of the advantages I have in view. The adoption of this suggestion would, of course, contribute in some mea- sure to the success and popularity of the schools ; it would, however, be far more advantageous to the universities, and, above all, to the Church and to other religious bodies which chose to avail themselves of it.

Many of the persons engaged in these schools in the work of tuition might be young persons, with- out any very great disadvantage resulting. Attention is purposely drawn to this for the sake of illustrating the system. In the first place, much of the evil, which under our present system would result from this, would be obviated by the fact, that a large share of the moral training of the children would still be left in the hands of the parents. This is not said with the intention of conveying the idea that the masters of these schools would be absolved from the duty of exercising a moral influence over the children they taught : quite the contrary ; they would turn to the best account the means and opportunities they pos- sessed for moral training: but, in addition to this, the education of the children would be carried on under — to many of them — the still stronger in- fluences of home, and of parental affection and watchfulness. And, in the next place, the school being among the most valued possessions, and under the constant supervision, of every parent in the

MISTRESSES. 99

parish, or district, any act of neglect, or any thing in any way faulty, would be known immediately, and the proper remedy would be immediately applied. Of course a young person would be employed as under-master, or assistant teacher, only in cases where no objection was felt. Those whose dearest interests were connected with the school would take care not to entrust the chief part, or any part, of the management of it to persons in whom they were unable to feel confidence.

I have endeavoured to show that there is no reason for anticipating any difficulty in procuring properly qualified masters : there will, I think, be still greater facilities for procuring any number of properly qua- lified female instructors, so soon as we shall be able to give them the position which these schools would offer, Every one is familiar with the regrets constantly expressed at the want of suitable employment for women, who, having received the careful education of gentlewomen, afterwards find themselves in narrow circumstances. Now here is a large field for energy, talent, and devotedness, exactly adapted to such cases. Here is employment, and a position, which many a right-thinking and high-minded woman, in the circumstances to which I have just alluded, would regard as a great privilege. We must not for a moment compare the position of a mistress in one of these schools, either with the dependent position of

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a governess in a private family, or with the harass- ing and humiliating position of an ordinary school- mistress, or school-teacher. The position of our mistress would be very different. The amount of responsibility which would devolve upon her would not be overwhelming, because a part of the burden would be borne by the school-managers, and a part also by the parents of the children. The greater portion, too, of her time would, as was observed respecting the masters, be at her own disposal. There would be nothing degrading about her work, in which she would be supported by the school- managers, who would be the most intelligent and respectable persons in the district, as well as by the respect and regard of the parents of the children. The increasing respect, also, in which the masters of our schools would be held, would to some extent be reflected on the mistresses. If she were a well- educated person, and if our schools could be so organised as that her situation could be made what we have been for the moment considering it, we may be sure that she would be received well at all events by that part of the community in the education of whose children she was bearing a part. She would also be animated by the hope — which few women now engaged in tuition can feel — of some day obtaining, in a larger or higher school, a more extended field of usefulness, attended by an increase of salary, and a higher position.

MISTRESSES, WHERE TO BE FOUND. 101

No greater boon than the establishment of this system could be conferred on a very large class of the women of this country, who now see every avenue both to independence and to usefulness closed against them. To how many well-educated, active- minded, and devoted women would such a field for labour, and such a position, be most attractive. Here is the true substitute for the convents and sisterhoods of mercy of other times. Female assist- ance of this description is indispensable in any general system of education, and we have super- abundant materials in our modern society for sup- plying it. We have thousands of women well qualified for, and most desirous of, taking a part in this the great work of our times ; and if such schools as these were established, we should at once give them the opportunity, which they do not now possess, of turning their talents and devotedness to good account. Perhaps we may see the day, not only when many of the daughters of the clergy, of officers in the army and navy, and of the smaller gentry, will be desirous of securing a position of this kind, in which either a few years or a whole life might be spent so creditably, but even when many of rank and station, under the influence of religious feelings, who, had they lived in former times, would have devoted themselves to seclusion and penance, will devote themselves with equal piety to the task of teaching and training the young. Perhaps with F 3

102 SCHOOL OF THE FUTURE.

the increase of wealth, knowledge, leisure, and refinement, the desire to do good has also increased in equal proportion ; we have, however, no regular field for the realisation of this desire, as far as women are concerned : these schools would give such a field.

Under, then, this system of schools we should escape from our present necessity of searching for school- mistresses from amongst the lower orders of society. The manners and feelings of such persons, however excellent may be their characters, must more or less be coloured by their antecedents and early associa- tions : we can hardly expect them to be very refined. , These objections may doubtless be removed to a very great extent by a good training school; still, how- ever, very few cases can occur in which they can be entirely overcome in those who have known no other life than that of the cottage. Schools of the kind recommended in these pages, though of course they would not decline to avail themselves of the services of those educated at training schools, would yet, we may be sure, have at all times at their command numbers of volunteers from the well-educated classes of society, better able to create around them an atmosphere of gentleness and refinement, and to implant a love of the beautiful and the good in the minds of their pupils, than would be possible for a labourer's daughter, even supposing she had had the advantage, — which, however, only a small percentage

DEPENDENCE UPON THE TRAINING SCHOOL. 103

of our present schoolmistresses have had, — of spend- ing two or three years in a training school. The mis- tresses, whose services I am supposing that we should be able to secure, would also possess a far sounder and more varied experience of life ; and this is a kind of knowledge which always enables its possessor to gain much influence over children, and the want of which they are always very sharp-sighted in detecting. This remark is of course equally applicable to masters.

Perhaps it may be as well to say a word or two in reference to the manner in which our training schools have just been mentioned. It would be difficult to speak too highly of the services which these insti- tutions have done of late years in the work of ele- vating the character of our popular education. They have been the chief centres from which have been diffused higher ideas concerning the duties, the attainments, and the position of schoolmasters and schoolmistresses ; and it will be absolutely necessary to retain these institutions, and it would be well for us if we could increase their number, so long as the lowness and inadequacy of our salaries, and the un- certainty and capriciousness which belong to our present no-system of school-management, oblige us to take our masters and mistresses from the lowest, and most uneducated, class of society. Under any circumstances, too, there would be much advantage in retaining them. "What I wish to say is, that if we

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should succeed in bringing persons already well- educated, and in whose minds higher and better motives will be at work, to undertake the duties of the teacher's office, we shall escape from our present entire dependence upon the training school. It is not considered necessary that the masters of our public schools, or that our governesses, should have spent two or three years in some training establish- ment. Now we ought to aim at making our schools of such a character that we might reasonably ex- pect to find, among the candidates for the situation of masters and mistresses, persons who had already received a good education, and who, setting Latin and Greek aside, though we should not despair even of this in some instances, possessed as extensive knowledge, and were as well able to interest the minds of children in the acquisition of knowledge, and to lead them by their moral sentiments and affections, as our governesses, or the untrained mas- ters of our public schools.

The school, then, which has been kept before the reader in these pages, would be the school of the large rural parish, or of the rural district. The reader will see how it would adapt itself to the small village on the one hand, or to the town on the other hand. In small towns, and in populous neighbour- hoods, the school would of course be larger, and there would be a greater amount of funds at its disposal. This would be just so much more power

LIBRARY AND READING-ROOM ATTACHED. 105

for the improvement of the school ; and none of this power would be diverted for other purposes, as is the case with schools established not by a neighbourhood for its own use, but by a private individual as a private speculation. Whatever sum was raised in the school, or for it, would be wholly expended in securing abler teachers, and a greater number of them, and in otherwise improving the school.

In the larger towns this improvement would be so great that the chief school would assume the appear- ance of a college, by which name, perhaps, it would be advisable to call it, because those who wished to proceed farther in their studies than would be pos- sible at the rural schools, would attend the classes of these higher town schools, where there might be means for securing the services of very able men. The name of college, then, would be useful for the purpose of marking their superiority to the schools in the rural districts.

In our largest towns — those of above 50,000 inhabitants — these colleges might be of a very high character. In such places as Liverpool and Man- chester, if the time shall ever come when the whole population will be educated, several colleges would be required.

To each school a library might be attached, for the use of the students, the masters, and the neigh- bourhood. An additional advantage would be gained if this library, or, in case the neighbourhood could

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not afford a separate room for the library, a class- or school-room, were used as an evening reading- room. And here I would allow newspapers to be taken in, as the daily press has now become the most generally used means for disseminating knowledge and ideas. For every one person who is in the habit of reading books, there are ten persons perhaps who never read any thing but newspapers. True wisdom is shown not by ignoring important facts of this kind, but by turning them to good account. This library and reading-room would supply another, and a very powerful means for making the school a centre of interest, and of union, to those whose children were receiving their education in it. It would bring them together in a pleasing manner, on neutral ground, and for intellectual enjoyment. It would dispose them to regard the school with affection. Occasional lectures also to adult classes might be given in this library, or in the school- or class-room.

High above all, as was previously remarked, would stand our great national universities, which, if they chose — and, surrounded by such a system of schools, they could not but choose — to bring their teaching into harmony with the state of knowledge, the wants, and the work of our free, busy, and enlightened age, would command the love and reverence of all orders, as the illustrious time-honoured depositaries of know- ledge, and, again, as occupying the highest place in its diffusion.

DIMINISHING IMPORTANCE OF UNIVERSITIES. 107

If Oxford would give up the idea of making her- self a theological seminary for the upper orders, and endeavour, honestly, to connect herself with the general education of the country, there is every rea- son for supposing that, in an age like the present, when our numbers and our wealth have increased so enormously, and knowledge and education are valued so highly, her fame and her influence would soon become even greater than they were in those old times to which she looks back with so much pride. Instead of doing this, she has been endeavouring to restrict the instruction she offers to the limits of what was taught centuries ago; forgetting that society is in a very different state now from that in which it was then ; that knowledge is in a very different state ; and that, besides, in those old times when Oxford was so famous, she taught all that men at that time wished to know, and indeed all that was at that time known.

At present, the studious youth of this country do not look to Oxford as the place where they may receive the highest and best instruction. The lead- ing university of the Anglo-Saxon race ought cer- tainly to be capable of offering great facilities for the study of the different branches of science, as well as of polite learning. But what is the fact ? Is it not generally felt that she offers no peculiar advantages to those who are entering upon the study of any

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particular branch of science, or who intend to culti- vate any part of the field of literature ? It would be demanding too much to expect that she should be in advance of the rest of the world in her physical teaching, or in her teaching on social and econo- mical science, or in medicine, or law; or that she should maintain a school for the study of the fine arts ; or that she should possess an historical, or even a critical and philological school, from which views might be disseminated, to which the learned upon these subjects on the outside of the uni- versity would be disposed to defer. We ought not now to expect much of this kind, because in these days scientific and literary men are every- where able to carry on their pursuits, without aid from the countenance or support of an university : and the activity of the press is now so great that every man, wherever he resides, may easily keep himself on the level of what is known in his own department of study, and may have upon the shelves of his own library every thing that is worth reading upon the subjects in which he is interested. Great capitals, too, must, in many important respects, always possess very considerable advantages over an university situated as Oxford is. Still Oxford ought, at all events, to be able to attract to herself, and to enlist in her service, men of eminence in their different departments, by making it worth their while to reside within her walls, and teach in her

LIBERTY OF STUDY, AND OF TEACHING. 109

lecture-rooms. Of course this necessitates both some changes in, and some additions to, her present system.

Now if any thing of this kind were aimed at, there are two questions which would have to be settled ; the first being, How are these subjects to be admitted into the present system of instruction ? and the other being, Where are we to find places for the men of eminence, who might, under different circumstances, look to Oxford as offering the most suitable field for their labours ? This is not the place for discussing these questions : it appears, however, that there is for them but one solution, and that is, that the uni- versity must admit both a much greater liberty of study, and, as a correlative necessity, a much greater liberty of teaching ; the main restrictions being, as far as respects the former, that the subjects chosen by the student be studies which the university has sanc- tioned and provided for ; and, as far as respects the latter, that the teacher must be licensed by the uni- versity. The existing colleges, the power to make certain alterations having been allowed them, might be left upon their present footing, in the hope that they would of themselves sooner or later do what would be most conducive to the public good, and to their own interests. Should they, however, find in- superable difficulties in the way of any such attempts, let them continue to maintain their present restric- tions ; but at the same time let others be allowed to

110 SCHOOL OF THE FUTURE.

establish colleges of their own within the precincts of the university, and let the students of these new colleges be allowed to avail themselves of the lectures of the professors, and to receive, on the same terms as the students of the old colleges, the honours and degrees which the university confers. This would be permitting the Roman Catholics, Wesleyans, Independents, and others to remove their colleges from the places where they are now situated to Oxford. Now if at the same time those graduate members of the university who at present are al- lowed to act as private tutors were allowed to open licensed halls, we should have in these licensed halls and new colleges two additions to the present system, which would perhaps suffice for the desired liberty of teaching. The requisite liberty of study will only be attained when the university shall have provided equal facilities for, and shall give equal encourage- ment to, all the different branches of study — and the more numerous these branches the better — which she may be desirous of promoting. If any thing of this kind were to be done, we should then see some students coming to Oxford solely for the purpose of studying mathematical or physical science; others for the purpose of pursuing classical, critical, and philological studies ; some to study medicine, others law ; some history, or the social and economi- cal sciences, and others theology. Of course some of these branches admit of subdivision, — as, for in-

HAVE FEW REAL STUDENTS. Ill

stance, that of physical science ; while others might be studied conjointly with advantage, as might be the case with history, philology, and theology. The idea is merely thrown out for the purpose of indi- cating the system which universities must eventually adopt : the present state of knowledge, and the present state of society, will oblige them to adopt it.

It is by no means improbable, (such is now the thirst for, and the actual value of, knowledge,) that if any man of eminence in the literary or scientific world were, — just as some celebrated philosopher might have opened a school at Athens, — to propose to give a course of lectures, and to instruct a class, upon the subject where the pre-eminence of his knowledge was incontestable, the success of the attempt would be most signal. Should any thing of the kind be done, it would at once point out to the universities the necessity of abandoning the practice of forcing upon men what they do not wish to know, what they have no aptitude for, and will never make any progress in ; and of teaching them, instead, what they wish to know, and of providing them for this purpose with the best instructors.

One consequence of the present system is, that Oxford possesses hardly any real students. An analysis of her undergraduate members will readily prove this. A large proportion, amounting perhaps to a clear majority of the whole, enter the uni- versity, because an university degree is a necessary

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preliminary to ordination. Of the remainder many are young men who will some day possess inde- pendent fortunes, and who are sent to Oxford, not because their friends expect that they will study, but because their friends do not know what else to do with them. It is supposed, also, that it will be advantageous for those who purpose being called to the bar, to be able to show an Oxford degree : all things considered, the advantage of this may reason- ably be called in question : this idea, however, draws some to Oxford. Some also are attracted by the hope of securing a fellowship. Now this mere handful of undergraduates, among whom — when we consider the necessity which compelled some, and the motives which induced others, to connect them- selves with her — very few real students can be re- cognised, is her condemnation. Her halls and col- leges are not thronged by earnest students from the different parts of this great empire, desirous of culti- vating, under her guidance, some this, and others other parts of the field of knowledge ; because she herself is cultivating only one small corner of that field, and this, too, a corner which has not of late been very productive, nor ever will be again, except- ing when cultivated in conjunction with other parts of the field.

The establishment of schools of the kind we have been proposing would, perhaps, eventually set all this right, in a more complete manner, and more

SMALL COST OF THE SYSTEM. 113

expeditiously, too, than the Royal Commission in all probability hope ever to see it done. Such schools would show what kind of education was wanted. The universities might aid the schools by giving a good education to many who might after- wards be glad to teach in the schools ; and the schools might in turn aid the universities by sending up to them from all parts of the country those who had shown the greatest desire and capacity for learning. These would be willing and real students. It has also been shown how, by the aid of these schools, — for none of our present schools would be of any use for such a purpose, — the universities might lessen the expense, and, at the same time, improve the character of their clerical education. An university, in order to maintain its credit, must endeavour to supply the wants of the day. People living in the middle of the nineteenth century very properly have no wish to send their children to a school which can hardly be said to teach any more than what was known in the Middle Ages. In these days three or four years, and 600£ or 800/., may be spent to better purpose.

The slight cost of maintaining this system of schools — weighing the cost with the large proportion

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of the community to whom it would offer an educa- tion suitable to the wants of the present day — may at first sight appear to constitute an objection. It may be asked whether so much could be done for so little ? This reduction, however, in the cost of edu- cation — the reduction being twofold, for it is both a reduction in the expense of maintaining a school capable of giving a high education, and a reduction in the expense of a high education to each individual ; the first being a result of the state of knowledge and of society, and the latter of the number of persons whom it may be desirable to educate, either partially, or entirely, in the same manner, — is one of the advan- tages which the progress of civilisation has now placed within our reach. There is nothing lowering to the dignity of the work of education in our finding that it is subject to the general law which makes the character of the supply of any article of general consumption depend upon the character of the cir- cumstances which attend the demand. The number of consumers has increased enormously ; and, at the same time, the facilities for producing the article in demand have increased in quite as great a proportion, or even perhaps in a still greater.

With respect to the particular article of education, it is an easy matter to trace the application of this general principle. There are stages in the progress of society in which education is not thought of or required : there is no demand for any thing of the

WHY NO OBJECTION. 115

kind. But to come at once to that order of things, out of which the actual state of society has grown by a regular sequence of events : in the dark ages, as we have already observed, there was no demand for education throughout the community, except among the clergy. Though the rights and the religion of the community rested ultimately upon letters, yet such was the extraordinary condition of society, that only one order of men — what we might almost call only one profession — either did, or, indeed, could, cultivate letters. A necessary result of this, as well as a sufficient proof of the narrowness of the limits within which education was restricted, was the fact that the clergy became statesmen, architects, lawyers, physicians, diplomatists ; not so much en- grossing all the opportunities and power which belong to knowledge, as receiving them in complete default of any other claimants.

The great intellectual era of the Reformation in- augurated very different views and practices, founded upon a just appreciation of the wants and resources of the day. At that time it was that the existing system of education, as far as its main character- istics are concerned, was established. The spread of knowledge and the training of mind were neces- sary for the support of the Reformation ; but, at the same time, knowledge and intelligence, together with habits of self-dependence and self-restraint, were not at all needed by the great body of the

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people, either for their own well-being, or for the sake of the society in which they lived. It must also be remembered, that at that time the population of Great Britain could not have been more than double that of the metropolis alone at the present day. It was absolutely necessary to spread, to a certain ex- tent, enlightenment, and habits of independent thought ; and yet such were the circumstances of society and of the times, that very few were found capable of giving instruction, and very few were found so circumstanced as to be capable of receiving it. It was therefore necessary, by an apparatus of endowed schools and endowed colleges, to force the production of what was needed. A bounty was paid upon education. Men were bribed to qualify them- selves for becoming masters of schools and colleges ; and others were bribed to listen to their instructions. Formerly the clergy had provided for the education of their own body ; the Reformers wished to educate some of the laity as well as the clergy ; but, to speak generally, they saw that, as things then were, this could not be done, unless they provided the means for its being done. These means they provided in their endowed schools.

Now the very reverse of much of this is the case at the present day. The population has become so dense that, for the purposes of education, the whole country may be regarded as if it were one continuous town. Throughout these closely packed millions all

PRESENT ADVANTAGES. 117

are capable of receiving education, and all are de- sirous of receiving it : education is now the only resource we have for enabling each individual to provide for himself — now that society obliges every one to take care of himself; and education is the chief means which society has for meeting the pe- culiar evils by which it is assailed in these days. And not only is it now true that all are capable of receiving instruction, and that their well-being de- pends upon their receiving it, but besides — so that our position is in both respects the reverse of theirs — we have in these days a sufficiency of persons quite capable of giving all the desired instruction. All that is requisite is a system of schools which shall bring together those who wish to be taught, and those who are able to teach. These are the favour- able circumstances which, never having existed be- fore, do in these days enable us to lessen the cost of, and at the same time to improve, our education.

The great advantages which we now possess, and we are as yet hardly conscious of their greatness, or even that we do possess them, are, first, that we now have such vast numbers demanding education, that, under a properly organised system, a large pro- portion of our schools might be made, even without a rate-in-aid, to support themselves ; and then, that we have abundant materials for forming our staff of teachers ; that is to say, if we adopt such a sys- tem as would render the position of a schoolmaster

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a respectable one, while it admitted of the co-opera- tion of those who were capable of being, and willing to be, of use.

In the meantime, however, it seems to be the duty of all those who are interested about the exten- sion and improvement of education, and above all does it appear to be the duty of the clergy, to aid in the establishment here and there, and wherever there are openings, of schools of the proposed kind, which may serve as examples to the surrounding districts of what can be done, and of what ought to be done. This great service the Dean of Hereford has ren- dered to the cause of education, the schools of King's Somborne having been in this way examples, not only to their immediate neighbourhood, but in no inconsiderable degree to the whole country ; and it is much to be regretted that the attempt made in the dioceses of Winchester and Salisbury to form a society, having specifically for its object the esta- blishment of schools upon the model of those at King's Somborne, was not better supported. The clergy and gentry of any neighbourhood might unite for the purpose of giving to the schools of some large central village this improved character. Every one who, by reflection on the course of events, and the present wants of society, and by attending to the discussion which the question of education is now undergoing, may become desirous of doing some- thing, may at once set to work in his own town, or parish, or district. The best way for him to pro-

PUBLIC OPINION MUST BE ENLIGHTENED. 119

ceed will be to endeavour to get his neighbours to join him in making the attempt. For the purpose of exemplifying the proposed system — and the school-system of the future must be a common and co-operative one — it would be advisable that this should not be the work of an individual, but a work in which many take a personal and a common in- terest. All who make such attempts may hope to secure eventually the sympathy and support of every parent who is anxious about the welfare of his chil- dren, of every one who wishes well to his neighbours, and of every one who wishes to see an improvement in the moral and intellectual, and, through the moral and intellectual, in the material condition of those by whom he is surrounded.

Perhaps, however, the reader is now disposed to say, all this is very well, but how is it to be done ? Supposing that such a system of schools would meet our wants, there yet remains the question of how are we to get them ? We have already said some- thing about the manner in which such schools may be supported, and about the manner in which, and this in most cases would prove the greater difficulty of the two, they might be started. There is, how- ever, a preliminary difficulty to be overcome — the difficulty of interesting the great body of the people in the question, the difficulty of bringing them to see, if not the necessity in the present state of society, yet, at all events, the value to themselves of

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such schools : the people must be interested, because it is evident both that schools of this kind can only be supported by local resources, and that their management also must be local. What is wanted for such a system to rest on, is not the assist- ance and supervision of the government, though of course the assistance of the government will always be of great value, and is at present quite indispensable ; still less is it the guidance and support of educational societies, for as soon as parents shall have become desirous of establishing schools for the education of their own children, it will be plain to every body's comprehension that these parents will know much better than any society will be able to tell them, what it is that they want, and will be able to manage the matter much better themselves than any society would be able to manage it for them : our primary want is the enlightenment of public opinion. We want the conviction in the minds of intelligent and right- thinking people in any neighbourhood that they can establish a school themselves for their own and their neighbours' children, in which their children may receive a cheaper and better education than they are receiving at present. Every day it is becoming easier to produce these convictions, for the simple reason that they are suggested by the wants and cir- cumstances of the times.

What, then, we ought to propose to ourselves as our paramount objects are, first, to get adequate

OUR ULTIMATE AIMS — HOW ATTAINABLE. 121

means for enabling us to secure the services of good masters and mistresses : ultimately this can only be done effectually by adding, wherever it may be re- quired, a school-rate-in-aid to the school-fees, and to the amount of income arising from endowments wher- ever they may happen to exist. And, in the next place, to get the management of the schools into the hands of those who are most interested in their good management and success. Now those persons who will be most interested in the good management and success of any school will of course be those who pay a rate for its support, and who, for the sake of their own children, perhaps — at all events for the sake of their neighbours' children — will be desirous of having a good and efficient school.

It is plain, therefore, that this is a movement in which we must aim at interesting the people. The gentry and clergy must begin. It devolves upon them to show what is the kind of school we want ; what can be done by a good school ; and how a good school may be supported. In every part of the country, either in small towns or in large rural parishes, there are schools already existing which offer facilities for the introduction of the necessary improvements : many of these are endowed schools. Better management, perhaps some additional build- ings, and most probably a better master, will be required. The funds needed for these alterations may, let us hope, be raised ultimately by the rate

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we have been speaking of, or by a Parliamentary grant for the express purpose of improving existing schools : at present, however, they must be raised from some other source ; that other source being, for the present, the munificence of the gentry and clergy, which has never been wanting in this country for what is confessedly a good object.

The establishment, then, of these schools, here and there, will, by serving as examples of what may be done, and of the best manner of doing it, be the most effectual way of winning the co-operation of the intelligent and well-to-do middle classes. The chief motive by which we shall secure their assist- ance will be, that they will not allow their own children to receive a worse education than the chil- dren of artizans and labourers.

The labouring classes are already almost every- where sufficiently alive to the advantages of giving their children a good education, as the only means of enabling them to rise in the world.

When the very idea of national education was only in its germ, it was well that educational societies sprang up capable of assisting its development, and contributing much towards its favourable reception. The idea, however, is now daily gaining more ex- tended acceptance ; so much so, indeed, as to give us good reason for hoping that the people will soon begin to take an interest in the work: and when this shall be the case, it will be evident that the main

UTILITY OF SOCIETIES ONLY TEMPORARY. 123

purpose for which the societies were established will then have been answered. The societies were not established for the purpose of controlling the educa- tion of the people, but for the purpose of con- tributing towards the consummation of having the whole people educated. If any thing of this kind is ever to take place, the scale of operations will then be far too great for private societies : the work will then be one which it will be only possible to carry on by the enlightened liberality, attention, and supervision of the inhabitants of each village, town, or district. Nor would they submit to dictation or interference; for a work of this kind, freedom of action will be an essential requisite. It will, let us trust, be some day the glory of our educational societies that their exertions contributed much to- wards leading the present educational movement to so desirable an end.

If this should be the end of the present movement some ten or fifteen years hence, it may then be a question whether the position of the government towards the education of the country will not be greatly modified. How will government be able to inspect and to have transactions of one kind or another with 20,000 schools in Great Britain ? If the people, however, should ever come to take the enlightened interest in this question, or rather in this work, which it is supposed that they will, they will then be able to do these things for themselves.

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It is plain, at all events, that if the inhabitants of each district or parish are to pay towards the sup- port of the schools in their respective districts or parishes, and if their own children are being educated in these schools, then these persons ought to have, and will have, the management of these schools. At present, the province of government in this matter is to aid as much as possible in bringing about this, the legitimate consummation of the educational movement ; and when it shall have been brought about to any great extent, then perhaps its province will better be restricted to the exceptional cases, the cases of neighbourhoods, where people are prevented by some circumstance or other from establishing, or are actually unable to establish and maintain, the necessary schools.

It need hardly be noticed that the success of an attempt to establish an improved school in any neighbourhood must at present, while improved edu- cation is in its infancy, and improved schools are few in number, depend upon the qualifications of the master in a greater degree than may be the case perhaps hereafter, when many prejudices shall have been removed, and good schools become common, and correct views respecting education more gene- rally diffused. A person who is charged with the introduction of a new system must needs possess not merely the requisite knowledge, but also great tact and judgment. There is every reason, however,

ONE MAN MIGHT NOW DO MUCH. 125

for supposing that these, and every other qualifica- tion which may be required, might easily be found, provided the situation of master, as we have often said already, be made a respectable and desirable one.

It may be worth while to remind the reader how a man whose services were needed for any special purpose, — that, for instance, of organising schools, or of giving advice in school matters, or of being present at public meetings, might, as it were, multiply himself in these days. By the aid of railways he might be to-day in Cumberland, to-morrow in Corn- wall, and the day following in Kent. One of the arguments for the introduction of railways into India rests upon the same idea ; it is said that they will enable one soldier to do the work which, as long as the means of communication are rude and imperfect, must occupy several. This is one of the advantages of the present day which would enable us to turn to the best account the abilities of a few able men. In estimating what may be done, credit should be allowed for advantages of this kind. In these days of railway travelling, and of cheap and rapid postal communication, even a single individual might, by visiting from school to school, and by keeping up a correspondence with school managers and school teachers, contribute much towards infusing a proper spirit into, and maintaining, a proper course of in- struction in a large number of schools.

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There are some incidental questions which the perusal of the preceding pages may have given rise to in the minds of those, whose attention has never been particularly directed to the differences, which exist between the present state of knowledge and that of the knowledge of all former periods, or to the social wants of the present day. We will say a few words about these difficulties, or objections, not because we hope that by doing so we shall be able to throw any additional light upon our subject, but because there is an advantage in considering a sub- ject of this kind from every point of view.

I. One question, then, which we may expect to hear frequently asked is, Would not the children of the poor receive, in such schools as these, too high an education ? There are many ways in which this objection may be answered. As a general remark it is found to be impossible to keep the children of the labouring classes at school beyond their eleventh or twelfth year, and in some districts even beyond their tenth. Now there can be little reason for supposing that a child whose education will end at this age will receive too high an education. The practical difficulty lies in the directly contrary direc- tion : the thing to be really apprehended is, that, do what we may, we shall not have time enough for educating them up to the point, where education may be supposed likely to have a good effect upon one's after life and character. Up to what point has the education of the children of the upper orders

TOO HIGH AN EDUCATION IMPOSSIBLE. 127

been carried by their tenth or eleventh year ? If, however, the children of the labouring classes should ever come to stay longer at school, it will be because the parents have become convinced, in consequence of the improvements in our schools, that a child gains so much by continuing at school, that it is worth their while to sacrifice what they might themselves gain by a child's labour, in order that the child may receive the additional benefit of attending school a year or two longer. And we may be sure that when the poor — if such should ever be the case — . shall have become so capable of appreciating a real education as to be ready to make these sacrifices — to them enormous sacrifices — for the purpose of securing a little more instruction for their children, they will not be in an unfit state, as a class, for receiving the rudiments of an education somewhat higher than that which aims professedly at enabling every poor man to read — nothing being said about understanding — a chapter in his Bible.

If we had a good system of schools, it is probable that any poor child who showed that he was pos- sessed of great abilities, or who took pleasure in the acquisition of knowledge, would meet with kind friends amongst his richer neighbours, who would be glad to pay the small school-fees necessary for re- taining him at school a little longer. Some of these might afterwards, perhaps regularly, perhaps at spare times, find means of attending some of the classes of

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the high school, or college, in the neighbouring town ; and even here and there one or two of these might afterwards, under a more open and less costly system of University education, — we have pointed out a way in which these schools might be made use of for the purpose of reducing the expense of this part of education at once by one third, — be found amongst the students of Oxford or Cambridge, com- pleting their education, and qualifying themselves for taking charge of one of these schools, or even for eventually taking charge of a parish. In this way might society avail itself of talents wherever they had been bestowed. Our present system precludes us from doing this. Perhaps the day will come when it will be found that the only effectual way of allaying the natural and (in the present state of society) growing discontent of the lower orders, will be our having it in our power to demonstrate to them by examples of the fact in every town and neigh- bourhood, that the paths to success in life have been opened to the lower orders, as far as possible upon the same conditions as to those above them ; that is, upon their showing that they have the moral charac- ter and the abilities requisite for success. That the lower orders should be brought to feel this practi- cally would be a greater advance in their improve- ment than history has yet had to record. But the machinery for effecting any thing of this kind con- sists in a system of improved schools.

It can hardly be necessary that any thing more

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should be said in reply to the objection that the children of the poor will be receiving too high an education. It is, of course, a truism that we ought not to waste any part of the short time at our dis- posal in teaching them what it will be of little or no advantage for them to know. There can, however, result nothing but good from putting into their minds some of the ideas which must have been in the mind of the Creator when He formed the objects with which he has surrounded us, and bestowed them upon us for our use ; nor some of the ideas which must have been in the mind of the Creator when He ordained the general laws to which human societies were to be subject. Knowledge of this kind is suitable to the capacity of every one. Every one, irrespective of his sta- tion in society, is capable of taking an interest in such knowledge, and a pleasure in acquiring it. Every one of us, in consequence of possessing it, will perform his allotted work in life better, and be a better and a happier man. As far as this kind of knowledge} and the tastes and dispositions which har- monise with it, are concerned, has any human being ever been, or can such a thing happen as that one should be, too highly educated ? Perhaps it may be invidious to inquire whether the fear, expressed in general terms, without any indication of particulars, that the poor are receiving too high an education, may not be interpreted to mean, when any thing is

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really meant, not that the poor will ever know too much for their own happiness, but that some amongst them will know more, and be able to turn what they know to better account, than the badly- educated in the classes above them. Under any system, similar to that now proposed, this feeling would cease to exist : no one ought to be surprised at finding that it exists under our present system of education.

II. Another objection, akin to the preceding one, is, would not the proposed system of giving instruc- tion to the children of the labouring classes together with the children of some of those who employ labour, result in placing the necessary intercourse between the two classes upon a very disagreeable footing. To this we may reply — (1.) That this mixture will always be optional. (2.) That it will not be necessary for the success or usefulness of the school that it should take place ; and the probability is that it will be some time before it will take place to any great extent, I say it will not by any means be ne- cessary, though of course it would contribute towards making the school self-supporting, and would tend to improve it in a variety of ways. (3.) That if our schools shall be made what they ought to be, it must take place to a greater or to a less extent, because parents will send their children where they will receive the best education at the least cost. This seems to be an inevitable consequence of the im- provement of our schools ; and therefore, perhaps,

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the wisest way of proceeding would be, not to ob- ject to it, because it must take place, and because it will follow from our having good schools, but to endeavour to turn it to good account, as it is plain that we may in several ways. The adoption of the system of school-rates would, perhaps, very soon lead to this mixture of classes.

A little reflection, perhaps, will show that the greater weight of probability lies upon the side of the directly contrary supposition. If the children of the labouring classes were to receive instruction together with the children of some of the classes above them, as has been done for many generations in Scotland, as was done till lately with the best eifect in some of the northern parts of England, and as is now being done at King's Somborne ; and if this instruction were given by able and judicious masters, under the management of persons interested personally in the success of the school, these masters not being taken, as is now the case, from the lower orders of society, then the probability is that the children of the labourer or artizan and of his em- ployer would grow up with feelings of mutual re- spect for each other, instilled and practised from their earliest years. Each, as the condition of having his own rights respected, would learn to respect the rights of others. This, of course, will depend upon the character of the school.

Those of the class above the labourer who may,

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we think, some day make use of these schools, do not at present decline sending their children to boarding-schools of a very inferior kind, though they know that they will have to live in constant daily intercourse with many children who have been much neglected. Why, therefore, should we suppose that they will refuse to send their children to better schools, where every thing will be known, and where there will be very little opportunity for evil commu- nications to corrupt good manners.

I am quite aware that the above remarks, perhaps the whole purport of these pages, may sound strange to those who have been brought up under our old scheme of education ; the practical end and aim of which — if it has any end or aim at all — is not so much moral and intellectual improvement as a cer- tain kind of acquaintance with Latin and Greek ; for we must remember that in the present state of human knowledge and of human society an acquaint- ance with the old learning has not the moral and intellectual value it had two or three centuries ago. Perhaps, too, what I have been saying will appear in this light even to a great many of my own brethren in the ministry, although their attention is being constantly directed to moral and social questions, and to the mitigation of moral and social evils. These, however, are not at all reasons for despairing, because improved schools of one kind or another must soon be established, and it is equally certain

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that the clergy will be amongst the foremost and ablest of their supporters. The direction which the sympathies and mental activity of the present gene- ration have taken, in which the clergy largely partici- pate, the abolition of pluralities, and the enforcement of residence, can hardly lead to any other result.

III. A third question which may be asked is, Will not such a system of schools interfere with and, if it succeed, ruin our great public schools ? To this we may reply, that supposing for a moment this were to be its effect upon our public schools, there could only be one reason for its having this effect ; that reason being, that parents who were capable of judging between the two systems, and at perfect liberty to decide according to the evidence, and who had the strongest motives for coming to a right con- clusion, and no motives for coming to a wrong one — had decided that the new system of education was better than the old one. In this case no more would be done than was done when the mariner preferred the guidance of the compass to that of the stars ; or when the soldier exchanged his old bow and arrows for the musket and bayonet ; or when the steamboat and railway train superseded the sailing-packet and stage-coach. We may, however, be relieved from all apprehensions that any thing of the kind will ever take place : we shall never see our public schools deserted, and appealing for support to our feelings of respect for their past history. Many of our public

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schools are well endowed, and all of them have well- established names ; and so, of course, it will always be worth somebody's while to keep them up under a system adapted to our present wants and the present state of knowledge, supposing public opinion to have expressed itself decidedly against the old system. At all events we never need fear but that in so rich a country as this there will always be a very large number of parents who will very naturally prefer sending their children to our large public schools.

The only effect which an improved and extended system of general education can have upon our public schools will be a very beneficial one — beneficial both to themselves and to the public. They will be brought to abandon their old methods of teaching, and the old, narrow, almost single-subject system of instruction : and having done this, we may risk the prophecy, that they will find within their walls a greater number of pupils than they have yet had.

Our public schools, then, aiming directly at meet- ing the wants and availing themselves honestly and fearlessly of the knowledge and of the resources for teaching of these times, and being very much strengthened by the extension and improvement of popular schools, everywhere spreading moral and in- tellectual enlightenment, might at the same time find the Universities working in concert with them. For our Universities cannot be effectually adapted to these times unless the schools — which are to prepare

PKOPAGANDISM IMPOSSIBLE. 135

men for the Universities, and which thus form a very essential part, in fact the very foundation of a system of education which includes an university course, which is merely its completion and last development — are brought to make at the same time a corre- sponding change in their objects and system. The School and the University work connectedly — the one supplying the first part, the other the latter part, of a certain plan of education. It is not, therefore, of much use to talk about altering the whole scope of the education given in the one, without at the same time making a corresponding change in the plan and idea of the education given in the other. The number of schoolmasters on the Oxford Commission leads us to hope that this very essential point will not be lost sight of. The Universities, by the cha- racter of their examinations for matriculation, and more particularly by the kind of knowledge to which they assign their honours, may exert a great deal of influence over our schools.

IV. Another objection frequently alleged against every scheme of popular education to which the term " system" can be made in any way to apply, particularly if the aid or inspection of the Govern- ment is to be admitted, is, that the masters will soon become little more than political agitators, or propa- gandists of opinions of one kind or another. This the objectors allege to be the case in Prussia and France, and affirm that we should meet with the

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same result in this country. This objection is alto- gether wide of the mark, as directed against any system of the kind proposed in these pages. What we have been suggesting has nothing in common with the Government-managed systems of other countries, which could in any way lead to the anticipated evil. It would be a thoroughly English system, every school being managed separately, by those who were locally and personally interested in its efficiency and success. It would have no political or propagandist object of any kind, but would aim singly at meeting the educational wants of the present day, as those wants are felt and understood by ourselves ; and it would avail itself of the resources which we, and which no other people, do at this day possess.

Our teachers would not be a vast body of men in the pay of the State, all possessed of the same kind of knowledge and qualifications, and all serving one master (that master being the Government), and therefore sympathising with each other, and animated by an objectionable esprit de corps. They would, in each case, be engaged and paid by those who had established the school, and who would, of course, retain the direction of it. If, therefore, a master were to attempt to make use of his position for pur- poses beside his duty, or to show any unfitness for his office, he would, of course, immediately lose his appointment. Neither would our masters be looking to the State for promotion, but to the fathers of

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families and to the clergy of each neighbourhood or town. Many would be themselves clergymen, or would be persons qualifying themselves for entering Holy Orders. Many of our female teachers might be high-minded and well-educated gentlewomen. Nothing more, therefore, need be said about this ob- jection, which we maybe sure will never be applicable to any system of education adopted in this country.

V. One more adverse remark which may be made upon our proposed schools, is the repetition of the old sneer about " a little learning." In which, then, of the departments of knowledge, in which it is pro- posed that instruction should be given, has it been found that a little knowledge is better than entire ignorance ? It may fairly be maintained that merely to teach a man to read, without giving him a supply of food for thought, that is, without giving him a cer- tain amount of knowledge ; and without attempting to give a right development to his tastes and moral feelings — is a dangerous thing : but then this is an objection not to the schools we are proposing, but to our present parochial schools. Or, again, the sneer may be applied to a little knowledge of Latin and Greek, which is soon forgotten : in respect of this, " a little learning" may certainly be said to be an use- less thing. Our schools, however, would teach every- thing that is now taught. Besides this, they would give much accurate knowledge, and would lead on the mind to general views in several departments of

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knowledge, where nothing is now taught. They would implant the desire for making further acquisi- tions of knowledge, and lay foundations for further acquisitions. They would quicken the intelligence, and supply materials upon which thought might be exercised. They would possess means for giving a right direction to the moral feelings.

I will now recapitulate the chief advantages which may be expected from some such system as that which I have been endeavouring to lay before the reader in the preceding pages : in doing this I shall be obliged to make some repetitions.

1. Our system would be really a national one (which can be said of no system now at work ; or, I believe, as yet even proposed), for it would be capable of embracing the education of all orders.

2. It views knowledge as a whole (which no system of education now in operation does), the parts of which are inter-connected and inter-dependent ; and it would, therefore, gladly avail itself of opportuni- ties for giving instruction in any branch of know- ledge.

3. It is, therefore, both because it does not omit either any class of society, or any department of knowledge, something ultimate. There cannot be any thing beyond it to come in and disturb our work. There is nothing further to be wished for, or imagined.

4. In the case of the middle classes and of the

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upper orders, should they ever become desirous of availing themselves of our schools and of our system of education, it would reduce the expense of educa- tion to an insignificant fraction of its present cost.

5. It would give to parents very strong motives for supporting, and improving, and watching over the schools in their respective neighbourhoods ; while it would give them, from the nature of the schools, the means and the opportunities requisite for doing this effectually.

6. It would enable us to avail ourselves of the' knowledge of every one who had any thing to com- municate, from that of the man who might be occu- pying the first place in the scientific or literary world, to the knowledge of the neighbouring pro- fessional man, or even of the neighbour who, in his humble way, may have devoted himself to some favourite pursuit. A school of the kind we propose would be a field in which the good will, and the knowledge, of a multitude of persons might be turned to very useful account, but which, under the present system, are allowed to run to waste.

7. This variety of teachers when it could be ob- tained — it would be a very important part of the office of the master to show the connexion and bearing of every thing that was taught in the school, to give unity to the whole of the school work, and to make the purport of every part of it understood — would keep up the attention of the children, and

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meet their differences of taste, temper, power, and aptitude. Under the present system one mind has assigned to it the impossible task of transfusing itself into a hundred or more dissimilar minds. Every one who was educated at a large school must have observed how much better one master's style of teaching suited him than that of another ; while with other boys of his acquaintance the very reverse was felt to be the case. Of course this remark has a still more important application as respects a variety of subjects for instruction, than as respects differences of style in two persons teaching upon the same subject. If then we shall be able to secure several teachers differing in views, feelings, attain- ments, and manner, we shall perhaps find that each subject upon which instruction is given, as well as each idiosyncracy amongst the pupils, has a fairer chance. One man's teaching will bring out points which another's may have passed over, or left ob- scure ; or will even make interesting a whole subject, upon which another may have no power of awaken- ing interest. Or one may present a moral consider- ation under some fresh aspect, such as may awaken feelings which would have remained dormant under the teaching of others. Take a case : if a child were to grow up — supposing for the moment the thing possible — without ever having seen more than one person, or heard more than one voice, how much duller would be such an one's apprehensions, and how

SUMMARY OF ITS ADVANTAGES. 141

much less would he know than would have been the case had he been allowed to frequent the company of, and to observe what was said and done by, and to ask questions of, his parents, and his brothers and sisters, and friends, and domestics, and strangers. The same remark is applicable, and it applies with quite as much force to the difference in result which must exist between the instruction of a single teacher and the instruction which might be received from a variety of teachers. Of course we assume that one master superintends and gives unity to the whole.

8. It will enable us to keep the instruction of the school on a level with the knowledge and require- ments of the age, which of course is not thought about, or in any way considered as a desirable ob- ject, so long as the instruction of the school is con- fined to one subject, and that a subject disconnected, as it is for the most part taught, from the knowledge, the ideas, the feelings, and the work of our own times.

9. It will easily and effectually elevate the teacher by connecting him with the knowledge and the work of the age; and by giving him an agreeable and independent, and honourable, and a hopeful position.

10. It will enable us to avail ourselves of the knowledge, and talents, and influence, and devoted- ness of well-educated gentlewomen.

11. We shall be released from the necessity which belongs to our present system of taking a large pro-

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portion of our instructors from the lower orders. Under the system proposed this, for reasons of which the reader will be aware, would be less objection- able : under the present system, however, it is both a great and a necessary evil.

12. It will give great facilities for improving female education throughout all classes.

13. It will bring education to bear, far more directly than is attempted at present, upon the social and moral evils of these times.

14. It will exclude many at present self-acting influences of a bad tendency from, and introduce many of a good tendency into, our schools.

15. It will save many well-intentioned persons from becoming, what may now be witnessed in almost every neighbourhood, impediments to the improvement and extension of education ; and which we shall continue to witness as long as the majority of our parochial schools are eleemosynary establish- ments, supported and managed by the richest part of the community, and used exclusively by the poorest. The results of this are, that no attempt is made to carry out the idea of a good school for these times ; for this attempt would entail expenses beyond the means which such a system can command ; and that the scheme of instruction is limited to what the rich consider suitable for the poor ; the exact point, which it is not deemed desirable to pass, being, in very many cases, practically settled by the ideas the

SUMMARY OF ITS ADVANTAGES. 143

ladies have of the point, beyond which they would consider it inconvenient that the knowledge possessed by their maid-servants should go. The result is similar when the education of the poor, as a distinct class, falls into the hands of some other section of the community, who must necessarily, to a certain extent, take narrow and special views of what ought to be taught and aimed at in their schools. The remedy for every thing of this kind evidently con- sists in making it the interest of the intelligent part of the community in any neighbourhood, that the. schools in their neighbourhood should be good and efficient schools, and then in placing the manage- ment of these schools in their hands.

16. A school system of the kind proposed would constitute an admirable nursery for the Church: it would offer far more appropriate work for young men than the cure of souls, and work which would be an excellent preparative for the sacred ministry.

17. The foregoing remark applies to other pro- fessions and lines of life. It often happens that young persons — this is particularly the case in the medical profession — find that they have a great deal of spare time : now schools of this kind would afford serious and improving occupation for the leisure time of persons so situated. The study and atten- tion which would be requisite for enabling them to give a course of lectures, or to teach a class, upon the subjects with which they were best acquainted,

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might in many cases have a good effect upon the character of their after lives. Of course the school managers and master would have to decide whether those who offered their services were qualified for the task they were ready to undertake.

18. Another advantage which would result from carrying on the education of the country in some such manner as that which we have been proposing, would be that, instead of having great educational societies, as has hitherto been too much the case, pulling against each other, and against the govern- ment, and aiming at objects not strictly educational, we should have those who, in each neighbourhood, felt an interest upon the subject of education, busying themselves about their own school, and attending exclusively to the management and improvement of that particular school.

19. It will accommodate itself to every locality ; and we may hope that eventually, by opening a con- nexion between the different grades of schools, and between these and the universities, it will provide a suitable education, not only for the children of labourers and mechanics, but also for the children of tradesmen, farmers, or professional men.

20. It is perhaps to the adoption of this system that we must look for the removal of the great diffi- culty which has been for so long a time stopping the way to the improvement and extension of popular education. We find that in the scheme of instruc-

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tion carried out in 999 out of 1000 of the schools established and set to work in this country, religious instruction forms a more or less essential part. No sooner, however, is the subject of religion touched upon, no matter in what way, in any proposed scheme for the general education of the people, than the whole scheme is at once declared inadmissible. The result is the same whether the proposal be to give religious instruction, or to omit it, or to give it in any particular mode or degree : it does not matter what the proposal may be : no sooner is a word said about this part of the subject than the whole scheme is at once rejected. So that we are in this position, that which a practice, all but universal, demonstrates to be absolutely necessary, in the present state of public opinion, for the efficiency and success of our schools, experience demonstrates to be absolutely fatal to any proposal for a general system of education.

Now our scheme does in a very great measure provide for what has thus in practice been found necessary, while at the same time it avoids what experience has shown will ever in this country be fatal to any educational measure. It says nothing about religion, either that it shall be taught, or that it shall not be taught ; or, if taught, in what way it shall be taught ; it makes no mention of religious, or ^ of secular, schools; but leaves everything involved in this part of the question to be settled in exactly

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the same way in which it is settled at present ; that is to say, by the wishes and wants of those who establish each separate school. This will be a self- adjusting way of overcoming the difficulty. If parents are desirous of giving their children religious instruction, it would savour very strongly of tyranny to prevent their doing so ; but if it should happen, which we will suppose to be the case, that the school is supported by these very parents — partly by fees, and partly by a rate — it would be an extreme act of injustice arid oppression to interfere at all in the matter. If from any local reasons there should happen to be cases, where, for the sake of securing united action, a secular school was preferred, why then of course such a parish, or neighbourhood, ought to be allowed to raise a rate, if such were their wish, for a secular school. The probability, however, is that such cases would be extremely rare. Experience is demonstrating more and more every day that the religious difficulty, which, when con- sidered as a theoretical or legislative question, is perhaps insuperable, is, after all, not nearly so for- midable in practice. A little common sense, and good feeling, on the part of the managers of a school, together with the strong desire on the part of the majority of the parents in every neighbourhood to secure a good education for their children, from whatever quarter it may be offered — Protestant children in some places attending Roman Catholic

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schools — at once remove a great part of the diffi- culty, at all events from the school-room.

The system, then, in this respect, would probably work in something like the following way.

In the vast majority of cases, the schools being supported, as at present, mainly by Church people, would retain the same kind of religious instruction as at present. The increasing number, and activity, and intelligence of the clergy, would very much strengthen this tendency.

In some places Roman Catholics, and in most of the towns dissenters, would be strong enough to support schools of exactly the kind which they re- spectively wished to have. Of course, therefore, they would be allowed equal facilities for regulating the religious instruction given in their schools, in accordance with their own views ; and would share in a general rate, according perhaps to the provisions of the proposed Manchester Education Bill, in pro- portion to the number of children their schools might be actually educating. The probability, however, is, that under such a system denominational schools would decrease in number.

In the meanwhile, however, the laity becoming more and more interested in school matters, and taking an increasing part in the management of schools, would of course — and this would be the case more particularly in schools where Church influence was predominant — have a tendency to make the re-

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ligious teaching of as practical and, at the same time, of as comprehensive a character as possible.

I again repeat, that the above remarks are not at all meant as an attempt at solving the theoretical difficulties of the religious part of the education question, but merely as an attempt to direct attention to a practicable way of giving greater facilities for meeting the difficulty ; it is a practicable way, be- cause we know that it is the only way in which the difficulty is met at present, and overcome, as far as that is done ; nor can we suppose that it will ever be overcome in any other way in this country. It will not be overcome by the establishment of Secular Government Schools, or of Religious Government Schools. This point we must be allowed to settle for ourselves.

21. It will enable us to develope, and bring to the surface, and avail ourselves of, for the purpose of carrying on the intellectual work of the age — the talents, at present dormant, or perverted in many cases, of the great bulk of the people.

22. It will enlarge the range of our sympathies by imparting to the different orders of society, to a greater or less extent, the same knowledge, the same ideas, and the same feelings. This will go far towards teaching us to regard with common senti- ments of respect the feelings and rights of each other. Our present system of education restricts and deadens our sympathies, and places impassable gulfs in matters of feeling between the different orders of

SUMMARY OF ITS ADVANTAGES. 149

society. It does this by imparting to each class ideas, feelings, and knowledge, to a great extent at variance with the ideas, feelings, and knowledge im- parted to the other classes. The clergy are now beginning to experience the bad effects of this.

23. It will connect together all our educational efforts and establishments in such a manner as that each part of the system shall countenance and aid all the other parts*

24?. It will contribute much towards removing our present low and unworthy views respecting education ; for many of us seem to think that education has no particular object, or that enough has been done when it has enabled a young man to acquire as much Greek and Latin as will enable him to obtain a degree, or as much as will be required at his ordination ; or, if he is ambitious, as much as will enable him to obtain a fellowship. And we may hope that it will render these ideas obsolete by substituting for them the idea that the intellectual object of education is to strengthen and develope our mental faculties, and to make us cognisant, as far as shall be possible, of the knowledge which existed in the mind of the Deity, when he created man and ordained the laws to which human societies were to conform, and when he created and arranged, and endowed with their various pro- perties, and set in motion everything that is in the world around us ; and that the moral object of edu- cation is to make us good, and gentle, and pains-

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taking, and patient, and prudent, and just, and true.

25. It will not confine its efforts so much to the training of the memory — necessarily the chief aim of our present system, which makes either an ac- quaintance with two dead languages, or a textual acquaintance with Scripture, the main work and object of education — but will rather aim at exer- cising the power of thought, and at drawing out the feelings and affections. Exercising the memory alone cannot lead to any very striking or useful results ; while exercising the power of thought leads in various ways, for the intellect and the heart act and re-act upon each other, to the strengthening and development of our moral faculties ; besides, that it is to the successful exercise of thought that civilisa- tion is indebted for its material progress.

26. It will put an end to a great deal of irrelevant discussion, such as we have been engaged in of late years, and which in reality is not on the subject of education : for, supposing that we succeed in getting improved schools of this kind established, and ma- naged and supported in the manner we propose, it is evident that the educational questions which will then excite the greatest interest will not be, as at present, often only quasi-educational, being rather political or ecclesiastical than educational, but entirely of a local and practical character. People will then set them- selves to work to improve the efficiency of the school

SUMMARY OF ITS ADVANTAGES. 151

in which their own, or, at all events, their neigh- bours', children are educated. It will be a happy consequence of this, that whatever a man may, under such a system, do for the improvement of the school - education of his own children, will contribute in an equal degree to the improvement of that of his neigh- bours' children.

27. It would give to education, in the eyes of all orders, the prominency which of necessity belongs to it at the present day. I say of necessity, because no other means have been suggested for enabling us to meet the peculiar evils, or rather the peculiar cir- cumstances, of these times, for the circumstances themselves are not evil: whatever evils have hitherto ensued have arisen from our not having met our cir- cumstances in a proper manner. The leading pecu- liarities of our circumstances are, that we have an enormous population of many millions more de- pendent for their daily bread than was ever before the case upon their skill and good conduct, in other words, upon knowledge and moral character ; and that the admission of the million to political power is rapidly going on, and this is a power which they must be trained to use aright, which brings us again to moral and intellectual culture.

And here I would enter a parting protest against the idea, that enough in these days is done for the moral and intellectual culture of the children of the H 4

152 SCHOOL OF THE FUTURE.

upper orders when they are sent to classical schools to take their chance of acquiring some knowledge of Latin and Greek; and that enough is done for the children of the lower orders when they are taught to read the Bible, to write, and to cipher. In neither case have the things taught any necessary connection with moral improvement. A man may be able to con- strue a page of Latin or Greek, or he may be able to read the Bible and to write well, and be a good calcu- lator — and yet be a very ignorant and a very vicious man. With respect to the lower orders, there are thousands who say, let us teach them reading, writing, and arithmetic : this will be enough for persons in their situation in life : many even consider this very liberal. The truth, however, is, that to confer these powers upon the lower orders without, at the same time, giving them such ideas and such knowledge as shall interest, enlighten, and elevate their minds ; and without, at the same time, making some reasonable attempts to predispose their moral feelings aright, is, in a great many instances, to do harm. It does not enable them to direct and govern themselves, but rather makes them arrogant and discontented: it has made many a socialist and anarchist, and many an un- happy man. Of course no one supposes that any system of education would be exempt from a multi- tude of failures ; but perhaps most persons are now coming over to the conclusion that it is now possible to establish a system which would very much lessen

SOCIAL PHENOMENA OF THE PRESENT DAY. 153

the proportion of failures which attend the present system amongst both the upper and the lower classes.

The views, then, on the subject of education which have been laid before the reader in the foregoing pages, and the kind of school-system which has been proposed for his consideration, have, throughout, a constant reference to the circumstances of the times in which we are living. Education is not an abstract, but a practical and a relative question ; and there never was a time when it was so important that this should be borne in mind as at the present moment, because we form a community in which vast numbers are crowded together in small spaces, in a manner quite beyond all former precedent, and of these vast numbers every individual has been called upon by society to take care of himself, and has had a certain amount of social and political power deposited in his hands ; it is evident that the fabric of our civilisation is resting, more than was ever before the case, on foun- dations of a moral and of an intellectual character.

The reader will recollect that I set out by stating what were the conditions which any system of edu- cation constructed for these times must endeavour to fulfil. Now, what I have been submitting to his consideration are merely proposals for putting into a distinct and operative form the ideas upon the subject of education which the existence and pressure of these conditions are suggesting to the minds of H 5

154 SCHOOL OF THE FUTURE.

many, and which have already begun to have some effect upon public opinion. Doubtless such a system could not have been worked at any other period of the world's history ; it could not even have been imagined, because neither the state of knowledge, nor the state of society, at any former period sup- plied the conditions necessary for acting successfully upon such a system, or the facts necessary for sug- gesting the idea of it.

That nothing of the kind has ever been attempted before forms no objection to the proposal — in its simplest expression — that all should receive as much moral and intellectual culture as can, in the present age, be bestowed upon them. If what we propose were not to involve very considerable modifications of our former views and practices, it could not pos- sibly be the thing we are now in want of. The briefest consideration of the new agencies at work amongst us, and of the various changes which have of late found their way into the material and structure of society, will lead us to this conclusion. Take first the most obvious facts which stand out upon the very surface of what is passing around us, and we shall in all directions find the old state of things undergoing very extensive modifications, the ten- dency and effect of which, in the great preponderance of instances, is evidently to elevate the lower orders. The manner in which of late years the steam engine has been made to assist and to supersede human labour has had the effect both of increasing the

SOCIAL PHENOMENA OF THE PRESENT DAY. 155

intelligence in various ways of large masses of the working classes, and of cheapening to all alike many of the necessaries and comforts of life. The factory system has of late conferred a great amount of power upon the working classes by collecting them together in vast masses. The railway enables them to travel in the same manner as the upper classes. The penny postage also has given them equal facilities for cor- responding with each other. Causes of the above kind, together with the very general diffusion of knowledge, have awakened thought in the minds of many of the factory people, and of the artizans. The wonderful extension, too, of the newspaper press, (which must henceforth go on increasing,) con- tributes very much to stimulate thought amongst these classes. The leaders of these classes may, by the aid of the railway, cheap postage, the electric telegraph, the platform, the lecture-room, and their own press, influence them almost simultaneously over the whole country. The well-to-do mechanic of the present day is able to travel more, and, perhaps, does actually travel more, reads more, writes (such a case is possible) and receives more letters, has his moral and intellectual faculties more exercised, has greater means and opportunities for gaining an in- fluence over his own class, attends more public meetings and lectures, than the ordinary gentleman, certainly than the country gentleman, of 150 years ago. Success in life among the million as well as

H 6

156 SCHOOL OF THE FUTURE.

among the upper classes, daily comes to depend more and more upon the personal qualifications, the intel- ligence, and the moral character of the individual himself. This approximation towards making the conditions of success the same for all has the effect of making the different classes themselves in many respects approximate towards each other. The increased activity of the clergy — a body of 17,000 men taken from the upper classes — has brought them into very close contact with the middle and lower classes ; this has animated their ministrations with a spirit — and the effect of their schools contri- butes to the same result — which encourages and strengthens amongst those classes feelings, which, perhaps, other causes belonging to the times have originated, of an independent and democratic cha- racter. We now have £,000,000 souls collected to- gether in the metropolis, 2,000,000 collected together in Lancashire, and 30,000,000 brought, by the ap- pliances of modern science, into contact with each other, and, as it were, collected into a single city ; and these 30,000,000 brought into close contact with the inhabitants of the other countries of the civilised world. The direction of public affairs, the main- tenance and advancement of civilisation, and so even the destinies of our race, are rapidly descending to the hands of the mere numerical majority, vast num- bers of whom are at present more or less ignorant and vicious, and whom it never will be possible to

HOW TO BE MET, AND TURNED TO ACCOUNT. 157

confront with any superior power, and who never will be controlled by any thing excepting moral, intellectual, and religious enlightenment.

Now these facts certainly indicate that our social state is undergoing very great modifications, modifi- cations indeed as extensive and important as any which society has yet passed through ; and for this reason they constitute a necessity for our admitting very considerable modifications into the views and practices which have hitherto obtained on the subject of education : we must now give every member of the community the best education in our power, as the fittest and the only means of preparing the people for the new state of things. This advance is the true complement to all the other advances of these times. It forms the antidote to what without it will be evil in all the rest. It will, or, if we prefer to be cautious, it may, enable us (and there is no- thing else from which anything of the kind has been hoped) to work all the other changes and innovations of our times for our advantage, and for the advantage of civilisation ; and as these changes and innovations are advancing very rapidly, it is high time for us to set about providing the means for turning them to good account. As, however, society is always capable of supplying the wants which arise out of its own pro- gress and development, we may hope the best with respect to the supply of this the great, the most press- ing, and the most general want of our own times, and

158 SCHOOL OF THE FUTURE.

of our form of civilisation. There are many hopeful symptoms in the times which encourage us to trust that these anticipations will speedily be realised in no inconsiderable degree ; indeed the work itself has already been commenced amongst us in attempts, here and there, at forming schools suitable to, and worthy of, our times, and we have the best assurance for the extension of the work in the wishes and con- victions of a large and influential part of the com- munity. Nor can we believe that a beneficent design underlies the course of society, as well as the course of nature, without, at the same time, believing that the time is at hand when much will be attempted for the purpose of rescuing vast masses of our population from their present state of ignorance, vice, and misery.

When looked at from the religious point of view the effect of such an improvement and extension of education appears like a fresh extension, almost like a new application, of the elevating, and humanizing, and benevolent principles of the Gospel. Hitherto society has not been in such a state as to give us grounds for hoping that those principles could be applied to, and made to leaven, all parts of the com- munity : a variety of adverse circumstances forbade our entertaining such hopes. There were the actual defects of knowledge, the impossibility of diffusing, and so of making use of, what was known, and along- side of these impediments there existed very defective

CONCLUSION. 159

social arrangements. Our lot it is to live in days when men think that they have caught a glimpse of a better future. Much is now being removed which heretofore impeded the development and the exer- cise of pure and benevolent feeling. New influences are being brought to bear upon the minds and hearts of all orders. We are ceasing to look upon our brother with an evil eye ; and, instead, are beginning to entertain a desire to relieve and elevate his estate. The high and the low are beginning to understand, almost in a new sense, the original announcement of our religion — of glory to God, peace upon earth, and good will towards man ; at all events, we are beginning to forget many of the reservations which have hitherto rendered these sentiments of such little effect. As the range of knowledge increases, and as dissociating circumstances are removed, we begin to feel that there is an elevation of spirit, and a happiness, in regarding our fellowmen as " our brethren," and "in honouring all men ;" expressions which are now ceasing to be so much religious phraseology, by which, at no very distant date, not much was meant, and which awakened no corresponding sentiments. The thoughts of the better minds amongst us, and the instincts of those who desire something better than what is imme- diately before them, do not * now dwell so much upon the ideas of " coming out," and of being "a peculiar people" — necessarily prominent ideas

160 SCHOOL OF THE FUTURE.

when there was no opening for the attempt to leaven every part of society with Christian feeling — as upon the idea of attempting to bring all within the pale by informing the intelligence and cultivating the moral feelings of all ; the condition of society, and its various resources, the good will of the upper classes, attended by great moral and intellectual ad- vances amongst the lower orders, and the state of knowledge having begun to render this possible now for the first time in the history of society. We are now beginning to see that the highest and best influ- ences which hitherto have been made use of only in the education of the few, and even in their case only partially and under circumstances so disadvantageous that almost the whole of their power was lost, may now be brought to bear under far more favourable circumstances, honestly, and in such a manner as that great effects may be expected, upon the edu- cation of all. The attempt may now be made to christianize the spirit of all orders by an unreserved use of all knowledge, and by an unreserved appeal to the highest and best feelings of our nature. This will effect more than could have been effected by placing several additional clergymen in every parish of the land at any former period, when knowledge had riot made its present advances, nor, consequently, attained its present power, and when the circum- stances and sentiments of society were different.

VEKITAS FILIA TEMPOKIS.

APPENDIX.

I.

ON THE LATE EXHIBITION, REGARDED AS AN EXPONENT OF THE PRESENT STATE, AND OF THE TENDENCIES, OF SOCIETY ; AND AS AFFORDING GROUNDS FOR A COM- PARISON OF THE PRESENT WITH THE PAST.

OUR Great Exhibition of last summer has very oppor- tunely supplied a strong confirmation of the general correctness of the views taken in the preceding pages. The character of the Exhibition itself, its success, and all its attendant circumstances, have not merely indicated that there exist very great differences between the present and the past, but have also directed our attention to the causes which have produced these differences, and gene- rally to the whole stream of tendency in social matters ; and this has been done to such good purpose as even very much to advance public opinion, as well respecting the possibility and necessity of educating the whole people, as respecting the kind of education which we ought to provide for the people. It will not, therefore, be out of place, and perhaps it may be worth while, to devote some pages, as an appendix to the foregoing work, to the object of pointing out in what way the Exhibition may be regarded as an exponent of the present state, and of the present wants, of society ; and as an indication of the direction which things are taking ; and also as a measure of the advances which society has now made.

The most prominent, and perhaps the most significant, of all the facts connected with the Exhibition was that

162 APPENDIX.

of the number of persons who visited it. That six millions of visitors should, within the short space of six months, have been attracted to the same spot, a large proportion of these millions having been contributed from the lower classes of society, and that in this mighty gathering every nation of the civilised world should have been represented, is of course a fact which every body is quite aware stands alone in the annals of the human race.

Now it may be worth while to glance for a few moments at some of the causes which, by their concur- rence, have rendered this possible, because they are either new, or are acting to an extent, and exercising degrees of influence, which are new ; and are producing no small portion of the social fermentation and changes of the present day, the pressure of which we all feel, some of us regarding them with hope and exultation, others with fear and abhorrence, and perhaps the majority with feelings variously compounded of these two extremes. The success of the Exhibition, and many of the striking circumstances which attended it, and grew out of it, brought these causes very prominently forward, and present as sure indications as we have yet had of their character and power.

The millions of visitors which the Exhibition attracted, suggests our beginning with the enormous increase of our population during the last fifty years. Since those amongst us were born, who have only just reached the age at which the powers of thinking and judging are supposed to receive their mature development, the popu- lation of this island has doubled itself, while that of the metropolis has been almost trebled. The presence of so many conditions were necessary for such an augmentation in an old country, and so many important social results must flow from it, that this at once becomes one of the

APPENDIX. 163

most interesting of the facts of our times. The mere increase of numbers to such an amount might have been regarded in this light, but its importance as an element of change, or disturbing cause, is very much heightened by the fact that almost the whole of this vast increase has been confined to the trading, manufacturing, and commercial part of the population, — to that part of the population, in short, which dwells in towns, as distin- guished from that which dwells in the country, and is connected with the land.

Now it is almost a truism to point out this marvellous increase of the population as one of the causes which have enabled us to supply such a stream of visitors to the Crystal Palace. Only let the reader imagine such an Exhibition to have been attempted in the time of Queen Elizabeth, or of Charles II. In either case, most pro- bably, some picturesque account would have been left us of the manner in which the court opened, and visited, the sight ; though of course it would have been impos- sible for them to have approached the interest or splen- dour of the spectacle which our generation witnessed on the now ever memorable first of May, 1851. We should have been told that Elizabeth, with her great ministers and courtiers, swept along the nave with imposing state ; or that Charles was affable and inquisitive ; but we should not have heard any thing about a concourse of between sixty and seventy thousand persons having been re- peatedly attracted to the building in a single day : for a few days there might have been assemblages of a few thou- sands ; but there could not have been any thing more : the population, indeed, of England and Wales, in the time of Charles II., is not supposed to have amounted to more than double that of London alone at the present day. The visitors of the Crystal Palace have outnumbered the whole adult population of Great Britain at that time.

164 APPENDIX.

But to advance another step. However numerous our population, the Exhibition would still have failed, if there had been amongst us an inability to appreciate it : in this case it would have been in advance of the age ; little interest would have been felt in it ; and the wish to see it would not have existed in the breasts of millions. If, also, our means of communication had been of such a character as to have precluded those who lived at even a comparatively short distance from the metropolis from visiting it, except at a considerable expense of both money and time, the same result would have attended it. These remarks indicate two further conditions to the success of such an undertaking, both of which, too, just as is the case with the marvellous increase and amount of our population, while they belong to our own times, — one being new in degree, the other, of course, entirely — occupy very prominent places among the causes which are now telling in every part of society, and must give their character and direction to many a series of events yet in the womb of time.

I will take first the increased intelligence of the people, because the whole project of the Exhibition rested upon this supposition. Now there can be no doubt, though the fact may not be flattering to certain prejudices not everywhere obsolete, but that there has been of late years a great increase of intelligence throughout all orders. This increase of intelligence, although it falls lamentably short of what is now possible, and of what will soon be absolutely necessary for the purpose of enabling us to direct aright the elements of change incidental to these times, and to maintain our position in the competition of the world, will appear, when we compare the present with the past of only a few years ago, very considerable, particularly among the lower strata of the middle classes, and among that large part of the community which re-

APPENDIX. 165

ceives its support from weekly wages. We frequently hear of great facts ; but there can hardly be one greater, or more gratifying, than that 60,000 persons, chiefly from these classes, should have been willing to pay, day after day, for their admission to the Crystal Palace.

Of course this increase of intelligence is ultimately referable to a cause which nothing can arrest, and which is year after year acting with greater power in this direction, — I mean, the mere course of events. It is an observation lying quite upon the surface, that the way in which trade and business are carried on at the present day is very different from the way in which they were carried on only a few years ago ; and that a corresponding differ- ence exists in the tradesman's mode of life, and in the influences to which his mind is subjected. Formerly he hardly possessed a book, and seldom left his home : his neighbours resembled him in these respects : the conse- quence was, that his ideas were confined to his shop. The tradesmen of the present day are members of clubs and mechanics institutes ; they attend lectures ; they talk about science and the fine arts ; they have their regular excursions, and may even be met at Paris, and in Switzerland; they look out upon the world, and know something about what is going on in it. Among the working classes also there is a growing capacity to feel interest in other matters besides those in which they are immediately concerned. Those who have much inter- course with the lower orders will, if they attend to this circumstance, be often surprised at finding how rapidly an interest on any great event, or important subject, spreads over the whole country, and penetrates even to the humblest class of labourers. This is not to be attri- buted merely to the press and the railway, but to the whole aggregate of our self-acting educational influences, which, as they arise out of the circumstances of the times, can-

166 APPENDIX.

not be repressed, can indeed hardly be controlled, and which are developing a very great amount of thought and intelligence in all classes from the top to the bottom of the social scale.

And now I come to the other point : with the excep- tion of the inhabitants of the metropolis, and of a few of the wealthier classes, the wish to see the Exhibition would not (the old saying notwithstanding) have created a way. It used to be a common remark, that man was the most difficult commodity to move : the problem, how- ever, which we had to solve, was that of bringing up hundreds of thousands of men, in truth millions, from great distances, and carrying them back again, many of them on the same day ; and this for a charge of not more than a few shillings a head. No ingenuity, and no com- mand of funds, could have enabled us to solve this pro- blem twenty years ago ; now, however, it is as simple and easy a matter, and one as much of course, as any thing in the world. Before the shilling admission commenced the manager of the traffic of the London and North Wes- tern Railway informed the Commissioners that that line alone would be able to bring up 50,000 visitors daily. It had, however, already performed the almost still greater marvel of bringing up to London the Crystal Palace itself. Under the old stage coach system these 50,000 visitors could not have been brought up to London, and taken home again, supposing that part of them came from Warwick- shire, and part from Lancashire, in less than 3000 coaches, which would have required between 300,000 and 400,000 horses. Now setting aside the question of time and cost, the thing would have been impossible. In these days, however, a single railway company has in its own re- sources the means of repeating this marvel daily ; while at the very same time all the other lines terminating in the metropolis may be employed in a similar manner.

APPENDIX. 167

The political, economical, and social value of these facilities for communication and transport, great as are the achievements which they have already enabled us to accomplish, cannot yet be fully appreciated. In these days, however, we cannot suppose that centuries, as has been the case with the discovery of printing, will be allowed to elapse, while society shall be employed in gradually ascertaining the extent, and finding out how to make the most of, the new power. The changes which railways have produced in the habits of all classes are already very great, and the Exhibition has given an im- petus to these changes. The representatives of even the class of agricultural labourers in the south and west of England, who for the purpose of visiting the Crystal Palace availed themselves of the railway during the sum- mer for the first time, will for the future be found more disposed to resort to the rail, as a means of seeking a better field for their labour, and so of escaping the miseries of their present lot. The glimpses of the new and mighty world beyond their own villages, which those who have had an excursion to London during the Exhibition will have caught, will be seeds sown in their minds which must germinate, and bear fruit too : with a great many this their first trip will most assuredly not be their last. In this way the Exhibition will amply repay the debt it owes to our new methods of communication for having made it both possible and successful ; for it will render the practice of using railways for the purposes of work, pleasure, or business, much more frequent among the great body of the people. The 56,000,000 second and third class passengers of two years ago will, from this particular cause, receive very large accessions over and above what would have accrued from the ordinary in- crease of railway traffic.

It is a common remark, that the comparative degrees of advancement reached by different countries, or by the

168 APPENDIX.

same country at successive periods, may be measured by the points of excellence which they severally, or respec- tively, reached in their means of communication. It is evident, that the development of the ancient Greek civili- sation was very much accelerated by the fact, that the sea every where offered to the whole Greek race a ready means of inter-communication ; for there was no Greek city, from Sinope to Massilia, but was either actually seated on, or at no great distance from, the coast. The Roman Empire, also, as it was composed of the coun- tries lying round the Mediterranean, to a very great ex- tent enjoyed the same advantage ; but as these countries reached back to great distances from the sea, and could only be maintained in subjection by military occupation, roads became necessary, and the excellency of these roads has always been regarded as indicating the high civilisa- tion to which that empire had attained : in this case, however, there are considerations — such, for instance, as that of the main purpose for which these roads were made — which in some degree detract from the credit they would otherwise reflect upon Roman civilisation. A comparative view of the activity of mind, and indeed of many of the most important conditions of society, as they exist at the present day in Russia and the United States of America, may be very fairly illustrated by the character of the means of communication which they have respectively established, and the use they make of those with which nature has provided them.

Great, however, as have been the ingenuity and labour exercised by man in supplying this particular want, our minds will be disposed to devout and reverent feelings by the consideration, that in all we have done even here, we have only been working out, in the manner permitted us, our allotted part in an evidently pre-conceived whole ; for we find that the instincts of even the lower animals are directed to the formation of what are actually roads, along

APPENDIX. 169

which they may travel, with comparative safety and ease, from one feeding ground to another, or to the nearest spring. There are paths, probably more ancient than any formed by the hand of man in any part of the world, so deeply indented on the sides of some of the mountains of Southern Africa, as to be visible from considerable dis- tances, and which have been excavated by the feet of the herds of wild elephants, which century after century have passed along them, each generation treading in the steps of its predecessors; and perhaps, when the elephant shall have become extinct upon this part of the continent, com- munities of civilised men will make use of the path formed by the brute, in obedience to his instinct, at a time anterior to that at which the savage first wandered in the neigh- bouring wood. If we pass to the other extremity of the scale of magnitude in animated nature, we shall also find the little emmet that we tread upon forming for itself, often across our own highway, a carefully smoothed track, from which it does not deviate in leaving or returning to its home; and whicli enables it to travel with greater rapidity, and to carry its provisions and building mate- rials with greater ease. It is interesting, and most pro- fitable, particularly on occasions like the present, when we may be too much disposed to glorify the work of our own heads and hands, forgetful of that higher Power which pre-arranged the whole, to trace in this manner the analogies of nature, and to see that some of the loftiest achievements of the science and mechanical powers of man are only the means, which have been granted to us for supplying a want, felt equally by the brute and the insect, and which they have been enabled to provide for by the unerring, and for their purposes not the less adequate, operations of instinct. Reflections of this kind, by pointing out to us what is really the position assigned to Man in the scale of being, indispose us

I

170 APPENDIX.

equally either to take a low view of our own nature, or to permit ourselves at any time to be carried away by a feel- in^ of irreverent arrogance : they contain the antidote

O "

which will enable us to exercise without stint, and with- out fear, but rather with thankfulness, every power with which we may find ourselves endowed, or which we may find placed within our reach. This is solid ground upon which our reason and heart alike can rest with pious satisfaction.

But a view of the causes which contributed to the suc- cess of this magnificent Exhibition would be most incom- plete, were we to omit all reference to that which lies at the bottom of the whole — the civil virtues, the love of order and respect for law, in a word, the moral character, of our countrymen. In the original conception of such an undertaking these points must have been taken for granted : those who first formed the project, and worked it out, never found themselves checked for a moment in giving its fullest development to their grand design, by a want of faith in these qualities of the English character: they were not afraid of assembling in London any number of Englishmen for such a purpose ; nor were they afraid that these assemblages of our own countrymen would be influenced, or contaminated, by the addition of any dis- turbing, or suspicious, element from abroad. They were ready to receive all who might come, and were not appre- hensive of any among ourselves. We take everything of this kind so entirely as a matter of course, that we do not appreciate, as fully as we ought, these national qualities. It cannot, however, be doubted, but that this spontaneous respect for law and order, without the slightest outward parade of the feeling itself, and to such a degree that all classes amongst us appear to act upon the principle with- out any thought or reflection, struck our continental visitors of last summer as much as any thing that they saw in England. They were fully aware that in no other

APPENDIX. 171

European capital could any gatherings of the kind have been allowed to take place. Elsewhere men's minds are so unsettled, and such deep irreconcilable hostilities now divide society, that mischief would inevitably result from such assemblages, continued throughout a space of six months. The mere bringing people together in the present state of the world could hardly be risked with impunity. Or supposing that such daily assemblages had been allowed in any great city of the continent, it could only have been after the safe keeping of the building, of the main thoroughfares, and even of the town itself, had been entrusted to a large military force, ready to act at a moment's notice. To us, however, even while we were in the centre of the stir, with 60,000 persons coming and going daily, and on some of the last days with nearly 100,000, such ideas appeared almost laughable. Not a Word of discontent was heard ; not a single disorderly meeting was held ; not a factious motion was made in parliament : there were even fewer police cases than on ordinary years. It would be an insult even to the most fanatical vestryman to suppose that he would have rejoiced to have seen disturbances arising out of, and interrupt- ing, the Exhibition, in the hope that under their cover he might have advanced his political panaceas ; or that he was so ignorant of the temper of Englishmen, as to have imagined, in his most ecstatic moments, that those who might have resorted to such a plan of operations would have gained anything but discomfiture and contempt. The above remarks would not have been worth making, were it not for the fact that the absence of these qualities and virtues in the inhabitants of the capitals of the con- tinent, would have made it impossible to hold an Exhibi- tion of the Industry of all Nations, on such a scale, and in so open and unrestricted a manner, any where but in London. For this element of success we have to thank

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all orders of our countrymen alike. These are facts which are alone sufficient to inspire confidence, that the powers which education will confer upon the million will never in this country be exercised for any other than their legitimate purposes.

It is important to observe how little the daily passage of so many thousands through our metropolis was felt in any way : this gives some insight into our resources of various kinds. It has just been observed, that though so many were assembling daily from all parts of the country, and we may almost say from all parts of the world, there was not the slightest occasion for the government to take any cognizance of what was going on ; nor, with the ex- ception of the appointment of a few hundred additional policemen, were our means for the preservation of order at all increased ; none, however, of our most ordinary arrangements were interfered with, or altered. There were no obstructions to the traffic of Piccadilly ; and the equestrians in Rotten Row were as numerous, and as undisturbed, as in former years. We have found also that our arrangements for providing daily food for the 2,500,000 regular inhabitants of the metropolis are so extensive and so perfect, that we are able to entertain with ease any additional number ever likely to visit us even in these days of railways and steam-boats. The prices of provisions consequently did not rise; and a joint of meat, and a loaf of bread, did not cost more than they would have cost had not a single foreigner visited Lon- don last year. And, just to say a word upon another point, where not a little uneasiness was previously felt : it has now been satisfactorily proved that the current of English thought and life is so strong, since the stream has been deepened, that foreign manners and ideas have not any power to make impressions upon us. It is amus- ing to recollect the apprehensions which were felt and expressed last winter by a not uninfluential section of

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society : great changes were to be effected in the feelings and habits of Englishmen ; our government was to be revolutionized ; Her most gracious Majesty was to be- come a fugitive from the wrath of her misguided sub- jects ; the observance of the Sabbath was to be relin- quished; Englishmen were to become ashamed of their domestic virtues ; Jesuits in disguise were to persuade us to revert to the payment of Peter's pence. It is true that during the summer an invasion of London was going on from the continents on either side of us, our invaders arriving in detachments which perhaps in the aggregate amounted to a greater number than that of the grand army ; and it may also be true that many of them came armed with very horrible ideas and opinions, and very shocking customs, but, though we made no preparation for their reception, we felt no inconvenience at their presence, and expect no bad effects from their example ; nor, indeed, any thing worse than mutual satisfaction, and a likelihood of our being henceforth better able to understand, and appreciate, each other.

There is no other occasion upon record, which ever gave an opportunity for taking a connected view of the whole human family. The Exhibition of the Industry of all Nations enabled us to contemplate each nation in its peculiarities, as standing in a certain sense apart, in a relation of its own towards the everywhere varying forces and productions of nature ; and in the next place to con- template the relation in which each stands towards the others as a producer, for the general good, of some of the necessaries and embellishments of life: we were reminded both of the influences which to a certain degree separate, and give a distinctive character to, each nation and division of the earth ; and, on the other hand, of the wants common to all civilised nations, which it has been ordained shall

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only be supplied from certain fixed localities, and this for the opposite purpose of bringing us together. Never be- fore was there collected into one view such clear evidence, such a panoramic demonstration of the fact, that the Creator has surrounded each division of the human family with a peculiar combination of physical and material cir- cumstances; and that out of these varied combinations of circumstances the peculiar wants, as well as the peculiar resources, of each nation arise ; and even (to mount to a higher point) that it is with a constant relation to these circumstances that the intelligence and the sentiments of each are exercised and developed. To the readers of these pages, ideas of this kind are more or less familiar ; but to the vast majority of those who passed, beneath the roof of the Crystal Palace, from one country and region of the earth to another, as represented by their respective pro- ductions, such ideas were to a very great extent new. In one place they saw the black tent of the desert, wrhere men neither cultivate the soil nor have fixed abodes ; in an- other specimens of the rich and varied harvests of fertile regions and genial climates ; and in a third, fur-bearing skins from countries buried the greater part of the year beneath the snow ; they looked upon the trappings of the elephant and of the camel, as well as of the horse. The contrasts which exist in objects of this kind could not have failed to imply to the mind of even the uneducated the most diverse aspects of nature, and the most opposite conditions of human life. But to the intelligent eye, and well informed mind, palpable contrasts of this kind were riot more suggestive than the shades of difference which mark the arts of neighbouring civilised nations, and which, though, perhaps, to rougher observers almost in- appreciable, do yet evidently belong inherently to pecu- liar aptitudes and tastes, or to the structure and sympa- thies of society, according as it consults the wants of the many or the interests only of the few.

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Starting from such a point as tins, our thoughts may take a wide range through some of the most interesting fields of speculation connected with the history, or with the destiny, of our race. Here among such indications of the life and of the character of modern civilised com- munities, the spectator may have been led on to think how many tribes and languages must have died out, without leaving a record of their existence, or even a name, in the page of history. How often in the ruder ages of the world, we may suppose, before the progress of social development had attached each individual to a certain spot of earth by the arts which he exercised, and the property which he possessed, so that henceforth it became impossible for sudden invasions to destroy or obliterate nations, that whole tribes, perhaps whole languages, were suddenly swept away by invaders to whom it mattered little in what forests they hunted, and by what river's side they pitched their tents. In the his- toric period, too, how many nations have passed from the scene. Every language spoken on the face of the earth at the time of Homer is either now dead, or so changed, that those who now speak it would be unintelligible to those who spoke it in his time ; his own tongue, and that owing in some degree to his own immortal poems, offer- ing the nearest approach to an exception : for among savage tribes language varies more or less with each generation ; it is civilisation, culture, and above all litera- ture, which give it permanency. Even, too, in our own day this destruction of races is going on : the red Indian and the Australian native, races occupying (what we may call) two continents, and possessing very marked pecu- liarities of organisation, are rapidly becoming extinct. They are disappearing before the advance of civilised man as completely as the animals they hunted, and with- out leaving, either upon the surface of the large portion

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of the earth which was originally assigned them, or upon the minds, and subsequent history, of those who are super- seding them, any more distinct traces of their existence, with the exception here and there of the name of a mountain, lake, or river. Surrounded by the Industry of all Nations, we could not but revert to these two branches of the human family, dispossessed by ourselves of their spacious continents, before society had advanced with either of them to such a point as would enable them to ad- here to the soil, and before even they could have produced any thing worthy of the attention of their successors. Here are the inhabitants of whole continents passing away without ever having risen to the knowledge, the senti- ments, and the modes of life, by which alone we deem man to be ennobled, and without which we regard him as excluded from the privileges of his nature. Did these races fulfil any purpose which would not have been an- swered as well by the existence on the same scenes of some species of savage brute ? Or what is the difference between the whooping savage and the beast of prey ? Whatever solution we may be disposed to give to ques- tions of this kind, upon one point, at least, closely con- nected with them the Exhibition gave us certain evidence, and that is upon the extent to which, and the rapidity with which, civilisation is now expanding its borders at the expense of the area hitherto occupied by barbarism ; and perhaps, we may add, that even these savage races will not have existed upon those continents in vain, if they shall have left upon the minds of the civilised com- munities which are superseding them the impression, that what enabled themselves to take the place of those who formerly possessed the soil was, in its simplest ex- pression, their moral and intellectual superiority ; and that as it was by these means alone that they rose above the savage, so it is only by elevating and purifying the

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feelings, increasing knowledge, and strengthening the power of thought, that they can hope to make future advances : as the absence of this culture would approxi- mate them to the state of the savage who made way for them, so are efforts to advance it the only means permitted them for rising beyond their actual position. They ought to bear in mind that advances of this kind give an insight, even approaching nearer to completeness,, into the workings and purposes both of society and of nature, and are ever bringing the thoughts and heart of man into closer harmony with the designs, and into a state of more complete reliance upon th^ goodness and wisdom, of Him who orders all things.

The character of such an Exhibition of the Industry of all Nations must have disposed many a thoughtful spectator to follow discursively, according to the sugges- tions of surrounding objects, very various trains of thought and feeling, arising out of a view of the condition, the fortunes, and the history of the different branches of the human family. To the minds of many who contem- plated the Exhibition in this spirit, the large space al- lotted to the United States, and to our Australian colonies, must have recalled the present condition of the North American Indian, and of the Australian native : eo ipso praefulgebant, quod non visebantur. And out of the number of such visitors there were, doubtless, some who passed on to the speculation of what might be the posi- tion which these two rising and aspiring continents would occupy in some distant future Exhibition.

But not only did this Exhibition of the industrial universe lead us to regard the different branches of the \iuman family as varying, within certain prescribed limits, in their sentiments, tastes, and intelligence, in conformity with the variations of surrounding nature ; but it also led us to regarJ them as bound together by common wants,

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which they are able reciprocally to supply. It had a unity of its own, as great as Humboldt's cosmos j and doubtless suggested to many that our wants, with the facilities and means for supplying them, and so the inter- dependence of nations, increase in exact proportion to the advances the world makes in civilisation. The most barbarous nation upon earth is the most independent of its neighbours, and of all the world, and the most civilised is the most dependent : the latter will find in every part of the world something or other that is of great use to it ; something without the aid of which it will be unable to carry on some process of manufacture, or* some useful or ornamental art ; without which, in short, it must forego some comfort or luxury. A walk down the nave of the Crystal Palace enabled thousands to collect ample mate- rials for this conclusion : the slightest attempt to trace the history of the innumerable objects which formed that wonderful display, must have shown that the productions of every region upon earth had, in the hands of our own, and of foreign manufacturers and artists, been made to contribute to it. This, however, is a fact, for evidence of the truth of which, though here demonstrated on so large a scale, and in so complete a manner, one need hardly have been sent so far. The Royal Exchange, even in the time of the Spectator, raised the same reflec- tions in the mind of Addison : and any one of us may now be carrying about with him, upon his own person, just as conclusive evidence of this, as far as one, at least, of our chief wants is concerned. As the eyes of the reader glance over these words he may be wearing a coat made of Saxon wool ; the soles of his boots may have been made from a Buenos Ayrean, or Australian, hide ; the upper leather may have been tanned in France, or Switzerland, and the whole put together with thread made from Belgian flax ; the material from which his

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linen was made may have grown on German soil ; for that from which his stockings were made he was indebted to Egypt or America, or India; his handkerchief may have come from China, his gloves from France. All this is quite upon the surface ; if, however, we were to trace out every thing which was requisite for each of the dif- ferent processes which each of these different articles had to pass through before they were fitted for his use, and where every thing came from which was required for building and navigating the vessels which brought them to our shore, the inquiry would show, that the ivhole earth, and not that spot of earth which it does itself occupy, is the field from which if is intended that a civilised community should supply its wants. In sug- gesting such ideas as these to the minds of no small pro- portion of its visitors, the educational advantages of the Exhibition have been very great.

This general and extensive interchange of the gifts of nature, the fruits of toil, and the works of taste and art, is a feature of modern civilisation. It is true that much of what was best in its kind flowed from the provinces around the Mediterranean, and even from greater dis- tances, to imperial Rome, being paid for chiefly by the tribute and plunder of those very provinces. But this traffic was very much less extensive than might have been supposed ; and, also, much less diversified : of the very articles which constitute the most important items in modern commerce, many did not enter at all, and others only in a very slight degree, into theirs ; besides, there was so much similarity in the productions of the countries which surrounded the Mediterranean, that an extensive commerce among themselves, except under par- ticular circumstances in the article of corn, was out of the question. In the best days of the republic the com merce of Rome was, of course, much smaller, and the.

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variety of articles imported much less. At Athens, though commerce and manufactures were among the sources of her prosperity, this was equally the case, on account of the paucity of an Athenian's wants, and the remarkable simplicity of his private life. Considerations of this kind mark the extent of ground over which humanising and civilising influences have spread, and the strength they have gained, in modern times. No country has done more to diffuse these influences, or has felt them more strongly herself, than our own : our extensive commerce has brought us acquainted not more with the produce than with the inhabitants of every part of the earth ; even our own empire, which seems to have inherited the remark, first applied to that of Charles V., that the sun never sets upon it, has made us familiar with no small portion of the productions and of the inhabitants of each of the four continents, besides that it includes in itself the whole of Australia. This has opened our minds for the admission of many ideas, which tell in a very appreciable degree upon the sentiments of individuals, especially of the lead- ing minds amongst us, and so upon our general views. We are more familiar than any other people with the endless variety of nature, and with the various conditions in which man exists in different parts of the earth. Our extended intercourse has some effect in predisposing what may be called the mind of the country to take enlarged and philanthropic views upon many questions which come before it. It is also one of the causes why an Exhibition of so open and liberal a character, and which aimed at representing all the productions of Nature, Industry, and Art, was so well received amongst us.

But here a word or two upon a subject of which we heard a great deal during the last twelvemonth — that arts and commerce are the great pacificators. No one doubts this ; and it was precisely for this very reason that so

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many thoughtful persons were ready, on every occasion, to give all honour to the Exhibition of the Industry of all Nations, supposing that it would contribute to increase the weight in human affairs which these influences have already acquired. We must, however, moderate our ex- pectations, by recollecting that no other nation can be so alive to these influences as ourselves, because amongst ourselves all classes are more or less affected, and to a far greater degree than is the case with any other people, by the vicissitudes of commerce. Those who are expect- ing, in the present state of the world/ that the operation of these causes may make war impossible, are expecting far more than the circumstances of other nations at all justify. If all nations were engaged as largely in com- merce as we are, and if it entered as intimately into their national life as it does into ours, then the balance of pro- bability would be very decidedly against the recurrence of war ; though even then he would be rash who might undertake to say, that men would no longer allow their passions sometimes to get the mastery over their interests and their reason. As, however, during the last four centuries commerce has increased all over the world so amazingly, and as of late it has been increasing far more rapidly than ever heretofore, we have good grounds for indulging hopes concerning the more peaceable character of the future : in the mean time, all honour is due to the Industrial Exhibition, which, by showing to each nation how dependent it is upon the rest of the world, and how much more than it now possesses it may obtain from others through the labours of peaceful industry, must con- tribute in some degree towards the desired consummation.

The intelligent artizan who visited the Exhibition (and it was a pleasing sight to meet there so many thousands of this class) must have had it obtruded upon his atten-

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tion, that labour is everywhere both the lot of man and the price of success. The Exhibition was in reality mainly an Exhibition of the results of the labour of dif- ferent nations. The artizan, indeed, had an advantage over the refined and wealthy visitor, in being able to ap- preciate more accurately the amount of skill, headwork, and finger work, which was required for the production of the different objects set out before him. He knew how many years a man must have handled his tools, and with how much attention, before he could have acquired the power of using them with so much effect; and understood how much previous thought was required, before the power of creating such beautiful designs could have been attained. In this respect the Exhibition was more instructive and profitable to this class than to any other ; and we doubt not but that many a horny-handed, but stout-hearted, and intelligent artizan made these reflections, and is now the better man for having made them. This is a work-a-day world ; and he who has no work to do in it is not a man who is to be envied. Everything of value is the fruit of work : only let not those whose work is chiefly that of the hands underrate the greater wear and tear which many of those have to go through whose work lies in the brain. "VYe must not, however, be surprised at some- times hearing from these classes expressions indicative of but little respect for those who, because fortune has released them from the necessity of labouring either with hand or head, allow all the higher faculties of their nature to run to waste, at the very time when the rewards which attend the cultivation of these faculties are greater, and the fields for their exercise more extensive, than at any previous period of man's history.

The building itself not only contributed very largely to the interest of the Exhibition, but did also better ex-

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emplify some of the most prominent characteristics of the age than any of the works of art which were exhibited beneath its wonderful roof. M. Dupin, in an after-dinner speech delivered at the entertainment given at Richmond to the foreign Commissioners, observed that the problem to be solved by the architect was the following ; how was an edifice, larger than Windsor, the Escurial, or the Tuileries, to be built in eight months, and in such a manner as to be ready for use as soon as built ? These apparently impossible conditions were complied with, winter, too, being the time of the year during which the work was done. So that the building was delivered over to the Commissioners, ready for immediate use, upon the day required. If we were to tell this to some stranger, ignorant of what were the materials used, and the me- thods of construction adopted, in building the Crystal Palace, he would be ready to exclaim (and he might afterwards find that such, indeed, had been the case) that the architect must have been able to have summoned to his assistance some power greater than that which has been granted to the arms of mortal men. In truth, the Crystal Palace, so extraordinary in its extent, constructed with such marvellous rapidity, and so impressive in its grand simplicity, is only the last, though perhaps the most striking, instance of the works which man can accomplish, now that he has found a submissive ally in the never- wearied and all-powerful spirit of steam, which has undertaken to relieve man himself, and his old allies, the horse, the stream, and the wind, from bearing the burden of all the hard work, and providing the enormous amount of " power," without which the various requirements of our advanced civilisation could not be complied with.

An abundant supply of iron (and the steam-engine has enabled us to command a practically unlimited supply, of which fact the construction of the Crystal Palace affords

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very conclusive evidence) has now become the first neces- sity of our material progress. In an age when this is understood by every one who sees that all our processes of manufacture are now effected by the aid of machinery formed of iron, even to the rounding of a lucifer-match, or the folding of an envelope ; and who is aware that we now travel upon iron roads, and construct our largest buildings, ships, and bridges of iron, it is interesting to look back on the most ancient monuments which this island possesses, so ancient indeed that their history is unknown, and that we can only conjecture what were the purposes for which they were raised. In them we see still in existence structures of a most remote antiquity, more perdurable perhaps than any, with the exception of the railway embankment, which modern civilisation has placed upon the surface of the earth ; and we find that their very durability has been the direct result of the fact that those who constructed them had not enough iron, or skill, to make the few tools which would have enabled them to dress the stones they used, and to work in ma- sonry. It is interesting at a time when we are making more than 2,500,000 tons of iron a year to be able to point to still existing monuments in proof of the fact that there was a time when the use of iron was unknown amongst us. We may, too, suppose that, as it is by no means certain that the use of cement was unknown to the builders of what are called Cyclopean walls, that the dearness and scarcity of tools had some share in giving to that style also of architecture its peculiar character. These walls and structures were, at all events, raised during the age of bronze : pins of bronze have been ex- tracted from the treasury of Atreus at Mycenas ; the sword of Achilles was of bronze ; and all the tools of this age, specimens of which are still found from time to time in almost every part of Europe, were of the same material.

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A comparison of the Crystal Palace with some of the great buildings of former times would illustrate, in a very interesting manner, both the progress of many of the use- ful arts, and the moral and intellectual condition of society, at some of the great epochs of history. Herodotus tells us that 100,000 men were employed for twenty years in the construction of the Grand Pyramid : a modern engineer would be able to tell us with how many bushels of coal he could, in so level a country as Egypt, restore this enormous pile of stone to the quarries, from which the greater part of it was brought at the cost of so much time and labour. But on contemplating this stupendous monument of what sheer labour can effect, that which is most striking to the thoughtful mind, is not the progress which science and the mechanical arts have made, since the time when the Pharaohs were exacting in the valley of the Nile from the thews and sinews of their subjects' work, from which man has now relieved himself, and laid upon iron and steam ; but rather what may be called the moral and intellectual state of a civilisation which could undertake such works. It does not give us a very exalted idea of the wisdom of the Pharaohs, of the priest- hood, or of the people, to find so many persons torn from their homes for so many years, and employed in what aimed professedly at gratifying merely the vanity (for, as the benefit was to be confined to the royal architect, we will not call it the religious feeling) of one man. The Grand Pyramid is, in fact, a monument to all ages of a most entire disregard of human suffering, a most com- plete ignorance of what ought to be the object of human labour, and almost as complete an absence of artistic feel- ing, coexisting together with a knowledge of many of the useful arts, much constructive skill, and so advanced a state of agriculture and of general industry, that the people were able to support for twenty years the 100,000

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hands which had been withdrawn from the cultivation of the soil, and their ordinary employments. Viewed as a monument of the state of thought and feeling, and of the condition of humanity, at the time when it was erected, such are the inferences we must draw from its character and history. How contemptible the moral and intellectual condition of the man who could use up his helpless sub- jects in this way ! How lamentable a circumstance for his subjects to have been so employed ! How pitiable a perversion of power and of labour !

We may also, with equal credit to our modern civilisa- tion, compare the Crystal Palace with the greatest build- ing of Imperial Rome. If we keep before us the character of the purposes for which the Flavian amphitheatre was designed, then the sums that were spent upon it, and the magnitude of the structure, do in fact measure the misery and degradation of the age which witnessed its erection. Its benches were thronged with the men and the women of Rome, eager to see their fellow-men mang- ling each other, or torn to pieces by savage animals. The women of Rome could gloat over the last agonies of the dying gladiator. The vestal virgins had seats of honour assigned to them, as ministers of religion, that they might see to the greatest advantage these sights of a Roman holiday. If the reader will spend a few moments in pic- turing to himself what must have been the tone of society, and the character of public and private life, wrhich could harmonise with a taste for such inhuman and degrading spectacles, he will cease to feel any surprise at reading of the wanton destruction of populous cities, the desolation of kingdoms, the spoliation of provinces, the wholesale ejection of the proprietors of land, the long lists of pro- scriptions, the existence of Neros, Caligulas, and Domi- tians, and the astounding general corruption and rotten- ness of the empire, followed by its miserable collapse, the

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legitimate and inevitable consummation of these base and cruel antecedents. Now, if we turn to our Crystal Palace, we find that it was built by the voluntary contri- butions of the people, not out of sums extorted from subject provinces by a military autocrat at the head of an army of 400,000 men ; that the purposes for which it was built were, to refine the taste, to do honour to industry, to increase the comforts and embellishments of life, and to spread throughout society a knowledge of the profu- sion, the variety, the beauty, and the beneficence of Nature — to promote, in a word, the glory of God, peace upon earth, and good will among men.

There will always be plenty of half-informed persons disposed to undervalue the times in which they live. We often hear such persons calling the present age, depre- ciatingly, an age of iron, of steam, of cheap printing, of Birmingham ware, of shams ; they say that we have no great men, no great ideas, that nothing great is in course of development, and much more in the same strain ; a great deal, however, of which is very much to our credit when rightly understood. Now there surely can be no very great difficulty in showing that these low views of modern society are wholly untrue. Never be- fore was society actuated by higher motives : we see this in our literature, which gives utterance to our feelings, and in our legislation, which is the highest embodiment of the aspirations and spirit of society. Never before was there so much earnestness, or so many working for the general good and advancement ; never before was the human intellect so actively employed, or so profitably ; never before did right feeling, and sound moral sense, penetrate so deeply into the great masses, which are the broad foundations which support cultivated society. To be most thoroughly persuaded of all this does not at all imply a blindness to the evils of the present day : far

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from it : those who are best able to appreciate our pecu- liar advantages and merits will perhaps be the first to detect and deplore the evils which unfortunately attend them. Those who feel disposed to depreciate the present, ought first to be sure that they have honestly endea- voured to comprehend both what is now going on in the world, and what was the internal condition of society at the different epochs of the historic period ; and then they ought to lay their finger upon some particular period, and say, the men of that day were superior to the men of this day, in respect of the feelings, pursuits, and attain- ments— the particulars just mentioned as characterising the present day point to the chief of these — which elevate Man, and give to life here below such enjoyments as are worthy of a being upon whom has been bestowed a nature to feel pain at what is evil, and pleasure at what is good ; and a large discourse of reason to comprehend the properties, the relations, and the beauty, of the ob- jects with which Supreme wisdom and goodness have surrounded him.

One of the high advantages of this Exhibition was the fact, that it brought before us many distinct and palpable indications of the character of our civilisation ; it showed us, in a manner in which nothing else could have shown it, what is the spirit of our civilisation ; what it can achieve ; and at what it is aiming ; in a word, taken with all its attendant circumstances, it supplied the crucial proof that there have been changes for the better, and that the world has been advancing. Beneath the mar- vellous roof of the Crystal Palace — for the roof is almost the only part of the building which from within meets the eye of the visitor — and amid the specimens both of whatever nature has given to man in the different regions of the earth for use or ornament, and of the art and taste with which man has fashioned them to his purpose, he

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whose memory was stored with recollections of the past achievements and fortunes of his race, and whose heart was at the same time in sympathy with the efforts and aims of the men of his own day, naturally compared, in some such manner perhaps as has just now been done, the structure in which he stood with the great buildings of other times and forms of civilisation, and the busy imagin- ation pictured to itself the scenes which history connects with each. From considerations of this kind, especially of the uses to which they were respectively put, an esti- mate may be formed in each instance of the contemporary state of society. Our thoughts first rested on the oldest monuments of civilisation; but they only served to re- mind us of the miseries of helpless millions, and of the hardhearted and objectless perversion of power which most characterise the Oriental form of civilisation, where thought is useless and forbidden, and improvement there- fore impossible. The Flavian amphitheatre next rose before us ; but that was in some respects suggestive of still sadder thoughts : it reminded us how it happened that the greatest opportunity the world had ever had came to nothing. As we approach nearer to our own times, the old Cathedrals of Western Europe, the great monuments of mediaeval art and feeling, present an occasion for one further comparison. We shall here be treading on almost sacred ground : the nave, however, the transept, and the aisles of the Crystal Palace itself must already have frequently brought the two into a kind of juxta- position in the minds of many ; and the reader perhaps will not be unwilling to follow for a time the train of thought which such a comparison awakens.

We have, then, in these structures, also, very wonder- ful monuments of man's constructive skill ; in some respects, indeed, they exceeded all which had been previ- ously achieved. The summit of many a provincial Ca-

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thedral rose almost as high above the surface of the earth as the summit of the Grand Pyramid. Their cen- tral avenues were of a length and loftiness unimagined by the architects of the temples of Athens and Rome. Their windows were formed of what would have appeared to the inhabitants of ancient Babylon or Ecbatana pic- tures of rubies and emeralds. Their tracery and carving were more elaborate and profuse than what decorated the Golden House of Nero, or the Palace of Diocletian ; the gold and jewels in their shrines and sacristies often ex- ceeded the treasures of princes. All this justly excites our admiration ; but, when regarded, from our higher points of view, as a test of the contemporary state of the human mind, the general conclusion is in some respects disparaging. The ignorant serf, and his almost equally ignorant lord, who, as some procession passed by, and the music rose to the lofty roof, and was lost along the distant aisles, felt their hearts bowed before the influences of the place and of the occasion, could not have known much (and history tells us that they did not) of that abiding influence over the heart and life, which belongs only to distinct knowledge and reason- able convictions. The Persian on his mountain-top wor- shipped in a nobler temple and after a more spiritual fashion. I am not in the least attempting to depreciate the character, the efforts, or the achievements of the mediaeval church : every body is now aware that we are under the greatest obligations to it : not only was it the keeper and transmitter of the Faith ; the guardian of the rights of the weak ; and, to a greater degree than the purer churches which sprang from it have been, or are ever likely to be, the salt and the leaven of society; but it was also the great patron and preserver of art and literature. That, however, which concerns our present purpose is the fact, that, itself unarmed, it had a hard battle to fight against armed men, who, for the most part,

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were men of violence, and so strong as often to be able to set the laws as administered in those times at de- fiance, and to whose reason any appeal would have been vain. The Church could meet this only by the terrors of the unseen world, and by the awe-inspiring and over- powering magnificence of its ceremonial worship. For this the cathedral was most important ; without this embodi- ment of the reality and power of the Church, and without the aid of the feelings, which the character of the services carried on within its walls was calculated to inspire, even the bishop would have been powerless in the presence of the neighbouring baron. The cathedral was a tower of moral strength to the Church in the conflicts of that rude age. The splendour of its ceremonial, and the imposing magnitude and real beauty of the sacred edifices in which these ceremonies were celebrated, both awed the mind of the worshipper, and invested the priesthood with dignity in the eyes and hearts of an ignorant generation, which was easily impressed, and which judged only by what was on the surface. To duly estimate the force of these re- marks, we have only to consider what the influence of the mediaeval church would have been, had it been de- prived in the earlier part of this period by the brand of some Eomanist Knox, or by the prevalence of some spiritualizing dogma, of its cathedrals and abbeys, and churches, and reduced to the unadorned worship of the conventicle. 'We ought to be deeply grateful that the Anglican Reformation spared these magnificent monu- ments of the taste and feeling of former times, in which so much of the internal history of those times may be read ; though it may well be doubted whether, had they been unfortunately destroyed, there would now be any dread of a reaction towards medievalism : the greatness, how- ever, of our advantage in possessing them far more than compensates for the evil resulting from it, — which evil,

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too, we must remember, is very far from being of an un- mixed character. The old cathedral, then, must ever be regarded as a very wonderful monument of the piety and munificence, a high embodiment of the feeling, an extra- ordinary development of the art, of the times which wit- nessed its erection and adornment. It answered well, by peaceful and artistic means, the purposes for which it was designed : but the use of such means for such purposes does, upon the whole, indicate an early, rather than an advanced, stage of society ; perhaps we might say that it indicates that a successful attempt was being made to in- fluence the rudeness and violence of prevailing barbarism by appeals to the eye and the imagination through means (in some instances improved upon) which had been rescued from the wreck of a former civilisation. As, then, we looked along the nave, or wandered among the courts and aisles, of the Crystal Palace, a conviction was presented to the mind, being the conclusion of more than one line of thought, that the wisdom, and goodness, and power, and other attributes of the Creator are now better understood and more felt, than at the time when a gorgeous and imposing ceremonial was observed in the neighbouring abbey ; and that the ideas and feelings suggested by the character, the sights, the attendant and resulting circum- stances of our great Industrial Exhibition, are better calculated to dispose the hearts of the men of this day to piety and charity, than a return to the means resorted to for compassing these ends by an age most unlike our own, means of which that fine old minster will serve most favourably and impressively to remind us.

Another fact connected with the Exhibition, and which deserves notice, is the manner in which it has brought forward and given, in general estimation, an useful and honourable position to the scientific, the practical, the

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artistic, and the working intellect of the country. The circumstances of the times were preparing such a position for men of this description ; and the event of last summer seems at once to have placed them in it. And here, per- haps, it may be interesting, as illustrative of some of the differences between the present and the past, to compare (but it can only be done in the briefest way) what are our feelings towards those who, in these various ways, are labouring for society, with what were men's feelings in this respect at some of the great epochs of history. The old Graeco-Roman civilisation received its full de- velopment under the Caesars and succeeding emperors : now it would be hard to say what description of men were held in general estimation during this important period in the history of Europe. Literature was patron- ised in the time of Augustus ; but from his time there is no first-rate name in Poetry or Philosophy, nor, with the exception of Tacitus, in the department of History, till the revival of learning twelve centuries later. Many of the emperors were successful soldiers, but military men were not held in honour, for those who wore the purple, by a tenure more than semi-military, would naturally enough have been jealous of great generals ; and besides, as the limits of the empire comprised the whole civilised world, there was not that opening for the acquisition of military fame which had existed under the republic, when almost yearly fresh armies, and fresh generals, were sent out against some redoubtable foe, and great conquests were effected. The fact is, that under the empire — excepting only the long misunderstood Christians, who, however, were themselves eventually unable to escape the pre- dominant influences of this, as it then seemed, aimless and hopeless period, — there was no class of men who were generally worthy of respect, and no class whose good opinion would have been of much value. And

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how could it have been otherwise at a time, when the inhabitants of the capital of the world consisted of the court of an autocrat, a strong military force, a few mil- lionaires, a vast body of citizens not far removed from pauperism, slaves, and foreign adventurers ? When a commonwealth so degraded had been displaced and over- turned, and society had reconstructed itself upon new principles, the form which for a moment it appeared to have permanently assumed was that of Feudalism. Though this was a rude, while the preceding had been a polished, epoch, yet it possessed many symptoms of far greater promise ; and foremost among these may be placed the fact, that man was now able to hold his fellow man in honour: the loyal knight was honoured; woman, with almost the feeling of high respect^which Tacitus describes as existing in the woods of Germany, was honoured ; the churchman, as the champion of order, and protector of the weak, was honoured ; and humanity itself, the mere man, in obedience no less to the spirit and doctrines, than to the letter, of the new religion, was honoured. But Feudalism also passed away ; and the order of society which succeeded it has, for the four last centuries, been constantly receiving further development, and even now we can only speculate upon what will be the form into which it will ultimately settle. In the mean time, how- ever, it may throw some light upon the stream of ten- dency, if we consider who are the men now held in highest regard and honour. They are all those, if we state the idea in its most general form, who have in any way benefited society. And we have come to attach to these terms ideas somewhat different from those which would have been connected with them during the previous epoch. As far as regards the precept of honouring all men, the principles of the Church in this, as in many other respects, were, during the feudal period, very much in advance of what it was possible to realise in such a state of society.

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Since that time, however, so many social inequalities have been removed, and so many strong lines of demarcation obliterated, that it has become easy to give to this precept a more extended, truthful, arid practical effect : what has been lost in picturesqueness has been gained in these essential particulars. The law of honour has enlarged its meaning. Our ideas, too, upon the subject of the obligations which society incurs, have been vastly im- proved : since the emancipation of labour, there has been growing up a feeling, which could not have existed as long as labour was servile, that he who labours in his vocation and calling, be they as humble as they may, to discharge faithfully his duty to society, in return deserves well of society : to the best of his ability he has been its benefactor, and as such is entitled to be regarded. Now this Great Exhibition has given prominency to this feel- ing : its professed object was to do honour not only, to the achievements of high art, but to every form of in- dustry. It has been the first recognition before the world of the higher claims of labour, the claims which it has upon our respect, our gratitude, and our sympathy; it has been the first express practical acknowledgment which society has made, that the labourer, whether he be one the labour of whose hands waits upon the labour of his intellect, or whether his labour be merely so much mus- cular exertion, and mechanical drudgery, is worthy of something more than his hire.

Casting our eyes, then, first upon that division of man- kind, whose lot it is — in some few instances whose choice it is — to toil for the common advancement, we may sup- pose that the wearisomeness of their daily toil will be in some degree lightened, and a new stimulus given to their exertions, by the consciousness that the importance of the results of their labours will now be better understood. And the advantages of this view of our Great Exhibition

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will not be confined to these classes, but will also extend to that smaller division of mankind which graces the opposite extremity of the social scale. Owing mainly to the industry and virtues of the people of this country, which have enabled us to turn to the best account our natural advantages, this favoured division of mankind is far more numerous in this island than in any other part of the world. Fortune has so entirely exempted them from the burden of more serious toil than what is neces- sary for enjoying the hive in which they live, that our first comparison is likely to be that of the drones and the working bees. We might almost be disposed to imagine that they must look down upon society from their Bel- gravian eminence with something like the feelings of the gods of Epicurus. There are, however, few symptoms in our modern civilisation more hopeful than the manner in which our wealthy classes have resisted the enervating and debasing effects of wealth. Though they have so much more extensive a command of the means and ap- pliances for luxurious living than the wealthy classes of ancient Rome, yet we never hear a word of the complaint which used to be in the mouth of every thoughtful Roman, that the national character was succumbing to luxury. On the contrary ; the energy and patriotism of our wealthiest classes have kept pace with the general prosperity of the nation, from whose industry their riches have been derived. To the aspirations of those among these classes who are now young, and who will some day occupy positions of great influence, the sights and cir- cumstances of this Exhibition may have given an elevating direction. They found there how much, and in a manner of which they can have had no previous idea, Man has been allowed to accomplish out of an endless variety of materials, scattered over the different regions of the globe, corresponding to an equal variety of human wants. In

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this view of the laws and productions of nature, and of the purposes to which they have been turned, they saw think- ing and labouring Man every where working together with the Author of all things, in carrying out the pre- ordained designs and ends of human society. This may have suggested to them the idea of a scheme, in ivhich there is no place or honour for those who do nothing.

These remarks on what may be called the lessons which the Exhibition was capable of teaching to all classes, naturally lead to some mention of one of the most in- teresting and striking sights witnessed in the Crystal Palace. In the department assigned to machinery in motion, there might frequently have been seen men of the greatest distinction standing by some curious or im- portant machine, watching its movements, and asking questions of the operatives employed in working it. The great man perhaps had hitherto directed his thoughts almost entirely either to the events and routine of the society in which he moved, or had devoted his attention to affairs of church or state, or it might have been a case in which the law had with still greater jealousy claimed the whole of his previous life, and so he had hitherto had but little opportunity for making himself acquainted with the ingenuity and enormous power of the machinery, to which he had been indebted for almost every manufac- tured article that he used. And here was the Manchester operative giving all the necessary explanations with as much calmness and clearness as an Owen or a Faraday delivering a lecture at the Royal Institution. This was a suggestive sight to those who were thinking on the uses of the Exhibition, and an interesting one as a study of national character. Quietness of manner, absence of all thought of display, the wish to get, or to give, a clear idea of the object of the machine, were as marked in the humble Lancashire operative, as in the man of distinction

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occupying a high position in the world. The calm self- possession, and real dignity of demeanour, with which all classes of Englishmen, whatever may be their rank or occupation, go about their work, is neither the least pleasing, nor least striking, of our characteristics ; it is one, too, which bodes well for the future.

On looking around us for indications of the character of the change which is coming over the spirit of society, there can hardly be found any more significant, as well as more pleasing, than the intelligent interest (there are no fitter words) which the most exalted personages in the realm showed in this Great Exhibition, and the gratifica- tion all orders of observers felt at witnessing it. When Mr. Cobden said in the previous winter that few persons could be aware of the amount of labour and anxiety Prince Albert would have to undergo, on account of the part he was taking in the arrangements and provisions necessary for the success of such an undertaking, he only said what the public have since become well aware of. At the time when most persons viewed the project with timidity, or coldness, or even with hostility, the Prince had the sagacity to see that the resources of our civilisation were equal to the idea ; and foreseeing how great would be its advan- tages, if worthily carried out, he undertook a very anxious and laborious part in the work of bringing it to maturity ; and, like Clive at Madras, or Sir Stamford Raffles at Java, inspired every one with the spirit with which he himself entered upon the undertaking. We have, however, in- curred a second, and still greater, obligation : the Queen and the Prince, by their early and regular visits, and by the systematic and thorough manner in which they inves- tigated every department, pointed out the way in which it was to be turned to the most profitable account. There can have been few persons who spent so many hours in the Exhibition, and saw so much of it. The nation,

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indeed, may well be proud at being able to compare its present court so advantageously with those of other periods of our history. Royalty never before had such an opportunity of showing that it sympathised with the efforts of the working classes, and appreciated their work ; and never was a great opportunity better used.

Of late we have seen the great, and the wealthy, show- ing a growing interest in, and exerting themselves to promote the welfare and advancement of, the humbler classes ; and in the schools, societies, and institutions of the present day, we have substantial, and to a certain ex- tent satisfactory, proofs of the activity of these feelings : while the manner in which the humbler classes appre- ciated, and conducted themselves in, the Exhibition, is an indication that no small advance has been made by themselves. Scarcely any of us are too young to re- member the apprehensions which were felt only a few years ago, that, if the mob, as the people were then called, were to be admitted to gardens, galleries, museums, or to any place where specimens of art were exhibited, and where orderly behaviour on the part of the visitors was requisite, they must do mischief, as much from igno- rance as design; and by their unmannerly demeanour effectually exclude all other classes. These same humbler classes, however, have been gradually admitted to mu- seums, galleries, and gardens ; several museums, and institutions for the encouragement of literary and scien- tific tastes, have been established for their especial use ; a taste for music has been created among them, and we even hear of places in which shilling concerts are sup- ported by them. This has all risen up during the last few years ; and now we have just been meeting them among the avenues and courts of the Crystal Palace, not on the footing upon which we meet them at the fetes

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given by the great on the occasion of a marriage, or of the eldest son's having reached his majority, when they are under the restraint which arises from a sense of obli- gation, and from their being in the presence of those who give them employment, and upon whom they are de- pendent ; but on the same footing as ourselves, having come, many of them, from a distant part of the country, to see the same sight which had attracted us, conducting themselves with perfect decorum, and paying like our- selves for their pleasure and instruction. All honour, then, to the Great Exhibition, for having thus demon- strated the existence of a common ground — the useful, the beautiful, and the wonderful in nature and in art, — where all might meet with common feelings, not only the Englishman and the foreigner, but also the high and the low, the Prince and the peasant. Here are means, to which no exceptions can be taken, for applying that " touch of nature, which makes all men kin."

Particulars of this kind are the more important, on ac- count of the glimpses they give of the tendencies, and, without either indulging in the prophetic vein, or at all being in the secret of the Coming Man, we may almost say, of the future of society. All great events which grow out of the circumstances of their times, and so of course are in harmony with their spirit, cast very distinct shadows before them. Suppose an Exhibition of the Industry of all Nations had been attempted only twenty- five years ago : every one can picture to himself, how widely different from what we have just been witnessing in Hyde Park would have been not merely the building itself, the things exhibited, and the number of visitors, but also how widely would have differed the feelings and views of the visitors, the manner in which the public would have regarded the proposal, and all the attendant circumstances. We may call this difference by whatever

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name we please, still the fact itself remains unquestion- able,— never was there such an amount of change in any country, or in any age, within the same space of time. It is plain also that some of the causes which have been most influential in bringing this about, have of late years been acting with a continually increasing momentum. Now beneath the roof of the Crystal Palace many a sight was witnessed which served to throw light upon the nature of these changes and of their causes. Reflections of this kind must have crossed the mind of every thoughtful visitor, suggested by the building itself, by the numbers and character of the multitude around him, and by the uses and history of many of the objects so marvellously brought together. And can we suppose that any one person out of the thousands, in whose minds thoughts of this kind spontaneously arose, thinks that all the mighty causes which have produced these changes, — and of their power the Exhibition itself and its success were by no means fallacious indications, — will, under any circum- stances which can be imagined, suddenly cease to act; and that we shall have no more change ? On the con- trary, indeed, most of us think that we shall probably have too much change ; and consequently regard the future with various degrees of apprehension.

This is a fit occasion for speaking of these feelings. It is true, that it is contrary both to our own experience, and to that larger experience which history supplies, to suppose that any change will ever be unattended with inconveniences, or that any thing in human affairs will ever be unmixedly good ; but it is equally contrary to the experience of history to believe that any great change in society is a change from good to evil. The decay of the Roman empire, manifestly after it had fulfilled its pur- pose, does not at all affect this position. Society is in a more healthy state now than during the middle of the

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last century ; at that time it possessed the same kind of superiority over the corresponding point of the preceding century ; and, if we were to go backwards in this manner to the very foundations of our monarchy, we should find that every century was an improvement on that which preceded it. As we travel backwards amongst the monu- ments and records of the past, unravelling the internal history of events as well as scanning their outward aspect, we find men's charity as well as their views less enlarged, and the general aims of society lower.

I would suggest, as a ready and safe criterion for set- tling a comparative estimate of the character of different aeras, a consideration of the objects, about which the hu- man intellect was engaged, and the aims it proposed to itself at these several seras. In the East we see from the remotest times its most strenuous efforts directed to the maintenance of certain fixed systems of law and polity. In the Homeric Hellas there was no tendency in any direc- tion ; no aim or effort of any kind : all was rest and enjoy- ment : it does not appear that men were aware that hu- man society admitted of change : though there was much personal activity, and much vigorous enterprise, there was nothing resembling social movement : no mind was turned to the future. In the Grseco-Roman period, down to the establishment of the empire, men's feelings, and thoughts, and whole life, derived their predominant colour- ing from the political circumstances and necessities of the times ; the civilisation of Europe might almost be de- scribed as comprised, during the best days of this period, in a large number of independent cities and small states on the shores of the Mediterranean : this led to a state of things of which modern societies have had no experience, and which even the Italian republics of the middle ages reproduced but very imperfectly: every freeman was busied throughout his life in providing for the defence of

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his city against foreign aggression, in maintaining or assail- ing its polity, and in administering its affairs : this pro- duced an extraordinary amount of mental activity, which forms the strong point of contrast between this sera and that which followed it. Under the Roman empire all the motives, which, during the former period, had developed so much energy and enterprise in every petty state and city, were at once swept away : mind became stagnant : periods of centuries passed without a great thinker, or a great man in any department of moral or intellectual greatness appearing from Britain to the Euphrates, or from the Alps to the Atlas : the benumbing union, how- ever, which had succeeded the diversified, restless, and fruitful antagonism of the preceding sera, was, on a wide view of the course of events, a great advance ; because it prepared men's minds over a large surface of the earth for the reception of new ideas, and society for the deve- lopment of new relations : in both instances that which was new, being far higher than that which was superseded. Still, even Christianity, in which these new ideas and relations were embodied, became infected with the con- tagion of the times in a manner from which it has not yet recovered : it assumed the aspect, and became animated with the spirit, almost as much of a controversy as of a religion ; and borrowing from the idea and the spirit of the imperial government, both gave to its organisation an hierarchical character, and, as a consequence of this, in direct contravention, at all events, of the teaching of its Divine founder and of the Apostles, substituted for the liberty of the Gospel a system of minute technical definitions, and precise legal rules.

With respect to the mediaeval, or feudal, aera, no one, unless he confines his attention to a few points on the mere surface, will think that the state of society at that period resembled the state of society which Homer de-

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scribes. The traditions of the empire, out of the ruins of which the new fabric had in a great measure been con- structed ; and the active principle of aggression contained in the church, which was ever innovating on the tem- poral power, and ever busy in presenting to men's minds ideas in advance of the age, produced a wide difference in the feelings, aims, and spirit of society. We have now arrived at our own times ; and a moment's reflection will show that the leading ideas of the present day are connected with the social elevation, and the moral and intellectual improvement, of the humbler classes, — that is, of the great mass of mankind : this is our great idea : our instinctive aim : it is also peculiarly ours, because when these classes were chiefly slaves or serfs, the idea could not have existed ; nor even at a recent period was it possible that any weight could have been attached to it, while these classes were as yet nowhere congregated into vast bodies, nor as yet surrounded by such circumstances as needs must develope among them a certain kind of intelligence, and a certain amount of mental activity.

This cursory view of Man's history is not at all out of place, because, without some comparative estimate of this kind, it would be impossible for us properly to under- stand, or appreciate, the aims and spirit of our own times. The invaluable conclusion to which it leads us is, that the sequence of the great events of history is a regular development ; we find that we, of this age, have firmer ground to stand upon, and higher objects in view, than the actors and speculators of preceding aeras ; we begin, and be it said with the deepest reverence, to catch some glimpses, in the operations and tendencies of human societies, of the purposes of the Great Designer, upon which our hearts and minds can rest with peaceful and hopeful satisfaction. In former periods it must have been very difficult to have felt in this manner. At the time when throughout the civilized world the many were

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the goods and chattels of the few, and when man treated his fellow-maa as the savage beast treats his prey; or during the ever-increasing corruptions of the Roman empire ; or the oppressions and injustice of Feudalism ; where in any thing connected with society, excepting only the Church, could the heart or mind have rested with any thing approaching to satisfaction ? But now we find that all these preceding states were only preparatives, each being an advance on that which went before ; and that after all the aims and spirit of human society are just, benevolent, and elevated; we now see that society has gained sufficient wisdom, charity, and strength, vigor- ously to stir itself for the purpose of mitigating misery, and of removing as far as possible the causes which produce misery and vice; that society is beginning, if not to love and honour, at all events to regard and wish well to all its members, and to feel the wide application of the sacred precept, that we should do to others as we would that they should do to us. These are facts and reflections which ought to lead us to look upon the changes of the present day with a hopeful rather than with an apprehensive spirit.

I will only advert to one more consideration upon this part of our subject : if the instruments we were using to work out the part assigned us in the great drama of social development, implied in their use, violence, blood- shed, or misery ; or a vast amount of social corrup- tion ; or the moral and intellectual degradation of a large portion of the community, then might we with reason be apprehensive, and even actively hostile. A walk through the Exhibition, however, gave an epitome of the proof, which is spread throughout society itself, that the direct reverse of all this is the case : in that walk evidence enough was seen for the conclusion that the great instrument by which modern society is working out its purpose is in one word — Knowledge. The very

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building itself suggested one instance,' that of the number- less important inventions of the present day, which have enabled us to produce, with such astonishing rapidity and economy, and almost without limit, so many of the neces- sary and useful appliances required for carrying on the work of our advanced civilisation. It is by these aids that we have even been enabled to open to the Lan- cashire operative and his million brethren, who in other times would have been slaves, or serfs, or mere hopeless drudges, the fields of literature and of science, and to supply them with many advantages unknown to the wealthy of former times : it was machinery, too, which placed it within their means to visit, and brought them up to, the Crystal Palace, itself the creation of machinery. Now these are advantages which have very few con- comitant inconveniences ; they are not purchased by the plunder or oppression of the world, or of any part of the community : on the contrary, they are advantages in which all classes participate, perhaps equally, and by which every branch of the human family must ultimately be benefited. And, while that which produces them is knowledge, which strengthens and exercises the human in- tellect, we cannot suppose that there is any thing in them to corrupt the heart : labour is the price paid for them ; moral and intellectual culture are necessary for their en- joyment.

There is another topic which connects itself with the preceding view of modern society, the omission of which would render that view very incomplete ; it is, too, a topic upon which the Exhibition has bearings, when considered as an exponent of modern aesthetical feeling. Nothing is more common than to hear the present age condemned as dull and unpoetical : this accusation is paraded with a confidence which can only arise from a feeling, that what has been advanced is irrefutable, and, indeed, that very few will have the temerity to question

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it. Now perhaps reasons may be shown for withholding our assent from this opinion. Without any intention of entering upon a dissertation, it may be said that there are two great sources of poetic inspiration : one being the faculty of feeling and appreciating the beauty of Nature, of all that is about and external to man ; in a word, of all that is seen ; the other being the faculty which enables us to appreciate all that passes in the internal world of man's heart, his hopes, his fears, his emotions in their thousand forms and shades ; in a word, all that is felt. Now it might be asked, which of these two sources of poetic inspiration other ages possessed in a greater degree than our own ? Few will question but that the beauty and power of nature is more felt — to such a degree, indeed, is this the case, as to supersede the necessity for any formal comparison— at the present day than at any former time. If we compare ourselves in this respect with the ancients, we shall find that there are very few indications in the whole range of classic literature (in a more marked manner is this the case with that of Rome), which could be adduced as proofs, that the feelings with which we regard the beauty and power of nature, par- ticularly what we call the picturesque, were participated in by the ancients : we find in their writings none of that fondness for observing, and dwelling upon, all the details of natural scenery, we may almost say, upon every object in nature, from the boundless immensity of the ocean, or the majesty of the cloud-capped mountain, to the disporting of an insect, or the pencilling of a flower — which so strongly characterizes modern taste : now this may be accounted for partly by the fact that the old civilisation was cradled, and grew to maturity, in cities ; and partly by the reflection that before the mind and heart of man can take pleasure in the contemplation of external nature, he must possess a certain amount of

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knowledge in order that he may, as it were, be able to read, and understand, the page that is spread before him ; he must also possess the disposition to love all nature, on the ground of his knowing it to be the work of an All- wise and All-good Creator. With respect to the other source of poetic inspiration, the power which enables us to appreciate that which passes in the internal world of man's heart, there is of course a nearer approach to equality, though even here we ought rather to allow a difference than an inferiority : perhaps, without going into any detail, we may at once say that other ages were more familiar with the stronger emotions, what we may call more appropriately the passions, while we have the advantage as respects what is gentle, and hopeful, and pleasing, and touching.

I have only just indicated in what way we might deal with this question : perhaps, however, enough has been said to show that ours is not to be condemned without a hearing as an unpoetical age, or as an age notoriously devoid of the elements of poetical feeling. Our aspira- tions after higher forms of good ; the interest we take in every thing appertaining to humanity ; the treasures and spoils of time which we possess so abundantly ; the con- flict between things new and old going on around us ; the varied and inexhaustible imagery with which our acquaintance with all climes, and all the kingdoms, and departments of nature has supplied us, contribute in various ways and degrees to the creation of poetical feeling amongst us ; and are, too, of such a character as to cause its more general diffusion. I have spoken of poetical feeling, rather than of the formal expression of this feeling ; because the former is more dependent upon times and circumstances, and because there are reasons for its existing very abundantly in modern society ; while the latter of course requires a poet, that is the

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combination of so many rare qualities, that it would be very rash to condemn an age as unpoetical, because it is not graced with the name of a great poet ; though even if taken upon this ground, we may perhaps have had as many names during the last half century, that will live, as can be shown for any other equal period of past time. It is very probable that this country may never see a second Shakspeare, but it would by no means follow, this having been conceded, that there had not been since, and would never be again in this country, so much poetical feeling as existed in the reign of Elizabeth. Perhaps also it might be shown that an age, in which poetical feeling had become very largely diffused, and in some respects more refined and fastidious, and was allow- ing itself a far wider range among the objects of nature, and the incidents, and relations of human life, would be disposed to regard not rhyme only, but also numbers, and the old poetical phraseology, in the light of mere- tricious trammels, and almost to desert the time-honoured forms of poetry for the purpose of obtaining greater variety, truthfulness, and freedom of expression ; for in- stance, would look upon Ivanhoe as not less essentially a poem than Marmion.

The above remarks seemed necessary for the purpose of enabling us to arrive at something like a just estimate of the value and importance of the Exhibition of the Arts and Industry of all Nations, as far as it aimed at reflecting the powers, feelings, aspirations, and tenden- cies of our own age. In nothing that I have said have I any wish to depreciate the past, or to exalt the present at the expense of the past. We ought rather to view the past and the present as the inseparably connected parts of one grand whole. Those who have gone before us laid the foundations upon which we are building : they bore the heat and burden of the day, without enjoying

210 APPENDIX.

the fruit of their toil : we have to a great extent entered upon their labours. New powers have been placed in our hands, because we were fit for them ; but we never could have been fitted for them, except by a long course of preparatory events. The man, therefore, who regards other ages with contempt is, by this very feeling, inca- pacitated from forming a right estimate of the character of the events of even his own day : he shows that he is unacquainted with the path along which society has ad- vanced to its present position, and the supports it needed on the way : he ought not, therefore, to be listened to when he undertakes to interpret the present, or to advise respecting the future.

If we look through the pages of history for some event or Institution, with which our Great Exhibition of the Industry of all Nations may be compared, we shall find nothing at all resembling it, with the partial exception of the festival held by the Greek race, upon the banks of the little stream of the Alpheus. Rome, though the mis- tress of the world, and though she deemed it her peculiar glory to have everywhere received the vanquished foe as the adopted citizen, was incapable of conceiving the idea of an Institution which might, only on a large scale, have reflected the spirit and object of the Olympic reunions. Her ambition, as understood and interpreted by herself, was merely to secure the substantial advantages of com- plete dominion ; its aims were confined to the temporali- ties of empire, and, in this respect being very unlike the aims of Greek or Saracenic ambition, had no ideal side. She had no respect for intellectual refinement; and no ideas which she was desirous of disseminating, except that of submission to her power. An appreciation of art, and a love of literature, never characterised the national mind, or had any effect upon the manners of the people ;

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these tastes, indeed, were rather regarded with a harsh and contemptuous feeling, and from a military point of view, as active causes of moral deterioration. We must, how- ever, constantly bear in mind the great historic truth that in the long, and still evidently very incomplete, work of the development of human society, Rome had allotted to her an especial task ; and that that task was very different from what the preceding age had been called upon to ac- complish, or from what has been laid upon us. I have already had occasion to observe that all the good of the foregoing period had resulted from the existence of a state of the most intense antagonism : every city had stood alone : such a stimulus was requisite for causing the germination of the first seeds of improvement. But this step having been gained, it devolved upon Rome to fuse these isolated and discordant elements into one mass, so that men might everywhere feel their common nature, and become capable of being influenced by the same ideas : under the circumstances of those times the iron hand without the velvet glove was necessary for this work. And these ends were so thoroughly answered by the manner in which the Roman empire was established and maintained, that the old feeling, that every city was under the protection of a different deity, and that its handful of inhabitants were further separated from the rest of mankind by some more or less important distinc- tion of race, were all but obliterated, and the ground pre- pared for the reception of the two connected ideas, of one Supreme Being over all nature, caring for all men equally, and of the universal brotherhood of mankind. Having, then, accomplished the work for which civilisa- tion had become ripe, and the necessity for its being done was the very cause which enabled Rome to do it, her em- pire decayed, leaving in its ruins many of the elements which were to feed the growth of more spiritual and more

212 APPENDIX.

highly developed forms of society. Feudalism also has passed away, which was not so much a bridge by which the civilisation of Rome was brought over to us, as an at- tempt, after a vast and disastrous inundation, again to cultivate the soil much enriched both by its long pre- vious culture, and by new elements of fertility which the inundation had deposited upon it ; to re-establish land- marks ; and reconstruct shelter with the confused ma- terials and imperfect appliances that were at hand, and under many disadvantages.

And now it is interesting and instructive to find our European civilisation, — the stages of the Roman empire and of the middle ages having been passed through, which were necessarily stages of hard and enforced sub- jection, — still true to its earliest instincts, of the exist- ence of which it had all along been conscious, and of which it had never ceased to give indications ; and re- verting to the free exercise of intellectual and artistic power, as the highest and surest means for elevating and uniting civilised communities : by the exercise of these powers man embodies in poetry, in literature, in music, in painting, in sculpture, in the decorative arts, but above all in his manners and modes of life, the feel- ings with which he interprets his own nature, and the circumstances of human life, and the feelings with which he regards the objects of the external, and of the unseen world. Nothing can be more interesting, or more in- structive, than thus to find ourselves, more than 2000 years having passed by, during which man was rather laying the foundations of future good at much cost, than enjoying the fruits of his labour, and which is still too much the picture of society, going back again to the ideas, and almost to the practices, of ancient Hellas, and reproducing as a means of union and improvement, but on a scale commensurate with the power, and the attain-

APPENDIX. 213

ments, and after the particular fashions which harmonize with the spirit, of our modern civilisation, the assemblages of those early days.

Here, however, as upon every other point of history with which our subject has brought us in contact, we find how great is the difference between the present or- ganisation and spirit of society, and its organisation and spirit at other great epochs. We, like the ancient Greek, hope that meetings of this kind may lead to an increas6 and a wider dissemination of knowledge, to a more fruit- ful cultivation of taste, and to a more healthful growth of common feeling; we suppose that our visitors from Glasgow, Oxford, or Manchester, and even (for, unlike the Greek, we do not exclude all but our own race) from Italy, Germany, France, or America, will be able to form such an estimate of the general character and ten- dencies of modern civilisation from what they saw not only in the Crystal Palace, and in all its attendant cir- cumstances, but also in the thronging and busy life of our metropolis, in many respects the centre and capital of the world, as may be of use in enabling them to cor- rect feelings and ideas, which the peculiarities of their several situations and circumstances dispose them to entertain. But not only did our wider sympathies, and our juster estimate of humanity, indispose us to confine our festival and its advantages to ourselves, but the very class also whom we hoped to benefit the most, and by benefiting whom we expected our civilisation to be so much advanced, is that large portion of society with whom the Greek could have had no sympathy, and whom he could not elevate.

This points to the most fruitful of all the differences between modern and ancient societies : the old civilisa- tion, because it held the humbler classes in a state of slavery, could derive no moral advancement from the

214 APPENDIX.

virtues which may be practised by those who toil ; by the check which their opinions and self-respect may pro- duce upon those above them in the social scale ; and by the sympathy which may be felt by the rich at witness- ing the struggles of the poor. Nor could it receive, like our modern civilisation, any intellectual advancement from the aid of thoughtful and able men, who them- selves, or whose fathers, had sprung from the mass of the working classes. These classes, because they were held in slavery, though perhaps this condition was necessary for the advancement of the earlier stages of civilisation, were to the ancients sources of weakness and of corrup- tion ; while we are beginning to reckon them among the sources of both our moral and intellectual strength. We were anxious to bring them up to our metropolis from all parts of the country, from the most retired villages as well as from the busiest towns, to show them the wealth and enterprise of the capital of the world ; and to take them to the Crystal Palace, for the purpose of pointing out to them what Art and Science have done, and of enabling them to form some idea of the usefulness and beauty of the productions with which the various regions of the earth have been made to abound for man's enjoy- ment and convenience. We trusted that we should in this way be giving much pleasure which would be pro- fitable, and much knowledge which would humble, while it elevated ; we trusted that we should save many a deserving man from toiling to complete what had already been accomplished, or from aiming at points of excellence lower than that which had been already passed. We hoped that out of so many thousand visitors the sight might sow seeds in the minds of some, which would in time produce very good and useful fruit ; and that it would inspire many with renewed- energy from a contemplation of the honour in which successful labour and thought are held. We were not afraid of their seeing and knowing

APPENDIX. 215

every tiling, nor of the ideas and feelings which such a sight might suggest taking a wrong direction : on the contrary, it will be the greatest of all the advantages which the Exhibition may confer upon us, if it shall have given to these classes some ideas on a level with the pre- sent state of civilisation : the cost of the marvellous sight will be amply repaid, if it has been the means of effecting any thing of this kind. Those who are desirous, from a variety of concurrent reasons, of educating these classes as well as possible, would rejoice at finding that there was no village so remote or secluded as not to have received in some way or other, from what had been seen or heard of the Great Show, some little enlightenment, and some useful materials for thought to work upon. Assuredly we do not grudge to these classes as much intellectual and sesthetical enjoyment as the discoveries of art and sci- ence, and their applications to the purposes of life, can possibly place within their reach. Civilisation — that is, the well-being and power of man — will be advanced by every increase in their intelligence. In the minds of a population of thirty millions we possess a field of inex- haustible fertility, capable, if duly cultivated, of supply- ing all the wants of the future.

n.

ON THE INFLUENTIAL POSITION WHICH THE SCHOOL- MASTERS OF THE FUTURE WILL PROBABLY OCCUPY.

THE adoption of any thing like what I have been re- commending in the preceding pages, (and the people will take care that something of the kind shall be established), implies the introduction of a new and powerful element into our social system. I say new? because at present school-masters, as a profession, possess little, or no, direct

216 APPENDIX.

social influence. A school system at all like that which I have been contemplating, would create a body of able and well-informed men, as numerous as, perhaps more numerous than, the clergy ; and dispersed, like them, over the whole country, for there would be at least one repre- sentative of the body in almost every parish : the cha- racter, too, of their duty would bring them into contact with almost every household. The influence upon society of such a body of men so employed, would necessarily be great.

An officer in the army or navy is respected from the estimation in which the service to which he belongs is held ; the respect felt for the law is reflected upon the members of the bar ; the humblest curate is treated with deference because he is a clergyman ; a medical man has something conceded to him because he is one of the faculty : our present schoolmasters alone derive no ad- ditional estimation or standing from their employment : this proves that teaching is not yet regarded in the light of an honourable profession. Nor will it be so regarded, as long as of the schools in any neigbourhood, some are private speculations, and so to a certain extent rival establishments, and others possess endowments suffi- ciently large to make the master independent of the success of his school, while some again have been called into existence for the purpose of teaching rival dogmas, not of educating, and others are merely charitable in- stitutions for the most elementary instruction.

When, however, we shall possess a body of men at all like what we have been supposing, each member of it will naturally have a feeling of professional pride : there will then be some proper esprit de corps among school- masters ; each one will be conscious that he belongs to a large, intelligent, and powerful class of men. And these feelings cherished among themselves, and entertained on

APPENDIX. 217

just grounds, will contribute very much to increase the estimation in which the public will hold them, and to strengthen therefore their influence in society. They will become one of the most influential of our professions. Nor will their influence with the public be weakened by rivalries among themselves, for they will all have but one common object, that of furthering, each within the sphere of his own school, the cause of general education.

But, though their numbers, and intelligence, and the character of their employment may give the school- masters of the future much weight and influence, they will be powerless for any bad purpose, because they will always be under the control, not of the government, but of those who in each town or village will pay for, and therefore manage, the school.

The existence of so large a body of men, so dispersed over the country, as that one at least of its members should be present in every neighbourhood, having for his office the dissemination of knowledge, the inculcation of the feeling of duty, and the practice of religion ; so situated as that he may be called to account by his neighbours at any moment ; and having as strong motives for maintaining a life void of offence as those which actuate the clergy, would be felt throughout society as an enormous advantage.

III.

ON THE PRESENT POSITION AND THE PROSPECTS OF LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC INSTITUTIONS, MECHANICS* INSTITUTES, PROVINCIAL MUSEUMS, AND OTHER VO- LUNTARY ASSOCIATIONS OF AN EDUCATIONAL CHA- RACTER.

I LIVE in the neighbourhood of Ipswich, and am a mem- ber of the Ipswich Museum, an institution so young, that

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218 APPENDIX.

on the 17th and 18th of the present month — December, 1851 — it celebrated only its fourth anniversary. The first of these anniversaries was presided over by our late lamented Bishop Stanley ; and the three following have been presided over by our present Diocesan, who, upon each occasion, came from a distance for the purpose, and has always expressed his entire approval of the object of the Institution, and promised us the continuance of his hearty support. On each of these anniversaries a lecture has been delivered by some one of eminence in the scientific world ; on previous occasions we listened to Owen, Edward Forbes, and Sedgwick, and on the last occasion we were addressed by Sir Charles Lyell : the Astronomer Royal has also given us a course of five lectures.

I wish to draw particular attention to the fact that Sir Charles Ly ell's audience, for a lecture delivered at 8 o'clock in the evening of the 17th of December, ex- ceeded the number of one thousand. It is, I think, very important that a fact like this should be known, because it shows what a field of usefulness is before institutions of this kind. Sir Charles Lyell would of course attract a large audience wherever it was known that he was about to lecture ; but that in the town of Ipswich, a place of no great size, such an audience, consisting, with very few exceptions, of the inhabitants of the town itself, should have come together to hear him, is a fact from which some useful inferences may be drawn.

Had he been lecturing in a professorial chair at Oxford or Cambridge, what may we suppose would have been the number of his class ? Probably not more than one, cer- tainly not more than two, per cent, of his Ipswich audience, notwithstanding that his subject, that of Geology, is more popular at the Universities than any other of the sciences which have been entrusted to professorial teaching.

An audience of a thousand persons is indeed almost

APPENDIX. 2 1 9

equal to the whole body of students, whom Oxford is able at any one time to attract from the whole kingdom.

Of course out of the thousand persons present no one supposes that a very large proportion were pursuing the study of Geology in earnest, still it is a very significant fact, that in a town of the size of Ipswich so large a number of persons can be induced, from the interest they feel on a scientific subject, to leave their firesides on a winter evening for a lecture that was to last nearly two hours.

There is also in the town of Ipswich a Mechanics' In- stitute, which is well supported, and is doing much good by means of its educational classes and lectures.

And here I may repeat a fact mentioned in an educa- tional pamphlet I published last year, that, with the exception of the clergy, I am not aware of a single person in the town of Ipswich having received an university education ; and this is the more remarkable, as Ipswich is not a manufacturing town, but the county town of an agricultural county, and contains a population of about 33,000 souls.

It may, I think, be safely inferred from these facts that there is something very faulty in our university system : my object, however, in mentioning them is to show to institutions like those at Ipswich how wide a field is opening before them : there are indications that they are entering upon a long career of extensive utility. They have sprung up in every town ; they have been entirely created by the people for the purpose of supply- ing wants of which they were conscious. They aim at imparting the knowledge of the day to persons of all ages and all classes. This is an idea for which neither the state of society, nor the state of knowledge, was here- tofore ripe ; but it is one which there is now some pros- pect of our being able to realise. It is a far grander idea

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than that which is embodied in our old mediaeval univer- sities, which neither are'now, nor were originally, intended to aid in the education of the whole people, having been established at a time when any idea of this kind was im- possible : they have special objects, about which, though intrinsically very important, the great body of the people take but little interest ; and, as long as they shall con- tinue to confine themselves to these special objects, they will continue to be amply sufficient for 20,000,000, or perhaps for twice 20,000,000 of Englishmen. What we now want is, not additional universities restricting their instruction to the old learning, but an institution in every town — those in our large towns numbering more students than our two universities combined — offering, at a cost to each individual of nearer two than two hundred pounds a year, instruction upon whatever subjects men may, in these days, be desirous of studying. Our Ipswich institutions, and others like them springing up all over the country, are the first rude efforts of the people to create something for themselves that may answer this purpose. There is no reason why institutions of this kind may not some day supply our old universities with a great many students.

Professor Henslow, who occupies the botanical chair at Cambridge, is president of the Ipswich Museum; and as this institution can now collect an audience of a thousand persons, no one, I think, will hesitate to decide, that, as president of the Ipswich Museum, he occupies as useful and honourable a position as that which is given him by his possession of the botanical chair at Cambridge.

The Ipswich Museum had sixty thousand visitors last year ; and, if the president should succeed in an effort he is now making, he will be able to offer to the members and working classes of the town one gratuitous lecture in each week of the ensuing year.

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The change which has come over men's minds with respect to these institutions is a good augury for their future success. A very few years ago they were every where assailed with abuse or ridicule. Many laughed at the idea of there being any use in teaching more than what had been taught, time out of mind, in our public schools and universities ; others were jealous of putting the power which knowledge confers into the hands of the middle and lower classes ; while some loudly proclaimed that knowledge, unless it were classical or mathematical, was hostile to religion. The course of events has now silenced all these objections. These institutions, there- fore, have before them a clear stage for their growth and development.

The great difficulty with which they now have to combat is the want of sufficient funds — such funds as would enable them to offer adequate remuneration for good lectures, and good class-teaching. This, however, is a difficulty which there is much reason for hoping will gradually diminish. They are attracting, year by year, more general support : if their character should become more formally and decidedly educational, they may, perhaps, some day be allowed to share in an educational rate. At all events I think we may be sure that when their usefulness has begun to be extensively felt, they will not be left to struggle against inadequate funds.

In a scheme, which I shall place at the end of this volume, as a suggestion for the appropriation of the surplus funds of the late Exhibition, I shall point out a way in which that surplus may be so employed as imme- diately to give very great importance to institutions of this kind.

At present it appears that the best means in their power for securing good lecturers, is that of combination for this particular purpose. If those in any district, and

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in these days railways make distance a matter of very little importance, were desirous of carrying out this idea, they might contribute to a common fund in proportion to the number of their respective subscribers. Suppose those in the district had in all 5000 members ; if they were to give but one shilling for each member, here would be a fund of 250/., which might be given each winter to some able man, who would spend his winter in the district, and give a course of four or five lectures before the members of each of the allied institutions. His travelling expenses might be paid out of what would be taken at the doors of the different lecture-rooms, from the non-subscribers who entered. This 25QL might be sufficient to secure the services, not, of course, of a first- rate man, but still of a very able man. A different sub- ject, and a new lecturer, would of course be chosen each year. Any system of this kind would, in a few years, create a great many very good lecturers.

IV.

THE COMPETITION OF THE UNITED STATES WILL OBLIGE US TO IMPROVE AND EXTEND POPULAR EDUCATION.

A PAPER, headed " Locomotion by river and railway in the United States," which appeared in the " Times" of the 18th of September, and excited a great deal of atten- tion and interest, concluded with the following summary, and accompanying remarks.

" To what extent this extraordinary rapidity of ad- vancement made by the United States in its inland communications is observable in other departments will be seen by the following table, exhibiting a comparative statement of those data, derived from official sources, which indicate the social and commercial condition of a

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people, through a period which forms but a small stage in the life of a nation : —

1793. 1851.

Population - 3,939,325 24,267,488

Imports - - £6,739,130 £38,723,549

Exports - - -£5,675,869 £32,367,000

Tonnage - - 520,704 3,535,451

Lighthouses, beacons, and lightships 7 373

Cost of their maintenance - 2,600 115,000

Revenue - - - £1,230,000 £9,516,000

National expenditure - £1,637,000 £8,555,000

Post offices 209 21,551

Post roads (miles) - 5,642 178,670

Revenue of Post Office • - £22,800 £1,207,000

Expenses of Post Office - - £15,650 £1,130,000

Mileage of mails - 46,541,423

Canals (miles) - 5,000

Railways (miles) - - - 10,287

Electric telegraph - - 15,000

Public libraries (volumes) - 75,000 2,201,623

School libraries - - 2,000,000

" If they were not founded on the most incontestible statistical data, the results assigned to the above table would appear to belong to fable rather than history. In an interval of little more than half a century, it appears that this extraordinary people have increased above 500 per cent, in numbers; their national revenue has aug- mented nearly 700 per cent., while their public ex- penditure has increased little more than 400 per cent. The prodigious extension of their commerce is indicated by an increase of nearly 500 per cent, in their imports and exports, and 600 per cent, in their shipping. The increased activity of their internal communication is ex- pounded by the number of their post-offices,, which has been increased more than an hundred-fold ; the extent of their post-roads, which have been increased thirty-six- fold; and the cost of their post-office, which has been

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augmented in a seventy-two-fold ratio. The augmentation of their machinery of public instruction is indicated by the extent of their public libraries, which have increased in a thirty-two-fold ratio ; and by the creation of school- libraries, amounting to 2,000,000 volumes. They have completed a system of canal navigation, which, placed in a continuous line, would extend from London to Calcutta ; and a system of railways, which, continuously extended, would stretch from London to Van Diemen's Land ; and have provided locomotive machinery, by which that distance would be travelled over in three weeks, at a cost of I±d. per mile. They have a system ofjnland naviga- tion, the aggregate tonnage of which is probably not inferior in amount to the collective inland tonnage of all the other countries of the world ; and they possess many hundreds of river steamers, which impart to the roads of water the marvellous celerity of roads of iron. They have, in fine, constructed lines of electric telegraph which, laid continuously, would extend over a space longer by 3000 miles than the distance from the north to the south pole, and have provided apparatus of transmission by which a message of 300 words despatched under such circumstances from the north pole, might be delivered in writing at the south pole in one minute ; and by which, consequently, an answer of equal length might be sent back to the north pole in an equal interval.

" These are social and commercial phenomena for which it would be vain to seek a parallel in the past history of the human race."

Wonderful as are the above facts, the wonder might have been still further increased, if it had entered into the design of the writer to have made some mention of the enormous natural advantages possessed by this ex- traordinary people, and which the marvellous instances of progress which he has adduced show that they will not fail to turn to the best account. He might have men-

APPENDIX. 225

tioned their inexhaustible mineral wealth, — the abundance in which they possess the most valuable of the precious, and the most necessary of the useful, metals : that one of their coal-fields extends over a space larger than the surface of Great Britain ; that the natural navigation of their chief river and its tributaries exceeds 26,000 miles ; that the numerous rivers which descend from the high ground of the Alleghany range to the Atlantic sea-board, present a practically illimitable amount of manufacturing power, and that many of these rivers possess good har- bours at their embouchures; that their territory, more than twenty-seven times larger than the area of the United Kingdom, supplies them with almost every pro- duction, both of the tropics and of the temperate zones ; and that the vast continent which they occupy lies mid- way between Europe and Asia, a situation which, while it renders an invasion of their territory almost impossible, will give to them the command of the Atlantic and of the Pacific, and equal facilities for commerce with either ex- tremity of the old world.

If the present rate of the increase of the population of the United States is maintained for the next seventy -five years, persons now alive may see it reach 200,000,000 souls. Add to this a corresponding progress upon those heads of material wealth which were mentioned in the summary just quoted; arid, furthermore, let the reader remember that the power of these 200,000,000 must not be measured by what may be supposed to be the power of an equal number of Europeans, among whom the vast majority would be little better than mere machines; they will all be thoughtful, well informed, independent, and enterprising, and will all speak the same language. The probability, then, is, that any con- jectures which might be formed at present respecting the effect which this extraordinary people are destined to

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produce upon the future history of the human race, would fall short of what that effect really will be.

In the meantime, however, there is one thing which appears to be plain enough, and that is that the only way in which we shall be able to hold our own against them, will be by making our people their equals in intelligence and mental power. We may not have to meet them by land or sea, and yet they may, in the legitimate pur- suit of their own advantage, inflict upon the millions of Lancashire and Yorkshire, and through them upon the whole country, the greatest disasters, if, by their superior arrangements and greater economy of manufacture, they become able to undersell us in the market of the world. Do what we will, we shall have a hard battle to fight, for our adversaries are an offset from our own body, in many respects more favourably circumstanced than ourselves for the development of practical ability and enterprise. Perhaps the only effectual way of preparing for the contest will be by educating the whole people. There can be little of which a population of 30,000,000, in the enjoyment of political and commercial freedom, as well educated as our population may now be, and circum- stanced in other respects as we are in this country, need be apprehensive. In the minds of 30,000,000 of people we possess unimagined resources — a mine of inexhaustible wealth.

In the Pamphlets which I published last year and the year before last, I endeavoured to direct attention to the course of competition with the United States, upon which we are now entering, as supplying a very urgent reason for the immediate extension and improvement of popular education. The 2,000,000 volumes mentioned in the preceding table as belonging to school libraries in America, show that on that side the Atlantic the value of education, as a means of developing the power and re- sources of a nation, is understood.

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V.

A PROPOSAL FOR THE APPROPRIATION OF THE SURPLUS FUNDS OF THE LATE EXHIBITION.

LET no part of the capital be spent in building, or in purchasing a lease of buildings already erected, or in any other way ; but let the whole sum be invested, and the interest, which we may suppose would amount to about 5000/. a year, be applied to the carrying out of the sub- joined plan.

I think that it would be possible in these days to create a kind of imperial, or itinerant, university, which might dispense entirely with the whole cost of buildings, libra- ries, fees, officers, residence &c. &c., and in which the only thing paid for would be just so much of the services of some of the ablest and most eminent men in the country as might be required, their ability and eminence being the only points considered in their selection. It would be necessary for the success of the plan I have in view, that persons of this description should be more highly remunerated for their work than has been usual in this country ; and the income derivable from the surplus would be sufficient to enable the commissioners to do this upon the plan I am about to propose. I use the words imperial, or itinerant, university, merely for the purpose of conveying at once to the reader some general idea of the scheme ; we must remember that much of what was quite impossible only a few years ago is of very easy accomplishment at the present moment.

I would propose, then, that some of the ablest men in the country — such men as Lyell, Grote, Herschell, Owen, Hallam, Faraday, &c. — be requested to prepare each a course of lectures, each course consisting of four or five lectures, and that each lecturer be paid for his course 5GO/.

228 APPENDIX.

For reasons which will be mentioned presently, I would add to this list two or three foreigners of eminence.

The subject assigned to each lecturer would of course be that to which he had especially directed his attention, and upon which subject the public would be more de- sirous of hearing him than any other man.

Each of the lecturers might be requested to deliver his course in some of the chief towns of the country ; to this work it would probably be advisable to request them to devote two months in the spring, and two in the autumn.

In this way every part of the country would receive directly, from the highest sources, views in every depart- ment of knowledge and science, upon a level with all that is known. This is a far grander idea than that in- volved in our present university system, and its realisa- tion would lead to far grander results.

If it were necessary to repeat any of these lectures a second year, for the benefit of towns which could not be visited during the first year, each lecturer might be paid for the repetition of his lectures, 400/. But in no case ought more than two months in spring and two in autumn to be devoted to this, in order that the public might know when to expect the lectures, and that they might not tire of them from their being too long continued ; this arrangement would also allow the lecturers, even in those years when they were employed, far the greater part of the year for their ordinary pursuits. A man of science or learning might occasionally, or even frequently, give up two months in spring and two in autumn, with- out considering it any very serious interruption of what he had chalked out as the plan of his life. It would be wrong to countenance the idea of permanent employment, or of an eventual pension ; the rule ought to be high pay for all the work done, and nothing further.

APPENDIX. 229

Whenever a new course of lectures was required, 500/. ought to be paid for it ; whenever a repetition of an old course, 4007.

Any institution in a town desirous of obtaining the delivery of the series of lectures, — if the town were of sufficient importance to justify its making such a request, — would put itself in communication with the commis- sion. This might be done by literary and scientific in- stitutions, mechanics' institutes, provincial museums, or even by the corporations 'of boroughs in some instances, or by committees of the chief inhabitants. Some body of this kind, it would be immaterial which of them, in some places one, in others another, of them, might make the necessary arrangements for the reception of the lecturers, &c.

To be connected with such a great institution, capable of supplying them with the most able and eminent men as lecturers, would give new life and great importance to provincial literary and scientific institutions, mechanics' institutes, and museums ; it would make them very ef- fective instruments for popular education.

One shilling should be paid for admission to each course of lectures. General experience, as well as that of the Exhibition itself, shows that while this would offer hardly any hindrance to attendance, it would produce the greatest result in money.

This might be expected to raise a large sum, out of which all the travelling expenses of the lecturers might be paid. If any surplus remained from this source, it might be employed in increasing the number of lecturers.

The commission would have a secretary in London, who ought to be a very able man, and who would devote himself entirely to the work. It might be difficult to find a man fitted for so important an appointment : he ought to be a man of encyclopaedic mind ; one in whose

230 APPENDIX.

mind science and knowledge had a connected and subjec- tive aspect. He ought not to be a special student, but one who had turned his thoughts to the ensemble of knowledge, and to the contemplation of the various in- fluences which make man what he is at the present day, and which modified his tastes, his character, and his manners, at other periods. Among special investigators, a secretary who was himself only a special investigator would do almost as much harm as one who was merely superficial and plausible.

With the secretary a copy of each course of lectures would be deposited, and it would be part of his duty to edit a journal, containing, each month, two or three of these lectures. The price of this journal would be one shilling, and its sale would probably be enormous. The names of the lecturers, their connection with the Exhibi- tion, and with the great institution which rose out of it, and the fact that the lectures were brought before every- body's notice by their itinerant character, would render the journal everywhere known. Many would take it in, that they might know what was the point which the lead- ing thinkers of the age had reached in their respective departments.

As a compliment to foreign nations, and for the pur- pose of maintaining the original character of the Exhibi- tion, copies of this journal would be presented to the leading literary and scientific institutions of all foreign countries.

It would also be in keeping with the character of the Exhibition, and contribute much to the success of the plan, if, as I have already said, foreigners of well-known eminence were requested to deliver courses of lectures. In each case of this kind the 500/. would be paid. In order to secure the entire independence of the commis- sion, this rule would in no case be departed from. It

APPENDIX. 231

would also be necessary that all lecturers, both English and foreign, and the ablest as well as those who had not quite so much ability, should be paid the same sum.

The journal would be invaluable, if for nothing else, yet, merely as a complete record of the progress of thought and knowledge.

Its educational importance, however, would be very great, for it would carry to every fireside, and place in every body's hands, the knowledge and ideas which the lecturers had laid before those who in the chief towns had been able to attend the delivery of the lectures. It would make the educational effect of the lectures as widely felt as that of the Exhibition itself.

The duties of the Secretary would be so arduous, and would require so much ability for their proper discharge, that he ought to be remunerated very highly. This ought to be done both as a proper recompense for his services, and as a guarantee to the public, that he was a man of ability. He ought not to have less than 1000Z. a year.

For the above purposes, I would propose that the Koyal Commission be made permanent, and that for the future it be recruited exclusively from those who have delivered lectures. This ought to be a fundamental rule, under no circumstances, and in no case, to be departed from. As the number of eligible persons increased committees for special purposes might be formed to advise and assist the commission. This would be drawing together and con- centrating upon the single point of the advancement of knowledge and society, the strength of all the great thinkers of the country.

I should not despair of seeing such a body of men, if able to bring their influence to bear in the manner I have pointed out, gaining in the public mind such a position for intellectual pursuits, and questions of social ameliora-

232 APPENDIX.

tion, as would in a very great and perceptible degree detract from the importance which polemical and political considerations would otherwise acquire : they would pre- occupy much of the ground. There would be an adequate power in such a body of men, if able to bring their thoughts and influence to bear upon the whole popula- tion, to produce such an effect. I think that in this country political feeling does not reach the height it otherwise would do, because the minds of so large a pro- portion of the people, particularly of the middle and lower classes, are pre-occupied with religious discussions, and religious questions : this, though destructive of Christian feeling and prejudicial to the cause of religion itself, has, notwithstanding, this good incidental effect. Just in the same way would the ideas and tastes, which such a body of men coming in contact with the whole people would implant in the public mind, constitute an element of thought and feeling and of intellectual life, which would grow at the expense of what now goes to constitute the polemical and political elements of strife. A turn would be given to many of the most active minds; their atten- tion would be directed to, and they would become inter- ested about, the progress of thought and discovery. At all events, in the present state of society, it is well worth our while to try if something of this kind can be done ; and there are reasons for thinking that in this country it may be done, if set about in the right way, and if sufficient power be brought to bear.

Nothing would give the public so much confidence in an institution of the kind I am proposing, as their feeling certain that no one was admitted to the governing body excepting those who had first proved their qualification by lecturing before the country. The public would thus feel assured that the Institution was as worthy of the position to which it aspired — that of leading the mind of

APPENDIX. 233

the country upon certain subjects — as it was possible to make it. Its utility and success would depend upon its being above suspicion in these respects. The rule of ad- mission, by which it would perpetuate itself ought to be an iron rule, that could neither be bent, pr broken. It would be a great thing to make it the first institution the world has yet seen, from which interest, jobbery, and mistakes were all alike equally, and necessarily, excluded.

If this rule were one without exceptions, then the being requested to deliver a course of lectures might be regarded as a more valuable distinction than the decoration of an order of merit.

Of course the difficulty at first would be to find men to commence with, of sufficient eminence and ability. I have already mentioned the names of Lyell, Grote, Owen, Faraday, Hallam, Herschel: to these might be added two or three good foreign names, and perhaps a Scotch and an Irish name.

If the whole course were delivered in each town, then the inferiority of a part of the number would not be of so much consequence, because the impression left would be the result of the aggregate of the whole course.

The fact, also, that the whole course was delivered before each audience would have another good effect : it appears to be a common fault with scientific men, and with the students of any particular branch of knowledge, that they become too special, abstract, and objective. They have a tendency to look at but one object, and not even to consider that one in its bearings, connections, and uses ; the astronomer becomes merely an investigator of the phenomena of the heavens; and the historian merely a collector of the facts and events of the past. But if the whole course were delivered before each audience, those audiences would naturally pass on to take connected and subjective views of knowledge. This is

234 APPENDIX.

an advantage which does not in any degree belong to our present system of education ; it would, however, be the spontaneous result of having the various branches of science and knowledge submitted to our consideration almost in a synoptical manner.

Supposing that at starting we were unable to secure the services of the men who stand the highest in their respective departments, still the hope of securing such high remuneration for each engagement, together with the distinction which would attend being requested to lecture, would, we may be sure, soon create a body of eminent men worthy of such an institution. This is an additional reason for beginning with the apparently high payment of 500/. for each course of lectures, consisting of not more than four or five. It would be the surest and quickest means of creating whatever might be wanted, as well as of getting many of the ablest men to put forth their full force at once.

The effect of such an institution upon our whole edu- cational system would be great and immediate. Our teachers would be the ablest men, and they would address the whole country. There would be the highest instruc- tion within the reach of every one who was desirous of profiting by it.

The fund, the best appropriation of which we are dis- cussing, was contributed by all parts of the country, and by all classes ; such an institution would be a channel by which the debt might be repaid with interest to all classes, and to all parts of the country alike.

It could hardly fail to be well received, because it would be in harmony with the spirit, and on a level with the knowledge, of the age. It would be popular, because it would be, as it were, the creation of the people, and because it addressed itself to the people.

It would make the Exhibition in reality the inaugura-

APPENDIX. 235

tion of a new era in education : the circumstances of the times, but more particularly the late Exhibition itself, have prepared the ground for it ; the funds, the ma- chinery, and the public, are ready for it. Five thousand a year, derived from any other source, and in other hands, though the attempt might be made to apply it in the same manner, could not be made to produce the effect I am contemplating. The eminent persons who formed the conception, and worked out the idea, of the Exhibi- tion, might not, perhaps, be indisposed to countenance and support a kindred plan of this kind.

Of course the main difficulty would lie in obtaining the services of the best men ; perhaps, however, there are men of eminence who might think that nothing would so much contribute to the increase of their reputation as their taking an active part in a work which, in all pro- bability, would have such extensive and such beneficial effects. The Astronomer Royal has given a course of five lectures to the members of the Ipswich Museum ; Mr. Edward Forbes, the professor of geology at Cambridge, and Sir Charles Lyell, have also given them lectures ; the professor of botany at Cambridge is the president of the institution, and devotes to it a great portion of his time. These facts show that the missionary spirit is strongly felt among our men of science.

But even supposing that we were not able to get the most eminent men at starting, we should still, with such a plan of operations, get an adequate educational return for the very small sum spent, only 5000/. a year — no more than the salary which many in Church or State are now receiving. At all events we should, by offering 500/. for each course of four or five lectures, soon create a body of lecturers who would be well worth all the money spent. The journal also alone, as an exact record of the progress of thought and knowledge, would almost be a sufficient return for so small an expenditure.

236 APPENDIX.

The above scheme would be entirely in harmony with the character of the Exhibition ; it would be as compre- hensive as the Exhibition itself. It would have all the simplicity of Paxton's conception of the Crystal Palace, admitting of any degree of enlargement, as funds might flow in from some future Exhibition, or from any other source. It would be of general utility, and would com- mand general sympathy and support. It would include foreign nations, in perhaps the only practicable way in which they can be included, in any plan having England for the theatre of its execution ; for they would receive copies of the journal, be invited to join in the work by the delivery of lectures, and by this means become eligible to a place in the deliberations of the commission, It would, in as great a degree as the Exhibition did, address itself to all classes and professions, to the young as well as to those who are older, to both sexes, to all parts of the country, to every home, and to foreign coun- tries. It would not be a falling off from the original idea of the Exhibition, though that idea was realised so magnificently, but rather a still higher and nobler deve- lopment of it.

If, after a fair trial, reasons should appear for aban- doning the plan, the whole of the surplus fund would still be available for any purpose that might then be thought desirable. Not one shilling of it would have been spent.

THE END.

LONDON :

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