Various - Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 63, No. 391, May, 1848

"Only three weeks to the holidays, and then no more school, Sisty – no more school! I shall have your room all done freshly, and made so pretty; they are coming about it to-morrow.

"The duck is quite well, and I really don't think it is quite as lame as it was.

"God bless you, dear, dear child! – Your affectionate happy mother,

The interval between these letters and the morning on which I was to return home, seemed to me like one of those long, restless, yet half dreamy days which in some infant malady I had passed in a sick-bed. I went through my task-work mechanically, composed a Greek ode in farewell to the Philhellenic, which Dr Herman pronounced a chef-d'œuvre , and my father, to whom I sent it in triumph, returned a letter of false English with it, that parodied all my Hellenic barbarisms by imitating them in my mother tongue. However, I swallowed the leek, and consoled myself with the pleasing recollection that, after spending six years in learning to write bad Greek, I should never have any further occasion to avail myself of so precious an accomplishment.

And so came the last day. Then, alone, and in a kind of delighted melancholy, I revisited each of the old haunts. The robbers' cave we had dug one winter, and maintained, six of us, against all the police of the little kingdom. The place near the pales where I had fought my first battle. The old beech stump on which I sate to read letters from home!

With my knife, rich in six blades, (besides a cork-screw, a pen-picker, and a button-hook,) I carved my name in large capitals over my desk. Then night came, and the bell rang, and we went to our rooms. And I opened the window and looked out. I saw all the stars, and wondered which was mine – which should light to fame and fortune the manhood about to commence. Hope and Ambition were high within me; – and yet, behind them, stood Melancholy. Ah! who amongst you, readers, can now summon back all those thoughts, sweet and sad – all that untold, half-conscious regret for the past – all those vague longings for the future, which made a poet of the dullest amongst you on the last night before leaving boyhood and school for ever!

2 2 Reports of the Commissioners of Inquiry into the State of Education in Wales, appointed by the Committee of Council on Education. Parts I. II. III. 1847. That it is the duty of a wise and foreseeing government to inquire into the condition of whatever affects the well-being of the people, is almost a political truism, and may certainly be received as a political axiom. More especially, however, when the subject is one of such vital importance as education, does such an inquiry become necessary: and, in truth, the leaders of the state cannot be considered as doing their duty, unless they make themselves acquainted with the practical bearings and results of the system, whatever it may be, that exists. Not that the government of this country, until very recent periods at least, ever troubled themselves with such matters: the more direct political business of the state, the clash of parties, and the struggle for power, absorbed their whole attention; and education was left, as a matter of private and local concern, to the clergy and the gentry exclusively. The voluntary system, superinduced upon the country by the indolence or neglect of those who held the reins of authority, was allowed to remain in unaided operation as far as education was concerned; and until the establishing of National Schools, as they are commonly termed, and for some time after that event, the governments that followed each other in the dingy recesses of Downing Street cared no more for village schoolmasters, and knew no more about them, than they did about village blacksmiths. It was enough if the people went on tolerably well, and paid their taxes; whether they learned any thing at school, or whether they had schools in which any thing might be learned, was, at head-quarters, a matter of no moment. Most of the upper classes of the nation were of the same feeling – the middle classes, too, folded their arms and looked on. 3 3 This, it will be understood, does not apply to Scotland, – where education has been a very popular interest for nearly two centuries back. Had it not been for the force of events, and the efforts of a few energetic men, education had been shelved, as a musty useless topic, for an indefinite period.

Now, however, in this forty-eighth year of the nineteenth century, it is viewed in a far different light. The middle classes have begun to take up the matter as they had never done before, – "purging and unsealing their long abused sight" to the manifold advantages involved in it for themselves; while the upper classes look more to how it fares in this respect with the very poor or the profligate. And so much pressed on this subject, from many quarters, is the government, that neither Lord John Russell, as long as he remains on the Treasury Bench, nor any body else, who may get there, can ever hope to avoid doing something for the education of the people.

There has been a growing sense of the importance of this subject on the part of the nation at large, which has acted on the nervous sensibilities of all occupants of office in later years; and the very force of events themselves, apart from all theoretic reasoning as to expediency or the contrary, has compelled each successive government to look after the schoolmaster, and even to send him abroad in the world, though at the risk of making him the laughing-stock of his scholars for want of due preparation.

We do not purpose to write the history of the educational movement of this realm since the middle of the eighteenth century – volumes might be compiled on the topic, and it would still remain unexhausted.

There are, however, two things which we would point out to the attention of our readers. The first is, that the constituted authorities of this country and the legislature, ever since the time of the Reformation, have acted too much upon the principle that the ecclesiastical establishments of the nation, aided by the Foundation schools of the land, not only were sufficient to attend to the moral and religious welfare of the community, but that they actually did effect this end, and that they did bring up the people in the right way; whereas we now know, that not only has the constitution of the ecclesiastical revenues and administration been lamentably unequal and ineffective, but that provisions for teaching, upon a general and effective plan, could hardly be said to exist. At all events, when the population began to increase rapidly – when the great movement of the Methodists took place in England – and later, when religious dissent not only reared its hydra head, but became encouraged in high places – the nation seemed all at once to start from its lethargy, and to inquire into what means it possessed for enlightening and civilising the humblest classes of its children; and, when it did so inquire, those means were found wanting.

Again, in these our own days, when crime is shown to be increasing in a much faster ratio than either the enormous wealth or the already great population of the country; and when legal inquirers have traced back adult crime to puerile and even infantine neglect and ignorance; when the brutality of the people shows itself at every man's door and homestead, in the burning of farming-stock or the destruction of machinery and dwelling-houses, and makes itself to be paid for in the form of constantly increasing poor-rates, – in times such as these, it behoves every man, who has any thing to dread from the insurrectionary rising of the lower classes, to look sharply around him, and to see how best the sources of the evil torrent may be dried up; where the strongest dam may be thrown across its impetuous course, and into what side-channels its blind strength may be diverted. It behoves every thoughtful lover of his country to consider well how the innate national energies of his fellow countrymen may be improved, humanised, and directed to proper objects; and how the mass of the people, instead of being dreaded as a mob of hungry, savage levellers, may come to be looked on as the broad basis and support of the whole national edifice. And this is to be effected by attending, not merely to the physical and material well-being of the people, but by giving well directed and unceasing diligence to the promotion of "true religion and sound knowledge" among them. We maintain that hitherto, and even at the present time, the public constituted means for attaining this important end have been, and are, altogether insufficient; and we further maintain, that the necessity of making some adequate provision is increasing every day, and cannot long be postponed without imminent danger to the community.