Education, and Literature.—The government expresses the most laudable anxiety to forward education, by patronizing schools upon the Lancasterian system; and the numerous seminaries in this city are a credit to the people.
The College School consists of 125 youths, from the age of 15 to 16 or 17 years of age. In their walks, they wear black clothes, with a light blue ribbon over their coat. Their behaviour is better than that of the boys at our public schools: a person may mix amongst them, without being subject to those insolent remarks so common at home, and which makes a stranger dread to enter their precincts.
At the Buenos Ayres College, pupils are taught every branch of the classics. They have not the advantage of professors, as at Oxford, Cambridge, Eton, Westminster, and the rest of our public schools—professors, whose talents not only confer honour upon their country, but on the human species generally. Some students have elicited considerable talents. A younger branch of the Belgrano family, Manuel, wrote a play founded on The Virgin of the Sun, which was performed with success; he has likewise acquired a knowledge of the English language, and is at present employed in the British Consul’s office.
In the Merced Church, an academy is held for the instruction of 30 youths in the study of divinity.
Among the numerous seminaries here, is one kept by an English lady, Mrs. Hyne, which receives great encouragement; she has had 70 scholars at a time, who are taught, with other requisites, the English language. From the anxiety expressed by parents, that their children should attain this language, the next generation will become completely anglicised. In placing them under the care of a Protestant lady, they are not so narrow-minded as to fear that their religion will be tampered with. One of the stripling scholars conversed with me the other day in good English, which he had learned in a very short period.
A number of Buenos Ayrean gentlemen speak and write the English language with much fluency and correctness. Don Manuel Sarratea, late a governor of the province, and who resided some time in London as their minister, is a proficient, and a man of talent. To the British he is very attentive, and is much respected by them. Don Miguel Riglos is another instance: this gentleman has made the tour of Great Britain, and speaks English with so little of foreign accent, that, on my introduction to him, I supposed him to be an Englishman: his manners are very prepossessing and amiable. Some self-taught young men have also an excellent idea of it, and others express a great desire to learn it. It has now become a branch of education in their public schools; and, from the continued intercourse they are likely to have with the British and North Americans, and others who speak the English tongue, the utility of learning it will become every day more apparent, and, as regards business, it will be of greater importance than the French.
The prejudices of ages is fast wearing away: the South-Americans, and, Spain herself, no longer view us as renegades, heretics, “God-abandoned.” Twenty years back, England and Englishmen were as little known or understood by the Buenos Ayreans, as is the interior of the Chinese empire now to the rest of the world. For centuries past, care was taken to inflame the passions of the Spaniards against us and our country; and it is not strange that a remnant of this animosity yet remains. Their best poets have stigmatised us: I recollect hearing, in Buenos Ayres, that part of Lope de Vegas’ popular ballad—
“My brother Don John to England’s gone,
To kill the Drake, the Queen to take,
And the heretics all to destroy;
And he shall bring you a Protestant maid
To be your slave, &c.”