It is impossible to leave so great a subject as history without saying a word on the manner of teaching it (for in this a manner is needed rather than a method), when it is emancipated from the fetters of prescribed periods and programmes which attach it entirely to text-books. Text-books are not useless but they are very hard to find, and many Catholic text-books, much to be desired, are still unwritten, especially in England. America has made more effort in this direction than we. But the strength of historical teaching for children and girls at school lies in oral lessons, and of these it would seem that the most effective form is not the conversational lesson which is so valuable in other subjects, nor the formal lesson with "steps," but the form of a story for little ones; for older children the narrative leading up to a point of view, with conversational intervals, and encouragement for thoughtful questions, especially at the end of the lesson; and in the last years an informal kind of lecture, a transition from school-room methods to the style of formal lectures which maybe attended later.
Lessons in history are often spoiled by futile questions put in as it were for conscience' sake, to satisfy the obligation of questioning, or to rouse the flagging attention of a child, but this is too great a sacrifice. It is artistically a fault to jar the whole movement of a good narrative for the sake of running after one truant mind. It is also artistically wrong and jarring to go abruptly from the climax of a story, or narrative, or lecture which has stirred some deep thought or emotion, and call with a sudden change of tone for recapitulation, or summary, or discussion. Silence is best; the greater lessons of history ought to transcend the limits of mere lessons, they are part of life, and they tell more upon the mind if they are dissociated from the harness and trappings of school work. Written papers for younger students and essays for seniors are the best means of calling for their results, and of guiding the line of reading by which all oral teaching of history and study of text-books must be supplemented.
When school-room education is finished what we may look for is that girls should be ready and inclined to take up some further study of history, by private reading or following lectures with intelligence, and that they should be able to express themselves clearly in writing, either in the form of notes, papers, or essays, so as to give an account of their work and their opinions to those who may direct these later studies. We may hope that what they have learned of European history will enable them to travel with understanding and appreciation, that places with a history will mean something to them, and that the great impression of a living past may set a deep mark upon them with its discipline of proportion that makes them personally so small and yet so great, small in proportion to all that has been, great in their inheritance from the whole past and in expectation of all that is yet to be.
CHAPTER XI.
ART.
"Give honour unto Luke Evangelist:
For he it was (the aged legends say)
Who first taught Art to fold her hands and pray.
Scarcely at once she dared to rend the mist
Of devious symbols: but soon having wist
How sky-breadth and field-silence and this day
Are symbols also in some deeper way,
She looked through these to God, and was God's priest.
"And if, past noon, her toil began to irk,
And she sought talismans, and turned in vain
To soulless self-reflections of man's skill,
Yet now, in this the twilight, she might still
Kneel in the latter grass to pray again,
Ere the night cometh and she may not work."
DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI.
When we consider how much of the direction of life depends upon the quality of our taste, upon right discernment in what we like and dislike, it is evident that few things can be more important in education than to direct this directing force, and both to learn and teach the taste for what is best as far as possible in all things. For in the matter of taste nothing is unimportant. Taste influences us in every department of life, as our tastes are, so are we. The whole quality of our inner and outer life takes its tone from the things in which we find pleasure, from our standard of taste. If we are severe in our requirements, hard to please, and at least honest with ourselves, it will mean that a spur of continual dissatisfaction pricks us, in all we do, into habitual striving for an excellence which remains beyond our reach. But on the other hand we shall have to guard against that peevish fastidiousness which narrows itself down until it can see nothing but defects and faults, and loses the power of humbly and genuinely admiring. This passive dissatisfaction which attempts nothing of its own, and only finds fault with what is done by others, grows very fast if it is allowed to take hold, and produces a mental habit of merely destructive criticism or perpetual scolding. Safe in attempting nothing itself, unassailable and self-righteous as a Pharisee, this spirit can only pull down but not build up again. In children it is often the outcome of a little jealousy and want of personal courage; they can be helped to overcome it, but if it is allowed to grow up, dissatisfaction allied to pusillanimity are very difficult to correct.
On the other hand, if we are amiably and cheerfully inclined to admire things in general in a popular way, easily pleased and not exacting, we shall both receive and give a great deal of pleasure, but it will be all in a second and third and fourth-rate order of delight, and although this comfortable turn of mind is saved from much that is painful and jarring, it is not exempt from the danger of itself jarring continually upon the feelings of others, of pandering to the downward tendency in what is popular, and, in education, of debasing the standard of taste and discrimination for children. To be swayed by popularity in matters of taste is to accept mediocrity wholesale. We have left too far behind the ages when the taste of the people could give sound and true judgment in matters of art; we have left them at a distance which can be measured by what lies between the greatest Greek tragedies and contemporary popular plays. Consternation is frequently expressed at seeing how theatres of every grade are crowded with children of all classes in life, so it is from these popular plays that they must be learning the first lessons of dramatic criticism.
There are only rare instances of taste which is instinctively true, and the process of educational pressure tends to level down original thought in children, as the excess of magazine and newspaper reading works in the same direction for older minds, so that true, independent taste becomes more rare; the result does not seem favourable to the development of the best discernment in those who ought to sway the taste of their generation. If taste in art is entirely guided by that of others, and especially by fashion, it cannot attain to the possession of an independent point of view; yet this in a modest degree every one with some training might aspire to. But under the sway of fashion taste is cowed; it becomes conventional, and falls under the dominion of the current price of works of art. On the other hand it is more unfortunate to be self-taught in matters of taste than in any other order of things. In this point taste ranks with manners, which are, after all, a department of the same region of right feeling and discernment. If taste is untaught and spontaneous, it is generally unreliable and without consistency. If self-taught it can hardly help becoming dogmatic and oracular, as some highly gifted minds have become, making themselves the supreme court of appeal for their own day.