And, all the while, some kindly expectant people are [[30]]waiting for ‘details of my plan.’ In the presentment of which, this main difficulty still lets me; that, if I told them, or tried to help them definitely to conceive, the ultimate things I aim at, they would at once throw the book down as hopelessly Utopian; but if I tell them the immediate things I aim at, they will refuse to do those instantly possible things, because inconsistent with the present vile general system. For instance—I take (see [Letter V].) Wordsworth’s single line,
“We live by admiration, hope, and love,”
for my literal guide, in all education. My final object, with every child born on St. George’s estates, will be to teach it what to admire, what to hope for, and what to love: but how far do you suppose the steps necessary to such an ultimate aim are immediately consistent with what Messrs. Huxley and Co. call ‘Secular education’? Or with what either the Bishop of Oxford, or Mr. Spurgeon, would call ‘Religious education’?
What to admire, or wonder at! Do you expect a child to wonder at—being taught that two and two make four—(though if only its masters had the sense to teach that, honestly, it would be something)—or at the number of copies of nasty novels and false news a steam-engine can print for its reading?
What to hope? Yes, my secular friends—What? That it shall be the richest shopman in the street; and be buried with black feathers enough over its coffin? [[31]]
What to love—Yes, my ecclesiastical friends, and who is its neighbour, think you? Will you meet these three demands of mine with your three Rs, or your catechism?
And how would I meet them myself? Simply by never, so far as I could help it, letting a child read what is not worth reading, or see what is not worth seeing; and by making it live a life which, whether it will or no, shall enforce honourable hope of continuing long in the land—whether of men or God.
And who is to say what is worth reading, or worth seeing? sneer the Republican mob. Yes, gentlemen, you who never knew a good thing from a bad, in all your lives, may well ask that!
Let us try, however, in such a simple thing as a child’s book. Yesterday, in the course of my walk, I went into a shepherd-farmer’s cottage, to wish whoever might be in the house a happy new year. His wife was at home, of course; and his little daughter, Agnes, nine years old; both as good as gold, in their way.
The cottage is nearly a model of those which I shall expect the tenants of St. George’s Company, and its active members, to live in;—the entire building, parlour, and kitchen, (in this case one, but not necessarily so,) bedrooms and all, about the size of an average dining-room in Grosvenor Place or Park Lane. The conversation naturally turning to Christmas doings and havings,—and I, as an author, of course inquiring whether Agnes had [[32]]any new books, Agnes brought me her library—consisting chiefly in a good pound’s weight of the literature which cheap printing enables the pious to make Christmas presents of for a penny. A full pound, or it might be, a pound and a half, of this instruction, full of beautiful sentiments, woodcuts, and music. More woodcuts in the first two ounces of it I took up, than I ever had. to study in the first twelve years of my life. Splendid woodcuts, too, in the best Kensington style, and rigidly on the principles of high, and commercially remunerative, art, taught by Messrs. Redgrave, Cole, and Company.