Of such science, art, and literature as are properly connected with husbandry, (see Note a, p. 210 of this volume,) St. George primarily acknowledges the art which provides him with a ploughshare,—and if need still be for those more savage instruments,—with spear, sword, and armour.
Therefore, it is fitting that of his schools “for the workmen and labourers of England,” the first should be placed in Sheffield: (I suppose, originally Sheaf-field; [[311]]but do not at all rest on that etymology, having had no time to inquire into it.)
Besides this merely systematic and poetical fitness, there is the farther practical reason for our first action being among this order of craftsmen in England; that, in cutler’s ironwork, we have, at this actual epoch of our history, the best in its kind done by English hands, unsurpassable, I presume, when the workman chooses to do all he knows, by that of any living nation.
For these two principal reasons, (and not without further direction from Fors of a very distinct nature,) I expressed, some time since, my purpose to place the first museum of the St. George’s Company at Sheffield.
Whereupon, I received a letter, very well and kindly meant, from Mr. Bragge, offering me space in the existing Sheffield museum for whatever I chose to put there: Mr. Bragge very naturally supposing that this would be the simplest mode of operation for me; and the most immediately advantageous to the town. To that (as I supposed private) communication I replied, in what I meant to be a private letter; which letter Mr. Bragge, without asking my permission, read at a public dinner, with public comment on what he imagined to be the state of my health.
Now, I never wrote a letter in my life which all the world are not welcome to read, if they will: and as Fors would have it so, I am glad this letter was read [[312]]aloud, and widely circulated: only, I beg Mr. Bragge and the other gentlemen who have kindly interested themselves in the existing Sheffield museum to understand that, had I intended the letter for publicity, it would have been couched in more courteous terms, and extended into clearer explanation of my singular and apparently perverse conduct in what I observe the Sheffield press, since it has had possession of the letter in question, characterizes as “setting up an opposition museum at Walkley.”
I am glad to find the Sheffield branch of English journalism reprobating, in one instance at least, the—I had imagined now by all acclamation, divine—principle of Competition. But surely, the very retirement to the solitude of Walkley of which the same journalist complains, might have vindicated St. George’s first quiet effort in his own work, from this unexpected accusation,—especially since, in so far as I can assert or understand the objects of either of the supposedly antagonist showmen, neither Mr. Bragge nor St. George intend taking shillings at the doors.
Nevertheless, the impression on the mind of the Sheffield journalist that museums are to be opened as lively places of entertainment, rivals for public patronage, and that their most proper position is therefore in a public thoroughfare, deserves on St. George’s part some careful answer. A museum is, be it first observed, primarily, not at all a place of entertainment, but a [[313]]place of Education. And a museum is, be it secondly observed, not a place for elementary education, but for that of already far-advanced scholars. And it is by no means the same thing as a parish school, or a Sunday school, or a day school, or even—the Brighton Aquarium.
Be it observed, in the third place, that the word ‘School’ means ‘Leisure,’ and that the word ‘Museum’ means ‘Belonging to the Muses;’ and that all schools and museums whatsoever, can only be, what they claim to be, and ought to be, places of noble instruction, when the persons who have a mind to use them can obtain so much relief from the work, or exert so much abstinence from the dissipation, of the outside world, as may enable them to devote a certain portion of secluded laborious and reverent life to the attainment of the Divine Wisdom, which the Greeks supposed to be the gift of Apollo, or of the Sun; and which the Christian knows to be the gift of Christ. Now, I hear it continually alleged against me, when I advocate the raising of working men’s wages, that already many of them have wages so high that they work only three days a week, and spend the other three days in drinking. And I have not the least doubt that under St. George’s rule, when none but useful work is done, and when all classes are compelled to share in it, wages may indeed be so high, or, which amounts to the same thing as far as our present object is concerned, time so short, that at least two, if not three days out of every week, (or an [[314]]equivalent portion of time taken out of each day,) may be devoted by some British workmen—no more to the alehouse, but to, what British clergymen ought to mean, if they don’t, by the ‘concerns of their immortal souls,’ that is to say, to the contemplation and study of the works of God, and the learning that complete code of natural history which, beginning with the life and death of the Hyssop on the wall, rises to the knowledge of the life and death of the recorded generations of mankind, and of the visible starry Dynasties of Heaven.
The workmen who have leisure to enter on this course of study will also, I believe, have leisure to walk to Walkley. The museum has been set there, not by me, but by the second Fors, (Lachesis,) on the top of a high and steep hill,—with only my most admiring concurrence in her apparent intention that the approach to it may be at once symbolically instructive, and practically sanitary. [[315]]