For, first, observe, the father should have paid nothing for that boy’s farming education. As soon as he could hold a hoe, the little fellow should have been set to do all he could for his living, under a good farmer for master; and as he became able to do more, taught more, until he knew all that his master knew,—winning, all the while he was receiving that natural education, his bread by the sweat of his brow.
‘But there are no farmers who teach—none who take care of their boys, or men.’
Miserables again, whose fault is that? The landlords choose to make the farmers middlemen between the peasants and themselves—grinders, not of corn, but of [[12]]flesh,—for their rent. And of course you dare not put your children under them to be taught.
Read Gotthelf’s ‘Ulric the Farm Servant’ on this matter. It is one of his great novels,—great as Walter Scott’s, in the truth and vitality of it, only inferior in power of design. I would translate it all in Fors, if I had time; and indeed hope to make it soon one of my school series, of which, and other promised matters, or delayed ones, I must now take some order, and give some account, in this opening letter of the year, as far as I can, only, before leaving the young farmer among the Blacks, please observe that he goes there because you have all made Artificial Blacks of yourselves, and unmelodious Christys,—nothing but the whites of your eyes showing through the unclean skins of you, here, in Merry England, where there was once green ground to farm instead of ashes.
And first,—here’s the woodcut, long promised, of a rose-leaf cut by the leaf-cutting bee, true in size and shape; a sound contribution to Natural History, so far as it reaches. Much I had to say of it, but am not in humour to-day. Happily, the letter from a valued Companion, Art. III. in Notes, may well take place of any talk of mine.[7]
Secondly, I promised a first lesson in writing, of which, [[13]]therefore, (that we may see what is our present knowledge on the subject, and what farther we may safely ask Theuth[8] to teach,) I have had engraved two examples, one of writing in the most authoritative manner, used for modern service, and the other of writing by a practised scribe of the fourteenth century. To make the comparison fair, we must take the religious, and therefore most careful, scripture of both dates; so, for example of modern sacred scripture, I take the casting up of a column in my banker’s book; and for the ancient, a letter A, with a few following words, out of a Greek Psalter, which [[14]]is of admirable and characteristic, but not (by any honest copyist,) inimitable execution.
Here then, first, is modern writing; in facsimile of which I have thought it worth while to employ Mr. Burgess’s utmost skill; for it seems to me a fact of profound significance that all the expedients we have invented for saving time, by steam and machinery, (not to speak of the art of printing,) leave us yet so hurried, and flurried, that we cannot produce any lovelier calligraphy than this, even to certify the gratifying existence of a balance of eleven hundred and forty-two pounds, thirteen shillings, and twopence, while the old writer, though required, eventually, to produce the utmost possible number of entire psalters with his own hand, yet has time for the execution of every initial letter of them in the manner here exhibited.
Respecting which, you are to observe that this is pure writing; not painting or drawing, but the expression of form by lines such as a pen can easily produce, (or a brush used with the point, in the manner of a pen;) and with a certain habitual currency and fluent [[15]]habit of finger, yet not dashing or flourishing, but with perfect command of direction in advance, and moment of pause, at any point.