But otherwise, the evil is still flagrant; for academical honours lie in so narrow a circle, that a small number only can have a hope of reward; and with the most impartial choice equal merit at least must be unjustly rejected. Such honours are taken from a general stock. It is fencing in part of a common; employing the manure upon one spot, which should fertilise the whole field; or it is worse; for, in the exact proportion that the professor rises into distinction, the common teacher is degraded. The one advances, while the other is made to retrograde by the same impetus. Thus in all modern nations the least important individual of a community is the schoolmaster.
Either his talents are not called out by any high motives to exertion; or if his ambition should attempt a rivalry with the institution, having its diplomas, titular distinctions, public honours and endowments, and so many things independent of professional ability to sustain it, what chance has he of success?—That only of the individual who trades against a chartered company: he must expect to be driven from the market. On the other hand the college professor, being without a rival, becomes lazy and inert. Voltaire says, that not one of the French professors, except Rollin, had ever written any thing worthy of remembrance, whilst in Greece, by far the greatest of their distinguished writers had been either public or private instructors.
Another signal mischief of these schools is, the multiplying professional aspirants beyond the necessities of the state, and filling the professions with persons not competent by nature for such pursuits. The ascent to literary and professional honours is exceedingly rugged in all countries, and always crowded to excess with adventurers. The brilliant honours which have attended the fortunes of a few persons here, continually lure others from their useful employments, to try their luck in the great lottery. All are tempted, by a single success, to expect the prize; and the blanks pass for nothing. As soon as any trader or mechanic has grown comfortable by his industry, instead of raising his sons to his own useful employment, he resolves that one, at least, shall be a gentleman, and therefore sends, generally, the most lazy and stupid to college.
The common event is, that the young gentleman having acquired, from his college associations, ambitious desires, and habits altogether adverse to ordinary industry, and finding the avenues to success shut against his little diligence or abilities, is driven to dishonourable expedients for a living; he turns gambler or drunkard: or, at least, if he does not make gunpowder to kill the “King of the French,”[2] he resorts to law, or gospel, or medicine, and gleans the stubble for a miserable subsistence during a long life, (for poor devils won’t die,) or he turns common hack upon the high way of letters, and peddles and hucksters all day, for his meagre provender at night. If you think this a caricature, come and live in the “Latin Quarter,” and you will find it is a handsome enough likeness.
However, I do not mean by all this reasoning, that you are to burn the University of Pennsylvania; but, that a system which cannot be changed, may be improved. I should like to see it confined to the highest possible range of studies, so that a smaller number of persons may be seduced from the laborious pursuits, and those common things, the schoolmasters, may have a wider field of duties, and, consequently, a larger share of the public consideration, and the dignity of human nature. It is silly to talk of the prosperity, especially of a literary employment, where honour and profit are not given to those who administer its duties.
I know two or three members of the Institute, who will be angry if I should tell you not a word of that “bel etablissement.” I have read somewhere, that Fulton having sued the protection of this Institute in vain, for a whole year, was afterwards enabled, by an individual, called William Pitt, to bring his valuable invention into the service of mankind; which seems to import, that “forty men” may not have always “de l’esprit comme quatre.” Such institutions, when established, like the geographical and other societies, for literary intercourse and correspondence, are of manifest utility; but when they assume judicial powers, and accord the world
“just as much wit,
As Johnson, Fleetwood, Cibber shall think fit;”
standing between the author and the public; or when they become a privileged class, invested with honours, which cannot be attained by others of equal merit, I am a hardened heretic in all my opinions respecting them. I know, moreover, no scheme of patronage that secures such academical honours to the most worthy.
We used to see rejected in the old Academy, such names as Helvetius, Molière, Arnault and Pascal, and the two Rousseaus; and such as Sismondi and Beranger, in the present. Beranger, the poet, the most original and philosophical, one of the most richly endowed with poetic genius of the present age, “who, under the modest title of ‘Songs,’ makes odes worthy the lyre of Pindar, and the lute of Anacreon,” was refused the vacant place of this year, in the Académie des Belles Lettres, and it was given to Mr. Somebody, who writes vaudevilles. Broussais, who has left an impress upon his age, by his genius, was rejected in the “Académie des Sciences” for a Monsieur Double—and who knows M. Double? And Lisfranc, to whom surgery owes more than to any living Frenchman, was excluded for a Monsieur Breschet—and who is M. Breschet? I might as well ask, who, in the “Académie de Medecine,” are Messrs. Bouriat, Chardel, Chereau, Clarion and Cornac.[3]
The students pass their nine years here upon Latin, as in America, and by nearly the same processes; that is, the children are drilled as with us upon the studies of mature age, and improve their memories without much troubling the other faculties. A boy for instance, at ten and twelve years, is made to strain after the beauties of Cicero and Horace, which are conceivable only by a well-cultivated manhood; and in the elementary schools, babies are taught, exactly as in Philadelphia, all the incomprehensible nonsense of the grammars. Any child here can tell you why a verb is “active, passive, and neuter,” and how the action must pass from the agent to the object, to make it “transitive;” and they study reading and punctuation on the “Beauties of the Classics,” as we do:—“vital spark,” (a comma,) “Heavenly flame,” (a semicolon;)—and the little things are taught to “Hic and Hac,” at a public examination to please Mrs. Quickly just as with us. Paris is, also, full of instructors, calling themselves Professors, who have introduced all the different ways of turning dunces into wits, in six lessons, which are practised so successfully in Philadelphia; and they have tapestried every street with their “new systems,” under the very nose of the Minister of Public Instruction. In the chamber adjoining mine is a young Englishman, just arrived, without a knowledge of French, to a course of medical study; he has taken a master, a venerable and noisy old man, who humbly conceives that the whole English nation is stupid, because this youth cannot pronounce vertu. He made, this morning, fifty persevering efforts, each louder than the last, and still it was verthu. The old gentleman sat afterwards in my room awhile, quite meditative, and at length said, in a very feeling manner:—“I believe the English nation is fool!”—I know another teacher, an Englishman, who retaliates upon the French the violence done his countrymen. He begins by dislocating a Frenchman’s jaws. His “system” is to commence with the difficulties, and all the rest, he says, is “down hill.” So he has a little book of phrases, “made hard for beginners,” as follows:—“I snuff Scotch snuff, my wife snuffs Scotch snuff.”—“A lump of red leather, and a red leather lump,” &c. The scholar, having overcome these preparatory difficulties, takes up Sterne’s sentimental journey. It is, he says, as one who learns to run, having put on leaden shoes: when relieved from the weight he can almost fly.—I verily believe that the greatest fools, all over the world, are those who communicate knowledge; as the greatest knaves are usually those who teach men to be honest.—Je ne sais si je m’explique.