The room, or rather rooms, were hung round with various pictorial embellishments, consisting of some very beautiful lithographed designs, representing the most interesting and affecting scenes in the Old and New Testament—birds and animals, fruits and flowers, steam apparatuses, machinery of all descriptions, modes of every branch of agriculture, and some excellent maps.
A stand was placed in the middle of the apartment, and a boy of about twelve or thirteen took his station by the side of it, with the “wand of office” in his hand. It was now announced by the master—“Those boys who wish to ask questions, please hold up their hands,” when immediately about eight or ten, of the same age as the one stationed in the middle of the room, replied by the motion required, while an air of animation sprang to their eyes, and lightened the dusky hue of their complexions. The first question was proposed by a boy, black as the late member of parliament’s celebrated blacking, but whose scanty habiliments bore many a mark from the finger of time, and many a stain upon their once fair colour. “Who was Hannibal?” Answer, from the boy near the stand—“A Carthaginian general, who defeated the Romans in two engagements.”
It was now his turn to propound—“How is the true situation of any place upon the globe shewn?” Answer, from an intelligent-looking little mongrel boy, who was in such haste to reply, that it called for the aid of the master to render his rapid utterance understood—“By the intersection of that imaginary circle, which we call a parallel of latitude, with the meridian of the place in question.” Having replied to this query, he asked the boy at the stand—“Who was the first Roman emperor that visited England, then called Britain, and in what year?”
This was a puzzler. He could not answer to it; so he lost his conspicuous station, which was occupied by the more fortunate querist.
Various other questions were then proposed in history and chronology; after which, an examination in the Old and New Testaments commenced—the interrogatories being still propounded by the boy: “Who was the man that climbed up into the tree, to see Jesus pass?” “Zaccheus.”—“Where did Moses die?” inquired a pretty little girl. “On Mount Pisgah,” was the answer. A tall, rather grim-looking boy, started up, and, in a sepulchral-toned voice, asked—“What is the difference between Pisgah and Nebo?”—“Nebo appears to have been a point, or pinnacle, of Mount Pisgah,” replied a shrimpish boy by his side.
An excellent map of the world was then brought, and attached to the stand in the middle of the apartment, so that the eyes of the whole school could rest upon it. The greater and lesser circles were then pointed out, the meaning of longitude and latitude defined, the form and divisions of the earth mentioned and descanted upon, and the sun’s path through the ecliptic described.
The question was then proposed to the school—“Would you like to sing?”—“Yes,” from every lip. “You must promise to sing very soft and sweet,” quoth the master. “Soft and sweet,” reverberated from the whole of the scholars, like the tongue of an echo. Then came the “soft and sweet,” as they termed it; and if the burden of a song could give melody to the lips, it would have been more sweet than “the breath of the south wind upon a bed of violets,” as Avon’s favoured bard once sang; for it was all about our dear little Queen Victoria. To the tune of this loyal ditty they marched round the room, each class divided by their several teachers, carrying a pile of books, and then formed into semicircles, to be exercised in reading, writing, arithmetic, spelling, and grammar. Their spelling was very fair; many of them wrote a good hand; they all appeared conversant with the four first rules of arithmetic; and as for grammar, they talked about present tenses, and perfect participles, nouns, adverbs, and conjunctions, definites and indefinites, until I began to think they must have been born with a “Lindley Murray” in their mouths. I wish I could speak as well of their reading; but I suppose boys who talk about Hannibal and Artaxerxes, ecliptics and globular projections, and descant upon the merit of tenses, esteem it too common-place to read correctly words of two or three syllables.
The average number of boys and girls attending this school is from 140 to 160; although, from the prevalence of the measles upon my visit, there were not more than half that number there. Young men are also received in this establishment as candidates for teachers; 100 of whom have, within these last four years, been disseminated throughout the schools in Antigua, and some of the other West India Islands, as fully qualified for instructing the rising generation in all the necessary branches of education.
After experiencing the erudition of these advanced scholars, we passed into another part of the establishment appropriated to the use of the infant school. Here we found about sixty little creatures, two or three, to eight or ten years of age, seated upon their benches, raised one above the other—the elder ones occupying the upper tier.
This apartment was also garnished with its pretty prints and Brobdignagian alphabets, and possessed its coloured maps and stands. The exercises were conducted in a similar manner as those in the other part of the seminary: an intelligent-looking little black boy taking his place by the centre stand, beside the map of Palestine, and answering very fluently the various questions proposed to him by the other children, at the same time pointing out the places. “Where did Jesus turn water into wine?” asked one of the little girls. “Cana, in Galilee.”—“Who got his cedars from Lebanon?”—“Solomon,” &c. They then sang one of their pretty little songs, to the tune of which they marched round the room, and, formed into classes, read, from a selection of pieces, “Dr. Franklin’s Whistle.” It was too difficult for them, and they bungled sadly through it; for although, like the elder pupils, they were geographers and historians, they had not made much progress in the art of reading. Their lessons over, they sang an anthem; and then, after a short prayer offered up by the master, the school broke up, and away they started with whoop and song, leaving me to ponder in my brain how far their manifold knowledge would benefit their after progress through life.