“I am very sorry to hear it, Sir,” replied Mr. Lascelles, lifting his bonnet, “but he is very young, and will get steadier as he grows up. Has he been letting the cows eat your corn?”
“The Lord forbid either the one thing or the other,” said the parson. “He is a genus, a mathematical genus, and will be an honour to the parish when we are both dead and gone.”
The father now understood that the words which he had at first considered as lamentation were laudatory; the fatted calf was killed, the parson was feasted, the boy taken from the cows, and sent to college; and the result is—a perfect Anak in philosophy.——
That the literary men of Scotland are drawn from the whole range of the population is not only in favour of themselves; it is also highly advantageous to the humbler classes of the people. In as far, indeed, as merely literary men are concerned, the advantage to Scotland is by no means great, because in Scotland they meet with but little reward to stimulate their exertions. And hence they are obliged to scatter themselves over the world. But still, the number that remain, and fill the duties of parochial and other teachers throughout the country, are superior, not in degree merely, but absolutely in kind, to the teachers of youth, more especially youth of the poorer classes, in any other part of the country. In England, for instance, when a man of general information undertakes the office of teacher, he does it either with the hope of making a fortune by teaching the children of the rich, or as a matter of necessity, and as a dernier resort after having been unfortunate in teaching the children of the poor. But one who is to have any chance of succeeding in the communication of any thing else than the mere mechanism of reading, writing, and casting accounts, which after all does not deserve the name of education, must love his profession for its own sake, and look upon the exercise of it as an honour,—which, in one that instructs the children of the lower orders, can never be the case, unless he himself has been educated as one of those orders. It is quite natural, and it is also quite true, that the education which is most beneficial for any one class of society, can neither be imparted nor purchased by any other class. Charity schools will never be held in much estimation by any one who has seen the progress of those poor children for whose education their own parents pay. There is something in the receiving of any kind of charity which is humiliating and debasing; and to bestow a charitable education upon the whole or the greater part of the labouring classes in the country, would be the surest means not only of leaving them nearly uneducated, but of destroying their virtue and diminishing their usefulness.
It is to the absence of this humiliating mode of being instructed, and the presence of one infinitely better and more rational, that the grand peculiarity of the Athens, and remarkably of the provincial parts of Scotland, is chiefly to be attributed. The smallness of Scotch and even of Athenian society, the limited number even of the labouring classes, who, except in Glasgow, and perhaps a place or two more, are all intimately known, as well in their connexions as in their individual characters, and perhaps also the low rate of wages, and the fewer facilities to solitary dissipation, may no doubt account for some portion of the intelligence and virtue of the humbler Scotch. But still, in as far as those circumstances operate, they must operate upon the higher classes as well as the lower; and, as the higher classes in Scotland have no such superiority over the higher classes in other countries, as the lower have over the lower, there must be some special cause which operates in favour of the Scotch peasantry. I have looked round for causes; I have found none except those remarkable advantages in respect of teachers of education, (unless, perhaps, it be that the sober and simple Kirk of Scotland has a more wholesome influence upon the poor than a more showy and aristocratical establishment can exert,) and I think I discovered that those advantages are quite sufficient to account for the fact.
If there were not something in education that made strongly and peculiarly in favour of the Scotch peasantry, why should they be decidedly before the peasantry of England, both in talent and civilization, while not merely the upper ranks of the provincial Scotch, but even the learned and official scribes (and pharisees) of the Athens, are so markedly and so monstrously behind? This circumstance, unaccustomed as kings may well be supposed to be to rigorous philosophic observation, did not escape the notice of George the Fourth. He expressed no unusual admiration at the polish of the Scotch peers, the elegance of the Scotch ladies, the learning of the Scotch professors and parsons, or the worshipful appearance of the Scotch magistrates; but the Scotch people, the crowds who shouted his welcome on his arrival, and who cheered him every time he appeared in public, were a source of wonder and a theme for admiration,—and a proof, against which there is no arguing, that if people receive the education of gentlemen, their habits will correspond, however scanty their earnings or scanty their abodes.
In the Athens, this relative superiority of the humbler classes over those whom chance, ancestry, or office has set up into the high places, is not only more remarkable than in any other locality that I ever visited, but the most remarkable, at least the most admirable feature in the character of the Athens herself.
I have said, and I dare themselves to deny it, that her men in office are a trifling and a truckling race; I have said, and I dare themselves to deny it, that a great mass of her scribes unite some of the worst propensities of the Jew, with none of the best of the attorney; I have said, and I dare them to deny it, that her schools of philosophy have “fallen into the sear and yellow leaf,” and that her philosophical societies pursue trifles from which even school-boys would turn with disdain; and I have said, that her gentry have neither the capacity nor the means of encouraging the sciences, literature, and the fine arts; but though I have said thus, and said it from personal—perhaps painful, observation, I am bound to add, that in point of intellect, and all matters considered in point of conduct, the populace of the Athens are far superior to any with which I am acquainted. When I visited the public libraries, the men whom I found borrowing the classical and philosophical books wore aprons, while the occasional lady or gentleman that I saw there, was satisfied with the romance of the week, or the pamphlet of the day.
This accumulation of intellect among the lower and labouring classes is a delightful thing,—when contemplated as studying history or philosophy, or sporting itself with the finest productions of genius. In this calmness and tranquillity it puts one in mind of the blue expanse of the interminable and unfathomable ocean; its immensity makes you feel it sublime; its depth tints it with that transparent green which the eye never wearies in contemplating,—but, when the wind is up, when the billows heave their masses, dash their spray to the heavens, and deafen the ends of the earth with their roar, the ocean becomes a fearful and a formidable thing; and, when the winds of oppression chafe it, so is a population so learned, and so linked together, as the labouring classes of the Athens.
In the great manufacturing or commercial towns of England, and even, and perhaps to fully as great a degree, in the British metropolis, one finds the labourers and operative mechanics, though strong enough at their labour, and skilful enough at their craft, far down indeed in the intellectual scale,—reduced from their want of emulation to seek their relaxation and their pleasure in the indulgence of their merely animal appetites, and forced, through the want of proper education at the outset, and fit means of obtaining or extending it afterwards, to spend their evenings in ale-houses, and rest their distinctions of honour and superiority on brawls and fights. In Scotland generally, and in the Athens in particular, it is very different. Almost the whole of the working classes there have got such an education in their youth as not only would qualify them for ultimately being masters in their respective trades, but which gives them an insatiable thirst, not for technical knowledge in their own professions merely, but for knowledge in general. If one were to follow them home, after the hours of their labour are over, one would not find them besotting themselves with beer, and discussing the circumstances of a prize-fight, in clouds of smoke over a dirty newspaper, which the reader has to spell as he gets on. No doubt they have their carousals, and when they do drink, they drink deeply; but it is not so much for the love of the dissipation, as for some public or brotherly measure which brings them together. You find one man laying aside his apron to consult Adam Smith, dispute with Malthus, or re-judge the judges of the Edinburgh Review; another will be found solving mathematical problems, or constructing architectural plans; and all the less proficient will be found attending evening classes, at which they are instructed by able teachers, and for reasonable fees.