Let Charlotte Bronté answer, walking painfully across the moor with hand held hard to beating side, sitting now and then upon a stone to keep herself from falling, wondering why the daylight blinds her so, obliged to give up Villette owing to the terrible headaches which it brings on. Let Charlotte Bronté answer, dying before her time at thirty-nine years of age, when the path of fame was just beginning to be bright before her, and the world was just beginning to know how much it wanted her. Charlotte Bronté, the gifted and the feeble, the lynx-eyed and the blind, so full of glorious strength and pitiable weakness! Charlotte Bronté, who feels the pressure of every-day life to be as hard as a giant's grasp upon her throat! Charlotte Bronté cannot tell why she is so unhappy, why she feels like a prisoner in the world,—why earth, our beautiful earth, is like a charnel house to her. And yet we think that the most ordinary passerby could see very satisfactory reasons why Charlotte Bronté was what she was, and felt what she felt. Hollow cheek and faded eye, teach their wisdom to their possessor last of all. The pale-eyed school-girl, who never played along with the other children, never ran and laughed and shouted with the rest, little knew what days and hours and years of dulness, of pain and agony, she was laying up for the future, what a premature grave she was digging for herself. Peace be with her, her toil is over; it is now three years since Heaven received in Charlotte Bronté one angel more.
Intellect, then, needs body. Come, then, and see me build a Man! A calm, silent devotion, a conscience pure and reverent, a heart manful and true, an intellect clear and keen, a frame of iron,—with these will we dower our hero, and call him Washington!
From me Washington needs no eulogy. Free America is at once his eulogy and his monument! It is useless to say more. Every one here feels in his heart a higher praise than can be uttered by the tongue. But let me ask you, What would Washington's qualities of mind and heart have availed his country, unless the manly strength, the frame of iron had been added? A good man he might have been, a patriot he surely would have been; but the Father of his Country, never! The soul that trusted in God, the conscience that felt the omnipotence of justice and right, the heart that beat for his country's weal alone, the mind that thought out her freedom, was upborne by the body that knew no fatigue, by the nerves that knew not how to tremble.
Washington had to endure physical fatigue enough to have killed three ordinary men. And how well did his youth prepare him for a life of protracted toil. Hear his biographer Irving. "He was a self-disciplinarian in physical as well as mental matters, and practised himself in all kinds of athletic exercises, such as running, leaping, pitching quoits, and tossing bars. His frame even in infancy had been large and powerful, and he now excelled most of his playmates in contests of agility and strength. As a proof of his muscular power, a place is still pointed out at Fredericksburg, near the lower ferry, where, when a boy, he threw a stone across the river. In horsemanship, too, he already excelled, and was ready to back, and able to manage, the most fiery steed. Traditional anecdotes still remain of his achievements in this respect."
Some of you have doubtless seen in Thackeray's 'Virginians,' that young Warrington found that he was more than a match for the English jumpers, as indeed, writes he, he ought to be, as he could jump twenty-one feet and a half, and no one in Virginia could beat him, except Colonel G. Washington.
It is needless to say that I do not mean to exalt the body at the expense of the higher faculties. I only maintain that the rest are incomplete without the physical element; in which indeed all the other powers dwell, and by means of which they are more or less clearly manifested. There may, of course, be vast physical energy without any corresponding development of mind or soul, as any blacksmith or prize fighter could tell us. And further, there may be a character, in which some of the higher qualities may exist in great perfection, coupled, too, with mighty force of body, and yet the character may be incomplete. Take, as an instance, another of America's great men.
Daniel Webster! perhaps the most cavernous head, set upon the strongest shoulders, which has appeared upon the planet, since the soul of Socrates went back to God. Daniel Webster! strong mind in strong body, leader and king of men, deep-chested, lion-voiced, whose words of power moved men as the wind moves the sea, whose eloquence had a physical energy, a bodily grandeur about it like to that of no other man. Daniel Webster! pride of all Americans; to you I leave it to say where he was weak. It belongs not to me, a stranger, to pluck one laurel from that stately brow; his own brethren must do it, with reluctant and half remorseful hands, pitying the errors which marred so grand a character, but saying of him as I would say of England, Webster, with all thy faults, I love thee still.
Our analysis of human character, necessarily one-sided and imperfect, is now ended. It remains for us to ask, What are its bearings upon American education? How far does American education fulfil the wants of Human Nature, and wherein does it disregard them? The title of my Lecture tells plainly enough, where I think that the great deficiency is found; a deficiency which reacts upon both mind and morals, and ofttimes utterly defeats the best efforts of clergymen and teachers. I assert, then, that, in America, the body is almost entirely neglected. Thirty thousand clergymen, from as many pulpits, advocate the claims of the conscience and the soul. A hundred thousand teachers are busied throughout the length and breadth of the land in training the intellect, while a man could almost count on his fingers the number of those engaged in training the body. The intellectual training which the masses receive, is the highest glory of American education. If I wanted a stranger to believe that the Millennium was not far off, I would take him to some of those grand Ward Schools in New York, where able heads are trained by the thousand. When I myself entered them, I was literally astonished. When I looked at the teachers who instructed that throng of young souls, I could not help saying to myself, Ah! dear friends, it would do you good to know what I feel just now. I can feel the very blessing of God descending on your labors, just as if I could see it with mine eyes. What piety have been at work here, in the construction of this colossal system of education! What inspired energy was needed to work it out! What charity is necessary to carry it on! Many a teacher saw I there, unknown, may-be, to all the world, carrying on her work with noble zeal and earnestness, to whom the quick young brains around bore abundant testimony. When I saw them, I blessed them in my heart, I magnified mine office, and said to myself, I, too, am a teacher.
I spent four or five days doing little else than going through these truly wonderful schools. I stayed more than three hours in one of them, wondering at all I saw, admiring the stately order, the unbroken discipline of the whole arrangements, and the wonderful quickness and intelligence of the scholars. That same evening I went to see a friend, whose daughter, a child of thirteen, was at one of the ward schools. I examined her in algebra, and found that the little girl of thirteen could hold her own with many of a larger growth. Did she go to school to-day? asked I. No, was the answer, she has not been for some time, as she was beginning to get quite a serious curvature of the spine, so now she goes regularly to a gymnastic doctor. I almost feel ashamed to criticize such noble institutions as the schools of New York; but truth compels me to do this. Hitherto, nothing whatever has been done to train the bodies of the tens of thousands who are educated there. All that is done is excellent, is wonderful, but fearful drawbacks come into play, in the shape of physical weakness, and positive male-formation of body.
The only remedy which can be devised, I think, in a crowded city like New York, where it is impossible to get open ground, is to have large gymnasiums attached to every ward school, and daily exercise therein should form an essential part of the education there. The importance of this to New York cannot be estimated, and I heard with joy, that a gymnasium was established in at least one of the ward schools, and I found out that the teachers of others were alive to this most crying need. I read too, with very great pleasure, that a Mr. Sedgwick of New York was appointed to deliver a lecture on the importance of physical education, at the next meeting of the Teachers Association, in that State; and indeed every one begins to feel that something must be done, and that quickly. Miss Beecher's book enlightened most people on this subject, and reform is already inaugurated. It is well that it is so, or the race would dwindle away before our very eyes. Listen to some serio-comic verse upon this subject, taken out of your Lecturer's portfolio. It is an address to America, dictated by an ancient sage:—