The old bath, or “bad” man, had vipers’ nests, their eggs, and many other Caliban curiosities, which he was desirous to show me; but having seen quite enough for one morning’s visit, and besides, hearing his wife’s tongue coming along the subterranean passage, I left him—her—toad—reptiles, &c., to fret away their existence, while I rose into far brighter regions above them.
After ascending a couple of flights of stairs, I strolled for some time on the little parade, which is close to the entrance of the old “Bad-Haus;” but the benches being all occupied by people listening to the band of music, and besides, not liking the artificial passages of hedges cut, without metaphor, to the quick, I bade adieu to the scene; and, entering the great forest, with which the hills in every direction were clothed to their summits, I ascended a steep, broad road (across which a couple of schlangens glided close by me), until I came to a hut, from which there is a very pleasing home view of the little valley of Schlangenbad. It is certainly a most romantic spot, and that it had appeared so to others was evident, from a marble pillar and inscription which stood on the edge of a precipice before me. The tale it commemorated is simply beautiful. The Count de Grunne, the Dutch Ambassador at Frankfort, having, in the healthy autumn of his life, come to Schlangenbad, with his young wife, was so enchanted with the loveliness of the country, the mildness of the air, and the exquisite softness of the water, that, quite unable to contain himself, on a black marble column he caused to be sculptured, as emblems of himself and his companion, two crested schlangens, eating leaves (apparently a salad) out of the same bowl—with the following pathetic inscription:—
EN
Reconnaissance
Des Délicieuses Saisons
Passées Ici Ensemble
Par
CHARLES Cte DEGRUNNE
Et
BETSI Ctesse DEGRUNNE.
1830.
Leaving this quiet sentimental bower, and descending the hill, I entered the great pile of buildings of the old Bad-Haus, or Nassauer-Hof, and as I was advancing along one of its endless passages, I passed an open door, from which a busy hum proceeded which clearly proclaimed it to be a school. My grave Mentor-like figure was no sooner observed silently standing at its portal, than its master, a short, slight, hectic-looking lad, scarcely twenty, seemed to feel an unaccountable desire to form my acquaintance. Begging me to enter his small literary dominion, he very modestly requested leave to be permitted to explain to me the nature of the studies he was imparting to his subjects; the little creatures, from their benches, looking at me all the time with the same sort of fear with which mice look into the face of a bull-dog, or frogs at the terrific bill and outline of a stork.
Having, by a slight inclination, accepted this offer, the young Dominie commenced by stating that all the children in Nassau are obliged, by order of the Duke, to go to school, from six to fourteen years of age;—that the parents of a child, who has intentionally missed, are forced to pay two kreuzers the first time, four the second, six the third, and that if they are too poor to pay these fines, they are obliged to work them out in hard labour, or are otherwise punished for their children’s neglect;—that the inhabitants of each village pay the schoolmaster among themselves, in proportions, varying according to their means, but that the Duke prescribes what the children are to learn—namely, religion, singing, reading, writing, Scripture history, the German language, natural history, geography, and accounts;—and that the mode of imparting this education is grounded upon the system of Pestalozzi.
This introductory explanation being concluded, the young master now displayed to me specimens of his scholars’ writing—showed me their slates covered with sums in the first rules of arithmetic—and then calling up several girls and boys, he placed his wand in the hand of each trembling little urchin, who one by one was desired to point out upon maps, which hung against the walls, the great oceans, seas, mountains, and capitals of our globe. Having expressed my unqualified approbation of the zeal and attention with which this excellent young man had evidently been labouring, at the arduous, “never-ending, still beginning” duties of his life, I was about to depart, when, as a last favour, he anxiously intreated me to hear his children, for one moment, sing; and striking the table with his wand, it instantly, as if it had been a tuning fork, called them to attention—at a second blow on the table, they pushed aside their slates and books—at a third, opening their eyes as wide as they could, they inflated their tiny lungs brimfull—and at a fourth blow, in full cry, they all opened, to my no small astonishment, mouths which, in blackness of inside, exactly resembled a pack of King Charles’s spaniels: had the children been drinking ink, their tongues and palates could not have been darker; and though, accompanied by their master, the psalm they were singing was simply beautiful, and though their infantine voices streaming along the endless passages produced a reverberation which was exceedingly pleasing, yet there was something so irresistibly comic in their appearance, that any countenance but my own would have smiled.
The cause of the odd-looking phenomenon suddenly occurred to me,—having, in the morning, observed several peasants, whose trowsers at the knees were stained perfectly black, by their having knelt down to pick bilberries, which grow on the forest-covered hills of Nassau in the greatest profusion. The children had evidently been grazing on the same ground, and as soon as the idea occurred, I observed by their little black fingers that my solution of the dark problem was correct.
Returning to my residence, the New Bad-Haus, the sun, though much less weary than myself, having sunk to rest, I sat alone for some time in one of the bowers of the shrubbery belonging to the building. Occasionally a human figure, scarcely visible from the deep shade of the trees, glided slowly by me, but whether that of a prince or a peasant I neither knew nor cared. What interested me infinitely more, was to observe the fire-flies, which, with small lanterns in their tails, were either soaring close above me, or sparkling among the bushes. The bright emerald green light which they possessed was lovely beyond description, yet apparently they had only received permission to display it so long as they remained on the wing—and as two young ones, gliding before me, rested for a moment on a rose-leaf, at my side, the instant they closed their wings, they were left together in total darkness. Some (probably old ones) steadily sailing, passed me, as if on business, while others, dancing in the air, had evidently no object except pleasure; yet, whether flying in a circle or in a line, each little creature, as it proceeded, gaily illuminated its own way, and like a pure, cheerful, well-conditioned mind, it also shed a trifling lustre on whatever it approached.
As I sat here alone in the dark, I could not drive from my mind the interesting picture I had just been witnessing in the little village school of Schlangenbad.
We are all in England so devotedly attached to that odd, easily pronounced, but difficult to be defined word—liberty, that there is, perhaps, nothing we should all at once set our backs, our faces, and our heads against more, than a national compulsatory system of education, similar to that prescribed in Nassau; and yet, if law has the power to punish crime, there seems at first to exist no very strong reason why it should not also be permitted, by education, to prevent it. Every respectable parent in our country will be ready to admit, that the most certain recipe for making his son a useful, a happy, and a valuable member of society, is carefully to attend to the cultivation of his mind. We all believe that good seeds can be sown there, that bad ones can be eradicated—that ignorance leads a child to error and crime—that his mental darkness, like a town, can be illuminated—that the judgment (his only weapon against his passions) can, like the blacksmith’s arm, by use, be strengthened; and if it be thus universally admitted that education is one of the most valuable properties a rational being can bequeath to his own child, it would seem to follow that a parental government might claim (at least before Heaven) nearly as much right to sentence a child to education, as a criminal to the gallows. Nevertheless, as a curious example of the difference in national taste, it may be observed, that though in England judges and juries can anywhere be found to condemn the body, they would everywhere be observed to shrink at the very idea of chastening the mind; they see no moral or religious objection to imprison the former, but they all agree that it would be a political offence to liberate the latter. Although our poor-laws oblige every parish to feed, house, and clothe its offspring, yet in England it is thought wrong to enforce any national provision for the mind, and yet the Duke of Nassau might argue, that in a civilized community children have no more natural right to be brought up ignorant than naked; in short, that if the mildest government be justified in forcing a man, for decency’s sake, to envelop his body, it might equally claim the power of obliging him, for the welfare, prosperity, and advancement of the community—to develop his mind.