Belgium, Vol. 1 (of 2)

by Sir James Emerson Tennent

10 September, 1840.

We had, this morning, a visit from Count d’Hane, a member of the “senate,” the elective House of Peers for Belgium, to which he is returned for the district of Alost. The Count is a younger brother of the most distinguished family of Ghent, and head of the educational section of the legislature, besides being an ardent amateur of agriculture. He is married to the only daughter of M. de Potter (not the de Potter of the Revolution, however) and in conformity to the Flemish usage, has appended the name of that family to his own. We drove along with him to the house of his mother, the Dowager Countess d’Hane de Steenhausen, in the Rue des Champs, the most splendid mansion in the city, built in the style of Louis XIV, and containing a collection of choice pictures of the Dutch school. The dining-room is a superb saloon with mirrored walls, an inlaid parquet and richly painted ceiling: the latter, however, is torn down in many places, the soldiers of the French revolutionary army having thrust their sabres through it in 1794, in the hope of finding gold concealed between it and the floor above, an outrage, the traces of which the owners have never removed. It was in these apartments that the late Count received the Emperor Alexander on his return from England after the Peace of Paris, and the same suite of rooms were subsequently the residence of Louis XVIII, who fled hither during the Hundred Days, and remained till the events of 1815, restored him to his throne.

A few doors distant in the same street, we visited the gallery of M. Schamps which had long been regarded as one of the lions of Ghent. It has since been dispersed and sold. When we saw it, it was numbered and catalogued, and the rooms filled with dealers from all parts of Europe, inspecting their intended purchases previous to the auction, which was to take place a few days after. The gentleman by whom it was originally collected is but recently dead, and its dispersion now was attributed, we were told, partly to impatience of the present proprietor, at having his retirement perpetually invaded by travellers to see his pictures, and partly by the operation of the law against primogeniture, which rendered its sale indispensable, in order to a more equal partition of the family estates.

Count d’Hane did us the favour to conduct us over the buildings of the University, one of the many valuable institutions for which Belgium is indebted to the munificence of the King of Holland. It was founded by him in 1816, and thrown open for the reception of students in 1826; an inscription upon the portico records the event, Auspice Gulielmo I. Acad. Conditore, posuit, S. P. Q. G. DCCCXXVI. the initials in the usual magniloquence of the low countries, represent the Senatus Populus Que Gandavensis!

The buildings from a design of Roelandt, an artist of Nieuport, are in a style of chaste Corinthian architecture, the portico ornamented with sculpture in alto relievo, the vestibule superbly flagged in a mosaic of colored marbles, and the hall and staircase ornamented with busts and caryatides in white marble. The theatres are on a magnificent scale, richly furnished and lighted by lofty lanterns in the vaults of the roof. The course of education, besides most extensive primary schools, comprises the faculties of law, medicine and divinity, with science and belles-lettres, and the number of students is between 300 and 400 attending the classes of thirty professors. There is attached to the University a library of sixty thousand volumes, a collection of philosophical apparatus of great value, and museums of antiquities, natural history, mineralogy and comparative anatomy, and the whole institution having been recently remodelled and placed under the care of a vigilant and anxious committee, it promises to be one of the most important and beneficial foundations in the kingdom.

The entire system of primary education, however, is in anything but a satisfactory position in Belgium. Under the regence of Holland, the Dutch system of rational education was imparted to Belgium. Schools were established in every district, under the superintendance of provincial committees, instruction was supplied gratuitously, and the children of the poor were required to avail themselves of it, whilst to secure its efficiency, no teacher was allowed to be employed who had not undergone a thorough examination, and been furnished with a diploma of competency.

This feature of the government was from the first vehemently opposed by the Belgian clergy, who saw in it an encroachment upon the right claimed by the Catholic Church to regulate the quantity as well as the quality of national education, and when in 1830, they succeeded in effecting the “repeal of the Union,” between the two countries, the entire system was abolished at one fell swoop.[19]

Education, like every thing else, was declared to be free, and the new government did away with all official supervision of schools, and the necessity for any enquiry into the competency of teachers. The result of this has been, that although the number of schools has not been diminished, the nature of the instruction and the qualification of the teacher, is of so very low a description, as to be thus characterised in a modern work upon the subject, by M. Ducpétiaux,[20] himself, a distinguished Belgian, and intimately acquainted with the subject.

“Instruction in our schools is generally faulty and incomplete, and little merits the praise which has been bestowed upon it. The best thing that can be said in its favour is, that it is better than no instruction at all, and that it is more satisfactory to see children sitting on the benches of a school, even although they be doing nothing to the purpose, than to behold them working mischief on the streets. They are taught to read, write, and figure a little; to teach them less is scarcely possible. We speak here of primary schools in general, and affirm that those who attribute a moralising influence to the majority of these schools, deceive themselves in a manner the most strange and prejudicial to the interest of the class whose children are the pupils in these seminaries. A degree of instruction so limited, so meagre, is nearly equivalent to none whatever; and it is impossible that things should be in a better case, seeing that the education of the teachers themselves is of the most imperfect kind. Barely do these persons know the little which they undertake to impart, and they have, generally speaking, the most superficial notions of those methods of instilling knowledge, which they impudently attempt to apply in the case of those only a little more ignorant than themselves.”

The experiment of education on both systems has now had an ample trial in Belgium; first in fifteen years of government protection, and now in ten years of “free trade.” The result has been a convincing failure, and those most clamorous for the latter system in 1830, are now the most urgent in their demands to revert to the former. The provincial deputations, in their reports, recommend the same course, and the legislature have so far subscribed to their views, as to propose a projet de loi for carrying them into effect, by restoring a modification of the system, as before the revolution.