Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume 16

by Unknown

Some years ago, I met with a modern Job, who said he had read through the large edition of Johnson's Dictionary; and I do regret, with considerable sincerity, having neglected to ask the gentleman whether, in the course of his highly entertaining reading, he met with any word so murdered, butchered, abused, and misunderstood, as the poor polysyllable—education. Many wise people conceive it to signify many multitudes of words—of dead words and of living words, of words without symbols; or, in plain language, they say (or they act as if they said) that education means to make a man's head a portable lexicon of all languages. This is what they term the education classical. Some very wise men go a step farther with the meaning of the term. They shake their heads in contempt at the mere word-men. They mingle more of utility with their idea of the signification. They maintain that education meaneth also certain figures, whereby something is learned concerning pounds and pence, and square inches and solid inches. Here the general idea of education terminates; and this is the education mercantile and mathematical. There are, however, a third class of philosophically-wise men, who affirm that education means the macadamising, on a small scale, of blue stones and grey ones; in describing comets with tails, and planets without tails; in making the invisible gases give forth light in darkness, as the invisible mind lighteth mortality. This is the education scientific. Thus the artillery of all the three is directed against the head. The head is made a gentleman, a scholar, a philosopher, while the poor heart is suffered to remain in a state of untutored, uncared-for barbarity and ignorance. And in all this parade, concerning what education in reality imports, it is overlooked, that the heart from whence all evil proceeds—the heart where all good is received—is the soil where the first seeds of education ought to be sown, watered, watched over, pruned, and reared with tenderness. And it is not until the heart has become a sturdy savage, hardened in ignorance, that any attempts are made to curb it within the limits of moral obligation. A more insane idea cannot be conceived by a rational man, than supposing that education begins by learning to know that one letter is called A, a second B, and a third C. Education begins with the first glance which the mother bestows upon her child in answer to its first smile. Before the infant has lisped its first word, the work of education has made progress. The mother is the first, the fondest, the most important and responsible teacher. It is hers to draw out the young soul, which dreams in the smiles and the laughing eyes of her infant; it is hers to subdue, and in gentleness to root up, the first germ of evil that springs into existence; it is hers to unfold, by a thousand ways and a thousand tendernesses, which a mother's heart can only conceive, and a mother's eye only can express, the first shadows of right and of wrong; it is hers to teach feelings of love, of gentleness, and gratitude—to give a direction and a colouring to the embryo passions which shall mark the future character and destiny of her yet sucking child. Nor is there an object upon earth more worthy the admiration, we had almost said the envy, of an angel, than a Christian mother gazing, in the depth of her affection, upon the babe of her bosom, watching its faculties expand like young flowers—bending them to the sun of truth, gently as the linnet bends the twig where it thrills its little song to cheer its partner. But, when the infant leaves the lap of its mother, and other duties divide her care, it is then necessary that a teacher, equally affectionate and equally efficient, be provided; for children seek, and will find, teachers of good or of evil in every scene, and in every playmate. It is now that the Infant School must mature the education which the mother has, or ought to have, begun. Some disciple of moth-eaten customs, whose ideas are like the flight of a bat, and whose imagination is hung round with cobwebs, may snarl out his mouthfuls of broken humanity, and inquire, what could be learned by infants of two or of five years of age, to compensate for blighting their ruddy cheeks like tender plants in a frost-wind, by mewing them up and crowding them together within the dismal walls of a noxious schoolroom, through the midst of which a male or a female tyrant continue their dreary tramp, tramping to and fro within the hated circle of their terror, and flourishing fear and trembling in their hand, in the shape of a birch, the bark of which has yielded to their work of punishment? I readily admit that, in such a place, and under such a teacher, nothing could be learned—nothing experienced—but an early foretaste of future misery. This is no picture of an infant school—this is no part of its discipline. Never would I confine the little innocents within the walls of a prison-house—never would I behold them trembling beneath the frown of a taskmaster. I would not curtail one of their infant joys, nor cut off one of their young pleasures. I would not mar their merry play, nor curb the glee that wantons in their little clubs. But I would mingle education with their joy and with their pleasures—health and lessons with their play—and affection and forgiveness in their little bands. Thus their joys or their pleasures, their play and their companions, become their teachers. By an infant school I would not mean a room where a hundred children may be crowded together in an unhealthy atmosphere. The situation and comforts of the school are almost as important as the nature of the instruction, or the character and disposition of the teacher. The situation should be airy and healthy, and the room well ventilated, with a small play-ground attached. For the play-ground is almost as necessary as the school, and both are regarded by the pupils as places of loved amusement, where the presence of the teacher inspires no terror, no restraint, but where he mingles in their sports and directs them as an elder playmate, while they regard him as such, and in return love him as a parent. And while all appears unrestrained mirth on the little yard, or the little green; and exercise gives play to the lungs, vigour to the system, and health to the blood, and the small gymnasium rings with the joy of the happy beings, no incident, however trifling, is suffered to pass unimproved, to "lead them from nature up to nature's God," to eradicate evil propensities, and cherish a love of truth, justice, mercy, and mutual love. Their sports, their tempers, their little wrongs, or quarrels, all become monitors in the hands of the teacher, to render his infant charges the future good men, or the excellent women. The schoolroom is only changing the scene of amusement, and tasks which I remember were to me the very essence of purgatory, pain, and punishment, are rendered to them an exquisite pastime. The pence table they carol merrily to the tune of "Nancy Dawson." With two or three sets of merry motions, they chant the formidable multiplication table, which affords them all the hilarity of chasing a butterfly, or romping on the meadow. Nothing is given them in the shape of a task, but every new lesson is a new pleasure. They are not so much taught by words, as by bringing the thing signified under their observation. I should be sorry if the objects of infant schools should ever be so perverted as to attempt making them nurseries for infant prodigies. I care no more for precocity of talent than I do for a tree that has blossomed before its time, the fruit of which is sure not to be worth the gathering. The design of infant schools is not to make ignorant parents vain of their children, but to make all parents happy in their children. It is not so much the quantity of what they learn that is to be regarded, as the quality of what they learn. They will learn cheerful obedience to their parents, their instructors, and their future masters; they will learn the most important of all lessons to their after happiness, the government of their temper; they will learn conscientiousness in all that they do; they will learn sincerity; they will learn habits of order, of cleanliness, and of courtesy; they will learn method and dislike confusion; they will learn to bestow neatness, without vanity, on their persons; and order in all things. They will acquire a knowledge of geography, of the animal, the vegetable, and the mineral kingdoms, not as words but as things that exist, and of which they have an understanding. They will acquire much to amuse and delight the fireside of their parents—much to surround it with edification and instruction. And instances have been, where they have there conveyed upon their lisping tongues conviction and conversion to a parent's heart; while their Maker from the lips of babes and of sucklings perfected praise. They will be taught to feel that there is ever in the midst of them a God of love, of mercy, and of power, who is angry with the wicked every day. They will be taught to love the creatures He has framed, to know his Word, and revere its precepts—to love virtue for virtue's sake. It may be urged that much of the good produced by infant schools will be afterwards destroyed, by their mingling in other schools in riper years, with children whose passions have been permitted to run wild, and especially where evil examples may exist on the part of the parents. That these will have a prejudicial effect to a certain extent, is not to be denied. But for them there is also a preventive and a remedy. The infant school is the nursery of the Sabbath school, where all the good begun will be strengthened and confirmed. Great as the moral and religious change is which Sabbath schools have effected upon society, their effect would have been tenfold, had not the moral culture of the child been so unheeded before sending it to the school, and its heart so hardened by years and neglect, as to render an abiding impression impossible. But religious instruction, whether implanted in our minds by our father's fireside, in the infant school, or the Sabbath school, will never be forgotten. It will not depart from us. We may endeavour to shake it off, but it will struggle with us as Jacob with the angel. It will be a whisper in our souls for ever. We may grow up, and we may mingle with the world, and we may cast our Bibles far from us—and we may become wicked men and thoughtless women, but these whispers of eternal truth, though even thought to be forgotten by ourselves, will return and return again; and, when we wander in solitude, or lie sleepless on our pillow in the darkness of midnight, they will rush back upon our guilty minds, in texts, in verses, and in chapters, long, long forgotten.

But to return to my history. I have said that the first of my education was the sayings which I heard from the lips of my father and mother. They gave an inclination to my spirit, as the hand bendeth the twig. They became to me as monitors that were always present. I often think that I hear the voice of my honoured father saying unto me still, "Whatsoever ye take in hand, persevere until ye accomplish it." That maxim became with me a principle, which has continued with me from childhood unto this day.

Before proceeding farther, it is necessary for me to say that my father was not only a poor man, but his occupation was one of the humblest which a peasant could occupy. He filled no higher situation than that of occasional barnman, and hedger and ditcher, upon a farm near Thornhill, in Dumfries-shire. Neither was he what some would call a strong-minded man, nor did he know much of what the world calls education; but, if he did not know what education was, he knew what the want of it was, and he was resolved that that was a knowledge which his children should never acquire. It was therefore his ambition to make them scholars to the extent of his means. But, when I state that his income did not exceed six shillings, you will agree with me that those means were not great. But my father's maxim, persevere, carried him over every difficulty. When my mother had said to him, as a quarter's wages became due—"Robin, I will never be able to stand thir bairns' schooling—sae mony o' them is a perfect ruination to me."

"Nonsense, Jenny," he would have said, in his own half-laughing, good-natured way; "the back is aye made fit for the burden. Just try anither quarter, though we have to be put to our shifts to make it out. I'm no feared but that we will make it out some way or other. We have always done it yet, and what we have done, we can do again. Let us give them a' the schooling we can, poor things; and the day will come when they will thank us, or mair than thank us, for a' that we have wared upon them. O Jenny, woman! had I been a scholar, as I am not, instead o' being the wife o' a labouring man the day, ye would have been my wife—but a leddy."

A thousand times since, it has been a matter of wonder to me how my parents, out of their niggard income, provided food, clothing, and education for their family, which consisted of five sons and four daughters, all of whom could not only read, write, and cast accounts; but, though I say it who perhaps ought not to say it, his sons, in point of "schooling" in higher branches, were the equals, and perhaps more than the equals, of the richest farmer's sons in the neighbourhood. And never did a quarter-day arrive, on which any of the nine children of Robert and Janet Gray went before his teacher without his money in their hand, even as the brethren of Joseph, the patriarch, carried the money in their sacks' mouth. For it was not with my revered parents, as now-a-days it is with too many, who regard paying a schoolmaster his fees somewhat in the same light as paying a physician after his patient is dead, or a lawyer when the cause is lost.

Every Saturday night my father, though no scholar himself, caused us to bring home our books and our slates, and in his homely way he examined us—or rather he examined them (the books and the slates)—as to the proficiency we had made. Of figures he did know something: grammar, he said, was a new invention, and there, for a time, his examinations were at fault, and he knew not how to judge or to decide. But (I being the eldest) as I grew up, he transferred the examination of my younger brothers, as regarded grammatical proficiency, to me. And well do I remember, that every weekly examination closed with the admonition—"Now, bairns, persevere. Ye see how your mother and me have to fecht late and early to keep ye at the schule; and it is my greatest ambition to see ye a' scholars. Learning is a grand thing; it is a fortune equal to the best estate in the kingdom—ay, even to the Duke o' Buccleugh's; but oh, the want o' it is a great calamity, as nane can tell ye better than your faither. Therefore, bairns, persevere; always strive to be at the head o' your class, and if I live to be an auld man, I shall see some o' ye leddies and gentlemen."

Thus the word persevere was for ever rung in our ears; and I believe, before any of us knew its meaning, we one and all put it in practice. And often, when the frost lay white upon the ground, before the sun got up, and even when the ice drew itself together like a piece of lace-work on the shallow pools, at the head of all the classes in our school, which were just like stepping-stairs, a barefooted and barelegged laddie, but with hands and face as clean as the linen on his back, might have been seen as the dux of every class: and all those barefeeted or barelegged laddies were the bairns of Robert Gray.

"Persevere as ye are doing, Roderic," my old teacher used to say, "and ye will live to be an ornament to your country yet." I doubt all the ornament I have been to my country is hardly of a higher kind than that of a stucco or a paste-board figure on a mantelpiece, and perhaps not so much. However, be that as it may, I have the consolation to think that I have not passed through the world exactly as if I had been a cipher.

I know it is a difficult and a delicate thing for a man to write a sketch of his own life, without committing shipwreck on the shoals and quicksands of egotism; but I will endeavour to steer clear of this, and while it is certain that I will "set down nought in malice," I trust that I shall be able to show that I will "nothing extenuate."

My father's precept of perseverance carried me through my schoolboy days gloriously, even as it had borne him through the expense of paying out of his scanty earnings for the education of nine children. I wanted three days of completing my thirteenth year when I left the school, but then I had begun to read Homer in Greek—I had read Horace in Latin, and I was acquainted with Euclid. My father was proud of me, my master was proud of me, for I had persevered. It was seldom that the son of a cottar, or the son of any one else, left the school at such an age so far advanced.