Classics, then, these young fellows do not get. Meat they get but twice a week. Let English parents bear this fact in mind; but that the lads are healthy and happy, anybody who sees them can have no question; furthermore, they are well instructed in a sound practical education—history, geography, mathematics, religion. What a place to know of would this be for many a poor half-pay officer, where he may put his children in all confidence that they will be well cared for and soundly educated! Why have we not State Schools in England, where, for the prime cost—for a sum which never need exceed for a young boy’s maintenance £25 a year—our children might be brought up? We are establishing National Schools for the labourer; why not give education to the sons of the poor gentry—the clergyman whose pittance is small, and would still give his son the benefit of a public education—the artist—the officer—the merchant’s office-clerk, the literary man? What a benefit might be conferred upon all of us if honest Charter Schools could be established for our children, and where it would be impossible for Squeers to make a profit![31]
Our next day’s journey led us, by half-past ten o’clock, to the ancient town of Louth, a little poor village now, but a great seat of learning and piety, it is said, formerly, where there stood a university and abbeys, and where St. Patrick worked wonders. Here my kind friend, the rector, was called upon to marry a smart sergeant of police to a pretty lass, one of the few Protestants who attend his church; and, the ceremony over, we were invited to the house of the bride’s father hard by, where the clergyman was bound to cut the cake, and drink a glass of wine to the health of the new-married couple. There was evidently to be a dance and some merriment in the course of the evening; for the good mother of the bride (Oh, blessed is he who has a good mother-in-law!) was busy at a huge fire in the little kitchen, and along the road we met various parties of neatly-dressed people, and several of the sergeant’s comrades, who were hastening to the wedding. The mistress of the rector’s darling Infant School was one of the bridesmaids: consequently the little ones had a holiday.
But he was not to be disappointed of his Infant School in this manner; so, mounting the car again, with a fresh horse, we went a very pretty drive of three miles to the snug lone schoolhouse of Glyde-farm—near a handsome park, I believe of the same name, where the proprietor is building a mansion of the Tudor order.
The pretty scene of Dundalk was here played over again; the children sang their little hymns, the good old clergyman joined delighted in the chorus, the holiday was given, and the little hands held up, and I looked at more clean bright faces and little rosy feet—the scene need not be repeated in print, but I can understand what pleasure a man must take in the daily witnessing of it, and in the growth of these little plants, which are set and tended by his care. As we returned to Louth, a woman met us with a curtsey and expressed her sorrow that she had been obliged to withdraw her daughter from one of the rector’s schools, which the child was vexed at leaving too. But the orders of the priest were peremptory; and who can say they were unjust? The priest, on his side, was only enforcing the rule which the parson maintains as his:—the latter will not permit his young flock to be educated except upon certain principles and by certain teachers; the former has his own scruples unfortunately also—and so that noble and brotherly scheme of National Education falls to the ground. In Louth, the National School was standing by the side of the priest’s chapel—it is so almost everywhere throughout Ireland; the Protestants have rejected, on very good motives doubtless, the chance of union which the Education Board gave them—be it so: if the children of either sect be educated apart, so that they be educated, the education scheme will have produced its good, and the union will come afterwards.
The church at Louth stands boldly upon a hill looking down on the village, and has nothing remarkable in it but neatness, except the monument of a former rector, Dr. Little, which attracts the spectator’s attention from the extreme inappropriateness of the motto on the coat of arms of the reverend defunct. It looks rather unorthodox to read in a Christian temple, where a man’s bones have the honour to lie, and where, if anywhere, humility is requisite—that there is multum in parvo, ‘a great deal in Little.’ O Little, in life you were not much, and lo! you are less now; why should filial piety engrave that pert pun upon your monument, to cause people to laugh in a place where they ought to be grave? The defunct doctor built a very handsome rectory-house, with a set of stables that would be useful to a nobleman, but are rather too commodious for a peaceful rector who does not ride to hounds; and it was in Little’s time, I believe, that the church was removed from the old abbey, where it formerly stood, to its present proud position on the hill.
The abbey is a fine ruin, the windows of a good style, the tracings of carvings on many of them; but a great number of stones and ornaments were removed formerly to build farm-buildings withal, and the place is now as rank and ruinous as the generality of Irish burying-places seem to be. Skulls lie in clusters amongst nettle-beds by the abbey-walls; graves are only partially covered with rude stones; a fresh coffin was lying broken in pieces within the abbey; and the surgeon of the dispensary hard by might procure subjects here, almost without grave-breaking. Hard by the abbey is a building of which I beg leave to offer the following interesting sketch:—
The legend in the country goes that the place was built for the accommodation of Saint ‘Murtogh,’ who lying down to sleep here in the open fields, not having any place to house under, found to his surprise, on waking in the morning, the above edifice, which the angels had built. The angelic architecture, it will be seen, is of rather a rude kind; and the village antiquary, who takes a pride in showing the place, says that the building was erected two thousand years ago. In the handsome grounds of the rectory is another spot visited by popular tradition—a fairy’s ring: a regular mound of some thirty feet in height, flat and even on the top, and provided with a winding path for the foot-passenger to ascend. Some trees grew on the mound, one of which was removed in order to make the walk. But the country-people cried out loudly at this desecration, and vowed that the ‘little people’ had quitted the country side for ever in consequence.