Thames were scarcely more public than those of Windermere.' That faithless spiritual overseer, Dr. Watson, Bishop of Llandaff, had also fixed his residence in the Lake district; and in a letter written to the poet Cowper, at the suggestion of his friend Hayley, in 1797, he takes occasion to say: 'The lakes are visited by all the world: if an excursion into these parts should ever be made by yourself, I beg you would try the hospitality of Calgarth.' It is remarkable that as yet tourists to the lakes of Cumberland and Westmoreland failed utterly to perceive that grandeur of the surrounding mountain scenery which the English of the present century have, mainly through the instrumentality of Mr. Ruskin, been brought to perceive. Defoe, very early in the reign of George I., had viewed Westmoreland only as 'the wildest, most barren, and frightful' of all the counties he had passed through in the course of his tour through England, and speaks of the 'terrible' aspect presented by its hills. When Dr. John Langhorne wished to convey an idea of the impression it produced upon him when he first beheld it, he could find no fitter terms than 'delightful horrors.' So likewise one of the authorities cited by the Rev. William Gilpin, in his well-known work entitled'Observations on the Mountains and Lakes of Cumberland and Westmoreland,' published in 1772, defined the 'three circumstances' which in his opinion when combined together made up the characteristics of one of the lakes to be these -'immensity, beauty, and horror.' The first compiler of a guide book to the Lakes was Thomas West, author of 'The Antiquities of Furness,' and a priest of the Church of Rome, who died at the ancient seat of the Stricklands of Sizergh in Westmoreland in July 1779, when his little work had passed through a fifth edition.3 During the latter part of his life, West, whose pastoral duties left him much leisure, had frequently accompanied parties of strangers on a tour of the lakes, and when no longer able to do this, he turned his knowledge of them to practical account by the compilation of a guide book. Life of Wilberforce, by his sons, i. 183. 2 Observations &c., ed. 1808, ii. 227. Atkinson's Worthies of Westmoreland. CHAPTER XIII. EDUCATION. Retrograde condition of education in the last century The Grand Tour' Yorkshire schools-Course of female instruction-Mrs. Trimmer's schools -State of the English universities-Remissness of discipline -Facility of graduation - Social life at Oxford and Cambridge. THERE can be little doubt that the inveteracy and extent of the frivolity, depravity, ignorance, and low state of mental culture with which all classes of English society were imbued in the last century, may be attributed in great measure to the very insufficient character of the instruction which it was then considered necessary to impart during the seasons of childhood and early youth. When about eight or ten summers had passed over the head of a stripling, the question which most agitated the parental mind was whether he should, in accordance with the wholesome precept of the Olney moralist, eschew Schools that have outlived all just esteem or whether he should straightway proceed to the academy of Mr. Quæ Genus at Edgware, to make acquaintance with my young Lord Knap, son of the Earl of Frize, or to Dr. Ticklepatcher's at Barnet, to form a friendship with young Stocks, the rich broker's only child.' The parents still venerated the schoolmaster's rod, and regarded it as the only instrument of education, as a language or two to be its whole business.' When the preparatory schoolmaster had taught his pupil all he knew (which was at the best very little), or when he had Foote, The Author. exhausted his patience with his dulness and stupidity, he was usually despatched to one of the great public schools, generally Eton, Harrow, Winchester, or Westminster, and under a rigorous course of the same discipline which we read that Pedagogue Thwackum applied to Master Tom Jones, attained, or did not attain, a trifling quantity of classic lore, at a most formidable expense to his parents or guardians. It was rare that schoolmasters took pains to stimulate the spirit of emulation among their scholars, or to foster any desire for the acquisition of knowledge. That they were sound in the faith according to Busby may be taken for granted, but beyond the mechanical performance of their dull task they did nothing. The claims of the physical and mathematical sciences were dismissed as altogether unworthy of notice, and modern languages were entirely neglected. Meanwhile, perhaps, the dancing and fencing masters had taken him in hand, and the music teacher had tried his utmost to attune his soul unto harmony. By the time a youth arrived at the age of eighteen or nineteen, sometimes long before, with his head crammed full of the contents of Dalzell's Analecta Majora' and the 'Gradus ad Parnassum,' he was considered fully equipped, so far as mental acquirements were concerned, to proceed to one of the two universities, or, which was more often the case, to set out on 'the grand tour' of Europe under the conduct of a tutor who was as often as not a needy cleric. Nothing (wrote Addison in the early part of the century) is more frequent than to take a lad from grammar and taw, and under the tuition of some poor scholar, who is willing to be banished for thirty pounds a year and a little victuals, send him crying and snivelling into foreign countries. Thus he spends his time as children do at puppet shows, and with much the same advantage, in staring and gaping at an amazing variety of strange things; strange indeed, to one who is not prepared to comprehend the reasons and meanings of them, whilst he should be laying the solid foundation of knowledge in his mind, and furnishing it with just rules to direct his future progress in life, under some skilful master in the art of instruction.' What the result of the grand tour usually was, it is hardly necessary to add. The pupil, ostensibly superintended by his tutor, wandered for three or four years from place to place, knight-errant fashion, acquiring, instead of those accomplishments which improve and adorn a man of sense, the frivolous manners and the polite oaths of every nation and country that he visited, like Don Lumber, who had tour'd all Europe about, and commonly returned home more conceited, more unprincipled, more dissipated, and more incapable of any serious application either to study or to business than he could well have become in so short a time had he lived at home.'1 Bearing this in mind, the illiterate character of the language which proceeds out of the mouths of some of the ministers of religion, lawyers, and physicians who figure in the pages of the novelists, becomes explicable. That the evils infected every one who undertook this tour is not to be supposed; many honourable exceptions to the rule there were, but there is no gainsaying that for every scholar that such a system turned out, or for every man of parts it gave to the professions, there were at least three who assumed the rôle and swelled the ranks of gamesters, swindlers, Darby Captains, Cock and Bottle Captains, Mohocks, and other contemptible creatures who disgraced and outraged all decent society by their vagaries. Not until the present century had considerably advanced did the late Charles Dickens reveal to the public gaze, in the pages of his novel of 'Nicholas Nickleby,' the scandalous condition of secondary education, by his satirical delineation of the imposture, crass ignorance, and brutality, latent in the numerous private schools in Yorkshire, corresponding with the description of the pedagogue Squeers at his seminary of Dotheboys Hall, where youths were boarded, clothed, educated, and lodged, for the sum of twenty guineas per annum. But only imagine the miseries, privations, and sufferings which those whose misfortune it was to be consigned to them, must have endured in the academies,' the 'halls, or the seminaries' Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations, book v. c. i. 89 of the same county, in the century preceding that in which Dickens's fiction appeared! It is possible to discover in the files of old newspapers, advertisements setting forth all the advantages which Mr. Wackford Squeers advertised as enjoyed at his establishment for twenty guineas per annum, at one half that fee. Some samples of these advertisements are appended : For At Knaton, near Thirsk in Yorkshire, by the Rev. Mr. Addison and proper assistants, young gentlemen are conveniently boarded, decently clothed, and regularly instructed in the English, Latin, and Greek languages; writing in all hands; arithmetic and geometry, with their uses in all kinds of measuring, trigonometry plane and spherical, applied to navigation, astronomy, &c. Algebra and book-keeping after the Italian method. They are furnished with books, paper, and other necessaries, at 10l. per annum. further satisfaction apply to Joseph Garth, Esquire, New North Street, Red Lion Square; Mr. Stapleton, watchmaker, near Carnaby Market. Mr. Addison intends to be in town the 14th inst. and may be treated with as usual at the Sussex Coffee House in Fleet Street every day from ten to twelve, and at Benn's Coffee House, New Bond Street, from two to four, Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays.1 The Rev. Peter Rumney, Master of the Free Grammar School at Kirby Hall, near Richmond, Yorkshire, proposes to board and clothe twenty boys, and no more; and, by himself and proper assistants, to educate them for twelve pounds per annum, according to the following conditions. They shall constantly dine with the master; they shall be neatly clothed, and great care shall be taken As to their to keep them clean; their bedchambers, beds, and bedding, shall be as good as any gentleman can desire for his son. education, they shall be taught to read English; they shall be fitted for the University or compting house, and taught writing and arithmetic, as their parents shall direct. Such boys as are intended for trades and not to learn Latin, shall read the best authors in our own language; and be taught to speak and write English grammatically, and to spell it truly.2 At Bowes ancient Grammar School, in Yorkshire, by Mr. Lamb, licensed master, and proper assistants, young gentlemen are taught the languages, readily and completely qualified for the sea, and any trade or business; neatly boarded, decently clothed, supplied with books and all necessaries, at ten pounds a year each. Mr. Lamb is now in town, and to be spoke with morning and evening at Mr. Lamb's, carpenter, in Noble Street, near Foster Lane, Cheapside; and from ten to twelve every day at Abington's Coffee House, ▾ Public Advertiser, Friday, April 4, 1755. |