Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 63, No. 391, May, 1848

I confess that I, (for I was permitted on that first occasion not only to dine with the guests, but to outstay the ladies, in virtue of my growing years, and my promise to abstain from the decanters) – I confess, I say, that I, poor innocent, was puzzled to conjecture what sudden interest in the county newspaper could cause Uncle Jack to prick up his ears like a warhorse at the sound of the drum, and rush so incontinently across the interval between Squire Rollick and himself. But the mind of that deep and truly knowing man was not to be plumbed by a chit of my age. You could not fish for the shy salmon in that pool with a crooked pin and a bobbin, as you would for minnows; or, to indulge in a more worthy illustration, you could not say of him, as St Gregory saith of the streams of Jordan, "a lamb could wade easily through that ford."

"Not a county newspaper to advocate the rights of – " here my uncle stopped, as if at a loss, and whispered in my ear, "What are his politics?" "Don't know," answered I. Uncle Jack intuitively took down from his memory the phrase most readily at hand, and added, with a nasal intonation, "the rights of our distressed fellow-creatures!"

My father scratched his eyebrow with his forefinger, as he was apt to do when doubtful; the rest of the company – a silent set – looked up.

"Fellow-creatures!" said Mr Rollick – "fellow-fiddlesticks!"

Uncle Jack was clearly in the wrong box. He drew out of it cautiously – "I mean," said he, "our respectable fellow-creatures;" and then suddenly it occurred to him that a "County Mercury" would naturally represent the agricultural interest, and that if Mr Rollick said that the "County Mercury ought to be hanged," he was one of those politicians who had already begun to call the agricultural interest "a Vampire." Flushed with that fancied discovery, Uncle Jack rushed on, intending to bear along with the stream, thus fortunately directed, all the "rubbish"[1 - "We talked sad rubbish when we first began," says Mr Cobden in one of his speeches.] subsequently shot into Covent Garden and the Hall of Commerce.

"Yes, respectable fellow-creatures, men of capital and enterprise! For what are these country squires compared to our wealthy merchants? What is this agricultural interest that professes to be the prop of the land?"

"Professes!" cried Squire Rollick, "It is the prop of the land, and as for those manufacturing fellows who have bought up the Mercury – "

"Bought up the Mercury, have they, the villains!" cried Uncle Jack, interrupting the Squire, and now bursting into full scent – "Depend upon it, sir, it is a part of a diabolical system of buying up, which must be exposed manfully. – Yes, as I was saying, what is that agricultural interest which they desire to ruin? which they declare to be so bloated – which they call 'a vampire!' they the true blood-suckers, the venomous millocrats! Fellow-creatures, sir! I may well call distressed fellow-creatures, the members of that much suffering class of which you yourself are an ornament. What can be more deserving of our best efforts for relief, than a country gentleman like yourself, we'll say – of a nominal £5000 a-year – compelled to keep up an establishment, pay for his fox-hounds, support the whole population by contributions to the poor rates, support the whole church by tithes; all justice, jails, and prosecutions by the county rates, all thoroughfares by the highway rates – ground down by mortgages, Jews, or jointures; having to provide for younger children; enormous expenses for cutting his woods, manuring his model farm, and fattening huge oxen till every pound of flesh costs him five pounds sterling in oil-cake; and then the lawsuits necessary to protect his rights; plundered on all hands by poachers, sheep-stealers, dog-stealers, church-wardens, overseers, gardeners, gamekeepers, and that necessary rascal, his steward. If ever there was a distressed fellow-creature in the world, it is a country gentleman with a great estate."

My father evidently thought this an exquisite piece of banter; for by the corner of his mouth I saw that he chuckled inly.

Squire Rollick, who had interrupted the speech by sundry approving exclamations, particularly at the mention of poor rates, tithes, county rates, mortgages, and poachers, here pushed the bottle to Uncle Jack, and said civilly – "There's a great deal of truth in what you say, Mr Tibbets. The agricultural interest is going to ruin; and when it does, I would not give that for Old England!" and Mr Rollick snapped his finger and thumb. "But what is to be done – done for the county? There's the rub."

"I was just coming to that," quoth Uncle Jack. "You say that you have not a county paper that upholds your cause, and denounces your enemies."

"Not since the Whigs bought the – shire Mercury."

"Why, good heavens! Mr Rollick, how could you suppose that you will have justice done you, if at this time of day you neglect the press? The press, sir – there it is – air we breathe! What you want is a great national – no, not a national – A PROVINCIAL proprietary weekly journal, supported liberally and steadily by that mighty party whose very existence is at stake. Without such a paper, you are gone, you are dead, extinct, defunct, buried alive; with such a paper, well conducted, well edited by a man of the world, of education, of practical experience in agriculture and human nature, mines, corn, manure, insurances, acts of parliament, cattle shows, the state of parties, and the best interests of society – with such a man and such a paper, you will carry all before you. But it must be done by subscription, by association, by co-operation, by a grand provincial Benevolent Agricultural, Anti-innovating Society."

"Egad, sir, you are right!" said Mr Rollick, slapping his thigh; "and I'll ride over to our Lord-Lieutenant to-morrow. His eldest son ought to carry the county."

"And he will, if you encourage the press, and set up a journal," said Uncle Jack, rubbing his hands, and then gently stretching them out, and drawing them gradually together, as if he were already enclosing in that airy circle the unsuspecting guineas of the unborn association.

All happiness dwells more in the hope than the possession; and at that moment, I dare be sworn that Uncle Jack felt a livelier rapture, circum præcordia, warming his entrails, and diffusing throughout his whole frame of five feet eight the prophetic glow of the Magna Diva Moneta, than if he had enjoyed for ten years the actual possession of King Crœsus's privy purse.

"I thought Uncle Jack was not a Tory," said I to my father the next day.

My father, who cared nothing for politics, opened his eyes.

"Are you a Tory or a Whig, papa?"

"Um," said my father – "there's a great deal to be said on both sides of the question. You see, my boy, that Mrs Primmins has a great many moulds for our butter-pats; sometimes they come up with a crown on them, sometimes with the more popular impress of a cow. It is all very well for those who dish up the butter to print it according to their taste, or in proof of their abilities; it is enough for us to butter our bread, say grace, and pay for the dairy. Do you understand?"

"Not a bit, sir."

"Your namesake Pisistratus was wiser than you, then," said my father. "And now let us feed the duck. Where's your uncle?"

"He has borrowed Mr Squills's mare, sir, and gone with Squire Rollick to the great lord they were talking of."

"Oho!" said my father, "brother Jack is going to print his butter!"

And indeed Uncle Jack played his cards so well on this occasion, and set before the Lord-Lieutenant, with whom he had a personal interview, so fine a prospectus, and so nice a calculation, that before my holidays were over, he was installed in a very handsome office in the county town, with private apartments over it, and a salary of £500 a-year – for advocating the cause of his distressed fellow-creatures, including noblemen, squires, yeomanry, farmers, and all yearly subscribers in the New Proprietary Agricultural, Anti-innovating – shire Weekly Gazette. At the head of his newspaper Uncle Jack caused to be engraved a crown supported by a flail and a crook, with the motto "Pro rege et grege," and that was the way in which Uncle Jack printed his pats of butter.

CHAPTER X

I seemed to myself to have made a leap in life when I returned to school. I no longer felt as a boy. Uncle Jack, out of his own purse, had presented me with my first pair of Wellington boots; my mother had been coaxed into allowing me a small tail to jackets hitherto tailless; my collars, which had been wont, spaniel-like, to flap and fall about my neck, now, terrier-wise, stood erect and rampant, encompassed with a circumvallation of whalebone, buckram, and black silk. I was, in truth, nearly seventeen, and I gave myself the airs of a man. Now be it observed, that that crisis in adolescent existence wherein we first pass from Master Sisty into Mr Pisistratus, or Pisistratus Caxton, Esq. – wherein we arrogate, and with tacit concession from our elders, the long envied title of "young man" – always seems a sudden and imprompt up-shooting and elevation. We do not mark the gradual preparations thereto; we remember only one distinct period in which all the signs and symptoms burst and effervesced together; – Wellington boots, tail, stiffener, down on the upper lip, thoughts on razors, reveries on young ladies, and a new kind of sense of poetry.

I began now to read steadily, to understand what I did read, and to cast some anxious looks towards the future, with vague notions that I had a place to win in the world, and that nothing is to be won without perseverance and labour; and so I went on till I was seventeen, and at the head of the school, when I received the two letters I subjoin.

1. – From Augustine Caxton, Esq.

"My Dear Son, – I have informed Dr Herman that you will not return to him after the approaching holidays. You are old enough now to look forward to the embraces of our beloved Alma Mater, and I think studious enough to hope for the honours she bestows on her worthier sons. You are already entered at Trinity, – and in fancy I see my youth return to me in your image. I see you wandering where the Cam steals its way through those noble gardens; and, confusing you with myself, I recall the old dreams that haunted me when the chiming bells swung over the placid waters. 'Verum secretumque Mouseion, quam multa dictatis, quam multa invenitis!' There, at that illustrious college, unless the race has indeed degenerated, you will measure yourself with young giants. You will see those who, in the Law, the Church, the State, or the still cloisters of Learning, are destined to become the eminent leaders of your age. To rank amongst them you are not forbidden to aspire; he who in youth 'can scorn delight, and love laborious days,' should pitch high his ambition.

"Your Uncle Jack says he has done wonders with his newspaper, – though Mr Rollick grumbles, and declares it is full of theories, and that it puzzles the farmers. Uncle Jack, in reply, contends that he creates an audience, not addresses one, – and sighs that his genius is thrown away in a provincial town. In fact, he really is a very clever man, and might do much in London, I dare say. He often comes over to dine and sleep, returning the next morning. His energy is wonderful, and – contagious. Can you imagine that he has actually stirred up the flame of my vanity, by constantly poking at the bars? Metaphor apart – I find myself collecting all my notes and common-places, and wondering to see how easily they fall into method, and take shape in chapters and books. I cannot help smiling when I add, that I fancy I am going to become an author; and smiling more when I think that your Uncle Jack should have provoked me into so egregious an ambition. However, I have read some passages of my book to your mother, and she says "it is vastly fine," which is encouraging. Your mother has great good sense, though I don't mean to say that she has much learning, – which is a wonder, considering that Pic de la Mirandola was nothing to her father. Yet he died, dear great man, and never printed a line, – while I – positively I blush to think of my temerity!

"Adieu, my son; make the best of the time that remains with you at the Philhellenic. A full mind is the true Pantheism, plena Jovis. Wherever there is knowledge, there is God. It is only in some corner of the brain which we leave empty, that Vice can obtain a lodging. When she knocks at your door, my son, be able to say, 'No room for your ladyship, – pass on.' – Your affectionate father,

    "A. Caxton."

2. – From Mrs Caxton.

"My Dearest Sisty, – You are coming home! – My heart is so full of that thought that it seems to me as if I could not write any thing else. Dear child, you are coming home; – you have done with school, you have done with strangers, – you are our own, all our own son again! You are mine again, as you were in the cradle, the nursery, and the garden, Sisty, when we used to throw daisies at each other! You will laugh at me so, when I tell you, that as soon as I heard you were coming home for good, I crept away from the room, and went to my drawer where I keep, you know, all my treasures. There was your little cap that I worked myself, and your poor little nankeen jacket that you were so proud to throw off – oh! and many other relics of you when you were little Sisty, and I was not that cold formal 'Mother' you call me now, but dear 'Mamma.' I kissed them, Sisty, and said 'My little child is coming back to me again!' So foolish was I, I forgot all the long years that have passed, and fancied I could carry you again in my arms, and that I should again coax you to say 'God bless papa.' Well, well! I write now between laughing and crying. You cannot be what you were, but you are still my own dear son – your father's son – dearer to me than all the world – except that father.

"I am so glad, too, that you will come so soon: come while your father is really warm with his book, and while you can encourage and keep him to it. For why should he not be great and famous? Why should not all admire him as we do? You know how proud of him I always was; but I do so long to let the world know why I was so proud. And yet, after all, it is not only because he is so wise and learned, – but because he is so good, and has such a large noble heart. But the heart must appear in the book too, as well as the learning. For though it is full of things I don't understand, every now and then there is something I do understand – that seems as if that heart spoke out to all the world.

"Your uncle has undertaken to get it published; and your father is going up to town with him about it, as soon as the first volume is finished.

"All are quite well except poor Mrs Jones, who has the ague very bad indeed; Primmins has made her wear a charm for it, and Mrs Jones actually declares she is already much better. One can't deny that there may be a great deal in such things, though it seems quite against the reason. Indeed your father says, 'Why not? A charm must be accompanied by a strong wish on the part of the charmer that it may succeed, – and what is magnetism but a wish?' I don't quite comprehend this; but, like all your father says, it has more than meets the eye, I am quite sure.

"Only three weeks to the holidays, and then no more school, Sisty – no more school! I shall have your room all done freshly, and made so pretty; they are coming about it to-morrow.

"The duck is quite well, and I really don't think it is quite as lame as it was.

"God bless you, dear, dear child! – Your affectionate happy mother,

    "K. C."

The interval between these letters and the morning on which I was to return home, seemed to me like one of those long, restless, yet half dreamy days which in some infant malady I had passed in a sick-bed. I went through my task-work mechanically, composed a Greek ode in farewell to the Philhellenic, which Dr Herman pronounced a chef-d'œuvre, and my father, to whom I sent it in triumph, returned a letter of false English with it, that parodied all my Hellenic barbarisms by imitating them in my mother tongue. However, I swallowed the leek, and consoled myself with the pleasing recollection that, after spending six years in learning to write bad Greek, I should never have any further occasion to avail myself of so precious an accomplishment.

And so came the last day. Then, alone, and in a kind of delighted melancholy, I revisited each of the old haunts. The robbers' cave we had dug one winter, and maintained, six of us, against all the police of the little kingdom. The place near the pales where I had fought my first battle. The old beech stump on which I sate to read letters from home!

With my knife, rich in six blades, (besides a cork-screw, a pen-picker, and a button-hook,) I carved my name in large capitals over my desk. Then night came, and the bell rang, and we went to our rooms. And I opened the window and looked out. I saw all the stars, and wondered which was mine – which should light to fame and fortune the manhood about to commence. Hope and Ambition were high within me; – and yet, behind them, stood Melancholy. Ah! who amongst you, readers, can now summon back all those thoughts, sweet and sad – all that untold, half-conscious regret for the past – all those vague longings for the future, which made a poet of the dullest amongst you on the last night before leaving boyhood and school for ever!

EDUCATION IN WALES

[2 - Reports of the Commissioners of Inquiry into the State of Education in Wales, appointed by the Committee of Council on Education. Parts I. II. III. 1847.]That it is the duty of a wise and foreseeing government to inquire into the condition of whatever affects the well-being of the people, is almost a political truism, and may certainly be received as a political axiom. More especially, however, when the subject is one of such vital importance as education, does such an inquiry become necessary: and, in truth, the leaders of the state cannot be considered as doing their duty, unless they make themselves acquainted with the practical bearings and results of the system, whatever it may be, that exists. Not that the government of this country, until very recent periods at least, ever troubled themselves with such matters: the more direct political business of the state, the clash of parties, and the struggle for power, absorbed their whole attention; and education was left, as a matter of private and local concern, to the clergy and the gentry exclusively. The voluntary system, superinduced upon the country by the indolence or neglect of those who held the reins of authority, was allowed to remain in unaided operation as far as education was concerned; and until the establishing of National Schools, as they are commonly termed, and for some time after that event, the governments that followed each other in the dingy recesses of Downing Street cared no more for village schoolmasters, and knew no more about them, than they did about village blacksmiths. It was enough if the people went on tolerably well, and paid their taxes; whether they learned any thing at school, or whether they had schools in which any thing might be learned, was, at head-quarters, a matter of no moment. Most of the upper classes of the nation were of the same feeling – the middle classes, too, folded their arms and looked on.[3 - This, it will be understood, does not apply to Scotland, – where education has been a very popular interest for nearly two centuries back.] Had it not been for the force of events, and the efforts of a few energetic men, education had been shelved, as a musty useless topic, for an indefinite period.

Now, however, in this forty-eighth year of the nineteenth century, it is viewed in a far different light. The middle classes have begun to take up the matter as they had never done before, – "purging and unsealing their long abused sight" to the manifold advantages involved in it for themselves; while the upper classes look more to how it fares in this respect with the very poor or the profligate. And so much pressed on this subject, from many quarters, is the government, that neither Lord John Russell, as long as he remains on the Treasury Bench, nor any body else, who may get there, can ever hope to avoid doing something for the education of the people.

There has been a growing sense of the importance of this subject on the part of the nation at large, which has acted on the nervous sensibilities of all occupants of office in later years; and the very force of events themselves, apart from all theoretic reasoning as to expediency or the contrary, has compelled each successive government to look after the schoolmaster, and even to send him abroad in the world, though at the risk of making him the laughing-stock of his scholars for want of due preparation.

We do not purpose to write the history of the educational movement of this realm since the middle of the eighteenth century – volumes might be compiled on the topic, and it would still remain unexhausted.