EDUCATION OF THE ATHENS.
Just as the twig is bent the tree’s inclined.--POPE.
IF there be one cause to which, more than others, we are to look for
an explanation of those peculiarities that distinguish the inhabitants
of one place from the inhabitants of others, that cause is education.
I do not mean that education which is given, or attempted to be given,
at schools and colleges, but that which is produced by the contact and
collision of those with whom young men associate at that important
period when they are beginning to think and to act for themselves.
There is no doubt that more of the character of society in the Athens
depends upon this circumstance than upon any thing else, as, so far as
my observation extended, there is more peculiarity in the treatment of
the Athenian youth at this period than in any other city of the British
empire.
It is to this education, for life and not for literature, which I mean
chiefly to advert in this chapter. Still, it may not be amiss to
give a preliminary glance at the school education, not of the Athens
merely, but of Scotland generally, because on that, it strikes me,
Englishmen might find something both to learn and to imitate. The idea
of having one or more schools in each parish, so established that
no teacher can be appointed to them who is not well educated, and
so endowed that they can never be corrupted as the free-schools so
frequently are in England, or confined to the most opulent classes of
society, as the better class of schools are in that country, is one of
the best that ever entered into the imagination of any legislature.
Even in the remotest and most thinly-inhabited parish of Scotland,
the schoolmaster is a man of real information: not unfrequently the
son of humble parents, who, finding that he evinced talents and a
taste for learning, sent him to school, and to some one or other of
those cheap universities in Scotland, where, judging from the number
of illustrious names that they can boast of, learning is nothing the
worse for its cheapness, till he was qualified for orders; but who,
finding his influence insufficient for procuring him the ease and
indolence of a parsonage, took, as his only alternative, the humbler
and more laborious, but unquestionably more useful, office of parish
schoolmaster. Young men of this description are one of the greatest
blessings that a country can possess, and rather than that Scotland
should lose them, it were more for her welfare that all the boasted
philosophy, and all the brawling law of the Athens were at the bottom
of the sea. They may be said not only to pursue learning for its own
sake, and without any view either to honour or emolument, but also to
follow the profession of teachers from the same disinterested motives.
Since professions more lofty and lucrative than that of minister of the
Scotch Kirk monopolized the sons of the wealthier Scotch--since the
free sons of the mountains went to practise slavery in the west, and
those of the plains to get wealth and liver complaints in the east,
the ecclesiastical offices in Scotland have been almost exclusively
filled by the sons of the poor. These almost invariably pass a part
of their early life either as parochial schoolmasters or as tutors in
private families. The tutors are those who have the best connexion, the
most ambition, and the most fawning and obsequious habits. They are
menial servants, and with the education of gentlemen they are sent to
companion with butlers and valets, to humour the caprices of wayward
children, and to hear the fooleries of booby “lairds,” and the scorn
of assuming dames, who can see no merit but in being connected with
this, that, or the other family, which has borne the same name, and
inhabited the same lands since the first introduction of crows and
cow-stealing. Connected with this office, at least in the majority
of instances, there are humiliations to which no lad of spirit would
submit for the sake of the present emolument. The hope, and generally
the stipulation, of the tutor is, that his patron shall, when he has
drudged and degraded himself for the requisite number of years, “bless
him with a kirk;” and this abasement,--this bowing down before the
patron, in order that they may, in due time, rise to the living, is
one of the chief reasons why the Scotch parsons have swerved from that
independence of feeling and of action, of which the example was set
them by John Knox, and become as willing and obsequious worshippers at
the feet even of delegated power, or of unmerited place, as imagination
can picture to itself. If it were not that they are strained through
this filter, we should never have had them declaring, ex cathedrâ, that
the National Monument, a piece of gratuitous foolery, or vanity, or
political patchwork, was “a most suitable and appropriate expression
of gratitude to the Lord of Hosts.” If they had not been studying
somewhere else than in their bibles, their answer would have been--
“The Being, whom we profess to worship, and under whose protection
we certainly are, cannot be propitiated by votive offerings of stone
and lime; and the gallant deeds of our brave countrymen, however
gracefully they might be chiselled on the frieze of the ‘restored
Parthenon,’ could not, in the slightest degree, redound to his glory,
although they might, to a certain extent, flatter the vanity of men.
The offerings which He requires are not swelling columns and fretted
architraves: they are _deeds_--deeds of justice, beneficence, and
mercy, done to our fellow men. After He has enumerated the most costly
and splendid sacrifices-just for the purpose of declaring that in
his sight they avail nothing--He delivers this simple but heavenly
commandment, ‘Offer to God _thanksgiving_.’ To propose the erection
of _any edifice_, therefore, as ‘a most suitable and appropriate
expression of gratitude to the Lord of Hosts,’ savours little of the
knowledge and still less of the spirit of Christianity; and if no
edifice whatever could be such an expression, far less could a temple
which had been erected for the worship of dead and useless idols.”
The filtration, or winnowing, or whatever process it may be called,
which has separated and set apart the more flexible portion of the
educated peasantry of Scotland for the peculiar service of the kirk,
has been in an eminent degree favourable for the schools, which have
thus reserved to them the most independent and generally also the most
enthusiastically devoted to learning.
I should have mentioned ere now, that the men who fill learned
situations, or are engaged in literary pursuits in Scotland, ought,
in genius, though perhaps not always in education, to be superior to
men of the same description in England; for the expense of obtaining
any thing like a literary education in the latter country is so
great, and the disposition to obtain it is so contrary to the habits
of the humbler, and even the middle ranks of the people, that the
range of classes from whom the learned men of England can be taken,
is far narrower than that from which Scotland can make her election.
In England, a peasant or a small farmer never so much as dreams of
giving his son a classical or a university education; and even among
the wealthier yeomen and tradesmen this is seldom done, except with
an immediate view to a church living, to which if the person so
educated should not succeed, he returns back to the counter or the
counting-house.
In Scotland, again, though the gates, at least of some species of
knowledge, do not stand open so widely or so long as in England, yet
they stand open to every class of the people; and thus, though the
population of Scotland be not one-sixth part of that of England, the
number of persons from whom the learned men of Scotland are chosen is
perhaps greater; indeed, it is positively greater, for the whole two
millions of the Scotch people are in this situation; and if all the
classes in England who have the power and the will to educate their
children be counted, they will be found far fewer than this. Now,
as the means of obtaining liberal education descend in society, the
quantity of talent must necessarily increase. In natural ability, a
hundred peasants, at least a hundred peasant boys, are not necessarily
inferior to the same number of scions of nobility; and as the total
number of peasants exceeds the total numbers of the others, the whole
quantity of natural capacity must be greater. Whatever, indeed, may be
their differences after they grow up, and when all the varieties of
advantage, opportunity, and habit have come into play, it cannot be
denied that there is a point in the age of all classes of society at
which their talents and capacities are in the precise ratio of their
numbers; and it is equally true that, if they were all taken at this
point, and subjected to the same discipline, the number of illustrious
men that would be obtained from each class would also be in the precise
ratio of the total number. But all classes in Scotland have, from
infancy up to a certain period, the same facilities of being educated,
and therefore, in obtaining a supply of learned and literary men,
Scotland has the choice of the whole population.
But this is not the only advantage that results from throwing the gates
of knowledge open to all the people, for those of the poorer classes
who are sent to college have a chance of possessing greater natural
abilities, and being more assiduous and successful in the cultivation
of them, than those who are sent from the rich.
This may, at first sight, appear to be paradoxical, but its truth
will become apparent upon very little reflection. The more seductive
pleasures of youth to which the rich have access, are, independently of
any other cause, sufficient to turn the scale in favour of the poor.
To the rich, the hours spent in the prosecution of knowledge are hours
taken from the enjoyment of pleasure, and as such they must ever be
looked upon as a task and a drudgery. To the poor, on the other hand,
the hours spent in the prosecution of knowledge are an abridgment
of labour more irksome and severe, and therefore they must ever be
regarded as relaxation and pleasure. Besides, the children of the
rich are sent to college, not so much with a view to the perfection
of education in the meantime, and the profitable application of it
afterwards, as because it is the custom, or that their parents and
guardians can afford the expense. The pupil who is born to wealth or
to honours, considers his literary attainments not only as a merely
subordinate accomplishment, but as one which stands in the way of
others that he deems more consistent with his rank, and feels to be
more consonant with his desires; while he to whom the same pursuit
is present pleasure, and the hoped foundation of future honour and
emolument, is certain not only to like it better, but to pursue it
with more zeal and success. Of the illustrious names that have been
famed in the pages of Scotch biography, a far greater proportion have
sprung from humble life than are to be found in the annals of any
other country. The fact is, that although the Scotch peasants have a
strong desire to educate all their children, it is only the ones who
are believed or found to possess a superior degree of genius that are
educated for literature; and of the discoveries of original genius
that are continually making in the provincial parts of Scotland a very
curious book might be made. I shall mention one instance of the many:
The gentleman, who at this moment takes the highest station among the
philosophers of the Athens, and who would have been entitled to no mean
place even when her philosophy was in the zenith of its splendour, is
of humble though highly respectable extraction. His father rented a
small farm in the kingdom of Fife, and had it not been that accident
revealed the genius of the infant philosopher, first to the village
parson, next through his advice to learned professors of St. Andrew’s,
and, lastly, through the wisdom of that advice, to the world at
large, his experiments might have been confined to composts for the
fields, instead of compositions for the furtherance of science; and
his speculations, instead of grasping the globes of the earth and the
heavens, might never have soared above a globe-turnip. That the loss
that science would thus have sustained would have been great, even
the enemies of the philosopher (and there is no philosopher without
enemies, especially in the Athens) must allow; for the lines of his
discovery have not only been boldly drawn, but have been drawn in
situations which no other philosopher has attempted. If, therefore,
the discovery which I am about to relate, singular as those who are
not conversant with the modes in which genius, when left to itself,
developes itself, may consider it to be, had not been made, a blank
page would have remained in the book of knowledge, which is now full
and fair in its characters of wisdom. The future philosopher, as was
once the case with nearly all the nascent philosophers of Scotland, and
may still be the case with a few, not the worst of them, divided the
year between the study of learning, and the observation of nature. When
winter had spoiled the fields of their beauty, and driven the shepherds
and cow-herds into the villages, he went to school, where the Proverbs
of Solomon, Ruddiman’s Rudiments of the Latin Tongue, and Dilworth’s
Arithmetic, by turns expanded his wisdom, or perplexed his ingenuity;
and when the fields were again in flower and the birds in song, he was
sent forth to observe the progress of vegetable and animal life, notice
the revolutions of suns, and feel the practical philosophy of wind and
rain. In order that there might be economy as well as information in
his employment during the latter season, he was enjoined to attend to
the movements of his father’s cows, as well as to those of nature; and
until he had reached nearly the end of his twelfth year, it remained
doubtful whether cattle or causation was to be the future business and
glory of his life. In the summer of that year, however, the die was
cast, and never was turning-up more philosophically fortunate, or more
fortunate for philosophy. In one of those village libraries, which
often contained more rich variety of lore than is to be found among
the countless volumes of even an Athenian repository of books, he had
found a thumbed and boardless copy of Simpson’s Euclid, which might
in its time have perplexed the wits of ten successive classes at St.
Andrew’s. By that strong intuition which ever characterizes superior
genius, even at its earliest dawn, he found out that this was a volume
worthy of being read, and throwing aside the Shorter Catechism of the
Kirk, which had been furnished him by his parents for his recreation,
as well as the exploits of George Buchannan, the History of Buckhaven,
the exquisite biography of Paddy from Cork, and the sweet songs of
Sir James the Rose, and the Laird of Coull’s Ghost, with which he had
contrived to furnish himself, he set fondly and furiously to work
upon Simpson’s Euclid, preparing his floor, and drawing his diagrams
in the same manner, though not exactly in the same materials, as the
philosophers of antiquity. The smooth grassy sod answered all the
purposes of the abacus, and the cows generously supplied him in a
substitute for the sand. Spreading and smoothing that substitute with
his bare foot, he engraved upon it with his finger the mystic lines and
letters; and, with book in hand, proceeded to establish the elementary
principles of geometry, heedless though the cows should, in the mean
time, scale the fence, and carry the neighbouring corn by a _coupe de
la bouche_.
One day as he was occupied in this learned work, the parson of the
village happened to be on the other side of the hedge, pacing backwards
and forwards, and cudgelling his reluctant and retentive brains for
as much of the raw material of sermonizing as would serve to put him
and his parishioners over the ensuing Sunday. While he paced and
pleaded with the sluggish spirit, his ear was assailed by a continued
_mumbling_ of voice through the hedge, which caught so much stronger
a hold of him than he could do of his sermon, that his steps and
his study were both brought to a dead stand, and his outward ears
perked up in the fondest attitude of listening. Ministers as well as
men often remember the words of that of which they were never able
to grapple with the meaning; and thus, though the old parson did not
exactly comprehend the extent of that proposition, the diagram of
which the young philosopher had traced upon his soft abacus, and the
demonstration of which he was rehearsing in very solemn tones, yet
he remembered that such words had been used by one of the professors
in that part of his academic course which he had never understood.
That which is known is always simple, and that which is not known,
however simple it may be in itself, is always accounted the very depth
of wisdom. The parson was astonished, and, for a moment, he doubted
the evidence of those ears upon which he had had to depend through a
long life. He tried the one, it caught, “The angles at the base of an
isosceles triangle;” he tried the other, it continued the enunciation,
“are equal to one another.” He poked his head half way through the
hedge, and the auxiliary testimony of his eyes and spectacles confirmed
that of his ears. He saw the abacus, the book, and the student, and
forthwith descended to the village, big and puffing with the tale. A
visit from the parson at any other hour than that of dinner, is always
an ominous matter to some of the family of a Scotch peasant. If the
young folks be children they dread the catechism. If more advanced,
there are occasional terrors of that Scotch tread-mill, which is
trodden alone and in presence of the assembled congregation. The mother
of the philosopher had nothing to dread upon either of those grounds,
but still she felt all the glow of a woman’s curiosity, when the parson
approached her husband with so hasty steps and so important looks.
“Well, Mr. Lascelles,” said the parson, “you must take care of Jock,
and that forthwith, for I am thinking that he is a _genus_.”
“I am very sorry to hear it, Sir,” replied Mr. Lascelles, lifting his
bonnet, “but he is very young, and will get steadier as he grows up.
Has he been letting the cows eat your corn?”
“The Lord forbid either the one thing or the other,” said the parson.
“He is a genus, a mathematical genus, and will be an honour to the
parish when we are both dead and gone.”
The father now understood that the words which he had at first
considered as lamentation were laudatory; the fatted calf was killed,
the parson was feasted, the boy taken from the cows, and sent to
college; and the result is--a perfect Anak in philosophy.----
That the literary men of Scotland are drawn from the whole range of
the population is not only in favour of themselves; it is also highly
advantageous to the humbler classes of the people. In as far, indeed,
as merely literary men are concerned, the advantage to Scotland is by
no means great, because in Scotland they meet with but little reward
to stimulate their exertions. And hence they are obliged to scatter
themselves over the world. But still, the number that remain, and fill
the duties of parochial and other teachers throughout the country, are
superior, not in degree merely, but absolutely in kind, to the teachers
of youth, more especially youth of the poorer classes, in any other
part of the country. In England, for instance, when a man of general
information undertakes the office of teacher, he does it either with
the hope of making a fortune by teaching the children of the rich, or
as a matter of necessity, and as a dernier resort after having been
unfortunate in teaching the children of the poor. But one who is to
have any chance of succeeding in the communication of any thing else
than the mere mechanism of reading, writing, and casting accounts,
which after all does not deserve the name of education, must love his
profession for its own sake, and look upon the exercise of it as an
honour,--which, in one that instructs the children of the lower orders,
can never be the case, unless he himself has been educated as one of
those orders. It is quite natural, and it is also quite true, that the
education which is most beneficial for any one class of society, can
neither be imparted nor purchased by any other class. Charity schools
will never be held in much estimation by any one who has seen the
progress of those poor children for whose education their own parents
pay. There is something in the receiving of any kind of charity which
is humiliating and debasing; and to bestow a charitable education upon
the whole or the greater part of the labouring classes in the country,
would be the surest means not only of leaving them nearly uneducated,
but of destroying their virtue and diminishing their usefulness.
It is to the absence of this humiliating mode of being instructed,
and the presence of one infinitely better and more rational, that the
grand peculiarity of the Athens, and remarkably of the provincial
parts of Scotland, is chiefly to be attributed. The smallness of
Scotch and even of Athenian society, the limited number even of the
labouring classes, who, except in Glasgow, and perhaps a place or
two more, are all intimately known, as well in their connexions as
in their individual characters, and perhaps also the low rate of
wages, and the fewer facilities to solitary dissipation, may no doubt
account for some portion of the intelligence and virtue of the humbler
Scotch. But still, in as far as those circumstances operate, they must
operate upon the higher classes as well as the lower; and, as the
higher classes in Scotland have no such superiority over the higher
classes in other countries, as the lower have over the lower, there
must be some special cause which operates in favour of the Scotch
peasantry. I have looked round for causes; I have found none except
those remarkable advantages in respect of teachers of education,
(unless, perhaps, it be that the sober and simple Kirk of Scotland
has a more wholesome influence upon the poor than a more showy and
aristocratical establishment can exert,) and I think I discovered that
those advantages are quite sufficient to account for the fact.
If there were not something in education that made strongly and
peculiarly in favour of the Scotch peasantry, why should they be
decidedly before the peasantry of England, both in talent and
civilization, while not merely the upper ranks of the provincial
Scotch, but even the learned and official scribes (and pharisees)
of the Athens, are so markedly and so monstrously behind? This
circumstance, unaccustomed as kings may well be supposed to be to
rigorous philosophic observation, did not escape the notice of George
the Fourth. He expressed no unusual admiration at the polish of the
Scotch peers, the elegance of the Scotch ladies, the learning of the
Scotch professors and parsons, or the worshipful appearance of the
Scotch magistrates; but the Scotch people, the crowds who shouted his
welcome on his arrival, and who cheered him every time he appeared in
public, were a source of wonder and a theme for admiration,--and a
proof, against which there is no arguing, that if people receive the
education of gentlemen, their habits will correspond, however scanty
their earnings or scanty their abodes.
In the Athens, this relative superiority of the humbler classes over
those whom chance, ancestry, or office has set up into the high places,
is not only more remarkable than in any other locality that I ever
visited, but the most remarkable, at least the most admirable feature
in the character of the Athens herself.
I have said, and I dare themselves to deny it, that her men in office
are a trifling and a truckling race; I have said, and I dare themselves
to deny it, that a great mass of her scribes unite some of the worst
propensities of the Jew, with none of the best of the attorney; I have
said, and I dare them to deny it, that her schools of philosophy have
“fallen into the sear and yellow leaf,” and that her philosophical
societies pursue trifles from which even school-boys would turn with
disdain; and I have said, that her _gentry_ have neither the capacity
nor the means of encouraging the sciences, literature, and the fine
arts; but though I have said thus, and said it from personal--perhaps
painful, observation, I am bound to add, that in point of intellect,
and all matters considered in point of conduct, the populace of the
Athens are far superior to any with which I am acquainted. When I
visited the public libraries, the men whom I found borrowing the
classical and philosophical books wore aprons, while the occasional
lady or gentleman that I saw there, was satisfied with the romance of
the week, or the pamphlet of the day.
This accumulation of intellect among the lower and labouring classes
is a delightful thing,--when contemplated as studying history or
philosophy, or sporting itself with the finest productions of genius.
In this calmness and tranquillity it puts one in mind of the blue
expanse of the interminable and unfathomable ocean; its immensity
makes you feel it sublime; its depth tints it with that transparent
green which the eye never wearies in contemplating,--but, when the
wind is up, when the billows heave their masses, dash their spray to
the heavens, and deafen the ends of the earth with their roar, the
ocean becomes a fearful and a formidable thing; and, when the winds
of oppression chafe it, so is a population so learned, and so linked
together, as the labouring classes of the Athens.
In the great manufacturing or commercial towns of England, and even,
and perhaps to fully as great a degree, in the British metropolis, one
finds the labourers and operative mechanics, though strong enough at
their labour, and skilful enough at their craft, far down indeed in
the intellectual scale,--reduced from their want of emulation to seek
their relaxation and their pleasure in the indulgence of their merely
animal appetites, and forced, through the want of proper education at
the outset, and fit means of obtaining or extending it afterwards, to
spend their evenings in ale-houses, and rest their distinctions of
honour and superiority on brawls and fights. In Scotland generally, and
in the Athens in particular, it is very different. Almost the whole of
the working classes there have got such an education in their youth
as not only would qualify them for ultimately being masters in their
respective trades, but which gives them an insatiable thirst, not for
technical knowledge in their own professions merely, but for knowledge
in general. If one were to follow them home, after the hours of their
labour are over, one would not find them besotting themselves with
beer, and discussing the circumstances of a prize-fight, in clouds of
smoke over a dirty newspaper, which the reader has to spell as he gets
on. No doubt they have their carousals, and when they do drink, they
drink deeply; but it is not so much for the love of the dissipation,
as for some public or brotherly measure which brings them together. You
find one man laying aside his apron to consult Adam Smith, dispute with
Malthus, or re-judge the judges of the Edinburgh Review; another will
be found solving mathematical problems, or constructing architectural
plans; and all the less proficient will be found attending evening
classes, at which they are instructed by able teachers, and for
reasonable fees.
Society is indeed, as it were, reversed in the Athens; the men of the
law give their evenings to Bacchus; those who are called philosophers,
give theirs to butterflies; the ladies associate for the purposes of
gossipping; and the gentlemen, with praise-worthy gallantry, assist the
ladies; while the artizans pursue literature, and study philosophy.
Thus, although there be more both of the one and the other in the
Athens, than one would at first sight suppose, the supposition is
excusable because they are not to be found where one would first and
most naturally seek for them.
But if these habits make the labouring classes in the Athens more
intelligent and delightful as a people than the same classes are in
England, they render them as much more dangerous as a mob. It is true,
that any demagogue cannot lead them to any mischief for any cause that
he pleases, as is but too often the case with a less informed and
reflective population. But if they are not to be collected or set
on by every casual breath, it is not every casual breath that will
make them disperse, or make them desist from their purpose. They have
repeatedly--indeed upon every occasion where they have been aroused and
brought together, evinced an union and organization which, with arms
and perseverance, would have made them formidable to a large military
force; and they have kept their plans so secret, and executed their
purposes with so much promptitude and skill, that the whole of the
legal and local authorities, in the joint exercise of their wisdom and
their fears, have not been enabled to penetrate the one or prevent the
other. “The Porteus” mob is universally known; and a gentleman who was
an eye-witness gave me such an account of a minor one, both in its
object and in its mischief, that occurred upon the result of the late
Queen Caroline’s trial, as convinced me that their skill and their
spirit have not yet abated.
The populace of the Athens, as well as of most other places, resolved
upon having a general illumination, when the result of that trial was
made known. I do not say this was right, neither do I say that it
was wrong; but it was the will and the wish of the people, and they
did it. The official part of the Athenians were of course against
the measure, on political grounds; and a very large proportion of
the superior classes disliked it, either because they had doubts of
its propriety, or because they disliked the expense and trouble.
Disturbances were apprehended, and the authorities took what they
were pleased to call “vigorous measures:” they gave plenary power to
Archy Campbell,--armed deacon Knox with a great bludgeon,--supported
the constabulary with staves,--hung bayonets and cartouch-boxes
across the shoulders of the writers clerks,--stuck swords behind the
sheriff and advocates-depute,--sent for the Lothian farmers and their
cart-horses,--collected the military detachments,--shotted the guns of
the Castle, and lighted the linstocks,--dined, and put in the internal
armour of divers bottles of wine a-stomach,--and then bolting as many
doors upon themselves as ever they could, sat down to wonder and wait
for the issue. After preparations so extensive in their nature, and
so profound in their organization, one would naturally have supposed
that not so much as a rebellious candle would have been lighted, or an
Athenian lamp broken. But this was by no means the case.
My informant, who had just arrived from Glasgow, where a similar scene
had been performed on the preceding evening, with much credit to the
military, some little to the magistrates, and no positive disgrace to
the people, was induced, by the unusual radiance that he observed in
the street, to walk out and see what was the matter, or rather how the
matter was. He passed along Princes Street, which exhibited nearly the
same number of candles, and the same taste in transparent paintings
that are usual upon other grease-burning and gauze-daubing occasions;
but the street itself was unusually quiet, and free of people. As he
stood gazing at a window opposite the earthen mound, in the decoration
of which some painter had been peculiarly happy in absurdity, a
stranger took him by the arm, and requested him to go to the other
side of the street, as where he stood he was by no means safe. He
hesitated, alleging that he heard nothing. “But it is coming,” said the
stranger, “and the more silent it is the less safe.” They crossed the
street together; and my informant looking towards the other end of the
mound, observed that the lamps were extinguished one by one, and though
not a tongue was heard, there was a heavy and hurried tread as of a
dense crowd rapidly approaching. It came, filling the whole breadth,
and about half the length of the mound. In the front were borne two
transparencies, rendered barely visible by dull blue lights behind.
On each flank were treble lines of men, armed with stakes, which they
had torn from a paling; and the whole square, of which they formed two
sides, was as thick in its composition and as regular and rapid in
its march as the Macedonian phalanx. This thick phalanx moved along
some of the principal streets: when a voice in one key called out one
set of numbers, a shower of missiles instantly demolished every pane
in the windows; and when a voice in another key called out another
set of numbers, not a stone was thrown. This mass of people passed
along the streets, and performed its quantity of mischief with the
silence and rapidity of a destroying angel; and when it had wreaked a
double portion of violence upon the dwelling of the Lord Provost, it
melted away nobody knew how, where, or by what agency. Meanwhile, the
alarm had been given to the powers and protectors; but when they came
to read the riot act, and scatter the spoilers, there remained none
to hear, but shattered houses and frightened inmates, and nothing to
scatter, except fragments of glass. Fortunately, the mischief was not
very great; but the manner in which it was done was enough to show the
superior tactics, and consequently superior danger of an Athenian mob.
It is not, however, the education of politicians, of professional
men, or of the populace, which constitutes that peculiar course of
discipline which deserves to be designated, as “the education of the
Athens.” That education is a training of the manners more than of
the mind,--an initiation into the practices of life, rather than the
principles of any art, or of any science. Most species of education
imply some sort of restraint; but the Athenian education is chiefly
taken up with removing the restraints that have been imposed in other
places, and by other systems; and the rapidity with which students make
proficiency in it is without parallel in any of the ordinary schools
or colleges. A mere boy shall come from the remotest glen or island
of Scotland, as timid as a hare, as modest as a maiden, and as honest
as a man of five feet in a mill-stone quarry; and yet, astonishing to
tell! three little months, sometimes three little weeks, of Athenian
tuition, shall make him a perfect adept in all the theory, and an
expert proficient in all the practice of the Athenian mysteries. No
where else, indeed, can young men be thus educated at so early an
age; and it is the boast of the Athens, that she frees the youth of
Scotland of more of their antiquated notions and narrow prejudices
than they could get rid of even in London itself. The number of young
men who resort annually to the Athens as students in the college, and
under the private lecturers in the different departments of medical
science--who, as I have said, are now in a great measure eclipsing and
supplanting the college professors, together with the still greater
number who throng to the offices of the men of law, form a separate and
unguardianed and unguarded society of youths, greater in proportion to
the whole population than is to be found in any other British city.
They meet with those of but a year’s longer standing, and these meet
those of but another year, and so on, till the total take in every
lesson-abhorring student, and every quill-driving clerk, to the amount
of some thousands,--all of them furnished with at least moderate means
of supporting themselves, and without the slightest check or control
as to how those means shall be expended. The studies of the law-clerks
are of an exceedingly dry description, and those of the other students
are not very different. The infant scribes are set loose at an early
hour in the evening, and as the professors in the Athens are said to
be far more strict in looking after their own fees than after the
attendance of the students, the whole of this mass of young persons
are left to govern themselves and each other for nearly the half of
every day in the week, and almost the whole of Saturday and Sunday.
Athenian apprentices to the law are seldom lodged in the families of
their masters; and it is a rare thing indeed for an Athenian student
to be boarded with his professor. Hence, both classes are allowed to
help each other in the formation of their habits, without any control
from the more experienced part of society. It is the interest of the
lodging-house-keepers, with whom the greater part of them reside, that
their juvenile frolics should not come to the ears of their relations;
and therefore each is allowed to indulge himself as he pleases, and the
only measure of indulgence is the purse.
While this mode of life holds out facilities for indiscretions which
the greater activity and occupation of even a mercantile city prevent,
the great numbers take off the shame of individual transactions, and
give a fashion and eclât to what would no where else be tolerated.
Youths of no great advance in life have their nightly drinking-bouts,
and boys, in the first year of their studies or apprenticeships, have
their occasional carousals in ale-houses suited to the state of their
funds. As the greater number of young men in the Athens, setting
aside the working classes, whose conduct is very different, are of
this description, perhaps they stamp upon the whole place much of its
character; and, especially in the several professions connected with
the law, they in all probability stamp the greater part of it.
The results are just what might be expected. There is no place that
I visited where both the manners and the morals of young persons
are so free; and, with a greater partiality for the bottle, and a
greater proneness to all its consequences, there is perhaps less moral
feeling, and a less clear perception either of intellectual or of moral
truth, among young men who have passed through the several stages of
an Athenian education, than among those who have had their novitiate
any where else. Too young for reflection, and too much exposed to
temptation for study, their minds become as desultory as their manners
are dissipated; and while yet they hardly know any thing, they are
prompt in their decision of every thing; and having once found that it
is easier, and gives more notoriety to decide without thinking, than to
think without deciding, they become as dogmatical in speech as they are
shallow in knowledge, and raw in experience.
The force of ardent and inexperienced passions, just set loose from
paternal restraint, the force of every day’s example, the force of
ridicule, and frequently also the force of direct compulsion, all
conspire to drive every young man who goes to reside in the Athens
into these courses, and to keep him in them as long as he continues
to reside in the Athens; and be it for study or for business, the
novitiate is in ordinary cases sufficiently long to stamp the character
for life. Accordingly it has been remarked, that though young men who
profited by a regular course of Athenian study, be often very showy
and frequently very jovial as companions, they are not very pre-eminent
for sagacity as counsellors, or trust-worthiness as friends. Coming
from the provinces in all their greenness, without any principle, save
that prudence which their parents tried to inculcate, and getting rid
of that very speedily, they are left like blank-paper, upon which the
Athens may inscribe her peculiar characters. There they grow up, and
acquire the passions, and learn the vices of men, while they have the
intellect only of boys.
Every part of the system tends to debauch their morals, and deaden
their intellectual perceptions, and there are some parts of it that
tend strongly to make them as impertinent as they are ill-informed.
With many of them, and more especially with those connected with the
law, public speaking, or rather public wrangling, such as they daily
hear before their Lordships, is regarded as the foremost and best of
all qualifications. Accordingly, they not only have little disputing
societies, at which the most profound and grave questions are discussed
and decided in the least grave and profound manner, but they also,
not sometimes, but very frequently, carry the same practices into
their carousing parties, whether in their own lodgings or at their
respective ale-houses. Thus they learn to make speeches, which, like
inflated bladders, are of a considerable size, and smooth withal on
the surface, but have neither solidity nor weight. Of those who are
thus educated, a considerable portion are scattered over the country,
and perhaps in this way the Athens draws both upon the virtue and the
intelligence of the age, in full for all that she gives in the way of
other education. Perhaps, indeed, setting aside the political taints
which have been noted as emanating from the Athens, it were just as
well for Scotland, and not a bit worse for England, that Athenian
education of all kinds were confined between the Loch of Duddingstone
and the Water of Leith. Of those again who are thus educated, and who
remain in the Athens, it may perhaps be said that they turn round and
inflict upon those who come after, full retribution for what those who
went before inflicted upon themselves; and that with all her boasted
elegance and taste, there is perhaps no city in which vice is more
generally or more obtrusively practised, than in this self-boasted
model of taste and purity.
The effects of this system of education may be traced in the manners,
and especially in the conversation, of the Athenians, even when they
have, as one would suppose, risen above the standard and outlived the
vices of those juvenile associations. The jokes which are quoted as
being the indigenous crop of the Parliament-House habitually, and even
of the bench occasionally, have almost uniformly a latitude in them,
which would not be tolerated in similar places elsewhere; and perhaps
one of the most offensive collections that could be raked together,
would be a list of all the good things with which the Athenians
embellish their conversations, as having been said and done by the men
of whom they boast; but as such a collection would be relished no where
except in the Athens, and with Athenian disciples, it may, with great
propriety, be left as a chosen preserve, in which her own literati
may poach, when otherwise their stores become exhausted, as must
occasionally be the case even with them.
A system of male education, such as I have attempted to describe,
must of course require a peculiar system for females; but as female
education is every where much more matter of fact than of philosophy,
it would be improper to go into any investigation or argument about
it. In speaking of such a subject, I might err: by remaining silent, I
cannot.