"I labour to diffuse the important good
Till this great truth by all be understood,
That all the pious duty which we owe
Our parents, friends, our country, and our God,
The seeds of every virtue here below,
From discipline and early culture grow."
WEST.
The different chapters of a novel remind me of a convoy of vessels. The
incidents and _dramatis personæ_ are so many respective freights, all
under the charge of the inventor, who, like a man-of-war, must see them
all safely, and together, into port. And as the commanding officer, when
towing one vessel which has lagged behind up to the rest, finds that in
the meantime another has dropped nearly out of sight, and is obliged to
cast off the one in tow, to perform the same necessary duty towards the
sternmost, so am I necessitated for the present to quit Nicholas and
Newton, while I run down to Edward Forster and his _protégée_.
It must be recollected that, during our narrative, "Time has rolled his
ceaseless course," and season has succeeded season, until the infant, in
its utter helplessness to lift its little hands for succour, has sprung
up into a fair blue-eyed little maiden of nearly eight years old, light
as a fairy in her proportions, bounding as a fawn in her gait; her eyes
beaming with joy, and her cheeks suffused with the blush of health, when
tripping over the sea-girt hills; meek and attentive when listening to
the precepts of her fond and adopted parent.
"Faithful," the Newfoundland dog, is no more, but his portrait hangs
over the mantel-piece in the little parlour. Mrs Beazely, the
housekeeper, has become inert and querulous from rheumatism and the
burden of added years. A little girl, daughter of Robertson, the
fisherman, has been called in to perform her duties, while she basks in
the summer's sun or hangs over the winter's fire. Edward Forster's whole
employment and whole delight has long been centred in his darling child,
whose beauty of person, quickness of intellect, generous disposition,
and affectionate heart, amply repay him for his kind protection.
Of all chapters which can be ventured upon, one upon education is
perhaps the most tiresome. Most willingly would I pass it over, not only
for the reader's sake, but for mine own; for his--because it cannot well
be otherwise than dry and uninteresting; for mine--because I do not
exactly know how to write it.
But this cannot be. Amber was not brought up according to the prescribed
maxims of Mesdames Appleton and Hamilton; and as effects cannot be
satisfactorily comprehended without the causes are made known, so it
becomes necessary, not only that the chapter should be written, but,
what is still more vexatious, absolutely necessary that it should be
read.
Before I enter upon this most unpleasant theme--unpleasant to all
parties, for no one likes to teach, and no one likes to learn,--I cannot
help remarking how excessively _au fait_ we find most elderly maiden
ladies upon every point connected with the rearing of our unprofitable
species. They are erudite upon every point _ab ovo_, and it would appear
that their peculiar knowledge of the _theory_ can but arise from their
attentions having never been diverted by the _practice_.
Let it be the teeming mother or the new-born babe--the teething infant
or the fractious child--the dirty, pinafored urchin or sampler-spoiling
girl--school-boy lout or sapling Miss--voice-broken, self-admiring
hobby-de-hoy, or expanding conscious and blushing maiden, the whole
arcana of nature and of art has been revealed to them alone.
Let it be the scarlet fever or a fit of passion, the measles or a
shocking fib--whooping-cough or apple-stealing--learning too slow or
eating too fast--slapping a sister or clawing a brother--let the disease
be bodily or mental, they alone possess the panacea; and blooming
matrons, spreading out in their pride, like the anxious clucking hen,
over their numerous encircling offspring, who have borne them with a
mother's throes, watched over them with a mother's anxious mind, and
reared them with a mother's ardent love, are considered to be wholly
incompetent, in the opinion of these dessicated and barren branches of
Nature's stupendous, ever-bearing tree.
Mrs Beazely, who had lost her husband soon after marriage, was not fond
of children, as they interfered with her habits of extreme neatness. As
far as Amber's education was concerned, all we can say is, that if the
old housekeeper did no good, she certainly did her no harm. As Amber
increased in years and intelligence, so did her thirst for knowledge on
topics upon which Mrs Beazely was unable to give her any correct
information. Under these circumstances, when applied to, Mrs Beazely,
who was too conscientious to mislead the child, was accustomed to place
her hand upon her back, and complain of the rheumatiz--"Such a stitch,
my dear love, can't talk now--ask your pa when he comes home."
Edward Forster had maturely weighed the difficulties of the charge
imposed upon him, that of educating a female. The peculiarity of her
situation, without a friend in the wide world except himself; and his
days, in all probability, numbered to that period at which she would
most require an adviser--that period, when the heart rebels against the
head and too often overthrows the legitimate dynasty of reason,
determined him to give a masculine character to her education, as most
likely to prove the surest safeguard through a deceitful world.
Aware that more knowledge is to be imparted to a child by conversation
than by any other means (for by this system education is divested of its
drudgery), during the first six years of her life Amber knew little more
than the letters of the alphabet. It was not until her desire of
information was excited to such a degree as to render her anxious to
obtain her own means of acquiring it that Amber was taught to read; and
then it was at her own request. Edward Forster was aware that a child of
six years old, willing to learn, would soon pass by another who had been
drilled to it at an earlier age and against its will, and whose mind had
been checked in its expansive powers by the weight which constantly
oppressed its infant memory. Until the above age, the mind of Amber had
been permitted to run as unconfined through its own little regions of
fancy, as her active body had been allowed to spring up the adjacent
hills--and both were equally beautified and strengthened by the healthy
exercise.
Religion was deeply impressed upon her grateful heart; but it was
simplified almost to unity, that it might be clearly understood. It was
conveyed to her through the glorious channel of nature, and God was
loved and feared from the contemplation and admiration of His works.
Did Amber fix her eyes upon the distant ocean, or watch the rolling of
the surf; did they wander over the verdant hills, or settle on the
beetling cliff; did she raise her cherub-face to the heavens, and wonder
at the studded firmament of stars, or the moon sailing in her cold
beauty, or the sun blinding her in his warmth and splendour;--she knew
that it was God who made them all. Did she ponder over the variety of
the leaf; did she admire the painting of the flower, or watch the
motions of the minute insect, which, but for her casual observation,
might have lived and died unseen;--she felt, she knew that all was made
for man's advantage or enjoyment, and that God was great and good. Her
orisons were short, but they were sincere; unlike the child who, night
and morning, stammers through a "Belief" which it cannot comprehend,
and whose ideas of religion are, from injudicious treatment, too soon
connected with feelings of impatience and disgust.
Curiosity has been much abused. From a habit we have contracted in this
world of not calling things by their right names, it has been decried as
a vice, whereas it ought to have been classed as a virtue. Had Adam
first discovered the forbidden fruit he would have tasted it, without,
like Eve, requiring the suggestions of the devil to urge him on to
disobedience. But if by curiosity was occasioned the fall of man, it is
the same passion by which he is spurred to rise again, and reappear only
inferior to the Deity. The curiosity of little minds may be impertinent;
but the curiosity of great minds is the thirst for knowledge--the daring
of our immortal powers--the enterprise of the soul, to raise itself
again to its original high estate. It was curiosity which stimulated the
great Newton to search into the laws of heaven, and enabled his
master-mind to translate the vast mysterious page of Nature, ever before
our eyes since the creation of the world, but never, till he appeared,
to be read by mortal man. It is this passion which must be nurtured in
our childhood, for upon its healthy growth and vigour depends the future
expansion of the mind.
How little money need be expended to teach a child, and yet what a
quantity of books we have to pay for! Amber had hardly ever looked into
a book, and yet she knew more, that is, had more general useful
knowledge than others who were twice her age. How small was Edward
Forster's little parlour--how humble the furniture it contained!--a
carpet, a table, a few chairs, a small China vase, as an ornament, on
the mantel-piece. How few were the objects brought to Amber's view in
their small secluded home! The plates and knives for dinner, a silver
spoon or two, and their articles of wearing apparel. Yet how endless,
how inexhaustible was the amusement and instruction derived from these
trifling sources!--for these were Forster's books.
The carpet--its hempen ground carried them to the north, from whence
the material came, the inhabitants of the frozen world, their manners
and their customs, the climate and their cities, their productions and
their sources of wealth. Its woollen surface, with its various
dyes--each dye containing an episode of an island or a state, a point of
natural history, or of art and manufacture.
The mahogany table, like some magic vehicle, transported them in a
second to the torrid zone, where the various tropical flowers and fruit,
the towering cocoa-nut, the spreading palm, the broad-leaved banana, the
fragrant pine--all that was indigenous to the country, all that was
peculiar in the scenery and the clime, were pictured to the imagination
of the delighted Amber.
The little vase upon the mantel-piece swelled into a splendid atlas of
eastern geography, an inexhaustible folio describing Indian customs, the
Asiatic splendour of costume, the gorgeous thrones of the descendants of
the Prophet, the history of the Prophet himself, the superior instinct
and stupendous body of the elephant; all that Edward Forster had
collected of nature or of art, through these extensive regions, were
successively displayed, until they returned to China, from whence they
had commenced their travels. Thus did the little vase, like the vessel
taken up by the fisherman in the "Arabian Nights," contain a giant
confined by the seal of Solomon--Knowledge.
The knife and spoon brought food unto the mind as well as to the body.
The mines were entered, the countries pointed out in which they were to
be found, the various metals, their value, and the uses to which they
were applied. The dress again led them abroad; the cotton hung in pods
upon the tree, the silkworm spun its yellow tomb, all the process of
manufacture was explained. The loom again was worked by fancy, until the
article in comment was again produced.
Thus was Amber instructed and amused: and thus, with nature for his
hornbook, and art for his primer, did the little parlour of Edward
Forster expand into the "universe."