Habit is said to be a second nature, and it is often stronger than the
first. At first we easily take the bend from the hand of the master, but
the second nature, which is of our own making, is frequently proof
against any alteration. How important, then, is _education_, which gives
the turn and moulding to the mind while it is flexible, fixes the habits,
and forms the character! The discipline of the mind, with respect to its
natural bias, is either misdirected or misunderstood in nine cases out of
ten, and latent talents or tendencies, which by proper culture might be
rendered sources of enjoyment to the possessor, and useful to the
community, are restrained, if not too powerful for suppression, from
their proper developement, by absurd and artificial treatment.
In the upper classes, a parent, perhaps, incapable of estimating the
capacity of his son, determines with himself that the profession, suppose
of divinity, of law, or of medicine, is the most lucrative,
gentlemanlike, or otherwise eligible, and that the boy shall be educated
accordingly.
The unfortunate youth who has no talent for the acquisition of languages,
and cannot comprehend the simplest proposition in geometry, is condemned
to pursue a prescribed routine, and to pass many of the most precious
years of his life in the unavailing effort to learn, through the drudgery
of a classical school, what is repugnant to his taste, and beyond his
powers of comprehension; and all this time, from being constantly engaged
in _thumbing_ the elementary books of the dead languages (which are never
at his _finger ends_, in the acceptation of the common phrase), he grows
up shamefully ignorant of his vernacular tongue, in which he can neither
read with fluency nor spell with correctness.
The schoolmaster, however, is expected to prepare him for the university
within a given time, and he must be _made up_ for entrance accordingly.
If the parents are told that Young Hopeful has no turn for a literary
life, no capacity for learning what is required, they doubt the judgment
of the informant, who tells them the truth; for the acknowledgment of
this would be an indirect admission of their own incapacity; and in
proportion to their ignorance and dullness, is their self assurance that
their booby has excellent abilities. The youth is therefore forced
forward in spite of his natural repugnance to books; and if afterwards
smuggled through the university into a profession which may give him
place or emolument, without ability or exertion on his part, he disgraces
his station by general ignorance and unfitness; and if he be admitted
into a profession which yields honour or emolument only in proportion to
talents and industry, he totally fails of the object, and it is
discovered too late that the selection of his avocation was in some way
_unlucky_.
Now, it is very probable that if such an every-day boy had been permitted
to pursue some track for which his inclinations qualified him, instead of
being limited to a course of unsuitable and distasteful occupations, he
might have acquired useful knowledge of some sort. For example, supposing
him to stumble at metrical "longs and shorts," or to be stuck between the
horns of a dilemma, or be lost amidst the mazes of metaphysics, he might
have that peculiar turn which would render him a good farmer, an
excellent judge of "long and short wools" or of "long and short horns,"
or that shrewdness which would render him a clever tradesman, a man
"Who knows what's what, and that's as high
As metaphysic wit doth fly."
And so certain am I that many young men who enter our university would
prefer and far better comprehend the plain and practical lecture of a
professor of agriculture, surrounded by models of machinery and plates of
cattle, &c., than lectures of a far more pretending character, that I
cannot avoid lamenting the deficiency in the department of agriculture
which Socrates designated "the nurse and mother of all the arts," and
Gibbon "the foundation of all manufactures."
The example afforded in this respect by the University of Edinburgh is
worthy of the imitation of Trinity College. To afford at least the
opportunities of gaining such information on this subject as the mind may
be capable of receiving or predisposed to receive, cannot but be deemed
judicious. And the theoretical knowledge of husbandry is incalculably
more needed by the gentry and middle classes of Ireland than by those of
the same grades in Scotland, where almost every land-proprietor and
farmer understands the subject more or less.
Far be it from me to decry the advantages of what is called learning, but
I would have a more diversified course, both in our schools _of every
class_, and in the universities, so as to comprehend those useful
branches of information, to which the student, if denied by Providence
the faculties requisite for the attainment of others, may apply himself
with pleasure or advantage.
I have met with many young persons of exceeding dullness in _book
learning_, of decided distaste to the pursuits of _literature_, who have
manifested a quick apprehension of _mechanical contrivances_, practically
exhibited a love of natural history, of gardening, of agriculture, of
something, in short, of a utilitarian character. If these tendencies had
been duly cultivated, the results would have been favourable to the
individuals themselves, and probably to the public also.
I have often been puzzled to account for the pre-eminence of the Scotch
as a clever and a _thinking_ people: it cannot be from atmospheric
influence; and I am disposed to question the correctness of the assertion
of a grave Caledonian, that the fine spirit of philosophical inquiry
which distinguishes his countrymen is mainly attributable to their use of
oatmeal porridge; it must rather be from well-directed education, from
the early acquired habit of _thinking for one's self_, and of giving _a
reason_ for every thing as far as they can, that the Scotch are so
intelligent and so fitted for their respective stations in the social
circle.
My own countrymen are _naturally_ as shrewd and intellectual as the
Scotch, but their minds are too generally ill disciplined, and school
education, for all classes, is too generally defective _every where_.
Several hours of the day are passed in wearisome restraint within the
walls of a schoolroom, in learning words without ideas, sounds without
sense; the mind being seldom engaged in the tasks with either pleasure or
profit.
And besides the impediments which obstruct the progress of useful
occupation, arising from the blindness of parents, the unfitness of
teachers, and the incapacity of pupils, there are to be encountered in
all schools the natural preference of idleness to any kind of systematic
occupation, the love of mischief and freaks, which prevail among
combinations of boys, and the difficulty of analysing character and
dispositions in crowded seminaries.
But in schools for the poor, where order and discipline are easily
enforced; in places of _private_ education, and under the paternal roof,
where, by far the greatest degree of happiness and simplicity of
character are enjoyed and preserved--in such cases, in which instructors
and parents are qualified to educate, a system of literary instruction,
combining with it relaxation of a useful kind, may be pursued.
Among the latter I would place gardening and botany foremost among the
out-of-door occupations, and these pursuits apply to both sexes, and to
the humblest of the peasantry, as well as to the nobles of the land, for
with the idea of a garden is connected every association that is pure and
heaven-born. I myself even now look back upon those of my childish hours
which were employed in the garden, with unmixed pleasure, and the first
early crop of radishes which I raised with my own hands in a garden
border, afforded me more innocent pride than any far more valuable crop
that I have subsequently raised upon my farm. The care of flowers and
shrubs, and the absence of corrupting influences, during the indulgence
of this pursuit, render it a subject of extreme interest in the formation
of individual and national character.
Those of the poor who are disposed to take a real interest in their
gardens as is the case of thousands of the English peasantry, instead of
finding their summer evening occupations in their allotments wearisome
after their day of other toil, seem to find relaxation in the
comparatively light work which they thus perform for _themselves_; and in
the pleasurable contemplation of their own flowers, though they be but
_common_ beauties, and of their own tiny crops, they feel that calmness
and tranquillity, that quiet satisfaction, which lay the passions at
rest, and therefore indispose for the boisterous mirth and the ungodly
society of the frequenters of the beer-house or the gin-shop.
Poultry, pigeons, and rabbits, may be reared by young people, both for
amusement and profit. The child who understands much of the natural
history of domestic animals from practical observation, and perceives the
force of those influences which unite the parent and the offspring, will
so far sympathize with, and apprehend the nature of, those influences, as
to feel pain at the thought of wantonly dissociating that connection, and
would be far less likely "to rob the poor birds of their young," than the
child who had not been familiarized with the nature and habits of the
feathered race.
Children who have watched over a brood of chickens from the moment of
their first disengagement from the shell, and witnessed the instinct with
which the Creator causes them to come at the call of their mother, and
contemplate the love with which "the hen gathers her chickens under her
wings," will take no pleasure in destroying that life of which they had
anxiously traced the progress from the hour in which the first sign of
developed animation appeared. It is improbable that the boy (and far more
so that the girl, who is naturally kind) to whose hand the birds have
fearlessly looked for food, while they clamorously delighted in his
presence, could in his manhood witness any torturing of the feathered
race, such as the diabolical barbarity of throwing at cocks on Shrove
Tuesday, which used to disgrace Great Britain; or take pleasure in the
barbarities of a cock-fight[A] or a gander-fight.[B]
For those who are excluded from the enjoyments of rural life, and those
occupations to which I have referred, there remain other pursuits of
extreme interest, according to their respective tastes--geology,
chemistry, mechanics, which employ both the head and the hand. Many a
youth may be taught "sermons in stones," &c.--see the quotation in
Shakspeare, _As You Like It_--and be kept from bad company, by having
access to a lathe, and becoming practically "a tool-making animal," who,
from his distaste to books, would be otherwise miserably destitute of
rational employment. I do not wish to see either young or old persons too
much
"Agog for novelty where'er it lies,
In mosses, fleas, or cockleshells, or flies"--
But natural history, to a reasonable extent, is surely a useful and
improving study for both rich and poor; it leads them to look from the
creature to the Creator; to contemplate His works, His glories, and His
beneficent _designs_, both in the material and the spiritual world. In
short, I would supply the mind and body with those occupations which best
harmonise together, and most powerfully tend to overcome the degrading
and demoralising effects of ignorance, which is confessedly the greatest
enemy to religion, to peace, good order, and social happiness.