many a year before, in the germ and first outlines of it) is now
fairly afoot, and in slow, but determined, beginning of realization,
I will endeavour in this and the next following letter to set its
main features completely before you; though, remember, the design
would certainly be a shallow and vain one, if its bearings could be
either shortly explained, or quickly understood. I have much in my own
hope, which I know you are as yet incapable of hoping, but which your
enemies are dexterous in discouraging, and eager to discourage. Have
you noticed how curiously and earnestly the greater number of public
journals that have yet quoted these papers, allege, for their part,
nothing but the difficulties in our way; and that with as much contempt
as they can venture to express? No editor could say to your face that
the endeavour to give you fresh air, wholesome employment, and high
education, was reprehensible or dangerous. The worst he can venture
to say is, that it is ridiculous,--which you observe is, by most,
declared as wittily as they may.
Some must, indeed, candidly think, as well as say so. Education of
any noble kind has of late been so constantly given only to the idle
classes, or, at least, to those who conceive it a privilege to be idle,
[27] that it is difficult for any person, trained in modern habits
of thought, to imagine a true and refined scholarship, of which the
essential foundation is to be skill in some useful labour. Time and
trial will show which of the two conceptions of education is indeed
the ridiculous one--and have shown, many and many a day before this,
if any one would look at the showing. Such trial, however, I mean anew
to make, with what life is left to me, and help given to me: and the
manner of it is to be this, that, few or many, as our company may be,
we will secure for the people of Britain as wide spaces of British
ground as we can; and on such spaces of freehold land we will cause
to be trained as many British children as we can, in healthy, brave,
and kindly life, to every one of whom there shall be done true justice,
and dealt fair opportunity of "advancement," or what else may, indeed,
be good for them.
"True justice!" I might more shortly have written "justice," only you
are all now so much in the way of asking for what you think "rights,"
which, if you could get them, would turn out to be the deadliest
wrongs;--and you suffer so much from an external mechanism of justice,
which for centuries back has abetted, or, at best, resulted in, every
conceivable manner of injustice--that I am compelled to say "True
justice," to distinguish it from that which is commonly imagined by the
populace, or attainable under the existing laws, of civilized nations.
This true justice--(not to spend time, which I am apt to be too fond
of doing, in verbal definition), consists mainly in the granting to
every human being due aid in the development of such faculties as
it possesses for action and enjoyment; primarily, for useful action,
because all enjoyment worth having (nay, all enjoyment not harmful)
must in some way arise out of that, either in happy energy, or rightly
complacent and exulting rest.
"Due" aid, you see, I have written. Not "equal" aid. One of the
first statements I made to you respecting this domain of ours was
"there shall be no equality in it." In education especially, true
justice is curiously unequal--if you choose to give it a hard name,
iniquitous. The right law of it is that you are to take most pains
with the best material. Many conscientious masters will plead for the
exactly contrary iniquity, and say you should take the most pains
with the dullest boys. But that is not so (only you must be very
careful that you know which are the dull boys; for the cleverest look
often very like them). Never waste pains on bad ground; let it remain
rough, though properly looked after and cared for; it will be of best
service so; but spare no labour on the good, or on what has in it
the capacity of good. The tendency of modern help and care is quite
morbidly and madly in reverse of this great principle. Benevolent
persons are always, by preference, busy on the essentially bad; and
exhaust themselves in efforts to get maximum intellect from cretins,
and maximum virtue from criminals. Meantime, they take no care to
ascertain (and for the most part when ascertained, obstinately refuse
to remove) the continuous sources of cretinism and crime, and suffer
the most splendid material in child-nature to wander neglected about
the streets, until it has become rotten to the degree in which they
feel prompted to take an interest in it. Now I have not the slightest
intention--understand this, I beg of you, very clearly--of setting
myself to mend or reform people; when they are once out of form they
may stay so, for me. [28] But of what unspoiled stuff I can find to my
hand I will cut the best shapes there is room for; shapes unalterable,
if it may be, for ever.
"The best shapes there is room for," since, according to the conditions
around them, men's natures must expand or remain contracted; and, yet
more distinctly, let me say, "the best shapes that there is substance
for," seeing that we must accept contentedly infinite difference in
the original nature and capacity, even at their purest; which it
is the first condition of right education to make manifest to all
persons--most of all to the persons chiefly concerned. That other
men should know their measure, is, indeed, desirable; but that they
should know it themselves, is wholly necessary.
"By competitive examination of course?" Sternly, no! but under
absolute prohibition of all violent and strained effort--most of
all envious or anxious effort--in every exercise of body and mind;
and by enforcing on every scholar's heart, from the first to the last
stage of his instruction, the irrevocable ordinance of the third Fors
Clavigera, that his mental rank among men is fixed from the hour
he was born,--that by no temporary or violent effort can he train,
though he may seriously injure the faculties he has; that by no manner
of effort can he increase them; and that his best happiness is to
consist in the admiration of powers by him for ever unattainable,
and of arts, and deeds, by him ever inimitable.
Some ten or twelve years ago, when I was first actively engaged in
Art teaching, a young Scottish student came up to London to put
himself under me, having taken many prizes (justly, with respect
to the qualities looked for by the judges) in various schools of
Art. He worked under me very earnestly and patiently for some time;
and I was able to praise his doings in what I thought very high terms:
nevertheless, there remained always a look of mortification on his
face, after he had been praised, however unqualifiedly. At last, he
could hold no longer, but one day, when I had been more than usually
complimentary, turned to me with an anxious, yet not unconfident
expression, and asked: "Do you think, sir, that I shall ever draw as
well as Turner?"
I paused for a second or two, being much taken aback; and then
answered, [29] "It is far more likely you should be made Emperor of
All the Russias. There is a new Emperor every fifteen or twenty years,
on the average; and by strange hap, and fortunate cabal, anybody might
be made Emperor. But there is only one Turner in five hundred years,
and God decides, without any admission of auxiliary cabal, what piece
of clay His soul is to be put in."
It was the first time that I had been brought into direct
collision with the modern system of prize-giving and competition;
and the mischief of it was, in the sequel, clearly shown to me,
and tragically. This youth had the finest powers of mechanical
execution I have ever met with, but was quite incapable of invention,
or strong intellectual effort of any kind. Had he been taught early
and thoroughly to know his place, and be content with his faculty, he
would have been one of the happiest and most serviceable of men. But,
at the Art schools, he got prize after prize for his neat handling;
and having, in his restricted imagination, no power of discerning the
qualities of great work, all the vanity of his nature was brought out
unchecked; so that, being intensely industrious and conscientious,
as well as vain, (it is a Scottish combination of character not
unfrequent, [30]) he naturally expected to become one of the greatest
of men. My answer not only mortified, but angered him, and made him
suspicious of me; he thought I wanted to keep his talents from being
fairly displayed, and soon afterwards asked leave (he was then in my
employment as well as under my teaching) to put himself under another
master. I gave him leave at once, telling him, "if he found the other
master no better to his mind, he might come back to me whenever he
chose." The other master giving him no more hope of advancement than
I did, he came back to me; I sent him into Switzerland, to draw Swiss
architecture; but instead of doing what I bid him, quietly, and nothing
else, he set himself, with furious industry, to draw snowy mountains
and clouds, that he might show me he could draw like Albert Durer,
or Turner;--spent his strength in agony of vain effort;--caught cold,
fell into decline, and died. How many actual deaths are now annually
caused by the strain and anxiety of competitive examination, it would
startle us all if we could know: but the mischief done to the best
faculties of the brain in all cases, and the miserable confusion and
absurdity involved in the system itself, which offers every place,
not to the man who is indeed fitted for it, but to the one who,
on a given day, chances to have bodily strength enough to stand the
cruellest strain, are evils infinite in their consequences, and more
lamentable than many deaths.
This, then, shall be the first condition of what education it may
become possible for us to give, that the strength of the youths shall
never be strained; and that their best powers shall be developed in
each, without competition, though they shall have to pass crucial,
but not severe, examinations, attesting clearly to themselves and to
other people, not the utmost they can do, but that at least they can
do some things accurately and well: their own certainty of this being
accompanied with the quite as clear and much happier certainty, that
there are many other things which they will never be able to do at all.
"The happier certainty?" Yes. A man's happiness consists infinitely
more in admiration of the faculties of others than in confidence in
his own. That reverent admiration is the perfect human gift in him;
all lower animals are happy and noble in the degree they can share
it. A dog reverences you, a fly does not; the capacity of partly
understanding a creature above him, is the dog's nobility. Increase
such reverence in human beings, and you increase daily their happiness,
peace, and dignity; take it away, and you make them wretched as well
as vile. But for fifty years back modern education has devoted itself
simply to the teaching of impudence; and then we complain that we
can no more manage our mobs! "Look at Mr. Robert Stephenson," (we
tell a boy,) "and at Mr. James Watt, and Mr. William Shakspeare! You
know you are every bit as good as they; you have only to work in the
same way, and you will infallibly arrive at the same eminence." Most
boys believe the "you are every bit as good as they," without any
painful experiment: but the better-minded ones really take the
advised measures; and as, at the end of all things, there can be
but one Mr. James Watt or Mr. William Shakspeare, the rest of the
candidates for distinction, finding themselves, after all their work,
still indistinct, think it must be the fault of the police, and are
riotous accordingly.
To some extent it is the fault of the police, truly enough,
considering as the police of Europe, or teachers of politeness
and civic manners, its higher classes,--higher either by race or
faculty. Police they are, or else are nothing: bound to keep order,
both by clear teaching of the duty and delight of Respect, and, much
more, by being themselves--Respectable; whether as priests, or kings,
or lords, or generals, or admirals;--if they will only take care to
be verily that, the Respect will be forthcoming, with little pains:
nay, even Obedience, inconceivable to modern free souls as it may
be, we shall get again, as soon as there is anybody worth obeying,
and who can keep us out of shoal water.
Not but that those two admirals and their captains have been sorely,
though needfully, dealt with. It was, doubtless, not a scene of the
brightest in our naval history--that Agincourt, entomologically,
as it were, pinned to her wrong place, off Gibraltar; but in truth,
it was less the captain's fault, than the ironmonger's. You need not
think you can ever have seamen in iron ships; it is not in flesh and
blood to be vigilant when vigilance is so slightly necessary: the
best seaman born will lose his qualities, when he knows he can steam
against wind and tide, [31] and has to handle ships so large that the
care of them is necessarily divided among many persons. If you want
sea-captains indeed, like Sir Richard Grenville or Lord Dundonald,
you must give them small ships, and wooden ones,--nothing but oak,
pine, and hemp to trust to, above or below,--and those, trustworthy.
You little know how much is implied in the two conditions of boys'
education that I gave you in my last letter,--that they shall all
learn either to ride or sail; nor by what constancy of law the power
of highest discipline and honour is vested by Nature in the two
chivalries--of the Horse and the Wave. Both are significative of the
right command of man over his own passions; but they teach, farther,
the strange mystery of relation that exists between his soul and the
wild natural elements on the one hand, and the wild lower animals
on the other. The sea-riding gave their chief strength of temper
to the Athenian, Norman, Pisan, and Venetian,--masters of the arts
of the world: but the gentleness of chivalry, properly so called,
depends on the recognition of the order and awe of lower and loftier
animal-life, first clearly taught in the myth of Chiron, and in his
bringing up of Jason, Æsculapius, and Achilles, but most perfectly by
Homer in the fable of the horses of Achilles, and the part assigned
to them, in relation to the death of his friend, and in prophecy of
his own. There is, perhaps, in all the 'Iliad' nothing more deep
in significance--there is nothing in all literature more perfect
in human tenderness, and honour for the mystery of inferior life,
[32] than the verses that describe the sorrow of the divine horses
at the death of Patroclus, and the comfort given them by the greatest
of the gods. You shall read Pope's translation; it does not give you
the manner of the original, but it entirely gives you the passion:--
Meantime, at distance from the scene of blood,
The pensive steeds of great Achilles stood;
Their godlike master slain before their eyes
They wept, and shared in human miseries.
In vain Automedon now shakes the rein,
Now plies the lash, and soothes and threats in vain;
Nor to the fight nor Hellespont they go,
Restive they stood, and obstinate in woe;
Still as a tombstone, never to be moved,
On some good man or woman unreproved
Lays its eternal weight; or fix'd as stands
A marble courser by the sculptor's hands,
Placed on the hero's grave. Along their face,
The big round drops coursed down with silent pace,
Conglobing on the dust. Their manes, that late
Circled their arched necks, and waved in state,
Trail'd on the dust, beneath the yoke were spread,
And prone to earth was hung their languid head:
Nor Jove disdain'd to cast a pitying look,
While thus relenting to the steeds he spoke:
"Unhappy coursers of immortal strain!
Exempt from age, and deathless now in vain!
Did we your race on mortal man bestow,
Only, alas! to share in mortal woe?
For ah! what is there, of inferior birth,
That breathes or creeps upon the dust of earth;
What wretched creature of what wretched kind,
Than man more weak, calamitous and blind?
A miserable race! But cease to mourn!
For not by you shall Priam's son be borne
High on the splendid car; one glorious prize
He rashly boasts; the rest our will denies.
Ourself will swiftness to your nerves impart,
Ourself with rising spirits swell your heart.
Automedon your rapid flight shall bear
Safe to the navy through the storm of war...."
He said; and, breathing in th' immortal horse
Excessive spirit, urged them to the course;
From their high manes they shake the dust, and bear
The kindling chariot through the parted war.
Is not that a prettier notion of horses than you will get from your
betting English chivalry on the Derby day? [33] We will have, please
heaven, some riding, not as jockeys ride, and some sailing, not as
pots and kettles sail, once more on English land and sea; and out
of both, kindled yet again, the chivalry of heart of the Knight of
Athens, and Eques of Rome, and Ritter of Germany, and Chevalier of
France, and Cavalier of England--chivalry gentle always and lowly,
among those who deserved their name of knight; showing mercy to whom
mercy was due, and honour to whom honour.
It exists yet, and out of La Mancha, too (or none of us could exist),
whatever you may think in these days of ungentleness and Dishonour. It
exists secretly, to the full, among you yourselves, and the recovery of
it again would be to you as the opening of a well in the desert. You
remember what I told you were the three spiritual treasures of your
life--Admiration, Hope, and Love. Admiration is the Faculty of giving
Honour. It is the best word we have for the various feelings of wonder,
reverence, awe, and humility, which are needful for all lovely work,
and which constitute the habitual temper of all noble and clear-sighted
persons, as opposed to the "impudence" of base and blind ones. The
Latins called this great virtue "pudor," of which our "impudence"
is the negative; the Greeks had a better word, "aidôs;" too wide
in the bearings of it for me to explain to you to-day, even if it
could be explained before you recovered the feeling;--which, after
being taught for fifty years that impudence is the chief duty of man,
and that living in coal-holes and ash-heaps is his proudest existence,
and that the methods of generation of vermin are his loftiest subject
of science,--it will not be easy for you to do; but your children may,
and you will see that it is good for them. In the history of the five
cities I named, they shall learn, so far as they can understand, what
has been beautifully and bravely done; and they shall know the lives of
the heroes and heroines in truth and naturalness; and shall be taught
to remember the greatest of them on the days of their birth and death;
so that the year shall have its full calendar of reverent Memory. And
on every day, part of their morning service shall be a song in honour
of the hero whose birthday it is: and part of their evening service,
a song of triumph for the fair death of one whose death-day it is:
and in their first learning of notes they shall be taught the great
purpose of music, which is to say a thing that you mean deeply, in the
strongest and clearest possible way; and they shall never be taught
to sing what they don't mean. They shall be able to sing merrily when
they are happy, and earnestly when they are sad; but they shall find
no mirth in mockery, nor in obscenity; neither shall they waste and
profane their hearts with artificial and lascivious sorrow.
Regulations which will bring about some curious changes in
piano-playing, and several other things.
"Which will bring." They are bold words, considering how many schemes
have failed disastrously, (as your able editors gladly point out,)
which seemed much more plausible than this. But, as far as I know
history, good designs have not failed except when they were too
narrow in their final aim, and too obstinately and eagerly pushed
in the beginning of them. Prosperous Fortune only grants an almost
invisible slowness of success, and demands invincible patience in
pursuing it. Many good men have failed in haste; more in egotism, and
desire to keep everything in their own hands; and some by mistaking
the signs of their times; but others, and those generally the boldest
in imagination, have not failed; and their successors, true knights
or monks, have bettered the fate and raised the thoughts of men for
centuries; nay, for decades of centuries. And there is assuredly
nothing in this purpose I lay before you, so far as it reaches
hitherto, which will require either knightly courage or monkish
enthusiasm to carry out. To divert a little of the large current
of English charity and justice from watching disease to guarding
health, and from the punishment of crime to the reward of virtue;
to establish, here and there, exercise grounds instead of hospitals,
and training schools instead of penitentiaries, is not, if you will
slowly take it to heart, a frantic imagination. What farther hope I
have of getting some honest men to serve, each in his safe and useful
trade, faithfully, as a good soldier serves in his dangerous, and too
often very wide of useful one, may seem, for the moment, vain enough;
for indeed, in the last sermon I heard out of an English pulpit, the
clergyman said it was now acknowledged to be impossible for any honest
man to live by trade in England. From which the conclusion he drew was,
not that the manner of trade in England should be amended, but that
his hearers should be thankful they were going to heaven. It never
seemed to occur to him that perhaps it might be only through amendment
of their ways in trade that some of them could ever get there.
Such madness, therefore, as may be implied in this ultimate hope of
seeing some honest work and traffic done in faithful fellowship, I
confess to you: but what, for my own part, I am about to endeavour,
is certainly within my power, if my life and health last a few years
more, and the compass of it is soon definable. First,--as I told you
at the beginning of these Letters,--I must do my own proper work as
well as I can--nothing else must come in the way of that; and for some
time to come, it will be heavy, because, after carefully considering
the operation of the Kensington system of Art-teaching throughout the
country, and watching for two years its effect on various classes of
students at Oxford, I became finally convinced that it fell short of
its objects in more than one vital particular: and I have, therefore,
obtained permission to found a separate Mastership of Drawing in
connection with the Art Professorship at Oxford; and elementary
schools will be opened in the University galleries, next October, in
which the methods of teaching will be calculated to meet requirements
which have not been contemplated in the Kensington system. But how far
what these, not new, but very ancient, disciplines teach, may be by
modern students, either required or endured, remains to be seen. The
organization of the system of teaching, and preparation of examples,
in this school, is, however, at present my chief work,--no light
one,--and everything else must be subordinate to it.
But in my first series of lectures at Oxford, I stated (and cannot
too often or too firmly state) that no great arts were practicable
by any people, unless they were living contented lives, in pure air,
out of the way of unsightly objects, and emancipated from unnecessary
mechanical occupation. It is simply one part of the practical work I
have to do in Art-teaching, to bring, somewhere, such conditions into
existence, and to show the working of them. I know also assuredly
that the conditions necessary for the Arts of men, are the best for
their souls and bodies; and knowing this, I do not doubt but that it
may be with due pains, to some material extent, convincingly shown;
and I am now ready to receive help, little or much, from any one who
cares to forward the showing of it.