Harrison Ainsworth. _Guy Fawkes._ Routledge. 2/-.
Shorthouse. _John Inglesant_ (perfect Picture of Court of Charles
I.). Macmillan. 3/6.
Whyte Melville. _Holmby House_ (Cavaliers and Roundheads). Longmans.
1/6.
Edna Lyall. _To Right the Wrong_ (Cavaliers and Roundheads). Hurst &
Blackett. 6/-.
A. J. Church. _With the King at Oxford_ (Charles I.). Seeley. 5/-.
J. S. Fletcher. _When Charles the First was King._ Bentley. 3 vols.
31/6.
Author of “The Schönberg Cotta Family”. _The Draytons and the
Davenants_ (Civil Wars). Nelson & Sons. 3/6.
Wilkie Collins. _Hide and Seek_ (Civil Wars). Chatto. 3/6.
George Macdonald. _St. George and St. Michael_ (Civil Wars. Siege of
Raglan Castle). Kegan Paul. 3/6.
Rev. A. D. Crake. _Fairleigh Hall_ (Civil Wars). Mowbray. 2/6.
M. and E. Lee. _Rosamond Fane_ (Escape of Duke of York). Griffith &
Farran. 3/6.
Anna Glyn. _A Pearl of the Realm_ (Civil Wars. Nonsuch Palace).
Hutchinson. 6/-.
Emma Marshall. _A Haunt of Ancient Peace_ (Little Gidding). Seeley.
5/-.
Edited by Canon Carter. _Nicholas Ferrar_ (not a story; account of
Little Gidding). Longmans. 6/-.
-- _Brave Dame Mary_ (Siege of Corfe Castle). S.P.C.K. 2/-.
C. M. Yonge. _Under the Storm_ (Cavaliers and Roundheads). National
Society. 3/6.
Miss Holt. _Ashcliffe Hall_ (Cavaliers and Roundheads). Silver & Co.
3/6.
Harrison Ainsworth. _Boscobel._ Routledge. 2/-.
Emma Marshall. _The White King’s Daughter_ (Charles I.). Seeley. 3/6.
Emma Marshall. _Under Salisbury’s Spire_ (George Herbert). Seeley.
5/-.
Marryat. _The Children of the New Forest_ (Cavalier story for
children). Routledge. 2/-.
Author of “The Schönberg Cotta Family”. _On Both Sides of the Sea_
(Commonwealth and Restoration). Nelson. 5/-.
D. G. McChesney. _Miriam Cromwell’s Royalist._ Blackwood & Son. 6/-.
Miss Manning. _Mary Powell_ (Diary of Milton’s Wife). Hall. 2/6.
Field. _Ethne_ (Cromwell in Ireland). Wells, Gardner. 6/-.
Alfred de Vigny. _Cinq Mars_ (in French. Richelieu). Calmann Levy. 2
vols. 8 francs.
G. P. R. James. _Richelieu._ Warne. -/6.
Stanley Weyman. _Under the Red Robe_ (Richelieu). Methuen. 6/-.
-- _My Lady Rotha_ (Thirty Years’ War). Innes. 6/-.
Henty. _The Lion of the North_ (Gustavus Adolphus). Blackie. 6/-.
Sir W. Scott. _Rokeby_ (Marston Moor).
Browning. _Strafford._
Period 1660-1714--
Sir Walter Scott. _Old Mortality_ (Lauderdale and Claverhouse).
Black. 1/6.
-- _Peveril of the Peak_ (Popish Plot). Black. 1/6.
-- _The Bride of Lammermoor_ (1700). Black. 1/6.
-- _The Black Dwarf_ (Jacobites). Black. 1/6.
Austin Clare. _The Carved Cartoon_ (Plague and Great Fire). S.P.C.K.
3/-.
Henty. _When London Burned._ (Plague and Great Fire). Blackie. 5/-.
Harrison Ainsworth. _Old St. Paul’s._ (Plague and Great Fire).
Routledge. 2/-.
Miss Manning. _Cherry and Violet_ (Plague and Great Fire). Nimmo. 6/-.
Anthony Hope. _Simon Dale_ (Treaties of Dover). Methuen & Co. 6/-.
Edna Lyall. _In the Golden Days_ (Algernon Sidney). Hurst & Blackett.
6/-.
Emma Marshall. _Winchester Meads_ (Bishop Ken). Seeley. 5/-.
Conan Doyle. _Micah Clarke_ (Monmouth’s Rebellion). Longmans. 3/6.
M. and C. Lee. _The Oak Staircase_ (Monmouth’s Rebellion). Griffith &
Farran. 3/6.
Blackmore. _Lorna Doone_ (Monmouth’s Rebellion). S. Low. 2/6.
Walter Besant. _For Faith and Freedom_ (Monmouth’s Rebellion).
Chatto. 3/6.
Everett Green. _In Taunton Town_ (Monmouth’s Rebellion). Nelson. 5/-.
A. E. Mason. _The Courtship of Maurice Buckler_ (1685). Macmillan.
6/-.
Mary Peard. _To Horse and Away_ (Charles II.). National Society. 3/6.
Mary Rowsell. _Traitor or Patriot_ (Rye House Plot). Blackie. 3/6.
Stanley Weyman. _Shrewsbury_ (a Romance of the Reign of William
III.). Longmans. 6/-.
Henty. _Orange and Green_ (B. Boyne). Blackie. 5/-.
Emma Marshall. _Kensington Palace._ Seeley. 5/-.
Anon. _The Last of the Cavaliers_ (1688). Bentley. 6/-.
Henty. _The Bravest of the Brave_ (Peterbro in Spain). Blackie. 5/-.
M. Rowsell. _Thorndyke Manor_ (Jacobite). Blackie. 3/6.
Conan Doyle. _The Refugees_ (Revocation of the Edict of Nantes).
Longmans. 3/6.
Thackeray. _Esmond_ (Jacobites. Anne’s Reign). Smith, Elder. 1/6.
Period 1714-1815--
Sir W. Scott. _Rob Roy_ (Rising of 1715). Black. 1/6.
-- _The Heart of Midlothian_ (Porteous Riots). Black. 1/6.
-- _Waverley_ (Rising of 1745). Black. 1/6.
-- _Guy Mannering_ (1750). Black. 1/6.
-- _Red Gauntlet_ (Jacobites, 1770). Black. 1/6.
-- _The Antiquary_ (1798). Black. 1/6.
Henty. _Bonny Prince Charlie._ Blackie. 6/-.
-- _A Jacobite Exile_ (in service of Charles XII. of Sweden).
Blackie. 5/-.
-- _With Frederick the Great_ (Seven Years’ War). Blackie. 6/-.
-- _Hold Fast for England_ (Siege of Gibraltar). Blackie. 5/-.
-- _With Clive in India._ Blackie. 6/-.
-- _With Wolfe in Canada._ Blackie. 6/-.
-- _In the Reign of Terror._ Blackie. 5/-.
-- _True to the Old Flag_ (War of American Independence). Blackie.
6/-.
-- _One of the Twenty-eighth_ (Waterloo). Blackie. 5/-.
-- _With Moore at Corunna._ Blackie. 6/-.
-- _Through Russian Snows._ Blackie. 5/-.
Walter Besant. _Dorothy Forster_ (Rising of 1715). Chatto. 3/6.
Thackeray. _The Four Georges._ Smith, Elder. 1/6.
Andrew Lang. _Pickle the Spy_ (Young Glengarry. Ellibank Plot).
Longmans. 18/-.
Author of “Atelier du Lys”. _Mistress Beatrice Cope_ (Rising, 1745).
Hurst & Blackett. 3/6.
Harrison Ainsworth. _Preston Fight._ Routledge. 2/-.
Thackeray. _The Virginians._ Smith, Elder. 5/-.
Author of “The Schönberg Cotta Family”. _Diary of Mrs. Kitty
Trevylyan_ (Wesley). Nelson & Sons. 3/6.
-- _Against the Stream_ (End of 18th Century). S.P.C.K. 4/-.
Dickens. _Barnaby Rudge_ (Gordon Riots). Chapman & Hall. 2/6.
Walter Besant. _The Chaplain of the Fleet_ (Fleet Marriages). Chatto.
3/6.
Sarah Tytler. _The Huguenot Family_ (Refugees in England). Chatto.
2/-.
Fenimore Cooper. _The Last of the Mohicans_ (English and Americans).
Routledge. 2/-.
G. Parker. _The Trail of the Sword_ (French in America). Methuen. 6/-.
Emma Marshall. _The Four Reigns_ (George III. to Victoria). Seeley.
5/-.
-- _In Colston’s Days_ (Old Bristol). Seeley. 5/-.
-- _Under the Mendips_ (Hannah More). Seeley. 5/-.
Dickens. _A Tale of Two Cities_ (French Revolution). Chapman & Hall.
2/6.
Stanley Weyman. _The Red Cockade_ (French Revolution). Longmans. 6/-.
Author of “Mdlle. Mori”. _The Atelier du Lys_ (French Revolution).
Longmans. 2/6.
Harriet Martineau. _The Peasant and the Prince_ (French Revolution).
Routledge. 1/6.
M. E. Coleridge. _The King with Two Faces_ (Gustavus III. of Sweden.
French Revolution). Edward Arnold. 6/-.
Author of “Mdlle. Mori”. _On the Edge of the Storm_ (French
Revolution). Warne. 3/6.
Felix Gras. _The Reds of the Midi_ (French Revolution). Heinemann.
3/6.
Sarah Tytler. _Citoyenne Jacqueline_ (French Revolution). Chatto. 2/-.
Whyte Melville. _Sister Louise_ (French Revolution). Ward, Lock. 2/-.
C. J. A., author of “Good Fight of Faith”. _In Palace and Faubourg_
(French Revolution). Nelson. 5/-.
Author of “Atelier du Lys”. _A Child of the Revolution._ Longmans.
2/6.
F. M. Peard. _Mother Molly_ (Threatened Invasion of Napoleon). Bell.
5/-.
Conan Doyle. _Uncle Bernac_ (Napoleon). Smith, Elder. 6/-.
-- _Brigadier Gerard_ (Napoleon). Newnes. 6/-.
Tolstoi. _War and Peace_ (Napoleon’s Russian Campaign, for teachers).
W. Scott. 4 vols. 2/6 a vol.
THE TEACHING OF ANCIENT HISTORY.
By MARY HANBIDGE, M.A. (Lond.).
[General scope.]
The importance of history as a school subject has been fully discussed
in an earlier section. But “history,” as taught in schools, too often
connotes merely English, or, at best, modern history. Hence the
necessity of asserting separately the claim of ancient history, though
in the very fact that it is not a separate subject, lies its importance.
The progressive development of the human race is a scientific axiom.
If we ignore the continuity of history, we tend to base our teaching
only on facts, rather than on the laws which form the bond of sequence
between them. Thus the sense of historical proportion is never
awakened; and the girl so trained may know in detail the history of
England, and the history of the Israelites, but has little idea of
their relation to the rest of the modern or ancient world. The child of
to-day cannot attain to a true understanding of the history and culture
of her own nation unless she has some ideas of the civilisation we
inherit. The Renaissance is a fact which every text-book emphasises,
and every schoolgirl knows; but what does she know of its spirit? How
little can she realise the enthusiasm that stirred those “spacious
times” if she is an utter stranger to the “glory that was Greece, and
the greatness that was Rome”! Again, in neglecting ancient history,
we lose sight of the homogeneity of the human race, that oneness which
Thucydides felt would make his history not merely a passing record, but
a prophecy ες το αει. And in truth the ancient city states grappled
with many of the social and political problems of to-day. They are
set before us in miniature, we see them in their entirety, and their
solution guides or warns us. The influence of capital in politics,
the depopulation of country districts, the dangers of a foreign corn
supply, the drifting of democracy to socialism, and the treatment
of subject races, were questions of as vital importance for Greece
and Rome as they are to-day. So true is Dr. Arnold’s paradox that
the ancient world is the most modern of all. Thus regarded, ancient
history forms a valuable mental training for upper forms, a training
which, in the case of girls, is especially useful, since women too
often do not realise the modern problems in which they are unconscious
factors. A further advantage is the accessibility of the original
authorities, even to a school class. Here at least they are not
dependent on retrospective theories, but can see how the history of the
day impressed the men who made it--a result not so easily obtainable in
other branches of history.
[General suggestions.]
To turn to the practical teaching of the subject. From the beginning,
the child must be trained to realise that the history of the world is
a whole. Throughout the school, ancient and mediæval history should be
taught side by side with that of England and Palestine. English history
may with advantage be taught in less detail, and time thus secured
for the sister subject. In French and German schools this system is
definitely adopted; we append a German scheme. If possible, the subject
should be in the hands of the same teacher, that the correlation of
interest may be duly emphasised. In classes where reading lessons are
given, poems, plays, etc., which bear upon the history, should be
chosen, and may suggest subjects for composition. A geography lesson
should precede the history course, and the importance of geography
throughout cannot be overestimated.
[Graduated scheme. Course A. Ages 9-10.]
With young children history proper is an impossibility, but an interest
in the life of the past may be awakened very early. The mental
development of the child epitomises that of the race, and in the record
of a nation mythology precedes history. In the lowest classes of the
Cheltenham Ladies’ College a course of stories from Greek mythology has
met with marked success. Quite little children know Jason, with his one
sandal, as well as they do Cinderella, and Athene is a familiar friend,
whose picture they recognise. Cavillers may say that we are only
teaching fairy tales, but the same children grown a little older see
their Athene the central point of all the glories of Periclean Athens,
and find themselves in a world they know.
Such a course will begin with a talk about the Greeks and their Gods,
pass on to the heroes, and end with the “Tale of Troy Divine,” the
wanderings of Odysseus, and the story of Thebes; of course these will
be stories pure and simple, not vehicles for any ætiological theory,
and the success will depend entirely on the descriptive power of the
teacher.
[Course B. Ages 10-12.]
We are now on the threshold of history, and since a child is naturally
anthropomorphic, the personal element must be made the most prominent.
This course will therefore consist of a series of biographies, but
biographies introductory to history. The men therefore whom we choose
must be men who make or mark a period, and their lives must be closely
connected. For this Greek history offers greater facilities than Roman,
where the personal element is weaker.
The following series is suggested:--
1. _Lycurgus_ (the dawn of history); revive knowledge of Atridæ;
new Peloponnesus, _cf._ Heptarchy; Lycurgus and his laws; rise of
Sparta. 2. _Solon_, lawgiver of Athens. 3. _Pisistratus_, the tyranny;
rise of free Athens. 4. _Crœsus_, Cyrus, Cambyses; Asiatic Greece,
connection with Bible history. 5. _Darius_ and his wrath against
Athens. 6. _Miltiades_ and Marathon. 7. _Themistocles_ and Salamis.
8. _Pausanias_, victor of Platæa; his insolence and fall. 9. _Cimon_,
expulsion of Persians from Ægean. 10. _Pericles_ and his Athens;
Sparta’s jealousy; the war. 11. _Brasidas_ and _Demosthenes_. 12.
_Nicias_ and the Sicilian expedition. 13. _Lysander_ and fall of
Athens. 14. _Socrates_ and degradation of Athens. 15. _Agesilaus_
and the fall of Sparta. 16. _Conon_ and the rebuilding of the walls.
17. _Epaminondas_, the humbling of Sparta. 18. _Philip of Macedon_
and his plans. 19. _Demosthenes_ and how he failed to stop them. 20.
_Alexander_.
In these two courses no text-books need be used or notes taken, but
the children should be required to tell the tale of the last lesson,
either _viva voce_ or in writing. The appended chart should be used
throughout this course, and will show the connection with Jewish
history.
[Course C.]
History of Rome to B.C. 31. We now come to history proper, necessarily
in outline. This must not be mere chronology, but a series of connected
pictures of events. Such dates as are given must be the dates of a
century. We suggest that Rome should form the subject of this course,
since in the story of the nations Rome follows Greece. Rome touches the
world the children already know, as mistress of Britain, and heir of
Alexander, while Pyrrhus and Philip V. of Macedon are connecting links
with the Hellenistic age, as a rule a _terra incognita_. Antiochus
and the Maccabees will connect it with Jewish history. For chart of
connection with Course A see end.
[Course D. Ages 13-14.]
Augustus to Charlemagne. The Germans recognise the importance of this
period. In England, forming as it does the link between ancient and
modern history, it is taught with neither, and yet it is the key to
the race question of modern Europe. We suggest a scheme whose two
connecting links are: the rise of Christianity and the barbarian
migrations. 1. Augustus; Tiberius; Claudius. 2. Nero; the Christians.
3. Vespasian; Titus; fall of Jerusalem. 4. Roman life; Pompeii. 5.
Britain and the expansion of the empire under Trajan. 6. Marcus
Aurelius; Christianity and Paganism; death of Oracles. 7. Diocletian;
last persecutions of Christians; barbarians; inroads. 8. Constantine,
first Christian emperor; Constantinople. 9. Julian; reaction against
Christianity; Franks; Strasburg (357). 10. Alaric and Visigoths (410).
11. Attila and Huns (450). 12. Fall of empire. 13. Alexandria. 14.
Theodoric and Ostrogothic kingdoms. 15. Clovis and Frankish kingdoms.
16. Descendants of Clovis; Brunhilda and Fredegond; extension of
Frankish kingdom. 17. Monastic age, Celtic and Roman; Gregory the
Great; rise of Papacy; Gregory and Brunhilda; Augustine. 18. Mahomet.
19. Caliphs; spread of Mahometanism in Asia, Africa, Spain. 20.
Saracens repulsed (732); Charles Martel. 21. _Fainéant_ kings; mayors
of palace. 22. Charlemagne. 23. Holy Roman empire.
[History for higher classes.]
In the higher classes of a school we may assume a fair knowledge of
outline history. Periods bearing on the classical reading should be
selected and read in detail. Typical periods as “The Empire of Athens
and the Age of Pericles,” and “The Age of Augustus”.
A standard history should be worked through, and other books, notably
the original historians, will be suggested. A lending library is
therefore essential. An essay subject will be set in connection with
each lecture to form a centre for reading.
[Illustrations.]
Throughout, the importance of concrete illustrations cannot be too
strongly insisted upon. In many places the lectures can be supplemented
by visits to local museums, Roman relics, etc. (_e.g._, Chedworth Villa
near Cheltenham, Gloucester Museum, Bath). For elder classes a visit to
the British Museum would obviously be helpful, but it is wonderfully
easy to interest even quite young children. A board schoolboy of
eleven, who was wandering aimlessly about the Elgin room, was delighted
when I showed him the Nemesis head and told him the story of the
Persian Invincible Armada, which never set up its trophy.
Invaluable help can also be obtained from the Educational Museum of the
Teachers’ Guild. A full catalogue is published, in which we specially
notice (1) illustrations of Greek dress, which might be copied by the
mythology class (Course A); (2) maps and plans, especially of Athens
and Rome (Holzel); (3) coins, museum reproductions; (4) portraits;
(5) lantern slides. Mention may also be made of views of the English
Photographic Co., Constitution Square, Athens, who send a priced
catalogue; the series of card reliefs, 6d. each, by Lecherchier, Barbe
et Cie., to be obtained from the Art Schools Association, 21 Queen’s
Square, Bayswater; card illustrations from Menge’s _Antike Kunst_.
These illustrations would be of double value were they the permanent
possession of the class-room; the class could then become really
familiar with each one. It would be a great boon if a central loan
collection could be formed by some such body as the Teachers’ Guild,
from which illustrations of special periods could be borrowed term by
term, a plan which at present is only adopted for lantern slides. This
would give access to a greater selection of pictures and models than
a single school can provide, and might lead to the development of the
historical side of the school museum, and the consequent formation of a
school archæological society.
[Maps.]
Kiepert’s wall-maps may be taken for granted. The list in the Teachers’
Guild catalogue is helpful, but a teacher must make her own period
maps. (White blind holland is an excellent material.)
[Books.]
1. Text-books. (_a_) Roman. Creighton’s _Primer_; E. S. Shuckburgh’s
_History of Rome for Beginners_ and _History of Rome_; Well’s _Short
History of Rome_ to the death of Augustus; How and Leigh’s _History of
Rome_; Mommsen’s _History of Rome_ (abridged for schools); Pelham’s
_Outlines of Roman History_ (Epoch Series); Bury’s _Student’s Roman
Empire_.
(_b_) Greek. Fyffe’s _Primer_; Oman’s _History of Greece_; Cox’s
_General History of Greece_ (Epoch Series); Butcher’s _Demosthenes_.
(_c_) Transition. Freeman’s _Europe_ (Primer); Freeman’s _General
Sketch of European History_.
2. Historical atlases. Student’s Kiepert.
3. Suggestions for school library in connection with junior courses.
Miss Gardner’s _Friends of the Olden Time_ and _Rome the Centre of the
World_; Church’s _Stories_; Cox’s _Tales of Ancient Greece_; Kingsley’s
_Heroes and Poems_; Macaulay’s _Lays_; Hawthorne’s _Tanglewood Tales_;
_Epics and Romances of the Middle Ages_ (Wagner and Anson); Lang,
Leaf and Myers’ _Iliad_; Butcher and Lang’s _Odyssey_; Worsley’s
_Odyssey_; Morris’ _Earthly Paradise_ and _Life and Death of Jason_;
Browning’s _Balaustion_ and Aristophanes’ _Apology_; Miss A. Swanwick’s
_Æschylus_; Tennyson’s _Œnone_, etc.; Milton; _Atlas of Classical
Portraits_--(_a_) Roman; (_b_) Greek (published by Dent); Baumeister’s
_Bilder aus dem Alterthum_.
_German Scheme for History Teaching_:--
1st year. Greek legends and German sagas.
2nd year. Pictures of ancient German and Prussian history, Cyrus to the
Emperor Frederick.
3rd year. German and Prussian history, from invasion of barbarians to
the Emperor Frederick.
4th year. Ancient history to invasions of barbarians (every fortnight,
one hour’s repetition of German and Prussian history).
5th year. German history, from invasion of barbarians to 1648.
6th year. From 1648 to the present day, with special stress on general
history of civilisation.
PARALLEL CHART FOR THE YOUNGER CLASSES.
-----+-------------------+------------------------+-------------------
Year.| Biblical History. | Greece. | Rome.
-----+-------------------+------------------------+-------------------
1400 | | |
| | |
1300 |Exodus. |Troy? |
| | |
1200 | | |
|Samson. | |
1100 | | |
| | |
1000 |David. | |
| | |
900 | |Homer? |
| | |
800 | |Lycurgus? |
| | |
700 | | |Rome.
| | |
600 |Nebuchadnezzar. |Solon. |
| | |
|Belshazzar. Cyr|us. Pisistratus. |
500 |Temple rebuilt. Dar|ius. |Expulsion of Kings.
|Esther. Xer|xes. Miltiades. |
| |Themistocles. |
| |Pericles. |
400 | |Socrates. |The Gauls.
| |Epaminondas. |
300 | |Alexander. |
| |(Ptolemies.) (Pyrr|hus.)
| | |1st Punic War.
200 | (Antio|chus.) (Philip of |Macedon. Hannibal.)
|(Maccabees.) | Poly|bius.
100 | | |Corinth. Carthage.
| |(Cleopatra.) |{Cicero. Pompey.
| | |{Julius Cæsar.
A.D. |Herod the Great. | |
|Birth of Christ | |Augustus.
-----+-------------------+------------------------+-------------------
At the beginning of Course B, Column I. (except the names in brackets)
will be marked on the chart. Column II. as far as Alexander to be
filled in during Course B. Column III. and the brackets of Columns I.
and II. to be filled in during Course C.
TIME-MAPS.
By DOROTHEA BEALE.
The practice of representing to the eye by means of diagrams the facts
of science, physical and social, is becoming more common: we have
jagged lines indicating fluctuations in the winds or in the stocks.
In an American record which has been sent to me, there are coloured
squares representing the thousands of children who are regular in
their attendance at school, black squares standing for the defaulting
thousands. By such means we can see at a glance what the mind finds it
difficult otherwise to realise; it furnishes a framework into which we
can fit anything we wish to locate.
[Historical Charts.]
It is hardly necessary to say that for any orderly study of history it
is necessary to have some scheme into which we may fit the subjects
of study. As well might we expect by learning latitude and longitude
to understand the position of places on the earth’s surface, as by
learning dates to get a clear idea of the relative position of events
in time. We want some form of map which will represent the events to
the eye. Many excellent charts have been drawn up giving us parallel
histories, but the great difficulty is their prodigious size. Time is
one-dimensional, and if we give a small linear space to a century, and
try to represent a few thousand years, the mind fails to grasp the
picture; if the scale of the different periods varies, the proportion
is wrong. For this reason rivers and trees of time, etc., have been
more or less failures; they are useful and interesting, but the
objection is, that they are either too large and detailed to be carried
in the memory, or that the landmarks are too slight. The Méthode
Mnémonique Polonaise, which is much used in France, was introduced to
my notice, and first used by me at Queen’s College: it has the great
advantage of compactness--it is in form like a geographical map. It
can be adapted to various purposes, but I shall dwell now on its
applications as a record of time, and show the different ways in which
it can be used by little children, though it is equally well adapted
for Tom Brown at Oxford (who seems to have used it) and for the mature
student of history. It may be made for little ones into a system of
object-lessons, or hieroglyphics, if you will, which appeal to the
child’s imagination and help him to realise something of the proportion
of things, and whilst looking at the world, as each of us must, from
our own “pin-point,” yet see life in relation to the lives of others.
It is compact; it shows at a glance the relations of events. We can
have a world-map and give only the great landmarks, or we may by a map
of large proportions work out to any degree of detail a short period.
The plan is to make a square of ten represent a century, and each
horizontal line a decade. Thus:--
++----+----+----+----+----++----+----+----+----+----++
|| 0 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 || 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 ||
++----+----+----+----+----++----+----+----+----+----++
|| 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 || 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 ||
++----+----+----+----+----++----+----+----+----+----++
|| 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 || 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 ||
++----+----+----+----+----++----+----+----+----+----++
|| 30 | 31 | 32 | 33 | 34 || 35 | 36 | 37 | 38 | 39 ||
++----+----+----+----+----++----+----+----+----+----++
|| 40 | 41 | 42 | 43 | 44 || 45 | 46 | 47 | 48 | 49 ||
++====+====+====+====+====++====+====+====+====+====++
|| 50 | 51 | 52 | 53 | 54 || 55 | 56 | 57 | 58 | 59 ||
++----+----+----+----+----++----+----+----+----+----++
|| 60 | 61 | 62 | 63 | 64 || 65 | 66 | 67 | 68 | 69 ||
++----+----+----+----+----++----+----+----+----+----++
|| 70 | 71 | 72 | 73 | 74 || 75 | 76 | 77 | 78 | 79 ||
++----+----+----+----+----++----+----+----+----+----++
|| 80 | 81 | 82 | 83 | 84 || 85 | 86 | 87 | 88 | 89 ||
++----+----+----+----+----++----+----+----+----+----++
|| 90 | 91 | 92 | 93 | 94 || 95 | 96 | 97 | 98 | 99 ||
++----+----+----+----+----++----+----+----+----+----++
It will at once be seen that all the numbers in the first line of a
century are units, in the second tens, in the third twenties, and so
on; whilst, if we look down the vertical line, all the numbers in the
first row end with nought, in the second with one, and so on. The
thick line is intended to help the eye; we have forty and fifty on
each side of the horizontal thick line, four and five on each side of
the vertical. A few minutes’ practice will generally enable the pupil
to read off numbers rapidly from a blank square. He will then have to
learn the position of the marks in any century, as he would learn the
geography of a country, or the shape of a constellation. Take, for
example, the English history of the fourteenth century. We mark Edward
II., in 1307; Edward III., in 1327; Richard II., 1377; Henry IV., 1399.
The dates need not be learned; we have the picture of the century in
our mind and can read off the square.
++----+----+----+----+----++----+----+----+----+----++
|| | | | | || | | ● | | ||
++----+----+----+----+----++----+----+----+----+----++
|| | | | | || | | | | ||
++----+----+----+----+----++----+----+----+----+----++
|| | | | | || | | ● | | ||
++----+----+----+----+----++----+----+----+----+----++
|| | | | | || | | | | ||
++----+----+----+----+----++----+----+----+----+----++
|| | | | | || | | | | ||
++====+====+====+====+====++====+====+====+====+====++
|| | | | | || | | | | ||
++----+----+----+----+----++----+----+----+----+----++
|| | | | | || | | | | ||
++----+----+----+----+----++----+----+----+----+----++
|| | | | | || | | ● | | ||
++----+----+----+----+----++----+----+----+----+----++
|| | | | | || | | | | ||
++----+----+----+----+----++----+----+----+----+----++
|| | | | | || | | | | ● ||
++----+----+----+----+----++----+----+----+----+----++
Some children take much pleasure in making and painting illustrated
charts. I have one on a large scale of the sixteenth century, giving
the accession of Queen Mary--1553, and a picture of the Tower, to which
Northumberland and others were sent. A block in 1554 tells of the
executions consequent on Wyatt’s rebellion, and a dove with an olive
branch of Philip’s intercession for Elizabeth--1555; there is a picture
of a martyr at the stake, and a hand in the flames for Cranmer--1557; a
scroll stands for the first Covenant in Scotland, and a sword for the
war with France--1558; there is a heart with Calais written on it.
Here is a specimen of a chart with a key of the sixteenth century.[19]
It will be seen from this how events in contemporary history can be
introduced. Thus the first year, 1500, reminds us of the discovery of
America, and of the great jubilee, the precursor of the Papal downfall;
the _fleur de lys_ standing for the French kings and the cross for the
German Emperors, tell of the accession of Francis I. and Charles V.
Portraits are given of English sovereigns. We have later the massacre
of St. Bartholomew with daggers, a ship for the Armada, etc., etc.
[19] It may be well to add that I am not ignorant of the discussions
respecting the proper beginning of a century. Is the year 1800 the
last year of the eighteenth or the first year of the nineteenth
century? Our dates have been translated from the Latin ordinals,
and we ought to say the eighteen-hundredth year, instead of the
year eighteen-hundred. I have deliberately preferred to conform the
chart to the vulgar tongue. If I did not, the numbers in the first
line would contain nine units and one ten, instead of all units; the
second line of tens would contain one twenty, and so on. If we are
content to use the inaccurate language of daily life, bearing in mind
that it requires correction, and making such corrections when we are
engaged in important historical or astronomical calculations, we may
well be content to do the same with the chart. I shall, therefore,
consider the life of a century as that of a centenarian. We say of
a child that he is in his 1st, 2nd, 3rd, etc., year, when he is
0, 1, 2, etc., years old; so, also, a person is in his 100th year
when he is 99 years old; and he has lived a century at the close of
this year, for the cardinal marks the number of completed years,
the ordinal the number of the year in progress. So 1799 is regarded
as the closing year of the last century, 1800, 1801, as the first
and second of this. For a learned and elaborate discussion on the
subject, and a list of authorities for the view adopted, see _An
Examination of the Century Question_, George Bell, Fleet Street, 1850.
[Illustration]
KEY TO SIXTEENTH CENTURY CHART.
+-------------+------------+------------+------------+------------++
| 1500. | 1501. | 1502. | 1503. | 1504. ||
| Columbus | | | Julius II. | ||
| prisoner. | | | | ||
| Jubilee. | | | | ||
| | | | | ||
+-------------+------------+------------+------------+------------++
| 1510. | 1511. | 1512. | 1513. | 1514. ||
| | | | Flodden. | ||
| | | | Leo X. | ||
| | | | | ||
| | | | | ||
+-------------+------------+------------+------------+------------++
| 1520. | 1521. | 1522. | 1523. | 1524. ||
| Soleyman. | Diet of | | | ||
| | Worms. | | | ||
| | | | | ||
| | | | | ||
+-------------+------------+------------+------------+------------++
| 1530. | 1531. | 1532. | 1533. | 1534. ||
| Death of | | | Anne | ||
| Wolsey. | | | Boleyn. | ||
| | | | | ||
| | | | | ||
+-------------+------------+------------+------------+------------++
| 1540. | 1541. | 1542. | 1543. | 1544. ||
| Jesuits. | |Cath. Howard| Catharine. | ||
| Anne | | beheaded. | Parr. | ||
| of Cleves. | | | | ||
|Cath. Howard.| | | | ||
+-------------+------------+------------+------------+------------++
++------------+------------+------------+------------+------------+
|| 1505. | 1506. | 1507. | 1508. | 1509. |
|| | | | | Henry VIII.|
|| | | | | |
|| | | | | |
|| | | | | |
++------------+------------+------------+------------+------------+
|| 1515. | 1516. | 1517. | 1518. | 1519. |
|| Francis I. | | | | Charles V. |
|| | | | | |
|| | | | | |
|| | | | | |
++------------+------------+------------+------------+------------+
|| 1525. | 1526. | 1527. | 1528. | 1529 |
|| Prussia. | Baber. | | | |
|| Teutonic | | | | |
|| Order | | | | |
||secularised.| | | | |
++------------+------------+------------+------------+------------+
|| 1535. | 1536. | 1537. | 1538. | 1539. |
|| Fisher and |Anne Boleyn | | | |
|| More | beheaded. | | | |
|| executed. | Jane | | | |
|| | Seymour. | | | |
++------------+------------+------------+------------+------------+
|| 1545. | 1546. | 1547. | 1548. | 1549. |
|| Council of | | Edward VI. | | |
|| Trent. | | Henry II. | | |
|| | | | | |
|| | | | | |
++------------+------------+------------+------------+------------+
[Illustration]
KEY TO SIXTEENTH CENTURY CHART.
+------------+------------+------------+------------+------------++
| 1550. | 1551. | 1552. | 1553. | 1554. ||
| | | | Mary | ||
| | | | Spenser | ||
| | | | born. | ||
+------------+------------+------------+------------+------------++
| 1560. | 1561. | 1562. | 1563. | 1564. ||
|Charles IX. | | | Guise | Max. II. ||
| | | | assass. | Shakspere ||
| | | | | born. ||
+------------+------------+------------+------------+------------++
| 1570. | 1571. | 1572. | 1573. | 1574. ||
| | |Massacre of | | Henry II. ||
| | | St. Bar- | | ||
| | | tholomew. | | ||
+------------+------------+------------+------------+------------++
| 1580. | 1581. | 1582. | 1583. | 1584. ||
| | | | | Orange ||
| | | | | assass. ||
| | | | | ||
| | | | | ||
+------------+------------+------------+------------+------------++
| 1590. | 1591. | 1592. | 1593. | 1594. ||
| _Faerie_ | | |Shakspere’s | Hooker’s ||
| _Queene_, | | | Poems. | _Eccles_. ||
| 3 books. | | | | _Polity_. ||
| | | | | ||
+------------+------------+------------+------------+------------++
++------------+------------+------------+------------+------------+
|| 1555. | 1556. | 1557. | 1558. | 1559. |
|| Persecu- | Cranmer. | | Elizabeth. | Francis II.|
|| tions. | | |Ferdinand I.| |
|| | | | | |
++------------+------------+-------+----+------------+------------+
|| 1565. | 1566. | 1567. | 1568. | 1569. |
|| | | | | |
|| | | | | |
|| | | | | |
++------------+------------+-------+----+------------+------------+
|| 1575. | 1576. | 1577. | 1578. | 1579. |
|| | Rudolph II.| | | |
|| | | | | |
|| | | | | |
++------------+------------+------------+------------+------------+
|| 1585. | 1586. | 1587. | 1588. | 1589. |
|| | | Mary | Armada. | Henry IV. |
|| | | Queen of | | |
|| | | Scots | | |
|| | | beheaded. | | |
++------------+------------+-------+----+------------+------------+
|| 1595. | 1596. | 1597. | 1598. | 1599. |
|| | | Bacon’s | Edict of | |
|| | | Essays. | Nantes. | |
|| | |Shakspere’s | | |
|| | |first Play. | | |
++------------+------------+------------+------------+------------+
In the charts I have published,[20] I have given only English kings;
when these are fixed in the memory, events of general history can be
gradually introduced, and paper ruled on any scale required.
[20] _Students’ Chronological Maps_ (Bell & Sons, 3s. 6d.).
If the chart is studied as a whole, either in reference to English or
modern history, it is convenient to divide it into four periods, of
five hundred years each, corresponding to four lines in the chart, and
to characterise each century. Then on a larger scale, for which we have
sheets of paper ruled, we put in gradually certain landmarks, whilst
giving lessons on modern history, such matters being written in as the
teacher directs. The writer’s text-book of English and general history,
in which are given the sovereigns of the principal European countries,
notable persons and events, etc., can be used for lessons in connection
with the chart.[21]
[21] For more complete lists of sovereigns and a selection of the
more important dates, Beale’s _Student Text-book of English and
Modern History_ may be referred to, and _Students’ Chronological
Maps_ (Bell & Sons).
I subjoin a syllabus of a course of lessons on modern history:--
+------------+------------+------------+------------+------------+
| 1st | 2nd | 3rd | 4th | 5th |
|Christianity| Good | Military |Constantine |Fall of Rome|
| | Emperors | Despotism | | |
+------------+------------+------------+------------+------------+
| 6th | 7th | 8th | 9th | 10th |
| Barbaric | Mahomet | Charlemagne| Alfred | Feudalism |
| Wars | | | | |
+------------+------------+------------+------------+------------+
| 11th | 12th | 13th | 14th | 15th |
|Hildebrand | Crusades | Schoolmen | Rise of | Renaissance|
| | | |Middle-class| |
+------------+------------+------------+------------+------------+
| 16th | 17th | 18th | 19th | 20th |
|Reformation | Religious | Political | Revolution | |
| | Wars | Wars | | |
+------------+------------+------------+------------+------------+
I.--In the first century we see Rome at the height of prosperity,
victorious on all sides. During the second, she maintains her position
fairly under the good emperors. The third is a period of trouble and
confusion, the empire is struggling for existence. In the fourth, the
firm government of Constantine maintained, for a short time after
his accession, comparative peace; but the removal of the seat of
government, and the subsequent division of the empire, facilitated
the barbaric triumphs of Radagaisus, Alaric, Attila and Genseric in
the fifth; and before its close, the Western empire had fallen, and
Theodoric the Ostrogoth was king of Italy. This line embraces in
Britain the 400 years of the Roman occupation, and a small portion of
the Anglo-Saxon period.
II.--In the second line we have the period of barbarian
settlements--tribes are changing into nations. The Anglo-Saxon
invasions, the unceasing contests amongst the numerous petty kings,
have terminated, by the middle of the tenth century, in the union of
the country under Athelstane, the first who can properly be called King
of all England. In France we have the union of the Franks under Clovis,
the constant civil wars, interminable divisions, and _fainéant_ kings
of the Merovingian period, the union of the country under Charlemagne,
the renewed civil strife, subdivisions, and _fainéant_ kings of the
Carlovingian line, and the accession of the third, or Capetian Dynasty.
In Germany, too, order is being developed out of confusion, and, in the
tenth century, the different nations have agreed to choose one king;
barriers are opposed to further invasion from without, free cities are
rising, feudalism is being rapidly developed, the spirit of chivalry is
felt, and the idea of a united Christendom, subject to the emperor as
temporal, to the pope as spiritual head, may be traced most distinctly
in the schemes of the Othos, and the attempt of Sylvester II. to rouse
the European nations for a crusade.
In Italy, so long a battlefield, the great republics are rising, and
the pope from time to time asserting his independence. In the East, in
Africa, in Spain, the Mahometan kingdoms have been established. During
so turbulent a period, we must expect to find many heroes, and from
these we may select Mahomet, Charlemagne and Alfred, as the central
figures of the seventh, eighth and ninth centuries.
III.---In the third line we have the formation of the states of modern
Europe. The great nations of the West are no longer isolated units,
for they have joined together in crusades against the East, they
acknowledge one head in the popes. The popes, mighty in the person
of Gregory VII. in the eleventh century, in Innocent III. in the
thirteenth, have sunk to the lowest depths of ignominy in the person of
Alexander VI. The Albigenses are almost exterminated in the thirteenth,
but Wickliffe has preached in the fourteenth. Huss and Jerome of Prague
have been martyred at Constance early in the fifteenth, but Luther
has begun to study the Scriptures. The middle classes, too, have been
growing in importance, citizens have triumphed over warriors. The power
of a turbulent chivalry has been destroyed by civil wars, the people
have risen to power. The invention of gunpowder has changed the aspect
of war, and the introduction of printing brought about a vast change
in education; great writers, as Chaucer and Dante, are beginning to
produce their works in the vulgar tongue. America has, at the close of
the period, been just discovered.
IV.--In the last line we have a period marked first by struggles
for religious, afterwards for political liberty, the long religious
wars of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The oppression of the
aristocratic and papal powers during the preceding period led, in
some instances, to the exaggeration of the monarchical authority, and
to this are opposed the revolutions of the seventeenth, eighteenth
and nineteenth centuries, which have in some instances produced a
reaction in favour of despotism. The discovery of America has given
an extraordinary impulse to naval enterprise, to colonisation and
commerce; this, together with the diffusion of knowledge by printing,
has greatly stimulated intellectual activity, and the mathematical and
philosophical studies of the sixteenth century have prepared the way
for the practical triumphs of our own day.
Only a few leading dates have been marked in the published charts,
which are coloured for different periods, but these may be added to
indefinitely--sometimes by writing in additional signs or words to mark
contemporary sovereigns, etc., but it is better not to multiply these
too much; for many things no signs need be used, as persons and things
of minor importance will become associated in the memory with the more
important. Or again, suppose a special subject is taken up, as English
literature or the history of painting, the name of a leading author
or painter can be written across that portion of the century in which
his chief works appeared, and all who belong to his school of thought
will be easily remembered in connection with him. A chart of English
literature has been published on this plan by Baker, Clifton.
In the Chart of Ancient History, the numbers are read upwards and
backwards. Thus:--
++----+----+----+----+----++----+----+----+----+----++
|| 99 | 98 | 97 | 96 | 95 || 94 | 93 | 92 | 91 | 90 ||
++----+----+----+----+----++----+----+----+----+----++
|| 89 | 88 | 87 | 86 | 85 || 84 | 83 | 82 | 81 | 80 ||
++----+----+----+----+----++----+----+----+----+----++
|| 79 | 78 | 77 | 76 | 75 || 74 | 73 | 72 | 71 | 70 ||
++----+----+----+----+----++----+----+----+----+----++
|| 69 | 68 | 67 | 66 | 65 || 64 | 63 | 62 | 61 | 60 ||
++----+----+----+----+----++----+----+----+----+----++
|| 59 | 58 | 57 | 56 | 55 || 54 | 53 | 52 | 51 | 50 ||
++====+====+====+====+====++====+====+====+====+====++
|| 49 | 48 | 47 | 46 | 45 || 44 | 43 | 42 | 41 | 40 ||
++----+----+----+----+----++----+----+----+----+----++
|| 39 | 38 | 37 | 36 | 35 || 34 | 33 | 32 | 31 | 30 ||
++----+----+----+----+----++----+----+----+----+----++
|| 29 | 28 | 27 | 26 | 25 || 24 | 23 | 22 | 21 | 20 ||
++----+----+----+----+----++----+----+----+----+----++
|| 19 | 18 | 17 | 16 | 15 || 14 | 13 | 12 | 11 | 10 ||
++----+----+----+----+----++----+----+----+----+----++
|| 9 | 8 | 7 | 6 | 5 || 4 | 3 | 2 | 1 | 0 ||
++----+----+----+----+----++----+----+----+----+----++
We give, in conclusion, photographs of two charts prepared for the
Victorian Exhibition (1897) with a key.
The first gives the chief events of the Queen’s reign, the second the
chief scientific discoveries.
[Illustration]
KEY TO CHART No. I.
CHART OF THE QUEEN’S REIGN.
1837. The Queen’s Accession. 1838. First Electric Telegraph.
1840. Queen’s Marriage--Penny Postage. 1841. Birth of Prince of Wales.
1842. Capture of Shanghai. 1846. Repeal of the Corn Laws. 1848.
Death of Lord Melbourne--Chartist Revolt.
1850. Death of Wordsworth and Sir Robert Peel. 1851. First Great
Exhibition. 1852. Death of the Duke of Wellington. 1854. Crimean
War. 1857. Indian Mutiny.
1860. Death of Lord Aberdeen. 1861. Death of the Prince Consort. 1863.
Prince of Wales’ Marriage. 1864. Birth of the Duke of Clarence.
1865. Birth of the Duke of York--Death of Lord Palmerston. 1869.
Death of Lord Derby.
1871. Disestablishment of the Irish Church. 1876. Queen Proclaimed
Empress of India. 1878. Death of Lord John Russell. 1879. Zulu
War.
1880. Lord Roberts’ Relief of Candahar. 1881. Death of Lord
Beaconsfield. 1884. Soudan War. 1885. Death of Gordon--Bible
Revised. 1887. Queen’s Jubilee. 1889. Death of Browning.
1892. Death of Duke of Clarence. 1893. Marriage of Duke of York--Death
of Tennyson--Home Rule Bill Rejected. 1894. Birth of Prince
Edward. 1896. Jameson’s Raid. 1897. Queen’s Diamond Jubilee.
[Illustration]
KEY TO CHART No. II.
SHOWING PROGRESS IN SCIENCE DURING THE QUEEN’S REIGN.
1837. First Telegraph. 1839. Photography--Daguerre.
1841. Sewing Machine. 1842. Nasmyth’s Steam Hammer. 1843. Ross’
Telescope. 1848. Planet Neptune Discovered. 1849. Joule’s
_Mechanical Equivalent of Heat_--Anæsthetics.
1851. The Great Exhibition. 1852. Ophthalmoscope. 1854. Armstrong Gun.
1856. Tyndall’s Investigation of Glaciers. 1857. Atlantic Cable
from Valentia to Newfoundland. 1858. The _Great Eastern_. 1859.
Darwin, _Origin of Species_--Brunel’s Death.
1860. Stellar Spectroscopy--Huggins. 1861. Aeronautic Experiments.
1864. Clifton Suspension Bridge. 1865. Lister, Antiseptic
Treatment. 1867. Death of Faraday. 1868. Suez Canal.
1870. Torpedo. 1871. Huxley, _Anatomy of Vertebrates_. 1872. Daily
Weather Chart first begun. 1876. _Challenger_ at
Portsmouth--Bell’s Telephone. 1878. Electric Light on the
Embankment. 1879. Phonograph.
1880. Pasteur’s Cure of Hydrophobia. 1882. Sir W. Siemen’s Steel
Process. 1885. Maxim Gun. 1888. Stellar Photography--Sir Isaac
Roberts. 1889. Bicycles, The Pneumatic Tyre.
1890. Forth Bridge. 1892. Tower Bridge. 1894. Argon, by Lord Rayleigh
and Professor Ramsay. 1895. Röntgen Rays. 1896. Lord Kelvin’s
Jubilee.
ECONOMICS FOR GIRLS.
By MARGARET BRIDGES.
[Changed attitude of public towards economics.]
Nothing strikes a student of economics more forcibly than the change
which has come over public opinion with regard to this subject during
the last few years. Until quite lately, it has been regarded, except by
scholars, with suspicion and dislike, accused of setting forth material
wealth as the supreme object of human desire, and of ignoring all that
is generous and disinterested in human nature. To-day things are very
different: indeed it might be said we are all economists now. Some
vestige, however, of the old prejudice still lingers in the minds of
those who ask: “What is the good of teaching economics to _Girls_?”
[Training given in accuracy.]
(1) The student of economics is trained to think exactly, to reason
closely, and to express herself clearly. No one surely would maintain
that such training is _less_ needed by girls than by boys. On the
contrary, we are often assured that women are less accurate than
men, and are constitutionally illogical. In any science, vagueness
of thought and looseness of expression are fatal to success, but the
student of economics has a peculiar difficulty to overcome, for he
finds no special vocabulary ready for his use. The terms used are for
the most part those familiar in everyday language, employed however in
a very definite and sometimes peculiar sense. Great care is needed in
distinguishing between the ordinary and the economic meaning of such
terms as utility, wealth, capital, value, and many others. And the
training in scientific precision of language thus given is no small
gain in these days of slip-shod English.
[Reasoning powers developed.]
(2) The study of economics tends to stimulate independent thought, and
to develop “mental muscle”. We take it for granted that the questions
set for home work require an application of the principles given,
and not a mere reproduction of notes. The girls _must_ think out the
problems for themselves, for, as they truly remark sometimes: “We
can’t find the answers in our books”. Political economy certainly does
not lend itself to cribbing or cramming--and we are thankful that our
text-books supply no ready-made solutions of problems.
[History rendered more interesting.]
(3) We find that the study of the industrial conditions of our country
gives an additional interest to history. To read it with economic eyes
is to read it afresh, whilst to study it _without_ them is to leave out
a very important factor.
[Interest shown by pupils in subject.]
[Diagrams supplied by pupils.]
[Illustrations drawn from daily life.]
(4) I would urge the great importance of giving our girls, especially
those engaged in philanthropic work, some knowledge of those economic
principles upon which such work must be based to do real good. We
have learnt that this is not easy, and that incalculable mischief may
be done by thoughtless benevolence, which is too often cruelty in
disguise. Mr. Loch, in speaking of charity organisation, has said:
“It is likely that we shall in the future draw our women secretaries
from the ranks of those who have taken the trouble to study political
economy”. Of course, there must be the training of the heart as well as
the head. Our theories, however perfect, will avail us little without
the sympathetic insight that love alone can give, but perhaps women
specially need to remember that sympathy itself must be guided by
reason. Still it may be asked: “Can political economy, dealing as it
does, for the most part, with dry abstractions, be made interesting to
girls?” My experience is, that in no branch of their studies are the
pupils more responsive or more ready to do their part of the work, and
indeed to give often more than is actually demanded. They particularly
enjoy the making of original diagrams (very original sometimes!),
and occasionally so elaborate as to cost the teacher some anxious
study. Much amusement may be got out of such seemingly unpromising
material as even the _Law of Diminishing Returns_ or Ricardo’s _Theory
of Rent_, when they are touched upon by an imaginative or artistic
girl. To past generations of pupils I owe many apt illustrations and
ingenious diagrams, which have been stored up for future use, because
they were much better than any I had thought of myself. I think our
lessons fail sometimes, because we work so hard ourselves, that we
leave our pupils nothing to do! Now in economics we are dealing to a
great extent with facts that are already familiar to them, so that we
can constantly appeal to their own experience and observation, and the
teacher will find that “interrogative lessons on the Socratic model”
are particularly suited to this subject. The daily newspapers will
furnish her with plenty of illustrations, and economic laws can be
shown to be working themselves out before our eyes. What better comment
on the Laws of Demand and Supply could we wish for than that supplied
by the recent “boom” and subsequent “slump” in the bicycle trade, or
the speculation in seats during the late Jubilee! The illustrations
furnished by the girls themselves, from their own experience, are
specially valuable. The daughters of Indian officers can testify to
the diminished purchasing power of the “vanishing rupee,” whilst Irish
girls are eloquent on the system of Land Tenure in their own country; a
banker’s daughter will supply us with skilfully forged bank notes and
bills of exchange, and on one occasion an Austrian pupil gave us some
interesting information on the working of the Metayer system abroad.
[Judicious use of text-books.]
[Economics as an examination subject.]
In teaching younger girls--say from fifteen to seventeen--a sparing
use should be made of text-books for home reading: paragraphs,
exemplifying or enlarging on the lesson given, may be selected,
but indiscriminate reading, for the average girl, at that age, is
pretty sure to result--as she will candidly tell you--in her getting
“hopelessly muddled”. Jevons’ _Primer of Political Economy_ is an
admirable introduction to the subject, but avowedly does not cover
the whole ground, and I regret to say that Professor Gonner’s very
helpful text-book is now out of print. To a great extent indeed the
teacher will find it necessary to form her own text-book, that is, to
collect her materials from many sources, and adapt them to the use
of her pupils. One feels in this, as in other subjects, that one
cannot hope to do much more, in the limited time at our disposal, than
awaken interest, and show what a wide field there is to be explored.
We are glad to know that the subject is often continued after school
days are over. Many of our pupils are preparing for the Senior Oxford
Examination, but economic lessons are given in non-examination classes
as well.
Some take up the subject again later for the Cambridge Higher Local,
and have to make themselves acquainted with Adam Smith, J. S. Mill,
and a host of more modern writers, hardly any of whom could have been
placed in their hands with advantage at an earlier age, although they
will unconsciously have imbibed much of their teaching and will find
that their year’s training in elementary economics will have helped
them a long way on their road.
[Ethical considerations. Enlarged sympathies.]
In conclusion, we would advocate the study of economics for girls,
because we believe that it helps them to live in a larger world, and to
take a more intelligent interest in the lives of those around them.
[Wealth an element in well-being.]
The “sordid science” is lifted into a higher plane when we regard it as
“a part of the study of man”--and look on wealth as a means to an end,
not an end in itself--valuable only so far as it facilitates a “growth
towards that higher and purer condition of society, for which alone we
care to strive”.
APPENDIX.
I give a few extracts from papers received from old pupils, in answer
to the request that they would say, quite simply and unofficially,
what benefits they had derived from a course of economic study.
“I think that learning economics has helped me to take a more
intelligent interest in everyday matters.”
“I consider I have benefited more by that subject than by any other.
There are so many subjects you can take an interest in _if_ you
understand economics, that if you do not, would appeal to you in no
way whatever.”
“It helps us to understand some of the most important subjects of the
day, and gives us a clearer idea of the difficulties of the poor--and
shows us the best way of helping them.”
“The human sympathies cannot fail to be awakened, and narrow-minded
and selfish views cannot long be entertained. Economics often shows
the best methods in the relief of our less fortunate brothers and
sisters.”
“Living as I do, in Ireland, the study of this subject has widened
my interests greatly. Now I can more fully understand the problem of
landlord and tenant.”
“Besides economics being useful, it is also very interesting.”
“It tends to make one speak more exactly and to keep to the point.”
Many more answers to the same effect might be given, but these
are perhaps enough to show that the study of economics is neither
uninteresting nor unpractical.
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
By AMY LUMBY.
[The general aim and method of the teacher.]
“All spirits upon which poetry falls,” says Shelley, “open themselves
to receive the wisdom which is mingled with its delight.” To remember
these words will help the teacher of literature to bear in mind her
double aim--to inspire delight and at the same time to impart wisdom.
It is impossible to lay down rules for accomplishing this aim, but we
may trace out a few principles by which to guide our course. Literature
appeals to the imagination, the faculty of the mind in which emotion
and intellect join, and a literature lesson should combine the two
elements of feeling and thought. Poetry needs to be enjoyed if it is
to be understood, for it is the expression, not of facts which can be
demonstrated, but of truth which can only be recognised by those who
care for it. So the first aim of the teacher must be to make her class
enjoy what they read. Dulness is a bad fault in any teacher; in the
teacher of literature it is high treason. No one ought to teach the
subject unless she thoroughly enjoys it herself and can communicate
her enjoyment. But in trying to inspire delight in her pupils, she
must be on her guard against the mental indolence of children who ask
only to be amused. In this age of trivial literature and comic papers
young people are apt to be impatient of serious reading, to find the
_Faerie Queene_ dull and the _Pilgrim’s Progress_ slow, but the teacher
must persevere in presenting to them as attractively as may be the very
best they are capable of relishing at all, and after a while a better
taste will destroy all desire for the worthless rubbish they once found
pleasure in.
When once the teacher has roused real enjoyment in her class, her part
becomes merely that of the interpreter. She must see to it that her
pupils understand the words they read, realise the images that are
called up before them, and follow as closely as they can the thoughts
that are presented to them. The subject does the rest. For the power
of intercourse with great and good thoughts is such that it enlarges
and lifts the mind insensibly to better things. If the spirit is but
rendered sensitive to poetry, wisdom enters hand in hand with delight.
We can give no rules for producing this effect. The power to do it
is the special gift required in the teacher of literature. She must
possess the faculty of kindling and stirring thought and feeling to
respond to the thought and feeling presented to them. Without this she
will never make her pupils feel anything of what poetry can teach. In
no subject does the mental attitude and the mental furniture of the
teacher matter so much.
[The earliest stage--the reading lesson.]
Assuming then a thorough enjoyment and appreciation of the subject,
we will consider a little more in detail the method in which it may
be treated in one or two typical cases. To begin with the simplest
form of literature--the reading lesson--we will suppose that we have
to read a poem, say “The Wreck of the _Hesperus_,” with a class of
young children. We shall have in our own minds a clear conception of
the qualities which make this one of the finest of modern ballads--the
extreme simplicity of the theme, the vigour and breadth of the
treatment, the pathos of the little human tragedy set against the
great background of Nature in storm and tumult. But we shall not
burden the children’s minds with this information; with a very few
words of preface to prepare them for what they are to expect, we shall
first read the whole poem through to them. The reading is a very
important point, for on this depends to a large extent the enjoyment
they will have in the poem. A harsh voice or a dull delivery is fatal
to pleasure; and monotonous reading fails to convey the point of the
story, and to suggest the atmosphere of the poem. Every teacher of
literature should be a trained reader.
The poem must next be taken verse by verse; the meaning of difficult or
unusual expressions, such as “veering flaw,” “lashed to the helm,” “she
stove and sank,” should be explained, while those that are peculiarly
apt should be noted with appreciation; for instance, “_fairy_ flax,”
“a _whooping_ billow,” the vessel “_swept_” towards the reef, and many
others. At the same time the class must be made to see the pictures
suggested, as they rise: the wintry sea, the skipper beside the helm,
the child lashed to the mast, the frozen ship rushing headlong to her
doom. And lastly, the whole drift and significance of the poem must be
kept before their minds by making them realise the situation; the happy
child so suddenly overwhelmed, helpless and at first bewildered, then
as calamities thicken, turning for help to prayer; hurried on with the
doomed vessel through night and storm, and sharing its fate among the
exultant breakers. And they should feel the calm of the close and the
survival of the human interest beyond the short-lived triumph of the
sea. Of course it will not be possible at first to make young children
feel all the force of a poem like this, but our aim must be to rouse
their imaginations by bringing the picture it presents vividly before
them, so that they gradually become more and more sensitive to the
stimulus of poetry.
[The second stage--the detailed study of one of Shakspere’s plays, or
some other work in detail.]
A course of reading lessons, graduated in difficulty from the simple
ballad to such poems as “The Forsaken Merman,” “Tithonus,” and the
“Ode to Duty,” will lead up to the next stage, the reading of a play
of Shakspere. Here we must cling very closely to our principle of
the importance of enjoyment. Very few people who have read their
first play at school are happy enough to have enjoyed it. And why is
this? Because a mistaken ideal has been before the teacher’s mind,
and a mistaken method has been used to attain it. Careful study and
exact understanding of the language of Shakspere is almost a liberal
education in itself; but it is not always borne in mind that the
understanding of the language is but a means to an end, and that
notes, whether philological or historical, are of value only when
they really throw light on the meaning of the text. It is worse than
useless to burden the memories of children with derivations of words
from languages with which they are absolutely unacquainted. When the
original or root-meaning of a word is really worth knowing, and a
knowledge of it tends to a more accurate use of the word, then it
should be learnt, but to make children learn Saxon or Welsh or Sanskrit
words simply because an English word is akin to them is a waste of time
and power, and this explaining of the vaguely understood by the totally
unknown is a subversion of all educational methods. The teacher should
exercise a wise discretion in the use of notes, and not disgust her
class with Shakspere altogether, as is too often done, by forcing upon
the children a mass of dry information which overloads their memories
without bringing a ray of illumination with it.
Some care will be needed with young children reading their first play
to see that they can really follow the story of it. The dramatic form
is puzzling to them; the absence of descriptive matter, together with
the constant change of scene, is apt to bewilder them, and it may be
necessary to read the story to them in Lamb’s _Tales from Shakspere_,
or some such form, before we launch into the play itself. With older
pupils this will not be required. With them the kind of preparation we
should give would be rather a very simple talk about those moral laws
of which Shakspere is the inspired teacher. Children of sixteen years
of age, or thereabouts, are easily interested in problems of character,
and it is well to explain to them something of what we understand by
character and how it may be built up or undermined, rousing their
consciousness to realise what their own moral experience has been,
so that they look into themselves for confirmation of the facts with
which the plays deal. Having done this, however, we must avoid tacking
any specific “moral” to a play. Shakspere teaches, like life, by
indirection, and we have to consider his plays as pictures of life, not
as tracts against particular vices.
In bringing before a class the characters of a play, we should first
form a clear conception of them ourselves. Shakspere’s people are
so complex that many different views can be taken of them, and no
thoughtful estimate is without its value. But it is most important that
no statement about a character should be unsupported by evidence from
the text. Adherence to this rule will save the teacher from making
fancy sketches of her own, and will also make her shun those little
text-books which give catalogues of qualities attached to each name,
bringing no image whatever before the mind, and destroying all true
realisation of the character. We should not be satisfied until we have
made the chief characters in the play we are reading so real to our
children that they would recognise them if they met them in the street.
When we have clearly realised the characters we shall be able to see
the drift and the force of the play, and to show our children how
the persons develop and change under the stress of circumstances and
according to the absolute decrees of the moral law. To convey this
teaching, all steeped in poetry of the richest kind, should be the
purpose of a Shakspere lesson; and the notes that are learnt should be
subordinate to that end. Our work must not be less thorough than it
usually is at present, but it may well be less pedantic.
The reading of a play usually takes up a course of lessons, so that
it is impossible in this space to give notes on any particular one,
but the same principles which guided us in our treatment of a simple
ballad will hold good here, and in the study of such longer poems
as may be chosen for the reading of our class. Here as there we must
first secure clear understanding of the language, then we must realise
the images called up by it, and lastly yield ourselves in intelligent
self-surrender to the poet’s thought, not obtruding our own personality
but letting him lead us where he will, feeling ourselves, and teaching
our class to feel, a deep reverence for what he has to say to us.
The reading of prose may be treated in much the same way, bearing in
mind the fact that the emotional element is less marked in prose, the
appeal being rather to reason than to feeling. Such prose as has become
a part of literature is, however, largely imaginative, and we have to
teach the children not only to follow closely a train of reasoning
and to criticise it, if need be, but also to appreciate the means by
which the writer makes his thought vivid to us, what figures he uses,
what light he flashes upon his subject. Some of Macaulay’s _Essays_,
Addison’s _Essays_, _Rasselas_, and similar works may well be read at
this stage for the sake of the training they give in the right use of
language, the first element of literary cultivation.
[The most advanced stage--the study of the history of literature.]
The teaching of a period of the history of literature is a matter
on which only broad general principles can be laid down. Children
of fourteen to sixteen can hardly be expected to realise clearly
differences in style or treatment, or to be able to write criticisms
on the poets of the period. With them, it will be best to make them
acquainted with the lives of the chief writers, as far as may be
necessary, and then to let them read as much as they can of their
works. We can teach them to love choice expressions, to recognise
beauty of thought, to appreciate true imagination. They may not be
able to say why they like these things, but they need not like them
the less for that. With older pupils, capable of taking in general
ideas as to the drift of thought in any particular age, the period to
be studied should be set against its historic background, the first
lessons being devoted to discussion of the stage of cultivation reached
at the time, and the influences which had tended to produce it. For
instance, a course on the Elizabethan period would require introductory
lessons on the Renaissance as it affected England, on the Reformation
in its bearing on education and freedom of thought, on the discovery
of America and the spirit of adventure connected with it, and on the
social and political conditions of the times. With clear conceptions on
these points to start from, it will be easy to follow the art movement
in poetry during the period, the growth of the drama, the development
of prose writing in its various branches, and the students will be
in possession of information which will help them to understand why
Spenser, Shakspere, Bacon and our Authorised Version belong to that
age and to no other. Then the chief authors should be read as far as
possible at first hand, and the very cheap editions which are published
of all our classics make it easy for the class to come provided with
their own books. It will not be possible to read many of the longer
works through with the class, but selection can be made of the choicest
passages, and these can be linked together by a short analysis of the
rest.
During this stage the sense of style should be carefully cultivated.
Differences in style may be shown by comparing examples of the
treatment of similar themes by different writers; for instance, in
poetry, “Lycidas,” Gray’s “Elegy,” Adonaïs, and Thyrsis, might be
studied with this aim, while in prose, selected essays of Bacon,
Cowley, Addison and Lamb might be used in the same way. Taste must also
be trained, and it should be made as catholic as possible; each author
should be enjoyed for his own special excellence, Dryden for his vigour
and common-sense, no less than Sir Thomas Browne for his “moth-like
flitting” in intellectual twilight.
A suggestion for reading-courses adapted for girls of different ages
is subjoined. It is not, and could not be, in any sense complete, but
it may serve to help those who have not yet had much experience to
estimate the character and scope of the reading that may be expected
from children of various ages. Except in the case of the youngest
children, the choice of books has been made so as to include prose and
poetry of different epochs, and thus make the intellectual outlook
wider than it could be if the reading were restricted to the works of
one particular age. A girl who had read through the books mentioned
in this course, or any drawn up on similar lines, would have a fair
all-round acquaintance with the best kind of literature by the time she
was eighteen.
Age.
10-12. _1st year._ Macaulay’s “Lays”; “Marmion”; Kingsley’s “Heroes”;
Keary’s “Heroes of Asgard”.
_2nd year._ “Evangeline” and “Hiawatha”; “Enoch Arden”;
“Ancient Mariner”; Lamb’s “Tales from Shakspere”;
“Ivanhoe”.
12-14. _1st year._ “Midsummer Night’s Dream”; “Lady of the Lake”;
“Deserted Village”; “Gulliver’s Travels”;
“Kenilworth”.
_2nd year._ “Merchant of Venice”; “Childe Harold”; “Morte
d’Arthur”; “Vicar of Wakefield”; Essays from the
“Spectator”.
14-16. _1st year._ “As You Like It”; “Henry V.”; Gray’s “Elegy”; “The
Princess”; “Esmond”; some of the “Essays of Elia”.
_2nd year._ “Faerie Queene,” book i.; “Julius Cæsar”; Milton’s
“Minor Poems”; Macaulay’s Essays on “Clive” and on
“Mme. d’Arblay”; Ruskin’s “Sesame and Lilies”.
16-18. _1st year._ “Macbeth”; “Paradise Lost,” books i. and ii.; “The
Holy Grail”; “Areopagitica”; Burke’s “Speeches on
America”.
_2nd year._ “Hamlet”; “Essay on Man”; “Selections from
Wordsworth”; Bacon’s “Essays”; “Rasselas”; Carlyle,
“The Hero as Poet and the Hero as Man of Letters”.
PHILOSOPHY AND RELIGION.
By DOROTHEA BEALE.
The third division of Part I. has to do with man as subject, a person,
self-conscious, related to other persons and to One All-embracing
Personality in whom all live and move and have their being. I am to
treat the subject from an intellectual point of view--religion, ethics,
philosophy.
[Sphere of school instruction.]
No school, and especially no day-school for girls, is responsible for
the whole of the religious education. The school is the link between
infancy and mature life, between the home and the world, the secular
and the spiritual. The school has to systematise instruction, and bring
it to bear on the daily tasks, on the social life, on the developing
character; to make the secular and religious life one organic whole.
We have to teach our pupils, so that they may _know_ the truth, _feel_
nobly, and hence _act_ rightly. We have to cultivate the power of
thought by instruction, to purify the emotions by the teachings of
history and poetry including the Bible and the utterances of heroic and
saintly lives, to strengthen the character by the discipline of the
mind, heart, will.
[Relation of dogmatics to ethics.]
Emotion and action must be the expression of an intelligent belief. “He
that cometh to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder
of them that seek Him.” We ought to offer the noblest gifts we can--a
“reasonable service,” a devotion of heart, which rests upon the truest
conception we can form; in the highest of all subjects there should
be that clearness of apprehension, that strong conviction, which is
necessary, if any truth is to become a practical power. We are so made
that we must, if we think at all, theorise, and our acts will depend
on our theories; no student of history can doubt this. Our sanitarians
have found that we may teach the poor about the value of cleanliness
and fresh air, but not until they understand the breathing functions do
they act upon it.
So in deeper things, it is ideas that govern the world. When the
Apostle would teach the most practical truths of family life and social
virtue, he began with the great doctrines of the indwelling Divine
life, of our brotherhood in Christ, of our citizenship in a spiritual
Kingdom, extending far beyond the regions of sense. We must found
Christian teaching upon definite beliefs accepted and felt to be true
by the highest reason. We must not be satisfied with cultivating the
affections only. There must be something more than an “enthusiasm of
humanity,” something which can embrace and fulfil it, else it will
blaze up like a bonfire, but soon die down, smothered under the ashes
of pessimism. None of our faculties can be isolated from the others;
each acts and reacts on each, the thought stimulating emotion, emotions
quickening thought, and the life acting and reacting upon both. Ethics
springs from dogmatics.
What do we mean by religion? Our age has been fertile in definitions.
May we not say it is the power by which we enter into conscious
_personal_ relation with the One, the Eternal, the Father of all?
[Religion as related to science and philosophy.]
Though it may be truly said that all knowledge of Nature is knowledge
of God, we feel that there is a difference between the teaching of
science and the teaching of religion--a distinction between the
knowledge of a thing, or an act, which we may know objectively, and the
knowledge of a person whom we know subjectively. We might know all the
movements of a machine, but we never speak of knowing a machine. It is
possible to know the works of God, and not know Him. It is personal
sympathetic knowledge which is the chief factor in the education of
character--the humanities are educative in a different sense from
mathematics and natural science. It is this personal relation to God
with which religious teaching has to do; its true end is to draw us
into sympathy with the All-Good.
Two things I would here insist on which are sometimes overlooked. 1st.
The child knows persons before things, and in the earliest exercises of
will-power, it is the will of another that rules his will. 2nd. Through
obedience to the higher intelligence, and trust in the love of another,
the child is enabled to acquire right habits.
Fröbel’s religious teaching is very beautiful, but he brings out less
clearly than Rosmini the priority of the personal; if Nature speaks
to a child of the All-Father, it is because he knows that all has to
come to him through persons, it is only much later that forces can
be hypostatised, and power, justice, spoken of apart from a person;
though this is, as Lotze has specially insisted, as inconceivable as is
quality without substance--attribute without subject.
[Piety in its double sense.]
First in the old sense of the word the child “worships” his parents
and those to whom he looks up, he is miserable when he feels the
displeasure of those with whom he is in sympathy, and their approbation
is the sunshine of his soul; thus is he early led to think of the
Father, to whom he and his parents owe all things, to whom they speak
in prayer and whose unseen presence they feel.
Hymns then and prayers, which express the feelings of a child to
a father, or the love to Jesus, and the desire to be like Him,
are suitable; such as give rather the consciousness of a penitent
reprobate, are sometimes heard at children’s missions, to the great
sorrow of those who know how dangerous it is to play with the emotions
and to excite terrors.
[Consciousness and self-consciousness.]
We must consider first that the conscious life is only gradually
developed; perceptions must become apperceptions by the controlling
power of attention; very gradual is the dawn of consciousness, marked
as Rosmini thinks by the first smile. So too there is an epoch at which
self-consciousness seems to awaken. Maurice and other philosophers have
marked the dawn of it by the use of the personal pronoun.
The baby new to earth and sky,
What time his tender palm is prest
Against the circle of the breast,
Has never thought that “this is I”:
But as he grows he gathers much,
And learns the use of “I” and “me,”
And finds “I am not what I see,
And other than the things I touch”.
So rounds he to a separate mind
From whence clear memory may begin,
As thro’ the frame that binds him in
His isolation grows defined.
Then, as in teaching science or language we first awaken the powers of
observation, and lead the child to reflect, so here, in the case of the
self-conscious subject, we help the child to interpret the facts of the
inner life as well as the outer.
Whilst recognising the danger of forcing the subjective in children, we
ought in this, as in other things, to follow the guidance of nature,
and surely our own experience, and that of most children, will show how
much they are occupied with their own feelings, with the struggles of
the higher to subdue the animal nature, and how through contest they
are developing the will-power, which is the only safeguard of later
life.
It is especially important early to correlate the subjective with the
objective in early teaching. Surely much irreligion results in later
life from the divorce of the two. As we guide the observing powers in
the outward life, so as the power of reflection develops we should do
with the inward life: the child is conscious of the pang which comes
to all of us, when we act against conscience: that pang which makes
our blood run cold, as we feel we have done wrong, is as much a fact
of experience, as real, as the sensation of heat, when we touch hot
iron. Would people grow up to deny the existence of the spiritual
consciousness, if they had been led to question their own experience? A
beautiful story is told by Parker and quoted by Armstrong.[22]
[22] _Man’s Knowledge of God._ Swift.
[Conscience.]
“When a little boy in my fourth year, my father took me to the farm
and sent me home alone. I had to pass a pond. A rhodora attracted my
attention. I saw a spotted tortoise sunning himself in the shallow
water at the root of the flaming shrub. I lifted the stick I had, to
strike; though I had never killed any creature, I had seen boys destroy
birds, squirrels and the like, and felt a disposition to follow their
wicked example. All at once something checked my little arm, and a
voice within said clear and loud, ‘It is wrong’. I held my uplifted
stick in wonder at the new emotion, the consciousness of an involuntary
but inward check upon my action, till the tortoise and rhodora both
vanished from my sight. I hastened home to mother and asked what it was
that told me it was wrong. Taking me in her arms, she said: ‘Some men
call it conscience, but I prefer to call it the voice of God. If you
listen and obey it, it will speak clearer and clearer, but if you turn
a deaf ear, it will at last leave you in the dark without a guide: your
life depends on your obedience to its voice.’ No event in my life has
made so deep and lasting an impression.”
[A witness for the spiritual, the universal.]
The fact that we cannot get rid of the consciousness of wrong, shows
that there is a higher Self condemning the self, one other than
ourselves; we must not force answers on the child, but we can bring
into his consciousness the presence of the holy and righteous God.
We may help to make clear and permanent in his consciousness the
facts, which he will only later interpret--the conflict of the merely
individual, the selfish life, with the larger, the all-embracing life
of unselfish love.
We may appeal too to the experience of each child, who suffers
punishment rather than disobey conscience. Such victories establish
faith, convince us that we are more than creatures of time, that we
are sons of God. Every true and self-denying act that a child is able
to do is a ground of confidence; “I write unto you, young men, because
ye have overcome the wicked one”. Each time that the mere animal
desires are subdued by the love of truth and righteousness, we prove
that we transcend the things of time and space. These are the eternal
things, which eye sees not and thought cannot conceive, and yet for the
sake of these unseen and eternal things men live and die, and count
all earthly things as nought. Do not the hearts of all children “burn
within them” as we expound to them the Scriptures which tell of heroes
who have done battle, who laid down their lives for righteousness’
sake, of Him who triumphed from the Cross? We can appeal too to the
inward experience of those who are naughty; they do not in their inmost
heart wish to be so, but they try and fail; nothing is more touching
than the penitence of children, when they find that we have seen the
good which is hidden, and not only the evil that comes forth--that
we know, not only what is done, but what is resisted. We can, as in
the old myths, show that their deliberate choice is not for selfish
pleasure; they would if offered the things most delightful to the mere
animal, refuse all, if they could have it only on condition of becoming
wicked and cruel and deceitful. Hauff’s _Cold Heart_ is a beautiful
story on the subject. Thus should we base healthy religious experiences
upon facts, and foster habits of attention and obedience to the inward
voice.
Right ambitions too should be fostered, the desire to enter into the
Divine purposes in thought and word and deed, to be a fellow-worker
with God. This will take more definite form in the later idealising
period of life; still there will be developed sometimes at an early age
earnest desires to become wise and good and to do some special work.
[Order of teaching.]
For objective formal teaching the little ones would begin with the
stories of the world’s childhood. The lessons first given in a simple
form will be expanded in the higher classes. The child who has learned
to trust his father, will learn from Abraham’s sacrifice that we can
trust God; the higher classes will see how by the frustration of his
purpose Abraham learned the true meaning of sacrifice; the Psalms and
Prophets will carry on the subjective teaching, and the words of the
old prophets will become a fact of experience; “the word of the Lord
came unto me”.
The inner meaning of the sacred myths which had once been told as a
mere story will now be felt; the story of the flood as interpreted by
St. Peter, and quoted in our baptismal service, the deliverance from
the bondage in Egypt, typifying redemption from the slavery of sin,
the New Testament teaching of the synoptical gospels, especially the
parables, will have supreme educative power.
[Written work.]
It is essential that in this, as in other subjects, written exercises
which require thought be set, and corrected and criticised--this is
often the only subject in which pupils are not required to formulate
their thoughts--hence there exists a vast amount of current religious
phraseology to which no definite meaning is assigned; the words may be
true in themselves, but not true for the person using them. An American
writer tells of one who for years was a regular attendant at church,
and often encouraged him by her attentive and responsive expression;
when he came to know her later, he found to his surprise that she was
as ignorant of the fundamental truths as if she had been brought up in
a heathen land.
[Sceptical phases.]
The later period, that of ripening experience, of adolescence, will
give the maximum of reflective, as the earliest childhood, the maximum
of the sensitive power. As the mysteries of their own being are more
and more unfolded, the problems of philosophy and metaphysics have
an attraction which should not be disregarded: there is a desire to
be alone; the young feel that they must work out the problems for
themselves, and they resent the attempt to force on them other people’s
solutions. They must question ere they can fully believe; we must never
give utterance to the profane idea, that God is angry with those who
make mistakes in seeking truth, only show that truth like light is a
good, that we may not rest in an indolent agnosticism, for we cannot
grow vigorous and strong out of the sunlight; we must encourage them,
in this as in all studies, to be ever seeking a fuller knowledge of
truth, to live by the truth they have attained, and then they will gain
more and more, even through the mistakes. The function of the teacher
now is as Socrates described it, to be ready to give help, when needed,
to bring to the birth the great thoughts which oppress the soul.
[Need of leisure.]
Later the deep spiritual experiences of St. John and the arguments
wherewith St. Paul convinced himself, will come home to the religious
experience at least in some degree, and the words in which he describes
the vision of God as seen from the spiritual heights, which he had
reached in his later epistles. But there must be for the ripening of
the character time for quiet, and the incessant activities of to-day,
the filling up of every hour, the deprivation of quiet even on Sunday,
are much to be regretted, and all educators should see that those who
need time for spiritual thought, for working out the great questions
which come to every thoughtful person, should not be deprived of it,
because some would misuse it. There are two excellent articles in the
_Pedagogical Review_ for July, 1891, on the “Psychology and Pedagogy
of Adolescence,” by E. Lancaster, and another, a study in “Moral
Education,” by J. Street, both Fellows of Clark University; the second
article is especially emphatic on this subject.
[Systematic reading.]
In the highest classes, some systematic reading regarding the history
and foundations of philosophy in general and Christian philosophy in
particular should not, I think, be omitted: one cannot do better than
begin with Plato; taking the _Apology_, the _Crito_ and parts of the
_Phædo_, or the two volumes of selections by Professor Jowett, or some
less expensive edition. The _Memorabilia_ of Xenophon is obtainable
for 3d. Selections might be made from Aristotle’s _Ethics_, and some
good history of philosophy be made accessible, _e.g._, Schwegler’s,
edited by Dr. Hutchinson Stirling, which is not too long; and some
such inspiring book as Fichte’s _Vocation of the Scholar_ may be
recommended; other books I might mention, _e.g._, Henry Jones on
Browning; Professor Frazer’s selection from Berkeley; Mackenzie’s
_Social Philosophy_ and the series of small hand-books edited by
Professor Knight. There might be meetings for discussion and reading
under the presidency of one versed in such matters; this would give
definiteness to thought, and would at least lead to the kind of wisdom
which made the oracle pronounce Socrates the wisest of men; such
meetings would be specially useful for the staff. Some effort should be
made to establish the primary convictions which alone make life worth
living, enable one to possess one’s soul in patience, live in the faith
that each is working out the will of the All-Wise and All-Good--if
willingly, then with the fullest joy and reward.
[Higher teaching.]
The subject is not ignored at the University Colleges of the States,
and there is much of deep interest in the article to which I have
referred, _viz._, “Psychology of Adolescence”. In an article by Caswell
Ellis, the special training of teachers of religion is insisted on, and
the establishment of professorships. “A department of pedagogy cannot
be called complete that does not deal with this important part of its
field. Religious training is as much a problem for the pedagogue, as is
physical or mental training. Surely we cannot entirely separate them.
We have already at our command in the Universities, many helps in the
study of the Bible, of theology, of philosophy, of psychology, etc.;
why cannot there be found some man of broad culture, wide sympathies,
reverent spirit, to focalise these in a chair of religious pedagogy,
or whatever it may be called? it would give the opportunity while
in college to look at the larger phases of the problem of religious
training. No subject is more vital, and our best men need not leave
college ignorant of the problem or the possibility of its solution--and
find in the decline of life that (as editors, preachers, etc.) they
have been spending their energies on reformation, while the great work
of formation was never considered.”
[Foundations of faith.]
The means of giving a thorough and systematic teaching regarding
the strong foundations of faith, is one that should be considered
by all educators. It is true that the emotions and affections are,
as in the case of all personal relations, the appropriate means of
intercommunion; but the religious life, if it is not to become weak and
sentimental, needs the bracing power of intellectual study, and the
Scriptures, especially the writings of St. John and St. Paul, afford
such exercise.
I may perhaps summarise the lines on which the grounds of a rational
faith seem to be established, and which should surely be formulated,
as we formulate the principles on which we base our faith in matters
of science. They may be arranged under two heads--objective and
subjective:--
1. Sense compels us to recognise the existence of a universe, to which
we can set no bounds of _space_ or _time_. We find everywhere at work
forces adapted to produce results immeasurably greater, yet similar in
character, to those produced by our own exercise of thought and will;
we are unable to conceive of either except as ultimately proceeding
from a personal mind and will.
Since our mind interprets the phenomena of sense, which is the language
of Nature; since the intelligent mind is related to an intelligible
universe, the finite mind must be related to the infinite, man must be
the child of God.
The facts of history show us man in all ages renouncing all that the
animal craves for, for the sake of the ideal, the transcendent.
2. Man is self-conscious, he can become an object to himself; that
he can do this proves him to have a dual nature. The higher sits
in judgment on the lower, or animal nature (identified with the
individual), seeks to bring it into obedience to the universal. Since
we can identify conscience with the universal mind and will, we infer
that we are on the one side in communion with God, as on the other with
the universe.
Man has the power of sympathy. As we cannot conceive of light without
postulating an all-comprehending æther, through which all things are
related, so the fact that we are affected, actually feel physically
and mentally with others, is inconceivable without postulating one
all-embracing Personality.
The faith that good must ultimately triumph is an axiom of the moral
life; we find it impossible to believe the reverse.
These are some of the broad bases on which rest the Christian dogmas of
the relation of man to God the All-Father, which tell of a perfect Son,
and of the power given to all to rise through grace into the spiritual
life.
I have dwelt on the subject at some length, because it seems to me that
the intellectual relation to God has been too much ignored; we should
love with the mind as well as with the heart; with the developing
of the physical and psychical life, the soul craves to root itself
more firmly on the consciousness of the universal, it desires to be
at one with the All-Wise and the All-Good Father of spirits to work
out the purpose of its own existence. It seeks to be in harmony with
all who are living by the highest ideal; hence the impulse to work in
associations, specially in the spiritual life, for life must overflow
into action! It seeks evermore to be at one in its being, and to bring
the individual self into harmony with the all-embracing Spirit in whom
we are one.
I may recommend to teachers the recently published volume on _Religious
Teaching in Schools_, by Dr. Bell of Marlborough.