In what is now as near the centre of the Map of London as any house
can properly be said to be is an old-fashioned dwelling-house on
Great-Ormond Street, which is occupied, and densely occupied, by
Frederic Denison Maurice's "Working-Men's College." The house looks, I
suppose, very much as it did in 1784, when Great-Ormond Street bordered
on the country,--when Lord Thurlow, the Chancellor of England, lived in
this house,--when some thieves jumped over his garden-wall, forced
two bars from the kitchen-window, entered a room adjoining the Lord
Chancellor's study, and stole the Great Seal of England, "inclosed in
two bags, one of leather and one of silk." London has grown so much
since, that anything that is stolen from the Working-Men's College
will not be stolen by thieves entering from the fields. I may say, in
passing, that this theft "threw London into consternation"; there being
an impression, that, for want of the Great Seal, all the functions of
the Executive Government must be suspended. The Privy-Council, however,
did not share this impression. They had a new seal made before night;
and though the Government of England has often moved very slowly since,
it has never confessedly stopped, as some Governments nearer home have
done, from that day to this day.
In view of what is done in Lord Thurlow's old house now, it is worth
while to linger a moment on what it was then and what he was. He was the
Keeper of George III.'s conscience, until he caballed against Mr. Pitt,
and was unceremoniously turned out by him. As Lord High-Chancellor, he
was guardian-in-chief of all the wards in Chancery; and I suppose, for
instance, without looking up the quotation in Boswell, that he was the
particular Lord Chancellor to whom Dr. Johnson said he should like to
intrust the making of all the matches in England. Louis Napoleon has
just now undertaken to make all the friction-matches in France,--but Dr.
Johnson's proposal referred to the matrimonial matches, the _dénouemens_
of the comedies and tragedies of domestic life. To us Americans, Thurlow
is notable for the strong and uncompromising language which he used
against us all through our Revolution, which excessively delighted the
King. As to his faculty for keeping a conscience, it may be said, that,
though he never married, he resided in this Great-Ormond Street house
with his own mistress and his illegitimate children. Lord Campbell, who
mentions this fact, informs us, that, as early as his own youth, the
British Bench had reached such purity that judges were expected to marry
their mistresses when they were appointed to the Bench. He adds, that
it is long since any such condition as that was necessary. In Thurlow's
time this stage of decency had not been attained even by Lord
Chancellors. His humanity may be indicated by his stiff opposition to
every reform ever proposed in the English criminal law, or in the social
order of the time. He battled the bills for suppressing the slave-trade
with all his might. "I desire of you, my Lords, in your humane
frenzy, to show some humanity to the whites as well as to the
negroes",--illustrating this remark by a picture of the sufferings of an
English trader who had risked thirty thousand pounds on the slave-trade
that year. When an entering wedge was attempted for the improvement of
the bloody code of criminal law, Thurlow opposed it with passion. The
particular clause selected by the reformers was one which demanded that
women who had been connected with any treasonable movements should be
burnt alive. It was proposed to reduce their punishment to the same
scale as men's. Thurlow made it his duty to defend the ancient practice.
He was, in short, mixed up with every effort of his time, which we now
consider disgraceful, for arresting the gradual progress of reform.
Now that Thurlow's wine-cellar is a college-chapel, that young men study
arithmetic in the room the Great Seal was stolen from, that Mr. Ruskin
teaches water-color drawing in Thurlow's bed-chamber, that Tom Brown,
_alias_ Mr. Hughes, presides over a weekly tea-party in the three-pair
back, and drills the awkward squad of the working-men's battalion in the
garden, it seems worth while to show that at least some places in the
world have improved in eighty years, whether the world itself is to
be given up as a mistake or not. We will let Lord Thurlow go, as Lord
Campbell does, with this charitable wish:--"I have not learned," he
says, "any particulars of his end, but I will hope that it was a
good one. I trust, that, conscious of the approaching change, having
sincerely repented of his violence of temper, of the errors into which
he had been led by worldly ambition, and of the irregularities of his
private life, he had seen the worthlessness of the objects by which he
had been allured; that, having gained the frame of mind which his awful
situation required, he received the consolations of religion; and that,
in charity with mankind, he tenderly bade a long and last adieu to the
relations and friends who surrounded him." There is not an atom of fact
known on which to found Lord Campbell's hope. But I, also, will leave
Lord Thurlow with this charitable wish, and I will now ask the readers
of the "Atlantic," who may be enough interested in social reform and a
mutual education, to see what has happened between his wine-cellar and
ridge-pole since the "London Working-Men's College" was established
there.
The founder of the Working-Men's College, as I have intimated, is the
Rev. Frederic Denison Maurice, the eminent practical theologian. Its
age is now six years,--as it was founded in the autumn of 1854. He says
himself, in a striking speech he made at Manchester not long since, that
the plan originated in that "awful year 1848, which I shall always look
upon as one of the great epochs in history." He says that "a knot of
men, of different professions, lawyers, doctors, parsons, artists,
chemists, and such like," thought they saw, in the convulsions of 1848,
a handwriting on the wall, sent them by God himself, testifying, "that,
if either rank or wealth or knowledge is not held as a trust for men, if
any one of these things is regarded as a possession of our own, it must
perish." In a real desire, then, to "make their own little education of
use to such persons as had less," and, in so doing, to establish a
vital and effective relation between themselves and the men of the
working-classes below them, they looked round for opportunities to work
in the education of _men_. Anybody who remembers "Amyas Leigh" will
remember how earnestly Charles Kingsley there presses the theory that
most of what we learn as children should be left to be learned by men,
as it was in the days of Queen Bess. I suppose that Maurice's "knot of
parsons and such like" shared that view. At all events, they lectured to
Mechanics' Institutes, and did other such wish-wash work, which is not
good for much, except for the motive it shows; and having found that
out, they were all the more willing to join in arrangements more
definite and profitable. According to Mr. Maurice, the formation of the
People's College in Sheffield started them on the plan of a college,
and determined them, as far as they could, to give consistency to
their dreams by carrying out the plan of an English college in their
arrangements for working-men.
At this point I must beg the accomplished company of readers to
recollect what an English college is. In its organization, and in much
of its consequent _esprit du corps_, it is as different from an American
college as an Odd-Fellows' lodge is from a country academy. The
difference is also of precisely the same sort. The man or the boy who
connects himself with an English college is, in theory, still the
student of a thousand years ago, who came on foot to Oxford or
Cambridge, because he had heard, in the wilds of Mercia or of Wessex,
that there were some books at those places,--and that some Alfred or
Ethelred or Eldred had given some privileges to students coming there.
When he has arrived, he joins one or other of the societies of students
whom he may find there, just as the Mercian Athelstan may have done.
From the moment that the established society has tested him,--and the
tests are very mild,--he is admitted as a member of a fraternity,
sharing the privileges of that fraternity, and, to a certain extent, its
duties. He is at first a junior member, it is true. Among his duties,
therefore, will be obedience to some of the senior members, and respect
to all. But none the less is he a neophyte member of a corporation which
extends back hundreds of years perhaps,--he is a co-proprietor of its
honors and privileges, is responsible for their preservation, and is,
from the first, inoculated with its _esprit du corps_.
Now in an American college there is _esprit du corps_ enough, and sense
of college dignity enough. But the student's _esprit du corps_ is one
thing, and the government's is another. The Commons Hall, for instance,
has died out of most of our colleges. Why? Why, because it had ceased to
be a _Commons_ Hall. It was not the place where the junior and senior
members of a college, the pupils and all their instructors, met
together. It was the place where the undergraduates were fed,--and where
a few wretched tutors were fed at their sides. But every member of the
governing body who could possibly escape did so. At our Cambridge,
they even went so far as to set apart a Commons Hall for each class of
undergraduates at last,--for fear men should see each other eat; as at
"Separate Prisons" the idea of communion in worship is carried out by
introducing each prisoner into a state-pew or royal-box whose partitions
are so high that he cannot see his neighbors. This was before they gave
the _coup-de-grace_ to the whole thing, and scattered the members of
their college just as widely as they could at meal-times, as at all
other times. The recitation, again, probably the only occasion when an
American student meets his instructor, is conducted according to an
arrangement by which the instructor meets all of a large section or
class together, meeting them for recitation simply. In a word, the
American college differs from any other American school chiefly in
having larger endowments and older pupils.
In the English college, on the other hand, before a freshman has
been there three months, he may have established his claim to some
"scholarship," which shall be his post and his "foundation" there
for years. From the very beginning, one or another honor or prize
is proposed to him,--which is the first stepping-stone on a line of
promotion of which the last may be his appointment to the highest
dignities in the University or in the Church. From the beginning,
therefore, he has his duties in the college assigned to him, if he have
earned any right to such honors. Thus, it may be his place to read the
Scripture Lesson at prayers, or to read the Latin grace at the end of
dinner,--the President and Vice-President of his college having done the
same at the beginning.
These arrangements are not to be confounded with the services rendered
by charity students. We have imitated some of these, which are so sadly
described in "Tom Brown at Oxford." But we have no arrangements which
correspond at all to those of the system which in England brings
graduates and undergraduates to a certain extent into a common life,
mutually interested in the honor and popularity of "Our College."
When Mr. Maurice and his friends spoke of "a college," they meant to
carry to the utmost these social and mutual views of college life. They
wanted to come into closer connection with the working-men of London,
and formed the Working-Men's College that they might do so.
They had, therefore, something in mind very different from sitting for
an hour in presence of a dozen students, hearing them recite a lesson,
saying then, "_Ite, missa est_," and departing all, every man to his
own way. They foresaw their difficulties, undoubtedly, and they have
undoubtedly met some which they did not foresee. But they meant to
establish, on paper, if nowhere else, a mutual society,--a society, it
is true, in which those who knew the most should teach those who knew
the least, but still a society where the learners and the teachers met
as members of the same fraternity,--equals so far as the laws of that
society went,--and with certain common interests arising from their
connection with it.
Not only does the necessity for such an undertaking appear in England
as it does not here, but the difficulty of it is, on a moderate
calculation, ten thousand times greater than it is here. Here, in the
first place, if the "working-man" as a boy has felt any particular fancy
for algebra or Greek or Latin, (and those fancies, in a fast country,
are apt to develop before the boy is eighteen,) he has e'en gone to a
high-school, and, if he wanted, to a "college," where, if he had not the
means himself, some State Scholarship or Education Society has floated
him through, and he has gained his fill of algebra, Latin, or Greek, or
is on the way to do so. Or, if he have not done this,--if the appetite
for these things, or for physical science, historical science, or
political science, has developed itself a little later in life, he has
hoarded up books for a few years, and has made himself meanwhile rather
more necessary to his master than he was before, so that, when he says,
some day, "I think we must arrange so that I can leave the shop earlier
in the afternoon," the master has bowed submiss, and the incipient
chemist, historian, or politician has worked his own sweet will. Or,
thirdly, if he wanted instruction from anybody in the category we first
named, who had tried the high-school and college plan, he had only to go
and ask for it.
Very likely the man is his brother; at all events, he is somebody's
brother: and there is no difference in their social _status_ which makes
any practical difficulty in their meeting together, man-fashion, to
teach and to learn. But in saying all this, we speak of things which
London understands no more than it does the system of society of the
Chinese Empire. To begin: the thriving Oxford-Street retailer will tell
you very frankly, perhaps, that he had rather his son should not learn
to read, if he could only sign his name without learning. Reason: that
the father has observed that his older son read so much more of bad than
good, that he is left to doubt the benefits conferred by letters. I do
not mean, that, practically, the London tradesman's son does not learn
to read; but I do mean that that process meets this sort of prejudice.
Grant, however, that he does learn to read, and has appetite for more;
grant that he gets well through with A B C, and what follows; grant that
he can read well enough to read the translations from French filth which
his father is afraid of; but grant that his father and his mother,
working with the blessing of his God, have kept him pure enough to steer
clear of that temptation; grant that he becomes one-and-twenty, eager
for algebra, for chemistry, for Latin, or for Greek. What are you going
to do about it then? Then comes in the necessity which Mr. Maurice
wanted to meet,--and there comes in, by the same steps, the exceeding
difficulty of his experiment.
It is the difficulty of caste. I do not know how many castes there are
in England; but I should think there were about thirty-seven. Any member
of either of these finds it as hard to associate with a member of any
other as a Sudra does to associate with a Brahmin, or a Brahmin with a
Sudra. It is not that people are unwilling to condescend to the castes
below them. At least, it is not that chiefly. It is, quite as much or
more, that, with a good, solid, English pride, they do not care to be
snobbish, and do not choose to put themselves upon people who are above
them. They "know their place," they say. And, for a race which has as
good reason as the English for pride in its ability to stand firm,
to "know one's place" is a great thing to boast of. People who have
travelled on the Continent have been amused to see how zealously Sir
John and Lady Jane and Miss Jeanette talked together at the _table
d'hôte_ for a week, never by accident speaking to Mr. Williams, Mrs.
Williams, and Miss Williamina, who sat next them. This is not inability
to condescend, however. The Ws are as unwilling to speak to the Js. This
difficulty is the same difficulty which Mr. Litchfield describes in an
account of his "Five Years' Teaching at Working-Men's College." "When a
man first comes to our college," he says, "he is apt to walk into his
class-room in the solemn and discreet manner befitting an entry into a
public institution, and generally for a night or two will persist in
regarding his teacher as a severely official personage, whose dignity is
not to be lightly trifled with. Now nothing, I believe, can really be
done, till this notion is extinguished,--till teacher and students have
got to understand each other, and have agreed to banish the foolish
_mauvaise honte_ which makes every Englishman shy of talking to a
fellow-creature. The freer the colloquial intercourse between teacher
and students, the more is learned in the time. To establish this is not
easy; but harder still is the task of setting the students on a familiar
footing with each other. There seems to be _some impassable obstacle to
the fraternization of a dozen Londoners_, though sitting side by side,
week after week, doing the same work." The truth being, that the dozen
Londoners might belong to twelve different castes. And just as in "the
Rifle Movement" the clerks in the Queen's civil service could not serve
in the same battalion with architects' clerks on the one hand, or
students at law on the other,--you may have, in your algebra class,
a goldsmith who is afraid of being snobbish if he speaks to a
map-engraver, or a tailor who does not presume to address an opinion on
Archimedes' square to a piano-forte maker.
But the Brahmin and the Sudra may both be converted to Christianity. In
that case, though it seems very odd to both, the distinction of caste
goes to the wall. And the "knot of parsons and such like," spoken of
above, having, very fortunately for the world, been born into the
Christian Church, made it, as we have seen, their business to face the
difficulty because of the necessity,--and the Working-Men's College is
the result of their endeavor. Mr. Maurice himself took the first step.
Before the College itself was opened, he undertook a Bible-class. He
invited whoever would to come. He read a portion of the Scriptures,
explained its meaning as he could,--and invited all possible
questioning. He testifies, in the most public way, that he got more good
than he gave in the intercourse which followed. "I have learned more
myself than I have imparted. Again and again the wish has come into my
mind, when I have left those classes, 'Would to God that anything I have
said to them has been as useful to them as what they have said to me has
been to me!'"
If now the American reader will free his mind from any comparisons
with an American college, and take, instead, his notion of this
"Bible-class," we can give him some conception of what the Working-Men's
College is. For there is not a clergyman in America who has not
conducted such a class, for the benefit of any who would come. And
such classes are considered as mutual classes. Everybody may ask
questions,--everybody may bring in any contribution he can to the
conversation. Very clearly there is no reason why chemistry, algebra,
Latin, or Greek may not be taught from the same motive, in classes
gathered in much the same way, and with a like feeling of cooperation
among those concerned. This is what the Working-Men's College attempts.
The instructors volunteer their services. They go, for the love of
teaching, or to be of use, or to extend their acquaintance among their
fellow-men. The students go, in great measure, doubtless, to learn. But
they are encouraged to feel themselves members of a great coöperation
society. So soon as possible, they are commissioned as teachers
themselves, and are put in a position to take preparatory classes in the
College. A majority of the finance-board consists of students. Let us
now see what is the programme which grows out of such a plan. I have not
at hand the schedule of exercises for the current year. I must therefore
give that which was in force in the autumn of 1859, when by paying
half-a-crown I became a member of the Working-Men's College. As I
make this boast, I must confess that I never took any certificate of
proficiency there, nor was I ever "sent up" for any, even the humblest,
degree. For the Working-Men's College may send up students to the
University of London for degrees.
Remember, then, that to accommodate London working-hours, all the
classes begin as late as seven o'clock in the evening. There are some
Women's Classes in the afternoon, but they are under a wholly different
management. From seven to ten every evening, Lord Thurlow's house is, so
to speak, in full blast. Mr. Ruskin is the earliest professor. He comes
at seven on Thursday, to teach drawing in landscape from seven till
half-past ten. Work begins on other evenings and in other classes at
half-past seven. Four other teachers of drawing are at work with their
pupils on different evenings of the week. Monday and Thursday are the
Latin days, Monday and Wednesday the Greek,--all taught by graduates of
the Universities. The mathematics are Arithmetic, Algebra, Geometry in
two classes, and Trigonometry. There was a class in Geology the winter I
knew the College,--there had been classes in Botany and Chemistry. There
were also classes in French, in German, in English Grammar, in Logic,
in Political Economy, and in Vocal Music, a class on the Structure and
Functions of the Human Body, and some general lectures or studies in
History. There were also "practice classes," where the students worked
with others more advanced than themselves on the subjects of the several
exercises,--there were preparatory classes, and an adult school to teach
men to read.
Now this is rather a rambling conspectus of a curriculum of study. But
it teaches, I suppose, first, what the right men would volunteer to
teach,--second, what the working-men wanted to learn. It is pretty
clear, that, if the plan succeeds, it will bring up a body of young men
who will know what is the advantage of a systematic line of study a good
deal better than any of them can be expected to know at the beginning.
Meanwhile here is certainly a very remarkable exhibition of instruction
to any man in London for a price merely nominal. After he has once paid
an entrance-fee,--half-a-crown, as I have said,--he may join any
class in the College whenever he wishes, on the payment of a very
insignificant additional fee. For the drawing-classes this fee is five
shillings. For the courses of one hour a week it is two shillings
sixpence, for those of two hours it is four shillings. The
drawing-classes are a trifle more costly, because the room for drawing
is kept open ready for practice-work every evening in the week. There
is also open for everybody every evening a Library, and the Principal's
Bible-class is open to all comers.
So much for the instruction side. Now to describe the social side, I
had best perhaps give the detail of one or two of my own visits at the
College. Walk into the front room on the lower floor of any house in
Colonnade Row in Boston, where the entry is on the right of the house,
and you see such a room as the present "Library" was when Lord Thurlow
lived there. Here is the office of the College. Here I found Mr.
Shorter, the Secretary, in a corner, at a little desk piled with
catalogues, circulars, "Working-Men's College Magazines," etc. There
was a coal fire in a grate, [_Mem._ Hot-air furnaces hardly known in
England,] a plain suite of book-shelves on one or more sides of the
room, and a suite of narrow tables for readers running across. There
were, perhaps, a dozen young men sitting there to read. This is
virtually a club-room for the College, and serves just the same
purpose that the reading-room of the Christian Union or the Christian
Association does with us, but that they take no newspapers. [_Mem. 2d_.
If you are in England, you say, "They _take in_ none." In America, the
newspapers take in the subscribers.]
I told Mr. Shorter that I wanted to learn about the practical working
of the College. He informed me very pleasantly of all that I inquired
about. It proved that they published a monthly magazine, "The
Working-Men's College Magazine," which was devoted to their interests.
The subscription is a trifle, and I took the volume for the year. It
proved, again, that I could become a member of the College by paying
half-a-crown; so I paid, was admitted to the privilege of the
reading-room, and sat down to read up, from the Magazine, as to the
working of the College. It appeared, that, after my initiation, I might
join any class, though it were not at the beginning of the term. So I
boldly proposed to Mr. Shorter that I would join Mr. Ruskin's class.
To tell the whole truth, I thought the experiment would be well worth
making, if I only gained by it a single personal interview with the
Oxford graduate, though I was doubtful about the quality of my impromptu
skies.
"Says Paddy, 'There's few play
This music,--can you play?'--
Says I, 'I don't know, for I never did try.'"
I could at least have said this to the distinguished critic, if I found
that his class was more advanced than I. But it proved that their
session was within quarter of an hour of its end,--and with some
lingering remains of native modesty, I waited for another occasion,--a
morrow which never came,--before putting myself under Mr. Ruskin's
volunteer tuition. But I tell the story to illustrate what might have
been. Had I been legitimately a working-man in London, whatever the
character of my work, I had a right to that privilege.
The Library proved to be one of those miscellaneous collections, such as
all new establishments have, so long as they rely on the books which
are given to them. I took down a volume of the "Reports of the Social
Association,"--an institution which they have in England now, for the
double purpose of giving an additional chance to philanthropists to
talk, and of saving the world from the Devil by drainage, statistics,
statutes, and machinery generally. But I looked over the edge of the
book a good deal to see who drifted in and out. As different classes
finished their work, one and another member came in,--and a few lingered
to read. The aspect of activity and resolute purpose was the striking
thing about the whole. The men were all young,--seemed at home, and
interested in what they were doing. Half-past nine, or thereabouts,
came, and a bell announced that all instruction was over, and that
evening prayers would close the work of the day. Down-stairs I went,
therefore, with those who stayed, into Lord Thurlow's wine-cellar,
which, as I said, is the chapel.
The arrangements for this religious service, if I understood the matter
rightly, are in the hands of Mr. Hughes, the well-known biographer
of Tom Brown at Rugby and at Oxford. In an amusing speech about his
connection with the College, Mr. Hughes gives an account of the way his
services as a law professor were gradually dispensed with, and says,
"Being a loose hand, they cast round to see what should be done with
me." Then, he says, they gave him the charge of the common room of the
College,--and that he considers it his business to promote, in whatever
way he can, the "common life," or the communion, we may say, of the
members who belong to different classes. In this view, for instance, in
the tea-room, where there is always tea for any one who wants it, he
presides at a social party weekly;--he had charge, when I was there, of
the drill class, and, I think, at other seasons, conducted the cricket
club, the gymnastics, or had an eye to them. In such a relation as that,
such a man would think of the union in worship as an essential feature
in his plans. And here I am tempted to say, that in a thousand things
in England which seem a hopeful improvement on English lethargy, one
catches sight of Dr. Arnold as being, behind all, the power that is
moving. Hodson, in the East-Indian army, seems so different from anybody
else, that you wonder where he came from, till it proves he was one
of Arnold's boys. Price's Candle-Works, in London, and Spottiswoode's
Printing-House have been before us here, in all our studies for the
Christian oversight of great workshops,--and it turns out that it was
Arnold who started the men who set these successes in order. The Bishop
of London would not thank me for intimating that he gained something
from being Arnold's successor; but I am sure Mr. Hughes would be
pleased to think that Arnold's spirit still lives and works in his
cellar-chapel.
The chapel is but one of the recitation-rooms,--and, like all the
others, is fitted with the plainest unpainted tables and benches. Two
gentlemen read the lessons and a short form of prayer, prepared, I
think, by Mr. Maurice himself,--and so adapted to the place and the
occasion. Thirty or more of the students were present.
I dare not say that it was a piece of Working-Men's College
good-fellowship,--but, led either by that or by English hospitality, one
of the gentlemen who officiated, to whom I had introduced myself with
no privilege but that of a "fellow-commoner" at the College, not only
showed me every courtesy there, but afterwards offered me every service
which could facilitate my objects in London. This fact is worth
repeating, because it shows, at least, what is possible in such an
institution.
After an introduction so cordial, it may well be supposed that I often
looked in on the College of an evening. If I were in that part of the
town when evening came on, I made the Library my club-room, to write a
note or to waste an hour. I am sure, that, had it been in my power, I
should have dropped in often,--so pleasant was it to watch the modest
work of the place, and the energy of the crowded rooms,--and so new
to me the aspects of English life it gave. I felt quite sure that the
College was gaining ground, on the whole. I can easily understand that
some classes drag,--perhaps some studies, which the managers would be
most glad to see successful. But, on the whole, there seems spirit and
energy,--and of course success.
My travelling companion, Chiron, is fond of twitting me as to the
success of one of the "social meetings" to which I dragged him,
promising to show him something of working-men's life. We arrived too
early. But the Secretary told us that the garden was lighted up for
drill, and that the working-men's battalion was drilling there. It was
under the charge of Sergeant Reed, a medal soldier from the Crimea. At
that time England was in one of her periodical fits of expecting an
invasion. For some reason they will not call on every able-bodied man to
serve in a militia;--I thought because they were afraid to arm all their
people,--though no Englishman so explained it to me. They did, however,
call for volunteers from those classes of society which could afford
to buy uniforms and obtain "practice-grounds three hundred yards in
length." This included, I should say, about eleven of the thirty-seven
castes of English society. It intentionally left out those beneath,--as
it did all Ireland. Mr. Hughes, however, seized on it as an admirable
chance for his College,--its common feeling, its gymnastics,--and many
other "good things," looking down the future. In general, the drills
which were going on all over England were sad things to me. This idea
of staking guineas against _sous_, when the contest with Napoleon did
come,--staking an English judge, for instance, with his rifle, against
some wretched conscript whom Napoleon had been drilling thoroughly, with
his, seemed and seems to me wretched policy. But--if it were to be done
this way--of course the best thing possible was to work as widely as you
could in getting your recruits; and,--if England were too conservative
to say, "We are twenty-eight millions, one-fifth fighting men,"--too
conservative to put rifles or muskets into the hands of those five or
six million fighters,--the next best thing was to rank as many as you
could in your handful of upper-class riflemen. However, I offered my
advice liberally to all comers, and explained that at home I was a
soldier when the Government wanted me,--was registered somewhere,--and
could be marched to San Juan, about which General Harney was vaporing
just then, whenever the authorities chose. So it was that I and Chiron
stood superior to see Sergeant Reed drill thirty-nine working-men. Mr.
Hughes was on the terrace, teaching an awkward squad their facings.
Sergeant Reed paraded his men,--and wanted one or two more. He came and
asked Mr. Hughes for them,--and he in turn told us very civilly, that,
if "we knew our facings," we might fall in. Alas for the theory of the
_Landsturm!_ Alas for the fame of the Massachusetts militia! Here are
two of the "one hundred and fifty-two thousand eight hundred and fifty
non-commissioned officers, musicians, artificers, and privates" whom
Massachusetts that year registered at Washington,--two soldiers for
whom somebody, somewhere, has two cartridge-boxes, two muskets, two
shoulder-straps, and the rest;--here is an opportunity for them to show
the gentlemen of a foreign service how much better we know our facings
than they theirs,--and, alas, the representative two do not know their
facings at all! We declined the invitation as courteously as it was
offered. Perhaps we thus escaped a prosecution under the Act of 1819,
when we came home,--for having entered the service of a foreign power.
Certainly we avoided the guilt of felony, in England; for it is felony
for an alien to take any station of trust or honor under the Queen,--and
when Mr. Bates and Louis Napoleon were sworn in as special constables on
the Chartists' day, they might both have been tried for felony on the
information of Fergus O'Connor, and sent to some Old Bailey or other.
None the less did we regret our ignorance of the facings, and, after a
few minutes, sadly leave the field of glory.
My last visit to the Working-Men's College was to attend one of Mr.
Maurice's Sunday-evening classes, and this was the only occasion when I
ever appeared as a student. It was held at nine in the evening,--out of
the way, therefore, of any Church-service. There gathered nearly twenty
young men, who seemed in most instances to be personally strangers to
each other. Mr. Maurice is so far an historical person that I have a
right, I believe, to describe his appearance. He must be about fifty
years old now. He looks as if he had done more than fifty years' worth
of work,--and yet does not look older than that, on the whole. His hair
is growing white; his face shows traces of experience of more sorts
than one, but is very gentle and winning in its expression, both in his
welcome, and in the vivid conversation which is called his lecture. He
sat at a large table, and we gathered around it with our Testaments and
note-books. The subject was the fourth chapter of the Epistle to the
Hebrews,--the conversation turning mostly, of course, on the "rest"
which the people of God enter into. This is not the place for a
report of the exposition, at once completely devout and completely
transcendental, by which this distinguished theologian lighted up this
passage for that cluster of young men. But I may say something of the
manner of one so well known and so widely honored among a "present
posterity" in America, for his works. He read the chapter through,--with
a running commentary at first,--blocking out, as it were, his ground
notion of it. This was the first _ébauche_ of his criticism; but you
felt after its details without quite finding them. In a word, the
impression was precisely the uneasy impression you feel after the first
reading of one of his sermons or lectures,--that there is a very grand
general conception, but that you do not see how it is going to "fay in"
in its respective parts. One of the students intimated some such doubt
regarding some of the opening verses,--and there at once appeared enough
to show how frank was the relation, in that class at least, between the
teacher and the pupils. Then began the real work and the real joy of the
evening. Then on the background he had washed in before he began to put
in his middle-distance, and at last his foreground, and, last of all,
to light up the whole by a set of flashes, which he had reserved,
unconsciously, to the close. He dropped his forehead on his hand, worked
it nervously with his fingers, as if he were resolved that what was
within should serve him, went over the whole chapter in much more detail
a second time, held us all charged with his electricity, so that we
threw in this, that, or another question or difficulty,--till he fell
back yet a third time, and again went through it, weaving the whole
together, and making part illustrate part under the light of the comment
and illumination which it had received before,--and so, when we read
it with him for the fourth and last time, it was no longer a string
of beads,--a set of separate verses,--Jewish, antiquated, and
fragmentary,--but one vivid illustration of the "peace which passeth all
understanding" into which the Christian man may enter.
With this fortunate illustration and exposition of the worth and work of
the Working-Men's College my connection with it closed. It seems to me a
beautiful monument of the love and energy of its founder. Perhaps we are
all best known through our friends, or, as the proverb says, "by the
company we keep." Let the reader know Mr. Maurice, then, by remembering
that he is the godfather of Tennyson's son,--
"Come, when no graver cares annoy,
Godfather, come and see your boy,"--
that Charles Kingsley has a Frederic Maurice among his children,--and
that Thomas Hughes has a Maurice also. The last was lost, untimely, from
this world, in bathing in the Thames. The magnetism of such a man has
united the group of workers who have formed the Working-Men's College.
We need not wonder that with such a spirit it succeeds.