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MY reading has been lamentably desultory and immethodical. odd, out of the way, old English plays, and treatises, have supplied me with most of my notions, and ways of feeling. Ihing that relates to sce, I am a whole Encyclopaedia behind the rest of the world. I should have scarcely cut a figure among the franklins, or try gentlemen, in king Johns days. I know less geography than a school-boy of six weeks standing. To me a map of old Ortelius is as authentic as Arrowsmith. I do not know whereabout Africa merges into Asia; whether Ethiopia lie in one or other of those great divisions; nor form the remotest jecture of the position of New South Wales, or Van Diemens Land. Yet do I hold a correspondeh a very dear friend in the first-named of these two Terrae Initae. I have no astronomy. I do not know where to look for the Bear, or Charless Wain; the place of any star; or the name of any of them at sight. I guess at Venus only by her brightness -- and if the sun on some portentou<big></big>s moro make his first appearan the West, I verily believe, that, while all the world were gasping in apprehension about me, I alone should stand unterrified, from sheer incuriosity and want of observation. Of history and ology I possess some vague points, such as one ot help pig up in the course of miscellaneous study; but I never deliberately sat down to a icle, even of my own try. I have most dim apprehensions of the freat monarchies; and sometimes the Assyrian, sometimes the Persian, floats as first in my fancy. I make the widest jectures i, and her shepherd kings. My friend M., with great painstaking, got me to think I uood the first proposition in Euclid, but gave me over in despair at the sed. I am entirely unacquainted with the modern languages; and, like a better man than myself, have "small Latin and less Greek." I am a strao the shapes aure of the orees, herbs, flowers -- not from the circumstany being town-born -- for I should have brought the same inobservant spirit into the world with me, had I first seen it in "on Devons leafy shores," -- and am no less at a loss among purely town-objects, tools, engines, meic processes. -- Not that I affect ignorance -- but my head has not many mansions, nor spacious; and I have been obliged to fill it with such et curiosities as it hold without ag. I sometimes wonder, how I have passed my probation with so little discredit in the world, as I have done, upon so meagre a stock. But the fact is, a man may do very well with a very little knowledge, and scarce be found out, in mixed pany; every body is so much more ready to produce his own, than to call for a display of your acquisitions. But in a tete-a-tete there is no shuffling. The truth will out. There is nothing which I dread so much, as the bei alone for a quarter of an hour with a sensible, well-informed man, that does not know me. I lately got into a dilemma of this sort. -In one of my daily jaunts between Bishopsgate and Shacklewell, the coach stopped to take up a staid-?lookileman, about the wrong side of thirty, who was giving his parting dires (while the steps were adjusting), in a tone of mild authority, to a tall youth, who seemed to be her his clerk, his son, nor his servant, but something partaking of all three. The youth was dismissed, and we drove on. As we were the sole passengers, he naturally enough addressed his versation to me; and we discussed the merits of the fare, the civility and punctuality of the driver; the circumstance of an opposition coach having been lately set up, with the probabilities of its success -- to all which I was eo retury satisfactory answers, having been drilled into this kind of etiquette by some years daily practice of riding to and fro iage aforesaid -- when he suddenly alarmed me by a startling question, whether I had seen the show of prize cattle that m in Smithfield? Now as I had not seen it, and do not greatly care for such sort of exhibitions, I was obliged to return a cold ive. He seemed a little mortified, as well as astonished, at my declaration, as (it appeared) he was just e fresh from the sight, and doubtless had hoped to pare notes on the subject. However he assured me that I had lost a fireat, as it far exceeded the show of last year. We were noroag Norton Falgate, when the sight of some shop-goods ticketed freshened him up into a dissertation upon the cheapness of cottons this spring. I was now a little i, as the nature of my m avocations had brought me into some sort of familiarity with the raw material; and I was surprised to find how eloquent I was being oate of the India market -- when, presently, he dashed my incipient vanity to the earth at once, by inquiring whether I had ever made any calculation as to the value of the rental of all the retail shops in London. Had he asked of me, what song the Sirens sang, or what name Achilles assumed when he hid himself among women, I might, with Sir Thomas Browne, have hazarded a "wide solution." My panion saw my embarrassment, and, the almshouses beyond Shoreditch just ing in view, with great good-nature aerity shifted his versation to the subject of public charities; which led to the parative merits of provision for the poor in past and present times, with observations on the old monastistitutions, and charitable orders; -- but, findiher dimly impressed with some glimmering notions from old poetic associations, than strongly fortified with any speculations reducible to calculation on the subject, he gave the matter up; and, the try beginning to open more and more upon us, as roached the tur Kingsland (the destiermination of his journey), he put a home thrust upon me, in the most unfortunate position he could have chosen, by advang some queries relative to the North Pole Expedition. While I was muttering out something about the Panorama of those strange regions (which I had actually seen), by way of parrying the question, the coach stopping relieved me from any further apprehensions. My panioi<dfn>9９ｌｉｂ?</dfn>ng out, left me in the fortable possession of my ignorance; and I heard him, as he went off, putting questions to an outside passenger, who had alighted with him, regarding an epidemic disorder, that had been rife about Dalston; and which, my friend assured him, had gohrough five or six schools in that neighbourhood. The truth now flashed upohat my panion was a saster; and that the youth, whom he had parted from at our first acquaintance, must have been one of the bigger boys, or the usher. He was evidently a kied man, who did not seem so much desirous of provoking discussion by the questions which he put, as of obtaining information at any rate. It did not appear that he took any i, either, in such kind of inquiries, for their own sake; but that he was in some way bound to seek for knowledge. A greenish-coloured coat, which he had on, forbade me to surmise that he was a clergy-man. The adventure gave birth to some refles on the differeween persons of his profession in past and present times.
[Footnote] *Urn Burial.
Rest to the souls of those fine old Pedagogues; the breed, long siinct, of the Lilys, and the Linacres: who believing that all learning was tained in the languages which they taught, and despising every other acquirement as superficial and useless, came to their task as to a sport! Passing from infancy to age, they dreamed away all their days as in a grammar-school. Revolving in a perpetual cycle of desions, jugations, syntaxes, and prosodies; renewing stantly the occupations which had charmed their studious childhood; rehearsing tinually the part of the past; life must have slipped from them at last like one day. They were always in their first garden, reaping harvests of their golden time, among their Flori and their Spici-legia; in Arcadia still, but kings; the ferule of their sway not much harsher, but of like dignity with that mild sceptre attributed to king Basileus; the Greek and Latin, their stately Pamela and their Philoclea; with the occasional duncery of some untoward Tyro, serving for a refreshing interlude of a Mopsa, or a Damaetas!
With what a savour doth the Preface to Colets, or (as it is sometimes called) Pauls Acce, set forth! "To exhort every man to the learning of grammar, that ih to attain the uanding of the tongues, wherein is tained a great treasury of wisdom and knowledge, it would seem but vain and lost labour; for so much as it is known, that nothing surely be ended, whose beginning is either feeble or faulty; and no building be perfect, whereas the foundation and ground-work is ready to fall, and uo uphold the burden of the frame." How well doth this stately preamble (parable to those which Milton eh as "havihe usage to prefix to some solemn law, then first promulgated by Solon, or Lycurgus") correspond with and illustrate that pious zeal for ity, expressed in a succeeding clause, which would fence about grammar-rules with the severity of faith-articles ! -- "as for the diversity of grammars, it is well profitably taken away by the king majesties wisdom, who foreseeing the invenience, and favourably providing the remedie, caused one kind of grammar by sundry learned men to be diligently drawn and so to be set out, only everywhere to be taught for the use of learners, and for the hurt in ging of saisters." What a gusto in that which follows: "wherein it is Profitable that he orderly dee his noun, and his verb." His noun!
The fine dream is fading away fast; and the least of a teacher in the present day is to inculcate grammar-rules.
The modern saster is expected to know a little of every thing, because his pupil is required not to be entirely ignorant of any thing. He must be superficially, if I may so say, omnist. He is to know something of pics; of chemistry; of whatever is curious, or proper to excite the attention of the youthful mind; an insight into meics is desirable, with a touch of statistics; the quality of soils, &c. botany, the stitution of his try, cum multis aliis. You may get a notion of some part of his expected duties by sulting the famous Tractate on Education addressed to Mr. Hartlib.
All these things -- these, or the desire of them -- he is expected to instil, not by set lessons from professors, which he may charge in the bill, but at school-intervals, as he walks the streets, or sauhrough green fields (those natural instructors), with his pupils. The least part of what is expected from him, is to be done in school-hours. He must insinuate knowledge at the mollia tempora fandi. He must seize every occasion -- the season of the year -- the time of the day -- a passing cloud -- a rainbow -- a waggon of hay -- a regiment of soldiers going by -- to inculcate something useful. He receive no pleasure from a casual glimpse of Nature, but must catch at it as an object of instru. He must interpret beauty into the picturesque. He ot relish a beggar-man, ipsy, for thinking of the suitable improvement. Nothing es to him, not spoiled by the sophistig medium of moral uses. The Universe -- that Great Book, as it has been called -- is to him io all is and purposes, a book, out of which he is doomed to read tedious homilies to distasting schoolboys. -- Vacations themselves are o him, he is only rat<mark>?</mark>her worse off than before; for only be has some intrusive upper-boy fastened upon him at such times; some cadet of a great family; some ed lump of nobility, entry; that he must drag after him to the play, to the Panorama, to Mr. Bartleys Orrery, to the Panopti, or into the try, to a friends house, or to his favourite watering-place. Wherever he goes, this uneasy shadow attends him. A boy is at his board, and in his path, and in all his movements. He is boy-rid, sick of perpetual boy.
Boys are capital fellows in their own way, among their mates; but they are unwholesome panions frown people. The restraint is felt no less on the one side, than oher. -- Even a child, that "plaything for an hour," tires always. The noises of children, playing their own fancies -- as I now hearken to them by fits, sp on the green before my window, while I am engaged in these grave speculations at my suburbareat at Shacklewell -- by distance made more sweet -- inexpressibly take from the labour of my task. It is like writing to music. They seem to modulate my periods. They ought at least to do so -- for in the voice of that tender age there is a kind of poetry, far uhe harsh prose-ats of mans versation. -- I should but spoil their sport, and diminish my own sympathy for them, by mingling in their pastime.
I would not be domesticated all my days with a person of very superior capacity to my own -- not, if I know myself at all, from any siderations of jealousy or self-parison, for the occasional union with such minds has stituted the fortune and felicity of my life -- but the habit of too stant intercourse with spirits above you, instead of raising you, keeps you down. Too frequent doses inal thinking from others, restrain what lesser portion of that faculty you may possess of your own. You get entangled in another mans mind, even as you lose yourself in another mans grounds. You are walking with a tall varlet, whose strides out-pace yours to lassitude. The stant operation of such potent agency would reduce me, I am vio imbecility. You may derive thoughts from others; your way of thinking, the mould in which your thoughts are cast, must be your own. Intellect may be imparted, but not each mans intellectual frame. -
As little as I should wish to be always thus dragged upwards, as little (or rather still less) is it desirable to be stunted downwards by your associates. The trumpet does not more stun you by its loudness, than a whisper teases you by its provoking inaudibility.
Why are we never quite at our ease in the presence of a saster ? -- because we are scious that he is not quite at his ease in ours. He is awkward, and out of place, in the society of his equals. He es like Gulliver from among his little people, and he ot fit the stature of his uanding to yours. He eet you on the square. He wants a point given him, like an indifferent whist-player. He is so used to teag, that he wants to be teag you. One of these professors, upon my plaining that these little sketches of mine were any thing but methodical, and that I was uo make them otherwise, kindly offered to instruct me ihod by which youlemen in his seminary were taught to pose English themes. -- The jests of a saster are coarse, or thin. They do not tell out of school. He is uhe restraint of a formal and didactive hypocrisy in pany, as a clergyman is under a moral one. He o more let his intellect loose in society, thaher his inations. -- He is forlorn among his co-evals; his juniors ot be his friends.
"I take blame to myself," said a sensible man of this profession, writing to a friend respeg a youth who had quitted his school abruptly -- "that your nephew was not more attached to me. But persons in my?９9liｂ. situation are more to be pitied, than well be imagined. We are surrounded by young, and, sequently, ardently affeate hearts, but we ever hope to share an atom of their affes. The relation of master and scholar forbids this. How pleasing this must be to you, how I envy your feelings, my friends will sometimes say to me, when they see young men, whom I have educated, return after some years absence from school, their eyes shining with pleasure, while they shake hands with their old master, bringing a present of game to me, or a toy to my wife, and thanking me in the warmest terms for my care of their education. A holiday is begged for the boys; the house is a se of happiness; I, only, am sad at heart -- This fine-spirited and warm-hearted youth, who fancies he repays his master with gratitude for the care of his boyish years -- this young man -- in the eight long years I watched over him with a parents ay, never could repay me with one look of genuine feeling. He roud, when I praised; he was submissive, when I reproved him; but he did never love me -- and what he now mistakes fratitude and kindness for me, is but the pleasaion, which all persons feel at revisiting the se of their boyish hopes and fears; and the seeing on equal terms the man they were aced to look up to with reverence. My wife too, "this iing correspo goes on to say, "my once darling Anna, is the wife of a saster.-- When I married her -- knowing that the wife of a saster ought to be a busy notable creature, and fearing that my gentle Anna would ill supply the loss of my dear bustling mother, just then dead, who never sat still, was in every part of the house in a moment, and whom I was obliged sometimes to threaten to fasten down in a chair, to save her from fatiguing herself to death -- I expressed my fears, that I was bringing her into a way of life unsuitable to her; and she, who loved me tenderly, promised for my sake to exert herself to perform the duties of her new situation. She promised, and she has kept her word. What wonders will not womans love perform ? -- My house is managed with a propriety and de, unknown in other schools; my boys are well fed, look healthy, and have every proper aodation; and all this performed with a careful ey, that never desds to meanness. But I have lost my gentle, helpless Anna ! -- Whe down to enjoy an hour of repose after the fatigue of the day, I am pelled to listen to what have been her useful (and they are really useful) employments through the day, and what she proposes for her to-morrows task. Her heart and her features are ged by the duties of her situation. To the boys, she never appears other than the masters wife, and she looks up to me as the boys master; to whom all show of love and affe would be highly improper, and unbeing the dignity of her situation and mine. Yet this my gratitude forbids me to hint to her. For my sake she submitted to be this altered creature, and I reproach her for it? " -- For the unication of this letter, I am ied to my cousin Bridget.
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