Complete Novels of Maria Edgeworth

by Maria Edgeworth

  And what are these holyday delights? And in what consists parental rewards? In dissipation and idleness. With these are consequently associated the idea of happiness and the name of pleasure; the name is often sufficient, without the reality. During the vacation, children have a glimpse of what is called the world; and then are sent back to their prison with heads full of visions of liberty, and with a second-sight of the blessed lives which they are to lead when they have left school for ever. What man of sense, who has studied the human mind, who knows that the success of any plan of education must depend upon the concurrence of every person, and every circumstance, for years together, to the same point, would undertake any thing more than the partial instruction of pupils, whose leading associations and habits must be perpetually broken? When the work of school is undone during the holydays, what hand could have the patience perpetually to repair the web?

  During the vacations spent at home, children may be made extremely happy in the society and in the affections of their friends, but they need not be taught, that idleness is pleasure: on the contrary, occupation should, by all possible methods, be rendered agreeable to them; their school acquisitions, their knowledge and taste, should be drawn out in conversation, and they should be made to feel the value of what they have been taught; by these means, there would be some connection, some unity of design, preserved in their education. Their school-masters and tutors should never become the theme of insipid ridicule; nor should parents ever put their influence in competition with that of a preceptor: on the contrary, his pupils should uniformly perceive, that from his authority there is no appeal, except to the superior power of reason, which should be the avowed arbiter to which all should be submitted.

  Some of the dangerous effects of that mixed society at schools, of which we have complained, may be counteracted by the judicious conduct of parents during the time which children spend at home. A better view of society, more enlarged ideas of friendship and of justice, may be given to young people, and the vile principle of party spirit may be treated with just contempt and ridicule. Some standard, some rules may be taught to them, by which they may judge of character independently of prejudice, or childish prepossession.

  “I do not like you, Doctor Fell; The reason why, I cannot tell: But this I know full well, I do not like you, Doctor Fell” —

  is an exact specimen of the usual mode of reasoning, of the usual method in which an ill educated school-boy expresses his opinion and feelings about all persons, and all things. “The reason why,” should always be inquired whenever children express preference or aversion.

  To connect the idea of childhood with that of inferiority and contempt, is unjust and impolitic; it should not be made a reproach to young people to be young, nor should it be pointed out to them, that when they are some years older, they will be more respected; the degree of respect which they really command, whether in youth or age, will depend upon their own conduct, their knowledge, and their powers of being useful and agreeable to others. If they are convinced of this, children will not at eight years old long to be fifteen, or at fifteen to be one and twenty; proper subordination would be preserved, and the scale of happiness would not have a forced and false connection with that of age. If parents did not first excite foolish wishes in the minds of their children, and then imprudently promise that these wishes shall be gratified at certain periods of their existence, children would not be impatient to pass over the years of childhood; those years which idle boys wish to pass over as quickly as possible, men without occupation regret as the happiest of their existence. To a child, who has been promised that he shall put on manly apparel on his next birthday, the pace of time is slow and heavy until that happy era arrive. Fix the day when a boy shall leave school, and he wishes instantly to mount the chariot, and lash the horses of the sun. Nor when he enters the world, will his restless spirit be satisfied; the first step gained, he looks anxiously forward to the height of manly elevation,

  “And the brisk minor pants for twenty-one”

  These juvenile anticipations diminish the real happiness of life; those who are in continual expectation, never enjoy the present; the habit of expectation is dangerous to the mind, it suspends all industry, all voluntary exertion. Young men, who early acquire this habit, find existence insipid to them without the immediate stimuli of hope and fear: no matter what the object is, they must have something to sigh for; a curricle, a cockade, or an opera-dancer.

  Much may be done by education to prevent this boyish restlessness. Parents should refrain from those imprudent promises, and slight inuendoes, which the youthful imagination always misunderstands and exaggerates. — Never let the moment in which a young man quits a seminary of education, be represented as a moment in which all instruction, labour, and restraints, cease. The idea, that he must restrain and instruct himself, that he must complete his own education, should be excited in a young man’s mind; nor should he be suffered to imagine that his education is finished, because he has attained to some given age.

  When a common school-boy bids adieu to that school which he has been taught to consider as a prison, he exults in his escape from books and masters, and from all the moral and intellectual discipline, to which he imagines that it is the peculiar disgrace and misery of childhood to be condemned. He is impatient to be thought a man, but his ideas of the manly character are erroneous, consequently his ambition will only mislead him. From his companions whilst at school, from his father’s acquaintance, and his father’s servants, with whom he has been suffered to consort during the vacations, he has collected imperfect notions of life, fashion, and society. These do not mix well in his mind with the examples and precepts of Greek and Roman virtue: a temporary enthusiasm may have been kindled in his soul by the eloquence of antiquity; but, for want of sympathy, this enthusiasm necessarily dies away. His heroes are not the heroes of the present times; the maxims of his sages are not easily introduced into the conversation of the day. At the tea-table he now seldom hears even the name of Plato; and he often blushes for not knowing a line from a popular English poet, whilst he could repeat a cento from Horace, Virgil, and Homer; or an antistrophe from Æschylus or Euripides. He feels ashamed to produce the knowledge he has acquired, because he has not learned sufficient address to produce it without pedantry. On his entrance into the world, there remains in his mind no grateful, no affectionate, no respectful remembrance of those under whose care he has passed so many years of his life. He has escaped from the restraints imposed by his school-master, and the connection is dissolved for ever.

  But when a son separates from his father, if he has been well educated, he wishes to continue his own education: the course of his ideas is not suddenly broken; what he has been, joins immediately with what he is to be; his knowledge applies to real life, it is such as he can use in all companies; there is no sudden metamorphosis in any of the objects of his ambition; the boy and man are the same individual. Pleasure will not influence him merely by her name, or by the contrast of her appearance with the rigid discipline of scholastic learning; he will feel the difference between pleasure and happiness, and his early taste for domestic life will remain or return upon his mind. His old precepts and new motives are not at war with each other; his experience will confirm his education, and external circumstances will call forth his latent virtues. When he looks back, he can trace the gradual growth of his knowledge; when he looks forward, it is with the delightful hope of progressive improvement. A desire in some degree to repay the care, to deserve the esteem, to fulfil the animating prophecies, or to justify the fond hopes of the parent who has watched over his education, is one of the strongest motives to an ingenuous young man; it is an incentive to exertion in every honourable pursuit. A son who has been judiciously and kindly educated, will feel the value of his father’s friendship. The perception, that no man can be more entirely interested in every thing that concerns him, the idea, that no one more than his father can share in his glory or in his disgrace, wi
ll press upon his heart, will rest upon his understanding. Upon these ideas, upon this common family interest, the real strength of the connection between a father and his son depends. No public preceptor can have the same advantages; his connection with his pupil is not necessarily formed to last.

  After having spoken with freedom, but we hope with moderation, of public schools, we may, perhaps, be asked our opinion of universities. Are universities the most splendid repositories of learning? We are not afraid to declare an opinion in the negative. Smith, in his Wealth of Nations, has stated some objections to them, we think, with unanswerable force of reasoning. We do not, however, wish to destroy what we do not entirely approve. Far be that insanity from our minds which would, like Orlando, tear up the academic groves; the madness of innovation is as destructive as the bigotry of ancient establishments. The learning and the views of the rising century must have different objects from those of the wisdom and benevolence of Alfred, Balsham, or Wolsey; and, without depreciating or destroying the magnificence or establishments of universities, may not their institutions be improved? May not their splendid halls echo with other sounds than the exploded metaphysics of the schools? And may not other learning be as much rewarded and esteemed as pure latinity?

  We must here distinctly point out, that young men designed for the army or the navy, should not be educated in private families. The domestic habits, the learned leisure of private education, are unsuited to them; it would be absurd to waste many years in teaching them the elegancies of classic literature, which can probably be of no essential use to them; it would be cruel to give them a nice and refined choice of right and wrong, when it will be their professional duty to act under the command of others; when implicit, prompt, unquestioning obedience must be their first military virtue. Military academies, where the sciences practically essential to the professions are taught, must be the best situations for all young sailors and soldiers; strict institution is the best education for them. We do not here inquire how far these professions are necessary in society; it is obvious, that in the present state of European cultivation, soldiers and sailors are indispensable to every nation. We hope, however, that a taste for peace may, at some future period in the history of the world, succeed to the passion for military glory; and in the mean time, we may safely recommend it to parents, never to trust a young man designed for a soldier, to the care of a philosopher, even if it were possible to find one who would undertake the charge.

  We hope that we have shown ourselves the friends of the public preceptor, that we have pointed out the practicable means of improving public institutions by parental care and parental co-operation. But, until such a meliorating plan shall actually have been carried into effect, we cannot hesitate to assert, that even when the abilities of the parent are inferiour to those of the public preceptor, the means of ensuring success preponderate in favour of private education. A father, who has time, talents, and temper, to educate his family, is certainly the best possible preceptor; and his reward will be the highest degree of domestic felicity. If, from his situation, he is obliged to forego this reward, he may select some man of literature, sense, and integrity, to whom he can confide his children. Opulent families should not think any reward too munificent for such a private preceptor. Even in an economic point of view, it is prudent to calculate how many thousands lavished on the turf, or lost at the gaming table, might have been saved to the heirs of noble and wealthy families by a judicious education.

  V. Barne’s Essay on public and private education. Manchester Society.

  V. Mr. Frend’s Principles of Algebra.

  V. Williams’s Lectures on Education.

  CHAPTER XX. ON FEMALE ACCOMPLISHMENTS, MASTERS, AND GOVERNESSES.

  Some years ago, an opera dancer at Lyon’s, whose charms were upon the wane, applied to an English gentleman for a recommendation to some of his friends in England, as a governess for young ladies. “Do you doubt,” said the lady (observing that the gentleman was somewhat confounded by the easy assurance of her request) “do you doubt my capability? Do I not speak good Parisian French? Have I any provincial accent? I will undertake to teach the language grammatically. And for music and dancing, without vanity, may I not pretend to teach them to any young person?” The lady’s excellence in all these particulars was unquestionable. She was beyond dispute a highly accomplished woman. Pressed by her forcible interrogatories, the gentleman was compelled to hint, that an English mother of a family might be inconveniently inquisitive about the private history of a person who was to educate her daughters. “Oh,” said the lady, “I can change my name; and, at my age, nobody will make further inquiries.”

  Before we can determine how far this lady’s pretensions were ill founded, and before we can exactly decide what qualifications are most desirable in a governess, we must form some estimate of the positive and relative value of what are called accomplishments.

  We are not going to attack any of them with cynical asperity, or with the ambition to establish any new dogmatical tenets in the place of old received opinions. It can, however, do no harm to discuss this important subject with proper reverence and humility. Without alarming those mothers, who declare themselves above all things anxious for the rapid progress of their daughters in every fashionable accomplishment, it may be innocently asked, what price such mothers are willing to pay for these advantages. Any price within the limits of our fortune! they will probably exclaim.

  There are other standards by which we can measure the value of objects, as well as by money. “Fond mother, would you, if it were in your power, accept of an opera dancer for your daughter’s governess, upon condition that you should live to see that daughter dance the best minuet at a birth-night ball?”

  “Not for the world,” replies the mother. “Do you think I would hazard my daughter’s innocence and reputation, for the sake of seeing her dance a good minuet? Shocking! Absurd! What can you mean by such an outrageous question?”

  “To fix your attention. Where the mind has not precisely ascertained its wishes, it is sometimes useful to consider extremes; by determining what price you will not pay, we shall at length ascertain the value which you set upon the object. Reputation and innocence, you say, you will not, upon any account, hazard. But would you consent that your daughter should, by universal acclamation, be proclaimed the most accomplished woman in Europe, upon the simple condition, that she should pass her days in a nunnery?”

  “I should have no right to make such a condition; domestic happiness I ought certainly to prefer to public admiration for my daughter. Her accomplishments would be of little use to her, if she were to be shut up from the world: who is to be the judge of them in a nunnery?”

  “I will say no more about the nunnery. But would not you, as a good mother, consent to have your daughter turned into an automaton for eight hours in every day for fifteen years, for the promise of hearing her, at the end of that time, pronounced the first private performer at the most fashionable and most crowded concert in London?”

  “Eight hours a day for fifteen years, are too much. No one need practise so much to become the first performer in England.”

  “That is another question. You have not told me whether you would sacrifice so much of your daughter’s existence for such an object, supposing that you could obtain it at no other price.”

  “For one concert?” says the hesitating mother; “I think it would be too high a price. Yet I would give any thing to have my daughter play better than any one in England. What a distinction! She would be immediately taken notice of in all companies! She might get into the first circles in London! She would want neither beauty nor fortune to recommend her! She would be a match for any man, who has any taste for music! And music is universally admired, even by those who have the misfortune to have no taste for it. Besides, it is such an elegant accomplishment in itself! Such a constant source of innocent amusement! Putting every thing else out of the question, I should wish my daughter to have every possible
accomplishment, because accomplishments are such charming resources for young women; they keep them out of harm’s way; they make a vast deal of their idle time pass so pleasantly to themselves and others! This is my chief reason for liking them.”

  Here are so many reasons brought together at once, along with the chief reason, that they are altogether unanswerable; we must separate, class, and consider them one at a time. Accomplishments, it seems, are valuable, as being the objects of universal admiration. Some accomplishments have another species of value, as they are tickets of admission to fashionable company. Accomplishments have another, and a higher species of value, as they are supposed to increase a young lady’s chance of a prize in the matrimonial lottery. Accomplishments have also a value as resources against ennui, as they afford continual amusement and innocent occupation. This is ostensibly their chief praise; it deserves to be considered with respect. False and odious must be that philosophy which would destroy any one of the innocent pleasures of our existence. No reward was thought too high for the invention of a new pleasure; no punishment would be thought too severe for those who would destroy an old one. Women are peculiarly restrained in their situation, and in their employments, by the customs of society: to diminish the number of these employments, therefore, would be cruel; they should rather be encouraged, by all means, to cultivate those tastes which can attach them to their home, and which can preserve them from the miseries of dissipation. Every sedentary occupation must be valuable to those who are to lead sedentary lives; and every art, however trifling in itself, which tends to enliven and embellish domestic life, must be advantageous, not only to the female sex, but to society in general. As far as accomplishments can contribute to all or any of these excellent purposes, they must be just objects of attention in early education.