Complete Novels of Maria Edgeworth

by Maria Edgeworth

  (January 17th, 1796.) S —— . “I don’t understand about the tides.”

  H —— (13 years old.) “The moon, when it comes near the earth, draws up the sea by the middle; attracts it, and as the middle rises, the water runs down from that again into the channels of rivers.”

  S —— . “But — Hum! — the moon attracts the sea; but why does not the sun attract it by the middle as well as the moon? How can you be sure that it is the moon that does it?”

  Mr. —— . “We are not sure that the moon is the cause of tides.”

  We should never force any system upon the belief of children; but wait till they can understand all the arguments on each side of the question.

  (January 18th, 1796.) S —— (9 years old.) “Father, I have thought of a reason for the wind’s blowing.

  When there has been a hot sunshiny day, and when the ground has been wet, the sun attracts a great deal of vapour: then that vapour must have room, so it must push away some air to make room for itself; besides, vapour swells with heat, so it must have a great, great deal of room as it grows hotter, and hotter; and the moving the air to make way for it, must make wind.”

  It is probable, that if children are not early taught by rote words which they cannot understand, they will think for themselves; and, however strange their incipient theories may appear, there is hope for the improvement of children as long as their minds are active.

  (February 13th, 1796.) S —— . “How do physicians try new medicines? If they are not sure they will succeed, they may be hanged for murder, mayn’t they? It is cruel to try them (them meant medicines) on animals; besides, all animals are not the same as men. A pig’s inside is the most like that of a man. I remember my father showed us the inside of a pig once.”

  Some time afterwards, S —— inquired what was meant by the circulation of the blood. “How are we sure that it does move? You told me that it doesn’t move after we die, then nobody can have seen it really moving in the veins; that beating that I feel in my pulse does not feel like any thing running backwards and forwards; it beats up and down.”

  The lady to whom S —— addressed these questions and observations, unfortunately could not give him any information upon this subject, but she had at least the prudence, or honesty, to tell the boy that “she did not know any thing about the matter.”

  S —— should have been shown the circulation of the blood in fishes: which he might have seen by a microscope.

  Children’s minds turn to such inquiries; surely, if they are intended for physicians, these are the moments to give them a taste for their future profession, by associating pleasure with instruction, and connecting with the eagerness of curiosity the hope of making discoveries; a hope which all vivacious young people strongly feel.

  (February 16th.) S —— objected to that fable of Phædrus in which it is said, that a boy threw a stone at Æsop, and that Æsop told the boy to throw a stone at another passenger, pointing to a rich man. The boy did as Æsop desired, and the rich man had the boy hanged.

  S —— said, that he thought that Æsop should have been hanged, because Æsop was the cause of the boy’s fault.

  How little suited political fables are to children. This fable, which was meant to show, we suppose, that the rich could not, like the poor, be insulted with impunity, was quite unintelligible to a boy (nine years old) of simple understanding.

  (July 19th, 1796.) Amongst “Vulgar errours,” Sir Thomas Browne might have mentioned the common notion, that if you take a hen and hold her head down to the ground, and draw a circle of chalk round her, she will be enchanted by this magical operation so that she cannot stir. We determined to try the experiment, for which Dr. Johnson would have laughed at us, as he laughed at Browne for trying “the hopeless experiment” about the magnetic dials.

  A hen’s head was held down upon a stone flag, and a chalk line was drawn before her; she did not move. The same hen was put into a circle of chalk that had been previously drawn for her reception; her head was held down according to the letter of the charm, and she did not move; line or circle apparently operated alike. It was suggested (by A —— ) that perhaps the hen was frightened by her head’s being held down to the ground, and that the chalk line and circle had nothing to do with the business. The hen was carried out of sight of the magic line and circle, her head was held down to the ground as before; and when the person who had held her, gently withdrew his hand, she did not move. She did not for some instants recover from her terror; or, perhaps, the feeling of pressure seemed to her to remain upon her head after the hand was withdrawn.

  Children who are accustomed to doubt, and to try experiments, will not be dupes to “Vulgar errours.”

  (July 20th, 1796.) S —— (between 9 and 10) when he heard a lady propose to make use of a small glass tumbler to hold pomatum, made a face expressive of great disgust; he was begged to give a reason for his dislike. S —— said it appeared to him dirty and disagreeable to put pomatum into a tumbler out of which we are used to drink wine or water.

  We have observed, (V. Chapter on Taste and Imagination) that children may early be led to reflect upon the cause of their tastes.

  (July 24th, 1796.) S —— observed, that “the lachrymal sack is like Aboulcasem’s cup, (in the Persian tales.) It is emptied and fills again of itself; though it is emptied ever so often, it continues full.”

  The power of reasoning had been more cultivated in S —— than the taste for wit or allusion; yet it seems his mind was not defective in that quickness of seizing resemblances which may lead to wit. He was not praised for the lachrymal sack, and Aboulcasem’s cup. (V. Chapter on Wit and Judgment.)

  (August 3d, 1796.) C —— (11 years old) after she had heard a description of a fire engine, said, “I want to read the description of the fire engine over again, for whilst my father was describing one particular part, I recollected something that I had heard before, and that took my attention quite away from what he was saying. Very often when I am listening, something that is said puts me in mind of something, and then I go on thinking of that, and I cannot hear what is said any longer.”

  Preceptors should listen to the observations that their pupils make upon their minds; this remark of C —— suggested to us some ideas that have been detailed in the “Chapter on Attention.”

  (August 1st, 1796.) S —— , who had been translating some of Ovid’s Metamorphoses to his father, exclaimed, “I hate those ancient gods and goddesses, they are so wicked! I wish I was Perseus, and had his shield, I would fly up to heaven and turn Jupiter, and Apollo, and Venus into stone; then they would be too heavy to stay in heaven, and they would tumble down to earth; and then they would be stone statues, and we should have much finer statues of Apollo and Venus than any they have now at Rome.”

  (September 10th, 1796.) S —— (within a month of ten years old) read to his sister M —— part of Dr. Darwin’s chapter upon instinct; that part in which there is an account of young birds who learn to sing from the birds who take care of them, not from their parents. S —— immediately recollected a story which he had read last winter in the Annual Register. Extract from Barrington’s Remarks upon singing Birds. “There was a silly boy once (you know, sister, boys are silly sometimes) who used to play in a room where his mother had a nightingale in a cage, and the boy took out of the cage the nightingale’s eggs, and put in some other bird’s eggs (a swallow’s, I think) and the nightingale hatched them, and when the swallows grew up they sang like nightingales.” When S —— had done reading, he looked at the title of the book. He had often heard his father speak of Zoonomia, and he knew that Dr. Darwin was the author of it.

  S —— . “Oh, ho! Zoonomia! Dr. Darwin wrote it; it is very entertaining: my father told me that when I read Zoonomia, I should know the reason why I stretch myself when I am tired. But, sister, there is one thing I read about the cuckoo that I did not quite understand. May I look at it again?” He read the following passage.

  “For a hen
teaches this language with ease to the ducklings she has hatched from supposititious eggs, and educates as her own offspring; and the wag-tails or hedge-sparrows learn it from the young cuckoo, their foster nursling, and supply him with food long after he can fly about, whenever they hear his cuckooing, which Linnæus tells us is his call of hunger.”

  S —— asked what Dr. Darwin meant by “learns it.”

  M —— . “Learns a language.”

  S —— . “What does foster nursling mean?”

  M —— . “It here means a bird that is nursed along with another, but that has not the same parents.”

  S —— . “Then, does it not mean that the sparrows learn from their foster sister, the cuckoo, to say Cuckoo!”

  M —— . “No; the sparrow don’t learn to say cuckoo, but they learn to understand what he means by that cry; that he is hungry.”

  S —— . “Well, but then I think this is a proof against what Dr. Darwin means about instinct.”

  M —— . “Why? How?”

  S —— . “Because the young cuckoo does say cuckoo! without being taught, it does not learn from the sparrows. How comes it to say cuckoo at all, if it is not by instinct? It does not see its own father and mother.”

  We give this conversation as a proof that our young pupils were accustomed to think about every thing that they read.

  (Nov. 8th, 1796.) The following are the “Curiosities of Literature,” which were promised to the reader in the chapter upon Grammar and Classical Literature.

  Translation from Ovid. The Cave of Sleep, first edition.

  “No watchful cock Aurora’s beams invite; No dog nor goose, the guardians of the night.”

  Dog and goose were objected to, and the young author changed them into dogs and geese.

  “No herds nor flocks, nor human voice is heard; But nigh the cave a rustling spring appear’d.”

  When this line was read to S —— , he changed the epithet rustling into gliding.

  “And with soft murmurs faithless sleep invites, And there the flying past again delights; And near the door the noxious poppy grows, And spreads his sleepy milk at daylight’s close.”

  S —— was now requested to translate the beginning of the sentence, and he produced these lines:

  “Far from the sun there lies a cave forlorn, Which Sol’s bright beams can’t enter eve nor morn.”

  Can’t was objected to. Mr. —— asked S —— what was the literal English. S —— first said not, and then nor; and he corrected his line, and made it

  “Which Sol’s bright beams nor visit eve nor morn.”

  Afterwards:

  “Far in a vale there lies a cave forlorn, Which Phœbus never enters eve nor morn.”

  After an interval of a few days, the lines were all read to the boy, to try whether he could farther correct them; he desired to have the two following lines left out:

  “No herds, nor flocks, nor human voice is heard, But nigh the cave a gliding spring appeared.”

  And in the place of them he wrote,

  “No flocks nor herds disturb the silent plains: Within the sacred walls mute quiet reigns.”

  Instead of the two following:

  “And with soft murmurs faithless sleep invites, And there the flying past again delights.”

  S —— desired his secretary to write,

  “But murmuring Lethe soothing sleep invites, In dreams again the flying past delights.”

  Instead of

  “And near the doors the noxious poppy grows, And spreads his sleepy milk at daylight’s close,”

  the following lines were written. S —— did not say doors, because he thought the cave had no doors; yet his Latin, he said, spoke of squeaking hinges.

  “From milky flowers that near the cavern grow, Night scatters the collected sleep below.”

  We shall not make any further apology for inserting all these corrections, because we have already sufficiently explained our motives. (V. Chapter on Grammar and Classical Literature.)

  (February, 1797.) A little theatre was put up for the children, and they acted “Justice Poz.” When the scenes were pulled down afterwards, S —— was extremely sorry to see the whole theatre vanish; he had succeeded as an actor, and he wished to have another play acted. His father did not wish that he should become ambitious of excelling in this way at ten years old, because it might have turned his attention away from things of more consequence; and, if he had been much applauded for this talent, he would, perhaps, have been over-stimulated. (V. Chapter on Vanity and Ambition.)

  The way to turn this boy’s mind away from its present pursuit, was to give him another object, not to blame or check him for the natural expression of his wishes. It is difficult to find objects for children who have not cultivated a taste for literature; but infinite variety can be found for those who have acquired this happy taste.

  Soon after S —— had expressed his ardent wish to have another play performed, the trial of some poor man in the neighbourhood happened to be mentioned; and it was said, that the criminal had the choice of either going to Botany Bay, or being hanged.

  S —— asked how that could be. “I did’nt think,” said he, “that a man could have two punishments. Can the judge change the punishment? I thought it was fixed by the law.”

  Mr. —— told S —— that these were sensible questions; and, as he saw that the boy’s attention was fixed, he seized the opportunity to give him some general idea upon the subject. He began with telling S —— the manner in which a suspected person is brought before a justice of the peace. A warrant and committal were described; then the manner of trying criminals; what is called the court, the jury, &c. the crier of the court, and the forms of a trial; the reason why the prisoner, when he is asked how he will be tried, answers, “By God and my country:” this led to an account of the old absurd fire and water ordeals, and thence the advantages of a trial by jury became more apparent by comparison. Mr. —— told S —— why it is called empannelling a jury, and why the jury are called a pannel; the manner in which the jury give their verdict; the duty of the judge, to sum up the evidence, to explain the law to the jury. “The judge is, by the humane laws of England, always supposed to be the protector of the accused; and now, S —— , we are come round to your question; the judge cannot make the punishment more severe; but when the punishment is fine or imprisonment, the quantity or duration of the punishment is left to his judgment. The king may remit the punishment entirely; he may pardon the criminal; he may, if a man be sentenced to be hanged, give him his choice, whether he will be hanged or transported” — (the word was explained.)

  “But,” said S —— , “since the judge cannot change the punishment, why may the king? I think it is very unjust that the king should have such a power, because, if he changes the punishment for one thing, why mayn’t he for another and another, and so on?”

  Mr. —— . “I am inclined to believe, my dear S —— , that it is for the good of a state, that a king should have such a power; but I am not sure. If any individual should have this power, I think it is most safely trusted to a king; because, as he has no connection with the individuals who are tried, as he does not live amongst them, he is not so liable as judges and jurymen might be to be prejudiced, to be influenced by personal revenge, friendship, or pity. When he pardons, he is supposed to pardon without any personal motives. But of all this, S —— , you will judge for yourself, when you study the law. I intend to take you with me to —— next assizes to hear a trial.”

  S —— looked full as eager to hear a trial, as he had done, half an hour before, to act a play. We should mention, that in the little play in which he had acted, he had played the part of a justice of the peace, and a sort of trial formed the business of the play; the ideas of trials and law, therefore, joined readily with his former train of thought. Much of the success of education, depends upon the preceptor’s seizing these slight connections. It is scarcely possible to explain this fully in writing.

>   (February 25th, 1797.) S —— was reading in “Evenings at Home,” the story of “A friend in need, is a friend indeed.”

  “Mr. G. Cornish, having raised a moderate fortune, and being now beyond the meridian of life, he felt a strong desire of returning to his native country.”

  S —— . “How much better that is, than to say he felt an irresistible desire, or an insupportable desire, as people sometimes say in books.”

  Our pupils were always permitted to stop when they were reading loud, to make whatever remarks they pleased upon whatever books they read. They did not, by this method, get through so many books as other children of their age usually do; but their taste for reading seemed to increase rapidly. (V. Books.)

  (March 8th, 1797.) H —— (14) told us that he remembered seeing, when he was five years old, some puppets packed up by a showman in a triangular box; “and for sometime afterwards,” said H —— , “when I saw my father’s triangular hat-box, I expected puppets to come out of it. A few days ago, I met a man with a triangular box upon his head, and I thought that there were puppets in the box.”

  We have taken notice of this propensity in children, to believe that particular, are general causes; and we have endeavoured to show how it affects the temper, and the habits of reasoning. (V. Temper, and Wit and Judgment.)

  (March 27th, 1797.) Mr. —— showed little W —— (3 years old) a watch, and asked him if he thought that it was alive.

  W —— . “Yes.”

  Mr. —— . “Do you think that the fire is alive?”

  W —— . “Yes.”

  Mr. —— . (The child was standing at the tea table.) “Do you think the urn is alive?”