The Press. — London, England, 1853-09-17 00:00:00

Xlittaturt. National Education. Speech of Lord John Russell in the House of Commons April 4, 1H53. London : Longmans. Public Education to Affected by the Minutes of the Committee of Privy Council front 1846 to it 452. By Sir .1. Kay Shuttleworth, London Longinatn. _ _ _ Tits; education question has lost much of its practice' urgency since the shelving of Lord John Hussein; bill ; but Sir . lames - Kay Shut tleworth's volume possesses a permanent in terest, and may be read with pleasure long after the policy which he recommends has been de finitively adopted or rejected. It is also in a manner the text-book of the Ministerial mea sure. and the best part of Lord John's speech was little else than an abridgment from it. We cannot attempt to analyse the contents of a work which mainly deals with details, but a brief review f the history of the educational movement in this country may not be mis. played. Bell and Lancaster were the first founders of public day schools in England. Substantially theirsysteins did not differ. They were first abused,thenapplauded, and finally patronised by inost ofthe politicians of the day. That of Lan caster was adopted about leo4, by a society called the " British awl Foreign School Society, which acted on the principle of giving scrip lurid teaching. like the Kildare-street schools 01 Ireland, " without note or comment " The inure zealous sort of churchmen protested against this plan as latitudinarian, on the same ground which led the Homan Catholics of Ire land to pretest against it as exclusive— namely, that it. refused to acknowledge the authority of any particular sea in religious matters. To remedy the alleged detect a new association, called the National." which is still alive and in full force, was organised ; ac cording to whose rules not only the bible, but the chur c h catechism also, is included in the compulsory teaching, and attendance atchurch On Sundays made a same gag N 415. So ;natters went on till Is3l, tiovernment not interfering. By lord Grey's ;Ministry a yearly grant of Mena to each of the above. named societies was proposed to the House of 4 %minions. and by them voted without objec tion. This mode of assistance, with some variations in the amount, continued until '39. By its introdnetion an important step was gained—the recognition of the principle of State interference in educational matters. But here the merit ended. Grants were given pro portioned to the stints voluntarily subscribed, but no supervision was exercised over the quality of the education imparted. Thus, in '39, the great question," How far shall Govern " nw*nt interfere, direetly, for the teaching of the people?" remained practically unsolved. For a simple grant in aid, or annual donation, though it seemed to affirm the existence of a public duty, was not, and could not be, con sidered as the adequate oreven attempted dis charge of a public debt. But when a normal training-school for masters of all religious persuasions was proposed, not merely under the general patronage, but to be maintained directly at the expense, of the nation, it be came evident that. a struggle of principle must ensue. Very high language was used by the more extreme party in the Church. " The " clergy," said Mr. (now Archdeacon) Denison, "did not wish to divide the province of edu " cation with the secular power." " The State "shall altill'aled Mr. Sewell. "without a " creed, and without a sacrament, and without " any ministerial authority from God, under " take to educate the people of this country. - The meaning of words like these—and words like these were used at meetings held throughout the keigth and breadth of tlw land—was simply this, that the State should teach the children of churchmen only, and exclusively through the church—that all right. of secular control over the teaching given should be formally waived—and that, if Dissenters received any aiyi whatever, it should be separately, and in the form of a mere eleemosynary pittance. Such a cry, raised by such a body, was more than a weak Ministry durst face. They re- THE PRESS. tracted their proposition relative to normal schools, and they contented themselves with somewhat enlarging the powers, and increasing the resources, of the Committee of Council. Warned by this failure, subsequent adminis trations have dealt with the question in a more cautious spirit, if not with objects essentially different- do attempt has been made to di minish materially the amount of clerical super vision over Church of England schools; and the idea of a combined secular instruction, if it ever found favour in Downing street, has been distinctly repudiated. The system recog nised in Lord John Russell's bill is one neces sarily dependent upon the co-operation of religious ministers of various creeds. These are made auxiliaries of the civil authority in its distribution of funds for educational pur poses, and a fair balance of power is maintained between the clergyman on the one hand, and the Committee of Council, representing the lay element, on the other. But all such balances of power are difficult to uphold. Like the mutual cheeks and counter cheeks of a constitutional government, they require care, and a temperate spirit, on both sides, to pre vent them from causing a deadlock ; and, even as it is, a largo section of Protestant Dissenters, averse to latitudinarianism, and jealous of state control, stand aloof from, and reject, the assistance which is proffered impartially to all sects. These,—the advocates of the so-called voluntary system,—proceed on the assumption that education and religion are not only in separable, but synonymous. They regard assistance given to a Roman Catholic school in the light of an endowment of the Boman Catholic religion, us tending to produce uni versal indifference to religious truth, and thus to bring all creeds, by an ostentatious pant& of impartiality, into equal contempt. Resting mainly on this ground of objection, they sup port it also by appeals to the success of the pure voluntary principle—by strenuous dis claimers of the alleged deficiency of education among the people—and by the often-repeated argument that State support, in whatever pro portion administered, tends to supplant the more efficient exertions of individual henevo knee. The ability with which views like these have been maintained must not blind us to their lidlacy. Lord John Russell summed up his reply to them with great force in words which it is only just to quote: — I never can admit that any principle Tor any scruple shal' prevent the State fIY 01 assisting in the religious and moral training of the people, when it is obviourly the great duty of the State to preserve peace re i n to enforce the 4 lb , ewmuteu of the rules of ntorality. The voluntru•ists, mor e over, however active and well informed, are a minority, and a small one, even among the dissenting!, community. For Roman Catholics, Wesleyans, and a por tion of the Independent body, refuse to ,join them ; and in this refusal they are of course backed by the whole power and weight of the Establishment. Yet their protests have not been without use, as tending to keep alive a just jealousy of that continental centralisation by which the State virtually assumes the di rection of all teaching, and drills its subjects into a mechanical uniformity of thought. Sonic remarks on the party favourable to secular education only, and on the present state of the question, we reserve for another article. Mole and Ilionrir Partraito. By James Bruce. London: Hurst and Blackett. VOLTAIRE was ready to excuse nearly every fault in style, provided the author set the reader thinking. As we perused Mr. Bruce's volu►ues we were often reminded of the bril liant Frenchman's saying. These " portraits" are classic and historic" in their subjects, but not in their style. Scarcely one of them can be accepted as a flnishe►l sketch of the original : some of them are daubs, and several are bald and colourless caricatures. Yet the work is readable, and has the great merit of freshness, arising from the strong marks of the author's own mind being visible in nearly every chapter. Of Mr. Bruce we know nothing beyond what we glean from his book. He is a Scotchman, excessively dogmatic, reasonably skilled in the tongues, affecting seholarship, gud disclaiming style. Within the compass SATURDAY, of two octavo volumes he has brought together a variety of anecdotes illustrating the cha racters of about sixty celebrated persons, from Helen of Troy down to Catharine of Russia. The selection of his subjects is arbitrary, and apparently depending on the state of the author's commonplace book. Thus, in the second volume, we are introduced in succes sion to " Queen Elizabeth," " Mary Queen of Scots,* "Cervantes," " Sir Kenelm Digby," " John Sobieski," " Anne of Austria." Such a mode of arrangement is disagreeable. The author perhaps intended a work similar to the " Curiosities of Literature ;" but between " Mr. James Bruce" and the late Mr. Dis raeli there is a wide interval. Never theless, Dominic Bruce, from the very whimsicality of his mixture of odd learning and " prodigious" dogmatism, is generally an amusing, and not rarely an instructive, com panion. The first volume is filled with subjects from antiquity ; and, as the character of Julius Ca.sar appears to be a favourite one with the author, we will quote a portion of it as a speci men of his manner:— We have, fortunately, a complete-enough portrait of Julius t 'astir, and we know a good that, though not nearly so much as it would be desirable that we knew, of his habits and mode of life. He was a tall, slender, well-made man, with a long pale fare; his brow was high but not broad ; lie had dark sparkling eyes, and his mouth wait rather large. A slight putting of the under lip," says Nlerivale, " which may be traced in some of his best busts, must undoubtedly have detracted front the admirable COB tour of his coimtenance." Yet he was still reckoned hand some, and in his momenta of vanity he delighted to trace his descent through his ancestor, lulus, to the love of the goddess of beauty for the mortal Anchises; while the name of his ancestress, Venus, was actually stamped on some of his coins. *Nichelet, in his history of Rome, has a fine picture of " I should like," he says, " to have seen this white and pale figure, faded before its tine by the debauches of 1:01m, this deli►ate epileptic man, marching under the rains of haul, at the bed of his legions, swimming over rivers, or riding 011 I►o►xebuck between the litters in which his secretaries were carried." Suetoni►►s, in a shwa chap ter (the tifty-seventh ), has furnished the idea so beauti fully brought out here. --- • • n manhood, and in his latter years, the once " boy" paid attention to the neatness of his attire. He shaved carefully—there is no bust or coin of Caesar With a beard—he was fond of gems and jewels, and loved a be coming magnificence in his houses. _ ()usu. though his health was generally good, was subject to starting in his sleep, to fainting, and to the falling sick ness, having twice been seized with epilepsy in public. This latter malady is generally found in connection with feebleness of mind, or rather tends to induce mental weakness. Merivale, in noticing the case of Casar, men tions that Napoleon had attacks of epilepsy. Ca.sar's in tellect certainly is amongst the very highest that ever shone upon the world. The story that Mahomet, a men of the most vigorous mind, was subject to falling sickness. is un known to genuine history, being a fable invented by his Christian opponents. Caesar's baldness, with the notion whicl► the ancients attached to the falling of the hair from the head, sub jected hint to much ridicule. His soldiers, when they ac companied him in his Uralic triumph, with a licence ac conied to them on such occasions, did not fail to jeer him on this score. He tried as tar as he could to conceal this deftwt by bringing forward his hair ; and, as I have elsewhere noticed, of all the honours conferred upon him by the senate, that which most delighted his heart was the right of continually wearing the laurel wreath round Ins brows. The author scarcely portrays the features of his subjects ; he rather pieces together bits of matter about them, which he takes from a variety of writers. Mrs. Jameson is fre quently called upon to eke out his curt description ; and her deep-toned style ex poses, by contrasts, the defects of Mr. Bruce's composition. At one place he fills up two pages and a half with a long extract from one of Lady 13u1wcr Lytton 's novels ! In his remarks on Queen Elizabeth, Mr. Bruce tells us - she viewed with execration " the attempts made to convey her features to " the canvas," and it is difficult to say what she would have done if she caught an artist, either with pen or pencil, presenting so miner able a travestie of her as we find in these " historic portraits." Hume's magnificently executed picture of that extraordinary woman will, while English literature lasts, transmit the true character of her genius. On the moot points in the story of "Mary Queen of Scots ' the author makes no remarks, but he takes us " proven " that she murderod her