The Press.
London, England, 1854-09-02 00:00:00

SEPTEMBER 2, 1854.

another's faces, and pulled one another's hair, by way of
agreeing on the steps to be taken for their improvement—
which they never did; a surprising circumstance, when
the happy adaptation of the means to the end is considered.
Still, although they differed in every Aber particular, con-
ceivable and inconceivable (especially inconceivable ), they
were pretty well united on the point that these unlucky
infants were never to wonder. Body number one said they
must take everything on trust. Body number two said
they must take everything on political economy. Body
number three wrote leaden little books for them, showing
how the good grown-up baby invariably got to the savings-
bank, and the bad grownup baby invariably got trans-
ported. Body number four, under dreary pretences of
being droll (when it was very melancholy indeed), made
the shallowest pretences of concealing pitfalls of know-
ledge, into which it was the duty of these babies to be
snuggled and inveigled.
Nor are almshouses, refuges for the desti-
tute, or such institutions, of more worth. The
process and result of such wasted benevolence
begins and ends in
making a vainglorious will, whereby five-and-twenty
Humbugs, past five-and-fifty years of age, each taking upon
himself the name, Josiah Bounderby of Coketown, should
for ever dine in Bounderby-hall, for ever lodge in Bonn-
derby-buildings, for ever attend a Bounderby chapel, for
ever go to sleep under a Bounderby chaplain, for ever be
supported out of a Bounderby estate, and for ever nauseate
all healthy stomachs with a vast amount of Bounderby
balderdash and bluster.
Actually, we can find no hint throughout
11 e book of what is, or can, or ought to be
done, except, perhaps, to gather the factory
children together to read "Goody Two Shoes,"
with a special examination for the advanced
students in "Jack and the Bean Stalk."
Abjuring facts and practice, the author, of
course, detests blue books ar.d the Parliament
that edits them. The latter is at one time the
" national cinder heap," at another a " little
" noisy and rather dirty machinery in a by-
" corner," filled with members for ounce
weights and measures, and " representatives of
"the multiplication table." Of the former we
are told :
- • .

Mr. Gradgrind's room was quite a blue chamber in its
abundance of blue books. Whatever they could prove
(which is usually anything you like), they proved there,
in an army constantly strengthened by the arrival of new
recruits. In that charmed apartment the most compli-
cated social questions were cast up, got into exact totals,
and finally settled—if those concerned could only have
been brought to know it. As if an astronomical observa-
tory should be made without any windows, and the astro-
nomer within should arrange the star' y- universe solely by
pen, ink, and paper, so Mr. tiratlgrind, in his observatory
(and there are many like it), had no need to cast an eye
upon the teeming myriads of human beings around him,
but could s 4 the all their destinies on a slate, and wipe out
all their tears with one dirty little bit of sponge.
' We know something of blue books. Will
Mr. Dickens accept our testimony to the fact
that—after deducting the annual pile of
" accounts and papers " which are, after all,
only John Bull's housekeeping books— the
azure folios, with all their repulsive aspects,
contain an infusion of matter of tasteful, ar-
tistic, and fictitious character not seldom
quite as strong as that of " Hard Times "
itself? And in Parliament it is the frequent
complaint that the fanciful element is even
. too preponderating. Again deducting "supply
nights," the time devoted to griefs and glorifi-
cations quite as remote from "fact" as those
of Mrs. Bluebeard or Cinderella is far larger
than is always compatible with the dignity of
the Legislature or the interests of the country.
No, we are not yet overrun with " facts.'
Education is not what it ought to be, nor what
it will be. With so vast and untried a field
before them—with so much and so many to
teach—with the mode, the means, and the
nature of the instruction that can be most
judiciously imparted, still to find by experi-
ment in many cases—it is no wonder that the
knowledge derived from our public or private
e iucators should be sometimes partial and in•
sufficient, or at others cumbrous and grotesque.
But its faults are not of a sort to deserve gib-
_ betting in the person of a Gradgrind, or that
promise to be cured by the interposition of
Mother GoOse.
The author is wrong in his basis, and, as we
think, unskilful in his superstructure. His
moral, taken at his own estimate, is very im-
perfectly worked out by drawing a series of
"monsters," embodying each some particular
attribute, like the Greek gods and goddesses,
though without their natural grace, and conduct
ing them through a series of incoherent inci-
dents to the appointed consummation. Social
problems are not to be solved—nor even a
goal novel to be written—so. Mr. Dickens