The Press.
London, England, 1856-10-25 00:00:00

THE PRESS.

education of all boys alike, no matter what their
future profession :
I speak of the study of Greek and Latin in commercial
schools. We all of us know that it is no uncommon thing
for a boy to spend five or six years of the most valuable,
because the most impressible, period of his life in getting
by heart the rules of a language he is never to have the
good fortune to learn; to waste his energies in putting up
a scaffolding for a building of which he is never to lay a
single stone. What can be more ridiculous than that a
boy who is intended to work at a trade, or to serve out
goods behind a counter, should stupify himself in getting
by heart dead rules and exploded forms ? exploded by a
more recent and deeper insight into the mechanism of
language Sydney Smith puts this point very forcibly
and wittily. " Cicero, in his ' Offices,' " says the reverend
reviewer, " tells a whimsical anecdote of Cato the Censor.
Somebody asked him what was the best mode of employing
capital? He sail, To farm good pasture land. What
next ? To farm middling pasture land. Well, but after
that, what the next? To farm bad pasture land." Now,
the notions which prevail in England respecting classical
learning seem to me to resemble very much those which
the old Roman entertained with regard to his favourite
method of cultivation. Is a young man able to spare the
time nece•s iry to enable him to pass through the Univer-
sity ? Make him a good classical scholar. But a
second, instead of residing at the University, must
go into business when he leaves school. Make him
a tolerable classical scholar. A third has still less
time to snatch up knowledge, and is destined for
active employment while still a boy. Make him a bad clas-
sical scholar. If he does not become a Porson or a Heyne,
he may learn to write nonsense verses. If he does not get
on to Horaze he may read the first book of Caesar. If
there is not time for such a degree of improvement, he
may at least be flogged through that immemorial vestibule
of learning—Otis (keel : who teacheth ? Magisler docet
the master teacheth. Would to heaven that he taught
something better worth knowing.

To those intended for the universities of course a
thorough classical education was necessary, but even
under those circumstawes he objected to a boy being
kept fi'e or six years plodding over unintelligible
rules of grammar and syntax :
Would not a boy exer,:ise his memory quite as well, and
somewhat more profitably, in getting by heart the beauties
of Shakespeare, Milton, and our other classical English
authors, as in grubbing his way through qua genus or as in
present, or the Eton Latin Grammar, or such like, to him
unintelligible stuff? Oh, but some will say, a knowledge
of classics, however slight, improves one's English style.
Now this, too, I question. If a tithe of the pains which
are bestowed on the minutia:, on the refinements, on the
elegancies of Greek and Latin prose, and verse too, which
is even still more absurd—were the same labour and
study, I say, expended on the acquisition of a pure, manly,
vigorous, graceful, and idiomatic English style, we should
not have so much incorrect, slipshod slang, as is daily
written amongst us. The man who would blush at being
detected using a phrase of doubtful Latinity writes with-
out compunction or hesitation any sort of shambling
English that comes uppermost. Those old Greeks.
whom we in vain attempt to rival, who were masters of
the art of composition to a degree of perfection which
has never since been equalled, knew no language but their
own, and despised every other. To perfect and polish
the Greek language they bestowed all their care, and
thst care was not bestowed in vain. Instead of copying
their results we should strive rather to follow their mode
of procedure.

Dr. Booth then referred to the change taking
place in the learned professions clerical, legal,
or medical—each of which showed symptoms of
decay. The main support of England's industrial
and commercial prosperity lay in that vast
variety of industrial employment, those unnamed
and unrecognised productive professions which ate
unknown to the Earl Marshal, and which have
neither station nor precedence in the herald's pro.
gramme. Of these are the men who go forth and
build the aqueduct, and level the railroad, and lay
down the electric telegraph along the trackless wild,
or submerge it beneath the ocean. Of these are the
men who are the true pioneers of civilisation."
Dr. Booth concluded his lecture with a few pt actical
remarks upon "quick readers " upon the right method
of reading a book, and with a summary of his views
upon national education :

Many persons, especially those who are called quick
readers, have a notion that when they get through a hook,
as they do through an article in the newspaper, they have
mastered the contents of the book. They have fallen far
short of anything of the kind. To read a book so as to
expect to acquire any knowledge of it, you must deal with
it as a lawyer does with a brief. You must pencil-mark
the important passages, underscore the points which the
author makes, interline his arguments, and bracket his
propositions. Then read the book over again, and make
an abstract of it ; a little practice will give you facility ;
you will be surprised, in the first place, at the clearness,
firmness, and precision of your knowledge of the book ;
and, in the next place, you will be astonished at the small-
ness of the compass within which the essence of a volume
of considerable size may be condensed. The process re-
minds one of those preserved meats in air-tight canisters,
which concentrate all the nutritious properties of the flesh
and bones into a small compass. When you try this expe-
riment you will be surprised to find how much, even of the
best books, are made up of what the masons call rubble
stuff—with matter which is either superfluous, irrelevant, or
twaddle ; ao true is the remark of the critic, " Aliquando
bonus dormitat Homerus."

1027

Now, before I conclude, I would earnestly desire once
more to impress this great truth on your minds—and it
cannot be too deeply impressed—that your power of learning
does not depend so much upon what is called talent and
cleverness, but on the ability to bring the whole light of the
mind to a point and to keep it there. But this great truth
has been overlooked; talent and ability have been praised
as if they were the great instruments of success, while
power of concentration, a great and rare gift, has been un-
dervalued as plodding. How often do we hear, " Oh, he is
a very clever lad, he sees things at a glance ; I should not
be surprised if, one day or other, he became Lord Chan-
cellor ; ' and of another we hear, '' Oh, he is a man of gi eat
genius, of wonderful talent, but he has never applied him-
self to anything ;" as if his great talents were an excuse for
his idleness, and not the very contrary, if there be any
truth in the parable of the talents. When some persons one
day were extravagantly admiring—if it could be extrava-
gantly admired—the transcendant genius of Sir Isaac
Newton and his wonderful powers of discovery, he replied
that the power of patient thinking was the only faculty he
was conscious of being superior to other men in.
With respect to national education, he was inclined
to such a system of industrial training as should
permit each child, by a certain amount of labour, to
contribute towards the expense of his instruction.
The plan was adopted in our reformatories and gaol;
why not in our schools ?

My argument is briefly this : if education and industrial
training can so thoroughly cleanse those who have been
dragged through the mire of guilt and crime, how much
more ought they to do for those who have never offended,
wl ose habits have not been warped. It is easier to keep
a tree straight than to make a crooked tree grow straight
But you will say, such an education as you refer to fur the
whole of our poorer population would be an enormous ex-
pense. Look at the coat of our reformatories for a few
hundred criminals. Extend this system of industrial
training to the whole of our working classes and who shall
compute the cost? Now, in reply to this objection, I assert
that the great principle which ought to underlie every
system of national education is this, that every healthy
child should contribute a portion of his labour to defray,
at least in part, the charge for his school instruction. Let
him give value for what he receives. But some ready
ohjector will reply, would you have a farm and workshop
attached to every national school? would you propose that
the child who is now six hours a day at school, and learns
but little, should have his time still fdrther curtailed ?
Now, I venture to assert this, that a boy who alternates
three hours' labour with three hours' learning will make
more progress than another who is shut up for the whole
six hours in a school-room. This is one of the cases where
three added to three do not make six, but sometimes the
result is even less than three. This you will easily under-
stand if you will recollect what I have striven to impress
on you, that the amount of knowledge of a given subject
which you can acquire does not so much depend on the
time you give to it, or on the clearness of your understand.
ing, as on the amount of concentrated energy and vigorous
attention you bring to bear upon it.

MR. RECORDER HILL, Q.C., UPON TICKETS

OF LE.iVF..
MR. Q.C., at the opening of the Quarter
Sessions at Birmingham on Monday, delivered a
powerful defence of the system of tickets of leave.
The public feeling was now in favour of a return to
transportation. He was opposed to such a " reversal
of policy." However imperfectly the law was framFd,
and however open to animadversion the manner in
which it had been carried into effect, it nevertheless
embodied two principles, each founded upon just and
enlightened principles of jurisprudence :

The first is to enable the criminsl to work nut his free.
deco for himself by exhibiting proof that he is an altered
man, and that he has become imbued with qualities the
absence of which led to his fall. The second, to make the
discharge only a conditional restoration to liberty.
The causes of the late panic against ticket of leave
men lay in a confusion between convicts discharged
on tickets of leave, the period of whose sentences had
not terminated, and convicts who had been free ab-
solutely, or, if liberated with tickets of leave, had
been out of prison so long that their sentences had
expired :
It was the confounding, I say, of these descriptions of
convicts, and considering them as ticket•ofleave to en,
which produced what I may freely call the panic of last
winter, throwing the good people of this country in•o a
state of mind which placed in extreme danger the perma•
nence of a measure having most assuredly the soundest
foundation, whatever defects might weaken its superstruc-
ture. Happily, the misapprehensions and the fears to
which the committee advert have been dispelled. Our
advance towards the rational treatment of criminals I as
been secured, and a peril has been averted, the magnitude
of which we can scarcely over-estimate. Nevertheless, it
cannot be denied that the public had very reasonable
grounds for complaint and misgivings. The responsibility
of the convict discharged on ticket of leave has been in
practice little better than nominal. The rule was to send
him to the town or district in which his offence had been
commi:ted. but no intimation of his return was conveyed
to the police, and consequently they had no means of
ascertaining whether he had come out of prison on a
ticket of leave or whether he had received an unconditional
discharge. In the latter - he -
until he committed

ticket was liable to recal

of State, and by an

;ter event he was subject to no oontr
a fresh offence. In the •ormer his
ecal at the direction of the Secretary
mdoraement on the ticket itself he