The Sun.
London, England, 1862-03-08 00:00:00

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THE SUN.
LONDON, SATURDAY, MARCH 8, 1862.

It is most important that the country should keep
mind whom they really propose to educate by
Government aid. Forgetfulness of this single
point lies at the root of most of the clamour against
the strictly educational part of the ❑ew code. If it
were proposed to teach at the expense of the State
the children of even the extreme lowest section of
the middle class, such as inferior clerks, petty shop-
keepers, or even, as Lord GRANVILLE said, the
Children of Lord LYTTELTON'S head groom and
head gardener, the system must be in many re-
spects different from that which is necessary
for the benefit of the classes below them. If
the inquiries of the Royal Commissioners, to
whom the country is under such deep obligation,
prove anything, they prove that the children of
those whom we mean when we speak of "the
working classes," nearly always leave school be-
tween the ages of ten and eleven. Observation,
indeed, might have taught us this before. A con-
sideration of the necessities of parents of such
children might have shown it. However, no one
now pretends to deny the fact.
Now, as this is the only class to whose education
the tax-payers of the country can with any
decency be asked to contribute, the nature of the
education given, the qualifications of the school-
masters, indeed all the arrangements of the
school are conditioned by the unalterable
fact, that what is taught must be taught to
children below eleven years of age. Such chil-
dren may be taught school drill, and cleanly and
moral habits, as far as their age permits; and no
one proposes, any more than the Lord Bishop of
OXFORD in the twenty-five schools of his diocese,
that these things should be neglected. They may
also be taught, below that age, a good deal of
religious knowledge, in the biographical Scripture
form especially, with ease and advantage. Doc-
trinal catechisms are sheer nonsense to children,
but there are not many mothers, who attend at all
personally to the teaching of their younger children,
who do not make them acquainted in very early
years, with the inimitable stories of sacred history;
no teacher of a school for young children could
overlook these. To drill the children in the
chronological comparison of the Kings of Israel
and Judah, and to implant in their minds the
morals of SAUL'S and SAMUEL'S, DANIEL'S and
SOLOMON'S lives, are very different things. The
former is worse than worthless to children, for
it occupies the time appropriate to more natural
teaching.

But even this last, th:: only valuable kind of
Biblical teaching for young children, is tenfold
more valuable to the child, if he can read
the narratives for himself so easily, that
he is
never in danger of losing the
power to read them again at any time of his life.
And this is just what the Royal Commission wish ;
just what the Government
to effect ; has honestly endeavoured
and yet, strange to say, it is just what

hosts of clergymen, and some bishops,whose organs
of speech are much more efficient than their organs
of thought, have denounced as irreligious in its
tendency ! It is the very reverse. They speak of
reading as a mechanical art. If it be, it is the
most mighty art of intellectual mechanicii—the one
art but for which no literary records of the past,
not even the Bible itself, would have come into
existence—but for which all history would
have been a blank and master of which
art nothing but the limitation of the human facul-
ties prevents a man from mastering all that his
fellow men have ever known. The spirit of these
remarks applies equally to writing and elemen-
tary arithmetic. Combined with the art of reading
without effort—for that is the point—so reading, that
there will never be any disinclination on account of
the labour, to read in after life—combined with
such reading, ease in writing and arithmetic, opens
everything to the man who possesses them. He
may become a Divine and a Bishop, and be able to
abuse elementary instruction as mechanical in the
House of Peers; or he may become a lawyer and a
Chancellor, and pointing back to the three things
required at the day school examination, after the
example of the former blacksmith, may inscribe
reading, writing, and arithmetic on the coat of
arms on his carriage, with the motto inclosing
them—" By these I got you."
Lord LYTTELTON, much to his credit, has abjured
the partisan in his resolutions. He thinks a few
details may be amended, but he accepts honourably
the main principle of paying for results. His second
and third resolutions fully admit that. The details
to which he adverts are hardly proper subjects of
discussion, we should think, in either House of
Parliament. The legislature might as well attend
to the minutia of regimental clothing, or the details
of manufacturing an ARMSTRONG gun. Let men,
whose hearts are in the great object of getting all
the children, for whose education we pay, taught
the three elements, and they will find out the most
efficient mode of attaining this end better than all
the thousand and more members of our legislature
wrangling for nights together over what they so
imperfectly understand.
There is one point which we hope the good sense
of both houses will distinctly affirm, we mean the
inadmissibility of the cry of vested interests. Par-
liament has been forced by the lawyers to concede
so much of this kind to them, that law reform is
obstructed beyond conception by this fact alone.
But if whatever Government attempts, persons who
have connected themselves with the undertaking are
to claim continuance of the system, or compensation,
on the plea of vested interest, it will come to this,
that the Government will be able to attempt nothing
in the least degree tentative and experimental, for
fear of bringing some day upon themselves the sel-
fish cry of " vested interests." In the present case,
the report of the commissioners, is decidedly, that
no such claim exists. Few even of the memorials
have ventured to assert such a claim. Alterations
have been made from time to time, affecting the
position of the schoolmasters more or less, even by
Sir J. K. SHIITTLEWORTH himself, and the whole
system has always been avowed to be one simply
tentative and experimental. The time has now
come when the results of the experiment have been
noted and recorded,—the results of it are, a very
great improvement in the attainments of the masters,
but a corresponding neglect on their part of those
elements of knowledge, which alone are within the
reach of the vast majority of the pupils; while a few
children in each decent school have been advanced
in higher knowledge at the expense of the many. In
fact the system has made the masters too ambitious
to the injury of three-fourths of the children. The
Government has adopted therefore the obviously
right course. It does not discourage high attain-
ments in master or in pupil. It does, however, in-
sist that the many, for whom it pays, shall learn
something worth paying for. We trust we may
accept Lord LYTTELTON'S candour, as a good omen
that Mr. WALPOLE and the House of Commons
will follow the example of the House of Lords.

It is said that Englishmen are always grumbling,
and it would seem at present as if they had not
enough to find fault with. Not content with
making changes where chango is an improvement,
our authorities must needs begin alterations that
are of very doubtful benefit. We wish Mr. CowrEß
would bear in mind the retort of a Minister to
Queen ANNE when she asked what it would cost
to enclose the three public parks. " Three crowns,"
was the quiet answer. We do not suppose that
the President of the Board of Works will have to
pay a price proportionate for his constant inter-
meddling with the most beautiful park of the me-
tropolis, but we wish he would bear in mind the
interest taken by the public in the few green spots
of our busy Babylon. The vote for the objection-
able temporary road across Kensington-gardens
was agreed to on Thursday night, in spite of a
small but determined opposition. Mr. COWPER
observed in defence of his scheme that it had the
merit of not interfering with any existing roads or
boundaries, or with the grass of the park. Now,
a gentleman occupying the position of President of
the Board of Works should be acquainted with
the principles of drainage and of horticulture, and
he might know that cutting a deep trench through
a dry soil will draw all the moisture from the sur-
face, destroy the trees in the immediate vicinity,
and seriously injure those in the neighbourhood.
Why should these beautiful gardens be thus trifled
with for such official vagaries. It is somewhat
singular that among the many suggestions of hon.
members a very simple solution of the difficulty
has not been brought prominently forward.
About a quarter of a mile beyond the Kensing-
ton turnpike there is a broad carriage road,
leading direct to the Bayswater and Notting-
hill road, admirably adapted for all pur-
poses of general traffic between the two loca-
lities. Why not solve the problem by throwing
this road open to the public during the Exhibition
season ? It is at present a private passage only,
but surely any interests concerned in maintaining'
its seclusion might be suspended for the time, and
when the increased traffic had ceased it would be
closed, as before, to the general public, Why should
not the authorities avail themselves of a road
ready made to their hand, thereby avoiding the
expense, delay, and, above all, the Vandalism in-
volved in the construction of a new one ? Tem-
porary constructions aro unsatisfactory things, and
at best seem a waste of capital and labour. There
is no necessity, we presume, why the inhabitants
of Bayswater and Notting-hill should be brought
in such a very exact line to the doors of the Exhi-
bition. We suppose London will not be traversed
with new streets, leading by the shortest possible
routes to the point of attraction, and a little diver-
gence may be borne with by persons in vehicles
going on an errand of pleasure, for the sake of
preserving their sylvan retreats unmolested. As
Lord ELcuo justly observed, it is a pity to spoil
the few pretty things we have in London, and he
objected " to a gentleman who had turned out so
remarkable an architect as Mr. FowKE improving
upon the bridge upon the Serpentine, as proposed
by Sir M. PETO." Mr. COWPER has at least not
entered into this project ; but it seems he cannot
leave well alone, and the public will have to thank