The Sun.
London, England, 1858-04-01 00:00:00

Cremes, but education in these days has nothing t
do with the result. A schoolboy is all his time de-
clining, conjugating, parsing, construing, scanning •
—all grammatical and critical exercises—reciting .
first Latin doggerel bout genitives and prwteritesa :
then, it must be admitted, Latin and Greek -
speeches and poetry. The Universities merely
complete this course of training. But the habit of ,
mind imparted by all these exercises is rather ad-
verse to method, facility, and elegance of expres-
sion than conducive to these qualities. It often
helps to make men hesitate, boggle, and stammer,
be at a loss for a word, or give two 9r three words
instead of one, contradict themselves, explain, re-
peat, and fall into every vice of utterance. The
tdoonegs u
e notis referconti ou na t
coa
Ipe
du bil
question, as Lord Stanhope very properly says,
lly
nictespseeravkiicneg; andThieg
always liable to failure for
want of a proper
training.
The result is lamentable, and often disagreeable.
The first education that
the country can give
offers no security whatever that a man shall not
offend and disgust when he should please and in-
form. Enter church after church, in the metropo-
lis or elsewhere, and you shell hear the pmenread by a machine, and the sermon read by •
a drone. The supplications are solemn without
being serious ; the exhortations have only that
gravity that conduces to sleep. The one is a pious
form, and the other an unpleasant necessity. is is -
not our present, purpose, and certainly is no Wish,-
of ours, to enlarge upon defects which are the. •
staple of almost every conversation in respectable
houses between the hours of one and two on Sun-
..
day afternoon. Nor is this state of things confineet
to the Church. Hundreds of excellent gentlemesa
aspire to Parliament, and get in or not,, with the
same ultimate ill succe,s. The moment they try
to speak, all their feelings, thoughts, facts, and
purposes either crowd to the tongue or fly alto- -
getlaer, and leave it utterly bankrupt of words.
Those who can speak do not often bring credit on
the gift. In teed, in this country there is no-
thing which is so often the subject of a sneer as
fluency of speech. It has become an affectation
with many that they cannot express themselves,
and they find excuses enough alike in the short- •
comings and excesses of others. A large part of
the wisdom, the experience, and the actual •
power of the country is unrepresented in
Parliament, through the taciturnity or defective
expression of our public men, while, as a natural
consequence, many who have little else than a
ready command of words entails an influence be-
yond their just worth. "In the people of the
blind a one-eyed man is king ;" and in an assembly
of bad speakers or mutes a very ordinary orator
will get more than his duo. It must be so at the
bar, and in the pulpit also. At the former there are
men who have been sneered at for their garrulity,
their vulgarity, their tau o. t I ogy, and utter defiance of
all the rules of rhetoric, eve, since
they opened their
mouths, but when they obtain practoe, wealth,.
and rank, they can afford to laugh at their brief
less brethren. En the pulpit the scholar and gen-
tleman from the University pines and moulders in
his curecy without even the conviction of ministe-
rial success, while an ignorant Ranter carries away
halt his flock, and the vulgar Dissenter, with every
fault of in nir-eq. and style, with solecisms innume-
rable and unpardonable outrages on social pro-
priety, is run after by thousands, would fill a
Oules,eum, and has every, hing a clergyman can wish
for ex ept a Palace, a Peerage, and " My Lord."
The chief foundation of his power is not merely his
owe eloqueric-, but the utter want of that quality
in must of his competitor'. He lris been preaching
every day, to a small party or a large one, ever
since he was 10 years old. He has been among
preachers. When another ended he began ; and
when he was tired another took it up. His whole
life, short as it is, has been one course of preaching.
The Oxford or Cambridee divine has get up 20
textbooks, can reed the Scriptures in the c ruins',
has read the Fathers and the old English theolo-
gians, but never preached except by book, and bas
scarcely heard a sermon that was not a written one,
and read accordingly.
No doubt, people must have begun early to speak
well., The child who is allowed to tell his longstory
all about nothing at all, or the tale he has read ;het
merniog in his nut sery-book, is in training for an
orator. lie will very soon have his little audience,
while the philosopher is left on his stool, and the .
sulker is left to go where he will. This is domestic
training, which, whether by precept or example,
has more to:do than schools. But if schools ate
good for anything, they ought to help here too.
-Boys ought to practise that which they will have
to do in future life ; to describe what they have
read, seen, or heard ; to read from other language a
into good English, as Lord S-anbope says was part
of Pitt's traiuiug, to state cases and arguments, and
in every possible way to acquire readiness, nerve, a
good vocabulary, and a gentle tone of voice, neither
overbearing nor timid, and even a bearing that -
shall not be positively ridiculous. It stands to
reason, and is certainly borne out by multitudes of
instances, that if a child is ever to speak well it
ought to begin as soon as it has the use of its
tongue ' • and the course ought not to be intermitted
at school or college. At present all the rhetorical
training a boy has at either of these places he picks
up for himself. If he does this his future career is
often a triumph of self-will over duty, or rather
of nature over learned folly. While the good boys
ere plodding over their tasks, writing no end of
verses, racking their brains to find matter for a
theme, or turning over the leaves of dictionaries
and grammars till they are dizzy, some indolent;
fellow is following his own bent, taking all kinds
of nonsense, playing off hi- jokes on everybody,
and trusting to his good fortune and address to
propitiate the master. Thirty years hence he is
likely enough to be a great man, and, in his way
a useful roan, while his dutiful and plodding con-
tempora, ies are settling into ol.).cutity and insigni-
ficance. It ought not to be, but it is so, and will
remain se, as long as the art of speaking well is
ui telly neglected in all its stages and applications,
and nothing is cared for but headwork and pen-
_
svoik, as applied to ancient languages and pure
ma hem atics.