Daily globe., 1883-08-27

Some weeks ago assisted at the clos
ing exercises of school in excellent re-
pute, and heard some music and some es-
says, and some more music and some NOR
| essays. An essay is defined as an attempt
an effort, and while the attempt was laud-
able enough, the selection of themes in
nearly every instance was such as preclud-
ed the likelihood of any original thought
or treatment. One courageous young
lady took the most agitating queen in his
tory for her subject, grouped and COM
mented on all the vexed questions of her
very exciting career, and settled the whole
business while you could say Jack Robin
son. Erudite and impartial historians.
preJudiced and partisan and picturesque
historians, writers of every veriety little
and intermediate, in every civilized
language have tried to give us the right
understanding of this unfortunate wo-
mans life.
There is an anecdote told of D'Israeli's
advice to youth whose father requested
the worldly-wise premier to be so gracious
as to give his son some suggestions as to
| his future course. And what did Beacons-
field say?
Why, never to try his hand in establish
ing the identity of the man in the iron
mask, nor to attempt unraveling the mys-
terry surrounding the authorship of the
Junius' Letters!
One is apt to smile at the extravaganza
| n Int -
a playful exaggeration in reminding the
young man not to venture beyond his
depth in anything.
You have heard people lecturing upon
art and its varied schools, who we're
never out of this country,
and hadn'ti been signally
favored in seeing any of the famons paint
lngs owned by the moneyed nobs in
the back settlements. And yet they
were at the vero weakness which
D'Israeli with laughing wisdom warns
that listening youth not to attempt.
because he knew that one illustrative alb
surdity or brace of them would do for
all the rest. You deem, for instance, that
having excellent photographs of all the
celebrated paintings of Madonnas, you are
ready to discuss even to an audience. all
that artistic achievement with the thought,
research, opportunity and natural endow-
ment for the task of-well, let's say Rus
kin.
In the case of the young lady in the
school closing exhibition, whose essay was
the distressing and perplexing and uni
versal queen, and the young gentleman
who at the same time summed
up brilliant artist with
neatness and dispatch, and with such an
exemplary collation. of we'll known facts
as to leave no doubt in his hearers minds
as to the authenticity of his authorities.
While the auditors were pleased and par
tial, and while the essays showed goodly
reading and systematic arrangement of
it, some people would have preferred a
more original expression of mental powers
and capacities,
For instance, the faculty of observation
IN Its Infinite range of accomplishment,
how rare it is that it becomes a distin-
gushing gift, as with Dickens, who made
everything he saw enter into his works as
if it was sentient.
| The humorous personifcations of mani
mate things constitutes half the fun of his
writings, and the same popularity inverted
gives the pathetic tinge as well-just as
the air of the "Cruiskeen Lawn is a iolly
drinking song, albeit, in the minor key,
again by the merest touch conveys the
sadly tender sentiments of ''John Anderson
My Jo." So, when Dickens describes the
ticking of Dombey's watch and Dr.. Parker
Peps' watch, audible in the death stiffness
OF Mrs. Dombey's last moments, and talks
of their racing with each other, under the
apparent levity runs the inevitable mono
tone of eternity.
You are more touched with the pathos of
1t so than you are with the labored climax
OF LeFevre's death in Tristram Shandy,
and that curious colloquy of the pulse.
which is fantastic finale worthy of
Sterne.
Now then, understand me as not expect :
ing young ladies and adolescents at school
to have this wonderful facility of obssrya-
| ton.
don't. I know better.
L am nevertheless aware that the
promising youth of both sexes
in scholastic review before us. has
the power of observation which ought to
be cultivated until it sees with both ewes.
that of the body, and that of the mind which
Hamlet announces, and effecting a correI-
alton gives to expression and writing in
dividuality and permanence.
If the youth who ''essayed" the great ar
tlst and grouped all the leading facts of
his life for the edifcation of auditors who
we're mostly familiar with them-if. in
stead he had described one walk to school.
and taken in earth, and air, and sky-had
put in the people he saw with the manifes
tations of character, occupation, profes-
sion, and life legible in gait and garb.
Or, had he observed some comparison
whose disposition he had studied, whose
mental makeup was unusually attractive
and promising, and recorded it all with the
fresh stamp of his direct seeing and think
ing, his effort would have been
purely his own and gained in yaIue accord-