The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 Part 50

CHARLES SANGSTER.--1822-

My footsteps press where, centuries ago, The Red Men fought and conquer'd; lost and won.

Whole tribes and races, gone like last year's snow, Have found the Eternal Hunting-Grounds, and run The fiery gauntlet of their active days, Till few are left to tell the mournful tale: And these inspire us with such wild amaze They seem like spectres pa.s.sing down a vale Steep'd in uncertain moonlight, on their way Towards some bourn where darkness blinds the day, And night is wrapp'd in mystery profound.

We cannot lift the mantle of the past: We seem to wander over hallow'd ground: We scan the trail of Thought, but all is overcast.

THERE WAS A TIME--and that is all we know!

No record lives of their ensanguin'd deeds: The past seems palsied with some giant blow, And grows the more obscure on what it feeds.

A rotted fragment of a human leaf; A few stray skulls; a heap of human bones!

These are the records--the traditions brief-- 'Twere easier far to read the speechless stones.

The fierce Ojibwas, with tornado force, Striking white terror to the hearts of braves!

The mighty Hurons, rolling on their course, Compact and steady as the ocean waves!

The fiery Iroquois, a warrior host!

Who were they?--Whence?--And why? no human tongue can boast!

XCII. MORALS AND CHARACTER IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY.

GOLDWIN SMITH.--1823-

_From_ COWPER.

The world into which Cowper came was one very adverse to him, and at the same time very much in need of him. It was a world from which the spirit of poetry seemed to have fled. There could be no stronger proof of this than the occupation of the throne of Spenser, Shakespeare, and Milton, by the arch-versifier Pope. The Revolution of 1688 was glorious, but unlike the Puritan Revolution which it followed, and in the political sphere partly ratified, it was profoundly prosaic. Spiritual religion, the source of Puritan grandeur and of the poetry of Milton, was almost extinct; there was not much more of it among the Nonconformists, who had now become to a great extent mere Whigs, with a decided Unitarian tendency. The Church was little better than a political force cultivated and manipulated by political leaders for their own purposes. The Bishops were either politicians, or theological polemics collecting trophies of victory over free-thinkers as t.i.tles to higher preferment. The inferior clergy as a body were far nearer in character to Trulliber than to Dr.

Primrose; coa.r.s.e, sordid, neglectful of their duties, shamelessly addicted to sinecurism and pluralities, fanatics in their Toryism and in attachment to their corporate privileges, cold, rationalistic, and almost heathen in their preachings, if they preached at all. The society of the day is mirrored in the pictures of Hogarth in the works of Fielding and Smollett; hard and heartless polish was the best of it; and not a little of it was _Marriage a la Mode_. Chesterfield, with his soulless culture, his court graces, and his fas.h.i.+onable immoralities, was about the highest type of an English gentleman; but the Wilkeses, Potters, and Sandwiches, whose mania for vice culminated in the h.e.l.l-fire Club, were more numerous than the Chesterfields. Among the country squires, for one Allworthy, or Sir Roger de Coverley, there were many Westerns. Among the common people religion was almost extinct, and a.s.suredly no new morality or sentiment, such as Positivists now promise, had taken its place. Sometimes the rustic thought for himself, and scepticism took formal possession of his mind; but as we see from one of Cowper's letters, it was a coa.r.s.e scepticism which desired to be buried with its hounds. Ignorance and brutality reigned in the cottage.

Drunkenness reigned in palace and cottage alike. Gambling, c.o.c.k-fighting, and bull-fighting were the amus.e.m.e.nts of the people.

Political life, which, if it had been pure and vigorous, might have made up for the absence of spiritual influences, was corrupt from the top of the scale to the bottom: its effect on national character is portrayed in Hogarth's _Election_. That property had its duties as well as its rights, n.o.body had yet ventured to say or think. The duty of a gentleman towards his own cla.s.s was to pay his debts of honor, and to fight a duel whenever he was challenged by one of his own order; towards the lower cla.s.s his duty was none. Though the forms of government were elective, and Cowper gives us a description of the candidate at election time obsequiously soliciting votes, society was intensely aristocratic, and each rank was divided from that below it by a sharp line which precluded brotherhood or sympathy. Says the d.u.c.h.ess of Buckingham to Lady Huntingdon, who had asked her to come and hear Whitefield, "I thank your ladys.h.i.+p for the information concerning the Methodist preachers; their doctrines are most repulsive, and strongly tinctured with disrespect towards their superiors, in perpetually endeavoring to level all ranks and do away with all distinctions. It is monstrous to be told you have a heart as sinful as the common wretches that crawl on the earth. This is highly offensive and insulting; and I cannot but wonder that your ladys.h.i.+p should relish any sentiments so much at variance with high rank and good breeding. I shall be most happy to come and hear your favorite preacher." Her Grace's sentiments towards the common wretches that crawl on the earth were shared, we may be sure, by her Grace's waiting-maid. Of humanity there was as little as there was of religion.

It was the age of the criminal law which hanged men for petty thefts, of life-long imprisonment for debt, of the stocks and the pillory, of a Temple Bar garnished with the heads of traitors, of the unreformed prison system, of the press-gang, of unrestrained tyranny and savagery at public schools. That the slave trade was iniquitous hardly any one suspected; even men who deemed themselves religious took part in it without scruple. But a change was at hand, and a still mightier change was in prospect. At the time of Cowper's birth, John Wesley was twenty-eight, and Whitefield was seventeen. With them the revival of religion, was at hand. Johnson, the moral reformer, was twenty-two.

Howard was born, and in less than a generation Wilberforce was to come.

_That is best blood that hath most iron in 't To edge resolve with, pouring without stint For what makes manhood dear._

JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL.

XCIII. A LIBERAL EDUCATION.

THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY.--1825-

_From_ LAY SERMONS, ADDRESSES, AND REVIEWS.

Suppose it were perfectly certain that the life and fortune of every one of us would, one day or other, depend upon his winning or losing a game at chess. Don't you think that we should all consider it to be a primary duty to learn at least the names and the moves of the pieces; to have a notion of a gambit, and a keen eye for all the means of giving and getting out of check? Do you not think that we should look with a disapprobation amounting to scorn, upon the father who allowed his son, or the state which allowed its members, to grow up without knowing a p.a.w.n from a knight?

Yet it is a very plain and elementary truth, that the life, the fortune, and the happiness of every one of us, and, more or less, of those who are connected with us, do depend upon our knowing something of the rules of a game infinitely more difficult and complicated than chess. It is a game which has been played for untold ages, every man and woman of us being one of the two players in a game of his or her own. The chess-board is the world, the pieces are the phenomena of the universe, the rules of the game are what we call the laws of Nature. The player on the other side is hidden from us. We know that his play is always fair, just, and patient. But also we know, to our cost, that he never overlooks a mistake, or makes the smallest allowance for ignorance. To the man who plays well, the highest stakes are paid, with that sort of overflowing generosity with which the strong shows delight in strength. And one who plays ill is checkmated--without haste, but without remorse.

My metaphor will remind some of you of the famous picture in which Retzsch has depicted Satan playing at chess with man for his soul.

Subst.i.tute for the mocking fiend in that picture, a calm, strong angel, who is playing for love, as we say, and would rather lose than win--and I should accept it as an image of human life.

Well, what I mean by Education, is learning the rules of this mighty game. In other words, education is the instruction of the intellect in the laws of Nature, under which name I include not merely things and their forces, but men and their ways; and the fas.h.i.+oning of the affections and of the will into an earnest and loving desire to move in harmony with those laws. For me, education means neither more nor less than this. Anything which professes to call itself education must be tried by this standard, and if it fails to stand the test, I will not call it education, whatever may be the force of authority, or of numbers, upon the other side.

It is important to remember that, in strictness, there is no such thing as an uneducated man. Take an extreme case. Suppose that an adult man, in the full vigor of his faculties, could be suddenly placed in the world, as Adam is said to have been, and then left to do as he best might. How long would he be left uneducated? Not five minutes. Nature would begin to teach him, through the eye, the ear, the touch, the properties of objects. Pain and pleasure would be at his elbow telling him to do this and avoid that; and by slow degrees the man would receive an education, which, if narrow, would be thorough, real, and adequate to his circ.u.mstances, though there would be no extras and very few accomplishments.

And if to this solitary man entered a second Adam, or, better still, an Eve, a new and greater world, that of social and moral phenomena, would be revealed. Joys and woes, compared with which all others might seem but faint shadows, would spring from the new relations. Happiness and sorrow would take the place of the coa.r.s.er monitors, pleasure and pain; but conduct would still be shaped by the observation of the natural consequences of actions; or, in other words, by the laws of the nature of man.

To every one of us the world was once as fresh and new as to Adam. And then, long before we were susceptible of any other mode of instruction, Nature took us in hand, and every minute of waking life brought its educational influence, shaping our actions into rough accordance with Nature's laws, so that we might not be ended untimely by too gross disobedience. Nor should I speak of this process of education as past for any one, be he as old as he may. For every man, the world is as fresh as it was at the first day, and as full of untold novelties for him who has the eyes to see them. And Nature is still continuing her patient education of us in that great university, the universe, of which we are all members--Nature having no Test-Acts.

Those who take honors in Nature's university, who learn the laws which govern men and things, and obey them, are the really great and successful men in this world. The great ma.s.s of mankind are the "Poll,"

who pick up just enough to get through without much discredit. Those who won't learn at all are plucked; and then you can't come up again.

Nature's pluck means extermination.

Thus the question of compulsory education is settled so far as Nature is concerned. Her bill on that question was framed and pa.s.sed long ago.

But, like all compulsory legislation, that of Nature is harsh and wasteful in its operation. Ignorance is visited as sharply as wilful disobedience--incapacity meets with the same punishment as crime.

Nature's discipline is not even a word and a blow, and the blow first; but the blow without the word. It is left to you to find out why your ears are boxed.

The object of what we commonly call education--that education in which man intervenes and which I shall distinguish as artificial education--is to make good these defects in Nature's methods; to prepare the child to receive Nature's education, neither incapably nor ignorantly, nor with wilful disobedience; and to understand the preliminary symptoms of her displeasure, without waiting for the box on the ear. In short, all artificial education ought to be an antic.i.p.ation of natural education.

And a liberal education is an artificial education, which has not only prepared a man to escape the great evils of disobedience to natural laws, but has trained him to appreciate and to seize upon the rewards which Nature scatters with as free a hand as her penalties.

That man, I think, has had a liberal education, who has been so trained in youth that his body is the ready servant of his will, and does with ease and pleasure all the work that, as a mechanism, it is capable of; whose intellect is a clear, cold, logic engine, with all its parts of equal strength, and in smooth working order; ready, like a steam engine, to be turned to any kind of work, and spin the gossamers as well as forge the anchors of the mind; whose mind is stored with a knowledge of the great and fundamental truths of Nature and of the laws of her operations; one, who, no stunted ascetic, is full of life and fire, but whose pa.s.sions are trained to come to heel by a vigorous will, the servant of a tender conscience; who has learned to love all beauty, whether of Nature or of art, to hate all vileness, and to respect others as himself.

Such an one and no other, I conceive, has had a liberal education; for he is, as completely as a man can be, in harmony with Nature. He will make the best of her, and she of him. They will get on together rarely; she as his ever beneficent mother; he as her mouth-piece, her conscious self, her minister and interpreter.

XCIV. TOO LATE.

DINAH MARIA MULOCK CRAIK.--1826-

Could ye come back to me, Douglas, Douglas, In the old likeness that I knew, I would be so faithful, so loving, Douglas, Douglas, Douglas, tender and true.

Never a scornful word should grieve ye, I'd smile on ye sweet as the angels do,-- Sweet as your smile on me shone ever, Douglas, Douglas, tender and true.

O to call back the days that are not!

My eyes were blinded, your words were few; Do you know the truth now up in heaven, Douglas, Douglas, tender and true?

I never was worthy of you, Douglas, Not half worthy the like of you; Now all men beside seem to me like shadows,-- I love _you_, Douglas, tender and true.

Stretch out your hand to me, Douglas, Douglas, Drop forgiveness from heaven like dew, As I lay my heart on your dead heart, Douglas, Douglas, Douglas, tender and true.