rank amongst them you are not forbidden to aspire; he who in youth 'can scorn delight, and love laborious days,' should pitch high his ambition.
"Your Uncle Jack says he has done wonders with his newspaper, – though Mr Rollick grumbles, and declares it is full of theories, and that it puzzles the farmers. Uncle Jack, in reply, contends that he creates an audience, not addresses one, – and sighs that his genius is thrown away in a provincial town. In fact, he really is a very clever man, and might do much in London, I dare say. He often comes over to dine and sleep, returning the next morning. His energy is wonderful, and – contagious. Can you imagine that he has actually stirred up the flame of my vanity, by constantly poking at the bars? Metaphor apart – I find myself collecting all my notes and common-places, and wondering to see how easily they fall into method, and take shape in chapters and books. I cannot help smiling when I add, that I fancy I am going to become an author; and smiling more when I think that your Uncle Jack should have provoked me into so egregious an ambition. However, I have read some passages of my book to your mother, and she says "it is vastly fine," which is encouraging. Your mother has great good sense, though I don't mean to say that she has much learning, – which is a wonder, considering that Pic de la Mirandola was nothing to her father. Yet he died, dear great man, and never printed a line, – while I – positively I blush to think of my temerity!
"Adieu, my son; make the best of the time that remains with you at the Philhellenic. A full mind is the true Pantheism, plena Jovis. Wherever there is knowledge, there is God. It is only in some corner of the brain which we leave empty, that Vice can obtain a lodging. When she knocks at your door, my son, be able to say, 'No room for your ladyship, – pass on.' – Your affectionate father,
2. – From Mrs Caxton.
"My Dearest Sisty, – You are coming home! – My heart is so full of that thought that it seems to me as if I could not write any thing else. Dear child, you are coming home; – you have done with school, you have done with strangers, – you are our own, all our own son again! You are mine again, as you were in the cradle, the nursery, and the garden, Sisty, when we used to throw daisies at each other! You will laugh at me so, when I tell you, that as soon as I heard you were coming home for good, I crept away from the room, and went to my drawer where I keep, you know, all my treasures. There was your little cap that I worked myself, and your poor little nankeen jacket that you were so proud to throw off – oh! and many other relics of you when you were little Sisty, and I was not that cold formal 'Mother' you call me now, but dear 'Mamma.' I kissed them, Sisty, and said 'My little child is coming back to me again!' So foolish was I, I forgot all the long years that have passed, and fancied I could carry you again in my arms, and that I should again coax you to say 'God bless papa.' Well, well! I write now between laughing and crying. You cannot be what you were, but you are still my own dear son – your father's son – dearer to me than all the world – except that father.
"I am so glad, too, that you will come so soon: come while your father is really warm with his book, and while you can encourage and keep him to it. For why should he not be great and famous? Why should not all admire him as we do? You know how proud of him I always was; but I do so long to let the world know why I was so proud. And yet, after all, it is not only because he is so wise and learned, – but because he is so good, and has such a large noble heart. But the heart must appear in the book too, as well as the learning. For though it is full of things I don't understand, every now and then there is something I do understand – that seems as if that heart spoke out to all the world.
"Your uncle has undertaken to get it published; and your father is going up to town with him about it, as soon as the first volume is finished.
"All are quite well except poor Mrs Jones, who has the ague very bad indeed; Primmins has made her wear a charm for it, and Mrs Jones actually declares she is already much better. One can't deny that there may be a great deal in such things, though it seems quite against the reason. Indeed your father says, 'Why not? A charm must be accompanied by a strong wish on the part of the charmer that it may succeed, – and what is magnetism but a wish?' I don't quite comprehend this; but, like all your father says, it has more than meets the eye, I am quite sure.
"Only three weeks to the holidays, and then no more school, Sisty – no more school! I shall have your room all done freshly, and made so pretty; they are coming about it to-morrow.
"The duck is quite well, and I really don't think it is quite as lame as it was.
"God bless you, dear, dear child! – Your affectionate happy mother,
The interval between these letters and the morning on which I was to return home, seemed to me like one of those long, restless, yet half dreamy days which in some infant malady I had passed in a sick-bed. I went through my task-work mechanically, composed a Greek ode in farewell to the Philhellenic, which Dr Herman pronounced a chef-d'œuvre, and my father, to whom I sent it in triumph, returned a letter of false English with it, that parodied all my Hellenic barbarisms by imitating them in my mother tongue. However, I swallowed the leek, and consoled myself with the pleasing recollection that, after spending six years in learning to write bad Greek, I should never have any further occasion to avail myself of so precious an accomplishment.
And so came the last day. Then, alone, and in a kind of delighted melancholy, I revisited each of the old haunts. The robbers' cave we had dug one winter, and maintained, six of us, against all the police of the little kingdom. The place near the pales where I had fought my first battle. The old beech stump on which I sate to read letters from home!
With my knife, rich in six blades, (besides a cork-screw, a pen-picker, and a button-hook,) I carved my name in large capitals over my desk. Then night came, and the bell rang, and we went to our rooms. And I opened the window and looked out. I saw all the stars, and wondered which was mine – which should light to fame and fortune the manhood about to commence. Hope and Ambition were high within me; – and yet, behind them, stood Melancholy. Ah! who amongst you, readers, can now summon back all those thoughts, sweet and sad – all that untold, half-conscious regret for the past – all those vague longings for the future, which made a poet of the dullest amongst you on the last night before leaving boyhood and school for ever!
EDUCATION IN WALES
2That it is the duty of a wise and foreseeing government to inquire into the condition of whatever affects the well-being of the people, is almost a political truism, and may certainly be received as a political axiom. More especially, however, when the subject is one of such vital importance as education, does such an inquiry become necessary: and, in truth, the leaders of the state cannot be considered as doing their duty, unless they make themselves acquainted with the practical bearings and results of the system, whatever it may be, that exists. Not that the government of this country, until very recent periods at least, ever troubled themselves with such matters: the more direct political business of the state, the clash of parties, and the struggle for power, absorbed their whole attention; and education was left, as a matter of private and local concern, to the clergy and the gentry exclusively. The voluntary system, superinduced upon the country by the indolence or neglect of those who held the reins of authority, was allowed to remain in unaided operation as far as education was concerned; and until the establishing of National Schools, as they are commonly termed, and for some time after that event, the governments that followed each other in the dingy recesses of Downing Street cared no more for village schoolmasters, and knew no more about them, than they did about village blacksmiths. It was enough if the people went on tolerably well, and paid their taxes; whether they learned any thing at school, or whether they had schools in which any thing might be learned, was, at head-quarters, a matter of no moment. Most of the upper classes of the nation were of the same feeling – the middle classes, too, folded their arms and looked on.3 Had it not been for the
This, it will be understood, does not apply to Scotland, – where education has been a very popular interest for nearly two centuries back.
