whether they are snuff-coloured turned black, or black turned
snuff-coloured, a point upon which we ourselves are perfectly
unable to offer any ray of enlightenment, it is so very long since
they were undarned and new.” I do not like that sort of school,
because I have never yet lost my ancient suspicion touching that
curious coincidence that the boy with four brothers to come always
got the prizes. In fact, and short, I do not like that sort of
school, which is a pernicious and abominable humbug, altogether.
Again, ladies and gentlemen, I don’t like that sort of school – a
ladies’ school – with which the other school used to dance on
Wednesdays, where the young ladies, as I look back upon them now,
seem to me always to have been in new stays and disgrace – the
latter concerning a place of which I know nothing at this day, that
bounds Timbuctoo on the north-east – and where memory always
depicts the youthful enthraller of my first affection as for ever
standing against a wall, in a curious machine of wood, which
confined her innocent feet in the first dancing position, while
those arms, which should have encircled my jacket, those precious
arms, I say, were pinioned behind her by an instrument of torture
called a backboard, fixed in the manner of a double direction post.
Again, I don’t like that sort of school, of which we have a notable
example in Kent, which was established ages ago by worthy scholars
and good men long deceased, whose munificent endowments have been
monstrously perverted from their original purpose, and which, in
their distorted condition, are struggled for and fought over with
the most indecent pertinacity. Again, I don’t like that sort of
school – and I have seen a great many such in these latter times –
where the bright childish imagination is utterly discouraged, and
where those bright childish faces, which it is so very good for the
wisest among us to remember in after life – when the world is too
much with us, early and late – are gloomily and grimly scared out
of countenance; where I have never seen among the pupils, whether
boys or girls, anything but little parrots and small calculating
machines. Again, I don’t by any means like schools in leather
breeches, and with mortified straw baskets for bonnets, which file
along the streets in long melancholy rows under the escort of that
surprising British monster – a beadle, whose system of instruction,
I am afraid, too often presents that happy union of sound with
sense, of which a very remarkable instance is given in a grave
report of a trustworthy school inspector, to the effect that a boy
in great repute at school for his learning, presented on his slate,
as one of the ten commandments, the perplexing prohibition, “Thou
shalt not commit doldrum.” Ladies and gentlemen, I confess, also,
that I don’t like those schools, even though the instruction given
in them be gratuitous, where those sweet little voices which ought
to be heard speaking in very different accents, anathematise by
rote any human being who does not hold what is taught there.
Lastly, I do not like, and I did not like some years ago, cheap
distant schools, where neglected children pine from year to year
under an amount of neglect, want, and youthful misery far too sad
even to be glanced at in this cheerful assembly.
And now, ladies and gentlemen, perhaps you will permit me to sketch
in a few words the sort of school that I do like. It is a school
established by the members of an industrious and useful order,
which supplies the comforts and graces of life at every familiar
turning in the road of our existence; it is a school established by
them for the Orphan and Necessitous Children of their own brethren
and sisterhood; it is a place giving an education worthy of them –
an education by them invented, by them conducted, by them watched
over; it is a place of education where, while the beautiful history
of the Christian religion is daily taught, and while the life of
that Divine Teacher who Himself took little children on His knees