The Modern Athens 29

The Modern Athens 29

One day as he was occupied in this learned work, the parson of the

village happened to be on the other side of the hedge, pacing backwards

and forwards, and cudgelling his reluctant and retentive brains for

as much of the raw material of sermonizing as would serve to put him

and his parishioners over the ensuing Sunday. While he paced and

pleaded with the sluggish spirit, his ear was assailed by a continued

_mumbling_ of voice through the hedge, which caught so much stronger

a hold of him than he could do of his sermon, that his steps and

his study were both brought to a dead stand, and his outward ears

perked up in the fondest attitude of listening. Ministers as well as

men often remember the words of that of which they were never able

to grapple with the meaning; and thus, though the old parson did not

exactly comprehend the extent of that proposition, the diagram of

which the young philosopher had traced upon his soft abacus, and the

demonstration of which he was rehearsing in very solemn tones, yet

he remembered that such words had been used by one of the professors

in that part of his academic course which he had never understood.

That which is known is always simple, and that which is not known,

however simple it may be in itself, is always accounted the very depth

of wisdom. The parson was astonished, and, for a moment, he doubted

the evidence of those ears upon which he had had to depend through a

long life. He tried the one, it caught, “The angles at the base of an

isosceles triangle;” he tried the other, it continued the enunciation,

“are equal to one another.” He poked his head half way through the

hedge, and the auxiliary testimony of his eyes and spectacles confirmed

that of his ears. He saw the abacus, the book, and the student, and

forthwith descended to the village, big and puffing with the tale. A

visit from the parson at any other hour than that of dinner, is always

an ominous matter to some of the family of a Scotch peasant. If the

young folks be children they dread the catechism. If more advanced,

there are occasional terrors of that Scotch tread-mill, which is

trodden alone and in presence of the assembled congregation. The mother

of the philosopher had nothing to dread upon either of those grounds,

but still she felt all the glow of a woman’s curiosity, when the parson

approached her husband with so hasty steps and so important looks.

 

“Well, Mr. Lascelles,” said the parson, “you must take care of Jock,

and that forthwith, for I am thinking that he is a _genus_.”

 

“I am very sorry to hear it, Sir,” replied Mr. Lascelles, lifting his

bonnet, “but he is very young, and will get steadier as he grows up.

Has he been letting the cows eat your corn?”

 

“The Lord forbid either the one thing or the other,” said the parson.

“He is a genus, a mathematical genus, and will be an honour to the

parish when we are both dead and gone.”

 

The father now understood that the words which he had at first

considered as lamentation were laudatory; the fatted calf was killed,

the parson was feasted, the boy taken from the cows, and sent to

college; and the result is--a perfect Anak in philosophy.----

 

That the literary men of Scotland are drawn from the whole range of

the population is not only in favour of themselves; it is also highly

advantageous to the humbler classes of the people. In as far, indeed,

as merely literary men are concerned, the advantage to Scotland is by

no means great, because in Scotland they meet with but little reward

to stimulate their exertions. And hence they are obliged to scatter

themselves over the world. But still, the number that remain, and fill

the duties of parochial and other teachers throughout the country, are

superior, not in degree merely, but absolutely in kind, to the teachers

of youth, more especially youth of the poorer classes, in any other

part of the country. In England, for instance, when a man of general

information undertakes the office of teacher, he does it either with

the hope of making a fortune by teaching the children of the rich, or

as a matter of necessity, and as a dernier resort after having been

unfortunate in teaching the children of the poor. But one who is to

have any chance of succeeding in the communication of any thing else

than the mere mechanism of reading, writing, and casting accounts,

which after all does not deserve the name of education, must love his

profession for its own sake, and look upon the exercise of it as an

honour,--which, in one that instructs the children of the lower orders,

can never be the case, unless he himself has been educated as one of

those orders. It is quite natural, and it is also quite true, that the

education which is most beneficial for any one class of society, can

neither be imparted nor purchased by any other class. Charity schools

will never be held in much estimation by any one who has seen the

progress of those poor children for whose education their own parents

pay. There is something in the receiving of any kind of charity which

is humiliating and debasing; and to bestow a charitable education upon

the whole or the greater part of the labouring classes in the country,

would be the surest means not only of leaving them nearly uneducated,

but of destroying their virtue and diminishing their usefulness.

 

It is to the absence of this humiliating mode of being instructed,

and the presence of one infinitely better and more rational, that the

grand peculiarity of the Athens, and remarkably of the provincial

parts of Scotland, is chiefly to be attributed. The smallness of

Scotch and even of Athenian society, the limited number even of the

labouring classes, who, except in Glasgow, and perhaps a place or

two more, are all intimately known, as well in their connexions as

in their individual characters, and perhaps also the low rate of

wages, and the fewer facilities to solitary dissipation, may no doubt

account for some portion of the intelligence and virtue of the humbler

Scotch. But still, in as far as those circumstances operate, they must

operate upon the higher classes as well as the lower; and, as the

higher classes in Scotland have no such superiority over the higher

classes in other countries, as the lower have over the lower, there

must be some special cause which operates in favour of the Scotch

peasantry. I have looked round for causes; I have found none except

those remarkable advantages in respect of teachers of education,

(unless, perhaps, it be that the sober and simple Kirk of Scotland

has a more wholesome influence upon the poor than a more showy and

aristocratical establishment can exert,) and I think I discovered that

those advantages are quite sufficient to account for the fact.

 

If there were not something in education that made strongly and

peculiarly in favour of the Scotch peasantry, why should they be

decidedly before the peasantry of England, both in talent and

civilization, while not merely the upper ranks of the provincial

Scotch, but even the learned and official scribes (and pharisees)

of the Athens, are so markedly and so monstrously behind? This

circumstance, unaccustomed as kings may well be supposed to be to

rigorous philosophic observation, did not escape the notice of George

the Fourth. He expressed no unusual admiration at the polish of the

Scotch peers, the elegance of the Scotch ladies, the learning of the

Scotch professors and parsons, or the worshipful appearance of the

Scotch magistrates; but the Scotch people, the crowds who shouted his

welcome on his arrival, and who cheered him every time he appeared in

public, were a source of wonder and a theme for admiration,--and a

proof, against which there is no arguing, that if people receive the

education of gentlemen, their habits will correspond, however scanty

their earnings or scanty their abodes.

 

In the Athens, this relative superiority of the humbler classes over

those whom chance, ancestry, or office has set up into the high places,

is not only more remarkable than in any other locality that I ever

visited, but the most remarkable, at least the most admirable feature

in the character of the Athens herself.

 

I have said, and I dare themselves to deny it, that her men in office

are a trifling and a truckling race; I have said, and I dare themselves

to deny it, that a great mass of her scribes unite some of the worst

propensities of the Jew, with none of the best of the attorney; I have

said, and I dare them to deny it, that her schools of philosophy have

“fallen into the sear and yellow leaf,” and that her philosophical

societies pursue trifles from which even school-boys would turn with

disdain; and I have said, that her _gentry_ have neither the capacity

nor the means of encouraging the sciences, literature, and the fine

arts; but though I have said thus, and said it from personal--perhaps

painful, observation, I am bound to add, that in point of intellect,

and all matters considered in point of conduct, the populace of the

Athens are far superior to any with which I am acquainted. When I

visited the public libraries, the men whom I found borrowing the

classical and philosophical books wore aprons, while the occasional

lady or gentleman that I saw there, was satisfied with the romance of

the week, or the pamphlet of the day.

 

This accumulation of intellect among the lower and labouring classes

is a delightful thing,--when contemplated as studying history or

philosophy, or sporting itself with the finest productions of genius.

In this calmness and tranquillity it puts one in mind of the blue

expanse of the interminable and unfathomable ocean; its immensity

makes you feel it sublime; its depth tints it with that transparent

green which the eye never wearies in contemplating,--but, when the

wind is up, when the billows heave their masses, dash their spray to

the heavens, and deafen the ends of the earth with their roar, the

ocean becomes a fearful and a formidable thing; and, when the winds

of oppression chafe it, so is a population so learned, and so linked

together, as the labouring classes of the Athens.

 

In the great manufacturing or commercial towns of England, and even,

and perhaps to fully as great a degree, in the British metropolis, one

finds the labourers and operative mechanics, though strong enough at

their labour, and skilful enough at their craft, far down indeed in

the intellectual scale,--reduced from their want of emulation to seek

their relaxation and their pleasure in the indulgence of their merely

animal appetites, and forced, through the want of proper education at

the outset, and fit means of obtaining or extending it afterwards, to

spend their evenings in ale-houses, and rest their distinctions of

honour and superiority on brawls and fights. In Scotland generally, and

in the Athens in particular, it is very different. Almost the whole of

the working classes there have got such an education in their youth

as not only would qualify them for ultimately being masters in their

respective trades, but which gives them an insatiable thirst, not for

technical knowledge in their own professions merely, but for knowledge

in general. If one were to follow them home, after the hours of their

labour are over, one would not find them besotting themselves with

beer, and discussing the circumstances of a prize-fight, in clouds of

smoke over a dirty newspaper, which the reader has to spell as he gets

on. No doubt they have their carousals, and when they do drink, they

drink deeply; but it is not so much for the love of the dissipation,

as for some public or brotherly measure which brings them together. You