Your Lordship did well to remind me of such societies as those in which you and I have, at times, been engaged. The recollection is, of course, flattering and agreeable. But let us presume upon ourselves, my Lord; theLimborchsandLe Clercsare not so obvious to every body, as they were to us; or, if they were, every body would not profit so well by them. And if private scholars be thus inaccessible, how shall we think to intrude on the business and occupations of experienced magistrates and ministers? And, putting both these out of the question, who remain for the tutorage and instruction of these travelled boys, but such raw, unaccomplished companions, as they left at home, and may find every where in abundance?
Still my objections go further. What if, by uncommon sagacity and good luck, some acquaintance be made with superior persons, and some little insight at length be gained into their real characters? Of what mighty advantage will this be in life, when their businesslies amongst other men; and when the same industry and attention had brought them acquainted with the characters of those, they must act and live with? Foreigners are neither an easier study than our own countrymen, nor a more useful one. The very modes and forms of external breeding catch the attention of unexperienced youth; and are so many obstacles to their real progress in this science. And, when all is done, the modifications of the human character, as existing at home, and exhibited in the lives and actions of their fellow-citizens, are, as I said, the proper objects of their curiosity.
In short, the utmost I can allow to this discipline of foreign travel, under the idea of its furnishinga knowledge of the world, is, That it may possibly wear a young man into some studied and apish resemblance of the models, he copies from, in his deportment and manners; or that the various scenes, he has passed through, may furnish matter, at his return, for much unprofitable babble in conversation: but, that he should come back fraught with any solid information concerning men and things, such as, in your Lordship’s sublime phrase, may fit him to appear with lustre in the court or senate of his owncountry, is what I can never promise myself from this fashionable mode of education.
I am even disposed to promise myself the less from it, for anobservation, I have sometimes had the opportunity of making.
An old man has so little about him to provoke envy, that he may be allowed to make the best of his former successes. And though I pride myself inone, of a very delicate nature, the boast of it will not be ill taken even there, where your Lordship, with all your pretensions, would be heard with no patience. In short, I indulge myself in the vanity of saying that I have, in my time, been well with the fair sex, and have even been countenanced so far as to be admitted into a degree of acquaintance and familiarity with some ladies of the highest quality and distinction. And of these, I have constantly observed, that, though bred up at home, they had a manifest advantage over their travelled brothers, I was going to say, in learning and science, but certainly in true politeness, good sense, and even a knowledge of the world.
I understand this civility to the ladies, as a decent atonement for your late freedoms with them. In this light I should be unwilling to cavil at it: and yet I see not, how your high encomiums on the superior good sense and politeness of these home-bred ladies can consist with the passion, you before censured in them, for foreign travel, as favourable, in their opinion, to the production of such virtues.
My consistency in this representation, I doubt, is less questionable, than my civility. For the ladies, on whom I bestowed those high, but just encomiums, were chiefly such as I had known in my younger days, before the passion for travel had got among them. Now indeed the case is altering apace, and the effects are answerable. The virtues of theEnglishladies, when they staid at home, were more conspicuous than those of our travelled gentlemen. Now that they, too, begin to travel, their follies are, also, more glaring: in either case, I am willingto own, for the credit of my civility, from the same reason, that both good and ill qualities strike us most, whensetin the precious metal of that sex.
However, from the whole of my experience, I must needs conclude, that this finishing of a travelled education only serves to corrupt good qualities, or inflame bad ones.
But the ladies are not in my province. If they were, a knowledge of the world is not the leading virtue I might wish to see them possessed of. In the men, I confess, this accomplishment is of more importance; and I am therefore solicitous, that no well-meaning youth, whom it so much concerns to gain a knowledge of the world, should be misled in his search of it.
Seriously, my Lord, theWORLD, which I am forced to repeat so often, is a solemn word, and the study of it has an air of something plausible and imposing. But those, who know what the world is, will think it best that a young man begin with what is the first and last concern of every man, the study of himself; and if, in due time, he come to understand, and, still more, to value as they deserve,the characters of the great and good men of his own country, the opprobrious name ofhome-bredwill not hinder him from acquiring the best fruit, with which a knowledge of the world, rightly understood, can furnish him.
For, my Lord, I must not, on so inviting an occasion as this, conceal an odd fancy of mine from your Lordship.
The affair ofknowing the world, about which weak and fantastic people make so much noise, and which one hears them perpetually insisting upon with so much sufficiency, is of all others the nicest and most momentous step that is made in education. And, though volumes have been written to teach us how we may best become scholars, orators, courtiers, what not; yet not one leaf do I ever remember to have seen, composed by any capable man, that instructs us in the proper way of getting into this great secret.
It is not a matter to be entered upon, if I were vain enough to think myself capable of it, in this casual conversation; but thus much I may presume to say, that whoever designs to let a young man into a safe and useful knowledge of the world, must do it in a way veryremote from that which has hitherto been taken.
A young man, they tell us, must know the world; therefore, say they, push him into it at once, that he may acquire that knowledge, which his own experience, and not another’s, must procure for him.
I, on the other hand, take upon me to say, Therefore keep him out of that world, as long as you can; and when you commit him to it, let the ablest friend or tutor lend him his best experience, to conduct him gradually, cautiously, imperceptibly, into an acquaintance with it.
You ask the reason of this mysterious procedure; yet methinks it should be obvious enough. Fromsixteen to one and twenty(a period, in which the cares of an ordinary education cease, or are much relaxed) is that precise season of life, which requires all the attention of the most vigilant, and all the address of the wisest, governor. The passions are then opening; curiosity awake; and the young mind ready to take its ply from the seducements of fashion, and creditable example.
Nor is this the worst. An education, that deserves the name, has inculcated maxims of honour and probity; has inspired the noblest sentiments of moral duty; has impressed on the mind a veneration for all the virtues, and an equal horror for all the vices, of humanity.
Full of these sublime ideas, which his parents, his tutors, his books, and even his own ingenuous heart has rendered familiar to him, the fatal time is at hand, when our well-instructed youth is now to make his entrance into the world: but, good God, what a world! not that which he has so long read, or dreamt of; but a world, new, strange, and inconsistent with all his former notions and expectations.
He enters this scene with awe; and contemplates it with astonishment. Vice, he sees assured, prosperous, and triumphant; virtue discountenanced, unsuccessful, and degraded. He joins the first croud, that presents itself to him: a loud laugh arises; and the edge of their ridicule is turned on sobriety, industry, honesty, generosity, or some other of those qualities, he has hitherto been most fond of.
He quits this clamorous set with disdain; and is glad to unite himself withanother, better dressed, better mannered, in all respects more specious and attractive. His simplicity makes him for some time the dupe of this plausible society: but their occasional hints, their negligent sarcasms, their sallies of wit, and polite raillery on all that he has been accustomed to hold sacred, shew him at last that he has only changed his company, not mended it.
This discovery leads him to another. He attends to the lives of these well-bred people, and finds them of a piece with their manners and conversation; shewy indeed, and, on first view, decorous; but, in effect, deformed by every impotent and selfish passion; wasted in sloth and luxury; in ruinous play; criminal intrigues; or, at best, unprofitable amusements.
This painting, methinks, is a little strong. Besides, you might surely have provided better company for your young inspector of the world, than that shameless crew, or this corrupt one.
I take up, as he must do, with such company as the world is most apt to throw in our way; and the colouring, your Lordship knows, is modest enough for the occasion.
But I attend our boy-adventurer no further in his progress into the world, and return now to ask you, what effect your Lordship thinks these strange unexpected scenes must naturally have upon him? Certainly one or the other of these two; either that the scorn of virtue, he every where observes, will by degrees abate his his reverence of it, and at length obliterate all the better impressions of his education; or, if these should still keep their hold of his young ingenuous breast, that he will entertain the most indignant sentiments of mankind, and suffer himself to be carried by them into a sour and sullen misanthropy, at least; perhaps into a sceptical and prophane impiety.
I have seldom known a young man of sense and parts, educated in this way, escape from one or other of these mischiefs.
But why then bring him up with those high notions of mankind, of which the world must presently disabuse him, at the expence either of his innocence, or good nature?
That question had been natural enough from most men. But your Lordship knows very well, that, in this moral discipline, as in every other, ideas of excellence are to be imprinted on the young mind, and the most consummate models proposed for imitation: on this certain principle, That, whoever would be moderately accomplished in any art, and most of all in this supreme art of life, must take his aim high, and aspire to absolute perfection. A painter or statuary of the lowest form, your Lordship knows, is taught to work after aMadonnaofRaphael, or aVenusofMedicis; yet is not likely to meet with either, among his acquaintance.
The observation is surely just; and I could only mean that those high fancies should be checked and moderated in due time, before our entrance into that world, which, it is foreseen, will so little correspond to them.
And what is thatdue time, your Lordship sets apart for this delicate operation?
Is it, before the young boy commences his travels? But that, according to your Lordship’s scheme, is so early, that the regimen, you would now abate, has not taken its full effect, and his weak unconfirmed virtue would die under the experiment.
Is it then, when his travels are already begun? And is the sage tutor, your Lordship anxiously flies to, as to some god, on every occasion of distress, to charge himself with the solution of this difficulty? Alas! now it is too late. You have brought the boy into thescene. He will see and judge for himself. The torrent bears him away: the instant impression is too strong to be counteracted by the feeble and, now, disgusting admonitions of a tutor.
See then, if the proper way, to secure him from these inconveniences, be not, To keep him yet at a distance from the world; and, when you let him into some knowledge of it, to do it seasonably, gradually, and circumspectly: to take the veil off from some parts, and leave it still upon others; to paint what he does not see, and to hint at more than you paint: to confine him, at first, to the best company, and prepare him to make allowances even for the best: to preserve in his breast the love of excellence, and encourage in him the generous sentiments, he has so largely imbibed, and so perfectly relishes: yet temper, if you can, his zeal with candour; insinuate to him the prerogative of such a virtue, as his, so early formed, and so happily cultivated; and bend his reluctant spirit to some aptness of pity towards the ill-instructed and the vicious: by degrees to open to him the real condition of that world, to which he is approaching; yet so as to present to him, at the same time, the certain inevitable misery of conformingto it: last of all, to shew him some examples of that vice, which he must learn to bear in others, though detest in himself; to watch the effect these examples have upon him; and, as you find his dispositions incline, to fortify his abhorrence of vice, or excite his commiseration of the vicious: in a word (for I am not now directing a tutor, but suggesting, in very general terms, my ideas of his office) to inform the minds of youth with such gradual intelligence, as may prepare them to see the world without surprize, and live in it without danger.
This is that important chapter, which I presumed to say no institutor of youth had yet composed, or so much as touched upon, in a treatise of education. You will learn from this brief summary of its contents, what, in my opinion, should be the employment of those precious years, which are usually thrown away upon foreign travel.
In earnest, my Lord, there is a fatal mistake in this matter. People speak of a knowledge of the world, as what may be acquired at any time, and, for its importance, cannot be acquired too soon. Alas! they forget, that a long and careful preparation is necessary, before we are qualified so much as to enter onthis task; and that they, who are latest in setting out, will arrive the soonest, certainly the safest, at their journey’s end.
But where shall this mighty work of preparation be carried on? And in what privileged sanctuary shall our good young man be kept from the sight and contagion of this wicked world, and yet be gradually forming for the use and practice of it?
Where, does your Lordship ask? Why, in his college; in a friend’s, or his father’s house; any where, in short, rather than in a foreign country, where every wholesome restraint is taken off, and the young mind left a prey to every ill impression.
And are there no inconveniences, on the other hand, which a provident parent may besupposed to foresee, and may be willing to guard against?
I understand your Lordship. I know, that, for want of better arguments in support of this foreign breeding, weak or unworthy parents are ready to take up with such as these:
They tell us, especially if of rank and quality, that their children have suffered more than enough already, in their passage through our public and vulgar schools; that, together with many illiberal habits, they have contracted many low and illiberal friendships, which are, in all reason, to be shaken off; that these unworthy companions follow them to the University, and are, if not the bane, yet the dishonour and incumbrance of their future lives; that an absence of some years abroad loosens these hasty and ill-timed connexions; and leaves them, on their return, at full liberty to contract others, more suitable to their birth and quality, and more conducive to their views of fortune, as well as of reputation, in the world; that indeed they might remove the young man immediately from his school into their own house; but that much of their time is necessarily spent in the metropolis, the licence of which is notto be guarded against by any care of their own, or of the best governor; that his low illiberal acquaintance would haunt him even there; at least, that the youth of his own age and rank would naturally flock about him, and, under a thousand pretences of civility or amusement, engage him in all the follies, and perhaps the vices, of this great town; that, on the whole, his only refuge from these mischiefs is in the way of foreign travel; whence, at length, he may return in riper age and with better judgement to take his station in the world.
To this popular talk (which your Lordship, I suppose, glanced at, but would not condescend to enforce directly) it is enough to reply, that part of the inconveniences, here enumerated, are feigned at pleasure, and the rest exaggerated; that the authority of a father, if he deserve that name, in concurrence with honest friends and an ordinary governor, will prevent them all, or at least palliate them; and that, to take matters at the worst, his son will be exposed to still greater inconveniences any where else. But in truth I cannot see, if a college be excepted against, and the business be to see the world, as it is called, whyLondonshould not be esteemed as fit a scene for the purpose, as any other great town inEurope.I think it contains as much good company as any other; and I doubt whether it be more licentious; or, if it be, there are three restraints upon it, which, I am sure, will not be found abroad: I mean, “the parental authority;” “domestic government;” and “a regard to reputation, under the eye and notice of his friends.”
So that, in every view, whether on your Lordship’s plan, of entering directly on the great study of the world, or on mine, of only preparing for it, our young man cannot possibly do better, at his years, than stay at home; where, if your Lordship please, we will then leave him; at least, till we have tried the force of your next, and, as I remember,LASTargument in behalf of foreign travel, “which arose out of the mighty benefits, supposed to attend the study and cultivation of what are called theFINE ARTS; in short, from the lustre and importance of the virtuoso character.”
Your Lordship, who has so acknowledged a taste in these things, and of course has so exquisite a sense of their value, may be excused for enlarging so particularly on this head. But to me, who am of a plainer make and coolerdisposition, they appear, if not frivolous, yet of little importance, when compared with those other things, which are the proper and more immediate objects of education.
It would, I doubt, disgust your Lordship, should I speak my mind freely of them; or even insinuate, that I take these studies, when entered upon in early youth, and proposed as matters of serious pursuit and application, to have indeed the most pernicious tendency; as breaking the nerves and force of the mind, and inspiring I know not what of a trifling and superfluous vanity.
To render these pursuits serviceable in any degree, or even harmless, they should in all reason be postponed to riper years, when the confirmed judgment will of course take them but for what they are, for nothing more than elegant and polite amusements.
Not to insist, that to excel in this species of taste, as in all others, a previous foundation is required, of reflexion and good sense: for I agree with your favourite poet; of every polite study and indulgence even of the imagination,
Sapere,est et principium et fons.
Sapere,est et principium et fons.
Sapere,est et principium et fons.
These and still stronger objections might be made to your partiality for thefine arts. But I am contented to wave them all; as indeed they would come with an ill grace from one, who must acknowledge himself to have no particular skill or discernment in them, and who should not therefore presume to enter the lists with so consummate a master of them as your Lordship.
And so, under the cover of a civil speech, you escape from the most specious, at least, of those arguments, which are alleged in favour of an early travelled education. For, whether it be true, or no, that other accomplishments may be as well acquired at home, it is past a doubt that the polite and liberal arts can only be learnt abroad. And of their use and ornament to our noble youth—
Your Lordship, I know, can say more, and finer things, than you expect I should seriously dispute with you, on this occasion.
I have now, my Lord, (at least if my old memory has not betrayed me) gone over the several heads and topics of your defence; and said enough, I believe, on each, to shew that foreign travel is not, on whatever side we view it, the most proper method of a young gentleman’s education.
The benefits, you propose by it, are either of small account in themselves, at least of much less account than those you must sacrifice to them; or, when their importance is real and confessed, may be attained more conveniently in some other way, and at some other season.
For, after all I have said, your Lordship is not to conclude that I am wholly bent against the practice of foreign travel. I am as sensible, as any man, of its important use, when undertaken at a proper time and by fit persons. For, though I esteem it idleness, and something worse, for a young boy to waste his prime and most precious years in sauntering roundEurope, yet I know what ends of wisdom and of virtue may be answered by a capable man’s survey of it.
But then, my Lord, I reckon that capacity at no vulgar rate. He must be of worth and consideration enough to be received into the wisest, nay the greatest company. His natural insight into men and things must be quick and penetrating. His faculties must all be at their height; his studies matured; and his reading and observation extensive. With these accomplishments, if a man of rank and fortune can find leisure to employ a few years among the neighbouring nations, I readily agree, his voyage may turn out to his own benefit, and to that of his country.
In this way it may be true, as your Lordship insisted, that our island prejudices will be usefully worn off, and much real civility and politeness be imported among us.
I thank you for this concession. Although I cannot yet be convinced of the total impropriety of an earlier voyage, I am pleased to find you do not interdict the thing itself. Many wise persons among us have even talked at that rate. But you are more reasonable; and indeed that extravagance was not to be apprehendedfrom your true sense and superior knowledge of human nature.
I have that esteem of your Lordship’s kind opinion, as to be very unwilling to forfeit any share of it. Yet what I have now to advance will, I readily foresee, expose me to some risk, in that particular.
For now your Lordship has expressed your regard fora superior knowledge of human nature, it emboldens me to add that such knowledge (which I have small right to claim to myself) is not to be acquired but by the largest and most extensive observation of the human species: so that I may be found at last even a warmer advocate for the uses of foreign travel, than your Lordship.
I hold then that the knowledge of human nature (the only knowledge, in the largest sense of the expression, deserving a wise man’s regard) can never be well attained but by seeing it under all its appearances; I mean, not merely, or chiefly, in that fair and well-dressed form it wears amid the arts and embellishmentsof our western world; but in its naked simplicity, and even deformities; nay, under all its disguises and distortions, arising from absurd governments and monstrous religions, in every distant region and quarter of the globe.
The subject appears to me of that importance, that it almost warms me, an old philosopher as I am, into some emulation of your Lordship’s enthusiasm.
I would say then, “that, to studyHUMAN NATUREto purpose, a traveller must enlarge his circuit beyond the bounds ofEurope. He must go, and catch her undressed, nay quite naked, inNorth-America, and at the Cape ofGood Hope. He may then examine how she appears crampt, contracted, and buttoned up close in the strait tunic of law and custom, as inChinaandJapan: or, spread out and enlarged above her common size, in the loose and flowing robe of enthusiasm, among the Arabs and Saracens: or, lastly, as she flutters in the old rags of worn-out policy and civil government, and almost ready to run back naked to the deserts, as on theMediterraneancoast ofAfrica.”
These, my Lord, are the proper scenes for the philosopher, for the citizen of the world, to expatiate in. The tour ofEuropeis a paltry thing: a tame, uniform, unvaried prospect: which affords nothing but the same polished manners and artificial policies, scarcely diversified enough to take, or merit, our attention.
It is from a wider and more extensive view of mankind that a just estimate is to be made of the powers of human nature. Hence we collect what its genuine faculties are: what ideas and principles, or if any, are truly innate and essential to it; and what changes and modification it is susceptible of from law and custom.
If you think I impose too great a task on our inquisitive traveller, my next advice is, That he stay at home: readEuropein the mirror of his own country, which but too eagerly reflects and flatters every state that dances before its surface; and, for the rest, take up with the best information he can get from the books and narratives of the best voyagers.
That is, you discourage him from looking abroad into the world of reason and civility, the most natural state of mankind; and require him to waste his time and observation on slaves, madmen, or savages; states, in which reason and civility have no place, and where humanity itself, almost, disappears.
Admirable advice this, to come from a philosopher! and still better, to send your disciple to take his information of this unnatural disordered scene from the lying accounts of ignorant, ill-instructed, and gaping tale-tellers!
I was afraid, I should not be able to secure to myself the good opinion, which your Lordship was pleased to express of myknowledge of human nature. This mortifying experience puts an end to my adventurous flights, at once; and forces me back again into the narrower walk, which your Lordship seems willing to prescribe to me.
Be it then, as you insist, that anEnglishgentleman’s care should be, to accomplish himself in the school of reason and civility; to fit himself, in short, for that state which your Lordship dignifies with the name ofnatural. Still I declare against hisEuropeantravels.
The manners of each state are peculiar to itself, and best adapted to it. The civility, that prevails in some places on the continent, may be more studied and exquisite than ours; but not therefore to be preferred before it. Those refinements have had their birth from correspondent policies; to which they are well suited, and from which they receive their whole value. In the more absolute monarchies ofEurope, all are courtiers. In our freer monarchy, all should be citizens. Let then the arts of address and insinuation flourish inFrance. Without them, what merit can pretend to success, what talents open the way to favour and distinction? But let a manlier character prevail here. We have a prince to serve, not to flatter: we have a country to embrace, not a court to adore: we have, in a word, objects to pursue, and interests to promote, from the care of which our finer neighbours are happily disburthened.
Let our countrymen then be indulged in the plainness, nay, the roughness of their manners: but let them atone for this defect, by their useful sense, their superior knowledge, their public spirit, and, above all, by their unpolished integrity.
Would your Lordship’s favourite Athens have done wisely (or rather did it do so?) to exchange the simplicity and manly freedom of its ancient character, for the fopperies and prostrations of the Asiatic courts? Nay, would the softer accomplishments of Athens, in its best state, have done well in a citizen ofSparta?
Your Lordship sees what to conclude from these hints. For my own part, my Lord, I esteem politeness, in the reasonable sense of the word, as the ornament, nay more, as the duty of humanity. But, under colour of making this valuable acquisition, let no culture of the human mind, no instruction in letters and business, no discipline of the passions, no improvements of the head and heart, be neglected. Let the foundation of these essential virtues be laid deep in the usual forms of ourpublic, if you will, or (as you know I had rather) in the way of a more attentive andmoral, becauseprivate, education. Let the commerce of the world, in due time and under due regulation, succeed to this care; and your Lordship will find your young gentleman as fully accomplished in all respects as, in reason, you should wish to see him. And for proof of it, if I were not restrained, by a common and perhaps false delicacy, from bringing the names of our friends and acquaintance into example in conversation, how many instances of this sort could I point to, in such men as your Lordship has known in your own country, and is most disposed to reverence; and some of them, possibly, in your own family!
Rather tell me, how we may reasonably expect to see such models produced, according to the vulgar way of our home-breeding: that one or two such may, perhaps, after strict search, be found among ourselves, I shall not dispute with you.
The search would cost me small pains. But I press the matter no further. It is enoughthat your Lordship sees I have my eye on some, the most estimable, nay the most accomplished characters, that have been formed among ourselves: and that even so envied a thing, as a fine gentleman, has been fashioned on this side the water. But the rarity of the production, you think, makes against me, and shews there is no trusting to the stubborn soil and unfriendly climate of our country. You conclude, upon the whole, for the expediency of foreign travel, from the acknowledged defects of our authorized seats of learning; which, according to your Lordship’s idea and representation of them, are so degenerate and depraved, that nothing of worth and value can be reasonably expected from that quarter.
This, after all, is your main reason for advising a foreign education. Your spite is to our Universities; and, to bribe, or rather provoke me into the same quarrel, your Lordship did not forget to remind me of the little obligation, which I myself, who was trained in their discipline, have had to them.
I could assent, perhaps, to some part of this charge. It is certain, at least, that the prejudices, the bigotry, the false learning, and narrow principles, which have prevailed too much,and still prevail, in those famous seminaries, create an unfavourable opinion of them in the minds of many liberal and discerning persons. Nay, I will not disown to you, that I have at times been tempted myself to entertain, perhaps to express, some resentment against them. But we are always severe, generally unfair, judges in our own case. And, to say the truth, when the matter comes to be considered impartially and coolly, their faults, of whatever kind, will admit of much alleviation.
TheUniversities of England, your Lordship knows, had their rise in the barbarous ages. The views of their institutors were, accordingly, such as might be expected from men of their stamp, and in their circumstances.
These seminaries were more immediately consecrated to the service of the church; which is the less to be wondered at, as our statesmen, you know, were, at that time, churchmen. Hence the plan of studies, prescribed to the youth, would be such as was best adapted to the occasions of that class of men, in whose instruction the public was more directly interested.
Besides, the learning of that time was rude and barbarous; and, had their views beenmore enlarged, the founders of our colleges had it not in their power to provide for the encouragement of any other. The supreme accomplishment even of our men of business was little more than a readiness in the forms, and a dexterity in the quirks, of the canon law: and the pride of the most profound scholars lay in applying the subtleties of the Aristotelian philosophy to theologic and metaphysical questions; whence too much stress was evidently laid on logical exercises and scholastic disputations.
’Tis true, some few of our colleges were erected at a time, when something more light and knowledge had broke in upon us; I mean, during the progress of theReformation. But the great object that filled all men’s minds being the dispute with the see ofRome, the principal circumstance that distinguishes these later foundations from the other is, that their statutes provide more especially for the management of that controversy. So that, even in these societies, the scholastic disputative genius still prevailed, to the exclusion of that more liberal plan of studies, which is fitted to all times, and would have suited better to the general purpose of these established seats of education.
This account of the institution and genius of ourEnglishUniversities may be easily credited, even from what we now see of them. But, though some causes may be assigned for the introduction of these barbarous plans of education, what reason can be given why they should be cherished in our days, or that men of sense should submit to them?
The reason is not far to seek. These barbarous plans of education had, we have seen, in former times, both their reason and their use. Bodies of men retain the character of their first institution very long; and, all things considered, I am inclined to think it not amiss that they do so. Universities and schools of learning, in particular, should not be in haste to exchange established principles and practices, which the best sense of former ages had introduced, for novel and untried pretensions. The reason is plain: their instructions would have small weight, and their discipline no stability, amid such easy and perpetual changes. Theyare, indeed, the depositaries of the public wisdom and virtue; and their business is, to inculcate both on the rising generation, upon the footing on which they are received and understood in the several countries where they are erected. Even if their local statutes laid them under no restraint, an easiness in departing from established rules were a levity not to be commended; and would, in the end, be unfavourable to truth itself, when at any time it should come, in its turn, to be entertained among them.
The truth is, my Lord, we are ready to consider these seminaries as schools of philosophy, strictly so called: whereas their proper character is that of schools of learning and education. Under this last idea, much of that bigotry and prejudice is to be looked for, and should be excused, which would rightly be objected to them under that other denomination.
Hence then, I conceive, a just apology may be made for the present condition of our Universities. If they have not, in all respects, corrected the vices of their original institution, let the influence and authority of such institution be pleaded in their excuse; and if certain inveterate errors in speculation (for I knowyour Lordship’s chief quarrel to them) not immediately connected with their institution, happen still to maintain their credit in those places, let it be considered that the general sense of the public should in all reason be expected to go before their profession and propagation even of right principles. Believe it, my Lord, as reason and sound philosophy make a progress among us, these bodies will gradually, though reluctantly indeed, reform themselves: and the service they will then render to truth will be the greater for the opposition they now make to it.
I have ventured to say, that this reformation will, in due time, come of itself. I think, it certainlywill; as well in regard to the general plan of their studies, as their particular principles and opinions. Yet, in respect of theformerat least, it might perhaps be something quickened by external application. I know the attempt is delicate and difficult; but it might possibly succeed, if carried on under cover of some still greater reformation; which seizes the mind with much force, turns it to a new bias, and makes it propitious to every thing that tends to the attainment of its principal object.
Such occasions do not present themselves every day. One such we have seen; but we missed the season. Whatever was fundamentally wrong in the constitution of the Universities, should have been set right in that great æra, when the church was reformed. The undertaking had been of a piece with the rest of that extraordinary work; and the opportunity was inviting. But whether the minds of men were then ripe for this other reformation, or whether there was indeed light enough in the nation at that time fully and properly to effect it, may not unreasonably, I know, be made a question with your Lordship.
It is no question at all with me, whether any service of that kind was to be expected from those great dealers in church-work. Perhaps another andlateræra may be pointed out, when the same office might, and should, have been undertaken by our political craftsmen.
Your Lordship means at theRevolution; and, as the generous principles of liberty, onwhich the Revolution was founded, had received but little countenance from the Universities, this consideration, you will say, afforded the best pretence for attempting their reformation. But wise men saw, that the credit which those learned bodies had drawn to themselves, and indeed deservedly, by their late conduct, notwithstanding their speculative systems and conclusions, was at that time too high, to suffer a rigorous inspection to be made into their statutes and constitutions: they saw, in that convulsion of the state, it would be impossible to carry on a design of this nature, without endangering the new settlement, or exposing it at least to many odious and inconvenient imputations: and they saw, besides, that the spirit of liberty, which had prevailed so far as to reform the state itself, would insensibly extend its influence to all subordinate societies.
In a word, the close and immediate connexion, which the Universities have with the church, made it natural and highly reasonable to expect that both should have shared the same fate at theReformation: but the necessity was not so urgent, or so visible at least, that the Universities should be new-modelled, at theRevolution.
However, my Lord, what the wisdom ofeitherage omitted, or was unable to do, time, and that desuetude which attends upon it, will gradually bring about; not to say, has in some measure accomplished. And, to take matters as they now are, the studies and discipline of the Universities are not without their use, and should not be too violently declaimed against and degraded.
The elements of literature are reasonably well taught in those places. At least, the familiarity, which men have with the learned languages (the proper foundation, as I dare say your Lordship holds, of all real learning and politeness) is very much owing to the lectures of our colleges. And, though I am sensible what exceptions are to be made in other respects, yet, on the whole, religion, and good morals, receive an advantage from their institutions, and the regularity of their discipline.
Yes; their religion is intolerance; and their morals, servility. For, as to any freedom of manly thought, or the dignity of virtue—
You are ready to look for them any where else than in ourEnglishUniversities.
Come on then, my Lord: have the goodness to point out to us those happier seminaries, where these and all other virtues are more successfully propagated.
But which way will your Lordship direct us to take, in this search? Shall we turn to the North of this country for those advantages, which we despair of finding in the South? Or, because the grossness of our island air may infect all parts alike, shall we shape our course to the Continent? And does your Lordship encourage us to look for someAthensamidst the Protestant states ofGermany, in theNetherlands, or theSwissCantons?
These, I take it, are the only scenes which your Lordship can have in view; for, as high as their reputation may be in this respect, you would hardly advise the breeding of ourEnglishyouth in the colleges of the Jesuits.
One word then, if you please, on these Protestant Universities on the Continent.
Your Lordship and I have had some experience of the state of literature and education in those places. Eminent and excellent men they surely have amongst them. But so, your Lordship will confess, have the Universities ofEngland. If we do not readily find those who, at this day, may be opposed to aLimborchor aLe Clerc; yet it is not long since we had to boast of aChillingworth, aCudworth, and aWhichcot; all, men of manly thought, generous minds, and incomparable learning.
But the question is not, you know, of particular men, which such great bodies rarely want; but, of the general frame and constitution of learned societies, fit for the purposes of polite and liberal education.
Shall we say then, that the scattered tribes of students in aDutchorSwisstown are likely to be better instructed, or better governed, than the young scholars in our colleges; or, that the good order, discipline, and sobriety of these places, is to be compared with the anarchy and licence of those other?
Your Lordship, I know, takes a pleasure to conceive of certain foreign academies, as ofthatANCIENTone, where the students visited, without constraint, the schools of philosophers, and even bore a part in their free conferences and disputations: you even love to paint the noble youth to yourself, as of old, spatiating, at their leisure, in shady walks and porticos, and imbibing the principles of science as they drop upon them in the dews of Attic eloquence and politeness.
All this, my Lord, is very well: yet, setting aside a certain colouring of expression which takes and amuses the imagination, I see but little to admire in this picture; certainly not enough to make one regret the want of the original, and seriously to prefer this easy manner of breeding, to that stricter form which prevails in our own Universities: where the day begins and ends with religious offices: where the diligence of the youth is quickened and relieved, in turn, by stated hours of study and recreation: where temperance and sobriety are evenconvivialvirtues; and the two extremes of a festive jollity and unsocial gloom are happily tempered by the decencies of acommon table; where, in a word, the discipline of SpartanHallsand the civility of AthenianBanquetsare, or may be, united.
Surely, my Lord, these wholesome regulations, with many others that might be mentioned, could we but strip them of the opprobrious name of collegiate and monastic, are of another use and value in education, than the lax unrestrained indulgence of foreign seminaries.
But, were there even no difference in this respect, as there is surely a great deal, are we to reckon for nothing the disparity of civil and religious constitutions?
Your Lordship, I dare say, will not suspect me of a bigoted adherence to any meremodeof civil or ecclesiastical regimen. But is it all one, whether a young boy, who is destined to be a subject to the crown, and a member of the church ofEngland, be inured to the equality of republican governments, and of calvinistical churches? It may be well for men of confirmed age and ability to look into both; but would you train up your son in a way that is likely to indispose him, right or wrong, to the institutions of his own country?
Besides, are there fewer prejudices, think ye, in the men of other churches and governments, than our own? or, are their professorsand institutors of youth more free from popular errors and blind attachments, though of a different sort, than the tutors and masters of education in our country?
Nay, consider with yourself, my Lord; is there not as much tyranny in the administration of some they callfree states; and as much restraint and persecution in the principles of some they callfree churches, as can fairly be charged on the monarchy or church ofEngland?
So that what you could expect to gain by preferring these foreign schools of learning to your own, I cannot easily imagine. All that is worth acquiring in either, you have, at least, an equal chance to meet with at home: and what should be avoided, may, nay must, with more probability, be encountered abroad.
But your Lordship, perhaps, would confine your young traveller to nooneseat of learning; and have it only in view to convey him hastily, under the wing of a tutor, through many a famous academy, without settling him in any. This, I must confess, is the way to keep clear of prejudices; but, whether any solid instruction, or just science either of men or things, isto be gathered from so cursory an education, your Lordship will do well to consider.
You have done me the favour to imagine many projects and designs for me, which I was too dull to entertain in my own thoughts. But, if the education of a young man of rank and quality cannot be carried on without the assistance of academical instructors, I would much sooner trust him to the care of such as the more free and liberal genius of certain foreign Universities has formed, than submit him to the tutorage of those priestly guides, to whom our narrow and slavish institutions have consigned the province of education, in our own country.
Your Lordship now indeed speaks out very plainly. Your objection, then, is toClergy-tutors; and you think it absurd and even pernicious to commit our noble and liberal youth to the care of churchmen. You would rather see them in lay-hands; in the hands ofphilosophers, properly so called; who, indifferent to every thing but pure truth and reason, are in no danger of imbibing wrong principles themselves, and are therefore under no temptation of instilling any such into the minds of their followers.
The thought is happy, my Lord; and, if a number of these philosophers could any where be found, I might be induced to fall into the project of employing such only in the province of education. But, the condition, in which truth and reason are now left, and seem likely to continue, in this world of ours, affords little room for such flattering expectations. An unprejudiced instructor, I doubt, is a rarity not to be met with, I do not say in our Universities, but even out of them: and, prejudices for prejudices, some persons may be apt to think those of a churchman as tolerable as of any other.
But, my Lord, having no particular bias on my own mind in favour of that order, and having something perhaps toresentfrom several individuals of it, it will not misbecome me to hazard a word or two, in its vindication.
You will permit me then to say, that I see no peculiar unfitness in the clergy for theoffice, they are called to, in this country, of superintending the business of education. The leisure they enjoy; the various learning and general studies, which that leisure enables them, and their profession obliges them, to pursue; and, lastly, the strictness of life and manners, or, if you will, the very decorum, which their character imposes upon them; these circumstances seem generally to have marked them out, as the properest persons to form the manners and cultivate the minds of youth, in all countries. In ourown, that propriety strikes one the more, since their prejudices, of whatever kind, are but in common to them with other speculative and studious men; and since even their interest, rightly understood, and as seen by the best and wisest of themselves, (whatever may have been warmly and passionately said by some persons) is in no degree separate from that of the great community, to which they belong.
Yes, your Lordship will say, their hopes and views of preferment—
Yet, in this respect, they are but on a level with other men of most other professions; nay, with all men out of them, that aspire to rise, by their merits or the favour of their superiors,to any distinction in the world. And though we commonly say, that the clergy should beonlyanimated by purer motives, yet you cannot expect, nay would not seriously wish, that they should be altogether insensible to such as these.
It is true, in countries where the clergy have a dependance on some foreign power, or where they have usurped an independent power to themselves, or where, lastly, the civil constitution is so ill defined that the privileges of the subject lie at the mercy of the prince; in each of these cases, the ambition of the clergy may be, and in fact has been, productive of many public mischiefs. But our Protestant clergy, who are in no foreign subjection, claim no independency, and fill their place in a system all whose parts are, now at least, exactly regulated by known laws, cannot, by their private ambition, disturb the general interest, and have no peculiar inducements to attempt it. And though particulars may sometimes, by their follies and indiscretions, dishonour themselves, yet the effect cannot be considerable, and certainly affords no good reason for taking the province of education, for which on so many accounts they are well qualified, out of their hands.
Your Lordship’s candour and equity will then, upon the whole, permit an obvious distinction to be made between theMENand theirPROFESSION. Too many of the sacred order, I confess, and am sorry for it, seem now to have their minds perverted by those principles, and heated by those passions, which do little credit to their function, or themselves; and are equally inconsistent with the genius of that religion they profess to teach, as they are unfriendly to that legal constitution both of church and state, which they have bound themselves to support. But theirprofessionis little concerned in all this; and in a succession or two of these men (if the present set be, many of them, incorrigible) you may surely reckon upon all those prejudices and passions being worked off, which now administer the occasion of so much dislike to it.
Well, butclergy-manners; will they, too, be worked off, with their other infirmities?
Perhaps, they may; if not, forgive them this one defect; at least, if it be their onlyone. But you do not mean, that the manners of the clergy,as such, are more offensive than those of other people. They are suited to their profession and way of life, from which they naturally result; and if the clergy have not that gloss upon them, which sets off the manners of finer men, they rarely disgust you with the affectation of it. But, after all, if persons of your Lordship’s quality and breeding would condescend to countenance them a little, they would, doubtless, brighten under your eye; and might come in time to reflect somewhat of that high polish, which glistens so much in the address and conversation of their betters.
What transmutations they may undergo hereafter, and by what means, I am not curious to enquire. On this head, their candid apologist is at liberty to be as much in jest, or in earnest, as he thinks fit. But from what appears at present, I must take leave, in my turn, to think less reverendly, than He would have me, of our sacred instructors; and though I value some particular persons of the order, as much as any man, yet, till I see a greater change in the principles, temper, and mannersof that body, than, I fear, is likely to come to pass in our days, I can have no very favourable sentiments of those rude, illiberal, and monkish seminaries, where such worthies preside.
Let us have patience, my Lord. I have not scrupled to confess to you, that much is, at present, amiss in those seminaries, and wants to be set right. But so, God knows, there is every where else. As our factions and parties both in religion and government die away, the Universities will become more reasonable; and as the general manners refine, they too will, of course, take a better air and polish. In a word, they may not lead the public taste or judgment; but, as I said, they will be sure to follow it.
And the happy period is not, perhaps, far off. For, now I have taken upon me to divine so much of the future condition of our Universities, let me paint to you more particularly what I conceive of their growing improvements; and, in a kind of prophetic strain, such as old age, they say, pretends to, and may be indulged in, delineate to you a faintprospect of those brighter days, which I see rising upon us.
“TheTIMEwill come, my Lord, and I even assure myself it is at no great distance, when the Universities ofEnglandshall be as respectable, for the learning they teach, the principles they instil, and the morals they inculcate, as they are now contemptible, in your Lordship’s eye at least, on these several accounts.
“I see the day, when a scholastic theology shall give place to a rational divinity, conducted on the principles of sound criticism and well interpreted scripture: when their sums and systems shall fly before enlightened reason and sober speculation: when a fanciful, precarious, and hypothetic philosophy, shall desert their schools; and be replaced by real science, supporting itself on the sure grounds of experiment and cautious observation: when their physics shall be fact; their metaphysics, common sense; and their ethics, human nature.
“Do I flatter myself with fond imaginations, my Lord? Or is not the time at hand, when St.Paulshall lecture our divines, and notCalvin; ourBaconsandBoylesexpelAristotle; Mr.Newtonfill the chair ofDes Cartes; and even your friend (if your Lordship can forgive the arrogance of placing himself by the side of such men) take the lead ofBurgersdicius?
“Still, my Lord, my prophetic eye penetrates further. Amidst these improvements in real science, the languages shall be learnt for use, and not pedantry: Your Lordship’s admired ancients shall be respected, and not idolized: the forms of classic composition be emulated: and a set of men arise, even beneath the shade of our academic cloysters, that shall polish the taste, as well as advance the knowledge, of their country.
“Yet, I am but half way in the portraiture of my vision. The appointed lecturers of our youth, whom your Lordship loves to qualify with the name ofbearded boys, shall adopt the manners of men; shall instruct with knowledge, and persuade with reason; shall be the first to explode slavish doctrines and narrow principles; shall draw respect to themselves, rather from the authority of their characters, than of their places; and, which is the first and last part of a good education,set the noble and ingenuous youth intrusted to their care, the brightest examples of diligence, sobriety, and virtue.
“Perhaps in those days, a freer commerce shall be opened with the world: the students of our colleges be ambitious of appearing in good company: and a general civility prevail, where your Lordship sees nothing, at present, but barbarism and rudeness.
“Nay, who knows but, in this different state of things, the arts themselves may gain admission into these seminaries; and even the exercises be taught there, which our noble youth are now sent to acquire on the Continent?
“Such, I persuade myself, if the presage of old experience may pass for any thing, is the happier scene which a little time shall disclose to your view, in ourEnglishUniversities. What its duration may be, I cannot discover. Much will depend on the general manners, and the public encouragement. In the mean time, if any cloud rest upon it, it will not, I assure myself, arise immediately from within, but from the little, or, which is worse, the ill-directed favour,which the Great shall vouchsafe to shew to places, so qualified, and so deserving their protection.
“Yet, after all I have seen, or perhaps dreamt, as your Lordship may rather object to me, of the future flourishing estate of our Universities, and of their extreme fitness in all respects to answer the ends of their institution, I cannot be mistaken in one prediction, “that the mode of early Travel will still continue; perhaps its fury will increase; and our youth of quality be still sent abroad for their education, when every reason shall cease which your Lordship has now alleged in favour of that practice.”
This last prediction may, perhaps, be true; I mean, if those others should ever be accomplished. But as I have no great faith in modern prophecy, and see at present no symptoms of this coming age of gold, which your fancy has now presented to us, you must excuse me if theseprophetic strains, as you termed them, have no great weight with me before their completion. Should that ever happen,I shall respect your foresight, at least; and rejoice extremely at an event, which, I shall then freely own, will leave my countrymen no excuse for their folly.
This, Sir, was the substance of what passed between us on the subject in question. Our other friends interposed, indeed, at times; but rarely, and in few words; and I have rather chosen to mix their occasional observations with our own, than perplex and lengthen this recital by a more punctilious exactness. Besides, I could not think it civil to introduce my friends upon the scene, only to shew them, as it were, for mutes; their politeness to us, who were principals in the debate, being such, as to restrain them from bearing any considerable part in it. Yet this way of relation would, no doubt, have given something more of life to the sketch I here send you; as their presence, you may believe, certainly did to the original conversation.
It is enough to say, that nothing more material, than what I have now related to you, passed on the occasion. For by this time the day was pretty well spent, and it was necessary for us to withdraw to our several engagements.
For myself, I leave you to guess the effect which our philosopher’s grave remonstrance left upon me. One thing you will think remarkable; that the part of arraigning the present state of things should fall to my share; while he, at an age that is naturally querulous and dissatisfied, was employed in defending it. Whether this be a proof of his wisdom, or good spirits, I pretend not to say. But it gave me a pleasure to hear the old man indulging himself in the prospect of better days, of which, as young as we are, and as warmly as we wish for them, you and I had always despaired.