Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 1. No 1, June 1850

AMUSEMENTS OF THE COURT OF LOUIS XV

At one time the whole court was thrown into great commotion by a sudden fancy which the king took for worsted work. A courier was instantly dispatched to Paris for wool, needles, and canvas. He only took two hours and a half to go and come back, and the same day all the courtiers in Versailles were seen, with the Duke of Gesvres at their head, embroidering like their sovereign. At a later period, both the new and the old nobility joined in the common pursuit of pleasure before their fall. Bad taste and frivolousness marked their amusements. Titled ladies, who eagerly sought the favor of being allowed a seat in the presence of Madame de Pompadour, visited in secret the popular ball of the Porcherons, or amused themselves by breaking plates and glasses in obscure cabarets, assuming the free and reckless tone of men. Their husbands in the meanwhile embroidered at home, or paced the stately galleries of Louis XIV, at Versailles, a little painted cardboard figure in one hand, while with the other they drew the string which put it in motion. This preposterous amusement even spread throughout the whole ration, and grave magistrates were to be met in the streets playing, like the rest, with their pantins, as these figures were called. This childish folly was satirized in the following epigram:

"D'un peuple frivole et volagePantin fut la divinité.Faut-il être s'il chérissait l'imageDont il est la réalité?"

The general degeneracy of the times was acknowledged even by those who shared in it. The old nobles ascribed it to that fatal evil, the want of female chastity. Never, indeed, had this social stain been so universal and so great. —Women in France during the Eighteenth Century.

The Pleasures of Old Age. – One forenoon I did prevail with my mother to let them carry her to a considerable distance from the house, to a sheltered, sunny spot, whereunto we did often resort formerly to hear the wood-pigeons which frequented the fir trees hereabout. We seated ourselves, and did pass an hour or two very pleasantly. She remarked, how merciful it was ordered that these pleasures should remain to the last days of life; that when the infirmities of age make the company of others burdensome to us and ourselves a burden to them, the quiet contemplation of the works of God affords a simple pleasure which needeth not aught else than a contented mind to enjoy: the singing of birds, even a single flower, or a pretty spot like this, with its bank of primroses, and the brook running in there below, and this warm sunshine, how pleasant they are. They take back our thoughts to our youth, which ago doth love to look back upon. —Diary of Lady Willoughby.

[From Bentley's Miscellany.]

THE CIRCASSIAN PRIEST-WARRIOR AND HIS WHITE HORSE

a true tale of the daghestanThe Russian camp lay at the footOf a bold and lofty hill,Where many a noble tree had root,And babbled many a rill;And the rill's laughter and the shade —The melody and shade combin'd —Men of most gentle feelings made,But of unbending mind.On that hill's side, concealed by trees,Slumber'd Circassia's might,Awaiting till the war-horse neighsHis welcome to the light.The first gray light broke forth at length,And with it rose the Invader's strength.Now, if the Vulture, reasoning bird,Foretelling blood and scenting strife,Had not among the hill-clouds stirr'd,One would have said that human life,Save that of shepherds tending flocks,Breathed not among yon silent rocks.What Spectre, gliding tow'rd the raysOf rising sun, meets Russian gaze,And is it fright, amaze, or awe,Distends each eye and hangs each jaw?A Horse, as snow on mountain height,His master clothed all, too, in white,Moved slowly up the mountain's side,Arching his neck in conscious pride.And though the cannon pointed stood,Charged with its slumb'ring lava flood,The rider gave no spur nor stroke,Nor did he touch the rein which layUpon the horse's neck – who yokeOf spur nor rein did e'er obey.His master's voice he knew – the horse,And by it checked or strain'd his course.But even no voice was needed now,For when he reach'd the mountain's brow,He halted while his master spreadHis arms full wide, threw back his head,And pour'd to Allah forth a pray'r —Or seem'd to pray – for Russian earEven in that pure atmosphere,The name of Allah 'lone could hear.The sound, whose purport is to nameGod's name – it is an awful sound,No matter from what lips it came,Or in what form 'tis found —Jehovah! Allah! God alike,Most Christian heart with terror strike.For ignorant as may be man,Or with perverted learning stored,There is, within the soul's wide span,A deep unutterable word.A music, and a hymn,Which any voice of love that breaksFrom pious spirit gently wakes,Like slumb'ring Cherubim.And "Allah, Allah, Allah!" roseMore thrilling still for Russian foesBy Russian eyes unseen!Behind a thick wood's screen,Circassia's dreadful horsemen wereBowed to the earth, and drinking thereEnthusiasm grand from pray'r,Ready to spring as soldier fir'd,When soldier is a Priest inspir'd.Ay, o'er that host the sacred nameOf Allah rolled, a scorching flame,That thrilled into the heart's deep core,And swelled it like a heaving oceanVisited by Tempest's roar.Invader! such sublime emotionBodes thee no good – so do not mockThe sacred sound which fills each rock."Yon Priest must fall, and by his bloodDamp the affrighted army's zeal,Who dream his body's proof and good'Gainst flying ball or flashing steel."A gun was pointed – match applied —The ball leaped forth; the smoke spread wide.And cleared away as the echo died,And "Allah! Allah! Allah!" roseFrom lips that never quiver'd:Nor changed the White Priest's grand repose,The White Horse never shiver'd.The cannoneer, now trembling, blushed,For he rarely missed his aim,While his commander forward rushed,With words of bitter blame."There is no mark to guide the eye,"Faltered the chidden man;"Yon thing of white is as the sky —No difference can I scan!""Let charge the gun with mitraille show'r,And Allah will be heard no more."And the gun was charged, and fixed, and fired;Full fifty bullets flew.The smoke hung long, the men admiredHow the cannon burst not through.And the startled echoes thundered,And more again all wondered —As died away the echoes' roar —The name of Allah rose once more.And "Allah! Allah! Allah!" rose,While horse and rider look'd repose,As statues on the mountain raised,Round whom the mitraille idly blazed,And rent and tore the earth around;But nothing shook except the ground,Still the untroubled lip ne'er quivered,Still that white altar-horse ne'er shivered."Wait his return," the captain cried;"The mountain's side a mark supplies,And range in line some twenty guns:Fire one by one, as back he runs;With mitraille loaded be each gun —For him who kills a grade is won!"But back the White Horse ran not – no!His pace was gentle, grand, and slow;His rider on the holy skies,In meditation fix'd his eyes.The enemy, with murderous plan,Knew not which to most admire,The grand White Steed, the grander man,When, lo! the signal – "Fire!""Unscath'd! unscath'd! now mark the race!"The laughing soldiers cried:The White Horse quickens not his pace,The Priest spurs not his side."Ha! mark his figure on the rock!"A second gun is ringing,The rock itself is springing,As from a mine's low shock,Its splinters flying in the air,And round the Priest and steed is thereOf balls and stones an atmosphere.What not one stain upon his side!The whited robe remains undyed —No bloody rain upon the path —Surprise subdues the soldier's wrath."Give him a chance for life, one chance;(Now, hear the chance the captain gave)Let every gun be fired at once —At random, too – and he, the brave,If he escape, will have to tellA prodigy – a miracle —Or meet the bloodiest graveThat ever closed o'er human corse,O'er rider brave, or gallant horse."And away, and away, like thunder weather,Full twenty cannon blaze together;Forth the volcano vomits wide.The men who fired them spring aside,As back the cannons wheeled.Then came a solemn pause;One would have thought the mountain reeled,As a crater opes its jaws.But the smoke and sulphur clearing,Down the mountain's side, unfearing,Phantom-like glided horse and man,As though they had no danger ran."Hurrah! hurrah!" the soldiers cheer,And clap their hands in wild delight.Circassia's Priest, who scorn'd to fear,Bears the applause of Muscovite.But, soldiers, load your guns once more;Load them if ye have time,For ears did hear your cannons roar,To whom it is as sweet bells chime,Inviting to a battle feast.Dark eyes did see the mitraille driven,With murderous intent,'Gainst the High Priest, to whom was givenProtection by offended Heaven,From you on murder bent,Haste, sacrilegious Russian, haste,For behold, their forest-screen they form,With the ominous sounds of a gathering storm.Promptly – swiftly – fatally burst,That storm by Patriot-piety nursed;Down it swept the mountain's side;Fast o'er the plain it pour'd,An avalanche – a deluge wide,O'er the invader roared.A White Horse, like a foaming wave,Dashed forward 'mong the foremost brave,And swift as is the silver light,He arrowy clear'd his way,And cut the mass as clouds a ray.Or meteor piercing night.Aimed at him now was many a lance,No spear could stop his fiery prance,Oft would he seize it with his mouth,With snort and fierce tempestuous froth,While swift the rider would cut downThe lanceman rash, and then dash onAmong advancing hosts, or flying,Marking his path with foemen dying.Now, the morning after, whenThe gray light kiss'd the mountain,And down it, like a fountain,Freshly, clearly ran – oh, thenThe Priest and White Horse rose,So white they scarce threw shade,But now no sacrilegious blowsAt man nor horse are made.The eyes profane that yester glared,Hung'ring for that sacred life,Were quench'd in yester's fatal strife,And void of meaning stared.No lip could mock – no Russian earThanksgiving unto Allah hear,"To Allah, the deliverer!"The mountain look'd unchang'd, the plain is red;Peaceful be the fallen invaders' bed.Paris. J.F.C.

On Atheism. – "I had rather," says Sir Francis Bacon, "believe all the fables in the Legend, the Talmud, and the Koran, than that this universal frame is without a mind. God never wrought miracles to convince Atheists, because His ordinary works are sufficient to convince them. It is true, that a little philosophy inclineth men's minds to Atheism; but depth in philosophy bringeth them back to religion; for while the mind of man looketh upon second causes scattered, it may sometimes rest on them, and go no further; but when it beholdeth the chain of them confederate and linked together, it must needs fly to Providence and Deity."

[From the London Examiner.]

UNSECTARIAN EDUCATION IN ENGLAND

Upon none of the various classes of official men who have been employed for the last twenty years in introducing or extending social and administrative reforms, has a more delicate, invidious, and thankless task devolved, than upon those who have had the charge of the preliminary arrangements for a system of national education.

A growing sense of the importance of this great subject has been slowly manifesting itself since the close of last century. The Edgeworths diffused practical views of individual education. Lancaster demonstrated the possibility, by judicious arrangement, of imparting instruction to great numbers of children at once, and, by thus reducing the cost of education, of rendering it acceptable to the poorest. Before Lancaster entered the field some benevolent persons, among whom Nonconformists were the most numerous and active, had set on foot Sunday schools for the benefit of those whose week-day toil left them no leisure for mental cultivation. The High Church and Tory parties at first very bitterly opposed these Sunday and Lancaster schools; but finding the tide too strong against them, they set up Dr. Bell, as a Churchman, against Lancaster the Dissenter, and organized the National School Society in opposition to the British and Foreign School Society. Controversy, as usual, not only increased the numbers of those who took an interest in the discussion, but rectified and improved public opinion on the matters at issue. The Edinburgh Review took the lead, and for a considerable time kept it, as the champion of unsectarian education; and the wit and wisdom of Sydney Smith did invaluable service in this field.

The result was, that, very gradually, by means of individuals and private associations, opportunities of education were extended to classes who had not previously enjoyed them; improved methods of tuition were introduced; and the good work went on in an imperfect, scrambling, amorphous way till after the passing of the reform bill, and the establishment of the Whigs in power. From this time we have to date the first regular efforts – poor enough at first, lamentably inadequate still, but steadily and progressively increasing – to countenance and extend general education by the government and legislature.

The beginnings were very feeble, as we have said. From 1833 to 1838, £20,000 was annually voted for the promotion of educational purposes, and this paltry sum was administered by the Lords of the Treasury. Since 1839 the annual grant has been administered by the Committee of Council on Education, and its amount has been progressively augmented. From 1839 to 1842 inclusive it was £30,000 per annum; in 1843 and 1844 it was £40,000; £75,000 in 1845; £100,000 in 1846 and in 1847; and in 1848 it was raised to £125,000. The distribution of this grant being intrusted to a committee of council, the president became to a certain extent invested with the character of a Minister of Education. A machinery of government inspectors of schools was organized, and a permanent educational secretary attached to the committee. Not to mention other valuable results, we may add that the establishment of workhouse and factory schools, and the institution of the normal school for training teachers at Kneller Hall, are among the most prominent benefits for which we are indebted to this growing recognition of a care for the extension of general education as one of the duties of government.

When we thus look back on the twenty years since 1830, it can not be denied that a great advance has been made. We have now the rudiments of an educational department of government. The grants annually voted by parliament for educational purposes are still, it must be confessed, unworthily small, when contrasted with the sums freely voted for less essential objects; and the operations of the committee on education have been thwarted, impeded, and obstructed by all kinds of narrow-minded and vexatious opposition. Still we can console ourselves by the reflection that we have got an educational department of government; that the public mind is becoming familiarized with its existence, and convinced of its utility; and that its organization, slowly indeed, but surely, is being extended and perfected.

This was substantially admitted by Mr. Fox in the able speech introducing his supplementary educational plan to the House of Commons; and with the strongest sense of the merits and claims of the government measure, we find ourselves able very heartily to approve of the proposal of Mr. Fox. It would remedy the defects of the existing system with the least possible jar to existing prejudices. With nothing heretofore set on foot for the promotion of educational purposes would it in any way meddle – being addressed simply to the remedy of notorious defects, and for that purpose using and strengthening the machinery at present employed by government. It is on every account desirable that a fair and earnest consideration should be given to the second reading of this bill. It has been mixed up with other educational projects lately set on foot, and not a very correct impression prevails respecting it.

For here we must be allowed to remark, in passing, that of all the caviling and vexatious obstructions which the committee of council have had to encounter, the most ungracious and indefensible appear to have been those offered by advocates of unsectarian education less reasonable and considerate than Mr. Fox. We are not going to challenge any particular respect for the feelings of men in office. It is the well-understood fate of those who undertake reforms to be criticised sharply and unreflectingly; such unsparing treatment helps to harden them for the discharge of unpalatable duties; and even the most captious objections may be suggestive of improved arrangements. But making every allowance on this score, it remains incontrovertible that men entertaining sound abstract views respecting unsectarian education, and the importance of intrusting to the local public a large share in the control of educational institutions, like the members of the Lancashire School Association and others, have not only refused to make due allowance for the obstructions opposed to the committee of council on education by the prepossessions of the general public, but, by assuming an attitude of jealous opposition to it, have materially increased the difficulties with which it has had to labor. These gentlemen think no reform worth having unless it accord precisely with their preconceived notions; and are not in the least contented with getting what they wish, unless they can also have it in the exact way they wish it. Other and even more factious malcontents have been found among a class of very worthy but not very wise persons, who, before government took any charge of education, had exerted themselves to establish Sunday and other schools; and have now allowed the paltry jealousy lest under a new and improved system of general education their own local and congregational importance may be diminished, to drive them into a virulent opposition to any scheme of national education under the auspices or by the instrumentality of government. But all this parenthetically. Our immediate object is to comment upon an opposition experienced in carrying out the scheme of operations which the state of public opinion has compelled government to adopt, coming from the very parties who were most instrumental in forcing that scheme upon it.

The committee of council, finding it impossible, in the face of threatened resistance from various religious bodies, to institute schools by the unaided power of the secular authorities, yielded so far as to enter into arrangements with the existing societies of promoters of schools, with a view to carry out the object through their instrumentality. The correspondence commenced in 1845 under the administration of Sir Robert Peel, and the arrangements were concluded under the ministry of Lord John Russell in 1846. It was agreed that money should be advanced by government to assist in founding and supporting schools in connection with various religious communions, on the conditions that the schools should be open to the supervision of government inspectors (who were, however, to be restrained from all interference "with the religious instruction, or discipline, or management of the schools"), and that certain "management clauses," drawn up in harmony with the religious views of the respective communions, should be adhered to. On these terms arrangements were concluded with the National Society, representing the promoters of Church of England schools; with the British and Foreign School Society; with the Wesleyan body; and with the Free Church of Scotland. A negotiation with the Poor-school Committee of the Roman Catholic Church is still pending.

With the exception of the National Society all the bodies who entered into these arrangements with the Committee of Council have co-operated with it in a frank and fair spirit, and to good purpose. A majority of the National Society, on the other hand, have made vehement efforts to recede from the very arrangements which they themselves had proposed; and have at length concluded a tedious and wrangling attempt to cajole or bully the committee on education to continue their grants, and yet emancipate them from the conditions on which they were made, by passing, on the 11th of December last, a resolution which virtually suspends all co-operation between the society and government. The state of the controversy may be briefly explained.

The "management clauses" relating to Church of England schools are few in number. They relate, first, to the constitution of the managing committee in populous and wealthy districts of towns; second, to the constitution of the committee in towns and villages having not less than a population of five hundred, and a few wealthy and well-educated inhabitants; third, to its constitution in very small parishes, where the residents are all illiterate, or indifferent to education; and, fourth, to its constitution in rural parishes having a population under five hundred, and where, from poverty and ignorance, the number of subscribers is limited to very few persons. There are certain provisions common to all these clauses. The master, mistress, assistant teachers, managers, and electors, must all be bona fide members of the church; the clergyman is ex-officio chairman of the committee, with power to place his curate or curates upon it, and with a casting vote; the superintendence of the religious and moral instruction is vested exclusively in the clergyman, with an appeal to the bishop, whose decision is final; the bishop has a veto on the use of any book, in school hours, which he deems contrary to the doctrines of the church; in matters not relating to religious and moral instruction, an appeal lies to the president of the council, who refers it to one of the inspectors of schools nominated by himself, to another commissioner nominated by the bishop of the diocese, and to a third named by the other two commissioners. It must be kept in mind as bearing on the composition of such commissions, that the concurrence of the archbishop of the province is originally requisite in appointing inspectors of church schools, and that the third commissioner must be a magistrate and member of the church. We now come to the points of difference in these "management clauses." They relate exclusively to the constitution of the local school committees. In the first class of schools, the committee is elected by annual subscribers; in the second, it is nominated by the promoters, and vacancies are supplied by election; in the third it is nominated, as the promotions and vacancies are filled up, by the remaining members, till the bishop may direct the election to be thrown open to subscribers; in the fourth no committee is provided, but the bishop may order one to be nominated by the clergyman from among the subscribers.

The management clauses, thus drawn, were accepted by the National Society. The provisions for appeal, in matters of moral and religious instruction, had been proposed by themselves, and were in a manner forced by them on the committee of council. Let us now look at the claims which the society has since advanced, and on account of the refusal of which it has suspended, if not finally broken off, its alliance with the committee.

The National Society required: 1st, that a free choice among the several clauses be left to the promoters of church schools; 2d, that another court of appeal be provided, in matters not relating to religious and moral instruction; and 3d, that all lay members of school committees shall qualify to serve, by subscribing a declaration not merely to the effect that they are members of the church, but that they have for three years past been communicants. And because demur is made to these demands, the committee of the society have addressed a letter to the committee of council, in which they state that they "deeply regret the resolution finally adopted by the committee of council to exclude from all share in the parliamentary grant for education, those church schools the promoters of which are unwilling to constitute their trust deeds on the model prescribed by their lordships."

It is a minor matter, yet, in connection with considerations to be hereafter alluded to, not unworthy of notice, that this statement is simply untrue. The committee of council have only declined to contribute, in the cases referred to, to the building of schools; they have not absolutely declined to contribute to their support when built. They have refused to give public money to build schools without a guarantee for their proper management; but they have not refused to give public money to support even such schools as withhold the guarantee, so long as they are properly conducted.