lass_L/H^ 
 
 PRp:sF:N"n:i) by 
 

 LECTURES 
 
 CONCERNING THIS TIME AND THE TIMES 
 OF OLD. 
 
PRIJCTED BY R. CLAY, LONDON, 
 FOR 
 
 MACMILLAN & CO. CAMBRIDGE. 
 
 iLonHon: BELL AND DALDY, 186, FLEET STREET. 
 Dulltin: HODGES AND SMITH. 
 CiJinturg^: EDMONSTON AND DOUGLAS, 
 (glasgoto: JAMES MACLEHOSE. 
 (Olfort: J.K.PARKER. 
 
LEARNING AND WORKING. 
 
 SIX LECTURES 
 
 DELIVERED IN WILLIS'S ROOMS, LONDON, IN JUNE AND JULY, 
 
 1854. 
 
 THE RELIGION OF ROME, 
 
 AND 
 
 ITS INFLUENCE ON MODERN CIVILIZATION. 
 
 EOUR LECTURES 
 
 DELIVERED IN THE PHILOSOPHICAL INSTITUTION 
 OF EDINBURGH, IN DECEIVIBER, 1854. 
 
 BY 
 
 FREDERICK DENISON MAURICE, M.A. 
 
 CHAPLAIN OP Lincoln's inn. 
 
 MACMILLAN & CO. 
 
 1855. 
 

 Gift 
 
 John Meigs 
 
 P. 28 04. 
 
TO 
 
 JOHN MALCOLM LUDLOW, ESQ. 
 
 barrister, lincoln's ink 
 
 My dear Friend, 
 
 A LETTER, Avhich I received from you 
 early in the year 1848, when you had seen Paris 
 immediately after the expulsion of the Orleans 
 family, had a very powerful effect upon my thoughts 
 at the time, and has given a direction to them ever 
 since. I understood from it, better than I had 
 ever done before, how hollow that material civiliza- 
 tion was, of which Louis Philippe had been the 
 great promoter in Prance, and which we had been 
 well inclined to adopt and to worship in England. 
 I felt, far more than I had ever done before, how 
 much it was the duty of every man, but, above all, 
 
VI DEDICATION. 
 
 of every clergyman, to strive that the principle and 
 power of Christian civilization, which is not based 
 upon selfishness, which does not make the accu- 
 mulation of material treasures or the increase of 
 material enjoyments its main objects, might be 
 recognised in the past history of Europe, and 
 especially of our own country, — might influence 
 and determine its future condition. We knew well 
 how little you and I could do to counteract the 
 evil, or bring forth the good, that is working in our 
 time. But we knew also, that what we could do, 
 we were bound to do. And I believe that in 
 looking back upon the seven years that have elapsed 
 since, we have both often felt bitter self-reproach, 
 in considering how much more even we might 
 have done, if we had followed the light which was 
 granted us, to prevent the blessing of God's great 
 judgments from being lost to our country, — how 
 much we have shared in the sin of the rulers 
 who, while those judgments were in the earth, 
 did not learn righteousness, but returned, after a 
 moment of terror, to their crooked ways. Never- 
 theless, I can truly say, that not only every task 
 
DEDICATION. Vll 
 
 in which we have been engaged together, but that 
 every sermon or lecture that I have dehvered in ) 
 the exercise of my own vocation, ahnost every 
 thought I have thought, has been shaped and 
 coloured by the conviction which you helped to . 
 awaken in me. 
 
 Amidst many differences of opinion about the 
 course which Christian civilization took in former 
 days, and respecting that direction which is most 
 suitable for our age, we have agreed, I think I 
 may say it confidently, in one or two practical 
 conclusions. We have neither of us ever doubted 
 that the whole country must look for its bless- 
 ings through the elevation of its Working Class, 
 that we must all sink if that is not raised. We 
 have never dreamed that that class could be bene- 
 fited, by losing its working character, by acquiring 
 habits of ease or self-indulgence. We have rather ( 
 thought that all must learn the dignity of labour \ 
 and the blessing of self-restraint. We could not 
 talk to suffering men of intellectual or moral im- 
 provement, without first taking an interest in their 
 physical condition and their ordinary occupations; 
 
Till DEDICATION. 
 
 but we felt that any interest of this kind would be 
 utterly wasted, that it would do harm and not good, 
 if it were not the means of leading them to regard 
 themselves as human beings made in the image of 
 God. We have never thought that we could help 
 
 / them to be individually wise or individually good, 
 if we forgot that they were social beings, bound to 
 
 / each other by the ties of family, neighbourhood, 
 country, and by a common humanity. We have 
 never thought that we could make them understand 
 what that common humanity means, or even what 
 is implied in any of those subordinate relations, 
 unless we could speak to them of a Son of Man in 
 whom they have a common interest. We have 
 believed that in order to do that, we must go deeper 
 still, that the Son of Man must be the Son of 
 God, that there is no Brotherhood for human beings 
 if there is not a common Fatherhood. 
 
 These thoughts are so familiar to you, and to 
 all with whom I am in the habit of conversing, 
 that you would not suppose it possible for me to 
 conceal them, on whatever topic I was speaking 
 or writing. They present themselves, not very 
 
DEDICATION. IX 
 
 obtrusively, in this volume. But you will feel at 
 once that tliey lie at the ground of everything 
 which is contained in it. They connect together 
 two sets of Lectures, which were delivered for 
 very different purposes, to very different audiences, 
 but which, it seems to me, bring out two aspects 
 of the same subject. 
 
 The first set has reference to the Working-men's 
 College, in which I have the honour and satisfac- 
 tion to be a fellow-labourer with you. After we 
 had laid our plan, you and others thought it 
 would be desirable that I should state it and 
 explain it, not only to the Working-people, (which 
 I did afterwards in an Inaugural Lecture,) but 
 to such an audience as was likely to meet at 
 Willis's Rooms. Addressing myself to such per- 
 sons, I was naturally anxious to show that we 
 were engaged in no novel experiment; that we 
 were carrying out a principle which had been 
 recognised in all periods of our history, and of 
 the history of modern Europe ; that to the acknow- 
 ledgment of it we owed most of the education 
 and civilization which the upper and middle classes 
 
 \ 
 
X DEDICATION. 
 
 of England possessed; tliat the forgetfulness and 
 denial of it was not merely leading to tlie ruin 
 of the loAver classes, but would end in the ruin 
 of all ; that the humane education of om^ Colleges 
 will become inhuman, narrow, worthless, if we do 
 not recognise the most precious subjects of edu- 
 cation as those which are common to men; that 
 the difficulties which hinder the union of Learning 
 with manual Work, are difficulties which must be 
 faced, because they interfere with the freedom, 
 order, civilization of England now and in the 
 times to come. This, with a general outline of 
 our own particular plan, and a few hints as to 
 the feasibility of it in other places besides the one 
 we have chosen for our experiment, and in other 
 hands than ours, forms the material of the first 
 six Lectm^es. 
 
 The title of the other four was determined by 
 some Edinbrn-gh friends who did me the honour 
 of asking me to appear in the same rooms in 
 which Mr. Ruskin delivered his Lectm^es on Archi- 
 tecture, and our friend Kingsley his on Alexandria. 
 It was a distinction and a misfortune to follow 
 
DEDICATION. XI 
 
 sucli men ; and the ' Religion of Rome ' is pro- 
 bably a less inviting topic than that which it had 
 fallen to the lot of either of them to discuss. 
 But I was thankful for the selection, because it 
 led me more earnestly to meditate on that other 
 principle of Christian civilization to which I have 
 alluded, and to see how it is implied in the exist- 
 ence of modern society. Whatever there was 
 mighty in the Roman institutions, whatever there 
 was sincere and earnest in the Roman religion, 
 had its basis, I believe, in the fatherly authority. 
 That was the truth to Avhich the Republic owed 
 its greatness. It lasted on in strange alliance with 
 a principle which was always contradicting it in 
 the Empire. Polytheism overlaid it, but could not 
 stifle it. The loss of it was the decline and fall of 
 Rome. Cliristianity came in, to place it on its 
 true and eternal foundation, to make it prac- 
 tical for mankind. Because the Greek and Asiatic 
 cities never took hold of it, their civilization, after 
 trying to unite with Christianity, perished along 
 with their Christianity. The civilization of Western 
 Europe has depended upon it, has expressed it in 
 
Xll DEDICATION. 
 
 every name, institution, revolution, — in the Roman 
 Bishops Avho assumed to be the fathers of Chris- 
 tendom, — in the German reverence for the family, 
 which rose up against them. To assert a divine, 
 true Fatherhood, in place of the paternal tyrannies 
 which have counterfeited it, must, I conceive, be 
 the work of those who would educate and civilize 
 the nations in the Avay in which they never have 
 been educated and civilized, and never can be, by 
 those who merely seek, even with the utmost 
 skill, to cultivate their material prosperity, at the 
 expense of their inward life. 
 
 I hope this statement will remove something of 
 the natural surprise which you expressed, when 
 I told you that I meant to combine these courses 
 of Lectures in one volume. There are other 
 bonds of connexion between them, in my mind, 
 of a more sad and sacred kind. Both alike were 
 delivered in a year which will be memorable as 
 one of suffering, honour, and disgrace in our 
 national annals. Both of them are to me most 
 deeply associated with personal affections and 
 personal sorrows. Since I began to prepare these 
 
DEDICATION. Xlll 
 
 Lectures for tlie press, one who listened mtli tlie 
 most cordial sympathy to the first course, who 
 would have been the best judge of the second, — 
 one from whom I learned more than from almost 
 any, and who especially taught me how possible 
 it is to unite vehement and earnest feeling, and 
 an extreme dislike of eclectical accommodations 
 with an abhorrence of party names and narrow- 
 ness, — has ended his work upon earth, has be- 
 gun, as I believe, freer and nobler works, more 
 helpful to us here, than any which were possible 
 whilst he w^as amongst us. No one took a deeper 
 interest in our College, or hoped more from it. 
 More recently a member of our own Council has 
 been taken from us ; one very dear to you and dear 
 to me, to whom men of science looked for great 
 discoveries in the study to which he was sacri- 
 ficed ; who, we knew, had aims which no physical 
 science could satisfy. In our College and in all 
 our tasks, may we work as those who are cheered J 
 on by the voices of invisible friends ! And 
 when the clouds that overhang our country 
 are thickest, and men who are worthy to be 
 
xiv DEDICATION. 
 
 trusted appear to be the fewest, may we be able 
 to hope that God will do His own work, and out 
 of those who are lowest in human eyes, — our 
 common people, — will raise up citizens that will be 
 fit to live and die for England, if not to rule 
 her. 
 
 Ever yom* affectionate Eriend, 
 
 E. D. Maurice. 
 
PEEFACE. 
 
 The Working-men's College, in Red Lion Square, 
 wliicli the first six Lectures in this volume were in- 
 tended to announce, was opened at the beginning of 
 last November. About 140 pupils entered the dif- 
 ferent classes. The entire number has not varied 
 much in the second term. The classes which were 
 most frequented in the first term, were those on Algebra 
 and Arithmetic, the English Grammar class, the Draw- 
 ing class, and the Bible class. The class on Geometry 
 was well attended. Those on Politics, Geography, 
 History, and certain parts of Practical Jurisprudence, 
 attracted a few students, whose diligence compensated 
 for the smallness of their numbers. Classes on Me- 
 chanics and Astronomy had some pupils in the last 
 term, none in this, chiefly because the teachers evinced 
 a great desire that their pupils should have a previous 
 training in Mathematics. The lecturer on the human 
 frame, who had no pupils in the first term, has three 
 in this. Classes have been opened since Christmas 
 in French and Latin, which have been very popular. 
 An Evening Adult School, to prepare pupils for the 
 College in reading, writing, and arithmetic, is in- 
 creasing in numbers every week. 
 
XVI PREFACE. 
 
 Whether the partial success which we have to be 
 thankful for, is to disappear, or to be permanent ; 
 whether the pupils are to feel that they are really 
 members of a College united together for high ends 
 by other than mercenary bonds ; whether they shall 
 feel that they are learning principles, instead of merely 
 acquiring a few scraps of miscellaneous information, 
 must depend mainly upon the teachers, upon the prin- 
 ciples which govern their thoughts and acts, upon the 
 fellowship and mutual understanding which there is 
 among them. Since these Lectm^es were delivered, 
 some have joined our body, whose cooperation we had 
 no right to count upon, but who have given us their 
 most cordial and persevering assistance. Mr. Ruskin 
 has procm*ed for our Drawing class a reputation that 
 has been reflected on the whole society, of which it 
 forms a most important part. I would not insult him, 
 or any of my colleagues, by expressing any wonder or 
 gratitude that they have undertaken tasks, which, I am 
 sure, bring the most abundant reward with them ; but 
 I do thank them, one and all, for giving the best 
 pledge which they could give of zeal in the cause of 
 the Working-men, in that they have not shrunk from 
 associating themselves with a person from whom many 
 of them differ widely in opinion, and whose name can 
 bring them nothing but discredit with the world. 
 
 My only claim to be the temporary guide of men 
 who are my superiors in nearly every accomplishment, 
 is, that I am a little older than any of them, and 
 that circumstances have given me a more lengthened, 
 though certainly not a more honourable, acquaintance 
 
PREFACE. XVll 
 
 with Colleges of one class and another, than has fallen 
 to their lot. It liappens, by a strange accident, that 
 I have been a member of both onr Universities, — 
 that I resided at both for a considerable time as 
 an Undergraduate, — and that, therefore, though I 
 may have had less opportunity of intercourse with the 
 eminent Doctors in them than many, I have been 
 brought into close contact with different classes of the 
 younger men, and with some of those whose thoughts 
 were most stirring and characteristic of the times. 
 Afterwards I had the honour of being connected, for 
 thirteen years, with a College established especially for 
 the benefit of the Middle- classes in London and in the 
 country generally, — and that in two capacities, as a 
 teacher of those who were preparing themselves for 
 the larger Universities, or for the business of the 
 world, and as a teacher of those who were destined to 
 be parochial Clergymen, generally in poor and humble 
 neighbourhoods. Now, though it is quite possible 
 to have passed through this discipline without being 
 the least qualified for the very responsible work of 
 directing the studies of a body of Working-men, 
 my friends may, perhaps, be excused for setting it 
 off against deficiencies in other respects, and I for 
 supposing that such a preparation is not given one for 
 nothing, and that he who has received it is bound 
 to consider how he may best tm'n it to account. 
 
 That all the gifts Avhich any have received through 
 one instrumentality or another, all general knowledge, 
 all professional knowledge, — and that which we may be 
 rich in if we are poor in these, experience of our own 
 
 h 
 
XVlll PREFACE. 
 
 failures and errors, of tlie wrongs we have done, of 
 the good we have missed, — should be turned to the 
 service of that class which is, indeed, not a class, but 
 which represents the stuff of humanity after class dis- 
 tinctions have been removed from it, — in which lie the 
 germs of the worst evil, and of the best good, that is 
 in any of the classes, — the worst evils of which are 
 rarely to bear fruit, the best good of which may be, by 
 God's grace, made more productive than any seeds which 
 were sown in any past generations have proved to be : — 
 this is the doctrine that I have maintained in the Lec- 
 tures on Learning and Working, and which I trust 
 also will receive illustration from those on the Old and 
 Modern Civilization, though they were delivered in 
 another country and for another purpose. I have 
 referred continually to the older Universities, because 
 it seems to me that they are passing through a crisis, 
 which will decide whether they are to perish, or to 
 become immeasurably greater blessings to the nation 
 than they have ever been ; and that the first of these 
 results will be inevitable, if they attach a vulgar, exclu- 
 sive, caste signification to the divine, humane, physical 
 lore which it is their function to diffuse ; that they may 
 be certain of obtaining the second, if they feel that 
 their business is to awaken in the noble, in the scholar, 
 and in the peasant, that manhood which each loses 
 when it does not recognise the presence of it in the 
 other. We ask them to aid in delivering us from 
 the cold hard officiality which is cramping all our 
 energies, destroying all our hearts, and which the 
 modem plans for improving official promotions and 
 
PREFACE. XIX 
 
 removing corruptions, unless they are sustained by 
 some better and purer influences, will, I fear, ratlier 
 foster than check. It will avail nothing to offer prizes 
 to men of all conditions : such a scheme may create 
 a race of nimble clerks, it will form no seers and 
 statesmen, — if you do not set before the people of 
 England some standard of worth, such as no prizes 
 ever taught them to contemplate, — if you do not offer 
 them some sincere knowledge, such as prizes often 
 tempt them to exchange for what is most glossy and 
 superficial. Let the skilful quill-driver have his reward, 
 (indeed, who has more rewards already?) but if we 
 want to create heroes, or to save them from perishing 
 when we have them, let those who used to boast that 
 they existed to form English gentlemen, show that 
 their occupation is not gone ; only that they believe » 
 gentleness is not tied to wealth, not even to birth ; / 
 that God can cultivate it, and would cultivate it, in the 
 collier and the street-sweeper. 
 
 These words are addressed expressly to those, no 
 longer young, whom I have known and cared for at 
 our Universities, and to those who have taken their 
 places there. I am also bound to say something to 
 those whom I have myself had a share in educating, 
 and to whose kindness I owe more than I can express. 
 I have broken a promise in the letter which some of 
 them were so good as to draw from me, that I would 
 reproduce some fragments of Lectm'es 1 once gave 
 them on English Literature ; I believed I should 
 keep the spirit of it better, if I could show them 
 how they might carry out in practice the principles 
 
XX PEEFACE. 
 
 which I endeavoured to set forth in those Lectures. 
 They had, in my opinion, one merit, and only one. 
 They were formed upon the belief that all history 
 and all literature exhibit God's education of mankind ; 
 that the history and literature of England exhibit the 
 education of our people and of ourselves. I enforced 
 this principle till T have no doubt my hearers were tired 
 of what seemed to them an endless repetition. If, on 
 looking back to the time we spent together, they have 
 forgiven that fault, and the want of information and 
 liveliness which they must have detected since they 
 became acquainted with other teachers, it must be 
 because they have felt that truth to be one, which how- 
 ever it was uttered and expounded, is needful for our 
 time, and becomes alive when it is acted out. This 
 I am sure is a right judgment ; therefore, if I can help 
 them to act, if I can point out to them a course of 
 action, I am giving them the old Lectures revised and 
 corrected, with the very commentary which they missed 
 when they were first delivered. Let them understand 
 that God has been educating them to educate their 
 brethren of the working-class, and all that they learnt, 
 all that they are still learning, all the work of their 
 professions or trades, will acquire a new character, will 
 be valued as it has never been valued before, will be 
 changed from a weight into a power — from the routine 
 of a machine, into the onward movement of a spirit. 
 These former pupils will recognise in my Edinburgh 
 Lectures much of what I was trying to say to them, 
 only in a different form, and carried back into the old 
 world. I spoke to them of the Divine education which 
 
PREFACE. XXI 
 
 had been granted to modern Europe. Here I have 
 traced this education to the cradle, in which we have 
 often wondered that a child, destined to such a great 
 inheritance, could have been rocked. If I have shown 
 that it was not neglected, but carefully tended even 
 then, I may have removed some little perplexity 
 from the mind of the modern as well as the classical 
 student ; I may have afforded one more illustration of 
 the inseparable connexion which there is between their 
 respective pursuits. I hope, that in doing so, I may 
 have shown why Lectures that bear directly on busi- 
 ness should be combined with Lectm'es on a subject 
 of scientific inquiry. If the business does not rest on 
 scientific truth, it can be good for nothing ; if the science 
 does not lead to practice, it cannot deserve its name. 
 A College — a Working-men's College especially — ought 
 to exist, that it may manifest their essential unity.* 
 
 * It may throw light on some of the statements in the Lectures and 
 in this Preface, if I insert the programme of our studies for the last 
 Term : — 
 
 TIME. P.M. SUBJECT. TEACHER. 
 
 Sunday . . 8^-10 The Gospel of St. John .... The Principal. 
 Monday . . 8 — 9 The Structure and Functions of 
 
 the Human Body Mr. Walsh. 
 
 ,, 8 — 9 Algebra,^ {Section 2) Mr. Litchfield. 
 
 „ 8 — 9 Natural Philosophy : Mechanics . Mr. Watson. 
 
 „ 9-10 English Political Writers : Six- 
 teenth Century The Principal. 
 
 Tuesday . . 8 — 9 Geometry Mr. Hose. 
 
 „ 8 — 9 French M. Talandier. 
 
 „ 9-10 English Grammar, (Section 2) . Mk. Furnivall. 
 
 Wednesday. 8 — 9 Political Economy Mb. Neale. 
 
 „ 8 — 9 Algebra,^ (Section 2) Mr. Litchfield. 
 
 ^ The treatment of the subject in this Section will embrace the prin- 
 ciples and practice of Arithmetic. 
 
XXU PREFACE. 
 
 TIME. P.M. SUnJECT. TEACHER. 
 
 Wednesday. 8 — 9 Natural Philosophy: Astronomy. Mii. Locock. 
 „ 9-10 Latin Mr. Irving. 
 
 TMr. Ruskin, 
 Tltwrsday . 7 — 9 Drawing |Mr. Rohsetti, & 
 
 IMr. Dickinson. 
 
 „ 8 — 9 English Grammar [Section 1) . . Mr. Furnivall. 
 
 ,. 8 — 9 Natural Philosophy : Mechanics . Mr. Watson. 
 
 „ 8 — 9 >Sanitary Legislation Mr. Hugiieh. 
 
 „ 9-10 Geometry Mr. Hose. 
 
 „ 9-10 Structure and Derivations of Eng- 
 lish Words Mr. Furnivall. 
 
 „ 9-10 The Law of Joint Stock Compa- 
 nies Mr. Ludlow. 
 
 Friday . . . 8 — 9 The Geography of England as 
 
 connected with its History . Mr. Brewer. 
 
 „ 8 — 9 French M. Talandier. 
 
 „ 9-10 The Reign of King Richard IL il- 
 lustrated by Shakspeare's Play The Principal. 
 Satm-day . 8-10 Algebra, {Section 1) Mr. Webtlake. 
 
 It has been arranged that ultimately the College should be divided into 
 five classes. The first will consist of the general body of Matriculated 
 Students ; the second, of Students who obtain a certificate of compe- 
 tency in some one branch of study after they have attended the College 
 for four terms; the third, of Associated Students, who shall prove 
 that they have a competent knowledge in the principal subjects of our 
 teaching, no effort being made to elicit their opinions, but a reasonable 
 knowledge of Scripture History, of English History, of the principles 
 of English Grammar, and of either Geometry or Algebra, being consi- 
 dered indispensable. The fourth class will consist of Fellows, that is, 
 of persons chosen out of the Associates, who shall be considered 
 morally and intellectually capable of assisting in the education of the 
 Students. The fifth class will contain the Council, which it is proposed 
 should be recruited from the Fellows, These arrangements may admit 
 of modifications ; but they are the basis of a scheme which we trust 
 will give solidity and unity to our society. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 LEARNING AND WORKING. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 LECTURE I. — Juvenile and Adult Learning .... 3 
 
 IL — Learning and Leisure 39 
 
 III. — Learning and Money Worship incom- 
 
 tatible 72 
 
 IV.— Learning the Minister of Freedom and 
 
 Order 99 
 
 V. — The Studies in a Working College . . 129 
 
 VI.— The Teachers in a Working College . . 159 
 
 NOTES 192 
 
XXIV CONTENTS. 
 
 THE RELIGION OF ROME. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 LECTURE L— Rome in its Youth 205 
 
 IL — Rome under Greek Teachers 239 
 
 III. — Rome at the Beginning of the New 
 
 World 275 
 
 IV, — The Influence of Rome and Germany 
 
 upon Modern Europe 311 
 
 NOTES 347 
 
LEAENING AND WOEKING. 
 
 B 
 
LECTURE I. 
 
 JUVENILE AND ADULT LEAENING. 
 
 Fifteen years ago I delivered some Lectures in this 
 room on the subject of Education. I refer to them that 
 I may better explain to you the motives which have 
 induced me to commence the present course. 
 
 At that time some earnest men, with one or two of 
 whom I had the honour to be acquainted, were striving 
 to make the ecclesiastical machinery which they found 
 in this country, effectual for the education of its people. 
 They believed that that was the design for which it 
 existed, and that if it failed of accomplishing that 
 design, the Clergy and the laity of the upper classes 
 in England were guilty of a sin for which they would 
 have to answer. They thought that we had powers to 
 do the work, if we knew them and would use them. 
 They thought also that no machinery, though it might 
 be the best in the world, could be of the least avail, 
 if we did not understand that this power was not a 
 mechanical but a moral one. I could give very little lielp 
 to those who were attempting to carry these convictions 
 into practice ; but I fancied that I might be able to 
 
 B 2 
 
4 JUVENILE AND ADULT LEAENING. [LECT. 
 
 impress tliem on the minds of a few in whom they would 
 bear fruit, and that I might perhaps lead those who were 
 engaged in a great work to reflect more deeply on the 
 principle that was involved in it, so that it should not 
 "become, as all work is liable to become, servile drud- 
 gery, but should continue intelligent and manly as the 
 hearts of those were who had devoted themselves to it. 
 As I should not have ventured in 1839^ to discuss 
 the principles of Education, unless there had been 
 some practical undertaking to which they could be 
 applied, and by which they could be tested, so neither 
 in tlie year 1854 have I acquired that courage. I 
 should be more afraid than I was then of merely laying 
 down general maxims upon this subject, because I 
 think I know a little, a very little, more of the facts 
 with which we have to deal. Now, as before, an experi- 
 ment is about to be made, which must be submitted 
 to a searching examination, which will be good for 
 nothing if it is pursued ever so zealously but not in 
 conformity with sound principles. The experiment is 
 altogetlier different in kind from that of which I have 
 spoken. It does not aim at restoring or invigorating 
 an old organization. It does not start from any con- 
 sideration respecting the powers of the Church or of 
 the State. It does not contemplate men as divided 
 from each other by certain circumstances of property 
 or position, into rich or poor, or into the upper class, 
 the middle class, the lower class. It simply looks at 
 the fact, that the great bulk of the people in this 
 country, those in whom its strength lies, want an in- 
 struction which they have not got. It views them in 
 
I.] JUVENILE AND ADULT LEARNING. 5 
 
 reference, not to their station "but to tlieir occupations. 
 The scheme I speak of, is a College for Working Men. 
 A College, that is to say, a society constituted for the 
 purpose of communicating and receiving a methodical 
 education ; for Worhing-men, that is to say, for grown- 
 up people spending their lives in business, not for 
 children or boys who are merely preparing themselves 
 for business. 
 
 You will perceive at once, that a project of this kind 
 is free from some of the difficulties which tormented the 
 prosecutors of the other plan at every step. Those 
 who attempt to found a Working College will not 
 have to ask that revenues which have been turned for 
 years or centuries to another use, should be reclaimed to 
 theirs. If they succeed at all, tfiey will not be found- 
 ing or renewing a charity ; they will be offering that 
 wdiich free-men must take and pay for if they wish to 
 have it. They avoid the question, wlio may or may 
 not provide the education ; assuming that any persons, 
 even the most insignificant, may make tlie offer, and 
 that the working-men themselves will decide at whose 
 hands and under what conditions they will accept it. 
 In another respect they resemble their predecessor^.. 
 Actual complaints of the inefficiency of our spiritual 
 organization, and eager demands that it might be 
 destroyed, led them to exclaim, ' Let us try if we 
 * cannot turn it to account,' We hear on all sides of 
 us lamentations over the moral and intellectual con- 
 dition of the Workins: Classes. We are not forcina: 
 people's attention upon facts w^hich they have agreed 
 to disregard; we are dwelling upon those which a 
 
6 JUVENILE AND ADULT LEARNING. [LECT. 
 
 majority profess to think the most important of all. 
 And the scheme itself which we propose has no novelty 
 in it. A nnmber of previous experiments have been 
 made in the same direction. The effort to provide 
 some kind of teaching for working men out of working 
 hours, is perhaps the most characteristic effort of this 
 time. Nevertheless, I am certain that if these or any 
 other considerations lead those who are putting forward 
 this plan to fancy that it is an easy one — that the 
 objections to it are not deeper and more radical than 
 any which can have been raised against the other — they 
 have not counted the cost of their undertaking, and 
 will have to learn from experience that which they 
 might have understood from reflection. 
 
 The first and most fundamental of these objections 
 presents itself in this form : ' We find it hard enough 
 to satisfy ourselves about the right method of bringing 
 up boys and girls. We have been discussing schemes 
 of instruction indefatigably. We have our English 
 schemes, our French schemes, our German schemes ; 
 schemes of Statesmen, schemes of Churchmen, schemes 
 of Voluntaries. Almost every town, parish, hamlet, 
 has its own scheme. Nearly every man and woman 
 has something to say against the scheme of his or her 
 neighbour. Those who have been most earnest on the 
 subject often begin to be most hopeless of any agree- 
 ment upon it, the most discontented with the results 
 which they witness. And yet these plans refer to 
 those who have as yet no prejudices of their own, who 
 are ready to receive impressions, from whom the im- 
 pressions they have received may be effaced, for whom 
 
I.] JUVENILE AND ADULT LEAENING. 7 
 
 * almost any sort of teaching or discipline would seem to 
 ^ be better than none. And now having failed or 
 
 * succeeded very imperfectly, with these, you propose to 
 ^ try your hand upon those who are hardened by use and 
 
 * custom, whose facility of receiving what you would 
 
 * impart has been diminished by every year in which 
 ' they have been without it, whose power and inclination 
 ' to resist that which you would impart has been in- 
 
 * creased by every year which has given a hard definite 
 ^ mould to their characters and purposes ; who, in addition 
 ' to all the obstructions which meet you in the case of 
 
 * the education of children from the contradictions of sects 
 
 * and classes, oppose the weight of uncultivated intellects 
 
 * and of stubborn, impracticable wills. Because you 
 
 * have been wearied with the footmen, you would contend 
 ' with the horsemen. You are nearly in despair of 
 
 * making your children into men, and therefore you 
 '- would attempt the promising task of making your men 
 ^ into children.' 
 
 I state the objection as strongly as I can, because I 
 feel it to be most strong. No theories, no calculations of 
 what might be good for our people, can overthrow it ; 
 facts, I think, may shoAV that it must be encountered, 
 however miglity it is. The difficulties, you say, which 
 beset us in the teaching of boys and girls are serious 
 enough. Yes ; and are they not of this kind ? Do you 
 not find that when you have got your schoolroom built 
 according to the most approved model, and the system 
 of instruction, whatever it be, set on foot, you cannot 
 keep your boys and girls in the schoolroom working 
 out this system, after a very early age indeed ? Do you 
 
8 JUVENILE AND ADULT LEARNING. [LECT. 
 
 not find that tlie bribes wliicli you can offer tliem to 
 stay are powerless, in comparison with those which lead 
 their parents to send them into the field, or into the 
 factory, or into service ? Do you not find it the hardest 
 of all problems to solve, how you shall influence them 
 afterwards? These are not occasional or local grievances; 
 you hear of them from the agricultural village and the' 
 manufacturing town, from the parish curate and the 
 dissenting minister, from the schoolmistress as much as 
 the schoolmaster. 
 
 I quite admit that the Government measure for the 
 encouragement of pupil-teachers has done something, 
 and may do more^ to abate this evil. I cannot doubt 
 for a moment that that is a step in the right direction. 
 It is in that very direction into which I am seeking 
 to lead you. It is connected with that valuable move- 
 ment for the foundation of training-schools, which arose 
 from the discovery that school-houses, school-machinery, 
 even a multitude of scholars, are not the things which 
 we most want. It belongs to a class of measures which 
 involve the princijole, that unless there be an education 
 for adults, there will in a short time be none that is 
 worth having for children. 
 
 I believe this conclusion is also forced upon us in 
 another way. It may be true that we have answered 
 all the arguments with which farmers or country-gen- 
 tlemen were wont to assail our phantasies about teaching 
 the poor. Any one who sets deliberately about the task 
 of refuting them may be accused, with great plausibility, 
 of fighting with ghosts or windmills. But after all, 
 some of these dead arguments start to life again and 
 
I.] JUVENILE AND ADULT LEArvXIXG. 9 
 
 present themselves in very questionable shapes. ' Your 
 ' learning,' it was said, ' will not fit boys and girls for 
 * doing their work.' We thought the suspicion exceed- 
 ingly absurd. But surely we are often obliged to ask 
 ourselves when no one is within hearing, Does it? Is 
 there any direct and manifest connexion between the 
 business of the school and the business of the world, 
 between the books and the life ? I trust in many cases 
 there is a strong and obvious connexion, one which 
 makei5 itself felt in all the doings of the boy or girl who 
 come from the school, one which proves that there are 
 thoughts in them which, but for that early discipline, 
 would never have been awakened. It would be sad 
 indeed if one did not believe this. But there is certainly 
 an impression abroad which is shared by some of the 
 most zealous supporters of popular education, that our 
 schools for the poor, whatever other benefits have come 
 from them, are not bringing up helpful intelligent 
 workers, that from some accident or other their learning 
 and work stand altogether apart from each other, so that 
 the best scholar may sometimes almost seem to have 
 had the faculties dulled and stunted, which he needs for 
 the toils in which he must be enirao'ed. If this is the 
 case, we ought to know it and confess it. If those who 
 prophesied such a result think they have won a triumph, 
 by all means let them enjoy it. Not for one single 
 instant would we fall back into their habit of thinking, 
 because it was grounded upon the assumption that poor 
 people were sent into the world to work for them, and 
 that all which had to be considered was, how they might 
 be made into the handiest tools for their purposes. But 
 
 / 
 
10 JUVENILE AND ADULT LEARNING. [LECT. 
 
 tliougli we abjure tlieir doctrine, we may turn their 
 practical experience to account, so far as it serves for 
 rtlie exDOSure and correction of our own mistakes. Q We 
 ought freely to admit, that any education which fails to 
 make poor men or rich men efficient in action, is an un- 
 satisfactory education, — one which needs to be reformed, 
 'not only for the sake of its results, but because the 
 studies which produce such results cannot themselves 
 be sincere and wholesome. } 
 
 But I should be distrustful of this evidence, if it was 
 only drawn from the condition of one class in the country. 
 I think there are proofs that it has as much to do with 
 our highest education as with our lowest. A bill, you 
 all know, is now under discussion in Parliament, and is 
 likely to become law, which proposes to alter the con- 
 stitution of the University of Oxford. The form which 
 this proposition has taken, is certainly not that which it 
 would have taken tweaity or thirty years ago. Then 
 it was supposed that the old Universities required to 
 be reformed according to modern maxims ; that they 
 ought to abandon as much as possible their original 
 character, which was presumed to be a narrow one. 
 What has been attempted in this bill, successfully or 
 unsuccessfully, has been to restore part of their original 
 character which had been lost, to bring back the most 
 ancient idea of the University, partly because this was 
 also found to be the most comprehensive. This change 
 in the direction of our thoughts and plans is owing, I 
 conceive, very principally to the writings of an eminent 
 Scotchman, Sir W. Hamilton. In his articles in the 
 ' Edinburgh Review, ' about twenty years ago, he 
 
I.] JUVENILE AND ADULT LEARNING. 11 
 
 showed very clearly tliat the Universities, properly 
 so called, had been merged in the Colleges, — that the 
 reform which was most demanded was to restore them 
 to life. He endeavoured to support this important doc- 
 trine by charges against the conduct of the Colleges, 
 some of which, I think, were not supported by evidence, 
 and have been disproved by subsequent investigations. 
 He appeared to regard the whole scheme of Colleges 
 with a suspicion and dislike in which I cannot partici- 
 pate. Respect for the name of Baliol, and for the 
 benefits which have proceeded out of the society bearing 
 that name from the fourteenth century to the present 
 day, would alone prevent me from adopting that opinion. 
 But this difference does not make me less sensible of the 
 obligation under which Sir AV. Hamilton has laid us all, 
 by asserting the necessity of giving prominence and effi- 
 ciency to the University, and not suiFering the discipline 
 of the Colleges, valuable as that may be, to overshadow 
 it. It is this consideration which has led many, who 
 have exceedingly disliked the thought of legislative 
 interference with the bodies from which they have 
 derived some of the greatest blessings of their lives, 
 to acquiesce in the necessity of the present measure, — 
 even to desire that a more comprehensive one had been 
 adopted. They have no wish to see the Universities 
 adapted to the tastes and notions of the public; they 
 would have them correct and expand the public mind, 
 not stoop to it. But they feel that their power for this 
 purpose has been greatly cramped by the fact that the 
 manly adult education which belongs to the University 
 has been comparatively forgotten, and an education 
 
 / 
 
12 JUVENILE AND ADULT LEAKNING. [LECT. 
 
 wliicli is not clifFerent in kind from the teacliing of the 
 grammar-school substituted for it. Thus the Uni- 
 versity loses the great influence which it ought to have 
 upon the busj and professional life of the country, upon 
 its physicians, its merchants, its lawyers, its statesmen. 
 If our learned bodies will not reclaim this influence 
 for themselves, the legislature must at all hazards re- 
 mind them of their duty. The lion may not be the best 
 companion for Una, — it would be far better that the 
 Red Cross Knight should attend her on her journeys, 
 and fight with her enemies ; but if he is seduced from 
 his proper function, a rough paw may be necessary to 
 open doors that would otherwise be closed, that she 
 may be able to sit and teach the savage tribes. 
 
 Here, then, is adult education asserting its rights, 
 and proving its necessity, by the experience of our rich 
 men and of our scholars, just as we found it doing in 
 the schools of the poor by our inability to make the 
 education of the young effectual without it. And the 
 peculiar circumstances of this University Reform, — the 
 undoubted evidence which has been produced that it is 
 a re-form in the strict sense of the word, a restoration, 
 not an innovation, — has forced the inquiry upon us. 
 Whether adult education, in the history of Great Britain 
 and of Europe generally, followed or preceded the educa- 
 tion of the young ? It is this question which I propose 
 to examine to-day. Another, which is closely involved 
 with this, and which is even more necessary for the 
 object I have in view, Whether leisure or work is the 
 proper and ordained ally of learning ? I reserve for our 
 next meeting. . 
 
ij JUVENILE AND ADULT LEAENING. 13 
 
 Possibly some light might be thrown upon this 
 subject if one knew more of those 'schools that were 
 established by the Eomans in the different provinces of 
 their empire, a few notices of which may be found in 
 M. Guizot's ' History of French Civilization.' But I 
 do not think we should gain much from this informa- 
 tion. Evidently those schools were labouring to keep 
 up a kind of lore, which was nearly worn out and had 
 become useless. The study of rhetoric, which was 
 worth something while there was a Forum to practise it 
 in, became utterly weak and inane when it was merely 
 to be exhibited in school-exercises and declamations. 
 How unsatisfying it was to any ardent and earnest spirit, 
 we may learn from the account which St. Augustine 
 gives of his own experiences of the African schools, 
 comparing it with his intense interest and joy when he 
 lighted, in his private reading, upon one of Cicero's 
 philosophical treatises. 
 
 These schools gave way before those which were not 
 merely Christianised, as some of them must have been 
 in the ' later days of the empire, but which had a 
 distinctly Christian foundation. We cannot separate 
 these from the general history of the people among 
 whom they were established. When — to take an 
 instance which is familiar to us, and therefore the best 
 we can find — the Christian Missionaries came to the 
 Anglo-Saxons, they addressed themselves to the kings 
 and queens, they appealed to the domestic affections 
 and the national instincts which were always latent in 
 the Saxons. To these all their doctrine and all their 
 polity attached itself. Through these they led the 
 
14 JUVENILE AND ADULT LEARNING. [lECT. 
 
 tnrbiTlent conquerors and lords of the sea and land, to 
 feel that there was an invisible world about them which 
 thej could not conquer with their swords or traverse 
 with their ploughs and ships; the world which had 
 mixed so strangely in all their old songs and traditions 
 with the visible and palpable one, which had before 
 seemed a dark abyss, or a region in which giants were 
 contending for the mastery, which was now announced 
 to them as a quiet home and dwelling-place whither 
 the spirits of men might fly from the noise and turmoil 
 around them. The schools which rose up with such 
 marvellous rapidity after the island had once been 
 subdued by Cliristianity, were the results of this feeling 
 and reflected it. They were places to which the poorest 
 peasant might resort. But he went there on the con- 
 dition of becoming a scholar. He was to devote 
 himself to a new life. Tlie invisible was to be his 
 occupation ; all his social economy had reference to 
 that. It might be part of his business in the monastery 
 to till the gromid, to work with his hands — even an 
 enjoined and necessary part of it. He might be doing 
 much to improve agriculture and cultivate various arts, 
 for whicli all men would afterwards be the better. But 
 he was felt to have different objects from the kings and 
 warriors, however they might confess his faith and 
 receive his admonitions. They belonged to an outward 
 circle, he to an inward one. 
 
 It would be the greatest mistake to suppose that this 
 difference lay merely in the fact, that he was a student 
 of theology, or that he practised certain religious 
 exercises. These did not separate him so much from 
 
I.] JUVENILE AND ADULT LEAENING. 15 
 
 tlie surrounding world — for tliey were acknowledged to 
 be in some sense necessary for all men — as tlie fact that 
 he was a student of arithmetic, of geometry, of music, 
 of astronomy, of logic, and of rhetoric. The circle of 
 studies which became the recognised one in our Saxon 
 schools, had not originally been derived from an eccle- 
 siastical source ; we can trace it back very clearly to 
 Boethius, that eminent statesman in the reign of 
 Theodoric, who is often called the last of the classical 
 Romans, and whose claims to the place which he has 
 sometimes obtained among Catholic writers, are exceed- 
 ingly doubtful. No doubt, parts of this course of 
 teaching, the study of music especially, had a close ' 
 affinity with the worship of the church, and was 
 sustained by it. But the scheme of studies can only be 
 looked upon as having been adopted by the ecclesiastics, 
 not as having been suggested by them. The student 
 life could never have established itself in a wild, 
 warring people, except through their agency; the 
 schools would not have been felt to have any meaning, 
 if there had not been a divine atmosphere about them. 
 But it was as schools that they stood in such sharp 
 opposition to the ordinary occupations of men. 
 
 I should not have thought it necessary to make these 
 remarks, which will seem to many very obvious, except 
 for the purpose of calling your attention to tlie fact, that 
 the education which was fii'st established in our country, 
 was not elementary education, but what we should 
 consider now the reverse of it. Those subjects which 
 we should call the professorial subjects, those which 
 belong to science as such, were those from which all 
 
16 JUVENILE AND ADULT LEARNING. [LECT. 
 
 other teacliing took its commencement. This is true 
 of every subject which I have mentioned. You may 
 suppose, perhaps, that Arithmetic is an exception, that 
 it appertains to an inferior class of subjects, adapted to 
 the comprehension of the young. But if you adopt 
 this notion, you are looking at arithmetic in another 
 way than that in which these schools looked at it. 
 Arithmetic is with them not identical with figures or 
 counting ; it is a branch of philosophy. If I were to 
 read to you the introduction to the treatise of Boethius 
 upon it, you would think that I was carrying you into 
 the very depths of metaphysics. I am not going to 
 impose any such penance upon you; but I wish you 
 to perceive from what point it was that Britain, as well 
 as every other country, started in its intellectual pro- 
 gress. We might have supposed that there would have 
 been a gradual ascent towards this kind of erudition ; 
 but it is not the fact that there was. However unsatis- 
 factorily they might resolve the problems of physics 
 or dialectics, they entered upon them, even upon the 
 most difficult of them, from the first. 
 
 You may ask, ' But what then did they teach their 
 ' boys, and how did they teach them ? ' The question is 
 a fair one, and we can give a tolerably satisfactory answer 
 to it. There came a time of which we have some right 
 to be proud, v/hen a scholar of York was to help forward 
 the instruction and civilization of the Continent. The 
 story of the aid which Alcuin gave to Charlemagne in 
 the education of himself and of the young princes, is 
 familiar to many of you through M. Guizot's ' History 
 of French Civilization,' and through Sir James 
 
I.] JUVENILE AXD ADULT LEAENING. 17 
 
 Stephen's ' Lectures on the History of France.' I do 
 not think either ot those eminent writers would allow 
 us to claim for our countryman the whole, or the 
 principal part, of the merit which helongs to the cate- 
 chetical system of instruction, to which he subjected the 
 monarch himself as well as the lads who were assigned 
 him as his pupils. They would say that the exceeding 
 activity of Charlemagne's own mind, his long training 
 in affairs, his practical sense, obliged the tutor to adopt 
 a more simple experimental method than he would 
 have fallen into, if he had been lecturing in an academy. 
 I quite accept this statement, and believe that this 
 interesting chapter in the history of learning is one 
 which brings out forcibly the truth, that a right 
 education is the result of the collision and conflict 
 between the practical intellect and the meditative 
 intellect, that no true spark comes forth till the one is 
 struck by tlie other. But though Alcuin may have 
 found out something like tlie true method of teaching 
 in this way, you must not suppose that his subjects vrere 
 different from those of his contemporaries. He reasons 
 with his boys about dialectics, and about the principles 
 and grounds of philosophy; lie talks with the con- 
 queror of the Saxons, the wearer of the iron crown of 
 Lombardy, about quantities and qualities, and contraries, 
 and opposites. 
 
 There is however a period far dearer than this to the 
 hearts of Englishmen, far more closely connected with 
 their moral and intellectual growth. It was ordained, 
 mercifully ordained, that that Latin cultivation which 
 the Christian monks had introduced, with all the 
 
18 JUVENILE AND ADULT LEAENIXG. [LECT. 
 
 premature fruits wliicli had grown out of it, should be 
 swept away. The schools and monasteries, for the sake 
 of which so many a mailed monarch had deserted his 
 proper duties, and in which he had sought an ignoble 
 rest and an ungodly repentance, were destroyed by the 
 pirates of the North. Alfred, for his own good, and for 
 the good of the land, was not suffered to know any 
 Latin lore till he was twelve years old. He was 
 brought up on the food which was fittest to make him 
 a great Saxon king, the songs and ballads of his fore- 
 fathers. So trained, his learning came to him when he 
 wanted it ; he understood what it was worth and why 
 it was given him. For the first time one perceives a 
 real Saxon education in the land, an education carried 
 on not first of all by monks, though they might be 
 instruments in communicating it, but by a king, trained 
 in business and in adversity, w^ho could appreciate books 
 because he knew men, and v/ho could tell what books 
 men had need of. He had scholars about him, possibly 
 one eminent and profound metaphysician ; but his own 
 sound practical sense kept them in order, and turned 
 them to account, forcing them, whether they liked it or 
 110, to use their wisdom for the culture of the nation. 
 This example stands out clear and bright in our annals, 
 a witness of much that was to be done hereafter, and 
 of the way in which it was to be done. But Alfred's, 
 like Alcuin's, was adult teaching. 
 
 Alfred's books were translations from the Latin. 
 In the time which immediately followed his, the 
 national spirit must have begun to utter itself in free 
 and original songs, such as had not been produced for a 
 
I.] JUVENILE AND ADULT LEARNING. 19 
 
 long time, perhaps not since the conquest of Britain. 
 Then came the reaction. The Latin, or ecclesiastical 
 learning, which had probably been too much kept 
 down, asserted its supremacy under Dunstan, and tried 
 to crush everything but itself. There must have been 
 an uneasy conflict between the native wisdom and the 
 foreign, between the warrior and the priest, till the 
 beginning of the eleventh century. Then began, here 
 and throughout Europe, the ascendancy of those mighty 
 Normans whose old spirit had been so curiously pre- 
 served amidst their Gallic civilization, who were ready 
 for the wildest enterprises, who were capable of the 
 strictest organization, who had just enough of national 
 feeling to make them the effectual agents in subduing 
 all nations. These men w^ere not only to establish 
 kingdoms, vanquish infidels, frame doomsday-books ; 
 they were also to organize the monastic life, to establish 
 the Latin and ecclesiastical culture, to reduce the 
 schools as much as the world under discipline. In 
 Eadmer's life of Anselm there are some curious and 
 interesting stories respecting the education of chil- 
 dren in the monastery of Bee, indicating the sen- 
 sible notions of Anselm concerning the treatment ot 
 them. But the Norman discipline was essentially one 
 for m.en, and not for children. Their whole school 
 system w^as one which appealed to the faculties and 
 thoughts of men, even while it stood furthest off from 
 the ordinary business of their lives, even when it 
 seemed to have least to do with their human feelings. 
 
 The twelfth century opens a new chapter in the 
 history of education. The schools had hitherto been 
 
 c 2 
 
20 JUVENILE AND ADULT LEAENING. [LECT. 
 
 inseparably connected witli the monasteries. The or- 
 Sfanizins: mind of the Norman had reduced all branches 
 of thought and learning, even more completely than 
 before, under the dominion of theology ; and the learned 
 life was regarded as part of the religious life. The 
 great prominence which was given to the latter by. 
 St. Bernard, in the institutions which he founded and 
 superintended, led to the undervaluing of the former. 
 The venerable Peter of Clugny still asserted its rights 
 in his society. But soon the separation makes itself 
 manifest. Bodies came into existence for the pursuit of 
 some special study or faculty, such as jm-isprudence or 
 theology, or for several united together. These bodies 
 are first formed, perhaps, through the popularity of 
 some particular lecturer ; they soon acquire a corporate 
 character; they are recognised as Universities, or cor- 
 porations, for carrying on studies, as there were other 
 corporations for carrying on trades. It may be sup- 
 posed that now at length we have found places de- 
 signed especially for the education of the young. Far 
 from it. There were, as I have said, schools for boys 
 in the monasteries, though the idea of the school was 
 not deduced from them. University teaching is alto- 
 gether removed from any such association. The lec- 
 turers address themselves expressly to that dialectical 
 lore which we are wont to regard as entirely removed 
 not only from boyish but from human sympathies. 
 
 There is apparently warrant for that impression ; we 
 might found upon it the conclusion that this teaching 
 can only have attracted a few people of a peculiar cast 
 of character. How marvellous, then, must it be to hear 
 
I.] JUVENILE AND ADULT LEAENING. 21 
 
 wliat took place when the young Breton, Peter Abelard^ 
 was lecturing in Paris. Perhaps I might hope in the 
 course of a few days to make every one here understand 
 what the subject was on which he v/as disputing. 
 ' I undertook/ he says, ' by most satisfactory argu- 
 ' ments to induce my old master, William, the arch- 
 ^ deacon of Paris, to abandon that sentiment of his 
 ' about Universals ; for he would maintain that the same 
 ' whole thing dwells essentially in each individual thing.' 
 Well, to hear the unfortunate William of Paris con- 
 fomided upon the doctrine which he had embraced on 
 this subject, such crowds gathered together as no 
 Parisian singer or actress ever yet succeeded in assem- 
 bling. And when in a later period of Abelard's life, 
 after he had experienced the tremendous temptations of 
 popularity, as well as the dreariness and sinking of 
 heart which come to a man who has no actual ties 
 to his fellow-beings ; after he had sought an escape 
 from that dreariness by involving one much brighter 
 and nobler than himself in a hopeless sorrow ; when, 
 after this, he returned to a certain cell for the purpose 
 of lecturing upon theology, there rushed such a multi- 
 tude of scholars to him, that, to use his own language, 
 all the country round did not suffice to furnish them 
 with dwellings, nor the soil with food. The whole 
 story sounds like the most incredible romance ; yet the 
 evidence for it is clear and undoubted. Men and women 
 in the twelfth century did not merely run to hear a 
 powerful and popular preacher like St. Bernard ; they 
 not only could be dissolved in tears, when he spoke 
 in a language which they did not understand; they 
 
22 JUVENILE AND ADULT LEARNING. [LECT. 
 
 were also drawn hj the strangest sympathy to the 
 teachings of a subtle logician, and that not only in his 
 earlier days, when he was young and handsome, and 
 untainted in reputation, but after he had fallen into 
 moral disgrace and was suspected of heresy. 
 
 The life of Abelard shows us, I think, that what we 
 call the discussions of the schools, though they may be 
 very unsatisfying to the deeper spirit of human beings, 
 have yet something in them which may excite very 
 strongly the intellects and even the passions of men, 
 and that the mere business of the world does not furnish 
 an adequate substitute for them. The next century 
 records phenomena in the history of education which 
 are scarcely less remarkable. It was the century in which 
 the Mendicant Orders arose, the century in which Francis 
 and Dominic appealed directly to the hearts of the most 
 miserable people in Europe, presenting Christianity to 
 them as especially meant for them. Now this pecu- 
 liarly popular movement, which was so much mightier 
 than all the policy of Innocent III. had been in break- 
 ing down the distinctions of nations, and in establishing 
 the papal supremacy over them, was, in its issue, the 
 great instrument of revolutionising the scholarship of 
 Em'ope, which you might have fancied that its preachers 
 would have disregarded. It was not only over the 
 hearts of guilty or sorrowing men or women that these 
 orders established their throne. Before they had existed 
 half a century, they had fought for dominion in the 
 universities, and had won it. They had succeeded in 
 organizing the -whole learning of these universities, in 
 establishing what we emphatically call the scholastic 
 
I.] JUVENILE AND ADULT LEARNING. 23 
 
 system, and in producing tlie most complete sclieme of 
 thought upon all possible subjects which the world ever 
 has seen or ever will see. Those who believe that a 
 complete system is the thing that man wants, should 
 fall down and worship the books of Thomas Aquinas, 
 for they will surely find nothing that is so worthy of 
 their idolatry. If this is the climax of education, it 
 reached its climax in the thirteenth century. But in 
 that century men began to discover that they wanted 
 something else than this — something entirely different 
 from this. They did not wait to be told that secret by 
 later times ; it was found out then. Roger Bacon, the 
 Franciscan, was unwinding in his laboratory a great 
 part of that web which Thomas Aquinas, the Domi- 
 nican, had been weaving in his study. He was show- 
 ing that physical science, at all events, is occupied 
 primarily with facts, not with the words that describe 
 facts. He was conspiring with other teachers — some of 
 them of his own order — to suggest the thought that 
 moral science may be in the same predicament. And 
 there was a vehement reaction against both the orders, 
 arising from national feelings which were beginning to 
 express themselves in a national language, that did 
 more than all other influences together to prevent the 
 schools from becoming omnipotent. 
 
 Thus far we have had only occasional glimpses of 
 any distinct education for the boy. He has been bred 
 in the monastery; the studies which belonged to his 
 elders have in some way or other been communicated 
 to him ; but the schools have certainly not existed 
 primarily for his sake : the name suggested to our 
 
24 JUVENILE AKD ADULT LEARNING. [lECT. 
 
 ancestors a tlioiiglit most unlike that which it ordinarily 
 suggests to ITS. In the period upon which we now 
 enter, the school in our sense, the school as identified 
 with the training of the young, comes into sight. I 
 wish you to consider how our Grammar-schools grew 
 up, how they acquired such dignity and importance in 
 our social economy, in what relation they stand to the 
 older education. But we cannot at once enter upon 
 that subject. The Universities as such, the Universities 
 as schools in quite a different sense from this, must still 
 fix our attention for a few moments. They of course 
 were the homes of the Latin lore, while that great 
 English movement to which I was alluding Y/as going 
 on in the heart of the middle or trading class of the 
 country. But though this is true on the whole, it would 
 be a great mistake to suppose that the Universities vrere 
 exempt from their share in that movement — nay, that 
 they did not furnish some of the great leaders in it. 
 There was an old scholastical quarrel with the friars, 
 which was contemporary witli the national quarrel, 
 and which often mingled with it. The orders had in- 
 truded themselves into the schools. But that vulgar 
 talent which enabled them to appeal to the worst feel- 
 ings of the mob, was, especially when they became 
 degenerate, and their higher principles had decayed, by 
 far their most effective instrument. The earnest student 
 would be disgusted by these exhibitions ; he would 
 often transfer his disgust from them to the elaborate 
 subtleties which he found the friars inventing when 
 they assumed their other character. Sprung himself 
 from the people, he would appeal to the homely sense of 
 
I.] JUVENILE AND ADULT LEARNING. 25 
 
 the English people, to their business-like habits, against 
 the circulators of the popular legends. As a teacher 
 in the schools, he would turn to the Bible as an escape 
 from the intricacies of its commentators. The position 
 of WyclifFe, first in Oxford, afterv^-ards as a parish- 
 priest in Lutterworth, explains the way in which these 
 different tendencies worked together. His translation of 
 the Bible, the only really important work in wliich lie was 
 engaged, embodies both, and shows us how impossible 
 it was that the new English practical feeling could have 
 grown up Avithout the Latin culture, how certain it was 
 they would stand out in fierce opposition to each other, 
 how surely they would, some time or other, be forced to 
 coalesce, how surely those who were most possessed by 
 the one temper would often exhibit in themselves the 
 influences of the other. 
 
 I have spoken of a strife between the Universities as 
 such and the Orders as such. I conceive that there was 
 a very strong feeling in the thirteenth century that the 
 University, however the teachers in it might be mem- 
 bers of orders, was to preserve itself distinct from the 
 orders, to show that it had a function altogether differ- 
 ent from theirs. But, if it was to maintain this position, 
 the University must have a social life of its own. It 
 could only resist the monasteries, if it could provide its 
 scholar with an intercourse and fellowship which re- 
 sembled that of the monasteries. To this impulse, as 
 well as to a strong local feeling, a desire to connect the 
 towns and counties which were dear to them with tlie 
 learning which belonged to the whole land, may be 
 traced the foundation of the Colleges which began to 
 
26 JUVENILE AND ADULT LEAENING. [lECT. 
 
 grow up at tliis period in our Universities, and wliicli 
 are truly said to constitute the most purely English 
 element in tliem. Three of those in the University of 
 Oxford — University, Baliol, and Merton Colleges — 
 Ibelong to the thirteenth century. The name of the first, 
 the wills and statutes of the founders of all three, show 
 that they acknowledged the existence of an elder and 
 larger society, of which they were to form a part, which 
 they were never intended to svfallow up in themselves, 
 the characteristic studies of which their fellows were to 
 pursue and to teach. There were also the signs of 
 those other intentions to which I have alluded ; but I 
 do not perceive, thus far, that the training of the young 
 is at all a principal object. The fellows of University 
 College were to study divinity, or the decretals. The 
 sixteen scholars whom the widow of John Baliol 
 settled in a tenement in Oxford Avere to pray for the 
 souls of her husband, or ancestors, or children. Of 
 Walter de Merton^s society the University Commis- 
 sioners say expressly, that it was not bound by the 
 monastic vows, that it belonged to none of the reli- 
 gious orders, that his object was to counteract the 
 influence of the regular clergy, especially of the ]Men- 
 dicant Friars. 
 
 In the fourteenth century, the case is different. The 
 University Commissioners say, evidently with the great- 
 est truth, that the foundation of ISTew College was a new 
 era in Oxford history. In fact, if we wish to understand 
 this important stage in our subject, we cannot do better 
 than consider the character and objects of its eminent 
 founder, William of Wvkeham. There is some diffi- 
 
I.] JUVENILE AND ADULT LEAENING. 27 
 
 ciilty, however, in arriving at a riglit judgment of liim. 
 The University Commissioners say, ' that he gave a more 
 
 * ecclesiastical, or rather monastic, character to his foun- 
 ' elation, than had belonged to any previous one. The 
 
 * very character of his buildings,' they add, ' secluded and 
 
 * gloomy outwardly, but stately and convenient within, 
 
 * intimate what was in his thoughts. The statutes, 
 ' which are minute and elaborate to an extent before 
 ' that time unprecedented, impressed a monastic cha- 
 ^ racter on the whole institution.' This evidence is 
 very strong. William of Wykeham, as he proved 
 both at Windsor and Winchester, was a consummate 
 architect; his buildings might seem to be tlie most 
 faithful expressions of his inward feeling. He wrote 
 his statutes three times : in them he embodied his ma- 
 turest thoughts. If they suggest the same conclusion 
 as the exterior of his College, it would seem to be irre- 
 sistible. And yet if we turn to the life of him by 
 Bishop Lowth, the most accomplished Wykehamist of 
 the last century, who has given the most patient and 
 conscientious attention to all the original documents 
 respecting him, and has put them together in a skilful 
 and scholar-like manner, we should conclude that the 
 subject of his biography, instead of having the least of a 
 monastical tendency, was the best man of business of his 
 time, the most thoroughly conversant with all civil affairs. 
 Lowth quotes from a warden of New College, who lived 
 fifty years after the death of Wykeham, the opinion 
 that he knew very little of speculative wisdom, that he 
 was too poor to have attained any scholastical know- 
 ledge in his youth, but that in practical wisdom he was 
 
28 JUVENILE AND ADULT LEAENING. [lECT. 
 
 unrivalled. Edward III. liad clearly that opinion of 
 him : he was his chancellor in the most difficult times; 
 no public or private business seems to have come amiss 
 to him. 
 
 I make these remarks — not only because it is always 
 well to look at a remarkable man from two points of 
 view, and to see how opposite notions respecting him 
 may arise ; but because it is on the reconciliation of these 
 two characters that his place in a history of education 
 depends. The impulse which proceeded from him 
 caused the foundation of All Souls and Magdalen, as 
 well as his own College; but this was the least part 
 of his work. It is the union of Winchester College 
 with New College, of the school for boys with the 
 school for men, which is the great fact of his life. He 
 evidently felt that the time was past when any good 
 could come from the foundation of monasteries or abbeys ; 
 but that the principle which had been latent in them, 
 and which was only producing idlers, might be turned 
 to profit, provided the school and life could be con- 
 nected, provided the stiff scholarship which belonged 
 to the man could be bound up with the growth and 
 expansion of the boy, through healthful exercises of the 
 body as well as mind. If they could hold their due 
 relation and proportion to each other — if one could be 
 a nursery to the other— if the higher education could 
 determine the character of the lower, and the lower send 
 back energy and vitality to the higher — the University 
 and the Grammar-school might furnish good and brave 
 citizens to the commonwealth. 
 
 I shall not apologise for saying so much of William 
 
I.] JUVE^^1LE AND ADULT LEAENING. 29 
 
 of Wykeliam, seeing that the principle which %Yas 
 expressed in his statutes was adopted by Henry VL 
 in the foundation of King's College and Eton, and that 
 therefore it is a key to all the educational movements of 
 the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries in England. Those 
 are the centuries in which the great movement which we 
 usually describe as the revival of letters was going on 
 upon the Continent. The civil wars hindered us from 
 partaking in it as much as we otherwise might ; but 
 these are the witnesses of the effect which it was to 
 produce upon us, — a practical and national effect, for the 
 sake of which one can spare some of the more showy 
 effects which it produced in other lands. 
 
 I will notice only one more indication of that period : 
 it is one of the ironies of history, which I have no doubt 
 has often been alluded to. Lincoln College was founded 
 in 1427, for the purpose of training theologians to exter- 
 minate the principles of Wycliffe. Its founder was 
 Eichard Fleming, who had been a Wycliffite himself. 
 Among the theologians whom his bounty raised up, to 
 exterminate the notion that Christianity might be taken 
 out of its scholastical forms aM presented directly to 
 the body of the people, was John Wesley. The wills 
 of founders, it w^ould appear, may sometimes be de- 
 feated without the interference of Commissioners and 
 Cabinet Ministers. 
 
 Nor was that notion exterminated in the century 
 which followed the death of Fleming, though in the 
 beginning of the reign of Henry VIII. it seemed 
 likely enough to suffer that fate. Henry himself was an 
 enemy of it, in his double character of king and school- 
 
30 JUVENILE AND ADULT LEARNING. [LECT. 
 
 man. Wolsey was the enemy of it, as the most magni- 
 ficent of chnrchmen and statesmen, and as the patron oi 
 Universitj learning. Sir Thomas More was the enemy 
 of it, as lawyer, scholar, and divine. But the learning 
 and piety of the friend of Erasmus were as little able to 
 withstand the mighty and divine impulse of that time, as 
 the splendour of the Cardinal and the will of the Tudor. 
 The claim that each man should be recognised as a living- 
 personal being, was too strong for any school wisdom 
 to struggle with. That wisdom must adjust itself, as it 
 could, to the conviction which the hearts of numbers had 
 received as a direct message from heaven. And it did 
 strive, sometimes awkwardly, sometimes skilfully, to 
 make the adjustment. In the sixteenth century, more 
 than in the fourteenth, the leaders of the Eeformation 
 were to be found in the Universities, though there also 
 were its greatest antagonists. The new learning was 
 the instrument of the new faith. Language was the 
 study to which those who Vv^ould fight the schoolmen, 
 and bring forth the Bible, must devote themselves. 
 Philology became to the men of this time v/hat Logic 
 had been to their fathers. And philology could not be 
 treated as logic had been, as a subject for University 
 disputations. The grammar must actually be learnt ; 
 the sooner the learning could begin, the better. The 
 boys' school had now an importance which it had not 
 before; it was especially the place for learning the gram- 
 mar; it was, therefore, the place for arming the Protestant 
 warrior. That this feeling was strong in the reign of 
 Edward YI., any one who looks into the statutes 
 of the schools which were founded then under royal and 
 
I.] JUVENILE AND ADULT LEAENING. 31 
 
 reforming patronage will perceive. And lience there 
 was a kind of cliasm between the studies of the school 
 and those of the University which had not existed 
 before. The prelections and disputations there seemed 
 as if they had no bearing upon that which the boy was 
 reading or committing to memory. Very soon the 
 Jesuit reaction against the Reformation began. Among 
 the three weapons in the armoury of this order, the 
 school was more trusted and more successful than even 
 the pulpit and the confessional. But the school meant 
 among them what it was beginning to mean among 
 their opponents, the place for training boys and girls, 
 for bringing them up in the opinions which they were 
 to hold in mature life. The business was to furnish 
 manuals on all possible subjects. Education was be- 
 coming an art, which had its own doctors and professors. 
 Our worthy Eoger Ascham embodied his notion of the 
 art in his ' Schoolmaster ; ' the rules of the Jesuits on 
 the subject were, I doubt not, contained in much more 
 elaborate and skilful treatises. Fortunately there was 
 at our grammar-schools something better fhan any dog- 
 mas about the art of training ; there was a free hearty 
 life, games in which the limbs were expanded, a disci- 
 pline which, with all its sternness, yet assumed boys to 
 be human creatures, not machines. There was this 
 good, which we must always thankfully acknowledge ; 
 there were defects and evils, of which England had to 
 endure the penalty, and which drew forth the com- 
 plaints and protests of some of the best and noblest of 
 her sons. 
 
 It is startling to hear such words as these from Lord 
 
32 JUVENILE AND ADULT LEARNINQ. [lECT. 
 
 Bacon. He is advising King James toucliing Mr. 
 Sutton's estate, that is to say, touching the project of 
 Christopher Sutton to found the Charter House School. 
 He says, — ' Concerning the advancement of learning, I 
 ' do subscribe to the opinion of one of the wisest and 
 
 * greatest men in your kingdom, that for grammar- 
 
 * schools there are already too many, and therefore no 
 ' providence to add where there is excess : for the great 
 ' number of schools which are in your highness's realm 
 ' doth cause a want, and doth cause likewise an over- 
 ' flow ; both of them inconvenient, and one of them 
 
 * dangerous. For by means thereof they find want, in 
 ' the country towns, both of servants for husbandry and 
 ' apprentices for trade ; and on the other side, being 
 
 * more scholars bred than the state can prefer or em- 
 ' ploy, and the active part of that life not being in 
 
 * proportion to the preparative, it must needs fall out 
 '■ that many will be bred unfit for other vocations, and 
 
 * unprofitable for that in which they are brought up ; 
 
 * which fills the realm full of indigent, idle, wanton 
 
 * people.' 
 
 But he says in the next paragraph, ' Therefore in 
 
 * this point I wish Mr. Sutton's intentions were exalted 
 
 * a degree ; that that which he meant for teachers of 
 ' children, your majesty should make for teachers of 
 
 * men ; wherein it hath been my ancient opinion and 
 ' observation, that in the Universities of this realm, 
 ' which I take to be of the best endowed Universities of 
 ' Europe, there is nothing more wanting towards the 
 ^ flourishing state of learning, than the honourable and 
 'plentiful salaries of readers in arts and professions. 
 
I.] JUVENILE AND ADULT LEARNING. "33 
 
 * Surely readers in the cliair are as parents in sciences, 
 '■ and deserve to enjoy a condition not inferior to the 
 '■ children who embrace the practical part ; else no man 
 
 * will sit longer in the chair than till he can walk to a 
 ' better preferment For if the principal readers, 
 
 * through the meanness of their entertainment, be but 
 
 * men of superficial learning, and that they shall take 
 ' their place but in passage, it will make the mass of 
 ' sciences want the chief and solid dimension, which 
 ^ is depth, and to become but pretty and compendious 
 ' habits of practice.' 
 
 These weighty sentences are the weightier because 
 Bacon was the great protestant against the method of 
 study which he had found established in the Universi- 
 ties : a great part of their dialectical system seeming to 
 him a grievous and fatal check on the free investigation 
 of nature. And I would remind you that his fear that 
 the sciences should become merely ' pretty and compen- 
 ' dious habits of practice,' did not arise from any want of 
 the practical element in himself. It was predominant in 
 him ; in it lay his strength and his danger. But he felt 
 that there would be an end of all true and manly 
 practice, if it were not continually fed from springs that 
 are not in itself. He knew that it would become formal, 
 traditional, improgressive, if it were not associated with 
 fixed and eternal principles. 
 
 If I had time, I should endeavour to show you Avhat 
 illustration this remark receives from the treatise of 
 Milton on Education, in his letter to Mr. Hartlib, which, 
 whatever may be the merits or mistakes of the plan 
 of study which it recommends, is one of the most sug- 
 
 D 
 
34 JUVENILE AXD ADULT LEAENING. [LECT^ 
 
 gestive books ever written, as it is one of the bravest 
 and noblest ; a witness, as all his other books are, that 
 no man had drunk more deeply into the spirit of onr 
 English institutions, if he was over impatient of the 
 forms, when the spirit, as he thought, had departed from 
 them. I should refer also to the treatise of Locke on 
 Education, which I should like a foreigner to read 
 immediately after he had read Milton's letter on the 
 same subject, that he might understand what different 
 aspects our literature presents. He will find two men 
 writing at an interval of a few years, brought up, one 
 may say, in the same dogmatical school, treating on the 
 same topics, disliked by the same people, one of whom 
 cannot prevent his thoughts and his words from rising 
 into poetry if he is treating of the vulgarest topics, the 
 other of whom must speak the plainest prose if he is 
 occupied with the most sublime. Nevertheless, the 
 foreigner will, I think, discover in both that honest 
 benevolence which never scorns anything as beneath 
 them in which human beings are interested. He who 
 was busy with all the highest questions of faith and 
 government, who was fresh from the air and associations 
 of Italy, who was meditating the divinest poem, was at 
 the same time the hard-working schoolmaster in Alders- 
 gate Street ; he who aspired to lay down the laws of the 
 Understanding did not forget that he was bred a phy- 
 sician, and could define accurately the proper thickness 
 of children's shoes. 
 
 But this practical English wisdom was beginning in 
 the seventeenth century, more and more to stand aloof 
 from that wliich was embodied in the Colleges and 
 
I.] JUVENILE AND ADULT LEARNING. 35 
 
 Universities. The scliools and the world were not, as 
 they had once been, different spheres ; they became 
 competitive and hostile, each striving to do the work 
 of the other. The schools seized the principles which 
 the previous century had vindicated, and reduced them 
 into hard systems, robbing them of their life ; the world 
 tried to fashion an education for itself, which should 
 meet its emergencies, and create for it hands, not men. 
 While this war was going on, while it was at its height, 
 good rafen of the upper and middle classes became sud- 
 denly aware that a population was growing up around 
 them, which was without knowledge, without the 
 means of acquiring knowledge. We can never be 
 thankful enough for the discovery, and for the earnest 
 efforts which it awakened. To these probably we owe 
 it, that Great Britain was able to preserve, and somewhat 
 to improve, the education of her gentlemen ; if they had 
 not betliought them in time of rescuing the children of 
 their labourers from barbarism, their own might have 
 become barbarous. I am convinced that the experiments 
 which have been made in the education of the boys and 
 girls and infants of the lower classes have done us all more 
 good than we can measure. Nevertheless it was inevit- 
 able that these experiments, undertaken at a time when 
 there was much disorder and perplexity in the thoughts 
 of our countrymen about the teaching which they had 
 possessed for centuries, when there was so great a discord 
 between thought and action, should have been hastily 
 conceived and not very consistently worked out. ' Boys 
 
 * and girls must be taught, at all events, to read and 
 
 * write and cipher ; what else they should be taught w« 
 
 d2 
 
36 JUVENILE AND ADULT LEARNING. [LECT. 
 
 ' may consider afterwards ;' this was the first and very- 
 natural thought of people living in an age of printed 
 books, and wont to regard money transactions as the 
 most important of all. But instructions starting from 
 this ground, however reasonable a one it may seem, 
 have not been found to accomplish the purpose at which 
 they aimed, to say nothing of any higher purpose. It 
 does not signify how many studies, sacred or secular, 
 you append to these first and elementary studies ; it does 
 not signify on what plea you append them ; education 
 can never be felt to be the rightful portion and inherit- 
 ance of Britons, its own meaning and dignity must be 
 altogether forgotten, when you determine its purpose by 
 that which is at best only its starting point. Learning 
 cannot look Work in the face ; it must quail at the sight 
 of its steady progress, its mighty achievements. Your 
 boys and girls must scorn their primers when they see 
 what can be done, what they themselves can do, with 
 the help of the steam engine. Unless you can find 
 some way of showing them that Learning and Working 
 presume each other are necessary to each other, you 
 are but spinning a web to-day which to-morrow will 
 unravel. 
 
 Now it has seemed to me that the circumstances of 
 this time especially invite us and oblige us all, to con- 
 sider how this reconciliation may be brought about. I 
 do not mean merely the circumstances which discourage 
 us respecting the issue of our past efforts for the poor ; 
 I mean those which begin to give us some hope of a 
 reform in the institutions which accident, not their 
 original intention, has nearly confined to the rich. The 
 
I.] JUVENILE AND ADULT LEARNING. 37 
 
 discussions respecting the Universities show us how our 
 education has taken its rise, what have been the great 
 helps, what have "been the most serious hindrances, to its 
 advancement and its diffusion. If you seriously medi- 
 tate on the facts which these discussions have brought 
 to light, they may lead you to conclusions very different 
 from those to which they lead me; but they will at 
 least force you to admit that those who would try to 
 encounter the great question, how grown men may 
 be trained to think as well as to act, are not run ning 
 counter to the wisdom of other ages, are not despising 
 the lessons which the noble men who flourished in 
 them, by their words and their deeds, have bequeathed 
 
 to U.S. 
 
 I have been far too long, but I cannot conclude 
 without one observation more. It was felt to be a verp 
 gi*eat step in Education, when the infants' school waa- 
 added to the schools for boys and girls. There were- 
 some who hoped everything from that addition. ' When 
 
 * we have reached the cradle,' they said, ' we have found 
 
 * the standing point from Avhich we can move the world.' 
 You may fancy, perhaps, that I am entirely at issue with 
 these sanguine dreamers ; seeing that I have taken the- 
 ascending instead of the descending line ; that I have- 
 attributed our failures not to our neglect of those who 
 have not reached the age of boyhood, but of those who" 
 have passed it. But I can clear myself of this charge. 
 Whatever the infant school may have done or may not 
 have done, I believe that the zeal which has been 
 awakened respecting infant education has been of un- 
 speakable worth. I believe it for two reasons. First 
 
38 JUVENILE AND ADULT LEARNING. [LECT. 
 
 because it has been impossible in educating little chil- 
 dren to think chiefly of reading and writing and cipher- 
 ing. Y\G have been compelled to remember that we 
 have living spirits to deal with, which must by most 
 wonderful and mysterious processes, wherein we may be 
 agents, wherein we cannot be principals, be brought to 
 trust, to think, to hope, to know. My second reason is, 
 that those who think most earnestly of infant education 
 must think of adult education. However they may 
 reverence the descending scale, they cannot expect to 
 teach infants by infants. They must above all things 
 desire that the mothers should have wise, loyal, English 
 hearts. By all means let us labour for that end. If I 
 did not believe that the education of working men 
 would lead us by the most direct road to the education 
 of working women, I should care much less for it. 
 But I am sure that the earnest thoughtful man who is 
 also a labourer with his hands, instead of grudging his 
 wife the best culture she can obtain, will demand that 
 she should have it. He will long to have a true house- 
 hold, he will desire to bring up brave citizens. He will 
 understand that his country looks to the wives and 
 mothers, in every one of her classes, as the best security 
 that the next generation of Englishmen shall not make 
 her ashamed. 
 
II.] LEAKNING AND LEISURE. 39 
 
 LECTURE 11. 
 
 LEARNING AND LEISURE. 
 
 The maxim, that all hope for the Improvement of 
 our comitry lies in the education of her youth, was 
 examined in my last Lecture. I pointed out some 
 of the difficulties which those experience who try to 
 ■carry it into practice. The children of the poor, and of 
 some who are not absolutely poor, are taken away for 
 the business of the world, before they have acquired 
 more than a smattering of knowledge from the school. 
 That smattering of knowledge is not found to be of any 
 great avail afterwards : the complaint has gone forth, 
 that they have not cultivated the faculty or obtained 
 the information which fit them to be serviceable citizens. 
 Either they are awkward in the business to which they 
 devote themselves, or in the pursuit of it they forget 
 most of tlie little lore which they have brought with 
 them. These statements may be much exaggerated ; 
 if they are true, there must be innumerable exceptions. 
 But the evidence for them is too strong not to shake 
 terribly the expectations which we had most of us built 
 on our schools for boys and girls. 
 
43 LEARNIXG AND LEISURE. [LECT* 
 
 Is it possible, then, to found schools for men ? If 
 we cannot keep the young from business, may we teach 
 the full-grown who are already busy? May we en- 
 deavour to give parents an interest in the education of 
 their children by educating them? At first sight the 
 difficulties in the way of such a project seem far gi-eater 
 than those which we are encountering now — the mate- 
 rials which we have to mould are so much harder and 
 less pliable. But it is not always safe to act upon 
 first impressions. What is the testimony of history 
 on the subject? I endeavoured to trace the intel- 
 lectual growth of Europe, but . especially of England, 
 through a series of ages, dwelling not upon events that 
 happened in a corner, or that looked important to an 
 individual or a party, but on those which were admitted 
 by all to be of deep and wide significance. The infer- 
 ence appeared irresistible. Schools, according to the 
 original force of the word, had not a direct application 
 to children. They were places for preserving and ex- 
 panding the studies which belong especially to men. 
 They were intended to make men conscious that they 
 had other organs besides the organs of sense, and that 
 these had their proper objects and exercises. The result 
 was the same, whether we looked at the schools which 
 grew up in England after its conversion to Christianity, 
 or to the lessons which Alcuin imparted to the Frankish 
 monarch, or to the Saxon discipline of Alfred, or to the 
 systematic Latin culture in the Norman monasteries, 
 or to the Universities in the twelfth century, or to 
 those Universities in the thirteenth century, when they 
 had in a great measure submitted to the mendicant 
 
II.] LEARNING AND LEISURE. 41 
 
 orders, or again in the fourteenth, when Colleges were 
 growing up in them which were substitutes for the 
 cloister life, and were directing it to another purpose. 
 Adult education was always taking precedence of 
 juvenile education, determining its objects and for the 
 most part its form, exercising an influence over the 
 whole of society which that could never have exercised. 
 In due time we saw the Grammar-school arising ; but 
 it arose in connexion with the College, the College 
 itself being under the shadow of the University. 
 Gradually these schools for boys obtained an inde- 
 pendent importance ; tlieir connexion with the adult 
 teaching was not as obvious as it had been. Then 
 Bacon wished to check the growth of them, to direct 
 the bounty of kings and subjects again into the channel 
 of the Universities : then Milton complained that both 
 had lost their manly character, and had ceased to serve 
 the commonwealth. In modern times we found that 
 the English University had gradually assumed the 
 form of an advanced Grammar-school. Hence the 
 complaints of its inefficiency ; hence the demand for 
 reformation ; hence the readiness with which those who 
 are least disposed that the Universities should take the 
 shape which the public would give them, have con- 
 sented that their restoration should be promoted by the 
 legislature. 
 
 A conclusion honestly deduced from facts so various 
 and so inconsistent as these, has some right to be con- 
 sidered of weight. Yet I can conceive that it may still 
 appear to many quite incredible. It would appear so 
 to me — scarcely any amount of historical evidence would 
 
42 LEARNING AND LEISITEE. [LECT. 
 
 induce me to accept it — if I felt that it really contra- 
 dicted the principle which the champions of early- 
 education are asserting. They are certain that a full- 
 grown man who has been without education all his life, 
 must be in a more hopeless condition for receiving it 
 than a child or a boy. There can, I conceive, be no 
 doubt of that proposition. The question is, whether 
 this is the condition in which our forefathers found 
 those to whom they imparted their lessons ; whether 
 this is the condition in which we shall find the working- 
 men of our day. The people of Kent and Northumbria 
 might perhaps have seen no Christian Missionaries till 
 Augustine or Paulinus came among them. But surely 
 it would be a prodigious mistake to say that they had 
 had no teaching which prepared them for that of the 
 Missionaries, none but what interfered with it. They 
 had the sun and moon and stars over their heads; 
 they had the earth which they were trying to cultivate; 
 they had the ocean on which they were sailing. They had 
 children, brothers, wives, husbands. They had affections 
 and sorrows ; they had life and death. These were school- 
 masters that had been at work upon them, and without 
 whose aid Augustine and Paulinus, I apprehend, would 
 not have done much. They might meet with some 
 who had studied well, some who had studied ill, under 
 these doctors ; some whose old traditions had over- 
 shadowed or effaced their lessons ; some in whom those 
 same traditions had awakened thoughts which they 
 would not otherwise have had. They may have met 
 with some comparatively at ease, some dissatisfied and 
 restless ; but they will not have met with a single man 
 
II.] LEARNING AND LEISURE. 43 
 
 who had not been nnder a training, a veiy wonderful 
 training, carried on, as they held, if they had faith in 
 their own proclamation, by an invisible Being of whom 
 they could give clearer and more authentic tidings than 
 the Saxons had yet received. 
 
 In like manner, we are not exactly to conclude' that 
 Charlemagne- had no preparation for that strange lore 
 about contraries and opposites, which Alcuin brought to 
 him. He might have been occupied chiefly in fighting 
 and ruling ; but he could not cany on either of these 
 operations without speaking. If he spoke, his words 
 followed one another in some order ; his discourses 
 obeyed some laws as well as his armies. Those laws 
 were the laws of gTammar and of logic. He had been 
 a grammarian and a logician all his life without knowing 
 it. Alcuin only made him aware of the fact, which 
 caused him, no doubt, a new and a very delightful 
 surprise, and which he took in Avith ten times more 
 intelligence and relish because he was in the habit of 
 observing facts. 
 
 The simple teaching of Alfred in geography and 
 history was addressed to people living in an island, 
 and often seeing ships which came to them from other 
 countries with strange things and stranger men ; to 
 people who had come to know that they were members 
 of a nation, and therefore cared to know what the 
 nation had been doing before they were born. If you 
 wonder that in the centuries which followed, this kind 
 of teaching seemed to be less prized than that which 
 had no native associations, that which, as we are wont 
 to say, consisted only in verbal subtleties, I must ask 
 
44 LEARNING AND LEISURE. [LECT, 
 
 you again to remember that words have as much to do 
 with human beings as swords and ingots have; that words 
 were the special weapons of the scholar as distinguished 
 from the warrior and the merchant, though all throe 
 were obliged to use them ; that to enter into the force 
 and conditions of these words and the relations in 
 which they stood to things, did not look like trifling, 
 but like a very solemn and serious occupation indeed. 
 Those crowds who rushed to hear Abelard talk about 
 universals and particulars, were thoroughly awake and 
 in earnest. They supposed that he had something to 
 tell them which concerned them as thinking beings; 
 and what had to do with them in that character struck 
 them as of not less importance than what had to do 
 with them as eating and drinking beings. 
 
 There was, then, a previous education and discipline 
 which led men in these ages to seek for certain kinds 
 of intellectual food. They received the food if it met 
 the particular hunger which had been awakened in 
 them ; if any other had been provided, it would have 
 been rejected. Are we to suppose that it is altogether 
 otherwise in our day ? Have our working people re- 
 ceived no education for which they are not indebted to 
 us ? They have, at all events, some of those books out 
 of which their forefathers read. They see the sun and 
 stars occasionally, even in London and Manchester ; 
 often enough to remove any scepticism as to their con- 
 tinued existence. They have brothers, wives, sons ; 
 tliey have to fight with sorrows, inward and outward 
 — with life and death. They converse with each other 
 in words, as men did in other days, as men do still in 
 
II.] LEARNING AND LEISURE. 45 
 
 otlier classes. Their words follow certain laws, under- 
 stood or misunderstood. They belong to a nation richer 
 "by a thousand years in history than it was when 
 Alfred reigned. The government under which they 
 live affects them for good or evil as his did the inha- 
 bitants of Wessex and the more distant provinces out 
 of which our England was only beginning to form itself. 
 I speak of that which they have in common with those 
 who discovered that the lore of the schools concerned 
 them. We are wont to boast that our century has 
 immeasurable advantages which theirs could not dream 
 of. We talk of our cheap books, magazines, news- 
 papers. We delight to remember that our people throw 
 shuttles, work engines, transmit lightning messages. 
 Can it be that they crave less for intellectual nourish- 
 ment than those did upon whom we look almost with con- 
 tempt, or that they have not the same organs for masti- 
 cating and digesting it ? 
 
 There is one answerc ommonly given to this ques- 
 tion which sounds most plausible and decisive. ' The 
 
 * circumstances of our working people,' it is said, 
 
 * are altogether unlike the circumstances of those with 
 ' whom you compare them. The name we give them 
 
 * points out what the difference is. The schools, you 
 ' admit, though they were open to the poor, were separate 
 < from the ordinary interests and pursuits of men whether 
 *" rich or poor. Our people are absorbed in these interests 
 
 * and pursuits. The successful worker cannot be at the 
 
 * same time the student. Scraps of loose miscellaneous 
 
 * lore he may pick up from time to time. When his daily 
 '■ tasks are over, he may be persuaded sometimes to 
 
46 LEARNING AND LEISURE. [lECT. 
 
 sleep on tlie bencli of a lecture-room rather than on 
 the bench of a beer-house. There will, of course, be 
 exceptions, but, as a rule, leisure and learning have 
 always gone and will always go together. Your busy 
 man of the upper and middle class, even though his 
 occupations may be scientific or literary, or benevolent 
 or religious — even though he can intermit them when 
 he likes — is not a thinker. He knows about a num- 
 ber of topics, but he does not deepen or improve our 
 wisdom or his own. Can you expect a better result 
 from men whose toils are not voluntary, but com- 
 pulsory, and, to a great extent, of a dull mechanical 
 kind? Industry is good, science and literature are 
 good ; but they have always kept at a respectful dis- 
 tance from each other ; nor is that distance likely to 
 be diminished as the demands for the fruits of industry^ 
 and therefore upon the time of those who produce 
 them, become more imperative.' 
 Upon this showing, the chief warrant for our pride 
 and self-congratulation is the reason why we must 
 always despair. Because our works are so much greater 
 than those of our forefathers, we must be content that 
 our men should be less intelligent, less Imman, than they 
 were ; we must expect that the more they achieve, the 
 more ignorant they shall become, the more every higher 
 faculty in them shall be dwarfed. This decree, if it 
 is announced with ever so much confidence, if it looks 
 ever so indisputable, is somewhat too mournful to be 
 immediately acquiesced in. We must at least consider 
 whether the statements on which it rests are quite 
 invulnerable. 
 
11.] LEAENINa AND LEISURE 47 
 
 One peculiarity in the history of our time is curious, 
 and deserves a little to be reflected on. The most intel- 
 ligent patrons of juvenile education, — those who have 
 had most opportunity of seeing how it works, and what 
 are its defects, — are very generally convinced that all 
 our schools ought to be industrial schools. Great as 
 are those diversities of opinion to which I alluded in 
 my last Lecture, there is a startling agreement on this 
 point among those whose judgment is entitled to any 
 respect; I have heard that some who have spent their 
 lives in promoting the instruction of the poor, and whose 
 purses are as open as ever they were, have declared that 
 they will not give a sliilling to any school in whicli work 
 and teaching are not combined. Now, though I am sure 
 that one of their objects is to prepare the children for 
 being tailors or shoemakers or cooks or housemaids 
 hereafter, I cannot believe that this is their chief object. 
 Sullen masters and mistresses may say that they do not 
 care for the school apprenticeship, that they could teach 
 their servants better themselves. But the advantages of 
 this discipline are found to be immediate, not prospective. 
 The children may not at once earn better wages in con- 
 sequence of the facility they have acquired, but they do 
 their school tasks infinitely better. Not only are their 
 bodily powers cultivated, but the words which they 
 read acquire a life and reality which they scarcely ever 
 have when the book stands by itself, when the only 
 business is to spell it out. On the other hand, the 
 work, even if it is imperfectly executed, is understood 
 to be a part of the day's duties ; its character is raised ; 
 and tlie child does not look forward to the workshop as 
 
48 LEAENINa AND LEISURE. [lECT. 
 
 sometliing whicli is to separate Mm from all that lie is 
 doing l)efore lie goes to it. 
 
 These are very substantial arguments on behalf of a 
 course which is adopted by persons, to whose authority 
 and experience we might bow if they had no arguments 
 to bring forward at all. They may go very little way 
 towards shaking the doctrine about the connexion of 
 Learning and Leisure, in any mind in which it has taken 
 root ; but those who believe that the child is the father 
 of the man, and who cannot perceive that the school 
 industry can be different in kind from the industry of 
 the world, or that the last must not serve the same end 
 as the first in a higher degree, because it is more real, 
 may at least be ready to wait for further evidence be- 
 fore they pronounce that work when it is most effective, 
 most productive, must of necessity be incompatible with 
 regular and manly study. 
 
 Some further evidence on this point, I believe, we 
 derive from the experience of other classes. The old 
 adage about the dulness which comes to the schoolboy 
 when he has all work and no play, might be considerably 
 changed without losing its force. Cricket and rowing, 
 when they are pursued earnestly, — and every true .boy 
 must be earnest in all he does, — become very hard 
 work indeed. They are wanted as work, and as work 
 they make the proper school tasks immeasurably more 
 profitable than they would otherwise be. The grammar- 
 school becomes in that sense an industrial school. The 
 games are happily voluntary, not formal and prescribed. 
 But there is an order and discipline in them, as in those 
 pursuits of which the master takes cognisance ; if they 
 
II.] LEAENIXa AND LEISURE. 49 
 
 were to cease, he would feel the difference as much as 
 his pupils. 
 
 At the University the case is still stronger. There 
 the craving for action becomes exceedingly vehement. 
 In some it is satisfied by bodily exercises ; those of the 
 grammar-school giving place to others belonging to a 
 more advanced age, the cricket-bat being deserted for 
 the scarlet coat. But those who never have these im- 
 pulses, or cannot gratify them if they have, exhibit the 
 same eagerness to be about the tasks of the world, — to 
 be doing, and not merely reading. I suppose most per- 
 sons, in looking back to the time they passed at College, 
 know what this feeling is, and to what morbidness and 
 restlessness it gave rise. Though they might not 
 expect to draw any considerable prizes in the lottery 
 of the world, they still wished to be in the midst 
 of it, and, if that was not possible, to obtain what sem- 
 blance of it they could get in rooms and walks which 
 seem to derive their beauty from the exclusion of it. 
 Of course, it is easy to account for all such tempers of 
 mind by repeating commonplaces about the discontent 
 of every one with his own lot, about the longing of the 
 landsman for the sea and the sailor for land, and so 
 forth. If you delight in retailing such wise saws, which 
 have done duty in boys' themes for about two thousand 
 years, you can find an additional instance to support 
 them in your own later experiences, — in the pleasure 
 with which, being amidst the smoke and noise of cities, 
 you reflect upon the quiet of the cloistei, and desire a 
 home in it. Each fact is well worthy of being noted 
 and reflected on ; each confirms and explains the other. 
 
 E 
 
50 LEAENINO AND LEISURE. [LECT. 
 
 But they ought not to suggest so barren a moral, as that 
 no one can be happy where he is ; they should lead us 
 to ask ourselves very seriously, whether the life of 
 thought and the life of action have not a necessary 
 relation to each other, according to the laws of God's 
 providence, according to the constitution of man; and 
 whether there can be contentment — whether there ought 
 to be — when they are divorced from each other. 
 
 I have spoken first, as I did in the former Lecture, 
 of our present experience, because I have no notion 
 that any one will attend to the lessons of the past 
 unless he can connect them with that and use them for 
 the illustration of it. But let us next consider, what 
 the moral and intellectual history of nations and indi- 
 viduals says in favour of that pretty alliteration of 
 Learning and Leisure ; whether they have really any 
 thing more to do with one another than Macedon and 
 Monmouth ; whether, on the other hand, Learning and 
 Working have not been shown in all ages, even when 
 they have been most unnaturally severed, to be bone of 
 each other's bone, flesh of each other's flesh. 
 
 No one has ever doubted that the monastic life and 
 discipline are closely connected with European civiliza- 
 tion. If any Protestant is afraid to confess this fact, 
 he must be an exceedingly bad Protestant"; one who 
 acts upon the maxim which in words he repudiates, that 
 truth may be concealed, and that we may lie for God ;; 
 one who is ignorant to what men we owe the first 
 impulses towards reformation. It is, in fact, the denial 
 of the worth of the monastic life which has led to a 
 monstrous exaggeration of its worth, to the fancy 
 
II.] LEARNING AND LEISURE. 51 
 
 which many in our day are cherishing, that it has a 
 merit in itself, that it is less liable to abuse than 
 other kinds of life, that it is desirable for all countries 
 and all times ; notions which the testimonies of monks 
 and the histories of orders would much more com- 
 pletely refute than any criticisms or commentaries of 
 ours upon them. The history of this life in the west, — 
 for the monastic life of the east has quite a different 
 meaning and character, — begins with the foundation of 
 the monastery near Monte Casino in the middle of the 
 sixth century. Thither came young Benedict in the 
 year 528. There he established his order, there he 
 proclaimed the rule which became the model for all 
 subsequent rules, the standard which the restorers of 
 discipline, after it had decayed, were always seeking to 
 brink back. The Benedictines of the congregation of 
 St. Maur, who hi the seventeenth century were the 
 most learned men in Europe, always maintained, that 
 in devoting themselves to study they were following 
 out the intentions of their founder. Benedict, by the 
 acknowledgment of Gregory the Great, his biographer, 
 was devoted to letters before he left Borne, and he 
 certainly did immeasurably more to promote letters by 
 going to Monte Casino, than he could have done if he 
 had acquired and circulated all the knowledge which 
 was then to be found in the capital. What he did was 
 to lead men away from their farms and their merchan- 
 dise, that they might become the teachers of the nations, 
 the asserters of a spiritual and divine foundation for the 
 culture of western Europe. Now the following passage 
 is taken from the Benedictine rule ; it embodies a maxim, 
 
 e2 
 
52 LEARNING AND LEISURE. [LECT. 
 
 which you will perceive could not be merely a maxim, 
 but was worked into the system. ' Idleness is the 
 enemy of the soul. Therefore, at certain times the 
 brethren must be occupied in the labour of the hands, 
 and again at certain hours in divine study. We 
 think that both ends may be accomplished by this 
 arrangement. From Easter till the Calends of October, 
 let them go out in the morning, and from the first hour 
 till nearly the fourth let them labour for the procuring 
 of that which is necessary. Again, from the fourth 
 hour to about the sixth let them be at leisure for 
 reading. Rising from the table after the sixth hour, 
 let them have an interval of rest upon their beds, or if 
 any one should wish to read, let him so read that he 
 may not disturb his neighbour. At the ninth hour let 
 them again work till the evening if the necessity of 
 the place or their poverty require it, and let them 
 gather the fruits of the earth, seeing that those are 
 true monks who live by the labour of their hands, as 
 our fathers and the Apostles did. But let all things 
 be done moderately and in measure on account of those 
 that are feeble. From the Calends of October till the 
 beginning of Lent, let them be at leisure for reading 
 till the second hour, then from the third to the ninth 
 hour let all labour at the work which is enjoined 
 them. In the days of Lent, let them be at leisure for 
 their readings from the early morning to the third 
 hour, from thence to the eleventh let them do the work 
 which is enjoined them.' 
 I quote this passage that you may see what principles 
 were recognised as fundamental in this discipline. 
 
II.] LEARNING AND LEISURE. 53 
 
 Working and learning so far, not learning and leisure, 
 went hand in hand. Or rather, for this is the phrase 
 which the Benedictine rule adopts, the reading was the 
 leisure. The work of the hands demanded this to 
 quicken and sustain it. The reading demanded equally 
 the work of the hands as the condition of its being 
 healthy and nutritive to the mind. Here in England, 
 the Benedictine rule must have established itself very 
 early ; some modification of it existed probably from 
 the time of Augustine. Whenever the monasteries 
 sought to renovate themselves, or to recover their in- 
 fluence, they had recourse to it ; it became strong under 
 Dunstan, universal under the Normans. But there 
 was, as I observed in my last Lecture, a conflict of the 
 popular spirit with the monastical ; they had alternate 
 triumphs and defeats. Either I think would have 
 destroyed the nation without the other; together they 
 upheld it. The monastery became strong through the 
 union of labour and study ; then it waxed tyrannical and 
 dangerous ; soon it sunk into sloth and contempt. The 
 kings and people became strong through the union of 
 book wisdom with the common homely wisdom ; then 
 the mere traffic or amusement of the Avorld was exalted 
 above everything high and mysterious ; feebleness and 
 sensuality succeeded. Neither power was sufiered to 
 become utterly dead ; the other rose up to struggle 
 with it and to awaken its energies. The witness of 
 each in itself and of both together is the same. ■ Letj 
 learning try to exist by itself and it dies; let common] 
 industry try to exist by itself and it dies. The ease^ 
 to which each gives birth murders its parent. \ 
 
54 LEARNING AND LEISUKE. [LECT. 
 
 You licar mucli of tlic quibbles of tlic schools in the 
 middle ages. I have ventured to question the justice 
 of the word when it is used generally to describe the 
 learning of those ages. The questions which turn upon 
 the meaning of words are not quibbles ; they may lead 
 us into the deepest knowledge of ourselves ; they may 
 clear our minds of the quibbles and contradictions into 
 which they fall through ignorance. J^ut I do not in 
 the least deny that tlic most miserable quibbles grew 
 out of the logical controversies of that period. The 
 eminent men of the day were almost as much aware of 
 it as we can be. John of Salisbury in the reign of 
 Henry II. formally denounced and exposed the trifles 
 and triflcrs that encountered him in the schools as well 
 as in the court. Whence came the trifling of the 
 schools ? The answer has been given again and again 
 by those who have understood the subject best. They 
 have said, ' The schoolmen had too much leisure. They 
 
 * had time to spin endless cobwebs. They were not in 
 
 * commerce witli the business of the world. They 
 
 * could not test by it the worth of the thoughts with 
 *■ whicli their brains were teeming. They could not turn 
 
 * their thoughts into acts, and contemplate them apart 
 
 * from themselves. They were always working in sub- 
 
 * tcrranean chambers, Avhere they forged armour not for 
 ' heroes to wear in their battles on earth, but to play 
 
 * with and fight with by the light of their own fires.' 
 
 I said that John of Salisbury alluded to the court- 
 triflers as well as to the school-triflers of his day. Tliey 
 were men of the most opposite disposition, with an 
 unbounded contempt for each other. Our Plantagenet 
 
II.] LEARNING AND LEISURE. 55 
 
 pnnccs introduced into England the liglit literature of 
 the south of France — the songs of the Troubadour 
 minstrels. Jests and buffooneries came in with ditties 
 and love-plaints, The monarch who received Ireland 
 from Adrian IV., the monarch who led the armies of 
 the Crusaders, delighted to hear the priests, and their 
 faith, and their morals, turned into ridicule by these 
 professors of another kind of lore. I am far from 
 denying that they may have helped to rebuke hypocrisy, 
 to check the predominance of the Latin schools, to 
 show that there were aspects of life of which the 
 ecclesiastics were not taking account, l^ut it must also 
 be understood that they scorned the people at least as 
 much as the priests, that in our country their minstrelsy 
 would have crushed the English tongue as much as the 
 Latin. It should also be remembered, that everything 
 which their enemies said of the grossness and depravity 
 of their lives, and of the effect of their literature upon 
 the South of France, is confirmed by the latest and the 
 most impartial historical inquiries. There are no 
 words strong enough to denounce the wickedness of 
 those who sent a Crusade against that region, or to 
 describe the demoniacal acts by which the soldiers of 
 De Montfort sought to buy for themselves a place in 
 heaven. Nevertheless, intelligent Protestants have 
 maintained that the utter demoralisation which the Pro- 
 vencal literature expressed and promoted, made even 
 that horrible visitation inevitable. The leisure and 
 refinement of these doctors, their scorn of worlc, did 
 not help much in the cultivation of Europe. 
 
 Thank God, its poetry and its art had a different 
 
OQ LEARNING AND LEISUEE. [lECT. 
 
 origin from this. It was not in the Court of Love that 
 Dante found the person who purified and exalted his 
 whole life ; nor was his life the life of leisure which the 
 worshippers in that court coveted and claimed for the 
 minstrel. Trained to the hard work of the camp, bred 
 in the severest discipline of the schools, immersed in 
 the factions of Florence, occupied with the politics of 
 Europe, compelled often to change his friends and to 
 find that those from whom he had hoj)ed most for his 
 countrj were its deceivers and betrayers, he of all men 
 could declare that he was not rocked and dandled into 
 a patriot, a theologian, or a poet. And I apprehend we 
 owe all the benefits which he has conferred on the world 
 to this fact. He was not busy with abstractions, but 
 realities. Eternal principles revealed themselves through 
 events in which he suffered; through men whom he 
 abhorred or loved. He discovered hoAV much grandeur 
 and permanence there is in that which outwardly is 
 paltry and transitory. So the fierceness of party and of 
 his own spirit drove him to seek for an order which 
 will maintain itself in defiance of all factions and 
 emperors and popes ; which will avenge itself upon all. 
 So the formulas of the schools became witnesses to him 
 of that which is and which abides ; so the bright vision 
 which had cheered and sustained him in the sorrows of 
 earth, brightened more and more into the serene and 
 perfect day. 
 
 Possibly it will be admitted that the Poetry of 
 Europe could not have grown up without this union 
 of action and suffering with thought and study. But 
 Painting, it will be said, is born and cradled amidst 
 
II.] LEARNING AND LEISURE. 57 
 
 softer airs and more genial influences ; that at least 
 requires patronage and leisure to foster it. Let us 
 liear what testimony there is on this subject. I need 
 not refer to any other authority, since I cannot refer to 
 a higher, than Mrs. Jameson's ' Memoirs of the Early 
 Italian Painters.' After pointing out the mistake into 
 which many historians have fallen in placing Cimabue 
 at the head of the great revolution in art in the thir- 
 teenth and fourteenth centuries, Mrs. Jameson says 
 that the great merit of that artist was in perceiving and 
 protecting the talent of Giotto, ' than whom no single 
 
 * human being of whom we read has exercised in any 
 
 * particular department of science or art a more imme- 
 ' diate, wide, and lasting influence.' And then she 
 tells a story which has often been told before, but 
 never in clearer or more agreeable language than this : 
 — ' About the year 1289, when Cimabue was already 
 
 * old and at the height of his fame, as he was riding in 
 ' the valley of Perpignano, about fourteen miles from 
 ^ Florence, his attention was attracted by a boy who 
 ' was herding sheep, and who, while his flocks were 
 
 * feeding around, seemed intently drawing on a smooth 
 
 * fragment of slate, with a bit of pointed stone, the 
 ^ figure of one of his sheep, as it was quietly grazing 
 ' before him. Cimabue rode up to him, and looking 
 ' with astonishment at the performance of the untutored 
 ' boy, asked him if he would go with him and learn. 
 
 * To which the boy replied that he was right willing if 
 
 * his father were content. The father, a herdsman of 
 
 * the valley, by name Bondone, being consulted, gladly 
 ' consented to the wish of the noble stranger, and 
 
6S LEAENING AND LEISURE. [LECT. 
 
 * Giotto liencefortli "became tlie inmate and pupil of 
 ' Cimabue.' 
 
 This story, resting on evidence wliich satisfies the 
 accomplished narrator of it, goes much further, when it 
 is connected with her remarks, than merely to prove, 
 what no one perhaps would have doubted, that a 
 shepherd boy may become a great artist. It shows 
 that the refinement and cultivation of a man like 
 Cimabue, sprung from the upper classes of society, 
 commanding all the appliances for his art which were 
 within any man's reach in his time, and possessing 
 himself the divine gift which could turn them to ac- 
 count, was not able to produce any deep and lasting 
 impression upon the arts in Italy till he had evoked the 
 genius of this herdsman's son. I do not wish to push 
 the inference to any unfair length. I only desire that 
 it should be noted as a fact that thus the great art- 
 movement in Europe began. 
 
 I have been the more anxious to speak of these 
 Florentines, because it is to Florence that the supporters 
 of the doctrine, that leisure is the necessary and natural 
 support of learning, commonly turn with the greatest 
 confidence and satisfaction. Passing lightly and not 
 with much complacency over these rough and toilsome 
 workers at the beginning of the fourteenth century — '■ 
 dwelling respectfully but in rather vague language upon: 
 the great inventions of the period which followed, 
 talking magnificently of printing, but very little of the 
 hard hands which wrought the first types, of the lonely 
 and painful efforts of those who conceived and sought to 
 realize the possibility of making them the expressions 
 
II.] LEARNING AND LEISURE. 59 
 
 of thought — alluding with somewhat more distinctness 
 to the merchants who brought the treasures of Greece 
 into the West — thej transport us rapidlj to the gardens 
 of Lorenzo the Magnificent ; they tell us to contemplate 
 the scholars and sculptors and painters who are gathered 
 there ; and they bid us reflect devoutly on the way in 
 which wealth and luxury have been able to change the 
 face of the world, and to substitute refinement for bar- 
 barism. If these raptures were merely called forth by 
 the spectacle of riches employed upon humanising 
 instead of upon umvorthy objects, one would be un- 
 willing that they should be suppressed. Nor do I 
 acknowledge any sympathy with the reactionary school 
 which denounces Pagan literature and Pagan art as 
 cormpting and mischievous. That school, I think, 
 shows great ingratitude to God for some of the blessings 
 He has bestowed on the earliest and the latest ages ; 
 benefits which may be instruments in delivering us 
 from idolatry instead of leading us into it, as some of 
 them did serve to break in pieces the idols which the 
 middle ages had set up. But I must say, at the same 
 time, that this school has found a great moral justi- 
 fication in the tone which has been taken by those 
 against whom it protests. The outrages of Lorenzo and 
 of his family upon liberty, have been excused and 
 tolerated in compliment to their liberality. The brave 
 witness which the Dominican Savonarola bore, that the 
 new art could not reform nations plunged and steeped 
 in iniquity, and that the fosterers of that art in high 
 places were themselves the guiltiest of all, has been 
 denounced as fanatical. Leo X. has been glorified as 
 
60 LEARNING AND LEISURE. [LECT. 
 
 the builder of St. Peter's and the patron of those who 
 adorned it ; and the questions, how he built it and paid 
 for it, and what he was, have been treated as interesting 
 to theologians, but as of little significance for those who 
 are studying the progress of civilization and refinement. 
 Is it wonderful that men of earnest minds should have 
 risen up in their wrath, and have sworn that with such 
 maxims and such doctrines they would have nothing to 
 do ; that they spring not from the reverence for art but 
 from the reverence for wealth ; that they lead not to the 
 refinement of nations in the north or in the south, but 
 to the enfeebling of all their moral, and therefore of all 
 their intellectual, energies? Are they to be greatly 
 blamed if they say that, if they must choose, they would 
 rather have fought by the side of Ziska and his Bohe- 
 mian savages, though they would have crushed all 
 learning, — because they were struggling for a principle, 
 because they were maintaining a privilege for mankind, 
 — than have stood by the side of Leo, or even by the 
 side of Erasmus, in support of a scholarship which was 
 to be upheld by corruption and insincerity ? 
 
 What I am most anxious to assert is, that, by these 
 means and under these protectors, neither learning nor 
 faith could have been maintained, and that the great 
 Reformation movement was as necessary to the one as 
 to the other. It was necessary, because it connected 
 both faith and learning with the ordinary work of man ; 
 because it would not allow either to be shut up in 
 monasteries or universities. Great as the crimes were 
 which attended the destruction of the monasteries in 
 our own land, bad as some of the consequences of that 
 
II.] LEARNING AND LEISURE. 61 
 
 act have been, I am glad to liave the high authority of 
 Mr. Hallam for thinking that its mischief to literature 
 has been exceedingly overrated. The blessings which I 
 spoke of as proceeding from the monasteries at their 
 foundation, were precisely those wliicli they were not 
 conferring, and which they could not confer in this 
 stage of their growth, or rather of their decrepitude. 
 The crimes of their inmates might be far less than they 
 were represented to be, their revenues might fall into 
 hands which had no right to them, and which applied 
 them ill ; but the time, I conceive, was gone by, when 
 they could meet the wants of the English character, and 
 help to promote the intellectual and spiritual growth of 
 its people. They could support beggars ; they could 
 not tfeach men to work, or teach them when they were 
 working. The tradesmen of the towns had grown up 
 under a discipline different from theirs, had fallen under 
 teachers who were generally in opposition to them. 
 That great undefined body which we now call the 
 working classes had not yet taken shape at all. What 
 its demands would be, could not be foretold. It might 
 be guessed that the universities and grammar-schools, 
 as they existed, would not suffice for those who were 
 tied to manual occupations. But the amazing develop- 
 ments of our manufacturing and commercial industry 
 lay hid in the unknown future. Our ancestors in the 
 sixteenth century were removing various obstacles which 
 checked them ; it was not to be expected that they should 
 provide for what might come even of the discoveries and 
 inventions with which they were already acquainted. 
 But though the bodies which had promoted Learning 
 
62 LEARNING AND LEISURE. [lECT. 
 
 in former days miglit fail to promote it in this day, it was 
 still a question whether it might not grow up under in- 
 dividual or state patronage ; whether the same influences 
 which were said to have called forth genius in Italy, 
 which in the judgment of some even created it, might 
 not work with the like efiect in our colder climate. How 
 far do the biographies of our most eminent men, illus- 
 trated by the history of their times, fulfil this expec- 
 tation ? 
 
 The age of Elizabeth is the glorious age of our 
 literature only because it is the great working age of 
 the nation; one in which all thought was connected 
 with actual business, and was used for the interpretation 
 of it. In action our writers on Government and Polity 
 were formed. You would expect to find Hooker, per- 
 haps, cultivating his faculties and acquiring his calm 
 wisdom in some monastical retreat. You find him 
 rocking his child's cradle, shearing sheep, listening to 
 the objurgations of a very troublesome helpmate. Our 
 noble Spenser will at least dwell chiefly in a fantastic 
 world. On the contrary, his fairy-land is his common 
 native earth. He could not distinguish Elizabeth from 
 Gloriana. His supposed allegory mixes with all daily 
 common transactions. It was in that battle for life and 
 death in which every one of us is engaged, that his Sir 
 Guyons and Artegalls and Britomarts and Arthurs, 
 proved their swords and won their laurels. 
 
 A few years ago it might have been thought that 
 Shakspeare ought to have no place in a Lecture on 
 Learning. We should have been told that he was the 
 great type instance of the force of original genius 
 
II.] LEARNING AND LEISUEE. 63 
 
 without learning. I do not anticipate any such objec- 
 tion now. I think all are agreed that historical learning, 
 biographical learning, humane learning in the largest 
 sense of the word, belonged to him, and that it did not 
 drop npon him from the clouds ; that he acquired it ; 
 that his genius enabled him to win it and to use it, but 
 was not in the least a substitute for it. Most assuredly 
 he did not obtain it in leisure, or in any school which 
 exempted him from intercourse with the coarsest persons 
 and occupations. If he had merely read the old chronicles 
 of England he might have commented on them, much 
 as others have commented on him. But he used them 
 to interpret the actual world in which he lived, and 
 so both pages became illuminated. There did not 
 rise up in his study a frightful abstraction, called Man 
 because it was unlike any individual creature that has 
 ever borne the name. There did not arise from his 
 empirical observations a set of walking figures labelled 
 French, Italian, Dane, King, Poet, Doctor, noted by 
 certain costumes and habits of speech, having nothing 
 in common with each other. He found in the chronicles 
 and tales which he read, men of all degrees, ages, and 
 countries, who, because he took them to be essentially of 
 the same flesh and blood and to have the same life with 
 those whom he met in streets and taverns, presented 
 themselves to him, and through him in a degree to us, 
 with an awful distinctness ; so that w^e know they were, 
 and cannot but feel also that they are. And so, with 
 next to no antiquarian or geographical lore, he could yet 
 make our own history intelligible, and make us feel the 
 distinction of climates and races, as no one else has 
 
64 LEARNING AND LEISURE. [LECF. 
 
 done. We ought not to admit for an instant that his 
 circumstances were unfavourable to this cultivation ; 
 that it was marvellous he could be what he was, belong- 
 ing, as he did, to the people. His circumstances were 
 assuredly the best possible for him, as those we are born 
 to are the best for us. It is clear, from the example of 
 liis contemporaries, who had some of the advantages 
 which he had not, that if he had mixed in more artificial 
 society he would have been less refined in his discourse, 
 and, above all, less graceful and reverential in his ap- 
 preciation of the female character, than he was. And, 
 therefore, instead of setting him up as a mere marvellous 
 phenomenon and an excuse for our self-worshij), it 
 might surely be better to ask whether he does not give 
 us the hint of a cultivation at once popular and pro- 
 found, humane and national, which might be available 
 for thousands, who are not separated from their fellows 
 by any accidents of class or condition. 
 
 No one, I think, quite likes to speak of Shakspeare 
 as belonging to the reign of James I., though in that 
 reign his greatest plays were produced, if not written. 
 But there is another name which we feel belongs 
 strictly to this time. Though the dedications which 
 Lord Bacon has prefixed to his diflferent works are not 
 exactly the documents by which one most wishes to 
 remember him, they thrust themselves in our way, to 
 tell us that his conception of a Solomon was somewhat 
 different from ours. Here then we may expect to find 
 the proof that patronage and leisure were the great 
 supports of learning, physical as well as humane. But 
 the evidence fails just when it promises to be most 
 
II.] LEAENIXa AND LEISUEE. 65 
 
 decisive. Of all men who liave contributed to the 
 advancement of knowledge, he was certainly the busiest. 
 The pursuit of a scientific method never for a moment 
 interrupted his occupations as a lawyer and as a states- 
 man. Nor can it be said that science in his hands was 
 at all indebted to patronage. He was ahvays consider- 
 ing how it might be the better for that aid ; but his own 
 position was that of a reformer, of one who was dissatisfied 
 with the condition of studies as he found it, and with 
 the means which were taken to foster them. His own 
 honours and dignities, as they were his chief calamities, 
 so they contributed nothing to the benefit of the studies 
 in which he delighted, except as they connected him with 
 common life, and thus led him to be an experimentalist 
 instead of a theorist. 
 
 I alluded in my last Lecture to the kind of leisure 
 which Milton made for himself, after his return from 
 Italy, when he became the teacher of boys in London. 
 But there is an earlier stage in his life, between his 
 leaving college and his going to Italy, when he may be 
 thought to have cultivated leisure, the years during which 
 he wrote Comus and Lycidas. I would advert for a 
 moment to that time. No one can doubt that Charles I. 
 afforded a much more graceful patronage to literature 
 and to art than his father had done : not being himself 
 the competitor of learned men, and caring more for the 
 refined than for the scholastic parts of learning. The 
 masques, which had been such fashionable entertain- 
 ments in the former reign, probably acquired additional 
 ^grace and dignity from the encouragement of Henrietta. 
 I allude to that particular branch of art and literature, 
 
 P 
 
63 LEARNING AND LEISURE. [leCT. 
 
 for both art and literature were combined in it, (Inigo 
 Jones liad contributed his aid to it as well as Ben 
 Jonson,) because it enables me to show you what Milton, 
 the young Puritan, could effect in the very line that 
 seemed especially appropriated to the court poets. They 
 had gone on repeating, with more or less skill and 
 talent; the same fantastical combinations of classical and 
 fairy mythology, trusting really much more to the 
 decorations, or to the ladies, who appeared as god- 
 desses of the seas or the woods, than to the poetry which 
 illustrated their looks. In his noble and gorgeous 
 masque he discovers a purpose and order in that which 
 had been merely grotesque. That which at best had 
 merely reflected the tone of the court, liad been sensual 
 or correct according to its tendencies, is at once trans- 
 lated into a picture of the struggle of life, of the war 
 which the spirit, seeking truth and purity, has to engage 
 in with Comus and his midnight crew, of the divine 
 powers which are at hand to break the spells of the 
 enchanter, of the home which there is for those who 
 seek it in the midst of the strife and after the victory. 
 And all this is done, not by introducing dry moralities, 
 not by breaking loose from the old forms, but by quick- 
 ening them with another spirit, by substituting the 
 human life for the court life. Trained in stern Hebrew 
 wisdom, possessed with the divinity and the morality of 
 the Hebrew books, he could impart to the classical and 
 the romantic lore, in each of which he excelled all his 
 contemporaries, a new meaning, and yet the very mean- 
 ing which we feel must always have been latent in them.. 
 But all would have been in vain if he had been merely 
 
II.] LEAENING AND LEISURE. 67 
 
 a scholar, and liacl not felt tliat scliolarsliip is meant to 
 penetrate and explain tlie work of the world. 
 
 That the literature which was most popular after the 
 Eestoration sought for leisure as its ally, I am not 
 disposed to deny ; nor yet that the scholastic learning 
 of that time often claimed the same companion, and 
 shut itself out from the society of men. But the most 
 learned men were, on the whole, the most practical. In 
 the practical devotion of Jeremy Taylor, in the prac- 
 tical sense of South, lies the strength of each. The 
 great essayists of the reign of Queen Anne did not 
 fancy that literature ought to be separated from business. 
 Addison may not have been a good Secretary of State ;. 
 but if he had thought that the business of a Secretary 
 of State had nothing to do with the business of a Man 
 of Letters, we certainly should not have had the ' Free- 
 holder,' probably not the ' Spectator.' The charm of 
 Addison, as it is of the writer who most resembles him 
 in our day, lies in the union of the humane spirit of 
 the man of letters with the wisdom which can only have 
 been acquired by the man of business. We are taking 
 counsel with one who knows the world better than we 
 do, but who is also a friend able to help us in thinking- 
 as well as in acting. 
 
 There is, however, an amazing difference between 
 those writings of the beginning of the last century and 
 the delightful author to whom I have just alluded. 
 You might read through the ' Spectator ' and the 
 ' Guardian ' without fancying that there were any 
 people besides ladies and gentlemen and their servants 
 
 r2 
 
63 LEARNING AND LEISURE. [LECT. 
 
 ill God's universe. If the author of tlie ' Friends in 
 Council' has discovered another set of inhabitants in 
 our pL^net, and considers that it is a great part of his 
 vocation and of ours to help them, no one would be 
 more willing to allow, than he how much he is indebted 
 for his better state of mind to events which have hap- 
 pened and to persons who have lived between Addison's 
 age and his. Every one now will recognise in the 
 great Methodist movement of the last century a power 
 which called an outlying world of animal existence 
 into moral existence. Almost every one will see in 
 one of the great enemies of that movement, Samuel 
 Johnson, a sign that the refined age with which the 
 century began was passing by degrees into a rough 
 and working age, — that the scholar was not to hope 
 much more from the patronage of kings and nobles. 
 Of Johnson's life, in this point of view, I can have 
 nothing to say which has not been anticipated by 
 Mr. Carlyle ; and I should be afraid of showing, by 
 some unfortunate phrase, that Johnson is less a hero 
 with me than he is with him. As a proof that Learning 
 and Work are more nearly associated in the lives of 
 eminent men in later days, as in earlier ones, than 
 Learning and Leisure, I may claim both the facts of 
 Johnson's life and, what is of no less weight, the 
 authority of his panegyrist. 
 
 There is one more name to which I must allude, 
 though I am again venturing on ground which Mr. 
 Carlyle has travelled, and this time with the enthusiasm 
 of a patriot as well as of a hero-worshipper. When 
 
II.J LEARNING AND LEISURE. 69 
 
 I speak of Bobert Burns, it is not with the intention of 
 descanting upon his powers, far less of demanding any 
 new wonder for them. How good it would have been 
 for him and for his contemporaries if they had won- 
 dered less, if it had seemed to them nothing at all sur- 
 prising that an Ayrshire peasant should think more 
 freely and speak more nobly than those w4io had been 
 trained amidst the forms of artificial life, who were in 
 less close intercourse with that which is native and 
 homely ! For then they would have sought less to 
 remove him out of his sphere into theirs ; they would 
 have wished more to profit by his strength, than that he 
 should be a sharer in their weakness. I hope the ludi- 
 crous stories of the behaviour of his patrons to him, 
 the mournful stories of the effects of it upon his own 
 mind, which are gathered together and so effectively 
 brought home to us in Mr. Lockhart's biography, have 
 not been lost upon this generation. I hope all are 
 beginning to learn that the profession of Van Amburgh 
 is by no means the most honourable or the most safe 
 of professions. There are better things to be done than 
 to exhibit lions, or feed them or tame them. If we can 
 by any means assist in forming men, for which end 
 we must teach them, and learn from them, not patronise 
 them, that surely will be a better and more healthful 
 work for our age and for the ages to come. 
 
 All I have endeavoured to do in this Lecture is, to 
 show you that the hindrances to this result do not arise 
 from the fact that Work and Learning have a natural 
 antipathy to each other. The practical difficulties in 
 
( 
 
 70 LEAENING AND LEISURE. [LECT. 
 
 t]i3 present condition of society wliicli liinder their 
 union, which threaten to make tlie separation wider and 
 more hopeless, I propose to consider hereafter. I shall 
 conclude what I have been saying to-day, by alluding 
 to the subject of which I was speaking at the end of 
 the last Lecture. You may think that my remarks have 
 had an almost exclusive reference to men, — that there 
 was something ominous in my beginning from the 
 monastery. On the contrary, I believe that the persons 
 who have reconciled the schools with the world, the life 
 of thought with the life of action, have been women, 
 and, most of all, the women of England. An attempt 
 was made to unite them in the monastery, but it failed, 
 as every attempt must fail ultimately, to do that by 
 our methods which God has done by his methods. 
 Looking at the best female literature of our own and of 
 former days, this, as it seems to me, has been its great 
 function, to claim that all thought shall bear upon 
 action and express itself in action, that it shall not 
 dwell apart in a region of its own. I believe there is 
 another task equally necessary, which it falls, perhaps, 
 more within our province to perform, to show that tliere 
 cannot be action without thought, that^^he power to 
 rule the world without must come from the world 
 witliin.J If each sex fulfils its own calling, there will 
 be a blessing, of which others besides those whom we 
 call the working-people will be the inheritors. If either 
 fails, both will suffer, and suffer in a worse way than by 
 the loss of any material advantages. The question has 
 been greatly discussed in our day, what is the force of 
 
II.] LEARNING AND LEISURE. 71 
 
 ■the apostolical injunction, " If a man will not work, 
 neither let him- eat," and under what limitations it is 
 applicable to us. There is a more terrible sentence 
 still, of which we should seek diligently to avert the 
 execution upon ourselves and upon those who have all 
 they need of outward consolations — " If a man will not 
 work, neither let him think." 
 
72 leaeninCt and [lect. 
 
 LECTURE in. 
 
 LEARNING AND MONEY WORSHIP INCOMPATIBLE. 
 
 In my last Lecture, I attempted to prove tliat Learning' 
 and Work are not natural enemies, but natural allies. 
 The word loorh I used in the largest sense. From the 
 instance of Dante I argued that the most intense interest 
 in practical politics — even in what we should call factious 
 politics — did not prevent a man in the thirteenth centur j 
 from being at once a profound schoolman and a divine 
 poet. From tlie instance of Bacon I di'cw the inference 
 that a laborious lawyer and statesman might be the re- 
 former and methodiser of physical studies. Undoubtedly 
 the occupations of the Florentine and of the Englishman 
 were not manual ; they were working with their brains 
 as priors and as chancellors, not less than when they 
 were composing poems or treatises on the Advancement 
 of Learning. But their occupations were of a kind which 
 are ordinarily supposed to interfere with the pursuit of 
 science and literature. Leisure from these toils has been 
 esteemed even more necessary to secure calmness and 
 extent of knowledge for the student, than freedom from 
 manual exercises, which it is admitted may, under cer- 
 
III.] MONEY WORSHIP INCOMPATIBLE. 73 
 
 tain limitations, be. a variety for liis mind, and be liealtli- 
 ful to liis body. If, however, proofs were wanted that 
 manual labour not taken up at hazard, or merely for 
 change and recreation, but wrought into the tissue of 
 the life, did not interfere with thought and with letters, 
 there was the example of the Benedictine monks, with 
 which I began, — there was the example of Robert Burns, 
 with which I concluded. Labour was enjoined upon the 
 one as the very condition of their social existence, as 
 necessary to their devotion and their learning. The 
 labour of the Scotch peasant was not only appointed for 
 him from his birth; he owed to it his truest and highest 
 inspirations. 
 
 This evidence, if it is earnestly considered, will, I 
 think, suggest the reply to an argument against the 
 possibility of educating, in any regular manner, those 
 who are always at work, which I hinted at in my last 
 Lecture, but which I took no pains to confute. ' Even,' 
 it has been said, ' the activity of those in the upper and 
 ^ middle classes of society who impose upon themselves 
 
 * the duty of speaking and presiding at assemblies, bc- 
 
 * nevolent, literary, and religious, evidently prevents 
 
 * them from thinking steadily and continuously ; it 
 
 * makes them quick and ready in retailing what has 
 ' been wrought out by others and sanctioned by the 
 
 * voice of the circle in which they move, but incapable 
 
 * of increasing our supplies of wisdom or of pointing us 
 
 * to springs from which it may be renewed. How much 
 ^ more incredible,' the reasoner continues, ^ is it that 
 
 * men who work every day, who work because they 
 
 * must, who work at tasks in general mechanical and 
 
74 LEAHNIXa AND [lECT. 
 
 * not intellectual, should ever do more than sip for a 
 
 * chance moment at the streams or the puddles of know- 
 
 * ledge, not having time to ascertain even whether they 
 ' are clear or muddy ! ' 
 
 If it were true that the worker is only a hustler under 
 compulsion, this conclusion would be irresistible. But 
 the worker is emphatically not a bustler; he cannot be 
 one. To fulfil his character, he must go on steadily 
 from step to step ; there must be no hurry, and no inter- 
 mission. And he is continually reminded how little he 
 can do, how much is done for him. He can, according 
 to Bacon's grand aphorism, but bring two things together, 
 or separate them; the rest nature transacts in secret. The 
 fever of the miscellaneous man, of the man who hopes to 
 prevail by his multitude of words, is altogether foreign 
 from him. Just so far as he is a producer, he is silent 
 and calm. 
 
 This assertion is equally true of the manufacturer as 
 of the agricultural labourer. I do not undervalue the 
 differences between them. I have already spoken of the 
 life of Burns in the open air, following his plough upon 
 the mountain side, before he went to Edinburgh and 
 became used to saloons, as most favourable to the free- 
 dom of his spirit. But the processes which the sower 
 and reaper has to observe, though simpler and more 
 august, are scarcely more exact and successive than 
 those by which the rags grow into paper, or the pin is 
 pointed and headed. There is a law regulating both. 
 If we mean by a law of nature, that which exists inde- 
 pendently of man and which he cannot transgress, to 
 which he must adapt himself, then there is a law of 
 
III.] MONEY WORSHIP INCOMPATIBLE. 75 
 
 nature for tlie stocking-weaver as well as for tlie grazier 
 or tlie ploughman. 
 
 I am told, and I can well believe, that some of our 
 mechanics find an unspeakable delight in studying 
 mathematics ; and that amidst the noise of mills, with 
 scarcely any external help, they have made great pro- 
 gress in them. The sense of succession and order has 
 been so much cultivated in them by the pursuits in 
 which they are continually engaged, there is such a 
 witness to them of mighty laws bounding and defining 
 all the material things with which they are conversant, 
 that to find what they find in geometry, the actual prin- 
 ciples to which they have been conforming themselves 
 brought out in perfect sequence, must be a satisfaction 
 such as we can scarcely dream of. I remember well 
 how we used to remark at Cambridge the head and 
 face of the Northern who was most likely to be 
 fashioned into a ■wrangler. Evidently his preparation 
 had been one of work, of converse with realities much 
 more than of initiation into books. Many of us could 
 scarcely understand what in the world we had to do 
 with mathematics ; they mingled so little with the 
 thoughts that had most occupied us. The Northern 
 found in them answers to questions which he had 
 encountered. He was not forming a first awkward 
 acquaintance with unsympathisiug lines and circles ; 
 they were old friends. The strict demonstration was 
 the beautiful harmony of that which had been crude 
 and discordant in his mind hitherto. 
 
 If you read the biographies of such men as Arkwright 
 ,and Brindley, you may trace the curious and interesting 
 
76 LEARNING AND [LECT. 
 
 process "by wliich those wlio have been busy only with 
 coarse mechanical employments waken up to the per- 
 ception of powers which they are themselves wielding, 
 of laws which govern these powers, of the way in which 
 the powers, intelligently and lawfully used, may produce 
 the newest combinations and the mightiest effects. We 
 who are dazzled by these combinations and effects, — in 
 the case of Arkwright, especially I am afraid, by the 
 gi-eat capital which he accumulated, — forget the painfal 
 throes of discovery, the mysterious struggles in the man 
 himself, before he could understand his own meaning, or 
 bring it to light. But there are some who think the 
 human soul more precious than the spinning-jenny. 
 They will dwell upon the st<ips that led to the invention 
 with more wonder and awe than upon all its material 
 results. They will find in those steps, the hints of that 
 Avhich exists hidden from others, hidden from himself, in 
 every mechanic, and which it is worth more pains to 
 call forth than to produce all the cotton which shall 
 be produced while the world lasts. 
 
 Let us then thoroughly assure ourselves, that there is 
 nothing in industry itself of any kind, agricultural or 
 manufacturing, nothing in the most steady, persevering, 
 creative industry, to hinder steady, persevering, creative 
 thouglit. It should be further understood, that there i^ 
 nothing in the meeting together of a great number of 
 men under one roof for the purpose of work, which can 
 be unfavourable to their learning. That must be a vast 
 advantage in every way. Intercourse must be better 
 than solitary toil. The discipline and arrangement 
 which arises from the apportionment of tasks to one 
 
III.] MOXEY WORSHIP IXCOMPATIBLE. 77 
 
 and to another, must assist in cultivating those habits 
 of order and of distinction which the student needs. 
 ISTor can the toil be at all the worse, because it is pursued 
 for the sake of a livelihood. That circumstance, taken 
 by itself, gives greater solidity and earnestness to the 
 labour, and to the mind of the labourer. And that this 
 livelihood is not to be for the worker only, but for a wife 
 and children, is an inconceivable blessing. Domestic 
 sympathies afid hopes are everything to the nianual 
 worker. They are everything, also, to the intellectual 
 worker. Their close relationship to each other is proved 
 in no way more clearly, than by the help and refresh- 
 ment which both derive from this source. 
 
 And yet — there is no use in concealing it — facts seem 
 to show that, in this country, the class of mechanics as a 
 class are not disposed to connect study with work, even 
 when the greatest pains are taken and the most reason- 
 able methods used, to point out the bond which there is 
 between them. I will remind you of one or two experi- 
 ments which have been made for this end, and of the 
 success which has attended them. 
 
 The Mechanics' Institute is entitled to the first place. 
 We owe it to the benevolence and the wisdom of the 
 late Dr. Birkbeck. The name denoted very success- 
 fully the object of its founder. He was not providing 
 an instruction for the poor as poor. He was not looking 
 above the poor to the class of shopkeepers and trades- 
 men. He was distinctly aiming at those who were 
 working with their hands, or working with any other 
 machine. He acknowledges them not as hands or as 
 machines, but as men capable of being instituted or 
 
78 LEAENINa AND [lECT. 
 
 educated into a knowledge of the work tliej were en- 
 gaged in. That was evidently Dr. Birkbeck's object. 
 He would have a race of intelligent craftsmen, of men 
 who knew what they were about, who were not merely 
 doing to-day what they did yesterday, because they did 
 it yesterday. The idea is a most precious and fertile 
 one. There is a hint in it which I ho23e to follow out 
 in these Lectures, and which I am therefore most 
 anxious that you should refer to the persoti, who did so 
 much to give it form and to make it effectual in his 
 own time. Thoughts having such a purpose could not 
 be wasted, even if one plan or a hundred plans that 
 were built on them proved abortions. But the Me- 
 chanics' Institutes have not been abortive. They have 
 produced good amidst great discouragement, while many 
 of us, who should have taken part in them_, have looked 
 on coldly and indifferently. To a certain class of young 
 men in towns, they must often have been very service- 
 able. The class, however, has not in general been the 
 one which Dr. Birkbeck sought to help. The tradesman 
 has rather taken the place of the mechanic. Of course, 
 one does not grudge him this or any other intellectual 
 privilege ; but the character of the teaching has been, I 
 suspect, insensibly altered in consequence of the persons 
 who receive it. They do not come to the lecture-room, 
 so much to be instructed respecting the meaning of their 
 own occupations, as to acquire general information on a 
 great many topics. Hence there is frequently a com- 
 plaint, that the lectures in Mechanics' Institutes (rather 
 graze the surface of men's minds than penetrate into 
 them.^ The evil will probably be much abated if the 
 
III.] MONEY WORSHIP INCOMPATIBLE. 79 
 
 sclieme proposed Iby tlie Society of Arts takes effect, 
 and the different institutions tlirougliout the land look 
 to a common centre. Still it is scarcely to be hoped 
 that they will ever supply the most serious necessities 
 of the working people. We may be thankful enough, 
 that they have borne and do bear witness to the existence 
 of those necessities. 
 
 The founders of the Evening Classes for Young Men 
 have profited by the experience of the Mechanics' Insti- 
 tutes, and have avoided their greatest danger. In them 
 the pupils learn, and do not merely listen. The teacher 
 gives lessons, not lectures. The experiment is a very 
 noble one, and is a great step towards a methodical 
 education. If the classes were more connected together, 
 if the teachers thoroughly understood each other, they 
 might be still more useful. But these classes consist, 
 I believe, almost exclusively of clerks in offices and 
 young men from shops. They are professedly for their 
 use, and therefore they fulfil their object more com- 
 pletely than the Institutes, which were meant for 
 journeymen. 
 
 Before these classes were commenced, an effort had 
 been made, upon the success of which their success must 
 mainly depend. If shops are open till eight or nine 
 in the evening, the time which the shopmen or shop- 
 women can have for improving themselves must be 
 very short indeed, and their weariness must make that 
 short time often nearly useless. Hence the movement for 
 closing shops at six or seven. A more desirable object 
 than this we can scarcely think of. The attempt has 
 been as successful as its promoters had any right to 
 
80 LEARNING AND [leCT. 
 
 expect it would Tbe, tliougli far less successful than its 
 intrinsic merits and their zeal and fidelity entitled it to 
 be. Like all attempts to remove a wrong and to do 
 right, it has consequences beyond the immediate one at 
 which it aims. To hear men asserting continually that 
 the 2:ains of trade are not worth the sacrifice of the bodies 
 and souls of those who are engaged in it, is very profit- 
 able to us ; infinitely more profitable, because we are 
 inclined to dismiss the assertion as a mere idle and 
 tiresome truism which we all believe ; whereas we do 
 not believe it, any of us. We may believe that it is 
 very shocking for tradesmen to sell goods which cost 
 the price of blood : but we do not think it at all 
 shocking that we should buy at the same price, though 
 abstinence must of course be far less serious to us. 
 The great good the abettors of this movement have 
 done and are doing, is that they appeal to the con- 
 sciences of the consumers more than of the sellers ; that 
 they remind each of us of his own responsibility, when 
 we are inclined to shift it upon others. And they 
 teach us, moreover, when we are about to make some 
 great display of benevolence and self-sacrifice, that if 
 we are really minded to help our fellow-creatures, very 
 little acts, or the not doing certain things we have been 
 in the habit of doing, would be immeasm*ably more to 
 the purpose. 
 
 But this scheme, though set on foot expressly for the 
 purpose of enabling hard-worked men to obtain leisure 
 for study in the evening, does not apply to mechanics. 
 With them it is perhaps scarcely popular, since they 
 are obliged to make any purchases which they have to 
 
III.] MONEY WOESHIP INCOMPATIBLE. 81 
 
 make at tlie end of the day. Tliey have, however, begun 
 to urge the importance of short hours in their own work. 
 This was one of the principal demands in the engineering 
 strike of the year before last. It was put expressly on 
 the ground that the workmen had not time for the 
 cidtivation of their miuds. I have no doubt that the 
 argument was used sincerely, though possibly if the 
 Tforking people felt that they were obtaining pecuniary 
 benefit by longer liours they might not adhere to their 
 own principle. Still they have distinctly confessed their 
 need of further instruction; they have claimed the 
 means of obtaining it at the hands of those who are using 
 their work ; they have given us a right to say, ' We will 
 
 * do our utmost that you may not be defrauded of that 
 
 * which you agree with us in thinking is your rightful 
 
 * inheritance.' 
 
 This is an effort towards the union of Learning with 
 Work from the side of the labourer. A still more sys- 
 tematic effort to bring about this union has been made on 
 the side of the employer. The conductors of the Belmont . 
 Factory have not merely abridged the hours of labour 
 for the sake of affording time for education. They 
 have sanctioned the great principle which the Monas- 
 teries first inculcated, that an alternation of Labour 
 and Study is the proper law of human life. They have 
 had the courage actually to carry this principle into 
 practice. 'Noy have they confined themselves to the 
 boys and girls of the establishment. Mr. Wilson's 
 letters show that he is undertaking the education of 
 adults in the noblest spirit. The mixture of manly 
 exercises of the body with those of the mind, and the 
 
 G 
 
82 LEARNING AND [LECT. 
 
 thoroiiglily liUmaii character wliicli lias been thrown 
 into the whole machinery, make this one of the most 
 striking and pregnant experiments of onr time. 
 
 But it will not he the blessing to us which it might 
 he, if it does not lead us to reflect on the cause which 
 has rendered most of the attempts to connect Work with 
 Learning which we have made hitherto, so unsatisfactory. 
 I have shown you that Learning has no necessary con- 
 nexion with Leisure. But it has the most intimate 
 connexion with Best. There cannot he two words 
 which represent more different thoughts tlian these 
 two ; there cannot be anything more perilous than the 
 confusion of them. In the old degenerate Monasteries 
 there was plenty of Leisure ; everybody was claiming 
 it, seeking for it, inventing methods of enjoying it. 
 But there was no Rest. There was endless hurry and 
 weariness in pursuit of animal enjoyments, and in de- 
 vising means to kill the time which hung so heavily. 
 We see a number of men in the Universities, a number 
 of men in London, with a prodigious weight of Leis\n-e, 
 but they are certain to be the most restless people we 
 •can encounter. On the other hand, if you think of the 
 men to whose biographies I alluded in my last Lecture, 
 you will find that the very painfulness of some of their 
 occupations drove them to seek for a home and a resting- 
 place, not by casting them aside, but in the very midst of 
 them. Dante, Hooker, Milton, — it was the same with 
 all. The outward world of worry and turbulence, in and 
 for which they were to work, made it more abundantly 
 necessary that they shoidd feel after and find an 
 inner world of peace and quietness, to which their spirits 
 
III.] MONEY WOKSHIP INCOMPATIBLE. 83 
 
 might retreat, wliicli they might feel was as truly their 
 dwelling as the confused city or house, — as Florence witli 
 its noisy parties, or Aldersgate Street with its noisy 
 boys, — was tlic dwelling of their bodies. And this they 
 felt to he no special privilege which belonged to them ; — 
 they lived to vindicate it for alL They discovered that 
 which the spirit of the stupidest man in Florence or 
 London needed and was craving for. 
 
 IN^ow all that education which had so miglity a power 
 over England, which seemed at first to stand aloof from 
 its different occupations, which then blended so won- 
 derfully with them and sustained them, was effectual 
 because it bore this testimony. Warring men were 
 reminded by these schools of a Peace wliich did not 
 imply the cessation from toil, — ' a central Peace sub- 
 sisting at the heart of endless agitation.' They were 
 led to perceive that there are two kingdoms, one of 
 which is meant for us just as much as the other. How 
 to bring them together, liow to hinder them from 
 clashing and interfering with each other, was a great 
 problem, the great problem of all. But each was always 
 confessed to be necessary to tlie other ; and there was a 
 secret assurance that if it was so, they could not be 
 confined to two different sets of subjects ; that the 
 same man must at the same time be a citizen of both, 
 and that it was his mistake, not the mistake of the 
 order in which he was placed, if there was any divided 
 allegiance, any opposition of interests. 
 
 This, it seems to me, is what we were bound to 
 teach our working men, and this is what we have 
 failed to teach them. We are under no obligation 
 
 G 2 
 
84 LEARNING AND [lECT. 
 
 whatever to tell tliem — the wise man forbids lis to tell 
 tliem — that the former days were better than these. 
 We might have shown them very clearly that these 
 days are better than the former days ; better because 
 they offer increased facilities for work ; better because 
 we can understand more perfectly the principle which 
 is imj)lied in work ; better because nominally and in 
 theory at least we do not divide the schools from com- 
 mon human life as they were once divided. But we 
 can only maintain this boast of superiority, if we regard 
 every man, more thoroughly than our ancestors did, 
 as capable of receiving a wisdom that cannot be 
 gotten for gold, and which the gold and the crystal 
 cannot equal. 
 
 Instead of doing this, we have done, I fear, the re- 
 verse of this. We have led the labourer to think tliat 
 the wisdom we possess, and of which we would give 
 a portion to him, can be gotten for gold ; and that its 
 value can be represented very accurately in gold or 
 silver or copper measures. Whatever kind of instruc- 
 tion we have offered and recommended to him, we have 
 tried by this scale. ^ If you will only acquire these 
 
 * fragments of physical information, who can tell you 
 
 * that you may not be as rich as Sir Eichard Arkwright ? 
 
 * If you only make yourself master of these dogmas of 
 
 * political economy, what advantage you will have over 
 
 * those about you, who know nothing of the laws which 
 ' regulate wages ! If you will but let your children 
 '■ swallow these lumps of divinity, there are examples 
 
 * without end of well-behaved boys who were sent to 
 
 * College, and became in due time Prebendaries and 
 
III.] MONEY WORSHIP INCOMPATIBLE. 85 
 
 ^ Deans, to saj nothing of richer stalls that may be 
 ' reserved for them in some other state of existence/ With 
 these and the like pious frauds, together with the com- 
 fortable assurance, in the last case, that if they will 
 receive our wisdom they will be saved from the danger 
 of being too wise, we have stuffed the ears of those to 
 whom we might have held out promises and hopes of 
 quite a different kind, — promises and hopes which would 
 not have proved, as these do, utterly disappointing in the 
 millionth case in which they are literally fulfilled, — 
 promises and hopes which do not lead one of our fellow- 
 creatures to think that he is fortunate only when he 
 obtains that which others cannot have. 
 
 These arguments, if they stood by themselves, would 
 confute themselves. The working people would have 
 sense to laugh at them ; the only effect of our using them 
 would be, that we should increase the suspicion of our 
 honesty which they entertain already. But they conspire 
 with a multitude of other influences which are tending 
 to make Work not that brave, noble occupation of 
 men's hands, which is so beneficial to the labour and 
 the rest of their minds, but a feverish effort to pro- 
 duce quickly that which may look well, and be puffed 
 largely, and be sold at a low rate, to the great loss of 
 the purchaser. The sense of responsibility which 
 led the Greek to be as diligent in working out that 
 part of the statue which would be hidden by the wall 
 of the temple as that part which would be exposed 
 to the eye, because the gods would look upon both, 
 seems to have departed from Christendom, which should 
 cherish it most. The flimsy texture which cannot 
 
SQ . LEARNINa AND [lECT. 
 
 instantly be discovered — the carelessness wliicli will only 
 cause some boiler to explode in a distant ocean, where 
 no one will hear who has perished — is considered no 
 outrage upon the modern morality, to which we are 
 training our workmen because we have first imbibed it 
 ourselves. 
 
 I am not now to point out the different forms of this 
 trade morality, and to show you how it is affecting all 
 kinds of industry. That has been done frequently and 
 with great ability, by persons who have a much more 
 experimental acquaintance with the subject than I have. 
 I am referring to these maxims now only as they bear 
 upon the education of the working classes. I wish you 
 to feel that they are great and permanent hindrances to 
 that education; that to all intents and purposes they 
 make it impossible, by making the ends at which it 
 should aim unintelligible, and by turning the means 
 tliat would promote these ends into the destruction of 
 them. 
 
 If steady work is favourable to Education, unsteady 
 work, — gambling work, — (it is almost profaneness to join 
 two such words together,) must be the most fatal obstacle 
 to it. And the truth must be spoken. We are becoming 
 a nation of gamblers. Life is beginning to be regarded 
 as a shuffling of cards, as a throwing of. dice. We do 
 not ask what we are to do, but what is likely to turn 
 up, if we make such and such a cast. Handicrafts, 
 Trades, Professions, are to be undertaken upon a calcu- 
 lation of chances, not from the sense of a vocation. 
 How can we think quietly, how can we pursue science, 
 which only converses witli that whicli is, while our 
 
III.] MONEY WORSHIP INCOMPATIBLE. 87 
 
 whole iiiinds are busy with possibilities and coutiu- 
 gencies ? 
 
 I state the case in this way, because I wish you ear- 
 nestly to reflect, 1st. That precisely the same disease 
 which is affecting the working class, is affecting all 
 classes ; 2d. That the disease has its root in a habit of 
 mind, which is communicated from the higher classes to 
 the working class ; 3d. That there is no way so effectual 
 of restoring the whole of society to its right tone, as by 
 doing what in us lies for the reformation of this portion 
 of it. 
 
 We often hear complaints of the habits which young 
 men contract at College, and of the tolerance of these 
 habits by their superiors there. Believe me, you can 
 do more to correct and cure those habits than all the 
 Tutors and Heads of Houses in the world. If you take 
 care that the notion shall be checked among all over 
 whom you have influence, that Money is the measure of 
 worth : that professions exist for the sake of the Money 
 which they bring in ; that the acquisition and the accu- 
 mulation of it is the purpose for which men are to live 
 and die, you will be laying your axe to the root of an 
 evil from Avhich the best sumptuary regulations can 
 only cut off a few branches, if they do not^ as is some- 
 times the case, promote its growth. Now that vulgar 
 belief which is tending to the degradation of the higher 
 study among us, and of all those noble pursuits which 
 directly draw their life from study, is the very one which 
 is making trade insincere and false, the very one wliich 
 is reducing the labourer into a serf. I use that last- 
 phrase advisedly. I wisli it to be taken literally, 
 
88 LEARNING AND [lECT. 
 
 and I will try to explain wliy it is not an exaggerated 
 one. 
 
 Mr. Soutliey, when lie wrote liis ^ Colloquies on the 
 State and Prospects of Society/ had a singular advantage. 
 As he was sitting in his study at Keswick, he received 
 a visit from the shade of Sir Thomas More, who brought 
 the wisdom of the sixteenth century to hear on the cir- 
 cumstances of the nineteenth. I cannot claim the 
 benefit of any similar instruction. Ghosts in our days 
 choose both the places and persons they shall visit 
 judiciously. Sir Thomas More knew that he should 
 find at Keswick both a goodly prospect and a most 
 intellia'cnt auditor. But I find in the MSS. of a friend, 
 not very legibly written, the report of a conversation 
 which he states himself to have had in a railway caniage 
 with some person, whom he describes so mysteriously 
 that he may, for aught I can affirm to the contrary, have 
 been a humble contemporary of More, though the style of 
 his discourse may not justify me in attributing it to him 
 or any other accomplished scholar. After some vague 
 and not very intelligible account of his companion's out- 
 ward appearance, my friend says, ' You will not wonder 
 
 * that I was somewhat startled by his first speech. He 
 ' pronounced very emphatically these words, which he 
 ' was reading, I presume, out of a newspaper^ " Freedom, 
 ^ Civilization, Commerce ! " and then added, " Humph ! 
 
 * These this learned Theban says are the glories of 
 ' England. She will not have any one of the three 
 
 * fifty years hence." I was silenced for a moment by 
 
 * this outrageous ejaculation ; then, remembering the 
 
 * book I held in my hand, I asked him whether it had 
 
III.] MONEY WOESHIP INCOMPATIBLE. 89 
 
 been liis good fortune to read " Uncle Tom's Cabin? " 
 He said, " He knew what was in it." Whether he had 
 arrived at his knowledge by the ordinary methods, or 
 by some magnetical intuition, he did not explain* 
 " And yet you think that England is less free, or likely 
 to be less free, than other nations?" "What is there 
 in that book to cure me of such an opinion?" " What! 
 Does not a particularly intelligent and patriotic writer, 
 belonging to the country which calls itself, and is called 
 by Europe generally, the freest in the world, speak of 
 us and of our possessions as the refuge for the slaves 
 whom America keeps in bondage? Is that no evidence 
 in our favour?" "Does Mrs. Stowe," he rejoined, 
 " explain to you in what Freedom, according to her 
 judgment of it, consists ? " " Very clearly. She 
 makes it evident that a certain class of beings in the 
 United States are treated as things, not as persons. 
 Therefore, they are subjects of Law only so far as its titles 
 have respect to things. They are not eligible to Educa- 
 tion, because Education can only deal with persons. 
 She does not deny that the maxim on which slavery 
 rests often undergoes the greatest modifications in 
 practice ; happily it contradicts others which men con- 
 fess, and upon which they are obliged in a multitude 
 of cases to act. But she proves that it exists, and 
 that it is productive of the most frightful social anoma- 
 lies." " Admirable ! " said my companion ; " there 
 never was a better account of slavery than that. It is, 
 however, one that you need not have waited to receive 
 from the new world. The history of the old world 
 would have taught it to you. The emancipation of any 
 
90 LEAENING AND [LECT. 
 
 * people from serfdom, of whatever kind it be, had tliis 
 ' ground and no other. If there was a sufficiently clear 
 ' and strong testimony that the man, as such, was different 
 ' in kind from the earth on which he worked, from the 
 ^ tools which he used, from the sheep and oxen which he 
 ' tended, then in due time he ceased to be a serf. The 
 ' collar which signified that he belonged to such and 
 ' such an estate, to such and such a lord, fell off. Pos- 
 ' sibly he began to be a freeholder, not only tilling 
 ' certain acres, but able to transmit them to his children^ 
 ' or to hand over the clod to some other who acquired 
 ' the same privilege. More probably he held it under 
 ^ some obligations of service to a lord, who owed services 
 ' on his side, the acres under that condition being also 
 ' transmissible. Or he may have held the land at a given 
 ' price, for a certain term ; or he may have held it at 
 
 * the pleasure of the owner; or he may have had nothing 
 ' to do with land at all ; but may have exchanged his 
 ' strength and dexterity and experience, for food and 
 ' raiment, or a dwelling, or the money that was their 
 ' equivalent. Often he may have failed in any one of 
 
 * these positions to assert his personal rights, or to secure 
 '• the law as a protector of them. But it was understood 
 ' in all cases that he was free, not because he was a 
 ' holder of land or because he received wages, but tliat 
 ' he was able to hold land and to exact payment for 
 ' what he did, because he was in essentials like the 
 
 * landlord, a moral responsible being even as he was." 
 
 '•'The priest," I interrupted him, "had great in- 
 ' fluence in procuring this emancipation." " No doubt,"^ 
 
 * he rejoined. " The priest cared little for the laws of 
 
III.] MONEY WOESHIP INCOMPATIBLE. 91 
 
 particular states, but he claimed all wlio had the human 
 form and features as belonging to a mysterious king- 
 dom or divine brotherhood. Where he had faith and 
 courage to enforce the claim vigorously and effec- 
 tually, he found other influences, often apparently 
 clashing and contradictory influences, cooperating to 
 bring the goatherd or swineherd, who had always sup- 
 posed himself a little better than the goats and swine he 
 waited on, into the state of one whom the law guarded, 
 and of whom it demanded obedience. But often the 
 first emancipation consisted in bringing him to the 
 school ; he became a student before he became a citizen. 
 Of the two, that was felt to be the higher testimony 
 to his personality." " The priest," I replied, " must 
 often have repented of his own achievem'cnts." "As- 
 suredly," said the stranger, '^he was raising up the 
 stoutest champions against his own assumptions, when 
 he sought to deal with human beings as if they were 
 not persons ; as if they had not a higher responsibility 
 than to him. He could only break the bonds of the 
 serf, in the name of God ; by asserting that he claimed 
 all as His free servants and children. If he was dis- 
 posed, for the sake of his own authority, again to 
 controvert that doctrine, it was found too mighty for 
 him ; the principle once uttered could no more contract 
 itself to suit his convenience, than the principle which 
 was uttered in Runnymede could contract itself to the 
 dimensions which the barons might have thought 
 ample enough for it. Principles are terrible things to 
 sport with." 
 ' "Well," I said, " when one thinks of the state of those 
 
92 LEARNING AND [LECT. 
 
 countries in which tlie voice of the priest has had no 
 effect in emancipating the serf, and where, consequently, 
 he may count upon the unbounded reverence of both 
 serf and lord, though his own character and intellect 
 should be ever so degraded, one may rejoice to live in 
 a land where his order has been one means of raising 
 men to a position, in which they must and will despise 
 him, unless he continues to labour in different circum- 
 stances for the same object." 
 
 * " Rejoice as you will," replied my unknown com- 
 panion, '' but answer me plainly. Do you in England 
 attach that sense to Freedom which connects it with the 
 distinction of Persons and Things ? A Freeman, so ftir 
 as I can make out your dialect, signifies in it, one who 
 is not a Slave, and a Slave signifies one who does not 
 receive wages. Thus the labourer is led to define 
 himself, as his superiors have already defined him, 
 — a wages-receiving animal. That is his great and 
 permanent distinction in God's universe. By that 
 sign he is known from the rest of the genus Mam- 
 malia. Hence he comes to conceive that the great 
 end of those who do not belong to his order in creation, 
 is to prevent liim from rising into theirs, and to 
 keep down his wages while he continues where he 
 is. Laws often appear to him to have been con- 
 structed and to be maintained, chiefly for this end. 
 Literature, he believes, has ministered to the same 
 end very effectually, in those who possess it. He 
 would like to remake the laws, because he might then 
 have a chance of raising himself to the level of those 
 who he believes are depressing him. He would like to 
 
III.] MONET WORSHIP INCOMPATIBLE. 93 
 
 obtain education tliat his labour may fetch more in the 
 market, that it may at last obtain for itself that which 
 he thinks has been granted to its enemies." " This 
 may be the state of mind among some of the working 
 people/' I said; " I am sure it is not among all." 
 " Thank God," he replied, " that it is not ; and if that 
 better mind dwells also in your divines, economists, 
 statesmen — if they do not regard wages as the cha- 
 racteristic difference between the free labourer and the 
 serf — you may yet retain the best and worthiest of 
 your three treasures ; if not, was I not wrong in fixing 
 so long a term as fifty years for your tenure of a gift 
 which you have already forfeited? " 
 ' I mused on the prophecy, half in sadness, half in 
 an2:er, and did not for some time allude to the second 
 word. But, like Mr. Tennyson, " we waited for the 
 train at Coventry," — a delay which, alas ! was to pro- 
 duce no Lady Godiva, — and then I asked him " whether 
 he had not seen enough in our journey from the great 
 to"svns of the ISTorth, to convince him that our Civilization 
 at least had reached a very high pitch, and was based 
 upon a very strong foundation " " Its high pitch," he 
 said, " I never disputed." " It is the soundness of the 
 foundation, then, you question ?" " K"o ! " he replied, " I 
 believe your civilization has a very deep foundation. 
 There," pointing me to the Court-house in Coventry, 
 " you may read, better than in Guizot, the story of its 
 origin and of its grovv^th. You will find in the verses 
 round the walls an account of the way in which our 
 ancestors became civil, because they became citizens. 
 You will see how closely the rise of our manufacturing 
 
94 LEARNING AND [lECT. 
 
 industry was connected witli the feelings of citizenship, 
 of a common corporate life of union and fellow work." 
 " I suppose," I said, "the life in Coventry was some- 
 thing like the life in Ghent, which Mr. Taylor has so 
 well described to us in his Philip Van Artevelde. And 
 yet in the quotation from Hobbes with which he 
 introduces it, he speaks of ' the absence of arts, letters, 
 society — of the life of men as solitary, poor, nasty, 
 brutish, and short/ " " I think," he said, " Mr. Taylor's 
 poem is immeasurably better than his quotation, and 
 is the true comment upon it. There was brutishness 
 enough in these citizens ; but what brutes they would 
 have been — you would have been — if they had not 
 sought for that corporate life ; if they had not aspired to 
 the dignity and responsibility of citizens ! Now, do 
 you mean this by civilization — you Englishmen of the 
 nineteenth century ? Do you not mean just the reverse 
 of this by it? Do you not mean exactly that life 
 which is so solitary, and brutish, and nasty ; the life 
 of men not working together, but working against 
 each other, in strife and rivalry and hatred ? And do 
 you seriously believe that a civilization so inconsistent 
 with the principle out of which it has grown — which 
 is implied in its continuance — can last fifty years ?" 
 ' I had one last resource, and I felt it was a strong one. 
 I suspected my friend of being a Protectionist. I was 
 prepared to overthrow him, with statistics about our 
 commercial progress. To my astonishment, he ex- 
 pressed unbounded sympathy with my assertion that 
 every nation was to seek help from every other ; that 
 the policy of trying to favour our own productions, and 
 
III.] MONEY WORSHIP INCOMPATIBLE. '95 
 
 * to proliibit or check the introduction of those of foreign 
 ' lands, was suicidal. He was willing to admit that the 
 <■ freeest and largest intercourse was the best ; that in 
 
 * maintaining it to be so, we are Aviser than our fore- 
 ' fathers. " Well, then ? " I said. " Well, sir, and there- 
 
 * fore^ because you have cast aside all rivalry between 
 ' nations ; because you deem the emancipation from it 
 ' the greatest achievement of your age ; therefore you 
 
 * will use your commerce only to promote the most 
 
 * wea1*isome, exhausting, destructive rivalry between 
 ' your own subjects ; to make every member of a house- 
 *■ hold the rival, and in the end the destroyer of every 
 ^ other ! That is the Commerce which is to sustain itself 
 
 * for fifty years ! " ' 
 
 I have quoted the words of this mysterious critic upon 
 our country's condition, because I believe they express 
 the thoughts of a great many foreigners who look at it 
 with no unfriendly eyes, and of many a native who feels 
 for it with the anxiety and tenderness of a lover or a 
 child. They have led a few to adopt conclusions and to 
 enter upon courses of action, which probably you Avill 
 not approve, and which I am not here to defend, though 
 I am bound to express my hearty sympathy with them. 
 To deliver the working people from the notion that they 
 are merely wages-receiving animals, and their superiors 
 in rank and position from the corresponding degradation 
 of being regarded as merely wages-paying animals, it 
 has seemed to them worth while to try whether bodies 
 of workmen might not be associated, for their own 
 profit, under a government not less strict, but more 
 paternal, than that to which they are ordinarily sub- 
 
96 LEARNING AND [LECT, 
 
 jected. It lias struck tliem, that almost any risk should 
 be incurred, and of course the very trifling risk of being 
 called hard and ugly names, for the sake of making the 
 labourers understand that citizenship is a reality, that 
 civilization is not a curse, that the same power which 
 enabled their forefathers to w^ork together in spite of all 
 the tendencies to solitude and rivalship in the four- 
 teenth century, can enable them to overcome the same 
 tendencies, in the more fortunate circumstances of the 
 nineteenth. They have thought it not unimportant to 
 show that the principle of Trade is reciprocity, not 
 overreaching. I have alluded to this subject because I 
 should be dishonest if I did not confess that I think the 
 reformation must begin at both ends, that we must raise 
 Work to make it fit for association with Learning, as well 
 as bring Learning to bear upon Work. But I am far 
 indeed from thinking that these schemes, or any schemes, 
 have any virtue of their own. Their one use is, that 
 they may help to raise the workman to a sense of man- 
 hood and freedom ; to the feeling that he is a person 
 and not a thing, a citizen and not a slave. If you 
 can accomplish that end without these means, — if 
 you can make us who resort to them look ridiculous 
 and contemptible, by the better machinery which you 
 bring into play, by the higher spirit w^ith which you 
 set it in motion — God speed you! I am trying to 
 show you that there is another method, quite different 
 from the one which I have hinted at, by whicli you may 
 improve the social position of the mechanic and secure 
 your own. If you acknowledge him as not merely 
 entitled to receive certain crumbs of knowledge which 
 
III.] MONEY WOESHIP INCOMPATIBLE. 97 
 
 fall from the ricli man's table, to a scrap here and there 
 of irregular, disjointed learning, which is rather a 
 bm'den to his spirit than a power to raise it, but as 
 intended to share with you the deepest and most uni- 
 versal part of your treasures, those which belong not to 
 classes but to men ; if you will dispense these regularly 
 and methodically as if they were portions of our com- 
 mon food, which must be received, and which belong 
 to the life of us all ; if you will follow out the hint 
 which Mr. Wilson has given you, and consider that 
 you are making the labour of the hands most effectual 
 when you turn the factory into a school and a home ; 
 then indeed you may boast that you are doing infi- 
 nitely more than all our little efforts, whether rea- 
 sonable or unreasonable, whether rightly or wrongly 
 directed, have done yet, or could do, if they were ever 
 so much extended, to save the land from serfdom and 
 barbarism. And this I urge not only, not even chiefly, 
 for the sake of those who toil and suffer, but for the 
 sake of those who possess and enjoy. I tremble lest 
 those whose station most demands of them nobleness 
 and chivalry, should shrink into money-getters and 
 money-changers. That calamity will be averted if you 
 will resolve to teach the hardest hands that they were 
 created for other uses than these. God will give man- 
 hood to the nobles and gentlemen of England, when they 
 assert that the highest manhood, and therefore that gen- 
 tleness and nobility, may be called forth in those who 
 are not of higher origin than our tinker poet Bunyan, 
 or than that illustrious Scotsman of our day, Hugh 
 
 II 
 
98 LEAEXING AND ]\rONEY WOESHIP, ETC. [lECT. 
 
 liiller ; wlio are not richer in tliis AYorld's goods tliau 
 were the fishermen of Galilee.* 
 
 * The fears with which this Lecture concludes would not have been 
 expressed m the same terms, if it had been delivered in Xovember or 
 December instead of June. The nobles and gentlemen of England 
 have shown that the old manhood is in them : the private has 
 abundantly vindicated his share in that manhood. God be thanked 
 for drawing such blessings out of such sorrow ! God be thanked for 
 giving us signs and tokens that there is a common heart in the land 
 still ! There is enough of miserable partisanship, suspicion, frivolity 
 in us all, to keep us ashamed ; enough of personal and national misery 
 to make vaunting and self-glorification more than ever unseemly and 
 monstrous. But the treasure which we thought we had lost, is proved 
 to have been only hidden. Let us take care that the Mammon altar 
 which it has needed, and may need, so much suffering and blood to 
 throw down, shall not be built again. We have asked another God 
 than the money god to lead our hosts. Let us swear that, neither in 
 peace nor in war, shall he reign in our senate, our colleges, or our 
 Jiearts. 
 
IV.] LEARNING THE MINISTER OF FEEEDOjL, ETC. 09 
 
 LECTURE IV. 
 
 LEARI^ING THE MINISTER OF FREEDOM AND ORDER. 
 
 It will seem to many of you tliat I have greatly 
 increased the difficulties of tlie subject I am considering, 
 by the view which I took of Education in my last Lec- 
 ture. I spoke of an education which should not be 
 merely a supplement to work, but should be incorporated 
 with it ; of an education which should speak to those who 
 received it, of rest in the midst of toil, even while it 
 demanded from them toil of another kind ; of an educa- 
 tion which should make them feel, that the spirit in them 
 has a world of its own, which is as real as that which 
 their senses tell them of. Such language will sound, I 
 doubt not, to a number of practical men, very mystical 
 and absurd, not the less so because I produced evidence 
 that an education such as I described was the one 
 which our forefathers established in this country, the 
 one which our old schools and colleges with their nio- 
 nastical and picturesque associations remind us of, if 
 they do not impart it. ' That would be a decisive 
 ' proof,' I shall be told, ' were proofs necessary, that 
 
 II 2 
 
 L. OT ^. 
 
loo LEARNING THE MINISTER OF [lECT. 
 
 ' ice want something altogether different. The age tliat 
 
 * gave birth to those institutions was an age of dreamers ; 
 ' ours is one of workers. To reproduce the temper of 
 
 * that time, is happily impossible ; to reproduce the 
 ' forms of it, is ridiculous. We are born among factories 
 
 * and railways, and we must make the best of them 
 That last proposition expresses my own abiding convic- 
 tion. I believe we are born among factories and rail- 
 ways, and that it is good for us that we are. Far from 
 participating in the contempt which some whom I admire 
 have expressed for them, I believe that they are gifts of 
 God, and reasons for thankfulness, just as beautiful 
 cathedrals and beautiful paintings are. I have ex- 
 pressed already a profound reverence for the achievements 
 of modern industry, and have maintained that the learning 
 which despises or overlooks them, which does not adapt 
 itself to our circumstances, which merely dresses itself 
 out in the garments of the past, cannot be sound or good 
 learning. Nevertheless I fully expect that these profes- 
 sions, however sincere I may know and you may believe 
 them to be, necessarily as they are involved in my argu- 
 ments against the worshippers of Leisure, will prove 
 light as air when weighed against that one tremendous 
 word, ' Mystical. ' Every aged trader in newspaper en- 
 chantments knows the efficacy of that word; he communi- 
 cates it to the young apprentice as a spell which, though 
 it has been well worked, has still more power than any 
 other to frighten comfortable men not prone to ordi- 
 nary superstitions, as well as timid women. I fully 
 appreciate the wisdom of those wlio put this epithet in 
 the front rank, when tliey seek to demolish a project, a 
 
IV.] FREEDOM AND ORDER. 101 
 
 book, or a character ; it will do tlie work of a liuudre 
 facts and of a tlioiisand arguments. 
 
 But though the public listens and trembles whenever 
 this word is pronounced, it does not follow that an edu- 
 cation possessing somewhat of the ' mystical ' character is 
 a^lways the least popular amongst us. Twenty-five years 
 ago, if half-a-dozen intelligent people, acquainted with 
 the tendencies, the strength, the deficiencies of the Eng- 
 lish character, had been asked what studies would be 
 most likely — what would be least likely — to spread 
 amongst us, especially amongst our manual workers, 
 they might have given different answers to the first half 
 of the question according to their tastes and propensities. 
 One might have urged the teaching of arithmetic, an- 
 other of mechanics, a third of economics. But there 
 would have been no dispute about the last half of it. 
 They would have said one and all, ' Whatever other 
 ' instruction you give, leave the fine arts alone. They 
 ' belong to the South. There they have ripened under 
 
 * the warm sunshine both of ecclesiastical and state pa- 
 ' tronage ; there men in the highest classes cultivate 
 ' them, men in the lowest admire them. The sensuous 
 
 * worship gives them a sacred character ; they become 
 ' associated with the vulgarest amusements of the pea- 
 ' santry. Everything in the social condition of our 
 ' people, in their hard practical temper, in their religious 
 ' services, is hostile to this sort of cultivation.' And if 
 it occurred to any of the party that possibly some un- 
 washed Morland or Blake or Gainsborough might be 
 dwelling in some unvisited corner of our land, a reluctant 
 exception would perhaps have been made in favour of 
 
102 LEARNING THE MINISTER OF [lECT. 
 
 Drawing, only that the testmiony might be more strong 
 against the possibility of Ihisic ever obtaining the slight- 
 est hold upon our people. How clearly it would have been 
 explained to us, why voice and ear have been denied to 
 the inhabitant of this island, and why, on the whole, we 
 should rejoice in our freedom from the temptations to 
 which they would expose us ! What a number of in- 
 ^'enious theories about races would have been introduced 
 to remove any lingering discontent with our allotment ! 
 And if these theories dwelt a little too strongly upon the 
 effect of Italian sweetness and Roman Catholic worship, 
 and so left the fact unexplained that Protestant Germany, 
 with anything but a soft tongue, anything but a warm 
 devotion, had nevertheless given birth to eminent com- 
 posers and to a people musically inclined, I need not 
 tell any one Avho knows from experience the elasticity of 
 these philosophical explanations, how easily they would 
 have expanded to take in this new and troublesome case — 
 the speculative or mystical character of Germany always 
 coming in as a resource to prevent us from building any 
 vain hopes upon our community of blood. Well, it has 
 appeared in the result, that these clear and irresistible 
 reasonings belong to the same class with the solutions 
 which the members of the Royal Society, shortl}^ after 
 its foundation, sent in to the celebrated problem of 
 Charles II. respecting the fish which did not displace 
 the water. There was no problem to be solved; the 
 fact so well accounted for was not a fact. 
 
 Of all experiments in English education, beyond com- 
 parison the most successful has been that for diffusing a 
 knowledge of music and a love of music among our 
 
IV.] FEEEDOM AND OEDEE. 103 
 
 people. The Mechanics' Institutes have attracted a few 
 men here and there, and those generally not mechanics ; 
 the classes of Mr. Hullah have brought thousands toge- 
 ther of both sexes, in London and in every part of 
 England. Every order down to the lowest has felt the 
 impulse. I am credibly informed that instead of merely 
 hearing lectures about singing, numbers have actually 
 learned to sing. I am sure no one can look at their 
 faces at one of their great meetings, and not perceive 
 with what hearty delight and with what comparative 
 indifference to mere display and effect, they exercise 
 tlieir gift. 
 
 I am willing to admit that this proof is not absolutely 
 decisive. There has been no one working in any other 
 department of popular education with the same thorough 
 zeal and geniality which Mr. Hullah has thrown into 
 this. We cannot tell that the same energy exerted else- 
 where might not have produced results as remarkable. 
 Let us assume that it might have done so, and hope 
 that it will do so yet. But men generally appear 
 when they are wanted, to do the thing that wants to be 
 done. There have been indications in various quarters 
 that a craving both for instrumental and vocal music 
 has been awakened among mechanics in London*and the 
 provinces, indications which I believe we ought to con- 
 sider as distinctly providential. Few persons have less 
 motive to estimate them highly than I have ; few, from 
 utter ignorance of the whole subject, would be more in- 
 clined to overlook them. But it is impossible not to con- 
 fess that they are the most significant facts which have yet 
 come under our notice, facts which from their strange- 
 
104 LEARNING THE MINISTER OF [LECT. 
 
 ness and their inconsistency with all our anticipations^ 
 require to be reflected on. Music will never, surely, 
 occupy a most conspicuous place in any good scheme 
 of education. But if it has taken stronger hold of those 
 whom we desire to educate, than any other study has 
 done, especially if it has laid hold of them when we 
 thought that any other study was more in agreement 
 with their previous tastes and habits of mind, there 
 must be something in it which may help us to under- 
 stand what is needed in all studies, something which 
 m.ay deepen and widen our thoughts respecting the 
 nature of education itself. I need hardly tell you that 
 it is no novelty to think thus ; that it is an opinion which 
 carries as great a weight of authority in its favour as 
 any we can adopt. One whole book of ' Plato's Re- 
 public' is given to the subject of music as an instru- 
 ment of education. He was but commenting on a pur- 
 suit which already formed a capital part of his country's 
 discipline ; and he felt that portion of it to be so im- 
 portant for good and for evil — he felt that besides being 
 Athenian it was so Greek, and that besides being Greek 
 it was so human — that a careful criticism of the kinds of 
 music which were likely to nerve and elevate, or to 
 weaken and lower the character, was not out of place in 
 a work written to teach Athenians, Greeks, and men, 
 the principles on which they must live together, 
 and the methods by which they might become practi- 
 cally united. Strictly in the spirit of Plato, but still 
 more in the spirit of those Hebrew sages from whom 
 he had learned his highest wisdom, Milton insists in his 
 Letter to Mr. Hartlib, that the pupils in his imaginary 
 
IV.] FEEEDOM AND OEDEK. 105 
 
 college should ' recreate and compose their, travailed 
 ' spirits with the solemn and divine harmonies of music 
 
 * heard or learnt, either while the skilful organist plies 
 ' his grave and fancied descant in lofty fugues, or the 
 
 * whole symphony with artful and unimaginable touches 
 ' adorn and grace the well-studied chords of some choice 
 
 * composer ; sometimes the lute or soft organ stop wait- 
 
 * ing on elegant voices either to religious, martial, or 
 ' civil ditties, which if wise men and prophets be 
 
 * not extreamly out, have a gi-eat power over disposi- 
 ' tions and manners, to smooth and make them gentle 
 ^ from rustick harshness and distempered passions.' 
 It is pleasant to have the strength of such names and 
 such words ; yet, I must repeat it, I do not touch upon 
 the subject in deference to them, or from a wish to copy 
 the older schools of England, but because the me- 
 chanics of the nineteenth century are manifesting 
 their desire for these influences, and because it greatly 
 imports us to inquire what is the root of this desire, 
 as vv^ell as how it may be unfolded, and led to em- 
 brace other objects not less lovingly and cordially 
 than this. 
 
 To understand this question rightly, you must put 
 yourselves in the place, not exactly of some utterly 
 dull and incapable listener like myself, but, of some 
 simple clown, all whose work has been of the roughest 
 kind, but who has had a father and mother, perhaps a 
 wife and children, and who possesses the strange power 
 which it has never occurred to him to think about, of 
 recollecting that which has been in his own life, of anti- 
 cipating that which shall be. Very strange! This 
 
106 LEARNING THE MINISTER OF [LECT. 
 
 clown is a creature tliat looks before and after. All 
 the economy of his existence is adapted to one pos- 
 sessing these faculties ; he is descended from those who 
 are in their graves ; those are climbing his knees who 
 will be playing or working on this earth when he is in 
 Ms grave. I cannot tell what these strange sounds^ so 
 unlike the ordinary discourse which he hears when he 
 is talking about the weather, or buying and selling in 
 the market, mean to him, wdiat kind of message they 
 carry to him ; but I am quite sure it has something to 
 do with these memories and hopes and fears of his ; 
 that it joins itself to a number of vague feelings which 
 he has had about other days, and about faces which he 
 has seen and hands which he has pressed ; that it gives 
 them a kind of distinctness which they had not before. 
 I cannot explain how this comes to pass, and I am sure 
 he could not. The music speaks to something wdthin 
 him w^hich the ordinary language does not speak to, 
 something more near his own very self, touching wires 
 wdiich that language does not reach, and making them 
 vibrate. If any one likes to call this a mystical expres- 
 sion, he is at full liberty to do so. I might justify 
 myself by saying that Hartley, whose philosophy is the 
 idol of some of our practical people, uses the same 
 phraseology ; that he has a much more complete theory 
 of vibrations than I can even dream of. But I put 
 forward no such justification. I will give up my mode 
 of stating the case as mystical and good for nothing, the 
 moment you will furnish me with another which de- 
 scribes the facts more adequately. I only desire to get 
 them acknowledged. This Memory, which the ancients 
 
lY.] FEEEDOM AND ORDEE. 107 
 
 called the mother of arts, may not be that, but a very 
 Yiilgar simple thing, which we can all define and mider- 
 stand. This Hope, with which not only the bloom but 
 the substance of our being seems to be involved, may, 
 when it is submitted to a satisfactory analysis, shrink 
 into a very obvious, intelligible, unmarvellous quality ; 
 I have no doubt that it will. But I am not speaking of 
 cither in this refined state ; I am speaking of them 
 as they rise in the heart of a day labourer. To him 
 ifiey are wonderful ; and the music which mingles so 
 curiously and intricately with them, is wonderful also. 
 It must depend, I suppose, very much upon the care of 
 those who provide it for him, whether it shall awaken 
 only some slight and momentary titillation of pleasure, 
 or the deepest and most energetic thoughts ; whether it 
 shall be impressed into the service of his ordinary habits 
 of thinking and acting, and receive its shape and hue 
 from them, or shall be instrumental in raising them and 
 giving them a nobler form and brighter colouring ; 
 whether it shall be the vision of an occasional luxury 
 which the rich man may enjoy to surfeiting — he only at 
 rare intervals — or whether it shall speak to him of a 
 divine order which was before the discords of earth 
 began, which works on in tlie midst of them, and into 
 which the pure of heart, who prefer their human heritage 
 to any other, may freely enter. Yet even the vulgarest 
 street music is an education to the hearts of those who 
 stand at the doors of pestilential dwellings to listen to 
 it. Till that day which shall unseal all pent-up words 
 and reveal the secrets of all hearts, it may not be known 
 what thoughts have been stirred up in human spirits by 
 
108 LEARNING THE MINISTER OF [LECT. 
 
 sounds that fell utterly dead upon our ears; what 
 authentic tidings of invisible things came to them 
 through those channels when other avenues seemed to 
 be closed ; what awakenings of conscience, what aspi- 
 rations after truths never yet perceived, what search for 
 treasures that had been lost. Some of the most beau- 
 tiful passages of modern as of ancient poetry turn upon 
 the stories of fishermen and shepherds who were tempted 
 by siren visions, that spoke to them of some fairer 
 regions, for which it were well to desert the dreariness 
 of their earthly occupations, even at the risk of plunging 
 into the deep. Besides the wonderful ballad of the 
 German poet, there is that exquisite passage in Mr. 
 Landor's ' Gebir,' — 
 
 * But I have sinuous sliells of pearly hue 
 Within ; and they that lustre have imbibed 
 In the sun's palace porch, where when tinyoked 
 His chariot wheel stands midway in the wave. 
 Shake one, and it awakens ; then apply 
 Its polish'd lips to your attentive ear, 
 And it remembers its august abodes, 
 And murmurs as the ocean murmurs there.' 
 
 I feel that the beauty of such conceptions lies in their 
 essential truth. The shepherds and fishermen of our 
 land, as of every land, hear these whispers,, have these 
 dreams. They need an interpreter ; if they do not find 
 one, they may give heed to any tempter who would lead 
 them into the most perilous depths or the most wretched 
 shallows. The last calamity is the greater of the two. 
 To have any gratification for such longings is almost 
 better than to have them stifled and killed. 
 
 I trust, then, you will see why I attach such import- 
 
IV.] FEEEDOM AND ORDEE. 109 
 
 ance to this movement towards musical education. 
 First, because it is useless to impart what men are not 
 willing to receive, and here is an index of what thej 
 are willing to receive. Secondly, because it seems to me 
 a most healthful instinct which has led them, while com- 
 paratively indiiferent to much that has been offered to 
 them, to select what we perhaps should have called a 
 mere amusement or gratification. If the higher classes 
 have made it a mere amusement or gratification, so 
 much the worse for them. I believe to the working 
 people it must be more than that, or it will not be that. 
 But I trace in this appetite for music cravings, which 
 I believe to be the deepest that there are in man, 
 — the most indispensable to every Englishman, — the 
 cravings for freedom and for order, I believe that all 
 education is intended to excite these cravings, and to 
 meet them ; that only so far as it effects these objects 
 does it deserve its name. 
 
 This is no new doctrine. We have 'all of us pro- 
 claiijied in one form or another our belief that freedom 
 is not merely a collateral blessing of education, a con- 
 dition on which it exists, but that it is the end at which 
 it aims. For. instance, we have most of us spoken 
 some strong words about the Jesuit schools. If these 
 words expressed a censure of the plans which are 
 adopted in the Jesuit schools, they were not justifiable ; 
 for all plans must be considered in reference to the 
 purpose which they are designed to accomplish, and 
 tried by that standard I imagine few would be fomid 
 more ingenious or perfect than those which this order 
 has devised. If, again, they convey a oose condemna- 
 
110 LEAIININC; TIIK MINISTKli OF \\a:("V. 
 
 lion of all llic Iciu-liiiii^wliicli lias exi.stc.cl in schools (hat 
 have acknowlc(lf»'('(l or do ackuowlodgc the aiilhoiily of 
 the. JTihIio]^ of lioiiic, Ihcy will 1)0 iirijusi and ignorant; 
 for (he, Icachiiip^ which existed in oiir own eounlry and 
 olher eounlries diiiin.^' the middle a<i;eH — whether it. was 
 good or had, eU'eedial or ineilectual — was altogether 
 different in its principle, and in ii,H effects, iVom llial, 
 whicdi has grown np among the disciples of Ignatius 
 Loyola. What, we mean, however confusedly we may 
 sometimes utter onr meaning, is tluit the Jesuits 
 arc not seeking to frcr the spirit of man hy their 
 teaching. We have- a, solid and deep-roolcd convic- 
 tion that their ohject is the reverse ol" this ; that 
 they look upon the school as one of the instruments, 
 probahly the most powerful of all instruments, for pre- 
 venting the emancipation of the spirit, lor keeping it 
 in fetters. 'IMiat is our ordinary English opinion. I am 
 not going to argue in delence of it, though I thoroughly 
 and inwardly Ixdieve it to hi*, true; and though that 
 persuasion makes it ii (picslion o[ great inditferenc.c to 
 nu'. \N helln'r the other statements about the .Jesuits are 
 true or not. 1 do not want any black and all Mack 
 Eugene Sue portraits of some inconceivable monsters of 
 fraud and inicpnty, who at the same time are able, iu 
 virtne of their fraud and iniipiitA", to direct all the move- 
 ments of the- world. I am glad to get an)' facts, or 
 even any tolerable testimonies, to authorize me in dis- 
 trusting representations which are in themselves so in- 
 crcdihle. I helieve J^inglishmen injure their minds far 
 more than Desdemona injured hers, when they listen to 
 tales of — 
 
IV.] VREKDO^r AND OliDKll. Ill 
 
 " Aliilir(i|)((|)li;if.';i, and iiirii avIiomo lioaclfl 
 Do [<!•() w ln!iin:illi tlit'ir HliniililiThi ;" 
 
 becaiiRC, ^v\\v\\ il, Ii;ij)|k'iis lliat siicli reports In one. <>i- 
 juiotlicr case, arc rcl'ulcd liy 1;Ik^ olaUMiionts ol' iiioi-c 
 accuralc. and sccpllcal IravclK'rs, llicrc Is <j,vii(M'ally a 
 velicincut reaction, and the bein^^- who was painted as 
 a devil may, Avilh luiraeulous rapidlly, e.\elian_!i,-e his 
 lioofs for a hah), and obtain an apolhc-osis. I hohl it 
 therefore more safe to dismiss those (iaillcan extrava- 
 ga^ncies, and to maintain our old faith, that seeing* tlic 
 Jesuit does not sock to give om* sons and (Laughters 
 freedom, l)ut seeks delil)erately, skilfully, systemati- 
 eally, lo (l('j)ri\'i', thcni of IVcedoni, he, is not doin!.:; 
 tlie lliing that we want done, he is doing Ihe thing 
 w hich most ol" all. we want not to be done ; and 1 here- 
 fore that we must rea})eetl'ully re(pu',st him to go his 
 way, wdiilc wc go ours. If I added any more words, 
 they would be these, that whilevve are pursuing our own 
 way steadily and mani'idly, we- have not the least reason 
 to be afraid of him, even il" he had those superhuman 
 powers which sojue Inlldels and some Protestants at- 
 tribute to him ; and th;it if we, miss our way, or walk 
 along it with faltering, irregular, lipsy steps, \\c., or any 
 man who knows his goal and works straight f)r it, 
 must have the advantage of us. 
 
 And it is not oidy when we are o])posing olhers 
 ihat we inscribe this watchword of TVeedom on I he- 
 same banner with that ol" Kducation. This, as J said 
 in my lirst Lecture, has been the safest boast we 
 have been able lo put I'orth, on behaH' ol' our publie 
 bcIiooIb, 'You nuiy talk,' we have said, 'as you wdl 
 
112 LEARNING THE MINISTER OF [LECT. 
 
 * of tlieir imperfections as mere places for commmii- 
 
 * eating a certain quantity of information. You maj 
 ' complain that the sports of the school are its most 
 ' serious business, that the teaching is secondary to 
 ' them. But in some way or other^ a free, manly, 
 ' English character is formed in them ; men do go forth 
 
 * from them who can work with men and for men, who 
 
 * have sympathies with them and tolerance for them, 
 ' who are therefore fit to rule them.' Whether this boast 
 is always well founded or not, whatever deductions 
 actual experience may make from it, we at least learn 
 from it what our national standard is, what object our 
 schools set before themselves, whether they reach it or 
 not. And I cannot think that our noblest and most 
 effectual school reformer, Dr. Arnold, ever proposed 
 to himself a different standard from this, or wished 
 that our schools should confess a different object. I 
 think he discovered that, through various causes, they 
 were not forming Englishmen as they were meant to 
 do ; that the games were freer than the teaching ; that 
 a lov.^, vulgar caste morality was supplanting the brave 
 national morality ; that the schoolmaster had become 
 too much identified with the stiff pedant ; and there- 
 fore that the schoolboy was sinking into the pert cox- 
 comb. He was throughout his life combating the 
 slavish tempers and habits which were warping and 
 undermining the country's heart. In his own sphere, 
 no one combated them so successfully. And since 
 all our public schoolmasters who have attempted refor- 
 mation, confess that they received their first impulse 
 from him, and that like him they are seeking not to 
 
IT.] FREEDOM AND ORDEE. 113 
 
 change but to restore, we may assume tliat they also 
 look upon English education as intended to bring forth 
 the free English spirit, and so to counteract the narrow 
 and debasing influences, — especially those that grow 
 out of our money worship, — which are conspiring to 
 destroy it. 
 
 If, then, we are consistent with our own habitual 
 professions, we must aim in all our teaching of the 
 working classes, at making them free. We know that 
 they feel themselves shackled in a thousand ways ; that 
 they ask to be delivered from their shackles. They 
 may be wrong in some of their notions about the nature 
 of their bondage ; they are not wrong about the fact 
 of it. If you think that it is upon their souls, and 
 not upon their bodies, then you will set about eman- 
 cipating their souls. If the distinction between a free- 
 man and a slave, as Mrs. Stowe has taught us, and 
 many before her, is identical with the distinction be- 
 tween a Person and a Thing, you will seek above all 
 things to make our working people understand tliaj 
 they are Persons, and not Things. Whatever teaching 
 contributes to that end must be good for them, and, as- 
 they have shown in tiie instance of Music, they will by 
 degrees feel that it is good for them. Whatever does 
 not contribute to it — but leads them to suppose that 
 the things they are working with are more precious 
 than themselves, the workers — must be bad for them ; 
 and I believe they will not be induced to seek for it, 
 or to prize it when it is offered to them. I do not say 
 that such teaching, if it comes recommended by men 
 in whom they trust, and who promise them that it will 
 
 I 
 
114 LEAENIXG THE MINISTER OF [LECT. 
 
 "bring political power, 'may not be prized, precisely 
 because it appeals to tlieir personal liopes and sym- 
 patliies ; but I do say, tliat if we try to give tliem 
 instruction wliicli assumes tliem only to be liewers of 
 wood and drawers of water, tliey will prefer to liew 
 tlieir wood and draw tlieir water — I niiglit add, and to 
 drink tlieir gin — without it. 
 
 I do not suppose, liowever, that the only end of 
 Education is to make us free. It would not accomplish 
 that object if it did not lead us to perceive an order 
 in all that we do, and in all we think. Here, again, 
 I am only enunciating a proposition to which we have 
 all, in some form or other, given an assent. ' School- 
 masters,' says George Herbert, in an often quoted pas- 
 sage, ' deliver us to Laws.' Their business is not to 
 supply a substitute for the paternal government, or for 
 the affection of the mother, but to make us understand 
 the meaning of ordinances which are fixed for a whole 
 society, and cannot be transgressed by any one with- 
 out bringing down punishment ; ordinances which are 
 to be obeyed, because they exist, but which are gra- 
 dually to make their justice and wisdom apparent to 
 us. These ordinances are not only imposed that the 
 lessons may go on uninterruptedly ; they are the most 
 important part of the lesson. They help to make it 
 intelligible to the boy how there should be rules of 
 grammar and composition ; how it should be his obliga- 
 tion not to make false concords. On the other hand, 
 the detection of his false concords, and the punishment 
 of them, is part of his initiation into the principles of 
 order. He finds that there are laws of speech which 
 
IV.] FEEEDOM AND ORDER. 115 
 
 existed before liis day, before his master's day, to wliicli 
 one as mucli as the other must conform himself. This 
 is discipline and education imited; it is the teacher's 
 business to feel their connexion thoroughly himself, 
 that he may, not by formal indoctrination half so much 
 as by his habitual practice, imbue his pupils with tlie 
 sense of it. By some means or other, the sense of it 
 has passed^into the minds of Englishmen, — infinitely 
 less than it ought, but still— as I conceive, so much as 
 to give us great cause for gratitude. There is always 
 danger in vaunting, and when we begin to rejoice that 
 our youths are not subject to a Jesuit ecclesiastical drill 
 or to a Prussian state drill— that their minds are not 
 forced to obey mechanically either a spiritual rule or 
 a military word of command,— we should remember with 
 trembling, that the perversions of the true idea of order 
 and government, which we attribute to people of a 
 different faith or nation from our own, are pe;*versions 
 incident to human natm'e, and that we have fallen and 
 ^ do fall into them continually. Still the language indi- 
 cates our feeling of what we ought to be ; our true 
 school reformers have so considered it. They have not 
 thanked God that we are not as other men are, but 
 they have thanked Him, for giving us the perception of 
 a principle by which we may measure the irregularities 
 and inconsistencies of our own practice. They have 
 been able to see where despotical caprice in him who 
 administers and executes the school law, or favouritism, 
 or laxity, or a pedantic adherence to rules, has destroyed 
 the moral as well as the intellectual blessing of the 
 discipline, and has introduced an order which is not 
 
 I 2 
 
116 LEARNING THE :^[INISTER OF [leCT. 
 
 the twin sister but the subverter of Freedom, so hin- 
 dering the pupils hereafter from understanding how 
 God gOA^erns and educates his voluntary creatures, as 
 Avell as the laws which He has ordained that Nature, 
 with its ever fresh powers of generation and produc- 
 tion, should obey. For if, as these reformers have well 
 understood, the school is tlic preparation for the higher 
 culture of the university — which is to open *o the pupil, 
 loosened from that preparatory training in forms and 
 accidents, the methods of science, that he may with awe 
 and boldness climb the steps which lead him into the 
 mysteries of the outward universe, and those other 
 steps, not less regular, though apparently broken by 
 man's self-will, whereby he may ascend to the secrets 
 of the moral world, as they are discovered in human 
 and divine history, — to restore that which has become 
 weak or confused in the order of the teaching and of 
 the discipline, is a duty as great as that of making 
 them both minister to freedom, and one which the 
 reformer undertakes in the same spirit, and with the 
 same deliberate courage. 
 
 It is for the extension of an education, having thi^? 
 object as well as the former, to working men, that I 
 plead, or, what is much more to the purpose, that they 
 themselves plead. You have mistaken them grieA'ously 
 if you think that they are more sensible of the first Avant 
 than of the second ; that they pant more for freedom 
 than for organization. Many phrases which come from 
 their lips might lead you to that opinion, but if you com- 
 pare them with others quite as significant, quite as much 
 expressive of their innermost minds, you would often 
 
IV.] FREEDOM AND OKDER. 117 
 
 cliange it for tlie opposite. No feeling, I am tliorouglilj 
 convinced, is so alive with them, as the wish to find 
 an order of which they themselves are a living part, or, 
 which is the alternative if that wish is denied them, to 
 make one. And if you study carefully their acts as 
 well as their words, — if you read, for instance, in an 
 impartial spirit, without any bias towards tlie employer 
 or the workman, the history of the late Preston strike, — 
 you will perceive in them, even at times when the spirit 
 of insubordination was likely to be strongest, a sense of 
 order and self-restraint, a submission to government and 
 a capacity for it, which prove that we may receive 
 much from them, as well as impart something to them. 
 And this we must learn from that and all similar 
 examples, — that the order of society, like the order of 
 nature, was not created by us for our convenience, and 
 cannot shape itself according to our convenience ; that 
 we are all its subjects ; that it asserts itself; that it 
 avenges itself; that we are humbly and devoutly to 
 ask what its demands upon us are, and whence we can 
 obtain the power of fulfilling them. Then when we 
 have received a little of this wisdom, which sages in 
 their books and the experience of history have tried 
 to impress upon us, we may be able to raise our working 
 people out of some of the delusions to which they as 
 well as we are prone. We may lead them to perceive, 
 since we shall have first perceived it ourselves, that 
 obedience is not hard and servile compulsion ; that 
 polities are not created in conformity to certain theories 
 of ours ; that the irregularities and crimes and tyrannies 
 of men imply a divine order, of which they are the 
 
118 LEARNING THE MINISTER OF [LECT, 
 
 transgressions ; tliat every piece of machinery — that the 
 commonest acts of those who use machinery — indi- 
 cate the divine laws to which the smi and stars do 
 homage. We may show them that the instinct which 
 led them to listen with wonder and delight to musical 
 chords is not a merely sensual one; that it is a witness 
 to the trutli of that inward primal harmony in nature 
 and in the fellowship of men, which the ancients repre- 
 sented in their fables, when they spoke of the music of 
 the spheres, and of cities rising at the sound of the 
 lyre. 
 
 However strange the assertion may soimd, I helieve 
 it is in this way we may best hope to engage our 
 working men in the study of the commonest things, as 
 well as of severer science. The phrase, teacldng of 
 common things, has of late acquired great interest for 
 us, through the valuable hints which Lord Ashburton 
 has thrown out on the subject, and the practical expe- 
 riments by which he lias enforced his hints. Nothing, 
 I conceive, can be more true than the''assertion, that we 
 have been eager to teach working men, as well as other 
 men, uncommon things, while the things which are lying 
 at their feet, those which are occupying them every day, 
 those whicli affect the economy of their daily lives, are 
 disreQ:arded. If we can recal them to those thina'S, 
 if we can persuade them to think about those things, 
 the moral benefit to them will be greater even than the 
 external advantage. For a man seriously to meditate 
 how he may prevent the rain from coming through his 
 roof, or how lie may convert his dwelling from a sty 
 for pigs into a house for his wife and children, is better 
 
IV,] FREEDOM AND ORDEE. 119 
 
 for him than to have notions and speculations, nay, even 
 hond fide knowledge, about the courses of the planets 
 and the history of mankind. No proposition, I am 
 satisfied, can be sounder than that; and any means 
 which arc taken to make it more than a proposition, to 
 turn it into use, must be fruitful of good. The good, 
 I apprehend, will be especially of this kind. These 
 common things have to do with human life, especially 
 with domestic life. Instead of withdrawing the man 
 from his home, they connect his studies with it. 
 Things, — common things, — are instruments of raising 
 the man morally, of making him less the slave of his 
 circumstances, since he finds that he can mould and dis- 
 pose them. The belief that he can substitute order 
 for disorder in the arrangements of his household, is an 
 immense and unspeakable improvement to his intellect 
 and character. It cultivates in him tliat perception of 
 order I have been speaking of. I trust, therefore, that 
 this experiment may be fully Avorked out, and that no 
 apparent disappointment may cause it to be abandoned, 
 or check the hopes which it lias excited, especially for 
 the agricultural labourers, in many minds. 
 
 Such disappointments, I think, may arise from several 
 causes. We all know, from our personal experience, 
 that it is not enough to say to us, ' You would be 
 ' much wiser if you did not trouble yourself about great 
 ' matters which do not concern you ; about events in 
 ' the Baltic and Black Sea ; about Russian aggression 
 ' or Austrian diplomacy. Have not you business enough 
 ' to do in your own village, in your own house ? Why 
 ' should you be sending your thoughts to the ends of 
 
120 LEARNING THE MINISTER OF [lECT. 
 
 ' tlie earth, when you might concentrate them there?' 
 Such words, I am sure, make many of us very much 
 ashamed Avhen we hear them. They touch our con- 
 sciences. We have many accounts unsettled in our own 
 circles ; we cannot pretend any special call to Cronstadt 
 or Sebastopol ; we are not likely to sway the counsels 
 of Vienna or Petersburgh. Nevertheless, there lies the 
 newspaper on the table ; under protest, we turn to it 
 again. The subject has an indescribable interest for us. 
 When we come to question ourselves, we cannot find 
 out that our other work would be better done, if ^YQ 
 stifled that instinct. It might be immeasurably better 
 done if that instinct took a stronger and healthier form. 
 If, instead of yawning over the latest intelligence or the 
 leading article, we seriously felt for tlie human beings 
 and the human interests that are involved in those 
 distant transactions, the human interests and human 
 beings that are nearer to us might rise also in our esti- 
 mation ; we might feel more our duties to them, more 
 the power we have of benefiting them. 
 
 It seems to me that, in like manner, working men, 
 who are living with each other in shops, factories, public 
 houses, who hear and talk, who read newspapers, may 
 listen to our call that they should mind the common things 
 of their household, and may in part admit the reason- 
 ableness of it, but that they will in a majority of cases 
 still find the distant and comprehensive subjects more 
 engaging. When that is not the case, it will be because 
 they have already acquired a sense of moral respon- 
 sibility w^hich leads them to feel most strongly the ob- 
 ligations that are closest to them. I dare not say 
 
IV.] FEEEDOM AND ORDER. 121 
 
 that the man who has this sense of responsibilitj will 
 he the one who gives up his patriotism, who ceases to 
 care for that which affects his country. I dare not wish 
 to deprive him of any one interest that is even half 
 awake in him already. I should rather wish to arouse it 
 into full consciousness, and this for the sake of the 
 other object. The paradoxical proverb is a true one, 
 that the longest way yound is the shortest way home. 
 The labourer may arrive at his home through Cronstadt 
 and Sebastopol, whilst the quicker route might have 
 brought him, not to his family, but only to his chimney 
 corner ; not to think of common things, but only of 
 those which are purely and exclusively his own. 
 
 The great problem of all, then, is how to make men 
 know that they are persons, and therefore that freedom 
 and order are tlieir necessary and rightful inheritance. 
 There may be various ways of solving this problem. 
 One of them may be, by teaching household economy ; 
 one of them may be, by teaching what many call an 
 accomplishment, a refinement. I do not care what 
 influence you bring to bear upon the man, provided it 
 does its work, — provided it arouses him to be a man. 
 Common things or uncommon, fine arts or coarse arts, 
 which promote that object, are all precious. To reject 
 one or another upon a theory is rash. We cannot in the 
 least pronounce a priori which will meet particular cases 
 or emergencies best. The success of Mr. Hullah's classes 
 proves, as I have shown already, how much all previous 
 conjecture, however practical, however apparently built 
 on observation, may mislead us. I know but three rules 
 which we can follow in forming a scheme of education. 
 
122 LEAllNING THE MINISTER OF [LECT. 
 
 The first, is to "be clear about our objects. The second, 
 is to study the tempers of those whom we would guide. 
 The third, is to plagiarise without remorse from all our 
 predecessors. 
 
 I am about to confess my own plagiarisms from two 
 parties which are supposed to be in deadly hostility to 
 each other, and both of which have some excuse for 
 anathematising me. In maintaining that any study 
 whatsoever, music, arithmetic, or that of common things, 
 is an instrument of which we may make use, even ifioe 
 have no other, in educating working men, or indeed men 
 of any class, I have adopted the maxim of those who call 
 themselves supporters of a purely Secular Education. 
 They ask why we are not at liberty to teach what we 
 can, supposing it is not in our power to teach what we 
 would? — whether it is not a strange thing to prefer no 
 instruction, to a scheme from which religious instruction 
 is excluded ? — whether we really think a man the worse 
 for having got wisdom on some subjects, because he has 
 not got it on that which we deem most important? 
 — whether we believe that enlightenment on the ordi- 
 nary business of life is a disqualification for the higher 
 lessons we would communicate ? — whether, if that is the 
 case, there is not good reason to suspect that these 
 lessons are not what they ought to be, not what are 
 likely to make free and brave English citizens ? These, 
 I think, are perfectly reasonable questions, all the better 
 because they are searching. I have answered the main 
 one already. I am equally ready to answer those wdiicli 
 are subordinate to it. I own at once that I should be 
 afraid that I was deceiving myself about the quality of 
 
I v.] FREEDOM AND OKDEE. 123 
 
 any religious instruction I ventured to offer, to any 
 person whatever, if I thouglit ignorance, dulness, torpor 
 of the mental faculties, would be a helpful precondition 
 to his receiving it ; if I did not Avish that he should be 
 as wide awake as he could be ; if I did not hail any 
 agency that had stirred up his faculties, even though the 
 immediate effect of the stirring might be to make him 
 regard me and that which I have to tell him, with irri- 
 tation, Avith suspicion, with aversion. I speak these 
 words deliberately, understanding something of what 
 is involved in them, and not shrinking from any appli- 
 cation of them that I am as yet acquainted with. And 
 therefore, if this were all that the advocates of secular 
 instruction intended by their doctrine, I might ask for 
 admission into their guild. But I have already made 
 statements which prevent me from pretending to that 
 honour. I have spoken of men as spiritual beings. I 
 have only justified the musical education on the ground 
 that it arouses men, shut up in the dreariest mechanical 
 employments, even sunk in moral debasement, to a feeling 
 of their spiritual existence, to the consciousness of be- 
 longing to another economy than that which is conversant 
 with the making or selling of commodities. I have 
 supposed freedom and order to be impossible for men 
 except as they come to understand that there is this 
 higher economy for them ; that they are not enclosed 
 within the boundaries of the lower. With the Secu- 
 larists, so far as they deny this principle, 1 am at issue, 
 not about points and deductions, but about data ; about 
 the very end for wdiich Learning exists, and for the sake 
 of which it is to be associated with Working. I can see 
 
124 LEARNING THE MINISTER OF [lECT. 
 
 no outcome from this project when it takes tliis form, but 
 that which Mr. Dickens is so vividly setting before us 
 in his sketches of the family of Mr. Gradgrind, a gen- 
 tleman who announces himself as the great champion of 
 ■ facts,' but who, if I understand his biographer rightly, 
 is only the champion of one class of facts, the positive 
 and dogmatical denier of another equally ascertained 
 class, which have even more to do with our condition as 
 human beings. 
 
 In treating men as spiritual creatures, I am evi- 
 dently plagiarising from the schoolof the anti-Secularists, 
 — from those who say that religion is the basis of 
 education. If I could understand that proposition to 
 be a recognition of the principle which I believe is 
 embodied in the old education of England, — if I 
 could understand by it the proclamation of the further 
 truth, that we are instruments in the hands of God for 
 raising and educating the spirits of men, and that we 
 ought all to confess this responsibility — I might hope to 
 fraternise with this class. But it seems to me that too 
 many of them, in their zeal against Secularists, actually 
 assume their ground and relinquish their own ; that they 
 treat the subjects of their discipline as purely mechanical, 
 while they affirm them to be spiritual ; that they address 
 them as if they belonged only to a mundane economy, 
 while all their professions imply the existence of another ; 
 that they undermine the faith in a divine Teacher, even 
 in the very words which they use to maintain the neces- 
 sity of a divine Teaching. I differ with them, because 
 they seem to me to differ with themselves. I only ask 
 them and the Secularists to hold fast to the doctrines 
 
lY.] FREEDOM AND OEDER. 125 
 
 from wliicli they start, and to dismiss what is incon- 
 sistent with them ; then I think they will, in due time, 
 miderstand one another, and may together provide a 
 solid education for the people of England. 
 
 Whilst, however, I have made frank acknowledgment 
 of my thefts from these two opposing schools, I must 
 disclaim all intention of fashioning out of these thefts 
 an eclectical scheme of education which shall be half 
 secular, half religious. Against this kind of com- 
 pound I would most earnestly protest. I believe it 
 must be powerless for good to any class, but utterly and 
 demonstrably powerless for the working classes. There 
 is a kind of Christianised teaching about philology, his- 
 tory, physiology, which seems to me most unchristian. 
 It is offensive to the scientific man, because it twists 
 facts to a moral ; to the devout man, because it treats 
 the laws of God's universe and His acts as less sacred 
 than our inferences from them ; to the working man, 
 because he asks us to help him to see the truth of 
 things, and he thinks we are plotting to deceive him. 
 If you regard Christianity as something which is to be 
 spread and sprinkled over the surface of things, to pre- 
 vent truth from being dangerous — if you have not courage 
 to look into the roots of knowledge and science, be- 
 cause you are sm'e that the God of truth and righteous- 
 ness is there, — you had better leave the working man 
 alone, unless you desire to make him a thousand times 
 more of an infidel than you give him credit for being 
 already. 
 
 I apprehend that if we are to give the working men 
 an education, we must take them as we find them, not 
 
126 LEARNING THE MINISTER OF [lECT. 
 
 as we would liave tliem to "be, in order to make our 
 arrangements for them easier. But that is the condition 
 under which all education, — that of the upper classes as 
 well as of the lower, — that already existing in England 
 as well as that which may be called into existence, — 
 must henceforth proceed. The decision to which the 
 House of Commons came last week, on Mr. Hey wood's 
 clause for the removal of the tests at matriculation in 
 Oxford, marks a new era in the history of the Univer- 
 sities. The resolution may not he affirmed by the 
 House of Lords ; it may not at once be carried into 
 execution ; but there can be no doubt, I conceive, in 
 any reasonable mind, that the rulers of the University 
 must consider the principle as established, and must 
 prepare themselves to act upon it. They must them- 
 selves be submitted now to a new and very stringent 
 test. It is to be tried whether they can address them- 
 selves to the various sects of the nation, and, without 
 exacting from them any preparatory agreement, can 
 prove to them and to all that they are fit to be educators 
 of a nation, the witnesses to it of the freedom and 
 order which are intended for all its sons. I trust 
 and hope that these ancient bodies will answer this 
 call, as those who love them could wish them to answer 
 it. I trust they will show that the senility which has 
 been imputed to them, has been apparent only ; or that, 
 if there was any ground for the charge, it will dis- 
 appear, now that tliey know how much the country 
 demands of them. Which result I believe we may help 
 to bring about, if we show that the maxims upon which 
 they must conduct their education are precisely those 
 
lY.] FREEDOM AND OKDEll. 127 
 
 wliicli we find applicable, and are ready to apply, in tlic 
 case of men not within the circle of their influence. 
 
 On the whole, I think the reasons for discouragement 
 which I brought before you in my last Lecture are fully 
 balanced by the signs of hope which I have tried to 
 speak of to-day. They may not be as brilliant as we 
 should like them to be ; they may be mixed with much 
 out of wliich we could, if we liked, draw excuses for 
 despondency. But if we have that faith in the power of 
 good, and the strength that is given to weakness, with- 
 out Avliich any attempt to ^meet a great necessity must 
 fail, I am sure that we shall see in every thought which 
 every benevolent man has thrown out — in the triumph of 
 at least one educational movement, and the feelings with 
 which the people have welcomed it — in the ideas and 
 attempts of the most warring parties — pledges of hope, 
 that it would be sinful to reject or despise. I know 
 there are some who cannot discover any such symptoms 
 of good in the new palace of Art which has been opened 
 to the inhabitants of this city. 1 agree with them that 
 the salvation of a country is not to be looked for from 
 such exhibitions. If I thought it was only to offer 
 nourishment for our dilettantism, I should be disposed 
 to use stronger language, and to repeat, in reference to 
 the nineteenth century, what I ventured to say to you 
 respecting Lorenzo's garden in the fifteenth. But this 
 danger will be averted, if you use that which might be 
 merely a place for gazing, as a place of education ; if 
 you do not contemplate the works of former days as 
 objects of idolatry, but as indicating what men in dif- 
 ferent ages, who were of our flesh and blood, thought, 
 
128 LEARNINa THE MINISTER, ETC. [lECT. 
 
 and in what forms they expressed their thought ; if yon 
 connect them with thoughts and struggles that are in 
 your own minds, and in the minds of the least in- 
 structed of your countrymen. You may make the 
 works at Sydenham, lesson books for them in the his- 
 tory of the past. Out of those lesson books you may 
 lead them to reflect : ' We too are men ; we too have 
 ' spirits within us. We need some higher Teacher 
 ' than these, to giye our spirits freedom ; to bring our 
 ' strange thoughts into order ; to make us workers and 
 ' learners for our children and for the time to come.' 
 
 ^1 
 
Y.] THE STUDIES IN A WOEKING COLLEGE. 129 
 
 LECTURE V. 
 
 THE STUDIES IN A WOEKING COLLEGE. 
 
 I SAID in my last Lecture that tlie ends wliicli we 
 should propose to ourselves in the Education of working 
 men, and of all men, were to give them Freedom and 
 Order. Of course^ I know how little worth there is in 
 either of these words, so long as it is a mere word. 
 Freedom and Order have become, may continue to be — 
 symbols for stump orators and election placards. Either 
 symbol may stand as a representative of most mischievous 
 and hateful acts and principles. We all remember what 
 Madame Koland said about the first as she went to 
 execution; surely there are hundreds lying in Italian 
 prisons who could utter a still deeper groan about the 
 crimes that have been perpetrated in the other name. 
 To speak of them in connexion with Education, I assume 
 that they can be redeemed from the service of the plat- 
 form and the hustings ; that they can find a living, intel- 
 ligible, practical signification ; that they can be wrenched 
 out of the hands of the anarchist and the despot, 
 (perhaps it is a blunder to distinguish names which are 
 always found at last to denote the same thing,) and can 
 
 K 
 
130 THE STUDIES IN A WOEKING COLLEGE. [LECT. 
 
 Ibe turned against tliem. If we have tliat jDurpose in 
 view, tlie more liabitnally we remember it, the more 
 plainly we avow it, the better it will be for ns and for 
 those whom we teach. I say for myself, that I do not 
 care for Education in the least except so far as I believe 
 it will contribute to these results. 
 
 I tried to show you that our Grammar-schools and 
 Universities nominally aim at these objects, much more 
 than at communicating any greater or less amomit of 
 teaching ; that this is the justification we commonly put 
 forth for them ; that all true and effectual reformers 
 have laboured to bring them back to this standard, to 
 make them real instruments in emancipating the spirits- 
 of the students, and in giving them a sense of Order. We 
 have stated the case to ourselves thus : — ' These boys 
 
 * will hereafter have to toil in some profession or other, as 
 ' statesmen, as soldiers, as sailors, as landlords, as culti- 
 
 * vators of the land^ as lawyers, as physicians, as divines. 
 ' God forbid that they should not toil ! God forbid 
 ' that they should become idlers in the land ! But they 
 ' may become drudges instead of workers. They will, 
 
 * unless they are men as well as workers. Then their 
 ' work will be free, brave, intelligent. The practice of 
 ^ their professions will be honourable, the science of 
 
 * them will be expanded. If they are swallowed up in 
 
 * their work, — if they think of themselves only as land- 
 
 * lords, as soldiers, as sailors, as physicians, — the pro- 
 
 * fession will sink into a craft ; its mercenary ends will 
 
 * be chiefly regarded. It will lose its old dignity, it 
 
 * will conquer no new regions of thought and expe- 
 
 * xience. Therefore, for the sake of Work, let us have 
 
v.] THE STUDIES IX A WORKING COLLEGE. 131 
 
 ' an education which has not merely a reference to 
 ' Work.' 
 
 We have "been so vehement in these assertions, that 
 we have even exaggerated the application of them, and 
 so have weakened their effect. We have so much 
 dreaded to make the Education of our Schools and Uni- 
 versities professional, that we have kept it at a wide, 
 almost hopeless, distance from professional life. So 
 those effects have followed which I spoke of in my first 
 Lecture. The higher adult Education, that which our 
 ancestors described by the word Faculties, that from 
 which our Universities started, and which is their proper 
 characteristic, has been buried under the mere school 
 education. The teaching of boys has given the tone and 
 form to the discipline which should direct the thoughts 
 of men, when they are about to plunge into the business 
 of the world. Hence that business has become, unhap- 
 pily, divorced from the previous study. It is in danger 
 of becoming a mere absorbing practice. The springs 
 which should have fed it have been choked up or 
 diverted elsewhere. I rejoice to think that we have 
 suffered less from these causes than we might reason- 
 ably have expected. There is, I am sure, among the 
 professional men of England a manliness and nobleness 
 that are scarcely to be found anywhere. Every one of 
 us must have had proofs in his intercourse with phy- 
 sicians of their freedom from sordid feelings — proofs to 
 be recollected with silent gratitude and humiliation. 
 Those who have conversed much with lawyers, will 
 readily acknowledge that the generous and high-minded 
 judge, who was as dear to the scholar as to the lawyer, 
 
 K 2 
 
132 THE STUDIES IN A WORKINa COLLEGE. [LECT. 
 
 and wliose dying words entitle liim to the love of the 
 working-people as mucli as of either, was not an excep- 
 tion in his order, but a specimen of what it may produce. 
 And yet I gather from the lamentations I have heard 
 among the members of these noble professions, how 
 much they fear lest the science of medicine or of law, 
 being separated from other sciences, and from the studies 
 which belong to humanity, should be crushed under the 
 details of business, lest their own lives should yield 
 to the same oppression. I have no doubt that some of 
 these evils are counteracted by that which they often 
 find very inconvenient, the grumbling of patients and 
 suitors, whose demands, often ignorant no doubt, but 
 expressing real wants, force them to reflect upon their 
 traditional habits and rules in connexion with the general 
 interests of mankind, and with the principles of their 
 science, from which any reformation that is not hasty 
 and mischievous must begin. Still greater benefits may 
 arise to these professions — and to another that is 
 liable to more flagrant abuses and perversions from the 
 idols of the cave and of the market place — if the Uni- 
 versities, stimulated by the Legislature, make a serious 
 eftbrt to revive their adult lore, so carrying into efl'ect 
 their own true faith that all particular branches 
 of knowledge should be subject to a comprehensive 
 human culture. But the greatest good of all to Law, 
 Physic, and Divinity, may be expected, as I think, if 
 lawyers, physicians, and divines, determine in their 
 hearts that the hand workers shall not be mere drudges 
 more than themselves, that they also shall be taught 
 how to work as men, that they shall have such Freedom 
 
v.] THE STUDIES IN A WOKKING COLLEGE. 133 
 
 and sucli an Order as no arrangements of society, with- 
 out a spirit to direct them and the men who compose 
 the society, can ever give. 
 
 When we had settled these to be ends of our teaching, 
 we were less scandalised and discouraged than we should 
 otherwise have been, by some discoveries which were 
 made to us respecting the tastes and inclinations of the 
 working people themselves. It was a curious, and at 
 first a very startling fact, that they apparently pre- 
 ferred musical instruction to any other we could afford 
 them. Almost any lessons would have seemed more 
 practical, more suitable to their appointed tasks, than 
 these. With the little time they have for acquiring 
 information, how strange, how perplexing, that they 
 should fix their aff'ections upon a pursuit which, after 
 considerable labour, could return them so little. But 
 possibly their instinct is sounder than our criticism. 
 They may have discovered the very truth which we 
 have nearly forgotten ; their welcoming of music may 
 be a sign that they want something deeper and better 
 than all mere indoctrination. The fact, it seemed to 
 me, ought not to be overlooked. I was as much dis- 
 posed to complain of it as any one could be : but it is 
 of no use to complain of facts ; we must adjust ourselves 
 to them as we can. If we do not adjust ourselves to 
 them, I believe our Education will not be worth having. 
 
 It would indeed be a very hasty inference from tliis 
 observation, that music is the only study or the chief 
 study which we are to offer our people facilities for 
 learning. I have already told you that not a few of 
 them, under every possible disadvantage, have devoted 
 
134 THE STUDIES IN A WORKING COLLEGE. [LECT. 
 
 tliemselves to Mathematics, and that the works they 
 were engaged in have given them an interest in the 
 study which they would not otherwise have had. Cases 
 of tlieir giving themselves to languages may he rarer, 
 but unquestionably they are to be found. The authoress 
 of ' Mary Barton,' the most satisfactory of all wit- 
 nesses, testifies to the existence of learned botanists and 
 entomologists among the Manchester spinners. How 
 many of those who have devised our greatest engineering- 
 wonders have begun in the workshop, I believe we are 
 scarcely aware. The profoundest scientific chemists have 
 been sei^vants in the laboratory. I believe the statistics 
 of the most popular lecture rooms which the working 
 people frequent, would show that history and poetry 
 are subjects on which they especially like to hear dis- 
 courses. I need not speak of the impulse to oratory, 
 which exists certainly as much in them as in any 
 class of the community. And no one can have listened 
 to any of their speeches, without seeing how many 
 ethical and metaphysical as well as political theories are 
 seething in their brains. What, therefore, I gather 
 from the willingness they have shown to receive musical 
 instruction, is (1.) That all other instruction should 
 speak to them as this does, less as distinguished by 
 particular occupations, than as sharers of a common 
 humanity, and as capable of entering into the feeling of 
 it, in spite of their different pursuits, or by means of 
 them. (2.) That it being regarded as the great end of 
 studies to raise and cultivate that which is human, the 
 arbitrary division of them into useful and entertaining 
 should be discarded as illogical and embarrassing. 
 
y.] THE STUDIES IN A WORKINa COLLEGE. 135 
 
 •(3.) That they should have a considerable number of 
 studies presented to them, out of which they may choose 
 the one or two which have most attractions for them. 
 (4.) That though they never should be invited to devote 
 more time to any studies than is compatible with their 
 ordinary occupations, they should be led to perceive that 
 there is a relation between all studies ; that the boundary 
 lines between them are often artificial and imaginary; 
 that when they are most real, and when it is most 
 needful to distinguish between their objects and their 
 spheres, they again blend together when they are con- 
 templated in reference to our lives and duties. 
 
 I could not even venture to speak of a course of 
 studies for a College of Working Men, without making 
 these preliminary remarks. For you will be ready to 
 exclaim — ' Course of studies ! what a wild dream is 
 
 * this ! Here are ignorant, untrained men, with an hour 
 ' or two which they can with great difficulty snatch out 
 
 * of a day of extreme toil, and you fancy that you can 
 
 * give them a regular systematic indoctrination in a 
 
 * dozen or fifteen subjects, to understand any one of 
 
 * which would require all the wits of ordinary people of 
 
 * our class, who have had a preparatory discipline of 
 
 * many years.' I am guilty of no such monstrous 
 extravagances. I am going to speak of various branches 
 of knowledge, between which I feel there is a close 
 inward connexion. I wish the working man to under- 
 stand that there is this connexion. But I would have 
 him understand it, not by plunging into all these studies 
 together, or even into one after another, but by learning 
 under a teacher who feels the connexion himself; whd 
 
136 THE STUDIES IN A WORKING COLLEGE. [LECT. 
 
 is in friendly and continual intercourse witli other 
 teachers, each trying to initiate his pupils into the 
 subject with which he is most familiar. I allow for the 
 short time, the very short time, which the working man 
 is able to give to any subject. I do not anticipate the 
 day, which, nevertheless, I trust our children will see, if 
 we do not, when Mr. Wilson's principle will be carried 
 out to its full extent, when the Factory shall become the 
 College, when Working and Learning shall be regarded 
 as inseparable. I take things as I find them. The hard 
 won evening hours are all I ask for. I do not wish the 
 married man — I do not expect the bachelor — to give up 
 half or a third of these to the college. What I think 
 he may do, if there is a subject which has already some 
 hold upon him, or which he wishes for any reason to 
 take hold of, is to come for the hour or hour and a half, 
 when that subject is taught, week after week. He can, 
 if he likes and if he lives, spread his lessons over a 
 much wider tract of years than the ordinary student in 
 a University ; since he is not preparing for work, but in 
 the midst of work. The Degree need not terminate his 
 career, as it does that of the other ; he may, therefore, 
 make some amends for a little time at first, by the 
 greater time afterwards. But he may make much 
 better amends than this, if he is really awake and 
 interested in that which he is about. He may speak of 
 it at home with his wife and children ; he may think of 
 it, and even, as the mathematical students I alluded to 
 are in the habit of doing, read about it, when his work 
 is merely mechanical. And then when he feels that his 
 mind is freer and more orderly for this part of learning, 
 
v.] THE STUDIES IN A WOEKINa COLLEGE. 137 
 
 and if he has seen something on the right or left of it 
 which is needed to bring out the full sense of it, he maj 
 "betake himself to that, or he may work with dogged 
 pertinacity in his own original mine, till he has 
 brought out some of its deeper and more hidden 
 treasures. I have said thus much about the teachers, 
 and the way in which I would have them think and 
 work together, each keeping his own calling directly be- 
 fore him, each growing into a respect for his neighbour's 
 calling and curing himself of his exclusiveness, because 
 I could not well separate it from the topic which is 
 before us now. But I reserve for my final Lecture the 
 consideration of the class from which the teaching body 
 should be taken, of the form which should be given to 
 it, of the relation in which it should stand to the 
 learners. My business now is to enumerate the subjects 
 which I suppose we are warranted in offering to a 
 body of working men, as being likely on one ground or 
 another to engage their sympathies, and as fitted to 
 elevate them individually and socially. 
 
 The first I shall speak of. is one which you might 
 fancy I should keep to the last, as being very difiicult and 
 dangerous to handle, if 1 were not prudent enough to omit 
 it altogether. There can be no doubt that the subject of 
 Politics has an interest for a large body of English work- 
 men which no other subject has. That is the reason 
 why it is banished from many institutions which seek to 
 do them good. ' We do not want,' it is said, * questions 
 'which set men at war. Education is designed to 
 
 * make the mind calm and sober. Confine yourselves 
 
 * to physics ; there is no excitement and passion. Once 
 
138 THE STUDIES IN A WORKING COLLEGE. [LECT. 
 
 * venture on the other ground, and you are in the midst 
 ^ of smoke ; a smoke which betokens that tliere is fire if 
 
 * it has not yet bm-st out/ 
 
 There are some who feel the force of this remark, 
 and yet who half suspect that you do not clear away 
 the smoke or put out the fire, by pretending not to 
 observe them. They think political instruction should 
 be given, but under another name. ' Why may we not 
 
 * teach what is needful to be known of Politics in the 
 ^ form of History ? We do in fact communicate much 
 ' political information to school-boys when we read Livy 
 
 * or Tacitus with them. Working men who are likely 
 
 * to frequent a college will learn what they want or can 
 ' receive respecting the present from the newsj)aper ; our 
 
 * business is to give them tidings respecting the past, of 
 
 * which they have as yet only a very loose and incorrect 
 
 * impression.'' I feel all the temptations to adopt this 
 mode of escaping from the difficulty. I know what 
 plausible and strong arguments there are for avoiding a 
 name, which often alarms quiet people more than the 
 most terrible things. But I am satisfied that these 
 risks ought to be incurred, and that an Education such 
 as I am proposing for men, will fail altogether of its 
 object, if it does not teach Politics ; if it does not give 
 great prominence to them; if it attempts to disguise 
 the purpose by any subterfuge whatever. Unquestion- 
 ably I wish the working men to feel tliat they are 
 studying Politics when they are studying History; 
 I wish them to think of the past and to learn the lessons 
 of the past. I rejoice to believe that our English boys 
 are learning politics, and not merely Latin and Greek, 
 
y.] THE STUDIES IN A WOEKIXG COLLEGE. 139 
 
 from Tacitus and Thucydides ; tlie j will learn still more 
 of politics, I suspect, from the Bible, if tlie j read it with, 
 open eyes. But I have to remark, once for all, that we 
 never can teach men as we teach boys, let their previous 
 deficiencies be what they may. You will all remember 
 the passage in Guy Mannering, where Dominie Sampson, 
 in his first rapture at receiving 3Ir. Henry Bertram, the 
 pupil who had been lost at five years old and had come 
 back at twenty-two, tells him how much his sister has 
 been learning in the interval, and proposes to begin 
 again with him from the fii'st rudiments of grammar, 
 !Xow there was nothing ridiculous in this proposition 
 according to school notions. There was a reasonable 
 presumption that Mr. Bertram, who had been roughing 
 it in the world, was rather rusty in his accidence, if he 
 had been lucky enough to have meddled with it at 
 all, after he fell among the smugglers. Since sound 
 knowledge requires a sound foundation, the Dominie 
 had a fair excuse for suggesting that he should resume 
 his studies where he had left them ofi". Why then did 
 the clear worldly sense of Sir Walter Scott perceive 
 something exquisitely humorous in this scheme of the 
 tutor? why has he made his readers laugh at it more 
 even than at his exorcism of Meg Merrilies ? Because 
 we feel instinctively that a man has rights, has a know- 
 ledge, has a position, which must be taken for granted, 
 and respected ; that he must under no circumstances 
 be put on a first foiTQ, and turned into a child. You 
 cannot do it ; you have no business to attempt it. 
 The world has been teaching him — I must add with all 
 reverence, God has been teaching him — whatever you 
 
110 TllK STUDIES IN A WOrvKINCI COLLECIE. [LKCT. 
 
 Ikivc Ibccu cloliii;-. ^Po overlook that fact, is sliii})lv to 
 deprive yourself of tlie Lest opportunity of clcliveriiig 
 Lim from the iciuorancc whieh cleaves to him. 
 
 I am not at all sure that we have not heen too 
 indlll'erent to the present, in our teaehing of boys ; 
 that ^ve have not far too much ignored the amount of 
 incoherent ini'ormation which they have received from 
 conversation and newspapers, and have not failed to 
 connect that witli tlie work of the schoolroom. 1 iind 
 the most intelligent schoolmasters are heglnning to 
 adopt that opinion, and to alter their practice in con- 
 formlly Avith It. And L think that hy doing so, they 
 will help to hring about one of the most desirable 
 and necessary of all reforms. 
 
 It has become the fashion even at our public schools 
 to give the pupils extracts from great authors, for the 
 sake of the language, rather than the authors themselves. 
 St) they are driven to learn what is called their lllslory 
 from outlines and epitomes. The moment we begin \o 
 regard History as the interpretation of the present by 
 the ])ast, these nmst prove utterly unavailing; LIvy 
 and Xeno})hon must resume their ])lacc as teachers ; 
 Mr. rinnoek's Catechisms may be used to light our 
 fires, since they have no light in themselves. 
 
 I think, then, that instead of binding ourselves by 
 precedents drawn from the teaching of ehiklren, we may 
 rather hope greatly to benefit that teaehing by following 
 out the method whieh is obviously the most suitable for 
 men. To make our working people aware of the 
 treasures which they ])Ossess in the history of the 
 country, 1 would begin with the topics that are most 
 
v.] THE STUDIES IN A WORKING COLLEGE. 141 
 
 occupying us iu llils day. No doiiLt these are ])arty 
 topics, — that is to say, cacli party in the country has its 
 own views upon them. You may make that an excuse 
 for passing them by, and for talking upon some subject 
 upon wliicli all people agree, or seem to agree. You 
 may say, ' There is a Tory tradition about this point, and 
 
 * a Whig tradition. I find these working peo})le rather 
 
 * impatient of both, inclined to take up with some Radical 
 
 * o])inion which they fancy is not traditlonid. It is much 
 
 * "better to move the previous question, and discourse of 
 
 * air-pumps and gases.' What is the effect V The most 
 active and energetic thoughts of the minds with which 
 you have to deal, are those which you do not meet, 
 which you leave to the sport of any chance influence. 
 Y^ou say to the most vigorous man, — ' Your vigour is in 
 
 * our way ; we had rather you Avcrc stupid or asleep ; 
 ' and Ave wdll try to find some part of you which is not 
 
 * alive, that w^e may address ourselves to that.' It 
 woidd be better to take any course, even what I should 
 think the narrowest, than this. Give them your Tory 
 traditions or your Whig traditions ; enforce them by 
 the most passionate declamation, by the most onesided 
 exhibition of facts, luring up your fierce Radicalism to 
 confound both. Tn any of these ways you will do 
 something ; you will often irritate the man's fiiith, you 
 will often outrage his conscience ; perhaps you will 
 find that you are not dealing very fairly with your 
 own ; but at least you will kindle some emotions, w^ith 
 whieh good will mix as ^v(^\ as evil. You will not 
 leave the man to the thought wdiich is the worst of all f >r 
 him and for you, that there is nothing common between 
 
142 THE STUDIES IN A WORKING COLLEGE. [LECT. 
 
 liim and you ; that yon do not care for the same things, 
 that yon are indifferent whether yon are fellow-citizens > 
 or deadly foes. 
 
 I believe, indeed, that there is a more excellent way 
 than either — one which those who care to edncate work- 
 ing men and to edncate thinking men, more than to 
 propagate their opinions, will find. I believe that they 
 will be able to point ont the great and precions prin- 
 ciples which have been vindicated by the Tory tra- 
 ditions and by the Whig traditions; the grievons loss 
 which it would have been if either had been wanting to 
 the land; the great and noble spirit which has gone 
 forth in support of both. I believe that in justifying 
 these, and in showing how, while apparently counter- 
 acting each other, they have nobly worked together for 
 building up the nation, yon would be able to point out 
 far more clearly what have been the sins into which 
 each party has fallen, and what reason each has afforded 
 for the bitter complaints against it. You would then be 
 able to explain, while confessing the good of both, 
 while proving that good to be necessary for our time as 
 well as for any past time, that there is a good which 
 neither could effect, nor both together, and which we 
 may effect if we profit by the wisdom of both, while we 
 refuse to be bound by the exclnsiveness of either. Thus 
 a teacher may give the most cordial welcome to the 
 convictions and hopes which he will find stirring in the 
 hearts of the working men, and yet may bring the 
 experience of history to remove their prejudices and 
 diminish their asperities. This cannot be, if we do not 
 come to the task with a willingness to have our own 
 
v.] THE STUDIES IN A WORKING COLLEGE. 143 
 
 theories broken to pieces by facts ; desirous to nnd 
 men, better than we have supposed them to be ; de- 
 termined that what is right and true must be mightier 
 and must show itself to be mightier than we and all 
 other men are. This willingness, this determination, 
 may grow weaker or firmer by practice. Nothing is so 
 likely to weaken them as the habit of attacking others 
 and apologising for ourselves. Nothing is so likely to 
 strengthen them as the habit of bringing our thoughts 
 into collision with those of men whom we wish to help, 
 who will not take what we say for granted, who' will 
 often surprise us by their ignorance, often by showing 
 us that they have got beyond our depth. 
 
 You may ask how I would begin with defining the 
 subject which I propose should have such prominence ; 
 into how many portions I would divide it. I answer, 
 I think if we begin with the topics to which we ordi- 
 narily give the name Political, — those topics that are 
 most occupying our thoughts, foreign, domestic, econo- 
 mical, legal, — we shall arrive by degrees at the sense of 
 the word ; at the very sense of it which is indicated by 
 its etymology ; at the very sense which the greatest 
 thinkers have seen in it, far more securely and satis- 
 factorily than if we started with a formal definition, 
 which would embarrass the student and separate the 
 subject from his actual interests and sympathies. By 
 the same method we shall get to perceive when Politics 
 are dealing with human beings ; when with the things 
 which they work with or traffic with ; when they are con- 
 versant about decrees ; when with laws ; when they are 
 occupied with what is mutable, when with that which is 
 
144 THE STUDIES IN A WOEKING COLLEGE. [lECT. . 
 
 fixed and eternal, — far "better than if we introduced 
 divisions at the outset which are likely to tie it down by 
 maxims of ours, sometimes confounding what should be 
 distinguished, sometimes separating what should be 
 united. By this experimental course, we do justice to 
 the isrnorance and the knowledge both of ourselves and 
 our pupils, and we may make a particular study the 
 means of illustrating and cultivating the method which 
 belongs to all studies. 
 
 That is one excuse for the disproportionate length at 
 which I have spoken of this subject. Another is, that 
 I have included in it much that I have to say on some 
 other subjects which would else require a careful treat- 
 ment. I shall not need to explain how I suppose the 
 History of England, or of any other country in the 
 modern or old world, ought to be presented to a body of 
 workers ; I have already shown that I look upon them 
 all as deriving their interest and significance from the 
 light which they throw upon our own noisy age, from 
 the power which they give of looking into the heart of 
 questions which we are all inclined to contemplate 
 chiefly from the outside. And do not suppose that I am 
 showing our forefathers any disrespect, or am forgetting 
 that they had a life and battle of their own, because I 
 claim them first of all as commentators upon us. On 
 the contrary, I am sure they will come forth as living 
 figures out of the canvass — they will put on flesh and 
 blood again, and be seen, not merely in the costume of 
 their own time, but surrounded with all its circumstances 
 and interests, the actors in a true human drama, when 
 we connect them with what we see and do and feel. 
 
v.] THE STUDIES IN A WORKING COLLEGE. 145 
 
 Dr. Arnold, in an admirable passage of liis Lectures, 
 dwells upon the good which he had got from Mitford's 
 * Greece,' not because the sentiments of the historian 
 were just, or his statements of facts always credible, 
 but because he wrote in a passion, because he denounced 
 Pericles with the same vehemence with which he would 
 have denounced Mr. Fox. So Dr. Arnold learnt that 
 Pericles was not less an actual person, not more a 
 shadow, than Mr. Fox. He could judge afterwards for 
 himself what place he occupied among men, whether 
 it was that which Mitford had assigned him or quite 
 a different one ; but hereafter a place he must have, not 
 in a mausoleum, but among thinkers and workers. 
 One ought to be thankful for the existence of the 
 historical partisan, if he only produces one such actual 
 believer in history as Arnold was. But the experience, 
 I suspect, is not an uncommon one. We have all had 
 to bless some one or other for making ns know that 
 we are reading of men and women when we are reading 
 bound books. I think it is also Dr. Arnold who says 
 that he owed much to the ' Fortunes of Nigel ' for 
 making him recollect that King James talked broad 
 Scotch. That is the kind of benefit which we have 
 most of us derived from Sir Walter Scott. If we canno'^ 
 always assure ourselves that his kings and queens, even 
 that his ordinary ladies and gentlemen, had hearts- 
 beneath their robes, we have at least had one great 
 difficulty removed. They did walk and talk ; they had 
 shoes and head-gear; they are not only to be found 
 on coins. When we have got them so far brought 
 into the region of humanity, Shakspeare will show 
 
 L 
 
146 THE STUDIES IN A WOIlKINa COLLEGE. [LECT. 
 
 US wliat tliej were, as well as what tliey wore; w^e 
 begin to recognise witli awe and almost trembling that 
 nothing has departed or can depart; that words once 
 spoken, thoughts once thought, have a permanence 
 which man did not give them, and cannot take away 
 from them. 
 
 To receive this impression even imperfectly, is to 
 learn history, — to convey it, is to teach history. English- 
 men can, I think, learn it and teach it in no other way ; 
 no men are more likely both to learn it and teach it 
 again to us in that way, than our working people. It is 
 one of the great blessings I expect from a free inter- 
 com'se with them, that we shall be compelled to study 
 all that we might look at as antiquarians or dilettanti, 
 heartily and humanly. No men have appreciated 
 more, none perhaps so much, the services which Mr. 
 Carlyle has rendered to history and biography, by 
 giving substance and personality to names that had been 
 mere watchwords of vague admiration or horror. With- 
 out his genius, we may, if avc have battles to fight our- 
 selves, understand a little how other men fought theirs ; 
 and the tougher and harder the fight is of the men whom 
 wx try to educate, the better they will enter into our 
 meaning when we try to communicate it to them. 
 
 I need not speak of the value of places in giving an 
 interest or reality to history, or of the rich store of 
 topographical associations which the English workman, 
 and especially the London workman, may possess, if 
 there is any one to make him aware of his treasures. 
 I can have no remark to make on that subject which 
 has not been anticipated in Mr. Stanley's admirable 
 
v.] .THE STUDIES IN A WOKKING COLLEGE. 147 
 
 Lecture at Exeter Hall. But I would observe, in. 
 reference to the larger subject of geography, that I con- 
 ceive all instruction upon it ought to start like our 
 historical lessons from present topics and interests. 
 If you begin with defining continents, and islands, and 
 peninsulas, you will be fiiUing into the Dominie Samp- 
 son method ; if you take a map of the seat of the war, 
 and comment upon it, the elements of the subject, which 
 you may seem to have passed over, will gradually be 
 acr[uircd in the most satisfactory manner; and you 
 may then go on to arrange and organize tlie knowledge 
 you have communicated upon it as carefully as you 
 will; the more order you can put into the student's 
 mind the more grateful he will be to you. 
 
 In these last words I have indicated the rule which 
 I should apply to all our studies, but which is specially 
 important in reference to Ethics. What we want is not 
 to put things into our pupils' minds, so much as to set 
 in order what we find there, to untie knots, to disen- 
 tangle complicated threads. I cannot conceive a stupider 
 or a more useless task than that of prelecting to a set of 
 tired artisans, about the benevolent theory and the selfish 
 theory of morals, about the Platonical ideas, and the Aris- 
 totelian mean, and the Benthamite analysis of motives. 
 But if there be in every artisan the seeds of all the 
 theories of morals that have ever existed in the world ; 
 if you see these seeds bearing fruit in different parts of his 
 practice ; if he is the selfish man and tlie benevolent man, 
 the idealist and the pursuer of compromises, the seeker of 
 pleasm-e and the sufferer of pain a hundred times in the 
 same week ; then I know nothing more interesting, or 
 
 l2 
 
148 THE STUDIES IN A WOEKING COLLEGE. [leCT. 
 
 that may be more useful, tlian to follow out these different 
 tracks to the point from which they arise and in which 
 they terminate. The effort presumes some knowledge 
 of what is going on in the minds of oiu' pupils and in 
 our own, together with a sense that it is very frag- 
 mentary, and needs to he increased by intercourse with 
 them and with ourselves. It presumes also that we have 
 sufficient faith in what we have hold of, to be willing 
 that it should be subjected to all possible tests ; and 
 that we are quite certain that in no possible case shall 
 we come at the discovery that wrong means right, and 
 falsehood, truth. Like all efforts, it must be attended 
 with much humiliation ; but then what a reward ! We 
 shall feel, and we shall lead working men to feel, that 
 there is a standing ground for their acts and their exist- 
 ence, a deeper and a firmer one than they or we had sus- 
 pected. I can only repeat the hint about the text of our 
 lessons, which I gave when I was speaking of Politics and 
 History. It must be furnished by the topic in which we 
 find that our pupils are taking the most direct interest, 
 whatever that may be. We need care little what the 
 occasion is, whether it seems an important or an insig- 
 nificant one in our eyes. It catmot be insignificant if it 
 is stirring the hearts of any number of people, — if it is 
 deeply stirring the hearts of even the one or two we are 
 conversing with. If they are attaching an extravagant 
 consequence to some trivial point, we shall not make 
 them think less of it, by treating them or it with scorn. 
 We can only dispossess them of their exaggeration, 
 by leading them from the paltry subject-matter to the 
 principle which lies beneath it, and which really gives 
 
v.] THE STUDIES IN A WORKING COLLEGE. 149 
 
 them tlieir interest in it. Wlien they have come into 
 the daylight of a principle, they will perceive the relative 
 magnitude of different objects which were distorted by 
 the twilight and the morning mist. Another hint, 
 which may serve to connect this subject with the last, 
 is that questions concerning our relations with society 
 commonly take stronger hold of men in our day than 
 questions concerning individual morality, and that we 
 therefore have a better chance of coming to ethics through 
 politics, than to politics through ethics. I do not say 
 which is abstractedly the best method ; I do not know. 
 That which answers its purpose best in any given time 
 is the best for that time. 
 
 I must repeat again, because I know how much 
 reasonable ridicule we expose ourselves to if the remark 
 is not recollected, that in speaking of these studies, I am 
 trying to find different channels through which we may 
 reach different minds. I take the most general subjects 
 first, those which may have an interest for a great number, 
 if we do not mar them by our way of handling them. 
 But I do not assume that all will care for political 
 teaching, or all for ethical, or the same for both. I wish 
 to explain how, if they should take but one, they would 
 unawares be introduced to some of the lore which strictly 
 appertains to the other. Lessons on Morals, I think, 
 will be good for nothing if they are not illustrated from 
 Biography and History ; nay, if biography and history 
 do not supply the substance of them. So also histori- 
 •cal lessons will, in my judgment, be far less useful than 
 they might be, if they are separated from Poetry and 
 Painting. I should expect the plays of Shakspeare and 
 
150 THE STUDIES IN A WOEKING COLLEGE. [LECT. 
 
 the portraits in the National Gallery — supposing the 
 College were in London — to supply continual sugges- 
 tions to the Ethical lecturer. I should he surprised if 
 he did not often . take a play or a picture as the direct 
 and formal subject of his lesson, and if he did not find 
 that it served his end better than Paley or Stewart. 
 It must be clearly understood that in doing so, he would 
 not be poaching on the manor of a teacher who under- 
 took to give lessons on Painting or Poetry. I think 
 there should be such lessons ; they would meet a number 
 of feelings which would be less open to the Ethical 
 instructor. If he As^as jealous, he would as often have 
 to complain of intrusions from the artists as they from 
 him. I do not speak, of course, of direct lessons in 
 Drawing, which are invaluable and indispensable on 
 other grounds, but of teachings upon the principles of 
 the art, or upon the productions of its masters. I pre- 
 sume also whenever the musical doctor proceeds beyond 
 the mere practice of his art, there must be allusions 
 to the character that chords and sounds denote, which 
 would be in the strictest sense Ethical. 
 
 The reasons which I gave for the wonderful popu- 
 larity of Abelard's Lectures at Paris in the twelfth 
 century, will be a sufficient defence for me, when I plead 
 for offering instruction in Logic to our working classes. 
 If I supposed I should be introducing them to a new 
 subject, to one apart from all their previous thoughts 
 and habits, I should be obliged, by the maxims whicli 
 I have laid down, to reject it from our circle. But 
 since the workers speak and think and reason, they ar& 
 all logicians in embryo : what they want in this, as in- 
 
Y.] THE STUDIES IN A WOUKINa COLLEGE. 151 
 
 other cases, is to Lc taught what they arc doing, to 
 have their minds set in order about their own opera- 
 tions. I am far from sure that the person who undertook 
 this task, knowing what it signified, and with a reso- 
 lution to avoid pedantry, might not make his lessons 
 popular as well as very profitable. I do not indeed 
 anticipate a return of the middle age frenzy. I do not 
 suppose that if Mr. Mill announced a lecture on Uni- 
 versals at Drury Lane Theatre or Exeter Hall, there 
 wcTuld be an instant rush for front boxes, and that 
 tickets would be unprocurable. But the working man 
 who has been used to viigueness often manifests such a 
 delight in discovering lines and distinctions which were 
 always existing, and which he had not perceived, as the 
 student, tired of these lines and distinctions, and longing 
 to fill them up with actual forms, cannot appreciate. 
 Everything shows what a blessing each may be to the 
 other. 
 
 The study of language has been the study of our 
 English schools, — it has given them their name. You 
 will feel at once that it cannot be pursued in a working 
 College under the same conditions which we find in 
 them. Latin and Greek can ncA^er be the groundwork 
 of a mechanic's education. The love of intellectual 
 acquisition for its own sake exists only in a few — the 
 passion for philology only in one here and there ; these 
 generally find means of gratifying it, and are transported 
 from the working class into the scholar class. For such 
 cases we do not wish to provide, if we could. But does 
 it follow that the objects which our Grammar-schools 
 propose to themselves in their culture, arc not objects 
 
152 THE STUDIES IN A WORKINa COLLEGE. LECT. 
 
 which we should seek after, and which the working 
 people themselves desire? The best good that any 
 scholar gets from his Latin or Greek schooling is the 
 reverence for words ; a belief in their vitality and 
 power; a capacity of tracing them from their roots 
 through the diiferent stages of their growth ; a dread of 
 the corruption which they contract both in the schools 
 and the world ; a lively pleasure in recovering them to 
 their proper use, not only by observing that use in the 
 best and most considerate writers, but also by listening to 
 the speech of those who have retained some of their lost 
 meanings in their provincialisms. All these benefits the 
 scholar may owe to other tongues, but he turns them to 
 the account of his own. He is not more fond of exotics, 
 but more tenacious of the idioms, or at all events the prin- 
 ciples, of his language, than other people. Why then 
 can he not communicate what he has received, to those 
 whose training must be chiefly in English ? Why 
 cannot he lead them to observe the etymologies, powers, 
 and distinctions of the words which they are continually 
 uttering ; why may he not cultivate in them the respect 
 for their own native speech, and the feeling of respon- 
 sibility in the use of it, which he owes to his own 
 discipline ? I am far from thinking that some working- 
 men may not wish to learn another language besides 
 their own — French, German, or Latin — and that they 
 should not have facilities for doing so. But first of all, 
 I would have special lessons upon words — the words 
 which occur in the most familiar conversation, as well 
 as on technical words ; those which have the widest 
 range and the greatest depth of signification How 
 
v.] THE STUDIES IN A WORKING COLLEGE. 153 
 
 mucli may be done in this way, is sufficiently proved by 
 Mr. Trench's book on Words, which arose out of lectures 
 delivered to the elder boys in a parish school. The 
 interest which the lectures excited among them, and 
 their popularity among all classes of readers, show 
 clearly enough that there is a demand for this kind 
 of instruction, which might be satisfied if scholars could 
 only do themselves the highest of all services, by con- 
 senting to become as little children. 
 
 I shall have been greatly mistaken indeed, if I am 
 supposed to undervalue physical studies because I have 
 spoken at so much length of these human studies. 
 Natural studies, it seems to me, have been unfairly 
 treated in not being regarded as parts of a human 
 discipline ; as belonging, not to things only or chiefly, 
 but to men. The highest of them all is surely that which 
 we call, by way of eminence, Physiology ; and this 
 because it has a more direct relation to the human being 
 than any other has. I believe there are the most ob- 
 vious, practical reasons, — reasons which any benevolent 
 man will at once recognise, why lessons on the human 
 body should be given to working people, and should 
 occupy a place above even those that touch most closely 
 upon their occupations. This subject at once brings us 
 into contact with the laws of health, with the conditions 
 of the poor man's dwelling, therefore with all those com- 
 mon things of which I was speaking in the last lecture. 
 The experiences of the working man, — his bitterest suf- 
 ferings, — show him the need he has of this culture ; the 
 reward of receiving it would be an admiration of the 
 curious and wonderful frame which has been given him, 
 
154 THE STUDIES IN A WOEKING COLLEGE. [LECT. 
 
 and a higher sense of his own moral responsibility for 
 the use of it. Such lessons would promote the objects 
 which the Temperance Societies have at heart, better, 
 perhaps, than any pledges. A knowledge of the mis- 
 chief and curse of drunkenness may be useful ; but 
 surely it is better for a man to know that he may be, 
 and that all classes will help him in being, something 
 better than an animal. For sottishness will always 
 exist where there is despair : you will never cure it 
 except by kindling hope. 
 
 When I was speaking of Mechanics' Institutes, I 
 dwelt upon the necessity of teaching the class for whom 
 they were originally designed, the laws upon which their 
 Machines have been constructed, and which they obey ; 
 that is a way to show that the worker obeys another kind 
 of laws himself. One cannot carry out the principle of 
 Dr. Birkbeck too far ; our object should be to discover 
 how we may make it more effectual ; how we may give 
 the mechanic a fuller and clearer impression of its truth 
 and of its connexion with his own life. He will not 
 lose the sense of that connexion at all, if, besides 
 giving him the opportunity of studying practical me- 
 chanics, we offer him that instruction in the principles of 
 mathematics, for which so many of his class have mani- 
 fested a desire, and which they have obtained without 
 our aid. From thence the way will be open to any 
 even of the highest physical sciences, into which very 
 few, perhaps, may seek a thorough initiation, but which 
 should be within the reach of all. 
 
 I have often felt as if the phrases * manly education ' 
 — ' education for men ' — whicli I have used so often in 
 
y.] THE STUDIES IN A WOEKINa COLLEGE. 155 
 
 these Lectures, must liave an offensive sound, as if I 
 were devising a teaching which should be confined to 
 one sex. But I have adopted these phrases deliberately, 
 being certain that by employing them, I am doing my 
 best to vindicate a high education for women. Where 
 the education of men is not manly — where it is effemi- 
 nate — they will always be disposed to degrade their 
 wives and sisters ; they will always be suspicious of 
 their rivalry. When it has been most masculine — as in 
 Qu^en Elizabeth''s days, — the culture of women has been 
 free and noble in the same proportion. This remark is 
 no less true of the working class, than of every other.. 
 I look forward to no result of a College with so much 
 pleasure as to the improvement which I trust it will 
 make in those evenings which the man spends, not there, 
 but in his own dwelling. At the same time, I appre- 
 hend that much of the teaching I have described would 
 be as applicable to women as to men. And I hopefully 
 trust that if our present experiment should be at all 
 successful, we may be able to adapt some modification of 
 it very speedily to the use of females. There will be 
 this great advantage in such a course, that we shall be 
 able to claim the help of English ladies in following 
 it out. Parts of it may, perhaps, be more advan- 
 tageously managed by men. But the whole subject of 
 domestic economy, many lessons respecting health, 
 many respecting practical ethics, will not only come 
 with greater force and influence from persons of their 
 own sex, but would be, probably, full of follies and 
 blunders, if they proceeded from ours. 
 
156 THE STUDIES IN A WOEKINCr COLLEGE. [leCT. 
 
 I had hoped to say a few words on the subject of 
 Amusements, which Mr. Dickens has lately obliged us 
 all to think of; but I find that I must defer this till next 
 week, or I shall not have time to tell you what I think 
 about the teaching of Theology. Perhaps you will be of 
 opinion that I have anticipated the greatest difficulty on 
 this subject, when I alluded to the doctrines of the Secu- 
 larists and the Anti-Secularists, and expressed my assent 
 to the judgment of the first, that we may teach any study 
 whatever without insisting that any other whatever shall 
 be taught along with it, and my entire sympathy with the 
 second, in their professed belief that man is a spiritual 
 being, and that all education is good only so far as it 
 proceeds upon that supposition. But that statement would 
 not be a sufficient justification to me, for offering specific 
 instruction in Theology, if I had not the same reason to 
 give for that course, which I have given for teaching 
 Politics and Logic. Unless I felt sure that the working 
 men were divines in embryo as well as logicians in 
 embryo, — in other words, that they must think about 
 Divinity, whether we speak to them of it or not; unless 
 I believed that their vague thoughts about it interfere 
 with the feeling that they are men and have the rights 
 of men — and that it is possible to give their thoughts 
 harmony, and so to do more for the freedom and the 
 order of their minds than by any other of our lessons ; 
 I should rather avoid a subject which no man of common 
 sense or ordinary experience hopes to handle without 
 giving offence. Having that conviction very strongly 
 and deeply rooted in my mind, so strongly that it must 
 
y.] THE STUDIES IN A WOKKING COLLEGE. 157 
 
 liave its expression in every lesson of mine on any subject, 
 if it did not find this direct outlet, I tliink it would be 
 dishonest to the working people if I did not give them 
 notice of it, by using a word which is likely to frighten 
 many of them. Of course no one need take more of our 
 instruction than he likes ; but he has a right to know 
 what sort of people they are who offer it ; he has cause to 
 complain if they sail under false colours. If I asked 
 any one to suppress his convictions, I should feel as if 
 I were under a sort of obligation to stifle my own ; but 
 as I think all peril to truth as well as charity lies in 
 evasions and concealments — and that there will be most 
 safety, and most tenderness of others, when every one 
 speaks out that which is deepest in him — I must exercise 
 the privilege of which I count it a shame and a folly that 
 we should deprive any. And as I make that our defence 
 for giving a substantive place to Theology in om- College 
 course, so it is upon this principle that I should wish to 
 see it taught. There are those who suppose that if we 
 excite any one to tell that which makes him discontented 
 with us and our conclusions, or what he takes to be our 
 conclusions, we must be propagating doubts and divisions. 
 I can only say that I have tried, and I believe it to be the 
 best method of delivering our pupils and ourselves from 
 doubts and divisions, of leading them and us to know 
 where we are standing, and what we have to stand upon. 
 If I believed that Truth belonged to us and that we 
 could settle strifes, I should think and act otherwise. 
 Believing that Truth is of God, and that our divisions 
 come from our narrow and partial apprehensions of it, 
 
158 THE STUDIES IN A WORKING COLLEGE. [LECT. 
 
 I ■would ask Him to vindicate it, and to cstablisli Unity 
 in His own way. If I tliouglit that we could give men 
 Freedom or Order, I should leave the science of Theology 
 alone ; I should suppose that no such science existed. 
 I would teach it, because I believe that God desires 
 Freedom and Order for us, and will help us to desire 
 them and claim them for ourselves. 
 
VI.] THE TEACHEES IN A WOEKINa COLLEGE. 159 
 
 LECTURE VI. 
 
 THE TEACHEES IN A WOEKING COLLEGE. 
 
 The subject wliicli I am to consider this morning 
 presents more difficulties than any upon which I have 
 spoken to you yet. They are difficulties, which I be- 
 lieve can be overcome ; otherwise I should not have 
 begun this course of Lectures. But I have no wish to 
 conceal from myself or from you, how serious they are. 
 I am not to show, as I did in my first Lecture, that an 
 Education for Adults is demanded by the present cir- 
 cumstances of England; that such an Education has 
 existed among us from the earliest times ; that out of it 
 our schools for boys and girls have developed themselves. 
 I am not to show, as I tried to do in my second, that an 
 Education which is united with Work, is demanded by 
 the present circumstances of England, and that such 
 a combination is justified by a long array of unexcep- 
 tionable precedents. I am not to show, as I did in my 
 third, that the discouragements to this attempt which 
 arise from our false notions of Labour and of Learning 
 must be combatted, unless the freedom and civiliza- 
 tion — even the commerce — of England, are to die ; not, 
 as I did in the fourth, that there are great encoui'age- 
 
160 THE TEACHERS IN A WORKING COLLEGE. [lECT. 
 
 ments to set off against these discouragements, in the 
 desire which the working people have manifested for 
 certain kinds of Education, in fact, from their readi- 
 ness to receive any Education which speaks to them 
 as human beings, and awakens or satisfies the craving 
 in them for freedom and order; not, as I did in my 
 last Lecture, that it is possible to imagine a number 
 of studies, each of which would have an attraction 
 for some of their body, — each of which, even if taken 
 by itself, would contribute to the objects which all 
 Education is to aim at, and which have an affinity and 
 inward relation to each other. But I am to consider 
 whether it is possible to establish such an Education as 
 this in England, and to find teachers who will carry 
 it on. 
 
 Not for the 'sake of deferring this question, but in 
 hopes of gaining some light upon it, I shall allude 
 first to another question, which I passed over through 
 want of time in my last Lecture. I dwelt, perhaps 
 sufficiently, on the studies which should be comprised in 
 a College course. I said nothing directly of the Amuse- 
 mmts which some demand even more earnestly than 
 studies for those who are engaged all day in hard work. 
 The great general plea for amusements is the necessity 
 which is felt for them, by the higher classes, whose ordi- 
 nary toils are so much less severe. There is an additional 
 argument for them derived from the reports which have 
 reached us, especially in Mr. Mayhew's book on ' London 
 Labour and the London Poor,^ of the miserable recrea- 
 tions which our people have devised for themselves in 
 default of the better which might have been offered to 
 
YI.] THE TEACHEES IN A -WOEKING COLLEGE. IGl 
 
 tliem. In reference to the first subject — tlie great demand 
 for amusement among those who seem as if they had no 
 "business besides that — one cannot help recollecting the 
 remark of an eminent man, playing on Avhat he sup- 
 posed to be the derivation of the word, that ' no doubt 
 
 * it was very desirable for people to retire at times from 
 ' the Muses, only he should like to know what time 
 
 * they spent with the Muses. If the string of the bow,* 
 he added, ' Avas ever stretched, it would be more easy to 
 ^ determine when and how it should be relaxed.' I 
 quote his remark not for the sake of enforcing it against 
 a particular class, but rather of showing how it may be 
 applied to a class for which it was not intended. Tlie 
 makers of coats and shoes are certainly not bound by 
 their ordinary occupations to be icith the Muses; the 
 thought of their company, if they once entertained it, 
 might, one would hope, be rather a relief than a burden. 
 And it is not ' relaxation ' that they or that any men 
 chiefly crave for. There may be a state — I am told there 
 is, of hopeless drawling effeminacy in some men, who 
 have early exhausted all modes of pleasure, which pro- 
 nounces all effort of any kind whatever, a bore. The 
 cases are worthy to be noted ; the Helots of luxury should 
 be exhibited in their worst excesses, that young men 
 may see and fear. But in general, people of all ages 
 wish to be roused out of torpor. The stimulus may be 
 of a kind which tends to produce great torpor afterwards ; 
 but the demand for it is a practical confession that 
 torpor is wholly unsuited to our state, that it is quite 
 intolerable. Do not suppose that men, Avho are working 
 all day for their bread, are in this respect difibrcnt from 
 
 :m 
 
1^2 'I'lir: Ti:Ar:iii:i:s in a avorktno C()LLF/;r.. [lfxjt. 
 
 Ilicir fcllow-creatiircs. The. g-ln palaces may lend at 
 last to Htii])or and oblivion, lnit their first tcin])tatioii is 
 cxcitcnicnt, l^ive-ry ])ciniy theatre promises tlie same 
 reward; no ease ior iacnllies Ihat liiive l)een ovcr- 
 {^Irelchcd, l)ii( :i temporary awakening to faculties that 
 have heen benumLed. 
 
 If this is so, tlien tlie desire for recreation among 
 those who are hard-worked, does not make teaching 
 liopelcss, provI(h'd leaelilii!^- takes a reasonable form, 
 provided it is not an eilbrt to cast new burdens upon a 
 spirit already crushed and jaded, but an attempt to 
 give that S})irit exercise, that it may be more ca])ahh>. of 
 sustaining tlie burden ^vhieh it has already to bear. 
 Tiien, again, if this is so, we shall not give any pedantic 
 scliool restriction to the word Mcaching.' Whatever 
 ■tends to make the man more human, is a part of educa- 
 tion, not something beside i(. Our ancestors certainl}^ 
 had this feeling. They sup])oscd that tl^e seats of 
 learning were to raise tlie tone of the country in every 
 respect; that whatever belonged to r(>fnieni(Mit and cul- 
 ture it was their business to dilVuse. ^riiey did not 
 perform their function very well. The enli'rtainments 
 one reads of, as given by them in tlu' j)rogressea of 
 Qiiecu J*jlizabeth and James J. must liave become 
 very formal and artificial. Milton s])enks of those in 
 liis tiuu^, as^ sim])ly ridiculous. ' ^There, while they 
 
 * acted,' he says, ' and over-acted, among other }'oung* 
 
 * scholars 1 was a spectator. I'hey thought themselves 
 ^ gallant men, and I tliouglit them fools. They made 
 
 * sport, and I laughed. They mispronounced, and I 
 
 * misliked. And to make up the Atticism, they were 
 
VI.] TIIK TEACHERS IN A WORKING COLLEGE. 1G3 
 
 ' out, arid I hissed.' But there was in these relics and 
 corruptions of an old practice, the indication of wliat it 
 had once meant. The University was to train the 
 whole man, not merely one part or side of him ; .it was 
 not to suffer any instruments which could serve for the 
 elevation of the liuman soul, to become instruments in 
 brutalizing it. There was the example in old Home 
 liow tlie games and spectacles of a great people might 
 call forth its worgt and most savage tendencies, those 
 that were making it the tyrant of the world which it was 
 meant to civilize. There was the example of Catholic 
 Spain, how all that was most dark and dangerous in 
 the character of its inhabitants, all that mingled most 
 readily with its superstitions and was stimulated by its 
 gold, could receive a yet Avorse and more malignant 
 character from its bull-fights. Did it not behove patri- 
 otic men to save their land from the like abominations, 
 by showing that the eye and the ear are not to be Jeft 
 untrained, but are to be made subservient to right and 
 honourable uses, not to those which are debasing and 
 shameful ? Alas ! in this and in so many other cases, 
 to some of wliich I have alluded before, the caste 
 morality in the upper classes, and even in the seats of 
 learning, drove out tlie higher, truer, national morality^ 
 The entertainments of the Court severed themselves 
 from the entertainments of the people. The people 
 were encouraged to be brutal ; the refinements of the 
 Court became efieminate and corrupt. The Puritan 
 ministers, not without tlie greatest excuse, but wholly 
 against the judgment of Milton, Colonel utchinhon 
 and their wisest men, strove to put down botli, Eotlt 
 
 M 2 
 
164 THE TEACHEES IN A WORKING COLLEGE. [LECT. 
 
 reappeared after the Eestoration, more debased, more 
 inhuman, just in proportion as they more belonged to 
 classes. The amusements of the lower orders, coarse 
 and degrading as they were, were yet free from the 
 systematic villany that was tolerated and admired on 
 the stage, which received its tone and encouragement 
 from the higher. Many attempts have been made at 
 reformation since ; some very unsuccessful, some not 
 without a great promise of blessing. If we examine 
 them carefully, I think we shall perceive that no good 
 has come to the amusements of the higher class, except 
 where they have sought to strengthen and refresh them- 
 selves by intercourse with the lower, to repair a jaded 
 conventionalism by drawing new life from that wdiich 
 is essentially human ; that no good has come to the 
 entertainments of the lower classes, except from the 
 same cause differently working, from their perceiving 
 that they w^ere interested in whatever has an interest 
 for human beings. 
 
 The conclusion to which I come is this. The bodily 
 energies being given to man by his Creator, and bemg 
 liable to all abuse — the senses being given to man by 
 his Creator, and being liable to all abuse — no education 
 can be sound and true which makes light of either, 
 which does not treat the development of them as a 
 solemn duty, not merely as a bye work. The more we 
 look upon man as a spiritual being, the more we regard 
 education as intended to bring forth his spirit, the more 
 we shall desire to train his animal nature and his 
 senses, because they w^ll certainly enslave his spirit, if 
 they are not made its servants. This being the general 
 
VI.] THE TEACHERS IN A WORKING COLLEGE. 165 
 
 rule, its application will be different in different time?, 
 and places, and circumstances. It may be most desir- 
 able that there should be formal gymnastics in connexion 
 with a London College, where the opportunities for 
 exercise are rare, and the occupations often sedentary. 
 For agricultural labourers, living in the open air, cricket 
 and other games would, I should conceive, be im- 
 measurably better. With respect to the other branch 
 of cultivation, the concert would be desirable, and 
 in general, under some form or other, attainable, in 
 great towns ; — some substitute for it would be found, 
 I doubt not, in the country. The eye has a right to its 
 own education, as well as the ear ; how it should be con- 
 ducted may depend on a number of circumstances, 
 which it is impossible to enumerate or anticipate. Pro- 
 bably the discovery of what is really the most suit- 
 able method must be attained in all cases through a 
 number of unsuccessful experiments. There is always 
 a danger of assuming that what was good as an in- 
 strument of education in one age — Avhat may be still 
 very useful in another country — is necessarily good for 
 our time and land ; there is the equal danger of re- 
 fusing to profit by the lessons of former times, and of 
 surrounding nations. From the instance of Music to 
 which I alluded in a former Lecture, we may judge how 
 rash speculations are, respecting the capacities and dis- 
 positions of those whom we would train ; how necessary 
 it is to observe with care, what are the influences that 
 affect them most powerfully. My own opinion would 
 certainly be, that while no nation has more of the 
 dramatic faculty than the English, or is more capable of 
 
166 THE TEACHERS IN A WOKKING COLLEGE. [leCT. 
 
 contemplating history as a great providential drama, 
 there is less of what is histrionic in ns than in the 
 people of the continent ; less that is likely to receive 
 impressions from the acted play. On that gromid, I 
 should hope more from exhibitions like those which the 
 Crystal Palace offers, than from any attempts to purify 
 and restore entertainments which many of our coun- 
 trymen look upon with utter aversion, because they 
 connect them with a number of evil accidents, cer- 
 tainly not belonging to their essence. I am not, how- 
 ever, in the least sure that I am right ; some facts would 
 lead to quite a different inference. And I would say, 
 once for all, that while in those questions which concern 
 self-indulgence we owe the greatest respect and homage 
 to the feelings of every honest man — while deference to 
 Ihem, when nothing but this is involved, will be always 
 beneficial to our own characters ; — all danger of giving 
 offence ought to be risked the moment we are fully 
 convinced, after careful deliberation, that the step we 
 are taking will tend to give a more moral and humane 
 tone to our fellow-citizens. That end is too important 
 to be sacrificed to an object so paltry as that of keeping 
 up a good reputation for ourselves, with any persons 
 Avhatsoever. And so far from injuring their consciences, 
 we may often do them much good by teaching them to 
 distinguish between the self-seeking which they ought 
 to condemn in the pursuit of pleasure, and in every 
 pursuit, and those acts which, when they are not con- 
 demned by an express law, are good or evil, according 
 to the purpose for which they are done, and the spirit 
 in which they are done. This distinction is so precious 
 
VI.] THE TEACHERS IX A WORKINa COLLEGE 167 
 
 to the interests of tlie liigliest as well as of the vulgarest 
 morality, and the pains which are taken to obliterate it, 
 by some who ventm^e to lay down laws for society, are 
 so perilous to the faith and honesty of England, that 
 we should make great efforts, and incur serious risks, 
 for the sake of asserting it. In proportion as the upper 
 classes feel the responsibility which is laid upon them, 
 by all possible means to bring out in themselves and 
 those from whom they are divided by circumstances, 
 that which is common to both, — in that proportion will 
 they be able to establish this distinction upon a tme and 
 safe ground. 
 
 This is the connecting link between the subject of 
 amusements and the one which I announced for the 
 present Lecture. The experiment of a Working College, 
 which some of us wish to make in London, has been 
 made already in Sheffield. The history of that experi- 
 ment, as I have heard it, is very interesting. The neces- 
 sity for it in that great manufacturing town was felt by 
 various benevolent persons, as well as by many of the 
 workers themselves. A scheme was devised, in which 
 men of different opinions took part. It was found 
 that they did not work wxll together. It was feared 
 that the whole scheme must be abandoned. A dis- 
 senting minister of Sheffield undertook the conduct of 
 it when its condition seemed to be desperate, and, as I 
 have been informed, gave it its present shape, and for 
 some time upheld it and directed it himself. When, 
 after two or three years, he left the neighbourhood, the 
 people who had been benefited by it resolved that it 
 should not fall. They have supported it, and ad- 
 
16S THE TEACHERS IN A WORKING COLLEGE. [lECT. 
 
 ministered it themselves. Last autumn so eminent a 
 man as Dr. Lyon Playfair proclaimed it as one of the 
 greatest movements in modern scientific education. 
 Nearly all the London newspapers, I believe, com- 
 piented on his words, and noticed the Sheffield insti- 
 tution as a striking phenomenon of this age. 
 
 Such, I am sure, we shall be right in considering it. 
 Every step in the story is full of instruction and en- 
 couragement. The failure of the attempt to establish it 
 by an appeal to the public, the energy of an individual 
 man who had faith to believe that what was to be done 
 could be done, whatever the public might say to it ; 
 above all, the proof which the Sheffield people have 
 given that they care for education, and will have it, and 
 can conduct it in an orderly, intelligent manner, in- 
 creasing their numbers and their range of studies, as 
 I hear they do, each year, is a fact to be dwelt upon 
 with serious thankfulness. Whatever we can do, any 
 of us, to strengthen the hands of those who have 
 entered upon such a work, as w^ell as to imitate them, 
 we surely are bound to do. Our business is not to 
 criticise their course of instruction. The suitableness of 
 it for themselves, they are much better able to judge of 
 than we are. All we can desire is, that they should 
 work out their plan vigorously and thoroughly. So best 
 they w^ill find out if there are any defects in it which 
 need to be repaired. What I feel about it is, that if we 
 do not claim our share in the work which they have 
 not of choice but of necessity, and apparently with the 
 best possible feeling, taken upon themselves, we shall 
 miss a great benefit which, for the sake of all classes, 
 
TI.] THE TEACHERS IN A WORKING COLLEGE. 169 
 
 we cannot afForcT to miss. I am glad that, anywhere, iii 
 any town of England, manual workers should have 
 shown the spirit which they have in Sheffield. But I 
 do not think that we have a right to expect it of 
 them generally. I do not think it is intended that 
 we should be cheated of the fruits of the education 
 which it has pleased God to bestow upon any of us, 
 as I feel confident we shall be cheated of them, if we 
 are not able in some way to distribute them. It may 
 be" determined, in the counsels of Providence, that 
 the professional men of England, as well as the upper 
 classes of England, should not have this honour. It 
 may be that every good which the labourers get is to 
 be won for themselves. If such a sentence has gone 
 forth, I can only regard it as the most fearful hand- 
 "writing upon the wall: — 'You are weighed in the 
 
 * balance, and found wanting. The kingdom which 
 ' your cultivation would give you, so long as you 
 ' used it as God's servants for the use of His children, is 
 
 * taken from you, because you have accounted it your 
 
 * own.' Some prophet's eye may even now discern those 
 characters in the scroll whicli contains our country's 
 destiny. But till they stand out clearly and legibly, — 
 nay, even if they did — our business would be to seek 
 by a timely repentance that the decree might be 
 averted. 
 
 I believe that it is most desirable for the working 
 classes that it should be averted. I think that we can 
 give them a cultivation which they are not able to give 
 themselves. For the sake of avoiding quarrels and 
 discussions they will often be obliged to stint themselves 
 
170 THE TEACHERS IN A WORKING COLLEGE. [lECT. 
 
 of a laiowledge wliich, at all events, many of tlieni 
 want. If they seek that knowledge, it must come in 
 a more irregular and exciting way, not as a part of 
 education, but in the form of declamation and contro- 
 versy. A knowledge so coming, will be partial class 
 knowledge. It will not have the elevating, humanizing 
 effect that it might have, if they felt clearly that it came 
 from the pages of history, where there is no respect of 
 persons, where each class is tried and judged and con- 
 demned by its own acts, because history is the voice of 
 God, and utters in fragments and portions the sentence 
 wliich He will at last pronounce fully for the universe. 
 
 I know well how hard it is, and must be, to persuade 
 working men any where, especially those intelligent 
 working men who are likely to desire instruction, that 
 we do not mean to make our teaching subservient to our 
 own purposes, that we do not wish to make the history 
 of the past and the experience of the present, echo our 
 own conclusions, and apologise for our own injustice. 
 It is most hard to remove this suspicion ; it ought to be 
 most hard. We have played falsely with facts; we have 
 bent and twisted evidence to the justification of our 
 own school and party and class, and to the condemna- 
 tion of every other. We must pay the penalty for 
 these crimes. The expiation cannot be a very brief one. 
 But it is possible to establish confidence, if we are will- 
 ing to make efforts and sacrifices for it. It is possible 
 to show that we love the truth more than our opinions 
 and ourselves, if we do love it more. And there will 
 be the rich reward of teaching others to love it more 
 than themselves and their opinions, and so of making 
 
YI.] THE TEACHEES IN A WOEKING COLLEGE. 171 
 
 them in very deed our fellow- citizens and fellow- 
 workers. 
 
 We have got to this point then : I have claimed for 
 those who call themselves the educated classes of 
 England, at least the privilege and the right of helping 
 the manual workers to educate themselves. But having 
 defined our teachers so far, we are only at the beginning 
 of our task. The Sheffield experience comes in to baffle 
 us. The hopeless English public, with its infinite 
 varieties of sect opinions, class opinions, individual 
 opinions, what can we do with that? Sheffield says, 
 
 * Nothing.' Will London give a different answer? I 
 should say, ' Beyond all doubt, it will give the same 
 
 * answer.' 
 
 I am far from saying that an appeal might not be 
 made to the religious, or benevolent, or wealthy public, 
 as it is called in advertisements, in favour of an Educa- 
 tion for working men ; that powerful statements might 
 not be put forth about their ignorance and degi-ada- 
 tion, their addiction to evil books and instructors, and 
 the necessity of a strong and combined effort on the 
 part of those in superior situations, to extirpate their 
 bad principles and give them better. I am far from 
 saying that such an appeal might not be responded to ; 
 that Patrons, Vice-Presidents, and a Committee might 
 not be organized, that subscription lists might not be 
 opened at various bankers, and might not gain fresh 
 names after each energetic harangue, or each report with 
 the statistics, which some read and a few believe. But 
 when all this has been done, what has been gained? 
 I am afraid rather less than nothing. We have spread 
 
172 THE TEACHERS IN A WORKING COLLEGE. [LECT. 
 
 the notion tliat we are raising a charitable fund, and 
 these working people do not want our charity, and will 
 not accept it. We have led them to think that we 
 suspect them, and they will return the suspicion a hun- 
 dred fold. We have talked of giving them our princi- 
 ples instead of theirs, and are we quite sure tliat we 
 have made it clear by our acts that they would gain by 
 the exchange? Then, supposing we could get our 
 institution established, would it move? Would there 
 not be continual assumptions, interferences, complaints, 
 which make other works disagreeable, but Education, 
 if they are allowed to influence it, impossible. Either 
 the teacher must boldly proclaim the Busby principle, 
 and keep his hat on his head when the many-headed 
 king enters his schoolroom, in which case he will be 
 pronounced a direct rebel, and probafbly be dismissed ; 
 or he must submit to a constraint which will destroy all 
 harmony in his studies, and all respect in his scholars. 
 By all means, let our colleges and schools be open to 
 the criticisms of the public, and let the conductors of 
 them know how to make use of those criticisms. But 
 let them be men who feel that they did not receive their 
 commission and their power from the public ; who mi- 
 derstand that they can be of no use to it while they hold 
 themselves bound by its edicts and maxims. 
 
 May we then hope that the Government of the country 
 will, after due consideration, establish an Education for 
 adult working men, and provide suitable teachers to 
 carry it on ? It would be easy to say many sharp things 
 about the failures of successive Governments to esta- 
 blish any general Education for children, and thence to 
 
VI.] THE TEACIIEES IN A WOEKING COLLEGE. 173 
 
 argue how far tliey would "be likely to enter into a 
 new and more difficult line. But I do not impute these 
 failures to the insincerity or the weakness of one set of 
 ministers or another. I believe there has been a hearty 
 desire in many, perhaps in all, to do whatever the country 
 would let them do for its teaching, and a willingness to 
 incur risks for the sake of ascertaining what it is pos- 
 sible to do. 
 
 I know that some consider the practical conclusion 
 at which we have arrived, a lame and impotent one. It 
 seems to them that a Government ought to go much 
 further than merely to stimulate the efforts of different 
 classes by the promise of assistance, and to prevent their 
 efforts from being futile, by sending inspectors to see 
 v/hether the work done corresponds to the professions of 
 those wlio do it. They complain that the exceptions 
 from this rule in the case of those who transgress the 
 law, and, possibly, of paupers, give those an advantage 
 who are the least entitled to one. All such observations 
 have great plausibility ; but, perhaps, the more we trace 
 the history of English education during the last twenty 
 years, the more we shall doubt whether they are solid. 
 I do not mean merely, that such an examination may 
 show us how very little right we have to charge Govern- 
 ment with not undertaking a task, which our dissensions 
 have hindered them from undertaking, but that Provi- 
 dence has shaped our ends better than we should have 
 shaped them for ourselves, and that if we accept facts 
 which we cannot alter, and seriously weigh the respon- 
 sibilities which devolve upon ourselves in consequence 
 of them, we may obtain an Education more suitable to 
 
174 THE TEACHERS IN A WOEKING COLLEGE. [lECT. 
 
 the English character, more helpful to Freedom and 
 Order, than any which the best and most paternal 
 Government in the world could bestow upon us. I admit 
 the inference which the working people of the land 
 draw, and must draw, when they see that wrong doers 
 are cared for by the State while they appear to be over- 
 looked. I believe the greatest obligation is laid upon 
 us to take off the edge of that inference. We can take 
 it off, if we show them that they may be all the more 
 true and manly citizens of the State, because they are 
 not harnessed and driven by it, as those must be who 
 have forfeited their moral dignity, and as all are in 
 despotic countries, where moral dignity is not thought 
 of. If we are able to begin an adult Education, the 
 Government, according to its own principle, will help 
 us, and will see whether we are fulfilling our pretensions 
 or belying them. To a College of the kind I am sup- 
 posing, it may render especial service by means of those 
 Schools of Design which it has already established. But 
 if we wait for the Government to originate the College, 
 or to conduct it, we may wait till the present generation 
 has died out, and not secure any thing that will be 
 worth leaving to its successor. 
 
 I alluded, in my first Lectiire, to some earnest men 
 who expected little from the public or from the State, in 
 providing an Education for any class or any age, but 
 who thought that our old cathedral establishments had 
 been intended for the cultivation and elevation of our 
 people generally, and that they might be restored to 
 their original purpose. Whether the experience of 
 fifteen years has chilled or encouraged these expectations. 
 
VI.] THE TEACHERS l^ A WOKKINa COLLEGE. 175 
 
 I do not venture to pronounce. ' Hope,' certainly, 
 * springs immortal in the Imman breast,' or, as another 
 poet has it : — 
 
 "Oh joy ! that in our embers 
 Is somethiug that doth live, 
 That yet we should remember 
 What were so fugitive," 
 
 as the good resolutions which some of these bodies 
 seemed to form in the days when they were threatened 
 with utter extinction. It never can have been wrong 
 for any to have longed or laboured for the recovery 
 of goodly buildings and great foundations to a 
 patriotic use. But till the objects which were contem- 
 plated by the founders of our Cathedral schools are 
 accomplished, nothing can be so absurd as to ask that 
 they should promote objects which can never have been 
 contemplated. If our Chapters will do their utmost to 
 train boys, they may fairly decline to undertake the 
 ofiice of teaching men. Possibly they may do some- 
 thing many years hence to assist that work too ; but it 
 must be begun, I conceive, by other hands than theirs. 
 
 Can we look for those hands in our Universities? 
 I own I expect great blessings to the working class 
 from the new impulse, which I trust will be given to 
 the education of the land generally, by the present 
 University reform. I have already shown how much 
 the principle of adult teaching is involved in that reform. 
 The desire which all parties have shown, according to 
 their different notions, to bring College teaching within 
 the reach of poor men, is also a promising symptom, 
 though unreasonable hopes may be raised upon it. 
 The new position of Oxford with regard to Dissenters, 
 
176 THE TEACHERS IN A WORKING COLLEGE. [LECT. 
 
 if somewhat embarrassing to itself, must oblige its rulers 
 to consider more seriously than they have done, all the 
 circum'stances of the country which they are intended 
 to illuminate. Supposing that Colleges were established 
 in London, and Birmingham, and ]\Ianchester, the 
 Universities would, I trust, entertain the question in 
 a free and generous spirit, what degrees they might 
 confer on those who deserved well in them ; how, 
 at least, they might remove all obstacles which fees 
 put in the way of the very poorest man who should 
 aspire to such distinctions. In Oxford and Cambridge 
 they may do much to help the shopkeeper and the 
 mechanic to obtain an education which they could 
 scarcely gain elsewhere. I am told that there are 
 ancient customs in the University of Oxford, which in- 
 dicate an evident design to connect it with the trades of 
 the town. The Vice-Chancellor, for instance, has from 
 time immemorial given an annual dinner, or supper, to 
 the hair-dressers of Oxford, they being regarded as a 
 guild or corporation, with which the guild or corpora- 
 tion of learned men was to claim affinity, and to which 
 it was to give a higher character. If these intentions 
 could be carried out in their principle — not, of course, in 
 their form — there might be a very honourable adjustment 
 of the old quarrel of Town and Gown ; the toga pre- 
 serving rather more dignity than the fists and sticks of 
 the Under-graduates can procure for it. But it is ob- 
 vious that though the Universities may set an example, 
 they can do very little to provide actual teaching for 
 men whose work lies in the streets of the metropolis, 
 ro the factories of the north. They may provide some 
 
YI.] THE TEACIIEES IN A WORKING COLLEGE. 177 
 
 of tlie teachers ; but the teachers must have left the 
 schools and gone out into the world. 
 
 There are, however, institutions established in Lon- 
 don, as well as in the provinces, which have a directly 
 educational object. Some of these bodies are becoming 
 strongly alive to the duties Tvhich they owe to the pre- 
 sent time, and anxious to promote the well-being both 
 of their own neighbourhoods and of the whole land. 
 The Society of Arts, above all, is exerting itself, in its 
 hundredth year, with quite juvenile freshness and 
 alacritv. There seems to be as much wisdom as there 
 is zeal, in those who are directing it. And that wisdom 
 has led them, as it has led the Government, to feel that 
 they can do much more good by uniting and animating 
 bodies which already exist, and by supplying them 
 with a machinery, than they could do if they set on 
 foot an education of their own. They do not, therefore,, 
 satisfy the demand which I am now making, though., 
 they may render the greatest service to those, whoevci: - 
 they may be, who shall undertake to satisfy it. 
 
 It may occur to you that some one of the English. 
 sects, having the unity and organization which a com- 
 mon religious profession supplies, might be able to 
 undertake this task- better than a number of such sects, 
 or than any body of larger extent and higher pretensions,, 
 without the same cohesion. I am not competent to 
 express an opinion on this subject. If there is any 
 body in the land possessing that kind of strength, and, 
 willing to exert it, for the sake of giving expansion,, 
 freedom, and order, to any portion of the working 
 classes, nothing can be so desirable as that it should 
 
 N 
 
178 THE TEACHEES IN A WOEKING COLLEGE. [lECT. 
 
 make the attempt. Its success in carrying out sucli an 
 object would be good for all ; even its failure might be 
 a blessing to itself. But those who are not members of 
 such a society cannot feel that they are discharged from 
 their own obligations by anything that it may do 
 without them. All persons who feel the necessity of 
 helping the great body of their countrymen, and how 
 little they have effected for that object hitherto, must 
 still ask themselves, AVhat can we do? with whom can 
 we cooperate? 
 
 I have knoTVTi some thoughtful and earnest men, 
 learned in the history, especially the ecclesiastical his- 
 tory, of past times, not less learned in the necessities and 
 calamities of the present time, who have felt that a Sect 
 can give little aid in our emergencies, but that an Order 
 might give much. They feel how many of the educa- 
 tional movements, not only of the middle ages, but of 
 later ages, have been owing to the devotion and concen- 
 tration of purpose which were found in particular Orders : 
 they do not see why the abuses which accompanied 
 their growth, and the seeds of which, perhaps, existed 
 at their birth, should be considered as inherent in their 
 nature ; why Protestantism, instead of repudiating the 
 use of them, should not have power to purify the prin- 
 ciple of them and convert them to the best ends. The 
 subject is so important, and the persons who take this 
 view of it are entitled to so much respect and deference, 
 that I should be very sorry to treat either hastily. I will 
 only state why I think this is not the remedy for the 
 particular evil we are considering, whether it is appli- 
 cable to other cases or not. 
 
VI.] THE TEACHERS IN A WORKING COLLEGE. 179 
 
 What we want to make working men feel, is that the 
 daily ordinary business of life is compatible with — nay, 
 is in strictest harmony with — the best and highest 
 knowledge. They have been almost utterly separated 
 in their minds, to a great extent they have been sepa- 
 rated in ours ; our business is, to reconcile them in both. 
 This, I must repeat it again and again, is the only 
 ground upon which a school or college, which deals 
 with our English popidation as it is, can possibly rest. 
 Now an Order proceeds upon a maxim the very opposite 
 of this. It assumes that separation from the common 
 work of life is the most advantageous and desirable con- 
 dition for carrying on the peculiar work to which it 
 dedicates itself. I know that there are great apparent 
 exceptions to this rule. The Jesuit institution suggests 
 the most remarkable. A man may be all the better 
 fitted for a place in that Order, because he does not 
 obviously belong to it, because he has the habits of a 
 man of the world. But we all know that the compen- 
 sation in this case is a more intense internal addiction 
 to the interests of the Society, and to the words of the 
 Superior, than would be called for, where the tie was 
 a more acknowledged and palpable one. We may 
 therefore assume generally, that an Order expressly for 
 Education would consist of persons not Lawyers, not 
 Physicians, not Tradesmen, but Teachers simply. That 
 would be their duty ; every other would be pursued in 
 subordination to that, — would be considered as not 
 the proper function of a member. Therefore they 
 would not teach just what we want our pupils to 
 learn ; their acts, their very existence, would suggest 
 
 N 2 
 
180 THE TEACHERS IN A WORKING COLLEGE. [LECT. 
 
 the tlioiiglit wliicli we wish, above all others, to 
 dispel. 
 
 Yon will perceive that this objection is qnite irre- 
 spective of any accidental defects or abuses in these 
 Orders. It touches the root and primary intention of 
 them. It does not prove that there are no possible cases 
 in vvdiich they might be useful for us as well as for other 
 nations ; but it does show why they have been generally 
 uncongenial to tlie English character, the strength of 
 which lies in its reverence for common life, in its belief 
 that all common acts and offices are sacred. It does 
 show why Orders have been especially suspected by the 
 founders and upholders of English Colleges, why Walter 
 de Merton and William of AYykeham were almost as 
 jealous of them, and as anxious to substitute another 
 kind of life for theirs, as Cranmer or Thomas Cromwell 
 could be. And it forces us to inquire, how a College 
 in our days must be officered, if it is not to be con- 
 structed or organized by the Public, or the Govern- 
 ment, or the University, or by any chartered Society 
 or any voluntary Sect, or any new Order. 
 
 It may seem to some, that I have exhausted the pos- 
 sibilities of English life, when I have enumerated these 
 sources from which an Education might come. But, in 
 tiTith, I have only cleared the ground, that we may look 
 at English life in its simplest, best known forms. In 
 London, in any considerable provincial town, within a 
 small circle of miles in every country district, you find 
 men of various callings, with diffi3rent degrees of mental 
 power, with different measures of cultivation, all busy, 
 €ach able to contribute something to the social improve- 
 
YI.] THE TEACHERS IN A WORKING COLLEGE. ISl 
 
 ment of the rest, eacli tempted at times to be pedantical 
 and over-professional, each tempted at times to be merely 
 frivolous, each using a certain portion of his day, and 
 desiring to use it, for the good of his less fortunate 
 neiorhbours. Men of this kind are often thrown into 
 sets, the physician, the lawyer, the clergyman, the 
 artist, the mere man of letters, with many more — such as 
 are described in all accounts of clubs, metropolitan or 
 provincial — such as every one meets with who is con- 
 versant with the ordinary stuff of society, not with its 
 rarities. Such men have been brought together by 
 what in our thoughtless, indevout language we call 
 accidents ; they have, probably, many disagreements of 
 opinion, latent or expressed ; their connexions and social 
 position may be exceedingly unlike. But they can 
 work together, not, of course, without collisions and 
 conllicts, but, on the whole, with more mutual confidence, 
 with fewer formal explanations, with less of reserve and 
 compromise, than people more artificially connected. 
 Their association may not be firm ; it may depend partly 
 upon locality. But there are among them the materials 
 for a real fellowship ; limbs not ill-fitted to each other, if 
 they were animated by the same spirit, if they were 
 trying to lift the same weight. 
 
 A club and a college are very difierent things ; they 
 may be wide as the poles asunder. But a Club of ordi- 
 nary Englishmen may become a College of intelligent, 
 thoughtful men, provided a human purpose takes the 
 place of a selfish one, provided they do not meet merely 
 as quidnuncs and gossips, but as men who have tasks to 
 perform in the world, who wish their tasks to be per- 
 
182 THE TEACHERS IN A WORKING COLLEGE. [LECT. 
 
 formed intelligently, wlio are sure that they will not be, 
 unless tliey are reminded continually of the principles 
 wliicli are involved in tliem, of the human beings for 
 whose sake they are appointed. A Club — even a society 
 too loose and fragmentary for that name — may become 
 a College before it has found any pupils, or before it 
 is certain whether any are to be found, because each 
 member of it feels that he must learn in order to teach, 
 that the knowledge he has in his own department needs 
 to be compared with that of men who are engaged in 
 other departments, and that he must discover what it is 
 that combines them. But a man has not sufficient motive 
 for this kind of work, not motive enough for testing the 
 soundness of his own possessions, unless he has a certain 
 set of persons present to his mind, who he hopes will 
 some day or other be better for the thoughts which he 
 and his friends are exchanging ; they must look beyond 
 their own circle, that they may work pleasantly and 
 hopefully within it. 
 
 I may not succeed in making all persons understand 
 what I mean ; some, I know, will catch it very readily 
 from their own experience. You may laugh at the 
 notion of a regiment where there are only colonels and 
 lieutenant-colonels, and no privates; but educational 
 regiments must be formed by this process, or not at all. 
 You must have the teachers first ; they must feel that 
 they have relations to each other, that they have a clear 
 distinct work of their own ; then they can invite scholars 
 to join them, not as strangers, but as integral portions 
 of their body. Such, if I do not mistake, is the principle 
 of our old English Colleges, which I reverence as much 
 
VI.] THE TEACHERS IX A WORKING COLLEGE. 183 
 
 as those do wlio would set up tlie College idea to tlie 
 exclusion and destruction of every other. It is unques- 
 tionably a great and blessed thing for any learner to 
 feel that hfe is not merely to get a certain portion 
 of information, but that he belongs to a body, that he 
 is one of a learned commonwealth. This feeling is de- 
 stroyed by some of the efforts which are made in this 
 day to preserve it. If you treat the student as a 
 child, who must be supposed to have thought of nothing, 
 though he has thought of a hundred things, — who must 
 be credited with an ignorance of all that people are 
 disputing about, though he has heard every variety of 
 opinion at his father's table, and in twenty other places, 
 — he cannot have the sense of citizenship and of moral 
 responsibility ; he will know that you wish to keep him 
 in leading-strings, and he will try to break them. On 
 the other hand, there is no necessity that this feeling of 
 unity between the student and his teacher should be 
 confined to old societies with historical associations. It 
 derives grandeur from them, no doubt; the impression of 
 venerable quadrangles and oriel windows is not to be 
 spoken of lightly. But the real sympathy must be in 
 the persons, not in the buildings. With all their beauty 
 and tenderness, they often strike very coldly upon the 
 heart which has been used to friendly human counte- 
 nances; they are not really loved, till they become 
 connected with human beings that live inside of 
 them. We may ask rough-handed men, who are 
 already members of a factory, to become members 
 of a College ; and it is our fault if we do not make 
 them understand that we mean a real fellowship of 
 
184 THE TEACHEKS IN A WORKINit COLLEGE. [LECT. 
 
 mutual learning and teaching, — of actual joint workers, 
 — though we liave no beautiful outward symbols of our 
 community to set before them. The words University 
 and College point to a corporate life, not to a hard 
 indoctrination. I doubt whether any teaching of our 
 manual workers is possible, unless we can convert these 
 words into realities. 
 
 It is a conviction of this kind which has led a few 
 friends of mine to propose a College for Working 
 Men in the northern part of London. They answer 
 with tolerable exactness to the description I have 
 given of the persons from whom it is reasonable to 
 demand such an effort. They are all at work them- 
 selves, in occupations which they believe to be voca- 
 tions, and which they do not hold it would be right 
 to forsake under any plea of benevolence to their 
 fellow-creatures. They do not, therefore, aim at form- 
 ing a guild or order of Teachers. They are already 
 admitted into their different guilds as members of the 
 Inns of Court, or the Colleges of Surgeons or Phy- 
 sicians, as Artists, as Ministers of the Gospel, as 
 Tradesmen, as Operatives. What they believe is best 
 for themselves — best for the special fraternity to which 
 they belong, in respect of the work which it is pledged 
 to do, as well as of the science which it is pledged to 
 advance — is that they should keep up an intercourse with 
 men of different callings, and should do what in them 
 lies, that those who are engaged merely in manual 
 labour should feel that also to be a high calling. They 
 may differ among themselves about some of the ways 
 in which this end should be accomplished; they are 
 
yi.] THE TEACHEKS IN A WORKING COLLEGE. 185 
 
 perfectly agreed that one of the ways, and the most 
 effectual, is to strive, that the manual worker may have 
 a share in all the best treasures with which God has 
 been pleased to endow them. They do not think ^ley 
 have any business to consider how few of these treasures 
 they may possess in comparison with many of their con- 
 temporaries ; by all means, let those who have more give 
 more ; all they have to do is to ask how they make 
 what they have most useful, and how they may increase 
 it by communicating it. Their design is far from am- 
 bitious. It is not to found a College for the workers of 
 England, or of London. It is simply to make an expe- 
 riment, necessarily on a very small scale, in the neighbour- 
 hood which is nearest to the places in which most of them 
 are busy during the day. If Working and Learning are 
 to be combined, learning must come to the door of the 
 workshop and factory, till the better day when it shall 
 be allowed to enter into them. The north of London 
 is not a region for great manufactories ; but it is a region 
 where there are handicraftsmen of all sorts and descrip- 
 tions; it affords a fair enough opportunity for a trial 
 though I am far from saying that in Birmingham or 
 Manchester, or other parts of the Metropolis, it may 
 not be made with greater advantages. 
 
 Indeed, it is this consideration which has induced me 
 to speak on this topic at greater length, and with more 
 gravity, than you may think at all justified by the very 
 humble project which I have announced. It seemed 
 to me that we could not shelter ourselves under the 
 plea, that a particular effort of this kind is not worse 
 than a number of efforts which are born in a night, and 
 
186 THE TEACHERS IN A WORKING COLLEGE. [lECT. 
 
 die in a night ; and wliicli any persons are at liberty to 
 make if they like to bear the punishment of disappoint- 
 ment and ridicule. Such pleas are not safe and good 
 in any case. No doubt every man is to prepare himself, 
 in whatever he undertakes, for the probability of disap- 
 pointment and ridicule ; that is part of his regular cost 
 and outlay, which he is most improvident if he does not 
 count beforehand, and consider whether there is anything 
 to set oif on the other side. But no men have a right to 
 begin a work which they do not think has a principle 
 in it that may live and bear fruit after they are dead 
 and forgotten. It is quite possible — it is exceedingly 
 likely — that our College may have few or no pupils in 
 it, and that any kind friend who asks two years hence, 
 with a suppressed smile, ' What have you done in that 
 
 * fine scheme of yours ? ' may have the satisfaction of 
 hearing, ' It has come to nothing,' and of saying, ' Just 
 
 * as I prophesied it would.' But it is not likely — it is 
 not possible — that the relations between working men 
 and the other classes of the community should continue 
 what they are now. If we were prophets, or sons of 
 prophets, we might possibly have some answer to make 
 to our friend, which would not be given with a smile, 
 and would scarcely provoke one. As we are only plain 
 men, unable to foresee results, we are the more bound 
 to take care that we do nothing through our rashness 
 which may make the feelings of the classes towards 
 each other less friendly than they are already, may omit 
 nothing which would contribute to unite them. For the 
 upper classes to think they can only obtain what they 
 consider indispensable to their comfort, at the price 
 
YT.] THE TEACHERS IN A WORKING COLLEGE. 187 
 
 of the ignorance and degradation of tlieir fellow-men, — 
 for the lower classes to think that the manufacturing 
 industry of the country must perish before they can be 
 what God created them to be, — is perilous to England. 
 Any plans which tend to foster either of these opinions, 
 must be mischievous ; the most insignificant attempt to 
 show that they are false, may be worth considering. If 
 it has fallen into bad and foolish hands, let tiie good 
 and wise take it out of them. 
 
 We propose to commence our undertaking next 
 November. I do not mean that we shall form our 
 College then — that is formed already. The Teachers 
 are the members of a Society, into which any persons 
 above sixteen years of age, who can read and write, 
 and know the first four rules of arithmetic, are eligible 
 to enter. We divide our College year into Terms ; we 
 even call our adoption of pupils into the College, Matri- 
 culation. These phrases indicate what we are aiming 
 at. We wish to do what our fathers did when they 
 provided Colleges for England, as it was in those days. 
 I say for Englarid; I will not make the antithesis sharper 
 by saying for the upper and middle classes. For that 
 was not their intention at all. They educated English- 
 men, to whatever class they might belong. They 
 matriculated them into societies regularly organized, 
 that they might know they were connected with that 
 which is permanent, not merely with that which is arti- 
 ficial and transitory ; with what is human and divine, not 
 merely with producing and exchanging. This testimony 
 is more necessary for London in the nineteenth century, 
 than for Oxford and Cambridire in the fourteenth. 
 
188 THE TEACHERS IX A WORKING COLLEGE. [lECT. 
 
 If we can help to bear it, and so to associate together 
 different periods in our country^s history, as well as 
 different portions of onr population, we may endure a 
 heavier penalty than that of being called pedantical. 
 
 The method of our teaching must, of course, be 
 affected by the character of the different subjects ; still 
 the general principle of it has been agreed upon ; I may 
 say, it lias in a measure been acted on. I alluded in 
 my last Lecture to an experiment in Theological in- 
 struction which had satisfied me that the consideration 
 of the most difficult questions was favourable to earnest- 
 ness and reverence. With that experiment our College 
 may be said to have originated. A Scripture class has 
 been held on Sunday evenings. A book of the Bible is 
 read through. The Teacher endeavours to unfold the 
 sense of it passage by passage. It becomes the subject 
 of conversation. The pupils state their perplexities 
 with freedom. He points out what seems to him the 
 solution of them. It would be ridiculous to say that this 
 plan excludes Dogmatism. The Teacher, of course, 
 expresses his own convictions. He does not dream of 
 suppressing them because they may not be those of his 
 auditors. But as he believes that his pupils cannot re- 
 ceive his meaning, however they might receive his words 
 and repeat them, if they are merely dead listeners, he 
 rejoices much when they prove to him practically, even 
 by putting him to a severe probation, that they are not 
 so. Though the same course cannot be followed in all 
 cases, we have at least determined that we will be Tutors 
 rather than Professors, that we will give Lessons not 
 Lectures, and that one half of the lessons shall be cate- 
 
TI.] THE TEACHERS IX A WOKKING COLLEGE. 189 
 
 chetical, and sliall refer to the subject that had been treated 
 of when the class last met. As we may not always be 
 able to set our pupils tasks and exercises in the interval 
 between the Lectures, this plan may in some degree 
 supply the place of them, and may assist their memories. 
 I need not give you a list of the subjects we mean 
 to introduce into our Course. I sketched a general out- 
 line of them in the last Lecture ; a special programme 
 will be published at the beginning of each term. Politics 
 and Public Health will be the innovations. History 
 and Geography will be made to illustrate each other. 
 Shakspeare's plays will be preferred to Hume when 
 we are illustrating the records of our own country ; 
 Drawing will be treated with the honour which belong-s 
 to it as a most living and practical discipline for the eye 
 and the hand, the head and the heart. If we should 
 not find that Vocal Music is already taught in our 
 immediate neighbourhood, as well and cheaply as it 
 can be taught, we shall claim for it a conspicuous place 
 in our Course. We shall try to give the study of 
 Words as much pre-eminence and dignity in this Colleg*e 
 as it has had in any, though we shall teach English 
 words and English Grammar before we venture upon 
 any modern or classical language. The teachers in the 
 different branches of pure Mathematics, and of Natural 
 Philosophy, will be in continual communication witJi 
 each other. To secure a gradation of studies such as 
 they could wish, will of course be difficult. Still we 
 have proofs enough of the ardour of working people in 
 these pursuits, to believe that it will not be impossible. 
 Our teachers will endeavour as far as* they can to avoid 
 
190 THE TEACHEES IN A WORKING COLLEGE. [lECT. 
 
 technicalities and long words. But they will avoid just 
 as earnestly a superficial and frivolous way of treating the 
 great facts and laws of the universe, as if they were con- 
 descending to the capacities of men immeasurably below 
 them, instead of labouring, with the consciousness of 
 their own ignorance, to raise men a little more ignorant 
 into some apprehension of the meaning of the world in 
 which God has placed them, and of the relation in 
 which they themselves stand to it. 
 
 As our great object is in all ways to show our respect 
 for the working people, not to insult them, we have no 
 notion of offering them this education gratuitously. 
 They are to pay for it. The fees will be arranged 
 according to the scale which is adopted in the principal 
 Mechanics' Institutes of London. They will not cover 
 the expenses of the College. We want a Library ; and 
 though the original teachers will receive nothing, they 
 fully hope to raise up teachers among the working men 
 themselves, who ought to be properly remunerated. 
 This is one of the chief objects which they set before 
 themselves, though they never desire to see the time 
 arrive when the instructors shall be exclusively, or even 
 chiefly, from this class. They hope and trust that pro- 
 fessional men of all kinds, that men of letters, that 
 students fresh from the Universities, that statesmen and 
 divines, will always be found to take part in this educa- 
 tion, will always feel that by doing so they are fuliilKng 
 their proper tasks, and educating themselves. 
 
 Because this is my conviction, I have ventured to 
 speak of this Working College, to an audience of all 
 classes except Working Men, gathered together in this 
 
VI.] THE TEACHEES IX A WOKKING COLLEGE. 191 
 
 West-end of London. I thank you heartily for the 
 patience with which you have listened to statements 
 which often must have been dry, and to opinions from 
 which many of you may have dissented. I believe 
 you will be rewarded for that patience, and for greater 
 efforts and sacrifices, if you should be led in any way 
 to assist in this work, or in such a work as I have 
 described to you. We are so convinced of the absolute 
 necessity of not making our teaching dependent upon 
 public patronage, that we shall not beg help from the 
 public. The aid of those who are willing to trust us, 
 we shall be thankful to receive, and we think that we 
 can] turn it to good account. Those who cannot trust 
 us, I would beseech to commence a better enterprise 
 themselves. We attach no worth to the particular plan 
 which I have sketched out. It is the best we have 
 been able to think of in the circumstances in which ^ we 
 find ourselves. Another may be far better in other 
 circumstances. Ours may be modified, contracted, ex- 
 panded to almost any extent. Only, let not any man 
 be hindered from doing that which in him lies, by his 
 suspicions of other men, — by fancying, rightly or 
 wrongly, that what they do must be done feebly or ill. 
 To every man, his country, his conscience, God himself, 
 is saying, " Work thou while the day lasts, for the night 
 is coming when no man can work." 
 
NOTES. 
 
 NOTE I. P. 1. 
 
 The ' Lectures on Education,' which are spoken of in tlie first 
 Lecture of this Course, were published in the vear 1839. They have 
 been for some time out of print ; and I do not imagine tliat a new 
 edition of them is the least likely to be demanded. When they 
 appeared, it seemed to me that two great perils were threateninij 
 education. One arose from the notion that the State could educate 
 the nation by providing schoolrooms, establishing a system of 
 instruction, inducing sects and parties to obey a common rule and 
 suppress that which was peculiar to each. The other danger was, 
 that the Ecclesiastical body in the country might, either on the 
 strength of its ancient position, or of its divine pretensions, or of its 
 command over a majority, assert the kind of power which the Jesuit 
 body had asserted in former days and continues to assert in our own. 
 That power, as I understand it, is a power to rule and govern minds, 
 not to awaken and educate them. It is a power which the State has 
 a right to dread. It has always interfered, and must always interfere, 
 with the power of the magistrate, because it is itself magisterial. 
 This, I maintained, was not because the Jesuit was too much of a 
 Churchman, but too little, — because he abandoned the function of 
 a Churchman, " and became a mischievous Statesman. The true 
 Churchman, it was contended, possessed a power of an entirely 
 diiferent kind, a power which cooperated with that of the States- 
 man, but did not cross it or interfere with it. It was a power over 
 the spirits of men and of children, not to keep them down, but to give 
 them freedom and expansion; it was an influence to raise men 
 above the condition of animals, into the condition of moral and 
 responsible beings. It was an influence to raise men out of a 
 
NOTES. 193 
 
 warring, turbulent, atomic condition, into a social condition. It 
 was an influence, therefore, favourable to science, adverse to super- 
 stition. It was an influence favourable to national freedom and 
 order, adverse to all tlie influences, religious or secular, which 
 threatened them. The State, it was affirmed, could not absorb this 
 power into itself, could not dispense with it. The State had a right 
 to claim that it should be exercised for the good of its subjects ; had 
 a right to interfere when those who wielded it were turning it to 
 mischief. But the two powers existed distinctly, co-ordinately. 
 'No artificial arrangement had called forth either. No conventional 
 alliance determined the conditions of their union. Their distinctness 
 and their relation to each other, were implied in all the acts and 
 thoughts of nations and of individuals. The course of history, not 
 our theories and speculations, was to teach us how they were to 
 work together or impede each other. 
 
 These Lectures were written to meet a particular set of circum- 
 stances which does not now exist. If I spoke my mind freely, 
 I should say that the experience of the years which have passed 
 since, has been more profitable, — at least in the question of educa- 
 tion, — to English Statesmen than to English Churchmen ; that the 
 former have shown more humility, more willingness to learn the 
 limits of their power from experience and fact, more disposition to 
 use it within those limits, than the latter. This is an impression 
 which has forced itself upon me very reluctantly, while I have been 
 considering the acts of the Committee of Privy Council, and the 
 debates which have taken place in the National Society. I do not 
 say that we can be satisfied with either. I do not say that we 
 could have dispensed with either; not even with the turbulent 
 exhibitions which have caused most pain and scandal ; nor yet with 
 the third party of dissenting voluntaries. But, on the whole, one 
 must acknowledge a more practical purpose, and a more energetic 
 action, in those with whom one is inclined to have the least sym- 
 pathy. One may dread some of their maxims and some of their 
 proceedings ; but it must be chiefly the fault of our own pride or 
 ignorance if they do us harm. The Government now recognises 
 whatever moral and spiritual power it finds at work in the country, 
 and does not pretend to supersede it, or substitute its own for it. 
 Every Clergyman, therefore, and every society of Churchmen is 
 put upon a trial. If the Churchman knows what moral and spiritual 
 
 
 
194 NOTES. 
 
 power is entrusted to liim, lie can put it forth. If he cares for a 
 real authority rather than for the semblance of one ; if he actually 
 raises men's spirits instead of boasting of his divine commission to 
 raise them ; the State will ask him no questions, will commend what 
 it sees he has effected, and will afford to him another kind of aid, 
 which he can in general obtain from it at less sacrifice of dignity and 
 duty than from the public. 
 
 Eor these reasons, many passages in my former Lectures, though 
 I believe they were justified by the occasion which called them forth, 
 now strike me as not only obsolete, but painful. There are hopes 
 expressed, some of which have been disappointed, suspicions which 
 have proved unreasonable. But it is pleasant to feel that there are 
 more of the last than of the first. Some individual men, who Avere 
 then exercising, as I thought, nobly, the true function of the 
 Churchman, have since shown that their idea of it was derived from 
 the school of Loyola, and have therefore felt, reasonably and con- 
 sistently, that they could only find full scope for it by submitting to 
 the Bishop of Eome. A Society which then seemed to be awakening 
 into new and vigorous life, now appears likely to sink into premature 
 decay and decomposition. But the training-schools in the neigh- 
 hourhood of London and throughout England, are doing far more 
 than they promised to do. Some of those who contributed most to 
 their growth and efBciency, are not less zealous in the cause than 
 they were at first, and have had years of sorrow and wisdom to give 
 them a deeper understanding of their duties as English and Christian 
 men. Some, we have a right to believe, who have passed out of the 
 struggles and divisions of this world, are able, with clearer insight 
 and higher powers, to work with their friends, tlieir country, and 
 the whole Church militant on earth.* On the v.diole, I believe that 
 the last fifteen years, though they may have left us more deeply 
 conscious than ever we were, of the wants of our population and of 
 our own failures, have done more than almost any corresponding 
 period in our annals, I might almost say than any half-century, to 
 show us what cannot be done and what may be done by English 
 Statesmen and Churchmen. 
 
 * One of the most devoted of thera all, G. P. Mathisou, Esq., died after these 
 Lectures were delivered. 
 
KOTES. 195 
 
 Note IL Page 13. 
 
 The passage in Guizot, which refers to the old schools of the 
 empire, is in the 4th Lecon of the ' Histoire de la Civilisation en 
 Prance/ vol. i. pp. 97—124. 
 
 Note III. Page 16. ^^ 
 
 The passages in Alcuin's Works, which illustrate his method of 
 education, are to be found in vol. ii. part 2, pp. 265 — 354. Ed. 
 fol. 1777. The notices of him in Guizot, are contained in the 22d 
 Legon, vol. ii. pp. 160 — 192. 
 
 The third Lecture in Sir James Stephen's Work, is on the 
 character and influence of Charlemagne. 
 
 Note IV. Page 19. 
 
 ' A certain Abbot,' writes Eadmer, ' who was esteemed very 
 
 * religious, would often converse with Anselm about the religion 
 
 * of the monastery generally, and especially about the boys that 
 
 * were brought up in the cloister. "What, I pray you, is to be 
 ' done with them ? They are perverse and incorrigible. Day and 
 
 * night we do not cease beating them, and yet they grow worse 
 
 * and worse." To whom Anselm with some astonishment, " You 
 
 * do not cease to beat them ? And when they are grown up 
 
 * what kind of people are they ? " " Stupid and bestial," was 
 
 * the answer. " What encouragement have you to waste this 
 
 * nourishment of yours," said Anselm, " when the result of it is, 
 
 * that out of men you fashion beasts ? " " But what can' we do ? " 
 
 * asked the Abbot. "We control them in all possible ways that 
 
 * they may turn to good, and we do no good." " My dear Abbot, 
 
 * I beseech you," said Anselm ; "if you were planting the seedling of 
 
 * a tree in your garden, and you were so to shut it up on all sides 
 
 * that it could not send out its branches in any direction, when after 
 
 * certain years you let it loose, what kind of tree do you think would 
 ' come forth ? I should fancy one with very curved and twisted 
 
 2 
 
196 NOTES. 
 
 ' brauclies. And whose fault would that be but yours who liad 
 
 * confined it so immoderately ? And this is what you are doing with 
 ' your boys. They have been planted in the garden of the Church, 
 
 * that they may grow and bring forth fruit to God. But you bind 
 
 * them so fast with terrors, threats, and lashes, that they can enjoy 
 
 * no liberty whatsoever. Thus unwisely pressed down, they heap 
 
 * together evil thoughts within them, and cherish and feed upon them, 
 ' thoughts that are twisted like thorns together, and so sustained 
 
 * by the nourishment which they receive from you, that they resist 
 
 * obstinately whatever might serve for their correction. Since they 
 ' do not perceive in you anything of love, or gentleness, or beuig- 
 
 * nity towards them, neither have they any belief in any goodness 
 ' in you, but they suppose that all your plans are so many con- 
 
 * trivances against them, proceeding from envy and hatred. And 
 
 * this miserable result comes to pass, that as their bodies grow, so 
 
 * there grows in them hatred and the suspicion of every kind of evil; 
 ' their minds become curved and stooping towards all vices. Since 
 
 * they have never been nourished in true charity, they cannot look 
 ' at any one except with downcast brows and squinting eyes." ' — 
 Eacbier's Life, Book I. chap. iv. section 30. See also the following 
 section. 
 
 Note Y. Page 21. 
 
 The passages I have quoted from Abelard occur in the celebrated 
 
 * Historia Calamitatum.' — Cousin'' s Edition of his Works, vol. i. p. 3. 
 
 Note YI. Page 26. 
 
 The passages to which I have specially referred in the * Heport of 
 the Oxford Commission,' are those which have reference to the 
 Colleges generally, beginning at p. 129, and to the accounts of 
 University, Balliol, Merton, New College, and Lincoln College, pp. 
 185—214. 
 
 My knowledge of William of Wykeham is entirely derived from 
 this Report, and from Bishop Lowth's Life. There is a more recent 
 work, entitled * William of Wykeham and his Colleges,' by 
 Mr. Mackenzie Walcott, London, Nutt, 1852, which contains much 
 valuable and interesting information. 
 
NOTES. 197 
 
 Note VII. Page 34. ' 
 
 My readers are no doubt sufficiently acquainted with Milton's 
 
 * Letter to Mr. Hartlib.' Locke's ' Thoughts concerning Edu- 
 catioi],' though they are often quoted, are not, I suspect, much read. 
 The passage to which I have referred, in which it is recommended 
 that the child's shoes should be so thin that they may leak, and let in 
 water whenever he comes near it, occurs near the opening of the 
 treatise, and is one of a series of physical instructions which precede 
 those that bear upon moral and intellectual discipline. As I have 
 quoted in my third Lecture a passage from Milton respecting Music, 
 I will give the parallel one from Locke. After strongly recom- 
 mending Dancing because ' it gives graceful motions all the life, and 
 ' above all things manliness and a becoming cou^dence to young 
 ' children,' he goes on to say, ' Music is thought to have some 
 ' affinity with dancing, and a good hand upon some instruments is by 
 ' many people mightily valued. But it wastes so much of a young 
 
 * man's time to gain but a moderate skill in it, and engages often in 
 
 * such odd company, that many think it much better spared. And 
 ' I have amongst men of parts and business so seldom heard any one 
 ' commended or esteemed for having an excellency in Music, that 
 
 * amongst all those things that ever come into the list of accomplish- 
 
 * ments, I think I may give it the last place. Our short lives will 
 ' not serve us for the attainment of all things, nor can our minds 
 ' be always intent on something to be learnt.' — TForks, vol. iii. p. 91, 
 quarto, 1714. 
 
 Note VIII. Page 5i. 
 
 The part of John of Salisbury's Polycraticus which relates to the 
 trifles of the Schools, is in lib. vii. c. 12. De ineptiis nugatorum 
 qui sapientiam verba putent. 
 
 Note IX. Page 57. 
 
 The extract from Mrs. Jameson is taken from the first volume of 
 her ' Memoirs of the Early Italian Painters,' p. 30. 
 
198 KOTES. 
 
 Note X. Page 81. 
 I trust tliPct the papers wliich explain the origin, progress, and 
 present working of the Yauxhall experiment are so widely known, 
 that any quotations from them would be quite superfluous. A com- 
 pany for publishing illustrated books, in which the same enlightened 
 maxims are recognised and the same practical plans for the Workmen 
 are made legally binding on the shareholders, has, I understand, been 
 recently established, and is under tlie direction of one of Mr. Wilson's 
 family. 
 
 Note XL Page 98. 
 
 The words which I have used at the close of the third Lecture will 
 expose me to the severe censure of a class of men whom I per- 
 sonally respect, and who, on many occasions, have shown a practical 
 interest in the education of the working classes. In common, 
 I believe, with the rest of my clerical brethren, I have been favoured 
 with an epistle addressed by the Quaker body to the religious people 
 of England on the subject of the war. I am not the least entitled to 
 represent the feelings of any one else ; but for myself I do, with all 
 gratitude, make answer to that document thus : — Because I accept 
 the Bible as the law-book of individuals and of nations ; because 
 I believe the interests of humanity and godliness are superior to all 
 other interests ; because I hold that principle is never to be sacrificed 
 to expediency, and that no plea of necessity can ever justify wrong- 
 doing ; therefore do I repudiate that union of Christian and Mam- 
 monite maxims which the advocates of peace have been establishing, 
 to the great detriment of the education, morality, and well-being of 
 the English people ; therefore do I think a war in the support of 
 right and justice has been an instrument in God's hands for breaking 
 down that unnatural and accursed alliance, and for teaching us that 
 w^e cannot bow at once to Him and to His enemy. Whenever the 
 Society of Eriends has testified by zeal and sacrifices for the good of 
 men, even by acts Mliich in themselves I disapprove, that there is a 
 higher standard to which men may be conformed than the selfish 
 standard, I believe they have been, in the true sense of the word, 
 ministers of peace, helping to remove some of the diseases which 
 cause wars, and of which wars are the medicine. Whenever they 
 
NOTES. 199 
 
 have left on men's minds the fatal impression that mere pln^sical life 
 is the most sacred of all things; that money is the measure of 
 worth ; that the cliaracter of God is uncertain ; that the principles 
 of His old and of His new Covenant are contrary to each other ; 
 I hold them to he the ministers of war, the abettors of its worst evils, 
 those who teach their countrymen to hail even its direst terrors as 
 God's method of savinir us from utter heartlessness and Atheism. 
 
 ^^TE Xll. Page 126. 
 
 I have spoken of the new obligations which devolve upon the 
 Uaiversity of Oxford, in consequence of the removal, now sanctioned 
 by the Legislature, of the subscription to the Articles at Matri- 
 culation. As I have defended the principle upon which that sub- 
 scription was originally established, maintaining it to be directly 
 connected with Education, and not accidentally imposed as a test of 
 Church membership, which it is not and never can be — I wish to 
 explain myself somewhat more upon this point than I could do in 
 Lectures referring to an altogether different subject. I am the more 
 desirous to do so, because I believe there is a disposition in some of 
 the Colleges to make use of the privilege, which at present they 
 undoubtedly possess, of fixing restrictions for their own bodies by 
 ■which the University as such cannot be bound. Such a course, 
 however legally justifiable, is not one which I think can be safely 
 adopted by societies desirous to do the work, which their founders 
 intended them to do, which God and their country require of them 
 in this day. 
 
 I take it for granted that those who would limit the Colleges to 
 professed members of the Church of England, dislike strongly, if not 
 equally, a purely secular education which shall avoid Theology — and 
 therefore some of the deepest questions in humanity — altogether, and 
 one which, professing to treat of Religion, strives to make it equally 
 agreeable and palatable to all persons of all different opinions, with 
 the limitation, possibly, that they must acknowledge a certain, 
 respect for Christianity. I heartily sympathise in their objection to 
 both these experiments. Though I am quite content that both should 
 be made, because I believe that it is only by trial we can ascertain 
 how little either is compatible with the frankness and openness 
 
200 NOTES. 
 
 which is demanded of the teacher, and with the cravings and neces- 
 sities which exist in the mind of the pupil, I should mourn greatly 
 if our old Colleges, constructed, as I believe they are, on an entirely 
 opposite principle, and bound now more than ever to exhibit the 
 power of that principle, should desert it for the sake of being thought 
 comprehensive or called liberal. But it is a question which I would 
 most seriously submit to them, whether they are not in that peril 
 already, and whether they in the least escape from it by insisting 
 that their classes shall consist only of those who were born within the 
 pale of the national Church, or who have entered its pale. Is the 
 teacher under no temptation tobe silent altogether respecting Theology, 
 or to pare down his statements and expressions upon it, so that he may 
 adapt himself to the different habits and complexions of the parties 
 or no-party which exist in our own communion ? Suppose he does 
 not take this course, but announces with great distinctness and 
 vehemence his own conclusions, does not his conscience often hint the 
 reproach to him, that he is more of a sectarian than a Churchman, or 
 is exalting his own judgment above that of his predecessors or contem- 
 poraries ? I do not say that there is no way of escaping from these self- 
 accusations as well as from the evil of suppressing his convictions ; 
 I am sure that there is, and that an honest and humble man will, 
 by some discipline, be enabled to find it ; but I do say that it is 
 not his circumstances wiiich point him to it, and that if it pleases 
 God to change those circumstances for others, these may have the 
 effect of removing some of his confusions, 'not of increasing them. 
 The more I have considered the events of our time as divine 
 indexes to our conduct, the more it has seemed to me that we 
 are driven from our old moorings, not into the open sea, but, 
 if we will profit by it, to a more secure anchorage. We cannot 
 test men any longer by their own professions, or by our judg- 
 ments of them; we must ask the Bible to tell us how God 
 regards them, — how they stand in His sight, without reference 
 to their false impressions or ours. That is surely a more theo- 
 logical point of view than any other. It may be very hard to 
 attain it, by reason of our own selfishness or opinionativeness ; 
 but it is just that which an English Churchman w^ould wish to 
 attain, if he could; it is just that which enables him to prove that 
 his Church is not a sect — to use the language of his formularies, 
 as if it were intended for human beings. Without binding any to 
 
KOTES. 201 
 
 adopt these formularies, he may adopt them in his inmost heart, — he 
 may carry out the lessons, which they have tauglit him, into his 
 words and into his life. There is no need of concealment. The 
 dissenters, who put their sons under his care, know what he is; they 
 would wish him to be honest. They will probably expect liim to be 
 far more dogmatical and exclusive than they will find him to be ; 
 they will be surprised at discovering that that is not his temptation, 
 that — because he is a Churchman, because he wishes to build up a 
 united nation — sectarianism is a greater dread and abomination to 
 him in himself than in any one else. I am sure that the writers in 
 religious newspapers will say that this is nonsense ; they are bound 
 to do so ; they would forget their function if they spoke otherwise. 
 But I am not addressing myself to them, but to the Christian 
 scholars and gentlemen who take part in the teaching of our English 
 Colleges. I know that what I say will commend itself to something 
 in their minds and hearts, in spite of any prejudices they may have 
 against the utterer. When a man is confident that God is teaching 
 these things to his generation, as He has taught them to himself; 
 when he is satisfied that they are not the contradiction of that which 
 our ancestors believed, but the adaptation of it to new conditions, he 
 must be sure that those who need them will receive them in due 
 time. Very encouraging proofs liave already been given, that the 
 best and most enlightened Colleges in Oxford, if they stumble for a 
 moment through a natural desire to maintain their old maxims, will 
 not be suffered to ruin their existence and their future usefulness, 
 but will be tauglit, even by the rulers of the Church, that they can 
 best maintain these ancient principles by frankly confessing their 
 new duties. 
 
 Note XIII. Page 129. ' 
 
 It is probable that many of the remarks on the studies of a "Work- 
 ing College, which occur in the Fifth Lecture, would have taken a 
 somewhat different form, perhaps would have been altered even in 
 substance, if they had been written after the work of our College 
 commenced. I am very glad that they were not. Oftentimes 
 experience shows our ideal to have been wrong. Then it is a 
 privilege as well as a duty to correct it ; for to correct is to ennoble 
 it. Oftentimes experience shows that there are parts of it which 
 
202 NOTES. 
 
 cannot be realized at once, which must be modified to suit persons, 
 places, and times. To alter the design in conformity to this expe- 
 rience, is merely to save ourselves the humiliation which it brings 
 with it, to reduce that which is higher and truer within the dimen- 
 sions of our own pettiness, to deprive ourselves and others of a 
 standard by which we may hope to be raised and reformed. I think 
 most persons must have learnt that, if it is not an act merely of 
 prudence but of duty to give up the most cherished projects and 
 maxims for the sake of getting what you can at the first starting of 
 an Institution — it is just as prudent, just as much a duty to keep your 
 principles always before you. Occasions will speedily arise which 
 will make you feel your need of them, and will force you to apply 
 them more severely than you were at first able to do. 
 
LEOTUEES 
 
 ON 
 
 THE EELiaiON OF KOME, 
 
 AND ITS CONNEXION WITH THE HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN 
 
 CIVILIZATION. 
 
LECTURE I. 
 
 KG MIC IN ITS YOUTrr. 
 
 • 
 
 Many wlio arc present to-nioLt will rcmcml)cr a pas- 
 sa.f^c wliicli occurs near the commencement of Dante's 
 ' Inferno.' Wlien tlie Poet first liciirs whiilicr Virgil 
 is aljout to conduct liim, lie expresses Lis wonder that 
 so rare an lionom* sliould 1)C conferred on so mejin a 
 person. lie rcmemLers indeed that tliere is a precedent. 
 'IMic licro of liis great master's poem was permitted in 
 his lifetime to visit the shades helow. iUit it was not 
 strange or unnatural that such a privilege should he 
 l)estowcd upon il^^neas, heathen though he was, ' Sith 
 he ' — so Cary renders the words, — 
 
 * Bitli Lo of Home, Jiiul of Rorne'H cmplro wide, 
 111 heaveii'H empyreiil lieight wan clioHcn Hire, 
 I'otli wliicli, if tnitli \)(', spoken, were; ordainM, 
 And Htaljli.sird for tlie lioly place, wliero sits 
 Wlio to great Peter's Hacred scat succeeds." 
 
 This is certainly a singular motto to choose for a 
 Course of Lectures to he delivered in the ca})it<il of 
 Scotland. Your modern scholars have done as mueli 
 as the scholars of any part of Europe to scatter tli(; last 
 lingering suspicion that Home derived its origin from 
 
206 EOME IN ITS YOUTH. [LECT. 
 
 a Trojan colony. Your older heroes have done at least 
 as mnch as those of any nation, to show that what Dante 
 regarded as the final glory of the great city, for which all 
 its sufferings and victories had been preparing, was not 
 a desirable consummation for it or for mankind. I cer- 
 tainly do not dissent from either of these conclusions. 
 Nevertheless, I think there is a principle implied in the 
 words of the poet, which is not seriously affected by his 
 antiquarian ignorance, or by his ecclesiastical theory. 
 That principle, as I understand it, applies to all nations 
 wliich have risen from insignificance to greatness, and 
 have maintained a memorable position in the annals of 
 the world. It assumes that we may trace through all 
 these, some great providential purpose, some leading 
 character and tendency, signs of which will be apparent 
 in the very opening of the history, and will be most 
 conspicuous as we approach its catastrophe. The feeling 
 of such a purpose imparts to many of the classical 
 histories that dramatical unity, which we feel to be a 
 compensation for their want of accurate criticism. A 
 similar characteristic gives an interest to many of the 
 historical works which have been recently produced in 
 France, though one has often to lament in them rheto- 
 rical exaggerations, and to fear that facts and documents 
 have been unconsciously coloured for the sake of effect. 
 Something better than the Destiny which the ancient 
 as well as the modern annalist recognises as presiding 
 over the course of events, — a Will which is compatible 
 with freedom, and which awakens it, — may one day, 
 I trust, be fiilly confessed by those who write and those 
 who read, and may compel them to dread every devia- 
 
I.] EOME IN ITS YOUTH. 207 
 
 tion from truth as no less* miscliievoiis to the poetical 
 consistency of their narrative, than to its moral signi- 
 ficance. But such a belief will lead to a more careful 
 observation of the course which every nation has pursued 
 through the different stages of its infancy and youth 
 and manhood, and to an assured conviction that, however 
 the design for which it exists may have been perverted 
 and concealed by its self-will, that design will not be 
 sought in vain by the faithful student, and may be 
 fulfilled, within his own sphere, by the faithful citizen. 
 
 While, however, I look upon this doctrine as one of 
 the widest application, as one which may be safely 
 tested by the annals of England or Scotland or France, 
 I cannot help perceiving the most striking illustration 
 of it in the case to which Dante referred. The traditions 
 respecting ^neas contain, it seems to me, the germ of 
 an idea that has been worked out in the records of the 
 Popedom. The life and empire of Rome, in all its in- 
 termediate periods, exhibits, -I think, the development 
 and fructification of this seed, so tliat we cannot under- 
 stand the good or the evil which we find at one or another 
 moment in those memorable records, if we refuse to 
 take notice of it. I do not conceive that any change 
 which has taken place in our views respecting Roman 
 history, any discovery that we had mistaken legends for 
 facts, has robbed us of materials for this investigation, 
 or can affect the method of it. Every new light which 
 has been thrown upon the character or constitution of 
 the people, ought to be, and I believe will prove to be, 
 also a light to us in this path. Every hint that has 
 been given respecting the value of heroical lays or my- 
 
208 EOME IN ITS YOUTH. [LECT. 
 
 thological traditions, is of the greatest value to liim wlio 
 is endeavouring to look upon the story as a whole, not 
 merely as a collection of fragments. At the same time 
 there will be, I suspect, a great satisfaction in finding 
 that the interest which our fathers took in Roman his- 
 tory — the influence which it exercised upon their charac- 
 ters and their lives — was not derived from a spurious 
 source, was not the consequence of their mistakes or their 
 credulity, but was the fruit of a genuine instinct which 
 led them to perceive a truth and a sequence in the 
 narrative, that no increased knowledge respecting its 
 details can excuse the men of tliis day for forgetting. 
 
 This last consideration will, I hope, acquit me of the 
 extreme presumption which may at first seem to be 
 involved in the task I have undertaken. I shall have 
 need enough of your indulgence, while I am skimming 
 hastily over a ground with the steps of which many of 
 you will be familiar, about the objects and views in 
 w^hich many of you will have forgotten more than I have 
 ever learnt. But if you fancy that it is necessary for 
 my purpose that I should lead you, or should be capable 
 of leading you, into any profound historical or philolo- 
 gical inquiries, you are mistaken. I rejoice to think, as 
 I have said already, that no remarks which I shall make 
 can diminish your interest in those inquiries. But my 
 proper business will be wdtli commonplaces which the 
 most superficial readers are acquainted with. I would 
 wish you to consider what is implied in facts which are so 
 well known to us that we scarcely suppose anything is 
 implied in them, in traditions which we fancy are parts 
 of a school-boy lore tliat men have left a long way 
 
I.] ROME IN ITS YOUTH. 209 
 
 beliind them. I believe the benefit, in a refined and 
 cultivated society, in an advanced period of civilization, 
 of recurring to these old thoughts, of questioning them 
 and dwelling upon them, is more than we are any of us 
 aware of. Distant periods of our own lives are brought 
 together. The fresh life of the boy is strengthened 
 with the experience of the man, and imparts more than 
 it receives. The periods of the world's life are in like 
 manner brought nearer to each other, and we understand 
 how identical the laws which govern the progress and 
 changes of the species are with those which we trace in 
 the individual. 
 
 But there are some reasons which incline me to think 
 that such studies, especially when they relate to Roman 
 history and to Koman faith, are peculiarly demanded in 
 our day. Every one must be aware in himself of a 
 certain vagueness and perplexity when he contemplates 
 the influence of Eome on the destinies of mankind. 
 What is this gigantic fatal power, so unlike that which 
 we observe in the empires of the East, — not denoted by 
 a few sweeping conquests, — not raising huge walls and 
 palaces and temples, that vanish out of sight and after 
 a number of ages give back a fev/ scattered memorials 
 of themselves to new races which have forgotten them, — 
 but which rises quietly and majestically, winning mira- 
 culous victories by steady foresight and intelligible 
 means ; amidst all changes of time and circumstance 
 preserving not merely an identity of name, but of es- 
 sence ; never perishing in one form till it has left an 
 heir of its greatness ; in its ruins discovering that skill 
 and energy which the nations of the western world 
 
 p 
 
210 KOME IN ITS YOUTH. [LECT. 
 
 confess to liave been at work in the formation of their 
 own habits and institutions? The transitory rule of 
 some dynasty, or of some nation that has trampled 
 others down, we can describe as a necessary visitation, 
 as a scourge for the cure of internal evils. But so 
 permanent a dominion as this, adapting itself to such 
 a variety of conditions, and preserving so strange a 
 imiformity, what does it denote ? At one moment we 
 are ready to hail it as a great instrument of civilization ; 
 there has been surely a beneficent design in all its 
 growth and continuance. Then our thoughts are recalled 
 to the portentous crimes that marked the acquisition of 
 this power, and the exercise of it ; crimes which we can 
 limit to no period, of which the Eepublic furnished 
 examples as startling as the Empire ; and which we want 
 no other testimonies than those of the historians, poets, 
 divines, of the Middle Ages, to prove were not less when 
 the city of the Caesars had been changed into the 
 spiritual capital of Christendom. Must we accept the 
 most horrible of all conclusions, — that the course of the 
 world has been under the dominion of some daemon, by 
 whom occasional good is permitted, only to make the 
 evil system he has ordained more conspicuous and more 
 inevitable ? 
 
 I think the conscience of mankind could better ward 
 off this frightful hypothesis, if another thought still 
 more perplexing, or rather a legion of thoughts with a 
 specially tremendous one at their head, did not come in 
 to strengthen the worse reason and make it appear the 
 better. There can be no doubt that the religion of old 
 Home was bound up with its very life, impregnated all 
 
I.] EOME IX ITS YOUTH. 211 
 
 its institutions, was a principal cause of its consistency 
 and of its endurance. This fact is obvious to the most 
 careless thinker; the most accomplished students saj 
 that it seems more important to them the further 
 they have pursued their researches. But was not this 
 religion in its essence false and evil? Must not any 
 polity which was derived from it, have been necessarily 
 like its parent? Must not all greatness which it sus- 
 tained have been accursed and destructive ? These are 
 startling and agitating questions. Intelligent men, sin- 
 cere students of history, have sometimes made them 
 more painful still by the answers which they have given 
 to them. One will tell us, that E-omans did noble deeds, 
 and exhibited a noble character, so long as they believed 
 that which was utterly fictitious ; but that the moment 
 they saw things as they were, and therefore understood 
 their faith to be folly, they became heartless and base, 
 eager to be tyrants, ready to be slaves. A statement of 
 a precisely opposite character to this sounds at first 
 even more astonishing and alarming, both from its own 
 nature, and from the character and authority of the 
 speaker. I^iebuhr, in a letter written to Savigiiy from 
 Borne, in 1818, after lamenting the falsehood and the 
 infidelity of the people whom he saw about him, ob- 
 serves, ' All this seems the strangest thing to me, when 
 ' one looks back to the old Eomans, who were governed 
 ^ by a religion of the strictest veracity, fidelity, and 
 ^ honesty. If it should ever be in my power to continue 
 
 * my history, I shall venture to demonstrate how this 
 
 * religion, which was something quite different from 
 ^ Stoicism, was the foimdation on which the greatness of 
 
 p 2 
 
212 KOME IN ITS YOUTH. [lECT. 
 
 * the old repiiHlcan time was reared, and how the whole 
 ^ life of the constitution depended on it.' 
 
 So remarkable an utterance as this, may well make us 
 pause. There are parts of the religion of the old Romans, 
 not when corrupted, but, so far as we can tell, as it 
 existed from the first, which no authority in the world, 
 not even Niebuhr's, can force us to think either veracious 
 or honest. Nevertheless, a man so truthful in his own 
 character, and so impatient of the absence of truth 
 either in criticism or in life, writing with an unparalleled 
 knowledge of the subject, to a man better able than 
 almost any to judge of the soundness of his opinion, 
 would scarcely have ventured such a statement as this 
 without having some grounds for it which deserve the 
 most earnest attention. One is not bound to make him 
 an offender for a word. The familiarity of a letter, and 
 the capacity of his correspondent, are an excuse for 
 ellipses which in a book addressed to the public he 
 Tv'Ould have been bound to fill up. Still, unless we 
 inquire carefully what the veracious and honest element 
 of the religion was to which he attributes such great 
 effects, we shall certainly be likely to gather from his 
 dictum an excuse for that which he would have most 
 abhorred — for insincerity or for want of faith. 
 
 I think I shall be treating this subject most fairly, if 
 I do not begin from the Religion or ^lythology of the 
 Romans, but rather from some part of their habits and 
 political constitution, which we confess, with little dis- 
 sension, to be characteristic and national. I shall not 
 stop to prove that one of these is the power which the 
 Roman father exercised over his child. This power is 
 
I.] EOME IN ITS YOUTH. 213 
 
 connected witli all the stones wliicli have made the 
 deepest impression upon our childhood, with those which 
 we wondered and trembled at ; which assured us that 
 we were reading of an orderly, and therefore a most 
 mighty race. The questions which these stories excited 
 in us were not always pleasant. Were the actors in them 
 to he reverenced or hated? were they entirely right, 
 or utterly wrong ? But they did not suggest the least 
 thought of cruelty ; rather of fixed purpose, controlling 
 affections that certainly existed, that were, perhaps, 
 unusually strong. These childish feelings, instead of 
 "being corrected by subsequent study, are always gaining 
 strength. When we begin to hear a little of Eoman 
 law, maxims respecting the power of the father, titles 
 and institutions grounded upon it, meet us at every turn. 
 We have struck against a gnarled and fibrous root, 
 which is spreading itself out in all directions. Natural 
 Fatherhood suggests the thought of Adoption. It seems 
 as if the relation had a power of multiplying itself in- 
 definitely. Then come in the different forms of eman- 
 cipation. The whole doctrine of citizenship, when it is 
 latent, when it is complete and acknowledged, is involved 
 with these paternal rights. 
 
 These are loose hasty observations which every one 
 makes. We are suspicious of them, because they 
 are so obvious. If we could sit at the feet of some 
 great jurist, he would, perhaps, explain to us that all 
 these are but the accidents and circumstances of the 
 history ; that there are certain deeper principles in the 
 constitution to which they may be referred. M. Savigny, 
 Niebuhr's correspondent, is as high an authority as we 
 
214 EOME IN ITS YOUTH. [LECT. 
 
 can appeal to upon the subject. No one has more 
 extensive knowledge of it in all its bearings ; he ap- 
 proaches it with the earnestness of a citizen, and with 
 the impartiality of a scholar. The object he proposes 
 to himself necessarily leads him to view the history 
 from its legal side ; he will therefore warn us of any 
 fancies we may fall into, that there is something older 
 and deeper than Law. Such would be his inclination. 
 But the fact is, that this authority of the Father seems 
 to him so original, so fundamental, a fact of Roman 
 existence, that he departs from his proper functions for 
 the sake of doing homage to it. Strictly speaking, a 
 jurist Avould treat all branches of law as comprehended 
 imder Obligations ; he would not admit any thing to be 
 within his province which could not, in some manner^ 
 be referred to that head. But M. Savigny says in terms 
 that the Roman jurist cannot adhere to this rule. He 
 must recognise the Family principle as antecedent to 
 all formal obligations, as implied in them. He cannot 
 advance a step, if he is not willing to make this sacrifice 
 of systematic consistency to undoubted fact. 
 
 The first impression which this power made Avas, I 
 said, somewhat confused ; the second may be positively 
 painful. The dominion of the Father over the life of his 
 son, together with the fact that the son for many years 
 was under conditions similar to those of the slave, sug- 
 gests the thought that the whole scheme of existence 
 was a vast tyranny, out of which individual existence 
 and responsibility can only by slow degrees have 
 emerged. Such representations have been made by 
 eminent moralists and commentators on history. The 
 
I.] ROME IN ITS YOUTH. 215 
 
 slave, it Las "been said, was one of liis master's posses- 
 sions ; tlie son was scarcely distinguishable from liim. 
 The Family consisted of both. Does not this prove 
 that in our sense of the word the Family had no exist- 
 ence ; that the head was an owner or proprietor merely ; 
 that Law and Government, if indeed they shaped 
 themselves in conformity with this idea, must have 
 overlooked Persons altogether, must have contemplated 
 only those rights which have reference to Things ? 
 
 There is great plausibility in this statement. There 
 is so far a truth in it, that Rome had certainly from the 
 first the capacity of becoming a state in which the life 
 of the citizen, the life of the man, was unrecognised, 
 was impossible. That a time arrived when this capacity 
 was turned into full and frightful reality, all admit ; that 
 is what we mean when we speak of imperial despotism ; 
 it is of this that we trace the workings in the decline 
 and fall of Roman greatness. It is right and important 
 that the historian should not ascribe these to accidents 
 occurring at a particular period, or to some external 
 impact ; that he should seek for the seeds of them in the 
 earliest periods. But what was it that the despotism 
 subverted ? what was it that declined and fell ? We 
 want an answer to this question. A true consideration 
 of the Roman doctrine and practice respecting the 
 parental and filial relation, I think, leads to the most 
 satisfactory answer we can obtain. This doctrine and 
 practice were not grounded upon the confusion of things 
 with persons, of human beings with property. They 
 were tlie great protests in the ancient Pagan world 
 against that confusion ; the great indication and assertion 
 
216 EOME IN ITS YOUTH. [leCT. 
 
 of the eternal Law, wliicli that confusion disturbs and 
 violates . The mere title of a man to certain material 
 possessions could never become the first subject of a 
 law which derived its form and its life from the authority 
 of the parent; so long as that authority continued to be 
 the fundamental article of the popular belief, the ten- 
 dency to look at possession as the capital distinction 
 and characteristic of a human being always encountered 
 the most vigorous and practical counteraction. Nay 
 more ; there was involved in that idea of the Family, 
 as containing within it both the Son and the slave, not 
 the degradation of the first, but the elevation of tlie 
 second ; not the reducing of the heir into a chattel, but the 
 acknowledgment of the captive in war, the purchasable 
 article, as having the capacities of a citizen and a human 
 being. If the Son must be emancipated at a certain 
 stage of his life, that he might exercise the powers and 
 fulfil the duties which were always latent in him, which 
 his name and position implied, — the slave might share 
 a similar emancipation ; there was nothing in his nature 
 or temporary position, to hinder him from eventually 
 wielding the same powers, fulfilling the same duties. 
 
 Thus there was in the heart of this commonwealth, 
 embedded in its jurisprudence, worked into the very 
 habits of its citizens, a principle which asserted the 
 highest Government to be connected with a human 
 relationship, to be derived out of it. Power was not 
 controlled by certain artificial checks, by the assertion 
 of certain rights in the subjects of it ; not even by an 
 occasional play of the afi'ections. The sternest, strongest 
 power was that which was found established among 
 
I.] EOME IN ITS YOUTH. 217 
 
 men by tlic conditions of tlieir Ibirtli ; that power com- 
 pelled liim wlio exercised it, to regard tlie subject of it 
 as having a nature like his own. It involved that rever- 
 ence for persons, that tacit acknowledgment of person- 
 ality w^ien it was unable to assert itself, when other 
 motives urged to the utter denial of it, in which we 
 may trace the germ of all later experiments to vindi- 
 cate for the serf, moral, social, human rights. 
 
 I am especially anxious that you should perceive 
 that I am not selecting a particular title of Roman law, 
 or a particular experience of Roman life, because it is one 
 for which I may have conceived some private sympathy ; 
 but that I am at least trying to discover the most 
 radical, permanent principle of the greatness of the 
 state, and of its citizens. I do not suppose that when it 
 is fully stated, any one will differ widely with me in my 
 opinion. But we need to state it, and to connect it with 
 a number of facts and traditions which are floating in 
 our minds, in order that wq may appreciate it ; and, 
 above all, that we may see how it bears upon the proper 
 subject of this Lecture. We are liable to adopt two 
 opinions, each of which will, I think, lead us astray. 
 One is, that the Roman feeling, as I have described 
 it, because it touches so closely upon common human 
 feelings, is not distinctive of the nation ; the other is, 
 that it may be sufficiently accounted for, and that it was 
 merely kept alive, by certain accidental circumstances, 
 and by the force of laws and institutions. I will touch 
 upon both these points before I proceed further. 
 
 We cannot better understand in what sense the acknow- 
 ledgment of fatherly power and the incidents that arose 
 
218 EOME IN ITS YOUTH. [lECT. 
 
 out of it, belonged to Rome, tlian "by comparing its state 
 for a moment with that of the Oriental monarchies 
 and of the Grecian republics. ]S[o doubt a patriarchal 
 principle was latent in all the despotisms of the East : 
 it is to them that the modern admirers of what they call 
 patriarchal governments turn, with a scarcely dissembled 
 affection. "Whatever occasional abuses they may dis- 
 cover in the administration of the power, the maxim on 
 which it proceeded was, they affirm, more favourable 
 than any other to liuman happiness. I do not mean to 
 argue the point. What I wish is, to ascertain wherein 
 tins patriarchal principle differs from the one which we 
 find penetrating the Latin life and character. In the 
 passage to which I referred just now, Savigny says, in 
 answering a charge of Hegel and of Adam Miiller, 
 that naked despotism was implied in the fatherly 
 authority : ' These writers have not taken this point 
 
 * into account, that among no people of the old world 
 ' were wives so highly honoured as in Rome.' And he 
 quotes from Columella what he calls — and I think we 
 shall none of us disagree with him — this beautiful 
 description of the family life of the older times : ' There 
 
 * was then the highest reverence, joined with concord 
 ' and with industry ; there was no division of interests 
 
 * to be seen in the house ; nothing which the husband or 
 ' the wife claimed to belong to either of their own riglit : 
 
 * all was looked upon as common to both.' 
 
 Compare a state of things where even the conception 
 of such a life as this was possible, let the realization of 
 it have been as imperfect as it might, with that which 
 must exist wherever polygamy prevails, wherever the 
 
I.] EOME IN ITS YOUTH. 219 
 
 monarch, the father of the people, cL^ims specially in 
 virtue of his dignity to be surrounded with a seraglio ; 
 and then estimate, if you can, how these ideas must 
 have affected all the parts of a society in which they 
 respectively prevailed; how the spirit of relationship, 
 of a community of interests united with a distinctness of 
 persons, must have diffused itself through all the orders 
 and institutions of the one state; how entirely the 
 monarch himself must have been the embodiment of 
 the principle of fatherhood and government in the other 
 case, whilst all occupations and duties will have been 
 merely services prescribed by the one central authority, 
 and rendered to it. Or have I not unawares, and almost 
 of necessity, fallen into a wrong mode of speaking? 
 Ought I not rather to have said that the very idea of 
 orders and institutions belongs to the one principle and 
 has been developed out of it, and that if the eastern 
 maxim is at the foundation of the society, and not 
 merely, as it was in the case of the Jews, a temporary 
 accident and outgrowth, there can be no orders or insti- 
 tutions at all? Despotism, in that sense in which it 
 soon becomes identical with mere dominion over things, 
 in which every minister of the State is only an agent to 
 extract certain revenues from other less responsible 
 agents, is ultimately its only possible condition. 
 
 The point to which I have drawn your attention in 
 this comparison is this, — that the patriarchal character 
 in the case of the eastern monarch attaches to him as a 
 monarch, — that he is the king first, then the father; 
 whereas the idea of fatherhood was the primary one in 
 the Italian people, and might or might not connect 
 
220 ROME IN ITS YOUTH. [LECT. 
 
 itself witli tlie person of any sovereign. This remark 
 bears especially upon the early period of the Roman 
 State ; upon that kingly period, many of the traditions 
 of which we have ceased to believe, but the existence of 
 which is not disputed. It was most natural that the 
 fatherly authority should be first exhibited in actual 
 rulers, and that when any one of these clearly proved 
 that he was not a father, but a tyrant, the principle should 
 have had strength to break loose from its temporary 
 representative, to manifest itself through old forms and 
 names which had become sacred, to discover new ways 
 of securing reverence and obedience. Scipio, in Cicero's 
 * Dialogue on the Republic,' to which I may refer for 
 another purpose in a future Lecture, dwells much on the 
 continuance of the kingly idea in the general of the 
 camp, and in the dictator who was appointed in civil 
 emergencies : at the same time he expresses the intensest 
 horror of tyranny, and his profound reverence for every 
 one who had helped to deliver the country from it, or to 
 prevent its restoration. Niebuhr supposes that this 
 Dialogue was written wdth especial reference to Cicero's 
 times, to prepare the way for the government of one man, 
 which he saw to be inevitable. Whether it was so or 
 not, the doctrine of the book clearly is, that there is an 
 aspect of monarchy which might be tolerable to a 
 Roman, one which would embody, not contradict, 
 the principle that had been recognised in all periods of 
 the Republic. 
 
 If this was the practical faith of the Roman, we may 
 understand how much he differed from a lively and 
 enterprising citizen of a Greek republic, whose mind 
 
I.] ROME IN ITS YOUTH. 221 
 
 was full of schemes of government, and wlio liad had 
 so much experience of the working of a great many. 
 I shall have to compare the general habits of the two 
 people more at large in the next Lecture : I would only 
 draw your attention now to one point ; I mean the 
 striking contrast which the struggles of the aristocratical 
 and democratical parties in Sparta and Athens present 
 to the struggles of the patricians and plebeians in 
 Rome. It is not at all strange, that they have often 
 been confounded. There is such a genuine pleasure in 
 detecting likenesses, after the manner of Plutarch, 
 between men and nations, and there is such a radical 
 likeness between them beneath all their diversities, that 
 we are constantly tempted to seek for it where it is not 
 to be found. If we adopt Niebuhr's doctrine, which, 
 I suppose, may be considered as thoroughly established, 
 that the patricians were the original Koman houses, we 
 see at once how little the struQ-Q-ks of one set of men to 
 prevent the expansion of the rights of citizenship, and of 
 another to vindicate for themselves rights which they had 
 valour and wisdom to exercise, can have resembled the 
 question whether the government of the best or the 
 government of the people was to be preferred, with 
 the further questions which arose out of those, who 
 were the best and who were the people. It is not 
 necessary to decide, which kind of inquiries was the 
 most interesting. If either had been wanting, there 
 would have been a great blank in the experience of 
 mankind. But we may say confidently, that so far as 
 government and authority over men are concerned, it 
 was desirable, it was inevitable, that they should be 
 
222 EOME IN ITS YOUTH. [lECT. 
 
 "bestowed, not upon those who were always considering 
 where power did reside or ought to reside, but upon 
 those who perceived in the very constitution of man an 
 answer to these questions, and who acted on that con- 
 viction. Those who sat in the Senate consulted what 
 was to be done and how it was to be done, as much as 
 any Greek assembly could do ; but it was as fathers 
 they consulted. In that name they decreed; by that 
 name they were appealed to. So long and so long only 
 as they could preserve the dignity and sacredness which 
 belong to that name, could they preserve the authority 
 of their order. No old titles, no exclusion and con- 
 tempt of others, could secure more than the shadow of 
 their reverence, when the human family associations 
 which attached themselves to the name had passed 
 away ; when they sat merely to carry out the purposes 
 of some faction, or to register the edicts of an emperor. 
 
 I think then that I may assume this belief in the 
 authority of Fathers to be distinctively Roman. I 
 do not therefore quarrel with the assertion that it is 
 common and human. The peculiar circumstances of 
 climate, soil, position, which we find in one city, and not 
 in another, deserve assuredly the most careful obser- 
 vation. They help us to understand what its work is 
 in the world. But the most accurate knowledge of the 
 external condition of a nation will not tell us what it is, 
 or wherein its power has consisted. To arrive at any safe 
 conclusion on these questions, you must know what side 
 of human life it has taken the strongest hold of, which 
 of those radical principles that belong to us as members 
 of a species, have possessed and penetrated it most. It 
 
I.] EOME IN ITS YOUTH. 223 
 
 is no paradox then to say tliat tlie peculiarity of a 
 great people must Ibe something which is not confined 
 to it, but is universal. It is no strange assertion, that 
 ilome could not have been raised above the rest of the 
 earth, could not have had its dominion over men, 
 except in virtue of some quality which every man 
 might recognise as his own. Other people may have 
 had all the same external advantages, or immeasurably 
 greater. The power of turning them to account, of 
 subjecting them to its commands, of converting them 
 from impediments into tools, is what we require ; and 
 this power must come from some other source than from 
 the things which it is to make use of; if it wants 
 support we must look elsewhere than to these to 
 uphold it. 
 
 There can be no question, from what I have said, that 
 the Roman reverence for parents did need support ; that 
 it was exposed to continual perils from within and with- 
 out. The perils were great in the outset of the history. 
 The early legends represent to us the founders of the 
 city, as men willing to adopt all plans for carrying out 
 their purpose, getting wives as they could from the 
 neighbouring lands, by fair means or foul. Such sto- 
 ries, to whatever precise events they may point, are 
 faithful indications of character ; they show us the rough 
 hands which have begun great empires ; they scatter 
 all dreams of an Arcadian age. In Roman history we 
 have scarcely the hint of such an age ; we find our- 
 selves involved, at once, in the habits and the crimes of 
 an organized society. So much the more do we want 
 to know how it came to be organized, what held the 
 
224 ROME IN ITS YOUTH. [lECT. 
 
 elements together that were so likely to burst asunder, 
 what gave them the sense of obedience, since we cannot, 
 in this case at least, attribute it to the weariness of 
 fighting : no men were ever less weary of it ; they 
 longed for it ; they were entering upon a life of it. 
 The difficulty becomes greater as we proceed. The city 
 grows more firm and compact : but with this growth its 
 internal struggles become severer ; it seems continually 
 as if the body would be actually rent asunder. The 
 strifes of orders must have afiected the private life of tlie 
 citizens, must have disturbed their hearths and homes. 
 External wars, and conquests, the prizes to avarice, the 
 excitements to ambition, must have been felt by every 
 E-oman son, must have tempted him continually to break 
 loose from the authority of the Father. Laws were 
 themselves affected by all the causes that affected the 
 manners of the people ; their inadequacy to preserve 
 manners was proved at last, was confessed always. 
 Who will guard the guardians ? who will teach us to 
 honour that which in itself is weak, while we are strong? 
 This was the problem which all earnest citizens and 
 statesmen had to work out. If they thought they could 
 solve it by their sage maxims and skilful contrivances, 
 the passions in the hearts, the strength in the arms of 
 those whom they ruled, defied and mocked them. The 
 helmsman who depended upon his tricks and con- 
 trivances for keeping the sea in order, had to find that 
 there is another law governing it which he must learn, 
 to which he must submit, which he cannot alter. The 
 manliness and wisdom of the Roman consisted chiefly 
 in that he understood this truth better than most 
 
I.] EOME IN ITS YOUTH. 225 
 
 men ; lie trusted less to his sagacity and more to facts ; 
 he perceived that he could only govern by consenting 
 to be governed. Yet he was prone, as all are, to forget 
 this principle ; then it proved its strength by his dis- 
 comliture. 
 
 I have been brought, then, to the direct subject of 
 my Lecture. Some influence was needful to maintain 
 this paternal authority, — customs, laws, sagacity, were 
 not adequate for the purpose. Shall we say that the 
 Roman Religion supplied that want which nothing else 
 could supply ? If I put forth this proposition, I might 
 procure an easy assent to it. A hundred facts would 
 immediately come in to support it — the mixture of civil 
 and sacred names in the offices of the state ; the attention 
 to sacrifices ; the whole science of divination and augury. 
 It might be shown, clearly enough, and Polybius would 
 support the evidence with his authority, that what are" 
 called religious sanctions had far more weight with the 
 Romans than with the Greeks, or any people of the old 
 world; that they trembled far more to violate an oath 
 which the name of the gods had confirmed. And hence 
 it would be easy to draw the inference that a machinery 
 which kept them continually alive to the punishments 
 which might be inflicted on them here or hereafter, if 
 they were guilty of crimes, operated on their consciences 
 or their fears with a strength which we cannot in the 
 least measure. 
 
 Unfortunately the facts are conclusive — facts to which 
 I must draw your attention more carefully on another 
 occasion — that when the machinery was most perfect, 
 when it was recognised as having this object among all 
 
 Q 
 
226 EOME IN ITS YOUTH. [LEGT. 
 
 who took part in tlie working of it, it did not avail to 
 check the most enormous and deliberate crimes. But 
 supposing there was a moment, a transition period hard 
 to discover, when the balance, strongly inclining to- 
 wards evil, was adjusted simply by the threatenings 
 of what the Gods might inflict upon the wrong doer, — 
 supposing the pious frauds to which the priests resorted 
 for the purpose of strengthening the popular fears were 
 oiot a weight in the other scale, — can it be shown that, at 
 any time whatsoever, that fellowship of the husband and 
 the wife, that reciprocal government and obedience of 
 the father and the child, which the old agricultural writer 
 dwells on so fondly, grew and expanded under this 
 shadow? Can it be shown, or in the least degree 
 presumed, that the Koman hosts in the old time went 
 forth to throw their lives away for their country's sake, 
 because they had a dim apprehension that he who dwelt 
 and ruled in the Capitol, might do them some greater 
 mischief than the general who led them, or than the 
 enemy if they fell into his hands? Was this the 
 kind of motive to create orderly discipline, or to inspire 
 deeds of daring and devotion? If the religion of the 
 Romans was nothing else than this, it certainly does 
 not in the least help us to account for the virtues either 
 of the hearth or of the camp ; still less does it teach us 
 to' connect them together, or show how the one might 
 animate and sustain the other. 
 
 But if this account of the matter is unsatisfactory, 
 there is another v^hich is sometimes given, and which 
 has acquired considerable popularity in our day, that 
 seems, in this instance at all events, even less tenable. 
 
 4 
 
I.] ROME IN ITS YOUTH. 227 
 
 The religions impulse is said to be that which creates 
 in men high ideas of the beautiful and the good, which 
 raises the nobler thoughts they find in themselves to 
 their highest power, which invests them with divinity, 
 which enthrones them amidst the stars. What warrant 
 the history and mythology of the Greeks afford for 
 this kind of statement, — how easy it is for a person 
 who contemplates their history apart from the history 
 of mankind, or who thinks that it is the key to every 
 other, to regard this view as the solution of all dif- 
 ficulties, — I can readily admit. What I would observe 
 here is, that the Eomans Vv^ere, as we all know, not 
 an ideal people ; that they were eminently and charac- 
 teristically the reverse of this ; that they never could 
 reverence anything which they believed had proceeded 
 from them, had been fashioned by them ; that nothing 
 illustrates this feeling so strongly as their reverence for 
 the authority of Fathers, as their conviction that this was- 
 the foundation of all other authority. The moment any 
 Homan began to suspect that there was nothing but w^hat 
 he had projected from himself, that moment this re- 
 verence fell by its own weight. To seek for the protec- 
 tion of it in such a religion as this, would be the most 
 flagrant of all possible inconsistencies. 
 
 But if we throw aside these theories and look at the 
 facts of the case, what do we find ? Be it remembered, 
 that, for this purpose, traditions which took any strong 
 hold of the popular mind, are facts. They are facts of 
 belief, though not facts of history. They may explain 
 to us what was recognised in the invisible world, 
 though they may give only a confused impression of 
 
 q2 
 
228 ROME IN ITS YOUTH. [lECT. 
 
 what took place in tlie visible. Witli tliis recollection 
 on your minds, consider that story to which I referred at 
 the outset, the story which Virgil, who had been bred 
 in the simplicity of Italian rustic life, who was sur- 
 rounded by the splendours of the new court, who was 
 a Roman at heart though his intellect had been cast 
 into a Greek mould, felt to be the most faithful em- 
 bodiment of that old truth which he trusted that the 
 anarchy of the civil wars had not been able entirely to 
 destroy, which he fondly dreamed that the new dynasty 
 might restore. Forget, as we are privileged to do, all 
 about a Trojan colony and a Trojan war, all that merely 
 belonged to the vanity of the Julian family, the want of 
 documents, the carelessness of investigation, and then 
 consider what is implied in the story of a man bearing 
 his father out of the ruins of a fallen city, and coming 
 to Latium after perils by sea and land, with liis house- 
 hold gods. Consider those words Household Gods in 
 this connexion, and then ask yourselves whether this is 
 a mere tale, illustrating the dry moral, that it is proper 
 for sons to take care of their fathers, or whether it does • 
 not give us a glimpse into the meaning of the reverence 
 for fathers, of the authority of fathers, — whether it does 
 not tell us whence that reverence and authority were 
 derived, how they were sustained. Was there not a 
 belief in the Roman such as did not dwell in any other 
 Pagan nation, that there was a fatherly government in 
 the highest region of all, which was implied in the very 
 existence of the household, upon which the permanence 
 of all household relations depended, upon which therefore 
 all civil relations, all civil order, and not less the mili- 
 
I.] EOME IN ITS YOUTH. ^229 
 
 taiy order, the aiitliority and subjection of the camp, 
 nlthnately depended ? 
 
 I do not assume the opinion of some very eminent 
 scholars to be established, that the Penates were really 
 the gods of the Roman State, that Jupiter himself was 
 one of them. Though I feel that that must be sub- 
 stantially a correct statement, I do not wish to build 
 anything upon it, seeing that the inference one would 
 deduce from it follows as clearly from premises whicli 
 all admit. And while I would maintain the resemblance 
 of the powers which presided over the state with 
 those wliich presided over the hearth, I would not 
 lose sight of the fact that they retained their own dis- 
 tinctness, that the Roman family was never merged in 
 the State as the Spartan was, that the safety of the 
 State and the freedom of its individual members de- 
 pended upon the acknowledgment of a number of 
 circles, each having its own centre within the great 
 circle. Where the highest idea of the divine Unity 
 is not recognised, where different powers are supposed 
 to exercise distinct functions in nature, or to demand 
 homage from some special faculty or disposition in 
 man, there I cannot conceive that the home and the 
 country will not be felt to be in some degree under 
 different government ; that there will not, at all events, 
 have been frequent clashing of the affections and the 
 understanding, in the effort to regard them as the same. 
 If we contemplate these facts in the light of history and 
 of our own experience, I think we shall be less sur- 
 prised at the differences and perplexities of scholars 
 upon this point, than at the efforts after unity, the 
 
230 EOME IN ITS YOUTH. [LECT. 
 
 intuition of it wliicli one sees in this people, just so far 
 as they connected the objects of their worship with the 
 family and with the nation. The moment they lost 
 that association, the moment they contemplated their 
 Gods merely as presiding divinities in nature, as asso- 
 ciated with all the vicissitudes of climate, with aspects 
 of the country, with strange and startling phenomena, 
 that moment they became Polytheists in the most 
 radical sense of the word. A pantheon so formed could 
 have no limitations. Each new observation, each new 
 conquest, would people it afresh. And at each step the 
 feeling of that which had been originally implied in 
 the worship would grow weaker ; some utterly frivolous 
 or utterly cowardly feeling would be substituted for it. 
 
 To affirm that there was any time when the people of 
 Rome were free from this kind of polytheism, or when 
 it did not determine many of their acts, would be to 
 contradict the plainest evidence. But it would be 
 equally, I think, against evidence to say that there ever 
 was a time, when there was not a sense of something 
 deeper than this, when a divine fatherhood did not make 
 itself manifest to them as the object of their confidence 
 and their devotion through the different objects which 
 were reverenced at the private or the public altar. It 
 did not signify whence the rites of the particular divinity 
 might be imported, from what language the name might 
 come, — so sure as they were adopted by the Eoman of 
 the older time, he saw in them that which did not 
 belong to flowers and seeds and agriculture firstly or 
 chiefly, that which did belong to the family and upheld 
 it. Take a very simple instance which will illustrate 
 
l] eome in its youth. 231 
 
 this remark by sliowing in* what way it became for- 
 gotten in later times. Ovid, we all know, undertook to 
 be the commentator npon his country's religion. If 
 mere cleverness and liveliness, a knowledge of old fables, 
 and a power of presenting them in an agreeable form, 
 had been sufficient qualifications for this task, no one 
 was fitter for it than he was. The only thing which he 
 wanted was any, the slightest, appreliension of that 
 which constituted the dignity of the Roman, the 
 citizen, or the man. For a right treatment of his 
 subject, no point was so important as the worship of 
 Vesta or Hestia. All the most sacred ceremonies and 
 institutions of Rome were associated with it; the 
 virgins of tlie sacred fire had aifected the character of 
 the nation from its infancy. The fop and sentimen- 
 talist of the Augustan age approaches the topic with 
 the jaunty air, which is so characteristic of him and so 
 intensely disagreeable. He informs us that Vesta means 
 the Earth. He confesses that he had been entirely igno- 
 rant till a very recent time of the fact that there was no 
 image of Vesta; that her fire was her only symbol. 
 He then proceeds to tell a vulgar and impure story, by 
 way of illustrating that which had conveyed to his 
 fathers the feeling that purity was implied in the very 
 existence of the home and the hearth. I have more 
 than one reason for alluding to this perversion. In 
 England — I hope it is otherwise in Scotland — Ovid is the 
 writer from wliom our boys commonly derive their first 
 impressions of what was believed in the old world, and 
 especially by the conquerors of it. He is chosen partly, 
 I suppose, because the art of writing longs and shorts 
 
232 EOME IN ITS YOUTH. [LECT. 
 
 may "be learnt most easily from liim ; partly Lecause it 
 is tliouglit that the form under Avhich he presents the 
 Pagan Mythology must show how ridiculous and false 
 it was. What sacrifices ought to he made for the first 
 end, I do not venture to pronounce ; the theological 
 calculation I must maintain is utterly false. What 
 such a writer as Ovid teaches us is not to despise and 
 abjure that which is fiibulous and mythological, but to 
 lose all perception of that in the fables and mythology 
 which was bearing witness for truth. To him the 
 religion of liis country was a stuff out of which he 
 could make verses just as he could make others out of 
 his own sorrows ; therefore wliilc we read him, we 
 lose all power of perceiving how it took hold of men's 
 hearts. We suppose that somehow certain fictions 
 were credited by the old world, Avhich have bequeathed 
 a set of metaphors for schoolboys. And so we are not 
 the least prepared to watch the tendencies in our minds 
 out of which the worst of these fictions proceeded, or to 
 reclaim from them that which was in them, not of 
 them, — that which came from a higher source, and was 
 to manifest its might when Paganism had proved its 
 weakness and had perished. 
 
 Vesta, we may say it boldly, not caring the least for 
 Ovid's dictum, did not mean the Earth to an old l\oman, 
 whatever she may have meant to the Greeks. Nor did 
 her fire associate itself in his mind with physical powers 
 and principles, about which lie knew notliing and 
 speculated very little. It spoke to his heart, not his 
 understanding, of that which was nearest and dearest. 
 It connected the sanctity and affection of the Home 
 
I.] ROME IN ITS YOUTH. 233 
 
 with tlie preservation of the City. It revealed how 
 little one could be preserved without the other. It told 
 him what need there was of a divine vigilance to keep 
 that alive, which a multitude of cold blasts were ever 
 threatening to put out. Such thoughts might not be 
 reduced to shape in his mind. They could not put 
 themselves into words. The forms of the worship 
 were an attempt to express them. 
 
 One would doubt of any one instance of this kind. 
 But the more one thinks of the objects of Koman reve- 
 rence, the more strongly is the same conviction brought 
 home to us. The most obvious example, the one which 
 has forced itself upon every student, is also the most 
 important. The Zeus of Olympus becomes the Jupiter 
 of the Capitol. That which belonged to him as one of 
 his Homeric epithets, is felt to describe his inmost nature. 
 The Compeller of the Clouds is recognised as first of all 
 the Father, the source of Roman law and order ; dwell- 
 ing in the city ; its Parent and its King. I associate the 
 two ideas which had such an affinity for each other in 
 the Eoman mind, which never could be far asunder, be- 
 cause their union throws light upon those stages of Eoman 
 History to which I have alluded already. The passing 
 away of the kingly period, whenever and however it took 
 place, may have been accomplished without that tremen- 
 dous sense of interruption, that violent wrench in the mind 
 of the nation, which we connect with such a revolution. 
 The story of Lucretia must express the deepest meaning 
 of that event. Whether it actually answers to the 
 fact or not, whether Brutus spoke the words which the 
 poet-historian of the later time attributed to him, or 
 
234 EOME IN ITS YOUTH. [LECT. 
 
 some yet more simple words, we are sure tliat it lias a 
 place in tlie enduring records of humanity wliich no 
 fiction can claim. And tliis is because the oath which 
 declared that the purity of no Roman house, the honour 
 of no Eoman matron, should again be outraged by 
 regal baseness and tyranny, announced the continuance, 
 not the dissolution, of the comm^onwealth, nay, even of 
 the kingdom. It had been dissolved already, so far as 
 it could be, by the crimes of Tarquin and his son. He 
 had extinguished his own authority ; but the authority 
 remained still in that presence which was recognised in 
 the citadel. The royal father there had not abdicated ; 
 he retained his claim upon the allegiance of his sub- 
 jects ; they claimed him as their protector and avenger. 
 In the belief of his continued dominion, the fathers 
 could still maintain their original dignity, the Consuls 
 could go forth to the battle against the enemy, could 
 receive the obedience of the citizens. There was all 
 that invisible awe, that certain punishment of the wrong- 
 doer, which, when separated from protection and fatherly 
 government, no priestly contrivances, no plots of states- 
 men could make effectual to restrain the wickedness of 
 any man who had the power to commit it. The other 
 beautiful story, in which Eoman freedom is again in- 
 volved with female purity, the deliverance of the child 
 with the deliverance of the city, and both with the 
 exercise of the father's affection and authority, still 
 points to the same divine asserter of right, still affirms 
 that human fatherhood is watched over and protected 
 by an unseen father. The act of Virginius in that 
 venerable tradition, was the appeal to a higher law 
 
1.] EOME IN ITS YOUTH, 235 
 
 against that whicli -the Decemvirs were enacting, against 
 any outward force that they possessed. The majesty 
 of human relationships, their inviolahility in the case 
 of the humblest man or cliild, rested upon the faith that 
 a true and righteous government was maintaining the 
 family, was maintaining the city, and would put down 
 any temporary ruler who denied the source from 
 which his power proceeded, the end for which it was 
 created. 
 
 I must again observe that the force of this evidence 
 is not at all weakened by our inability to ascertain, how 
 nearly these tales represent the actual occurrence. As 
 a test for ascertaining the nature and the ground of the 
 popular belief, of that which constituted the Roman 
 religion, they have the most indisputable significance. 
 And it is surely this religion of which Niebuhr speaks 
 as being honest, faithful, and veracious. Such names 
 could not belong to it, if it had only led to certain good 
 results. In this place may I not go further and say, ap- 
 pealing to all your national honesty and national faith, 
 it never could have produced results in any degree good, 
 except so far as it was good and true. We dare not 
 call the conviction, the religious conviction, which is 
 expressed in the acts of Brutus and Yirginius, false, 
 without undermining whatever is most solid and most 
 deep in our own belief. We must suppose that that 
 religion pointed to something, most imperfectly deve- 
 loped and ascertained, which any clearer revelation 
 would not annul, but confirm and bring into full light. 
 
 The other assertion of Niebuhr's, that this religion 
 was something altogether different from Stoicism, is also, 
 
236 ROME IN ITS YOUTH. [LECT, 
 
 it seems to me, irrefragable. The stoical belief of a 
 Fate, tlie stoical belief in God as identical with the 
 world, has surely very little in common with this belief 
 in a fatherly government, this* reverence for a person, 
 this confession of a power which may be appealed to 
 against suffering and wrong, instead of being called in 
 to account for the existence of it. How Stoicism after- 
 wards connected itself with this older faith, how it put 
 on some of its forms and gave back to it some of its 
 own conclusions, how it came in to supply some of the 
 blanks which the ignorance of the old times had left, 
 to explain and indorse the errors into which they had 
 fallen, I may try to show you in another Lecture. But 
 in the meantime, both the reasons which I have alleged 
 and the authority of the great German historian, will, 
 I hope, induce you to acknowledge that the practical 
 popular faith had a firmer and deeper ground than this 
 school doctrine. 
 
 The old traditions which speak of the son of Mars, — 
 the warrior, the lawgiver, — as the founder of the city, of 
 the priestly sage who received his inspirations from the 
 nymph Egei>ia as the second king, do not, I think, merely 
 offer hints about the races of which Rome may have been 
 composed, and their respective contributions to its sta- 
 bility ; they point out also the order in which its insti- 
 tutions must have arisen, the relation in which they 
 must always have stood to each other. The sacerdotal 
 part of the commonwealth, important as it was, was 
 always subordinate to its legal and governing part. It 
 was born to rule and conquer. It learnt to connect 
 worship and sacrifice with that vocation. To forget 
 
I.] ROME IN ITS YOUTH. 237 
 
 this order is to misunderstand the character of the city 
 in all its periods, to lose sight of one of the chief causes 
 of its strength as well as of its weakness. It was this 
 which taught the priest always to look upon himself 
 as the servant of the commonwealth, who was to use 
 liis wisdom and his lore for its occasions, not to sepa- 
 rate himself from it in the pursuit of certain studies 
 and ends of his own. It was this which tended to make 
 liim continually the agent and tool of a State-policy. 
 It was this which taught the Roman to connect the 
 highest thoughts of devotion and personal sacrifice with 
 the service of his country. It was this that disposed 
 him to think of the sacrifices to the Gods as mere con- 
 trivances for producing a certain impression upon the 
 minds of the people or the soldiers. It was this which 
 preserved the Roman religion from some of the worst 
 tendencies of the Hindu or Brahminical religion. It 
 was this which made it liable to acquire a kind of false- 
 hood which was peculiarly its own. But we should 
 forget the letter of these traditions, and still more, the 
 moral of them, if we concluded that because some of 
 the more elaborate pontifical institutions may have 
 grown up subsequently, there was not a religion in the 
 Roman state from its outset. It opens with a story of 
 augury and divination. What did those divinations 
 imply ? They indicated, I think, from the beginning, 
 they indicated always, a belief that the divine ruler of 
 the city was provident of its welfare, that the future as 
 well as the past was known to him. They indicated 
 a conviction that in some way or other he intended to 
 make his mind known to his creatures, that they too 
 
238 EOME IN ITS YOUTH. [LECT. 
 
 were meant to exercise foresiglit, that there must be 
 a means of regulating their acts and designs according" 
 to his purpose. The God was "believed to direct the 
 city before there had been any careful arrangement of 
 ministers to conduct his service, before the order of the 
 services had been authoritatively settled. 
 
 The greatness of Rome depended on this faith. So 
 soon as it decayed, the Roman began to believe in his 
 auguries, in his sacrifices, in his religion, not in a Ruler, 
 not in a Father. Thus the Religion destroyed itself. 
 It affirmed the existence of Gods ; it gradually recog- 
 nised them as its own creatures. What it had formed it 
 must sustain ; the first lie cannot live if there is not a 
 second to join with it ; if that does not find some other 
 to keep it in circulation. The web becomes more intri- 
 cate every hour. The danger of disturbing any thread 
 of it seenis more terrible. But in some way or other it 
 must be torn asunder ; the earnestness, the faith, of the 
 Roman demanded that it should. By what agents and 
 processes the work was accomplished, we may consider 
 hereafter; what good come out of it and what evil. 
 But let us rest for the present in the conviction that 
 Roman history, the further we trace it, will furnish 
 larger and deeper illustrations of the principle that 
 whatever is false is feeble and the cause of feebleness, 
 that whatever is truth must come forth and vindicate 
 its might before the Universe. We need that convic- 
 tion if we would understand the past ; we need it for 
 the work of every day ; we shall hold it more firmly 
 when we look back upon our present existence from 
 that which is to come. 
 
II.] ROME UNDER GREEK TEACHERS. 239 
 
 LECTURE 11. 
 
 ROME UNDER GREEK TEACHERS. 
 
 Marcus Aurelius in his meditations Ibade himself 
 remember at all times that he was a male and a E-oman. 
 Yet Marcus Aurelius wrote in Greek ; his studies had 
 "been mostly in Greek philosophy; he lived at a time 
 when the Greek culture appeared to have achieved a 
 victory over the Boman intellect, and when Rome had 
 as little right to boast of freedom as any of the cities 
 that she had subdued. Why did the emperor cling so 
 tenaciously to that form of character which one might 
 have expected that a man who possessed his lore, and 
 aimed at his objects, would have almost scorned ? 
 
 This question touches closely upon some of those 
 which were raised in my last Lectm'e, upon the relation 
 in which Greek politics, as well as Greek religion, stood 
 to the Roman; upon the relation between the Roman 
 religion and Stoicism. Both these subjects will come 
 more distinctly and prominently before us to-night. 
 
 I endeavoured to prove that the authority of the 
 father was the ground of Roman government, the source 
 of the Roman reverence for law, the secret at once of 
 
240 EOME UNDER GREEK TEACHERS. [LECT. 
 
 Roman dominion and of Roman freedom. "Whatever 
 was strong in tlie national mind was derived from this 
 authority, or was intertwined with it. The institutions 
 of the country bore witness of it from the beginning ; 
 the witness grew stronger and more marked as they 
 developed themselves. The principle was manifested 
 in the continuous order of the commonwealth; it was 
 manifested quite as remarkably in those events which 
 disturbed existing rulers and introduced social changes. 
 When we turned to the religion, there was a series of 
 facts exactly corresponding with these. The idea of 
 fatherhood and fatherly government was every where 
 expressed in the Roman reverence for their Gods. It 
 gave a unity to their belief, though every thing in the 
 outward conditions of that belief was hostile to unity. 
 It made that worship real and substantial. For the 
 Roman could never suppose that his faith or his concep- 
 tions had called that divine power into existence which 
 was the only origin and protection of them. His faith 
 became a palpable and practical contradiction, the moment 
 he dreamed that his own fatherly feelings had led him to 
 attribute the same to the Gods. These feelings perished 
 if there was not some fountain deeper than themselves, 
 out of which they had issued, from which they could be 
 renewed. Tlie honesty and veracity which Niebuhr 
 claims for the Roman religion, must be utterly denied 
 to it if this were not the case. 
 
 It appeared to us that the Greek started on that long 
 and adventurous voyage, in the course of which he saw 
 so many cities and men, and suffered so much by sea 
 and land, from a different port than this. It would be 
 
II.] ROME UNDER GREEK TEACHERS. 241 
 
 very wrong indeed to say that tliere was not in him a 
 strong sense of the preciousness and sacredness of human 
 relationships. The Homeric poems would refute hy a 
 hundred beautiful stories so rash an assertion. The 
 legends of the Trojan war abundantly testify that the 
 marriage-bond, reverence for its permanence, a determi- 
 nation to punish all violations of it, lay at tlie root of 
 Greek society. The sense of kindred every where mixes 
 itself with the association in cities, with the honour of 
 the kings, even with the courtesies of enemies to each 
 other. The affection of husband and wife is seen and 
 honoured in the city which the crime of Paris has 
 doomed to destruction. The same habits of mind taking 
 even a stronger form, linking the roving disposition of 
 the sea-wanderer to the sympathies of home, reappear 
 in the Odyssey. And I need not remind any of you 
 that the religious or theocratic element in these poems 
 answers to the human. The Gods have their relation- 
 ships, their affections, their jealousies among each other; 
 they are parents and kinsmen to the earthly heroes. 
 Those who founded cities could not establish them or 
 rule them, if they could not claim to be the children or 
 the friends of some unseen guardian. 
 
 These are unquestionably important elements in the 
 life of this wonderful race. But the more you consider 
 them, the more, I think, you will be convinced that the 
 voluntary relationship, that into Avhich men enter of 
 themselves, and not that in which they find themselves 
 by the law of their birth, was the prominent one in the 
 Greek mind. The wife is the object of the liero's 
 choice. The choice has been confirmed by human laws 
 
242 E05[E UNDER GEEEK TEACHERS. [LECT. 
 
 and divine rites ; gods and men will defend it. Xo 
 other man, be he ever so great, may outrage it. But 
 Agamemnon may vindicate his own right to the captive 
 taken in war, as being not less agTeeable in form or na- 
 ture than Clytemnestra. This is clearly a state of feeling 
 quite unlike that of the Oriental ; but it is no foundation 
 for such a household as the Roman delighted to contem- 
 plate. 
 
 The sons will probably go forth presently, to seek, 
 under the guidance of fortune better than their parent, 
 for some new home. Firm friendships may be formed, 
 colonies may be established, by these wanderers, not 
 without a sense of strong love for the land that has been 
 left behind. Various political combinations of unspeak- 
 able interest to after times may be attempted by them. 
 There may be the general council and the clever tyrant; 
 but the stable j)olity, the settled dominion, must be 
 sought elsewhere. 
 
 A similar observation applies to the religion. The 
 Homeric gods sympathise with men, mix in their battles, 
 teach them various arts ; but it is impossible to feel that 
 they have a right to govern, that they are exalted above 
 the tempers and passions of those who inhabit the lower 
 world. If Zeus holds the scales in which the fate of 
 two combatants are poised, he is open to the importu- 
 nities of Aphrodite or Thetis, to the rebukes of Hera. 
 We feel instinctively that such beings might attach 
 themselves to many impulses and affections of men's 
 hearts, might be invoked in many moments of pleasure 
 or of distress, might be felt to inspire the singer or the 
 sailor or the warrior, might represent many movements 
 
II.] EOME UNDEE GREEK TEACHEES. 243 
 
 in the natural world, hut that they could not, strictly 
 speaking, be revered. They were the elde brothers or 
 sisters of the human race ; the awe of fatherhood did not 
 dwell in them. 
 
 Consequently the Greek was always liable to fancy 
 that he was the measure and standard to which all 
 things must be referred, — that laws, institutions, princi- 
 ples, gods, were his offspring. This, I say, was his 
 tendency. And it is to the struggle against this ten- 
 dency, the struggle to find some foundation to rest upon 
 which he did not create, that we may trace all the 
 noblest efforts of the Greek mind in its legislation, to 
 a certain extent in its art, to a still higher degree in its 
 later poetry, more completely still in all that is enduring 
 of its philosophy. The lawgiver must find an authority 
 to which he can appeal, that is raised above those who 
 are the subjects of it, that is not at the mercy of their 
 caprices. The Dorian would vindicate this authority, 
 even though taste, cultivation, the very freedom which 
 he maintained against external despots, were abandoned 
 to secure it. The Ionian, who could not submit to such 
 sacrifices, must try to maintain the higher part of 
 humanity against the lower, the intellectual against the 
 animal. The fight was a very hard one. For though 
 his countrymen might have the keenest intellects ever 
 bestowed on any race, they were also in the completest 
 sense animals, always ready to use their intellects as 
 ministers of their lower appetites. The sculptor might 
 assist in counteracting this tendency, if he could present 
 the objects of worship in beautiful forms, with the highest 
 intellect pervading and quickening them. The human 
 
 E 2 
 
244 ,EOME UNDER GREEK TEACHERS. [LECT. 
 
 creature miglit at least see tliat they were elevated above 
 liimself, tliougli they Avere sharers of his nature. The 
 dramatic poet took a higher flight. He discovered in 
 the old traditions of his country v/itnesses of a divine 
 law which would bend to no human phantasies ; of 
 crimes — above all, crimes against the relations of life — 
 avenging themselves after the lapse of generations ; of a 
 fixed unbending destiny wdiich did not prohibit tlie 
 ►strife of human wills, but overcame them. Then came 
 the eager search of the philosopher for some principle 
 in physical things or numbers, or in human nature itself, 
 to which all things might be traced, and which no in- 
 ventions of men could alter. Then came his vehement 
 protest against the Homeric gods as creations of man's 
 fancy ; then his vindication of that which is in itself 
 against that which is produced by any art; then his 
 assertion that the excellence that dwells in the Gods 
 must be the ground and type of all human excellence, 
 and that man must not dare to impute his Avrongs and 
 perversities to them, unless he would make his standard 
 of what was right for states and individuals mutable 
 and useless. 
 
 These works are, it seems to me, grander in their ulti- 
 mate aim, more instructive by their connexion with eacli 
 other and with Greek history, more valuable even in 
 their defects, than for those separated and isolated beau- 
 ties upon Avhich admiring critics are wont to dwell. 
 They help us to perceive a unity of purpose in this 
 nation, like that which I have endeavoured to trace in 
 the Roman. The aspiration of the Greeks after an 
 ideal of humanity, after a wisdom wdiich is implied in 
 
II.] EOME UNDER GREEK TEACHERS. 245 
 
 all the acts of the understanding of the highest men, 
 but cannot be limited to them or derived from them, 
 may be seen in the rudeness of the Homeric life, no less 
 than in the greatest refinement of the age of Pericles, or 
 in the loftiest designs of Alexander. It may be seen in 
 the confused Mythology of the Homeric poems, and 
 seen also in the protest against that Mythology in the 
 Republic of Plato. In comparing the two periods, the 
 evils which were developed in the later time and had 
 not been developed in the earlier, the deeper truths 
 which had come to light in the later period and that 
 liad not come to light in the earlier, and which made 
 the false notions of that time manifest, we have a right, 
 I am sure, to affirm concerning Greeks what I did affirm 
 concerning Latins, that in no case was the lie productive 
 of good, that in no case was the detection of it produc- 
 tive of evil. No, nor of unbelief. On the contrary, 
 there was a seed of unbelief, of irreverence, of contempt 
 for what is divine, in all the Homeric fables. The faith 
 which was latent in these fables was the confession of a 
 great eternal verity ; the seed of irreverence and unbelief 
 was unfolded in those who, with the Athenian Sophists, 
 proclaimed man to be the standard ajid measure of all 
 things, and in those also who with their enemy, Aristo- 
 phanes, clung to the old traditions respecting the gods, 
 and yet made the gods the objects of sport and ridicule. 
 The seed of good and of truth was unfolded in those 
 who maintained in fact, or sought to prove by argument, 
 that there is a substantial and universal Ptigliteousness 
 and Wisdom which must be confessed by all who would 
 be righteous and wise themselves. 
 
246 ROME UNDER GREEK TEACHERS. [lECT, 
 
 But it does not follow because the Greek mind had 
 a great and glorious problem of its own, wliicli it was 
 trying to work out, — of wliicli if it could not discover 
 the solution, it might show us whence the solution is to 
 be expected, — that it would, therefore, make its work in- 
 telligible to the Roman. There are many evidences 
 that it did not, many satisfactory reasons why it could 
 not. If there is any part of Greek speculations which 
 we might suppose would have had an affinity with the 
 Roman intellect, it is that part which refers to polities 
 and politics. Two of the greatest works of the greatest 
 philosophers of Greece were directly occupied with this 
 subject. They were familiar to Cicero, as to all the 
 accomplished Komans of his time. He held the names 
 of Plato and Aristotle in the profoundest respect. He 
 regarded Plato as more eloquent than almost all profes- 
 sors of eloquence. Nevertheless, there is not the slightest 
 proof that his own political ideas were determined, even 
 greatly modified, by their teaching. His fragment on 
 the Republic shows that he had learnt his idea of insti- 
 tutions and of society in an entirely different school; 
 and if in the book of Laws there is more to remind us of 
 the work attributed, rightly or wrongly, to Plato under 
 that title, his saying, that he preferred the Twelve Tables 
 to all the dogmas of the philosophers, was undoubtedly 
 sincere. I do not see how it could be otherwise. The 
 most memorable and striking passages of Plato's Re- 
 public, those which were most valuable to Greece, and 
 may be precious to Britons, Germans, or Frenchmen, 
 did not meet at any point the thoughts which had been 
 awakened in Romans by their polity, encountered a set 
 
IT.] KOME UNDER GREEK TEACHERS. 247 
 
 of questions and difficulties witli wliicli tliey liad never 
 Ibeen exercised, pointed to an ideal which they had 
 never dreamed of. On the other hand, the practical sug- 
 gestions in that book, which they could understand, 
 must have been utterly shocking to them. JVe may see 
 how Plato came to defend a community of wives, the 
 experiences of modern Europe helping us even more than 
 any reasonings ; we may feel that with his knowledge 
 and his ignorance, it was almost impossible that he 
 should not regard so fatal a result as the condition of 
 a perfect society. The Roman could only look upon it 
 as the most accursed scheme for the dissolution of all 
 society. In Aristotle's polity he would find no such 
 blot. Human relationships- he would there see treated 
 with profound reverence, as the primitive types of all 
 the most advanced forms of political life. But even in 
 -this beautiful conception there would be something en- 
 tirely alien from the habits of his mind. Each relation 
 seems considered by itself, as if it might unfold itself 
 into a separate kind of government. The parental 
 authority is not here, more than anywhere else in Greek 
 literature, that centre to which all the other aspects of 
 human life are referred. And there is in Aristotle an 
 utter want of the divine groundwork of these hu.man 
 relations, which the Eoman never forgot. Partly for 
 that reason, the relation between the master and the 
 slave has none of the embryo filial character vvhich it 
 had in the Eoman family. It is based by Aristotle upon 
 the great principle that the intellectual being must rule 
 the animal ; the perilous deduction from that principle, 
 that the Greek was meant to rule all other creatures. 
 
248 EOME UNDER GREEK TEACHERS. [LECT. 
 
 being as little disguised in the tlieoiy of the master as 
 it was in the practice of the pupil. 
 
 Hence it was not possible, I should suppose, for a 
 Roman to enter heartily into either of these master- 
 works, or even into the great Greek histories of which 
 they were in some sense the expositions. Herodotus 
 was too free and cosmopolitan for the home taste of the 
 Latin ; Thucydides treated of those wars of principles 
 of which, in the Republican time at least, he had no 
 experience. At what point, then, was it possible for the 
 Greek intellect to come in contact with that which was 
 so unlike it? How was the affinity created which was 
 afterwards productive of such remarkable effects ? How- 
 ever little a hasty a priori reflection might prepare us 
 for such a result, it was Greece when it had become 
 unpolitical, when social problems had been either cast 
 away by its sons in despair, or had been merely con- 
 nected with the phenomena of the universe ; it was 
 Greece deprived of its great masters, fallen under the 
 tyranny of mere commentators and debaters ; it was 
 Greece framing schemes of the universe to console her- 
 self for the loss of the moral freedom and intellectual 
 dominion which she had once sighed for and almost 
 grasped ; it was this Greece, so prostrate and helpless, 
 which appealed to the hearts that had been nourished in 
 the traditions of Brutus, and Fabricius, and Regulus ; it 
 was this which excited the terror of their elders; it 
 was this, which no denunciations and protests could 
 prevent from introducing into the city legions of 
 thoughts directed apparently against a world into which 
 the Roman arms had never been carried. 
 
II.] ROME UNDER GREEK TEACHERS. 249 
 
 What was this new world which Alexander had not 
 discovered, but which men so much feebler than he was 
 dreamed that they could conquer? It was one which 
 had not been unvisited bv the imaorination in former 
 days. Greek legends had spoken of a lord of the sun, 
 a lord of the air, a lord of the deep with all the trea- 
 sures that lay in it, a lord of the subterranean abyss 
 and. its tires. Beside these, had dwelt the possessors of 
 different stars in the firmament, forms that haunted 
 every glade and rivulet, Tritons and Naiads innume- 
 rable in Poseidon's kingdom, male and female powers of 
 horror and vengeance that executed the commands of 
 Pluto. All had human tempers, characters, sympathies, 
 shapes ; all spoke of different emotions and habits, of 
 gladness, of wonder, of terror, in human hearts. But 
 the acts and offices of all were connected with the opera- 
 tions of nature, with those operations which were most 
 familiar to Greek observation and experience. The 
 impulse to penetrate into nature, to examine its secrets, 
 as well as to turn its powers to account, had therefore 
 been fostered not only by the necessities of the husband- 
 man and the sailor, but by the teaching of the priest, 
 by the belief of the people. The voices of gods and 
 goddesses seemed beckoning, even wooing, the shepherd 
 and the fisherman to ascend the hills or plunge into the 
 ocean caverns where they had their dwellings. The 
 passion had been felt by the earliest Ionian philosopher, 
 and had been rewarded by useful discoveries. Thales 
 had calculated eclipses, and given help to armies. It 
 had also been the cause of dangers. Anaxagoras, living 
 in the most intellectual period of Greece, had main- 
 
250 EOME UNDER GEEEK TEACHEES. [LECT. 
 
 tained that a higher intellect than that wliich was 
 directing the sculptor or the poet must be ruling in the 
 stars. His doctrine had seemed to his countrymen 
 worthy of banishment. They craved for human fellow- 
 ship and sympathies in their gods ; he seemed to 
 be substituting for them a cold abstraction. It was 
 otherwise with the warm-hearted patriot Empedocles, 
 amidst the volcanic wonders of Sicily. To him every- 
 thing in the operations of nature suggested thoughts 
 of the affinities and antipathies of men and of king- 
 doms ; to these, as to ultimate principles, he referred 
 them. 
 
 Such dreams and explanations had no longer any 
 interest for the Greek thinker. Even the dogma of 
 Anaxagoras had become too personal for him. But the 
 desire to understand nature, and to connect it by some 
 link or other with human life, had descended upon him 
 as the last relic of his ancestral inheritance, which he 
 might still boast of, and might perhaps improve in his 
 own hands. The Epicurean retained most of that side 
 of the old Greek feeling which connected nature with 
 man, and made it subordinate to his interests and 
 delights. But in place of the fresh joyous sympathy 
 with nature as the kinsman of man, as peopled with 
 beings like him and caring for him, the dull dry maxim 
 that he is to get all the pleasure he can out of it, had to 
 be sustained by a theory which showed out of what 
 -seeds, and by what combinations, the great system had 
 come into existence without any creative energy or will. 
 The gods, Epicurus honoured as beings having those 
 very tastes and forms, that indolence and apathy, which 
 
II.] EOME UNDER GEEEK TEACHERS. ^51 
 
 he regarded as the perfection of humanity. So far he 
 reflected something of the temper of those ages which he 
 ridiculed ; only to carry out his idea and preserve men 
 from anxiety about the future, these higher human 
 beings must be entirely excluded from all relation with 
 and dominion over those who dwell upon this planet. 
 On the other hand, the Stoic would ascribe the most 
 restless activity to the gods, the most unceasing interest 
 in what men were doing. How could it be otherwise ? 
 For were not they the moving powers and energies of 
 this world, another name for all the secret and manifest 
 powers and operations of nature, by which for good or 
 evil we are most affected ? How reasonable then to pay 
 them homage ! How wise were all the precepts of anti- 
 quity respecting their worship ! All the philosopher 
 can add to the old doctrine is a still higher reverence for 
 the world itself, the whole divinity of which these are 
 parts. All he has to do is to observe the fixed unde- 
 viating fate which regulates its acts and movements, 
 and to submit himself to the same rule, quenching joys 
 and sorrows, fears and hopes, as caprices unworthy of 
 one who has risen to the apprehension of a government 
 so calm and stedfast. To break the chains of Epicurean 
 and Stoical dogmatism, to use that method of Plato by 
 which he sought in the conflict and collision of two 
 truths to discover a higher wherein both were involved, 
 for the oversetting of all affirmations and the mainte- 
 nance of a perpetual equilibrium, was at last the sole 
 function of the Academician. But in his progi'css to 
 scepticism, he halted at several stages, coquetted with 
 several positive beliefs, always left an opening for 
 
252 ROME UNDER GREEK TEACHERS. [LECT. 
 
 practical acquiescence, even wliile lie was most fostering 
 the liabit of speculative doubt. 
 
 How these three forms of opinion acted on the 
 Roman mind, what their influence was on the Roman 
 faith, we must learn not by guesses but from documents. 
 Cicero's book on the Nature of the Gods is the classical 
 one on the subject. It would be difficult to imagine one 
 more interesting and more valuable. But I cannot 
 help thinking that the meaning of it is sometimes mis- 
 taken, owing to prejudices Avhich we bring with us 
 to the study of it. I will point out one or two of these 
 before I proceed to speak of the book itself. 
 
 Gibbon has said in a well-known passage : ' The 
 ^ various modes of worship that prevailed in the Roman 
 ' world were all considered by the people as equally 
 ' true, by the philosopher as equally false, and by the 
 * magistrate as equally useful.' I will not now speak of 
 the first member of this triad. It does not directly con- 
 cern our present business. But if the second is correct 
 of the philosophers, under which name must be included 
 all the teachers who influenced the Roman mind — all 
 the persons in Cicero's dialogue — the most notorious facts 
 must mislead us, the plainest passages in the book must 
 have some new and strange sense put upon them. 
 Apparently Velleius, who maintains the Epicurean side 
 in the controversy, asserts with good faith that the gods 
 have human forms and natures, and applauds his master 
 for worshipping them in secret, though he did not admit 
 their interference with the administration of the world. 
 A very large part of the argument of Balbus in the 
 second book is devoted to the defence on philosophical 
 
II.] ROME UNDER GREEK TEACHERS. 253 
 
 grounds, and not as a question of personal expediency, 
 of tlie old Roman legends respecting the gods. He is 
 vehement and prolix in this argument, and he connects 
 it with the fundamental maxims of his scliool. Gotta, 
 the Academician, is the only one who treats these legends 
 with anything approaching to levity. He was himself 
 the Pontifex : Balbus appeals to him with great solem- 
 nity not to forget his office, and what it involves. He 
 declares, abandoning for the time his laughing mood, 
 that nothing which he says must be taken as in the 
 least at variance with his sacred functions, but that he 
 does not conceive he is bound to respect the Stoical 
 arguments in support of the traditions, because he 
 respects the traditions themselves. I am not saying- 
 yet how these words are to be accounted for; I merely 
 say that, as this conversation is supposed to take place 
 among friends, opening their minds to each other with 
 perfect freedom, not scrupling to utter words that 
 must have sounded very strange to their countrymen, 
 Gibbon's dogmatic assertion must require very great 
 explanations and deductions, before it can even approach 
 the truth. 
 
 What I have said about Cotta, or rather what he says 
 about himself, may seem amply to confirm the other 
 dogma, that the magistrates regarded all religions as 
 equally useful. How much the religion of Eome always, 
 even in the earliest times, was liable to become a state 
 religion, I admitted in the last Lecture, How much the 
 danger had increased with the growth of the common- 
 wealth and the enlargement of its limits, I am most 
 anxious that you should remember. It is this fact 
 
254 ROME UNDER GREEK TEACHERS. [LECT. 
 
 wliicli accounts in a great measure for tlie opposition 
 which the Greek literature and philosophy encountered 
 from such Romans as Cato the Censor; this explains 
 the eagerness with which they were hailed by the 
 younger men. The Censor had a strong conviction 
 that the religion had some very close connexion with 
 the order of the state, with the preservation of its polity. 
 What the connexion was he knew as little as men of his 
 character and class generally do ; he had a vague im- 
 pression that somehow people were kept from crimes 
 which his office did not enable him to suppress, by invi- 
 sible terrors. He thought that traditions of heroes 
 descending to the battle, must stimulate the corn-age of 
 the legions. lie may have found it convenient some- 
 times, to stop the holding of the Comitia by a sinister 
 augury. With these calculations there will, I conceive, 
 have been mixed up the old patriarchal feeling of the 
 Eomans, a sense that the glory of the Eoman homes 
 was departing, a just and humble confession that his 
 own faith and practice were inferior to those of his 
 fathers, a belief that his office laid upon him the respon- 
 sibility of not abetting a fm'ther degeneracy. There is 
 no difficulty in sketching such a likeness as this ; num- 
 bers of men in all times and countries might sit for it. 
 Of course there will be m^irked individual lines in each 
 case. But this, or something like this, I suppose, 
 would be a fair representation of the motives and argu- 
 ments which created the Eoman Graioijliobia, And 
 the Roman Graiomania in the yomig men will have had 
 as intelligible an explanation. They had been led to 
 reverence veracity as a specially Roman virtue, and 
 
II.] HOME UNDER GEEEK TEACIIEES. 255 
 
 tliey found themselves surrounded by men wlio seemed 
 to think it their Koman duty, to maintain a show and an 
 appearance of truth for the sake of a certain result. 
 They had been taught that Order belonged to the 
 Boman state, and they found a multitude of disorders 
 perpetrated in its name. They heard of the sacredness 
 of relationships, they saw very little of it ; the feeling of 
 them had not passed in any strength into their own hearts, 
 though there was a lingering consciousness of their worth, 
 and even of their power. Their ambition, a Roman ambi- 
 tion, led them to be desirous of being conspicuous in the 
 forum. To be so they must have a skill in debate 
 which did not belong to their ancestors, as well as an 
 acquaintance with many things of which they were 
 ignorant. Here were teachers who boldly looked into 
 the facts of the universe ; here were men who spoke of 
 an order much more perfect than the Roman order; 
 here were men who taught a severe self-restraint, such 
 as the older Romans had practised ; here wxre men 
 who cultivated the faculty of seeing the two sides of 
 a question, and of showing what might be said for each, 
 as it could be cultivated nowhere else. These were 
 reasons strong enough why magistrates of the Roman 
 people, and those who were aspiring to magistracy, 
 should reject the Greek learning when first it appeared 
 in Rome, or should promote it. They indicate a mix- 
 tiu'e of feelings on both sides ; the honest with the 
 impure, the manly with the frivolous and the cowardly. 
 But they do not warrant the charge against either, of 
 that monstrous wickedness which Gibbon imputes to 
 the most eminent men of the Republic as of the Empire 
 
256 EOME UNDER GREEK TEACHERS. [LECT* 
 
 tliat tliey had no other reason whatever for supporting" 
 the religion of their country, than that they considered 
 it a serviceable lie. There was probably no man in 
 Rome, not the best and noblest of all, who might not at 
 times, by words or acts, yield to this abominable habit 
 of mind. If it had not been so, the Republic would 
 not have fallen. But I am convinced there was no great 
 man, not Cotta, certainly not Cicero, in whom another 
 and totally opposite feeling did not dwell; combining 
 with his most sacred Roman traditions ; not only sus- 
 taining itself in spite of his Greek philosophy, but often 
 by the help of it. 
 
 No one doubts, I imagine, that Cicero's character is a 
 complicated one, hard to describe faithfully upon a single 
 hypothesis, capable of being contemplated on various 
 sides, supplying plentiful excuses for a severe criticism 
 as well as for cordial admiration. Since he was the man 
 who was most perfectly seasoned in Greek literature of 
 all his cotemporaries ; since he was at the same time 
 essentially Latin in thoughts, language, affections, charac- 
 ter, and regarded all his Greek culture as ornamental and 
 subsidiary ; since, nevertheless, he has taken more pains 
 to show us how it might in his judgment be helpful to 
 the main object of the Roman's life ; — he must be the 
 best illustration we can find, both in his person and in his 
 writings, of the whole subject. His vanity belongs to him- 
 self; his political oscillations, and his domestic failures, 
 much more to his time; the uncertainty of his conclu- 
 sions, to his education both in the schools and at the bar. 
 But beneath all these there lies the Roman reverence, the 
 Roman sense of duty, the Roman tenderness and affec- 
 
II.] ROME UNDER GREEK TEACHERS. 257 
 
 tion, and, I must add, laying stress upon tlie adjective, 
 tlie Roman love of trutli. That love of truth was alto- 
 gether distinct from the Greek love of it. Truth in 
 itself Cicero did not pursue or care for, or know the 
 meaning of. But truth in institutions, truth in charac- 
 ter, truth in the ordinary dealings of men, he did admire 
 very heartily, even if various influences to the right and 
 to the left made him deviate often and sadly from his 
 standard. Now it is absolutely impossible that any 
 one of these habits of mind could exist in a man who, 
 consciously and habitually, regarded the worship of the 
 gods of his country as something merely useful to the 
 magistrate. 
 
 Whence then arises that allusion to the two charac- 
 ters of the priest and the reasoner, which occurs in his 
 dialogue, and which does not seem to have caused him 
 any great shock? I think the cause may be traced 
 very clearly in the dialogue itself. It is evident that 
 the graceful and accomplished Komans who discuss the 
 question about the nature of the gods, are in themselves 
 earnest energetic men ; but that they are liot more than 
 half in earnest when tliey are met for such a business 
 as this. It is not that there is any intentional levity in 
 their manner ; it is not that they would not bring all the 
 force and energy of their minds to bear upon it ; it is not 
 that the eloquent reporter is not doing, as he always did 
 in every work little or great, his very best. But it is, 
 that they have a reserve of faith, as practical men, as 
 men of work, which enables them to treat controversies, 
 however interesting and important, as belonging to 
 leisure. It is not the least a life and death que?tion 
 
 S 
 
258 EOME UNDER GEEEK TEACHEES. [lECT. 
 
 with tliem, whether Yelleius or Balbus is right. The 
 actual reverence for a divine power cannot, they think 
 and very often say, be in the least affected by the deter- 
 mination to which this or that argument may lead them. 
 If we take Cotta's words literally, and interpret them 
 liberally, this is what he understood when he claimed 
 the right to be as sceptical as he liked in his mere rea- 
 sonings about the nature of the gods. Whatever he did 
 believe, he says, he never could believe with Epicu- 
 rus. Yet he could gratify the follower of Epicurus by 
 showing that all which Lucilius urged in favour of the 
 popular mythology, as included in his great world-god, 
 was entirely futile. Cicero himself concludes, to the 
 surprise of his reader, with saying that he differed from 
 Cotta, the patron of his own sect, and was inclined on 
 this subject to agree with the Stoic ; an assertion of 
 which he makes his brother afterwards remind him in 
 the book on Divination. Evidently his intellect went 
 with Cotta, who demolishes Stoicism with the rhetoric 
 of his reporter, not his own. But because the conclu- 
 sion of Balbus seemed more to favour the faith in a 
 divine presiding power, he accepted it, being convinced 
 that that was true, whatever else might be false. 
 
 Before we assume that either Cotta or Cicero thought 
 this belief was to be upheld merely because it was use- 
 ful, we should recollect what always was and must have 
 been a Koman's test of truth. That which could sup- 
 port nothing, appeared to him essentially unsubstantial. 
 That which was able to sustain such a state and republic 
 as Eome, had in it tokens of solidity which could not 
 be gainsayed, which must be confessed, however difficult 
 
II.] EOME UNDER GREEK TEACHERS. 259 
 
 it miglit be to prove by other evidence that it was strong 
 and ought to stand. It was this test vv'-hich made him 
 feel the weakness of that which he had borrowed from 
 the Greeks^ and which, as far as Avords and logic went, 
 seemed so much less assailable than that which he had 
 inherited. All these controversies and conclusions of 
 the sects were no basis for a society, could keep no 
 society alive. There must be something firmer and 
 deeper than they were. If it was not the traditions 
 which had been so intertwined with the history and 
 growth of Rome, what was it ? Must it not be some- 
 thing in them which no patriot, no true man, could dare 
 to part with, which he must maintain against the world 
 and against himself? 
 
 But then to discern what this was, became every day 
 more difiicult. For there were two processes going on 
 simultaneously, each of which made the other more 
 perplexing. There was that process of decay in the 
 inner domestic life of Eome, and, consequently, of decay 
 in its institutions, which continually warned all thought- 
 ful Romans of coming ruin : and yet, as it affected their 
 own characters and the clearness of their own vision, 
 made them less able to understand wherein the greatness 
 and safety of their city consisted. It was easy to feel 
 and denounce the cruelty of factions, the venality of 
 officials, the oppression of provinces — easy to foretel 
 whither all these were leading. But it was not easy so 
 to trace all the symptoms to the constitutional malady 
 from which they had proceeded, as to avoid the trial of 
 a number of plausible insufficient remedies, some of 
 which were hastening the death of the patient. It was 
 
 s 2 
 
260 ROME UNDER GREEK TEACHERS. [LECT. 
 
 most difficult to one who sought to preserve the springs 
 of the nation's life, not to be tender also of the mud 
 in which they were hidden. It was at least as difficult 
 for one who saw how necessary it was to sweep that 
 away, not to overlook the only instrument of health and 
 puritication. 
 
 For it must not be forgotten that though the Roman 
 did not give up his traditions for the sake of his philo- 
 sophy, his philosophy was in a number of ways acting 
 upon those traditions, and showing large portions of 
 them to be untenable. This is the other process to 
 which I alluded. Their joint efiect is nowhere, I think, 
 so visible, as in Cicero's work on Divination. Niebivlir, 
 I have been told, though I cannot remember to have 
 read the passage in his writings myself, has somewhere 
 denounced this book with great vehemence, considering 
 it as the worst exhibition of Cicero's character, with 
 which in general he is disposed to deal very tenderly. I 
 can see some grounds for such an opinion. The dialogue 
 is a far less interesting and agreeable one, than that on 
 the ' Nature of the Gods.' Cicero's brother, who defends 
 divination on Stoical maxims in the first book, argues 
 his case as if he expected to be confuted. Under cover 
 of his name, Cicero is able to introduce long extracts 
 from his own poems, which are brought forward as an 
 argumentum ad hominem, to convict him of attaching 
 iiiith in auguries respecting the Catilinarian conspiracy. 
 When he proceeds to demolish these pleas in his second 
 book, there are more signs of direct disbelief in the 
 popular faith without any clear assertion of the grounds 
 upon which he would tolerate it, than are at all consis- 
 
II.] ROME UNDER GREEK TEACHERS. 2G1 
 
 tent with the sincerity and manliness wliicli one wishes 
 to give him credit for, and which in general, after all 
 deductions, we feel did belong to him. But the more 
 we look at the book, the more, I think, we shall be in- 
 clined to qualify the censure which we may at iirst 
 bestow on it, to acknowledge that the difficulties belonged 
 more to the nature of the subject than to the timidity of 
 the writer, and to perceive that he was struggling to be 
 honest, in the midst of all his temptations to keep one 
 doctrine for himself and to leave another for the people. 
 The important point in this dialogue is that Quintus 
 Cicero is defending the old traditions in the new and 
 fashionable mode, lie is the Le Maistre of Eoman 
 augury. Jt is exceedingly delightful and agreeable, of 
 course, in his opinion, to believe what his revered fore- 
 fathers believed ; but it is still more delightful to be able 
 to justify them upon refined maxims which they never 
 dreamt of. Quite in the spirit of his modern imitators? 
 Quintus is destroying the root of the traditions, while 
 he is vindicating all their most extravagant outgrowths. 
 ' How can you tell that the birds may not denote such 
 and such things by their flight V Why should not there 
 be correspondences between the internal appearances of 
 beasts and the events of a campaign? Do you under- 
 stand all the mysteries of this great world? What 
 curious relations there are between the life in plants 
 and the life in the human frame ! Is not all medicine 
 grounded upon them ? ' These and the like formulas, 
 with which we in our day are so painfully familiar; 
 these appeals to the ignorance which should prompt us 
 to seek for knowledge as an excuse for being always 
 
262 EOME UNDEE GEEEK TEACHEES. [LECT. 
 
 without it; tliese arguments of mock humility which 
 must make real humility for ever impossible ; these en- 
 couragements of a universal scepticism, as the only way 
 to an undistinguishing faith, were all tried and exhausted 
 1900 years ago, in this conversation. It is surely a 
 very high honour to Marcus Tullius Cicero that he 
 detected the covert atheism which was lurking in them. 
 He strikes a direct and deadly blow at the Stoic, who 
 pretended that the world was all governed by a fixed 
 fate, and yet could admit an art which made the course 
 of events subject to accident. He asserts, with peculiar 
 clearness, which one scarcely looks for in a Latin, the 
 dignity of science, as being a continual escape from 
 accident. But he does more. He clearly shows that 
 it is a profaneness and wickedness to connect the divine 
 nature, with which we ought to associate all permanence 
 and stedfastness, primarily and chiefly with those things 
 which belong to the realm of change and uncertamty. 
 He may not follow out the conclusion as satisfactorily 
 as we might desire ; but when he utters his conviction 
 at the close of his book, ' that it is the part of a wise 
 
 * man to defend the institutes of his ancestors, by re- 
 ^ taining sacrifices and ceremonies ; and that the beauty 
 '- of the world, and the order of celestial things, demon- 
 ^ strate some excellent and eternal natm'e, which is to 
 
 * be the object of wonder and reverent regard to the 
 *" human race ; but that, at the same time, all the roots 
 '- of superstition ought to be cast out, because it inter- 
 *" feres with all stedfastness and quietness of mind,' we 
 may trace, I think, a very strong, however imperfectly 
 developed, conviction, that the ground of all that had 
 
II.] JiOME UNDER GREEK TEACHERS. 263 
 
 "been good in the worship of the Roman people — good in 
 their institutions — had been not a faith in accidents or 
 portents, but in the providence of a Being superior to 
 all these, who may direct the flight or fall of a sparrow, 
 but who is trusted because order, and not caprice, is the 
 ground of his counsels. 
 
 There is one most striking paragraph in the book on 
 
 * the Nature of the Gods ' which I have dwelt upon with 
 wonder, and which has been to me a great help in 
 apprehending the thoughts which were at work in the 
 author of both these books, and in the Romans of his 
 time. It occurs at the close of that long speech of 
 Cotta's in which he seems to have shaken the Roman 
 Pantheon to its centre, exposing the different conceptions 
 human and natural that had contributed to form it, and 
 in which he had apparently sounded the very depths of 
 scepticism, maintaining all events and actions to be a 
 maze without a plan, and the wise man to be more 
 miserable than the fool. ' All mortals,' he says, ' account 
 
 * that all outward conveniences, vineyards, harvests, 
 ' olive-yards, the abundance of fruits, the commodities 
 
 * and prosperities of life, come to them from the 
 ^ gods. But Virtue no one ever thanked the gods for 
 ' bestowing upon him. They are right, no doubt. For 
 
 * we are justly praised for virtue, and in our virtue we 
 ^ have a right to glory. And this would not be the 
 
 * case if we had it as a gift from a god, not from our- 
 ' selves. Whereas if we have gained any increase of 
 ^ lands or property, or if we have obtained any accidental 
 *■ good or driven off any accidental ill, then we give the 
 
 * gods thanks, for we suppose nothing has been gained 
 
264 EOME UNDER GREEK TEACHERS. [LECT. 
 
 ^ for our own honour. Did ever any man tliank tlie 
 
 * gods that he was a good man ? Of course not ; but 
 , that he was ricli, that he was honoured, that he was 
 ' out of danger. It is for these reasons they call Jove 
 
 * greatest and best; not that he makes us just, tempe- 
 
 * rate, wise, but that he gives us safety, abundance, 
 
 * wealth.' Here, no doubt, was tlie secret of the whole 
 matter, what the Roman in his heart was searching 
 after, — a god who should propose it as the first end of 
 his dealings with his creatures to make them right and 
 true, — who should in this way justify the fatherly 
 character which the traditions of their country had attri* 
 buted to him. To believe there was such a Being was 
 most difficult, for the reason which Cotta so simply and 
 honestly assigns. How could they then compliment 
 themselves upon their virtue ? How could they credit 
 themselves with it as their own ? If it was absolutely 
 necessary to their dignity as Romans, or their dignity as 
 philosophers, to do this, the aspiration after sucli a 
 divinity must be for ever unsatisfied. But it might be 
 discovered to some, by the blackness of their country^s 
 crimes — by more melancholy experiences in themselves, 
 — that it was necessary to their sincerity as Romans, to 
 their w^isdom as philosophers, 7iot to do this; to do just 
 the reverse of this, — to confess that the rectitude or man- 
 liness which Avas in their fathers, that the craving for 
 these which they discovered in themselves, were gifts 
 which must have come from some higher source than a 
 god of vineyards, or olive-yards, or money. Those who 
 acquired that conviction might look natm-e in the face 
 more stm*dily and manfully than any Greek philosopher, 
 
II.] ROME UNDER GREEK TEACHERS. 265 
 
 iniglit Ibelieve in an ideal of liiimanity higher than any 
 Greek of the old time had yearned for, and yet might 
 recognise a parental authority which did not belong- 
 more to the infancy of his nation than to its fullest man- 
 hood, not more to it than to all the tribes which it had 
 conquered, and which it was appointed to civilize. 
 
 I had intended to dwell at some length on the evi- 
 dence for these conclusions which arises out of one of 
 the non-theological treatises of Cicero, that fragment on 
 the Republic to Avhich I referred in my last Lecture. I 
 wished to do so, chiefly that I might show how insepa- 
 rably the two sides of Roman life were connected, and 
 how impossible it is to understand any of those thoughts 
 which seem to take a philosophical form in the later 
 Roman literature, till we have seen them tried in their 
 application to government and to affairs. But I will 
 content myself with referring you to one passage, inte- 
 resting in itself, but far more interesting in its relation 
 to the whole object of the work. It is the passage in 
 which Scipio begins his discussion on the different 
 forms which a commonwealth may take. I should wish 
 you to consider it only as it stands in the genuine frag- 
 ment, not to make it stronger, as Mai does, by adding 
 some sentences from Lactantius, wherein he professes to 
 give the sentiments of Cicero upon the divine monarchy. 
 Scipio affirms that he must begin his speech, as Aratus 
 begins his poem, from Jove. When he is asked why 
 he should imitate a poet in a grave discourse upon 
 States, he says that it does so happen, he cannot tell 
 how, it may be by the contrivance of princes for their 
 own ends or for the general utility, but somehow 
 
266 EOME UNDKR GEEEK TEACHEES. [LECT. 
 
 people have consented to speak of one king as ruling 
 in the heavens, as ruling Oljmpus by his nod, as the 
 common king and father of all. Ignorant men may 
 have adopted the opinion, it may be embodied in fables, 
 but it would seem as if the most learned people in the 
 world had used the same language, and defended it on 
 grounds of reason. 
 
 This is evidently no idle exordium. Scipio wishes to 
 account for the origin of kingdoms, and to show that 
 however intolerable they may have become, there is an 
 excuse for them in the nature of things, and that a state 
 may revert to that kind of government f\dthout falling 
 into a tyranny. There is a hesitation about the lan- 
 guage, which was, probably, more characteristic of 
 Cicero than of Scipio ; of the time which followed the 
 assassination of Casar, than of that in which the later 
 factions of the Republic were only commencing. But 
 this very hesitation shows more remarkably what was 
 passing away and what was at hand. The belief of 
 a father of gods and men did, as Scipio intimates, lie 
 very deep in the heart of the Roman commonwealth : no 
 dread of the name of kings could extinguish it. While 
 it lasted, they might rule beneficially, or consuls and the 
 senatorial fathers might rule without them ; the law was 
 observed, the unseen majesty remained. When it was 
 shaken, the terror of an Olympian Jove would not be 
 less strong ; it would not less clothe itself in fables and 
 fiction ; but the whole character of the belief would be 
 changed; it would, in fact, be a belief no longer; it 
 w^ould be the horror of an oppressive God of nature, not 
 the trust in a protecting God over men. And then it 
 
II.] ROME UNDER GREEK TEACHERS. 267 
 
 -would speedily enshrine itself in a liuman form. Not a 
 fatlier-king, but a Divus Imperator, a god-general would 
 come fortli, to turn citizens into slaves. 
 
 Before this change took place, Koman Stoicism had 
 tried what it could do to restore the state, and it had 
 given the clearest proof how essentially different it was 
 from the old character with which it had allied itself. 
 There was more of that character in Brutus than, pro- 
 bably, in any of his contemporaries ; a more genuine 
 and earnest wish to uphold the forms and institutions of 
 his country, at whatever cost to himself. There was, 
 probably, more in him also of the domestic affection 
 which had once made the Koman home so cheerful and 
 o-raceful. But these beautiful relics of a former world 
 must be adapted to that in which his lot was cast by 
 being set in a stiff, artificial, pedantical framework. The 
 Fate which he confessed, could not make a Eoman heart 
 bow to the force of circumstances. It only made him 
 rigid in his adherence to old maxims, unable to perceive 
 what was demanded by the times he lived in, and 
 wherein lay the best hope of something better. The 
 genial government of the man who had most sympathy 
 with the soldiers and people, — who, in spite of all his 
 faults, had proved that he understood what Eome might 
 do for ordering and forming rude nations better than any 
 of her sons, — was intolerable to men who, if they had 
 realized their highest dream, would only have produced 
 a poor lifeless copy of a noble original; out ot whose 
 conspiracy there came, in fact, nothing but factions, 
 proscriptions, anarchy, and a readiness in their country- 
 men to accept with joy any dictator, though he might 
 
268 ROME UNDER GREEK TEACHERS. [LECT. 
 
 have ever so few of the better qualities of the one they 
 had lost. Had philosophy, as Gibbon represents it, 
 been plotting the overthrow of the old Roman religion, 
 that religion would have had its ample revenge in the 
 feebleness of its rival to destroy a form of society or to 
 restore one. As it was an attempt to reconstruct the 
 old religion, everything being carefully preserved in it 
 except its principle, the question more and more craved 
 for an answer, whether in any way the principle might 
 be ;asserted and shown to 'be immortal, though all its 
 adjuncts should perish. 
 
 That was not the question, apparently, which pre- 
 sented itself to another illustrious Koman, who was 
 equally removed from the academical scepticism of 
 Cicero, and the republican stoicism of Cato and Brutus. 
 The elder poets of Rome had been the conservators of 
 its heroic legends, those who expressed its belief in 
 divine friends and protectors. Ennius appears to have 
 mixed some philosophy with his belief. Yet his coim- 
 trymen honoured him mainly as the collector of tradi- 
 tions concerning the life and growth of their city, and 
 especially of those that connected it with the gods. How 
 strange then is it that the first complete Roman poem, 
 — the greatest, as many think, that Roman genius ever 
 gave birth to, — the greatest of which it was capable — 
 should be one in which the whole religion of the ancient 
 world is denounced passionately, — it would scarcely be 
 a paradox to say, fanatically ! Lucretius does not merely 
 lift his voice against it ; he aims at the extirpation of it. 
 The hope of accomplishing that object, of delivering 
 mankind from the terrors of the unseen world, and of 
 
II.] EOME UNDER GREEK TEACHERS. 269 
 
 the powers whicli had Ibeen thought to preside over it, 
 "bears him through all the amazing difficulties of his 
 enterprise, enables him to discover poetry in the spe- 
 culations of so frigid a 'thinker as Epicurus, to repro- 
 duce dry arguments in free and living verse, actually to 
 compel the language of his country, nursed as it had 
 been in camps, to accept the toughest compounds which 
 the pliable Greek had discovered for philosophical use, 
 without destroying its native purity or strength. So 
 remarkable an achievement would have been impossible 
 if there had not been an intensely fervent purpose in the 
 poet ; his mere genius might have struck out a number 
 of much pleasanter paths. In fact, the main interest of 
 the poem ' On the Nature of Things ' arises from this 
 cause. However we may dislike his theory, we can 
 scarcely help attributing to Lucretius a moral earnest- 
 ness such as did not belong even to the best WTiters of 
 the Augustan age. It is far more true of him than of 
 the satirist of a later time, that ' indignation made his 
 verses.' No describer of human battles is more pas- 
 sionate, more thoroughly alive, than he w^ho undertakes 
 to represent to us the war of the atoms out of which the 
 world arose. He charges at the head of his tremendous 
 Greek syllables, as men of the former day broke the 
 phalanxes of Pyrrhus, or, amidst desponding trials and 
 reverses, encountered Hannibal upon their own soil. 
 Nay, strange as the assertion may sound, it is the 
 ancient Roman feeling, which inspires him with such an 
 intense detestation of the practices which had become 
 identified in his mind with the religion of his own 
 country and of Greece. His horror at the tradition 
 
270 EOME UNDER GREEK TEACHERS. [LECT, 
 
 respecting the murder of Ipliigenia is an indication of 
 his reverence for that paternal instinct and duty, which 
 Agamemnon abandoned at the command of the prophet 
 who said that he uttered the voice of the god. In spite 
 of his belief that the gods take no interest in men, he is 
 continually invoking them and iriiputing to them per- 
 sonal sympathies. His primary elements have more 
 humanity in them, than many epical and dramatical 
 poets succeed in imparting to their men and women. 
 And every where some magnificent simile comes in to 
 illustrate one of his philosophical maxims, which show 
 what his heart was really interested in, whatever indif- 
 ferent entertainment his intellect might be providing 
 for it. Thus in his second book, when he is to illus- 
 trate the doctrine that there are different kinds and 
 forms throughout the universe which must be referred 
 to differences in their original elements, he bursts out 
 with a passage, delicious alike for sense and sound, 
 which it is better to render into the rudest prose than to 
 disgrace by a poetical parody. ' If it were not so, how 
 ' could the child confess its mother or the mother confess 
 
 * her child, which we know they can do, so that it is 
 
 * not only among men but in all creatures that they are 
 ' mutually known. For oftentimes before the splendid 
 
 * temples of the gods a calf hath fallen, slain beside the 
 
 * incense-burning altars, breathing the warm blood of 
 
 * life out of its breast. Meantime the widowed mother, 
 ' traversing the green copses, leaves on the ground the 
 ' tokens of her cloven feet, visiting all places with her 
 
 * eyes if perchance she may see anywhere her lost 
 ' offspring, and fills with her moans the leafy wood as 
 
II.] EOME UNDER GEEEK TEACHEES. 271 
 
 ' she stands gazing, and oft returns to the stall, pierced 
 ' through with the love of the young that is lost. Nor 
 
 * can the tender willows and herbs fresh with dew, 
 ' nor the streams gliding along between their high 
 
 * banks, avail to comfort her mind and avert her anguish. 
 
 * Nor can all the other kinds of calves along the glad 
 ' meadows draw her mind away from the one or soothe 
 ' her care. So true is it that there is something proper 
 ' to each, which each perceives and asks again.' There 
 must have been an exquisite tenderness as well as 
 strength in the heart of a man who delighted to trace 
 these sympathies through all nature, which he must 
 first have learnt to know for himself. For the kind of 
 attraction which he attributes to these animals, is not 
 that which the pantheist sees everywhere as the sub- 
 stitute for all human bonds and relationships. It is the 
 reflection of these in a lower sphere. It is the mother 
 and the child, not some magnetical affinity, which he 
 perceives, * among the cattle and the wild beasts, and 
 ' the finny race, the various birds that frequent the 
 ' waters, and the fountains and lakes, and fly through 
 ^ the pathless woods.' 
 
 Were the vulgar notion of Lucretius the true one, 
 that he is the poet and philosopher of chance, attri- 
 buting to it that which his more devout predecessors 
 had maintained to be the work of a divine mind, 
 such passages as these would be mere inexplicable 
 inconsistencies. But there is not even the slightest 
 justification for this opinion. Lucretius certainly felt 
 himself that he was escaping from the region of chance 
 to the region of order. It seem^ed to him that the 
 
272 EOME UNDER GEEEK TEACHERS. [LECT. 
 
 popular mythology was built upon accidents and omens, 
 and that there was no safety or rest but in the dis- 
 covery and acknowledgment of fixed principles. How 
 much he failed in the search for these, with what a 
 grand Titania-affection he embraced an ass^s head, it 
 might be easy to point out if it were necessary. But 
 that he was in search of an order, and that the order 
 which alone could satisfy his mind would have been 
 one that is higher and nobler, not meaner and poorer, 
 than thatAvhich those. speak of who think of the Creator 
 of the world merely as a great artificer, must, I think, 
 be evident to those who read his poem seriously. He 
 craved for a Father of men, not merely for an Author 
 of nature. Till he found what he sought, — or at least 
 while he found such images presented to him, such 
 acts demanded of him, as implied that the world Avas 
 governed by no such Being as this, but by one alto- 
 gether unlike this, — he preferred to deny a Providence 
 altogether, to wrap himself in a theoretical atheism. 
 
 If we pass from Lucretius to Virgil, the contrast is in 
 all respects as great and startling as it can be. And 
 yet, as I endeavoured to point out in my last Lecture, 
 the result is the same. The reverent observer of his 
 country's traditions, the man who will exercise all his 
 native talent in reproducing them, who will make all 
 his Greek culture subservient to the adornment of them, 
 teaches us that very lesson which we have been learning 
 from the poet who hoped to see religion trodden under 
 the feet of philosophy, and who believed that it had 
 been the instigator of the greatest evils in the world. 
 What the one seeks to present to his countrymen, is 
 
II.] ROME UNDER GREEK TEACHERS, 273 
 
 a hero whose only memorable quality is liis filial virtue 
 and reverence, who confessedly derives that quality 
 from the household gods he bears with him, they being 
 in the higher region what Anchises is in the lovvxr. 
 What the unbeliever craves for, what he curses his 
 country's traditions for not showing him, is this same 
 image. He will abjure them all ; he will meditate 
 upon atoms, and their original diversities and attrac- 
 tions ; he will refer himself and all things to these ; 
 unless you can make him feel, that not in dead tra- 
 ditions, but in living power, there is a Ruler who can 
 explain why the maternal instinct is so mighty every- 
 wdiere — why the power of the father had made his own 
 nation so glorious — why, when that power was changed 
 into a tyranny, his nation grew so weak and so con- 
 temptible. Virgil was doomed to a greater disappoint- 
 ment than Lucretius, for he thought he saw a father of 
 his country and a beginner of a new era, in Augustus 
 Ca3sar. But perhaps a clearer glimpse might be given 
 to him than to the other, of a fatherly kingdom which 
 would be as wide as that of the C^sars, if their legions 
 were not to extend it, if their palace was not to be the 
 centre of it. 
 
 At all events, Marcus Aurelius may have had some 
 good reason for reminding himself, — when his Greek 
 philosophy led him to forget the fact or to wish himself 
 something else, — that he was born a Roman. He was 
 right in thinking that to be that in its fullest sense, was 
 to be a great and noble man. He was right in thinking 
 that only a religion which befitted a male, — which was 
 strong, substantial, efficient, which was not sickly or 
 
 T 
 
y 
 
 274: EOME UNDER GREEK TEACHERS. [LECT. 
 
 efFeminate, wliicli spoke of rule and autliority — could be 
 the support of such a character. He had a right to ask 
 also, that this authority should be of that kind which 
 the Roman had confessed in his best days, should be 
 that in its most perfect form, should prove what it was 
 by fact, establishing its claim to obedience by tokens 
 which men could recognise. He had a right to ask that 
 wdth the manifestation of this autliority should be joined 
 the manifestation of that ideal of humanity which the 
 Greek had longed for. One of these conditions was 
 certainly necessary, probably both of them, to any re- 
 ligion that should preserve the empire from decay and 
 ruin. Unless it were found, the Roman eagle might 
 continue to be a bird of prey, but it would never mount 
 up to behold the sun and draw light from its fountain. 
 
III.] EOME. 275 
 
 LECTURE III. 
 
 EOME AT THE BEGINNING OF THE NEW WOELD. 
 
 In my last Lecture I commented upon a sentence 
 wliicli occurs very early in tlie liistory of the " Decline 
 and Fall of the Homan Empire." I could not easily 
 have found one that was more characteristic, in its 
 form or in its spirit, of that work and of its author. 
 All religions, it said, were equally true in the eyes of 
 the Roman people, equally false in the eyes of the 
 philosopher, equally useful in the eyes of the magis- 
 trate. There speaks the acute observer of a falling 
 or fallen world, from that point of view which the 
 eighteenth century afforded him. He a]3peared to him- 
 self to be judging most fairly of the past ; he was 
 really transferring to the past the habits and the 
 despondency of his own time. The preface to the first 
 volumes of the History is dated in the year 1776; the 
 preface to the entire work in the year 1788. It was 
 completed, therefore, one year before the breaking out 
 of the French Revolution ; all the tempers and modes 
 of thinking which belonged to it, are those of which 
 that event was the climax and catastrophe. The people, 
 
 T 2 
 
276 ROME AT THE [LECT. 
 
 tlic pliilosopliers, the magistrates, in the different states 
 of modern Europe, were thinking then very much as he 
 supposes they must have thought under the Kepublic 
 and the Empire. 
 
 I "believe we shall not do justice to this eminent 
 historian, or learn the great lessons which his work is 
 able to teach us, if we approach it without this recol- 
 lection on our minds. If I may judge of others by 
 myself, it is not easy to express the magnitude of our 
 obligations to him. We become more conscious of 
 them, the more we endeavour to put our thoughts toge- 
 ther respecting the long period which he has described 
 to us, or to consider particular portions of it. We are 
 not only bound to admire his patient toil, his faithful- 
 ness in the study of documents which a large majority 
 of his cotemporaries, and probably of ours, would sup- 
 pose that he had no occasion to meddle with, and the 
 power which he has of awakening our interest in the 
 dullest subjects. These are very gi-eat historical gifts ; 
 but the historical genius is more exhibited when a 
 writer enables us to understand that heterogeneous 
 events are connected, that history is really a drama^ 
 every scene of which has relation to some centre, and is 
 bearing us on to some issue. The melancholy grandeur 
 of Gibbon's book remains with us and grows deeper, as 
 we look upon any picture of the ruins of Rome, or 
 meditate upon the world that has grown out of them. 
 His solemn and stately style is felt, — even the more for 
 its want of nature, of freedom and variety, — to be the 
 proper garb for a funeral procession, such as he brings 
 before ns and compels us to join. It is a majestic 
 
III.] BEGINNING OF THE NEW WOELD. 277 
 
 spectacle to see Greeks and Gatlis, hordes from tlie 
 steppes of Asia which Pompey and Cicero never 
 dreamed of, the Moors of Africa, nations in all costumes 
 and of all religions, joining in that procession and 
 attending the fallen conqueror to his tomb. 
 
 If one conceives of tliis as the object of our illustrious 
 countryman, it does not seem at all strange that any 
 signs of returning vegetation on the old and worn out 
 land, any indication that there were virgin soils which 
 were capable of cultivation, should disturb rather than 
 attract liim. They were interruptions in his narrative 
 which must be explained away, if they could not be made 
 to illustrate its course and augment its gloom. The sports 
 and the laughs of the schoolboy which Gray surveyed 
 with such pleasure wlien he had a distant view of the 
 old Eton towers, would probably have been rather 
 distressing to his somewhat sensitive and fastidious 
 nature and his recluse habits, if he had come into close 
 contact with them. He would then perhaps have been 
 reminded that those Vvdio urged the flying ball, or en- 
 thralled the captive linnet, had not merely soitows in 
 the far future of which it was bliss to be ignorant, but 
 had their own present griefs and quarrels, their sins of 
 violence and of fraud, which were as real and as 
 intensely felt as any that could come forth in maturer 
 life. The boyhood of nations must in like manner have 
 been a very disagreeable subject for Gibbon. However 
 brilliantly he may sometimes describe it, the noise and 
 the turbulence must have been utterly ajar with the 
 feelings with which he was contemplating the dying out 
 of a society in the fulness of refinement and civilization. 
 
278 EOME AT THE [LECT. 
 
 And all appearances of a new element in the decaying 
 mass, everything which threatened to hasten its decom- 
 position and to create something different out of it, 
 must have been regarded by a man writing with such a 
 purpose at such a time, angrily and impatiently. If 
 it could be shown, — and how well might it be shown 
 from undoubted records which had been unfairly con- 
 cealed or disfigured, — that many of the worst evils of 
 the old world mingled with that which threatened to 
 displace it, and that other evils had been added to these, 
 how eagerly would such facts be brought forth and set 
 in their fullest, broadest light ! If it could be shown, — 
 and what evidences there were in Gibbon's day to 
 warrant the hypothesis, — that a principle which seemed 
 in the second and third centuries new and immortal, was 
 helpless, almost defunct, how naturally was that which 
 would have been bitterness turned to scorn ; how calmly 
 the narrator could aiford to trifle with what he thought 
 was proving itself to be insignificant; what new force he 
 could give to his picture and his moral by showing us 
 that Roman greatness was not all which was destined 
 to decline and fall ! 
 
 I have complained of the judgment which Gibbon 
 has passed upon the thinkers and actors of the old 
 Roman world. I am far less anxious to refute his 
 judgment of the Christian Faith and the Christian 
 Church. If the rules of your Institution permitted me 
 to engage in polemics for the former, I should decline 
 the task, being convinced that if that faith cannot defend 
 itself by appealing to the consciences of men and the 
 facts of history, my arguments would serve it very 
 
III.] BEGINNING OF THE NEW WOELD. 279 
 
 little. As to the latter, I am of opinion tliat Gibbon 
 lias done more for it than most ecclesiastical historians, 
 inasmuch as he has shown as they have not shown, 
 what a substantive power it was in the world, how 
 impossible it is to speak of the Roman Empire as a 
 civil writer should speak of it, without taking account 
 of the questions by which it was exercised, of the acts, 
 good or evil, that it has accomplished. Instead of 
 pleading for a greater liberty, in touching upon topics 
 which have their theological as well as their human 
 side, than his example would authorize, I shall neither 
 venture nor desire to meddle with controversies, which 
 he has judged it a necessary part of his duty care- 
 fully to discuss. Nor can I be tempted to judge less 
 severely of the misdoings of the Church, than he has 
 done. In proportion to our estimate of the influence 
 which it was meant to exercise over the progress and 
 civilization of the world, maist we be inclined to indig- 
 nation at its shortcomings ; an indignation that must be 
 roused by many acts which he would have tolerated, 
 though it may be mitigated by a consideration which 
 could have had no place in his mind, that we have 
 inherited the same responsibilities, and lie under a 
 heavier guilt. Subject to that weighty reflection, the 
 admission may be freely made, that he has rendered 
 a service to Christianity by every faithful exposure 
 which he has made, of the crimes or mistakes of her 
 champions and patrons; that he has no further mis- 
 represented them than he has misrepresented the course 
 of the world's history ; that he had a right to be- 
 lieve the success of their Gospel was owing to second 
 
280 HOME AT TPIE [lect. 
 
 causes, if tliere was not a principle in it whicli could 
 reform society. 
 
 This observation leads me to speak of an historian 
 who belonged not to the eighteenth century but to the 
 first and second ; w^ho did not see from a distance the 
 gradual falling of the edifice which it had taken ages to 
 build up, but mourned over one tumbling column after 
 another, with the earnestness and foresight of a patriot. 
 Many would describe Tacitus as a much more melan- 
 choly writer even than Gibbon. They feel that nothing 
 was ever written so tragical as his Annals and his 
 History, nothing which ever impressed them so much 
 with the sense of gigantic power passing into weak- 
 ness or a curse. I acknowledge at once that Tacitus is 
 the Roman tragedian, that he has taken the only subject 
 upon which a Roman could write tragedy; — not the 
 sorrows of QEdipus or the crimes of Medea, but the 
 ' rushing into slavery of consuls, senators, knights,' the 
 corruption of domestic manners, the growth of military 
 tyranny, with the certain signs that it would be avenged 
 by military insubordination. As Tacitus wrote from 
 his heart, as he was a man before he was an historian 
 or a philosopher, I admit also that he is more capable of 
 inspiring us with the sorrow which oppressed him, than 
 an easy man of fortune and of letters in the eighteenth 
 century, devoting himself to the study of past events 
 with ever so much fidelity and even interest, can pos- 
 sibly be. But I cannot allow that Tacitus leaves us in 
 the same despondency, in which Gibbon would leave us 
 if we accepted his inferences as well as his facts. His 
 picture of Rome itself may afford us no consolation. 
 
III.] BEGINNING OF THE NEW WORLD. 281 
 
 As liis eye travels over the different frontiers wliicli 
 legions are guarding, the prospect looks even more 
 dismal. Noble specimens of an older time, like Ger- 
 manicns, are soon taken off by the jealousy of the 
 tyrant, after they have resisted the temptation to put 
 themselves in his place. The miserable son succeeds 
 to the throne which the illustrious father could not 
 occupy. The pupil of the philosopher becomes the 
 plague of the universe. But if. we turn from these 
 faithful narratives to the ' Life of Agricola,' still more 
 to the book ' On the Manners of the Germans,' the 
 spectacle is altogether changed. The former may be 
 chiefly valuable as a graceful and dutiful tribute to a 
 father-in-law ; as a commemoration of one of the great 
 men who were left in the most degenerate times. Yet 
 it cannot be overlooked, by any Briton at least, as the 
 most curious and interesting document respecting the 
 kind of civilization which Eome, when her governors 
 were honest, could produce in a barbarous province ; as 
 authentic and valuable a testimony of that which she 
 could not do, of her inability to raise up a national 
 or a moral life, in the country that received most readily 
 her discipline, her polity, her luxuries. 
 
 The other book, which should be read in connexion 
 with this, carries the moral much further. I do not 
 inquire how far the statements of Tacitus are to be 
 depended upon. I have heard an eminent Gothic 
 scholar, a pupil of Grimm, say that the more he read 
 the book on Germany, the more he wondered at its 
 accuracy. But if Tacitus was as ill-informed as some 
 have given him credit for being, if his book was as 
 
282 . ROME AT THE [LECT. 
 
 much a romance as some of those which were written 
 in the last centmy about the islands in the Pacific, 
 I should still regard it, in connexion with what viQ 
 know of the after world, as full of significance. No one 
 can doubt that Tacitus saw in that country which 
 E-ome had been unable to conquer, a power which might 
 do something much more terrible in the way of destruc- 
 tion, than it had done when it slew the legions of Varus, 
 and yet which he could not view without a certain joy 
 for its vigorous and youthful life. If you ask how he 
 could take so much more pleasure in contemplating 
 such a life than Gibbon did, though it was a far more 
 portentous vision to him, I answer. Because he had that 
 which Gibbon wanted. He understood wherein the 
 nobleness of old Rome had consisted ; he saw how much 
 domestic life, the reverence for fathers and for wives, 
 had to do with it ; he had kept those sympathies warm 
 in himself amidst all that was dull and cold around him. 
 And therefore it was impossible that he should not 
 hail these when he saw, or thought he saw, them reap- 
 pearing in tribes ever so remote from Roman civilization, 
 ever so unwilling to receive the Roman yoke. It was 
 no treason to his country, it was the effect of his 
 patriotism, that he recognised these domestic patri- 
 archal institutes as the appointed and necessary elements 
 of a human society. He would have led his country- 
 men, if he could, to see the virtues of their own 
 ancestors in those men who had as yet received no 
 external polish, who were ignorant of the arts of life 
 which the Roman worshipped, in which he supposed 
 civilization to consist. Therefore it was really the love 
 
.Til.] BEGINNING OF THE NEW WORLD. 283 
 
 for the old wliicli made Tacitus just to the new. He 
 discovered fresh sprouts where all seemed to be dead ; 
 he perceived that the family principle was immortal, 
 even if Roman institutions which had sprung out of it 
 were condemned to die. 
 
 Mj object in this comparison will, I hope, be evident 
 to you. Tacitus can be as little appealed to for contro- 
 versial purposes, by a defender of Christianity, as Gibbon 
 can. He had the vaguest impressions of what it was, 
 of ^ its very name. The Christian body presented itself 
 to him, as the most fanatical sect of that nation which it 
 was necessary for Vespasian to put down, and about 
 the institutions of which therefore it behoved Tacitus 
 to gather what loose and fragmentary notices he could, 
 from authorities not specially trustworthy. But Tacitus 
 felt those evils of the Roman world to be the causes of 
 its misery, and of its coming fate, which Gibbon re- 
 garded chiefly as subjects for amusement, or as furnish- 
 ing the materials for some unclean note. No one is 
 so mag-nificent a painter of drapery as the Englishman : 
 no one helps us to look into the inmost heart of the 
 society which he describes, like the Roman. 
 
 When we speak of the domestic life of the Romans 
 during the Empire, it is very likely that our thoughts 
 turn first of all to Pompeii, and the information which 
 we have received from it respecting Roman houses. It 
 is excusable and significant, that we refer so naturally 
 to these indications respecting the private existence of 
 this great people, that we scarcely remember there are 
 any others, which do not belong to them in their civil 
 and out-of-door character. Unquestionably the ordinary 
 
284 ROME AT THE [LECT. 
 
 lloman in the time of Tiberius or of Claudius would 
 liave taken the same view of things. The house 
 would have meant for him, the dwelling, the hall, the 
 chambers, the feasting room, the baths : ' What else,' he 
 would have asked, * is a house but that ? How does one 
 ' differ from another, except in the richness or taste of 
 ' its outward or inward decorations ? ' And yet, within 
 that house so decorated, certain persons still continued 
 to dwell ; and they continued to speak,- — probably with 
 more refinement than their ancestors, — a language which 
 intimated by a thousand forms of expression, that the 
 house did not consist of certain walls, but of beings 
 such as tliey were, and that upon tlieir relations to each 
 other it depended, whether it was a noble house or an 
 ignoble and detestable one, whether it was to send 
 forth Tioman citizens, or men like those Asiatics whom 
 Rome held that she had a commission to subdue. The 
 vulgar maxims implied in the use of these words of 
 course were scouted; the words themselves could be 
 used without any pain or distress, because the sting- 
 had been taken out of them, — the sense of them was 
 departed. But the sting had not been taken out of the 
 facts. They remained good. The household, — that is, 
 the persons dwelling in the house, — had the same power 
 to make each other miserable, as when they knew 
 nothing of porticoes and paintings. There could be plots 
 among the slaves, rebellions of the sons, contrivances of 
 the wife against the husband and the husband against 
 the wife, anticipations of the death of the parent, testa- 
 mentary frauds, poisonings, assassinations. All these, 
 not only Roman satire but Roman history tells of. We 
 
III.] BEGINNINa OF THE NEW WOELD. 285 
 
 are not left to the evidence of excavations ; domestic 
 history is not fixed in relics of marble : it is written 
 most broadly and legibly and frightfully in every book 
 which has been bequeathed to ns, by competent and 
 intelligent observers. Perhaps it may be written, too, 
 in the book of nature, in the volcanoes which the luxu- 
 ries of the Roman dwellings were not able to avert, and 
 which carried them av/ay. 
 
 It would, however, be a most rash and uncharitable 
 thing to say that the people of Pompeii were sinners 
 above all those that dwelt in Rome, as it would be 
 a contradiction of history to say that the visible punish- 
 ments which befel those that dwelt in Rome were less 
 terrible than theirs. What are the annals of the palace of 
 the Caesars from Augustus to Vitellius, but a laying bare 
 of the domestic crimes of those who were called fathers 
 of their country, and of those who were nearest to the 
 throne ? What are they but accounts of the vengeance 
 and retribution which followed their acts? If Nero's 
 life was held to be the climax and consummation of all 
 foregone atrocities, it was because his hands were dipped 
 in the blood of his mother. If liis punishment was the 
 greatest, it was not because he at last suffered mui'der 
 himself, but because he was pursued by the terrors of 
 conscience as none other had been ; because, in the 
 w^ords of the historian, 'When he had perfected his 
 
 * crime, its greatness became intelligible to him, and 
 
 * so through the rest of the night, sometimes fixed in 
 
 * silence, oftener rising up in fear and deserted of sense, 
 ' he waited for the light as if it would bring him de- 
 
 * struction j' and because neither the apologies of philo- 
 
286 EOME AT THE [LECT. 
 
 gophers nor tlie wickedness of tliat motlier herself who 
 had drawn him into the hatefullest crimes, could hinder 
 him from hearing ' the sound as of a trumpet and her 
 
 * cries on the hills and from the sea.' 
 
 In his beautiful narrative of this event, Tacitus men- 
 tions another fact which is most illustrative of the time. 
 Seneca was to employ his rhetoric and philosophy in 
 extenuating the act to the Senate : ' but meantime 
 
 * JSTero's friends went to the temples, and then, following 
 
 * their example, all the neighbouring towns of Campania 
 
 * began to testify their joy at his supposed deliverance 
 
 * from treachery, by offering victims to the Gods and 
 
 * coming in embassies to the Emperor.' The combina- 
 tion is complete. This was the popular as well as the 
 imperial religion of the time. When a great crime had 
 been committed, the temples must be thronged, partly 
 to put a different face upon it before men, partly to 
 make it acceptable to the gods. The more terrible the 
 enormity, the more need of religion to cover it or to 
 make up for it. How certain was it then that this 
 religion would spread and multiply under the Csesars ; 
 that every day would cause it to be regarded as 
 more indispensable ; that poor Stoicism, even with so 
 able and subtle a champion as Seneca, should be 
 quite unable to offer any substitute for the encourage- 
 ments and the concealments which it afforded! Add 
 to this the restless anxiety to know something of the 
 future, the impatience of men who had nothing in 
 the past or present to rest upon, at least to get a 
 glimpse of what was behind that veil, were it never 
 so terrible and hideous, and one may understand that 
 
III.] BEGINNIXa OF THE NEW WOELD. 287 
 
 tliere never was a richer field for the priest and the 
 conjuror to work in than that which this age pre- 
 sented. 
 
 And now came the fulfilment of that doctrine respect- 
 ing the condition of the slave, which I maintained, on 
 the authority of M. Savigny, we ought never to attribute 
 to the Roman institutions. An eminent statesman, in 
 one of the earlier debates on West Indian emancipa- 
 tion, quoted the celebrated passage in the 6th Satire of 
 Juvenal, which describes the punishments inflicted by 
 a Homan matron on her slave, to explain what a system 
 was prevalent in the Eoman empire at the time when 
 Christianity appeared in it. I do not mean to express 
 any opinion upon the inference which he deduced from 
 the passage : but it certainly never can prove, that the 
 idea of the Roman family involved these cruelties, or 
 anv. ' So I will ; so I command : let will stand for 
 ^ reason,' are the words in which the lady asserts her 
 right to do what she likes with her own. They are 
 words which imply a time when law was despised and 
 trampled upon, when the maxims of arbitrary rule, 
 recognised in the highest sphere, had descended to the 
 lowest. They could have had no place in a satire 
 describing the foul abominations which this one de- 
 scribes, if there had not been a protest in the Roman 
 heart and conscience against them. 
 
 That conscience was certainly never extinct And 
 before Juvenal wrote, there had been a change in the 
 condition of the empire, beginning with the era of 
 Vespasian and only interrupted by the dark days of 
 Domitian. Even those days were apparently profitable, 
 
288 EOME AT THE [LECT. 
 
 inasmucli as they taught tlie people to appreciate the 
 government of emperors who tried to be fathers, and 
 taught them also to see how little they could depend 
 upon the continuance of such a government. There 
 was a kind of moral indignation against the crimes of 
 Domitian and his officials which had not been 
 awakened by the atrocities of Nero. The orator and 
 the philosopher were then employed in finding a justi- 
 fication for court-wickedness ; now the best of them 
 mourned over it, and, when they could, exposed it. 
 The panegyric of the younger Pliny upon Trajan, if it 
 reads to us like flattery, Avas certainly a genuine ex- 
 pression of the deliglit of a good citizen in discovering 
 that it was possible for a ruler to feel responsible for his 
 subjects, to regard them in some measure as his family. 
 It was not that the abominations of the land ceased by 
 magic, on the appearance of emperors having these 
 dispositions : Gibbon's dream of the happiness of the 
 world during the second century is scattered by a mul- 
 titude of facts which his honesty would have forced him 
 to record, if he had surveyed that portion of the history 
 less rapidly. The influence of the better government 
 was shown much more in its permitting free censures 
 upon the state of society, — in giving us the materials 
 for knowing how corrupt it was, — than in any real refor- 
 mation. That itself, however, was an unspeakable 
 benefit; the moral standard was raised; there was just' 
 so much of light as enabled the Eoman to perceive the 
 darkness : the Empire was so improved that j)atriots had 
 courage to dream of the Republic. Above all, they 
 could perceive that the dissolution of domestic man- 
 
I II. J BEGINNINa OF THE NEW WORLD. 289 
 
 ners was the curse of all curses, whicLi the utmost official 
 diligence, if it liad descended from tlie liigliest Euler 
 to the governor of every province and to the centurion 
 of every cohort, could not have removed. The later 
 emperors of the second century were evidently much 
 more deeply aware of this fact, than their more showy 
 predecessors, Trajan and Hadrian. The nanje which was 
 bestowed on the first Antoninus, denotes that he culti- 
 vated filial piety as the chief of Eoman virtues, and that 
 his subjects had discernment to see that in doing so he 
 was entering into the spirit of the old institutions, 
 helping to reviix the old life, and so doing more for 
 his country than if he had conquered the Dacians, or, 
 like Hadrian, had affected all Greek taste and cultiva- 
 tion. Marcus Aurelius, v/ho had that cultivation, with- 
 out Hadrian's pretensions and vices, used it expressly 
 for the purpose of sustaining in himself and in his 
 subjects, what he perceived to be the proper native 
 character. Self-examination, an acknowledgment of 
 the downward tendency in man and of the need of 
 a divine teacher to raise up thtiL which was better and 
 higher in him, resort to all the aids of thought and 
 devotion so far as he knew them, were in his judgment 
 the necessary means for enabling him to fulfil his 
 duties as a son, a ruler, a father. 
 
 And yet, with all his sincerity, the household of 
 Marcus Aurelius was the most melancholy of spectacles ; 
 the empire passed out of his hands to the most wretched 
 of sons. The fact had been demonstrated, that there 
 was no power left in Boman Religion, cultivated by 
 the most honest and devout of its votaries, — in Greek 
 
 u 
 
V 
 
 280 . EOME AT THE [LECT. 
 
 pliilosopliy, rescued from all its meaner adjmicts, turned 
 to the most practical account, industriously and happily 
 associated witli what had seemed most foreign from it, — 
 to quicken and renovate that which every patriot, — that 
 which Marcus Aurelius, the most consistent of patriots, 
 — felt was essential to the preservation of the city and 
 of the world. Thenceforth one hears of no such experi- 
 ments as he made. The best emperors are only trying 
 what they can do to enforce the authority of law by the 
 help of the jurisconsults, and the obedience of the 
 legions by severe schemes of discipline. If the Empire 
 can possibly be kept from breaking to pieces by these 
 instruments, the achievement is wonderful. The man 
 who can avert an invasion or put down a rebellion, is a 
 hero and deliverer, — one who is for a moment suspend-* 
 ing the anarchy, which returns the next generation in 
 all its fury, and in which all foresee that the state must 
 at last be ingulfed. Meantime, those tribes whose 
 character Tacitus endeavoured to study in the country 
 which he saw furnished the most perfect specimen of 
 an external barbarism with a root of order and future 
 civilization, those tribes were beginning to measure their 
 strength against the power of Rome, to see whether 
 it was not a match for the most perfect discipline, 
 as far as art went, when the spirit of discipline had 
 departed. This is surely the meaning of that momen- 
 tous struggle of which there had been so many fore- 
 tellings, but which Romans understood to be one for 
 life and death, from the time of Decius downwards. 
 The phrases by which we often describe it, are certainly 
 quite inadequate. When we speak of a battle of bar- 
 
III.] BEGINNINa OF THE NEW WORLD. 291 
 
 Ibarlsm with civilization, we have need to define "both 
 onr terms. They may be both vakiable, if we will give 
 ourselves a faithful accomit of them ; they are both 
 deceitful, if we assume that we understand them because 
 we can make ready use of them. It icas civilization 
 that was defending itself with the arms of Rome : but 
 it was that civilization which the Annals of Tacitus, the 
 Satires of Juvenal, the chapters of Gibbon describe to 
 us. It was a civilization exhausted of its civility, a 
 civilization with which the civis or citizen had no 
 longer anything to do ; it was a civilization which de- 
 manded all religious sanctions to uphold it, all religious 
 impostures to make the different parts of it cohere ; 
 a civilization out of which the religion had departed 
 upon which Niebuhr bestows the epithets of sincere and 
 veracious, — that which protected, as he says, the integrity 
 of the people as well as of their institutions. On the 
 other side there was barbarism, — all the vices of bar- 
 barism, much of its weakness. But there was not 
 merely, as we sometimes delude ourselves with think- 
 ing, great physical strength and the capacity of enduring 
 heat and cold. That capacity, which depends so much 
 upon exercise and education, was greater in the hosts 
 of Home than in those to which they were opposed. 
 It was the treasure bequeathed by past times which had 
 not been wasted, which every new occasion was again 
 able to call forth. And if there was in some of the 
 barbarians an unusual robustness of frame, that was 
 owing, as Tacitus so clearly points out, mainly to moral 
 causes, to the freedom from habits which were destroy- 
 ing the heart more than the animal vigour of the 
 
 u2 
 
292 . EOME AT THE [LECT. 
 
 Roman youtli. It was tlie presence of tins heart, of 
 this manhood, in the Germans and the Goths, of a 
 principle of union not created by laws or accidental 
 association, but derived from the sense of kindred, from 
 the human relationships, that made them teiTible. And 
 this feeling of kindred, which was liable of course to be 
 disturbed by a thousand influences of individual selfish- 
 ness and ambition, was upheld by the belief of divine 
 powers related to the human warrior, of gods from whom 
 the kings had issued, of helpers in the battle, of a Society 
 awaiting them after it was over, of struggles going on 
 in the heart of man and of nature with powers that 
 were adverse to the peace and order of both, but which, 
 through mighty conflicts wherein men and gods were 
 engaged together, would at last be put down. This 
 faith had surely in itself a meaning and a sincerity 
 such as the early Roman faith had ; yet it was different 
 in kind as much as in outward form and colouring from 
 that. There was in it more of the sense of government 
 and authority than in the Greek belief, more that 
 craved for authority and would be ready to recognise 
 it. There was an immeasurably deeper reverence for 
 women, than even the stories of Andromache and Pene- 
 lope warrant us in attributing to the Hellenic people. 
 Still, the reverence for the hero, for one who unites the 
 man with the god, much more brings back the race 
 Homer describes, than that which bowed to the father- 
 king in the Capitol. The Gothic faith contained no 
 substitute for this. Unless it could in some manner 
 blend with this, and be subordinated to it, one does not 
 see what escape there was for the people who held it, 
 
Jir.J BEGINNING OF THE NE\y WORLD. 293 
 
 from that brutality which degraded and perverted their 
 nobler and manlier qualities. 
 
 It would have seemed to be the business of Rome in 
 the world to bring about this union, to stamp the image 
 of its own paternal authority, and of that wonderful 
 order to which it had given birth, upon those who were 
 likely to continue for ever in a kind of wild boyhood, 
 unless there were some to prepare them for the distinct 
 purposes and steady work of manhood. But how could 
 Home fulfil this task? She never, as we have seen, 
 was able to exercise the kind of power over these tribes, 
 which she had put forth with so much success among 
 the Celts of Gaul and Britain. And supposing she had 
 acquired that position, supposing she could have com- 
 manded them as she did the others, what different 
 materials would she have found awaiting her skill and 
 discipline! How could she have taught them the 
 lessons they were wanting to learn, when she had herself 
 utterly forgotten them? Without these lessons, how 
 would her superficial culture have been cast aside by 
 the strong hands and stout hearts, which at last con- 
 spired to take it away from herself ! 
 
 If all religions were equally true for the people, 
 useful for the magistrate, and indifferent to the philo- 
 sopher, there could be no reason why, when the craving 
 both for religion and for novelty was so strong among 
 the people, when old religions were proving themselves 
 so ineffectual for the purposes of the magistrate, when 
 the philosopher was inquiring what helps he might 
 find to uphold the feebleness of his theories and reso- 
 lutions, a newer and fresher set of dogmas should not 
 
294 EOME AT THE [LECT. 
 
 have proved acceptable to all three. Had Christianity 
 presented itself in that shape to the inhabitants of the 
 Roman empire, it need not have waited two centuries 
 for Philippus Arabs to give it a brief recognition among 
 the tolerated and naturalized religions of the empire. 
 It might very soon have been permitted by the mild 
 wisdom of Trajan, to cooperate with other insti'uments 
 in keeping the world peaceable and submissive ; it 
 might have been .allowed by Marcus Aurelius to take its 
 turn with the lessons of various schools, by all of which 
 he sought to regulate and improve his life. Trajan 
 determined that it must be proscribed, and its professors 
 pmiished ; Marcus Aurelius, in his double character of 
 monarch and philosopher, ratified and carried out the 
 sentence. Nor is it easy to see how men contemplating 
 Christianity as they did, and anxious as they were to 
 preserve the existing order of society, could have come 
 to a different conclusion or adopted a different com*se. 
 For these new teachers did not come forth with a set of 
 manageable opinions and maxims, which might be 
 balanced and compared with those that had already 
 gained currency among thoughtful men, or been rejected 
 by them. They declared that they had good news for 
 men of all sorts and conditions ; for the slave as well 
 as the freeman, in the provinces as much as in the 
 capital. Those who proclaimed this good news spoke 
 as energetically as Lucretius had done, against that 
 whole system of sacrifices by which the nations had 
 sought to conciliate their gods. They proclaimed these 
 to be cruel, as he had done ; they sj^oke of them in the 
 old Hebrew phrase, as abominations. But they did 
 
III.] BEGINNINa OF THE NEW AVORLD. 295 
 
 not merely promise the student and investigator of 
 nature an emancipation from this system, and the theory 
 of the invisible world upon which it was based, — 
 they offered that emancipation to the people. The 
 ground of this emancipation was the very one which 
 Cotta had pronounced to be impossible, unless, men 
 were to give up boasting of their virtue, and claiming it 
 as their own. The new teachers affirmed righteousness 
 and the power of attaining it to be the highest and 
 most heavenly gift; to be received, not procured; for 
 the sake of which the loss of vineyards, olive-yards, 
 health and life, might be well endured, — that loss being 
 itself oftentimes part of the treasure. And. this message 
 and gift were affirmed to proceed from a Father who was 
 revealing himself as at the root of the universe and of 
 the life of man ; of whom the Jupiter of the Capitol had 
 been the phantom, and before whom he must disappear. 
 It was not possible in any way to identify this Being 
 with the world-god of Stoicism. He was declared to be 
 the Creator and Ruler of the world. It was not possible 
 to put him at a distance from the affairs of men, as the 
 Epicurean did. He was declared to be the Archetype 
 of which men are the image, to be conversing with them 
 through One who was the elder brother of their race, to 
 be acting upon them, governing them, reforming them. 
 It was not possible to treat this message as a theory 
 not affecting the conditions of social life. This father- 
 hood and brotherhood were declared to be the foundation 
 of a no less comprehensive society than the imperial ; all 
 subjects of the empire were invited to claim citizenship 
 in it. 
 
296 . ROME AT THE [LECT. 
 
 Gibbon lias certainly not exaggerated tlie intrusive- 
 ness and audacity of sucli a proclamation as this ; lie 
 has greatly underrated it. If lie had fully apprehended 
 itj he might have made a more successful if a less- 
 ingenious defence of the Roman emperors than he has 
 done. He might have called upon all equitable and 
 reasonable Christians to ask themselves how they would 
 have acted if they had been in the place of Trajan or 
 of Marcus, and not to cast a stone at them for their 
 persecutions, till they are clear about the answer. The 
 more one considers the circumstances of that time, the 
 further one looks into the past history, the more does 
 one appreciate the difficulties of their position, the more 
 clearly does it appear, that their private virtues and their 
 zeal for the well-being of their subjects may furnish the 
 most natural explanation of their policy. They could 
 have afforded to despise any enthusiast or body of 
 enthusiasts, that sought to bring back the old forms of 
 the Republic. These had been tried, and had failed ; 
 every wise man would have said, * What can we gain 
 ' by going round the same weary circle? We shall 
 ' return to this point again. Surely these Emperors are 
 ' giving us as free a government as we can bear.' They 
 could in like manner have afforded to despise any 
 system which was really, what the people believed 
 Christianity to be, — atheistical. The worship of the 
 Gods was so wrought into every part of the work and 
 enjoyment of human life, it was so identified with old 
 traditions, it so little disturbed any modern pleasure or 
 taste, that there wa^s no apparent reason why the mul- 
 titude should wish to be freed from it ; they had ten 
 
JII.] BEGINNING OF THE NEW WORLD. 297 
 
 tliousand motives for cleaving to it, though no state 
 influences were exercised in its favour. But a society 
 coming forth in a divine name, — so like that which had 
 commanded all ancient Roman reverence, so unlike ail 
 that they habitually invoked ; a society speaking with 
 the authority to which Rome had bowed when it was a 
 village, assuming the universality of Rome now that it 
 ruled the world, bidding men of all different hetero- 
 geneous faiths confess one Father, and shake off that 
 which separated them, had a far more formidable aspect. 
 Wise men could discern that the insignificance of 
 those who professed it did not make it less dangerous 
 if it could stand its ground. That insignificance natu- 
 rally tempted them to try whether it could measure 
 itself against the power of the Empire ; whether it 
 might not be shown by palpable proofs that the clear 
 heaven which the Christian said lay behind that which 
 was filled with the objects of the world's worship, — a 
 heaven at the same time much more closely connected 
 with the earth than that was, — had not been discovered, 
 but only dreamed of. 
 
 Upon the trial of this issue the conditions of the 
 modern world were to depend. It is a mistake, I con- 
 ceive, to suppose that we can trace the progress of it if 
 we allow our minds to wander vaguely over the vast 
 circuit of the Empire. But it would be a still greater 
 mistake to suppose that'the Christian Church chose out 
 secret glens and corners remote from the corrupt civi- 
 lization of the time, for its principal achievements, 
 and that it is in these we are to look for the decisive 
 battles in which it triumphed or was discomfited. It 
 
298 EOME AT THE [LECT. 
 
 was ill the great commercial cities, where the charac- 
 teristic accomplishments and the characteristic evils of 
 the old world were the most fully developed, that the 
 new faith established its first holds ; it is in these that 
 we ought to study its workings. The more minute the 
 examination the better: I can but throw out two or 
 three loose and obvious hints. 
 
 Antioch is the city which we naturally think of first 
 in connexion with the Christian name. It combined 
 various elements of the old civilization. It was Greek, 
 and born into the world at the time when Greeks were 
 most eager to stamp their own image upon it. Yet 
 Antioch was Syrian in riiuch of its temper and habit 
 of thought. It was not unaffected by the colony of 
 Jews which had settled in it, after its monarchs had 
 ended their vain struggle to subdue the Jewish worship. 
 Finally, the Roman proved here as elsewhere that he 
 had a strength to which the most opposing tendencies 
 and influences must submit themselves. Hither the 
 Christian teachers came as soon as they had passed the 
 limits of Palestine ; hence they went forth on their first 
 incursions into the outlying world. Here Trajan found 
 the society which taught him, that a kingdom was 
 springing up in the heart of his kingdom which might 
 undermine it. Here he perceived the necessity of 
 removing the spiritual father, that the bonds of spiritual 
 brotherhood which were holding together the Christians 
 in the city, and connecting them with distant cities, 
 might be snapped asunder. The event did not answer 
 to his expectations. The bond appeared to be made 
 firmer by the death of Ignatius. Divisions soon effected 
 
III.] BEGINNINa OF THE NEW WORLD, 299 
 
 more for the object tie aimed at, than he could effect. 
 Still the Society lived on, and grew stronger from all 
 imperial experiments to overthrow it. The question 
 had yet to be decided, what this Society was doing to 
 alter the condition of Antioch Society. The records of 
 the first two centuries afford no satisfactory answer to 
 that question. The third suggests a more painful one, 
 whether Antioch Society may not be doing much to 
 alter the condition of the Christian Church. A Bishop 
 in Queen Zenobia's time, probably patronised by her, is 
 reported to be assuming the airs and dignity of a Roman 
 official. But his flock is scandalized. Partly on that 
 account, he is deposed by his brethren. A general 
 persecution soon follows. Antioch bears her share in 
 it. Then comes Patronage. The Eagle in the capital 
 and the provinces has stooped to the Cross. Christian 
 Doctors can lift up their heads and challenge the homage 
 of those who have despised them ; nowhere is there a 
 school of them more esteemed and more learned than at 
 Antioch. It can send forth reasoners and debaters for 
 the confutation of Heathens or Jews, or for carrying- 
 on the controversies within the Church. But we want 
 to know what this school is doing for the city in which 
 it dwells ? The fourth century gives a very emphatic 
 and a very sorrowful reply, from the lips of two men 
 entirely unlike each other in temper, character, faith. 
 The first is the Emperor Julian. He finds Antioch 
 just what we know it to have been three centuries 
 before, — frivolous, capricious, devoted to pleasure, with- 
 out manliness, without heart. The testimony might be 
 suspicious. Julian disliked Antioch, for Antioch dis- 
 
300 . EOME AT THE [LECT. 
 
 liked Julian. But it did not dislike our otlier autho- 
 ritj. John Chiysostom obtained the reverence and fear 
 of its citizens by the nobleness of his life ; the bril- 
 liancy of his speech made him popular in spite of its 
 frankness. And the Church presbyter far more than 
 confirms all the denunciations of the Heathen Emperor. 
 We may learn from his discourses there, how depraved 
 and ignoble the population, rich and poor, was ; the 
 rich far more than the poor. That there should be a 
 man to tell us so, — a man to declare in the name of 
 God that it ought not to be so, — a man to defend the 
 weak and uphold the mighty, and to feel that in doing 
 this he was simply fulfilling the work which he and the 
 whole body whereof he was a member had been sent 
 into the world to do, — this is something to make us 
 wonder and rejoice. But the fact is not less certain. 
 This brave asserter of a fatherly and righteous govern- 
 ment over men, makes it clear by his words that this 
 belief had not penetrated into the heart of the people 
 among whom he dwelt, and that till it did so, the city 
 could not be reformed, could not be recivilized by the 
 presence in it of teachers wise and good as he was, of 
 the most accomplished schools, of the most complete 
 ecclesiastical organization. This truth was established 
 in the fourth century. It became more manifest in all 
 the subsequent Syrian history, till that great crisis, 
 when the armies of the Prophet, insupportably advancing, 
 swept away that civilization, and bore witness that the 
 name of a divine Sovereign in which they fought is 
 mightier than all theories and speculations, mightier 
 than anything but that name of divine ' Father ^^ which 
 
III.] BEGINNIXa OF THE NEW WOP.LD, 301 
 
 tlie Arabian did not know, wliicli the Syrian had 
 forgotten. 
 
 The city of Carthage presents quite a different phase 
 of civilization to this. Tliere the native Punic element 
 had "been ntterly crushed, when the cry, ' The old 
 * enemy must be blotted out,' went forth from the 
 Roman senate and people. Then the language, institu- 
 tions, education of the Latins took possession of the 
 country . which had so long resisted their arms. All 
 these had been carefully transplanted, and had taken 
 such root in the African soil as they could take, before 
 the Christian teachers came to sow their seed in it. 
 Eminent men had watched the growth of that seed, had 
 nsed no little pains by loud cries, and som.etimes by 
 ugly scarecrows, to hinder the birds from gathering it 
 up. There more than anywhere had been vehement 
 protest against the corrupt Pagan practices, and against 
 the meddling of Christians with them. There more than 
 anywhere the lines had been drawn deeply and broadly 
 between the new Society and the old outlying world ; 
 there more than anywhere, had ingenious methods been 
 invented, for detecting false teachers and exterminating 
 them. By the third century we may hope to see the in 
 fluence of these efforts upon Carthage and upon African 
 society. A favourable time arrives, the Christians, 
 under Philippus Arabs, are patronised and promoted. 
 Cyprian, the Carthaginian Bishop, describes the result, 
 — divisions, corruption of manners, the loss of discipline, 
 manliness, faith. A persecution comes. Numbers, as 
 might be expected, throw away that profession which 
 they held so feebly; others make a compromise with 
 
302 EOME AT THE [LECT.' 
 
 their consciences, and obtain credit for a crime which 
 they have not committed. The pictm-e is a sad one. 
 It is relieved by instances of fortitude and endurance 
 to death ; by the tokens of the good which came to 
 Carthage out of its sorrow; above all, by the proof 
 Cyprian himself gave, in a pestilence which followed the 
 persecution, that he had the sympathy of brotherhood 
 with the heathen population, and could as readily lay 
 down his life for them as for his own flock. Then 
 follow endless debates and arrangements about the 
 economy of the Church. When Constantine acknow- 
 ledges it, he finds Africa beset by a schism which he 
 must interfere, in vain, to heal. The schism gTows 
 stronger through the fourth century. In the course of 
 that century we have Augustine's valuable help in 
 ascertaining what the condition of Carthage and its 
 neighbourhood was, when he was growing into man- 
 hood. The moral tone of the country, as he describes 
 it, is miserably low; the schools are given up to a paltry 
 rhetoric ; everywhere we have the indications of an ex- 
 hausted falling society, only here and there any symp- 
 tom of renovation. The heart and mind of Augustine 
 were themselves at work in the years after he retm-ned 
 to his native province, to fulfil these promises. But the 
 Vandals were besieging Hippo when he died. Africa 
 needed the terrible discipline they inflicted upon it. 
 The wars of Justinian, by which they were expelled, 
 thinned and wasted it ; they did not apparently impart 
 to it any fresh moral life. The fate of Antioch was 
 awaiting Carthage. The Mussulman was to draw the 
 same moral out of both. Only in the case of Carthage 
 
111.] BEGINNING OF THE NEW WORLD. 303 
 
 one side of the moral was more conspicuous. The Chris- 
 tian teachers there, while they denounced, with righteous 
 vehemence, the outrages on domestic life which the 
 heathens perpetrated, had done little, except bj their 
 denunciations, to assert its sacredness. They had done 
 something to diminish its sacredness. They had allowed 
 it to be supposed that the divinest kind of life excluded 
 it; that relationships were precious as types of some- 
 thing else ; scarcely precious in themselves. The country 
 which had derived its civilization from Eome, wanted 
 the very principle from which Roman civilization had 
 sprung. The Christian Church did not vindicate that 
 principle in its inmost circle. Could it expect to make 
 Carthage understand its own cardinal maxim, while 
 this method of enforcing it was neglected? Must it not 
 look somewhere or other for the hand-writing on the 
 wall, to declare that it was weighed in the balance and 
 found wanting? Where could that writing appear more 
 legibly and terribly than on the scymitars of the 
 Saracens ? 
 
 There is another city, far richer and more various in its 
 history than either Antioch or Carthage, of which I need 
 not speak, as a friend of mine brought a number of its 
 aspects before you in the course of the last spring. I am 
 only reducing his pictures into a few dull words, when 
 I say that the Church in Alexandria was able to main- 
 tain her ground against the philosophy which it had 
 derived from Greece, even to match her policy with that 
 of the Empire ; that she was able to boast of her heroes 
 and martyrs ; but that she was not able to renew a 
 decaying and putrifying carcase ; that she was less able, 
 
304 EOME AT THE [LECT. 
 
 because slie was so eager to confute sages and "baffle 
 statesmen, because she did not remember that she inhe- 
 rited from the Jew the duty and the power of raising 
 family life, and through that, national life, from the abyss 
 into which it had fallen. I must, therefore, agree with 
 him in regarding it as a blessing, not a curse to man- 
 kind, that a better, truer, more manly and even more 
 godly race w^as permitted for a "while to tread under foot 
 the Egyptian, as well as Syrian civilization. 
 
 It may be said, however, that these cities do not offer* 
 a fair ground for experiment, seeing that they had 
 already so stiff and stereotyped a form of social exist- 
 ence. At all events, Byzantium is open to no such 
 objection. It had no historical associations ; it was 
 surrounded with no ancient and venerable Pagan 
 traditions. It offered itself, by its magnificent site, to 
 the eye of the first Christian emperor, as the fittest place 
 of all to bind the two continents under one master. 
 Rome, in the days of Diocletian, had already lost its 
 dignity as the seat of the Caesars ; the contrivance of 
 dividing the world under several Princes had failed, at 
 least for the moment. What a glorious opportunity for 
 casting aside the tyranny of the gods who had claimed 
 the Italian capital as their home ! What an edifice may 
 not a Christian monarch and Christian bishops raise 
 on the foundation of the new faith ! They undertake 
 the task. No skill or zeal or treasures are wanted to 
 bring it to rapid completion, W^hat is the result ? The 
 child is decrepit from its birth; has all the signs of 
 advanced age in its cradle. It springs at a bound 
 into the corruptions which other cities attain by gradual 
 
III.] BEGINNING OF THE NEW WORLD. 305 
 
 accretions, "by a long process of degeneracy. The 
 vilest parasites at once acquire a recognised dominion 
 in the palace. Titles take the place of orders ; offices 
 of relations. There is a complete system ; there is no 
 life. No one thing cleaves to another by a law of inter- 
 nal affinity ; only by an accidental, artificial attachment. 
 What signifies it how you describe such a society as 
 this? Who cares whether you denote the different 
 parts of it by ecclesiastical, or civil, or military names ? 
 They mean the same thing ; they belong equally to a 
 huge Oriental despotism. You have, indeed, succeeded 
 in making a capital altogether different from the old, 
 divested of its perilous recollections. But the difference 
 is, that all which spoke there, even in the darkest times, 
 of internal greatness and strength and freedom, has been 
 exhausted, — that the imperial falsehood has attained the 
 consummation at which it had always been aiming, but 
 which it never reached. 
 
 It would be a mournful and utterly false inference 
 from these premises, that during the 1,000 years in 
 which Constantinople dragged on a precarious existence 
 as a Christian capital, there did not come from it any 
 noble men, any illustrious words and deeds, any trea- 
 sures of thought and experience which the world could 
 not have afforded to lose. All such let us cheerfully 
 and thankfully acknowledge, wondering at the creative 
 power which can bring life out of death, order out of 
 that which appears to us worse than chaos. Let it, for 
 instance, be always remembered how, before Valens 
 fell in his battle with the Goths at Hadrianople, 
 Ulphilas had gone forth as the teacher of those Goths 
 
306 EOME AT THE [LECT. 
 
 wlio had Ibeen settled in tlie empire. He went to tell 
 tliem what he believed and what he knew. There 
 might be confusions in his mind ; there might be greater 
 confusions when his lessons passed into the minds of 
 his pupils. There they met various and dim traditions 
 with which they strangely mingled, together with a 
 fierceness which often turned them to its own purposes 
 and imparted to them its own likeness. But anyhow 
 they received that which they had most need of, and 
 they received it, as they probably would not have done 
 fi-om a Latin. Ulphilas would have told them first and 
 phiefly, of a Brother of their race to whom they might 
 look up with wonder and trust. The book he rendered 
 into their tongue seemed all full of these tidings. 
 And with that he put into their own Mseso-Gothic, 
 words which travelled through the length and breadth 
 of Europe, and penetrated into all dialects, and gave 
 them a unity with each other, as they testified of a 
 like unity between huts and palaces : ' Our Father, 
 which art in Heaven.' 
 
 This was indeed a mighty contribution to the Chris- 
 tian civilization of the West. There were many others 
 only less memorable. The gathering together of Roman 
 laws by Justinian, — the architecture in which Byzan- 
 tium instructed Venice and many cities not in Italy, 
 — her scholars and antiquarians, who watched carefully 
 over the deposits of past ages, if they could not create 
 for themselves, — the final testament of her treasures 
 to the Latin world, when she could no longer preserve 
 her own life from the Turk, — must always be thought of 
 with gratitude. But on the other hand, Constantinople 
 
III.] BEGINNINa OF THE NEW WORLD. S07 
 
 testified liow little slie ever grasped any one of the 
 great j^rinciples or institutes of Humanity ; how little, 
 above all, she could ever appreciate a fatherly govern- 
 ment. The sight of the hateful abuses of her palace 
 helped more than anything else to inspire Julian with 
 his hatred of Christianity, — to make him think that the 
 old gods might be the restorers of the old world. The 
 emperor and empress, and the bishops who executed 
 their commands, drove the noblest and best of the citi- 
 i;ens of Constantinople — Chrysostom — into exile. It 
 was in her that the frightful spectacle was presented to 
 mankind, of the most furious religious factions joined 
 with the most utter frivolity ; the holiest names, at 
 which angels are said to veil their faces, mingling with 
 the shouts of the circus ; the same diabolical passions 
 being associated with the one and the other. What 
 true life, what higher civilization could come from such 
 a religion as this ? It might be the shell of the highest 
 truths ; but the kernel was gone out of it. It was a 
 religion that had set itself in the place of Man and 
 of God. 
 
 We turn, therefore^ anxiously and earnestly, with 
 some hope but more of fear, to that old city which was 
 not built in a day, which did not rise at the wand of 
 any imperial magician, but which appeared as if it 
 were an integral portion of the old world and could not 
 survive its dissolution. Has it been dissolved? Can 
 it endure the revolution which is shaking not the earth 
 only which it has ruled, but the heaven in which dwelt 
 the objects of its adoration ? This is the question which 
 men were asking when the hosts' of Alaric appeared at 
 
 x2 
 
308 ■ EOME AT THE [lECT. 
 
 tlie gates of tlie city, which they had to ask themselves 
 again and again through all the convulsions of the fifth 
 century. The answer at first appeared decisive. The 
 Yv^estern world was seemingly hastening to decompo- 
 sition, faster than the Eastern. The swarms which flew 
 over the one settled on the other. Every fresh blast of 
 the trumpet announced more clearly than the. last that 
 the work of ages was about to suffer some tremendous 
 fall. At length an event comes, which is scarcely worthy 
 of that name. The light that has been flickering so longv 
 bursting out for a moment, then growing feebler and 
 feebler, dies in the socket. History amuses itself with 
 findinsr a nickname for the C^sar out of whose hand 
 the sceptre dropped. In bitter mockery he is called 
 Bomulus Augustulus. 
 
 The catastrophe seems to have arrived. In a little 
 time the Ostrogoth succeeds. A fresh and vigorous 
 race is clothing itself with the spoils of the dead giant. 
 But is he dead ? Is not the pulse still beating ? Are 
 there not symptoms, not of life only, but of strength ; of 
 strength that may become once again mighty for good 
 or for evil ? I do not now refer to the armour which 
 the Goth is wearing, to the laws and institutes which 
 he gTadually begins to find necessary for him. I must 
 consider hereafter whether these were forged by him, 
 or inherited from the Eoman. But another, stranger, 
 more startling fact offers itself to us. The masters of 
 the greater part of Italy do not make the old capital 
 their capital. That is left to one who calls himself its 
 Father. The name has been long heard : now that 
 the Emperor is gone, it becomes THE name ; the power 
 
III.] BEGINNINa OP THE NEW WORLD. 309 
 
 wliicli Eome claims as characteristic of itself. lu tlie 
 deepest suffering and degradation this power makes 
 itself felt. Gregory the Great finds Eome in an abyss 
 of misery which it had never reached in any former 
 age ; impoverished by the wars of Belisarius, crushed 
 by pestilence, threatened by Lombards, hopeless of as- 
 sistance from Greeks. By a government really fatherly, 
 by proving that he does not value his power for its sake 
 or his own, he lifts his country out of ruin. He aspires 
 to make all the nations of the West confess the same 
 authority. To a marvellous extent he accomplishes his 
 purpose. A society composed of different tribes and 
 races once more does homage to the ancient capital. A 
 paternal authority is now, as at the first, declared to be 
 the ground of its dominion. 
 
 This is the fact to which I drew your attention when 
 at the commencement of my Lectures I quoted the pas- 
 sage of Pante which speaks of ^neas and old Eoman 
 life as having some mysterious relation to the successors" 
 ■of St. Peter. I accepted the assertion. I said, I be- 
 lieved we should find it to be true. I maintained that 
 there had been a marvellous continuity in the history 
 of this people, and that it was one which deserved our 
 deepest study, for the light it threw upon the Pro- 
 vidence which guides all nations, and the special help 
 it afforded in understanding the civilization of the 
 Western world. 
 
 I am no more afraid to meet the facts which en- 
 counter us at this stage of our inquiry, tlian those 
 which thrust themselves upon us at the outset of it. I 
 no more dare to suppress one portion of history lest it 
 
310 EOME. [leCT. 
 
 should "be claimed as an argument against Protestantism, 
 than I dared to suppress another, lest it should appear to 
 reflect some honour upon Paganism. In all suppressions 
 there is imbelief, there is sin, there is treachery to the 
 maxims which our Christian and Protestant forefathers 
 have bequeathed to us. They hade us go up to every 
 fact, look it in the face, question it till it tell us what 
 it means. So act the brave students of the phenomena 
 of nature ; so must we behave ourselves in the presence 
 of the phenomena which perplex us in the life of nations 
 and of men. When we come first to the mouth of 
 the cavern, there may rise up dark vapours ; confused 
 sounds may be heard through them; when they take 
 form as distinct words, the oracle may be ambiguous, 
 bewildering, self-contradictory. But wait on as those 
 wait who care to know ; watch as those watch who 
 believe that the morning will come out of the darkest 
 night. You will find that the answer proceeds from 
 no mad or false priestess, but from the Spirit of Truth, 
 who will Himself enable us to understand it, who Him- 
 self will direct the fulfilment of it. 
 
IV.] INFLUENCE OF EOME AND GERMANY. 311 
 
 LECTURE IV. 
 
 THE INFLUENCE OF EOME AND GEEMANY UPON 
 MODERN EUEOPE. 
 
 The name of one of your eminent conntiymen is 
 inseparably associated with the notion, that the Roman 
 world passed away in the fifth century, and that the 
 origin of modern society is to be sought for in the 
 woods of Germany. I have no need to tell you that 
 this doctrine has been strongly controverted in our day, 
 and that the tide of opinion is setting in the opposite 
 direction. The permanence of Roman institutions, their 
 prodigious influence upon the life and society of the 
 Middle Ages, have been asserted by the most eminent 
 historical scholars of France, Germany, and Great 
 Britain. The very forms of social life which Robertson 
 traced to a Gothic source, have been said to bear most 
 distinctly the Latin impress. 
 
 You, I conceive, are particularly qualified to be arbi- 
 ters in this controversy. Respect for your distinguished 
 historiographer may make you unwilling to dissent from 
 any opinion which had the sanction of his authority ; 
 yet you, far more than we in the south,, have most 
 
312 INFLUENCE OF EOME AND GERMANY [lECT. 
 
 practical witnesses in favour of the other theory. Your 
 jurisprudence is so intimately associated with the civil 
 law, that no affection for Saxon ancestors can tempt 
 you. to disclaim your obligations to Rome. Those 
 Ibenefits which it requires some pains and ingenuity to 
 Ibring home to us, which we have thought it rather a 
 part of our pride to repudiate, must he continually 
 forcing themselves upon your notice. You do not want 
 Savigny or Guizot to show you, that if Rome died with 
 Romulus Augustulus, some of the most important of 
 her rules and maxims are alive at this day. 
 
 At the same time you may, I think, entertain a rea- 
 sonable doubt whether the dogma of our century 
 necessarily displaces that which prevailed in the last. 
 So far as that was negative, so far as it intimated the 
 utter passing away of the old polity and its effects, we 
 may be content to abandon it. Possibly, we may go 
 a little further. We may perceive that Rome was 
 especially the land of institutions, that in the strict 
 sense of the word, our venerable Saxon ancestors knew 
 little about them; and that, therefore, in distributing 
 our gratitude to those who have earned it, we may fairly 
 give the former, and not the latter, credit for these par- 
 ticular treasures. But, on the other hand, if we come 
 to consider what institutions are, how any people become 
 possessed of them, what they do for us and cannot do, 
 we shall look with considerable suspicion upon some of 
 the statements to which the recent school has given 
 currency, highly as we may honour their facts and the 
 industry which has brought them to light. We may 
 turn with some affection to the other conclusion as 
 
IV.] UPON MODERN EUEOPE. 313 
 
 p^'oceeding from a sound instinct, even if the premises 
 from wliich it was deduced are not satisfactory. In 
 M. Guizot's works on the civilization of Em'ope gene- 
 rally, and of France particularly, one discovers the 
 widest and most minute acquaintance with all the docu- 
 ments that bear upon the subject, or can even remotely 
 illustrate it, — a remarkable freedom from party bias, — 
 a desire to do justice to all influences, from whatever 
 -quarter they have come, which have contributed to the 
 formation of European society. All the agencies of 
 great men, of customs, of laws, of race, of religion, are 
 fi'cely confessed, and their action and reaction upon each 
 other clearly and beautifully explained. What one 
 misses, I think, in the admirable picture, is precisely 
 that primary element of civilization to which I have 
 been trying to draw your attention in these Lectures. 
 All these diverse conspiring or contradictory powers were 
 at work to create something very real, something which 
 all history bears witness of, something which is implied 
 in the very existence of cities and polities, something 
 which cannot perhaps be denoted by any better name 
 than that which he has chosen. But when one tries to 
 connect the citizen with the man, when one recollects 
 that he was certainly a son, probably a husband and 
 father and brother, as well as an exerciser of municipal 
 rights, a holdeir of property, an artist, or a man of 
 science, it seems to us as if this point had been over- 
 looked, as if the accomplished teacher had thought it too 
 commonplace to demand any special attention from one 
 who was engaged in so difficult and complicated an 
 inquiry. Not, of course, that he would not at once 
 
314 INFLUENCE OF EOME AND aEEMANY [LECT. 
 
 assent to the importance of domestic life, or confess that 
 all the other parts of life might be affected by the good 
 •or bad condition of it, but that he never seems to have 
 acknowledged these to himself as the root of all civili- 
 zation, and all civilization — let it have reached the 
 highest point it will — as irregular and tortuous, as tend- 
 ing to destruction, and as needing a new start and com- 
 mencement, when it has forgotten this origin and is 
 contemplating arts, refinement, religion, without refer- 
 ence to it. 
 
 It is easy to understand how a great thinker, dreading, 
 on the one hand, the idolatry of savage, — that is, merely 
 independent or individual, — existence into which so 
 many reformers in the last century fell, — dreading not 
 less the notion that there was in the middle ages a kind 
 of patriarchal life separated from the life of cities, which 
 it would be desirable to reproduce, — should have made 
 what appears to us so serious an omission. Look- 
 ing upon his book as a protest against either of these 
 opinions, it is of the highest value. But if it tempts us 
 to think of that life which Tacitus has described, as 
 merely savage, — if it hinders us from seeing that out of 
 this life proceeded that which Rome could not give, and 
 which alone made what she did give of any worth, — 
 I conceive we are defrauded of a truth, for which the 
 additional light we have acquired on a number of points 
 is no sufficient compensation. Take away what we 
 owe to our German forefathers, and our institutions 
 would mean something altogether different to us ; 
 they would have been imposed upon our nation, not, 
 as they have, grown up with it, their bone and muscle 
 
IV.] UPON MODERN EUROPE. 315 
 
 adapting itself to its inner life and outward occasions, 
 strengthening daily witli use and exercise. 
 
 What I said in my last Lecture in reference to 
 Agricola and his influence upon Britain, will at once 
 explain this distinction. The institutions which he 
 introduced into the province, were as good as the wisest 
 and most benevolent ruler could devise for those whom 
 he ruled. There was no grudging disposition to withhold 
 from subjects that which belonged to their masters. 
 What Romans felt to be best for themselves, — roads, 
 markets, magistrates, equitable administration, restraint 
 upon crime, — they freely gave. The population was capa- 
 ble of the boon; the Druids, who would have hindered 
 them from receiving it, were swept away. In due time 
 came Christianity travelling with the Roman legions, 
 settling in the country first as a proscribed stranger 
 and outlaw, finally as an acknowledged and honoured 
 guest. W^hy did a society with so many pillars inside 
 of it, tremble the moment the external buttress of impe- 
 rial protection was withdrawn ? M. Guizot explains, 
 that as the central government grew feeble and neces- 
 sitous, those who held municipal offices in the provinces 
 were liable to the severest responsibilities and exactions, 
 — that it was therefore a privilege to be exempt from 
 them, — that the middle class, which is formed by muni- 
 cipal institutions, was enfeebled and almost destroyed. 
 These, no doubt, are important facts ; a colony in this 
 condition must be a falling one. But we Britons have 
 felt that to continue a Province or a Colony, supposing 
 municipal institutions had been ever so respectable, taxes 
 ever so moderate, would have meant the never emerging 
 
316 INFLUENCE OF EOME AND GERMANY [lECT. 
 
 • into the dignity of a nation, the never sharing in its com- 
 mon sufferings and joys, its shame and its triumphs, the 
 never being in the right sense freemen or citizens. We 
 ■have considered it is a cause for continual thanksgiving, 
 that our civilization was swept away ; that our Chris- 
 tianity was driven into corners; that a Pagan and a 
 "barbarous race got possession of our fields and of our 
 harbours. Why, but because these bloodthirsty men, — 
 over whose coming Gildas the monk poured forth such 
 wailings, while he confessed, at the same time, that the 
 moral condition of Britain was utterly bad, that order 
 and family life had perished, that it was the prey of 
 continual tyrants^ — because this bloodthirsty people had 
 the sense of kindred, a belief in the sacredness of rela- 
 tionship's, an acknowledgment of divinities, such as I 
 spoke of in the last Lecture, who were concerned in the 
 preservation of these, and were interested in putting 
 down the evil giants that were destroying the earth. 
 'Was it not well, we have said to ourselves, to get these 
 men fixed on our soil, whatever temporary miseries they 
 might inflict upon it, because they were not effeminate 
 colonists who submitted to an order which was forced 
 upon them, reluctantly but slavishly, — gratifying their 
 inclinations at the expense of law when they dared, but, 
 on the whole, keeping the sepulchres fairly white, while 
 the dead men's bones were rattling within ;— but men full 
 of all turbulent and disorderly impulses, men, neverthe- 
 less, panting for order, longing to find some real govern- 
 ment that they might both obey and love, having 
 already the pattern of it in the homes to which their 
 hearts turned amidst all their barbarism, in the Gods, 
 
lY.] UPON MODERN EUROPE* 317 
 
 wlio were at least more kingly and more observers of 
 laws than themselves? 
 
 This has been our conviction, and I do not think we 
 are prepared to give it np. We may have pushed, it 
 further than the facts permitted : we may have assumed 
 that our law and polity could not have had anything to 
 do with the country, which had ceased to rule us when 
 tlie Saxons brought their wives and children here. We 
 may have forgotten that four centuries of Roman occu- 
 pation must have left the deep traces of themselves in 
 every direction, as we know that they have in the 
 actual soil and in the names of our towns. We may 
 have failed to consider that the Saxons, rude men as 
 they were, were still a tractable people, who recognised 
 facts, and who, therefore, if they saw any Roman prac- 
 tice, the reasonableness of which they could appreciate, 
 which clearly did the work it was intended for, and 
 which they could connect with their own more primi^ 
 tive notions of fatherhood and brotherhood, would be 
 likely to adopt it and remould it. 
 
 But the discovery and confession of these mistakes 
 will not hinder us from speaking, as we have always 
 spoken, of the Saxons as the beginners of our national 
 history. Though the phrase may appear to be chrono- 
 logically improper, we are certain that it is radically 
 sound. And it is not inconsistent with chronology, or 
 with any facts whatever, if it be true, as I have con- 
 tended in these Lectures, that the civilization of Rome, 
 just as much as the Gothic civilization, had its starting- 
 point in the household. For then it might surely be 
 most needful that the household life and strength should 
 
318 INFLUENCE OF EOME AND GERMANY [lECT. 
 
 be restored, before any of tlie gifts whicli Rome had con- 
 ferred could be really available for us. 
 
 It does not signify from what country we fetch our 
 illustrations. I have taken England rather than any 
 continental country, rather even than Scotland, not 
 because it is the easiest and most obvious instance, — for 
 in some respects it is the most difficult, — but because 
 it brings so many of the questions we are consider- 
 ing together, and submits them to so severe a test. 
 The interruption of our earliest Christianity by the 
 Saxon settlement distinguishes our history most curi- 
 ously from the French, who became so much more 
 closely connected mth the Church, after the invasion of 
 Clovis, than they had been before. And it is idle to 
 overlook the fact that our Christianity was recovered 
 from a Roman source, that the Christian civilization of 
 the Saxons began with Gregory. I cannot for a mo- 
 ment doubt that the mission of Augustine in England 
 was immensely furthered by that proclamation, which 
 fell so dead on the ears of the Celts in Wales, or rather 
 which called forth in them so much suspicion that the 
 habits and practices they had received from their fathers 
 were to be disturbed and set aside by a foreign autho- 
 rity. Honest and even useful as the opposition of those 
 earlier Christians was, it cannot be disputed that the 
 name of a spiritual father went home to the hearts of 
 our kings, their wives, and their people, and that the 
 demand of obedience to such a one was responded to, as 
 no mere announcement of a doctrine would have been. 
 And this was because the associations with this name, 
 the associations of hearth and home, were so alive and 
 
IV.] UPON MODEEN EUEOPE. 319 
 
 vigorous in tlie Saxon race. When tlicir minds were 
 awakened to feel they had to do with a mysterious and 
 invisible world, no tidings could Ibe credible to them 
 which did not connect that world with what they felt 
 to be highest and holiest in this. Their vision of a 
 spiritual ruler living hundreds of miles away over the 
 sea, could not have been very distinct ; but it suggested 
 the thought of that which was immeasurably higher 
 and also nearer. The call to obey such a ruler having 
 such a name, the news of their own connexion with 
 a large human family, met thoughts which had been 
 working confusedly in them for generations, which 
 their mythology had sometimes kindled, often bewil- 
 dered, but never satisfied. 
 
 The history of the very gradual conversion of these 
 Saxons is always intertwined with their national and 
 with their family life, with the relation of the king 
 to the subject, but with that as it grew out of and 
 was interpreted by the relations of the father to the 
 child, of the husband to the wife. A society formed 
 in this manner was likely, when it sought to draw 
 others within its circle, to follow the same method. It 
 can cause us no surprise that our Missionaries of the 
 eighth century, who went forth to christianise and 
 civilize their kindred stock in Germany, should have 
 spoken much of a spiritual father of Christendom, 
 and should have held the Churches they founded in 
 very strict subjection to his authority. But another 
 fact must be remembered in connexion with this. When 
 the rapid growth of monasteries and schools in England 
 had led to a severance between the religious life and 
 
o 
 
 20 INFLUENCE OF ROME AND GERMANY [lECT» 
 
 tlie domestic, when kings had acquired the habit of 
 exchanging the crown for the cowl, and the whole of 
 that society, which had been grounded upon the dignity 
 and divinity of human relationships, was beginning to 
 treat them as a Greek or an Oriental might, that civili- 
 zation was swept away even as the former had been. 
 The old kinsmen of the Saxons came to reclaim the 
 land for paganism and barbarism; in other words, to 
 confer on it the very same blessing which was conferred 
 on it when the first set of sea-pirates conquered it, — the 
 blessing of a healthy manly growth from a real root, 
 the blessing of being delivered from that which was 
 becoming every day more artificial, spurious, insincere. 
 I am carrying out, you perceive, the principle which 
 I announced in my last Lecture. I cannot venture to 
 speak of great events, like the Mahometan conquest in 
 the East, like our own overthrows by Pagan conquerors, 
 as if they were mere unintelligible breaks in the deve- 
 lopment of the modern world. I am bound to regard 
 them as indispensable to that development; as mon- 
 strous calamities indeed in themselves, but as calamities 
 without which one could not in the least understand the 
 nature or trace the course of Christian civilization. It 
 is the most familiar of all commonplaces, that we could 
 not have had an Alfred without the Dane ; and that com- 
 monplace ought not to signify merely that trials are 
 necessary to bring forth a hero ; but that Alfred's work, 
 as the restorer of the true Saxon life, — of that homely, 
 manly, kingly life which joined the world without to 
 the world within, the student to the worker, — was sub- 
 stituted for that mixture of barbarism and efieminacy 
 
IV.] UPON MODERN EUROPE. 321 
 
 wliicli liad divided the land between tliem. We see 
 how a nation really grows, and how blessed are all 
 those impediments which the providence of God raises 
 to its over-rapid and tortuous growth ; liow merciful it 
 is when it is obliged to spell out its elements again, 
 to work at its hornbook, when it has been aspiring to 
 lore for which it was not yet fitted, and which it could 
 but acquire crudely and incoherently. 
 
 These events may seem too national and isolated for 
 a summary of European civilization. I do not think they 
 are so. I believe it is by the progress of some particular 
 people, especially if that progress has been apparently 
 irregular, that we must learn the law which has been 
 at work everywhere. I believe we might deduce, for 
 instance, from the case of Alfred, some very important 
 conclusions respecting the union of Roman and Teutonic 
 elements, and respecting the Christian influence which 
 was fusing them together in the mind of every monarch 
 who was able to raise and reform a land, to make it 
 conscious of its calling, to connect it witli the past, to 
 prepare it for the future. But I willingly pass on to 
 a period which manifestly connects us with the general 
 history of Europe, and which illustrates, better perhaps 
 than any other, the combined operations of those in- 
 fluences which we often assume to be hostile. 
 
 M. Thierry has given us a lively picture of the miseries 
 which the Norman conquest inflicted on the old occu- 
 piers of the English soil. I do not wish to dispute the 
 truth of his sketch, or even to lower the colouring of it. 
 I cannot conceive how a people, fallen, as tlie Anglo- 
 >Saxons of the eleventh century certainly were, into 
 
 Y 
 
322 INFLUENCE OF ROME AND GERMANY [lECT. 
 
 feebleness, strife, and sottislmess, could liave escaped 
 tlie severest punishments, either at their own hand, or 
 from some external invader. But if these brilliant 
 narratives were to suggest the thought that the conquest 
 was not on the whole an inconceivable blessing to Eng- 
 land, — that it did not organise the form of society which 
 was needful for the land then and for its after growth, 
 — that it did not give us national consistency as distinct 
 from the rest of Christendom, and yet at the same time 
 bring us into fellowship with the rest of Christendom, — 
 that it did not open to the native Saxon a pathway 
 to ultimate greatness, which he could never have found 
 if he had been left to the quiet possession of his lands, 
 • — I must steadily protest against them as at variance 
 with facts still more important than those upon whicli 
 they have been grounded. 
 
 There are many aspects of the subject ; I can but 
 glance at one. It was natural enough that English 
 annalists should speak of the feudal system, as belong- 
 ing to the Norman Conquest, as even the creation 
 of William. Strangely as that doctrine was opposed 
 to notorious passages in the past European history, 
 it had so much justification from the change which 
 took place in the condition of the English proprie- 
 tors, that even accomplished writers unawares encou- 
 raged it. Eobertson, by referring to the customs 
 which governed the distribution of lands, wherever the 
 chiefs of the tribes who broke up the Eoman empire 
 settled, made all his readers feel that the special 
 circumstances of England had called no new scheme of 
 society into existence. Eoman antiquarians, going 
 
IV.] UPON MODERN EUROPE. 323 
 
 further back still, liave shown that the soldiers of the 
 Empire, and even of the Republic, to whom conquered 
 lands were assigned, held them upon a tenure not 
 different in kind from the feudal tenure. The more 
 one reflects upon these different observations," and seeks 
 to combine them, the more one feels that these arrange- 
 ments followed a law of which Romans and Germans 
 were alike the unconscious asserters and administrators ; 
 a law which proceeded from no arbitrary will, though a 
 strong will might be needed to give it effect; a law 
 which was, in fact, the restraint, the only possible 
 restraint, upon the outbreaks of arbitrary power ; a law 
 which, more than any other, distinguishes the condition 
 of the Western from that of the Eastern world. How- 
 ever one may dwell upon the incidents of the feudal 
 system, it is impossible not to see that at the basis 
 of it there was an acknowledgment of relationships, 
 beginning from the highest lord and descending to 
 the weakest vassal, — a chain of inter-dependencies, 
 grounded upon the idea of the family, transferred 
 from it to the camp, affecting through both the con- 
 ditions of civil life. M. Guizot is no doubt perfectly 
 right, in saying that this feudal order is not itself 
 civilization. It is antecedent to the growth of cities, 
 and may do much to check their growth. Yet we have 
 no reason to think that in the Western world cities 
 could have come into existence without it ; we have 
 every reason to think that their existence would have 
 been a capricious and unhappy one when severed from 
 this foundation. 
 
 Those two memorable centuries, the eleventh and 
 twelfth, which include the period of strictly Norman 
 
 Y 2 
 
324 INFLUENCE OF EOME AND GERMANY [LECT. 
 
 domination in England, are those from wliicli one is to 
 learn how the feudal and the Christendom life were 
 related to each other, the abuses to which each was lia- 
 ble, the benefits which each bequeathed. They are the 
 centuries in which the Normans exhibit their ancient 
 spirit of adventure, no longer as pirates of the sea, but 
 as the soldiers of Europe ; as men united in a common 
 bond with all the nations of the West, pledged to fight 
 the battles of the West. It is the age in which those 
 Normans went forth to drive the Greeks out of Italy ; 
 were themselves threatened by an Italian conspiracy, 
 •of which Leo IX. was the head ; vanquished him, and 
 submitted to him as their spiritual lawgiver and parent. 
 They are the centuries in which the successor of 
 Leo IX., Hildebrand, put forth the claim to be the 
 spiritual father of the world in broader and clearer lan- 
 guage than his predecessors had ever used, and on the 
 .strength of it asserted his right to set his foot upon the 
 Jieck of kings. They are the centuries of the Crusades 
 and of the Military Orders. They are the centuries in 
 which Monasteries had greater power over Europe, than 
 they ever had before or have had since. They are the 
 centuries in which Latin more completely asserted 
 itself as the one language of thought in the West, than, 
 it ever did before or has ever done since. They are the 
 centuries in which even the strong Saxon tongue yielded 
 to this conqueror in the schools, as it yielded to the 
 Xorman conqueror in the law courts. These are evi- 
 dently all indications of the same class and kind. They 
 are not merely contemporaneous as historical events ; a 
 common historical principle is denoted by them. Surely 
 we are not WTong if we say that this common principle 
 
.IV.] UPON MODERN EUROPE. 325 
 
 is the one wliicli we found in the very cradle of Eoman 
 life, which appeared to strengthen with its strength and 
 became weaker with its weakness, the principle of the 
 authority of the father, the principle of all social life 
 as connecting itself with this, as unfolding itself out of 
 this. Take any one of the points I have alluded to ; 
 do not merely glance at the surface of the story, but 
 look into the heart of it, and see whether it does 
 not bear witness of the same truth. How is it that 
 William, who maintains his own will against the world, 
 who does not submit to any practical interference 
 with his dominion, nevertheless acknowledges that 
 enormous 'claim of Hildebrand, — never thinks of dis- 
 puting that there is such a father, to whom kings must 
 bow ? Evidently he feels that without such an autho- 
 rity, wherever it is lodged, the chain of mutual inter- 
 dependence is broken. He can exact no homage unless 
 he renders it. There must be some reserved authority 
 beyond his own, spiritual and mysterious, but after all 
 fatherly, or his own will be a tyranny, and be regarded 
 as a tyranny. Despot as he is, we feel how vast a 
 difference there was between him and his successor, 
 a difference affecting all their relations to their subjects. 
 It clearly consisted in this : that the one had the sense 
 of responsibility to some power which he could not 
 measure by material rules and maxims, that the other 
 counted such a power to be a mere dream ; what was 
 not material, was for him nothing. Hence the scholar 
 was utterly contemptible in his eyes. He could some- 
 times look with a clear humorous gaze into false pre- 
 tensions, but the wisest and devoutest man was just as 
 
326 INFLUENCE OF ROME AND GERMANY [lECT, 
 
 odious to liim as the hypocrite. Each monarch of our 
 Norman dynasty, down to the last, under whose reign 
 all relations were loosened, all invisible power dis- 
 dained, and mere physical strengths measured them- 
 selves against each other, illustrates what there was in 
 those fierce knights and kings which was ready to break 
 out to the destruction of the land and of themselves, 
 and also what an order there was hemming them in on 
 every side, what a restraining power of bonds and 
 affinities and responsibilities, all derived from the family 
 principle, from the sense of a fatherhood which they 
 themselves were to exhibit, and of a higher father- 
 hood to which they must stoop. 
 
 Look again at the Crusades. See how mighty the 
 Military Orders were, when they wxnt forth in the 
 strength of this mutual relationship, confessing a fatherly 
 authority in their own superior, and a higher fatherly 
 authority over the whole of Christendom, — how much 
 this called forth all the other virtues which they dis- 
 played ; and how utterly detestable they became, what 
 plagues to every nation, when the sense of this bond 
 deserted them, — nothing but the com*age which it had 
 awakened, and the arms which that courage enabled 
 them to turn to mischief and crime, being left to them. 
 Look again at the Monasteries. Their effect upon 
 European civilization no one gainsays. The monks did 
 unquestionably drain lands and till them, bring gardens 
 out of a waste, teach and subdue brutal natures. The 
 names of fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters, were inse- 
 parably intertwined with their thoughts and their 
 energies. In these names, while they had any reality, 
 
IV.] UPON MODERN EUROPE. 327 
 
 tliey exercised influence and dominion ; the moment 
 tliey "became dead names, the Order became corrupt ; 
 those who had established it mourned over it ; those 
 who had bowed to it mocked it. Carry the examination 
 a little higher. Reflect on the acts of the different 
 Popes, from Hildebrand onwards to the middle of the 
 eleventh centmy. Judge them just as they were ; 
 * Nothing extenuate, or set down aught in malice.' See 
 how the best men in Europe, such men as Anselm, fled 
 to their authority as a refuge from the tyranny of 
 monarchs, and stoutly and earnestly maintained their 
 allegiance to it, even to the sacrifice of their civil duty, 
 not from selfish and ambitious motives, but to their own 
 exceeding loss and suffering, really deeming that this was 
 a protection for the poor and a witness against the force 
 of arms. And then read the account of what they found 
 when they came into direct contact with this fatherly 
 government, of the intrigues and venality which pre- 
 vailed at the sacred See, of the immense difficulty which 
 they had in recognising the thing and the person they 
 were looking for. Read the address of Bernard to his 
 pupil Eugenius III. at the beginning of his treatise 
 *■ De Consideratione,' and observe how the reverence 
 for the man to whom he bows with the most filial 
 affection, alternates Avitli wonder how one living amidst 
 such a crowd of parasites and suitors, in such a web 
 of complicated worldliness, should have any leisure for 
 thought, any time to seek refreshment for his moral 
 life. Read the conversation between John of Salisbury, 
 the devoted friend of Becket, the antagonist of Henry II., 
 with his old friend Adrian IV., and hear how plainly 
 
Q 
 
 28 INFLUENCE OF EOME AND GERMANY [lECT. 
 
 lie tells liim that Chnrclimen generally looked upon 
 Rome as tlie sponge Avliicli was drawing all their life 
 "blood to itself. Put these two opposing sets of facts 
 together, and then judge how wonderfully that belief 
 of a fatherhood for Christendom was sustaining itself, 
 against contradictions scarcely less overwhelming than 
 those which assailed the early Homan, when he clung 
 with such tenacity to the faith of a fatherhood over the 
 city. 
 
 If we distinguish the Roman from the German 
 civilization, I have a right, after what I have said, to 
 connect the general European history of tins period 
 with the former rather than with the latter. There was, 
 it is true, even at this time, even where the Christendom 
 spirit was most distinguished from the national, an im- 
 pulse which drew men's thoughts away from Rome and 
 fixed them upon Jerusalem. The influence of that coun- 
 teraction should never be overlooked by the student of 
 these centuries ; it was wider and deeper than either the 
 ordinary civil or ecclesiastical historian has perceived ; 
 it suggested continually the thought of a centre which 
 was, at all events, not in the West. It brought out 
 a sense of direct allegiance to One, who was higher 
 than all popes, and of whose power the sepulchre wit- 
 nessed more than the palace. But this does not affect 
 the other assertion, that the properly Teutonic and 
 national life, if not suspended, was at least overshadowed 
 during these centuries. The German emperors were of 
 course maintaining their fight against the popes ; but 
 the imperial feeling was fm*ther removed from the 
 national, — was, on the whole, more hostile to it, — than 
 
IV.] UPON MODERN EUEOPE. 329 
 
 the papal. Between them lay, alternately the victims and 
 the allies of one or the other, those Italian cities whose 
 records form so interesting and so melancholy a chapter 
 in the history of modern civilization. Civilized they 
 ■were, in the strictest sense of the word. The city had 
 attained all the refinement, the subtlety, the eagerness 
 for political experiments, which belonged to the old 
 republics of Greece. But the ground of the civic life, 
 the family hereditary feeling, had become only a part of 
 it, — only, therefore, an excuse for those factions which 
 were ever mixing themselves with theories and maxims 
 of government, and disturbing the peace of society. It 
 is wonderful how much interest Ave are able to feel in 
 conflicts, so stained with selfishness and crime as these 
 are. It is, that we are sure there is a principle 
 w^iich is greater and deeper than the combatants knew 
 of, one connecting the turbulence of factions with the 
 freedom of Italy, and that with all the mystery of 
 human crime and punishment and blessedness; that the 
 union which the Florentine patriot perceived and em- 
 bodied in his great poem between his individual affection, 
 the sorrow^s of his own land, and the purpose of God 
 for the universe, was not an imaginary but a real one 
 for himself and for every one that tried to realize it. 
 
 The struggles of these Italian cities enable us to 
 understand, and appreciate more thankfully, the steps 
 by which our own towns acquired their national position 
 and dignity. It is they which offered that new and 
 better path to greatness which I spoke of, for our Saxon 
 population; in them they learnt the meaning of their 
 old privileges, the sacredness of their old municipal 
 
330 INFLUENCE OF EOME AND GERMANY [LECT. 
 
 freedom. The charters of the monarchs did not so 
 much give them rights, as enable them to re-assert those 
 which had Ibeen always latent in their constitution. 
 They found that in their unions, as tradesmen, they 
 could accomplish more than in their separate existence, 
 as landowners ; the skill of handicraftsmen was deve- 
 loped in them ; they worked together as they had never 
 worked in the days before the Norman ascendency ; 
 they became the middle class of England. They began 
 to feel, that if they were not the head of the nation, 
 they were at least its heart. They could, vindicate it 
 once more as their nation ; they could prove that the 
 Saxon tongue had never died, that it had only been 
 strengthening itself with Norman and Latin grafts, and 
 that it was stronger and more living than ever, more 
 capable of expressing great thoughts and recording- 
 noble deeds. But this, which was our civilization, though 
 it was altogether different from that feudal life which 
 preceded it, though it rose up as a contrast to it and 
 counteraction of it, had a wonderful affinity with its 
 principle. We must not forget that the trading bodies 
 in our towns were called fraternities — that the feeling of 
 brotherhood, if it was derived from the monasteries, 
 yet penetrated into the heart of these manufacturing 
 communities, and gave the form to their municipal in- 
 stitutions. The name, no doubt, became limited by 
 trade notions ; it was often confined to those who did a 
 particular kind of work. They might be rivals to those 
 who did another work ; there might be divisions between 
 men of tlie same craft, opposing societies within it; 
 there might be plentiful jealousies in each. Still, so 
 
.IV.] UPON MODERN EUROPE, 331 
 
 far as there was order, as there was civility, this name 
 expressed the ground and the support of it. Only so 
 far as this name suggested its primary meaning, did 
 this class become a powerful and united one, able to 
 show that the burgher might do as much as the noble 
 or the knight, in maintaining the unity as well as the 
 freedom of the land. 
 
 And it must be remembered, that the burgher was 
 a plain man who did not care for metaphors. A father 
 meant a father to him, a brother a brother. There was 
 a general comprehensive use of the words, which he held 
 to be real and sound. But there was also a special and 
 natural application of them. In his mind the one must 
 always keep up its connexion with the other. The 
 actual family with its actual relations must be main- 
 tained. Any thing which assumed relationship and 
 made light of this, he soon learnt to regard with in- 
 difference, even with hostility. The monk and the 
 friar, therefore, however they might be endured by the 
 highest class, reverenced by the lowest, were always 
 viewed by him with something of jealousy and aversion. 
 For the upper clergy, as removed from sympathies 
 with common life, he had little regard; the secular 
 clergy, the parsons of the towns, were his guides and 
 teachers. They were English, and grew more English 
 by their association with him. He forgave them for 
 being celibates ; but he could not understand why such 
 a restriction had been imposed on them, and regarded 
 with suspicion and dislike those who had invented it. 
 
 I am describing a class which you will at once 
 recognise as belonging both to England and Scotland, 
 
332 INFLUENCE OF KOME AND GERMANY [lECT. 
 
 tlie class wliicli sympathised wifh the movement of 
 Wycliffe and received his translation of the Bible as 
 their book, dear to them as the pledge of their national 
 existence, the witness that a divine voice was speak- 
 ing directly to them and their kings, not at second- 
 hand through any vicegerent. But indications similar 
 to these, though not the same, were to be seen in all the 
 Teutonic nations during the fourteenth century ; adapt- 
 ing themselves to the previous habits and feelings of 
 the countries in which they arose ; everywhere having 
 the same origin, giving rise to the same murmurs, leading 
 onwards to the same results. The trade fraternities, — 
 the awaking in them of a peculiarly domestic feeling and 
 a peculiarly national feeling, — their conspiracy against 
 the hierarchy which boasted of being universal, — these 
 belong, at least, to all the northern nations of Europe 
 at this period ; under certain considerable modifications, 
 probably to the Latin nations also. But from the 
 character of the movement, it must be contemplated in 
 each separate country ; the attempt to represent it as I 
 did the Christendom movement of the former time, 
 must fail. 
 
 In the fifteenth century the scene is changed. Then 
 we see again a general European impulse at work ; but 
 at work in the Latin countries more than in the Teu- 
 tonic, among the scholars far more than among the 
 people. It is apparently an impulse, even a vehement 
 impulse, towards reformation. The great Latin councils 
 cry out that there is corruption both in the head and in 
 the members. They undertake to set things right by 
 such means as they know of, arguing about maxims of 
 
IV.] UPON MODERN EUEOPE. 333 
 
 ecclesiastical and state government, drawing wonderfully 
 subtle distinctions, ready to make strong decrees, though 
 there is some danger that the one of to-day may con- 
 tradict that of yesterday. What it strikes one that the 
 learned doctors of these councils have not discovered, is, 
 that the corruption which they saw appearing both in 
 head and members, was a corruption of the blood, which 
 no amputation of limbs, no substitution of the best and 
 most flexible wooden or cork limbs for those which 
 should be cut off, was likely to remove. A deep, per- 
 vading, penetrating immorality in ecclesiastics as much 
 as in laymen, — a low, grovelling moral habit, which was 
 worse than the acts that proceeded from it, — these pre- 
 sent themselves to every student of that period, and if 
 he is a true and earnest man, make him loathe the con- 
 troversies relating to external arrangements, which might 
 have been altered and re-altered a thousand times, and 
 left society just as it was before. 
 
 It is not w^onderful that men have turned with satis- 
 faction from this spectacle, to observe that other Euro- 
 pean movement of the time, which we describe by the 
 name ' Revival of Letters.' It is not wonderful that 
 Popes and dignified ecclesiastics, if they had some 
 human sense and feeling, even though they had not the 
 distinct political object of diverting men's thoughts from 
 evils that were palpable and that seemed incapable of 
 redress, should have thrown themselves eagerly into this 
 movement, willingly forsaking the ecclesiastical ques- 
 tions for its sake. We have been wont to say that, 
 in taking this course, they were doing their very best 
 for the civilization of Europe. Eecent writers have 
 
334 INFLUENCE OF HOME AND GERMANY [LECT. 
 
 somewliat vehemently contradicted tliat opinion, main- 
 taining that the civilization which they were promoting, 
 was at all events Pagan and not Christian, — that all 
 which had been strong and Christian in the previous 
 times, must now give way to the classical, — that the 
 Greek and Roman standard of heroism was to displace 
 the saintly ideal. Very strong feelings and very able 
 intellects are enlisted on both sides in this strife. It is 
 one which no person must omit to take notice of, who 
 ventures to speak on the subject of these Lectures. But 
 I am afraid that if I enter upon it, I must give almost 
 equal offence to each party. I cannot fall down and 
 worship Nicholas V. or Lorenzo the Magnificent, or 
 Leo X. I can as little bring myself to regret the 
 revival of Latin scholarship and Greek art, or not to 
 hail it as a very great step forwards in the divine and 
 moral education of the West. I cannot think that a 
 mere dilettantism and refinement, which satisfied no one 
 of the great national impulses that had been awakened 
 in the fourteenth century, which did nothing whatever 
 for the elevation of the mind of the people, w^hich 
 scorned the idea of liberty and popular life, which tole- 
 rated the basest intrigues and the darkest vices, which 
 concealed them, apologised for them, and allied itself 
 with them : I cannot conceive that this is a thing which 
 brave men are bound to admire, or which they can dare 
 to speak of, as if it had borne any great fruits for man- 
 kind. But on the other hand, I must think that this 
 dilettantism, poor and contemptible in itself, was dis- 
 covering or at least polishing weapons that were destined 
 to do mighty service for mankind, and partly by work- 
 
IV.] UPON MODERN EUROPE. 335 
 
 ing out its own destruction. Call tlie old literature 
 Classical or Pagan, or what you please, but it was a 
 literature that spoke of national life and energy, of 
 polities that were based upon principles and not upon 
 plots, of statesmen who were first men, of states that 
 were called into being by a divine voice and which 
 asserted their origin by the vengeance and fall which 
 overtook the human rulers who supposed they could 
 fashion the world at their pleasure. This literature, 
 with all its corruptions, spoke more clearly and dis- 
 tinctly of domestic life as lying at the foundation of 
 civil polity, than any monk, however high his ideal 
 might be, had been able to speak. No doubt, these 
 principles were so mixed with what contradicted them, 
 that they needed some light to explain their meaning 
 and clear away their perplexities. The new philology, 
 in bringing the Scriptm-es out of the dust of the schools 
 and setting forth their living, domestic, national records, 
 — where all is clear, free, inartificial, earthly because 
 heavenly, human because divine, — in contrast with the 
 learned commentaries and popular legends, provided 
 that light, sufficient for the guidance of the wayfarer 
 who had none of the other lore, the revealer of its 
 meaning and worth to those who had it. And there- 
 fore, though they thought it not, neither did it come 
 into their minds, I believe those who patronised the 
 new literature and the new art were doing much for 
 that highest and truest civilization, which is not apart 
 from national and domestic life, but of which they are 
 the sources and guardians. If Raphael fell, as we are 
 told he did, below elder painters in his standard of 
 
336 INFLUENCE OF EOME AND GERMANY [LECT. 
 
 devotion and holiness, I must think, without pretending 
 to any knowledge of the subject, that he was not only 
 more perfect than they were in his art, but that he did 
 much more to raise the human and domestic affections, 
 by exhibiting the purest model of them. I must think 
 also, that it was better and more for the honour of God, 
 that men should study the human form as He made 
 it, whether they derived the impulse to that study from 
 the Greeks or from any other people, than that they 
 should reconstruct it according to notions and fictions of 
 their own. Any passage out of the artificial to the 
 living and the real must, I conceive, have been a pas- 
 sage towards moral health and reformation. And I 
 cannot but think that a sound acquaintance with the 
 heartier life of the old Romans, such as the revival in 
 the fifteenth century enabled its students to obtain, 
 must have suggested some very frightful and yet not 
 altogether useless comparisons, with Rome as it was in 
 the days of Alexander VI. and Csesar Borgia. If the 
 one was called Pagan civilization and the other Chris- 
 tian, the young man of that age might be tempted to 
 prefer the earlier: but since he would do so because 
 the New Testament had taught him that he was bound 
 to hate what was clearly of the devil, and to refer 
 everything which had in it the taste and savour of 
 truth to God, one would hope that the conflict of mind^ 
 however terrible for a while, would at last bring him ta 
 love that book best which testified against all ^Tong, 
 and most vehemently against that which assumed the 
 divine livery and banner. 
 
 I have alluded to this contrast because I wish you 
 
IV.] UPON MODERN EUROPE. 337 
 
 not to forget that my especial business is witli Roman 
 civilization. I began this Lecture witli saying that 
 I could not separate that from German civilization, 
 though I looked upon them as distinct, markedly dis- 
 tinct, from each other. You will at once gather from 
 my previous remarks, that I regard the German Refor- 
 mation as a wonderful and blessed development of that 
 principle, of which I traced the working in our own 
 Saxon people. The more one feels the inefficiency of 
 the attempts at Reform of the Doctors in the councils of 
 Pisa and Constance, — the more heartily does one rejoice 
 in that Reform which began from a moral ground ; 
 which appealed to the conscience of the people ; which 
 advanced vigorously and triumphantly so long as it was 
 broad, homely, national, so long as it was bearing wit- 
 ness against the abominations of ecclesiastical practice^ 
 so long as it was vindicating the sacredness of marriage 
 and family life, so long as it was tearing down every 
 veil that obstructed the vision of an actual Brother and 
 Lord of men's spirits, so long as it rested all earthly 
 duties and obligations on a divine ground, making them, 
 the result and carrying out of the Will which rules the 
 universe. I need not remind you that the greatest ob- 
 struction to their progress, in the judgment of the 
 Reformers themselves, arose from the fanatics who sought 
 to overthrow the reverence for relationships, and to build 
 up a spiritual society which should dispense with them. 
 I need not remind you that any blots which we lament 
 over, and their adversaries triumph over, in their own 
 acts, arose from their inability to vindicate the sacredness 
 and dignity of these relationships as they desired to do, 
 
 z 
 
338 INFLUENCE OF EOME AND GEEMANY [lECT. 
 
 or from some unworthy compromise witli the errors 
 and sins of their patrons. The result of the history, 
 if one meditates on it thoughtfully and carefully, com- 
 paring it with that of previous and of subsequent times, 
 is one of extreme wonder and thankfulness, that such 
 a divine deliverance was effected for the world through 
 the old Saxon faith and reverence, from a state of 
 things which had become more utterly immoral heart- 
 less and godless than that of any period in the world's 
 history, — except, possibly, the reigns of the first seven 
 Caesars. But in spite of this wonder and gratitude, one 
 cannot but feel that something was wanting, which tliis 
 German movement did not supply, something to com- 
 bine with it and make it effectual. It seems as if the 
 Latin nations could not profit by it, as they might 
 have done, because the characteristic of the old Roman 
 civilization, — the reverence for fathers, — was but feebly 
 developed in it. This reverence had no doubt been 
 very imperfect in these nations ; but the recollection of 
 it had been kept alive by the name of the general father 
 of Christendom, — which they had been taught to asso- 
 ciate with the very existence of the Church. It certainly 
 needed to find some outlet and some fountain which the 
 German teachers had but obscurely pointed out. 
 
 The period between the Reformation and the French 
 Revolution would furnish, I think, plentiful confirma- 
 tions and illustrations of this remark, if I had time to 
 produce them. But I am anxious to dwell upon one 
 fact which ought to increase our sense of our national 
 blessings and responsibilities. That union of Roman 
 and German civilization which has been granted to the 
 
IV.] UPON MODERN EUROPE. 339 
 
 Scotch and Englisli, and wliicli prevents us from iden- 
 tifying ourselves with either class of the nations into 
 which we commonly divide Western Europe, has im- 
 parted to us more of the old patriarchal feeling than 
 belongs to the Protestant nations of the Continent; 
 while, at the same time, we have kept up, perhaps more 
 intensely than any of them, our conviction that it cannot 
 be satisfied in the way in which the purely Latin nations 
 are trying to satisfy it, and that though the fatherly prin- 
 ciple may be expansive enough for the whole of human 
 society, it never can exist while it is not owned as the 
 root of a pure domestic life. The belief in that last 
 truth, — in the inseparable connexion of the family with 
 whatever is right, manly, godly, in the life of the citizen, 
 — your ancestors, it seems to me, held more firmly 
 than ours. So solemn a subject, affecting us indivi- 
 dually as well as socially, ought to furnish an occasion 
 for any thing rather than flattery. I am not consciously 
 guilty of that sin when I use these words. For I speak 
 them with the most earnest conviction of the obligation 
 which is laid upon us one and all, not to dissipate such 
 an inheritance if it has indeed come down to us ; and 
 of the possibility, which becomes more manifest the 
 more we read history, — the more we consider our own 
 times, — that we may suffer that great and infinite loss 
 which other people have suffered, and may thereby be 
 deprived of all the blessings which we claim in the 
 names of Civilization and of Christianity. Before I con- 
 clude, I will illustrate my remark and the moral of it, 
 from another and more recent page of history. 
 
 z 2 
 
340 INFLUENCE OF EOME AND GERMANY [LECT. 
 
 There probably never was a society so brilliant as 
 that in France before the Revolution ; none in which 
 so many schemes of social life were discussed with so 
 much lightness and gracefulness. There probably never 
 was a time in which theorists dwelt so little upon the 
 human relationships, in which the practical indifference 
 to them was greater. Yet when the earthquake came 
 which shook France and all the Latin nations, far more 
 than the Revolution of the sixteenth century had shaken 
 the German, the first word that one hears is the word 
 Brotherhood; all men of all classes are to embrace 
 each other as brothers. How they were to do so, no one 
 could tell them ; how brotherhood could be prevented 
 from leading to mutual destruction, was a lesson which 
 statesmen and philosophers had not learnt. The very 
 name seemed to terrify them, as if it was one which 
 they had never heard before, as if all disorder and 
 destruction were involved in it. Still it did burst out 
 of the hearts of the very lowest people. They had 
 been taught other phrases and symbols which they could 
 repeat and use occasionally ; this was the one they clung 
 to habitually ; this lived on amidst the death of consti- 
 tutions, lived on through the fires which it seemed itself 
 to have kindled. It terrified us in England and Scot- 
 land, often perhaps frightened us out of all propriety 
 and wisdom. But it did not exactly frighten us in the 
 same manner as it did the people on the Continent. For 
 by degrees the impression on our minds became stronger, 
 that fraternity was not a bad thing in itself, that it was 
 bad only because there needed something else to be joined 
 
IV.] UPON MODERN EUROPE. 341 
 
 witli it. Brotherhood seemed to lis a poor and miserahle 
 thing if it was separated from Fatherhood. Our old 
 Roman doctors had taught us that ; we had found from 
 a higher oracle what their dim and mysterious utter- 
 ances signified, to what they were pointing. It did not, 
 therefore, cause us any delight to see this belief of 
 fraternity trampled under foot by a military tyrant; 
 that might be necessary, might be beneficial on the 
 whole for the world ; at least it implied that there must 
 be a universal society somehow, and that a great Will 
 must rule it. But this kind of universal government, 
 this kind of Will, looked to us very unsightly ; this we 
 thought we were bound to struggle with and put down. 
 That this obligation is still laid upon us, that we 
 ought to encounter the evil principle which substitutes 
 mere sovereignty for fatherly authority, in whatever 
 form it embodies itself, against whatever persons it puts 
 forth its proud and godless pretensions, we are all, 
 I trust, convinced. We feel that we ought to show all 
 the tribes of the earth, that the true fatherly principle, 
 instead of involving abject slavery, is the ground of 
 all morality, of reciprocal rights and duties, of justice, 
 of freedom. We perceive that this service is due to 
 the Latin people of the West, who should belong to 
 the same Christendom and Family as ourselves ; is 
 due no less to the Mussulman, that we may teach him 
 what is wanting to make him one of that family. We 
 owe it, surely, even more to those who bow beneath 
 our sceptre, — to those in all parts of the world who have 
 found that there was no power in their arms or their 
 
342 INFLUENCE OF ROME AND GEEMANY [LECT. 
 
 traditions to resist tlie Saxon energy and enterprise. Of 
 these we have boasted enough. Must we not claim also 
 the other portion of our inheritance ? Must we not un- 
 derstand, whithersoever we go, that we are sent to the 
 different races of the earth with a message, not that the 
 West is to rule the East, not that British notions and 
 traditions are to displace those in which they have 
 grown up, hut that the Malay and the Hindoo have a 
 right to claim the same Father as the Roman and the 
 Goth, because He has claimed them for His children? 
 Beginning from the highest truth which the old Koman 
 saw dimly through his family institutions, and pro- 
 claiming it simply and broadly as it was proclaimed by 
 those who overthrew the Boman Pantheon and laid the 
 foundation of Christendom, we may be permitted to 
 establish a domestic and a national life in countries 
 where it has never existed, to restore it where it is 
 withered and almost dead through the want of some 
 sustaining principle. Thus we may exercise over an 
 empire as wide as that of the Boman, the very influence 
 which he needed to bind his provinces together, for the 
 absence of which no arms and no laws could com- 
 pensate. 
 
 We cannot despair of any nation of the world, though 
 its condition may look ever so mournful from its bar- 
 barism, or its false and fading civilization, or its insincere 
 religion, while we believe that there is in the highest 
 Will an inexhaustible energy which is always at work 
 to create and to regenerate. But we shall despair for 
 all nations, we shall despair for ourselves, if we believe 
 
lY.] UPON MODERN EUKOPE. 343 
 
 tliat any macliineiy secular or religious, tliat any bene- 
 volence or wisdom of ours, can quicken human society 
 generally, can quicken any, — the most fortunate, — portion 
 of it. Whilst we cherish that delusion, no distant vision 
 will look so ghastly and terrible, as that which is daily 
 before our eyes. The thought of our own population 
 will mock us, defy us, madden us, more than the thought 
 of the multitudes who worship Kali and Juggernaut. 
 Before the actual dense wretchedness, physical and 
 moral, of our streets, the appliances of states, the 
 schemes and dogmas of philosophers and divines, are 
 discomfited and put to flight. But no one experiment 
 begun in the faith that there is a fatherly . government 
 over the world, no one attempt to prove that it exists 
 and to connect it with human relationships, has failed. 
 Its success has not fallen short of our dreams; it tran- 
 scends them immeasurably. Every such experiment 
 demonstrates that, if Christian men were as honest as 
 the old Romans, and believed as much in the words that 
 they speak, every household in the land might be as 
 noble, because it might as fully realize the union between 
 the divine and the human fatherhood, as that which 
 has been made dear to the hearts of Scotchmen and of 
 Englishmen by ' The Cotter's Saturday Night.' 
 
 It has been impossible not to recollect this great 
 utterance of one of your own prophets, whilst I have 
 been speaking of domestic and national greatness. And 
 it has been dithcult, while I have been speaking of the 
 perpetuity of the Roman dominion under its different 
 phases, not to think of another prophecy, a prophecy in 
 
344 INFLUENCE OF ROME AND GERMANY [LECT. 
 
 the more usual and modern sense of the word, which 
 went out from your city, and which has awakened some 
 speculations, possibly also some searchings of heart, on 
 both sides of the Tweed, if not on the banks of the 
 Tiber. You will easily suppose that I allude to an 
 oracle which is stamped with the high authority of your 
 representative. He looks forward to a time when an 
 artist shall be sketching the ruins of St. Paul's from a 
 broken arch of London Bridge. In that time he expects 
 that the Vatican may still be standing in all its glory. 
 There are those who have complained of this sentence, 
 as unpatriotic, and as offering encouragement to those 
 who hate us. I cannot join in that censure. I cannot 
 conceive that a patriot has any higher duty than to 
 remind his countrymen of the instability of their mere 
 material greatness, to tell them that the buildings which 
 bear witness of the extent and mightiness of their com- 
 merce may fall along with those in which they and their 
 fathers have worshipped. Would to God that the image 
 of that future painter rose oftener before us, to remind 
 us that every single person in the crowds whicli are 
 passing every hour and moment over London Bridge, — 
 that every man who has knelt in St. Paul's before or 
 since the fire, — has an immortality which does not belong 
 to ships or towers or temples ! The objection to Mr. 
 Macaulay's words might have taken and may still take 
 another form. If posterity does not deal more gently 
 with that which our age leaves behind it, than we have 
 dealt with the works of our forefathers, the critic of some 
 distant period may affirm that one of our most illustrious 
 
JV.] UPON MODEEN EUROPE. 345 
 
 cotemporaries was so misled by liis prejudices against 
 the men of another nation and another faith, that he 
 fancied he could persuade them, — with all the memorials 
 of ruin before their eyes, with words that intimate the 
 perishableness of all mortal things continually on their 
 lipsj — that the houses which they now inhabit have some 
 special exemption from the general law, and that the 
 palaces of popes will have a duration which has been 
 denied to the palaces of emperors. We may be sure that 
 there was no such uncharitable judgment or purpose, in 
 the mind of the eloquent writer when he gave forth 
 these sentiments. We may take it for granted that he 
 only wished to impress us, by a contrast which would 
 strike us as more vivid and startling than any other, with 
 a lesson respecting ourselves which we have all need to 
 lay deeply to heart. You would not feel that he dimi- 
 nished his claims upon your esteem — you would feel 
 that he augmented them — if he told you, — perhaps he 
 has told you already, in words which you cannot forget, — 
 that even your city, notwithstanding its grand associations 
 with the forms of nature and with the records of history, 
 though every old and modern street in it reminds you 
 of warriors with sword and pen who have fought your 
 battles, may suffer that sentence which the greatest 
 cities of the world have suffered. If a stranger who 
 has no claim to speak to you at all but that which your 
 kindness has given him, — yet who is bound by that 
 kindness, by reverence for your past history, by strong 
 affection and gratitude to many of your living citizens, 
 to say not what is pleasant but what is true, — should 
 
346 INFLUENCE OF EOME AND GERMANY. [lECT. IV. 
 
 venture to recal that tliouglit to your minds, lie would 
 do so in the full conviction that neither E-ome nor Lon- 
 don nor Edinburgh will be suffered to fall, or to lose any 
 portion of its grandeur, till its work is done ; till He 
 who knows all things shall perceive that it is concealing 
 the prospect of the Eternal City, in which Italians, 
 Englishmen, Scotchmen, shall find then, may find now, 
 their common home, their Father's house. 
 
NOTES. 
 
 Note I. Page 211. 
 
 A VERY able and interesting article, on the Study of History, in 
 the "Westminster Heview for October last, contains a statement 
 respecting the coincidence of Koman greatness with a belief in utter 
 falsehoods nearly identical with that in the text. I had not read this 
 paper at the time I wrote the Lecture. I recommend it to the 
 serious consideration of the historical student, both for its substan- 
 tial merits, and because it is the best exposition of the opinion 
 wdiich I have endeavoured to refute. I would acquit the accom- 
 plished author of any indifference to truth ; I believe he loves it 
 heartily ; though I feel that if I adopted his conclusion, I should 
 despair of ever finding it, and should regard the whole universe as a 
 great lie. 
 
 Note II. Page 211. 
 
 The passage from Niebuhr's letter, which I took from Miss 
 Winkworth's excellent translation, will be found in vol. ii. pp. 385) 
 3S6, of the German Life. The passage stands thus in the 
 original : — 
 
 ' AVenn man an die alten Rbmer zuriickdenkt, welehe cine Ueli- 
 ' gion der reinsten Wahrhaftigkeit, der Treue und Redlichkeit 
 
 * beherrschte : — das kommt einem hier am allerwunderlichsten vor. 
 
 * Wii'd es mir ja moglich meine Geschichie fortzusetzen, so werde 
 
348 KOTES. 
 
 ' icli es wagen, zeugniss zu gebeu, wie diese Religion, die ganz 
 
 * etwas anderes als Stoicismus war, die Grosse der alten repub- 
 
 * licanisclien Zeit begriindet hat, und das gauze Leben der Ver- 
 
 * fassung von ilir abhing.' 
 
 Note HI. Page 213—218. 
 
 The passages from Savigny to which I have referred will be found 
 in his * System des heutigen Romischen Rechts,' book ii. chap. i. § 53, 
 (especially pp. 341, 342, of vol. i. of the Ed. 1840 ;) and in the 
 whole of § 54, (especially pp. 350 and 351, with the notes P. and G.) 
 
 Note IV. Page 231. 
 
 The passage from Ovid is in the Pasti, book vi. 1. 267, be- 
 ginning — 
 
 ' Vesta eadem est quae terra.' 
 
 Note V. Page 258. 
 
 I have not done justice to the book On the Nature of the Gods, 
 nor to the part which Cotta plays in it, in that I have not quoted 
 the very remarkable passage in Chapter xxxii. of Book I. ; in which 
 he makes the all-important distinction between the notion tliat the 
 gods are made in the image of men, and that men are made in the 
 image of the gods. I do not know many modern authors in whom 
 one can find five lines of such pregnant theology as these : * Nee 
 
 * vero intelligo, cur maluerit Epicurus deos hominum similes dicere, 
 
 * quam homines deorum. Quaeres, quid intersit. Si enim hoc illi 
 
 * simile sit, esse illud huic. Video ; sed hoc dico, non ab hominibus 
 
 * form 86 figuram venisse ad deos : dii enim semper fuerunt ; nati 
 
 * numquam sunt, si quidem seterni sunt futuri ; at homines nati: ante 
 
 * igitur humana forma, quam homines, ea, qua erant forma dii im- 
 ' mortales. Non ergo illorum humana forma, sed nostra divina 
 ' dicenda est.' 
 
 I would also invite the reader's attention to the very beautiful 
 
NOTES. 349 
 
 passage, in which Cotta argues that Epicurus necessarily undermined 
 Worship, however he might appear to cultivate it, when he divorced 
 the idea of the gods from the idea of grace and love : ' Quum enim 
 ' optimam et prsestantissimam naturam dei dicat esse, negat idem 
 ' esse in deo gratiam. ToUit id, quod maxime proprium est optimas 
 
 * prsestautissimseque naturae Vos autem quid mali datis, quum 
 
 ' in imbecillitate gratificationem et benevolentiam ponitis ! Ut enim 
 ' omittani vim et naturam deorum : ne homines quidem censetis, nisi 
 
 * imbecilli essent, futuros beneficos et benignos fuisse ? Nulla est 
 ' caritas naturalis inter bonos ? Carum ipsum verbum est amoris, ex 
 ' quo amicitise nomen est ductum ; quam si ad fructum nostrum 
 ' referemus, non ad illius commoda, quern diligimus, non erit ista 
 ' amicitia, sed mercatura quaedam utilitatum suarum. Prata et arva 
 ' et pecudum greges diliguntur isto modo, quod fructus ex eis 
 ' capiuntur: hominum caritas et amicitia gratuita est. Quanto igitur 
 
 * magis deorum, qui nulla re egentes et inter se diligunt et homini- 
 
 * bus consulunt.' 
 
 The author of these sentiments represents the doctrine — if it has 
 a representative among Cicero's friends, or honest men — that all 
 religions are equally false to the Philosopher, and equally useful^to 
 the Mas;istrate ! 
 
 Note VI. Page 262. 
 
 I have preferred to give my total' impression of the Book on 
 Divination rather than to quote a number of distinct passages. The 
 one which I have quoted, from the close of the second book, must not 
 be taken as representing the spirit of the treatise, but rather as quali- 
 fying and controlling the sentiments which both the Ciceros had 
 uttered in the course of it. It is clear that Cicero had utterly lost 
 faith in divinations, but that there was something in divination 
 which he felt to be indispensable to the state, not because it was 
 false, but because it was true. He may have often hesitated him- 
 self whether this was his reason. He may often in worse moods 
 have attributed to himself another. But there is a Philip sober to 
 whom we may always appeal from Philip druuk, a man and therefore [^^' 
 a statesman, who is always better than the politician. 
 
350 NOTES. 
 
 Note YIL Page 263. 
 
 The memorable passage respecting the impossibility of thanking 
 the Gods for the gift of virtue, is found in ' De Nat. Deorum.' 
 lib. iii. c. 36. 
 
 Note YIII. Page 265. 
 
 See ' Republic,' lib. i. c. 36. I do not see any proof that the 
 passage in Lactantius was derived from this chapter. If it was, 
 the quotation was made by the Christian Pather for a purpose which 
 might not be Cicero's purpose. It is surely much safer, therefore, 
 to adhere to the original, however imperfect and mutilated it may 
 be. To my mind it proves that the King and Pather of whom Scipio 
 speaks is more than the sole monarch to whom the different philo- 
 sophers quoted by the African divine are said to bear witness. 
 
 Note IX. Page 271. 
 
 It is scarcely necessary that I should urge the reader to turn for 
 himself to the passage from Lucretius, of which I have given so 
 bald a version. It is contained in the lines between 342 and 370 of 
 the second book. 
 
 ' Prseterea genus humanum,' &c. 
 
 Note X. Page 327. 
 
 Pleury reports the conversation between the Pope and John of 
 Salisbury (taking his narrative from the latter) with the malicious 
 pleasure of a Gallican. See Histoire Ecclesiastique, liv. xvi. c. 15, 
 A.D. 1156. 
 
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