Chapter LXXXIII (4)

It was Saturday, and a half holiday, when we arrived at Yverdun, and oh the confusion of tongues which there prevailed! All Bedlam and Parnassus let loose to rave together, could not have come up to that diapason of discords with which the high corridors were ringing, as, passing through the throng, we were conducted to the venerable head of the establishment in his private apartments beyond. In this gallery of mixed portraits might be seen long-haired, highborn, and high-cheek-boned Germans; a scantling of French _gamins_ much better dressed; some dark-eyed Italians; Greeks in most foreign attire; here and there a fair ingenuous Russian face; several swart sinister-looking Spaniards, models only for their own Carravagio; some dirty specimens of the universal Pole; one or two unmistakeable English, ready to shake hands with a compatriot; and Swiss from every canton of the Helvetic confederacy. To this promiscuous multitude we were shortly introduced, the kind old man himself taking us by the hand, and acting as master of the ceremonies. When the whole school had crowded round to stare at the new importation, "Here," said he, "are four English boys come from their distant home, to be naturalised in this establishment, and made members of our family. Boys, receive them kindly, and remember they are henceforth your brothers." A shout from the crowd proclaiming its ready assent and cordial participation in the adoption, nothing remained but to shake hands _à l'Anglaise_, and to fraternise without loss of time. The next day being Sunday, our skulls were craniologically studied by Herr Schmidt, the head usher; and whatever various bumps or depressions phrenology might have discovered thereon were all duly registered in a large book. After this examination was concluded, a week's furlough was allowed, in order that Herr Schmidt might have an opportunity afforded him of seeing how far our real character squared with phrenological observation and measurement, entering this also into the same ledger as a note. What a contrast were we unavoidably drawing all this time between Yverdun and Westminster, and how enjoyable was the change to us! The reader will please to imagine as well as he can, the sensations of a lately pent up chrysalis, on first finding himself a butterfly, or the not less agreeable surprise of some newly metamorphosed tadpole, when, leaving his associates in the mud and green slime, he floats at liberty on the surface of the pool, endowed with lungs and a voice,--if he would at all enter into the exultation of our feelings on changing the penitential air of Millbank for the fresh mountain breezes of the Pays de Vaud. It seemed as if we had--nay, we had actually entered upon a new existence, so thoroughly had all the elements of the old been altered and improved. If we looked back, and compared past and present experiences, there, at the wrong end of the mental telescope, stood that small dingy house, in that little mis-yclept Great Smith Street, with its tiny cocoon of a bedroom, whilom our close and airless prison; here, at the other end, and in immediate contact with the eye, a noble chateau, full of roomy rooms, enough and to spare. Another retrospective peep, and _there_ was Tothill Fields, and its seedy cricket ground; and _here_, again, a level equally perfect, but carpeted with fine turf, and extending to the margin of a broad living lake, instead of terminating in a nauseous duck-pond; while the cold clammy cloisters adjoining Dean's Yard were not less favourably replaced by a large open airy play-ground, intersected by two clear trout-streams--and a sky as unlike that above Bird-Cage Walk as the interposed atmosphere was different; whilst, in place of the startling, discordant _Keleusmata_ of bargees, joined to the creaking, stunning noise of commerce in a great city, few out-of-door sounds to meet our ear, and these few, with the exception of our own, all quiet, pastoral, and soothing, such as, later in life, make

"Silence in the heart
For thought to do her part,"

and which are not without their charm even to him "who whistles as he goes for _want_ of thought." No wonder, then, if Yverdun seemed Paradisaical in its landscapes. Nor was this all. If the views outside were charming, our domestic and social relations within doors were not less pleasing. At first, the unwelcome vision of the _late_ head-master would sometimes haunt us, clad in his flowing black D.D. robes--"tristis severitas in vultu, atque in verbis fides," looking as if he intended to flog, and his words never belying his looks. That terrible Olympian arm, raised and ready to strike, was again shadowed forth to view; while we could almost fancy ourselves once more at that judicial table, one of twenty boys who were to draw lots for a "hander." How soothingly, then, came the pleasing consciousness, breaking our reverie, that a very different person was _now_ our head-master--a most indulgent old man whom we should meet ere long, with hands uplifted, indeed, but only for the purpose of clutching us tight while he inflicted a salute on both cheeks, and pronounced his affectionate _guten morgen, liebes kind_, as he hastened on to bestow the like fatherly greeting upon every pupil in turn.

THE DORMITORY.

The sleeping apartments at the chateau occupied three of the four sides of its inner quadrangle, and consisted of as many long rooms, each with a double row of windows; whereof one looked into the aforesaid quadrangle, while the opposite rows commanded, severally, views of the garden, the open country, and the Grande Place of the town. They were accommodated with sixty uncurtained stump bedsteads, fifty-nine of which afforded _gîte_ to a like number of boys; and one, in no respect superior to the rest, was destined to receive the athletic form of Herr Gottlieb, son-in-law to Vater Pestalozzi, to whose particular charge we were consigned during the hours of the night. These bedrooms, being as lofty as they were long, broad, and over-furnished with windows, were always ventilated; but the in-draught of air, which was sufficient to keep them cool during the hottest day in summer, rendered them cold, and sometimes _very_ cold, in the winter. In that season, accordingly, especially when the _bise_ blew, and hail and sleet were pattering against the casements, the compulsory rising to class by candlelight was an ungenial and unwelcome process; for which, however, there being no remedy, the next best thing was to take it as coolly, we were going to say--_that of course_--but, as patiently as might be. The disagreeable anticipation of the _réveil_ was frequently enough to scare away sleep from our eyes a full hour before the command to jump out of bed was actually issued. On such occasions we would lie awake, and, as the time approached, begin to draw in our own breath, furtively listening, not without trepidation, to the loud nose of a distant comrade, lest its fitful stertor should startle another pair of nostrils, on whose repose that of the whole dormitory depended. Let Æolus and his crew make what tumult they liked inside or outside the castle--_they_ disturbed nobody's dreams--_they_ never murdered sleep. Let them pipe and whistle through every keyhole and crevice of the vast _enceinte_ of the building--sigh and moan as they would in their various imprisonments of attic or corridor; howl wildly round the great tower, or even threaten a forcible entry at the windows, nobody's ears were scared into unwelcome consciousness by sounds so familiar to them all. It was the expectation of a blast louder even than theirs that would keep our eyes open--a blast about to issue from the bed of Herr Gottlieb, and thundering enough, when it issued, to startle the very god of winds himself! Often, as the dreaded six A.M. drew nigh, when the third quarter past five had, ten minutes since, come with a sough and a rattle against the casements, and still Gottlieb slept on, we would take courage, and begin to dream with our eyes open, that his slumbers might be prolonged a little; his face, turned upwards, looked so calm, the eyes so resolutely closed--every feature so perfectly at rest. It could not be more than five minutes to six--might not he who had slept _so long_, for once _over_sleep himself? NEVER! However placid those slumbers might be, they invariably forsook our "unwearied one" just as the clock was on the point of striking six. To judge by the rapid twitchings--they almost seemed galvanic--first of the muscles round the mouth, then of the nose and eyes, it appeared as though some ill-omened dream, at that very nick of time, was sent periodically, on purpose to awaken him; and, if so, it certainly never returned ~apraktos~. Gottlieb would instantly set to rubbing his eyes, and as the hour struck, spring up wide awake in his shirt sleeves--thus destroying every lingering, and, as it always turned out, ill-founded hope of a longer snooze. Presently we beheld him jump into his small-clothes, and, when sufficiently attired to be seen, unlimber his tongue, and pour forth a rattling broadside--_Auf, kinder! schwind!_--with such precision of delivery, too, that few sleepers could turn a deaf ear to it. But, lest any one should still lurk under his warm coverlet out of earshot, at the further end of the room, another and a shriller summons to the same effect once more shakes the walls and windows of the dormitory. Then every boy knew right well that the last moment for repose was past, and that he must at once turn out shivering from his bed, and dress as fast as possible; and it was really surprising to witness how rapidly all could huddle on their clothes under certain conditions of the atmosphere!

In less than five minutes the whole school was dressed, and Gottlieb, in his sounding shoes, having urged the dilatory with another admonitory _schwind, schwind!_ has departed, key and candle in hand, to arouse the remaining sleepers, by ringing the "Great Tom" of the chateau. So cold and cheerless was this matutinal summons, that occasional attempts were made to evade it by simulated headach, or, without being quite so specific, on the plea of general indisposition, though it was well known beforehand what the result would be. Herr Gottlieb, in such a case, would presently appear at the bedside of the delinquent patient, with very little compassion in his countenance, and, in a business tone, proceed to inquire from him, Why not up?--and on receiving for reply, in a melancholy voice, that the would-be invalid was _sehr krank_, would instantly pass the word for the doctor to be summoned. That doctor--we knew him well, and every truant knew--was a quondam French army surgeon--a sworn disciple of the Broussais school, whose heroic remedies at the chateau resolved themselves into one of two--_i. e._, a starve or a vomit, alternately administered, according as the idiosyncracy of the patient, or as this or that symptom turned the scale, now in favour of storming the stomach, now of starving it into capitulation. Just as the welcome hot mess of bread and milk was about to be served to the rest, this dapper little Sangrado would make his appearance, feel the pulse, inspect the tongue, ask a few questions, and finding, generally, indications of what he would term _une légère gastrite_, recommend _diète absolue_; then prescribing a mawkish _tisane_, composed of any garden herbs at hand, and pocketing lancets and stethoscope, would leave the patient to recover _sans calomel_--a mode of treatment to which, he would tell us, we should certainly have been subjected in our own country. Meanwhile, the superiority of _his_ plan of treatment was unquestionable. On the very next morning, when he called to visit his _cher petit malade_, an empty bed said quite plainly, "Very well, I thank you, sir, and in class." But these feignings were comparatively of rare occurrence; in general, all rose, dressed, and descended together, just as the alarum-bell had ceased to sound; and in less than two minutes more all were assembled in their respective class-rooms. The rats and mice, which had had the run of these during the night, would be still in occupation when we entered; and such was the audacity of these vermin that none cared _alone_ to be the first to plant a candle on his desk. But, by entering _en masse_, we easily routed the _Rodentia_, whose forces were driven to seek shelter behind the wainscot, where they would scuffle, and gnaw, and scratch, before they finally withdrew, and left us with blue fingers and chattering teeth to study to make the best of it. Uncomfortable enough was the effort for the first ten minutes of the session; but by degrees the hopes of a possible warming of hands upon the surface of the Dutch stoves after class, if they should have been lighted in time, and at any rate the certainty of a hot breakfast, were entertained, and brought their consolation; besides which, the being up in time to welcome in the dawn of the dullest day, while health and liberty are ours, is a pleasure in itself. There was no exception to it here; for when the darkness, becoming every moment less and less dark, had at length given way, and melted into a gray gloaming, we would rejoice, even before it appeared, at the approach of a new day. That approach was soon further heralded by the fitful notes of small day-birds chirping under the leaves, and anon by their sudden dashings against the windows, in the direction of the lights not yet extinguished in the class-rooms. Presently the pigs were heard rejoicing and contending over their fresh wash; then the old horse and the shaggy little donkey in the stable adjoining the styes, knowing by this stir that their feed was coming, snorted and brayed at the pleasant prospect. The cocks had by this time roused their sleepy sultanas, who came creeping from under the barn-door to meet their lords on the dunghill. Our peacock, to satisfy himself that he had not taken cold during the night, would scream to the utmost pitch of a most discordant voice; then the prescient goats would bleat from the cabins, and plaintively remind us that, till their door is unpadlocked, they can get no prog; then the punctual magpie, and his friend the jay, having hopped all down the corridor, would be heard screaming for broken victuals at the school-room door, till our dismissal bell, finding so many other tongues loosened, at length wags its own, and then for the next hour and a half all are free to follow their own devices. Breakfast shortly follows; but, alas! another cold ceremony must be undergone first. A preliminary visit to pump court, and a thorough ablution of face and hands, is indispensable to those who would become successful candidates for that long-anticipated meal. This bleaching process, at an icy temperature, was never agreeable; but when the pipes happened to be frozen--a contingency by no means unfrequent--and the snow in the yard must be substituted for the water which was not in the pump, it proved a difficult and sometimes a painful business; especially as there was always some uncertainty afterwards, whether the chilblained paws would pass muster before the inspector-general commissioned to examine them--who, utterly reckless as to how the boys might "be off for soap," and incredulous of what they would fain attribute to the adust complexion of their skin, would require to have that assertion tested by a further experiment at the "pump head."

THE REFECTORY.

"Forbear to scoff at woes you cannot feel,
Nor mock the misery of a stinted meal."--CRABBE.

The dietary tables at the chateau, conspicuous alike for the paucity and simplicity of the articles registered therein, are easily recalled to mind. The fare they exhibited was certainly _coarse_--though, by a euphemism, it might have been termed merely _plain_--and spare withal. The breakfast would consist of milk and water--the first aqueous enough without dilution, being the produce of certain ill-favoured, and, as we afterwards tasted their flesh, we may add ill-flavoured kine, whose impoverished lacteals could furnish out of their sorry fodder no better supplies. It was London sky-blue, in short, but not of the Alderney dairy, which was made to serve our turn at Yverdun. This milk, at seven in summer, and at half-past seven in winter, was transferred boiling, and as yet unadulterated, into earthenware mixers, which had been previously half-filled with hot water from a neighbouring kettle. In this half-and-half state it was baled out for the assembled school into a series of pewter platters, ranged along the sides of three bare deal boards, some thirty feet long by two wide, and mounted on tressels, which served us for tables. The ministering damsels were two great German Fraus, rejoicing severally in the pleasing names of Gretchen and Bessie. When Frau Gretchen, standing behind each boy, had dropt her allowance of milk over his right shoulder--during which process there was generally a mighty clatter for full measure and fair play--the other Frau was slicing off her slices of bread from a brown loaf a yard long, which she carried under her arm, and slashed clean through with wonderful precision and address. It was now for all those who had saved pocket-money for _menus-plaisirs_ to produce their _cornets_ of cinnamon or sugar, sprinkle a little into the milk, and then fall to sipping and munching with increased zest and satisfaction. So dry and chaffy was our _pain de ménage_ that none ventured to soak it entire, or at once, but would cut it into _frustrums_, and retain liquid enough to wash down the boluses separately. In a few minutes every plate was completely cleaned out and polished; and the cats, that generally entered the room as we left it, seldom found a drop with which they might moisten their tongues, or remove from cheeks and whiskers the red stains of murdered mice on which they had been breaking their fast in the great tower. So much for the earliest meal of the day, which was to carry us through five hours, if not of laborious mental study, at least of the incarceration of our bodies in class, which was equally irksome to them as if our minds had been hard at work. These five hours terminated, slates were once more insalivated and put by clean, and the hungry garrison began to look forward to the pleasures of the noon-day repast. The same bell that had been calling so often to class would now give premonitory notice of dinner, but in a greatly changed tone. In place of the shrill snappish key in which it had all the morning jerked out each short unwelcome summons from lesson to lesson, as if fearful of ringing one note beyond the prescribed minute, it now would take time, vibrate far and wide in its cage, give full scope to its tongue, and appear, from the loud increasing swell of its prolonged _oyez_, to announce the message of good cheer like a herald conscious and proud of his commission. Ding-dong!--come along! Dinner's dishing!--ding-dong! _Da capo_ and _encore_! Then, starting up from every school-room form throughout the chateau, the noisy boys rushed pell-mell, opened all the doors, and, like emergent bees in quest of honey, began coursing up and down right busily between the _salle-à-manger_ and the kitchen--snuffing the various aromas as they escaped from the latter into the passage, and inferring from the amount of exhaled fragrance the actual progress of the preparations for eating. Occasionally some "sly Tom" would peep into the kitchen, while the Fraus were too busy to notice him, and watch the great cauldron that had been milked dry of its stores in the morning, now discharging its aqueous contents of a much-attenuated _bouillon_--the surface covered with lumps of swimming bread, thickened throughout with a hydrate of potatoes, and coloured with coarse insipid carrots, which certainly gave it a savoury appearance. It was not good broth--far from it, for it was both _sub_-greasy and _super_-salted; but then it was hot, it was thick, and there was an abundant supply. It used to gush, as we have said, from the great stop-cock of the cauldron, steaming and sputtering, into eight enormous tureens. The shreds of beef, together with whatever other solids remained behind after the fluid had been drawn off, were next fished up from the abyss with long ladles, and plumped into the decanted liquor. The young _gastronome_ who might have beheld these proceedings would wait till the lid was taken off the _sauerkraut_; and then, the odour becoming overpoweringly appetising, he would run, as by irresistible instinct, into the dining-room, where most of the boys were already assembled, each with a ration of brown bread in his hand, and ready for the Fraus, who were speedily about to enter. The dinner was noisy and _ungenteel_ in the extreme--how could it be otherwise? _ventre affamé n'a point d'oreilles._ Hardly was the German grace concluded, and the covers removed, when that bone of contention, the marrow bone, was caught up by some big boy near the top of the table, and became the signal for a general row. All in his neighbourhood would call out second, third, fourth, fifth, &c., for said bone; and thus it would travel from plate to plate, yielding its contents freely to the two or three first applicants, but wholly inadequate--unless it could have resolved itself altogether into marrow--to meet all the demands made upon its stores. Then arose angry words of contention, which waxed hot as the marrow waxed cold, every candidate being equally vociferous in maintaining the priority of his particular claim. Earnest appeals in German, French, Spanish, English, &c., were bandied from one to the other in consequence, as to who had really said _après toi_ first! At last the "dry bone" was found undeserving of further contention; and, ceasing to drop any more fatness upon any boy's bread, the competition for it was dropt too. When now we had half-filled our stomachs with a soup which few physicians would have withheld from their fever patients on the score of its strength, we threw in a sufficiency of bread and _sauerkraut_ to absorb it; and, after the post-prandial German grace had been pronounced, the boys left the table, generally with a saved crust in their pockets, to repair to the garden and filch--if it was filching--an alliaceous dessert from the beds, which they washed in the clear stream, and added, without fear of indigestion, to the meal just concluded within the chateau. Most of us throve upon this Spartan diet; but some delicate boys, unendowed with the ostrich power of assimilation usual at that period--for boys, like ostriches, can digest almost anything--became deranged in their chylopoietics, and continued to feel its ill effects in mesenteric and other chronic ailments for years afterwards. An hour was given for stomachs to do their work, before we reassembled to ours in the class-room. At half-past four precisely, a _gouté_, was served out, which consisted of a whacking slice of bread, and either a repetition of the morning's milk and water, or _café au lait_, (without sugar "_bien entendu_,") or twenty-five walnuts, or a couple of ounces of strong-tasted _gruyère_, or a plateful of _schnitz_ (cuttings of dried apples, pears, and plums). We might choose any one of these several dainties we liked, but not more. Some dangerous characters--not to be imitated--would occasionally, while young Frau Schmidt stood doling out the supplies from her cupboard among the assembled throng, make the disingenuous attempt to obtain cheese with one hand and _schnitz_ with the other. But the artifice, we are happy to say, seldom succeeded; for that vigilant lady, quick-eyed and active, and who, of all things, hated to be imposed upon, would turn round upon the false claimant, and bid him hold up both his hands at once--which he, ambidexter as he was, durst not do, and thus he was exposed to the laughter and jeers of the rest. At nine, the bell sounded a feeble call to a _soi-disant_ supper; but few of us cared for a basin of _tisane_ under the name of lentil soup--or a pappy potato, salted in the boiling--and soon after we all repaired to our bedrooms--made a noise for a short time, then undressed, and were speedily asleep under our _duvets_, and as sound, if not as musical, as tops.

Our common fare, as the reader has now seen, was sorry enough; but we had our Carnival and gala days as well as our Lent. Vater Pestalozzi's birthday, in summer, and the first day of the new year, were the most conspicuous. On each of these occasions we enjoyed a whole week's holiday; and as these were also the periods for slaughtering the pigs, we fed (twice a-year for a whole week!) upon black puddings and pork _à discretion_, qualified with a sauce of beetroot and vinegar, and washed down with a fluid really like small-beer.

CLASSES.

The school-rooms, which lay immediately under the dormitories on the ground-floor, consisted of a number of detached chambers, each of which issued upon a corridor. They were airy--there was plenty of air at Yverdun--and lofty as became so venerable a building; but they were unswept, unscrubbed, peeled of their paint, and, owing to the little light that could find its way through two very small windows punched out of the fortress walls, presented, save at mid-day, or as the declining sun illumined momentarily the dark recess, as comfortless a set of interiors as you could well see. It required, indeed, all the elasticity of youth to bear many hours' daily incarceration in such black-holes, without participating in the pervading gloom. Such dismal domiciles were only fit resorts for the myoptic bat, who would occasionally visit them from the old tower; for the twilight horde of cockroaches, which swarmed along the floor, or the eight-eyed spiders who colonised the ceiling. The tender sight, too, of a patient just recovering from ophthalmia would here have required no factitious or deeper shade--but merits like these only rendered them as ungenial as possible to the physiology and feelings of their youthful occupants. If these apartments looked gloomy in their dilapidations and want of sun, the sombre effect was much heightened by the absence of the ordinary tables and chairs, and whatever else is necessary to give a room a habitable appearance. Had an appraiser been commissioned to make out a complete list of the furniture and the fixtures together, a mere glance had sufficed for the inventory. In vain would his practised eye have wandered in quest of themes for golden sentences, printed in such uncial characters that all who run may read; in vain for the high-hung well-backed chart, or for any pleasing pictorial souvenirs of Æsop or the Ark--neither these nor the long "coloured Stream of Time," nor formal but useful views in perspective, adorned our sorry walls. No old mahogany case clicked in a corner, beating time for the class, and the hour up-striking loud that it should not be defrauded of its dues. No glazed globe, gliding round on easy axis, spun under its brassy equator to the antipodes on its sides being touched. No bright zodiac was there to exhibit its cabalistic figures in pleasing arabesques. In place of these and other well-known objects, here stood a line of dirty, much-inked desks, with an equally dirty row of attendant forms subjacent alongside. There was a scantling--it seldom exceeded a leash--of rickety rush-bottom chairs distributed at long intervals along the walls; a coal-black slate, pegged high on its wooden horse; a keyless cupboard, containing the various implements of learning, a dirty duster, a pewter plate with cretaceous deposits, a slop-basin and a ragged sponge;--and then, unless he had included the cobwebs of the ceiling, (not usually reckoned up in the furniture of a room,) no other movables remained. One conspicuous fixture, however, there was, a gigantic Dutch stove. This lumbering parallelogram, faggot-fed from the corridor behind, projected several feet into the room, and shone bright in the glaze of earthenware emblazonments. Around it we would sometimes congregate in the intervals of class: in winter to toast our hands and hind quarters, as we pressed against the heated tiles, with more or less vigour according to the fervency of the central fire; and in summer either to tell stories, or to con over the pictorial History of the Bible, which adorned its frontispiece and sides. We cannot say that every square exactly squared with even our schoolboy notions of propriety in its mode of teaching religious subjects; there was a Dutch quaintness in the illustrations, which would sometimes force a smile from its simplicity, at others shock, from its apparent want of decorum and reverence. Preeminent of course among the gems from Genesis, Adam and Eve, safe in innocency and "_naked_ truth," here walked unscathed amidst a menagerie of wild beasts--_there_, dressed in the costume of their fall, they quitted Eden, and left it in possession of tigers, bears, and crocodiles. Hard by on a smaller tile, that brawny "knave of clubs," Cain, battered down his brother at the altar; then followed a long picture-gallery of the acts of the patriarchs, and another equally long of the acts of the apostles. But, queer as many of these misconceptions might seem, they were nothing to the strange attempts made at dramatising the _parables_ of the New Testament--_e. g._ a stout man, staggering under the weight of an enormous beam which grows out of one eye, employs his fingers, assisted by the other, to pick out a black speck from the cornea of his neighbour. Here, an unclean spirit, as black as any sweep, issues from the mouth of his victim, with wings and a tail! Here again, the good Samaritan, turbaned like a Turk, is bent over the waylaid traveller, and pours wine and oil into his wounds from the mouths of two Florence flasks; there, the grain of mustard-seed, become a tree, sheltering already a large aviary in its boughs; the woman, dancing a hornpipe with the Dutch broom, has swept her house, and lo! the piece of silver that was lost in her hand; a servant, who is digging a hole in order to hide his lord's talent under a tree, is overlooked by a magpie and two crows, who are attentive witnesses of the deposit:--and many others too numerous to mention. So much for the empty school-room, but what's a hive without bees, or a school-room without boys? The reader who has peeped into it untenanted, shall now, if he pleases, be introduced, _dum fervet opus_ full and alive. Should he not be able to trace out very clearly the system at work, he will at least be no worse off than the bee-fancier, who hears indeed the buzzing, and sees a flux and reflux current of his winged confectioners entering in and passing out, but cannot investigate the detail of their labours any farther. In the Yverdun, as in the hymenopterus apiary, we swarmed, we buzzed, dispersed, reassembled at the sound of the bell, flocked in and flocked out, all the day long; exhibited much restlessness and activity, evincing that something was going on, but _what_, it would have been hard to determine. Here the comparison must drop. Bees buzz to some purpose; they know what they are about; they help one another; they work orderly and to one end,--

"How skilfully they build the cell,
How neat they spread the wax,
And labour hard to store it well
With the sweet food," &c. &c.

In none of these particulars did we resemble the "busy bee." This being admitted, our object in offering a few words upon the course of study pursued at the chateau is not with any idea of enlightening the reader as to anything really acquired during the long ten hours' session of each day; but rather to show how ten hours' imprisonment may be inflicted upon the body for the supposed advantage of the mind, and yet be consumed in "profitless labour, and diligence which maketh not rich;" to prove, by an exhibition of their opposites, that method and discipline are indispensable in tuition, and (if he will accept our "pathemata" for his "mathemata" and guides in the bringing up of his sons) to convince him that education, like scripture, admits not of private interpretation. Those who refuse to adopt the Catholic views of the age, and the general sense of the society in which they live, must blame themselves if they find the experiment of foreign schools a failure, and that they have sent their children "farther to fare worse."

And now to proceed to the geography class, which was the first after breakfast, and began at half-past eight. As the summons-bell sounded, the boys came rushing and tumbling in, and ere a minute had elapsed were swarming over, and settling upon, the high reading-desks: the master, already at his work, was chalking out the business of the hour; and as this took some little time to accomplish, the youngsters, not to sit unemployed, would be assiduously engaged in impressing sundry animal forms--among which the donkey was a favourite--cut out in cloth, and well powdered, upon one another's backs. When Herr G---- had finished his chalkings, and was gone to the corner of the room for his show-perch, a skeleton map of Europe might be seen, by those who chose to look that way, covering the slate: this, however, was what the majority of the assembly never dreamt of, or only dreamt they were doing. The class generally--though ready when called upon to give the efficient support of their tongues--kept their eyes to gape elsewhere, and, like Solomon's fool, had them where they had no business to be. The map, too often repeated to attract from its novelty, had no claim to respect on other grounds. It was one of a class accurately designated by that careful geographer, old Homer, as "~maps ou Kata Kosmon~." Coarse and clumsy, however, as it necessarily would be, it might still have proved of service had the boys been the draughtsmen. As it was, the following mechanically Herr G----'s wand to join in the general chorus of the last census of a city, the perpendicular altitude of a mountain, or the length and breadth of a lake, could obviously convey no useful instruction to any one. But, useful or otherwise, such was our _regime_,--to set one of from fifty to sixty lads, day after day, week after week, repeating facts and figures notorious to every little reader of penny guides to science, till all had the last statistical returns at their tongue's tip; and knew, when all was done, as much of what geography really meant as on the day of their first matriculation. Small wonder, then, if some should later have foresworn this study, and been revolted at the bare sight of a map! All our recollections of _map_, unlike those of _personal_ travel, are sufficiently distasteful. Often have we yawned wearily over them at Yverdun, when our eyes were demanded to follow the titubations of Herr G----'s magic wand, which, in its uncertain route, would skip from Europe to Africa and back again--_qui modo Thebas modo me ponit Athenis_; and our dislike to them since has increased amazingly. Does the reader care to be told the reason of this? Let him--in order to obtain the pragmatic sanction of some stiff-necked examiner--have to "get up" all the anastomosing routes of St Paul's several journeyings; have to follow those rebellious Israelites in all their wanderings through the desert; to draw the line round them when in Palestine; going from Dan to Beersheba, and "meting out the valley of Succoth;" or, finally, have to cover a large sheet of foolscap with a progressive survey of the spread of Christianity during the three first centuries--and he will easily enter into our feelings. To return to the class-room: The geographical lesson, though of daily infliction, was accurately circumscribed in its duration. Old Time kept a sharp look-out over his blooming daughters, and never suffered one hour to tread upon the heels or trench upon the province of a sister hour. Sixty minutes to all, and not an extra minute to any, was the old gentleman's impartial rule; and he took care to see it was strictly adhered to. As the clock struck ten, geography was shoved aside by the muse of mathematics. A sea of dirty water had washed out in a twinkling all traces of the continent of Europe, and the palimpsest slate presented a clean face for whatever figures might next be traced upon it.

The hour for Euclidising was arrived, and anon the black parallelogram was intersected with numerous triangles of the Isosceles and Scalene pattern; but, notwithstanding this promising _début_, we did not make much quicker progress here than in the previous lesson. How should we, who had not only the difficulties inseparable from the subject to cope with, but a much more formidable difficulty--viz. the obstruction which we opposed to each other's advance, by the plan, so unwisely adopted, of making all the class do the same thing, that they might keep pace together. It is a polite piece of folly enough for a whole party to be kept waiting dinner by a lounging guest, who chooses to ride in the park when he ought to be at his toilet; but we were the victims of a much greater absurdity, who lost what might have proved an hour of profitable work, out of tenderness to some incorrigibly idle or Boeotian boy, who could not get over the Pons Asinorum, (every proposition was a _pons_ to some _asinus_ or other,) and so made those who were over stand still, or come back to help him across. Neither was this, though a very considerable drawback, our only hindrance--the guides were not always safe. Sometimes he who acted in that capacity would shout "Eureka" too soon; and having undertaken to lead the van, lead it astray till just about, as he supposed, to come down upon the proof itself, and to come down with a Q. E. D.: the master would stop him short, and bid him--as Coleridge told the ingenious author of _Guesses at Truth_--"to guess again." But suppose the "guess" fortunate, or that a boy had even succeeded, by his own industry or reflection, in mastering a proposition, did it follow that he would be a clear expositor of what he knew? It was far otherwise. Our young Archimedes--unacquainted with the terms of the science, and being also (as we have hinted) lamentably defective in his knowledge of the power of words--would mix up such a "farrago" of irrelevancies and repetitions with the proof, as, in fact, to render it to the majority no proof at all. Euclid should be taught in his own words,--just enough and none to spare: the employment of less must engender obscurity; and of more, a want of neatness and perspicacity. The best geometrician amongst us would have cut but a bad figure by the side of a lad of very average ability brought up to know Euclid by book.

Another twitch of the bell announced that the hour for playing at triangles had expired. In five minutes the slate was covered with bars of minims and crotchets, and the music lesson begun. This, in the general tone of its delivery, bore a striking resemblance to the geographical one of two hours before; the only difference being that "ut, re, me" had succeeded to names of certain cities, and "fa, so, la" to the number of their inhabitants. It would be as vain an attempt to describe all the noise we made as to show its rationale or motive. It was loud enough to have cowed a lion, stopped a donkey in mid-bray--to have excited the envy of the vocal Lablache, or to have sent any _prima donna_ into hysterics. When this third hour had been bellowed away, and the bell had rung unheard the advent of a fourth--_presto_--in came Mons. D----, to relieve the meek man who had acted as coryphæus to the music class; and after a little tugging, had soon produced from his pocket that without which you never catch a Frenchman--a _thème_. The theme being announced, we proceeded (not quite _tant bien que mal_) to scribble it down at his dictation, and to amend its orthography afterwards from a corrected copy on the slate. Once more the indefatigable bell obtruded its tinkle, to proclaim that Herr Roth was coming with a Fable of Gellert, or a chapter from Vater Pestalozzi's serious novel, _Gumal und Lina_, to read, and expound, and catechise upon. This last lesson before dinner was always accompanied by frequent yawns and other unrepressed symptoms of fatigue; and at its conclusion we all rose with a shout, and rushed into the corridors.

On resuming work in the afternoon, there was even less attention and method observed than before. The classes were then broken up, and private lessons were given in accomplishments, or in some of the useful arts. Drawing dogs and cows, with a master to look after the trees and the hedges; whistling and spitting through a flute; playing on the patience of a violin; turning at a lathe; or fencing with a powerful _maître d'armes_;--such were the general occupations. It was then, however, that we English withdrew to our Greek and Latin; and, under a kind master, Dr M----, acquired (with the exception of a love for natural history, and a very unambitious turn of mind) all that really could deserve the name of education.

We have now described the sedentary life at the chateau. In the next paper the reader shall be carried to the gymnasium; the drill ground behind the lake; to our small menageries of kids, guinea pigs, and rabbits; be present at our annual ball and skating bouts in winter, and at our bathings, fishings, frog-spearings, and rambles over the Jura in summer.

FOOTNOTES:

[14] CICERO, _De Fin._, ii. 1.

THE CROWNING OF THE COLUMN, AND CRUSHING OF THE PEDESTAL.

It was said in the debate on the Navigation Laws, in the best speech made on the Liberal side, by one of the ablest of the Liberal party, that the repeal of the Navigation Laws was the _crowning of the column of free trade_. There is no doubt it was so; but it was something more. It was not only the carrying out of a principle, but the overthrow of a system; it was not merely the crowning of the column, but the _crushing of the pedestal_.

And what was the system which was thus completely overthrown, for the time at least, by this great triumph of Liberal doctrines? It was the system under which England had become free, and great, and powerful; under which, in her alone of all modern states, liberty had been found to coexist with law, and progress with order; under which wealth had increased without producing divisions, and power grown up without inducing corruption; the system which had withstood the shocks of two centuries, and created an empire unsurpassed since the beginning of the world in extent and magnificence. It was a system which had been followed out with persevering energy by the greatest men, and the most commanding intellects, which modern Europe had ever produced; which was begun by the republican patriotism of Cromwell, and consummated by the conservative wisdom of Pitt; which had been embraced alike by Somers and Bolingbroke, by Walpole and Chatham, by Fox and Castlereagh; which, during two centuries, had produced an unbroken growth of national strength, a ceaseless extension of national power, and at length reared up a dominion which embraced the earth in its grasp, and exceeded anything ever achieved by the legions of Cæsar, or the phalanx of Alexander. No vicissitudes of time, no shock of adverse fortune, had been able permanently to arrest its progress. It had risen superior alike to the ambition of Louis XIV. and the genius of Napoleon; the rude severance of the North American colonies had thrown only a passing shade over its fortunes; the power of Hindostan had been subdued by its force, the sceptre of the ocean won by its prowess. It had planted its colonies in every quarter of the globe, and at once peopled with its descendants a new hemisphere, and, for the first time since the creation, rolled back to the old the tide of civilisation. Perish when it may, the _old English system_ has achieved mighty things; it has indelibly affixed its impress on the tablets of history. The children of its creation, the Anglo-Saxon race, will fill alike the solitudes of the Far West, and the isles of the East; they will be found equally on the shores of the Missouri, and on the savannahs of Australia; and the period can already be anticipated, even by the least imaginative, when their descendants will people half the globe.

It was not only the column of free trade which has been crowned in this memorable year. Another column, more firm in its structure, more lasting in its duration, more conspicuous amidst the wonders of creation, has, in the same season, been crowned by British hands. While the sacrilegious efforts of those whom it had sheltered were tearing down the temple of protection in the West, the last stone was put to the august structure which it had reared in the East. The victory of Goojerat on the Indus was contemporary with the repeal of the Navigation Laws on the Thames. The completion of the conquest of India occurred exactly at the moment when the system which had created that empire was repudiated. Protection placed the sceptre of India in our hands, when free trade was surrendering the trident of the ocean in the heart of our power. With truth did Lord Gough say, in his noble proclamation to the army of the Punjaub, on the termination of hostilities, that "what Alexander had attempted they had done." Supported by the energy of England, guided by the principles of protection, restrained by the dictates of justice, backed by the navy which the Navigation Laws had created, the British arms had achieved the most wonderful triumph recorded in the annals of mankind. They had subjugated a hundred and forty millions of men in the Continent of Hindostan, at the distance of ten thousand miles from the parent state; they had made themselves felt alike, and at the same moment, at Nankin, the ancient capital of the Celestial Empire, and at Cabool, the cradle of Mahommedan power. Conquering all who resisted, blessing all who submitted, securing the allegiance of the subjects by the justice and experienced advantages of their government, they had realised the boasted maxim of Roman administration--

"Parcere subjectis et debellare superbos,"

and steadily advanced through a hundred years of effort and glory, not unmixed with disaster, from the banks of the Hoogley to the shores of the Indus--from the black hole of Calcutta to the throne of Aurengzebe.

"Nulla magna civitas," said Hannibal, "diu quiescere potest--si foris hostem non habet, _domi invenit_: ut praevalida corpora ab externis causis tuta videntur, suis ipsis viribus conficiuntur."[15] When the Carthaginian hero made this mournful reflection on the infatuated spirit which had seized his own countrymen, and threatened to destroy their once powerful dominion, he little thought what a marvellous confirmation of it a future empire of far greater extent and celebrity was to afford. That the system of free trade--that is, the universal preference of foreigners, for the sake of the smallest reduction of price, to your own subjects--must, if persisted in, lead to the dismemberment and overthrow of the British empire, cannot admit of a moment's doubt, and will be amply proved to every unbiassed reader in the sequel of this paper. Yet the moment chosen for carrying this principle into effect was precisely that, when the good effects of the opposite system had been most decisively demonstrated, and an empire unprecedented in magnitude and magnificence had reached its acme under its shadow. It would be impossible to explain so strange an anomaly, if we did not recollect how wayward and irreconcilable are the changes of the human mind: that action and reaction is the law not less of the moral than of the material world; that nations become tired of hearing a policy called wise, not less than an individual called the just; and that if a magnanimous and truly national course of government has been pursued by one party long in possession of power, this is quite sufficient to make its opponents embrace the opposite set of tenets, and exert all their influence to carry them into effect when they succeed to the direction of affairs, without the slightest regard to the ruin they may bring on the national fortunes.

The secret of the long duration and unexampled success of the British national policy is to be found in the protection which it afforded to _all_ the national interests. But for this, it must long since have been overthrown, and with it the empire which was growing up under its shadow. No institutions or frames of government can long exist which are not held together by that firmest of bonds, _experienced benefits_. What made the Roman power steadily advance during seven centuries, and endure in all a thousand years? The protection which the arms of the legions afforded to the industry of mankind, the international wars which they prevented, the general peace they secured, the magnanimous policy which admitted the conquered states to the privileges of Roman citizens, and caused the Imperial government to be felt through the wide circuit of its power, only by the vast market it opened to the industry of its multifarious subjects, and the munificence with which local undertakings were everywhere aided by the Imperial treasury. Free trade in grain at length ruined it: the harvests of Libya and Egypt came to supersede those of Greece and Italy,--and thence its fall. To the same cause which occasioned the rise of Rome, is to be ascribed the similar unbroken progress of the Russian territorial dominion, and that of the British colonial empire in modern times. What, on the other hand, caused the conquests of Timour and Charlemagne, Alexander the Great and Napoleon, to be so speedily obliterated, and their vast empires to fall to pieces the moment the powerful hand which had created them was laid in the dust? The _want of protection_ to general interests, the absence of the strong bond of experienced benefits; the oppressive nature of the conquering government; the sacrifice of the general interests to the selfish ambition or rapacious passions of a section of the community, whether civil or military, which had got possession of power. It is the selfishness of the ruling power which invariably terminates its existence: men will bear anything but an interference with their patrimonial interests. The burning of 50,000 Protestants by the Duke of Alva was quietly borne by the Flemish provinces: but the imposition of a small _direct_ tax at once caused a flame to burst forth, which carried the independence of the United Provinces. Attend sedulously to the interests of men, give ear to their complaints, anticipate their wishes, and you may calculate with tolerable certainty on acquiring in the long run the mastery of their passions. Thwart their interests, disregard their complaints, make game of their sufferings, and you may already read the handwriting on the wall which announces your doom.