Chapter XV: Education

One day at Gloucester and one at Wells enabled us to get only hasty impressions of each. The west front of the latter was not so impressive as the pictures of it had led me to expect. Indeed, it looks like a sort of afterthought, and might as well have been put a hundred feet farther away for all the connection it has with the cathedral. However, when I am made an English bishop, it is Wells I shall choose for the bishop's garden!

But Gloucester, like Rome, would require a lifetime to exhaust. The whole history of western ecclesiastical architecture is built into its walls. Like the English constitution, it is neither an evolution nor a revolution. It is a series of new things put onto the old. Perhaps for that reason it is so impressive. It is not logical, but it works! The rough Saxon stonework was not torn down when the more stately Norman was added but left standing to bear witness to the past. And so the various styles of Gothic, from the early pointed to the highly decorative, have in turn been added, and the result is a structure in some ways the most impressive in England and perfectly representative of the English people. I thought of "The Chambered Nautilus":

"Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul,
As the swift seasons roll:
Let each new temple, nobler than the last,
Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast--
Till thou at length art free,
Leaving thine outgrown shell by life's unresting sea."

From Wells we returned to Bath, crossing the Mendips, or are they the Cotswolds? On the steep ascent we passed two bicyclists, a parson and a very pretty girl, evidently his daughter. I wished we had two vacant seats to offer them, for it is a stiff climb. We did offer the one we had to the pretty girl, but though she looked tired, she was a good sport, and declined to leave her father to toil up the hill alone. I hope he was grateful, but Englishmen have a way of accepting sacrifices from their womenfolk which we do not understand. At any rate, it was pleasant to see the companionship between the two.

We spent the night at Bath in a pretentious and uncomfortable hotel, and moralized on Beau Brummel and his preposterous patron. I can never forgive Sir Walter Scott for his laudation of the Prince Regent, but, on the other hand, Thackeray's picture is as relentless as a portrait by Sargent.

From Bath we passed over to Winchester, taking in a corner of the New Forest _en route_.

After we had seen the great cathedral and college at Winchester, we walked to St. Gross, which is a home for old men. I have forgotten how old it is, but the custom of receiving pilgrims remains unchanged through all the many years. Each "pilgrim" is given a piece of bread and a mug of ale at the porter's lodge. We pilgrims were not hungry enough to enjoy either.

I had a letter to the head master, who, unfortunately, was away, but one of the house masters received us kindly and showed us about.

Of course the talk turned on education and the relative merits of English and American schools. Our guide had never been in America, but if you think that prevented him from having definite views on American methods of education, you do not know the English! He was inclined to admit that what he called our "board schools" were, perhaps, in some respects better than the English, but when it came to the question of "public" schools--such as the Phillips Academies at Exeter and Andover, or St. Paul's or Groton, he found it difficult to speak what he believed to be the truth and at the same time be polite. So he contented himself with saying that the English standard is much higher; which, I fear, cannot be denied. I asked him what boys of fifteen were reading in Latin, and when he replied, "Cæsar and the first books of Virgil," I said it would be the same with us. But when he explained that by "reading" he did not mean merely translation into English, but also retranslation into Latin in the style of the author, and added that boys must be able to write good Latin prose of their own composition, I gave up!

I asked him how he accounted for the fact that the standard was higher with them than with us. He said because English boys studied harder and longer hours than our boys do. He thought the three months' holiday fatal to continuous progress. "Then," he added, "your boys go to school too late. English boys are sent to a preparatory school at nine--often at eight--years of age, so they acouire habits of study before yours begin."

Much of this is no doubt true, but there are some things he does not know and which, _mirabile dictu_, I did not tell him! Do you ask "why"? Well, to tell you the truth, I did begin, but soon found he was one of those Englishmen who, having made up his mind, does not care to listen to new evidence. Moreover, the schoolmaster the world over is in the habit of teaching and does not care to be taught--certainly not by one not of the guild. No doubt you will say to yourself that this is not a peculiarity of the schoolmaster but is true of the clergy as well. However, in this case there were some things not taken into account. For instance, the holidays may be too long, but in our climate the boy who was kept at work till the 1st of August would not learn much more than he does now. Moreover, I question if the American boy, with his nervous temperament, is capable of the long hours of application which the more stolid English lad bears with ease. Whether it is an advantage, from the standpoint of scholarship, for a boy who has just emerged from infancy to be sent from home, I do not know. But the reason it can be done in England and could not be done in America--except in the case of those poor little unfortunates whose mothers and fathers have been divorced--is that in England the decision lies with the father, whereas with us it is the mother who has the final word. That it is desirable to send a child from home before there has been time to instil lasting principles, I fancy few American mothers would admit. Will English mothers when they have gained the independence of their transatlantic sisters continue the custom? Who can say?

I admit that all this sounds like what the lawyers call "confession and avoidance," but I believe there is a reason for the higher standard in England which perhaps our guide did not know, or was too polite to mention, but which, were it recognized, would lift our standard without resorting to the remedies he suggested. I suspect the real difficulty is that we have no such large body of well-trained university men to draw upon for teachers as England has. We find it difficult with so many attractive and lucrative careers open to young men to find many who are willing to make teaching a life-work, and therefore must do the best we can with the material we have. In other words, before we change our system would it not be well for us to make the profession of teaching as attractive with us as it is in England? What college president with us has such a position of influence, such a house and salary, as has the head master of Winchester, Eton, or Harrow?

You will be inclined to say as Prof. Corson did when I asked him, when I was a freshman, what subject he would suggest for a "composition." "Any except 'Education'!"