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    ^ T ^ Sii ^ SsSfi&es ^ or the of . the But aphorisms * re m if > tiasrian&r -to the ^ average of workers , who , Mr . Maurice declares &S ^ S& ^ a ^ eaadvihdiaerencei However , have held them babkv What mm ^ setafetr strives , by patient experiments-to emulate Arkrmght s dlBeoveTiesVexoiept ^ witlt the idea of emulating also his wealth ? How have Mechanics' Institutes succeeded ? ' In every town the last place to seek for , a mechanic is theilnstitute , which falls to the share of young tradesmen , clerks and others , better pleased by entertainments than by lectures , and profoundly indifferent ,, for the most part , to the higher studies of politics and history . The Institute is usually a , concert or newspaper-room ; though theinfluence of the Society of Arts is effecting a gradual change . Frivolity or somethin * worse , is Ifte source of English indifference ; wherever avarice ib not the controlling paBsion . We have seen with gladness , that the war , whatever evil it has produced , has evolved some feeling better than that of cupidityi for ' the English nation , credulously persuaded that it fights for a principle , has offered in the clearest terms to pay ( partly by loans ) the ransom of liberty . Still , if only to enable him to-be magnanimous , the Englishman yearns for money . From the axiom that " learning is the minister of freedom andorder , " the reader is not to suppose that Mr . Maurice loves " order"in the imperial sense . Probably , there is nowhere so much order as in a prison , except in a lunatic asylum ; but the peace desirable in a state is that in which men are self-poised , restrained by conseienceor by discretion , and actuated by motives of mutual sympathy . A man gagged and manacled is at rest ; but , in this sense , a toad in a stone is the realisation of that calm socialism "in which every one comprehends his part in the natural drama , and is contented with it . Stating * therefore ; that education is nothing if it do not prepare men for the harmonious order of a free society , Mr . Maurice explains the deficiencies of our actual system . "We have stated th 6 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 cultivators of the land , as lawyers , as physicians , as divines . God forbid that they should not toil ! God ibrbid 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 landlords , as soldiers , as sailors , as physicians , —the profession 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 experience . Therefore , for the sake of Work , let us have 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 Universities professional , that we have kept it at-awMe ; 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 icharacteristic , 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 , unhappily , divorced from the previous . study . It Js 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 reasonably have expected . There is , I am sure , among the professional men of England a manliness and noble- nfess that are scarcely to be found anywhere . Every one of us must have had proofs in his intercourse with physicians of their freedom from sordid feelings—proofs to be recollected with silent gratitude and humiliation . iThe endeavour to impregnate the working classes with a sympathy for music has been the-most successful movement of our time . In ^ Manchester the numerous operatives who have evinced a capacity for science prove that it is not the kind of work , but the condition of the worker , that degrades . Moreover , in the oratory of this class ethics and metaphysics appear through the cloud of language as distinctly as political speculations . Even the mistakes of the industrious classes oftetf arise from their attempts to apply to the solution of their doubts and sufferings higher methods of rea- soning than their experience enables them to wield . But the theory here explained supposes that it is essential for working ; men to receive that sort of instruction'which , instead of distinguishing them according to their occupa- lions , addresses their common humanity , and leads them from the ramifica- tions of society to the confluence of human thoughts and feelings . It should be regarded as the great end of their studies to raise their human qualities , and not arbitrarily to separate the useful from the entertaining , It should allow them to select those branches of pursuit which are most in Conformity with the original bias of their minds . It should never allure them to devote more time to general study than is compatible with their special occupations ; though the truth should never be forgotten , that be- tween all studies there are proper relations , so that hours devoted to the acquisition of knowledge are not lost , even in the most worldly point of view . 'The discourses on the Religion of Rome deal as largely with ancient as wtyb . modern history . It is here that the idea rises of that fatherly govern- ment which Mr . Maurice exalts as the Hope of the world . The state of Rome was composed of a thousand families in one . Children , in relationto their parents , lived as slaves ; men , in relation to the state , had no capacity except that of obedience . But by the kingly , as well as by the imperial period , the , principle was condemned : —the first impeded the growth of the commonwealth , the second reduced it to corruption . To this uiuiple theory of government , An fact , young nations resort , in their ignorance , and old nations in their degeneraoy . Voltaire wroto a theatrical eulogy of China as a country ruled by piety ; he has been imitated by others who have descanted on . the golden age of Peru ; but is there an affinity between those artificial systems which sacrificed the individual life to the hfo of the state , and the natural union of man with man in the earlier days of Itomo ? _ At ull events the fatherly prinoiple , wherever it has boon established in its pure form ,. has changed , in the course of time , into an artificial system , with a papntul executive , and a people not filial , but servile . We scarcely know "what the original patriarchs were , but wo know what emperors have been , ^ nd that they have chiefly cultivated the oquivocal virtue of the lloman and thoiRuwfian y / whioh . compelled them , in the name of disci p line , to kill their eons . Wo know , also , that a populous state , whoro individuals have com-

    , , , < i . < 1 i i ( . 1 < < « < < T j j . t < j i t * £ ^ . \ a o s e * I ^ ^ ^ i t o c t t l plex relations and interests , cannot long f preserve the form of a patriarchal ; society , but must choose between representative and despotic institutions . ? . TJie ^ hort duration of a system , it is true , does not impugn its excellence ; j for . fby this-iest , liberty itself is disgraced by the superior permanence of s tyranny . The Hebrews had nearly a thousand years of national life ,, but , only three centuries of civil freedom . The historic independence of Greece , had vanished in six hundred years ; Athens fell under Philip within two centuries and a half from the rule of her first archon . How soon the Dorian and JStouan colonies withered in the Eastern waste . How soon ' . Cyrene , Syracuse , and Massilia perished in the West . How few ages passed before Rome was contented with bread and games . Not one of the Italian republics survived three hundred years . Not one of the Slavonian states that aspired to be an example of liberty could hold its own against imperial ' aggression .. In Germany , and the Netherlands also , free states have been unsuccessful experiments . But what is to be the practical result of Mr . Maurice ' s theory ? Is all regular government to be superseded by a vague consciousness in men ' s hearts that a paternal Providence controls the worEl ? Or does he ask for a Theocracy vested in human hands ? We scarcely know , for the writer appears at times to argue with himself . We have , at least , no glimpse of the moral which Mr . Congreve and Mr . Tennyson enforce , that " a simple great pne' ^ is needed to silence the cabals of faction , and to impel the policy of empires along an unswerving line . " Simple great ones" have , in most instances , ruled by virtue of their contempt for the human species , and always by an unjustifiable assumption of fatherly attributes . An extract will prove that Mr . Maurice invites no Asiatic absolutism to throw its purple shadows over England : — 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 . Tet 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 verylowest people . Th « y 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 constitutions , lived on through the fires which it seemed itself to have kindled . It terrified us in England and Scotland , 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 with it . Brotherhood seemed to us a poor and miserable 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 utterances 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 eociety 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 . Thence , passing to another question—It has been difficult , while I have been speaking of the perpetuity of the Roman dominion under its different phases , not to think of prophecy , a prophecy in 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 commerce may fall along with those in which they and their fathers have worshipped . Would to God that the imago of that future painter rose of tenor before us , to remind us that every single person in the crowds which 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 ' e words might have taken and may still take anpther form . If posterity does not deal more gently with that which our ago loaves behind it , than wo have dealt with tho works of our forefathers , the critic of some distant period may affirm that one of our most illustrious cotemporarios was so misled by his prejudices against tho men of another nation and another faith , that ho fancied ho could persuade thorn , —with all the memorials of ruin before their eyes , with words that intimate tho perishableness of all . mortal things continually on their lips , —that the houses which they now inhabit havo somo special exemption from the general law , and that tho palacca of popes will have a duration which has boon denied to tho palaces of emperors- Wo may bo sure that there was no such uncharitable judgment or purpose in tho mind of tho eloquent writer when ho gave forth those sontiinontn . Wo may take it for granted that ho only wished to impress us , by a contrast which would strike us as more vivid and startling than any other , with a lcsnon rejecting ourselves which wo have all need to lay deeply to heart . You would not fcol mat "' i diminished his clninm upon your esteem—you would feel that ho augmented ' «<"" J ^ ho told you , —perhaps ho has told you already , in words which yon f ™ ° **? ° ° : ' that even your city notwithstanding its grand aseociations with t' « ° ™ ° ° fj you and with tho records of history , though every old and modern «^ '" »™™ lftt" £ of warriors with sword and pen who have fought your battle * may sutler iuot tonce which tho mentost citiee of tho world hnvo suffered . nv : n £ tn The Lectures on the Religion of Somo , though vague in purpose , evinco tho high and masterly intellect of tho writer .

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• Citation
  • Leader (1850-1860), Sept. 22, 1855, page 919, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2107/page/19/