Chapter V (1)

Talking in beetles—Identity of Egyptian animals with those
now existing: does this prove fixity of species?—Examination
of the celebrated argument of species not having altered in
four thousand years—Impossibility of distinguishing species
from varieties—The affinities of animals—New facts proving the
fertility of Hybrids—The hare and the rabbit contrasted—Doubts
respecting the development hypothesis—On hypothesis in Natural
History—Pliny, and his notion on the formation of pearls—Are
pearls owing to a disease of the oyster?—Formation of the
shell; origin of pearls—How the Chinese manufacture pearls.

A witty friend of mine expressed her sense of the remoteness of the ancient Egyptians, and her difficulty in sympathizing with them, by declaring that “_they talked in beetles, you know_.” She referred, of course, to the hieroglyphics in which that curious people now speak to us from ancient tombs. Whether those swarthy sages were eloquent and wise, or obscure and otherwise, in their beetle-speech, it is certain that entomologists of our day recognize their beetles as belonging to the same species that are now gathered into collections. Such as the Egyptians knew them, such we know them now. Nay, the sacred cats found in those ancient tombs, are cats of the same kind as our own familiar mousers; they purred before Pharaoh as they purr on our hearthrugs; and the descendants of the very dogs which irreligiously worried those cats, are to this day worrying the descendants of those sacred cats. The grains of wheat, which the _savans_ found in the tombs, were planted in the soil of France, and grew into waving corn in no respect distinguishable from the corn grown from the grain of the previous year.

Have these familiar facts any important significance? Are we entitled to draw any conclusion from the testimony of paintings and sculptures, at least four thousand years old, which show that several of our well-known Species of animals, and several of the well-marked Races of men, existed then, and have not changed since then? Nimrod hunted with dogs and horses, which would be claimed as ancestors by the dogs and horses at Melton Mowbray. The Negroes who attended Semiramis and Rhamses are in every respect similar to the Negroes now toiling amid the sugar-canes of Alabama. If, during four thousand years Species and Races have not changed, why should we suppose that they ever will change? Why should we not take our stand on that testimony, and assert that Species are unchangeable?

Such has been the argument of Cuvier and his followers; an argument on which they have laid great stress, and which they have further strengthened by a challenge to adversaries to produce one single case where a _transmutation_ of species has taken place:—“Here we show you evidence that Species have persisted unaltered during four thousand years, and you cannot show us a single case of Species having changed—you cannot show us one case of a wolf becoming a dog, an ass becoming a horse, a hare becoming a rabbit. Yet you must admit that if there were any inherent tendency to change, four thousand years is a long enough period for that tendency to display itself in; and we ought to see a very marked difference between the Species which lived under Semiramis, and those which are living under Victoria. Instead of this, we see that there has been no change: the dog has remained a dog, the horse has remained a horse; every Species retains its well-marked characters.”

No one will say that I have not done justice to this argument. I have stated it as clearly and forcibly as possible, not with any design to captivate your assent, but to make the answer complete. This argument is the _cheval de bataille_ of the Cuvier school; but like many other argumentative war-horses, it proves, on close inspection, to be spavined and brokenwinded. The first criticism we must pass on it is, that it implies the existence of Species as a _thing_, which can be spoken of as fixed or variable; whereas, as we saw last month, Species is an _abstraction_, like Whiteness or Strength. No one supposes that there exists any whiteness apart from white things, or strength apart from strong things; yet the naturalists who maintain the fixity of Species, constantly talk as if Species existed independently of the individual animals. Instead of saying that by the word Species is indicated a certain group of characters, and that whenever we meet with this group we say, here is an animal of the same Species; they explicitly declare, or tacitly imply, that although an individual dog may vary, there is something above all individuals—the Species—and _that_ cannot vary. As it is possible some readers may protest that no respectable authority in modern times ever held the opinion here imputed to a school, I will quote the very explicit language of one of Cuvier’s disciples—the last editor of Buffon—who, no later than 1856, could declare that “Species are the primitive forms of Nature. Individuals are nothing but the representatives—the copies of these forms: _Les espèces sont les formes primitives de la Nature. Les individus n’en sont que des représentations, des copies._”[12] According to this very explicit, but very extravagant, statement, an individual dog is nothing but a copy of the primitive form—the typical dog—the _idea_ of a dog, as Plato would say; and of course, if this be true, it matters little how widely individual dogs may vary, the type, or species, of which it is the representative, remains unaltered. Indeed it is on this ground that many physiologists explain the fact of hereditary transmission: the individual may vary, it is said, but the species is preserved; and if a dog, without its fore paws, has offspring, every one of which possesses the fore paws, the reason is, that _l’idée de l’espèce se reproduit dans le fruit, et lui donne des organes qui manquaient au père ou à la mère_.[13] It is not easy to understand how the _idea_ of species can reproduce itself, and give the offspring of a dog the _organs_ which were wanting in the parents; but to those who believe that Species exist independently of individuals, and form the only real existences, the conception may be easier.

I have too much respect for the reader to drag him through a refutation of such philosophy as this; the statement of the opinion is enough. And yet, unless some such opinion be maintained, the doctrine of Fixity of Species is without a basis; for if it be said that the group of characters which constitute the dog are incapable of change, and in this sense Species are fixed, we have to ask what evidence there can be for such an assertion? since it is notorious that individual dogs _do_ show a change in some of the characters of the group. We shall be referred to the Egyptian tombs for evidence. M. Flourens assures us that not only are these tombs evidence that Species have not changed in four thousand years, but that _no_ species has changed—_aucune espèce n’a changé_—which is surely stepping a long way beyond the precincts of the tombs?

It may be paradoxical, but it is strictly true, that the fact of particular species having remained unaltered during four thousand years, does not add the slightest weight to the evidence in favour of the fixity of Species. “What!” some may exclaim, “do you pretend that four thousand years is not a period long enough to prove the fixity of animal forms?” Yes; I affirm that four thousand, or forty thousand, prove no more than four. It is only by a fallacy that the opposite opinion could gain acceptance. You would not suppose that I had strengthened my case if, instead of contenting myself with stating reasons once, I repeated these same reasons during forty successive pages; you would remind me that this _iteration_ was not _cumulation_, and that no force was given to my fortieth assertion which the first wanted. Why, then, do you ask me to accept the repetition of the same fact four thousand times over, as an increase of evidence? It is a familiar fact that like produces like, that dogs resemble dogs, and do not resemble buffaloes; this fact is, of course, deepened in our conviction by the unvarying evidence we see around us, and is guaranteed by the philosophical axiom that like causes produce like effects; but when once such a conception is formed, it can gain no fresh strength from any particular instance. If we believe that crows are black, we do not hold that belief more firmly when we are shown that crows were black four thousand years ago. In like manner, if it is an admitted fact that individuals always reproduce individuals closely resembling themselves, it is not a whit more surprising that the dogs of Victoria should resemble the dogs of Semiramis, than that they should resemble their parents: the chain of four thousand years is made up of many links, each link being a repetition of the other. So long as a single pair of dogs resembling each other unite, so long will there be specimens of that species; simply because the children inherit the characteristics of the parents. So long as Negroes marry with Negroes, and Jews with Jews, so long must there be a perpetuation of the Negro and Jewish types; but the tenth generation adds nothing to the evidence of the first, nor the ten-thousandth to the tenth.

I believe that this fallacy, which destroys the whole value of the Cuvierian argument, has not before been pointed out; and even now, you may, perhaps, ask if the fixity of Species is not proved by the fact that like produces like? So far from this, that it is only by the aid of such a fact in organic nature that we can imagine _new_ species to have arisen: in other words, those who believe in the variability of Species, and the introduction of new forms by means of modification from the old, always invoke the law of hereditary transmission as the means of establishing accidental variations. Thus, let us suppose the Egyptian king to have had one hundred dogs, all of them staghounds, and no other form of dog to have existed at that time in that country; the dog species would be represented by the staghound. These staghounds would transmit to their offspring all their _specific characters_. But, as every one knows, however much dogs may resemble each other, they always present individual differences in size, colour, strength, intelligence, &c. Now, if any one of these differences should happen to become marked, and to increase by the intermarriage of two dogs similarly distinguished by the marked peculiarity, this peculiarity would in time become established by hereditary transmission, and would form the starting-point of a new race of dogs—say the greyhound—unless it were obliterated by intermarriage with dogs of the old type. In the former case, we should have two races of dogs among the descendants of those figured on the Egyptian tombs; but as one of these races would still preserve the original staghound type, Cuvier would refer to _it_ as a proof that species had not varied. We, on the other hand, should point to the greyhound as proof that animal forms _are_ variable, and that a new form had arisen from modification of the old.

An objection will at once be raised to this illustration, to the effect that all zoologists admit the possibility of new Varieties, or Races, being formed; but they deny that new Species can be formed. It is here that the equivoque of the word Species prevents a clear understanding of each other’s argument. Whiteness may justly be said to be unalterable; but white things may vary—they may become gray, or yellow. In like manner Species must be invariable, because Species is a word indicating a particular group of characters; but animals may vary in these characters: they may present some of the characters less, or more, developed; and they may even want some of them. Now as there is no absolute standard of what constitutes Species, what Sub-species, and what Varieties, it becomes impossible to say whether any individual variation in an animal form shall constitute a new Variety, or a new Species. With regard to dogs the differences between the various races are so numerous, and so marked, as would suffice to constitute species and even genera, in other groups of animals.

We must relinquish the idea of proving anything by the paintings and sculptures of the ancients. When we find an Egyptian plough closely resembling the plough still in use in some places, we may identify it as of the same “Species” as our own; but this does not disprove the fact that steam-ploughs, and ploughs of various construction, have been since invented, all of them being modifications of the original type. Formerly, and for many years, the stage-coach was our approved mode of conveyance—and it is still kept up in some districts; nevertheless, modifications of coach-road into tramroad, and tramroad into railroad, have gradually resulted in a mode of conveyance utterly unlike the stage-coach. It is the same with animals.

Let us never forget that Species have no existence. Only individuals exist, and these _all vary_ more or less from each other. When the variations are slight, they have no name; when they are more marked, and are transmitted from one generation to another, they constitute particular Faces, or Varieties; when the differences are still more marked they constitute Sub-species; but, as Mr. Darwin says, “Certainly no clear line of demarcation has yet been drawn between Species and Sub-species; that is, the forms which in the opinion of some naturalists come very near to, but do not quite arrive at the rank of Species; or again, between Sub-species and well-marked Varieties, or between lesser Varieties and individual differences. These differences blend into each other in an insensible series; and a series impresses the mind with the idea of an actual passage.” But the same process of divergence which establishes Varieties out of individual differences, and Species out of Varieties, also serves to establish Genera out of Species, Orders out of Genera, and Classes out of Orders. It is, doubtless, difficult to conceive by what process of modification, two animals of distinct Genera, say a dog and a cat, were produced from a common stock; but organic analogies in abundance render it easy of belief. If we knew as much of zoology as we do of embryology, in respect of the affinities of divergent forms, it would be far less surprising that two different Genera should arise from a common stock, than that all the various parts of the skeleton should arise from a common osseous element. We know that the jaws are identical with arms and legs—both being divergent modifications of a common osseous structure. We know that the arm of a man is identical with the fin of a whale, or the wing of a bird. The differences here in form, size, and function are much greater than the differences which establish orders and classes in the animal series. Unless animal forms were modifications of some common type, it would be difficult to explain their remarkable affinities. As Mr. Darwin says, “It is a truly wonderful fact—the wonder of which we are apt to overlook from familiarity—that all animals and all plants throughout all time and space should be related to each other in group, subordinate to group, in the manner which we everywhere behold, namely, varieties of the same species most closely related together, species of the same genus less closely and unequally related together, forming sections and sub-genera, species of distinct genera much less closely related, and genera related in different degrees, forming sub-families, families, orders, sub-classes, and classes. The several subordinate groups in any class cannot be ranked in a single file, but seem rather to be clustered round points, and these round other points, and so on in almost endless circles. On the view that each species has been independently created, I can see no explanation of this great fact in the classification of all organic beings; but to the best of my judgment it is explained through inheritance, and the complex action of natural selection, entailing extinction and divergence of character. The affinities of all the beings of the same class have sometimes been represented by a great tree. I believe this simile largely speaks the truth. The green and budding twigs may represent existing species; and those produced during each former year may represent the long succession of extinct species. At each period of growth all the growing twigs have tried to branch out on all sides, and to overtop and kill the surrounding twigs and branches, in the same manner as species and groups of species have tried to overmaster other species in the great struggle for life. The limbs divided into great branches, and these into lesser branches, were themselves once, when the tree was small, budding twigs; and this connection of the former and present buds by ramifying branches, may well represent the classification of all extinct and living species in groups subordinate to groups. Of the many twigs which flourished when the tree was a mere bush, only two or three, now grown into great branches, yet survive and bear all the other branches. So with the species which lived during long-past geological periods, very few now have living and modified descendants.... As buds give rise by growth to fresh buds, and these, if vigorous, branch out and overtop on all sides many a feebler branch: so by generation, I believe, it has been with the great Tree of Life, which fills with its dead and broken branches the crust of the earth, and covers the surface with its ever-branching and beautiful ramifications.”[14]

It will not be expected that in these brief and desultory remarks I should touch on all, or nearly all, the important points in the discussion respecting the Fixity of Species. Mr. Darwin’s book is in everybody’s hands, and my object has been to facilitate, if possible, the comprehension of his book, and the adoption of a more philosophical hypothesis, by pointing out the weakness of the chief argument on the other side. There is one more argument which may be noticed—the more so as it is constantly adduced with triumph by the one school, and admitted as a difficulty by the other. Its force is so great that it prevents many from accepting the development hypothesis. It is the argument founded on the alleged impossibility of Hybrids continuing the race. More than two or three generations of Hybrids, it is said, can never be maintained; after that, the new form perishes: thus clearly showing how Nature repudiates such amalgamations, and keeps her species jealously distinct and invariable. This argument is held to be the touchstone of the doctrine of species. I wish it were so; because, in that case, the question would no longer be one of hypothesis, since we have now the indubitable proof that some Hybrids _are_ fertile unto the thirteenth generation and onwards.

A history of the various attempts which have been made to prove and disprove the fertility of Hybrids, would lead us beyond our limits; the curious reader is referred to the works cited below.[15] One decisive case alone shall be given here, and no one will dispute that it _is_ decisive.

The hare (_lepus timidus_) is assuredly of a distinct species from the rabbit (_lepus cuniculus_). So distinct are these species, that any classification which should range them as one, would violate every accepted principle. The hare is solitary, the rabbit gregarious; the hare lives on the surface of the earth, the rabbit burrows under the surface; the hare makes her home among the bushes, the rabbit makes a sort of nest for her young in her burrow—keeping them there till they are weaned; the hare has reddish-brown flesh, the rabbit white flesh; while the odour exhaled by each, and the flavour of each, are unmistakeably different. The hare has many anatomical characters differing from those of the rabbit: such as greater length and strength of the hind legs, larger body, shorter intestine, thicker skin, firmer hair, and different colour. The hare breeds only twice or thrice a year, and at each litter has only two or four; the rabbit will breed eight times a year, and each time has four, six, seven, and even eight young ones. Finally, the two are violent foes: the rabbits always destroy the hares, and all sportsmen are aware that if the rabbits be suffered to multiply on an estate, there will be small chance of hares.

Nevertheless, between species so distinct as these, a new hybrid race has been reared by M. Rouy, of Angoulême, who each year sends to market upwards of a thousand of his _Leporides_, as he calls them. His object was primarily commercial, not scientific. His experiments, extending from 1847 to the present time, have not only been of great commercial value—introducing a new and valuable breed—but have excited the attention of scientific men, who are now availing themselves of his skill and experience to help them in the solution of minor problems. It is enough to note here, that these hybrids of the hare and the rabbit are fertile, not only with either hares or rabbits, but _with each other_. Thirteen generations have already been enumerated, and the last remains so vigorous that no cessation whatever is to be anticipated.

In presence of this case (and others, though less striking, might be named) there is but one alternative; either we must declare that rabbits and hares form one and the same species—which is absurd—or we must admit _that new types may be formed by the union of two existing types_; and consequently that species _are_ variable. If the doctrine of Fixity of Species acknowledges the touchstone of hybridity, the fate of the doctrine is settled for ever.

Although I conceive the doctrine of Fixity of Species to be altogether wrong, I cannot say that the arguments adduced in favour of the development hypothesis rise higher than a high degree of probability, still very far from demonstration; they will leave even the most willing disciple beset with difficulties and doubts. When stated in general terms, that hypothesis has a fascinating symmetry and simplicity, but no sooner do we apply it to particular cases, than a thick veil of mystery descends, and our pathway becomes a mere blind groping towards the light. There is nothing but what is perfectly conceivable, and in harmony with all analogies, in the idea of all animal forms having arisen from successive modifications of one original form; but there are many things perfectly conceivable, which have nevertheless no existence; there are many explanations perfectly probable, which are not true; and when we come to seek for the evidence of the development hypothesis, that evidence fails us. It _may_ be true, but we cannot say that it _is_ true. Ten years ago, I espoused the hypothesis, and believed that it must be the truth; but ten years of study, instead of deepening, have loosened that conviction: they have strengthened my opposition to the hypothesis of fixity of species, but they have given greater force to the difficulties which beset the development hypothesis, and have made me feel that at present the requisite evidence is wanting. I conclude with reminding the reader that the question of the origin of species is at present incapable of a positive answer; of the two hypotheses, that of development seems the more harmonious with our knowledge; but it is no more than an hypothesis, and will probably for ever remain one. Now, an hypothesis, although indispensable as a provisional mode of grouping together facts, and giving them some sort of explanation, is after all only a _guess_, and it may be absurdly wide of the truth. In Natural History, as in all other departments of speculative ingenuity, there have been a goodly number of outrageously extravagant hypotheses, gravely propounded, and credulously accepted. Men prefer an absurd guess to a blank; they would rather have a false opinion than no opinion; and one of the last developments of philosophic culture, is the power of _abstaining_ from forming an opinion, where the necessary data are absent.

If you wish to see how easily hypotheses are formed and accepted, you need only turn over the history of any science. If you want a laugh at credulity, read a chapter of Pliny’s _Natural History_. Pliny is a classic, and was for centuries an authority; but looked at with impartial eyes, he appears the veriest “old woman” that ever wrote in a beautiful style. He was a mere bookworm, without a particle of scientific insight. His was not an age when men had much regard to evidence; but to him the suspicion never seems to have occurred that Gossip Report could be given to romancing, or that travellers could “see strange things.” No fable is too monstrous for his credulity.

One of the pretty fables Pliny repeats, is, that pearls are formed by drops of dew falling into the gaping valves of the oyster. It never occurred to him to ask whether oysters were ever exposed to the dew? whether the drops _could_ fall into their valves? whether oysters kept their valves open, except when under water? or, finally, whether, if the dew _did_ fall in, it would _remain_ a rounded drop? The drop of dew had a certain superficial resemblance to the pearl, and that was enough. Ælian’s hypothesis was somewhat better: he supposed that the pearls were produced by lightning flashing into the open shells.

Turning from these ancient sages, you will ask how pearls are formed? And almost any ingenious modern, not a zoologist, will tell you (and tell you falsely), that the pearl is a disease of the oyster. One is somewhat fatigued with the merciless frequency with which this notion has been dragged in, as an illustration of genius issuing out of sorrow and adversity; and it is time to stop that “damnable iteration” by discrediting the notion. Know then, that if

“Most wretched men
Are cradled into poetry by wrong:
They learn in suffering what they teach in song”—

it is not true that oysters secrete in suffering what women wear as necklaces. Disease would be the very worst cradle for pearls. The idea of disease originated in a fanciful supposition of pearls being to the oyster and mussel what gall-stones and urinary calculi are to higher and more suffering animals. Réaumur, to whom we owe so many good observations and suggestive ideas, came near the truth when, in 1717, he showed that the structure of pearls was identical with the structure of the shells in which they grow. He attributed their formation to the morbid effusion of coagulating shell-material.

I presume you know that shells are formed by a secretion from the _mantle_? The mantle is that delicate semi-transparent membrane which you observe, on opening a mussel, lining the whole interior of the shells, and having at its free margins a sort of fringe of delicate tentacles, which are sensitive and retractile. A microscopic examination of these fringes shows them to be glandular in structure—that is, they are secreting organs. The whole mantle, indeed, is a secreting organ, and its secretion is the shell-material: the fringes secrete the colouring matters of the shell, and enlarge its _circumference_; the rest of the mantle secretes the nacre, or mother-of-pearl, and increases the _thickness_ of the shell. Now it is obvious that the formation of pearl nacre, and of pearls, depends on the _healthy_ condition of the mantle, not on its diseases. If the mantle be injured the nacre is not secreted at all, or in less quantities.

But, although pearls depend upon the healthy, not the diseased activity of the mantle, it is clear that there must be some unusual condition present for their formation; since the secretion of nacre does not spontaneously assume the form of pearls. What is the unusual condition? Naturalists are at present divided into two camps, fighting vigorously for victory. The one side maintains that the origin of a pearl is this—an egg of the oyster has escaped and strayed under the mantle; or the egg of a parasite has been _deposited_ there; this egg forms the nucleus, round which the nacre forms, and thus we have the pearl. The other side maintains with great positiveness that _anything_ will form a nucleus, a grain of sand, no less than the egg of a parasite. ’Tis a pretty quarrel, which we may leave them to settle. Some aver that grains of sand are more numerous than anything else; but Möbius says that of forty-four sea pearls, and fifteen fresh-water pearls, examined by him, not one contained a grain of sand; and Filippi, who has extensively investigated this subject, denies that a grain of sand ever forms the nucleus of a true pearl. Both Filippi and Küchenmeister[16] declare that a parasite gets into the mussel or oyster, and its presence there stimulates an active secretion of nacre.

There are pearls, according to Möbius, which consist of three different systems of layers, like the shells in which they are formed; with this difference, that these layers are _reversed_: in the shell the nacre forms the innermost layer, in the pearl it forms the outermost. Hence the qualities of the pearl depend on the shell, and on the different proportions of nacre and carbonate of lime.

Since we know how pearls are made, may it not be expected that we should learn to make them? Ever since the days of Linnæus the hope has been entertained, and it is now becoming every day more likely to be realized. Imperfect pearls have been made in abundance. The Chinese have long practised the art. They simply remove the large fresh-water mussel from the water, insert a foreign substance under the mantle, and in two or three years (if I remember rightly) they take the mussels up again, and find the pearls formed. In this way they make little mother-of-pearl Josses, which are sold for a penny each; and I remember seeing a couple of large shells in the Anatomical Museum at Munich, the whole length of which was occupied by rows of little squab Josses, very comical to behold. I was informed that a copper chain of these deities had been inserted under the mollusc’s mantle, and this was the result.

FOOTNOTES

[12] FLOURENS: _Cours de Physiologie Comparée_, 1856, p. 9.

[13] BURDACH: _Physiologie_, ii. 245.

[14] DARWIN: _Origin of Species_, p. 128.

[15] ISIDORE GEOFFROY ST. HILAIRE: _Hist. Nat. Générale des Règnes Organiques_, 1860, iii. 207 _sq._ BROCA: _Mémoire sur l’Hybridité_, in BROWN-SEQUARD’S _Journal de la Physiologie_, 1859.

[16] See their interesting essays in MÜLLER’S _Archiv._ 1856.

Paterfamilias to the Editor of the “Cornhill Magazine.”

Sir,—To a person returning to England after an absence of many years, few things can be more striking than the progress which has been made in the art and practice of education since the commencement of the present century, the methods and contrivances which have been ingeniously and mercifully invented for imparting with greater ease the rudiments of knowledge to the young, and the new books and new devices which really merit the Old World title of _Reading made Easy_.

Formerly, any old paupers, who could read or write more or less intelligibly, and who were too worn or too weak to earn their subsistence in any other manner, used to be considered as perfectly qualified to instruct the rising generation of the parish to which they belonged in those necessary arts; and dire used to be the sufferings which the unhappy village children underwent, solely because their broken-down and incompetent teachers knew but little themselves, and knew not at all how to impart that little to others.

To do them justice, however, their pupils were not entirely neglected. If they could not read fluently, neither could they seat themselves with any degree of comfort; and if they were backward in summing and spelling, they seldom failed to return home at night with swollen eyes and scored palms. The tree of knowledge in those days was only valued on account of the tough and elastic materials which it furnished for the manufacture of instruments of childish torture.

The normal aspect of a village school used then to be, an aged crone in the chimney-corner, spectacles on nose, and rod in hand; a loutish boy, crowned with a fool’s cap, whining by her side; a class of trembling dunces before her, endeavouring in vain to shirk unchastised through lessons which they were as unapt to learn as their mistress was to teach; and, in the background, the body of the school, ignorant, rude, dirty, and of evil savour—just such a brutal and unpromising brood as the incapable old hen who presided over them might be expected to rear.

In the present year of our Lord 1860, a village, nay, a workhouse school, in any district of England, presents a very different, and a much pleasanter sight. Order, cleanliness, and intelligence now predominate; the active and experienced teachers—young men and women in the prime of life, carefully trained to teach—understand their duties thoroughly, and are proud of their success in discharging them. Punishments are now rare, and never cruel; the children have a happy and cultivated look, and the result of this improved system of school-teaching obtrudes itself gratefully on the eye and ear of the visitor in well-written copies and careful drawings, in distinctly enunciated reading, in harmonious singing, and in arithmetical calculations of surprising accuracy and rapidity. And all these valuable results have been produced by a very moderate degree of judicious encouragement and vigilance on the part of the legislature, which has, in the first place, taught the teachers of the children of the poor the art of teaching—an art until lately entirely neglected in this country; and, secondly, has kept them up to their work by a careful system of school inspection. Every school which now benefits by a grant of government money is examined and reported on, publicly and periodically, by the government inspectors of schools, able and accomplished men, as thoroughly versed in the art of examination as the teachers they overlook are in the art of teaching.

It is a deplorable and strange fact, that whilst all this care and forethought has been so properly bestowed on the children of the English poor, the children of our wealthier classes have been in that respect altogether neglected. Their teachers are never trained to teach at all; no government inspector ever reports on the educational merits or demerits of our old-established upper-class schools, which remain, for the most part, mere money speculations, in which the welfare and progress of the pupils are held altogether subservient to the pecuniary profits of the masters. All is left in those important establishments to self-interest and to chance; and there would even now be small hope of a change in their system for the better, were it not for external circumstances, to which I will presently advert.

Many years ago I was myself a pupil at Harchester College, one of our most celebrated public schools. It was indeed a pleasant place for a sturdy, quick-witted boy; though for a boy who was neither sturdy nor quick-witted, it was neither pleasant nor profitable: clever, studious boys did very well at it, as clever, studious boys will generally do anywhere; but boys of average ability and application learnt very little there, and dull or idle boys learnt positively nothing at all.

Nor were these unsatisfactory results surprising, when the system and the staff of the school were critically examined. The Harchester tutors were all Fellows of one small and not very distinguished college at Oxbridge, which possessed a sort of vested interest in Harchester. They came thither as masters, not because anybody believed them to be clever men, or because they were supposed to possess any natural or acquired aptitude for teaching, but solely as a matter of pounds, shillings, and pence. They wished to make money rapidly. The profits of a master at Harchester were known to be very great; and the Fellows of —— college had, according to their seniority, a prescriptive right to that position, if they pleased.

Such an arrangement as this was bad enough, but the fact that the proportion of masters to boys was dishonestly small, was worse; there were not nearly enough of them even to hear the pupils the daily tasks which were assigned to them; and as for any moral or social supervision out of school-hours, none was ever attempted—so perplexed and overwhelmed were the teachers with the burden of their scholastic duties. If the elder boys in a tutor’s house chanced to be gentlemanlike and well-conditioned lads, the juniors had a pretty good time of it, and fared tolerably; if they chanced to be roughs or snobs, which they occasionally were, the juniors had a bad time of it, and fared ill. But the whole thing was a complete matter of chance. A tutor, who from seven in the morning till ten at night, with very brief intervals for food and exercise, was occupied in teaching and hearing lessons, in examining maps, in correcting themes and verses, and who could not in that space of time hear one-fifth of the lessons his pupils were supposed, by a wild stretch of tutorial imagination, to learn, was not in a position to bestow much attention on either the morals or the manners of the boys. During the daytime they were left entirely to themselves, to ferment, and purify or corrupt, as the case might be; and at night they were in some degree supervised and controlled by the confidential servants of the houses in which they boarded.

The regular business of the school consisted solely in the study of Latin and Greek, which was taught in the precise manner in which it had been taught to our fathers and grandfathers; for no newfangled or short cuts to knowledge found favour in the eyes of the Principal of Harchester: of modern history, modern geography, modern languages, English composition and literature, arithmetic, or mathematics, we learnt nothing. There was, indeed, a slight pretence made of teaching some few of those branches of education, and French and mathematics figured occasionally as extras in our bills; but it was but a pretence—they formed no part of what was termed “the regular business of the school,” and proficiency in them obtained for a boy neither credit nor position at Harchester. Straws often show which way the wind blows. The Harchester boys were never required to touch their hats to the French or the mathematical masters; whilst to the classical masters, who alone conducted the discipline of the school, they were required to be always hat in hand.

The insufficient number of masters, and the overwhelming number of pupils, enabled the latter to shirk their lessons with great facility; and the consequence was, that the masters, conscious of the evil practice, yet unequal to prevent it, quieted their consciences by inflicting corporal punishments to an incredible amount; notwithstanding which, it is no exaggeration to say, that for one pupil who left Harchester a fair scholar, a dozen left it with scarcely any education at all.

But as the Harchester boys had plenty of holidays—as their amusements were many and varied, and as they were liberally fed and well lodged—they liked the system and the place well enough. Fives, rackets, cricket, boating, hockey, and football kept them healthy and active; they dressed well and expensively, had every opportunity they could desire for running in debt at the pastrycooks’ and the public-houses of the town, and, I am sorry to say, equal facilities for becoming initiated into some of the vices of maturer age.

The masters were scarcely to blame for this; it was the system that was mainly in fault. They had themselves been brought up under that system; they sincerely believed in it. They worked from morning till night, and more could not be expected of mortal men. If they could, they would have educated all their pupils thoroughly; they would have watched over them and kept them out of debt and difficulty of all kind; but they could not—their numbers were so few. It is true that their numbers might have been doubled, nay, trebled, with undoubted advantage to the school; but then their profits must have been proportionably diminished; and it was too much to expect from human nature that a reform, which could only be attained at such a heavy cost, should be initiated by the very individuals who would suffer from it. Government inspection would at once have shown the propriety of such a step, and would have necessitated its immediate adoption; but to talk of government inspection for such a distinguished school as Harchester would have been rank sacrilege. It might do very well for the schools of the poor, but Harchester would never have submitted to it.

Harchester was a very popular school. The sons of half the nobility and gentry of England, Scotland, Ireland, and Wales were sent thither, because their fathers had been there before them; and because, although it was known not to be a very good school—for learning—there was no other upper-class school which was known to be decidedly better. It used to be hinted, too, that between each generation vast improvements had taken place in its system. The high social position of the Harchester boys was sure to obtain for them a remarkably good start in the race of life, and whenever any one of them distinguished himself signally at college or in parliament, the admirers of Harchester fondly attributed his success to the excellence of the Harchester system. It never seemed to occur to them that the boy might have thriven in spite of that lax and dishonest system, and not in consequence of it. Harchester men had also a great reputation for being gentlemanlike, and on that quality they prided themselves much more than upon their scholarship. But as the sons of the best noblemen and gentlemen of England all went to Harchester, it was not very surprising that they should grow up gentlemen. They would probably have done so had they all been educated anywhere else. At any rate, the masters could claim no credit for the gentility of their pupils—unless, indeed, gentility be a plant which is best cultivated by entire neglect.

Numbers of the wealthy of the middle classes sent their sons to Harchester in imitation of their betters. It was the most expensive school in England. They imagined that its associations secured to their boys great advantages in after life; and, in truth, like their betters, they knew of no other upper-class school that was decidedly superior to it. Mothers liked it because it was fashionable, and was supposed to make their boys “gentlemen;” and country squires, who had been educated there themselves, and were not particularly conscious of their own deficiencies, were quite satisfied if their sons, after passing four or five years in happy idleness, left it accomplished oarsmen and expert cricketers.

Thirty or forty years ago such a system as this did very well for our governing classes; well or ill educated, the Houses of Lords and Commons, the Army, and the Civil Service, received with open arms the children of the powerful and the rich; eldest sons, after a couple of years’ additional idleness as gentlemen commoners at Oxbridge, went into parliament and voted all the more steadily with their party, because they were confirmed and incurable dunces; whilst younger sons obtained commissions in crack regiments, or stools in the Treasury and Foreign Office, and rose through the money and the parliamentary influence their fathers could command, rather than through their own merits and exertions. From such causes, and for such reasons, did Harchester College prosper, and set an example which was followed by most of the upper-class schools in England.

But in the present day, circumstances have arisen which must ere long shake the time-honoured Harchester system to its very foundations. The improvements which have of late years taken place in English education, have, indeed, been first made manifest in the schools of the poor; but they are swiftly surging upwards, and if Harchester, and our other great public schools, are to maintain the position which they have hitherto held, the sooner they call in the government inspector the better for them. Middle-class schools are rising around them—in London, in Liverpool, at Cheltenham, at Bradley, at Marlborough, at Bradfield, and elsewhere—which are readily adapting themselves to the altered requirements of the age; and unless Harchester means to be left in the lurch, that venerable establishment must conform also.

No boy can now enter the Army or the Civil Service until he has proved by an examination before government examiners, not only that his parents have paid for a good education for him, but that he has profited by it. The standard of education which has been erected by the Civil Service Commissioners and the Board of Military Education, is, indeed, a low one; but it has been constructed by the advice and with the concurrence of the masters of our largest schools, it is firmly based upon public opinion, and it is far more likely to be heightened than to be reduced. And there it will henceforward remain—a sure though not a severe test of the honesty and abilities of masters as well as of scholars. From a youth of seventeen or eighteen years of age it requires but little, but it insists that that little shall be well and thoroughly learnt. A correct knowledge of his mother tongue and of arithmetic, a fair acquaintance with history, geography, mathematics, and French, as well as with Latin and with Greek, if the candidate volunteers the latter, is all that is asked; and if an upper-class school does not teach that much to a boy between the age of twelve and eighteen, it is not unreasonable to inquire what it does teach him? But these are just the educational items which Harchester has hitherto evaded teaching. They are not yet part of the Harchester “school business;” the sooner they are, the better for the future prosperity of Harchester.

As matters now stand, what happens to a Harchester boy the moment he receives the promise of a commission or a clerkship, is just this: he is hastily removed from that celebrated school, and is handed over to “a crammer”—an educational empiric—who can have no pride in his calling; who deals only with full-grown and avowed dunces; and who undertakes to teach them in a few months what it is shameful to their teachers that they should not have learnt years before. The “crammer” teaches at a manifest disadvantage; he and his pupil are strangers to each other; he knows nothing of his constitution, his disposition, his capacity, or his temper; he has, and can have, no influence or control over him; all he can do, all he undertakes to do, is to hustle him, by fair means or by foul, over the low educational barrier which debars the youth from entering the profession of his choice. Sometimes he succeeds—generally after one or two mortifying failures; but very often the poor lad has been allowed to become so incurably idle as to be unable to acquire at eighteen those rudimentary parts of education, which ought to have been imparted to him when he was a child, and in which the sons of his father’s tradesmen are now mostly proficient; and he is in consequence shut out from the career to which he and his parents have for years been looking forward with eager satisfaction. In either case his friends are unfairly exposed to great expense, anxiety, and mortification. And all this happens because our old public school system is too deeply rooted in vested interests to accommodate itself readily to the altered habits and requirements of the age.

I know very well that I shall be told that our public school system is not what it used to be, and that what I have here written refers rather to what _was_ than to what _is_. I am prepared to test the justice of this reproof in the manner most disadvantageous to my argument. I have before me the statistics of half-a-dozen of our largest upper-class schools; I will take up those of the most costly, the most renowned, the largest. They are those of Eton.

I find that that school lately contained between 800 and 900 boys. To teach them everything, save mathematics and French, there were twenty-one masters. But of those, one, the head master, takes no pupils: nor does the assistant master in college teach any of the boys. Upwards of 800 boys, therefore, are taught by nineteen masters. Now much economy of scholastic labour may undoubtedly be effected by teaching boys in large droves; but I am assured that the system of instruction at Eton is rather wasteful than economical of scholastic labour. All the teaching is done out of school, in the private houses of the tutors, and the boys only go into school to repeat what they have previously learnt, and to exhibit exercises that have been already examined and corrected. Therefore, as each master has a few pupils in every class in the school, each master is compelled every day to go through the entire business of every class in the school; and some of them undertake single-handed the private tuition of as many as seventy boys!

It seems absolutely impossible, under such conditions, that nineteen masters can do justice to 800 or 900 boys; and the questions naturally arise,—Do they do justice to them? Can they do justice to them? And if they do not, and cannot, why are their numbers not doubled or trebled at once? Ought not the liberal sum paid for the education of an Eton boy to ensure to him the fullest educational advantages? Ought any “crammer” to be required to prepare him for his appearance before the Civil Service Commissioners or the Board of Military Education?

Of late years we have been told that the study of modern languages has been much more attended to at our public schools than formerly; and H.R.H. the Prince Consort has kindly and thoughtfully encouraged it by offering prizes for the best scholars in that branch of knowledge at Eton. But the authorities at that school do not appear, from their published statistics, to be sensible of the importance of such acquirements, although they absolutely constitute the only current coin which will be received at the educational turnpike which the government has recently erected, and through which every boy entering on public life as a soldier or a civil servant must now pass. At that turnpike Greek and Roman money is no longer exclusively taken.

The class of youths who are educated at Eton can scarcely be said to have received the education of gentlemen, if at seventeen or eighteen they have not acquired a moderate knowledge of French. Yet to teach 800 or 900 boys French, but one master has hitherto been provided by the authorities of that school; and for their fractional share in his services, his pupils each pay 10_l._ 10_s._ a year _extra_. At King’s College, London,—one of the best of our middle-class schools—there are three French masters kept to instruct 880 boys, without any _extra_ charge. At Charter-House—which enjoys the advantage of the independent supervision of its distinguished governors—there is one classical master to every twenty boys; and French—not an _extra_—is as well cared for as it is at King’s College; whilst at Eton there is not one classical master to every forty boys. I will, however, enter into no further comparisons of this kind. I am fearful of falling into technical errors, which might weaken the force of what I wish to say. I have no right to suppose that Eton is a bit worse than others of our public schools, or that it is not better than many of them: but I do say that the statistics to which I have here adverted call for immediate attention and explanation. It is of the utmost importance to every man in England that the schools at which our future legislators are educated should be good schools, and that the governors of this country should be at least as well educated as the governed. If they are not, in the course of a few years deplorable results must ensue.

I will now relate the accident which has decided me on calling, through your means, public attention to this matter.