CHAPTER FOUR.
"UP FOR EXAM." Say, should the philosophic mind disdain That good which makes each humbler bosom vain?
Let school-taught pride dissemble all it can, These little things are great to little man! In pursuance of the vicar's advice, I hied me without delay to the tutor whom he had specially recommended; and, setting to work diligently, crammed, as hard as I could, for my expected examination.
"Cramming," nothing more nor less, was, undoubtedly, the system pursued by this modern instructor of maturity--I cannot say `of youth,' as the majority of his pupils were men who had long cut their wisdom teeth, and worn the virile toga almost threadbare:--stalwart men, "bearded like the pard," in the fashion of Hamlet's warrior, which has now become so general that heroes and civilians are indistinguishable the one from the other.
The crammer dosed these with facts and figures at a five-hundred-horse- power rate, interlarding them with such stray skeleton scraps of popular information as mendicant scholars may pick up from the sumptuously- spread tables of the learned, through those crumb-like compilations of chronology and history, with which we are familiar, styled "treasures of knowledge:"-- thus, he injected into the brain of his neophytes dates by the dozen and proper names--geographical ones in particular--by the score, impressing them on stubborn memories through the aid of some easily-learnt rhyme, or comic association, that made even the dullest comprehension retentive for awhile.
His entire curriculum consisted, mainly, in the getting by heart, with their answers, of sundry old civil service examination papers which he kept in stock--continually increasing his store as fresh ones were issued by the examining board, until he was at length master of every question which had ever puzzled a candidate from the era of the first competition down to the present day.
His motive in this was very obvious.

The crammer argued, not only wisely, but well, that a certain proportion of these questions were pretty safe to be again propounded in subsequent contests, just as one sees antique Joe Millers appear again and again, at regular recurring intervals, in the excruciating "Facetiae" columns of those penny serials, of limited merit and "unlimited circulation," that delight the eyes and ears of below-stairs readers, the staple of whose mental pabulum they principally form.
The crammer was right in his premises, as I've said, the old queries being so frequently put and re-put, that they amount on average to fifty per cent, at least, of the total number that may be set to-morrow, to addle the brains of the Smiths, Browns, and Robinsons who may be ambitious of serving their country in a red-tape capacity.
It has often struck me that the general principles of our national system of education are open to considerable improvement.
We go to work on a wrong foundation.
Any plan of instruction, meant to be permanent in its effects, should be homogeneous: we, on the contrary, so break up and divide the different branches of ordinary knowledge, that they resemble more a number of disconnected particles, loosely strung together without order or uniformity, than the kindred units of a harmonious whole--as should properly be the case.
We mark out and specify, geography, history, science, and Belles Lettres, as distinct subjects for study--whereas, in reality, they dovetail into one another in the closest bonds of relationship; and, were they only thus judiciously intermingled, in one, thorough, cosmical course of learning, they would, most likely, be better understood in their separate parts, and, undoubtedly, be better remembered.
For instance, in grounding the young idea in the geography of any particular country, the main points of its history should follow as a natural sequence.

Its seas and rivers would lead to the consideration of commerce and the polity of nations:--the mention of its towns, suggest the names of its great men in literature and art.

Its scenery would call to mind the poets who might have made it famous, the artists who may have portrayed its beauties with their pencil; while, to pursue the theme, its valleys and mountains would remind the student of the value of agriculture and mineral wealth--besides attracting his notice to atmospherical and other scientific phenomena, that can be far more readily comprehended by young learners, when thus seen, as it were, in action, than if taught merely in separate dry treatises that seem to have little in common with the busy, bustling, moving world, whose laws they affect to expound.
My plan, indeed, would be a further development of the Kindergarten scheme, and the Pestalozzian system, generally.
As soon as children had passed through the rudimentary stages of instruction, being able to spell and read correctly, their advanced studies should be entirely shorn of their present routine characteristics.

They might be made so full of life, and even amusement, that they would thenceforth lose their _lesson_ look; and be, correspondingly, all the more easily-learnt.