198 CHAP. XIV. THE STRUCTURE OF SCHOOLS. A MOST important subject is presented to our notice. under the head of the Structure of Schools. The more fully and fairly we consider the subject of education, especially in connection with moral training, the more clearly we see that many concurring influences must be brought to bear upon the purposes of the educator; the more clearly we see, when taking this view, that no single individual can work out this great purpose through the instrumentality of personal authority, or even example alone, that it cannot be effectually carried out, even by a combination of individuals acting officially, but by a variety of influences so brought together by the application of principle as to create a kind of moral atmosphere, without which all attempts to educate character up to a high standard must prove ineffectual. Hence, the structure of schools, when made to comprehend the arranging of plans and the bringing together of influences for this purpose, becomes a subject of the greatest importance. It might be deemed presumptuous to say here that in this respect a general reform throughout our educational establishments is greatly needed. I will therefore only venture to suggest that such a reform would be a noble enterprise, not unworthy of the highest talent, or the most enlightened philanthropy. As a proof how little any individual, by the mere exercise of authority, can do towards altering the moral character of a community, we may take the subject of honour. Where once a certain code of honour has become established in a community of young persons beyond the years of childhood, there is no power that can be wielded by any single hand which has half the amount of influence exercised by these laws amongst the young persons themselves. Physical force, of course, may be brought in to keep down the visible manifestations of this influence, but it will still be there, and even while thus restrained, will sometimes operate with a strength scarcely inferior to that which nerved the Spartan boy while the stolen animal he was concealing in his bosom preyed upon his life. The offenders in such cases may be expelled, or the community may be dispersed. And nobly was it said by Dr. Arnold, when certain symptoms of misrule or of want of principle appeared amongst his pupils, that it was not necessary to have a school of three hundred boys—not of a hundred, or even of fifty; but that it was necessary to have a school of Christian gentlemen. There has been no recorded saying of any individual eminent in modern times, which, to my feelings, has borne so much the stamp of moral greatness as this; and it is chiefly in despair of finding a sufficient number of men like Dr. Arnold, that we have so much need for so constructing our educational establishments, that many influences combined may produce the same beneficial results which I am still prepared to grant, might, under very peculiar circumstances, be partially insured by the influence of one noble and enlightened character, endowed in the highest degree both with intellectual and moral greatness. But, even under such circumstances, the good influence thus derived must cease with the natural life of this rarely endowed individual; and because we see this generally the case, we have come to suppose that individual influence alone can accomplish the great work which has to be done. It was the observation of the late Dr. Combe, in writing on this subject, that unless we can found our systems of education on some basis more sure and lasting than individual influence, we shall never make any important progress in moral training. I would here also make grateful acknowledgment of many other useful hints and suggestions, always kindly offered by Mr. Combe; than whom, perhaps, it is scarcely possible to refer to higher authority on some points connected with the nature and the development of human character. From these, and from many other sources, all the evidence I have been able to obtain has tended to increase my doubts of the certainty, or the lasting efficacy, of individual moral influence, when operating upon numbers as at school, and that only during the short period which is usually allowed at any single establishment. To the influence of parents these remarks have no application. Parental influence has the great advantage of beginning first, while the plastic nature of youth is still unmoulded and unimpressed. Parents, as already pointed out, enjoy the unequalled advantage of working through the powerful instrumentality of natural affection; and their efforts, of whatever kind they may be, can mostly be applied, with only transient interruptions, through a considerable portion of the season of youth. Parental influence has, however, always a great, and sometimes a counter influence to cope with, in the code of honour usually prevailing in schools; and, in what are called the highest schools, this influence is always the most powerful. It is, then, to this code of honour that we look for reform, when the moral working of the whole machine is out of order. It is not necessary to repeat that there may be a false honour as well as a true; and we all know that popular notions of honour have undergone almost as many changes as civilization itself. Even at this very moment, it is a subject of most curious and interesting investigation to observe how some of our national prejudices are wearing out in this respect, how exceedingly threadbare some of the old-fashioned notions of honour are beginning to look; and at the same time how pleasant and how invigorating are the sensations excited by some of our more modern notions, as we find them embodied both in prose and verse. civilization advances, these changes in public feeling and opinion always succeed each other more rapidly; so that the veteran chief of one school of honour is in some danger of living to be considered, in another, merely an old-fashioned man. As Little as I should desire to meddle, even in idea, with the general order of things as they belong to what are called our highest educational institutions, I still believe that a general and periodical revision of the laws of honour by the young persons who are influenced by such laws, would be of immense importance in helping to place their self-government upon a higher moral basis; as well as in better preparing them, both collectively and individually, for taking their legitimate places rather in advance than in the rear of all social and moral improvement. Associations for the consideration and revision of internal law would certainly be no unworthy occupation for those who may in future have to take their post in the government of nations. By such means, too, they would be brought to feel the weight of individual responsibility; for those who publicly engage in constructing or enforcing law as recognised by numbers, and established upon the basis of true honour, will certainly be placed in a situation the most favourable for the keeping of such laws themselves; and thus a great moral safeguard might be derived from this single source. But there are many other means, connected with the structure of schools, which might no doubt be made available for the same purposes. Nothing is more natural on the part of the young, nothing more apparent to those who undertake their education, than that even the most disorderly and rebellious do not really like a condition of general confusion and misrule. Indeed, they almost universally prefer an orderly establishment for the many, with the privilege of destroying order confined to themselves: they prefer that there should be law, even strictly enforced, so that they may have the pleasure of violating such law themselves. Any plan in the structure of a school which would bring such an individual, though but for a brief time, and with limited authority, into the position of laying down laws for the whole establishment, would, I believe, answer to a great extent the valuable purpose of converting a rebel into a stanch disciplinarian. By entering publicly, and in the face of his companions, upon this responsible office, he would feel himself pledged in rather a remarkable manner to one of two alternatives-either to make the |