- ity," he is congratulated by his tutor for having been passably
decent. Whereupon he observes,—[1]
"Thus closed my academical career. He who does not allow
that it passed creditably to my teachers, profitably to myself,
and beneficially to the world, is a narrow-minded and illiterate
man, who knows nothing of the advantages of modern education."
Trollope in The Bertrams, and Kingsley in Yeast and
Alton Locke, have a few words for the subject, but add no
new idea, except that Alton voices the disgust of the students
themselves with their Alma Mater. It is this same
young neophyte who is advised by Dean Winnstay to go
to some such college as St. Mark's, which "might, by its
strong Church principles, give the best antidote to any
little remaining taint of sans-culottism."
In Butler's Erewhonian Colleges of Unreason the leading subject is Hypothetics, and the most honored Chairs are those of Inconsistency and Evasion, both required courses. Genius and originality are resolutely discouraged, it being a man's business "to think as his neighbors do, for Heaven help him if he thinks good what they count bad." These Erewhonian professors, by the way, might have adduced as evidence the well-known, horrified exclamation of Mary Shelley at the suggestion that her son
- ↑ Pelham, 13. Cf. his Kenelm Chillingly for a discussion between Uncle John, the idealistic vicar and Mivers, the utilitarian man of the world, as to educational values. The latter believes the parson's rêgime would produce "either a pigeon or a ring-dove, a credulous booby or a sentimental milk-sop." The former makes a thoughtful distinction between the public school, which ripens talent but stifles genius, and the private, which is too enervating, making of the boys either prigs or sissies. It is Mivers who advocates adapting the style of education to the disposition of the individual; and insuring development by putting the youthful mind in contact with the most original and innovating thinkers of the day.
