HISTORY AS THE TEACHER.
WE wish Sir Mountstuart Grant-Duff would not pack his thoughts so closely, but remember that recoil from verbiage is not of itself eloquence. He has got into a habit of compression since he left off talking to Elgin, and sometimes it nearly spoils his work. His lecture of Thursday, for example, to the Royal Historical Society is a contribution to politics as well as thought ; but it is so packed, that we doubt if all his audience could follow his meaning, and it is positively gritty to read. He desires, as we understand him, to make a serious modification in English education by introducing the study of general history, the history of the world, and not of any particular period, into what we may call the peremptory curriculum. He wants the new generation, and especially those of them who have time for thorough training, to "know their centuries," and breaks into a warm defence of history as an expanding influence on the mind, and especially as rendering the task of the politician easier, which it is, to this particular writer at all events, exceedingly pleasant to read. It is so true that "Dix mills ignorances ne font pas un savoir ! ' and that nine-tenths of the nonsense that is talked and written up and down the land would never be heard of if an adequate knowledge of the History of the World were one of the ordinary accomplishments expected in an English gentle- man." And it is so true, also, that the habit of splitting up history into "periods" is utterly detestable, and quite fatal to the study as a means of education, its object being to teach the student, not what happened in par- ticular years, but what man has been, and done, and said. You may know the Henry VIII. "period" a great deal better than Mr. Froude, and then be, for all true purpose in knowing history, as ignorant as a fish ; while men who know only outlines, find themselves equipped at every turn in the political controversy either with knowledge, or know- ledge how to obtain knowledge, which has all the value of experience. Sir Mountstuart is as convinced of his theory as any theologian, and actually takes the trouble, to the ruin of his lecture, to discuss books which might be used in the early stages of the study, either by the students themselves, or by the teachers who instruct them, and dares to rouse flaming animosities by suggesting that time might be found by deductions from studies— the classics, for example—for which he expresses, as means of education, a very decided contempt.
With the main drift of this proposal we acknowledge a certain sympathy. The ignorance of human history, so habitual among Englishmen, fetters them at every turn, and is in particular a cause of endless waste of energy in the political field. Half the speeches on the Home- rule project could not have been delivered to men really familiar with the history of the struggle between their own country and Ireland, nor can any historians listen with patience to much of the speaking in favour of that drift towards the extinction of private property which is now described as "Socialism." Five-sixths of the talking about military expenditure is, to those who know history, a stupid waste of time ; while they can but smile when they hear of experiments in the relief of the unemployed, as old as Imperial Rome, pressed forward as discoveries which must be imitated by all nations, and must diminish the misery prevailing in all great cities of the world. If our voters knew their own history, they would be far more patriotic, would know what " England " means, and would know, too, how much further than the rest of mankind they have advanced towards the ordered liberty which is the philosophic ideal, as well as that of all really progressive statesmen. It is dis- graceful, as well as hampering, for the educated class not to know, as half of them do not know, how the Empire grew ; while the imaginations of the uneducated are ren- dered poor by their ignorance of all patriotic traditions,— an ignorance the more inexcusable because the Lowland Scotch, a people exactly like themselves, are upon this subject nearly as well informed as are Norwegians or Swedes. If we could only teach our own history as well as the Americans teach theirs, we should breed electors twice as competent ; and for that end we would gladly give up much that is now con- sidered education, and especially all that arithmetical rubbish which, as Sir Mountstuart Grant-Duff truly says, no man ever employed or remembered in transacting the business of life. But when he speaks of making the study of "the centuries" universal, we part company with him, even as regards the educated, and contend that he has forgotten the first condition of the problem. Men who hate it can no more be taught general history, than men who hate music can be taught musical composition. They will not, or, to be still more frank, they cannot learn it. Sir Mountstuart must have met, when he was a younger man, with scores of young men upon whom classical education was worse than thrown away, who regarded it in all sincerity as a worrying study of words, and who emerged from school or college with, as Mr. Smedley once wrote, a positive dislike for classical writings, and a sort of hatred for the "lands of the unforgotten brave," about which they had been pestered during all their conscious lives. He has also, no doubt, been familiar during his maturer life with men who acknowledge openly a loathing for mathematics ; who regret that they ever learned any ; who deny utterly that they train the mind to anything except bitterness ; and who, but for their appreciation of such applied sciences as engineering, would gladly hear that the study, as a study, was extinct. He may rely upon it that the in- stinctive antipathy to general history, the history of "the centuries," is as bitter, and covers a larger proportion of English mankind. They can no more read Gibbon than the Italian convict could read Guic- ciardini. The fascination of that most marvellous of narratives no more exists for them than the fascination of Beethoven existed for Dean Stanley. If forced to read such history, they forget it at once, and even while they read it, believe that one Emperor was just like another, that julian, who founded Paris, and left his soul to inhabit it, so that Paris corporate has been for a thousand years just Julian, was much of a muchness, say, with Diocletian the administering, or Justinian the legislating Emperor. All three are to them names on coins, not Emperors. History not only does not educate, it shuts up their minds. We are certain of our facts, which have been pressed on us by the events of life, and we do not believe there is any remedy whatever, any more than there is for distaste to music. Stay, we believe it to be possible, by great attention and. individual oral teaching, to wake in any strong mind, what- ever its bias, interest in history taken in minute patches. It is difficult to conceive of a young man capable of com- prehending history at all, who, if forced to read about the conversion of Rome from a Republic into a Monarchy, would not get interested in that stirring drama, and the personages who played in so effective a manner its great roles. Cesar and Pompey and Antony are people even to the dull, much more to those who are not dull, but only dislike history. And it is impossible to conceive of a man able to perceive how one man differs from another, who, if driven to read of Alexander, would not feel the fascination of the man who so impressed the world as a separate being, that from the day of his death till the day when Rome swallowed his Empire up, legitimate political power depended on its claimant's relation to Alexander as child, as bastard, as friend, as Marshal, or as follower. Nor have we ever met in the world a man who, knowing at all of the French Revolution, ever found its history dull, or its personages, from Mirabeau down even to Barri:re, devoid of interest. But general history is to two-thirds of Englishmen wearisome ; and compendiums of it, even such a one as White's "Eighteen Christian Centuries," constantly inaccurate, but as readable as a novel, mere sawdust. If all were taught it, 10 per cent. would become men of a wide and most stimulating know- ledge, 30 per cent. would be men of larger interests and experience than they are, and 60 per cent, would be less " educated " than the average men now, who are trained through what are to them more acceptable methods. The 60 per cent, would know nothing of the history they had learned, which would raise in their minds not one picture or one speculation, and which they would correlate in no way with the facts around them ; and they would miss the other knowledge, more fruitful for them, which they might, but for historic reading, have acquired. "It is impossible," the lecturer may exclaim. Well, we can but give an opinion ; but one of the ablest travellers who has ever studied America, affirms that, away from the sea-coast, men have lost their interest in Europe, never speak of it never read of it, care no more about its stirring history, either past or present, than Englishmen care about the history of Asia,—an immense and most vivid subject, about which, as Sir Mountstuart Grant-Duff well knows, the majority of the English educated could not be induced by any temptation, either from the knowledge or from the style of the historian, to read or remember one word.
The truth is, in education, as in every other department of life, you have to deal with human beings : they are nct all alike, and what they do not like, to that they will not devote their minds. Sir Mountstuart is very angry, quite justly, with the imperfect way in which many children at Board schools learn to read. In the sense in which he thinks of the art, and in which all journalists, we imagine, are compelled to think of it, a large number of the children never learn to read at all. They slowly gather from the signs before them some sort of meaning, usually inaccurate, and once away from school often forget what sounds the signs should convey. That is not knowledge, and Sir Mountstuart is half-inclined to think it must be due to the teaching. Very likely that may be true in many cases, but let Sir Mountstuart cross-examine the brightest " school-marm " he can discover, either in Surrey or Massachusetts, and he will find that those who read best are taught on the same system and by the same people as those who read worst, and that nearly all the difference comes from within, is referable, in fact, to a want of atten- tion caused by a failure of will. To educate well we must waken interest, and as the interest of any three lads is in three different things, we must teach many subjects, and abandon the hope that all will become even" sufficiently" instructed in any one of them. We venture to say that if every Member of Parliament read Sir Mountstuart's lecture to-night, not more than a third could pass in it to-morrow any sort of examination. That is the precise position of a majority of lads who read history.
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