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The

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from the knowledge that success at school and college CHAP. might influence their whole career. A gentleman's education, indeed, was less complete than it is now. boys at Eton, for instance, were taught almost exclusively Latin and Greek; and an Eton education was supposed to be the very best which a parent could give his son. The Eton boy, on leaving school, could write Latin Elegiacs or Greek Iambics with admirable ease and grace; but he could not speak a word of any modern language except his own. He was perfectly acquainted with the great authors of the ancient world, but he had never read a line of Chaucer or Froissart. He had read the speeches of Cicero; but he hardly knew the name of Bolingbroke. He had studied the dialogues of Plato; but he was ignorant of the writings of Locke. He could discuss the campaigns of Hannibal or Julius Cæsar with judgment, but he could hardly repeat the names of Frederick the Great's battles. He regarded the Gracchi as patriots, but he had an obscure notion that Adam Smith was a dangerous character. He knew the boundaries of the Roman empire; he could not have repeated the names of the English colonies.

Incomplete, however, as his education was, as far as it went it was admirable. The well educated man knew very little; but what he did know he knew very well. He had acquired very little serviceable information; but his mind was very well educated. Education is, after all, only the system under which the mind is trained. Men will perhaps always dispute whether physics or classics, mathematics or science, form the best subjects for training it. A man may bring his body into perfect condition by various kinds of exercise, and there is no reason for supposing that the mind may not be equally well trained by application to various kinds of studies. If, indeed, it were the object of school life to acquire a large stock of information, nothing could be worse than to devote the

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CHAP. greater portion of schooltime to the study of extinct and, so far as most men are concerned, useless languages. But ordinary men cannot acquire much information at school. They lay in their stores of knowledge when their education ceases; and, in this respect, our ancestors were certainly more advantageously situated than ourselves. In 1816, a man could not devote his whole time to reading novels, for the very good reason that there were only a few novels to be read. He was obliged, if he chose to read at all, to select books which on the whole were well worth reading. He read less than the modern Englishman, but the books which he did read were more useful to him. Educational institutions, however, were not free from the influence of the governing classes. Those who had the good fortune to be born in the purple were exempted at both Universities from the curriculum prescribed for ordinary students, and the visit of a monarch to a school was usually followed by the remission of a week's work. A whole term of academical study was dispensed with by the University of Oxford at the coronation of George IV. To remit a part of education,' wrote Ward to the Bishop of Llandaff, as you would remit a punishment, to what century does such a notion belong? A new reign then is to be reckoned as a joyous event for felons and undergraduates.' 1

'The old English gentleman.'

It was, however, only the exceptional young man, with more than the average of ability and ambition, who was well educated and well informed. The ordinary English gentleman, if he were an elder son, lived on his paternal acres; if he were a younger son, he lived on the family living, or went abroad to fight his country's battles. There were few professions which a gentleman could enter. A clever boy was sent to the Bar; a dull boy was driven into the Church; a spirited lad was destined for the Navy, or, if he had money or interest, for the 1 Ward's Correspondence with the Bishop of Llandaff, p. 249.

Army. But, outside the Bar, the Army, the Navy, and the Church, there was nothing which a gentleman could do. The prizes of the civil service were political, and the lower ranks of the offices were, with few exceptions, hardly good enough for the sons of a country gentleman. No one above the rank of an agricultural labourer would have dreamed of emigrating; no one with any pretensions to noble blood would have thought of going into trade. A gentleman's son would have rather died a pauper than have become a wine-merchant.

CHAP.

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The eldest son succeeded as a matter of course to the paternal acres. He usually had many good qualities; but he had equally many infirmities. On the one hand he was honest and honourable, kind to his tenants, and, after a fashion, to the poor. On the other hand he still too frequently indulged in the sports, the language, and the habits which had been common among his forefathers. Men moving in high society could see a bull baited, a main of cocks fought, or the desperate struggles of the prize-fight, without losing caste. Men in good society were not ashamed to maintain that there was something peculiarly English in these brutal spectacles. The courage of the prize-fighter, the bulldog, and the cock, prompted men, so they thought, to noble deeds. After all, the prize-fighter's risk was smaller than that which was incurred by the duellist, and every gentleman was prepared at any moment to fight a duel. Duelling had Duels. probably its origin in that remote period when trial by combat was regarded with the solemnity of a judicial proceeding. It was sanctioned by the deeds of the knights errant and the hallowing reminiscences of the days of chivalry. Everyone remembers the page in Brougham's life, in which he tells the story of his brother Peter's death in a duel. But plain men like Peter Brougham were not the only duellists. A man could hardly enter a public career without running the risk of

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CHAP. fighting a duel. Pitt was prime minister of England, Tierney was temporarily leader of the Opposition, when they fought at Wimbledon. Canning and Castlereagh were two of the most prominent members of the Cabinet when they met in 1809. The wound which Canning received did not teach him discretion. On two subsequent occasions he was on the eve of fighting a duel. He challenged Burdett, and Burdett's explanation only averted a meeting. An appeal was made to the Speaker's authority to stop the possibility of a contest between Canning and Brougham. Brougham himself was challenged by Stapylton for some hasty words spoken in contesting Yorkshire in 1830. In 1826 Beaumont and Lambton fought on Bamborough Sands in consequence of some expressions which Beaumont had used on the hustings at Alnwick. Wellington was prime minister of England when he challenged Lord Winchilsea in 1829. The Duke of Bedford and the Duke of Buckingham fought in Kensington Gardens in 1822. Grattan was elected for Dublin in 1800, made a speech against the Union, and fought a duel on the same day. O'Connell had killed his man. A literary quarrel led to Sir A. Boswell's death in a duel in 1822. Jeffrey, the editor of the Edinburgh Review,' was challenged by Moore the poet. Scott, in 1S27, was prepared to meet an obscure French officer.1

Intempe

rance.

Duels, however, frequent as they were, constituted only occasional events in a man's lifetime. Intemperance was the Englishman's everyday fault. Men, indeed, no longer got drunk at night as regularly as they went out hunting or shooting in the morning. But hard drinking was the vice of the nation from the highest to the lowest. To be drunk occasionally was no offence against good breeding. Some persons will recollect Scott's apology for a drunken clergyman: The crime of drunkenness consists not in a man's being in that situation twice or

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1 Ann. Reg. 1822, pp. 62, 82. Ibid. 1826, p. 103. Lockhart's Scott, p. 665.

thrice in his life, but in the constant and habitual practice of the vice; the distinction between "ebrius" and "ebriosus" being founded on common sense and recognised by law.'1 George IV., when Prince of Wales, invited the Duke of Norfolk to dinner for the express purpose of making him drunk. The Duke of York drank six bottles of claret at a sitting.2 Claret, however, was only within the reach of dukes and spendthrifts. Taxation had raised its price and restricted its use.

Bold and erect the Caledonian stood,

Old was his mutton, and his claret good;

Let him drink port, the English statesman cried—

He drank the poison, and his spirit died.3

So ran John Home's epigram.

Others had tasted claret till they now
To humbler port would turn,

wrote Crabbe in the Borough.'4

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Laws.

If drinking were too frequently the country gentle- The Game man's chief pastime at night, hunting and shooting were his chief occupation by day. Neither of these sports

were indeed carried on under the conditions which have made them popular since. The land was not drained; the enclosures were small; they were separated by huge shores or fences which no horse could leap; and the coverts or woods were large and near each other. Pace, in its modern sense, was impracticable, and men rode to hounds for the pleasure of seeing them work. The hare, which ran in a circle, became under these circumstances a more popular object of chase than the fox, which ran straight to the nearest covert, from which it taxed the skill of the huntsman to drive him. Shooting, too, was carried on with difficulty with the old flint locks and

1 Lockhart's Scott, p. 57. In Waverley, Bradwardine excuses Balmawhapple by the same distinction, ch. xii.

2 Thackeray's Four Georges, pp.
197 and 199.

3 Lockhart's Scott, p. 372.
* The Borough, Letter VI.

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