ELEVATING THE PROFESSION OF THE EDUCATOR, 109 



we can hardly comprehend the nature of the evil or see any degene- 

 racy in the office. The early arbitration of ignorance cast education 

 as the ignoble business of slaves, and through the successive ages 

 even up to this period, the primary opinion, strenghtened more and 

 more by error, has thickened into a proverb. Those great and good 

 men who at all periods have been alone worthy to fill so sacred a 

 duty, disgusted and driven away to the more solitary pursuits of lite- 

 rature left the divine trust of teaching truth and goodness, to the 

 herd of promiscuous and ignorant pretenders, who being qualified 

 neither in the knowledge of God nor man, have turned this spiritual 

 magistracy into a grovelling and despicable trade, dragging the high- 

 est moral duty to the lowest bent of human degradation. It is no 

 marvel therefore the " profession of the educator" should be so con- 

 temned nay contrariwise would be a miracle. To depict more firmly 

 this declension, let the profession be compared with itself and with 

 that of the church. The multitude and varied character of schools, 

 drawn in this comparison is another and incidental evil, what could 

 be more curious than to trace the gradual and the long descent, from 

 the regal professorships of the universities down to the poor half- 

 starved attenuated village school-master or the two pence a week 

 dame schools, where a number indefinitely fixed of poor little chil- 

 dren are huddled together in a dark, cold, damp cellar or kitchen^ 

 and, ere they can lisp, learn the truth (baptized in tears) that " man 

 is born to trouble" ; from the observation of these " seminaries for 

 the young" is it strange that the office should relapse to the lowest 

 place in public opinion ? or that the mere name of school should 

 carry with it something abortive and fatal to improvement. But the 

 evils of these schools, are also the evils of those aspiring to the more 

 respectable term of " Academy/' modified they may be, but the same 

 evils prevail in all ; though their hideous complexion be more or less 

 concealed : it matters little whether it be a two-penny dame school or 

 a " seminary for young gentlemen or ladies,"* poverty, distress, and 

 ignorance of the high virtues of their calling prevail in the same in- 



• Nothing is more at variance with common sense, than the silence of even 

 the first writers on education, as to the instruction and right bringing up of /<?- 

 males, as if those from whom we derive our first and most lasting impressions, 

 might be left to the mere chance of circumstances. Let it not be forgotten 

 therefore that the writer of this essay, though he does not particularize the 

 name, he associates all mankind without reference to sex in the essential re- 

 parative process of a better education, and that no general remark can ap- 

 ply exclusively to either sex. 



