78 BRAMBLES AND BAY LEAVES. 



From the age 



That children tread the worldly stage, 

 BroomstafF, or poker, they bestride, 

 And round the parlour love to ride. , 



Pkior. 



The broomstick went the way of all toys, — petted to day, burnt 

 to-morrow ; and to avenge the degradation inflicted upon it then, 

 its ghost came back to us at school, inflicting stripes, and, in 

 the compound of foolscap and pickled birch, torturing the affections 

 as well as the flesh, and making youth's season of song and sunshine 

 one of wailings and tears. The pickled birch — how barbarous in it- 

 self, and still more barbarous in its frequent anduntimeduse, marking 

 more the phases of the teacher's temper than the dulness of the pupil's 

 mind. Stupid old doctrine ! to imagine that what the mind was in- 

 capable of grasping could be beaten into the body, — that to make an 

 impression on the memory blood must trickle from the skin. Well, 

 that time has past also, and memory seems to hallow even those bar- 

 barities ; and we catch sight of the modern cane, so sparingly used by 

 men who have adopted love as an element of education in the place of 

 the old sottish spite, — when we see that, we sometimes imagine that 

 things have sadly degenerated since we went to school, for to us now 

 the pickled birch is a thing of poetry, if it be the poetry of pain, while 

 the cane is mere prose, and suggestive of sugar candy at the highest. 

 But the birch has its moral for after life, — 



■ — ■ As fond fathers, 



Having bound up the threatening twigs of biich, 

 Onely to stioke it in their children's sight 

 For terror, not to use; in time the rod, 

 More mocked than feared. 



Measuke for Measure. 



It is a serious question how far principle actuates us to duty rather 

 than fear of consequences. We are, perhaps,tlittle better than school- 

 boys, and fear the moral birch of the world, and the stripes of con- 

 science, in more cases than we love its tasks and burdens: — 



But though no more his brow severe, nor dread 

 Of birchen sceptre awes my riper age, 

 A sterner tyrant rises to my view, 

 ' With deadlier weapon armed. 



Jagg, Edge Hill. b. iii. 



