850 
PROCEEDING-S OF SECTION J. 
mentions in connection with jam-tarts came into the ascendant.* It 
became the scholastic mode to make things easy and pleasant. Objects 
were placed before boys to look at; diagrams of the cancerous interior 
of Napoleon s stomach, skeletons with brass fittings, melodramatic 
chemical displays in which a bit of lump sugar swelled into a vast cubical 
mass of solid blacking. With these and similar devices was the pupil 
amused and instructed. On the top of this amiable method came the 
principle of moral earnestness and moral suasion. f This was, with a 
few expounders of educational theories and with some middle-class 
parents, a highly popular principle. The neophytes of this cult felt 
somehow that the mantle of Arnold had descended upon their shoulders. 
But moral suasion was found difficult to work ,♦ in fact, it broke down! 
There should exist somewhere in the background of schools a terror to 
evildoers, just as in general life behind all marches the policeman. 
Life is hard everywhere, and when the question is looked into there 
seems to be no practical reason why boys should pass what is a con- 
siderable part of the span of life under a kind of more-favoured 
nation clause as to their work. Besides, men could not always be 
on their knees striving for the moral conversion of boys. But the 
question of punishment being a standing difficulty, and a full 
reversion to the dominion of the ferule being out of the question, men 
had to cast about for some new coercive instrument, and discovered 
examinations to be a first-class substitute for the birch. 
In estimating the decline of corporal punishment in the discipline 
of grammar schools, perhaps adequate allowance has not been made 
for the expulsive power of this new discipline. As every avenue to 
life in succession becomes barred by a gate watched by an examiner, 
so does the mechanical force of the examination mill increase ; so also 
is the schoolmaster supplied with an increasing means of enforcing 
industry. Intellectual delights belong only to the few; but vanity, 
ambition, the desire to please, the desire to excel, the desire of 
independence, these and other motives play their part. The successful 
examinee enters upon the fruition of ail these desires. His name 
appears in leading newspapers, accompanied in some instances by 
his biography ; his portrait goes the rounds of the British world. In 
some American States successful boys and girls enjoy the pleasure of 
seeing themselves pictured in the daily papers. There is a story told of 
a senior wrangler who declined to appear in a box at a London theatre 
lest his presence should give rise to popular commotion leading to a 
suspension of the performance. He thought it prudent to allow the 
London public time to digest this addition to metropolitan attractions. 
But they win more substantial benefits than these ; they get the pick 
of prizes, of posts, and rewards. 
Examinations thus provide the new model of education. They 
give the pressure requisite to keep education going. Exertion such as 
is necessary for elementary acquirement — work at the grammar of 
* Hor. Ep. 2, 1-70, and Suetonius de 111. Gr. 9 quotes Domitius : “ Si quos 
Orb Hi as ferula suticaque cccidit.” The jam tarts are mentioned, Hor. Sat. 1, 1, 25: Ut 
pueris olim dant crustula biandi , Doctores elementa t 'dint ut disccre prlma. It appears 
that in some parts of Brazil cigarettes are served out to children of merit as rewards. 
t “ No physical force ; the moral sense appealed to, the higher qualities educed by 
kindness, the innate preference of right prompted by self-esteem, the juvenile faculties 
to be elevated from the moment of earliest development by a perception of their high 
responsibility. ** From a circular put out in 1840. 
