268 
SOUTHERN CULTIVATOR. 
of that beautiful time donot wish to live it over again'? 
Why does the warrior covered with the glories of an hun- 
dred victories, the statesman seeing his name upon the. 
pages of the histories which are recording the events of 
his own times; yea, why does the poet, in whose gentle 
heart the Divine Goodness has not yet suffered the joy- 
ousness of his youth ever to grow old, whose eye de- 
lights in visions of beauty and virtue such as no other 
mortal eye may see, when he perchance looks upon a 
picture of what he was long, long ago, sighs and ex- 
claims : — 
“ Would I were a boy again.” 
Ah, how many a man has found the life of his manhood 
so blest with contentment, so satisfied with his lot, that he 
does not sometimes in the disappointment of hopes which 
he has nursed in his heart of hearts, 
“Go wandering back into his childhood,” 
Searching for them with tears.” 
Happiest and best is the man v ho was the longest a 
child ; who never puts away childish things until he is no 
longer a child, who is not older than his years, and who 
goes forth into the world credulous, confiding, and hope- 
ful! 
Now, the greatest objection to our systems of education 
is that they break in upon the naturalness of childhood; 
that they unduly restrain its innocent joyousness, and 
that in the forced cultivation they give to it, it matures be- 
fore its time, and never attains its natural growth. Even 
in youth it is matured, at maturity it is grown old, and 
while the men of other lands are in the full vigor of their 
manhood, it is creeping and tottering upon the verge of 
the grave. We Americans, and especially we of the 
South, seem to think that we have more to do in life than 
the rest of mankind and that, therefore, we must the sooner 
set about it. When a child is seven or eight years of age 
and not unfrequently before, and his young heart is beat- 
ing and bounding v»^ith the warm blood and the glowing 
impulses natural to his years, the noise of his innocent 
sports has become offensive to those ears which have 
been accustomed to listen to sounds that never violate the 
strictest and properest decorum; and a behavior is pre- 
scribed which is suitable to manhood alone. But the boy 
cannot at once leap into manhood. His young spirit 
chafes under restraint. He will break it, and bound away 
to fields and woods, and join in the merry sports of those 
of his kind. In the evening, he comes with rosy cheeks 
but subdued and quiet, to that home which has already 
lost one hold upon his love, in the necessity he feels not to 
disturb its decorous silence, and when the darkness sets 
in on his little couch he sinks at once into that sleep such 
as only the young can sleep, and dreams of the joyous 
sports of the day gone by, to be renewed on the morrow. 
Oh happy, happy days ! When the young heart never feels 
and never know's of man’s inhumanity to man! Days 
golden with sunshine and gladness ! Who would obscure 
them with clouds, and v/ith the darkness which oversha- 
dows manhood and age ! Alas ! it is we, we who, like un- 
just step-dames, repress our impulses of love and tender- 
ness in the great and never to be postponed business of 
life. On some morning, when, it may be, the fields and 
the village-green are unusually cheerful and inviting, the 
birds unusually sprightly and Joyous, our noisy little ur- 
chin, with timid heart and down-cast eye, pursues his 
dow reluctant step, satchel in hand, to the school room, 
it is no great matter that a young child should be sent to 
a school. His youth is no objection, if the discipline and 
the ^abor are adapted to his years. It is the very smallest 
number of children who are willing at first to go to the 
school. A discipline which does not seek to overcome 
this repugnance, is not only faulty but criminal. How 
seldom does it accomplish or even seek to accomplish this 
end ! Nay, how often is this repugnance increased to 
such a degree that it never entirely subsides! And the 
reason is that we expect their teachers to impose burthens 
which they cannot sustain, in order to advance them at a 
pace which they cannot preserve, and to punish this in- 
capacity by the imposition of still greater burthens and a 
confinement, which is infinitely still more onerous. The 
majority of Southern schools are kept from seven to ten 
hours in the day. In some communities the value of a 
teacher’s services is estimated by the number of hours he 
keeps his pupils in school. 
Now, while this is enough to obtund the intellect and des- 
troy the health of the stoutest boy in a neighborhood ; nay, 
while it IS a harder task than the strongest man in society 
can, with impunity, impose upon himself, I believe it is 
an uncommon thing that any deduction either of labor or 
confinement is allowed to younger pupils. Children of all 
ages, from the urchin with his round jacket to the stripling 
with his frock coat, the little maid with pantalettes. and 
pinafore to the young lady with long dresses and hooped 
skirts, all, all, like the shorter victims of Procrustes, are 
stretched to the utmost length of this bed of pain and tor- 
ture. Like the shorter — for none are ever found who are 
longer, not one. And we fathers and mothers v/hose chil- 
dren leave us early in the morning for the school room 
and return late in the evening after a long day’s confine- 
ment which our misguided economy compels their teachers 
to impose upon them, with wearied bodies and pale faces, 
which we interpret into evidences of great mental progres- 
sion; as if the very bestmeans of strengthening the mind was 
to weaken the body ; with loads of huge books which we 
could not comprehend at twice their age, and some 
of us never comprehend yet, forgetting that they are 
like their parents— we could no more easily sit upon 
hard benches eight hours a day and successfully pursue 
a series of instructions to any good effect than they can. 
This is the life a child is often doomed to lead when he 
takes his seat in the school room. There he sits the live- 
long day conning his primmer, and when conned, forced 
still to look upon it and upon no other object, who, if 
he could be let out, after two or three hours of study, to 
go to his play, might conceive an early love for the beau- 
ties of learning, but who, after hours and hours of listless 
apathy, when the school breaks up, and he sees the setting 
sun warning him to seek his home, where, when supper is 
past, he is made to resume his endless labors, and in the 
intervals of those rebukes which are but the continuation 
of the long ago too rigid discipline of the day, nods and 
nods and is at last driven to bed, too tired, too sleepy, 
too forlorn to think about offering up his little prayer, con- 
ceives a disgust for the very name and idea of a book, 
which years, all the years of a long life are never able en- 
tirely to eradicate fiom his mind. 
“You call this education, do you not 1 
Why ’tis the forced march of a herd of bullocks 
Before a shouting drover. The glad van 
Move on at ease and pause awhile to snatch 
A passing morsel from the dewy greensward; 
While all the blows, the oaths, the indignation 
Fall on the croup of the ill-fated laggard 
That cripples in the rear.” 
And now where is the activity of that once buoyant 
step I Whither is the rose fled that once lighted up the 
round cheek of the blooming boy '? Where is that youth- 
ful freshness of love and faith and truth '? All gone and 
faded, and he who, with a frame and constitution, might 
have grown to be a man with strength sufficient to sustain 
all those fatigues which are incident to a man’s life, grows 
up, if he grows up at all, feeble, pale, dyspeptic, idle and 
uncandid. Is this the man to encounter the summer^s 
heat and winter’s cold, to find resources whence to gather 
