170 
BRAMBLES AND BAY LEAYES. 
of the teacher’s temper than the dulness of the pupil’s 
mind. Stupid old doctrine ! to imagine that what the 
mind was incapable 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 barbari¬ 
ties ; and we catchsightof 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 high st. But the birch has its 
moral for after life,— 
“ ——-As fond fathers, 
Having bound up the threatening twigs of birch. 
Onely to sticke it in their children’s sight 
For terror, not to use; in time the rod, 
More mocked than feared.” 
—Measure for Measure • 
It is a serious question how far principle actuates us 
to duty rather than fear of consequences. We are, 
perhaps, little better than schoolboys, and feel the moral 
birch of the world, and the stripes of conscience, 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.” 
Jago, Edge Hill, b. iii. 
But leaving private experience, which lacks largeness 
