FRENCH & ENGLISH

FRENCH & ENGLISH

A Comparison

BY

PHILIP GILBERT HAMERTON

AUTHOR OF ‘THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE,’ ETC.

London
MACMILLAN AND CO.
AND NEW YORK
1889

All rights reserved

ADVERTISEMENT

In the years 1886 and 1887 the author contributed a series of seven articles to the Atlantic Monthly, which bore the title of the present volume, and are in great part absorbed in it. The book, however, is essentially new, as it contains much more matter than the articles, and the chapters are either hitherto unpublished or rewritten in a less desultory order.

This work is not intended to be historical. It only professes to compare the French and English of the second half of the nineteenth century.

PREFACE

It may be taken as typical of the author’s intentions that he has felt uncertain which of the two nationalities he would put first in the title, and that the question has been decided by a mere consideration of euphony. If the reader cares to try the experiment of saying “English and French,” and “French and English” afterwards, he will find that the latter glides the more glibly from the tongue. There is a tonic accent at the beginning of the word “English” and a dying away at the end of it which are very convenient in the last word of a title. “French,” on the other hand, comes to a dead stop, in a manner too abrupt to be agreeable.

The supercilious critic will say that I am making overmuch of a small matter, but he may allow me to explain why I put the Frenchmen first, lest I be accused of a lack of patriotism. This book has not, however, been written from a patriotic point of view; it is not simply an exposition of the follies and sins of another nation for the comparative glorification of my own, neither is it an example of what Herbert Spencer has aptly called “anti-patriotism,” which is the systematic setting down of one’s own countrymen by a comparison with the superior qualities of the foreigner.

I should like to write with complete impartiality, if it were possible. I have at least written with the most sincere desire to be impartial, and that perhaps at the cost of some popularity in England, for certain English critics have told me that impartiality is not patriotic, and others have informed me of what I did not know before, namely, that I prefer the French to my own countrymen.

It seems to me that the best patriotism does not consist in speaking evil of another country, but in endeavouring to serve one’s own. There are many kinds of service. That of a writer is above all things to tell the truth and not to deceive his countrymen even when they wish to be deceived. If he fails in veracity he is guilty of a kind of treachery to his own country by giving it erroneous ideas or fallacious information. Such treachery may become serious when the subject of the volume is international. When public writers are patriotic in the old narrow and perverse meaning of the term, that is to say, when they are full of gall and injustice, when they systematically treat the foreigner as a being who has neither rights, nor merits, nor feelings, then, whether intentionally or not, they are urging their own nation on the path that leads to war. When they endeavour to write truly and justly about the foreigner, with a due consideration for his different position and a fair recognition of his rights and feelings, then they are favouring the growth of a conciliatory temper which, when a difficulty arises, will tend to mutual concession and to the preservation of peace. Is it better or worse for England that she should maintain peaceful relations with her nearest neighbour, with that nation which, along with herself, has done most for liberty and light? That question may be answered by the experience of seventy years.

I have no illusions about friendship between nations. There will never be any firm friendship between England and France, and a momentary attachment would only cause me anxiety on account of the inevitable reaction. All I hope for and all that seems to me really desirable is simply mutual consideration. That is possible, that is attainable; in the higher minds of both countries (with a few exceptions) it exists already. If it existed generally in the people it would be enough to prevent bloodshed. Any difficulty that arose between the two countries would be met in a rational temper and probably overcome without leaving rancour behind it. This has actually been done on one or two recent occasions with complete success, a result due to the high patriotism of the statesmen on both sides. A lower and more vulgar patriotism would have aroused the passion of chauvinisme which puts an end to all justice and reason.

Whatever the spirit of justice may lead to in the correspondence of statesmen, it is a sad hindrance to effect in literature. I am fully aware of this, and know that, without justice, a more dashing and brilliant book might easily have been written. Just writing does not amuse, but malevolence may be made extremely entertaining. What is less obvious is that justice often puts her veto on those fine effects of simulated indignation which the literary advocate knows to be of such great professional utility. It is a fine thing to have an opportunity for condemning a whole nation in one terribly comprehensive sentence. The literary moralist puts on his most dignified manner when he can deplore the wickedness of thirty millions of human beings. It is ennobling to feel yourself better and greater than thirty millions, and the reader, too, has a fine sense of superiority in being encouraged to look down upon such a multitude. Justice comes in and says, “But there are exceptions and they ought not to be passed over.” “That may be,” replies the Genius of Brilliant Literature, “but if I stop to consider these I shall lose all breadth of effect. Lights will creep into my black shadows and I shall no longer appal with gloom. I want the most telling oppositions. The interests of art take precedence over commonplace veracity.”

The foreigner may be effectually dealt with in one of two ways. He may be made to appear either ridiculous or wicked. The satire may be humorous, or it may be bitter and severe. The French, with their lighter temperament, take pleasure in making the Englishmen absurd. The English, on their part, though by no means refusing themselves the satisfaction of laughing at their neighbours, are not disinclined to assume a loftier tone. It is not so much what is obviously ridiculous in French people that repels as that which cannot be described without a graver reprobation.

And yet, delightful as may be the pleasures of malice and uncharitableness, they must always be alloyed by the secret misgiving that the foreigner may possibly, in reality, not be quite so faulty as we describe him and as we wish him to be. But the pleasure of knowing the truth for its own sake, when there is no malice, is a satisfaction without any other alloy than the regret that men should be no better than they are.

One of my objects in this book has been to show real resemblances under an appearance of diversity. Not only do nations deceive themselves by names, but they seem anxious to deceive themselves and unwilling to be undeceived. For example, in the matter of Government, there is the deceptive use of the words “Monarchy” and “Republic.” When we are told, for the sake of contrast, that England is a Monarchy and France a Republic, it is impossible, of course, to deny that the statement is nominally accurate, but it conveys, and is disingenuously intended to convey, an idea of opposition that does not correspond with the reality. The truth is that both countries have essentially the same system of Government. In both we find a predominant Legislative Chamber, with a Cabinet responsible to that Chamber, and existing by no other tenure than the support of a precarious majority. The Chamber in both countries is elected by the people, with this difference, that in France the suffrage is universal and in England very nearly universal. In short, the degree of difference that there is does not justify the use of terms which would be accurate if applied to countries so politically opposite as Russia and the United States. Again, in the matter of religion, to say that France is “Catholic” and England “Protestant” conveys a far stronger idea of difference than that which would answer to the true state of the case. In each country we find a dominant Orthodoxy, the Church of the aristocracy, with its hierarchy of prelates and other dignitaries; and under the shadow of the Orthodoxy, like little trees under a big one, we find minor Protestant sects that have no prelates, and also tolerated Jews and unbelievers. Stated in this way the real similarity of the two cases becomes much more apparent, the most important difference (usually passed over in silence) being that co-establishment exists in France for two Protestant sects and for the Jews, whilst it does not exist in England.

It is an obstacle to accurate thinking when differences are made to appear greater than they are by the use of misleading language.[1] France and England are, no doubt, very different, as two entirely independent nations are sure to be, especially when there is a marked diversity of race, but the distance between them is perpetually varying. I hope to show in this volume how they approach to and recede from each other. The present tendency is strongly towards likeness, as, for example, in the adoption by the English of the closure and county councils, which are both French institutions; and it might safely be predicted that the French and English peoples will be more like each other in the future than they are now. Democracy in politics and the recognition of complete liberty of conscience, both positive and negative, in religion, will be common to both countries. Even in matters of custom there is a perceptible approach, not to identity, but to a nearer degree of similarity. The chauvinist spirit in both countries recognises this unwillingly. A nobler patriotism may see in it some ground of hope for a better international understanding.

As it is unpleasant for an author to see his opinions misrepresented, I may be permitted to say that in politics I am a pure “Opportunist,” believing that the best Government is that which is best suited to the present condition of a nation, though another might be ideally superior. When a country is left to itself a natural law produces the sort of Government which answers for the time. I look upon all Governments whatever as merely temporary and provisional expedients, usually of an unsatisfactory character, their very imperfection being a sort of quality, as it reconciles men to the inevitable change. To make a comparison far more sublime than our poorly-contrived political systems deserve, they are moving like the sun with all his cortège of planets towards a goal that is utterly unknown. Or it is possible that there may be no goal whatever before us, but only unending motion. The experimental temper of our own age is preparing, almost unconsciously, for an unseen and unimaginable future. It is our vain desire to penetrate the secret of that future that makes all our experiments so interesting to us. France has been the great experimental laboratory during the last hundred years, but England is now almost equally venturesome, and is likely, before long, to become the more interesting nation of the two.

I believe Parliamentary Government to be the only system possible and practicable in England and France at the present day. I believe this without illusion and without enthusiasm. The parliamentary system is so imperfect that it works slowly and clumsily in England, whilst in France it can hardly be made to work at all. With two parties the prize of succession is offered to the most eloquent fault-finder, with three a Cabinet has not vitality enough for bare existence. At the present moment the English Parliament inspires but little respect and the French no respect whatever. Still we are parliamentarians, not for the love of long speeches in the House, but from a desire to preserve popular liberty outside of it. The distinction here between England and France is that in France every parliamentarian is of necessity a republican, a freely-elected parliament being incompatible with monarchy in that country, whereas in England Queen Victoria, unlike her predecessor Charles I., has made it possible for her subjects to be parliamentarians and royalists at the same time.

In the variety of national and religious antipathies we sometimes meet with strange anomalies. Whenever there is any conflict between French Catholics and French Freethinkers the sympathy of all but a very few English people is assured to the Catholics beforehand, without any examination into the merits of the case, and the case itself is likely to be stated in England in such a manner as to command sympathy for the Catholics. This is remarkable in a country which is, on the whole, Protestant, as the very existence of the French Protestants (in themselves a defenceless minority) is due to the protection of the Freethinkers. Without that strictly neutral protection Protestant worship would no more be tolerated in France than it was in the city of Rome when the Popes had authority there. I may also remind the English reader that if genuine Catholics were to become masters of England all Protestant places of worship would be shut up, and the Anglican sovereign would have the alternative of Henri IV, whilst the heaviest political and municipal disabilities would weigh upon all who did not go to confession and hear mass. On the other hand, if Freethinkers, such as the present generation of French politicians, were masters of England, the worst evil to be apprehended would be the impartial treatment of all religions, either by co-establishment as in France, or by disestablishment as in Ireland. The bishops might be dismissed from the House of Lords, but the bishops and clergy of all faiths would be eligible for the House of Commons, as they are for the Chamber of Deputies.

It is now quite a commonly-received opinion in England that religion is “odiously and senselessly persecuted” in France, but nothing is said against the Italian Government for its treatment of the monastic orders. Neither does it occur to English writers that this is a case of a mote in the neighbour’s eye and a beam in one’s own. The Catholic Church has been robbed and pillaged by the French secular power, which allows her nearly two millions sterling a year in compensation, and keeps the diocesan edifices in excellent repair. The Catholic Church has been robbed and pillaged by the English secular power, which repairs none of her buildings and allows her nothing a year in compensation. In France the Jewish and Dissenting clergy are paid by the “persecuting” State, in England they get nothing from the State. Catholic street processions are forbidden in many of the French towns; in England they are tolerated in none. In France a Catholic may be the head of the State; in England he is excluded from that position by law. The French Government maintains diplomatic relations with the Holy See; a Nuncio is not received at the Court of St. James’s.

The French Government is described as persecuting and tyrannical because it has sent pretenders into exile after tolerating them for sixteen years. The English Government never tolerated pretenders at all, but kept them in exile from first to last—the last being their final extinction on foreign soil.

Another very curious and unfortunate anomaly is the instinctive opposition of French Republicans to England. It exists in degrees exactly proportioned to the degree of democratic passion in the Frenchman. When he is a moderate Republican he dislikes England moderately, a strong Republican usually hates her, and a radical Republican detests her. These feelings are quite outside of the domain of reason. England is nominally monarchical, it is true, but in reality, as every intelligent Frenchman ought to know, she has set the example of free institutions.

An hypothesis that may explain such anomalies as these, is that the ancient national antipathy which our fathers expressed in bloodshed has now, in each nation, taken the form of jealousy of the other’s progress, so that although each enjoys freedom for herself she can never quite approve of it in her neighbour. There is also the well-known dislike to neutrals which in times of bitter contention intensifies itself into a hatred even stronger than the hatred of the enemy. The French Freethinker is a neutral between hostile religions, and the English lover of political liberty is regarded as a sort of neutral by Frenchmen, since he has neither the virulence of the intransigeant nor the vindictiveness of the réactionnaire.

In concluding this Preface I wish to say a few words about nationality in ideas.

The purity of nationality in a man’s ideas is only compatible with pure ignorance. An English agricultural labourer may be purely English. The gentleman’s son who learns Latin and Greek becomes partly latinised and partly hellenised; if he learns to speak French at all well he becomes, so far, gallicised. To preserve the pure English quality you must exclude everything that is not English from education. You must exclude even the natural sciences and the fine arts, as they have been built up with the aid of foreigners and constantly lead to the study of foreign works. These things do not belong to a nation but to the civilised world, and England, as Rebecca said in Ivanhoe, is not the world. Her men of science quote foreign authorities continually, her painters and musicians are nourished, from their earliest youth, on continental genius.

But although it is impossible for an educated man to preserve the purity of his mental nationality, that is, its exclusive and insular character, although it is impossible for him to dwell in English ideas only when foreign ideas are equally accessible to him, the fact remains that the educated mind still includes far more of what is English than the uneducated one. The man who is called “half a foreigner” because he knows a foreign language may be more largely English than his critic. A rich man may hold foreign securities and yet, at the same time, have larger English investments than his poorer neighbour. Even with regard to affection, there are Englishmen who love Italy far more passionately than I have ever loved France, yet they love England as if they had never quitted their native parish.

The Saturday Review was once good enough to say that I am “courteously careful not to offend.” It is satisfactory to be told that one has nice literary manners, but I have never consciously studied the art of avoiding offence, and in a book like this it does not seem possible to avoid it. People are more sensitive for their nation than they are even for themselves. They resent the simplest truths, though stated quite without malice, if they appear to be in the least unfavourable. One evening, at Victor Hugo’s house in Paris, a few of his friends met, and the conversation turned by accident on a book of mine, Round my House, then recently published. Gambetta, who was present, was in a mood of protestation because I had said that the French peasants were ignorant, and Victor Hugo was inclined to take their part. The sentiment of patriotism was very ardent and sensitive in Gambetta, so he could not allow a foreigner to say anything that seemed unfavourable to France. Yet the French themselves have shown that they were aware of the ignorance prevalent in their own country by their praiseworthy efforts to remedy it.

CONTENTS

PART I
EDUCATION

CHAPTER I
PHYSICAL EDUCATION

Not much formal Physical Training in England.

English and Greeks.

In England there is not much physical education of a formal and methodical nature; the English are not remarkable for a love of gymnastic exercises, and they seldom train or develop the body scientifically except when they prepare themselves for boat races. In saying this I leave out of consideration the small class of professional athletes, which is not numerous enough to affect the nation generally. It has been said, and by a French author, that of all modern races the English come nearest, in the physical life, to the existence of the ancient Greeks. The difference, however, between the modern English and the Greeks of classic antiquity is mainly in this, that the Greeks were a systematically trained people and the English are not.

Activity of the English.

Their irregular Training.

Advantage of Amusements.

Still, the English are a remarkably active people, and they owe their activity chiefly to a love of rural amusements and of the open air. Thus, in an informal manner, they get a kind of unscientific training which is of immense advantage to their health and vigour. A criticism of this irregular training (which is not mine, as it comes from a scientific gymnast) affirms that it develops the legs better than the arms and chest, and that although it increases strength it does not much cultivate suppleness. According to scientific opinion, more might be made of the English people if they took as much interest in gymnastic training as they do in their active amusements. The advantage of these amusements is that they divert the mind, and so in turn have a healthy influence on the body, independently of muscular exertion.

Professor Clifford.

There are exceptions to the usual English indifference about gymnastics, and it may happen that the lover of gymnastics cares less than others for the usual English sports. This was the case with Professor Clifford. His biographer says: “At school he showed little taste for the ordinary games, but made himself proficient in gymnastics; a pursuit which at Cambridge he carried out, in fellowship with a few like-minded companions,[2] not only into the performance of the most difficult feats habitual to the gymnasium, but into the invention of other new and adventurous ones. His accomplishments of this kind were the only ones in which he ever manifested pride.”

Choice of Physical Pursuits.

Gladstone.

Wordsworth. Scott. Byron.

Keats.

Shelley.

Tyndall.

Millais.

Bright.

Trollope.

Palmerston.

Many distinguished Englishmen have had some favourite physical amusement that we associate with their names. It is almost a part of an Englishman’s nature to select a physical pursuit and make it especially his own. His countrymen like him the better for having a taste of this kind. Mr. Gladstone’s practised skill in tree-felling is a help to his popularity. The readers of Wordsworth, Scott, and Byron, all remember that the first was a pedestrian, the second a keen sportsman, and the third the best swimmer of his time. The readers of Keats are sorry for the ill-health that spoiled the latter years of his short life, but they remember with satisfaction that the ethereal poet was once muscular enough to administer “a severe drubbing to a butcher whom he caught beating a little boy, to the enthusiastic admiration of a crowd of bystanders.” Shelley’s name is associated for ever with his love of boating and its disastrous ending. In our own day, when we learn something about the private life of our celebrated contemporaries, we have a satisfaction in knowing that they enjoy some physical recreation, as, for example, that Tyndall is a mountaineer, Millais a grouse-shooter, John Bright a salmon-fisher; and it is characteristic of the inveteracy of English physical habits that Mr. Fawcett should have gone on riding and skating after he was blind, and that Anthony Trollope was still passionately fond of fox-hunting when he was old and heavy and could hardly see. The English have such a respect for physical energy that they still remember with pleasure how Palmerston hunted in his old age, and how, almost to the last, he would go down to Epsom on horseback. There was a little difficulty about getting him into the saddle, but, once there, he was safe till the end of his journey.

Cricket and Boating.

Cricket in France.

French Lycées.

Cricket and boating are the trainers of English youth, and foreigners, when they visit Eton, are astonished at the important place assigned to these two pursuits. It is always amusing to an Englishman to read the descriptions of the national game by which French writers attempt (of course without success) to make it intelligible to their countrymen. These descriptions are generally erroneous, occasionally correct, but invariably as much from the outside as if the writer were describing the gambols of strange animals. Whilst English and French have billiards and many other games in common, cricket remains exclusively and peculiarly English. It cannot be acclimatised in France. I believe that some feeble attempts have been made, but without result. The game could not be played in the gravelled courts of French lycées, under a hundred windows, but this difficulty would be overcome if there were any natural genius for cricket in the French race. A few of the lycées are in large towns, and far from possible cricket fields; the majority are in small towns, not a mile from pasture and meadow. The French seem to believe that all English youths delight in the national game, but that is a foreigner’s generalisation. Some English boys dislike it, and play only to please others, or because it is the fashion amongst boys. However, most English boys have gone through the training of cricket, though many give it up when they abandon Latin. It is useful because it does not exercise the legs only, like walking, or the arms and chest only, like rowing, but all the body.

Tennis.

French Affinity for Gymnastics.

Military Drill.

Consequences of Neglect.

Military Exercises.

Duelling.

The French would have had a tolerable equivalent for cricket if they had kept up their own fine national game of tennis. Unfortunately the costliness of tennis-courts has caused the abandonment of the game, and this is the more to be regretted that the French system of education in large public schools might have harmonised so conveniently with it. Field tennis, the parent of modern English lawn tennis, might have been kept up in the country. The present French tendency in exercises is towards gymnastics and military drill. No one who has observed the two peoples closely can doubt that the French have more natural affinity for gymnastics than the English. This may be due in part to their less lively interest in physical amusements. Not being so ready to amuse themselves freely in active pastimes, they are more ready to accept gymnastics as a discipline.[3] As for military drill, it is more and more imposed upon the French by the military situation in Europe, so that they would practise it whether they liked it or not; still, it is certain that they have a natural liking and aptitude for military exercises. The authorities who have directed public education in France in the middle of the nineteenth century have treated physical exercise with such complete neglect that a reaction is now setting in. It may be doubted whether in any age or country the brain has been worked with such complete disregard of the body as in France from 1830 to 1870. An observer may see the consequences of that absurd education even now in the stiff elderly men who never knew what activity is, the men who cannot get into a boat quickly or safely, who never mounted a horse, and who take curious precautions in getting down from a carriage. The present generation is more active—the effects of gymnastics are beginning to tell. The comprehensive conscription, which imposes military exercises on almost every valid citizen, has also been, and will be still more in the future, a great bodily benefit to the French race. The maintenance of duelling in France, after its abandonment in England, gives the French a certain advantage in the habitual practice of fencing, which is learned seriously, as men only learn those things on which living or life may one day depend. I need not expatiate on the merits of fencing as an exercise. It increases both strength and grace, as it is at the same time extremely fatiguing and exacting with regard to posture and attitude. I am inclined to believe that fencing is the finest exercise known.

Pedestrianism.

Englishwomen and Frenchwomen.

French Peasants.

Riding on Horseback.

Cavalry and Artillery.

English Hunting.

In ordinary pedestrianism there is not much difference between the two countries except in the female sex, and there it is strongly marked. Englishwomen who have leisure walk perhaps three or four times as much as Frenchwomen in the same position. Young men in both countries may be equally good walkers if they have the advantage of rural life. The French peasants are slow pedestrians but remarkably enduring; they will go forty or fifty miles in the twenty-four hours, being out all night, and think nothing of it. Riding on horseback is much more practised in England; the economy of the carriage, by which one horse can transport several persons, and the excellent modern roads, had almost killed equestrianism in France, but now there are some signs of a revival. Here, too, the large national army has an excellent influence. Great numbers of Frenchmen learn to ride in the cavalry and artillery, and the captains of infantry are all mounted. There is not, in France, the most valuable training of all, that of riding to hounds in the English sense; and therefore it is probable that England could produce a far greater number of horsemen able to leap well. As for style in riding, that is a matter of taste, and national ideas differ. The French style is derived chiefly from military examples, the English indirectly from the hunting-field.

False Ideals of Dignity.

French Ecclesiastics.

Exercises permitted to English Clergymen.

French Notions of Dignity.

False ideals of dignity are very inimical to effective bodily exercise. A foolish notion that it is more dignified to be seen in a carriage than on horseback, has deprived all French ecclesiastics of the use of the saddle. Their modes of locomotion are settled by a fixed rule; they may walk (generally with the breviary in their hands, which they read whilst walking), and the poor curé may now keep a small pony carriage. A bishop must always ride in a close carriage drawn by a pair of horses. A curé may drive himself; a bishop may not drive. In England these rules are not so strict, as the clergy are not so widely different from the laity. The English clergyman may ride on horseback and be active in other ways; still, there is a prejudice even in England against too much healthy activity in clergymen. Being on a visit to a vicar in the north of England, I found that he possessed a complete apparatus for archery. “That is a good thing for you,” I said; but he looked melancholy, and answered, “It would be if my parishioners permitted the use of it, but they talked so much that I was forced to give up archery. They considered it unbecoming in a clergyman, who ought to be attending to his parish. Had I spent the same time over a decanter of port wine in my dining-room they would have raised no objection.” The same clergyman was fond of leaping, but indulged that passion in secret, as if it had been a sin. Still, these prejudices are stronger in France. I never saw a French priest shoot, or hunt, or row in a boat. It cannot be the cruelty of shooting and hunting which prevents him, as he is allowed to fish with hooks; it is simply the activity of the manlier sports that excites disapprobation. All Frenchmen who care for their dignity avoid velocipedes of all kinds, which are used only by young men, who are generally in the middle class, such as clerks and shopkeepers’ assistants. In England, where the prejudice against activity is not so strong, velocipedes are often used by rather elderly gentlemen, who are not ashamed of being active.

French Prejudice against Boating.

Present State of Boating in France.

There was formerly an intense prejudice against boating in France. It was considered low, and even immoral, being inextricably associated in the popular mind with excursions in the worst possible feminine society. Nobody in those days understood that sailing and rowing could both be refined and pure pleasures. The first book published on amateur boating in France appeared to authorise these prejudices by its own intense vulgarity. Since then boating has gained in dignity, and there are now regattas at most of the river-side towns, with beautifully constructed boats and perfectly respectable crews. The whole tone of the pursuit has changed; it has got rid of vulgar pleasantry, and has become scientific, an improvement greatly helped by the excellent scientific review Le Yacht. Many French boating men have been led by their pursuit to a thorough study of construction and nautical qualities. The only objection I have to make to French boating as it exists to-day, is that it seems too dependent on the stimulus of regattas, and carried on too exclusively with that object. The best lover of boating follows it for itself, as a lover of reading does not read only for a degree.

Taste for Boating limited in France.

French Regatta Clubs.

The Nautical Passion.

Although the French are now little, if at all, inferior to the English either in rowing or sailing, the taste for these pursuits is limited to comparatively few persons in France. If such a marvellously perfect river as the Saône existed in England it would swarm with pleasure craft of all kinds, but as it happens to be in France you may travel upon it all day without seeing one white sail. There are, however, three or four regatta clubs with excellent boats. I know one Frenchman who delights in possessing sailing vessels, but never uses them, and I remember a yachtsman whose ship floated idly on the water from one regatta to another. Now and then you meet with the genuine nautical passion in all its strength, with the consequence that it is perfectly unintelligible to all wise and dignified citizens.

Swimming.

Prevalence of Swimming in France.

Swimming in England.

Exceptional Excellence.

Low Average.

Swimming is much more cultivated and practised in France than in England. This is probably due in some degree to the hot French summers, which warm the water so thoroughly that one may remain in it a long time without chill. All along the Saône the boys learn swimming at a very early age. It is the boast of the village of St. Laurent, opposite Mâcon, that every male can swim. Ask one of the villagers if he is a swimmer, and he does not answer “Yes,” but smiles significantly, and says, “Je suis de St. Laurent.” Wherever a river provides a deep pool it is used as a swimming bath. In England the accomplishment is much more rare, and is usually confined to the middle and upper classes, especially in the rural districts. When we read in the newspaper that an English boat has capsized we always expect to find that most of the occupants were unable to swim and sank to rise no more. Amongst English sailors the art seems to be nearly unknown, and they have even a prejudice against it as tending to prolong the agonies of drowning. In the female sex, also, France takes the lead by the number of ladies who can swim a little, though they have not a Miss Beckwith amongst them, any more than Frenchmen can produce a Captain Webb. It is characteristic of England, with her vigorous race, to produce the finest and strongest swimmers, though her general average is so deplorably low. One English family may be long remembered, that of Vice-Chancellor Shadwell, who progressed grandly in the Thames, followed by his nine sons.

Dancing.

Dancing used to be an essentially French exercise, and as it was much practised in the open air it was conducive to healthy activity. The best kind of dancing was that which used to bring together a few peasant families in the summer evenings. The reader observes that I am speaking of the past. In the present day dancing of that kind seems to be almost entirely abandoned. Unhealthy dancing in small crowded rooms is practised to some extent by the middle classes. As for the bals publics, the fewer of them there are the better. In obvious ways, and in ways that I can only hint at, they are injurious to the public health.

Field Sports.

Shooting in France.

Game not over-abundant.

In field sports the chief difference between France and England is not a difference of taste for sport itself, but a difference in game-preserving. In England this is carried to the utmost perfection by the most artificial means and at enormous cost; in France this is done only on a few estates, and ordinary game-preserving is very lax and very economical. Often it is merely nominal. Some man with another occupation is supposed to be the garde, and he walks over the estate occasionally with a gun, killing a hare or a partridge for his private use, and seldom arresting a poacher. Still, the shootings are supposed to be worth something, as they are let, though at low prices. The English believe that there is no game at all in France, except a few partridges; and they might quote French humorists in support of this opinion, as they have laughed at the Parisian sportsman and his empty bags from time immemorial. However, as this is not a comic account, but an attempt to tell the truth, I may say that for several years my sons kept my larder very fairly supplied with game in the shooting season, including hares, partridges, woodcocks, snipes, and wild ducks. The neighbouring squires occasionally kill a deer or a wild boar, and one nobleman has killed many wild boars, some of them magnificent beasts. As a rule, a French sportsman walks much for little game, and is himself quite aware that the game is a mere pretext; the exercise is the real object. If the English reader thinks this ridiculous, I may remind him that English fox-hunting is an application of the same principle. A hundred horsemen follow a single fox, and when he is killed they do not even eat him.[4]

French Hunting.

There is nothing that resembles English hunting in France. French hunting is pretty and picturesque, with some remnant of old-world costume and ceremonial, and it affords some exercise in riding about the roads through the dense forests, but as a training in horsemanship it is not comparable to such hunting as I have witnessed in Yorkshire. French farmers and peasant proprietors would never permit a regiment of gentlemen to spoil their fences; that can only be done in a very aristocratic country.

Contrast between Classes in regard to the Physical Life.

The desirable Ideal.

Apparatus of the English Aristocracy.

Access to Natural Beauty.

As to the physical life, both England and France present the same contrasts, but they are more striking in England. There you have an active and vigorous upper class much enjoying the open air, and a lower class in the big towns living without either pure air or healthy exercise. The physical quality of the race is well maintained, and even improved, at one end of the scale, and deteriorated at the other. Unfortunately the class which deteriorates, the lowest urban class, is not only the more numerous, but also reckless in reproduction, so that its power for degradation is greater than the aristocratic conservative or improving power. The ideal would be a whole nation physically equal to the English aristocracy. That aristocracy has undoubtedly set the example of healthy living, but the objection is that its fine health costs too much. With its immense apparatus of guns, yachts, and horses, its great army of servants, its extensive playgrounds, the aristocracy sets an example that cannot be followed by the poor man, shut up in the atmosphere of a factory all day and sleeping in an ill-drained street at night. The rich have another immense advantage in the free access to natural beauty, which is favourable to cheerfulness and therefore indirectly to health. The ancient Greeks, who led the perfect physical life, were surrounded by noble scenery, glorious in colour. Compare the foul sky and spoilt landscape of Manchester with the purple hills, brilliant sunlight, wondrously clear atmosphere, and waters of intensest azure, that surrounded the City of the Violet Crown!

English and French Middle Classes.

Peasants.

Factory Population.

Putting aside the aristocracies of both countries, which may live as healthily as they please, let us examine the state of the middle classes and the common people. The middle classes in both take insufficient out-door exercise, their occupations are too confining and too sedentary, they stiffen prematurely, and after that are fit for nothing but formal walks. Their physical life is lower than that of the aristocracy and lower than that of the agricultural population. The two greatest blessings in our time for the English of the middle class have been velocipedes and volunteering. France has one advantage over England in the numbers of the peasant class, which leads a healthy and active life, though its activity is of a slow and plodding kind. The factory population, proportionally much larger in England, is more unfavourably situated. It undergoes wasting fatigue in bad over-heated air, but it does not get real exercise; consequently, whilst the aristocracy keeps up its strength, the factory population deteriorates.

Comparison of the two Races.

A comparison of English and French physical qualities leads to the following conclusions. The English are by nature incomparably the finer and handsomer race of the two; but their industrial system, and the increasing concentration in large towns, are rapidly diminishing their collective superiority, though it still remains strikingly visible in the upper classes. The French are generally of small stature,[5] so that a man of middle height in England is a tall man in France, and French soldiers in their summer fatigue blouses look to an Englishman like boys. Still, though the ordinary Frenchman is short, he is often muscular and capable of bearing great fatigue, as a good pony will. His shortness is mainly in the legs, yet he strides vigorously in marching.

The Physical Future of the English and French Races.

One cannot look to the physical future of either race without the gravest anxiety. Unless some means be found for arresting the decline caused by industrialism and the rapid using-up of life in large cities, it will ruin both races in course of time. Already the French physicians recognise a new type, sharp and sarcastic mentally, with visible physical inferiority, the special product of Paris. The general spread of a certain education is indisposing the French for that rural peasant life which was their source of national health, and the population of England is crowding into the large towns. There are two grounds of hope, and only two. The first is the modern scientific spirit, with its louder and louder warnings against the neglect of the body; the second is the extension of military training, of which I shall have more to say in another chapter.

CHAPTER II
INTELLECTUAL EDUCATION

England and France have been governed, since the Renaissance, by the same ideas about intellectual education, though there have been certain differences in the application of these ideas.

Latin and Greek.

Latin in France.

Educators in both countries have persistently maintained the incomparable superiority of Latin and Greek over modern languages, not only for their linguistic merits, but also on the ground that the literature enshrined in them was infinitely superior to any modern literature whatever. French education insisted chiefly upon Latin. Frenchmen take “learning” to be equivalent to Latin. They call a man instruit when he has learned Latin, although he may have a very limited acquaintance with Greek, and they say that one a fait des études incomplètes when he has not taken his bachelor’s degree, which implies that bachelors have made des études complètes though they know Greek very imperfectly.

Greek in England.

In England Latin was considered necessary, but Greek was the great object of achievement. A “scholar,” in England, means especially a Greek scholar. One may be a scholar without Hebrew or Arabic, but certainly not without Greek. The ordinary level of French attainment in Hellenic studies appears contemptible to the English of the learned class.

The Principle common to both Countries.

Dignity of the Teacher.

Antiquity and Mystery.

Hieratic quality of the dead Languages.

Latin Quotations.

However, the principle was the same in both countries, and may be expressed in terms applicable to both. That principle was the choice of an ancient language that could be taught authoritatively by the learned in each country. They can never teach a modern language in that authoritative way, as in modern languages their degree of accomplishment must always be inferior to that of the educated native. When the teacher assumes great dignity it is essential to its maintenance that he should be secure from this crushing rivalry, and this security can be given by an ancient language alone. Besides this professional consideration there is the effect of antiquity, and of a certain mystery, on the popular mind. So long as the people could be made to believe that a lofty and peculiar wisdom, not communicable in translations, was enshrined in Latin and Greek words, the learned were supposed to be in possession of mysterious intellectual advantages. There was even an hieratic quality in the dead languages. Closely connected with religion, they were the especial study of priests, and communicated by them to the highest classes of the laity. They belonged to the two most powerful castes, the sacerdotal and the aristocratic. Even yet the French village priest not only says mass in Latin, but makes quotations in Latin from the Vulgate when preaching to illiterate peasants. He appeals in this way to that reverence for, and awe of, mysterious words which belongs to the uncultured man. He knows, but does not tell his humble audience, that the Vulgate is itself a translation, and that, were it not for the effect of mystery, he might equally give the passage in French.

French Contempt for Modern Literatures.

In the same way a knowledge, or even a supposed knowledge, of Latin gave laymen an ascendency over the lower classes and over women in their own rank. It was easy for a Frenchman who knew no English to declare to a French audience equally ignorant that the whole vast range of English literature was not worthy of comparison with what has come down to us from ancient Rome. He could class English authors in the two categories of barbarians who knew nothing of antiquity and imitators who feebly attempted to copy its inimitable masterpieces. The only education worthy of the name was that which he himself possessed, and those literatures that he did not know were simply not worth knowing.

Conventionalism.

Inconsistency.

Learning and Ignorance.

The intensely conventional nature of these beliefs, both in France and England, may be proved by their inconsistency. It was laid down as a principle that a knowledge of ancient books through translations was not knowledge, yet at the same time the clergy, with very few exceptions, were dependent on translations for all they knew of the Old Testament, and few French laymen had Greek enough even to read the Gospels. In either country you may pass for a learned man though destitute of any critical or historical knowledge of the literature of your native tongue. One may be a learned Englishman without knowing Anglo-Saxon, or a learned Frenchman though ignorant of the langue d’oil.

Modern Tendencies.

Thoroughness of Modern Study.

Proposed Abandonment of the Classics. M. Raoul Frary.

Professor Seeley’s Proposal.

The close of the nineteenth century is marked by two tendencies that seem opposed yet are strictly consistent, being both the consequence of an increased desire for reality in education. One is a tendency to much greater thoroughness in classical studies themselves, and the other a tendency, every day more marked, to abandon those studies when true success is either not desired, or in the nature of things unattainable. The greater thoroughness of modern study is sufficiently proved by the better quality of the books which help the learner, and the most remarkable point in the apparently contradictory condition of the modern mind is that the age which has perfected all the instruments for classical study is the first age since the Renaissance to propose seriously its general, though not universal, abandonment. M. Raoul Frary, himself a scholar, has been so impressed by the present imperfection and incompleteness of classical studies that he has seriously proposed the abolition of Latin as a compulsory study for boys. “Only one thing,” he says, “could justify the crushing labour of beginning Latin, that would be the full possession and entire enjoyment of the ancient masterpieces, and that is precisely what is wanting to the crowd of students. They leave school too soon, and the later years are too much crowded with work to allow any time for reading.” For the same reason, the uselessness of partly learned Latin as an instrument of culture, Professor Seeley wisely proposes to defer the commencement of that study to the age of fourteen,[6] and spend the time so gained on English. Greek, I conclude, he would defer for two or three years longer. Not only M. Frary, but some other Frenchmen who appreciate Greek for themselves, would exclude it entirely from the lycées. “Amongst the young men,” he says, “who come out of our colleges, not one in ten is able to read even an easy Greek author, not one in a hundred will take the trouble. We will not discuss the question whether our youth ought to cease to learn Greek. They do not learn it, the question is settled by the fact.”

Opinion of Masters in French Lycées.

Mental Gymnastics.

With my deference on these questions to those who are accustomed to teaching, I have submitted M. Frary’s book (La Question du Latin) to two or three masters in lycées, and their answer to it is this. They say: “It is quite true that, considered as an acquisition, the Greek taught in lycées does not count, and though Latin is learned much better the pupils gain a very small acquaintance with Latin literature, and that chiefly by fragments; nevertheless, we do unquestionably find that, as gymnastics, these studies cannot be replaced by anything else that we know of. There are now pupils who do not study Latin or Greek, and we find that when they are brought into contact with the others on other subjects their intelligence seems undeveloped and inflexible. It is difficult, and often impossible, to make them understand things that are plain to the classical students.”[7]

Modern Languages.

In French Public Schools.

Quality of the Teachers.

A Hatter.

A Cook.

Examination.

Experience of F. Sarcey.

The École Normale.

Here I leave this Question du Latin, regretting only that the quickened intelligence of classical students should fail to master their own particular study. The value of modern languages, as a discipline, cannot easily be ascertained, because they are rarely studied in that spirit. They have been systematically kept in a position of inferiority, by giving them insufficient time and by employing incompetent masters. They were established as a study in the French public schools by a royal ordinance, dated March 26, 1829, but M. Beljame[8] tells us that nothing was done to insure the competence of the teachers. These were picked up entirely by accident. “The masters of those days were generally political exiles, and even the best educated amongst them had never previously thought of teaching. When they were French no better qualifications were required. A member of the University told me that he had had for teachers of English in the State schools, first, the town hatter, who had a business connection with England, then the cook from the best hotel, who had exercised his art on the other side the Channel. These gentlemen were good enough to give some of their leisure moments to the University. No examination was required, either from foreigners or Frenchmen. Foreigners were supposed to know their language; as for the others, some functionary, usually quite ignorant of every European tongue, put the question, ‘Do you know German?’ or, ‘Do you know English?’ The candidate answered ‘Yes,’ and received at once the necessary authorisation.” Francisque Sarcey, in his Souvenirs de Jeunesse, tells us that in his time the hour nominally devoted to English was passed at leap-frog, that being the traditional way of spending it. Even at the École Normale the teaching of modern languages was entrusted to a pupil, and if no pupil happened to possess a knowledge of English or German some teacher was sought elsewhere.

State of Things in 1888.

Quality of Present Teachers.

Improvement in the Class of Teachers in France.

These were the miserable beginnings. In the present year (1888) the study of modern languages is better established in France than in England. It is obligatory in secondary education. Teachers in the lycées are required to be either bacheliers ès lettres or to have a corresponding foreign degree, and it is hoped that before long the licence ès lettres (equivalent to the English mastership) will be exacted. They have to pass a special linguistic examination for a certificate before they can teach in the lycées. This examination is a serious test, but it is much less severe than the competitive trial for the agrégation. The certificate gives the rank of a licencié, the agrégation that of a Fellow of the University. Every year the candidates are of a better class. M. Beljame says that he knows thirty teachers of English who were already licenciés, and amongst the candidates in 1884 twelve had already taken that degree. In short, the teachers of modern languages are now rapidly assuming the same position in the University as the classical masters; and it is only just that they should do so, since they have the same general culture, and their special examinations are more searching. For example, the candidate for the agrégation has to lecture twice, before the examiners at the Sorbonne and in public, once in English and once in French.

Teachers of Modern Languages in England. Their low Status.

Supposed Facility of Modern Languages.

In England the teachers of modern languages pass no examinations and have no dignity. They are often required to render services outside of their special work. They are wretchedly paid, have no sort of equality with classical masters, and are considered to belong to an inferior grade. When they are foreigners they are looked upon as poor aliens. The belief that modern languages are easy, although erroneous, is against them, the truth being that the pupils do not go far enough in these languages to become aware of the real difficulties. They think that Italian is easy, not knowing that there are two thousand irregular verbs, and they think that French is easy, not knowing that French boys, specially drilled and disciplined in their own tongue, have to be wary to avoid its pitfalls.

Quality of the Pupils in France.

Rarity of Learning in Modern Languages.

The Practical Difficulty.

The results of the improved teaching of modern languages have not yet had time to become visible in France. Teachers tell me that amongst their pupils a certain proportion show a natural taste and aptitude, and take heartily to their work.[9] The rest count for nothing, and will retain only a limited vocabulary. In England some knowledge of modern languages is, as yet, much more general, but it seldom reaches the degree of what can be seriously called “learning.” The practical difficulty is that the unripe minds of young students, especially of young ladies, are not ready for the strongest books, and they take no interest in the history and development of a language, so they soon fall back upon the easy and amusing literature of the present, to the neglect of the great authors. That is the misfortune of modern languages as an intellectual pursuit.

Rare Appreciation of Foreign Poetry.

Blank Verse.

Rhyme.

Expletive Phrases.

Difficulties in English Poetry for Frenchmen.

English Difficulties with French Verse.

Technical Workmanship.

It very rarely happens that a reader of either nationality has any appreciation of the poetry of the other. We may begin by setting aside that immense majority of prosaic minds which exist in all countries, and for whom all poetry must be for ever unintelligible. After them come those lovers of poetry who enjoy rhyme but cannot hear the music of blank verse. The French are in that position with regard to English poetry, though they claim an appreciation of blank verse in Horace and Virgil. Then, even in rhymed poetry, there remains the prodigious difficulty of pronunciation. Sound and feeling must go together in poetry, but the foreigner rarely has the sound. And even if he could imitate sounds exactly there would still remain the lack of those early associations to which poets are constantly appealing, both by subtle allusion and by the affectionate choice of words. The foreigner, too, has a difficulty in gliding over the unimportant expletive phrases; they acquire too much consequence in his eyes. The conventionalisms of the art strike the foreigner too forcibly. When an Englishman, in reading his own language, follows poetic ideas, a Frenchman is embarrassed by what seems to him the lawlessness of the versification, and he seeks for rules. On the other hand, the elaborate rules of French versification seem pedantic to an English mind, which perceives no necessary connection between such artificial restraints and the agile spirit of poetry. Was ever yet English scholar so learned that he could feel properly shocked by what shocks a French critic in verse? How is the foreigner to disengage the poetic from the conventional element? Since both English and French scholars believe that they have mastered all the secrets of Greek and Latin versification, it might be inferred that there is no insuperable difficulty in that of a modern tongue; yet where is the Englishman, except Swinburne, who in reading a French poem knows good technical workmanship when he sees it?

Conventionalism of French Ignorance.

A proposed English Academy.

French ignorance of English literature would be amazing if it were not the result of a conventionalism. It is conventionally “ignorance” in France not to have heard of Milton; it is not ignorance never to have heard of Spenser. A Frenchman is ignorant if the name of Byron is not familiar to him, but he need not know even the names of Shelley and Keats. He is not required, by the conventionalism of his own country, to know anything whatever of living English genius. A London newspaper amused itself with sketching a possible Academy for England, and named some eminent Englishmen as qualified to be members. The names included Browning, Ruskin, Arnold, Lecky, and other first-rate men. On this, certain Parisian journalists were infinitely amused. Their sense of the ludicrous was irresistibly tickled when they saw that individuals like these, whom nobody had ever heard of, could be proposed as equivalents for the forty French immortals.

Rarity of Conversational Accomplishment in Foreign Tongues.

The Foreigner in Society.

Independently of learning, modern languages are supposed to be useful for conversation. They are, however, very rarely studied or practised to the degree necessary for that use. The foreigner may be able to order his dinner at his hotel and ascertain when the train starts, but in cultivated society he only pretends to be able to follow what is said. His impressions about the talk that is going on around him are a succession of misunderstandings. He sits silent and smiling, and he endeavours to look as if he were not outside and in the dark; but he is in the dark, or, worse still, surrounded by deceptive glimpses. It would be better if French or English were like Chinese for him.

The Future.

Abandonment of Latin and Greek.

An élite.

Modern Languages.

Men remain on their own Level.

Languages do not elevate the Mind.

Mean Use made of Languages.

The future towards which we are rapidly tending may already be seen in the distance. Latin and Greek will be given up for ordinary schoolboys, both in England and France, but the study of them will be maintained by a small élite. This élite will have a better chance of existence in England, where superiorities of all kinds are not only tolerated but respected, than it can have in France, where the modern instincts all tend to the formation of an immensely numerous, half-educated middle class. When the classical literatures shall be pursued, as the fine arts are now, by their own elect, and not imposed on every incapable schoolboy, they will be better studied and better loved. Now, with regard to modern languages I have no illusions left. You cannot convert a Philistine into a lover of good literature by teaching him a foreign tongue. If he did not love it in his own language, he is not likely to take to it in another. Every man has his own intellectual level, and on that level he will remain, whatever language you teach him. To make a Frenchman appreciate Milton or Spenser, it is not enough to teach him English; you would have to endow him with the poetic sense, with the faculty that delights in accompanying a poet’s mind—in a word, with all the poetic gifts except invention. Neither are all men fit to read noble prose. Minds incapable of sustained attention read newspaper paragraphs in English, and in French they would still read newspaper paragraphs. What I mean is that languages do not elevate the mind, they merely extend the range of its ordinary action. Teach a French gossip English and she will gossip in two languages, she will not perceive the futility of gossiping. This explains the poor and mean use that is constantly made of modern languages by many who have acquired them, and the remarkable unanimity with which such people avoid every great author, and even all intelligent intercourse with foreigners, reading nothing and hearing nothing that is worth remembering.

Hollow Pretensions.

Smallness of the Studious Class.

Idleness of the unintellectual.

Libraries in French Houses.

Expenditure on Books in England.

In all things connected with education we are in a world of hollow pretensions. The speeches at prize distributions assume that pupils will make use of their knowledge afterwards. They are told that the wonderful literatures of Greece and Rome now lie open before them like gardens where they have but to wander and cull flowers. If they have studied modern languages they are told that European literature is theirs. The plain truth is, that both in England and France, and especially in France, there is a small studious class isolated in the midst of masses occupied with pleasure or affairs, and so indifferent to intellectual pursuits that the slightest mental labour is enough to deter them. Whatever reading they do is in the direction of least resistance. They have no enterprise, they find all but the easiest reading irksome, and the obstacle of the easiest foreign language insurmountable. They will play cards or dominoes in the day-time rather than take down a classic author from his shelf. A guest in a French château told me that on seeing the ennui that reigned there, whilst nobody read anything, she asked if there were any books in the house, and was shown into a library of classics formed in a previous generation but never opened in this. All testimony that comes to me about French interiors confirms the belief that the number of people who form libraries has greatly diminished. It was once the custom in the upper class, but nobody would say that it is the custom now. In twelve or fifteen country houses known to a friend of mine there was only one library, and, what is more significant, only one man deserving the name of a reader. Even in England, where people read certainly three times as much as they do in France, the expenditure on books bears no proportion to income, except in the case of a few scholars. How many English houses are there, of the wealthy middle class, where you could not find a copy of the representative English authors, and where foreign literatures are unknown!

English knowledge of the Bible.

Possibility of Future Neglect.

Unknown—with one exception. The belief that Hebrew literature is one book, and that it was written by God himself, and that the English translation of it has a peculiar sanctity, has given the English middle class a familiarity with that literature which is a superiority over the French middle class. The French Catholic laity only knows the Bible through l’Histoire Sainte and selections; the unbelievers take no interest in it. Nothing surprises an Englishman more than French ignorance of the Bible; yet it is probable that if ever the English cease to believe in the dogma of inspiration they will neglect the whole Bible as they neglect the Apocrypha now.

Scientific Education.

Usefully educated Young Men.

Sacrifice of the Superfluous.

Effects of the Loss of Literature.

Science has a stronger basis than literature in modern education because it offers useful results. In France the usefully educated young men are well educated in their way. The time spent on their education is strictly economised with a view to a definite result, and the effect of it is to turn out numbers of young men from the École Centrale and other schools who at once enter upon practical duties with a readiness that speaks much for the system. They are, however, so specially prepared that they have omitted the useless and the superfluous—“le superflu, chose si nécessaire!” In cutting away the superfluous the practical educator throws literature overboard. Well, without literature, it is still possible to sharpen the faculties and store the mind, but without literature education misses what is best and most interesting in the world. To a generation “usefully” educated Europe will be like a new continent destitute of memories and associations, a region where there are mines to be worked and railways to be made.

French Secondary Education.

As the French system of secondary education extends over the whole country, an account of the most important changes in it may be worth giving in a few words.

The Old System.

The Bifurcation.

The Bifurcation did not work well.

The old system, from the time of Napoleon I. to the middle of the century, was founded on classical studies, with lighter scientific studies and those chiefly mathematical. After taking their bachelor’s degree, those students who were intended for certain Government schools (Écoles Polytechnique, Centrale, Normale supérieure pour les sciences) received further scientific instruction in special classes. This was the old system, but in 1853 an important change was introduced by M. Fortoul’s ministry, which invented what was long known as the bifurcation. On leaving the fourth class, at the age of thirteen or fourteen, pupils were required to choose between literary studies with a slight scientific supplement or the converse. Both kinds of students continued at that time to attend together the lectures on history and geography, and so much of modern languages as was then taught, besides the classes for Latin translation and the French classes. This was the system known as the bifurcation, but it did not work very well in practice, because the scientific students fell too far behind the literary students to follow profitably the same Latin classes.

The Enseignement Spécial.

In October 1864, under Duruy’s ministry, there was a new departure. He established the enseignement secondaire spécial. This scheme of teaching excluded Latin, which was replaced by a modern language, and it embraced rather an extensive programme, outside of classical studies, with such subjects as mathematical and natural science, political economy, and law.

Present State of the Enseignement Spécial.

Under the existing system the enseignement spécial includes two modern languages instead of one, and of these one is taken as “principal,” the other as “accessory,” at the student’s choice, he being more severely examined in that which he selects as “principal.” The present varieties of public secondary education may be described under three heads.

Present Varieties in French Secondary Education.

1. Ancient languages, with a little science and one modern language.

2. Scientific education, with a little Latin and one modern language.

3. Scientific education, with two modern languages, no Latin.

Necessity for using Acquirements.

Enough has been already said in this chapter on the degrees of proficiency attained. My own belief is that no acquirement whatever really becomes our own until we make constant use of it for ourselves, and it is impossible to make a constant use of more than a very few acquirements. It is here, in my opinion, that is to be found the true explanation of that perpetual disappointment which attends almost all educational experiments. They may provide the instrument; they cannot insure its use. This is what makes professional education, of all kinds, so much more real than any other, and the scientific professions do certainly keep up the scientific spirit. There is not any profession (certainly not school-teaching or hack-writing) which maintains the pure literary spirit in the same way.

CHAPTER III
ARTISTIC EDUCATION

Qualities of French Art Education.

Serious Nature of French Teaching.

In both music and drawing the French have shown themselves far better educators than in languages. Their ways of teaching drawing are especially marked by seriousness, by the discouragement of false, ignorant, and premature finish, by the wise use of simple and common materials, and by the consistent aim at sound knowledge rather than vain display. As the French have taught painting and sculpture they are both most serious pursuits; I mean that, if the French may often have been frivolous in the subsequent employment of their knowledge, they were assuredly not frivolous in the acquisition of it. For them the fine arts have been a discipline, a culture that has penetrated beyond the artist class.

French Disinterestedness.

Generosity of distinguished French Artists.

The seriousness of French teaching has been accompanied by an admirable disinterestedness. Artists of the highest reputation, every hour of whose time was valuable, have been willing to undertake the direction of private schools of painting on terms that barely paid the rent of the studio and the hire of models. There they have given the most sincere and kindly advice to hundreds of students, both Frenchmen and foreigners, from whom they had nothing to expect but a little gratitude, and, perhaps, the reflected honour of having aided one or two youths of genius amidst a crowd of mediocrities.

Extension of Art Teaching in England.

Results in the Improvement of English Taste and Skill.

In England this kind of teaching is all but unknown, yet a certain culture of the faculties by means of drawing is incomparably more general than it was in the beginning of the century. The total number of “persons taught drawing, painting, or modelling through the agency of the Science and Art Department” is now approaching a million, and this independently of the considerable numbers of young English people who study art privately or in other schools. The result of this culture is already plainly visible in the wonderful improvement of English taste and skill in everything that art can influence, an improvement that nobody could have foreseen in the first half of the present century.

French Efforts in Popular Art Education.

In France, too, great efforts have been made to spread a knowledge of sound elementary drawing amongst the people. It is now a part of the regular course of education for the middle classes in the lycées, and there are cheap public drawing schools all over the country. In England this is a new enterprise, in France it is an attempt to recover lost ground; as the French workmen of the eighteenth century were certainly more artistic than their successors, and must have understood design more thoroughly. Even in the Middle Ages, as we know from the excellence of the work left to us, the common workmen cannot have been ignorant of art.

The real Motive.

France and England not Artistic Nations.

French Provincial Towns.

The Argument for the Beautiful.

Value of Beautiful Surroundings.

The real motive for this modern increase in art-culture is not the disinterested love of art, it is the desire for commercial success. France and England are not now really artistic nations. In the French provincial cities the modern buildings, which are so rapidly replacing what remains of the mediæval ones, display, as a rule, no artistic invention whatever, and if the English people were suddenly to awake one morning with an artist’s passion for the beautiful they would not be able to endure the prevalent ugliness of their towns. Still, though the nations are not artistic, both races produce exceptional persons who are so, and these are allowed to have their own way more than formerly in the warfare that they wage against the hideous or the commonplace. Their argument in favour of the beautiful is the very simple one that it makes life pleasanter and, so far, happier, and in some of them this argument takes the kindly form of desiring, especially, to make beautiful things accessible to the poor. They might even go further, and affirm that beautiful surroundings are favourable to health, which they certainly are, by ministering to gaiety and cheerfulness and so increasing the charm of life. The perception of this truth would produce a very close alliance between philanthropic and artistic spirits, as we see already in the generous and thoughtful founders of the Manchester Art Museum.

Art in Lancashire.

A former artistic Condition.

The unspoiled Beauty of Nature.

The Industrial Epoch.

Art education is an attempt to return consciously to conditions of life which have long ago been attained unconsciously and afterwards departed from. There are now many schools of art in Lancashire by way of reaction against the ugliness of the industrial age. There was a time when Lancashire knew neither ugliness nor schools of art. The habitations of the Lancashire people in the sixteenth century, and for some time later, were always artistic, whether magnificent or simple, and so was the furniture inside them. The art was not of an exquisite or an elevated order, but it was art, and it was interesting and picturesque. The beauty of nature, too, was quite unspoiled, and though Lancashire was no more Switzerland than Manchester was Verona, still there was beauty enough in the county for all ordinary human needs; the pastoral valleys were green, the trout-streams pure, and if the skies were often gray it was only with clouds from the sea. The industrial epoch came and destroyed all this; it destroyed the vernacular architecture, it filled the beautiful valleys with the ugliest towns in the world, it fouled both the streams and the sky, it rapidly diminished even the health and beauty of the race. It is the conscious reaction against these evils which has made Lancashire a centre of artistic effort.

Conditions of Urban Life in France.

Artistic Torpor.

Inferiority of French Provincial Exhibitions.

The French bourgeois.

His Ignorance of Art.

Provincial Building.

The Provincial Nobility.

In France there has never been the same acute consciousness that modern life was making itself hideous; and, in fact, the conditions of urban life in France, except in certain quarters of Lyons and Marseilles, very rarely approach the melancholy imprisonment of an English manufacturing town. Most of the French towns are comparatively small, the country is easily accessible on all sides, they all have avenues of trees (many of them really magnificent), and those which are situated on the great rivers have spacious and well-built quays, which are the favourite residence and resort. In a word, the difference between urban and rural life is seldom painfully or acutely felt. It is, I believe, a consequence of this comparative pleasantness of French country towns that the artistic life in them is so torpid. Provincial exhibitions are, in France, quite incomparably inferior to English provincial exhibitions. The fine arts are much more successfully cultivated in Manchester and Liverpool than in Rouen or in Lyons. As for the smaller French towns, you find in them here and there an intelligent amateur, here and there a respectable artist, but, by the ordinary French bourgeois, art is not understood, it lies outside of his interests and his thoughts. He can no more appreciate style in painting and sculpture than he can appreciate it in literature. He lives in a country where you can hardly travel fifty miles without meeting with some remnant of noble architecture, and it has been necessary to pass a law to protect what remains against his ignorant spoliation. Contemporary provincial building is, as a rule, only masons’ work, and whenever an old church or a château is in any way meddled with, the chances are that it will be ruined beyond remission. The provincial nobility very rarely give any evidence whatever of artistic culture or attainment. If they attempt anything, the result is poor and incongruous, some pepper-box turret added to the corner of a modern house, or some feeble attempt to imitate the mediæval castle.

Paris the maintainer of Art in France.

English Academical Teaching.

It may seem a contradiction to have begun this chapter with hearty praise of French methods in art teaching, and to have continued it with depreciation of French taste, but, in fact, both praise and its opposite are deserved. Paris has maintained the light of art in France. Without Paris, contemporary France would have a very small place in artistic Europe; with Paris it still maintains, though against powerful rivals, a leadership. London has not any comparable influence. Many of the best English Academicians, including the President, have studied their art abroad. The methods of English Academical teaching, which require a minute and trifling finish in mere studies, are a waste of the pupil’s time.

Exceptional Genius in England.

Poetic Art in England.

Improvement in English Handicraft.

Elevation of the Common Level.

The English race, usually destitute of any artistic faculty or perception, produces exceptional geniuses in quite as great numbers as the French. The faculties that raise art above mere technical cleverness to the region of poetry are not excessively rare in the home of poetry itself. In fact, the English tendency has been to rely upon native gifts too much, to the neglect of handicraft, yet even in artistic handicraft the English have made surprising progress in the thirty years between 1850 and 1880. Their art critics go on repeating the old complaint that there is little above the common level, but the common level itself has risen, and the complaint amounts merely to the truism that exceptional excellence is exceptional.

The General Understanding of Art.

Paris and the Provinces.

London.

Edinburgh.

Art in the Middle and Lower Classes.

The attainments of artists are, no doubt, a matter of national concern, as are the accomplishments of all workers; nevertheless, it is still more important, from the intellectual point of view, that art should be understood by many than that it should be dexterously practised by a few. Now, as to this separate question of intelligence concerning the fine arts, I have said elsewhere, and can only repeat, that in Paris it is wonderfully general, but not in the French provinces. Intelligence of that kind is common, without being general, in London, and not very rare in the other great English towns, whilst Edinburgh is incomparably more important as an art-centre than either Lyons or Marseilles. Neither the English nor the French aristocracy has ever, as a body,[10] shown an intelligent interest in art. For some reason that may be connected with the contempt felt by a noblesse for manual labour, the understanding of art seems to belong chiefly to the middle and lower classes, who often find in it a substitute for more expensive pleasures. As for the future, this kind of intelligence is likely to increase widely in the same classes, especially if art is more intimately associated with handicrafts and manufactures.

The Particular Difficulty of the English.

Mr. Ruskin’s Moral Criticism.

The Sacrifice of Art to Veracity.

Toil in Details.

If I were asked what is the particular difficulty that usually prevents the English from understanding art, I should answer, The extreme energy and activity of their moral sense. They have a sort of moral hunger which tries to satisfy itself in season and out of season. That interferes with their understanding of a pursuit which lies outside of morals. The teaching of their most celebrated art critic, Mr. Ruskin, was joyfully accepted by the English, because it seemed for the first time to place art upon a substantial moral foundation, making truth, industry, conscientiousness, its cardinal virtues. The English imagined, for a time, that they had subordinated the fine arts to their own dominant moral instincts. Painting was to abandon all its tricks and become truthful. It was to represent events as they really occurred, and not so as to make the best pictures, a sacrifice of art to veracity that pleased the innermost British conscience. Again, it was assumed that mere toil in the accurate representation of details was in itself a merit, because industry is meritorious in common occupations. In short, all the moral virtues were placed before art itself, which, in reality, is but accidentally connected with them.

The English love of Nature.

An Impediment to the Appreciation of Art.

The English love of nature, in itself one of the happiest of all gifts, has not been altogether favourable to the understanding of art. It has led many English people to subordinate the fine arts entirely to nature, as if they were but poor human copies of an unapproachable divine original. In reality the fine arts can only be understood when they are pursued and valued for themselves.

The Parisian Mind.

The feebler moral sense of the Parisian mind and its less passionate affection for nature have left it more disengaged and more at liberty to accept art on its own account, as art and nothing more. There is a kind of Paganism which is able to rest content without deep moral problems, and to accept with satisfaction what art has to give without asking for that which it cannot give.

Diversity of Ideals.

The final word on the subject may be that there is a diversity of ideals, that the English ideal (speaking generally) is moral, and the Parisian ideal artistic.

CHAPTER IV
MORAL TRAINING

Difficulty of the Subject.

The Effects of Moral Teaching not easily ascertained.

This chapter is very difficult to write, because I shall have to deal with what cannot be accurately ascertained. A man can hardly know how far he has been successful in the moral training of his own sons. As to the boys in the nearest school, he may ascertain what is taught them by their masters, but he cannot know the effects of the teaching on the formation of their characters; that can only be known much later, if at all. And when we pass to distant schools our knowledge must be so general and so vague that no trustworthy argument can be founded upon it.

Personal Influence.

The truth is that moral training is chiefly an affair of personal influence, and that influence of this kind is a special gift. For example, Dr. Arnold had the gift in the supreme degree, but a man might be placed in control of the same educational machinery and yet be destitute of it.

However, some general truths may be taken note of, and they may help us to understand the subject so far as it can be said to be intelligible.

Necessity of a National Moral Sense.

Want of Freshness of Feeling in France.

First, you require material to work upon in a national moral sense, and here I have just said that the English have the advantage. The moral sense is (on the whole and in spite of many exceptions) very much stronger in England than in France. The English (except their men of the world) still retain in a great degree the healthy state of moral feeling which is capable of being really shocked and horror-stricken by turpitude and vice; the French lose this freshness of feeling very early in life, and look upon turpitude and vice very much as an English man of the world looks upon them, as a part of the nature of things too familiar to excite surprise. It does not follow that they themselves are base and vicious, but they know too much, and they know it too early, about the evil side of life.

Moral Influence of the Church of England.

Authority needed with the Young.

Value of Ecclesiastical Institutions.

Special Authority of the Clergy.

The English, too, have a great advantage in the possession of a national institution which exists far more for moral training than for anything else. The Church of England is much less of a theocracy than the Church of Rome, and much more of a moral influence over the ordinary laity. Its clergy are nearer to the laity than the Roman Catholic clergy are, and their influence is on the whole a more pervading and efficient influence. The great difficulty about the moral training of the young is that it can only be done well and efficiently by authority. Ecclesiastical institutions invest the teacher with this authority far better than any others. The clerical teacher, with the Church behind him, is free from the perplexing task of reasoning about morals; he has only to require obedience. His very costume separates him from all laymen, and gives a weight and seriousness to his teaching that they cannot impart to theirs. For this reason almost all parents, until recent years, have been anxious to place their children under the authority of priests, and have often done so when they themselves had no belief in theological doctrines. They did not seek the theocratic power, but the moral power that was connected with it.

The Difficulty of Clerical Education.

Effect of it on Unbelievers.

Truthfulness especially a Social Virtue.

Unbelievers numerous in France.

Agnostics in the French University.

In course of time, however, a most formidable difficulty arises. Clerical education may be morally most beneficial, but it can only be so whilst the pupil himself is a sincere believer. If he is not, the effect of clerical education is not moral, but the contrary, as it compels him to learn the arts of dissimulation. The clergy do not say in plain terms that deceit and imposture are virtues; they class them, nominally, in the category of vices, but the intelligent pupil soon perceives that he is rewarded for practising them and punished for not practising them. “Many unbelievers,” said a truthful Frenchman to me, “come out of our clerical seminaries, but the acquired habit of dissimulation remains with them, and they are never plain and straightforward in after life.” Perhaps it may be said that I attach too much importance to truthfulness, that a certain degree of dissimulation is necessary in the world, and that it may as well be learned at school as in practical affairs. I only know that truthfulness is one of the social virtues, though it is often directly contrary to the interests of those who practise it. Being a social virtue, and favourable to public interests, it ought to be encouraged in public education. Now, it so happens, whether for good or evil, that the majority of French laymen of the educated classes are unbelievers, and I say that no moral purpose can be answered by bringing them up in habits of hypocrisy. I am told by those who are in a position to judge accurately, that is to say, by intelligent men who have lived all their lives in the University, that four out of every six professors are Agnostics, and that the proportion amongst the present generation of their pupils is even larger. Under these circumstances the idea of handing over the national University to the priests is inadmissible by any one who cares for liberty of conscience; and if the reader thinks that liberty of conscience is a luxury for Protestants only, and that Agnostics have no right to it, I cannot agree with him.

Liberty of Thought unfavourable to Moral Authority.

Incompatibility of Authority with Reasoning.

Principle of the Church of Rome.

Unfortunately, however, it is found in practice that liberty of thought in religious matters not being itself founded upon authority, but on the exercise of individual reason, is unfavourable to moral authority, especially over the young. In fact, reason and authority are incompatible. We rule our children by authority when they are young, without stopping to reason; when they are grown up we endeavour to influence them by reason, but our authority, as such, has departed. The Church of Rome avoids this difficulty by founding all her teaching on authority. Even when she condescends to reason, every one knows that the principle of authority is behind and can be used, like a royal prerogative, to cut short discussion at any moment.

French Lay Teachers wanting in Authority.

One Good Effect of Lay Education.

Now, as a matter of simple fact, it must be admitted that the moral authority of French lay teachers is inadequate. They have not the power of the priests, nor even of the English clergy. And the consequence is that a new generation of Frenchmen is growing up under insufficient moral control. I make no attempt to disguise the evil, but cannot see how it was to have been avoided. It is an evil which lies before every country in Europe as the authority of religion becomes relaxed. Meanwhile, lay education, if not morally so strong as one might desire, is at least producing a generation of young men who are frank and fearless, and have an unaffected contempt for sneaks and hypocrites of all kinds.

Dr. Arnold.