54 TRIALS OF the medIEVAL SCHOLARS. upon successful soldiers, red with the blood of battle, or famous statesmen, who have wrought out their policy at the cost of the liberty and happiness of inferior races; the student, the lover of knowledge, may well reserve his special commendation for that moral courage which prevails over the sorrows and anxieties of the world, over calumny and detraction, over poverty and want; the latter one of the sharpest trials that can befall the ambitious scholar. If we contrast the abundant educational appliances of the present day with the lack of all utilities and the numerous restrictions which hampered the mediæval students, we cannot but admire and be astonished at the colossal work they accomplished. Physical bravery may readily move a man to march forward steadily to the mouth of the hostile cannon; he is fired by the example of his fellows, by the hope of revenge, victory, or plunder; but a far loftier impulse is needed to endure the pressure of cold and hunger, the contumely of the arrogant, the indifference of the rich, while labouring alone and unknown to cultivate the mind and master the secrets of wisdom. Even in learned Germany, prior to the Reformation, a school was a place of punishment rather than of education. It was always the worst house in the town; the walls and floors were filthy; wind, rain, and snow beat in through the doorways and unglazed window spaces; the children were covered with vermin and half-naked. So few the books, that frequently the scholar had to write out a copy for his own use. The Latin was monkish and barbarous; the grammar a mass of dry rules and barren subtleties; the teacher often a worthless impostor. System there was none; it was "a scramble for learning," in which only the resolute could hope to gain anything. A lad was often twenty years old before he understood his grammar or could speak a word or two of such Latin as was then in vogue. The elder boys, or Bacchanten, tyrannised over the younger, or Schutzen-an elaborate, and, we are told, a cruel system of fagging. A Bacchant would have three or four boys, who begged and stole for him, though their own hunger was frequently so keen that they would dispute with the dogs the luxury of a bone. The Bacchant claimed all their earnings, and compelled them to give up even what they had received for their private use. "Singing salves and requiems; whimpering false stories to the tradesmen's wives; thieving, if there was a chance; sleeping in the winter on the school hearth and in summer in the churchyard, 'like pigs in straw;' assisting at mass; chanting the responsoria, frozen in the cold churches till they were crippled; trying to get by heart a clumsy Latin syntax; and wandering, vagabond-like, from school to school, would sum up the life of thousands." A vivid light is thrown upon this condition of things by one Thomas Platter, a Swiss from the valley of the Wisp, who eventually became rector of the grammar-school at Basel. In Dresden, he says, there was not one good school, and the rooms for strange scholars were thick MORAL COURAGE AND SELF-CULTURE. 55 with vermin, so that at night they might be heard crawling in the straw. The city of Breslau, he continues, had seven parishes, and each had its school. No scholar of one parish dared sing in another; if he did, the cry of Ad idem, Ad idem, was raised, and the Schutzen assembled and fought. It was said that there were thousands of Bacchanten and Schutzen living upon alms; and it is also said that some of the Bacchanten, who were twenty or thirty years old or more, were still supported by their Schutzen. Yet, in spite of conditions so dispiriting and unfavourable, men arose who kept alight the lamp of knowledge, inextinguishable as Vesta's fire, and handed it down to a more fortunate generation; men whose moral courage the student cannot fail to esteem worthier of eulogium than the gallantry of the knights or menat-arms, their contemporaries, who rode blithely into "a plump of spears" for love of fame or greed of conquest. It was their high moral courage that supported them through all the bitterness of their lifelong struggle after light. It may be they were not unconscious of the dignity of the work they were doing; but it was chiefly from a disinterested love of knowledge they were induced to maintain the heroic effort; and so, uncomplaining and unresting, they pressed forward daily on their rugged and laborious path. Will the student of this more favoured generation lead a less worthy life? Will he confess himself inferior in elevation of purpose and desire of wisdom to the poor scholars of medieval Germany? "The first thing to be attended to," says Professor Blackie, "is to have it distinctly and explicitly graved into the soul that there is only one thing that can give significance and dignity to human life—namely, virtuous energy; and that this energy is attainable only by energising." By virtuous energy I understand the Professor to mean in reality moral courage. If you imagine you are to be much helped by books, and reasons, and speculations, and learned disputations in this matter, you are altogether mistaken. "Books and discourses may indeed awaken and arouse you, and perhaps hold up the sign of a wise finger-post to prevent you from going astray at the first start, but they cannot move you a single step on the road; it is your legs only that can perform the journey; it is altogether a matter of doing. Finger-posts are very well when you find them; but the sooner you can learn to do without them the better: for you will not travel long, depend upon it, before you come into regions of moor, and mist, and bog, and far waste solitudes; and woe be to the wayfarer in such case who has taught himself to travel only by finger-posts and milestones! You must have a compass of sure direction in your own soul, or you may be forced to depend for your salvation on some random saviour, who is only a little less bewildered than yourself. Gird up your loins, therefore, and prove the all-important truth, that as you have to walk only by walking, to leap by leaping, and to fence 56 66 THE REAL AND THE IDEAL. 66 by fencing, so you can learn to live nobly only by acting nobly on every occasion that presents itself." Cultivate your moral courage, discipline both heart and intellect; be prompt and firm in resolution. You have made (at least I hope so), you have made your choice; you will not live a life of the earth, earthy, a life of the senses, sensual, but a life of exalted intention and heroic motive; and, therefore, you will often require when temptation besets you or depression, or you are surrounded with hostile influences, to fall back upon the stronghold of your conscience and your will. Do not give way one inch; when a soldier climbs the breach, he goes forward and conquers or retires and perishes. So long as the dykes of Holland maintain a steady front, safe are the lowlands which they shelter and protect; but let the tiniest rift be made, and the sea, oozing in at first with imperceptible drops, will soon widen it into a chasm, burst through in a flood of water, and lay everything in ruin. Keep ever before you, then, a standard of ideal truth and purity, to which, by an effort of moral dynamics, your aspirations and feelings may ascend. For men on earth," says Schiller, remains only the choice between the pleasures of sense and the peace of the soul. To attain the peace of the soul on earth, to make the life here approach the divine life, to be free in this kingdom of death, taste not the fruit of the earth. The eye may delight in its outward beauty, but the short-lived pleasures of enjoyment are speedily revenged by the flight of time. Matter alone is subject to vicissitude; but the Ideal, the invisible type of the good and the beautiful, walks above the earth in meadows of light, divine with the divinity, the playmate of blest natures. Would you soar aloft on her wings? Cast away the earthly, and flee from this narrow gloomy life into the kingdom of the ideal. There alone is to be found that image of God in which man was created, the ideal type of manhood living in eternal youth, free from all the impurities of earth, illuminated by the pure rays of absolute perfection, like the silent phantoms of life who are walking in their radiances by the Stygian stream in the Elysian fields, before they step down to this earth, the melancholy tomb of the immortal. If in actual life the issue of our struggle is doubtful, here is victory a victory not given to free your limbs from further strife, but to give them new strength." "1 1 I subjoin Bulwer Lytton's translation (or rather imitation) of this fine passage: "With Man the choice, Timid and anxious, hesitates between The sense's pleasure and the soul's content; Seek'st thou on earth the life of Gods to share, To pluck the fruits that glitter to thine eye; TRY, TRY, AND TRY AGAIN. 57 In addressing young men, I cannot conceive it to be necessary to repeat the usual copybook maxims in praise of industry. No one would undertake the work of self-culture who was not prepared to pursue it diligently. It is not the idler or the saunterer who feels any desire to discipline his heart or expand his mind. But I may at least insist upon the necessity of Perseverance. I have known young men begin, like soldiers setting out on a march, with a flourish of trumpets. Books are painfully collected; a most elaborate and admirable scheme of study laid down-upon paper; a few problems are solved or a few questions answered; and then in the path of the would-be scholar springs up a giant difficulty. Immediately his heart fails him; he retreats. The books are thrown aside and the plan of study is abandoned on the plea that he is not clever enough for "that sort of thing;" he had overrated his talents; the work is above and beyond him. But what should we say if a general, on investing a fortress, drawing his parallels and designing his lines of circumvallation, suddenly withdrew because his men, in digging the first trench, came upon a hard soil? No; the student must persevere. Of course he will meet with difficulties; not one or two or half-a-dozen, but with a legion; only, as he advances, he will find each one easier to conquer than the last, and his continual successes will give him a spirit of easy confidence. Of course he will meet with difficulties; or where would be the glory and utility of study? We do not shower stars and laurels upon a general who marches across an Content thyself with gazing on their glow.- And in Possession sweet desire will die. Safe from each change that Time to Matter gives, Wouldst thou soar heavenwards on its joyous wing? Here, bathed, Perfection, in thy purest ray, Hovers divine the Archetypal Man! undefended country and meets with no opposition. Knowledge would lose half its beauty and much of its usefulness if we could acquire it without a strenuous and incessant effort. The rapture lies in the struggle, not the prize. It is the struggle that carries on the education of the soul and the development of the character; that teaches patience and calmness, and moderation and decision. Of course he will meet with difficulties, but there was never a difficulty yet that could not be conquered. Give a strong man a stout iron pick and give him time, and he will hew his way through adamantine rock. So, too, the student, with fit tools and sufficient leisure, can get at the heart of anything he chooses to attack. Industry is good and diligence is better, but perseverance is best. A man may be industrious and yet easily discouraged by failures; he may lose spirit because he thinks he is making little progress. The one virtue of this kind which the student cannot dispense with is this same golden one of perseverance. He may feel himself suddenly checked in the middle of his work by the reflection that it can never amount to much, because he can give to it so brief an interval daily. Let him persevere. My friend, suffer nothing to discourage you; do not own yourself beaten; never give in. If you have only an hour a day, use that hour well. If you have no aptitude for languages, try one of the sciences, or some branch of philosophy, or history, or one of the arts; only, persevere ! Remember, you must first learn to learn; and, like a child essaying to walk, you must have your slips and falls; but, persevere :— "See first that the design is wise and just; Says Dr. Arnold :-"Stand still and see the salvation of God' was true advice to the Israelites on the shore of the Red Sea; but it was not the advice which is needed in ordinary circumstances; it would have been false advice when they were to conquer Canaan." And every student has his Canaan to conquer. Let him gird up his loins, cross the Red Sea, march through the wilderness, but not complaining like the Israelites,-and when he reaches Jericho blow his trumpet round about its walls_until they give way. It was a fixed principle with Sir William Jones, the Orientalist, never to be deterred, by any difficulties that were (as all are) surmountable, from carrying to a successful issue what he had once deliberately undertaken. Hence, in the course of his short life he acquired eight languages critically, eight less perfectly, but intelligible with a dictionary, and twelve less perfectly, but so that with a little more study they might be mastered. Oh, the magic of perseverance! I might crowd this page with examples, but Ferguson the astronomer, Sir |