OCCUPATIONS FOR THE YOUNG.

BY MARTIN DOYLE.

Habit is said to be a second nature, and it is often stronger than the first. At first we easily take the bend from the hand of the master, but the second nature, which is of our own making, is frequently proof against any alteration. How important, then, is education, which gives the turn and moulding to the mind while it is flexible, fixes the habits, and forms the character! The discipline of the mind, with respect to its natural bias, is either misdirected or misunderstood in nine cases out of ten, and latent talents or tendencies, which by proper culture might be rendered sources of enjoyment to the possessor, and useful to the community, are restrained, if not too powerful for suppression, from their proper developement, by absurd and artificial treatment.

In the upper classes, a parent, perhaps, incapable of estimating the capacity of his son, determines with himself that the profession, suppose of divinity, of law, or of medicine, is the most lucrative, gentlemanlike, or otherwise eligible, and that the boy shall be educated accordingly.

The unfortunate youth who has no talent for the acquisition of languages, and cannot comprehend the simplest proposition in geometry, is condemned to pursue a prescribed routine, and to pass many of the most precious years of his life in the unavailing effort to learn, through the drudgery of a classical school, what is repugnant to his taste, and beyond his powers of comprehension; and all this time, from being constantly engaged in thumbing the elementary books of the dead languages (which are never at his finger ends, in the acceptation of the common phrase), he grows up shamefully ignorant of his vernacular tongue, in which he can neither read with fluency nor spell with correctness.

The schoolmaster, however, is expected to prepare him for the university within a given time, and he must be made up for entrance accordingly. If the parents are told that Young Hopeful has no turn for a literary life, no capacity for learning what is required, they doubt the judgment of the informant, who tells them the truth; for the acknowledgment of this would be an indirect admission of their own incapacity; and in proportion to their ignorance and dullness, is their self assurance that their booby has excellent abilities. The youth is therefore forced forward in spite of his natural repugnance to books; and if afterwards smuggled through the university into a profession which may give him place or emolument, without ability or exertion on his part, he disgraces his station by general ignorance and unfitness; and if he be admitted into a profession which yields honour or emolument only in proportion to talents and industry, he totally fails of the object, and it is discovered too late that the selection of his avocation was in some way unlucky.

Now, it is very probable that if such an every-day boy had been permitted to pursue some track for which his inclinations qualified him, instead of being limited to a course of unsuitable and distasteful occupations, he might have acquired useful knowledge of some sort. For example, supposing him to stumble at metrical “longs and shorts,” or to be stuck between the horns of a dilemma, or be lost amidst the mazes of metaphysics, he might have that peculiar turn which would render him a good farmer, an excellent judge of “long and short wools” or of “long and short horns,” or that shrewdness which would render him a clever tradesman, a man

And so certain am I that many young men who enter our university would prefer and far better comprehend the plain and practical lecture of a professor of agriculture, surrounded by models of machinery and plates of cattle, &c., than lectures of a far more pretending character, that I cannot avoid lamenting the deficiency in the department of agriculture which Socrates designated “the nurse and mother of all the arts,” and Gibbon “the foundation of all manufactures.”

The example afforded in this respect by the University of Edinburgh is worthy of the imitation of Trinity College. To afford at least the opportunities of gaining such information on this subject as the mind may be capable of receiving or predisposed to receive, cannot but be deemed judicious. And the theoretical knowledge of husbandry is incalculably more needed by the gentry and middle classes of Ireland than by those of the same grades in Scotland, where almost every land-proprietor and farmer understands the subject more or less.

Far be it from me to decry the advantages of what is called learning, but I would have a more diversified course, both in our schools of every class, and in the universities, so as to comprehend those useful branches of information, to which the student, if denied by Providence the faculties requisite for the attainment of others, may apply himself with pleasure or advantage.

I have met with many young persons of exceeding dullness in book learning, of decided distaste to the pursuits of literature, who have manifested a quick apprehension of mechanical contrivances, practically exhibited a love of natural history, of gardening, of agriculture, of something, in short, of a utilitarian character. If these tendencies had been duly cultivated, the results would have been favourable to the individuals themselves, and probably to the public also.

I have often been puzzled to account for the pre-eminence of the Scotch as a clever and a thinking people: it cannot be from atmospheric influence; and I am disposed to question the correctness of the assertion of a grave Caledonian, that the fine spirit of philosophical inquiry which distinguishes his countrymen is mainly attributable to their use of oatmeal porridge; it must rather be from well-directed education, from the early acquired habit of thinking for one’s self, and of giving a reason for every thing as far as they can, that the Scotch are so intelligent and so fitted for their respective stations in the social circle.

My own countrymen are naturally as shrewd and intellectual as the Scotch, but their minds are too generally ill disciplined, and school education, for all classes, is too generally defective every where. Several hours of the day are passed in wearisome restraint within the walls of a schoolroom, in learning words without ideas, sounds without sense; the mind being seldom engaged in the tasks with either pleasure or profit.

And besides the impediments which obstruct the progress of useful occupation, arising from the blindness of parents, the unfitness of teachers, and the incapacity of pupils, there are to be encountered in all schools the natural preference of idleness to any kind of systematic occupation, the love of mischief and freaks, which prevail among combinations of boys, and the difficulty of analysing character and dispositions in crowded seminaries.

But in schools for the poor, where order and discipline are easily enforced; in places of private education, and under the paternal roof, where, by far the greatest degree of happiness and simplicity of character are enjoyed and preserved—in such cases, in which instructors and parents are qualified to educate, a system of literary instruction, combining with it relaxation of a useful kind, may be pursued.

Among the latter I would place gardening and botany foremost among the out-of-door occupations, and these pursuits apply to both sexes, and to the humblest of the peasantry, as well as to the nobles of the land, for with the idea of a garden is connected every association that is pure and heaven-born. I myself even now look back upon those of my childish hours which were employed in the garden, with unmixed pleasure, and the first early crop of radishes which I raised with my own hands in a garden border, afforded me more innocent pride than any far more valuable crop that I have subsequently raised upon my farm. The care of flowers and shrubs, and the absence of corrupting influences, during the indulgence of this pursuit, render it a subject of extreme interest in the formation of individual and national character.

Those of the poor who are disposed to take a real interest in their gardens as is the case of thousands of the English peasantry, instead of finding their summer evening occupations in their allotments wearisome after their day of other toil, seem to find relaxation in the comparatively light work which they thus perform for themselves; and in the pleasurable contemplation of their own flowers, though they be but common beauties, and of their own tiny crops, they feel that calmness and tranquillity, that quiet satisfaction, which lay the passions at rest, and therefore indispose for the boisterous mirth and the ungodly society of the frequenters of the beer-house or the gin-shop.

Poultry, pigeons, and rabbits, may be reared by young people, both for amusement and profit. The child who understands much of the natural history of domestic animals from practical observation, and perceives the force of those influences which unite the parent and the offspring, will so far sympathize with, and apprehend the nature of, those influences, as to feel pain at the thought of wantonly dissociating that connection, and would be far less likely “to rob the poor birds of their young,” than the child who had not been familiarized with the nature and habits of the feathered race.

Children who have watched over a brood of chickens from the moment of their first disengagement from the shell, and witnessed the instinct with which the Creator causes them to come at the call of their mother, and contemplate the love with which “the hen gathers her chickens under her wings,” will take no pleasure in destroying that life of which they had anxiously traced the progress from the hour in which the first sign of developed animation appeared. It is improbable that the boy (and far more so that the girl, who is naturally kind) to whose hand the birds have fearlessly looked for food, while they clamorously delighted in his presence, could in his manhood witness any torturing of the feathered race, such as the diabolical barbarity of throwing at cocks on Shrove Tuesday, which used to disgrace Great Britain; or take pleasure in the barbarities of a cock-fight[A] or a gander-fight.[B]

For those who are excluded from the enjoyments of rural life, and those occupations to which I have referred, there remain other pursuits of extreme interest, according to their respective tastes—geology, chemistry, mechanics, which employ both the head and the hand. Many a youth may be taught “sermons in stones,” &c.—see the quotation in Shakspeare, As You Like It—and be kept from bad company, by having access to a lathe, and becoming practically “a tool-making animal,” who, from his distaste to books, would be otherwise miserably destitute of rational employment. I do not wish to see either young or old persons too much

But natural history, to a reasonable extent, is surely a useful and improving study for both rich and poor; it leads them to look from the creature to the Creator; to contemplate His works, His glories, and His beneficent designs, both in the material and the spiritual world. In short, I would supply the mind and body with those occupations which best harmonise together, and most powerfully tend to overcome the degrading and demoralising effects of ignorance, which is confessedly the greatest enemy to religion, to peace, good order, and social happiness.

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