REVIEW.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 3893, 8 August 1874, Page 6 (Supplement)

REVIEW.

Health ami Education. —- By the Rev. CijAßfcEs KnrcsLßY, F.L.S., F.G.S., Canon of Westminster. W. Isbister

and Co,, London, X 874.

This is a series of essays delivered upon various occasions in the shape of lectures, popular or otherwise. Who does not know before they read them of what sort of stuff they are composed 1 But few old novel readers who are not familiar with the strong, language and nervous sentences which characterise the Hector of Everaley. Like a breath of fresh air come his whirling, whistling paragraphs, each with hands and feet, like Martin Luther's words. Not always exactly true; seldom to be anatomised and pulled to pieces, but ever leaving a fresh clear sentiment behind them~ making us feel more manly, better, finer, for having appreciated some of the outlets in these modern times still left- for the manlier virtues. Canon Kingsley, before any living author, has 'preserved an ideal overtopping the current one by many a foot. Laugh as we may at his somewhat prolix adoration of pure muscle; deduct the full measure of his occasionally animal frolicsomeness; make every allowanoe fur his somewhat sensuous (we use the word in its original meaning) word painting, and we have left behind all—a nobleness, a pure unsullied freedom of thought, which we cherish. It ia not necessary to agree with all that Canon Kingsley teaches in order to esteem his position in the world now. Some of his pet theories seem to us far-fetched and unnatural. It is not our purpose to represent him as a great power in this generation, far from it; his eccentricities of thought are far too great to give him any such place. Undoubted y he would do more, and further his own favourite ends more successfully, if the current of his thoughts ran more in the channel of everyday life. Where we value him most is for his entire independence of mind. We might have predicted of him just what, has come to pass — that he would be more successful in gaining and directing fast friends, who, in'their turn, will influence others, than in any very direct power directly over public opinion. His teaching in the volume before us is of the old sort. We defy any young man to read " Health and Education." without gaining a more divine ideal—a more lofty tone of thought—without finding his knowledge of the purpose of his being here.extended, What " Westward, Ho '," did for dreaming schoolboys and budding hobbledehoys, this volume will do for sentimental maidens, discontented damselsraise their ideal of life, extend their horizon of knowledge, make them recognise, in spite of themselves, that dressing and flirting are not the only pleasant things within their reach. Charles Kingsley speaks, here, as is his wont, to the nobler part of human nature, and appeals to it without forced delicacy, and without too polite a deference. He speaks to it as to that which has as real a being as any material matter, and by the unmistakeable directness of his appeal, he does a good deal to draw out, and even create that to which he addresses himself. The mean and ugly things that grow out of our modern civilisation shrink into their bur- ' rows likg rabbits at the sight of a dog, when j he pleads the cause of all that is lovely and of good report. One fault we find with him unconfessed, indeed frankly denied in his words, but not the less plainly traceable throughout all he writes, viz., his muscular contempt for what is weak whether physically or morally. We fancy that in a society where Charles Kingsleya were dominant, the softer graces—clinging clients of Christianity—

would go to the wall. Not that the Canon allows as much; to do him justice he takes infinite pains, especially in his later writings, to avoid this conclusion ; nevertheless we take leave to think that the very pain and "difficulty his effort betrays, do most certainly show the tendency of his teaching. We should, not at all like to be the failing weakly being civilisation so often produces if the world was ruled by its Kingsleys. Savages are often upon the average finer animals than civilised men, as we now know, because the weaklings are killed out. , A short shrift and sudden death would come, we fancy, to too many, far too many, because they could not reach the muscular standard of vitality, if our Canon's will were law. While, then, we think this book, like all his writings, an admirable tonic, we should not care to be dieted upon quinine. Used as a medicine, taken as a cure, his views of life, its duties and its punishments, are perfect; accepted as the governing principle, when good and evil, strength and weakness, are so strangely commingled and blended aa in our modern social life, we take it the Canon's law, like that of old, would leave us in a dilemma—having inflicted for a fa ling death, what should we have lefc with which to punish murder ?

In the following passage, which occurs in his essay upon heroism, we notice this ready discontent with weakness, of which we complain, and which doe 3, indeed, constitute the true weakness of the reading of the world's puzzles the musclemeri would give us.

• It is an open question whether the policeman is not demoralising us; and that in proportion as he does his duty-well; whether the perfection of justice and safety, the complete preservation of body and goods, may not reduce the educated and comfortable classes into that lapdog condition in which not conscience but comfort doth make cowards of us all. Our forefathers, on the whole, had to take care of themselves ; we find it more convenient to hire people to take care of us. So much the bettor for us in some respects, but it may be so much the worse in others.

After thus stating the main .principle upon whice we think his position stands, he goes on to make many of the requisite exceptions, without, as it seems to us, in the slightest degree comprehending that upon this principle of protecting the weak all real progress must depend. He seems to throw the poor dog a bone, clean picked, with but little real sustenance on it, and not to dream that every science and art, every noble and pure thought, really exists and controls the world in virtue of this principle ; the converse of the old proverb—that "might makes right." .

iSneaks and cowards, Charles Kingsley seems to say, have the same chance under the protection of the police to squirm and wriggle that men and heroes have to live. I do not see how to get out of the difficulty. I suppose I must accept the evil for the sake of the good.that goes with it, but I should very much like to see the tender care of the police given only to those who are using their time and their powers to some . good end. Sometimes indeed, his true tender-hearted English nature leads him into one of those humane expressions of feeling which have gonefar to make his name idolised, not only in in his own West cwmiree, but wherever honest men live. Who has not recognised something loveable and good about the little arts of the managing mother— stock joke for novelist, excellent foil for caricaturist, aB they' are 1 The maternal instinct is never more notable than when with sublime self-sacrifice the old mother foregoes everything that makes her life pleasant—rest, peace, sleep, home-Mn order to see-her offspring settled.

With pain she brought these girls into tVe world. With pain «he educated thorn, ac .cording to her light. With pain she is trying to obtain for them the highest earthly blessing of -which she can conceive—namely, to be well married ; and if iv doing that last she manoeuvres a little, commits a few basenesses, even tells a few untruths, what does all that come to save this: that in the confused intensity of her motherly self-sacrilice, she will sacrifice for her daughters even her own conscience and her own credit. We may sneer, if we will, at such a poor hard driven, soul, when we meet her in society ; our duty both as Christians and ladies and ijentleinen is to do for her somethiug very different indeed. ;

But if our author be kind,' somewhat too kind, for the mother in whom he finds a gracious power of self-sacrifice which makes her lovely, we shall not think him one whit too sympathetic with the younger woman of London society. In an essay entitled, Nansicaa in London, or the lower education of women, an essay certainly the geni of the volume, he depicts the young Englishwoman of London in anything but a lovely guise. With a ferocity alien to his strong, but not tyrannical nature, he plunges his stiffest pen into his darkest fullest ink-bottle, and conjures up all the pertest and most intolerable young women of his experience to stand for their likeness. Of course, it is all exaggerated ; of course, it is all unutterably absurd, but even while we smile at the overdrawn picture, we cannot fail to recognise certain germ 3of truth.;

Poor little thugs*.'. I passed hundreds every day, trying to hide their littleness by the nasty mass of false hair—or what does duty for it—and by the ugly and useless hat which is stuck upon it, making the head thereby look: ridiculously large and heavy, and by the high heels on which they totter onwards, having forgotten or never learnt the simple art of walking, their bodies tilted forward in that ungraceful attitude which is called a Grecian bend, seemingly kept on their feet, and kept together at all in that strange attitude, by tight stays, which prevented all graceful and healthy motion of the hip 3 and sides; their raiment, meanwhile, being purposely misshapen in this direction and in that to hide deficiencies of form. If that chignon and those heels had been taken off, the figure which would have remained would have been that too often of a puny girl of sixteen. And yet there was no doubt that these; women were not only full grown, but some of them, alas ! wives and mother-!. Poor little things ; and this they have gained by so-called civilisation—the power of aping the f ishions by whijh the worn out Parisienue hides her own personal defects, and of making themselves, by the innate want of that taste which the Parisienne possesses, on y the cause of something like a sneer from many a cultivated man."

This is, it must be allowed, strong, very strong, language. Moreover, however unfortunate Canon Kingsley may have been in his experiences, we are, fortunately, able to correct him by the observations of one not too friendly a judge in the matter, who has put on record his opinion on English women. M. Tame finds the great fault with them that they are too big, too beefy, too fleshy. He contrasts the mountain of flesh—rosy coloured flesh, 'which; he takes as the present type of the female Bull—with the more spiritual grace of his own countrywomen. Either M. Tame or C. Kingsley must be wrong, and we side with the Frenchman, not in his disapprobation of full fod women, but in his assertion that the generality of the sex in England run very much in that direction. Kingsley is a somewhat determined laudator tempoHs acti, indeed, his intense love for " the good old times " gives his writing often a somewhat lackadaisical and too sentimental air. Fair fresh faces, full womanly forms, are not so rare as he makes them out. Is not old fogeyism making its accustomed presence felt even in our lusty canon? Whether we agree in his broad disparagement of the rising generation of girls or not, we must at least allow that physical training, whether the old ball play of the Greeks, which he especially eulogises, or the more feasible devices of the gymnasium, are much wanted to aid the physical developement of the future mothers of our people. Educational reformers are still too apt to neglect this. Notwithstanding all that has been said and written about assimi-

lating the education of boya and girls, it remains but too true that this assimilation is confined for the most part to the school room, and does not sufficiently enter into the playing field. After all, let narrowchested pedants declaim as they may, there is a natural affinity between football and classics, cricket and the cube, root. The same physical force that enables a man to shine in a scurry, directed in another direction, enables him to aspire to a senior wranglership and the woolsack. It is becoming more and more evident that lungs, chest, heart, must all be well and strong to empower a man to win through the struggle of life, and that imperfect physical power is the most deadly drawback to supremacy in any walk in life. Wherefore, and for which reason, we agree with one another that if the proposed change in the education of; girls means—

That they are to learn more lessons, and to study what their brothers are taught, in addition to what their mothers were taught, then it is to be hoped by physiologists and patriots that the scheme will sink into that limbo whither, in a free and tolerably rational country, all imperfect and ill-considered schemes are sure to gravitate. But if the proposal be a bonafide one, then it must be borne in mind that in the public schools in E agland—^and, in all private schools,! I presume, thai; take their tone from them— cricket and football are more or less compulsory, being considered integral parts of an Englishman's education. I trust that the subject "will be taken up'methodically by those gifted ladies who have: acquainted themselves, and are labouring to acquaint other women, with the- first principles of health, and that they may avail -to prevent the coming generation, under the unwholesome influence of competitive examinations and so forth, from developing into bo many Chinese dwarfs or idiots. .

The essays upon which we have commented, while they are the most interest ing in the volume, are by no means the only ones that will repay a careful study. One upon Superstition, for instance, is full of interest. The definition is laboured, carefully explained, and very admirable. The author declares Superstition to be "Fear.of the unknown."

"The, Science of Health" explains itself as a title; and who does not know what Kingsley will be sure to say about "Thrift;", ■■-.'.•■■■. '.•;■: ./:

The entire volume is one even more remarkable for what it suggests than for what it plainly declares. If to make one, think is the highest praise that can be given to a popular lecture, it is still more> desirable as a verdict upon an essay. We sincerely trust that Mr Kingsley will'develop and continue this branch of his lifework ; perhaps in no way will he more certainly gain the . end he has. evidently in view, and make his mark upon the men of his age. Having won his hearing;as a novelist, sustained it as a preacher better than popular, he is in the best of all positiors for impressing his generation with his own thoughts. In time.to come the book under notice will, if we are not mistaken, be appealed to as an authority We should recommend it to all fathers of families as a capital household book. Nowhere is its teaching more needed than in these Colonies, where we are but too apt to forget or pass by the plain practical teaching of advanced science mated with common sen3e in an unmisLakeable care for the human frame. -