The fine dream is fading away fast; and the least concern of a teacher in the present day is to inculcate grammar-rules.

The modern schoolmaster is expected to know a little of every thing, because his pupil is required not to be entirely ignorant of any thing.  He must be superficially, if I may so say, omniscient.  He is to know something of pneumatics; of chemistry; of whatever is curious, or proper to excite the attention of the youthful mind; an insight into mechanics is desirable, with a touch of statistics; the quality of soils, &c. botany, the constitution of his country, cum multis aliis.  You may get a notion of some part of his expected duties by consulting the famous Tractate on Education addressed to Mr. Hartlib.

All these things—­these, or the desire of them—­he is expected to instil, not by set lessons from professors, which he may charge in the bill, but at school-intervals, as he walks the streets, or saunters through green fields (those natural instructors), with his pupils.  The least part of what is expected from him, is to be done in school-hours.  He must insinuate knowledge at the mollia tempera fandi.  He must seize every occasion—­the season of the year—­the time of the day—­a passing cloud—­a rainbow—­a wagon of hay—­a regiment of soldiers going by—­to inculcate something useful.  He can receive no pleasure from a casual glimpse of Nature, but must catch at it as an object of instruction.  He must interpret beauty into the picturesque.  He cannot relish a beggar-man, or a gipsy, for thinking of the suitable improvement.  Nothing comes to him, not spoiled by the sophisticating medium of moral uses.  The Universe—­that Great Book, as it has been called—­is to him indeed, to all intents and purposes, a book, out of which he is doomed to read tedious homilies to distasting schoolboys.—­Vacations themselves are none to him, he is only rather worse off than before; for commonly he has some intrusive upper-boy fastened upon him at such times; some cadet of a great family; some neglected lump of nobility, or gentry; that he must drag after him to the play, to the Panorama, to Mr. Bartley’s Orrery, to the Panopticon, or into the country, to a friend’s house, or to his favourite watering-place.  Wherever he goes, this uneasy shadow attends him.  A boy is at his board, and in his path, and in all his movements.  He is boy-rid, sick of perpetual boy.

Boys are capital fellows in their own way, among their mates; but they are unwholesome companions for grown people.  The restraint is felt no less on the one side, than on the other.—­Even a child, that “plaything for an hour,” tires always.  The noises of children, playing their own fancies—­as I now hearken to them by fits, sporting on the green before my window, while I am engaged in these grave speculations at my neat suburban retreat at Shacklewell—­by distance made more sweet—­inexpressibly take from the labour of my task.  It is like writing to music.  They seem to modulate my periods.  They ought at least to do so—­for in the voice of that tender age there is a kind of poetry, far unlike the harsh prose-accents of man’s conversation.—­I should but spoil their sport, and diminish my own sympathy for them, by mingling in their pastime.