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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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Untitled Article
What the select nature of an education may be , we are not informed , but it must be something particularly fine , as it is charged so high . In fact , we are almost blasted by excess of light . We are almost afraid of thinking of this * tuition of the highest order , ' which aeems calculated only for princes , nobles , and other superior
beings . Poor Tom , our oldest son , being formed of ordinary clay , would , we are convinced , shrink into himself and be annihilated in a week , if he were to venture into this region of light . Our enfeebled eye next glances on another column of the colossal sheet , when , lo ! it is caught by a sweetly flowing announcement , which at Qnce completely restores our spirits .
To Parents and Guardians . If you wish your sons or wards to read properly , write and calculate with that neatness , correctness , and rapidity , which every man of business admires so much , also to
speak the French language with fluency , associate with those who are distinguished for urbanity of manners , and though last , by no means of the least importance , to be boarded as liberally as the sons of gentlemen should , whose parents conscientiously pay for it ; by inquiring at , testimony may be had that cannot fail to satisfy the truly anxious or the most scrupulous . In order to correct bad spelling , the pupils either write themes , history , or letters on business , daily . The Latin and Greek are taught on the Eton plan . '
What can be more dulcet than these lines . Our son shall go : we are e truly anxious and most scrupulous' that he should ' associate with those who are distinguished for urbanity of manners . ' Into this land of milk and honey shall he go , to be boarded as liberally as the sons of gentlemen should , who conscientiously pay . Tom shall go . Rather than he should lose such advantages , we will violate a second nature , and conscientiously pay , or
at least faithfully promise to do so . This fine composition has nevertheless a dying fall : the climax ends in bad spelling . Yet behold the force of genius in exalting the lowest subject . To an ordinary mind , the correction of bad spelling would have suggested nothing remarkable ; but in the mind of a genius it involves the
composition of themes , history , or letters on business , daily . Happy the youth who spells ill : he is transformed forthwith into a moralist and historian ; what a nest of young Dr . Johnsons and Livys we shall have ; what new lights will be thrown on history and morals : all in consequence of bad spelling . Verily geniup can turn dirt into gold .
So dull were we at first that we did not exactly comprehend the schoolboy ' s daily letters on business , alluded to as forming part of the complicated machinery for removing bad spelling . On inquiry , we find that boys have business as well as men ; and the following business letter , though in a somewhat less florid and ambitious style than those of the young historians , will perhaps give some notion of the excellence of the plan , but not of the happy infelicity of the spelling .
Untitled Article
64 fl The Schoolmaster Abroad .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Sept. 2, 1833, page 646, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2622/page/62/
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