Miscellaneous Papers | Page 9

knew where it
was, and gave the right direction to it. The prevailing idea among the
loungers (the greater part of them the very sweepings of the streets and
station houses) seemed to be, that the teachers were quixotic, and the
school upon the whole "a lark". But there was certainly a kind of rough
respect for the intention, and (as I have said) nobody denied the school
or its whereabouts, or refused assistance in directing to it.
It consisted at that time of either two or three--I forget which--
miserable rooms, upstairs in a miserable house. In the best of these, the

pupils in the female school were being taught to read and write; and
though there were among the number, many wretched creatures steeped
in degradation to the lips, they were tolerably quiet, and listened with
apparent earnestness and patience to their instructors. The appearance
of this room was sad and melancholy, of course--how could it be
otherwise!--but, on the whole, encouraging.
The close, low chamber at the back, in which the boys were crowded,
was so foul and stifling as to be, at first, almost insupportable. But its
moral aspect was so far worse than its physical, that this was soon
forgotten. Huddled together on a bench about the room, and shown out
by some flaring candles stuck against the walls, were a crowd of boys,
varying from mere infants to young men; sellers of fruit, herbs,
lucifer-matches, flints; sleepers under the dry arches of bridges; young
thieves and beggars--with nothing natural to youth about them: with
nothing frank, ingenuous, or pleasant in their faces; low-browed,
vicious, cunning, wicked; abandoned of all help but this; speeding
downward to destruction; and UNUTTERABLY IGNORANT.
This, Reader, was one room as full as it could hold; but these were only
grains in sample of a Multitude that are perpetually sifting through
these schools; in sample of a Multitude who had within them once, and
perhaps have now, the elements of men as good as you or I, and maybe
infinitely better; in sample of a Multitude among whose doomed and
sinful ranks (oh, think of this, and think of them!) the child of any man
upon this earth, however lofty his degree, must, as by Destiny and Fate,
be found, if, at its birth, it were consigned to such an infancy and
nurture, as these fallen creatures had!
This was the Class I saw at the Ragged School. They could not be
trusted with books; they could only be instructed orally; they were
difficult of reduction to anything like attention, obedience, or decent
behaviour; their benighted ignorance in reference to the Deity, or to any
social duty (how could they guess at any social duty, being so
discarded by all social teachers but the gaoler and the hangman!) was
terrible to see. Yet, even here, and among these, something had been
done already. The Ragged School was of recent date and very poor; but
he had inculcated some association with the name of the Almighty,
which was not an oath, and had taught them to look forward in a hymn
(they sang it) to another life, which would correct the miseries and

woes of this.
The new exposition I found in this Ragged School, of the frightful
neglect by the State of those whom it punishes so constantly, and
whom it might, as easily and less expensively, instruct and save;
together with the sight I had seen there, in the heart of London; haunted
me, and finally impelled me to an endeavour to bring these Institutions
under the notice of the Government; with some faint hope that the
vastness of the question would supersede the Theology of the schools,
and that the Bench of Bishops might adjust the latter question, after
some small grant had been conceded. I made the attempt; and have
heard no more of the subject from that hour.
The perusal of an advertisement in yesterday's paper, announcing a
lecture on the Ragged Schools last night, has led me into these remarks.
I might easily have given them another form; but I address this letter to
you, in the hope that some few readers in whom I have awakened an
interest, as a writer of fiction, may be, by that means, attracted to the
subject, who might otherwise, unintentionally, pass it over.
I have no desire to praise the system pursued in the Ragged Schools;
which is necessarily very imperfect, if indeed there be one. So far as I
have any means of judging of what is taught there, I should
individually object to it, as not being sufficiently secular, and as
presenting too many religious mysteries and difficulties, to minds not
sufficiently prepared for their reception. But I should very imperfectly
discharge in myself the duty I wish