Part 1

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Page 203: After the following line there is a hand symbol pointing to the right: "With firm, undazzled eye behold!"

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THE

RURAL MAGAZINE,

AND

LITERARY EVENING FIRE-SIDE.

VOL. I. PHILADELPHIA, _Sixth Month, 1820._ _No. 6._

FOR THE RURAL MAGAZINE.

THE DESULTORY REMARKER.

No. V.

This mournful truth is every where confess'd, _Slow rises worth, by poverty depress'd._

Dr. Johnson.

Numerous and important are the boasted advantages of our free government. Men and things are professedly estimated, in this region of sturdy republicanism, in exact accordance with their true character. Our just and beautiful theories inculcate the doctrine, that VIRTUE and TALENT are the only proper grounds of distinction in society; and if this were faithfully illustrated in practice, merit would not be opposed by serious obstacles, in emerging from obscurity. If such a desirable state of things were realized, how rapidly would our country advance in prosperity! Monarchical institutions, which sanction the hereditary descent of RANK and DISTINCTION, would contrast very unpleasantly with those which are bottomed on the cardinal principle, that all men are by NATURE CREATED EQUAL. It becomes us therefore to inquire, whether the fancied superiority, which in relation to this subject, we arrogate to ourselves, be in reality any thing but in name.

In prosecuting this inquiry, let personal observation, and personal experience, be candidly consulted. If we have voluntarily substituted, for what in other countries results from the exercise of despotic power, an idol of our own creation, and bow to it with the same deference and fealty, what becomes of our claim to the title of independence? The effect of such a deception will be no less productive of mental and moral degradation, than if the laws of the land had authorized the establishment of PRIVILEGED ORDERS. The real republican character is particularly distinguished by its simplicity. The inroads of luxury, and the inordinate influence of wealth, are anxiously to be deprecated, as destructive to rational liberty. Titles of nobility are not within our reach; but the glitter of wealth may equally awaken our ambition, and monopolize our attention. Here there is danger, against the approach of which it is the part of prudence and of wisdom to be vigilant.

When an individual is supposed to be affluent, have we ever known his merit to be unjustly overlooked or disregarded? Are not riches uniformly invested with the magic power of extenuating the faults, and magnifying the good qualities of their possessor? The answers to these questions will at once be given without hesitation,

For virtue, glory, beauty, all divine And human powers, immortal Gold! are thine.

The complexion of society in Philadelphia, is considered, in many respects, of that chastened and respectable character, which is well becoming the nature of our institutions. Our metropolis has always been distinguished for _Benevolence_, of which, as well as of other good qualities, honourable mention might be made. But indiscriminate approbation must be withheld, if we maintain our allegiance to truth. There is in this city an aristocracy of wealth, which has a withering and destructive effect on the best interests of social life.--Wealth, in certain circles, is considered an indispensable recommendation; and perhaps in some instances, the only one its possessor is required to prefer! It is not pretended, that this golden qualification should be contemned in the abstract; for, when not abused, it furnishes the means not only of procuring many valuable and rational gratifications, but of extensive utility to others. But we err egregiously, in permitting it to supplant, in our estimation, the only distinctions of real value;--those which have been indicated above. Such a blind devotion to its charms, casts a reflection upon our character for good sense, equally just and severe with that which properly belongs to a retailer of the stale and pointless bon-mots of monarchs, for wit, merely because they issue from the fountain of royalty. This slavish subserviency, is altogether unworthy of freemen; they must, if true to themselves, discard the influence of PRIVILEGED ORDERS, and view things as they really are.--Many an individual, who now fills a large space in the public eye, would, if overtaken by adversity, scarcely be discerned at all without the aid of a microscope. He would, when deserted by prosperity, return to his native insignificance, and assume his proper station in life.

Our conduct to all men should be friendly and decorous, but to those who are struggling with adverse circumstances, and who possess sterling recommendations to our notice, it should be zealously and liberally extended. The great man, to whom we are indebted for our motto, knew what it was to be beset by those potent adversaries,--griping poverty, and chilling neglect. He concluded one of his letters to CAVE, the editor of the Gentleman's Magazine, in these remarkable words, "I am yours IMPRANSUS." If by this he intended to convey the idea, that he was fasting because he had not the means of procuring a dinner, what a melancholy reflection does it suggest to the mind. Even Lord CHESTERFIELD himself, whose delicate nerves were so dreadfully shocked by the "_savageness_" of JOHNSON, had he been acquainted with the circumstance, and foreseen his future celebrity, would have hastened to his relief. Who that beheld Dr. FRANKLIN, in the garb of a printer's boy, walking up Market Street, eating one of his rolls of bread, and carrying the other under his arm, could have believed, that at a future period he would become one of the most celebrated men of the age. So deceptive are external appearances, and so irresistible must be the conclusion, that VIRTUE and TALENT are not excluded from the humblest walks of life.--Hence the folly and injustice of establishing PRIVILEGED ORDERS.

So long ago as the days of HORACE, the seductive power of gold was considered as directly hostile to the cause of virtue. The following lines are extracted from his ode to his friend SALLUST, as translated by Dr. FRANCIS.

Virtue, to crowds a foe profest, Disdains to number with the blest, Phraates, by his slaves ador'd, And to the Parthian crown restor'd, And gives the diadem, the throne, And laurel wreath, to him alone, _Who can a treasur'd mass of gold With firm, undazzled eye behold!_

THE VILLAGE TEACHER.

It was finely remarked by an Indian, that the white man has not so deep and intimate a sense of his dependence upon God as the Indian. He owes more, apparently, to himself and his fellows. Entrenched in his palaces of stone, he can smile at the pitiless storm, and defy the blasts of winter. The great business of his early life, is to provide against its decline. He has artisans to administer to every want, and to alleviate every pain. Hence his own importance is magnified in his view; and he thinks less frequently of the great Being, from whom all his comforts spring. The Indian, on the other hand, leads a life of privation and adventure. He wanders alone through the forest; and seeks companionship and communion with nature. He looks abroad on the majesty of creation, and feels that there must be a Deity. In the uncertainty of his supplies of food, he knows that he is at the mercy of an invisible Protector; and the feeling of gratitude for unexpected relief, is more vivid than can enter into the heart of the civilized man.

Without stopping to inquire into the justice of the Indian's remark, I shall go on to observe, that there is a like difference between the occupations of the city and country. Every thing in a great metropolis is artificial. As the division of labour is the great secret of national wealth, so it is carried to its greatest extent in the capital. The members of the community are there more interlocked with each other, more helpless by themselves, than is the case with us. Accordingly they look to each other for the principal part of their enjoyments. To begin with the most necessary things of life, a citizen is dependant upon a dozen tradesmen, perhaps, for those articles of food and clothing, which a farmer works up at home. He accomplishes himself for one object of pursuit; and although profoundly ignorant of all others, is enabled thereby to fill his station, to keep his place as a key-stone in the arch of society. It never occurs to him how helpless and impotent he would be by himself. He is accommodated to things around--the artificial creature of an artificial system. Nor is it only in this dependence upon his fellows, that, the citizen differs from the countryman. His contrivances against the unavoidable evils and calamities of life, are more numerous, and cast a veil, in some degree, between him and his Creator. The overruling of that hand, which dispenses and withholds the rain and the harvest, affect him, as it were, but at a distance.--His merchandise is the product of art. His system of credit equalizes, if I may use the expression, the dispensations of Providence. The tempest may bury his wealth in the bosom of the deep; but an insurance office repairs the ravage of the elements. Every means in his power is used to thwart the original decree, "By the sweat of thy brow," &c.--He looks into futurity, and calculates the unfruitfulness of the seasons--not as a motive to humble dependence--not as an incentive to prayer and repentance--but that he may build his fortune upon the wants and the casualties of his fellow creatures. He even grapples with death itself--calculates with unfeeling selfishness the days and the infirmities of his neighbours, and wagers upon the length of his life. All his arrangements are predicated upon this artificial system. The thought, if it ever occur to him, of the great God of nature, is as much shut out by it, as the fair face of creation from the alleys and courts of the city. And in proportion as he becomes impressed with a deep sense of that overruling Providence, will these things become hateful in his eyes. No doubt the mind is, as Milton has it, "its own place," and can transform the natural aliment of vice into a medicament of virtue. The noblest examples of active goodness are generally to be found in a large metropolis; for it must be virtue of a superior cast that can resist the temptations which are there presented.--But minds of a contemplative turn may be allowed to shun the combat which they find it so hard to sustain, and to seek for aids to their good resolutions in external circumstances.

To all such I may venture to recommend the pursuits of a country life as eminently salutary. Every month and week has there its appropriate labours, which cannot be neglected; and it is from this cause a life of activity and variety. The events of the season are full of interest, and it is peculiarly delightful to observe how Providence still delights to bless. Shortsighted and presumptuous that we are, we are constantly auguring this or that misfortune--lamenting the unpropitiousness in some respect or another of the year; and yet from harvest to harvest are our barns filled, and our granaries laden. The labours of the country do not, like those of the city, deform the body, and undermine the constitution; and there is in its clear atmosphere, and silent serenity, an influence as invigorating to the soul as the touch of earth to Antæus. In the country, the silent and manifest workings of the Deity are constantly before us, and meet our eyes in every phase of organized life: The mind must be worse than insensible that does not feel and respond to the voice of praise, which seems to be constantly ascending, as from one great altar.

Some philosophers have placed virtue in a state of lofty contemplation; and others, of continued activity. The truth seems to be, that they are both essential to the perfect character.--He who gives himself up to indolent meditation, will become a prey to the enemies of his own household, and will fall by a servile foe. He who never retires to "plume his feathers, and let grow his wings," will find himself less and less able to sustain his flight; and discover, perhaps, when it is too late, that he has lost the energy of virtue, and the love of moral beauty.

But as the temptations of the more selfish passions are the strongest, that state of society in which we are the most exposed to them, is the most dangerous; and we have more need of having our eyes and our hearts fixed upon pure and lofty objects, than of having excessive stimulants applied to that activity, of which every condition in life requires a steady and vigorous application. To reflecting minds, therefore, the labour and the relaxation which the country holds out, are both more salutary and invigorating, than that which is required amid the smoke, and bustle, and jarring interests of a great metropolis.

AN ACCOUNT

_Of the Agricultural School at Hofwyl, in Switzerland._

(From the Edinburgh Review.)

Mr. de Fellenberg was first known merely as an agriculturist, and still keeps up his original establishment of husbandry at Buchsie, an old chateau near Hofwyl; but agriculture was always with him a secondary object, and subservient to that system of education to which his thoughts were very early directed. He is a man of an unusually ardent as well as persevering turn of mind, and conceals a character of deep and steady enthusiasm, under a very calm exterior and manners. Although born to patrician rank in his own country, he early imbibed those political doctrines of which such tremendous misapplication was so soon to be made in his neighbourhood: and the disappointment filled his mind with melancholy views of the moral state and future prospects of mankind. It appeared to him, that the world was blindly hurrying on to irretrievable ruin; and that a sounder system of education for the great body of the people, could alone stop the progress of error and corruption. He has sometimes mentioned in conversation the particular circumstances, which finally determined him to the course he has since pursued. In the year 1798 or 1799, he happened to be at Paris as one of the commission sent by the provisional government established in Switzerland after the French invasion; and in that capacity he had an official conversation with the Director Reubel, at his country-house near Paris,--in the course of which he laid before him, in glowing colours, a picture of the miserable state to which his country was reduced, and which might soon lead to a _Vendean_ war, destructive to both parties. The Director appeared for some time to listen with profound attention, and Mr. de Fellenberg ascribed his silence to conviction of the truths he urged, and something like a feeling of compunction,--when, all at once, the worthy republican throwing open a window, called aloud to one of his servants--'_Jacques! apportez moi Finette!_' A little spaniel was brought accordingly with its litter of young ones in a basket--and there was no chance of his hearing another word about Switzerland or liberty! After this rebuff, he gave up the idea of serving his country as a politician; and, asking for his passport the next day, made the best of his way home, determined to set about the slow work of elementary reformation, by a better mode of education, and to persevere in it for the rest of his life!

It is now upwards of twelve years since Mr. de Fellenberg undertook to systematize domestic education, and to show on a large scale how the children of the poor might be best taught, and their labour at the same time most profitably applied: in short, how the first twenty years of a poor man's life might be so employed as to provide for his support and his education. The peasants in his neighbourhood were at first rather shy of trusting their children for a new experiment; and being thus obliged to take his pupils where he could find them, many of the earliest were the sons of vagrants, and literally picked up on the highways; and this is the case with one or two of the most distinguished. He had very soon, however, the good fortune of finding an excellent co-operator in the person of a young man of the name of Vehrli, the son of a schoolmaster of Thurgovia, who, coming to Hofwyl in 1809, to see the establishment and inform himself of the mode of teaching, was so struck with the plan of the _school of industry_, that he offered his son, then about 18, as an assistant. This young man devoted himself from that moment to the undertaking.----Although admitted at first to Mr. de Fellenberg's table, he soon left it for that of his pupils, with whom he has ever since lived night and day. Working with them in the fields, their playfellow in their hours of relaxation,--and, learning himself what he is to teach as a master, his zeal has not cooled a moment during a trial of more than ten years' unremitting exertions, under the guidance of his patron, and assisted now by four other masters. The number of his pupils has increased successively to 43: They obey him as well as Mr. de Fellenberg, entirely from love and a sense of duty:--punishment has been inflicted only twice since the beginning; and their treatment is nearly that of children under the paternal roof. They go out every morning to their work soon after sunrise--having first breakfasted and received a lesson of about half an hour. They return at noon. Dinner takes them half an hour,--a lesson of one hour follows; then to work again till six in the evening. On Sunday, the different lessons take six hours instead of two; and they have butcher's meat on that day only. They are divided into three classes, according to age and strength; an entry is made in a book, every night, of the number of hours each class has worked, specifying the sort of labour done, in order that it may be charged to the proper account, each particular crop having an account opened for it, as well as every new building, the live stock, the machines, the schools themselves, &c. &c. In winter, and whenever there is no out-of-doors' work, the boys plait straw for chairs; make baskets; saw logs with the cross saw, and split them; thrash and winnow corn, grind colours, knit stockings, or assist the wheel-wright and other artificers, of whom there are many employed on the establishment. For all which different sorts of labour an adequate salary is credited each boy's class.

Mr. de Fellenberg indeed observes, that the boys being most of them only just come to the age of productive labour, it is presumed the Establishment will not only support itself in future, but repay past expenses; particularly as certain outfits charged to the first years will not recur again.--He observes also, that several grown boys have been suffered to go away, and have been replaced by young children, to the great injury of the Establishment. It may be added, that the pupils have been indulged of late with better clothes than formerly, or than is strictly necessary, as well as a better table; and that, from attention to their feelings, the cast-off clothes of the _school of the rich_ are not turned to their use, but given away to the poor of the neighbourhood, that they may not appear in the light of dependants on any but their adoptive father and their own labour. It is undoubtedly a very striking circumstance, that only one, out of the whole number of boys admitted into this school since the beginning, has been dismissed as irrecoverably vicious; all the others have got rid of their former habits;--and, when final sentence was passed upon the unfortunate boy, the others begged leave to contribute each one _batz_ towards a present to him, that he might remember them with kindness.

The labours of the field, their various sports, their lessons, their choral songs, the necessary rest, fill the whole circle of the twenty-four hours; and judging from their open, cheerful, contented countenances, nothing seems wanting to their happiness.--But it is a great point gained, to have brought young men to the age of 18 or 20, uncontaminated by the general licentiousness which prevails in the country. When their time is out, and they mix with other people, they will no doubt marry; but the probability is, they will be more difficult in their choice than other men of the same rank, and will shrink from vulgarity and abject poverty. Long habits of self-restraint, too, will enable them to look out with comparative patience for a suitable establishment, before they burden themselves with a family. In short, if the only check of the mild kind to an excessive increase of population is self-restraint, from motives of prudence and morality, where may we look for it with better hopes than among the pupils of Mr. de Fellenberg?

We shall now proceed, however, to lay before our readers a more detailed account of the internal management of the school of industry. The lessons are given mostly _viva voce_, and various questions continually interposed, respecting measures of capacity, length and weight, and their fractional parts; the cubic contents of a piece of timber, or a stack of hay; the time necessary to perform any particular task, under such or such circumstances; the effects of gravitation; the laws of mechanics; rules of grammar and different parts of speech, &c. &c. The boys endeavour to find the solution of arithmetical and mathematical problems without writing, and at the same time to proceed with the mechanical processes in which they may happen to be engaged. Aware of the difficulties with which they are thus made to grapple, as it were, without assistance, they are the more sensible of the value of those scientific short cuts, which carry you in the dark indeed, but safely and speedily, to your journey's end, and the more delighted with their beauty as well as their use. They acquire the _rationale_ of the thing, together with the practice; their understandings are exercised, and their attention kept awake. None of them are ever seen to look inattentive or tired, although just returned from their day's labour in the fields. Contrivance, and some degree of difficulty to overcome, is a necessary condition, it would seem, of our enjoyments.

The pupils are not always questioned, but, in their turn, propose questions to the masters, and difficulties to be solved, which they do sometimes with considerable ingenuity.--They draw outlines of maps, from memory, exhibiting the principal towns, rivers, and chains of mountains; they draw correctly from nature, and in perspective, all sorts of machines for agriculture; and are very fond of trying chymically the different sorts of soil, and have tables of them very well arranged.