Chương Chương 3 · EDUCATION

, the sacrifice might have been completed, as

doubtless has happened in many similar instances, had it not been for

the courage of an elder sister, who revealed to the wealthy suitor that

Lady Emily’s affections were fixed upon a young soldier of fortune, a

near relation of her own.

Sir Everard manifested great emotion on receiving this intelligence,

which was confirmed to him, in a private interview, by the young lady

herself, although under the most dreadful apprehensions of her father’s

indignation.

Honour and generosity were hereditary attributes of the house of

Waverley. With a grace and delicacy worthy the hero of a romance, Sir

Everard withdrew his claim to the hand of Lady Emily. He had even,

before leaving Blandeville Castle, the address to extort from her

father a consent to her union with the object of her choice. What

arguments he used on this point cannot exactly be known, for Sir

Everard was never supposed strong in the powers of persuasion; but the

young officer, immediately after this transaction, rose in the army

with a rapidity far surpassing the usual pace of unpatronised

professional merit, although, to outward appearance, that was all he

had to depend upon.

The shock which Sir Everard encountered upon this occasion, although

diminished by the consciousness of having acted virtuously and

generously had its effect upon his future life. His resolution of

marriage had been adopted in a fit of indignation; the labour of

courtship did not quite suit the dignified indolence of his habits; he

had but just escaped the risk of marrying a woman who could never love

him, and his pride could not be greatly flattered by the termination of

his amour, even if his heart had not suffered. The result of the whole

matter was his return to Waverley-Honour without any transfer of his

affections, notwithstanding the sighs and languishments of the fair

tell-tale, who had revealed, in mere sisterly affection, the secret of

Lady Emily’s attachment, and in despite of the nods, winks, and

innuendos of the officious lady mother, and the grave eulogiums which

the Earl pronounced successively on the prudence, and good sense, and

admirable dispositions, of his first, second, third, fourth, and fifth

daughters.

The memory of his unsuccessful amour was with Sir Everard, as with many

more of his temper, at once shy, proud, sensitive, and indolent, a

beacon against exposing himself to similar mortification, pain, and

fruitless exertion for the time to come. He continued to live at

Waverley-Honour in the style of an old English gentleman, of an ancient

descent and opulent fortune. His sister, Miss Rachel Waverley, presided

at his table; and they became, by degrees, an old bachelor and an

ancient maiden lady, the gentlest and kindest of the votaries of

celibacy.

The vehemence of Sir Everard’s resentment against his brother was but

short-lived; yet his dislike to the Whig and the placeman, though

unable to stimulate him to resume any active measures prejudicial to

Richard’s interest, in the succession to the family estate, continued

to maintain the coldness between them. Richard knew enough of the

world, and of his brother’s temper, to believe that by any

ill-considered or precipitate advances on his part, he might turn

passive dislike into a more active principle. It was accident,

therefore, which at length occasioned a renewal of their intercourse.

Richard had married a young woman of rank, by whose family interest and

private fortune he hoped to advance his career. In her right he became

possessor of a manor of some value, at the distance of a few miles from

Waverley-Honour.

Little Edward, the hero of our tale, then in his fifth year, was their

only child. It chanced that the infant with his maid had strayed one

morning to a mile’s distance from the avenue of Brerewood Lodge, his

father’s seat. Their attention was attracted by a carriage drawn by six

stately long-tailed black horses, and with as much carving and gilding

as would have done honour to my lord mayor’s. It was waiting for the

owner, who was at a little distance inspecting the progress of a

half-built farm-house. I know not whether the boy’s nurse had been a

Welsh or a Scotch-woman, or in what manner he associated a shield

emblazoned with three ermines with the idea of personal property, but

he no sooner beheld this family emblem than he stoutly determined on

vindicating his right to the splendid vehicle on which it was

displayed. The Baronet arrived while the boy’s maid was in vain

endeavouring to make him desist from his determination to appropriate

the gilded coach-and-six. The _rencontre_ was at a happy moment for

Edward, as his uncle had been just eyeing wistfully, with something of

a feeling like envy, the chubby boys of the stout yeoman whose mansion

was building by his direction. In the round-faced rosy cherub before

him, bearing his eye and his name, and vindicating a hereditary title

to his family, affection, and patronage, by means of a tie which Sir

Everard held as sacred as either Garter or Blue-mantle, Providence

seemed to have granted to him the very object best calculated to fill

up the void in his hopes and affections. Sir Everard returned to

Waverley-Hall upon a led horse, which was kept in readiness for him,

while the child and his attendant were sent home in the carriage to

Brerewood Lodge, with such a message as opened to Richard Waverley a

door of reconciliation with his elder brother.

Their intercourse, however, though thus renewed, continued to be rather

formal and civil than partaking of brotherly cordiality; yet it was

sufficient to the wishes of both parties. Sir Everard obtained, in the

frequent society of his little nephew, something on which his

hereditary pride might found the anticipated pleasure of a continuation

of his lineage, and where his kind and gentle affections could at the

same time fully exercise themselves. For Richard Waverley, he beheld in

the growing attachment between the uncle and nephew the means of

securing his son’s, if not his own, succession to the hereditary

estate, which he felt would be rather endangered than promoted by any

attempt on his own part towards a closer intimacy with a man of Sir

Everard’s habits and opinions.

Thus, by a sort of tacit compromise, little Edward was permitted to

pass the greater part of the year at the Hall, and appeared to stand in

the same intimate relation to both families, although their mutual

intercourse was otherwise limited to formal messages and more formal

visits. The education of the youth was regulated alternately by the

taste and opinions of his uncle and of his father. But more of this in

a subsequent chapter.

CHAPTER 3. EDUCATION

The education of our hero, Edward Waverley, was of a nature somewhat

desultory. In infancy his health suffered, or was supposed to suffer

(which is quite the same thing), by the air of London. As soon,

therefore, as official duties, attendance on Parliament, or the

prosecution of any of his plans of interest or ambition, called his

father to town, which was his usual residence for eight months in the

year, Edward was transferred to Waverley-Honour, and experienced a

total change of instructors and of lessons, as well as of residence.

This might have been remedied had his father placed him under the

superintendence of a permanent tutor. But he considered that one of his

choosing would probably have been unacceptable at Waverley-Honour, and

that such a selection as Sir Everard might have made, were the matter

left to him, would have burdened him with a disagreeable inmate, if not

a political spy, in his family. He therefore prevailed upon his private

secretary, a young man of taste and accomplishments, to bestow an hour

or two on Edward’s education while at Brerewood Lodge, and left his

uncle answerable for his improvement in literature while an inmate at

the Hall. This was in some degree respectably provided for. Sir

Everard’s chaplain, an Oxonian, who had lost his fellowship for

declining to take the oaths at the accession of George I, was not only

an excellent classical scholar, but reasonably skilled in science, and

master of most modern languages. He was, however, old and indulgent,

and the recurring interregnum, during which Edward was entirely freed

from his discipline, occasioned such a relaxation of authority, that

the youth was permitted, in a great measure, to learn as he pleased,

what he pleased, and when he pleased. This slackness of rule might have

been ruinous to a boy of slow understanding, who, feeling labour in the

acquisition of knowledge, would have altogether neglected it, save for

the command of a taskmaster; and it might have proved equally dangerous

to a youth whose animal spirits were more powerful than his imagination

or his feelings, and whom the irresistible influence of Alma would have

engaged in field-sports from morning till night. But the character of

Edward Waverley was remote from either of these. His powers of

apprehension were so uncommonly quick as almost to resemble intuition,

and the chief care of his preceptor was to prevent him, as a sportsman

would phrase it, from over-running his game—that is, from acquiring his

knowledge in a slight, flimsy, and inadequate manner. And here the

instructor had to combat another propensity too often united with

brilliancy of fancy and vivacity of talent—that indolence, namely, of

disposition, which can only be stirred by some strong motive of

gratification, and which renounces study as soon as curiosity is

gratified, the pleasure of conquering the first difficulties exhausted,

and the novelty of pursuit at an end. Edward would throw himself with

spirit upon any classical author of which his preceptor proposed the

perusal, make himself master of the style so far as to understand the

story, and, if that pleased or interested him, he finished the volume.

But it was in vain to attempt fixing his attention on critical

distinctions of philology, upon the difference of idiom, the beauty of

felicitous expression, or the artificial combinations of syntax. “I can

read and understand a Latin author,” said young Edward, with the

self-confidence and rash reasoning of fifteen, “and Scaliger or Bentley

could not do much more.” Alas! while he was thus permitted to read only

for the gratification of his amusement, he foresaw not that he was

losing for ever the opportunity of acquiring habits of firm and

assiduous application, of gaining the art of controlling, directing,

and concentrating the powers of his mind for earnest investigation—an

art far more essential than even that intimate acquaintance with

classical learning which is the primary object of study.

I am aware I may be here reminded of the necessity of rendering

instruction agreeable to youth, and of Tasso’s infusion of honey into

the medicine prepared for a child; but an age in which children are

taught the driest doctrines by the insinuating method of instructive

games, has little reason to dread the consequences of study being

rendered too serious or severe. The history of England is now reduced

to a game at cards, the problems of mathematics to puzzles and riddles,

and the doctrines of arithmetic may, we are assured, be sufficiently

acquired by spending a few hours a week at a new and complicated

edition of the Royal Game of the Goose. There wants but one step

further, and the Creed and Ten Commandments may be taught in the same

manner, without the necessity of the grave face, deliberate tone of

recital, and devout attention, hitherto exacted from the well-governed

childhood of this realm. It may, in the meantime, be subject of serious

consideration, whether those who are accustomed only to acquire

instruction through the medium of amusement may not be brought to

reject that which approaches under the aspect of study; whether those

who learn history by the cards may not be led to prefer the means to

the end; and whether, were we to teach religion in the way of sport,

our pupils may not thereby be gradually induced to make sport of their

religion. To our young hero, who was permitted to seek his instruction

only according to the bent of his own mind, and who, of consequence,

only sought it so long as it afforded him amusement, the indulgence of

his tutors was attended with evil consequences, which long continued to

influence his character, happiness, and utility.

Edward’s power of imagination and love of literature, although the

former was vivid and the latter ardent, were so far from affording a

remedy to this peculiar evil, that they rather inflamed and increased

its violence. The library at Waverley-Honour, a large Gothic room, with

double arches and a gallery, contained such a miscellaneous and

extensive collection of volumes as had been assembled together, during

the course of two hundred years, by a family which had been always

wealthy, and inclined, of course, as a mark of splendour, to furnish

their shelves with the current literature of the day, without much

scrutiny or nicety of discrimination. Throughout this ample realm

Edward was permitted to roam at large. His tutor had his own studies;

and church politics and controversial divinity, together with a love of

learned ease, though they did not withdraw his attention at stated

times from the progress of his patron’s presumptive heir, induced him

readily to grasp at any apology for not extending a strict and

regulated survey towards his general studies. Sir Everard had never

been himself a student, and, like his sister, Miss Rachel Waverley, he

held the common doctrine, that idleness is incompatible with reading of

any kind, and that the mere tracing the alphabetical characters with

the eye is in itself a useful and meritorious task, without

scrupulously considering what ideas or doctrines they may happen to

convey. With a desire of amusement, therefore, which better discipline

might soon have converted into a thirst for knowledge, young Waverley

drove through the sea of books like a vessel without a pilot or a

rudder. Nothing perhaps increases by indulgence more than a desultory

habit of reading, especially under such opportunities of gratifying it.

I believe one reason why such numerous instances of erudition occur

among the lower ranks is, that, with the same powers of mind, the poor

student is limited to a narrow circle for indulging his passion for

books, and must necessarily make himself master of the few he possesses

ere he can acquire more. Edward, on the contrary, like the epicure who

only deigned to take a single morsel from the sunny side of a peach,

read no volume a moment after it ceased to excite his curiosity or

interest; and it necessarily happened, that the habit of seeking only

this sort of gratification rendered it daily more difficult of

attainment, till the passion for reading, like other strong appetites,

produced by indulgence a sort of satiety.

Ere he attained this indifference, however, he had read, and stored in

a memory of uncommon tenacity, much curious, though ill-arranged and

miscellaneous information. In English literature he was master of

Shakespeare and Milton, of our earlier dramatic authors, of many

picturesque and interesting passages from our old historical

chronicles, and was particularly well acquainted with Spenser, Drayton,

and other poets who have exercised themselves on romantic fiction, of

all themes the most fascinating to a youthful imagination, before the

passions have roused themselves and demand poetry of a more sentimental

description. In this respect his acquaintance with Italian opened him

yet a wider range. He had perused the numerous romantic poems, which,

from the days of Pulci, have been a favourite exercise of the wits of

Italy, and had sought gratification in the numerous collections of

_novelle_, which were brought forth by the genius of that elegant

though luxurious nation, in emulation of the “Decameron.” In classical

literature, Waverley had made the usual progress, and read the usual

authors; and the French had afforded him an almost exhaustless

collection of memoirs, scarcely more faithful than romances, and of

romances so well written as hardly to be distinguished from memoirs.

The splendid pages of Froissart, with his heart-stirring and

eye-dazzling descriptions of war and of tournaments, were among his

chief favourites; and from those of Brantome and De la Noue he learned

to compare the wild and loose, yet superstitious, character of the

nobles of the League with the stern, rigid, and sometimes turbulent

disposition of the Huguenot party. The Spanish had contributed to his

stock of chivalrous and romantic lore. The earlier literature of the

northern nations did not escape the study of one who read rather to

awaken the imagination than to benefit the understanding. And yet,

knowing much that is known but to few, Edward Waverley might justly be

considered as ignorant, since he knew little of what adds dignity to

man, and qualifies him to support and adorn an elevated situation in

society.

The occasional attention of his parents might indeed have been of

service to prevent the dissipation of mind incidental to such a

desultory course of reading. But his mother died in the seventh year

after the reconciliation between the brothers, and Richard Waverley

himself, who, after this event, resided more constantly in London, was

too much interested in his own plans of wealth and ambition to notice

more respecting Edward than that he was of a very bookish turn, and

probably destined to be a bishop. If he could have discovered and

analysed his son’s waking dreams, he would have formed a very different

conclusion.