which I think prevailed among them was that liberty was regarded with jealousy, and fear could not be wholly dispensed with." The true teacher is not afraid of freedom, but makes it the dominant element in his training and in his educational theory. 66 May the profounder truth in regard to child training spread to the ends of the earth! May the time soon come when there shall be no disciples of Susan Nipper's doctrine, that childhood, like money, must be shaken and rattled and jostled about a good deal to keep it bright"! May Christian civilization soon be free from such memories as the remembrance of Mr. Obenreizer, in No Thoroughfare, had of his parents: "I was a famished naked little wretch of two or three years when they were men and women with hard hands to beat me"! May Christ's teaching soon be so fully understood that there will be no child anywhere like the shivering little boy in The Haunted Man, who was used already to be worried and hunted like a beast, who crouched down as he was looked at, and looked back again, and interposed his arm to ward off the expected blow, and threatened to bite if he was hit"! May teachers and all trainers of children learn the underlying philosophy of the statement made by Dickens, in connection with the schools of the Stepney Union, in The Uncommercial Traveller: "In the moral health of these schools-where corporal punishment is unknown-truthfulness stands high"! 66 CHAPTER IV. THE DOCTRINE OF CHILD DEPRAVITY. DICKENS heartily accepted Froebel's view of the doctrine of child depravity. They did not teach that the child is totally divine, but neither did they believe that a being created in God's image is entirely depraved. They recognised very clearly that the doctrine of child depravity was the logical (or illogical) basis of the theory of corporal punishment and all forms of coercion. What more natural or more logical than the practice of checking the outflow of a child's inner life if we believe his inner life to be depraved? The firm belief in the doctrine of child depravity compelled conscientious men to be repressive and coercive in their discipline. Dickens understood this fully, and therefore he gave the doctrine no place in his philosophy. Mrs. Pipchin's training was based squarely on the doctrine of child depravity, for "the secret of her management of children was to give them everything that they didn't like, and nothing that they did." If the training of children under the "good old régime," for which some reactionary philosophers are still pleading, is carefully analyzed, it will be found that Mrs. Pipchin's plan was the commonly approved plan, and it was the perfectly logical outcome of the doctrine that the child, being wholly depraved, desired everything it should not have and objected to everything it should have. That was a touching question addressed by a little boy to his father: "Say, papa, did mamma stop you from doing everything you wished to do when you were a little boy?" How Dickens despised the awful theology of the Murdstones, who would not let David play with other children, because they believed "all children to be a swarm of little vipers [though there was a child once set in the midst of the Disciples], and held that they contaminated one another"! How he laughed at Mrs. Varden and Miggs, her maid! 66 "If you hadn't the sweetness of an angel in you, mim, I don't think you could abear it, I raly don't." 66 66 66 Miggs," said Mrs. Varden, "you're profane.” Begging your pardon, mim," returned Miggs with shrill rapidity, "such was not my intentions, and such I hope is not my character, though I am but a servant." Answering me, Miggs, and providing yourself," retorted her mistress, looking round with dignity, "is one and the same thing. How dare you speak of angels in connection with your sinful fellow-beings-mere "—said Mrs. Varden, glancing at herself in a neighbouring mirror, and arranging the ribbon of her cap in a more becoming fashion-" mere worms and grovellers as we are! "I do not intend, mim, if you please, to give offence," said Miggs, confident in the strength of her compliment, and developing strongly in the throat as usual, "and I did not expect it would be took as such. I hope I know my own unworthiness, and that I hate and despise myself and all my fellow-creatures as every practicable Christian should." Oliver Twist was described by the philanthropists who cared for him as "under the exclusive patronage and protection of the powers of wickedness, and an article direct from the manufactory of the very devil himself." Mr. Grimwig had no faith in boys, and he tried hard to shake Mr. Brownlow's faith in Oliver. "He is a nice-looking boy, is he not?" inquired Mr. Brownlow. "I don't know," replied Mr. Grimwig pettishly. "Don't know?" "No. I don't know. I never see any difference in boys. I only know two sorts of boys: mealy boys and beef-faced boys." "And which is Oliver?" 66 'Mealy. I know a friend who has a beef-faced boy-a fine boy, they call him; with a round head, and red cheeks, and glaring eyes; a horrid boy; with a body and limbs that appear to be swelling out of the seams of his blue clothes; with the voice of a pilot, and the appetite of a wolf. I know him! The wretch! " 66 Come," said Mr. Brownlow, "these are not the characteristics of young Oliver Twist; so he needn't excite your wrath." 66 worse. They are not," replied Mr. Grimwig. "He may have He is deceiving you, my good friend." "I'll swear he is not," replied Mr. Brownlow warmly. "If he is not,” said Mr. Grimwig, “I'll——————” and down went the stick. 66 "I'll answer for that boy's truth with my life!" said Mr. Brownlow, knocking the table. "And I for his falsehood with my head! " rejoined Mr. Grimwig, knocking the table also. "We shall see," said Mr. Brownlow, checking his rising anger. "We will," replied Mr. Grimwig, with a provoking smile; we will." 66 Dickens always pleaded for more faith in children. In Great Expectations poor Pip was continually reminded of the fact that he was 66 naterally wicious," and at the great Christmas dinner party Mr. Pumblechook took him as the illustration of his theological discourse on swine" and Mrs. Hubble commiserated Mrs. Gargery about the trouble he had caused her by all his waywardness. 66 Trouble?" echoed my sister, "trouble?" And then entered on a fearful catalogue of all the illnesses I had been guilty of, and all the acts of sleeplessness I had committed, and all the high places I had tumbled from, and all the low places I had tumbled into, and all the injuries I had done myself, and all the times she had wished me in my grave, and I had contumaciously refused to go there. Again, when Pip was just beginning his life away. from home his guardian, Mr. Jaggers, said to him at their first interview: "I shall by this means be able to check your bills, and to pull you up if I find you outrunning the constable. Of course you'll go wrong somehow, but that's no fault of mine." "Of course you'll go wrong somehow," was an inspiring start in life for a young gentleman. Abel Magwitch, Pip's friend, told him near the close of his career how he came to lead such a dissipated and criminal life. He evidently had ability and possessed a deep sense of gratitude, and might have developed the other virtues if he had been treated properly. Dickens used him as an illustration of the fact that society fails often to do the best for a boy and make the most out of him through sheer lack of faith in childhood, and that this lack of faith results from the belief that a boy is so depraved that he would rather do wrong than right, and that when he starts to do wrong there is no hope of his reform. "Dear boy and Pip's comrade. I am not a-going fur to tell you my life, like a song or a story-book. But to give it you short and handy, I'll put it at once into a mouthful of English. In jail and out of jail, in jail and out of jail, in jail and out of jail. There, you've got it. That's my life pretty much, down to such times as I got shipped off, arter Pip stood my friend. "I've been done everything to, pretty well-except hanged. I've been locked up, as much as a silver teakittle. I've been carted here and carted there, and put out of this town and put out of that town, and stuck in the stocks, and whipped and worried and drove. I've no more notion where I was born, than you have-if so much. I first become aware of myself, down in Essex, a-thieving turnips for my living. Summun had run away from me-a man—a tinker and he'd took the fire with him, and left me wery cold. "I know'd my name to be Magwitch, chrisen'd Abel. How did I know it? Much as I know'd the birds' names in the hedges to be chaffinch, sparrer, thrush. I might have thought it was all lies altogether, only as the birds' names come out true, I supposed mine did. "So fur as I could find, there warn't a soul that see young Abel Magwitch, with as little on him as in him, but wot caught fright at him, and either drove him off or took |