第96章 CHAPTER XXXVIII(2)

He was never easy unless he was actively engaged in some benevolent scheme, the promotion of some charity, or in what he considered his parliamentary duties, which he contrived to make very burdensome to his conscience. As his health was bad, these self-imposed obligations were all the more onerous; but he never spared himself, or his somewhat scanty means. Amongst other minor tasks, he used to teach at the Sunday-school of St. John's, Westminster; in this he persuaded me to join him. The only other volunteer, not a clergyman, was Page Wood - a great friend of Mr. Cayley's - afterwards Lord Chancellor Hatherley. In spite of Mr. Cayley's Unitarianism, like Frederick the Great, he was all for letting people 'go to Heaven in their own way,' and was moreover quite ready to help them in their own way. So that he had no difficulty in hearing the boys repeat the day's collect, or the Creed, even if Athanasian, in accordance with the prescribed routine of the clerical teachers.

This was right, at all events for him, if he thought it right. My spirit of nonconformity did not permit me to follow his example. Instead thereof, my teaching was purely secular. I used to take a volume of Mrs. Marcet's 'Conversations' in my pocket; and with the aid of the diagrams, explain the application of the mechanical forces, - the inclined plane, the screw, the pulley, the wedge, and the lever. After two or three Sundays my class was largely increased, for the children keenly enjoyed their competitive examinations. I would also give them bits of poetry to get by heart for the following Sunday - lines from Gray's 'Elegy,' from Wordsworth, from Pope's 'Essay on Man' - such in short as had a moral rather than a religious tendency.

After some weeks of this, the boys becoming clamorous in their zeal to correct one another, one of the curates left his class to hear what was going on in mine. We happened at the moment to be dealing with geography. The curate, evidently shocked, went away and brought another curate.

Then the two together departed, and brought back the rector - Dr. Jennings, one of the Westminster Canons - a most kind and excellent man. I went on as if unconscious of the censorship, the boys exerting themselves all the more eagerly for the sake of the 'gallery.' When the hour was up, Canon Jennings took me aside, and in the most polite manner thanked me for my 'valuable assistance,' but did not think that the 'Essay on Man,' or especially geography, was suited for the teaching in a Sunday-school. I told him I knew it was useless to contend with so high a canonical authority; personally I did not see the impiety of geography, but then, as he already knew, I was a confirmed latitudinarian. He clearly did not see the joke, but intimated that my services would henceforth be dispensed with.

Of course I was wrong, though I did not know it then, for it must be borne in mind that there were no Board Schools in those days, and general education, amongst the poor, was deplorably deficient. At first, my idea was to give the children (they were all boys) a taste for the 'humanities,' which might afterwards lead to their further pursuit. I assumed that on the Sunday they would be thinking of the baked meats awaiting them when church was over, or of their week-day tops and tipcats; but I was equally sure that a time would come when these would be forgotten, and the other things remembered. The success was greater from the beginning than could be looked for; and some years afterwards I had reason to hope that the forecast was not altogether too sanguine.

While the Victoria Tower was being built, I stopped one day to watch the masons chiselling the blocks of stone.

Presently one of them, in a flannel jacket and a paper cap, came and held out his hand to me. He was a handsome young fellow with a big black beard and moustache, both powdered with his chippings.

'You don't remember me, sir, do you?'

'Did I ever see you before?'

'My name is Richards; don't you remember, sir? I was one of the boys you used to teach at the Sunday-school. It gave me a turn for mechanics, which I followed up; and that's how I took to this trade. I'm a master mason now, sir; and the whole of this lot is under me.'