Again,
I don't like that sort of school, of which we have a notable
example in Kent, which was established ages ago by worthy scholars
and good men long deceased, whose munificent endowments have been
monstrously perverted from their original purpose, and which, in
their distorted condition, are struggled for and fought over with
the most indecent pertinacity. Again, I don't like that sort of
school--and I have seen a great many such in these latter times--
where the bright childish imagination is utterly discouraged, and
where those bright childish faces, which it is so very good for the
wisest among us to remember in after life--when the world is too
much with us, early and late {22}--are gloomily and grimly scared
out of countenance; where I have never seen among the pupils,
whether boys or girls, anything but little parrots and small
calculating machines. Again, I don't by any means like schools in
leather breeches, and with mortified straw baskets for bonnets,
which file along the streets in long melancholy rows under the
escort of that surprising British monster--a beadle, whose system
of instruction, I am afraid, too often presents that happy union of
sound with sense, of which a very remarkable instance is given in a
grave report of a trustworthy school inspector, to the effect that
a boy in great repute at school for his learning, presented on his
slate, as one of the ten commandments, the perplexing prohibition,
"Thou shalt not commit doldrum.
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