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and rigidly appropriated to that service, the less of it would serve.
The separate spaces, allotted for this purpose, would not, in
other respects, be thrown away. A bed, a bureau, and a chair must be had at
any rate, so that the only extraordinary expence in building would be for
the partitions: for which a very slight thickness would suffice. The youth
of either sex might by this means sleep as well as study under inspection
and alone: a circumstance of no mean importance in many a parent's
eye.
In the Royal Military school at Paris, the bed-chambers (if my
Brother's memory, does not deceive him) form
two ranges on the two sides of a long room: the inhabitants being separated
from one another by partitions; but exposed alike to the view of a Master
at his walks, by a kind of grated window in each door. This plan of
construction struck him, he tells me, a good deal, as he walked over that
establishment (about a dozen years ago was dele it not?) with you: and
possibly in that walk the foundation was laid for his Inspection-house. If
he there borrowed his idea, I hope he has not repaid it without interest.
You will confess some difference, in point of facility, betwixt a state of
incessant walking and a state of rest: and in point of compleatness of
inspection, between visiting two or three hundred persons one after another, and
seeing them at once.
In stating what this principle will do in promoting the
progress of instruction in every line, a word or two will be thought sufficient to
to state what it will not do. It does gives every degree of efficacy which can be
given to the influence of punishment and restraint. It gives a boy that sort of
motive for doing his task which a labourer has who works by the day, and
which is the only one a boy has under the discipline of the common run of schools.
But it does nothing towards correcting the oppressive influence of punishment
and restraint, by the enlivening and invigorating influence of reward.
It does not give a boy that sort of motive for performing his task, and performing
it well to the utmost stretch of his faculties, which the labourer has
has who is paid by the piece. That noblest and brightest engine of discipline
can by no other means be put to constant use in in schools, than by the practice
which at Westminster, you know, goes by the name of challenging: an institution,
which paying merit in its fittest and most inexhaustible coin, and even
uniting in one impulse the opposite powers of reward and punishment,
holds out dishonor for every attention a boy omitts and honour for every
exertion he can make bestow.
With regard to the extending the range of inspection over every
moment of a boy's time, the sentiments of mankind might not be altogether
so unanimous. The notion indeed of most parents, is, I believe, that their children
cannot be too much under the masters eye: and if man were a consistent
animal, none who entertain that notion but should be fonder of the principle the
farther they saw it pursued. But as consistency is of all human qualties
the most rare, it would need not be at all surprize us surprising if, of those who in the
present state of things are most anxious on the head of the masters
omnipresence, many were to fly back and change their note, when they saw
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