Page:Cambridge Modern History Volume 7.djvu/91

 -1754] Education. 59 eighteenth century that the colony had anything like a regular system of public education. When we pass into the middle colonies we at once find a change. In reading the records of New York, of New Jersey, and of Pennsylvania, we find the neglect of education occasionally lamented, and the obli- gation to supply it intermittently recognised and imperfectly fulfilled. There was no comprehensive system enforcing on townships the necessity for providing schools and schoolmasters. About the middle of the eighteenth century, however, a wave of educational progress seems to have swept over the middle colonies, since between 1741 and 1754 colleges were founded in New York, in New Jersey, and in Pennsylvania. Among the commonplaces of American history is the saying of Berkeley, the cavalier governor of Virginia, who thanked God that his colony had no schools. The indifference of the ruling classes no doubt had its share in keeping the southern colonies without any effective system of education. But their educational deficiencies were far more due to natural causes, mainly to the fact that the tillers of the soil were a class permanently doomed to servile labour, with whom any hope of improvement became more dangerous as it became more possible. The young Virginian of the upper class either had a tutor at home, such a one as guided the studies of George and Harry Warrington, or he was sent to England for education. More than one of the Virginians who played a conspicuous part in the struggle for independence, such as Dulany and Arthur Lee, had been trained at English public schools or universities. One vigorous attempt was indeed made to introduce higher education into Virginia. After the Revolution, Compton, Bishop of London, appointed as his commissary in Virginia an able and public- spirited Scotsman, James Blair. Through his energy, seconded by that of Lieutenant-Governor Nicholson, and by the liberality of certain London merchants, a college called that of William and Mary was founded in Virginia. It is clear, however, that, in spite of Blair's energy, the college did not become more than a boarding-school with a somewhat disorderly set of pupils. It was not only in the narrower and more special sense of the term education that the New England colonies stood out pre-eminent. They alone had something which might be called a definite and organic school of literature. English thought in the generation which produced Puritanism was intensely articulate. It instinctively embodied in words its experiences and aspirations with due regard to literary form. Of that spirit there was no lack among the founders of New England. For the New Englander in the young days of his country two subjects overwhelmed all others the spiritual life of the individual, and the corporate life of the State. Thus the literature of early New England falls into two groups chronicles, and theological writings. The former are always tinged with partisanship and, with one or two exceptions, are CH. II.