Page:Hannah More (1887 Charlotte Mary Yonge British).djvu/192

180 old times, and a letter to him on the education of the poor, written in October 1821, deserves quotation:—

"I think there is ultraism on both sides of the question. My views of popular instruction are narrow, the views of others I think too narrow. I will give you a sketch of my own poor practice at setting out, but opposition compelled me to lower it. Not the very poor only are deplorably ignorant. The common farmers are as illiterate as their workmen. It therefore occurred to me to employ schoolmasters, who to sound piety added good sense and competent knowledge. In addition to instructing all the poor children in the parish on Sundays at my expense, I directed him to take the farmers' sons on week days, at a low price to be paid by them, and to add writing and arithmetic to reading, which was all I thought necessary for labourers' children. The master carefully instructed these higher boys also in religious principles, which their fathers did not object to when they got it gratuitously. I had long thought that the knowledge necessary for persons of this class was such as would qualify them for constables, overseers, churchwardens, jurymen, and especially tend to impress them with a sense of the awful nature of an oath, which I fear is often taken without any sense of its sanctity. Farther than this I have never gone.

"Now I know the ultra-educationalist would despise these limits. I know not if you have seen a book on