Intellectual Opportunities, Past and Present [pp. 88-100]

INTELLECTUAL OPPORTUNITIES,
for so long profoundly ignorant, and to turn to his own benefit
so many of the latent powers of nature, stealing, as it were, each
year some fresh secret from her bosom-such, for example, as the
electric fluid, enabling us to knit together, so to say, the entire
universe in one vast whole with a complete nervous system of
cables and wires, along which the electric current darts with a
lightning speed with news of war or messages of peace, with
words of weal or of woe, revealing the fluctuating fortunes of
friend or foe, depression or prosperity in trade, down to the least
important events of our more immediate neighborhood, the last
speech of the premier, or the final decision of the law court.
Let us, before going any further, pause for a while, and cast
our eyes back a couple of centuries, and visit England as it then
appeared. WVe must confine ourselves to the subject of education chieflf, and what more immediately touches education, since
we would else get too much involved or else be compelled to prolong our paper beyond its natural limits.
The art of printing had, of course, been invented at that epoch,
but the process was so laborious and so imperfect that but very
few books were struck off in the course of a year. In towns and
villages libraries and literary clubs, such as we know them, can
hardly be said to have existed at all. None of the public institutions to encourage study, so many and so various nowadays, were
then known. The coffee-houses were the nearest equivalents, and
these, indeed, were the chief centres of information and general
knowledge of all kinds. To them the curious and inquisitive,
gray-headed politicians and learned doctors, artful schoolmen
and men of letters, used to flock in large numbers and gather up
the scraps of information and floating tales and rumors always
inundating large cities.
There were political coffee-houses, literary coffee-houses, Tory
and Whig coffee-houses. Each section, indeed, of the community
possessed its own particular sanctum sanctorum, with its leading
man, who gave the tone and character to the place. Here they
would spend many an interesting hour gathered round the hospitable hearth, and launch out into animated discussions and harangues on whatever subject might be uppermost in the popular
mind, or enter into grave debates on matters of interest and importance, whether in religion or politics, church or state. The
newspapers, if we may so call them, consisted of a single small
sheet. Whenever they made their appearance-which, however,
was only once or twice a week-they were seized with avidity and
handed round with absorbing interest from one to another. As
[April,
90