Templemoyle — Derry
From Newtown Limavaddy to Derry the traveller has many wild and noble prospects of Lough Foyle and the plains and mountains round it, and of scenes which may possibly in this country be still more agreeable to him — of smiling cultivation, and comfortable well built villages, such as are only too rare in Ireland. Of a great part of this district the London Companies are landlords — the best of landlord, too, according to the report I could gather; and their good stewardship shows itself especially in the neat villages of Muff and Ballielly, through both of which I passed. In Ballikelly, besides numerous simple, stout, brick-built dwellings for the peasantry, with their shining windows and trim garden plots, is a Presbyterian meeting-house, so well built substantial, and handsome, so different from the lean, pretentious, sham Gothic ecclesiastical edifices which have been erected of late years in Ireland, that it can t fail to strike the tourist who has made architecture his study or his pleasure. The gentlemen’s seats in the district are numerous and handsome, and the whole movement along the road betokened cheerfulness and prosperous activity.
As the carman had no other passengers but myself, he made no objection to carry me a couple of miles out of his way, through the village of Muff, belonging to the Grocers of London (and so handsomely and comfortably built by them as to cause all Cockneys to exclaim, “Well done our side!") and thence to a very interesting institution, which was established some fifteen years since in the neighbourhood — the Agricultural Seminary of Templemoyle. It lies on a wooded hill in a pretty wooded country, and is most curiously secluded from the world by the tortuousness of the road which approaches it.
Of course it is not my business to report upon the agricultural system practised there or to discourse on the state of the land or the crops; the best testimony on this subject is the fact, that the Institution hired, at a small rental, a tract of land, which was reclaimed and farmed, and that of this farm the landlord has now taken possession, leaving the young farmers to labour on a new tract of land, for which they pay five times as much rent as for their former holding. But though a person versed in agriculture could give a far more satisfactory, account of the place than one to whom such pursuits are quite unfamiliar, there is a great deal about the establishment which any citizen can remark on; and he must be a very difficult Cockney indeed who won’t be pleased here.
After winding in and out and up and down, and round about the eminence on which the house stands, we at last found an entrance to it, by a court-yard, neat, well-built and spacious, where are the stables and numerous offices of’ the farm. The scholars were at dinner off a comfortable meal of boiled beef, potatoes, and cabbages, when I arrived; a master was reading a book of history to them; and silence, it appears, is preserved during the dinner. Seventy scholars were here assembled, some young, and some expanded into six feet and whiskers — all, however, are made to maintain exactly the same discipline, whether whiskered or not.
The “head farmer” of the school, Mr. Campbell, a very intelligent Scotch gentleman, was good enough to conduct me over the place and the farm, and to give a history of the establishment and the course pursued there. The Seminary was founded in 1827, by the North-west of Ireland Society, by members of which and others about ￡3,000 were subscribed, and the buildings of the school erected. These are spacious, simple, and comfortable; there is a good stone house, with airy dormitories, school-rooms, &c., and large and convenient offices. The establishment had, at first, some difficulties to contend with, and for some time did not number more than 30 pupils. At present, there are 70 scholars, paying ten pounds a year, with which sum, and the labor of the pupils on the farm, and the produce of it, the school is entirely supported. The reader will, perhaps, like to see an extract from the Report of the school, which contains more details regarding it.
“On Tuesday B commences work in the morning and A at school, and so on alternate days.
“Each class is again subdivided into three divisions, over each of which is placed a monitor, selected from the steadiest and best-informed boys; he receives the Head Farmer’s directions as to the work to be done, and superintends his party while performing it.
“In winter the time of labour is shortened according to the length of the day, and the hours at school increased.
“In wet days, when the boys cannot work out, all are required to attend school.
“Rules of the Templemoyle School
“1. The pupils are required to say their prayers in the morning before leaving the dormitory, and at night, before retiring to rest, each separately, and after the manner to which he has been habituated.
“2. The pupils are requested to wash their hands and faces before the commencement of business in the morning, on returning from agricultural labour, and after dinner.
“3. The pupils are required to pay the strictest attention to their instructors, both during the hours of agricultural and literary occupation.
“4. Strife, disobedience, inattention, or any description of riotous or disorderly conduct, is punishable by extra labour or confinement, as directed by the Committee, according to circumstances.
“5. Diligent and respectable behaviour, continued for a considerable time, will be rewarded by occasional permission for the pupil so distinguished to visit his home.
“6. No pupil, on obtaining leave of absence, shall presume to continue it for a longer period than that prescribed to him on leaving the Seminary.
“7. During their rural labour, the pupils are to consider themselves amenable to the authority of their Agricultural Instructor alone, and during their attendance in the school-room, to that of their Literary Instructor alone.
“8. Non-attendance during any part of the times allotted either for literary or agricultural employment, will be punished as a serious offence.
“9. During the hours of recreation the pupils are to be under the superintendence of their Instructors, and not suffered to pass beyond the limits of the farm, except under their guidance, or with a written permission from one of them.
“10. The pupils are required to make up their beds, and keep those clothes not in immediate use neatly folded up in their trunks, and to be particular in never suffering any garment, book, implement, or other article belonging to or used by them, to lie about in a slovenly or disorderly manner.
“11. Respect to superior, and gentleness of demeanor, both among the pupils themselves and towards the servants and laborers of the establishment, are particularly insisted upon, and will be considered a prominent ground of approbation and reqward.
“12. On Sundays, the pupils are required to attend their respective places of worship, accompanied by their Instructors or Monitors; and it is earnestly recommended to them to employ a part of the remainder of the day in sincerely reading the Word of God, and in such other devotional exercises as their respective ministers may point out.
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At certain periods of the year, when all hands are required, such as harvest, &c., the literary labours of the scholars are stopped, and they are all in the field. On the present occasion we followed them into a potato-field, where an army of them were employed digging out the potatoes; while another regiment were trenching in elsewhere for the winter: the boys were leading the carts to and fro. To reach the potatoes we had to pass a field, part of which was newly ploughed: the ploughing was the work of the boys, too; one of them being left with an experienced ploughman for a fortnight at a time in which space the lad can acquire some practice in the art.
Amongst the potatoes and the boys digging them, I observed a number of girls, taking them up as dug and removing the soil from the roots. Such a society for 70 young men would, in any other country in the world, be not a little dangerous; but Mr. Campbell said that no instance of harm had ever occurred in consequence, and I believe his statement may be fully relied on: the whole country bears testimony to this noble purity of morals. Is there any “other in Europe which in this point can compare with it?
In winter the farm works do not occupy the pupils so much, and they give more time to their literary studies. They get a good English education; they are grounded in arithmetic and mathematics; and I saw a good map of an adjacent farm, made from actual survey by one of the pupils. Some of them are good draughtsmen likewise, but of their performances I could see no specimen, the artists being abroad, occupied wisely in digging the potatoes.
And here apropos, not of the school but of potatoes, let me tell a potato story, which is, I think, to the purpose, wherever it is told. In the county of Mayo a gentleman by the name of Crofton is a landed proprietor, in whose neighbourhood great distress prevailed among the peasantry during the spring and summer, when the potatoes of the last year were consumed, and before those of the present season were up. Mr. Crofton, by liberal donations on his own part, and by a subscription which was set on foot among his friends in England as well as in Ireland, was enabled to collect a sum of money sufficient to purchase meal for the people, which was given to them, or sold at very low prices, until the pressure of want was withdrawn, and the blessed potato-crop came in. Some time in October, a smart night’s frost made Mr. Crofton think that it was time to take in and pit his own potatoes, and he told his steward to get laborers accordingly.
Next day, on going to the potato-grounds, he found the whole fields swarming with people; the whole crop was out of the ground, and again under it, pitted and covered, and the people gone, in a few hours. It was as if the fairies that we read of in the Irish legends, as coming to the aid of good people and helping them in their labours, had taken a liking to this good landlord, and taken in his harvest for him. Mr. Crofton, who knew who his helpers had been, sent the steward to pay them their day’s wages, and to thank them at the same time for having come to help him at a time when their labour was so useful to him. One and all refused a penny; and their spokesman said, “They wished they could do more for the likes of him or his family.” I have heard of many conspiracies in this country; is not this one as worthy to be told as any of them?
Round the house of Templemoyle is a pretty garden, which the pupils take pleasure in cultivating, filled not with fruit (for this, though there are 70 gardeners, the superintendent said somehow seldom reached a ripe state), but with kitchen herbs, and a few beds of pretty flowers, such as are best suited to cottage horticulture. Such simple carpenters’ and masons’ work as the young men can do is likewise confided to them; and though the dietary may appear to the Englishman as rather a scanty one, and though the English lads certainly make at first very wry faces at the stirabout porridge (as they naturally will when first put in the presence of that abominable mixture), yet after a time, strange to say, they begin to find it actually palatable; and the best proof of the excellence of the diet is that nobody is ever ill in the institution: colds and fevers and the ailments of lazy, gluttonous gentility, are unknown; and the doctor’s bill for the last year, for 70 pupils, amounted to 35 shillings. O beati agricoliculae!You do not know what it is to feel a little uneasy after half a crown’s worth of raspberry-tarts, as lads do at the best public schools; you don’t know in what majestic polished hexameters the Roman poet has described your pursuits; you are not fagged and flogged into Latin and Greek at the cost of ￡200 a year. Let these be the privileges of your youthful betters; meanwhile content yourselves with thinking that you are preparing for a profession, while they are not; that you are learning something useful, while they, for the most part, are not: for after all as a man grows old in the world, old and fat, cricket is discovered not to be any longer very advantageous to him — even to have pulled in the Trinity boat does not in old age amount to a substantial advantage; and though to read a Greek play be an immense pleasure, yet it must be confessed few enjoy it. In the first place, of the race of Etonians, and Harrovians and Carthusians that one meets in the world, very few can read the Greek; of those few — there are not, as I believe, any considerable majority of poets. Stout men in the bow windows of clubs (for such young Etonians by time become) are not generally remarkable for a taste for Aeschylus [And then, how much Latin and Greek does the public school boy know? Also does he know anything else, and what? Is it history, or geography, or mathematics or divinity?] You do not hear much poetry in Westminster Hall, or I believe at the bar tables afterwards; and if occasionally, in the House of Commons, Sir Robert Peel lets off a quotation — a pocket-pistol wadded with a leaf torn out of Horace — depend on it it is only to astonish the country gentlemen who don’t understand him: and it is my firm conviction that Sir Robert no more cares for poetry than you or I do.
Such thoughts would suggest themselves to a man who has a had the benefit of what is called an education at a public school in England, when he sees 70 lads from all parts of the empire learning what his Latin poets and philosophers have informed him is the best of all pursuits, — finds them educated at one-twentieth part of the cost which has been bestowed on his own precious person; orderly without the necessity of submitting to degrading personal punishment; young, and full of health and blood, though vice is unknown among them; brought up decently and honestly to know the things which it is good for them in their profession to know. So it is, however; all the world is improving except the gentlemen. There are at this present writing 500 boys at Eton, kicked, an............