Mr. Punch's History of Modern England. Volume 2 of 4.—1857-1874

Jowett, it need hardly be explained, was doubly obnoxious to the heresy-hunters. He had long been suspect for the liberality of his religious opinions; he had also contributed to Essays and Reviews: —

DE HAERETICO COMBURENDO

 
A little book⁸ Professor Jowett made,
And argued not as one of truth afraid;
But Oxford Dons alike fear truth and Jowett,
And their proceedings not a little show it.
 

Punch goes on to give utterance to the wishes of the obscurantists: —

 
Oh for a holocaust of heretics
With Jowett in one common van to mix,
For leave to burn, hang, quarter, disembowel,
Maurice and Williams, Temple, Wilson, Powell!
 
 
To teach admiring minds those Acts who follow
That Oxford toleration's wide of swallow,
As wide as from Geneva to Maynooth,
But one thing it won't tolerate – the truth!
 

Punch returned to the charge just a year later, at the time of the vote in Convocation on the question of Jowett's salary: —

IN RE JOWETT

 
Heresy's seed is rank! Shall Jowett sow it?
Tell me not, sciolists, Greek's not theology:
As if there's not a heterodox philology
That can be wrapped up cunningly in articles,
Impregnate accents, propositions, particles,
Poisoning texts as strychnine poisons wheat.
The silly crows, no doubt, scoff at alarming;
"What's toxicology to do with farming?"
And peck, and peck and drop dead as they eat.
E'en so Greek roots poisoned may be by Jowett,
And who's to know it.
 

Jowett and Colenso

When the proposed statute to give Jowett a decent remuneration for his services was rejected, Punch suggested that the Crown might make suitable amends for their persecution of the Regius Professor by making him a Bishop (March 26, 1864). The question of the salary was satisfactorily settled in 1865. The suggestion of the Bishopric was well meant rather than wise: a far more suitable sphere of activity and influence awaited him as Master of Balliol (1879-1893).

The famous case of Bishop Colenso, which synchronized with the Oxford heresy-hunt of Jowett and other contributors to Essays and Reviews, is dealt with very much in the same spirit. By way of introducing the subject to a generation who do not know Colenso as an arithmetician and take for granted the method of applying scientific criticism to scripture history, which he was the first English Bishop to adopt, it may be as well to state that while Bishop of Natal he had incurred the displeasure of his metropolitan, Dr. Gray, the Bishop of Cape Town, by the publication of his critical studies of the Pentateuch. Dr. Gray claimed the right to try and depose Colenso for heresy, and did so. Colenso protested against Gray's jurisdiction and appealed to the Crown, with the result that the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council pronounced the whole of the proceedings null and void. The episode created a stir by the side of which the Kikuyu controversy is reduced to insignificance. Colenso's searching historical criticisms did not merely alarm orthodox theologians; they estranged his friend, the broad-minded F. D. Maurice. Punch was with Colenso in his refusal to acquiesce in Dr. Gray's claim to override the secular courts; he respected Colenso's fearless courage and honesty; but for the rest he declined to enter into the theological issues involved and hovered on the outskirts of the dispute: —

COLENSO AND CONVOCATION

 
Truth is great; must prevail;
Reason, Parsons, don't rail;
You will hinder, not help, her defence so.
But confute the man's sums;
You may then snap your thumbs
And make faces at Bishop Colenso.
 

Much neater and better, however, is the summary of the correspondence between the Bishop and the Archbishop of Canterbury given three weeks later: —

THE NATAL CORRESPONDENCE

I

 
My dear Colenso,
With regret,
We hierarchs, in conclave met,
Beg you, you most disturbing writer,
To take off your colonial mitre.
This course we press upon you strongly:
Believe me,
Yours most truly,
Longley.
Lambeth.
 

II

 
My dear Archbishop,
To resign
That Zulu diocese of mine,
And own myself a heathen dark
Because I've doubts of Noah's Ark,
And feel it right to tell all men so,
Is not the course for
Yours,
Colenso.
 
 
Kensington.
 

Dean Stanley and Père Hyacinthe

Stanley was appointed to the Deanery of Westminster in 1863, and the lamentations of the Record, the organ of ultra-orthodox Evangelicalism, gave Punch his opportunity: —

That the wisdom and justice of the appointment of Canon Stanley to the Deanery of Westminster might be clear to everybody, the Record gives its certificate that such appointment is "a melancholy fact." Disapprobation by the Record having been thus signified, of course every sensible person must now be convinced that the Dean is the right man in the right place.

Comments of this sort add to the liveliness of newspaper controversy, but they do not conduce to the popularity of those who indulge in them. But at any rate they are an improvement on Punch's references to the "viperine expectorations" of the editor of the Tablet in earlier years.

The welcome extended to Père Hyacinthe in 1869 showed that Punch was not restricted in his sympathies to Protestant heretics only. But we fear that his welcome was not entirely disinterested. In his verses on "Hyacinthus Redivivus," Punch attacks Pius IX for favouring Père Hyacinthe as long as he was a winning card, and then rending him as a heretic. The lines are friendly, but reading between them one can detect a warning to M. Loyson to shun the dangers that beset the fashionable preacher in New York, whither he was then bound. We cannot resist the feeling that Punch was more pleased by the Pope's embarrassment in dealing with this modernist than anxious to see Romanism reformed from within.

In the high affairs of Church and State the year 1868 was a great landmark. After a long debate Gladstone's Resolutions on Irish Disestablishment were carried against the Government on April 5. The discussions were followed closely in Punch's "Essence of Parliament," and two interesting points are brought out. Disraeli maintained that the House had no mandate, as we now say, to deal with the Irish Church. They ought not to be asked at eight days' notice to repeal the Union. On the other hand, Gladstone argued that it would be ultra-democratic, if not anarchic, to say that Parliament could not act without appeal to the constituencies. The Government were beaten by 328 votes to 272, but remained in office till the autumn, when they appealed to the country. By the return of a Liberal majority Gladstone was left free to introduce the first instalment of his scheme for pacifying Ireland. This view is clearly set forth in Punch's doggerel stanzas headed, "Out and In": —

 
Gone is Dizzy,
From the busy
Cares of State repose he can.
In comes Gladdy
Who of Paddy
Means to make a loyal man.
 

Punch acquiesced in the measure, but showed some anxiety lest it should be interpreted as a concession to Fenian intimidation. His cartoon, which bore the inscription "Justice to Ireland," shows the figure of Justice blindfolded, with sword and scales, enthroned in the background. In front and at her feet Gladstone, laying the Irish Church on a flaming altar, says: "This is a sacrifice to Justice, not to Papists or Assassins. And if they – " Turning their backs on him are a sulky-looking priest and a Fenian desperado levelling a gun. The Bill for Disestablishing and Disendowing the Irish Church was introduced by Gladstone on March 1, 1869. A month later Punch published another cartoon entitled, "Disendowment and Disarmament." Here a Fenian says to a priest: "Be jabers, your Riv'rence, it's spoilin' our thrade they are entirely"; and his Riv'rence replies: "Thrue for you, me boy." During the course of the debates the "Essence of Parliament" contains an entry with an unpleasantly familiar ring: —

Thursday (April 29). Another and another Irish murder. The desire of Members to know that the Government is doing something cannot be blamed. The Irish Secretary stated that the Executive would proceed with the utmost vigour, but deprecated the entering into details. There is a Ruffian called the Mayor of Cork, who has presided at a dinner to two of the released Fenian convicts, and who eulogized O'Farrell, who wounded the Duke of Edinburgh. Mr. Gladstone said that the fellow's language could not be too severely condemned.

Ghost of Queen Elizabeth: "Agreed, have they? Ods boddikins! Gads my life, and marry come up, sweetheart! In my time I'd have knocked all their addlepates together till they had agreed!"

John Bright, who had joined the administration as President of the Board of Trade, donned a court uniform and (if Punch is to be believed) actually danced a quadrille at a Court Ball with the Princess of Wales as partner, is applauded for his eloquence in the House and rebuked for his unbridled vehemence outside it. Ministers mustn't bully, but think of their colleagues. They must, in short, wear a muzzle, and if Bright could not bear to wear one, he certainly had no right, Punch argued, to be where he was. The debates in the Commons were fiery and protracted, and those who regarded the measure as one of confiscation secured important concessions, but the battle was really joined in the Upper House. Lord Derby maintained a non possumus attitude, but the eloquence of Magee (then Bishop of Peterborough) and the arguments of Cairns did not avail to prevent thirty-six Conservative Peers from voting with the Government. But, even so, the Lords' amendments threatened a constitutional crisis, only averted by the compromise arrived at by Granville and Cairns in July, 1869. The Bill became law and was put into operation on January 1, 1871. That Punch entertained misgivings as to its effect in encouraging intimidation may be gathered from his cartoon, "How not to do it," in which "Pat" threatens Britannia with unspeakable things if she does not release those noble patriots, the Fenian prisoners.

"Mr. Disraeli's Religion"

The prevalence of religious cant and snobbery and sensationalism is frequently chastised in the 'sixties and 'seventies. In the spring of 1866 Punch copies an advertisement in which a young man wished "to find a home with a pious family, where his Christian example would be considered sufficient remuneration for his board and lodging." And in January, 1870, he pilloried an even more glaring example of complacent and well-connected religiosity: "A Gentleman, born and bred, kinsman of an Earl … will preach Christ." The infection of the pulpit by sensation is deplored in 1867 à propos of an announcement in the Islington Gazette: —

"Caledonian Road Chapel. – Next Sunday Sermons will be preached, afternoon, by Mr. Geo. B. Clarke, a Black Brother, from Jamaica, Son-in-law of the late excellent Paul Bogle. Evening, by Mr. Henry Varley the Butcher, from Notting Hill, whose 'words sink, like flame-tipped darts, into the souls of his hearers.'"

It is easy to make too much of isolated instances of self-conscious and self-advertising rectitude. There is far greater justification for the animated protest which Punch registered against the attempts made to discredit Disraeli at the time of his first Premiership on the score of his religion or irreligion. Disraeli had to some extent anticipated this criticism when in his first speech as Premier, on March 5, 1868, he said that he knew that in his position there were personal and peculiar reasons which would aggravate the burden and augment the difficulties. On this Punch made the following comment: —

People can interpret these words as they please. Those who give them a significance connected with birth, and who have intelligence enough to take a large view of pedigree, may note that they were uttered by a man descended from one of the Hebrew families expelled from Spain by the Inquisition, and who settled in Venice as merchants.

The campaign of curiosity met with no encouragement from Punch, who returned to the subject a few weeks later under the heading, "The Modern Inquisition": —

Perhaps the Premier, who has now got to make a Bishop of Hereford, will write one more letter and satisfy the British Booby on the subject of "Mr. Disraeli's Religion," which appears to afflict divers. Scarcely a day passes but some new conjectural impertinence, or some particularly unnecessary information is tossed out. Mr. Disraeli knows that Punch has not refrained from a great lot of good-natured allusions to the nationality of which the former is so justly proud; and it is possible that we may have many another cartoon of which he will be the smiling or scowling hero. But we protest – and we are as good a Protestant as Mr. Hardy – against sneaking into a gentleman's study, and taking notes as to whether Prayer Book, Missal, Watts's Hymns, Koran, or Shaster, be most thumbed, and publishing inferences. We do not see whose business it was to announce that Mr. Disraeli had no particular religion until he was five, and that he was then taken by Samuel Rogers to Hackney Church, especially as we believe the latter statement to be false, Mr. Rogers and his father having been regular attendants at the Unitarian Chapel at Hackney, of which the celebrated Dr. Price was, in older days, Minister. Nor do we see why the pastor of Hughenden should gratify vulgar curiosity by proclaiming that the Premier has been a regular Church-goer for seventeen years, and was a Communicant at Easter. Is this England or America? We do not habitually admire French legislation, but the late edict against ransacking Private Life is not without its merits. Somebody will be asking about our religion next, and will need all his own to bear the consequences.

In earlier years Punch, as we know, had overlooked Lord Shaftesbury's great services as a practical philanthropist in view of his Sabbatarianism. But he had learned to dissociate Lord Shaftesbury from the "snuffling sect" of Puritan killjoys, and in 1868 indulges in a eulogy of his Protestant zeal against Popery and Ritualism. The ballad on the insurrection in Spain, in the early winter of that year, shows no abatement of Punch's distrust of Romanism. The end of the Temporal Power in 1870 was welcomed as the logical, inevitable, and desirable consummation of Italian unity: it made Italy, not the Vatican, mistress of Rome, and it was in keeping with the consistent policy of the paper that the Pope's pretensions as a peace-maker in 1871 should be roughly disputed. England, it is claimed, was the true pacificator of Europe, and Professor (afterwards Sir John) Seeley's observations in "How to keep the Peace" suggest the possibility of a League of Nations.

The end of this period was marked by the passing of a great divine, a famous bishop and the greatest of missionaries. In the memorial verses printed on April 13, 1872, Punch recognized the true saintliness, the love of truth, the nobly righteous indignation of F. D. Maurice: —

 
The life of love he lived, the truth he spoke,
The seeds of good he sowed on earth remain.
In many brave hearts, eased from Evil's yoke,
The fruitful soul of Maurice lives again.
 

Incidentally it is noted that Maurice never received any preferment, bishopric, canonry, or deanery.

Wilberforce and Livingstone

The lines given below on Wilberforce, who is coupled with Lord Westbury, are largely inspired by the de mortuis note. The writer begins by recording the worst that had been said of both – the slyness of the sleek priest, the sneers and scorn and mincing tones of the bitter lawyer. But now we know better, and recognize that the dove was blended with the serpent in both: —

 
And so, Life's judgment set to right by Death's,
Lay busy Bishop and keen Judge to rest;
And, by their coffins, think with bated breaths,
How good the worst of us, how bad the best.
 

Chorus of Old Washerwomen: "There! Take'em away – we can't be worrited with them things."

"If the seventy-five members of the Pan-Anglican Synod have not a single word to say upon any of the great questions, theoretical or practical, which concern the very existence of the Church of England, their impotent caution and misplaced decency will do more to endanger it than any external attack with which it is at present threatened." —Pall Mall Gazette.]

Writing of Livingstone, always one of his heroes, Punch does not agree with the view that his was a wasted life, or that a greater work of reclamation was to be done at home, and applauds the unselfishness, fearlessness, and vision of one who died in sight of evening rest and honours fairly won: —

 
By their own scale great souls gauge things and men;
Their ways and weights are not our weights and ways;
Only their vision goes beyond our ken,
Reaching to larger lights – diviner days.
 

It was in this larger vision that Punch found the Church of England wanting, and when the first Pan-Anglican Synod met in 1867, he took as the text of his cartoon the acid comment of the Pall Mall Gazette just quoted.

The question of Public Worship Regulation was already in the air, though it did not lead to legislation until the return of the Conservatives to power. On July 12, 1873, Punch published a cartoon à propos of the protest against Ritualism and the Confessional. Mr. Miall, M.P., a leader of the Liberation Society, is shown with two archbishops expressing his delight to find them so earnestly co-operating with him for the destruction of the State Church. A fortnight later Punch complained that Dr. Thomson (the Archbishop of York) had misread the cartoon. What Punch really meant was to suggest that by neglecting the representations of real Churchmen, and by tolerating the antics of Ritualism, the hierarchy were playing into the hands of the Church's enemies. But he still hoped that the Archbishops would stiffen their backs and carry out the spirit of Tait's threat against those who brought their toys to church. So when Archdeacon Denison, who supported the Confessional, denounced certain Bishops for their ultra-Protestantism, Punch suggested that Denison's friends should present him with a triple cap (with bells).

EDUCATION

The worst of education, as Peacock remarks, is that there is no beginning and no end to it. But the subject is set about with other pitfalls and difficulties. It is one of the most important things in life; its annals have been adorned by great and even heroic names; yet the calling has never been free from gibes at the dominie and the gerund-grinder. And again, by the irony of fate it has been responsible for an unconscionable amount of dull and pedantic and cranky literature. There is no greater benefactor than a good schoolmaster; there is no greater bore than the "Educationist." Punch, though a comic journal, has not escaped the infection in dealing with the subject, but it is to his credit that on the whole he has resisted the temptation to indulge in untimely facetiousness, and has not been afraid to be serious when the occasion demanded.

Contending zealots, assisted by Parliamentary apathy, had effectually barred the progress of national education throughout the period treated in the previous volume. But the awakening had begun in 1858, though more than twenty years were to pass before Forster's Act was placed on the Statute Book. The debate on the Paper Duty in June, 1858, showed, at any rate, that all parties were at one in condemning this tax. Disraeli, then Chancellor of the Exchequer, could not afford to remit it, but Punch read the signs of the times aright in his comment: "The House voted £563,435 for Educational purposes in order to qualify the people to read the books which the removal of the paper duty will place in their hands." It was reserved for Mr. Gladstone to make good this forecast. His famous series of Free Trade Budgets between 1859 and 1865 were quite as much the effect as the cause of national prosperity, but in 1865 "no one ventured to doubt Gladstone's financial omniscience. Everyone who paid less for his pound of tea or his newspaper could look upon him as a personal benefactor."⁹

The judicious use of opportunity rather than genius may have been the secret of Gladstonian finance; but no such reserves are called for in appraising the merits of the series of Acts dealing with national education passed during his first Premiership. If one needs a practical illustration of the immense advance made in education in ten years, one need only compare the provisions of the Act of 1870 with the account of what Punch calls an "anti-educational demonstration" in the Commons in July, 1860, when Palmerston was Prime Minister: —

There was a Bill for making it compulsory on the employers of the labour of children under twelve years old, to have a certificate that the child was learning to read and write, and had twenty hours of teaching per month-nothing like an hour a day. But so monstrous an Innovation frightened the House. Mr. Henley was pious, and said that people were not to eat unless they worked, but were not commanded to read and write; Mr. Buxton was humane, and said there were thousands of children too idle, wicked or stupid to learn, and their vested rights were not to be interfered with; Mr. Hardy took the old Tory view, and said that the children of the poor were taught quite enough to enable them to do the duties they were intended for; and Mr. Baynes, as a Dissenter, declared the Bill to be needless, and that the work of education was going on admirably. Yielding to these irresistible arguments, the Bill was thrown out, a majority of 122 to 51 deciding that the children of the English poor want no assistance in the battle with the World, the Flesh and the First Whig.

It was this debate, by the way, that prompted Punch to recall the derivation of Parliament by a French etymologist from the two verbs parler and mentir.

Education Act of 1870

A good beginning had been made with the Act providing efficient inspection of endowed and Grammar Schools in 1869, but the Elementary Education Act of 1870 was a measure of first-rate importance, which has affected our national life more vitally than any other passed in the last fifty years, unless we except the People's Representation Act of 1918. From the moment of its introduction Punch realized its far-reaching influence. On March 26, 1870, he published the cartoon, "The Three R's, or Better Late than Never." Here we see Forster addressing a group of small school children, town and country types: "Well, my little people, we have been gravely and earnestly considering whether you may learn to read. I am happy to say that, subject to a variety of restrictions, conscience clauses, and the consent of your vestries – you may!" The conflict that led to the final compromise is indicated by two groups in the background: one amicably gathered round John Bull; the other including a bishop, a coronetted peer, a sour-visaged minister of the Chadband type, and an austere female.

Clerical Examiner: "What is your name?"

Incorrigible: "Biler, sir."

Clerical Examiner: "Who gave you that name?"

Incorrigible: "The boys in our Court, sir."

The issues involved are set forth in a "long and grave letter" addressed by Punch to "Master Gutterblood" in town, and "Master Chawbacon" in the country. Writing as their friend and well-wisher, sincerely anxious to see them properly taught, he deplores the obstacles hitherto put in their way by the "black-coats" – Parson, Priest and Nonconformist Minister. He applauds Forster's plan, and specially condemns the action of the secularizing party who would exclude all religion from schools, since the bulk of English people were in favour of some simple religious teaching: —

Those who are now barring your road to school are not the Churches, but those who insist that no Church at all shall have a hand in your teaching when you have got there. I have been accustomed to think that it was the Established Church's jealousy of the Dissenters that kept you ignorant, now it looks as if you were to be kept in the dark by the Dissenters' jealousy of the Established Church, working with those who distrust and dislike equally Church and Dissent, and all forms of religious Creed.

Mr. Punch (to Bull A.1): "Yes, it's all very well to say 'Go to school!' How are they to go to school with those people quarrelling in the doorway? Why don't you make 'em 'move on'?"

It was a fair summary of the opposing interests which clashed during the progress of the Bill through the House. Punch's impatience is shown in the further cartoon "Obstructives." "Those people" are a group of clerics of various Churches blocking the school doorway. A fortnight later Punch was able to announce in his "Essence of Parliament" that the very qualified compulsion proposed by Parliament had been approved by large majorities, and to publish his third cartoon on the solving of the problem. Master Forster (with his slate) is saying to Britannia, the Schoolmistress, "Please, M'm, I've done it, M'm." And when Britannia asks, "And how have you done it, William?" he replies, "Please, M'm, I've reduced all the fractions to the lowest common denomination." To this is added the stage direction "The good Boy enters the Cabinet." The Bill passed through both Houses, and when Parliament rose on August 10 and the Queen's Speech made special reference thereto, Punch comments, "Excuse us, your Majesty, but permit us to say 'Hooray!' and to add a cheer for Mr. Forster." He welcomed a measure which affirmed the principle that the State was bound to provide gratuitous instruction for all the children in the realm, but resented the educational luxuries which leading "Educationalists" were anxious to introduce. So we find a burlesque list of these fancy subjects, including hieroglyphics, croquet, bézique, etiquette, given in the following year with the remark: "There are people old-fashioned enough to think that it might be as well to give our poor neglected children only plain joints at first – the 3 R's – and let the entrées stand over for the present." The introduction of the "Fourth R" – Religion – prompted the "Educational Epigram" a year later: —

 
Milk is for babes, wrote one that knew.
Sectarian Educators, you
Who dogmas teach which Doctors question,
Are you not giving babes strong meat,
So much too tough for them to eat
The upshot must be indigestion?
 

Rector's Wife: "And what's your father, my boy?"

Boy: "My father's a 'Hagitator,' an' he says he won't have me learnt no catechism, 'r else you'll all of yer 'ear of it!"

In the following summer we have a picture by Charles Keene of a beery working man protesting against temperance propagandism at schools, and resolving to withdraw his small son from the reach of these subversive doctrines, while humorous capital is made out of the "Conscience Clause" at the expense of the "agitator." The provision of gratuitous meals to elementary school children was not yet even mooted, but Punch strongly supported the philanthropists who in 1867 gave weekly dinner parties in Marylebone to seven or eight hundred children, following the example set by Victor Hugo during his sojourn in Guernsey.

Scene – Toy-shop. (Enter highly educated Youth of Twelve). – "Oh, I want some toy, or conjuring trick, or something that would do for an old gentleman of fifty or thereabouts; my grandfather, in point of fact, – you know the kind of thing. I dessay."

Children and their Tormentors

Turning to preparatory or boarding schools, we have to note that academies of the type of "Dotheboys Hall" had not altogether disappeared, to judge by the advertisement which Punch pilloried under the heading of "Children and their Tormentors": —

"Boarding Schools wanted, in London, for a boy, nine years, and two girls, six and seven years old, requiring firm discipline, having become wild and unruly, through neglect occasioned by family misfortunes. No holiday could be given, as holidays destroy any good effected at school. The father, quite a gentleman, can only pay 20 guineas each. This advertisement is only intended for schools of pre-eminent efficiency for such cases, and prosperous enough to be able and willing to accept such terms, and undertake the needed task of reformation for the sake of the schools' own additional credit of success. Particulars and references, by letter only."

As for its conducing to the "credit" of a school to help unnatural fathers thus to get rid of their children, surely no one but a squeers could indulge in such a thought. If through neglect at home, a child becomes unruly and requires to be "reformed," it is right that at a proper age it should be sent to school, if proper means are wanting for teaching it at home. But a girl of six years old can scarcely be so "wild" as to require, for her taming, utter banishment from home: nor can she be much bettered by being badly fed for twenty pounds a year, and, worse still, taught to grow up without knowing what "home" means.

The name of "gentleman" had been strangely taken in vain a year earlier, as we gather from an extract which sounds like an echo from The Fairchild Family: —

THE GAME OF JACK KETCH

On Saturday last a man named Thomas Edwards was hanged for murder at Liverpool, when, according to a report of the execution which appeared in the Daily Telegraph: —

"To the discredit of some person, a drag, containing gentlemen's children, was brought near the gallows."

Fine fun for gentlemen's children during the Christmas holidays, to see a man hanged. Just the spectacle to amuse little boys – but perhaps there were some little girls too among these gentlemen's children. Well, in that case, the gentlemen have taken a good step towards getting their girls, as well as their boys, off their hands. Nothing is more likely than that the juvenile spectators of Thomas Edwards' death-struggles will get to play at hanging, and effectually hang one another.

In 1868 Punch was exercised in mind by the pernicious influence on the ingenuous youth of "penny dreadfuls," and the activities of educational faddists. Precocious pedantry, as we show on the previous page, is satirized in 1863. There is a curious foreshadowing of Madame Montessori's hostility to fairy tales in Du Maurier's "Little Christmas Dream." Du Maurier had a genius for the delineation of nightmares, and in this picture he quite excelled himself. Earlier in the same year Punch made excellent capital, again with the aid of Du Maurier's pencil, out of Lord Malmesbury's statement that it was useless to teach modern languages at the public schools, "as parents can easily procure such instruction for their children by hiring foreign nurses." The artist depicts four disgusted Harrow boys, who have returned for the holidays, taking an educational walk with their German and French instructresses, while a young and untutored yokel looks on with grim amusement.