The cause of the odd-looking phenomenon suddenly occurred to me,--having, in the morning, observed several peasants, whose trowsers at the knees were stained perfectly black, by their having knelt down to pick bilberries, which grow on the forest-covered hills of Nassau in the greatest profusion. The children had evidently been grazing on the same ground, and as soon as the idea occurred, I observed by their little black fingers that my solution of the dark problem was correct.
Returning to my residence, the New Bad-Haus, the sun, though much less weary than myself, having sunk to rest, I sat alone for some time in one of the bowers of the shrubbery belonging to the building. Occasionally a human figure, scarcely visible from the deep shade of the trees, glided slowly by me, but whether that of a prince or a peasant I neither knew nor cared. What interested me infinitely more, was to observe the fire-flies, which, with small lanterns in their tails, were either soaring close above me, or sparkling among the bushes. The bright emerald green light which they possessed was lovely beyond description, yet apparently they had only received permission to display it so long as they remained on the wing--and as two young ones, gliding before me, rested for a moment on a rose-leaf, at my side, the instant they closed their wings, they were left together in total darkness. Some (probably old ones) steadily sailing, passed me, as if on business, while others, dancing in the air, had evidently no object except pleasure; yet, whether flying in a circle or in a line, each little creature, as it proceeded, gaily illuminated its own way, and like a pure, cheerful, well-conditioned mind, it also shed a trifling lustre on whatever it approached.
As I sat here alone in the dark, I could not drive from my mind the interesting picture I had just been witnessing in the little village school of Schlangenbad.
We are all in England so devotedly attached to that odd, easily pronounced, but difficult to be defined word--liberty, that there is, perhaps, nothing we should all at once set our backs, our faces, and our heads against more, than a national compulsatory system of education, similar to that prescribed in Nassau; and yet, if law has the power to punish crime, there seems at first to exist no very strong reason why it should not also be permitted, by education, to prevent it. Every respectable parent in our country will be ready to admit, that the most certain recipe for making his son a useful, a happy, and a valuable member of society, is carefully to attend to the cultivation of his mind. We all believe that good seeds can be sown there, that bad ones can be eradicated--that ignorance leads a child to error and crime--that his mental darkness, like a town, can be illuminated--that the judgment (his only weapon against his passions) can, like the blacksmith's arm, by use, be strengthened; and if it be thus universally admitted that education is one of the most valuable properties a rational being can bequeath to his own child, it would seem to follow that a parental government might claim (at least before Heaven) nearly as much right to sentence a child to education, as a criminal to the gallows. Nevertheless, as a curious example of the difference in national taste, it may be observed, that though in England judges and juries can anywhere be found to condemn the body, they would everywhere be observed to shrink at the very idea of chastening the mind; they see no moral or religious objection to imprison the former, but they all agree that it would be a political offence to liberate the latter. Although our poor-laws oblige every parish to feed, house, and clothe its offspring, yet in England it is thought wrong to enforce any national provision for the mind, and yet the Duke of Nassau might argue, that in a civilized community children have no more natural _right_ to be brought up ignorant than naked; in short, that if the mildest government be justified in forcing a man, for decency's sake, to envelop his body, it might equally claim the power of obliging him, for the welfare, prosperity, and advancement of the community--to develop his mind.