I will here give two or three pages to the blue boy. He is not at all aware that I am about to put him into print. The reader, I trust, will think that the betrayal of confidence involved in my doing so is not altogether unjustifiable. I mentioned that on the day we crossed the Grimsel, from the Rhone Glacier to Meiringen, he was unusually silent. He afterwards told me that he had then been engaged in composing a drama, which was to be entitled ‘The Drama of the Mountains,’ in which the most conspicuous mountains he had seen—he had in 1870 made the acquaintance of M. Blanc—were to be the Dramatis Personæ. Nothing more was said on the subject then, or afterwards. We have infantine productions of Dr. Johnson, Pope, the late Professor Conington, and of others. I now offer the following drama, as an addition to this kind of literature. I can vouch for its entire authenticity and genuineness. It shall be printed from the blue boy’s own MS. The whole composition was arranged in his mind, some days before it was put upon paper, without a hint or suggestion from anybody, and subsequently not a word was corrected, nor even a point in the stopping altered. It could not have been more entirely his own had he been the only soul in Switzerland at the time it was composed. He was alone, too, at the time it was put upon paper. On the first day we were at Aigle—I have just mentioned that it was a wet day—I found him writing it currente calamo; and on hearing what he was about, I immediately left the room.

I must premise that last summer I had read to him Shakespeare’s Julius Cæsar (he was then translating Cæsar’s Commentaries), and the Midsummer Night’s Dream. On each of which occasions he immediately afterwards produced a drama of his own; one in the high classical style founded on Roman history, the other in the style of Bottom’s interlude. His having had those two plays read to him is the extent of his acquaintance with dramatic literature.

Those who may happen to have no personal acquaintance with his dramatis personæ, will allow a word or two on the appropriateness of the parts imagined for them. Blanc, of course, is Emperor in his own, the old, right: from his shoulders and upwards he is higher than any of his people. So with Rosa: she has the same fitness for being Empress. Weishorn and Jungfrau are, beyond controversy, worthy of being, as the order of nature has made them, Prince and Princess Imperial. Cervin (the blue boy thinks in French, and so he calls Matterhorn by his French name), by reason of his signal and conspicuous uprightness, is the best of Prime Ministers. Schreckhorn’s name and character fit him for the Ministry of Police, and prepare us for his horrible treason. Simplon has conferred on him the place of the Emperor’s Messenger, on account of his services to the world in supporting the most serviceable of the great passes into Italy. We are not surprised at finding Silberhorn acting as Chancellor of the Exchequer. Mönch appropriately counsels peace. Finsteraarhorn, it will be observed, is taunted with hardly daring to show his face: a sarcastic allusion to the difficulty there is of getting a view of this mountain.

That the Empire of the Mountains was transferred to the Potentate of the Himalaya, was intended not only as an illustration of the bad policy of calling in to our assistance one stronger than ourselves—the mistake the horse made when he entered into a league with man to drive the stag from the contested pasture—but, also, as an application, and this was the main idea, of the broad simple principle of detur digniori.

The empire of the Alps consists of a large number of European mountains, who think themselves the highest in the world; but it is not so, for the kingdom of the Himalaya is still higher and wiser. In the empire of the Alps, there had been internal disturbances between Blanc, the emperor, and Schreckhorn, the police-agent, in which Schreckhorn had mostly had the advantage and had shut the others up in a prison. But they escaped and applied to Chimoulari, king of the Himalaya, to help them, which he accordingly did, and defeated Schreckhorn. Chimoulari then received the empire of the Alps, and was then emperor of all the mountains in the world.

Are we all met?

Yes, we are; we must not speak too loud, for Schreckhorn is outside the door.

Schreckhorn outside the door! impossible!

Fear nothing.

Finster, really, this is too bad: you wish to have us all in the lockup; yes, you who hardly dare to show your face!

Blanc, my husband, please send Finster out.

Blanc, don’t, don’t.—Rosa, what do you mean; do you wish to deliver Finster into the hands of Schreckhorn?

Peace! peace! (Exeunt omnes.)

Silberhorn, pay me your debts.

Please is nothing to me; pay!

Blanc, come and help me. (Enter Blanc.)

I condemn you both to lose fifty feet of your height.

Ah! (Exeunt omnes).

Would it not be better if you called in Chimoulari?

Yes, I will immediately. (Exeunt duo.)

Blanc, what do you want?

To make war against Schreckhorn.

That is very easy.

I will be general. (Exeunt.)

Down with Thee.

I will bring thee to nothing!

(Everest knocks down Schreckhorn, kills him, and goes out.)

I have killed Schreckhorn.

Now, Blanc, give me the Empire of the Alps.

Must I yield it? yes, I suppose.

Now am I monarch of all around me! let me rejoice.

I do not give this little drama as a wonderful work for a child of between nine and ten, but to show what I think any child of average powers might do, spontaneously and with pleasure, if only parents and teachers could be brought to understand that the area of their teaching should be expanded to its natural limits, that is to the history of man, and to a general acquaintance with our earth. The proper starting point for the former is the history, in its widest sense, of the towns and localities with which the child is familiar; and for the latter the natural objects, mountains, rivers, valleys, plains, vegetation, animal life, meteorology, &c., of the same localities. The teacher should then pass on, in both these departments, from what has been understood, because it has been seen, to what will be understood, though not seen, because it differs in certain particulars, that can be explained, from what is already understood. So much for the area: and an equally great change must be brought about in the manner of teaching. We must adopt the natural method as well as the natural area; that is to say, we must teach orally and conversationally. In this way only can what is taught to a child be made intelligible. And if it be not made intelligible it cannot possibly interest. One step more: all about man and nature, that has thus been taught orally and conversationally, should always be subsequently repeated in the child’s own words. This, among many other great advantages, cultivates as nothing else can, because, again, in the natural way, both the power of attention and the power of continuous extemporary expression. Teaching by the book and by heart—well so phrased, for the understanding has nothing to do with it, and it takes all heart out of a child—has, among others, this conspicuous evil, that at the cost to the child of compulsory ignorance, and gratuitously-engendered aversion to mental effort, it saves nothing, except the necessity, in the teacher, of knowing anything about what he professes to teach.