This story was begun, within a few months after the publication ofthe completed "Pickwick Papers." There were, then, a good many cheapYorkshire schools in existence. There are very few now.

Of the monstrous neglect of education in England, and the disregardof it by the State as a means of forming good or bad citizens, andmiserable or happy men, private schools long afforded a notable example.Although any man who had proved his unfitness for any other occupationin life, was free, without examination or qualification, to open aschool anywhere; although preparation for the functions he undertook,was required in the surgeon who assisted to bring a boy into the world,or might one day assist, perhaps, to send him out of it; in the chemist,the attorney, the butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker; the wholeround of crafts and trades, the schoolmaster excepted; and althoughschoolmasters, as a race, were the blockheads and impostors who mightnaturally be expected to spring from such a state of things, and toflourish in it; these Yorkshire schoolmasters were the lowest and mostrotten round in the whole ladder. Traders in the avarice, indifference,or imbecility of parents, and the helplessness of children; ignorant,sordid, brutal men, to whom few considerate persons would have entrustedthe board and lodging of a horse or a dog; they formed the worthycornerstone of a structure, which, for absurdity and a magnificenthigh-minded LAISSEZ-ALLER neglect, has rarely been exceeded in theworld.

We hear sometimes of an action for damages against the unqualifiedmedical practitioner, who has deformed a broken limb in pretending toheal it. But, what of the hundreds of thousands of minds that have beendeformed for ever by the incapable pettifoggers who have pretended toform them!

I make mention of the race, as of the Yorkshire schoolmasters, in thepast tense. Though it has not yet finally disappeared, it is dwindlingdaily. A long day's work remains to be done about us in the way ofeducation, Heaven knows; but great improvements and facilities towardsthe attainment of a good one, have been furnished, of late years.

I cannot call to mind, now, how I came to hear about Yorkshire schoolswhen I was a not very robust child, sitting in bye-places near RochesterCastle, with a head full of PARTRIDGE, STRAP, TOM PIPES, and SANCHOPANZA; but I know that my first impressions of them were picked upat that time, and that they were somehow or other connected with asuppurated abscess that some boy had come home with, in consequence ofhis Yorkshire guide, philosopher, and friend, having ripped it open withan inky pen-knife. The impression made upon me, however made, never leftme. I was always curious about Yorkshire schools--fell, long afterwardsand at sundry times, into the way of hearing more about them--at last,having an audience, resolved to write about them.

With that intent I went down into Yorkshire before I began this book, invery severe winter time which is pretty faithfully described herein.As I wanted to see a schoolmaster or two, and was forewarned that thosegentlemen might, in their modesty, be shy of receiving a visit from theauthor of the "Pickwick Papers," I consulted with a professional friendwho had a Yorkshire connexion, and with whom I concerted a pious fraud.He gave me some letters of introduction, in the name, I think, of mytravelling companion; they bore reference to a supposititious little boywho had been left with a widowed mother who didn't know what to dowith him; the poor lady had thought, as a means of thawing the tardycompassion of her relations in his behalf, of sending him to a Yorkshireschool; I was the poor lady's friend, travelling that way; and ifthe recipient of the letter could inform me of a school in hisneighbourhood, the writer would be very much obliged.

I went to several places in that part of the country where I understoodthe schools to be most plentifully sprinkled, and had no occasion todeliver a letter until I came to a certain town which shall be nameless.The person to whom it was addressed, was not at home; but he came downat night, through the snow, to the inn where I was staying. It was afterdinner; and he needed little persuasion to sit down by the fire in awarm corner, and take his share of the wine that was on the table.

I am afraid he is dead now. I recollect he was a jovial, ruddy,broad-faced man; that we got acquainted directly; and that we talkedon all kinds of subjects, except the school, which he showed a greatanxiety to avoid. "Was there any large school near?" I asked him, inreference to the letter. "Oh yes," he said; "there was a pratty big'un." "Was it a good one?" I asked. "Ey!" he said, "it was as good asanoother; that was a' a matther of opinion"; and fell to looking at thefire, staring round the room, and whistling a little. On my reverting tosome other topic that we had been discussing, he recovered immediately;but, though I tried him again and again, I never approached the questionof the school, even if he were in the middle of a laugh, withoutobserving that his countenance fell, and that he became uncomfortable.At last, when we had passed a couple of hours or so, very agreeably, hesuddenly took up his hat, and leaning over the table and looking mefull in the face, said, in a low voice: "Weel, Misther, we've been varapleasant toogather, and ar'll spak' my moind tiv'ee. Dinnot let theweedur send her lattle boy to yan o' our school-measthers, while there'sa harse to hoold in a' Lunnun, or a gootther to lie asleep in. Arwouldn't mak' ill words amang my neeburs, and ar speak tiv'ee quietloike. But I'm dom'd if ar can gang to bed and not tellee, for weedur'ssak', to keep the lattle boy from a' sike scoondrels while there's aharse to hoold in a' Lunnun, or a gootther to lie asleep in!" Repeatingthese words with great heartiness, and with a solemnity on his jollyface that made it look twice as large as before, he shook hands and wentaway. I never saw him afterwards, but I sometimes imagine that I descrya faint reflection of him in John Browdie.

In reference to these gentry, I may here quote a few words from theoriginal preface to this book.

"It has afforded the Author great amusement and satisfaction, during theprogress of this work, to learn, from country friends and from a varietyof ludicrous statements concerning himself in provincial newspapers,that more than one Yorkshire schoolmaster lays claim to being theoriginal of Mr. Squeers. One worthy, he has reason to believe, hasactually consulted authorities learned in the law, as to his having goodgrounds on which to rest an action for libel; another, has meditated ajourney to London, for the express purpose of committing an assault andbattery on his traducer; a third, perfectly remembers being waited on,last January twelve-month, by two gentlemen, one of whom held himin conversation while the other took his likeness; and, although Mr.Squeers has but one eye, and he has two, and the published sketch doesnot resemble him (whoever he may be) in any other respect, still heand all his friends and neighbours know at once for whom it is meant,because--the character is SO like him.

"While the Author cannot but feel the full force of the compliment thusconveyed to him, he ventures to suggest that these contentions may arisefrom the fact, that Mr. Squeers is the representative of a class, andnot of an individual. Where imposture, ignorance, and brutal cupidity,are the stock in trade of a small body of men, and one is describedby these characteristics, all his fellows will recognise somethingbelonging to themselves, and each will have a misgiving that theportrait is his own.

"The Author's object in calling public attention to the system would bevery imperfectly fulfilled, if he did not state now, in his own person,emphatically and earnestly, that Mr. Squeers and his school are faintand feeble pictures of an existing reality, purposely subdued and keptdown lest they should be deemed impossible. That there are, upon record,trials at law in which damages have been sought as a poor recompensefor lasting agonies and disfigurements inflicted upon children by thetreatment of the master in these places, involving such offensive andfoul details of neglect, cruelty, and disease, as no writer of fictionwould have the boldness to imagine. And that, since he has been engagedupon these Adventures, he has received, from private quarters far beyondthe reach of suspicion or distrust, accounts of atrocities, in theperpetration of which upon neglected or repudiated children, theseschools have been the main instruments, very far exceeding any thatappear in these pages."

This comprises all I need say on the subject; except that if I had seenoccasion, I had resolved to reprint a few of these details of legalproceedings, from certain old newspapers.

One other quotation from the same Preface may serve to introduce a factthat my readers may think curious.

"To turn to a more pleasant subject, it may be right to say, thatthere ARE two characters in this book which are drawn from life. It isremarkable that what we call the world, which is so very credulous inwhat professes to be true, is most incredulous in what professes to beimaginary; and that, while, every day in real life, it will allow in oneman no blemishes, and in another no virtues, it will seldom admit avery strongly-marked character, either good or bad, in a fictitiousnarrative, to be within the limits of probability. But those who take aninterest in this tale, will be glad to learn that the BROTHERS CHEERYBLElive; that their liberal charity, their singleness of heart, theirnoble nature, and their unbounded benevolence, are no creations of theAuthor's brain; but are prompting every day (and oftenest by stealth)some munificent and generous deed in that town of which they are thepride and honour."

If I were to attempt to sum up the thousands of letters, from all sortsof people in all sorts of latitudes and climates, which this unluckyparagraph brought down upon me, I should get into an arithmeticaldifficulty from which I could not easily extricate myself. Suffice itto say, that I believe the applications for loans, gifts, and officesof profit that I have been requested to forward to the originals of theBROTHERS CHEERYBLE (with whom I never interchanged any communicationin my life) would have exhausted the combined patronage of all the LordChancellors since the accession of the House of Brunswick, and wouldhave broken the Rest of the Bank of England.

The Brothers are now dead.

There is only one other point, on which I would desire to offer aremark. If Nicholas be not always found to be blameless or agreeable, heis not always intended to appear so. He is a young man of an impetuoustemper and of little or no experience; and I saw no reason why such ahero should be lifted out of nature.