£x Libris C. K. OGDEN SIR JOHN LUBBOCK. BART. M.P., F.S.A , D.C.L., LL.D, f >^' r THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES ';> '■^K v Y ^ GERMAN LETTERS^ ENGLISH EDUCATION DURING AN EDUCATIONAL TOUR IN 1870 BY Dr. L. WIESE, LATK I'RIVT CODNCILI.OR IN THK MIXISTRT OF PDP.LIC IXSTRUCTrOS IN PRUSSIA. TRANSLATED AND EDITED BY LEONHAED SCHMITZ, LL.D. CLASSICAL EXAMINER IN THE UNIVEUSITY OF LONDON. LONDON: WILLIAM COLLINS, S0N8, AND COMPANY. 1877. I.ONDO.V : PKlNTEIi BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, STAMlXlitU bTKElir AND CUAKING CROSS. INTRODUCTION. The " intelligent foreigner " who in these letters gives us the results of his observations, and the impressions made upon his mind by our educational institutions and arrangements, deserves, for many reasons, to be listened to with more than ordinary attention and respect, and the suggestions he makes deserve our serious considera- tion. Not only has he earnestly striven to arrive at a right understanding and appreciation of our educational systems, as he has testified by his repeated visits to the schools of England and Scotland, but his extensive and thorough knowledge of the educational establishments of Germany, with the superintendence and technical admi- nistration of which he has been intrusted by his govern- ment for many years, point him out as the man who. above all others, is competent to express his opinions on the educational questions which of late years have engaged, more than any other, the attention of English- men, and which are still far from being satisfactorily settled. More than twenty years ago Dr. Wiese visited England for the purpose of making himself acquainted with the systems of education and instruction pursued in our public schools, and after his return home he published I 2 ■\(y-'y£^c>/:- o Jt^-^fljl IV INTRODUCTION. his impressions in a little volume entitled ' Dentsclie Briefe liber Englisclie Erziehung,' which was translated into English by Lieutenant W. B. Arnold, the son of Dr. Arnold of Eugby, and published in 1854. The work created consideral)le sensation, and was extensively read both in this country and on the continent. At that time Dr. Wiese was a comparatively young man, and one of the heads of the oldest Eoyal Foundation School at Berlin, the constitution of which greatly resembles that of our ancient public schools. Dr. Wiese at that time had the entire management of that rich foundation, while his colleague, A. Meincke, as head-master, had the super- intendence of everything connected with the instruction. It was his connection with that great establishment that made Dr. Wiese desirous to visit the English public schools and to study their systems and arrangements. What he then saw and heard in England, especially of the noble work of Dr. Arnold at Eugby, as described in Dean Stanley's Life of that great educator, filled him with an admiration of our public school system, which would pro- bably have been somewhat tempered, if he had had opjjor- tunities of examining the actual working of other schools ; but even then he correctly apprehended, on the whole, the great and characteristic features of English public schools. It is an excellent custom in Prussia to associate with the Minister of Public Instruction men, as councillors, who have large practical experience in educational matters, and have given evidence of their administrative powers in that department. Dr. Wiese was pre-eminently such a man, and accordingly, in 1852, he was raised to the position of Councillor to the Minister of Public Instruc- tion. In this position he had virtually the superinten- INTEODUCTION. V dence and the technical administration of all the higher schools (hoth the Gymnasia and the Bealschiden) through- out the kingdom of Prussia. After the formation of the North German Confederation, and still more after the restoration of the German Empire, his influence was felt, more or less, in all the states of Germany. During this last period it was found necessary to revise the scholastic arrangements of the empire, and a commission was appointed, with Dr. Wiese as chairman, the object of which was to regulate and superintend the higher schools of Germany, especially in reference to the privileges enjoyed by their pupils in regard to military service. Independently of this, he was appointed to prepare the way for introducing in Alsace-Lorraine the German system of schools, for which purpose he repeatedly visited that country to examine its educational institutions. As regards Prussia and the adjoining smaller states, to which his services at all times were more especially devoted, there is scarcely any public school which Dr. Wiese did not personally insj^ect and help to improve by his advice and his suggestions.* In 1875, after having filled the office of Ministerial Councillor for upwards of twenty years, Dr. Wiese re- signed and retired into private life, not on account of his age, for he is still a man full of vigour and energy, * It may, jierliaps, interest some English readers to know that Dr. Wiese, under the authority of the Minister of Public Instruction, has published two works which alone contain official and authentic infor- mation on the Prussian schools. Their titles are: 1. 'Historisch- statistische Darstellung des hoheren Schulwesens in Preussen/ in three vols., the last of which was published at Berlin in 1874 ; 2. ' Verord- nungen und Gesetze iiir die hoheren Schulen in PVeussen,' 2nd edit., Berlin, 1875. VI INTRODUCTION. but because, after a long official life of nearly fifty years, he naturally desired, during tlie rest of his life, to enjoy the pleasure of pursuing his own favourite studies. It is not improbable, however, that his retirement was partially owino- to his feeling that he could not conscientiously carry out the ideas of the present Minister of Public Instruction. Being relieved from all official duties, and having gained an amount of educational knowledge such as few men can boast of, Dr. Wiese last year again visited this country for the sole purpose of seeing what progress had been made in its educational development ; for he still follows with loving interest the course taken by the educational movements both in Germany and in England, being convinced that a nation's moral and intellectual well-being mainly depends upon its education. He thus came among us enriched with all his official experience, and at an age when illusions have given way to sober reflection. The whole of last summer he devoted to visiting all classes of English schools, attending meet- ings of teachers, conversing with men of all shades of opinions on educational matters, and, in short, availing himself of every opportunity of gathering information. By this means he has been enabled to give to the world an unbiassed picture of our educational condition, which though not free from serious defects, yet contains ele- ments which justify the hope that at no distant time the education of English youths will be equal, if not superior, to that at present given in the best educated countries of Europe. There ore a few points which Dr. Wiese, in common with all true friends of education, would wish to see INTRODUCTION. Vll reformed, and I venture to draw attention to them here, because upon them depends the success of all our other reforms. First, there ought to be a proper method of ascertaining the qualifications of a person before he is allowed to undertake the functions of a teacher. Hitherto the possession of a certain amount of knowledge has been thought sufficient, and the degree of B.A. or M.A. is generally considered satisfactory evidence of a man's pos- sessing the qualifications necessary to undertake the educa- tion of the young in our great public schools. But there is no lack of examples to show that a man may possess any amount of learning or knowledge and yet be a very inefficient teacher. In addition to his knowledge he must possess other indispensable qualities: he must have the power of communicating knowledge in a clear and attrac- tive manner ; he must have sympathy with the young in order to be able effectively to guide their actions and inclinations in the right way ; he must be enthusiastic in his profession, and not regard its duties, as is but too often the case, as mere drudgery ; and lastly, he must be able to inspire his pupils with a love for their studies, and for everything that is good and noble. It is obvious that these qualities cannot be discovered by a mere examina- tion for a degree. A second defect to which Dr. Wiese directs our atten- tion is our present system of examinations, which has produced that peculiar species of industry called " cram- ming " or " coaching," than which nothing can be more dangerous to the interests of true education. I must leave it to the readers of Dr. Wiese's letters to ponder these important questions, and to devise remedies for the existing evils. My task has been simply to put viu INTEODUCTIOK his book in an English dress before the English public ; and tacitly to correct a few errors which were almost unavoidable in a work which has to deal with so great an amount of detail collected in a comparatively short period t)f time. May the book contribute its mite to- wards a iinal and satisfactory solution of the all-important question of public education ! THE EDITOR. FEOM THE AUTHOR'S PREFACE. The following letters were written in England, but after my return home tliey have been revised and somewhat extended for publication. They were originally addressed to friends who, from having been my colleagues for many years, have become dear to my heart. The epistolary form will be at once an excuse and a justification of the character of my communications. Completeness in statis- tical and other matters, even if it had been attainable, has not been aimed at any more than a strictly objective form or the precision of a systematic report. I have rather availed myself fully of that freedom in the treat- ment of my subject, which is allowed in letters to a friend. I have endeavoured to reproduce the impressions made upon me during many observations and on different occa- sions, and to unite them into one picture, without refrain- ing from giving free expression to my own thoughts and recollections, as they were called forth by circumstances. This is also the reason why the letters are called " German," which is not an idle attribute. Without wishing every- where to compare England and Germany, I could not in my descriptions conceal either my knowledge of German schools or the interest I take in them, especially at a time when the union of Germany and the preparation of X PREFACE. an educationfil law for the largest of the German states have called forth new hopes and new problems for onr schools. In our days there is danger, arising from various causes, of schools becoming unfaithful to their duty as educa- tional institutions, and of confining their function to the communication of knowledge and the cultivation of the intellect. But, however indisputable the right and dominion of the intellect may be in investigation and demonstration, yet in active and moral life for which the young are to be educated, it very often happens that the will is not determined by the intellect, which permits itself but too often, under certain impulses, to be used as a tool by the desires and inclinations of man. The problem of education is to purify and to strengthen the will. In England it has always been admitted that in developing free and independent characters the school and the family must go hand in hand, and that, accord- ingly, the acquisition of knowledge is not the principal object in education. The more recent development of public-school affairs is taking a different direction ; but in the old public schools, and in those formed after their model, the same educational idea still prevails and bears its fruit. To acknowledge this is no depreciation of that which is peculiar to Germany ; and whoever looks at my account as a whole wall find that it is impartial, and that my only desire has been to assist my countrymen in. acquiring an accurate knowledge of a foreign country, which may be instructive to us by its defects as well as by its excellences. Where the present letters show discrepancies from opinions I have expressed on a former occasion, the reader PREFACE. XI will not, I hope, at once charge me with inconsistency, for many things appear different when looked at from different points of view and at different times. The passages I quote from English writers are for the most part intended to confirm my own opinions, for it not imfreqiiently happens that the expressions of men who live in the midst of the educational movement show a dissatisfaction with the actual state of affairs, where my own observations had led me to the same conclusion. But as at all times only those strictures are just and fair which are united with a recognition of the real value of a thing, and grow out of such appreciation, the things which I have said in praise of English schools, both on a former occasion and in my present work, perhaps give me the right to speak with freedom also on other aspects of the subject in the manner I have done in these letters. L. WIESE. Potsdam, Novemher 1876. CONTENTS. LETTER I. PACK ]\Iotives of the Journey— Personal Meetings — First Impressions 1 LETTEE II. Favourable Circumstances promoting a manly Education in England — Self-made Men — Difference between the Higher Schools of England and those of Germany — Agitated Questions — Fundamental Features of the Character of Englishmen ........ 9 LETTER III. The State and the School— Difference in the Historical Develop- ment between Prussia and England. Effects of it in the two Countries — Self-Government — Efforts of the Middle- classes in Educational Matters — Actual Condition of Eng- lish Schools in general ...... 22 LETTER IV. Conflicting OiDinions as to what is to be done — The Educational Reformers, the Conservatives, and the Mediators between the two Extremes ....... 82 LETTER V. Varied Activity in scholastic Affairs — Provisions of the Govern- ment and independent private Undertakings . . i7 XIV CONTENTS. LETTER VI. PAGB Survey of the whole Domain of the Higher Schools and their differences in Degree and Kind — The Universities . . 55 LETTER VII. The Universities continued— Eton— International Schools . 72 LETTER VIII. Comparison of the School Administration of Germany and England — The Committee of Privy Council on Education — School Inquiry Commissions — The Governing Bodies — Dulwich — Schools of First, Second, and Third Grade — University Reform ....... 87 LETTER IX. Head-masters' Conferences — The Universities, and their Rela- tion to the Schools — Local Examinatious — The College of Preceptors . . . . . . . .112 LETTER X. The present System of Examinations in Universities and Schools — Competitive Examinations .... 130 LETTER XL A Glance at the Working of the Schools — Plan of Instruction — National Games and Physical Exercises— The Ancient Languages and Practical Subjects {IleaJid) — Instruction in Natural Science — Terence and Plautus in Schools — The Pronunt.'iation of Latin — French and German — The Eng- lish Language, History, Geography, Gymnastics . . 153 LETTER XII. The preceding Subjects continued— Practical Schools (Ikal- schulen) — School Books — Selection of Special Subjects — Mode of Instruction — Results of Instruction — Holidays — Prizes and Rewards — Reports — Discipline— Pupils' Maga- zines — Fagging — Flogging — School-houses . . . 17G CONTENTS. XV LETTEK XIII. Eeligion in Schools — Biblical Knowledge— Ecclesiastical Cha- racter of Schools — The keeping of Sunday 203 LETTEE XIV. The Position of Teachers— Their Preparation, Examination, Appointment, Salaries, Pensions — The Profession of Teacher ......... 220 LETTEE XV. Instruction of Girls — A Glance at America — The mixed Sys- tem and Female Teachers in Boys' Schools there — English Efforts to increase and improve Girls' Schools — The Edu- cation of Women in general ...... 232 LETTEE XVI. The Elementary Schools before and after the Education Act of 1870— The Eeligious Difficulty — The Birmingham League — Payment by Eesults — Uhe Education Act of 1876 246 LETTEE XVII. Brief Eetrospect— School Legislation in Prussia and in Eng- land — Public Opinion — Consideration as to what is to be done at present for the Higher Schools in England — Conclusion ........ 264 APPENDIX. I. Examples of School Fees II. A Plan of a School Organisation . III. Examination Arrangements IV. Examples from Examination Papers V. Examples of Time Tables . 276 277 287 291 294 GERMAN LETTERS ENGLISH EDUCATION, LETTEE I. Motives of the Journey — Personal Meetings — First Impressions. Edinhurgh, August 1876. After long wanderings througli the Island I will begin here, in the beautiful capital of Scotland, to collect my observations. You know all that had passed when I formed the resolution once more to visit England. My official life, which had been devoted to the youth of Germany in my varied activity as a teacher and in taking part in the highest administration of scholastic affairs, had come to an end. During that period of my life, I had not only become intimately acquainted with the higher schools of Prussia, but in consequence of the gradual re-establish- ment of the German empire, I had entered into a closer relation with the higher schools of Germany in general, and my official activity had extended even to Alsace and Lorraine. The time had arrived when I had to look back- ward, rather than forward, and when my thinking became more and more a remembering. In happy retirement — Deus nobis haec otia fecit — I recalled to my mind the B 2 GERMAN LETTERS past, and following the ways of the development of our public schools in their connection with our political history, I recognised in the progress of this striving after improved culture more and more distinctly a manifestation of the peculiarly German mind. There is no country in Europe in which at present men are not occupied with questions about education. More perceptibly than for a long time past. Time now lays his hand on everything existing, and it is as if education were taken to account, as if its results were more sharply criticised, and as if it were more urgently called upon to assist in arri"ving at a better state of things. All that happens in State and Church and in the wider spheres of social life, urges those concerned — more or less consciously — to think and to take care of the rising generation. It may perhaps be said that this task has nowhere been more deeply apprehended than among the Teutonic nations. In Germany, the school has never ceased to be an object of care with the different governments, as well as of universal interest ; and in England, during the last few years, it has become a matter of the first importance for the government and private enterprise, which there so often competes with the government. With the exception of Alsace and Lor- raine, where at present the German school combats the traditions of French culture, the active movements in the domain of education nowhere excite as much interest as in England. The cause of this and the course it has hitherto taken were not unknown to me. The desire to compare the higher schools of England with our own, had in former years drawn me to that country, and I had ever since remained somehow connected with its school-life. But I was no longer satisfied with watching the current of ON ENGLISH EDUCATION. d affairs at a distance; I wished to look into the actual condition of things with my own eyes, to form, as it were, the conclusion of my school-experiences. The fact that our age has brought the nations into closer contact than was the case in former times increases their mutual interest, and a comparison with what is foreign facilitates the right understanding of what is peculiar to ourselves. And I think that he who does not know England lacks the knowledge of one of the most peculiar and marked types of the Teutonic mind, a type which has become what it is in the course of centuries through its natural relations and its history. But we do not know the schools of a country by having become acquainted merely with individual institutions, their constitutions, etc.: we have to consider not the isolated school, but its position in its connection with the whole of popular life ; and this renders it necessary to live for a considerable time in the same atmosphere, and to allow oneself to be borne by the current of life in different directions. As I wished to do this, I had to make haste, before it might be too late for me. I will not deny that I also felt it as a peculiar charm or instinctive impulse, after a long official life spent in the service of the order and regularity of a system of state-schoolsv once more, as a recreation, to pass some time in the uncontrolled freedom of the arrangements and conditions of English schools which are almost wholly independent of the state. Well, I have carried out my plan ; I have travelled about in England and Scotland for more than three months, endeavouring everywhere by observations on the spot, by inquiry and conversation, to complete or correct my knowledge of particular subjects acquired elsewhere, and E 2 4 GERMAN LETTERS to arrive at a correct judgment on the position of the general questions that are of importance to me. In doing this I have revisited a large number of schools and seen others for the first time ; and I have, on various occasions, by letter or by personal intercourse discussed scholastic questions with teachers of different institutions as well as vdth. government officials. The polite reception which I have met with almost everywhere shall always be kept in grateful remembrance. During my former visit the recommendation of Bunsen, tlien ambassador in London, opened to me many doors otherwise closed against a foreigner. This time I owe most to the sympathy of influential gentlemen, in England especially of Mr. W. E. Forster, M.P., formerly Minister of State, of Mr. Matthew Arnold his brother-in-law, of the present Dean of Westminster, Arthur P. Stanley, the biographer of Thomas Arnold; further of our learned countryman. Dr. Leonhard Schmitz in London, and in Scotland of Professor S. S. Laurie. But even with such assistance, it is always difficult in this country to attain objects such as mine were. In my former official position I was able easily to assist others engaged in similar pursuits, and it often happened that they were Englishmen. When strangers came to Berlin for the purpose of making them- selves acquainted with the Prussian school-system by direct observations in the institutions themselves, and for that purpose applied to the ministry, an open letter from me addressed in general to the heads of schools in Berlin or elsewhere in the Prussian dominion always had the effect of a iMsse-port, and was respected even beyond the frontiers of Prussia. As there does not exist in England any such central school-administration^ special ON ENGLISH EDUCATION. 5 access lias to be procured for every individual institution, and the granting it always depends upon the goodwill of the particular head-master. Very many things happened to be specially favourable to my inquiries, among others the fact that Parliament was this year more than ever engaged on school questions, and that by special favour I was permitted to attend these discussions in the House of Commons itself. Few Germans have received pleasant impressions from meeting with travelling Englishmen on the Continent. There is perhaps no nation that takes less trouble to be kind and civil to others on such occasions than English- men. It is quite different in the country itself. Even here it often happens that at first the consequences of their insular seclusion are felt, and that some time is required to accommodate oneself to the traditions and forms or conventionalities of their mode of life. But when in personal intercourse the ice of their reserve is once broken through, you discover below it^ — especially if, as I was several times permitted to do, you take part in their family life — very often most amiable characters, and receive from them proofs of true friendship and readiness to serve you. In this respect also England is a country of contrasts, and it is very difficult to form a just and correct judg- ment of Englishmen. The longer a foreigner, who carefully observes them, lives in the country, the more cautious he will be in forming an opinion or coming to a final conclusion. Any one may undertake to refute any generalising assertion about characteristic peculiarities of the people, with convincing proofs of the opposite. In the most sober-minded practical man you will perhaps fi GERMAN LETTERS to-morrow discover an idealist. With most unbounded appreciation of personal independence they combine the sense of strictest loyalty. It not unfrequently happens that with all their calculation they appear fantastical in their undertakings. How often have they not heard it said of themselves that they do not know a disinterested high-minded policy dictated by noble motives ; that warm sympathy with other nations is foreign to them; that everything has to pass to them across the sea, and is cooled on the road : and now we witness this storm of enthusiasm among the people for the liberation of the Christians from the yoke of the Turks in the distant East ! It will soon be seen whether in this case also the usual political solidarity between the people and the government of England will be proved by the acts of the latter. In London itself it took some time to accustom myself to the restlessness of its public life ; I felt that in com- parison with former days it had immensely increased, and at first I was somewhat confused by it. Even the language seemed to be affected by the general hurry; a very general stenography of the mouth more and more weakens the articulation of the sounds, and renders many things quite unintelligible to one who is not accustomed to it. I was not surprised to hear some- times, that, in contrast with this, the " distinctness " was praised with which Germans spoke English. During the last decades, London has acquired a very different aspect through the erection of numerous grand buildings. I also saw several schools, which had been known to me before, in a renovated form. In the case of not a few of them, it has been found absolutely necessary to transfer them into more open localities, for the same ON ENGLISH EDUCATION. 7 reasons which demand the removal of the Joachimsthal Gymnasium in Berlin. The old Charterhouse School had already emigrated from the narrow smoky region of Smithfield to Godalming, in the splendid scenery of the Surrey Hills. The buildings of the school-colony of these happy Carthusians, provided in a most handsome manner with everything necessary, has cost about 200,000?., including the land. Care had been taken to make its history migrate with it : in several parts of the new buildings I saw memorial stones inserted in the walls containing the names of former pupils, especially of such as have become celebrated. In the case of other institutions which are likewise expecting to be removed, e.g., The Bluecoat School, the City of London School, and Westminster School, there are greater difficulties, besides which, in the last-named school, many attach great importance to the religio loci; but the number of their pupils is much diminished in con- sequence of its present unfavourable locality. Eugby School has received so many external additions, and has become so much more handsome in appearance, that I scarcely recognised it, and everything has been done with English solidity. I shall never forget the day I spent there : it was Speech-day, the principal school-festival of the year. The head-master first took me into his study ; it had been the study of Thomas Arnold. The recollection of that excellent man rose up more vividly before us during our conversation there. After the speeches (I shall have occasion to return to such school festivities) about two hundred persons were entertained by the head-master in the hall of the institu- tion with liberal hospitality. Thereafter we saw the boys 8 GERMAN LETTERS scattered over the large green field, partly playing, and partly reclining in tlie shade of mighty trees : the whole story of Tom Brown passed before my eyes. I have a pleasing recollection of not a few other institutions on account of the beautiful scenery by which they are surrounded, as, for example, Mill-Hill School in the fairest part of Middlesex, Harrow, Dulwich, Forest School in Epping Forest near Leytonstone, Fettes College in the neighbourhood of this city, and several others. During my present visit I have had more opportunities than before of observing the working of schools ; in several I was permitted to be present during the lessons and to put questions to the pupils, nay, in some cases I was asked to conduct the instruction for a time myself. The head-masters readily gave me every information I desired, and were most obliging in their varied com- munications to me. There is at jDresent great activity among English teachers ; many men distinguished partly by their personal influence upon youths, partly by other pedagogic or didactic qualities, are engaged in the nume- rous and large educational establishments ; and who- ever has formed a closer acquaintance, to mention only a few, with the successful activity of head-masters like J. Percival at Clifton, G. Bidding at Winchester, Montagu Butler at Harrow, Jex Blake at Eugby, F. W. Walker in Manchester, E. A. Abbott and A. K. Isbister in London, E. F. Weymouth at Mill-Hill, F. B. Guy in the Forest School just mentioned, and others, can speak only with the greatest respect of such representatives of England's teachers. I will now endeavour to arrange what I have observed and collected in such a manner as to give you a complete ON ENGLISH EDUCATION. 9 picture of the present movement in educational matters in England. On my return journey I intend to stay in suitable localities, in order to give to my communications the freshness of the impressions of the country itself. LETTEE II. Favourable Circumstances promoting a manly Education in England — Self-made Men — Difference between the Higher schools of England and those of Germany — Agitated Questions — Funda- mental Features of the. Character of Englishmen. Edinhurgh. More than twenty-five years have passed since my first educational tour through England ; during a subsequent visit, four years ago, I could pay but little attention to schools. My present visit was, therefore, a second meeting with old friends after a period which had wrought many changes on both sides. We were no longer the same : the English schools had entered upon a period of thorough reform, and I myself, after a long activity in the ad- ministration of schools, had arrived at an age matured by experience ; I faced the same objects as a difi'erent man, and looked at them with difi'erent eyes, and from a difi'erent point of view. Nevertheless the foundation had remained the same on both sides. The changes already perceptible in the public school afi'airs of England have in general not altered their essential character, or that of the education of the young ; the force of tradition is too great in the country, and the national peculiarities are too deeply rooted to allow of radical changes. And I myself, thank God, have not become so dried up by ofiicial work as not to be able 10 GERMAN LETTERS still to contemplate, with tlie joyousness of a fresh and susceptible heart, the life of youth developing gaily and vigorously in the atmosphere of freedom. These letters will discuss other sides of the same subject, and will often be obliged to strike quite a different tone from that running through my former letters. One thing, however, remains — I must again acknowledge and praise the manner in which Englishmen know how to guard and to strengthen, in their boys, the germ of manliness; and, apart from excrescences and perversities, the free and vigorous con- duct of English youths is a pedagogic virtue. The dark sides of English boarding-school life * are well known to me; nevertheless it always affords me pleasure to recall the impression made upon me during this visit again, as often as I saw boys and youths amusing themselves in the open air, and that not only in the manly aristocratic schools like Eton and Harrow, but also in other places where the pupils are of a more mixed set of boys. Most of them with the fresh colour of health on their countenances, their bright eyes, firm gait, without a trace of constrained behaviour, were to me often a re- freshing picture of blooming youth. We soon discover that this condition is the effect of a variety of causes which elsewhere are not combined in the same manner or in the same measure. As among these causes, physical exercises and games (such as cricket and others, which aim at adroitness and strength of body) occupy a prominent place among the customary means of education, one might perhaps think of transplanting such * The term boarding-school is here used in its most general sense, including all our public schools where the pupils are boarded in the houses of masters. The German expression is alumnate. — Ed. ON ENGLISH EDUCATION. 11 things into Germany. The wish that this might be done has been expressed to me also during my present stay in England by Germans who were able to compare the two countries in regard to the physical training of youth ; and in fact German teachers have repeatedly agreed to study these games in England in order to introduce them among ourselves. The attempts have been made in vain. The conditions of life are too different in the two countries, and we shall never be able to make up our minds to devote as much of the time of our school-hours as seems requisite for games which, after all, would not be a proper substitute for gymnastic exercises. English youths acquire a national feeling of indepen- dence earlier than ours. I have never met with a vain or arrogant feeling of self-consciousness at that age; but they know that they are Englishmen, a part of a great nation whose position commands respect in all quarters of the globe, they know that they belong to one another, and that in this national community the one may rely upon the other. Things are not yet in this state with us ; but I believe we are on the right road to it, and we may venture to hope, considering the latest turn which our history has taken, that this powerful agent in a manly education will in our case also become more and more effective, and that, not the proud, but the joyous consciousness of the growing and increasing national unity will become more and more active. , In England there are many oppor- tunities for observing the unusual vital strength of the people. This, according to my conviction, is the Germanic element ; and in Germany itself, this same vital strength, so it please God, is now — in the union of its different tribes, previously separated to their own 12 GERMAN LETTERS detriment — leading to a national rejuvenescence. I am quite aware liow much is still wanting for such a state of thino-s, what wrong paths have to be avoided or abandoned; but our public schools can help in bringing this about, principally by their strengthening the uniting forces, for which purpose instruction in history and literature can be applied with the best result. At the time of Germany's deepest humiliation, at the bec^inning of this century, General Gneisenau— who en- tertained a high opinion of the invigorating air of England as ref^ards manly education — expressed the wish that a seminary might be there established for German youths. Montesquieu traced the origin of England's constitution to the forests of her Germanic mother- country — whence German love of freedom had been carried over as a germ, and had been developed and matured by the favourable position of the land. In accordance with Gneisenau's proposal, the gift in return— the model and the means for furtherin*^ a vigorous and national education — should be fetched from England. The thought had arisen out of the distress of the Fatherland, and its impractica- bility could not but soon become evident ; still it was not so fantastic as what Fichte proposed at the same period and for the same purpose, that boys should be taken from their parents and brought into the society of eminent men, in order that by the example of the latter they mif^ht develop into nobler and more vigorous characters. God has so directed the fortunes of the German nation, that it is no longer tempted to think of extraordinary means for its salvation. May it not miss the right path that lies open before it ! Gneisenau's proposal reminds me of the international ON ENGLISH EDUCATION. 13 educational establishments lately projected in England. I shall reserve the few things I have to say on this subject for a future letter. One of Thomas Arnold's pedagogic remarks most applic- able to English youths is that boys differ from one another less in talent than in energy. I have again found it con- firmed in various ways in the country itself. In Germany, in accordance with our better regulated school affairs, we have a much more widely spread and general education than is met with in England ; but in England it more fre- quently happens that young persons who, owing to their domestic circumstances, or it may be to causes for which they are themselves to blame, have been backward in their education, but being subsequently stimulated or favoured in some way, exhibit a wonderful strength of will to make up for what they have neglected, and by their own efforts to do that which others could not do for them. Not a few parents, even of the wealthy middle classes, give their sons only elementary instruction in reading, writing, and arithmetic ; the rest is left to the stimulating power of the school of life ; and in many cases they are not disappointed. The number of self-taught men in England is greater than elsewhere. Self-taught and self-made men, such as Sir Stamford Eaffles was, are still to be met with in Eng- land. I have there again become acquainted with several men in respected positions who, without having visited a higher school or a university, have, by self-chosen studies, acquired a very good and general education, and have displayed great taste for intellectual interests and a sound judgment, for instance, upon literary productions. The libraries also which they had gradually gathered around themselves were a proof of their intellectual aspirations. 14 GERMAN LETTERS In Germany publishers complain that philosophical books, and, in fact, works belonging to the more serious domain of literature, are less and loss frequently purchased by private persons ; in England this is not the case. With us the reason may in many instances be the result of our more limited means, as well as of the increase and the greater accessibility of public libraries ; but the fact is that, for instance, at the seats of the nobility in our country, a good library is much less frequently met with than in former days ; in England, among the educated classes, a well-stocked library is considered an essential part of the household furniture. Englishmen can point to men like the one mentioned above in justification of their voluntary principle, and they certainly still estimate it according to its great value ; but people have ceased to be satisfied with it either in regard to individuals or to communities. It has taken a long time to come to the determination to look into the traditional ways and means of education, and to recognise the necessity for thorough changes demanded by the national interest, as well as by the care for the public good. Even Milton raised his voice against the dry formalism of the higher teaching and lamented over the miserable instruction given to the children of the lower orders; he demanded that the misapplied treasures of the Church should be taken from it and be applied to the establishment of good schools. His words were of as little avail as the censure expressed in a similar manner by Bacon, Locke, and others in regard to the traditional school arrangements. The history of the internal development of the higher school-system in Germany and in England proper shows ON ENGLISH EDUCATION. 15 a difference wliich is characteristic of the two nations. "With us the Keformation created an ideal, in which the intellectual culture, based upon the study of the ancient languages, was closely connected with that ethical culture which was nourished by the Gospel. In France also an attempt was made to realise this ideal, in the Eeoles of Port Royal, the only refreshing green spot amid the uniformity of the French system of schools, forgotten by the French under the oppressive weight of the Jesuitical system of instruction, or at least not recognised in its typical value. In England the intellectual side has, generally speaking, at all times received lessattention than the ethical in the form of the national. Attention is now more than formerly directed to the disproportion which sprang from this in the cultivation of the two sides, and people now endeavour to make up for what has been neglected. But while in Germany, even after the time w^hen the original idea became obscured, and during the one-sided prevalence of intellectualism, an ideal direction was nevertheless followed, the present advance in England is more towards realism. This is partly to be traced to the deep after- effects of the influence of men like Bentham, Cobden, and Stuart Mill, who, starting from different points of view, have strengthened in the mental life of the nation, at the cost of its ideal character, the taste of utilitarianism. The attempts to reform the schools have been going on in England for some decades ; but when I reflect on what I saw of this in the country more than twenty years ago, it still makes upon me the impression of a quiet course that is but little disturbed. At the present time the revolution is all the more powerful. Parliament has taken the matter in hand, and has already developed an 16 GERMAN LETTERS activity wliicli shows its effects in all directions. That it should not as yet have been fruitful everywhere, and that it should not have satisfied the impatience of many even in those quarters where it is progressing rapidly, is very natural. The task — after such a past history of its school system — is extremely arduous and difficult ; and those en- gaged in the subject, justly will not and cannot depart from the English maxim that the changes should not so much at once attempt to create something perfectly new as to link themselves to what exists and transform it in accordance with the sj)irit of the age, and that gradually. It is confidently expected of the well-tested motive power in the national life, that in due time it will cast off what is decaying in order to replace it by something fresh and better. The beginning of a school legislation is made ; but it was this very beginning that first revealed the difficulties which have to be overcome. Hence in England at present several of the same questions are being discussed, the solution of which is occupying us in Germany. The condi- tions of general elementary instruction, the question about free schools, the religious instruction in elementary schools and the denominational character of the public schools in general, the relation of the State and the Church to the school, the education of girls, the separation of institutions for general and special education, and several others, are there just as much the subjects of zealous controversy as with ourselves. The question about proper middle schools, i.e. about the manner in whicli the gap between the ele- mentary and the higher schools can be most appropriately filled up, is engaging the attention of Englishmen no less than our own ; they too have their question about middle- ON ENGLISH EDUCATION. 17 class schools, they too dispute about the advantages of the classical and the modern school-instruction, about the value of the study of Latin in the curriculum, and about the most appropriate point where to begin with the ancient languages in this curriculum, etc. ; also the ques- tion as to the best arrangement in regard to holidays — even the question about orthography is not wanting among them. The fact of these questions arising simultaneously in both countries increases the interest to see how the same subjects will be conceived and treated there. In regard to the main points the questions are such as naturally spring from the general movement of civiliza- tion at the present day. On all sides of the great domain — from the elementary school to the university — things are still in a state of progress, and I may as well say, in a state of ferment ; at every point also experiments have been made, and many a thing has been begun which does not bear within itself any guarantee of being able to last. Only in the case of elementary schools a few fixed positions have been, gained. It will be a long time before the completion of an organisation of the teaching in the middle and higher schools, and in the universities, can be reported. In such times — which unmistakably bear the character of a transition-period — it would require longer and calmer observation correctly to estimate the individual pheno- mena. A few fundamental features of the English system to which I must at once draw attention, — a few exceptions I admit at once, — and from which its merits are derived, and which likewise explain what we, accord- ing to our idea, must call defects, may perhaps serve to facilitate the understanding of the question ; I can but 18 GERMAN LETTEES recommend you to regard them as general points of view for my subsequent communications. The red thread that runs through the whole moral view of life of Englishmen is the respect paid to personal independence, and to all individual life ; this is shown and expected everywhere as if it were inherited by birth in accordance with an inalienable moral law. One ought, they say, to grant to each individual the freedom and the right to do his oivn work in his own tvay. But as we live in a community, the rights of my freedom cease where those of another begin. There is accordingly no absolute freedom in determining one's own actions. Moreover, an Englishman has enough of political wisdom to know that for the sake of freedom he must sacrifice equality ; hence socialistic agitations in general find but little sympathy with the people. Further, his idea of freedom is not so vague as to be irreconcilable with the ready recognition of a higher authority. An English teacher told me that when in Berlin he heard a speech (delivered on the occasion of pupils having completed their course at a public school), the conclusion of which was : " Take with you as my last words : Preserve the freedom of your judgment, do not give it up, not even in the face of the highest authority," and he added : " This would be too vague for us, we should think that we ought to give to the young something more positive as a guide on their way." In like manner, a few weeks ago, I heard the late Prime Minister, Mr. Grladstone, while distributing the prizes at King's College, London, recom- mend to the young respect for the truths transmitted to them as a sacred inheritance ; for that much had already been thought and done before us, and that not every ON ENGLISH EDUCATION. 1!) one could, in everything, begin again at the commence- ment. Freedom and right are inseparable ideas ; and however strongly and vividly an Englishman may feel both, still he assigns a higher place to duty. One may hear people reason about this in some such manner as the following. Duty is more ancient than right, the latter presupposes the former; the sense of right and the claim to it does not arise until man feels and knows himself to be an independent being, and consequently it arises after the sense of duty, which has been his guide even before. It is further a general characteristic of Englishmen to feel a certain reverence for what has been historically developed and hallowed by length of time ; they cling more tenaciously to what has been transmitted in this manner than is usual on the continent. Hence their institutions often make the impression of a compromise between what is old and what is demanded by the exigencies of the time. It aflbrds a special pleasure to observe among them everywhere the inter-action of the forces of stability and of onward pressure. The sudden transition from the liberal to the present ministry, now nearly three years ago, is therefore described by some as something instinctive ; after so many legislative reforms, they say, the desire was to return to a more tranquil course. Even liberalism in England has no inclination to republicanism, but is decidedly royalistic. In the seventeenth century the people seem once for all to have passed through the process of revolutionary transitions in the constitution of the state ; the revolution which placed William III. on the throne was the conclusion of the preceding one. c 2 20 GERMAN LETTERS TJie aversion to wliat is general in contrast to the matter of fact or tlie concrete is very striking in the English mode of thought. Although since the year 1870 they have formed somewhat different ideas of us, they may still be heard to speak of the harren soil of German generalities and " so-called ideas " as of something misty. For the same reason they will sometimes ridicule the German's trust in pure theories, as opposed to the realities jf life and the actual necessity. You always look at things in the abstract, they say ; we have to translate them for ourselves into the particular and palpable. Hence their definitions also, avoiding abstract ideas, often take a realistic turn. For example, they do not easily conceive the idea of freedom abstractedly or negatively (freedom from), but straightway give it a real character, and hence do not say it is, but it consists, either in property, personal security, or locomotive faculty. They have no equivalent word for Wissenschaft ; for in their ordinary language the terms science and knowledge are entirely different, and we all know what strange use they make of the word philosophy. The same difference is met with in the domain of politics. "With us constitutionalism has not grown historically and gradually as in England, but has been imported ready made from France or Belgium ; hence our idea of a constitutional state still has essentially something abstractedly theoretical. Englishmen speak far less about the state, as such, but all the more of the country and the nation ; they do not speak of the rights of a citizen, but of those of an Englishman. The idea of the state has its stages of realisation. England stands midway between the North-American ON ENGLISH EDUCATION. 21 conception, which still contains an atomistic freedom of the individual, and Continental Europe, which, e g., in Prussia forms the state into a compact organism, embracing all the ethical objects of the people's life. England can never arrive at that tension of the idea of the state now prevalent with us on the continent, because the individual jealously guards his personal freedom, and yet possesses a thoroughly patriotic heart. But the tendency of the state to extend its powers is unmistak- able in England also ; it is as if the state had become more conscious of its duties and rights than it formerly was, and as if it now acknowledged that the protection of law is merely a condition of existence, but that much more depends upon the object of existence, even for the interest of the state itself. If the preservation and promotion of the welfare of the community and of the individual — in so far as this benefits the whole — is the task of the govern- ment, then Englishmen are still far from generally allowing this power over the individual to the government : the individual must and will take care of himself. In consequence of the above-mentioned peculiarities, it is a matter of difficulty for Englishmen correctly to comprehend any other nationality and to be just towards it ; it has sometimes seemed to me as if they were afraid, on such occasions, of being obliged to deny their own national character. The insular narrowness, as they themselves call it, keeps them too closely shut in to be able to arrive at that large-hearted universalism, which in Germany so frequently and so readily connects itself with the Germanic fundamental feature of individualism, that the excess of virtue becomes its opposite. 22 GERMAN LETTERS LETTER III. The State and the School— Difference in the Historical Development between Prussia and England— Effects of it in the two Coun- tries— Self-Governnient— Efforts of the Middle-classes in Edu- cational Matters — Actual Condition of English Schools in general. Edinhurgh. Just as in England parents let their children follow their own inclinations more than is the case with us, so the state there, up to within a short period, also allowed schools to act freely and to go their own way. English- men are proud of the fact that their parental responsibility has never been given over to the authority of the State or the Church. In the matter of elementary schools things have in recent times become different in this respect. I wish you to remember, however, that my observations principally refer to the middle and higher schools. We can distinguish a threefold relation between the state and the school, and illustrate it at once by referring to three countries : in England we have the relation of absolute freedom ; in Belgium state institutions and private institutions compete with each other, and the latter are under no influence or supervision of the state ; in Prussia, and in Germany generally, schools are es- sentially state institutions; for those not supported by the state, but by towns or other private patrons, must, nevertheless, in their arrangements follow the rules generally prescribed by the state. In order to understand these differences one must turn back to the historical ON ENGLISH EDUCATION. 23 development of the countries mentioned. I will here only compare Prussia and England. The government of both countries has become what it is by opposite paths. In England the people, led by the aristocracy, have, in the course of centuries, won their free constitution after severe struggles, and it now is a republic with a monarchical head. In Prussia, on the contrary, the formation of the state was brought about by its princes. The Prussian state — not comprised as England, from the beginning, within given natural boundaries — is the product, commencing with small beginnings, of centuries of hard work on the part both of prince and people, for which the latter had first to be educated. And this its princes have managed to do in a masterly manner. In order to keep together that which was given under unfavourable conditions of nature, to extend it and to strengthen it, the state required a military force ready for action, and fixed internal arrangements with trust- worthy officers to maintain them. Thus we can easily understand the development of the strict and compact Prussian system of* administration and of the three general duties connected with it, the compulsory at- tendance at school, obligatory military service, and the duty of paying taxes. The state at an early date made use of the school in order to educate the rising generation for its purposes and to prepare its stafi" of officials ; and about the end of last century, in the legislation of the Allgemeine Landrecht, it classed all institutions together as belonging to itself, regardless of the origin and the primary purposes of the different institutions, and made itself the sole school-administrator : " Schools are institutions of the state." — The unity of the Prussian school-system is 24 GERMAN LETTERS the result of the absolute monarchical government, such as it has remained down to recent times ; the utter want of unity and of connection among English schools is the consequence of the unlimited freedom allowed to all educational institutions. At the time of the Keformation, and long afterwards, schools in Germany made their arrangements in accord- ance with the ideas of their founders, and with the wishes of the towns, of course at that time under the advice of the Church. Subsequently the state gradually placed them under the supervision of its central authority, determined the objects of instruction and ordered exami- nations. Thus a compact system of schools and a fixed organisation took place in the different schools which had stood side by side without any connection. In England this process of organisation has as yet scarcely begun. About the same time when the educational insti- tutions in Prussia became subordinate to the state, the influence of the state in England — so far as it had existed at all— ceased : James II. was the last to make his authority felt in the universities. The historical development in Prussia, as I have sketched it, must give the impression of violence, and of an interference with the rights of the Church, of the community, and of parents. The history of the state explains this procedure, although it may not be able to justify it in all points, but this is a question I cannot enter upon here. — One of the evils which, as it seems, is inseparable from the control of the state, is the in- creasing external uniformity of schools, and the re- pression of private schools, which is the result of the .'system of granting certain privileges to state schools. ON ENGLISH EDUCATION. 25 The existence of institutions which act with greater freedom, and can set to work in a pedagogic manner, according to individual requirements, more than is possible in the case of the others, is absolutely to the interest of the public and of the public schools them- selves. However, an impartial judgment must admit that the good eflects of the guidance and supervision of the state outweigh all other considerations. The true solicitude of the government for its internal and external relations has created in Prussia, in spite of its limited means, a system of schools that is held in universal esteem, and is considered by many to be a model system on account of its actual results. The existing order of things has gradually, through custom, become so interwoven with the views of the people, that the guardianship of the state is not regarded as an encroachment upon the people's rights, but as a blessing. In England, when, as repeatedly happens, I am asked about the efiects of the general compulsory system of schools in Prussia, and whether the people express any dissatisfaction, I can only answer, the people do not feel it at all to be compulsory, they know of no other form, and consider obedience to the state in this matter to be a self-evident duty. I recollect a conversa- tion I had with a well-to-do artisan in Berlin, whose son attended a middle-class school, and was afterwards to carry on his father's business. Upon my question as to whether he approved of his son having at school to learn Latin, which would subsequently be of hardly any use to him, the man replied : " There must be some good in it, my boy likes to learn it ; I do not understand anything about it, but we are well governed, and therefore I do 26 GERMAN LETTERS not trouble myself any further about the matter." Now .this would in England be considered as a servile state of mind, and the surrendering of his own judgment and will as contemptible. But whether on that account the private judgment requisite to come to a sound determi- nation exists in England in a greater measure is quite a different question. While in Prussia, in accordance with its idea of the state, the chief care is directed to the security, the growth and the development of the whole, and the individual man is taken into its service for this purpose, in England the greatest importance is attached to the independence and the free action of the individual, in the confident hope that this will be of the highest advantage to the whole. Who can dispute that in England this contrary principle has borne its good fruit ? To help oneself, to be ready to hasten to the assistance of your neighbour, this is manly honour and manly virtue, and this is the root of English self-government. In the strict regulation of the continental system of officials, the individual acts as the agent and tool of a higher authority, and is bound by an oath to do his duty : in England the number of men admitted to office in this way is very small ; a voluntary undertaking of duties for the general good is much more general than with us; the personal responsibility is indeed greater in this case, but even the greatest responsibility is not to a superior or to him from whom a mandate may have been received— but to the public, to public opinion. The fruits of this voluntary activity for the common good are just those which we have most plainly before our eves in the domain of education. As in the case of ON ENGLISH EDUCATION. 27 the Chiircli, the government in England does not, with a few exceptions in Scotland and Ireland, give a shilling towards the higher schools ; they support themselves hy their own resources. How grand have been the under- takings of voluntary exertions for the education of the people is sufficiently attested by the activity of two societies formed at the beginning of this century, The National and The British and Foreign School Society as well as of the Ragged School Union (since 1844). The Archbishop of Canterbury was able very recently to declare in the House of Lords, that within the last fifty years £27,000,000 had been laid out by members of the Church of England for the education of the poor. However, according to the internal laws of human nature, such forces as are presupposed by self-govern- ment and the voluntary principle do not always act with the same effect, and it is admitted by Englishmen themselves that at present they are decreasing and insufficient for the existing wants. This has for a long time appeared most distinctly in the management of the poor and of elementary schools. The former com- pact connection and energetic co-operation have be- come loosened in many places, partly in consequence of political changes. The individual found himself no longer protected against his own weakness, or supported by the spirit and strength of his associates, as had previously been the case. The reliance on self-help diminished, and the discontent with the old conditions, among others especially with the public and private schools, became greater and greater, and made itself heard. The press did its part to disclose their defects. Descriptions such as those in Dickens's ' Nicholas Nickleby,' and less 28 GERMAN LETTERS caricatured in 'David Copperfield,' likewise helped to pave the way ; their effect upon the public was not un- like that of Hogarth's pictures, and, in our own days, the representations of the Turkish atrocities in the English illustrated newspapers. In short, the belief in the excellence of the old system of schools in England has been shaken in the minds of many ; men recognise more and more what is wanted, and see where the shoe pinches. Moreover, they no longer scruple to confess that other countries are in advance of them, and that they have remained behind in the race. Merchants and other men of business have assured me that, with few exceptions, young men who had come to them from German middle-class schools (Bealsehuleri) were superior to English apprentices in their knowledge of languages and geography, and in general proved themselves by their school training to have become more useful than English lads of the same age. This is the reason why, at present, boys are frequently sent to Germany to be educated, though they belong almost exclusively to the middle classes, for which there still remains very much to be done. The desire for better, more numerous and com- prehensive educational institutions for the middle classes is therefore now much stronger than the desire for lower and higher schools. The different causes of this par- ticular movement wull become clear in subsequent letters ; one I have just hinted at in mentioning what I was told by business men. For a time Englishmen w^ere heard to express a fear lest other countries with more appropriate and a more extended education, especially Germany, should drive them from the markets of the ON ENGLISH EDUCATION. 29 world : hence the demand for a better education became a question of honour and self-preservation. In my opinion the parliamentary reforms of 1832 and 1867, and of the municipal reforms, the results of which are becoming more and more manifest, are of still greater importance. In former times it was landed property which determined political questions ; now-a-days it is more especially capital, the industrial and money aristocracy. Hence the increased political importance, together with the effects of the absolute freedom of trade, urges the well- to-do middle classes forward in the same direction : the altered position of affairs demands a different mode of culture. The more rapid general movement of our time has likewise enlarged the horizon of many men ; their former contentment with simpler relations has given way to a more ambitious striving onward, which very soon leads to the desire of further intellectual culture. Many things thus combine to invite the state to a co- operation to which it has not been accustomed during the period of vigorous and extensive self-government, nay, to urge it to take the initiative in making administrative arrangements. Such has recently been the case in the attention paid to the poor, to the sanitary affairs of towns, to the cultivation of the arts, and other matters, but probably in no department more than in that of education. Formerly government did not think of inter- fering either in the administration of counties and towns, or in the affairs of churches and schools, but we now see this happening in many places, and welcomed by the people. It has taken up the struggle, with the approval of many, against the lazy tradition prevailing in the old public schools, and against the selfishness in the disposal 30 GERMAN LETTERS of their funds, nor has it met with any considerable opposition in its measures for raising popular education, which are not very far from making attendance at school compulsory. We thus witness an exceedingly remarkable limitation of the English idea of the state. The government of the country has evidently been guided by the conviction that while unchecked self-determination has a wholesome effect in those regions of the population where the ethical value of freedom is recognised, and is productive of good for the general objects ; it is, on the other hand, dangerous where it can easily degenerate, and by begetting crimes become costly to the community. Hence the ordinances which no longer permit the lower classes to let their children grow up in ignorance and to run wild. The symptoms of the beginning of a bureaucratic con- centration and dependence upon state authority are increasing in England in different departments of public life, while on the other hand simultaneously successful efforts are made in Prussia and Germany to limit the predominating influence of monarchical ofiicialism, which has for a long time rendered good service in promoting the objects of the state — a limitation tending to self- government through the rights possessed by the repre- sentatives of the people and by the communities. In the task devolving upon every state of reconciling the demands of the higher and general good with the special interests of the individual, England and Germany are therefore now moving in opposite directions. But if we except the elementary schools, public in- struction in general does not in any way show a progress towards objects clearly recognised and defined. An ON ENGLISH EDUCATION. 31 extraordinary amount of power, time, and money, is still wasted from a want of plan and unity. Men of intelli- gence in the country itself, described within my hearing the present condition of the schools in their wavering between freedom and dependence as a state of anarchy. How long will they be willing and able to tolerate it ? It has often appeared to me as if we were facing the question as to which is the lesser and therefore prefer- able evil : the consequences of the want of connection and fixed rules resulting from the freedom which has hitherto existed, or the dependence on a well-ordered administration ? "We of the continent, accustomed to the latter, cannot help wondering how people can be in doubt about it for a single moment. But in England itself, the matter is not so simple, even apart from the practical difficulties in its realisation. One must live in the country, and be familiar with its history, in order to understand how difficult it is to decide such an alternative, seeing that the nation owes so much that is great and good to the voluntary principle. In the contest between freedom on the one hand, and order and regularity on the other, Englishmen will always be inclined to decide in favour of the former. However, in the course of my subsequent remarks, it will perhaps be seen that it is not necessary to adhere to either alternative, but that there is a third possibility, and that owing to the good each contains the contrasts are not irreconcilable. 32 GERMAN LETTERS LETTER IV. Conflicting Opinions as to what is to be done — The Educational Eeformers, the Conservatives, and the Mediators between the two Extremes. Tarhet, on Loch Lomond, After a tour through the Scottish Lakes, the splendour of which still surrounds me here, I again take up my pen. That England has entered upon its educational era is clear from many signs observable during a longer re- sidence in the country. The interest in educational questions is alive in all ranks, and has just received a fresh impulse through the last debates in Parliament. Schools and education are an inexhaustible topic of serious discussion, as well as of lighter conversation ; the most different and diametrically opposite views have their zealous advocates. I fancy it will be very conducive to my object here to describe the present pedagogic con- dition of England, allowing the most important of these views to speak for themselves as in a parliament, and to present them to you in the manner in which I have be- come acquainted with them through personal intercourse, periodicals, and otherwise. Three points of view are easily distinguished : that of the friends of reform, that of their opponents, and that of the mediators between the two. The call for reform is louder than all others. After what has already been done for elementary education, the condemnation of reformers is directed against the in- stitutions above it, not excluding the ancient universities. ox ENGLISH EDUCATIOX. 33 Complaints are now esjjecially heard about the long neglect of the wants of the middle classes: the lower classes, it is said, are already taken care of by the government with great liberality, and so are the semi- naries for training able teachers ; the upper classes are in the enjoyment of the advantages offered by the richly endowed universities and public schools, and in them well prepared and respected teachers are not wanting. But the middle classes are not equally cared for, and here we have the real spot of the missing link in the series of public educational institutions ; the instruction here, it is said, is generally left to private speculation, whence the teachers in this class of schools have no share in the respectability of those in the higher public schools. And yet it is the middle classes — so says many a one of their advocates — upon which the hope of the country is based ; they lead the lower classes, from them the aristocracy of the upper classes is ever renewed, and they afford the greater prospect of furnishing leading political characters, who are now not often found in the higher ranks. Many talents, it is said, in this and other departments perish from want of culture, owing to which the capa- bility of self-government also is beginning to be wanting, and the freedom of labour in all departments will not become a reality until it ceases to be crippled by ignorance. It is proposed and regarded as a fair demand that, as after all the middle classes contribute most to that which is expended by the state for the advantage of the lower classes, the state should also take the middle classes under its care ; that it should at least erect a sufficient number of houses for middle-class schools, over which it 34 GERMAN LETTERS might reserve to itself the right of inspection ; and that for the rest, a large influx of pupils being almost certain, these institutions would be able to support themselves by means of the school-fees, though they might be fixed at a moderate rate. Others are of opinion that the state, as in the case of elementary schools, should take into its own hands the whole question of middle-class schools and organise them according to its own views. Mere institutions for instruction, a small number of which have recently been established, are not considered satisfactory by some people : they say the question is not only about acquiring knowledge, but it is of far greater importance that the youths of these classes also, by a community of life and exertion, such as the higher orders enjoy at the public schools, should become accus- tomed to independent and manly ways, self-control and proper conduct. For this reason they say larger board- ing schools ought to be founded with simple arrangements, so as not to be too expensive for parents. Fault-finders censure not a few arrangements in the higher schools, and their censure easily becomes an un- just accusation. The public schools, they say, and the universities are the cause of our material having outrun our intellectual progress ; the majority of young men bring from these institutions only ignorance, indolence, and love of pleasure ; they are ignorant of what they ought to know at their age ; and if such questions as, for example, about some natural phenomenon is discussed, they appear as helpless as they are wanting in interest. The inquiries recently made about public and grammar schools have shown a lamentable result ; the curriculum is limited and antiquated, paying no regard to the pro- ON ENGLISH EDUCATION. 35 gress of the age and the requirements of the time ; more attention is paid to the body than to the mind ; and as the subjects of instruction, so the traditional method of instruction is unfruitful, devoid of stimulating power, awakens no interest, and creates no elasticity either of thought or judgment. The old universities, according to the condemnatory opinion of the same party, have forgotten their duty ; they have become unproductive places of intellectual indolence, and a capital opportunity even for wealthy individuals to gain sinecures from foundations intended for the poor. Young men, they say, neither learn there to work systematically, nor do they acquire any taste for philosophical inquiries ; they are either left to their noble passions — " under the name of education, it is simply the purchase of three years' more or less agree- able residence at an expensive club," — or are pedantically trained to acquire university titles of doubtful value. In short, the results are glaringly disproportionate to the enormous sums spent upon the education of young Englishmen: " There is no department of human energy in which there is such a pretentious display of power with such a beggarly amount of result.'* If some of these sharp critics are asked how things are to be improved, they no longer hesitate to answer: we must cease to be slaves to our idea of independence, and to our national pride ; what is the use of freedom to a nation if it is uneducated ? We require, for the administration of all our scholastic affairs, a central guiding authority, standing above parties, and we ought not to be ashamed to learn a lesson from other nations. In fact, the aversion formerly so general against every D 2 36 GEEMAX LETTERS interference of the government in this department has greatly decreased. The institution of a special Minister of Instrnction has repeatedly been brought before Parlia- ment (1856, 1862, 1868, 1874), hitherto, it is true, with- out success ; but I am convinced that it is only a question of time. The superiority of other countries in matters of education is readily acknowledged by some, who speak with great respect of Germany, and particularly of Prussia, as they have somewhat corrected their concep- tions of it through the reports of their countrymen who have visited us and examined matters with their own eyes. Such men do not hesitate to recommend some of our institutions as models for imitation. Those utterly opposed to the reformers cling with English tenacity to the old tradition. They plead their cause somewhat in this way : if you take from us our faults, you also take from us our virtues. Do not meddle with our old custom, they say; every new school arrangement takes away a piece of old Eng- land ; for in what country are the higher schools and universities, such as tlioy are, so deeply rooted in the national life as with us ? You want to change our public schools into establishments for acquiring know- ledge; but they are institutions for the education of " gentlemen," for propagating " English feeling," and honourable sentiments, an education which knows how to unite freedom with order, and independence with respect for public opinion. This is the reason why they, like our two old universities, whose educational problem is the same, are of such great importance to the welfare of the country. Our young men make the most favourable impression upon all foreigners ; not 1 ON ENGLISH EDUCATION ,37 only have the ambassadors from Japan expressed their admiration, but from Persia, France, and Italy, princes have been sent to ns for education ; they would scarcely have been intrusted to a German Gymnasium, Our public schools are very unequal, it is true, and one is perhaps little efficient in one department, and another in another ; but in place of its defects it has also its advantages, and each in its own way contributes to the great general result — to give to the young an English education, for the honour and advantage of the country. Nor is it to be regretted that in some institu- tions the boys are less interested in books than in games and sports, in cricket and boat-races, which strengthen their limbs. What they there neglect in Greek and Latin is fully counterbalanced by the word of the Duke of Wellington — an alumnus of Eton — who, when once re-visiting that school, and passing through the play- ground, said : " It was here that the victory of Waterloo was won !" But if you point to the small amount of knowledge which most pupils of the public schools carry away with them after so many years of school-life, we reply that it is not our intention to urge them on to zealous study ; after their years at school, they have to work their way up the steep mountain of life ; it would be foolish to make them exert themselves at the very foot in such a manner as to weaken their physical strength and elas- ticity, and to damp their animal spirits. You further forget that the close of the school curriculum is not the place for determining the value of a school ; the right place for forming such an estimate is to be looked for farther on in life itself, Avhere the personal qualities 38 GERMAN LETTERS developed at scliool have to he tested, as is said in the proverb : " The proof of the pudding is in the eating." To this the opponents naturally reply : it is life itself and its present altered demands, by which we form our estimate, and find that our youths are behindhand ; and if we do not advance simultaneously with the demands of the time, time will leave us behind. And how shortsighted is it after all, when you consider that firmness of character, public spirit, and kindred qualities, which a man gives proof of in life, are described as merits of the school which he attended when a boy, whereas public life and the other circumstances through which he has passed have probably contributed the greatest and best part. "Why are you not equally ready to set down the faults of the man to the account of the school ? The same class of opponents in general form a low esti- mate of the value of knowledge : man, they say, is wholly man only in action, and can it be that the strongest motives for action have their origin in knowledge ? It is not what a man knows that determines his place in the world, but what he does. Everyone must learn by his own experience what is best and most serviceable to him ; and the superiority of one man over another will always consist in the culture which the individual gives to himself, and not in the results of his school learning. The only useful education, therefore, is that which leads the pupil to learn and to act for himself. I\Iost men are limited by nature to a few thoughts which they have to realise ; to lead them into distant regions renders them unpractical and unhappy. Many a one has learned more than he has been able to bear and to digest, and has thereby become more awkward than he ON ENGLISH EDUCATION. 39 originally was, according to the measure of his natural gifts. This is the sense in which the Duke of Wellington is said, on one occasion, to have answered a young man who wished some appointment under him, and wanted to prove his ability by theoretical expositions, for after having listened to him for a while, the Duke said : "I can make no use of you, you are over-educated for your intellect."* The efforts to raise the lower and middle classes of the population by better school-instruction is further met by the following consideration. You assert that the discrepancy between the political rights of these classes and their ability to recognise and promote the true welfare of the community, must be neutralised by increased culture ; but you can scarcely have formed a clear idea of what is understood by this. If you think of intelligence only, you are on the wrong track ; intelligence can make one cleverer but not more culti- vated, nor better, nor can it supply an energetic will ; it can afford no substitute for religious culture and habits, which are far more necessary to the young, and are the only basis for educating them to true freedom. But as regards your desire for schools for the children of the middle classes, you imagine the thing to be more easy than it really is. You overlook the difference of the claims which are made upon them, according to the social position of the parents, and the different callings for which they destine their sons. Do you really be- * This may serve as a commentary on the following passage in A. Tennyson's poem on the death of the Duke : " Whose life was work, whose language rife With rugged maxims hewn from life." 40 GEEMAN LETTERS lieve that the demamTs of tradesmen, clerks, farmers, yeomen, &:c., will agree among themselves ? Nor is it a matter of indifference that their children become more and more estranged to the class to which they belong. Even now the consequence of this education is, that applications for an appointment with a small salary are becoming more frequent in comparison with the requests to be received into the different trades. In the latter, a want of applicants is already beginning to be felt, while the market where clerks and such persons are required is over-stocked. Much school-learning is the most un- suitable preparation for an English man of business, it destroys his proper taste for it. Still worse than in the case of boys is the effect of your increased culture uj)on girls, who have then no longer any desire to enter into service. And what is it after all that you have attained ? Nothing but outward appearance and superficiality. If things go on in this way, our civilisation is threatened by a despotism of mediocrity ; have we not already enough to suffer under the levelling influences of the age of railroads ? I have also met with individual instances in which men raised their warning voices against favouring efforts directed towards the acquisition of knowledge, especially (jf the natural sciences, rather than towards sounder mental culture, because, they said, the final object with most men is, after all, only to gain more and more easily in this way — to make money : modern realism conceals within itself a danger to the life of the nation. Cotton and coals are useful things, and so is money ; but to direct one's mind to them exclusively has something degrading, and prevents the cultivation of nobler quali- ON ENGLISH EDUCATION. 41 ties ; it ends at last in the worship of the god Mammon, who in England is already worshipped more than enough, and more than the true God. This reminded me of what Schleiermacher says of Englishmen in his discourses on religion : " These proud Islanders treat nothing seriously that goes beyond the tangible profit : they kill science, and only use its dead wood for the masts and oars on the voyage through their gain-loving life." Connected with the above is the fear entertained by many lest the study of the ancient classics should be displaced by an education ad Jioc, which even at school has an eye to the professional aims of later life. They wish this study to be adhered to at Oxford and Cambridge, as well as in all the higher schools, as the main subject, and as a protection against the barbarism of a realism devoid of ideas. The zeal with which many still vindicate for the study of the ancient languages — in spite of the often small results of the time and labour spent upon them — the principal place in the curriculum of all higher schools, may be compared with the determination with which others wish to preserve the strictness of the English Sunday, which after all is very often only external. The common motive of both is the wish to have a bulwark against the influences of a restless activity which other- wise absorbs the whole man and threatens in the end to deaden all his interest in higher and sj)iritual things. But the time when the ancient classics still formed an essential part of the intellectual food of every educated man seems to have passed away in England as well as elsewhere. Nowadays no one quotes Horace in Parliament, which was formerly not unfrequently done : even Mr. Gladstone scarcely ever does it. A teacher openly confessed to me : 42 GERMAN LETTERS " We must not deceive ourselves, our youths have drawn, their knowledge and their ideas of the ancient world not from the original sources, but rather from manuals and translations." But still this is no reason for not insisting strictly upon the study of the two ancient languages. I once heard a member of Parliament replying to an opponent of classical studies : we now live rapidly, we have more to hear and to say, and must settle many things in less time than before. This has its influence upon the language ; it is frequently abused for semblances of truth ; often no clearness of thought answers to the rapidly uttered word. It is therefore of great and even of moral advantage to our youth to j)ass through a strict and logical practice of the ancient languages, especially Latin, provided it is taught in the proper manner. Those who place their hope on the state for better schools are occasionally met by English pride declaring that this way would tend to disgrace free England, and to weaken a national virtue. Such men would abandon school affairs to the confused pretensions of the public rather than entrust them to the regulating hand of the state. To educate the people, they say, is no more the business of the state than it is to feed them. Improve- ments, so far as they are necessary and possible, must be left to independent local action, to self-help, voluntary efibrts ; then, and then only, will that which is new, both in the schools and the teachers, bo respected and cared for ; but the other mode of proceeding will be viewed with distrust, and the willingness to give or assist on the part of the public will cease, or be greatly diminished, when once the schools are under state management. If the state once takes everything under its control, then good-bye to all ON ENGLISH EDUCATION. 43 originality in the conception and management of scholas- tic affairs. All the great schoolmasters have belonged to times and to countries, in which the state had not yet laid its hands on public school affairs. What its guardian- ship may lead to can be seen on the continent, where people place so much reliance on the state that it has become a kind of Providence to them. The people there have become so unaccustomed, in case of distress, to have recourse above all things to self-help, that on the occur- ence of any calamity, e.g. of fire, water, bad harvest and the like, they demand the help of the state ; self-reliance, readiness to make sacrifices, and the efforts of the commu- nities and other corporations are therefore very feeble, and are not brought into action except with great trouble and difficulty. I have always been the more surprised at this jealousy and distrust of the state in England, because there, more than anywhere else, the government represents and carries out the popular will. The same adherents of the old English ways, when looking at the German management of schools, do indeed admit not only that sound learning and a desire for know- ledge as such are more common in Germany, but also that there exists a more thorough and a more widely dilTused general school culture than in England. But, they say, the same things are not suited for all, a thing may be good in itself, but is not on that account good for us : we have got what we want, not the best thing perhaps, it may be, but the best thing for us. Do you wish, they ask, that we too should burden ourselves with the heavy load of learning, as is usually the case in Germany, and that we should thus run the same risk of 44 GEEMAN LETTEES weakening the jirodnctive mental independence of our nation ? The young in every country must be educated according to its circumstances. With us, young men enter upon public life earlier than they do on the conti- nent. How many, when they have scarcely left the age of boyhood, are obliged to go out into the wide world, to India, to the colonies, or any other distant part of the earth ! Their fitness for this, their ability to stand on their own legs, to look around them with freedom, to form a resolution, to take the initiative, and to act on their own responsibility, would be diminished by a school training like that of Germany, where, though the horizon has become enlarged by limiting the powers of the smaller states, youths may be burdened too heavily for their journey through life within their narrower sphere. As Germans in general, they say, even in their public life, rely more upon knowledge and reflection than upon practical life and habits, so they over-estimate school- learning, while we attach greater importance to a training by national custom and indirect means of education ; and we do not wish to alter this state of things. The often repeated reference to Prussia is to many specially offensive. One still meets with the strangest notions about the external and internal administration of that country : it is nothing, they say, but a bureaucracy and a tyrannical government-mechanism ; the cause of this, the military character of the whole state, has become a necessity on account of its situation between two such neighbours as France and Eussia, but the consequence is that the whole of the life of the people has fallen into absolute dependence upon the state-power and militarism. Some gentleman who had travelled in Prussia to make ON ENGLISH EDUCATION. 45 himself acquainted with its scholastic arrangements, exclaimed within my hearing: "In the first year the state vaccinates yon, in the sixth it sends you to school, in the twentieth it drafts you into the army ; and when I saw that every school in regard to military privileges belongs to a special paragraph in its military system, I was reminded of the tablets on which one may read at the entrance of every town or village the name of the military district to which it belongs." It is difficult to make an Englishman understand, e.g., the advantages and beneficial consequences of the uni- versal obligation to serve in the army, and many do not like to be reminded of the fact that they too now have a strict vaccination law, and that obligatory attendance at school is already introduced into a large number of towns of their country. Others again imagine that the striving after mental culture in Germany, and especially in Prussia, by a continual sceptical criticism of what exists, prevents the accumulation of a proper amount of positive knowledge and fosters discontent with the actual state of things ; that a tendency to criticise is there developed wholly disproportionate to the power of individual judgment and of the individual will. Among teachers also I met with many prejudices against the Prussian school regime : " The administration is no doubt attentive and careful," said an assistant master in a grammar school, " and the authorities may be humane towards the teachers ; but the feeling that you are controlled from above and are dependent would be intolerable to us." The disagreement among the schoolmasters themselves as to the path to be pursued in introducing reforms acknowledged to be necessary adds not a little to the 46 GERMAN LETTEES confusion which at present pervades the whole question of school education in England. With the jiretension of infallibility some claim precedence or even an exclusive place in a school curriculum for religious, others for secular instruction, others for the ancient, others for modern languages, and others again for the natural sciences or mathematics, &c., and speak with something like contempt of all the rest. In Germany more progress has indeed been made towards reconciling the hostile parties, but we are still far from having effected a peaceful settlement. In what I have said before, I have mainly allowed the two opposing parties to express their own views. The number of those who occupy an intermediate position between them is not small. Suffice it to report, that they are not disinclined to give up a part of the inde- pendence of the schools to the state, and to recognise a higher power of administration. They demand a better organisation of the schools, and a better method of teaching, but they deprecate an increase in the subjects of instruction, and will not consent to any change in the curriculum, which is opposed to the spirit of the well tried English national education, or which might put the pupil in a position unsuited to his later objects in life and render him incapable or unwilling to enter upon the struggle of life which every one must pass through. Nor do they wish to put any force upon parents in the free disposal of their children. Hence, without breaking with the past, they wish to improve that which has been handed down to them, and develop it according to the exigencies of the time. In this spirit actual progress is making in different ox ENGLISH EDUCATION. 47 directions ; but the secular and ecclesiastical, the local and central authorities are still far from being agreed upon a plan that is to be carried out with consistency : the vague subjective demands of individuals and the claims of the community based upon reason and the nature of things are still not reconciled. LETTEK V. Varied Activity in scholastic Affairs — Provisions of the Govern- ment and Independent private Undertakings. Tarhet. The people of England have not waited till the contro- versies mentioned in my last letter were settled : they have acted. As soon as an idea of reform is there gene- rally felt to be the expression of a recognised want, a resolution is soon formed and the means procured. It rarely happens in England that, when defects in public affairs are laid bare in meetings or other discussions, these are only followed by wearisome and discouraging delays ; as a rule the refreshing effect of such discussions is action. In this manner the people with its peculiar energy pro- ceeded, and the education question soon took precedence in the public transactions ; for a long time this question had been obliged to give way to many others, but as yet it has not been permanently driven back from that position. It is very pleasant to glance back upon the last decades in this respect : there arose a rivalry between the organs of the state and private persons, to establish or prepare more suitable arrangements in the whole domain of educa- tion. Many things are gratefully traced to impulses 48 GERMAN LETTERS given by the late Prince Consort. I shall not here inquire whether in some instances the people have not taken the second stej) before the first, whether in their first zeal they have not advanced too rapidly without sufiiciently considering whether the time had arrived for this or that measure, and whether the wish and the desire soon to make up for jiast neglects, have not sometimes preferred to create something instead of allowing it to groiv organi- cally. This side of the question will not remain unnoticed in my further communications. In elementary education, where at first it was most needed, they have acted without hesitation and most effectually. The action of the government and of Parlia- ment in this respect has had extraordinary efi'ects. The question demands a sjiecial discussion, to which I mean to devote a future letter, so far as the subject in general lies within the limits of my plan. I will here only make the following remarks: The state everywhere came to the help of those who could not help themselves. Long before the Church and the large school societies mentioned before had supported elementary instniction as far as they could, the state in the year 1833 for the first time came to its assistance with a grant of money. The grant (chiefly for the Imilding of school-houses) amounted then, according to Lord Althorp's proposal, to 30,000/. (20,000Z. for England and Wales, and 10,000/. for Scotland). Since then the grant for elementary schools from the public treasury has been increased every year. In 1874 it amounted, inclu- sive of the expenses of administration and inspection, to 2,228,470?., in 1875 for the schools alone, to 1,548,563/., and in 1870 to 1,707,055/. ON ENGLISH EDUCATION. 49 In how comprehensive a spirit the problem of popiilar education has been conceived in recent times is clear above all from the fact that the education question became at once connected with the question of dwellings, and the latter again with the question of communication, in accordance with the circumstances of the large cities in England, and especially of London itself. It was desired not to separate the education at school from the previous condition of domestic habits of order and cleanliness. Houses for the working classes, accordingly, had to be built, for which room could be found only in the wide sur- roundings of the cities. The work was soon begun, and the combined efforts of Parliament and of enterprising philanthropical private societies have produced, in a com- paratively short time, astonishing changes. It always gave me pleasure in the suburbs of London to see the long rows of such dwellings, notwithstanding their monotony : innumerable small houses, each calculated for one family, mostly with a little garden attached, like the cite ouvriere, e.g., near Muhlhausen in Alsace. Barracks for workmen are very rarely met with. These houses are let to work- men at a moderate rent. But as the houses would be unsuitable to them unless they were within easy access to the places of their occupations in town, arrange- ments have been made for running special cheap railway trains. By these arrangements and other architectural changes, London has been immensely improved notwith- standing its continued extension, owing to which it can even now no longer be called a town, but a large densely peopled tract of country : the statistics of its rate of mor- tality show that it is now a more healthy place than many other large cities. 50 GERMAN LETTERS The interest in the cause of popular education lias not decreased in the course of years either in Parliament or in the towns ; of this I had opportunities of convincing myself, among other things, by the kind of discussions which I have repeatedly attended both in Parliament and at the London School Board. The result is in general satisfactory. Most of the elementary schools are attended by large numbers of children, and as regards England, the remark which the American Minister, Mr. George Bancroft, made to me some years ago in Berlin, is no longer true. In America, he said, many are educated at the expense of a few, in England, a few at the expense of many, in Germany alone matters are fairly balanced. The grand provision made by the government, for the present confined to elementary schools, has been increased by sympathising and liberal private efibrts. The gap be- tween the lower and higher schools is already filled up in several places by middle-class schools. I will mention but one example of the manner in which such objects are attained in England. In the year 1866 a London gentleman, whose heart was moved by the distress of parents who did not wish to send their sons into elementary or bad private schools, and could not send them to the expensive public schools, as- sembled a number of men of similar feelings, and with them drew up a plan of a cheap middle-class school. Thereupon they applied to several wealthy persons, especially merchants and bankers, with the request to assist them in carrying out their plan, and in a short time 40,000/. were subscribed. I have become person- ally acquainted with the institution (Cowper Street, City Head); during this summer it was attended by 1300 ON ENGLISH EDUCATION. 51 pupils. The society which founded it, The Corporation for Middle-class Education in the MetrojJolis and the Suhurhs thereof, intends to proceed in a similar way in other parts of London.* Some of the guilds also have lately established similar middle-class schools in London and other towns. We may expect that others will follow in London if the efforts of the " City Guilds Reform Association " are successful in restoring the funds, parts of which have been applied to other objects, to their original educational purpose. In other already existing schools separate classes for objects similar to those of middle-class schools have been added. In this manner day schools, the sole object of which is to give instruction, have been much increased in number, by the side of the numerous boarding establishments. I might mention not a small number of grammar schools which have been established within the last twenty years, and are mainly constituted as middle-class schools. The South Kensington Museum also has done much by lec- tures and otherwise to promote instruction in practical matters. Among the recent associations for founding schools, I * "The iuteution is, to provide for boys who are destined for com- mercial life, such liberal course of instruction as shall be most useful to them hereafter, as well as to educate them in those habits of thought and discipline which will best ensure their future success. The course of instruction will include the English language and literature, history and commercial geography, mathematics, surveying, arithmetic, writing, book-keeping, chemistry, drawing (engineering and architectural), French, and vocal music ; also the elements of physical science, — Classes for Latin, German, Hebrew, shorthand, home-lessons, advanced drawing, and violin, are held immediately after school-hours on special but easy terms. — The terms, strictly inclusive for all other advantages of the school, are twenty-five shillings per quarter (paid in advance)." E 2 52 GERMAN LETTERS will only mention tlie corporation of Saint Marij and Saint Nicholas, whicli lias considerable funds at its dis- posal ; it proposes to provide in five different districts of tlie country public school education on tlie principles of the Church of England, according to the wants of the different classes, and has already called into existence several institutions. An "Association for the Pro- motion of Secondary Education in Scotland " has been formed quite recently. During the last few years much attention and support has also been given to the long neglected education of females. Associations for it, as well as for the promotion of other educational ol)jects, have been formed in several places, especially for the benefit of those not possessing ample means. Among these are Literary and Scientific Institutes, Mechanics' Institutions, evening classes for adults, &c. There is now scarcely a town that does not possess such institutions, and the wealthy classes are generally very liberal in providing them with teaching apparatus, maps, photographs, and the like. Nor are there wanting new foundations and funds for the support of poor boys of talent. — There is scarcely any public school without its scholarships, school and university bursaries, or exhibitions. The Charterhouse School has now sixty scholarships (thirty for boys of the ages between twelve and fourteen, amounting to 60Z. each, and thirty for boys between the ages of fourteen and sixteen, amounting to 80Z. each). The guilds of the goldsmiths, grocers, fish- mongers, broderers, skinners, and glass-sellers, have, during the last few years, contributed towards the exhibitions of the City of London School, to induce youths to proceed to the universities. ON EXGLISH EDUCATION. 53 Sunday/ schools have been greatly extended, and are not limited to children or to religious instruction. The following circumstance may serve as a proof of the kindly and ready disposition to do good to these and similar schools. When the head of such an institution appeals to the public to enable him to give an outing to his many poor children, the appeal is scarcely ever made in vain. My impression is that Englishmen are decidedly kindly disposed towards schools. The conferences of head-masters are also deserving of notice as a sign of the united pedagogic efforts among the teachers themselves. For some years past the head- masters of many of the higher schools have met at dif- ferent places towards the end of December to deliberate on matters of common interest. The College of Preceptors in London has greatly extended its sphere of action during the last few years. Chairs of pedagogics have recently been established in the universities of Edinburgh and St. Andrews, and in London a society has been formed for the development of the science of education. Later on I shall have occasion to say more upon the subjects I have here briefly mentioned, as well as upon the great influence already exercised by the inquiries ordered by the government into the constitution, the functions, the property, and the administration of the public schools of every kind, as well as of many private institutions. The universities are not exempted from these general inquiries, and it is well known that many restrictions formerly imposed upon attendance at the universities have already been removed. Other important government measures are connected with the intention to raise the general standard of culture, 54 GERMAN LETTERS especially iu tlic civil and military services. I allude to the abolition of the system of purchasing places in the army, and to the regulation that, after the abolition of former privileges, the career in the civil and military services is open to all, and that appointments are given only according to the results of competitive examinations. I will close these hints about the great activity which has for some years prevailed upon the whole wide domain of education in England, with the report of a conversation. It was an agreeable surprise to me at an evening party in London, to meet an English lady whose acquaintance I had made at Eome. After a long sojourn in Italy she had also spent some years in Germany, and by this means she had enlarged her intellectual horizon and acquired a fine understanding and appreciation of national peculi- arities, more so than many of her countrymen do during their travels on the continent. "Sometimes," she said, "I feel like a stranger in my own country; the early acquired seriousness of my countrymen makes me uneasy ; they all. agree, without expressing it, that it is necessary, not only to practise inward self-control, but to suppress all outward signs of feeling ; they claim such a large measure of freedom for life, and yet put on themselves so much social restraint. Oh, if they had but a little of the disinvoltura of the Italians and the heartfelt {gemiUlivoUen) sympathy of the Germans ! But we have not even a word for Gemicth. This is beyond the question about pedagogics. But otherwise pedagogics are now en vogue among us; you have come at the right time. I am delighted at this general movement which has already successfully stimu- lated many energies and produced beneficial efi'ects, though in some directions its course may be without ox ENGLISH EDUCATION. 55 definite objects and results. Pedagogic enthusiasts, for example, have suddenly imported among us their Kinder- garten, and in their hurry have taken the name together with the thing; we have the Kindergarten system, Kindergarten teachers. Kindergarten examinations, and even a Frobel Society. But the thing is as un-English as possible. All modes of taking care of children and guarding them for families which cannot do it themselves, are certainly deserving of praise ; and infant schools may learn much that is good from the Kindergarten ; but to undertake this care for families which are well able to educate their children, to make them sit still, and among other things to teach them to play systematically and rationally, &c., instead of leaving them to their own pleasure and fancy and allowing them to grow up like the flowers of the field and the trees of the forest — this is a pedagogic importunity which I would keep far away from my house; I hope the affair may not be lasting in England." These expressions were to me as unexpected as they were welcome. LETTEE VI. Siirvey of the whole domain of the Higher Schools and theii- differences in Degree and Kind — The Universities. Whitby, in Yorkshire. Nowhere has the distribution of the higher schools over the country been made with that regularity with which, for example, a garden is laid out : everywhere the free historical development has produced great inequalities, 56 GERMAN LETTERS but nowhere is the inequality of the distribution as great as in England. In some parts schools of the most different kinds exist in close j)roximity, whereas large districts are entirely Avithout any. Whence, on surveying the whole, we at first receive the impression of a scattered variety without order. At the same time, however, if we do not take into consideration mere private enterprise and pedagogic industry, we are filled with admiration at the many great things which the love for the young and the interest in their education have done in England during past centuries. In no country in the whole world have so many foundations for this object been made, partly by individuals and partly by associations. The higher schools in England proper have almost exclusively sprung from such an origin ; nowhere, moreover, as I had occasion to mention in my last letter, is the number and the amount of scholarships and similar bequests founded for the attendance at schools and universities as large as in England ; it is proportionately much smaller in Scotland. This does not, however, prove that the higher instruction is sufficiently provided for, and in comparison with Prussia, for example, one higher school exists in England only for a much larger number of inhabitants. It is impossible to make an accurate statistical calcula- tion of the proportion of the number of higher schools to the population or to the area of the different parts of the country, partly because there is no fixed definition of a higher school, and partly because no distinct lines of demarcation can be drawn either between the higher, the middle, and elementary schools, or between them and the universities. It will soon be clear that on both sides the limits are fluctuating. I will now endeavour to give an out- ox ENGLISH EDUCATION. 5< line of the whole domain of the higher schools in England, and to indicate characteristics for making a division. I reckon among them all those institutions whose aims are higher than those of the elementary schools, which, independent of religious instruction, satisfy the humblest wants by instruction in reading, writing, and arithmetic. Instruction in foreign languages will therefore be one of the characteristic marks of a higher school. The most obvious differences in England as elsewhere are those of degree and kind. I will first give a general survey of both, and then add a few observations on the different forms comprised in them. According to the degree and extent of the offered means of higher education, the Elementary school is suc- ceeded first by the Middle-class school, corresponding to the German town-schools, higher Burger schulen and Pro- Gtjmnasia; and further on, the Public and Grammar schools, which correspond to the German Gymnasia and Bealschtden. Next follow the Collegiate Institutions and University Colleges, whose character is a mixture of school and uni- versity, or comprise both forms though separated from each other. Lastly, the Universities themselves and the special institutions for future clergymen, lawyers, and medical men. The difference in degree of the institutions here men- tioned, however, is intended to give only what actually exists, and not a graduation in the course of study. Among the numerous differences in kind I mention first those of sex : they are higher institutions both for boys and for girls, and mixed ones for both ; according to their origin they are church-schools, town-schools, foundations, endowed schools, charities and others ; according to their 58 GERMAN LETTERS destination for edncation and indruction, or for the latter only, they are boarding and day schools ; according to their course of study they are either of a classical or of a realistic tendency, and those in which there is a combina- tion of both ; they may further be distinguished according to their denominational character; according to their patronage andi property: public, proprietary, private schools ; according to local dtstinatian, inasmuch as a school may be specially or exclusively destined for a single locality or for a larger district (county schools) ; and lastly according to ranlis : for the upper and middle classes, in which the difference of expense for instruction and education is an im- portant item. A special kind of schools which have arisen in modern times are the so-called international schools. As in regard to the difference of degree, so also in regard to the difference of kind, there are of course schools which may be said to stand on the borderland. Such are the professional schools whose course of study also embraces general instruction, for example, polytechnic, agricultural and military schools. Following upon the whole the above order, I will now add some remarks about the special kinds of schools and the circumstances connected with them. That the domain of Elementary schools is not strictly separated from that of the higher instruction is shown by the subjects prescribed to them by the government as well as by the traditional custom prevailing in all parts of the country, but especially in Scotland ; every- where the curriculum in particular institutions also embraces elements of higher instruction, at least, as optional subjects. The schools of the National and the British Society in their higher classes partake of the ON EXGLISH EDUCATION. 59 cliaracter of middle-class schools ; and the elementary schools, called after Dr. Birkbeck their founder, (without religious instruction), include in their curriculum also French, chemistry, experimental philosophy, social science, &c., and are in reality preparatory technical schools. A classification of schools is least possible in Scotland. The parish-school system is there the foundation of public schools. John Knox connected the necessity of popular education with the reformation of the Church, and this circumstance gave rise at an early time to a sort of compulsory school attendance throughout the country. The subjects in parochial schools are everywhere reading, writing, arithmetic, biblical knowledge, the shorter catechism, and Latin ; but in many places various other subjects also have been admitted, such as Greek, mathe- matics, physics, technology, and even phrenology. The elementary schools advance into the domain of the higher, and the latter are at the same time general schools.* The eagerness to learn has always been very great in * In an official report of last year we read : " Parochial schools are attended by children who ought to he in infant schools, and what are called infant schools are attended by big boys and girls, who ought to be in more advanced schools. The Burgh and middle-class schools, in like manner, which might be expected to be secondary, combine in themselves infant, elementary, and secondary schools. Sometimes in the same class-room, and taught by the same master, there are boys and girls of fifteen and sixteen years of age, reading, it may be, Homer and Virgil and Racine, and alongside of them infants under six years of age, learning their letters and their multiplication table, and young men of eighteen and twenty, who, according to age, ought to be in the universities. There is no uniformity or organisation throughout the country, but schools have been lelt just as they have grown up, or old schools have been amalgamated with new, so that the general result is a sort of ill-ordered patchwork, and the great marvel is, how much good comes out of this disorder." 60 GERMAN LETTERS Scotland ; in the seventeenth century the work at school lasted in some places up to ten hours daily. A school-inspector told me that on one of his last journeys, he asked, in a village school in the Highlands, whether any of the children learned the ancient lan- guages, whereupon several boys and girls rose from their seats ; that a girl who stepped forward barefoot, gave a good translation of a chapter from Julius Caesar, and solved a geometrical problem accurately ; the teacher then sent for his best scholar, who, with his permission, happened to be engaged in the fields ; the boy came in with the traces of his work on his hands and feet ; the teacher handed him a copy of Virgil and of Xenophon's Anabasis, and the inspector told me that the boy trans- lated satisfactorily the passages selected by him. He added that he had met with similar cases in other village schools. Things of this kind appear interesting to us when we hear or read of them, and we rejoice at the zeal of these children, but we cannot approve of it for various reasons, especially for the sake of the school itself. In the country such things are exceedingly popular ; even the humble and poor, it is said, are not to be excluded from the higher culture if they can anywhere obtain it. The whole Scottish school system has something of this romantic irregularity ; although the people generally are much inclined to turn their attention to what is practical and useful, still serious, nay ideal aspirations and great perseverance pass by the immediate wants almost without concern.* * I have just read in the Ilumilton Advertiser, a Scottish newspaper, the following remarks in an account of a cattle-show in Aberdeen : ON ENGLISH EDUCATION. 61 Middle-class schools are cliiefly intended to provide, without great expense, the necessary instruction for such occupations as do not require the studies of a university. In most of them Latin also is taught ; and the honour of having prepared pupils so far as to enable them to enter a university is in the eyes of many too great a recom- mendation of a school to he indifferent about it, though in our opinion it would be better if the school confined itself to the special task marked out for it. The middle- class schools recently established in London likewise go beyond their first intentions, and offer among other things Greek and even Hebrew, mostly without increasing the school fee, and make a show of individual pupils who have actually succeeded in getting into a university. The Scotch Borough schools are town-schools, and "There seems to be very little connection between the reading of Caesar's Gallic Wars and the rearing of prize bulls, between the knowledge of how the Roman State was founded and how black cattle are fed ; but the intellectual sharpness produced in a boy by the study of Eoman literature, is an excellent preparation for enabling him, as a man, not only to rear cattle, but to cultivate the soil, navigate the sea, manufacture and sell goods, lead armies, fight battles, and guide the destinies of nations. Does anybody believe that if the young Aber- donians had been taught botany, geology, astronomy, or any, or two of the so-called practical subjects, they would have been more skilled cattle-breeders, more intelligent agriculturists? Would the mental effort necessary to appreciate the formation of cellular tissue in plants, or that recfuired for understanding the construction of a language for the expression of men's thoughts, be the more invigorating? There is surely as much interest connected with the utterance of human thought and the doings of men, as with the growth of plants and the knowledge of their properties. W"e do not mean to undervalue the study of what are called practical subjects, but we are sure that, as instruments of general intellectual training, they are not superior to the studies that have helped to produce the hard-headed, close-fisted, argumentative, and intensely practical Aberdonians." 62 GERMAN LETTERS according to the extent of their course of instruction are either middle-class schools with the before-mentioned half elementary character, or public or grammar schools in the English sense. This next higher sphere of secondary instruction, as it is called in England and France, is, for the reasons mentioned, least developed in Scotland. John Knox indeed recognised the necessity of establishing colleges between the parochial schools and the universities ; but this part of his plan was not carried out ; and it is only the larger cities like Edinburgh and Glasgow that possess schools which can be compared to the German gymnasia. The inhabitants of other places frequently send their sons to England, if they desire to give them a higher education. In Scotland great efforts are made at present to render secondary schools as a speciality more independent ; I have mentioned in my last letter the association which has been formed for this purpose. The definition of a Public school is not fixed ; the name is traditionally given — somewhat in the sense in which in Germany Schulpforte is called Landesschule — to a small number of the oldest schools, especially Winchester, Eton, Westminster (which are connected by special foundations with colleges at Oxford and Cambridge), Harrow, Rugby and Charterhouse, which properly speak- ing, belong to the genus grammar school, because in- struction in the two ancient languages constitutes the principal part of their teaching, and they are all intended to prepare pupils for the Universities. But the name Grammar schools is generally applied in a wider sense only to the smaller public schools ; many grammar schools moreover have no arrangements for boarders. ON ENGLISH EDUCATION. 63 College is another general name for these institutions ; in Scotland they are also called High Schools and Academies ; and the name public school has there a dif- ferent meaning, for since the Educational Act for Scot- land was passed in 1872, the name is given to all the institutions, parochical as well as endowed and grammar schools, which are under the management of School Boards. I shall afterwards have occasion to speak of the division of endowed schools made by the govern- ment into institutions of the first, second, and third grade. University Colleges exist, e.g., at Liverpool, Bristol, and Aberystwith in Wales. The older institutions of this class, especially Owens College at Manchester, have a tendency to become independent universities, but have as yet not been able to obtain the right to confer academical degrees. The teachers of Owens College are also em- ployed in an Artisans' College in the same city. The subjects of instruction in university colleges are chiefly the exact sciences in their practical application, but also medicine, law, the ancient and modern languages, litera- ture and history. What appears to us specially sur- prising is the fact that students are admitted at so early an age and without sufficient preparation ; at Owens College boys may enter at the age of fourteen. It is equally opposed to our German notion of a clear organisation, that such different schools as academical institutions and lower preparatory schools should be united together, and that too in the same building. I saw this for the first time in New College, London, an institution for theological studies of Dissenters. It comprises a preparatory course of two years (faculty of arts, to which boys may be ad- G4 GERMAN LETTERS mittetl at the age of sixteen, if tliey are acquainted with the first elements, the accidence of Latin and Greek) and a theological course of three years. In 1826, University College was founded in London, in opposition to Oxford and Cambridge (in 1828 160,OOOZ. were already subscribed for it), and in 1832 University College School was added to it ; both are without any ecclesiastical connection. This called forth a practical protest on the part of the Church in the establishment of King's College in 1828, and King's College School in 1830. The well-known historian George Grote was for a long time President of University College, while his father by contributing money took part in the establish- ment of King's College. Thus the old era is separated from the new one. Both colleges, besides their preparatory schools, have also opened evening classes during the winter months, in which all the subjects of university as well as of school instruction are taught to young and old. The age of admission and the degree of preparation re- quired sufi&ciently show that both colleges are still pre- eminently mere schools. Every one who has attained the age of 16 may become a student there, though he may not possess the knowledge — to judge from the printed questions of the entrance examination on the ancient languages, even in the case of those wishing to enter the theological department — of a pupil of a secunda* in a German gymnasium. In King's College reports are sent to the parents of the students at the * A German Gyrunasium has six classes, the lowest being called sexta, so that the herAuula would answer to the fifth form in our jiublic schools. — Ejd. ox ENGLISH EDUCATIOX. 65 end of each of the three terms, into which the year is divided. The schools of the two colleges have upper, middle, and lower classes, and separate departments for classical and practical subjects of instruction (classical and modern sides). The German universities combine scientific research with scientific teaching and training to scientific work, while scientific research is the exclusive business of academies ; but the universities of England have pre- eminently confined themselves to teaching and examin- ing, and the London University is simply an examining institution. In Germany most of those who have passed through a Gymnasium, or a Kealschule of the first order, enter upon scientific or professional studies, as the natural sequel to school-learning; but in England, the universities, if we except the just mentioned London University, are still essentially schools : " the first year of the student's university life is a mere continuation of his school-work." Some of the excellent works of W. Whewell on ' English University Education ' are written in this spirit. At Oxford and Cambridge, you cannot ask " to what faculty does a young man belong?" or " what does he study ?" but " where does he study?" that is, " to what college does he belong ? " The number of such college-foundations for collegiate life at Oxford amounts to twenty, independently of five smaller ones called halls ; in Cambridge there are fourteen colleges and three halls. The real professional studies are generally pursued by those who choose them at all, after their university career. Many of the faculties, it is true, do exist, and are represented by professors; but they do not constitute the component parts . of the university ; 66 GERMAN LETTERS this is clone by the colleges. The degrees in ■ theology, Liw, and medicine are not conferred by a faculty, but by the university as such. This and the difierent relation of the state to the acquisition of knowledge explain the difference between the English and German universities. The educational function of the English universities is only a rise upon that of the public schools ; to strengthen and deepen the general culture, especially by a pro- longed occupation with the ancient classics, and to bring the character of the young man to maturity : " to turn him out more of a man than he was before." The order of study and the discipline are regulated according to these objects, and English students are allowed less freedom than we are accustomed to in Germany. No certificate of maturity is demanded for matricula- tion at Oxford or Cambridge, nor is there in general any examination for admission, the latter is the case only in some colleges — such as Balliol College at Oxford. It is the general opinion that most of the colleges do ijot consider it to be to their interest to be severe in the admission of students, and that thereby the universities have depressed the standard of the public schools. It is a rare thing for a student to have passed through the highest class of such a school. Men of practical ex- perience have assured me that the majority of students are insufficiently prepared, and that they proceed to the universities not to study, but to be coached for the examinations. The new-comer has only to pay his dues, and to recognise his obligation to submit to the general rules ; there must however be no doubt about his moral qualification. The chief object in most cases is the degree of Bachelor of Arts. ON ENGLISH EDUCATION. 67 The undergraduate receives his directions for study from his tutor, a fellow of the college, but chiefly from his private tutor, for the former is more especially obliged loco parentis to exercise a general care and superintendence over him. Fellows are those who enjoy the funds of a college as a pension ; they are elected by co-optation from among those who have passed their university examinations. Instruction is generally given during two hours daily , from 10 to 12, and more than twenty students rarely meet in class ; it is like the prima of a German Gym- nasium. It was formerly the rule, in addition to this, to be prepared by a private tutor, and the business of a private tutor was for a long time a very lucrative in- dustry at Oxford and Cambridge, but it is said now to be on the decrease. The lectures of the professors are on the whole little attended, especially because they do not, like the tutors, take part in the examinations. In recent times a step towards a closer union of the colleges has been taken, inasmuch as sometimes several colleges do their exercises in common under the same tutor or lecturer, who is regarded as particularly clever and able in his department, whereas formerly one tutor was thought suf- ficient for the different requirements of the students. Last year Oxford had thirty-seven professors and one hundred and sixty-eight college tutors and lecturers, of whom one hundred and fifty were fellows. The natural sciences and modern languages have recently been added to the old subjects of instruction. The year is divided at Oxford into four terms, at Cambridge into three ; but on the whole it is customary to devote less than one-half of the year to study ; and as great importance is attached to physical F 2 68 GEEMAN LETTEES exercises, study must give way to these and other out-door amusements, especially when the weather is fine. Besides the students living in the colleges there are also externes, who in Cambridge form the majority ; they belong to a definite college, but live in the town, and are bound in the arrangement of their time to follow the rules prescribed for the others ; they attend divine service at their college, and are generally obliged to dine there. At Oxford those who have lived three years at a college must take apartments in the town, in order to make room for others. To these has been added in modern times a third class, unattached students, who are not subject to the regulations of a college, but to the general rules of the university, and must have a tutor. The consequences of the unrestrained life led by these students not living in colleges, induced the authorities at Oxford in 1854 to abolish this arrangement : Ne quis Scliolaris in domibus privatis victitet aut hos]jitetur ; but this could not be carried out, and in 1868 the old custom was completely revived. Special professional studies are for the most part* carried on after the university course in seminaries and other institutions of a practical character. But the admission to them is by no means dependent upon the candidate proving that he has studied at a university. There are in England a goodly number of medical men and judges, also dissenting ministers, who have never studied at a university. Most of the clergy of the * About three-fourths of the students of Oxford last year wislied to prepare themselves for the more diflicult examination for honours, one-third in the ancient languages ; others in a descending proportion in modem history, theology, law, matliematics, and natural science (in the last only one-fifteenth). ON ENGLISH EDUCATION. G9 English Chiirch, it is true, receive their education at Oxford or Cambridge, but it is not necessary that the candidate should have taken his degree; a clergyman above all things must be a gentleman, and his having resided for a time and for this purjDose at a university, seems to be considered more important than the examinations ; to judge of his qualifications is afterwards the business of the bishop. In the theological department of King's College, London, the diplomas there acquired after an attendance of two years are accepted by the bishops as sufficient proof of qualification. In the same college, persons who during the day are engaged in other occupa- tions, may prepare themselves in the evening classes, even for theological appointments.* At New College, which I have mentioned before, the students are often young men who have previously carried on some trade. In justification of this, it is sometimes said that those who have before gained a larger experience in life are better fitted for the clerical office than others, who pass at once from school to the study of theology. There is a seminary at St. Bees, in Cumberland, for poor theological students belonging to the English Church. The future lawyer in order to gain a practical know- ledge visits the Inns of Court, such as the Inner and Middle Temple, Lincoln's Inn, Gray's Inn, or enters the office of some lawyer as an apprentice. This mode of * " With a view to meet the requirements of those who desire to enter Holy Orders, but are unable, for so long a period as two years, to relinquish professions in which they are already engaged, it has been determined (with the approval of the Archbishops of Canterbury and York, and the Bishops of London, Winchester, and Rochester) to allow a portion of the study and training of the theological department to be carried out in the evening." 70 GERMAN LETTERS proceeding and of acquiring a knowledge of law by the study of concrete cases is, in England, regarded as the only possible method, because the English laws are not systematically arranged, and cannot be treated as a science. During the last ten years an examination has had to be passed before admission into the courts, but Greek and mathematics are not required, and in some cases the whole examination may be dispensed with. According to the arrangements made quite recently for the practice of medicine, it is scarcely possible to be admitted to the study of it without a sufficient school training, and at least some knowledge of Latin. Medical students receive the principal part of their training in hospitals. It is well known that the medical art in England has distinguished representatives. The Scottish universities, compared with the old English ones, are poor, and like some of the Irish ones receive aid from the state. They are not what their name indicates, but have even more than Oxford and Cambridge the character of schools with lower and higher classes. At the beginning of the lesson the professor calls over the roll, puts questions, tasks are given out, &c. Each subject of general culture is always represented by only one professor : in Edinburgh, for example, John Stuart Blackie is the only professor of Greek. A minimum amount of knowledge is not required on admission; sometimes boys of thirteen years are enrolled as students. Those who have attended a high school are on an average sixteen years old, and enter the higher class ; besides these there may be young men of twenty-five who have come from country districts. In 18G6, 29 per cent, of the students in the Humanity classes of the Edinburgh University had ON ENGLISH EDUCATION. 71 come direct from elementary schools, and the percentage in Aberdeen was even greater. Professor Blackie in one of his writings says : " The Faculty of Arts in our uni- versities has been dragged down to the level of school teaching, and the professors have been forced systemati- cally to denude themselves of all their highest professorial and academical functions." Many of the students are entirely without means, and it still happens that during the more than six months' holidays they have elsewhere to earn the means of living in the university town during the winter. A life such as the students lead at Oxford and Cambridge is not known in Scotland, any more than the vita communis and the discipline of the colleges. The persevering industry of Scotch students is highly spoken of; Lord Stanley in his Eectorial Address at Glasgow in 1869 thought it even necessary to caution them against over-exertion. In all the Scotch universities the Eector is elected by the students. Ireland has an Anglican and a Eoman Catholic university at Dublin ; both have an entrance examination, the re- quirements of which, however, are much inferior to those of the German Ahiturienten* examinations. University (Queen's) Colleges were established in 1845 in Belfast, Cork, and Galway. The last place has also a Presbyterian College, and an old Eoman Catholic College exists at Maynooth. The new Eoman Catholic university at Kensington (London) admits pupils from the age of seventeen, and has a strictly regulated curriculum of four years. * An abiturieut is a young man who, after having gone through the six classes of a Gymnasium, is going through an examination to ascer- tain his fitness to enter a university. This examination may be termed a leaving examination. — Ed. GERMAN LETTERS LETTER VII. The Universities continued — Eton — International Schools. mifh/. I WILL now joroceecl to discuss the differences in kind of the higher schools mentioned in my last letter. In regard to their origin most of them are foundation schools, wholly or partially endowed.* The great insti- tutions at Eton, "Winchester, St. Paul's in London, and many others, are described as mainly Foundation schools. Hospital schools are a special kind of institutions, which have arisen out of charitable foundations or charities. Hospital in the first instance signifies a poor's house, and next very frequently a school connected with such a house. Christ's Hospital in London (the Bluecoat School) has been the model for others, as for Heriot's Hospital at Edinburgh, which was founded in 1628 ; the splendid Fettes College recently erected (1864) at Edinburgh is likewise a Hospital school. One-half of all the school foundations have probably originated in this manner, and most of them were intended for the humbler classes. The mischievous consequences of many children living closely packed together in a monastic fashion has now led the * The spirit of most founders is expressed in the inscription above the entrance of the school at Kingsbridge : — " Lord wliat I liave 'twas Thou that gav'st it me, And of Thine own this I return to Thee." St. Paul's School in London, according to the intention of its founder, Dean Colet, was to be : "A free school to all natives or foreigners, of what country whatsoever, none being excluded by their nativity, which exclude not themselves by their un worthiness, to the number of 153, as n, any fishes as were caught in the net by the Apostles (John xxi. 11)." ON ENGLISH EDUCATION. 73 authorities at Edinburgh to the determination to phice the children in families, and to have them educated with others in the hospital, which is to be converted into a day school. As the Fettes foundation left to the trustees their free choice, they have thought it best, considering the actual wants, to provide a higher school with a boarding esta- blishment for the middle classes ; it educates fifty boys free of expense. Glasgow, too, has recently been enabled by the Hutcheson hospital foundation, to establish a grammar school with an elementary and a secondary department, the latter being divided into a classical and a modern side. In England, as in Germany, we can distinguish %»Mmsi(X •and Beahchulen ; but a combination of the two is now more frequent in England than the specific separation, inasmuch as the curriculum of the public and grammar schools has been considerably enlarged by the introduction of the natural sciences, modern languages, and partially also by more attention being paid to history, geography, and mathematics. It often happens that according to the system of bifurcation, we meet in the same institution with the three departments which I have just mentioned in the case of the Glasgow grammar school ; the common substructure is also called the preparatory, lower or junior school (below thirteen years), the superstructure is termed the classical or general side, and the modern the mathematical side. Among the old public schools Harrow was the first to enlarge its curriculum by the addition of a distinct modern side ; and there, as at Dulwich, Marlborough, Birmingham, and Cheltenham, it is managed by the same head-master as the classical side. The same is the case in Wellington College, an excellent institution, situated in a beautiful 74 GEKMAN LETTERS part of Berkshire. It was founded in 1853, in honour of the Duke whose name it bears, for the sons of deceased officers ; and the funds were secured by subscriptions, to which was added the residue of the patriotic fund, which had been raised at the time of the Crimean war. A large number . of other pupils was soon added to the eighty foundationers w^ho are educated entirely free of expense. The institution has gradually changed its originally half- military character, and is now in most respects what we should call a BeaUchule. In regard to assigning equal rights to the classical and modern schools, the directors of the latter make very short work. A grammar school at Giggleswick, in York- shire, founded in the sixteenth century, has now become a Eealschule, according to the scheme drawn up for it by the Endowed School Commission, and is enjoying an excellent reputation. I saw it during the process of its transformation, which consisted, among other things, in the addition of a large building for boarders. The school calls itself " a first grade modern school, that is, a school answering in every respect to a first grade classical school, except that the leading subjects of instruction are Latin, modern languages and literature, natural science and mathematics. Greek, except in special cases, and verse compositions are omitted." Sometimes the classical and the realistic or modern de- partments of the same school are under difi'erent manage- ment, as, for example, in the Leathersellers' foundation and the Haberdashers' school in the suburbs of London. There are also institutions which, though belonging to each other, are yet locally separated and difi'er from each other either in kind or degree. Thus a Hospital Pre- ON ENGLISH EDUCATION. 75 paratory School in Hertford belongs to the Bluecoat School in London ; in like manner the upper school at Dulwich has at some distance a lower school, with Latin, for poorer boys, which is managed by the same head-master. A corporation which I have mentioned before (p. 50) has established for the south of England schools which belong to each other, first, at Lancing (Sussex), for the higher classes, chiefly classical ; secondly, at Hurst pier- point, for the middle classes, chiefly realistic ; thirdly, at Ardinghj, a higher elementary school (hohere Burger schule) for the poorer classes ; in the last two, however, oppor- tunities are offered for learning Latin and Greek. The same corporation has planned a similar group for the Midland district ; but has, as yet, only commenced the middle of the three institutions, a realistic school at Dengstone. There is a preparatory school for Lancing at St. Leonard's, near Hastings. Each group, moreover, has a girls' school connected with it. In Germany very few of the more important boarding- schools are situated in large towns; most of them, like Ilfeld, near Hanover, are in smaller places. Such is the case also at Eton, Harrow, Kugby, and now also Charter House; or they are situated, like our Schulpforte and Eossleben, in country solitude, for instance, Wellington, Mill Hill, Giggleswick, Glenalmond (Perthshire). Many of these boarding-schools also receive pupils who only take part in the instruction, whence they have non- resident as, well as resident pupils. But it is considered more genteel when the former are excluded, for which reason many heads of private boarding-schools say in their prospectus " no day-scholars are admitted." Even in the middle classes not a few parents, in order to appear 76 GERMAN LETTERS more respectable, send their sons and daughters to such exclusive establishments. In Scotland there are fewer boarding-schools than in England, but many day-schools also receive boarders, as, for example, Morison's Academy at Crieff, and Hutton Hall in Dumfries, which belong to the endowed schools. The fact that, in general, the education of boys in boarding-schools is preferred to domestic training and attending a day-school, arises from the belief that the mutual education which boys in boarding-schools receive from one another is of the highest value ; for there, it is said, the character is formed at an early time, and boys are prepared to bear the buffs to which everyone is exposed in after life, to show courage and resolution, and to acquire an honourable esprit de corps* What is called the Eton system regards it as its problem " to make manly boys." The number of pupils at Eton has been on the increase during the last years : in 1836 it had four hundred and forty-four puj)ils ; in July of the present year I found nine hundred and fifty-two. The seventy foundation scholar- ships, or King's scholarships, were originally intended for poor boys, but, as at present the benefit is acquired by competitive examination, several sons of wealthy parents are in the enjoyment of them. Seven hundred and seventy oppidans reside in boarding- houses, which are now, for the most part, kept by the masters * In an official report of 1867 I find the following : " In the great schools which possess famous traditions, and in which the pupils come for the most part from tiic liouses of gentlemen, there is a tone of manners, and a sentiment of honour, which go far to neutralise the disadvantages of a too early withdrawal from the shelter of home. Few boys can breathe such an atmosphere without being strengthened by it." ox ENGLISH EDUCATION. 77 (thirty) in tlie vicinity of the school ; those which used to be kept by dames have been reduced to two. Eton has longest held to its ancient traditions ; innovations were met by " it was always so," until a few years ago (1872) new statutes were framed ; since then the new governing body has made many internal as well as external changes. Mathematics and French now belong to the obligatory subjects. Twice every year an examiner, invited by the governing body, comes from Oxford, selects a number of pupils from each class, examines them in whatever he likes, and also looks over their written exercises. The old-fashioned, much-abused school-books have been thrown aside, the number of class-rooms has been increased, and are now also heated in winter. The income of the in- stitution amounts to about 30,000/. annually. All boys on the foundation must belong to the English Church ; but it is no longer necessary either for the Provost or the head-master to be a clergyman. Boarding-schools for the higher ranks exist in sufficient number (the most frequented among the older ones, next to Eton, are Harrow, Winchester, and Merchant Taylors', in Loudon, which has one hundred foundationers), but for the other ranks there is a scarcity of such boarding- schools as are not too expensive and enjoy the general confidence of the public. In consequence of the government measures the ex- clusive ecclesiastical or religious character of many schools has recently been given up, but in opposition to this it has been made more stringent in others, for new institutions have been founded with a definite ecclesias- tical tendency. The inclination towards ritualism, which is increasing in the English Church, shows itself also in 78 GERMAN LETTERS some schools, for example at Bloxham near Banbury, in Oxfordshire : the school, a higher elementary school with Latin, it is said, " is esjjecially intended to give a sound general education in the distinctive catholic principles of the English Church, and, in a manly, liberal spirit to boys who, as a rule, go direct from school into the busi- ness of life." Lancing, which I mentioned above, and the institutions connected with it are of a similar character. Besides the Anglican Cathedral and other parish schools, there exists a number of Dissenting institutions, as of the Wesleyans (for example their Collegiate Institution at Trull near Taunton), Methodists, and Independents. But most of them are of a mixed character, especially the schools of the Society of Friends, which are highly praised on account of the care and ability of their masters, and are not confined to children of their own denomination. The Moravian-schools also, for example at Fulneck in the "West Biding, are likewise attended by other children, as is the case in Germany, from which country they from time to time receive new masters. In Scotland the presbyteries at first took part in the ecclesiastical management of the parochial schools, but, as in Germany, the direct ecclesiastical influence has been more and more repressed. By the side of the public schools (in the Scottish sense of the word) there also exist schools of the Church of Scotland, of the Free Church, the Epis- copal and the Eoman Catholic Churches. The last are on the increase in England. Among their larger colleges I may mention by way of example that at Stonyhurst in Lancashire, and Mount St. Mary's College near Chester- field, which, like the school at Oscott near Birmingham, are managed by Jesuits. ON ENGLISH EDUCATION. 79 The state in no case exercises the rights of a 'patron over any of the higher schools. In Germany several of these schools would, according to their foundation, be under royal patronage ; such would be the case, for instance, with Eton, Westminster, King Edward's School at Birmingham, Shrewsbury, the Grammar schools at Sherborne, at Bury St. Edmund's, and others ; but in England government has no direct influence over them. The funds of the endowed schools, from whomsoever they are derived, have not been bequeathed to an individual person, but to a place, to a district, or to the country in general, that is, to the nation and not to the state as such, of which they are, on that account, independent ; they are, like Oxford and Cambridge with their rich college foundations, national property. While therefore with us in Germany the Joachimsthal- Gymnasium and Schulpforta, princely foundations of early times, have in their internal and external relations en- tirely fallen under the administration of the state, Eton, founded by Henry VI. as a preparatory school for King's College, Cambridge, has its own special administration, is independent, and could resist the interference of a com- mission of inquiry appointed by Parliament, and at all events reject proposed alterations. I have already men- tioned that it has at last given up its resistance. The governing body possess the patronage and the corporate rights of the institution of which they have the administration. The composition as well as the name of such governing bodies are very different. In the case of several of the old public schools, the three universities, and the Koyal Society of London, are represented in the governing bodies ; in some cases the body of the masters, including the head- master, are entitled to elect one of 80 GERMAN LETTERS their number. In Eton, tlie governing body consists of the Provost and ten Fellows ; at Westminster, of the Chapter of the cathedral ; at Winchester, of the Warden and the Fellows ; at Eugby, of the trustees ; at Harrow, of the Governors ; at Dulwich it consists of nineteen persons, eleven of whom are elected by the Court of Chancery in London, and eight by the four London parishes which are privileged by the deed of the foundation. Moreover churches, universities, corporations and as- sociations of different kinds, have the patronage of schools. In Leeds the patronage belongs to trustees headed by the vicar of the principal church; in Bristol it belongs to the corporation. It is the same in some towns of Scot- land ; but at present the high schools of Edinburgh and Glasgow are no longer under the patronage of the city- corporations, but are placed under the School-boards in- stituted by the government. In such cases the towns only retain certain honorary rights of representation. King's College in London, under a permanent Principal elected by the Council, has something of a monarchical constitution. In University College the Council itself determines everything, and a new President is elected every year. The Froprietary selwoh are the property of individuals or of associations, which have founded or maintain them on account of the interest they take in education. Some of the best schools of the country are of this class. Many also are the property of shareholders, whose object it is to make money by them. In this the head- masters are generally in an unpleasant position, as the proprietors, if they live in the same place, generally wish to interfere in everything ; and cither from selfishness or * ON ENGLISH EDUCATION. 81 from vanity often make the most perverse arrangements ; but whether they live near or at a distance, at all events they expect good dividends upon their shares. Many public advertisements of such establishments and of private schools may be seen, in which they offer to do a variety of things for everybody, e.g., " Thorough preparation for the public schools and universities, the Naval and Military Colleges, Local and Civil Service examinations, and for professional and commercial and all business life;" in like manner they promise to " take special care of delicate and backward boys, and of Indian and colonial children." Proprietary schools are commonly distinguished from Private schools, which are the property of an individual who at the same time conducts them. As to his ability no one has a right to question it. Being institutions established at the risk of an individual and for his own benefit they are also called Adventure scliools. The number of such schools and the difference in their arrange- ments are very great in England, and many are said to be incredibly bad. To teach and to set up schools are parts of free trade there, and any one who has been found want- ing in other occupations, or has become a bankrupt in all manner of undertakings, may still set up an " academy for young gentlemen," " a commercial " or " an agricul- tural academy." He engages the cheapest teachers, who if they know nothing of what they are to teach may stick to books. It rests with the parents as to whether they wish to entrust their sons to him ; very many do it, and I have often wondered at it. As individual men are essen- tially different from one another in the clearness of their ideas about the relation between the means and the end 82 GERMAN LETTERS and in tlieir ability to distinguish between the two, so one nation possesses these qualities more than another, but no nation seems to have them to the same extent as the English, both in their public and in their private affairs, whence they generally appear as calculating and cool reasoners. But in selecting a place for the instruc- tion or education of their children this clearness of judg- ment is most frequently wanting. Numberless parents still allow themselves to be deceived by seductive lauda- tions in the public papers, and by splendid promises to meet all the wishes of the public, and in their blind confidence entrust their children to incompetent teachers. I am well aware, on the other hand, that there are some very excellent private schools, and that some of them have most able teachers; and I, for my part, have always been of opinion that it is desirable to allow a free pedagogic field of experiment alongside of the public institutions, which are bound by fixed rules, even for the development of the special talents of the teachers themselves. We may further observe a difference among schools ac- cording to the social -position of the parents — a difference not known in Germany to the same extent. It does indeed happen among us also, that some institutions for a time acquire the reputation of gentility through the sons of wealthy parents, who give a certain tone to them ; but special distinctions of rank are not fostered in German schools ; even the Bitter -Ahademien (schools for the nobility) have given up their exclusiveness ; the equal desire to be educated, and, after the time of school attend- ance, the mere fact that youths have passed the Ahiturien- ON ENGLISH EDUCATION. 83 ten-Examen (leaving examination qualifying for the University), make them all equal in rank. The City of London School, and others, state their object to be to " furnish a liberal and useful education for the sons of respectable persons who are engaged in professional, commercial, and trading pursuits." Other institutions are expressly called Middle-class scJiools. It does not easily occur in Germany thus to name the class of the population for which a higher school is established ; the character and the aims of the school are indicated, and it is left to the public to avail itself of it or not. It is only in girls' schools that a somewhat stricter distinction of ranks is observed. In England, where the nobility does not form a distinct class in the continental sense, an aristocratic exclusive- ness makes itself nevertheless felt in the education of the young. Some heads of schools do not admit boys at all, whose fathers keep a shop ; in other schools the lives of such boys are made miserable by the other pupils. The following case was related to me in London. A mother brings her son to the head-master of a school, where the fees were high. One of her questions is : have you sons of tradespeople ? The head-master answers yes, but they are well-behaved boys, and belong to respectable and wealthy houses. This was of no use, the mother went away and took her son with her. It is generally believed that parents not belonging to the higher ranks, send their sons to such schools, with the intention of raising them, by the acquaintances they there form, into the higher social circles. This ambitious motive may actually exist in many cases, and be one of the causes why some public schools are so numerously attended; but it is g2 84 GERMAN LETTERS well known that very many families, by the very wealth acquired in commerce and other industrial undertakings, have been raised into the region of the aristocracy. The expenses for a pupil at Eton, if clothing, games, military drill and journeys are included, generally amount to upwards of 200/. per annum ; even those who are on the foundation require annually about 25Z. At Kugby the expenses amount to about 150Z. But there are also boarding-schools, where the annual cost is 50Z. and even less. The fees in the Gymnasia and Eealschulen through- out Prussia are, with few exceptions, the same ; but in England we meet with the greatest differences in this respect.* International schools have been mentioned in my last letter. We cannot wonder that the idea of a greater community of culture should have arisen at a time when the nations have been brought into such close contact by the new means of communication. Before the last war with France, negotiations were carried on for a time about a question which came from that country, as to whether French candidates might be admitted into German seminaries (normal schools), provided German candidates were received in return in the seminary for middle-class teachers at Cluny. Various reasons pre- vented this scheme being carried into effect. At the time of the great Exhibition in Paris, 1862, Eugene Ecndu raised the question about instituting in- ternational schools. The idea was taken up in England by Cobden, and soon found supporters. The object was at first really something grander than the mere learning of foreign languages by a residence in a foreign country ; * Some examples of school fees, &c., may be seen in Appendix I. ON ENGLISH EDUCATION". 85 the personal and friendly intercourse of young people was intended to set aside national prejudices, and to prepare an area for general peace throughout Europe. The plan then was to form a large company of shareholders, and to establish at four places — those originally proposed being Oxford, Munich, Paris, and Eome, or Florence — schools which should be perfectly alike in their arrange- ments. The institutions were to admit pupils between the ages of eleven and eighteen, and were to dovetail into one another in such a manner that after every second year each boy was to pass on to another country. The language of the country was to be the language in which the instruction should be given. It was hoped that by this means, and by the intercourse of the pupils in the school, the European languages would be acquired with fluency without any special instruction in grammar. The opposi- tion which this proposal of course also met with, pointed chiefly to the fact that by such a method only an out- ward and superficial culture could be acquired, and hinder the strengthening of the special national character. For a long time this and other considerations were not listened to ; but it was nevertheless not attempted to carry out the proposed method, principally because the same amount of readiness was not met with in all of the four countries to contribute the funds necessary for the undertaking. Moreover there was no lack of educational establishments for young Englishmen either in France or in Germany {e.g. on the Ehine, at Dresden, and elsewhere). In England some institutions under the above name still continue to exist, as at Spring Grove near London. During a visit I paid to that in- stitution, four years ago, when Dr. Leonhard Schmitz 86 GERMAN LETTERS was still its principal, I found a motley assemblage of pupils : some were the sons of Germans resident in England, others had come from Spain, Portugal, North and South America, and India; but the majority were English boys. There were only very few French pupils. At every lesson which I attended, I witnessed the extra- ordinary difficulties with which the instruction in the institution had to contend. This reminds me of a conversation on a kindred subject, a universal language, which I once had with a Frenchman under peculiar circumstances. It was Antommarchi, the private physician of Napoleon at St. Helena. In 1831 we were obliged for a whole fortnight to share the same room in the Herrenkrug near Magdeburg, where we were in quarantine during the prevalence of cholera. He was then on his return to France after the fall of Warsaw, where he had served the cause of the Poles. He was an agreeable narrator of the events he had witnessed, and it was exceedingly pleasant to discuss matters with him, for he understood the art not only of speaking, but also of listening. But I could not convert him to my opinion, that the English and not the French must become the universal language. The cosmopolitan idea of one lan- guage for the whole world is started again and again on different occasions ; Leibnitz was not the first who thought of a " Pasilalia," and the subject has been repeatedly discussed in consequence of the marvellously accelerated intercourse among nations by means of rail- roads and electric telegraphs ; in fact the restoration of the German empire has quite recently been the occasion of a serious proposal to assemble a congress of scholars, for the purpose of determining upon a general language ON ENGLISH EDUCATION. 87 for the intercourse among nations, or in ease of need to create one, and to make it a rule that this language should be taught in all the schools. LETTEK YIII. Comparison of the School Administration of Germany and England — The Committee of Privy Council on Education — School Inquiry Commissions — The Governing Bodies — Dulwich — Schools of First, Second, and Third Grade — University Eeform. Scarborough. The Odyssey can nowhere be read with greater pleasure than by the sea-shore. How I have again felt this here, where the roar of the ocean comes in at my open window, and my eye can follow the sunny coast-line of the bay ! But my present letters have to speak of other impressions and studies. In my last I gave a general survey of the different kinds of schools existing in England. We in Germany also have a great variety of public and private educa- tional establishments, differing in kind and degree, although the variety is not as perplexing as in England. The difference between the two countries, which in this respect is at once evident, is that we in Germany have everywhere a definite school-system, and a fixed order of administration under the management of the government. Both are wanting in England. Owing to the influences of a transition period, many things with us in Germany have become uncertain, and are subjects of controversy ; for example, the ways and means by which the aims and objects fixed for the different kinds of schools can be 88 GERMAN LETTERS most surely attained. However the aims themselves, for example in Prussia, are fixed and distinct according to the destination of the particular institutions. In like manner there is a firmly established connection, and a well regulated mutual relation among the schools which embraces the whole system. We are not so self-satisfied as to suppose that our school-system is therefore perfect. We know its defects, and know in what it is internally wanting in spite of its outward appearance of order ; this order, however, inas- much as it nowhere hinders the further -development, facilitates the work of progressive reform. This we owe to the state, to the government; we know what we have in and from it : it is above all this unity of administration ; it is free from arbitrariness, and is conducted in most German countries — in the central localities as well as in the provinces— by men who have obtained their appointments after long practical activity and experience in schools. In all important questions the advice of those acquainted with the subject in the country is listened to and made use of to a large extent. In the schools themselves, however, the head-master is not prevented, by the arrangements established by law, from carrying out the idea of culture in accordance with his own best judgment, and, in like manner, no obstacle is put in the way of the free pedagogic influence of the masters on the boys. And hand in hand with the direction and the superin- tendence of the whole, with the attention paid to the objects of the schools themselves, goes the care which is bestowed upon the persons connected with it. Fixed laws and administrative ordinances protect both the master in ON ENGLISH EDUCATION. 89 his rights and claims, and secure the school itself against neglect and official abuse. Every approved teacher of a public institution has a right to expect a pension after leaving his office, and moreover the institution of a widows' fund can set his mind at ease, if not entirely at rest, in regard to the future of the family he may leave behind him. When we compare this state of things with that which at present exists in the English school system, I can scarcely say otherwise — and Englishmen themselves have used the same expression — than that things are in a chaotic state,* the very reverse of organisation. There is an absolute want of any clear division of the whole domain, of a definition of the different kinds of schools, and of fixed distinct objects. In many cases we ask in vain for some decisive authority which would pre- vent freedom from degenerating into arbitrariness. It is true that an extraordinary amount is done, that ample means exist and are contributed with great liberality for scholastic purposes ; but they are frittered away. The affairs of education and culture, and the science and art collections, are in very different hands, and belong to separate departments, which are quite independent of one another. Hence, in these matters, one everywhere misses unity and combination of the powers of adminis- tration. What grand things might be attained, could the means be kept together and employed according to some fixed plan of unity ! The many noble endeavours * " We are now beginning to look forward hopefully to the gradual reduction of our educational chaos into something like a system," are the words of a head-master. Similar remarks are met with in the reports of some of tlie Schools Inquiry Commissioners. 90 GERMAN LETTERS anil unselfish contributions towards the great object of education are as they stand — isolated, atomistic — not nearly so effective to the whole as they might and ought to be. The obstinacy and strength of Englishmen in their feeling of independence become weaknesses where organi- sation is required. I shall, in a subsequent letter, speak of the precarious personal position of teachers. At present people are on all hands busy with reforms. But a unity of plan and a firm guiding hand is wanting. The old system, which has in part been already aban- doned, worked well and successfully in its way ; and no safe method has as yet been found for the new one; it has still to be tested. Thus many experiments are still going on, and in the education both of boys and girls courses are here and there being pursued which sooner or later will be recognised to be erroneous. What is need- ful in such times is a man of the character of Thomas Arnold, in whom were combined clearness of perception as to the requirements and means, with a practical mind for carrying them into execution, and an energetic power of will to direct them. But, even though such a man could be found, how could he, in England, acquire the right of acting authoritatively ? I have mentioned before that in the case of elementary schools, and of the institutions for training teachers for them, the government has created an organisation of administration which has already accomplished great things. The want of a central administration, in the first instance, for elementary schools, was for a long time felt by many. The Church alone could not, either in England or in Scotland, supply the want ; in like manner ON ENGLISH EDUCATION. 91 the self-government of the towns and counties, as well as the action of the two great school associations (the National and the British), and the efforts of other charitable associations, proved insufficient. As early as the year 1832 therefore a Parliamentary Commission was appointed to inquire into scholastic affairs, and in 1839 the Committee of the Privy Council on Education was formed by the Privy Council of the Queen ; this is the germ of a special ministry for education in England. Lord Mel- bourne's ministry, and afterwards Sir Kobert Peel, aimed at placing the schools under government control ; but the plan had to be given up ; it was impossible at that time to carry a law through Parliament, and the attempt contributed not a little to the fall of Peel's ministry. The difficulty lay on the one hand in the opposition of Parliament and of the people against any centralising measures of the government ; and on the other in the religious question, where the liberty of conscience of the individual as well as the antagonism between the English Church and the Dissenters had to be taken into account. The government was thus met by the jealousy of political and religious liberty, and had to content itself in the meantime with commencing some improvements, without a law, in the way of administration. But amid continued struggles the Committee of Council steadily kept its object in view, and at last, after long parliamentary debates, has succeeded in bringing about a central administration for elementary schools. A wish has often been expressed that the government should take under its care those schools also which are destined for the middle classes of the population ; but, hitherto, the government has declined, for many other reasons, and 92 GERMAN LETTERS also because it is tlioiiglit right to wait and see whether the school-hoards established for elementary schools might not, of themselves, enter into some connection with the institutions immediately above the elementary schools, which has in fact already taken place in Scotland. The above mentioned Committee, the Education Depart- ment of the Privy Council, stands under its Lord President, who is responsible to Parliament, The Duke of Ptichmond is now President ; the principal business of the Committee devolves upon the Vice-President and his secretaries. The Vice-President, now Viscount Sandon, occupies a position somewhat similar to that of our Minister of Instruction, but his authority is more limited. His predecessor, during Mr. Gladstone's premiership, until 1874, was Mr. W. F. Forster, who was at the same time cabinet minister, and hence still more influential. The Cabinet in England is something different from what it is, e.g., in Prussia, where it is the privy council of the king, through which he communicates his resolu- tions to the ministry. In England the Cabinet may be regarded as a select committee of Parliament, or, if you like, of the ministry, and constitutes the real government of the country. Not all the ministers are members of the Cabinet ; but the members of the Cabinet always belong to the much more numerous body of the Privy Council. The Secretaries of the Education Department are in a position similar to that of the Prussian Ministerial Councillors {Geheime Ministerialrdthe). The principal one among them at present is Sir F. E. Sandford, who is at the same time Secretary of the Science and Art Depart- ment for the promotion of the exact and natural sciences, ON ENGLISH EDUCATION, 93 which ever since 1856 has been connected with the Education Department. There are at present in England one hundred and two Inspectors of Schools (ten Seniors with an annual salary of 700Z. each ; that of the others varies between 200?. and 600?.) ; in Scotland, which has its own Education Committee, there are eighteen. The action of these School Inspectors and of the Education Department extends, as I have already observed, only to elementary schools, and among these only to those which are assisted with public money. With the higher schools the Government has nothing to do, except in regard to their financial affairs, and even this only if they are endowed schools, and are maintained by their own endowments. As the interference in these cases is on the whole very cautious, Mr. Kobert Lowe, M.P., and under Mr. Gladstone a member of the Ministry, might well express his indignation at the restraints put upon schools by the deeds of their endowments. In a speech which I heard him deliver at a school festival, where he was the chairman, he said : " In England, schools are managed not by strong living hands, but by dead ones." The amount of such endowments in the schools of England proper is estimated at about 1,000,000Z. The endowments of many old schools in and near London, which were at first perhaps small, have enormously in- creased during the last two or three centuries, in con- sequence of the rise in the value of land. In regard to the application of their endowments, all these schools are under the High Court of Chancery, which has the super- intendence of charities and the protection of infant heirs. The inquiry into the management of the property 94 GERMAN LETTERS afforded to the government an opportunity, with the sanction of Parliament, of gaining some insight also into the pedagogic and didactic character of the schools, their doings, and their course of study. For each of these two objects different Commissions were appointed one after another, and voluminous reports were pub- lished ; at the same time the Commissioners were led by their observations to suggest proposals of reforms. A Charity Commission had been engaged for some con- siderable time in inquiring into the application of the funds of charitable foundations ; but in 1861 a special Commission was appointed for the nine large endowed schools of Eton, Winchester, Westminster, Charterhouse, St. Paul's, Merchant Taylors', Harrow, Eugby, and Shrews- bury ; its title is " Public Schools Commission, to inquire into the revenues and management of certain colleges and schools." This task was followed by others, referring partly to the remaining endowed schools and other in- stitutions, which occupy an intermediate position between the public and the elementary schools, partly to private and girls' schools, partly to scientific instruction (a Eoyal Commission for this last was appointed in 1870), and partly to the universities. A special " Endowed Schools and Hospitals Inquiry Commission for Scotland " was appointed in 1872. The results of the inquiries were in each case laid before Parliament by the Committee of Council, where- upon the Public Schools Acts were passed in 1864 and 1868; and the Endowed Schools Acts in 1869, 1873, and 1874. By the Endowed Schools Amendment Act of 1874, Charity Commissioners were appointed instead of the Endowed Schools Commissioners, with the same ox ENGLISH EDUCATION. 95 powers and authority. This is the still existing Com- mission for the Endowed Schools. Owing to the independence of the several foundations and their great differences determined by local circum- stances, the work of the Commissioners was very laborious and extensive; they had to strengthen themselves by Assistant Commissioners. The Commission appointed in 1864 had to deal with no fewer than 782 schools. Their personal inquiry was generally prepared by a number of questions sent to the schools. The reports mention nearly 20,000 questions, which according to the special circumstances were addressed to those concerned, to- gether with the answers. The Commission which at the request of many was formed in 1865, to inquire into private schools, that wholly neglected branch of the educational machinery, was ordered to address eighty-one questions to the heads of such schools. These questions enter much into detail in all directions, inquiring into the external as well as the internal arrangements, and the whole of their operation. As the admission of the Commissioners in this case depended entirely upon the good will of the heads of the schools, it was recommended to proceed throughout the inquiry with discretion and caution. It is very interesting to read the instructions given to the Commissioners, e.g., those of Mr. H. J. Koby,* Secretary to the Schools Inquiry Commission of 1874. At first the Commissioners did not by any means meet with a cordial reception everywhere ; in some places * He is the author of a Latin grammar in two volumes, which shows that he is well acquainted with German works on the same subject. He now lives at Manchester, and is the owner of a manufactory. 96 GERMAN LETTEES they even met with decided opposition and refusal. Others, on the contrary, were impatient and vexed be- cause, considering the urgent need of reform, they had to wait for the slow process of such inquiries, and the legislation that was to follow. The reports of the different Commissions and Com- missioners fill a very large number of folio and octavo Blue Books, which are evidences of their labour, per- severance, care, and accuracy ; but it is difficult to make use of the mass of materials gradually accumulated in this manner. The reports of Mr. D. K. Fearon on London and Scotland are among the most searching and most instructive. Printed along with them are the re- ports of the Commissioners who were sent out to examine corresponding schools in France, Italy, Switzerland, Prussia, and Holland. The report on the higher schools of Prussia is by Mr. Matthew Arnold (1868). The result of the inquiries regarding the endowments was that in many places the intentions of the founders had entirely fallen into oblivion, and that the benefits were not enjoyed by the poor for whom they were destined, but by the wealthy ; that much carelessness, abuse, and disorder existed in the administration of the funds, and that the altered circumstances of the times demanded a difierent application of the funds for the common good. The endowments had in not a few cases been anything but a blessing to the place and the school ; they had accustomed the inhabitants, and the teachers, too, to live on heedlessly and without an^ exertion of their own : instruction, for which they had not to pay, was looked upon and treated by many parents with indifierence. When the Charity ON ENGLISH EDUCATION. 97 Commissioners forbade the administrators of an endow- ment to si^end part of its funds upon annual dinners, as was the custom in some places — the experience of the London Guilds had sufficiently shown what sums out of their charitable endowments were annually spent upon such entertainments; — it sometimes happened that they were requested not to interfere with the old custom, because the trustees on such occasions were sure to meet, and because such social gatherings were most likely to keep up a cordial feeling between them and the teachers, and an interest in the school itself. Otherwise most of the Keports about the public schools expressed themselves satisfied with the state of discipline and with the care taken about the physical training of the pupils, but dissatisfied with the general results of the instruction, and this in a still higher degree in the case of a very large number of the other schools. The first and most important result of the Eeports was that, with the consent of Parliament, new governing bodies were appointed for most of the public schools. By the Act of 1868 these bodies were empowered to make alterations. In regard to the admission of pupils, they ruled : 1. That they should be admitted only on the ground of a previous examination, and that the limits of age for leaving the school should be fixed difi'erently from what they had been before. 2. That the number of admissions and of foundationer- should be diminished or increased according to circums stances. 3. That the admission to the benefits of the endowments should be granted only on the ground of examinations. H 98 GERMAN LETTERS 4. That the election of masters should not be subject to restrictions, e.g., that it should no longer be dependent upon their having received their education in certain schools and universities, and that they should not be forbidden to marry. 5. That the sanitary condition of the schools should be better cared for. 6. That their property should be more carefully managed. 7. That the course of instruction should be enlarged in some schools and limited in others. 8. That exemption from religious instruction should be possible. 9. That the necessity of being boarded in the schools should be abolished. 10. That the head-master should be appointed by the governing body, and the masters by the head-master. Partly the governing bodies, partly the Committee of Council, or Parliament itself, now made new arrangements regarding the granting of free education and other benefits — arrangements which were intended to give more weight to the will and real intention of the founder. In most cases an open competition was instituted, and the con- siderations of domicile, custom, and relationship, on which previously everything had depended, were greatly limited. It was, however, not thought desirable to admit the poor only, which was the literal meaning of some of the statutes, because the times had been very much changed, and because the state now paid annually large sums for the instruction of the poor. The abusive acquisition of privileges was prevented. It often happened, e.g., that parents took up their residence at Eugby, only for the ox ENGLISH EDUCATION 99 time that their sons attended school, in order that, as inhabitants of the town, they might enjoy its privileges ; upon this ground they could claim the admission of their sons, however little they might be qualified by talent or knowledge. As, however, the result of the competitive examinations has been that the prizes were carried off by the sons of wealthy parents who had been able to devote more time and money to the preparation for the examina- tions, more regard has of late again been paid to the circumstances of the parents in admitting their sons as foundationers. Let me mention, as an example of such changes, the endowment of Alleyn's College of God's Gift, at Dulwich, near London ; it is the foundation of an actor, made in 1612, and had been for a long time in an extremely neglected condition ; a dispute about the application of its funds, in which some London parishes are interested, had been going on for several years. The local circum- stances had become quite different in the course of time, as in other cases, where the founder intended to benefit a particular district of the city inhabited in his time by the middle classes as well as by poorer citizens. In the course of time the middle classes had, to a great extent gradually removed to the environs of the old city, and the inhabitants of that district of the city are now, for most part, poor people. It was no longer practicable to limit the benefits of the foundation to the children of those parishes, especially be- cause, at the founder's death, it amounted annually to 800Z., whereas now it amounts to 16,000/., and because the state now takes care of the elementary instruction of the poor, while there is greater need in the middle classes with H 2 100 GERMAN LETTERS small incomes. Accordiug to a decree of Parliament, three-foil rt lis of tlie funds of the foundation are now applied to educational purposes, and one-fourth to the support of the poor. There are two educational institu- tions, a lower and a higher; the latter, the Dulwich College, has received a splendid new building, erected at a cost of 100,0007. In both institutions the children of the inhabitants of the London districts concerned enjoy some advantages on their admission, provided they have acquired sufficient preliminary knowledge. The new college, opened in 1870, seems to progress well, and is attended by considerable numbers. The fact that in its course of study more than usual attention is paid to drawing arises from the circumstance that the institution (like the Streifsche Scliulstiftnng, at Berlin) also possesses a very valuable collection of paintings, the gift of a benefactor, who left a capital of 12,0007. to provide for its preserva- tion in an appropriate home. Considering that at the time when most of the schools were founded Dissenters and Eoman Catholics did not yet possess a legal standing in England, and that, accord- ingly, only members of the Church of England had the enjoyment of them, Mr. Gladstone's Ministry went so far as to make the benefits of such endowments quite inde- pendent of religious profession, wherever the statutes were not expressly opposed to it. Toleration, enlighten- ment, and the religious freedom of the present day, it was said, demanded such a change ; according to the Endowed Schools Act of 1869 (it does not refer to the old public schools, nor does it affect either Scotland or Ireland) the appointment of teachers, also, was to be independent of their religious beliefs. Mr. Disraeli, Gladstone's sue- ox ENGLISH EDUCATION. 101 cesser, encleavourecl, in 1874, to abolish this arrange- ment, but finding Parliament not favourable to his plan, he withdrew his Endowed Schools Bill. In regulating the property of the endowed schools, the government has divided them into three grades. The division depends upon the different duration of the school course, and upon the average age up to which boys are expected to remain at school. Schools of the first grade are those at which the pupils remain up to their eighteenth or nineteenth year ; of the second grade are those in which they remain till about their sixteenth year ; and of the third grade those in which they remain until about the fourteenth. The course of instruction is regulated according to this and to the available means. Some institutions which, according to the intentions of their founders, still continued to admit and educate boys gratis, or for a small fee, up to the universities, but were unable to attain this end on account of their limited means, were reduced to a lower grade ; while others, whose means were proved to be sufiicient, were raised to the rank of schools of the first grade. In order to establish a more suitable course of instruc- tion, sometimes definite rules were laid down, e.g., that the natural sciences and modern languages should be introduced, and sometimes a series of general recom- mendations were made to be taken into consideration. In this new arrangement the government drew up a scheme based on the Keports for each of the endowed schools, and for the management of its funds ; and the scheme was communicated to those whom it concerned for the expression of their opinion upon it. In case of the Committee of Council not being willing to consider 102 GERMAN LETTERS any objections thus raised, Parliament miglit be appealed to for its decision. The schemes have the force of law, as soon as they have been confirmed by the Queen.* More than throe hundred schemes have already been drawn up, a proof of the unremitting activity of the Endowed Schools Commissioners. I asked a head-master who is very well acquainted with the state of affairs, whether, in the plan of in- struction and in the arrangements of the schools in general, the Eecommendations were universally followed, and whether more agreement thereby had been efi'ected among institutions of the same kind. He smiled, and then quite frankly said : " I do not think so, we are not accustomed to it ; I imagine everyone now, as before, does as he likes. The governing bodies, often strangely composed, have the power to interfere in many ways; but they are often not united among themselves or differ in their opinions from the Eecommendations, and thus the internal affairs of the school generally remain as they were before." All that has hitherto been done with great exertion and a large expenditure are only beginnings, but not the beginnings of a planned organisation ; the efforts have been too isolated, and their success is too little secured. The government does not touch the real work of the school, but has to do almost exclusively with its externals, and always only with one particular school without regard to its connection with institutions pursuing the same object. The government sometimes lacks the authority and sometimes the energy consistently to insure general * In the Appendix No. II. is printed, as a specimen, the sclieme for the endowed school at Waketield. ON ENGLISH EDUCATION. 103 obedience to the new principles. The differences of the authorities concerned is in most cases too great: local, secular, clerical bodies, the Charity Commission, the Court of Chancery, and the Parliament, have to be consulted ; whence it is often very difficult and wearisome to carry into effect even the most useful plans. There is always the greatest fear of having anything to do with the Court of Chancery, because business there is always connected with a large expenditure of time and money. The Keports and the actual condition of the schools furnish abundant materials ; but where is the architect to construct out of them an edifice worthy of the greatness of England ? The feeling among the teachers in general is that the utmost they would concede to the state is the right of supervision, but not that of controlling. But what is the use of supervision which cannot insure corresponding effects ? I have discussed before (p. 65) the universities only as institutions for instruction and education ; I must here return to them, inasmuch as recently they too have become the subjects of reform, effected or introduced for the most part by the orders of Parliament. At Oxford and Cambridge the colleges form the university ; the unity of the latter is overshadowed by the independence of the former. Keble College, the latest addition to Oxford, has been constituted in the same spirit ; it is named after Keble, the poet of the ' Christian Year,' who died in 1866; Merton College, the oldest, was founded in 1264, The Congregation at Oxford consists of all the Masters of Arts who reside at Oxford and are actively engaged in university work; hence of all the Professors, Heads of 104 GERMAN LETTERS Houses, Tutors, pen to them. A regular system of yearly examination by examiners unconnected with the school will be established." In this new arrangement also the head-mistresses have at once acquiesced in the possibility of their being dismissed by the council. Each one on her appointment has to sign a document in which, among other things, it is stated : "If I am removed by the council, I will acquiesce in such removal " (comp. p. 226). ON EXGLISH EDUCATIOX. 241 with much encouragement and has already established twelve schools; each of them has a special governing body responsible to the council of the company. These new institutions are intended to give an education " as sound and as thorough as that which boys now receive in grammar schools of the highest class." Opportunities are also offered to pupils in these schools of training them- selves for the office of teachers, as is often the case in the higher girls' schools in Germany. The Corporation of Hutcheson's Hospital at Glasgow has opened this year a new girls' school for the middle classes, in which besides languages, geography, and arithmetic, bookkeeping also, telegraphy, needlework, household economy and cookery are taught, in order to prepare the girls not only for domestic duties, but also to render them fit to fill positions in the Post-office, in telegraphic and other establishments where female labour is in remunerative demand. Academic and other institutions for the varied culture of women and girls have been established of late years in several places. Queen's College in London has existed ever since 1853. There and in almost all similar institu- tions the ancient languages also are taught ; the same is the case in the Ladies' Educational Association connected with the London and Edinburgh Universities, and in the Clifton Association for the higher education of women. At Cambridge classes have been opened for women, and in the neighbourhood of the town there are Newham Hall and Girton College, which have been established for the same purpose, and are much frequented. University College at Bristol has opened its lectures and exercises, with the exception of the medical classes, to students of 242 GERMAN LETTERS both sexes. The inventor of the Holloway pills has purchased a piece of land near Eghani, not far from London, for 25,000/., intending to erect upon it a ladies' university, on so grand and comprehensive a scale that, if it is ever carried out, it will even surpass Yassar College near New York. Girls are admitted to scientific examinations in nearly all the universities, and it often happens that they carry oS good certificates and prizes in Latin, mathematics, and natural philosophy, and some- times even in Greek, chemistry, geology, logic, and political economy. The fact that the means of education are now ofi'ered to females in a much ampler measure than before, again shows the energy of the English people. The earnest- ness and the persevering strength herein manifested is deserving of admiration. The number of women distin- guished by special studies in some departments of know- ledge is in England very large. And it very often happens that the wife is not only interested in the scientific occupations of her husband, but takes an active part in them. Their literary activity also is not to be undervalued; for although English authoresses have published very much that is worthless, still we are in- debted to them for a series of excellent historical works and translations ; even the Tauchnitz Collection contains not a few things which surpass the merits of ordinary entertaining literature, and in which the higher interests, originality of conception, and excellence of style are combined to such a degree that we may well admit that England in productions of this kind is at present excelled by no other country. But it is just this praiseworthy share of English ladies in the literature of their country ON ENGLISH EDUCATION. 243 that shows at the same time the limit of the female mind for it. I do not believe that in the modern striving after intellectual culture, however honourable it is, the limits clearly marked by nature and by the destination of the sex are sufficiently considered. People have in general not formed sufficiently clear ideas in regard to the object, and the result is but too often out of proportion to the great efforts which are expected to be made both bodily and mentally. Moreover I, for my part, consider it to be too dependent and narrow a conception, nay, an utter mistake to imitate as far as it is in any way possible the arrangements existing for the scientific education of the male sex. This mistake is committed in establishing the collegiate system for girls, in teaching them mostly the same subjects, in following the same methods, in employ- ing the same pressure to gain certificates and prizes, and other things of the same kind. Many parents have no eyes to see what their daughters lose for ever through such a gain ; and the present academical course of study is the most unsuited of all for training female teachers. It is quite certain that the education of the two sexes must have a common foundation not only in religion, but, e.g., also in history and literature, if the wives are to meet their husbands in understanding the great problems of life. And as it would be an injurious one-sidedness to develope in boys only knowledge and conscious activity, so it would be an equal mistake to regard the develop- ment of the feelings and of receptivity as the only problem in the education of girls. On the contrary, it is especially in girls that the greatest importance should be attached to the clearness of their conceptions, n 2 2-14 GERMAN LETTERS because Iviiowletlge and feeling must work together to produce the right volition. But it does not follow from this that the plan and method of instructing girls should be made as like as possible to the arrangements destined for boys and youths. If we add to this the girls' own eagerness to overcome what is strange and hard by obstinate diligence, this often not only injures health, but oftener involves the loss of the genuine feminine charac- ter. To feel the correctness of this view, one must have seen how crowds of girls with their books, &c., hurry to the lectures — for it is lectures that are demanded above all things — and one must have heard even in a railway carriage how they talk about problems in natural philo- sophy, while others, as I have often witnessed, diligently study some Latin grammar. Englishmen themselves are not unconscious that their female students also adopt more and more the free ways of the Americans, and that in their eagerness to learn, they often do not only gain knowledge, but acquire a misdirected culture which destroys the feminine character and grace. Some months ago I went from Hastings to Battle, to revisit the old abbey. The gate was still locked. Awaiting its opening, I sat down on a shady bench close by. The same was done by a girl of about twenty with her two brothers, who were spending their holidays at home, and whom she had taken to Battle to show them the abbey. As two nuns happened to be passing, I asked her whether there was a convent in the place. She said No, and our conversation starting from this point was continued for a short time, when the gate was opened, and we afterwards walked for some time together in the park. In our conversation I made use of a French word, ON ENGLISH EDUCATION. 245 because I considered it more significant. She said, " Wliat does that mean ? Pray tell it me in English." When I remarked that I had thought French was taught in all English girls' schools, she said she belonged to the sect of the Plymouth Brethren, in whose schools there were, indeed, opportunities of learning French, but that her parents had not considered it necessary, and that with the exception of a little mathematics, she had received only the usual elementary instruction. I was astonished to hear this. But notwithstanding this naive confession of her ignorance, her conversation had shown me that she possessed such a clear understanding, e.g., in eccle- siastical matters, and such a fine taste in her judgment of the architecture of the abbey, as to make on me the impression of a healthy simplicity and of an har- monious culture resting on a deep foundation. Her mind had nothing of an acquired showiness ; everything was her own and was naturally developed from within. She was, moreover, free from sectarian pride, and within her narrow sphere she evidently enjoyed a satisfaction which many never attain in their wider spheres. This Ply- mouth sister shall form the conclusion of my letter about women. 240 GERMAN LETTERS LETTEE XYI. The Elementary Schools before and after the Edncation Act of 1870 — The Religions Difficnlty— The Birmingham League — Payment by Results — The Education Act of 1876. Sc'irboirmfih . It is clifiracteristic of the state of element anj schools in England that, after the introduction of a new order by the Elementary Edncation Act in 1870, not a year has passed without alterations being made in it, and that Parliament during the present year's long session has been engaged upon no subject so much as again with elementary schools, without the discussions about it, ac- cording to all appearance, having been brought to a final close by the Act of 1876. We may see from this, on the one hand, that in this matter the government has to deal with great difficulties, and on the other, that there exists both in the people and its representatives a general and unceasing interest in the question about education. In the first place, let me remind you of the following facts which belong to an earlier period : Scotland, ever since the Keformation, has had its parochial schools ; in England the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge in 1G98 made provisions for popular instruction, and established a large number of schools ; an association for Sunday Schools was formed as early as 1785. The National Society for promoting the education of the poor in the principles of the Established Church was founded by Andrew Bell, and has been under the protectorate of the Archbishops of Canterbury ever since 1811 ; the ON ENGLISH EDUCATION. 247 Britisli and Foreign Scliool Society, which owes its origin to Joseph Lancaster, has displayed extensive activity since 181-4 ; this last society allows the Bible to be read in its schools, but no sectarian religious in- struction is given. Both these societies are supported partly by the churches, and partly by private bene- volence and bequests. In 1833 (see p. 48) they received for the first time subsidies from the state, and in 1839 (see p. 91) an educational board was instituted, chiefly to control these subsidies, which from the first were granted on condition of the respective schools being inspected by persons appointed by the state. Accord- ingly the inspection of schools by the state is not the result of a natural right, but of a compact : a school which does not receive or take money from the state cannot be superintended by it. — Ever since 1840, the Wesleyans have a special committee for the management of their schools. Ever since 1843 the National Society has had some training schools for male and female teachers. In 1844 the Ptagged School Union provided for the very poorest of the population. Besides these, there existed for elementary instruction many muni- cipal schools as well as a large number of private ad- venture schools (see p. 78). A conviction was gradually spreading that all this was no longer sufiicient for the increasing wants. I have already spoken (see p. 91) about the opposition which the government first met with, when it tried to treat the matter as an affair of state. The discussions about it in Parliament were particularly excited, when in the year 1847 a demand of 100,000?. was made for elementary schools. In the preceding year the principle of free 248 GERMAN LETTERS trade had gained its victory, and many peojile could not make up their minds at the time to give up the same principle in the department of public, although only elementary, instruction. The whole nation seemed to be divided into two parties for and against the measure. Macaulay, in 1847, delivered one of his best speeches in Parliament in support of the bill. His principal argu- ments, which have been constantly repeated in the subse- quent discussions on the subject, are derived from the necessity of national security against the consequences of ignorance,* from the right of a child to be instructed, even against the carelessness or the will of its parents. Three interests are to be considered, that of the father, that of the child, and that of the state : the father alone, it is said, has not the right to determine, for every child born in England is heir to the rights of all Britons, but the ability to participate in them can only be acquired by education, and this the state must secure to it. But a long time elapsed before efficient measures were sanctioned by Parliament, even after the inquiries had brought to light the great faults and defects of popular instruction ; taxation for school purposes in particular was always rejected. The ordinances issued before 1858 as measures of administration by the Committee of Council were collected, and form the Old Code; in 18G1 there appeared a Pievised or New Code of regulations, and in 1870 the Pievised New Code; but in the same year the above-mentioned Elementary Education Act also was * "The arguments which show that the Government ought not to leave to i^rivate people the task of providing for the national defence, will equally show that the Government ought not to leave to piivate people the task of j^iroviding for national education." ON ENGLISH EDUCATION. 249 passed. This was at last a victory, chiefly due to the energetic efforts of Mr. W. E. Forster, and by it the elementary schools in England have been placed under state control. It seems to me further of importance to state a few facts to show the manner in which the government proceeds in the matter, because it characterises the condition of English schools in general. In order to attain its object the government has divided the whole country into school districts, England and Wales into eighty, of which London alone has ten, and Scotland into thirteen ; each district has to maintain a certain number of elementary schools in proportion to its population. The business connected with them has to be undertaken by school boards, whose election (both active and passive) belongs to the rate-paying inhabitants of the place without distinction of sex. A school-rate is intro- duced in the localities belonging to the school board to defray the expenses ; besides this the state on certain conditions grants subsidies. No instruction is given gratis ; the fees for very poor children are paid by the school boards, and in Scotland by the parochial boards. These boards representing as they do the will of the place after their election, may make school attendance com- pulsory ; they have also to fix the amount of the school- rate. The preparation of teachers for their ofiice takes place in training colleges established for the purpose. The instruction is limited to reading, writing, arithmetic, and biblical knowledge. The examination of the schools and training colleges and to report upon them are the functions of inspectors appointed by the state. I will add a few more observations about all this. To carry out the plan of organisation here indicated, it 250 GERMAX LETTERS was above all things necessary to have a sufficient number of school-houses, efficient teaching powers, and the co- operation of the school boards of the locality itself for both objects. As the matter is one of great importance, many are ambitious to become members of a school board, and the periodical elections each time cause much agitation. They consist of five or more members, according to the extent of the locality. Clergymen are not excluded, and have their natural influence in the boards. It is an unpaid honorary office ; the expenses connected with the election and administration are very considerable. In Glasgow, e.g., the first constitution of the school board cost 10,000Z. Here at Scarborough the first election in 1S71 caused an expenditure of about 134/. Until last year 1434 school boards had already been elected in England and Wales. Many of them proceeded with great zeal, especially in the erection of the new school-houses, for which they were allowed to contract loans. A large number of buildings rose in a short time ; they are built in different styles, but are everywhere an ornament to the locality. It was first necessary to have the house in order to be able to regulate, and in case of need to enforce attendance. The amount of space required could in every case be calculated only approximately ; but these calculations were in many cases fallacious, and hence in some districts more and larger school-houses were built than were required. Special inspectors, selected from the school attendance committee of the board, control in every district the attendance at school. They may stop every child in the street between the ages of five and thirteen and ask it to what school it belon.f's. If the child names one that is ox ENGLISH EDUCATIOX. 251 not a board school, it may be taken before a magistrate and be examined. If the result is satisfactory the child and the school are no longer interfered with : the school in that case is considered " efficient ; " if not, the school is examined (private schools however often refuse to submit to an examination), and if it does not satisfy the demands made upon it within a given time, and also declines to be placed under the board, the school is abolished. In order to avoid this, and also to rival the board schools and, if possible, to excel them, the other schools (they are to a large extent supported by voluntary contributions and are comprised under the name of voluntary schools) take much trouble to produce favourable results, for which piirpose they often employ teachers who are better prepared and therefore also require higher salaries. But both the supporters of English independence and the friends of the Church (including those of the National Society) prefer them to the state schools, not a few continue as before to pay not only the school rate, but their contribution for the support of voluntary schools, which they are not obliged to do. It may therefore happen that a new school-house built by the board is almost empty, while a voluntary school in the neighbourhood is quite filled. On the other hand, cases have occurred in which the new school-houses were not sufficient, e.g., when the ragged schools had been prematurely abolished, in con- sequence of which it was impossible immediately to provide space for thousands of children. The discontent of the poor was all the greater, because in the charity- schools the children had not only received instruction, but in case of need also food and clothing. All such circumstances have prevented the useful institution of 252 GERMAN LETTERS school boards from becoming popular with the ratepayers, on account of the supposed unnecessary expenditure, and with the lower classes, on account of the withdrawal of the above-mentioned charities, as well as on account of the strictness with which regular attendance at school is enforced. This last grievance is severely felt in manu- facturing and country districts, where the family has often to calculate upon the earnings of children. The school boards are empowered to propose bye-laws for their respective districts, but they require the approval of the Committee of Council and the Koyal sanction. In this manner, London, Liverpool, Manchester, and other large towns have been enabled to introduce the compulsory system ; and according to the Eeport of the Education Department for the present year, this is already the law for 46 per cent, of the population of England and Wales. Wherever it is introduced, persistent violation of it is punished by fines and eventually even by imprisonment. It will, however, require a long time before the English people become accustomed to such compulsion ; and even the most zealous friends of reform have not yet ventured to make it a general law. Even Milton has expressed himself in favour of compulsory education. What is most offensive to many in the Act of 1870 is its independence of the Church. It limits the duty of parents regarding the instruction of their children in the same manner as is now done again by the law of 1876 ; it determines that " it shall be the duty of the parent of every child to cause such child to receive efficient elemen- tary instruction in reading, writing and arithmetic," and nothing else ; school inspectors are not required at all to take account of the religious instruction. The Act of ON ENGLISH EDUCATION. 253 1876 touclies upon religions instruction only negatively in these words: "No religious catechism or religious formulary which is distinctive of any particular denomina- tion shall be taught in the school." This clause has been differently conceived and interpreted. It may mean that the school, though excluding sectarian instruction, should yet give instruction in the Bible, but also that it should be left to the school either to give such instruction or not according to its discretion. Some understand the clause to mean that by it not only the Apostles' Creed, but also the Lord's Prayer and the Ten Commandments are ex- cluded, a circumstance with which the government has been repeatedly reproached in Parliament ; others regard these three parts of the catechism as admissible and act accordingly, because, they say, all Christian denomina- tions are agreed upon them. In consequence of this un- certainty the schools, in regard to religion, act in very different ways. The voluntary schools, recognised as eJSicient, enjoy greater liberty in this respect, although in case of need they also receive state support. I have visited such a school at Stratford in Essex ; it contained, in four classes, about five hundred children, boys and girls, and, thanks to the energy of the principal teacher, was in excellent order and activity. It was an educational pleasure to see how he understood the art of governing the masses and keeping up the attention of every child, and how the boys singing pretty songs marched into and out of the school. From one point in the city I had seen seven churches of seven different denominations, and I accordingly presumed that many children would be ex- cluded from the religious instruction of the school, which 254 GERMAN LETTERS is given by teachers belonging to the English Church. When I inquired about this I learned that such was by no means the case ; the school is so dear to all, that they gladly allow their children to take part in it and even to learn the catechism. The religious difficulty therefore is here entirely out of the question ; in other places how- ever the difficulty is greater if the personal character of the teacher and of the local clergyman are less tolerant. In order to evade this difficulty, many deem it necessary to exclude from the . school all religious instruction, and even the reading of the Bible. An association called the Birmingham League makes the greatest efforts to effect this. Its principles are acknowledged by many, not indeed from religious indifference, but by men of a decidedly religious character ; they do so on the principle that the general elementary school as such ought to be a national school, and that in such a school nothing ought to be taught upon which the nation is not agreed, consequently, no religion. Acknowledging the necessity of a religious education of the young, they would leave it entirely to the Sunday Schools and to the various religious communities, and also allow the school-rooms to be used for the separate religious instruction at times when they are not wanted for general school purposes. When I remarked that such a purely secular education did not realise the idea of an elementary school and of the education of the young in general, that the isolated religious instruction was thus un- connected with any other, and that in many cases it would not be attended, as it is not like others obligatory, the advocates of the League could not but agree with me, but they, nevertheless, considered the absolute separation of the school from the Church as the only means by which the i ON ENGLISH EDUCATION. 255 school would be enabled to carry on its work in peace and unity. Many sujiporters of the same view also advocate the absolute necessity of carrying out the compulsory system, and of the state undertaking the entire management of the elementary schools. Others wish to exclude religious instruction from state supported schools, because they are opposed to the episcopal state Church whose intrusion into the schools they dread. These views have lately been expressed by a Manchester Nonconformist Conference and by the Kent Congregational Association.* In order to facilitate matters for children who, according to the wishes of their parents, do not take part in what the school offers as religious instruction, it has been arranged that in board schools religious lessons should always be placed at the beginning or the end of the regular school-hours. The opponents of state schools do not cease drawing the atten- tion of the people to the dangers involved in the abandon- ment^ of the old English custom, according to which education and religion have always been closely united. Such a one who had publicly spoken of a " Godless education " in board schools, recently received as a reply from the Chairman of the London School Board the remark that out of one hundred and twenty-six thousand school children only one hundred and twenty-four had excluded themselves from biblical , instruction, and that too not because parents availed themselves of the con- science clause of the law, but for other more external * " That no national system of education should be maintained except one which provides for united secular instruction, and leaves religious instruction to educational agencies which are indepeudent of state supijort." 256 GEEMAN LETTERS reasons. Another inquiry of the government has shown that last year eighty-three per cent, of the school boards in England and Wales had adopted the system of the British and Foreign Society, according to which the Bible in schools is either merely read, or read and expounded. The so-called London compromise, which further allows prayers to be learned and hymns to be sung, aims pretty much at the same thing. I must here supplement an earlier statement (see p. 48) about the large expenditure for elementary instruction, by mentioning the different sources from which the means are derived. Last year, England, Scotland, and Ireland received altogether : From the public funds . . £2,228,470 From voluntary contributions . 897,858 From school fees . . . 1,198,098 From endowments . . . 118,545 From the school rate . . 846,065 Total . . £5,289,036 For the present year only the state grant can be mentioned, which amounts — For England to . . . £1,707,055 For Scotland . . . 438,227 For Ireland .... 645,949 Total . . £2,791,231 Dissatisfaction with the school rate is often expressed. ON ENGLISH EDUCATION. 257 especially as its screw is going deeper and deeper ; in London it amounts this year already to four and a half per cent, on the value of a house or dwelling. Ever since the establishment of this rate the voluntary contributions have been decreasing ; for voluntary schools were established partly for the purpose of having some school at all events, and partly of having one of a special ecclesiastical cha- racter. The former reason is now removed by the board schools, to which people are obliged to contribute ; hence it is quite natural that the supply of voluntary contribu- tions has everywhere diminished, so that on the whole the number of voluntary schools decreases from year to year. Parliament also considered it expedient everywhere to exact school fees; it was above all things desired to promote more regular and more diligent attendance, and experience showed that to give instruction gratis does not produce such a result. According to the circumstances of the parents, from one penny to nine pence per week may be demanded. The fact that the state gives such large grants as those mentioned above for elementary instruc- tion, is censured by those who are of opinion that parents are as much bound to have the children whom they bring into the world instructed, as to provide them with food and clothing ; they maintain that the state ought to sub- sidise only the very poorest, as is the case in modern Greece, where university instruction is gratuitous, but not the elementary instruction. In England the government believes that for the present it cannot attain its objects without offering rewards for a diligent attendance and zeal in learning. Its grants are given in proportion to the " attendance and proficiency of the scholars, the qualifications of the teachers and the state of the schools." s 258 GEEMAN LETTERS The grants are determined by the results of the examina- tions hekl by the inspectors of schools, and for these examinations there are six different standards. The first demands only the simplest elements in reading, writing, and arithmetic ; the second enters a little upon the subjects of grammar, geography, and history ; and in these six subjects the requirements gradually rise up to the sixth standard. Kewards in money are given for the best performances, and for the most regular attend- ance at school. This is what is called "payment by results," which was already known in the New Code of 1861. The money thus gained goes to the funds of the Board ; the London School Board quite recently had already obtained the sum of 6,085?. Now what about the teachers ? Training colleges with schools for practice, mostly boarding schools, have been established for their training; their arrangements are left to the different religious communities ; but the state grants ample subsidies. Last year the training colleges of the English Church had 1787 pupils ; the expenses for each of them are calculated at 160?. per annum. The British and Foreign Society had 243 pupils in their train- ing colleges. In the first instance, those aspiring to the ofiice of teacher are employed as pupil teachers (in Scot- land they are sometimes called apprentice teachers), some- times, when no more than thirteen years old, e.g.^ as superintendents of infant schools : at the age of eighteen, after having passed an examination, they may be admitted into a training college, and later on, after a second ex- amination and after passing through a period of proba- tion, they may be appointed as teachers. They remain generally two years in a training college. In the final ON ENGLISH EDUCATION. 259 examination, certificates of a lower or higher degree may- be obtained. Similar institutions have been founded for training female teachers. The original intention was to grant state support only to schools with trained teachers. But as a sufficient number of these did not exist it was found necessary to admit others also who, without the preparation of a training college, had obtained a certificate of qualification, i.e., certificated teachers. As notwithstanding this there Avas still a want of teachers, a third class of male and female teachers was recognised who were neither trained nor certificated ; they first consisted of those who were not below thirty-five years of age, had been in school practice for ten years, and of whose pupils at least twenty had proved by an examination to have been tolerably well instructed ; in 1874 these figures were reduced to thirty years and fifteen pupils, and in 1876 even to twenty-five years and five pupils, the period of school practice being of course likewise shorter than had at first been demanded. This continued reduction is dangerous, because it creates teachers who can only claim small salaries, and are, therefore, in many schools pre- ferred to abler teachers. A landed proprietor in the neighbourhood of Manchester has recently placed at the disposal of the school board there one hundred scholar- ships of 25Z. each, to be enjoyed for three years by such pupils of elementary schools as show inclination and talent for the office of teacher. The regular salaries of teachers are in some cases in- creased by the payment by results, but this depends upon the reports of the school inspectors about the attendance, upon the results of their examinations, and the general s 2 260 GEEMAN LETTERS condition of the school. Pensions, though to a very- limited extent, are in certain circumstances granted to teachers in elementary schools and training colleges. The Education Act for Scotland of 1872 is essentially the same as that for England of 1870. In England the principal task of school boards is to promote " atten- dance ;" in Scotland, to procure " appliance and accom- modation," because, in general, children there are not wanting in eagerness to learn. The number of board schools in Scotland is much smaller than that of the parochial and Church schools. The school fees some- times vary according to the subjects taken by the pupils ; hence the school board of a Scotch town recently made known that the fee for instruction in reading was 10^7. per month ; for reading, writing, and arithmetic. Is., and if grammar and geography were added, Is. 3d. ; if Latin, French, mathematics, and drawing were desired, Is, 8«rZ. Such going beyond the limits of elementary schools is allowed everywhere, but has nowhere been more frequent than in Scotland (comp. p. 59); at present, however, it is beginning to be less common. The government attaches the greatest importance— and it cannot doother- ■vvise — to good and successful elementary instruction, for which reason many teachers confine themselves to it, in order to receive for themselves and for their schools greater rewards from the public funds. It is a subject of complaint with patriotic Scotchmen, even in their official reports, that in this way they gradually lose " a characteristic and admirable feature of the old parochial education of Scotland, that the highest instruction was generally within the reach of the poorest child who was capable of deriving benefit from it." ON ENGLISH EDUCATION. 261 The educational question has unmistakably, and not to its advantage, been drawn more and more into the dispute of political parties ; the long parliamentary de- bates upon it during the present session (1876) may be regarded as a political campaign ; but in what has been done we can at the same time perceive a thoughtful return from the hasty proceedings of the first excitement. It is for this reason that Mr. W. E. Forster, the author of the Act of 1870, has supported the present ministry, to which he does not belong, in carrying the Act of 1876, because the principle of his own law is maintained. It has not been determined to force increased attendance by the general introduction of the compulsory system ; it remains permissive, and is not imperative, i.e., the school boards are at liberty to apply it or not, as they think proper. Wherever the compulsory system has not been established, the object is now to be attained in an in- direct manner, viz.. by forbidding to admit children before their tenth year to work, e.g., in factories. After the tenth, and up to the fourteenth year, it is allowed only on proof being given that the child possesses a certain measure of school knowledge, such as can be acquired during that period by attending the school for half the day. This implies a mitigation of direct com- pulsory attendance, something like what we see in some of the Eastern States of America, as in Massachusets and Connecticut, where the exercise of the right of voting is dependent upon the ability to read and write. Another mitigation in the new law concerns the school boards. I have before hinted at the reasons why they are opposed by many. Now the Act of 1876 admits that boards may be dissolved, provided the district contains 262 GERMAN LETTERS no school for them, and elementary education is other- wise sufficiently provided. The Act further ordains that in smaller towns and country districts, where it is not as easy as in large towns to establish boards with their functions and their whole order of business, town councils, local authorities, and the guardians shall be allowed to take their place, and on the whole exercise the same powers. I pass over other new regulations, which are of less importance to my object. The Act throughout shows a relaxation of severity ; in religious matters also, wdthout expressing it, it allows greater freedom, and its enactments are not to be enforced at once, but gradually until the year 1881. Time is thus gained for testing it, for it certainly is again no more than an experiment.* The success hitherto attained in the legislation about elementary schools is in several respects satisfactory, for on the whole much more and much better instruction is given than before. Although much still remains to be done, and although, e.g., in London with its population of nearly four millions it has been impossible to prevent many children growing up without school instruction and wandering about as Arabs and wastrels, still the Duke of Eichmond in his statistical communications to Parliament was able to point to the fact that since 1870 the number of children at school had been increased by hundreds of thousands. The moral condition of the lower classes, also, already shows favourable results. The more the schools get into a quiet course, and the more a fixed order gains consistency in them, the more it * " We have been advancing of late siifiiciently fast in the worlv of education to be able to aflbrd a little breathing time for a new experi- ment." ON ENGLISH EDUCATION. 263 will be possible and necessary to revise the whole system of administration and to change some arrangements and appliances which were at first perhaps indispensable. It is at present an exceedingly complex machinery with a great deal of bureaucratic writing and little direct per- sonal influence. It could not but appear strange to me that the services of a man like Matthew Arnold as In- spector of Schools should be employed for hours in a Wesleyan training college, where I saw him superintend- ing about sixty pupil teachers writing out their tasks, which he himself had not set for them ; with us any teacher would be sufficient for such a function. I have not found that the inspectors of schools in London meet in conferences as a council on technical matters ; they have only to send in their written reports. The existing legal ordinances in my opinion require simplification and some of them also greater precision, as e.g., in what is said in section 14 of the Act of 1870 about religious instruction ; the Act further speaks of efficient schools, but does not state how they are to be recognised as such, nor is it said as to who is competent to judge of the efficiency of a school, &c. But the greatest obstacle to a healthy development of the system of elementary schools lies in the part which money plays in them. The payment by results is a stimulus for teachers ; but the impulse comes from without and not from the thing itself. A real organisation, that is, a form which contains in itself the living law of its growth, cannot possibly be developed in such circumstances. "When teachers— complaints also are made of it in official reports — allow themselves to be guided in their actions, e.g., in the choice and treatment of subjects that go beyond 264 GERMAN LETTERS the mere elements solely by the prospect of as much gain as possible, — " the educational code guides the teachers' course entirely by money consideration " — and when it can be publicly said that money has become the sole test of success in elementary school-teaching, then surely something is still rotten in this body and requires a healinfj hand. LETTEE XVII. Brief Retrospect— School Legislation in Prussia and in England- Public Opinion— Consideration as to what is to be done at present for the Higher Schools in England— Conclusion. Leytonstone. Before I again leave England I will close my epistolary communications in a place which is specially dear to me on account of the friends with whom I am staying. When I put together the features which characterise the present affairs of English schools, I am struck above all things by the lively, earnest and active interest with which the government and the people have made the education of the young the object of their care. Here we see the determined will to discover and carry out what is right and what is best, and the unmistakable desire to harmonise the just claims of the community and of the individual in a manner beneficial to both. These are the problems the solution of which engages the attention of all. Everything still bears the marks of a state of transi- tion; everywhere the unrest of reforming is observable. The demand of the ago to enlarge the course of instruc- tion in the higher schools could be resisted all the less, ON ENGLISH EDUCATION. 265 as it had to be confessed that it was impossible any longer to restore the old power of attraction to the exclusive or predominant occupation with the ancient languages ; the gain of the enlargement^ however, has become a loss, inasmuch as the course of instruction has lost its former simplicity and has not yet attained an inner unity. The new system of examinations is particularly calculated to render this difficult. Both, teachers and pupils make great efforts to satisfy them ; both work with greater exertion than before, but without the proper satisfaction and pleasure in their work. Yet the examina- tions produce this good effect, that arbitrary proceedings have been checked, and that a little more agreement has been introduced into the action of schools of the same category. When I look at what is still wanting and at the institutions intermediate between the elementary schools and the university, the arrangements for instruc- tion and their results, so far as I have become acquainted with them, I am inclined to regard the following as the chief desiderata : greater solidity in the elementary foundations ; a stricter separation of the different kinds of schools ; more definite aims for the instruction in the several classes and in the institutions themselves ; the abandonment of the now prevailing system of allowing pupils to choose their own subjects, in favour of the system of classes ; and institutions preparing teachers for their functions. I have no doubt that in this respect the majority of English teachers in the higher institutions will agree with me. It would be more difficult to come to an agreement as to the manner in which this object can best be attained in England. I do not consider it right to leave things in 266 GERMAN LETTERS the condition in which they now are to their further free development, and I am convinced that a decisive action on the part of the legislature is required. We in Prussia are in a very different position in this respect. Our school legislation has to deal with problems which are totally different from those of England : with us it must regulate, in England it must constitute. I do not mean to say that our work is easier, hut rather the reverse. It is indeed not unnatural that the Prussian public, after so many vain attempts to carry an educational bill, have become impatient. But how much do their vain attempts warn us to be cautious, and how do they reveal the great diflSculties that are still to be overcome ! They are to be found in the nature of things, in the difference — which also includes the schools— of the historical development of the numerous provinces out of which Prussia has gradually been formed, and in the connection of the schools with other relations of the state. This last point weighs particularly heavily. For not only the value of school certificates in public life, and the whole system of privileges, but also the internal constitution of the schools, the system of classes and the regulations about examinations, are connected with the manner in which the business of instruction is interwoven with the Prussian political system of administration. Normal plans of instruction have existed in Prussia only during the last decades. Formerly the head-masters had the double task of drawing up the plan of instruction and of seeing it carried into effect ; at j^rcsent so far as instruction is concerned they have only the latter task. In order to attain its own as well as the general objects of education, the state, seeing the frequent mistakes that have been ON ENGLISH EDUCATION. 267 made, found itself obliged to limit tlie self-determining power of the schools, and to draw up the outlines of an agreement among them. These normal plans are not arbitrary schemes, but constructed according to the idea of the different kinds of schools, and according to the claims which public life makes upon the schools. To prevent inconveniences arising was and is impossible. I will only mention the often lamented overburdening the pupils, the removal of which is expected from the legislature. The simplification of the course of instruction will always be one of the conditions of discovering a remedy for this ; but in endeavouring to efi'ect this not only the claims made upon the school from without demand con- sideration, but the conditions of the system of classes also have to be borne in mind. Legislation can do little in this matter unless it were to abolish the existing order of the Prussian school system altogether ; but by fixing the limits of the number of pupils in the schools and in the several classes, it may greatly facilitate to the head- masters and their colleagues the task of not unduly exerting the strength of the young. For the task is pre- eminently one of internal pedagogy, and must be treated individually, and consequently not according to legal enactments. General measures without due regard to circumstances might injure the blessing of work in the school. A proper pedagogy has to secure this blessing as well as to prevent harshness and abuse into which the laborious spirit of the Germans has always strayed in the education of youth as well as in other things. In Hugo von Trimberg's Benner we read that a pupil must be pale, and two centuries later Fischart, in his treaties on 268 GERMAN LETTERS Plutarcli's essay on the education of children, complains that parents overburden their sons with intolerable work, so that their minds decay like seared leaves, become in- dolent, and in the end altogether cease receiving and comprehending their lessons with a quiet mind, because the pleasure in them is drowned by excessive work. This then is an evil against which, as I have already said, a remedy is to be expected much less from the legislature than from pedagogy. Everything depends upon a clear view as to what the law can do, and what it cannot do, and what accordingly it ought to do, and ought not to do. The word of the Scriptures that no law can give life applies here also ; it does not reach the inner life and vital power of the school ; its real function and power here also is the right of protecting and of stimulating to do one's duty. It has, therefore, to consider what rights and duties belong, not only to all those persons taking part in the school, but also to the institutions or schools them- selves ; for without such rights and duties they cannot fulfil their tasks. Not to make mistakes in the enact- ments referring to this requires as much insight into the nature of the thing as practical understanding and historical tact, a combination of requirements which is rare among us, if we may judge from recent works written with a view to reform the schools and to assist the legisla- ture : how many Germans have still something of the idealist who builds his perfect castle in the air, but does not know how to settle down on the firm ground of given circumstances ! Although in the above-mentioned sense the legislature has to do with the external and internal order of the ON ENGLISH EDUCATION. 269 school, still it must confine itself to general principles as leading rules, and refrain from entering much into detail. We have seen in Belgium, Hungary, and also in Bavaria, how the overlooking of this maxim has become the cause of repeated experiments, has kept the schools in a state of perpetual unrest and uncertainty, and has weakened the confidence in legislative authority. In order to make the right selection and keep within the proper limits, it is requisite to possess a clear knowledge, matured by long observation, of what is necessary and possible ; a law must contain nothing that is not sup- ported by the full guarantee of experience and is not sure of success. Nothing, therefore, must be fixed by law which from its very nature must remain in the living flow of development, and admits of change according to circum- stances. In matters of instruction there are very many things of this kind, because a school is not a ready-made, complete thing, but has an inner living growth, and cannot be isolated, but stands in close relation to, and partially in interaction with the social life in the state, the community, the Church, and the family ; all these things are factors of national education in the wider sense of the word, and legislation has to take them all into account. Now the difiference between England and Prussia, as far I can see, consists in the fact that for most of these relations there exists among us already a fixed order and a comprehensive school organisation, whence all that is required is only a legal expression, so far as this is at all compatible with the nature and destination of the school, and so far as the latter must not be left to its own further development according to internal laws, under the 270 GERMAN LETTERS influeuce of the national spirit of Germany. In England, on the other hand, this order has still to be created, and the outlines of an organisation have still to he drawn, England's advantage lies in this, that it is less hindered than we are by legal arrangements already existing, and can thus confine itself to what is most simple and most needed. This is also rendered necessary on account of the peculiar views of the English people derived from tradition and the habit of centuries, that the order of their public life is less based upon general laws than upon actual and real circumstances and special rights. But the progress from habit to law and the action of correcting the former by the latter has already commenced; in the department of the higher schools it still proceeds with that caution which is the result of respect for the right of what exists. Hitherto the dis- cussions about elementary schools have shown that the right relation and the limit between the legislature and the rights of the executive administration have not yet been discovered. Parliament has hitherto been occupied a great deal too much with the detail of school questions, which ought to be left to the arrangements of the govern- ment or to local administration. The consequences of such a proceeding have not failed to show themselves. Legislation has not yet arrived at the final state and rest which the school requires for its internal consoli- dation : on the contrary, not a few ordinances clearly contain within them the germs of fresh changes that have to be discussed again by the representatives of the people. The government, as far as I know, does not at present intend to prepare a legal regulation of the whole domain ON ENGLISH EDUCATION. 271 that lies between the elementary schools and the uni- versities, but having taken the first step towards it, by- its thorough inquiries it will sooner or later be forced to it by public opinion. Legislation in England is dependent upon public opinion in a diflferent and more definite manner than it is in Germany. It may indeed be of a very transient nature, a mere ephemeral opinion of the multitude, changing according to the force of impressions made and guided by leading individuals ; but in most cases it is something stronger and more in- dependent, the concentrated expression of the spirit and will, which at any given time pervades the whole nation. This kind of public opinion in England overrides many dissensions and difierences, e.g., those of the different Churches, and unites the people into one body, the strength and importance of which for the common- wealth the guiding statesmen dare not neglect. It is in many cases a watchful, impartial, and strict guardian of order and law. It is the highest wisdom of the English government to recognise, to estimate, and to make use of the direction of this incalculable power of English life, and to avoid conflicts between it and the life of the state, which is still distinct from it. It has often appeared to me, as if with us, the demand for a law about instruction had with many men no other reason than that founded upon the constitution of 1850, which promises such a law, and the wish that this gap in the long series of our laws should be filled up at last. Such an abstract demand would have little force with Englishmen, and contribute little towards forming a public opinion on the matter. But the feeling and recognition of an actual want act with them all the 272 GERMAN LETTERS more powerfully ; they arise, grow imperceptibly, and gradually assume the form of demands with which the government of the country must come to an under- standing. If I am not misled by my own views, which I have found corroborated by isolated expressions of others, it will not be long before public opinion will express itself in favour of extending the legislation commenced with elementary education to the domain of the higher schools. Things cannot possibly remain where they now are ; they must go onwards. As to the how I cannot presume to say. But if I look at the matter quite objectively as the subject of a study in state pedagogy — and as such it is in existing circumstances of the highest interest— I might be tempted to sketch a plan which would have for its starting point the creation of a separate school authority. The central place would be a ministry of public instruc- tion in London, assisted by a standing council of qualified, experienced, and intelligent men.* Of such there is no lack in the country, they may be found in schools, uni- versities, and in other official or independent positions. The deliberations with them and the rich materials brought to light and collected by the Inquiry Commis- sioners would furnish the outlines of an organisation of the higher schools, the main object of which ought to be the classification of the schools and the establishment of provincial authorities of administration. These outlines * Otljcrs al«o have expressed "tliat the creation of a special ministiy dealing with science and with education is a necessity of the public service. In connection with, and supplementary to this ministry, there should be a permanent scientific council, whose advice on all {loints of science the ministry mi^ht obtain." ON ENGLISH EDUCATION. 273 alone would require the sanction of Parliament, all the rest would be matters of administration. The ministry in conjunction with the technical provincial authorities strengthened in their first deliberations by representatives of all the schools concerned would have to pass resolutions upon the following subjects : — The fixing of the limits of instruction in the different kinds of schools and in the several subjects of instruction, but so as to demand only a minimum, and in so elastic a manner as to leave free space for peculiar talents and inclinations of the pupils ; Limitation of the system of allowing pupils to select their own subjects, and the gradual introduction of the system of classes ; Leaving examinations conducted by the teachers them- selves, after abolishing the present method of examination; The conditions to be made regarding the endowment, the school-house, the providing it with all the necessaries for teaching, so as to' entitle it to registration and to hold leaving examinations ; Eeform of the present system of prizes and rewards ; The granting of school and university scholarships not according to competitive examinations but according to the judgment of the staff of teachers ; and Institutions preparing men for the office of teacher, establishment of special commissions subordinate to the provincial school authorities, for examining teachers and for granting them certificates. All the rest, the ways and aims, disciplinary arrange- ments, etc., would have to be left perfectly free to the several institutions. Private schools would be at liberty to constitute themselves according to the pleasure of 274 GERMAN LETTERS tlieir proprietors. But every head of such a school ought to be made to furnish some proof of his capacity. I think no thoughtful and unbiassed judge could see in a school arrangement of this kind any unbearable com- pulsion, anything injurious to the cause, or any kind of unworthy dependence. It does not touch the property of any existing institutions, nor does it threaten any of their real excellences, nor any of their peculiarities which deserve to be retained. I am convinced that the numerous difficulties with which the carrying out of such a scheme would have to deal in England, would not be insuperable, and I am equally sure that it would soon be felt to be a blessing. The recognition of the schools themselves by a public and competent authority would secure to them respect with the public, and confer a value upon their certificates ; in regard to the certificates of qualification for teachers the efi"ect would be the same. All these remarks however are intended to be and can be nothing more than the frank opinions of a man who has the advantage of being well acquainted with the working of German schools and to some extent also with those of England, and who desires to state candidly what, in his opinion, the schools of England at present stand in need of. He does so from the stand-point of his experience and knowledge of German schools, so far as the existing arrangements in his own country appear to him as generally adapted to their purposes. They are the conclusions to which lie has been naturally led, by what he has observed in the schools of England. I part from the country and from the subject, which, during my long occupation with it, has become to me more and more important, witli the wish and the hope ON ENGLISH EDUCATION. 275 that I may live to see the suggested reforms carried out, because they unite liberty with subordination under a respected authority. Englishmen have at all times regarded these two principles less as opposites than any other nation, and they have always known how to combine them both in their public and their private life. T 2 276 APPENDIX. I.— EXAMPLES OF SCHOOL FEES, &c. £ s. d. City of London School per annum . . . . 10 10 London University College School .... 24 King's College School, below 16 years . . .2-4 „ „ above 16 years . . 30 (For this the pupils have the loan of school books and stationery.) Stationers' School, London, 11. (including stationery). Dulwich College, Lower School. £ s. d. Below 14 years 4 Above 14 years 8 Dulwich College, Upper School. Below 13 years 15 Above ]3 years 18 Spring Grove 25 4 Clifton College 25 Giggleswick School 1200 Manchester Grammar School 12 12 Edinburgh High School, from 121. to lol., rising with the classes. Edinburgh Academy, from I'Sl. to Idl., rising with the classes. Glasgow Hutcheson Grammar School. Elementary Department II. to 21., rising with the classes. Secondary Department, 21. 10s. to il. The fees are the same in Hutcheson's girls' school. In the schools of the Society for the education of girls those under 10 years pay 9L Os., those between 10 and 13 years 12^. 12s., and those above 13 years pay Ifjl. 15s. per annum. The board in tlie great boarding-schools is at Euuby about 120Z. : at Harrow in the house of the head-master about 112/. ; at Wellington APPENDIX I. 277 College 110?. ; in the Charter-house ahout 110/. ; at Malvern College, below 14 years 80/., above 14 years 90/. ; at Sjiriug Grove from 70/. to 90/. ; in Clifton College, under 13 years 60/., above 13 years 72/. ; Salisbury School from 40 to 60 guineas ; in Trinity College, East- bourne, from 40 to 70 guineas ; in Leamington New College, below 14 years 60/., above 14 years 70/. ; in Lancing, 62 guineas ; at Hurst- pierpoint, 33 guineas ; at Ardingly, 16 guineas ; in Bloxham All Saints School, 32 guineas ; in Giggleswick School, below 13 years 57/., above 13 years 72/. ; in Hereford Cathedral School, from 60/. to 70/. ; in Fettes College, Edinburgh, 100/. ; in Morison's Academy, Crieff, below 10 years 45/., between 10 and 13 years 50/., above 13 years 55/. Tn the Moravian Institution at Ockbrook, near Derby, below 12 years 36 guineas, above that age, 40 guineas. In the boarding houses of the Masters in many of these schools the expenses are generally much higher, amounting in some to 200/. To the above-mentioned sums there must be added several extras, as e.g., entrance fee (which in some cases is as high as twelve guineas), for seat in church, medical attendances, laundry, &c. Sometimes not only instruction in music, but also modern languages, drawing, gymnastics, fencing, military drill, use of the laboratory, workshops, &c., have to be paid for separately as extras. These numerous extras, especially in girls' boarding-schools, sometimes double the expenses mentioned in advertisements, which are occasionally as low as 20/. or even 18/. In some boarding-schools, sons of clergymen pay less than those of laymen ; Indian boys, and all those who remain in institutions during holiday-time, everywhere pay considerably more. II.— EXTKAOTS FROM THE SCHEME OF THE SCHOOL FOUNDATION AT WAKEFIELD. 1. The object of the Foundation or Trust hereby established shall be mainly to promote the advancement of a liberal and practical education for boj^s and girls by means of schools in Wakefield as follows : A' grammar school for boys ; a teclinical or trade school for boys ; a school for girls; with exhibitions and other things conducive or in- cidental to the objects of such schools. 7. From the date of this scheme all rights and powers reserved or belonging to, or claimed by, any body or person, other than Her Majesty, as visitor of any of these foundations, shall be transferred to Her Majesty, and all such rights and powers, and also any like rights 278 APPENDIX 11. and powers vested in Her Majesty on the second day of August, 1869, shall be exercised only through and by the Charity Commissioners. 9. The Uovtrniny body, hereinafter called the governors, shall ulti- mately, when completely formed and full, except as hereinafter provided, consist of eighteen persons, of whom two shall be ex officio governors, eight representative, and eight co-optative. 10. The ex officio governors shall be the Mayor of Wakefield and the chairman of the School Board for Wakefield, for the time being, if they will respectively undertake to act in the trusts of this scheme. 11. The representative governors shall be elected five by the town council of Wakefield, and three by the School Board for Wakefield. 12. The co-optative governors shall, except as hereinafter provided, be appointed by the governors ; but no such appointment shall be valid until it has been api:)roved by the said Commissioners, and their approval certified under their oflicial seal. 13. The representative governors, except as hereinafter provided, shall be appointed to oflice for the term of five years. The co-optative governors, exce]>t as hereinafter provided, shall be appointed to office for the term of seven years. Any governor may be re-appointed. 18. Religious opinions or attendance, or non-attendance at any parti- cular form of religious worship, shall not in any way aflect the qualifi- cation of any person for being a governor under this scheme. Women may be governors. No teacher of any of the schools shall be a governor. 20. The governors shall hold meetings in some convenient place in Wakefield, or elsewhere, as often as may be found necessary for the management of the trust, and at least two ordinary meetings in each year, on some convenient days to be appointed by themselves, and alter such notice as they shall think fit to prescribe. 30. The governors shall cause sufficient abstracts of the amounts to be published annually in two local newspapers. Such abstracts may be in the form appended to this scheme, unless any form is prescribed by the Charity Commissioners, in which case the form so prescribed shall be followed. 33. The governors may from time to time, when and as favourable opportunity oilers, if the Charity Commissioners deem it to be for the jx-rmanent benefit of the trust, and with their sanction sell such real estates of the trust as are not required to be used lor the objects of this scheme, and shall, with the like sanction, invest the proceeds in the names of the official trustees of charitable funds in such mode as the Court of Chancery, in exercise of its statutory powers, or as any Act of Parliament may authorise for the investment of trust funds in general. 37. As soon as conveniently may be after the date of this scheme, the governors shall provide on land secured to the trust, and according APPENDIX II. 271) to plans and estimates approved by the Endowed Schools Commis- sioners, or after their powers have ceased by the Charity Commissioners, such additional buildings as may be required for the purposes of the said schools, arranged so as to admit of convenient extension. The buildings for the trade school shall be suitable for not less than one hundred day scholars, with a residence for the head-master. The build- ings for the girls' school shall be suitable for not less than one hundred scholars, with a residence for the head-mistress ; and, if the governors of the girls' school hereinafter mentioned think fit, accommodation for boarders. 38. For the purposes of such respective sites and buildings, the governors may spend such sums, to be raised out of the capital funds or property of the trust in such manner as the Charity Commissioners may direct. 39. The parent or guardian of, or person liable to maintain or having the actual custody of, any day scholar at any school under this scheme may claim, by notice in writing addressed to the principal teacher, the exemptions of such scholar from attending prayer or religious worship, or from any lesson or series of lessons on a religious subject, and such scholar shall be exempted accordingly ; and a scholar shall not by reason of any exemption from attending prayer or religious worship, or from any lesson or series of lessons on a religious subject, be deprived of any advantage or emolument in any school under this scheme or out of this trust to which he or she would otherwise have been entitled. If any teacher in the course of other lessons at which any such scholar is in accordance with the ordinary rules of the school present teaches systema- tically and persistently any particular religious doctrine, from the teach- ing of which any exemption has been claimed, as in this clause before provided, the governing body of the school shall, on complaint made in writing to them by the parent, guardian, or person liable to maintain or having the actual custody of such scholar, hear the complaint, and inquire into the circumstances, and, if the complaint is judged to be reasonable, make all proper provisions for remedying the matter complained of. 40. No person shall be disqualified for being a master in any school under this scheme by reason only of his not being, or not intending to be in holy orders. 45. The (jrammar school shall be a day and boarding-school, con- sisting of a senior and a junior department under one head-master. 46. The head-master shall be a member of the Church of England, and a graduate of some university within the British empire. 47. The head-master shall be appomted by the governors. In order to obtain the best candidates, they shall, for a sufficient time before 280 APPENDIX II. making any appointment, give public notice of the vacanc}', and invite competitions by advertisements in newspapers, or by such other methods as they may judge best calculated to secure the object. 48. The governors may dismiss the head-master without assigning cause, after six calendar months' written notice, given to him in pursuance of a resolution passed at two consecutive meetings held at an interval of at least fourteen days, and duly convened for that express purpose, such resolution being affirmed at each meeting by not less than two-thirds of the governors present. 50. Every head-master previously to entering into office shall be required to sign a declaration, to be entered in the minute book of the governors in the following form : " I declare that I will always, to the best of my ability, discharge the duties of head-master of the Wakefield Grammar School during my tenure of the office, and that if I am removed by the governors, according to the constitution of the said school, I will acquiesce in such removal, and will thereupon relinquish all claim to the mastership and its emoluments, and will deliver up to the governors, or as they direct, possession of all their property then in my possession or occupation." 52. The head-master shall give his personal attention to the duties of the school, and during the tenure of office he shall not accept or hold any benefice having the cure of souls, or any office or appointment which, in the opinion of the governors, may interfere with the proper performance of his duties as head-master. 53. Neither the head-master nor any assistant-master shall receive or demand from any boy in the school, or from any person whom- soever on behalf of any such boy, any gratuity, fee, or payment, except such paj^ments as are prescribed or authorised by this scheme. 54. Within the limits fi.\ed by this scheme, the governors shall prescribe the general subjects of instruction, the relative prominence and value to be assigned to each group of subjects, the division of the year into term and vacation, the payments of the day scholars, the number and the payments of the boarders, and the number of holidays to be given in term. They shall take general supervision of the sanitary con- dition of the school buildings and arrangements. They shall determine what number of assistant-masters shall be employed. They shall every year assign the amount which they think proper to be paid out of the income of the trust for tlie puriiose of maintaining assistant-masters, and of maintaining a jjroper plant or apparatus for carrying on the instructions given in the school. 55. Before making or altering any regulations, under the last pre- ceding clause, the governors shall consult the head-master in such a manner as to give him full oiiiiortunity for the expression of his views. APPENDIX 11, 281 56. Subject to the rules prescribed by or under the authority of this scheme, the head-master shall have under his control the choice of books, the methods of teaching, the arrangement of classes, and school hours, and generally the whole internal organization, management, and discipline of the school ; provided that if he expels a boy fi-om the school, he shall lorthwith make a full report in writing of the case to the governors. 57. The head-master, subject as hereinafter provided, shall have the sole power of appointing, and, subject to appeal to the governors, whose decision on such apj^eal shall be final, of dismissing all assistant- masters, and shall determine, subject to the approval of the governors, in what pro]jortions the sum assigned by the governors for the main- tenance of assistant-masters, and of plant or apparatus, shall be divided among the various persons and objects for the aggregate of which it is assigned. And the governors shall pay the same accordingly, either through the hands of the head-master or directly, as they think best. The appointment or dismissal of the senior assistant-master in the junior department shall not be valid until it has been confirmed by the governors. 59. The head-master shall receive a fixed stipend of 200?. a year. He shall also receive head-money, calculated on such a scale, unilbrm or graduated, as may be determined by the governors, being at the rate of not less than 21., nor more than U. a year for each boy in the junior department, and not less than 4Z. nor more than SI. a year for each boy in the senior department. The payments of stipend and head-money shall be made terminally or quarterly as the governors think fit. 60. The governors shall make such regulations as they think right for the reception of boarders either in the house of any master upon terms sufficiently profitable to him, or upon the system generally known as the hostel system, under which the pecuniary and domestic arrangements of the boarding house are regulated by persons directly accountable to the governors, and the profit, if there is any, accrues to the credit of the trust, or, if they think it best, they may combine both systems. 61. All boys, except as hereinafter provided, shall pay such entrance and tuition fees as the governors shall fix from time to time, provided that no such entrance fee shall be more than ten shillings in the junior or more than 11. in the senior department, and that no such tuition fee shall be less than 5Z., or more than 10?. a year in the junior, or less than 101. or more than 201. a year in the senior deiDartment. No difference in respect of such fees shall be made between any scholars on account of place of birth or residence, or of being or not bein<^ • boarders. The payment for a boarder aj^art from tuition fees shall 282 APPENDIX 11. not exceed the rate of 60/. a year. No extras of any kind shall be allowed without the sanction of the governors, and written consent of the scholar concerned. 63. No boy shall be admitted into the junior department unless he has attained the age of eight years, and no boy shall remain in that department beyond the end of the term in which he attains the age of fifteen years. 64. No boy shall be admitted into the senior department unless he has attained the age of twelve years, and, except with the permission of the head-master, no boy shall be allowed to remain in that depart- ment beyond the end of the term in which he attains the age of nine- teen years. And the head-master shall make regulations for the withdrawal of boys from either department of the school, in cases where from idleness or incapacity to profit by the instruction given they have fallen materially below the standard of position and attain- ment proper for their age. 65. Subject to the provisions established by or under the authority of this scheme, the school and all advantages of the school shall be open to all boys who are of good character and of sufficient health, and who are residing at home with their parents, guardians, or next friends, or in some boarding-home established under the sanction of the governors. No boy, not so residing or boarding, shall be admitted to the school unless he has previously obtained the permission of the governors. 68. Every applicant for admission shall be examined by or under the direction of the head-master, who shall ajipoint convenient times for that purpose, and give reasonable notice to the parents of those whose turn is arriving. No boy shall be admitted to the school without undergoing the examination for admission to the department to which he is admitted, and being found fit for admission. Those who are so found fit shall, if there is room for them, be admitted in order, accord- ing to the dates of their application. If there is not such room, the governors may direct that their priority shall be determined by competitive examination. 69. The examination for admission to the junior department shall be graduated according to the age of the boy, but never fall below the following standard, that is to say : reading easy narrative, writing small text liand, sim]ile sums in the first four rules of arithmetic, with the multiplication table. 70. The examination for admission to the senior department shall be graduated according to the age of the boy, but shall never fiiU below the following standard, that is to say : reading^ordinary narrative prose, writing simple prose from dictation, sums in the four simple and compound rules of arithmetic, English grammar, geography, outlines APPENDIX JI. 28a of English history, Latin grammar, translation and parsing of simple Latin sentences. The governors may raise the minimum standard for either department from time to time if they deem it advantageous for the school. 71. The governors and head-masters shall, within their respective departments, as hereinbefore defined, and subject to the provisions of this scheme, make proper regulations for the religious instruction to be given in the school. Such instruction shall be in accordance with the doctrines of the Church of England. 72. The subjects of secular instruction shall be as follows : In the junior department, reading, writing, arithmetic, history, geography, English grammar, composition and literature, one or more modern European languages, Latin, one branch (at least) of natural science, mathematics, vocal music, and drawing. In the senior department, Greek shall be taught, in addition to the subjects prescribed for the junior department. The boys shall be instructed iu the foregoing subjects according to the classification and arrangements made by the head-master. 73. Annual examinations (see p. 132, note). 74. The head-master shall make an annual report in writing to the governors on the general condition of the school, and on any special occurrences during the year. He may also mention the names of any boys who in his judgment are worthy of praise or substantial reward, having regard both to proficiency and conduct. 75. By way of exhibitions tenable at the school, the governors shall grant exemptions from the payment of tuition lees for such periods and on such conditions as they think fit. All such exemptions shall be given as the reward of merit only, and shall be assigned, in the case of candidates for admission, on the result of an open competitive examination, to be conducted by an independent examiner under arrangements to be made by the governors and head-master, and in the case of boys already attending the school, on the reports of the examiners and head-master, and no exemptions shall be granted to any such boy if the head-master reports that he is rendered undeserving of it by ill-conduct. The governors may under these conditions exempt boys from the payment of the whole or of one-half of the tuition fee, but such exemption shall in every case be liable to forfeiture in the event of misconduct or failure to maintain a reasonable standard of proficiency. Boys so exempted shall be called and ranked as foundation scholars, and the degrees of exemption shall be further distinguished if the governors think fit. No further exemptions shall be allowed when the exemptions, total and partial, reach the proportion of one iu every ten boys in the school. 284 APPENDIX II. 76. '['he governors ma)- nlso, in cases in which they think it expedient, grant further exhibitions tenable at the school, by awarding to ex- hibitioners or other deserving scholars on the recommendation of the head-master gratuities not exceeding in the case of any scholar the amount of 10?. in a year, towards the cost of books and stationery, and other exi^enses incident to their attendance at the school. For this purpose they may apply yearly a sum of not more than 60?. 77. The governors shall apply the yearly sum of 240?. in providing exhibitions, each of such yearly value not exceeding 50?., and tenable for three years at an university or any such place of liberal scientific, technical, or professional education or study as they may approve, to be competed for by scholars who are at least seventeen years of age, and who have attended the school for not less than three years immediately preceding the date of the election. Candidates shall be elected to these exhibitions by the governors on a consideration of the reports of the head-master and of the examiner. In cases of equality of merit preference shall be given to sons of inhabitants of the town of Wakefield. 79. The Trade School shall be a day-school only, under a head-master. 80. The head-master of the trade school shall have the degree of Bachelor of Science in the University of London, or a certificate of the Department of Science and Art, or some other certificate of proficiency in science as the governors may consider satisfactory. 81. The appointment, dismissal, and payment of assistant-masters, and the distribution of the amount assigned for the maintenance of school plant and apparatus shall be at the discretion of the governors, but except as aforesaid the trade school shall be subject to the like provisions as contained in the foregoing clauses relating to the grammar school. 82. The head-master shall receive a fixed stipend of 150?. a year. He shall also receive head-money calculated on such a scale, uniform or graduated, as may be determined by the governors, being at the rate of not less than 1?. nor more than 3?. a year for each boy. The payments of stipend and head-money shall be made terminally or quarterly, as the governors think fit. 83. All boys, except as hereinafter provided, shall pay such entrance and tuition fees as the governors shall fix from time to time, j^rovided that no such entrance fee shall exceed ten shillings, and that no such tuition fee shall be less than 3?. or more than 6?. a year. • 85. No boy shall be admitted into the school unless he has attained the age of eight years. No boy shall remain in the school after the end of the term in which he attains the age of sixteen years. 91. The governors and head-masters shall, within their respective APPENDIX II. 285 departments as hereinbefore defined, and snbject to the provisions of this scheme, make proper regulations for the religious instruction to he given in the schooL 92. The subjects of secular instruction shall be as follows : reading, writing, arithmetic, English, geography, mathematics, drawing (with special reference to mechanics and engineering), and such other branches of practical and experimental science as the governors may direct. 96. In providing exhibitions the governors shall arrange that half of the number shall be competed for in the first instance by boys who have been educated for at least two years at the public elementary schools in the municipal borough of Wakefield, and who have passed he inspector's examination in the standard suitable to their age, and the governors shall make such arrangements as seem to them best adapted to secure the double object of attracting good scholars to the school, and applying a stimulus to the said public elementary schools. None of the exhibitions in respect of which a preference is given by this clause shall be thrown to all comers until the head-master has reported that there are not enough boys from the said public elementary schools who on examination proved worthy to take them. Subject to the preference given by this clause, the exhibitions established under this part of this scheme shall be freely and openly competed for. 98. The governors shall also apply the yearly sum of 90/. in providing exhibitions, each of a yearly value not exceeding 30/., tenable at other places of education or professional training, to be approved of by the governors, and to be awarded by open competition among the boys who have been educated at the school for not less than three years immediately preceding the date of the election. 100. In the management of the girW school the governoi's shall act with three women, to be appointed in the manner hereinbefore provided for the appointment of co-optative governors, except that such women shall act as governors in future appointments. The governors with such women shall be called the governors of the girls' school. 101. The school for girls shall be a day, and if the governors think it desirable, a boarding school under a head-mistress. 104. The head-mistress shall receive a fixed stipend of lOOZ. a year. She shall also receive head-money calculated on such a scale, uniform or graduated, as may be determined by the governors of the girls' school, being at the rate of not less than thirty shillings or more than 3/. yearly for each girl. These payments shall be made terminally or quarterly, as the governors of the girls' school think fit. 105. All girls, except as hereinafter provided, shall pay such entrance and tuitioD fees as the governors of the girls' school shall fix from time to time, provided that no such entrance fee shall exceed ten shillings, 286 APPENDIX ir. and that no such tuition fee shall be less than 6/. or more than 10?. a year. No difference in respect to such fees shall be made between any scholars on account of place of birth or residence, or of being or not being boarders. The payments for a boarder, apart from tuition and entrance fees, shall not exceed the rate of 3G/. a year. No extras of any kind shall be allowed without the sanction of the governors of the girls' school, and the written consent on behalf of the scholar concerned. 107. No girl shall be admitted into the school unless she has attained the age of eight years. No girl shall remain in the school after the end of the term in which she attains the age of eighteen years. 111. Every ap[)licant for admission shall be examined by or under the direction of the head-mistress, who shall appoint convenient times for that purpose, and give reasonable notice to the parents of those whose turn is arriving. No girl shall be admitted to the school except alter undergoing such examination and being found fit for admission. Those who are so found fit shall, if there is room for them, be admitted in order according to the dates of their application. If there is not such room, the governors of the girls' school may direct that their priority shall be determined by competitive examination. 112. The examination for admission shall be graduated according to the age of the girl, but it shall never fall below the following standard, that IS to say : reading easy narrative, small text handwriting, the first four rules of arithmetic, the outlines of the geography of England. The governors of the girls' school may raise the minimum standard from time to time if they deem it advantageous for the school. 114. The subjects of secular instruction shall be as follows : reading, writing, arithmetic, English composition and literature, geography, history, German, French, some one or more branches of natural science, algebra, geometry, domestic economy, drawing, and music. Other Icreign languages may be taught at such extra fees as the governors of the girls' school may direct. 126. The governors may also, it they think fit and the funds suffice for the purpose, agree with either head-master for the formation of a fund in the nature of a pension or superannuation fund, the main principle of .such agreement being that the head-master and the trust- fund shall each contribute annually for a period of twenty years such sums as may be fixed on : that these contributions shall accumulate :it (•()ni[)0und interest; that in case the head-master servos his office twenty years, he sliall on his retirement be entitled to the whole fund : that in case he retires earlier on account of permanent disability from illness, he shall also be entitled to the whole fund : that in all other cases he shall, on his ceasing to be master, be entitled to the amount produced by his own contributions," APPENDIX III. 287 The regulations respecting religious instruction, the annual examina- tions, the annual reports of the head-master, and the scholarships in the commercial and girls' school are similar to those mentioned in regard to the grammar schools. III.— EXTRACT FROM THE STATUTE FOR MIDDLE-CLASS EXAMINATIONS, MADE BY THE UNIVERSITY OF OX- FORD, JUNE 18, 1857. Quum sit multifariam petitum ut bona3 spei adolescentes extra Academiam, Uteris artibusque humanioribus studentes, examinatione habita in Clientelam Universitatis recipiantur, placuit Universitati h;ec qu£e sequuntur sancire : 1. Candidatorum qui non sunt de corpore Universitatis Examinatio, vel intra Academiam, vel si res ita ferat, ctiam alibi, quotannis habeatur duplex ; videlicet Seniorum qui decimum octavum, Juniorum qui decimum quintum setatis annum nondum compleverint. 2. Fiat Examinatio tum in Rudimentis Fidei et Religionis (nisi alicujus parentes vel qui in loco parentis sint banc renuerint), tum in Literis Anglicis, in Histovia, in Linguis, in Mathematica, in Scientiis Physicis, et in ceteris artibus qua3 ad juventutem liberaliter educandam pertinent. 3. Testimonium accipiat quicunque tum Seniorum tum Juniorum Examinatoribus satisfecerit ; titulo etiam Associati in Artibus ex Academiaj auctoritate Senioribus collato. liegulations for carrying into effect the statute concerning the ex- amination of those who are not members of the university (Nov. 1857 : has since been little changed). The examination will commence on Monday the 21st of June. Junior and senior candidates will be examined at the same time, but the papers for the two exanunations will be different. A. — Exjmiination of Junior Candidates for Certificates. I. — All candidates will be required to satisfy the examiners in — ■ 1. Reading aloud a passage from Southey's ' Life of Nelson.' 2. Writing from dictation. 3. The unalysis and parsing of a passage taken from Goldsmith's ' Deserted Village.' A few questions will also be set on tlio allusions, &c., in the poem. 4. Writing a short English comjjosition, such as a description of a place, an account of some useful natural or artificial product, or the like. 5. Arithmetic.' — No candidate will be passed who cannot work the first four rules, simple and compound, whatever may be his excellence in other respects. 6. Geography. Every candidate will be required to draw from memory an outline map, showing the coast-line, the chief ranges of mountains, and the chief 288 APPENDIX III. rivere of some country to be named by the examiners from the fallowing list : England, Scotland, Ireland, Europe, Asia, Africa, North America, South America, Australasia. Questions will also be set in geography. 7. The outlines of English History : that is, tlie succession of sovereigns, the chief events and some account of the leading men in each reign. The quality of the handwriting in the several exercises will be taken into account. II. — The examination in the rudiments of Faith and Religion will consist of questions in : 1. The Book of Genesis and Exodus, the Gos^Del of St. Matthew, and tlie Acts of the Apostles. 2. The Catechism, the Morning and Evening Services, and tlie Litany. This examination will not be required of any candidate whose parents or guardians shall have declined it on his behalf. III. — Papers will also be set in the following eight subjects, and every candidate will be required to offer himself for examination in one subject at least ; but no candidate will be examined in more than four. 1. Latin. — A passage will be given from Caesar de Bello Gall., books I. II. III., for translation into English, with questions on the parsing and the historical or geographical allusions. An easy passage for translation from some other Latin book. A passage of English, with the Latin words supplied, for translation into Latin. 2. Greek. — A passage will be given from Xenophon's ' Anabasis, books I. II., for translation into English, with questions on the pars- ing, and the historical or geographical allusions. An easy passage for translation from some other Greek book. 3. French.— A passage will be given from Voltaire's 'Charles XII.,' with questions on the parsing, and the historical or geographical allusions. A passage from a French newspaper for translatiuu into English. English sentences for translation into French. 4. German. — A passage will be given from Schiller's ' Pievolt of the Netherlands,' with questions on the parsing, and the historical or geographical allusions. A passage from a German newspaper for trans- lation into English. English sentences for translation into German. 5. Mathematics.— ' 'EucUd,' books I. II. Arithmetic. — Algebra to simple equations inclusive. This amount of knowledge will enable a candidate to pass in this subject. Questions will also be set in ' Euclid, books II [. IV. VI., in quadratic equations, progressions, and proportion, plane trigonometry not beyond the solution of triangles, the use of logarithms, mensuration, and practical geometry. 6. Mechanics and Mechanism. — The questions on mechanics will be chiefly of a practical character, and will not extend beyond the parallelograms of forces, the centre of gravity, and the mechanical APPENDIX III. 289 powers. The questions on mechanism will be confined to the me- chanism of the steam-engine. The answers must be illustrated by diagrams or drawings. Great importance will be attached to good drawing. 7. Chemistry. — Questions will be set on the elementary facts of chemistry. Solutions will be given to be tested, containing each not more than one acid and one base. 8. Botany and Zoology. — Questions will be set on the classification of plants and animals, their uses, and geographical distribution. British plants and parts of plants will be given for description. IV. Candidates may also ofi"er themselves for examination in — 1. Drawing from the flat, from models, from memory, and in perspective. 2. In the grammar of music. The names of the successful candidates will be arranged in three divisions : Those in the first division will be placed in the order of merit ; those in the second and third divisions alphabetically. After each successful candidate's name will be inserted his age, the place of his residence, and the school (if any) from which he comes to attend the examination. The certificate given to each successful candidate will specify the subjects in which he has satisfied the examiners. The fact that a candidate has passed the examination in the rudiments of faith and religion will be entered on his certificate, although it will not affect his place on the list. B. — Examination of Senior Candidates for the title of Associate in Arts. Candidates must be under eighteen years of age on the day when the examination begins. I. All candidates at this examination will be required to satisfy the examiners in-^1. Analysis of English sentences and parsing, and correction of faulty sentences. 2. A short English composition. 3. Arithmetic. — Geography. — Every candidate will be required to draw from memory an outline map of some country in Europe to be named by the examiners, showing the boundary lines, the chief ranges of mountains, the chief rivers, and the chief towns. Questions will also be set in geography. 5. The outlines of English History : that is, the succession of sovereigns, the chief events, and the characters of the leading men in each reign. II. The examination in the rudiments of Faith and Religion will consist of questions in— 1. The historical Scriptures of the Old Testament to the death of Solomon. 2. The Gospels of St. Matthew and St. John, u 290 APPENDIX III. and the Acts of the Apostles. Those who offer themselves for exami- nation in Greek wiU be expected to answer questions on the same parts of the Greek Testament. 3. The Catechism, the Morning and Evening Services, and the Litany ; and the outlines of the history of the Book of Common Prayer. This examination, &c., as before II. 1. III. Every candidate will also be required to satisfy the examiners in two at least of the sections marked A B C D ; or in one of those four, and in one of those marked E F. A. English. — This will include questions in — 1. English History, from the battle of Bosworth Field to the Eestoration ; and the outlines of the ' History of English Literature ' during the same period. 2. Shak- speare's ' King Lear,' and Bacon's ' Essays.' 3. The outUneS of Political Economy and English Law. The examination will not extend beyond the subjects treated of in the first book of Smith's ' Wealth of Nations,' and the first volume of ' Blackstone's Commentaries.' 4. Physical, political, and commercial geography. A fair knowledge of one of these four classes of subjects will enable a candidate to pass in this section. B. Languages. — 1. Latin ; 2. Greek ; 3. French ; 4. German. A fair knowledge of one of these languages will enable a candidate to pass in this section. C. Mathematics. — 1. Pure mathematics. 2. Practical mechanics (including mechanism) and Hydrostatics mathematically treated. Sur- veying, and navigation. Algebra to the end of quadratic equations and four books of ' Euclid ' will enable a candidate to pass in this section, D. Physics. — 1. Natural philosophy. Great importance will be attached to good mechanical drawing. 2. Chemistry. Questions will be set on the facts and general principles of chemical science. There will be a practical examination in the elements of analysis. 3. Vege- table and animal physiology. Questions will be set on vegetable physiology in general, and on the functions of vertebrata in animal physiology. Parts of plants and bones of vertebrata will be given for description. Great importance will be attached to good botanical and anatomical drawing. A fair knowledge of one of these classes of subjects will enable a candidate to pass in this section : but in all cases a practical acquaintance with the subject-matters will be indispensable. E. Drawing and Architecture. — 1. Drawing from the flat, from models, from memory, and in perspective, and drawing of plans, sections and elevations. 2. Design in pen and ink, and in colour. 3. The liistory and principles of the arts of design. A fair degree of skill in freehand drawing. F. Music. — 1. The grammar of music. 2. The history and principles of musical r-oinposition. The elements of thorough bass. APPENDIX IV. 291 IV.— SPECIMENS FKOM THE PAPEES OF THE UNIVERSITIES OF OXFORD AND CAMBRIDGE. A. — For the examination of schools : What is the meaning of the distinction between synthetic and analytic languages? Which is the earlier stage? Illustrate your answer by special reference to the case systems of Greek and Latin. Give the meaning of laxare ordines, erigere aciem. Give the etymology of secundus, anceps, and the comparative of fxikas, ra^us, pius, vettis, and the superlative of fxaKpos, prope, irenav. To what extent is Latin literature original? After translating a passage from Lucretius the candidate is asked to state the theories held by the philosophers Empedocles and Anaxagoras, and to state the chief differences between Lucretius and Virgil as writers of hexameter verse. In translating from Cicero, in Catilinara, the candidate is asked to parse decreverit, nosce, egeris, egredere. With a translation of Horace the candidate is asked to give the perfect and supine oi geret, expediunt, perficient, vmci, pro- fero, to parse stravere, dereptum, cutem, and to give the dative plural of filia, prcBceps, adidter. After a question about Mr. Merivale's view about the satirical character of Sallust, the candidate among other things is asked to mention the genitive plural of canis, dux, and juvenis, the comparative of parvus, heneficus, and cequus, and the perfect of claudo, Jingo, pergo, haurio. After a translation from Juvenal, he is asked to give an account of the prospects of poets, historians, orators, and schoolmasters in Juvenal's time. The (Edipus Tyrannus is the most typical of Greek tragedies. Explain and examine this statement. Parse fiefivin^eda, di\a, Give the degrees of comparison of raxvs, alcrxpos, lySe'cos, dXrjdrjs. Give the future and aorist tenses of oAXv/xi, eKcpepco, '6p.vvp,i, ala-ddvofjLai, ylyvopLai, tiktw, Tpe(t)co, ecrdia). Point out in these words what is root, and what is formative or inflexional element. After translating a passage from Thucydides, the questions are : parse Kadlcrav, Kadearap-fv, dvaXovv, and decline v'u'ls, vdop, UTrXovs, Imrevs. From the Examination Papers of the London University. A. At the Matricidation Examination : Translate into Latin : It matters little to the republic, whether you depart or stay at home. All citizens must obey the laws of their country. Peace being concluded, the armies were disbanded. He promised to come early. I hope to receive a letter from my friend before he sets out for Home. No one knows what may happen to- morrow. Correct the sentences : Meminit res pra^teritas. Quum urbem cepis- set, fedificia omnia publica et privata pepercit. Suadet me, ut Athenas proficiscerer. Give the etymology of the words : amhitio, seditio, conditio, contio, reditus. Decline dives, Arabs, frigus acre, senex locuples. Give the third person plural perfect indicative active of vinco, vincio, vivo. Jingo, figo, tango, pergo. Besides the translation of a passage from Xcnophon's ' Anabasis,' the candidates are asked to decline throughout : peya opos, raxvs iTnrevs, p.ei^ov Kepas ; to distinguish avrr], avrf], avrrj, avrov, avrup, avrr] 17 X'^P'* and T] avTTf x<^P^ 5 to name the mood and tense, and write down the first person of the present tense active of aTroBpavai, eirereTaKTO, tTerparo, BiaTeTpTjVTo ; and to write down the first person future and aorist active of oWvpi, eKTtivco, npvvpi, ayyeXXw, XavOnvo). APPENDIX IV. 293 B. At the first B. A. Examination. After the translation of a passage from the Iliad, the candidates are asked to decline in singular and plural avrji) jSovXfvrtjs, (iovs elXnrovs ; to parse delvai, VTroa-xecrdcu, bvvr)ai, Kari-rrrj^iv, yvaai ; what suffixes are added to nouns and pronouns to express the ideas of where, whence, whither ? In connection with a translation from Livj-, they are asked : How do the Eomans express to and from and position at, with names of towns ? To translate into Latin : He vainly tried to prevent me from doing what I wished. He said he would not have gone away, unless you had ordered him. Camillus returned in triumph to the city, victorious in three wars at once. Such was the end of a man who, if he had not been born in a free state, would have had a place in history. C. At the first B.A. Examination for honours. Translation of chapters from Livy, Cicero, and Tacitus into English, and of a jmssage from Gibbon into Latin. Change of Latin sentences and periods from the oratio recta into the oratio obliqua and vice versa. In what sense is quisquam used, and how does it differ from aliquis ? Distinguish between non nemo and nemo non, and give other examples of the same kind. State the different meanings of both the Latin imperfect and the perfect. Translate into Latin : I hope you will not take it ill that I have spoken to you so frankly. The soldiers were stirring up more dust than one would have expected from their number. I do not doubt but that you will soon discover how useful it is to study mathematics. Write out the following sentences corrected : Minime tibi docet talia loqui. Cicero dicitur summum oratorem fuisse. Cupio scire quid ageres. Pueris ludere licentiam domus. Persuasus sum id fieri non posse. D. At the second B.A. Examination for Honours. — Essay on the influence of Greek literature on that of the Romans. Translations of passages from Herodotus, Plato, Aristotle. Connected with this, state briefly the points discussed in the first three books of Aristotle's Nicom. Ethics. State the subject which Plato discusses in the Protagoras, Which are the principal rules about the use of the optative mood ? In connection with translations from Lucretius, Terence, and Horace, we find : How do you explain the accusative in stratus membra, coronatus capillos? Explain the difference between Fuit ha3c res documento, quanta sit and quanta esse^ vis conscientife. E. General Examination for Women. — Write a short life of Agesi- laus. Describe the immediate cause of the war between Greece and Persia. Mention the principal rivers of Greece, with their courses, and say which is the largest of them. Describe the positions of Delphi, 294 APPENDIX IV. Platjea?, Itliome, Cythcra, Epidauros, Pylos ; and state what you know of their history. In connection with a translation of passages from the Odyssey, it is asked : State the voice, mood, and tense of u^Ikovto, elirejxev, nideadm, efifiadev, dprjpei. State the case governed by the jjrepositions 8i.d, ds, Kara, vtto, irapa, and distinguish the several meanings of them. In connection with Xenophon's ' Anabasis,' decline 6 fiiyas opvis, nav 86pv, 6 a\T)drjs pdprvs. When do the Greeks use the nominative and when the accusative with the infinitive ? The questions set by the College of Preceptors for the examination of schools and for the diploma (see p. 128) are of a similar kind. Examples from the former are : Connected with the translation of a passage from Cicero, De Senect. are such questions as : parse viri, nive, earn. What kind of verbs are persequare and poeniteret ? Give the perfect and supine of vides, doceri, excipiet, vixisset. Of what verbs are moriaris and moreris respectively parts? Similar questions are put in connection with translations from Sallust, Virgil, and Horace, e.g., distinguish redeunt and rtddunt, or about the declension of duce, manii, urhes, about the comparative and superlative, or the principal tenses of ordinary verbs ; short sentences to be translated into Latin. Similar questions are put in Greek, in connection with Homer and Xenophon. Even the questions put to candidates for the diploma of an associate are not essentially different (see p. 128). v.— EXTKACTS FROM SOME OF THE COURSES OF INSTRUCTION. Clifton College, according to the system of bifurcation, besides a junior school (in which Greek also is taught), has a Classical and a Modern side. In the sixth form of the former the subjects of instruc- tion are : the Old Testament (Judges), the New Testament (Philippians), Sophocles, Thucydides ; Cicero, Virgil ; Organic Chemistry, Mechanics ; Delille, Moliere's Tartuffe ; Schiller (Don Carlos) ; Fouque' (Undine) ; English History, Geography, and Literature. In the first set of the modern side : Old Testament (Judges), New Testament (St. John) ; Virgil, English History and Geography ; Shakespeare (Pilchard II.) ; Organic Chemistry, Mechanics; Racine (Athalie), Goethe (Hermann und Dorothea). Dulvjich College. — Sixth form (in 1875): Old Testament (Kings), New Testament (St. Mark) ; Cicero (pro Cluentio), Horace (Ars Poetica), Thucyd. Book VH. ; Aristophanes (Nubes) ; Shakespeare APPENDIX V. 295 (Tempest), Goethe (Egmont) ; A. W. Schlegel (Dramatic Literature) ; Ponsard (Charlotte Corday) ; History of Greece ; Trigonometry, Conic Sections ; Mechanics ; Chemistry (theoretical and practical) ; Physics (heat and light) ; Geology ; Physical Geography (North Polar regions) ;' Drawing (from the model, shading from the cast, anatomical and mechanical drawing). At Harrow the modern side has every week six or seven lessons in Mathematics, four or five in French, three in German, two or three in Natural Science, two or three in Latin, two in Divinity, two or three in History and English. The City of London School begins with a junior school, in which, besides the usual elementary subjects, instruction is given in English Grammar, Geography, and History. Above this there is a middle or com- mercial school for boys from the age of ten to sixteen, in which Algebra is commenced, and Latin and French also are taught. After this follows the concluding or senior school in three classes for boys between the ages of thirteen and nineteen ; here Greek and higher Mathematics also are taught. The curriculum of the High School of Edinburgh embraces six years, the first three of which are destined for the general junior division ; above them the course is divided into a classical and commercial side, each comprising three years. In the highest class of the former two hours are daily devoted to Latin, one to Greek, &c., the pupil may have also Bookkeeping, if it is wished, without extra charge. In the highest class of the commercial side are taught : English Literature, History, Geography, French, German, Physiology. The pupil continues his Latin and Bookkeeping. Mathematics, Natural Philosophy, and Natural History are not mentioned. The Edinburgh Academy has similar arrangements. The classical side devotes three and a half hours daily to Greek, Latin, and Geography; two hours to English, French, German, Mathematics. The modern school gives daily one hour to Latin and Ancient History, four and a half hours to English, French, German, Mathematics, Geo- graphy, and Bookkeeping. Hutcheson's Grammar School at Glasgow (see p. 73) has a course of nine years, and in the last of the classical side are taught : English, Mathematics, Ancient History and Geography, Latin, Greek, Antiquities, Music; and simultaneoui;ly in the modern school: English, Book- keeping, Drawing, Physical and Matliematical Geography, Mathematics, Natural Philosophy, Mechanics, German, and Music. In both sides fencing with foils, rifle, and drill are taught. Hutcheson's Girls' School at Glasgow has likewise a course of nine years, and in the last of the secondary department are taught : English 296 APPENDIX Y. Bookkeeping, Drawiiifi, Phj'sical and Mathematical Geography, Natural Philosophy (in the preceding classes also Latin and Mathematics), French, German, Music, Domestic Economy, and lessons in Cookery (in the preceding classes also Needlework and Cutting out). From the time-table of the Stationer^ School, London (a middle- class school). The highest class on Mondays from 9 to 9.15 Prayers and the Scriptures (the same daily); from 9.15 to 10 English History ; from 10 to 10.30 History ; from 10.30 to 11 Algehra and Trigonometry ; from 11 to ] 1.30 Greek or German ; from 11.30 to 12 Greek or Algebra ; from 12 to 12.30 is an interval. From 12.30 to 1 Drilling ; from 1 to 1.30 French; from 1.30 to 2 French; from 2 to 2.30 French; from 2.30 to 3 French. , THE END. -4 \ Uaa^T^*-'*'^' ■Xp^''5^ -^XSV^N^^.^T,--V,y;N^>S^^^S^<;^55,f^5^^^