THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION
 
 "It is a very great thing to be able to think as you like ; 
 but, after all, an important question remains what you 
 think. It is a fine thing to secure a free stage and no favour ; 
 but, after all, the part which you play on that stage will have 
 to be criticised. Now, all the liberty and industry in the 
 world will not ensure two things : a high reason and a fine 
 culture. They may favour them, but they will not of them- 
 selves produce them: they may exist without them. But it 
 is by the appearance of these two things, in some shape or 
 other, in the life of a nation, that it becomes something more 
 than an independent, an energetic, a successful nation that it 
 becomes a great nation." The Popular Education of France, 
 with Notices of that of Holland and Switzerland, /. xliii.
 
 THOUGHTS ON 
 EDUCATION 
 
 CHOSEN FROM THE WRITINGS OF 
 
 MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 EDITED BY 
 
 LEONARD HUXLEY 
 
 " A fugitive and gracious light he seeks, 
 
 Shy to illumine ; and I seek it too. 
 
 This does not come with houses or with gold, 
 \Vithplace, "with honour, and a flattering crew ; 
 
 ' Tis not in the world's market bought and sold" 
 
 THYRSIS 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY, 64-66, FIFTH AVENUE 
 1912
 
 PRINTED BY 
 
 WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED, 
 LONDON AND BECCLES.
 
 PREFACE 
 
 To Mr. Theodore Reunert, whose name I gratefully 
 place first among my few words of preface, this 
 book owes its inception, and not its inception only, 
 but a host of practical suggestions. His own activity 
 on the Johannesburg Council of Education, his own 
 enthusiasm for that which is the chiefest instrument 
 of civilisation, owed much of their inspiration to 
 Matthew Arnold, the labourer in the field of practical 
 education as well as the apostle of enlightenment 
 Xhe inspector of English schools, the investigator of 
 educational systems in France and Germany, in 
 Holland, Italy and Switzerland, was a critic of edu- 
 cational .ideas and educational methods who could 
 appreciate the best in them while exposing their 
 defects, and who claimed that England should not 
 fall short of the other centres of European civilisation 
 in making true education a national concern, in 
 making it an organised training for the many, and 
 not either the privilege of the few or the prey of the 
 charlatanism and cupidity of individual speculation. 
 
 Matthew Arnold long regarded himself as one 
 crying in the wilderness. Yet in the course of years 
 his voice has made itself heard more widely than the 
 voice of many another who wrote on education ; men 
 perhaps so wholly identified with strictly educational 
 work that they appealed for the most part to profes- 
 sional circles only. In the public eye he was not the 
 School Inspector, but the man of letters, the cham- 
 pion of a high cause ; he was equipped not merely 
 with educational formulas, but with wide-ranging 
 
 2C26S3O
 
 vi PREFACE 
 
 ideas ; armed, too, with memorable phrases and 
 stinging epigrams for the knotted cords with which 
 to drive the profane and mere money-changers from 
 the sanctuary of the human spirit. In him was some- 
 what of the prophet as well as the critic, and it was 
 this prophetic impulse, I think, that made itself felt 
 among thoughtful persons outside the circle of 
 educators proper, just as a similar prophetic impulse 
 made itself felt from his contemporary seers of natural 
 science. 
 
 The crying need which he proclaimed for more 
 wide-spread culture could be appreciated by every 
 one who possessed culture or realised its power. He 
 saw popular education develop in many ways during 
 his lifetime, not always on the lines he desired ; but 
 while various practical details which he advocated in 
 the subjects and methods of teaching have been left 
 aside, the larger ideals at which he would have 
 education aim have constantly shaped the develop- 
 ments of popular education during the years that 
 have passed since his death. And this is not only due 
 to the fact that the educational world has long known 
 and studied the record of his technical work as 
 inspector of schools, his foreign reports upon schools 
 and universities and popular education of the Con- 
 tinent, and his domestic reports upon the English 
 schools that it was his duty to inspect year after year, 
 admirable selections from which have been published 
 from the Bluebooks wherein they are embalmed, first 
 by Lord Sandford, and latterly by Mr. Marvin. It 
 was due also to the fact that thoughtful people tfad 
 been stirred by his general essays, wherein the ideals 
 that form the educational goal were set forth not in
 
 PREFACE vii 
 
 naked isolation, but as intimately linked with the 
 social and political movements, the restless dreams of 
 to-day, and the established realities of to-morrow 
 which lie so near to the heart of that eminently 
 "political creature," the Englishman. Nor indeed 
 were these high considerations absent from his pro- 
 fessional reports : witness " Democracy," the first in 
 the volume of " Mixed Essays," which is the intro- 
 duction to his report on "Popular Education in 
 France," now inaccessible save in the libraries of the 
 British Museum and the Board of Education, and the 
 like. Far and wide, Matthew Arnold's prophesyings 
 drove home the conviction that education is not a 
 thing of the schoolroom, but of the whole body politic. 
 His influence was the greater for being as it were 
 indirect, for showing the value of education in terms 
 of our more obviously insistent problems. 
 
 The special references to education, however, have 
 remained scattered up and down his works. That 
 well-known book of selections, the " Prose Passages," 
 contains but a handful of such. To collect into a single 
 volume the most striking passages on matters educa- 
 tional from his published writings and from Blue-books, 
 was, as I have already said, the idea of Mr. Reunert 
 who had marked many of them in the course of his 
 reading. That the execution of his idea has fallen to 
 my hand is, for personal as well as general reasons, 
 a peculiar pleasure to me, and here, if I may not 
 elsewhere, I gratefully associate his name with this book 
 of Matthew Arnold's " Thoughts on Education." 
 
 In these selections are included passages of a par- 
 ticular and professional character dealing with the 
 state of schools at certain periods of the nineteenth 
 
 a 2
 
 viii PREFACE 
 
 century, as well as others of wider and less technical 
 bearing. Matthew Arnold's repeated insistence on 
 the value of literature and especially poetry as a 
 humanising force in education has suggested the 
 inclusion of several passages of literary criticism to 
 show what kind of poetry he had in mind as possess- 
 ing the highest formative power. The arrangement 
 is chronological as far as may conveniently be, an 
 arrangement which will enable the reader to follow 
 Matthew Arnold's views as they developed with the 
 developments of the time, while an index supplies 
 cross-references to the subjects discussed. Subjoined 
 is a list of the works from which selections have been 
 taken, noting the edition used for the purpose, and 
 the original date of publication. Nor are his formal 
 publications alone drawn upon. The " Letters of 
 Matthew Arnold " furnish a number of remarks to 
 intimate correspondents on the main points of interest 
 in his work from time to time. For permission to 
 include some material that is still in copyright, my 
 best thanks are due to Messrs. Macmillan. 
 
 This volume does not profess to exhaust the 
 educational stores in Matthew Arnold's writings. My 
 hope is that it gathers within convenient compass the 
 most interesting of his reflections, whether general or 
 particular, and will help alike to show the general 
 reader what was actuall}' thought and done for educa- 
 tion by the " apostle of culture," and to push forward 
 by direct stimulus or indirect suggestion the consum- 
 mation of a true educational ideal for the whole 
 people. 
 
 L. H. 
 December 1911
 
 LIST OF BOOKS QUOTED FROM 
 
 R. E. S. REPORTS ON ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS, 1852-1882 
 New edition by F. S. Marvin. (Wyman, for H.M. 
 Stationery Office, 1908.) 
 
 L. LETTERS OF MATTHEW ARNOLD. (Macmillan, 1895.) 
 P. E. F. THE POPULAR EDUCATION OF FRANCE, WITH 
 NOTICES OF THAT OF HOLLAND AND SWITZERLAND. 
 (Longmans, 1861.) A reprint of the Report to the 
 Education Commission, 1 86 1, entitled " Popular Educa- 
 tion in France, Holland, and the French Cantons of 
 Switzerland," after his continental mission of 1859. 
 O. T. H. ON TRANSLATING HOMER. (Smith, Elder, 1896). 
 Lectures delivered 1860-1862. 
 
 F. E. A FRENCH ETON. (Macmillan, 1892). Containing "A 
 French Eton," 1864, that portion of "Schools and 
 Universities on the Continent" (1868) which deals with 
 Secondary Education in France, and a Preface (1874) 
 written when the German portion of the latter book 
 was published separately, but afterwards omitted. 
 
 E. C. ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. First Series (Macmillan, 1865). 
 
 H. S. G. HIGHER SCHOOLS AND UNIVERSITIES IN GER- 
 MANY. (Macmillan, 1892.) Published in 1868 as a 
 Report to the Schools Enquiry Commissioners from 
 1865 onwards. 
 
 C. L. THE STUDY OF CELTIC LITERATURE. (Smith, 
 Elder, 1905: Corn hill Magazine, 1866; first in book 
 form, 1867.)
 
 x LIST OF BOOKS QUOTED FROM 
 
 F. G. FRIENDSHIP'S GARLAND. (Smith, Elder, 1903). 
 Appeared from 1866 to 1870 ; first published in book 
 form, 1871. 
 
 B. R. S. A BIBLE READING FOR SCHOOLS. The Great 
 Prophecy of Israel's Restoration : Isaiah, chapters 49- 
 66 (Macmillan, 1872). 
 
 I. E. IRISH ESSAYS. (Smith, Elder, 1882.) 
 
 U. A. DISCOURSES IN AMERICA (Macmillan, 1885) and 
 Eversley Series, 1906. 
 
 S. R. E. E. SPECIAL REPORT ON CERTAIN POINTS CON- 
 NECTED WITH ELEMENTARY EDUCATION IN GER- 
 MANY, SWITZERLAND, AND FRANCE. (Eyre & 
 Spottiswoode, 1886.) 
 
 L. D. LITERATURE AND DOGMA, 1873.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 
 
 PACK 
 
 Proportion in Education . . . 
 
 Preface, Johnson's 
 
 
 
 Lives of the Poets 
 
 I 
 
 Discipline 
 
 R. E. S. 52 . 
 
 3 
 
 The English Language in Welsh Schools 
 
 R. E. S. 52 . 
 
 4 
 
 Co-education for Young People . 
 
 R. E. S. 52 . 
 
 5 
 
 Lack of Culture in Pupil-teachers 
 
 R. E. S. 52 . 
 
 5 
 
 Compulsory Education alone Universal 
 
 R. E. S. 53 . 
 
 7 
 
 The Duty of the School Inspector 
 
 R. E. S. 54 . . 
 
 7 
 
 The Schoolmaster . . . . 
 
 R. E. S. 54 . 
 
 9 
 
 The Teacher's Training 
 
 R. E. S. 55 
 
 10 
 
 Women Teachers in 1855 
 
 L. i, 46 
 
 12 
 
 Montalembert on English Public 
 
 
 
 Schools and Universities . . . 
 
 L. i, 50 
 
 12 
 
 Napoleon's Organisation of Church and 
 
 
 
 State 
 
 L. r, 114 
 
 13 
 
 The American Character in 1860 
 
 L. i, 115 
 
 13 
 
 Reading-books and Culture . 
 
 R. E. S. 60 . 
 
 14 
 
 State Interference in Education . 
 
 P. E. F. xii. 
 
 16 
 
 Character of the Masses in France 
 
 P. E. F. xxi. 
 
 17 
 
 Causes of the Power of France . 
 
 P. E. F. xxii. 
 
 17 
 
 Democracy's Lack of Ideals . 
 
 P. E. F. xxxii. . 
 
 18 
 
 The Lack of Public Schools for the 
 
 
 
 Middle Class 
 
 P. E. F. xl. . 
 
 19 
 
 Culture and Character united in Athens 
 
 P. E. F. xliii. . 
 
 20 
 
 French Administrative Divisions in 1 859 
 
 P. E. F. 5, 9 . 
 
 22 
 
 Over-Government and Under-Govern- 
 
 
 
 ment . . . . . , ' . 
 
 P. E. F. 1 1 . 
 
 22 
 
 The Christian Brothers' Schools . 
 
 P. E. F. 14 and 1 6 
 
 23 
 
 Schools Founded by the Convention . 
 
 P. E. F. 24 . 
 
 24
 
 xii CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Educational Results of the French 
 
 Revolution P. E. F. 29 . .24 
 
 Napoleon as Educator . . . . P. E. F. 31-3 . 25 
 
 Fusion ofthe Upper and Middle Classes^ 
 
 Secondary Education in England and I P. E. F. 74-7 . 27 
 
 France .) 
 
 Mixed Schools in France and Holland P. E. F. 81 . . 32 
 Comparative Expenditure in England 
 
 and France in 1856 . . . P. E. F. 88 . .32 
 Schoolless Children in France and 
 
 England in 1856 . . . . P. E. F. 101 . 33 
 
 The Sisters' Schools of Paris . . P. E. F. 103 . 33 
 
 Needlework Schools . . . . P. E. F. 104 . 34 
 
 Inspection of Private Schools . . P. E. F. 105-6 . 35 
 
 Pupil-teachers P. E. F. 108-9 3 6 
 
 Inspectors as Civil Servants . . . P. E. F. 147 . 38 
 
 Rational Form of the Code Napoldon . P. E. F. 159-60 , 38 
 
 Liberal Spirit of French Legislation . P. E. F. 160-1 . 40 
 The State as the Organ of the National 
 
 Reason P. E. F. 164-5 . 41 
 
 Society dislocated by the Spread of 
 
 Education P. E. F. 166-7 4 2 
 
 The Value of Ideals to a Nation . . P. E. F. 168-9 43 
 
 The Elimination of Superiorities} . . P. E. F. 192 . 44 
 Excellence of Primary Schools in 
 
 Holland P. E. F. 195-6, 201 45 
 
 The Society for the Public Good. . P. E. F. 197-8 . 46 
 
 Organised School Inspection in Holland P. E. F. 199 . 46 
 Position and Character of Dutch 
 
 Teachers P. E. F. 202-3 . 47 
 
 Teachers' Examination in Holland . P. E. F. 203 . 48 
 
 Pupil-teachers in Holland . . . P. E. F. 204 . 48 
 
 Religious Instruction in Holland . . P. E. F. 204-5 49 
 
 The Normal School of Haarlem . . P. E, F. 206 . 50 
 
 The Schools of Leyden and Utrecht . P. E. F. 207 .51 
 
 The Value of Recitation . . . R. E. S. 61 . .51 
 
 The most Important Poetical Monument O. T. H. i . . 53 
 
 The Translator's Task . . . . O. T. H. 2 . .54 
 
 The only Competent Tribunal . . O. T. H. 4-5 . 54
 
 CONTENTS xiii 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Virtue of the Latin Element in English O. T. H. 7 . . 55 
 How to Approach Homer . . . 0. T. H. 8 . .55 
 The Four Qualities of Homer's Poetry O. T. H. 10. . 56 
 Unlikeness of Homer to Milton . . O. T.H.I 1-12 . 57 
 Fidelity in a Translator . . . O. T. H. 14 . .58 
 The Objection to a Rhymed Translation O. T. H. 15. . 58 
 How Pope fails to render Homer. . O. T. H. 16. . 59 
 Pope's Style lacks Plain Naturalness . O. T. H. 19-20 . 60 
 Pope's Style incapable of Good Descrip- 
 tions . . . . * . , . O. T. H. 21-2 . 60 
 Pope's Fate a Warning to Translators . O. T. H. 22 . . 61 
 Pope's Version contrasted with Chap- 
 man's O. T. H. 22-3 . 62 
 
 Chapman wrongly praised by the Critics O. T. H. 24 . . 63 
 Homer and the Elizabethans . . O. T. H. 25 . . 64 
 Chapman's Complexity of Thought . O. T. H. 26-7 . 64 
 Homer Works in the Grand Style . O. T. H. 30 . . 66 
 The One Thing demanded of a Transla- 
 tion O. T. H. 32 . .67 
 
 Homeric Unity O. T. H. 47 . .67 
 
 What Constitutes the Grand Style . O. T. H. 59-61 . 68 
 
 Homer and Scott O. T. H. 61 . .69 
 
 English Eccentricity and the Need of 
 
 Criticism O. T. H. 65 . .70 
 
 The Best Metres for Epic Poetry . O. T. H. 69-70 . 7 1 
 Milton's Blank Verse . . . . O. T. H. 71-2 . 73 
 Milton contrasted with Homer . . O. T. H. 73 . . 73 
 The Possibilities of the English Hexa- 
 meter O. T. H. 77. .74 
 
 Homer and the Bible . . . . O. T. H. 89. .75 
 
 Genius of Homer O. T. H. 106 .76 
 
 The Evils of Literary Controversy . O. T. H. 108-9 7 6 
 
 English Literary Opinion . . . O. T. H. 112 -77 
 
 Danger and Charm of Dilettanteism . O. T. H. 114 . 78 
 
 The Saving Grace of Ignorance . . O. T. H. 116-17 . 79 
 
 Homer the Bible of the Athenians . O. T. H. 125 . 80 
 The Need to seek a Positive Result in 
 
 Criticism O. T. H. 133-4 81 
 
 What is "The Grand Style" ? . . O. T. H. 137-8 . 82
 
 xiv CONTENTS 
 
 The Best Models of the Grand Style . 
 
 O. T. H. 140-2 
 
 . 84 
 
 The Critic's First Duty 
 
 O. T. H. 155-6 
 
 . 84 
 
 Verse Translation best for Homer 
 
 O. T. H. 157-8 
 
 . 85 
 
 Distinctive Character of Poets . 
 
 O. T. H. 170-2 
 
 . 86 
 
 Some Excuse for the Author's Vivacity 
 
 O. T. H. 176 
 
 . 88 
 
 The Revised Code of 1862 . 
 
 L. i, 148 . 
 
 . 89 
 
 Reading and Recitation . . 
 
 R. E. S. 63 . 
 
 Q I 
 
 Teachers and Self-culture . 
 
 R. E. S. 63 . 
 
 93 
 
 A Learned and a Liberal Education . 
 
 L- i, 233 . 
 
 93 
 
 The Reform of Eton .... 
 
 F.E.3-4 
 
 . 94 
 
 French and English Literature . 
 
 F. E. 17-18 . 
 
 94 
 
 Lacordaire 
 
 F. E. 26, 28 . 
 
 95 
 
 Cost of Secondary Instruction . 
 
 F.E.37-8 . 
 
 . 96 
 
 The Need of Securities for Efficiency . 
 
 F. E. 43 - 
 
 97 
 
 The Law of Supply and Demand In- 
 
 
 
 applicable . . . . . 
 
 F. E. 44-5 . 
 
 . 98 
 
 Delusive Examinations 
 
 F. E. 57-8 . 
 
 . 99 
 
 The Real Needs in Secondary Instruc- 
 
 
 
 
 F E. 60-3 . 
 
 GO 
 
 The Middle Class and Higher Education 
 
 F. E. 66-7 
 
 . 102 
 
 Middle Class Education and the State 
 
 F. E. 99-101 
 
 . 103 
 
 Public Establishment of Secondary 
 
 
 
 
 F. E. 126-7. 
 
 
 Middle Class Education and the 
 
 
 
 Working Class 
 
 F. E. 130-2 . 
 
 . 1 06 
 
 National Influence of the Intellectual 
 
 
 
 Life 
 
 
 IO7 
 
 Educative Effect of the Aristocratic Ideal 
 
 L. i, 305 . 
 
 *v-v 
 
 . 108 
 
 Oxford 
 
 E. C. xviii. . 
 
 . 109 
 
 Grammar and Science Teaching . 
 
 L. r, 313 
 
 . no 
 
 Class Division and State Authority 
 
 L- i, 335 
 
 . in 
 
 Public Schools and the Middle Class . 
 
 F. G. 25 
 
 . 112 
 
 The Three Classes of Philistine . 
 
 F. G. 35 
 
 . 113 
 
 Stein's Land Reform .... 
 
 F. G. 36 . 
 
 . 114 
 
 Teaching at Eton and at Lycurgus 
 
 
 
 House 
 
 F. G. 49 
 
 . 116 
 
 Compulsion for all Classes Alike . 
 
 F. G. 52 
 
 . 119 
 
 The Welsh Problem .... 
 
 C. L. ix. . 
 
 . 119 
 
 The Bilingual Question 
 
 C. L. 10 
 
 . 121
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 Payment by Results . . - . 
 Would Compulsory Education Succeed? 
 The Choice of School Books .' V 
 The Old Private School . . . 
 Origin of our Secondary Schools . 
 The University of Paris 
 
 Paris and Oxford . . . . . 
 Studies in the Universities of Paris 
 
 The College of France . . V. 
 Schools of the Jesuits .... 
 Condorcet's Plan of Secondary Educa- 
 tion 
 
 Napoleon's Work 
 
 Revenue of the New University of 
 
 France 
 
 Guizot's Law of Primary Instruction . 
 Ministry and Council of Public 
 
 Instruction . . . . 
 The Normal School . . 
 Oxford and Cambridge 
 French and English Schoolmasters 
 Examinations in France and England . 
 Private Schools in France and England 
 Discipline in French and English 
 
 Schools 
 
 Growing Disbelief in Greek and Latin . 
 Appointment by Examination 
 Value of Public Establishments . 
 Motto from Humboldt .... 
 The Experience of the Continent . 
 Compulsory Education .... 
 Higher Education .... 
 Technical Schools .... 
 Council of Education . 
 Obstacles to Profiting by Continental 
 
 Experience . . . * 
 
 
 XV 
 
 
 PAGE 
 
 R. E. S. 67 . 
 
 121 
 
 R. E. S. 67 . 
 
 122 
 
 R. E. S. 67 . 
 
 124 
 
 R. E. S. 67 . 
 
 124 
 
 F. E. 218 . 
 
 127 
 
 F. E. 2 10-12, 229- 
 
 
 31 
 
 128 
 
 F. E. 226-7 
 
 130 
 
 F. E. 232-3, 234, 
 
 
 237 . 
 
 131 
 
 F. E. 238 . 
 
 133 
 
 F. E. 239-40 
 
 134 
 
 F. E. 241 
 
 135 
 
 F. E. 245-6, 248, 
 
 
 252 . 
 
 135 
 
 F. E. 247, 253-4 . 
 
 136 
 
 F. E. 251-2. 
 
 137 
 
 F. E. 266-7 . 
 
 138 
 
 F. E. 279, 283-5 
 
 139 
 
 F. E. 281 . 
 
 141 
 
 F. E. 288, 290-2 . 
 
 142 
 
 F. R. 328-31 
 
 144 
 
 F. E. 337-8 
 
 I 4 6 
 
 F. E. 366-7 . 
 
 H7 
 
 F. E. 394-5 
 
 I 4 8 
 
 F. E. 412 . 
 
 ISO 
 
 F. E. 4U-I5 
 
 IS* 
 
 H. S. G. iv. . 
 
 IS* 
 
 H. S. G. ix. . 
 
 152 
 
 H. S. G. x.-xii. . 
 
 152 
 
 H. S. G. xv. 
 
 155 
 
 H. S. G. xviii. . 
 
 I 5 6 
 
 H. S. G. xix. 
 
 157 
 
 H. S. G. xx.-i. 
 
 158
 
 xvi CONTENTS 
 
 The Initial Defect in English Schools . 
 Reform of Classical Studies . . . 
 Prussian School Law .... 
 Prussian Leaving Examination . 
 
 Pedagogic 
 
 Teachers of Modern Languages . 
 The Art of Teaching .... 
 Need of an Education Minister . 
 Prussian Belief in Culture 
 Religious Instruction in Prussian 
 
 Schools 
 
 Salaries of Prussian Schoolmasters 
 The Ancient Authors as Literature 
 Wise Choice of Text-Books . 
 Games at German Schools . 
 Value of Classical Training . . " . 
 
 The Pri-vatdocent 
 
 Brodstudien and Examinations . 
 The System of the German Universities 
 The Conflict between Classical and 
 
 Modern Studies .... 
 The True Aim of Instruction 
 Routine in our Public Schools 
 Alter thumswissenschaft 
 The Commercial Theory of Education 
 The Conclusion of the Whole Matter . 
 Our Middle Class Education 
 
 Relative Efficiency of Public and Private 
 Schools 
 
 Functions of a Council of Education . 
 
 Public Supervision of Endowed Schools 
 
 English Universities merely Hants 
 Lyctes 
 
 Provincial Universities Foreshadowed . 
 
 Limitation of Degree-Giving Powers . 
 
 State Appointment of Professors . 
 
 Training a better security of Fitness 
 than Examinations .... 
 
 FAGS 
 
 H. 
 
 S. 
 
 G. 2 . 
 
 159 
 
 H. 
 
 S. 
 
 G. 13 . . 
 
 160 
 
 H. 
 
 S. 
 
 G. 20-2 . 
 
 161 
 
 H. 
 
 S. 
 
 G. 54-6 . 
 
 163 
 
 H. 
 
 S. 
 
 G. 67 . 
 
 164 
 
 H. 
 
 S. 
 
 G. 68-9 
 
 165 
 
 H. 
 
 S. 
 
 G.73- 
 
 165 
 
 H. 
 
 S. G. 82-3 . 
 
 165 
 
 H. 
 
 S. 
 
 G. 85 . 
 
 167 
 
 H. 
 
 S. 
 
 G. 85-7 . 
 
 167 
 
 H. 
 
 S. 
 
 G. 96 . 
 
 169 
 
 II. 
 
 S. 
 
 G. 109-10 . 
 
 169 
 
 H. 
 
 S. 
 
 G. 112-13 
 
 170 
 
 H. 
 
 S. 
 
 G. 124-5 
 
 171 
 
 H. 
 
 S. 
 
 G. 131-2 . 
 
 172 
 
 H. 
 
 S. 
 
 G. 142-4 . 
 
 173 
 
 H. S. G. 148-9 . 175 
 H. S. G. 152 
 
 176 
 
 H. S. G. 153 . 177 
 
 H. S. G. 154-60 . 177 
 
 H. S. G. 161-2 . 182 
 
 H. S. G. 167-70 . 183 
 
 H. S. G. 172-5 . 185 
 
 H. S. G. 175-6 . 187 
 H. S. G. 187-91 
 
 (M. E. 147) 189 
 
 H. S. G. 200 . 192 
 H. S. G. 201-3 192 
 H. S. G. 206-8 . 194 
 
 H. S. G. 209-10 . 195 
 H. S. G. 218-19 196 
 
 TT r r^ _ 
 
 H. S. G. 220 
 
 H. S. G. 222-3 
 H. S. G. 225 
 
 197 
 
 198 
 
 199
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 The English Character . ... 
 Obedience and Right Action . . 
 Need of a Serious Conception of 
 Righteousness .... 
 Recitation as a Formative Influence . 
 Latin in Elementary Schools . " *~'_ 
 Educational Interest of " A Bible 
 
 Reading for Schools" . . . ". 
 Importance of Letters in Schools . 
 Value of a Classical Education . . 
 Relation of Classical to Modern Poetry 
 The Bible the only Possible Classic for 
 
 the People 
 
 Hindrances to Bible Reading in Schools 
 Disregard of the Civilising Power of 
 
 Letters 
 
 Culture needed for All .... 
 German and English Law-Making 
 University Education in Ireland . 
 The Need of Religion .... 
 
 State-appointed Professors . 
 
 Clap-Trap and Catch-Words , 
 
 Confectioner and Doctor 
 
 Good Recitation as helping Intelligence 
 
 The Regulation of Studies . 
 
 Grammar as a Class Subject 
 
 Science and Letters .... 
 
 Natur-kunde 
 
 The Formative Power of Poetry . 
 Middle Class and Working Class 
 
 Education 
 
 The Influence of Poetry 
 Influences affecting Voluntary Schools 
 Cramming, and the Creative Spirit . 
 The Governing Aim of Education 
 The Aim of Education .... 
 Formative Influence of Masterpieces . 
 Eutrapelia 
 
 XVll 
 
 
 PAGE 
 
 F. G. x. 
 
 I 99 
 
 F. G. xii. . 
 
 200 
 
 L. 2, 47 
 
 201 
 
 R. E. S. 72 . 
 
 202 
 
 R. E. S. 72 . 
 
 203 
 
 L. 2, 86 
 
 205 
 
 B. R. S. vi-vii. . 
 
 205 
 
 B. R. S. vii-viii . 
 
 208 
 
 B. R. S. ix-x. 
 
 210 
 
 B. R. S. x-xi. 
 
 212 
 
 B. R. S. xi-xii. . 
 
 213 
 
 B. R. S. xii. . 
 
 215 
 
 L. D. 7 i-3 
 
 216 
 
 F. E. 137-40 
 
 217 
 
 F. E. 153-4, 155 
 
 220 
 
 F. E. 159, 161, 
 
 
 191, 201-2 . 
 
 221 
 
 F. E. 188-9. 
 
 223 
 
 F. E. 215 . 
 
 224 
 
 F. E. 215-16 
 
 224 
 
 R. E. S. 74 . 
 
 225 
 
 L. 2, 123 
 
 227 
 
 R. E. S. 76 . 
 
 228 
 
 R. E. S. 76 . 
 
 22 9 
 
 R. E. S. 78 . 
 
 230 
 
 R. E. S. 78 . 
 
 232 
 
 L. 2, 151 
 
 233 
 
 R. E. S. 80 . 
 
 234 
 
 R. E. S. 82 . 
 
 235 
 
 R. E. S. 82 . 
 
 239 
 
 R. E. S. 80 . 
 
 242 
 
 I. E. 184 . 
 
 243 
 
 I. E. 184 . t 
 
 244 
 
 I. E. 187 . 
 
 244
 
 xviii CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Regular Reading L. 2, 196 . .249 
 
 Reading of Books Hindered by News- 
 papers L. 2, 268 .250 
 
 Light also a Moral Cause . . . D. A. x-xi. . ., 250 
 The Things of the Mind as a Political 
 
 Force D. A. 30-7 . .251 
 
 The Love of France . . . . D. A. 38-9 . . 254 
 The Rivalry of Literature and Science 
 
 in Education D. A. 76-92 . 255 
 
 Science Teaching and Human Nature D. A. 99-102 . 262 
 Mediaeval Universities . . . D. A. 115-16 . 264 
 The Middle Ages, Science and Letters D. A. 117-18 . 264 
 The Final Need of Letters in Education D. A. 124-6 . 265 
 The Study of Greek .... D. A. 130-2 .266 
 The Necessity for Literature . . D. A. 136-7 . 267 
 Free Education in Saxony . . . S. R. E. E. 6 . 268 
 ' Quality of Education . . . . S. R. E. E. 13-14 268 
 Careful Grounding . . . . S. R. E. E. 14 . 270 
 The Humanising Touch . . . S. R. E. E. 14 . 270 
 Religious Teaching in Germany . . S. R. E. E. 14 . 272 
 Organisation the Secret of Superiority S. R. E. E. 15 . 273 
 Lack of Co-ordination . . . . S. R. E. E. 15 . 274 
 Co-ordination of Primary and Secon- 
 dary Education S. R. E. E. 16 . 275 
 
 Status, Training, and Pensioning of 
 
 Teachers S. R. E. E. 16-17 276 
 
 French Training Schools . . . S. R. E. E. 18 .280 
 
 General Reflections from Abroad . S. R. E. E. 24-5 . 281 
 
 INDEX 285
 
 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 
 
 Proportion in Education 
 
 DA milii, Domine, scire quod sciendum est, " Grant 
 that the knowledge I get may be the knowledge 
 which is worth having ! " the spirit of that prayer 
 ought to rule our education. How little it does rule 
 it, every discerning man will acknowledge. Life is 
 short, and our faculties of attention and of recollec- 
 tion are limited ; in education we proceed as if our 
 life were endless, and our powers of attention and 
 recollection inexhaustible. We have no time or 
 strength to deal with half of the matters which are 
 thrown upon our minds ; they prove a useless load 
 to us. When some one talked to Themistocles of 
 an art of memory, he answered : " Teach me rather 
 to forget ! " The sarcasm well criticizes the fatal 
 want of proportion between what we put into our 
 minds and their real needs and powers. 
 
 From the time when first I was led to think about 
 education, this want of proportion is what has most 
 struck me. It is the great obstacle to progress, yet 
 it is by no means remarked and contended against 
 as it should be. It hardly begins to present itself 
 until we pass beyond the strict elements of education, 
 beyond the acquisition, I mean, of reading, of writing, 
 and of calculating so far as the operations of common
 
 2 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 
 
 life require. But the moment we pass beyond 
 these, it begins to appear. Languages, grammar, 
 literature, history, geography, mathematics, the 
 knowledge of nature, what of these is to be taught, 
 how much, and how ? There is no clear, well- 
 grounded consent. The same with religion. Re- 
 ligion is surely to be taught, but what of it is to be 
 taught and how ? A clear well-grounded consent 
 is again wanting. And taught in such fashion as 
 things are now, how often must a candid and sensible 
 man, if he were offered an art of memory to secure 
 all that he has learned of them, be inclined, as to 
 a very great deal of it, to say with Themistocles : 
 " Teach me rather to forget ! " 
 
 In England the common notion seems to be 
 that education is advanced in two ways principally : 
 by for ever adding fresh matters of instruction, and 
 by preventing uniformity. I should be inclined to 
 prescribe just the opposite course ; to prescribe a 
 severe limitation of the number of matters taught, a 
 severe uniformity in the line of study followed. Wide 
 ranging and the multiplication of matters to be 
 investigated, belong to private study, to the de- 
 velopment of special aptitudes in the individual 
 learner, and to the demands which they raise in 
 him. But separate from all this should be kept the 
 broad plain lines of study for almost universal use. 
 I say almost universal, because they must of necessity 
 vary a little with the varying conditions of men. 
 Whatever the pupil finds set out for him upon these 
 lines, he should learn ; therefore it ought not to 
 be too much in quantity. The essential thing is
 
 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 3 
 
 that it should be well chosen. If once we can get it 
 well chosen, the more uniformly it can be kept to, 
 the better. The teacher will be more at home ; and 
 besides, when we have once got what is good and 
 suitable, there is small hope of gain, and great cer- 
 tainty of risk, in departing from it. 
 
 Preface to Johnson's " Lives of the Poets." 
 
 Discipline 
 
 I AM convinced there is no class of children so 
 indulged, so generally brought up (at home at least) 
 without discipline, that is, without habits of respect, 
 exact obedience, and self-control, as the children of 
 the lower middle class in this country. The children 
 of very poor parents receive a kind of rude discipline 
 from circumstances, if not from their parents ; 
 the children of the upper classes are generally 
 brought up in habits of regular obedience, because 
 these classes are sufficiently enlightened to know of 
 what benefit such a training is to the children them- 
 selves ; but children of the class I am alluding to 
 receive no discipline from circumstances, for they are 
 brought up amidst comparative abundance ; they 
 receive none from their parents, who are only half 
 educated themselves, and can understand no kind- 
 ness except complete indulgence ; and, in conse- 
 quence, nowhere have I seen such insubordination, 
 such wilfulness, and such a total want of respect for 
 their parents and teachers as among these children. 
 The teacher's hands cannot be too much strengthened 
 in the schools which this class frequents ; for, if
 
 4 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 
 
 they are not disciplined at school, they will, while 
 young, be disciplined nowhere ; and a scale of 
 fees is peculiarly undesirable, which makes the 
 teacher dependent on the favour of their parents, 
 and unwilling to risk that favour by introducing 
 strict habits of discipline. 
 
 General Report, 1852. 
 
 The English Language in Welsh Schools 
 
 THE children in the Welsh Schools are generally 
 docile and quick in apprehension, to a greater degree 
 than English children ; their drawback, of course, 
 is that they have to acquire the medium of informa- 
 tion, as well as the information itself, while the 
 English children possess the medium at the outset, 
 There can, I think, be no question but that the 
 acquirement of the English language should be more 
 and more insisted upon by your Lordships in your 
 relations with these schools as the one main object for 
 which your aid is granted. Whatever encourage- 
 ment individuals may think it desirable to give to 
 the preservation of the Welsh language on grounds of 
 philological or antiquarian interest, it must always 
 be the desire of a Government to render its domi- 
 nions, as far as possible, homogeneous, and to break 
 down barriers to the freest intercourse between 
 the different parts of them. Sooner or later, the 
 difference of language between Wales and England 
 will probably be effaced, as has happened with the 
 difference of language between Cornwall and the rest 
 of England ; as is now happening with the difference 
 of language between Brittany and the rest of France ;
 
 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 5 
 
 and they are not the true friends of the Welsh people, 
 who, from a romantic interest in their manners 
 and traditions, would impede an event which is 
 socially and politically so desirable for them. 
 
 General Report, 1852. 
 
 Co-education for Young People 
 
 I MUST say that I have never seen any inconvenience 
 arising from bringing together boys and girls in the 
 same school, if their playgrounds are kept distinct. 
 Indeed, the education of girls, when they learn with 
 boys and from a master, appears to me to gain that 
 very correctness and stringency which female 
 education generally wants; while a female teacher 
 is no doubt the person best qualified to instruct 
 infants of both sexes. 
 
 General Report, 1852. 
 
 Lack of Culture in Pupil-Teachers 
 
 ON one other topic, in connection with the subject 
 of pupil-teachers, I am anxious to touch in conclusion. 
 In the general opinion of the advantages which have 
 resulted from the employment of them, I most fully 
 concur ; and of the acquirements and general be- 
 haviour of the greater number of those of them whom 
 I have examined I wish to speak favourably. But I 
 have been much struck in examining them towards 
 the close of their apprenticeship, when they are 
 generally at least eighteen years old, with the utter 
 disproportion between the great amount of positive 
 information and the low degree of mental culture 
 and intelligence which they exhibit. Young men,
 
 6 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 
 
 whose knowledge of grammar, of the minutest details 
 of geographical and historical facts, and above all 
 of mathematics, is surprising, often cannot para- 
 phrase a plain passage of prose or poetry without 
 totally misapprehending it, or write half a page of 
 composition on any subject without falling into 
 gross blunders of taste and expression. I cannot 
 but think that, with a body of young men so highly 
 instructed, too little attention has hitherto been 
 paid to this side of education ; the side through 
 which it chiefly forms the character ; the side 
 which has perhaps been too exclusively attended to 
 in schools for the higher classes, and to the deve- 
 lopment of which it is the boast of what is called 
 classical education to be mainly directed. I attach 
 little importance to the study of languages, ancient 
 or modern, by pupil- teachers, for they can seldom 
 have the time to study them to much purpose 
 without neglecting other branches of instruction 
 which it is necessary that they should follow ; but I 
 am sure that the study of portions of the best 
 English authors and composition, might with ad- 
 vantage be made a part of their regular course of 
 instruction to a much greater degree than it is at 
 present. Such a training would tend to elevate and 
 humanise a number of young men, who at present, 
 notwithstanding the vast amount of raw informa- 
 tion which they have amassed, are wholly un- 
 cultivated ; and it would have the great social 
 advantage of tending to bring them into intellectual 
 sympathy with the educated of the upper classes. 
 
 General Report, 1852.
 
 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 7 
 
 Compulsory Education alone Universal 
 
 I AM far from imagining that a lower school fee, or 
 even a free admission, would induce the poor 
 universally to send their children to school. It is 
 not the high payments alone which deter them ; 
 all I say is, as to the general question of the education 
 of the masses, that they deter them in many cases. 
 But it is my firm conviction, that education will 
 never, any more than vaccination, become universal 
 in this country, until it is made compulsory. 
 
 General Report, 1853. 
 
 The Duty of the School Inspector 
 
 His first duty is that of a simple and faithful re- 
 porter to your Lordships ; the knowledge that 
 imperfections in a school have been occasioned 
 wholly or in part by peculiar local difficulties, may 
 very properly restrain him from recommending the 
 refusal of grants to that school ; but it ought not to 
 restrain him from recording the imperfections. It is 
 for your Lordships to decide how far such imperfec- 
 tions shall subsequently be made public ; but that 
 they should be plainly stated to you by the In- 
 spector whom you employ there can be, I think, no 
 doubt at all. It is said that the Inspector is sent 
 into his district to encourage and promote education 
 in it ; that often, if he blames a school, he discourages 
 what maybe, from local difficulties, a struggling effort, 
 and an effort whose inferiority is owing to no fault 
 of its promoters. I answer, that it is true that the
 
 8 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 
 
 Inspector is sent into his district to encourage 
 education in it ; but in what manner to encourage 
 education ? By promoting the efficiency, through 
 the offer of advice and of pecuniary and other helps, 
 to the individual schools which he visits in it ; not 
 by seeking to maintain by undeserved praise, or to 
 shelter by the suppression of blame, the system, the 
 state of things under which it is in the power of this 
 or that local hindrance to render a school inefficient, 
 and under which many schools are found inefficient 
 accordingly. 
 
 A certain system may exist, and your Lordships 
 may offer assistance to schools established under it ; 
 but you have not, surely, on that account committed 
 yourselves to a faith in its perfect excellence ; you 
 have not pledged yourselves to its ultimate success. 
 The business of your Inspector is not to make out a 
 case for that system, but to report on the condition 
 of public education as it evolves itself under it, and 
 to supply your Lordships and the nation at large 
 with data for determining how far the system is 
 successful. If, for fear of discouraging voluntary 
 efforts, Inspectors are silent respecting the deficien- 
 cies of schools respecting the feeble support given 
 to this school, the imperfect accommodations in 
 another, the faulty discipline or instruction in a 
 third, and the failure of all alike to embrace the 
 poorest class of children if everything is repre- 
 sented as hopeful and prosperous, lest a manager 
 should be disappointed or a subscriber estranged 
 then a delusion is prolonged in the public mind as to 
 the real character of the present state of things, a
 
 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION g 
 
 delusion which it is the very object of a system of 
 public inspection, exercised by agents of the Govern- 
 ment on behalf of the country at large, to dispel 
 and remove. Inspection exists for the sake of finding 
 out and reporting the truth, and for this above all. 
 
 But it is most important that all Inspectors should 
 proceed on the same principle in this respect that 
 one should not conceal defects as an advocate for 
 the schools, while another exposes them as an agent 
 for the Government. If this happens, besides that 
 the general picture of the state of education will be 
 unfaithful, there is also a positive hardship inflicted 
 on the schools which are frankly reported on ; they 
 will appear at a disadvantage compared with other 
 schools, not because they are really in a better state, 
 but because the statement of their defects is softened 
 down or altogether suppressed. 
 
 General Report, 1854. 
 
 The Schoolmaster 
 
 ALTHOUGH I thus press for the most unvarnished 
 and literal report on their schools, I can assure the 
 teachers of them that it is from no harshness or want 
 of sympathy towards them that I do so. No one 
 feels more than I do how laborious is their work, 
 how trying at times to the health and spirits, how 
 full of difficulty even for the best : how much fuller 
 for those whom I too often see attempting the work 
 of a schoolmaster men of weak health and purely 
 studious habits, who betake themselves to this 
 profession, as affording the means to continue their
 
 io THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 
 
 favourite pursuits ; not knowing, alas, that for all 
 but men of the most singular and exceptional vigour 
 and energy, there are no pursuits more irrecon- 
 cilable than those of the student and of the school- 
 master. Still, the quantity of work actually done 
 at present by teachers is immense : the sincerity 
 and devotedness of much of it is even affecting. 
 They themselves will be the greatest gainers by a 
 system of reporting which clearly states what they 
 do and what they fail to do ; not one which drowns 
 alike success and failure, the able and the inefficient, 
 in a common flood of vague approbation. 
 
 General Report, 1854. 
 
 The Teacher's Training 
 
 MUCH of the exaggeration respecting the over-teach- 
 ing in elementary schools arises, I think, in the 
 following way. People read the examination papers, 
 which are printed from year to year in your Lord- 
 ships' Minutes, and exclaim at the rate of attainment 
 demanded ; as if the rate of attainment demanded 
 by those examination papers was the rate of attain- 
 ment demanded in elementary schools. They forget 
 that these examination papers are for teachers, not for 
 scholars. 
 
 Yes ; but, they say, why demand so much learn- 
 ing from those who will have to impart so little ? 
 Why impose on those who will have to teach the 
 rudiments only of knowledge to the children of the 
 poor, an examination so wide in its range, so search- 
 ing in its details ?
 
 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION n 
 
 The answer to this involves the whole question as 
 to the training of the teachers of elementary schools. 
 It is sufficient to say, that the plan which these 
 objectors recommend, the plan of employing teachers 
 whose attainments do not rise far above the level of 
 the attainments of their scholars, has already been 
 tried. It has been tried, and it has failed. Its 
 fruits were to be seen in the condition of elementary 
 education throughout England, until a very recent / 
 period. It is now sufficiently clear, that the teacher I 
 to whom you give only a drudge's training, will do : 
 only a drudge's work, and will do it in a drudge's] 
 spirit : that in order to ensure good instruction even 
 within narrow limits in a school, you must provide 
 it with a master far superior to his scholars, with a 
 master whose own attainments reach beyond the 
 limits within which those of his scholars may be 
 bounded. To form a good teacher for the simplest 
 elementary school, a period of regular training is 
 requisite : this period must be foiled with work : can 
 the objectors themselves suggest a course of work 
 for this period, which shall materially differ from 
 that now pursued ; or can they affirm that the 
 attainments demanded by the certificate-examina- 
 tion exceed the limits of what may without over- 
 work be acquired within the period of his training, 
 by a man of twenty or twenty-one years of age, of 
 fair intelligence, and of fair industry ? 
 
 General Report, 1855.
 
 12 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 
 
 Women Teachers in 1855 
 
 I AM rather interested in seeing the Training 
 School for the first time. I am much struck with 
 the utter unfitness of women for teachers or lecturers. 
 No doubt it is no natural incapacity, but the fault 
 of their bringing up. They are quick learners 
 enough, and there is nothing to complain of in the 
 students on the female side ; but when one goes from 
 hearing one of the lecturers on the male side to hear 
 a lecturer on the female side there is a vast difference. 
 However, the men lecturers at the Boro' Road are 
 certainly above the average, one from his great 
 experience, the other from his great ability. You 
 should have heard the rubbish the female Principal, 
 a really clever young woman, talked to her class of 
 girls of seventeen to eighteen about a lesson in 
 Milton. 
 
 " Letters of Matthew Arnold," i. 46. 
 
 Montalembert on English Public Schools and 
 Universities, 1856 
 
 WHAT he says about the Public Schools and 
 Universities comes curiously from a foreigner, and 
 just now ; but I think there is much truth in it, and 
 that if the aristocratical institutions of England 
 could be saved by anything, they would be saved 
 by these. But as George Sand says in the end of 
 her Memoirs : " L'humanite tend a se niveler : 
 elle le veut, elle le doit, elle le fera ; " and though it 
 does not particularly rejoice me to think so, I believe 
 that this is true, and that the English aristocratic
 
 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 13 
 
 system, splendid fruits as it has undoubtedly borne, 
 must go. I say it does not rejoice me to think 
 this, because what a middle class and people we 
 have in England ! of whom Saint Simon says truly : 
 " Sur tous les chantiers de 1'Angleterre il n'existe 
 pas une seule grande idee." 
 
 " Letters," i. 50. 
 
 Napoleon's Organisation of Church and State, 
 1860 
 
 I HAVE had to look a good deal into the history of 
 the present French organisation in Church and State, 
 which dates from the first Consulate of the great 
 Napoleon, and have come out of my researches with, 
 if possible, a higher opinion of that great man than 
 ever. The way in which he held the balance between 
 old and new France in reorganising things I had till 
 now had no idea of, nor of the difficulties which 
 beset him, both from the Revolution party and the 
 party of the ancient regime. 
 
 "Letters," i. 114. 
 
 The American Character in 1860 
 I SEE Bright goes on envying the Americans, but I 
 cannot but think that the state of things with 
 respect to their national character, which, after all, 
 is the base of the only real grandeur or prosperity, 
 becomes graver and graver. It seems as if few 
 stocks could be trusted to grow up properly without 
 having a priesthood and an aristocracy to act as
 
 14 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 
 
 their schoolmasters at some time or other of their 
 national existence. 
 
 "Letters," i. 115. 
 
 Reading-books and Culture 
 
 THE candour with which school inspectors in France 
 avowed to me their dissatisfaction with the school- 
 books in use there, led me to reflect on the great 
 imperfection exhibited by our school-books also. I 
 found in the French schools good manuals for teach- 
 ing special subjects a good manual for teaching 
 arithmetic, a good manual for teaching grammar, 
 a good manual for teaching geography ; what was 
 wanting there, as it is wanting with us, was a good 
 reading-book, or course of reading-books. It is not 
 enough remembered in how many cases his reading- 
 book forms the whole literature, except his Bible, 
 of the child attending a primary school. If then, 
 instead of literature, his reading-book, as is too 
 often the case, presents him with a jejune encyclo- 
 paedia of positive information, the result is that he 
 has, except his Bible, no literature, no humanising 
 instruction at all. If, again, his reading-book, as 
 is also too often the case, presents him with bad 
 literature instead of good with the writing of 
 second or third-rate authors, feeble, incorrect, and 
 colourless he has not, as the rich have, the correc- 
 tive of an abundance of good literature to counter- 
 act the bad effect of trivial and ill- written school- 
 books ; the^second or third-rate literature of his 
 school-book remains for him his sole, or, at least,
 
 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 15 
 
 his principal literary standard. Dry scientific dis- 
 quisitions, and literary compositions of an inferior 
 order, are indeed the worst possible instruments for 
 teaching children to read well. But besides the 
 fault of not fulfilling this, their essential function 
 the ill-compiled reading-books I speak of have, I say, 
 for the poor scholar, the graver fault of actually 
 doing what they can to spoil his taste, when they 
 are nearly his only means for forming it. I have 
 seen school-books belonging to the cheapest, and 
 therefore most popular series in use in our primary 
 schools, in which far more than half of the poetical 
 extracts were the composition either of the anonymous 
 compilers themselves, or of American writers of the 
 second and third order ; and these books were to be 
 some poor child's Anthology of a literature so varied 
 and so powerful as the English ! To this defective- 
 ness of our reading-books I attribute much of that 
 grave and discouraging deficiency in anything like 
 literary taste and feeling, which even well-in- 
 structed pupil-teachers of four or five years' training, 
 which even the ablest students in our. training 
 schools, still continue almost invariably to exhibit ; 
 a deficiency, to remedy which, the progressive 
 development of our school system, and the very 
 considerable increase of information among the 
 people, appear to avail little or nothing. I believe 
 that nothing would so much contribute to remedy 
 it as the diffusion in our elementary schools of 
 reading-books of which the contents were really well 
 selected and interesting. Such lessons would be far 
 better adapted than a treatise on the atmosphere,
 
 16 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 
 
 the steam-engine, or the pump, to attain the proper 
 end of a reading-book, that of teaching scholars to 
 read well ; they would also afford the best chance of 
 inspiring quick scholars with a real love for reading 
 and literature in the only way in which such a love is 
 ever really inspired, by animating and moving them ; 
 and if they succeeded in doing this, they would have 
 this further advantage, that the literature for which 
 they inspired a taste would be a good, a sound, and a 
 truly refining literature ; not a literature such as that 
 of most of the few attractive pieces in our current 
 reading-books, a literature over which no cultivated 
 person would dream of wasting his time. 
 
 General Report, 1860. 
 
 State Interference in Education 
 
 THE wish for a more deliberate and systematically 
 reasoned action on the part of the State in dealing, 
 with education in this country is more than once 
 expressed or implied in the following pages. In 
 this introduction I propose to submit to those who 
 have been accustomed to regard all State-action 
 with jealousy, some reasons for thinking that the 
 circumstances which once made that jealousy prudent 
 and natural have undergone an essential change. I 
 desire to lead them to consider with me, whether, 
 in the present altered conjuncture, that State- 
 action, which was once dangerous, may not become, 
 not only without danger in itself, but the means of 
 helping us against dangers from another quarter. 
 
 The Popular Education of France with Notices of that of Holland 
 and Switzerland," p. xii, . '
 
 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 17 
 
 Character of the Masses in France 
 
 THE common people, in France, seem to me the 
 soundest part of the French nation. They seem to 
 me more free from the two opposite degradations of 
 multitudes, brutality and servility ; to have a more 
 developed human life, more of what distinguishes 
 elsewhere the cultured classes from the vulgar, than 
 the common people in any other country with which 
 I am acquainted. 
 
 " The Popular Education of France, etc.," p. xxi. 
 
 Causes of the Power of France 
 
 THE power of France in Europe is at this day mainly 
 owing to the completeness with which she has 
 organised democratic institutions. The action of 
 the French State is excessive ; but it is too little 
 understood in England that the French people has 
 adopted this action for its own purposes, has in 
 great measure attained those purposes by it, and 
 owes to having done so the chief part of its influence 
 in Europe. The growing power in Europe is demo- 
 cracy ; and France has organised democracy with 
 a certain indisputable grandeur and success. The 
 ideas of 1789 were working everywhere in the 
 eighteenth century ; but it was because in France 
 the State adopted them that the French Revolution 
 became an historic epoch for the world, and France 
 the lodestar of Continental democracy. 
 
 " The Popular Education of France, etc.," p. xxii, 
 
 C
 
 18 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 
 
 Democracy's Lack of Ideals 
 
 ENGLISH democracy runs no risk of being over- 
 mastered by the State ; it is almost certain that it 
 will throw off the tutelage of aristocracy. Its real 
 danger is, that it will have far too much its own way, 
 and be left far too much to itself. " What harm 
 will there be in that ? " say some : " are we not a 
 self-governing people ? " I answer : " We have 
 never yet been a self-governing democracy, or anything 
 like it." The difficulty for democracy is, how to 
 find and keep high ideals. The individuals who 
 compose it are, the bulk of them, persons who need 
 to follow an ideal, not to set one ; and one ideal of 
 greatness, high feeling and fine culture, which an 
 aristocracy once supplied to them, they lose by the 
 very fact of ceasing to be a lower order and becoming 
 a democracy. Nations are not truly great solely be- 
 cause the individuals composing them are numerous, 
 free, and active ; but they are great when these 
 numbers, this freedom, and this activity are em- 
 ployed in the service of an ideal somewhat higher 
 than that of an ordinary man, taken by himself. 
 Not only the greatness of nations, but their very 
 unity, depends on this. In fact, unless a nation's 
 action is inspired by an ideal commanding the 
 respect of the many as higher than each ordinary 
 man's own, there is nothing to keep that nation 
 together, nothing to resist the dissolvent action of 
 innumerable and conflicting wills and opinions. 
 Quot homines, tot sententiae, and one man's opinion
 
 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 19 
 
 is as good as another's there is no basis for a real 
 unity here. 
 
 " The Popular Education of France, etc.," p. xxxii. 
 
 The Lack of Public Schools for the Middle 
 Class 
 
 THE aristocratic classes in England may, perhaps, 
 be well content to rest satisfied with their Eton and 
 Harrow ; the State is not likely to do better for 
 them ; nay, the superior confidence, spirit, and style, 
 engendered by a training in the great public schools, 
 constitute for these classes a real privilege, a real 
 engine of command, which they might, if they were 
 selfish, be sorry to lose by the establishment of 
 schools great enough to beget a like spirit in the 
 classes below them. But the middle classes in 
 England have every reason not to remain content 
 with their private schools ; the State can do a great 
 deal better for them ; by giving to schools for these 
 classes a public character, it can bring the instruction 
 in them under a criticism which the knowledge of 
 these classes is not in itself at present able to supply ; 
 by giving to them a national character, it can confer 
 on them a greatness and a noble spirit, which the 
 tone of these classes is not in itself at present adequate 
 to impart. Such schools would soon prove notable 
 competitors with the existing public schools : they 
 would do these a great service by stimulating them, 
 and making them look into their own weak points 
 more closely : economical, because with charges
 
 20 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 
 
 uniform and under severe revision, they would do 
 a great service to that large body of persons, who, 
 at present, seeing that on the whole the best secon 
 dary instruction to be found is that of the existing' 
 public schools, obtain it for their children from a 
 sense of duty, although they can ill afford it, and 
 although its cost is certainly exorbitant. Thus the 
 middle classes might, by the aid of the State, better 
 their instruction, while still keeping its cost moderate. 
 This in itself would be a gain ; but this gain would 
 be nothing in comparison with that of acquiring the 
 sense of belonging to great and honourable seats of 
 learning, and of breathing in their youth the air of 
 the best culture of their nation. This sense would 
 be an educational influence for them of the highest 
 value ; it would really augment their self-respect 
 and moral force ; it would truly fuse them with the 
 class above, and tend to bring about for them the 
 equality which they desire. 
 
 "The Popular Education of France, etc.," p. xl. 
 
 Culture and Character united in Athens 
 
 IN modern epochs, the part of a high reason, of 
 ideas, acquires constantly increasing importance in 
 the conduct of the world's affairs. A fine culture 
 is the complement of a high reason, and it is in the 
 conjunction of both with character, with energy, that 
 the ideal for men and nations is placed. It is 
 common to hear remarks on the frequent divorce 
 between culture and character, and to infer from
 
 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 21 
 
 this that culture is a mere varnish, and that character 
 only deserves any serious attention. No error can 
 be more fatal : culture without character is, no 
 doubt, something frivolous, vain, and weak, but 
 character without culture is, on the other hand, 
 something raw, blind, and dangerous : the most 
 interesting, the most truly glorious peoples, are those 
 in which the alliance of the two has been effected 
 most successfully, and its result spread most widely. 
 This is why the spectacle of ancient Athens has such 
 profound interest for a rational man ; that it is the 
 spectacle of the culture of a people. It is not an 
 aristocracy leavening with its own high spirit the 
 multitude which it wields, but leaving it the un- 
 formed multitude still ; it is not a democracy, acute 
 and energetic, but tasteless, narrow-minded, and 
 ignoble ; it is the middle and lower classes in the 
 highest development of their humanity that these 
 classes have yet reached. It was the many who 
 relished these arts, who were not satisfied with less 
 than those monuments ; in the conversations re- 
 corded by Plato, or by the matter-of-fact Xenophon, 
 which for the free yet refined discussion of ideas 
 have set the tone for the whole cultivated world, 
 shopkeepers and tradesmen of Athens mingle as 
 speakers. For any one but a pedant, this is why 
 a handful of Athenians of two thousand years ago 
 are more interesting than the millions of most 
 nations our contemporaries. Surely, if they knew 
 this, those friends of progress, who have confidently 
 pronounced the remains of the ancient world so much 
 lumber, and a classical education an aristocratic
 
 22 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 
 
 impertinence, might be inclined to reconsider their 
 sentence. 
 
 "The Popular Education of France, etc.," p. xliii. 
 
 French Administrative Divisions in 1859 
 
 (FRANCE contains, according to the last census, a 
 population of 36,039,364 inhabitants.) Its 86 de- 
 partments have, for administrative purposes, a 
 division which it will often be necessary, in reading 
 what follows, to bear in mind. Each department is 
 divided into arrondissements ; each arrondissement 
 is subdivided into cantons and communes. There 
 are 363 arrondissements in France, 2850 cantons, 
 36,826 communes. 
 
 " The Popular Education of France, etc.," pp. 5, 9. 
 
 Over Government and Under Government 
 
 I BELIEVE, as every Englishman believes, that over- 
 government is pernicious and dangerous ; that the 
 State cannot safely be trusted to undertake every- 
 thing, to superintend everywhere. But, having once 
 made this profession of faith, I shall proceed to point 
 out as may be necessary, without perpetually repeat- 
 ing it, some inconveniences of under-government ; to 
 call attention to certain important particulars, in 
 which, within the domain of a single great question, 
 that of public education, the direct action of the 
 State has produced salutary and enviable results. 
 
 " The Popular Education of France, etc.," p. I r.
 
 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 23 
 
 The Christian Brothers' School 
 
 IN 1789 the religious societies engaged in teaching 
 the poor of France were twenty in number ; but 
 the religious society which has prosecuted this work 
 most effectually, which has most merited gratitude 
 by its labours for the education of the poor, and 
 which, at the present day, most claims attention 
 from its numbers and from its influence, is undoubt- 
 edly the society of the " Brethren of the Christian 
 Schools." 
 
 The brethren are enjoined by their statutes to 
 devote themselves to the instruction of boys in all 
 things that pertain to an honest and Christian life. 
 They are not forbidden to receive the rich into their 
 schools, but their principal business is to be with 
 the poor, and to their poorer scholars they are to 
 extend a special affection. They are to obey a 
 Superior-General, who, with two assistants, is to be 
 elected by the assembled directors of the principal 
 houses. The Superior-General is chosen for life, 
 the assistants for ten years. The separate houses 
 are to be governed by directors, chosen for three 
 years. No brother is to take holy orders. Their 
 vows, which are for three years only, are the three 
 regular vows of chastity, poverty, and obedience, 
 with another of stability, and of teaching without fee 
 or reward. Even these three-year vows they are 
 not permitted to make until they have been members 
 of the institute two years, one of which is passed in 
 the noviciate, the other in a school. They are 
 always to go in company with others of their order ;
 
 24 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 
 
 at first they went in parties of two, now they must 
 be at least three. Together with religious know- 
 ledge they are to teach their scholars reading, 
 writing, and arithmetic. They are to have in each 
 of their houses a store of school-books and school- 
 material, which they are to sell to their scholars at 
 the cost price. They are not to talk or gossip with 
 their scholars, or to hear any news from them. 
 They are to be sparing of punishments. The 
 director of each house is to have the inspection of 
 the schools in connection with it. 
 
 " The Popular Education of France, etc.," pp. 14, 16. 
 
 Schools Founded by the Convention 
 
 IT was the Convention which endowed France with 
 two admirable institutions, of which the vitality 
 has proved not less great than the usefulness the 
 Normal School and the Polytechnic School. 
 
 "The Popular Education of France, etc.," p. 24. 
 
 Educational Results of the French Revolution 
 
 " WHAT," I ventured to ask M. Guizot, " did the 
 French Revolution contribute to the cause of popular 
 education ? " " Un deluge de mots," replied M. 
 Guizot, " rien de plus ! " As regards the material 
 establishment of popular instruction, this is un- 
 questionably true. Yet on its future character and 
 regulation the Revolution, as unquestionably, exer- 
 cised an influence which every Frenchman takes it
 
 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 25 
 
 for granted that an inquirer understands, and which 
 we in England must not overlook. It established 
 certain conditions under which any future system 
 of popular education must inevitably constitute 
 itself. It made it impossible for any Government of 
 France to found a system which was not lay, and 
 which was not national. 
 
 ft The Popular Education of France, etc.," p. 29. 
 
 Napoleon as Educator 
 
 FOR the feeble and decaying central schools of the 
 Convention * mere courses of lectures, without hold 
 on their pupils, without discipline, and without 
 study the new law substituted the communal 
 colleges and the lyceums, with boarders, with a 
 rigid discipline, and with a sustained course of 
 study; institutions which do not, indeed, give an 
 education equal to that of our best public schools, 
 but which extend to all the middle classes of France 
 an education which our public schools give to the 
 upper classes only. For the exclusively mathe- 
 matical and scientific course of the revolutionary 
 theorists, it substituted, but with proper enlarge- 
 ment, that bracing classical course which the ex- 
 perience of generations has consecrated, and which 
 Napoleon, though he had not himself undergone it, 
 had the power of mind to appreciate. Finally, 
 by the establishment of 6400 scholarships, fairly 
 
 * The law of the third Brumaire, year four, had decreed one for each 
 department. In 1802 only thirty-two were found to have had any 
 success. These thirty-two were the first Lycles under the new law.
 
 26 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 
 
 distributed, it opened an access as wide as was 
 possible, or even desirable, to the schools which it 
 created. 
 
 Only the first chapter of the law of 1802 related 
 to primary schools. This merely repeated the humble 
 provisions of the last law of the Convention. The 
 Commune was to furnish a schoolhouse to the 
 teacher, who still, after this was supplied to him, 
 had to depend for his support upon the payments of 
 his scholars. The number of these to be exempted, 
 on the ground of poverty, from the school-fee, was 
 reduced from a fourth to a fifth. The superin- 
 tendence of the teacher by the municipal authorities 
 was confirmed. Finally, the schools were placed 
 under the supreme charge of the newly created 
 departmental executive, the sub-prefects and the 
 prefects. 
 
 Small as was the attention then bestowed on 
 schools for the poor, in comparison with that which 
 at a later time they received, it is curious to remark 
 how strongly the inconvenience of their total dis- 
 organisation was felt in the French provinces, as 
 long ago as the beginning of this century. It seems 
 as if, rude and illiterate as was the village-school of 
 France before the Revolution, its disappearance 
 could leave a blank as serious as the blank which 
 the disappearance of the village-school would leave 
 now. In its endeavour to bring order out of the 
 chaos which the Revolution had left, the Consular 
 Government invited in iSoithe practical suggestions 
 of the council-general of each department upon the 
 wants of the locality. The councils-general, in their
 
 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 27 
 
 replies, expressed, among other things, the greatest 
 dissatisfaction at the state of the primary schools, 
 and the greatest desire to see it improved. Many 
 of them called for the re-establishment of the 
 religious orders devoted to teaching. " The Brethren 
 of the Christian Doctrine, the Ursulines, and the 
 rest, are much regretted here," says the council- 
 general of the Cote d'Or. That of the Pas de Calais 
 begs the Government " Again to employ in the 
 instruction of boys and girls the Freres ignorantins, 
 and the Daughters of Charity, and of Providence." 
 That of the Pyrenees Orientales says, " People here 
 regret the religious associations which busied them- 
 selves in teaching the children of the poor." That 
 of the Aisne asks, like that of the Pas de Calais, for 
 the " reorganisation of the religious communities 
 devoted to the elementary instruction of children of 
 each sex." To commit the primary instruction of 
 France to religious corporations was at no time the 
 intention of Napoleon. To avail himself of the 
 services of these corporations, under the control of 
 a lay body, modern in its spirit, and national in its 
 composition, he was abundantly willing. Such a 
 body he designed to establish in his new University. 
 
 " The Popular Education of France, etc.," pp. 31-33. 
 
 Secondary Education in England and France 
 
 MY limits forbid me to do more than touch on this 
 great subject of secondary instruction ; yet to touch 
 on it for one moment in passing I cannot forbear.
 
 28 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 
 
 I saw something of it ; I inquired much about it ; 
 had I not done so, I should have comprehended the 
 subject of French primary instruction very imper- 
 fectly. Let me, then, be permitted to call the 
 English reader's attention to the advantage France 
 possesses in its vast system of public secondary 
 instruction ; in its 63 lyceums and 244 communal 
 colleges, inspected by the State, aided by the State,* 
 drawing from this connection with the State both 
 efficiency and dignity ; and to which, in concert with 
 the State, the departments, the communes, private 
 benevolence, all co-operate to provide free admission 
 for poor and deserving scholars. M. de Talleyrand 
 truly said that the education of the great English 
 public schools was the best in the world. He added, 
 to be sure, that even this was detestable. But 
 allowing it all its merits, how small a portion of the 
 population does it embrace ! It embraces the 
 aristocratic class ; it embraces the higher pro- 
 fessional class ; it embraces a few of the richest 
 and most successful of the commercial class ; of 
 the great body of the commercial class and of the 
 immense middle classes of this country, it embraces 
 not one. They are left to an education which, 
 though among its professors are many excellent and 
 honourable men, is deplorable. Our middle classes 
 are nearly the worst educated in the world. But it 
 is not this only ; although, when I consider this, all 
 the French commonplaces about the duty of the 
 
 * In 1855 the grant from the State to the lyceums was 
 1,300,000 fr. ; to the communal colleges, 98,000 fr. 86 c. 
 " Budget de 1'Instruction Publique," pp. 164, 167.
 
 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 29 
 
 State to protect its children from the charlatanism 
 and cupidity of individual speculation seems to me 
 to be justified. It is far more that a great oppor- 
 tunity is missed of fusing all the upper and middle 
 classes into one powerful whole, elevating and 
 refining the middle classes by the contact, and 
 stimulating the upper. /In France this is what the 
 : system of public education effects ; it effaces 
 / between the upper and middle classes the sense of 
 social alienation ; it raises the middle without 
 dragging down the upper ; Jit gives to the boy of 
 the middle class the studies, the superior teaching, 
 the proud sense of belonging to a great school, which 
 the Eton or Harrow boy has with us ; it tends to 
 give to the middle classes precisely what they most 
 want, and their want of which is the great gulf 
 between them and the upper ; it tends to give them 
 personal dignity. The power of such an education 
 is seen in what it has done for the professional 
 classes in England. The clergy and barristers, who 
 are generally educated in the great public schools, 
 are nearly identified in thought, feeling, and manners 
 with the aristocratic class. They have not been 
 unmixed gainers by this identification ; it has too 
 much isolated them from a class to which by income 
 and social position they, after all, naturally belong, 
 while towards the highest class it has made them, 
 not vulgarly servile certainly, but intellectually too 
 deferential too little apt to maintain perfect mental 
 independence on questions where the prepossessions 
 of that class are concerned. Nevertheless, they 
 have, as a class, acquired the unspeakable benefit
 
 30 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 
 
 of that elevation of the mind and feelings which it 
 is the best office of superior education to confer. 
 But they have bought this elevation at an immense 
 money-price at a price which they can no better 
 than the commercial classes afford to pay; which 
 they who have paid it long, and who know what it 
 has bought for them, will continue to pay while 
 they must, but which the middle classes will never 
 even begin to pay. When I told the French Uni- 
 versity authorities of the amount paid for a boy's 
 education at the great English schools, and paid 
 often out of very moderate incomes, they exclaimed 
 with one voice that to demand such sacrifices from 
 French parents would be vain. It would be equally 
 vain to demand them of the English middle classes. 
 Either their education must remain what it is, vulgar 
 and unsound ; or the State must create by its 
 authorisation, its aid above all, by its inspection 
 institutions honourable because of their public 
 character, and cheap because nationally frequented, 
 in which they may receive a better. If the former 
 happens, then this great English middle class, grow- 
 ing wealthier, more powerful, more stirring every 
 year, will every year grow more and more isolated 
 in sentiment from the professional and aristocratic 
 classes. If the latter, then not only will the whole 
 richer part of our rich community be united by the 
 strong bond of a common culture, but the establish- 
 ment of a national system of instruction for the 
 poorer part of the community will have been rendered 
 infinitely easier. In fact, the French middle classes 
 may well submit to be taxed for the education of
 
 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 31 
 
 the poor, for the State has already provided for their 
 own. But already there are loud complaints among 
 the lower middling classes of this country that the 
 Committee of Council is providing the poor with 
 better schools than those to which they themselves 
 have access ; and we may be very sure that any 
 new measure which proposes to do much for the 
 instruction of the poor, and nothing for that of the 
 middling classes, will meet with discontent and 
 opposition from the latter. It is impossible to over- 
 rate the magnitude of this question. English 
 superior instruction is perhaps intelligent enough to 
 be left to take care of itself. Oxford and Cambridge 
 are popularising themselves : with little noise and 
 in the shade, the London University is performing 
 a work of great national benefit. At any rate, 
 superior instruction is the efflorescence and luxury 
 of education ; it is comparatively of limited im- 
 portance. Secondary education, on the other hand, 
 is of the widest importance, and it is neither or- 
 ganised enough nor intelligent enough to take care 
 of itself. The Education Commissioners would 
 excite, I am convinced, in thousands of hearts a 
 gratitude of which they little dream, if, in presenting 
 the results of their labours on primary instruction, 
 they were at the same time to say to the Govern- 
 ment : " Regard the necessities of a not distant 
 future, and organise your secondary instruction." 
 
 " The Popular Education of France, etc.," pp. 74-77.
 
 32 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 
 
 Mixed Schools in France and Holland 
 
 AMONG the 39,600 public boys' schools, 17,000 are 
 mixed, that is, they admit girls as well as boys. 
 The number of mixed schools tends continually to 
 diminish, by the creation of separate schools for 
 girls. Although M. Cousin, in his report of 1833, 
 calls the objection to mixed schools a " wide-spread 
 error which makes female education on a great scale 
 an almost insoluble problem," and directs against 
 it the whole weight of his authority, the objection 
 has not ceased to gain strength, and is at the present 
 day, in France, almost universal. Upon no point, 
 I am bound to say, have I found all those connected 
 with education in that country more unanimous. 
 In Holland, on the other hand, there prevails an 
 equal unanimity in favour of mixed schools. 
 
 " The Popular Education of France, etc.," p. 81. 
 
 Comparative Expenditure in England and France 
 in 1856 
 
 IN Great Britain, according to the latest returns, 
 the annual expenditure on primary instruction, 
 properly so called, was about 800,000. Putting 
 out of sight, as we have put out of sight in the case 
 of France, the value received for this expenditure 
 in the shape of administration, inspection, etc., let 
 us ask what it achieved for schools and scholars. It 
 maintained no schools, but it aided, we will assume, 
 in one way or another, all the schools liable to in- 
 spection ; and on this estimate, which is exaggerated,
 
 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 33 
 
 it aided 8461 primary schools, giving instruction to 
 934,000 scholars ; that is to say, it helped, at the 
 outside, 8461 schools to exist, and it helped 934,000 
 children to receive instruction. In France, the 
 same grant would have entirely maintained nearly 
 25,000 schools, and to more than a million and a half 
 of children it would have entirely given instruction. 
 
 " The Popular Education of France, etc.," p. 88. 
 
 School-less Children in France and England in 1856 
 
 I COULD not discover that even in the great towns, 
 where population is thickest, masses of poor children 
 anywhere remained without instruction. There are 
 cases of hardship, such as those which I have men- 
 tioned ; but I should mislead the English reader if I 
 allowed him to think that I found in any French city 
 educational destitution such as that of the 21,025 
 school-less children of Glasgow, such as that of the 
 17,177 school-less children of Manchester. I should 
 mislead him if I let him think that I found in 
 France, or that I believe to exist in France, a school- 
 less multitude like the 2,250,000 of England. 
 
 " The Popular Education of France, etc.," p. 101. 
 
 The Sisters' Schools of Paris 
 
 APART from the mere instruction, however, there is, 
 even in Paris, something in the Sisters' schools 
 which pleases both the eye and the mind, and which 
 is more rarely found elsewhere. There is the fresh, 
 
 D
 
 34 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 
 
 neat schoolroom, almost always cheerfuller, cleaner, 
 more decorated than a lay schoolroom. There is 
 the orderliness and attachment of the children. 
 Finally, there is the aspect of the Sisters themselves, 
 in general of a refinement beyond that of their rank 
 in life ; of a gentleness which even beauty in France 
 mostly lacks ; of a tranquillity which is evidence 
 that their blameless lives are not less happy than 
 useful. If ever I have beheld serious yet cheerful 
 benevolence, and the serenity of the mind pictured 
 on the face, it is here. 
 
 " The Popular Education of France, etc.," p. 103. 
 
 Needlework Schools 
 
 ATTACHED to the same establishment is an asile- 
 ouvroir, or needlework school, which I visited. The 
 schools are open after or between the ordinary 
 school-hours ; they are attended by girls from mixed 
 schools under masters, to which they are often 
 annexed ; by girls from ordinary girls' schools, of 
 which the teacher is not particularly skilled in 
 needlework ; finally, by girls who attend no other 
 school at all. For the benefit of the latter a little 
 instruction in reading, arithmetic and religious 
 knowledge is added to the lessons in sewing, knitting, 
 and marking. Embroidery and ornamental work 
 are proscribed by law, except in those districts of 
 France where they form an important branch of 
 female industry. As the schools are open only for 
 a few hours in each day, the services of skilful
 
 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 35 
 
 teachers can be secured for a very moderate re- 
 muneration. These establishments, which are of 
 great use, and which have had no small share in 
 giving to French needlewomen their superiority, are 
 unknown as a school institution in England. 
 
 " The Popular Education of France, etc.," p. 104. 
 
 Inspection of Private Schools 
 
 HARDLY anywhere in France (in this the reports of 
 all the inspectors concur) can the private boys' 
 schools, whether they be lay or congreganist, hold 
 their own in the competition with the public schools. 
 The private girls' schools kept by the Sisters are more 
 fortunate. But for their boys although even in 
 the private school the teacher has the indispensable 
 guarantee of the certificate of capacity, without 
 which, in France, no man may teach parents un- 
 doubtedly prefer the public school with its additional 
 guarantees of a public character and a more detailed 
 inspection. To State inspection all private schools 
 are subject ; but only in what concerns their pro- 
 vision for the bodily health and comfort of the 
 pupils, and their maintenance of due morality. So 
 strongly do these establishments feel the advantage 
 conferred by the publicity and stimulant of thorough 
 inspection, that they constantly request the inspector 
 to extend his examination from their school premises 
 to their school instruction. Generally he refuses, 
 and for reasons which his English brethren would 
 do well to remember. " If T find the instruction
 
 36 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 
 
 ever so bad and injudicious," he says, " I have no 
 power to get it changed ; and I am bound to give 
 public service where I know it can have results." 
 Many an English squire, in like manner, wishes for 
 the stimulant of inspection, while he is determined 
 to keep his school entirely independent. In other 
 words, he wishes to have an inspector down from 
 London occasionally, as he would have a landscape- 
 gardener or an architect, to talk to him about his 
 school, to hear his advice, and to be free to dismiss 
 him, as he might dismiss the landscape-gardener or 
 the architect, the moment his advice becomes un- 
 palatable. He wishes to have a public functionary 
 to act as showman to his school once a year. But 
 it is not for this that the State pays its servants. 
 State supervision is useless if it can be rejected the 
 moment it becomes a reality the moment it tends 
 to enforce general reason against individual caprice. 
 The counsels of inspection, to be of any real worth, 
 must be in some way or other authoritative. 
 
 " The Popular Education of France, etc.," pp. 105-106. 
 
 Pupil-Teachers 
 
 PUPIL-TEACHERS the sinews of English primary 
 instruction, whose institution is the grand merit of 
 our English State system, and its chief title to public 
 respect ; this, and I will boldly say, the honesty 
 with which that system has been administered. 
 Pupil-teachers the conception, for England, of 
 the founder of English popular education, of the
 
 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 37 
 
 administrator whose conceptions have been as fruitful 
 as his services were unworthily maligned, of Sir 
 James Shuttleworth. In naming them, I pause to 
 implore all friends of education to use their best 
 efforts to preserve this institution to us unimpaired. 
 Let them entreat ministerial economy to respect a 
 pensioner who has repaid the outlay upon him a 
 thousand times ; let them entreat Chancellors of 
 the Exchequer to lay their retrenching hands any- 
 where but here ; let them entreat the Privy Council 
 Office to propose for sacrifice some less precious 
 victim. Forms less multiplied, examinations less 
 elaborate, inspectors of a lower grade let all these 
 reductions be endured rather than that the number 
 of pupil-teachers should be lessened. If these are 
 insufficient, a far graver retrenchment, the retrench- 
 ment of the grants paid to holders of our certificates 
 of merit, would be yet far less grave than a con- 
 siderable loss of pupil-teachers. A certificate, in- 
 deed, is properly a guarantee of capacity, and not 
 an order for money. There is no more reason that 
 it should entitle its possessor to 20 than that it 
 should entitle him to a box at the opera. Private 
 liberality can repair the salaries of the schoolmasters, 
 but no private liberality can create a body like the 
 pupil-teachers. Neither can a few of them do the 
 work of many. " Classes of twenty-five or thirty, 
 and an efficient teacher to each class ; " that school- 
 system is the best which inscribes these words on 
 its banners. 
 
 " The Popular Education of France, etc.," pp. 108-109,
 
 3 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 
 
 Inspectors as Civil Servants 
 
 WHEN the Concordat was under discussion, neither 
 supplication nor adroitness could prevail with 
 Napoleon to give to the State itself an exclusively 
 denominational character ; he steadily refused to 
 call the Roman Catholic religion the religion of the 
 State ; he would only consent to call it, what it 
 undoubtedly was, the religion of the majority of 
 the French nation. State inspection represents 
 the unity of the civil power, not the divisions of 
 rival sects. It takes care that children learn, in 
 the public schools, each the doctrines of his own 
 religion ; but it protects each, in learning these, 
 from the intolerance of the other, and itself remains 
 neutral, that it may check intolerance the better. 
 The State, therefore, owes no account to any man 
 of the religious persuasion of its inspectors ; for it 
 is not as religious sectaries that they have to 
 discharge their duties, but as civil servants ; and 
 the moment they begin to discharge them as religious 
 sectaries, they discharge them ill. 
 
 *' The Popular Education of France, etc.," p. 147. 
 
 Rational Form of the Code Napoleon 
 
 IT is not a light thing that the law, which speaks 
 to all men, should speak an intelligible human 
 language, and speak it well. Reason delights in 
 rigorous order, lucid clearness, and simple statement. 
 Reason abhors devious intricacy, confused obscurity, 
 and prolix repetition. It is not unimportant to the
 
 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 39 
 
 reason of a nation, whether the form and text of its 
 laws present the characters which reason delights in, 
 or the characters which reason abhors. Certainly the 
 text of an English Act of Parliament never carried to 
 an uneducated English mind anything but bewilder- 
 ment. I have myself heard a French peasant quote 
 the Code Napoleon ; it is in every one's hands ; 
 it is its rational form, hardly less than its rational 
 spirit, that the code has to thank for a popularity 
 which makes half the nations of Europe desirous 
 to adopt it. If English law breathed in its spirit 
 the wisdom of angels, its form would make it to 
 foreign nations inaccessible. The style and diction 
 of all the modern legislation of France are the same 
 as those of the Code. Let the English reader com- 
 pare, in their style and diction alone, M. Guizot's 
 education-law, printed at the end of this volume, 
 with the well-known bill of a most sincere and intel- 
 ligent friend of English education, Sir John Paking- 
 ton. Certainly neither was the French law drawn 
 by M. Guizot himself, nor the English bill by Sir 
 John Pakington ; each speaks the current language 
 of its national legislation. But the French law 
 (with a little necessary formality, it is true) speaks 
 the language of modern Europe ; the English bill 
 speaks the language of the Middle Ages and speaks 
 it ill. I assert that the rational intelligible speech 
 of this great public voice of her laws has a directly 
 favourable effect upon the general reason and in- 
 telligence of France. 
 
 " The Popular Education of France, etc.," pp. 159-160.
 
 40 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 
 
 Liberal Spirit of French Legislation 
 
 FROM the form I pass to the spirit. With still more 
 confidence I say: It is not a light thing for the 
 reason and equity of a nation that her laws should 
 boldly utter prescriptions which are reasonable and 
 equitable. It is not a light thing for the spread, 
 among the French masses, of a wise and moderate 
 spirit on the vital and vexed questions of religion and 
 education, that the law of 1833 should say firmly : 
 Le voeu des peres de famille sera toujours consulte et 
 suivi en ce qui concerne la participation de leurs 
 en/ants a I' instruction religieuse. It is not a light 
 thing that the whole body of modern French legis- 
 lation on these critical questions should hold a 
 language equally firm, equally liberal. To this it 
 is owing that in a sphere where the popular cry in 
 other countries, either cannot be relied on or is sure 
 to be wrong, there exists in France a genial current 
 of sound public opinion, blowing steadily in the right 
 quarter. To this it is owing that from dangers 
 which perpetually thwart and threaten intellectual 
 growth in other countries, intellectual growth in 
 France is comparatively secure. To this, finally, 
 it is owing that even in questions beyond this sphere, 
 if they assume a sufficient generality, and do not 
 demand a large knowledge of particular facts, of 
 which the mass of Frenchmen is deplorably ignorant, 
 the habit of intelligence continues in the French 
 people to be active and to enlighten. It is with 
 truth that M. Guizot says in his latest work : 
 " C'est la grandeur de notre pays que les esprits
 
 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 41 
 
 ont besoin d'etre satisfaits en mcme temps que Ics 
 intfrets." * 
 
 " The Popular Education of France, etc.," pp. 160-161. 
 
 The State as the Organ of the National Reason 
 
 IN dealing with education, a Government must often 
 meet with questions on which there are two opposite 
 opinions, and both rational. If it is wise, it will 
 invariably treat such opinions with due respect, 
 and will be guided, in deciding between them, by 
 the character of the times, the state of the circum- 
 stances, the disposition of its people. Shall public 
 education be in the hands of the clergy or in the 
 hands of the laity ? Shall the instruction given in 
 primary schools be exclusively secular, or shall it be 
 also religious ? Here are two questions, upon each 
 of which opposite opinions, both having a ground of 
 reason, may fairly be maintained. In inclining to 
 either, in abandoning its own inclinations on the side 
 of either, a Government may be taking a course 
 which reason sanctions ; at any rate it is giving 
 victory or defeat to arguments of which reason can 
 take cognisance. The national intelligence can at 
 least follow it in its operations. But a Government 
 in dealing with education, will also sometimes meet 
 with opinions which have no ground in reason, 
 which are mere crotchets, or mere prejudices, or 
 mere passions. Will it have the clearness of vision 
 to discern whether they are such, or the courage, if 
 
 * MAnoires, vol. ii. p 235.
 
 42 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 
 
 they are, to treat them as such ? that is the ques- 
 tion. Will it encourage and illuminate the national 
 intelligence by firmly treating what is unintelligent 
 as unintelligent, what is fanatical as fanatical, in 
 spite of the loudness with which it maybe clamoured ; 
 or will it wound and baffle and confuse the national 
 intelligence by treating what is unintelligent as if it 
 were intelligent, as if it were a real power, as re- 
 spectfully to be parleyed with as possible to be 
 inclined to, as reason herself ? The reader will be 
 conscious that the State has sometimes followed, in 
 England, the latter course. 
 
 " The Popular Education of France, etc.," pp. 164-165. 
 
 Society Dislocated by the Spread of Education 
 
 EMINENT personages complained to me that already 
 popular education in France was carried so far that 
 society began to be dislocated by it ; that the 
 labourer would no longer stay in his field, nor the 
 artisan in his workshop ; that every labourer would 
 be an artisan, every artisan a clerk. This is the 
 language which we have all heard so often, from 
 those who think that the development of society can 
 be arrested because a farmer's wife finds it hard to 
 get a cookmaid. It is sufficient to say to those 
 who hold it, that it is vain for them to expect that 
 the lower classes will be kind enough to remain 
 ignorant and unbettered merely for the sake of 
 saving them inconvenience. 
 
 " The Popular Education of France, etc.," pp. 166-167.
 
 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 43 
 
 The Value of Ideals to a Nation 
 
 THE two grand banes of humanity, says Spinoza, 
 are indolence and self-conceit ; self-conceit is so 
 noxious because it arrests man in the career of self- 
 improvement ; because it vulgarises his character 
 and stops the growth of his intellect. The Greek 
 oracle pronounced wisest of men, him who was most 
 convinced of his own ignorance : what, then, can 
 be the wisdom of a nation profoundly convinced of 
 its own attainment ? After all that has been said, 
 it remains immutably true that " a little knowledge 
 is a dangerous thing," unless he who possesses it 
 knows that it is a little ; and that he may know this, 
 it is almost indispensable for him to have before his 
 eyes objects which suggest heights of grandeur, or 
 intellect, or feeling, or refinement, which he has 
 never reached. . . . 
 
 The proud day of priesthoods and aristocracies 
 is over, but in their day they have undoubtedly 
 been, as the law was to the Jews, schoolmasters to 
 the nations of Europe, schoolmasters to bring them 
 to modern society ; and so dull a learner is man, so 
 rugged and hard to teach, that perhaps those nations 
 which keep their schoolmasters longest are the most 
 enviable. The great ecclesiastical institutions of 
 Europe, with their stately cathedrals, their imposing 
 ceremonial, their affecting services ; the great 
 aristocracies of Europe, with their lustre of descent, 
 their splendour of wealth, their reputation for grace 
 and refinement, have undoubtedly for centuries 
 served as ideals to ennoble and elevate the sentiment
 
 L THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 
 
 pi the European masses.l Assuredly, churches and 
 /aristocracies often lacked the sanctity or the refine- 
 ment ascribed to them ; but their effect as distant 
 ideals was still the same ; they remained above the 
 individual, a beacon to the imagination of thousands ; 
 they stood, vast and grand objects, ever present 
 before the eyes of masses of men in whose daily 
 avocations there was little which was vast, little 
 which was grand ; and they preserved these masses 
 from any danger of overrating with vulgar self- 
 satisfaction an inferior culture, however broadly 
 sown, by the exhibition of a standard of dignity and 
 refinement still far above them. I 
 
 " The Popular Education of France, etc." pp. 168-169. 
 
 The Elimination of Superiorities 
 
 IT is the spirit in which highly-instructed peoples 
 live and work that makes them interesting, not the 
 high instruction itself. Placed between France and 
 Germany, Switzerland is inevitably exposed to 
 influences which tend to prevent her democracy from 
 exercising, unchecked, the pulverising action which 
 democracy exercises in America. But the dominant 
 tendency in modern Swiss democracy is yet not to 
 be regarded without disquietude. It is socialistic, 
 in the sense in which that word expresses a principle 
 hostile to the interests of true society the elimina- 
 tion of superiorities. The most distinguished, the 
 most capable, the most high-minded persons in 
 French Switzerland, are precisely those most ex- 
 cluded from the present direction of affairs ; they
 
 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 45 
 
 are living in retirement. Instruction may spread 
 wide among a people which thus ostracises all its 
 best citizens ; but it will with difficulty elevate it. 
 
 " The Popular Education of France, etc," p. 192. 
 
 Excellence of Primary Schools in Holland 
 
 CUVIER has described the emotion of astonishment 
 and delight with which on his first entrance into one 
 of them he was struck ; so unlike was it to any 
 school for the poor which he had ever seen, or which 
 at that time was anywhere to be seen out of Holland. 
 For it was in 1811. 
 
 The popular instruction of other countries has 
 grown up since that time ; but I have seen no primary 
 schools worthy to be matched, even now, with those 
 of Holland. 
 
 The provincial governments fixed the teacher's 
 salary for each province at a rate which made the 
 position of the Dutch schoolmaster superior to that 
 of his class in every other country. Free schools 
 for the poor were provided in all the large towns ; 
 in the villages, schools which taught the poor 
 gratuitously, but imposed a small admission-fee on 
 those who could afford to pay it. Ministers of 
 religion and lay authorities combined their efforts 
 to draw the children into the schools. The boards 
 which distributed public relief, imposed on its 
 recipients the condition that they should send their 
 children to school. The result was a popular
 
 46 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 
 
 education, which, for extent and solidity combined, 
 has probably never been equalled. 
 
 " The Popular Education of France, etc.," (Holland) 
 pp. 195-196, 201. 
 
 The Society for the Public Good 
 
 IN 1784, John Nieuvenhuysen, a Memnonite minister 
 in North Holland, founded, with the assistance of 
 several friends, the Society for the Public Good. 
 The society purposed, first, to prepare and circulate 
 among the common people useful elementary works, 
 not only on religious and moral subjects, but also 
 on matters of everyday life. This first object it 
 accomplished with such success, that in two or three 
 years an improved calendar published by the 
 society beat the popular calendar, a tissue of 
 absurdities and superstitions, the Moore's Almanack 
 of Holland, out of the field. The society's second 
 object was to establish model and temporary 
 schools, with libraries, for the use of workpeople who 
 had left school. It purposed, thirdly, to conduct 
 inquiries into the true principles of the physical and 
 moral education of children, and into school method. 
 The society prospered. In 1809 it numbered 
 7000 members, and had spread its operations as 
 far as to the Cape of Good Hope. 
 
 " The Popular Education of France, etc.," (Holland) 
 pp. 197-198. 
 
 Organised School Inspection in Holland 
 
 To organise inspection : this is, in fact, the grand 
 object of the law of 1806 ; with this it begins, and
 
 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 47 
 
 with this it ends. To keep the system of inspection 
 efficient was the central thought, the paramount 
 aim of its author, up to the very last days of his 
 life, when, a venerable old man, he received M. 
 Cousin at Haarlem in 1836, and said to him : " Take 
 care how you choose your inspectors ; they are 
 men whom you ought to look for with a lantern in 
 your hand." And inspection in Holland was 
 organised with a force and completeness which it 
 has attained nowhere else. 
 
 " The Popular Education of France, etc.," (Holland) 
 p. 199. 
 
 Position and Character of Dutch Teachers 
 FINALLY, and this M. Cuvier justly thought one of 
 the grand causes of the success of the Dutch schools, 
 the position of the schoolmasters was most advan- 
 tageous. Municipalities and parents were alike 
 favourable to them, and held them and their pro- 
 fession in an honour which then, probably, fell to 
 their lot nowhere else. Hardly a village schoolmaster 
 was to be found with a salary of less than 40 a year ; 
 in the towns many had from 120 to 160, and even 
 more than that sum ; all had, besides, a house and 
 garden. The fruits of this comfort and considera- 
 tion were to be seen, as they are remarkably to be 
 seen even at the present day, in the good manners, 
 the good address, the self-respect without presump- 
 tion, of the Dutch teachers. They are never servile, 
 and never offensive. 
 
 " The Popular Education of France, etc.," (Holland) 
 pp. 202-203.
 
 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 
 
 Teachers' Examination in Holland 
 
 THE examination for the higher grades was con- 
 siderably higher than the certificate examination 
 of France, considerably lower than ours, for which, 
 indeed, with its twelve hours of written exercises of 
 mathematics alone,* it would be difficult to find a 
 parallel. But the Dutch regulation, instructing 
 the examiners to admit to the highest grade those 
 candidates only who gave signs of a distinguished 
 culture, assigned to the schoolmaster's training a 
 humanising and educating direction, which is 
 precisely what we, with our exaggerated demand 
 for masses of hard information, have completely 
 missed. School methods also and pedagogic aptitude 
 occupied more space in the Dutch examination than 
 in the French or in ours. 
 
 " The Popular Education of France, etc," p. 203. 
 
 Pupil-Teachers in Holland 
 
 THE legislation of 1806 did not institute normal 
 schools. How, then, was an efficient body of school- 
 masters formed ? It was formed by permitting, in 
 the schools of the Society for the Public Good, the 
 best scholars to stay on at school for two or three 
 years longer than usual, without paying, on con- 
 dition that they acted as teachers : these became, 
 
 * Lately reduced, I am happy to say, to nine.
 
 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 49 
 
 first, assistants ; then, under-masters ; finally, head- 
 masters. Great eagerness was manifested to be 
 nominated one of these retained scholars. M. Cuvier 
 found this system in operation when he visited 
 Holland, and he speaks warmly of its success. It 
 was the first serious attempt to form a body of 
 regularly trained masters for primary schools. In 
 our eyes it should have a special interest : we owe 
 to it the institution of pupil-teachers. 
 
 " The Popular Education of France, etc." (Holland), p. 204. 
 
 Religious Instruction in Holland 
 
 FINALLY, under the legislation of 1806 it was not 
 permitted to public schools to be denominational. 
 The law required that the instruction in them should 
 be such as to " train its recipients for the exercise of 
 all social and Christian virtues," but no dogmatic 
 religious instruction was to be given by the teacher, 
 or was to be given in the school. Measures were to 
 be taken, however, that the scholar should not go 
 without the dogmatic teaching of the communion to 
 which he belonged. Accordingly, the Minister for 
 the Home Department exhorted by circular the 
 ministers of the different communions to co-operate 
 with the Government in carrying the new law into 
 execution, by taking upon themselves the religious 
 instruction of the school children belonging to their 
 persuasion. The religious authorities replied favour- 
 ably to this appeal. They willingly took upon them- 
 selves the task required of them ; and nowhere, 
 
 E
 
 50 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 
 
 perhaps, has the religious instruction of the people 
 been more eminently religious than in Holland, 
 while the public schools have remained, by law, 
 unsectarian. M. Cuvier found that the school 
 children, in 1811, were taught the dogmatic part of 
 their religion on Sundays, in church, by their own 
 minister ; that on Saturdays, when Jews were 
 absent, they were instructed in school by the 
 schoolmaster in the New Testament and the life of 
 Christ ; on other days, in the truths common to all 
 religions. M. Cousin found, in 1836, the same 
 avoidance of dogmatic teaching in the Dutch schools, 
 the same prevalence of sound religious instruction 
 among the Dutch people. 
 
 M. Cuvier concludes his report by pointing out 
 the foundation on which the excellent school-system 
 of Holland appeared to him to repose. It reposed, 
 he said, upon three things ; the comfort of the 
 schoolmaster, the effectiveness of the inspection, the 
 superiority of the school-methods. To these three 
 advantages the Dutch schools still owe their 
 prosperity. 
 
 " The Popular Education of France, etc." (Holland), 
 pp. 204-205. 
 
 The Normal School of Haarlem 
 
 THE normal school at Haarlem became justly cele- 
 brated for its success, due to the capacity and 
 character of its director, M. Prinsen. M. Prinsen 
 was still at its head when M. Cousin visited Holland. 
 He received M. Cousin at Haarlem ; and the vigour
 
 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 51 
 
 of the man, and the personal nature of his influence 
 over his pupils, is sufficiently revealed in reply to 
 M. Cousin's request for a copy of the regulations of 
 his school : " I am the regulations," was M. Prinsen's 
 answer. 
 
 " The Popular Education of France, etc." (Holland), p. 206. 
 
 The Schools of Leyden and Utrecht 
 
 IT was impossible for me to enter without emotion 
 the halls and lecture-rooms of Leyden and Utrecht, 
 illustrious by the memory of a host of great names, 
 and recalling by their academic costume, their 
 academic language, or their classical predilections, 
 the venerable Universities of our own country. 
 Perhaps the feeling that these, too, long maintained 
 a course which the modern spirit, not altogether 
 without justice, decried as antiquated, but which 
 nevertheless formed generations able to fill, not 
 ignobly, their part in Church and State, inspired me 
 with indulgent tenderness towards their Dutch 
 sisters. 
 
 *' The Popular Education of France, etc." p. 207. 
 
 The Value of Recitation 
 
 RHETORIC and grammar are allied, and what may 
 be called the rhetorical exercise of paraphrasing a 
 passage of prose or poetry often finds a place in 
 our grammar examinations. In general a pupil- 
 teacher paraphrases a passage even worse than he
 
 52 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 
 
 analyses it, and in the examination for Queen's 
 scholarships this year no exercise in paraphrasing 
 was given. We all complain of the want of taste and 
 general culture which the pupil-teachers, after so 
 much care spent upon them, continue to exhibit ; 
 and in their almost universal failure to paraphrase 
 ten lines of prose or poetry, without doing some 
 grievous violence to good sense or good taste, they 
 exhibit this want most conspicuously. Here, too, 
 perhaps, the remedy will be found to lie, not in 
 attempting to teach the rules of taste directly 
 a lesson which we shall never get learnt but in 
 introducing a lesson which we can get learnt, which 
 has a value in itself whether it leads to something 
 more or not, and which, in happy natures, will 
 probably lead to this something more. The learn- 
 ing by heart extracts from good authors is such a 
 lesson. I have often thought of it as a lesson 
 offering an excellent discipline for our pupil-teachers 
 and I rejoiced to see it instituted by one of the regula- 
 tions of the much attacked Revised Code. This 
 regulation at any rate, I think, no one will be found 
 to attack. Nay, it is strange that a lesson of such 
 old standing and such high credit in our schools 
 for the rich, should not sooner have been introduced 
 in our schools for the poor. In this lesson you 
 have, first of all, the excellent discipline of a lesson 
 which must be learnt right, or it has no value ; 
 a lesson of which the subject matter is not talked 
 about, as in too many of the lessons of our elementary 
 schools, but learnt. Here, as in the case of the 
 grammar lesson, this positive character of the result
 
 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 53 
 
 is a first great advantage. Then, in all but the 
 rudest natures, out of the mass of treasures thus 
 gained (and the mere process of gaining which 
 will have afforded a useful discipline for all natures), 
 a second and a more precious fruit will in time 
 grow; they will be insensibly nourished by that 
 which is stored in them, and their taste will be 
 formed by it, as the learning of thousands of lines 
 of Homer and Virgil has insensibly created a good 
 literary taste in so many persons, who would never 
 have got this by studying the rules of taste. Pupil- 
 teachers will then be found to paraphrase well, 
 whom no rules supplied by their teachers will ever 
 teach to paraphrase well at present. 
 
 General Report, 1861. 
 
 The most important Poetical Monument 
 
 IT has more than once been suggested to me that I 
 should translate Homer. That is a task for which 
 I have neither the time nor the courage, but the 
 suggestion led me to regard yet more closely a poet 
 whom I had already long studied, and for one or 
 two years the works of Homer were seldom out of 
 my hands. The study of classical literature is 
 probably on the decline ; but, whatever may be 
 the fate of this study in general, it is certain that, 
 as instruction spreads and the number of readers 
 increases, attention will be more and more directed 
 to the poetry of Homer, not indeed as part of a 
 classical course, but as the most important poetical 
 monument existing. 
 
 " On Translating Homer," p. i.
 
 54 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 
 
 The Translator's Task 
 
 IT is disputed what aim a translator should propose 
 to himself in dealing with his original. Even this 
 preliminary is not yet settled. It is said that the 
 translation ought to be such " that the reader should, 
 if possible, forget that it is a translation at all, and 
 be lulled into the illusion that he is reading an 
 original work something original " (if the trans- 
 lation be in English) " from an English hand." 
 The real original is in this case, it is said, " taken as 
 a basis on which to rear a poem that shall affect our 
 countrymen as the original may be conceived to 
 have affected its natural hearers." 
 
 " On Translating Homer," p. 2. 
 
 The only Competent Tribunal 
 
 No one can tell him how Homer affected the Greeks ; 
 but there are those who can tell him how Homer 
 affects them. These are scholars, who possess, at 
 the same time with knowledge of Greek, adequate 
 poetical taste and feeling. No translation will seem 
 to them of much worth compared with the original ; 
 but they alone can say whether the translation 
 produces more or less the same effect upon them as 
 the original. They are the only competent tribunal 
 in this matter : the Greeks are dead ; the unlearned 
 Englishman has not the data for judging ; and no 
 man can safely confide in his own single judgment 
 of his own work. Let not the translator, then, 
 trust to his notions of what the ancient Greeks would
 
 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 55 
 
 have thought of him he will lose himself in the 
 vague. Let him not trust to what the ordinary 
 English reader thinks of him ; he will be taking 
 the blind for his guide. Let him not trust to his own 
 judgment of his own work ; he may be misled by 
 individual caprices. Let him ask how his work 
 affects those who both know Greek and can appre- 
 ciate poetry ; whether to read it gives the Provost 
 of Eton, or Professor Thompson at Cambridge, or 
 Professor Jowett here in Oxford, at all the same 
 feeling which to read the original gives them. I 
 consider that when Bentley said of Pope's trans- 
 lation, " It was a pretty poem, but must not be 
 called Homer," the work, in spite of all its power 
 and attractiveness, was judged. 
 
 " On Translating Homer," pp. 4-5. 
 
 Virtue of the Latin Element in English 
 
 WE owe to the Latin element in our language most 
 of that very rapidity and clear decisiveness by which 
 it is contradistinguished from the German, and in 
 sympathy with the languages of Greece and Rome : 
 so that to limit an English translator of Homer to 
 words of Saxon origin is to deprive him of one of 
 his special advantages for translating Homer. 
 
 " On Translating Homer," p. 7. 
 
 How to Approach Homer 
 
 THE frame of mind in which we approach an author 
 influences our correctness of appreciation of him ;
 
 56 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 
 
 and Homer should be approached by a translator 
 in the simplest frame of mind possible. Modern 
 sentiment tries to make the ancient not less than 
 the modern world its own ; but against modern 
 sentiment in its applications to Homer the trans- 
 lator, if he would feel Homer truly and unless he 
 feels him truly, how can he render him truly ? 
 cannot be too much on his guard. 
 
 " On Translating Homer," p. 8. 
 
 The Four Qualities of Homer's Poetry 
 
 WHEN I say, the translator of Homer should above 
 all be penetrated by a sense of four qualities of his 
 author that he is eminently rapid ; that he is 
 eminently plain and direct, both in the evolution 
 of his thought and in the expression of it, that is, 
 both in his syntax and in his words ; that he is 
 eminently plain and direct in the substance of his 
 thought, that is, in his matter and ideas ; and, 
 finally that he is eminently noble ; I probably seem 
 to be saying what is too general to be of much service 
 to anybody. Yet it is strictly true that, for want 
 of duly penetrating themselves with the first-named 
 quality of Homer, his rapidity, Cowper and Mr. 
 Wright have failed in rendering him ; that, for 
 want of duly appreciating the second-named quality, 
 his plainness and directness of style and diction, 
 Pope and Mr. Sotheby have failed in rendering him ; 
 that for want of appreciating the third, his plainness 
 and directness of ideas, Chapman has failed in 
 rendering him ; while for want of appreciating the
 
 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 57 
 
 fourth, his nobleness, Mr. Newman, who has clearly 
 seen some of the faults of his predecessors, has yet 
 failed more conspicuously than any of them. 
 
 " On Translating Homer," p. 10. 
 
 Unlikeness of Homer to Milton 
 
 I DO not despair of making all these propositions 
 clear to a student who approaches Homer with a 
 free mind. First, Homer is eminently rapid, and 
 to this rapidity the elaborate movement of Miltonic 
 blank verse is alien. The reputation of Cowper, 
 that most interesting man and excellent poet, does 
 not depend on his translation of Homer, and in 
 his preface to the second edition, he himself tells 
 us that he felt he had too much poetical taste not 
 to feel on returning to his own version after six 
 or seven years, " more dissatisfied with it himself 
 than the most difficult to be pleased of all his judges." 
 And he was dissatisfied with it for the right reason 
 that " it seemed to him deficient in the grace of 
 ease." Yet he seems to have originally miscon- 
 ceived the manner of Homer so much, that it is no 
 wonder he rendered him amiss. " The similitude 
 of Milton's manner to that of Homer is such," he 
 says, " that no person familiar with both can read 
 either without being reminded of the other ; and 
 it is in those breaks and pauses to which the numbers 
 of the English poet are so much indebted both for 
 their dignity and variety, that he chiefly copies the 
 Grecian." It would be more true to say : The
 
 58 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 
 
 unlikeness of Milton's manner to that of Homer is 
 such, that no person familiar with both can read 
 either without being struck with his difference from 
 the other ; and it is in his breaks and pauses that 
 the English poet is most unlike the Grecian." 
 
 " On Translating Homer," pp. 11-12. 
 
 Fidelity in a Translator 
 
 IT is in vain that Cowper insists on his fidelity ; 
 " my chief boast is that I have adhered closely to 
 my original " " the matter found in me, whether 
 the reader like it or not, is found also in Homer ; 
 and the matter not found in me, how much soever 
 the reader may admire it, is found only in Mr. 
 Pope." To suppose that it is fidelity to an original 
 to give its matter, unless you at the same time give 
 its manner ; or, rather, to suppose that you can 
 really give its matter at all, unless you can give its 
 manner, is just the mistake of our pre-Raphaelite 
 school of painters, who do not understand that the 
 peculiar effect of nature resides in the whole and 
 not in the parts. So the peculiar effect of a poet 
 resides in his manner and movement, not in his 
 words taken separately. 
 
 " On Translating Homer," p. 14. 
 
 The Objection to a Rhymed Translation 
 
 ON the whole, Pope's translation of the Iliad is 
 more Homeric than Cowper's, for it is more rapid. 
 Pope's movement, however, though rapid, is not
 
 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 59 
 
 of the same kind as Homer's ; and here I come to 
 the real objection to rhyme in a translation of 
 Homer. It is commonly said that rhyme is to be 
 abandoned in a translation of Homer, because " the 
 exigences of rhyme," to quote Mr. Newman, " posi- 
 tively forbid faithfulness ; " because " a just trans- 
 lation of any ancient poet in rhyme," to quote 
 Cowper, " is impossible." This, however, is merely 
 an accidental objection to rhyme. If this were all, 
 it might be supposed, that if rhymes were more 
 abundant Homer could be adequately translated in 
 rhyme. But this is not so ; there is a deeper, a 
 substantial objection to rhyme in a translation of 
 Homer. It is, that rhyme inevitably tends to pair 
 lines which in the original are independent, and thus 
 the movement of the poem is changed. 
 
 " On Translating Homer," p. 15. 
 
 How Pope fails to render Homer 
 
 RHYME certainly, by intensifying antithesis, can 
 intensify separation, and this is precisely what Pope 
 does ; but this balanced rhetorical antithesis, though 
 very effective, is entirely un-Homeric. And this is 
 what I mean by saying that Pope fails to render 
 Homer, because he does not render his plainness and 
 directness of style and diction. Where Homer marks 
 separation by moving away, Pope marks it by 
 antithesis. 
 
 " On Translating Homer," p. 16
 
 60 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 
 
 Pope's Style lacks Plain Naturalness 
 
 A LITERARY and intellectualised language is, how- 
 ever, in its own way well suited to grand matters ; 
 and Pope, with a language of this kind and his own 
 admirable talent, comes off well enough as long as 
 he has passion, or oratory, or a great crisis to deal 
 with. Even here, as I have been pointing out, he 
 does not render Homer ; but he and his style are 
 in themselves strong. It is when he comes to level 
 passages, passages of narrative or description, that 
 he and his style are sorely tried, and prove them- 
 selves weak. A perfectly plain direct style can of 
 course convey the simplest matter as naturally as 
 the grandest ; indeed, it must be harder for it, one 
 would say, to convey a grand matter worthily and 
 nobly, than to convey a common matter, as alone 
 such a matter should be conveyed, plainly and 
 simply. But the style of Rasselas is incomparably 
 better fitted to describe a sage philosophising than 
 a soldier lighting his camp-fire. The style of Pope 
 is not the style of Rasselas ; but it is equally a 
 literary style, equally unfitted to describe a simple 
 matter with the plain naturalness of Homer. 
 
 " On Translating Homer," pp. 19-20. 
 
 Pope's Style Incapable of Good Descriptions 
 
 IN elevated passages he is powerful, as Homer is 
 powerful, though not in the same way ; but in plain 
 narrative, where Homer is still powerful and de- 
 lightful, Pope, by the inherent fault of his style, is
 
 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 61 
 
 ineffective and out of taste. Wordsworth says 
 somewhere, that wherever Virgil seems to have 
 composed " with his eye on the object," Dryden 
 fails to render him. Homer invariably composes 
 " with his eye on the object," whether the object be 
 a moral or a material one ; Pope composes with his 
 eye on his style, into which he translates his object, 
 whatever it is. That, therefore, which Homer 
 conveys to us immediately, Pope conveys to us 
 through a medium. He aims at turning Homer's 
 sentiments pointedly and rhetorically ; at investing 
 Homer's description with ornament and dignity. 
 A sentiment may be changed by being put into a 
 pointed and oratorical form, yet may still be very 
 effective in that form ; but a description, the 
 moment it takes its eyes off that which it is to 
 describe, and begins to think of ornamenting itself, 
 is worthless. 
 
 " On Translating Homer," pp. 21-22. 
 
 Pope's Fate a Warning to Translators 
 
 THEREFORE, I say, the translator of Homer should 
 penetrate himself with a sense of the plainness and 
 directness of Homer's style ; of the simplicity with 
 which Homer's thought is evolved and expressed. 
 He has Pope's fate before his eyes, to show him 
 what a divorce may be created even between the 
 most gifted translator and Homer by an artificial 
 evolution of thought and a literary cast of style. 
 
 " On Translating Homer," p. 22.
 
 62 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 
 
 Pope's Version Contrasted with Chapman's 
 
 CHAPMAN'S style is not artificial and literary like 
 Pope's nor his movement elaborate and self-retarding 
 like the Miltonic movement of Cowper. He is plain- 
 spoken, fresh, vigorous, and, to a certain degree 
 rapid ; and all these are Homeric qualities. I 
 cannot say that I think the movement of his four- 
 teen-syllable line, which has been so much com- 
 mended, Homeric ; but on this point I shall have 
 more to say by and by, when I come to speak of 
 Mr. Newman's metrical exploits. But it is not 
 distinctly anti-Homeric, like the movement of 
 Milton's blank verse ; and it has a rapidity of its 
 own. Chapman's diction, too, is good, that is, 
 appropriate. With these merits, what prevents his 
 translation from being a satisfactory version of 
 Homer ? It is merely the want of literal faithful- 
 ness to his original, imposed upon him, it is said, 
 by the exigences of rhyme ? Has this celebrated 
 version, which has so many advantages, no other 
 and deeper defect than this ? Its author is a poet, 
 and a poet, too, of the Elizabethan age ; the golden 
 age of English literature as it is called, and on the 
 whole truly called ; for, whatever be the defects of 
 Elizabethan literature (and they are great), we have 
 no development of our literature to compare with 
 it for vigour and richness. This age, too, showed 
 what it could do in translating, by producing a 
 master-piece, its version of the Bible. 
 
 " On Translating Homer," pp. 22-23.
 
 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 63 
 
 Chapman wrongly Praised by the Critics 
 
 CHAPMAN'S translation has often been praised as 
 eminently Homeric. Keats's fine sonnet in its 
 honour every one knows ; but Keats could not 
 read the original, and therefore could not really 
 judge the translation. Coleridge, in praising Chap- 
 man's version, says at the same time, " It will give 
 you small idea of Homer." But the grave authority 
 of Mr. Hallam pronounces this translation to be 
 " often exceedingly Homeric " ; and its latest 
 editor boldly declares that by what, with a de- 
 plorable style, he calls " his own innative Homeric 
 genius," Chapman " has thoroughly identified him- 
 self with Homer ; " and that " we pardon him even 
 for his digressions, for they are such as we feel 
 Homer himself would have written." 
 
 I confess that I can never read twenty lines of 
 Chapman's version without recurring to Bentley's 
 cry, " This is not Homer ! " and that from a deeper 
 cause than any unfaithfulness occasioned by the 
 fetters of rhyme. 
 
 I said that there were four things which eminently 
 distinguished Homer, and with a sense of which 
 Homer's translator should penetrate himself as fully 
 as possible. One of these four things was, the 
 plainness and directness of Homer's ideas. I have 
 just been speaking of the plainness and directness 
 of his style ; but the plainness and directness of 
 the contents of his style, of his ideas themselves, is 
 not less remarkable. 
 
 " On Translating Homer," p. 24.
 
 64 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 
 
 Homer and the Elizabethans 
 
 BUT as eminently as Homer is plain, so eminently is 
 the Elizabethan literature in general, and Chapman 
 in particular, fanciful. Steeped in humours and 
 fantasticality up to its very lips, the Elizabethan 
 age, newly arrived at the free use of the human 
 faculties after their long term of bondage, and de- 
 lighting to exercise them freely, suffers from its own 
 extravagance in this first exercise of them, can hardly 
 bring itself to see an object quietly or to describe 
 it temperately. Happily, in the translation of the 
 Bible, the sacred character of their original inspired 
 the translators with such respect that they did not 
 dare to give the rein to their own fancies in dealing 
 with it. But, in dealing with works of profane 
 literature, in dealing with poetical works above all, 
 which highly stimulated them, one may say that the 
 minds of the Elizabethan translators were too active ; 
 that they could not forbear importing so much of 
 their own, and this of a most peculiar and Eliza- 
 bethan character, into their original, that they 
 effaced the character of the original itself. 
 
 " On Translating Homer," p. 25. 
 
 Chapman's Complexity of Thought 
 
 ALL the Middle Ages, with its grotesqueness, its 
 conceits, its irrationality, is still in these opening 
 pages ; they by themselves are sufficient to indicate 
 to us what a gulf divides Chapman from the " clearest 
 souled " of poets, from Homer ; almost as great a
 
 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 65 
 
 gulf as that which divides him from Voltaire. Pope 
 has been sneered at for saying that Chapman writes 
 " somewhat as one might imagine Homer himself to 
 have written before he arrived at years of discretion." 
 But the remark is excellent : Homer expresses him- 
 self like a man of adult reason, Chapman like a man 
 whose reason has not yet cleared itself. For 
 instance, if Homer had had to say of a poet, that he 
 hoped his merit was now about to be fully estab- 
 lished in the opinion of good judges, he was as 
 incapable of saying this as Chapman says it 
 " Though truth in her very nakedness sits in so 
 deep a pit, that from Gades to Aurora, and Ganges, 
 few eyes can sound her, I hope yet those few here 
 will so discover and confirm that the date being out 
 of her darkness in this morning of our poet, he shall 
 now gird his temples with the sun " I say Homer 
 was as incapable of saying this in that manner, as 
 Voltaire himself would have been. Homer, indeed, 
 has actually an affinity with Voltaire in the unrivalled 
 clearness and straightforwardness of his thinking ; 
 in the way in which he keeps to one thought at a 
 time, and puts that thought forth in its complete 
 natural plainness, instead of being led away from it 
 by some fancy striking him in connexion with it, 
 and being beguiled to wander off with this fancy 
 till his original thought, in its natural reality, knows 
 him no more. What could better show us how 
 gifted a race was this Greek race ? The same 
 member of it has not only the power of profoundly 
 touching that natural heart of humanity which it 
 is Voltaire's weakness that he cannot reach, but can 
 
 F
 
 66 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 
 
 also address the understanding with all Voltaire's 
 admirable simplicity and rationality. 
 
 My limits will not allow me to do more than 
 shortly illustrate from Chapman's version of the 
 Iliad, what I mean when I speak of this vital differ- 
 ence between Homer and an Elizabethan poet in 
 the quality of their thought ; between the plain 
 simplicity of the thought of the one, and the curious 
 complexity of the thought of the other. 
 
 " On Translating Homer," pp. 26-27. 
 
 Homer Works in the Grand Style 
 
 THE Elizabethan poet fails to render Homer because 
 he cannot forbear to interpose a play of thought 
 between his object and its expression. Chapman 
 translates his object into Elizabethan, as Pope 
 translates it into the Augustan of Queen Anne ; 
 both convey it to us through a medium. Homer, on 
 the other hand, sees his object and conveys it to us 
 immediately. 
 
 And yet, in spite of this perfect plainness and 
 directness of Homer's style, in spite of this perfect 
 plainness and directness of his ideas, he is eminently 
 noble ; he works as entirely in the grand style, he 
 is as grandiose, as Phidias, or Dante, or Michael 
 Angelo. This is what makes his translators despair. 
 " To give relief," says Cowper, " to prosaic subjects " 
 (such as dressing, eating, drinking, harnessing, 
 travelling, going to bed), that is to treat such sub- 
 jects nobly, in the grand style, " without seeming 
 unreasonably tumid, is extremely difficult." It is
 
 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 67 
 
 difficult, but Homer has done it. Homer is precisely 
 the incomparable poet he is, because he has done it. 
 His translator must not be tumid, must not be 
 artificial, must not be literary ; true : but then 
 also he must not be commonplace, must not be 
 ignoble. 
 
 " On Translating Homer," p. 30. 
 
 The One Thing demanded of a Translation 
 
 IF the scholar in judging a translation looks to 
 detail rather than to general effect, he judges it 
 pedantically and ill. The appeal, however, lies not 
 from the pedantic scholar to the general public, 
 which can only like or dislike Chapman's version, 
 or Pope's, or Mr. Newman's, but cannot judge 
 them ; it lies from the pedantic scholar to the 
 scholar who is not pedantic, who knows that Homer 
 is Homer by his general effect, and not by his single 
 words, and who demands but one thing in a trans- 
 lation that it shall, as nearly as possible, reproduce 
 for him the general effect of Homer. 
 
 " On Translating Homer," p. 32. 
 
 Homeric Unity 
 
 THE insurmountable obstacle to believing the Iliad 
 a consolidated work of several poets is this : that 
 the work of great masters is unique ; and the Iliad 
 has a great master's genuine stamp, and that stamp 
 is the grand style. 
 
 Poets who cannot work in the grand style in- 
 stinctively seek a style in which their comparative
 
 68 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 
 
 inferiority may feel itself at ease, a manner which 
 may be, so to speak, indulgent to their inequalities. 
 The ballad-style offers to an epic poet, quite unable 
 to fill the canvas of Homer, or Dante, or Milton, a 
 canvas which he is capable of filling. 
 
 " On Translating Homer," p. 47. 
 
 What Constitutes the Grand Style 
 
 I MAY discuss what, in the abstract, constitutes the 
 grand style, but that sort of general discussion never 
 much helps our judgment of particular instances. 
 I may say that the presence or absence of the grand 
 style can only be spiritually discerned ; and this is 
 true, but to plead this looks like evading the diffi- 
 culty. My best way is to take eminent specimens 
 of the grand style, and put them side by side with 
 this of Scott. For example, when Homer says : 
 
 a\\6., <(>(\os, Give Kul av. T/TJ o\vct>vpeai olirus ; 
 KtirOave Kal fl6.TpoK\os, STTC/J fffo iroXXbj/ o.p.eCvuv,* 
 
 that is in the grand style. When Virgil says : 
 
 Disce, puer, virtutem ex me verumque laborem, 
 Fortunam ex aliis, t 
 
 that is in the grand style. When Dante says : 
 
 Lascio lo fele, et vo pei dolci pomi 
 Promessi a me per lo verace Duca ; 
 Ma fino al centro pria convein ch' io tomi, J 
 
 * " Be content, good friend, die also thou ! why lamentest 
 thou thyself on this wise ? Patroclus, too died, who was a far 
 better than thou." Iliad, xxi. 106. 
 
 f " From me, young man, learn nobleness of soul and true 
 effort : learn success from others." Aeneid, xii. 435. 
 
 J " I leave the gall of bitterness, and I go for the apples of 
 sweetness promised unto me by my faithful Guide ; but far as 
 the centre it behoves me first to fall." Hell, xvi. 61.
 
 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 69 
 
 that is in the grand style. When Milton says : 
 
 His form had not yet lost 
 All her original brightness, nor appeared 
 Less than archangel ruined, and the excess 
 Of glory obscured,* 
 
 that, finally, is in the grand style. Now let any 
 one after repeating to himself these four passages, 
 repeat again the passage of Scott, and he will per- 
 ceive that there is something in style which the first 
 four have in common, and which the last is without ; 
 and this something is precisely the grand manner. 
 
 " On Translating Homer," pp. 59-61. 
 
 Homer and Scott 
 
 THE poetic style of Scott is (it becomes necessary 
 to say so when it is proposed to translate Homer into 
 the melodies of Marmion) it is, tried by the highest 
 standard, a bastard epic style ; and that is why, 
 out of his own powerful hands, it has had so little 
 success. It is a less natural, and therefore a less 
 good style than the original ballad style ; while it 
 shares with the ballad style the inherent incapacity 
 of rising into the grand style, of adequately rendering 
 Homer. Scott is certainly at his best in his battles. 
 Of Homer you could not say this ; he is not better 
 in his battles than elsewhere ; but even between the 
 battle-pieces of the two there exists all the difference 
 which there is between an able work and a master- 
 piece. 
 
 Tunstall lies dead upon the field, 
 
 His life-blood stains the spotless shield : 
 
 * Paradise Lost, i. 591.
 
 70 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 
 
 Edmund is down, my life is reft, 
 The Admiral alone is left. 
 
 " For not in the hands of Diomede the son of 
 Tydeus rages the spear, to ward off destruction from 
 the Danaans ; neither as yet have I heard the voice 
 of the son of Atreus, shouting out of his hated 
 mouth ; but the voice of Hector the slayer of men 
 bursts round me, as he cheers on the Trojans ; and 
 they with their yellings fill all the plain, over- 
 coming the Achaians in the battle." I protest that, 
 to my feeling, Homer's performance, even through 
 that pale and far-off shadow of a prose translation, 
 still has a hundred times more of the grand manner 
 about it, than the original poetry of Scott. 
 
 " On Translating Homer," p. 61. 
 
 English Eccentricity and the need of Criticism 
 
 OUR present literature, which is very far, certainly, 
 from having the spirit and power of Elizabethan 
 genius, yet has in its own way these faults, eccen- 
 tricity and arbitrariness, quite as much as the 
 Elizabethan literature ever had. They are the 
 cause that, while upon none, perhaps, of the modern 
 literatures has so great a sum of force been expended 
 as upon the English literature, at the present hour 
 this literature, regarded not as an object of mere 
 literary interest but as a living intellectual instru- 
 ment ranks only third in European effect and im- 
 portance among the literatures of Europe ; it ranks 
 after the literatures of France and Germany. Of 
 these two literatures, as of the intellect of Europe
 
 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 71 
 
 in general, the main effort, for now many years, has 
 been a critical effort ; the endeavour, in all branches 
 of knowledge, theology, philosophy, history, art, 
 science to see the object as in itself it really is. 
 But, owing to the presence in English literature of 
 this eccentric and arbitrary spirit, owing to the 
 strong tendency of English writers to bring to the 
 consideration of their object some individual fancy, 
 almost the last thing for which one would come to 
 English literature is just that very thing which now 
 Europe most desires criticism. 
 
 " On Translating Homer," p. 65. 
 
 The Best Metres for Epic Poetry 
 
 I HAVE sufficiently shown why I think all forms of 
 our ballad-metre unsuited to Homer. It seems to 
 me to be beyond question that, for epic poetry, only 
 three metres can seriously claim to be accounted 
 capable of the grand style. Two of these will at 
 once occur to every one the ten-syllable, or so- 
 called heroic, couplet, and blank verse. I do not 
 add to these the Spenserian stanza, although Dr. 
 Maginn, whose metrical eccentricities I have already 
 criticised, pronounces this stanza the one right 
 measure for a translation of Homer. It is enough 
 to observe that if Pope's couplet, with the simple 
 system of correspondences that its rhymes introduce, 
 changes the movement of Homer, in which no such 
 correspondences are found, and is therefore a bad 
 measure for a translator of Homer to employ, 
 Spenser's stanza, with its far more intricate system
 
 72 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 
 
 of correspondences, must change Homer's move- 
 ment far more profoundly, and must therefore be 
 for the translator a far worse measure than the 
 couplet of Pope. Yet I will say, at the same time, 
 that the verse of Spenser is more fluid, slips more 
 easily and quickly along, than the verse of almost 
 any other English poet. 
 
 By this the northern waggoner had set 
 His seven-fold team behind the stedfast star 
 That was in ocean waves yet never wet, 
 But firm is fixed, and sendeth light from far, 
 To all that in the wide deep wandering are.* 
 
 One cannot but feel that English verse has not 
 often moved with the fluidity and sweet ease of 
 these lines. It is possible that it may have been 
 this quality of Spenser's poetry which made Dr. 
 Maginn think that the stanza of The Faery Queen 
 must be a good measure for rendering Homer. This 
 it is not : Spenser's verse is fluid and rapid, no 
 doubt, but there are more ways than one of being 
 fluid and rapid, and Homer is fluid and rapid in 
 quite another way than Spenser. Spenser's manner 
 is no more Homeric than is the manner of the one 
 modern inheritor of Spenser's beautiful gift, the 
 poet, who evidently caught from Spenser his sweet 
 and easy-slipping movement, and who has ex- 
 quisitely employed it ; a Spenserian genius, nay, 
 a genius by natural endowment richer probably than 
 even Spenser ; that light which shines so unex- 
 pectedly and without fellow in our century, an 
 
 * The Faery Queen, Canto ii. stanza i.
 
 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 73 
 
 Elizabethan born too late, the early lost and ad- 
 mirably gifted Keats. 
 
 " On Translating Homer," pp. 69-70. 
 
 Milton's Blank Verse 
 
 THE rhymed ten-syllable couplet being thus ex- 
 cluded, blank verse offers itself for the translator's 
 use. The first kind of blank verse which naturally 
 occurs to us is the blank verse of Milton, which has 
 been employed, with more or less modification, by 
 Mr. Gary in translating Dante, by Cowper, and by 
 Mr. Wright in translating Homer. How noble this 
 metre is in Milton's hands, how completely it shows 
 itself capable of the grand, nay, of the grandest, 
 style, I need not say. To this metre, as used in 
 the Paradise Lost, our country owes the glory of 
 having produced one of the only two poetical works 
 in the grand style which are to be found in the modern 
 languages ; the Divine Comedy of Dante is the other. 
 England and Italy here stand alone ; Spain, France, 
 and Germany, have produced great poets, but 
 neither Calderon, nor Corneille, nor Schiller, nor 
 even Goethe, has produced a body of poetry in the 
 true grand style, in the sense in which the style 
 of the body of Homer's poetry, or Pindar's, or 
 Sophocles's is grand. 
 
 " On Translating Homer," pp. 71-72. 
 
 Milton Contrasted with Homer 
 
 BUT the grandeur of Milton is one thing, and the 
 grandeur of Homer is another. Homer's movement,
 
 74 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 
 
 I have said again and again, is a flowing, a rapid 
 movement ; Milton's, on the other hand, is a 
 laboured, a self -retarding movement. In each case, 
 the movement, the metrical cast, corresponds with 
 the mode of the evolution of the thought, with the 
 syntactical cast, and is indeed determined by it. 
 Milton charges himself so full with thought, imagina- 
 tion, knowledge, that his style will hardly contain 
 them. He is too full-stored to show us in much 
 detail one conception, one piece of knowledge ; he 
 just shows it to us in a pregnant allusive way, and 
 then he presses on to another ; and all this fulness, 
 this pressure, this condensation, this self -constraint, 
 enters into his movement, and makes it what it is 
 noble, but difficult and austere. Homer is quite 
 different ; he says a thing, and says it to the end, 
 and then begins another, while Milton is trying to 
 press a thousand things into one. So that whereas, 
 in reading Milton, you never lose the sense of 
 laborious and condensed fulness, in reading Homer 
 you never lose the sense of flowing and abounding 
 ease. With Milton line runs into line, and all is 
 straitly bound together ; with Homer line runs off 
 from line and all hurries away onward. 
 
 " On Translating Homer," p. 73. 
 
 The Possibilities of the English Hexameter 
 
 WHEN I say this, I point to the metre which seems 
 to me to give the translator the best chance of pre- 
 serving the general effect of Homer that third 
 metre which I have not yet expressly named, the
 
 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 75 
 
 hexameter. I know all that is said against the use 
 of hexameters in English poetry ; but it comes 
 only to this, that, among us, they have not yet 
 been used on any considerable scale with success. 
 Solvitur ambulando : this is the objection which 
 can best be met by producing good English hexa- 
 meters. And there is no reason in the nature of 
 the English language why it should not adapt itself 
 to hexameters as well as the German language does ; 
 nay, the English language, from its greater rapidity, 
 is in itself better suited than the German for them. 
 
 " On Translating Homer," p. 77. 
 
 Homer and the Bible 
 
 WE shall find one English book and one only, where, 
 as hi the Iliad itself, perfect plainness of speech is 
 allied with perfect nobleness ; and that book is the 
 Bible. No one could see this more clearly than 
 Pope saw it : " This pure and noble simplicity," he 
 says, " is nowhere in such perfection as in the 
 Scripture and Homer," yet even with Pope a woman 
 is a " fair," a father is a " sire," and an old man a 
 " reverend sage," and so on through all the phrases 
 of that pseudo-Augustan, and most unbiblical, 
 vocabulary. The Bible, however, is undoubtedly 
 the grand mine of diction for the translator of Homer ; 
 and, if he knows how to discriminate truly between 
 what will suit him and what will not, the Bible may 
 afford him also invaluable lessons of style. 
 
 " On Translating Homer," p. 89.
 
 76 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 
 
 Genius of Homer 
 
 HOMER has not only the English vigour, he has the 
 Greek grace ; and when one observes the bolstering, 
 rollicking way in which his English admirers even 
 men of genius, like the late Professor Wilson love 
 to talk of Homer and his poetry, one cannot help 
 feeling that there is no very deep community of 
 nature between them and the object of their en- 
 thusiasm. " It is very well, my good friends," I 
 always imagine Homer saying to them : if he could 
 hear them : " you do me a great deal of honour, but 
 somehow or other you praise me too like barbarians." 
 For Homer's grandeur is not the mixed and turbid 
 grandeur of the great poets of the north, of the 
 authors of Othello and Faust ; it is a perfect, a lovely 
 grandeur. Certainly his poetry has all the energy 
 and power of the poetry of our ruder climates ; but 
 it has, besides, the pure lines of an Ionian horizon, 
 the liquid clearness of an Ionian sky. 
 
 " On Translating Homer," p. 106. 
 
 The Evils of Literary Controversy 
 
 " NOTWITHSTANDING this example," says Buffon, 
 who, as well as Montesquieu, had been attacked by 
 the Jansenist Gazetteer, " notwithstanding this 
 example, I think I may promise my course will be 
 different. I shall not answer a single word." 
 
 And to any one who has noticed the baneful 
 effects of controversy with all its train of personal 
 rivalries and hatreds, on men of letters or men of 
 science ; to any one who has observed how it tends
 
 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 77 
 
 to impair, not only their dignity and repose, but their 
 productive force, their genuine activity ; how it 
 always checks the free play of the spirit, and often 
 ends by stopping it altogether ; it can hardly seem 
 doubtful, that the rule thus imposed on himself by 
 Buffon was a wise one. His own career, indeed, 
 admirably shows the wisdom of it. That career was 
 as glorious as it was serene ; but it owed to its 
 serenity no small part of its glory. 
 
 Buffon's example seems to me worthy of all 
 imitation, and in my humble way I mean always to 
 follow it. I have never replied, I never will reply, 
 to any literary assault ; in such encounters tempers 
 are lost, the world laughs, and truth is not served. 
 
 " On Translating Homer," pp. 108-109. 
 
 English Literary Opinion 
 
 I THINK that in England, partly from the want of 
 an Academy, partly from a national habit of intellect 
 to which that want of an Academy is itself due, 
 there exists too little of what I may call a public 
 force of correct literary opinion, possessing within 
 certain limits a clear sense of what is right and wrong, 
 sound and unsound, and sharply recalling men of 
 ability and learning from any flagrant misdirection 
 of these their advantages. I think, even, that in 
 our country a powerful misdirection of this kind is 
 often more likely to subjugate and pervert opinion 
 than to be checked and corrected by it. Hence a 
 chaos of false tendencies, wasted efforts, impotent 
 conclusions, works which ought never to have been
 
 78 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 
 
 undertaken. Any one who can introduce a little 
 order into this chaos by establishing in any quarter 
 a single sound rule of criticism, a single rule which 
 clearly marks what is right as right, and what is 
 wrong as wrong, does a good deed ; and his deed is 
 so much the better the greater force he counteracts 
 of learning and ability applied to thicken the chaos. 
 
 " On Translating Homer," p. 112. 
 
 Danger and Charm of Dilettanteism 
 
 " THE first beginnings of my Wilhelm Meister," says 
 Goethe, " arose out of an obscure sense of the great 
 truth that man will often attempt something for 
 which nature has denied him the proper powers, 
 will undertake and practise something in which he 
 cannot become skilled. An inward feeling warns 
 him to desist " (yes, but there are, unhappily, cases 
 of absolute judicial blindness !) " nevertheless he 
 cannot get clear in himself about it, and is driven 
 along a false road to a false goal, without knowing 
 how it is with him. To this we may refer everything 
 which goes by the name of false tendency, dilet- 
 tanteism, and so on. A great many men waste in 
 this way the fairest portion of their lives, and fall 
 at last into wonderful delusion." Yet after all 
 Goethe adds it sometimes happens that even on 
 this false road a man finds, not indeed that which 
 he sought, but something which is good and useful 
 for him ; " like Saul, the son of Kish, who went 
 forth to look for his father's asses, and found a 
 kingdom." And thus false tendency as well as
 
 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 79 
 
 true, vain effort as well as fruitful, go together to 
 produce that great movement of life, to present 
 that immense and magic spectacle of human affairs, 
 which from boyhood to old age fascinates the gaze 
 of every man of imagination, and which would be 
 his terror, if it were not at the same time his delight. 
 
 " On Translating Homer," p. 114. 
 
 The Saving Grace of Ignorance 
 
 AND he ends by saying that my ignorance is great. 
 Alas ! that is very true. Much as Mr. Newman 
 was mistaken when he talked of my rancour, he is 
 entirely right when he talks of my ignorance. And 
 yet, perverse as it seems to say so, I sometimes find 
 myself wishing, when dealing with these matters of 
 poetical criticism, that my ignorance were even 
 greater than it is. To handle these matters properly 
 there is needed a poise so perfect that the least 
 overweight in any direction tends to destroy the 
 balance. Temper destroys it, a crotchet destroys it, 
 even erudition may destroy it. To press to the 
 sense of the thing itself with which one is dealing, 
 not to go off on some collateral issue about the 
 thing, is the hardest matter in the world. The 
 " thing itself " with which one is here dealing the 
 critical perception of poetic truth is of all things 
 the most volatile, elusive, and evanescent ; by even 
 pressing too impetuously after it, one runs the risk 
 of losing it. The critic of poetry should have the 
 finest tact, the nicest moderation, the most free, 
 flexible, and elastic spirit imaginable ; he should be
 
 8o THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 
 
 indeed the " ondoyant et divers," the undulating 
 and diverse being of Montaigne. The less he can 
 deal with his object simply and freely, the more 
 things he has to take into account in dealing with 
 it the more, in short, he has to encumber himself 
 so much the greater force of spirit he needs to 
 retain his elasticity. But one cannot exactly have 
 this greater force by wishing for it ; so, for the force 
 of spirit one has, the load put upon it is often heavier 
 than it will bear. The late Duke of Wellington said 
 of a certain peer that " it was a great pity his educa- 
 tion had been so far too much for his abilities." 
 In like manner, one often sees erudition out of all 
 proportion to its owner's critical faculty. Little as 
 I know, therefore, I am always apprehensive, in 
 dealing with poetry, lest even that little should 
 prove " too much for my abilities." 
 
 *' On Translating Homer," pp. 116-117. 
 
 Homer the Bible of the Athenians 
 
 HOMER'S verses were some of the first words which 
 a young Athenian heard. He heard them from his 
 mother or his nurse before he went to school, and 
 at school, when he went there, he was constantly 
 occupied with them. So much did he hear of them 
 that Socrates proposes, in the interests of morality, 
 to have selections from Homer made, and placed 
 in the hands of mothers and nurses, in his model 
 republic ; in order that, of an author with whom 
 they were sure to be so perpetually conversant, the 
 young might learn only those parts which might do
 
 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION Si 
 
 them good. His language was as familiar to 
 Sophocles, we may be quite sure, as the language 
 of the Bible is to us. 
 
 Nay, more. Homer's language was not, of 
 course, in the time of Sophocles, the spoken or written 
 language of ordinary life, any more than the language 
 of the Bible, any more than the language of poetry, 
 is with us ; but for one great species of composition 
 epic poetry it was still the current language ; it 
 was the language in which every one who made that 
 sort of poetry composed. 
 
 " On Translating Homer," p. 125. 
 
 The Need to seek a Positive Result in Criticism 
 
 THIS is all I seek in criticisms ; and perhaps (as I have 
 already said) it is only as one seeks a positive result 
 of this kind, that one can get any fruit from them. 
 Seeking a negative result from them personal 
 altercation and wrangling one gets no fruit ; 
 seeking a positive result, the elucidation and estab- 
 lishment of one's ideas one may get much. Even 
 bad criticisms may thus be made suggestive and 
 fruitful. I declared, in a former lecture on this 
 subject, my conviction that criticism is not the 
 strong point of our national literature. Well, even 
 the bad criticisms on our present topic which I meet 
 with, serve to illustrate this conviction for me. And 
 thus one is enabled, even in reading remarks which 
 for Homeric criticism, for their immediate subject, 
 have no value which are far too personal in spirit, 
 far too immoderate in temper, and far too heavy- 
 
 G
 
 82 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 
 
 handed in style, for the delicate matter they have 
 to treat still to gain light and confirmation for a 
 serious idea, and to follow the Baconian injunc- 
 tion, semper aliquid addiscere, always to be adding 
 to one's stock of observation and knowledge. Yes, 
 even when we have to do with writers who to 
 quote the words of an exquisite critic, the master 
 of us all in criticism, M. Sainte-Beuve remind us, 
 when they handle such subjects as our present, of 
 " Romans of the fourth or fifth century, coming to 
 hold forth, all at random, in African style, on papers 
 found in the desk of Augustus, Maecenas, or Pollio," 
 even then we may instruct ourselves if we may regard 
 ideas and not persons ; even then we may enable 
 ourselves to say, with the same critic describing 
 the effect made upon him by D'Argenson's Memoirs : 
 " My taste is revolted, but I learn something 
 Je suis choque mais je suis instruit." 
 
 " On Translating Homer," pp. 133-134. 
 
 What is "The Grand Style"? 
 
 HOMER can in no sense be said to sink with his 
 subject, because his soundness has something more 
 than literal naturalness about it ; because his sound- 
 ness is the soundness of Homer, of a great epic 
 poet ; because, in fact, he is in the grand style. So 
 he sheds over the simplest matter he touches the 
 charm of his grand manner ; he makes everything 
 noble. Nothing has raised more questioning among 
 my critics than these words noble, the grand style. 
 People complain that I do not define these words
 
 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 83 
 
 sufficiently, that I do not tell them enough about 
 them. " The grand style but what is the grand 
 style ? " they cry ; some with an inclination to 
 believe in it, but puzzled ; others mockingly and 
 with incredulity. Alas ! the grand style is the last 
 matter in the world for verbal definition to deal 
 with adequately. One may say of it as is said of 
 faith : " One must feel it in order to know what it 
 is." But, as of faith, so too one may say of noble- 
 ness, of the grand style : " Woe to those who know 
 it not ! " Yet this expression, though indefinable, 
 has a charm ; one is the better for considering it ; 
 bonum est, nos hie esse ; nay, one loves to try to 
 explain it, though one knows that one must speak 
 imperfectly. For those, then, who ask the question, 
 What is the grand style ? with sincerity, I will try 
 to make some answer, inadequate as it must be. 
 For those who ask it mockingly I have no answer, 
 except to repeat to them, with compassionate sorrow, 
 the Gospel words : Moriemini in peccatis vestris, Ye 
 shall die in your sins. 
 
 But let me, at any rate, have the pleasure of 
 again giving, before I begin to try and define the 
 grand style, a specimen of what it is. 
 
 Standing on earth, not rapt above the pole, 
 More safe I sing with mortal voice, unchanged 
 To hoarse or mute, though fall'n on evil days, 
 On evil days though fall'n, and evil tongues. . . . 
 
 There is the grand style in perfection ; and any 
 one who has a sense for it, will feel it a thousand 
 times better from repeating those lines than from 
 hearing anything I can say about it.
 
 84 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 
 
 Let us try, however, what can be said, controlling 
 what we say by examples. I think it will be found 
 that the grand style arises in poetry, when a noble 
 nature, poetically gifted, treats with simplicity or with 
 severity a serious subject. 
 
 " On Translating Homer," pp. 137-138. 
 
 The Best Models of the Grand Style 
 
 THE best model of the grand style simple is Homer ; 
 perhaps the best model of the grand style severe is 
 Milton. But Dante is remarkable for affording 
 admirable examples of both styles ; he has the grand 
 style which arises from simplicity, and he has the 
 grand style which arises from severity. 
 
 Both these styles, the simple and the severe, are 
 truly grand ; the severe seems, perhaps, the grandest, 
 so long as we attend most to the great personality, 
 to the noble nature, in the poet its author ; the 
 simple seems the grandest when we attend most to 
 the exquisite faculty, to the poetical gift. But the 
 simple is no doubt to be preferred. It is the more 
 magical : in the other there is something intellectual, 
 something which gives scope for a play of thought 
 which may exist where the poetical gift is either 
 wanting or present in only inferior degree ; the severe 
 is much more imitable, and this a little spoils its 
 charm. 
 
 " On Translating Homer," pp. 140-142. 
 
 The Critic's First Duty 
 
 IT is the critic's first duty prior even to his duty 
 of stigmatising what is bad to welcome everything
 
 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 85 
 
 that is good. In welcoming this, he must at all 
 times be ready, like the Christian convert, even to 
 burn what he used to worship, and to worship what 
 he used to burn. Nay, but he need not be thus 
 inconsistent in welcoming it ; he may retain all his 
 principles : principles endure, circumstances change ; 
 absolute success is one thing, relative success another. 
 Relative success may take place under the most 
 diverse conditions ; and it is in appreciating the 
 good in even relative success, it is in taking into 
 account the change of circumstances, that the critic's 
 judgment is tested, that his versatility must display 
 itself. He is to keep his idea of the best, of per- 
 fection, and at the same time to be willingly accessible 
 to every second best which offers itself. 
 
 " On Translating Homer," pp. 155-156. 
 
 Verse Translation to be Preferred to Prose 
 
 I CONCEDE that a good verse-translation of Homer, 
 or, indeed, of any poet, is very difficult, and that a 
 good prose-translation is much easier ; but then I 
 urge that a verse-translation, while giving the pleasure 
 which Pope's has given, might at the same time 
 render Homer more faithfully than Pope's ; and 
 that this being possible, we ought not to cease 
 wishing for a source of pleasure which no prose- 
 translation can ever hope to rival. 
 
 Wishing for such a verse-translation of Homer, 
 believing that rhythms have natural tendencies 
 which, within certain limits, inevitably govern them ; 
 having little faith, therefore, that rhythms which
 
 86 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 
 
 have manifested tendencies utterly un-Homeric can 
 so change themselves as to become well adapted 
 for rendering Homer I have looked about for the 
 rhythm which seems to depart least from the ten- 
 dencies of Homer's rhythm. Such a rhythm I think 
 may be found in the English hexameter, somewhat 
 modified. 
 
 "On Translating Homer," pp. 157-158. 
 
 Distinctive Character of Poets 
 
 BUT, after all, Homer is not a better poet than the 
 balladists, because he has taken in the hexameter a 
 better instrument ; he took this instrument because 
 he was a different poet from them ; so different 
 not only so much better, but so essentially different 
 that he is not to be classed with them at all. Poets 
 receive their distinctive character, not from their 
 subjects, but from their application to that subject 
 of the ideas (to quote the Excursion) , 
 
 On God, on Nature, and on human life, 
 
 which they have acquired for themselves. In the 
 ballad-poets in general, as in men of a rude and 
 early stage of the world, in whom their humanity 
 is not yet variously and fully developed, the stock 
 of these ideas is scanty, and the ideas themselves 
 not very effective or profound. From them the 
 narrative itself is the great matter, not the spirit 
 and significance which underlies the narrative. Even 
 in later times of richly developed life and thought, 
 poets appear to have what may be called a balladist's 
 mind; in whom a fresh and lively curiosity for
 
 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 87 
 
 the outward spectacle of the world is much more 
 strong than their sense of the inward significance 
 of that spectacle. When they apply ideas to their 
 narrative of human events, you feel that they are, so 
 to speak, travelling out of their own province : in 
 the best of them you feel this perceptibly, but in 
 those of a lower order you feel it very strongly. 
 Even Sir Walter Scott's efforts of this kind even, 
 for instance, the 
 
 Breathes there a man with soul so dead, 
 
 or the 
 
 O woman ! in our hours of ease, 
 
 even these leave, I think, as high poetry, much to 
 be desired ; far more than the same poet's descrip- 
 tions of a hunt or a battle. But Lord Macaulay's 
 
 Then out spake brave Horatius, 
 
 The captain of the gate : 
 ' To all the men upon this earth 
 
 Death cometh soon or late,' 
 
 (and here, since I have been reproached with under- 
 valuing Lord Macaulay's Lays of Ancient Rome, let 
 me frankly say that, to my mind, a man's power to 
 detect the ring of false metal in those Lays is a good 
 measure of his fitness to give an opinion about 
 poetical matters at all), I say, Lord Macaulay's 
 
 To all the men upon this earth 
 Death cometh soon or late, 
 
 it is hard to read without a cry of pain. But with 
 Homer it is very different. This " noble barbarian," 
 this " savage with the lively eye," whose verse, 
 Mr. Newman thinks, would affect us, if we could
 
 88 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 
 
 hear the living Homer, " like an elegant and simple 
 melody from an African of the Gold Coast," is 
 never more at home, never more nobly himself, 
 than in applying profound ideas to his narrative. 
 As a poet he belongs narrative as is his poetry 
 and early as is his date to an incomparably more 
 developed spiritual and intellectual order than the 
 balladists, or than Scott and Macaulay ; he is here 
 as much to be distinguished from them, and in 
 the same way, as Milton is to be distinguished from 
 them. He is, indeed, rather to be classed with 
 Milton than with the balladists and Scott ; for what 
 he has in common with Milton the noble and pro- 
 found application of ideas to life is the most 
 essential part of poetic greatness. 
 
 " On Translating Homer," pp. 170-172. 
 
 Some Excuse for the Author's Vivacity 
 
 How vain to rise up early, and to take rest late, 
 from any zeal for proving to Mr. Newman that he 
 must not, in translating Homer, say houndis and 
 dancen ; or to the first of the two critics above 
 quoted, that one poet may be a greater poetical 
 force than another, and yet have a more unequal 
 style ; or to the second, that the best art, having 
 to represent the death of a hero, does not set about 
 imitating his dying noises ! Such critics, however, 
 provide for an opponent's vivacity the charming 
 excuse offered by Rivarol for his, when he was 
 reproached for giving offence by it : " Ah ! " he 
 exclaimed, " no one considers how much pain every
 
 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 89 
 
 man of taste has had to suffer before he ever 
 inflicts any." 
 
 " On Translating Homer," p. 176. 
 
 The Revised Code of 1862 
 
 THE impossibility of preparing the bulk of the 
 children to pass the examination proposed was, no 
 doubt, exaggerated. We have seen what can be 
 accomplished in this line by preparers. On the 
 other hand, I have always thought that the Com- 
 missioners, finding in the state of the junior classes 
 and of the elementary matters of instruction a point 
 easy to be made and strikingly effective, naturally 
 made it with some excess of energy, and pressed it 
 too hard. I knew the English schools well in this 
 period, between 1850 and 1860, and at the end of 
 it I was enabled to compare them with schools 
 abroad. Some preventible neglect of the junior 
 classes, some preventible shortcoming in the ele- 
 mentary instruction there was, but not nearly so 
 much as was imagined. What there was would 
 have been sufficiently met by a capitation grant on 
 individual examination, not for the whole school, 
 but for the children between seven and eight 
 years old, and nine and ten, a grant which would 
 then have been subsidiary, not principal. General 
 " payment by results " has been a remedy worse 
 than the disease which it was meant to cure. 
 
 The opposition to Mr. Lowe's Revised Code of 
 1862 so far prevailed that it was agreed to pay 
 one-third of the Government grant on attendance,
 
 90 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 
 
 and but two-thirds on examination. Moreover, 
 the grouping by age was abandoned, and the 
 arrangement of the children in six classes, or 
 standards, as they have come to be called, was 
 substituted for it. The teacher presented the 
 child in the standard for which he thought him fit ; 
 he must present him the next time, however, in a 
 standard above that. 
 
 The capitation grant on attendance was four 
 shillings ; that on examination was twice that 
 amount, one-third of which was forfeited for a 
 failure in reading, or writing, or arithmetic. This 
 latter grant has governed the instruction and in- 
 spection of our elementary schools ever since. I 
 have never wavered in the opinion most unaccept- 
 able to my official chiefs that such a consequence 
 of the Revised Code was inevitable, and also harmful. 
 To a clever Minister and an austere Secretary, to the 
 House of Commons and the newspapers, the scheme 
 of " payment by results," and those results, reading, 
 writing, and arithmetic, " the most necessary part 
 of what children come to school to learn," a scheme 
 which should make public education " if not efficient, 
 cheap ; and if not cheap, efficient, "-r-was, of course, 
 attractive. It was intelligible, plausible, likely to 
 be carried, likely to be maintainable, after it had 
 been carried. That, by concentrating the teacher's 
 attention upon enabling his scholars to pass in the 
 three elementary matters, it must injure the teaching, 
 narrow it, and make it mechanical, was an educator's 
 objection easily brushed aside by our public men. 
 It was urged by Sir James Shuttleworth, but this
 
 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 91 
 
 was attributed to a parent's partiality for the 
 Minutes of 1846 and the Old Code founded on them, 
 a Code which the Revised Code had superseded. 
 But the objection did really occur to him and weigh 
 with him, because he was a born educator, and had 
 seen and studied the work of the great Swiss educators, 
 Pestalozzi, Fellenberg, Vehrli. It occurred to me 
 because I had seen the foreign schools. No serious 
 and well-informed student of education, judging 
 freely and without bias, will approve the Revised 
 Code. 
 
 1887. " Letters," i. p. 148. 
 
 Reading and Recitation 
 
 THE attention which has been drawn by the Revised 
 Code to the elementary subjects of reading, writing, 
 and arithmetic has already had the happiest effect 
 in improving the quality of school reading books. 
 At last the compilers of these works seem beginning 
 to understand that the right way of teaching a little 
 boy to read is not by setting him to read such sen- 
 tences as these (I quote from school works till 
 lately much in vogue) ; " the crocodile is vivi- 
 parous," " quicksilver, antimony, calamine, zinc, 
 etc., are metals," " the slope of a desk is oblique, the 
 corners of the door are angles ; " or the right way 
 of teaching a big boy to read better, to set him to 
 read : " some time after one meal is digested we 
 feel again the sensation of hunger, which is gratified 
 by again taking food ; " " most towns are supplied 
 with water and lighted by gas, their streets are 
 paved and kept clean, and guarded by policemen ; "
 
 92 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 
 
 " summer ornaments for grates are made of wood 
 shavings and of different coloured papers." Reading 
 books are now published which reject all such 
 trash as the above, and contain nothing but what 
 has really some fitness for reaching the end which 
 reading books were meant to reach. Some of them 
 even go a little too far in the effort to avoid dryness 
 and pedantry and to be natural and interesting ; 
 they contain rather too many abbreviations, too 
 many words meant to imitate the noises of animals, 
 and too much of that part of human utterance which 
 may be called the inter jectional. The little children, 
 for whom the books are designed, are apt to be 
 rather puzzled by words of this kind, and, even if 
 they were not, it is a fault in a short reading lesson 
 to contain too much of them. But this fault, which 
 certainly some of the best of the new reading books 
 do not quite avoid, has at least the merit of being 
 a fault on the right side. 
 
 No more useful change has in my opinion ever 
 been introduced into the programme of the pupil- 
 teachers' studies than that which has lately added 
 to it the learning by heart of passages from some 
 standard author. How difficult it seems to do 
 anything for their taste and culture I have often 
 said. I have said how much easier it seems to 
 get entrance to their minds and to awaken them 
 by means of music or of physical science than by 
 means of literature ; still if it can be done by 
 literature at all, it has the best chance of being 
 done by the way now proposed. 
 
 General Report, 1863.
 
 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 93 
 
 Teachers and Self-culture 
 
 IN England it is among the teachers that the desire 
 for a better culture, and the attainment of it, most 
 shows itself. It shows itself in those in my district 
 by more and more numerous efforts to pass the 
 examinations which the London University, with 
 a wise liberality, makes accessible to so large and 
 various a class of candidates. I gladly seize every 
 opportunity to express the satisfaction which the 
 sight of these efforts gives me. To the able, the 
 ardent, and the aspiring among the young teachers 
 of schools under my inspection, I say : " Your 
 true way of advancing yourselves, of raising your 
 position, of keeping alive and alert amidst 
 your trying labours, is there." And the more the 
 Government certificate comes to be regarded as a 
 mere indispensable guarantee of competency, not as a 
 literary distinction, the better ; literary distinction 
 should be sought for from other and larger sources. 
 
 General Report, 1863. 
 
 A Learned and a Liberal Education 
 IT is well to take the distinction which you have 
 taken between liberal and learned education, because 
 this is one of the things which the public has got 
 into its head, and one can do most with the public 
 by availing oneself of one of these things. To give 
 the means of learning Greek, for instance, but not to 
 make Greek obligatory, is a proposal, for secondary 
 education, which half the world are now prepared 
 to prick up their ears if you make. 
 
 1864. " Letters," i. p. 233.
 
 94 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 
 
 The Reform of Eton 
 
 IF Eton does not teach her pupils profound wisdom, 
 we have Oxerstiern's word for it that the world is 
 governed by very little wisdom. Eton, at any rate, 
 teaches her aristocratic pupils virtues which are 
 among the best virtues of an aristocracy, freedom 
 from affectation, manliness, a high spirit, simplicity. 
 It is to be hoped that she teaches something of these 
 virtues to her other pupils also, who, not of the 
 aristocratic class themselves, enjoy at Eton the 
 benefit of contact with aristocracy. For these 
 other pupils, perhaps, a little more learning as well, 
 a somewhat stronger dose of ideas, might be desirable. 
 Above all, it might be desirable to wean them from 
 the easy habits and profuse notions of expense 
 which Eton generates, habits and notions graceful 
 enough in the lilies of the social field, but incon- 
 venient for its future toilers and spinners. To con- 
 vey to Eton the knowledge that the wine of Cham- 
 pagne does not water the whole earth, and that there 
 are incomes which fall below 5000 a year, would 
 be an act of kindness towards a large class of 
 British parents, full of proper pride, but not opulent. 
 
 " A French Eton," pp. 3-4, 
 
 French and English Literature 
 
 IN the study of the mother-tongue the French 
 schoolboy has a more real advantage over ours ; he 
 does certainly learn something of the French 
 language and literature, and of the English our
 
 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 95 
 
 schoolboy learns nothing. French grammar, how- 
 ever, is a better instrument of instruction for boys 
 than English grammar, and the French literature 
 possesses prose works, perhaps even poetical works, 
 more fitted to be used as classics for schoolboys 
 than any which English literature possesses. I need 
 not say that the fitness of the works for this purpose 
 depends on other considerations than those of the 
 genius alone, and of the creative force, which they 
 exhibit. 
 
 " A French Eton," pp. 17-18. 
 
 Lacordaire 
 
 LACORDAIRE erred in making absolute devotion to 
 the Church (malheur a qui trouble I'Eglise), the watch- 
 word of a gifted man in our century ; one cannot 
 doubt that he erred in affirming that " the greatest 
 service to be rendered to Christianity in our day was 
 to do something for the revival of the mediaeval 
 religious orders." Still, he seized a great truth, 
 when he proclaimed the intrinsic weakness and 
 danger of a state of anarchy ; above all, when he 
 applied this truth in the moral sphere he was incon- 
 trovertible, fruitful for his nation, especially fruitful 
 for the young. He dealt vigorously with himself, 
 and he told others that the first thing for them was 
 to do the same : he placed character above every- 
 thing else. " One may have spirit, learning, even 
 genius," he said, " and not character ; for want of 
 character our age is the age of miscarriages. Let 
 us form Christians in our schools, but, first of all,
 
 96 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 
 
 let us form Christians in our own hearts ; the one 
 great thing is to have a life of one's own." 
 
 " One of the great consolations of my present 
 life," he writes from Soreze, " is, that I have now 
 God and the young for my sole companions." The 
 young, with their fresh spirit, as they instinctively 
 feel the presence of a great character, so, too, 
 irresistibly receive an influence from souls which 
 live habitually with God. 
 
 " A French Eton," pp. 26, 28. 
 
 Cost of Secondary Instruction 
 
 FOR the serious thinker, for the real student of the 
 question of secondary instruction, the problem 
 respecting secondary instruction which we in England 
 have to solve is this : Why cannot we have through- 
 out England, as the French have throughout 
 France, as the Germans have throughout Germany, 
 as the Swiss have throughout Switzerland, as the 
 Dutch have throughout Holland, schools where the 
 children of our middle and professional classes may 
 obtain, at the rate of from 20 to 50 a year, if they 
 are boarders, at the rate of from 5 to 15 a year, if 
 they are day-scholars, an education of as good 
 quality, with as good guarantees, social character, 
 and advantages for a future career in the world, as 
 the education which French children of the corre- 
 sponding class can obtain from institutions like that 
 of Toulouse or Soreze ? 
 
 There is the really important question. It is 
 vain to meet it by propositions which may, very
 
 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 97 
 
 likely, be true, but which are quite irrelevant. 
 " Your French Etons," I am told, " are no Etons 
 at all ; there is nothing like an Eton in France." 
 I know that. Very likely France is to be pitied for 
 having no Etons, but I want to call attention to 
 the substitute, to the compensation. The English 
 public school produces the finest boys in the world ; 
 the Toulouse Lyceum boy, the Soreze College boy, 
 is not to be compared with them. Well, let me 
 grant all that too. But then there are only some 
 five or six schools in England to produce this 
 specimen-boy ; and they cannot produce him cheap. 
 " A French Eton," pp. 37-38. 
 
 The need of Securities for Efficiency 
 
 No one who knows anything of the subject, will 
 venture to affirm that these " educational homes " 
 give, or can give, that which they " conscientiously 
 offer." No one, who knows anything of the subject, 
 will seriously affirm that they give, or can give, 
 an education comparable to that given by the 
 Toulouse and Soreze schools. And why ? Because 
 they want the securities, which, to make them 
 produce even half of what they offer, are indispens- 
 able the securities of supervision and publicity. 
 By this time we know pretty well that to trust to 
 the principle of supply and demand to do for us 
 all that we want in providing education is to lean 
 upon a broken reed. 
 
 " A French Eton," p. 43.
 
 98 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 
 
 The Law of Supply and Demand Inapplicable 
 
 THE mass of mankind know good butter from bad, 
 and tainted meat from fresh, and the principle of 
 supply and demand may, perhaps, be relied on to 
 give us sound meat and butter. But the mass of 
 mankind do not so well know what distinguishes 
 good teaching and training from bad ; they do not 
 here know what they ought to demand, and, there- 
 fore, the demand cannot be relied on to give us the 
 right supply. Even if they knew what they ought 
 to demand, they have no sufficient means of testing 
 whether or no this is really supplied to them. 
 Securities, therefore, are needed. The great public 
 schools of England offer securities by their very 
 publicity ; by their wealth, importance, and con- 
 nections, which attract general attention to them ; 
 by their old reputation, which they cannot forfeit 
 without disgrace and danger. The appointment of 
 the Public Schools Commission is a proof, that to 
 these moral securities for the efficiency of the great 
 public schools may be added the material security 
 of occasional competent supervision. I will grant 
 that the great schools of the Continent do not offer 
 the same moral securities to the public as Eton or 
 Harrow. They offer them in a certain measure, 
 but certainly not in so large measure; they 
 have not by any means so much importance, by 
 any means so much reputation. Therefore they 
 offer, in far larger measure, the other security, the 
 security of competent supervision. With them 
 this supervision is not occasional and extraordinary,
 
 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 99 
 
 but periodic and regular ; it is not explorative only; 
 it is also, to a considerable extent, authoritative. 
 
 " A French Eton," pp. 44-45. 
 
 Delusive Examinations 
 
 ANY one can see that the examination of a few select 
 scholars from a school, not at the school itself, and 
 not preceded or followed by an inspection of the 
 school itself, affords no solid security for the good 
 condition of their school. Any one can see that it 
 is for the interest of an unscrupulous master to give 
 all his care to his few cleverest pupils, who will serve 
 him as an advertisement, while he neglects the 
 common bulk of his pupils, whose backwardness 
 there will be nobody to expose. I will not, however, 
 insist too strongly on this last mischief, because I 
 really believe that, serious as is its danger, it has not 
 so much prevailed as to counterbalance the benefit 
 which the mere stimulus of these examinations has 
 given. All I say is, that this stimulus is an insuffi- 
 cient security. 
 
 " A French Eton," pp. 57-58. 
 
 The Real Needs in Secondary Instruction 
 
 ENGLISH secondary instruction wants, I said, two 
 things : sufficient provision of good schools, sufficient 
 security for these schools continuing good. Granting 
 that the Universities may give us the second, I 
 do not see how they are to give us the first. It is not 
 enough merely to provide a staff of inspectors and 
 examiners, and still to leave the children of our
 
 ioo THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 
 
 middle class scattered about through the numberless 
 obscure endowed schools and " educational homes " 
 of this country, some of them good, many of them 
 middling, most of them bad ; but none of them 
 great institutions, none of them invested with much 
 consideration or dignity. What is wanted for the 
 English middle class is respected schools as well as 
 inspected ones. I will explain what I mean. 
 
 The education of each class in society has, or 
 ought to have, its ideal, determined by the wants 
 of that class, and by its destination. Society may 
 be imagined so uniform that one education shall be 
 suitable for all its members ; we have not a society 
 of that kind, nor has any European country. We 
 have to regard the condition of the classes, in dealing 
 with education ; but it is right to take into account 
 not their immediate condition only, but their wants, 
 their destination above all, their evident pressing 
 wants, their evident proximate destination. Looking 
 at English society at this moment, one may say 
 that the ideal for the education of each of its classes 
 to follow, the aim which the education of each should 
 particularly endeavour to reach, is different. Mr. 
 Hawtrey, whose admirable and fruitful labours at 
 St. Mark's School entitle him to be heard with great 
 respect, lays it down as an absolute proposition that 
 the family is the type of the school. I do not think 
 that is true for the schools of all classes alike. I feel 
 sure my father, whose authority Mr. Hawtrey claims 
 for this maxim, would not have laid it down in 
 this absolute way. For the wants of the highest 
 class, of the class which frequents Eton, for instance,
 
 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 101 
 
 not school a family, but rather school a little world, 
 is the right ideal. I cannot concede to Mr. Hawtrey 
 that, for the young gentlemen who go to Eton, our 
 grand aim and aspiration should be, in his own words, 
 " to make their boyhood a joyous one, by gentle 
 usage and friendly confidence on the part of the 
 master." Let him believe me, the great want for 
 the children of luxury is not this sedulous tenderness, 
 this smoothing of the rose-leaf for them ; I am sure 
 that, in fact, it is not by the predominance of the 
 family and parental relation in its school-life that 
 Eton is strongest ; and it is well that this is so. It 
 seems to me that, for the class frequenting Eton, 
 the grand aim of education should be to give them 
 those good things which their birth and rearing are 
 least likely to give them, besides mere book-learning, 
 the notion of a sort of republican fellowship, the 
 practice of a plain life in common, the habit of 
 self-help. To the middle class, the grand aim of 
 education should be to give largeness of soul and 
 personal dignity ; to the lower classes, feeling, 
 gentleness, humanity. Here, at last, Mr. Hawtrey's 
 ideal of the family as the type for the school, comes 
 in its due place ; for the children of poverty it is 
 right, it is needful, to set oneself first to " make 
 their boyhood a joyous one by gentle usage and 
 friendly confidence on the part of the master ; " for 
 them the great danger is not insolence from over- 
 cherishing, but insensibility from over-neglect. 
 
 " A French Eton," pp. 60-63.
 
 102 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 
 
 The Middle Class and Higher Education 
 
 IF secondary instruction were organised on a great 
 and regular scale, if it were a national concern, it 
 would not be by insuring to the offspring of the 
 middle classes a more solid teaching at school, and 
 a larger share of home comforts than they at present 
 enjoy there (though certainly it would do this), that 
 such secondary instruction would confer upon them 
 the greatest boon. Its greatest boon to the offspring 
 of these classes would be its giving them great, 
 honourable, public institutions for their nurture 
 institutions conveying to the spirit, at the time of 
 fife when the spirit is most penetrable, the salutary 
 influences of greatness, honour, and nationality 
 influences which expand the soul, liberalise the 
 mind, dignify the character. 
 
 Such institutions are the great public schools of 
 England, and the great Universities ; with these 
 influences, and some others to which I just now 
 pointed, they have formed the upper class of this 
 country a class with many faults, with many 
 shortcomings, but imbued, on the whole, and 
 mainly through these influences, with a high, mag- 
 nanimous, governing spirit, which has long enabled 
 them to rule, not ignobly, this great country, and 
 which will still enable them to rule it until they are 
 equalled or surpassed. These institutions had their 
 origin in endowments ; and the age of endowments 
 is gone. Beautiful and venerable as are many of 
 the aspects under which it presents itself, this 
 form of public establishment of education, with
 
 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 103 
 
 its limitations, its preferences, its ecclesiastical 
 character, its inflexibility, its inevitable want of 
 foresight, proved, as time rolled on, to be subject 
 to many inconveniences, to many abuses. On the 
 continent of Europe a clean sweep has in general 
 been made of this old form of establishment, and 
 new institutions have arisen upon its ruins. In 
 England we have kept our great school and college 
 foundations, introducing into their system what 
 correctives and palliatives were absolutely necessary. 
 Long may we so keep them ! 
 
 " A French Eton," pp. 66-67. 
 
 Middle Class Education and the State 
 
 PEOPLE talk of Government interference, Government 
 control, as if State-action were necessarily something 
 imposed upon them from without ; something 
 despotic and self-originated ; something which took 
 no account of their will, and left no freedom to their 
 activity. Can any one really suppose that, in a 
 country like this, State-action, in education for 
 instance, can ever be that, unless we choose to make 
 it so ? We can give it what form we will. We can 
 make it our agent, not our master. In modern 
 societies the agency of the State, in certain matters, 
 is so indispensable, that it will manage, with or 
 without our common consent, to come into operation 
 somehow ; but when it has introduced itself without 
 the common consent when a great body, like the 
 middle class, will have nothing to say to it then 
 its course is indeed likely enough to be not
 
 104 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 
 
 straightforward, its operation not satisfactory. But, 
 by all of us consenting to it, we remove any danger of 
 this kind. By really agreeing to deal in our collec- 
 tive and corporate character with education, we can 
 form ourselves into the best and most efficient of 
 voluntary societies for managing it. We can make 
 State-action upon it a genuine local government of 
 it, the faithful but potent expression of our own 
 activity. We can make the central Government 
 that mere court of disinterested review and correction 
 which every sensible man would always be glad to 
 have for his own activity. We shall have all our 
 self-reliance and individual action still (in this 
 country we shall always have plenty of them, and 
 the parts will always be more likely to tyrannise 
 over the whole than the whole over the parts), but 
 we shall have had the good sense to turn them to 
 account by a powerful, but still voluntary, organisa- 
 tion. Our beneficence will be " beneficence acting 
 by rule," (that is Burke's definition of law, as insti- 
 tuted by a free society), and all the more effective 
 for that reason. Must this make us "a set of 
 helpless imbeciles, totally incapable of attending 
 to our own interests ? " Is this " a grievous 
 blow aimed at the independence of the English 
 character ? " Is " English self-reliance and inde- 
 pendence " to be perfectly satisfied with what it 
 produces already without this organisation ? In 
 middle class education it produces, without it, the 
 educational home and the classical and commercial 
 academy. Are we to be proud of that ? Are we 
 to be satisfied with that ? Is " the greatness of
 
 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 
 
 , 
 
 this country " to be seen in that ? But it will be 
 said that, awakening to a sense of the badness of our 
 middle class education, we are beginning to improve 
 it. Undoubtedly we are ; and the most certain 
 sign of that awakening, of those beginnings of 
 improvement, is the disposition to resort to a public 
 agency, to " beneficence working by rule," to help 
 us on faster with it. 
 
 " A French Eton," pp. 99-101. 
 
 Public Establishment of Secondary Schools 
 
 IN that great class, strong by its numbers, its energy, 
 its industry, strong by its freedom from frivolity, 
 not by any law of nature prone to immobility of 
 mind, actually at this moment agitated by a spread- 
 ing ferment of mind, in that class, liberalised by an 
 ampler culture, admitted to a wider sphere of thought, 
 living by larger ideas, with its provincialism dis- 
 sipated, its intolerance cured, its pettinesses purged 
 away, what a power there will be, what an element 
 of new life for England. Then let the middle class 
 rule, then let it affirm its own spirit, when it has 
 thus perfected itself. J 
 
 And I cannot see any means so direct and powerful 
 for developing this great and beneficent power as 
 the public establishment of schools for the middle 
 class. By public establishment they may be made 
 cheap and accessible to all. By public establish- 
 ment they may give securities for the culture offered 
 in them being really good and sound, and the 
 best that our time knows. By public establishment
 
 106 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 
 
 they may communicate to those reared in them the 
 sense of being brought in contact with their country, 
 with the national life, with the life of the world ; and 
 they will expand and dignify their spirits by com- 
 municating this sense to them. I can see no other 
 mode of institution which will offer the same 
 advantages in the same degree. 
 
 " A French Eton," pp. 126-127. 
 
 Effect of Middle Class Education on the 
 Working Class 
 
 I HOPE the middle class will not much longer delay 
 to take a step on which its future value and dignity 
 and influence so much depend. By taking this 
 step they will indirectly confer a great boon upon 
 the lower class also. This obscure embryo, only 
 just beginning to move, travailing in labour and 
 darkness, so much left out of account when we 
 celebrate the glories of our Atlantis, now and then, 
 by so mournful a glimpse, showing itself to us in 
 Lambeth, or Spitalfields, or Dorsetshire, this immense 
 working class, now so without a practicable passage 
 to all the joy and beauty of life, for whom in an 
 aristocratic class, which is unattainable by them, 
 there is no possible ideal, for whom in a middle class, 
 narrow, ungenial, and unattractive, there is no 
 adequate ideal, will have, in a cultured, liberalised, 
 ennobled, transformed, middle class, a point towards 
 which it may hopefully work, a goal towards which 
 it may with joy direct its aspirations. 
 
 Children of the future, whose day has not yet
 
 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 107 
 
 dawned, you, when that day arrives, will hardly 
 believe what obstructions were long suffered to 
 prevent its coming. You who, with all your faults 
 have neither the aridity of aristocracies, nor the 
 narrow-mindedness of middle classes, you, whose 
 power of simple enthusiasm is your great gift, will 
 not comprehend how progress towards man's best 
 perfection the adorning and ennobling of his 
 spirit should have been reluctantly undertaken ; 
 how it should have been for years and years retarded 
 by barren commonplaces, by worn-out clap-traps. 
 You will wonder at the labour of its friends in 
 proving the self-proving ; you will know nothing of 
 the doubts, the fears, the prejudices they had to 
 dispel ; nothing of the outcry they had to encounter, 
 of the fierce protestations of life from policies 
 which were dead, and did not know it, and the 
 shrill querulous upbraiding from publicists in their 
 dotage. But you, in your turn, with difficulties of 
 your own, will then be mounting some new step 
 in the arduous ladder whereby man climbs towards 
 his perfection ; towards that unattainable but 
 irresistible lode-star gazed after with earnest longing, 
 and invoked with bitter tears ; the longing of thou- 
 sands of hearts, the tears of many generations. 
 
 " A French Eton," pp. 130-132. 
 
 National Influence of the Intellectual Life 
 
 THE subject being secondary instruction, an instruc- 
 tion in direct correspondence with higher instruc- 
 tion and intellectual life, I cannot admit that any
 
 io8 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 
 
 countries are more worth studying, as regards 
 secondary instruction, than those in which intel- 
 lectual life has been carried farthest Germany 
 first, and, in the second degree, France. Indeed, 
 I am convinced that as Science, in the widest sense 
 of the word, meaning a true knowledge of things as 
 the basis of our operations, becomes, as it does 
 become, more of a power in the world, the weight 
 of the nations and men who have carried the intel- 
 lectual life farthest will be more and more felt ; 
 indeed, I see signs of this already. That England 
 may run well in this race is my deepest desire ; and 
 to stimulate her and to make her feel how many 
 clogs she wears, and how much she has to do in 
 order to run in it as her genius gives her the power 
 to run, is the object of all I do. 
 
 1865. " Letters," i. p. 245. 
 
 Educative Effect of the Aristocratic Ideal 
 
 IN Austria one feels that there is some truth in the 
 talk which in England sounds such rubbish about 
 the accessibility of the English aristocracy, but what 
 is really the strength of England is the immense 
 extent of the upper class the class with much the 
 same education and notions as the aristocracy ; this, 
 though it has its dangers, is a great thing. In 
 Germany there is no such thing, and the whole 
 middle class hates refinement and disbelieves in it ; 
 this makes North Germany, where the middle class 
 has it, socially though not governmentally, all its 
 own way, so intensely unattractive and disagreeable.
 
 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 109 
 
 This too made them all such keen Northerners. 
 " They say he is a tailor," said Haupt, the great 
 classical professor of Berlin, of Johnson the American 
 president : " Gott sey dank dass er ein Schneider 
 ist ! " 
 
 ,865. " Letters," i. p. 305. 
 
 Oxford 
 
 BEAUTIFUL city, so venerable, so lovely, so unravaged 
 by the fierce intellectual life of our century, so serene ! 
 
 There are our young barbarians, all at play ! 
 
 And yet, steeped in sentiment as she lies, spread- 
 ing her gardens to the moonlight, and whispering 
 from her towers the last enchantments of the Middle 
 Age, who will deny that Oxford, by her ineffable 
 charm, keeps ever calling us nearer to the true 
 goal of all of us, to the ideal, to perfection, to beauty, 
 in a word, which is only truth seen from another 
 side ? nearer, perhaps than all the science of 
 Tubingen ? Adorable dreamer, whose heart has been 
 so romantic, who hast given thyself so prodigally, 
 given thyself to sides and to heroes not mine, only 
 never to the Philistines ! home of lost causes, and 
 forsaken beliefs, and unpopular names, and im- 
 possible loyalties ! what example could ever so in- 
 spire us to keep down the Philistine in ourselves, 
 what teacher could ever so save us from that bondage 
 to which we are all prone, that bondage which 
 Goethe, in his incomparable lines on the death of 
 Schiller, makes it his friend's highest praise (and 
 nobly did Schiller deserve the praise) to have left
 
 no THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 
 
 miles out of sight behind him ; the bondage of 
 " was uns alle bandigt, DAS GEMEINE ! " Oxford 
 will forgive me, even if I have unwittingly drawn 
 upon her a shot or two aimed at her unworthy son ; 
 for she is generous, and the cause in which I fight 
 is, after all, hers. Apparitions of a day, what is our 
 puny warfare against the Philistines, compared 
 with the warfare which this queen of romance has 
 been waging against them for centuries, and will 
 wage after we are gone ? 
 
 Preface to " Essays in Criticism," p. xiii. 
 
 Grammar and Science Teaching 
 
 IF it is perception you want to cultivate in Florence, 
 you had much better take some science (botany is 
 perhaps the best for a girl, and I know Tyndall 
 thinks it the best of all for educational purposes), 
 and choosing a good handbook, go regularly through 
 it with her. Handbooks have long been the great 
 want for teaching the natural sciences, but this 
 want is at last beginning to be supplied, and for 
 botany a text-book based on Henslow's Lectures, 
 which were excellent, has recently been published by 
 Macmillan. I cannot see that there is much got out 
 of learning the Latin Grammar except the mainly 
 normal discipline of learning something much more 
 exactly than one is made to learn anything else ; 
 and the verification of the laws of grammar, in the 
 examples furnished by one's reading, is certainly 
 a far less fruitful stimulus of one's powers of obser- 
 vation and comparison than the verification of the 
 laws of a science like botany in the examples
 
 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION in 
 
 furnished by the world of nature before one's eyes. 
 The sciences have been abominably taught, and by 
 untrained people, but the moment properly trained 
 people begin to teach them properly they fill such 
 a want in education as that which you feel in 
 Florence's better than either grammar or mathema- 
 tics, which have been forced into the service because 
 they have been hitherto so far better studied and 
 known. Grammar and pure mathematics will fill 
 a much less important part in the education of the 
 young than formerly, though the knowledge of the 
 ancient world will continue to form a most important 
 part in the education of mankind generally. But 
 the way grammar is studied at present is an obstacle 
 to this knowledge rather than a help to it, and I 
 should be glad to see it limited to learning thoroughly 
 the example-form of words, and very little more 
 for beginners, I mean. Those who have a taste for 
 philosophical studies may push them further, and 
 with far more intelligible aids than our elementary 
 grammars afterwards. So I should inflict on 
 Florence neither Latin nor English grammar as 
 an elaborate discipline ; make her learn her French 
 verbs very thoroughly, and do her French exercises 
 very correctly ; but do not go to grammar to culti- 
 vate in her the power you miss, but rather to science. 
 
 1866. "Letters,"!, p. 313. 
 
 Class Division and State Authority 
 
 NOT that I do not think it, in itself, a bad thing 
 that the principle of authority should be so weak
 
 H2 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 
 
 here ; but whereas in France, since the Revolution, 
 a man feels that the power which represses him in 
 the State, is himself, here a man feels that the power 
 which represses him is the Tories, the upper class, 
 the aristocracy, and so on ; and with this feeling 
 he can, of course, never without loss of self-respect 
 accept a formal beating, and so the thing goes on 
 smouldering. If ever there comes a more equal 
 state of society in England, the power of the State 
 for repression will be a thousand times stronger. 
 
 "Letters," i. p. 335. 
 
 Public Schools and the Middle Class 
 
 WHEN I was over in England the other day, my poor 
 friend Mr. Matthew Arnold insisted, with his usual 
 blind adoration of everything English, on taking 
 me down to admire one of your great public schools ; 
 precious institutions, where, as I tell him, for 250 
 sterling a year your boys learn gentlemanly deport- 
 ment and cricket. Well, down we went, and in the 
 playing fields (which with you are the school) : 
 " I declare," says Mr. Matthew Arnold, " if there 
 isn't a son of that man you quarrelled with in the 
 Reigate train ! And there, close by him, is the son 
 of one of our greatest families, a Plantagenet ! It 
 is only in England, Arminius, that this beautiful 
 salutary intermixture of classes takes place. Look 
 at the bottle-merchant's son and the Plantagenet 
 being brought up side by side ; none of your absurd 
 separations and seventy-two quarterings here. Very 
 likely young Bottles will end by being a lord
 
 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 113 
 
 himself." I was going to point out to Mr. Matthew 
 Arnold that what a middle class wants is ideas, 
 and ideas an aristocracy has nothing to do with ; 
 so that that vulgar dog, Bottles, the father, in 
 sending his son to learn only cricket and a gentle- 
 manly deportment, like the aristocracy, had done 
 quite the wrong thing with him. 
 
 1866. " Friendship's Garland," Letter iv. p. 25. 
 
 The Three Classes of Philistine 
 
 " MY dear friend," says he, " of the British 
 species of the great genus Philistine there are 
 three main varieties. There is the religious 
 Philistine, the well-to-do Philistine, and the rowdy 
 Philistine. The religious Philistine is represented 
 by " 
 
 " Stop, Arminius," said I, " you will oblige me 
 by letting religion alone ! " 
 
 " As you please," answered he ; " well, then, 
 the rowdy Philistine is represented by the Daily 
 Telegraph, and the well-to-do Philistine by the Times. 
 The well-to-do Philistine looks to get his own view 
 of the British world, that it is the best of all possible 
 worlds as it is, because he has prospered in it, 
 preached back to him ore rotundo in the columns 
 of the Times. There must be no uncertain sound 
 in his oracle, no faltering, nothing to excite mis- 
 giving or doubts ; like his own bosom, everything 
 his oracle utters must be positive, pleasant, and 
 comfortable. So of course about the great first
 
 ii 4 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 
 
 article of his creed, the sacro-sanctity of property, 
 there must in the Times be no trifling." 
 
 " Friendship's Garland," Letter v. p. 35. 
 Stein's Land Reform 
 
 " WELL, then, what did Stein do ? " asked I. " He 
 did this/' Arminius answered. " In these estates, 
 where the landlord had his property-right on the 
 one hand, and the tenant his tenant-right on the 
 other, he made a compromise. In the first place 
 he assigned, say, two-fifths of the estate to the land- 
 lord in absolute property, without any further claim 
 of tenant-right upon it thenceforth for ever. But 
 the remaining three-fifths he compelled the landlord 
 to sell to the tenant at eighteen years' purchase, 
 so that this part should become the tenant's absolute 
 property thenceforth for ever. You will ask, where 
 could the tenant find money to buy ? Stein opened 
 rent-banks in all the provincial chief towns, to lend 
 the tenant the purchase-money required, for which 
 the State thus became his ci editor, not the landlord. 
 He had to repay this loan in a certain number of 
 years. To free his land from this State mortgage 
 on it and make it his own clear property, he had 
 every inducement to work hard, and he did work 
 hard ; and this was the grand source of the frugality, 
 industry, and thrivingness of the Prussian peasant. 
 It was the grand source, too, of his attachment to 
 the State." 
 
 " It was rotten bad political economy, though," 
 exclaimed I. " Now I see what the Times meant
 
 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 115 
 
 by saying in its leading article yesterday that 
 Ireland is incomparably better governed than the 
 United States, France, Germany, or Italy, because 
 the excellence of government consists in keeping 
 obstacles out of the way of individual energy, and 
 you throw obstacles in the way of your great pro- 
 prietors' energy, and we throw none in the way of 
 ours. Talk of a commutation like the tithe-com- 
 mutation, indeed ! Why it was downright spolia- 
 tion ; it was just what Lord Clanricarde says some 
 people are driving at in Ireland, a system of con- 
 fiscation." 
 
 " Well," says Arminius, calmly, " that is exactly 
 what the Prussian junkers called it. They did not 
 call it commutation, they called it confiscation. 
 They will tell you to this day that Stein confiscated 
 their estates. But you will be shocked to hear that 
 the Prussian Government had, even before Stein's 
 time, this sad habit of playing tricks with political 
 economy. To prevent the absorption of small 
 proprietors by a great landed aristocracy, the 
 Prussian Government made a rule that a bauer-gut 
 a peasant property, could not, even if the owner 
 sold it, be bought up by the Lord Clanricarde of 
 the neighbourhood ; it must remain a bauer-gut still. 
 I believe you in England are for improving small 
 proprietors off the face of the earth, but I assure 
 you in Prussia we are very proud of ours, and 
 think them the strength of the nation. Of late 
 years the Hohenzollerns have taken up with junkers, 
 but for a long time their policy was to uphold the 
 batter class against the junker class ; and, if you
 
 n6 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 
 
 want to know the secret of the hold which the house 
 of Hohenzollern has upon the heart of the Prussian 
 people, it is not in Frederick the Great's victories 
 that you will find it, it is in this policy of their 
 domestic government." 
 
 " My dear Arminius," said I, " you make me 
 perfectly sick. Government here, government there ! 
 We English are for self-government. What business 
 has any Mr. Stein to settle that this or that estate 
 is too large for Lord Clanricarde's virtues to expand 
 in ? Let each class settle its own affairs, and don't 
 let us have Governments and Hohenzollerns pre- 
 tending to be more enlightened than other people, 
 and cutting and carving for what they call the general 
 interest, and God knows what nonsense of that 
 kind. If the landed class with us has got the magis- 
 tracy and settled estates and game laws, has not 
 the middle class got the vestries, and business, and 
 civil and religious liberty ? " 
 
 " Friendship's Garland," Letter v. p. 36. 
 
 Teaching at Eton and at Lycurgus House 
 
 "Bur I want to know what his nephew learnt," 
 interrupted Arminius, " and what Lord Lumpington 
 learnt at Eton." " They followed," said I, " the 
 grand, old, fortifying, classical curriculum." " Did 
 they know anything when they left ? " asked Armi- 
 nius. " I have seen some longs and shorts of 
 Hittall's," said I, " about the Calydonian Boar, 
 which were not bad. But you surely don't need me
 
 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 117 
 
 to tell you, Arminius, that it is rather in training 
 and bracing the mind for future acquisition 
 a course of mental gymnastics we call it, than in 
 teaching any set thing, that the classical curriculum 
 is so valuable." " Were the minds of Lord Lump- 
 ington and Mr. Hittall much braced by their mental 
 gymnastics ? " inquired Arminius. " Well," I ans- 
 wered, " during their three years at Oxford they 
 were so much occupied with Bullingdon and hunting 
 that there was no great opportunity to judge. But 
 for my part I have always thought that their both 
 getting their degree at last with flying colours, after 
 three weeks of a famous coach for fast men, four 
 nights without going to bed, and an incredible 
 consumption of wet towels, strong cigars, and brandy 
 and water, was one of the most astonishing feats of 
 mental gymnastics I ever heard of." 
 
 " That will do for the land and the Church," 
 said Arminius. " And now let us hear about 
 commerce." " You mean how was Bottles edu- 
 cated ? " answered I. " Here we get into another 
 line altogether, but a very good line in its way, too. 
 Mr. Bottles was brought up at the Lycurgus House 
 Academy, Peckham. You are not to suppose from 
 the name of Lycurgus that any Latin and Greek was 
 taught in the establishment ; the name only in- 
 dicates the moral discipline, and the strenuous 
 earnest moral character, imparted there. As to 
 the instruction, the thoughtful educator who was 
 principal of the Lycurgus House Academy Archi- 
 medes Silverpump, Ph.D., you must have heard of 
 him in Germany ? had modern views. ' We must
 
 n8 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 
 
 be men of our age/ he used to say. ' Useful 
 knowledge, living languages, and the forming of 
 the mind through observation and experiment, 
 these are the fundamental articles of my educational 
 creed.' Or, as I have heard his pupil Bottles put 
 it in his expansive moments after dinner (Bottles 
 used to ask me to dinner till that affair of yours with 
 him in the Reigate train) : ' Original man, Silver- 
 pump ! fine mind ! fine system ! none of your 
 antiquated rubbish all practical work latest dis- 
 coveries in science mind constantly kept excited 
 lots of interesting experiments lights of all colours, 
 fizz ! fizz ! bang ! bang ! That's what I call 
 forming a man.' " 
 
 " And pray," cried Arminius, impatiently, " what 
 sort of man do you suppose this infernal quack really 
 formed in your precious friend Mr. Bottles ? " 
 " Well," I replied, " I hardly know how to answer 
 that question. Bottles has certainly made an 
 immense fortune ; but as to Silverpump's effect on 
 his mind, whether it was from any fault in the 
 Lycurgus House system, whether it was that with 
 a sturdy self-reliance thoroughly English, Bottles, 
 ever since he quitted Silverpump, left his mind 
 wholly to itself, his daily newspaper, and the 
 Particular Baptist minister under whom he sate, 
 or from whatever cause it was, certainly his mind, 
 qua mind " " You need not go on," inter- 
 rupted Arminius, with a magnificent wave of his 
 hand, " I know what that man's mind, qua mind, 
 is, well enough." 
 
 1867. " Friendship's Garland," Letter vi. p. 49.
 
 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 119 
 
 Compulsion for all Classes Alike 
 
 " You were talking of compulsory education, and 
 your common people's want of it. Now, my dear 
 friend, I want you to understand what this principle 
 of compulsory education really means. It means 
 that to ensure, as far as you can, every man's being 
 fit for his business in life, you put education as a 
 bar, or condition, between him and what he aims at. 
 The principle is just as good for one class as another, 
 and it is only by applying it impartially that you 
 save its application from being insolent and 
 invidious." 
 
 " Friendship's Garland," Letter vii. p. 52. 
 The Welsh Problem 
 
 LET me venture to say that you have to avoid two 
 dangers in order to work all the good which your 
 friends could desire. You have to avoid the danger 
 of giving offence to practical men by retarding the 
 spread of the English language in the principality. 
 I believe that to preserve and honour the Welsh 
 language and literature is quite compatible with not 
 thwarting or delaying for a single hour the intro- 
 duction, so undeniably useful, of a knowledge of 
 English among all classes in Wales. You have to 
 avoid, again, the danger of alienating men of science 
 by a blind, partial, and uncritical treatment of your 
 national antiquities. 
 
 When I see the enthusiasm these Eisteddfods 
 can awaken in your whole people, and then think 
 of the tastes, the literature, the amusements, of
 
 120 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 
 
 our own lower and middle class, I am filled with 
 admiration for you. It is a consoling thought, and 
 one which history allows us to entertain, that 
 nations disinherited of political success may yet 
 leave their mark on the world's progress, and 
 contribute powerfully to the civilisation of mankind. 
 We in England have come to that point when the 
 continued advance and greatness of our nation is 
 threatened by one cause, and one cause above all. 
 Far more than by the helplessness of an aristocracy 
 whose day is fast coming to an end, far more than 
 by the rawness of a lower class whose day is only 
 just beginning, we are emperilled by what I call 
 the " Philistinism " of our middle class. On the side 
 of beauty and taste, vulgarity ; on the side of morals 
 and feeling, coarseness ; on the side of mind and 
 spirit, unintelligence this is philistinism. Now, 
 then, is the moment for the greater delicacy and 
 spirituality of the Celtic peoples who are blended 
 with us, if it be but wisely directed, to make itself 
 prized and honoured. In a certain measure the 
 children of Taliesin and Ossian have now an oppor- 
 tunity for renewing the famous feat of the Greeks, 
 and conquering their conquerors. No service Eng- 
 land can render the Celts by giving you a share 
 in her many good qualities, can surpass that which 
 the Celts can at this moment render England, by 
 communicating to us some of theirs. 
 
 " The Study of Celtic Literature," Intr. ix.
 
 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 121 
 The Bilingual Question (1867) 
 
 I MUST say I quite share the opinion of my brother 
 Saxons as to the practical inconvenience of per- 
 petuating the speaking of Welsh. It may cause a 
 moment's distress to one's imagination when one 
 hears that the last Cornish peasant who spoke the 
 old tongue of Cornwall is dead ; but, no doubt, Corn- 
 wall is the better for adopting English, for becoming 
 more thoroughly one with the rest of the country. 
 The fusion of all the inhabitants of these islands 
 into one homogeneous, English-speaking whole, the 
 breaking-down of barriers between us, the swallowing 
 up of separate provincial nationalities, is a con- 
 summation to which the natural course of things 
 irresistibly tends ; it is a necessity of what is called 
 modern civilisation, and modern civilisation is a 
 real, legitimate force ; the change must come, and 
 its accomplishment is a mere affair of time. The 
 sooner the Welsh language disappears as an instru- 
 ment of the practical, political, social life of Wales, 
 the better ; the better for England, the better for 
 Wales itself. 
 
 " The Study of Celtic Literature," p. 10. 
 
 Payment by Results 
 
 I OBSERVE one or two of my colleagues say in their 
 reports that school managers get pleased with the 
 new mode of examination, and with the idea of pay- 
 ment by results, as they become familiarised with 
 it. I think this is very true ; the idea of payment 
 by results was just the idea to be caught up by the
 
 122 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 
 
 ordinary public opinion of this country and to find 
 favour with it ; no doubt the idea has found favour 
 with it, and is likely, perhaps, to be pressed by 
 it to further application. But the question is, 
 not whether this idea, or this or that application of 
 it suits ordinary public opinion and school managers ; 
 the question is whether it really suits the interests 
 of schools and of their instruction. In this country 
 we are somewhat unduly liable to regard the latter 
 suitableness too little, and the former too much. 
 I feel sure, from my experience of foreign schools 
 as well as of our own, that our present system of 
 grants does harm to schools and their instruction 
 by resting its grants too exclusively, at any rate, 
 upon an individual examination, prescribed in all 
 its details beforehand by the Central Office, and 
 necessarily mechanical ; and that we have to 
 relax this exclusive stress rather than to go on 
 adding to it. The growing interest and concern 
 in education will of itself tend to raise and swell 
 the instruction in the primary schools ; if we 
 wish fruitfully to co-operate with this happy 
 natural movement we shall, in my opinion, best 
 do so by some such relaxation as that which I 
 have indicated. 
 
 General Report, 1867. 
 
 Would Compulsory Education Succeed? 
 
 THROUGHOUT my district I find the idea of com- 
 pulsory education becoming a familiar idea with 
 those who are interested in schools. I imagine that
 
 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 123 
 
 with the newly awakened sense of our shortcomings 
 in popular education a sense which is just, the 
 statistics brought forward to dispel it being, as every 
 one acquainted with the subject knows, entirely 
 fallacious the difficult thing would not be to pass 
 a law making education compulsory ; the difficult 
 thing would be to work such a law after we had 
 got it. In Prussia, which is so often quoted, edu- 
 cation is not flourishing because it is compulsory, 
 it is compulsory because it is flourishing. Because 
 people there really prize instruction and culture, and 
 prefer them to other things, therefore they have no 
 difficulty in imposing on themselves the rule to 
 get instruction and culture. In this country people 
 prefer to them politics, station, business, money- 
 making, pleasure, and many other things ; and till 
 we cease to prefer these things, a law which gives 
 instruction the power to interfere with them, though 
 a sudden impulse may make us establish it, cannot 
 be relied on to hold its ground and to work effectively. 
 When instruction is valued in this country as it is 
 in Germany it may be made obligatory here ; mean- 
 while the best thing the friends of instruction can 
 do is to foment as much as they can the national 
 sense of its value. The persevering extension of 
 provisions for the schooling of all children em- 
 ployed in any kind of labour is probably the best 
 and most practicable way of making education 
 obligatory that we can at present take. But the 
 task of seeing these provisions carried into effect 
 should not be committed to the municipal authori- 
 ties, less trustworthy with us than in France,
 
 124 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 
 
 Germany, or Switzerland, because worse chosen and 
 constituted. 
 
 General Report, 1867. 
 
 The choice of School Books 
 
 IN this country, where little importance is attached 
 to the science of public administration, a public 
 department is apt first to attempt to exercise a 
 critical function with insufficient means, and then, 
 when the result appears unsatisfactory, hastily to 
 retreat altogether from exercising it. The better 
 way, perhaps, would be to exercise it properly. 
 Nothing is more remarkable in the school administra- 
 tion of Germany than the care with which every 
 branch is confided to experts, and experts of recog- 
 nised expertness. The control of school books and 
 school examinations in literature is there strictly 
 given to persons of proved qualifications in letters ; 
 the control of school books and school examinations 
 in the mathematical and natural sciences to persons 
 of proved qualifications in those sciences ; and so 
 on. It would surely be well if we followed this 
 example, instead of either exercising this control 
 with imperfect instruments or abandoning it alto- 
 gether, and suffering private speculation to have 
 unchecked play. 
 
 General Report, 1867. 
 
 The Old Private School 
 
 THE stamp of plainness, or the freedom from charla- 
 tanism given to the instruction of our primary
 
 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 125 
 
 schools, through the public character which in the 
 last thirty years it has received, and through its 
 having been thus rescued, in great measure, from 
 the influences of private speculation, is perhaps the 
 best thing about them. It is in this respect that our 
 primary schools compare so favourably with the 
 private adventure schools of the middle class, that 
 class which, Mr. Bright says, is perfectly competent 
 to manage its own schools and education. The work 
 in the one is appraised by impartial educated 
 persons ; in the other, by the common run of 
 middle-class parents. To show the difference in 
 the result, I will conclude by placing in juxta- 
 position a letter written in school by an ordinary 
 scholar in a public elementary school in my district, 
 a girl of eleven years old, with one written by a 
 boy in a private middle-class school, and furnished 
 to one of the Assistant Commissioners of the Schools 
 Inquiry Commission. The girl's letter I give 
 first : 
 
 DEAR FANNY, I am afraid I shall not pass in 
 
 my examination ; Miss C says she thinks I shall. 
 
 I shall be glad when the Serpentine is frozen over, 
 for we shall have such fun ; I wish you did not live 
 so far away, then you could come and share in the 
 game. Father cannot spare Willie, so I have as 
 much as I can do to teach him to cipher nicely. I 
 am now sitting by the school fire, so I assure you I 
 am very warm. Father and mother are very well. 
 I hope to see you on Christmas Day. Winter is 
 coming ; don't it make you shiver to think of ?
 
 126 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 
 
 Shall you ever come to smoky old London again ? 
 It is not so bad, after all, with its bustle and business 
 
 and noise. If you see Ellen T will you kindly 
 
 get her address for me. I must now conclude, 
 as I am soon going to my reading class ; so 
 good-bye. 
 
 From your affectionate friend, 
 
 M 
 
 And now I give the boy's : 
 
 MY DEAR PARENTS, The anticipation of our 
 Christmas vacation abounds in peculiar delights. 
 Not only that its " festivities," its social gatherings, 
 and its lively amusements crown the old year with 
 happiness and mirth, but that I come a guest com- 
 mended to your hospitable love by the performance 
 of all you bade me remember when I left you in the 
 glad season of sun and flowers. 
 
 And time has sped fleetly since reluctant my 
 departing step crossed the threshold of that home 
 whose indulgences and endearments their temporary 
 loss has taught me to value more and more. Yet 
 that restraint is salutary, and that self-reliance is as 
 easily learnt as it is laudable, the propriety of my 
 conduct and the readiness of my services shall ere 
 long aptly illustrate. It is with confidence I promise 
 that the close of every year shall find me advancing 
 in your regard by constantly observing the precepts 
 of my excellent tutors and the example of my ex- 
 cellent parents. 
 
 We break up on Thursday the nth of December
 
 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 127 
 
 instant, and my impatience of the short delay will 
 assure my dear parents of the filial sentiments of 
 Theirs very sincerely, 
 
 N 
 
 P.S. We shall re-assemble on the igth of January. 
 Mr. and Mrs. P. present their respectful compli- 
 ments. 
 
 To those who ask what is the difference between a 
 public and a private school, I answer, It is this. 
 
 General Report, 1867. 
 
 Origin of our Secondary Schools 
 
 POPULAR education has sprung out of the ideas and 
 necessities of modern times, and the elementary 
 school for the poor is an institution which has no 
 remote history. With the secondary school it is 
 otherwise. The secondary school has a long history ; 
 through a series of changes it goes back, in every 
 European country, to the beginning of civilised 
 society in that country ; from the time when this 
 society had any sort of organisation, a certain sort 
 of schools and schooling existed, and between that 
 schooling and the schooling which the children of 
 the richer class of society at this day receive there is 
 an unbroken connection. In no country is this 
 continuity of secondary instruction more visible 
 than in France, notwithstanding her revolutions ; 
 and in some respects France, in that which concerns 
 the historical development of secondary instruction, 
 is a typical country. 
 
 " A French Eton," p. 218.
 
 128 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 
 
 The University of Paris 
 
 ALL the countries of Western Europe had their early 
 contact with Greek and Roman civilisation, a con- 
 tact from which their actual books and schools and 
 science begin ; France had this more than any of 
 them, except Italy. All the countries of Western 
 Europe had hi the feudal and Catholic Middle Age 
 their universities, under whose wings were hatched 
 the colleges and teachers that formed the germ of 
 our actual secondary instruction ; and the great 
 Middle Age university was the University of Paris. 
 Hither repaired the students of other countries and 
 other universities, as to the main centre of mediaeval 
 science, and the most authoritative school of 
 mediaeval teaching. It received names expressing 
 the most enthusiastic devotion ; the fountain of 
 knowledge, the tree of life, the candlestick of the house 
 of the Lord. " The most famous University of Paris, 
 the place at this time and long before whither the 
 English, and mostly the Oxonians, resorted," says 
 Wood. Tandem fiat hie velut Parisiis . . . ad instar 
 Parisiensis studii . . . quemadmodum in Parisiensi 
 studio . . ., say the rules of the University of 
 Vienna, founded in 1365. Here came Roger Bacon, 
 St. Thomas Aquinas, and Dante ; here studied the 
 founder of the first university of the Empire, Charles 
 the Fourth, Emperor of Germany and King of 
 Bohemia, founder of the University of Prague ; 
 here Henry the Second in the twelfth century 
 proposed to refer his dispute with Becket ; here, 
 in the fourteenth the schism in the papacy and the
 
 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 129 
 
 claims of the rival popes were brought for judgment. 
 In Europe and Asia, in foreign cities and on battle- 
 fields, among statesmen, princes, priests, crusaders, 
 scholars, passed in the Middle Ages this word of 
 recognition, Nos fuimus simul in Galandia the 
 Rue de Galande, one of the streets of the old univer- 
 sity quarter, the quartier latin of Paris. 
 
 But the importance of the University in the 
 thirteenth and fourteenth centuries was extra- 
 ordinary. Men's minds were possessed with a 
 wonderful zeal for knowledge, or what was then 
 thought knowledge, and the University of Paris 
 was the great fount from which this knowledge 
 issued. The University and those depending on 
 it made at this time, it is said, actually a third of 
 the population of Paris ; when the University went 
 on a solemn occasion in procession to St. Denis, the 
 head of the procession, it is said, had reached St. 
 Denis before the end of it had left its starting place 
 in Paris. It had immunities from taxation, it had 
 jurisdiction of its own, and its members claimed to 
 be exempt from that of the provost of Paris ; the 
 kings of France strongly favoured the University, 
 and leaned to its side when the municipal and 
 academical authorities were in conflict ; if at any 
 time the University thought itself seriously aggrieved 
 it had recourse to a measure which threw Paris into 
 dismay it shut up its schools and suspended its 
 lectures. 
 
 In a body of this kind the discipline could not 
 be strict, and the colleges were created to supply 
 
 K
 
 130 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 
 
 centres of discipline which the University in itself, 
 an apparatus merely of teachers and lecture-rooms, 
 did not provide. The fourteenth century is the 
 time, when, one after another, with wonderful 
 rapidity, the French colleges appeared. Navarre, 
 Montaigu, Harcourt, names so familiar in the 
 school annals of France, date from the first quarter 
 of the fourteenth century. The College of Navarre 
 was founded by the Queen of Philip the Fair, in 
 1304 ; the College of Montaigu, where Erasmus, 
 Rabelais, and Ignatius Loyola were in their time 
 students, was founded in 1314 by two members of 
 the family of Montaigu, one of them Archbishop of 
 Rouen. The majority of these colleges were founded 
 by magnates of the church, and designed to maintain 
 a certain number of bursars, or scholars, during 
 their university course. Frequently the bursarships 
 were for the benefit of the founder's native place, 
 and poverty, of which among the students of that 
 age there was no lack, was specified as a title of 
 admission. 
 
 " A French Eton," pp. 210-212, 229-231. 
 
 Paris and Oxford 
 
 OUR Stephen Harding, the third Abbot of Citeaux, 
 and the true founder of the great Order of the 
 Cistercians, was studying at the School of Paris 
 in 1070. The name of Abelard recalls the European 
 celebrity and immense intellectual ferment of this 
 school in the twelfth century. But it was in the 
 first year of the following century, the thirteenth,
 
 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 131 
 
 that it received a charter from Philip Augustus, 
 and thenceforth the name of University of Paris 
 takes the place of that of School of Paris. Forty- 
 nine years later was founded University College, 
 Oxford, the oldest College of the oldest English 
 University. Four nations composed the University 
 of Paris the nation of France, the nation of Picardy, 
 the nation of Normandy, and (signal mark of the close 
 intercourse which then existed between France and 
 us) the nation of England. The four nations united 
 formed the faculty of arts. The faculty of theology 
 was created in 1257, tnat f ^ aw m I2 7 I > tnat of 
 medicine in 1274. Theology, law, and medicine 
 had each their Dean ; arts had four Procurators, 
 one for each of the four nations composing the 
 faculty. Arts elected the rector of the University 
 and had possession of the University chest and 
 archives. 
 
 " A French Eton," pp. 226-227. 
 
 Studies in the University of Paris 
 
 ONE asks oneself with interest what was the mental 
 food to which this vast turbulent multitude pressed 
 with such inconceivable hunger. Theology was the 
 great matter ; and there is no doubt that this 
 study was by no means always that barren verbal 
 trifling which an ill-informed modern contempt is 
 fond of representing it. When the Bishop of Paris 
 publicly condemned as current in the University, 
 such propositions as these : Quod sermones theologi 
 sunt fundati in fabulis : Quod nihil plus scitur
 
 132 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 
 
 propter scire theologiam ; Quod fabulae et falsa sunt 
 in lege Christiana sicut et in aliis ; Quod lex Christiana 
 impedit addiscere ; Quod sapientes mundi sunt 
 philosophi tantum, it is evident that around the 
 study of theology in the mediaeval University of 
 Paris there worked a real ferment of thought, and 
 very free thought. But the University of Paris 
 culminated as the exclusive devotion to theological 
 study declined, and culminated by virtue of that 
 declension. A teaching body with a lay character 
 could not have been created by the simple impulse 
 to theological study. The glory of the University 
 of Paris was its Faculty of Arts, its artiens as they 
 were called ; it was among the students in this 
 faculty that the great ardour showed itself, the great 
 increase in numbers. The study of this faculty 
 was the seven arts of the trivium and quadrivium ; 
 the three arts of the trivium were grammar, rhe- 
 toric, and dialectic ; the four of the quadrivium, 
 arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, music. This 
 was the liberal education of the Middle Age, 
 and it came direct from the schools of ancient 
 Rome. 
 
 Such an education was apparently possible with 
 the programme offered by the seven arts. Rhetoric 
 included poetry, history, composition the human- 
 ities in general; dialectic took in the whole of 
 philosophy. 
 
 The great monastery schools of Cluny, Saint 
 Victor, and the Bernardines, assigned three years 
 to grammatical studies, and the University pro- 
 fessed to admit to its teaching no student who was
 
 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 133 
 
 not already grounded in them ; qui nescit paries, 
 in vanum tendit ad artes. 
 
 The eminence of the University of Paris was in 
 the scholastic philosophy ; its culminating moment 
 was the fourteenth century, its greatness was 
 mediaeval. It did not follow the growth of the time, 
 assimilate the new studies of the Renaissance and 
 the sixteenth century, make itself their organ, and 
 animate with them the French schools of which 
 it was the head. 
 
 " A French Eton," pp. 232-233, 234, 237. 
 
 The College of France 
 
 THE languor of the retrograde spirit took possession 
 of the University, and, with the University, of the 
 colleges and schools of France, which depended on 
 it. The one learned institution which imbibed the 
 spirit of the Renaissance, which seriously established, 
 for the first time in France, instruction in Greek 
 and Hebrew, which kept meeting by the creation 
 of successive chairs, chairs for mathematics, philo- 
 spohy, medicine and surgery, anatomy and botany, 
 the wants of the modern spirit, and which was 
 spared by the Revolution when all the other public 
 establishments for education were swept away 
 the College of France this institution was a royal 
 foundation of Francis the First's, and unconnected 
 with the University. 
 
 " A French Eton," p. 238.
 
 134 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 
 
 Schools of the Jesuits 
 
 THE Jesuits invaded the province long ruled by the 
 University alone. By that adroit management 
 of men for which they have always been eminent, 
 and by the more liberal spirit of their methods, they 
 outdid in popularity their superannuated rival. 
 Their first school in Paris was established in 1565, 
 and in 1762, two years before their dissolution, 
 they had eighty-six colleges in France. They were 
 followed by the Port Royalists, the Benedictines, 
 the Oratorians. The Port Royal schools from which 
 perhaps a powerful influence upon education might 
 have been looked for, restricted this influence by 
 limiting very closely the number of their pupils. 
 Meanwhile the main funds and endowments for 
 public education in France were in the University's 
 hands, and its administration of these was as in- 
 effective as its teaching. 
 
 Paid or gratuitous, however, its instruction was 
 quite inadequate to the wants of the time, and when 
 the Jesuits were expelled from France in 1764, their 
 establishments closed, and their services as teachers 
 lost, the void that was left was strikingly apparent, 
 and public attention began to be drawn to it. It is 
 well known how Rousseau among writers, and 
 Turgot among statesmen, busied themselves with 
 schemes of education ; but the interest in the subject 
 must have reached the whole body of the community, 
 for the instructions of all three orders of the States 
 General in 1789 are unanimous in demanding the
 
 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 135 
 
 reform of education, and its establishment on a 
 proper footing. 
 
 " A French Eton," pp. 239-240. 
 
 Condorcet's Plan of Secondary Education 
 
 FOR the work of reconstruction Condorcet's memor- 
 able plan had in 1792 been submitted to the Com- 
 mittee of Public Instruction appointed by the 
 Legislative Assembly. This plan proposed a 
 secondary school for every 4000 inhabitants ; for 
 each department, a departmental institute or 
 higher school ; nine lycees, schools carrying their 
 studies yet higher than the departmental institute, 
 for the whole of France ; and to crown the edifice, 
 a National Society of Sciences and Arts, corre- 
 sponding in the main with the present Institute of 
 France. The whole expense of national instruction 
 to be borne by the State. 
 
 " A French Eton," p. 241. 
 
 Napoleon's Work 
 
 THE present secondary instruction of France dates 
 directly from the Consulate. The four greatest 
 of the old schools of Paris were adopted, renamed, 
 and set to work. In the course of a year and a half 
 30 lycees and 250 secondary schools were started 
 and in operation. More than 350 private schools 
 received aid, while inspectors-general and members 
 of the Institute traversed France to ascertain the 
 educational condition of the country, and what were
 
 136 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 
 
 its most pressing requirements. The Normal School, 
 the unique and best part of French secondary 
 instruction, was launched at last ; "a boarding 
 establishment for 300 pupils, for the purpose of 
 training them in the art of teaching the letters and 
 sciences." In 1810 it was fairly at work. Mean- 
 while, from 1806 to 1808 Napoleon had established 
 the centre in which all these schools, and all the 
 schools of France, were to meet, the new University, 
 the University of France. 
 
 The legislation of the Empire accomplished little 
 for the primary instruction of France, but the 
 secondary instruction it established on a firm 
 footing, and with the organisation which in the 
 main it still retains. In 1809 a statute restored to 
 Greek and Latin their old preponderance in this 
 instruction, effacing a mark which the Revolution, 
 by the prominence given to scientific and mathe- 
 matical studies, had left upon it. It thus resumed the 
 mainly classical character common to it in the 
 corresponding institutions all through Europe. 
 
 The University had been made by Napoleon an 
 endowed corporation, and not a ministerial depart- 
 ment, in order to give it more stability and greater 
 independence. 
 
 " A French Eton," pp. 245-246, 248, 252. 
 
 Revenue of the New University of France 
 
 THE University was not a mere department of that 
 State, it was an endowed corporation. It had a 
 revenue of about 2,500,000 francs. Of this the
 
 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 137 
 
 fixed part proceeded from a permanent charge, 
 granted to the University, of 400,000 francs a year 
 upon the public funds. 
 
 The variable portion of the University revenues 
 was far the most important. This consisted of 
 dues paid for examination and degrees, and of a 
 contribution, one-twentieth of the fee paid for their 
 schooling, from all the scholars in the secondary 
 schools of France. 
 
 In 1834, after a long discussion, the special budget 
 of the University was suppressed, and the collection 
 of its revenues and the control of its accounts 
 assimilated to that of the other public departments. 
 It was left in the possession of its endowment and 
 property, an honour more nominal than real, 
 since it no longer had the management of them ; 
 but it was thought that by retaining, as the possessor 
 of an endowment and property, the character of a 
 personne civile, it might attract bequests and fresh 
 endowments, of which a department of State had 
 no chance. 
 
 " A French Eton," pp. 247, 253-4. 
 
 Guizot's Law of Primary Instruction 
 
 THE Government of Louis Philippe, having under- 
 taken the serious task of dealing with primary 
 education, was unable at first to give much attention 
 to secondary ; when, however, M. Guizot's memor- 
 able law of 1833 had founded primary instruction, 
 a succession of ministers set themselves to improve 
 and develop the secondary schools. 
 
 " A French Eton," pp. 251-252.
 
 138 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 
 
 Ministry and Council of Public Instruction 
 
 THE Minister of Public Instruction is the head of 
 this vast organisation. His office, in Paris, has six 
 divisions, under himself and his secretary-general. 
 Each of these six divisions has its chief, and is 
 divided into two bureaux, each, again, with its 
 head. First come the three divisions for superior 
 instruction, secondary instruction, primary instruc- 
 tion. The first bureau of each of these is for the 
 personnel of the branch of public instruction adminis- 
 tered by the division treats, that is, all matters 
 relating to appointment, and studies ; the second 
 bureau is for the materiel and comptabiliti whatever 
 relates to buildings, finance or accounts. The 
 three remaining divisions have charge, one, of the 
 department's business with the Institute, and with 
 the public libraries ; another, of its business with 
 the scientific and literary establishments (such as the 
 Museum of Natural History, the French School at 
 Athens, the observatories of Paris and Marseilles, 
 etc.), in connection with it ; the third, of the expense 
 of the central office, and of the general revision of 
 the whole finance and accounts of the department- 
 Under the Minister's presidency is the Imperial 
 Council of Public Instruction, which in concert with 
 him fixes the programmes of study in the State 
 schools, and the books to be used in them. It is 
 also consulted as to the formation of new State 
 schools, and as to the whole legislation and regula- 
 tion of French public instruction. The important 
 measures which have lately been introduced and
 
 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 139 
 
 passed for the furtherance of professional instruction, 
 as it is called measures of which I shall have to 
 speak presently were all of them thus brought 
 by M. Duruy, the present minister, before the 
 Council, and there discussed. Certain members of 
 the Council formerly proceeded from election ; in 
 1852, under the pressure which then caused, in 
 France, the strengthening of the hand of government 
 everywhere, proposal by the Minister of Public 
 Instruction and nomination by the President of 
 the Republic was substituted for election in these 
 cases. The Emperor still nominates on the Minister's 
 proposal ; but M. Duruy's disposition has certainly 
 been rather to enlarge the part of action for others 
 than to keep all action for himself ; thus he has 
 lately given to the functionaries of public instruction, 
 whom the law of 1852 gave him the power to dismiss 
 offhand, the security of a committee of five, chosen 
 out of the Council of Public Instruction, by whom 
 the case of the functionary whose conduct may be 
 in question is to be examined, his defence heard, 
 and the merits of the case reported on. 
 
 " A French Eton," pp. 266, 267. 
 
 The Normal School 
 
 THE pupils of the Normal School (Ecole Normale 
 Supdrieure) can hold the place of professor without 
 being agr/ges ; but they cannot hold the more 
 important and better paid post of professeur titulaire 
 without this test ; they can only be divisional, acting, 
 or assistant professors (professeurs divisionnaires,
 
 140 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 
 
 suppleants or adjoints). And the examinations of 
 the Normal School are in themselves a test, and a 
 very strict one, of the fitness of its pupils for their 
 business. I have already mentioned this admirable 
 institution ; it enjoys a deserved celebrity out of 
 France as well as at home, and nowhere else does 
 there exist anything quite like it. Decreed by the 
 revolutionary Government, and set to work by that 
 of the first Napoleon, it had two periods of difficulty 
 one under the Restoration, when it attracted 
 hostility as a nest of liberalism, and it was proposed 
 to abate its importance by substituting for one 
 central Normal School several local ones ; another 
 after the revolution of February, when the grant 
 to it was greatly reduced, and the number of its 
 pupils fell off. But it has now recovered its grants 
 and its numbers, and few institutions in France are 
 so rooted in the public esteem. Its main function 
 is to form teachers for the public schools. It has 
 two divisions ; one literary, the other scientific. 
 Its pupils at present number no ; they are all 
 bursars, holding a scholarship of 40 a year, which 
 entirely provides for the cost of their maintenance. 
 The course is a three years' one ; but a certain 
 number of the best pupils are retained for a fourth 
 and fifth year ; these, however, are lost to the 
 secondary schools, being prepared for the doctorate 
 and for the posts of superior instruction, such as 
 the professorships in the faculties. 
 
 Last year 344 candidates presented themselves 
 for 35 vacancies, and these candidates were all 
 picked men. To compete, a youth must in the
 
 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 141 
 
 first place be over 18 years of age and under 24, 
 must produce a medical certificate that he has no 
 bodily infirmity unfitting him for the function of 
 teacher, and a good-conduct certificate from his 
 school. He must enter into an engagement to devote 
 himself, if admitted, for 10 years to the service of 
 public instruction, and he must hold the degree of 
 bachelor of arts if he is a candidate in the literary 
 section of the school, of bachelor of sciences if in 
 the scientific. He then undergoes a preliminary 
 examination, which is held at the same time at the 
 centre of each academy throughout France. This 
 examination weeds the candidates ; those who 
 pass through it come up to Paris for a final examina- 
 tion at the Ecole Normale, and those who do best in 
 this final examination are admitted to the vacant 
 scholarships. A bare list of subjects of examination 
 is never very instructive ; the reader will better 
 understand what the final examination is, if I say 
 that the candidates are the very /lite of the lycees, 
 who in the highest clasess of these lyctes have gone 
 through the course of instruction, literary or scientific, 
 there prescribed. In the scientific section of the 
 Normal School the first year's course comprehends 
 the differential and integral calculus, and it will at 
 once be seen what advanced progress in the pupil 
 such a course implies. 
 
 " A French Eton," pp. 279, 283-285. 
 
 Oxford and Cambridge as higher Lycees 
 EVERY Englishman who has been at Oxford or 
 Cambridge must in France remark with surprise
 
 142 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 
 
 that institutions like these universities of ours, 
 taking a young man at the age of eighteen or nine- 
 teen, and continuing his education, with the shelter 
 of a considerable, though modified control and 
 discipline till the age of twenty-three or twenty-four, 
 seem to be there, for laymen, quite wanting. It is 
 true that in France, as in Germany, there is a superior 
 instruction, a faculty instruction, much more com- 
 plete than ours, and that our Oxford and Cambridge 
 are, in fact, as Signer Matteucci, who has studied 
 them well, said to me at Turin, not establishments 
 of superior instruction at all, but simply hauls 
 lycees. This is true, and it is to be regretted that we 
 have not a better organised superior instruction ; 
 still Oxford and Cambridge, in prolonging a young 
 man's term of tuition and prolonging it under 
 discipline, instead of his being thrown at large on the 
 life of a great city, Paris or London, where he follows 
 lectures, are invaluable, and it is in this direction 
 that foreigners may find most to envy in English 
 education. 
 
 " A French Eton," p. 281. 
 
 French and English Masters 
 
 A FRENCH professor has his three, four, or five 
 hours' work a day in lessons and conferences, and 
 then he is free ; he has nothing to do with the 
 discipline or religious teaching of the lycee, he has 
 not to live in its precincts ; he finishes his teaching 
 and then he leaves the lycee and its cares behind him 
 altogether. The provisor, the censor, the chaplains,
 
 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 143 
 
 the superintendents, have the business of govern- 
 ment and direction, and they are chosen on the 
 ground of their aptitude for it. A young man 
 wishing to follow a profession which keeps him in 
 contact with intellectual studies and enables him to 
 continue them, but who has no call and no talent 
 for the trying post of teacher, governor, pastor, 
 and man of business all in one, will hesitate before 
 he becomes a master in an English public school, 
 but he may very well become a professor in a French 
 one. Accordingly the service of public instruction 
 in France attracts a far greater proportion of the 
 intellectual force of the country than in England. 
 
 Two of the most eminent of modern Frenchmen, 
 M. Cousin and M. Villemain, were originally pro- 
 fessors in the French public schools ; they were both, 
 also, Ministers of Public Instruction. M. Duruy, 
 the present Minister, was a professor, an author of 
 a very good school-book, and an inspector. M. Taine 
 and M. Prevost-Paradol, personages so important in 
 the French literature of the present day, were both of 
 them distinguished pupils of the Normal School. It 
 is clear that this abundance of eminent names gives 
 dignity and consideration to the profession of public 
 teaching in France ; it tends to keep it fully supplied, 
 and with men who carry weight with the pupils 
 they teach and command their intellectual respect. 
 And this is a very important advantage. 
 
 I was informed that from all these sources the 
 income of an able Paris professor of the first rank 
 in his calling reached very nearly 10,000 francs (400) 
 a year. For my own part I would sooner have this,
 
 144 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 
 
 with the freedom and leisure a French professor has 
 with it, than 800 a year as one of the under masters 
 of a public school in England. 
 
 " A French Eton," pp. 288, 290-292. 
 
 Examinations in France and England 
 
 THE French lycees are guiltless of one preposterous 
 violation of the laws of life and health committed 
 by our own great schools, which have of late years 
 thrown open to competitive examination all the 
 places on their foundations. The French have 
 plenty of examinations ; but they put them almost 
 entirely at the right age for examinations, between 
 the years of fifteen and twenty-five, when the 
 candidate is neither too old nor too young to be 
 examined with advantage. To put upon little 
 boys of nine or ten the pressure of a competitive 
 examination for an object of the greatest value to 
 their parents, is to offer a premium for the violation 
 of nature's elementary laws, and to sacrifice, as in 
 the poor geese fatted for Strasburg pies, the due 
 development of all the organs of life to the premature 
 hypertrophy of one. It is well known that the 
 cramming of the little human victims for their ordeal 
 of competition tends more and more to become an 
 industry with a certain class of small schoolmasters, 
 who know the secrets of the process, and who are 
 led by self-interest to select in the first instance their 
 own children for it. The foundations are no gainers, 
 and nervous exhaustion at fifteen is the price which 
 many a clever boy pays for over-stimulation at
 
 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 145 
 
 ten ; and the nervous exhaustion of a number of 
 our clever boys tends to create a broad reign of 
 intellectual dullness in the mass of youths from 
 fifteen to twenty, whom the clever boys, had they 
 been rightly developed and not unnaturally forced, 
 ought to have leavened. You can hardly put too 
 great a pressure on a healthy youth to make him 
 work between fifteen and twenty-five ; healthy or 
 unhealthy, you can hardly put on him too light a 
 pressure of this kind before twelve. 
 
 The bursarships in the lycees are, therefore, not 
 given away by competitive examination among 
 children from eight to twelve ; they are given on 
 the ground of poverty, either to the children of 
 persons having some public claim, or to the most 
 promising subjects from the primary schools. This 
 seems to me quite right, and I wish the English 
 reader to remark how here, as elsewhere, we suffer 
 from our dread of effective administration and from 
 the feudal and incoherent organisation of our society. 
 In the hands of individuals and small local bodies 
 patronage like that of our foundation schools 
 becomes outrageously jobbed ; at last the public 
 attention gets directed to this, and the patronage 
 has to be otherwise dealt with ; but there is no body 
 of trained and competent persons with authority 
 to decide deliberately how it may best be dealt with ; 
 so it ends by the local people through whose laches 
 the difficulty has arisen throwing a sop to Cerberus, 
 and gratifying an ignorant public's love of clap-trap 
 by throwing everything open to competitive examina- 
 tion. On the Continent, there is an Education 
 
 L
 
 146 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 
 
 Minister and a Council of Public Instruction to 
 weigh matters of this kind ; so far from jobbing 
 being promoted by this, the examination test is 
 much more strictly applied in France than with 
 us, but there is a competent authority to decide 
 when it is rational to apply it, and when absurd. 
 Neither are there any complaints of the way the 
 lycee bursarships it being judged best not to give 
 these by competitive examination are distributed ; 
 because here again all that is done is done with the 
 safeguards of joint action between several competent 
 agencies, of publicity, and of responsibility. It is 
 a mistake to suppose that a government bureau, 
 in an administrative organisation like that of France, 
 has no checks ; it has far more checks than a govern- 
 ment bureau here, which has been extemporised 
 to meet some urgent want, and is not part of a 
 well-devised whole. The secretary of our Education 
 Department is almost invited to settle of his own 
 authority education-questions which M. Duruy, 
 though a minister, would not settle without referring 
 them to a Council composed as we have seen. Nay, 
 and even supposing our secretary refers them to 
 his chiefs and they refer them to the Committee of 
 Council how is this Committee of Council com- 
 posed ? Of three or four Cabinet Ministers with no 
 special acquaintance with educational matters. 
 
 " A French Eton," pp. 328-331. 
 
 Private Schools in France and England 
 
 PRIVATE or free schools in France are not free in 
 the sense that any man may keep one who likes.
 
 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 147 
 
 To keep one a man must be twenty-five years old, 
 must have had five years' practice in a school, and 
 must hold either the degree of bachelor, or a certificate 
 which is given after an examination of the same 
 nature as the examination he would have to pass 
 for the degree of bachelor. Thus, he cannot, as 
 in England, be perfectly ignorant and inexperienced 
 hi his business ; neither can he, as in England, be 
 a ticket-of-leave-man, for the French law declares 
 every man who has undergone a criminal condemna- 
 tion incapable of keeping a school. Neither can he 
 have his school-room in ruins or under conditions 
 dangerous to his pupil's health or morality ; for if 
 it is a new school he is establishing, he has to signify 
 his intention beforehand to the academic authority 
 of his department, and if this authority makes 
 objection, the Council of Public instruction in Paris, 
 in the last resort, decides. If within a month the 
 academic authority makes no objection, he is then 
 free to open his school ; but it is at all times liable 
 to inspection by the academic authority or the 
 inspectors-general of secondary instruction, to ascer- 
 tain that nothing contrary to health, morality, or 
 the law, is suffered to go on there. The inspector 
 of a school of this kind does not meddle with its 
 instruction. 
 
 " A French Eton," pp. 337-338. 
 
 Discipline in French and English Schools 
 
 OUR government through prepositors or prefects, 
 and our fagging, are unknown in French schools ;
 
 148 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 
 
 for the former, the continual presence and super- 
 vision of the maitre d 'etude leaves no place ; the 
 latter is abhorrent to French ideas. The set of 
 modern opinion is undoubtedly against fagging, 
 and perhaps also against government through the 
 sixth form ; one may doubt, however, whether the 
 force of old and cherished custom, the removal of 
 excess and abuses in the exercise of these two powers, 
 and certain undeniable benefits attending that of, 
 at any rate, the latter of the two, may not yet long 
 preserve them in the great English schools. The 
 same can hardly be said of flogging, which, without 
 entering into long discussions about it, one may say 
 the modern spirit has irrevocably condemned as a 
 school punishment, so that it will more and more 
 come to appear half disgusting, half ridiculous, and 
 a teacher will find it more and more difficult to inflict 
 it without a loss of self-respect. The feeling on the 
 Continent is very strong on this point. The punish- 
 ments in the French schools are impositions and 
 confinement. 
 
 " A French Eton," pp. 366-367. 
 
 Growing Disbelief in Greek and Latin 
 As one may say of flogging, that the set of the 
 modern spirit is so decisively against it that it is 
 doomed, whatever plausible arguments may be 
 urged on its behalf, so is the set of the modern spirit 
 so decisively in favour of the new instruction, that 
 M. Duruy's creation, whatever reasons may be given 
 why it should not succeed, will probably in the end 
 succeed in some shape or other. This current of
 
 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 149 
 
 opinion is, indeed, on the Continent, so wide and 
 strong as to be fast growing irresistible ; and it is 
 not the work of authority. Authority does all that 
 can be done in favour of the old classical training ; 
 ministers of State sing its praises ; the reporter of 
 the Commission charged to examine the new law 
 is careful to pay to the old training and its pre- 
 eminence a homage amusingly French.* Men of 
 the world envy us a House of Commons where 
 Latin quotations are still made, school authorities 
 are full of stories to show how boys trained in Latin 
 and Greek beat the pupils of the new instruction 
 even in their own field. Still in the body of society 
 there spreads a growing disbelief in Greek and 
 Latin, at any rate, as at present taught, a dis- 
 position to make modern languages and the natural 
 sciences take their place. I remark this in Germany 
 as well as in France ; and in Germany, too, as 
 in France, the movement is in no wise due to the 
 school authorities, but is rather in their despite, 
 and against their advice and testimony. I shall 
 have an opportunity, by and by, to say a few 
 words respecting what appears to me the real import 
 of this movement, and the part of truth and of error 
 in the ideas which favour it. All I wish now to lay 
 stress upon is its volume and irresistibility. 
 
 " A French Eton," pp. 394-395. 
 
 * " On ne saurait trop exalter 1'importance sociale des 
 lettres classiques. Ce sont elles qui ont assure depuis des siecles la 
 suprematie intellectuelle de la France" Enseignement secondaire 
 special, p. 438.
 
 150 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 
 
 Appointment by Examination 
 
 PUBLIC establishments such as these which I have 
 enumerated serve a twofold purpose. They fix a 
 standard of serious preparation and special fitness 
 for every branch of employment ; a standard which 
 acts on the whole intellectual habit of the country. 
 To fix a standard of serious preparation is a very 
 different thing, and a far more real homage to 
 intelligence and study, than to demand as we have 
 done since the scandal of our old mode of appoint- 
 ment to public functions grew too evident a single 
 examination, by a single board with a staff of 
 examiners, as a sole preliminary to all kinds of civil 
 employment. Examinations preceded by prepara- 
 tion in a first-rate superior school, with first-rate 
 professors, give you a formed man ; examinations 
 preceded by cramming under a crammer give you 
 a crammed man, but not a formed one. I once 
 bore part in the examinations for the Indian Civil 
 Service, and I can truly say that the candidates 
 to whom I gave the highest marks were almost 
 without exception the candidates whom I would 
 not have appointed. They were crammed men, not 
 formed men ; the formed men were the public 
 school men, but they were ignorant on the special 
 matter of examination English literature. A 
 superior school forms a man at the same time that 
 it gives him special knowledge. 
 
 " A French Eton," p. 412.
 
 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 151 
 
 Value of Public Establishments 
 
 / A SECOND purpose which such public establishments 
 ^serve is this. pThey represent the State, the country, 
 the collective community, in a striking visible shape, 
 which is at the same time a noble and civilising one ; 
 giving the people something to be proud of, and which 
 it does them good to be proud of.J The State is in 
 England singularly without means" of civilisation of 
 this kind. But a modern state cannot afford to do 
 without them, and the action of individuals and 
 corporations cannot fully compensate for them 
 the want of them has told severely on the intelligenc e 
 and refinement of our middle and lower class. It 
 makes a difference to the civilisation of these classe s 
 whether it is the Louvre which represents their 
 country to them, or the National Gallery ; and 
 whether the State consecrates in the eyes of the 
 people the great lines of intellectual culture by 
 national institutions for them, or leaves them to 
 take care of themselves. What the State, the 
 collective permanent nation, honours, the passing 
 people honour ; what the State neglects, they think 
 of no great consequence. 
 
 " A French Eton," pp. 414-415. 
 
 Motto from Humboldt 
 
 " The thing is not to let the schools and universi- 
 ties go on in a drowsy and impotent routine ; the 
 thing is, to raise the culture of the nation ever 
 higher and higher by their means." 
 
 " Higher Schools and Universities in Germany," p. iv.
 
 152 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 
 
 The Experience of the Continent 
 
 IT is expedient for the satisfactory resolution of 
 those educational questions, which are at length 
 beginning seriously to occupy us, both that we should 
 attend to the experience of the Continent, and that 
 we should know precisely what it is which this 
 experience says. As to compulsory education, 
 denominational education, secular education, the 
 Continental precedents are to be studied ; and they 
 are to be studied for the sake of seeing what they 
 really mean, and not merely for the sake of furnishing 
 ourselves with help from them for some thesis which 
 we uphold. 
 
 Most English "Liberals seem persuaded that our 
 elementary schools should be undenominational, 
 and their teaching secular ; and that with a system 
 of public elementary schools it cannot well be other- 
 wise. Let us clearly understand, however, that on 
 the Continent generally, everywhere except in 
 Holland, the public elementary school is denomina- 
 tional ; * and its teaching religious as well as 
 secular. 
 
 " Higher Schools and Universities in Germany," p. ix. 
 
 Compulsory Education 
 
 THEN, again, as to compulsory education. The 
 example of the Continent proves, and nothing which 
 Mr. Pattison or I have said disproves, that in 
 general, where popular education is most prosperous, 
 there it is also compulsory. The compulsoriness 
 
 Of course with what we should call a conscience clause.
 
 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 153 
 
 is in general, found to go along with the prosperity, 
 though it cannot be said to cause it ; but the same 
 high value among a people for education which 
 leads to its prospering among them, leads also in 
 general to its being made compulsory. Where the 
 value for it is not ardent enough to make it, as it is 
 in Prussia and Zurich, compulsory, it is not, for the 
 most part, ardent enough to give it the prosperity 
 it has in Prussia and Zurich. After seeing the 
 schools of North Germany and of German Switzer- 
 land, I am strongly of this opinion. 
 
 But the English friends of compulsory education, 
 in their turn, will do well to inform themselves how 
 far on the Continent compulsory education extends, 
 and the conditions under which alone the working 
 classes, if they respect themselves, can submit to 
 its application. In the view of the English friends 
 of compulsory education, the educated and in- 
 telligent middle and upper classes among us are to 
 confer the boon of compulsory education upon the 
 ignorant lower class which needs it while they do not. 
 But on the Continent, instruction is obligatory for 
 lower, middle, and upper class alike. I doubt 
 whether our educated and intelligent classes are at 
 all prepared for this. I have an acquaintance in 
 easy circumstances, of distinguished connections, 
 living in a fashionable part of London, who, like 
 many other people, deals rather easily with his 
 son's schooling. Sometimes the boy is at school, 
 then for months together he is away from school, 
 and left to run idle at home. He is not in the least 
 an invalid, but it pleases his father and mother to
 
 154 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 
 
 bring him up in this manner. Now I imagine no 
 English friends of compulsory education dream of 
 dealing with such a defaulter as this ; and certainly 
 his father, who perhaps is himself a friend of com- 
 pulsory education for the working classes, would be 
 astounded to find his education of his own son inter- 
 fered with. But if my worthy acquaintance lived 
 in Switzerland or Germany, he would be dealt with 
 as follows. I speak with the school-law of Canton 
 Neufchatel immediately under my eyes, but the 
 regulations on this matter are substantially the same 
 in all the states of Germany and of German Switzer- 
 land. The Municipal Education Committee of the 
 district where my acquaintance lived would address 
 a summons to him, informing him that a comparison 
 of the school-rolls of their district with the municipal 
 list of children of school-age showed his son not to 
 be at school ; and requiring him, in consequence, 
 to appear before the Municipal Committee at a 
 place and time named, and there to satisfy them 
 either that his son did attend some public school, 
 or that, if privately taught, he was taught by duly 
 trained and certificated teachers. On the back of 
 the summons my acquaintance would find printed 
 the penal articles of the school-law sentencing him 
 to a fine if he failed to satisfy the Municipal Com- 
 mittee ; and, if he failed to pay the fine, or was 
 found a second time offending, to imprisonment. 
 In some Continental States he would be liable, in 
 case of repeated infraction of the school-law, to be 
 deprived of his parental rights, and to have the care 
 of his son transferred to guardians named by the
 
 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 155 
 
 State. It is indeed terrible to think of the consterna- 
 tion and wrath of our educated and intelligent 
 classes under a discipline like this ; and I should 
 not like to be the man to try and impose it on them. 
 But I assure them most emphatically and if they 
 study the experience of the Continent they will 
 convince themselves of the truth of what I say 
 that only on these conditions of its equal and universal 
 application is any final law of compulsory education 
 possible. 
 
 " Higher Schools and Universities in Germany," pp. x-xii. 
 
 Higher Education 
 
 SECONDARY and higher education is not, like popular 
 education, a subject which very keenly interests at 
 present our educated and intelligent classes. It is 
 their own education ; and with their own education 
 they are, it seems, tolerably well satisfied. Yet I 
 hope that here again these classes above all, I 
 hope that the great middle class, which has much 
 the widest and the gravest interests concerned in 
 the matter, will not refuse their attention to the 
 experience afforded by the Continent. Before con- 
 cluding that they can have nothing to learn from 
 it, let them at any rate know and weigh it. 
 
 To three points particularly let me invite their 
 consideration. In the first place, let them consider 
 in its length and breadth the fact that on the 
 Continent the middle class in general may be said 
 to be brought up on the first plane, while in England 
 it is brought up on the second plane. In the public
 
 156 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 
 
 higher schools of Prussia or France some 65,000 of 
 the youth of the middle and upper classes are 
 brought up ; in the public higher schools of England 
 even when we reckon as such many institutions 
 which would not be entitled to such a rank on the 
 Continent only some 15,000. Has this state of 
 things no bad effect upon us ? 
 
 The second point is this. The study of Conti- 
 nental education will show our educated and in- 
 telligent classes that many things which they wish 
 for cannot be done as isolated operations, but must, 
 if they are to be done at all, come in as parts of a 
 regularly designed whole. 
 
 " Higher Schools and Universities in Germany," p. xv. 
 
 Technical Schools 
 
 OUR educated and intelligent classes, in their 
 solicitude for our backward working class, and their 
 alarm for our industrial pre-eminence, are beginning 
 to cry out for technical schools for our artizans. 
 Well-informed and distinguished people seem to 
 think it is only necessary to have special schools 
 of arts and trades, as they have abroad, and then we 
 may take a clever boy from our elementary schools, 
 perfected by the Revised Code, and put him at once 
 into a special school. A study of the best Conti- 
 nental experience will show them that the special 
 school is the crown of a long co-ordered series, 
 designed and graduated by the best heads in the 
 country. A clever boy in a Prussian elementary 
 school, passes first into a Mittelschule, or higher
 
 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 157 
 
 elementary school, then into a modern or real school 
 of the second class, then into a real school of the first 
 class, and finally, after all these, into the special 
 school. A boy who has had this preparation is 
 able to profit by a special school. To send him 
 there straight from the elementary school, is like 
 sending a boy from the fourth form at one of our 
 classical public schools to hear Professor Ritschl 
 lecture on Latin inscriptions. 
 
 " Higher Schools and Universities in Germany," p. xviii. 
 
 Council of Education 
 
 I COME, lastly, to the third point for our remark in 
 Continental education. These foreign Governments 
 which we think offensively arbitrary, do at least 
 take, when they administer education, the best 
 educational opinion of the country into their counsels, 
 and we do not. This comes partly from our dis- 
 belief in government, partly from our belief in 
 machinery. Our disbelief in government makes us 
 slow to organise government perfectly for any 
 matter. Our belief in machinery makes us think 
 that when we have organised a department, however 
 imperfectly, it must prove efficacious and self- 
 acting. The result is that while, on the Continent, 
 through Boards and Councils, the best educational 
 opinion of the country by which I mean the 
 opinion of men like Sir James Shuttleworth, Mr. 
 Mill, Dr. Temple, men who have established their 
 right to be at least heard on these topics necessarily 
 reaches the Government and influences its actions,
 
 158 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 
 
 in this country there are no organised means of 
 its ever reaching our Government at all. The most 
 important questions of educational policy may be 
 settled without such men being even heard. A 
 number of grave matters affecting public instruction 
 in this country our system of competitive examina- 
 tions, our regulation of studies, our whole school- 
 legislation, are at the present moment settled one 
 hardly knows how, certainly without any care for 
 the best counsel attainable being first taken on them. 
 On the Continent it is not so ; and the more our 
 Government is likely, in England, to have to intervene 
 in educational matters, the more does the Continental 
 practice, in this particular, invite and require our 
 attention. 
 
 " Higher Schools and Universities in Germany," p. xix. 
 
 Obstacles to Profiting by Continental 
 Experience 
 
 IN conclusion. There are two chief obstacles, as 
 it seems to me, which oppose themselves to our 
 consulting foreign opinion with profit. One is, 
 our notion of the State as an alien intrusive power 
 in the community, not summing up and representing 
 the action of individuals, but thwarting it. This 
 notion is not so strong as it once was, but still it is 
 strong enough to make it opportune to quote some 
 words from a foreign Report before me, which sets 
 this much obscured point in its true light : " Le 
 Gouvernement ne repr/sente pas un interet particulier 
 distinct, puisqu'il est au contraire la plus haute et
 
 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 159 
 
 la plus sincere expression de tous les intevets 
 du pays." 
 
 This is undoubtedly what a Government ought to 
 be ; and, if it is not this, it is the duty of its citizens 
 to try and make it this, not to try and get rid of so 
 powerful and essential an agency as much as possible. 
 
 The other obstacle is our high opinion of our own 
 energy and prosperity. This opinion is just ; but 
 it is possible to rely on it too long, and to strain our 
 energy and our prosperity too hard. At any rate 
 our energy and our prosperity will be more fruitful 
 and safer, the more we add intelligence to them. 
 Here, if anywhere, is an occasion for applying the 
 words of the wise man : "If the iron be blunt, and 
 a man do not whet the edge, then must he put forth 
 more strength ; but wisdom is profitable to direct." 
 
 " Higher Schools and Universities in Germany," pp. xx-xxi. 
 
 The Initial Defect in English Schools 
 
 PERHAPS one reason why in England our schools 
 have not had the life and growth of the schools of 
 Germany and Holland is to be found in the separation 
 with us, of the power of the Reformation and the 
 power of the Renascence. With us, too, the 
 Reformation triumphed and got possession of our 
 schools ; but our leading reformers were not at the 
 same time, like those of Germany, the nation's 
 leading spirits in intellect and culture. In Germany 
 the best spirits of the nation were then the reformers. 
 In England our best spirits Shakspeare, Bacon, 
 Spenser were men of the Renascence, not men of
 
 160 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 
 
 the Reformation, and our reformers were men of the 
 second order. The Reformation, therefore, getting 
 hold of the schools in England was a very different 
 force, a force far inferior in light, resources, and 
 prospects, to the Reformation getting hold of the 
 schools in Germany. 
 
 " Higher Schools and Universities in Germany," p. 2. 
 
 Reform of Classical Studies 
 
 To reform the old methods of teaching the classics, 
 to reduce their preponderance, to make school 
 studies bear more directly upon the wants of practical 
 life, and to aim at imparting what is called " useful 
 knowledge," were projects not unknown to the 
 seventeenth and eighteenth century as well as to ours. 
 Comenius, a Moravian by birth, who in 1641 was 
 invited to England in order to remodel the schools 
 here, and in the following century Rousseau in 
 France, and Basedow in Germany, promulgated, 
 with various degrees of notoriety and success, 
 various schemes with one or other of these objects. 
 The Philanthropinum of Dessau, an institution 
 established in pursuance of them, was an experiment 
 which made much noise in its day. It was broken 
 up about 1780, but its impulse and the ideas which 
 set this impulse in motion, continued, and bear fruit 
 in the Realschulen. The name Realschule was first 
 used at Halle ; a school with that title was established 
 there by Christoph Semler, in 1738. 
 
 " Higher Schools and Universities in Germany," p. 13.
 
 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 161 
 
 Prussian School Law 
 
 THERE is no organic school-law in Prussia like the 
 organic school-law of France, though sketches and 
 projects of such a law have more than once been 
 prepared. But at present the public control of the 
 higher schools is exercised through administrative 
 orders and instructions, like the minutes of our 
 Committee of Council on Education. But the 
 administrative authority has in Prussia a very 
 different basis for its operations from that which it 
 has in England, and a much firmer one. It has for 
 its basis these articles of the Allgemeine Landrecht, 
 or common law of Prussia, which was drawn up in 
 writing in Frederick the Great's reign, and pro- 
 mulgated in 1794, in the reign of his successor : 
 
 " Schools and universities are State institutions, 
 having for their object the instruction of youth in 
 useful information and scientific knowledge. 
 
 " Such establishments are to be instituted only 
 with the State's previous knowledge and consent. 
 
 " All public schools and public establishments 
 of education are under the State's supervision, and 
 must at all times submit themselves to its exami- 
 nations and inspections. 
 
 " Whenever the appointment of teachers is not 
 by virtue of the foundation or of a special privilege 
 vested in certain persons or corporations, it belongs 
 to the State. 
 
 " Even where the immediate supervision of such 
 schools and the appointment of their teachers is 
 committed to certain private persons or corporations,
 
 1 62 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 
 
 new teachers cannot be appointed, and important 
 changes in the constitution and teaching of the school 
 cannot be adopted, without the previous knowledge 
 or consent of the provincial school authorities. 
 
 " The teachers in the gymnasiums and other 
 higher schools have the character of State function- 
 aries." 
 
 To the same effect the Prussian Deed of Con- 
 stitution (Verfassungs-Urkunde) of 1850 has the 
 following : 
 
 " For the education of the young sufficient 
 provision is to be made by means of public schools." 
 
 " Every one is free to impart instruction, and to 
 found and to conduct establishments for instruction, 
 when he has proved to the satisfaction of the proper 
 State authorities that he has the moral, scientific, 
 and technical qualifications requisite. 
 
 " All public and private establishments are under 
 the supervision of authorities named by the State." 
 
 With these principles to serve as a basis, adminis- 
 trative control can be exercised without much 
 difficulty. These principles, however, may with 
 real truth be said to form part of the common law of 
 Prussia, for they form part of almost every Prussian 
 citizen's notions of what is right and fitting in school 
 concerns. It would be a mistake to suppose that 
 the State in Prussia shows a grasping and centralising 
 spirit in dealing with education ; on the contrary, 
 it makes the administration of it as local as it 
 possibly can ; but it takes care that education shall 
 not be left to the chapter of accidents. 
 
 " Higher Schools and Universities in Germany," pp. 20-22.
 
 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 163 
 
 Prussian Leaving Examinations 
 
 A PUBLIC school boy, who, to evade the rule requiring 
 two years in prima, leaves the gymnasium in 
 secunda, goes to a private school or private tutor, 
 and offers himself for examination within two 
 years, needs a special permission from the minister 
 in order to be examined. So well do the Prussian 
 authorities know how insufficient an instrument 
 for their object that of promoting the national 
 culture and filling the professions with fit men 
 is the bare examination test ; so averse are they 
 to cram ; so clearly do they perceive that what 
 forms a youth, and what he should in all ways be 
 induced to acquire, is the orderly development of his 
 faculties under good and trained teaching. 
 
 With this view, all the instructions for the 
 examinations are drawn up. It is to tempt candi- 
 dates to no special preparation and effort, but to be 
 such as " a scholar of fair ability and proper diligence 
 may at the end of his school course come to with a 
 quiet mind, and without a painful preparatory effort 
 tending to relaxation and torpor as soon as the 
 effort is over." The total cultivation (Gesammtbil- 
 dung) of the candidate is the great matter, and this 
 is why the two years of prima are prescribed : 
 " that the instruction in this highest class may not 
 degenerate into a preparation for the examination, 
 that the pupil may have the requisite time to come 
 steadily and without overhurrying to the fulness of 
 the measure of his powers and character, that he may 
 be securely and thoroughly formed, instead of being
 
 164 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 
 
 bewildered and oppressed by a mass of information 
 hastily heaped together." All tumultuarische 
 Vorbereitung and all stimulation of vanity and 
 emulation is to be discouraged, and the examination, 
 like the school, is to regard das Wesentliche und 
 Dauernde the substantial and enduring. Accord- 
 ingly, the composition and the passages for transla- 
 tion are great matters in German examinations, 
 not those papers of questions by which the examiner 
 is so led to show his want of sense, and the examinee 
 his stores of cram. 
 
 That a boy shall have been for a certain number 
 of years under good training is what, in Prussia, 
 the State wants to secure ; and it uses the examina- 
 tion test to help it to secure this. We leave his 
 training to take its chance, and we put the examina- 
 tion test to a use for which it is quite inadequate 
 to try and make up for our neglect. 
 
 " Higher Schools and Universities in Germany," pp. 54-56. 
 
 Pedagogic 
 
 THE Germans, as is well known, attach much im- 
 portance to the science of pedagogic. That science 
 is as yet far from being matured, and much nonsense 
 is talked on the subject of it ; still, the total un- 
 acquaintance with it, and with all which has been 
 written about it, in which the intending school- 
 master is, in England, suffered to remain, has, I am 
 convinced, injurious effects both on our school- 
 masters and on our schools. 
 
 " Higher Schools and Universities in Germany," p. 67.
 
 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 165 
 
 Teachers of Modern Languages 
 
 A SPECIAL facultas docendi is given to the foreign 
 teacher of modern languages ; but even he, besides 
 the modern language he is to teach, must know as 
 much Latin, history, geography, and philosophy as is 
 required of candidates who are to teach in the 
 middle division of a gymnasium. This provision 
 guards against the employment of subjects so unfit 
 by their training and general attainments to rule a 
 class, as those we too often see chosen as teachers of 
 modern languages. 
 
 " Higher Schools and Universities in Germany," pp. 68-69. 
 
 The Art of Teaching 
 
 WOLF'S great rule in all these lessons was that rule 
 which all masters in the art of teaching have followed 
 to take as little part as possible in the lesson 
 himself ; merely to start it, guide it, and sum it up, 
 and to let quite the main part in it be borne by the 
 learners. 
 
 " Higher Schools and Universities in Germany," p. 73. 
 
 Need of an Education Minister 
 
 I CANNOT but think an education Minister a necessity 
 for modern States, yet I know that in the employment 
 of such an agency there are inconveniences, and I 
 do not wish to hide any of them from the English 
 reader. I have said that in France political con- 
 siderations are in my opinion too much suffered to
 
 166 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 
 
 influence the whole working of the system of public 
 education. In Prussia the minister is armed with 
 powers, and issues instructions showing how he 
 interprets those powers, which in England would 
 excite very great jealousy. He tells the provincial 
 authorities that no reproach must attach to the 
 private and public life, any more than to the know- 
 ledge or ability, of a candidate for school employ- 
 ment ; he tells them that they are to take into 
 consideration the whole previous career, extra 
 professional as well as professional (das gesammte 
 bisherige und ausseramtliche Verhalten], of such a 
 candidate ; and that schoolmasters should be men 
 who will train up their scholars in notions of obedience 
 towards the sovereign and the State. 
 
 It is not, indeed, at all likely that in England, 
 with the forces watching and controlling him here, 
 a minister would use language such as I have 
 quoted ; and even if it were, I am not at all sure that 
 to have a minister using such language, though it is 
 language which I cordially dislike, is in itself so much 
 more lamentable and baneful a thing than that 
 anarchy and ignorance in education matters under 
 which we contentedly suffer. However, what I wish 
 now to say is, that in spite of this language, the 
 political influence which has such real effect upon 
 the public education of France, has no effect, or 
 next to none, upon that of Prussia. I do not 
 believe that it has more on that of Prussia than it 
 has on that of this country. I took great pains to 
 inform myself on this head. 
 
 " Higher Schools and Universities in Germany," pp. 82-83.
 
 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 167 
 
 Prussian Belief in Culture 
 
 THE truth is, that when a nation has got the belief 
 in culture which the Prussian nation has got, and 
 when its schools are worthy of this belief, it will not 
 suffer them to be sacrificed to any other interest ; 
 and however greatly political considerations may 
 be paramount in other departments of administration 
 in this they are not. 
 
 " Higher Schools and Universities in Germany," p. 85. 
 
 Religious Instruction in Prussian Schools 
 
 I HAVE spoken several times of the religious instruc- 
 tion as forming part of school work and of examina- 
 tions. The two legally-established forms of religion 
 in Prussia are the Protestant (evangelisch] and the 
 Catholic. All public schools must be either Protes- 
 tant, Catholic, or mixed (Simultananstalteri) . But 
 the constitution of a mixed school has not been 
 authoritatively denned, and though the practice 
 has grown up, especially in Realschulen, of appoint- 
 ing teachers of the two confessions indifferently, 
 yet these Simultananstalten retain the character of 
 Christian schools, and indeed usually follow the rule 
 either that the director and the majority of the 
 masters shall be Catholic or that they shall be 
 Protestant. In general, the deed of foundation or 
 established custom determines to what confession 
 a school shall belong. The religious instruction 
 and the services follow the confession of the school. 
 The ecclesiastical authorities the consistories for 
 Protestant schools, the bishops for Catholic schools
 
 i68 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 
 
 must concur with the school authorities in the 
 appointment of those who give the religious instruc- 
 tion in the schools. The consistories and the bishops 
 have likewise the right of inspecting, by themselves or 
 by their delegates, this instruction, and of addressing 
 to the Provincial Boards any remarks they may have 
 to make on it. The ordinarius, or class-master, who 
 has general charge of the class, as distinguished from 
 the teachers who give the different parts of the 
 instruction in it, is generally, if possible, the religious 
 instructor. In Protestant schools the religious 
 instructor is usually a layman ; in Catholic, an 
 ecclesiastic. The public schools are open to scholars 
 of all creeds ; in general, one of the two confessions, 
 evangelical or Catholic, greatly preponderates, and 
 the Catholics, in especial, prefer schools of their own 
 confession. But the State holds the balance quite 
 fairly between them ; where the scholars of that 
 confession which is not the established confession 
 of the school are in considerable numbers, a special 
 religious instructor is paid out of the school funds to 
 come and give them this religious instruction at the 
 school. Thus, in the gymnasium at Bonn, which is 
 Catholic, I heard a lesson on the Epistle to the 
 Galatians (in the Greek] given to the Protestant boys 
 by a young Protestant minister of the town, engaged 
 by the gymnasium for that purpose. When the 
 scholars whose confession is in the minority are very 
 few in number, their parents have to provide by 
 private arrangements of their own for their children's 
 religious instruction. 
 
 " Higher Schools and Universities in Germany," pp. 85-87.
 
 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 169 
 
 Salaries of Prussian Schoolmasters 
 
 THE whole scale of incomes in Prussia is, however, 
 much lower than with us, and the habits of the nation 
 are frugal and simple. The rate of schoolmasters' 
 salaries was raised after 1815, and has been raised 
 again since ; it is not exceptionally low as compared 
 with the rates of incomes in Germany generally. 
 The rector of Schulpforta with his 300 a year and 
 a house, has in all the country round him where 
 there is great well-doing and comfort few people 
 more comfortably off than himself ; he can do all 
 he wants to do, and all that anybody about him does, 
 and this is wealth. The schoolmasters of the higher 
 school enjoy, too, great consideration ; and con- 
 sideration in a country not corrupted has a value as 
 well as money. 
 
 " Higher Schools and Universities in Germany," p. 96. 
 
 The Ancient Authors as Literature 
 
 THE great superiority of the Germans, and where 
 they show how much further they have gone in 
 Alterthumswissenschaft than we have, is in their 
 far broader notion of treating, even in their schools, 
 the ancient authors as literature, and conceiving 
 the place and significance of an author in his country's 
 literature, and in that of the world. In this way 
 the student's interest in Greek and Latin becomes 
 much more vital, and the hold of these languages 
 upon him is much more likely to be permanent. 
 This is to be set against the superior finish and
 
 170 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 
 
 elegance of the best of our boys in Latin and Greek 
 composition ; above all, in Latin and Greek verse. 
 Greek verse, indeed, can scarcely be said to be a 
 school exercise at all, so far as I could see or hear, 
 in the foreign schools. 
 
 " Higher Schools and Universities in Germany," pp. 109-110. 
 
 Wise Choice of Text-Books 
 
 I MUST in passing observe how greatly some intelligent 
 censorship like that of the Provincial Boards and 
 the Minister in Prussia, or that of the Council of 
 Public Instruction in France, is needed for school- 
 books in England. Many as are the absurdities 
 of our state of school anarchy, perhaps none of them 
 is more crying than the book-pest which prevails 
 under it. Every school chooses at its own discre- 
 tion ; many schools make a trade of book-dealing, 
 and therefore it is for their interest to have books 
 which are not used elsewhere, and which the pupil 
 will not bring with him from his last school ; so that 
 a boy who has been at three or four English schools 
 has often had to buy a complete new set of school- 
 books for each. The extravagance of this is bad 
 enough ; but then, besides, as there exists no 
 intelligent control or selection of them, half at least 
 of our school-books are rubbish, and to the other 
 defects of our school system we may add this, that 
 in no other secondary schools in Europe do the 
 pupils spend so much of their time in learning such 
 utter nonsense as they do in ours. 
 
 " Higher Schools and Universities in Germany," pp. 112-113.
 
 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 171 
 
 Games at German Schools 
 
 AT Schulpforta they are very proud of their playing- 
 field, which is indeed, with a wooded hill arising 
 behind it, a pleasant place ; but the games of 
 English playing-fields do not go on there ; instead 
 of goals or a cricket-ground, one sees apparatus for 
 gymnastics. The Germans, as is well known, now 
 cultivate gymnastics in their schools with great 
 care. Since 1842, gymnastics have been made a 
 regular part of the public-school course ; there is a 
 Central Turnanstalt at Berlin, with eighteen civilian 
 pupils who are being trained expressly to supply 
 model teachers of gymnastics for the public schools. 
 The teachers profess to have adapted their exercises 
 with precision to every age, and to all the stages of a 
 boy's growth and muscular development. The 
 French are much impressed by what seems to them 
 the success of the Germans in this kind of instruction, 
 and certainly in their own lycces they have not at 
 present done nearly so much for it. Nothing, 
 however, will make an ex-schoolboy of one of the 
 great English schools regard the gymnastics of a 
 foreign school without a slight feeling of wonder 
 and compassion, so much more animating and 
 interesting do the games of his remembrance seem 
 to him. This much, however, I will say ; if boys 
 have long work hours, or if they work hard, gym- 
 nastics probably do more for their physical health in 
 the comparatively short time allotted to recreation 
 than anything else could. In England the majority 
 of public schoolboys work far less than the foreign
 
 172 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 
 
 schoolboy, and for this majority the English games 
 are delightful ; but for the few hard students with 
 us there is in general but the constitutional, and this 
 is not so good as the foreign gymnastics. For little 
 boys, again, I am inclined to think that the carefully 
 taught gymnastics of the foreign school are better 
 than the lounging shiveringly about, which in my 
 time used often at our great schools to be the portion 
 of those who had not yet come to full age for games. 
 
 " Higher Schools and Universities in Germany," pp. 124-125. 
 
 Value of Classical Training 
 
 DR. JAGER, the director of the united school well- 
 placed, therefore, for judging, and as I have said, 
 an able man assured me it was the universal 
 conviction with those competent to form an opinion 
 that the Realschulen were not, at present, successful 
 institutions. He declared that the boys in the 
 corresponding forms of the classical school beat the 
 Realschule boys in matters which both do alike, 
 such as history, geography, the mother-tongue, and 
 even French, though to French the Realschule boys 
 devote so far more time than their comrades of the 
 classical school. The reason for this, Dr. Jager 
 affirms, is that the classical training strengthens a 
 boy's mind so much. 
 
 This is what, as I have already said, the chief 
 school authorities everywhere in France and Germany 
 testify : I quote Dr. Jager's testimony in particular, 
 because of his ability and because of his double 
 experience. In Switzerland you do not hear the
 
 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 173 
 
 same story, but the regnant Swiss conception of 
 secondary instruction is, in general, not a liberal 
 but a commercial one ; not culture and training of 
 the mind, but what will be of immediate palpable 
 utility in some practical calling, is there the chief 
 matter ; and this cannot be admitted as the true 
 scope of secondary instruction. 
 
 " Higher Schools and Universities in Germany," pp. 131-132. 
 
 The Privatdocent 
 
 OTHER countries have full professors and pro- 
 fessors extraordinary. France, for instance, has 
 her professeurs titulaires, and her professeurs 
 suppleants ; but the Privatdocent is peculiar to 
 Germany, and is the great source of vigour and 
 renovation to her superior instruction. Sometimes 
 he gives private lessons, like the private tutors of 
 our universities ; these lessons have the title of 
 Privatissima. But this is not his main business. 
 His main business is as unlike the sterile business 
 of our private tutors as possible. The Privatdocent 
 is an assistant to the professorate ; he is free to use, 
 when the professors do not occupy them, the 
 university lecture-rooms, he gives lectures like the 
 professors, and his lectures count as professors' 
 lectures for those who attend them. His appoint- 
 ment is on this wise. A distinguished student 
 applies to be made Privatdocent in a faculty. He 
 produces certain certificates and performs certain 
 exercises before two delegates named by the faculty, 
 and this is called his Habilitation, If he passes,
 
 174 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 
 
 the faculty names him Privatdocent. The authorisa- 
 tion of the minister is also requisite for him, but 
 this follows his nomination by the faculty as a matter 
 of course. He is then free to lecture on any matters 
 proper to his faculty. He is on his probation, he 
 receives no salary whatever ; and depends entirely 
 on his lectures ; he has, therefore, every motive to 
 exert himself. In general, as I have said, the 
 professors and Privatdocenten arrange together to 
 parcel out the field of instruction between them, 
 and one supplements the other's teaching ; still a 
 Privatdocent may, if he likes, lecture on just the same 
 subject that a professor is lecturing on ; there is 
 absolute liberty in this respect. The one precaution 
 taken against undue competition is, that a Privat- 
 docent lecturing on a professor's subject is not allowed 
 to charge lower fees than a professor. It does honour 
 to the disinterested spirit in which science is pursued 
 in Germany, that with these temptations to competi- 
 tion the relations between the professors and the 
 Privatdocenten are in general excellent ; the dis- 
 tinguished professor encourages the rising Privat- 
 docent, and the Privatdocent seeks to make his 
 teaching serve science, not his own vanity. But it 
 is evident how the neighbourhood of a rising young 
 Privatdocent must tend to keep a professor up to the 
 mark, and hinder him from getting sleepy and lazy. 
 If he gets sleepy and lazy, his lecture-room is 
 deserted. The Privatdocent, again, has the standard 
 of eminent men before his eyes, and everything 
 stimulates him to come up to it. 
 
 " Higher Schools and Universities in Germany," pp. 142-14 j.
 
 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 175 
 
 Brodstudien and Examinations 
 
 THERE are, of course, many idlers ; the proportion 
 of students in a German university who really work 
 I have heard estimated at one-third ; certainly 
 it is larger than in the English universities. But 
 the pressure put upon them in the way of com- 
 pulsion and university examinations is much less 
 than with us. The paramount university aim in 
 Germany is to encourage a love of study and science 
 for their own sakes ; and the professors, very unlike 
 our college tutors, are constantly warning their 
 pupils against Brodstudien, studies pursued with a 
 view to examinations and posts. The examinations 
 within the university course itself are far fewer and 
 less important in Germany than in England. It is 
 Austria, a country which believes in the things of 
 the mind as little as we do, which is the great country 
 for university examinations. There they are applied 
 with a mechanical faith much like ours, and come as 
 often as once a month ; but the general intellectual 
 life of the Austrian universities is lower, though 
 Vienna and Prague are good medical schools, than 
 that of any other universities of Germany. " Le 
 pays a 1'examens, 1'Autriche," exclaims an eminent 
 French professor, M. Laboulaye, who has carefully 
 studied the German university system with a view 
 to reforming that of France " Le pays a 1'examens, 
 1'Autriche, est precisement celui dans lequel on ne 
 travaille pas ; " and every competent authority in 
 Germany will confirm what M. Laboulaye says. 
 I do not say that in countries like Austria and
 
 176 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 
 
 England, where there is so little real love for the 
 things of the mind, examinations may not be a 
 protection from something worse. All I say is that 
 a love of the things of the mind is what we want, and 
 that examinations will never give it. 
 
 " Higher Schools and Universities in Germany," pp. 148-149. 
 
 The System of the German Universities 
 
 Lehrfreiheit and Lernfreiheit, liberty for the teacher 
 and liberty for the learner ; and Wissenschaft, 
 science, knowledge systematically pursued and 
 prized in and for itself, are the fundamental ideas 
 of that system. The French, with their ministerial 
 programmes for superior instruction, and their 
 ministerial authorisations required for any one who 
 wants to give a course of public lectures authorisa- 
 tions which are by no means a matter of form are 
 naturally most struck with the liberty of the German 
 universities, and it is in liberty that they have most 
 need to borrow from them. To us, ministerial 
 programmes and ministerial authorisations are un- 
 known ; our university system is a routine, indeed, 
 but it is our want of science, not our want of liberty, 
 which makes it a routine. It is in science that we 
 have most need to borrow from the German universi- 
 ties. The French university has no liberty, and 
 the English universities have no science ; the German 
 universities have both. 
 
 " Higher Schools and Universities in Germany," p. 152.
 
 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 177 
 
 The Conflict Between Classical and Modern 
 Studies 
 
 SEVERAL times in the foregoing chapters I have 
 touched upon the conflict between the gymnasium 
 and the Realschule, between the partisans of the 
 old classical studies and the partisans of what are 
 called real, or modern, or useful studies. This 
 conflict is not yet settled, either by one side crushing 
 the other by mere violence, or by one side clearly 
 getting the best of the other in the dispute between 
 them. We in England, behindhand as our public 
 instruction in many respects is, are nevertheless in 
 time to profit, and to make our schools profit by 
 the solution which will certainly be found for this 
 difference. I am inclined to think that both sides 
 will, as is natural, have to abate their extreme 
 pretensions. The modern spirit tends to reach a 
 new conception of the aim and office of instruction ; 
 when this conception is fully reached, it will put an 
 end to conflict, and will probably show both the 
 humanists and the realists to have been right in 
 their main ideas. 
 
 " Higher Schools and Universities in Germany," p. 153. 
 
 The True Aim of Instruction 
 
 THE aim and office of instruction, say many people, 
 is to make a man a good citizen, or a good Christian, 
 or a gentleman, or it is to fit him to get on in the 
 world, or it is to enable him to do his duty in that 
 state of life to which he is called. It is none of 
 these, and the modern spirit more and more discerns 
 
 N
 
 178 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 
 
 it to be none of these. These are at best secondary 
 and indirect aims of instruction ; its prime direct 
 aim is to enable a man to know himself and the 
 world. Such knowledge is the only sure basis for 
 action, and this basis it is the true aim and office of 
 instruction to supply. To know himself, a man 
 must know the capabilities and performances of the 
 human spirit ; and the value of the humanities, 
 of Alterthumswissenschaft, the science of antiquity, 
 is, that it affords for this purpose an unsurpassed 
 source of light and stimulus. Whoever seeks help 
 for knowing himself from knowing the capabilities 
 and performances of the human spirit will nowhere 
 find a more fruitful object of study than in the 
 achievements of Greece in literature and the arts 
 during the two centuries from the birth of Simonides 
 to the death of Plato. And these two centuries are 
 but the flowering-point of a long period, during 
 the whole of which the ancient world offers, to the 
 student of the capabilities and performances of the 
 human spirit, lessons of capital importance. 
 
 This the humanists have perceived, and the 
 truth of this perception of theirs is the stronghold of 
 their position. It is a vital and formative know- 
 ledge to know the most powerful manifestations of 
 the human spirit's activity, for the knowledge of them 
 greatly feeds and quickens our own activity ; and 
 they are very imperfectly known without knowing 
 ancient Greece and Rome. But it is also a vital 
 and formative knowledge to know the world, the 
 laws which govern nature, and man as a part of 
 nature. This the realists have perceived, and the
 
 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 179 
 
 truth of this perception, too, is inexpugnable. 
 Every man is born with aptitudes which give him 
 access to vital and formative knowledge by one of 
 these roads ; either by the road of studying man and 
 his works, or by the road of studying nature and her 
 works. The business of instruction is to seize and 
 develope these aptitudes. The great and complete 
 spirits which have all the aptitudes for both roads 
 of knowledge are rare. But much more might be 
 done on both roads by the same mind, if instruction 
 clearly grasped the idea of the entire system of 
 aptitudes for which it has to provide ; of their 
 correlation, and of their equipollency, so to speak 
 as all leading, if rightly employed, to vital know- 
 ledge ; and if then, having grasped this idea, it 
 provided for them. The Greek spirit, after its 
 splendid hour of creative activity was gone, gave our 
 race another precious lesson, by exhibiting in the 
 career of men like Aristotle and the great students 
 of Alexandria, this idea of the correlation and equal 
 dignity of the most different departments of human 
 knowledge, and by showing the possibility of 
 uniting them in a single mind's education. A man 
 like Eratosthenes is memorable by what he per- 
 formed, but still more memorable by his commanding 
 range of studies, and by the broad basis of culture 
 out of which his performances grew. As our public 
 instruction gets a clearer view of its own functions, 
 of the relations of the human spirit to knowledge, and 
 of the entire circle of knowledge, it will certainly 
 more learn to awaken in its pupils an interest in 
 that entire circle, and less allow them to remain
 
 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 
 
 Aal strangers to any part of it. Still, the circle 
 is so vast and human faculties are so limited, that 
 it is for the most part through a single aptitude, or 
 group of aptitudes, that each individual will really 
 get his access to intellectual life and vital knowledge ; 
 and it is by effectually directing these aptitudes on 
 definite points of the circle, that he will really obtain 
 his comprehension of the whole. 
 
 Meanwhile, neither our humanists nor our 
 realists adequately conceive the circle of knowledge, 
 and each party is unjust to all that to which its own 
 aptitudes do not carry it. The humanists are loath 
 to believe that a man has any access to vital know- 
 ledge except by knowing himself the poetry, 
 philosophy, history, which his spirit has created ; 
 the realists, that he has any access except by knowing 
 the world the physical sciences, the phenomena 
 and laws of nature. I, like so many others who 
 have been brought up in the old routine, imperfectly 
 as I know letters the work of the human spirit 
 itself know nothing else, andjay judgment, there- 
 fore, may fairly be impeached^EBut it seems to me 
 that so long as the realists persist in cutting in two 
 the circle of knowledge, so long do they leave for 
 practical purposes the better part to their rivals, 
 and in the government of human affairstjjeir rivals 
 will beat them. And for this reason. ^|^Jhe study 
 of letters is the study of the operation of human force, 
 of human freedom and activity ; the study of nature 
 is the study of the operation of non-human forces, 
 of human limitation and passivity. The contempla- 
 tion of human force and activity tends naturally to
 
 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 181 
 
 heighten our own force and activity ; the contempla- 
 tion of human limits and passivity tends rather to 
 check it. Therefore the men who have had the 
 humanistic training have played, and yet play, so 
 prominent a part in human affairs, in spite of their 
 prodigious ignorance of the universe ; because their 
 training has powerfully fomented the human force 
 in them."} And in this way letters are indeed runes, 
 like tho^e magic runes taught by the Valkyrie 
 Brynhild to Sigurd, the Scandinavian Achilles, 
 which put the crown to his endowment and made 
 him invincible. 
 
 Still, the humanists themselves suffer so much 
 from the ignorance of physical facts and laws, and 
 from the inadequate conception of nature, and of 
 man as a part of nature the conduct of human 
 affairs suffers so much from the same cause that 
 the intellectual insufficiency of the humanities, 
 conceived as the one access to vital knowledge, 
 is perhaps at the present moment yet more striking 
 than their power of practical stimulation ; and we 
 may willingly declare with the Italians that no part 
 of the circle of knowledge is common or unclean, 
 none is to be cried up at the expense of another. 
 To say that the fruit of classics, in the boys who study 
 them, is at present greater than the fruit of the 
 natural sciences, to say that the realists have not 
 got their matters of instruction so well adapted to 
 teaching purposes as the humanists have got theirs, 
 comes really to no more than this : that the realists 
 are but newly admitted labourers in the field of 
 practical instruction, and that while the leading
 
 182 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 
 
 humanists, the Wolfs, and the Buttmanns, have 
 been also schoolmasters, and have brought their 
 mind and energy to bear upon the school-teaching 
 of their own studies, the leaders in the natural 
 sciences, the Davys and the Faradays, have not. 
 When scientific physics have as recognised a place 
 in public instruction as Latin and Greek, they will 
 be as well taught. 
 
 " Higher Schools and Universities in Germany," pp. 154-160. 
 
 Routine in our Public Schools 
 
 THE Abbe Fleury, than whom no man is a better 
 authority, says of the mediaeval universities, the 
 parents of our public secondary schools : " Les 
 universites ont eu le malheur de commencer dans un 
 temps ou le gout des bonnes etudes etait perdu." 
 They were too late for the influences of the great 
 time of Christian literature and eloquence, the first 
 five centuries after Christ ; they were even too late 
 for the influences of the time of Abelard and Saint 
 Bernard. And Fleury adds : " De la (from these 
 universities founded in a time of inferior insight) 
 nous est venu ce cours regie d' etudes qui subsiste 
 encore." He wrote this in 1708, but it is in the 
 main still true in 1867. All the historical part of 
 this volume has shown that the great movements 
 of the human spirit have either not got hold of the 
 public schools, or not kept hold of them. What 
 reforms have been made have been patchwork, 
 the work of able men who into certain departments 
 of school study which were dear to them infused
 
 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 183 
 
 reality and life, but who looked little beyond these 
 departments, and did not concern themselves with 
 fully adjusting instruction to the wants of the human 
 mind. There is, therefore, no intelligent tradition 
 to be set aside in our public schools ; there is only a 
 routine, arising in the way we have seen, and destined 
 to be superseded as soon as ever that more adequate 
 idea of instruction, of which the modern spirit is 
 even now in travail, shall be fully born. 
 
 " Higher Schools and Universities in Germany," pp. 161-162. 
 
 Alterthumswissenschaft 
 
 I WAS myself brought up in the straitest school 
 of Latin and Greek composition, and am certainly 
 not disposed to be unjust to them. Very often 
 they are ignorantly disparaged. Professor Ritschl, 
 I am told, envies the English schools their Latin 
 verse, and he is no bad judge of what is useful for 
 knowing Latin. The close appropriation of the 
 models, which is necessary for good Latin or Greek 
 composition, not only conduces to accurate and 
 verbal scholarship ; it may beget, besides, an 
 intimate sense of these models, which makes us 
 sharers of their spirit and power ; and this is of the 
 essence of true Alterthumswissenschaft. Herein lies 
 the reason for giving boys more of Latin composition 
 than of Greek, superior though the Greek literature 
 be to the Latin ; but the power of the Latin classic 
 is in character, that of the Greek is in beauty. Now, 
 character is capable of being taught, learnt, and 
 assimilated ; beauty hardly ; and it is for enabling
 
 184 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 
 
 us to learn and catch some power of antiquity, that 
 Greek or Latin composition is most to be valued. 
 Who shall say what share the turning over and over 
 in their mind, and masticating, so to speak, in early 
 life as models of their Latin verse, such things as 
 Vergil's 
 
 " Disce, puer, virtutem ex me, verumque laborem " 
 
 or Horace's 
 
 " Fortuna saevo laeta negotio " 
 
 has not had in forming the high spirit of the upper 
 class in France and England, the two countries where 
 Latin verse has most ruled the schools, and the two 
 countries which most have had, or have, a high 
 upper class and a high upper class spirit ? All this 
 is no doubt to be considered when we are judging 
 the worth of the old school trainings. 
 
 But, in the first place, dignity and a high spirit 
 is not all, or half all, that is to be got out of Alter- 
 thumswissenschaflfawha.i else is to be got out of it 
 the love of the things of the mind, the flexibility, 
 the spiritual moderation is for our present time 
 and needs still more precious, and our upper class 
 suffers, greatly by not having got it. In the second 
 placej^hough I do not deny that there are persons 
 with such eminent aptitudes for Latin and Greek 
 composition that they may be brought in contact 
 with the spirit and power of Alterthumswissenschaft 
 and thus with vital knowledge, through them 
 as neither do I deny that there are persons with such 
 eminent aptitudes for grammatical and philological 
 studies, that they may be brought in contact with
 
 \ 
 
 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 185^ 
 
 vital knowledge through them nevertheless,[l am 
 convinced that of the hundreds whom our present 
 system tries without distinction to bring into contact 
 with Alterthumswissenschaft through composition 
 and philology almost alone, the immense majority 
 would have a far better chance of being brought 
 into vital contact with it through literature, by 
 treating the study of Greek and Latin as we jreat 
 our French, or Italian, or German studies J In 
 other words, the number of persons with aptitudes 
 for being carried to vital knowledge by the literary 
 or historical, or philosophical, or artistic sense 
 to each of which senses we give a chance by treating 
 Greek and Latin as Literature, and not as mere 
 scholarship is infinitely greater than the number of 
 those whose aptitudes are for composition and 
 
 " Higher Schools and Universities in Germany," pp. 167-170. 
 
 The Commercial Theory of Education 
 
 WE have still to make the mother-tongue and its 
 literature a part of the school course ; foreign 
 nations have done this, and we shall do it ; but 
 neither foreign nations nor we have yet quite learnt 
 how to deal, for school purposes, with modern 
 foreign languages. The great notion is to teach 
 them for speaking purposes, with a view to practical 
 convenience. This notion clearly belongs to what 
 I have called the commercial theory of education, 
 and not the liberal theory ; and the faultiness of the 
 commercial theory is well seen by examining this
 
 i86 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 
 
 notion and its fruits. Mr. Marsh, the well-known 
 author of the History of the English Language, who 
 has passed his life in diplomacy, and is himself at 
 once a savant and a linguist, told me he had been 
 much struck by remarking how, in general, the 
 accomplishment of speaking foreign languages tends 
 to strain the mind, and to make it superficial and 
 averse to going deep in anything. He instanced 
 the young diplomatists of the new school, who, he 
 said, could rattle along in two or three languages, 
 but could do nothing else. Perhaps in old times 
 the young diplomatists could neither do that nor 
 anything else, so in their case there may be now a 
 gain ; but there is great truth in Mr. Marsh's remark 
 that the speaking several languages tends to make 
 the thought thin and shallow, and so far from in 
 itself carrying us to vital knowledge, needs a com- 
 pensating force to prevent its carrying us away 
 from it. But the true aim of schools and instruction 
 is to develope the powers of our mind and to give us 
 access to vital knowledge. 
 
 Again : if the speaking of foreign languages is a 
 prime school aim, this aim is clearly best reached by 
 sending a boy to a foreign school. Great numbers 
 of English parents, accordingly, who from their 
 own want of culture are particularly prone to the 
 more obvious theory of education the commercial 
 one send their boys abroad to be educated. Yet 
 the basis of character and aptitudes proper for 
 living and working in any country is no doubt best 
 formed by being reared in that country, and passing 
 the ductile and susceptible time of boyhood there ;
 
 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 187 
 
 and in this case Solomon's saying applies admirably : 
 " As a bird that wandereth from her nest, so is a man 
 that wandereth from his place." That, therefore, can 
 hardly be a prime school-aim, which to be duly 
 reached requires from the scholar an almost irre- 
 parable sacrifice. So the learning to speak foreign 
 languages, showy as the accomplishment always is, 
 and useful as it often is, must be regarded as a quite 
 secondary and subordinate school-aim. Something 
 of it may be naturally got in connection with learning 
 the languages ; and, above all, the instructor's 
 precept and practice in pronunciation should be 
 sound, not, as in our old way of teaching these 
 languages through incompetent English masters 
 it too often was, utterly barbarous and misleading ; 
 but all this part is to be perfected elsewhere, and is 
 not to be looked upon as true school business. It 
 is as literature, and as opening fresh roads into 
 knowledge, that the modern foreign languages, like 
 the ancient, are truly school business ; and far more 
 ought to be done with them, on this view of their 
 use, than has ever been done yet. 
 
 " Higher Schools and Universities in Germany," pp. 172-175. 
 
 The Conclusion of the Whole Matter 
 
 To sum up, then, the conclusions to which these 
 remarks lead. The idea of a general, liberal training, 
 is to carry us to a knowledge of ourselves and the 
 world. We are called to this knowledge by special 
 aptitudes which are bora with us ; the grand thing
 
 i88 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 
 
 in teaching is to have faith that some aptitudes of 
 this kind every one has. This one's special aptitudes 
 are for knowing men the study of the humanities ; 
 that one's special aptitudes are for knowing the 
 world the study of nature. The circle of know- 
 ledge comprehends both, and we should all have some 
 notion, at any rate, of the whole circle of knowledge. 
 The rejection of the humanities by the realists, the 
 rejection of the study of nature by the humanists, 
 are alike ignorant. He whose aptitudes carry him 
 to the study of nature should have some notion of 
 the humanities ; he whose aptitudes carry him to 
 the humanities should have some notion of the 
 phenomena and laws of nature. Evidently, there- 
 fore, the beginnings of a liberal culture should be 
 the same for both. The mother-tongue, the elements 
 of Latin, and of the chief modern languages, the 
 elements of history, of arithmetic and geometry, 
 of geography, and of the knowledge of nature, should 
 be the studies of the lower classes in all secondary 
 schools, and should be the same for all boys at this 
 stage. So far, therefore, there is no reason for a 
 division of schools. But then comes a bifurcation, 
 according to the boy's aptitudes and aims. Either 
 the study of the humanities or the study of nature 
 is henceforth to be the predominating part of his 
 instruction. Evidently there are some advantages 
 in making one school include those who follow both 
 these studies. It is the more economical arrange- 
 ment ; and when the humanities and the real 
 studies are in the same school there is less likelihood 
 of the social stamp put on the boy following the one
 
 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 189 
 
 of them being different from that put on a boy 
 following the other. 
 
 " Higher Schools and Universities in Germany," pp. 175-176. 
 
 Our Middle Class Education 
 
 NEITHER is the secondary and superior instruction 
 given in England as good on the whole, if we regard 
 the whole number of those to whom it is due, as that 
 given in Germany or France, nor is it given in schools 
 of so good a standing. Of course, what good 
 instruction there is, and what schools of good stand- 
 ing there are to get it in, fall chiefly to the lot of the 
 upper class. It is on the middle class that the 
 injury, such as it is, of getting inferior instruction, 
 and of getting it in schools of inferior standing, 
 mainly comes. This injury, as it strikes one after 
 seeing attentively the schools of the Continent, has 
 two aspects. It has a social aspect, and it has an 
 intellectual aspect. 
 
 The social injury is this. On the Continent the 
 upper and middle class are brought up on one and 
 the same plane. In England the middle class, as a 
 rule, is brought up on the second plane. One hears 
 many discussions as to the limits between the middle 
 and the upper class in England. From a social 
 and educational point of view these limits are 
 perfectly clear. Ten or a dozen famous schools, 
 Oxford or Cambridge, the church or the bar, the 
 army or navy, and those posts in the public service 
 supposed to be posts for gentlemen these are the 
 lines of training, all or any of which give a cast of
 
 igo THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 
 
 ideas, a stamp or habit, which make a sort of associa- 
 tion of all those who share them ; and this association 
 is the upper class. Except by one of these modes of 
 access, an Englishman does not, unless by some 
 special play of aptitude or of circumstances, become a 
 vital part of this association, for he does not bring 
 with him the cast of ideas in which its bond of union 
 lies. This cast of ideas is naturally in the main that 
 of the most powerful and prominent part of the 
 association the aristocracy. The professions 
 furnish the more numerous but less prominent part ; 
 in no country, accordingly, do the professions so 
 naturally and generally share the cast of ideas of 
 the aristocracy as in England. Judged from its 
 bad side, this cast of ideas is characterised by over- 
 reverence for things established, by an estrangement 
 from the powers of reason and science. Judged 
 from its good side, it is characterised by a high spirit, 
 by dignity, by a just sense of the greatness of great 
 affairs all of them governing qualities ; and the 
 professions have accordingly long recruited the 
 governing force of the aristocracy, and assisted it to 
 rule. But they are separate, to a degree unknown 
 on the Continent, from the commercial and industrial 
 classes with which in social standing they are 
 naturally on a level. So we have amongst us the 
 spectacle of a middle class cut in two in a way 
 unexampled anywhere else ; of a professional class 
 brought up on the first plane, with fine and governing 
 qualities, but disinclined to rely on reason and 
 science ; while that immense business class, which 
 is becoming so important a power in all countries,
 
 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 191 
 
 on which the future so much depends, and which 
 in the great public schools of other countries fills 
 so large a place, is in England brought up on the 
 second plane, cut off from the aristocracy and the 
 professions, and without governing qualities. 
 
 If only, in compensation, it had science, sys- 
 tematic knowledge, reason ! But here comes in 
 the intellectual mischief of the bad condition of the 
 mass of our secondary schools. In England the 
 business class is not only inferior to the professions 
 and aristocracy in the social stamp of its places of 
 training ; it is actually inferior to them, maimed and 
 incomplete as their development of reason is, in 
 its development of reason. Short as the offspring 
 of our public schools and universities come of the 
 idea of science and systematic knowledge, the off- 
 spring of our middle-class academies probably come, 
 if that be possible, even shorter. What these 
 academies fail to give in social and governing 
 qualities, they do not make up for in intellectual 
 power. Their intellectual result is as faulty as their 
 social result. 
 
 If this be true, then that our middle class does 
 not yet itself see the defects of its own education, 
 is not conscious of the injury to itself from them, 
 and is satisfied with things as they are, is no 
 reason for regarding this state of things without 
 disquietude. 
 
 " Higher Schools and Universities in Germany," chap, ix. 
 p. 187.
 
 192 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 
 
 Relative Efficiency of Public and Private 
 Schools 
 
 FROM the moment you seriously desire to have your 
 schools efficient, the question between public and 
 private schools is settled. Of public schools you 
 can take guarantees, of private schools you cannot. 
 Guarantees cannot be absolutely certain. It is 
 possible for a private school, which has given no 
 guarantees, to be good ; it is possible for a public 
 school, which has given guarantees, to be bad. But 
 even in England the disbelief in human reason is 
 hardly strong enough to make us seriously contend 
 that a rational being cannot frame for a known 
 purpose guarantees which give him, at any rate, more 
 numerous chances of reaching that purpose than he 
 would have without them. 
 
 " Higher Schools and Universities in Germany," p. 200. 
 
 Functions of a Council of Education 
 
 A HIGH Council of Education, such as exists in 
 France, and Italy, comprising without regard to 
 politics the personages most proper to be heard 
 on questions of public education, a consultative body 
 only, but whose opinion the minister should be 
 obliged to take on all important measures not 
 purely administrative, would be an invaluable aid 
 to an English Education Minister, an invaluable 
 institution in our too political country. 
 
 One or two matters which I have already 
 approached or touched in the course of this volume
 
 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 193 
 
 are matters on which it would be the natural function 
 of such a Council to advise. It would be its function 
 to advise on the propriety of subjecting children 
 under a certain age to competitive examination,, in 
 order to determine their admission to public founda- 
 tions. It would be its function to advise on the 
 employment of the examination test for the public 
 service ; whether this security should, as at present, 
 be relied on exclusively, or whether it should not 
 be preceded by securities for the applicant having 
 previously passed a certain time under training and 
 teachers of a certain character, and stood certain 
 examinations in connection with that training. 
 It would be its function to advise on the organisation 
 of school and university examinations, and their 
 adjustment to one another. It would be its function 
 to advise on the graduation of schools in proper 
 stages, from the elementary to the highest school ; 
 it would be its function to advise on school books, 
 and, above all, on studies, and on the plan of work 
 for schools ; a business which, as I have said, is 
 more and more inviting discussion and ripening for 
 settlement. We have excellent materials in England 
 for such a Council. Properly composed, and pro- 
 perly representing the grave interests concerned in 
 the questions it has to treat, it would not only have 
 great weight with the minister, but great weight 
 as an illustrious, unpaid, deliberative, and non- 
 ministerial body, with the country, and would 
 greatly strengthen the minister's hand for important 
 reforms. 
 
 " Higher Schools and Universities in Germany," pp. 201-203. 
 
 O
 
 I 9 4 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 
 
 Public Supervision of Endowed Schools 
 
 SOME of our present chief schools, like Eton and 
 Westminster and Christ's Hospital, are royal founda- 
 tions. Here the right of the State to have a share 
 in the whole administration of the institution, and a 
 voice in the nomination of the masters, immediately 
 arises. Others, like Winchester, Rugby, and Harrow, 
 are not royal foundations, but all of them are founda- 
 tion schools, and therefore to all of them, as such, a 
 right of public supervision applies. The best form 
 this supervision can possibly take is that of a partici- 
 pation, as in Germany, by the public authority 
 represented through the Provincial School Boards 
 or through members of the High Council of Educa- 
 tion, in their main examinations. On these examina- 
 tions matriculation at the university, and access to all 
 the higher lines of public employment should be made 
 to depend. The pupils of private schools should be 
 admitted to undergo them. In this way every 
 endowed school in the kingdom would have yearly 
 an all-important examination following a line traced 
 or sanctioned by the most competent authority, 
 the Superior Council of Education ; and with a 
 direct or indirect representation of this authority 
 taking part in it. The organisation of studies in 
 our very best schools could not fail to gain by this ; 
 in all but the very best it would be its regeneration. 
 Even in England, where the general opinion would 
 be opposed to requiring, as in Germany, for the 
 appointment of all public schoolmasters the sanction 
 of a public authority, there could be no respectable
 
 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 195 
 
 objection urged to such a mode of public intervention 
 as this ; the one bulwark, to repeat Wilhelm von 
 Humboldt's words, which we can set up against 
 the misuse of their patronage by private trustees. 
 And we should at the same time get the happiest 
 check put to the cram and bad teaching of private 
 schools, by compelling them either to adjust their 
 studies to sound and serious examinations, or to 
 cease to impose upon the credulity of ignorant 
 parents. 
 
 " Higher Schools and Universities in Germany," pp. 206-208. 
 
 English Universities merely Hauts Lycees 
 
 THE want of the idea of science, of systematic know- 
 ledge, is, as I have said again and again, the capital 
 want, at this moment, of English education and of 
 English life ; it is the university, or the superior 
 school, which ought to foster this idea. The 
 university or the superior school ought to provide 
 facilities, after the general education is finished, 
 for the young man to go on in the line where his 
 special aptitudes lead him, be it that of languages 
 and literature, of mathematics, of the natural 
 sciences, of the application of these sciences, or any 
 other line, and follow the studies of this line syste- 
 matically under first-rate teaching. Our great 
 universities, Oxford and Cambridge, do next to 
 nothing towards this end. They are, as Signer 
 Matteucci called them, hauls lycees; and though 
 invaluable in their way as places where the youth 
 of the upper class prolong to a very great age,
 
 1 96 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 
 
 and under some very admirable influences, their 
 school education, and though in this respect to be 
 envied by the youth of the upper class abroad, and, 
 if possible, instituted for their benefit, yet, with 
 their college and tutor system, nay, with their 
 examination and degree system, they are still, in 
 fact, schools, and do not carry education beyond the 
 stage of general and school education. The examina- 
 tion for the degree of bachelor of arts, which we 
 place at the end of our three years' university course, 
 is merely the Abiturientenexamen of Germany, the 
 fyreuve du baccalaureat of France, placed in both of 
 these countries at the entrance to university studies 
 instead of, as with us, at their close. Scientific 
 instruction, university instruction, really begins 
 when the degree of bachelor (bas chevalier, knight 
 of low degree) is taken, and the preparation for 
 mastership in any line of study, or for doctorship 
 (fitness to teach it), commences. But for master- 
 ship or doctorship, Oxford and Cambridge have, 
 as is well known, either no examination at all, or 
 an examination which is a mere form ; they have 
 consequently no instruction directed to these grades ; 
 no real university-instruction, therefore, at all. A 
 machinery for such instruction they have, indeed, 
 in their possession ; but it is notorious that they 
 do not practically use it. 
 
 " Higher Schools and Universities in Germany," pp. 209-210. 
 
 Provincial Universities Foreshadowed 
 IT is with our superior instruction as with so much 
 else ; we have plenty of scattered materials, but
 
 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 197 
 
 these materials need to be co-ordered, and made, 
 instead of being useless or getting in one another's 
 way as at present, to work harmoniously to one great 
 design. The design should be, to form centres of 
 superior instruction in at least ten different parts 
 of England, with first-rate professors to give this 
 instruction. These professors should of course be 
 grouped in faculties, each faculty having its dean. 
 So entirely have Oxford and Cambridge become mere 
 hauls lycees, so entirely has the very idea of a real 
 university been lost by them, that the professors 
 there are not even organised in faculties ; and their 
 action is on this account alone, if it were not on other 
 accounts also, perfectly feeble and incoherent. The 
 action of professors grouped in faculties, and con- 
 certing, as the professors and Privatdocenten of a 
 faculty concert in Germany, their instruction to- 
 gether, is quite another thing. In a place like 
 London all the five faculties of arts, mathematical 
 and natural sciences, theology, law, and medicine, 
 should, of course, be represented ; but it is by no 
 means necessary that each centre of superior 
 instruction should have all these five faculties. 
 
 " Higher Schools and Universities in Germany," pp. 218-219. 
 
 Limitation of Degree-Giving Powers 
 
 NEITHER is it by any means necessary, or even 
 expedient, that each centre of faculties should have 
 the power of conferring degrees. To maintain a 
 uniform standard of examination and a uniform 
 value for degrees is most important, and this is
 
 198 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 
 
 impossible when there are too many bodies examining 
 for degrees and giving them. Germany suffers from 
 having too many universities granting degrees, and 
 from these degrees bearing a very unequal value. 
 We have two very old and important universities, 
 Oxford and Cambridge ; one new and important 
 university, London, and we want no more degree- 
 granting bodies than these. 
 
 " Higher Schools and Universities in Germany," p. 220. 
 
 State Appointment of Professors 
 
 IT is not from any love of bureaucracy that men like 
 Wilhelm von Humboldt, ardent friends of human 
 dignity and liberty, have had recourse to a depart- 
 ment of State in organising universities ; it is because 
 an Education Minister supplies you, for the discharge 
 of certain critical functions, the agent who will 
 perform them in the greatest blaze of daylight and 
 with the keenest sense of responsibility. Convoca- 
 tion made me formerly a professor ; and I am very 
 grateful to Convocation ; but Convocation is not a 
 fit body to have the appointment of professors. It 
 is far too numerous, and the sense of responsibility 
 does not tell upon it strongly enough. A board is 
 not a fit body to have the appointment of professors ; 
 men will connive at a job as members of a board 
 who single-handed would never have perpetrated 
 it. Even the Crown that is, the Prime Minister 
 is not the fit power to have the appointment of 
 professors ; for the Prime Minister is, above all, a 
 political functionary, and feels political influences
 
 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 199 
 
 overwhelmingly. An Education Minister, directly 
 representing all the interests of learning and intelli- 
 gence in this great country, a full mark for their 
 criticism and conscious of his responsibility to them, 
 that is the power to whom to give the appointment of 
 professors, not for his own sake, but for the sake of 
 public education. 
 
 " Higher Schools and Universities in Germany," pp. 222-223. 
 
 Training a Better Security of Fitness than 
 Examinations 
 
 THE end to have in view is, that every one who 
 presents himself to exercise any calling shall have 
 received for a certain length of time the best in- 
 struction preliminary to that calling. This is not, 
 it must be repeated again and again, an absolute 
 security for his exercising the calling well, but it is 
 the best security. It is a thousand times better 
 security than the mere examination-test on which 
 with such ignorant confidence we are now, in cases 
 where we take any security at all, leaning with our 
 whole weight. 
 
 " Higher Schools and Universities in Germany," p. 225. 
 
 The English Character 
 
 BUT afterwards the conversation became general. 
 It then took a wider range ; and I remember Mr. 
 Frederic Harrison beginning to harangue, with his 
 usual fiery eloquence, on the enervation of England 
 and on the malignancy of all the brute mass of us
 
 200 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 
 
 who are not Comtists. Arminius checked him. 
 " Enervation ! " said he : " depend upon it, yours 
 is still the most fighting people in the whole world. 
 Malignancy ! The best character of the English 
 people ever yet given, friendly as the character is, 
 is still this of Burke's : ' The ancient and inbred 
 integrity, piety, good nature, and good humour of 
 the people of England.' Your nation is sound 
 enough, if only it can be taught that being able to do 
 what one likes, and say what one likes, is not suffi- 
 cient for salvation. Its dangers are from a surfeit 
 of claptrap, due to the false notion that liberty and 
 publicity are not only valuable for the use to be 
 made of them, but are goods in themselves, nay, 
 are the summum bonum." 
 
 1871. " Friendship's Garland," Dedicatory Letter. 
 
 Obedience and Right Action 
 
 "THERE are many lessons to be learned from the 
 present war ; I will tell you what is for you the 
 great lesson to be learned from it : obedience. That, 
 instead of every man airing his self-consequence, 
 thinking it bliss to talk at random about things, 
 and to put his finger in every pie, you should 
 seriously understand that there is a right way of 
 doing things, and that the bliss is, without thinking 
 of one's self-consequence, to do them in that way, or 
 to forward their being done, this is the great lesson 
 your British public, as you call it, has to learn, and 
 may learn, in some degree, from the Germans in this 
 war ! Englishmen were once famous for the power
 
 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 201 
 
 of holding their tongues and doing their business, and, 
 therefore, I admire your nation. The business now 
 to be done in the world is harder than ever, and 
 needs far more than has been ever needed for thought, 
 study, and seriousness ; miscarry you must, if you 
 let your daily doses of clap-trap make you imagine 
 that liberty and publicity can be any substitutes for 
 these." 
 
 " Friendship's Garland," p. xii. 
 
 National Need of a Serious Conception of 
 Righteousness 
 
 IT is an unspeakable relief to have the war, I suppose, 
 over ; but one may well look anxiously to see what 
 is in the future for the changed Europe that we shall 
 have. Immense as are her advantages and resources, 
 it does not seem as if France could recover herself 
 now as she did in 1815, or indeed could recover 
 herself within our time at all. Whatever may be 
 said of the harshness of such a sentence, it is yet 
 true that her fall is mainly due to that want of a 
 serious conception of righteousness and the need of 
 it, the consequences of which so often show them- 
 selves in the world's history, and in regard to the 
 Graeco-Latin nations more particularly. The fall 
 of Greece, the fall of Rome, the fall of the brilliant 
 Italy of the fifteenth century, and now the fall of 
 France, are all examples. Nothing gives more 
 freshness and depth to one's reading of the Bible 
 than the sense that this is so, and that this testimony
 
 202 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 
 
 is perpetually being borne to the book of righteous- 
 ness, though the nation out of which it came was 
 itself a political failure so utter and miserable. 
 
 "Letters," ii. p. 47. 
 1871. 
 
 Recitation as a Formative Influence 
 
 " RECITATION " is the special subject which produces 
 at present, so far as I can observe, most good. The 
 great fault of the instruction in our elementary 
 schools (of the secular part of it, at any rate), is, 
 that it at most gives to a child the mechanical 
 possession of the instruments of knowledge, but does 
 nothing to form him, to put him in a way of making 
 the best possible use of them. As things now are, 
 the time is not ripe for laying down a theory of how 
 this is to be thoroughly done and following it ; all 
 that can be said is, that what practically will be 
 found to contribute most towards forming a pupil 
 is familiarity with masterpieces ; familiarity with 
 them, for the less advanced pupil, in a very limited 
 number and with each object of his study standing 
 singly ; for the more advanced pupil, in a series 
 arranged according to some well-planned order. If 
 the " recitation " is carefully watched, as to the 
 authors and pieces selected, it does give us something, 
 though only a commencement, of that which for the 
 less advanced pupil is needed. I can already see the 
 good effects of it, and they may be extended much 
 further. Music, now that instruction in it is made 
 universal, ought to lay the foundation in the children
 
 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 203 
 
 of our elementary schools of a cultivated power of 
 perception ; " recitation," in the present absence of 
 any attempt even to raise their reading into some- 
 thing of a literary study, must be relied upon for 
 carrying the power of perception onward. 
 
 General Report, for 1872. 
 
 Latin in Elementary Schools 
 
 IT may seem over-sanguine, but I hope to see 
 Latin, also, much more used as a special subject, and 
 even adopted, finally, as part of the regular instruc- 
 tion in the upper classes of all elementary schools. 
 Of course, I mean Latin studied in a very simple 
 way ; but I am more and more struck with the 
 stimulating and instructing effect upon a child's 
 mind of possessing a second language, in however 
 limited a degree, as an object of reference and com- 
 parison. Latin is the foundation of so much in the 
 written and spoken language of modern Europe, that 
 it is the best language to take as a second language ; 
 in our own written and book language, above all, it 
 fills so large a part that we, perhaps, hardly know 
 how much of their reading falls meaningless upon 
 the eye and ear of children in our elementary schools, 
 from their total ignorance of either Latin or a 
 modern language derived from it. For the little 
 of languages that can be taught in our elementary 
 schools, it is far better to go to the root at once ; 
 and Latin, besides, is the best of all languages to 
 learn grammar by. But it should by no means be 
 taught as in our classical schools ; far less time
 
 204 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 
 
 should be spent on the grammatical framework, and 
 classical literature should be left quite out of view. 
 A second language, and a language coming very 
 largely into the vocabulary of modern nations, is 
 what Latin should stand for to the teacher of an 
 elementary school. I am convinced that for his 
 purpose the best way would be to disregard classical 
 Latin entirely, to use neither Cornelius Nepos, nor 
 Eutropius, nor Caesar, nor any delectus from them, 
 but to use the Latin Bible, the Vulgate. A chapter 
 or two from the story of Joseph, a chapter or two 
 from Deuteronomy, and the first two chapters of St. 
 Luke's Gospel would be the sort of delectus we want ; 
 add to them a vocabulary and a simple grammar of 
 the main forms of the Latin language, and you have a 
 perfectly compact and cheap school book, and yet all 
 that you need. In the extracts the child would be 
 at home, instead of, as in extracts from classical 
 Latin, in an utterly strange land ; and the Latin of 
 the Vulgate, while it is real and living Latin, is yet, 
 like the Greek of the New Testament, much nearer 
 to modern idiom, and therefore much easier for a 
 modern learner than classical idiom can be. True, 
 a child whose delectus is taken from Cornelius Nepos 
 or Caesar will be better prepared, perhaps, for going 
 on to Virgil and Cicero than a child whose delectus 
 is taken from the Vulgate. But we do not want to 
 carry our elementary schools into Virgil or Cicero ; 
 one child in 5000, with a special talent, may go on 
 to higher schools and to Virgil, and he will go on to 
 them all the better for the little we have at any 
 rate given him. But what we want to give to our
 
 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 205 
 
 elementary schools in general is the vocabulary, to 
 some extent, of a second language, and that language 
 one which is at the bottom of a great deal of modern 
 life and modern language. This, I am convinced, 
 we may give in some such method as the method I 
 have above suggested, but in no other. I strongly 
 urge the teachers of our leading elementary schools, 
 and all who are interested in raising the instruction 
 in these schools, to reflect on what I have here 
 said. 
 
 General Report, 1872. 
 
 Educational Interest of "A Bible Reading for 
 Schools " 
 
 INTO the education of the people there comes, with 
 us, at any rate, absolutely nothing grand ; now there 
 is a fatal omission (alles Grandioses bildet, as Goethe 
 says), and my little book in an attempt to remedy it. 
 I am afraid it will be used first in schools of a higher 
 kind, but I am not without hope it will reach the 
 Volksschule at last. 
 
 1872. " Letters," ii. p. 86. 
 
 Importance of Letters in Schools for the 
 People 
 
 AND why is the attempt made ? It is made because 
 of my conviction of the immense importance in 
 education of what is called letters ; of the side which 
 engages our feelings and imagination. Science, the 
 side which engages our faculty of exact knowledge,
 
 2o6 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 
 
 may have been too much neglected ; more par- 
 ticularly this may have been so as regards our know- 
 ledge of nature. This is probably true of our 
 secondary schools and universities. But on our 
 schools for the people (by this good German name let 
 us call them, to mark the overwhelmingly pre- 
 ponderant share which falls to them in the work 
 of national education) the power of letters has hardly 
 been brought to bear at all ; certainly it has not 
 been brought to bear in excess, as compared with 
 the power of the natural sciences. And now, 
 perhaps, it is less likely than ever to be brought to 
 bear. The natural sciences are in high favour ; it 
 is felt that they have been unduly neglected, they 
 have gifted and brilliant men for their advocates, 
 schools for the people offer some special facilities for 
 introducing them ; on the other hand, the Bible, 
 which would naturally be the great vehicle for 
 conveying the power of letters into these schools, is 
 withdrawn from the list of matters with which 
 Government inspection concerns itself, and, so far, 
 from attention. At the same time, good com- 
 pendiums for the teaching of the natural sciences 
 in schools for the people are coming forth ; and 
 the advantage to any branch of study of possessing 
 good and compendious text-books it is impossible to 
 overrate. The several natural sciences, too, from 
 their limited and definite character, admit better of 
 being advantageously presented by short text-books 
 than such a wide and indefinite subject-matter 
 nothing less than the whole history of the human 
 spirit as that which belongs to letters ; and this
 
 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 207 
 
 inherent advantage men of skill and talent, like the 
 authors of the text-books I speak of, are just the 
 people to turn to the best account. So that at the 
 very time when the friends of the natural sciences 
 have the public favour with them in saying to 
 letters : " Give place, you have had more than your 
 share of attention ! " their case is still further 
 improved by their being able to produce their own 
 well-planned text-books for physics, and then to 
 point to the literary text-books now in use in schools 
 for the people, and to say to the friend of letters : 
 " And this is what you have to offer ! this is what 
 you make such a fuss over! this is what you keep our 
 studies out in the cold for ! " And in truth, while 
 for those branches of study which belong partly to 
 letters, partly to science language, geography, 
 history our schools for the people have no text- 
 books meriting comparison with the new text-books 
 in physics, the schools are in a worse plight still when 
 we come to their means of acquainting their scholars 
 with letters strictly so called, with poetry, philosophy, 
 eloquence. A succession of pieces not in general 
 well-chosen, fragmentary, presented without any 
 order or plan, and very ill-comprehended by the 
 pupil, is what our schools for the people give as 
 letters ; and the effect wrought by letters in these 
 schools may be said, therefore, to be absolutely 
 null. 
 
 " A Bible Reading for Schools," pp. vi-vii.
 
 2o8 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 
 
 Value of a Classical Education 
 
 IT is through the apprehension, either of all litera- 
 ture the entire history of the human spirit or of 
 a single great literary work, as a connected whole, 
 that the real power of letters makes itself felt. Our 
 leading secondary schools give the best share of 
 their time to the literature of Greece and Rome. 
 We shall not blame them for it ; this literature is, 
 indeed, only a part of the history of the human spirit, 
 but it is a very important part. Yet how little, 
 let us remark, do they conceive this literature as a 
 whole ! how little, therefore, do they get at its 
 significance ! how little do they know it ! how little 
 does it become a power, in their hands, towards 
 wide and complete knowledge ! N But though in our 
 secondary schools the scholar is not led to apprehend 
 Greek and Latin literature as a whole, he is (and this 
 is a very important matter) led and often enabled to 
 lay hold of single great works or connected portions 
 of great works, of that literature as wholes. Even 
 supposing that the Iliad and Odyssey and Aeneid and 
 Oresteia are seldom entirely read at school, yet 
 we must admit that portions of the Iliad, Odyssey, 
 and Aeneid, and single plays of the Oresteia do form 
 important wholes by themselves, and that all the 
 upper scholars in our chief schools have read them. 
 What these scholars read or learn of English litera- 
 ture may be no more than what the scholars in our 
 schools for the people read or learn of it short 
 single pieces, or else bits detached here and there 
 from longer works. But the last book of the Iliad,
 
 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 209 
 
 or the sixth book of the Aeneid, or the Agamemnon, 
 are considerable wholes in themselves, and these 
 and other wholes of like beauty and magnitude they 
 do read. And all their training has been such as 
 to help them to understand what they read ; they 
 have always been hearing and learning (far too much 
 so, many people think) about the objects and 
 personages they meet with in it ; Helicon and 
 Parnassus are far more familiar names to them than 
 Snowdon or Skiddaw ; Troy and Mycenae than Berlin 
 or Vienna ; Zeus and Phoebus than the gods of 
 their own ancestors, Odin and Thor. So they are 
 brought into " the presence and the power of great- 
 ness," as Wordsworth calls it, in these indisputably 
 great works and great wholes ; and when they are 
 so brought, they may, if they attend, " perceive " 
 it ; they have the equipment of notions and of 
 previous information qualifying them to perceive 
 it. Now to know what Greece is, as a factor in the 
 history of the human spirit, is one thing ; to take in 
 and enjoy the Agamemnon is another. But each 
 is a whole ; the two wholes are of a very different 
 degree of value, nevertheless the second is a whole, 
 and a worthy whole, as well as the first ; and the 
 apprehension of it leads, however rudimentarily, 
 towards the first, and towards the whole of which 
 the first is itself but a part. For it tends how much 
 we cannot exactly determine, not much in one case, 
 in another more than we could have believed possible 
 it does tend, as Wordsworth again says, in lines 
 which if not exactly good verse are at any rate good 
 philosophy, to 
 
 p
 
 210 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 
 
 " Nourish imagination in her growth, 
 And give the mind that apprehensive power, 
 Whereby she is made quick to recognise 
 The moral properties and scope of things." 
 
 " A Bible Reading for Schools," pp. vii-viii. 
 
 Relation of Classical to Modern Poetry 
 
 IN general, the scholars in our schools for the people 
 come in contact with English literature in a mere 
 fragmentary way, by short pieces or by odds and 
 ends ; and the power of a great work as a whole 
 they have, therefore, no chance of feeling. But 
 attempts are now sometimes made to acquaint them 
 with some whole work, which is supposed to be 
 clear and simple, such as, for instance, Goldsmith's 
 Deserted Village or his Traveller. The Deserted 
 Village and the Traveller, works of a very different 
 rank from the same author's Vicar of Wakefield, 
 may be called good poems, but they are good 
 poems amongst poetry of the second or even the 
 third order, and it would be absurd to speak of 
 feeling the power of poetry through them as one 
 feels it through the Agamemnon. But besides this, 
 the modern literatures have so grown up under the 
 influence of the literature of Greece and Rome, that 
 the forms, fashions, notions, wordings, allusions of 
 that literature have got deeply into them, and are 
 an indispensable preparation for understanding 
 them ; now this preparation the scholars in our 
 secondary schools, we have seen, have ; all their 
 training is such as to give it them, and it has thus
 
 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 211 
 
 passed into all the life and speech of what are called 
 the cultivated classes. The people are without it ; 
 and how much of English literature is, therefore, 
 almost unintelligible to the people, or at least to the 
 people in their commencements of learning to the 
 children of the people we can hardly perhaps enough 
 convince ourselves. What the people can under- 
 stand is such speech as 
 
 " He sees his little lot the lot of all ; " 
 
 but how small a proportion do lines like these bear, in 
 Goldsmith's poetry, to lines like 
 
 " The pregnant quarry teem'd with human form." 
 
 Or 
 
 " See opulence, her grandeur to maintain. 
 Lead stern depopulation in her train ; " 
 
 and everything of this kind falls on the ear of the 
 people simply as words without meaning. Such 
 diction is a reminiscence, bad or good, of Latin 
 literature with its highly artificial manner ; and 
 such has been the influence of classical antiquity 
 that this sort of diction, and the sort of notions that 
 go with it, pervade in some shape or other nearly 
 all our literature pervade works of infinitely higher 
 merit than these poems of Goldsmith. And where- 
 ever this sort of diction and of notions presents 
 itself, the people, one may say generally, are thrown 
 out. A preparation is required which they have not 
 had. 
 
 " A Bible Reading for Schools," pp. ix-x.
 
 212 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 
 
 The Bible the only Possible Classic for the 
 People 
 
 ONLY one literature there is, one great literature, 
 for which the people have had a preparation the 
 literature of the Bible. However far they may be 
 from having a complete preparation for it, they have 
 some ; and it is the only great literature for which 
 they have any. Their bringing up, what they have 
 heard and talked of ever since they were born, have 
 given them no sort of conversance with the forms, 
 fashions, notions, wordings, allusions, of literature 
 having its source in Greece and Rome ; but they have 
 given them a good deal of conversance with the 
 forms, fashions, notions, wordings, allusions, of the 
 Bible. Zion and Babylon are their Athens and 
 Rome, their Ida and Olympus are Tabor and 
 Hermon, Sharon is their Tempe ; these and the like 
 Bible names can reach their imagination, kindle 
 trains of thought and remembrance in them. The 
 elements with which the literature of Greece and 
 Rome conjures, have no power on them ; the elements 
 with which the literature of the Bible conjures, have. 
 Therefore I have so often insisted, in reports to the 
 Education Department, on the need, if from this 
 point of view only, for the Bible in schools for the 
 people. If poetry, philosophy, and eloquence, if 
 what we call in one word letters, are a power, and a 
 beneficent wonder-working power, in education, 
 through the Bible only have the people much chance 
 of getting at poetry, philosophy, and eloquence. 
 Perhaps I may here quote what I have at former
 
 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 213 
 
 times said : " Chords of power are touched by this 
 instruction which no other part of the instruction 
 in a popular school reaches, and chords various, not 
 the single religious chord only. The Bible is for 
 the child in an elementary school almost his only 
 contact with poetry and philosophy. What a 
 course of eloquence and poetry (to call it by that 
 name alone) is the Bible in a school which has and 
 can have but little eloquence and poetry ! and how 
 much do our elementary schools lose by not having 
 any such source as part of their school-programme. 
 All who value the Bible may rest assured that thus 
 to know and possess the Bible is the most certain 
 way to extend the power and efficacy of the Bible." 
 
 " A Bible Reading for Schools," pp. x-xi. 
 
 Hindrances to Bible Reading in Schools 
 
 I ABSTAIN from touching here on the political and 
 ecclesiastical causes which obstruct such a use of 
 the Bible in our popular schools. A cause more 
 real is to be found in the conditions which at present 
 rule our Bible-reading itself. If letters are a power, 
 and if the first stage in feeling this power is, as we 
 have seen, to apprehend certain great works as 
 connected wholes, then it must be said that there 
 are hardly any means at present for enabling young 
 learners to get at this power through the Bible. 
 And for two reasons. The Catholics taunted the 
 Reformers with their Bible-Babel; and indeed that 
 grand and vast miscellany which presents itself to 
 us between the two covers of the Bible has in it
 
 214 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 
 
 something overpowering and bewildering. And its 
 mass has never been grappled with, and separated, 
 and had clear and connected wholes taken from it 
 and arranged so that learners can use them, as the 
 literature of Greece and Rome has. The Bible 
 stands before the learner as an immense whole ; 
 yet to know the Bible as a whole, to know it in its 
 historical aspect and in its connection, to have a 
 systematic acquaintance with its documents, is as 
 great an affair as to know Greek literature as a whole ; 
 and we have seen how far our best education is 
 from accomplishing this. But our best education 
 does at any rate prepare the way for it, by presenting 
 to the learner great connected wholes from Greek 
 literature, like the Agamemnon, and does give the 
 learner every help for understanding them ; nothing 
 or next to nothing of this kind has been done for 
 the Bible. This is one reason why the fruitful use 
 of the Bible, as literature, in our schools for the 
 people, is at present almost impossible. The other 
 reason lies in the defects of our translation, noble 
 as it is ; defects which abound most in those very 
 parts of the Bible which, considered merely as 
 literature, might have most power. Grant that we 
 had definite wholes taken out of those parts of the 
 Bible which exhibit its poetry and eloquence most 
 conspicuously ; grant that these wholes were 
 furnished with all the explanations and helps for 
 the young learner with which a Greek master- 
 piece is furnished ; he would still again and again 
 be thrown out by finding what he reads, though 
 English, though his mother tongue, though always
 
 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 215 
 
 rhythmical, always nobly sounding, yet fail to be 
 intelligible, fail to give a connexion with what 
 precedes and follows, fail, as we commonly say, to 
 make sense. This is a more serious matter than we 
 might perhaps think. To be thrown out by a 
 passage clean unintelligible, impairs and obscures 
 the reader's understanding of much more than that 
 particular passage itself ; the entire connexion of 
 ideas is broken for him and he has to begin again ; 
 and after several such passages have occurred in 
 succession, he often reads languidly and hopelessly 
 where he had begun to read with animation and 
 joy ; or, at any rate, even if the beauty of single 
 phrases and verses still touches him, yet all grasp on 
 his subject as a whole is gone. But we have seen 
 that it is by being apprehended as a whole, that the 
 true power of a work of literature makes itself felt. 
 
 " A Bible Reading for Schools," pp. xi-xii. 
 
 Disregard of the Civilising Power of Letters 
 
 AN ounce of practice, they say, is better than a pound 
 of theory ; and certainly one may talk for ever 
 about the wonder-working power of letters, and yet 
 produce no good at all, unless one really puts people 
 in the way of feeling this power. The friends of 
 physics do not content themselves with extolling 
 physics ; they put forth school-books by which the 
 study of physics may be with proper advantage 
 brought near to those who before were strangers to 
 it ; and they do wisely. For any one who believes 
 in the civilising power of letters and often talks of
 
 216 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 
 
 this belief, to think that he has for more than twenty 
 years got his living by inspecting schools for the 
 people, has gone in and out among them, has seen 
 that the power of letters never reaches them at all 
 and that the whole study of letters is thereby dis- 
 credited, and its power called in question, and yet 
 has attempted nothing to remedy this state of things, 
 cannot but be vexing and disquieting. He may truly 
 say, like the Israel of the prophet : " We have not 
 wrought any deliverance in the earth ! " and he 
 may well desire to do something to pay his debt to 
 popular education before he finally departs, and to 
 serve it, if he can, in that point where its need is 
 sorest, where he has always said its need was sorest, 
 and where, nevertheless, it is as sore still as when 
 he began saying this, twenty years ago. Even if 
 what he does cannot be of service at once, owing to 
 special prejudices and difficulties, yet these pre- 
 judices and difficulties years are almost sure to 
 dissipate, and it may be of service hereafter. 
 
 " A Bible Reading for Schools," p. xii 
 
 Culture Needed for All 
 
 THE poor require culture as much as the rich ; and 
 at present their education, even when they get 
 education, gives them hardly anything of it. Yet 
 hardly less of it, perhaps, than the education of 
 the rich gives to the rich. For when we say that 
 culture is : To know the best that has been thought 
 and said in the world, we imply that, for culture, a 
 system directly tending to this end is necessary
 
 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 217 
 
 in our reading. Now, there is no such system yet 
 present to guide the reading of the rich, any more 
 than of the poor. Such a system is hardly even 
 thought of ; a man who wants it must make it 
 for himself. And our reading being so without 
 purpose as it is, nothing can be truer than what 
 Butler says, that really, in general, no part of our 
 time is more idly spent than the time spent in reading. 
 Still, culture is indispensably necessary, and 
 culture implies reading ; but reading with a purpose 
 to guide it, and with system. He does a good work 
 who does anything to help this ; indeed, it is the 
 one essential service now to be rendered to educa- 
 tion. And the plea, that this or that man has no 
 time for culture, will vanish as soon as we desire 
 culture so much that we begin to examine seriously 
 our present use of our time. It has often been said , 
 and cannot be said too often : Give to any man all 
 the time that he now wastes, not only on his vices 
 (when he has them), but on useless business, weari- 
 some or deteriorating amusements, trivial letter- 
 writing, random reading ; and he will have plenty 
 of time for culture. " Die Zeit ist unendlich lang," 
 says Goethe ; and so it really is. Some of us waste 
 all of it, most of us waste much, but all of us waste 
 some. 
 
 "Literature and Dogma," pp. 71-73. 
 
 German and English Law-Making 
 LAWS in Germany about public instruction come from 
 statesmen, and so too, it may be said, do laws in
 
 2i8 THOUGHTS 'ON EDUCATION 
 
 England. Now, a statesman can hardly rise to 
 power without being superior in range of experience 
 and largeness of judgment to the mass of mankind ; 
 at least, if he can, it speaks ill for those who employ 
 him. And, in Germany, a law about public in- 
 struction may be taken to be the best which a states- 
 man, superior to the bulk of the community in 
 experience and judgment, and free to use these 
 unhampered, can devise. But we in England are, 
 as is well known, a self-governing people. This is 
 probably in the long run the best possible training 
 for a nation, but let us observe how it acts on our 
 statesmen and on our law-making. A statesman 
 having to make a law about public instruction is 
 not, with us, free to make it according to the best 
 lights of his own experience and judgment ; he 
 is hampered by the likes and dislikes of the bulk 
 of the community ; or of some large body or bodies 
 in the community which are necessary to his support. 
 And of the men in general who compose these the 
 judgment and experience are, by the supposition 
 we follow, and indeed by the very nature of things, 
 inferior to his own. Probably at the very best it 
 will be a give and take between him and them ; he 
 will concede something to their prejudices, and will 
 try, along with this concession, to slip in as much of 
 what he judges to be really right and expedient as 
 he can. But the more he slips in of this the less he 
 will tell the body of his supporters that their pre- 
 judices are prejudices ; he will even make out, 
 in passing, the best case for these he can, and will 
 soothe and humour them, in order that what he
 
 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 219 
 
 does gain he may gain safely. Therefore in any 
 matter which, like education, touches many passions 
 and prejudices, we do not get the best our statesmen 
 would naturally devise ; and what we do get is given 
 in a manner not to correct popular prejudices, but 
 rather to humour them. Our statesmen, therefore, 
 and their measures do directly hardly anything to 
 check and set right widespread errors amongst the 
 community. Our most popular newspapers do even 
 less ; because, while they have all the temptations 
 of statesmen to coax popular prejudices rather than 
 counteract them, they have not the same chance of 
 being, by experience and strength of judgment, 
 raised really above them. But it is evident that the 
 whole value of its training, to a nation which gets 
 the training of self-government, depends upon its 
 being told plainly of its mistakes and prejudices ; 
 for mistakes and prejudices a large body will always 
 have, and to follow these without let or hindrance 
 is not the training we want, but freedom to act, 
 with the most searching criticism of our way of 
 acting. 
 
 Now a criticism of our way of acting, in any 
 matter, is tacitly supplied by the practice of foreign 
 nations, in a like manner, put side by side with our 
 practice ; and this criticism by actual examples 
 is more practical, more interesting, and more readily 
 attended to than criticism by speculative arguments. 
 And the practice of Germany supplies a searching 
 criticism of this kind ; for we know how German 
 practice is governed by the notion that what is to 
 be done should be done scientifically, as they say ;
 
 220 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 
 
 that is, according to the reason of the thing, under 
 the direction of experts, and without suffering 
 ignorance and prejudice to intrude. But this 
 criticism our politicians and newspapers having 
 always, as we have seen, to consider the prejudices 
 of those bodies on which they lean for support 
 will never apply stringently and unflinchingly. 
 The practice of foreign nations they will always try 
 to exhibit by a side which may make their own 
 supporters feel proud and comfortable, rather than 
 humiliated and uneasy, and perhaps it is to this 
 cause, even more than to simple carelessness and 
 ignorance, that those inaccurate assertions about 
 foreign universities by our public men, on which 
 foreigners comment, are attributable. Therefore 
 we have always said that in this country the functions 
 of a disinterested literary class a class of non- 
 political writers, having no organised and embodied 
 set of supporters to please, simply setting themselves 
 to observe and report faithfully, and looking for 
 favour to those isolated persons only, scattered 
 throughout the community, whom such an attempt 
 may interest are of incalculable importance. 
 
 1874. " A French Eton," pp. 137-140. 
 
 University Education in Ireland 
 
 Now we come to the principle of the English Govern- 
 ment in regard to university education in Ireland. 
 This principle is, as we have seen, that for the future 
 we must not, in Ireland, endow religion in any way
 
 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 221 
 
 whatever. Now it is remarkable that in the sound- 
 ness of this their principle many of the chief members 
 of the English Government appear, if we may judge 
 by their own admissions, not to believe. 
 
 However, a principle may no doubt be sound, 
 even though its upholders do not themselves believe 
 in it ; the question is, Does the principle of the 
 English Government, when we examine it, turn out 
 to be sound in itself ? Because if it is not, it can 
 never be likely to succeed, much as it may be 
 written up and called a great and necessary principle. 
 So much written up, indeed, it is, and asserted so 
 confidently, that it has come to be treated by a 
 great many people as almost a truism, as something 
 which in its general form, that the State ought to 
 have nothing to do with religion, one must begin by 
 admitting as a matter of course, though circumstances 
 may here and there prevent our as yet shaping our 
 action in conformity to it. A truism, as is well 
 known, is something true, and trite. Now, the 
 principle in question is not exactly a truism, but it is 
 next door to it ; it is what Archbishop Whately 
 used to call a falsism. A truism is something true 
 and trite, and a falsism is something trite and false ; 
 and that is just what the maxim we are now dealing 
 with is ; something trite but false, a falsism. 
 
 " A French Eton," pp. 153-154, 155. 
 
 The Need of Religion 
 
 THE nations of Europe have all provided themselves 
 with an organisation of religion just as they have
 
 222 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 
 
 provided themselves with an organisation of society ; 
 the one was made a public affair for the same reason 
 as the other, because both were felt to interest the 
 public profoundly as human needs of primary 
 importance. And when it is said that this or that 
 thing has not been made a matter of public organisa- 
 tion, and why should religion be, we shall always 
 find, if we look close enough, that this was because 
 the thing in question did not interest the public 
 profoundly, was not held (whatever its real merits 
 may have been) to be a thing worth instituting 
 publicly, a public need of primary importance ; 
 whereas religion was. Religion has been publicly 
 instituted because it is a recognised public need ; 
 it has not been made a public need by being publicly 
 instituted. 
 
 Roman Catholicism does not disappear in Ireland, 
 where it has no public organisation, any more than 
 in Germany, where it has ; but it is a thousand 
 times more superstitious and unprogressive. So 
 that the maxim of Secularism, that the State must 
 have nothing to do with religion, a maxim which is 
 grounded on the notion that the inconveniences 
 of religion will disappear quicker if the State treats 
 it as if it did exist, turns out to be, as we say, 
 a falsism : that is, it is false because the notion on 
 which it is grounded is false, at the same time that 
 it is trite because so many Liberals are constantly 
 saying it. 
 
 The truth is, religion is too great a thing, too 
 universal a want, to be dealt with except nationally. 
 Men in general may think little and feel bluntly ;
 
 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 223 
 
 but the chief exercise of their higher thought and 
 emotion which they have, is their religion. Their 
 conduct may be very imperfect, but the chief guide 
 and stay of conduct, so far as it has any at all, is 
 their religion. Nothing, therefore, is of so much 
 importance to them. 
 
 And the Liberal party so much values itself upon 
 its intelligence that with them we ought to begin, 
 and show them, as we have been trying to show them 
 here, that this old stock maxim of theirs : " The 
 State (that is, the nation in its collective and corporate 
 character) is of no religion," is quite unsound. In 
 exchange for it we ought to solicit them, with a 
 persistency which never tires, to take a better : 
 "It is false to say the State is of no religion ; the 
 State is of the religion of all its citizens without the 
 fanaticism of any of them." 
 
 " A French Eton," pp. 159, 161, 191,201-202. 
 
 State-appointed Professors 
 
 A WISE Government will always regard the nation, 
 and rely on its reasonableness, if its genuine wants 
 and wishes are fairly met, for controlling the un- 
 reasonableness or ambition of individuals or corpora- 
 tions. 
 
 Experience proves that the appointment and 
 dismissal of professors is best in the hands of no 
 corporation less large and public than the nation 
 itself ; your professors shall be nominated and
 
 224 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 
 
 removed ,* not by the bishops, but by a responsible 
 Minister of State acting for the Irish nation itself. 
 
 " A French Eton," pp. 188-189. 
 
 Clap-Trap and Catchwords 
 
 BUT in this and all the matters most important to 
 us, progress, at the point where our nation now 
 stands, depends on our getting just, clear, well- 
 ordered thoughts about them, and setting at 
 defiance clap-trap and catchwords. 
 
 " A French Eton," p. 215. 
 
 Confectioner and Doctor 
 
 BUT for an active politician to go counter to clap-trap 
 is, as we have seen, hard ; and indeed, by the nature 
 of things it must be hard. And therefore it is that 
 we rejoice to see a moment of lull in their active 
 political life come to so many of our Liberal friends, 
 because they thus escape from great temptation, 
 and are set free to use their intelligence. For the 
 active politician can hardly get on without deferring 
 to clap-trap and even employing it. Nay, as 
 Socrates amusingly said, the man who defers to 
 clap-trap and the man who uses his intelligence 
 
 * In the first instance. But the body of Professors once 
 formed, and constituting the Academical Senate, might present 
 names to the minister for vacant professorships. With the 
 minister, however, the ultimate responsibility of appointment 
 and dismissal should always rest.
 
 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 225 
 
 are, when they meet in the struggle of active politics, 
 like a doctor and a confectioner competing for the 
 suffrages of a constituency of schoolboys ; the 
 confectioner has nearly every point in his favour. 
 The confectioner deals in all that the constituency 
 like ; the doctor is a man who hurts them, and makes 
 them leave off what they like and take what is 
 disagreeable. And accordingly the temptation, in 
 dealing with the public and with the trade of active 
 politics, the temptation to be a confectioner is 
 extremely strong, and we see that almost all our 
 leading newspapers and leading politicians do in 
 fact yield to it. 
 
 Only the confectioner is not at this moment 
 what we most require. Our wants are the same as 
 those which made Socrates, again, say, that though 
 himself no confectioner and taking quite another 
 line from the active politicians round him, indeed, 
 just because of this, he, or any man who held the 
 same course as to current clap-trap that he did, 
 " was the only true politician of men now living." 
 
 " A French Eton," pp. 215-216. 
 
 Good Recitation as Helping Intelligence 
 
 THE great majority of my schools now take, I am 
 glad to say, recitation as an extra subject. It is, 
 in my view, that part of the work in elementary 
 schools which does most, under our existing circum- 
 stances, to promote general intelligence. But the 
 passages to be learnt are by no means chosen with 
 
 Q
 
 226 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 
 
 sufficient care, and the learner is still, although 
 there is improvement in this respect, very in- 
 sufficiently taught the sense and allusions of what 
 he recites. More and more the recitation should be 
 turned into a literature lesson. None but classical 
 poetry should be taken ; we are far too much 
 afraid of restriction and uniformity. The young 
 ought in school to be as much as possible restricted 
 to good models ; the merit of the old classical 
 education was that it kept the pupil in continual 
 contact with a few first-rate models. We laugh 
 at the French Minister who took out his watch 
 and said with satisfaction that in all French lycees 
 the boys were at that moment doing the same 
 thing. But really, is it so lamentable to think that 
 all schoolboys should at a given moment be reading 
 the fourth eclogue of Virgil ; or is it so delightful 
 to think that at a given moment all schoolboys may 
 be reading different pieces of rubbish, out of in- 
 numerable and equally accepted collections of it ? 
 
 If the Education Department would yearly name 
 in its syllabus a short work of classical English poetry 
 for the candidates for admission, this work might 
 with great advantage be adopted for the recitation 
 and literature-lesson in the school. Thus carefully 
 studied it would have a good chance of being 
 appropriated and assimilated by both pupils and 
 pupil-teachers, and only thus can such a work 
 produce its due effect. Its due effect, when pro- 
 duced, is invaluable, and is precisely that of which 
 our elementary schools stand most in need. 
 
 These are details ; but it is attention to these
 
 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 227 
 
 details of study, and not to details of mere adminis- 
 tration, which we so much need. I limit myself even 
 as to these details of study, because it is easy to 
 attempt too much, difficult to get teachers to attend 
 to more than one thing at a time. 
 
 General Report, 1874. 
 
 The Regulation of Studies 
 
 I DO not like the course for the History School at 
 all ; nothing but read, read, read, endless histories ! 
 in English, many of them by quite second-rate men ; \ 
 nothing to form the mind as reading truly great 
 authors forms it, or even to exercise it as learning 
 a new language, or mathematics, or one of the 
 natural sciences exercises it. If they merely put 
 in these works in other languages into their History 
 Tripos, Thucydides, Tacitus, and either Montes- 
 quieu's Esprit des Lois, or Guizot's Civilisation in 
 France, the Tripos would be incalculably improved, 
 and would be a real training. As it is, I am not 
 sure that I would not sooner Dick had the discipline 
 of the mere degree examination in classics than the 
 no discipline of even honours in history. The one 
 matter which gave the mind something to school it, 
 the Roman Law, which used to go along with the 
 History, they have now taken away. The fact is, 
 it is at Oxford as it is at our schools. The regulation 
 of studies is all important, and there is no one to 
 regulate them, and people think that any one can 
 regulate them. We shall never do any good till 
 we get a man like Guizot or W. von Humboldt to
 
 228 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 
 
 deal with the matter, men who have the highest 
 mental training themselves, and this we shall probably 
 in this country never get, and our intellectual pro- 
 gress will therefore be a thousand times slower than 
 it need be, and generations will be sacrificed to 
 bungling. 
 
 1875. "Letters," ii. p. 123. 
 
 Grammar as a Class-Subject 
 
 THE spread of interest in education was already 
 doing much to re-awaken and re-invigorate our 
 schools, bound in a narrow routine and dispirited 
 as many of them certainly were. The introduction 
 of the class subjects of grammar, geography, and 
 history, has also done much in the same direction, 
 and will do more. Grammar and geography should 
 be the first of the class subjects chosen, and in the 
 schools under my inspection they generally are so. 
 I cannot understand the doubts of some of my 
 colleagues as to the use of teaching grammar. The 
 programme of a French elementary school is notori- 
 ously scanty, but it always includes the elements 
 of French grammar. Grammar is an exercise of 
 the children's wits ; all the rest of their work is in 
 general but an exercise of their memory. To learn 
 the definitions and rules of grammar is, indeed, but 
 an exercise of memory. But, after learning the 
 definition of a noun, to recognise nouns when one 
 meets with them, and to refer them to their definition, 
 that is an exercise of intelligence. I observe that it 
 animates the children, even amuses them. Indeed,
 
 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 229 
 
 all that relates to language, that familiar but wonder- 
 ful phenomenon, is naturally interesting if it is not 
 spoiled by being treated pedantically. In teaching 
 grammar, not to attempt too much, and to be 
 thoroughly simple, orderly, and clear, is most 
 important. The teacher, I have often said, should 
 be fettered as little as possible, and our Codes tend 
 to fetter him too much. 
 
 General Report, 1876. 
 
 Science and Letters 
 
 Ax last year's meeting of the British Association 
 the President of the Section for Mechanical Science 
 told his hearers that, " in such communities as 
 ours, the spread of natural science is of far more 
 immediate urgency than any other secondary study. 
 Whatever else he may know, viewed in the light of 
 modern necessities, a man who is not fairly versed 
 in exact science is only a half-educated man, and if 
 he has substituted literature and history for natural 
 science, he has chosen the less useful alternative." 
 And more and more pressure there will be, especially 
 in the instruction of the children of the working 
 classes, whose time for schooling is short, to sub- 
 stitute natural science for literature and history as 
 the more useful alternative. And what a curious 
 state of things it would be if every scholar who had 
 passed through the course of our primary schools 
 knew that, when a taper burns, the wax is converted 
 into carbonic acid and water, and thought, at the
 
 230 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 
 
 same time, that a good paraphrase for Canst thou 
 not minister to a mind diseased, was, Can you not 
 wait upon the lunatic I The problem to be solved is 
 a great deal more complicated than many of the 
 friends of natural science suppose. They see clearly 
 enough, for instance, how the working classes are, 
 in their ignorance, constantly violating the laws of 
 health, and suffering accordingly ; and they look 
 to a spread of sound natural science as the remedy. 
 What they do not see is that to know the laws 
 of health ever so exactly, as a mere piece of positive 
 | knowledge, will carry a man in general no great way. 
 / To have the power of using, which is the thing 
 / wished, these data of natural science, a man must, 
 f in general, have first been in some measure moralised ; 
 \ and for moralising him it will be found not easy, 
 I think, to dispense with those old agents, letters, 
 poetry, religion. So let not our teachers be led to 
 imagine, whatever they may hear and see of the 
 call for natural science, that their literary cultiva- 
 tion is unimportant. The fruitful use of natural 
 science itself depends, in a very great degree, on 
 having effected in the whole man, by means of 
 letters, a rise in what the political economists call 
 the standard of life. 
 
 General Report, 1876. 
 
 Natur-Kunde 
 
 WE ought surely to provide that some knowledge of 
 the system of nature should form part of the regular
 
 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 231 
 
 class course. Some fragments of such knowledge 
 do in practice form part of the class course at 
 present. Children in learning geography are taught 
 something about the form and motion of the earth, 
 about the causes of night and day and the seasons. 
 But why are they taught nothing of the causes, 
 for instance, of rain and dew, which are at least as 
 easy to explain to them, and not less interesting ? 
 And this is what the teaching of Natur-kunde 
 or natural philosophy (to use the formerly received, 
 somewhat over-ambitious, English name for the 
 kind of thing) should aim at ; it should aim at 
 systematising for the use of our schools a body 
 of simple instruction in the facts and laws of nature, 
 so as to omit nothing which is requisite, and to give 
 all in right proportion. Of course the best agency 
 for effecting this would be a gifted teacher ; but as 
 gifted teachers are rare, what we have most to wish 
 for is the guidance of a good text-book. Such a text- 
 book does not at present, so far as I know, exist ; 
 some man of science, who is also a master of clear 
 and orderly exposition, should do us the benefit of 
 providing one. But meanwhile there is no reason 
 for delaying the attempt to teach in a systematic 
 way an elementary knowledge of nature. Text- 
 books abound from which a teacher may obtain in 
 separate portions what he requires ; there can be 
 no better discipline for him than to combine out 
 of what he finds in them the kind of whole suited 
 to the simple requirements of his classes. Some 
 teachers will do this a great deal better than others, 
 but all will gain something by attempting it ; and
 
 232 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 
 
 their classes too, however imperfectly it is at first 
 often effected, will gain by its being attempted. 
 
 General Report, 1878. 
 
 The Formative Power of Poetry 
 
 IF we consider it, the bulk of the secular instruction 
 given in our elementary schools has nothing of that 
 formative character which in education is demanded. 
 As regards sewing, calculating, writing, spelling, this 
 is evident. They are necessary, they have utility, 
 but they are not formative. To have the power 
 of reading is not in itself formative. It is neces- 
 sary to have it, and here is the defence of our 
 promiscuous reading books and of allowing them 
 all to be used freely ; the power of reading has to 
 be acquired by the pupil, and for acquiring the 
 power of reading it must be owned that our reading 
 books, with the promiscuous variety of their con- 
 tents, serve well enough. But for a higher purpose, 
 to serve in any way to form the pupil in addition to 
 giving him the mere power of reading, no serious 
 person would maintain that our reading books are 
 at present fitted. But good poetry is formative ; 
 it has, too, the precious power of acting by itself 
 and in a way managed by nature, not through the 
 instrumentality of that somewhat terrible character, 
 the scientific educator. I believe that even the 
 rhythm and diction of good poetry are capable of 
 exercising some formative effect, even though 
 the sense be imperfectly understood. But, of course
 
 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 233 
 
 the good of poetry is not really got unless the sense 
 of the words is known. And more and more I find 
 it learnt and known ; more and more it will be 
 easy to refuse to let the recitation count for anything 
 unless the meaning of what is recited is thoroughly 
 learnt and known. It will be observed that thus 
 we are remedying what I have noticed as the signal 
 mental defect of our school children their almost f 
 incredible scantiness of vocabulary. We enlarge { 
 their vocabulary, and with their vocabulary their I 
 circle of ideas. At the same time we bring them' 
 under the formative influence of really good litera- 
 ture, really good poetry. We must not, of course, 
 be so rigid as to exclude all poetry but the very 
 best. Poetry like that of Scott or Mrs. Hemans, for 
 instance, is no doubt of texture different from that 
 of the best poetry, yet it has excellent qualities, 
 and qualities to which our school children are very 
 sensible ; we may be glad to have them learning it. 
 Still an effort should be made, for this one exercise, 
 to fix the standard high. Gray's Elegy and extracts 
 from Shakespeare should be chosen in preference to 
 the poetry of Scott and Mrs. Hemans, and very 
 much of the poetry in our present school reading 
 books should be entirely rejected. 
 
 General Report, 1878. 
 
 Education of the Middle Classes for the Sake 
 of the Working Class 
 
 I HAVE to make an address to the Working Men's 
 College at Ipswich, the largest College of the kind
 
 234 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 
 
 in England. The inducement to me was that I 
 might try and interest them in founding a system 
 of public education for the middle classes, on the 
 % ground that the working class suffered by not having 
 a more civilised middle class to rise into, if they do 
 rise ; this is in my opinion a very true plea, but you 
 may imagine the difficulty and delicacy of urging 
 it in a public meeting in a provincial town, where 
 half the audience will be middle class. However, 
 the speech is meant for the working men, the hands 
 in the great factories for agricultural implements 
 there. They are said to be an intelligent set, and 
 I do not despair of making them follow me. 
 
 1879. " Letters," ii. p. 151. 
 
 The Influence of Poetry 
 
 I FIND that of the specific subjects English litera- 
 ture, as it is too ambitiously called in plain truth 
 the learning by heart and reciting of a hundred 
 lines or two of standard English poetry continues 
 to be by far the most popular. I rejoice to find it 
 so ; there is no fact coming under my observation 
 in the working of our elementary schools which 
 gives me so much satisfaction. The acquisition of 
 good poetry is a discipline which works deeper than 
 any other discipline in the range of work of our 
 schools ; more than any other, too, it works of itself, 
 is independent of the school teacher, and cannot be 
 spoiled by pedantry and injudiciousness on his part. 
 Some people regard this my high estimate of the
 
 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 235 
 
 value of poetry in education with suspicion and 
 displeasure. Perhaps they may accept the testi- 
 mony of Wordsworth with less suspicion than mine. 
 Wordsworth says, "To be incapable of a feeling of 
 poetry in my sense of the word, is to be without 
 love of human nature and reverence for God." And 
 it is only through acquaintance with poetry, and 
 with good poetry, that this " feeling of poetry " can 
 be given. 
 
 Good poetry does undoubtedly tend to form the 
 soul and character ; it tends to beget a love of 
 beauty and of truth in alliance together, it suggests, 
 however indirectly, high and noble principles of 
 action, and it inspires the emotion so helpful in 
 making principles operative. Hence its extreme 
 importance to all of us ; but in our elementary 
 schools its importance seems to me to be at present 
 quite extraordinary. 
 
 General Report, 1880. 
 
 Influences Affecting Voluntary Schools 
 
 ONE might expect that the class of people for 
 whose children these schools are required would 
 prefer public rate-supported schools to others, as 
 being schools which they support (so far as they pay 
 rates) themselves, and which in no way make them 
 dependent on private charity. One might expect 
 that teachers would prefer schools where they both 
 get, in general, higher salaries than in voluntary 
 schools, and are free, besides, from the control of 
 private and clerical managers. In a report written
 
 236 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 
 
 many years ago by me after seeing the elementary 
 schools abroad, I said that for parents and teachers 
 to prefer really public schools seemed the natural 
 thing, and that they would with time come in this 
 country also to prefer them. And so, in fact, per- 
 haps, it is the natural thing, and they will in the end 
 come to prefer it. 
 
 Yet experience shows that where funds are forth- 
 coming for the support of voluntary schools, they 
 at present hold their own and are sought after. 
 Parents send their children to them, although the 
 fees are higher than at other schools within reach. 
 Teachers continue in them at lower salaries than 
 they could earn in board schools. 
 
 That this should be so, proves the moderation of 
 the English character, proves the absence, in general, 
 of arbitrariness and meddlesomeness on the part of 
 managers, the absence of irritable vanity on the 
 part of parents and teachers. A strong element of 
 irritable vanity on the one side, or of arbitrariness 
 on the other, would be fatal to voluntary schools. 
 But the moderation, the English moderation, on 
 both sides, keeps those elements of ruin out ; and 
 so long as they are kept out, and the voluntary 
 schools prosper, these schools serve, I think, several 
 important ends, of which I shall here mention two 
 only. 
 
 One is economic, the other moral. It has so 
 often been said that people value more highly, and 
 use more respectfully, what they pay a price for, 
 that one is almost ashamed to repeat it. But the 
 advocates of free education seem never to have
 
 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 237 
 
 heard or at least considered it. In a country where 
 there is public support for the education of one 
 class only, as in our country, to defend a very high 
 expenditure upon it by the very high expenditure on 
 publicly supported education abroad, where it is for 
 all classes, is, of course, a mere blunder. To have 
 an expensive public education for one class of the 
 community only, and to make it gratuitous, is practi- 
 cally to fall in with the ideas of Jack Cade. But 
 suppose that public schools are provided for the 
 whole community, and that schooling without fee is 
 then defended on the plea that parents have suffi- 
 ciently paid for their children's schooling by paying 
 rates and taxes. Even then, unless the payment is 
 so made by a direct school tax that both in form and 
 in amount it comes to much the same thing as the 
 payment of a school fee, I doubt whether its effect 
 upon the payers is so wholesome as the payment 
 of a school fee. In our board schools fees are paid, 
 but they are in general much lower than in volun- 
 tary schools, and there is pressure constantly being 
 applied to make them lower still, or even to get rid 
 of them altogether. A certain number of free 
 schools and a certain number of free places in paying 
 schools there ought to be ; but I hope that school 
 boards will not discontinue the school fee generally, 
 and that where it is now too low, and less than 
 parents can fairly pay, they will raise it. The high 
 character of voluntary schools in Westminster is 
 certainly very much due to the value set upon the 
 schooling for which what is felt to be a real and 
 adequate price has to be paid. I do not say that
 
 238 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 
 
 the price paid in board schools ought to be so high 
 as in those voluntary schools, it ought not ; but it 
 ought to be as high relatively to the means of the 
 parents to pay, and I do not think it is at present. 
 I visited the other day a voluntary school with a 
 6d. fee, where id. had just been added to this 
 for school stationery, which the boys had hitherto 
 provided as they could. They got it much better 
 for the extra id., they felt themselves to be paying 
 for it, and they were greatly pleased with it. I 
 could not help reflecting how wholesome this kind 
 of pleasure is, and how it is quite lost in board 
 schools where the gratuitous distribution of stationery 
 is the rule. And as with stationery, so with the 
 rest of what is furnished at school. 
 
 Another source of strength to voluntary schools 
 is the natural and intimate connexion between the 
 schools and their managers, and the influences 
 thence arising. The more experience I get, the 
 higher I value this source of strength. In a town 
 like London especially, many a man must feel that 
 while others, as Solomon says, " have many friends," 
 he himself " is separated from his neighbour " ; and 
 the feeling that in their manager they have really a 
 " neighbour " who knows them, and to the best of 
 his power will help them, is an influence which 
 tends to keep both teacher and scholar faithful to 
 voluntary schools. It is an influence of a very 
 valuable kind. Of course it is not exercised in every 
 case where it might be, but, on the whole, it is 
 exercised to an extent and with a power beyond 
 one's expectations. Teachers will remain at salaries
 
 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 239 
 
 below the board school rate, and scholars will pay 
 fees above the common board school fee, while they 
 feel this influence. I have schools in my district 
 where every teacher and every child in the school 
 feel that in their manager they have a friend, and 
 this is no little thing in London. 
 
 General Report, 1882. 
 
 Cramming and the Creative Spirit 
 
 FRESH matters of instruction are continually being 
 added to our school programmes ; but it is well to 
 remember that the recipient for this instruction, the 
 child, remains as to age, capacity, and school time, 
 what he was before, and that his age, capacity, and 
 school time, must in the end govern our proceedings. 
 Undoubtedly there is danger at present of his being 
 over-urged and over-worked, of his being taught too 
 many things, and not the best things for him. I 
 am very glad that the New Code confines the grant 
 for specific subjects to the standards above the 
 fourth. This is a defence against the danger of 
 teaching too much, and for children in the Fourth 
 Standard the specific subjects are in general too 
 much. Teachers know very well, however, that the 
 strain upon a learner's mind arises not only from 
 the quantity of what is put into it, but also from 
 the quality and character ; and that the strain may 
 be relieved not only by diminishing the quantity, 
 but also by altering that quality and character. 
 This is an extremely important matter. 
 
 Attention has lately been called to the break-
 
 240 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 
 
 down, in India, of a number of young men who had 
 won their appointments after severe study and severe 
 examination. No doubt the quantity of mental 
 exertion required for examinations is often excessive, 
 but the strain is much the more severe, because the 
 quality and character of mental exertion required 
 are so often injudicious. The mind is less strained 
 the more it reacts on what it deals with, and has 
 a native play of its own, and is creative. It is more 
 strained the more it has to receive a number of 
 " knowledges " passively, and to store them up to be 
 reproduced in an examination. But to acquire a 
 number of " knowledges," store them, and reproduce 
 them, was what in general those candidates for 
 Indian employment had had to do. By their suc- 
 cess in doing this they were tested, and the examina- 
 tion turned on it. In old days examinations 
 mainly turned upon Latin and Greek composition. 
 Composition in the dead languages is now wholly 
 out of favour, and I by no means say that it is a 
 sufficient test for candidates for Indian employment. 
 But I will say that the character and quality of 
 mental exertion required for it is more healthy 
 than the character and quality of exertion required 
 for receiving and storing a number of " knowledges." 
 And the candidate whom the former test brings to 
 the front is likely to be a healthier man in body 
 and mind, both then and afterwards, than the man 
 whom the latter test brings to the front. 
 
 Of such high importance, in relieving the strain 
 of mental effort, is the sense of pleasurable activity 
 and of creation. Of course a great deal of the work
 
 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 241 
 
 in elementary schools must necessarily be of a me- 
 chanical kind. But whatever introduces any sort of 
 creative activity to relieve the passive reception of 
 knowledge is valuable. The kindergarten exercises 
 are useful for this reason, the management of tools 
 is useful, drawing is useful, singing is useful. The 
 poetry exercise, if properly managed, is of very great 
 use, and this is why I have always been in favour 
 of it and am glad to see further development given 
 to it by the New Code. People talk contemptuously 
 of " learning lines by heart " ; but if a child is 
 brought, as he easily can be brought, to throw him- 
 self into a piece of poetry, an exercise of creative 
 activity has been set up in him quite different 
 from the effort of learning a list of words to spell, 
 or a list of flesh-making and heat-giving foods, 
 or a list of capes and bays, or a list of reigns and 
 battles, and capable of greatly relieving the strain 
 from learning these and of affording a lively pleasure. 
 It is true, language, and geography, and history, 
 and the elements of natural science are all capable 
 of being taught in a less mechanical and more in- 
 teresting manner than that in which they are com- 
 monly taught now ; they may be so taught as to call 
 forth pleasurable activity in the pupil. But those 
 disciplines are especially valuable which call this 
 activity forth most surely and directly. 
 
 General Report, 1882.
 
 242 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 
 
 The Governing Aim of Education 
 
 As to " knowledges," a teacher should, in my 
 opinion, aim at having every child who passes 
 through an elementary school not only taught 
 reading, writing, and arithmetic, but furnished 
 in addition with some knowledge of the English 
 language and of grammar, and also with some in- 
 struction in natural science, geography, and history. 
 A select class capable of being carried further 
 with profit should be formed for specific subjects. 
 But governing the teacher's whole design of instruc- 
 tion in these knowledges should be the aim of calling 
 forth, by some means or other, in every pupil a sense 
 of pleasurable activity and of creation ; he should 
 resist being made a mere ladder with " information." 
 There is an admirable sermon of Butler's, 
 preached in 1745 on behalf of the charity schools of 
 London and Westminster, which every one concerned 
 with popular education ought to read.* It is far 
 too little known ; the Christian Knowledge Society 
 would do well to reprint it, as they have reprinted 
 Bishop Wilson's manual. Every point is taken in it 
 which most needs to be taken : the change in the 
 world which makes " knowledges " of universal 
 
 * A sermon preached in the Parish Church of Christchurch, 
 London, on Thursday, May the gth, 1745, being the time of the 
 Yearly Meeting of the children educated in the Charity schools, 
 in and about the Cities of London and Westminster. By the 
 Right Rev. Joseph, Lord Bishop of Bristol. ... To which is 
 annexed an account of The Society for Promoting Christian 
 Knowledge. Printed by J. Oliver, printer to the said Society, 
 in Bartholomew Close ; and sold by B. Dod, bookseller, at the 
 Bible and Key in Ave-Maria Lane. MDCCXLV.
 
 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 243 
 
 necessity now which were not so formerly, the hard- 
 ship of exclusion from them, the absurdity and 
 selfishness of those who are " so extremely appre- 
 hensive of the danger that poor persons will make a 
 perverse use of even the least advantage, whilst 
 they do not appear at all apprehensive of the like 
 danger for themselves or their own children, in 
 respect of riches or power, how much soever ; though 
 the danger of perverting these advantages is surely as 
 great, and the perversion itself of much greater and 
 worse consequence." But there is, perhaps, no 
 sentence in the sermon which more deserves to be 
 pondered by us than this : "Of education," says 
 Butler, " information itself is really the least part." 
 
 Reports on Elementary Schools, 1880. 
 
 The Aim of Education 
 
 WHAT a man seeks through his education is to get 
 to know himself and the world ; next, that for this 
 knowledge it is before all things necessary that he 
 acquaint himself with the best which has been 
 thought and said in the world ; finally, that of 
 this best the classics of Greece and Rome form a 
 very chief portion, and the portion most entirely 
 satisfactory. With these conclusions lodged safe 
 in one's mind, one is staunch on the side of the 
 humanities. 
 
 1882. " Irish Essays," p. 184 (A Speech at Eton).
 
 244 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 
 
 Formative Influence of Masterpieces 
 
 THE best, in literature, has the quality of being 
 in itself formative ; of bringing out its own signifi- 
 cance as we read it. It is better to read a master- 
 piece much, even if one does that only, than to 
 read it a little, and to be told a great deal about its 
 significance, and about the development and sense 
 of the world from which it issues. Sometimes what 
 one is told about the significance of a work, and about 
 the development of a world, is extremely question- 
 able. At any rate, a schoolboy, who, as they did in 
 the times of ignorance at Eton, read his Homer and 
 Horace through, and then read them through again, 
 and so went on until he knew them by heart, is not, 
 in my opinion, so very much to be pitied. 
 
 " Irish Essays," p. 184. 
 
 Eutrapelia 
 
 As Goethe says of life : Strike into it anywhere, lay 
 hold of it anywhere, it is always powerful and 
 interesting so one may almost say of classical 
 literature. Strike into it where you like, lay hold 
 of it where you like, you can nearly always find a 
 thread which will lead you, if you follow it, to large 
 and instructive results. Let us follow to-night a 
 single Greek word in this fashion, and try to com- 
 pensate ourselves, however imperfectly, for having 
 to divert our thoughts, just for one evening's lecture, 
 from the diameter of the sun and moon.
 
 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 245 
 
 The word I will take is the word eutrapelos, 
 eutrapelia. Let us consider it first as it occurs in 
 the famous Funeral Oration put by Thucydides 
 into the mouth of Pericles. The word stands there 
 for one of the chief of those qualities which have 
 made Athens, says Pericles, " the school of Greece ; " 
 for a quality by which Athens is eminently repre- 
 sentative of what is called Hellenism : the quality 
 of flexibility. " A happy and gracious flexibility," 
 Pericles calls this quality of the Athenians ; and it 
 is no doubt a charming gift. Lucidity of thought, 
 clearness and propriety of language, freedom from 
 prejudice and freedom from stiffness, openness of 
 mind, amiability of manners, all these seem to go 
 along with a certain happy flexibility of nature, and 
 to depend upon it. Nor does this suppleness and 
 flexibility of nature at all necessarily imply, as we 
 English are apt to suppose, a relaxed moral fibre and 
 weakness. In the Athenian of the best time it did 
 not. " In the Athenians," says Professor Curtius, 
 " the sense of energy abhorred every kind of waste 
 of time, their sense of measure abhorred bombast and 
 redundancy, and their clear intelligence everything 
 partaking of obscurity or vagueness ; it was their 
 habit in all things to advance directly and resolutely 
 to the goal. Their dialect is characterised by 
 a superior seriousness, manliness, and vigour of 
 language." 
 
 There is no sign of relaxation of moral fibre here ; 
 and yet at the same time, the Athenians were 
 eminent for a happy and gracious flexibility. That 
 quality, as we all know, is not a characteristic quality
 
 246 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 
 
 of the Germanic nations, to which we ourselves 
 belong. Men are educable, and when we read of 
 the abhorrence of the Attic mind for redundancy 
 and obscurity of expression, its love for direct and 
 telling speech, and then think of modern German, 
 we may say with satisfaction that the circumstances 
 of our life have at any rate educated us into the use 
 of straightforward and vigorous forms of language. 
 But they have not educated us into flexibility. All 
 around us we may observe proofs of it. The state 
 of Ireland is a proof of it. We are rivals with Russia 
 in Central Asia, and at this moment it is particularly 
 interesting to note, how the want of just this one 
 Athenian quality of flexibility seems to tell against 
 us in our Asiatic rivalry with Russia. " Russia," 
 observes one who is perhaps the first of living 
 geographers an Austrian, Herr von Hellwald 
 " possesses far more shrewdness, flexibility, and 
 congeniality than England ; qualities adapted to 
 make the Asiatic more tractable." And again : 
 " There can be no dispute which of the two, England 
 or Russia, is the more civilised nation. But it is 
 just as certain that the more civilised English under- 
 stand but indifferently how to raise their Asiatic 
 subjects to their own standard of civilisation ; 
 whilst the Russians attain, with their much lower 
 standard of civilisation, far greater results among 
 the Asiatic tribes, whom they know how to assimilate 
 in the most remarkable manner. Of course they can 
 only bring them to the same level which they have 
 reached themselves ; but the little which they can 
 and do communicate to them counts actually for
 
 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 247 
 
 much more than the great boons which the English 
 do not know how to impart. Under the auspices 
 of Russia the advance in civilisation amongst the 
 Asiatics is indeed slow and inconsiderable, but 
 steady, and suitable to their natural capacities and 
 the disposition of their race. On the other hand, 
 they remain indifferent to British civilisation, which 
 is absolutely incomprehensible to them." 
 
 Our word " flexibility " has here carried us a 
 long way, carried us to Turkestan and the valleys 
 of the Jaxartes and Oxus. Let us get back to 
 Greece, at any rate. The generation of Pericles is 
 succeeded by the generation of Plato and Aristotle. 
 Still the charming and Athenian quality of eutrapelia 
 continues to be held in high esteem. Only the word 
 comes to stand more particularly for flexibility and 
 felicity in the give-and-take of gay and light social 
 intercourse. With Aristotle it is one of the virtues : 
 the virtue of him who in this pleasant sort of inter- 
 course, so relished by the Greeks, manages exactly 
 to hit the happy and right mean ; the virtue 
 opposed to buffoonery on the one side, and to morose 
 rusticity, or clownishness, on the other. It is hi 
 especial the virtue of the young, and is akin to the 
 grace and charm of youth. When old men try to 
 adapt themselves to the young, says Plato, they 
 betake themselves, in imitation of the young, to 
 eutrapelia and pleasantry. 
 
 Four hundred years pass, and we come to the 
 date of the Epistle to the Ephesians. The word 
 eutrapelia rises in the mind of the writer of that 
 Epistle. It rises to St. Paul's mind, and he utters it ;
 
 248 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 
 
 but in how different a sense from the praising and 
 admiring sense in which we have seen the word 
 used by Thucydides and Aristotle ! Eutrapelia, 
 which once stood for that eminently Athenian and 
 Hellenic virtue of happy and gracious flexibility, 
 now conveys this favourable sense no longer, but 
 is ranked, with filthiness and foolish talking, among 
 things which are not convenient. Like these, it 
 is not to be even so much as once named among the 
 followers of God T " neither filthiness, not foolish 
 talking, nor jesting (eutrapelia}, which are not 
 convenient." 
 
 This is an extraordinary change, you will say. 
 But now, as we have descended four hundred years 
 from Aristotle to St. Paul, let us ascend, not four 
 hundred, not quite even one hundred years, from 
 Thucydides to Pindar. The religious Theban poet, 
 we shall see (and the thing is surely very remarkable) , 
 speaks of the quality of eutrapelia in the same dis- 
 approving and austere way as the writer of the 
 Epistle to the Ephesians. The young and noble 
 Jason appears at lolcos, and being questioned about 
 himself by Pelias, he answers that he has been 
 trained in the nurture and admonition of the old 
 and just Centaur, Chiron. " From his cave I come, 
 from Chariclo and Philyra, his stainless daughters, 
 who there nursed me. Lo, these twenty years am 
 I with them, and there hath been found in me 
 neither deed nor word that is not convenient ; and 
 now, behold, I am come home, that I may recover 
 my father's kingdom." The adjective eutrapelos, 
 as it is here used in connexion with its two nouns,
 
 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 249 
 
 means exactly a word or deed, in Biblical phrase, of 
 vain lightness, a word or deed such as is not convenient. 
 There you have the history of the varying use 
 of the words eutrapelos, eutmpelia. And now see 
 how this varying use gives us a clue to the order and 
 sense, as we say, of all that Greek world, so nearly 
 and wonderfully connected with us, so profoundly 
 interesting for us, so full of precious lessons. 
 
 " Irish Essays " (A Speech at Eton), p. 187. 
 
 Regular Reading 
 
 I AM glad to find that in the past year I have at ! 
 least accomplished more than usual in the way of f 
 reading the books which at the beginning of the year - 
 I had put down to be read. I always do this, and ( 
 I do not expect to read all I put down, but some- I 
 times I fall much too short of what I proposed, 
 and this year things have been a good deal better. 
 The importance of reading, not slight stuff to get 
 through the time, but the best that has been written, 
 forces itself upon me more and more every year I 
 live ; it is living in good company, the best company, 
 and people are generally quite keen enough, or too 
 keen, about doing that, yet they will not do it in 
 the simplest and most innocent manner by reading, i 
 However, if I live to be eighty, I shall probably be \ 
 the only person left in England who reads anything | 
 but newspapers and scientific publications. 
 
 1882. " Letters," ii. p. 196.
 
 250 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 
 
 The Reading of Books Hindered by 
 Newspapers 
 
 THE influence of poetry and literature appears at 
 this moment diminishing rather than increasing. 
 The newspapers have a good deal to do with this. 
 The Times, which has much improved again, is a 
 world, and people who read it daily hardly feel the 
 necessity for reading a book ; yet reading a book 
 a good book is a discipline such as no reading of 
 even good newspapers can ever give. But literature 
 has in itself such powers of attraction that I am not 
 over anxious about it. 
 
 1884. " Letters," ii. p. 268. 
 
 Light also a Moral Cause 
 
 INFELICITOUS the general direction of our affairs 
 may be ; but the individual Englishman, whenever 
 and wherever called upon to do his duty, does it 
 almost invariably with the old energy, courage, 
 virtue. And this is what we gain by having had, 
 as a people, in the ground of our being, a firm faith 
 in conduct ; by having believed, more steadfastly 
 and fervently than most, this great law that moral 
 causes govern the standing and the falling of men 
 and nations. The law gradually widens, indeed, 
 so as to include light as well as honesty and energy ; 
 to make light, also, a moral cause. Unless we are 
 transformed we cannot finally stand, and without 
 more light we cannot be transformed. But in the 
 trying hours through which before our transformation
 
 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 251 
 
 we have to pass, it may well console us to rest our 
 thoughts upon our life's law even as we have hitherto 
 known it, and upon all which even in our present 
 imperfect acceptation of it it has done for us. 
 
 1885. " Discourses in America," pp. x-xi. 
 
 The Things of the Mind as a Political Force 
 
 " WHATSOEVER things are true, whatsoever things 
 are elevated, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever 
 things are pure, whatsoever things are amiable, 
 whatsoever things are of good report ; if there be 
 any virtue, and if there be any praise ; have these 
 in your mind, let your thoughts run upon these." * 
 This is what both Plato and the prophets mean by 
 loving righteousness, and making one's study in 
 the law of the Eternal. 
 
 Now the matters just enumerated do not come 
 much into the heads of most of us, I suppose, when 
 we are thinking of politics. But the philosophers 
 and prophets maintain that these matters, and not 
 those of which the heads of politicians are full, do 
 really govern politics and save or destroy States. 
 They save or destroy them by a silent, inexorable 
 fatality ; while the politicians are making believe, 
 plausibly and noisily, with their American institu- 
 tions, British Constitution and civilising mission of 
 France. And because these matters are what do 
 really govern politics and save or destroy States, 
 Socrates maintained that in his time he and a few 
 philosophers, who alone kept insisting on the good 
 
 * Philippians iv. 8.
 
 252 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 
 
 of righteousness, and the unprofitableness of iniquity, 
 were the only real politicians then living. 
 
 I say, if we are to derive comfort from the doctrine 
 of the remnant (and there is great comfort to be 
 derived from it), we must also hold fast to the 
 austere but true doctrine as to what really governs 
 politics, overrides with an inexorable fatality the 
 combinations of the so-called politicians, and saves 
 or destroys States. Having in mind things true, 
 things elevated, things just, things pure, things 
 amiable, things of good report ; having these in 
 mind, studying and loving these, is what saves 
 States. 
 
 There is nothing like positive instances to illus- 
 trate general propositions of this kind and to make 
 them believed. I hesitate to take an instance from 
 America. Possibly there are some people who think 
 that already, on a former occasion, I have said 
 enough about America, without duly seeing and 
 knowing it. So I will take my instances from 
 England, and from England's neighbour and 
 old co-mate in history, France. The instance 
 from England I will take first. I will take it 
 from the grave topic of England's relations with 
 Ireland. I am not going to reproach either England 
 or Ireland. To reproach Ireland here would 
 probably be indiscreet. As to England, anything 
 I may have to say against my own country- 
 men I prefer to say at home ; America is the last 
 place where I should care to say it. However, I 
 have no wish or intention now to reproach either the 
 English or the Irish. I want to show you from
 
 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 253 
 
 England's relations with Ireland how right the philo- 
 sophers and prophets are. Every one knows that 
 there has been conquest and confiscation in Ireland. 
 So there has elsewhere. Every one knows that the 
 conquest and the confiscation have been attended 
 with cupidity, oppression, and ill-usage. So they 
 have elsewhere. " Whatsoever things are just " 
 are not exactly the study, so far as I know, of 
 conquerors and confiscators anywhere ; certainly 
 they were not the study of the English conquerors 
 of Ireland. A failure in justice is a source of danger 
 to States. But it may be made up for and got over ; 
 it has been made up for and got over in many 
 communities. England's confiscations in Ireland 
 are a thing of the past ; the penal laws against 
 Catholics are a thing of the past ; much has been done 
 to make up for the old failure in justice ; Englishmen 
 generally think that it has been pretty well made up 
 for, and that Irishmen ought to think so too. And 
 politicians invent Land Acts for curing the last 
 results of the old failure in justice, for insuring the 
 contentment of the Irish with us, and for consolidat- 
 ing the Union ; and are surprised and plaintive if 
 it is not consolidated. But now see how much more 
 serious people are the philosophers and prophets 
 than the politicians. Whatsoever things are amiable: 
 the failure in amiability, too, is a source of danger 
 and insecurity to States, as well as the failure in 
 justice. And we English are not amiable, or at any 
 rate, what in this case comes to the same thing, 
 do not appear so. The politicians never thought of 
 that. Quite outside their combinations lies this
 
 254 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 
 
 hindrance, tending to make their most elaborate 
 combinations ineffectual. Thus the joint operation 
 of two moral causes together the sort of causes 
 which politicians do not seriously regard tells 
 against the designs of the politicians with what seems 
 to be an almost inexorable fatality. If there were 
 not the failure in amiability, perhaps the original 
 failure in justice might by this time have been got 
 over ; if there had not been the failure in justice, 
 perhaps the failure in amiability might not have 
 mattered much. The two failures together create 
 a difficulty almost insurmountable. Public men in 
 England keep saying that it will be got over. I hope 
 that it will be got over, and that the Union between 
 England and Ireland may become as solid as that 
 between England and Scotland. But it will not 
 become solid by means of the contrivances of the 
 mere politician, or without the intervention of moral 
 causes of concord to heal the mischief wrought by 
 moral causes of division. Everything, in this case, 
 depends upon the " remnant," its numbers, and its 
 powers of action. 
 
 " Discourses in America," pp. 30-37. 
 
 The Love of France 
 
 To France I have always felt myself powerfully 
 drawn. People in England often accuse me of liking 
 France and things French far too well. At all 
 events I have paid special regard to them, and am 
 always glad to confess how much I owe to them. 
 M. Sainte-Beuve wrote to me in the last years of
 
 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 255 
 
 his life : " You have passed through our life and 
 literature by a deep inner line, which confers 
 initiation, and which you will never lose." Vous 
 avez traversj noire vie et notre literature par une ligne 
 interieure, profonde, quifait les initite: et que vous ne 
 perdrez jamais. I wish I could think that this 
 friendly testimony of that accomplished and charm- 
 ing man, one of my chief benefactors, were fully 
 deserved. But I have pride and pleasure in quoting 
 it ; and I quote it to bear me out in saying, that 
 whatever opinion I may express about France, I 
 have at least been a not inattentive observer of that 
 great country, and anything but a hostile one. 
 
 " Discourses in America," pp. 38-39. 
 
 The Rivalry of Literature and Science in 
 Education 
 
 Now education, many people go on to say, is still 
 mainly governed by the ideas of men like Plato, 
 who lived when the warrior caste and the priestly 
 or philosophical class were alone in honour, and the 
 really useful part of the community were slaves. 
 It is an education fitted for persons of leisure in such 
 a community. This education passed from Greece 
 and Rome to the feudal communities of Europe, 
 where also the warrior caste and the priestly caste 
 were alone held in honour, and where the really 
 useful and working part of the community, though 
 not nominally slaves as in the pagan world, were 
 practically not much better off than slaves, and not 
 more seriously regarded. And how absurd it is,
 
 256 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 
 
 people end by saying, to inflict this education upon 
 an industrious modern community, where very few 
 indeed are persons of leisure, and the mass to be 
 considered has not leisure, but is bound, for its own 
 great good, and for the great good of the world at 
 large, to plain labour and to industrial pursuits, and 
 the education in question tends necessarily to make 
 men dissatisfied with these pursuits and unfitted for 
 them! 
 
 That is what is said. So far I must defend 
 
 Plato, as to plead that his .view of education and 
 
 studies is in the general, as it seems to me, sound 
 
 enough, and fitted for all sorts and conditions of 
 
 I men, whatever their pursuits may be. " An in- 
 
 | telligent man," says Plato, " will prize those studies 
 
 I which result in his soul getting soberness, righteous- 
 
 i ness, and wisdom, and will less value the others." 
 
 I cannot consider that a bad description of the aim 
 
 of education, and of the motives which should 
 
 govern us in the choice of studies, whether we are 
 
 preparing ourselves for a hereditary seat in the 
 
 English House of Lords or for the pork trade in 
 
 Chicago. 
 
 Still I admit that Plato's world was not ours, 
 that his scorn of trade and handicraft is fantastic, 
 that he had no conception of a great industrial 
 community such as that of the United States, and 
 that such a community must and will shape its 
 education to suit its own needs. If the usual 
 education handed down to it from the past does not 
 suit it, it will certainly before long drop this and try 
 another. The usual education in the past has been
 
 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 257 
 
 mainly literary. The question is whether the 
 studies which were long supposed to be the best for 
 all of us are practically the best now; whether 
 others are not better. The tyranny of the past, 
 many think, weighs on us injuriously in the pre- 
 dominance given to letters in education. The 
 question is raised whether, to meet the needs of our 
 modern life, the predominance ought not now to pass 
 from letters to science ; and naturally the question 
 is nowhere raised with more energy than here in the 
 United States. The design of abasing what is 
 called "mere literary instruction and education," 
 and of exalting what is called " sound, extensive 
 and practical scientific knowledge," is, in this 
 intensely modern world of the United States even 
 more perhaps than in Europe, a very popular 
 design, and makes great and rapid progress. 
 
 I am going to ask whether the present movement 
 for ousting letters from their old predominance in 
 education, and for transferring the predominance in 
 education to the natural sciences, whether this brisk 
 and flourishing movement ought to prevail, and 
 whether it is likely that in the end it really will 
 prevail. An objection may be raised which I will 
 anticipate. My own studies have been almost 
 wholly in letters, and my visits to the field of the 
 natural sciences have been very slight and inadequate, 
 although those sciences have always strongly moved 
 my curiosity. A man of letters, it will perhaps be 
 said, is not competent to discuss the comparative 
 merits of letters and natural science as means of 
 education. To this objection I reply, first of all, 
 
 s
 
 258 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 
 
 that his incompetence, if he attempts the discussion 
 but is really incompetent for it, will be abundantly 
 visible ; nobody will be taken in ; he will have 
 plenty of sharp observers and critics to save mankind 
 from that danger. But the line I am going to follow 
 is, as you will soon discover, so extremely simple, 
 that perhaps it may be followed without failure even 
 by one who for a more ambitious line of discussion 
 would be quite incompetent. 
 
 Some of you may possibly remember a phrase 
 of mine which has been the object of a good deal of 
 comment ; an observation to the effect that in our 
 culture, the aim being to know ourselves and the world, 
 we have, as the means to this end, to know the best 
 which has been thought and said in the world. A man 
 of science, who is also an excellent writer and the 
 very prince of debaters, Professor Huxley, in a 
 discourse at the opening of Sir Josiah Mason's 
 college at Birmingham, laying hold of this phrase, 
 expanded it by quoting some more words of mine, 
 which are these : " The civilised world is to be 
 regarded as now being, for intellectual and spiritual 
 purposes, one great confederation, bound to a joint 
 action and working to a common result ; and whose 
 members have for their proper outfit a knowledge 
 of Greek, Roman, and Eastern antiquity, and of 
 one another. Special local and temporary advan- 
 tages being put out of account, that modern nation 
 will in the intellectual and spiritual sphere make most 
 progress which most thoroughly carries out this 
 programme." 
 
 Now on my phrase, thus enlarged, Professor
 
 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 259 
 
 Huxley remarks that when I speak of the above- 
 mentioned knowledge as enabling us to know our- 
 selves and the world, I assert literature to contain 
 the materials which suffice for thus making us know 
 ourselves and the world. But it is not by any means 
 clear, says he, that after having learnt all which 
 ancient and modern literatures have to tell us, we 
 have laid a sufficiently broad and deep foundation 
 for that criticism of life, that knowledge of ourselves 
 and the world, which constitutes culture. On the 
 contrary, Professor Huxley declares that he finds 
 himself " wholly unable to admit that either nations 
 or individuals will really advance, if their outfit 
 draws nothing from the stores of physical science. 
 An army without weapons of precision, and with no 
 particular base of operations, might more hopefully 
 enter upon a campaign on the Rhine, than a man 
 devoid of a knowledge of what physical science has 
 done in the last century, upon a criticism of life." 
 
 This shows how needful it is for those who are 
 to discuss any matter together, to have a common 
 understanding as to the sense of the terms they 
 employ how needful, and how difficult. What 
 Professor Huxley says, implies just the reproach 
 which is so often brought against the study of belles 
 lettres, as they are called ; that the study is an 
 elegant one, but slight and ineffectual ; a smattering 
 of Greek and Latin and other ornamental things, 
 of little use for any one whose object is to get at 
 truth, and to be a practical man. So, too, M. Renan 
 talks of the " superficial humanism " of a school- 
 course which treats us as if we were all going to be
 
 260 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 
 
 poets, writers, preachers, orators, and he opposes 
 this humanism to positive science, or the critical 
 search after truth. And there is always a tendency 
 in those who are remonstrating against the pre- 
 dominance of letters in education, to understand by 
 letters belles lettres, and by belles lettres a superficial 
 humanism, the opposite of science or true know- 
 ledge. 
 
 But when we talk of knowing Greek and Roman 
 antiquity, for instance, which is the knowledge 
 people have called the humanities, I for my part 
 mean a knowledge which is something more than a 
 superficial humanity, mainly decorative. " I call 
 all teaching scientific," says Wolf, the critic of Homer, 
 " which is systematically laid out and followed up 
 to its original sources. For example : a knowledge 
 of classical antiquity is scientific when the remains 
 of classical antiquity are correctly studied in the 
 original languages." There can be no doubt that 
 Wolf is perfectly right ; that all learning is scientific 
 which is systematically laid out and followed up to 
 its original sources, and that a genuine humanism is 
 scientific. 
 
 When I speak of knowing Greek and Roman 
 antiquity, therefore, as a help to knowing ourselves 
 and the world, I mean more than a knowledge of 
 so much vocabulary, so much grammar, so many 
 portions of authors in the Greek and Latin languages. 
 I mean knowing the Greeks and Romans, and their 
 life and genius, and what they were and did in the 
 world ; what we get from them, and what is its 
 value. That, at least, is the ideal ; and when we
 
 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 261 
 
 talk of endeavouring to know Greek and Roman 
 antiquity, as a help to knowing ourselves and the 
 world, we mean endeavouring so to know them as to 
 satisfy this ideal, however much we may still fall 
 short of it. 
 
 The same also as to knowing our own and other 
 modern nations, with the like aim of getting to 
 understand ourselves and the world. To know the 
 best that has been thought and said by the modern 
 nations, is to know, says Professor Huxley, " only \ 
 what modern literatures have to tell us ; it is the j 
 criticism of life contained in modern literature." 
 And yet, " the distinctive character of our times," 
 he urges, " lies in the vast and constantly increasing 
 part which is played by natural knowledge." And 
 how, therefore, can a man, devoid of knowledge of 
 what physical science has done in the last century, 
 enter hopefully upon a criticism of modern life ? 
 
 Let us, I say, be agreed about the meaning of 
 the terms we are using. I talk of knowing the 
 best which has been thought and uttered in the 
 world ; Professor Huxley says this means knowing 
 literature. Literature is a large word ; it may mean 
 everything written with letters or printed in a book. 
 Euclid's Elements and Newton's Principia are thus 
 literature. All knowledge that reaches us through 
 books is literature. But by literature Professor 
 Huxley means belles lettres. He means to make me 
 say, that knowing the best which has been thought 
 and said by the modern nations is knowing their 
 belles lettres and no more. And this is no sufficient 
 equipment, he argues, for a criticism of modern life.
 
 262 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 
 
 But as I do not mean, by knowing ancient Rome, 
 knowing merely more or less of Latin belles lettres, 
 and taking no account of Rome's military and 
 political, and legal, and administrative work in the 
 world ; and as, by knowing ancient Greece, I under- 
 stand knowing her as the giver of Greek art, and the 
 guide to a free and right use of reason and to scientific 
 method, and the founder of our mathematics and 
 physics and astronomy and biology I understand 
 knowing her as all this, and not merely knowing 
 certain Greek poems, and histories, and treatises, 
 and speeches so as to the knowledge of modern 
 nations also. By knowing modern nations, I mean 
 not merely knowing their belles lettres , but knowing 
 also what has been done by such men as Copernicus, 
 Galileo, Newton, Darwin. 
 
 " Discourses in America," pp. 76-92. 
 
 Science Teaching and Human Nature 
 
 MORE than this, however, is demanded by the 
 reformers. It is proposed to make the training in 
 natural science the main part of education, for the 
 great majority of mankind at any rate. And here, 
 I confess, I part company with the friends of 
 physical science, with whom up to this point I have 
 been agreeing. In differing from them, however, 
 I wish to proceed with the utmost caution and diffi- 
 dence. The smallness of my own acquaintance with 
 the disciplines of natural science is ever before my 
 mind, and I am fearful of doing these disciplines 
 an injustice. The ability and pugnacity of the
 
 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 263 
 
 partisans of natural science makes them formidable 
 persons to contradict. The tone of tentative 
 enquiry, which befits a being of dim faculties and 
 bounded knowledge, is the tone I would wish to 
 take and not to depart from. At present it seems 
 to me, that those who are for giving to natural 
 knowledge, as they call it, the chief place in the 
 education of the majority of mankind, leave one 
 important thing out of their account ; the constitu- 
 tion of human nature. But I put this forward on the 
 strength of some facts not at all recondite, very far 
 from it ; facts capable of being stated in the simplest 
 possible fashion, and to which, if I so state them, 
 the man of science, will, I am sure, be willing to 
 allow their due weight. 
 
 Deny the facts altogether, I think, he hardly can. 
 He can hardly deny, that when we set ourselves to 
 enumerate the powers which go to the building up 
 of human life, and say that they are the power 
 of conduct, the power of intellect and knowledge, 
 the power of beauty, and the power of social life 
 and manners he can hardly deny that this scheme, 
 though drawn in rough and plain lines enough, and 
 not pretending to scientific exactness, does yet give 
 a fairly true representation of the matter. Human 
 nature is built up by these powers ; we have the 
 need for them all. When we have rightly met and 
 adjusted the claims of them all, we shall then be in 
 a fair way for getting soberness and righteousness, 
 with wisdom. This is evident enough, and the 
 friends of physical science would admit it. 
 
 " Discourses in America," pp. 99-102.
 
 264 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 
 
 Mediaeval Universities 
 
 The great mediaeval Universities were not brought 
 into being, we may be sure, by the zeal for giving a 
 jejune and contemptible education. Kings have 
 been their nursing fathers, and queens have been 
 their nursing mothers, but not for this. The 
 mediaeval Universities came into being, because the 
 supposed knowledge, delivered by Scripture and 
 the Church, so deeply engaged men's hearts, by so 
 simply, easily, and powerfully relating itself to their 
 desire for conduct, their desire for beauty. All 
 other knowledge was dominated by this supposed 
 knowledge, and was subordinated to it, because of 
 the surpassing strength of the hold which it gained 
 upon the affections of men, by allying itself pro- 
 foundly with their sense for conduct, their sense for 
 beauty. 
 
 " Discourses in America," pp. 115-116. 
 
 The Middle Ages, Science and Letters 
 
 THE Middle Ages could do without humane letters, 
 as it could do without the study of nature, because 
 its supposed knowledge was made to engage its 
 emotions so powerfully. Grant that the supposed 
 knowledge disappears, its power of being made to 
 engage the emotions will of course disappear along 
 with it but the emotions themselves, and their 
 claim to be engaged and satisfied, will remain. Now 
 if we find by experience that humane letters have an 
 undeniable power of engaging the emotions, the 
 importance of humane letters in a man's training
 
 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 265 
 
 becomes not less, but greater, in proportion to the 
 success of modern science in extirpating what it 
 calls " mediaeval thinking." 
 
 " Discourses in America," pp. 117-118. 
 
 The Final Need of Letters in Education 
 
 AND the more that men's minds are cleared, the more 
 that the results of science are frankly accepted, the 
 more that poetry and eloquence come to be received 
 and studied as what in truth they really are, the 
 criticism of life by gifted men, alive and active with 
 extraordinary power at an unusual number of points; 
 so much the more will the value of humane letters, 
 and of art also, which is an utterance having a like 
 kind of power with theirs, be felt and acknowledged, 
 and their place in education be secured. 
 
 Let us therefore, all of us, avoid indeed as much 
 as possible any invidious comparison between the 
 merits of humane letters, as means of education, 
 and the merits of the natural sciences. But when 
 some President of a section for Mechanical Science 
 insists on making the comparison, and tells us that 
 " he who in his training has substituted literature 
 and history for natural science has chosen the less 
 useful alternative," let us make answer to him that 
 the student of humane letters only, will, at least, 
 know also the great general conceptions brought in 
 by modern physical science ; for science, as Pro- 
 fessor Huxley says, forces them upon us all. But 
 the student of natural sciences only will, by our very 
 hypothesis, know nothing of humane letters ; not
 
 266 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 
 
 to mention that in setting himself to be perpetually 
 accumulating natural knowledge, he sets himself 
 to do what only specialists have in general the gift 
 for doing genially. And so he will probably be 
 unsatisfied, or at any rate incomplete, and even more 
 incomplete than the student of humane letters only. 
 " Discourses in America," pp. 124-126. 
 
 The Study of Greek 
 
 EVEN if literature is to retain a large place in our 
 education, yet Latin and Greek, say the friends of 
 progress, will certainly have to go. Greek is the 
 grand offender in the eyes of these gentlemen. 
 The attackers of the established course of study 
 think that against Greek, at any rate, they have 
 irresistible arguments. Literature may perhaps be 
 needed in education, they say ; but why on earth 
 should it be Greek literature ? Why not French 
 or German ? Nay, " has not an Englishman models 
 in his own literature of every kind of excellence ? " 
 As before, it is not on any weak pleadings of my own 
 that I rely for convincing the gainsayers, it is on 
 the constitution of human nature itself, and on the 
 instinct of self-preservation in humanity. The 
 instinct for beauty is set in human nature, as surely 
 as the instinct for knowledge is set there, or the 
 instinct for conduct. If the instinct for beauty 
 is served by Greek literature and art as it is served 
 by no other literature and art, we may trust to 
 the instinct of self-preservation in humanity for 
 keeping Greek as part of our culture. We may
 
 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 267 
 
 trust to it for even making the study of Greek 
 more prevalent than it is now. Greek will come, 
 I hope, some day to be studied more rationally 
 than at present ; but it will be increasingly studied 
 as men increasingly feel the need in them for beauty, 
 and how powerfully Greek art and Greek literature 
 can serve this need. Women will again study 
 Greek, as Lady Jane Grey did ; I believe that in 
 that chain of forts, with which the fair host of the 
 Amazons are now engirdling our English universities, 
 I find that here in America, in colleges like Smith 
 College in Massachusetts, and Vassar College in 
 the State of New York, and in the happy families 
 of the mixed universities out West, they are studying 
 it already. 
 
 " Discourses in America," pp. 130-132. 
 
 The Necessity for Literature 
 
 As with Greek, so with letters generally ; they will 
 some day come, we may hope, to be studied more 
 rationally, but they will not lose their place. What 
 will happen will rather be that there will be crowded 
 into education other matters besides, far too many ; 
 there will be, perhaps, a period of unsettlement and 
 confusion and false tendency ; but letters will not 
 in the end lose their leading place. If they lose it 
 for a time, they will get it back again. We shall 
 be brought back to them by our wants and aspira- 
 tions. And a poor humanist may possess his soul 
 in patience, neither strive nor cry, admit the energy 
 and brilliancy of the partisans of physical science, 
 
 m\ 
 
 re 
 *\
 
 268 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 
 
 and their present favour with the public, to be far 
 greater than his own, and still have a happy faith 
 that the nature of things works silently on behalf 
 of the studies which he loves, and that, while we 
 shall all have to acquaint ourselves with the great 
 results reached by modern science, and to give 
 ourselves as much training in its disciplines as we 
 can conveniently carry, yet the majority of men will 
 always require humane letters ; and so much the 
 more, as they have the more and the greater results 
 of science to relate to the need in man for conduct, 
 and to the need in him for beauty. 
 
 " Discourses in America," pp. 136-137. 
 
 Free Education in Saxony 
 
 DR. BORNEMANN was of opinion that the general 
 establishment of gratuitous popular instruction in 
 Germany, though everywhere a good deal discussed 
 at the present moment, will not actually come. If 
 it does come, he said, it will lead to a great develop- 
 ment of private schools. Poor children cannot 
 learn so much as the better off, who have more means 
 for preparation at home ; the schools will drop to the 
 level of the poorer children, and the better off will 
 go to private elementary schools. 
 
 " Special Report on Elementary Education in Germany, 
 Switzerland and France, 1886," p. 6. 
 
 Quality of Education 
 
 ALONG with the fuller programme and longer course 
 of German schools I found, also, a higher state of 
 instruction than in ours. I speak of what I saw and
 
 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 269 
 
 heard and of the impression which it made upon 
 me after seeing English schools for more than thirty 
 years. The methods of teaching in foreign schools 
 are more gradual, more natural, more rational, than 
 in ours ; and in speaking here of foreign schools I 
 include Swiss and French schools as well as German. 
 I often asked myself why, with such large classes, 
 the order was in general so thoroughly good, and why 
 with such long hours, the children had in general 
 so little look of exhaustion or fatigue ; and the 
 answer I could not help making to myself was, 
 that the cause lay in the children being taught less 
 mechanically and more naturally than with us, 
 and being more interested. In the teaching of 
 arithmetic, geometry, and natural science I was 
 particularly struck with the patience, the clinging 
 to oral question and answer, the avoidance of over- 
 hurry, the being content to advance slowly, the 
 securing of the ground. This struck me the more 
 because in these matters, in which I am not naturally 
 quick, I always had, as a learner, the sense of being 
 over-hurried myself by my teachers, and in the 
 foreign schools I constantly felt that if I had been 
 taught these matters in the way in which I heard 
 them taught there I could have made progress. 
 I am told that young men studying for Woolwich, 
 who go to Germany to learn the German language, 
 are at first struck in the schools there with the 
 mathematics being much less advanced than at 
 home ; but presently they find that the slower rate 
 of advance is more than compensated by the 
 thoroughness of the teaching and the hold gained
 
 270 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 
 
 upon the matter of study. I speak with hesitation, 
 however, on these matters, and often I wished for 
 some of my more competent colleagues to be with 
 me that I might have pointed out to them what 
 struck me, and have asked them if they could help 
 owning that it was so. At any rate the impression 
 strongly made upon me was as I have described. 
 
 " Special Report on Elementary Education in Germany, 
 Switzerland and France, 1886," pp. 13-14. 
 
 Careful Grounding 
 
 THE same thing in teaching the elements of writing 
 and reading, and in training children to answer 
 questions put to them ; the same patience, the same 
 care to make the child sure of his ground. A child 
 asked a question is apt to answer by a single word, 
 or a word or two, and the questioner is apt to fill 
 out the answer in his own mind and to accept it. 
 But in Germany it is a regular exercise for children 
 to be made to give their answers complete, and the 
 discipline in accuracy and collectedness which is 
 thus obtained is very valuable. 
 
 " Special Report on Elementary Education in Germany, 
 Switzerland and France, 1886," p. 14. 
 
 The Humanising Touch 
 
 BUT the higher one rises in a German school the more 
 is the superiority of the instruction over ours visible. 
 Again and again I find written in my notes, The 
 children human. They had been brought under
 
 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 271 
 
 teaching of a quality to touch and interest them, 
 and were being formed by it. The fault of the 
 teaching in our popular schools at home is, as I 
 have often said, that it is so little formative ; it 
 gives the children the power to read the newspapers, 
 to write a letter, to cast accounts, and gives them a 
 certain number of pieces of knowledge, but it does 
 little to touch their nature for good and to mould 
 them. You hear often people of the richer class in 
 England wishing that they and their children were 
 as well educated as the children of an elementary 
 school ; they mean that they wish they wrote as 
 good a hand, worked sums as rapidly and correctly, 
 and had as many facts of geography at command ; 
 but they suppose themselves retaining all the while 
 the fuller cultivation of taste and feeling which is 
 their advantage and their children's advantage over 
 the pupils of the elementary school at present, and 
 they forget that it is within the power of the popular 
 school, and should be its aim, to do much for this 
 cultivation, although our schools accomplish for it 
 so very little. The excellent maxim of that true 
 friend of education, the German schoolmaster, John 
 Comenius, " The aim is to train generally all who 
 are born to all which is human," does in some 
 considerable degree govern the proceedings of 
 popular schools in German countries, and now in 
 France also, but in England hardly at all. 
 
 " Special Report on Elementary Education in Germany, 
 Switzerland and France, 1886," p. 14.
 
 272 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 
 
 Religious Teaching in Germany 
 
 No one will deny that religion can touch the sources 
 of thought, feeling, and life, and I had not been 
 prepared for the seriousness with which the religious 
 instruction is given in Germany, even in Protestant 
 Germany, and for the effect which it produces. 
 Little or nothing was said in Lutheran schools, 
 about the church and its authority, about the 
 clergy and their attributes, but I was surprised to 
 find with what energy and seriousness points raised 
 by the catechism for example, the question in 
 what sense it can be said that God tempts men 
 were handled, and of the intelligence and interest 
 with which the children followed what was said and 
 answered the questions put to them. The chief 
 effect of the religious teaching, however, certainly 
 lies in the Bible passages, and still more in the 
 evangelical hymns, which are so abundantly learnt 
 by heart and repeated by the children. No one 
 could watch the faces of the children, of the girls 
 particularly, without feeling that something in their 
 nature responded to what they were repeating, and 
 was moved by it. It is said that two thirds of the 
 working classes in the best educated countries of 
 Protestant Germany are detached from the received 
 religion, and the inference is drawn that the religious 
 teaching in the schools must be a vain formality. 
 But may it not happen that chords are awakened 
 by the Bible and hymns in German schools which 
 remain a possession even though the course of later
 
 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 273 
 
 life may carry the German adult far away from 
 Lutheran dogma ? 
 
 " Special Report on Elementary Education in Germany, 
 Switzerland and France, 1886," p. 14. 
 
 Organisation the Secret of Superiority 
 
 THE instruction is better in the foreign popular 
 schools than in ours, because the teachers are better 
 trained, and of the training of teachers I shall have 
 to speak presently. This is the main reason of the 
 superiority, that the teachers are better trained. 
 But that they are better trained comes from a 
 cause which acts for good upon the whole of education 
 abroad, that the instruction as a whole is better 
 organised than with us. Indeed, with us it is not, 
 and cannot at present be organised as a whole at all, 
 for the public administration, which deals with the 
 popular schools, stops at those schools, and takes 
 into its view no others. But there is an article in 
 the constitution of Canton Zurich which well 
 expresses the idea which prevails everywhere abroad 
 of the organisation of instruction from top to 
 bottom as one whole : Die hohern Lehranstalten 
 sollen mit der Volkschule in organische Verbindung 
 gebracht werden ; the higher establishments for 
 teaching shall be brought into organic connexion 
 with the popular school. And men like Wilhelm 
 von Humboldt in Germany and Guizot or Cousin 
 in France have been at the head of the public 
 administration of schools in those countries, and 
 have organised popular instruction as a part of one 
 
 T
 
 274 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 
 
 great system, a part in correspondence of some kind 
 with the higher parts, and to be organised with the 
 same seriousness, the same thorough knowledge and 
 large views of education, the same single eye to its 
 requirements, as the higher parts. 
 
 " Special Report on Elementary Education in Germany, 
 Switzerland, and France, 1886," p. 15. 
 
 Lack of Co-ordination 
 
 WE may imagine the like in England if we suppose a 
 man like Sir James Mackintosh at the head of the 
 Education Department having to administer the 
 public school system for intermediate and higher 
 education as well as the popular schools, in continual 
 intercourse with the representatives of that system 
 as well as with representatives of the popular schools, 
 and treating questions respecting popular instruction 
 with a mind apt for all educational questions and 
 conversant with them, aided, moreover, by the 
 intercourse just spoken of. Evidently questions 
 respecting codes and programmes would then 
 present themselves under conditions very different 
 from the present conditions. The popular school in 
 our country is at present considered by the minister 
 in charge of it not at all as one stage to be co-ordered 
 with the other stages in a great system of public 
 schools, and to have its course surveyed and fixed 
 from the point of view of a knower and lover of 
 education. Not at all ; the popular school is 
 necessarily, for him, not so much an educational 
 problem as a social and political one ; as a school 
 dealing with a few elementary matters, simple
 
 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 275 
 
 enough, and the great thing is to make the House 
 of Commons and the public mind satisfied that 
 value is received for the public money spent on 
 teaching these matters. Hence the Code which 
 governs the instruction in our popular schools. 
 And I have always felt that objections made in the 
 pure interest of good instruction and education to 
 the Code had this disadvantage, that they came 
 before a man, often very able, but who, from his 
 circumstances, would not and could not consider 
 them from the point of a disinterested knower and 
 friend of education at all, but from a point of view 
 quite different. 
 
 ''Special Report on Elementary Education in Germany; 
 Switzerland, and France, 1886," p. 15. 
 
 Co-ordination of Primary and Secondary 
 Education 
 
 IN this report I have not space for showing the 
 many ways in which abroad the higher education of 
 the country is in continual correspondence with the 
 popular education, helping and strengthening the 
 work of the training colleges, advising the Minister 
 by commissions of experts on educational questions 
 requiring study, and so forth. But it will be at once 
 evident how directly schools like the hohere Volks- 
 Schulen of Saxony, the Secundar-Schulen of Zurich, 
 the Ecole Turgot at Paris, under one public adminis- 
 tration with the ordinary popular schools, and 
 receiving boys from them to be prepared for com- 
 mercial and industrial pursuits, and to continue up 
 to the age of sixteen or seventeen the education
 
 276 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 
 
 commenced in the popular school, it will be at once 
 evident, I say, how this continuation and corre- 
 spondence must naturally affect the programme of 
 the popular school. That programme cannot be 
 treated as something isolated and quite simple, 
 having merely to satisfy, not those who look well 
 into the matter, but the so-called practical man and 
 the public mind. 
 
 " Special Report on Elementary Education in Germany, 
 Switzerland and France, 1886," p. 16. 
 
 Status, Training, and Pensioning of Teachers 
 
 THE training school course there lasts six years. 
 But a youth enters at the age of about fourteen, with 
 the attainments required for passing an examination 
 for the Entlassungs-Zeugniss,oT certificate of discharge 
 from a mittlere Volksschule, or popular school of the 
 second grade, a school which in Saxony must be 
 organised in at least four classes, with a two years' 
 course for each. In the training school, instruction 
 and lodging are free ; a small sum is paid for board, 
 but a certain number of free boarders, " gifted poor 
 children," are admitted. In the Friedrichstadt 
 training school at Dresden, which I visited, there 
 were more day students than boarders, only 88 out 
 of 216 being boarders. But this is not the usual 
 proportion ; students, however, are permitted to 
 live at home or with families chosen by their parents, 
 and there being much pressure for admission to 
 the Friedrichstadt school, many, for whom there is 
 not room as boarders, attend as day students rather
 
 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 277 
 
 than not attend at all. The training school at 
 Dresden for schoolmistresses takes no boarders ; 
 all the students live at home or in private families. 
 
 To the training school is attached a practising 
 school, organised as a mittlere Schule, a middle school 
 with four classes and 155 scholars. In this school 
 the students see and learn the practice of teaching. 
 Their own instruction they receive in small classes 
 which may not have more than 25 scholars. Their 
 hours in class may not exceed 36 a week, not counting 
 the time given to music. The matters of instruction 
 are religion (the Friedrichstadt school is Protestant) , 
 German language and literature, Latin, geography, 
 history, natural science both descriptive and theo- 
 retical, arithmetic, geometry, pedagogy, including 
 psychology and logic, music, writing, drawing, 
 and gymnastics. All of these matters are obligatory, 
 but after the first year students of proved incapacity 
 for music are no longer taught it. 
 
 At the end of the course, when the student is 
 about twenty years old, he undergoes the Schulamts- 
 kandidaten-Pru/ung or examination for office. The 
 examination is both oral and in writing, and turns 
 upon the work of the student's course in the training 
 school. The examining commission is composed 
 of the Minister's commissary, a church commissary, 
 and the whole staff of the training college. The 
 staff conduct the examination, the Minister's com- 
 missary presides and superintends. 
 
 If the student passes he receives his Reifezeugniss, 
 or certificate of ripeness, and is now qualified to 
 serve as assistant in a public popular school, or as
 
 278 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 
 
 a private teacher where his work has not to go 
 beyond the limits of popular school instruction. 
 After two years of service as assistant, at the age 
 of about twenty-two, the young teacher returns to 
 the training school and presents himself for the 
 Wahlfdhigkeits-Prufung or examination for definitive 
 posting. For this examination the commission is 
 composed of the Minister's commissary, a church 
 commissary, the director of the seminar, and either 
 two of its upper teachers, or else other approved 
 schoolmen named by the Minister. This examina- 
 tion again is both written and oral. I attended the 
 oral part on two days at the Friedrichstadt training 
 school, and heard and saw candidates examined in 
 religion, music, German language, and literature, 
 the history of education, pedagogy, psychology, logic 
 and school law. The Minister's commissary was 
 the Inspector for Dresden, Mr. Eichenberg ; he 
 took an active part in the examination. The 
 church commissary listened in silence, but his 
 signature is required for the certificate. Of a batch, 
 of ten students whom I heard examined together 
 in the history of education I observed that seven 
 wore spectacles. But in general the students gave 
 me the impression of being better and more fully 
 educated than ours, under a better planned system, 
 and by better trained instructors. The school 
 synod at Hamburg unites all the teachers of the city, 
 and something of this union of the lower members 
 of the teaching profession with the higher exists 
 throughout Germany and is of great value. I found 
 that Mr. Griillich, the inspector for the country
 
 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 279 
 
 district round Dresden, a very accomplished and 
 able man, held periodical conferences with the 
 teachers of his district. The conferences were not 
 fewer than six in the year, lasted a whole afternoon, 
 and turned on matters settled by programme 
 beforehand, matters of interest to those engaged 
 in education. The Lehrziel, or aim to guide the 
 teaching of the students' several subjects, which is 
 given in the Saxon Seminar or dnung, or regulation 
 for ordering of training schools, is in itself an 
 instructor's manual full of counsel and suggestive- 
 ness. 
 
 The training school course for Saxon school- 
 mistresses resembles in general that for school- 
 masters, but it lasts for five years only instead of 
 six. The obligatory matters are the same as for 
 students of the other sex, except that French is 
 substituted for Latin, and needlework is added. 
 English and instrumental music are optional subjects. 
 The rules for examination and certificate-granting 
 are similar. 
 
 Training schools for schoolmistresses are, how- 
 ever, much less numerous in Germany than those 
 for schoolmasters, because in German countries 
 women are much less used in teaching than men. 
 In Prussia, for instance, there are 115 training 
 schools for schoolmasters, but only ten for school- 
 mistresses. In Saxony there are sixteen for school- 
 masters, one of the sixteen being for Catholics ; 
 there are only two for schoolmistresses. It is held 
 to be beyond question that certain matters of 
 instruction in the upper classes of the popular
 
 280 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 
 
 school women cannot teach satisfactorily. In general 
 a woman may in boys' or mixed schools teach only 
 the lower classes. The Hamburg school law directs 
 that in the popular schools for girls in that city the 
 head teacher and one other teacher at least shall 
 always be men. At Zurich I found a very capable 
 and pleasing schoolmistress, who had been employed 
 at Versailles by the French Education Department 
 (what a lesson for our Department !) during the 
 year of the last Paris Exhibition, to conduct a 
 primary school and show French teachers practically 
 what the methods of a good Swiss school were. 
 At Zurich she was teaching a lower class, and com- 
 plained much that she could not rise higher. The 
 French Education Department would gladly have 
 retained her in France, and if it had not been for 
 home duties she would gladly, she said, have stayed ; 
 the career for a schoolmistress was so much better 
 there. 
 
 '' Special Report on Elementary Education in Germany, 
 Switzerland and France, 1886," pp. 16-17. 
 
 French Training Schools 
 
 THE French training schools require separate notice. 
 Not that the forms of the system established by 
 the Training School Law of 1879, when M. Jules 
 Ferry was Minister of Instruction, and organised 
 by the decree of 1881, differ very greatly from those 
 in Germany. Boarding is more generally the rule, 
 and board, lodging, and instruction are all of them 
 gratuitous ; but the age of admission is fifteen, 
 though candidates are received up to eighteen. The
 
 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 281 
 
 candidate must have the certificat d' etudes primaires, 
 or certificate that he has passed the leaving examina- 
 tion of the primary school, and he must engage 
 himself to serve for ten years as a functionary of 
 public instruction. His time passed in the training 
 school, however, after the age of eighteen has been 
 reached by him, counts towards the fulfilment of 
 this engagement. The training school course lasts 
 three years ; at the end of the first year the student 
 has to pass his examination for the " elementary 
 brevet of capacity," or certificate as we call it ; at 
 the end of the third year that for the " superior 
 brevet." The examination turns upon the obligatory 
 matters of the training school course, which are 
 moral and civic instruction, reading, writing, the 
 French language and elements of French literature, 
 history and geography, those of France in particular, 
 and so on ; a programme less strong than that of 
 a German training school, but taking the same line 
 of subjects, except as to religion. One or more 
 modern languages may be taken, but this is optional. 
 To each training school a practising school is attached 
 as in Germany. 
 
 '' Special Report on Elementary Education in Germany, 
 Switzerland and France, 1886," p. 18. 
 
 General Reflections from Abroad 
 
 I WAS sent to make inquiries, and I have tried to 
 give, as succinctly as I could, the result of them. 
 That I should add recommendations was not in my 
 commission, but I may be allowed, perhaps, to put
 
 282 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 
 
 forward one or two remarks which are very present 
 to my mind in consequence of what I have seen. 
 
 In the first place, the retention of school fees is not 
 a very important matter. Simply from the point 
 of view of a friend of education there are advantages 
 in their retention, and advantages in their abolition, 
 and the balance of advantage is decidedly, in my 
 opinion, on the side of retention. But we must 
 remember, on the other hand, that there are some 
 questions which it is peculiarly undesirable to make 
 matters of continued public discussion ; questions 
 peculiarly lending themselves to the mischievous 
 declamation and arts of demagogues, and that 
 this question of gratuitous popular schooling is one 
 of them. How often, if the question becomes a 
 political one, will declaimers be repeating that the 
 popular school ought to be made free because the 
 wealthier classes have robbed the poor of endow- 
 ments intended to educate them. The assertion 
 is not true, indeed ; what we call " popular educa- 
 tion is a quite modern conception ; what the 
 pious founder in general designed formerly was to 
 catch all promising subjects and to make priests 
 of them. But how surely will popular audiences 
 believe that the popular school has been robbed, 
 and how bad for them to believe it, how will the 
 confusion of our time be yet further thickened by 
 their believing it ! I am inclined to think therefore 
 that sooner than let free popular schooling become 
 a burning political question in a country like ours, 
 a wise statesman would do well to adopt and organise 
 it. Only it will be impossible to organise it with
 
 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 283 
 
 the State limiting its concern, as it does now, to 
 the popular school only ; and this can be so palpably 
 shown to be a matter of common justice that one 
 need not despair of bringing even the popular 
 judgment to recognise it. 
 
 Secondly, there is a danger, perhaps, lest when 
 we have got very elaborate and complete returns, 
 and these returns show a very satisfactory proportion 
 between scholars in daily attendance and scholars 
 on the books, a very satisfactory limit to the number 
 of scholars allowed to each teacher, and a very 
 satisfactory percentage of passes in the established 
 matters of instruction, we should think that therefore 
 we must be doing well with our popular schools, and 
 that we have no cause to envy the popular schools 
 abroad, and nothing to learn from them. On the 
 contrary, the things on which we pride ourselves 
 are mere machinery ; and what we should do well 
 to lay to heart is that foreign schools with larger 
 classes, longer holidays, and a school-day often cut 
 in two as we have seen, nevertheless, on the whole, 
 give, from the better training of their teachers, and 
 the better planning of their school course, a superior 
 popular instruction to ours. 
 
 And this brings me thirdly and finally to the 
 point raised at the end of my first remark, and 
 urged by me so often and so vainly ever since my 
 mission abroad in 1859 ; our need to organise our 
 secondary instruction. This is desirable in the 
 interest of our secondary and higher instruction, of 
 course, principally j but it is desirable, I may say it 
 is indispensable, in the interest of our popular
 
 284 THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 
 
 instruction also. Every one now admits that 
 popular instruction is a matter for public institution 
 and supervision ; but so long as public institution 
 and supervision stop there, and no contact and 
 correlation are established between our popular 
 instruction and the instruction above it, so long the 
 condition of our popular instruction itself will and 
 must be unsatisfactory. 
 
 " Special Report on Elementary Education in Germany, 
 Switzerland and France, 1886," pp. 24-25.
 
 INDEX 
 
 * ACADEMY, lack of an English, 
 
 Aim of instruction, 177, 242, 
 
 243 
 
 Alterthumswissenschaft. See 
 
 ANCIENT AUTHORS. 
 ^America, national character 
 
 of, 13 
 tendency of democracy in, 
 
 44 
 
 ( Ancient authors (Alterthums- 
 wissenschaft) as literature, 
 169, 185 ; 178, 183 
 
 i Aristocracy , influence of, 13, 43 
 
 ' Aristocratic ideal, educative 
 
 effect of, 1 08 
 
 Arminius, 112-119 
 
 ...- Asiles ouvroirs, 34 
 
 : Austria and examinations, 175 
 
 BACON, 82. 
 -Balladists, 86 
 
 Basedow, 160 
 -Bentley on Pope's translations, 
 
 - Bible, humanizing influence 
 
 of, as literature, 14 
 and Homer, 75 
 of the Athenians, 80 
 " A Bible reading for | 
 
 Schools," 205, 206 
 the only classic for the I 
 
 people, 212 
 hindrances to reading in j 
 
 schools, 213 
 -Bilingual question, 121 ; cf. 
 
 4. "9 1 
 
 Books. See SCHOOL-BOOKS. 
 Bright, John, 13, 125 
 Brodstudien, 175 
 Buff on, 77 
 
 Burke, definition of law, 104 
 Butler, Bishop, Sermon on Edu- 
 cation, 242 
 
 CALDERON, 73 
 
 Cambridge compared to higher 
 
 lycee, 141, 195, 197 
 Gary, 73 
 Certificates, 37 
 
 Chapman and Homer, 62, 63 
 complexity of thought, 64, 
 
 65.67 
 Character and culture, 20, 95, 
 
 245 
 
 English, 199, 236 
 Christian Brothers, schools of, 
 
 23 
 
 Clanricarde, Lord, 115 
 Claptrap and Catchwords, 224 
 Class division and State Autho- 
 rity, in 
 
 Classes, size of, 37 
 Classical poetry, relation to 
 
 modern, 210 
 Classics, growing disbelief in, 
 
 148 ; 
 
 reform of, 160 ; 
 as literature, 169, 185 
 value of training in, 172, 208 
 conflict with modern 
 
 studies, 177, 181 
 power of, 183, 240 ; Greek 
 266
 
 286 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Code, the, how shaped, 275 
 Napoleon, rational form of, 
 
 38 
 
 Co-education, 5, 32 
 College of France, 133 
 Comenius, 160, 271 
 Commercial theory of educa- 
 tion, 185 
 
 Compulsory. See under EDU- 
 CATION. 
 Condorcet, plan of secondary 
 
 education, 135 
 Confectioner and doctor in 
 
 education, 224 
 Continent, experience of the, 
 
 152 
 
 contrasts, 158 
 obstacles to profiting by, 
 
 158 
 
 general reflections from, 281 
 Controversy, evils of literary, 
 
 76 
 Convention, schools founded 
 
 by the, 24 
 
 Co-ordination, 274, 275 
 Corneille, 73 
 Council of public instruction, 
 
 ^S, 157 I tf. 161, 192 
 Cousin, 47, 143, 273 
 Cowper, 66, 73 
 Cramming, and the creative 
 
 spirit, 239 
 
 Critic, first duty of the, 84 
 Criticism needed against Eng- 
 lish eccentricity, 70 
 use of ignorance in, 79 
 positive result in, 81 
 Culture, lack of, in pupil 
 
 teachers, 5 
 
 and reading-books, 14 
 and character united at 
 
 Athens, 20, 245 
 and teachers, 93 
 Prussian belief in, 167 
 needed for all, 216 
 defined, 258 sq. 
 Cuvier, 47, 50 
 
 DANTE, 66, 68 73 
 D'Argenson, 
 
 Degrees, 197 
 
 Democracy organized by 
 
 France, 17 
 lacks ideals, 18 
 Denominational education, 152, 
 
 167 
 
 Dilettanteism, 78 
 Discipline, 3 
 
 in French and English 
 schools, 147 
 
 ECCENTRICITY and Criticism, 70 
 Education, governing aim of, 
 
 242, 243 
 
 commercial theory of, 185 
 compulsory, alone is uni- 
 versal, 7, 119, 153 
 
 would it succeed, 122 
 
 abroad, 152 
 
 and in England, 152 
 
 denominational, 152 
 expenditure on, in France 
 
 and England, 32 
 free, 26, 236, 268, 282 
 higher, 102, 155. See 
 
 MIDDLE CLASS. 
 a learned and a liberal, 93 
 middle-class and the State, 
 
 103 
 
 proportion in, i 
 quality of, 268 
 secondary, in England and 
 France, 27 
 
 need of organizing, 3 1 
 
 summed up, 187 273-5, 
 
 283 
 
 secular, 152 
 the spread of, as dislocating 
 
 society, 42 
 State interference in, 16, 
 
 102, 105 
 
 superiority in, due to organi- 
 sation, 273, 274, 275 
 Education Council, 138, 157 
 functions of, 192 
 
 Minister, 138, 145 
 
 need of, 165 
 
 Educational results of the 
 French Revolution, 24 ; 
 cf> 135
 
 INDEX 
 
 287 
 
 Efficiency, need of securities 
 
 for, 97, 192 
 by training, 199 
 Endowed schools, inspection 
 
 of, 194 
 
 Endowments, 102 
 England, lack of great ideas in, 
 
 13 
 
 English in Welsh schools, 4 
 more to be studied by 
 
 pupil teachers, 6 
 poor anthologies of, 15 
 
 the Latin element in, 55 
 
 belief in machinery and 
 
 disbelief in government, 
 157, 153 
 contrast with Prussia, 167 
 
 character, 199, 236 
 
 Epic poetry, best metres for, 
 
 7i 
 Eton, reform of, 94 
 
 and France, 97 
 
 type of life at, 101 
 
 and Lycurgus House, 116 
 Eutrapelia, 244 
 Examinations, why severe for 
 teachers, 10 
 
 for Dutch teachers, 48 
 
 delusive, 99 
 
 in France and England, 144 
 
 appointment by, 150, 199 
 
 German and French leaving 
 examinations 163, 196 
 
 and Brodstudien, 175 
 
 and Austria, 175 
 
 FALSISMS, 221, 222 
 Foreign languages, 186 
 France, character of the masses 
 
 in, 17 
 
 causes of the power of, 1 7 
 administrative divisions in, 
 
 22 
 
 free education in, 26, 236 
 primary schools in, 26 
 secondary education of, com- 
 pared with England, 27, 
 127 
 
 effect of public education in, 
 29 
 
 France, educational expendi- 
 ture in 1856. .32 
 schoolless children in, 33 
 liberal spirit of legislation, 
 
 40 
 
 and the State, 112 
 M. Arnold's love of, 254 
 Free education in France, 26, 
 
 236 
 
 in Saxony, 268, 282 
 French and English literature! 
 
 94 
 
 French Revolution, educationa 
 results of, 24 ; cf. 135 
 
 GAMES in English and German 
 schools, 171 
 
 General reflections from abroad , 
 281 
 
 Geography, 231 
 
 Germany and refinement, 108 
 Prussian school law, 161 
 games and gymnastics in, 
 
 171 
 
 University system in, 1 76 
 quality of education, 268 
 careful grounding, 270 
 religious teaching in, 272 
 
 Goethe, 73, 78, 109, 217, 244 
 
 Goldsmith, 210 
 
 Government, over-and under-, 
 
 22 
 English disbelief in, 157 
 
 Grammar teaching, no 
 as class subject, 228 
 
 Grand style, 65, 67, 68, 73, 83, 
 84 
 
 Greek, 93, 148. See also 
 
 CLASSICS. 
 spirit, 178, 183 
 study of, 266 
 
 Grounding, careful, 270 
 
 Guizot, 24, 39, 40 
 
 law of primary instruction, 
 137, 227, 273 
 
 Gymnastics, 171 
 
 HAUPT, 109 
 
 Hawtrey, 100 
 
 Hexameter, the English, 74
 
 288 
 
 INDEX 
 
 History, school of, 227 
 Holland, primary schools in, 45 
 
 organized school inspection 
 in, 46 
 
 position of teachers in, 
 
 47 
 
 teachers' examinations in, 47 
 pupil teachers in, 48 
 religious instructions in, 49 
 normal school at Haarlem, 50 
 schools of Utrecht and 
 
 Leyden, 51 
 
 Homer, how to approach, 55 
 genius of, 76 
 the four qualities of his 
 
 poetry, 56, 63 
 works in the grand style, 66, 
 
 68 
 
 unlikeness to Milton, 57 
 not rendered by Pope, 59, 60, 
 
 61 
 
 and Scott, 69 
 and Voltaire, 65, 87 
 and the Elizabethans, 64 
 and the Bible, 75, 80 
 Homeric unity, 67 
 Human nature and science 
 
 teaching, 262 
 Humanizing influence of Bible, 
 
 14 
 touch in German schools, 
 
 270 
 
 Humanists, 178, 188 
 Humboldt, motto from, 151 ; 
 
 195, 227, 273 
 Huxley, Professor, 258 et seq. 
 
 IDEALS, lacking in democracy, 
 
 18 
 value of, to a nation, 43, 
 
 108 
 
 Ignorance, saving grace of, 79 
 Inspection of private schools, 
 
 of public schools, 98, 100 
 organized in Holland, 46 
 of endowed schools, 194 
 German method, 194 
 Inspectors, duty of, 7 
 as civil servants, 38 
 
 Instruction, true aim of, 177 
 Intellectual life, national in- 
 fluence of, 107, 251 
 Ireland, university education 
 in, 220, 252 
 
 JESUITS, schools of the, 134 
 Johnson, tailor and president 
 109 
 
 LACORDAIRE on character, 95 
 Latin, element of, in English, 
 55, 146. See also CLASSICS. 
 power of, 183 
 verse, 183, 184 
 in elementary schools, 203 
 Law and rational language, 38 
 Burke's definition of, 104 
 educational in England and 
 
 Germany, 217, 161 
 Letters, science, and the Middle 
 
 Ages, 264 
 final need of, in education, 
 
 265 
 of school children quoted, 
 
 125 
 
 Leyden, 51 
 Liberal education, 93 
 Light as a moral cause, 250 
 Literary controversy, 76 
 
 opinion, English, 77 
 
 Literature, not belles lettres, 
 
 259 
 
 necessity for, 267 
 need to be apprehended as a 
 
 whole, 210 
 
 civilizing power of, 215 
 need of, in popular schools, 
 
 205, 210 
 
 and science, 229, 255 
 French and English, 94 
 Lowe, 89 
 
 Lumpington, Lord, 116 
 Lycees, 25, 135 
 
 Oxford and Cambridge com- 
 pared to, 141, 195, 197 
 and examinations, 144 
 uniformity in, 226 
 Lycurgus House, 116
 
 INDEX 
 
 MACAULAY, 87 
 
 Machinery, English belief in, 
 
 157 
 
 Managers, school, 238 
 Masterpieces, formative in- 
 fluence of, 244 
 Masters, French and English, 
 
 142 
 
 Mathematical teaching in Ger- 
 man schools, 269 
 Mediaeval Universities, 264 
 Metres for Epic poetry, 71, 73 
 Middle Ages, science and letters, 
 
 264 
 Middle-class children, lower, 
 
 and discipline, 3 
 lack of public schools for, 
 
 19, 100, 112 
 
 relation to upper class, 29 
 and working class, 31, 106, 
 
 2 33 
 
 type of school life for, 101 
 and higher education, 102, 
 
 155 
 
 education and the State, 103 
 
 in Germany, 108 
 
 on the second, not the first, 
 
 plane in England, 189 
 Milton, unlikeness to Homer, 
 
 57. 69. 73, 88 
 
 Mind, things of the, as a 
 political force, 251 
 
 Ministry of public instruction, 
 
 138, 146 
 need of, 165 
 
 Mixed schools in France and 
 Holland, 32; cf. CO-EDUCA- 
 TION 
 
 Modern language teachers, 165 
 
 Montaigne, 80 
 
 Montalembert on English 
 public schools, 12 
 
 NAPOLEON, organization of 
 
 Church and State, 13 
 as educator, 25, 135. See 
 
 also CODE. 
 National character, American, 
 
 J 3 
 French, 17 
 
 National influence of the in- 
 tellectual life, 107 
 National need of a serious con- 
 ception of righteousness, 
 201 
 
 Natur-Kunde, 230 
 Needlework schools, 34 
 Newman, 67, 79, 87, 88 
 Normal school at Haarlem, 50 
 in France, 139 
 
 OBEDIENCE and right action, 
 
 200 
 Organization the secret of 
 
 superiority, 273 
 Over-government, 22 
 Oxford, apostrophe to, 109 
 and Paris, 130 
 compared to higher lycJe, 
 141, 195, 197 
 
 I PAKINGTON, Sir John, 39 
 j Parents and religious educa- 
 tion, 40 
 
 Paris, University of, 128 
 and Oxford, 130 
 range of studies in, 131, 134 
 Payment by results, 121 
 
 of schoolmasters, Prussian, 
 
 167 
 
 Pedagogic, 164 
 People, need of letters in 
 
 schools for the, 205, 210 
 Philistines, three classes of, 113 
 Poetical monument, the most 
 
 important, 42 
 Poetry, classical and modern, 
 
 210 
 
 English, for schools, 210, 226 
 formative power of, 232 
 influence of, 234, 241, 244 
 Poets, distinctive character of, 
 
 86 
 Political force of the things of 
 
 the mind, 251 
 Pope and Homer, 55, 59, 60, 
 
 67. 85 
 
 a warning to translators, 
 61
 
 290 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Pope contrasted with Chap- 
 man, 62 
 
 criticizes Chapman, 65 
 Priesthood, influence of, 13, 43 i 
 Primary schools not co-ordi- 
 nated with secondary, 274, 
 275 
 
 in France, 26 
 Guizot's law, 137 
 Prinsen, 50 
 
 Privatdocent, the, 173 
 Private schools, inspection of, 
 
 in France, 35 
 the old, 124 
 
 in France and England, 146, 
 192 
 
 teaching, function of, 2 
 
 Professors, State appointment ! 
 
 of, 198, 223 
 
 Prussian school law, 161 
 leaving examinations, 163 
 belief in culture, 167 
 religious instruction, 167 
 schoolmasters' pay, 169 
 Public establishment of second- i 
 
 ary schools, 105 
 value of, 151 
 
 instruction, ministry and 
 
 council of, 138, 157, cf. 
 161 
 
 schools, English, 12 
 
 Talleyrand on, 28 
 
 lack of, for the middle 
 
 class, 19, 97, 100, 112 
 products, 97 
 
 securities offered by, 98, 192 
 discipline as compared with 
 
 French, 147 
 routine in, 182 
 Pupil teachers, 36 
 
 lack of culture in, 5, 15 
 in Holland, 48 
 
 RATIONAL language and the 
 
 law, 38 
 
 Reading, regular, 249 
 of newspapers, 250 
 Reading-books and culture, 14, 
 
 91, 124 
 
 Realists, 180, 188 
 
 Realschulen, 160, 167, 172, 177 
 Reason, the State as organ of 
 
 the national, 41 
 Recitation, value of, 51, 91, 
 
 202, 225, 232, 241 
 Reformation and Renascence, 
 influence in education, 159 
 Regulation of studies, 227 
 Regulations, Prinsen's view of, 
 
 5i 
 Religion, no consensus as to 
 
 teaching, 2 
 need of, 221 
 Religious teaching, 41 
 
 and rights of the parent, 40 
 in Holland, 49 
 in Prussia, 167 
 in Germany, 272 
 Renan, 259 
 
 Results, payment by, 121 
 Revised code, 89 
 Revolution, French, educa- 
 tional results of, 24, 135 
 Righteousness, national need 
 
 of, 201 
 
 Rousseau, 160 
 Routine in public schools, 182 
 
 SAINTE BEUVE, 82, 255 
 Salaries. See PAYMENT; 
 SCHOOLMASTERS; and 
 TEACHERS 
 
 Saxony, free education in, 268 
 Schiller, 73, 109 
 School as a family or as a little 
 
 world, 101 
 School-books, choice of, 124, 
 
 170 
 School inspector, duty of, 7 
 
 law, Prussian, 161 
 
 in England and Germany, 
 
 217 
 
 Schoolless children, 33 
 Schoolmaster, the, 9 
 qualification of, 10 
 training of, 10 
 the Dutch, 45, 47 
 pay of Prussian, 169 
 Schoolmasters to the nations 
 13, 43
 
 INDEX 
 
 291 
 
 Schools. See also PUBLIC ; 
 
 PRIVATE ; INSPECTION. 
 English, initial defect in, 
 
 159 
 public establishment of 
 
 secondary, 105 
 securities for culture in, 97, 
 
 98, 105 
 technical, 156 
 voluntary, 235 
 of the Jesuits, 134 
 of Leyden and Utrecht, 51 
 of Soreze and Toulouse, 97 
 of the teaching orders, 23, 
 
 27. 33 
 founded by the Convention, 
 
 24 
 
 primary, in France, 26 
 
 in Holland, 45 
 
 for the poor, 26, 31 
 
 needlework, 34 
 Science and letters, 229, 255 
 
 and the Middle Ages, 264 
 by nature teaching, 230 
 
 teaching and grammar, no 
 
 teaching and human nature, 
 
 262 
 Scientific action denned, 219 
 
 teaching, 260 
 Scott, 69, 87 
 
 Secondary education. See also 
 under EDUCATION. 
 
 instruction in England 
 
 and France, 27 
 
 cost of, 96 
 
 not governed by law of 
 supply and demand, 98 
 
 real needs in, 99 
 
 result of organizing, 102 
 
 public establishment of, 105 
 
 and the intellectual life, 107 
 
 origin of our secondary 
 schools, 127 
 
 Condorcet's plan of, 135 
 
 summed up, 187 
 Secular instruction, 41 
 
 education, 152 
 
 Self-government, 114 
 Shuttleworth, Sir James, 37, 
 
 90 
 
 Sisters' schools, 33 
 
 Society for the Public Good, 46 
 
 Specializing, 188 
 
 Spenser, 72 
 
 State as organ of the national 
 reason, 41 
 
 appointment of professors, 
 
 198, 223 
 
 authority and class divi- 
 sion, in 
 
 establishment of second- 
 ary schools, 105 
 
 interference in education, 
 
 16, 29 
 suspected in England, 159 
 
 religion, 223 
 
 Stein's Land reform, 114 
 
 Studies, regulation of, 227 
 
 Superiorities, elimination of, 44 
 
 Superiority in education due 
 to organization, 273 
 
 Switzerland, tendencies of 
 democracy in, 44 
 
 TAINE, 143 
 j Talleyrand on English public 
 
 schools, 28 
 
 ' Teachers, training of, 10 
 self culture, 93 
 training and status of, in 
 
 Germany, 276 
 Dutch, 45, 47 
 examination of, 48 
 French and English, 142 
 of modern languages, 165 
 payment of, Prussian, 167 
 women, 12 
 
 Teaching, uniformity in, 2 
 function of private, 2 
 the art of, 165 
 mechanical, 241 
 Teaching orders in France, 23, 
 
 27. 134 
 
 Technical schools, 156 
 Training a better guarantee 
 
 than examination, 199 
 Training schools in German}', 
 
 279 
 in France, 280
 
 INDEX 
 
 Translation, the only tribunal 
 
 of, 54 
 
 essential, 67 
 rhymed, 58 
 verse, 85 
 Translator, task of, 54 
 
 fidelity in, 58 
 
 Translators, Pope a warning 
 to, 61 
 
 UNDENOMINATIONAL educa- 
 tion, 152 
 
 Under-government, 22 
 Uniformity in French curri- 
 culum, 226 
 in teaching, 2 
 
 Universities, English, 12, 31 
 contrasted with German and 
 
 French systems, 176 
 provincial, foreshadowed, 196 
 mediaeval, 264 
 
 University education in Ire- 
 land, 220 
 
 University of France, 136 
 
 revenue of, 136 
 University of Paris, 128, 130, 
 
 131. 134 
 Useful knowledge in schools, 
 
 160 
 Utrecht, 51 
 
 VIRGIL, 68 
 
 Vivacity, some excuse for, 88 
 
 Voltaire, 66 
 
 Voluntary schools, 235 
 
 WELLINGTON, Duke of, 80 
 Welsh schools and English 
 
 language, 4, 119, 121 
 Wolf, 165, 260 
 Women teachers in 1855 .. 12 
 Wordsworth, 209, 235 
 Working-class and middle-class 
 
 education, 31, 106, 233 
 Wright, 73 
 
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