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work; indeed, I might say, that Education, with which that college proposes to grapp

discussions in former days. Nobody outside the agricultural interest now dares to say that education is a bad thing. If any representative of the once large and powerful party, which, in former days, proclaimed this opinion, still exists in a semi-fossil state, he keeps h

he capitalists swell the chorus lustily. They declare that ignorance makes bad workmen; that England will soon be unable to turn out cotton goods, or steam engines, cheaper than other people; and then, Ichabod! Ichabod! the glory will be departed from us. And a

r noble grounds of action. They question if it be wise to tell people that you will do for them, out of fear of their power, what you have left undone, so long as your only motive was compassion for their weakness and their sorrows. And, if ignorance of

--that the class feeling is in favour of a different class--and that the prejudice has a distinct savour of wrong-headedness in each case--but it is questionable if the one is either a bit better, or a bit worse, than the other. The ol

way from their ministrations--whether the most completely educated men are not as open to reproach on this score as the

d, is a very safe kind of glory--whether we may not purchase it too dear; especially if we allow education, which ought to be directed to the making of m

g their functions in their present posture of half-clerical seminaries, half racecourses, where men are trained to win a senior wranglership, or a double-first, as horses are trained to win a cup, with as little reference to the needs of after-life in the case of the man as in that of the racer. And, while as zealous for education as the rest, they affirm that, if the education of th

dant. There is a loud cry for compulsory education. We English, in spite of constant experience to the contrary, preserve a touching faith in the efficacy of acts of Parliament; and I believe we s

on with theology is in the same predicament. But this is certain, that those who hold the first opinion can by

d to me in former days, those who, in despair of getting anything better, advocate this measure, are met with the objection that it is very like making a c

e entanglements. And by way of a beginning, let us ask ourselves--What is education? Above all things, what is our ideal of a thoroughly liberal education?--of that education which, if we could begin life again, we would give ourselves--of that

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ider it to be a primary duty to learn at least the names and the moves of the pieces; to have a notion of a gambit, and a keen eye for all the means of giving and getting out of check? Do you no

es, every man and woman of us being one of the two players in a game of his or her own. The chess-board is the world, the pieces are the phenomena of the universe, the rules of the game are what we call the laws of Nature. The player on the other side is hidden from us. We know that his play is always fair, just and patient. B

ess with man for his soul. Substitute for the mocking fiend in that picture a calm, strong angel who is pla

rces, but men and their ways; and the fashioning of the affections and of the will into an earnest and loving desire to move in harmony with those laws. For me, education means neither more nor less than this. Anythi

have been, and then left to do as he best might. How long would he be left uneducated? Not five minutes. Nature would begin to teach him, through the eye, the ear, the touch, the properties of objects. Pain and pleasure would be at his

oes, compared with which all others might seem but faint shadows, would spring from the new relations. Happiness and sorrow would take the place of the coarser monitor

tions into rough accordance with Nature's laws, so that we might not be ended untimely by too gross disobedience. Nor should I speak of this process of education as past for any one, be he as old as he may. For every man the world is as fresh as it

eat and successful men in this world. The great mass of mankind are the "Poll," who pick up just enough to get through without

legislation, that of Nature is harsh and wasteful in its operation. Ignorance is visited as sharply as wilful disobedience--incapacity meets with the same punishment

ncapably nor ignorantly, nor with wilful disobedience; and to understand the preliminary symptoms of her pleasure, without waiting for the box on the ear. In short, all artificial education ought to be an anticipation of natural education. And a liberal

qual strength, and in smooth working order; ready, like a steam engine, to be turned to any kind of work, and spin the gossamers as well as forge the anchors of the mind; whose mind is stored with a knowledge of the great and fundamental truths of Nature and of the laws of her operat

e, in harmony with Nature. He will make the best of her, and she of him. They will get on together rarely:

und such an education? Looking over the length and breadth of these islands, I am afraid that all these quest

y large proportion of cases not so well as to take pleasure in

of which the child, nine times out

y. This, to my mind, is much as if a man of science should make the story of the fall of the apple in Newton's garden a

he geography of the child's own country. But I doubt if there is a primary school in England in which hangs a map

espect for others: obtained by fear, if the master be inc

that, so far, it deals with the most valuable and important part of all education. Yet, contrast what is done in this direction with what might be done; with the time given to matters of comparati

every moral law, as cogent and as well defined as that which underlies every physical law; that stealing and lying are just as certain to be followed by evil consequences, as putting your hand in the fire, or jumping out of a garret window. Again, though the scholar may have been made acquainted, in dogmatic fashion, with the b

the necessary connection of the moral law which prohibits stealing with the stability of society--by proving to him, once for all, that it is better for his own people, better for himself, better for future generations, that he should starve than steal? If you have no foundation of knowled

much after the fashion of King David and the elders and nobles of Israel--his sole models. Will you give a man with this much information a vote? In easy times he sells it for a pot of beer. Why should he not? It is of about as much use to him as a chignon,

it is the hand-labourer, whose daily toil lies among levers and pulleys; or among the other implements of artisan work. And if any one is interested in the laws of health, it is the poor workman, whose strength is wasted by ill-prepared food, whose health is sapped by bad ventilation and bad drainage, and half whose children are massacred by disorders which might be prevented. Not only does our present primary educatio

neither misery nor crime among the masses of mankind? I reply, why should the thing which has been called education do either the one or the other? If I am a knave or

tending. The only medicine for suffering, crime, and all the other woes of mankind, is wisdom. Teach a man to read and write, and you have put into his hands the great keys of the wisdom box. But it is quite another matter whether he ever opens the box or not. And he is as likely to poison as to cure himself, if, without guidance, he swallows the first drug t

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ut that the higher schools, at any rate, must be allowed to give a liberal e

, for all that, every one knows that it is a rare thing to find a boy of the middle or upper classes who can read aloud decently, or who can put his thoughts on paper in clear and grammatical (to say nothing of good or elegant) language. The "ciphering" of the

her claims upon his attention. I venture to say that, in the great majority of cases, his ideas on this subject when he leaves school are of the

the great public schools with the greatest distinction and credit, and might never so much as have heard of one of the subjects I have just mentioned. He might never have heard that the earth goes round the sun; that England underwent a great revolution in 1688, and France another in 1789; that the

e found among the educational cities of the plain. But I would not have you too sanguine about the result, if

with avidity--it is the English. If there be a people which, during the same period, has developed a remarkable literature, it is our own. If there be a nation whose prosperity depends absolutely and wholly upon their mastery over the forces of Nature, upon their intelligent apprehension of, and obedience to the laws of the creation and distribution of wealth, and of the stable equilibrium of the forces of society, it is precisely this nation. And yet this is what these wonderful people tell their sons:--"At the cost of from one to two thousand pounds of our hard-earned money, we devote t

m-engines, or the nature of the raw products you employ; and, when you are asked to buy a patent, you shall not have the slightest means of jud

llions of men. But you shall not hear one word respecting the political organisation of your country; the meaning of the controversy between fre

o authority; and of drawing accurate general conclusions from particular facts. But at school and at college you shall know of no sou

d in bitterness, and you shall not have learned to take refuge in the great source of pl

cation. But is an education which ignores them all a liberal education? Nay, is it too much to say that the education which should embrace these subjects and no others would be

e ancient Greeks and Romans, and the geography of so much of the world as was known to these two great nations of antiquity. Now, do not expect me to depreciate the earnest and enlightened pursuit of classical learning. I have not the least desire to

uild up intelligible forms out of the scattered fragments of long-extinct beings, fail to take a sympathetic, though an unlearned, interest in the labours of a Niebuhr, a Gibbon, or a Grote? Classical history is a great section of the palaeontology of m

history were taught, not as a weary series of feuds and fights, but traced to its causes in such men placed under such conditions; if, lastly, the study of the classical books were followed in such a manner as to impress boys with their beauties, and with the grand simplicity of their statement of the everlasting pr

roduction of the head-masters out of the field in all these excellences. Next, I could exercise my boys upon easy fossils, and bring out all their powers of memory and all their ingenuity in the application of my osteo-grammatical rules to the interpretation, or construing, of those fragments

think you, would Cicero, or Horace, say to the production of the best sixth form going? And would not Terence stop his ears and run out if he could be present at an English performanc

a steep hill, along a bad road. What with short-windedness, stones, ruts, and a pervading sense of the wisdom of rest and be thankful, most of us have little enough sense of the beautiful under these circumstances. The ordinary sc

English, for the mere sake of being able to do it, and without the smallest regard to the worth, or worthlessness, of the author read. It means the learning of innumerable, not always decent, fables in such a shape that the meaning they once had is dried up into utter trash; and the only impression left upon a boy's mind is, that the people who believed such things must have been the greatest idiots

knowledge they might turn to account in life, not merely for the achievement of vulgar success, but for guidance in the great cris

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aid to the universities? This is an awful subject, and one I almost fear to touch wi

d valuable "Suggestions for Academical Organisation w

onged study of special and professional faculties by men of riper age. The universities embraced both these objects. T

ional study. Here and there college walls may shelter an occasional student, but not in larger proportions than may be found in private life. Elementary teaching of youths under twenty is now the only function performed by the university, an

to convince the outside world that language so severe is yet no more than just, the authority of the C

fer greatly from the absence of a body of learned men devoting their lives

University of Oxford, materially impairs its character as a seat o

arning are simply "boarding schools" for bigger boys; that learned men are not more numerous in them than out of them; that the advancement of knowledge is not the object

eal of a university, and doing their best to make that ideal a reality; and, to me, they would necessarily typify the universities, did not the authoritative statements I have quoted compel me to believe

ainted with the scientific, or the literary, activity of modern England, would si

universities profess to sacrifice almost everything else, why, a third-rate, poverty-stricken German univers

himself master of any abstract subject (except, perhaps, political economy and geology, both of which are intensely Anglican sciences), whether he is not compelled to read half a

, to go no further back than the contemporaries of men of middle age, can afford to smile at such a suggestion. England can show now, as she has been able to show in eve

racter which will not recognise impediments. They are not trained in the courts of the Temple of Science, but storm the walls of

ng in the world for which they are specially fitted. Imagine the success of the attempt to still the intellectual hunger of any of the men I have mentioned, by putting before him, as the object of existence, the successful mimicry of the measure of a Greek song, or the roll of Ciceronian prose! Imagine how much success would be li

century ago, have become what they are now--the most intensely cultivated

ome one competent to discipline him in the way of learning; whatever his special bent, let him but be able and diligent, and in due time he shall find distinction and a career. Among hi

talents, and every Bursch marches with a professor's gown in his knapsack. Let him become a great scholar, or man of science, and ministers will compete for his services. In Ger

tivation of science, and the direction of academical education." They are not "boarding schools for youths," nor clerical seminaries; but institutions for the higher culture of men, in which the theological faculty is

ds some such ideal as this, without losing what is valuable and distinctive in their social tone! But until they have succ

rt of relation to one another; that the best of our schools and the most complete of our university trainings give but a narrow, one-sided, and essentially illiberal education--while the worst give what i

he ambition to be able to give that education sooner or later. At present we are but beginning, sharpening our educational tools,

esent lacks only one thing in our programme, and that is a teacher. A considerable want, no doubt; b

earth, of its place and relation to other bodies; of its general structure, and of its great features--winds, tides, mountains, plains: of the chief forms of the ve

ble us to enjoy that pleasure. There is scope enough for the purposes of liberal education in the study of the rich treasures of our own language alone. All that is needed is direction, and the cultivation of

not as a series of biographies; not as evidence that Providence has always been on the side of eithe

follow, in these matters. If my hearers take to heart what I have said about liberal education, they will de

tno

about these schools, see that valuable bo