it, and could give no explanation of it whatever. Geography, again, is in itself one of the most interesting and stimulating of subjects. It may be taught in the most suggestive way, starting from the everyday experience of children, leading them on to understand and take in the great wonders of the earth and its formation, appealing to their imagination, filling them with sound knowledge of real things, and laying a simple but sure foundation for the reception of the principles of science. And yet how dull and lifeless is the mode in which it is commonly taught! Many teachers are satisfied with exacting a knowledge day by day of a limited portion of some text-book; and most textbooks are made up of long dreary lists of names, without interest, without life, without one living point of connection with the ideas which the child has in his mind already, or the objects which he sees about him every day. And so this most fruitful and real of all subjects, which might quicken into intelligence the dullest mind, becomes too often, under the weary grinding process of the examination mill, a mere string of dead barren formulæ, learnt and repeated by rote, without understanding, without human interest, without adding one iota to the real knowledge of the child, or making him thirst for more. but the teacher had never noticed educational system-I mean the study of the Bible. The Bible finds, alas! no place in the six standards, or in the inspector's examination; its teaching has to be huddled into odd corners, or to be confined to the Sunday-school; and I have a strong suspicion that the youth of this generation do not study it, do not know it, as their fathers did. If this indeed be so, it is a serious national misfortune, and is of itself enough to account for a deterioration in the literary fibre of our youth. Apart altogether from its sacred character, the Bible is the grandest book that the world has ever produced for feeding the intelligence, the conscience, the taste, the imagination of the young. It is all that Homer ever was to the Greek or the Roman, and much more. There is history in it, there is poetry, there is romance, there is philosophy; it is a fountain of wisdom, great, simple, and universal; it is a storehouse of instruction and illustration for every form of human emotion, for every phase of human character, for every incident of private life, for every kind of social and political institution. There never was a richer or nobler granary out of which to feed the heart and mind of a nation. It is a model of style, or rather of many styles; it speaks in a language at once pure, rich, and strong, at once popular and classical, and presents for the formation of our vocabulary an inexhaustible well of English undefiled. May the day never come when the simple facts of the Bible shall cease to be studied in our schools as the foundation of all human knowledge, or its ideas and its literary form to shape the conscience, to develop the taste, and to fire the imagination of our young! And now that I am touching on English, and on the subjects that may specially be called the English subjects, I cannot but express my fears that there is one subject of paramount importance in education which, under the present system, is being gradually driven into a corner, so that it constitutes no longer the main pillar of our It is obvious that such a course as of education as that sketched in this article can only be successfully carried out by means of a prolonged and systematic course of training. Modern reform, excellent as it has been in many ways, has been injurious to the cause of higher education, by the demand that is continually made for the introduction of new subjects into the school course. It is not that all these new subjects do not deserve recognition; on the contrary, they are admirable in themselves, and probably each of them, if systematically organised and with a sufficient amount of time at its disposal, might form the basis of an excellent system of education. The mistake made has been in the attempt to crowd all the subjects, new and old, into one curriculum, to be got through in the same space of time, or, many demand, in a shorter space of time than formerly, to the serious injury both of the old subjects and of the new. It matters little comparatively what subject or set of subjects be chosen to form the staple of an educational course; what does matter premely is, that whatever subjects be chosen should be completely, patiently, and exhaustively studied, with a view to the gradual training and development of the human faculties. The object to aim at is not to crowd all knowledge into one mind, but to train each mind thoroughly and systematically in one branch or one side of knowledge; for the mind which has been thoroughly trained in this way will be able, when time and opportunity offers, to make itself master of any other subject to which it may desire to turn its attention. I plead, therefore, rather for a reduction of the number of subjects to be taught in our schools, and an increase in the time su to be given to each ; and when critics complain of the sorry results produced by our secondary schools or universities, they should consider how far the shortcomings they deplore are due to the fact that the scholars have been tossed about from one subject to another, without having ever received a really continuous education in any subject at all. It has sometimes been made the ground of attack upon the Scotch schools and universities that they do not produce classical scholars that can rank beside the best English scholars, and patriots of the type of Professor Blackie declaim against what they are pleased to call the snobbery of believing that our best Scotch students can learn something by continuing their studies at Oxford and Cambridge, or that Oxford and Cambridge can supply us with types of scholarship which we do. not produce at home. It would be well for such critics to consider how long and patient a course of classical training is given by the best schools of England, and how vain it is to hope that equal results can be produced, save in exceptional cases, in the very much more limited time which is devoted to the study of classics in this country. We have seen the absurdity of imagining that a training in specific subjects continued for three years can form a satisfactory basis for university study. Let us ask what is the usual preliminary training received by students who enter at Oxford and Cambridge, and whose performances are contrasted with those of average Scotch students. Such a youth in England has probably been at school since he was nine years of age. From that age to thirteen or fourteen he attends a preparatory classical school. He has begun Latin at eight, sometimes even earlier; Greek at ten or eleven. At the preparatory school his education is mainly in Latin, Greek, and English, tempered with a moderate amount of mathematics, French, and history (including divinity). He works about 40 hours in the week, and from the time he is eleven he will devote no less than from 18 to 19 hours per week to classics, with which the study of English, on the principle explained above, always goes hand in hand. At fourteen he is transferred to one of the great public schools. I have before me the time-tables of Eton, Harrow, Rugby, Clifton, Winchester, and other schools, and I find that the amount of time given to the different subjects in the different schools is very much the same. At the age of fourteen, on an average not less than 12 hours aweek are given to classical lessons. As the boy rises in the school, the amount of time given to classics increases till it becomes as much as 17 hours per week. In addition to the time given in school, there is the time for preparation out of school, and for the writing of exercises in prose or verse composition, of which there are generally from two to three a-week. In one school I find that, counting both the time taken for preparation and that spent in classwork, not less than 27 hours per week are given to classics, while 5 are given to mathematics, 4 to modern languages, 2 to science, and 12 to history, making a total of from 40 to 41 hours in all. In another school I find as much as 52 hours of work per week, including preparation, of which 28 or 30 are devoted to the study of classics: the proportion throughout the other schools is very similar. The above exam ples, of course, are taken from the classical side. On the modern side, at Harrow 4 hours only per week are given to classics, 11 to science and foreign languages, 2 to English and history, and 6 to mathematics; from 20 to 24 hours are taken for preparation. The school course is continued usually up to the age of nineteen, so that when an English student joins the university, he has had ten or eleven years of consecutive training in classics, in literature, and in composition, all dovetailed into each other, and made to form part of a single and continuous system of education. How far this system is defective upon its mathematical and scientific side it is beside my present purpose to inquire; I only wish to point out what immense advantages in point of classical and literary education a good English student has received when he enters an English university, and how vain it is to expect that Scotland, with her mixed and inadequate system, can produce in classics an average of similar results. If with the above system we compare that pursued in our best secondary schools in Scotlandthose whose students distinguish themselves most at the university it will be found that the main distinction is that the Scotch course is very much shorter, and that it devotes less time to classics and more to English and mathematics. In Scotland, neither Latin nor Greek is begun at so early an age as in England, and this is probably an advantage. The Scotch course ends earlier: few scholars remain at school after seventeen, and not many after sixteen years of age. The consequence is that the scholars have not read nearly as much, and do not ever reach the same point of scholarship, as the best English boys when they leave school. Another most important difference is that Scotch schools are not able to devote as much time and care as are needed for the indispensable item of composition. It is, in consequence, most prominently in this respect that ordinary Scotch scholarship falls short of English scholarship. Nevertheless, during the last few years of the course, the time given to classics in a good secondary school in Scotland is nearly as great as that given in the best English schools. In Dundee High School, during the three last years, about 12 hours per week are given to classics in class, exclusive of preparation. In the Edinburgh High School, 15 hours a-week are given to classics in the highest class, 10 hours in the third class, and so on. In Glasgow High School from 10 to 15 hours of class-work, according to choice, are given to classics. In Ayr Academy as much as 16 hours are given to classics in the highest class, as much as 12 in the third class, exclusive of preparation. In Hutcheson's Grammar School, Glasgow, 10 hours are given to classics in the three highest classes of the school, while as much as from 7 to 11 hours are devoted to mathematics. I content myself with thus indicating the amount and character of the work done in our secondary schools, in order to show by what a gulf the training they offer is separated from that provided by ordinary public schools; but I am far from wishing to imply that these schools do not need improvement. The organisation of many of them stands in need of radical amendment, and this amendment will undoubtedly be insisted on so soon as the public is convinced that such schools must form an essential portion of our national system. The improvements most needed are that the power of head-masters should be strengthened, so as to exclude all divided authority inside the schools; that in all cases promotion by merit should be established, instead of by mere seniority; that pupils in each subject should be classified according to their degree of proficiency in it; that the hours of work should be better adjusted, so as to admit of boys taking proper exercise, and taking their meals at proper hours, throughout the winter months; and, most important of all, that a high standard of qualification should be demanded from the masters, and salaries sufficiently high provided to secure the services of really high-class men. Without reference, however, to future improvement, the facts given above show that in any good secondary school a systematic course of literary training is provided, extending over five or six years; classics are systematically and continuously taught; composition, though deficient in quantity, and far from being what it ought to be in quality, forms a substantial part of the work; and at the end of the course the scholar leaves school having understood and mastered considerable portions of the best classical authors. The scholar who has worked diligently and carefully through such a course has learned much more than a certain amount of Latin and Greek. He has learned to grapple with difficult processes of reasoning, and to follow trains of argument; he has learned how to get up a book or a subject systematically, and to hold it as a whole in his mind. He has had explained to him many abstract processes of thought, and has some grasp of abstract ideas. He has gained some appreciation of the niceties and delicacies of language, and a power to understand the differences of thought to which they correspond. He should have some sense for beauty of expression, for compactness of language, and (if he has had good teachers) he has been taught to value simplicity, directness, and strength in writing his mother tongue. If he has gained these things and nothing else, he is a fit subject for the highest education which the university can give him. Now let the reader who has borne with me thus far, contrast the kind of education which is here sketched out-an education which can, and which ought to be provided in every secondary school -with the specimens selected at random in my previous article as the product of the teaching of the "higher subjects" in ordinary public schools, under the system of specific subjects. Let him consider how entirely deficient that system is in respect of the teaching of English how barren in the production of ideas-how destitute of the flavour of literary culture. Let him remember, further, how very unsatisfactory the teaching of "English" commonly is, not only in the elementary, but in many of the secondary schools, and how largely it fails in producing that development of the intelligence, that cultivation of the taste, that command over language, which it is the main function of a literary education to secure. We may now attempt to give an answer to the question from which we started. Is it possible to give a literary education such as has been described in this article, and such as every secondary school should aim at, in every public school in the country? As suredly not. Such an education VOL. CXLII.-NO. DCCCLXI. can only be carried out by highclass teachers, such as are not to be found in every school in the country; by men who have taken honours at a university, or who have otherwise shown that they have some real literary culture of their own. Such work cannot be carried out successfully by men who merely repeat by rote the knowledge which they have crammed up for their own examinations, or which they get up with a view to their lessons from day to day. It may be asked, then, Should specific subjects be abolished altogether? Is it proposed that the connection between the universities and the elementary schools of the country, which has so long subsisted, should be broken, and that all students should be required, as a necessary condition of entering the university at all, to go through a complete course of secondary instruction at a secondary school? No doubt this would be the most admirable solution of all: but it is vain to discuss such an alternative. The facts given in my first article as regards the schools from which the universities draw their students, show that it would be impossible to effect such an educational revolution as to close the university door upon all but scholars of secondary schools. But such a revolution is not required. What is wanted is, not that all students should go through a secondary school, but that wherever secondary instruction is given, whether it be in a secondary school or in an elementary school, it should be systematically organised, and upon principles entirely different from those which regulate the work done for the six standards. The first thing to recognise is that it is impossible that efficient higher instruction can be given in every F |