MODERN LITERATURES IN EDUCATION. 3g7 



feelings toward us are of the very highest importance. If we can 

 imagine such a person giving free expression to his feelings at the first 

 sight of such a phenomenon (a phenomenon observable in all other 

 European states equally with our own), what he would say would 

 ' probably be something after this manner : " These nations of Europe 

 present some very singular anomalies. Their newspapers, of whatever 

 country, are full of complaints of the absolute inability of all foreigners 

 to gain the least comprehension of the institutions of that particular 

 country. The English and Germans alike speak of the French as a 

 nation wholly swallowed up in themselves, and ludicrously ignorant of 

 every thing outside themselves. The French retaliate by calling the 

 Germans barbarians and the English shopkeepers. The Americans say 

 that no foreigner, except a certain De Tocqueville, has ever gained the 

 smallest glimpse of their character ; while the English affirm that the 

 Americans themselves are blinded to every thing except what they 

 think their national grandeur. And what is more," the observer might 

 go on to remark, " these complaints are, for the most part, not only 

 true, but obvious, and obviously disastrous in their results. Witness 

 the fact that the leading English newspaper, not many years ago, 

 inserted a leading article on what turned out to be an absurd mistake 

 of its own respecting one of the chief institutions of Germany the 

 Zollverein a mistake which it had to acknowledge the day after. Or, 

 again, witness the fact that one of the chief French authors can hardly 

 employ an English word in his books without a ludicrous misspelling. 

 Or, again, the more serious fact that the French enter upon a war in 

 the firm belief that they will find allies in the States of South Germany ; 

 instead of which, they find them enthusiastic enemies. This being the 

 case," he might conclude by saying, "I naturally looked to those 

 bodies in these countries whose office it is to attain and diffuse knowl- 

 enge to the widest degree possible the universities assuming that 

 the means of remedying so great a defect in knowledge, and one so 

 universally complained of, would at any rate be under their considera- 

 tion. To my surprise, I find that they had hardly even noticed the 

 subject at all. Every one of these nations seemed to me to be in the 

 position of a man whose whole time was occupied in investigating the 

 biography of his great-grandfather, while with his relations, connec- 

 tions, friends, and acquaintances, he only transacted the most barely 

 necessary business for the shortest possible space of time." 



An observer who spoke in this way would, it may be granted, be 

 speaking in ignorance of many of the causes of the phenomenon he 

 wondered at, and of the practical necessities that might be held to 

 justify it. But he would surely not have in the least exaggerated the 

 strangeness of the phenomenon. Every conceivable branch of knowl- 

 edge physical science, mathematics, philosophy, theology all ancient 

 culture, is thought in England worth systematic study, except this. It 

 is only the condition, material and spiritual, of the nations with whom 



