576 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



of exhausted bookworms for shrewd, handy men in our works and 

 factories, let us consider what may be wisely and safely attempted in 

 the way of improving the education of the handicraftsman. 



First, I look to the elementary schools now happily established all 

 over the country. I am not going to criticise or find fault with them ; 

 on the contrary, their establishment seems to me to be the most im- 

 portant and the most beneficent result of the corporate action of the 

 people in our day. A great deal is said of British interests just now, 

 but, depend upon it, that no Eastern difficulty needs our intervention 

 as a nation so seriously as the putting down both the Bashi-Bazouks 

 of ignorance and the Cossacks of sectarianism at home. What 4ms 

 already been achieved in these directions is a great thing ; you must 

 have lived some time to know how great. An education, better in its 

 processes, better in its substance, than that which was accessible to 

 the great majority of well-to-do Britons a quarter of a century ago, is 

 now obtainable by every chjld in the land. Let any man of my age 

 go into an ordinary elementary school, and, unless he was unusually 

 fortunate in his youth, he will tell you that the educational method, 

 the intelligence, patience, and good temper, on the teachers' part, 

 which are now at the disposal of the veriest waifs and wastrels of 

 society, are things of which he had no experience in the costly middle- 

 class schools ; which were so ingeniously contrived as to combine all 

 the evils and shortcomings of the great public schools w T ith none of 

 their advantages. Many a man, whose so-called education cost a good 

 deal of valuable money and occupied many a year of invaluable time, 

 leaves the inspection of a well-ordered elementary school devoutly 

 wishing that, in his young days, he had had the chance of being as 

 well taught as these boys and girls are. 



But while, in view of such an advance in general education, I 

 willingly obey the natural impulse to be thankful, I am not willing 

 altogether to rest. I want to see instruction in elementary science 

 and in art more thoroughly incorporated in the educational system. 

 At present, it is being administered by driblets, as if it were a potent 

 medicine, "a few drops to be taken occasionally in a teaspoon." 

 Every year I notice that that earnest and untiring friend of yours 

 and of* mine, Sir John Lubbock, stirs up the government of the day in 

 the House of Commons on this subject; and also that, every year, he, 

 and the few members of the House of Commons, such as Mr. Playfair, 

 who sympathize with him, are met with expressions of warm admira- 

 tion for science in general, and reasons at large for doing nothing in 

 particular. But now that Mr. Forster, to whom the education of the 

 country owes so much, has announced his conversion to the right 

 faith, I begin to hope that, sooner or later, things will mend. 



I have given what I believe a good reason for the assumption that 

 the keeping at school of boys who are to be handicraftsmen beyond 

 the age of thirteen or fourteen is neither practicable nor desirable; 



