94 A LIBERAL EDUCATION; iv 



might be a German and the last an Englishman 

 for anything he could tell you to the contrary. 

 And as for Science, the only idea the word would 

 suggest to his mind would be dexterity in box- 

 ing. 



I have said that this was the state of things a 

 few years back, for the sake of the few righteous 

 who are to be found among the educational cities 

 of the plain. But I would not have you too 

 sanguine about the result, if you sound the minds 

 of the existing generation of public schoolboys, on 

 such topics as those I have mentioned. 



Now let us pause to consider this wonderful 

 state of affairs; for the time will come when Eng- 

 lishmen will quote it as the stock example of the 

 stolid stupidity of their ancestors in the nine- 

 teenth centurv. The most thoroui^hlv commercial 

 people, the greatest voluntary wanderers and 

 colonists the world has ever seen, are precisely 

 the middle class of this country. If there be a 

 people which has been busy making history on the 

 great scale for the last three hundred years — and 

 the most profoundly interesting history — history 

 which, if it happened to be that of Greece or Home, 

 we should study 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 de- 

 pends absolutely and wliolly upon their mastery 

 over the forces of Nature, upon their intelligent 



