in.] A LIBERAL EDUCATION. 35 



laws of licr operations ; ono who, no stunted ascetic, is 

 full of life and fire, but whose passions are trained to 

 come to heel by a vigorous will, the servant of a tender 

 conscience: who has learned to love all beautv, whether 

 of Nature or of art, to hate all vileness, and to respect 

 others as himself. 



Such an one and no other, I conceive, has had a liberal 

 education ; for he is, as completely as a man can be, in 

 harmony with Nature. He will make the best of her, 

 and she of him. They will get on together rarely ; she 

 as his ever beneficent mother ; he as her mouth-piece, 

 her conscious self, her minister and interpreter. 



"Where is such an education as this to be had ? 

 Where is there any approximation to it % Has any one 

 tried to found such an education? Looking over the 

 length and breadth of these islands, I am afraid that all 

 these questions must receive a negative answer. Con- 

 sider our primary schools, and what is taught in them. 

 A child learns : — 



1. To read, write, and cipher, more or less well; but 

 in a very large proportion of cases not so well as to take 

 pleasure in reading, or to be able to write the commonest 

 letter properly. 



2. A quantity of dogmatic theology, of which the 

 child, nine times out of ten, understands next to nothing. 



3. Mixed up with this, so as to seem to stand or fall 

 with it, a few of the broadest and simplest principles of 

 morality. 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, an integral part of the doctrine of 

 gravitation, and teach it as of equal authority with the 

 law of the inverse squares. 



4. A good deal of Jewish history and Syrian geo- 

 graphy, and, perhaps, a little something about Englisl> 



