40 LAY SERMONS, ADDRESSES, AND REVIEWS. [in. 



one boy in five hundred has ever heard the explanation 

 of a rule of arithmetic, or knows his Euclid otherwise 

 than by rote. 



Of theology, the middle class schoolboy gets rather 

 less than poorer children, less absolutely and less rela- 

 tively, because there are so many other claims upon his 

 attention. I venture to say that, in the great majority 

 of cases, his ideas on this subject when he leaves school 

 are of the most shadowy and vague description, and 

 associated with painful impressions of the weary hours 

 spent in learning collects and catechism by heart. 



Modern geography, modern history, modern literature , 

 the English language as a language : the whole circle 

 of the sciences, physical, moral, and social, are even 

 more completely ignored in the higher than in the lower 

 schools. Up till within a few years back, a boy might 

 have passed through any one of the great public schools 

 with the greatest distinction and credit, and might never 

 so much as have heard of one of the subjects I have 

 just mentioned. He might never have heard that the 

 earth goes round the sun; that England underwent a 

 great revolution in 1688, and France another in 1789; 

 that there once lived certain notable men called Chaucer, 

 Shakspeare, Milton, Voltaire, Goethe, Schiller. The first 

 might be a German and the last an Englishman for any- 

 thing 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 boxing. 



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. 



