Middle-Class Education. 39 



teacher, and consequently unproductive, are heavy afternoon 

 lessons following an early dinner. The early morning school 

 prevents much moral mischief in the dormitories. 



Reckoning classics and mathematics to be harder than 

 English, French, and German, which in turn are harder than 

 arithmetic and drawing, as these last rank before writing and 

 dictation, I arranged my scheme of hours accordingly, and found 

 it popular on trial both with masters and boys. 



School Management, Rules, 8fc. — I apprehend from the terms 

 of the thesis that our subject is limited to school teaching ; I 

 therefore pass by what might be a fruitful theme Avith the single 

 remark that too much confidence (to be exhibited in a hundred 

 ways) cannot be reposed in boys. The good feeling of the mass 

 under a judicious management will always check and set right 

 the vagaries and vicious propensities of the few. It is astonish- 

 ing how soon a new fellow tones to the school. A black sheep 

 detected, should of course be got rid of, if clearly incurable, as 

 quickly, but as quietly as possible. 



And now we have got to the limit of our subject. My con- 

 clusion is, that, all the young farmer need know, he can learn 

 well at school by the time he is sixteen. If, having begun at a 

 fair age, he has not done so, it would be perilous, in a moral 

 point of view, both to himself and others, to leave him longer 

 among little boys. 



But after sixteen — what then ? A few of the more ambitious 

 might wish for the opportunity to push on in studies that are 

 now just opening brightly on their view. But, as a rule, he 

 who settles down as a bov to the idea of being a farmer, and nothing 

 else, is not of an ambitious turn as regards study or intellectual 

 improvement of any sort. 



At sixteen, when the commercial class is leaving for the 

 counting-house, the professional for the desk and surgery, what 

 are we to do to fill up satisfactorily for the young agriculturist 

 this most hazardous season ? It is a time of life and a state of 

 circumstances that present exceeding temptations to idleness and 

 vicious courses. 1 cannot see, after much consideration, that at 

 this age a lad can do better than go for a year's course to some 

 such place as Cirencester College or Glasnevin, near Dublin. 



Of course this implies capital and pecuniary advantage on the 

 parent's part ; but so does modern farming in itself. Moreover, 

 the case will be materially altered if noble institutions like the 

 Suffolk Middle-Class College spring up over the land, and, simi- 

 larly to the grammar schools, be endowed with exhibitions, 

 which, having already acted as a stimulus to exertion at school, 

 shall help the less wealthy to a collegiate education. 



To keep a lad of ordinary spirit steady at sixteen years of age. 



