"THE ENGLISHMAN'S FIRESIDE/' 235 



off that monkish inheritance which leads so many of us blindly lo 

 believe that the business of education is to produce scholars rather 

 than men, and direct our educational efforts toward the requirements 

 of the future rather than by the traditions of the past, we need have 

 no fear that Great Britain will decline with the exhaustion of her 

 coal-fields. 



The teaching and training in schools and colleges must be directly 

 and designedly preparatory to those of the workshop, the warehouse, 

 and the office ; for if our progress is to be worthy of our beginning, 

 the moral and intellectual dignity of industry must be formally 

 acknowledged and systematically sustained and advanced. Hitherto, 

 we have been the first and the foremost in utilizing the fossil forces 

 which the miner has unearthed ; hereafter we must in like manner 

 avail ourselves of the living forces the philosopher has revealed. 

 Science must become as familiar among all classes of Englishmen as 

 their houshold fuel. The youth of England must be trained to 

 observe, generalize, and investigate the phenomena and forces of the 

 world outside themselves ; and also those moral forces within them- 

 selves, upon the right or wrong government of which the success or 

 failure, the happiness or misery of their lives will depend. 



With such teaching and training the future generations of England 

 will make the best and most economical use of their coal while it 

 lasts, and will still advance in material and moral prosperity in spite 

 of its progressive exhaustion. 



CHAPTER XXVIII. 



" THE ENGLISHMAN'S FIRESIDE.'' 



DURING the investment of Paris, the Comptes Eendus of the Acad- 

 emy of Sciences were mainly filled with papers on the construction 

 and guidance of balloons ; with the results of ingenious researches 

 on methods of making milk and butter without the aid of cows ; on 

 the extraction of nutritious food from old boots, saddles, and other 

 organic refuse ; and other devices for rendering the general famine 

 more endurable. In like manner, our present coal famine is direct- 

 ing an important amount of scientific, as well as commercial, atten 

 tion to the subject of economizing coal and finding substitutes for it. 



A few thoughtful men have shocked their fellow-sufferers very out. 

 rageously by wishing that coal may reach 3 per ton, and remain at 

 that price for a year or two. I confess that, in spite of my own 

 empty coal-cellar and small income, I am one of those hard-hearted 

 cool calculators, being confident that, even from the narrow point of 

 view of my own outlay in fuel, the additional amount I should thus 

 pay in the mean time would be a good investment, affording an ample 

 return in the saving due to consequent future cheapness. 



Regarded from a national point of view, I am convinced that 3 a 

 ton in London, and corresponding prices in other districts, if thus 

 maintained, would be an immense national blessing. I say this, 

 baing convinced that nothing short of pecuniary pains and penalties 



